And with that highly intelligent title, I think I have summed up my reaction to both the novel and the article. while I have often found dense texts in the courses I have been in challenging, rarely have I been so stymied by the complex situations and ideas presented by these two authors. Part of the reason for this in Russ’ text is the sheer lack of anyone with whom I can relate any sentiment. Not only is the story a scream for feminism and a call to rethink ideas of gender roles, but it is so lopsided in its representations and characters that I feel completely blank when trying to assimilate the text into any kind of association with my life.
With that in mind, I found myself trying to find similarities the novel had with other texts. I found myself recalling "Mulholland Drive" and the scene where Betty and Rita (or whatever their real names were) consummate their relationship. Some have said that this was David Lynch trying to make fun of how almost all sex scenes only include the exposition of female nudity. Others said he was attempting to make a general statement of female empowerment. The hard part is, "Mulholland Drive" is just as dense as "The Female Man". I got the impression that Russ was often just taking general ideas that popped into her mind and then trying to shove them into the story. Parts like The reason why Whileawayans celebrate, or the great happiness contest felt like they were just cobbled together in the story to fill up space. I found it very hard to get attached to any character and even harder to get involved with any plot the story may or may not have had.
The only correlating idea from Haraway’s article came in the first paragraph of "Fractured Identities", where she said that naming feminism by one adjective was an impossible task. Haraway says, "There is nothing about being ‘female’ that naturally binds women. There is not even such a state of ‘being’ female, itself a highly complex category constructed in contested sexual scientific discourses and other social practices" (pg 155). In following this idea, there is no way to contextualize this novel. It may be a manifesto, or maybe a postmodern creation of a hopeful world where gender is nonexistent (but in reality is even more focused). I don’t know, my brain is reeling. The only question I would pose to anyone who makes it this far into my meandering is how you would categorize this novel? Is it feminist, or is it just so postmodern that it had created its own category in the realm of fiction?