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Bakker and Women II


Mackaxx

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[quote name='MinDonner' post='1685579' date='Feb 13 2009, 10.12']Haha. You've got lots of women in your book, have you? Have a cookie. I expect some of your best friends are women too, aren't they?

I don't know why I'm so surprised that this part is so hard to get across, and I'm soooo sorry you're starting to run out of patience, but before you go, try looking at it the other way round. Imagine a book in which 90% of the characters were female. Maybe some female merchants, some nuns, some queens, a whole horde of slavering Amazon women (none of which are wearing chainmail bikinis, might I add), a prophetess, a witch, lots of courtly ladies (none of whom seem to have husbands or sons, and certainly never mention them). Then there's your 3 token blokes, who occasionally get called on to open jars. Of course, at one point in book 2, our main heroine wanders through a camp of male sewage workers, some of whom even get a line or two of dialogue, and then there's that builder who turns up halfway through book 3 and is immediately eaten by a monster... that's enough men for you, isn't it? Why are you still complaining?[/quote]

And if it made sense in the context of your fictional world, why WOULD anyone complain?

Most of the book takes place in the midst of the Holy War, an army on the march. And hell, past about the half-way point in TWP, Esmenet and Serwe are possibly the ONLY women left alive in the Holy War, the rest having been left to die along with the non-soldiers back in the desert.

If I set a book in a monestary, would you complain about the lack of female representation among the monks?
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[quote]Even the incredibly misogynistic classical Athenians had spaces for women that stood outside of that very narrow area.[/quote]

Incidentally, there are quite a few issues with the traditional view of athenian society (mainly it seems that the authors of texts will say something like "No woman will ever leave the house." then in the next page it's "And then I went to the market and bought a pair of amphorae from the woman who sold them, and then I passed a few women on their way to a funeral, and..." See the point?
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[quote name='Tears of Lys' post='1685574' date='Feb 13 2009, 10.07']I do see the point of those who decry Bakker's use of women in Earwa. And if it wasn't for the way he treats many other groups, I would agree. But one of the things that I had a hard time with when I first read the books was the treatment of any other group but that of the main driving forces of the books - Kellhus, Achamian, Cnaiur, and the various, hard-to-remember leaders of the various countries who become embroiled in the holy war.

<snip>

Now, the question of why he has chosen to make the few women in his story important only in how their sex has placed them. I noted it when reading the stories and read on. I don't require every book I read to be all things to me. If I want a book with interesting, powerful women, I'll read something else.[/quote]

This.
Emphatic :agree:

And I'd do Kellhus. Oh yeah. Gimme some mind fuck, baby. His character is enough to keep me begging for more. (And I like the others, too.)

ETA: Yeah, Min, that was pretty good. :lol:
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[quote name='Shryke' post='1685620' date='Feb 13 2009, 17.37']And if it made sense in the context of your fictional world, why WOULD anyone complain?

Most of the book takes place in the midst of the Holy War, an army on the march. And hell, past about the half-way point in TWP, Esmenet and Serwe are possibly the ONLY women left alive in the Holy War, the rest having been left to die along with the non-soldiers back in the desert.

If I set a book in a monestary, would you complain about the lack of female representation among the monks?[/quote]


Well, I can't think of any context where that would make sense, can you?

PoN also isn't about a monastery, it is about an enture culture and a sprawling world. It's epic in scope. It's the opposite to confined.

You don't need an excuse for not writing about women if you are writing a story about monks in a monastery, but in the case of PoN, you really do need a good excuse, or people will ask the question, and rightly so.
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[quote name='Lyanna Stark' post='1685678' date='Feb 13 2009, 11.18']Well, I can't think of any context where that would make sense, can you?

PoN also isn't about a monastery, it is about an enture culture and a sprawling world. It's epic in scope. It's the opposite to confined.

You don't need an excuse for not writing about women if you are writing a story about monks in a monastery, but in the case of PoN, you really do need a good excuse, or people will ask the question, and rightly so.[/quote]

It's epic in scope, but it's not epic in scene.

I mean, what are the settings again?

- The Holy War (99.9% men after the Desert)
- The Imperial Palace
- Cnauir going about his stuff (including the camp scenes with Kellhus and Serwe in TDTCB)
- Akka's travels

That's it. These aren't situations where you EXPECT to see alot of women. And where you do expect them (servants, whores, etc) they appear.
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[quote name='MinDonner' post='1685579' date='Feb 13 2009, 16.12']Imagine a book in which 90% of the characters were female. Maybe some female merchants, some nuns, some queens, a whole horde of slavering Amazon women [...][/quote]
OK, let’s roll with that.

