Bakker and Women 4

[Shryke]

[quote name='needle' post='1695743' date='Feb 22 2009, 14.34']Language - The use of harlot, and whorish as the main perjorative in the first part of TDTCB.[/quote]

Pussy, Wuss, Fag, Queer, etc.
To this day, it's still among the most common of insults.

[quote]Metaphor Vs. Character - the use of women in the story as symbols rather than characters. Esme is the only 'rounded' female caracter, and she is the most 'symbolic' also.[/quote]

The men are just as symbolic and archetypal.

[quote]Sex- Female characters being defined only through a lens of male desire.[/quote]

I wouldn't agree with this. Both Esmi and Serwe are defined outside the scope of simply being desired by men.

[quote]Absence/Invisibility - the absence of mothers/sisters/wives/daughters in back stories. Bakker has queried why we would assume that no woman anywhere held power in the Three Seas - but without any textual evidence of it, why would we assume otherwise?

Too Few women - the lack of 'secondary' female characters. That this is a male setting does work against this, but nevertheless, I can't help but feel it is part of my innate reaction.

Power - female power being given by men. Kellhus as modernity is an explanation for this, but it's again, an innate reaction, this one.

History - as above, there being no channels to power for women, when in the time of the crusades there[i] were[/i] avenues to power for women outside marriage/motherhood.[/quote]

These are all pretty much a concequence of the setting and the focus of the story though.

You say "Why would we assume otherwise?", I say "Why would you assume either way?".

The book is very focused on a small cast of characters.

[quote]These are the ones I have identified, anyway. Some of them I will freely admit are 'realisitic' in terms of the crusade theme of the book, but which strike a chord nonetheless. Some of them are deliberate by the author - language, for example - but their cumulative effect on the female reader unanticipated. Some of them I'm still working through, as to whether this is my prejudice, or that of the text.[/quote]

The more I read of this, the more it strikes me that my comments to Kal on the last thread about it being the reader that's the issue.

I mean, the most obviou example to me is a few people's comments in this thread about Scot "Only responding to male boarders at first". Something I actually laughed at. It strikes me as the reaction of someone looking far too hard for gender bias in everything.

[Happy Ent]

One honest question to those who don’t think Esmi’s characterisation is the knee’s bees: Could you point me to a female character in genre literature that is significantly better realised?

I simply haven’t been exposed to enough F&SF to readily think of one.

For example, this board knows I think Catelyn Stark is great, but I find Bakker’s Esmi superior in almost every way (both in the sense of being believable and in the sense of being somebody I have sympathy for). But there are many fantasy authors I haven’t read; I suspect Robin Hobb may contain characters that are more carefully constructed. Stephenson’s Eliza may qualify (and in many ways parallels Esmi’s story arc, complete with [i]Pygmalionesque[/i] Anasurimbor Henry).

[i]Please[/i] don’t say Drakasha Zamira — that’s exactly [i]not[/i] the kind of character I’m looking for when I read books.

[needle]

[quote]Pussy, Wuss, Fag, Queer, etc.
To this day, it's still among the most common of insults.[/quote]

Huh? none of these mean prostitute.

[Shryke]

[quote name='needle' post='1695776' date='Feb 22 2009, 15.16']Huh? none of these mean prostitute.[/quote]

And you think "whorish" isn't intended to be an insult based on sexuality?

[Pierce Inverarity]

Sick as a dog today, which means I don't trust myself to write. Head colds make me particularly stupid. Why I trust myself to wend through these argumentative nettles, I don't know.

[quote]For me, what's interesting in the debate - and why I am enjoying Sophelia's critique so much - is in teasing out why this book broke my suspension of disbeleif, and why it didn't break that of so many intelligent, and feminist, male readers. Authorial intent is - interesting, but not quite as interesting as working out exactly what caused which alarm bells to ring so loudly in both my (and other female reader's) heads.[/quote]

I'm not sure I understand this. Isn't the answer simply that we humans are inclined to conflate depiction and endorsement in the absence of clear contra-indicators?

This is the answer that is implied by the statements of mine that you explicitly agree are 'settled.' This is why the pursuit of the question strikes me as the pursuit of [i]canonical[/i] evidence, something which will make the interpretation of misogyny more than just one possible way of reading the text (that has the added disadvantage of misreading authorial intent).

