I loved this book and I have many philsophical questions about it. But I have really been wondering about the choice to call it "I Who Have Never Known Men" and to have such an emphasis on gender and the segregration of the sexes. Has anyone else who has read it wondered about this?
We don't know why the women and men are separated into different underground cages. We don't know why the Child didn't go through puberty and get her menses. I assume there was some kind of radioactive nuclear event that caused reproductive issues and cancers in the women due to how some of them died. The Child herself had bleeding from her uterus before she died.
But there was also such a focus on men or the lack thereof and the lack of interaction with them. Indeed the entire event of the women realizing the Child had a "secret" and wanting to start talking to her and sharing their knowledge with her involved her fantasies about the male guard and her "eruptions." (I was not sure what those even were. Orgasms she was able to have without actually touching herself? A lot of pleasure in her brain due to the intense thoughts?)
I've read a theory that the young guard purposefully left the key in the lock when the guards fled, because he HAD been noticing her staring at him and wanted to help her escape. If so then a man is responsible for their survival. There is some talk about why the women partner up and that they "give each other what they can," as if to indicate that lesbian love and relationships and sex are "lesser than" or a substitute for love and relationships and sex. And even when the Child is dying, some of her last thoughts are about how she has never known a man.
I wonder what it's all supposed to mean. That life is supposed to be about relationships between a man and a woman, and reproduction, and since these women couldn't experience that, they didn't know the full meaning of life and felt empty even when they had escaped and were living on the outside and being self-sufficient and had each other?
Many people have said this is a feminist book but I'm not so sure. It almost seems to center men or their absence in a way that suggests that they are needed for a woman's happiness or fulfillment. Or maybe just that men and women need each other and compliment each other.
I wonder if that's why the guards had the books about planting gardens… cross-pollination? Maybe they were all apart of some kind of alien experiment/observation about what happens to human women and men when they can't get together? Maybe animals couldn't reproduce either and bees couldn't mate and therefore couldn't pollinate flowers, etc.? (Or maybe animals all died in the nuclear event and/or the atmosphere and environment on that planet were not suited for plants or insects etc. but it's an alternate theory.)
I'd love to talk about this with anyone who has input or observations, as I can't stop thinking about it! In any event I really enjoyed this book and strong recommend it but I have so many questions and possible theories and the gender aspect is a big one.
by Employment-lawyer