Gender treatment in fantasy, according to Bakker

[salinea]

Still from Pat's Fantasy Hotlist, interview of R. Scott Bakker, about the Prince of Nothing epic fantasy series which I reviewed here.

- The genre exhibits a strong (albeit recent) tradition for subverting gender stereotypes by presenting worlds in which strong, independent female characters are plausible or even expected. Yet your world is as patriarchal as the reality that inspired it. I expect that this theme makes up for a good part of the discussions you have about your creation, possibly detracting from what you actually want to talk about. Is it difficult to resist the temptation to put something like a bad-ass tomboy warrior-princess with snappy dialogue and a heart of gold into the books?

First, let me say that I think I should be called out on the carpet on this issue, simply because I cover some pretty troubling ground. I certainly don’t believe in "quota characterization," either to be politically correct or to broaden the "gender appeal" of my books. Leave this for the after-school specials. I also don’t think that depiction automatically equals endorsement. The question that people should be asking, it seems to me, is one of whether I reinforce negative gender stereotypes or problematize them. If the books provide enough grist to argue this question, then the answer, it seems to me, automatically becomes the latter.

But the fact remains that a lot of people get hung up on my female characters: On the one hand, I self-consciously chose the harlot, the waif, and the harridan for my female characters, yet some seem to think a kind of unconscious moral defect chose them for me. If so, it would be a truly colossal coincidence that I would happen to pick the three misogynic types - I mean, isn’t it obvious that I’m up to something critical? On the other hand, I wanted my fantasy world to be realistic, to temper our yearning for premodern times with a good look at how ugly things got, particularly in times of war. When bad things happen to my female characters, it’s the circumstances that are being criticized, not the characters themselves!

But people get hunches while they read, and once they do, confirmation bias goes to work (and this is simply one among many reasons why we always buy our own bullshit), and the text, I think, possesses more than enough ambiguities for people spin any number of self-validating interpretations. It’s when they insist their interpretation is the only interpretation, or even worse, that it captures what’s really going on in my bean, that I become baffled.

Now, I'd argue with the form of the question (it's arguable whether it's a genre convention "to subvert gender stereotypes by presenting worlds in which strong, independent female characters are plausible"...), but the subject of females characters in that series is certainly interesting.

For those who haven't read it, the world presented is indeed inescapably gritty and brutally violent, especially against women and there's a strong sense of realism to it.

Of the three characters that Bakker mentions, though, I'd say that only Esmenet, the "harlot", is a real success, she's the only one that can be seen as sympathetic and strong, and her story is compelling. The two others serve more as plot device than anything IMHO. The "harridan" doesn't even have a PoV and is intensely creepy (not that creepiness is exceptionnal in those books ^^), and the "waif", Serwë, is victimised, shallow and stupid enough that despite the sympathy I felt for what she lived through, I would never say I found her interesting as a character.
I do agree about Bakker's point about "problematizing", which is worthy enough, although in this case one should also take into consideration the context of the genre, because if every story is one of gritty realism, then the problematization may be more of a reinforcement than he would think.
Then there's the issue which he fails to mention, which is the treatment of sex and sexuality, and of the bad guys of the setting utilisation of sex in extremely creepy way, and how it relates to his treatment of gender.

Thoughts?

Comments

[eefster.livejournal.com]

First of all, I totally agree on the phrasing of the question.

I also agree with Bakker that there's nothing wrong with purportedly exaggerating current society's tendencies in order to pick them apart more easily. I can understand why he picked the three archetypes he did, certainly. But I do think you're right that Esme's the only one who's actually a character. (Which isn't to say all of the male presences are characters, of course - they aren't.)

Mostly, though, what I don't understand is this willful self-separation of 'what I meant' from 'what I wrote' -- for someone who is lauded for using his words so precisely, and for being willing to confront the ugly truth, then why is he so reluctant to admit that some of those "self-validating interpretations" are of the nasty type? Not of him, but of those very characters he said weren't being criticised by his work?

Of course, I also disagree with Pat's assertion that Bakker's highlighting of the patriarchal nature of modern and 'idyllic earlier' society isn't part of what he wants to talk about. If he didn't want to talk about it, he wouldn't admit to making it such a big, deliberate inclusion in his work.

[scriva.livejournal.com]

The question made me roll my eyes a little bit, but hey, everyone has his perception.

I more or less agree with your perception of the characters, and the problematic. I think he problematizes and reinforces stereotypes.

