"Connie Willis - Even The Queen" - читать интересную книгу автора (Willis Connie)

A barefoot young woman wearing a flowered smock and a red scarf tied around her left arm came up to
the table with a sheaf of pink folders.
"It's about time," Karen said, snatching one of the folders away from her. "Your service here is
dreadful. I've been sitting here ten minutes." She snapped the folder open. "I don't suppose you have
Scotch."
"My name is Evangeline," the young woman said. "I'm Perdita's docent." She took the folder away
from Karen. "She wasn't able to join you for lunch, but she asked me to come in her place and explain
the Cyclist philosophy to you."
She sat down in the wicker chair next to me.
"The Cyclists are dedicated to freedom," she said. "Freedom from artificiality, freedom from body-
controlling drugs and hormones, freedom from the male patriarchy that attempts to impose them on us.
As you probably already know, we do not wear shunts."
She pointed to the red scarf around her arm. "Instead, we wear this as a badge of our freedom and our
femaleness. I'm wearing it today to announce that my time of fertility has come."
"We had that, too," Mother said, "only we wore it on the back of our skirts."
I laughed.
The docent glared at me. "Male domination of women's bodies began long before the so-called
'Liberation', with government regulation of abortion and fetal rights, scientific control of fertility, and
finally the development of ammenerol, which eliminated the reproductive cycle altogether. This was all
part of a carefully-planned takeover of women's bodies, and by extension, their identities, by the male
patriarchal regime."
"What an interesting point of view!" Karen said enthusiastically.
It certainly was. In point of fact, ammenerol hadn't been invented to eliminate menstruation at all. It
had been developed for shrinking malignant tumors, and its uterine lining-absorbing properties had only
been discovered by accident.
"Are you trying to tell us," Mother said, "that men forced shunts on women?! We had to fight everyone
to get it approved by the FDA!"
It was true. What surrogate mothers and anti-abortionists and the fetal rights issue had failed to do in
uniting women, the prospect of not having to menstruate did. Women had organized rallies, petitions,

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elected senators, passed amendments, been excommunicated, and gone to jail, all in the name of
Liberation.
"Men were against it," Mother said, getting rather red in the face. "And the religious right and the
tampon manufacturers, and the Catholic church--"
"They knew they'd have to allow women priests," Viola said.
"Which they did," I said.
"The Liberation hasn't freed you," the docent said loudly. "Except from the natural rhythms of your life,
the very wellspring of your femaleness."
She leaned over and picked a daisy that was growing under the table. "We in the Cyclists celebrate the
onset of our menses and rejoice in our bodies," she said, holding the daisy up. "Whenever a Cyclist
comes into blossom, as we call it, she is honored with flowers and poems and songs. Then we join
hands and tell what we like best about our menses."
"Water retention," I said.
"Or lying in bed with a heating pad for three days a month," Mother said.
"I think I like the anxiety attacks best," Viola said. "When I went off the ammenerol, so I could have
Twidge, I'd have these days where I was convinced the space station was going to fall on me."
A middle-aged woman in overalls and a straw hat had come over while Viola was talking and was