1. Unlike the Vampire Romance Novel or the BDSM-Lite Novel, the Dystopian Feminist Novel is the hot literary trend even husbands can love.
Good news for those of us peering over our laptops at the world that every day becomes a more shocking reflection of the dystopian fictional hellscapes we’re increasingly compelled to create: The Dystopian Feminist Novel is officially on-trend. In fact, the only people who seem even remotely surprised about the sudden rise of the Feminist Dystopian Novel are book critics. Journalists covering current events, eh, not so much.
And of course, if you write a Feminist Dystopian Novel, your husband, his family, and all your male friends will know, beyond any doubt, that you don’t mean them. Personally.
2. Dystopian Feminist Novels are troll-proof.
As you may already be aware, the very best way to attract the attention of gigantic asshats is to write something about women’s lived experiences and publish it, be it something as benign as “I continue to live in a world in which I earn 53%-79% of my male peers’ salaries,” or something as deliberately malicious and provocative as “I don’t really feel like getting sexually assaulted today, regardless of who that might inconvenience.”
Research indicates, however, that media and Internet trolls tend to be less threatened by Feminist Dystopian Novels. Because you’re writing about the future and not the present, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
3. You’ll get an awesome cover.
The horrible Headless Woman disease that afflicts the packaging of so many novels written by and for women is one from which not even Pulitzer Prize-winning “Pride of the North” Alice Munro is immune. On the plus side, headless female models will have plenty of work as long as women insist on continuing to write books.
By contrast, the cover for your Feminist Dystopian Novel will look serious, bleak, scary — you know, more like real literature.
4. You might actually get reviewed.
As Meg Wolitzer has proven, women writers aren’t published like their thoughts constitute major cultural events. But thanks to the terrifying, borderline-psychotic times in which we currently live, the Feminist Dystopian Novel is, at long last, proving that women authors have something of worth — indeed, something buzzworthy — to contribute to the public discourse. According to calculations, 96.3% of think pieces and op-eds published since the 2016 election have name-checked Margaret Atwood, Leni Zumas, Naomi Alderman, or all three.
Just to set expectations, though: You still won’t get shortlisted for any awards.
5. You’re just one of those people — everyday, normal, vagina-having people — haunted by scorching visions of the hideous, inescapable future that every day of rising maternal mortality, normalized sexual violence, curtailed reproductive freedoms, arbitrary detention of children, toxic masculinity, and lack of access to affordable health care seems to be hurtling us toward.
Blessed be the fruit.