The Female Man

Joanna Russ
The Female Man Cover

The Female Man - A Feminist Polemic

sdlotu
8/21/2024
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You'll read a lot of other reviews saying how this is a difficult novel and many have abandoned it rather than complete it. Let me make it easy for you. Find a copy somewhere, open it to Part 7, Section III, and read that one paragraph.

If this intrigues you, and excites to to want to read more, then by all means proceed. If not, put the book back and move on. This excerpt will not spoil anything about the book but the tone.

The book is a polemic from the time of second wave feminism. At this 50 year remove, it reads almost as parody, but it was truly written in earnest.

It won't be an easy read, since the author disdains conventional narrative form. Most notably, it has several changes of voice throughout the work, including writing the author into the work itself, and describing the author-as-character from another viewpoint at the same time.

It could easily have been titled "Why the World of Men Sucks, and the World of Women is Wonderful".

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