(Note - I don't think men really are like that (not does Tiptree) but that's the idea the women have to start with, and the men in the story accidentally confirm the mistaken idea in everything they say and do)
Of course they're not actually like that - the question is based on a deliberately false premise, as you rightly point out is made plain by the story. But you're being too kind to the women - the men don't accidentally start acting like crazed nutters, but are fed drugs which strip away their better (civilised) selves. There's that point here about civilisation being paper-thin, but that's hardly restricted purely to men. We don't see the women on those drugs and so have no way to tell if they'd be just as bad, but by observing their ruthless will to power, their cool refusal not to counter any deviation from their precepts, we see that they probably are.
The women have defined what is and is not bad and desirable because the society is theirs. In our own time, men have more or less done the same thing and feminists have rightly condemned them for it. I don't see how you can't condemn the women in Houston Houston for creating a society in which only the female works. And I think Tiptree does.
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Date: 2005-12-09 04:31 pm (UTC)Of course they're not actually like that - the question is based on a deliberately false premise, as you rightly point out is made plain by the story. But you're being too kind to the women - the men don't accidentally start acting like crazed nutters, but are fed drugs which strip away their better (civilised) selves. There's that point here about civilisation being paper-thin, but that's hardly restricted purely to men. We don't see the women on those drugs and so have no way to tell if they'd be just as bad, but by observing their ruthless will to power, their cool refusal not to counter any deviation from their precepts, we see that they probably are.
The women have defined what is and is not bad and desirable because the society is theirs. In our own time, men have more or less done the same thing and feminists have rightly condemned them for it. I don't see how you can't condemn the women in Houston Houston for creating a society in which only the female works. And I think Tiptree does.