[quote]Perhaps I'm taking that a little too personally, but I find it frustrating that again and again we're told we're simply rationalising our reactions to the book. Isn't the presence and the depth of this discussion proof against that? If I wanted to maintain my initial reactions I really wouldn't spend so much time analysing them, and I'm sure neither would Sophelia. I'm trying to understand why they bother me more than in a bog-standard fantasy.[/quote]

You have to admit, needle, when people begin speculating as to the 'hidden motives' behind who you respond to, or who's name you mention, with the suggestion that these could indicate incipient sexism - well... Don't you think this represents an attempt to [i]canonize[/i] the misogyny interpretation? To suggest that maybe, just maybe, the misogynistic interpretation isn't a misreading of authorial intent afterall?

That's the way it struck me. As did the continuing debate on the chauvinistic metaphysics of Earwa. The issue didn't seem to be so much, "Why does this alienate/bother [i]me[/i]?" - a question you would think would involve discussions of [i]mis[/i]interpretation - as "This is why this [i]is[/i] alienating." But this could be my defensiveness speaking.

But the bottomline that I'm stressing is that all interpretation, by it's very nature, is rationalization through and through. Like I said, it's not an accusation, but an always pertinent observation. The tendency to canonize one's interpretative viewpoint is irresistible because it is reflexive, and utterly invisible. Fundamentalists have the same feelings of 'fairness and openness' as do social constuctivists. Bias never wars under it's own flag.

One of the reasons I was dissapointed with the PW review with it's concluding comment regarding the 'conspicuous lack' of secondary and nonsexualized female characters, was that it smelled of someone with an agenda.

SPOILER: Minor spoiler for The Judging Eye

In [i]The Judging Eye[/i], Esmenet has become Theodora. Her daughter Theliopa has an important role, and her other daughter, Serwa, is introduced. Mimara is as much a principle character as Achamian - albeit one scarred by childhood prostitution.

In other words, I actually have a number of important female characters who have overcome abjection in a fiercely patriarchal world, in what I would argue is a thoroughly believable fashion (within the constraints of generic epic fantasy).

(Since I think bootstrapping is largely an ideological myth, I'm generally disinclined to represent 'triumphs of the human spirit.' I think contemporary culture is already awash in that status quo reinforcing dreck. I am, and likely always will be, a 'complexity of the human condition' writer. Everywhere you turn you're told to 'take charge of your future' as way of training you to own your inevitable failure to fully live up to your aspirations. "It's not because the game is rigged; it's because you just didn't try hard enough.")

Sophelia's move to block the parallel between Earwa and the real world carries the same odour of agenda to me. It's like historical periodization debates, where mere interpretative emphasis on this or that continuity or discontinuity slides the chronological marker this way or that. To me, given the sheer amount of work I put into making my world 'authentic' (far more than a good number of my peers, I think) this seems to be an obvious attempt to strengthen the This-is-Misogyny hand by discrediting my claim to be critiquing the 'real world.'

Block the connection, and suddenly [i]The Prince of Nothing [/i]becomes [i]The Critique of Nothing [/i]- a prurient exercise in gender porn.

Or is that simply a happy consequence of answering the Why-I-was-so-bothered question you say is actually motivating the discussion?

I fully admit I could be reading all this through the lense of excessive defensiveness - I am, after all, excessively proud of my worldbuilding! - but for the moment at least, this is the way the debate has seemed to turn to me.

scott/

[Bastard of Godsgrace]

[quote name='needle' post='1695776' date='Feb 22 2009, 21.16']Huh? none of these mean prostitute.[/quote]

Since in my native language words for "whore" and "whorish" are the most common curse words here and now, this objection seems a little bit strange to me.

[JGP]

[quote name='Pierce Inverarity' post='1695780' date='Feb 22 2009, 13.19']I fully admit I could be reading all this through the lense of excessive defensiveness - I am, after all, excessively proud of my worldbuilding! - but for the moment at least, this is the way the debate has seemed to turn to me.

scott/[/quote]

Generally I don't post if all I can say is 'couldn't agree more.' But, I couldn't, and unfortunately have caught up on my invoicing and have to get on home. Looking forward to renewing the discussion on Monday.

