The Line Between Author and Ink

[Arthmail]

I'm re-reading the Steel Remains by Richard Morgan, and there is a theme that trends through all of his works. All of his characters are jaded...full of angst. I can't say the man himself is, but he sure takes a dim view of how we construct our social apparatus.

[Cantabile]

Not to mention that it would (somewhat) rehabilitate his image of the fact that last time he was here he flounced off in a cloud of indignation and entitlement.

I think he responded to the whole sexism threads very well. Certainly much more kind and professional than most of us would be if we had people bashing our character for multiple threads and not really listening to our arguments :P

[sologdin]

unless he is being especially disingenuous.

not unprecedented, NB. RSB's first incarnation initially tried to pass off some spelling errors as the mark of authenticity.

[Galactus]

I think he responded to the whole sexism threads very well. Certainly much more kind and professional than most of us would be if we had people bashing our character for multiple threads and not really listening to our arguments :P

The discussion went something like:

Boarders: "This writing is kind of problematic, but let's hear Scott try to explain himself."

Scott: "It's TOTALLY NOT SEXIST AT ALL! And if you think it is it's just because you're predetermined to discount my brilliant arguments!"

Boarders: "Doesen't the same apply to you then?"

Scott: "YOU'RE ALL MEAN! I'M TAKING MY STUFF AND GOING HOME TO MY BLOG TO WHINE ABOUT FEMINISTS!"

Which y'know, is a pretty common internet pattern. And it's certainly not an incomparable crime or anything, it's just that I had slightly higher expecations of Scott Bakker than that he acts exactly according to the map.

[Cantabile]

It's been a while since I read those threads, but I was pretty impressed by his defenses. It seemed to me that mostly his opponents were just hellbent on thinking he was sexist, and refused to accept anything to the contrary. That's just my personal impression, though.

[Galactus]

It's been a while since I read those threads, but I was pretty impressed by his defenses. It seemed to me that mostly his opponents were just hellbent on thinking he was sexist, and refused to accept anything to the contrary. That's just my personal impression, though.

His defences basically boiled down to:

A) It can't be sexist because I didn't MEAN it to be sexist.

B) Anyone who thinks it's sexist is just predetermined to think so and so can be blithely ignored.

C) People just can't appreciate my genius. (See also: His diva-ish reaction to the fact that his books aren't selling as well as he thinks they deserve)

Really, he reacts exactly the way most people who are unthinkingly sexist (which is most of us at some point) react. By immediate, instinctive denial. He never even considered any of the arguments put forward.

EDIT: Bakker is one of the (many) authors that I've come to relegate to the position of rather reading them than listening to them :P In his books his ideas come across as fairly interesting, when talking to him he comes across as your average entitled internet-poster. (Which I guess it is unfair to expect him NOT to be, but eh)

[Spastic Plastic]

Not to mention how he entered the debate by using a sockpuppet.

I just re-read that thread, and found Kalbear to be much more articulate and smart than Bakker.

[Liadin]

EDIT: Bakker is one of the (many) authors that I've come to relegate to the position of rather reading them than listening to them :P In his books his ideas come across as fairly interesting, when talking to him he comes across as your average entitled internet-poster. (Which I guess it is unfair to expect him NOT to be, but eh)

This is one reason I'm not generally thrilled with authors I like having real Internet presences. While none of my faves come across as sexist, some of them do seem kinda douchey on the Internet where they don't in their books.

[Lord of Rhinos]

The Bakker and Sexism threads got me to read the Second Apocalypse. Many of the posters in those threads were being huge assholes and he interacted civilly with them. I was impressed.

[Cantabile]

Not to mention how he entered the debate by using a sockpuppet.

I just re-read that thread, and found Kalbear to be much more articulate and smart than Bakker.

I can't really blame an author for wanting to defend himself from criticism about his character, but not have to enter into the debate directly. A simple sockpuppet is a convenient way for someone to get their defense off their chest. Though everyone just ignored the sockpuppet's post. Plus he didn't try to hide the fact, he continued using that account instead of making a new one to post officially under.

