Jump to content

White-Luck Warrior


Calibandar

Recommended Posts

I don't see the difference here Ran. Or rather, I think your inclusion of "nebulous" is unneeded and, if removed, it becomes more clear.

I would describe tokenism (from the readers perspective, so more the demand for tokenism) as the desire for a character of X type to appear in the work ... simply because you want a character of type X to appear in the work.

Which is why I bring up the question of relevance: Why? Why does it matter? Why is it needed? What purpose would it serve beyond simply satisfying the reader's desire for that type of character to appear?

You have the problem confused. Again, no one is specifically requesting for X type to appear, but for something other than character of Y type to appear. There are 25 other letters in the Latin alphabet to choose from, but the author only uses characters of Y type for all of his major female characters. It gets old quick. So what if all male characters were just of X type? It is kind of like the reaction that some viewers had with the L Word when all the recurring heterosexual male characters on the show were assholes.

If there's a hole in the narrative, of sorts, that would make sense, but that's not what I'm seeing here.
The author dictates the narrative. I can make an incredibly sexist, racist offensive novel in the history of the world without putting a hole in the narrative. I doubt that people will be terribly concerned about the narrative flow or how the story would be disrupted by the removal of these elements.

I can certainly see the desire for this as a personal preference, but that's more a statement about the reader then the book. It's like if I was a young girl and really wanted to read about other young girls doing cool things because that's cool. Now, because of this, I might not like Harry Potter. Because the main character and hero is a boy and boys are smelly. But that's simply a matter of my own taste and preference and not a complaint about the Harry Potter series.
And if Hermione Granger, Ginny Weasley, and Luna Lovegood only had agency in the narrative through being sex objects?
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Because that is what people want. Jurble asked what more people want. And that is what they want in a nutshell - a non-sexualized female character with agency. It is relevant because of the problem below.

People are not asking for token characters, but the removal of overused stock characters or female characters not defined by their sexuality. The problem is not that the book must contain a female character of X type, but that the book only contains female characters of Y type.This is not a request for token characters. That is not a request for a character of X type. People are not asking for X type, but the presence of characters other than Y type.

While Esmenet and the Empress are sexualized and do fit the broad archetypes of Evil Queen Mother and Hooker With A Heart of Gold broadly, they do possess agency and are hardly stock characters. No more than Cnaiur is a stock Barbarian Warrior, Conphas is a stock Arrogant Prince, or Xerius is a stock Paranoid Despot.

Reverse the scenario. What would you think of an author who only used sexualized males in a book?

Might not be the best example. I don't men have that big an issue with being sexualized. In fact, as an Asian male, I'd prefer that there were more sexualized portrayals of Asian men in Western media. But I can understand the concern and find issue with portrayals of Asian men as asexual nerds or kung fu sidekicks, if at all. Maybe I've gotten jaded, but I don't necessarily equate lack of nuanced Asian men as racism.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

but we don't see the entire world of earwa. We see Kell with a hermit. Kell in Cnaiur's domain (where the women are very deferential to Cnaiur, and perhaps the most sexist society on Earwa), we see Akka, who is isolated from all society and thus limited to his experiences in the various locales he is in. And we see the high court, but the empress isn't allowed because she has a sex drive and we're looking for women without that. ;)

For the next two books, the majority of the PON trilogy has nothing to do with experiencing the greater empire, rather it's on a warpath, battle. for some impenetrable reason we don't see lots of farmers wives or female merchants and we don't see a lot of dress makers helping the clueless princess decide what to wear to the ball when we're on the warpath of a two year long crusade.

The point is there are no family characters that have interactions with normal nonsexualized women. There are no women characters that interact with the viewpoint men in a close way during the crusading. The PON trilogy is made up of lonely, isolated individuals who are largely cut off from society for one reason or another rather than being part of the larger segment of society.

And anyway, I hear 'nonsexualized woman character with agency' and wonder why someone wants women characters with no interest in sex or no encounters with sex when all the male characters are having sexual interactions.

