A case for any of The Female Man‘s characters to be defined as a hero is almost always refuted by the reality, history, or tradition of a different society in the novel. Janet can be seen early on as the hero of the novel with her steadfast liberation from female restraints on both Jeannine and Joanna’s Earth. When she fights the pompous Ginger ‘stache, despite Jeannine and Joanna’s concerns, most women, NAY! most readers, likely see her as a strong woman with strong convictions, and her actions motivated far more by the disrespect of the oaf and not a mere inclination toward violence. But whereas she may be a hero on Earth, on Whileaway she is expendable, a stupid guinea thrown into an experiment where her safety is of least concern when compared with the will of scientific research. Also, Jael picks up where Janet seems to fail, being a rich and influential person in her world, a powerful fighter, a remarkable genius, and also a compassionate other to the remaining three J’s. But the revelation of her hand in the disease which exterminated men from Whileaway casts her into a darker light for all readers, both in knowing that Whileaway has turned out to be far from the Cockaigne (pun intended) Jael may have envisioned and also because she seems to kill men mostly out of pleasure–a terrifying prospect and a terrible reason for menocide. Jeannine may not be a hero to anyone but Mr. Frosty, and Joanna cannot seem to hold her own against any of the women–even Jeannine, who she treats with a very unheroic contempt. All women have some claim of a heroic stature, yet none of these arguments can be said to be watertight or comprehensive. In a novel where futures and histories are all so hightly probable and somewhat continuous, the nature of each J must be held in account for these other realities, detrimentally so for them all.