The title of The Female Manechoes Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch(1970), in which Greer reveals the stereotypical concept of femininity as one of lack, which constructs the woman as a castrated man. Placing the concept of a gendered identity within the cultural context, Greer asks for alternative versions of this identity:

The speculative possibilities of science fiction make this genre a discursive space that is excellently suited for narrative experiments with such alternative identities. Placing another version of a genetically identical woman in an imaginary cultural context allows Russ to explore the ways in which culture determines the characters’ sense of self and identity. In turn, this speculative freedom also allows the text to experiment with strategies of resistance against this determinism.

Although The Female Mancontains the most prominent examples of characters with alternate identities, Russ's work is full of such experiments. Jael collects her ‘other selves out there in the great, gray might-have-been’ (160), proving that all they have in common is the same genotype: ‘We ought to think alike and feel alike and act alike, but of course we don't. So plastic is humankind!’ (162) In The Two of Them, Irene as an adolescent makes up an alternate identity for herself and names her Irenee Adler, ‘thewoman’ (5, italics in original) uninhibited by patriarchal concepts of femininity who can defy the rules of passivity and go out to become an interstellar Trans-Temporal agent. Zubeydeh has a ‘Bad Self’ (137) which allows her to act outside the rigid confines of Ka'aban gender roles.