If you were a woman reading science fiction in the 1960s, you were basically reading about yourself as a background prop. You were the "damsel in distress" or the "lusty space queen" or, if you were lucky, the efficient secretary to a galactic commander. Then came Joanna Russ.
She didn’t just join the club. She blew the doors off the hinges.
When we talk about Joanna Russ When It Changed, we’re talking about a specific short story published in 1972 that shifted the tectonic plates of the genre. It wasn’t just a "girl power" story. It was a cold, hard look at what happens when a self-sufficient world of women suddenly has to deal with the "return" of men.
Honestly, it’s still uncomfortable to read. That’s why it works.
The Planet Whileaway: A World Without Men
The story is set on a planet called Whileaway. It's a colony where, 600 years ago, a plague wiped out every single man. The women didn't just curl up and die. They figured it out. They developed a way to merge ova to reproduce—meaning they have daughters who carry the DNA of two mothers.
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Russ introduces us to Janet Evason. She’s a "maniac" driver, she’s fought duels, and she’s deeply in love with her wife, Katy. They have a daughter, Yuki. Life is hard, physical, and functional. It's not some sparkly, pink utopia where everyone braids hair all day. It's a world where women are just... people. They do the farming, the science, the fighting, and the living.
The Moment the Ship Lands
The "Change" in the title happens when a ship from Earth lands. Four men step out.
Now, this is where Russ gets brilliant. In a standard 1950s sci-fi story, the women would have swooned. They would have "instinctively" realized they were missing their "other halves." Russ gives us the opposite. To the women of Whileaway, these men look like aliens. They’re "ten-foot toads" to the kid, Yuki. They’re oddly gaudy. They take up too much space.
The men are condescending. They talk about "re-establishing sexual equality" on Earth, but they can’t even see the women standing in front of them as fully human. They see a "tragedy" that needs fixing. They see a "gene pool" they can use.
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Why the Ending Still Stings
The most famous line in the story is Janet's final realization. She says, "Take my life but don't take away the meaning of my life."
That's the core of Joanna Russ When It Changed. The real threat isn't that the men will kill the women. It’s that the men will re-contextualize the women’s entire history as a "waiting period." They’ll turn 600 years of female achievement into a footnote that says, "until the men came back."
It’s a terrifying thought. You spend your life building a world, and someone walks in and says, "Oh, how cute, you were playing house until the real adults arrived."
The Real-World Context of 1972
You've got to remember what was happening when Russ wrote this. The second-wave feminist movement was exploding. The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) had just passed the Senate in March 1972. People were screaming at each other about gender roles in the real world, and Russ brought that fire into the pages of Again, Dangerous Visions, the legendary anthology edited by Harlan Ellison.
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Russ was also reacting to her peers. She famously criticized Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness because Le Guin used "he" as the universal pronoun for her genderless characters. Russ wasn't interested in being "universal" or "neutral." She wanted to be specific. She wanted to show that the "male gaze" wasn't just a theory—it was a literal lens that distorted everything it touched.
Misconceptions About the Story
- Is it misandry? Some critics at the time (and even now) called it man-hating. But if you look closer, Russ isn't attacking men's existence; she's attacking the assumption of superiority.
- Is it a utopia? Not really. Whileaway has duels. It has grueling farm labor. It’s just a world where gender isn't the primary axis of power.
- Is it "The Female Man"? People get these confused. When It Changed is the short story. The Female Man is the 1975 novel that expanded on these ideas and used Whileaway as one of its four settings.
The Legacy of Joanna Russ
Russ won the Nebula Award for this story, and for good reason. She paved the way for writers like Octavia Butler and Margaret Atwood. She proved that science fiction could be a laboratory for social theory, not just rocket ships and ray guns.
She was also notoriously "difficult" in the eyes of the male-dominated SF establishment. She was angry. She was brilliant. She was a socialist lesbian who didn't care if she made you comfortable.
Practical Ways to Engage with Russ Today
If you want to understand why this story matters in 2026, don't just read the Wikipedia summary. Do this:
- Read the Story: It’s only about eight pages. It’ll take you 15 minutes. Search for it in the Library of America or various "Big Book of Science Fiction" anthologies.
- Compare the Men: Look at how the male characters in the story speak. Notice how they never actually listen to Janet. Then, look at your own Twitter feed or office meetings. It’s... hauntingly familiar.
- Check Out "How to Suppress Women's Writing": This is Russ's non-fiction masterpiece. It breaks down the subtle ways society ignores female creators. It's basically the "Gaslighting 101" of the literary world.
- Look for Whileaway in Modern Media: You can see echoes of this story in The Power by Naomi Alderman or even Wonder Woman’s Themyscira (though Russ’s version is much grittier).
Joanna Russ passed away in 2011, but the "Change" she wrote about hasn't finished happening yet. We’re still living in the middle of it. Every time a woman has to prove she belongs in a "male" space, Janet Evason is right there, driving her car like a maniac, wondering when the meaning of her life will finally be safe.
Next Step: Locate a copy of the anthology Again, Dangerous Visions or Russ's collection The Zanzibar Cat to read the full text of the story in its original context.