Single-sex societies in sf
In the past few months, I've become intrigued by various questions surrounding the portrayal of single-sex societies in speculative fiction. At some point I'll try to say something coherent about them, but it's becoming clear that I need to do a whole lot more reading first, because I haven't actually read most of the major works in this subgenre.
Here's a partial bibliography so far (note that in some cases, a work's presence on this list is a spoiler):
- Joanna Russ: "When It Changed," The Female Man
- James Tiptree, Jr.: "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?"
- Sheri S. Tepper: The Gate to Women's Country
- Suzy McKee Charnas: The Holdfast Chronicles
- Cordwainer Smith: "The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal"
- Ursula K. Le Guin: "The Matter of Seggri"
- John Wyndham: "Consider Her Ways"
- Lois McMaster Bujold: Ethan of Athos
- Nicola Griffith: Ammonite
- Pamela Sargent: The Shore of Women
- Philip Wylie: The Disappearance
- Max Handley: Meanwhile
- Mary E. Bradley Lane: Mizora
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Herland
- Sally Miller Gearhart: The Wanderground
(A couple of people have pointed out to me that my use of the term "societies" isn't very well defined; a group of soldiers, or a group of monks or nuns, could be deemed a single-sex society. But I'm hoping to look mostly at entire civilizations in which there are only women, or only men, or the two groups are kept carefully isolated from each other. Of course, that last lets in all sorts of patriarchal societies in which women are kept out of the mainstream, so maybe I won't be able to define this notion in a useful way, I dunno.)
While poking around on the web just now to see if such a list already existed, I found a couple of interesting items. First, a bibliography of Imagined Sexual Futures (whence came some of the more obscure works cited above); and second, a 1995 interview with David Brin done by a Dutch sf magazine called Holland SF, in which Brin complains that because his novel Glory Season was written by a man, "a few silly people . . . [made] certain the book was not considered for the James Tiptree Award." He goes on to complain about PC "self-righteousness junkies" and to be snide about Suzy McKee Charnas's Motherlines. At any rate, in among the ranting he mentions two other items that might belong on the above list: Poul Anderson's Virgin Planet and something by Brad Strickland. I'll have to look into those.
