402 replies to this topic

[Shryke]

Kalbear, on Feb 13 2009, 16.45, said:

How is a woman appearing at all in the books a token? Do you really think that in all of the Fanim cities, the Nansur cities and the Scarlet Spires there exist no wives? Because in their absence it feels often like Bakker is saying all women are sex objects, since that's the only women that are around. If that's not his intent, that's fine, but he did a really bad job of portraying that.

Really, you don't find it odd at all that women just aren't there? Anywhere? No wives, no daughters, no nothing? That's not odd to you?

No, it's token because you only want that women to appear because you want a women character in the book there to be the "normal life" one.

She's a token character. A quota filler. Inserted in order to fill the requisite hole you feel exists within the cast of characters.

Edited by Shryke, 13 February 2009 - 04:53 PM.

[JEORDHl]

needle, on Feb 13 2009, 14.41, said:

But the removal of woman from the canvas completely or than in deliberately mysogynistic stereotypes is an entirely different matter.

Is it though? That's what I'm wondering. And it's this kind of statement, 'It's not about feisty empowered women. It's about having non-abused woman, non sexualised objects within the text.' as you say and is clearly echoed by others, that makes me wonder if in fact this is about tokenism.

I look at it this way-- if it weren't for the Romans love of gossip and scandal, how much would we really know about Roman women? Could it be possible that Roman men in general and paterfamilias in particular thought as little about the women in their lives as they purportedly did about women as a whole? Could a Roman consul ride down the Appian Way and utterly disregard women passers-by if he wasn't attracted to them? I bet he could.

Maybe this is what Bakker's exploring. What if the importance of women in history was exactly how important they were in reality? A big if, mind you, but there might be hints of such considering some of the obstacles [admittedly small, so far]  that Esmenet runs into as Empress. I don't know.

Edited by Azor Ahai, 13 February 2009 - 04:58 PM.

[Arakasi]

I definitely agree with Needle. It's not about tokenism (because as Kal has pointed out it is quite deliberate that women in Earwa are in a crappy situation and are subjectively worse, so having an exception would be odd). It is about why is the world even written in that way? There should be plenty of women around who can do things other than fuck people and have babies, yet there isn't.

Your excuses don't work because this isn't only a military story, this is a broad epic tale spanning over many regions. Not all of the story is focused on war. One good woman in the midst of all that would yes be tokenism, but it should never even have gotten that way.

[Arakasi]

Azor Ahai, on Feb 13 2009, 15.55, said:

Is it though? That's what I'm wondering. And it's this kind of statement, 'It's not about feisty empowered women. It's about having non-abused woman, non sexualised objects within the text.' as you say and is clearly echoed by others, that makes me wonder if in fact this is about tokenism.

I look at it this way-- if it weren't for the Romans love of gossip and scandal, how much would we really know about Roman women? Could it be possible that Roman men in general and paterfamilias in particular thought as little about the women in their lives as they purportedly did about women as a whole? Could a Roman consul ride down the Appian Way and utterly disregard women passers-by if he wasn't attracted to them? I bet he could.

Maybe this is what Bakker's exploring. What if the importance of women in history was exactly how important they were in reality? A big if, mind you, but there might be hints of such considering some of the obstacles [admittedly small, so far]  that Esmenet runs into as Empress. I don't know.

All history is is selective story telling. In that sort of thing the minutiae is forgotten, people only write about the big events. Wars, treaties, marriages, children, etc. If Bakker's big thing is to show that selectively leaving out a whole bunch of stuff that you know makes humans human, then sure I guess that is valid. I've seen stories that focus very much on the small stuff and ignore what is happening in the world around them. But I don't think that is what he is trying to do here, because in that case he wouldn't write about women at all. It would be a tale of men, ignoring their women and whatnot. But he has women in there, they're all just you know whores.

[JEORDHl]

Unless you're planning on inverting it...

Edited by Azor Ahai, 13 February 2009 - 05:08 PM.

[kalbear]

Quote

No, it's token because you only want that women to appear because you want a women character in the book there to be the "normal life" one.

