Regiment of Women

Regiment of Women (1973) by Thomas Berger is a satirical dystopia set in a seedy, decaying New York City of 2125 where gender roles are rigidly inverted. The narrative follows Georgie Cornell, a male secretary navigating a society in which women hold total power and men are subjected to cosmetic anxieties, compulsory therapy, and state-run sperm camps. Following his arrest for transvestism (for wearing trousers) Georgie is recruited by an underground male liberation group that proves as manipulative and ideological as the female regime it opposes. Berger's satire is not aimed at either side of the gender divide but at the institutions that enforce rigid social roles in the first place. The title comes from John Knox's 1558 polemic The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, quoted in the epigraph.

Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, cloth. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973. ISBN: 0671214926. #11261.
Fine in fine dust jacket.