Gender in Genre III

[Sci-2]

Hmmm, I'll have go back to Dervish House - been meaning to start it again.

Anyone read Matt Stover's Caine novels. I felt there was a good deal to say regarding masculinity and strength, especially when we see how the ending of Book 1 influences the character in Book 2.

It's interesting when I once asked a question about writing/mythology that represented the homoerotic Stover said men stabbing each other with swords was totally a homosexual metaphor. (A heteroerotic example would be the seekers of the grail and their lances being the penis with the grail being the vagina.)

[Seli]

...

Re: Malazan Book of the Fallen, I have only read the first 3 books (but I intend to continue with the series eventually).

But while I liked it and there was certainly nothing offensive in it's description of women, I felt that from Deadhouse Gates on the series turned into a total sausage fest, with dozens of somewhat detailed male characters and a couple of fervent bromances juxtaposed against... Felisin. Who, while certainly an interesting character, is also a fairly unpleasant one and goes through some severely degrading experiences to bout.

This was off-putting, particularly since Gardens of the Moons gave me hopes of much more balanced representation, with Adjunct Lorn, Tattersail, etc.

I think Erikson does mostly balance, but he takes the characters to depths and dark places, as well as power and agency. Although I have the impression he does have the tendency to put the female characters through these cycles more than the male ones. In the end there are some good treatments of strength, overcoming problems and trauma, and humanity. As well as examples where (I believe in an attempt to get some other ideas across) the treatments are worse.

[ljkeane]

I don't tend to dwell on the depictions of gender in books a great deal but after having a think about it I'd say that Daniel Abraham's The Black Sun's Daughter series is reasonably good.

It has a female protagonist who is reasonably strong and independent but in pretty realistic manner rather than just beacuse she's the hero and has magic powers. She's pretty capable but we do see her making mistakes and learning through her experiences. It's also pretty good in that it is a significant part of her character development that she's a woman and it does impact on the storyline unlike some female characters in fantasy books were it feels you could fairly easily substitute a male character in their place without greatly impacting the story.

A possible downside is that I suppose a significant part of the story is driven by her various relationships with different men (both platonic and romantic) but I can't say it strikes me as hugely problematic.

[PaulineMRoss]

I disagree here. IMHO, without his mother, Ringil would be completely broken rather than just damaged. He seems to get his intelligence and manipulativeness from her. And he does feel that he "has" to do what she says in this case -- he has no special feelings for his....cousin? I think....and only goes off to save her at his mother's behest. I think it's worth repeating that the **entire action of the book** is set in motion by a woman here.

The entire action of the book being set in motion by a woman simply makes her a plot device, since she has no role to play beyond that. Ringil 'has' to do what she says largely because there would be no plot otherwise. Good point about Ringil's inherited characteristics.

But in any case, Archeth is "defined by a man" only in that her employer happens to be a man. She would be under the very same restrictions if her employer happened to be an Empress rather than Emperor.

Except that Morgan has created a world where there is absolutely no possibility of such a situation. Which leads nicely into...

In that case, you're probably disappointed in most secondary world fantasies (since "pseudo-medieval" is a favorite setting), and thus it's unfair to single out Morgan.

It's not merely that it's pseudo-medieval, it's the extreme version of it that I dislike. Most secondary world fantasy is low-tech - that does NOT equate to western European feudal system, it does NOT equate to extreme patriarchy, it does NOT equate to women invariably being at the bottom of the heap. That is a choice that Morgan has made. You're right that he's not alone in that, of course, but the fact remains that he could have created a society with some degree of female autonomy. You know, like the real medieval world, where female subservience was enshrined in law but the reality was a little different (which is an exact counterpoint to modern western life, where female equality is enshrined in law but the reality is a little different).

Incidentally, I think Morgan is in part making a point (or several points) out of this gender-unequal setting. IMHO he's doing it quite intentionally.

Now that is very possible, and I truly hope you're right. The series is not complete yet, and I haven't even read beyond the first book (although I will, because some aspects are fascinating), so it's quite possible that by the time all is done and dusted, there will be a quite different reading on all this. Archeth, in particular, will almost certainly develop beyond her relatively passive role in The Steel Remains. I do think it's difficult to work out what Morgan's intent is, because it's so well obscured by the vast amounts of graphic sex and liberal use of the f-word and the over-the-top behaviour of Ringil, in particular. I'm prepared to give Morgan the benefit of the doubt, largely because I've only read one single book by him, so it's unfair to judge him on that alone. So I acknowledge your different opinion, and I'll shut up about it now.

