Author Topic: EP170: Pervert  (Read 34388 times)

CammoBlammo

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Reply #50 on: August 13, 2008, 12:42:43 AM
Well, I didn't like this one, mainly for the reasons already cited. To be honest, I felt like the story finished just as something interesting looked like it was finally about to happen. Immature ejaculations aside there wasn't any sex here, even though it was clearly a theme.

I got the idea that Ally (?) felt the same way about the protagonist. I thought they might somehow end up together in a forbidden entanglement, secretly being married by a renegade priest, ala Romeo and Juliet. Instead, everyone ends up doing just what they were supposed to without challenging the social structure or the Gnostic* religion.

I couldn't figure out if the main guy was being pushed into hydro- or homo-. The whole story was leading up to his marriage, but then he ends up in the pool to spawn. I think I missed something obvious.

*Just for the record, 'Gnosticism' is a family of religions that emphasise the evil of the physical world and the goodness of the spiritual. The spirit and the flesh can have nothing to do with each other. In very broad terms, this leads to two opposing approaches to the practice of the religion. First, adherents can subject the physical to the spiritual by forsaking physical pleasure for spiritual reasons. This leads to asceticism and even self-abuse according to the not-so-fun meaning of the term. Second, they might decide that since the physical and the spiritual are completely separate, anything we do in the physical world cannot affect our spiritual being. This can lead to rampant hedonism. Guess which version has historically been the most popular.



Darwinist

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Reply #51 on: August 13, 2008, 01:20:01 AM
I'm in the group that liked this story.  Well read and interesting, and kept me interested until the end. 

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.    -  Carl Sagan


wintermute

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Reply #52 on: August 13, 2008, 02:51:02 PM
I couldn't figure out if the main guy was being pushed into hydro- or homo-. The whole story was leading up to his marriage, but then he ends up in the pool to spawn. I think I missed something obvious.
As I understand it, a "hydrosexual" is someone who enjoys spawning in the pool. The word used to describe this act is "marriage".

Doesn't have to be Earth, but I'm pretty sure these people are human or at least started out that way ... for one thing, the quoted phrases of their "scriptures" are all from the Christian Bible.  (Apparently they've expunged or rewritten the bits that condemn homosexuality, in order to endorse it instead.)
Their scripture certainly contains similar themes to the Christian Bible, though if you translated them into different idioms, they would "obviously" be from the Upanishads, or the Rig Veda, or any of a dozen other unrelated religious texts. There's no reason why aliens wouldn't also use those same themes in their own religions.

Throughout most of the story, I was assuming that they were humans, though with a very different psychology than anything we see now. But when the changes in gross anatomy were revealed, I couldn't imagine that they were meant to be anything other than an amphibian-like race of aliens. Or industrialised toads, millions of years after humans went extinct, but that's less likely. There's simply nothing there (other than a vague similarity of religion) that implies that these people are human.

I enjoyed it, though. Interesting story.

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eytanz

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Reply #53 on: August 13, 2008, 03:29:43 PM
I couldn't figure out if the main guy was being pushed into hydro- or homo-. The whole story was leading up to his marriage, but then he ends up in the pool to spawn. I think I missed something obvious.
As I understand it, a "hydrosexual" is someone who enjoys spawning in the pool. The word used to describe this act is "marriage".


It's just occured to me that maybe the author was trying to make a subtle political point. This is a world where homosexuality is the norm, and still the word "marriage" is used narrowly to describe the breeding of a male and a female (even though other aspects of marriage, such as permanence and intimacy, are not present).



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Reply #54 on: August 13, 2008, 04:39:57 PM
It's just occured to me that maybe the author was trying to make a subtle political point. This is a world where homosexuality is the norm, and still the word "marriage" is used narrowly to describe the breeding of a male and a female (even though other aspects of marriage, such as permanence and intimacy, are not present).

I'm reminded of the bit in A Boy and His Dog in which they're forcibly pumping out Don Johnson's semen while having a parade of girls march through and "marry" him one by one so that they can bear his children.  ;D

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eytanz

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Reply #55 on: August 14, 2008, 08:32:46 AM
It seems like the quality of stories is down.  I certainly expect fluctuations over time and not sure what can be accomplished to fix this.  I'm hoping it will pass.  I wonder if it has to do with filling 2 podcasts now instead of 1.

I think it all depends on what you like. Some people didn't like this story. I didn't like it myself but only in the sense that it reminded me of places like Saudi Arabia where the women are virtual prisoners, chattel.

