{margin-right: 50; padding-left 60px; text-align: justify;} p {style="text-indent:20px"; font: .9em Myriad Pro;} h1{font: bold; font size: 150%; "Helvetica";} h2{font: bold; font size: 200%;

"Helvetica";} h5{font: bold; font size: 200%; "Helvetica";}







Written in the Sand

Dune, Book One, Chapter One part 4

Reconcilable Differences

Welcome back to Written in the Sand. As promised, this episode is a bit big. I wanted to make it bigger, truth be told, I’m a little sick of being in Chapter one. Unfortunately, because of time and hosting limits, I had to break the episode up. Sorry. So, one more episode exists in this chapter.



This was a hard one to write. As I begin, I hope you’ll understand why it took so many delays to get to this one. I’ll be addressing men and women, the differences of the sexes, and I’m going to irritate a lot of people as I go along. I am requesting that you get through the tough parts. I feel this episode has to go through its stages, from beginning to end.



One of the criticisms of Dune that bothers me most is that it is anti-feminist. For one thing, such accusers had to have not finished the series. For another, I’m convinced that to truly be pro-feminism cannot be accomplished by a man, any man, just as feminism cannot truly be pro-men. We can try to refute that with platitudes, but if feminism was pro-male, it wouldn’t really be feminism. We all make allowances for our side of the equation. Men may support women but they will still reserve privileges for themselves, and women will do the same. It is an understandable thing and one that is possibly too hard to overcome, but important to keep in mind.



As I established in our second episode, we must remember that Frank Herbert, for all his careful planning and study, was still a man of his time and culture, as you and I are a part of our time and culture. The social norms of our current time would not be the same as the norms of his time. His understanding of the differences between men and women would be overgeneralized towards an understanding of gender roles for his time. But, I don’t think that’s true enough to make his thoughts completely dismiss-able.



I see many things here that are still true, or concepts that are true now that were not true then. He did try very hard to differentiate between cultural constructs and actual identity. We will continue this here. I am going to speak in generalities, but I will try to show my work, as it were.



Again, we may be looking at possibly offensive topics, and if I judge correctly, no one will really be happy with me about this. Which is actually okay with me. I am presenting thoughts, and I allow that they may be wrong. Just don’t confuse that allowance with the certainty that I am incorrect.



I will speak of things that lead me to present the concepts I’m going to touch on. Understand why I am presenting them, and if they conflict with how you view yourself, or your role in society, that is perfectly fine. If you are upset by that and want to reject it, that’s fine, also. At the very least take a bit of time to wonder why my thoughts should have any bearing on your sense of self. That is far more important a thing to address than what I may think of generalized concepts that you may have some opinion about.



Differences between men and women are more than just outward features. They are more than outward, physical differences between genitalia. This is a scientific fact. I know it is fashionable in our current society to think that this is not so, but it really is, and I’m not intending to debate it here. What I am going to do is post links in the resource section. They deal with testosterone and estrogen’s effects on the human body. These hormones cause mental changes just as much as physical changes.