Personally, I tend to look more at the character/personality of the women depicted, rather than the jobs they are given. Their "positions" are in large part determined by the overall world-building -- and that, in turn, usually has to do with much larger considerations than gender. But once all the characters (in both genders) are assigned their roles, then what does the author do with the people who fill those roles? Are they dull robots who are fit for nothing else, are they "sluts" who love to be exploited, or are they intelligent and strong people who simply do the best they can with what they have in life? That's the kind of gender considerations that make more of an impact on me when I read.

I would regard those aspects as simply character considerations, rather than gender issues, actually.

[Shryke]

Archeth has a ton of autonomy. Which she exercises a bunch of times in the story.

It's just she ultimately lives in a more or less totalitarian monarchy where the religious authorities, as I remember, want her dead. So at some point, yeah, she's gonna have to take orders.

[williamjm]

Pick a genre book (extra points if its not by RS Bakker) and say something about the portrayal of gender in it. Good, bad, about women, about men, deliberate, oblivious, problematic, praiseworthy, didactic, whatever. Something.

The challenge is that it can't be a book someone has already picked.

We can think thoughts that aren't recycled, right?

I think this is a good idea, one thing I find frustrating about many of these debates is that there's often very little actual discussion of books themselves, instead it usually tends to be more discussion of what the participants have said.

I'm two-and-a-half books into Chris Wooding's Braided Path Trilogy and gender does seem to be a bit of a theme in it, so I might as well comment on that. The world-building had a gender split in how male and female magicians can use magic, the women are better able to control the magic and can use it without going crazy whereas it sends men insane and causes them to go on orgies of torture, rape and murder after they use it. The male magicians initially outnumbered the female magicians, so they regarded them as a threat and systematically slaughtered them. At times the amount of times we're shown how evil the male magicians are does seem to get a bit gratuitous, although it does tie in to one of the themes of the series that society as a whole is willing to turn a blind eye to many things as long as the magicians continue to be useful. The world as a whole seems the be largely male dominated, but does have some women in positions of power.

The four characters in the series who are arguably the most important are all female (or usually female in one case), and there's a good variety of female characters. Kaiku becomes a powerful magician and is a competent fighter as well whereas Mishani has no special powers and would be hopeless in a fight but is skilled at court intrigue, Lucia is an unworldly, almost angelic child and Asara is a sociopathic 90-year old shapechanging assassin. I think the books do a good job of female characterisation, the male characterisation can be a bit more patchy - I liked Tsata and Yugi but the male villains in the story tend to be simplistic monsters whereas the female villains are much more complex.

[SkynJay]

Braided Path was a strange series for me as well. I loved a lot of it, and raced through it. But I was bothered by the weird split on gender. But at the same time it was the taint of the weave that was corrupting the men, and if the men have kept women away from said taint forcibly, it made since to a point. I am trying to remember, did the taint mess with any of the women characters who did use it? i Cant remember.

[Contrarius]

The entire action of the book being set in motion by a woman simply makes her a plot device, since she has no role to play beyond that.

She's an example of a woman having power in that society, even if that power is behind the scenes.

Except that Morgan has created a world where there is absolutely no possibility of such a situation.

So what? Archeth doesn't have to obey the Emperor because he's male, but because he is the leader of his country. She would have to do the very same thing if he happened to be female.

It's not merely that it's pseudo-medieval, it's the extreme version of it that I dislike.

Well, Morgan is an extreme kinda guy. He is not gender-specific in his extremist tendencies -- rather, he tends to take *everything* to extremes.

You're right that he's not alone in that, of course, but the fact remains that he could have created a society with some degree of female autonomy.

Actually, females DO have some degree of autonomy in his society. In fact, IMHO one of the things Morgan is exploring is how people survive/express agency in such an oppressive environment. For instance, Archeth bobs and weaves her way through the Emperor's whims while working to achieve her own objectives; Egar's young lover seduces Egar in order to achieve the status of being associated with the headman; Ringil's mother works behind the scenes to get the cousin rescued when nobody else cares about her; and so on. These are not women who are meekly accepting their subjugation.

