The Bene Gesserit Seamstresses of the 'Verse

[trinityvixen]

A link kindly provided to me by linaerys about the class conflict in Firefly/Serenity has been eating my brain for the past twenty minutes because, being bored as nuts around work, I am doing nothing but thinking on a plot bunny I plucked from my brain last week and how to work it out. It's not what the article itself talks about that I've been considering

Comments

[trinityvixen]

You're absolutely right about the romantic entanglements being controlled in some respect. Inara says it would be complicated for her to simply date someone, which may be one method of controlling Companions right there--when the Companion wants for company, she must satisfy it in her work. That might be the guiding method of the Guild, in fact--finding your own satisfaction in providing and receiving the pleasure of others. The fact that you would not then be able to pursue a relationship outside of a client-worker basis seems most unfair as that would, ideally, be the same thing (you'd want to be in the relationship for the give and take and exchange). I can only assume that it is curtailed to save confusion and keep people from attempting to romance Companions for free (as was the problem with certain whore houses in ancient Japan, where lotharios would try to make the whores love them so that they'd basically make themselves unsellable to other clients when they'd give their lovers tokens of their affection like fingers). The Guild is a business, after all, and, unfortunately, they can't have the cows giving the milk away for free except to those with whom they cannot help but having some kind of interaction with (like the captains of ships that Companions travel on). Basically, Companions are Companions all the time, not just when they're specifically being romantic with a client, so they can't just turn off their services. The Guild accepts this to a point and draws the line at the obvious, fairly sexist definition of romantic intent, probably because of the popular misconception that sex is essential to the Companion's duties with a client.

And, in that, I could see there also being the question of legitimacy in the sense of direct, unconfused paternity. If a Companion were to maintain a romantic interest who wasn't a client, and she'd arrange to go off her birth control for a client, there's a not unreasonable assumption a mistake might occur such that she would have to prove that she had not entertained or been intimate with anyone other than her client. It's easy enough to prove she's not scheduled clients (there's the Guild's database for that). It would be less so for her to eliminate the possibility of a lover being the sperm donor to a child conceived. This is very patriarchal as concerns go, but I think I've established that the 'verse isn't nearly so egalitarian with regards the war between the sexes as it's sometimes thought to be. Plus, this could also be a strong Chinese influence, with the emphasis on young generations upholding the honor and name of earlier ones (not to mention the subtle, but still present prejudices of males being responsible for females, such as with Simon being the Number One Son who must look after River--I don't doubt he loves her in the extreme, but I can't divorce his actions of protecting her from a cultural bias implied by the origins of these human transplants).

I'm sorry I brought up the babies-as-trade bit about the Guild, only because now I'm dead curious about it and there's zero evidence or ground to argue about it in the series itself. Alas.