I likewise would also appreciate and respect seeing people actually start examining these 'why do I feel this/does this bother me' statements. Right now it's still 'this is why I feel this way,' not 'why [i]do[/i] I feel this way?' Could be interesting. Complex and challenging, all around.

[Ran]

HE,

Too much symbolic baggage is shoved onto the characters for them to really feel "well-realized" [i]as characters[/i], I have to say, using the sort of criteria I usually use for what defines a well-realized character to me. We are, after all, none of us actually symbols of anything, but Bakker's characters are to varying degrees of explicitness.

So, in this, I think GRRM's craft with Catelyn makes her significantly better realized than Esmenet, since her narrative and her role in it feels more "naturalistic" (to whatever degree that can be applied to the artifice that is fiction) than Esmenet's. This is not a knock on Bakker's work. He has different views, priorities, talents, etc. But it means its comparing apples and oranges.

[MinDonner]

Not much to add to the discussion at the moment as I'm still digesting the various responses, but I would like to thank Sophelia for going into so much detail about her reactions, it's given me a lot of food for thought. :)

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

[quote name='Ran' post='1695810' date='Feb 22 2009, 16.07']Too much symbolic baggage is shoved onto the characters for them to really feel well-realized [i]as characters[/i], I have to say. We are, after all, none of us actually symbols of anything, but Bakker's characters are to varying degrees of explicitness.

So, in this, I think GRRM's craft with Catelyn makes her significantly better realized than Esmenet, since her narrative and her role in it feels more "naturalistic" (to whatever degree that can be applied to the artifice that is fiction) than Esmenet's. This is not a knock on Bakker's work. He has different views, priorities, talents, etc. But it means its comparing apples and oranges.[/quote]Pre-Zombie Catelyn was highly well realized, but Zombie Catelyn, not so much.

[needle]

[quote]You have to admit, needle, when people begin speculating as to the 'hidden motives' behind who you respond to, or who's name you mention, with the suggestion that these could indicate incipient sexism - well... Don't you think this represents an attempt to canonize the misogyny interpretation? To suggest that maybe, just maybe, the misogynistic interpretation isn't a misreading of authorial intent afterall?[/quote]

Yes. Are you suggesting that you should be[i] immune[/i] to speculations on whether you are or are not on occasion unconsciouly mysognist? that you alone have stepped outside the cultural conditioning that we all grow up with? Of course, on a wide ranging debate like this that you have participated in, your intentions, motivations, and unconscious prejudices will be questioned occasionally. It would be naive to expect them not to be. However, upon clarification, I did apologise, and do so again. It was noticeable, but obviously upon your explanation, co-incidental. And a cheap shot to take.

[quote]That's the way it struck me. As did the continuing debate on the chauvinistic metaphysics of Earwa. The issue didn't seem to be so much, "Why does this alienate/bother me?" - a question you would think would involve discussions of misinterpretation - as "This is why this is alienating." But this could be my defensiveness speaking.[/quote]

I appreciate you cannot follow every poster on a thread of this magnitude...but that's the question I am continually asking. I really don't give a fuck if there's a line in a book that I haven't read yet that talks about spiritual inferiority of women. I'm interested in why the first trilogy bothered me, and in what I got wrong, and where the text misled me. I'm not sure how much clearer I could have been about this throughout the last week and a half. (Though I'll admit to also been pretty interested in how the critiques affected you as a writer at various points)

Personally, I found it very interesting how the language in the first book affected me strongly, and how it was put in deliberately by you to signal that this was to be a critique of gender in the book. I missed that. That's interesting to me, in finding the tension between reader and writer, and the possibility for miscommunication. I'll still list it in a 'things which disturbed me' list, because it did. But looking at it more closely made me look at it as a foreshadowing of Esme as empress, and I learnt from it.
[b]
The pursuit of canonical evidence[/b] - that makes a mysognist reading the one true one. Hmm. I don't think I am searching for that. I'm not looking to 'prove' that these books hate women. I'm strongly interested in the different reactions different readers have, in the different readings people take from it. I'm saddened that the gender issues you have talked about raising have been missed both by women reading it ( merely finding disturbing) and men reading it ( not noticing it).
I'm not on a witch hunt here. But. I appreciate that's the same as you saying 'I'm not a mysognist'. Something that needs to be taken on faith.

