Headscratchers / The Power

• Surely the authorities would have twigged onto the fact that a woman with the power can kill a man in a way that perfectly replicates a heart attack? Why isn't anyone even slightly suspicious about Newland's death?
  • It was still pretty early then. Suspicion is one thing as well-proving it might still be very difficult.
• Why do people still use the exact same names 5,000 years in the future?
  • Presumably the same reason they use English. Translation Convention.
• Why didn't the security/military forces of Saudi Arabia or Moldova, or any other organized resistance to the Power-using factions, make use of devices like Faraday cages or insulative clothing? If the Power's electrical discharges still obey the laws of physics, there should be more than enough countermeasures available to neutralize the Power as an advantage, at least on military and sociopolitical scales — simply turning firehoses on people attempting to use the Power should be enough to ground the electricity out harmlessly. (Though admittedly, one can easily imagine Western governments being reluctant to incur the bad optics that would create.)
• If women have primarily replaced men in military, police and criminal roles, why has the inevitable loss of life from the violence in those roles not critically impacted generational birth rates? Evolutionarily, men are designed to be the disposable sex — a culture can recover from the loss of its men fairly quickly as long as a few remain alive to father the next generation. Any culture which loses a significant portion of its fertile child-bearing women in any generation, however, is very likely to be out-competed by cultures which protect theirs more carefully.
  • Because biology is the inconvenient barrier standing in the way of the story that this author wants to tell. The entire plot is running off the premise that the only difference that matters between men and women (and thus the only reason why we have a patriarchy rather than a matriarchy) is the physical strength difference. And its hard to argue that the book isn't claiming this when in a mere ten years women manage to replicate every single evil that men were guilty of against women and take the gender war literally nuclear all because Muscles Are Meaningless now. What this book fails to take into account though is that the mortality rate of childbearing women and young children was scarily high throughout most of history due to disease, infection, injury, miscarriage, poor access to hygiene, and just in general being without modern medicines and treatments. It wasn't uncommon for mothers to have six children and only have one survive. And when you also factor into this that a woman can only have one child a year (precluding twins) and then start throwing them into the proverbial meat grinder with all of the consequences that entails, its actually amazing that humans survived after the fall of civilisation at all. A matriarchy would either evolve along far more peaceful lines due to necessity or it would send its men off to war in their place (which we know for a fact did not happen). The world as it stands in the epilogue is a paradox. It shouldn't exist but at the same time it has to exist in order to allow it to hold up the intended mirror to our own.
• Is this regarded as a feminist book or not? Because to me we have a story here that seems to imply that feminism was never about equality and was always about superiority given how at the first lick of dominance women behave just as badly. I don't know if that was intended given how the author is well known to be a feminist herself, but that is certainly how it comes off to me. Where are the women who don't hate men and are out campaigning for them to not be second class citizens? Where are the mothers taking to the streets who don't want their sons to be in danger? Where are the women who do have a problem with training camps and political candidates attacking men on air? They are very elephant in the room in their absence in my opinion.
  • I had similar questions about female activists. But I think the same question could be asked about male activists and advocates in real life. I don't think it's that they don't exist but maybe we're meant to infer that they are in the minority, or at least not particularly capable of making large scale systemic change that would be required. And then when things get apocalyptic there isn't much that can be done.
  • The author has said her intent was to gender flip patriarchy and challenge how the biases and stereotypes we take for granted are rooted in cultural perceptions of power rather than inherent biology. It would defeat the purpose if women, suddenly given men's position in society, proved to be inherently better than they were.
  • It is a feminist novel, but it's focused on an internal debate about what feminism should be. Obviously the feminists who would have a problem with those things include the author, but her point is to argue for a feminism that opposes hierarchical power rather than one whose sole focus is "we need more female CEOs." Beyond that, it also serves to deconstruct gender roles by showing how they're ultimately just rooted in power.