On Sat, 24 Jan 2004, Damien Sullivan wrote: > 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. Is Vlad familiar with criminal Easterners? Also note that Vlad personally perceives a stigma - he has a lot of Eastern mores. I imagine there is rather less of a stigma for Dragaerans, given their better handle on disease and pregnancy. Vlad might not be able to easily distinguish between a weaker stigma and none. Also note that my guess is that most of the people involved are Teckla or Jhereg (on both sides) - it seems to me less than likely that a noble would frequent or work in Vlad's Massage Parlor - so which "society" one refers, the ruling class or the majority, might be important (see my ref to iconoclastic Dragons above). > 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. Note on the other hand that there are in fact some differences in Tortaalik's time - someone notes in _TPG_ that noblemen can't beat servants but noblewomen can. And certainly men are portrayed in active roles in romance much more than v.v. in that work.