I agree with Frances Green's sneaking suspicion:
>I 've always had the sneaking suspicion that Tepper just didn't want to
>be bothered with the complications of homosexuality as part of the
>"Women's Country" structure.
But I'd go one step further to speculate that homosexuality posed more
than bothersome "complications" Tepper preferred to avoid.
I think homosexuality and homosexuals had to be excluded in order for
the society to function at all. It's critical that homosexuality does
not exist. Imagine the women's country had lesbians. They'd fall in
love, undoubtedly move in together, and probably not have sex with the
segregated men. Imagine being the straight girl watching your sisters,
friends or neighbors fall in love and share a loving, physical life with
another. You'd feel a little cheated, wouldn't you? You probably
wouldn't tolerate it. You'd either leave or challenge the status quo.
Either way, the society fails to work.
When I first attempted to read this book and got to the discovery that
homosexuality was consciously "removed" from the gene pool, I threw the
book away. I was pretty intolerant of what I perceived as intolerance. =
) Later I decided to give Tepper the benefit of the doubt and tried
again. And while I didn't really care for it as a regular story, I did
find it interesting as a morality play of sorts. And I liked the
comparison of the one society that picks its parents to limit the (less
desirable) diversity of humanity and the society that fails as a direct
result of a lack of diversity in the gene pool. Interesting....
-LeAnne
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:07:35 PDT