Can you imagine, seriously, that somebody whose opinions you otherwise respect (that is, me) would be [i]offended[/i] by that book? Who would complain that there are “too few men in it?” I wouldn’t. (Also remember that one of the most sympathetic, intelligent, and beautiful POVs is male, and we’re following his ascendance through female oppression towards becoming and über seamstress, a job otherwise only held by women.)

Look, maybe I wouldn’t [i]read[/i] the book, because in all honesty it sounds like a pretty silly piece of obviously counter-stereotyping nonsense. But given that it’s actually really good, I simply cannot see me being in any way disturbed by it.

Except of course if I read in “affirm-my-grievances” mode; if I read with the expressed requirement to find [i]more than one[/i] empowered male character; or if I was a tokenist.

So your example doesn’t help. On the contrary. I. Still. Don’t. Get. It.
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[quote]Fee, good post. I'm not a misogynist, I don't think [maybe you'd know better tongue.gif] but I wouldn't agree that people aren't seeing the sexism in the books. To my mind it’s rather a case of the sexism in the books as having a legitimate place because of the various cultures of Earwa, while the plotting of the story has kept the common woman out of the narrative only out of necessity. But then again, the common man is out as well.[/quote]

Umm..let's not sully the discourse with my personal opinions on whether you are (or are not) a mysognist, eh Jason? :P

[quote]I've been thinking a lot of late about Bakker's choice to make Esmenet a whore, and I keep coming back to Achamian's character and what type of woman it would be socially 'acceptable' for him to befriend in such a manner, as well and perhaps more importantly, what kind of woman Achamian could stomach on a personal level [talking worldly here, as opposed to noble-caste] To him she is Esmenet who happens to be a whore [and all the pain that's brought him over the years] instead of the whore Esmenet.[/quote]

Well, you see, we just don't know, do we? because we don't know any woman from Akka's society that aren't whores. We do not know if Esme was an uncommonly intelligent whore, or an uncommonly intelligent woman, do we? with no comparisons makeable, we have no grounds on which to judge her. Maybe all woman are just as clever as Esme in her home land - Kelhus thinks she's clever, but he's only met her and Serwe, and I think we can agree that Serwe was uncommonly stupid. (or was she? the walk-on-part women seem to be as dumb as Serwe, so maybe the woman in this world are exceptionally stupid and Esme is a total freak. In which case, what is motive behind making a sub-class sex and then putting an intelligent monkey in?)

The point is, there are too many questions raised about the dubiety of women in Bakker's world. Bakker says it is a mirror of this world. I don't get that. There is no society where woman are quite as invisible as this. Bakker used the crusades as a template. There's a LOT more woman involved in the actual crusades, whether it be keepin the home fires burning, or waltzing along with them a la Eleanor of Aquitaine and her retinue, or as part of the peasant's crusade. I cannot believe Bakker is as stupid as to have sinned by omission accidentally, as I do beleive he is an intelligent man. Therefore, the question occurs - what is his motive? what point is he trying to prove? The only reason I get involved in a thread like this is that I might find some answers that stops me from tossing his books aside in disgust.

I do NOT require that female characters are consistently uber warriors as in Erikson, but I do require a degree of logical consistency. And if an Author has based his world on a medaevil crusade setting, but powered up the men and watered down the woman, I'd like to see better justification for it than [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] and[quote]'I hate to say this, but if the guy explicitly states his primary goal is to challenge rather than confirm readers' gender assumptions and biases, doesn't the very fact we're having this debate mean that he's achieved his aesthetic goals in this respect?'[/quote]


If his goal is to [i]challenge gender assumptions[/i], then it doesn't seem to be working because those who feel the book depicts things just fine are not challenging any assumptions, and those who are made uncomfortable are made so because the books depict a world objectively far worse for women than either that of the time of the crusades or in the modern day. What assumptions are the book challenging, Mr Bakker? That there weren't many token women warriors, a la Erikson? I think most of us got that point already. That whores can be people too? Well. That's original. If I am challenged by this book, it's by the divisiveness of it, that so many accept it as a faithful representation of a crusade society, and by the difficulty of making people understand what upsets me and why.
[quote]Bakker seems very cognizant of what consequences his choices entailed. Among them is the fact that a number of readers are alienated from the text, and not in a pleasant-mental-frission-creating way but a why-should-I-care way. Like he said, "It sucks", but hey, there are those who think it sucks that more people aren't bothered by some of the themes and subtexts.[/quote]

