I admit that I’ve never read beyond five pages of Bakker’s debut novel The Darkness that Comes Before. It may have something to do with the fact that the thing opens with a little boy being repeatedly raped, though really the writing is leaden as fuck too.
What you need to know about Bakker’s books, though, is that in his setting women are–objectively–spiritually inferior to men. And that, throughout his books, people are raped a lot: not just women, mind, but even so. It’s a lot of rape to go around, a lot of juvenile grimdark. A lot of people complained about this. Bakker fired back with this:
In a Q&A you did five years ago, you brought up the issue of exploring sexism in the guise of what if religious tracts were correct about the “inferiority” of women. Despite this, you’ve received some flak for the lack of female characters that aren’t variations of the “crone, whore, or saint.” Has this affected your portrayals of some of the female characters?
When it comes to the misogyny charge my answer has been fairly consistent, I think. First, that I am a sexist, insofar as I think men are generally less competent than women across the majority of modern social contexts.
Awwww isn’t he adorable. He thinks this will let him off the hook! Isn’t it just the cutest? Maybe it’d have been if Bakker was ten.
I generally find women more reliable and trustworthy. If anything, misandry is my problem, not misogyny.
LOOOOOOOOOOL.
Pity misandry isn’t a real thing, hmm? And, yeah, sure. Sure you do, boyo.
Third, that those who decide my books are misogynistic cannot help but find evidence to confirm their view (just as people who decide my books are feminist (my intention) cannot help but find evidence confirming their view). Fourth, that I recognize the problem of the ‘Archie Bunker effect,’ that for many readers the feminist subtexts are simply too opaque to rescue the books from misogynistic misreadings.
aaaaaaaaaahahahaha
So, if you think his whole “women are objectively spiritually inferior” thing is misogynistic, you’re just letting your bias get into the way. You’ve already decided, in a vacuum, that he is a sexist cock. It can’t have been something Bakker wrote, or said, can it? Ah no. The problem, my friends, is that the feminist subtexts are just too opaque for little minds like ours to comprehend. Here’s a hint, boyo; while it’s possible to explore feminism through creating a fictional misogynistic culture, it takes a good bit of finesse to do. The finesse that you, being an egocentric little wanker with gargantuanly overinflated ideas of your own writing ability and worth, do not have. You aren’t exactly Ursula le Guin or… or anything who’s done anything worthwhile to contribute to feminism, really.
And fifth, that the story is far from done, that my critics are passing judgment on fractions of the whole.
Eat shit. The first bite tastes like shit? Keep going, eventually it’ll become cake.
A surfeit of ‘weak female characters’ they then consider a flag for misogyny. Add that to a brutally patriarchal setting, and we have a pretty compelling case that Bakker is a misogynist.
Uhm, yes?
All they need do is keep reading after this point: a character will have a hundred thoughts, and they’ll pounce upon the one involving sex. That thought will have a hundred different possible interpretations, but they’ll crow about the one that confirms their criticism. The very semantic density of the works begins working against me. Competing interpretations are dismissed, particularly if they’re charitable. To preempt the possibility that I’m doing something more complicated, I get dragged through the mud in other ways. I become trite, derivative, preachy, and the list goes on.
Well I don’t know about your prose, boyo, but you know what you sound like right now? Trite. Preachy. Whiny. Stupid. And pretentious, while we’re at it. You see, sonny, people are not obliged to read your work the way you want them to.
Once people socially commit to this position, then its game over. Others challenge them (because the books really are more complicated) and suddenly making their case becomes a matter of in-group prestige.
Oh my goodness can you get any further up your own anus. MY BOOKS CHALLENGE YOU, THEY ARE SO COMPLICATED. What a self-important little roach.
They become invested, to the point of repeating the same arguments over years. It really is remarkable. They end up sounding like, well, gay conservatives.
HAHA PEOPLE WHO THINK HIS BOOKS ARE MISOGYNISTIC ARE JUST LIKE GAY CONSERVATIVES
What did you have for breakfast on that day, Bakker? Your own piss?
And the unfortunate fact is that they prime the expectations of other readers, bend the funhouse mirror in ways that tend to close the possibility of open, charitable readings–a mindset that I think the books genuinely reward. I have no doubt that sales have suffered, such is the power of labels. Books that interrogate misogyny, that ask genuinely hard questions about gender (as opposed to politically correct ones), become shunned as ‘misogynistic.’
My jaw actually dropped IRL here. I don’t think this part requires any commentary. It speaks for itself, and what it says is: “I, R. Scott Bakker, is an egocentric snowflake who can take no criticism and I’m as good a feminist as Joss Whedon, totally.” Good job sneaking in the “politically correct” jibe in there, shit-eater, because this diatribe just wouldn’t be complete without.
Is this me ‘blaming the reader’? Fucking A it is.
Awwww people don’t read your books just the way you want them to.
How harsh reality is.
There just has to be something wrong with me or my books. It’s so obvious. And yet, when I tell friends of mine, male and female, that people ‘out there’ think I’m a male chauvinist, they laugh their asses off. People who actually know me think it’s preposterous.
Why do all neckbeards trot out this one? “You don’t know me, you don’t know meeeee.” Either it’s their wife, or their mom, or their goldfish, who thinks they are just dandily perfect human beings and would never, ever do or say anything that’d be sexist/racist/homophobic. The thought that people might be remotely justified at all never strikes them. It’s simply not possible. After all, people who know them say so. The rest of us who simply derive his attitudes from what he says and does online, well, we could never be magical enough to truly know him.
More than a few times I found myself writing material that I knew people would intentionally read against my intent, but like I said, I was already committed. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that a certain subset of readers will see flags instead of ciphers, and that this controversy will always dog the books. All I can hope is that the overall reputation of the series will survive and eventually overshadow this perplexing sideshow. For all the praise you hear about ‘risk taking,’ you still get punished for taking them. That’s what makes them risks in the first place!
Bakker has taught me that:
- it’s always the readers’ fault you come across as a sexist douche
- it’s incomprehensible that anyone would find his texts misogynistic (despite the “women are, objectively, spiritually inferior to men”), “perplexing sideshow” even
- writing misogynistic texts in a genre full of misogynistic texts constitutes significant risk-taking
Thank you, Mr Bakker.
He is also notable for masquerading on Westeros.org while referring to himself as though he weren’t Bakker. That’s right, compatriots: he honestly sock-puppets in praise of himself. When caught out, he erupted into excuses. Like everything else he says and does online, the excuses he throws up are incredibly wanky and pretentious.
rizzrustbolt
/ August 16, 2011Wow, that guy sure does have a high opinion of his filo-thin characters.
Also; “Pierce Inverarity “?
…
/NuclearFacepalm
acrackedmoon
/ August 16, 2011He’s found this post and is now thumping his chest on his blog. The thought that it’s quite telling that rational people and misogynistic dicks alike find him incredibly wanky and pretentious seems to have, as per usual, quite eluded him.
Too good to be true.
ginmar
/ April 12, 2012I was following links elsewhere—-cats, of all things—-when I came across somebody defending him. You know, the thing that really depresses me is that there are obviously piles of guys who:
1. Don’t accept that blatant sexism IS BAD ENOUGH TO LABEL THE DAMNED BOOK.
2. Will defend their dudebro against all criticism without considering said criticism, because if their dudebro is this fucked up, what’s the matter with them?
3. Don’t get that sexism, by itself, is so serious a flaw that yes, it is enough to invalidate a whole book, or person, or career, especially if the person involved gets whiny and defensive;
4. Don’t think that a woman’s opinion of sexism is good enough;
5. Always know that if their convenient friends or wives or whatever disagree, then that’s more important;
6. Never get that maybe, just maybe, their friends are biased?
7. Endorse charges of sexism only if it causes them or their friends no harm;
8: Value backing up their dudebros more than injustice to women.
Can you imagine how defensive they get against more serious charges?
I have to marvel at the dudes that refuse to acknowledge or admit how men compartmentalize about women, and so can value some women while view others as disposable or worthless. This fits into your “mean girls” post so well: “But…..but….she was MEAN to me!”
dharmakitri
/ August 16, 2011“It may have something to do with the fact that the thing opens with a little boy being repeatedly raped…”
From the Prolouge of “The Darkeness that Comes Before” (e-book version) by R. Scott Bakker
————
“Terrified by the Bard’s strange manner and one white eye, the young boy hid, venturing out only when his hunger became unbearable. The old Bard continually searched for him, singing ancient songs of lov and battle, but slurring the words in blasphemous ways. “Why won’t you show yourself, child?” hew would cry as he reeled through the galleries. “Let me sing to you. Woo you with secret songs. Let me share the glory of what once was!”
“One night the Bard caught the boy. He caressed first his cheek and then his thigh. “Forgive me,” he muttered over and over, but tears fell only from his blind eye. “There are no crimes,” he mumbled afterward, “when no one is left alive.”
