Ooh, that article IS interesting. I hadn't thought that this could be a strategy to draw attention to how in our world patriarchical systems and assumptions are simply taken for granted, but that's an exciting idea. I guess one of the reasons why I wanted more is because it's such an interesting idea to explore in fiction, and so far I haven't come across any books that explore it satisfactorily. Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman fails to be done because it's based on essentialist assumptions - a matriarchy equals balance and harmony and flowers and rainbows, and not the current power balance being completely inverted, but the problem of sexism remaining.
The consciousness thing: I don't think humanity's understanding of the universe is flawless and without liminations, but at the same time, the idea that after death we'll "see" things, that once we leave the liminations of mortality behind us we'll gain a new understanding, is very religion-based and it's something I can't get behind. I mean, I can suspend my desbelief about it just fine, just like I regularly do about ghosts and several other ideas not compatible with my beliefs, but when characters go there I feel that I can't follow them. Of course. now that I think of it I realise that A Wrinkle in Time is ALL about that idea and yet I didn't even bat an eyelid. Maybe it's because L'Engle introduces it fairly early on, and so it was easy for me to accept it as just another imaginative element. But in The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms the gods are first introduced as enslaved, and although they know plenty more than Yeine, that idea of a deeper understanding beyond mortality doesn't play a key role until the cerimony and everything that follows.
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The consciousness thing: I don't think humanity's understanding of the universe is flawless and without liminations, but at the same time, the idea that after death we'll "see" things, that once we leave the liminations of mortality behind us we'll gain a new understanding, is very religion-based and it's something I can't get behind. I mean, I can suspend my desbelief about it just fine, just like I regularly do about ghosts and several other ideas not compatible with my beliefs, but when characters go there I feel that I can't follow them. Of course. now that I think of it I realise that A Wrinkle in Time is ALL about that idea and yet I didn't even bat an eyelid. Maybe it's because L'Engle introduces it fairly early on, and so it was easy for me to accept it as just another imaginative element. But in The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms the gods are first introduced as enslaved, and although they know plenty more than Yeine, that idea of a deeper understanding beyond mortality doesn't play a key role until the cerimony and everything that follows.