It's been a few months since I have finished the book, but it still pops up in my mind from time to time. It's like a mirror held up by a woman showing us our flaws as a society, how actual power or perceived power and physical dominance has shaped our entire human history, just with the promise of physical punishment towards the subordinated and the threat of violence among the people fighting for a spot in power.
What really surprised me is just how hard it hit me that women started acting just like men did, when they had the upper hand. Makes you think, if power is truly the reason behind some of the real life atrocities committed in the real world, or are we also missing something in the reasons why things happen. In any case, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, even with it's gut punching moments. It is definitely an interesting answer to the question "What if women ruled the world, what would change" and the answer is "Everything and nothing at all".
by Gotosp4c3
20 Comments
I thought the worldbuilding of the religious movement was really well written. overall it was a very difficult, sad read
yes, agreed, i really liked how the dynamics around power were portrayed
i’m always amazed at those who enthusiastically interpret the book as an ’empowering’ feminist message
Thoroughly disliked it, felt like it was a huge case of wasted potential for actual, proper feminist literature. Instead I found it very surface-level with regards to feminist analysis and also character psychology. Relied too much on shock factor, past a certain point, and the ending was rushed as fuck. The framing device was kinda neat though, I’ll give it that, but the fact reproduction was completely absent from the book’s understanding of why women are oppressed in the first place was a huge fail in my opinion.
There are complications. One of them being that, in order for the women to act like men, they had to all be as willing to hop on the weenie without any kind of preparation, as they were already wet. I hypothesize that the skein gives them brain damage. Turns them into psychopaths. It felt like part of the backstory we get with the future notes.
>!I felt that the voice in Allie’s head is supposed to be a supernatural entity manipulating her life. It’s something that wants violence and chaos. It moves her until she is in the worst possible situation. When it’s done with her, it moves into Margot’s head. It’s seeing humans moving towards equality and fairness. That’s no fun. It wants murder and cruelty. It wants a woman who previously didn’t seem bad to be amused rather than horrified when she orders a young man to clean up broken glass with his tongue, and he does.!<
>!The man writing the history is more evidence. No one cares. It’s an ugly story showing Allie to be a manipulated child. But no one cares. Even though what he’s telling is actually a true story, painting a sickening world, the woman who reads it is uninterested except in the perceived eroticism of men in soldier’s uniforms. And there is nothing erotic about this story.!<
>!People who haven’t read it couch it as “What if women were on top?” but it’s not that. It’s “What if women were turned into psychopaths with the Power, and the few who aren’t and the men who now have little defense struggle for survival?”!<
>!The realism in it is painful, though. The mother whose bond with her daughter is frayed by the poor girl’s poorly grown skein. The boy who, through a chromosome abnormality, has at little bit of skein. They kind of tried my patience at a criminal enterprise having figured out how to transplant a skein from sister to brother so that he can use it without trouble, without any implication that this hasn’t happened elsewhere (like in the U.S. armed forces.) But that is what would have happened. They’d have started cutting the skeins out, as apparently that not only possible, it’s relatively easy. Though putting them into a man is not so easy.!<
I hated this book.
I hated it so much I’ve forgotten a lot about it, but I remember my main criticism of the whole book.
Women are not automatically going to wield power like men, just b/c they have it.
For example don’t hear the same stories about female wrestlers’ or bodybuilders’ conduct (the best real-world direct physical comparison I have) as about men. But that’s only one physical example.
Women and men are socialized differently. This is partially due to sexism, partially to gendered expectations, partially due to physicality, partially due to perceptions of what women are better at (some true, some false) and partly just a complicated but neutral thing.
Even if Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris had zapping power, they’d be way less likely to be so warmonger-y, b/c they were never socialized that that was a good thing for female politicians to be to get what they wanted.
Same with your average 30somethkng on the street or 60something next door or 19 year old in class. Force is not how she’s been socialized to get what she wants. It would have to be a built-up habit over time.
And zapping power is not going to be enough to override centuries of misogyny all at once. Men are much more likely to see it as women with a cool skill, or weapon that can be wielded by male power.
Women just wield power differently. Do some female bullies beat other girls up, or some women solve conflicts through punches? Sure. But overall it’s much more catty and secretive and indirect. It can cause as much harm!!!! It’s just not physical or visible in the same way.
The Prophetess thing was believable. But escalating into mass nuclear war specifically b/c the lady politician all of a sudden was really aggressive, or that terrible country of mass male rape and violence, is just ridiculous. B/c it assumes women are just like men, and would wield power the same way. And they just wouldn’t.
And Alderman isn’t making any bold statements about gendered expectations not being real, b/c this whole idea is reinforcing the gender binary anyway!!!
So, “Women and men are 2 different camps, there are only 2 genders, this will happen to one and not the other. There’s a fundamental split in them! But actually, women will still be awful and cruel IN THE SAME EXACT WAY as men, the moment they can. So that women getting power will lead to mass slaughter of men and then s nuclear war! Because men are the opposite of women on this strict gender divide, but also men wielding power was the only thing saving us from utter destruction. B/c the two genders are fundamentally different but the exactly the same kind of cruel and aggressive, except men are more responsible than women.”
