Gender

Gender—and, in particular, a feminist deconstruction of it—is central to Lacey's work in Biography of X. The dichotomy she creates between the progressive Northern Territory and the outlandishly retrograde Southern Territory is rife with commentary about the ways in which women are treated within different circles of realistic society, and the oppressive conditions that X is raised in offer insight into why she grows up to become as damaged and incapable of human connection as she does. Furthermore, Lacey appears to make an argument that cycles of anti-woman violence tend to perpetuate themselves, even finding support among those most bruised by them.

The significance of the conditions in the Southern Territory to a conversation about gender in American culture is obvious: it is a theocratic dictatorship in which power is entirely held by men and in which women have no actionable rights. They are...