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Bakker and Women 3 (merged topic)


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[quote name='Matrim Fox Cauthon' post='1690576' date='Feb 18 2009, 02.36']Did you know I read through 46 pages of this topic while wondering when you would show up and why you had not done so prior to this?[/quote]




Fear.
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[quote name='Arthmail' post='1690586' date='Feb 18 2009, 02.52']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.[/quote]




It's not an assertion. As stated, it is a belief based upon the world in which only Bakker created.

I believe it is quite a bit more honest and important for him to forgo any attempt at softening the reality of such misogyny. It makes the story strike harder. It retains integrity, regardless of the harshness.
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[quote name='Stego' post='1690601' date='Feb 18 2009, 03.14']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.[/quote]Interesting. I've entertained the possibility of creating a fantasy world with these sort of familial practices (since these cultural assumptions make more sense to me), but I did not realize that it had such ancient precedent.

[quote]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.[b] Historians believe that women's rights, properties, and freedoms were curtailed to avoid questions of paternity.[/b][/quote]This is a fairly reasonable assertion when one looks at the underlying assumption of inheritance and birthrights in the Biblical legal corpus. Although the inheritance laws are not numerous (most of the mechanics of inheritance seem to be an unwritten assumption), there are a number of tangentially related laws that seem designed protect the integrity of a family's property and inheritance.

[quote name='Stego' post='1690602' date='Feb 18 2009, 03.16']Fear.[/quote]Well it was 46 pages of disappointment, but sure I can roll with that.
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I'm going to call BS on that; plenty of native american histories have a very clear idea of where babies come from and had far different sexual politics than indo-european cultures, and were fairly egalitarian.
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Call BS on it if you like, Kal. I'm talking about recorded history, not 500 year old verbal history.


I would suggest you do some theorycrafting on this before you jump in the Kool-Aid without knowing the flavor.
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So you're saying that it's only the written histories that count? And let me guess - Mayan and Aztec histories won't count here either? Sorry, I still don't buy it. You're the one presenting the theory; present some math behind it.

Not that this has anything to do with either Bakker or women.
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[quote name='Stego' post='1690613' date='Feb 18 2009, 03.33']Mat, check out Gilgamesh. Interesting shit.[/quote]I have read it, but never as an anthropological study.

[quote name='Kalbear' post='1690616' date='Feb 18 2009, 03.36']I'm going to call BS on that; plenty of native american histories have a very clear idea of where babies come from and had far different sexual politics than indo-european cultures, and were fairly egalitarian.[/quote]But one culture's response to the issue should not be confused with another's. I would imagine that the Mesopotamian world's response would have a much more resounding impact on the rest of the surrounding developing ancient world. But it is worth mentioning that the Native American matriarchal practices actually created their own set of intricate problems (namely in regards to the male-to-female birth ratios and its relation to marriages).
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[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.[/quote]

Mind, matrilineal and matrilocal socities aren't neccessarily matriarchal per se. There are tons of examples of cultures where property and names are passed on through the matriline but is controlled by men. (usually the men of said matriline, IE: the woman's brother)

It makes for quite an interesting set of familial relationships (for instance, children are more closely related to their uncles than their fathers)

So no, patriarchy isn't neccessarily connected to issues of paternity (since in these matrilineal socities a woman's child always belongs to her matrilineage anyway it doesen't matter who the father is, at least not to her family and for inheritance purposes, the father belongs to a different matrilineage and his sister's children will inherit him)
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[quote]But one culture's response to the issue should not be confused with another's. I would imagine that the Mesopotamian world's response would have a much more resounding impact on the rest of the surrounding developing ancient world. But it is worth mentioning that the Native American matriarchal practices actually created their own set of intricate problems (namely in regards to the male-to-female birth ratios and its relation to marriages).[/quote]Oh, totally. I'd be happy to buy that as soon as the discovery that men also made babies happened something like this did happen on some level (though whether Gilgamesh is particularly useful as a way to document the daily goings on of people, I'm not sure) - but I don't think it was a universal value throughout cultures and the one automatically precludes the other.
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[quote name='Kalbear' post='1690625' date='Feb 18 2009, 03.43']So you're saying that it's only the written histories that count? And let me guess - Mayan and Aztec histories won't count here either? Sorry, I still don't buy it. You're the one presenting the theory; present some math behind it.[/quote]



