The Gate To Women's Country

[chris_gerrib]

So, on the flight back from Worldcon, I read Sheri Tepper's wonderful novel The Gate To Women's Country. It's set in a post-apocalyptic Pacific Northwest, and describes a relatively low-tech world in which women are mostly in charge. There are male warriors, but they live in garrisons outside of the cities, and defend those cities from attack. Men have the choice, at age fifteen, to go through the Gate to Women's Country and live among the women or stay out as a warrior, not allowed in except for semi-annual carnivals. The beauty of Women's Country is that much of the real goings-on are hidden from view. The reader is then forced into the role of detective, figuring out "who's doing what."

What I wanted to discuss wasn't so much the book, but a concept that Tepper and other writers of her era, such as James Tiptree AKA Alice Sheldon and Joan Slonczewski use, the concept of "non-violent women." Basically, all of these writers say that a society of women or controlled by women will be inherently non-violent. I disagree, and I think this concept comes to us due to a misreading of history.

The first misreading of history is that of assuming women are non-violent by choice. The average woman has less upper-body strength and shorter reach then the average man. (Obviously, there are many individual exceptions.) In a pre-gunpowder society, these are critical disadvantages. Basically, pre-gunpowder, many women were impelled into choosing less-violent ways to settle disputes.

The second misreading occurs in that violent women tend not to get into the history books. For example, recent research suggest that armed Viking women went on raids. But this fact didn't make the history books. Other violent women, from documented cases of female pirates to female Civil War soldiers, are treated as historical footnotes.

In a women-controlled or especially women-only society, these disadvantages go away, allowing those women who are violent to be violent. In short, we have no reason to assume that a female-only society would be less violent than a mixed or male-only one. I would point out that Ursula LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness, set in a world in which the humans are neither male nor female, "gets it right," at least in my view.

Comments

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Also, a woman-controlled or woman-only society might still sometimes need to be violent: in order to defend itself from armed incursion, for instance. Even if one assumes that woman are, on the average, less biologically inclined to violence than are men, it's clearly a matter of overlapping bell curves, and what would simply happen is that either the (subordinate) men would be trained to war, or (especially in cases of woman-only societies) the most violent women would have their violent tendencies encouraged as need be to make the military enterprise work.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

For some earlier science-fictional examples of a belligerent woman-only society, I take you all the way back to E. E. "Doc" Smith's Matriarchy of Lyrane II, from Second Stage Lensman (1941, 1953), with a dominant humanoid race with sapient females and non-sapient males. Violent, aggressive telepaths with the ability to mind-blast. Though I think that "Doc" Smith missed the point in assuming that they would lose all interest in romance and erotic display: I personally think that they would have become lesbians.

Other good science-fictional takes on the idea. Poul Anderson's Delta Capitis Lupti from Virgin Planet (1959). Colonists lost male gender but were able to reproduce hermaphroditically, developed a society of belligerent caste-organized city-states (they're all from a limited number of clone families of known capabilities, so castes make sense for them). And L. Sprague de Camp's Ormazd (a planet of Lalande 21185 in the Viagens Interplaneteris series) from Rogue Queen (1951): humanoid race organized into castes like social insects, with the workers and soldiers sterile females as in the case of said social insects.

The idea is of course much, much older, going all the way back to the mythical Amazons (who may have been based on the non-mythical Scythians), but before around the 1940's it was usually played for laughs.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

SHE - 1887 has a pretty significant female lead and society based on her eternal rule.

Which reminds me. I do need to re-read some Haggard. Actually a fascinating chap.