Utopian Visions of Feminist Science
Fiction: A Pathway to ‘Better’ Futures
Pritam
Panda
Pritam Panda is a research scholar (Ph.D) in the Department of
English and other Modern European Languages, University of Lucknow. The topic
of his research is “Re–enactment of today’s myths and creation of tomorrow’s
myths in Science Fiction and Cinema”. The author’s areas of interests include
Victorian literature, Post\colonial studies and Speculative fiction.
Abstract
Science Fiction over the years have achieved a
significant place in the pantheon of literature. From being dismissed as pulp
fiction in the 20th century, science fiction has come a long way to
be recognised as a creative field of duty mainly due to the writings of H. G
Wells, Jules Verne, Arthur Clarke, etc. and the fact that the genre talks about
things that belong to the ‘future’ in a language adhering to the technicalities
followed by the cyber generation. As the progress of the society in material
terms getting accentuated at a very rapid pace owing to prolific use of
technology, the alternate societies presented by science fiction seems very relevant,
plausible and thought provoking in the present times. Utopian writings
belonging to the genre have achieved fame because they present themselves as a
kind of ‘revolutionary literature’ by offering the prototype of ‘perfect’
worlds that are estranged from the disparities existing in the contemporary
society. Feminist literature is also similar in ideation to the genre because
both the genres talk about societies that are truly democratic and which
provides equal opportunities to the ‘second sex’ to flourish. Feminist Utopian
science fiction was propelled by the works of writers like Ursula
Guin, Joanna Russ , Margaret Atwood who wrote about societies those were more
benevolent to women and also deconstructed the notion of patriarchal hegemony.
These utopias talked about the subverting the carefully designed stereotypical
social practices that gave an upper hand to the male society while pushing the
women to the periphery eternally. This paper looks at two texts namely The
Female Man by Joanna Russ and Women on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy and how these utopian texts brought about new
concepts in social orientation and its cultural influence on the gender
construct followed by the conventional society.
Keywords: alternate, revolutionary literature, democratic,
subversion, hegemony, orientation.
Science
Fiction over the years has found its own significant position in the pantheon
of literature. With our society engaging with science more and more with each
passing day, the importance of science fiction as a literary genre is
exponentially on the rise. Science fiction due to its imaginative texture
provides a lot of scope for the writers to include an array of topics and
contexts. Since the time of its proliferation as a literary genre, science
fiction has been used as a political, social and cultural tool. Science fiction
has moved a long way from being escapist stories of adventures and fairy tales
to being subjects of social and cultural reformation. Mainstream writers have
also used Science Fiction to comment on the contemporary problems of the society.
Basically the futuristic tenor of the genre allows the writers to extrapolate
the present conditions of the society and visualise it in an upcoming world.
Science and technology, as recognised by the great scientists like Einstein
have always been democratic and progressive. They are meant to expedite tasks
and assist in societal development. But the massive power dynamic associated
with it often results in the misuse of science and technology. In fact, in the
present context it has turned into a Frankensteinsque monster which has been
exploited by the power hungry capitalist forces for commercial benefits. Over
the years, science and technology has turned into a tool of social and cultural
exploitation by the dominant forces in the society. Time and again science
fiction writers have turned the genre into a way of resistance against these
malicious forces who have misutilized power and technology. Feminist science
fiction is such a genre in which these kind of narratives thrive. Science fiction
until the 1960s and 1970s had been a very patriarchal genre due to the social
construct that machines and devices are only dealt with by men and the women
folk do not have much to do with it. And it was reiterated by the almost
negligent participation of women science fiction writers, the marginalisation
of women characters in science fiction narratives and the general presumption
about science fiction being a masculine genre due to its ‘non artistic’
texture. With the advent of second wave feminism in the 1960s, the women
writers started combining sensationalism with the technological critique
narratives and that gave thrust to feministic science fiction. Three texts in
this period stood out: Ursula K. Le
Guin's The Left Hand
of Darkness (1969), Marge Piercy's Woman on the
Edge of Time (1976) and Joanna Russ' The Female Man (1970).The Star Trek show on T.V also attracted the
female audience because more than the machines and devices, the socio –cultural
dynamics of the show was much stronger which gave the female section a lot to
ponder upon and engage with. The series was mostly about the interaction with
aliens who were treated with a sense of alienation or ‘otherness’. This was
also appealing to the woman psyche because in a male dominated society, the
fairer sex was always treated as the ‘other’ to the ‘center’. Sarah Lefanu has
commented on the relationship between science fiction and feminism in the
following way:
‘Science Fiction is
feminism-friendly. With its metaphors of space and time travel, of parallel
universe, of contradictions co-existing, of black holes and event horizons,
Science Fiction is ideally placed for interrogative functions. The unities of
'self', whether in terms of bourgeois individualism or biological reductionism,
can be subverted.' (Lefanu, 95). The basic thing common between feminist
writings and science fiction is that both are rebellious in nature towards the
established social and cultural conventions of the society and there is a
conscious and constant effort to disorientate the status quo by both of them.
