Bakker and Women

[gladius]

[quote]I don't understand this at all. Earwa is a place where women are objectively damned.[/quote]

This simply isn't true. They are inferior to men in the eyes of god like slaves are inferior to masters and pigs to snakes, but they aren't damned unless they sin.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

[quote name='Kalbear' post='1683593' date='Feb 11 2009, 19.54']Or a simpler choice: Akka is old. :P[/quote]This would have been a more elegant explanations or justifications for the gender-bending of the character without changing the story. Explanation would still need to be in place for having women in the Mandate School, though they are alienated already, as people born of the Three Seas they are products of that same culture.

[quote]I'm not sure this is true. Akka frequently laments that sorcerers are there only for destruction. I think that a number of sorcerers would be happy being able to interact with the world magically that is not specifically and solely destructive.[/quote]So most of what Maia listed then would be infeasible given the nature of magic in place?

[quote]As for the imagination, I'd imagine that similar to what happens in the US would happen in Earwa; military necessity and imagination would supply the need, which would eventually trickle down to civilian use. Sorcery's been around for over 2000 years now, after all. Imagine 2000 years where no one even thinks about digging a hole in a mountain, or using it for excavation, or road-building, or anything like that.[/quote]I suppose it depends on the rates that the Mercenary School charges and whose responsibility infrastructure lies. It may be cheaper to hire (or enslave) 1,000 workers to construct a road than hire a sorcerer to blast that same stretch of road. I suppose the Emperor could use his sorcerers, but I'm not sure if he would unless he was actually on a military campaign.

[quote]It's as odd as spending 8000 years at a technological plateau.[/quote]This has been a world-building gripe of mine that is frequent in fantasy.

[Shryke]

[quote name='Matrim Fox Cauthon' post='1683647' date='Feb 11 2009, 20.34']I suppose it depends on the rates that the Mercenary School charges and whose responsibility infrastructure lies. It may be cheaper to hire (or enslave) 1,000 workers to construct a road than hire a sorcerer to blast that same stretch of road.[/quote]

Isn't this sorta what happened with the Romans. Technological stagnation is some areas because slave labour was just so damn cheap.

[Kalbear]

[quote]So most of what Maia listed then would be infeasible given the nature of magic in place?[/quote]Probably. I don't think the gnosis could do a lot other than destroy, but the analogies might be able to be worked. A dragon's breath can be used to heat things as well as destroy, for instance; using it to power a steam engine isn't insane. Anyone could demolish and shape the world using sorcery as well. I don't see how wind could really be generated to speed sailing, except perhaps by creating vacuums - and that might be a bit uncontrollable. Communication would be of course very easy, and that alone would add a ton of changes to a preindustrial society. Harbors could be created without too much difficulty, at least simple ones. Mines could be excavated more rapidly.

The real question would be why the sorcerers would do this. It seems a lot like ancient Greece; they had the capabilities to do things like a steam engine, but why would they? They've got slaves to do that work for them. But for something like communication, I think that this gives too much of a strategic and tactical advantage not to be used in a military setting, even if it means losing an actual mage or two and having them be out of place.

This of course just speaks to the inanity of not allowing women to be sorcerers.

[Mackaxx]

[quote name='Kalbear' post='1683605' date='Feb 12 2009, 12.12']Didn't say there weren't. I said there were a large number of books out there that fit this. And there are - and a lot more than the fantasy genre. And whores are fairly commonplace in the fantasy genre. This isn't really anecdotal; there's been plenty of study to go along with it. Go check out the earlier link.[/quote]

In respect to the earlier link are we talking about the vague news article? Because I've just wasted a bit of time going throuhg the thread trying to find something a bit more substantial. They need to do an analysis of the changing views in literature, year to year, decade to decade. Look at differences from genre to genre, again things do not exist in a vacuum. Then you need to divvy things up a bit, so you don't end up lumping the serious stuff in with the crap stuff. Like sticking Jane Austin in with Mills n Boon books for instance. To say literature has an overall bias to sexism is a bit of a well duh thing, of course it does, for a long time it was written by very consciously or unconsciously sexist men [i] and[/i] women. I'd hate to see a literary analysis of romance novels.

