Separatist societies

This is a list of works featuring separatist societies. For the purposes of this list, separatism is primarily gender-based separatism: separatism of the sexes. However, works featuring sexuality-based separatism, or race-based separatism (e.g., South African apartheid) could also be included.

• Distinguish from matriarchies: Separatism always has the sexes (or other groups) living apart; while this may be in conjunction with a matriarchy or a society in which all the members of one gender have died off, it is not necessarily the same.

• Distinguish from role reversal societies: Not all role reversal societies are separatist; just as patriarchal societies are not necessarily separatist.

For more on separatism, see separatism.

Planned gender-separatist societies

These are planned societies which use sex-separatism as a form of social engineering.

• David Brin Glory Season
• A. Bertram Chandler. Spartan Planet (aka False Fatherland) and sequel, The Last Amazon (a male-only society in the first story; amazon separatists try to take it over in the second)
• Suzy McKee Charnas. Holdfast Chronicles, especially Motherlines, The Furies, The Conqueror's Child (After the holocaust, an all-women's society lives under the radar of the Holdfast, where men rule and women are enslaved.)
• Ursula K. Le Guin. "The Matter of Seggri" (1994) (women and men live separately after childhood)
• Diana Rivers. The Hadra series (The Hadra are a country of lesbian separatists, protected by the Goddess in a patriarchal society. Sair of Semasi escapes her (patriarchal) country and is taken in by the Hadra.)
• Joan Slonczewski. A Door Into Ocean (Shora is apparently a planned community of women)

See: Intentional communities with gender separatism for more

All-female societies casting out men

• Amazon societies generally - Often supposed to cast out male children, or give them to neighboring tribes
• Doris Lessing, The Cleft (2007) (an all-woman society ejects the birth-defect squirts, who are raised to form their own society)
• Sheri S. Tepper. The Gate to Women's Country (most men live in military camps outside the cities where women, children under 5 of both sexes, and "gentle" men (gay and nonviolent men) live)

Lesbian/gay separatism

• Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold
• The Wanderground by Sally Miller Gearhart (women live apart; some gay men also live apart; cities are filled with horrible heterosexuals who haven't yet escaped)
• Starhawk, The Fifth Sacred Thing (in San Francisco, gay men live in an enclave of their own)
• Jean Stewart, the Isis series (in the nation of Isis, lesbian women live together; heterosexuals have their own city colonies; there is one largely gay male colony ("Harvey"); and Isis is perpetually threatened by an evil nation of evil patriarchal straight men)
• John Varley's Gaean trilogy volumes 2 & 3 (Wizard and Demon) have a lesbian separatist society

Biological gender separations

These are societies in which the genders separate and maintain different roles, apparently based on biology.

• Eleanor Arnason. A Woman of the Iron People and Ring of Swords (1993)
• Octavia Butler, the Xenogenesis trilogy = Adulthood Rites and Imago by Octavia Butler (the Xenogenesis series)

Religious or state mandated gender-segregation

• Free Amazon society in the Darkover series by Marion Zimmer Bradley (particularly in The Shattered Chain; Thendara House; and City of Sorcery)
• Spartan Planet (aka False Fatherland) by A. Bertram Chandler; and sequel, The Last Amazon (a male-only society in the first story; amazon separatists try to take it over in the second)
• Suzette Haden Elgin's Native Tongue and sequels

Hidden gender societies

• Leona Gom's The Y Chromosome: Those few men who secretly survive live apart.

Other

• The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter
• "Spinning the Green" by Margaret Elphinstone (in Despatches from the Frontiers of the Female Mind)
• Benefits by Zoe Fairbairns
• Paz (1984) by Camarin Grae
• "Sultana's Dream" (1905) by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (women got men to go into purdah, and now women run Ladyland)
• The Day of the Women (1969) by Pamela Kettle (after women take over the British government, they begin slowly to create separatist institutions)
• A Voice Out of Ramah by Lee Killough (90% of men die during puberty; the world is therefore homosocial)
• "The Moons of Sirius" by Ward Michaels. In Touch (Los Angeles), no. 39 (Jan. - Feb. 1979)
• "The Lineman" by Walter M. Miller, Jr., F&SF, Aug. 1957; reprinted in A Wilderness of Stars ed. by William F. Nolan, Nashville, Sherbourne, 1969.
• Daughters of Khaton by Merril Mushroom (1987)
• Joanna Russ. The Female Man (one of the societies features a society of men and women at war with each other)
• Joanna Russ. "When It Changed" (All-female society must cope with the advent of men.)
• Pamela Sargent's, The Shore of Women (men live in the wilderness)
• Rochelle Singer, The Demeter Flower
• Sheri S. Tepper. A Plague of Angels (1993) (one community has men and women living separately)
• James Tiptree, Jr.. "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" Three male astronauts are cut adrift and find themselves returned to an Earth which is completely female.
• Elizabeth Vonarburg's In the Mother's Country
• Philip Wylie. The Disappearance (for no explained reason, men and women are arbitrarily split apart into two separate, non-communicating, cultures)

See also:

• Intentional communities with gender separatism - Intentional communities designed by women, however, are just that: they may include men or may not; they may or may not be matriarchies; they may or may not be utopias.
• Plus see all the stories in which the gender ratios are skewed.
• Homonormativity