The existing paper looks at two texts: The
Female Man by Joanna Russ and Woman
at the Edge of time by Marge Piercy and tries to explore the alternate
worlds that they have portrayed and the social, cultural and political
implications emanating out from it.
Feminist
utopian narratives basically examine the inter-play of the dynamics of power
between the various sections of the society and re-orientate it with a more
egalitarian approach (in most of the cases). As Frances Bartkowski states, “The
feminist utopian novel is a place where theories of power can be addressed
through the construction of narratives that test and stretch the boundaries of
power in its operational details” (5). These narratives establish themselves as
the critique of the present conventions and try to redesign the working
mechanism of the society. Ann Keinhorst argues that ‘critical utopias’ are different
from ‘traditional utopias’ in more ways than one. Critical utopian narratives
take the reader to an altogether new world. They “offer possible historical alternatives
to the present” (91) that are rooted in a “flexible and alterable” now rather than
a “predetermined” future (96). The critical utopia differs from the traditional
utopia in that it is “the vision of a future way of life… which presently
carries the seed of potential historical reality” (98). Secondly, she opines that
critical utopias such as Monique Wittig’s Les Guérillères and Marge Piercy’s
Woman on the Edge of Time, unlike conventional utopias, have a specifically
feminist rather than humanist “emancipatory orientation” (97), one that is
firmly rooted in interrogating both the present and the place of women in it.
“Feminist utopia,” she states, “will not be replaced by ‘humanistic’ utopias
–as long as the full humanity of women remains a utopian goal” (98). The
utopian narratives are instrumental in highlighting the concerns, aspirations
and fears of the common persons especially the women community who have been
pushed to the periphery with respect to social control from time immemorial. Feminist
utopian narratives take the readers to alternate physical worlds which not only
are different to the existing social conditions but also inform the readers
about the future repercussions or reverse situations of the present disparities
that exist. The feminist utopian narratives are usually used by the writers to
deconstruct the gender binaries in our prevalent system and explore them with
new approaches. That gender is a social construct and its present conventions
needs to re-examined is well known to the sane individual and these utopian
narratives assist in that kind of analysis. In the essay “Feminist theory and
science fiction”, Veronica Hollinger maintains that although science fiction
“has often been called ‘the literature of change’, for the most part it has
been slow to recognize the historical contingency and cultural conventionality
of many of our ideas about sexual identity and desire, about gendered behaviour
and about the ‘natural’ roles of women and men” (126). Feminist utopian
writings are a welcome change because they are more accommodating in terms of
gender and sexuality which the conservative male science fiction writers are
circumspect of trying. It would not be wrong to ascertain science fiction as a
form of revolutionary or resentment literature because it tries to deconstruct
the accepted and coded forms of gender roles and notions. Thus science fiction can be seen as a
collaborative field to feministic writings which creates opportunities women to
inhabit in a world which is free from gender bias thus ensuring scope for
optimum realisation of the fairer sex’s potential.
The
first text in consideration is Women on
the Edge of Time, a classic feminist novel by Marge Piercy. The novel is
said to have created a special place for feministic science fiction writing.
The novel is widely revered because it is one of the most famous representations
of female dominated ‘utopias’. It
endeavours to reclaim artificial gestation as a potential means of achieving
gender equality. The book is a strong radical attack against patriarchal norms.
