Lois McMaster Bujold's Cetaganda, Ethan of Athos and Borders of Infinity

[rowyn]

I'm still working my way through Vorkosigan novels. Cetaganda is my least favorite on re-read so far. It's got Miles' characteristic inability-to-subordinate problem on even more display than usual -- typically his superiors are not around to be duped and misled anew every single day like he's doing in this novel. Also, the ridiculously beautiful haut-women got on my nerves this time. Maybe my middle-aged self is having trouble buying just how much influence beauty exerts on men. Setting that aside, there are some good clever moments and funny scenes, and I did enjoy it, but it's only getting a 6.

I'd been thinking of skipping Ethan of Athos because I remembered not much liking Ethan the first time, but it also has Elli Quinn and I decided to read it for her.

Weirdly, I ended up being quite fond of Ethan this time and disliking Quinn, whose cavalier attitude towards endangering others grated. Ethan is passive or ineffectual for the first half of the book, which is not a great thing in a viewpoint character, but he grows into his role and eventually does a good job. And his doctor's-perspective is endearing.

On an unrelated note: Athos, the planet Ethan is from, has been all-male since colonization two hundred years ago: they reproduce through ovarian cultures, in vitro fertilization, and uterine replicators. Their cultural attitude towards women is a weird mix of terror, ignorance, and condenscension. But the striking thing is that it's not really something noticeable while on Athos. It's just a planet full of people who treat each other equally and are isolationist. Ethan has a lot of absurd misconceptions and superstitions about women that are striking when he's finally exposed to them, so there's a chunk of misogyny there. And of course it seems weird viewed from the outside to exclude women from your entire planet.

And yet ... there's something queerly egalitarian about it. Because if you've only got one gender, you can't have gender-based discrimination. No gender stereotypes. No 'men aren't like that' because, well, there's just people.

Bujold's conceit is that some portion of Athos society is celibate and the rest gay; probably sensibly, she avoids assigning numbers to those proportions. It is an odd question, how many humans would be attracted to the same sex given favorable cultural norms and no opposite sex at all. Anyway, I'll give this one an 8.

Borders of Infinity collects three Vorkosigan novellas into one volume, with a frame story to tie them together. I liked all of them; "Labyrinths" struck me as silly/implausible at several points, but I enjoyed it in a guilty-pleasure way. I had been dreading the grim opening of the final titular story, but fortunately the horrible part didn't last as long as I'd remembered, and the tale rolled along well once it got going. I'll give this an 8 too.

Comments

[alltoseek]

there's something queerly egalitarian about it. Because if you've only got one gender, you can't have gender-based discrimination. No gender stereotypes. No 'men aren't like that' because, well, there's just people.

Except, WRONG.

People will always find ways to divide into 'us' vs 'them'. If not on gender/sexuality, then on skin color, language spoken, way of life, size, hair/eye color, tone of voice, you name it. People will figure it out.

If this particular planet is all egalitarian, they have achieved it independently of getting rid of the female sex - that had nothing to do with all the other divisions that plague people, nor the reason/need for creating those divisions in the first place.

how many humans would be attracted to the same sex given favorable cultural norms and no opposite sex at all.

I'd say nearly 100%. All those except the asexual, who aren't interested in sex at all.

More interesting, if reproduction is no longer tied to sex, in how much of the population will sexual desire persist? A lot, for a long time, is my guess. Was too critical for reproduction for too long.

[rowyn]

Right, it's not like I feel that eliminating gender will eliminate tribalism. Tribalism is what people do. Sadly.

Mostly what I was trying to capture is that, although "society of all men" is about as extreme a form of misogyny as one can imagine, it *feels* less awful than a society where women are present but brutally oppressed.

[alltoseek]

Once there is only one gender, it isn't only 'men'. It would be as correct to say there are only 'women'. There are just 'people'. It would be incomprehensible, as if we came across a race of people where half of them were not humanoid, even though they are all the same species. We would have no name for the two categories.

I suppose it's different, since they purposely evolved themselves this way using technology. They have a memory/history of there being a child-bearing sex, now replaced by machines. And they know other species retain the child-bearing sex.

But after a few generations I still think they wouldn't really recognize themselves as 'men'. They would just be people who have done away with the tedium of pregnancy. Maybe they would go, "Ewww, you carry babies in your own body? How gross! And what a burden!" But I don't know that they would empathize more with the males of another species. They'd be different altogether.

Or maybe not, I dunno.

[rowyn]

More interesting, if reproduction is no longer tied to sex, in how much of the population will sexual desire persist?

That's a good question too. Human bodies spend a lot of energy on sexual drive, so eliminating that would probably improve overall individual health, on the one hand. On the other, it's our most universal game, something a sizable proportion of the human race is very attached to doing. So I don't know that artificial reproduction would breed it out even though it served no practical function any more.

[anke]

About Ethan of Athos, I think it worked for me because it showed just how silly those ideas about women are, while making the character who holds them sympathetic.

[rowyn]

Yes -- the reader never feels like the Athosian attitude towards women is in any way reasonable. Yet Athos itself is not repugnant despite this.

[anke]

Colonising their own little corner of the universe and making it so that no women come there is a much more bearable form of misogyny than living with women and treating them as second class people.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

There's attracted to and attracted to?

I think the number who would have sex with other guys due to a lack of other options is probably really high. Because there all you need is 'not physically repulsed by the idea' which is a pretty low bar.

[rowyn]

*nods* I feel a significant part of sexual identity is cultural rather than instinctual, and that if you had a culture where "homosexual or celibate" were the only options, most people would engage in some homosexual behavior -- although I'm not sure how many would be "experiment and decide they don't like it". It's particularly interesting how it would be in the context of having no real concept of an opposite sex. Homosexuals on Earth have the context of seeing their own gender presented as sexually attractive (even if they're not supposed to be attractive to members of the same sex). But a heterosexual on a world where everyone was the same gender would have no concept of what they were 'supposed' to be attracted to. If they became celibate, would they still be able to respond sexually if as an adult they finally met a member of the opposite sex, or would it be too foreign an idea by then?

Oddly, it makes me think about asexuals -- are there people who think of themselves as asexual who would be attracted to some unknown gender, if only it existed? o_O

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

You'd think they'd find porn of this unknown, nonexistant gender somewhere on the internet.