Gender roles being one of the things that make our contemporary society unequal, and the one most obviously on show in the story, of course you're that the story can be principally seen as a satire of them. I also think you're right that the satire's message is about what we pretend and create about gender, rather than the actual truth of it. (Which, not harp on, is another reason I think the story is telling us to wake up and see that men and women not as different as we like to pretend.)
I think Geneva is spot-on, though, when suggesting that the story is also wider and more universal than that. Here is a story not about a hypothetical society but about our own as seen through the lens of one we sometimes think we'd like to live in. It challenges us to rethink our gender roles, social and economic models, and personal relationships whilst preserving diversity and tolerating inequality, rather than conforming to the received wisdom that 'this is just how people/things are', and condemning ourselves to the false dichotomy of total inequality and total equality.
Which makes the story sound much better than I actually thought it was (I liked it fine, but it's not that good), but hey. :P
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Date: 2005-12-09 04:42 pm (UTC)I think Geneva is spot-on, though, when suggesting that the story is also wider and more universal than that. Here is a story not about a hypothetical society but about our own as seen through the lens of one we sometimes think we'd like to live in. It challenges us to rethink our gender roles, social and economic models, and personal relationships whilst preserving diversity and tolerating inequality, rather than conforming to the received wisdom that 'this is just how people/things are', and condemning ourselves to the false dichotomy of total inequality and total equality.
Which makes the story sound much better than I actually thought it was (I liked it fine, but it's not that good), but hey. :P