But the men are carrying the cultural equivalent of the black death, and that needs to be addressed.
But even assuming that's true (and I would seriously debate that it is) murder isn't the only solution. Isolation would work just as well. Pop them down in what used to be Sydney with enough livestock and tools to be self-sufficient. What are they going to do, swim to California, walk to Texas and subjugate two million women? What else but fear could create such an extreme reaction in the face of such rational alternatives?
The motivation given in the text is that he realises he's carrying the black death.
Well, that's certainly a very different interpretation of the text than mine (why doesn't that surprise me? :-p). He articulates the women's perspective, and he understands his lack of choices; but where does it say that he agrees with them?
You and Dan are reading it far too literally, I think--taking for too much about the narrator's perceptions of the women's society at face value. The women are not stereotypes; he sees them as stereotypes, because that's what he's been conditioned to do
Hmm. The women's society is non-hierarchical, consensual. It's not combative. The women talk more than men, they share information readily. They do not pursue technological advances to the same extent as the male-dominated society did. They prefer happy love songs to "grim and pluggy" ones. They lie and manipulate. So no stereotypes there then. Of course they are *more* then that, but the stereotypes are there, just as the men are stereotypes too (alpha males, nerdy scientist, dismissive of women's achievements, patriarchal and patronising...). The narrator sees them as stereotypes, and his world-view is skewed... but he's not totally wrong. The difference is that it is female *society* but *individual* men who are stereotyped by Tiptree. So it appears that Lorimer is blinkered and bigoted, because he's applying his broad stereotypes to individual women who don't conform. But he does this because he's a stereotypical chauvinist.
That's a 'Billy' situation,
Well, yes, it's clearly something that *was* in the men already; but it was also something done to them. It's also something in (some) of the clones, as evidenced by Andy/Kay's happy excitement at feeling aggression towards Bud. And assuming that "negative" traits such as aggression, dominance, violence, etc are genetic, then either they've bred that out of themselves (which I don't believe gets mentioned) or it's as much a part of them as it was a part of any of us. Unless we're supposed to believe that women just don't/didn't have those traits? (That's a serious question, btw - I'm not sure what Tiptree's trying to tell me here, mainly because I can't believe she's trying to tell me that women Just Aren't Like That).
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Date: 2005-12-11 04:56 pm (UTC)But even assuming that's true (and I would seriously debate that it is) murder isn't the only solution. Isolation would work just as well. Pop them down in what used to be Sydney with enough livestock and tools to be self-sufficient. What are they going to do, swim to California, walk to Texas and subjugate two million women? What else but fear could create such an extreme reaction in the face of such rational alternatives?
The motivation given in the text is that he realises he's carrying the black death.
Well, that's certainly a very different interpretation of the text than mine (why doesn't that surprise me? :-p). He articulates the women's perspective, and he understands his lack of choices; but where does it say that he agrees with them?
You and Dan are reading it far too literally, I think--taking for too much about the narrator's perceptions of the women's society at face value. The women are not stereotypes; he sees them as stereotypes, because that's what he's been conditioned to do
Hmm. The women's society is non-hierarchical, consensual. It's not combative. The women talk more than men, they share information readily. They do not pursue technological advances to the same extent as the male-dominated society did. They prefer happy love songs to "grim and pluggy" ones. They lie and manipulate. So no stereotypes there then.
Of course they are *more* then that, but the stereotypes are there, just as the men are stereotypes too (alpha males, nerdy scientist, dismissive of women's achievements, patriarchal and patronising...). The narrator sees them as stereotypes, and his world-view is skewed... but he's not totally wrong.
The difference is that it is female *society* but *individual* men who are stereotyped by Tiptree. So it appears that Lorimer is blinkered and bigoted, because he's applying his broad stereotypes to individual women who don't conform. But he does this because he's a stereotypical chauvinist.
That's a 'Billy' situation,
Well, yes, it's clearly something that *was* in the men already; but it was also something done to them. It's also something in (some) of the clones, as evidenced by Andy/Kay's happy excitement at feeling aggression towards Bud. And assuming that "negative" traits such as aggression, dominance, violence, etc are genetic, then either they've bred that out of themselves (which I don't believe gets mentioned) or it's as much a part of them as it was a part of any of us. Unless we're supposed to believe that women just don't/didn't have those traits? (That's a serious question, btw - I'm not sure what Tiptree's trying to tell me here, mainly because I can't believe she's trying to tell me that women Just Aren't Like That).