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Bakker and Women


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[quote name='cyrano' post='1677730' date='Feb 6 2009, 22.34']Why does Bakker have aliens, teleportation, skin changers and shapeshifters in his books? Because the real world does.

No wait, it doesnt. I find an insistence on correspondence with the real world in a setting that has fantastical elements to be a tad ludicrous.[/quote]

Yeah, everyone should be able to fly, racism, sexism and discrimination should not exist and characters shouldn't be like real people at all.

After all, it's fantasy and an insistence on correspondence with the real world in a setting that has fantastical elements is ludicrous.
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[quote name='Arthmail' post='1674889' date='Feb 5 2009, 08.46']At the end of the day, Bakker's potrayal of women is however he wishes it to be. He wrote it, he owns it, he decided on the history of the world and the relevancy of its characters within. Claiming that he should examine other racial groups in some pc attempt to be all inclusive is ridiculous posturing, because he doesn't readily deal with those groups. He does deal with the women, and he sets all of them down the same path. That, to me, is just lazy and boring.[/quote]

To me, that's perhaps a bit of a lack of imagination - but I'm willing to forgive him for it because of the enjoyment I get from the rest of his story.

[quote name='Balefont' post='1674956' date='Feb 5 2009, 09.41']As a female who has been lucky to have lived a relatively safe existance, I really don't have a problem with the way Bakker portrays the women in the story. I think it works for the story and if you don't like it, perhaps the series is not for you. There's nothing wrong with that either. I can't get into Erikson myself so...[/quote]

I agree with Bale.

[quote name='Ran' post='1674990' date='Feb 5 2009, 10.21']What would people think if it turns out that the Dûnyain basically keep women around as little more than breeding stock?[/quote]

I'm not sure how he's going to handle that particular issue. I tend to agree that they probably won't be feminine versions of their male counterparts.

[quote name='Bastard of Godsgrace' post='1675011' date='Feb 5 2009, 10.38']Well, I would probably say he is true to his vision and doesn't allow himself to be led by readers expectations ;) Others, who aren't Bakker fanboys, would probably say other things, though. I think silence regarding Dunyain women is probably deliberate and Bakker is planning some surprise here.




You know, there is also worse possibility - I mean [b]Tleilaxu vats[/b] :devil:[/quote]

That thought occurred to me too. Now, THAT IS disturbing. :leaving:


[quote name='Happy Ent' post='1675226' date='Feb 5 2009, 13.56']In the interest of [i]realism[/i] I would agree. (Wouldn’t make for a very good book, of course. Our protagonists need to be exceptionel.)

I don’t agree. I feel a lot more outrage at the rape scenes in Bakker than at the very similar scenes in Martin. I don’t know why that is so, but I think that’s a point in Bakker’s favour.

In fact, the [b]happy whores[/b] in Martin (and Lynch) make me positively angry, though I normally try to check my political agendas at the door when I read fiction.[/quote]

I was a bit nonplussed by these things too - more so than by Bakker's used-and-abused womenfolk.

My sanguine attitude toward the literary treatment women receive in this series probably stems from the fact that I don't tend to relate to just women characters when I read. In fact, in the PoN series, I found myself relating more to Conphas (!) than anyone else.
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[quote name='Kalbear' post='1677507' date='Feb 7 2009, 00.48']I hate doing big things in spoilers because it really tends to derail the conversation.
SPOILER: TJE
Esmi is still entirely defined by her being the mom of Kellhus' kids - and she was put into power while Kellhus was away because he sees her fear as a strength when ruling. And when trying to deal with the cultist, she can't do a damn thing until Kellhus appears to save the day.
[/quote]

I agree about the spoiler tags, but oh well:

SPOILER: The Judging Eye
While the story focuses on Esmenet's relationships with her children, I wouldn't say she is defined entirely by her role as mother: she is also running the Empire all the while, the details of it are just usually kept in the background.
Her difficulties in dealing with the cult are a strike against her, but is it also a good of example of the things people criticise about Bakker's female characters, given that her opponents are all women as well?
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[quote name='Ran' post='1677501' date='Feb 6 2009, 15.43']I've said, and maintain, that I don't really think Bakker needs to change anything in the series. I think he missed an opportunity to make his problematization more interesting.[/quote]

[quote name='Shryke' post='1677583' date='Feb 6 2009, 16.52']I think "Missed Opportunity" is a much much better way of putting it.

My problem is that "Big Mistake" implies something that should be corrected. In this case, by throwing in more characters of whatever type in order to meet the quotas.[/quote]


This may sound strange, but I do think one of the problems is that Bakker simply has
1) so few fully realized characters, and
2) so few characters

If we exclude Kelhus - who is more device than character - how many major characters do we have? Akka, Esmenet, Cnaiur? Does anyone else really count? I'm not trying to excuse Bakker, but it's easier to have more interesting female characters when you have a world full of interesting characters . . . like say Martin. Many of Martin's secondary and tertiary (and so on) characters seem more fully realized to me than Bakker's major characters. And Martin simply has *so many* vivid characters.

