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Meliza's Reviews > I Who Have Never Known Men
I Who Have Never Known Men
by
by
** spoiler alert **
well written and does have some terrifying situations and ideas regarding being the last person on earth and having a past clouded in mystery but ultimately i found it very conservative in its ideas regarding womanhood, virginity, religion, sexuality, gender, age, and menstruation.
IWHNKM is the story of a group of women who are kept in a cell for give or take 12 years, they don't know why they've been imprisoned, they don't know by who, they don't know each other, and they don't know what's going on in the rest of the world. Their guards are all men, these guards never talk to them or touch them other than threatening to whip them if they disobey, these guards are somehow able to provide basic food and medicine for these women. The women aren't allowed to touch or kill themselves. One day a siren goes off and the guards evacuate leaving the keys for the jail cell and allowing the women to explore the now empty earth. We are told the story through the pov of The Child called so because she was the only child in the jail cell and grew up in captivity, this making her a woman who has never known men (a woman raised without patriarchy essentially).
It’s a pretty interesting dystopian setting and maybe I should’ve expected this given the title but any interesting ideas this story has are brought down by the it’s very outdated ideas about womanhood. For one the women never fight back against the guards despite there only being 3 guards at a time for 40 women. The only transgressive act they even attempt at doing is when the Child decides to stare at one of the newer younger guards and develops a way of counting time. This doesn’t really lead to helping them escape but it’s implied that the guard the Child liked left behind the keys because he felt pity for them. So their escape is ultimately dependent on the random kindness of a man rather than any actual effort on their part. And what motivated Child to stare at this man and develop this system of time anyway, well the fact that she could fantasize about him and make herself maybe sort of have an orgasm like that hands free…I guess?? Talk about a brain blast.
Honestly the first red flag of this book is when one of the women tells Child that back in the before time women would make themselves beautiful for men and that some woman claimed it was for themselves but it was really for men and without men they had no reason to make themselves pretty anymore. This statement is sexist and also wrong there is proof women still enjoy making themselves beautiful even when no men are around. But even ignoring that Child just kinda accept everything these women tell her no question, not even an inkling that she’s curious if anything she’s being told is actually true. Despite the 40 women in the jail cell supposedly coming from all around the country and having no relations to one another none of the women are described as having a unique ethnic identity, none practiced any religion that wasn’t christianity before incarceration, most didn’t have any real hobbies or interest because they were middle class working women and moms (this is also very sexist to me and a bit classist), and none of them were queer in any way before being locked up. We only have one woman who is seen as being “smart� and that’s only because she used to be a nurse and she often looks down on all the women around her. So obviously Child is raised with a very narrow view of life. Like i guess i shouldn’t have been too surprised there weren’t any like non white women in this book (cuz we weren’t invented until 2010 lol) but it still came off as odd to me because the book goes out of its way to say none of these women knew each other before being trapped and yet they’re all basically the same character. Given the time period i knew the group of 40 women was probably gonna be all white sure but none of y’all have any personality! i’ll take anything, i’ll take blondes vs brunettes, a crumb of character please!
Child is raised to believe that men were basically the greatest thing ever, a woman’s ultimate joy in life was being with men and having kids and all the other women pity her because she’s doomed to die alone and a virgin. Despite our introduction to Child being her basically imaging RPF until she braincums she grows up to be what reads a lot like an aromantic asexual adult. Not because the author has anything interesting to say about queer sexualities but because Child is infertile and obviously the only way a woman like this could exist would be because her uterus doesn’t work and she’s never spoken to a man in her life. Any normal woman would be wildin for some dick all the time. Child tries masturbating as an adult and it doesn’t work because obviously women can only achieve orgasm through “real� penetration from a penis. Pour one out for Child, last woman on earth and she can’t even masturbate. keep digging around down there eventually you’ll find it! (realistically it’s crazy that Child can’t figure out the simple act of masturbating considering irl most people stumble upon it by accident but whatever). Child being functionally asexual in a society full of pent up women who are obsessed with men even when they don’t exist could’ve been interesting but again not the point.
So Child is constantly described as a virgin despite that label being extremely useless in a world where society is just 40 women, this isn’t really explored either. On the topic of sexuality while it does seem like some of the women do pair up and have sexual relationships with each other this is framed more as them “doing what they can for each other� and not “real� relationships, there is never any talk of romantic love between these women just relationships out of convenience and desperation. Relationships where they get each other off and sometimes one do them takes on a more masculine role. weird. y’all are all that’s left of society aren’t you ALL eventually gonna be doing something that’s traditionally seen as masculine. this could’ve been used to explore how the labels of what’s feminine and what’s masculine no longer apply in the wilderness but AGAIN not really a topic that’s explored. gender is when you fix stuff i guess???
