You’ve surely noticed that the concept of gender can no longer be taken for granted as it was, say, when I was a student at Notre Dame. A very friendly young person working at my usual grocery store has, to all outward appearances, transitioned from a man to a woman. And my “nibling” (the nongendered term for the child of one’s sibling) has transitioned into a man. I’ve been instructed that referring to this nibling as “she” or “her” is a grave insult, and I should use “they.” I’m trying, but I still get tangled up in the pronouns. And I don’t get why a strapping, 6-foot, 2-inch young man of my acquaintance — who goes by “he” — wears a skirt when he goes out to dinner or a concert with his girlfriend. Fortunately, Natasha Pulley’s latest novel, The Mars House, is helping me think through this fundamental cultural shift.
Pulley weaves a story of political intrigue, environmental manipulation and romance set on Mars seven or eight generations after the first colonists arrive from Earth. Given Mars’ lesser gravitational pull, the descendants of those first colonists have grown tall and thin-boned. Immigrants from Earth — who, as the novel unfolds, turn out to be refugees from its environmental collapse — are three times stronger than any native-born Martian; recent arrivals could easily kill natives by unwittingly brushing against them on the street. Martians devise two solutions to this problem: form-fitting metal cages for the newcomers, to balance out disparity, or a horrifying procedure of rapid osteoporosis that reduces an Earth-born individual’s bone density by two-thirds and often leads to complete disability.
The intense cold and lack of water on Mars mean that human society essentially lives in one city-state reminiscent of an Italian city-state around 1500. Machiavelli would have felt at home with Martian politics, which revolve around wealthy, powerful families. As an election looms, everyone is debating whether immigrants should be forced to undergo the medical procedure or continue to be allowed to wear the cages. The debate hinges on the physical safety of the Mars-born voters and not around the desperate conditions of the immigrants, who are barred from most jobs and housing options and live without access to banks or money.
Despite the deep engagement of all native-borns in politics, one thing they never question is gender. The people of Mars dress not according to gender but to status. Everyone is “they.” Obvious gender differences have been genetically engineered out of native-borns for generations, to the point where the male protagonist, who has arrived from Earth, genuinely does not know if the native-born person he marries to save his life is male or female. Nor can he find out unless his spouse chooses to reveal the fact to him. The taboo against labeling a person “male” or “female” is so strong that when the protagonist unthinkingly refers to a small Earth-born boy as “he,” native-borns are horrified at his cruelty — and let him know it.
The first colonists had abolished gender because it was a source of power imbalance. The people of Mars shudder when they hear of things the people of Earth take for granted, such as that a male is physically stronger than a female and might use that strength to harm the female. Or that women are paid less than men for the same work. Pulley’s Mars has taken nonbinary to the logical conclusion of abolishing differences between the genders by eliminating the very idea and making all people the same gender.
But Pulley’s utopian vision of a nonbinary world comes with warnings. Mars’ harsh climate threatens every living creature on the most visceral level. Other than gender, her Mars makes no pretensions to equality. The rich most definitely rule the Martian world. Undocumented immigrants live a hair’s breadth from slavery. It takes a Mars-born and an Earth-born working together to de-escalate the plot’s crisis and find a constructive path through the political and economic inequalities.
Mars House is not just a compelling story, it’s a subtle commentary on human existence and both a celebration and critique of contemporary gender politics. It does what the best literature does, giving us characters and circumstances to engage our hearts while laying out the bare framework of an issue we ourselves are facing.
Megan Koreman lives in Royal Oak, Michigan. She is a historian and author of The Expectation of Justice: France, 1944-1946 and The Escape Line: How the Ordinary Heroes of Dutch-Paris Resisted the Nazi Occupation of Western Europe. A young adult novel, Dark Clouds over Paris, is forthcoming. Read more at dutchparisblog.com.