# DOORS: The hive-like society

*The Urth list — 7 messages, 3 voices, 23 Jan 2003*

<https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3802>

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### Michael Andre-Driussi
*23 Jan 2003, 17:00*

>> Adam Stephanides quoted me and wrote:
>> like insects, society is divided into the
>> mass of sterile female workers and super-fertile queens (little doubt
>> here)

> Could you elaborate?  It's been a long time since I've read the novel, but I
> don't recall any indications of this.

First I'd like to give my sense of the dolls, as I've been meaning to do

> since Roy Lackey wrote:
> I had the impression that dolls such as Tina were given primarily, if not
> exclusively, to boys. It also seemed to me that boys lost interest in them,
> or were made to give them up at some point, perhaps at puberty. At any rate,
> most men in the Otherworld do not seem to have retained them as adults. The
> shopkeeper in the doll hospital implied that dolls sent there for repair
> were not often picked up, and if they were, it was usually by the owner's
> mother.

Previously I pointed out that women are pretty much against men having
dolls: they will destroy them (the dolls first).  Now I will explain more
about why I think this is.

My theory: The women tolerate, even encourage dolls/goddess worship for
boys.  A doll gives a boy a focus, erotic and spiritual (especially in
preparation for his personal self-sacrifice that others might live).  The
doll does a lot of the work in preping the boy for his role as a man,
filling in during free time when the boy is away from formal education.
Otherworld marriage is an institution whereby a man pledges his zygotes to
a woman in exchange for her mercy and forbearance: it is for the man to
avoid sudden random death (be it like the probably unlawful rape at the
hospital or the socially-sanctioned lure of an ice-queen on a parade
float), and for the woman to avoid being a maenad/lamia/stalker of
unmarried men.

This then is the social contract.  The man gives up the doll when he
marries: his wife becomes his "goddess," the one that the doll was
preparing him for.  The husband lives until the zygote transfer (witness
the situation with boxer Joe Joseph and his wife Jennifer: according to the
pre-nuptial she will wait until she is 35, but some think she is pressuring
him for an earlier transfer).  The wife would have no interest in the man's
doll, but the man's mother of course would, since she had raised the boy
like a prize pig -- she would remember the boy and his doll.

With this in mind, a man with a doll is something rather shocking.  It
implies arrested development at the very least, if not some weird cult
and/or socially deviant behavior.

DIVISIONS OF SOCIETY

"AND IN THE CAPITAL, THE PRESIDENT HAS--AS SHE THREATENED EARLIER--VETOED
THE FAMILY MAINTENANCE--[volume turned down] bill that would have permitted
involuntary sterilization of mothers of twenty-five or more children" (28).

Now this could be a simple "Planet of the Apes"-style gag (words of the
sermon: "He said he never met an ape he did not like").  But I take it as
being more thought out than that.

In the government (of the women, by the women, for the women) there has
been a movement to restrict the number of children a mother can have.  To
me this suggests that 1) mothers have power; 2) the mother's power is
proportional to the size of her brood; 3) pre-mothers want to reduce the
power of mothers (at the cost of more male lives lost to fertilize more
low-output mothers); 4) the mothers are blocking the attempt at reducing
their power/upping the male death quota.

(I assume that the 25 children limit represents a number that is both
reproductively sound [i.e., does not represent negative population growth]
and supportive of a "democracy of mothers" that the bill's framers
presumably want.)

When I wrote,"like insects, [Otherworld] society is divided into the
mass of sterile female workers and super-fertile queens," I did not mean to
imply that the pre-mothers were actually incapable of giving birth (as
neuter female insects are), nor did I mean to imply that the mothers were
literally queens (it seems like a representative democracy of some kind).
In a hive-like society where every (female) "worker" (pre-mother) can
become a "queen" (mother) there will be the sort of tensions  I see in the
Otherworld society.

=mantis=

---

### Adam Stephanides
*25 Jan 2003, 14:20 · follows Michael Andre-Driussi*

> on 1/23/03 11:00 AM, Michael Andre-Driussi at mantis at siriusfiction.com
> wrote:
> Otherworld marriage is an institution whereby a man pledges his zygotes to
> a woman in exchange for her mercy and forbearance: it is for the man to
> avoid sudden random death (be it like the probably unlawful rape at the
> hospital or the socially-sanctioned lure of an ice-queen on a parade
> float), and for the woman to avoid being a maenad/lamia/stalker of
> unmarried men.

 
I may be forgetting something again, but I don't remember getting the
impression that unmarried men were in grave danger, Al Bailey's fate
notwithstanding.  In any case, marrying for the reason you suggest is
trading possible death for certain death, which seems to me like a bad
bargain.

> This then is the social contract.  The man gives up the doll when he
> marries: his wife becomes his "goddess," the one that the doll was
> preparing him for.

