jordan

Le jeu (The Game)

The percentage of violent offenders among these prisoners (rape and murder but also theft of all kinds and assault regardless of motivation or severity) ranges from 60% in state prisons to 7-13% in federal prisons. Private prisons are permitted to choose their inmates, and typically choose those inmates who will cost the least to corral, that being nonviolent offenders. Seven times more people are locked up for possessing drugs than for selling them, and half of all prisoners in federal prisons are there for drug “offenses.” It is estimated that between 46 and 100 thousand fully innocent people (prisoners who didn’t commit any legally defined crime) are in prison right now. On death row, this percentage actually goes up - for every eight people executed, one is fully exonerated, found to have never committed a crime in the first place. Half of all inmates across the board have a debilitating mental illness, an amount which has increased dramatically since the dismantling of the public mental health sector in the mid 1900s. Black Americans are both more likely to be sentenced to imprisonment, and more likely to be falsely convicted of a crime.

By “overt”, I mean that they openly express hatred of/contempt for women.  The Legion systemically categorizes women for forced breeding (rape) or slave labor because Caesar wants as many Legionaries as possible as quickly as possible.  This has very little to do with the personal opinions/experiences of individual Legionaries and everything to do with Caesar’s vision.  The average Legionary doesn’t have deep-seated open hatred of women, but believes that their society (which subjugates women into specific roles) is good.

Most medieval European societies were relatively bad for women.  In addition to the natural hazards of childbirth prior to the late 19th century, most social power structures excluded them or victimized them in various ways.  If you were to ask a medieval European man what they thought of women, you probably wouldn’t find many foaming at the mouth with hatred.  When people (women or otherwise) transgress social roles, the response varies from amusement to confusion to anger, but people who stay within “the lines” usually don’t catch much flack.

Last year, I read a book called Attitudes toward Post-Menopausal Women in the High and Late Middle Ages, 1100-1400 (really) by Jessica E. Godfrey.  Here’s the short summary of those attitudes: not good. Writers from that period tend to hold women in relatively high regard when they are young, beautiful, and childbearing. When they are not those things, they are held in low regard if not considered worthless.

So, while Legionaries would certainly be annoyed/confused by a female Courier, the average Legionary isn’t going around with balled fists hissing “WOMEN!” through clenched teeth.

RE: Caesar’s Karma being neutral: I believe at the time my rationale for that Karma setting is that Caesar is in a Mr. Kurtz-like state of unmoored morality. Whatever moral framework he had as Edward Sallow among the Followers has disintegrated after years of being Caesar.  I.e., it’s not so much that his Karma is neutral as much as it is alien.