The Female Man appeared during the high tide of the women’s liberation movement. At this time, authors such as Kate Millett published books denouncing the stereotyping of women as inferior and the carryover of these stereotypes into inequitable social practices, such as paying women and men differently for equivalent work. These books were products of a broader social current of women who protested against injustices.

This upheaval sparked a questioning of sexual roles by imaginative writers. During this period, the most acclaimed attempt by a science-fiction author to rethink biological bias was made in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (1969). In the universe Le Guin portrayed, there was no question of one sex dominating, because all the humanoids were hermaphrodites. Joanna Russ’s vision is more combative than this. She is not interested in simply drawing the type of implicit contrast found in The Left Hand of Darkness, in which the viability of a different biological setup is explored. Russ savagely compares contemporary sexism to the milder, freer life on all-female Whileaway.

One of the author’s strengths arises from her need to give an accurate rendering of modern life to serve as a basis of comparison. It is often overlooked that some of the greatest writers of science fiction, such as Philip K. Dick, achieve much of their authority because they bring to their speculative writing realistic portraits of their times. In Russ’s case, some of the best parts of this book are her faithful portraits of contemporary women, as in her depiction of Laura’s yearning for support and Jeannine’s ambivalence toward marriage. Such writing as easily might have filled a place in a mainstream realist novel as in a work of futurology.

When such slices of life are interrupted by visits from extraterrestrials and the narrative is intercut with views of future Earths, the book firmly establishes its science-fiction credentials. Inclusion of two manners of intervention allows Russ to make her sharpest comments in relation to the sexism in American society. On one hand, Janet, who has been socialized outside of patriarchy, is a determined, independent woman, more capable and generally likable than the Earth women. On the other, life on Whileaway, without men, is treated as attractively natural, festive, and well suited to the all-around development of individual potential.

This is not to say that Russ presents a blinkered view of either Janet as a faultless heroine or of her world. Janet is cold and can be self-absorbed, and her planet, which still allows the brutality of duels, arbitrarily and undemocratically assigns people to jobs they may not want.

The introduction of Jael’s planet hints that social structure determines a world’s negative or positive nature. Jael’s female civilization is warlike, murders men without compunction, and is not above keeping slavish gigolos for its elite women. This culture, at war with all men, makes the female/male dyad the central equation in the society’s worldview, and this twists its existence, even though men do not live within the community. Russ implies that it is the use of this dyad to establish difference, rather than inherent biological traits, that poisons human relationships. This point does not reduce the causticity of Russ’s critique of the injustices perpetuated by men in the United States.