"14 - Fighting Slave of Gor v2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norman John)

"You look ill, miserable," I said. "Do you care, truly, what they think?"

"They are politically powerful in my department," she said, "especially the big one. Even some of my male professors are afraid of them."

"So much for them," I said.

"Many without tenure fear their student evaluations," she said, "and, more importantly, their influence on the evaluations of others. Most of our young male teachers, and female teachers, too, do what is expected of them, and try to please them. They do not wish to lose their positions."

"I'm familiar with that sort of thing," I said. "It is called academic freedom."

She tied the strings of her cape. We then left the restaurant.

"I will hail a taxi," I said.

"I am not really a true woman," she said, outside the restaurant, miserably. "I am too feminine." She looked up at me. "I have tried to fight my femininity," she said. "I have tried to overcome it."

"You could redouble your efforts," I said. "You could try harder."

"I am finished in my department," she said. "They will undermine and destroy me."

"You could transfer to another school," I said, "and start over."

"Perhaps," she said, "but I fear that it is hopeless. It might just begin again. Or the word might be conveyed to the new department that I was not, truly, of the right kind."

"Of the right kind?" I asked.

"Of their kind," she said.

"That of the two women you met in the restaurant?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "They are so strong and man-like, like men used to be, before."

"Femininity is wrong in a woman, and masculinity in a man?" I asked.

"Of course," she said, "it interferes with personhood."

"But it is all right for women to be masculine and men to be feminine?"

"Yes," she said, "that is all right. Indeed, men must be taught to be gentle, tender and feminine."

"Can you not see," I asked, "that women who wish that of a man are not truly interested in what men happen to be, but want, perhaps, actually not a man but a woman of an unusual sort?"

She looked at me, with horror.

"The thought has an alarming plausibility, doesn't it?" I asked.

"I have never known anyone like you," she said. "You confuse me."

"Frankly," I said, "you are not of their kind, that of the two women in the restaurant you met. You are extremely different. Indeed, most women are extremely different from them. They are not even, truly, women. They are something else, not really women or men. It is little wonder they are so hostile, so filled with hatred, so vicious and bellicose. After centuries of disparagement why should they not now, with a vengeance, set themselves up as models for their sex? Why should they not now, so long denied the world, attempt now through rhetoric and politics to bend it to their designs? Can you blame them? Can you not understand their hatred for women such as you, who seem a veritable biological insult and reproach to their pretensions and projects? You are their enemy, with your beauty and needs, far more than the men they attempt through political power to intimidate and manipulate." I looked at her, angrily. "Your desirability and beauty," I said, "is a greater threat to them than you can even begin to understand. Their success demands the castigation and suppression of your sort of woman."