The Female Man

by Joanna Russ

  Anna, with a mechanical shiver of desire, says that we must go with him.

  “Her?” says Jeannine, confused.

  “Him!” says Anna in a strained contralto. The half-changed are very punctilious—sometimes about the changeds’ superiority and sometimes about their own genitals. Either way it works out to Him. He’s extraordinarily aware, for a man, of Jeannine’s shrinking and he resents it—as who would not? I myself am respectful of ruined lives and forced choices. On the street once Anna did not fight hard enough against the fourteen-year-old toughs who wanted his twelve-year-old ass; he didn’t go to the extremity of berserk rage, reckoning his life as nothing in defense of his virility; he forestalled—by surrender—the plucking out of an eye, the castration, the throat cut with a broken bottle, the being put out of his twelve-year-old action with a stone or a tire chain. I know a lot about Manlanders’ history. Anna made a modus vivendi, he decided life was worth it on any terms. Everything follows from that.

  “Oh, you’re lovely,” says Jeannine, heartfelt. Sisters in misfortune. This really pleases Anna. He shows us a letter of safe-conduct he has from his boss—a real-man, of course—and putting it back in pink-brocaded evening bag, draws around him that fake-feather Thing which floats and wobbles in the least current of air-. It’s a warm evening. To protect his employer, the big boss (they are Men, even in the child-rearing business) has had to give Anna K a little two-way TV camera to wear in his ear; otherwise somebody would break his high heels and leave him dead or half-dead in an alley. Everybody knows that the half-changed are weak and can’t protect themselves; what do you think femininity is all about? Even so Anna probably has a bodyguard waiting at the entrance to The Knife. I’m cynical enough to wonder sometimes if the Manlanders’ mystique isn’t just an excuse to feminize anybody with a pretty face—but look again, they believe it; look under the padding, the paint, the false hair, the corsetry, the skin rinses and the magnificent dresses and you’ll see nothing exceptional, only faces and bodies like any other man’s. Anna bats his eyes at us and wets his lips, taking the women inside the suits to be real-men, taking me to be a real-man (what else can I be if I’m not a changed?), taking the big wide world itself to be—what else?—a Real-Man intent on worshipping Anna’s ass; the world exists to look at Anna; he—or she—is only a real-man turned inside out.

  An eerie sisterliness, a smile at Jeannine. All that narcissism! Brains underneath, though.

  Remember where their loyalties lie.

  (Are they jealous of us? I don’t think they believe we’re women.)

  He wets his lips again, the indescribable silliness of that insane mechanism, practiced anywhere and everywhere, on the right people, on the wrong people. But what else is there? It seems that Anna’s boss wants to meet me. (I don’t like that.) But we’ll go; we maintain our outward obedience until the very end, until the beautiful, bloody moment that we fire these stranglers, these murderers, these unnatural and atavistic nature’s bastards, off the face of the earth.

  “Dearest sister,” says Anna softly, sweetly, “come with me.”

  VIII

  I guess Anna’s boss just wanted to see the alien poontang. I don’t know yet what he wants, but I will. His wife clicked in with a tray of drinks—scarlet skin-tights, no underwear, transparent high-heeled sandals like Cinderella’s—she gave us a homey, cute smile (she wears no make-up and is covered with freckles) and stilted out. Man talk. They seldom earn wives before fifty. Art, they say, has had a Renaissance among the Manlander rich, but this one doesn’t look like a patron: jowly, pot-bellied, the fierce redness of an athlete forced into idleness. His heart? High blood pressure? But they all cultivate their muscles and let their health and their minds rot. There is a rather peculiar wholesomeness to the home life of a Manland millionaire; Boss, for example, would not think of letting his wife go anywhere alone—that is, risk the anarchy of the streets—even with a bodyguard. He knows what’s due her. Their “women,” they say, civilize them. For an emotional relationship, turn to a “woman.”

  What am I?

  I know what I am, but what’s my brand name?

  He stares rudely, unable to conceal it: What are they? What do they do? Do they screw each other? What does it feel like? (Try and tell him!) He doesn’t waste a second on the pink crosses in purdah; they’re only “women” anyhow (he thinks); I’m the soldier, I’m the enemy, I’m the other self, the mirror, the master-slave, the rebel, the heretic, the mystery that must be found out at all costs. (Maybe he thinks the three J’s have leprosy.) I don’t like this at all. J-one (Janet, by her gait) is examining the paintings on the wall; J-two and J-three stand hand in hand, Babes in the Wood. Boss finishes his drink, chewing on something in the bottom of it like a large teddy-bear, with comic deliberation: chomp, chomp. He waves grandly toward the other drinks, his wife having abandoned the tray on top of what looks for all the world like a New Orleans, white-enamelled, bordello piano (Whorehouse Baroque is very big in Manland right now).

