The Female Man

JANET: Either you killed me before you got here, in which case I am dead, or you kill me after you get here, in which case I am dead. It makes no difference to me where I die.

JEANNINE: But suppose we brought a-a cannon or a bomb or something-suppose we fooled you and then seized the Government and threatened to blow everything up!

JANET: For the purposes of argument, let us suppose that. First of all, there is no government here in the sense that you mean. Second, there is no one place from which to control the entire activity of Whileaway, that is, the economy. So your one bomb isn't enough, even supposing you could kill off our welcoming committee. Introducing an entire army or an entire arsenal through the one point would take either a very advanced technology-which you have not got-or vast amounts of time. If it took you vast amounts of time, that would be no problem for us; if you came through right away, you must come through either prepared or unprepared. If you came through prepared, waiting would only assure that you spread out, used up your supplies, and acquired a false sense of confidence; if you came through unprepared and had to spend time putting things together, that would be a sign that your technology is not so advanced and you're not that much of a threat one way or the other.

JEANNINE:(controlling herself): Hm!

JANET: You see, conflicts between states are not identical with conflicts between persons. You exaggerate this business of surprise. Relying on the advantage of a few hours is not a very stable way of proceeding, is it? A way of life so unprotected would hardly be worth keeping.

JEANNINE: I hope-I don't hope really because it would be awful but just to pay you out I hope!-well, I hope that some enemy with fantastically advanced technology sends experts through that what-do-you-call-it and I hope they freeze everybody within fifty miles with green rays-and then I hope they make that whatever-you-call-it a permanent whatever-you-call-it so they can bring through anything they want to whenever they want to and kill you all!

JANET: Now there's an example worth talking about. First, if they had a technology as advanced as that, they could open their own access points, and we certainly can't watch everywhere at all times. It would make life too obsessive.

But suppose they must use this single one. No welcoming committee-or defensive army, even-could withstand those fifty-mile green rays, yes? So that's not worth sending an army against, is it? They would just be frozen or killed. However, I suspect that the use of such a fifty-mile green ray would produce all sorts of grossly observable phenomena-that is, it would be instantly obvious that something or somebody was paralyzing everything within a radius of fifty miles-and if these technologically advanced but unamiable persons were so obliging as to announce themselves in that fashion, we'd hardly need to find out about their existence by sending anyone here in the flesh, would we?.

(A long silence. Jeannine is trying to think of something desperately crushing.

Her platform wedgies aren't made for walking and her feet hurt.)

JANET: Besides, it's never at the first contact that these things happen. I'll show you the theory, some day.

Some day (thinks Jeannine) somebody will get yon in spite of all that rationality. All that rationality will go straight up into the air. They don't have to invade; they can just blow you up from outer space; they can just infect you with plague, or infiltrate, or form a fifth column. They can corrupt you.

There are all sorts of horrors. You think life is safe but it isn't, it isn't at all. It's just horrors. Horrors!

JANET (reading her face, jerking a thumb upwards from a closed fist in the Whileawayan gesture of religion): God's will be done.

VIII

Stupid and inactive. Pathetic. Cognitive starvation. Jeannine loves to become entangled with the souls of the furniture in my apartment, softly drawing herself in to fit inside them, pulling one long limb after another into the cramped positions of my tables and chairs. The dryad of my living room. I can look anywhere, at the encyclopedia stand, at the cheap lamps, at the homey bat comfortable brown couch; it is always Jeannine who looks back. It's uncomfortable for me but such a relief to her. That long, young, pretty body loves to be sat on and I think if Jeannine ever meets a Satanist, she will find herself perfectly at home as his altar at a Black Mass, relieved of personality at last and forever.

IX

Then there is the joviality, the self-consequence, the forced heartiness, the benevolent teasing, the insistent demands for flattery and reassurance. This is what ethologists call dominance behavior.

EIGHTEEN-YEAR-OLD MALE COLLEGE FRESHMAN (laying down the law at a party): If Marlowe had lived, he would have written very much better plays than Shakespeare's.