{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3872",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 3872,
    "subject": "Gender in TBOTLS",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2003-03-03T13:21:16+00:00",
    "last": "2003-03-03T13:21:16+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0303-3002@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Che Monro",
        "address": "flirt at technologist.com"
      },
      "date": "2003-03-03T13:21:16+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Gender in TBOTLS",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I've been reading in the archives some speculation about gender changing in \nthe Book of the Long Sun, in particular that Chenile and Hyacinth may have \nbeen male.\n\nI remember the little guardsman character who used to dress up as a woman \nand hang around in bars, and how he got murdered and his friend missed him. \nThat was sad, and funny.\n\nNow people speculate that Hy might have been a male chem too. Well I \nsuppose that there is no evidence against it, right? I find the romance \nbetween Silk and Hyacinth to be the sweetest and funniest part of the whole \nbook. Her calling him little pet names and him jumping out of second floor \nwindows to escape her clutches. That was so sweet and funny!\n\nIf in fact she was a man then it is still sweet and probably even funnier. \nI wonder though, on the Whorl whether a male chem who wanted to play the \nfeminine part wouldn't be able to get hold of some female parts to play \nwith? We know the little guardsman didn't, but perhaps Hyacinth was female \nin form, um, down there?\n\nI wonder if \"The Operation\" was available for humans on the whorl? Pig gets \nhis eyes back in the end, surgery that we couldn't do, so perhaps sex \nchanges were possible, at least in Chenile's childhood. That would be an \ninteresting character, a poor young boy who goes out gathering water cress \nwith his family to stay alive, they hit hard times so decided to sell him \nto a whore house where he is made into a she in order to make more money. \nTalk about a strange existence!\n\nDoes anyone else notice Roman parallels in Wolf's work. There are some \nobvious Rome symbols in Nessus, but in the Long Sun both the religion and \ngovernment seemed very Roman in character to me. Delightfully alien, yet \nfamiliar at the same time.\n\nOn Blue in Return to the Whorl where Horn and Silk were camped out in the \nbarrel behind the shop, that place seemed a lot like Rome too. Their \nfamilies, the way they treated their servants, the social ordering, the \nstories they told all seemed very Roman. And notice how Silk and Horn \nfitted right in without any difficulties?\n\nI love Wolfe's spin on the Vampires in these books. So tragic, so human, \nand so strange. Utterly masterful.\n\n\nChé Franz Joseph Monro -- http://www.chemonro.com\nche at chemonro.com    --     flirt at technologist.com"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}