Bakker and Women 3 (merged topic)

[needle]

Just when |I'm about to give up on this thread, it gets interesting again. :)

Nice posts, Sophelia ( and many others).

[Galactus]

The problem is that I don't think you can talk about modernity without the underlying concepts first. You can't do the industrial revolution without the agricultural one. You can't do the Enlightenment without scholasticism.

[Pierce Inverarity]

Wouldn't it be so much easier if we could just take over the corner of a bar at a con somewhere and have it out. This thread takes real work to keep up with.

[quote]Instead the author justifies the ticky boxes by setting, theme, and personal belief about human nature. Which is exactly the same justification that all of the other authors will have used. It becomes annoying by the cumulative frequency and Bakker will lose readers, as he said, due to 'the mysogyny that came before'.[/quote]

I seriously doubt that my justifications are 'exactly the same.' I haven't researched how other authors have responded to charges of misogyny, but I have enough faith in my peculiarity to think that there's a rather big difference in my thematic motivations compared to others.

[quote]But what many of us don’t understand is why people assume that being more creative in largely avoiding the first list means we want the second list. We don’t.[/quote]

I understand that - I understood it all along, I think. Part of the reason I decided to join this fracas was the sophistication of the critiques.

My answer is that [i]I think have been creative[/i] - to the point of cooking my own goose. In owning the first list in a self-conscious and thoroughly critical way (and one of the whole points of PoN was [i]to embrace the genre[/i] in a way that made it new), such that the parallels between scripture and fantasy resonate, allowing me to explore the ugliness that underwrites our nostalgia and wonder.

I put misogyny and sexualization [i]front and centre[/i] in my books, so much so that, like I say, I assumed that a sizable proportion of my readers would realize I was doing something critical, not apologetic. I was wrong.

Why did I think it would be obvious? When a writer focusses on something via things like repetition, embedded reflection, and systematic emphasis, there's a damn good chance they are trying to say something. If the general tenor of the book is critical, then it's a good bet that they are trying to say something critical.

Even my choices of female types - the whore, the waif, and the harridan - I thought, would broadcast the general shape of my thoroughly critical intent with clarity.

But, again, I was wrong, and I have been systematically misread as a result. I remember when I first encountered those brain imaging studies they did on republicans and democrats listening to Bush give a speech, and how nothing he said touched the deliberative centres of their brains. Their brains simply shuffled the content according to some preexisting processing scheme. The brain jealously rations its reasoning resources, and typically only deploys them to promote itself - ugly fact, but true. I had this image of the same thing happening in thousands of people reading my books! Oh-oh.

Interpretatively rich texts confront readers with multiple possible interpretations - ambiguity. Given ambiguity, confirmation bias becomes exceedingly powerful - even though to us [i]it feels[/i] as if we are being as open and as reasonable as humanly possible. Since we seem to have a tendency to mistake depiction for endorsement, this meant that for many readers my representations of misogyny were reflexly confused for misogynistic representations. Once primed in this way, the possibility of competing interpretations vanished, and the text seemed to confirm this initial interpretative hypothesis in myriad ways - to the point of spending endless hours on message boards arguing as much! What strikes us as obvious in the first instance literally becomes the yardstick we take to measure the cogency of competing interpretations.

Which explains why it's so devilishly difficult to get people to change their views [i]anywhere[/i], let alone on forums like this!

A text which literally (and I would argue, creatively) shouts 'Take a close look at these representations of misogyny!' becomes a text that shouts 'Steer clear these misogynistic representations!'

The creativity of my approach just did not exist for a sizable number of my readers, and I regret that - and I will definitely rethink my approach to controversial subject matters in future projects.

But with [i]The Second Apocalypse[/i], I'm pretty much locked in. Since I genuinely think my approach is creative (my hands are tied here when it comes to a full explanation because the series is only partially complete), and because I'm still a little optimistic that the strength of the story over-all might win out, I'll continue to plow ahead with everything as I had initially planned. Odds are, however, the series is likely doomed to be something baroque, controversial, and commercially marginal. And I'll likely end up teaching creative writing at a community college somewhere.

I know what I was [i]trying[/i] to do - so I'm not worried about my own confirmation bias in that regard. Otherwise, I admit that I failed to accomplish my goals with a great number of readers.

And that sucks, trust me. Especially when your wife is out of work and your muse seems to be too stubborn to write anything with 'mass appeal'...

