I absolutely LOVED this week’s stories. As you can see our
topic for this week is “Gender and Sexuality”. This was a very controversial and touchy topic for the years that these
stories were published (1966-1972). I was so excited to start this topic
because our generation is becoming more liberal and accepting of matters
regarding gender and sexuality. I am all for the equality of sexuality, gender,
sex and partnership (yes, sex and gender are two different things if you were
wondering). The two stories I had the
pleasure of reading this week were “Day Million” by Frederik Pohl, and “When It
Changed” by Joanna Russ.
While reading “Day Million” I have to admit I had a tiny
smirk or smile on my face almost the whole time while reading it. This story,
in my opinion, was told in a very F-you voice. There was so much aggression and
for lack of a better word, sass in the tone of what was being said. Although it
was slightly abrasive I do have respect for the writer because I was done to
grab the reader and say “I will squash any preconceived notion of what YOU
think love is”. Now I think the reader didn’t do this to discredit anyone’s
opinions of love but to rejoice in the fact that everyone has different opinions
of love, so intense and varying that there is no one definition. I interpreted
Dora “not being a woman” as one of two things. One, she was being portrayed as
intersex (having the physical make-up of a woman including a vagina, ovaries, and
breasts but genetically containing an XY chromosome set). Two, neither of them
were really “human”, they were mechanically altered, technologically interfered
with beings. Possibly that they can’t really be defined as “boy” or “girl” because
those terms are arbitrary to humans only.
The second story “When It Changed” brought up an important
yet complex biological term “parthenogenesis”. Parthenogenesis is a form of asexual
reproduction. By definition, this is the process of a zygote forming (the beginning
cell stages of a fetus) without the fertilization from male gametes (sperm). I
wouldn’t bother to bore you with this scientific aspect of the story BUT it is
incredibly important considering this is how a society of women has continued
to grow on an exponential scale. Aka we DON’T
need males for reproduction in this world. I do not mean to come across an
extremist or that I think women are above men but hell yea. This is awesome, I
do believe women deserve equality and when it comes to making a baby it does
require two halves of a whole (pertaining to men and women). But, this is an
awesome example of how women can do it without men! No, I’m not focusing in on
reproduction, but to run a society, and live comfortably. Either sex can do it,
not just men. In this story thought the author kind of made it seem like a
whole survival of the fittest, natural selection element came into play which
is why the male half of the species had gone “extinct” (a very relative term
because I realize they weren’t).This was probably a little extreme. But, the
author did hint at the fact that they really didn’t have a purpose the women
couldn’t fulfil. I’m not sure if that’s the truth or what I agree with, but I think
it was more the message that women could do all of the things that men can do was
what you were really supposed to catch on to.
I have to agree I got the whole aggressive thing from Day Million too. I didn't though think of it in the way that you did, that brings a whole new light to the subject. Everyone does have their own ways to define love and how to show it, and this writer may have been trying to tell us their definition of love through their writing...the things that make you go hmmmmm :)
ReplyDeleteI feel the same exact way! I loved how the authors went completely against social norms and continuously kept altering what we are usually suppose to feel a relationship to love story should be like, although to every person it's different. To each their own. I loved how easy and simple it was to decide if you wanted to sexually be a man or woman, you didn't have to make it a big issue or be scared to "come-out" or explain yourself because it was NORMAL! Which is exactly how it should be now.
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