Where are all the non-sesxualized male characters with agency in Prince of Nothing?! that's the question that concerns me.

why has no one called out Bakker on the lack of non-sexualized male characters in his books? The only one there was was Inrau, and Bakker promptly killed him.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think he was mostly shocked at the animosity and personal vitriol he received. I think he expected everyone to simply read it, understand that it was a parable about premodern views of sexism vs. modern views (and how modernity was an artificial uplift of women), and sagely nod while being slightly uncomfortable of all the jutting phalluses and whatnot.

I think he didn't expect so many of his readers - especially women - being actively uncomfortable because of the pure sexism in the world and the way women were represented and treated and simply choose to stop reading it due to that facet. I think he expected those kinds of readers to actively embrace it as a feminist triumph instead of vilify it as an overt work of sexism.

I think he more expected people to just read it anyway. Essentially, he expected people to read it as a difficult book, one that might make you uncomfortable. Something challenging.

Which comes back around to my reference to the couple of other threads going on now about male writers/female characters and about uncomfortable/ahistorical moralities. I've always got the impression, and not even from Bakker threads, that alot of people don't like reading things that make them uncomfortable.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

But I can understand the concern and find issue with portrayals of Asian men as asexual nerds or kung fu sidekicks, if at all. Maybe I've gotten jaded, but I don't necessarily equate lack of nuanced Asian men as racism.
This is exactly the same point. Is it okay to have a book where (for example) it's set in China and every single man there can do Kung Fu, and is only valued for their Kung Fu skills (or their ability to teach Kung Fu to others)? Or would that strike you as a bit...odd?

I think it'd depend on the author. I suspect Terry Pratchett could make something like that really funny. But I think if you take it really seriously, it'd probably be viewed as pretty offensive.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For what it's worth, I've just started reading Bakker (and yes, I know I'm posting in a thread full of spoilers; since plot suspense does very little for me, I don't care) and I actively enjoy that it makes me uncomfortable. Or at least some of the discomfort.

You are asking for a specific type of protagonist ... why?

We're talking about a type that's defined negatively. It's like asking for black characters who aren't sexually hyperactive jazz musicians.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And anyway, I hear 'nonsexualized woman character with agency' and wonder why someone wants women characters with no interest in sex or no encounters with sex when all the male characters are having sexual interactions.

Where are all the non-sesxualized male characters with agency in Prince of Nothing?! that's the question that concerns me.

why has no one called out Bakker on the lack of non-sexualized male characters in his books? The only one there was was Inrau, and Bakker promptly killed him.

Sigh. These all got discussed last time.

Akka isn't defined by his cock. Yes, he has sex - but he's a mandate sorcerer first and foremost. He fucks occasionally, but that doesn't dominate his mind nor do people look at him as as sex object.

Kellhus is defined by his superhuman powers and background. He fucks, but he actually does so to gain influence on others and gain offspring.

Cnaiur is defined by his being a great warrior. He's actually close to an argument against this, in that he is somewhat defined as being gay/bisexual and his rage - but mostly he's this barbarian type.

Esmi, Serwe and Istriya only have their sex. They're a whore, a concubine and the molesting queen. Their whole character is defined about being sexual objects to men. (Kellhus even brings this up explicitly to Esme at one point).

When folks say 'non-sexualized', they don't mean a character that doesn't have sex. They mean a character that isn't defined by having sex.

Which comes back around to my reference to the couple of other threads going on now about male writers/female characters and about uncomfortable/ahistorical moralities. I've always got the impression, and not even from Bakker threads, that alot of people don't like reading things that make them uncomfortable
That's likely true, and is one of Bakker's arguments - that people felt themselves so uncomfortable with the books that they had to rationalize why. And it couldn't be because the books resonated at some level with negative views of their society - no, it had to be because the writer was sexist.

