Fiction, violence, and a world without men
NO MEN, NO FEAR, BUT STILL NO PEACE
I’m so curious about what you’re feeling right now after reading the title of this piece.
Does something trigger you? Are you ready to go off because you think you know what I’m about to write?
Well, get your best comebacks ready because we’re about to go there. This piece was inspired by a novel I read by Jaqueline Harpman titled I Who Have Never Known Men. But this isn’t a review, this is a reflection on how that book challenged me to consider so many of my beliefs about life and purpose and, most prominently, about being a man.
Although this isn’t a book review, you will need some context in order for this piece to make sense, so let me handle that right now. I Who Have Never Known Men is a story about a group of thirty nine women who are trapped in a bunker. None of them have any memory of how they got there even though they all have memories of their past lives. All except one.
The main character is a young girl at the beginning of adolescence. Her only memories are of being in the bunker and living with the other women. Outside of the bunker, there are male guards. They tell the women, without words, when to sleep and when to eat, and use a whip as their main tool of punishment for disobedience. However, at the point in the story the book commences, discipline is hardly needed; the women know their roles.
The next thing you need to know is that the women eventually escape (this is not a spoiler, it’s in the description), and set on a decades long journey of wandering through an uninhabited land. This is where things get deep for me.
Not once, throughout the entire wandering of the land, do the women feel the threat of violence among anyone within their group. The only fear they have, which eventually fades, is that the guards will return and force them back to their cells. Other than that, not even a thought of violence from any of the women within the group. Some arguments, some disagreements, but zero violence. And again, this spans over decades.
This single layer really made me step back and think: would the removal of men from women’s lives significantly reduce or even eliminate the threat of violence (and acts of violence) against women? Is all it would take for a woman to feel safe is if men were to disappear like Harpman made possible in her novel? My editor is a woman and when she read that part, her immediate response was an emphatic “Yes!” (She wrote that in the comments).
I’m a man. I have never been violent in any way towards a woman. Yet when I speak to my female friends, I would say that 98% of them have endured some kind of abuse at the hands of a man. When I studied this topic further, I learned so many troubling statistics, and I could list them here. But in speaking to women more closely, I realize that the statistics will never match the reality, because the one stat you should know is that only 22% of women report their assault to the police.
22%.
That means the overwhelming majority of these cases go unreported so me listing off statistics that I learned won’t add much to your understanding. Let me just say, generally speaking, that the majority of women in North America and the West have experienced sexual or physical violence at the hand of a man. I don’t even want to get into the global figures because cultural differences make the actual reporting of this impossible, but from what I’ve studied, the reality is similar or worse than what I’ve mentioned.
So what do we do with this information?
Here’s another layer to process before we get into further exploration. The wandering women have everything they could possibly need, at least you think they do. They have a lifelong supply of food, they are in a warm to hot climate, they share close bonds and have “best friends” within the larger group, and, like I mentioned, there is no threat of violence.
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Yet one by one, the women slowly, and sometimes quickly, become dissatisfied with their lives. In some cases, the women would rather die than continue on to what they see as a pointless existence.
This brings up another question for me: most of the women in the group were heterosexual. They reminisced on their past lives and families and all of that made them happy. Knowing this, my mind explored the possibility that not having the opportunity for companionship, specifically romantic companionship with a man, partially led to their dissatisfaction. I’m not necessarily saying that they needed a man to be happy, I’m saying they needed romantic companionship to be happy and in this case, the companionship would need to come from a man.
Even if this is the case, it would be only a partial explanation for their collective unhappiness. For me, this novel really pushed me to question the meaning of life in a way not many other novels have. Most great novels or books would pinpoint a particular aspect of life and challenge your perspective. But this one challenged how I thought about life in general, and made me consider the role purpose plays in our existence.
Because think about this: if so many of your core needs are met—food, security, friendship—or no longer needed—money—what would cause you to be unhappy? Do we need to always be striving towards something? In order for our lives to have meaning, do we need personal goals? A mission? Do we need to know that we are leaving the world to other generations? (meaning is the experience of having children important to how we function psychologically)? Do we need romantic relationships?
Do we need men?
Can you see how this book has really captured my mind and is squeezing it in a vice grip?
The reason I am struggling with this question of men is because if I am analyzing this story correctly, it would suggest that men are inherently violent. If I extrapolate further, I could arrive at the conclusion that all violence, not just violence men exhibit against women, but the majority of violence is perpetuated simply because we are men.
This is wild to me.
Then a parallel thought to all of this: how powerful is fiction! Harpman has written a tale that feels important despite the story being made up. This is when I believe fiction is at its most powerful; when it can find the balance between entertaining and enlightening, there’s no art form that can shift perspective quite like a novel.
Now, if you want to take things further and learn how Harpman was able to execute on such a high level, subscribe to my paid tier. I’ll be doing a craft breakdown that details the techniques and strategies Harpman implored to write a simple story with deep meaning.
Subscribe or upgrade below. But first, comment with your thoughts.
Fiction is a lover of mine. And this is one of the reasons why:
"Then a parallel thought to all of this: how powerful is fiction! Harpman has written a tale that feels important despite the story being made up. This is when I believe fiction is at its most powerful; when it can find the balance between entertaining and enlightening, there’s no art form that can shift perspective quite like a novel."
Women may not always be violent, although I personally know a few who can be. But women can be vicious. There is a reason we have the trope of the Queen Bee, the opposite of the bee that is cared for by the hive, but one who controls the situation--family, business, town--she may not be physically violent, but she is controlling and abusive in other ways. I have read some stories where all the people were women, and they figured out parthenogenesis for children. It was not a utopia, because it had real people in it. An interesting view. Another such book is The Gate to the Women's Country, which had an agenda dealing witih the violence of men.