  I shook my head.

  He said, “You have any children?” Pregnancy fascinates them. The rank-and-file have forgotten about menstruation; if they remembered, that would fascinate them. I shook my head again.

  His face darkened.

  “I thought,” said I mildly, “that we were going to talk business. I’d like to do just that. I don’t mean—that is, I don’t want to be unsociable, but time’s passing and I’d rather not discuss my personal life.”

  He said: “You’re on my turf, you’ll Goddamn well talk about what I Goddamn well talk about.”

  Let it pass. Control yourself. Hand them the victory in the Domination Sweepstakes and they usually forget whatever it is they were going to do anyway. He glared and brooded. Munched chips, crackers, saltsticks, what-not. Doesn’t really know what he wants. I waited.

  “Personal life!” he muttered.

  “It’s not really very interesting,” I volunteered,

  “You kids screw each other?”

  I said nothing.

  He leaned forward. “Don’t get me wrong. I think you have a right to do it. I never bought this stuff about women alone having no sex. It’s not in human nature. Now, do you?”

  “No,” I said.

  He chuckled. “That’s right, cover up. Mind, I’m not condemning you. It’s only to be expected. Eh! If we’d kept together, men and women, none of this would have happened. Right?”

  I put on my doubtful, slightly shamed, sly, well-you-know, all-purpose look. I have never known what it means, but they seem to. He laughed out loud. Another drink.

  “Look here,” he said, “I expect you have more intelligence than most of those bitches or you wouldn’t be in this job. Right? Now it’s obvious to anyone that we need each other. Even in separate camps we still have to trade, you still have to have the babies, things haven’t changed that much. Now what I have in mind is an experimental project, a pilot project, you might say, in trying to get the two sides back together. Not all at once—”

  “I—” I said. (They don’t hear you.)

  “Not all at once,” (he continued, deaf as a post) “but a little bit at a time. We have to make haste deliberately. Right?”

  I was silent. He leaned back. “I knew you’d see it,” he said. Then he made a personal remark: “You saw my wife?” I nodded.

  “Natalie’s grand,” he said, taking some more chips. “She’s a grand girl. She made these. Deep-fried, I think.” (A weak woman handling a pot of boiling oil.) “Have some.”

  To pacify him I took some and held them in my hand. Greasy stuff.

  “Now,” he said, “you like the idea, right?”

  “What?”

  “The aversive therapy, for Chrissakes, the pilot group. Social relations, getting back together. I’m not like some of the mossbacks around here, you know, I don’t go for this inferior-superior business; I believe in equality. If we get back together, it has to be on that basis. Equals.”

  “But—” I said, mean
ing no offense.

  “It has to be on the basis of equality! I believe that. And don’t think the man in the street can’t be sold on it, propaganda to the contrary. We’re brought up on this nonsense of woman’s place and woman’s nature when we don’t even have women around to study. What do we know! I’m not any less masculine because I’ve done woman’s work; does it take less intelligence to handle an operation like the nurseries and training camps than it does to figure the logistics of War Games? Hell, no! Not if you do it rationally and efficiently; business is business.”

  Let it go. Perhaps it’ll play itself out; they do sometimes. I sat attentively still while he gave me the most moving plea for my own efficiency, my rationality, my status as a human being. He ended by saying anxiously, “Do you think it’ll work?”

  “Well—” I began.

  “Of course, of course,” (interrupted this damned fool once again) “you’re not a diplomat, but we have to work through the men we have, don’t we? Individual man can accomplish ends where Mass-man fails. Eh?”

  I nodded, picturing myself as Individual Man. The “woman’s work” explains it, of course; it makes him dangerously irritable. He had gotten now into the poignant part, the mystifying and moving account of our Sufferings. This is where the tears come in. It helps to be able to classify what they’re going to do, but Lord! it’s depressing, all the same. Always the same. I sit on, perfectly invisible, a chalk sketch of a woman. An idea. A walking ear.

  “What we want” (he said, getting into stride) “is a world in which everybody can be himself. Him. Self. Not this insane forcing of temperaments. Freedom. Freedom for all. I admire you. Yes, let me say that I do indeed, and most frankly, admire you. You’ve broken through all that. Of course most women will not be able to do that—in fact, most women—given the choice—will hardly choose to give up domesticity altogether or even” (here he smiled) “even choose to spend much of their lives in the market-place or the factory. Most women will continue to choose the conservative caretaking of childhood, the formation of beautiful human relationships, and the care and service of others. Servants. Of. The. Race. Why should we sneer at that? And if we find there are certain traits connected with sex, like homemaking, like reasoning power, like certain temperamental factors, well of course there will be, but why derogate one sex or the other on that account? People” (braced for the peroration) “people are as they are. If—”

  I rose to my feet. “Excuse me,” I said, “but business—”

  “Damn your business!” he said in heat, this confused and irritable man. “Your business isn’t worth two cents compared with what I’m talking about!”