I would regard those aspects as simply character considerations, rather than gender issues, actually.

I agree that these are character considerations, but they are not "just" character considerations. Depicting slatternly hookers and idiot drudges tells us that the oppression of these characters is acceptable, that they "deserve" their positions -- but depicting intelligent, ambitious, dissatisfied characters in similar positions tells us something very different.

[Grack21]

David Weber usually deals with Gender pretty well, although sometimes he goes off on weird tangents about human trafficking that are just...icky.

I'd write more but my brain just shut off.

[Lyanna Stark]

Yea, but at least the main such friendship is tangled with romantic attraction... and apart from that while 3 other female characters do appear and play somewhat important support roles (mother, Matalina and Ceri), they also get obviously sidelined in favor of male characters with romantic attraction/sexual tension potential.

Generally, there are several times more male characters than female ones in the series and Rachel regularly has her convenient bouts of incompetence, so that the current flame can save her.

It became particularly bad in the last book, where Rachel suddenly became absurdly bumbling and helpless - which, hallo?

Do you mean "Pale Demon"? I haven't read it yet.

As for sidelined, I'd say not consistently. Rachel goes back to her strong friendship with Ivy, despite a lot of stuff going down. I agree that the sexual tension thing between them could have been scrapped easily and it would have been for the better.

I quite like that Rachel is occasionally incompetent. It makes her a better character and sets her apart from horrible Mary Sues like Elena the only female werewolf in Kelley Armstrong's werewolf series.

I find these two series interesting to compare as they are in the same subgenre.

Rachel as female friends and considers female friendships important. Elena has no female friends and is surrounded by men who all worship her.

While Rachel is certainly not unattractive, it's fairly certain she's not the prettiest one around, while Elena is the only female werewolf, basically making her a Bella Swann for the werewolf community, i.e. a superspecial snowflake.

Rachel frets over men, but she still has her own agency, she runs her own business (which often goes so so), Elena looks after the pack (of adoring men) with her random imba leet skills.

Not to mention that Elena's love interest is a control freak with rape tendencies, but that is described as ok since he's hot. :dunce:

[Kalbear]

I really want to give props for Abraham's work. His female villain in betrayal in Winter was brilliant, one of the better characters I've seen in a while. I really liked both protagonist women in Dragon's Path as well. His women aren't particularly...I guess, womanly? But similar to GRRM, his women are good characters, with good motivations and flaws while still being sympathetic.

As far as relationships in specfic go, I really like what Greg Bear has done in a few cases. Darwin's Radio had a really good relationship that felt entirely real and genuine, and really felt like normal people dealing with ridiculous circumstance. Forge of God/Anvil of Stars had a number of nice bits here and there. Slant had great characters and relationships. Quantico/Mariposa has...interesting ones, but they tend to be fucked up - mostly because it's a police procedural, so naturally people's motivations and relationships are fucked up. He doesn't always do well - Hull Zero 3 was lame, Vitals had almost nothing. But he does a fair deal better than most.

[Seli]

Well, we will be getting back to who does it wrong in no time I am sure, so I will give one well known author who I feel does it right.

Terry Pratchett. And I think he has done it several times. Granny Weatherwax is my favorite fantasy character period. Magrat is a wonderful woman, who while young, is never described for her beauty, only her strengths and weaknesses. Susan may be the more typical fantasy book women, being beautiful, but at no point does that become her defining characteristic. Name any overweight woman in fantasy lit that isn't either a bar maid or a crone other than Agnes.

Pratchett is one of the few male authors who has filled his works with as many strong women as men, without ever feeling that he had to come up with a reason for them to turn into super-girl( Granny especially, just wanted to be a witch and wouldn't take no for an answer from her mentor).

Getting back to Pratchett, there is a great series of posts by Australian author Tansy Rayner Roberts in which she examines the women in Pratchett's books.

Starting with this one, in which she points out the problems Pratchett had in his earliest Discworld books and subsequently points out the ways the first few witches books are great in showing strong women. The most recent post (visiting Maskerade and Carpe Jugulum) is here and has links to the intermediate posts.

