Fit to Breed: Exercise and Sport in Women's Speculative Fiction

Abstract

Abstract:This essay examines Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Ursula Le Guin's "The Matter of Seggri" as critiques of the segregative gendering of exercise and sport—especially, with regard to their portrayals of the dystopian ramifications of stringent communities where procreative competence is the sole criterion for determining bodily fitness.