————-
You are introducing things into the text that aren’t there. This character was not, as you claim, “repeatedly raped”. Before you expect anybody to take your “criticism” seriously, maybe you wanna re-read the text to make sure you actually know what happens in the story.
acrackedmoon
/ August 16, 2011But, sweetums, I don’t give a shit about Bakker’s text. It’s tripe. So much so that I couldn’t be bothered to pirate the thing to check the prologue, though now that you’ve mentioned it maybe I’ll torrent the whole collection and leave it to seed just because. I like to give back to the community, you know?
Thank you for the correction, though! A little boy being raped just the once is so much more wholesome and palatable. What a wonderful world we live in and what deliciously edgy and mature
ordureliterature Mr Bakker has produced! With an opening like that, why, you know you just can’t go wrong. Teenage boys, and men with teenage minds, everywhere furiously fapping onto the pages. Do you touch yourself while reading Bakker’s opus, darling?uracrazybitch
/ February 14, 2012After reading a few of your poorly thought out blogs, several things became quite apparent.
1. You are quite unattractive. If you were even remotely pretty you would not have developed such an intense self-loathing which you try to pass off as hatred of R Scott Bakker.
2. You were obviously sexually abused, hence your constant mentioning of rape.
3. You hate men. You are guilty of the exact thing that you accuse Bakker of. You claim he cannot take criticism. Neither can you apparently. You have made more sexist remarks than any that Bakker may have made in his entire set of books, which brings me to my next point.
4.You are a failed writer. Thus this ridiculous blog. No actual meaningful content. Just the volcanic hatred you accuse an actual published author of.
5.Lesbian anyone?
6.Father left you at a very early age. You would have self esteem if your father(oddly enough, a man) had instilled any in you.
In short, you hate R Scott Bakker because you see so much of yourself in him, sans the fame of course. Isn’t it fascinating that I know so much about you just from sifting through your bullshit? Sucks to be a smart, intelligent, good looking man……..NOT
P.S. Since I know how you operate, I am just letting you know that I will not be logging in to see your response. That way I know you will read my comments but you will not have the satisfaction of thinking that I read yours.
Checkmate
(corymeier77@yahoo.com
75.82.96.43)
acrackedmoon
/ February 14, 2012Let it through because it’s so by the book I can’t even pretend to be upset. Since you’re being brave and everything, I hope you don’t mind that I made your e-mail and IP address public. :)
Gourmet Neurovore
/ February 14, 2012‘By the book’? It’s like the entire contents of Derailing for Dummies achieved sentience and lurched into the blog.
.
So, who wants to goatse his email address first?
wisebass
/ August 16, 2011The short answer is “it would help if you had read more of the books”.
The longer answer is that the metaphysics of the setting are intentionally misogynistic and cruel. This is a setting where Old Testament Morality (along with some more recent concepts, like “lake of fire” damnation) is real: snakes are holy while pigs are profane, etc. But at no point is this portrayed as a good thing from a more consequentialist view of morality – in fact, Bakker shows how horrifyingly cruel, arbitrary, and harsh it is, and how it shapes the society in the Three Seas negatively.
This is not misogynism on his part, unless you think the mere act of depicting a highly misogynistic fictional society is misogynistic on the part of the author (and you don’t, at least from this post).
Bakker has tried to explain that elsewhere, but it tends to get bogged down by his incredible verbosity and tendency to philosophize.
acrackedmoon
/ August 16, 2011Ahaha fanboy brigade is here, oh man this is the best. I’m not sure what “misogynism” is, by the way.
Here’s the thing: even setting aside everything, Bakker never ceases coming across as a pretentious prat who believes more words are better and appears to love–figuratively speaking–the sound of his own voice, or at least the noise of his fingers tapping away on the keyboard. Fair enough; the tapping sound can be quite soothing and pleasing. But, just like his prose, much of what he says is wanky dross, not substance. That’s why his “explanations” don’t fly. This interview in particular involves very little engagement with critiques, and a lot of “boohoohoo they’re just so mean and they don’t understand me because they have pea-brains, my mommy tells me I’m the brightest and bestest and THEY ARE JUST STUPID MEANIE-HEADS.” It’s defensive, pathetic, and most pro authors don’t do this for a good reason.
Maybe if he were a good writer who can communicate his ideas concisely. Although that still won’t help the whole “hiding under a different user name while pretending he is not R Scott Bakker, in a discussion about R Scott Bakker’s writing” thing. Anyone who does this is just a sad, sad child.
rizzrustbolt
/ August 17, 2011Simple lesson: Only showing the bad side of things, does not an Object Lesson make.
ginmar
/ April 12, 2012Funny how often guys choose those woman-hating places to write in, isn’t it?
The Ross (@ROStevenson)
/ August 16, 2011Bakker does get a bit pretentious while playing up the obscurity of his text. The feminism is actually quite apparent. It’s those of you whose preconceptions lead you to miss it that give him his big head about his alleged opaqueness and broad range of interpretation.
It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than this: Bakker is telling us, “If chauvinism ever could make sense, it would have to be in a world like this,” and gives us a strange fantasy land with a strange spiritual ontology. It’s your job, as the reader, to realize that our world lacks that ontology that makes chauvinism make sense, and thus gain a new appreciation for how wrongheaded woman hating is. It’s called an argument ad absurdum.
acrackedmoon
/ August 16, 2011I’m delighted that you agree he’s pretentious. See, Bakker? Even your fans think you’re a wanker.
It’s your job, as the reader,
Hahaha no. Next!
Neo-Prodigy
/ August 17, 2011“It’s your job, as the reader,”
Uh no. The audience owes the writer nothing.
rizzrustbolt
/ August 17, 2011It’s only argument ad absurdum if at some place in your argument you point out the absurdities. R. Scott Bakker never does that. He sets up these horrible places, and he never shows us why they are all wrong. We as the reader should never have to bring anything to a story. That’s the job of the storyteller.
Even Thomas Pynchon never tried to pull that bullshit.
Alexander David McCabe
/ August 16, 2011Just checking, but what is the fundamental difference between this and, say, the Handmaid’s Tale, which also sets up a misogynist dystopia? That is to say, why does one fail horribly and the other succeed (assuming that you actually liked The Handmaid’s Tale – if not, feel free to substitute the dystopian novel of your choice)? Other than that the author is a condescending dick IRL, of course.
Honest question, by the way, since I’ve never read Bakker’s stuff, only his fans’ high-minded defences of it, and realise there may be some serious disconnect between the two.
acrackedmoon
/ August 17, 2011I’ve read impressions of people who met him IRL, and it seems he is about as pompous and ridiculous there as he is online, which is quite the contrast to the more common “author x is offensive online but fairly polite at cons.”
Just checking, but what is the fundamental difference between this and, say, the Handmaid’s Tale, which also sets up a misogynist dystopia?
I’m tempted to say “because there’s no scene in The Handmaid’s Tale where a bunch of people are graphically raped in quick succession.” More seriously, Atwood never proposes that women in it are in some ways objectively inferior (Bakker does); they suffer because the society they live in is shit, the way it tends to be in the real world. As well, there’s the academic transcript at the end which examines Gilead and its misogyny as something objectionable.
Writers who pull off a dystopia successfully tend to have a pretty strong and insightful idea of what they are doing, I think. Yevgeny Zamyatin had a definite insight into Soviet Russia–seeing as he was living through it–that shows in We. Huxley had, at the time, a fairly new fear of mindless consumption (and decades after the publication of A Brave New World we are finding that it isn’t so far off a picture of the future). All these writers, plus Atwood, make it quite clear that what they are depicting is bad.
Bakker, on the other hand, has no real grasp of the harms of misogyny. All he knows about it, as far as I can tell, is something sophomoric like “it’s bad :(.” If you want to deal with it, and gender politics, in your narrative you need a more nuanced understanding than that. Moreover, The Handmaid’s Tale is a woman’s story, whereas for Bakker his vague intention to deal with misogyny is just one more item on a to-do list swamped with pompous attempts to subvert the genre and cram in as much pretension as he can–and it’s a narrative, also, full of dudes. Positing yourself as a feminist while spending most of your time writing men’s stories: you’re doing it wrong.
nextfriday
/ August 17, 2011What is it with the tendency to think that readers can’t tell the difference between a dystopia and a fap-world?
-WS
Gourmet Neurovore
/ August 19, 2011@nextfriday: Well, to be fair, it seems Bakker can’t tell the difference either…
(McCabe here, just in case you were wondering – got an account so I could reply properly).
@acrackedmoon: Seems like a reasonable breakdown of the differences. One thing I was wondering about, though, was the whole rape business. Returning to the Handmaid’s Tale, there is at least one case of on-screen non-consensual sex (Offred claims it’s not rape because she ‘signed up for’ it, but given the likely penalties for a Handmaid turning her Commander down…), and a mention of off-screen ‘rape marches’. In what way would you say Atwood got the treatment of rape right (again, assuming you think she did), and Bakker did not? Less… trivialisation? More exploration of the consequences? Better writing? Or is it just that the book’s other problems made it impossible for him to handle rape properly even if the parts where he wrote about it were relatively well-executed?
