Iron Widow

Butterflies, chrysalises, and the entire process of metamorphosis figure heavily into Iron Widow. The intersex butterfly presented in the first chapter begins Zetian’s ruminations on gender and her place in society, a topic that is explored more deeply when it is learned that a Balanced Match of pilots can transform their Chrysalis into an Ascended Form, causing their minds in the yin-yang realm to burst apart into a swarm of butterflies. Butterflies and chrysalises, then, are powerful symbols that emphasize the artificial social and cultural boundaries that separate men and women.

Iron Widow is a story that tackles issues of gender bio-essentialism. (Gender bio-essentialism is the belief that men and women are innately unique and biologically different creatures with distinctly different brains, physiology, etc., rather than being defined primarily by sociocultural roles.) Gender bio-essentialism is not the accepted view among scholars who research human physiology and culture. Instead, gender is understood to be a complex sociocultural construction unique to every human culture. Huaxia’s embrace of bio-essentialism is therefore an active part of its dystopian worldview. The intersex butterfly in Chapter 1 thus serves as a reminder that nature, biology, and biological sex are infinitely complex characteristics, unlike the simplistic fashion in which Huaxian society treats these factors. Accordingly, the inability to classify the ying-yang butterfly as male or female causes Zetian to wonder about the Chrysalis pilot arrangement, which ultimately leads to her later realization that the arrangement is wholly artificial and that the long-held mores of Huaxian society are an outright lie.

The artificial nature of the bio-essentialism of gender in Huaxia is further foreshadowed by the Ascended Forms of the Chrysalises. When each Chrysalis ascends, the pilots’ minds join to form one homogenous whole, both male and female like the butterfly. It is only when this artificial barrier between genders breaks down that the pilots can realize their true potential. The imagery of metamorphosis implied by both the butterflies and the Chrysalises themselves suggests that ideas about biology and gender are far more complex than the neat and tidy way the pilot program presents biology and gender.