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Bakker and Women 3 (merged topic)


JGP

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[quote]i hate to be the "but imagine if they had White Entertainment Television" guy but if bakker had written a book where men were objectively inferior i wonder what the outcry would be. none, i should think. for whatever reason that wouldn't bother me at all.[/quote]It's because white guys have the privilege to be able to see that as absolutely absurdist and unreal.

Women (and non-whites in the US)don't get that privilege.
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[quote name='Kalbear' post='1693253' date='Feb 19 2009, 21.25']It's because white guys have the privilege to be able to see that as absolutely absurdist and unreal.

Women (and non-whites in the US)don't get that privilege.[/quote]


does "white privilege" exist outside of freshman sociology class?


anyway, i mean men period - of all races.
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[quote name='Shryke' post='1693168' date='Feb 20 2009, 01.08']How does one avoid the 1st list without stubbling into the 2nd again?[/quote]

The long answer(s) will have to wait until tomorrow, but here's [s]the[/s] a short answer off the top of my head.

Look at the things on the first list, and think creatively how you can avoid them.

And good heavens, the most important thing, the thing which is so often missing, Kay already said: if you can give the men bloody strong characters why can't you do the same for the women?

As Mackaxx said, look to reality. The more I look at reality, the more bewildered I am at the way women are written in fantasy.

It's as if each author simply reads other fantasy books in order to learn about women, but to learn about men, looks inside him or her self. [ETA: although I mention Bakker's characters later on I'm talking about fantasy in general here: this isn't a rant aimed at Bakker - he doesn't have enough actual female characters to make a large enough sample, and does seem to have tried hard to breathe life into Esmi so I don't really want to target him here]

There is enough humanity in any writer to make a vast array of different characters. Everyone has some so-called female traits and some so-called male ones, even if due to biology or upbringing there might be more of some than the other - fictional characters are no different. Create a human being first, then adjust for gender as necessary.

Even in the most oppressive society, I don't believe women would be pale shadows of their modern counterparts, moulded into submissive forms. I have no direct evidence of this: my time machine got lost in the post and I have not travelled to societies alleged to be most oppressive in the current day. However:

I have read primary source documents going right through history, including medieval women's letters. Even those women who were expressing conventional sentiments of being god's very humble servant, for example, could be bossy or sly or eloquent (admittedly these were high class 'empowered' women, but it just adds to the evidence that force of personality shows everywhere you can look, so I suspect it is in the unrecorded places as well).

I have known women who were born just after 1900, one in particular who played a conventional role, with husband as breadwinner, while she had the children. She would hardly go out without him, and he spared her only a tiny amount of his wages to bring up their large family. She had more character than the women in 20 fantasy novels lumped together. A wicked, wicked sense of humour, and ways and means of subverting her husband, in addition to holding the family together. She saw herself as flutter-headed and unsuitable for any kind of work. But I couldn't see any 'loss' of strength of character, despite her relative 'oppression'. Extrapolating backwards through time, I don't think medieval women would be any less quirky and human than contemporary women. Attitudes, circumstances, beliefs and roles change the way people view themselves and others, but humanity is irrepressible.

I have not yet met one person who didn't possess an interesting individuality, and fierce strength of character in several ways. I once stereotyped 18-year old school-leavers as being 'all the same' and expected them to be lacking character. Every one of them has amazed me (well, those who talk. But I know very well that people who don't talk often have the most to say ;) ). All those parents are right: very young children show characters.

Look at the women you know: do they seem less 'strong' in character than the men? Have you never been afraid of a woman? Why assume when writing fantasy that women can't be (non-sexually and as a result of their own character not because of a man's weakness) scary/charismatic/persuasive?

In each generation babies are born which carry genetic material from both mother and father. Lamarckism doesn't have a say. There's no reason why meekness should pass through the female line. There's just as much chance that a female baby as a male baby will inherit temper, impulsiveness, guile and so on.

