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= Single-gender world =
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Introduction
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A relatively common motif in speculative fiction is the existence of
single-gender worlds or single-sex societies. These fictional
societies have long been one of the primary ways to explore
implications of gender and gender-differences in science fiction and
fantasy. In the fictional setting, these societies often arise due to
elimination of one sex through war or natural disasters and disease.
The societies may be portrayed as utopian or dystopian, as seen in
pulp tales of oppressive matriarchies.
Female-only worlds
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There is a long tradition of female-only places in literature and
mythology, starting with the Amazons and continuing into some examples
of feminist utopias. In speculative fiction, female-only worlds have
been imagined to come about, among other approaches, by the action of
disease that wipes out men, along with the development of
technological or mystical method that allow female parthenogenic
reproduction. The resulting society is often shown to be utopian by
feminist writers. Several influential feminist utopias of this sort
were written in the 1970s; the most often studied examples include
Joanna Russ's 'The Female Man', Suzy McKee Charnas's 'Walk to the End
of the World' and 'Motherlines', and Marge Piercy's 'Woman on the Edge
of Time'. Utopias imagined by male authors have generally included
equality between sexes, rather than separation. Female-only societies
may be seen as an extreme type of a biased sex-ratio, another common
SF theme.
Such worlds have been portrayed often by lesbian or feminist authors;
their use of female-only worlds allows the exploration of female
independence and freedom from patriarchy. The societies may not
necessarily be lesbian, or sexual at all�a famous early sexless
example being 'Herland' (1915) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
Themyscira, the home island of DC Comics' Amazon superheroine Wonder
Woman, was created by William Moulton Marston to allegorize the safety
and security of the home where women thrived apart from the hostile,
male-dominated work place. It is governed by "Aphrodite's Law", which
states: "Penalty of death to any man attempting to set foot on
Themyscira."
British sci-fi writer Edmund Cooper explored the subject in several of
his novels, including 'Five to Twelve' (1968) and 'Who Needs Men'
(1972).
Some lesbian separatist authors have used female-only societies to
additionally posit that all women would be lesbians if having no
possibility of sexual interaction with men, as in 'Ammonite' (1993) by
Nicola Griffith. The enormously influential 'The Female Man' (1975)
and "When It Changed" (1972) by Joanna Russ portrayed a peaceful
agrarian society of lesbians who resent the later intrusion of men,
and a world in which women plan a genocidal war against men, implying
that the utopian lesbian society is the result of this war.
During the pulp era, matriarchal dystopias were relatively common, in
which female-only or female-controlled societies were shown
unfavourably. In John Wyndham's 'Consider Her Ways' (1956), male rule
is shown as being repressive of women, but freedom from patriarchy is
only possible in an authoritarian caste-based female-only society.
Poul Anderson's "Virgin Planet" depicted a world where five hundred
castaway women found a way of reproducing asexually�but the daughter
is genetically identical to the mother�with the result that eventually
the planet has a large population composed entirely of "copies" of the
original women. In this female-only world, human males are considered
mythical creatures�and a man who lands on the planet after centuries
of isolation finds it difficult to prove that he really is one. An
example of a contemporary dystopian female world is 'Y: The Last Man',
which features one male human and monkey who survive a cataclysmic
event killing all other males.
James Tiptree Jr., a woman writing secretly under a male pseudonym,
explored the sexual impulse and gender as two of her main themes; in
her award-winning "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" (collected in 'Her
Smoke Rose Up Forever'), she presents a female-only society after the
extinction of men from disease. The society lacks stereotypically
"male" problems such as war and crime, but only recently resumed space
exploration. The women reproduce via cloning and consider men to be
comical.
'A Door into Ocean' is a 1986 feminist science fiction novel by Joan
Slonczewski. The novel shows themes of ecofeminism and nonviolent
revolution, combined with Slonczewski's own knowledge in the field of
biology. The water moon Shora is inhabited by women living on rafts
who have a culture and language based on sharing and a mastery of
molecular biology that allows them to reproduce by parthenogenesis.
In Elizabeth Bear's 'Carnival' (2006), a matriarchal, primarily
lesbian society called New Amazonia has risen up on a lush planet
amidst abandoned alien technology that includes a seemingly
inexhaustible power supply. The Amazonian women are aggressive and
warlike, but also pragmatic and defensive of their freedom from the
male-dominated Earth-centric Coalition that seeks to conquer them.
Distrustful of male aggression, they subjugate their men, a minority
they tolerate solely for reproduction and labor.
