White-Luck Warrior

[Shryke]

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."

Because the kind of people who read the book and thought "Yeah, that's the way women should be treated" either don't post here or aren't worth talking to (or braking for if you see them crossing the street).

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

He wasn't surprised peolpe were talking about women's place in Earwa and the like, he was surprised people were using this to extrapolate back to the work as a whole and him as a person.

Essentially it ended up being not a heated debate on women's role in Earwe, but rather a heated debate on how sexist the PON series and/or Bakker himself was.

[Kalbear]

Shryke, it's dissonant in the same way having Saving Private Ryan suddenly saved by a cartoon version of Captain America and Elmer Fudd would be dissonant. Humans have some expectations of both genders existing in a world. Westerners have the idea that if there's a queen, there's probably a king around. And vice versa. That for every warrior there's likely a wife. It doesn't have to be that way, but there should be an explanation of why it isn't - because that will mess up expectations.

Now, it's supposed to stand out and make you ask what the fuck. That was Bakker's goal. I think that he did it a bit too heavy-handedly, and either giving a better backstory on women being more valued due to the womb-plague or simply having some vague mention of queens and priestesses and nunneries would have served him better; I think ultimately showing women have less power but still exist would have conveyed a stronger message. Similarly, going away from the female archetypes would have been stronger as well, I think; imagine the book if Xerius and Istriya were switched so that Xerius was the spy and had manipulated Istryia with sex all this time? You can call that tokenism if you like, but I think it's more like balance.

That he seemed so perplexed that anyone could ever interpret it as anything other than what he did...that's the other oddity.

[Galactus]

and I don't think he is a sexist person

I think he is.

Not a misogynist or anything, but he has some pretty run of the mill, basic assumptions.

The fact that his immediate reaction is "I CAN'T BE SEXIST! I LIKE WOMEN! I HAVE FEMALE FRIENDS!" kind of points out it out.

Ironically, I would have been more inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt before he opened his mouth and filled out his bingo-card.

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

Because the man quite simply does not *get it*. His immediate reaction is denial, he rejects any kind of criticism by arguing that his opponents are obviously brainwashed, refers to the most stereotypical arguments, and so on and so forth.

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.

But that's *not* how people believed the world was. Bakker *cannot* claim historical veracity for his views: Not even in a meta-sense. He's making his world up for his own personal reasons, not to be true to any kind of scholarly view.

[Mathis Waters]

Since I haven't read far enough to understand all the metaphysics: could someone explain what it means that women are "spiritually inferior" in Earwa? If they were objectively intellectually inferior, I'd probably be more offended than I am, but at least I would know what it meant. Is it like sorcerers or Inchoroi where they go to Hell? (As noted earlier, spoilers don't actually hurt the reading experience for me, so don't worry about that.)

Because the kind of people who read the book and thought "Yeah, that's the way women should be treated" either don't post here or aren't worth talking to (or braking for if you see them crossing the street).

Look up "Goreans" sometime for a hoot.

[Shryke]

Shryke, it's dissonant in the same way having Saving Private Ryan suddenly saved by a cartoon version of Captain America and Elmer Fudd would be dissonant. Humans have some expectations of both genders existing in a world. Westerners have the idea that if there's a queen, there's probably a king around. And vice versa. That for every warrior there's likely a wife. It doesn't have to be that way, but there should be an explanation of why it isn't - because that will mess up expectations.

Now, it's supposed to stand out and make you ask what the fuck. That was Bakker's goal. I think that he did it a bit too heavy-handedly, and either giving a better backstory on women being more valued due to the womb-plague or simply having some vague mention of queens and priestesses and nunneries would have served him better; I think ultimately showing women have less power but still exist would have conveyed a stronger message. Similarly, going away from the female archetypes would have been stronger as well, I think; imagine the book if Xerius and Istriya were switched so that Xerius was the spy and had manipulated Istryia with sex all this time? You can call that tokenism if you like, but I think it's more like balance.

That he seemed so perplexed that anyone could ever interpret it as anything other than what he did...that's the other oddity.

I think you are jumping back and forth between different issues here. Are we talking about women's place in Earwa (which is obviously sexist and intended as such) or about a lack of women within the narrative(which is more about what he wanted to show and what fit in to the narrative of the book itself)?

Although I can see how those 2 things can be essentially multiplying each other's effects, compounding people's issues with the book. If we have a world where women are extra put-down and in less positions of power, then female narratives in a story about people in positions of power fighting a war far from home become alot less likely.

But that's *not* how people believed the world was. Bakker *cannot* claim historical veracity for his views: Not even in a meta-sense. He's making his world up for his own personal reasons, not to be true to any kind of scholarly view.