Apologies if I’m asking a bunch of extremely stupid questions here. Clueless white male nerd (yes, another one) trying to check if he’s on something approaching the same page as everyone else – and, if not, trying to figure out how he can get a bit closer to it.
acrackedmoon
/ August 20, 2011Check out how Bakker writes rape (scroll way down). I think you can agree that it’s vastly different from what appears in The Handmaid’s Tale. For one, it reads like borderline titillation, especially the “ejaculate on her tits” thing.
Gourmet Neurovore
/ August 20, 2011(reads creepy demon rape scene, winces at mentions of ‘lithe curves’ and ‘sunlit breasts’). Wow, yeah, that ain’t right. I’m pretty sure that a series aimed at exposing the evils of institutionalised misogyny isn’t supposed to have rape scenes that read like something off asstr.org.
However, the scene that you said made you stop reading clearly wasn’t intended to titillate, judging by the excerpt posted above. So I’m guessing the reasons you didn’t like it were different. Too early? I can see how having that as your establishing series moment could be (read: totally is) a bit on the tasteless ‘iz grimdark and MATURE nao’ side. Atwood, in contrast, used her depictions of rape considerably more sparingly to ensure they kept their impact and remained uncheapened.
That about right?
acrackedmoon
/ August 20, 2011Oh man, thank you for reminding me about asstr.org. I was just writing a different post and thinking “what was the name of that creepy archive full of horrid erotica and rape fantasies, that kind of took over after the Grey Archive died?”
I can see how having that as your establishing series moment could be (read: totally is) a bit on the tasteless ‘iz grimdark and MATURE nao’ side.
Yeah, that and–even at the time–I thought the writing was on the self-important side of things. I actually read more than five pages, past the prologue, but soon lost interest. That and all the names have ridonkulous amounts of accent marks. I’ve seen even a few dudebro readers cringing at some of the torture/sex/rape scenes. It should probably be noted, too, that while a woman being raped will have “sunlit breasts” and “lithe curves,” the rapes of the little boy and that Angelos dude aren’t described in terms so titillating. A small sample, admittedly, but I’m not sure anyone is willing to gather up all the rape scenes of men and women in the series and compare them side by side to scan for titillating vs non-titillating language.
Ronan Wills
/ August 16, 2011I haven’t read Bakkar’s books (or even heard of them up to this point) but it seems as if the initial complaint brought up by the question acrackedmoon quoted wasn’t so much the setting as it was this:
I can see where he’s coming from with the setting, but if he’s coupling it with shallow female characters then his attempts as feminism ring false.
I’m curious about what he thinks the genuinely hard questions are.
And yes, that entire post contains neutron star density levels of pretentiousness. If I was ever the producer of some sort of mass-consumed creative work (and I hope to be some day) I think I’d just let people interpret the story how the want. If you write anything with a message people are going to misinterpret it (whether or not that’s your fault) and I think it’s best to just shrug your shoulders and let them get on with it.
acrackedmoon
/ August 17, 2011Considering that his view on misogyny seems to be no more complex or nuanced than “sexism is bad and stuffies!1!” I’d wager that his idea of genuinely hard questions are something like “how many women can I put into this rape scene? Because that shows people that rape is a bad thing, right?”
Bakker needs to learn about this thing called “death of the author” sometime. Shame that a man who likes to think himself sophisticated and educated seems unaware of the concept.
emeryrobinson
/ August 16, 2011Hi, Robinson L/Arkan 2 here. *waves*
Okay, I don’t really know or care about Bakker, but this part threw me off.
Isn’t it? I’ll grant Bakker was probably using the term entirely wrong, and that many people (especially men) probably do, but I thought stuff like saying men can’t be raped, real men don’t cry, suck it up and be a man … isn’t that misandry?
acrackedmoon
/ August 17, 2011Misandry isn’t a real thing in the sense that it’s not a problem of institutional oppression: men don’t have oppressors, being on top of the privilege hierarchy, and most of the people practicing machismo are themselves men. I agree that there are harmful cultural narratives, but men don’t generally lose jobs/fail to get jobs because they are men, and when they are “objectified” in art the power dynamics are entirely different from when women are, etc. I’d personally call what you’ve described harmful gender essentialism.
emeryrobinson
/ August 18, 2011Ah, okay. It sounds like we’re coming at this from two different schools of feminist thought, then. My understanding is that patriarchy and male supremacy oppress everyone on the privilege hierarchy, including the men up at the top (in different ways).
… Different interpretations, I guess. *shrug*
emeryrobinson
/ December 19, 2011You know, on reflection it occurs to me that my previous comments here were probably derailing (I say “probably” because I’m not 100% sure what counts as off-topic for this blog). Sorry about that, and thanks for sharing your perspective anyway.
emeryrobinson
/ August 16, 2011Sorry, that was probably confusing. I meant that the above statements about men are harmful cultural narratives (should’ve put them in quotes), and I was asking “isn’t ‘misandry’ the proper word to describe these harmful cultural narratives?”
Paul Vincent (@PapushiSun)
/ August 16, 2011I had no idea about the sock puppetry, but totally makes sense: he has an ego the size of a supernova. And I can never finish his interviews. His mindboggling lack of self-awareness just rankles too much.
acrackedmoon
/ August 17, 2011The sockpuppet thing is special. I’ve seen many a writer upset by critiques of their books, but they usually show up under their own names at least, and what’s best is that when caught out he went “I was referring to myself in the second genitive! I wasn’t pretending I wasn’t me!” Goodness, what a child.
James Evans (@CursedArmada)
/ August 17, 2011Leave Bakker alone man, you sound like an obsessed weirdo… Take a chill pill! Oh, and you didn’t even get passed the prologue? You sound like a complete douche! Bakker is the shit and his books are a huge influence on my life, and my imagination. YOU sound like an arrogant Shitbag. BTW that prologue is fucking amazing… I don’t care what you have to say.I am a piss-gargling fool. I touch myself at night as I read the demon rape scene in The Judging Eye.
Kitty (@calixti)
/ August 17, 2011I wound up reading halfway through The Darkness That Comes Before, and I wish I’d been able to stop five pages in. It really does not get any better.
Unfortunately, I was in a psych ward, and that was the book my parents brought me, so I had nothing else to read. And when you’re already in bad enough mental condition to land there, reading Bakker’s misogynistic tripe is very, very unhelpful.
acrackedmoon
/ August 17, 2011D:!
No words enough for the D:
I’m sorry you had to go through it during a time of such bad headspace.
layogenic
/ August 17, 2011Ah, the Joss Whedon effect. “I declare myself a feminist, and thereby my works are empowering to women.” Good times.
I also went to read his chest-thumping, which is really just more of the same. For somebody who trots out the “preconceived prejudice” argument a lot, he seems woefully incapable of studying his self-affirmations.
acrackedmoon
/ August 17, 2011One of his fans seems to believe that, in comparing Whedon to Bakker, I was holding up Whedon as an exemplary feminist. Ahhh, Bakker. He may think his works are the height of clever and erudite subversion, but if that’s the case it doesn’t show in his readership.
Bakker does this “come to me, my fans; commence the circle-jerk, for someone has slighted my honor!” thing with rather… alarming frequency. (Note: the latter link was when a racist and misogynist had a go at Bakker. Amusingly, though, one of the things Bakker got annoyed about was that said misogynist objected to the copious rape. You know you’re doing something wrong when you claim you’re writing feminist subtexts and yet manage to offend–with your misogyny–someone who thinks women are inferior, lie about rape, and have no place voting.)
layogenic
/ August 17, 2011Oh dear heavens. Actually, that’s kind of what this feels to me–like a bait and switch. Write a incredibly gross story, see who responds, then have a laugh behind your hand with his friends at the sad little sperm that enjoy it. Except instead he’s having to defend his little TOTALLYNOTAFANTASY world against people who expected it to deliver something better…AND people who wanted more..?
(Your last note got me. How often I have sat staring at a dribbling post and thought, “This person is voting this fall.” Ugh.)
acrackedmoon
/ August 17, 2011Oh, no, not quite like that–Theo thinks women shouldn’t get to vote because, well… because! :D But come to that, Theo himself probably shouldn’t get to vote.
ginmar
/ April 12, 2012And he just had to make a joke about the rapes in his books were every other other page, just not every other page. Jeez.
layogenic
/ August 17, 2011OOOH I get it. Punctuation comprehension fail on my part. Still.
The Dollhouse/Darkness comparisons are apt. And oh the intent-o-meter is pushing the red on his latest post. “No no, I LIKE the perspective!” Hoo ha ha what a kidder.
acrackedmoon
/ August 17, 2011Awwww he’s adorable. “Blog war relationships.”
How disappointed he will be when it slowly dawns on him that I’ll probably never make another post about him seeing how one-note he is.
layogenic
/ August 17, 2011Well to be fair we ARE still talking about oh hey you remember your Terry Goodkind piece on your Terribad list? Do you realize that EVERY character mechanic (including his character thank yous!) you broke down in his Sword series is the male version of LKH? Like, directly, except for the rape squads.
And uh, sorry for not replying to the thread last time, I’m obviously new at this wordpress thing. ._.
