How about Le Guin's _The Dispossessed_ as a utopia/dystopia that doesn't
blame all problems on men?
Although it's not a utopia/dystopia story, I want to mention Eleanor
Arnason's _Ring of Swords_ in relation to this topic. It does offer
another view (but not quite a critique) of gender roles/responsibilities,
and there's a matter-of-fact-ness in the culture clash, expressed along
the lines of "Why the hell would you want to set things up *that* way?!?"
It implies an arbitrariness to "the way things are" that allows for
thinking about change without assigning blame.
this question also leads to (the larger than the scope of this listserv)
questioning of what "feminist" means here. Does a feminist
utopia/dystopia have to address gender? If it's about social equality or
environmental disasters, and doesn't blame patriarchy or take place in an
all-women culture, could it be feminist? Is _The Sparrow_ a feminist
work? (these are all open-ended discussion-type questions as far as I'm
concerned; I can think of arguments on several sides to this topic. they
are not meant to be rhetorical questions)
***************
Heather Whipple
hwhipple@script.lib.indiana.edu
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:06:02 PDT