When the women get old most of them choose to just be killed because it’s better than living as an old person. Age is very weirdly presented in the book with some passages admitting that older women have wisdom in age but also characterizing a lot of the women as being focused on their weight/appearance and not really knowing how to survive in the world or having any real interest/ skills because before she was just a cashier or a retail worker or just straight up being very petty towards each other. And then once a woman is old she just chooses to get stabbed through the heart because it’s better than living in this lonely world without men surrounded by old ladies. Like it’s weird how none of these women really change or grow as people under these new circumstances, they’re still the same petty women they were when they were locked up and it’s like why? i get social conditioning is very hard to undo especially for women but literal DECADES have passed. couldn’t this have been an interesting inciting incident for Child? if she saw these women’s internalized misogyny crumble before her eyes as they die one by one until Child realizes that it was all pointless?
Out of 40 women only one of them is ever shown singing and it’s mostly christian worship songs and this is extra weird for me because why do none of them sing? Why do none of you try to write songs? Why do none of them sing pop songs or music they liked? Why do none of them talk about books or stories or movies that they liked? Why is it only christian worship songs? no one here knows any other song or even tried to remember any other type of music? And this moment is presented like one of the nicer times in Child’s post apocalyptic life because it involves the women coming together and tend to their dead instead of like an example of how terrifyingly narrow Child’s world view is now.
Most of these women only have fond memories of motherhood and having men in their lives so Child feels alienated knowing she’ll never have that but don’t any of the women see Child as their kid? Why is Child never moved by genuine displays of female friendship? Every interaction among the women is laced with this underline pettiness. Why does Child not take joy in creating stories as the only thing she writes (the story we’re reading) she only wrote it because she was about to die? Like i get life sucks but damn! What not being able to nut does to a motherfucker!
There’s this whole theme that when Child is alone she doesn’t have interest to do anything because there isn’t a point but isn’t that just sooooo boring! It’s very human to want to make things even if it’s pointless. Child never hunts for food or has to worry about clothes because she keeps finding other bunkers that also have jail cells identical to the one she and her tribe were in except they’re filled with dead people and supplies so she has a lot of free time. But instead of like trying to figure out who locked her and the women up or make up her own music or stories she just stops talking instead? Like the fact that she’s never known men somehow makes all creativity pointless? How do none of the bunkers loose power in this world there’s gotta be something keeping electricity running?? Child is really lucky none of the bunkers ended up with a busted fridge.
Child sometimes manages to find books to read which help her expand her world view but these books are also pretty limited to telling stories about men and Child herself doesn’t really have any reading comprehension skills because of course she doesn’t. This really could’ve been the perfect opportunity to show Child just how empty her life has been outside of not having had sex with a man but instead it’s mostly Child telling us that some of the books are boring. If any moment of this book was going to challenge the worldview of the women and demonstrate that the real horror was Child living in ignorance this entire time it would’ve been this and it’s just…not expanded on.
Our protagonist Child is literally on her death bed about to die and her only big regrets aren’t that she wasn’t able to experience human society at its fullest or listen to music or eat actually seasoned food or have friends her own age or look at beautiful art, her only regrets are that she’s never known men (had sex) and never had a period. Because of course her defective womb is what eventually kills her.
IDK somewhere under this there’s something really interesting going on but as is it just left a bad taste in my mouth. like i get this story is ultimately a tragedy but Child never truly got to see how diverse womanhood really is I feel like that aspect of briefly seeing something she could’ve had and realizing her childhood was built on lies would’ve really made everything more scary. the moral seems to be “look at how women grow up when surrounded by women who exist purely for men� but that’s the thing, Child NEVER gets to realize that the women in her life were ultimately victims of the patriarchy.
