How we cite our quotes: (Part.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #7
There's no being out too late in Whileaway, or up too early, or in the wrong part of town, or unescorted. You cannot fall out of the kinship web and become sexual prey for strangers, for there is no prey and there are no strangers—the web is world-wide. (4.18.1)
Considering the fact that The Female Man was written well before the World Wide Web was a thing, this description of Whileaway's social networks is pretty astounding. Joanna Russ imagined a world a lot like the one we live in now; however, whereas Whileawayans are connected by familial kinship networks, our global connections are mediated by technological networking.
Quote #8
You can walk around the Whileawayan equator twenty times (if the feat takes your fancy and you live that long) with one hand on your sex and in the other an emerald the size of a grapefruit. All you'll get is a tired wrist.
While here, where we live—! (4.18.2-3)
On Whileaway, sexual violence is nonexistent, but on Joanna's Earth, it is so prevalent that Joanna-the omniscient narrator doesn't even have to finish her sentence for readers to know what she means.
Quote #9
It takes four hours to cross the Atlantic, three to shuttle to a different latitude. Waking up in a Vermont autumn morning, inside the glass cab, while all around us the maples and sugar maples wheel slowly out of the fog. Only this part of the world can produce such color. (8.9.1)
The Female Man has no love for patriarchy in America, but it sure has a lot of affection for the landscapes and cities of America's east. Aside from the fact that Joanna Russ was born in New York, is there any significance to the novel's eastern setting?