Non feminist fantasy?

[Altherion]

What "physical characteristics" are you speaking of?

Human males are noticeably larger, stronger and faster than human females, both on average and at the extremes. This has nothing to do with social conditioning -- it's just biology. You can see the extreme cases demonstrated at the Olympics. Of course, there are settings in which this would not matter. If your warriors fight primarily with guns, it matter much less. If they use powered armor or sorcery, it doesn't matter at all.

As far as I can tell, the objection in this badly misnamed thread is not to the presentation of females in such settings, but to fantasy which features what I would refer to as "Dungeons and Dragons female Fighters". That is, it's fantasy in a more or less classic magical medieval setting where, without any explanation whatsoever, any non-magical human warriors you run into are just as likely to be female as male. If the humans on this world are like us, then this makes absolutely no sense: even if the medieval society were somehow more egalitarian than ours (they're usually not portrayed as such) and allowed women who satisfy the physical requirements for being a warrior to train as such, male warriors would still outnumber females by a large margin and a truly good female warrior would be remarked upon. Instead, the females are presented as exactly equal to males which leads me to believe that these are not actually humans like us, but actually some sort of bizarre lookalikes with a different underlying biology. Good SFF (e.g. ASOIAF) averts this, of course, but there is plenty of the other type out there.

[dietl]

Instead, the females are presented as exactly equal to males ...

Can you give us examples of what books you are talking about, because I can't remember ever reading a book where women are presented as exacty equal.

[Galactus]

Human males are noticeably larger, stronger and faster than human females, both on average and at the extremes.

But armies didn't pick up the strongest men: They picked up the ones willing to join. (or just those that were closest) and remember that if women did not usually fight, they did do most of the stuff that soldiers did, simply because they accompanied armies. (and 90% of what soldiers did was walking and dying of various horrible diseases)

Very few armies have ever been in a position when they can just turn away recruits.

[Kalbear]

My wife found a couple more interesting links on the subject - notably the female gladiator skeleton found in London in 2000.

http://ejmas.com/jcs/jcsart_murray_0703.htm

[Max the Mostly Mediocre]

I guess the routine inclusion of women in institutionalised violence would strike me as odd. Such a phenomenon seems to presuppose several factors that run counter to how humans normally behave: you’d need a culture where violence is available women, you’d need absence of sexism, you’d need a sufficient number of women with the necessary physical characteristics to make the tradeoffs useful, you’d need a reason for why women are as expendable as men, etc.

The bolded is demonstrably untrue. The modern American military is rather sexist, but it also includes women in institutionalized violence (though it does go some lengths to pretending it doesn't; guarding a truck convoy in Iraq is a noncombatant role, really!).

[Werthead]

Can you give us examples of what books you are talking about, because I can't remember ever reading a book where women are presented as exacty equal.

The only one that comes immediately to mind is Malazan.

Brienne is considered unusual in ASoIaF, but Dacey and Maege Mormont are only considered unusual in the south; on Bear Island women fighting is considered extremely normal and to a lesser extent elsewhere in the North (especially where ironborn raids are likely). In Wheel of Time female mecenaries and soldiers are considered unusual but not unprecedented; female rulers are expected to accompany their armies into battle and command, even if they are not fighting on the front lines.

But in Malazan soldiers are just as likely to be female as male across multiple cultures (Malazan, Crimson Guard, the various Quon Talia militias, the Genabackan armies, the mercenary force Stonny is part of, etc) and there is almost no commentary on this being unusual or odd. It's part of Erikson's decision to be completely non-sexist, which then went out the window with the bizarre 'hobbling' storyline in Dust of Dreams.

[Winter's Knight]

There's also Laurie J. Marks' Elemental Logic series, which doesn't have any sort of gender based discrimination.

[Velo]

It's perfectly reasonable to have female characters running around with swords in fantasyland. No doubt half the readership would enjoy the story more if they would not be constantly reminded that their gender was (and to a degree still is) looked down upon through history. The argument that sexism is "more accurate" doesn't hold up to scrutiny - fantasy takes liberties in numerous fields, not just gender politics. The vast majority of the novels out there do not even attempt to portray the labyrinthine social stratification, ever-present religious beliefs, and state organization in even vaguely realistic manners. Previous posters said that warrior-women do not bother them because fantasy is rife with clearly supernatural elements e.g. elves and dragons. Well, id's say the hordes of well-educated, literate, socially-mobile, atheist peasants with straight teeth, happily directing armed bands of adventurers to the nearest monster-den should tip the perceptive reader even before the fireballs start flying.