What he failed to realize is that some people are uncomfortable simply having a lot of negative views of women or overly sexualized views of women because that reminds them too much of abuse or problems or simply is bad to them, in the same way that explicit gore can traumatize someone. That it wasn't the message that was squicking people out; it was the way the message was presented. Especially when those messages are couched in some kind of odd historical story that explicitly removes the positive ways women were treated or existed.

As another analogy, a lot of people would be uncomfortable reading huge descriptions of shit. The shape, the size, the smell, etc. And there might be an important point in there about how all that great food you eat with subtle spicing and layering and foam turns into the same shit at the end of the day - but reading hundreds of pages about shit just makes people not really want to read. That ultimately was the message I took away from Bakker - that while I think he intended well, and I don't think he is a sexist person, the books ultimately failed to deliver the message because I was too distracted by all the description of shit.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You have the problem confused. Again, no one is specifically requesting for X type to appear, but for something other than character of Y type to appear. There are 25 other letters in the Latin alphabet to choose from, but the author only uses characters of Y type for all of his major female characters. It gets old quick. So what if all male characters were just of X type? It is kind of like the reaction that some viewers had with the L Word when all the recurring heterosexual male characters on the show were assholes.

But something other then Y does appear. You get Z and Q and H and B. You just don't get X. But you really want X. And I ask: Why? Give me a reason. A relevant one, not just "Because I want it".

"Because I want X to appear" is what I would call tokenism.

"Because it doesn't make any sense in the world shown" or "Because we really should have seen something from the perspective of these people" or "Because the story is really awkward when it tries to avoid having X" or the like, those are relevant reasons.

The author dictates the narrative. I can make an incredibly sexist, racist offensive novel in the history of the world without putting a hole in the narrative. I doubt that people will be terribly concerned about the narrative flow or how the story would be disrupted by the removal of these elements.

But HOW would that novel be sexist/racist/etc? Probably by espousing a racist/sexist ideology or the like. (Think Birth of a Nation) I don't think anyone is saying that sort of thing about Bakker's work. It's completely different from what we are talking about.

Instead, that accusation is that the narrative is not espousing racism/sexism/etc, but rather that the book itself is racist/sexist/etc because it lacks characters of a certain type.

And if Hermione Granger, Ginny Weasley, and Luna Lovegood only had agency in the narrative through being sex objects?

Okay, let's go with that.

<stuff>

And those are the only three women in the entire first three books with any speaking roles. There are no mention of other women teachers. There are only casual mention of other female students. Now, for a book set in a school, wouldn't that strike you as a bit odd?

But this isn't an answer to what I was talking about. Or rather, not the part you quoted anyway.

What you have here is an argument that it doesn't fit within the setting. You are saying, in a modern mixed-gender school, that would be weird.

And the obvious analogy I'm sure you are trying to make is that it doesn't make sense in Earwa. Which I'd disagree with. Given our limited focus throughout the book, it's not at all out of place.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Context is important. Yes if you kept everything else about Harry Potter the same, sexualizing the female characters would be disturbing. But imagine if Hogwarts weren't a charming, magical British boarding school, but a douchey, magical all-male northeast US prep school or a magical fraternity, then the sexual shenanigans wouldn't be so out of place.

This is exactly the same point. Is it okay to have a book where (for example) it's set in China and every single man there can do Kung Fu, and is only valued for their Kung Fu skills (or their ability to teach Kung Fu to others)? Or would that strike you as a bit...odd?

Most asian characters in Kill Bill have something to do with martial arts, but if works because that's what the story's about.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And the obvious analogy I'm sure you are trying to make is that it doesn't make sense in Earwa. Which I'd disagree with. Given our limited focus throughout the book, it's not at all out of place.
It is very much out of place, because the whole PoN story is ripped off point by point from the Crusades.

And in the world of the Crusades, there were PLENTY of women at various points. There were queens, there were wives brought along on the Crusade, there were queens at home and consorts of those they invaded.

It doesn't make sense in that way. There is literally not a single mention of a queen in Earwa other than Istriya. Bakker takes such great pains to make Earwa a close analogy to the first Crusade, down to the naming schemes and the geography and the specific events that occur - but he specifically removes the women from the story, excises them with a knife. It's like he did copypasta and did a ctrl-H replacing every she with he, every queen with king, and every woman's name with a man's.