Plot wise, it tells the story of a poor Hispanic woman named Connie who is
transported to her dreams to Mattapoiset , an ideal future society where the
sexes enjoy total equality. Her acquaintance in this dreamland is Luciente, a resident
of Mattapoisett. The fictional world of Mattapoisett acts as a kind of utopian
world in which there is complete sexual freedom for ladies. It is an extension
of the idea propagated by the feminist movement of the 1960s where there was
strong advocation for elimination or estrangement of women from procreation
responsibilities as a means to achieve gender equality. The novel takes the
help of the process of ‘ectogenesis’ in which women are freed from the task of
breeding a child within their womb for months. This process was a topic of
debate between feminists as one section believed that the ability to procreate
preserves the individuality, uniqueness and unrivalled ‘capacity’ in the hands
of the female sex. This was not merely a physical activity but a carrier of
feministic aspirations and ideals. That men could not replicate the process,
neither could challenge it but were dependent on it for their off-springs was a
means of subverting patriarchal hegemony. In Piercy’s utopian society,
cultivating a brooder society for artificial gestation is always a
pre-determined decision. The character of Luciente introduces Connie to this
process of ectogenosis and thus presents a paradigm shift in gender politics
which leads to an ‘equal status for women’. It is termed as a ‘necessary evil’
for achieving the goal of sovereignty for women’. Piercy depicts a world in
which a feminist form of social anarchism exists as exemplified by the process
of total sexual license and complete autonomy to the women folks in terms of
gender roles. Pregnancy and child birth are carried through artificial wombs
and there is absolutely no need of women being subjected to excruciating pain
arising out of this processes. Set in the 1970s the book follows a fairly
decade old ideation of gender equality and more or less depicts a world that is
devoid of ‘manly interference’. It is a completely subversive attitude to look
at the current problems and there is no effort on the part of the author to opt
for a mediating path. There is no absolutely no scope of having a mutually
inclusive kind of society where there is space for the male section of the
society. Thus this novel comes together as a book which eliminates male
activity. This outlook remains a bone of contention for many female scholars
who believed that this is a kind of escapist vision which is temporal and will
not fulfil the basic underlying aim of achieving women equality in a society
that accommodates both men and women.
In
an important scene of the text Connie who is from the traditional world
disapproves of the existing social rituals of the Mattapoisett world. At one
point she tells “She felt angry. Yes, how dare any man share that pleasure?
These women thought they had won, but they had abandoned to men the last refuge
of women. What was special about being a woman here? They had given it all up,
they had let men steal from them the last remnants of ancient power, those
sealed in blood and milk” (Piercy, 134). Thus the author contradicts her own
theory of the utopian world being unsure of its extreme feminine anarchy. This
also vindicates the ambiguity of Utopia which is often a story of ‘no-where’
written by those who have not been to that no-where land. Connie’s lack of
freedom has been aptly captured in the beginning of the novel when she is
subjected to brain surgery without her permission. The physical act of
subjecting an individual under the knife without her consent and no valid
reason is used as a process akin to ‘rape’. Not only it is forceful but it
dehumanises the person and subjects the individual to grave psychological scars
and results in lack of self- esteem and also facilitates the growth of
schizophrenic tendencies. This act of scissoring thus acts as a metaphor for
rape in the novel. The state in the novel has been unkind on her, it has taken
away her daughter, killed her love and she is left alone to survive on
welfare. She is already subjected to a
lot of tribulations in her life mainly due to her coloured origin and being a
‘female’. But still the society is hell-bent on thrusting more bad experiences
on her in order to glorify the status quo of the society in which females are
the ‘second sex’ and thus should be given an appropriate treatment in order to
maintain the orientation. The character of Connie is financially dependent on
others.
