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Bakker and Women


Maia

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[quote name='Lyanna Stark' post='1682865' date='Feb 11 2009, 16.23']Hmm, I am not really seeing that women are superior to men in our current society.[/quote]
Whooho! That’s not what I said. It’s the small details about such claims about averages and trends and variances that makes us miss each other’s points over and over again.

[i]On average[/i], women do increasingly better than men. Men are having a harder and harder time competing in a heavily eduction-oriented society. It looks as if we will have a harder and harder time attracting men to university education, and those who show up will do worse and worse on the average.

Grades in school are an example. Average boys simply can’t handle the way we set up school. But the top students are of course still mainly boys, just as the bottom students are mainly boys.
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[quote]Also, where does all this Earwa is 'much worse' than the real world stuff come from?[/quote]

Err, have you studied social/gender history? The standard retort of any historian is and will probably always be "It's much more complicated..." because it IS. The problem with Earwa is that we do not see much of that complexity.

[quote]wanted to explore the nihilistic implications that underwrite social functionalist accounts of our present day gender egalitarianism - the suggestion that the now-sacred values so many have espoused here are actually secondary, ways to rationalize the more efficient utilization of labour given our new technologies of production and reproduction[/quote]

Ironically Mary S. Hartman in [i]The Household and the Making of History[/i] argues the exact reverse: That household structure in western europe led to the modern methods of production and the changes that follows. (it is interesting because these household structure correlate pretty closely to industrialization, and predates it significantly)
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PI,

[quote]Also, where does all this Earwa is 'much worse' than the real world stuff come from? Are women gang-raped in Earwa in order to shame them into becoming suicide bombers? Are they circumcised to prevent them from experiencing sexual pleasure?[/quote]

Eärwa is already a setting where gang-rape and the use of sexual violence to coercive ends is already taking place, so I'm not getting the point. And are you definitively saying that female circumcision or some other means of denying women sexual pleasure doesn't exist in Eärwa? Because short of that, I would have thought that I wouldn't be surprised if they did. The cultures the setting inspired by certainly did.

To take it further, it's that Eärwa is hopeless for women. They [i]are[/i] inferior. No exception, so far as you've shown in the first three novels. Even highly misogynistic societies of the past (and present) have their exceptions to the rules, women who succeed despite the social inferiority of their gender, who manage something of note and worth without depending on being sexual objects or breeders. They might well be redefined as freakish or an abomination or something, but still... they're there.
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HE:

While education is good and useful, it does not equal power, which is where women are weaker.

To be really crass: when you see women take over 60% of all CEO spots and the same amount of seats in congress/parliament/<insert equivalent>, I'd agree with you that women are doing better than men. As it stands now, women as a group are doing better sure, but to think that on average women are doing increasingly better than men is to take a very narrow view on society.

Not to mention a very "western world" centred view.
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[quote name='Pierce Inverarity' post='1682863' date='Feb 11 2009, 15.22']So tell me, what's the problem with stories that focus on male characters? Is there a dearth of 'positive representations of women' out there? Not so much anymore, I would think.[/quote]
1) [url="http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?showt...ntry1662067"]Yes[/url]. Equally, there is still a plethora of non-positive representations of women, whether as eye candy, as tokens or as pawns: it is vastly, vastly easier for a male reader to find a book containing a positive representation of his gender than a female reader.

2) There is also a more specific problem with stories containing "positive representations of women" by people regarded as "great authors". One "problem" with the females in PoN that I didn't mention earlier is that you're generally regarded as one of the stunningly good authors out there despite the fact that you write only women whose lives are made crap by the men around them. Male fans don't point and laugh at the rampant misogyny, or see past it to the subtext that you may just be making fun of them; they lap it up - and women are prepared to ignore it, though it makes reading difficult, because we're used to it. If I wrote a book in which all the men were oppressed, however technically accomplished it was, I wouldn't get any male readers. You're still getting some female readers.
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[quote]Is there a dearth of 'positive representations of women' out there? Not so much anymore, I would think.[/quote]

Was that a joke? :o

Its rather funny you would bring that up since this current thread about women in PoN stems from a huge conversation about women and minorities in Science Fiction and Fantasy in general.

I can't speak for anyone but myself, but yes I find that there is in fact an extreme lack of positive, female characters in the genre.
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[quote]So tell me, what's the problem with stories that focus on male characters? Is there a dearth of 'positive representations of women' out there? Not so much anymore, I would think.[/quote]It's not the focus on male characters that I have a problem with. It's what women are in the book and their representation.