I'd have to re-read the thread to say who I found more articulate, but when I read it my impression was that most of the pro-sexism posters' arguments boiled down to: "Your books treat women shittily, and it wasn't necessary for you as an author to do that, therefore you chose to do it, and by choosing to do something sexist you are sexist!"

[Negative]

Which of the dozen Bakker threads was this?

[Old Nan]

Bakker's sockpuppet is Pierce Inverarity, though I'm not sure how early he pops up.

[Sophelia]

Not to mention that it would (somewhat) rehabilitate his image of the fact that last time he was here he flounced off in a cloud of indignation and entitlement.

I think he responded to the whole sexism threads very well. Certainly much more kind and professional than most of us would be if we had people bashing our character for multiple threads and not really listening to our arguments :P

The Bakker and Sexism threads got me to read the Second Apocalypse. Many of the posters in those threads were being huge assholes and he interacted civilly with them. I was impressed.

That thread, and your three posts, are a fascinating example of how people come from such very different starting points and construct their own impressions and interpretations of events extremely differently, making it hard to agree a common ground with which to communicate.

My own impression of the Bakkerwomen threads was that there was a great deal of attempted explanation from both sides, but it took a lot of posting before actual communication really started. And even then it regressed at times (I feel particularly bad that I admitted, after needle expressed the same thing, that I had been wondering if Bakker addressing himself almost entirely to Kalbear was because Kalbear was male, when it turned out Bakker hadn't even realised Kalbear was male - this almost destroyed the trust which had been slowly building up).

However by the end I felt that I understood Bakker's point of view much better, and I also felt that he could see why many of his readers of feminist bent had been put off by his books (it turned out that his 'opponents' in the thread had various different reasons for disliking the portrayal of women so perhaps it was difficult for him not having a single unified approach to argue against. It must have seemed to him he was fighting a many-headed hydra).

I thought he stated quite clearly at the end that while he disagreed that the books were sexist (a position he argued well, I thought, in that it convinced me he had intended a non-sexist message), he acknowledged that our reactions meant that he had failed in getting his feminist message across in the books.

I felt that he vanished because he was feeling a bit despairing about his 'failure' to make his views clear to his potential readership. I must say I did find his style of expression in those threads very hard to understand and felt I was on the cusp of understanding when he vanished, so I never found out if I was really starting to get what he meant or not. He had suggested a debate at the Montreal worldcon and hence I signed up to go to Worldcon, only to find he wasn't there, I am not sure why not.

I lost respect for him because of the sockpuppet thing, but gained respect for him because he put a lot of time into trying to explain his position to us.

[Sophelia]

With specific reference to the thread topic, I take the middle position. I don't think that what an author chooses to write about is necessarily any reflection of their everyday preferences, any more than that your daydreams/daynightmares reflect how you really wish reality was.

While some authors may write about guns (for example) because they own guns and have an interest in their usage or because they have had good/bad experiences with guns in their own life, I'm sure more authors write about guns because they are necessary in their chosen genre or for worldbuilding authenticity, because their readership would expect it, because it ups the jeopardy and hence plot suspense, or perhaps because they want to put across an anti-gun message.

When I was a teenager I wrote stories involving violence and cruelty. I am the opposite of violent and cruel in my own life. I intended consciously that in exploring the human consequences of these things I would be showing how bad they were. However perhaps subconsciously it was a way to express anger or to explore fears. Perhaps it was cathartic. I don't know. It would be incorrect for a reader to infer that I was a violent and cruel person, but perhaps my wish to write about violence and cruelty could still be used to discover insights about my character (or life situation).

On the other hand I do believe that books are necessarily permeated with an author's views about the world. You cannot help revealing the way you structure and represent the world, because you are only capable of describing objects, characters, and events in a way that you have conceived of in your own mind (but that could be the way you see things or the way you think other people see things - since writers try and jump into the heads of people who are very different). But still, if a writer (for example) has a very black-and-white way of seeing the world, I think it would be difficult for them to create a truly 'grey' character. So looking over many works of the same author you can start to suspect that they like/dislike certain ways of thinking, but still this can only be a hunch, since you may only be seeing that author's view of 'how they think books should be written'.

