ISO patriarchy-dissolving SF/F books. Difficulty level: by or about men

March 3, 2021 7:48 AM

If using science fiction and fantasy to imagine breaking the patriarchy into tiny crumbs is a sort of emotional labor, what men are helping with that work?

My SF/F book club reads a lot of broadly feminist work. Books that use SF/F conventions & imaginative capabilities to reimagine women’s roles and power—feminist fantasies, utopias, dystopias, thought experiments, etc. Some of these are about satisfyingly smashing the patriarchy, some are alt-histories where the patriarchy never existed quite the way it does in our timeline. A few along these lines have been Naomi Alderman’s The Power, NK Jemisin’s Broken Earth books, Naomi Novik’s Spinning Silver, Nicola Griffith’s Ammonite, Madeline Miller’s Circe, and some older works by Russ, Le Guin, Atwood, Butler, etc. We were just reading a new book of this sort (Alix Harrow’s Once and Future Witches) when the question came up: Where is the SF/F that reimagines *men’s* roles? Is all this good work about dissolving the patriarchy being done by women? (If so, that’s not so great.)

One recent book we read that does this spectacularly is Marlon James’s Black Leopard, Red Wolf, though it was too violent for many in our group to manage. We’ve looked at a few other books with plotlines that involve nonbinary, trans, genderfluid, and queer characters, and we’re definitely interested in these too. I have a few ideas of older works to turn to (Thomas M. Disch, Samuel R. Delany), but we’re looking for more recent works if possible.

So: Works by men that also explore and reimagine gender roles and power (male, female, & nonbinary)? Curious to hear your suggestions!

posted by miles per flower to Writing & Language (9 answers total)

David Brin's _Glory Season_, if you don't mind silly biology. It's set in a larger society-of-societies that have generally recognized that men are a problem and have tried to do away with them, ending up as societies of women who reproduce parthenogenetically. But because of silly-biology, this doesn't work well so you need at least a few of some sort of men to start the process via nookie. Some societies have engineered nonsentient ",men" that are basically animate dildos. The society the book is actually set in engineered themselves to have opposed mating seasons and keep their few men segregated when they're in rut. Most of the story is about a pair of sisters who are trying to make their way in a society dominated by families of clone-sisters.

You might want to try this before suggesting it to the group. You might find that it doesn't pass muster as "broadly feminist."
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:26 AM on March 3, 2021 [2 favorites]

It doesn't fit your request to be by a man, but Lois McMaster Bujold has a book about men which is a direct response to the feminist literature of the 1970s: Ethan of Athos. It describes a world without women in which men fulfil all social roles.
posted by jb at 8:52 AM on March 3, 2021 [1 favorite]

Not sure if you're interested in someone as problematic as Asimov, but his The Gods Themselves has aliens with 3 genders, even though it doesn't address human gender related issues.
posted by signal at 9:17 AM on March 3, 2021

Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller (2018) finds hope in overturning an epidemic on a dystopian floating island. It's got a couple of rather gory bits, but they're not the themes that stuck with me.
posted by scruss at 9:38 AM on March 3, 2021 [2 favorites]

Kim Stanley Robinson is a very imaginative utopian, and his novel Aurora came to mind in response to this question even though it may only be on the “power” topic without directly questioning gender. It has an AI narrator (like Ann Leckie’s Ancillary series, which I don’t see on your list but sounds like good material for your group too) and a human society that at least has gender equality if perhaps not utter undoing of patriarchal foundations.

I haven’t read Robinson’s 2312 but a quick google finds some critiques that his imagination of bioengineered DIY genders/sexes may be a little simple-minded, but it appears that there’s enough there for your group to discuss.

Finally, The Years of Rice and Salt is an alternate history of an Earth where Europe did not colonize/exploit/genocide the rest of the planet, and it follows two characters over ten reincarnations whose binary genders fluctuate over the course of history.
posted by xueexueg at 10:04 AM on March 3, 2021 [2 favorites]

I think Michel Faber's "The Book of Strange New Things" would just about fit in this category.
posted by cocoagirl at 11:20 AM on March 3, 2021 [1 favorite]

I like Robert Jackson Bennett for this, though it's not explicitly oppositional/counterimaginary. The Divine Cities series (City of Stairs/Blades/Miracles) has men as helpmeets/sidekicks to the women. The Foundryside series also has this dynamic of men as following or reacting to women's agency.
posted by spamandkimchi at 11:50 AM on March 3, 2021 [2 favorites]

The Interdependency series by John Scalzi felt to me almost like he sketched out all the characters and then randomly assigned genders after the fact. It doesn't explicitly address feminism and/or patriarchy, but seemed like he was trying to create a universe where gender was really not an issue at all.
I'm sure other people have other thoughts about it, but for me I found it extremely restful in that sense, and super exciting and fun from a plot standpoint.
(I'm a cis woman who rarely reads books by men anymore because I'm too tired)
posted by exceptinsects at 1:51 PM on March 3, 2021 [3 favorites]

Perhaps it's too subtle for this purpose, but Scalzi's Locked In books take an interesting approach to gender. Some of John Varley's works - for example, Steel Beach - are set in a world where main characters regularly change gender mid-story. (There are other aspects of Varley's stuff that definitely aren't in line with what you're looking for.) I'm looking forward to better answers than mine.
posted by eotvos at 1:17 PM on March 4, 2021 [1 favorite]