The Female Man

by Joanna Russ

The novel begins when Janet Evason suddenly arrives in Joanna's world. Janet is from Whileaway, a futuristic world where a plague killed all of the men over 800 years ago, and Jeannine lives in a world that never experienced the end of the Great Depression. Janet finds Jeannine at a Chinese New Year festival and takes her to Joanna's world. Joanna comes from a world that is beginning its feminist movement.

Acting as a guide, Joanna takes Janet to a party in her world to show her how women and men interact with each other. Janet quickly finds herself the object of a man's attention, and after he harasses her, Janet knocks the man down and mocks him. Because Joanna's world believes that women are inferior to men, everyone is shocked. Janet expresses her desire to experience living with a typical family so Joanna takes Janet to the Wildings’ household. Janet meets their daughter Laura Rose who instantly admires Janet's confidence and independence as a woman. Laura realizes that she is attracted to Janet and begins to pursue a sexual relationship with her. This is transgressive for both of them, as Whileaway's taboo against cross-generational relationships (having a relationship with someone old enough to be your parent or child) is as strong as the taboo against same-sex relationships on Laura's world.

The novel then follows Jeannine and Joanna as they accompany Janet back to Whileaway. They meet Vittoria, Janet's wife, and stay at their home. Joanna finds herself under scrutiny when Vittoria uses a story about a bear trapped between two worlds as a metaphor for her life. Jeannine returns to her world with Joanna, and they both go to vacation at her brother's house. Jeannine's mother pesters her about her love life and whether she is going to get married soon. Jeannine goes on a few dates with some men but still finds herself dissatisfied. Jeannine begins to doubt her sense of reality, but soon decides that she wants to assimilate into her role as a woman. She calls Cal and agrees to marry him.

Joanna, Jeannine, Janet, and Laura are lounging in Laura's house. Laura tries to glorify Janet's status in Whileaway, but Janet explains that her world does not value her particularly, but chose her as inter-dimensional explorer because she was more expendable than others ("I am stupid," she explains). At 3 a.m., Joanna comes down, unable to sleep, and finds Jeannine and Janet awake as well. Suddenly they are no longer at Laura's house but in another world.

Joanna, Jeannine, and Janet have arrived in Jael's world which is experiencing a 40-year-old war between male and female societies. Jael explains that she works for the Bureau of Comparative Ethnology, an organization that concentrates on people's various counterparts in different parallel worlds. She reveals that she is the one who brought all of them together because they are essentially “four versions of the same woman” (p. 162). Jael takes all of them with her into enemy territory because she appears to be negotiating a deal with one of the male leaders. At first, the male leader appears to be promoting equality, but Jael quickly realizes that he still believes in the inferiority of women. Jael reveals herself as a ruthless assassin, kills the man, and shuttles all of the women back to her house. Jael finally tells the other women why she has assembled all of them. She wants to create bases in the other women's worlds without the male society knowing and eventually empower women to overthrow oppressive men and their gender roles for women.

In the end, Jeannine and Joanna agree to help Jael and assimilate the women soldiers into their worlds, but Janet refuses, given the overall pacifism of Whileaway. Jeannine and Joanna appear to have become stronger individuals and are excited to rise up against their gender roles. Janet is not moved by Jael's intentions so Jael suggests Janet that the reason for the absence of men on Whileaway is not because of a plague but because the women won the war and killed all of the men in its timeline's past. Janet refuses to believe Jael, and the other women are annoyed at Janet's resistance. The novel ends with the women separating and returning to their worlds, each with a new perspective on her life, her world, and her identity as a woman.