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Bakker and Women 3 (merged topic)


JGP

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Shryke, are you a mod? No? Then STFU and let other people post without badgering them. You arent the final arbiter of who can or cannot post here. With the ignore function your post is even more stupid than it needs to be.

[quote name='Dylanfanatic' post='1690030' date='Feb 17 2009, 18.19']Is it bad of me to wonder if debates like this are for mostly-WASP type people, those who don't have to worry about the [i]probability[/i] of graphic violence occurring to them or around them on a daily basis? Because right now, I'm trying to wrap my mind around how, for example, a woman from the Darfur region might interpret the debates on sexism. Would her views be fundamentally the same as expressed by many here, or would it differ in so many subtle and/or obvious ways?[/quote]

How many women from Darfur have read the books and are members of this forum? Fantasy is written for a fairly narrow subsection of humanity (Western-style educated people). And yet there is a fairly diverse spectrum of responses to such pieces of work.
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[quote name='Matrim Fox Cauthon' post='1690360' date='Feb 18 2009, 14.48']"The clean and unclean dichotomy of the Old Testament may seem very superficial and unreal to us modern people, but if you lived in those times, then these metaphysical properties certainly seemed very real and were treated as real."[/quote]

:cheers:

end unproductive backslap
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Guest thebadlady
[quote name='Matrim Fox Cauthon' post='1690360' date='Feb 17 2009, 21.48']Okay, now you are being an ass. I'm not sure if talking about the people themselves over the content of the work is really conducive to the sort of discussion we would like to be having, and that goes for Scott as well.

I just got back from a course on everyone's favorite Old Testament, and we were talking about an issue adjacent to the one we are currently discussing, and the guest speaker said a rather interesting thing that seemed to pertain to this thread, "The clean and unclean dichotomy of the Old Testament may seem very superficial and unreal to us modern people, but if you lived in those times, then these metaphysical properties certainly seemed very real and were treated as real."

These sort of comments are not exactly constructive either.[/quote]

Thanks guys, but I can handle a bad wind blown my way. Its not the first and won't be the last. And its not like I was Ms FuckingSunshine either. ;)

I really am sorry I wasn't expressing myself well earlier. I could make a thousand excuses, but it doesn't change a thing, now does it?

MFC, we are on the polar ends of the relgion spectrum but I love reading your take on stuff. And Finn - you came out of left field, but that is awesome. You have been a fresh breath. :D
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A point was made in Bakker and Women 1 or 2 as to the missed opportunity of including more normative women in the garb of washerwomen and courtiers and whatnot. But I think it is a legitimate question to ask whether any male author can actually succeed in writing 'normal' women.

See, just like we have our own biases and points of view when we judge a body of work, we have the same problem when we go about creating something that is outside our realm of experience. I wager it is easier to create something outside the norm of what is considered "normal" for women (e.g Serwe, Esmenet) than it is to create a character of depth who falls within the mean. To give an example, it is easy to write about an Amazon-like female warrior, you just write about a male warrior with tits.

In the absence of any examples from his entire body of work, I am on the fence whether he would be able to pull it off.
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Guest thebadlady
[quote name='cyrano' post='1690369' date='Feb 17 2009, 22.02']A point was made in Bakker and Women 1 or 2 as to the missed opportunity of including more normative women in the garb of washerwomen and courtiers and whatnot. But I think it is a legitimate question to ask whether any male author can actually succeed in writing 'normal' women.

See, just like we have our own biases and points of view when we judge a body of work, we have the same problem when we go about creating something that is outside our realm of experience. I wager it is easier to create something outside the norm of what is considered "normal" for women (e.g Serwe, Esmenet) than it is to create a character of depth who falls within the mean. To give an example, it is easy to write about an Amazon-like female warrior, you just write about a male warrior with tits.

In the absence of any examples from his entire body of work, I am on the fence whether he would be able to pull it off.[/quote]

Jordan has so many women in his series that even a webpage devoted to keeping track of them gave up. According to him, all based on his wife, from a washerwoman to Simmerage (sp? stupid firefox!!). Aye, there were jokes about that, but his women were so similar it became physically painful to read about the next bout of 'womanhood'.
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Jesus this thread is a train wreck.

I can't say I enjoy reading rape, but you know what I [i]would[/i] like to read about? More incest. Lots more. Especially if the sister was on trial for her life and her one-handed lover/brother refused to come save her. That would be great.