Kyra
/ August 17, 2011I don’t know whether I’m more annoyed at the blatant misogyny, the pretentious wank or the authorial intent crap. It might be the latter actually. I wish authors would just accept that their “intent” means absolutely nothing. The whole idea of reading against an author’s intent presupposes validity of authorial intent in determining the way texts are interpreted by readers. This is a weird abstract thing to be annoyed by. But I am :)
acrackedmoon
/ August 18, 2011Not just you. There’s something ridiculous about an author who can’t accept that there are people who give a shit about his intent. Very JK Rowling of him, though even she has been much more graceful and mature about such things than he can ever hope to be.
Christian M Franklin (@cmfranklin1983)
/ August 18, 2011I read the forum post you talked about, where he “pretended” to not be himself. I guess you missed the part where he signed the post “scott/” – the reply was directed at how Scott was talking to the poster. There was never a question of who was posting.Considering the title of your blog is “Requires Only That You Hate” I’m going to assume you’re just a troll that decided to up her blog hits by provoking an author who isn’t afraid to respond to critics of his books.
When I drank my own personal belief kool-aid I sure am glad I didn’t get any of yours. Whew.
I’m a subliterate dick with low reading comprehension and I lick the feet of R. Scott Bakker because that makes me feel fulfilled as a person. :(
acrackedmoon
/ August 18, 2011Aaaaaaaaaahahaha. No, snookums, that’s the post where he was caught out and hence started signing his name. Your hero is, unfortunately, very much into referring to himself in the third person (“the guy”) to defend his own books.
Christian M Franklin (@cmfranklin1983)
/ August 18, 2011He was never called out on anything. There’s his post you link where he asks questions then posts again http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/34102-bakker-and-women/page__view__findpost__p__1681821 praising the thread with a signature. How you twist that into him deceptively defending his own work is just nonsense.Also, considering the only comment I made that you didn’t decide to moderate was that you’re a troll means I hit the nail on the head. Which goes to further show your character. You bash an author for misogyny but you’re not interested in discussing it, you’re interested in slandering him for blog hits. Like a tabloid.
BAWWW WAH WAH WAH WHY ARE YOU SO MEAN TO BAKKER????
acrackedmoon
/ August 18, 2011D’awww you act like you’re interested in misogyny. But you aren’t, not anymore than Bakker is. More than anything he’s ever written, the way Bakker acts and speaks–repeatedly talking over women (both on his blog and on Westeros.org)–makes it obvious that he is exactly the kind of feminist Joss Whedon is: a sad excuse for a fake who probably thinks claiming to be a feminist will get him cookies.
Also it’s very telling that everyone who’s rushed over here to defend Bakker–himself a self-important nerdy white boy–is male. And, for the most part going by avatars, themselves quite white. Never stop being predictable, self-important nerdy white boys.
layogenic
/ August 18, 2011The same goes for his blog. I didn’t see a single woman speak up about how great of an anti-misogynist Bakker was, just men standing around congratulating themselves on it. And, of course, re-defining it. After all, we can’t let women go around thinking they can set terms and think they’re real people.
Oh, and they all assume (and in some cases insist) you’re male. To make them feel better.
Zach Herman
/ August 18, 2011Well, we’re about 50% of the fantasy audience, and likely vastly more of the audience for stuff like Bakker’s (Epic Grimdark, as you might say). We’re also, disproportionately bored and in college and spend a lot of time on the internet, so it stands to reason we’re the primary readers of his blog.
It’s really unclear what you mean when you say this, at least to me. Since there’s nothing at all anyone on the internet can do to prove their ‘feminist credentials’ to you, can’t you just say this about anyone, without there being any way for them to engage this seriously? So I’ll just ask: what, specifically, would someone who is interested in misogyny be saying in this thread? Could someone who is interested in misogyny, according to your definition, read and like Bakker’s books?
This is unrelated, but it appears to me like you generally conflate “I liked/did not like this book” with “the writing in this book was objectively good/bad.” There is bad writing and good writing, but liking or disliking a particular writing style indicates nothing about its actual quality, it speaks only to one’s preferences regarding that style of writing.
acrackedmoon
/ August 18, 2011We’re also, disproportionately bored and in college and spend a lot of time on the internet, so it stands to reason we’re the primary readers of his blog.
Thank you, that is my point exactly. You may also recall that Bakker made a big deal over Theo’s readers comprising primarily of Caucasian males, as though his readership did not comprise primarily of the same (and certainly not of a more enlightened persuasion than Theo’s, judging by their behavior when defending him here and elsewhere: not overtly as racist and sexist, perhaps, but there’s more to sexism than “LET’S RAPE WOMEN AND TAKE AWAY THEIR RIGHTS TO VOTE”).
Since there’s nothing at all anyone on the internet can do to prove their ‘feminist credentials’ to you, can’t you just say this about anyone, without there being any way for them to engage this seriously?
Requirement uno for being a feminist: that you identify as a woman. Men can be feminist allies, but not feminists. This is because the movement belongs to, and is about, women. Thus, Bakker’s not a feminist–at best he would be an ally but, as far as I can see, he’s not even that (even if he may insist, and he likes to, that upward of 800,000 women who knows him in real life believe he is the Grand King of Feminists who can never, ever do wrong).
But just what, precisely, do you believe establishes Bakker’s “feminist credentials”? My beef with his pretensions to such is that he has none. A good feminist ally listens to women: he doesn’t do this even to women who’ve engaged him closely on westeros.org, preferring to instead ignore them and sing LA LA LA when any charge of misogyny is leveled at him. A good feminist ally sits down, shuts up, and perhaps says: “I’m sorry that my feminist intentions were not communicated across well, and I’m sorry if what I’ve written has distressed or upset women. I will try better next time.” Bakker has not done any of this. Instead he defends, ever more rabidly and pompously, his right to call his texts feminist.
Could someone who is interested in misogyny, according to your definition, read and like Bakker’s books?
Sure! A practicing misogynist would love them.
This is unrelated, but it appears to me like you generally conflate “I liked/did not like this book” with “the writing in this book was objectively good/bad.” There is bad writing and good writing, but liking or disliking a particular writing style indicates nothing about its actual quality, it speaks only to one’s preferences regarding that style of writing.
Go on and find writing that you believe is honestly, objectively good and which I merely tore apart because I don’t like it, due to preferences. It’s not Paul S. Kemp or RA Salvatore or Jim Butcher, is it? Because if so I’m going to be in for a good, long lol.
Zach Herman
/ August 18, 2011“and certainly not of a more enlightened persuasion than Theo’s, judging by their behavior when defending him here and elsewhere: not overtly as racist and sexist, but there’s more to sexism than “LET’S RAPE WOMEN AND TAKE AWAY THEIR RIGHTS TO VOTE” ”
Would you grant that sexists of the variety of ‘let’s go back to marriage as chattel slavery, legalized domestic abuse, and acceptable rape’ are worse than…whatever kind of sexists you think Bakker’s readers are (let’s say, including me, although I don’t think of myself as a sexist).
“But just what, precisely, do you believe establishes Bakker’s “feminist credentials” ”
Oh, I have no idea, and personally, I’m not incredibly interested in what you might call ‘institutional’ feminism. I like women, I respect women, and I think people who are overtly sexist tend to be deeply misguided assholes. That said, when *I honestly cannot tell* if/when I’m being sexist, the cost/benefit of trying to not be sexist according the definitions contained within institutional feminism tend to drop off.I am not interested in respecting women nor combating misogyny. I’m only “feminist” when it suits me according to definitions of feminism I personally set (which women may or may not agree with; if they don’t, who cares? My voice as a man’s is of the foremost importance), and doesn’t cost me too much effort. Sorry, women. You are beneath my notice. You’re only good for making me feel more socially accepted and better about myself. In short, I am very much a stock privileged white boy: overflowing with pretension and aversive sexism.
“A good feminist ally sits down, shuts up, and perhaps says: “I’m sorry that my feminist intentions were not communicated across well, and I’m sorry if what I’ve written has distressed or upset women. I will try better next time.” ”
So…a good feminist ally never intentionally upsets or distresses women? I mean, okay, but that’s a frankly unreasonable standard to hold us (men, not feminist allies) to. Is it acceptable for someone to agree with many of the more ‘macro’ goals of the feminist movement and not be super interested in some of the more subtle aims of the movement?I don’t understand feminism but shall pretend to anyway. I believe feminist allies should have carte blanche to intentionally upsetting and distressing women while still retaining the entitlement of calling themselves “feminist allies.” Allies, moreover, should not have to educate themselves with regards to nuances and subtleties. Being a feminist ally is only good insofar as it makes a man socially acceptable and feel better about himself.
“Sure! A practicing misogynist would love them.”
This is funny, but I’m asking, can a person disagree with you about Bakker’s books, and be (generally) in line with much of what you say about the genre?
“Go on and find writing that you believe is honestly, objectively good and which I merely tore apart because I don’t like it, due to preferences.”
Joe Abercrombie. I get you don’t like fight scenes, but his books are tightly written, and he actually does some pretty interesting stuff with character archetypes. He also writes action scenes incredibly well, better than anyone I’ve read in the genre other than GRRM.
