Reading I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
First of all, I didn't read the entire story, I only got to page 5, and I have to make some commentary before I keep reading.When people were comparing Caine from TADC to AM from this short story, I was compelled to read it.
What I didn't expect, and should have expected, is the way that the female character is reduced to a caricature rather than an actual character who has been through a century of trauma. When I first read that the men "took turns" to have sex with her, I thought I read wrong. But I had read right. I was just second guessing myself. Weird, but not entirely impossible, a lot of humans need sex, and it would make sense that in an apocalyptic scenario that lasts over a century with only one, extremely traumatized woman, she'd accept having sex with the men that are with her as a way of comforting them and keeping some semblance of all of their sanities.
And I was okay with the logic this story was setting. Until it hit me with
"When AM had altered Benny,
during the machine's utterly irrational, hysterical phase, it was not merely
Benny's face the computer had made like a giant ape's. He was big in the
privates; she loved that! She serviced us, as a matter of course, but she
loved it from him. "
Sorry, but what the actual fuck? I honestly was baffled to read this.
Not saying that it is impossible for women to love big penises, it is very possible, but
First of all, although this wouldn't matter for a character as throughouly traumatized as Ellen, most women aren't looking for the size of their partner when it comes to sex. They look for touches, both sexual and non-sexual, whispers, visuals...
BUT IT DOESN'T EVEN MATTER WHAT THEY LIKE IN THIS CASE.
Because a woman that has been through decades of torture, who is using her body as a way to comfort others or to say thanks when she doesn't even enjoy it, a woman who doesn't even see sex as a way to connect or feel pleasure anymore, WOULDN'T LOVE THE THINGS SHE LOVED ABOUT SEX WHEN SHE WASN'T BROKEN TO THE POINT OF OTHERS NOTICING.
What do you mean this woman who has been tortured nonstop and doesn't have sex for her own pleasure anymore loves a big dick SO MUCH that the other traumatized men around her notice it?
Not to mention, it's not any big dick, it's a big dick from a man that looks like a CHIMPANZEE.
In this apocalyptic scenario, it makes sense that misogyny is rampant. It is a sense that she uses sex as a currency. What doesn't make sense is her loving a chimpanzee dick that much to the point the others notice. That's just a weird as fuck thing to write, and out of character too, when we consider the situation.
