White-Luck Warrior

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

My last post may not have been clear enough as far as what I was trying to ask. Regardless of motive (and there could be multiple motives) women are empowered during the story. Society changes their role. That is something that has happened in our society as well. Women have only been voting for about a century, for example. So the fact that the pre-Kellhus world of Earwa treats women in an inferior way seems like a plausible attempt to "problemitize" (sp) it.

I disagree. Society did not change their role. Kellhus changed their role. While Kellhus may be a shining white symbol of modernity, he is the male agent of change and not any of the women of the story, who rely solely on sex to achieve their objectives. Women have only been voting for a century, but they worked and campaigned to achieve those ends. It required men to reevaluate their own stances of equal rights and liberty. The women did nothing in Earwa for this. It just required the modern white male to snap his fingers. It is not so much objectionable that "the pre-Kellhus world of Earwa treats women in an inferior way" but how he sought to communicate that by having all three female characters use only sexual agency.

[kuenjato]

I disagree. Society did not change their role. Kellhus changed their role. While Kellhus may be a shining white symbol of modernity, he is the male agent of change and not any of the women of the story, who rely solely on sex to achieve their objectives. Women have only been voting for a century, but they worked and campaigned to achieve those ends. It required men to reevaluate their own stances of equal rights and liberty. The women did nothing in Earwa for this. It just required the modern white male to snap his fingers. It is not so much objectionable that "the pre-Kellhus world of Earwa treats women in an inferior way" but how he sought to communicate that by having all three female characters use only sexual agency.

I'm starting to get flashbacks of the old Bakker and Women threads and contextualization.

Women worked hard for agency, sure, but they achieved it slowly, in a modern context (e.g. the last three centuries), as the world itself changed enough for those voices to not only express such concerns but to take direct and indirect action, as well. The "agency" women were able to achieve in the Middle Ages (at least the 10th-11th centuries) was, by and large, associated with either extremly privilaged positions (Eleanor of Aquitaine) and/or the church and chastity--an inversion of sexuality, but still intimately tied ("solely") to it. Hildegard comes to mind. We aren't told the influence the wives of Bakkerworld kings et al. play (except Mommy Dearest) but given most of the story focuses on the journey to Shimeh and not the homefront activities, this isn't all that surprising. The correlating entity to the Catholic Church we see in Earwa comes in TJE and the Yatwer cult. I suppose Bakker could have included a "warrior woman" type a la Brienne, but that seems to me merely including stereotypes for the sake of it.

My personal theory about the God in Bakkerworld and Kellhus's ultimate plan may have to do with the sexist underpinings of that depicted existence -- in essence, the God is either evil or ambivilant or influenced solely by the ongoing mass-consciousness power paradigm, hence Mimara's vision about women being objectively inferior.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

I'm starting to get flashbacks of the old Bakker and Women threads and contextualization.

Women worked hard for agency, sure, but they achieved it slowly, in a modern context (e.g. the last three centuries), as the world itself changed enough for those voices to not only express such concerns but to take direct and indirect action, as well. The "agency" women were able to achieve in the Middle Ages (at least the 10th-11th centuries) was, by and large, associated with either extremly privilaged positions (Eleanor of Aquitaine) and/or the church and chastity--an inversion of sexuality, but still intimately tied ("solely") to it. Hildegard comes to mind. We aren't told the influence the wives of Bakkerworld kings et al. play (except Mommy Dearest) but given most of the story focuses on the journey to Shimeh and not the homefront activities, this isn't all that surprising. The correlating entity to the Catholic Church we see in Earwa comes in TJE and the Yatwer cult. I suppose Bakker could have included a "warrior woman" type a la Brienne, but that seems to me merely including stereotypes for the sake of it.

My personal theory about the God in Bakkerworld and Kellhus's ultimate plan may have to do with the sexist underpinings of that depicted existence -- in essence, the God is either evil or ambivilant or influenced solely by the ongoing mass-consciousness power paradigm, hence Mimara's vision about women being objectively inferior.

