Reflection upon Class 7

I must agree with the basic sentiment I have seen in other reactions: I enjoyed the discussion from class this week very much so. I feel that the topic of gender, as with many others, is much more easily approached in the medium of science fiction, and this book does a good job of doing so. I need to display my support for Jack's point about agency: the fact of the matter is, Joseph was in fact magically tied to the location he was created in order to protect. When he attempted to walk across the bridge without orders to do so, his constituent parts began to dissemble. Yod was created for the purpose of protecting the town of Tivka: mind you, Malkah changed that with her additional programming, but focus on the point at hand. With this original purpose in mind, he directly disobeyed his primary directives by accompanying Shira to rescue her child - this move in fact put Tivka in much, much more danger. I have to agree with Jack then, that Yod has an entirely different level of agency than Joseph, which I would argue places them in separate categories: Joseph in the category of magical non-human/non-person creation with a few twists, whereas the level of autonomy Yod displays throughout the book (culminating in his decision to prevent anything else like him from being created) as well as scope of action shows a strong sense of humanness/person-ness.

That said, the gender stuff in the book was interesting. I am not sure I read it quite the same as Scott, but I did in fact find parts offensive or at least of questionable fairness. They were not always up front, but they were there. In the middle of one of Shira's outpourings of emotions, you could find small phrases about Gadi's innate immaturity as a man (in addition to his specific personality), and the description of Avram was never particularly friendly either. I'm curious what other people thought about this and are willing to post here (and not discuss in class).

-Mike