Gender
Entry updated 9 September 2024. Tagged: Theme.
Discussion regarding gender has largely focused on women: this encyclopedia has an entry for Women in SF but not one for men. This focus can be partly attributed to the drive of Feminism to explore emancipation from the oppression of men. There have been many Utopian depictions of one gender societies in which women thrive. Though authors also depict worlds in which men dominate, these are usually treated as Dystopian. The genre has long been controlled by men with women characters developed specifically for an audience of men, and so more work has had to be done to rectify the imbalance of representation. Gender in sf, as a theme, has accordingly evolved over time. While early sf works provided Thought Experiments regarding social relations, there has been a growing focus on gender identity and what it means to be a man or a woman in the future of our world, or on others.
The Blazing World (1666) by Margaret Cavendish and Munster Village (1778) by Lady Mary Hamilton, both important works of Proto SF, are among the texts to introduce narratives involving gender separation, a concern which continues to grow in significance during the First Wave of Feminism. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), arguably the first sf text, depicts a new lifeform yearning for an equivalent of the opposite gender and being driven to violence by solitude (see Definitions of SF). The vengeful Edmond Dantès, in Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo (1844-1845), transgressively allows a lesbian couple to escape his wrath. Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett's New Amazonia: A Foretaste of the Future (1889) takes place in a decimated Ireland which is being repopulated by surplus women from England. The result is that men are in a minority and politics is freed from their influence, leading to more equitable society. Herland (January-December 1915 The Forerunner; 1979) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman similarly depicts women freed from male influence, but as a result of parthenogenesis excluding Y chromosomes. The one-gender-society is depicted as utopian. This is typical of speculative fiction by women during the period in which the extension of women's suffrage was hotly contested. (For more novels featuring women-ruled societies see Sociology.)
The depiction of women functioning independently from men converges with a developing focus on altered gender roles. W H Hudson's A Crystal Age (1887) deals with the male ego and its struggle with societal and political shifts towards matriarchy. William Morris in News From Nowhere (1890), does not go as far as Hudson in his portrayal of women's advancement but presents women as liberated from oppression. In Morris's socialist utopia, men and women do the work they like best and to which they are best suited, which in the case of women largely consists of domestic labour. Gloriana (1900) by Lady Florence Dixie resumes the trend for women-led utopias. The protagonist poses as a man to stand for parliament and wins the vote for her gender; Britain becomes more prosperous with women exerting influence.
Irene Clyde, the pen name of Thomas Baty, was one of the first writers to shift their emphasis from gender roles to gender identity. Beatrice the Sixteenth (1909), depicts the discovery of a Lost World by Time Travel in which gender is not recognized; the diction in which the story itself is told lacks all masculine or feminine identifiers. The novel also includes an invented language – Armerian, a hybrid of Latin and Greek which includes no gendered nouns. It is important to note that the characters native to the utopian society are biologically female, purchasing infants from a neighbouring tribe. It would be wrong, however, to categorize this with women-led utopias. The events take place in a post-gender society, and though characters marry each other, they are not considered lesbians (see Sex). Virginia Woolf's Orlando (1928) may be the first sf text of any importance to present a narrative shaped to accommodate an effortless gender fluidity.
The feminist trend in sf is undercut by the rise of Genre SF, particularly in the 1920s and 30s, which was aimed at a predominantly male audience, featured exaggerated portrayals of masculinity and highly sexualized depictions of women (see also Pulp). Edgar Rice Burroughs in his Barsoom sequence of novels, depicts femmes fatales in exotic landscapes. Weird Tales, which published many of the most popular stories of H P Lovecraft and Clarke Ashton Smith, used images of scantily clad damsels-in-distress for cover art. The short-lived Astonishing Stories, featuring the early work of Isaac Asimov and Robert A Heinlein, maintains the sexualized depiction of women, often in dangerous settings. Though men were typically portrayed as competent and of a scientific mindset, albeit reckless at times, such in Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness (cut February 1936 Astounding; restored in The Outsider and Others coll 1939) and John W Campbell's "Who Goes There?" (August 1938 Astounding), some pulp writers ironized the sexist attitudes eschewed by sensationalist cover art (see Illustration). Leigh Brackett's "The Dragon-Queen of Jupiter" (Summer 1941 Planet Stories) subverted expectations, the protagonist being beautiful, but also fierce and intelligent. Astounding Stories, now Analog was notable for having greater variety in its visual imagery.
