"Suzette Haden Elgin - Only A Housewife" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elgin Suzette Haden)

he was master. The girl had sighed once and died, her face ravaged by her
illness but unmarked by so much as a twinge of discomfort at Joro's hands. She
was better off dead, as her family was better off for being rid of her and
having the money he paid them.

Joro was quantum leaps ahead of the women. Never mind that they had had
thousands of years to refine the process and fit it to the traditions of the
culture. They were ignorant. It was ridiculous that this matter of shelter had
been left to them for so long. He was not about to live in symbiosis with a
house, shackled for the rest of his life by his own body; the very thought was
repulsive. It wasn't just the loss of freedom, although he could never have
accepted that. The thought of having something else -- something alive --
attached to his body made his stomach churn and turned his bowels to water; he
could not begin to imagine how women bore it. His first modification, once he
had satisfied himself that the house would indeed live and thrive, had been
the
installation of the tank that held backup testosterone to sustain the house
while he was away. If women wished to live all of their adult lives bound to
their houses by a few hundred yards of umbilical cord, that was their
privilege;
he had no intention of doing any such thing. He came home at night to his own
home, with no wife there to plague him and complain, and attached the tank to
the socket on his hip to replace the testosterone that had been used in his
absence. But that was it--that was all. Except for that simple task, Joro came
and went as he pleased.

When the government had been reluctant about letting him have land, Joro had
been outraged. He had not put up with that, either. The constitution was
perfectly clear. Any adult citizen, provided that citizen had a house of his
or
her own, was entitled to a fifty-acre site with all utilities provided.
Nothing
in the constitution said that this benefit was only for women, and he insisted
on his rights until they yielded. He had stated his case and stuck to it, in
no
way deterred by the scandal it created, or the pleas of his family, or the
muttering of the religious fanatics about heresy. And he won, of course. The
constitutional scholars were solidly behind him, even those who claimed to be
sickened by what he had done. He was on the front page of several major
magazines. He had a book contract, with an advance that would keep him from
having to work for many years to come. The government was talking about
setting
up a new bureau, just to deal with the issues his case had raised. He was
absolutely delighted, and all his friends --tied to their wives and no more
famous than the dirt -- were gratifyingly jealous.

He was delighted also with the site they provided to him. It was much finer
than
the one his sister had. And it delighted him, when he invited the other men to
his housewarming, that they had to drive down a long road lined on both sides