I also think that sexuality per se is one of those topics Bakker discusses and problematizes, and he shows sexuality mostly as something that either destroys people (like Cnaiur trying to shake off his sexuality) or is used to control people. I'm not sure though how much of this is part of the wish for "grit", or part of the story's core: What makes people behave the way they behave? (I have to admit that this is the reason why I can not bring up real love for the books. There is almost nothing and nobody that is balanced or healthy.)

[shiinabambi.livejournal.com]

Disclaimer: I have not read these books.

I have, however, suffered through the first four books of Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series, (on the recommendation of a friend; I gave up on both the books and his recommendations when he saw the parallels to Christianity in the story not as a sad lack of imagination or preachiness, but as t3h profound) in which the bad guys have predictably evil traits: the pedophile, the misogynist, the rapist, etc. (As a result, Goodkind has to do almost no work to make us hate them, but that's an entirely different rant on bad writing.)

When it was just that rape is used as a weapon of war (that's reality) or that men from misogynistic cultures use sex as a way to humiliate and debase women, well, that might have passed for "gritty realism." He crossed the line with the constant threats of rape on the heroine that never actually came to pass, (I began to wonder, in a world so intent on raping her, how the hell she escaped intact, against all odds, and if this meant that her character could no longer be the brave and righteous heroine if she did in fact fall victim to rape, and in a perverse way, wished for her rape, because the goddamn constant suspense was annoying me) and with the mutilation, and various other things that seemed, if problematizing misogyny, to also give it a lot of long, lingering, glorified attention. (Not saying we should ignore the problems women face. There's a line here, and I'm not quite sure how to draw it. More exposure is good, but it depends on the context and how it's done?)

It's also worth noting that any story "problematizing" a given thing is way more preachy than a story that writes about what the world would be like without said thing. The tomboy warrior princess grew up in a world where women were, if not equal, at least not oppressed to the point of breaking them. Such things have been realities, are reality, and will be reality again. Just because there are times and places where women are and have been oppressed does not mean that it has always been impossible for a woman to be powerful, everywhere. In fact, even in the medieval Europe that so many fantasies model themselves after, there was more power for some women than the layman who learned all his history from reading fantasy books would suspect. That a (male) author believes that a world in which women have no rights, no chance, and no spunk, and are pretty much reduced to victims and whores is "gritty realism" says more about his perception of reality than it does about reality itself.

I am also fairly insulted that he thinks that the only reason someone would write a woman with any kind of personal power would be "to be politically correct or to broaden the 'gender appeal' of [their] books" and is best left to "after-school specials". While I agree that some authors go too far with the, "Look at my awesome woman! Women can be blacksmith warrior magic-users too! I so subverted all the stereotypes!" characterization, but there reaches a point where a character (yes, even a female character) has to cease being a political statement about how women are so oppressed or women are so kickass, and not represent all women ever or demonstrate the problems all women face, and just be....herself. If she does something cliche, so be it. Sometimes it's more in keeping with the character to do that than to detour way around it for the sole purpose of not being cliche. (Of course, if it's nothing BUT cliches, we're back to bad writing.)

Once I met a man who believed that if not for laws protecting women, we would be nothing but the battered sex-slaves of men, passed around like whores and forced to service their needs on whim. He considered laws to be almost a charity--made by men and showing remarkable self-restraint. Since then, I realize that many men believe in such a world, where only "civilization" protects the woman from becoming a used sexual object. Hence their "gritty realism." A pity more of them did not study history.

[ciage.livejournal.com]

I followed the link from FeministsFantasy. Never posted there, either.

Anyway, not having read the series, here's my two cents.

Even with my own writing, I think as a female, I'm more aware of certain stereotypes and tropes than and I'm also more condescending of female characters than their male counterparts--in other words, a male and a female can exhibit the same character traits from similar upbringing, and as a female, I'm more likely to be condemning of the female (usually for various reasons, but usually, I just find them to be objectified twits). Even to keep having these conversations I think alludes that there is still gender inequality at least insofar as expectation. Then again, this is coming from a wannabe writer who reads mostly men, and is annoyed by the lack of characters I usually can identify with (at least, that aren't villainesses).

To play the devil's advocate over here, it's difficult to not soapbox with a given character one feels strongly about, and the harlot might speak for all the harlots in a given world if only because we only get to know one, rather than the entire brothel/cityworks. Personally, I find it easier to explore a more developed character who exhibits negative traits that I identify with, which might be why some male authors can only write certain ‘types’ of women.

Anyway, to get on the topic of females in gritty subjects, I usually like it more when male authors go on about it. I’ve noticed some female authors use rape to make us feel sorry for/sympathize with characters, or simply rape/maim characters the author doesn’t like. But to be fair, the novels I’m talking about generally speaking aren’t gritty fantasy.