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Regiment of Women

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Some people see Berger's "Regiment of Women" as an anti-feminist diatribe. I've always seen it as a pro-feminist book, with Berger essentially satirizing the extreme exaggerations of those who said women's lib would make women "masculine".

The book is set in a future where women rule the world. And they rule it with an iron fist. Men are excluded from all positions of power and relegated to second-class status. Society has experienced a complete role reversal of the sexes. The women are the politicians, business leaders and generals, while the men are secretaries, clerks and maids. Men are not permitted to hold political office or even vote, serve in the military or the police force.

Berger takes the reversal to the most extreme lengths. In Berger's imagined world, it is the men who wear dresses and skirts. They wear panties and stockings, put on makeup to make themselves pretty, and show off their shaved legs in high-heeled shoes. The women wear business suits and crewcuts, and sport fake beards and moustaches. They bind their chests, because thanks to cosmetic surgery, in this society it is the men who wear breasts, in the form of large silicone breasts.

Nowhere is the reversal more complete than in the area of sex. Both the male and female genitals have become superfluous organs. Here it is the female who penetrates the male. Thus, in "normal" sexual intercourse, the female vagina has been replaced by the male anus, and the male penis has been replaced by a strap-on dildo worn by the female (not surprisingly, in keeping with the over-the-top style of this book, Berger at different times describes the dildos used as huge, massive, and enormous. The protagonist of the book, Georgie Cornell relates how his high school prom date attempted to rape him with a dildo the size of a policewoman's club).

A constant theme throughout the book is power, and how women use it to dominate the male population. Sex appears to be just another tool in their arsenal. Georgie sees a psychiatrist to help him with his sexual problems. Georgie is frigid and unable to experience the joy of the male "anal orgasm". Instead he feels pain. And how does his analyst treat him for this problem? She gives him a beating to let him know what real pain is like, and then she essentially rapes him with a massive dildo. Georgie's friend, Charlie, offers his opinion as to what women get out of sex: "Power, pure and simple. What more obvious assertion of power is there? There you (the male) are, on your stomach, helpless, and they're (the female) riding you".

From birth on, men quickly learn their place. They are timid and subservient, meekly submitting to the female power structure. The women are the aggressors in all things, and treat men with a type of casual brutality. Although there are no physiological changes to the sexes, and men are still much larger and more physically powerful than women, in this world they have become the weaker sex. Like most men, Georgie fears women. He is right to fear women - he has been beaten by teachers, doctors, and girlfriends, and has fended off several attempts of rape.

Berger presents a world where the family has been eliminated. Children are born in incubators and raised by the state. Segregated by sex, they attend different schools. The girls get an academic education to prepare them for college, but since boys are considered to not be academically inclined, they take mostly home-economics courses.

To perpetuate the species, women volunteer as egg donors, while the men are drafted into the "Sperm Service". This involves a weekly milking of their sperm, which seems to consist of being masturbated by a machine.

Since the family structure has been eliminated, there is also no marriage. Many men and women do live with together, each seeming to get something out of the relationship. For women, they get free sex and a live-in maid, while men get a nice lifestyle, but more importantly, the physical protection of a women. Rape is a constant theme in the book. It seems to be commonplace and not treated very seriously the women running society (attempted rape is only a misdemeanor).

One thing Berger does is use language to surprise and shock the reader. Thus, to be masculine in the book is to be submissive and weak. Georgie worries about "his effeminate streak of brutality". The first paragraph of the books has Georgie waking up, "his baby-doll nightgown up to his sternum, exposing both his pudenda and his thrusting breasts". When Georgie lives with a famous painter, she is finishing up one of her greatest works titled "The Rape of the Sabine Men", which depicts a bunch of brawny women assaulting terrified male nudes.

The only problem with the book is it is somewhat of a one-joke note. That being said, I would say it's an interesting read.

I generally read about 75 books a year, and in the very long run few have made a lasting impression on me. This book is an exception; I read Regiment of Women about 20 years ago and I still think about it now and then. I suggest reading this book and Atwoods Handmaids Tale at the same time.

I stumbled onto this book when it first was published, and couldn't put it down. It came out at a time when we were all asking (like the song) "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" While the book may seem a little dated now, if you're old enough to remember, think about some of the sex/gender questions that were being asked then. Are we really any more advanced in our thinking now? This book made me laugh and laugh.