Give me a break. Just like every women in my book club, the more I talk about it, the angrier I get. Completely unrealistic, and pretty misogynistic too.
Personally I thought the concept was good and interesting, and there were some
memorable shocks, but the book itself and the narrative was fairly banal. It would have been better distilled as a short story.
I really liked it, although I’ve read it a couple of years ago.
I remember liking it while reading it, but it basically left my memory after the last sentence. It was fine, but not a whole lot to say that hasn’t already been done better, thin characters and kinda boring tbh
I tried watching the show but didn’t make it very far
It’s one of my favourite books of all time. It’s so rich and well thought out. The men who can’t cope with the shift in the balance of power, the women who misuse it, the men who try to take it back, the people who think it’s a religious sign, it all seems to be realistic and plausible.
Every so often I try to shoot electricity out of my fingers, just in case.
“Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” was the point, I think.
I remember that when I first read it I started imagining the effect on society if – to use a real-world analog to the bioelectrical mutation – all girls from the age of 13 or so were given knives, expert training in how to kill with knives, and the legal right to carry them at all times. I’m sure that would impact society but I doubt that it would lead to the kind of widespread, culture-changing *abuses* of power that are shown in the book for dramatic effect. Predatory psychopaths are, fortunately, a tiny minority of the human population.
Loved it.
I found the idea that with roles reversed, women were also extremely violent. It was an uncomfortable book, but that’s the point. Does power corrupt?
Just meh. And honestly some of it confused me, maybe it was a section at the end? Some storyline that I just couldn’t follow. Was it mystical in some way? I can’t even remember now.
It’s my absolute least favorite book of all time. I hate-read the entire thing in a single day and threw it across the room. I ranted about it for hours and hours. I have problems with it on every level.
It has some interesting ideas that you mentioned but that just makes the fact it’s so bad even worse.
I was excited to read it, and then I did, and I was bummed. It was huge missed opportunity to write about real feminism. It was okay, but not what I expected. I think if I read a summary of it first I would have liked it more because I would have known what was coming.
I get what it was trying to say, though, and the concept is still very interesting.
The premise itself seems silly.
What if women had “the power” to kill people from across the room? They’re called guns mate. Women have had that power for centuries now.
Maybe I just need to reread it as it has been a few years but I found it to be incredibly powerful.
Do I think this is a prediction of what would happen should a mutation like this actually occur? Not necessarily. But I did see this book as a release of the collective feminine rage at being suppressed, oppressed, openly used and abused with little to no repercussion. I can see how easily, especially with it starting from a young age and not having to take the abuse, the script could flip into so much anger. I saw this as a pendulum swing, something that (in the basis of the book) had to happen in order for balance to be found.
Versus in real life, there is no pendulum swing of power. Women are fighting for every inch towards the middle and equality so of course there isn’t going to be a massive swing in the balance of power without a MAJOR and EXTREME catalyst.
If the first generation to grow skeins and learn of their existence were 13 year olds that are just getting acquainted with the idea that they are “the weaker sex” and all of a sudden it is proven to them that they aren’t (skein), I can also see how a generation of under-developd girls (with under-developed brains) that literally don’t have to take shit from anyone could send the world into something like what happened in the book.
I am surprised by a lot of the comments about the book. Before I first read the book, I did thinking of it as a science fiction novel. Still not sure if it would be classified as science fiction? That said, I loved the book and thought it was stunning on so many levels. The framing of the book was clever at the beginning, in terms of letters exchanged between historians/writers (a man and a woman) in a matriarchal society. The exchanges between them are so interesting (and an informed introduction into how ideology, education, culture support a status-quo), and in a way suck you into the story that unfolds. And the novel begins as a historical novel set in a patriarchal society in our current time.
Then the novel shift/focuses on the women acquiring their gift and the way the characters, different societies started to react and the upheavals that this leads to. Violence, crime, revolutions, reactionary/vigilante violence by right wing men, civil wars etc. The split within Christianity and the emergence of ‘Mother Eve/Allie’ is another great tangent/aspect of the story. The supposed archeological/artwork from the period (sculptures, statues, paintings etc.) included in the novel, and how they show the shift from patriarchal and matriarchal societies is also imaginative and fleshes out the story.
The book/novel was much shorter that I would have ideally preferred. The changes and their impact on societies and lives of the characters over a longer time frame would have been super riveting and the novel being so abbreviated in a way, shortchanges the reader.
Some of the comments below about the writer not understanding gender and feminist theory are beyond ridiculous and a joke. I think many of them don’t understand that one of the basic supports behind a patriarchal, capitalist society, its basis is power-naked force-violence and the imbalance of force-violence between men and women. A point that the writer takes for granted and these commenters should think about/understand. The fact that the writer also understands that such a cataclysmic and fundamental shift in the world/society would involve/necessitate violence is also common sense and practical.
Am a cisgender heterosexual man and thought this feminist novel was insanely great.
Yet to read it!
Yup, the problem is the concentration of power in particular groups