3 ideas
When a society turns its record of origins into sacred text, later custodians select, reinterpret and smooth that record so the present order looks inevitable and divinely sanctioned. Recovering the raw record threatens institutions because their authority rests on the edited version, not on the events themselves. That is why the historian becomes a subversive figure.
In Maerlande, male births are rare and fertility is uncertain, so the society organizes kinship around fertile Mothers and treats men as a scarce resource, raising them apart and managing their reproductive role through ritual. Inverting which sex holds power does not remove bodily control. It moves control onto whichever bodies are scarce and essential to continuity.
A utopia's flaws show most clearly through an insider whose desires or doubts fall outside its rules, not through the ideals the society states about itself. Lisbei's forbidden attachments and questions show that even a humane, cooperative order runs on taboos and silences it cannot name. The costs land on those who fit badly.