I also like Richard Morgan, and think his writing style is one you either like or dislike, I just don’t think it’s bad. He’s tyrying to write cyberpunk noir. He wrote pretty good cyberpunk noir. If you don’t like that genre (and I would bet a lot of people don’t), cool, but within that subgenre, it’s way better than, say, Jeff Somers’ Avery Cates novels.
acrackedmoon
/ August 18, 2011I replied to most of the points about feminism through edits and strikethroughs. I hope you like them!
This is funny, but I’m asking, can a person disagree with you about Bakker’s books, and be (generally) in line with much of what you say about the genre?
You may notice I’ve said relatively little about Bakker’s books, since I read only snippets of them, including that ever-so-hilarious rape-in-succession thing from The Judging Eye. So, sure, they could. On the other hand, everybody who’s busy defending Bakker seems to consume Bakker uncritically and–again–have no interest in feminism or understanding of misogyny beyond “it’s bad.” They are also not likely to acknowledge that a woman who finds this offensive may have a point.
So basically, your problem is that writers I’ve said are terrible happen to be ones you like, which isn’t quite the same ground as what you originally objected to, is it?
Gourmet Neurovore
/ August 20, 2011Realise this turned into a bit of a shitstorm, but one thing you mentioned interested me.
“… preferring to instead ignore them and sing LA LA LA when any charge of misogyny is leveled at him. A good feminist ally sits down, shuts up, and perhaps says: “I’m sorry that my feminist intentions were not communicated across well, and I’m sorry if what I’ve written has distressed or upset women. I will try better next time.”.”
Do you believe that it is possible for a female reader to be incorrect (or, at least, operating off very shaky logic) when she accuses a male author of sexism in aspects of his work? If so, how would you suggest that that author should proceed if he’s trying to be a good feminist ally? Other than, y’know, staying out of debates about the quality of his work as much as possible, which tends to be the best way to avoid drama in general.
acrackedmoon
/ August 20, 2011A woman can be wrong, absolutely, though it’s probably to keep in mind that women are more perceptive to misogyny than men on average, so what the man thinks is “shaky ground” may not in fact be such. Still, it’s possible for a woman to misinterpret or even miss misogyny. But on the other hand, it’s also dickish to dismiss her responses out of hand: she’s coming from a place of having experienced misogyny, or possibly surviving abuse, sexual harassment (pretty much all women experience this) or assault. So I think the best thing to do, in that case, would be to say “I apologize for any distress caused” and leave it at that. This is probably where a Bakker dudebro fan will yell MEN JUST CAN’T WIIIIIN, but men win in every other area in the world so I think it won’t cost the hypothetical ally too much to not be able to defend his position to the death.
Oh, another thing about the demon rape scene: thinking about it, the scene is all about the man. It’s not really about how terrible it is that the woman is subjected to this. The real horror is that he, as her loving husband, must endure the spectacle of it. It’s his pain that takes center stage, his pain that’s important–she is reduced to a “sack of penetrated flesh.” It’s the problem of manpain: women are fridged, raped, abused, all to validate a man’s feelings and increase his suffering. This post does a fantastic job of breaking the issue down and why it plays into misogyny and rape culture. A feminist narrative, on the other hand, will focus on the woman. While I quite hate McKinley’s writing, her Deerskin is a great example of this. The protagonist of the novel is raped by her own father. But the narrative doesn’t make her father the focus–it’s about her and how she recovers, helped along by her own strength and other women. Much the same is true of Midnight Robber, except the writing is amazing instead of terrible: again, surviving rape isn’t about the rapist or the rape itself, but about the woman and how she fights through the experience, finds a life, and creates an identity for herself with which she’s comfortable. It’s a superb narrative.
Gourmet Neurovore
/ August 20, 2011I admit, I had a specific example in mind in regards to the question. In a review I read of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, a dark and somewhat deconstructive magical girl anime, the reviewer accused the magical girl creation process (among many other things, but this in particular stood out) of being sexist. Address is as follows (since I don’t know how to embed links here): https://matryoshkaa.wordpress.com/2011/07/22/madoka-magica-part-revisited/.
To clarify, the process involves the candidate’s soul being transferred into their transformation gem, leaving their body as what is effectively a remote-controlled puppet for them to operate. This allows them to survive more pain and nastier injuries than a normal human, but means that if it strays too far from their Soul Gem, their body ‘switches off’ in a manner resembling death. This is treated by the show as a rather disturbing violation of the candidates (mostly because their creepy mascot conveniently forgot to tell them about it before they signed up for the job), and causes a fair degree of angst in some of them about whether they still count as human. The reviewer describes all this as sexist because it involves ‘little 15 year old girls being turned into objects’.
Now, I’m not saying that Madoka Magica’s record is pristine in terms of gender equality – for instance, its answer to the age-old ‘why no magical boys?’ question is particularly cack-handed (and not terribly flattering to the female population) – but I honestly cannot see the logic in that complaint. Maybe I’m missing something?
As for the Bakker thing, I did actually notice that myself. ‘Wait, she’s the one being raped in loving, graphic detail, so why are we only getting the thoughts and opinions of the bozo chained to the rocks over there?’. Not that that scene needed much more of an ‘ew’ quotient as it was, but hey, seems he isn’t an author to do things by halves.
acrackedmoon
/ August 22, 2011Eh, to be honest I’ll need some familiarity with the source material to make the call, which I’m not particularly. I don’t know. The anime itself sounds interesting, so maybe in a month or two I may be able to get back to you on this.
Gourmet Neurovore
/ August 22, 2011Suggest you do. It’ll be interesting to see what you make of it.
Oh, and it involves a magical girl with an Uzi, so there’s that.
Lal
/ February 14, 2012Reply to an old comment so possibly out-of-date and completely useless. I blame the neckbeards for their relentless trolling of this post which made me read all the comments this time. Oh my word.
@Gourmet Neurovore – unfortunately that Madoka review isn’t online anymore. It’s been replaced with a shorter rant (https://matryoshkaa.wordpress.com/2011/12/24/madoka-re-revisted/) that express itself very well. Turning girls into zombies with soul gems = objectification = sexist! Main character is moe and useless = sexist! A character becomes a magical girl for love = sexist! Using historical characters = disrespectful = sexist!
@acrackedmoon – if you still want to read the original, I’ve found a French blog post which has a copy (http://www.fakeplasticlove.com/2012/01/madoka-magica-revisited/). There’s also a response to it which basically rips the shit out of it: http://www.itjustbugsme.com/forums/discussion/6598/when-even-i-think-youve-abused-the-concept-of-sexism-youve-gone-too-far/.
More importantly, did you get around to watching Madoka in the end?
acrackedmoon
/ February 14, 2012Oh goodness, I’m so sorry. I haven’t gotten around to Madoka–I keep meaning to, but… So many books to read, and the new Last Exile is so gay! (By which I mean: so much yuri subtext, delicious yuri subtext.)
Lal
/ February 14, 2012with a shorter rant (https://matryoshkaa.wordpress.com/2011/12/24/madoka-re-revisted/) that express itself very well
..that doesn’t express itself very well. *sigh*
Gourmet Neurovore
/ February 19, 2012On the topic of ‘anime acrackedmoon might want to check out someday’, Miniskirt Space Pirates has been astonishingly tasteful, female-positive, and generally not-terrible for a show with that title so far.
Yes, really.
Zach Herman
/ August 18, 2011Just a quick note: I don’t actually know how to quote text in wordpress, so there was stuff that I thought I was quoting that doesn’t look like it made it into my post.
Zach Herman
/ August 18, 2011“I am not interested in respecting women nor combating misogyny.”
I actually am interested in respecting women. Combating misogyny, it’s hard to say. Probably not according to you. But the whole reason I’m writing here is because I’m interested in what respecting women actually looks like, as opposed to what *I think it looks like.* My problem with your ‘voice’ is that you have really binary ways of categorizing people, and it doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense.
“I’m only “feminist” when it suits me according to definitions of feminism I personally set (which women may or may not agree with; if they don’t, who cares? My voice as a man’s is of the foremost importance), and doesn’t cost me too much effort.”
I don’t think I personally set the definitions of feminism, I think that I try to act according to a relatively broadly understood social code that has integrated a great deal of the project of feminism into its strictures.
“Sorry, women. You are beneath my notice. You’re only good for making me feel more socially accepted and better about myself. In short, I am very much a stock privileged white boy: overflowing with pretension and aversive sexism.”
Pretension, almost certainly. Aversive sexism, I have no way evaluate. Characterizing me as thinking I’m better than ‘women,’ generally? You have a right to do that, but it doesn’t really capture my opinions on the subject.
“I don’t understand feminism but shall pretend to anyway.”
I do do that. Again, part of the reason I’m here is better understand where you’re coming from.
