er X.

The word Ana (pronounced broadly 'Arna') corresponds with our plural
'men;' An (pronounced 'Arn'), the singular, with 'man.' The word for
woman is Gy (pronounced hard, as in Guy); it forms itself into Gy-ei for
the plural, but the G becomes soft in the plural like Jy-ei. They have
a proverb to the effect that this difference in pronunciation is
symbolical, for that the female sex is soft in the concrete, but hard to
deal with in the individual. The Gy-ei are in the fullest enjoyment of
all the rights of equality with males, for which certain philosophers
above ground contend.

In childhood they perform the offices of work and labour impartially
with the boys, and, indeed, in the earlier age appropriated to the
destruction of animals irreclaimably hostile, the girls are frequently
preferred, as being by constitution more ruthless under the influence of
fear or hate. In the interval between infancy and the marriageable age
familiar intercourse between the sexes is suspended. At the marriageable
age it is renewed, never with worse consequences than those which attend
upon marriage. All arts and vocations allotted to the one sex are open
to the other, and the Gy-ei arrogate to themselves a superiority in all
those abstruse and mystical branches of reasoning, for which they say
the Ana are unfitted by a duller sobriety of understanding, or the
routine of their matter-of-fact occupations, just as young ladies in our
own world constitute themselves authorities in the subtlest points of
theological doctrine, for which few men, actively engaged in worldly
business have sufficient learning or refinement of intellect.
Whether owing to early training in gymnastic exercises, or to their
constitutional organisation, the Gy-ei are usually superior to the Ana
in physical strength (an important element in the consideration and
maintenance of female rights). They attain to loftier stature, and amid
their rounder proportions are imbedded sinews and muscles as hardy
as those of the other sex. Indeed they assert that, according to the
original laws of nature, females were intended to be larger than males,
and maintain this dogma by reference to the earliest formations of life
in insects, and in the most ancient family of the vertebrata--viz.,
fishes--in both of which the females are generally large enough to make
a meal of their consorts if they so desire. Above all, the Gy-ei have a
readier and more concentred power over that mys