>POSSIBLE SPOILERS
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>they qualified the for the group that knew where those babies really came
>from, and artificial insemination was where it was at anyway!)
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>I have often wondered about Stavia's mother (sorry, name has slipped me
>for the moment) and her relationship with Joshua. I assume it was
>(discreetly) sexual as well as loving; likewise Stavia with (sorry, that
>name's gone too, Corrig??), father of her daughters, since they were not
>alone in their houses. (Which, since house-sharing seemed common, would
>provide additional cover for lesbian relationships.) In fact, I would
>suspect there might have been a fair number of "closeted" women/servitor
>affairs in progress: presumably libido was not turned off between
>festivals!
Since only women who "knew" what was going on (high ranking, done well
in "women's studies" (medicine) had servitors, I would think it would be
highly unfair if there were contact (but that's part of what I found odd
about the lack of sensual contact). I also wondered, but decided that
if it were as the text put forth (not these people going on in regular
life) that there was nothing, or it would have been brought out. I felt
that the servitors (being considered emasculated men by the warriors)
were considered (sexually) like other women (in a het world). They
seemed to give up sexuality totally (vs the limited access city women
had biannually or the access the warriors had to extra-city women or
"good" women biannually). This was in exchange for being "smart" to
come into the city (vs the cooks, etc who remained wedded to the warrior
ethos but didnt' fight)... they knew their genes would be passed along
and would also help raise the children. The society inside the city was
a defered gratification for those who "knew".
misha
bernardm@colorado.edu
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:07:35 PDT