  “Of course not, of course not,” I said soothingly.

  “I should hope so!”

  Numb, numb. With boredom. Invisible. Chained.

  “That’s the trouble with you women, you can’t see anything in the abstract!”

  He wants me to cringe. I really think so. Not the content of what I say but the endless, endless feeding of his vanity, the shaky structure of self. Even the intelligent ones.

  “Don’t you appreciate what I’m trying to do for you?”

  Kiss-me-I’m-a-goodguy.

  “Don’t you have any idea how important this is?”

  Sliding down the slippery gulf into invisibility.

  “This could make history!”

  Even me, with all my training!

  “Of course, we have a tradition to uphold.”

  It’ll be slow.

  “—we’ll have to go slowly. One thing at a time.”

  If it’s practical.

  “We’ll have to find out what’s practicable. This may be—uh—visionary. It may be in advance of its time.”

  Can’t legislate morality.

  “We can’t force people against their inclinations and we have generations of conditioning to overcome. Perhaps in a decade—”

  Perhaps never.

  “—perhaps never. But men of good will—”

  Did he hear that?

  “—and women, too, of course, you understand that the word ‘men’ includes the word ‘women’; it’s only usage—”

  Everyone must have his own abortion.

  “—and not really important. You might even say” (he giggles) “‘everyone and his husband’ or ‘everyone will be entitled to his own abortion’ ” (he roars) “but I want you to go back to your people and tell them—”

  It’s unofficial.

  “—that we’re prepared to negotiate. But it can’t be official. You must understand that I face considerable opposition. And most women—not, you, of course; you’re different—well, most women aren’t used to thinking a thing through like this. They can’t do it systematically. Say, you don’t mind my saying that about ‘most women,’ do you?”

  I smile, drained of personality.

  “That’s right,” (he said) “don’t take it personally. Don’t get feminine on me,” and he winked broadly to show he bore me no ill-will. This is the time for me to steal away, leaving behind half my life’s blood and promises, promises, promises; but you know what? I just can’t do it. It’s happened too often. I have no reserves left. I sat down, smiling brilliantly in sheer anticipation, and the dear man hitched his chair nearer. He looks uneasy and avid. “We’re friends?” he says.

  “Sure,” I say, hardly able to speak.

  “Good!” he said. “Tell me, do you like my place?”

  “Oh yes,” I say.

  “Ever see anything like it before?”

  “Oh no!” (I live in a chicken-barn and eat shit.)

  He laughed delightedly. “The paintings are pretty good. We’re having a kind of Renaissance lately. How’s art among the ladies, huh?”

  “So-so,” I said, making a face. The room is beginning to sway with the adrenalin I can pump into my bloodstream when I choose; this is called voluntary hysterical strength and it is very, very useful, yes indeed. First the friendly chat, then the uncontrollably curious grab, and then the hatred comes out. Be prepared.

  “I suppose,” he said, “you must’ve been different from the start—from a little girl, eh?—doing a job like this. You’ve got to admit we have one thing up on you—we don’t try to force everybody into the same role. Oh no. We don’t keep a man out of the kitchen if that’s what he really wants.”

  “Oh sure,” I said. (Those chemical-surgical castrati)

  “Now you do,” he said. “You’re more reactionary than we are. You won’t let women lead the domestic life. You want to make everyone alike. That’s not what I visualize.”

  He goes into a long happy rap about motherhood, the joys of the uterus. The emotional nature of Woman. The room is beginning to sway. One gets very reckless in hysterical strength; the first few weeks I trained, I broke several of my own bones but I know how to do it now. I really do. My muscles are not for harming anyone else; they are to keep me from harming myself. That terrible concentration, That feverish brightness. Boss-Idiot has not talked to anyone else about his grand idea; he’s still in First Cliche’ stage and any group discussion, however moronic, would have weeded out the worst of them. His dear Natalie. His gifted wife. Take me, now; he loves me. Yes he does. Not physically, of course. Oh no. Life seeks its mate. Its complement. Romantic rubbish. Its other self. Its joy. He won’t talk business tonight. Will he ask me to stay over?

  “Oh, I couldn’t,” says the other Jael. He doesn’t hear it; there’s a gadget in Boss’s ear that screens out female voices. He’s moved closer, bringing his chair with him—some silly flub-dub about not being able to talk the length of the room. Spiritual intimacy. Smiling foolishly he says:

  “So you like me a little, huh?”

  How terrible, betrayal by lust. No, ignorance. No—pride.

  “Hell, go away,” I say.

  “Sure you do!” He expects me to act like his Natalie, he bought her, he owns her. What do women do in the daytime? What do they do when they’re alone? Adrenalin is a demanding high; it un
tunes all your finer controls.