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White-Luck Warrior


Calibandar

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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:

No, I don't think it was the only way, but it certainly existed (an understatement). Moreover, Bakker, by and large, is depicting POV characters outside the mainstream Earwa existence. All of his characters are "exiles" within the confines of society or exceptional. And I, personally, like to have light shown on those people who are rejected by the society while fulfilling a foundational "need" aka prostitution. Prostitution isn't romanticized, and I like that, particularly when it contrasts pernicious cliches in the genre, be they "happy hookers" (GRRM has fallen into this) or the "hooker with a heart of gold" (a caricature like Haydon's Rhapsody). Serwe's story could fit hand in glove with sex-trafficked women around the world today or throughout the ages. I've seen many, many versions of Serwe both in the United States and elsewhere in the world. Esme's story, for me, was quite poignant -- the encroaching perils of an aging prostitute and the sacrifices it forces upon her. One of Bakker's hammered-on themes is the outside influences that mold a consciousness. Both in Earwa and in the premodern "real world", the vast majority of humans knew little more than what was taught to them, through the church and community. There were no avenues of argument or exploration.

I do agree that he could have shown women who exert power in other ways. He chose not to until TJE.

"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."

Flirtation doesn't pay the bills. In many pre-modern societies, once a woman was "fallen", she was polluted for good. Bakker explores this in depth, and I personally feel this should be explored, both for its overarcing theme--the hypocricies of the human condition--and as an avenue of character development, even if it is through the influence of the ubermensch character. Aside from that, very, very few people of either gender had the luxury of social mobility or economic choice of employment--those two are very recent phenomenon.

EDIT: "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."

Happy Ent beat me to it.

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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?

Sure he could. (Book IV is such a book. In fact one could argue that book III is such a book as well.) The triad of female stereotypes belongs mainly to book I. By book III Serwë is dead, granny Cersei turned out to be a skinjob, and Esmi is Evil Varys.

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

Both, of course, use violence.

Okay, but Inochoroi are not really premodern. (Nor does this address my arguments.) Premodernity was not purely sexual and instinct-driven. They are alien. Any premodernity ascribed to them is lost in the foot-long descriptions of their enormous penetrating phalluses oozing with black seed.

Sure he could. (Book IV is such a book. In fact one could argue that book III is such a book as well.) The triad of female stereotypes belongs mainly to book I. By book III Serwë is dead, granny Cersei turned out to be a skinjob, and Esmi is Evil Varys.

Pointing to the presence of such characters in Book IV is a red herring. His criticisms were directed at books I-III, which should form a self-contained arc. Saying, "Sure he could," also just begs the question of why he did not if that would have been a better way to convey his ideas.
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Pointing to the presence of such characters in Book IV is a red herring.

I was confused by the title of the tread. Sorry.

I have nothing more to say. Bakker chose (by his own admission, consciously) to have concubine–whore–harridan in his first book. I think that’s a valid choice, and it harmonises will with many of the themes he wants to explore. Could he have made another choice? Sure. Demonstrably so.

I’m not trying to be obtuse. I just don’t see the problem with his choice. In fact, I’d by happy if more authors made ambitious thematic choices.

(Aside: In fact, my criticism on the c-w-h triad is that it’s too post-modern, too much comment-on-the-genre, too much of fiction reflecting on itself, too much of a self-congratualtory capital-L Literature conceit.)

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I have nothing more to say. Bakker chose (by his own admission, consciously) to have concubine–whore–harridan in his first book.

I’m not trying to be obtuse. I just don’t see the problem with his choice. In fact, I’d by happy if more authors made ambitious thematic choices.

Aside: In fact, my criticism on the c-w-h triad is that it’s too post-modern, too much comment-on-the-genre, too much of fiction reflecting on itself, too much of a self-congratualtory capital-L Literature conceit.)

One of the problems with Bakker's method is that some of his conceits are pretty much invisible until he points to them in some extra-textual authorial statement. Does the c-w-h triad exist anywhere but in Bakker's head? I've never heard of these three tropes being roped together like this before. Did anyone read PON and say - "hey, look it's the classic concubine-whore-harridan triple play; the author is obviously up to something"? Without authorial intervention after the fact, how is the reader supposed to get that this is an inversion of genre tropes as opposed to something else?

I'm not attempting to make this a point in the larger discussion about gender, but I do think that Bakker runs into trouble because he expects readers to understand that his novels are meant to be read symbolically or allegorically at certain key points without doing much of anything to flag this fact in the text. And no, I'm not saying he needs to dumb down his novels or over-explain what he's about; novelists find ways to do this all the time without dumbing things down or over-explaining.

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http://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2010/09/03/flying-under-my-own-radar-yet-again/

Otherwise, I popped onto the Westeros board and was alarmed/amused to see that the old sexism debate has flared up anew. All I can say is that I wish my detractors would pick some more ominous names for their avatars. It’s hard to feel threatened by people whose names sound like Hello Kitty product lines. They need to sex themselves up with more masculine sounding monikers.

Because we all know I can’t take things seriously unless they’re masculine!

ahahahahahaha

Wait- is he making fun of me? Jurble sounds awfully unmasculine, I guess. Damn it, I wasn't criticizing him, but now I will, the sexist bastage.

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One of the problems with Bakker's method is that some of his conceits are pretty much invisible until he points to them in some extra-textual authorial statement.