[quote]The tendency to canonize one's interpretative viewpoint is irresistible because it is reflexive, and utterly invisible. Fundamentalists have the same feelings of 'fairness and openness' as do social constuctivists. Bias never wars under it's own flag.[/quote]

Isn't this the same thing again..that you think it's impossible to change our bias, and we're continually trying to find ways to justify it? But that's not what I am trying to do here. I'm not trying to convince others of my bias, I'm trying to demonstrate where my bias came from, and work things out about it. It's an exploration, not an entrenchment. I'm not arguing to win here, I'm arguing to find stuff out, in my own head as much as anyone elses.

[quote]To me, given the sheer amount of work I put into making my world 'authentic' (far more than a good number of my peers, I think) this seems to be an obvious attempt to strengthen the This-is-Misogyny hand by discrediting my claim to be critiquing the 'real world.'
Block the connection, and suddenly The Prince of Nothing becomes The Critique of Nothing - a prurient exercise in gender porn.

Or is that simply a happy consequence of answering the Why-I-was-so-bothered question you say is actually motivating the discussion?[/quote]

So..if Prince of Nothing is not read in relation to the real world, and real world gender inequalities, and real world analysis of powers and unconscious motivations, then it's an exercise in gender pron? Am I reading that right? Because that's interesting. It does throw the mantle right back on the reader - to read without immersion, but with knowing, open eyed comparisons to history and world as we know it being made during the reading.

I have to admit, I don't normally read like that - not fantasy, anyway. This is where the discussion is useful. But it's also where we get into little mini-debates, like whether the brutal subjugation in Earwa is an accurate depiction of mediavil reality or not. And this is probably where I come across my own biases most - because [i]I don't want to believe it was that bad[/i]. And yes, this is probably where I'll futilely argue, sort of knowing that I am wrong (or certainly not entirely right), because I don't like the reality. (As discussed earlier in the debate, the idea that woman came to power through impersonal capital forces is[i] hard[/i] to accept.)

[quote]I fully admit I could be reading all this through the lense of excessive defensiveness - I am, after all, excessively proud of my worldbuilding! - but for the moment at least, this is the way the debate has seemed to turn to me.[/quote]

I'm sorry you feel like that. To be honest, the debate feels like it's just getting interesting to me - Sophelia and I are putting up problems which we'll get around to working through. Personally, I'm finding it a lot more interesting than the metaphysics of spiritually inferior women the debate took previously.

[quote]I likewise would also appreciate and respect seeing people actually start examining these 'why do I feel this/does this bother me' statements. Right now it's still 'this is why I feel this way,' not 'why do I feel this way?' Could be interesting. Complex and challenging, all around.[/quote]

I'm obviously not communicating clearly enough, if none of that has come through yet. I'll keep trying to explain and to analyse as best as I can.

[Sophelia]

[quote name='needle' post='1695699' date='Feb 22 2009, 18.43']Fair enough. I guess it's so obvious to those of us who inhabit this place who is male and who isn't it's easy enoough to forget that others don't know. Just a bit of an unfortunate co-incidence, then. Apologies for pointing it out in a detrimental fashion.[/quote]

I too am sorry to have bothered Scott over it: thought either way it was worth mentioning since it shows how easy it is to accidentally prime past unhappy experiences.

[quote name='Happy Ent' post='1695774' date='Feb 22 2009, 20.14']One honest question to those who don’t think Esmi’s characterisation is the knee’s bees: Could you point me to a female character in genre literature that is significantly better realised?[/quote]
There are very few female charactisations that come anywhere near male ones (including Esmi). I made a post in this thread to Shryke about it. But then, since my concerns in these threads weren't about Esmi's characterisation, you probably weren't talking to me. :P

[quote name='Pierce Inverarity' post='1695780' date='Feb 22 2009, 20.19']Sophelia's move to block the parallel between Earwa and the real world carries the same odour of agenda to me. It's like historical periodization debates, where mere interpretative emphasis on this or that continuity or discontinuity slides the chronological marker this way or that. To me, given the sheer amount of work I put into making my world 'authentic' (far more than a good number of my peers, I think) this seems to be an obvious attempt to strengthen the This-is-Misogyny hand by discrediting my claim to be critiquing the 'real world.'[/quote]
:( Oh - I hope you will read my post after that (where I try to get into your fishbowl :P). I *do* have an agenda to try and explain why I was worried by the depiction of women, and those feelings aren't going to go away (or rather, seem worthwhile) until I understand fully what you were trying to achieve. Can you not see how much work I am putting in to try and [i]understand[/i] why you presented things the way you did? It seems hard for you to accept that I simply find your writing difficult to follow. And yes, if it is difficult to follow then I can't see a way out of the box where my feelings began.