Progress in representation may in part be attributed to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, events Asimov complained about having led to science fiction being taken more seriously. It is unsurprising then, that we begin to see more serious characters; this was partly due to plots being brought into the Near Future. Judith Merril's "That Only a Mother?" (June 1948 Astounding) takes place in 1953 and as a result of the radiation from ongoing nuclear World War Three, newborns suffer from such severe mutation, it is unclear, in one instance, whether the child is a boy or a girl. Moreover, "Dreams are Sacred?" (September 1948 Astounding) by Peter Phillips is an early Virtual Reality story in which the protagonists enter an artificially constructed dream and reconstruct the attire of a simulated woman. Sf readers became less concerned with escapist fantasies than contemporary political, sociological, and technological trends, not only those examined under the microscopes of the nearer future but, as with Robert A Heinlein or Isaac Asimov, within the more sober frame of the newly created Future History model.
Perhaps the most revolutionary text in the classic sf canon is Alfred Bester's Tiger! Tiger! (October 1956-January 1957 Galaxy as "The Stars My Destination"; 1956; rev vt The Stars My Destination 1957; rev 1996) in which the positive Apollonian tropes sf had typically attached to masculinity are replaced with their opposite. The protagonist is initially unintelligent, murderous, and a rapist. His ego manifests in a obsessive quest for revenge, which results in unprecedented destruction but also progress. Tiger! Tiger! is also notable for its depiction of body modifications, an important precedent for Cyberpunk as well as examination of the anatomy as it relates to gender. This would be explored more fully during the New Wave era, particularly in the writings of James Tiptree Jr and Joanna Russ.
Robert A Heinlein further broke the mold with "All You Zombies –" (March 1959 F&SF) in which a hermaphrodite travels back in time to impregnate themselves (see Sex; Time Paradox). His later work is notable for depicting women with fully functioning libidos; however, he often falls into the trap of caricatured gender depictions; man as conqueror and women as conquest. In Glory Road (July-December 1963 F&SF; 1963) the hero escapes into a fantastical world with a beautiful nudist who immediately expresses desire for him. Stranger in a Strange Land (1961; text restored 1991) is similarly criticized for its objectified women and their longing for the male gaze. Heinlein does, however, go on to make interesting commentary about gender dynamics in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (December 1965-April 1966 If; 1966). Much of the story takes place on the Moon where men outnumber women vastly. This results in women being treated with more respect and a reduction in the rate of sexual assault owing to the hypermasculine atmosphere stimulating the instinct to protect. Heinlein falls back into the many pitfalls of sf during the pulp era and Golden Age of SF with Time Enough for Love, or The Lives of Lazarus Long (1973) and subsequent works, redeeming himself somewhat with Friday (1982). Time Enough for Love, moreover, is significant for introducing gendered machinery; in contrast to the Robots of Asimov's Robot series, whose gender is merely a physical characteristic, machines are programmed with gendered mindsets, going against the grain of feminist thought that gender is a social construct.
The Dreaming Jewels (February 1950 Fantastic Adventures; exp 1950) by Theodore Sturgeon is notable for being an early depiction of gender being a social construct in a way that transcends the gender swapping described by Heinlein. The protagonist joins a carnival in which he lives as a dwarf-women and owing to his supernatural origins, actually develops physical and mental traits associated with his persona. Sturgeon's "The World Well Lost" (June 1953 Universe) presents the reader with a pair of aliens in love, initially assumed to be of opposite genders, but it is revealed to the shock of the protagonists that they are actually homosexual (see Sex). This is significant for detaching the gender of sentient beings from human characteristics; alien genders had largely been depicted as barely changed variations of men and women. In Venus Plus X (1960) Sturgeon goes on to describe a Utopian society of gender-neutral people, perhaps inspired by Irene Clyde's post-gender civilization: the characters, in this instance, have retractable genitals. Samuel R Delany builds on this notion in "Aye, and Gomorrah ..." (in Dangerous Visions, anth 1967, ed Harlan Ellison) in which the protagonist is without gender as a result of surgical alteration; they are also without sexuality but engage in sex work with both men and women. The loss of apparent gender is similarly treated as detrimental in Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" (March 1967 If). Ellison's protagonist is mutilated by a malevolent AI to the point of losing all sexual characteristics; resulting in the ultimate Torture, which encompasses debasement by loss of recognizable gender.
