Gender Fraud by Peg Tittle - book review by Jocelyn Cawley

Male domination is the process through which its victims and perpetrators witness the degradation, destruction, diminution, and/or dismissal of female life. In Peg Tittle’s Gender Fraud, the reader witnesses these practices of devolution unfold within a fictional world in which women are arrested for conveying traits associated with maleness (in a sociocultural and political context where being male is confluent with being fully human and being fully human means that the individual has the capacity to experience and express autonomy, independence, and agency). As the text unfolds, the reader learns that the female protagonist has been relocated to a psychiatric facility for the purpose of being reeducated on how to perform femininity for the purpose of eventually reentering society as a successfully subordinated woman who will docilely comply with the rules and regulations purported by the system of male domination. Delving into this text provides radical feminist readers with a plethora of complex, convoluted topics about which to ruminate and subsequently further develop strategies for resistance in a world predicated on the material, metaphysical, and metaphorical annihilation of female people.  

The novel opens with central character Kat Jones running and references to her biographical history, the reality of which reinforce the reader’s awareness of the aspects of female subjectivity which involve voluntarily engaging in somatic movement, articulating self-affirmations and reflecting on past events. Specifically, the narrative tells us that 

you can do this, she told herself as she sprinted—well, as she ran as fast as she could—along the road toward the curve in the distance. Heart thundering, lungs heaving, she made it to the curve, rounded it, and saw an intersection in the distance. You can do this, she kept telling herself, as she kept moving, getting closer and closer to the intersection … Yes, she was over sixty, just a tad over sixty, but she’d been running since she was thirteen, since she’d enteredhigh school and discovered something called ‘crosscountry’. She’d done track ingrades seven and eight, but— They ran through the forest! Or at least through the wooded parks on the edge of the city, which was, back then, the closest thing to forest she knew. She fell in love with it. The beauty. The quiet. The solitude. The rhythm. The distance. Between practices, she ran through her neighbourhood. Every day, further(1)

Here, the text sets the stage for the reader to witness a sequential devolution which involves the loss of the protagonist’s subjectivity for, while running and engaging in the processes of deep rumination, physical activity, and positive self-talk which are typically associated with seity, Kat is apprehended by the police for what the state refers to as “Gender Fraud.” The crimes she is accused of committing include wearing men’s clothing, not wearing make-up, maintaining a short, unkempt haircut, not wearing jewelry, being unmarried, not having children, having her breasts removed [due to a cancer concern], nullifying her reproductive capacity via tubal cauterization, and working towards the attainment of an advanced degree (11). After Kat is sentenced and relocated to the psychiatric facility, her immersion in gendered training begins. When she questions a facility representative and suggests that she was already adjusted to life, her counselor Mary-Anne states “Well, no…you were living like a man. And you’re a woman. That’s what I’m here to help you with. Living like a woman” (15). As the narrative continues to unfold, Kat and the reader learn that living like a woman involves realities such as wearing a bra “with built-in falsies” (17), donning high heels (18), obtaining make-overs (43), having her eyebrows plucked (48), attending positive posture classes (56), and cultivating an axiological framework in which the valuation of womanhood is always aligned to one’s capacity to bear children (75). When the reader juxtaposes the opening scene of female subjectivity to the onset of immersion in gender-based training which will result in the obliteration of her individual identity, the text’s central idea becomes evident: in a patriarchal world, female agency is a crime which must be corrected through inundation in a cult of femininity.

Throughout the text, Jones’s exposure to the retraining processes designed to have her conform to a very parochial, robotic, infantilized version of “womanhood” are met with her own acts of resistance. Many of these modes of resistance are rhetorically anarchic, anti-assimilationist constructs. For example, when she learns that she has been assigned to a therapy group called “Childless Women,” she wonders why and goes on to ask “Why isn’t wanting kids just as subject to examination as not wanting kids?” (56). Here, the reader witnesses Jones’s interrogation functioning as a modality through which prototypical patriarchal constructs of womanhood (which ceaselessly conflate female identity and value with the ability and willingness to rear children) are subjected to scrutiny. Additionally, Jones questions normative, patriarchal constructs pertaining to child-rearing and sexuality by challenging the cultural acceptability of corporal punishment and sexual assault. Specifically, Jones makes her awareness of these problematic social dynamics evident to her psychiatrist, Dr. Gagnon, upon asserting that “parents who hit their kids are just trying to teach them a lesson. And guys who rape are just trying to have a little fun. Intent might mitigate. Might. It does not justify, let alone excuse” (71). Despite Jones’s relentless resistance to the regime of male domination and its unique manifestations within the realm of the psychiatric facility, however, the abuse that transpires within the space continues and she is regularly subjected to practices and propaganda which reinforce the notion that female subordination and slavishness are the natural, normal ways for women to exist in the world. Once Jones fully grasps and accepts this reality, she is told, they will release her from the psychiatric facility and allow her to resume life beyond its walls as a socially adjusted woman. 

As the text continues to unfold, it becomes evident that Jones is not conforming to the facility’s rules and regulations regarding normative femininity. The narrative progresses such that sustained tension is garnered around the issue of how her resistant existence will be dealt with and culminates with her escaping the psychiatric facility. As the novel progresses, the reader learns that “a few days later, when she was outside, walking about, luxuriating in the strong wind, remembering trees swaying in the forest, distant cracks as the brittle ones fell—the power went off. While the automated gate was closing. She made a run for it” (195). Although she successfully exits the facility and continues running, the escape is not unequivocally triumphant for, as the novel ends, we learn that “the infirmary nurse had injected a tracking chip” (196). In reading this denouement, I am reminded of the portentous aspect of the patriarchy which is recognizing that it never really ends irrespective of the resistance that one greets it with. Despite the ominous, disorienting, and inconclusive ending of the text, it is safe to say that feminist readers would be more comfortable with this conclusion–one which expresses dissent, dissidence, and defiance–than one which would have involved compliance and conformance.   

Jocelyn Crawley is a radical feminist who places primacy on analyzing and exploring rape and sexual assault as key aspects of male supremacy.