She's a token character. A quota filler. Inserted in order to fill the requisite hole you feel exists within the cast of characters.

Sigh. The point isn't to fill a quota, Shryke. The point is that women do exist in the world. And that even in the context of a holy war (which isn't the whole series) you are going to run into some women. And if their society is at all like ours, you should run into some actually important women here and there. Even if those women are only important because of who they've married or fucked, you'd expect to see some, right?

Think about all the detail provided on men in the book. All the soldiers and their names, how they look, where they come from. All the kings and lords and prophets and priests. Where are their wives? Where are their daughters? Isn't that a bit odd that none appear? Where are the equivalents of the queens of jerusalem?

To me, this is really unnatural, and because of this it stands out as something Important. Furthermore, it emphasizes what the women in the book actually do. When the only women we encounter are objectified based on their sex, it's hard not to see that there is some message there. When the author actually comes and tells us that this was by design, it's even harder.

So yes, if Bakker wants to avoid giving the message that women are only good for sex or for making babies in Earwa, having other women in his world would be a good thing. If he doesn't, that's fine too - and it sounds like perhaps he doesn't.

Quote

I look at it this way-- if it weren't for the Romans love of gossip and scandal, how much would we really know about Roman women? Could it be possible that Roman men in general and paterfamilias in particular thought as little about the women in their lives as they purportedly did about women as a whole? Could a Roman consul ride down the Appian Way and utterly disregard women passers-by if he wasn't attracted to them? I bet he could.

Again, this isn't a historical document. It's a novel. We're not even reading Akka's retelling of the tale. Comparing it to historical documentation isn't reasonable.

[Arakasi]

Azor Ahai, on Feb 13 2009, 16.07, said:

Unless you're planning on inverting it...

Well sure, that's what Kalbear is asking. Why is Bakker writing a world where women are subjectively worse?

The chances at this point that it isn't intentional are about nil. We get it. Women are either defined by their vagina or by their breeding capacity in this world. They don't get mentioned much and when they do its for their sexual or breeding qualities. Stop it with this token argument. No one is arguing that Bakker should stick in a Honor Harrington or even a Sansa to show that there is that one lovely example of a non whore. We are all wondering why Bakker chose to put the women in his novels in such a shitty situation.

[JEORDHl]

Kalbear, on Feb 13 2009, 15.07, said:

Again, this isn't a historical document. It's a novel. We're not even reading Akka's retelling of the tale. Comparing it to historical documentation isn't reasonable.

Ok. I'm stumped. Why isn't it reasonable when all we know of history comes in one form of documentation or another? Texts, depictions in stele, etc. If 'history' judged women so insignificant, wouldn't it go to reason that the men that carried those times on their shoulders or those who recorded it, so to speak, would think as little about women as the historical record did? I don't know. Where are all the 'I miss my Mommies' and 'my Loves' in the Iliad? No where. There are some in Odysseus’s journey though, because he was going home.

[shakes head] I don't know if I'm making myself clear. I have a sense of what I'm trying to say but can't tell if I am or am not. I'm talking context.


ETA: spelling, grammar... and Arak, don't use 'we'

ETA: And now I have to go. Looking forward to seeing where this thread has gone between now and tomorrow

Edited by Azor Ahai, 13 February 2009 - 05:27 PM.

[Shryke]

Arakasi, on Feb 13 2009, 16.57, said:

I definitely agree with Needle. It's not about tokenism (because as Kal has pointed out it is quite deliberate that women in Earwa are in a crappy situation and are subjectively worse, so having an exception would be odd). It is about why is the world even written in that way? There should be plenty of women around who can do things other than fuck people and have babies, yet there isn't.

Your excuses don't work because this isn't only a military story, this is a broad epic tale spanning over many regions. Not all of the story is focused on war. One good woman in the midst of all that would yes be tokenism, but it should never even have gotten that way.

While the story may be epic, the cast of characters is small and all in roughly the same area. The story is epic, the focus is small.

Edited by Shryke, 13 February 2009 - 05:24 PM.