I haven't yet reread TAD, but I was looking through it, and I came across a
couple of things which cause problems for your scenario.  The woman at the
haberdashery tells Green that her father had still owned a doll after he was
married. (125)  A bodyguard sees Tina and tells Green "You got one of those?
I used to have one myself." (303)  This seems to me an unlikely remark if
most boys own dolls: sort of like saying "You went to school as a kid?  So
did I."  Then there's the doll hospital.  Your theory would imply that most
of the people who leave their dolls there to be repaired get married soon
afterwards (since you say men keep their dolls until marriage).  And the
shopkeeper refers to the typical client as a "boy," not a man (9).

I admit, though, that I don't understand the doll hospital.  Why do so many
people bring their dolls in to be repaired, paying a "pretty big deposit,"
and then fail to pick them up, even though they'd get their deposit back and
not have to pay anything.  If I were one of the owners' mothers, I'd
remember the deposit, if nothing else.

> "AND IN THE CAPITAL, THE PRESIDENT HAS--AS SHE THREATENED EARLIER--VETOED
> THE FAMILY MAINTENANCE--[volume turned down] bill that would have permitted
> involuntary sterilization of mothers of twenty-five or more children" (28).
> 
> Now this could be a simple "Planet of the Apes"-style gag (words of the
> sermon: "He said he never met an ape he did not like").  But I take it as
> being more thought out than that.
> 
> In the government (of the women, by the women, for the women) there has
> been a movement to restrict the number of children a mother can have.  To
> me this suggests that 1) mothers have power; 2) the mother's power is
> proportional to the size of her brood; 3) pre-mothers want to reduce the
> power of mothers (at the cost of more male lives lost to fertilize more
> low-output mothers); 4) the mothers are blocking the attempt at reducing
> their power/upping the male death quota.

I'd forgotten that quote.  But while it proves the existence of
"super-mothers," it seems to tell more against than in favor of your theory
as a whole.  Powerful groups are rarely targeted for involuntary
sterilization; note also that the bill has been vetoed, meaning that it had
passed Congress.  It's more likely that the motive for the bill is similar
to that of extreme right-wing proposals in this world to sterilize "welfare
mothers": that children in such large families are likely to be badly reared
and/or drains on the public purse.

And I don't think the bill, if passed, would have increased the number of
male deaths.  It's true that, to keep the rate of population growth fixed,
more men would have to become fathers.  But I don't recall any indication
that the society is aiming for such a fixed target; and men aren't coerced
to become fathers, though there is presumably social pressure to do so.

--Adam

---

### Michael Andre-Driussi
*26 Jan 2003, 16:25 · follows Adam Stephanides*

> Adam Stephanides wrote:
> I may be forgetting something again, but I don't remember getting the
> impression that unmarried men were in grave danger, Al Bailey's fate
> notwithstanding.  In any case, marrying for the reason you suggest is
> trading possible death for certain death, which seems to me like a bad
> bargain.

Whoops, we've lost track of the point that the men are marrying for love,
the women are marrying for socially sanctioned reproduction.  (Then again,
maybe I'm wrong on that supposition.)

>> This then is the social contract.  The man gives up the doll when he
>> marries: his wife becomes his "goddess," the one that the doll was
>> preparing him for.

> I haven't yet reread TAD, but I was looking through it, and I came across a
> couple of things which cause problems for your scenario.  The woman at the
> haberdashery tells Green that her father had still owned a doll after he was
> married. (125)  A bodyguard sees Tina and tells Green "You got one of those?
> I used to have one myself." (303)  This seems to me an unlikely remark if
> most boys own dolls: sort of like saying "You went to school as a kid?  So
> did I."  Then there's the doll hospital.  Your theory would imply that most
> of the people who leave their dolls there to be repaired get married soon
> afterwards (since you say men keep their dolls until marriage).  And the
> shopkeeper refers to the typical client as a "boy," not a man (9).

Strange (or maybe "predictably"?), I see those quotes you give in a
different light entirely.  Let's re-imagine the doll as an infant pacifier
to heighten the effect.  The haberdashery woman makes (or makes up) her
embarrassing admission in order to paper over her customer's socially
strange behavior -- she is trying to say there is nothing embarrassing
about it, but to me her actions speak louder than her words.  The
bodyguard's line is more pointed, and less to me the "You went to school .
. . ?" you see it as than a "Yea, I had a binky once . . . as a baby."  As
for the shop keeper, I don't think I take the term "boy" as literally as
you seem to: while I don't take it in the sense of a derogatory term for an
oppressed class (i.e., "boy" used by whites for adult black males), I tend
toward seeing it an affected form of shop talk.

Then again, if we could translate "malicapata" as "he performed his own
unmanning and died as a result," and we could establish that this was a
typical consequence of goddess worship (seems easy enough), and such
selfish suicide was widespread in Otherworld, many pieces would fall
together.  But that is a new topic for a different post.

I do not insist that all dolls belonged to pre-bridegrooms, nor that only
men give them up.  I am trying to solve the puzzle of why we are told more
than once that Otherworld women become destructively violent at the sight
of a man with his doll.

