Jealous Much?

So many insightful ideas were expressed in the first chapter of Katherine Burdekin's Proud Man. For starters, the idea of having a gender neutral narrator from the future that interacts with their possible ancestors, the subhumans, in a dream really perplexed me at first. However, as I began to look over the reading, I began to understand the importance of it, being that the narrator would be able to understand to lifestyle of both sexes a lot better. This, therefore, makes me trust the narrator more when he or she begins to talk about topics such as war, sexism, and the jealousy that comes from it. However, I still had issues in agreeing with what the narrator was saying. One of the things that grabbed my attention was when the narrator stated that men where jealous of women's biological importance when it came to making children (thus making them feel inferior and envious) and both genders cannot live together in peace since they hate and fear each other but at the same cannot live without the other due to having strong animal desires, which is sex. This claim regarding men and women not being able to live in peace because of their loathing one another seemed too extreme for me and can't seem to understand the reason for making that claim. Another thing along the lines of this that I had difficulty comprehending was the claim that war was the best method for relieving "...restlessness caused by the unnatural misery of their sex lives" (26). This struggle of inferiority that is expressed both between the males and females then leads to the dramatic ending of the chapter, where the narrator expresses the temptation to say that subhumans spend most of their time "In hating." (62). Perhaps since I see myself as a hopeful and optimistic person I was not able to digest the negativity and the lacking of a solution towards the problems mentioned throughout the chapter.

Some of the questions that I had throughout the reading include:
1.) What do you all think of the opinion regarding the struggle of men and women living peacefully? Has there been any kind of significant change that can argue against this or are we still dealing with the same issues today?

2.) What kind of significance do you see in having the narrator interact with the subhumans in a dream? Based on our discussions in class about having one's dreams differed, does this text seem to carry the similar idea of reaching towards something that can't be reached?

3.) Do you agree with the idea that art, religion, and war are the best methods in escaping the jealousy and tension between men and women?