So start from that premise. Think not that being oppressed somehow bleaches out all the character: it's all still there, even if not permitted to be expressed directly. (Oh but look at the literature on defence mechanisms, and think about the potential, think what *you* would feel or do if you lived in that society, and if you believed yourself inferior, trapped) I don't understand why no women in fantasy have the passion of Cnaiur or the angst of Akka. Instead we get the prostitute (hardened little by her experiences it seems) panicking because her sandal broke, and fretting over Akka but pausing to wonder what colour to paint her toenails. Maybe it's my sexist perceptions colouring my reading. :dunno: But truly, how often do people say Esmi is a great character, compared with Cnaiur?

(Yes, I am assuming they're supposed to be real characters, not just archetypes: I certainly can't help interpreting them that way.)
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You've got a whole long explanation on "Why any person could be an interesting character", but completely missed the whole "Why would they be in the story" part.




Sidenote: I thought the sandal thing was an excellent bit of storytelling. Is a broken sandal trivial? Maybe to you. To Esmenet, at that point,it really is life and death. An example of the gravity of the situation she's put herself in after leaving her "comfort zone".
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Apologies in advance to the rest of the thread

[quote name='Matrim Fox Cauthon' post='1693220' date='Feb 20 2009, 13.03']Reasons, yes, but what mechanisms?[/quote]

The reasons are the mechanisms, someones thought processes can be a shallow mechanistic explanation of how they are motivated to do something.

[quote name='Matrim Fox Cauthon' post='1693220' date='Feb 20 2009, 13.03']Furthermore, one can know [i]how[/i] something works without knowing [i]why[/i] it works.[/quote]

If you don't know why you don't know how.

Say an apple drops off a tree and you don't know about gravity. You know part of the story, how the apple broke from the tree, how it moved down before your eyes, how it spun round and round. But you don't know how it was forced to fall downwards toward the earth. I could replace every how in that sentence with a why, all at once or one at a time and it will still make sense.

Or a car engine, I know how the pistons go up and down but I don't know how they are forced to do so.

Or does knowing why something works imply that you know everything down to the subatomic level and below? If thats the case then no one knows why anything works.

[quote name='Matrim Fox Cauthon' post='1693220' date='Feb 20 2009, 13.03']Furthermore, answering why may leave one wanting to know how, but answering one does not necessarily require one to answer both questions.[/quote]

Answering why something happens may leave inevitably asking how, but you may just ask why again, because the two are interchangeable. Apple falls, why? branch broke, why did it fall after the branch broke? Gravity. Why does gravity force things to the ground? And so on.

Again, interchangeable. And again sorry thread.
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[quote name='Archibald Merriweather' post='1693221' date='Feb 20 2009, 13.04']it was a time/place where it may have been THOUGHT that the spiritual inferiority of women was "a fact like the atomic weight of uranium", which is to say that if Earwa is like biblical israel in that respect then Earwa too would be a place where that value is [i]percieved[/i] to be objective but [i]really is not[/i], which is how i (perhaps mis)understood it.[/quote]

I concur.
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In respect to adding 'powerful' female characters to your medieval world and having to be careful about setting off alarm bells I'm kind of wondering the following.

Historically there are powerful women, fair enough. In the context of our history though how often would your near neighbor have been a powerful female ruler? It happened of course, but how much a chance would one have to live and die without seeing it happen. Maybe it was pretty much the case all the time but i tend to see the same names reeled off and given that we've been documenting history for 1000s of years and that the earth is freaking massive just how small is the number in the end? Anyone?

This is related

[quote name='Sophelia' post='1693289' date='Feb 20 2009, 13.54']Cool little summary of women in history[/quote]

Interesting stuff, given that Bakkers story takes place in what is effectively a holy crusade how many women were on said crusade in positions of power?