[Norseman]

I am tired and quoting from memory, so please forgive me if what I've said has already been pointed out etc. However...

Women in medieval Europe worked as master artisans, owned breweries, could own and manage lands, many jewellers guilds were dominated by women. I mean for crying out loud read The Wife of Bath's Tale I mean this is obviously a rich, influential woman.

Women in the Ancient World could be and were patrons in their own rights, there are statues of Roman women, not the empress mind, but regular powerful women announcing their status as patrons. This despite the idea that women were supposed to stay home and work in wool.

In the Ottoman Empire the Caliph's harem owned major shares in trading enterprises. Once more there were in the Islamic world female scholars, powerful women who ran their own businesses, and so forth. (Before anyone says anything IMHO Europe was far better for women, but still...)

There is scarcely a single society on the planet where there haven't been women who have accomplished a lot. Moreover there's scarcely been a single society on the planet where all the silly rules regarding womens behaviour have actually been enforced.

[kalbear]

Quote

Ok. I'm stumped. Why it isn't reasonable when all we know of history comes in one form of documentation or another? Texts, depictions in stele, etc. If 'history' judged women so insignificant, wouldn't it go to reason than the men that carried those times on their shoulders or those who recorded it, so to speak, would think as little about women as the historical record did? Where are all the 'I miss my Mommies' and 'my Loves' in the Iliad? No where. There are some in Odysseus’s journey though, because he was going home.

But in the Iliad there were plenty of queens, daughters, goddesses, conquests, etc. There were plenty of Trojan women, and plenty of talk about the Greek queens.

And the Odyssey was about Odysseus trying to get home to his wife - and we got a lot of her trying to fend off other men successfully even. Not really such a great comparison for you to make.

History may judge women as not being worth mentioning because they weren't prime movers, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that women were actually around back then. They weren't invented in the 1960s so that Relic would have someone to flirt with. And because this isn't a historical document, this is a fictional work with points of view, it is unreasonable to compare it to historical documentation. It's reasonable to compare it to historical fictional works - but you'll find that very few fictional works have no women showing up, even in bit roles.

[JEORDHl]

That's fair, but I definitely didn't manage to get near what I was driving at. I'll think about it tonight, try to have something somewhat coherent come the morning.

[Shryke]

Kalbear, on Feb 13 2009, 17.07, said:

Sigh. The point isn't to fill a quota, Shryke. The point is that women do exist in the world. And that even in the context of a holy war (which isn't the whole series) you are going to run into some women. And if their society is at all like ours, you should run into some actually important women here and there. Even if those women are only important because of who they've married or fucked, you'd expect to see some, right?

Depends on the scenes in the book. In the scenes given, no I really wouldn't. (Hell, I didn't know till people started pointing it out on these threads that in real life, these guys hauled their wives along with them.)

Women show up all the time though. Just in places where it would make sense, given the scenes in the book. Cause the majority of the book is set in a war camp, yeah, there's lots of whores.

Quote

Think about all the detail provided on men in the book. All the soldiers and their names, how they look, where they come from. All the kings and lords and prophets and priests. Where are their wives? Where are their daughters? Isn't that a bit odd that none appear? Where are the equivalents of the queens of jerusalem?

All the detail?

We get a bunch of insight into the Great Names in the war through Kellhus and that's about it. The majority of the people are a faceless, indescribed mass of soldiers and whores and peasents and such.

The only thing that would have fit in naturally into the story would have been a Queen or some such leading her men into battle. The absence of that isn't really notable at all though. Maybe there weren't just any Queens in the relevant Nations at the time. Maybe those that exist stayed behind. And maybe Earwa is more sexist then our world in that women, in general, are not "allowed" to run nations.

Quote

To me, this is really unnatural, and because of this it stands out as something Important. Furthermore, it emphasizes what the women in the book actually do. When the only women we encounter are objectified based on their sex, it's hard not to see that there is some message there. When the author actually comes and tells us that this was by design, it's even harder.

See, this is the thing. You and others place this HUGE importance on this. It's not. Women not appearing alot in the story is just because of the areas the story focuses on.