Interesting - was that because of the visual similarity (full body robes/veils)? Because culturally, one of the interesting things about this story was that the men and women were both treated more or less equally - both sexes had to wear veils, not just women, and the only indication of a difference between the way the sexes was treated was that construction workers seemed to be exclusively male, and I don't know if we should read anything into that but an unintended injection of our own world's gender differences.

Quote
  A story like this makes me think of what exists in real life today. And that makes me grit my teeth. But it also showed me a different scenario of where sexual segregation could lead. That made it interesting. I would have liked more closure, a way out of the box trapping the culture and characters, but within the context of a short story that probably wasn't possible.

I don't think it's just a matter of it being a short story - my way of understanding the story was that the fact that there was no way out was one of the main points.

One of the most interesting aspects of this story is how thoroughly the priests have succeeded. The fact that his species has sexual reproduction, and the fact that - as he says - in older times they mated "like the animals" indicates that heterosexuality must have a biological basis with them. I'm guessing that many, many people in this world are attracted to the opposite sex. But they are so indoctrinated to be ashamed and repressed about it, that they don't even realize that they are not the only one like them.

There is no way out of that system, not for those who are not brave enough to stand up against the system - and, in the short run, not even for those who are. But in any case, the narrator is clearly not one such.



wintermute

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Reply #56 on: August 14, 2008, 11:49:53 AM
Because culturally, one of the interesting things about this story was that the men and women were both treated more or less equally - both sexes had to wear veils, not just women, and the only indication of a difference between the way the sexes was treated was that construction workers seemed to be exclusively male, and I don't know if we should read anything into that but an unintended injection of our own world's gender differences.
Actually, I'm not sure that's necessarily the case. The one, solitary female we see seems to be treated much the same as her male counterpart, but we see so little of the women of this world that we simply can't make any generalisation about sexual equality.

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eytanz

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Reply #57 on: August 14, 2008, 12:09:42 PM
Because culturally, one of the interesting things about this story was that the men and women were both treated more or less equally - both sexes had to wear veils, not just women, and the only indication of a difference between the way the sexes was treated was that construction workers seemed to be exclusively male, and I don't know if we should read anything into that but an unintended injection of our own world's gender differences.
Actually, I'm not sure that's necessarily the case. The one, solitary female we see seems to be treated much the same as her male counterpart, but we see so little of the women of this world that we simply can't make any generalisation about sexual equality.

True - let me clarify my statement. I didn't mean that the society as a whole was treating owmen as equal, because as you said, we don't really know about that. What is true is that in every aspect of life where both men and women are mentioned in the story, there seems to be identical treatment:

- Both men and women wear robes and veils that conceal everything but their eyes. The only difference in the description of the two were the colors, and it wasn't clear if that is a matter of social perscription, or just fashion.
- Both men and women are disallowed from crossing into the other's areas.
- When on the way to the "marrying" pool, the narrator imagines that the women on the way there are in a parallel journy. In other words, he is not expecting them to be treated differently.
- As you mentioned, it didn't seem that there was a difference in treatment of men and women in the shared workspace, though we did have a small sample size.
- When the narrator was watching the children, he said he couldn't tell if they were girls or boys. This means that children of both sexes are allowed to participate in similar forms of play.
- The first passage quoted from the scripture specifically mentions both men and women being created in god's image.

It's also worth noting that the narrator never mentions anything negative said about women. This is important, since he was constantly thinking of other pieces of dogma that forbade heterosexual contact. If there was any scripture or teaching that said women were inferior, unclean, or anything like that, I would expect him to be actively thinking of it, whether or not he agreed with it.

Note that none of the above are in any way conclusive, but at least this shows a trend.



zZzacha

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Reply #58 on: August 14, 2008, 12:24:15 PM
I really liked this story.

It reminded me a little of the situation in the book '1984' by Orwell, because of the enforced ideas about life or love and the conflict that the main character had with that. He felt there was something 'wrong' with him because he didn't feel the way he 'had' to feel by society. Struggling with those feelings and not knowing whether or not he could express that with anyone, because everybody felt different than him or knew how to pretend to feel that way (like the old man, who I thought also didn't have the homosexual feelings).

The ending left me with weird images about the conception, fishing the fertilized eggs out of the water, growing babies in a tank or something. Or are the women brought back in, to fish up the eggs between their legs? Will it lead to a swimming contest? What happens when they get water up their noses? Eh...

