If you think of all the great Dystopian literature and film and art — the overwhelming bulk of it springs from MALE minds. I don’t think that’s purely a result of the sexual politics that gave men overwhelming advantages in the workplace up till now. I think — had the sexual politics been more like they are now (and what they’re on the way to being), women would have been unlikely to write the kind of literature (or scripts or paint the paintings blah blah blah) we think of as Dystopian.
The one HUGE exception is ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’. And that’s an exception that ‘Proves The Rule’. ITS version of DYSTOPIA is a brutally sexist world.
And DYSTOPIA is something almost entirely caused by men — because it mostly occurs in MEN’S minds: The Root Cause: The Belief in Unilateral Decision-Making — a/k/a ‘I Alone Can Fix It’. Only A MAN could even imagine such a thought.
From a writer’s POV — A male character — alone in the world — is a SURVIVOR tasked with living out his days as the last of his kind. If it’s a FEMALE character though — she has all the same attributes plus one more: the INNER KNOWLEDGE that SHE (minus one sperm) has the capacity to RESTART HUMANITY — all by herself in essence.
And that would make the experience TOO CRUSHING TO ENDURE. I’m supposing, of course — I don’t have a womb. But I’ve watched my wife bear two children the old fashioned way. I KNOW her connection to our children. I KNOW how purposeful having a womb made her life. And while having a womb does not (nor should it) give purpose to any woman’s life, it is a simple fact of a Woman’s biology (and how it fits into humans continuing as a species) that she always has that purpose available to her.
And that, from this writer/storyteller’s POV — would have to be reflected in their NATURE.
The reason we even have Dystopias in our imaginations is because some men — with power in their reach — push the rest of us toward that very ‘ideal’ of ‘I Alone Can Fix It’ in the ‘People-Less World’ of their dreams. We may ‘look’ like people in those dreams but, on the inside, we’re machines doing their bidding.
Some of the men currently in power — sounds like THEM, doesn’t it?