I have been cogitating (much of this is from a comment elsewhere) on matriarchies and patriarchies in SFF; I guess *archies are easier to write than an-archies. Certainly the one can be a comment on the other. ...I barely resisted the urge to partial-order them, but I cannot help but categorize.
The current sex-role-reversal, or 'exceptional woman' novel, I think most interesting is ’ series from City of Pearl to Matriarch(more coming); she starts with a kickass, tormented female soldier, who is introduced to several seemingly utopian societies, which get more frightening on closer acquaintance. (I am more than a little nervous about the idyllic society with a) males physiologically dependent on female affection, and b) spectacular biotech.) The series is a bit unusual for SF in that the obviously damaging societies do not seem any less frightening--no Pangloss comfort.
Califia’s Daughters (, AKA ) has reversed-patriarchy matriarchy, generated by a sex-linked disease, and I think the denoument is humanist and feminist, though there’s no expectation that it will be utopian.
’s Carnival plays with a reversed-patriarchy and a surviving patriarchy, mostly as commentary on our expectations (her mats. are horrified by abortion; her pats. are strict animals’-rightists). ’s A Brother’s Price is a sex-reversed Regency romance and not subversive at all. (The Sharing Knife is a Regency romance in grubby clothes; the Ranger is a lot like the standard tormented-by-the-Napoleonic-Wars hero. )
The class-trumps-gender stories squick me out, probably because it’s so easy for me to enjoy them because my class position is comfy. The Barrayar stories rule this genre, because Cordelia, who is Never Wrong, is so explicit about it; ‘it’s easy for a democrat to adopt to an aristocracy if she gets to be an aristocrat!’ Not really the point, Cordelia. Nor is your personal attempt to ameliorate the society you profit from. The fantasy that it would be OK to be on the top of such a hierarchy because *we* would be, you know, *nice* slaveowners is poison. It's wine for us drunkards. The Wizard Hunters, vols. i_iii, were similar in the end and I reread them over and over as escapism; an active woman from a patriarchal culture moves to a matriarchal culture, marrying one-or-more unusually active men there. All parties respect each other more than the recipient has been brought up to expect. It's actually pretty easy to believe that they will all be happier than they would be trying to fix injustices directly, but it still seems like free-riding on the immoral acts of others.
( is the opposite; check out her evolution from wizards and beleaguered marcher kingdoms to Patriot Hearts.)
The cornucopias assume away scarcity of resources (’ Culture novels, obviously) leaving puzzles and the insoluble quirks of human nature to drive the plot. They seem feminist to me in about the same measure as the author’s assumptions about human nature do. This makes them rather like lit-fic ‘mundane’ novels in which everyone has an OK job of about the same salary; the cornucopias have fancier sets, which I enjoy.
The rarest books must be the ones that convince me the hero isn’t always the hero, without making that into an excuse to leave obvious injustices be. , who can often make me cry, puzzles me about this; he makes a good argument that quiet, scorned, womanly magic makes the world tolerable (Granny Aching), and that the best a male hero can do is seek obscurity (Carrot) or inactivity (Unseen University). I find this fairly plausible as a description of power. It still bothers me because it has been so useful an argument in telling the powerless to be grateful that they're weak and virtuous. I think virtue is generally strong enough to withstand several courses at dinner and a soft bed.
So wrote clew in SF&F.