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wintermute

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Reply #59 on: August 14, 2008, 01:59:41 PM
Note that none of the above are in any way conclusive, but at least this shows a trend.
Agreed, but I'd raise one small issue:

- When on the way to the "marrying" pool, the narrator imagines that the women on the way there are in a parallel journy. In other words, he is not expecting them to be treated differently.
Can the narrator really be assumed to know how women are being treated in this case? I'll grant that he believes their journey is much the same as his, but I don't see how that could be more than an assumption from a lack of evidence.

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eytanz

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Reply #60 on: August 14, 2008, 07:31:33 PM
- When on the way to the "marrying" pool, the narrator imagines that the women on the way there are in a parallel journy. In other words, he is not expecting them to be treated differently.
Can the narrator really be assumed to know how women are being treated in this case? I'll grant that he believes their journey is much the same as his, but I don't see how that could be more than an assumption from a lack of evidence.

Yes, that is correct, but the point was - he is well-educated, and as someone on the priesthood path who works in the government sector, he is part of the ruling class, even if just a peripheral one, and he is one of the few in the society who has direct contact (though not physical contact, of course) with women. He is apparently able to have free and casual conversation with women without being monitored. So a situation where A - women are treated very differently than men, and B - he is unaware of this, is very implausible.



contra

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Reply #61 on: August 15, 2008, 11:50:22 AM
I'm going to have to go back and listen to this one again.  At the end I just through 'huh, odd', and it didn't make a large impression of me.  Maybe I missed something.

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Hatton

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Reply #62 on: August 15, 2008, 08:20:00 PM
I think my only response to this story should be, "meh".

Actually, I got more out of the geek dad outro than then story.  Maybe it's because my son is 3 1/2 and I can relate with Steve a LOT on that.

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WillMoo

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Reply #63 on: August 15, 2008, 08:47:00 PM
"Oh, I get it in the future hetero's are perverts and everyone is sort of muslim-ish." he said with a shrug of his shoulders. 



Sandikal

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Reply #64 on: August 15, 2008, 11:50:48 PM
I thought this story had some promise that it didn't live up to.  I liked the idea of a totally gender-segregated society.  I liked the idea of forbidden desires.  I was curious about hydrosexuality.  I was wondering how the protagonist would resolve his conflict. 

Unfortunately, the ending left me dissatisfied. 



wakela

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Reply #65 on: August 20, 2008, 12:08:43 AM
I don't think anything I am about to say is the author's intention, but I got to thinking that if this is a non-human race maybe the main character is a pervert.  Humans (for the most part) have collectively decided that incest is a perversion even though it is done by the beasts of the field.  Practically speaking, a society that condemns incest will have fewer birth defects and a higher chance of survival.  It could be that by condemning heterosexual relationships the folks in this story have given their society a leg up.  So it's not so much that there are lots of heterosexuals and they are being put down by the man, but that most people really do think that heterosexual relationships are gross and dangerous.  Not the way our society thinks of homosexuality, but the way it thinks of incest or pedophilia. 

Then I thought, why do I have to preface that thought with 'if this is a non-human race'?

I'm not really sure where I am going with this.  It just occurred to me.  And again, I don't think that this was the message the author intended. 



wakela

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Reply #66 on: August 20, 2008, 12:43:05 AM
* the "button that can zap you" thing... was that a joke Allie was making, or is there really a button?

  I was curious about this too, but on my third listen through I decided it was just a reference to him jumping like he had been shocked earlier in the story when she psoke to him. I think that, in this soceity, if there was thought to be a risk with these people interacting that it would just not be allowed in the first place like it is for the rest of their society.
Samuel Delaney once said that science fiction is a more literal genre in the sense that we expect to be able to take expressions more literally when we read SF.  Consider "She went outside and her world exploded."  Totally different meaning if you read it in a Grisham novel or a Brin one.  My other favorite, "He woke up and turned on his left side."



Myrealana

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Reply #67 on: August 22, 2008, 07:15:30 PM
This one started out nicely. I started to get a feel for things with Jamin and Zel and the narrator, with his attraction to a woman. And then, it got weird - too weird for me.

I normally applaud stories that leave something to the imagination, and story-tellers that don't feel the need to lay everything out for us in a neat little line, but this one, I think, went too far the other way. Most of the threads started in the story had no payoff - Allie, the meeting with the old man, even Jamin and Zel who just walk off stage never to be seen again. They were all just scenery along the path between the opening line and the vague explanation of the "hydrosexual" means.