Which brings us to the question of how could species-perpetuating
reproduction happen if it is literally suicide for the male?  (Granted that
spiders and bees and ants and all sorts of others do it this way.)  It
seems to me that some men would mate/die for Love (Eros) along the goddess
worshiping lines, and others might mate/die for suicide (Thanatos) . . . so
what is the suicide rate among men?  What if this number were channeled
into fertilization programs, where each one donated enough zygotes for a
woman to have many more than 25 offspring?  (How many more, anyway?  Total
50?)  Could this suicidal minority support the species?  Seems possible.

So what do all the men do?  The married ones do not seem to be secluded in
harems or anything: Joe is a boxer.  (To spell it out: Jennifer is afraid
he will die in the ring rather than in her arms.)  In the parade we seem to
see men as soldiers, men as politicians giving each other flowers and
cigars, so they can fulfill these roles, too, and the text is silent over
whether or not marriage is required.

(Back to the street parade: My supposition is that a married man would not
be allowed to watch that parade, somehow; and/or if a married man was
targeted by the ice queen, she would see his wedding band and ignore him,
i.e., de-target him, and probably signal the police to pull him out of the
parade for public drunkenness.  But this is just supposition.)

> About the "Family Maintenance" bill in Otherworld Congress, Adam wrote:
> I'd forgotten that quote.  But while it proves the existence of
> "super-mothers," it seems to tell more against than in favor of your theory
> as a whole.  Powerful groups are rarely targeted for involuntary
> sterilization; note also that the bill has been vetoed, meaning that it had
> passed Congress.  It's more likely that the motive for the bill is similar
> to that of extreme right-wing proposals in this world to sterilize "welfare
> mothers": that children in such large families are likely to be badly reared
> and/or drains on the public purse.

Really?  I thought that Microsoft/Bill Gates was targeted for
"sterilization" precisely because of power.  (Since I'm stressing the
sociopolitical power of motherhood in Otherworld I think it is misleading
to think of "eugenics" programs against non-elites in our world.)

(Hmmm.  I saw "family maintenance" as translating to "making families
available to more women"; a broadening of the franchise.  You posit "family
maintenance" as meaning "maintain or restore the strength of the family by
limiting its size," if I understand it correctly.  And supposing that
political talk translates at all!)

But I see no evidence of a welfare system at all in TAD.  I do not see
motherhood in Otherworld as stigmatized in any way -- to the contrary, it
seems to be something so alluring that women (not all, mind you) are
willing to commit murder.  So while I can see your eugenics reading, I
cannot see the social situation it seems to rely upon; otoh, the eugenics
reading does not address the drive of Otherworld women to become mothers
when it is not entirely a biological necessity.

I'm happy you can see the "super-mothers," although I'd rather you see them
as just the mothers that I think they are.  I sense that you still cannot
see the rather desperate pre-mothers: Gloria Brooks (maybe), the ice queen
(definitely), and even Fanny.  I don't think we actually meet any
Otherworld mothers in the text, but we certainly meet two pre-mothers.
There is also wife Jennifer, of course, and her tempered but present drive.

If you want the line about the bill to be just a "Planet of the Apes" gag
to get across the alien side of Otherworld, (women with zygote holding
tanks; mothers who routinely birth more than 25 children) I can see that
without argument.

> And I don't think the bill, if passed, would have increased the number of
> male deaths.  It's true that, to keep the rate of population growth fixed,
> more men would have to become fathers.  But I don't recall any indication
> that the society is aiming for such a fixed target; and men aren't coerced
> to become fathers, though there is presumably social pressure to do so.

"Social pressure" like the ice-queen float in the parade?  "Coercion" like
that implied when the ice queen says, "I'm not one of those people who put
a gun to your head . . . If you should change your mind"?  Or the naked
coercion when she  goes after him with a knife? (23)  Is the following
passage indicative of social pressure or coercion?: [Dr. Pille talking
about the ice queen incident and why Green was diagnosed as an "alcoholic"
which the hospital workers call "sex change"] "Breach of promise is quite
serious, as you must know. If I had said you were sound except for your
concussion, you'd have been taken to another hospital, and eventually to
prison.  By classifying you as an alcoholic, I was able to keep you at
United and keep you off of psychoactive drugs" (101).

(The dark humor: by rights, Green should have been sent to the hospital
prison for his [ignorant] behavior, yet North, with his violent rap sheet
and ties to secret societies, has still been assigned to the simple
hospital.  Shows the social weighting of their crimes, I supppose.)

But I think we can agree that TAD is not at its core about population
growth, be it "Malthusian nightmare" ala Harrison's MAKE ROOM, MAKE ROOM
(where sterilization becomes a tool to tame overpopulation), or its
opposite, the infertility crisis die-off.

Since Adam Stephanides and Roy Lackey have both rejected my sense that
there are non-virginal gays in Otherworld, it may well be that they are
right.  (I thought that there was something other than tears that would
activate a sexually arousing doll.)  Maybe I read too much Delany as a
teenager, but the gay substratum seemed to me to be more than Green
avoiding a (what I suppose to be gay) proposition on Earth (207), and Green
saying "I'm not gay" to the antique-collecting woman (233).  (I could have
sworn Green said it another time earlier on in Otherworld, but I can't find
it now.)  And more than just TAD being a novel written in the 1980s where
sex = death for men.