Jeesh. When your responses start turning into confessional rants it probably means it's time to move on!

But just one last thing. Can we please leave the 'subhuman' nonsense behind us. This is simply using a loaded to term to score rhetorical points a la the 'Death Tax' (the term the American right uses in their ongoing attempt to make power (because that's what money is, the primary medium we use to manage other people's actions) even more hereditary in the United States). In this case it's just an attempt to score emotional (as opposed to logical) points by importing racist terminology into the debate.

Women are [i]not[/i] 'subhuman' in Earwa. They're just not as close to God (whatever that means). And as I hope should be clear by now, this isn't necessarily a bad thing because God isn't necessarily one of the good guys! And the men aren't all that pretty either, when you think about it...

scott/

[MinDonner]

Scott/Pierce, don't worry about the "subhuman" thing - the only person who's used it so far is our new friend Archie, who is clearly still embarrassed that his first post here was in praise of your "realistic" gender relations... :leaving:

I think we're getting to the point of realising that, in trying to use your female characters as [i]symbols[/i] as well as [i]characters[/i], something got lost in the mix; in serving the subtext so closely, their roles in the text have been sacrificed (to a certain extent). It kind of reminds me of an ill-fated poetry experiment I tried when I was a teenager, an oh-so-clever device where certain worDs in each lIne had PecUliar capiTaliSation, so that if you read the capital letters backwards it was a cry of Anguish! from someone trapped inside a mirror... nice idea (if you're 17), but the poem ended up being a total crock of nonsensical shit*, cos it just wasn't possible to seamlessly fit the backwards words in, AND make it rhyme, AND have it make sense....


*I am not suggesting this description applies to PoN, by the way, but the same principle applies.

[Lyanna Stark]

Interesting clarification!

[quote]And that sucks, trust me. Especially when your wife is out of work and your muse seems to be too stubborn to write anything with 'mass appeal'...

Jeesh. When your responses start turning into confessional rants it probably means it's time to move on![/quote]


Scott, maybe you could try some of the time-travelling viking novels to get your mind off things? :)

[kuenjato]

[quote name='Pierce Inverarity' post='1693608' date='Feb 20 2009, 06.40']And that sucks, trust me. Especially when your wife is out of work and your muse seems to be too stubborn to write anything with 'mass appeal'...

Jeesh. When your responses start turning into confessional rants it probably means it's time to move on!


scott/[/quote]

I hope your muse stays consistent in its stubborness until the Second Apocalypse is done. Otherwise [i]TJE [/i]would be the sort of pap this reader could put down and forget for a few days, rather than something that dominantes food, drink, rest and midterm study requirements.

[JGP]

[quote name='Pierce Inverarity' post='1693608' date='Feb 20 2009, 06.40']Jeesh. When your responses start turning into confessional rants it probably means it's time to move on![/quote]

I'd prefer it if you didn't, Scott, in this thread, in general, and I'd probably break my ban on drinking for the opportunity to sit in a pub and pick your brain a bit. But as great as your contributions to the thread and understanding have been, there have been others I feel I should acknowledge for having helped gear my perceptions and presumptions in other directions--

Kal, Finn, Paxter, MFC, ValyrianDragonLord, john, Fee, and especially Sophelia, whose ordered approach is greatly appreciated and regarded somewhat in an uncoveting yet jealous kind of way. Of course there have been other great contributors in this/these thread[s] posters [i]and[/i] posts, but these are the one's that come immediately to mind.

[Archibald Merriweather]

[quote name='Pierce Inverarity' post='1693608' date='Feb 20 2009, 08.40']But just one last thing. Can we please leave the 'subhuman' nonsense behind us. This is simply using a loaded to term to score rhetorical points a la the 'Death Tax' (the term the American right uses in their ongoing attempt to make power (because that's what money is, the primary medium we use to manage other people's actions) even more hereditary in the United States). In this case it's just an attempt to score emotional (as opposed to logical) points by importing racist terminology into the debate.

Women are [i]not[/i] 'subhuman' in Earwa. They're just not as close to God (whatever that means). And as I hope should be clear by now, this isn't necessarily a bad thing because God isn't necessarily one of the good guys! And the men aren't all that pretty either, when you think about it...

scott/[/quote]

Mr Bakker, I don't intend to use it as a "loaded term". Objectively, inherently inferior is how Jews were described by Nazis and blacks were described by white-supremacists, whom they considered "sub-human". You yourself did not use "objectively inherently inferior" though, so if that is not the case - if they are not "objectively inferior" to Men, who are human, therefore rendering women sub-men/sub-human (imo) then please say so and disabuse the many users on this board of that notion (of objective inferiority, not of sub-human-ness, which is a term only i'm using as I equate the two).