Good post, Ran. Maybe I should do as many suggest and accept that a book which potrays a single sex world with bizarre exceptions is just not for me, and stop reading.
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[quote name='Happy Ent' post='1685735' date='Feb 13 2009, 08.55']Look, maybe I wouldn’t [i]read[/i] the book, because in all honesty it sounds like a pretty silly piece of obviously counter-stereotyping nonsense.[/quote]

But isn't that Min's point? By your lights, isn't PoN a silly piece of stereotype-reinforcing nonsense. Bakker himself seems to suggest that *it is* stereotype reinforcing. The question people keep asking is then - "well, is there a point to this stereotype reinforcing?" Bakker implies that there is, and I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but no one - even his defenders (and I've been one of them, sporadically) - seems to have offered a plausible explanation yet.

It would be different if he said "Meh. It's a book set in a patriarchal world, tracking a war, blahblahblah." But that isn't what he says. He says that he knew there would be this kind of response, that his editor warned him there would be this kind of response, and that he made tough choices vis-a-vis gender representation, choices that he agonized over, because he has some sort of larger purpose. I suppose I'm willing to wait for that larger purpose to be revealed and hope that it actually makes sense of things. But given Bakker's own take on the subject, I have to say, I don't get the "I. don't. get. it" crowd.

In this recent iteration of this thread, what has jumped out at me is the question: where are all the mothers, wives, and daughters? I don't mean that they should be along the ride for the holy war, but that these prominent male characters seem to have no women in their lives who are important enough to them for the reader to learn (either in flashback or conversation) what their names are or who they were. I guess we get a glimpse of Cnaiur's mother, but . . . that only brings us back to the problem we're discussing.
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[quote name='Happy Ent' post='1685735' date='Feb 13 2009, 08.55']OK, let’s roll with that.

Can you imagine, seriously, that somebody whose opinions you otherwise respect (that is, me) would be [i]offended[/i] by that book? Who would complain that there are “too few men in it?” I wouldn’t. (Also remember that one of the most sympathetic, intelligent, and beautiful POVs is male, and we’re following his ascendance through female oppression towards becoming and über seamstress, a job otherwise only held by women.)[/quote]Except that that ascendance was only because the Aspect Tailor thought his amazingly delicate hands would make him good breeding stock, and everyone else thought the Aspect tailor was the preordained Tailor of God...except that she just had an old sewing machine that traveled back in time and knew the secrets of the Fabric That Comes Before.

Anyway.

HE, I know this isn't where you live, but just try to imagine where men and women aren't treated normally equally and where sexism is not equal either. While you wouldn't be offended, I know plenty of people on this board who would read it and be disgusted or refuse to read it because of that principle. It's easy not to be offended by something like this because it's so countervalent to the vast majority of entertainment; as a white man you've got that privilege.

Whereas when a woman sees a book where there aren't almost any women in it, and the women that do appear are based on sexual stereotypes of women...as a woman in the modern world, can you see that there might be some societal bias that sucks there?

[quote]Look, maybe I wouldn’t [i]read[/i] the book, because in all honesty it sounds like a pretty silly piece of obviously counter-stereotyping nonsense. But given that it’s actually really good, I simply cannot see me being in any way disturbed by it.

Except of course if I read in “affirm-my-grievances” mode; if I read with the expressed requirement to find [i]more than one[/i] empowered male character; or if I was a tokenist.[/quote]I don't think that either you or I can really understand quite what it's like to be subjected to basically every piece of popular culture having women as tokenized objectified pieces of lust to a man. It doesn't affect our image the way it does women, and that's been pretty vigorously proven. That doesn't mean that you need to be a woman to see the issues here.

As to the empowered bit, let's go with that.

Akka is empowered by his skepticism and his intelligence.
Cnaiur by his rage, his intelligence and his raw strength.
Kellhus by his societal upbringing and his genetics.
Esmi by [i]another man[/i].

How empowering do you really feel Esmi's role is in the book? She's the only lead character that cannot refuse Kellhus. She's the only one that's defined by her relationship to a man specifically, both earlier (as a whore) and later (as the queen of Kellhus). Do you really believe that this is an empowering example to women? If the situation was reversed, and some guy who was picked for his physiological characteristics in the hopes he'd have good babies was given some office in the government by a woman, do you think that would be particularly empowering for men?

