The Interplanetary Tourism Board Wants Your Help
More specifically, the Tourism Board of the planet of Czilan is interested in increasing the number of earthly visitors, and they've been tossing around some ideas about how to market Czilan as a vacation destination.
Although they aren't lacking in natural wonders and historical sites, they're convinced that the main feature of Czilan they should focus on in their marketing efforts is the fact that, compared to earth, Czilannian stereotypes and expectations about the sexes are exactly reversed. Mirror-image. No one knows specifically why - whether folks there are biologically different from earth folks or if it's just an accident of different historical and cultural shifts.
Conveniently, they look very much the same, to the point that people from either society would fit right in, indistinguishable on the basis of appearance, and since we all speak Galactic Standard, language won't be a problem.
So, here's what the tourism board was initially thinking:
• Earthly men could be lured to visit by the likelihood of being hit on by Czilannian women if they pretty themselves up.
• Earthly women, meanwhile, would respond to the promise of being able to get away from that, to be safe anywhere and everywhere from overt sexual attention.
But that initial focus has been challenged and after a couple of protracted arguments, the folks on the Tourism Board are no longer in agreement. Here are some of the concerns that got tossed out for additional consideration:
• Someone brought up the "likely behavior of the earthly males" and conjured up an unflattering picture of them running around acting in ways that would provoke hostile reactions from the Czilannians. There was a long loud argument in which some people thought the folks on Czilan would label these guys as "sluts and tramps" and become actively angry with them for overtly propositioning native women, while others said "You're assuming these beliefs about differences are based in actual differences between the sexes. They're just beliefs and neither real Czillanian men and women nor real Earth men and women actually have those differences." After an hour or so of arguing back and forth, a third cluster of board members coalesced around the viewpoint that whether the sexes are different or not, the expectations are real and that people might react based on the violation of their expectations, if the earthly males actually acted that way - "But why would they? They'll have it made! They don't have to behave that way here, and, besides, getting a reputation is unimportant for someone who is on vacation, they leave at the end and that's the end of it".
• Someone else brought up the question of whether to market visits to Czilan to LGBT communities, especially to transgender people. "Why would they want to come here?", a dissenter replied, "I would think that for transgender people from earth, coming to a gender-inverted environment would either be creepy or just irrelevant, and any marketing efforts implying otherwise would insult them and piss them off". From that beginning, the argument went off on a tangent about whether transgender people mostly want to get away from sex-based expectations that dont fit or whether it's mostly about the body itself being wrong and has little to do with cultural gender expectations and notions. Finally a consensus emerged that this was not on topic and needed to be shelved, so the question of whether to extend marketing efforts to the earthly transgender community remains unresolved. There was also an attempt to discuss the potential appeal (or lack thereof) to gay and lesbian or intersex travelers but the folks who were exhausted by the transgender discussion said it wasn't relevant either, and those who disagreed were shouted down.
• Then someone took issue with the notion that the only interest for earthly women would be to get away from unwanted sexual attentions for awhile. "Do you seriously think those gals on earth have so little of a sense of adventure? This would be a different experience opportunity for them. I bet there are many earthly women who would find it fun to be the overtly sexually predatory sex and have the chance to explore that without guys interrupting them to make passes and take the upper hand in being sexually pushy, the way those earth guys are". Once again there were several people arguing that "Women on earth, women on Czilan, women everywhere pursue sex just as actively and overtly as men do, it's just a silly outdated social notion that they don't, but it was probably never true on Earth any more than male sexual passivity is true on Czilan". One person said the reactions of some Czilannian men, deliberately designed to discourage overtly pushy women and to establish that they aren't just passive and get to make their own choices, would be very offputting to women from Earth. "Well, that's the challenge of it" the original board member replied.
So the Board decided to do some research, which is where you come in!
Is there any marketing strategy that's been discussed so far that would make you more likely to book an excursion to Czilan? How would you improve or elaborate on it?
Is there a different, unmentioned interest you would have that the Board should consider in designing its approach?
Please include your sex and gender identity and other factors including sexual orientation and whether you consider yourself cisgender or transgender or other departures from the binary if you think they're relevant to your answers.
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The world of Czilan was the setting for a 300-page science fiction novel I wrote in 1982. It's sitting in the back of a dusty back drawer, where it belongs: it was awful.