You keep saying they're not as close to God "whatever that means" - what does that mean? Could you please take a minute to explain that to me? That is the point on which everything hangs in this discussion (in my opinion). I've read the first three novels (waiting on the fourth) and all of your posts and I still cannot figure out what you're implying by that. All of the "scriptural worlds" to which you've compared Earwa to illustrate what you mean by this designation were worlds in which women were taken to be, presumed to be, considered to be and treated as though they were "spiritually inferior" but it was not an objective fact, I don't think, because the world described in scripture[i] is the same physical world we live in now.[/i] All that has changed is perception, so either the spiritual inferiority you're referring to is subjective in Earwa also or the analgogies you're using are problematic to say the least. If you're saying that the spiritual inferiority of women in Earwa is objective in the way that it was subjective in the ancient world, i.e. the world described in the Bible, then I'm still foggy as to what you hoped to demonstrate. I cannot see, in the novel, how this [i]objective [/i]spiritual inferiority has manifested itself any differently than [i]subjective[/i] spiritual inferiority would have. I suppose that is what I would like explained most, if you'd please.

Let me also say that this series is one of my favorites of all time. My favorite since Fritz Leiber, to be honest. Greater in my opinion (by far) than Wheel of Time, ASOIAF, Abercrombie, whomever. I cannot tell you how many people I've recommended it to. On four separate occasions at Barnes and Noble I've seen strangers meandering around the Fantasy section, browsing, and I've run and grabbed a copy of your novel (DTCB) and foisted it on them, telling them to give it a chance, that they won't be disappointed and that it is in my opinion the greatest fantasy I've read in decades. So please forgive me if I seem out of sorts after this quasi-maybe-revelation of which I'm still not certain and don't fully grasp. I've just found out that I've seemingly misread my favorite contemporary fantasy series. That I misunderstood it entirely. That my love of these novels was based, it seems, on mis-understanding. It's disconcerting and jarring and I would, at the very least, like to understand what I missed, and hope to end by appreciating these on an entirely new (to me) level if I can. I want to do that very much, so if you could help I'd appreciate it.

Thank you for your time Mr Bakker.

PS

Members: I've now read the whole of the threads, so please let's leave that one be.

[Archibald Merriweather]

Also, "inferior" itself is a "loaded term". If by "spiritually inferior" you mean "less spiritually connected/akin to a god who may be evil" then i think it can be argued that "spiritually inferior" is a mis-characterization, and that such people could be considered "spiritually superior", as they could be considered spiritually less tainted and so forth.

I don't know. I'm floundering over here.

[Jon AS]

I think I've said it before but it bears repeating: overall, these threads have been wonderfully informative and thought provoking and I'd just like to extent my thanks for that to everyone who contributed (yes, even that Pierce Inverarity fellow...in fact I kind of hope he sticks around for a bit).

[quote name='Lyanna Stark']Scott, maybe you could try some of the time-travelling viking novels to get your mind off things?[/quote]

He could always write some sequels to the [i]Second Apocalypse[/i] featuring time travelling Scylvendi...

[Archibald Merriweather]

[quote name='MinDonner' post='1693639' date='Feb 20 2009, 09.12']Scott/Pierce, don't worry about the "subhuman" thing - the only person who's used it so far is our new friend Archie, who is clearly still embarrassed that his first post here was in praise of your "realistic" gender relations... :leaving:[/quote]

No, I still don't think gender relations in the novel were unrealistic vis a vis medieval society. I'm embarrassed that I could not tell, from the text, that women were objectively inferior rather than subjectively so. Perception being reality and so forth.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

[quote name='Lyanna Stark' post='1693649' date='Feb 20 2009, 09.24']Scott, maybe you could try some of the time-travelling viking novels to get your mind off things? :)[/quote]So maybe Cnaiur really leaves, he time travels to the setting of Neuropath, he joins the marines and meets a guy, and then slash romance ensues.

[Kalbear]

[quote]I put misogyny and sexualization front and centre in my books, so much so that, like I say, I assumed that a sizable proportion of my readers would realize I was doing something critical, not apologetic. I was wrong.[/quote]Scott, thanks again for the long replies here and elsewhere. It's interesting and valuable, and I do appreciate it. I'd like to make sure that you understand where I've been coming from on this, because from this point it sounds like you don't.