This isn't to suggest that Bakker is a bad writer by comparing him negatively with Martin. On the contrary, he's just a very different kind of writer. Reading Bakker is kind of like watching a chess match. There aren't that many pieces in play, but the game is fascinating.

At any rate, my point is that the opportunity might have been missed (at least so far in the first three books) because the opportunities were so few and far between.

If the trend continues, however, all bets are off.
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[quote name='Triskele' post='1677967' date='Feb 7 2009, 00.10']I understand your point to a degree but I would say that Conphas is a fully realized character. And an awesome one at that. But you're right, I think the characters do run dry pretty quickly. But this doesn't bother me much. A comparison to Martin is a bit unfair because even at the perpetually suspended place in the series we're at, we have more than double the pages of Martin that we do of Bakker.[/quote]

And a comparison to Martin is unfair because Martin is pretty freakish in his ability to spin out endless interesting characters. Someone as minor as the Blackfish - who has played very little role in Martin's series to date - seems much more interesting to me than Conphas. But again . . . I'm not trying to critique Bakker. I think his minimalism with regard to the number of characters he is putting into play is simply part of the package.

To return to the gender representation argument -
I guess part of my point is that characters like Serwe and Istraya were never much more than cardboard cutouts to begin with. And in this they're much like their male counterparts. To my mind, Esmenet is really the crux here. (In fact, it occurs to me that as the reader moves beyond TTT to the next part of the series, Akka and Esme are the only surviving characters the reader can really hang onto.) To a large degree then, the reader's take on "Bakker and Women" will largely be determined by the reader's take on Esme.
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Eh, it's just his writing style. It's a smaller cast of people we interact with directly. There's alot of other characters, and they are consistent, but he just doesn't bring them into the main focus of the story.

He generally does a good job with them though. There's at least one minor character who's death in TTT was a complete "WTF?!? I can't believe he's dead!", even though I don't believe that character has a single speaking line in the entire series.
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I would argue that Bakker's secondary characters are pretty boring, thin, if you will. I do not feel that they have the same substance as many other tertiary characters from other authors. I also do not think that it is unfair to compare Bakker to others, because people mostly define their likes based off of what they have seen and read before. Aside from Akka, Esmi, Cnaiur, everyone else seems a little weak.

I do not include Kellhus in that group because he's just a giant fucking info dump, but i've ranted about him already.
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[quote name='Kalbear' post='1677507' date='Feb 6 2009, 23.48']
SPOILER: TJE
Esmi is still entirely defined by her being the mom of Kellhus' kids - and she was put into power while Kellhus was away because he sees her fear as a strength when ruling. And when trying to deal with the cultist, she can't do a damn thing until Kellhus appears to save the day.
[/quote]

SPOILER: TJE
From what i remember Esmi seems to have two personality settings; Esmi the Mother, and Esmi the Queen. As far as i can rememberer she doesn't consider herself to be a "battered peach" now, rather what she was and where she came from.

Besides that i can't see how her fear is a bad thing, one of the first things we hear from Kellhus is that they should never get complacent - fear is good, it makes her cautious.

As for Kellhus saving the day then yep, that's what he did - but i can't imagine anyone else, with the possible exception of Akka, not shitting themselves under the same conditions. Even the extremely powerful and impressive Maithanet did nothing to move the Matron.


[quote name='Kalbear' post='1677507' date='Feb 6 2009, 23.48']
SPOILER: TJE

Mimara is an ex-whore, and gets through to Akka by fucking him. She constantly thinks about the world as basically something that uses her like a whore.
[/quote]


SPOILER: TJE
This i can't really argue with, i didn't understand why Mimara felt the need to seduce her "father" anyway. She uses sex like a weapon.


[quote name='Kalbear' post='1677507' date='Feb 6 2009, 23.48']
SPOILER: TJE

The last, Nannaferi (and shockingly no umlauts) is defined by being the fertile mother figure. Her big moment in the book is fucking a guy while she's menstruating and smearing her blood and the guy's semen on people. The secondary book is her killing someone in a menstrual red smear of blood and darkness. She's worse than the whole lot; her whole power is defined entirely from her sex, as is the cult's true power.
[/quote]

To be honest i thought this was an argument over agency, and that the only way woman had any power was through sex. Now the argument seems to be that all the women are defined by their sex but i don't see how they wouldn't be; i mean your sex will always greatly influence ones personality.

Besides that if you wanted just one character who has a lot of personal power and has not had to use her body;

SPOILER: TJE
How about Kellhus' daughters ?
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[quote name='Sheep the Evicted' post='1678135' date='Feb 7 2009, 17.12']
SPOILER: TJE
This i can't really argue with, i didn't understand why Mimara felt the need to seduce her "father" anyway. She uses sex like a weapon.