[needle]

[quote]Since in my native language words for "whore" and "whorish" are the most common curse words here and now, this objection seems a little bit strange to me.[/quote]

See..that's interesting. For me, it was jarring when the Shriah gave the reason for invading other nations as they were 'whorish'. Would that be normal in Polish? Maybe it IS normal in the context of medaevil writings? (which I am most certainly not versed in).

[Bastard of Godsgrace]

[quote name='needle' post='1695823' date='Feb 22 2009, 22.29']See..that's interesting. For me, it was jarring when the Shriah gave the reason for invading other nations as they were 'whorish'. Would that be normal in Polish?[/quote]


Well, it would be just taken as an insult. The same as if he said they were fucking bastards in English which wouldn't have to say anything about his attitude toward illegitimate progeny as such.

[Finn]

[quote name='Pierce Inverarity' post='1695569' date='Feb 22 2009, 06.31']The reason I keep bringing up the confirmation bias stuff is simply that many people know nothing about it, those that do continue to succumb to it (all the time), which is why the tendency is to rationalize initial interpretations: I see this stuff as A, therefore it is A.[/quote]
You are clearly very interested in these issues, and I think it's admirable that you are almost evangelical on the subject. The world would almost certainly be a better place if we spent more of our educational capital teaching people how to think, and, as you say, this would necessarily entail teaching them what their brains aren't particularly good at.

For me, the problem is context. I would love to have a thread devoted to these issues; I'd love to hear -in this thread or others - how these issues shape your writing and your understanding of how reading works.

In the context of an ongoing discussion/debate, however, deploying "confirmation bias" seems to me to work to undermine/dismiss the other side of the debate. For instance -

[quote name='Pierce Inverarity' post='1695569' date='Feb 22 2009, 06.31']I can't help but feel that people, in this respect, are still trying to rationalize their initial moral reaction to the books.[/quote]
You can insist that the problem is universal and that it affects you as much as anyone else (and I'm not doubting these things), but right here you're dismissing the other side of the discussion. And the problem for me is simple: the argument is ad hominem. You're not here addressing the argument, but the person behind the argument (even if the problem itself is universal). And once we head down this road, we're virtually eliminating the possibility of real discussion.

And I think it's important to point out how easily the "confirmation-bias" argument can be turned around: "People hear what they want to hear, and we all know that Bakker has a hobby-horse about confirmation-bias. Given that he doesn't like what's being said, *of course* he won't be able to see the actual arguments for what they are. He'll just chalk them up to confirmation-bias in a knee-jerk way, just like he always does."

I don't actually think this, by the way. My point is that none of this is very productive in the context of this discussion.

[Pierce Inverarity]

This is thing. Reading through the crazy number of pages I had fallen behind on is like spraying layer after layer of clear gloss over my glasses, more and more distorting my reading of each successive post. I know that tickle, that tightening of the tendons in the shoulders, the whine in the ears and the tightness in the jaw that accompany defensive responses.

And like I said, I thought the question of 'Why are people so bothered?' had been already been dealt with, so I saw what I thought was canon-creep in Sophelia's and Needle's responses.

As for unconscious gender biases, I bit that bullet way, [i]way[/i] back. I was raised in a sexist household in a patriarchal culture. I also have reacted with intellectual violence against both for many, many years now.

But I actually hold a pretty peculiar view when it comes to the issue of implicit bias. I know, because the research seems pretty definitive on the subject, that implicit gender and racial bias is something all humans suffer, and has powerful and wide-ranging social consequences. But I also, because the research seems unequivocal on the subject, that scouring hints and innuendos for evidence of implicit or concealed gender or racial bias in individuals (as opposed to [i]institutions[/i]) should be avoided, simply because we are so prone to confirm our suspicions that the chances of unfairly labelling (with socially injurious terms like sexist or racist) someone who's innocent are pretty high.

