The Women Men Don't See

by James Tiptree Jr.

The short story revolves around protagonist Don Fenton, an American government agent on vacation in Mexico, and his meeting with the Parsons. Ruth Parsons and her daughter Althea charter a plane with the Mayan pilot Esteban and allow Fenton to travel with them. When the plane crashes, Don and Ruth split off from Althea and Esteban in order to search for fresh water. Throughout the ordeal, Don becomes increasingly annoyed when Ruth does not panic or act in a way he expects of a woman. His conversations with Ruth reveal that she feels alienated since she is a woman, though Don is unable to understand her views. During an encounter with aliens, Ruth pleads with them to take her and Althea away from Earth while Don tries to “save” her from the extraterrestrials. In the end the aliens leave with the Parsons, leaving Don bewildered and questioning why the two women would rather leave with aliens than stay on Earth.

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Feminism, Fiction, School, Aliens, Science Fiction Fantasy

42 pages, Unknown Binding

First published December 1, 1973

About the author

"James Tiptree Jr." was born Alice Bradley in Chicago in 1915. Her mother was the writer Mary Hastings Bradley; her father, Herbert, was a lawyer and explorer. Throughout her childhood she traveled with her parents, mostly to Africa, but also to India and Southeast Asia. Her early work was as an artist and art critic. During World War II she enlisted in the Army and became the first American female photointelligence officer. In Germany after the war, she met and married her commanding officer, Huntington D. Sheldon. In the early 1950s, both Sheldons joined the then-new CIA; he made it his career, but she resigned in 1955, went back to college, and earned a Ph.D. in experimental psychology.

At about this same time, Alli Sheldon started writing science fiction. She wrote four stories and sent them off to four different science fiction magazines. She did not want to publish under her real name, because of her CIA and academic ties, and she intended to use a new pseudonym for each group of stories until some sold. They started selling immediately, and only the first pseudonym—"Tiptree" from a jar of jelly, "James" because she felt editors would be more receptive to a male writer, and "Jr." for fun—was needed. (A second pseudonym, "Raccoona Sheldon," came along later, so she could have a female persona.)

Tiptree quickly became one of the most respected writers in the field, winning the Hugo Award for The Girl Who was Plugged In and Houston, Houston, Do You Read?, and the Nebula Award for "Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death" and Houston, Houston. Raccoona won the Nebula for "The Screwfly Solution," and Tiptree won the World Fantasy Award for the collection Tales from the Quintana Roo.

The Tiptree fiction reflects Alli Sheldon's interests and concerns throughout her life: the alien among us (a role she portrayed in her childhood travels), the health of the planet, the quality of perception, the role of women, love, death, and humanity's place in a vast, cold universe. The Otherwise Award (formerly the Tiptree Award) has celebrated science fiction that "expands and explores gender roles" since 1991.

Alice Sheldon died in 1987 by her own hand. Writing in her first book about the suicide of Hart Crane, she said succinctly: "Poets extrapolate."

Julie Phillips wrote her biography, James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon

Reviews

[Claudia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Among all these 5 stars, here comes my opposite. I didn't resonate with it; I found the characters unreliable and artificial and that meeting with the aliens... lol. I got the message but did not resonate with it either. Had I read it in '73 (wasn't born yet, but lets speculate) maybe I would have liked it. Now it seems out of place. Don't shoot, it's just one opinion.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of her very best, which means, *absolutely* don't miss. I've lost track of how many times I've reread it. Pretty near perfect. OK, the alien stuff is a bit heavy-handed. Or so it seems now. Published 1973, in F&SF. Many, many reprints. Available online:
archived copy of the Sci Fiction reprint:
http://www.ida.liu.se/~tompe44/lsff-b...
Easier-to-read PDF: http://valerie.debill.org/Hosting/The...

Here's where to find a printed copy, which you may already have:
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cg...
Plus, other interesting stuff & trivia. Finished #18 in the 1974 Locus ballot for Best Short Fiction!

