Reflections to "When It Changed"

At the beginning, I thought the story was going to be about some sort of journey or some kind of trip. But that actually had nothing to do with the main focus at all. The narrator of the story keeps mentioning "three duels" but I'm not too sure what it means. Can anyone please clarify for me?



As for my thoughts on the story, I primarily thought that this was a society that I was used to and considered "normal." Later, I realized the truth that gender is again the removed social construct as in The Left Hand of Darkness. I felt that it was strange to have a gender completely eliminated and nonexistent in a society. Apparently, the male gender died out for six hundred years and since then, the women renamed their planet in order to forget about the loss of the other gender. I find it somewhat strange to think about my gender dying out. I also understand that it would be even stranger to have a missing gender return after six centuries. Still, I guess as a male, I can't help but to see from a point of view that is similar to that of the men from Earth in the story. I can't see a society with only women, reproducing with other women, to be normal or natural. Actually, I never even thought that kind of reproduction ("merging of ova") was possible. But then again this is science-fiction we are talking about.