Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time
January 26, 2010
gamble81
Tags: Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of time
In the story Woman on the Edge of Time, by March Piercy gender is nearly eliminated in the world. They never use terms like him/her/himself/herself but rather per or perself. For example Peircing wrote, “Ah person is coming…person is calling”. (128) This leads for ambiguously gendered people. The children are made in labs and raised in artificial wombs. If someone dies, “co-mothers” are chosen to parent the children. The masculine terms “father/dad” are completely eliminated in this society and the term “mother” can go to anyone in this society. Connie asks Luciente about this and Luciente just responds that they don’t define you by male or female but by what you do best. (207)
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This story introduces an interesting question: what would the world be like without gender? There would be less discrimination when it came your sex. There would no longer be any debate about which sex gets paid more, or which sex is expected to stay home and cook dinner. There are things that are associated in our society with what sex you are (ie. pink/blue, legos/dolls, pants/dress) and these things would no longer be assigned to a certain sex. Even today, some people would judge if a little boy wearing a pink dress was playing with dolls. But, in this world that Peircing has created this discrimination would not exist. This would not be frowned upon or thought as weird.
However, in a way having no gender/sexes is like loosing your identity. Some people associate their sex with a lot they do in their life. For example, I like being a girly girl and people know me as that. When people give me gifts they know to pick it out in pink because that is my favorite color. So this book raises more questions associated with gender/sex. What would the world really be like without it? Would people act differently or identify themselves differently? Would people be happier?
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1.
fabiusbile |
January 26, 2010 at 11:04 pm
While I believe that some of what you propose may in fact be true in a genderless society, nothing comes without its downsides.
Not to attribute a single type of behavior to all peoples, but most of us seek a way to be better than those around us. We are competitive creatures whether we want to be or not. To be completely uncompetitive is to sink in our current society. Of course, this constant competition creates bias in the form of discrimination, be it by gender, race, sexuality, religion etc. Now say we were to remove some of these factors that allow for competition (in this case, gender, and we’ll go ahead and say sexuality because that would tend to be coupled with gender). Now we have two less factors by which to make ourselves feel superior to one another. What does this cause in the end?
Well I wont draw any large conclusions, in order to avoid a slippery slope logical fallacy, but it would be easy to see that those who already discriminate based on a certain point (gender & sexuality) would just have to turn their focus elsewhere.
So while a genderless society may benefit from not having one form of discrimination, other forms would rise to take its place. This would continue until either humans become completely noncompetitive, or we remove every single different feature between one another, and have a society of completely similar beings (which would be boring). So while a genderless world may be nice to think about in some aspects, more changes would have to take place to create a truly balanced world.
2.
Ryan |
January 27, 2010 at 11:54 pm
You bring up some very interesting points in your post. In one of my other classes we were discussing gender roles in America. There is a lot of disparity created because of gender roles in our society. For example, on average, women get paid less for doing the same amount of work.
With regard to the text and what Piercy is doing; I feel as though she is calling for people to look more into the soul/personality of a person. By eliminating gender roles, she exposes what is inside of the characters she has created. And if we allow ourselves to live up to our own standards, and not a standard that society/gender roles tell us to live up to, everyone is happier because their happy with themself.