Regiment of Women

Regiment of Women is a 1973 novel by Thomas Berger. It is an attempted satire of a feminist matriarchy, and is rife with sexism and homophobia.

Portraying a gender role reversal society, men are subject to rape and many of the social ills that women under patriarchy are. However, sexist stereotypes of feminists and women are used to create the dystopian matriarchy: dissolution of families, sex, and so forth. A central theme is the unnatural matriarchal sex, in which women penetrate men using dildos; the protagonist revels in and relishes a return to "natural" heterosexual sex, in which penile penetration of vaginas is normative. Homosexuality is erased. This preoccupation with the unnaturalness of woman-on-man sex is probably the most obvious feature of the book. Berger clearly seems to swallow the stereotype that feminism was about women trying to act like men, to upset the natural biological roles.

Quotes

• "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."
• Postscript: "Woman was God's second mistake." -- Nietzsche

Conflicting reviews

• The New York Times Book Review said: "Once again, Thomas Berger brings a satiric and irreverent perspective to the human experience, evoking a world that most dare not even imagine and effectively dismantling all existing definitions of sex and gender. "Imagined with such ferocity and glee that we assent to it almost in spite of ourselves . . . a brilliant accomplishment by one of out best novelists."--New York Times Book Review."

Lquilter: It's difficult to see how the novel "dismantl[ed] all existing definitions of sex and gender" since it tended, rather, to reify definitions popular throughout the early 20th century.

• NoSoupForYou "Doc", Amazon reviewer: "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". "