In other media
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The 1984 Polish film Sexmission deals with a dystopian women-only
society where all men have died out. Women reproduce through
parthenogenesis, living in an oppressive feminist society, where
apparatchiks teach that women suffered under males until males were
removed from the world.
Lithia, Episode 17 of the fourth season of the 1995 remake of 'The
Outer Limits', features a man who was cryogenically frozen and awakens
in a world populated only by women. They reproduce by artificial
insemination using frozen sperm left over from the time when there
were men (they died due to a war, then a subsequent virus that
affected males).
The 2010 German vampire film 'We Are the Night' explores the idea of
feminist separatism In the film, the female vampire committed a
genocide against male vampire somewhere at the end of the 1800s after
many of them already had been killed by humans. The female vampires
agreed among each other never to turn another man into a vampire.
In the Mass Effect universe, the 'Asari' are a monogender-pansexual
"female" species.
Male-only worlds
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Men-only societies are much less common. Russ suggests this is because
men do not feel oppressed, and therefore imagining a world free of
women does not imply an increase in freedom and is not as attractive.
Cordwainer Smith's 1964 short story "The Crime and the Glory of
Commander Suzdal" portrays a society in which all of the women have
died out. A. Bertram Chandler's 'A Spartan Planet' (1969) features the
men-only planet Sparta, which is dedicated to the values of militarism
loosely modeled upon the ancient Greek city state of Sparta.
'Ethan of Athos' (1986) by Lois Bujold, inspired by the real world
male-only religious society of Mount Athos, shows a world in which men
have isolated their planet from the rest of civilization to avoid the
"corrupting" effect of women. Children are grown in uterine
replicators, using ova derived from tissue cultures; the novel's plot
is driven by the declining fertility of these cultures. The titular
"unlikely hero" is gay obstetrician Dr. Ethan Urquhart, whose
dangerous adventure alongside the first woman he has ever met presents
both a future society where homosexuality is the norm and the
lingering sexism and homophobia of our own world.
The gay fantasy book series 'Regelance' by J. L. Langley depicts a
world where men are able to reproduce via replicative technology.
While there are still women amongst the lower classes, who reproduce
in the traditional manner, there are none among the upper classes
which the series focuses on.
Sexless or hermaphroditic worlds
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Some other fictional worlds feature societies in which everyone has
more than one sex, or none, or can change sex. For example:
Ursula K. Le Guin's 'The Left Hand of Darkness' (1969) depicts a world
in which individuals are neither "male" nor "female" but at different
times have either female or male sexual organs and reproductive
abilities, making them in some senses intersex. Similar patterns
exist in Greg Egan's novel 'Schild's Ladder' and his novella 'Oceanic'
or in Storm Constantine's book series 'Wraeththu' about an oogamous
magical race that arose from mutant human beings.
John Varley, who also came to prominence in the 1970s, also often
writes on gender-related themes. In his "Eight Worlds" suite of
stories (many collected in 'The John Varley Reader') and novels, for
example, humanity has achieved the ability to change sex at a whim.
Homophobia is shown to initially inhibit uptake of this technology, as
it engenders drastic changes in relationships, with homosexual sex
becoming an acceptable option for all.
In the Culture series of novels and stories by Iain M. Banks, humans
can and do relatively easily (and reversibly) change sex.
Sex segregation
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Segregation of the sexes is another relatively common trope of
speculative fiction�physical separation can result in societies that
are essentially single-sex, although the majority of such works focus
on the reunification of the sexes, or otherwise on links that remain
between them, as with Sheri S. Tepper's 'The Gate to Women's Country',
David Brin's 'Glory Season' and Carol Emshwiller's 'Boys'. Even an
episode of 'Duckman' tried this.
Sometimes the segregation is social, and men and women interact to a
limited extent. For example, when overpopulation drives the world away
from heterosexuality in Charles Beaumont's short story 'The Crooked
Man' (1955), first published in 'Playboy', homosexuals oppress the
heterosexual minority and relationships between men and women are made
unlawful.
See also
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* Arcadia (utopia)
* Feminist utopia
* Gender in speculative fiction
* Hypergamy
* Lesbian utopia
* LGBT themes in speculative fiction
* Sex and sexuality in speculative fiction
References
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;Notes
;Bibliography
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External links
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* [
http://www.lesbiansciencefiction.com/LSFWorldbyAuth0001.html List
of female/lesbian worlds at lesbiansciencefiction.com]
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Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-gender_world