Economics
is of paramount importance in Connie’s life. In a capitalist society, it is
financial power that gives the person a sense of dignity and relevance. “Usually a
sensation of repetition upon waking was a waking to: again bills, again hunger,
again pain, again loss, again trouble. Again,
no Claud, again no Angelina, again the rent due, again no job, no hope” (Piercy
33). After the death of her pick –pocket companion Claud she is completely
helpless moneywise and hence she needs other avenues of income for which she
does not have proper skills neither resources. This is a demonstration of
complete failure of social machinery which has been aptly demonstrated by the
treatment of Connie by the society. That the society is in a constant impulsive
endeavour of exerting its ideological functions on the individual through
violent means is reiterated repeatedly in the text. The society in which Connie
lives does not believe in equanimity but applies the ‘survival of the fittest’
principle. This surely has effect on persons who do not have adequate resources
at their disposal. This kind of mismatch is being critiqued upon by the author
who takes a strong stand against it by creating a complete female centric world
in ‘Mattapoiset’ which seems to be more of a gender reversed reconfiguration of
the unjust regulations carried out in the male dominated society. That a completely normal lady is taken
forcefully to the mental hospital and the mental health experts are hell-bent
on making her feel sick about herself speaks about the debasement of
institutions by the capitalist forces who want everything to be ‘fall in line’
with their ideology. “As long as that ethos includes the
sexist and racist attitudes of the larger society, female and non-white male
patients will be treated differently (less ethically) than the white male
patients.” (Piercy 172). Although the novel has been accused of reducing
women’s capacity of self-determination, the text acts as a mirror to
contemporary problems of the society whose treatment of coloured women is
severely questionable. The very existence of such a society is questionable where
the foundations do not adhere to social equality and the distribution of
economic and cultural resources is not uniform and democratic. The quest for
finding a utopian respite prompts the author to create a land like
Mattapoisset. Perhaps the author through this point of radicalism points out to
the fact that in the near future the dynamics of the society would subvert and
there will be complete female dominance. Thus an egalitarian society is a
figment of imagination which is almost impossible to achieve. Thus, this text serves
as a very important component of utopian fiction where a new society is
constructed by completely minimising the influence of the male intervention on
social dynamics.
The
next text in consideration is ‘The Female
Man by Joanna Russ. It is a critically acclaimed book which includes four
worlds in different times and spaces. The four major characters belonging to
these four worlds are: Jeanine, who is a librarian who still thinks that nothing
happened in USA or the world, neither the second world war took place and no
great depression occurred. Joanna is a college professor of the late 60s
America who is also the narrator, protagonist and authorial voice. Janet is the
lady from the utopian world of Whileaway. The fourth character is Jael, an
assassin who is violent and she comes from a polarised space where there are
clear demarcations between ‘manland’ and ‘womenland’. The novel is a landmark
text with the book advocating for a classless society without government with
strong affiliations towards the natural world. “Along the 1960s and 1970s, Russ
and her contemporaries introduced a profound change, positioning the female
protagonist as a complete individual capable of all constructive and
destructive activities entirely outside of any relationship with the male identity
of western myths” (Albinsky 160). The author through the plot intellectualises the
concept of women’s rights and tries to analyse it from a ‘male-less’
perspective by making the land of Whileaway free from males who have all died
in a plague.
The
world of Whileaway is very much different to the world of Jeanine and Joanna
who live in ‘our Earth’. Joanna wants to become a ‘female man’, only through
which she believes she can live her life to her fullest. By being influenced by
Janet and the envisioned utopian world of ‘Whileaway’, she wants to earn the
epithet ‘Female Man’ because she wants to deconstruct the contradictions based
on gender in her society by the process of unification of these contraries. As
the narrative progresses in part ix of the book, she beautifully encapsulates the
well designed, systematic curbing of the potential of the women community by
the society whose patriarchal dominant intentions are ubiquitously present in
the working mechanism of the social institutions and in the form of moral and
public policing. That Janet liberates them from this kind of oppression is
difficult to accept for them initially but later on they get attached to the
radical contours of Whileaway. As Joanna describes in the novel
In
college, educated women (I found out) were frigid; active women (I knew) were
neurotic; women (we all knew) were timid, incapable, dependent, nurturing,
passive, intuitive, emotional, unintelligent, obedient, and beautiful. You can
always get dressed up and go to a party. Woman is the gateway to another world;
Woman is the earth-mother; Woman, is the eternal siren; Woman is purity; Woman
is carnality; Woman has intuition; Woman is the life-force; Woman is selfless
love. (Russ 107).
Through the use of the
four central characters, Joanna Russ questions gendered identities and their
relevance in settings different from earth and also varied in time durations. The
techniques of time travel and different worlds are intertwined and the plot is
constructed on multiple layers of meaning in order to add a new dimension to
the concurrent differences that we find in our eco system which are driven by
social factors like education, race and gender. In the male dominated genre of
sf it has been repeatedly found that women have been purposefully pushed to the
fringes thus mirroring their peripheral existence in the society. The roles
played by women characters as depicted in science fiction texts are in no means
emancipatory and thus act as a reminder and reiteration of ‘naturalistic’
stereotyped roles meant for women. All the four female characters in the novel
present a unified picture of womanhood. The different configurations available
in the different portrayed worlds and the interlinking of characters and
contradictions point out to a conscious endeavour on the part of the author to
bring about a change in cultural awareness in the contemporary patriarchal
society and also to inculcate holistic consciousness in the future generations.