Kuenjato, do you genuinely believe that premodern women only had sexual agency? Women worked hard for expanded rights, equal treatment, and agency, but that does not mean that their agency was limited to only sex. Bakker could have used any "type" of woman apart from a whore, a concubine, and a harlot, but he chose only to have these three. Did Istriya, one of those "extremely privileged positions" need to be a harlot for Bakker to tell the story? From what I could tell, not really much of anything would have changed. Did Serwe need to be a concubine? If she represents he corrupted innocence of the world, perhaps that could have been communicated better by having her be a farmer's daugther who is swept up into the grandeur of being part of the Holy War? Romanticism doomed to be crucified with Kellhus. Or perhaps she remains the concubine and Esmenet is a fish merchant who is part of the Mandate spy network. They clearly have one. If she is supposed to represent the "woman in general," why is that communicated with her being a prostitute? If we learned anything from the Bakker and Women thread (and Bakker's own reaction in it), Bakker failed to communicate the ideas he wanted to in the Prince of Nothing. No one got those ideas, even those defending Bakker prior to his comments. To me that suggests that only showing women with sexual agency was completely unnecessary to communicate those ideas, and that if he had either been more explicit or changed the story and characters around to convey those ideas better, many of his detractors would be his defenders.

And Aoife succinctly sums up my attitude towards Bakker:

The more I see this, the more I am convinced that this really, really bothers him. I do feel bad for him on that point. However, I'm not entirely sure that he's yet admitting that he might -- just might -- have actually done something that people are legitimately objecting to.

[Kalbear]

I don't really understand the complaint about realism. What is a "realistic" portrayal of women is entirely dependent upon the specific culture, as gender roles are defined by that culture. Bakker's world is occupied by cultures that are not our own, and the gender roles in his novels are going to reflect those cultures, not the ones in which you live, so how can you possibly use your own as the basis for determining what is "realistic"?

Because Bakker went to such overarching pains to paint Earwa as a mirror of the Crusades, with specific mirrored groups for every main character and country involved. I'd agree - kinda - if Earwa was a truly alien world with aliens instead of humans, or if humanity had gone along a very different path to civilization. As it stands, though, he tries desperately to give parallels to our world and our history, and he does this so we fill in the blanks for him. We don't have to have huge descriptions of the way cities looked or the way the soldiers looked because we're already in the mindset of the Crusade.

But he also excises all the women of power. And that's weird without some other explanation.

I had thought about how a society where women were killed trying to give birth and all births were stillborn would make humans in general view women as more desirable (to the point of trying to control them more and thus stifle their power) but we have mentions of queens, so that doesn't work even in the context of the story. We hear about the Cish's consort queens, but they're never seen either. It's an explicit omission, and it's a real choice Bakker made. He didn't do it to emphasize the realism in his book as an alien culture; he did it to emphasize the hardships women had.

It's not a choice of realism. That's the Archie Bunker effect that we've discussed previously. We already know what the author's intent was here - he wanted to specifically frame feminism and the role of women in a premodern world and then show the contrast to a modern world created by artifice. He's said this explicitly. Pretending that this is not what it was, and Bakker's world is exceedingly realistic or internally consistent and it's an alien culture, blah blah - that's all going against what the author's specifically stated multiple times.

[red snow]

The funny thing is that in the post he said "it'll get the westeros forum sharpening their knives" (paraphrase). So he got his wish.

I can totally understand why being labelled a sexist etc would genuinely concern him. It's a fairly shit label to have thrown your way.

I don't think it's that much worse than most fantasy (although extreme) and it's so intentional that I figure there is a point to it that is yet to be revealed. I'd be more concerned with it accidentally popping up and that simply does not seem to be the case with Bakker. I worry that he's fucked however he resolves (or doesn't) the situation as some could accuse him of pandering to criticism regardless.

That said, Bakker knows exactly what he's doing by stirring up the "sexist" pot a couple of months before the next book comes out. There's no such thing as bad publicity and this is a particularly good case of it.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

I do not think that Bakker is necessarily sexist, at least to the extent that some claim. I just wish he was more mindful and self-reflective of where these criticisms are coming from. When the accusation was made, he came on the board and understandably defended his positions. But then he became incredibly defensive and dismissive. You can see this even on his blog. Just think about how quickly he would have diffused the entire situation if he had just said, "Hmmmm...that was not my intention when I wrote that. I see your point. You raise some interesting points that I have not considered. I guess I could have done X, Y, or Z, but I chose to do A, B, and C for these reasons. Thank you for your feedback. I will consider the matter more carefully in the future."

