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G. Rattray Taylor (Sex in History, 1954), Sturgeon drew heavily on Philip Wylie's The Disappearance (1951), which separates the sexes for four years in parallel worlds so that Wylie can condemn masculine domination and misjudgment. Sturgeon follows Wylie in denouncing humanity's virtual loss of the ability to love and man's breeding women to be submissive. He concludes that throughout history the father-dominated religious orders have been a key element in the Western refusal to adopt "a charitic religion and a culture to harmonize with it." Although Venus Plus X retains historical importance because it precedes the women's movement, it remains effective primarily when Sturgeon allowed the vignettes to speak for themselves. His most telling point is the episode in which Jeanette Raile thinks herself "rotten clear through" because she feels sexual desire.
Thomas D. Clareson, Understanding Contemporary American Science Fiction: The Formative Period (19261970) (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1990), pp. 14445
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