Femlandia

Product Information

Are the secrets and foundations Femlandia is built on safe for Miranda and Emma, or could they be more dangerous behind the walls than the horrors outside? Neither Vox nor Q (AKA Master Class) were particularly complex books, but there was a thematic consistency to them and the storylines were straightforward if not nuanced. It is an interesting one because it could so very easily be true and that is what I love and Dalcher's novels. Alongside this anti-feminist take, the novel is engaged in another, more subtle kind of moral or political argument, one that’s ultimately just as repugnant: a bizarre kind of passionate centrism welded to a grievance-powered feeling of Boomer-flavored righteousness. Its painful litanies of all-too-believable rape and abuse are an obvious and believable prompt that “things need to change,” except that Dalcher is simultaneously making the case that change is bad and will inevitably lead to the worst kind of human rights abuses.

It’s freaking disturbing, thought provoking, but also extremely frightening novel make you scream, giving you anxiety attacks! Middle-aged Miranda and her daughter, Emma (16), are left homeless after a social and government meltdown (never really explained what happened).The dystopia is paper-thin, the plot is one you've encountered in more practiced hands many times, and the characters are universally loathsome. Personally I didn’t really like any of the characters in this book (not always a negative) but the extreme setting felt a lot heavier and darker than simply a cult vibe.

Miranda never agreed with her mother’s idea of the world and was living her own life with her husband and daughter away from her mother’s ideal society.

It’s only once Miranda steps inside that she realizes Femlandia’s methods are barbaric and that her mother and her former best friend, are responsible. which, hey—your compound, your rules, but since there is no mention of trans men or nonbinary/genderqueer people anywhere in the book, it feels like dalcher just didn't want to have to bother with the complexities of gender identity, and dispensed with the matter, shutting it down in one short paragraph. She and her personality-less daughter are on their way to seek refuge in ‘Femlandia’, a womyn-only community founded by Miranda’s (there’s her name) man-hating, feminist mother. Miranda's mother Win founded Femlandia before she passed away, and adopted daughter Jen now runs the place. There were many flashbacks which made it a bit confusing occasionally but as a Linguistics graduate, I appreciated the fascinating bits about languages.

And so they set off to Femlandia, the women-only colony Miranda's mother, Win Somers, established decades ago.However, now she finds herself homeless, unemployed, with a daughter to support and in a lawless country. It's really just a backdrop for the real stars of the show - the horrendously titled "Femlandia" communities. Shocking, provocative, subversive, FEMLANDIA is a fantasy of female empowerment that curdles into a nightmare. Fuck this book and its harmful depictions of feminism, insulting portrayals of men, rampant transphobia, and boring one-dimensional characters. Gender dystopias and utopias are a long-standing thought experiment, and increasingly popular of late—worlds of only one gender, worlds where women (or men) are nearly extinct or second-class citizens.

A disgusting statement, which happens in the first quarter of the novel, so I had my back up the rest of the way.Dalcher seems to be trying to push the idea that feminism = equality, but does not seem to understand that the reason feminism still exists is that we've not been able to achieve equality in the world we currently live in, so simply stating that there's no difference between men and women is pointless. Society has somehow crumbled, the economy has gone to shit and people almost immediately start killing each other and/or themselves. Miranda never saw eye to eye with her mother, preferring to talk about boys and make-up than be invested in her mother's community ideas. A real meat-and-potatoes kind of person, you used to say when you were talking about someone simple, unpretentious, down-to-earth.