Damn. Firstly thank you for going there with this one. How people envision the world could go if both genders aren’t needed to reproduce, is fascinating, it was an old prompt, but I didn’t get anything like this, and this has made me so happy.

The different reception you might get if the gender roles were flipped in in this story, and men were shipping woman off who weren’t conforming to their standard of acceptable behaviour, kind of underlines the point here.

On one level, this is hilarious. It is well written, succicint, paints a wonderfully detailed picture in so few brush strokes. The minor offense, and the severity of the response, it is so entertaining. It had the ring of old sci-fi, the tongue in cheek, exaggerated telling, not meant to represent a widespread reality, but to spark a degree of reflection that stops it getting that far. It does that wonderfully.

On another level, this is a little scary. There are very much women out there who hate men, full stop, all of them. It is painful to see, and toxic to everyone involved. This type of feminist is sadly real, but it’s still declaring ‘all of a’ > ‘all of b’, but flipping a & b in that equation doesn’t lead to equality, and this shows that so very well. I really love the element of his partner wanting to move to mars as well, it captures that atmosphere of the loudest voice not representing the crowd, her concern and assurances, his doubt and hope, not only bring a lot to the story, but gave me a lot I really enjoyed reflecting on. There isn’t one man, and one woman, we aren’t all the same, but it is getting crazy, I have to say, thought of this story when the news broke someone had accused a polotictian I am really, really not a fan of at all of sexual assault because he touched her knee when they were laughing together with her husband.

This is just such a brilliant story, cautionary, insightful, witty, and it has really stuck with me.