Also, if this dude's sister hooked up with his long lost son. I would also like to read about that. Yay for incest!
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[quote name='Mackaxx' post='1690361' date='Feb 17 2009, 19.49']Even taking the inferiority thing literally, and saying that men are superior to women in some ways on Earwa, that doesn't in any way serve justify them being the overall superiors.[/quote]
OK. If you say so. I was really only trying to get you on the same page with the people you were arguing with, as you you seemed to be talking past each other. I prefer your take on Earwa to Bakker's, for what it's worth.

[quote name='Mackaxx' post='1690361' date='Feb 17 2009, 19.49']Please hold onto yours when you realize that 'spiritually inferior' is a pretty loaded term, what exactly does it mean really?[/quote]
Maybe that's why I said - [quote name='Finn' post='1690337' date='Feb 17 2009, 19.17']"spiritually inferior" - whatever that means[/quote] - in the post that you're responding to?

Look, on the one hand, I would prefer that Bakker resolve this "spiritually inferior" thing in the series in some interesting way that is palatable to me. On the other hand, if it turns out that the whole "spiritually inferior" thing was just some semantic mumbo-jumbo that didn't really mean anything, then his references to this premise in interviews and on this forum will have simply been an exercise in pseudo-provocative wankery. And that would really be lame.

[quote name='Mackaxx' post='1690361' date='Feb 17 2009, 19.49']Then when you stop and say, well, women ARE inferior in some ways to men in [i]our[/i] world, spiritually, physically and mentally (gasp)[/quote]
I'm just going to ignore that . . .

[quote name='Mackaxx' post='1690361' date='Feb 17 2009, 19.49']Despite all the real and perceived (spiritual) 'superiorities' our society is baggaged with we have still managed to muddle on through.[/quote]
I honestly don't know what you're going on about . . . Who are you arguing with and about what exactly?
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[quote name='Finn' post='1690376' date='Feb 18 2009, 15.14']OK. If you say so. I was really only trying to get you on the same page with the people you were arguing with, as you you seemed to be talking past each other. I prefer your take on Earwa to Bakker's, for what it's worth.[/quote]

I'm not on anyones side per se I'm merely presenting another angle. If I was the author I wouldn't be spelling things out for people either. Whether I'm right or wrong in respect to the authors intent doesn't matter too much either, this thread is a pretty stark example of that I'd have thought.

[quote name='Finn' post='1690376' date='Feb 18 2009, 15.14']Maybe thats why I said "spiritually inferior" - whatever that means[/quote]

Whatever that means is exactly the point, what does it mean? Ambiguous do you think?

[quote name='Finn' post='1690376' date='Feb 18 2009, 15.14']I'm just going to ignore that . . .[/quote]

There are differences between the sexes, I'd deal with that if I were you. No need to ignore it. Just don't discriminate because of them too much.

[quote name='Finn' post='1690376' date='Feb 18 2009, 15.14']I honestly don't know what you're going on about . . . Who are you arguing with and about what exactly?[/quote]

It's pretty simple really and I'm pretty sure most people got it. Read it again if you like.
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[quote name='Mackaxx' post='1690385' date='Feb 17 2009, 20.24']Whatever that means is exactly the point, what does it mean? Ambiguous do you think?[/quote]

Yes, it was my point. And so yes, I do think it's ambiguous. And that's why I expanded on the potential pitfalls of that ambiguity in my post.

[quote name='Mackaxx' post='1690385' date='Feb 17 2009, 20.24']It's pretty simple really and I'm pretty sure most people got it. Read it again if you like.[/quote]

I'm pretty sure I understood the sentence; I just didn't understand what relevance it had to the discussion at hand. But it's certainly not a big deal either way.
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[quote name='thebadlady' post='1690368' date='Feb 17 2009, 23.01']MFC, [b]we are on the polar ends of the relgion spectrum[/b] but I love reading your take on stuff. And Finn - you came out of left field, but that is awesome. You have been a fresh breath. :D[/quote]I think we're much closer than you may realize in regards to non-theism. I think our differences amount primarily to our approaches to religion, but that is for another time.

BTW, I appreciate how you slap this thread in the face showing just how real the events of "fantasy" can be for the reader.

[quote name='cyrano' post='1690369' date='Feb 17 2009, 23.02']A point was made in Bakker and Women 1 or 2 as to the missed opportunity of including more normative women in the garb of washerwomen and courtiers and whatnot. But I think it is a legitimate question to ask whether any male author can actually succeed in writing 'normal' women.

