The Power

Naomi writes a letter back to Neil: first, she comments that she likes the “contortionist” version of Mother Eve, controlling the actions of others with her power. She also sees what he’s done with the character of Tunde—that there are thousands of men who likely have had similar experiences: misattributions, anonymous works assumed to be female, men helping wives with their work, or simple theft.

Naomi moves on to her questions: she writes that she doesn’t believe that there could have been as many male soldiers as Neil depicts at the start of the book. She cites that in school they were only taught about women making men fight for entertainment, and that readers will have those ideas in mind. She adds that most people think of sexual fetishes when they think of a battalion of men in army fatigues or police uniforms.

Naomi also questions the idea that women didn’t have skeins before the Cataclysm. She thinks that it must have been women who provoked the war, not men. She writes that she feels instinctively that a world run by men would be “more kind, more gentle, more loving and naturally nurturing.” She cites evolutionary psychology: men are strong worker homestead-keepers, while women, with babies to protect, are more aggressive and violent.

Neil writes back, thanking Naomi for taking the time to read his work. He explains that he doesn’t think much of evolutionary psychology as it relates to gender, and it will be up to the reader to decide whether men are naturally more peaceful and nurturing than women. He suggests that peaceful societies tend to allow men to rise to the top because they “place less value on the capacity for violence.”

Neil also addresses Naomi’s question concerning the male warriors, writing that they’ve found hundreds of partial or full statues of male soldiers. He also corrects her, saying that history supports the idea that women didn’t have skeins before the Cataclysm. He concludes by saying that the way humans “think about our past informs what we think is possible today.” But he immediately backtracks, worrying that what he’s written isn’t realistic.

Naomi again points out the fact that what Neil has written contradicts many history books, which are based on accounts going back thousands of years. Neil counters that all of the books from before the Cataclysm have been recopied hundreds of times, and that for two thousand years, most of the people re-copying books were nuns in convents. He believes that they could have picked works to copy that supported their viewpoints and let the rest “molder into flakes of parchment.” He says that he’s simply trying to figure out what those history books didn’t capture.

Neil affirms that he’s not trying to attack women. Naomi replies saying she knows it’s not an attack. She writes simply that it is hard to see women portrayed as they are in this book. She mentions that they’ve talked about how much “what it means to be a woman” is bound up with strength and not feeling fear or pain. She says she’s been grateful for their honest conversations when she knows that it’s been difficult for him to form relationships with women.

Neil tells Naomi that she’s “one of the good ones.” But he writes that some of the worst crimes against men were never (in his opinion) perpetrated against women in the time before the cataclysm. Three or four thousand years ago, it was considered normal to cull nine in ten boy babies, and boys are still “curbed” in places today—that can’t have happened to women, he believes. It would have made no evolutionary sense, he says, to abort female babies on a large scale or to alter their reproductive organs.

Neil concludes his letter by saying that the world is the way it is now because of power being based on who can be more violent, but that that’s not the way it has to be. He writes, “Gender is a shell game.” A woman is whatever a man is not, and vice versa. But if one looks under the shells, there’s nothing there.

Naomi suggests they meet up to discuss together. She assures Neil that she really is behind the book and wants it to reach the widest audience. She has one final suggestion for him: acknowledging his worry that people will only view the book in the context of his gender, and that it will only be considered “male literature,” she wonders if he might consider publishing the book under a woman’s name.