Sexism In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

Aldous Huxley foresaw a number of incredible triumphs in his novel, Brave New World, but it seems that at no point in the near, or even distant future, was liberation for women an attainable goal for him. In fact, despite the dystopic nature of his novel, Huxley created a world that is hauntingly similar to our own. From women who are forced into inferiority, to an involuntary ideology of promiscuity, Aldous Huxley wrote it all. As a result, it seems that ‘Brave New World’ is just another second-rate replica of the misogynistic 1900s society that has been written a million times before.

So why, ladies and gentlemen, do books that tell the same sexist story become the must-reads of the 21st century? Is it because the misogyny portrayed in these

novels is still evident in our society? Is it something a wide array of people can identify and understand? Or do we, as the human race, simply enjoy poorly written works?
In Huxley’s dystopia, the only socially acceptable form of reproduction is through the Bokanovsky process, similar to IVF, this process fertilises female eggs outside of the womb. Eggs are situated into their social castes upon fertilisation and henceforth treated as such. Alpha’s are exposed to an array of nutritional benefits and endless amounts of oxygen, while Epsilon embryos are deprived of oxygen and injected with alcohol to produce semi-morons. This is all done in order to produce the ideal world that revolves around the idea of “community, identity, and stability”. Nevertheless, The Alpha caste consists entirely of men, despite this extreme control over the embryonic stage. Straight away, the foundations of the underpinning messages of Huxleys novel can be seen. In his exclusion of women from the elite group, the notion that women are naturally substandard to men becomes clear. It’s a mirror image of both our own contemporary society, and the early 1900s that Huxley grew up with. As if that wasn’t enough, Huxley’s distinct lack of female characters is a further showcase of the unquestionable majority that has inundated humanity since the beginning of time. Even today, in 2015, if you were to walk into any government, court house, or police firm, you would find an overwhelming amount of men dominating prestigious positions. Even today; the human race is still coined as mankind.
Now, I want all of you to stand up, girls to the left, and boys to the right, together, you all form a scaled down working and upper class population. However, the boys are all in positions of power; they are the CEOs, Army Generals, and Presidents of the world. Girls, however, you are the working class. However, seeing as women are “just as equal as men,” Jen and Emma, swap sides with James and Daniel.
As you can see, women, or in this case, Jen and Emma, are currently making up less than 20% of higher power positions that are dominated by the male side. Across the globe, women make up less than 20% of high power positions in all areas of work. I mean, there are more CEOs in the business world named John than there are women. Now look to the left; if this was our world, power dominated by women with less than a fifth of the entire group being men, would you question it? Would you join rallies and protests for men to have the right to make it to the top? Would you disagree with the idea that men aren’t born leaders?
Sit back down.
Nevertheless, a few years ago we had our first, and only, female prime minister to break the glass ceiling of politics. It was an incredible milestone that inspired women across the world. However, Julia Gillard was never taken as a legitimate icon of power despite her place at the top of the food chain. Instead, she was ridiculed, mocked and put down, even though she was far more successful than her replacement. Yes, I’m looking at you Tony Abbott.
Another prime example of this approach is the twitter fight between Taylor Swift and Nicki Minaj last month. Two of the most influential and powerful artists of all time were pinned against each other in all media outlets with magazines and tabloids still addressing the issue to this day. Since then, people have come to their own conclusions about why the fight started, and it seems the common thought is that the two are simply just “insane”. However, if it was instead two male artists fighting over twitter would they be deemed crazy? Or would they just be asserting their dominance?
Furthermore, in today’s society, friends with benefits, Netflix and chill, and no-strings-attached relationships, all make up the free love culture we experience today.

Similarly, Huxley had a fundamental notion of promiscuity and free love in his novel. However, despite the external appearance of the promiscuity of the brave new world; it is under no circumstance liberating for anyone involved. In fact, the brave new worlders are forced to partake in sexual acts from a young age, and are deemed ‘abnormal’ if they refuse. From sleep teaching to peer pressure, Huxley’s characters were forced to practice free love. Likewise, in modern culture young boys are encouraged to be promiscuous and are celebrated for having multiple sexual partners, but women are instead shamed for it, it’s a heinous double standard that has existed for thousands of years. However, despite this idea that a woman’s promiscuity is undesirable, pornography continues to be one of the most popular and profitable platforms worldwide, with over one and a half billion internet searches since the beginning of this year. In fact, 1 in 5 mobile searches are for explicit material, and the top 4 searches on pornography websites are largely female orientated. Yet, many men and women are still repulsed when a woman chooses to take control of her own sexuality, despite this newfound normativity of nudity that the ever-growing popularity of porn brings. Why has the belief become that a woman is idolised if she is forcibly sexual and submissive to her male partner, but is shunned when she takes control of her own body. This attitude has now escalated to a point where it is twice as likely for a photo of a mother breastfeeding her child to be removed from Facebook than a photo of a porn-star without

clothes.
I think it’s clear that Huxley’s novel was a direct recount of the sexist ideology that our contemporary society is still struggling to override today. By placing the Alpha men on an unreachable pedestal pitches the idea that women can never be equal to men. Huxley’s novel was not only a metaphorical vomit of his own sexist thoughts and feelings, but also a recount of his own society, one which he thoroughly agreed with. A world where women are never in complete control of their sexuality, or are ripped from power only to be told by males that they are destined to be beneath them, I have to ask; are we still talking the Brave New World, or are we talking about our own?