Janet represents a very completely different woman in comparison to the more
traditional Jeanine and Joanna. According to Joanna, Janet is “whom we [Joanna
and her contemporaries] don’t believe in and whom we deride but who is in
secret our saviour from utter despair” (Russ, 212-13).
The
sexual independence that Janet enjoys in the land of Whileaway, the utopian
land is very much different from what is practised in the land of Jeanine and
Joanna and even Jael who comes from a very volatile setting. As a character she
is way too liberal and has much more affinity towards violence. She has more
propensity towards radical feministic activities which seem intriguing and
disgusting to Jeanine and Joanna at the same time. While the process of sex
converts the women folks to weak objects of pleasure often playing second
fiddle, Janet portrays them new avenues of self- pleasure like masturbation and
homosexual relationships. While it is not utopian at all to have this
distinctly different modes of self -pleasure but to have ways which could free
women from ‘sexual slavery’ was completely novel and in a sense’ utopian for
the female folks. Even if we look at the
process of motherhood in the novel we will find that the process of
parthogenesis was followed thus liberating women from the traditional modes of
motherhood. It destabilised the conventional modes of parenting. It was a means
of liberating women from heterosexual oppression. For the ladies at Whileaway , parenting was a
‘leisure’ activity they generally undertook at around thirty years of age.
Joanna acknowledged the pressures of maternity being a patriarchal stigma
created by the traditional society when she says in the text “Besides what
about the children? Mothers have to sacrifice themselves to their children,
both male and female, so that the children will be happy when they grow up;
though the mothers themselves were once children and were sacrificed to in
order that they might grow up and sacrifice themselves to others; and when the
daughters grow up, they will be mothers and they will have to sacrifice
themselves for their children, so you begin to wonder whether the whole
things isn’t a plot to make the world safe for (male) children. But motherhood is
sacred and mustn’t be talked about” (Russ 204).
If we take into account the fourth character Jael,
she is much more focussed and sharp in comparison to the other Js. She is
diametrically opposite to the character of Joanna.Her intentions veer towards
integrating the other three women characters into the perennial struggle
against ‘Manland’ which she is fighting as a part of ‘Womenland’. The
segregation of both the lands and the constant hostility points out to an
alternate futuristic vision of the author of which Jael is a by-product. She
has turned into a ‘violent machine’ and thus becomes the symbol of the negative
facet of the revolution against men. She is hyper-active in her approach
representing an ‘alpha-feminine’ trait in her treatment of others. She employs
a male slave just like the males use female transsexuals as wives and
prostitutes in ‘Manland’. Unlike Janet’s ‘Whileway’ where a mysterious plague
eliminates all the males which is off-course an indirect and less explicit
method of alienating male intervention. Thus she is not at all friendly with
the concept of Whileaway and this is starkly visible when she says,
Disapprove
all you like. Pedant! Let me give you something to carry away with you, friend:
that “plague” you talk of is a lie. I know. . . . It is I who gave you your
“plague,” my dear, about which you can now poetize and moralize to your hearts
content; I, I, I, I am the plague, Janet Evason. I and the war I fought built
your world for you, I and those like me, we gave you 1000 years of peace and
love and the Whileawayan flowers nourish themselves on the bones of the men we
have slain. (Russ 211).
The author also decodes language as an agent of
extension of phallocentric ideas. Since Whileaway is a genderless society the
use of language as a carrier of phallocentric hegemony is limited. A life is
envisioned where the language written about women is not despotic and is not a
reflection of male anarchy thus maintaining the vision of a ‘utopian’ future.
As the language in ‘our world’ as analysed by Jeanine in the novel is based on
patriarchal codes, the entire population is divided strictly into two
categories- male and female which is dissimilar to the genderless society of
Whileaway. Language has been used as the most significant tool in ascribing
‘gender roles’ to both the biological sexes with its ‘channels of
communication’ and ‘ways of engagement’ both facilitating male superiority and
repeatedly glorifies the subservient status of women. This misuse of the
episteme of language has been completely dismantled in Whileaway. As Joanna who is the ‘female-man’ in the novel
describes her state in which she is highly intelligent and rational but society
has appropriated her in such a way that she discounts her intelligence as not
intrinsically belonging to her but being the ‘manly qualities’ of a female
which she is. AS Myk says that her behaviour reflects “the linguistic
impossibility to identify as a woman without subscribing to the term’s inherent
essentialism” (94).