It's odd. And as it turns out, it's supposed to be odd. He wants it to be out of place, he wants to call attention to it. He deliberately chose the three female archetypes to state a point. But this dichotomy - of having superrealism based on historical fact with having archetypes - is dissonant.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

But the series already has protagonists. Even female ones.

You are asking for a specific type of protagonist ... why?

Really? Since when is a woman with non-sexualized agency a specific type of protagonist?

Yes, he was asking what people wanted in relation to the accusations of sexism. The context is very important here. The implication was, Bakker (or his work at the least) was sexist because it didn't contain X. (with X here being apparently "non-sexualized female character with agency") And that he/it wouldn't be sexist if he'd done that.

Again, the accusation depends wholy on the fact that his book SHOULD contain X. And my question is, again, why? Why does it have to?

Yes they are. You just did it. Shit, you repeated it above. You want female character of X type in the book.

You appear to be confused. People are not saying that the book should contain Type X. Type X /= Women with non-sexual agency. Women with sexualized agency as expressed in PoN = Type X. Women with non-sexualized agency = Types A-W,Y, Z (any will do). Repulsed at the absence of females from other than Type X is not tokenism.

That would depend on the work itself, now wouldn't it? Which is what I've been saying all along. Given your example, I would find the demand for a non-sexualised male, simply on the grounds that I wanted a non-sexualized male in the book, stupid. I'd want a reason beyond tokenism.
Because not all straight human males on earth are assholes and this does not even cover the majority of types. Yet in PoN the entire microcosm of female experience is reduced to a harlot, a concubine, and a sex queen. This problem is magnified by the presence of male characters possessing a broader range of archetypes that are not defined by sex.

While Esmenet and the Empress are sexualized and do fit the broad archetypes of Evil Queen Mother and Hooker With A Heart of Gold broadly, they do possess agency and are hardly stock characters. No more than Cnaiur is a stock Barbarian Warrior, Conphas is a stock Arrogant Prince, or Xerius is a stock Paranoid Despot.

And all three female characters are purposefully defined by their sexual agency.

Might not be the best example. I don't men have that big an issue with being sexualized. In fact, as an Asian male, I'd prefer that there were more sexualized portrayals of Asian men in Western media. But I can understand the concern and find issue with portrayals of Asian men as asexual nerds or kung fu sidekicks, if at all. Maybe I've gotten jaded, but I don't necessarily equate lack of nuanced Asian men as racism.
Kalbear addressed this point.

And anyway, I hear 'nonsexualized woman character with agency' and wonder why someone wants women characters with no interest in sex or no encounters with sex when all the male characters are having sexual interactions.
A non-sexualized woman does not mean that she is uninterested in sex, but that sex does not define her identity or is it her only method for agency.

Where are all the non-sesxualized male characters with agency in Prince of Nothing?! that's the question that concerns me.

why has no one called out Bakker on the lack of non-sexualized male characters in his books? The only one there was was Inrau, and Bakker promptly killed him.

Male characters that have agency apart from sex: Kellhus, Akka, Cnaiur, Conphas, Proyas, Athjeari, Gothyelk, Chepheramunni, Skaiyelt, Yalgrota, Skauras, Martemus, Eleazaras, Iyokus, Maithanet. Should I keep going?
Link to comment
Share on other sites

That's likely true, and is one of Bakker's arguments - that people felt themselves so uncomfortable with the books that they had to rationalize why. And it couldn't be because the books resonated at some level with negative views of their society - no, it had to be because the writer was sexist.

What he failed to realize is that some people are uncomfortable simply having a lot of negative views of women or overly sexualized views of women because that reminds them too much of abuse or problems or simply is bad to them, in the same way that explicit gore can traumatize someone. That it wasn't the message that was squicking people out; it was the way the message was presented. Especially when those messages are couched in some kind of odd historical story that explicitly removes the positive ways women were treated or existed.