I don’t think this is fair. (And only because we don’t use that argument against Mieville or Duncan, who also write didactically about the whys and hows of their creations. Should I have understood that he’s a marxist as soon as the crisis engine was described? In retrospect it’s obvious, but knowing about the author’s background would have helped.)

The whole question arises because some readers are suspicious about Bakker’s intent. That’s an extra-textual aspect. The author is a valid (albeit biased) source for that debate.

Me, I’d be happy to just discuss the books, instead of authorial intent.

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I don’t think this is fair. (And only because we don’t use that argument against Mieville or Duncan, who also write didactically about the whys and hows of their creations. Should I have understood that he’s a marxist as soon as the crisis engine was described? In retrospect it’s obvious, but knowing about the author’s background would have helped.)

The whole question arises because some readers are suspicious about Bakker’s intent. That’s an extra-textual aspect. The author is a valid (albeit biased) source for that debate.

I'm not sure what fairness has to do with it. Readers aren't getting the message that Bakker says he wants to impart.

I'm certainly not saying that he's not allowed to weigh in after the fact to explain X and Y, but it would be better if the text made X and Y clear enough that he didn't have to do so.

I agree with you, HE, that Bakker should be commended for his ambition, but some of his most ambitious ideas aren't available to the reader within the text.

Since the gender debate is so polarizing, I'll pick an example that's less inflammatory. Bakker says that we're supposed to understand that in her death Serwe somehow represents Earwa. How could we know that? Why would we think that? It's a provocative idea, and I wish it were somehow suggested within the novel.

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Hopefully now I will impress on Mr. Bakker the strength of my convictions and the correctness of my arguments.

I'm not attempting to make this a point in the larger discussion about gender, but I do think that Bakker runs into trouble because he expects readers to understand that his novels are meant to be read symbolically or allegorically at certain key points without doing much of anything to flag this fact in the text. And no, I'm not saying he needs to dumb down his novels or over-explain what he's about; novelists find ways to do this all the time without dumbing things down or over-explaining.
This.

Again, the problem was doing too much. He tried to make PoN extra-realistic with respect to historical veracity (by copying the Crusades), which leads a reader to look away from symbol and allegory and look more to a historical reenactment. In that, he inserts these symbols, which just don't quite fit. That was the dichotomy I talked about earlier. There's no reason he can't do both, and there's no reason it can't be successful, but the two work at odds with each other.

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Maybe he's lurking here?

Not too surprising. If I knew that there was page after page of debates on the internet about whether or not I am a sexist I'd sure as hell be keeping an eye on it.

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.

Bakker indeed went to great lengths to mirror architecture, social groups, events, politics, technology, and lifestyles of the Crusades, but unless he specifically stated that gender roles were also meant to be a direct parallel of that time period then I don't think it's justified to use our own historical cultures as the basis for determining "realism" As a work of fantasy the series has tons of other deviations from the historical Crusades; it is Bakker's world after all, and what aspects of the world-building he chooses to be parallels of our own culture and history are entirely his choice. He may have meant to showcase the harsh realities of females in a pre-modern world, but as an author he is not bound to make those parallels exact. If women during the historical Crusades held certain political and social roles Bakker can easily exclude those form his own cultures while still highlighting the oppressive conditions that women faced.

No one is arguing that sexuality plays a very definitive role in the actions, motivations, and overall characterization of the point-of-view female characters. What I am failing to understand is:

1) How is this an example of sexism?

2) If it is an example of sexism, how can you possibly make the logical leap to assume that it not only exists in the book, but is a definitive reflection of the author's own ideologies? There is no valid evidence that the gender portrayals in Bakker's work mirror him as a human being.

There is a fine line between artist and art. It's "I think therefore I am" not, "I write therefore I am" for a reason.

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Again, the problem was doing too much. He tried to make PoN extra-realistic with respect to historical veracity (by copying the Crusades), which leads a reader to look away from symbol and allegory and look more to a historical reenactment. In that, he inserts these symbols, which just don't quite fit. That was the dichotomy I talked about earlier. There's no reason he can't do both, and there's no reason it can't be successful, but the two work at odds with each other.

Does it? I sure as hell didn't.

But then, this whole argument seems to be premised on people knowing about the First Crusade enough to spot the similarities.

Cribbing from history and symbolism are not mutually exclusive.

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If one of the themes in the books is that modernity is what allows co-equality between sexes, then I wonder, let's say civilization collapsed (ecological, nuclear, whatever), how long would it take for people to descend into rape and pillage? I certainly wouldn't rape and pillage. And certainly, I think a large majority of men would abstain from that kind of lifestyle (unless Cormac McCarthy is right, and the bulk of the human male population is entirely willing to rape and pillage once society collapses) but how many generations would that last, assuming civilization does not reassert itself?

Or would our modern mindsets in terms of gender, and violence stick with us?

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If one of the themes in the books is that modernity is what allows co-equality between sexes, then I wonder, let's say civilization collapsed (ecological, nuclear, whatever), how long would it take for people to descend into rape and pillage? I certainly wouldn't rape and pillage. And certainly, I think a large majority of men would abstain from that kind of lifestyle (unless Cormac McCarthy is right, and the bulk of the human male population is entirely willing to rape and pillage once society collapses) but how many generations would that last, assuming civilization does not reassert itself?

Or would our modern mindsets in terms of gender, and violence stick with us?

I'm sure no one would rape and pillage .... till they ran out of shit. That's when the pillaging would really get going.

But shit, look at what happened in like New Orleans post-Katrina. There's a taste of your post-apocalypse.

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