“I believe feminist allies should have carte blanche to intentionally upsetting and distressing women while still retaining the entitlement of calling themselves “feminist allies.” ”
I didn’t say this and don’t think it. You over-represent the harshest possible implications of what I’ve said. I’m saying, there are times when I have indifferently upset a woman. It appears as though you’re saying at no point can a guy who would like to be able to say at some point he’s a feminist ally can, under any circumstances, intentionally (or at least indifferently) upset any woman. I think this is asking a lot. I don’t call myself a feminist ally now precisely because I’m not sure what the definition of the term is and it would be presumptuous to represent myself as such.
“Allies, moreover, should not have to educate themselves with regards to nuances and subtleties.”
This is a huge problem with the modern left, generally (of which I am grudgingly a part of). You either understand all of our complex theory, or you are *one of them.* It has virtually guaranteed that people who would otherwise ally with you are alienated from your position instead, because your first impulse seems to be to condemn rather than to educate or inform.
I’m not well read on the subject (there are things I have read about it, but there’s a difference), and being called a sexist because I don’t know about your entire program and am willing to admit it is kinda dumb.
“Being a feminist ally is only good insofar as it makes a man socially acceptable and feel better about himself.”
No, it’s good because it furthers the project of feminism, among other things. You have a habit of characterizing people you argue with before seeing the entirety of their position, and while it’s rhetorically effective, and may be the result of seeing a lot of the same archetypes or whatever, it’s pretty unhelpful when it comes to genuinely engaging with people.
“So basically, your problem is that writers I’ve said are terrible happen to be ones you like, which isn’t quite the same ground as what you originally objected to, is it?”
No, I think they’re examples of good writing within their genres/subgenres.
I like them to a large extent because I think their writing is good. I’ll admit to liking some amount of trash (Warhammer 40k tie-in novels!), but saying that The First Law is bad writing is, IMO, incorrect.
acrackedmoon
/ August 19, 2011I think that I try to act according to a relatively broadly understood social code that has integrated a great deal of the project of feminism into its strictures.
Considering that broadly understood social codes suggest calling feminists “feminazi” is funny and integrate rape culture, among other things, I’m going to sit and lol at this for a bit.
Characterizing me as thinking I’m better than ‘women,’ generally? You have a right to do that, but it doesn’t really capture my opinions on the subject.
Oh, no, not your opinions. When you state right out that you aren’t interested in acting like you’re a decent human being if it costs you too much effort, I will treat you like someone who’s not really a decent human being. See, words have meanings.
It appears as though you’re saying at no point can a guy who would like to be able to say at some point he’s a feminist ally can, under any circumstances, intentionally (or at least indifferently) upset any woman.
It appears you are being intentionally dense. Bakker’s offenses have to do with misogyny. Do you think I’m talking about intentionally upsetting a woman by knocking her coffee over or something? Of course, a lot of things men do to upset women are motivated or informed by sexism, conscious or not, like using gendered insults.
It has virtually guaranteed that people who would otherwise ally with you are alienated from your position instead, because your first impulse seems to be to condemn rather than to educate or inform.
Ahhh, self-important nerdy white boys: textbook tone argument, as though dictated by clockwork. What is more predictable?
being called a sexist because I don’t know about your entire program and am willing to admit it is kinda dumb.
No, I’m calling you that because you have said sexist things.
You have a habit of characterizing people you argue with before seeing the entirety of their position, and while it’s rhetorically effective, and may be the result of seeing a lot of the same archetypes or whatever, it’s pretty unhelpful when it comes to genuinely engaging with people.
This is an amusing variation on Bakker’s “if only they KNEW ME IRL, like the hundred thousand or so women who do, they will NEVER call me a misogynist!” Again, I’ve responded to what you said, not what you think you have said. Or what you fancy you will say 2,000 words later. Perhaps you should conduct your arguments exclusively with mind-readers?
but saying that The First Law is bad writing is, IMO, incorrect.
It’s funny, because I think Abercrombie is trash. It’s just slightly more grown-up than tie-in novels, but it’s still trash that appeals very much to a certain sub-race of nerdy white boys, with all its pretensions of being “counter-Tolkien” and edgy. He’s not exactly Nabokov. At a line level, his prose is nothing very special and often his characters’ thoughts are repetitive. At a characterization level, I have trouble telling his characters apart; the barbarian guy in the First Law is very much like the barbarian guy in Best Served Cold and the torturer guy is heinously one-note and the “Gandalf subversion” is nowhere as subversive or clever as Abercrombie’d like to think. At another level still, he indulges in lazy “evil Arabs” stereotypes which aren’t only trite but also offensive.
I’m sure he is delighted that you think he is objectively good, though.
zachrh90
/ August 19, 2011I’m a dick who can’t be arsed to look up what “tone argument” actually means (as I’m unable to access a global network of information through which I may educate myself; thus I instead demand that feminists must educate me politely at my leisure) and therefore am flailing at random, smug in my own rhetorical superiority and emotional detachment because misogyny does not affect me. I’m also an individual so delightful that I manage to cram in sexism, classism and ableism in one comment. Congrats, me!
“Considering that broadly understood social codes suggest calling feminists “feminazi” is funny and integrate rape culture, among other things, I’m going to sit and lol at this for a bit. ”You’re too wrapped up in your own vitriol to interpret me reasonably. There are more than one set of broad social codes people operate under. The upper-middle class college set doesn’t include calling feminists feminazis.
“When you state right out that you aren’t interested in acting like you’re a decent human being if it costs you too much effort”
I didn’t say this. You said I said this. What I said was, I basically try to act in a non-sexist way, but without knowing specifics about the whole program, there are things that I’m inevitably going to do that are sexist by someone’s definition, and I can’t please everyone all the time.
Which…is apparently what you want? I think you just want to yell at a specific characterization of nerdy white guys.
“Do you think I’m talking about intentionally upsetting a woman by knocking her coffee over or something?”
I have no idea what you’re talking. You use a style of argumentation where you use unspecified terms in your rhetoric, and then get more specific as I (perhaps unsuccessfully) attempt to engage that rhetoric.
“Of course, a lot of things men do to upset women are motivated or informed by sexism, conscious or not, like using gendered insults. ”
Okay. I didn’t see Bakker do that here, and I don’t think I did either. If you’re saying that, generally, men shouldn’t call women bitches, or something along those lines, yes, I agree with you.
“Ahhh, self-important nerdy white boys: textbook tone argument, as though dictated by clockwork. What is more predictable?”
Ahhh, crazy person idiocy. The predictability of an argument has nothing to do with its validity or its accuracy. I’d point out that, instead of substantive responses, your whole last response was, essentially, “Listen, I’m right, and when you think I might be wrong, you’re wrong.” It’s a ridiculous way of arguing with people.
“No, I’m calling you that because you have said sexist things.”
What specifically?
“This is an amusing variation on Bakker’s ”
It’s not, actually. I’d prefer not to be thought of as a sexist (or be a sexist, for that matter, but that’s not really germane here), but since no one I know reads this blog, or Bakker’s blog, or any of that, this doesn’t really affect that.
This is saying what you do here is unproductive. You’re arguing with people who are more or less inclined to agree with you about the fundamentals of your position, and insulting me really doesn’t make me more interested in learning more about what you’re talking about.
“Again, I’ve responded to what you said, not what you think you have said.”
No, you’ve responded to a very specific, badly interpreted version of what I’ve said.
“It’s funny, because I think Abercrombie is trash.”
Okay, you genuinely think it’s bad writing. There is nothing else to be said here, my initial thoughts on your position on this book were wrong.
acrackedmoon
/ August 19, 2011You talked about the “cost/benefit” of not being sexist. Would you like to explain what the benefits are, exactly? Please don’t say “benefits to women” because that’d be lulzy. I personally don’t weigh it as “cost vs benefit” because I consider not being sexist, or racist or homophobic, as a decent-human-being thing.
Do you realize that people like Theo and Terry Goodkind are college-educated, and very likely middle-class and above? Your assertion that “upper-middle class college-educated set” equals less sexism is hysterical (and presumptuous, classist, and privileged as all fuck). What set do frat boys belong to again? Do you even know what I mean when I talked about rape culture, or do you also believe that attitudes perpetuated by it are more common among the working class?
Erzuli Kila
/ August 18, 2011Someone who only read 5-pages attacking someone’s writing…ridiculous.
Bakker is attacking a prime source of sexism -> The Scriptural Tradition of the Middle East, the one that still leads to women getting acid thrown in their faces and honor killings. Really, he has created a world where no matter how smart a woman is she seems to have been designated as spiritually inferior. This is the world that a LOT of people we’ve protected under the umbrella of political correctness and religious tolerance live in.
The women in his books lack agency for the same reason so many women lack agency – they live in faith based societies that are trying to destroy the places where women are given at least some measure of equality.
His efficacy can be called into question, as can his seeming unwillingness to really examine his own narrative, but I think trying to label him a sexist or misogynist is unfair. We don’t know him, and playing telephone (“I hear he’s a dick in real life”) is ignoring the bigger, more serious issue he (ham fisted-ly or not) is trying to tackle.