Another writer to tackle androgyny is Ursula K Le Guin who in The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), explores a world whose inhabitants are "ambisexual". They rarely show sex-specific characteristics but the portrayal of them is nuanced toward heterosexual behaviours. Describing her motivation for the novel, Le Guin stated that her goal was to portray a society in which gender was irrelevant, the result being that her characters could exist outside the context of a gender vacuum. Sexuality in The Left Hand of Darkness is also not a continuous factor in social relationships, which is significant for detaching sex from gender, a long-term goal of gender critical activists. Asimov explored similar territory in The Gods Themselves (March/April-May-June 1972 Galaxy; 1972). The aliens of the novel separated into three genders, each with different physical characteristics, opening sf up to discussions of genders outside of men and women. Le Guin goes on to explore gender roles in The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974), in which gendered labor is revaluated, a mother's labor being a particular cause for celebration. The societies in the novel are also guided by anarchist principles, and as Heinlein previously argued, freedom is driving force towards equality. The plot of John Varley's The Ophiuchi Hotline (1977) is complexly governed through the reproduction of Cloned minds which may be male or female.
Arguably the most important explorer of gender in sf is James Tiptree Jr. "And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side" (March 1972 F&SF) describes men becoming sexually fixated with aliens as result of an inherent desire for Exogamy to the detriment of not only the women in their lives, but Earth as a whole. It is notable that in this story, women appear immune to these perversions, emphasizing a distinction between genders. The Girl Who Was Plugged In (in New Dimensions 3, anth 1973, ed Robert Silverberg; 1989 chap dos) explores the Dystopian effects of hyper-capitalism and the constructed ideal of womanhood. Its protagonist, ostracized due to the physical ramifications of Cushing's syndrome, becomes able to control the body of a stereotypically beautiful young woman via a satellite linked to her brain. Gender disembodiment within the context of the novella manifests as the desire to move into more valued bodies for the purpose of acceptance. "The Screwfly Solution" (June 1977 Analog) as by Raccoona Sheldon, explores chauvinism interrupting into femicide. Houston, Houston, Do You Read? (in Aurora: Beyond Equality, anth 1976, ed Vonda McIntyre and Susan J Anderson; 1989 chap dos), another exploration of misogyny, follows three astronauts who return to a world solely populated by women and find themselves unable to cope in a world without patriarchal hierarchies. Tiptree's most famous story, "The Women Men Don't See" (December 1973 F&SF) deals with the blindness of men to the dissatisfactions of women. Its protagonist in unable to comprehend women choosing to leave their species to live with aliens. Tiptree wrote under a male pseudonym, for complex personal reasons, but perhaps more tellingly as an attempt to bridge the cognitive gap between genders in addition to avoid being patronized for her womanhood.
Joanna Russ contends with Tiptree as the leading explorer of feminist themes in the 1970s. And Chaos Died (1970) is told from the perspective of a homosexual man who acquires Psi Powers after crash landing on a world of highly evolved beings (see Evolution). His eventual rediscovery of Earth Satirizes the attempts of a police state to control its citizens. "When it Changed" (in Again, Dangerous Visions, anth 1972, ed Harlan Ellison) describes male astronauts landing on a world of women and feeling compelled to increase genetic diversity. As with And Chaos Died, Russ divides her settings in The Female Man (1975). The narrative is initially separated between worlds, one of which is the all-woman utopia described in "When it Changed". Another is a dystopia in which both genders are at war and live separately. Each of the central characters visit each other's worlds and despite returning to their own, they gain valuable perspectives on their Identity as women.
Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) by Marge Piercy uses Time Travel as a plot device to contrast 1970s society with a utopian future in which the social goals of the feminist movement have been fulfilled. The result is an absence of prejudice, facilitated by the introduction of gender-neutral pronouns, notably "per" for person rather than he or she. The Passion of New Eve (1977), one of Angela Carter's many ventures into sf, features a man surgically transformed into a woman with the intention to impregnate him with his own sperm. Vonda McIntyre's Dreamsnake (fixup 1978) takes place in the aftermath of most species have gone instinct and further challenges gender roles with a three-person marriage as the cultural norm. The 1970s are notable for authors making greater use of genre devices associated with Horror to convey Feminist lessons about the relationships between men and women. Angela Carter mutilates the fairy tale The Bloody Chamber (coll 1979) and Lisa Tuttle depicts the domestic lives of female protagonists being invaded by uncanny forces in many of her short stories, notably those collected in A Nest of Nightmares (coll 1986).
