Author Topic: EP159: Elites  (Read 35982 times)

JoeFitz

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Reply #75 on: June 23, 2008, 03:35:53 AM
I don't remember, exactly, but I got the impression that there wasn't any good scientific reason why the elites should be all female, but one of the original researchers said "Hey! Mothers defending their young!", and since then it had mainly been a point of dogma, or maybe ideology, that women (of the right sort, with the right stimuli) would be better front-line soldiers than men.

I think the text bears this interpretation out. It strikes me that this is the deeper point. The story inverts our prejudice that men make better soldiers with a scientifically dubious dogma and questions it. Recall the instance where the main character looks for those reports about these tests but cannot find them. This inversion aspect, I found, was the most enjoyable. For a number of minutes at the beginning, I thought 'why did Steve get a woman to read a story about soldiers' until it was made clear that the soldiers were women.

It strikes me that one good reason to make soldiers female is the same reason that sometime in the 19th century, women started to become the majority of teachers: fewer men were signing up. In this story, I get the impression that propaganda merely started telling soldiers that the "maternal protective instinct" made women better soldiers and men stopped becoming soldiers for fear of being labeled feminine. You'll recall the comments the main character had about the soft, weak doctor.



Listener

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Reply #76 on: May 25, 2010, 12:55:34 PM

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Unblinking

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Reply #77 on: June 02, 2010, 04:16:11 PM
Does this week's Drabblecast feel like a prequel to this story? Same author, same idea (woman warriors)...

http://web.me.com/normsherman/Site/Podcast/Entries/2010/5/21_Drabblecast_164-_The_Observer_by_Kristine_Kathryn_Rusch_Drabble-_The_Miner_byTravis_Scott_Greer.html

That would make sense.  When I listened to The Observer I'd forgotten that this one was also by KKR, but I still had a strong association with it. 

Unfortunately, realizing that increases my dislike for this one that I already didn't like particularly well.  The other story used it to much better result.  This one seemed like it was just trying to justify it's premise of women warriors and trying too hard.  In a society where technology is advanced enough to genetically engineer supersoldiers, creating super-mother soldiers isn't going to trump advanced weaponry on the other side.  Adrenaline fueled protective instincts aren't all that helpful with modern weaponry.  In the days of blade to blade combat, sure, but then the technology for engineering wouldn't be available. 

The one concept that I found very intriguing from it all was that the memory wipes did not stop the PTSD.  I don't know if that would be true or not, but if it would, it would say a lot about the nature of PTSD, perhaps that it is rooted deep in the brainstem below the level of conscious memory.



yicheng

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Reply #78 on: June 02, 2010, 04:26:20 PM
I heard the Drabblecast story as well, and I agree with Unblinking that "the Observer" seemed better executed.  I was better sold that the character in the Observer was one woman you didn't want to f*ck with:  she was a bloody killer rather than a hormone-case.   

I still find the idea of hormonally-enhanced women soldiers to be rather unnecessary, but that's just my opinion.  Other countries already use women as combat troops (British and Isreali's come to mind), and I don't know any military mind that would think uncontrollably violent soldiers are a good idea.  Discipline, training, organization, ruthlessness, and technology wins wars, not blood-thirsty sociopathy.  That's why those short-ish Roman legionaries were able to beat the crap out of the larger stronger Gauls.