But still, to make my point clear even as I recognize that it may not be
supported by the text: I thought that Sheng was offering a garden of
Earthly Delights in his "paradise" underground (with all those mattresses),
that it was "Sheng's Grotto" with more than tea, opium, and playing cards
being offered (note the "male root" given -- so Green can get "males"?).
Sheng as a panderer to sensual pleasures not offered by above ground
society.  "Welcome to the Underground," as it were.

In addition to that, I find something very shady about North witnessing Al
Bailey's "doing" by Gloria Brooks . . . that he would be so passive when
his friend/recruit is being killed seems odd.

(More about Bailey: since the post-coitus/post-ejaculation death is more
like dying by AIDS, then how come Bailey is an instant KIA?  Well maybe
some guys do shuffle off in the big O . . . or maybe she just gave him the
mercy killing with a pillow, a murder the victim would not resist, knowing
that it was merciful.  Explains that whole "gun to the head" thing: like
Theresa Russell's line in, iirc, "The Black Widow" -- "Are you going to
die, or are you going to die happy?")

So then I started wondering if North wasn't perhaps gay.  He might have
been going to have a tryst with Al (lethal or otherwise), with "bum a
cigarette" as the cover story for others.  North might have killed Bailey
(he certainly seems homicidal enough with Green, even in nonsexual
situations) and then blamed it on Gloria: after all, North is the witness
and we know how crazy he is.

A lot of North's behavior strikes me as being homo erotic, but then again
much alpha male behavior strikes me the same way (again, too much Delany?
Too much William Burroughs.).

(To guard against reading homo eroticism where none is present, I was just
now trying to remember that quote where Paul Newman is drunkenly saying to
va-va-voom wife Elizabeth Taylor something like "Is it wrong for two guys
to like each other, is that a crime?"  But whoops!  That's Tennessee
Williams. <g>  I'm doomed.)

Ejaculation as the death-trigger, I can see that easily enough.  And yet,
wow, what a <forgive me> Catholic Christian utopia nightmare!  No
fornication, no auto eroticism, sexual congress is performed one time for
reproductive purposes.

(Oh yeah, another reason why Otherworld women might resent the goddess: she
is not a goddess of motherhood, she is a goddess of love -- her whole deal
is multiple lovers, a trait which would not fit well in Otherworld society.)

Enough wheel-spinning on this retread.  Onward to Attis!

=mantis=

---

### Jeff Veyera
*26 Jan 2003, 17:51 · follows Michael Andre-Driussi*

Mantis-

I read TAD a little differently.

I ascribe women's hatred of the dolls to hatred of competition.  In
Otherworld, competition is literally killer.  In our world, a woman
typically competes against other women for the affections of one man.  In
Otherworld, where copulation equals death for the male, she must not only
compete with the other unattached women, but ALL women who wish to have a
child.  On top of this, men, fearing death, have taken to Goddess worship
and the safe companionship of dolls to fill the void typically filled by
women.  Is it any wonder they'd be so angry at the very sight of a doll?

I also wonder whether it is ejaculation or intercourse with a woman which
brings on death.  I suspect the latter, or one nocturnal emission would be
the end of civilization.

This would also lend more strength to my argument above, and to your notion
that North might be homosexual.  It would certainly follow in any society
where heterosexual sex meant death that a large number might prefer the
alternative.

```
-- 
```

---

### Michael Andre-Driussi
*26 Jan 2003, 18:49 · follows Jeff Veyera*

> Jeff Veyera wrote:
> I ascribe women's hatred of the dolls to hatred of competition.  In
> Otherworld, competition is literally killer.  In our world, a woman
> typically competes against other women for the affections of one man.  In
> Otherworld, where copulation equals death for the male, she must not only
> compete with the other unattached women, but ALL women who wish to have a
> child.  On top of this, men, fearing death, have taken to Goddess worship
> and the safe companionship of dolls to fill the void typically filled by
> women.  Is it any wonder they'd be so angry at the very sight of a doll?

I can go along with that, but I'd add that there must be plenty of
Otherworld women who do not want children, either because they do not want
to commit murder or simply because they do not want the hassle of
parenting.  That is to say, I think that TAD shows a world where
reproduction involves pre-fathers following Love/Death and pre-mothers
following Power, and the other men and women being pretty much the mass of
non-reproductive society, getting on with their lives.

> I also wonder whether it is ejaculation or intercourse with a woman which
> brings on death.  I suspect the latter, or one nocturnal emission would be
> the end of civilization.

Ah, well we are in agreement on that one: two against the world!  But their
argument, iirc, is that Otherworld males are as biologically different from
Earth males as O-females are from E-females -- so O-males are chaste and
pure (until a pre-mother does something which activates them) where E-males
are not . . . which leads Roy Lackey to suggest, iirc, that the masculinist
revolution in Otherworld could scarcely form.