[quote name='Sophelia' post='1693289' date='Feb 20 2009, 13.54']Instead we get the prostitute (hardened little by her experiences it seems) panicking because her sandal broke, and fretting over Akka but pausing to wonder what colour to paint her toenails. Maybe it's my sexist perceptions colouring my reading. :dunno: But truly, how often do people say Esmi is a great character, compared with Cnaiur?[/quote]

I agree with this too, as a character she isn't as interesting as Akka or Cnaiur, they are a tall order to match but I agree with what you say. In the next book she is looking a bit more exciting but I can't say how much more until I finish up.
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I think you should read Sophelia's post about what kind of women characters she (and I, and others) are looking for again, Mack. Although women characters who have power might be a good addition to a story, it's often inserted as a token.

Not all characters who are "strong" are "powerful" (and not all strength is physical, nor is all power in politics and a grand level, either).

Edited: I didn't think you misunderstood, I just think that Sophelia explained it pretty well. If an author can create interesting and realistic individuals who happen to be male, why does that not seem to carry over to characters who happen to be female?
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This post isnt a negative response to Sophelias stuff, but I can see how it can be seen that way. What I meant about writing real women earlier was just that and I agree with her post that these characters can be compelling, strong without being 'powerful'.

Some compelling strong women accompanying a holy crusade might be a bit tricky though. Although I think camp followers that are actual wives and not whores wouldn't be that tricky given the diverse ethnicities of the crusaders. Might have made for good reading when they decided to cut the followers loose. I'd forgotten that nasty bit.

Overall It was kind of a supporting statement, asking just how many politically powerful women were there realistically is basically what it was asking. And how many that accompanied holy crusades. Its pointing out that warrior queens are a bit silly perhaps if your going to do a pseudo history thing.

Adios everyone, weekend awaits
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[quote name='Mackaxx' post='1693363' date='Feb 20 2009, 00.14']The reasons are the mechanisms, someones thought processes can be a shallow mechanistic explanation of how they are motivated to do something.[/quote]You are playing a terrible game of semantics. The reasons are indeed mechanisms, but they are not the [i]how[/i], because there is an understood difference in asking the question "How did you open the door?" with "Why did you open the door?" If I were to ask you "how did you open the door?" then I am not in any way asking or desiring to know your reasoning ("the mechanics") for opening the door. If I were to ask you "why did you open the door?" we should similarly not expect you to answer with the process by which you opened it. This is because the two words carry two different semantic ranges, though there is overlap in meaning between the two when the words are used with the meaning of "for what reason."

[quote]If you don't know why you don't know how.[/quote]"Why did you open the door?" "I opened the door to get the cookies." Do you now know how? Is anyone left wondering how the door was opened? Or is the [i]how[/i] rather irrelevant to the question?

[quote]Say an apple drops off a tree and you don't know about gravity. You know part of the story, how the apple broke from the tree, how it moved down before your eyes, how it spun round and round. But you don't know how it was forced to fall downwards toward the earth. I could replace every how in that sentence with a why, all at once or one at a time and it will still make sense.

Or a car engine, I know how the pistons go up and down but I don't know how they are forced to do so.[/quote]You could replace them, but it carries with it a different semantic implication. The questions how and why are used in different contexts. If the words were completely interchangeable, then [i]how[/i] are there two different words for these two questions?

[quote]Or does knowing why something works imply that you know everything down to the subatomic level and below? If thats the case then no one knows why anything works.[/quote]I do not get your point here at all.

[quote]Answering why something happens may leave inevitably asking how, but you may just ask why again, because the two are interchangeable. Apple falls, why? branch broke, why did it fall after the branch broke? Gravity. Why does gravity force things to the ground? And so on.

Again, interchangeable.[/quote][i]How[/i] do you say that?
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[mod hat]

Folks, this thread is massive enough without having to house a separate discussion within it. The limited thread-drift has run its course, and let's allow the main topic to continue.

Thanks.