[Lyanna Stark]

I really want to give props for Abraham's work. His female villain in betrayal in Winter was brilliant, one of the better characters I've seen in a while. I really liked both protagonist women in Dragon's Path as well. His women aren't particularly...I guess, womanly? But similar to GRRM, his women are good characters, with good motivations and flaws while still being sympathetic.

Agreed on the female villain in Betrayal in Winter. She is one of my favourite female characters and Abraham is in general very, very successful in writing good female characters. Haven't read "Dragon's Path" yet but now I really want to!

[Maia]

Do you mean "Pale Demon"? I haven't read it yet.

Not so much this one, but the next "The Perfect Blood". Where she suddenly forgot nearly everything she knew in the very first volume as well as all the stuff that she had learned since, just so she could be rescued by the current romantic interest/sexual tension provider.

I agree that the sexual tension thing between them could have been scrapped easily and it would have been for the better.

But the thing is - since sexual tension there got more or less resolved, Ivy was getting rather marginalized too. That's the kind of stuff that really irritates me, frankly.

And please, I don't want Rachel to be a Mary Sue, but her suddenly forgetting all skills that she had been learning and displaying throughout the series just so she can be repeatedly rescued? And by a character whose strengths really didn't lie in that area until now, but who had been abruptly upgraded to a total bad-ass since he became a romantic interest? Ugh.

I really liked the first 6 volumes of the series, though even then I thought that romances/opportunities for sexual tension where often getting in the way of much more interesting plots. But the latest volumes? Pfew.

As to Kelly Amstrong, I have skimmed one of her books - "Bitten", I think, and it is exactly that kind of Queen Bee, special snowflake stuff that put me off her work.

I find it really sad how short female characters (other then our special, special heroine who is lusted after and befriended by all those cool men) tend to come in supposedly female-oriented urban fantasy books. It is like ingrained self-loathing of the female gender or something.

It is also terrible that seemingly female authors with female protagonists are being pressured to concentrate on romance. Why can't I get an urban fantasy series with a female protagonist whose life includes no more than Harry Dresden /Peter Grant / Mathew Swift amount of romance? And who interacts as much with women as she does with men? And whose wise teacher/mentor can be a woman too?

I also don't see why epic fantasy _has_ to rely so much on medieval setting, even though many aspects of their world are drastically different from iRL history. That just feels lazy to me, in that many authors just take certain events, put a fantasy wrapper on them and consider it a work well done.

The same applies to (fantasy-flavored) alternative history too. Seriously, if your world is so different that Byzantium controls better part of Europe including most of France, you won't get a War of the Roses or Princes in the Tower and it just feels absurd when you shoe-horn them into it.

[MinDonner]

Getting back to Pratchett, there is a great series of posts by Australian author Tansy Rayner Roberts in which she examines the women in Pratchett's books.

Starting with this one, in which she points out the problems Pratchett had in his earliest Discworld books and subsequently points out the ways the first few witches books are great in showing strong women. The most recent post (visiting Maskerade and Carpe Jugulum) is here and has links to the intermediate posts.

Nice article! Though it just makes me sadder about the travesty that was Snuff. No, Terry, the best way to deal with Jane Austen-like gender issues is not to have your male protagonist go "stop whining and go get jobs you lazy girls!" :bang:

[Lyanna Stark]

Not so much this one, but the next "The Perfect Blood". Where she suddenly forgot nearly everything she knew in the very first volume as well as all the stuff that she had learned since, just so she could be rescued by the current romantic interest/sexual tension provider.

Oh, you are making me not want to read them now. I haven't even started "Pale Demon" yet.

But the thing is - since sexual tension there got more or less resolved, Ivy was getting rather marginalized too. That's the kind of stuff that really irritates me, frankly.

And please, I don't want Rachel to be a Mary Sue, but her suddenly forgetting all skills that she had been learning and displaying throughout the series just so she can be repeatedly rescued? And by a character whose strengths really didn't lie in that area until now, but who had been abruptly upgraded to a total bad-ass since he became a romantic interest? Ugh.