> This would also lend more strength to my argument above, and to your notion
> that North might be homosexual.  It would certainly follow in any society
> where heterosexual sex meant death that a large number might prefer the
> alternative.

Right, but in theory the Otherworld gays could be "Platonic" lovers (where
Platonic is in its Victorian sense of being completely non-physical, as
opposed to the, ahem, satyricon of Plato's Retreat or the gay understanding
of the party in Plato's SYMPOSIUM).  So they could be virgin gays.

=mantis=

---

### Adam Stephanides
*30 Jan 2003, 14:40 · follows Michael Andre-Driussi*

> on 1/26/03 10:25 AM, Michael Andre-Driussi at mantis at siriusfiction.com
> wrote:
> I do not insist that all dolls belonged to pre-bridegrooms, nor that only
> men give them up.  I am trying to solve the puzzle of why we are told more
> than once that Otherworld women become destructively violent at the sight
> of a man with his doll.

Actually, I think I basically agree with you on that point.  A man who holds
onto his doll is choosing an ideal woman over a real woman, and hence
depriving a real woman of a chance for motherhood.

> Which brings us to the question of how could species-perpetuating
> reproduction happen if it is literally suicide for the male?  (Granted that
> spiders and bees and ants and all sorts of others do it this way.)  It
> seems to me that some men would mate/die for Love (Eros) along the goddess
> worshiping lines, and others might mate/die for suicide (Thanatos) . . . so
> what is the suicide rate among men?  What if this number were channeled
> into fertilization programs, where each one donated enough zygotes for a
> woman to have many more than 25 offspring?  (How many more, anyway?  Total
> 50?)  Could this suicidal minority support the species?  Seems possible.

Well, the math is easy to do.  Assume, to be liberal, that the average
mother has fifty children (since the average lifespan of human women is no
higher than in our world, it could scarcely be higher).  Assume also that
the sex ratio of babies is fifty-fifty, since there's no indication of
anything else.  Then each father produces an average of twenty-five males to
replace himself, which means that for the population to reproduce itself the
suicide ratio among men has to be at least 4%.  That seems awfully high to
me.

> About the "Family Maintenance" bill in Otherworld Congress, Adam wrote:

>> I'd forgotten that quote.  But while it proves the existence of
>> "super-mothers," it seems to tell more against than in favor of your theory
>> as a whole.  Powerful groups are rarely targeted for involuntary
>> sterilization; note also that the bill has been vetoed, meaning that it had
>> passed Congress.  It's more likely that the motive for the bill is similar
>> to that of extreme right-wing proposals in this world to sterilize "welfare
>> mothers": that children in such large families are likely to be badly reared
>> and/or drains on the public purse.

> Really?  I thought that Microsoft/Bill Gates was targeted for
> "sterilization" precisely because of power.  (Since I'm stressing the
> sociopolitical power of motherhood in Otherworld I think it is misleading
> to think of "eugenics" programs against non-elites in our world.)

Again, I may be forgetting something, but I don't recall any evidence in the
book of the mothers' sociopolitical power.  And while I know what you mean,
"eugenics" isn't really the right word for what I'm getting at (after
twenty-five children, it's a little late for eugenics).

> (Hmmm.  I saw "family maintenance" as translating to "making families
> available to more women"; a broadening of the franchise.  You posit "family
> maintenance" as meaning "maintain or restore the strength of the family by
> limiting its size," if I understand it correctly.  And supposing that
> political talk translates at all!)

Actually, I hadn't been thinking of the bill's title at all.  But now that
you mention it, I think that the reading you attribute to me fits better
than the one you prefer.  Of course, bills here frequently have anodyne
titles which don't reflect their contents, let alone the motives behind them
(USA Patriot Act, anyone?); presumably it's the same in Otherworld.

> But I see no evidence of a welfare system at all in TAD.

While it may not be mentioned explicitly, I think it's safe to say that one
exists.  Firstly, in matters not gender- or reproduction-related, Otherworld
society seems similar to America in the late 1940s or early 1950s.  We had a
welfare system then, though much less extensive than the Great Society, so
it's reasonable to suppose that Otherworld does.  Secondly, Green thinks at
one point that a society dominated by women would care more about children
than ours does.  Though realistically there's no reason why Green should be
in a position to know (he seems to observe very little that's not related to
his quest for Lara), I get the feeling we're supposed to regard his
ruminations on Otherworld as reliable.  So if postwar America and Otherworld
differ in this regard, I'd expect the difference to be in Otherworld's
favor.  Third, and most importantly, the practical aspect: a woman living on
her own, raising twenty-five children, could not possibly support herself
unaided (unless she were rich).

> I do not see
> motherhood in Otherworld as stigmatized in any way -- to the contrary, it
> seems to be something so alluring that women (not all, mind you) are
> willing to commit murder.  So while I can see your eugenics reading, I
> cannot see the social situation it seems to rely upon; otoh, the eugenics
> reading does not address the drive of Otherworld women to become mothers
> when it is not entirely a biological necessity.

