On Fri, 25 Feb 2000, David Pascal wrote:
I mean, really -- try to
feel yourself into it: what sort of world would it be, how would people
react, in a society where women simply did not exist? Where computerized
mannequins were their replacements? Where there were no fathers,
mothers, families, but where a sort of cultural nationalism insisted that
everyone act as though they were in the nineteenth century?
There's no reason to believe that there are no *fathers* in the society.
There's that man who stayed with his favorite marionette instead of marrying
(implying that men normally do marry other men) and there's Hanagata's
brother. Both of these suggest that families (and fathers) do exist. Just
not mothers.