If it helps, I was shocked at the number of clueless men in college trying to do laundry.

Unlike many men in the dorm, my clothes did not fade into one shade of dingy gray or pink after one semester.

My mom taught my brother how to do laundry, but he still stomps them into the washer so that some barely get wet, and smell worse than when he started. Interestingly, he learned how to propoerly wash clothes, and iron them, in the Marine Corps.

I also don't keep candy on my desk, despite inquiries as to why I don't. Candy leads to baked goods, and baked goods remind them of mommy, and soon they call you at 3am from Sydney because they lost their shoes, and all of this can be blamed on cookies.

I might keep candy on my desk, but it would all be for me. Of course this is also the kind of mother I'm likely to be at this point in my life, so when someone called me at 3am from Sydney, I would laugh, hang up and then look lovingly at my pretty shoes.

I'm still stuck on the core/rim dichotomy in attitudes toward the companions. Wasn't whatever planet featured in Train Job on the rim? (All I recall is that it was dirt-poor and people were dying for the lack of medicine--sounds rim-y.) And didn't Inara kind of waltzed in and saved Mal and Zoe because she, as a companion, commanded respect?

The way I see it, the place of the Train job was in was as to Persephene as Persephene is to the core.

They probably have never seen a Companion, heck, most of them probably had never been Persephene and would consider it a grand place.

I would think the people there would have a different view of a companion, a representative of a culture and environment they will never have or experience (the core worlds) where the folks of Shindig are much closer, and the mythic luster of it has worn off.

Virtually everywhere I've worked my boss has been female. The coffee gets made by whoever is wanting a cup, if it's a meeting everyone brings their own cup. Maybe it's a cultural thing.

I work at a university, and my new female boss has the stapleritis as well as the cpoy machine fear. What is funny here is that the people who are incapable of doing things like using the fax machine and copier or finding the staples are a) professors and b) students, although usually the females try. What is also a weird gender thing here is that almost all staff are female, academics are male. So there arereally, really high level females, but they are in academic support or parking or career services or student activities.

Short version: it's irritating when people today buy into or have to live with idiot gender stereotyping and gendered roles in the workplace. 500 years and several galaxies from here, in a fictional universe, I don't think there's any excuse to leave all that unexamined.

Fair point, well made.

I don't know - does the fact that gender roles have regressed in the hinterlands need to be any more closely examined than such regressions as "she's a witch, burn her"? If superstitions have regressed to that degree in places, why wouldn't gender roles?

Nutty, do you think it makes a difference that on Firefly, the writing staff is overwhelmingly male? Also, where does Zoe fall into the gender stereotyping dynamic?

I don't really think about the companion issue on Firefly, it's an internal fanwank of Inara, maybe. I ignore her character, mostly.

Unsure if any of this may have been examined, if the show went beyond 13 episodes.

I can see that attitudes toward sex would change over 500 years, I can see a time where people who are experts on performing sexual acts would eventually have the same prestige granted to a really great masseuse, who is also charged with making one's body feel good.

It's the ambassador part that loses me, the political influence. I don't see how the ability to give a really great blowjob gives one such a great amount of prestige that their opinion counts in a diplomatic situation.