I didn't say that motherhood per se was stigmatized; rather, having many
children and being an excessive charge on the public purse is stigmatized
(again, as welfare mothers are here).  In many societies in our world, women
have a strong desire to be mothers, though it's not biologically necessary;
as for the question of "murder," women presumably tell themselves, and are
told by their culture, that the fathers' deaths are necessary for the
preservation of the species (as they are).

> I'm happy you can see the "super-mothers," although I'd rather you see them
> as just the mothers that I think they are.

On p. 2, Lara tells Green that mothers on her world bear "Perhaps three
children.  Perhaps three dozen."  This implies a broad range, and suggests
to me that twenty-five is above average.

> I sense that you still cannot
> see the rather desperate pre-mothers: Gloria Brooks (maybe), the ice queen
> (definitely), and even Fanny.

I don't recall Gloria, but my impression is that the ice queen is too young
to be really desperate.  I'd attribute her sudden violence to a combination
of her great triumph of attracting a man to her float being suddenly
snatched away, combined with Green's unfavorably comparing her to the
goddess (as she must think as she undoubtedly thinks, not realizing that for
Green Lara is a flesh-and-blood woman).  And Fanny is happy to give up the
putative advantages of motherhood in favor of being able to "do it over and
over" with Green (309).  Which is not to say that women in Otherworld don't
strongly desire to be mothers, as I said.

>> And I don't think the bill, if passed, would have increased the number of
>> male deaths.  It's true that, to keep the rate of population growth fixed,
>> more men would have to become fathers.  But I don't recall any indication
>> that the society is aiming for such a fixed target; and men aren't coerced
>> to become fathers, though there is presumably social pressure to do so.

> "Social pressure" like the ice-queen float in the parade?  "Coercion" like
> that implied when the ice queen says, "I'm not one of those people who put
> a gun to your head . . . If you should change your mind"?  Or the naked
> coercion when she  goes after him with a knife? (23)  Is the following
> passage indicative of social pressure or coercion?: [Dr. Pille talking
> about the ice queen incident and why Green was diagnosed as an "alcoholic"
> which the hospital workers call "sex change"] "Breach of promise is quite
> serious, as you must know. If I had said you were sound except for your
> concussion, you'd have been taken to another hospital, and eventually to
> prison.  By classifying you as an alcoholic, I was able to keep you at
> United and keep you off of psychoactive drugs" (101).

There are breach of promise suits in our world (or used to be), and women do
sometimes try to kill men who jilt them.  Had Green not entered the float,
he would have been unmolested.

> (The dark humor: by rights, Green should have been sent to the hospital
> prison for his [ignorant] behavior, yet North, with his violent rap sheet
> and ties to secret societies, has still been assigned to the simple
> hospital.  Shows the social weighting of their crimes, I supppose.)

In fact North had been on the Violent Ward until a few days before Green
arrived (84); presumably he'd done a good job of play-acting.

And what precisely is North's crime?  His rap sheet says he was "Arrested
8/8/68 ngri." (128), but I don't know what that means.  Actually there's an
apparent discrepancy in this regard.  North tells Green when he first meets
him, not knowing yet that he's a Visitor, "If you start and then you think
my God, I'm going to _die_, and you back out, they say you're crazy.  Same
thing happened to me." (38)  But North is a Visitor too, so he wouldn't have
died.  North could have backed out, like Green, for some other reason, but
what?

> Green
> saying "I'm not gay" to the antique-collecting woman (233).  (I could have
> sworn Green said it another time earlier on in Otherworld, but I can't find
> it now.)

You're right; to North, in fact. (39)

> In addition to that, I find something very shady about North witnessing Al
> Bailey's "doing" by Gloria Brooks . . . that he would be so passive when
> his friend/recruit is being killed seems odd.

Well, North is planning his escape, and doesn't want to attract attention to
himself and be possibly returned to the Violent Ward. And his speech on p.
91 suggests that he would regard a conspirator who let himself be seduced as
weak and therefore expendable.

> (More about Bailey: since the post-coitus/post-ejaculation death is more
> like dying by AIDS, then how come Bailey is an instant KIA?

Did Bailey die immediately?  The only two references I found to him don't
say anything about his dying.

> Ejaculation as the death-trigger, I can see that easily enough.  And yet,
> wow, what a <forgive me> Catholic Christian utopia nightmare!  No
> fornication, no auto eroticism, sexual congress is performed one time for
> reproductive purposes.

Uh huh.  (Fanny's excitement at the prospect of being able to "do it over
and over," mentioned above, fits with this picture.)

Aside from the points I and Roy have already made, the mechanism you favor
seems quite implausible, both biologically and evolutionarily.  And I
personally have a hard time imagining the human race persisting without
sexual frustration, unrelieved by masturbation, as one motivating factor for
men; though Wolfe might disagree.

But I don't really know.  I doubt that there's enough evidence in the book
to decide the question one way or another (though Wolfe might think there
is); and I'm not sure it really makes much difference for the book as a
whole.

