Maybe the reason she looks so happy to see Avon is that now that the Messiah has arrived, she will soon be off the hook of obligation and can go and do whatever else she may have had in mind-- marrying her true love, perhaps

In that case, I would *hope* she'd have tactfully wriggled her hand free from the Messiah's.

Re: the idea that technology, as personified by Avon in Deliverance, is a masculine quality: but what about the scenes with Vila and the huntresses in "Powerplay," and of course the infamous "Power"? In both of those episodes we see a male/female social split, but with the women associated with the technological side.

Well, traditionally our pro-technology culture has associated technology with men. Boys play with trucks, girls play with dolls. Boys get toy chem labs and erector sets complete with motor, and get to take shop classes. Girls get paint sets and make-up kits and take arts or home ec. Women score lower on math tests but are better than men at reading emotional displays. Many people who feel technology without philosphy is ruining the planet like to embrace goddess-worship as part of their world view, which suggests even most rebels against society are buying into the technical/man-- emotional/woman dichotomy of the mainstream culture. (This ties in with the thread about how even rebelling from the culture, we a shaped by it). However, the Ben Steed theory is apparantly that civilization saps from men that which makes them manly, and technology, therefore, is a woman's thing. I have no idea why Powerplay is the way it is, other than 1. would Vila have gone with strangers he's being warned against if they weren't very pretty young women? and 2. maybe the author was conscienciously trying to avoid being considered sexist, since Deliverance has delivered such an attack on Nation's subconscious.