That said, there are a couple of things one should keep in mind while dealing with sexism in fantasy:

1) Throwing female characters into male roles and characterizing them as males with Lara Croft's physique, while simultaneously making them averse to stereotypical femininity doesn't give the author feminist points.

2) Novels might be actually centered around sexism, commenting on it, using it for dramatic conflict. From time to time we get fantasy queens and princesses doing their impressions of Tamar of Georgia or Eleanor of Aquitaine, dealing with societal pressure and the like. Another example - imagine someone writing in a setting inspired by the Greco-Persian wars. Mention that the latter side was more egalitarian in terms of gender than the other as part of describing culture-shock could be a good idea - especially given how popular culture butchers the Middle East.

3) What is the model of society an author should use while depicting a gender-equal fantasy world? Should it be transplanted from his or her own modern country? We don't live in a gender-equal world though, and women's right differ wildly around the globe. How equal should be a fantasy world depicted by a Japanese writer? Should it be any different than one created by an American author? Should they both use Sweden as a framework? But not even Sweden could possibly be 100% perfect, right? Should they write about an utopia then? Should they also fix a medieval kingdom's political structure, immigration policy and gun control in accordance to the reader's sensibilities? Could the end result really please both the Democrats and the Republicans?

Okay, enough with the jests. There are fantasy novels that could easily depict a more gender-equal environment - not all have to follow history with mad precision, and the treatment of women in much of the classics can be really grating. On the other hand the past, that fantasy draws from in droves, was not only rife with sexism, but also with racism, intolerance, bigotry, institutionalized violence and a thousand other nasty habits. A novel can't realistically root them all out, because the end result would be unrecognizable compared to anything in the real world, patronizing and preachy. Some things of course get glossed over as time passes and nobody seems to notice - that reflects the evolution of the readership's sensibilities. On the other hand said sensibilities do not change in a straight line heading towards some sanitized wonderland - before Game of Thrones reversed the trends, the typical fantasy-land was a much safer place than it is today. In this time of contemporary grimdark fantasy, a novel is much more likely to feature cruelty and injustice not seen in the Tolkien-era (at least not in mainstream quest-for-the-mcguffin fantasy). The darker part of our ancestors nature suddenly became acceptable to write and read about, and knights in shining armor got pushed to the corner. There is no one right way to write a book - it ultimately goes to the readers - what can and what cannot be tolerated by the general public. Today sexism is not tolerated in fantasy novels, and this results in either the inclusion of gender-equality in the settings or some sort of commentary while trying to by period-accurate. The former approach tends to bring us warrior-women the OP is criticizing - they don't bother me personally, but I'm not sure if our grandchildren 50 years from now won't be laughing their asses off when we will tell them about our idea of feminism in fantasy.

[dietl]

The only one that comes immediately to mind is Malazan.

Brienne is considered unusual in ASoIaF, but Dacey and Maege Mormont are only considered unusual in the south; on Bear Island women fighting is considered extremely normal and to a lesser extent elsewhere in the North (especially where ironborn raids are likely). In Wheel of Time female mecenaries and soldiers are considered unusual but not unprecedented; female rulers are expected to accompany their armies into battle and command, even if they are not fighting on the front lines.

But in Malazan soldiers are just as likely to be female as male across multiple cultures (Malazan, Crimson Guard, the various Quon Talia militias, the Genabackan armies, the mercenary force Stonny is part of, etc) and there is almost no commentary on this being unusual or odd. It's part of Erikson's decision to be completely non-sexist, which then went out the window with the bizarre 'hobbling' storyline in Dust of Dreams.

Well, the question was about women and men being 'exactly equal', so I don't think ASoIaF and WoT count, for the reasons you mention. Just because there are some exeptions doesn't mean that they are equal.

I was also thinking about Malazan too and I remember there being some female soldier, but the males are in the vast majority among the common soldiery (I grant that my memory might delude me here, so could somebody point to some statistics for MBotF? If the distribution turns out to be about 50/50 or at least 70male/30female, I would have to change my mind). It's different in the leading positions and in those involving sorcery, but that's to be expected given the magic system.