Again, having read all his books, I would say isn’t as good as he thinks he is when it comes to writing women, but I don’t think he’s sexist and the plotting and underlying warning about the danger of faith trumps his weaknesses there (for me anyway, others might dislike it more). His books will be read by so few, and his point is quite horrifically valid, it is like attacking a mouse when the lion, sexist Scripture, is roaming the forest.
acrackedmoon
/ August 19, 2011Bakker is attacking a prime source of sexism -> The Scriptural Tradition of the Middle East
Is he, like, from the Middle East? Because I find it hilarious when westerners get up on a soapbox and howl at the evil of Islam while conveniently ignoring that their own cultures are deeply sexist, that Christianity is sexist, and that things like Quiverfull don’t happen in a vacuum.
The women in his books lack agency for the same reason so many women lack agency – they live in faith based societies that are trying to destroy the places where women are given at least some measure of equality.
Oh gosh really. I don’t know, consider this. Even if you believe this is a fair approach to the issue, I’m going to go on a limb and suggest that the approach is problematic when coming from a man–much for the same reason it’d be problematic if he, a white dude, were to write about a world where people of color are stated as objectively inferior to Aryans.
This is the world that a LOT of people we’ve protected under the umbrella of political correctness and religious tolerance live in.
What the fuck are you even saying?
but I think trying to label him a sexist or misogynist is unfair. We don’t know him, and playing telephone (“I hear he’s a dick in real life”) is ignoring the bigger, more serious issue he (ham fisted-ly or not) is trying to tackle.
Why? There are better writers who deal with the same issues. Some of them are even women who have experienced them firsthand. Why should I prioritize, or consider important, what he’s doing? He’s not someone who is making meaningful and important contribution to women’s rights–not anywhere, not ever. All he is doing is sitting at home congratulating himself on what a wonderful feminist he is.
layogenic
/ August 19, 2011So he’s writing about real-world occurrences without any real-world combativeness. He’s writing about things that exist that are bad in a sandbox where there is nothing good to balance it out. But…he’s not making a point. He’s stating the obvious and expecting his readers to react the way he wants them to. And then acting like a dick when they don’t.
“This is the world that a LOT of people we’ve protected under the umbrella of political correctness and religious tolerance live in.”
This, and all the other tie-ins to Islamophobic rhetoric you’ve got here, is getting gross. Organized religion–and for that matter knee-jerk politics, punditry, memetics and anything else that asks, nay, requires that one doesn’t think in order to participate–all over the world is about repression at best and oppression at worst. That Bakker chooses the easy contemporary target (and you think that makes it okay) only serves to exemplify the lack of self-examination inherent in it. It certainly doesn’t bespeak tolerance. Next you’ll say a woman owning a blog is just another sign of the feminist agenda working in our secret shadow government.
Uh also “we’ve protected” is insultingly patronizing. Lookit us white lefties, savin’ the worlds.
layogenic
/ August 19, 2011There may be egg on my face. White USian egg used to reading pro-Christian anti-Islam talk couched in similar language to this.
Scriptural Tradition of the Middle East definitely applies to all Abrahamic religions, and a perspective on my comment (and yours) suggests that you might not have been referring exclusively to the current majority religion out there. I apologize for my leap and give you the benefit of the doubt.
The rest still applies, though. He’s doing nothing constructive or positive or even very interesting but insists on a specific read of his work, then cries “rally to my my juvenile hordes!” when assaulted. And I think it’s entirely fair to call somebody who talks like a misogynist on the interwebs a misogynist. And patronizing is still patronizing.
acrackedmoon
/ August 19, 2011It’s not just you. The “political correctness” thing kind of pinged me and… I don’t really think anyone is “protecting” things like the Taliban under the umbrella of anything.
layogenic
/ August 19, 2011Even the word “tolerance” is getting increasingly squicky for me. Mostly because of the more common usage–when you “tolerate” something it is there at your sufferance, and only for as long as you decide to suffer it. We don’t “tolerate” religion–our own or others’–it exists on its own regardless of how much you like it. Unless you’re the US and you decide to bomb it, I guess. Hence the squick.
Neo-Prodigy
/ August 20, 2011Tim Wise said it best in his piece on the Trouble With Tolerance:
“So what is tolerance anyway? As I see it, tolerance means I don’t burn your church down, or tie you to a fence and leave you to die, or drag you down a dirt road behind my pickup. It means I tolerate your existence and little else. I let you live and breathe for another day. How nice of me.”
How nice indeed.
rsbakker
/ August 22, 2011I’m guessing that you agree that ALL accusations of sexism cannot be true. What criteria do you use to distinguish between valid and invalid accusations of sexism in an author’s work?
acrackedmoon
/ February 3, 2012Comment let through for lulz, belatedly, seeing that five whole months later you are still hurt about it. I hope you’ll come back and engage, and see if you can handle discourse in a space you neither control nor where you can expect your fanboys to back you up.
tamahome02000 (@tamahome02000)
/ August 22, 2011Luke Burrage ( http://sfbrp.com ) thinks the books have some depth and philosophy to them. I think there’s one redeeming character. I haven’t read them.
acrackedmoon
/ August 23, 2011I think there’s one redeeming character. I haven’t read them.
See, that’s the very best thing I can say about these books.
Erzuli Kila
/ August 25, 2011Sorry, my post was pretty unclear babbling and my examples should have, at the least, included the pogroms against gays in Uganda spurred on by some evangelical Christians. Not sure if Judaism should even be lumped in with the violence spurred on by Christianity and Islam, so the term Scriptural traditions was a poor choice.
The books examine two faiths, one loosely based on Christianity and one loosely based on Islam. However, Bakker’s work is far more critical in its examination of the Christian based religion, so he isn’t pointing at another culture and saying, “we’re greener, the grass is shittier over there.”
Moreover, the books challenge the notion of literal interpretation on religious texts as well as any belief held without rational examination. This goes beyond the faiths originating out of the Mid-East, and looks at religious and political beliefs and varied prejudices.
Do the books handle the female characters well? I felt they did okay until the last book, but I don’t think this was because Bakker was getting off on a woman lacking agency. And I do think Bakker has a problem where he refuses to engage his own narrative and his discussion of it seems to be limited.
As to the rape queues in Prince of Thorns, I haven’t read the book but Bakker spends a lot of time looking at things from the point of view of the victims.
Now I don’t think the books are without problems, but because I see no inherent malice against women in his books, I can still see their major point, the questioning of belief, as making them worth my time in the same way I can read religious texts, which are directly attacking gender and sexual freedom, and find value.
My point about tolerance is that religion gets a softer treatment than, say, video games. If billions of people played video games, and certain video games caused a disproportionate number of people to act violently (such as the Muslim fundamentalists who burned a Buddhist woman alive or the Evangelicals in Uganda who beat a gay man to death with a hammer) we would be far more critical of the source rather than chalking it up to misinterpretations of “sacred” material. A direct attack on the veracity of these texts themselves, which many are unwilling to commit to, would possibly make greater headway in promoting equality rather than trying to accept that people believe in them.
“I’m going to go on a limb and suggest that the approach is problematic when coming from a man–much for the same reason it’d be problematic if he, a white dude, were to write about a world where people of color are stated as objectively inferior to Aryans.”
I guess I don’t have a problem with this. It would depend on the characters and whether this was presented as a positive or negative. Bakker makes clear that the treatment of women is an abomination – it is anti-escapist fantasy where we should be happy that rationality and skepticism has, to at least an extent, made headway in our world.
“Why? There are better writers who deal with the same issues. Some of them are even women who have experienced them firsthand.”
Curious -> Why make a post about him at all then? Or really about SFF? Why not spend time examining the bigger forces/issues?
acrackedmoon
/ August 25, 2011As to the rape queues in Prince of Thorns, I haven’t read the book but Bakker spends a lot of time looking at things from the point of view of the victims.
The one from The Judging Eye is very manpain-focused. I’m willing to accept that he’s written rape scenes with great sensitivity, although I doubt it.
I guess I don’t have a problem with this.
I do. I’m a person of color, which may have something to do with it.
Curious -> Why make a post about him at all then? Or really about SFF? Why not spend time examining the bigger forces/issues?
I don’t understand this. How do you go from “there are better writers than Bakker, some of them being women who actually know something about misogyny and feminism, having experienced them, whereas Bakker–being a man–speaks and writes from a position of privilege and ignorance” to “why do you write about SFF loooool.” And I made this post for no better reason than that Bakker is hilarious and wanky.
Erzuli Kila
/ August 25, 2011Actually, I’m a person of color as well. I find there is value to an outsider looking in, though yes my skepticism would be raised I am not prepared to dismiss such works out of hand. (Not saying you are BTW, just expressing my own view.)
I also don’t think minorities are free from prejudice, and have faced a lot of it – sometimes violent – at the hands of minorities of my own or other races. I’m just not prepared to dismiss white people, especially the nerdy white (and half-white) boys that made portions of my childhood bearable.
I didn’t mean rape scenes in particular, I meant the general plight of marginalized groups such as low caste individuals, slaves, women, and prejudice faced by sorcerers.