As another analogy, a lot of people would be uncomfortable reading huge descriptions of shit. The shape, the size, the smell, etc. And there might be an important point in there about how all that great food you eat with subtle spicing and layering and foam turns into the same shit at the end of the day - but reading hundreds of pages about shit just makes people not really want to read. That ultimately was the message I took away from Bakker - that while I think he intended well, and I don't think he is a sexist person, the books ultimately failed to deliver the message because I was too distracted by all the description of shit.

That's not what I said at all though. It's not about rationalization. People aren't rationalizing their dislike of this stuff, they are outright saying they don't like it.

And my comment is the same as in the other thread: Maybe readers should get over it. I think restricting your reading/watching/etc only to characters you can ultimately agree with and situations that don't make you uncomfortable is limiting.

And I think that's what Bakker wanted. He wanted the reader to not feel comfortable and safe. He didn't want to make escapist literature, he wanted to make something that challenged the reader, that made them uncomfortable, that pushed them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Context is important. Yes if you kept everything else about Harry Potter the same, sexualizing the female characters would be disturbing. But imagine if Hogwarts weren't a charming, magical British boarding school, but a douchey, magical all-male northeast US prep school or a magical fraternity, then the sexual shenanigans wouldn't be so out of place.

Okay - but why is Earwa so sexist as a world? Why are women objectively worth less than men? This was an authorial choice, and it's meant to be disturbing - but it's also meant to be realistic on some level.

I think that's the tough thing. And as Ran pointed out above, one that many PoN fans agreed with. Many looked at this as a triumph because it showed how bad it was for women back in the day. And make no mistake, women had it rough - but Bakker specifically made it worse than it was. Yet you had some people thanking him for making it such a great realistic story, missing completely the point that the story was deliberately and overtly being ahistorical and sexist. They mistook the other parts of the realism and conflated it with the non-realism of the sexism, and assumed both were true.

Similarly, others saw the realism and assumed that he was striving on some level for a realistic fantasy world - and then saw how he treated women and ascribed this as a clear sign that this was how the author viewed the world itself.

I think both are incorrect interpretations of the book, but I also think it's a flaw that Bakker's writings introduced that ended up giving both of these people this viewpoint.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Really? Since when is a woman with non-sexualized agency a specific type of protagonist?

You appear to be confused. People are not saying that the book should contain Type X. Type X /= Women with non-sexual agency. Women with sexualized agency as expressed in PoN = Type X. Women with non-sexualized agency = Types A-W,Y, Z (any will do). Repulsed at the absence of females from other than Type X is not tokenism.

Because not all straight human males on earth are assholes and this does not even cover the majority of types. Yet in PoN the entire microcosm of female experience is reduced to a harlot, a concubine, and a sex queen. This problem is magnified by the presence of male characters possessing a broader range of archetypes that are not defined by sex.

Except it's not supposed to represent the entire female experience in Earwa. And the male leads aren't that broad a range of archetypes either.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And I think that's what Bakker wanted. He wanted the reader to not feel comfortable and safe. He didn't want to make escapist literature, he wanted to make something that challenged the reader, that made them uncomfortable, that pushed them.
I agree - that's what Bakker wanted.

I don't think that's what he got. I think he failed to make people uncomfortable in the way he wanted. What I think he wanted was to make people uncomfortable by showing them what a literal premodern world was like, where our fantasies of how the universe work were actually objectively true and governed by a metaphysics that ended up being a sexist prick. And then say fuck that actual objective world, we're going to put some artifice and modernity on it and say that it doesn't matter about all that shit because it's not very nice.

And then have you ask - would you rather have truth, even if the truth sucked? Or would you rather have artifice, even if it was pretty awesome and egalitarian?

That's an interesting question. Unfortunately for Bakker I think he buried that question underneath scenes of raping, whores, molestation, jutting phalluses shooting black seed and women who are only sex objects.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It is very much out of place, because the whole PoN story is ripped off point by point from the Crusades.

