Regiment of Women

by Thomas Berger

Book Overview

It is the 21st century. In New York City the worst fears of future shock have become daily realities for its inhabitants. There are frequent pollution alerts and detention centres are located. Georgie... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0440572614
• ISBN13: 9780440572619
• Release Date: January 1982
• Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell
• Weight: 2.05 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Women use chicanery to make little boys forget what it's for

This novel demonstrates the importance for all men to have a working relationship with their regenerative organs. The dystopia Berger describes is a hilarious and terrifying societal order where biology is given the same treatment as all young boys having their cherries popped by lecherous women on the prowl for hot boy meat. All the inversions are great: gender roles are reversed, boys wear silly little underthings, blush, fret over the color of their toenails, bitch like drag queens, and girls are raised to be tough, mean, and aggressive. Girls play with guns, join the army, kill people. Boys play with their Kitty Carry-All dollies, and are prized for their pretty features and gaity. But apparantly all the boys grow up straight. Homosexuality is something of a myth. Buggery, however, is all too real. The upshot of all this is a society where women rule everything. But they can only do so because they've ostensibly created a system that denies a man a working relationship with his "original" tool. Boys never learn what their willies are FOR. They are told a pack of lies about sex. They grow up hating their organ and its hideous accomplices. If they complain too loudly, they are frequently threatened with the knife. There are plenty of eunichs around to serve as examples of what the wrong attitude can mean for a boy.The women of this world have only taken on the superficial characterists of men. Still, they aren't men. They are as much parodies of men as the men are of women. They must use dildos on their boy-slaves in order to luxuriate in their absolute domination of them. Sex is presented as power. Specifically, the penis is power. Women, no matter what they do to attempt to mimic stereotypical masculinity--will never have the true psychological advantage that is manifested through a synchronicity between the male's brain and his red headed stranger. Of course, feminists can tear this book to shreds. It would probably be a whole lot of fun, actually. It totally mocks feminism with an unrestrained glee. However, it clearly celebrates liberation for both men and women--a return to the biological imperatives that each human in instilled with at birth. The horrorshow presented in this book is an illustration of the folly of any attempt to subvert nature and create a [wo]man-made utopia that can only be sustained through treachery and callous, hateful deceit. Nevertheless, our own world has certainly subjugated whole sets of peoples for various reasons throughout history. So much that is in this book is most powerful because it rings so true.

will teach a few men what we go through in life

This book gets the point across about reverse sexual discrimation without coming across so stongly (as a feminist would). Picked this book up at the library in the late '70's. I'm an avid reader...read "Last Days of Pompeii" when I was 9, and everything written by Robert Heinlien by the time I was 12....but darned if I can tell you the name of the book I just finished reading yesterday....but this book is one I can remember. Although Berger's ideas are of what a man would think a woman would think life should be like....he doesn't do too bad a job at it. My husband read the book (the last book he'd read was about George Patton) and he finally understood why I worked on out-driving men on the golf course, or worked on my own car.

Haunting

I generally read about 75 books a year, and in the very long run few have made a lasting impression on me. This book is an exception; I read Regiment of Women about 20 years ago and I still think about it now and then. I suggest reading this book and Atwoods Handmaids Tale at the same time.

This book needs to come back into print

I stumbled onto this book when it first was published, and couldn't put it down. It came out at a time when we were all asking (like the song) "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" While the book may seem a little dated now, if you're old enough to remember, think about some of the sex/gender questions that were being asked then. Are we really any more advanced in our thinking now? This book made me laugh and laugh.

The First and Second Mistake

Original in its telling if not in its conception. This book is about 25-30-years old, but is still highly readable. Berger, in another book, had a character say that as long as women want to be men, judge their lot by comparing themselves with men, they'll get no sympathy from him, and that about sums up the theme of this highly inventive comic novel. At the end, when the man and woman have real sex, the first time she is on top, the second time he is: "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." The book ends with an inscription by Nietzsche that is ambiguously telling: "Woman was God's second mistake."