[Shryke]

I do not think that Bakker is necessarily sexist, at least to the extent that some claim. I just wish he was more mindful and self-reflective of where these criticisms are coming from. When the accusation was made, he came on the board and understandably defended his positions. But then he became incredibly defensive and dismissive. You can see this even on his blog. Just think about how quickly he would have diffused the entire situation if he had just said, "Hmmmm...that was not my intention when I wrote that. I see your point. You raise some interesting points that I have not considered. I guess I could have done X, Y, or Z, but I chose to do A, B, and C for these reasons. Thank you for your feedback. I will consider the matter more carefully in the future."

He did say something akin to that.

Except without the "I should have done ...." part and more just "You raised some interesting concerns and I'll think about this".

[TheValyrianDragonlord]

I think one can legitimately criticize Bakker for failing artistically but i don' think it's fair to call him a sexist.

As others have pointed out in the thread, it seems Bakker is trying to depict a world where values are made concrete and operate on the same level as the physical forces like gravity. And the fantasy genre is a perfect vehicle for him to use. So i think Bakker's very deliberate and self-conscious choices regarding gender is his novels is way way less pernicious than the standard commercial fantasy novel that lazily recycles tropes and unwittingly reproduces sexism. His approach might be hamfisted. He might failed. But he isn't sexist. And his failures are more interesting than so much other stuff out there. I bet Kalbear will be reading the white luck warrior despite all his misgivings about Bakker's work.

[Happy Ent]

We already know what the author's intent was here - he wanted to specifically frame feminism and the role of women in a premodern world and then show the contrast to a modern world created by artifice. [...]

OK, let’s run with this for a while, because maybe we can find some common ground.

1. I agree with your characterisation here: Bakker deliberately put in three and exactly three female characters in this first three books. He chose them consciously: concubine, whore, harridan. He did so because he has thought long an hard about issues such as genre tropes, gender stereotypes, etc.

For us who care about such issues—the portrayal of women in fiction, feminism, etc.—this is a good thing. It is exactly what we want: an author who actively and consciously tackles issues where we normally think our genre is intellectually or morally lazy.

So I agree with your observation. But I disagree with your conclusion. Because I think Bakker does a good and laudable thing. It’s what we normally claim we want. He serves us. Now lets eat it, even though we find out that we don’t actually like it. We certainly can’t blame the chef for serving. (We can blame him for the spices.)

2. One of the major themes in Bakker’s book (or books) is control. Again, he has thought long and hard about many aspects of this. (For example, he as internalised the entire thought process of transhumanism—how do we build artificial intelligences without them immediately turning against us?—and found a solution for it!)

One of the myriad of powerful ways we have of controlling each other is sex/lust/desire/temptation. There are many other, and Bakker patiently show us many of them. But sex is—again, deliberately, consciously, and laudably—shown as important weapon. In fact, it‘s the Inchoroi’s solution to the transhumanism problem: build your artificial intelligences so that the mere presence of their programmer makes them turn into slobbering 16-year old boys touched by the caress of an able girl. This is smashingly original and highly believable.

We see a lot of other combinations, for example Aurang controlling Kellhus (and almost succeeding) and Esmi for interrogative purposes. The rape of the Scylvendi captives. The rapes of Conphas and Serwë and the Anasurimbor bastard in the prologue. All for different purposes, all to exert various aspects of dominance or power. And logically, Bakker’s three female archetypes use sex as a weapon as well. Serwë does, Istriya does—interestingly (and, I believe, consciously), Esmi is actually least powerful in this. While I type this, I can’t really see where she, the professional, uses sex to get her way. (I may be wrong and would love to discuss this. I find these themes very interesting.)

So, yes, Bakker’s three women use sex as a weapon. That’s deliberate and interesting.

—

All these things are good stuff. Bakker has written intelligent and valuable books that take up a lot of themes that our genre normally trivialises, dismisses, romanticises, or just doesn’t mention. (“Victorianises?”) Or forgets or ignores out of laziness.

Hooray, I say! I can you not applaud this? I don’t get it. His work stands head and shoulders above everybody else, in particular in his portrayal of women, gender roles, thoughts about stereotypes in fiction, etc. All the things we claim to want to debate.

Instead, we get cherry-picked lists of Buttons Pushed. It’s insanely boring.