[/mod hat]
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I guess that, after slogging through endless posts, i'll go back to my original statement. The world fails to breath in some crucial way. Some would call it fluff, or others simply the little things that make a created world seem like a real one. This world lacks that essence of the everyday.
Many have argued in this thread that there were few, if any, women of power actually involved in the crusades. In light of the devestating amount of time devoted to this thread by so many, i started to up a book i had previously bought but not gotten around to called God's War, by Christoper Tyerman. Its considering one of the newly definitive works on the Crusades. There are indeed, few instances of powerful women involved directly in the crusades. In fact, i have not been able to find one so far. I won't go into this being a fantasy world with new rules available to any author, depending on the focus of his work, because its already been done.
That being said, my next point ties in with the idea of the world building itself having a problem, at least in my mind. Often, and especially during the Crusades, political alliances were garnered through marriage. It played an important political role, the marriage of powerful men to the daughters and sisters of other powerful men. We do not even get a whiff of this in Bakkerverse. Perhaps, having read GRRM with fascination, i have been spoiled. Perhaps it all doesn't need to be like that, but if you are going to write a book on the objective inferiority of women based off of scriptural writings in a pre-modern time, but ignore some of the key alliances that made many of the events in that time possible, i would say that there was a valuable piece of the historical narrative left out. This does nothing to further many female readers concerns, of course, but it does point out something i see as a serious flaw.
Now, with Bakker, he says that because we do not see it does not mean that its not going on somewhere in the background. As for that, all i have for evidence is the written material. I cannot assume what is going on behind the scenes, i am still trying to come to terms with what is going on currently that i can directly touch. Besides, in my mind, that almost feels a little like saying: well, i deal extensively with racism in my world, you just can't see any of it in my book. That does me little good.
Perhaps i feel some disappointment. Bakker is a clearly ambitous writer, and one of considerable skill. But in his rush to deal with the big ideas many of the things that make a fantasy world come alive have been left out. Personally, i don't think its fluff to have the exta bits in the background, even if mentioned only in passing. Because you are not writing a novel based in our world, but in another, one that has been made up. It is a construct of the mind, and one that can become quickly bogged down in its own flaws. I think the biggest flaw of any book like this is giving the sense that it is not a possible world, and for the reasons i have listed above, that is the feeling i get. I hope that in time this changes, and i am proven wrong.
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[quote name='Mackaxx' post='1693377' date='Feb 20 2009, 06.48']This post isnt a negative response to Sophelias stuff, but I can see how it can be seen that way. What I meant about writing real women earlier was just that and I agree with her post that these characters can be compelling, strong without being 'powerful'.

Some compelling strong women accompanying a holy crusade might be a bit tricky though. Although I think camp followers that are actual wives and not whores wouldn't be that tricky given the diverse ethnicities of the crusaders. Might have made for good reading when they decided to cut the followers loose. I'd forgotten that nasty bit.

Overall It was kind of a supporting statement, asking just how many politically powerful women were there realistically is basically what it was asking. And how many that accompanied holy crusades. Its pointing out that warrior queens are a bit silly perhaps if your going to do a pseudo history thing.

Adios everyone, weekend awaits[/quote]

Err, just look at history. Some women DID accompnay the Crusade (wives, and many in their own right)

Remember that it was a pilgrimage (albeit an armed one) not a normal kind of war.

Many widows went, they brought their own retainers, and there is at least one example of a woman taking up a longbow and shooting people.

EDIT: And while the FIRST Crusade has no powerful women except as an observer (although mind, an observer that wrote history because she failed at politics) the SECOND one has Eleanor of Aquitaine herself.
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[quote name='Arthmail' post='1693414' date='Feb 20 2009, 02.19']I guess that, after slogging through endless posts, i'll go back to my original statement. The world fails to breath in some crucial way. Some would call it fluff, or others simply the little things that make a created world seem like a real one. This world lacks that essence of the everyday.[/quote]I had a different reaction. While I thought that there were certain qualities and fluff of the everyday that were absent, there were some in which the book excelled head over heels above other works of fantasy, namely in terms of creating what appeared to be a workable (however oppressive) and organic series of religions and philosophy. Inrithism and Fanism felt highly real.

