‘Huh? Wha
happened?’
‘Just relax
honey. You were in a bad accident. Everything is okay now. You are safe.’
‘Safe?
Accident? Ahhhh, yeah. I remember. Car accident. I was in a car accident.’
‘That’s
right, Leah. So how are you feeling?’
‘Ah, good. I
think. Tired. Hard to remember.’
‘That is to
be expected, Leah. You nearly died.’
‘Died?’
‘Yes, honey.
Don’t you remember anything?’
‘Bright lights.
I remember bright lights. Then black. Now I am here.’
‘The
accident was six months ago.’
‘Six months?’
‘Yes, Leah.
You were out for six months. Your body was mangled. The doctors had to
reconstruct. The damage was so bad all they could do was… Well, it does not
matter, Leah. You are alive and awake.’
‘Leah? Who
is Leah?’
‘Oh, I am so
sorry honey. We had to give you a name. You don’t look like a Jack anymore. No.
no, honey. We mustn’t touch ourself.’
‘I’m a girl.’
‘Yes you
are. And lucky to be alive. Like I said, the doctors worked hard to save your
life but you were too damaged in certain areas. The only way to save your life
was make you a girl.’
‘A girl.’
‘It’s not
that bad being a girl. I am a girl too.’
‘Where is
this place?’
‘After you healed
enough and the danger was past you were brought here from the hospital, a
halfway house for continued healing. We monitor you 24/7.’
‘I want to
get up.’
‘That is a
good sign. Here, let me help you. We have a lot of training to do.’
‘Training?’
‘Yes, silly.
Training. You are a girl now. We need to teach you how to act and think like
one.’
That last line of "We need to teach you how to act and think like [a girl/women] sounded quite a bit sinister.
ReplyDeleteI've always had some level of aversion to anything that overtly tries to dictate my behavior and mode of thinking. Now, I know society does this naturally by way of the process Socialligests call "Socialization", but what I hear here are ideas of conditioning and drills of what a "proper" women should be.
The notion of "training" itself here was not all that unexpected. The victim here, Leah/Jack, has undergone some rather radical and severe changes and has effectively been comatose for months on end. She needs to relearn how to walk and move in her new and possibly atrophied body. The way the female body's weight is distributed is rather different than men's.
That is the kind of training I would expect. What is suggested in that last sentence suggests that "they" intend on dictating how the new women are the now behave and act in the world. That is far from the scope of the rehabilitation training I just described.
Anyway. Great caption and hope to find more like this on this blog.