[Shryke]

Esmi uses sex to get what she wants: information about the world outside her little slum. She uses her clients for information.

[Happy Ent]

I suppose Bakker could have included a "warrior woman" type a la Brienne, but that seems to me merely including stereotypes for the sake of it.

He did. There's a "Thyniuri (sp?) shield-maiden" in the coven of Yatwerian priestesses. And Mimara of course gets a sword. Westeros.org and Bakker's editors have clearly succeeded in aligning his books with the tastes of modern fantasy-reading audiences. Things like that depress me.

My personal theory about the God in Bakkerworld and Kellhus's ultimate plan may have to do with the sexist underpinings of that depicted existence -- in essence, the God is either evil or ambivilant or influenced solely by the ongoing mass-consciousness power paradigm, hence Mimara's vision about women being objectively inferior.

The way I understand it, the God is the mass-consciousness. So of course good women shine less brightly, or whatever the formulation was. The conceit of Bakker's metaphysics is that while the moral hierarchy that in our world is a subjective result of human prejudice, in his world is objective. What I feel some people misunderstand is that objective can still be malleable. If Ajencis is to be believed, reality is malleable in Bakkerworld, the Outside moreso than the "Inside" (i.e., the plane occupied by our protagonists).

So it follows that Mimara sees a real ("objective") manifestation of human social constructions when she peers into the Outside with her judging eye. That pigs are unclean, for example. The uncleanness of pigs is indeed objective and true and given by God, but mainly because God (and the entire hierarchy of morality visible in the Outside) is ultimately a (mutually self-referencing and reinforcing) manifestation of human souls.

[Happy Ent]

Esmi uses sex to get what she wants: information about the world outside her little slum. She uses her clients for information.

Ah, fine, exactly what I was looking for. It’s “old Esmi”, but qualifies. Does “book Esmi” succeed? From thinking about this for a full 20 seconds it seems like she is often seduced (by Aurang, by Kellhus) but fails to seduce.

From book 3 and onward, I don’t even think this is a relevant aspect to Esmi’s character anymore. She is Darth Esmi, and most of her internal monologue is concerned with her moral qualms about that.

[jurble]

The funny thing is that in the post he said "it'll get the westeros forum sharpening their knives" (paraphrase). So he got his wish.

In the new blog post he says

But, man, doesn’t this topic get people talking!

Maybe he's lurking here?

[red snow]

In the new blog post he says

Maybe he's lurking here?

I wasn't a member when last he walked these halls. It would be fun if he was still around. I'm not him :)

[Kalbear]

HE, you're not disagreeing with my conclusion, you're ignoring it completely.

I think Bakker could have done a good thing by examining sexism and feminism in the context of a fantasy tale, of examining sexual desire and its power over others. I think his goals are laudable and interesting.

But I think that his abilities to actually illustrate this in a reasonable way were overwhelmed by the actual text. If you like, compare Herbert's work about sex controlling people to this (which Bakker blatantly and consciously rips off). In Herbert's world you have, for better or worse, a race of women who use sex as their primary means of control. (not agency; they've got other ways of doing things. But control). They make sex literally physically addictive. There was zero outcry of making women tokens or only sexual agents in that novel though; why?

Because he explained it in the context of the novel. It was a dangerous, non-normative thing. This wasn't the basic rule, this was an exception from exceptional people. It was something known (and what the Bene Gesserit could have done if they wanted to) but very dangerous and prone to risk.

Bakker, on the other hand, doesn't explain a damn thing. Most of the contextual references we got to what he intended to write came long after the book was written by the author himself. You had thought that Bakker was doing a great service to fantasy by writing things in a 'more realistic' manner - when that was never his intent! We had (and still have) pages of debate about how realistic it was that only concubines and whores were on the holy war and the only queen was a harlot, when Bakker's intent was never to make that realistic.

So my conclusion is that while Bakker's goals may have been laudable - to showcase how modernity and feminism go together (which I disagree with, but it's an interesting idea at least) - I think that he failed to do a good job of writing it that way. His point was drowned in artifice and text. Those who wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt largely got the wrong message ("He's writing really REALISTIC fantasy, and that's just how it was back then!"). Those who were skeptical simply got drown out in pages and pages of rape fantasy, women being subjugated and women's roles being only that of sexual agents.