One of my bigger problems with the book has nothing to do with your intent, it has to do with the substance of the text itself. We talked about this before - the graphic nature of the series, the desensitization of the readers and the writers, etc. One thing that this overlooks is simply that text about a misogynistic world written so graphically can be pretty offensive and hard to read by itself. Not because it's deep and meaningful, but because it's very close to what people have actually experienced. At that point it doesn't matter whether you were being critical or apologetic about much of anything; the text overwhelms anything else. When it's purposely done everywhere - in the language of sexism, in the culture, in the religion, in the enemy, in the foundations of the book - and everywhere it's vivid, graphic and horrible - this can create some hard feelings in people. Not because they think you're saying 'all women are bad' or that you have some hangup on women or think misogyny is peachy-keen, but because their own experiences are too similar.

In that respect I think that you still haven't fundamentally understood some of the problems that readers have had with the books; it sounds still like you believe that confirmation bias (seeing a rat) sneaks in and people are upset or not wanting to read because they think you're a sexist prick, when it simply has to do with the subject matter and the way it's conveyed combining with the readers' experiences. Some people just aren't going to want to get past reading about rape demons, objective inferiority of women, brutal violence towards women, language that denigrates women at every turn and all the primary women in the book being sex objects. Not because that implies anything about the author.

Just because it's a lot more abuse that they already have to deal with.

[needle]

[quote]I seriously doubt that my justifications are 'exactly the same.' I haven't researched how other authors have responded to charges of misogyny, but I have enough faith in my peculiarity to think that there's a rather big difference in my thematic motivations compared to others.[/quote]

How would you know, if you haven't read much in the genre since the eighties? :P 'I don't know what everyone else is doing, but I know that I'm different' seems a bit.. silly.


[quote]I put misogyny and sexualization [i]front and centre[/i] in my books, so much so that, like I say, I assumed that a sizable proportion of my readers would realize I was doing something critical, not apologetic. I was wrong.

Why did I think it would be obvious? When a writer focusses on something via things like repetition, embedded reflection, and systematic emphasis, there's a damn good chance they are trying to say something. If the general tenor of the book is critical, then it's a good bet that they are trying to say something critical.

Even my choices of female types - the whore, the waif, and the harridan - I thought, would broadcast the general shape of my thoroughly critical intent with clarity.[/quote]

And an even more sizeable number of your readers [i]didn't notice[/i] that misogny was front and centre? In your in-depth interviews with DylanFanatic, gender didn't even [i]come up[/i]? Which bothers you more, I wonder? I'm certainly a reader you [i]overestimated [/i]however, as I have no idea what embedded reflection is, and most certainly missed it in the text..

[quote]But, again, I was wrong, and I have been systematically misread as a result. I remember when I first encountered those brain imaging studies they did on republicans and democrats listening to Bush give a speech, and how nothing he said touched the deliberative centres of their brains. Their brains simply shuffled the content according to some preexisting processing scheme. The brain jealously rations its reasoning resources, and typically only deploys them to promote itself - ugly fact, but true. I had this image of the same thing happening in thousands of people reading my books! Oh-oh.[/quote]


Oh dear, Mr Bakker. You can't (with any degree of consistency) on the one hand deride poor Archie for using loaded language and on the other compare your errant readers to Bush supporters. :lol:



[quote]Interpretatively rich texts confront readers with multiple possible interpretations - ambiguity. Given ambiguity, confirmation bias becomes exceedingly powerful - even though to us [i]it feels[/i] as if we are being as open and as reasonable as humanly possible. Since we seem to have a tendency to mistake depiction for endorsement, this meant that for many readers my representations of misogyny were reflexly confused for misogynistic representations. Once primed in this way, the possibility of competing interpretations vanished, and the text seemed to confirm this initial interpretative hypothesis in myriad ways - to the point of spending endless hours on message boards arguing as much! What strikes us as obvious in the first instance literally becomes the yardstick we take to measure the cogency of competing interpretations.

Which explains why it's so devilishly difficult to get people to change their views [i]anywhere[/i], let alone on forums like this!

A text which literally (and I would argue, creatively) shouts 'Take a close look at these representations of misogyny!' becomes a text that shouts 'Steer clear these misogynistic representations!'