Well, I'll grant that I've only read 3 books on Aztecs and only one on Mayan civilization, but I'm curious where you draw the assertion that there may have been less misogyny in Aztec culture than say Greek or Roman. (Women were property in Aztec lands. Men were treated little better)

No, you were referencing matriarchal North American tribes, were you not? The Iroquois are a famous example. Their history or passed down verbal history is rather hard to compare to nigh on 5000 year old recorded anthropology.

As for presenting the theory, many can do it far better than me. I am no anthropologist, I just read a lot. Maybe you should, too.
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[quote name='Kalbear' post='1690633' date='Feb 18 2009, 03.51']Oh, totally. I'd be happy to buy that as soon as the discovery that men also made babies happened something like this did happen on some level (though whether Gilgamesh is particularly useful as a way to document the daily goings on of people, I'm not sure) - but I don't think it was a universal value throughout cultures and the one automatically precludes the other.[/quote]Of course not, but I suppose one issue could be caught in the speculation of whether or not such practices would have potentially developed in Native American cultures given enough time and other "advancements" in their civilizations. I really do not want to get into making subjective statements as to the level of advancement their cultures possessed in relation to the history of the Old World. Also one must be careful of the romanticizing of the practices and societies of Native American cultures. None of this really pertains to Bakker apart from the development of sexism and the extent to which it is a universal sociological phenomenon.
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[quote name='Triskele' post='1690626' date='Feb 18 2009, 09.43']I would kill to know if Scott reads this board and if so, what he thinks of what he has wrought.[/quote]

You do know that the user Pierce Inverarity is actually Scott Bakker and thus Scott has written several posts in these threads by now, yes? ;)
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[quote name='Triskele' post='1690608' date='Feb 18 2009, 08.23']I guess this is my question: Do the women in this post feel that Bakker is a true sexist? Do you feel he is trying to disparage you with his writing? Does he want a world that more closely resembles Earwa?[/quote]

A "true sexist"? If by "true" you mean "intentional", then no, but as has been pointed out several times in the various threads, [b]intent does not matter[/b]. It's more than possible (in fact it's usually inevitable) to be sexist by accident, through lack of thought, unconscious cultural conditioning or whatever. I for one am deeply unimpressed by Bakker's assertions that he's trying to do feminist ("problematising") things and we actual feminists just don't get it; I do wonder if he's now considering that he might not be quite as feminist as he thinks he is.

My own position on the books - I enjoyed them, I wasn't *offended* per se, but I was [i]bothered[/i] by the portrayal of women in them. Not this much-vaunted spiritual inferiority that has had so much e-ink spilt thereupon, but the way that the main female characters are treated as plot devices rather than characters. Even Esme, who comes closest to having a real character, is still used in the narrative as a Prize (for K and A to fight over) or a Victim to be menaced by the Evil Rapist Baddies. Her ascension to spymaster is about as empowered as Sarah Palin's appointment as VP candidate; done by a man, for tokenistic reasons.

I haven't read TJE yet, and was planning to do so at some point, but Scott's rather pompous and patronising posts in here are making me less inclined to bother.
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I'd be pretty surprised if you (or really any historian) could find a reasonable causal connection between discovering that men had paternity and the rise of patriarchies in those societies. It's unclear whether Mayan culture is particularly patriarchal or to the degree in which women were owned by men or inferior to men.

But yes, I'm giving one counterexample, because that's really all it takes to say 'no, that is wrong'. China had an early history of matriarchal societies (in the Banpo dig) that predates Sumer, for instance. They obviously switched to a more patriarchal society at some point (likely before Sumer did), but being able to say 'and that's because they got the research points to discover animal and human husbandry'?