[Hirondelle (not getting notifications) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Feminist sf novella from 1973 (and it shows it is from 1973,oh, boy does it show... In some ways, kind of nostalgic, an almost virgin Yucatan only of interest to tourists,"guevaristas" or aliens..).

"James Tiptree Jr." was really Alice Sheldon who lived a very interesting life and wrote sf under a male penname for decades. You look at the blurbs, or plots, of her short fiction and you kind of wonder: how could she ever have passed for male? How could people think a male wrote that story? But then you read her stories, and particularly this one, well, you can see why people (say, me) would think this was written by a teen boy with just a passing knowledge of women as a concept - random erections (assuming we are talking of erections, it is kind of coy about that), women just deciding to have sex, and being presumably pregnant from one random sexual encounter for cryptic reasons. I can understand better how she passed for a male, because her males and females are like alien species and could have been written by anybody with no interest in people - two separate species of aliens, and completely alien just the same, not believable as people, with sex as some kind of biological imperative always lurking and always opposed in some kind of conflict.

And she did not seem to have much interest in exploring why a woman character would choose to have sex, if she would be worried about pregnancy, or if not, why, maybe that would be more interesting (to me! And lots of male authors) than following the PoV of our smarmy male PoV getting surprised at women doing unlikely choices (because those are unlikely choices and I would love some more context to sympathize!).

The concept of women being ignored by men if they are not seen as sexual objects is of course important, and interesting (to a woman, at least) - I picked this up based on blurb. But we do not get the story of those women, we do not get in their heads, we do not get their feelings. It is all some kind of fake philosophical grandstanding where nobody is convincing as a human being and the only point is "ah, smarmy male PoV gets surprised at women choosing to do stuff he does not understand" (and I do not understand either and I think he was made to be clumsily extra slimy).



There is this scene, where after Don and Ruth were separated from the younger Althea and Esteban apparently the older couple can watch the younger couple having sex from across the mangrove, and beach. Though there is no clue they were in visual communication with each other before this and honestly it is really really detailed for the distance between these people, if they are not like in yelling distance already..

"What's she seeing, out there in the flats?
Oho.
Captain Estéban's mahogany arms clasping Miss Althea Parsons's pearly body. Captain Estéban's archaic nostrils snuffling in Miss Parsons's tender neck. Captain's Estéban's copper buttocks pumping into Althea's creamy upturned bottom.… The hammock, very bouncy. Mayas know all about it.

(Yes, that kind of writing.

Also: hey they are going doggy style in an improvised hammock? Maybe this is hopelessly naive of me, but really, that works?? And that hammock sure is a lot stronger than I would expect from something improvised in a plane wreck

Also: Ruth's, Althea's mother is kind of aroused by watching this? Smiling and touching her thighs? WHAT? WHAT? She is having sex like that where her mother can see her with such details and her mother is kind of aroused by that? Who are these people?)

I am not even sure if this was meant to be "true" within the narrative, I expected maybe it was some kind of delirium, except it seems to have been confirmed, worked into the plot, and not a sign of a crazily delirious POV. And then there is a hint that Althea might be pregnant from this encounter when she decides to leave with aliens with no exploration of contraception as a possibility for an educated woman who freely chooses to have sex (in 1973).

We never really get into the minds of Ruth or Althea. If a young computer programming graduate in 1973 when planewrecked in Yucatan suddenly decides to have sex with the Mayan pilot after a couple days, all that within sight of her mother, wait, I want to understand why! This would be a more interesting PoV, I want to know more about her, than the PoV of Don! The way Don and Ruth assume, that Althea unchaperoned will automatically consider having sex? (A recent college graduate from 1973, who studied computer programming, if she could not restrain herself from having unprotected sex when alone with a man likely would not have graduated at all... I mean she had lots of candidates for sperm donation if that was what this is about...). Would it not be sexist of Don to even assume Althea would want to get pregnant and is not in control of that? (With no condemnation from the author who is very clear at showing Don being a jerk when he is a jerk but this passes...).