[quote]But isn't that Min's point? By your lights, isn't PoN a silly piece of stereotype-reinforcing nonsense. Bakker himself seems to suggest that *it is* stereotype reinforcing. The question people keep asking is then - "well, is there a point to this stereotype reinforcing?" Bakker implies that there is, and I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but no one - even his defenders (and I've been one of them, sporadically) - seems to have offered a plausible explanation yet.[/quote]Really, this. Very good point, Finn, and exactly what I've been trying to say so unsuccessfully.
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[quote]The point is, there are too many questions raised about the dubiety of women in Bakker's world. Bakker says it is a mirror of this world. I don't get that. There is no society where woman are quite as invisible as this. Bakker used the crusades as a template. There's a LOT more woman involved in the actual crusades, whether it be keepin the home fires burning, or waltzing along with them a la Eleanor of Aquitaine and her retinue, or as part of the peasant's crusade. I cannot believe Bakker is as stupid as to have sinned by omission accidentally, as I do beleive he is an intelligent man.[/quote]

"Sinned by omission"?? Loaded words much?

The only difference here is the apparent lack of a "Eleanor of Aquitaine". How do we know there's not a bunch of women back home " keeping the home fires burning"?? It's never mentioned, beyond the Shriah's little deceleration of "invade anyone who's away on the Crusades, and your excommunicated".

Really, this is just more of the same thing, along with this:
[quote]In this recent iteration of this thread, what has jumped out at me is the question: where are all the mothers, wives, and daughters? I don't mean that they should be along the ride for the holy war, but that these prominent male characters seem to have no women in their lives who are important enough to them for the reader to learn (either in flashback or conversation) what their names are or who they were. I guess we get a glimpse of Cnaiur's mother, but . . . that only brings us back to the problem we're discussing.[/quote]

Blah, Blah, Blah, why aren't there more women?

And the answer is simple:
Because the story doesn't focus in on areas where women would be.

It doesn't talk about life back home much. It focuses on the Holy War almost exclusively. And where you'd expect to see women there, they appear (Whores a plenty. For awhile anyway) What about wives or female rulers? Either left behind or didn't exist it appears. So what?

Where the story focuses it's attention, your simply not going to see alot of women. And we don't. And where we SHOULD see alot of women, we do.
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[quote]It doesn't talk about life back home much. It focuses on the Holy War almost exclusively. And where you'd expect to see women there, they appear (Whores a plenty. For awhile anyway) What about wives or female rulers? Either left behind or didn't exist it appears. So what?[/quote]So when there aren't many women around, and the women that do appear are whores, and then you have the example of a woman with power in the world who is using sex to manipulate men too...it's a fairly sexist and misogynistic tone.

[quote]Where the story focuses it's attention, your simply not going to see alot of women. And we don't. And where we SHOULD see alot of women, we do.[/quote]And yet there's not a lot of talk from the men about their wives either? Again, we don't have to see the sisters, but a very basic stereotype has always been the men going away from their families and missing their wives and daughters. Why not that stereotype?
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[quote]But isn't that Min's point? By your lights, isn't PoN a silly piece of stereotype-reinforcing nonsense.[/quote]

No, because the fictional book mentioned exists solely for the purpose of turning gender stereotypes around.

PoN does not exists solely (or in part) to reinforce gender stereo-types.
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[quote name='Kalbear' post='1685814' date='Feb 13 2009, 12.53']So when there aren't many women around, and the women that do appear are whores, and then you have the example of a woman with power in the world who is using sex to manipulate men too...[/quote]

And your point is?

Or do you just love typing periods?
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I don't know. I'm really not sure what your point is. Anyone can defend a book by saying it's that way because it was written that way. Seems a rather shallow argument to me. It's funny at the same time you can go from 1) There isn't any women in this part of the story because it makes sense that way to 2) All the women in this part of the story are whores because it makes sense that way.
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[quote name='Arakasi' post='1685826' date='Feb 13 2009, 13.03']I don't know. I'm really not sure what your point is. Anyone can defend a book by saying it's that way because it was written that way. Seems a rather shallow argument to me. It's funny at the same time you can go from 1) There isn't any women in this part of the story because it makes sense that way to 2) All the women in this part of the story are whores because it makes sense that way.[/quote]

How are those not complimentary?

And I'm not just saying "It's written that way". I'm saying "Given the focus of the story, the lack of women is plausible. And where it would be implausible for women NOT to appear, they do appear".