True, the reason I enjoyed the Hollows series was because it had those rare ingredients of female friendhsips and female cooperation without having a man in there to relate to, it avoided most damsel in distress tropes

and had a pretty kickass, albeit flawed, heroine.

I find it really sad how short female characters (other then our special, special heroine who is lusted after and befriended by all those cool men) tend to come in supposedly female-oriented urban fantasy books. It is like ingrained self-loathing of the female gender or something.

Yep, it's really sad. It's like the yearning for wishfulfillment of the Twilight variety is so strong all possible female competitors must be eliminated. It makes it even worse that Rachel Morgan is not joining this pile of tripe.

It is also terrible that seemingly female authors with female protagonists are being pressured to concentrate on romance. Why can't I get an urban fantasy series with a female protagonist whose life includes no more than Harry Dresden /Peter Grant / Mathew Swift amount of romance? And who interacts as much with women as she does with men? And whose wise teacher/mentor can be a woman too?

I don't mind a well built romance, but it does seem almost all available ones are over the top, few nuances just full blown paranormal romance. They also often have extremly problematic power dynamics, exemplified both by Kelley Armstrong's series and by Twilight. It's described as totally OK for the men to be super controlling and manipulative arseholes with rape tendencies. In real life, this would lead to a restraining order. In Paranormal Romance, it leads to a happy ending and babies. :frown5:

[Datepalm]

A case of missed potential could be the Temeraire books of Naomi Novik. She has a few women in active non-traditional (within the setting) roles, but apart from telling about how shocking that was does not seem to do a lot with it. The problem might be that characters are not a strong point of the books to start with. (I only read the first 2 and a halve)

Jane Roland gets a few scenes of astonishing badassery in a later novel (the 3rd or 4th, I think. Or maybe the 5th. Not sure. They're blurring together a bit.) The 7th had a few more female characters, (and was generally a return to form) though they were still peripheral and not part of the main cast/crew.

OTOH...I mean, it's not a series about women. It's not a series about anyone, really, except the love of one man for one dragon. Thats what we have here, thats what she chose to write, and I don't think theres anything inherently wrong with that. The books aren't actively sexist - they're just not concerned with any particular female characters. (Unlike, say, books like Bakker or Jordan which ARE concerned with women but suck at it, or books that have very casts with an illogical deficit of women.) It's only in context of the wider genre that they're problematic, where most books don't seem to be concerned with women.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Nice article! Though it just makes me sadder about the travesty that was Snuff. No, Terry, the best way to deal with Jane Austen-like gender issues is not to have your male protagonist go "stop whining and go get jobs you lazy girls!" :bang:

I'm still waiting for the mass-market paperback version. After Making Money I no longer buy hardback Pratchett.

[Chaldanya]

Altho there has been a thread for these books I still think the Hunger Games trilogy is worth a mention because they deal with gender very well.

The main protagonist I find very well written with flaws and all but the bonus for me is the society in which the books are set. There is no commentary at all on Katniss being a female contestant and being she isn't automatically sexualised more than the male participants from the get-go. Katniss is the stereotypical male action hero: efficient/brave/quiet/stoic whilst Peeta is the stereotypical female foil: creative/in need of rescuing/demonstrative.

I think the romance sub-plot of the book is quite refreshing as well. Katniss is very confused by it all and in the first instance sees the romance between her and Peeta as a way of winning the Games. This tracks throughout the entire trilogy as she's not angsting full time about this or that boy - v. v. plausible as she's in the middle of fighting a war and doesn't have the energy to do so.

N

[SkynJay]

Getting back to Pratchett, there is a great series of posts by Australian author Tansy Rayner Roberts in which she examines the women in Pratchett's books.

Starting with this one, in which she points out the problems Pratchett had in his earliest Discworld books and subsequently points out the ways the first few witches books are great in showing strong women. The most recent post (visiting Maskerade and Carpe Jugulum) is here and has links to the intermediate posts.

Wow. I brought up Pratchett, but I don't think I ever made the connection that there wasn't a single major male character in Witches Abroad. Thanks for the Post, Ill read the next three after work.

edit: Actually I just kept reading them. I am on the fifth one, which deals with Night Watch, and have a question for others. The blogger says the Agony Aunts are women, where as I always had thought of them as transgendered. I don't have my books handy, but did I miss the point completely?