And even if we say with a grain of salt that yes it is all terribly sexist and theres far too much whoring going on, after all that, how that should mean an author is obligated to do things differently because of the genres history strikes me as a bit weird.

Good works take the genre, use its biases and turn them on their heads, take 'Watchmen' for a great example.

[quote name='Kalbear' post='1683605' date='Feb 12 2009, 12.12']Except in Earwa, where women are objectively worse. It doesn't require men to enforce this so much as go along with it. And why wouldn't they? When they have people with the ability to see the damnation of women (and not of men), they can actually experience women for being worse.[/quote]

It does so require men to enforce it and to believe it. You might as well say the the bible or the Koran doesn't require men to enforce their bullshit sexism, they just go along with it. Those that believe have some really damn good reasons to look down on women after all.

[quote name='Kalbear' post='1683605' date='Feb 12 2009, 12.12']So John Norman writing about women liking bondage and submission was just a lark, then? Goodkind writing about Objectivism isn't at all personally motivated? The Fountainhead? Etc, etc. Now it's less reasonable because of the tone; nowhere is Earwa presented as all happiness and light. At the same time, if someone writes a brutal violent rape fantasy, it's not odd to think that they may have issues about women.

It's not always accurate, but it's not unreasonable. I don't think that it's the case, but I can absolutely see how others could get that message.[/quote]

Sometimes a spade is a spade yes, and its damned obvious in the cases you gave. In the case of Earwa, if you've read the books I do think its an unreasonable conclusion to make and don't sympathise with anyone that makes it. I also don't sympathise with a halfwit that decides romper stomper or once were warriors glorifies beating up women/minorities. An author cannot write for everyone, and they shouldn't.

If a genre or the medium in general has an overall bias for something or another than obviously any author who wants to tackle said bias in a non soap boxy manner will have to dive into said bias and pick it apart from within. Some people won't get it, and thats fine, again, its not the authors problem. If hardly anyone gets it thats ok too, jokes on them, art does this all the time

[Kalbear]

[quote]And even if we say with a grain of salt that yes it is all terribly sexist and theres far too much whoring going on, after all that, how that should mean an author is obligated to do things differently because of the genres history strikes me as a bit weird.[/quote]I'm' not saying an author is obliged to do a damn thing. However, if your genre is full of people writing about whores and the motivation behind that is to have a sexualized woman who can be bought and sold to make things more convenient, writing a story with a whore as the lead is going to raise some red flags.

And if whores in these tales have been largely used as a means of degrading women or objectifying them, it's something to consider when you claim that your whore is different, special, etc. The basis has already been established, and by adding another whore you're contributing to that whether that was your goal or not, whether you're trying to be establishment or subversive.

[Mackaxx]

Again, the genre being full of whores is up for debate, especially in the modern context. More so in respect to the higher brow books too.

Also your putting the motivation into the authors mouth there, authors motivations for their whores are obviously bound to differ, likewise words in mouth by stating the whoreing whores have been largely used to degrade and objectify women.

And you [i]are[/i] overtly saying the author should do it differently as apparently merely by including a whore you are contributing to the alleged whore filled genre, which is a bad thing (which i gather from your tone). Good works take the established on and take it apart from within, I'm very glad they didn't look at the red flag and decide not to go there.

[Pierce Inverarity]

The thing which gets my goat, I think, is the presumption that the books don't hold more than what meets the eye. It'll be interesting to revisit this topic following [i]The Disciple of the Dog[/i], which is the first thing I've written without labouriously pondering subtext after subtext - direct from by subconscious without all the torturous, ass-saving twists and turns of reflection.

Otherwise, I'm really not all that unsympathetic to a number of criticisms that have been floated here. I actually DO think negative representations have the nasty habit of reinforcing negative attitudes. I follow the research on bias too closely not to have the odd, ohmigod-what-have-I-done moment. My knee-jerk defence has always been to say that I'm not writing after-school specials. Probably too dismissive, that.

I know not to long after I finished TTT I saw this documentary on prostitution in Thailand that literally floored me, it was so powerful. Ever since then, I've pretty much reconciled myself to the fact that as 'gritty' or 'realistic' as I was trying to be, I had in fact [i]romanticized[/i] Esmenet... and that this could very well be chalked up to incipient sexism.