Now if you wanna argue that a book with a setting and focus where women wouldn't be prominent is a bad thing, I'm more then happy to laugh in your face for saying it and point out that you've just called a whole slew of books, including Lord of the Flies and any book set in a Monestary, bad by definition.
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[quote]The only difference here is the apparent lack of a "Eleanor of Aquitaine". How do we know there's not a bunch of women back home " keeping the home fires burning"?? It's never mentioned, beyond the Shriah's little deceleration of "invade anyone who's away on the Crusades, and your excommunicated".[/quote]


Umm..and the numerous women on the peasants crusade?

[quote]During his tour of France, Urban tried to forbid certain people (including women, monks, and the sick) from joining the crusade, but found this nearly impossible -Wiki[/quote]

and figures such as [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melisende_of_Jerusalem"]Melisende queen of Jerusalem[/url] who called the second crusade? and Eleanor's Ladies in waiting? She took half her court with her.

Shryke, what are you trying to prove? that it is an an unexagerrated potrayal of crusade? It's not. Women did exist in the middle ages, in the same number as men, you know.

Kal, excellent post on why it's disturbing for many women.
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[quote name='needle' post='1685836' date='Feb 13 2009, 13.12']Umm..and the numerous women on the peasants crusade?[/quote]

There is mention of women existing in the peasant crusade as I remember. Sadly, those people all died off-screen because the story wasn't about them.


[quote]and figures such as [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melisende_of_Jerusalem"]Melisende queen of Jerusalem[/url] who called the second crusade? and Eleanor's Ladies in waiting? She took half her court with her.[/quote]

Doesn't exist in Earwa apparently. Different world and all.

[quote]Shryke, what are you trying to prove? that it is an an unexagerrated potrayal of crusade? It's not. Women did exist in the middle ages, in the same number as men, you know.

Kal, excellent post on why it's disturbing for many women.[/quote]

What am I trying to prove? I'm pointing out that a lack of women in the scenes we see makes sense given where those scenes are set.

And no one said it's not exaggerated a bit. It's also got sorcerers. I mean, some shit is obviously different. But it's completely plausible.

Now, if you and Kal wanna say that any book with a setting that could plausible not include women and then doesn't include then is "disturbing", I'm gonna point out that your definition of what counts as disturbing is pretty dumb.
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I think the point is a lot of people do not find it plausible to exclude women from this setting. For good reasons that Needle has explained upthread. We're not talking about a monastery. We're talking about an entire world setting.

Really, that is the disconnect. I don't see people changing their mind if they don't have a problem with it, and I can't really see me being talked out of my objections to the series. But without the disconnect there would be no fun thread for us all to post in :P
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[quote name='Ghost of Nymeria' post='1685848' date='Feb 13 2009, 13.23']I think the point is a lot of people do not find it plausible to exclude women from this setting. For good reasons that Needle has explained upthread. We're not talking about a monastery. We're talking about an entire world setting.[/quote]

No, we're talking about a small part of said large world setting where the scenes in the book occur.

Why don't we ever meet Proyas' mother? Because we never get a scene set back at his home. We only see him when he's part of the Holy War. We don't see his father either. Or any siblings he might have. Or, pretty much, 99.99999% of the rest of the people in Earwa, half of whom we can assume are women.
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[quote]Why don't we ever meet Proyas' mother? Because we never get a scene set back at his home. We only see him when he's part of the Holy War. We don't see his father either. Or any siblings he might have. Or, pretty much, 99.99999% of the rest of the people in Earwa, half of whom we can assume are women.[/quote]Why would we assume that? The world is different, after all.

Very few of the people in the book talk about women. About wives, families, anything. 1/3rd of the series is set away from the holy war; where are the women there? Perhaps that's the subtle subtext that we're missing; women are actually a physical minority to a great extent in Earwa. That would explain a lot, actually.

It's not just a matter of meeting the women in the world that mean something to characters. Sure, none of the nations of the world have a single queen that is willing to go to war. None of the men bring any of their wives. There are no religious women. Okay, that's not realistic (in the sense of historical realism) but it's fine in the context of Earwa. But no one has a girlfriend that they miss, or a wife that they want to get back to?

Just seems odd.

And that's just one bit of the argument, really. The worse part for me personally isn't the lack of women in a war setting, it's the representation of the women that do exist. That there are none outside of those three makes their stereotypical behavior magnified by omission of counterexamples. Esmi, Serwe and Istriya are the only women that exist in Earwa as far as the text is concerned, and that says something.

But what does it actually say? That's the problem I have. I don't get a reason for it.
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