And what Scott has told us was by design was the world being shitty for women in general. Which isn't all that inaccurate.

Edited by Shryke, 13 February 2009 - 05:36 PM.

[Shryke]

Norseman, on Feb 13 2009, 17.25, said:

I am tired and quoting from memory, so please forgive me if what I've said has already been pointed out etc. However...

Women in medieval Europe worked as master artisans, owned breweries, could own and manage lands, many jewellers guilds were dominated by women. I mean for crying out loud read The Wife of Bath's Tale I mean this is obviously a rich, influential woman.

Women in the Ancient World could be and were patrons in their own rights, there are statues of Roman women, not the empress mind, but regular powerful women announcing their status as patrons. This despite the idea that women were supposed to stay home and work in wool.

In the Ottoman Empire the Caliph's harem owned major shares in trading enterprises. Once more there were in the Islamic world female scholars, powerful women who ran their own businesses, and so forth. (Before anyone says anything IMHO Europe was far better for women, but still...)

There is scarcely a single society on the planet where there haven't been women who have accomplished a lot. Moreover there's scarcely been a single society on the planet where all the silly rules regarding womens behaviour have actually been enforced.

And how many brewers, artisans, merchants, etc did we see PERIOD?

Should we lament the lack of male brewers in Earwa too? Scott is anti-business?

[Arakasi]

Azor Ahai, on Feb 13 2009, 16.17, said:

ETA: spelling, grammar... and Arak, don't use 'we'

ETA: And now I have to go. Looking forward to seeing where this thread has gone between now and tomorrow

Why not use we? I just meant it in as we being the readers. Bakker has clearly come out and said that it was his intent to put the woman in his world in such a predicament. The question is why?

[Shryke]

Arakasi, on Feb 13 2009, 17.36, said:

Why not use we? I just meant it in as we being the readers. Bakker has clearly come out and said that it was his intent to put the woman in his world in such a predicament. The question is why?

Because life for people back then sucked alot. Often.

At least, compared to what we are used to nowadays.

He's always talked about wanting to avoid the whole "Fairy Tale" medieval world thing.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

Ghost of Nymeria, on Feb 13 2009, 16.28, said:

This isn't about empowerment for me. Its about women being shown as ANYTHING other than some sort of sexual object. Emphasis on the word object.I don't need or want Xena, Warrior Princess showing up. What would be nice to have any woman represented as something other than an object to fuck.

The Kian ladies-in-waiting and female servants? I do not recall any mention of female nobility in relation to the Padirajah were mentioned though, and I do think that women in the besieged city Caraskand could have used more mentioning.

needle, on Feb 13 2009, 16.41, said:

It's not about feisty empowered women. It's about having non-abused woman, non sexualised objects within the text. It's about the vague mention that someone is worried about his daughter. It's about someone missing his wife. It's about someone thinking back to his mother in a positive light. It's about having evidence that women exist in Earwa beyond the bounds of the military camp. It's about some evidence that 50% of the occupants of this world are women. It's about Ran's washerwoman. It's not about a token Lara Croft.

Bakker's books would work if discovered as historical manuscripts - if we were reading a history of Earwa. The omission of woman apart from sidenotes to Istrya, Esme, and even Serwe as mother of wee moenghus would be about right, seen through a lens of contemporary-to-that-era male misogny. But it's not a history book of a world, it's a depiction of inside that world, from a modern writer who should surely be aware that the written evidence does not always equate to reality.

A quick scanning of Joinville and Villehardouin's (two actual crusaders) Chronicles of the Crusades reveals very little talk of women. I did find a Queen of Cyprus who was called in for trade negotiations. I suppose something along those lines could have been arranged for a female character, but I am not sure how it would have worked out given the geography and route that the Holy War took.

Kalbear, on Feb 13 2009, 17.07, said:

Again, this isn't a historical document. It's a novel. We're not even reading Akka's retelling of the tale. Comparing it to historical documentation isn't reasonable.

