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.

Going Their Own Way

• The Guardians of the Universe (Green Lantern) - a species in which the males and females go their separate routes. The males establish the Green Lantern Corps. ("Malthusians", "Oans", "Guardians"). As immortals, they need not reproduce. After being destroyed, they are later recreated as male and female (again).
• Ents in Lord of the Rings - The male Ents (Ents) and female Ents ("Ent-Wives") went their separate ways, with male Ents tending trees and female Ents working more with gardens and shrubs. The Ents wish they knew where the Ent-Wives went!

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 in SF