The Power

by Naomi Alderman

I suppose lots of things in the ancient scriptures can be accounted for that way. And I see what you’ve done with Tunde—I’m sure something like that has happened to thousands of men down the generations. Misattributions, anonymous work assumed to be female, men helping their wives or sisters or mothers with their work and getting no credit, and yes, simple theft.

I have some questions. The male soldiers at the start of the book. I know you’re going to tell me that ancient excavations have found male warrior figures. But really, I suppose this is the crux of the matter for me. Are we sure those weren’t just isolated civilizations? One or two among millions? We were taught in school about women making men fight for entertainment—I think a lot of your readers will still have that in mind when you have those scenes where men are soldiers in India or Arabia.

But does the history really support the idea that women didn’t have skeins much before the Cataclysm? I know, I know about the occasional statues we find of women without skeins from before the Cataclysm, but that could just be artistic license. Surely it makes more sense that it was women who provoked the war.

I feel instinctively—and I hope you do, too—that a world run by men would be more kind, more gentle, more loving and naturally nurturing. Have you thought about the evolutionary psychology of it? Men have evolved to be strong worker homestead-keepers, while women—with babies to protect from harm—have had to become aggressive and violent. The few partial patriarchies that have ever existed in human society have been very peaceful places.

Are there any problems that your interpretation solves that the standard model of world history leaves unsolved? I mean, it’s a clever idea, I’ll grant you. And maybe worth doing for that reason alone, just as a fun exercise. But I don’t know if it advances your cause to make an assertion that just can’t be backed up or proved.

As to whether men are naturally more peaceful and nurturing than women…that will be up to the reader to decide, I suppose. But consider this: are patriarchies peaceful because men are peaceful? Or do more peaceful societies tend to allow men to rise to the top because they place less value on the capacity for violence? Just asking the question.

Oh, the male warriors. I mean, I can send you images of hundreds of partial or full statues of male soldiers—they’ve been unearthed around the world. And we know how many movements have been devoted to completely obliterating all traces of the time before—I mean, just the ones we know about number in the thousands. We find so many smashed statues and carvings, so many obliterated marking stones. If they hadn’t been destroyed, imagine how many male soldier statues there’d be. We can interpret them however we like, but it’s actually pretty clear that around five thousand years ago there were a lot of male warriors. People don’t believe it because it doesn’t fit with what they already think.

Oh yes, OK, you ask, “Does the history really support the idea women didn’t have skeins much before the Cataclysm?” The answer is: yes. It does. At least, you have to ignore a huge raft of archeological evidence to believe otherwise. This is what I’ve tried to communicate in my previous history books but, as you know, I don’t think anyone wanted to hear it.

The way we think about our past informs what we think is possible today. If we keep on repeating the same old lines about the past when there’s clear evidence that not all civilizations had the same ideas as us…we’re denying that anything can change.

What you’ve written here contradicts so many of the history books we all read as children; and they’re based on traditional accounts going back hundreds, if not thousands, of years. What is it that you think happened? Are you really suggesting that everyone lied on a monumental scale about the past?

For one thing, of course, we don’t have original manuscripts dating back more than a thousand years. All the books we have from before the Cataclysm have been re-copied hundreds of times. That’s a lot of occasions for errors to be introduced. And not just errors. All of the copyists would have had their own agendas. For more than two thousand years, the only people re-copying were nuns in convents. I don’t think it’s at all a stretch to suggest that they picked works to copy that supported their viewpoint and just let the rest molder into flakes of parchment. I mean, why would they re-copy works that said that men used to be stronger and women weaker? That would be heresy, and they’d be damned for it.

This is the trouble with history. You can’t see what’s not there. You can look at an empty space and see that something’s missing, but there’s no way to know what it was. I’m just…drawing in the blank spaces.

It’s hard for me to see women portrayed as they are at times in this book. We’ve talked about this often. How much “what it means to be a woman” is bound up with strength and not feeling fear or pain.

I think we can be better than this. This thing isn’t “natural” to us, you know? Some of the worst excesses against men were never—in my opinion anyway—perpetrated against women in the time before the Cataclysm. Three or four thousand years ago, it was considered normal to cull nine in ten boy babies. Fuck, there are still places today where boy babies are routinely aborted, or have their dicks “curbed.” This can’t have happened to women in the time before the Cataclysm.

We talked about evolutionary psychology before—it would have made no evolutionary sense for cultures to abort female babies on a large scale or to fuck about with their reproductive organs! So it’s not “natural” to us to live like this. It can’t be. I can’t believe it is. We can choose differently.

The world is the way it is now because of five thousand years of ingrained structures of power based on darker times when things were much more violent and the only important thing was—could you and your kin jolt harder? But we don’t have to act that way now. We can think and imag...

Gender is a shell game. What is a man? Whatever a woman isn’t. What is a woman? Whatever a man is not. Tap on it and it’s hollow. L...

I have one suggestion now. You’ve explained to me how anything you do is framed by your gender, that the frame is as inescapable as it is nonsensical. Every book you write is assessed as part of “men’s literature.” So what I’m suggesting is just a response to that, really, nothing more. But there’s a long tradition of men who’ve found a way out of that particular bind. You’d be in good company. Neil, I know this might be very distasteful to you, but have you considered publishing this book under a woman’s name?