One man and a thousand horny women

On the faraway planet of Xoort, the women outnumber the men by a thousand to one. You might think that this would mean a matriarchal society, but you would be wrong. It is an iron-clad patriarchy; the society is ruled by the men in a rigid aristocratic oligarchy. The men control the economy, they control the government, they control more or less everything. The women are trained from childhood to accept their subservience. They are desperate for the approval of the men, culturally complicit in this arrangement.

All of the women are also horny, every single one of them. My god, are they horny! All day long, all they can think about is sex. When they last had sex, how long it lasted, when they might be able to have sex again. Sex, sex, sex! They have sex with themselves, sex with single partners, sex in groups, sex in stable relationships, sex with strangers, sex for fun, sex for money. Sex, sex, sex! But almost always - and this is a very curious feature of Xoort - they are only able to have sex with other women.

This is a huge problem, because no matter how horny they are, no matter how often the women have sex with each other, they are all achingly eager to have sex with a man. Every woman who's had sex with a man is quick to make it known that sex with other women just can't compare. Sex with a man is everything they ever dreamed it would be, and more! Not only is the sex just so very, very, VERY much better, sex with a man is the only way to get pregnant.

On Xoort, the social status of a woman is determined by how many children she has. Under this system, only the 5% of women who have carried a child to term are considered "real" women. All the rest are viewed as mere girls, without social standing or voice in anything. Even among that 5%, the women are ruthlessly judged by how attractive and interesting their children are. Barely 0.1% of the "real" women have children good enough for them to be considered "ladies".

You might ask, why is this a problem? Surely these men, surrounded as they are by so many willing, desperately horny women, should have no problem clearing their schedule for them, right? Wouldn't they all be happy to start in on fathering just as many children as possible?

This is where you would be wrong. Because there are so MANY women competing for his attention, each man can afford to be very selective. Actually, there are a large contingent of men who aren't that selective, and take wickedly unscrupulous advantage of the situation. They have sex with lots of women, forcing them to do horrible, unspeakably degrading and destructive acts, all the while promising them a houseful of beautiful children. When the man is done (or when the woman wises up), he dumps her and goes on to the next one. Not much is done to stop these predators, other than a bit of tut-tutting among the other men. For the most part, the women are blamed for being so stupid as to allow themselves to be taken advantage of.

Even among the nice guys, though, it's a buyer's market. None of the men wants to waste his time (or his energies) on the frumpy women, the boring women, the odd looking women or the potentially high-maintenance women. He only wants the amazing women, the incredible women, the awesome, compliant, true-breeding women. After a lifetime of having lots of sex, the man has learned to distinguish good sex from fantastic sex, and he only wants the fantastic kind. Even worse for the women, if the children are wonderful, the man shares the credit. If the children are ugly and dull, it's all the woman's fault. To get the best sex and the best kids, he is only interested in the best women.

So how can these men tell which is which? On Xoort, in order to have sex with a man - REAL sex, that is - every woman has to send her picture to a bunch of men in hopes that one will choose her. The women spend enormous amounts of time on these photos, working to get them just exactly right. However, the men have a lot of photos to paw through before deciding which (if any) he will consent to take into his bed. If her smile isn't bright enough, if her hair is a shade of brown that's a bit too reddish, if her earrings are too big (or not big enough), if she's showing too much confidence (or not showing enough), if the picture isn't of sufficiently high professional quality... any of these will get her picture tossed into the shredder after a moment's glance.

Women have cried out for centuries at the unfairness of this, saying that many frumpy, odd-looking women with crooked smiles are absolutely top-notch at sex, and could easily give birth to beautiful children.

The men aren't buying it. They all say, "The system works... why not? I don't care how unrepresentative the glamour photos actually are, how little they reflect the woman being photographed. If the women can't be bothered to provide me with a cheesecake shot that immediately stimulates me, then I'm not going to waste my time finding out what she's really like. I'm a busy guy and I have plenty of women to choose from."

The men rarely if ever provide pictures of themselves. Why should they? It's not like they are working to attract the women.

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This parable of agents and authors, of writing and publishing was inspired by a blog post from Nora Lumiere.

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