Addition to Women and Sexual Power

While looking over Anne's post about women and sexual power I started thinking about what we had talked about in class, specifically when all of the girls raised their hands at the same time. Our responces to PTJ's question about if we would rather live on the moon than the world seemed a little too quickly answered, or at least my answers were. Life on the moon for women, though they were in control, was similar to those who had the greatest wealth. Since women were a commodity, it was simply another way to say supply and demand. Women had power because in their choices they decided the sexual and reproductive fate of Luna.

However, looking at the rest of the book I think there is more to the enjoyment of women and that theme of pleasure that is carried throughout the book. Women represesnt pleasure and there are few other opportunities for pleasure on Luna. For men, the only option then is to hope for pleasure, there is no creation of it. In Mike's situation, as a computer, we did not think (as a reader) that pleasure was possible for a computer. But on page 338 Mike describes his experience of rock throwing as an "orgasm. That's what it is when they all light up. Now I know". That Mike experiences pleasure at a job well done, and at a job of destruction seems to be the opposite of what Loonies concider pleasure. Please for humans is of the flesh and of continuing life, Mike enjoys perfection and anihilation.

I think what Heinlein is attempting to show here is that woman and machiens have power, just as they both can produce pleasure. Women have the power to alter a man's mind and a machien can correct him. While women do have power, it is based on its ability to shift a man's thoughts. Women in themselves would not have power if men were satisfied in their pleasure in other ways. A machien like Mike however has power because it's facts are always correct (or at least men assume they are). The true source of social power in this book is not women as we are originally lead to believe, but artificial intelligence because men and women asume so completely that it will be correct and mathmatically falcifiable.