Your a history ... something aren't you? You always seem to have the skinny on this shit, I'm wondering what your specific thoughts are on this.

[Kalbear]

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?

It's the way he cherrypicked things. For instance, shrimp weren't accursed objects. Black men were not all slaves (though to be fair, slavery and racism only came later as a dehumanizing institution for the most part, so it's not that weird).

Rape by itself isn't a required part of a literal premodern world. Having women only be whores isn't either. Alien fucking, women only being able to manipulate men via sex - that's not what should be making people uncomfortable in a literal premodern world. Things like women being killed by gods or spells requiring sacrifice that require either one man or two women or three goats - that is the sort of thing that would work better. Rape, whores, none of that is different from a literal or figurative world, any more than fighting with cavalry is. It's nothing special. By emphasizing that point, all he did was emphasize a specific, old point of view towards women. It was off-message.

If instead he focused on how women are less than men in his universe and then showed how they earned roles in it anyway - that would have been more interesting and more disturbing to me as a reader.

Essentially it ended up being not a heated debate on women's role in Earwe, but rather a heated debate on how sexist the PON series and/or Bakker himself was.

A lot of people argued very, VERY vehemently that the Bakkerverse was so wonderfully realistic and portrayed things as they were. Happy Ent was one of them. When Bakker came in and specifically told folks 'no, it's hyperbole and meant as an exaggeration' they kinda shut up - but until then, that's what a lot of folks thought.

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

I think he is.

Not a misogynist or anything, but he has some pretty run of the mill, basic assumptions.

The fact that his immediate reaction is "I CAN'T BE SEXIST! I LIKE WOMEN! I HAVE FEMALE FRIENDS!" kind of points out it out.

Ironically, I would have been more inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt before he opened his mouth and filled out his bingo-card.

Because the man quite simply does not *get it*. His immediate reaction is denial, he rejects any kind of criticism by arguing that his opponents are obviously brainwashed, refers to the most stereotypical arguments, and so on and so forth.

I don't get it either. How does reacting to "You're a sexist pig" with "Wait, what? No I'm not... here's why..." make you a sexist?

[Shryke]

Since I haven't read far enough to understand all the metaphysics: could someone explain what it means that women are "spiritually inferior" in Earwa? If they were objectively intellectually inferior, I'd probably be more offended than I am, but at least I would know what it meant. Is it like sorcerers or Inchoroi where they go to Hell? (As noted earlier, spoilers don't actually hurt the reading experience for me, so don't worry about that.)

Essentially, just like God is real and Damnation is real, so is all the other shit that comes with those sort of religious beliefs.

So if the religion of Earwa says "Women owe fealty and loyalty to their fathers, until they get married and then they owe it to their husbands", women actually do owe that to their fathers/husbands. And if you disobey them, you are literally going to hell.

This is the essentially idea. According to God, men are more holy then women and so men are actually more holy then women.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

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.

I'm sorry, Z and Q and H and B are held only by male characters. All the female characters (whore, harlot, concubine) are subtle variations of Type Y.

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.

As the women of the Bakker and Women thread expressed, this is an exceptionally fine line, especially given the way that Bakker chooses to walk it.

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.

The Holy War is a microcosm of the entire Three Seas. It involves people of all nations and schools of sorcery. The Holy War is a homage to the Crusades. The Crusades featured notable women of different levels and stations who did more than whore themselves out.

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.

And none of this requires that all the female characters possess only sexualized agency.

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.

Three female characters in Prince of Nothing, and all occupy the same slim sliver of the female experience of sexual agency. Why all three? Why not just one or two? But all three?

[Kalbear]

Since I haven't read far enough to understand all the metaphysics: could someone explain what it means that women are "spiritually inferior" in Earwa? If they were objectively intellectually inferior, I'd probably be more offended than I am, but at least I would know what it meant. Is it like sorcerers or Inchoroi where they go to Hell? (As noted earlier, spoilers don't actually hurt the reading experience for me, so don't worry about that.)

It's...really unknown. We know it's true; Mimara remarks as such in TJE, and Bakker has told us that's one of the things he wants to explore - but we don't know what that really means or how it affects anything. Which might be the point, honestly; does it matter if God views women as less if there's nothing specifically 'less' about women?

I had a toy thought about how God was actually just a soul engine and that because women's souls were inherently more tainted by being able to bring new life into the world (and stealing the God's fuel) he viewed them as less, whereas men were tastier. Someone else put to the point that men were more likely to be corruptable, and that was 'tastier' than women. But honestly, we don't know. Like I said above, I think this being made explicit in an objective sense (you can kill 1 man or 3 women/goats to cast a spell) would be both more disturbing and more-on message. But that's just me.

