Lewis: By the way, has any science fiction writer succeeded in inventing a third sex? Apart from the third sex we all know.
\nAmis: Clifford Simak invented a set-up where there were seven sexes.
\nLewis: How rare happy marriages must have been then!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Before you read on, pause for a second and try to decide exactly what problem Lewis is anticipating in his comment.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I realized, when I was reading the dialogue, I could think of two possible complications that Lewis might be referring to (and the conversation subsequently shifted, so I wasn\u2019t sure which was right). \u00a0First, Lewis might have meant it would be much harder to find anyone to marry, since the odds that anyone was attracted to your particular sex was much lower. \u00a0Who knows how a system of seven sexes would work. \u00a0People might be attracted to any subset of the seven, and you might be unlucky enough to keep falling for people who didn\u2019t find your particular sex attractive.<\/p>\n
In this world, liking a particular gender is like having a thing for redheads, and finding out that disappointingly few redheads have a thing for you. \u00a0The more specialized your tastes, the more difficult it is to find a compatible match.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
But, I realized there was another possible difficulty that Lewis might have anticipated. \u00a0If marriage is meant to be the sacrament that bridges a tremendous division, and reunites the two images of God, might it be that, in Simak\u2019s world, a true marriage would bind\u00a0seven<\/em> people together \u2014 one of each gender? \u00a0This bears a little more\u00a0resemblance\u00a0to the idea of love and marriage as a healing of divisions (as in the song \u201cThe Origin of Love\u201d below, adapted from Plato\u2019s\u00a0Symposium<\/em>).<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/84\/2013\/05\/zero-gravity-wedding.jpg\" "\\"zero")
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