Sunday, September 17, 2006

I would not like to live on the moon....

I know I posted about this already and we talked about it in class, but I think it's an interesting subject so I'll talk about it some more!

Professor Jackson asked in class if we'd like to live on the moon. My initial reaction was "Sure! Attention, power, as many men as I want - why not!"

But then I thought about it some more, and realized that, a la Kermit the Frog, I might like to visit the moon, but not live there.

Women have power - but only as sexual objects. This implies that a woman who did not act as a sexual object but removed herself from the available pool would not be valued.

Heinlein writes as though all women are ready and willing to take on more than one male partner. I suppose this is plausible in a culture that encourages polyandry - however, not quite so plausible in Lunar culture, when so many people are recent immigrants from Earth, which still holds strong monogamous prejudices (at least in some places, as evidenced by Mannie's experiences).

Therefore, what would happen to a woman who preferred to marry just one man? Or, god forbid, a woman who wasn't interested in men at all, only other women? Would the men shove her out into the vaccuum? Would they see her as having any use?

Probably not, but still: I would not like to live on the moon.

1 comment:

nedlum said...

I feel like it's a bit of a leap from the idea "women are valued because they are scarce", to the idea "women must be available." At this subsistance level, anyone who can do a job is needed (especially at the end of the novel, when the food suplies are secure), which is why Man and Prof ask for all the poor who can be shipped up.

That said: I'd imagine lesbianism would probably be frowned at to an extent, while male homosexuality would be far more accepted.