Suzette Elgin - Native Tongue

“The problem,” he said, “is not difficult to summarize. It can in fact be done in three words, thus: WOMEN ARE EXTINCT.”

He waited a moment, to let that sink in and to let the laughter subside around the room. And then he went on.

“ Real women, that is. We have living females of the species homo sapiens moving about our Households, but that is all that can be said for them. They are homo sapiens, they are female, and they are alive. Nothing more, gentlemen, nothing more.”

One of the younger men opened his mouth to ask a question, but James Nathan was alert for interruptions, and he silenced him before he could make a sound, raising one hand.

“Please go on, Dano,” he said, underlining the message that the man was not to be interrupted.

“I believe,” said Mbal, nodding at James Nathan, “that we all first began to realize that something odd was happening with the women on the night that Thomas Blair Chornyak was so brutally murdered… I remember well that it was a subject of discussion that night. Except that we all thought, then, that it signalled some sort of change for the better ! Gentlemen, we were quite wrong.”

He paused just long enough to fill a pipe with the aromatic tobacco he was addicted to, and to light it, and then he said, “Gentlemen, our women have become intolerable. And what is most astonishing about this is that we find ourselves curiously… helpless? Yes, I think helpless is the word… helpless to bring any accusation against them.”

This brought a murmur of protest too widely scattered to be silenced by a gesture. The idea of men helpless against women was absurd, and the men were quick to say so. Dano listened to them courteously, and then he raised his broad shoulders and spread his open hands in a gesture of helplessness.

“Well, gentlemen!” he said. “I will stop, then, and hear the accusations. As you would phrase them.”

He waited while they shuffled and muttered, and then he grinned at them.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “Just as I thought! You are eager enough to have them accused — but you are no more able to give those accusations surface shape than I am. Can a man ‘accuse’ a woman of being unfailingly and exquisitely courteous? Can a man ‘accuse’ a woman of being a flawless mother or grandmother or daughter? Can a man, gentlemen, ‘accuse’ a woman of being an ever willing and skillful sexual partner? Tell me… can a man point a finger at a woman and say to her, ‘I accuse you of never frowning, or never complaining, of never weeping, of never nagging, of never so much as pouting?’ Can a man demand of a woman that she nag? Can he demand that she sulk and bitch and argue — in short, that she behave as women used to behave? In the name of sweet reason, gentlemen, I ask you — can one accuse a woman, name her guilty, for ceasing to do every last thing he has demanded that she not do, all his life long?”

The silence was thick, heavy in the air; they were all thinking, and they had forgotten that they were cramped and crowded into this room. Each of them had his own women in mind, and each of them had an image of those women listening to him as he made some sort of speech about how they were so goddam COURTEOUS and COOPERATIVE and REASONABLE and PLEASANT… Oh, no. It was true. There was no way to accuse them of those things. A man would look and sound like an idiot. A kind of sigh, a sigh of being burdened and oppressed, went round the room.

“I take it it is a general problem, then?” asked James Nathan. “None of you disagrees with Dano Mbal’s description?”

The contributions came thick and fast, from every corner and from every Line.

“It’s as if they weren’t really even there at all!”

“They look right at you, and they don’t interrupt or fidget — they fold their hands in their laps and give you what is supposed to be their full attention, right? More attention, God knows, than they ever used to give. But somehow you know, you know , that their minds are a thousand miles away. They’re not really looking at you — and not really listening!”

“They might as well be androids, for all the good they are; androids would at least be uniformly attractive.”

“They are so goddam cursed boring !”

It went on for some time, and James Nathan let it go. He nodded now and then, encouraging them, wanting them to get it all out in the open, wanting the consensus of sullen anger that he could feel building. None of it was new; he’d been listening to it for what seemed to be years and years — though as Dano had said, it couldn’t really be that long. Whatever it was, it was true that at the beginning it had seemed to be something desirable. What man would not be pleased to have his women always serene, always compliant, always courteous, always respectful?

Dano Mbal spoke again.

“It used to be,” he said, “that when a man had done something in which he could take legitimate pride, he could go home and talk to his wife and his daughters about it, and that pride would grow — it would be a reason to do even more, and to do it even better. We all remember that… it was important to us. But now, now, it would be just as satisfying to go outside and talk about our plans and our accomplishments to a tree. As so many of you have said — it’s not that they interrupt, it’s not that they won’t give a man all the time he wants — it’s that they are simply not really there at all. There’s no feedback from them that couldn’t be obtained from a decently programmed computer. It is as frustrating to address your remarks to our women as to address them to your elbow.”

That was true. They all agreed. No question about it, it was the same for all. And there was the other side of the coin, which each secretly suspected mattered only to him, and which would not be mentioned aloud.

It used to be that a man could do something he was ashamed of, too, and then go home and talk to his women about it and be able to count on them to nag him and harangue him and carry on hysterically at him until he felt he’d paid in full for what he’d done. And then a man could count on the women to go right on past that point with their nonsense until he actually felt that he’d been justified in what he’d done. That had been important, too — and it never happened anymore. Never. No matter what you did, it would be met in just the same way. With respectful courtesy. With a total absence of complaint.

And it used to be that three or four women would go off in a corner and talk to each other and make a man feel left out somehow… but that was normal. You could raise hell about it and make them leave off their woman-gibberish. It was annoying, but you could do something about it, and you knew where you were. They never did that anymore, either. They were always at your disposal… it was as if they had no need to talk to one another any longer. But you couldn’t complain about that. You couldn’t raise hell about it. You couldn’t order them to stop it. You knew what they would do if you were fool enough to try it. Those pleasant, serene, obscenely courteous faces… they would look at you, with nobody home back of their eyes, and they would say “Stop what , my dear?” And there’d be no answer. Stop giving me your full attention when I ask for it? Stop doing without the gossip and gabble I always ridiculed you for? It was out of the question.

“Gentlemen,” said James Nathan, “am I correct that it’s unanimous? Our women are a constant irritation? A total royal pain in the butt? Impossible to live with? Useful only for the occasional bed session, and even then it’s like fucking a well-bred rubber doll? Do I have it right, gentlemen? Am I leaving anything out? Overstating the case? Is there anyone here who feels that his women are an exception, or that the rest of us have gone over the edge?”