Fractions_ The First Half of the Fall Revolution - Ken MacLeod [94]
‘Thank you very much,’ Janis said. ‘What sort of women-oriented community keeps ordinary women out and lets men in?’
‘Femininists,’ Anderson articulated.
‘Ah, so,’ Kohn said. ‘You should have worn a frock, Janis, make-up like lacquer and false eyelashes. Then they might have let you in for a boring examination of their building, which is what I’m down for.’
Anderson gave an open, genuinely amused laugh.
‘Don’t take it to heart, ma’am. We won’t be more than an hour, and in the meantime, if you wouldn’t mind easing the truck forward a bit so we can get it unloaded and reloaded…’
Janis shrugged and blew a kiss and a scowl. Kohn climbed out.
‘Please leave any weapons,’ Anderson said.
Kohn detached the computer and heaved the bag back into the truck. Anderson coughed politely. Kohn thought for a moment, sighed, and passed Janis a pistol, a throwing knife, a flick-knife and a set of brass knuckles.
They walked across the courtyard. People strolled about or worked at the garden. The women, as Kohn had expected, were wearing every exaggeratedly feminine get-up known to man. The men looked rather drab and conventional by comparison. No old people; no children.
‘So tell me, Stuart, what’s it all about? If you don’t mind me saying so, you don’t look very sissy to me.’
‘Of course not,’ Stuart said. ‘That’s not what we’re into. Our aim isn’t to merge or reverse the sex roles but to make femininity the dominant gender.’
Moh shook his head. ‘I still don’t get it.’
‘It’s all to do with peace,’ Anderson said earnestly as they entered the block and walked down a bright corridor. ‘We’re sickened by the violence that goes on all around us, and the femininists have a theory which explains it. The so-called masculine virtues have outlived their usefulness. Aggression, ambition, production. We’ve reached a point where the whole earth can be a home, a garden, a sanctuary. Instead it’s used as a factory, a hunting-ground, a battlefield. That’s what we mean by the dominance of the masculine virtues. What femininism advocates and tries to practise is the long-overdue domestication of the species through the feminine virtues: domesticity itself, of course, plus gentleness, caring, contentment: channelling energy into art, adornment, decoration…All low-impact activities, you see, and utterly absorbing. Take embroidery, for example, which many find entirely satisfying as a full-time, lifelong occupation, yet the material resources used in it are negligible…and of course the product is valuable, including to rich collectors.’
‘And where do men fit into all this?’
‘Oh, they don’t try to fit us in. They just set us a good example. And we integrate our activities and interests as a subordinate, servicing part of this community, just as traditionally women’s work has serviced the masculine economy – in fact, that’s still how many of the women here earn money outside: as teachers, nurses, secretaries—’
‘Bank tellers?’
‘I think that, too, yes.’
‘Sounds a bit sexist to me.’
Anderson laughed. ‘Now that’s a word I haven’t heard in a long time.’
They entered a large, low room, almost a factory floor. Dozens of women worked intently at sewing-machines. A few of them were obviously making clothes, but even Kohn could see that some of the items being made from vast pieces of thin silk had to be something else. He indicated them with his head as they walked along the side of the room. At the same time he tried to see if Cat were among the women there, but – as far as a quick glance could tell – she wasn’t.
‘Pavilions, canopies,’ Anderson explained. ‘Very popular at society garden parties.’
Pavilions? Moh ran some of the shapes through again in his head, then left something at the back of his mind to figure them out. There was another thing that didn’t quite fit here. The ideas that Anderson had expounded struck him as too daft and too sensible at the same time: the femininists were