And for all that story is ostensibly about womEn (plural) men do not see, Althea herself is almost an accessory here, with no personality at all. It is not just men ignoring women or women characters, you know. Ruth has got way more lines and agency, but she is also totally unbelievable as, not even a woman but as a human being.

Their choice (or Ruth's at least because Althea is a stage prop) is insane. For all of Ruth's cynicism about the rights of women, or the the role of women in a world where men exist and are more physical powerful, she seems totally stupidly (... like some female character in retro sf blabbing about understanding, like it was the role of women to be empathic and understanding and loving) trusting of aliens! They might have slavery you know, they might treat them like free research objects). For all that Don is explicitly made to be very smarmy and unlikeable, I can not help feeling, hey he was being perfectly rational and helpful! And it was stupid as everything for Ruth to assume life with aliens is going to be fantastic and that only human males abuse their power (rather than say power corrupting and people with power building power preserving structures). Nope, aliens will be an improvement and what pamper them?


This was very heavy handed, not subtle at all feminist allegory and it was arguably IMO not really feminist, but just pro "gender war". Characters do not act like human beings at all (ok, maybe the aliens who I read as confused grad students!), and where ironically I think "Tiptree Jr." was really not being fair to her female characters or putting out a credible female voice about women men do not see. Because she is not looking at those women either, Alice "James" herself is she? Althea? She does not bother to explore Althea's feelings or motivations at all. It is not just men who do not see Althea, the author does not either bother to do that.

Don is made to be awful on purpose, his mind seems to refocus instantly to sex, dismissive of the women's personalities (not that they bother showing any), but at least he is the focus of the author - this is such a gender focused book I am wary of calling the male PoV unbelievable, since I am not a man, that but it is not like world literature is short of men writing about what men think and do and feel and I have certainly read plenty of stories about men thinking and feeling, as written by other men (it is not hard to find those books, is it?), and Don is a very odd PoV indeed.

This reads as some kind of provocative, what-if, gender war, speculation piece, a discussion starter but written by somebody who was not that particularly interested in people's feelings or why they chose to do things. If you are a woman writing about women being invisible, maybe you can give them a voice? Write from their PoV (you can say you are a man! You do not need to say you are a you know, WOMAN writing it, you can keep the fraud), rather than a snarky story from the PoV of a man (because is that like the default PoV? We got over that at least in the 19th century, I think) being surprised women acting strangely when they do really stupid choices without any exploration of why they would do those choices?

[Netanella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in 1973, "The Women Men Don't See" received critical attention and was nominated for several major awards, including the Hugo and the Locus. Tiptree withdrew the story from the Hugo ballot. It's a strange story that has not aged all that well, particularly in its lush descriptions of the Mexican tropics, which are now built up as world-class tourist destinations.

The story is written by a women pretending to be a man, and told from the perspective of man observing two women as the group is stranded in the tropical isles off the coastline. Completely self-absorbed, the man has no understanding of Ruth and her daughter Althea, and only views them in a sexual manner. When they are rescued by alien explorers, he fails to understand why the women would prefer to leave with the aliens rather than stay in his world.

It's feminism, but it's very pessimistic. What's the message? that true equality and women's lib resides in escape? That's a sad thought.

But if it means to go where no woman has gone before, well, why the hell not?

[Andreas · Rating 5 out of 5]

★★★★★

Full review at my blog.

I'm lazy and let Tiptree summarize the novelette in her own words:

"'Hero' - narrator, two plain women (mother & daughter) and Maya pilot crash on a sand-bar in Asuncion Bay. Hero and the mother set off on foot to cross bay and bring back fresh water. That night they are awakened by strangers in military-type vehicles who do not respond to their cries for help. Narrator thinks they are revolutionaries; woman picks up a dropped artefact and deduces that they are aliens. When aliens return for their object next eve, woman persuades them to take her and narrator back for plane. Arriving there, she quickly gets her daughter in the boat and over narrator's horrified protests, begs aliens to take them off earth. They do. Story has lots of struggle, hardships, wounds, tension. Message is total misunderstanding of woman's motivations by narrator, who relates everything to self. Message No. 2 is bleak future for feminism."

