M. C. A. Hogarth (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} haikujaguar) wrote,@ 2007-03-16 11:22:00 |
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| Entry tags: | meta-conversations, writing |
The Color of Your Worldview
"A reader asked me if there are any gender discrimination issues in Kherishdar," I say. Since I'm aunerai, an alien, I speak plainly to him without fear of giving offense.
Thirukedi, the Emperor, is standing across from me, arranging flowers. "What kind of discrimination?"
"Gender," I say. "Can men do things that women can't?"
I can hear his smile in his voice. "More like there are things women can do that men can't. One would think you would know that, Storyteller. Or do men bear children in your species?"
"That's not what I meant," I said. "Are there some caste-ranks that women are not allowed to do? Or men?"
He looks over his shoulder at me, one brow lifted. "What have your observations told you, Storyteller?"
I don't have to answer that: I have seen women and men in every caste-rank. Men who take care of families. Women who own their own businesses. Men and women toiling in the fields; men and women in charge of powerful noble and regal households; men and women as dancers and decorations and servants. The Guardian caste is almost all male, but does not exclude women: if they have the ishas, the defining spirit, they are welcome. Women and men are worshipped as gods and goddesses, and as ancestors the only weight given to them after death is measured by how effective they were.
But there's one place where I have never seen a woman. "My observations," I say (because even an aunerai would never think to not answer one of the Emperor's questions), "show me that a woman has never been Thirukedi."
I wait for anger or silence or some other sign that I've hit a nerve. Instead, Thirukedi laughs. "Oh, Storyteller. How your society's inequities have trained you to see only with a fractured lens."
"Well, it's true!" I say.
"Of course it's true," the Emperor says. "Tell me, aunerai... what is the central mystery of my caste-rank?"
"I--" I trail off, then say, "Oh." He asked, though, so I obediently answer, "That you are the same man who founded the Empire thousands of years ago."
"Reborn over and over to guide and serve the Empire, yes?" Thirukedi asks.
"Yes," I say.
"If I'm the same person," Thirukedi says, "then I must have the same body, yes?"
"Why?" I ask.
He huffs a soft laugh. "Just because we place each individual in their proper place no matter their sex, dear Storyteller, does not mean we believe we are so unaffected by our sex that we can switch to some other body with impunity." He returns to the flowers. "Kherishdar could very well have been begun by a woman, and then Thirukedi would be eternally female. But Kherishdar was begun by a man, and so you see me."
"You're not actually the same person--" I begin, but he lifts a hand.
"Enough." He's not angry, but there is something implacable in his voice. "Do not burden our society with your insistence that there is nothing mystical that cannot be explained. You may believe that my spirit is not the same spirit that founded Kherishdar. But that does not make you right."
Chastened, I bow and withdraw... for that surely was a dismissal. Funny how things that seem so obviously explained by your own worldviews can lead you to completely misinterpret reality. The "gender inequity" I observed in Thirukedi never being female seemed obvious to me before I realized it had nothing to do with gender at all... but with metaphysics.
So there you are,
altonwings... this one's a non-starter.Stardancer Home.