--------
I am now echoed on DreamWidth, like many other LJ folks. My DW acct is here. Please friend/link me on DW if you are a DreamWidth user.
--------
Index of all Blog Posts
Although they aren't lacking in natural wonders and historical sites, they're convinced that the main feature of Czilan they should focus on in their marketing efforts is the fact that, compared to earth, Czilannian stereotypes and expectations about the sexes are exactly reversed. Mirror-image. No one knows specifically why - whether folks there are biologically different from earth folks or if it's just an accident of different historical and cultural shifts.
Conveniently, they look very much the same, to the point that people from either society would fit right in, indistinguishable on the basis of appearance, and since we all speak Galactic Standard, language won't be a problem.
So, here's what the tourism board was initially thinking:
• Earthly men could be lured to visit by the likelihood of being hit on by Czilannian women if they pretty themselves up.
• Earthly women, meanwhile, would respond to the promise of being able to get away from that, to be safe anywhere and everywhere from overt sexual attention.
But that initial focus has been challenged and after a couple of protracted arguments, the folks on the Tourism Board are no longer in agreement. Here are some of the concerns that got tossed out for additional consideration:
• Someone brought up the "likely behavior of the earthly males" and conjured up an unflattering picture of them running around acting in ways that would provoke hostile reactions from the Czilannians. There was a long loud argument in which some people thought the folks on Czilan would label these guys as "sluts and tramps" and become actively angry with them for overtly propositioning native women, while others said "You're assuming these beliefs about differences are based in actual differences between the sexes. They're just beliefs and neither real Czillanian men and women nor real Earth men and women actually have those differences." After an hour or so of arguing back and forth, a third cluster of board members coalesced around the viewpoint that whether the sexes are different or not, the expectations are real and that people might react based on the violation of their expectations, if the earthly males actually acted that way - "But why would they? They'll have it made! They don't have to behave that way here, and, besides, getting a reputation is unimportant for someone who is on vacation, they leave at the end and that's the end of it".
• Someone else brought up the question of whether to market visits to Czilan to LGBT communities, especially to transgender people. "Why would they want to come here?", a dissenter replied, "I would think that for transgender people from earth, coming to a gender-inverted environment would either be creepy or just irrelevant, and any marketing efforts implying otherwise would insult them and piss them off". From that beginning, the argument went off on a tangent about whether transgender people mostly want to get away from sex-based expectations that dont fit or whether it's mostly about the body itself being wrong and has little to do with cultural gender expectations and notions. Finally a consensus emerged that this was not on topic and needed to be shelved, so the question of whether to extend marketing efforts to the earthly transgender community remains unresolved. There was also an attempt to discuss the potential appeal (or lack thereof) to gay and lesbian or intersex travelers but the folks who were exhausted by the transgender discussion said it wasn't relevant either, and those who disagreed were shouted down.
• Then someone took issue with the notion that the only interest for earthly women would be to get away from unwanted sexual attentions for awhile. "Do you seriously think those gals on earth have so little of a sense of adventure? This would be a different experience opportunity for them. I bet there are many earthly women who would find it fun to be the overtly sexually predatory sex and have the chance to explore that without guys interrupting them to make passes and take the upper hand in being sexually pushy, the way those earth guys are". Once again there were several people arguing that "Women on earth, women on Czilan, women everywhere pursue sex just as actively and overtly as men do, it's just a silly outdated social notion that they don't, but it was probably never true on Earth any more than male sexual passivity is true on Czilan". One person said the reactions of some Czilannian men, deliberately designed to discourage overtly pushy women and to establish that they aren't just passive and get to make their own choices, would be very offputting to women from Earth. "Well, that's the challenge of it" the original board member replied.
So the Board decided to do some research, which is where you come in!
Is there any marketing strategy that's been discussed so far that would make you more likely to book an excursion to Czilan? How would you improve or elaborate on it?
Is there a different, unmentioned interest you would have that the Board should consider in designing its approach?
Please include your sex and gender identity and other factors including sexual orientation and whether you consider yourself cisgender or transgender or other departures from the binary if you think they're relevant to your answers.
------
The world of Czilan was the setting for a 300-page science fiction novel I wrote in 1982. It's sitting in the back of a dusty back drawer, where it belongs: it was awful.
--------
I am now echoed on DreamWidth, like many other LJ folks. My DW acct is here. Please friend/link me on DW if you are a DreamWidth user.
--------
Index of all Blog Posts