Friday 18 March 2016

Species With A Subordinate Sex

Merseian females are subordinate and confined to domestic roles, several wives to one male. Kzinti females are not intelligent, each successful male owning a harem! And -

"...the Sterile Ones...non-bearing females were kept as a rare privilege for Heroes whose accomplishments were not quite deserving of a mate of their own."
-Jerry Pournelle and SM Stirling, "The Children's Hour" IN Larry Niven, Ed., Man-Kzin Wars II (London, 1991), p. 206.

Kzinti are like Merseians but more so. They not only enslave other rational species but also eat them.

Niven's Pierson's Puppeteers have three sexes of which one is not intelligent and is really of a different species.

Merseian and kzinti females sound like how some male human beings think of women. A kzinti visitor to the inhabited Map of Kzin on the Ringworld is interested to find females who are intelligent.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And one thing to remember about Kzin females is that many thousands of years before humans first made contact with the Heroic Race their females were as intelligent as the males. But the early Patriarchy undertook to breed/genetically manipulate females to be unintelligent.

Sean