In my view they are treated equaly in the social context but not portrayed equaly, because of the females being in the minority in violent positions (non-magical).

[David Selig]

The Malazan armies have 50/50 male/female distribution IIRC. Even among the heavies (the frontline tank type soldiers).

[sologdin]

not getting the physical strength objections. a longsword weights about how much? it takes how many foot pounds of pressure for a well maintained longsword to penetrate a human body? i think my 4 year-old daughter could kill me with one of those, ergo.

[jurble]

not getting the physical strength objections. a longsword weights about how much? it takes how many foot pounds of pressure for a well maintained longsword to penetrate a human body? i think my 4 year-old daughter could kill me with one of those, ergo.

I'm skeptical. Do some experiments.

But that reminds me, we need more child-soldiers in Fantasy. Where's all the pages and squires?

What did pages exactly do during battle? Did they stay in the camp? I expect they would.

[Datepalm]

Where are all the shanghaied 12 year old commoners being used as cannon fodder?

[Richard]

not getting the physical strength objections. a longsword weights about how much? it takes how many foot pounds of pressure for a well maintained longsword to penetrate a human body? i think my 4 year-old daughter could kill me with one of those, ergo.

I doubt she'd manage it if you were wearing plate armour or even mail. Or had any kind of offensive weapon yourself. Or a shield. From what I've read of broadsword combat, a lot of it involved getting the damn things up in the air and whirling and then beating your opponents down with sheer weight and momentum. We're not talking elegant duelling here. Any actual penetrating with the pointy end would more likely be a finishing stroke than the actual blows that took your enemies down.

Also - it's not really about what you can achieve once; it's whether you can keep doing it for hours at a time, then grab a couple of hours sleep and a mouthful of food, march a dozen miles and do it all over again. The levels of sheer brute endurance you'd need for this kind of combat are immense.

Which is not to say some women wouldn't be capable of it - but given the basic differential of muscle mass in males and females, and the significant differences in overall athletic performance between men and women, they are going to be starting out at a severe disadvantage, and that's before you even begin ladling on the lashings of extreme gender bias in every warlike culture the world has ever known.

[Zorral]

Until a guy has been a working farm woman pregnant 9 months, giving birth for a couple of days, getting up and getting back to work, he'd best not talk about the strength differential of women and men with the idea that women are by definition physically weaker.

[fabio012]

Until a guy has been a working farm woman pregnant 9 months, giving birth for a couple of days, getting up and getting back to work, he'd best not talk about the strength differential of women and men with the idea that women are by definition physically weaker.

Who did that.

[Max the Mostly Mediocre]

Also - it's not really about what you can achieve once; it's whether you can keep doing it for hours at a time, then grab a couple of hours sleep and a mouthful of food, march a dozen miles and do it all over again. The levels of sheer brute endurance you'd need for this kind of combat are immense.

I have difficulty believing that it was typical for an individual soldier to be actively engaged in combat--that is, swinging a sword--for hours. For that matter, I have difficulty believing we have very good sources about what a battle was actually like circa 1200. However, I could easily be wrong. If you don't mind, what sort of sources are you drawing on?

[fabio012]

I have difficulty believing that it was typical for an individual soldier to be actively engaged in combat--that is, swinging a sword--for hours. For that matter, I have difficulty believing we have very good sources about what a battle was actually like circa 1200. However, I could easily be wrong. If you don't mind, what sort of sources are you drawing on?

I can confirm his information with anime movies.

[Kalbear]

Reading the soviet rationale for women being snipers that seems to not be the case; women were better at focusing over long periods, moving long distances and better general aerobic (instead of anaerobic) fitness. Hardly scientific, but endurance seems a bit odd to ding women on.

[Persicaria]

I kind of had to take a double take when reading this thread title. Then I read the actual post. I'm still a little wtf right now.I would think that at least 8 out of 10 fantasy novels fail to portray females in any real or effective way, thus meeting your criteria. And it seems your complaint is not about feminism , but about female warriors or women holding equal status in a genre known for dragons and wizards? That's odd because we have historical evidence for the first and none for the later. Oh well, there are people far more talented in persuasion than I addressing this topic.