But then the other half of me cringes to think of the howls of outrage I'd be facing if I had made her existence as brutal as that suffered by the women in the documentary - one of whom was tricked by her family and sold to a leech farm in China. (Apparently leeches fattened on the blood of young women are quite the commodity in some quarters).

Strangely enough, it's the question of [i]what makes a book[/i], where I run afoul my own thoughts on the subject. Every since I left the Branch Derridean compound, I've always maintained that there really is no such thing as 'texts,' only [i]readings[/i] - that 'text' is simply a conceptual shorthand we use to isolate a single referent from the mob of readings - a useful simplification that we all too often 'reify' (to lapse into wanker terminology). The problem is that this suggests that PoN is or is not sexist [i]depending on who reads it[/i].

After all, if there's no 'master interpretation' to use as your yardstick, then the question seems to come back to what effect the books actually have on actual readers. Does it aggravate or does it mitigate the problem of sexism? And this, of course, is pretty much impossible to determine.

So I keep telling myself, 'Risks! Risks are what make fiction genuinely critical.' And as much as I would like to put my stamp on things, it really is up to you all to sort out whether I've succeeded. It's weird, really, how your work begins casting longer shadows.

Either way, kind or not-so-kind, I know the books are in [i]good[/i] hands on a board like this...

scott/

[Lies And Perfidy]

If it's puncturing your conscience any, I doubt the subsection looking for meaning and life lessons from their spec-fic reading is gonna take up the banner of Fantastic Sexism. ;) Personally speaking, I took away from PoN a dedication to the power of skepticism and doubt, and a resounding disappointment in my friends and their inability to remember polysyllabic names.

Now I have nobody to rave about PoN to at work. You bastard. You diacritic-loving [i]bastard.[/i]

[Shryke]

[quote]I took away from PoN a dedication to the power of skepticism and doubt, and [b]a resounding disappointment in my friends and their inability to remember polysyllabic names.[/b][/quote]

:rofl:

I think this same thing every time I read a thread on these books. Because there's ALWAYS at least a dozen people complaining about the names.

[Lies And Perfidy]

They're [i]phonetic[/i]! It's not that hard!

[kuenjato]

[quote name='Pierce Inverarity' post='1683731' date='Feb 11 2009, 19.39']I know not to long after I finished TTT I saw this documentary on prostitution in Thailand that literally floored me, it was so powerful. Ever since then, I've pretty much reconciled myself to the fact that as 'gritty' or 'realistic' as I was trying to be, I had in fact [i]romanticized[/i] Esmenet... and that this could very well be chalked up to incipient sexism.


scott/[/quote]

Exactely. Just from traveling in regions like SE Asia - where the saying 'life is cheap' has a much more realistic connetation than here in the pampered west - one can see how entrenched certain mindsets are. In Thailand, to use a common example, it is a cultural facet of the male psyche to have as sex with as many women as possible - a symbol of one's 'manliness' - hence the prostitution for the natives [i]dwarfs [/i]the oh-so-sensationalized western sex tourists, which only accounts for 5%. Until fairly recently, it was not unusual to find child prostitutes in places like Soi Cowboy. Be white and male and walk down the streets of Phnom Penh - odds are you'll be propositioned, and if you refuse, odds are you'll be offered a child. It's happened to me and to other friends I've met on the road. Some of the 'graphic' images 'exaggerated' in TWP are really just a depiction of what goes on now - and most probably 1000 years ago.

the armchair feminists work for a good cause - but that doesn't disguise the fact that the world can be a [i]very [/i]brutal place, and PoN is, as far as I'm concerned, more a mirror than an exaggeration.

[TheValyrianDragonlord]

Everyone should check out the CS friedman interview that Pat posted on his site. Her comments on sexism are interesting.

[kuenjato]

[quote name='TheValyrianDragonlord' post='1683813' date='Feb 11 2009, 21.19']Everyone should check out the CS friedman interview that Pat posted on his site. Her comments on sexism are interesting.[/quote]

She sums it up better than I ever could. I don't know where this rosy-glasses portrait of the middle ages comes from, given that a common subjegation meme from Jerome onward blamed women for the Fall and generally classed them as beneath men in virtually every aspect (unless they gave their chastity for Christ). Sure there were exceptions, but that is exactely what they were, exceptions.