The idea that part of a guardian’s responsibility is to prepare their charge for the painfulness and unpleasantness of sex on their wedding night was relatively pervasive in the social media I grew up around, and I can imagine what Alicorn describes being an allegory for this (though I read “Songmaster” too many years and too many perspective-changes ago to remember it usefully, so I have no idea whether Card had anything like this in mind).
I suppose that makes a twisted kind of sense. I’d been exposed to the idea before (though I wouldn’t have called it pervasive in the cultural milieu I grew up in), but didn’t make the connection—possibly because Card’s setup doesn’t seem to work if sex/loss of virginity is ordinarily painful or unpleasant.
It’s odd to write an allegory which implicitly rejects the real-life idea it’s supposed to point to (ETA: as opposed to tactfully ignoring it). I suppose Card might be trying to write for an audience that he assumes to have already rejected it, but now I feel like I’m making too many speculative leaps to be confident of my predictions.
(blink)
The idea that part of a guardian’s responsibility is to prepare their charge for the painfulness and unpleasantness of sex on their wedding night was relatively pervasive in the social media I grew up around, and I can imagine what Alicorn describes being an allegory for this (though I read “Songmaster” too many years and too many perspective-changes ago to remember it usefully, so I have no idea whether Card had anything like this in mind).
I suppose that makes a twisted kind of sense. I’d been exposed to the idea before (though I wouldn’t have called it pervasive in the cultural milieu I grew up in), but didn’t make the connection—possibly because Card’s setup doesn’t seem to work if sex/loss of virginity is ordinarily painful or unpleasant.
It’s odd to write an allegory which implicitly rejects the real-life idea it’s supposed to point to (ETA: as opposed to tactfully ignoring it). I suppose Card might be trying to write for an audience that he assumes to have already rejected it, but now I feel like I’m making too many speculative leaps to be confident of my predictions.