To whit, when in doubt give the benefit of the doubt.

[quote]Can you not see how much work I am putting in to try and understand why you presented things the way you did? It seems hard for you to accept that I simply find your writing difficult to follow. And yes, if it is difficult to follow then I can't see a way out of the box where my feelings began.[/quote]

I'm not doubting the [i]work[/i] at all, Sophelia! It's the 'trying to understand' that I'm not clear on. Needle said it had to do with trying to decipher the why of reception: IF this author put so much work into criticizing misogyny, then WHY did I perceive the precise opposite?

But like I said: I thought this issue had been resolved. On the one hand, readers are prone to mistake depiction for endorsement, and to selectively confirm their initial suspicions. On the other hand, I failed to signal my intent with the required clarity, and so not only failed to understand my readers, but to acheive the critical goals I set for the work.

(And as a result, I fear I might have written something which has done more damage than good. I thought which I find very troubling.)

Otherwise, I'm not sure how suggesting implicit gender bias in who I replied to by name, or trying to block the parallel between Earwa and the world has much of anything to do with understanding my admittedly byzantine intent. Your most recent questions and observations don't really seemed aimed at finding clarification - do you think they do? Even Needle refers to them as 'Sophelia's critiques.'

So, as I said, it kind of seems like you're really poking around looking for that damn rat you [i]knew[/i] you smelled the first time reading the trilogy!

I know that little bugger is around here somewhere!

scott/

[Bastard of Godsgrace]

[quote name='Happy Ent' post='1695774' date='Feb 22 2009, 21.14']One honest question to those who don’t think Esmi’s characterisation is the knee’s bees: Could you point me to a female character in genre literature that is significantly better realised?

I simply haven’t been exposed to enough F&SF to readily think of one.

For example, this board knows I think Catelyn Stark is great, but I find Bakker’s Esmi superior in almost every way (both in the sense of being believable and in the sense of being somebody I have sympathy for). But there are many fantasy authors I haven’t read; I suspect Robin Hobb may contain characters that are more carefully constructed. Stephenson’s Eliza may qualify (and in many ways parallels Esmi’s story arc, complete with [i]Pygmalionesque[/i] Anasurimbor Henry).[/quote]

I also think Esmenet is very well realized character - perhaps not as good as Catelyn, but almost. I would say Felisin Paran beats them both, though. She is more divisive than both of them put together, but you don't have to like her to see she is well done.

[Ran]

Ahh, I knew there was a fantasy "whore" character that rang a bit more true to me than Esmenet, but I was too exhausted (almost 12 hours at a horse show will do that to you) to dig it out of the wet matter. Thanks for reminding me, BoG.

Again, not a knock on Bakker. Of the characters in the trilogy, Akka and Esmenet were easily the two that I found the most fully fleshed out in "human" terms. Also, it's all a matter of buttons and, I suppose, biases, eh? Neither Erikson nor Bakker have been or ever will be female prostitutes, and I certainly never will be, so my preconceptions are the only things I can go by, etc., etc.

[Shryke]

[quote name='Ran' post='1695810' date='Feb 22 2009, 16.07']HE,
[b]
Too much symbolic baggage is shoved onto the characters for them to really feel "well-realized" [i]as characters[/i], I have to say, using the sort of criteria I usually use for what defines a well-realized character to me.[/b] We are, after all, none of us actually symbols of anything, but Bakker's characters are to varying degrees of explicitness.

So, in this, I think GRRM's craft with Catelyn makes her significantly better realized than Esmenet, since her narrative and her role in it feels more "naturalistic" (to whatever degree that can be applied to the artifice that is fiction) than Esmenet's. This is not a knock on Bakker's work. He has different views, priorities, talents, etc. But it means its comparing apples and oranges.[/quote]

I wondering what you think isn't well realised about the characters Ran.

[Happy Ent]

[quote name='Bastard of Godsgrace' post='1695858' date='Feb 22 2009, 23.21']I would say Felisin Paran beats them both, though.[/quote]
You bastard! Since I festooned my question with an admission of unsatisfying grasp of the canon, you [i]might[/i] have at least mentioned the author and series! (But google helped.)