“Ethan on Athos” by Lois McMaster Bujold

Alright, “Ethan on Athos” I’m a little late on commenting on this. I liked this book,  reading it was pretty simple and fun. I kind of  got the feeling I was watching a televison show as the content on first view was light and comedic. Although upon reflection the cirumstances for Ethan’s adventure present room for commentary and interpretation.

Athos as a starting point for the book places the reader in a setting void of women. As we learn from the start that Ethan is an obstetrician who works in a fertility clinic on the planet of Ethos where the men have settled some 200 years prior to start a sedentary life void of women. Before their setteling they had aquired an ovarian culture from a number of women in order to sustain a population that they would grow in fertilization chambers producing only male offspring.  The men of Athos perpetuate a religious belief that women are the primary source for sin which seems to be sustained through what resembles of an amelgamation of old testament fear and belief with that of greek mythology. Being a couple of hundred years of using the same ovarian culture, it has inevitably come to the end of it’s life expectancy and in need of replenishing.  This crisis had been compinsated for by a new order of ovarian cultures, where we the reader show up, finding out that the  order had been a boched sample with no use.  So Ethan is selected by his council to leave the planet and go out into space, and find a new supplier of ovarian cultures. This doesn’t sound as bad as it does, as he is to purchase a new sample from a seller on a intergalactic space station where all his misshaps and adventure take place.

This was a pretty good idea upon reflection. A culture completely of men but not sterotypical. It wasn’t a culture of testosterone fueled warlords and such but of a scientific  mysogynistic passivists. It kind of felt like a parody and almost satirical take on some extreme femminsit group found in second wave femminism ideologies, where somewhere along the way a group of disgrunteled gay scientists left the rest of society in pursuit of some fabled dream of a male Eden. At the same time I could almost imagine that they weren’t gay in the first place as their dogma reflects a lot of the old testament and it was over time that they found brotherly love. But it also points out the futility of such an endevour (if this is a satire then for women as well) by any one sex believing that they can escape an aspect of human nature that is attributed to sex or had by one sex over the other. In a sense by eliminating one half of the species they inevitably become sterile and limited in their potential.

Quin is interesting as she is like a trickster figure who involves herself in this man’s life causing him to question his dogma about the evil of women. Where in fact he comes to see that evil is had from both men and women and it is a human thing not to be attributed to one over the other. There is streangth and character in Quinn that is impressive and in a way reflects back on Ethan in a positive way as he finds he is capable of doing more than he thought he could.

Houston, Houston, Do You Read? by James Tiptree Jr.

What can I say? The emasculation of a man is a hard thing to bear. Especially when it is done with kindness. It kind of dehumanizes the whole experience of what it is to be a man. At least when it is direct and purposfullly intentional one can cry and die about it all at once and form some kind of depressional anxiety disorder to haunt him the rest of his life. I guess in this way it makes the inhumane treatmeant of others a little more obvious, rather than a normalized way of being, both of the man and the possesive attitude had by the man of what he thinks is his (could say - what he thinks is his right).

With this in mind Tiptree presents a kind of reversal of position where the women see the men as the kind of benign being, haveing no relevence to any functional future in their society out side of their genetic potential.

Another intersesting aspect is Lorimer presented as a kind of second class male figure where he doesn’t quite measure up to the alpha status of the other men. It is made known from the start that he has been the butt of the jokes of other men, always in their shadow, looking for acceptance but never quite obtaining it. This second class male, could he be a repressed archytype for the closet case homosexual??? cont later…

The Disappearance by Philip Wylie

A sci-fi novel that takes place in the 1950′s, (was written then too). It is about a well to do philosopher and his wife, where at the same time, one day all the women disappear off the face of the earth,  as well where all the men disappear on the face of the earth, and we the reader follow both tails in comparison through the experiences and revelations had by each husband and wife in relation to their discoveries of who they are to each other  as wife and husband, as man and woman, as well as mens relation to each other and women’s relation to each other.

Just Getting Started… ON UTOPIAN GENDERED SOCIETIES

Alright, I’m pretty new to blogging and the only reason i’m doing this is for a university course. The course is an english course on speculative fiction ( Sci-fi) focussing on the topic, Utopian gendered societies and their implications and possibilities and faults and… what ever else I think I can say about it. And you too all who find themselves reading this.

The first book is called “Herland” by Charolette Perkins Gilman. Basically it is set in the late 19th early 20th century whrere three young male explorers  set out to uncover a rumored all female society somewhere in South America. This is far as I got. It sounds dirty, it sounds exciting, I will have to read more and let someone know. Ok I go…