[quote]Also, where does all this Earwa is 'much worse' than the real world stuff come from? Are women gang-raped in Earwa in order to shame them into becoming suicide bombers? Are they circumcised to prevent them from experiencing sexual pleasure?[/quote]It comes from that we see no women in any position other than whore or conquest in the entire series, and the only woman who has power must use sex in order to achieve and maintain that power. The mistake is that you're comparing the current world and every culture in it to Earwa; we're comparing Earwa to its [i]historical parallels[/i]. So no, the Byzantium empire did not gang rape women to make them suicide bombers either, but at least it had women merchantfolk. The Holy Roman Empire did not circumcise women either, but they had women who were not whores.

Anyway, it sounds like your goal was to explicitly write women so that they were viewed on the basis of their sex alone, and that's fine. That certainly is troubling and difficult for many people to read, but at least it's an honest goal.

[quote]The setting in Neuropath is the opposite of Eärwa. Clearly, women are the dominating sex in the near-future (at least on average). This is a trend that we can observe already in RL today, and Bakker extrapolates that into his setting. Most men will fail, for example because of poor self-discipline. Neuropath says this flat-out and explicitly.[/quote]It's not a comparison between men and women necessarily, HE. Never mind that this is one of the bases of sexism, that's not the point. The point is that the two female characters in that are defined largely by their sex as well. As Bakker said, it's reasonable to say that everyone is in that book, but it's much akin to being prejudiced against everyone based on their skin tone. You might be being equal to all, but it matters a lot more if you're doing it against black-skinned folks because of prior racism.

You can be equally sexist to both sexes, but it means something very different against women.

In any case, the problem I have with Neuropath is the same as the one I have with PoN - that the women are largely defined by their sex. And that appears to be Bakker's message anyway; that different sexes are very different and largely defined by their biology, not their merit. That's an inherently anti-feminist message, but at least he's honest about saying so.
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[quote name='Kalbear' post='1682908' date='Feb 11 2009, 16.51']The point is that the two female characters in that are defined largely by their sex as well.[/quote]
I don’t understand what that claim means. And it’s not because I try to be obtuse.
[quote]You might be being equal to all, but it matters a lot more if you're doing it against black-skinned folks because of prior racism.[/quote]
Oh, but then I feel quite safe in ignoring the problem. Being equal to all is A-OK in my book. Here I was under the impression that the opposite was the case.

[quote]You can be equally sexist to both sexes, but it means something very different against women.[/quote]
Fine. That argument is not part of my set of ethical axioms, so I bow out of the debate. I’m sure it’s important so some people, just like I have pet issues to do with national minorities and lumberjacks that I’m sure you don’t give a flying fuck about.

[quote]that different sexes are very different and largely defined by their biology, not their merit. That's an inherently anti-feminist message, but at least he's honest about saying so.[/quote]
Oh! Now we’re talking. This [i]is[/i] one of my pet issues, and I suspect it’s at the heart of much of the resentment against Bakker and other authors who think Human Nature exists. As a scientist and a feminist I oppose that view [i]very strongly[/i]. Feminism is a political stance, the case against bigotry should not be made on the basis of biological indistinguishability of the sexes – scientific ignorance, however dishonest, should not be a prerequisite for feminism. The ideas that human behaviour is exempt from the rules of biology, that we are [i]more than animals[/i], belongs to religions and some niches of the academic left and should be stamped out with the same fervour as all other creationist tendencies. I understand that RSB pushes the buttons of the social constructivists, and I say more power to him. But [i]never[/i] will I allow social constructivists to monopolise the concept of feminism, just as I don’t allow religious people to monopolise virtue.

I’d be happy to hear Lyanna on this question. She’s also a scientist and a feminist, though politically a good deal to the right of me.

Maia, if I read your critique correctly, it differs from the honest admission of Kalbear’s, right?
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[quote name='Happy Ent' post='1682884' date='Feb 11 2009, 09.37']Whooho! That’s not what I said. It’s the small details about such claims about averages and trends and variances that makes us miss each other’s points over and over again.

[i]On average[/i], women do increasingly better than men. Men are having a harder and harder time competing in a heavily eduction-oriented society. It looks as if we will have a harder and harder time attracting men to university education, and those who show up will do worse and worse on the average.

