Journal Entry - Week 12

Some really interesting concepts were shared at the end of last week that got me thinking. I have this idea that I need to work out in pencil to see if it would hold ink. The idea crossed my mind that Piercy(Marge Piercy in her novel A Woman on the Edge of Time) makes large references to power, production, gender, reproduction, etc. and I wonder if we are the "other" to Piercy's utopia.  - The other being the opposite - polarized - anti-thesis - In her utopia women no longer have sole power over reproduction. Any person may mother. Yet the society as a whole does not over produce, man or machine. Our current society, and especially the one lived in by Piercy at the time when she wrote this novel, battles it's women for rights over their bodies and their offspring while at the same time over-producing both humans and machines. It's as if men use their power to produce things to make up for being unable to bodily produce humans. It goes without saying for many sociologists that our rate of populating will slow as women become greater equals to men. In that way alone you can view over population as a trait specific to male dominant societies. But I am still curious as to whether capitalism has anything to do with male dominance. Is the instinct to step on heads and make money and be greedy something that women, in general, do not feel? Is it possible that men, being unable to birth humans feel a need to produce things for money, attain property, acquaire companies? Drive Hummers? Ugh! Is it the lack of this "killer instinct" that makes men seem "in touch with their feminine side?" But wouldn't it be those men, trying with all their might to reproduce, merge, acquire, hoard and compensate for a lack of ovaries, who are closer to trying to attain a female-like state?Trying desperately to produce something for the want of reproducing children? Wouldn't the property owners and millionaires be more in touch with their "feminine side" - the side that reproduces? Wouldn't the men who don't care about reproduction for reproduction sake be thought of as more comfortable being a man- in touch with their non-reproducing masculinity? I think so. I will never look at the world or men in quite the same way.