If I mention all the cherry-picked buttons he pushed, it's because it's his failure to not press those buttons that caused him to fail to deliver the themes and notes he wanted to do. He does the same thing in Neuropath - and admits directly that he did so there as well. I'm actually defending the guy at this point; I understand how frustrating it is to want to convey something and not be able to do so as effectively as you like, to be misinterpreted despite your best intentions.

[generic]

He did. There's a "Thyniuri (sp?) shield-maiden" in the coven of Yatwerian priestesses. And Mimara of course gets a sword. Westeros.org and Bakker's editors have clearly succeeded in aligning his books with the tastes of modern fantasy-reading audiences. Things like that depress me.

But wasn't the question posed something like: "What if equality of the sexes had nothing to do with justice and everything with the demands of a modern industrial economy?" With Khellus playing modernity. So I don't think it's strange that women would now fill more roles in his empire.

[Ran]

There are implications packed into the notion that the very minor shield-maiden character (does she even have lines?) was somehow an attempt by Scott to align "his books with the tastes of modern fantasy-reading audiences" that either make Scott and/or his editors, or the one putting forward this theory, look rather ludicrous.

I know which one I'm going to go with.

[Happy Ent]

Kal, thanks for engaging my points!

(Let's see if we can turn this thread into something useful. We're all friends here, after all.)

Those who wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt largely got the wrong message ("He's writing really REALISTIC fantasy, and that's just how it was back then!").

But that is no contradiction.

Let me try to disentangle this.

I claim that Bakker is portraying women in a pre-modern society realistically. (I realise that you disagree with this claim, which is why I state it as on opinion rather than fact. Continuing along this tangent predictably leads to a debate over Real World history, instead of literature. I like that debate and believe my points to be stunningly erudite, authoritative, and just plain right. But it's a debate that belong in General Chatter and I would like to avoid derailing this debate. Though I'm spoiling for a fight.)

I think Serwë is just right, and will not for a second believe that a concubine had it better than her. You may disagree and think that sex-slaves had agency and were not defined by their sexuality.

I also think that Esmi's plight, it anything, is portrayed through rose-tinted glasses. To the extent that self-employed whores did actually exist, I don't think their life was much better. Few were breathtakingly intelligent or chosen by their generation's most powerful sorcerer and a God. Again, you mileage about how shitty the life of prostitutes was (or is) may vary.

Finally, the queen is just great I think. Bakker chose to make her an aging Cersei, and he gets flak for that. (Unilke GRRM, who doesn't get flak for having Cersei be a young Cersei.) I find this an interesting double standard in the fandom which I'd love to discuss, but that argument is neither here nor there.

Anyway, given the choice of female characters, I think Bakker portrays them very convincingly.

But.

You might argue that his choice of whom to include is suspect. After all, he could have included some exceptional women that aren't primarily defined through sexual tropes. He didn't to that. (Except for some brief and welcome scenes among Esmi's whore friends, some house Gaunum wives, sometimes in flashback, and Esmi's slaves, there aren't many women at all.) I claim that this was a deliberate choice with focus on which themes he wants to explore.

(This choice does not drive him in the titular book of this thread, for example..)

But this choice does not impinge his realism. He displays the plight of women in a pre-modern society (which was shit, even more so than the plight of most men) in an unflattering light. Hooray, I say. I look disagreeably on any author who does less, because I find it aesthetically jarring and politically suspect. (I'm probably caught in my priors here, which are a very bleak view of human history, and a strong leftist bent.)

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

Esmi uses sex to get what she wants: information about the world outside her little slum. She uses her clients for information.

She could just as easily use flirtation to get what she wants. Her agency would not be sex per se but the allure of sexual mystique and she could have displayed her "greater intelligence" and cunning.

Yet I am still puzzled as to what required all three female characters to use "sex as a weapon" in order to exert control? Especially when HE admits that sex is but "One of the myriad of powerful ways we have of controlling each other..." Could Bakker not have shown three different types of women trying to exert their agency in different ways to different effect in this sexist world? He could have explored three different archetypes of women in fantasy that did not fall along purely sexual lines. What would have drastically changed about his Grand Message?

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

Sex is how the premodern, the Inochoroi control things. Kellhus, the modern, uses subverted social structures.

Both, of course, use violence.