The creativity of my approach just did not exist for a sizable number of my readers, and I regret that - and I will definitely rethink my approach to controversial subject matters in future projects.[/quote]

Umm. I think you [i]underestimate[/i] your readers a little here. What has been posted throughout the thread, again and again, by many posters is that they have felt uncomfortable wihtout knowing precisely why, and are discussing it to work that out. Perhaps that got lost under the to and fro of all the 'is', 'isn't' of the main posters, but I think the last thing anyone arrived here with was a fixed idea of exactly what was wrong and a determination to argue it through. It wouldn't have made it through three pages of debates, and countless hours of everyone's time, if we had.

As far as the 'representations of' versus 'representations', Most of the discussion has started with the premise that people don't think you are sexist, so what's your motive? and does it work?, NOT from the point of you that you would have set out to create a sexist world for the hell of it. A lot of credit has been extended to you throughout on this point, do the courtesy of extending the same back, please.

[quote]But with [i]The Second Apocalypse[/i], I'm pretty much locked in. Since I genuinely think my approach is creative (my hands are tied here when it comes to a full explanation because the series is only partially complete), and because I'm still a little optimistic that the strength of the story over-all might win out, I'll continue to plow ahead with everything as I had initially planned. Odds are, however, the series is likely doomed to be something baroque, controversial, and commercially marginal. And I'll likely end up teaching creative writing at a community college somewhere.[/quote]

I think for every fan you have left behind, you have new ones arriving. I wouldn't worry overly that your wallet will be hit by alienating us feminazis..hell, look how many readers Goodkind gets with dodgy ideology underpinning it all!

[quote]But just one last thing. Can we please leave the 'subhuman' nonsense behind us. This is simply using a loaded to term to score rhetorical points a la the 'Death Tax' (the term the American right uses in their ongoing attempt to make power (because that's what money is, the primary medium we use to manage other people's actions) even more hereditary in the United States). In this case it's just an attempt to score emotional (as opposed to logical) points by importing racist terminology into the debate.[/quote]

See comments on Bush comparisons above :P

It's funny. Everytime you restore my faith in you as an author, you come back x hours later and destroy it with an underlying tone of contempt for those who get it wrong. *shakes head* it's been fun, though.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

[quote name='Kalbear' post='1693918' date='Feb 20 2009, 12.04']One of my bigger problems with the book has nothing to do with your intent, it has to do with the substance of the text itself. We talked about this before - the graphic nature of the series, the desensitization of the readers and the writers, etc. [b]One thing that this overlooks is simply that text about a misogynistic world written so graphically can be pretty offensive and hard to read by itself. Not because it's deep and meaningful, but because it's very close to what people have actually experienced.[/b] At that point it doesn't matter whether you were being critical or apologetic about much of anything; the text overwhelms anything else. When it's purposely done everywhere - in the language of sexism, in the culture, in the religion, in the enemy, in the foundations of the book - and everywhere it's vivid, graphic and horrible - this can create some hard feelings in people. Not because they think you're saying 'all women are bad' or that you have some hangup on women or think misogyny is peachy-keen, but because their own experiences are too similar.[/quote]Um how is that fundamentally different from other works of literature?

[Archibald Merriweather]

[quote name='needle' post='1694045' date='Feb 20 2009, 13.41']Oh dear, Mr Bakker. You can't (with any degree of consistency) on the one hand deride poor Archie for using loaded language and on the other compare your errant readers to Bush supporters. :lol:[/quote]


[i]Archibald[/i], please. Or 'Mr. Merriweather'.


May I ask who here gleaned from the text alone (of PON - I've yet to read TJE) that this was a world in which the 'spiritual inferiority' of women was an objective fact, rather than a subjective assumption? Did you, Needle? What in the first three novels indicates this distinction? I would not be suprised, all things considered, if I missed some glaring evidence. Although, perception being what it is, I think it would he hard if not impossible to distinguish between a world where the inferiority of women is objective and one where it is subjective. In both women would (due to the objective fact in the former and the assumption of it in the latter) have inferior status, they would be treated as 'second class citizens', they would be excluded for the most part from the corridors of Power (Bakker himself has stressed that merely because no powerful women exist in PON does not mean they do not exist in Earwa) etc.

