When someone says they are going to tell a love story people expect to hear about a boy and girl who fall in love but have some type of obstacle in the way of their relationship. In the end they overcome the obstacle, get married, and live happily ever after. In "Day Million" by Frederik Pohl the characters do get married and they do seem to live happily, but not in the way we'd expect them to. One of the first things that makes this an unconventional love story is that Dora is a transgender woman. Romantic stories about transgender women are most certainly not something you hear about everyday or ever really. In the story Dora's change in gender seemed to not bother anyone, if only people were that accepting now. The second thing is that Don and Dora didn't even say a word to each other before Don proposed. And we thought Romeo and Juliette fell in love too quick. Also, there was the fact that after the marriage they never interacted with each other again. If they ever felt the desire to be with one another they would simply go back to the recorded analogues. It was a strange love story that had me thinking "What the @!%$ is going on?!"during every paragraph.
Parthenogenesis literally means virgin birth, it's when an embryo develops from an unfertilized egg. This is something that does not occur in mammals. A mammals egg must be fertilized in order to develop into an embryo. So parthenogenesis specifically may be impossible for humans but virgin birth isn't. A woman doesn't need to have any type of sexual intercourse with a man in order for her to get pregnant, she just needs some fresh or frozen sperm and some intimate quality time with a turkey baster and BOOM she'll have herself a stinky, crying, snot nosed infant in about nine months. There has also been some research done on whether a female egg could be fertilized by artificial sperm and it seems to be a possibility. So will men serve any purpose if women gain the ability to reproduce without them? In “When It Changed” by Joanna Russ, it seems that the purpose of men is to be arrogant a**holes who need to make women feel inferior in order to make themselves feel better. Huh, that actually sounds like a lot of men I know. Don't worry boys I know it's "not all men" but it sure is plenty. In reality men would still serve a purpose even if they weren't needed to reproduce because any woman who is straight, bisexual, pan sexual, or is of any kind of sexuality that has interest towards the opposite sex wouldn't want their potential male partners to disappear. They are companions, best friends, brothers, boyfriends, husbands, fathers, etc. etc. and I suppose they can be entertaining sometimes.
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I never thought about it that way. The love story really wasn't a love story we expected. We all have a permanent example of a basic love story we see on movies or even tv. For the most part we actually see the couple grow instead of jumping right into marriage. We also don't see many people accept transgender woman be accepted in society so easily. Most love stories at least stay together & actually last. They didn't even see each other as much & if they did miss each other they would see recordings? Most human beings actually go see the person they miss other than barley doing anything about it. I agree this love story wasn't our typical one.
ReplyDeleteYeah in "Day Million" one most certainly has to be more open in this time period about sexuality. Now that I think about it, since Don And Dora didn't really exchange much words, did he really know she was transgender? How would he have felt or reacted if he were to be told?
ReplyDeleteI thought that the first story was a very confusing in the way that it tried to set up a loving relationship in the odd, dynamic home life Don and Dora have. They might not have the normal communicative relationship that we understand, but I thought the writer was intentionally making them distant and go to their recorded analogues because, like most married couples, they tend to look back at the moments they had when they were first together as more fond then the boring memories of the mundane excitement of Monogamy. Sad as hell, bleak and somehow beautiful, Day Million was one of the oddest love stories that we read and I was glad you picked up on the lack of communication out of anything else in the story. Good work!
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