BOOK REVIEWS

By Vern L. Bullough

Thomas Berger, REGIMENT OF WOMEN (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973), $8.95

Georgie Cornell, the central character of Berger's novel, is a 29 year old secretary with the publishing house of Philby, Osgood & Huff who goes to work every morning neatly attired in a white tailored blouse and pleated skirt of kelly green with beige pumps and match- ing purse. Georgie spends the day dodging the advances of a lecher- ous senior executive, concentrating on repairing makeup and trying to overcome frustration by visiting the analyst. George, however, is not the ordinary secretary of today since Georgie is a man.

The novel is set in the twenty-first century when inflation has es- calated and everyone lives in the city except a few forgotten souls. Women also have asserted their control over society, rewritten his- tory and literature to emphasize their superiority and the inherent weakness of the male, mainly the susceptibility of their organs to damage. Thus though men remain physically stronger than women they have a protected status. Reproduction takes place in test tubes from sperm collected from young male draftees who are milked against their will by a machine. Intercourse is forbidden except that women penetrate males anally by wearing false phalluses and mas- turbating. Men have inserts put in their chests so that their breasts will push out their blouses.

Berger in sum has written a novel on role reversal with females dominant and males submissive. The transvestite in the story is a female who wants to dress and act as a man, i.e. wear skirts, blouses, panty hose, and be a proper man. Though the ending is somewhat contrived, at least from a woman's liberation point of view, it should prove interesting and diverting to readers of Transvestia.

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