Feminists confront fascism and the state

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This is a list of works in which feminists confront fascism (narrowly) and state power more generally. Other works related to this theme and notable for some reason will also be listed.

Scope notes

Throughout the 20th century, writers have been concerned with the possibilities and threat of fascism. This list focuses on fascism in its strictest definition: an authoritarian ideology that advocates state power over the individual.

Hallmarks of real-life fascism include nationalism, authoritarianism, militarism, opposition to individual civil liberties, and opposition to movements advocating individual civil liberties or opposition to other aspects of fascism.

In fiction, social features are typically simplified to a greater or lesser extent, and "fascism" may be indicated by a signature element, such as concentration camps, idolatry of the national "leader", etc.

The term "fascist" has come into common use as an epithet for any exertion of state control over the individual, and even more broadly as an epithet for any exercise of control by anyone over anyone for any purpose ("ecofascist", "feminazi"). These broader uses are not helpful and are not used here.

While social anxiety fiction about the power of the state is common in SF, works will only be listed here if they include a government or movement with some expressly fascist ideology (primatizing the state over the individual) and some key component of fascism (such as concentration camps).

The concentration camp continues to show up in sf, feminist and otherwise, as a signatory element of fascism. Queer activists have especially noted the possibilities of camps being used to quarantine, detain, or murder those stricken with AIDS and other diseases. Feminists have analyzed the sexist and homophobic elements of camps, and added sex-segregated breeding camps to the pantheon. In the US, Christian ideologies are often depicted as key elements in an American fascism.

Feminists confront fascism

Fascism in America

  • Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale (198-?) Christian fascists take over the Eastern part of the United States, and force women to become Biblical chattel. Focus feminist.
  • Birdstone, Alabama. Queer Free. (1981: Calamus Books, New York, NY). ISBN 0-930762-04-5. © Ed Boggs. A fascist homophobic Christian sect, the "Believers," sweeps America. Queers are persecuted, and eventually herded into ghetto concentration camps. Gay focus.
  • Bryan, Jed A. A Cry in the Desert (1987: Banned Books, Austin, Texas). ISBN 0-934411-04-2. Right-wing homophobes take over Nevada, use AIDS to fan homophobia, and eventually establish death-camps for queers. Primarily a gay man's story. Gay focus.
  • Hickman, Tracy. The Immortals (1996: Roc). Disease-control is used to initiate fascism in America, with, yes, concentration camps.
  • Kress, Nancy. story in A Woman's Liberation
  • Lewis, Sinclair. It Can't Happen Here. (1937?). Fascists take over the United States, imprisoning Communists, homosexuals, and liberals.
  • Oberndorf, Charles. Sheltered Lives (1992). Almost everybody is monitored, almost all the time; people with "hives" (a lethal STD) are sent to concentration camps; and the US government has continued its "foreign entanglements."
  • Rubin, Marty. The Boiled Frog Syndrome: A Novel of Love, Sex and Politics. (1987: Alyson) (religious fundamentalist homophobes take over America; a Resistance movement operates out of Europe. the story really focuses on telling "how it got that way" and about the sexploits of the protagonist in Europe, missing his boyfriend who's still stuck back in the States in a concentration camp)
  • Stewart, Jean. Return to Isis. An AIDS spin-off fractured the United States; the midwest and eastern United States is in the hands of a Christian-style fascist state, that runs labor camps. The fascist United States is just the initial setting for the novel, which mostly takes place after our heroines have escaped.
  • Welles, Paul O. Project Lambda> Port Washington, N.Y.: Ashley, 1979. A future fascist police state in the US puts gay men in concentration camps.
  • "Keeper of the Flame" (1942) (George Cukor, Director; Hepburn, Tracy). Not a successful fascist take-over, but more of a "it could happen here" kind of warning. There are a couple of nice moments in the film where there is discussion of fascism using people's hatreds and prejudices against us. In one scene towards the end, Hepburn goes through a list of documents planned to incite anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Negro hatreds (and of course, anti-urban, which in those days really was anti-urban -- not just a cover for race hatred). She also makes a fairly explicit reference to women's role under fascism: breeder. A surprising film.

Fascism in Europe

  • Burdekin, Katharine. Swastika Night (1937). A dystopic future, some centuries after Hitler and the Nazis conquered the world. The sexism explicit in Nazi ideology is carried to its logical extreme.
  • Freeman, Gillian. The Leader (196-?). A man starts an anti-Semitic white supremacist movement in England. Not really science fiction, but a clear fictional look at how such a movement could get started "even here".
  • Kettle, Pamela. The Day of the Women (1969). A feminist movement takes over in England, and implements a creeping fascism.

Concentration Camps: Disease Quarantine

  • Birdstone, Alabama. Queer Free (1981)
  • Bryan, Jed A. A Cry in the Desert (1987)
  • Hickman, Tracy. The Immortals (1996)
  • Rubin, Marty. The Boiled Frog Syndrome (1987)

See also: AIDS in SF

Concentration Camps: Breeding

Other works

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