[john]

[quote name='Mackaxx' post='1693136' date='Feb 20 2009, 00.44']

SPOILER: TJE

You mean the glowing stuff? Because what that 'glow' tells us is nothing. Women have less of a glow, just as women have less facial hair and less muscle mass. In this case what does that 'glow' signify and does it justify discrimination? Is it a superiority/inferiority thing or just a difference.

[/quote]

Sure, could be. I haven't read the book so i'm taking all that stuff on faith from this thread. Doesn't make a difference to me either way.


[quote name='Kalbear' post='1693918' date='Feb 20 2009, 17.04']Some people just aren't going to want to get past reading about rape demons, objective inferiority of women, brutal violence towards women, language that denigrates women at every turn and all the primary women in the book being sex objects. Not because that implies anything about the author.[/quote]

I think he grasps that, in fact. It's not really a point you can respond to. Writings not a democracy, and he already said he fears he erred on the side of alienation.


Artie - No, i gleaned the idea from this thread and nothing else.

[Shryke]

[quote name='needle' post='1694045' date='Feb 20 2009, 13.41']It's funny. Everytime you restore my faith in you as an author, you come back x hours later and destroy it with an underlying tone of contempt for those who get it wrong. *shakes head* it's been fun, though.[/quote]

Contempt?

I think your completely missing the point of the line about Bush speeches. That people who either liked or hated him never actually THOUGHT about what he said. The part of their brains that do actual deliberate thinking never lit up. They simply used whatever he said to reinforce the notion of him they already had.

Basically, most people form an initial impression and then all other information gathered is just used to reinforce that impression.

So people who formed the impression thata the books are sexist (for whatever reason) read the parts that are SUPPOSED to be "Look at this sexism, isn't it awful" instead as being "Oh look, more sexism for the pile. Damn sexist bok."

[needle]

I got the point. I was just amused at the use of Bush in there to prove his point, and the comparison to the whole 'Death taxes' line of semantics.

Archie : don't know, and don't really care TBH. It's beeen a minor point that the boys got worked up about that I wasn't personally that interested in.

[Kalbear]

[quote]Um how is that fundamentally different from other works of literature?[/quote]It's not. Horror authors like Stephen King have been living off of this titillation factor for a long time. It's not that different from John Norman or Terry Goodkind either. Heck, it's really not that different from porn. My point is that blaming the readership for not getting the point is one thing (and saying that he didn't understand that the readers couldn't get over their confirmation bias is precisely that), but accidentally obscuring your point or disgusting readership with the ancillary data may be a poor strategy for communicating a message. And it ignores a very important part here, which is that irrespective of the authorial intent the authorial method may be the problem that people have with some of this.

I think that this is something that Lolita managed that Bakker really hasn't - that because we aren't given the insane graphic details of Humbert's actions we're not immediately turned off by his actions. This allows us to sympathize a bit even though the actions are the same (and are so deplorable). We aren't given that kind of freedom in Earwa; it's all gripping phalluses and jetting seed and bitch and whore and slit, women as objects and property, women without agency, left and right, all rape demons and violence towards women. Of course, we're not meant to sympathize with the skin-spies, but instead we're just reading a lot about disgusting acts and behaviors towards women. Those don't need confirmation bias. Even if we're supposed to be horrified and disgusted by the behaviors, [i]those behaviors are still too personal for some people[/i]. And because it's such a central point of the books and Bakker wanted to make sure that everyone got that sexism is bad, we see it again, and again, and again.

Let's go with an analogy, shall we? Those are fun, and we like those a lot. Let's say that there's a book that appears to be a classic...oh, I don't know, turn of the century class struggle but is in reality a clever dialog on the dietary restrictions of people back in the day. And every other page, we hear about shit. We read about people taking shits, about the consistency, the smell, the appearance, the size, everything. We hear about all its uses and see people using shit on a regular basis. We see how their agrarian world is built up on shit, how their boots are covered in it. This goes on for page after page, we're constantly reminded of it.

There may be a clever point in there, but it's still pretty unpleasant to read about that much shit, especially described so graphically.

[quote]I think he grasps that, in fact. It's not really a point you can respond to. Writings not a democracy, and he already said he fears he erred on the side of alienation.[/quote]I agree, but when he said that he felt like it didn't work for some people because of confirmation bias, I think that really missed a lot of why that might even come up. When you read about all these sexist tropes and all this misogyny, it's hard not to pile that into sexist works. That's what I'm trying to say - that the confirmation bias that Bakker railed against and blames for his misinterpretation was caused mostly by him, and by how he chose to write the story.