SPOILER: TJE
But she also swiftly realizes it was a mistake. It was something of a reversal to the old ways to her.
[/quote]
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Another thing about Esmenet that makes her especially suited for Kellhus is that the whore skills displayed by Esmenet have much in common with Dûnyain skills, and spy skills for that matter. Esmenet is so good an actor that even Aurang with thousands of years of experience behind him was fooled into underestimating her and initially bought into her act of a simple whore. She was also able to bluff the skin-spy playing Sarcellus without the latter seeing anything amiss. Esmi also knows which buttons to push to get her custom to return, as can be seen with her interactions with different men, so that she flatters one and weeps and acts vulnerable in front of another to draw on the man's protective instincts. The reason she didn't become rich that way can be attributed to heavy competition driving down prices in the whole field.

She lies; she manipulates; she does it well: she's the one for a Dûnyain to breed with and to give high political power.
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[quote name='Kalbear' post='1677344' date='Feb 6 2009, 17.29']Why does Istrya - the queen mother of one of the largest empires in the world - need to use sex to control her son? There's no specific historical precedent for it. There's no real requirement in the story either; the emperor doesn't get manipulated particularly more or less because he's sex-crazed, he just dies when the Consult wants him to. There's no real motive to it that I can see.

So why have Istrya do it? Just to make her a creepy molestor? Ooookay...[/quote]

I said it earlier why I think Istrya does it. While her husband was emperor, she was not the true ruler. Knowing one day he'd die and her son would then be emperor, she used the most effective weapon possible to undermine her son's mental state as a child so that when he grew to be a man and emperor, she had control over him. And it is the most effective weapon because it induces the element of shame which then forces there to be a level of secrecy that needs to be kept. Because if it ever got out...
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[quote name='Jora' post='1678139' date='Feb 8 2009, 03.14']I think Saubon is an excellent character. The part where his father's fists kept on whacking him in his memories gave me chills and made me care about him.[/quote]

I agree. I'd throw in Gothyelk, Gotian and the Nasur general, Conphas' aide (name escapes me at the moment, Martemus, maybe?) as other examples, in addition to Athjeari. I think Bakker does a decent job of fleshing out some of his minor characters. He certainly isn't in Martin's league in that respect, but he's not bad either.
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[quote name='Nerdanel' post='1677515' date='Feb 6 2009, 18.56']I think it's important for our understanding of Istriya to notice that we have actually never seen the real Istriya before she got replaced by a skin-spy. In my reread the signs of that were clear and numerous. Among other things, Xerius notices several times how clumsy his mother's manipulations have suddenly become and thinks she's going senile. There is also one scene where the skin-spy is surprised, and Xerius thinks that her mother should have known about that, since her network of spies should be as extensive as his own.

The real Istriya would have been far more formidable that the shell we saw.[/quote]
I disagree. There is a clear character change with Istriya. She is not a skin-spy the whole time.

[quote name='Kalbear' post='1677535' date='Feb 6 2009, 19.12']We don't get internal dialog from Serwe, but considering that she gives herself to another man and only views her talents as being beautiful (in a talk with Esmi), I don't think that's that far behind.[/quote] We get some Serwe POV in PON.


[quote name='Kalbear' post='1677576' date='Feb 6 2009, 19.45']As an example: how many times does Esmi in the first three books refer to herself as a whore? How many times does she say something similar to 'once a whore, always a whore'? How many times does she analyze men as a whore does, or mention how being a whore lets her see men differently?

SPOILER: TJE
And in TJE, how much of her character is involved in being a mother? Again, a role [i]defined by her sex[/i].
[/quote]
SPOILER: TJE
About 50%. And also a terrible example: mother vs. whore?!?!? Why not complain that the other 50% is involved in being an Empress, and of course only a female can be an Empress? :lol: I think the right complaint is that she is out of her depth as an Empress and a petty despot. Basically she was a smart whore but no more. You can dress her up but . . .


[quote name='Bakker Interview']This is the primary abstraction I try to concretize in The Judging Eye. What would it be like, what would it mean, to live in a world where everything had objective value, where everything was ranked and ordered, [b]so that men actually were ‘spiritually superior’ than women,[/b] and so on. The tendency in much fantasy fiction is to cater to readers’ moral expectations, to depict ideologically correct worlds and so avoid all the kinds of trouble I seem to get into with my fiction. In other words, the tendency is to be apologetic rather than critical (and then to be critical of those who refuse to apologize). My interest lies in the glorious ugliness that is a fact of traditional world making. Bigoted worlds. Biased worlds. Human worlds expressed through fantastic idioms.[/quote]
Did not read the whole thread, but wanted to make sure this piece of Bakker's interview with Pat was in here. In other words, it's not culture keeping women down in Bakker's world. It's [i]objective[/i] inferiority. :uhoh: I find that disturbing.
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Huh?

I think what he's trying to say is that Fantasy has a habit of being incredibly PC, even when depicting cultures that just ... weren't.

His goal is to create a world that ISN'T PC.
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