For instance, [url="http://www.intuition.org/txt/lerner1.htm"]this historian[/url] seems to agree that it arose out of the same time period in most cultures (written history and bronze age go together well here) but because of very different pressures in that society as well as the actual ability to own humans as property (since they had the food to be able to). Thus sexism and patriarchy was a creation of the agriculture revolution (primarily because of the requirement of protection, as war intensified), which makes sense; if you don't have excess food and the food you have is equally gained from both men and women, you can't have a 'men are better' kind of thing, right? And if you have large, spread-out groups of nomadic peoples, they're not going to come into conflict with other groups all that often vs. sedentary groups. That was just the quick google search I could come up with, but that jives pretty well with what the other historians I've read presuppose.

It's an interesting subject in any case, but it really has nothing to do with Bakker, Earwa, or their relationship to women.
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I like that theory. It doesn't seem as likely, but it's certainly fascinating to ponder.

Your counterexample disproves accepted theory about as much as the banana proves the existence of god (Thanks Kirk Cameron!!) but the information is interesting.


As for not having anything to do with Bakker, it was a throwaway line I was asked to elaborate on. I apologize for the derailment.
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[quote]My own position on the books - I enjoyed them, I wasn't *offended* per se, but I was [i]bothered[/i] by the portrayal of women in them.[/quote]

Yes. This. Bothered, disturbed, [i]made uneasy[/i].

Which led to the question of why so bothered, as so many books depict a similar setting, and are similarly lacking in female characters.


This thread for me was not about answering the question 'is Bakker a sexist?'as that's..irrelevant, really. And I'm quite happy to give him a personal pass on that.

It's about why I was bothered. It's about these books giving a more negative depiction of (female) society than is seen in history, and why in particular woman are invisible, subservient, and sexualised in Earwa. It's about looking at the varying attitudes of people to the books - and the various readings of the text.

Bakker said at one point these books are sexist depending on who reads them, and I think that's an interesting point. Anyone re-reading the books after having been involved in this thread to any degree is going to carry a different view in with them, they will have had their eyes opened to a good many others in-depth reactions to the book from either side of the argument.

Maybe they will be reading 'to win', as Bakker describes it, reading to prove their own view point. But that in turn will focus people on many different parts of the book, and I can't help but think that's a good thing. That's the point of threads like these, not proving whether Bakker himself is or is not sexist.
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I haven't read the whole thread, and I am quite sure everything was said before.

But I want to say that I am glad that this was discussed finally, was about time.
And I want to agree with everyone who pointed out that there is a problem with the description of woman here, and that it is very upsetting for women to read.
I stopped reading in the middle of the second book of the triology because I couldn't stand it any longer ( and I am no feminist and I normally finish every book I start, even if I don't like it and I think Bakker is otherwise quite a good writer and the story was otherwise quite interesting, and I have never had any problems with 'male-focused' stories before).
I intend never to read a book by Bakker again.
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[quote name='MinDonner' post='1690646' date='Feb 18 2009, 10.07']Even Esme, who comes closest to having a real character, is still used in the narrative as a Prize (for K and A to fight over) or a Victim to be menaced by the Evil Rapist Baddies. Her ascension to spymaster is about as empowered as Sarah Palin's appointment as VP candidate; done by a man, for tokenistic reasons.[/quote]
:stunned:
Maybe you should read Bakker's posts and their discussion by Paxter and TheValyrianDragonlord (found somewhere in the second volume of this thread and really the only good thing about it), which explain the intent behind Esmi's story.

(Happy Ent seems to be getting his wish.)
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[quote]But yes, I'm giving one counterexample, because that's really all it takes to say 'no, that is wrong'. China had an early history of matriarchal societies (in the Banpo dig) that predates Sumer, for instance. They obviously switched to a more patriarchal society at some point (likely before Sumer did), but being able to say 'and that's because they got the research points to discover animal and human husbandry'?[/quote]

Quite frankly, we don't know enough about most prehistoric cultures to tell much about their social organization. The reason the banpo dig culture is considered to be such is, IIRC; mainly through grave-sites (IE: we have found a lot of impressive graves with women in them and very few with men) which is not *neccessarily* a reliable depiction of actual patterns of power. (this is similar to scythian culture where we find similarily extravagant graves for women)

Probably this is tied to women having some kind of important cultic function, which is an indication that women had some sort of power, but not neccessarily that society was matriarchal.
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