See, just like we have our own biases and points of view when we judge a body of work, we have the same problem when we go about creating something that is outside our realm of experience. I wager it is easier to create something outside the norm of what is considered "normal" for women (e.g Serwe, Esmenet) than it is to create a character of depth who falls within the mean. To give an example, it is easy to write about an Amazon-like female warrior, you just write about a male warrior with tits.

In the absence of any examples from his entire body of work, I am on the fence whether he would be able to pull it off.[/quote]I do not think that for Bakker it is a matter of ability to pull it off, but a question of his willingness to do so. I think that the narrative had plenty of room for other women in the story. Perhaps the Padirajah could have sent out his wife as a negotiating emissary. Perhaps there was a wife of a minor lord who insisted on coming along out of some great religious fervor, even if it is of the religion that paradoxically oppresses her. Perhaps there was a woman of one of the female religious cults who came along to attend to the spiritual well-being of the crusaders.
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Edit - whoops, post occured in between it seems, response is to Finn

A statement about our world overcoming its own spiritual prejudices despite them being handed down by an omnipotent god or being biological truths seemed to fit in just fine. The links seem kinda obvious but given the shenanigans now going on in this thread who knows.
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[quote name='cyrano' post='1690363' date='Feb 17 2009, 21.51']Shryke, are you a mod? No? Then STFU and let other people post without badgering them. You arent the final arbiter of who can or cannot post here. With the ignore function your post is even more stupid than it needs to be.



How many women from Darfur have read the books and are members of this forum? Fantasy is written for a fairly narrow subsection of humanity (Western-style educated people). And yet there is a fairly diverse spectrum of responses to such pieces of work.[/quote]

I could quibble about how "fantasy" ought to be defined, but let's say the wellspring of ideas from which published Western fantasy arises flows in other cultures/lands in a way that's a bit more "real" to others than it would be to a Westerner. But my point behind writing that bit was this: cultural world-views vary quite a bit and how women in certain regions of the world are going to react to "sexist" statements/actions varies based on how they define themselves vis-á-vis their societies.

A lot of talk in these threads has been focused on how the reader reacts to the created world. That's a good, just talk. As a Westerner myself (and even more as someone who worked two years with teens who had suffered emotional/physical/sexual abuse in many cases), the ideology and gender relations in a world such as Earwä sickens me. It is nasty, coarse, brutal, etc. to the extreme.

But what I think Bakker is trying to point out (and he'll correct me if I'm wrong, I hope) is that we're looking at this so much from our own personal PoVs that it's difficult to twist it around and try to view it through another's lens. In our world today, in places such as the Taliban-controlled regions in Afghanistan and Pakistan, women are being taught that they are inferior. In a great many cases, [i]they accept it whole-heartedly[/i]. Why the hell do they do this? What power can there be in some scribbles done a thousand or more years ago to cause such maljustice to appear as justice itself in current times?

Sometimes, I think the horrid treatment of women in Earwä, when considered as a "logical" extrapolation from accepting certain religious doctrines as "the Biblical truth," damns our societies and certain religious interpretations quite a bit. I know from reading all his books that Bakker has a way of making me quite uncomfortable with my religious belief because I've had to confront the quite sexist (in this day and age, especially) language inherent in it. Perhaps by showing the brutal nastiness of such "fundamentalist" interpretations of religious doctrine in its full "glory," the story in part is meant to make us uneasy about our own treasured beliefs, since so much of it is grounded in what we would today call misogyny, ethnocentrism, and just pure diviseness?

But maybe "Bakker and Religion" ought to be a separate topic for another time?
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[quote name='thebadlady' post='1690368' date='Feb 17 2009, 20.01']And Finn - you came out of left field, but that is awesome. You have been a fresh breath. :D[/quote]
Why thank you, badlady.
And please don't let anyone - especially anonymous anyones on the internets - get you down.

[quote name='thebadlady' post='1690368' date='Feb 17 2009, 20.01']MFC, we are on the polar ends of the relgion spectrum but I love reading your take on stuff.[/quote]
Agreed. Interesting stuff the last few days, MFC. I may have to go check out this atheism thread I've heard tell of . . .
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Guest thebadlady
[quote name='Dylanfanatic' post='1690431' date='Feb 17 2009, 22.51']I...
But maybe "Bakker and Religion" ought to be a separate topic for another time?[/quote]

I would really enjoy seeing a thread like that (again).
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I've done my best to avoid this thread, mostly due to my friendship with Kalbear, my disagreement with him, my fear of the retribution of many fine women I respect and adore, and my deep affection for the work of Scott Bakker.