Also, as many people have pointed out, the reader can only fit the writers' words into their own preexisting frameworks, so it is difficult to tell where the writers' creation becomes the reader's.

Jon Sprunk probably expresses what I mean most succinctly:

So, my point is . . mixed. Yes, a deliberate author devises the aspects of his/her story with care, mixing character personalities and traits like a mad scientist, hoping to come up with something pleasing. And, yes, certain views and biases will come through, regardless of what the author intends. But readers should be wary in pronouncing judgment, because we do not always see what we think we see.

[Gabriele]

I browsed some of that Bakkerwomem stuff but since my reaction was, "geez girls, get a life, it's a friggin' BOOK," I stayed out of them. There is one thing that's worse than an - assumedly - sexist man, and that's a non-feminist woman. ;)

I have a lot more problem with Jordan's female characters. They were the reason I gave up on WoT. Jordan set out to write a world with some gender equality but what we get is high school bickerings. I couldn't take the whole Aes Sedai thing serious because the girls were so shallow and alike.

How much that says about Jordan's image of women I don't know. Maybe he saw women to be like that (and I know some who never outgrew the teenage stage myself; they do exist), maybe he just couldn't get them across more nuanced and adult even though that may have been his intent.

And since his series is so vastly popular, the problems with his girls may be on my side.

[Galactus]

I'm pretty sure Jordan was sexist in that vague way that old people often are, not neccessarily a *misogynist* per se, but a bit limited in his view of what men and women "are like".

I don't neccessarily think he intended his female characters to come across as unsympatethic: He's just, when the chips are down, not very good at characterization. (I do think readers tends to give male characters a certain slack in certain ways that female characters don't get, but that's a different discussion)

[Cantabile]

Yeah, Jordan certainly isn't a misogynist, he just has a very specific view of women, and according to him those female portrayals are realistic. It's more an ignorance of 52% of the human race than any negativity towards them :P

[Liadin]

Yeah, Jordan certainly isn't a misogynist, he just has a very specific view of women, and according to him those female portrayals are realistic. It's more an ignorance of 52% of the human race than any negativity towards them :P

Which doesn't make it any less sexist. I don't really want to start up the Jordan argument again (it's certainly true that his male characters aren't exactly pinnacles of characterization either, etc., although there is somewhat more diversity of personality among them), but there are lots of ways a person can be sexist aside from outright hating women, and being patronizing or believing women only interact by bickering, bullying or trying to one-up one another are sexist attitudes. But I do think Jordan's problems are due much more to ineptitude and having his wife for an editor than sexism.

[Negative]

Yeah, Jordan certainly isn't a misogynist, he just has a very specific view of women, and according to him those female portrayals are realistic. It's more an ignorance of 52% of the human race than any negativity towards them.

total population: 1.01 male(s)/female (2009 est.)

You gotta account for the crazy shit that's been going down in Asia, particularly India and China.

[Cantabile]

Which doesn't make it any less sexist. I don't really want to start up the Jordan argument again (it's certainly true that his male characters aren't exactly pinnacles of characterization either, etc., although there is somewhat more diversity of personality among them), but there are lots of ways a person can be sexist aside from outright hating women, and being patronizing or believing women only interact by bickering, bullying or trying to one-up one another are sexist attitudes. But I do think Jordan's problems are due much more to ineptitude and having his wife for an editor than sexism.

Misogyny and sexism are different, though. Misogyny is the hatred/mistrust/insert-negative-feelings-here towards women, whereas sexism is discrimination based upon gender, or attitudes that reflect gender stereotypes. So while Jordan isn't a misogynist, I'd agree with you that he displays sexism in his portrayals of women. Having female readers tell him how he nailed his portrayals of women probably didn't help the matter either.

You gotta account for the crazy shit that's been going down in Asia, particularly India and China.

Ah, thanks for the correction :)