i know this book is old and i expected some pretty outdated stuff beforehand anyways and i’m not trying to say this book as no value just cuz some rando didn’t learn anything despite reading it decades after it was first published. for all i know this was a very creepy eye opener for women at the time that their lives will be unfulfilled if all they think about is men and i’m all for that but i’m genuinely surprised by how many people online promote this book as being a powerful feminist masterpiece about the strength of female friendship specifically as if Child wasn’t basically friendless and alone her whole life. the central theme of the story is that Child is an outsider from the beginning so why are we lying and saying it’s about female solidarity when it’s about living life unfulfilled both in that Child never got dicked down and in the fact she never saw a life worth living that didn’t revolve around outdated patriarchy
IWHNKM is the story of a group of women who are kept in a cell for give or take 12 years, they don't know why they've been imprisoned, they don't know by who, they don't know each other, and they don't know what's going on in the rest of the world. Their guards are all men, these guards never talk to them or touch them other than threatening to whip them if they disobey, these guards are somehow able to provide basic food and medicine for these women. The women aren't allowed to touch or kill themselves. One day a siren goes off and the guards evacuate leaving the keys for the jail cell and allowing the women to explore the now empty earth. We are told the story through the pov of The Child called so because she was the only child in the jail cell and grew up in captivity, this making her a woman who has never known men (a woman raised without patriarchy essentially).
It’s a pretty interesting dystopian setting and maybe I should’ve expected this given the title but any interesting ideas this story has are brought down by the it’s very outdated ideas about womanhood. For one the women never fight back against the guards despite there only being 3 guards at a time for 40 women. The only transgressive act they even attempt at doing is when the Child decides to stare at one of the newer younger guards and develops a way of counting time. This doesn’t really lead to helping them escape but it’s implied that the guard the Child liked left behind the keys because he felt pity for them. So their escape is ultimately dependent on the random kindness of a man rather than any actual effort on their part. And what motivated Child to stare at this man and develop this system of time anyway, well the fact that she could fantasize about him and make herself maybe sort of have an orgasm like that hands free…I guess?? Talk about a brain blast.
Honestly the first red flag of this book is when one of the women tells Child that back in the before time women would make themselves beautiful for men and that some woman claimed it was for themselves but it was really for men and without men they had no reason to make themselves pretty anymore. This statement is sexist and also wrong there is proof women still enjoy making themselves beautiful even when no men are around. But even ignoring that Child just kinda accept everything these women tell her no question, not even an inkling that she’s curious if anything she’s being told is actually true. Despite the 40 women in the jail cell supposedly coming from all around the country and having no relations to one another none of the women are described as having a unique ethnic identity, none practiced any religion that wasn’t christianity before incarceration, most didn’t have any real hobbies or interest because they were middle class working women and moms (this is also very sexist to me and a bit classist), and none of them were queer in any way before being locked up. We only have one woman who is seen as being “smart� and that’s only because she used to be a nurse and she often looks down on all the women around her. So obviously Child is raised with a very narrow view of life. Like i guess i shouldn’t have been too surprised there weren’t any like non white women in this book (cuz we weren’t invented until 2010 lol) but it still came off as odd to me because the book goes out of its way to say none of these women knew each other before being trapped and yet they’re all basically the same character. Given the time period i knew the group of 40 women was probably gonna be all white sure but none of y’all have any personality! i’ll take anything, i’ll take blondes vs brunettes, a crumb of character please!
Child is raised to believe that men were basically the greatest thing ever, a woman’s ultimate joy in life was being with men and having kids and all the other women pity her because she’s doomed to die alone and a virgin. Despite our introduction to Child being her basically imaging RPF until she braincums she grows up to be what reads a lot like an aromantic asexual adult. Not because the author has anything interesting to say about queer sexualities but because Child is infertile and obviously the only way a woman like this could exist would be because her uterus doesn’t work and she’s never spoken to a man in her life. Any normal woman would be wildin for some dick all the time. Child tries masturbating as an adult and it doesn’t work because obviously women can only achieve orgasm through “real� penetration from a penis. Pour one out for Child, last woman on earth and she can’t even masturbate. keep digging around down there eventually you’ll find it! (realistically it’s crazy that Child can’t figure out the simple act of masturbating considering irl most people stumble upon it by accident but whatever). Child being functionally asexual in a society full of pent up women who are obsessed with men even when they don’t exist could’ve been interesting but again not the point.
So Child is constantly described as a virgin despite that label being extremely useless in a world where society is just 40 women, this isn’t really explored either. On the topic of sexuality while it does seem like some of the women do pair up and have sexual relationships with each other this is framed more as them “doing what they can for each other� and not “real� relationships, there is never any talk of romantic love between these women just relationships out of convenience and desperation. Relationships where they get each other off and sometimes one do them takes on a more masculine role. weird. y’all are all that’s left of society aren’t you ALL eventually gonna be doing something that’s traditionally seen as masculine. this could’ve been used to explore how the labels of what’s feminine and what’s masculine no longer apply in the wilderness but AGAIN not really a topic that’s explored. gender is when you fix stuff i guess???