> Later mantis wrote:
> That is to say, I think that TAD shows a world where
> reproduction involves pre-fathers following Love/Death and pre-mothers
> following Power, and the other men and women being pretty much the mass of
> non-reproductive society, getting on with their lives.

This raises the question: what percentage of men become fathers, and women
mothers?  You seem to be suggesting that it's only a minority; and if you do
think that the average mother has twenty-five children, it had better be a
minority, or there would be a population explosion.  As I said, I haven't
read the whole book in a long time; but as I recall, my impression when I
read it had been that the majority of men became fathers.  There are a
couple of quotes which to me support this view, though neither is
definitive.  Fanny tells Green "Lots of men hold out for their entire lives,
damn them." (152); if a majority of men held out, I would expect her to say
"most men" rather than "lots of men."  Watching Joe's fight with Sawyer,
Lara says of the audience "They applaud him [Sawyer] now[.]  But in a few
years he will be dead, and so will they." (292)  Of course, Lara could be
speaking from an immortal goddess's perspective, and by "a few years" she
might mean fifty or sixty.  And I realize that under this view there are
problems with population increase, even if the average number of children is
somewhat less than twenty-five; I don't know what to do about that.

And speaking of population increase, where are all the children?  The only
occasion I've come across so far where children are seen in the book is the
boys who are mentioned as following the parade.

> Ah, well we are in agreement on that one: two against the world!  But their
> argument, iirc, is that Otherworld males are as biologically different from
> Earth males as O-females are from E-females -- so O-males are chaste and
> pure (until a pre-mother does something which activates them) where E-males
> are not . . .

Well, either way, O-males have to be biologicall different from E-males,
since Green can have sex with Lara without dying, whereas an O-male could
not.  But I don't think O-males are chaste and pure, though they don't have
involuntary emissions (and their sex drives must presumably be somewhat
weaker).

--Adam

---

### Michael Andre-Driussi
*30 Jan 2003, 21:59 · follows Adam Stephanides*

BTW I took a look at the Captain Billy's Whiz Bang ref, Adam.  Pretty neat
stuff.

> Adam Stephanides wrote:
> Actually, I hadn't been thinking of the bill's title at all.  But now that
> you mention it, I think that the reading you attribute to me fits better
> than the one you prefer.  Of course, bills here frequently have anodyne
> titles which don't reflect their contents, let alone the motives behind them
> (USA Patriot Act, anyone?); presumably it's the same in Otherworld.

Yes.  In my defense I would say that we are now arguing over what the bill
claims to be about versus what it is really about.  We can agree that it
claims to be about "preserving families," but I still hold out the notion
that the real reason is something else ("extending the franchise" was the
example I gave).  And I'm not talking about "unanticipated consequences."
For an example from our world we might look at Prohibition and say that, as
madcap as it was, still it was a high ideal and/or an atonement for the
wild booze years before it, yet at root (how to explain?) it seems like an
expression of the Puritan roots that preceded the founding of the nation.
(The "unanticipated consequence," of course, was the unprecedented rise of
organized crime.  How this could have been unanticipated remains a mystery,
except for the strange blinders that always adorn rose-colored glasses.)

>> Adam quoted me and wrote:
>> But I see no evidence of a welfare system at all in TAD.

> While it may not be mentioned explicitly, I think it's safe to say that one
> exists.  Firstly, in matters not gender- or reproduction-related, Otherworld
> society seems similar to America in the late 1940s or early 1950s.  We had a
> welfare system then, though much less extensive than the Great Society, so
> it's reasonable to suppose that Otherworld does.  Secondly, Green thinks at
> one point that a society dominated by women would care more about children
> than ours does.  Though realistically there's no reason why Green should be
> in a position to know (he seems to observe very little that's not related to
> his quest for Lara), I get the feeling we're supposed to regard his
> ruminations on Otherworld as reliable.  So if postwar America and Otherworld
> differ in this regard, I'd expect the difference to be in Otherworld's
> favor.  Third, and most importantly, the practical aspect: a woman living on
> her own, raising twenty-five children, could not possibly support herself
> unaided (unless she were rich).

First point, right, but add they still have slavery, =mostly= in the South.
That should shake up the picture pretty nicely!

I am willing to concede on some points: I, too, saw Lara's "3 to 36" number
of babies, and have readjusted my sense (50 babies is thus far above
normal); likewise the shortage of young men -- there are too few young men
to fight in wars, iirc a comment Gene Wolfe made about the Otherworld in
one or more interviews.  We see this in the lack of a War Between the
States.  (It also fits in with the idea that the ancient matriarchal
utopias were all predicated on slavery.)

So in Otherworld most men die between the age of 14 and 21, let's say.  Any
man who survives beyond these years is either asexual or possesses an iron
will or is simply too frightened.  And the breeding population isn't a
minority, it is just that the men are winnowed out so early that adult men
are a numerical minority.