[quote]That being said, my next point ties in with the idea of the world building itself having a problem, at least in my mind. Often, and especially during the Crusades, political alliances were garnered through marriage. It played an important political role, the marriage of powerful men to the daughters and sisters of other powerful men. [b]We do not even get a whiff of this in Bakkerverse. [/b]Perhaps, having read GRRM with fascination, i have been spoiled. Perhaps it all doesn't need to be like that, but if you are going to write a book on the objective inferiority of women based off of scriptural writings in a pre-modern time, but ignore some of the key alliances that made many of the events in that time possible, i would say that there was a valuable piece of the historical narrative left out. This does nothing to further many female readers concerns, of course, but it does point out something i see as a serious flaw.[/quote]My own defense of this is because this is not the focus and expanding the Holy War to draw even more parallels of all the different political alliances would have drawn the book out significantly in length. GRRM is able to do this because he has a different narrative focus in his storytelling style.
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[quote name='Matrim Fox Cauthon' post='1693380' date='Feb 20 2009, 16.52'][i]How[/i] do you say that?[/quote]

Now THAT makes sense.

If we go back to the original how/why thing that was niggled about its far more ambiguous.

Onto the main topic now.

[quote name='Galactus' post='1693418' date='Feb 20 2009, 18.34']Err, just look at history. Some women DID accompnay the Crusade (wives, and many in their own right)

Remember that it was a pilgrimage (albeit an armed one) not a normal kind of war.

Many widows went, they brought their own retainers, and there is at least one example of a woman taking up a longbow and shooting people.

EDIT: And while the FIRST Crusade has no powerful women except as an observer (although mind, an observer that wrote history because she failed at politics) the SECOND one has Eleanor of Aquitaine herself.[/quote]

Go Errr yourself captain sarcastic pants, I was asking the question genuinly. Ta for the answer.
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[quote name='Pierce Inverarity' post='1691261' date='Feb 18 2009, 12.45']I've read your response regarding fundamentalism (which I'm using in a more general sense than you, I think) a couple of times, Finn, and I honestly can't see what you're driving at. Could you restate it, or give me an analogy, maybe?[/quote]
Sorry for the delay in getting back; didn't mean to be rude. The rest of this post is going to refer to you in the third person. Again, the intent isn't to be rude, but rather not to be presumptuous.

There were a couple of different points I made about fundamentalism, but I'm no longer sure they matter to the discussion at hand.

I had thought that one of the major concerns of the series was a refusal to whitewash history. Other fantasy writers might romanticize the premodern world, but Bakker wasn't going to do that. And since he was so closely mapping the First Crusade, I thought that there was a strong attempt to be "truer" to the history even as he was displacing it onto a fictionalized setting with various fantasy conventions.

And the disconnect for me was that Earwa didn't seem to reflect a recognizable pre-modern world. (And this seemed important vis-à-vis gender representation as discussed by several posters earlier in the threads.)

But I think I was just wrong about the series' relationship to history. Bakker seems to have an interest in the movement from premodern to modern, especially with regard to a kind of Weberian "disenchantment of the world." From his latest post (a response to Galactus), however, I take it that he's more interested in exploring historical "dynamics." At the end of the day, I'm guessing that it's not important to him, for instance, that Earwa be a particularly accurate reflection of the premodern world. What he really seems to be interested in is not history per se, but in telling a story that reflects the ways in which human history is an ongoing but always changing dynamic of oppression and injustice: trading one form of oppression for another and all that.

This could all be completely wrong of course . . . but to get back on topic, I'm now trying to get my head around how this would or should shape my understanding of Bakker's deployment of gender in the series . . .
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