[Amy Conlon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd never gotten around to reading this story, though it's a classic in the feminist SF ouvre. When it was referenced and linked in a discussion of gender & foreign policy analysis, I decided to remedy that.

Wow. All I can say for certain is that Tiptree drew a dead-on portrait of a particularly ugly gender dynamic that still persists to this day.

This is a grim vision of how many men (don't) see the women that surround them as subjects of their own lives, as capable of agency as they themselves are. It's not even a sexual objectification for the most part; the woman who are potential sex objects men do see, although only in that role. It's all the other women, not of the right age or attractiveness, who are simply a blur and a function.

Those invisible women scurry around the margins of the man's world, striving to find some function that makes them valuable enough to be protected & provided for. They are temperamentally unable to respond to the inevitable outbursts of violence directed at them in kind, so excel in avoidance, misdirection, and flight. They live at the whim of Overlords who may look so similar, are raised in the same homes they are raised in, but are incomprehensibly alien at heart.

There are, I think, such men in the world, and there are cultures that encourage such psyches to develop. I suspect Hollywood, obsessed with surface beauty and the new hot property, is one of those cultures. I think Washington DC, the world of Intelligence Analysis and the Foriegn Service, where James Tiptree/Alice Sheldon spent her professional life, is another.

I know there are men in the world who consider viewing any human being as functions as a sin, who strive to recognize the humanity and agency in every person they meet. I know that as a culture, we are pushing harder towards seeing women, even if we all too often fail to see women of color and non-traditionally feminine women. I know there is pushback.

But this dynamic is still out there. Some women have more options than the Parsons did to deal with it... But far from all.

[Adam · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have a hard time reviewing Sheldon's stories without spoiling them because they drive me mad haha. So if you haven't read it yet, just read it, then come back and yell at me and tell me I'm wrong after. Thanks.

Well that was disappointing. Let me first say that I’m not really an ally of this type of feminist fiction. I’m an ally of good stories, and I don’t care if it’s written by a man, woman, smurf, or turtle. I’ve read good stories that treat women horribly (see Harlan Ellison) and I’ve read good stories that treat men horribly (see all of Triptree’s other stories), and that’s fine. My issue here is that I just don’t think it’s a good story.

The author stated herself that the story was about a male hero, who misunderstands the female character’s message, can’t see them as independent people, and can’t help but sexualize them. I actually think that’s a really interesting theme, especially in the context of history where women were often marginalized and forced into particular roles. Although, it’s difficult for me to personally relate because I’ve grown up in a world around women who are very independent and capable of all things, including sexualizing themselves as casually as men do.

That’s not the issue for me. The issue is I don’t think these themes were presented in an interesting or believable way in the story.

I understand the idea of an unreliable narrator, but does that mean the narrator should be unbelievable? Our male protagonist is just focused on spending his holiday fishing, then after surviving a plane crash he understandably becomes focused on survival. Mixed up with his thoughts of finding fresh water, and catching fish to eat, are completely compulsive and out of place thoughts on having sex with the female character or obsessing over whether her daughter is getting pregnant from the pilot. Do men sometimes have an animal instinct, verging on predatory, that can be difficult to control? Sure. But his thoughts make no sense in the context of this story. It’s just ham-fisted in there so that as readers we know that even old men that just want to fish on their holiday are animals. I’m not buying it.

And then there’s Ruth, our female character. Ruth and her daughter prove how independent they are by not even making a peep while a plane plummets to the ground. Upon surviving the crash, they are calm and happy as clams. Strong women? You bet. Believable? Nope. Not at all. In fact all the characters reacted to this plane crash as if they just bumped their elbow on a doorway; a minor inconvenience.