Grades in school are an example. Average boys simply can’t handle the way we set up school. But the top students are of course still mainly boys, just as the bottom students are mainly boys.[/quote]

To add to this, here are a few current trends in American education that are highlighting these differences:

1) More emphasis on cooperative/group learning - many studies have shown this sort of learning style benefits female students, as there is not as much need for a dominant voice, but rather for a council-like discussion for a consensus to be reached. However, a good number of male students struggle with this method, as it runs counter to traditional emphasis on hierarchical learning arrangement (teacher-to-student, one student-to-other student, etc.)

2) More and more social programs at school are geared toward female students - from how to cope with body issues (not just teen pregnancy, but how to handle certain physiological changes) to how to feel "empowered." For the most part, there is no male equivalent.

3) With a loss of traditional power in school (and likely to occur within the next generation or two in the workplace as well), there is now quite a bit of confusion for young males. "How do I identify myself as a MAN?" is a commonly-thought (if not often stated aloud) question. Some turn to hypermasculine activity to "prove" themselves. Others just get confused and drop out...and continue to muddle it through.

So based on what I've seen over the past ten years as a teacher and as someone who worked in residential treatment centers for troubled teens, I'd have to say that increasingly, young males are confused about their own roles (sexism is [i]bad[/i], but what can "I" do in a world where most of the things that define "me" as a man are also [i]bad[/i]?) with educational and social systems that appear (to them) to be increasingly biased against them.

From what I understand, the next 20 years will be rather telling when it comes to the educational shift in American society. Don't know how it'll be like in Europe, Canada, or elsewhere in the post-industrial world.
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[quote name='Pierce Inverarity' post='1682863' date='Feb 11 2009, 08.22'].

Many think that if they miss a given subtext then either it's not there, or the author is being too clever by a half - and understandably so, because no one likes to think of themselves of 'missing things,' particularly when they take a certain pride in their readerly eye. Fair enough. Maybe I am being too clever. Only time will tell. [b]The important thing, to me, is that the series remains accessible at multiple levels[/b], and that it continues to pile on interpretative possibilities, not because of any cheesy po-mo game playing, but because of the richness of the text. I[b] literally set out to write something people would 'have problems with' and yet continue reading anyway.[/b]scott/[/quote]

You certainly suceeded in that regard. Personally, I don't think you need to come in and defend your work,* PoN speaks for itself, multiple interpretations and all.

History, in larger perspective, contains little evidence towards self-empowered gender roles. That is why the few women who do achieve power are so few, far between, and notable...and for every Hatshepsut (depicted as a man, lest we forget, and nearly wiped from physical memory afterward) or Nefertiti, we have a Theodora -- I use the latter example as one who reminds me of Esmenet's origins and rise.

If it is any consolation, Esmenet was one of the strongest characters [i]for me[/i]. As I wrote earlier, hers was the only POV that seemed vulnerable, and the revelation about her daughter was genuinely shocking.



*as much as it is a pleasure to see you active on the internet again
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HE: In response to my view on this, I don't think I am very much to the right of you on this issue.

As I am a de Beauvoir fangirl (well, if you CAN be) and she dedicates some three odd chapters to basically listing the failings of the female body, and then goes on to prove that this is not a reason why women should not be equal to men, i.e. that women should have equal opportunities, the same human rights, same political power etc.

As you know, I am not a fan of scientists who deliberately start up projects to prove things like "women's brains are smaller than men's and hence they're worse at playing computer games" or similar, since they seem to be basically self fulfilling, and the kinds of conclusions you can draw from that type of analysis will always be biased by our culture.

Just like physicists assume vacuum conditions for their experiments, so normally do these scientists, although it is a faulty assumption in the latter case.

Hence if I have to speak for the feminists, I'd say that

a) current research does not suggest that there is a significant difference between the sexes which will make one of them "superior" to the other in terms of fitness to survive, or reach success. There are biological differences, sure, but they are not nearly enough to explain why women should by necessity be oppressed (even depressed de Beauvoir agreeed with this).

b) supposedly, if women were more "unfit" (Simone seems to think women are significantly weaker physically, for instance) then no, I don't think that is any reason for women to be oppressed, not have full human rights or political powers), just like I don't think this should be the case for old people, the handicapped or say, people from Japan. In this I completely agree with HE as I think we have the same humanistic, or maybe even socialdemocrat :P outlook. Although he thinks I am a rightie.
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[sorta o/t] Dylan, I have to admit I agree with you. I've observed countless men in [i]my[/i] generation (late 20's to late 30's) who are still 'flailing' due to many reasons which include, but re not limited to: lack of direction, insecurity, lack of self confidence, etc. I've often wondered why this hasn't been a topic of discussion more often.

