[LMB] "Mr. Watson, come here, I want you"

[Rachel Ganz]

> I'm in the middle of rereading _Cetaganda_, and mulling over a... 
> discrepancy between it and _Ethan of Athos_.
> 
> In the former, Miles learns a good deal about the innermost workings of 
> the Cetagandan Empire - in particular, the peculiar power-role occupied 
> by the haut women. In the latter, Elli Quinn, having been sent on a 
> mission of espionage (prompted by a conversation Miles overheard in 
> the former), encounters Ethan Urquhart; at one point, speaking to 
> Ethan, she describes Cetaganda as "a typical male-dominated 
> totalitarian state, only slightly mitigated by their rather artistic cultural 
> peculiarities".
 
 <snip options>
 
 >Any thoughts? Have I missed any possibilities?
 I'm coming rather late to this thriead
BUT
I think that in all male-dominated totalitarian state there have been "powers behind/beside" the throne. They are usually (always) the wives or lovers of those in power. If you read about the court of Louis XVI, and the amount of influence his mistresses wielded, you can see that this is not a new option.

I believe (slightly political bit) that women have campaigned against equal rights in law, as the have campaigned against women priests (in Britain) and against women having the vote, because they believed that equal public power would disable the lateral power achieved by a few women having access to the ear (and other bits) of the mighty.

We cannot judge on people's invisible power. The Star Creche is a high-tech version of Darwind's evolution through sexual selection -in which the selection is carried out by the female. I would judge whether a society is male-dominated or not on how much access females have to the public posts, or whether such posts, by habit, custom or law, are restircted to males.

Rachel