"...had a kitchen-church-and-kids attitudes towards females."
-Poul Anderson, "Day of Burning" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 209-272 AT p. 231.
When the Terran Embassy on Merseia throws a reception for Lord Hauksberg and invites leading Merseians, Hauksberg's mistress cannot attend because of the Merseians' attitude to females! Larry Niven's kzinti - and, I think, his Slavers - are even more extreme cases because their females are non-linguistic!
10 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, I recall the Merseian attitude to females of any species attending social gatherings including outsiders. It reminds me of how strict Muslims treat women. In fairness, we should remember the affection Brechdan Ironrede had for a late wife and we females at the family gathering welcoming home his eldest surviving son (in Chapter 2 of ENSIGN FLANDRY).
And the ghastly thing about the Kzinti and their females was how they used genetic manipulation to make them be born with only moronic levels of intelligence.
Sean
Sean,
Coincidentally, Sheila commented last night that relationships between Muslim men and women on our street have relaxed during our time here. At the same time, many young Muslim women have started to wear the veil etc but this is their statement of identity rather than something that is being imposed on them.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I would put this down mostly to these Muslims being still a minority in a non Muslim nation. Which inevitably means being affected to some degree by Western and even Christian ideas. This "relaxation" is FAR less the case in Islamic dominated nations.
Sean
Deffo.
Kaor, Paul!
And non Muslim women in these places have to dress and behave like Muslim women for their own safety outside their homes! Bah!!!
Sean
Attitudes come and go and come around again. Change is a fact; progress is an Enlightenment myth.
I believe not in inevitable progress but in the possibility of either progress or regression.
Dear Mr. Stirling and Paul,
Mr. Stirling, I agree! Attitudes, both good and bad, come and go. And I believe more in the possibility of some changes being good, not because of mysticism about "Progress."
Paul, I agree. With the caveat that some "regressions," depending on circumstances, will be at least necessary. Assuming something like the Change in Stirling's Emberverse, various kinds of feudalisms would inevitably arise. From the mild kind seen among Mike Havel's Bearkillers to the harsher system seen in the PPA during Norman Arminger's lifetime.
Sean
Sean,
A good passage in TIME Patrol is when Carl tells a doctor in 2319 that his wife and he had been young in the 1960s. The doctor replies that fashions come and go.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I remember that bit in "The Sorrow Of Odin The Goth." And doctor was right.
Sean
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