Ruth also drops this gem: “Women have no rights, Don, except what men allow us. Men are more aggressive and powerful, and they run the world. When the next crisis upsets them, our so-called rights will vanish like - like that smoke. We’ll be back where we always were: property. And whatever has gone wrong will be blamed on our freedom, like the fall of Rome was. You’ll see.” Well, sorry to break it to you Ruth, but he won’t see, because that never happened. It's just a hysterical quote from a weak character espousing a victim's mentality.

So in the end Ruth and her daughter are rescued by aliens, yes of course, aliens. Because an alien planet will no doubt be preferable to this harsh, harsh world where Ruth, as a single mom, successfully raised her daughter and helped her get a computer science degree, and had enough money to take holidays to Mexico. Oh, this vicious man’s world!

The only thing I like here is the author’s prose and ability to create a sense of mystery and tension. Other than that this story doesn’t resonate with me at all, and it actually bums me out, because I REALLY like her other stories.

[Jo Daneman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hard to believe this was written over 50 years ago; it resonates soundly with the "Women Prefer the Bear" meme going around the Internet.

In this case, a woman prefers two strange aliens to a man who accompanies her on a trek out of the jungle after a plane crash. The narrator is the man, described by reviewer as "not only an unreliable narrator but unaware" or something to that effect; he's trivial, self-absorbed, obsessed with sex, locked in his patriarchial belief system and when push comes to shove, more dangerous than the bear, or in this case, two aliens. Mrs Parsons, the protagonist, is far more aware than her "protector", prepares fish for survival food and--finding a strange tube, hangs onto a missing part from the alien ship in exchange for transportation--away. Not just away from the jungle, but away for her and her daughter. She is far less fearful of the unknown than the known. Her comment about women living in the crevices of a man's world is telling as is her ambiguity on "women's lib" which was a hot topic at the time.

James Tiptree Jr was a FEMALE hiding under a male pseudonym, writing in a male field (science fiction) and her views on the world and how it treats women haven't been upturned.

[Naomi Rae · Rating 3 out of 5]

Women’s lit class again. This short story had an interesting plot but it was really hard to follow. Something about the way it was written made it hard to understand whether or not something was actually happening at certain points.

[Reet · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read this a few times, and it always hits so close to home. What's it like being a woman in a"man's world"? Ha! Disappointing, enraging, bewildering, heartbreaking, disillusioning, disgusting, to name just a few of the adjectives that apply. Especially if you had a mother and father who were Innocents and had no plans to try to prepare you for this jungle, only fears and old-fashioned ideas about how to raise you, along with your other 4 sisters and (more important than girls) 2 brothers. I also always wanted to go with"aliens" but was never presented with the opportunity this mother and daughter were.

[Kristie Pennock · Rating 5 out of 5]

Almost fifty years after this was written, I would love to report that the "opossums" have come out of the shadows and claimed their rightful space in society.

They haven't.

This short story is a masterful look at the casual dismissal most women face at the hands of men- and the secret longing those who are invisible feel. The desire is not to be seen, so much as it is to remove oneself from view entirely; to exist as a whole and integral person without relying on relationship or attractiveness to make you "worthy" of full personhood. This story, penned by a woman who literally shrouded herself from the appraising view, is a deep and meaningful exploration of the seen vs. the unseen.

[anaeliteratura · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really great short story! Recommend to everyone.
"Women have no rights, Don, except what men allow us. Men are more aggressive and
powerful, and they run the world. When the
next real crisis upsets them, our so-called rights will vanish like—like that smoke. We'll be back where we always were: property. And whatever has gone wrong will be blamed on our freedom, like the fall of Rome was. You'll see."

[Alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Don, who has suffered an injury and is high on Demerol, decides that he'd like to try to steal the alien's skiff, I thought - Alice Sheldon obviously knew women - but she knew men even better. Only a man would think, hey - look at this superior race - I can barely walk, but there's got to be a way for me to overpower them and take their boat.