Does Tolkien not get compared to the Germanic & Anglo-Saxon mythologies? Is that not the genre of literature he was emulating? If Bakker is likewise emulating the Illiad or historical documents of the Crusades, why is comparison to historical documents unreasonable?

Norseman, on Feb 13 2009, 17.25, said:

I am tired and quoting from memory, so please forgive me if what I've said has already been pointed out etc. However...

Women in medieval Europe worked as master artisans, owned breweries, could own and manage lands, many jewellers guilds were dominated by women. I mean for crying out loud read The Wife of Bath's Tale I mean this is obviously a rich, influential woman.

Women in the Ancient World could be and were patrons in their own rights, there are statues of Roman women, not the empress mind, but regular powerful women announcing their status as patrons. This despite the idea that women were supposed to stay home and work in wool.

In the Ottoman Empire the Caliph's harem owned major shares in trading enterprises. Once more there were in the Islamic world female scholars, powerful women who ran their own businesses, and so forth. (Before anyone says anything IMHO Europe was far better for women, but still...)

There is scarcely a single society on the planet where there haven't been women who have accomplished a lot. Moreover there's scarcely been a single society on the planet where all the silly rules regarding womens behaviour have actually been enforced.

While that is true, I think that Happy Ent and a few others would probably argue that fantasy tends to take these examples and romanticize the role of women in these pre-feminist societies.

Edited by Matrim Fox Cauthon, 13 February 2009 - 05:42 PM.

[kalbear]

Quote

See, this is the thing. You and others place this HUGE importance on this. It's not. Women not appearing alot in the story is just because of the areas the story focuses on.

I don't place a huge importance on it. I'm saying what the effect was for me. Queens didn't have to be on the Holy War, but it's weird that there were none there, none mentioned, and none in any of the Fanim land either. It's weirder that we don't run into any nobleborn women in Nansur either when we're dealing with court stuff.

Honestly, I can't think of a single book of historical fantasy, historical fiction, mythology or fiction I've read where there were so few mentions of women.

Here's something to consider: Kellhus states that one of the reasons women are so downtrodden is because men seek to control them, and they seek to control them because they want them. If they're so wanted...why aren't they mentioned?

[kalbear]

Quote

Does Tolkien not get compared to the Germanic & Anglo-Saxon mythologies? Is that not the genre of literature he was emulating? If Bakker is likewise emulating the Illiad or historical documents of the Crusades, why is comparison to historical documents unreasonable?

Because comparing it to historical fictions like the Iliad (which have women all over the place) and comparing it to historical documents like Roman surveys from consuls is not the same thing.

Similarly, comparing Tolkien to various mythologies is not the same thing as comparing it to scribes recording the lineage of the Tudors.

Jeordhi was saying that in history, there weren't many women mentioned, so it's okay. That may be true, but this isn't history. This is closer to an epic poem - and epic poems have tons of women in 'em.

Quote

While that is true, I think that Happy Ent and a few others would probably argue that fantasy tends to take these examples and romanticize the role of women in these pre-feminist societies.

It does, but Bakker doesn't romanticize them or make them worse; he deletes them completely.

Edited by Kalbear, 13 February 2009 - 05:48 PM.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

Shryke, on Feb 13 2009, 17.33, said:

Maybe there weren't just any Queens in the relevant Nations at the time. Maybe those that exist stayed behind. And maybe Earwa is more sexist then our world in that women, in general, are not "allowed" to run nations.

I am not sure how this sort of speculative thinking is all that beneficial or that valuable, because even then there is no mention of these could-be-maybe queenly lieges by any of the crusaders, where talk of the homeland nobility would be expected. Ultimately then, when the rest of the terrible plot of women being the way they are as we see in Earwe, it would be more logical for one to assume that the lack of women in such places is intentional and not a matter of simply being off-screen.

Kalbear, on Feb 13 2009, 17.43, said:

Here's something to consider: Kellhus states that one of the reasons women are so downtrodden is because men seek to control them, and they seek to control them because they want them. If they're so wanted...why aren't they mentioned?

Is this a joke question?