[Kalbear]

But it seems to me that some people are trying to have it both ways. They would argue that Bakker is sexist because of what he writes and that people like Happy Ent are off-base because Bakker's sexist world was hyperbole and an exaggeration. If that latter is true, would that not let Bakker off the hook for the former?

Not really. One could be a sexist and write a very sexist, unrealistic point of view of the world that others would glom on and say 'YES, EXACTLY, FINALLY SOME ONE GETS ME HURRR'.

Which is amusingly what actually happened with Bakker. :)

One can argue that Bakker is sexist while saying that folks like HE are off base because the world he wrote is an exaggeration and is overtly sexist. I'm not seeing the contradiction here. If anything, it took some convincing to show people that despite the fact that Earwa is sexist by design (something many people argued against) and that Bakker was deliberately doing this (again, argued against) Bakker himself wasn't sexist and he did have a point other than 'women are bad and whores', unlike, say, Frank Miller. :)

[Shryke]

It's the way he cherrypicked things. For instance, shrimp weren't accursed objects. Black men were not all slaves (though to be fair, slavery and racism only came later as a dehumanizing institution for the most part, so it's not that weird).

Rape by itself isn't a required part of a literal premodern world. Having women only be whores isn't either. Alien fucking, women only being able to manipulate men via sex - that's not what should be making people uncomfortable in a literal premodern world. Things like women being killed by gods or spells requiring sacrifice that require either one man or two women or three goats - that is the sort of thing that would work better. Rape, whores, none of that is different from a literal or figurative world, any more than fighting with cavalry is. It's nothing special. By emphasizing that point, all he did was emphasize a specific, old point of view towards women. It was off-message.

Most of this seems to be about the overt sexuality in the book which, given that the bad guys are rape aliens, I'm thinking serves a larger thematic/narrative purpose. We shall see.

I think the problem is that your examples of what he maybe should have used WOULDN'T make people uncomfortable.

If instead he focused on how women are less than men in his universe and then showed how they earned roles in it anyway - that would have been more interesting and more disturbing to me as a reader.

Well, we do get this with people like Esme or the Empress, but I think that showing too much of this would go against his purpose of showing Kellhus as the "Great Modernizer".

[Shryke]

The Holy War is a microcosm of the entire Three Seas. It involves people of all nations and schools of sorcery. The Holy War is a homage to the Crusades. The Crusades featured notable women of different levels and stations who did more than whore themselves out.

The Holy War is not a microcosm of the entire Three Seas. Not even close. It's a group of warriors from all parts of the Three Seas. That's different. It's a microcosm of the Warrior Caste of the Three Seas. And their ain't no women in that.

As for Holy War being an homage to the Crusader (which had women), this is deliberate as Earwa is supposed to be a more sexist world. Less women in positions of power.

Three female characters in Prince of Nothing, and all occupy the same slim sliver of the female experience of sexual agency. Why all three? Why not just one or two? But all three?

And all the men occupy the sliver of male experience of being warriors. Minus Akka, who's a spy (although also very good at blowing people to bits). We've got a fairly limited focus in the PoN series. (And also in alot of the next series too it seems) There's not alot of room for craftsman or merchants or the like. You're a nobel and/or a warrior, or you are part of their support structure.

Except, again, for Achamian.

And sexuality, again, does seem to be a fairly overt theme in the books. Maybe there's another purpose to it.

[Mathis Waters]

Essentially, just like God is real and Damnation is real, so is all the other shit that comes with those sort of religious beliefs.

So if the religion of Earwa says "Women owe fealty and loyalty to their fathers, until they get married and then they owe it to their husbands", women actually do owe that to their fathers/husbands. And if you disobey them, you are literally going to hell.

This is the essentially idea. According to God, men are more holy then women and so men are actually more holy then women.

So "ought to" is operationalized as a question of afterlife designation, correct? (I know Bakker's written about how fantasy features objective intentionality, but it doesn't seem clear to me what objective intentionality would mean. If it's just a matter of who gets tortured for eternity, that's perfectly comprehensible, but doesn't seem to measure up to the true metaphysical weirdness of the concept.)

But it seems to me that some people are trying to have it both ways. They would argue that Bakker is sexist because of what he writes and that people like Happy Ent are off-base because Bakker's sexist world was hyperbole and an exaggeration. If that latter is true, would that not let Bakker off the hook for the former?

I think something like a politically acute noblewoman who rules through her husband would go a long way here. (Heck, just remove the sexual monstrosity from the empress character.) Kalbear explained the problem pretty well: it's not just that the world hates women but that they don't seem to eke out any agency within it, except through sex, and that this seems to break psychological realism.

