I don't watch Game of Thrones but I sure like reading about it

[lotesse]

Interesting convo over at Shakesville that deconstructs the "but rape is historically realistic" canard by showing all the historically realistic ways medieval women had to gain power that are written right out of Westeros.

More and more, Game of Thrones reinforces my conviction that it's essential to include author positionality in SFF analysis, maybe moreso than in other genres? because of the imaginative freedom/responsibility worldbuilding confers. GoT has some cool-sounding ladypersons in it, but I look at the author and I look at the stans and I don't think their fantasy about ladypersons in a crypto War of the Roses with dragons added is the same as mine. There's an investment in - I don't quite know the word, but bad history and rape culture and something liked medievalist evopsych? which I do not, will not, share. Sometimes you can cut the texts up and rearrange the pieces; but Rape Rape Martin, from what I can see, lays down some hard patterns; those books kind of sincerely scare me, I'll admit it. And the question becomes if it's worth doing the work.

Ironically, bc Martin is so often presented as an improvement on Tolkien, Middle-earth is actually much better at allowing realistic paths to power for women apart from fighting or fucking; there aren't many named ladypersons in LoTR but of the few there are two are Ioreth and my personal cotdamn hero Lobelia Sackville-Baggins. And maybe it's part of the reason why I'll always love Narnia best of all: because women in Narnia gain power through insight and imagination, and they don't have to fight OR fuck if they don't want to. It's much easier for me to mentally wander around Gondor or Cair Paravel and add in realistically diverse, complex, and powerful women than I feel like it would be to attempt the same thing around the Iron Throne.

Comments

[giandujakiss]

Also, I just have to add - this essay, the Rape of James Bond, talks about all the contexts in which it would be historically realistic to depict sexual violence against men. And somehow, Game of Thrones and similar almost never do.

[lotesse]

ooh, evidence! people get weirdly dismissive about that argument, like male biology is rape-proof or something.

it occurs to me that you could sum up the work of the social historian as the ongoing demonstration that just because the propaganda of the dominant classes orders that things be Done or Not Done you can't assume that people weren't getting on peoplishly the whole time. everyone is subject to the threat of sexual violence under a patriarchy, but conversely everyone, male or female, also is going to be trying to find ways to survive and escape and sometimes pulling off some boss shit in patriarchy's despite.

[lavendertook]

Women are in the minority in Tolkien's Legendarium, but the ones he presents DO THINGS. Galadriel is an athlete, and she and the Maia Melian have a relationship that makes the HoME pass the Bechdel test. Luthien Tinuviel goes on a quest with her mortal lover Beren to recover a Silmaril and has just as much agency as he does. Miriel is the quintessential weaver and sewer, and Nerdanel is an accomplished sculptor. Morwen has personality traits that do not revolve around the male gaze. The Vala Yavanna and Nienna together create the 2 Trees. Though her story is subsumed into a romance plot the way Eowyn's is, Andreth is still known as a wise woman.

I will not waste time reading RR Martin or watching that show--life is too short for me to spend on a text I've been well informed hates women so much.

[lotesse]

The impression I always get of Tolkien's deal with gender is a relatively unprejudiced but also really segregated mentality; he respects women but he doesn't really know that many, his academic and military experiences are totally homosocial, he's basically only ever been with Edith romantically. and absent experience with women he just sort of respectfully sets their stories aside.

It's still sidelining, but.

[lavendertook]

It totally is sidelining. And he does his share of pedestaling as well.

And yet, the amount of respect and humanity he gives to his women outstrips so many male writers since, whihc sadly isn't saying much. All I"m hoping for is inoffensiveness and some agency, not feminist depictions.

I'm still reading through the HoME and he continues to exceed my expectations on depictions of women. I think he was a good observer of people and observed a good share of women at Oxford and more as he came in contact with fan artists, and he had a daughter. Many men make their most feminist transformations after having daughters, and the parts of the HoME I'm reading now are from his later years. I can't call him feminist, but I think he may have gotten better on filling out his women characters in his later writings.

[lotesse]

He also had huge amounts of respect and admiration for his mother, even as a boy, and I think you can see it in his general respect for older women. Have you read Humphrey Carpenter's bio? It's striking how significant these powerful older women are to his young life - his mother in his childhood, raising her sons alone without the support of their extended family because of her faith, and then he meets Edith when he's sixteen and she's nineteen and she's this talented older musician that he pines over steadfastly for years.

[lavendertook]

Yeah, I got that from his bios, too. The men pining for women thousands of years older than them kind of strikes that biographical chord. ;-P

[neotoma]

The lack of religious institutions as a source of power for women is a very good point. It's a really weird thing about GRRM's writing in this case, because he did go to the trouble of creating several different competing religions, but a comparatively small number of his characters take their religion, whatever it happens to be serious.

I mean that in actual medieval Europe, you had people get into competitions showing how charitable they were by building hospitals, funding abbeys, etc, as well as the tithe being a legal obligation as well as a moral one, and there being temporal fall-out for committing atrocities because of denunciation by religious authorities (excommunication, interdiction or fantasy equivalents). We never see that sort of thing even come up, and I find it extremely weird, because that is the sort of thing that DOES happen since humans generally think their religious beliefs are as important as their political ones, if not more so.

[lotesse]

On the one hand I can locate the exclusion in the sort of general secular humanism of sff? I mean even Tolkien the devout Catholic gave us a churchless world. But the medieval church served all these other functions, and those are serious gaps in worldbuilding if left unchinked.

randomly enough, I keep misreading Margaery of Tyrell's name as Margery and picturing Natalie Dormer playing Margery Kempe, crying inappropriately and asserting her sexual sovereignty. the gift of weeping at least would not be out of place, I think.

[senmut]

I am reading the series, but I've already divorced the characters I enjoy from the stupid in the text. It's like McCaffrey and Anthony: they fucked it all up, but I like aspects and those aspects I want to explore.

[lotesse]

That's interesting - I had very similar experiences of quickly backbuttoning out of both McCaffrey and Anthony as a teen! & at least with McCaffrey I'd always put it down to being too old and at that point sophisticated as a fantasy reader. But now I'm wondering if I wasn't reacting allergically to the impending "nope nope nope". I don't like fighting with books, I find it pretty emotionally draining.

[senmut]

+nods+

It's a difference I've noted between myself and a lot of people. Mostly younger than I, but also women of my own age. My reading habits follow my dad's... devour everything, spit out what I don't like, revel in the rest.

[skywaterblue]

I find the TV show to be so much less problematic than the actual books, which I have never finished due to... so many ladies being thirteen. And raped. Or threatened with rape. Or dudes who want to sex or rape thirteen year olds.

It's a recurring theme. One that occurs so frequently that I'd be extremely hesitant to leave young women in a room with GRRM or his hardest core fans.