Single-gender world

Single-gender worlds
Part of the Sex in SF series
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Many authors have used the freedoms offered by science fictional settings and plot devices to explore themes which, while not strictly gay, are closely related. A common motif in speculative fiction is the existence of single gender worlds or societies. In the fictional setting, these societies often arise due to elimination of one gender through war or natural disasters and disease.

Female-only worlds

In speculative fiction, female-only worlds have been imagined to come about by the action of disease that wipes out men, along with the development of technological or mystical method that allow female parthenogenic reproduction. The resulting society is often shown to be utopian by feminist writers. Many influential feminist utopias of this sort were written in the 1970's; the most often studied examples include Joanna Russ's The Female Man, Suzy McKee Charnas's Walk to the End of the World and Motherlines, and Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time. Utopias imagined by male authors have generally included equality between sexes, rather than separation.

Such worlds have been portrayed most often by lesbian or feminist authors; their use of female-only worlds allows the exploration of female independence and freedom from patriarchy The societies may not necessarily be lesbian, or sexual at all - a famous early sexless example being Herland (1915) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

Some lesbian separatist authors have used female-only societies to additionally posit that all women would revert to lesbianism if left unmolested by men, as in Ammonite (1993) by Nicola Griffith. The enormously influential The Female Man (1975) and "When It Changed" (1972) by Joanna Russ portrayed a peaceful arable society of lesbians who resent the later intrusion of men, and a world in which women plan a genocidal war against men, implying that the utopian lesbian society is the result of this war. James Tiptree Jr., a bisexual women writing secretly under a male pseudonym, explored the sexual impulse as her main theme; in her award-winning "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" (collected in Her Smoke Rose Up Forever), she presents a female only society after the extinction of men from disease. The society lacks stereotypically "male" problems such as war, but is stagnant. The women reproduce via cloning and consider men to be comical.

Consider Her Ways, in which male rule is shown as being violently repressive of women, but freedom of patriarchy is only possible in a fascist society modelled on ants

Male-only worlds

Male-only worlds are much less commonly found in SF than female-only worlds. Early examples written by men have most often shown the existence of an immoral or corrupt society, with the resultant homosexuality being purely situational or unnatural, and linked to depravity or violence. Such depictions have been called homophobic.

Ethan of Athos by Lois Bujold, inspired by the real world male-only religious society of Mount Athos, shows a world in which men have isolated their planet from the rest of civilisation to avoid the corrupting effect of women. Children are grown in uterine-replicators, and the majority of the fundamentalist population is gay and misogynistic. This is a rare example of a male-only world with a positive portrayal of the gay protagonist in mainstream science fiction.

The crime and glory of commander suzdal by cordwainer smith is another. It depicts a world where estrogen become a carcinogenic and as a result had an all male population. They reproduce by grafting tissue in such a way as to make an artificial womb. They despise the idea that there are women in the universe and our planning to eradicate them.

The planet Krieg in Warhammer 40,000, having been devastated by weapons of mass destruction, is an example of male-only society. Relying on cloning to reproduce, all humans on Krieg are produced male, as they have been determined by the government to be genetically preferable for the Death Korps, Krieg's army. Krieg's society is very grim and warlike, and their soldiers commonly wear gas masks and dark, drab colours.

Genderless or hermaphroditic worlds

A prime example is the Wraeththu (1987-89) trilogy by Storm Constantine, in which much of the male portion of the human race is converted to a new species of physiologically hermaphroditic post-humans. Other examples of alternative but not strictly gay sexuality in science fiction include Theodore Sturgeon's Venus Plus X and Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness.

In Isaac Asimov's Foundation and Earth, the first outside visitors to Solaria in thousands of years since it was first depicted in The Naked Sun learn that the inhabitants have become hermaphrodites to eliminate all need for physical contact.

John Varley, who also came to prominence in the 1970s, is another writer of importance to sexual themes. In his "Eight Worlds" suite of stories (many collected in The John Varley Reader) and novels, humanity has achieved the ability to change sex with at a whim. Homophobia is shown to initially inhibit uptake of this technology, as it engenders drastic changes in relationships, with homosexual sex becoming an acceptable option for all.

Gender segregation

Segregation of genders is another common trope of speculative fiction - physical separation can result in societies that are essentially single gender, although the majority of such works focus on the re-unification of the genders, or otherwise on links that remain between them, as with Sheri S. Tepper's The Gate to Women's Country, David Brin's Glory Season and Carol Emshwiller's "Boys".

Sometimes the segregation is social, and men and women interact to a limited extent. For example, when overpopulation drives the world away from heterosexuality in Charles Beaumont's short story The Crooked Man (1955), first published in Playboy, homosexuals oppress the heterosexual minority and relationships between men and women are made unlawful.

List of works

Female worlds

Houston, Houston, Do You Read?
The Female Man, When It Changed
Herland Consider Her Ways
Ammonite, Nicola Griffith

Male worlds

Forever War
Ethan of Athos

Genderless or hermaphroditic worlds

Wraeththu
Venus Plus X
The Left Hand of Darkness

See also

Gender in speculative fiction
Homosexuality in speculative fiction
Sex in science fiction

External links

List of female/lesbian worlds at lesbiansciencefiction.com[1]