----- Original Message ----- From: Ellynne G. rilliara@juno.com
On Mon, 5 Feb 2001 15:54:09 -0000 "Fiona Moore" nydersdyner@yahoo.co.uk writes:
Uh, oh. Can I safely admit to hating "The Handmaid's Tale"? I thought
Oh, absolutely. As a story, you can kick holes in almost every aspect of it. But as a political/polemical tract, I'm inclined to like it. To each their own.
Actually, that depends too. Witness female abandonment in parts of China; in a generation or two, their fertility will be seriously impaired by the excess of males, but this doesn't stop families abandoning surplus daughters in favour of sons.
Two points. Incidents of North American Indians kidnaping settlers seem to have risen in direct response to higher death rates (more from disease, at that point, than warfare). Who was taken, why, and how they were incorporated into the group varied from tribe to tribe. But, of adults, more women seem to have chosen _not_ to return than men
But to judge by what you're saying (I'm admittedly stronger on Africa than North America), the kidnapping there included *both* genders, not just women.
Second point. China has only begun to feel the crunch of its one child policy. The results aren't pretty (side issue of irritation with Bujold [one of my favorite authors] for ignoring the dark side of high percentage male populations). Women being sold (against their will) as either wives or prostitutes is on the rise.
Fair enough, but it still hasn't stopped them doing it. And I take your point that the China situation is more complex than I've painted it; I just wanted to make the point that just because a society lacks women doesn't mean it (and I mean the society, not individual families, who no doubt love their daughters like crazy) values them.
In Canada, for instance, the French and English didn't come charging in, gun down the natives and take their land-- they sent in a few people to get involved in the fur trade, then a few more, then a few more. That doesn't make Deliverance any less colonialist.
Uh, but there is a reason so many Indians in the U.S. opted to move to Canada having to do with better treatment and greater likelyhood of having certian basic rights respected.
Agreed (faintly nationalist <g>). But still, there's more forms of colonialism than the directly murderous kind; just because the British/Canadians were nicer to the Indians than the Americans doesn't make them any less colonialist.
Fiona
The Posthumous Memoirs of Secretary Rontane Available for public perusal at http://nyder.r67.net
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