When the women get old most of them choose to just be killed because it’s better than living as an old person. Age is very weirdly presented in the book with some passages admitting that older women have wisdom in age but also characterizing a lot of the women as being focused on their weight/appearance and not really knowing how to survive in the world or having any real interest/ skills because before she was just a cashier or a retail worker or just straight up being very petty towards each other. And then once a woman is old she just chooses to get stabbed through the heart because it’s better than living in this lonely world without men surrounded by old ladies. Like it’s weird how none of these women really change or grow as people under these new circumstances, they’re still the same petty women they were when they were locked up and it’s like why? i get social conditioning is very hard to undo especially for women but literal DECADES have passed. couldn’t this have been an interesting inciting incident for Child? if she saw these women’s internalized misogyny crumble before her eyes as they die one by one until Child realizes that it was all pointless?
Out of 40 women only one of them is ever shown singing and it’s mostly christian worship songs and this is extra weird for me because why do none of them sing? Why do none of you try to write songs? Why do none of them sing pop songs or music they liked? Why do none of them talk about books or stories or movies that they liked? Why is it only christian worship songs? no one here knows any other song or even tried to remember any other type of music? And this moment is presented like one of the nicer times in Child’s post apocalyptic life because it involves the women coming together and tend to their dead instead of like an example of how terrifyingly narrow Child’s world view is now.
Most of these women only have fond memories of motherhood and having men in their lives so Child feels alienated knowing she’ll never have that but don’t any of the women see Child as their kid? Why is Child never moved by genuine displays of female friendship? Every interaction among the women is laced with this underline pettiness. Why does Child not take joy in creating stories as the only thing she writes (the story we’re reading) she only wrote it because she was about to die? Like i get life sucks but damn! What not being able to nut does to a motherfucker!
There’s this whole theme that when Child is alone she doesn’t have interest to do anything because there isn’t a point but isn’t that just sooooo boring! It’s very human to want to make things even if it’s pointless. Child never hunts for food or has to worry about clothes because she keeps finding other bunkers that also have jail cells identical to the one she and her tribe were in except they’re filled with dead people and supplies so she has a lot of free time. But instead of like trying to figure out who locked her and the women up or make up her own music or stories she just stops talking instead? Like the fact that she’s never known men somehow makes all creativity pointless? How do none of the bunkers loose power in this world there’s gotta be something keeping electricity running?? Child is really lucky none of the bunkers ended up with a busted fridge.
Child sometimes manages to find books to read which help her expand her world view but these books are also pretty limited to telling stories about men and Child herself doesn’t really have any reading comprehension skills because of course she doesn’t. This really could’ve been the perfect opportunity to show Child just how empty her life has been outside of not having had sex with a man but instead it’s mostly Child telling us that some of the books are boring. If any moment of this book was going to challenge the worldview of the women and demonstrate that the real horror was Child living in ignorance this entire time it would’ve been this and it’s just…not expanded on.
Our protagonist Child is literally on her death bed about to die and her only big regrets aren’t that she wasn’t able to experience human society at its fullest or listen to music or eat actually seasoned food or have friends her own age or look at beautiful art, her only regrets are that she’s never known men (had sex) and never had a period. Because of course her defective womb is what eventually kills her.
IDK somewhere under this there’s something really interesting going on but as is it just left a bad taste in my mouth. like i get this story is ultimately a tragedy but Child never truly got to see how diverse womanhood really is I feel like that aspect of briefly seeing something she could’ve had and realizing her childhood was built on lies would’ve really made everything more scary. the moral seems to be “look at how women grow up when surrounded by women who exist purely for men� but that’s the thing, Child NEVER gets to realize that the women in her life were ultimately victims of the patriarchy.
i know this book is old and i expected some pretty outdated stuff beforehand anyways and i’m not trying to say this book as no value just cuz some rando didn’t learn anything despite reading it decades after it was first published. for all i know this was a very creepy eye opener for women at the time that their lives will be unfulfilled if all they think about is men and i’m all for that but i’m genuinely surprised by how many people online promote this book as being a powerful feminist masterpiece about the strength of female friendship specifically as if Child wasn’t basically friendless and alone her whole life. the central theme of the story is that Child is an outsider from the beginning so why are we lying and saying it’s about female solidarity when it’s about living life unfulfilled both in that Child never got dicked down and in the fact she never saw a life worth living that didn’t revolve around outdated patriarchy
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Reading Progress
July 12, 2023
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Started Reading
July 12, 2023
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July 12, 2023
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