OTOH, I guess I should outline my other unsupported notions about family
structure and political structure in Otherworld.  I figured that power
collected in families, whether they be blue bloods in New England or
Faulknerian dynasties in the South.  When every mother is a widow, there
are no "single moms" is how I would put it -- new mothers would naturally
have a place already waiting for them at their own mothers's house.
Mothers would have power, but grandmothers would have more, and great
grandmothers -- whew!

As for Congress, I vaguely thought that the Senate would be something more
like a House of Mothers (or Grandmothers?) and the House of Representatives
would be the more plebian (maybe even have male politicians).  So the
passage of the bill through both would represent a surge from lower to
upper.

We do not see any of this in the text: we see no grandmothers, we see no
congressional politicians (I don't think), we don't see any dynastic
houses.  What we see are the "little people" at the bottom struggling to
get up, just like the characters in FREE LIVE FREE.  So granted, in these
circumstances we might expect to see "single moms," mothers who are not an
appendage of a larger household, but I do not think that we do.

>> I sense that you still cannot
>> see the rather desperate pre-mothers: Gloria Brooks (maybe), the ice queen
>> (definitely), and even Fanny.

> I don't recall Gloria, but my impression is that the ice queen is too young
> to be really desperate.  I'd attribute her sudden violence to a combination
> of her great triumph of attracting a man to her float being suddenly
> snatched away, combined with Green's unfavorably comparing her to the
> goddess (as she must think as she undoubtedly thinks, not realizing that for
> Green Lara is a flesh-and-blood woman).  And Fanny is happy to give up the
> putative advantages of motherhood in favor of being able to "do it over and
> over" with Green (309).  Which is not to say that women in Otherworld don't
> strongly desire to be mothers, as I said.

I dunno.  The thing about Fanny is, she is so ambitious to climb up the
socioeconomic ladder.  As a police officer, Green could lead her to a
promotion, or even a double-promotion, iirc her spoken fantasy on the
subject.  The motherhood element does not seem to be for Fanny an
"either/or" thing, that is, it does not seem to be a choice of career or
motherhood . . . it seems like an "and" thing: that motherhood will lead to
promotion, either directly or as another element.

The thing about Gloria is that, if allegations are true, she has
rape/murdered a patient in a mental ward.  Far more predatory and serious
than the gay proposition in the Earth mental ward.

The ice queen, ah.  My view of her is changing . . . today I see her, and
all the doll-attackers as following a model of the goddess which just
happens to be wrong, according to the goddess herself.  That is to say: the
ice queen is enacting the behavior of Cybele, and the stained glass that
Roy was bugged by (sorry Roy, the short answer was "Love-goddess-with-spear
is far more ancient than Greek myths -- it is more like Ishtar and those
other fierce Middle Eastern goddesses of Love & War") is an example of the
wrong model being enshrined.  Because Cybele loved Attis and became
insanely jealous when he fell in love with a mortal princess, so she caused
his insanity, which made him cut himself: but in TAD Lara says this was all
a mistake and misunderstood, which I take to mean that Lara is more like
Aphrodite, and the Otherworld church is focused on Cybele.

With this in mind, obviously a rival (the doll or the "other goddess" who
stands behind her) makes the Cybele-devotee go into a berserker rage: the
devotee re-enacts the whole thing.

Still, a main point about the ice queen: she represents a socially
sanctioned non-marriage approach to the reproductive situation.  But talk
about random selection!

> And what precisely is North's crime?  His rap sheet says he was "Arrested
> 8/8/68 ngri." (128), but I don't know what that means.

Our mutual friend Google tells me that it means "Not Guilty by Reason of
Insanity."

As for North's secret societies, "Iron Boot" reminds me of Jack London's
THE IRON HEEL, a rather prophetic vision of fascism.

>> Green
>> saying "I'm not gay" to the antique-collecting woman (233).  (I could have
>> sworn Green said it another time earlier on in Otherworld, but I can't find
>> it now.)

> You're right; to North, in fact. (39)

Thanks, Adam!  Yikes, for a guy who hasn't reread the book, you've got an
unbelievable grip on it -- did you index it during your first read? <g>

> Did Bailey die immediately?  The only two references I found to him don't
> say anything about his dying.

Right, I'll grant you that.  Then again, I don't see anybody making any
moves to say goodbye to Al, shake his hand -- their sense of him seems to
be very past tense.

> Uh huh.  (Fanny's excitement at the prospect of being able to "do it over
> and over," mentioned above, fits with this picture.)

I dunno.  Fanny's excitement is very odd to me . . . it marks her, somehow,
but as what?  A visitor, maybe.  Or an Aphrodite devotee in a world of
Cybele worshipers.  (Ooops, these two options aren't that different.)

It is one of those weird little shifts, like when Green says that E-women
at singles bars and company picnics were just like O-women -- after babies,
not after Love.

In a sense she is playing it perfectly: she will be his Aphrodite.
(Aphrodite likes to do it over and over; Aphrodite doesn't much like having
babies, which is what those earth mothers like Cybele do.)  Unfortunately,
Green does not love Fanny, so for him it just signals another loveless
coupling, the type he has been rejecting all through the book.

=mantis=

---