I'm going to have to go with a thumbs-down this time around. I'm disappointed because I thought it had such potential at the start.

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DigitalVG

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Reply #68 on: August 22, 2008, 10:31:34 PM
Oh brave new world which has such fish-people in it.

Sorry.  Didn't care for Huxley's take on this story either.  I'm sure the girl was terribly pneumatic and all, but I'm still bored of the 'Ogg need make more Oggs' trope.  Next.



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Reply #69 on: August 22, 2008, 10:40:37 PM
There are two kinds of people in the world.  Heteros and Hydros.  And then there's me.  Poor poor Zoidberg.  *slobbery tentacle cry*



stePH

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Reply #70 on: August 23, 2008, 03:31:20 PM
Oh brave new world which has such fish-people in it.

Sorry.  Didn't care for Huxley's take on this story either.  I'm sure the girl was terribly pneumatic and all, but I'm still bored of the 'Ogg need make more Oggs' trope.  Next.


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Reply #71 on: June 30, 2010, 05:03:17 PM
I couldn't figure out if the main guy was being pushed into hydro- or homo-. The whole story was leading up to his marriage, but then he ends up in the pool to spawn. I think I missed something obvious.
As I understand it, a "hydrosexual" is someone who enjoys spawning in the pool. The word used to describe this act is "marriage".

If that's the case, then "marriage" was a badly chosen word for this.  Presumably by the time of this story the language has changed, so any weird assignment of word usage is entirely due to the author.  Marriage, regardless of the context, implies some sort of permanence--not lasting forever, perhaps, but surely describing something that lasts longer than wanking into a pool, something which is expected to last on the scale of seconds/minutes and then be over with.  I mean, it would make more sense to call eating "marriage"--at least it's on the scale of hours before most of the food's mass leaves my body.



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Reply #72 on: June 30, 2010, 05:07:26 PM
Throughout most of the story, I was assuming that they were humans, though with a very different psychology than anything we see now. But when the changes in gross anatomy were revealed, I couldn't imagine that they were meant to be anything other than an amphibian-like race of aliens. Or industrialised toads, millions of years after humans went extinct, but that's less likely. There's simply nothing there (other than a vague similarity of religion) that implies that these people are human.

If they're intended to be non-human, then they should've been written explicitly as such.  Being a human myself, if I read a story that does not give any hints about being non-human, I will assume they are human--and if it's suddenly revealed at the end that they're amphibians, well, then I'm not going to like the story.

For what it's worth, I assumed that the women had some sort of non-biological aid to extract their eggs--I hope for their sake that the procedure is done in some way that it can be enjoyable, otherwise they really have the short end of the stick in this society.



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Reply #73 on: June 30, 2010, 05:18:00 PM
I really disliked this one.

1.  It seemed to be heavily message driven, trying to teach me a lesson about how gays have been treated in our society.  I don't even disagree with that message--I've never understood those who condemned homosexuality.  You should be allowed to love who you love.  But I just don't care for message driven stories, even when I agree with the message.

2.  There was a lot of dead weight in the story.  Lots of characters introduced and then dropped by the wayside without having made any significant impression, only delaying the long-awaited reveal of what the heck a hydrosexual is.  If those characters were really supposed to be unimportant, the story could've been trimmed significantly for a smaller word count and more punch.  If they were supposed to be important, well it didn't come across.

3.  The use of the word "marriage" wasn't clear.  If "marriage" is what they call ejaculating into the pool, well, it wasn't a good word choice.

4.  It was suddenly unclear at the end if they were human because of their spawning method.  If they're not human, this should've been conveyed long before.  If they were, then this was just needlessly confusing.

5.  We're shown an apparent love interest, he rebels inside his mind, and it seems like he's going to get courageous and take some real action.  And then he goes and does exactly what everyone expected of him, end of story.  In the end, he was completely unmemorable and unworthy of having a story written about him.  I mean, imagine if Harvey Milk had just accepted the status quo and repressed his homosexuality.  Do you think he'd be memorable, and even have a movie based on him?  Hell no.  No one would know who he was because he'd be unremarkable, just another guy.  The same goes for this guy--if he were brave enough to take some action, any action, I might really be able to root for him.  But as is, he just fades into the background of his own story.