“Male hominid group leaders really are dangerous. When they cease being dangerous, they will be overthrown. This too has carried over into current time. Men who are physically dangerous—sports stars, murderers, rapists—often enjoy great sexual success. Even imprisoned serial killers are known to acquire female followers who send them gifts and invent romances about them. The aura of danger was and is sexually stimulating, and the attraction of and ‘taming’ of a dangerous man lies at the heart of all romance literature.
“While civilized males no longer publicly categorize females as prey or property, the instinct to do so remains strong … “
Mouche wriggled again, fighting boredom. His father had not treated his mother as either prey or property, and he probably didn’t think of her as an opponent, either. This time he kept his head down, evading Madame’s glance.
“How does this apply to you, Mouche?”
He looked up startled, but she had turned away.
“How does it apply to any of you? You will learn to impart an aura of danger because women find it thrilling, though it is only the aura, not the reality that we seek to achieve. It may take no more than a wicked smile to convey a delicious threat that will increase a woman’s feeling of vulnerability to you while at the same time increasing her feeling of safety. Don’t expect this to make sense at the rational level, it doesn’t. It makes sense only in the bestial basements of women’s minds, where a mate strong enough to fight off a cave bear was a plus, even if he occasionally knocked his mate into the fire.
“Don’t confuse fantasy and reality. It is all too possible to be so swept up in the fantasy that one continues into reality, but the Consort who crosses that line is lost. We never speak of them by name, but I could tell you of more than one who injured a patroness and died in shame and obloquy. Learn your own danger signals. Learn how to control yourselves.
“In your training, you will learn to use these instincts. You will learn how to look and sound dangerous. For example, we stage duels that appear quite real, but we intervene at a point when the combatants are equally advantaged so that both participants can be made to seem dangerous. Each one will then say to his own particular audience, They made us stop because they had a lot invested in him, and they were afraid I would kill him.’ Properly said, with a choke in the voice and furious tears in the eyes, this goes over well. Danger whispers to a woman, ‘He’s so strong, he’s so fearless, he can protect me.’
“This is the effect you will be trained to convey. You will seem larger than life, dangerous and perilous, while really being self-controlled. When a woman buys a Consort, she wants something larger than life. If you were mere Men of Business, you would not be tempting to your patronesses.”
She fell silent, took a sip of water, looked up to see a hand respectfully raised.
“Yes, Mouche? You have a question?”
“Why must we never hurt a woman, Madame? My mother made my father very unhappy sometimes. I used to think if he would hit her, he would feel better.” There. He had proved he’d been listening.
Madame nodded. “That raises several issues:”
“There has been much woman-wastage in history. Women have been used as breeders only, as dawn to dusk agricultural workers, as beasts of burden. They have been unconsidered, used up, untaught, cast aside, injured or killed, not allowed to grow or live to their potential. In societies that do this, it is a ‘way of life,’ but there is little or no culture. Heterosexual males, when by themselves, seem to fall naturally into the gang pattern where rape is an amusement or a battle tactic. Haraldson’s edicts, however, make it clear that we expect more than that from humanity.
“Here on Newholme we choose to be human and we cannot afford to waste women’s reproductive nature or their cultural talents. Injury is forbidden. Injury invalidates a marriage, no matter how much dowry has been paid, and a husband or Consort who purposely kills or injures a woman is invariably blue-bodied.