Men-only societies are much less common. Joanna Russ suggests this is because men do not feel oppressed, and therefore imagining a world free of women does not imply an increase in freedom and is not as attractive. [14]
In literature
The earliest mention of an all-male society seems to be the myth of the creation of man by the titan Prometheus, as recorded in Hesiod's 8th century BCE Theogony . To punish Prometheus for his trick at Mecone, Zeus hid the fire from men, but Prometheus managed to steal it back and restore it to mankind. This infuriated Zeus even more, who sent the first woman, Pandora, to live with mankind. Hesiod writes, "From her is the race of women and female kind: of her is the deadly race and tribe of women who live amongst mortal men to their great trouble, no helpmeets in hateful poverty, but only in wealth."
Some mythological creatures are often considered solely male, such as the satyrs, pans, centaurs, gigantes and cyclopes of Greek mythology and the dragons of Chinese mythology. Female centaurs, called centaurides or centauresses, are not mentioned in early Greek literature and art; they appear only occasionally in later antiquity. In Antiquity and the Middle Ages, werewolves were always described as males (in Old English the word "wer" means "man"). Descriptions of female werewolves began to be seen from the end of the 16th century.
The myth of the origin of the Myrmidons told in Ovid's Metamorphoses says that Zeus transformed the ants on the island of Aegina into a race of men, repopulating at the request of his son Aeacus the island devastated by a plague sent by Hera. [15] In Homer's Iliad , the Myrmidons are the soldiers commanded by Aeacus' grandson Achilles, who brought them to Troy to fight in the Trojan War.
According to ancient Greek records there were the Gargareans, an all-male tribe on the northern foothills of the Caucasus Mountains that copulated annually with the Amazons in order to keep both tribes reproductive. The Amazons kept the female children, and gave the males to the Gargareans. [16] The Ancient Greek chronicler Strabo mentioned that both the Gargareans and Amazons had migrated from Themiscyra. [17]
In the 2nd century CE, Lucian of Samosata tells in his fictional work A True Story that the inhabitants of the Moon, the Selenitans, are all males, completely unaware of the female gender. As adults they marry man to man and have children, always male, begotten in their legs, in the manner of Zeus begetting Dionysus in his thigh. There are a kind of men among them called Dendritans, who generate children by cutting and planting the right testicle in the earth, from which a flesh tree grows bearing a fruit the size of a cubit, from which the baby son is harvested.
Although in Catholic tradition angels are considered spiritual beings without sex or gender, in the Bible they always have male names and are referred to by male pronouns. The so-called "Sons of God" are interpreted as angels who fathered children with human women, thus indicating that they are sexually masculine beings.
In The Smurfs franchise (1958–present), all of the original Smurfs were male; later female additions are Smurfette and Sassette. Smurfette was Gargamel's creation, while Sassette was created by the Smurflings.
Cordwainer Smith's 1964 short story The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal portrays the Arachosians as a society in which almost all women died, and they were only able to save some of their women by chemically (and later genetically) making them male.
The Bene Tleilax, more commonly called the Tleilaxu, in the Dune series (1965–present) were a group of genetically altered humans who inhabited Tleilax, the sole planet of the star Thalim. They were a male society, and kept semi-conscious female Tleilaxu in machines for the sole purpose of their genetic experiments.
A. Bertram Chandler's A Spartan Planet (1969) features the men-only planet Sparta, in which human beings are produced by birth machines — women are unknown, and the society is dedicated to the values of militarism loosely modeled upon the ancient Greek city state of Sparta. Male homosexuality is the norm, and the protagonist, policeman Brasidus, has a partner named Achron, a male crechè nurse.
In 1982 children's novel The BFG (short for "The Big Friendly Giant"), the giants are exclusively male and simply come into being.
The main character in Frank Herbert's The White Plague (1982) loses his family to terrorist action in Ireland. He responds by developing a biological weapon that kills only women. He warns the world to isolate Ireland to avoid spread of the disease. World leaders do not take the threat seriously and the disease is spread around the world. [18]
In the Dragon Ball franchise (1984–present), Namekians and Frieza's race are all-male, and they reproduce asexually: Namekians lay eggs from their mouths, and Frieza was said to have been born to his father only.
In Moto Hagio's 1985 yaoi manga Marginal , on a future Earth a biochemical apocalypse has made women extinct, and, for centuries, the all-male population of Earth has survived by depending on only one woman, whose ova are harvested to create genetically engineered children (only boys). By the year 2999, society has restructured itself into clans and villages of all-male families and partnerships.
Ethan of Athos (1986) by Lois Bujold, inspired by the real world men-only religious society of Mount Athos, shows a world in which men have isolated their planet from the rest of civilization to avoid the "corrupting" effect of women. Children are grown in uterine replicators, using ova derived from tissue cultures; the novel's plot is driven by the declining fertility of these cultures. The titular "unlikely hero" is gay obstetrician Dr. Ethan Urquhart, whose dangerous adventure alongside the first woman he has ever met presents both a future society where homosexuality is the norm and the lingering sexism and homophobia of our own world. [19] [20] [21]
The manga and anime series Saber Marionette (1995) features a planet in the 22nd century colonized by humans from Earth whose only survivors of the travel were males. Called Terra 2, for three centuries the new world was inhabited solely by men who reproduced through cloning technology until they were able to create female androids name marionettes , creations that, while they serve their purpose, operate without sapience, emotion, or free will.
The Achuultani from 2003 Empire from the Ashes trilogy, a mysterious alien race that periodically exterminates all intelligent life it can find, are all males that have been reproducing by cloning for millions of years.
The novel This Gay Utopia (2005) by John Butler imagines male-only spaces in a small town in which both straight and gay men engage in homosexual relations.
The gay fantasy book series Regelance (2012) by J. L. Langley depicts a world where men are able to reproduce via replicative technology. While there are still women amongst the lower classes, who reproduce in the traditional manner, there are none among the upper classes which the series focuses on.
The goblins in Goblin Slayer (2016–present) are an entirely male species and they reproduce by kidnapping and raping females.
In 2020 manga World's End Harem: Britannia Lumière , high school girl Eri is suddenly summoned to another world, "Britannia", where only men exist.
Despite being robotic life forms with non-sexual reproduction methods, Autobots and Decepticons from the Transformers franchise (1984–present) were understood to be by default all male. Female Transformers were originally considered anomalies.
The parodic film Gayniggers from Outer Space (1992) follows a group of intergalactic homosexual black men as they exterminate the female population of the Earth, eventually creating a utopic male-only world. [22]
In 1995 Xenaverse TV series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess the centaurs are all male and reproduce with human women.
Some Pokémon species in Pokémon francise (1996–present) are entirely male, such as Hitmonlee, Hitmonchan and Latios.
The 1997 science fiction comedy show Lexx , in the episode "Nook" (February 19, 1999), featured a planet populated entirely by monks of a strange repressive order who were forced to spend their lives copying books they could not read. They were not aware that women or other forms of society existed.
All vampires in 2007 New Zealand film Perfect Creature are males.
The Minions are an all-male species of small, yellow creatures that appear in Illumination's Despicable Me franchise (2010–present).
The 2017 science fiction show The Orville featured a character Bortus played by Peter Macon who is a member of an exclusively masculine society, the Moclans, where female births are very rare. In the show's second episode, Bortus' female child was surgically turned male against his wishes.
