On Fri, Jan 23, 2004 at 11:52:53PM -0800, Philip Hart wrote: > > prostitution and sex itself is viewed very differently. I'm not quite > > sure how to articulate it, except that to dragaereans sex is entirely > > separate from marriage. > Note that at the time Vlad's knowledge of Dragaerans was more or less > limited to criminals, users of criminal services, and a few probably > wildly iconoclatsic nobles. Perhaps Aerich smiles on prostitution, On the other hand, he might know if his tags seemed to have guilt or shame, and probably would know if the Jhereg around him viewed the tags with contempt; he could at least observe a difference between Jhereg attitudes and criminal human attitudes. And Paarfi has shown many inter-House dalliances without comment. And the Dragaerans have good birth control, even if not through the means Vlad thinks, and think nothing of having women in the same roles as men, from low-level combat to high command. In fact the one place we've seen sex discrimination in the Empire is in the Jhereg, where the Left Hand is female and the Organization mostly male. Birth control, observable sexual equality, and quite possibly a lack of sexual size dimorphism (no textev either way, AFAIK) would lead us to expect a different view of sex than among humans. So on this issue I'll trust Vlad until shown otherwise. -xx- Damien X-)