   the female man is a feminist science fiction novel written by joanna russ. it was originally written in 1970 and first published in 1975. russ was an avid feminist and challenged sexist views during the 1970s with her novels, short stories, and nonfiction works. these works include we who are about to..., "when it changed", and what are we fighting for?: sex, race, class, and the future of feminism. the novel follows the lives of four women living in parallel worlds that differ in time and place. when they cross over to each other's worlds, their different views on gender roles startle each other's preexisting notions of womanhood. in the end, their encounters influence them to evaluate their lives and shape their ideas of what it means to be a woman. ==explanation of the novel's title== the character joanna calls herself the âfemale manâ because she believes that she must forget her identity as a woman in order to be respected (p.&nbsp;5). she states that âthere is one and only one way to possess that in which we are defectiveâ¦become itâ (p.&nbsp;139). her metaphorical transformation refers to her decision to seek equality by rejecting womenâs dependence on men. ==setting== * the female man includes several fictional worlds. * joanna's world: joanna exists in a world that's similar to earth in the 1970s. * jeannine's world: jeannine lives in a world where the great depression never ended. the second world war never happened because adolf hitler was assassinated in 1936, and chiang kai-shek controls hong kong, as japanese imperialism still dominates the chinese mainland. * whileaway (janet's world): whileaway is a utopian society in the far future where all the men died from a gender-specific plague over 800 years ago. their technology enables them to genetically merge ova in order to procreate. after mastering parthenogenesis, women form lesbian relationships and parent children within them. although the world is technologically advanced, their societies are mostly agrarian. joanna russ's nebula award winning short story when it changed (1972) also takes place on whileaway, but earlier.clute and nicholls 1995, p. 1035. * jael's world: jael's world is a dystopia where men and w
1970s_science_fiction_novels 1975_novels American_LGBT_novels American_science_fiction_novels Feminist_science_fiction_novels James_Tiptree,_Jr._Award-winning_works LGBT_speculative_fiction_novels Lesbian_novels Single-sex_worlds