The Female Man

MC: I said: Do you want to banish sex from Whileaway? Sex, family, love, erotic attraction-call it what you like-we all know that your people are competent and intelligent individuals, but do you think that's enough? Surely you have the intellectual knowledge of biology in other species to know what I'm talking about.

JE: I'm married. I have two children. What the devil do you mean?

MC: I-Miss Evason-we-well, we know you form what you call marriages, Miss Evason, that you reckon the descent of your children through both partners and that you even have "tribes"-I'm calling them what Sir____________________calls them; I know the translation isn't perfect-and we know that these marriages or tribes form very good institutions for the economic support of the children and for some sort of genetic mixing, though I confess you're way beyond us in the biological sciences. But, Miss Evason, I am not talking about economic institutions or even affectionate ones. Of course the mothers of Whileaway love their children; nobody doubts that. And of course they have affection for each other; nobody doubts that, either. But there is more, much, much more-I am talking about sexual love.

JE (enlightened): Oh! You mean copulation.

MC: Yes.

JE: And you say we don't have that?

MC: Yes.

JE: How foolish of you. Of course we do.

MC: Ah? (He wants to say, "Don't tell me.")

JE: With each other. Allow me to explain.

She was cut off instantly by a commercial poetically describing the joys of unsliced bread. They shrugged (out of camera range). It wouldn't even have gotten that far if Janet had not insisted on attaching a touch-me-not to the replay system. It was a live broadcast, four seconds' lag. I begin to like her more and more. She said, "If you expect me to observe your taboos, I think you will have to be more precise as to exactly what they are." In Jeannine Dadier's world, she was (would be) asked by a lady commentator: How do the women of Whileaway do their hair?

JE: They hack it off with clam shells.

VIII

"Humanity is unnatural!" exclaimed the philosopher Dunyasha Bernadetteson (A. C.

344-426) who suffered all her life from the slip of a genetic surgeon's hand which had given her one mother's jaw and the other mother's teeth-orthodontia is hardly ever necessary on Whileaway. Her daughter's teeth, however, were perfect.

Plague came to Whileaway in P.C.17 (Preceding Catastrophe) and ended in A.C.

03, with half the population dead; it had started so slowly that no one knew about it until it was too late. It attacked males only. Earth had been completely re-formed during the Golden Age (P.C.300-ca. P.C.180) and natural conditions presented considerably less difficulty than they might have during a similar catastrophe a millennium or so earlier. At the time of The Despair (as it was popularly called), Whileaway had two continents, called simply North and South Continents, and a great many ideal bays or anchorages in the coastline.