[Gili · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can hardly read things from the 70's. I don't know if it's the slang, but I was left feeling confused, and with an unreliable protagonist, that's not an easy mix. Since I already sort of knew what the story was about, I found it a bit annoying.
I think I read enough more recent feminist writing for the more groundbreaking aspects of the story to be less impactful for me.

[Lui · Rating 4 out of 5]

"What women do is survive. We live by ones and twos in the chinks of your world-machine." daaang.

really excellent. now my favorite use of the unreliable narrator. (warnings for narrator's racist and misogynist internal dialogue.)

[Selene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Men who only think of women in relation to themselves, both individuals or in gender. Women only exist in contrast to men. What about the women who have other motivations? Their own thoughts and dreams? Sometimes it feels like it's difficult, getting out of the man's world.

[Jessica Mae Stover · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story is part of a curated, scifi-thematic, challenge read that I programmed. https://bookshop.org/lists/beyond-the... + https://www.goodreads.com/review/list... Let me know if you take me up on it!

[bored reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Why was this guy always thinking about Mayan people’s sloped foreheads like gawdammn get another thought. So annoying in so many ways wish he shot himself to death

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think about this story every time I see a possum

[Gwen · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Women have no rights, Don, except what men allow us. Men are more aggressive and powerful, and they run the world. When the next real crisis upsets them, our so-called rights will vanish like—
like that smoke. We'll be back where we always were: property. And whatever has gone wrong will be blamed on our freedom, like the fall of Rome was. You'll see."

Y'know, Tiptree's not wrong. We've made incremental progress since 1973, but slightly lessen the more overt racism and sexism, and this is a story that could have been written today.

h/t: Eater

Looks interesting: the author's biography

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I located a copy to read here: https://lexal.net/scifi/scifiction/cl...

I liked the story, although until nearly the end I wondered what it was doing in a Fantasy and SF magazine. A lot of people at the time made a lot of the genders of the characters and of how women go unnoticed in society despite the fact they're (news flash) really oh so important to everyone. It was the early 1970s. Women's liberation was a major social topic of concern.

One could say that's people reading into Tiptree's story stuff that isn't there. But she titled the story, inviting the analysis. It's there. Only, most of us as a society have moved beyond elevating the role of gender to an importance it doesn't have. This moving on that has taken place thus makes this story really dated. Unless you haven't moved on. Then this story will be classically, perennially topical to you.

Bringing in the aliens seems like an unnecessary afterthought. Almost as if the author suddenly realized she was writing for a science fiction magazine, that she hadn't introduced the SF element, and that she had better get to it, or her story would be rejected.

The aliens could just as easily have been a search and rescue party of U.S. Air Force personnel. My dad did this type of work, first in Vietnam, then the Carribean, and we were stationed in southern Spain (until Franco booted us in late 1969) and then England, from where he deployed to retrieve astronauts who had splashed down somewhere near the Azores. I'm just saying, the presence of aliens seems superfluous here.

There's a very mature, realistic perspective and overtone to this story that lends it strength, a verisimilitude much other SF of that period lacked. I'm not in agreement with everything about this story, the depiction of all men as sex-crazed, one-dimensional, near-rapist beasts, for example, but I nevertheless really liked this story.

[Ana G]

this might be the first story I have no clue how to rate. Just goes to show GR's rating system is limited in a lot of ways.

A friend recommended me this story as being of the same type as "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" and...well, I guess I sort of see where she was coming from, if we define "the same type" as "both highly influential stories that echo decades later and make people think a lot". And a vague similarity in the speculative nature, though they're very different kinds of speculative. But other than that, this is quite a different genre and takes aim at a different underlying societal evil.

The gist of the story is the juxtaposition of two women's narrative arc as viewed through the lens of a man who doesn't actually see them as people outside their immediate (mostly sexual) relevance to his own interests. A point well-made for feminism, but TBH the story showed its age a bit (via some of the references and general style) and I personally had a harder time relating to the women's perspective here than I'd expected. Different generations, different cultures, who knows where my disconnect to this story comes from.

