In Which Her Prophet Invokes The Future
~Below is an excerpt from one of my Sisterhood short stories “Apéritif á La Tour Rouge”. It gives a general outline of what I think The Sisterhood could and should be like. Some will find it upsetting and even 'inhuman'. My response is to look at what you let yourself live with now; one in five of every one your fellow Citizens going hungry each day and over two billion of your fellow humans having to spend a significant part of each of their days looking for potable water. I ask you in which world is the cruelty merely perceived and in which is it pernicious and actual?
"Miki sighed. Even given the obvious rigorousness and dynamism of The Sisterhood, the regular insinuation of Decadence was a standard Phallist canard, based upon the real fear of the Union of Matrilineal Republic's massive number of Mandroid servitors, a number which grew steadily with each passing day.
Mandroids were really just a type of cyborg, but since the majority of humans these days had some manner of cybernetic augmentation, a separate term had been needed.
Most Mandroids were grown in uterine replicators based upon modified porcine uteri, and were commonly called 'tank babies'. Y-chromosome DNA was used exclusively in that process and was extensively engineered to enhance inclinations and tendencies for the various subtypes.
Tank baby Mandroids were usually of a lesser mental capacity and heavily augmented, Guidance Mechanisms being implanted in the brain's pleasure/pain centers before they were ever hatched. That also solved the problem of 'socialization'.
Experience had shown that the isolating 'non-humanness' of the replicators tended to regularly produce sociopathic and psychotic individuals, which was one of the principle reasons The Sisterhood practiced the live birth of their daughters. Obviously, they did not bear any male offspring and they certainly had the tech to make sure that they never did.
The Sisterhood used a certain amount of purely mechanical/electronic robots, but overall, robots had never reached the level of functional and economic efficiency of Mandroids, either in manufacture or operation. Too many raw materials needed. Basic mechanics too complex and often unreliable.
But it was in 'brain function' that robots really fell behind Mandroids. Ultimately, it was far easier to downgrade the biological that it was to upgrade the cybernetic.
It was the UMR's Ministry of Service that designed and created every variety of Mandroid, and was not only their sole producer, but also their sole legal owner. All Mandriods were leased, not owned, by their end users under a Usufruct Contract and that included every one of them from a single domestic servitor to the tens of millions employed by Space Force from Dirtside to the Asteroid Belt. And the MoS's Rules and Regulations regarding Care and Utilization under that contract were well defined and rigorously enforced.
And so The Sisterhood had finally resolved the ancient and pernicious human problem of social inequality, and permanently solved the issue of Labor Supply, by creating a specialized working class, one which was always happy and productive, and whose members could be stored in a medical coma when not needed or when shipped on long distance runs off planet.
Of course, the entire concept and its mechanisms were an anathema to Humanists and Phallists alike, though for different reasons.
For the latter, it meant that they and their world view were doomed, as who could resist such a society? Essentially, they were fighting a 'rear guard action' and knew it, not that this made them any the less determined to fight.
For the former, it was considered slavery, plain and simple, and was therefore Evil, no matter the details. That they could never come up with a realistic plan for what to actually do with the 'slaves' they wished to liberate was brushed aside. And they were horrified by The Sisters when they said, “Well, we could just space them all,” usually with a predatory grin.
Miki, and The Sisterhood in general, tended to have more contempt for The Humanists than for The Phallists. At least their position was honest. They were overtly committed to Masculine Supremacy and were not at all apologetic about that. The Sisterhood knew The Phallists were wrong - history made that quite clear - but they stood by their position without equivocation.
The Humanists however used all manner of philosophical smoke screens such as Freedom and Individuality to disguise a set of beliefs and practices not particularly different from The Phallists. At its core, Humanism boiled down to Survival of The Fittest, with some 'social welfare' attached to pretty things up.
Liberal Humanism had once been a vital force and had changed human affairs for the better. But it inevitable fell victim to the Cult of The Individual and then fractured into ideological factionalism, individual narcissism and intellectual decadence. Its absolute rejection of Hierarchy doomed it to impotence.
Humans are a social species and Hierarchy comes naturally to all human endeavors. The Sisterhood, The Phallists and The Humanists all existed Hierarchically, but the latter rigorously denied it. Both of the former could then undermine them in detail.
The Phallists had used the Humanists as moral cover to pass laws in several states totally banning Mandriods. This included the EU, Africa, and Siberia. Such laws were meaningless however, as the MoS forbade the exportation of most types of Mandriods outside the UMR itself and of any type to a state that had not entered into a Friendship Treaty with the UMR.
Such a treaty gave the MoS full and unilateral access to their servitors and the authority to take “direct and forceful action to preserve and protect said.” That included calling in Drop Troopers if necessary.
To date, every entity that had signed a Friendship Treaty had been first socially and then legally annexed by The Sisterhood within a decade or so of signing, as male birth rates would plummet and most the local females tended to become fully fledged Sisters.
The relentlessness of this trend forced the improvement of women's status throughout the rest of the world. If a women was unsatisfied with her lot, she could immigrate to The Sisterhood, which had all manner of programs for integrating 'outside' Sisters into the fold. All a woman had to do was apply at any UMR Embassy or Consulate. No woman was ever turned away.
More terrifying to the Phallists however, was the significant number of mostly younger males who also immigrated into the UMR. The MoS maintained a Special Augmentation division to convert these male immigrants into Special Service Mandriods, quite often some type of Pleasure Servitor. These types were highly prized and very well treated and their lives were something of a legend outside of The Sisterhood.
There was a Male Birth Movement, in which men would have a womb surgically implanted and would only have male children. But they were few in number and most Phallists were repulsed by the idea.
And because of the psychological problems inherent in non-augmented 'tank babies', attempts to increase the male population using that technology had been grotesque and horrifying failures. One of them had required the deployment of an entire Marine Drop Brigade to 'clean up the mess'.”