And in the world of the Crusades, there were PLENTY of women at various points. There were queens, there were wives brought along on the Crusade, there were queens at home and consorts of those they invaded.

It doesn't make sense in that way. There is literally not a single mention of a queen in Earwa other than Istriya. Bakker takes such great pains to make Earwa a close analogy to the first Crusade, down to the naming schemes and the geography and the specific events that occur - but he specifically removes the women from the story, excises them with a knife. It's like he did copypasta and did a ctrl-H replacing every she with he, every queen with king, and every woman's name with a man's.

It's odd. And as it turns out, it's supposed to be odd. He wants it to be out of place, he wants to call attention to it. He deliberately chose the three female archetypes to state a point. But this dichotomy - of having superrealism based on historical fact with having archetypes - is dissonant.

Why is it dissonant though?

While the shape of the narrative is ripped off the Crusades, the world itself is certainly not completely and isn't supposed to be.

To answer your question from another reply:

Okay - but why is Earwa so sexist as a world?

Because it's supposed to be a variation on our history, but based on how people believed the world was back then and not how it actually was. It's not dissonant, it's the point of the whole thing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

While Esmenet and the Empress are sexualized and do fit the broad archetypes of Evil Queen Mother and Hooker With A Heart of Gold broadly, they do possess agency and are hardly stock characters. No more than Cnaiur is a stock Barbarian Warrior, Conphas is a stock Arrogant Prince, or Xerius is a stock Paranoid Despot.

Wait. Xerius isn't a stock Paranoid Despot?

As another analogy, a lot of people would be uncomfortable reading huge descriptions of shit. The shape, the size, the smell, etc. And there might be an important point in there about how all that great food you eat with subtle spicing and layering and foam turns into the same shit at the end of the day - but reading hundreds of pages about shit just makes people not really want to read. That ultimately was the message I took away from Bakker - that while I think he intended well, and I don't think he is a sexist person, the books ultimately failed to deliver the message because I was too distracted by all the description of shit.

:rofl:

Kalbear, folks. There can be only one.

And on the flipside - it seems clear that a lot of readers weren't made uncomfortable *at all* by the sexism of Earwa. Given Bakker's stated intentions, I've always wondered why he doesn't spend time clearing up the misconceptions of these readers. It's not as if he's generally averse to taking readers to task for "not getting it."

This seems a bit bizarre. He wanted to raise gender issues and tweak people's sensibilities, and he obviously succeeded. So why show any shock at this? Isn't a heated debate on women's role in Earwe and the story exactly the intent?

Yes, exactly. This is something I've never understood.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree - that's what Bakker wanted.

I don't think that's what he got. I think he failed to make people uncomfortable in the way he wanted. What I think he wanted was to make people uncomfortable by showing them what a literal premodern world was like, where our fantasies of how the universe work were actually objectively true and governed by a metaphysics that ended up being a sexist prick. And then say fuck that actual objective world, we're going to put some artifice and modernity on it and say that it doesn't matter about all that shit because it's not very nice.

And then have you ask - would you rather have truth, even if the truth sucked? Or would you rather have artifice, even if it was pretty awesome and egalitarian?

That's an interesting question. Unfortunately for Bakker I think he buried that question underneath scenes of raping, whores, molestation, jutting phalluses shooting black seed and women who are only sex objects.

But you are contradicting yourself here since all the stuff that you mention in the last paragraph is the stuff that's SUPPOSED to make you uncomfortable with the "literal premodern world".

I mean, what else do you really think defines the premodern view of the world? What was supposed to be making us uncomfortable instead of what actually did?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I sort of agree with Kalbear - I don't think Bakker is a die-hard misogynist, but he definitely has some weird views on women that come through in his writing (someone said it was because his wife pushes him around?). His portrayal of women is exactly the same in Neuropath, a book set in out world.

And Kalbear - you don't want to talk like that, or you'll end up with an ass full of black alien semen.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...