Going off of the points made in “a misandristic proposal,”\u00a0I sometimes found it hard to side with the women towards the end of the novel.\u00a0 At the end, the book’s message seems more woman based than society based.\u00a0 Although I am a woman and can sympathize with the plight to become a less oppressed sex, I am also a humanitarian.\u00a0 The turning point for me, where this book stopped being about the possibility of a Utopian community where women are free of oppression, was with the introduction of Davy. \u00a0Davy, until we realize he is a machine, acts as the perfect subject for Jael’s misandristically driven motives.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 Throughout most of the novel men are the voyeurs, watching the women and objectifying them with their gaze.\u00a0 Joanna, Janet, and even Jeannine are often disgusted with the men that crudely attempt to court them.\u00a0 They do not enjoy being looked at by these men, because the often only looked at as sexual objects, rather than intelligent, meaningful humans.\u00a0 At the beginning of Jael and\u00a0Davy’s sex scene, the\u00a0previous roles of voyeur and voyee\u00a0are totally reversed: “I passed into his room barefoot and watched him cured in sleep, unconscious, the golden veils of his eyelashes shadowing his cheeks…” (196).\u00a0 Jael objectifys him, seduces him, and uses him until she is satisfied and goes off to handle business with the three Js.<\/p>\n
Jael refers to Davy with diminutive terms, such as “little Davy,” which is another illustration of a role reversal between the sexes.\u00a0 In our male-dominated society, diminutive terms are typically reserved for babies and women, to show small, weak, and insignificant they are.\u00a0 In Jael’s world, these type of\u00a0word seems to be reserved for the male house-pets.\u00a0 To complete the role reversal, the sex scene is finalized with Jael’s actually penetration of Davy: “that time I made him com by slipping my finger up his anus” (197).\u00a0 So much for Frued’s idea of penis envy.\u00a0 The penis has been reduced to a pleasure tool, that will eventually be eliminated entirely for the vibrators found in Janet’s world.<\/p>\n
Men in Jael’s\u00a0land\u00a0are machines that\u00a0live to serve.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Davy is a mere puppy, controlled by “the implants in his brain” (199).\u00a0\u00a0It becomes clear that Jael does not simply want equality between the sexes, she wants totality.\u00a0 Woman as the sole rulers of the world.\u00a0 But Jael doesn’t stop there.\u00a0 She doesn’t just want one world, she\u00a0seems to want\u00a0women to have all of them.\u00a0 Although the conclusion of the novel does not spell out Jael’s plans, it does appear that she wishes to have soldiers on other worlds, which would inevitably lead to\u00a0new wars.\u00a0<\/p>\n
By the end, I wasn’t sure what to make of Jael’s intentions and the creation of Janet’s world.\u00a0 I had previously found Janet’s world appealing.\u00a0 Like Janet, I was disturbed by Jael’s new information about how her world came to be.\u00a0 In a way, all the\u00a0Js\u00a0are feminists, but in varying degrees and temperaments.\u00a0 Perhaps the novel is cautioning us against extremist views like Jael’s.\u00a0 If this is the case, then Janet would be our herione.\u00a0 She is a fair feminist who knows when it has gone too far.\u00a0 She walks away from Jael’s plan to destroy the men, possibly altering the future of her own world and ending her women’s eutopia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Going off of the points made in “a misandristic proposal,”\u00a0I sometimes found it hard to side with the women towards the end of the novel.\u00a0 At the end, the book’s message seems more woman based than society based.\u00a0 Although I am a woman and can sympathize with the plight to become a less oppressed sex, … Continue reading Role Reversals<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[53,49,51],"class_list":["post-407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-week-9-female-man","tag-feminism","tag-sex","tag-the-female-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=407"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":466,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407\/revisions\/466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}