(FWIW, though, I find Esme to be the most well-drawn and identifiable character in the story so far. So it's not like the sex workers he creates are dehumanized (except by the other characters.) It's just that there's nobody else.)

[Shryke]

So "ought to" is operationalized as a question of afterlife designation, correct? (I know Bakker's written about how fantasy features objective intentionality, but it doesn't seem clear to me what objective intentionality would mean. If it's just a matter of who gets tortured for eternity, that's perfectly comprehensible, but doesn't seem to measure up to the true metaphysical weirdness of the concept.)

We actually don't know much about what it really means, I was just using an example to try and explain the general idea.

We know, for instance, that women are objectively lesser then men, but we don't know what that actually entails.

[Kalbear]

And sexuality, again, does seem to be a fairly overt theme in the books. Maybe there's another purpose to it.

We'll see. Given his predilection for it in PoN and in his non-fantasy books, I suspect that it's just one of Bakker's things. GRRM writes on and on about food and recipes; Bakker writes about engorged phalluses.

[Shryke]

We'll see. Given his predilection for it in PoN and in his non-fantasy books, I suspect that it's just one of Bakker's things. GRRM writes on and on about food and recipes; Bakker writes about engorged phalluses.

And you'd think more (straight) women (and gay men I guess) would take heart that they have that in common with Bakker: They all love the cock :P

PS - I seriously have to reread ASOIAF now. I keep hearing people say that GRRM has some unnatural love for food but I have never, ever noticed it in his books.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

The Holy War is not a microcosm of the entire Three Seas. Not even close. It's a group of warriors from all parts of the Three Seas. That's different. It's a microcosm of the Warrior Caste of the Three Seas. And their ain't no women in that.

Surely they are not all warriors? Indeed, the cross across Carathay Desert explicitly shows this to be the case.

As for Holy War being an homage to the Crusader (which had women), this is deliberate as Earwa is supposed to be a more sexist world. Less women in positions of power.

Earwa is deliberately more sexist world. Bakker deliberately chose to put in a harlot, a concubine, and a whore. But nowhere do I recall Bakker expressing that he deliberately chose to put less women in power or to exclude women of different elevations in life from the Holy War.

And all the men occupy the sliver of male experience of being warriors. Minus Akka, who's a spy (although also very good at blowing people to bits). We've got a fairly limited focus in the PoN series. (And also in alot of the next series too it seems) There's not alot of room for craftsman or merchants or the like. You're a nobel and/or a warrior, or you are part of their support structure.

Yet their agency involves more than simply sleeping around to get what they want, no? They fight, but they also do more.

Except, again, for Achamian.

And Eleazaras, Iyokus, Nautzera, Simas, Maithanet, Inrau, King-Regent Chepheramunni, and Padirajah Kascamandri.

And sexuality, again, does seem to be a fairly overt theme in the books. Maybe there's another purpose to it.

Would you mind laying out for me what the sexual theme is? Or what purpose it serves thus far? Do not be afraid to speculate. Would this theme have changed or been undercut if there was one less female character who only had sexual agency?

[Shryke]

Surely they are not all warriors? Indeed, the cross across Carathay Desert explicitly shows this to be the case.

And Eleazaras, Iyokus, Nautzera, Simas, Maithanet, Inrau, King-Regent Chepheramunni, and Padirajah Kascamandri.

They are warriors or their support personnel. Your whole list is nothing but nobles/warriors. Except maybe the Sorcerors, but that's debatable.

Would you mind laying out for me what the sexual theme is? Or what purpose it serves thus far? Do not be afraid to speculate. Would this theme have changed or been undercut if there was one less female character who only had sexual agency?

Fuck if I know. That's one of the things I love about the series, I have no idea where it's going. But, as I said to Kalbear, given the nature of the enemy, sexuality seems to be part of a larger theme in the over-arcing story.

[Kalbear]

On sexuality, Bakker specifically stated that it's an easy way to get a reaction. That overt graphical violence doesn't work particularly well any more, but overt sex does - and he wanted to get a reaction. It's the same reason that horror movies and books often feature it, and likely why it is showcased so much in his other novels.

I also think it goes into his views of psychology and humans - how humans are constantly fighting against their baser instincts (especially men) of fuck and kill. On the one hand we have aliens who want nothing more than to fuck every single thing in the world, and kill what they can't. On the other we have Kellhus, the paragon of modernity, who only uses sex to breed and sees it as a tool, nothing more. I don't think there's more to it than that.

Or he really loves the cock.