Russ and Equality
Amanda Dunn
Post #5
I think that Russ’s piece has a lot to say about our society’s
view of freedom and of gender equality. When the male character enters the
story and speaks about how gender equality has been reestablished, the women
are reacting not as much to the content of the words he is saying but the
juxtaposition of his words in conjunction with his behavior. In their community,
they have found true gender equality, in familial, employment and social
settings. The fact that they do not assign themselves to “man” or “woman” roles
shows that there is no inherent bias: these two terms come fraught with
intrinsic meaning developed from histories past and the plague just happened in
a way that narrowed the gender field, and equalized the community. In an ideal
world, this equality would happen with both en and women present and they don’t
provide separate treatments for each gender, or even people of different races,
sexualities or mindsets, but they treat each other as a part of one “human”
archetype. I feel that the men in this story are intended to exemplify the
stereotype of male inequality over women: they play into the role by acting as
though they know what is best for themselves and for the women and by
instigating control over them by simply telling them that men are coming, not
asking. In a way, the men have taken on the role of aliens; the fact that human
history preceded them is the only thing that set them apart from a true alien
but it seems to be making all the difference in the world. I think this reveals
a lot about the nature of how history plays a role in the future: no matter how
much change happens, the past still exists and can always be discussed again
and may recur, in its own way, in the future.
Autumn Holcomb
Post 5
I just want to take a minute to talk about this piece as a work of science fiction. I love the fact that the piece is truly a work of science fiction and not just an angry feminist story purely hating on men (not that there is anything wrong with those). Like we talked about in class, Russ uses the metric system, which is not uncommon for a work of science fiction. However, it makes all of the numbers seem very large to our American eyes. The first example is when she says that Katy is driving 120 kilometers per hour, which is only around 75-81 miles per hour. This might seem a little fast, but you also have to take into account that this story is set in the future, on what seems to be another planet. If humans have the resources to travel to another planet and sustain life, you would think that they would be able to make cars that travel very quickly, very safely.
Another example is when the protagonist, Janet, talks about how tall she is. She says that she is one meter eighty centimeters tall. She is saying this to compare herself to the men, who she says that two are taller than she is, and that she is “extremely tall”. One meter eighty centimeters is only approximately 5 foot 9 inches, and while that is a little tall for a woman, as a woman myself, I am 5 foot 10 inches tall and not considered a giant. I am considered tall, but not “extremely tall”; the average model is around 5 foot 10 or 11, and it is not all that uncommon to see a woman that is 6 feet tall. The use of the metric system makes her seem much taller than she actually is, and while the reader may expect their gene pool to have shorter women, since all of the genes are coming from women, it is weird that she considers anything above 5 foot 9 giant. This furthers the reader’s impression that the men are intruders, because they do not fit comfortably in the environment in Whileaway.
Stephanie Areas
Joanna Russ's When it Changed freaked me out! I tend to be such a gender equality oriented person so finding out that men did not exist and were not needed to procreate blew my mind. I needed to state the obvious right away because I thought that no matter what happened in the story, that was the main thing that threw me off. Then the other thing when starting to read the story, I thought Katy was married and had 3 kids with a husband. I went quite a while thinking that Janet was a man until you realize the narrator is a woman! While this story freaked me out at times, it did get me really good. By “get me”, I mean I caught myself being so stereotypical that it was disturbing to myself. When the narrator talked about the wife not using a gun, I immediately said to myself “Oh, this is her husband, a man”, I was wrong.
While the story was entertaining, the part that I had to re-read and think about for a while was the very end. When the narrator is talking about not knowing what is going to happen with Katy and the kids but then she says that she doubts that sexual equality has been reestablished in Earth. She then goes to talk about not liking to be mocked or Katy being made to be the weak one. This shows the difference between Earth and Whileaway. Katy and Janet are content where they are, those astronauts made them see that.
Needless to say, this story was full of stereotypes and sexism but it did do a great job of keeping me reading and the end was my favorite part because while it did a great job of portraying the message with the story but it was taken even further when Janet explains thing about sexual equality.