This book gets the point across about reverse sexual discrimation without coming across so stongly (as a feminist would). Picked this book up at the library in the late '70's. I'm an avid reader...read "Last Days of Pompeii" when I was 9, and everything written by Robert Heinlien by the time I was 12....but darned if I can tell you the name of the book I just finished reading yesterday....but this book is one I can remember. Although Berger's ideas are of what a man would think a woman would think life should be like....he doesn't do too bad a job at it. My husband read the book (the last book he'd read was about George Patton) and he finally understood why I worked on out-driving men on the golf course, or worked on my own car.

Original in its telling if not in its conception. This book is about 25-30-years old, but is still highly readable. Berger, in another book, had a character say that as long as women want to be men, judge their lot by comparing themselves with men, they'll get no sympathy from him, and that about sums up the theme of this highly inventive comic novel. At the end, when the man and woman have real sex, the first time she is on top, the second time he is: "If he was going to be builder and killer, he could be boss once in a while. Also, he was the one with the protuberant organ." The book ends with an inscription by Nietzsche that is ambiguously telling: "Woman was God's second mistake."

By forcing readers to refocus their eyes everytime they read about "him" putting on "his" lipstick, and "her" adjusting "her" crotch, Berger makes his audience laugh in spite of themselves.

I first read this book in junior high 20 years ago when I was home sick with the flu. As a budding feminist, I was appalled by Berger's ridiculous lampoon of the Women's Movement, but I was entertained nonetheless. In fact, this book came up during a conversation over lunch just a few weeks ago. "Regiment of Women" is no where near as good as "Little Big Man," but it's worth a read if you can find it at your local paperback trader.

This novel demonstrates the importance for all men to have a working relationship with their regenerative organs. The dystopia Berger describes is a hilarious and terrifying societal order where biology is given the same treatment as all young boys having their cherries popped by lecherous women on the prowl for hot boy meat. All the inversions are great: gender roles are reversed, boys wear silly little underthings, blush, fret over the color of their toenails, bitch like drag queens, and girls are raised to be tough, mean, and aggressive. Girls play with guns, join the army, kill people. Boys play with their Kitty Carry-All dollies, and are prized for their pretty features and gaity. But apparantly all the boys grow up straight. Homosexuality is something of a myth. Buggery, however, is all too real.

The upshot of all this is a society where women rule everything. But they can only do so because they've ostensibly created a system that denies a man a working relationship with his "original" tool. Boys never learn what their willies are FOR. They are told a pack of lies about sex. They grow up hating their organ and its hideous accomplices. If they complain too loudly, they are frequently threatened with the knife. There are plenty of eunichs around to serve as examples of what the wrong attitude can mean for a boy.

The women of this world have only taken on the superficial characterists of men. Still, they aren't men. They are as much parodies of men as the men are of women. They must use dildos on their boy-slaves in order to luxuriate in their absolute domination of them. Sex is presented as power. Specifically, the penis is power. Women, no matter what they do to attempt to mimic stereotypical masculinity--will never have the true psychological advantage that is manifested through a synchronicity between the male's brain and his red headed stranger.

Of course, feminists can tear this book to shreds. It would probably be a whole lot of fun, actually. It totally mocks feminism with an unrestrained glee. However, it clearly celebrates liberation for both men and women--a return to the biological imperatives that each human in instilled with at birth. The horrorshow presented in this book is an illustration of the folly of any attempt to subvert nature and create a [wo]man-made utopia that can only be sustained through treachery and callous, hateful deceit. Nevertheless, our own world has certainly subjugated whole sets of peoples for various reasons throughout history. So much that is in this book is most powerful because it rings so true.

I am a fan of Gender-switching, Fem Sci Fi & Utopia/Dystopia novels... I read everything that I can find that claims to be such... This one was such a disappointment! This is a world in which women rule and men are subservient -- but, to RULE..the women must strap their breasts flat, wear fake mustaches and wear fake groin bulges! They are gruff and crude and vulgar and everything that stereotypes A MAN. Men, on the other hand, must wear fake breasts, skirts, makeup and can only be secretaries, everything that stereotypes a woman! All the story does is frustrate the reader AND beg the question: why go to all the trouble re-creating a world in which all the same stereotypes exist? My humble suggestion is to read Pamela Sargent or Nicole Griffith or Paul O. Williams or Sheri Tepper or Marion Zimmer Bradley ...you'll have a much better time!

This book provides valuable and historic information on African Americans in the entertainment industry (primarily film and television). Sought out in researching Gordon Parks, I found the book less useful for any depth of information on Mr. Parks but excellent in its introduction and overview. Particularly satisfying was the book's spotlight on the less known facts and challenges that faced and continue to face African Americans in film and television.