Samuel R Delany, often regarded as the father of Afrofuturism is influential in bringing intersectionality as a discussion into the sf mainstream, notably with Dhalgren (1975), which was a surprise bestseller. One of its central characters is perceived sexually, not only as a man, but as a black man; Delany explores how race (see Race in SF) and gender interconnect to form ethical opinions surrounding his actions, with surprising results. In Triton (1976; vt Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia 1996), Delany explores manhood through his traditionally masculine protagonist and then subverts expectations by having him choose to become a woman (see Transgender SF). Stars in My Pocket like Grains of Sand (1984) is perhaps Delany's most prescient exploration of gender. "Man" is treated as an archaic term on one world in the book, characters being recognized by sex rather than gender, however the sex of the characters is often treated as irrelevant. Delany also explores different pronouns: "she/her" is an almost universal term, except for when the object is regarded as attractive, in which case, "he/him" is used. Delany's world is not without prejudice, however. Though sex is deemed to be almost as irrelevant as gender, characters are condemned for sexual relationships with those of different physical characteristics, perhaps a comment on arbitrary homophobia. Octavia Butler traverses similar discourses in a historical setting: Kindred (1979) tells the story of a slave master infatuated with his slave (see Slavery), exploring how both his race and gender ties into that infatuation. Butler also cleverly plays with gender expectations in "Bloodchild" (June 1984 Asimov's): a young boy consents to impregnation by an alien overlord and they form an intense emotional bond owing to the dangers of birthing larvae.
Cyberpunk introduced new ways of interpreting gender. The ability of characters to live as avatars in Cyberspace removes their physical sex but maintains their gender. This can be seen in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash (1992) in which characters are able to explore Virtual Reality as large breasted women while still being men. Pat Cadigan in Synners (1991), Fools (1992) and other works, explores the constraints of gender perceptions and how cybernetic augmentation ties into the evolving identities of her characters. Perhaps the most significant text from the cyberpunk era to explore gender is Marge Piercy's He, She and It (1991; vt Body of Glass 1992), which depicts a man-made cyborg, programmed by a woman. It is a novel which challenges the view that genders must also be distinct and epistemologically separate.
The James Tiptree Jr Award, now peculiarly renamed the Otherwise Award, has been presented since March 1992 for sf or fantasy fiction that best "explores or expands gender roles". Notable winners include Nicola Griffith's Ammonite (1993), which challenges the assumption of many earlier sf writers that an all-women society would be a peaceful and utopian one. M John Harrison's Light (2002) depicts a shapeshifting being which usually opts for the body of an old woman; Caitlín R Kiernan's The Drowning Girl: A Memoir (2012) features both a transgender woman and a shapeshifter as love interests. Ancillary Justice (2013) by Ann Leckie earned a place on the honour list: this novel follows a human-embodied AI which is unable to recognize gender, owing to the culture of its creators, and so defaults to she/her pronouns for the people it encounters. Gender ambiguity forces the reader to contemplate the relevance of gendered markers and deconstructs binary structures of identity. Most recently the award was won by Ryka Aoki for Light from Uncommon Stars (2021), in which a transgender violinist is pressured to part with their soul, and Rivers Solomon for Sorrowland (2021), in which the protagonist is forced to marry the leader of a cult.
There has been a greater push for representation of genders outside of men and women with sf Magazine editors seeking contributions from authors who belong to marginalized groups, Strange Horizons and Utopia Science Fiction Magazine being just two of these. Charlie Jane Anders, whose All the Birds in the Sky (2016) won a Nebula Award, is perhaps the most significant transgender sff author in recent years and has called for a greater array of direct representation. There has already emerged a greater proportion of transgender characters, a welcome shift from androgynous Aliens and gender-swapping technology. Furthermore, the growing Solarpunk subgenre incorporates the acceptance of minority genders as part of its punk ethos: A Psalm for the Wild-Built (2021) by Becky Chambers features a transgender robot in a world that accepts them. The overarching trend in sf explorations of gender is that they take place in utopian societies, whereby cultural change is encouraged by demonstrating how things ought to be. It is a trend that may continue long into the future of the genre. [JM]
further reading
- Sarah LeFanu. In the Chinks of the World Machine: Feminism and Science Fiction (London: The Women's Press, 1988) [nonfiction: pb/Anny White]
- Feminism and Science Fiction (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1989) [nonfiction: vt of the above: hb/]
- Paul Richard Marketos. The Evolution of Feminist Utopias. (University of Cape Town, Faculty of Humanities, Department of English Language and Literature, 1993.) [nonfiction: pb/]
- Francesca T Barbini, editor. Gender Identity and Sexuality in Fantasy and Science Fiction (Edinburgh, Scotland: Luna Press/Academia Lunare, 2017) [nonfiction: anth: pb/]
- Lisa Yaszek, Sonja Fritzsche, Keren Omry and Wendy Gay, editors. The Routledge Companion to Gender and Science Fiction (London: Routledge, 2023) [nonfiction: hb/]
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