I have so many points to make that I believe I will bullet point them, as fitting them into a considered argument could be a trilogy in and of itself. So, here we go.



-There is sexism of the highest magnitude in the world of The Prince of Nothing. I believe this is a positive thing. It reflects back what we must face about our own world. Sexism is real, in any and all directions, and has been a mainstay of humanity since history was first recorded. It is incredibly sad, in my opinion, that misogyny can be traced back quite easily to the scientific discovery that men had something to do with conception and the making of a child. Of course, prior to this, misandry was all the rage. in any of its forms, it leads one to wonder how we ever end up reproducing at all.

-Scott believes, genuinely in my opinion, that having a powerful female leader in a fictional religious-fervored, pre-industrial, and mostly illiterate society rings false based upon our own recorded history and would turn his fantasy into nothing more than fancy. There are plenty such books out there, we do not need them to all be such.

-Scott never apologizes for the actions of any of his characters. This is how he sees them. He is not subscribing to a philosophy and attempting to convert you to such. He is telling a story. Much of it is hard to read.

-Scott is a terribly nice guy to have a beer with.

-Kalbear is a terribly nice guy to have a beer with.

-Kalbear likes to argue more than most people enjoy sex. He honestly does not have to even agree with the side which he is representing; he simply lives for the argument. That is not say he does not believe in this particular argument. I believe he does quite deeply. I also believe that much of his furor is misdirected.

-A true work of art is judged on whether it can make you feel. The Prince of Nothing not only succeeds on this level, it also succeeds in making one think. As such, it is a tremendous work based in a society I abhor featuring characters that disgust me. And make me think.
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Stego:

"Scott believes, genuinely in my opinion, that having a powerful female leader in a fictional religious-fervored, pre-industrial, and mostly illiterate society rings false based upon our own recorded history and would turn his fantasy into nothing more than fancy. There are plenty such books out there, we do not need them to all be such."

But this is a false asertion, because there were women of some power. I have read the entire course of this thread, so i understand what the arguments are for Bakkers choice in this matter. As i have started my second attempt to read through the series, i am going to keep his points in mind. Claims like this, however, are patently false. Also, being that there is magic and other flights of fancy in his world, there is almost no reason that this sort of logic can be justified. Not only is it much harsher than even our own recorded history, but its a work of fiction, meaning there is countless room for interpretation. I know, i know the intentions, but i don't see it as some sort of white-wash PC world if it actually reflects some of our actual history.

DF is probably correct when he says that for some of us, the ideas put forth by Bakker about our own religious texts makes us uncomfortable. The scriptures are certainly a means of control for the Catholic Church, and the men who run it. But where as in our modern times we can choose to ignore it, during the time of the Crusades it was not so easy.

Though i would like to point out that the church derived a great deal of its power from the fact that the nobility of many nations allowed it that power, as it helped to legitmize their own rule. The fervrency of the Crusades was as much a result of religious zeal as it was a notion of conquest for land and wealth in a time when there were too much nobility with too much time on their hands attacking each other.
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[quote name='thebadlady' post='1690536' date='Feb 17 2009, 22.35']Finn, all my friends call me Ro. I would be honored if you would do the same.[/quote]
Will do, Ro.

[quote name='Stego' post='1690571' date='Feb 17 2009, 23.29']It is incredibly sad, in my opinion, that misogyny can be traced back quite easily to the scientific discovery that men had something to do with conception and the making of a child.[/quote]
Really? That's fascinating. This is not a story I know . . .
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[quote name='Finn' post='1690589' date='Feb 18 2009, 02.57']Really? That's fascinating. This is not a story I know . . .[/quote]


Well, to be succinct, in the earliest recorded histories, it was women who owned property, women who owned land, women who headed families and women who handed down their family names. Married men would go to live in the home of their wives family. (The Epic of Gilgamesh) This was due to women being sacred in that they procreated and men did not. Sex was a pastime, and the link was never made. In every recorded history since Mesopotamia in which it can be proven that there was a correlation between a father and childbirth, women faced a far different life. Historians believe that women's rights, properties, and freedoms were curtailed to avoid questions of paternity.
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