The majority of close "couple" friends I have are made up of go-getter women who have always had a job, always been moving forward, multitasking throughout their lives and directionless "I don't know what I want with my life and I'm not going to do anything about it until I figure it out" men. [/sorta o/t]
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[quote]Oh! Now we’re talking. This is one of my pet issues, and I suspect it’s at the heart of much of the resentment against Bakker and other authors who think Human Nature exists. As a scientist and a feminist I oppose that view very strongly. Feminism is a political stance, the case against bigotry should not be made on the basis of biological indistinguishability of the sexes – scientific ignorance, however dishonest, should not be a prerequisite for feminism. The ideas that human behaviour is exempt from the rules of biology, that we are more than animals, belongs to religions and some niches of the academic left and should be stamped out with the same fervour as all other creationist tendencies. I understand that RSB pushes the buttons of the social constructivists, and I say more power to him. But never will I allow social constructivists to monopolise the concept of feminism, just as I don’t allow religious people to monopolise virtue.[/quote]

That was my failure in writing, and I apologize. I shouldn't have said biology, as that means something specific that I didn't mean. I should have said sex, which connotes something very different.

I don't have any problem with the notion that women and men are demonstrably different because of their biology. I ascribe to that idea as well; there's simply too much scientific backing of it across cultural boundaries that points to it. It also makes sense; why wouldn't hormones and morphism change the way people think and behave?

What I have a problem with (and this is the issue I have with Bakker) is that women should be defined by their role in sexual reproduction primarily. This isn't to do with their personalitiies so much as their actual role in the world and how they choose to affect it.

For example, in Neuropath I don't have a problem with the woman being the sociopath. I do have a problem with her being only successful in manipulation of the man when she fucks him. She's a brilliant, amoral killer and the only thing that works is to fuck? Then she goes crazy and starts fucking more? Aside from the bad girl as slut meme that's been around for ages, it's kind of sad that this is the only thing that works. I recognize that this was in part largely because the book centers around showing how humanity is meat, not a soul; that's the Argument. Still, after seeing it over and over in PoN, seeing yet another set of women defined by how they fuck men or how they have kids, it was just another shrug and 'that's Bakker for you'.

Like I've said countless times in this thread and others, I don't have a problem with women being oppressed in the tale; it has countless historical antecedents and is largely taken from the history that the whole world is based in. Martin does it as well. The problem I have is that women in Bakker's world are defined by their relationship to sex in a way that men are not, and that is not necessary to the telling of the tale. That's their sole source of power in the world. I hope that explains things a bit better, and I apologize for my misuse of biology before this.
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[quote]Oh, but I already admitted I voted FP last election. (Arms still withers. I’ll have to cut if off.)[/quote]

Which for the record, I cannot fucking understand. Normally I'm all for FP, but their journey towards bigotry light and baton populism really disturbs me.

[quote]History, in larger perspective, contains little evidence towards self-empowered gender roles. That is why the few women who do achieve power are so few, far between, and notable...and for every Hatshepsut (depicted as a man, lest we forget, and nearly wiped from physical memory afterward) or Nefertiti, we have a Theodora -- I use the latter example as one who reminds me of Esmenet's origins and rise.[/quote]

The problem is not the lack of Hatschepschuts but the lack of Eleanors or Birgittas or Hildegards or Jeannes.
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So is this a [i]taste[/i] thing for you, Kalbear? Or do you think no man - perhaps no woman - should represent women in a sexualized light? I see lots of judgment in your posts, lots of 'oh-ya-that's-Bakker-for-you' (because ultimately I'm simple?) and very little in the way of what you think I should have done different, let alone any real engagement with the justifications I've so far provided.

[i]Neuropath[/i], as the title implies, is about psychopaths, serial murderers, which for whatever reason happen to be serial rapists as well. So are you saying that I should have 'desexualized' the two signature 'neuropaths' in the book? Or do you think I should have made all the neuropaths [i]male[/i]? Or do you think I should have avoided the topic altogether?

In writing the scene that I'm assuming you find so offensive, I knew that very many people would have a response similar to yours. The thing I was interested in was the [i]inversion[/i], the way having a female serial rapist engages an entirely different set of responses. If the genders of the participants were reversed, then the scene would have been monstrous. As it is, it smacks of a hairy-palmed teenage fantasy. (Sam even [i]says[/i] as much in the scene at issue). Since, at a cultural level, sexploitation is a cornerstone of the whole cult of the psychopath, I'm not sure how I could have written this story without confronting it somehow. And since I'm suspicious of all orthodoxies, PC included, I'm not sure how I could have written it without pissing you off.