My general impression is this is the sort of story best read as part of a group; I think its true value doesn't get exposed until a reader gets the chance to experience the discussions it sparks, at which point I suspect a lot of the story's subtler power will become evident.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok, so. I hope you didn't already read the brief on this on Goodreads because it is a short story and the lil summary gives it all away! So. If you've not read that DON'T! I read James Tiptree Jr's novel Brightness Falls from the Air for the Sword & Laser book club and that was a problematic work that I still enjoyed, but normally many people will opt out the second they hear there is a troupe of underage pornography workers involved. Weird. ANYWAY, this short story has none of that and is short and tells a rather interesting story. It's out there floating about in the public domain and I had to deal with a webpage that wasn't optimized for screen re-sizings, BUT I read this for free. And I did that because so many people in the sword and laser group were talking about how James Tiptree jr was really known more for her short stories than her two (?) novels and we shoulda read one of those which I mean, it's a book club and the short story literally took me less than an hour to read (or maybe about an hour? IDK I didn't time myself), so I guess they figured go with the novel length work as per usual. Anyway, all that to say, this was an interesting story about a traveler (male) who is put into a situation with two other travelers (females) and there was/is an interesting situation that occurs.

[Edel Ryder-hanrahan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read coz of a recommend in this excellent essay: http://aidanmoher.com/blog/featured-a...
Enjoyable.
This quote tho': "Women have no rights, Don, except what men allow us. Men are more aggressive and powerful, and they run the world. When the next real crisis upsets them, our so-called rights will vanish like—like that smoke. We'll be back where we always were: property. And whatever has gone wrong will be blamed on our freedom, like the fall of Rome was. You'll see."

[Noel Cisneros · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alice Sheldon se sumerge en la perspectiva de su protagonista y narrador, Don Fenton, de quien percibimos sus estados de ánimo, su sentido de alerta, su dolor, mientras nos muestra a esas mujeres que nadie ve, Mrs. y Miss Parsons, todo en el marco del accidente de una avioneta en unos manglares de la península de Yucatán.
Estas mujeres que nadie ve, que son, en realidad todas las mujeres, las mujeres que sobreviven en la maquinaría del hombre, como dice Mrs. Parsons, encuentran una forma de escape que el narrador no espera y que lo atemoriza.

[Me, My Shelf, & I · Rating 4 out of 5]

Women be choosing the random bear in the woods over the random man since at least 1973, and I can't blame 'em!
---------------------
This story isn't the best thing I've ever read, or even the averagest, tbh. But I like the way that it plays with the reader's preconceptions to emphasize a point that otherwise wouldn't be received. At face value it's quite bland and has several plotholes, but meeting it where it's at is much more interesting.

[Martha (Marty) · Rating 1 out of 5]

Honestly I read the book and it was confusing for the first several pages. Hard to get into which isn't good for a short story.
Messy writing and pacing.
I see what it was trying to do but it was a massive miss for me. I don't understand all the high star reviews for this.

Honestly thought it was a complete nonsensical mess for most of the book. Disappointing.

[Ian Carr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Came across my radar from Jo Walton's excellent Informal History of the Hugos. Apparently it wasn't publicly known that James Tiptree was the pen name of a woman for several years after this came out, which means its readers must have convinced themselves this was somehow written by an American man in the seventies.

[David Kahn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just happened upon this novelette and read it to learn what the critical fuss is all about - and I was very glad that I did - Tiptree is an excellent writer (so many have said so, so no news here) who impressed me with her raw, direct even (dare I say) aggressive prose.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Found here: https://www.ida.liu.se/~tompe44/lsff-...

The author is a woman writing a male narrator with a male penname. I think knowing this gives extra context to what feels like an adventure story but turns into something else by the end.

It was very uncomfortable to read the narrator's attempts to try very hard to sexualize Mrs. Parsons (and her "rump"), as though he was doing her a favor. It seemed like he had to be able to do that first before he would be able to see her as capable of anything else besides being a sitcom mom on Gilligan's Island, making the bed and bringing him drinks in a coconut cup.