Utopias
are recurrent in literature due to the continuous dissatisfaction with the
present social conventions. As the world is moving rapidly towards a post human
age, utopian literature is gathering new dynamics. Utopias are escapist modes
of literature that not only give the readers some respite from the hard
realities of life, it is instrumental in creating alternate worlds. Dystopias
are very much straight in depicting debilitating milieus and spaces over imagined
periods of time, but utopias are ironical attempts that try to glorify a very
contradictory situation with respect to the corresponding times. The feminist
utopias have a dual responsibility...they need to find a balanced world which
is equally sensitive to the demands of the women folk as well as establishing a
sense of equanimity with respect to caste, creed, gender and language. With the
present times full of disturbing developments including apocalyptic changes in
environment, the uncertainty over future has gripped humanity and there is a
great affinity for speculative literature that speaks about alternate futures.
Although there has been blatant criticism about these ‘feel good’ literature
being too good to be true, factual analysis reveals that most of the scientific
developments that have taken place in the contemporary society has been found
to be inspired by these speculative fiction.
The
two above mentioned novels present variable views of a more inclusive, liberal
and egalitarian society for women. But there seems to be an eagerness to
disrupt or eliminate male activity as something ‘contagious’ which seems ‘too
hard to be gullible’ in these contemporary times where ‘female inclusivity’ in
society has improved by leaps and bounds. In contemporary literature, sci-fi
concepts and tropes have been used extensively to portray future societies which
are much more liberating for women. But as time has passed the significance of
these two texts prolifically increase due to the fact that they were written in
the era of ‘second wave feminism’ which was instrumental in reconfiguring the
patriarchy based codes of social regulation to a large context. All in all,
they presented theoretical frameworks in which present age writers could
construct new women-centric narratives and try to add some semblance of balance
in the ‘monkey-balancing’ of power equations that co-exist between ‘male’ and
‘female’ in today’s times. The four world involving the four women have been
carefully constructed so as to ensure that a sense of didactism emanates from
the text that the revolution for women’s rights is not a monolithic movement
but the prerogative of women from all sections and part of the world. This
heterogenic discourse between the four women serves as an inspiration for the
future women generations to dismantle the imposed chains of patriarchal stigmas
and collaborate beyond the barriers of nationality, language, caste, race and
ethnicity. As Bammer observes this novel reinvigorates women sensitivity
against the prevalent imbalance of power equations and motivates them for “a
movement towards utopia in a journey of changes we ourselves create day by day
in the process of living” (Bammer 100). Thus
these utopias go a long way to establishing new modes of critical thinking as
well as providing researchers and social scientists remedial measures to fix
emerging problems in the present world.
Works
Cited
Albinski, Nan B. “When It Changed”. Women’s Utopias in British and American
Fiction.
Routledge, 1988, p.160.
Bammer,
Angelika. Partial Visions: Feminism and
Utopianism in the 1970s. Routledge,
1991, p.100.
Bartkowski, Frances. Feminist Utopias. University of Nebraska
Press, 1989, p.5.
Hollinger, Veronica. “Feminist Theory
and Science Fiction”. The Cambridge
Companion to Science Fiction. Cambridge,
2003, p.126.
Keinhorst, Annette. “Emancipatory
Projection: An Introduction to Women’s Critical
Utopias.” Women’s Studies. Vol 14, no. 2, 1987,
pp. 91-110.
Lefanu, Sarah. In the Chinks of the World Machine: Feminism and Science Fiction.
Women's Press, 1988, p.95.
Myk, Malgorzata. “Becoming-Woman Across
Utopian Spaces: Transfiguring Encounters
with Joanna Russ’s “The Female Man.” Utah Foreign
Language Review, Vol.19,2011,pp.85-103, http://www.epubs.uta.edu/index.php/uflr/article/view/727.
Piercy, Marge. Woman on the edge of Time. Fawcett Crest, 1976.
Russ, Joanna. The Female Man. The Women’s Press, 1985.