Are you suggesting this subject matter was too toxic, too subtle, or too something x, for someone like me to tackle?

Or could it be that I intentionally (and trust me, I debated all these issues endlessly in the course of writing the book) tweaked your normative expectations in ways you didn't like, and you're doing your best to recontextualize/reinterpret in ways that make it more ideologically manageable - to turn it into 'more of the same.'

After all, most everybody reads to win. When was the last time you saw an amazon reviewer who blamed [i]themselves[/i] instead of the book for their inability to appreciate this or that x?

I think I've provided enough grounds to at least [i]consider[/i] the possibility that at the very least this isn't your run-of-the-mill sexism. Maybe it's more subtle, and therefore more dangerous.

Or maybe you're simply doing what we all do all the time when we interpret: selectively confirming our initial impressions? Like I say, when you smell a rat in fiction, odds are you're going to find one.

Am I a rat, Kalbear? Do you really think that? Do you really think your interpretations exhaust the [i]essence[/i] of my books, and that all the rest is simply ad hoc, face-saving rationalization?

Or could it be that I've written something genuinely complicated, genuinely problematic, something that provokes timely debates about timely issues? Of course, I [i]want[/i] to believe this, which instantly makes me suspicious of it.

What I'm really curious about is your apparently absolute faith in the in the universal veracity of your individual interpretative perspective.

scott/
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Sigh. I lost my last gigantic answer to this, so I'll sum up briefly.

I don't think you're a sexist necessarily, Scott. I don't think it matters if you are or not to this discussion; you're not on trial. I do think your books are sexist, and since you've repeatedly said that this is a willful decision I don't see how this is really in argument. I think that you deliberately made a world where sexism was actually worse than it was historically and chose female roles where sexism was worse for them. What I don't understand is why this was necessary, or what it particulary adds to either discussions of sexism or of the story in general.

I don't have a problem with you writing about whatever; clearly I enjoy the books, as I keep buying them. I don't like how you've portrayed women primarily around their ability to have sex, either as their occupation or as their best form of agency.

I didn't have a problem with the serial raping in Neuropath; I had a problem with how Sam is only successfully manipulated by fucking (and only after I found out she was a Neuropath). I understand this was your point in the book (we're all meat and biology), and largely a point in PoN. At the same time, it's still a Bakkerism. This may be small sample size.

While you have any number of justifications for writing Esmi as a whore (and I largely agree with them), at the end of the day you're writing yet another fantasy novel where the lead woman is a whore. You know this, you use it purposely, and then you wonder why people have issue with it - wasn't that your point?

[quote]Or could it be that I've written something genuinely complicated, genuinely problematic, something that provokes timely debates about timely issues? Of course, I want to believe this, which instantly makes me suspicious of it.[/quote]I think you do, but I don't think sexuality and women in your books are part of the timely issues.
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[quote name='Ran' post='1681898' date='Feb 10 2009, 16.02'](though, were I your editor, I think I would have suggested Achamian instead of Conphas in any case)[/quote]

How would that have worked? :unsure:

And if you merely substituted Conphas for a woman, all you'd have is a woman written as a man. Else I'd think you'd have to change [i]a lot[/i] of the story.
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[quote name='Balefont' post='1683237' date='Feb 11 2009, 20.56']How would that have worked? :unsure:

And if you merely substituted Conphas for a woman, all you'd have is a woman written as a man. Else I'd think you'd have to change [i]a lot[/i] of the story.[/quote]


Frankly, I also don't see it. The only major character I can perhaps see working as a woman is Moenghus, and even that would mean Cnaiur wasn't gay which would make the story poorer.

Of course, it would also meant she-Moenghus used sex to influence Cnaiur, so people would still complain.
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I think Conphas as a woman would have been fine (and changed the Conphas/Cnaiur relationship in interesting and horrible ways), at least on a transformative way. I think it wouldn't have worked in the world as a whole; there's no evidence that any women were considered for military positions anywhere in Earwa at any time, and plenty of evidence against it, and it would have felt like inserting a woman in a position that they could not have obtained reasonably. It also reduces the power of Esmi's rise to power, though that's already fairly low anyway.

Making Serwe a man might've been more interesting.
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