The problem with the Prince of Thorns passage, at least out of context, is it seems we are supposed to be grimly amused about gang rape and rape camps. I’m guessing you, me, and really anyone who knows about actual rape camps does not find this amusing. I think Bakker is trying to do something else, whether he succeeds or not is arguable.
My point about SFF is it seems a lot of posts are devoted to it, curious why you feel it is important to post about SFF and its examination of gender and race issues in particular.
I think the claim of misogyny is a pretty serious one, and I don’t think there is really anything to point to Bakker as a misogynist. Whether the Argument of his books fails, or does more harm than good, is again arguable. Personally I didn’t have a problem until the last book, though the arc with the major female protagonist was a disaster in terms of railroading the plot into illogical directions.
acrackedmoon
/ August 25, 2011I also don’t think minorities are free from prejudice, and have faced a lot of it – sometimes violent – at the hands of minorities of my own or other races. I’m just not prepared to dismiss white people, especially the nerdy white (and half-white) boys that made portions of my childhood bearable.
Cool. I’ll be right here making fun of white people and nerdy white boys because it’s amusing when they cry.
My point about SFF is it seems a lot of posts are devoted to it, curious why you feel it is important to post about SFF and its examination of gender and race issues in particular.
Uh… why not? I read SFF. These things are relevant to me, ergo I write about them. If we are going by the same logic, shouldn’t I ask of Bakker why he isn’t out there doing real activism instead of sitting at home and going fuckbats whenever anyone says something about his books that he doesn’t like?
I think the claim of misogyny is a pretty serious one, and I don’t think there is really anything to point to Bakker as a misogynist.
It is? It’s not as though, after being “accused” as such by a random blogger on the Internet, Bakker will have “MISOGYNIST” chiseled onto his forehead forever. Nor have I called him a misogynist. His behavior–such as the tendency to speak over women and insisting that we are men when we disagree with him (and therefore anything we say with regards to sexism cannot possibly be true, or count, or valid)–is pretty obnoxious, however, and very much typical of a self-important nerdy white boy.
Ben Pateman
/ January 11, 2012The writer of this article repulses me somewhat.They openly admit to not reading more than a few pages of someone’s work, yet feel it necessary to write a long blog in which they endlessly ridicule that person.
So, what I’m wondering, is what inspired such passionate hate of another human being?
I am a useless fuck and a troglodyte. I even posted this with my facebook profile! In case you wanted to confirm that I’m a man, a fact which makes my whining about feminist critiques entirely worthless. Wah wah wah.
creepyhomeless
/ February 2, 2012I think he could use being called a misogynistic piece of subhuman garbage by another vitriolic blog. I also plan to point out the holes in his “logic”, his poor reading comprehension, his insecurity about being male, and last but not least what a waste of bandwidth his blog is. It will take time, as I am a procastinator, but I’ll do it. Oh, yes.
acrackedmoon
/ February 2, 2012Do it, with my salutations.
I should put up a blogroll or something, really.
gearsofgertrude
/ February 5, 2012i couldn’t be bothered to read all the comments here, as most of the arguments are just reductions of actual opinions. But from what I’ve gathered, this blog is five times more pompous, and half a as subtle.
saajanpatel
/ February 5, 2012As one Bakker fan to another, let me ask gears -> Are you white? Straight? Male?
How much have you “gathered”? You didn’t even read all the comments, so did you read any of the reviews here that are positive?
Did you check out some of the other discussions, and see how comfortable minorities, women, and at least one person with a disability are? How many people feel comfortable describing sexual assaults that have occurred in the past, either to them or someone close to them?
I’m not saying that Three Pound Brain doesn’t have its merits, but this is a safe space for a whole set of other readers for a reason. I’d be far more comfortable trying to talking about depiction through the lens of privilege here than at TPB.
gearsofgertrude
/ February 6, 2012your right.
maxwellgetsdrunk
/ February 11, 2012Just going to say, not reading the books then attacking the author for his character would be like me not reading your post but attacking you for using childish condescending terms like boyo.
I’m not disagreeing or agreeing with you. You have some points about the books but until you read them I wouldn’t want to attempt to discuss it with you.
acrackedmoon
/ February 12, 2012I will just have to live with you not discussing the books with me. Somehow.
Zach Rosenberg
/ February 12, 2012You know, I think I see what Bakker was trying to do, by and large: create an ‘Old Testament’ style setting and show how much it sucks. Problem is, Bakker doesn’t explore it much. Furthermore, a major issue…if he’s trying to make some kind of feminist critique, I think he’s failing hideously not because the movers and shakers of the world are men, but he paints really unflattering depictions of women and doesn’t really explore them in the setting. It comes across as pretty patronizing and I’m not even the demographic he’s talking down to.
What really gets me is how full of himself the man is. He is the epitome of arrogance and doesn’t remotely consider that by completely neglecting what he did, he might be in the wrong. It’s honestly maddening how tuned out to any opposing view he is.
acrackedmoon
/ February 12, 2012Someone asked him about the female character who falls in love with and forgives her rapist. He never answered.
saajanpatel
/ February 13, 2012It’s been awhile, but AFAIK there’s only the forgives part? Not to say people can’t take issue with that as well.
kalbear
/ February 21, 2012No, she falls in love with him. She can’t help herself because she understands him completely and empathizes with him completely.
I had thought it was only the forgiveness part too (which is squicky enough as it is), but my wife pointed out the latter and sure enough, there it was.
trevoresque
/ February 13, 2012These days Bakker appears to be blogging about you full-time.
acrackedmoon
/ February 13, 2012I can only say: one single post in August last year, six months of continuous, never-ending wahhhhh. That this is the response of a grown adult being continues to baffle me.
saajanpatel
/ February 13, 2012I’m curious to see what people think of his latest post:
http://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2012/02/10/the-halftime-show/
I can see parts where people would take issue with it, and I’m still arguing with him on varied topics not least of which is how it feels like he talks over dissenters, but it is IMO an honest attempt to listen…though it might require knowing Scott a little bit to see it that way.
acrackedmoon
/ February 13, 2012Hahahahahaha.
Let’s put it this way: if Sady Doyle knew of this she would tear him so many new orifices he’d still be hurting one full year after. His idea that she’d, like, totally be his friend is both presumptuous and hilarious.
yesteryeardnd
/ February 13, 2012It’s honestly maddening how tuned out to any opposing view he is.
You do realise the irony of point this out on a comment on this blog, right?
On the arrogance point: He got off his arse and wrote a lot of books that sell pretty well. It sort of entitles him to a bit of arrogance, at least in comparison to a bunch of blowhards writing blog comments which only 3 people will ever read or care about. Know what I mean?
acrackedmoon
/ February 13, 2012Hmm, since you think some kind of accomplishment is required in order to comment on other people’s behavior… what have you done? :)
siedhr
/ February 13, 2012So you can tell everything about people’s careers just by seeing their usernames? THAT IS AMAZING. You must bottle it and sell it. For the betterment of all human kind of course.
Captain Falcon (@psychoxnino)
/ February 13, 2012“freedom isn’t given by oppressors/it’s demanded by oppressed” – omar offendum
Judging by the author’s responses (and combining it with some things Abercrombie said about his own work), I think some writers from the privileged class have difficulty writing marginalized or oppressed characters because they lack an intuitive understanding of how individuals respond to social systems that don’t favor them as a class. I think the assumption is that civil rights move forward because the oppressors have a change of heart, as in, men chose to be respectful of women, or whites chose to abolish slavery and apartheid in the U.S. and elsewhere. There is a literary tradition behind this concept, not all of it bad in that sometimes privileged people could benefit from a wake up call to “do the right thing,” but it’s easy to misinterpret something like that without giving it the proper context, chiefly that the oppressed generally put more effort towards their own emancipation than their allies. That’s not to discredit the work of allies; it’s just to acknowledge that allies are the support for a movement but not the heart of it.
Zach Rosenberg
/ February 13, 2012That’s Serwe I take it? Yeah, that definitely ties to the point of Bakker cocking it up.
saajanpatel
/ February 13, 2012It’s usually a bad idea for authors to directly address reviews. I think he does have a right to defend himself, but as I’ve advised him directly I think the error lies in conflating a defense with multiple issues.
Awhile back I said I’d be curious what Sady Doyle would think of the blog in light of another discussion – not directly reflecting badly on him but one I felt was ensuring women identifying as feminists would be uncomfortable with.
Sady is such an interesting person, I actually think her input would be helpful.
acrackedmoon
/ February 13, 2012Consider the post she did on A Song of Ice and Fire, I can only imagine the number she’d do on his books, seeing that his doorstoppers are even more rape-dense than Martin’s. That Bakker believes Sady Doyle would in some way support him suggests that he genuinely, utterly can’t understand why he is not remotely the great feminist he thinks he is.
saajanpatel
/ February 13, 2012Trigger Warning: Sexual Abuse/Assault
Rape is a tricky subject in Bakker’s fantasy novels. There is more telling from a victims perspective, as Zach notes it is flawed but there’s something of what I’d consider an attempt to give us more than the usual grimdark….and then there’s the rape scene where “lithe” is used in the description.
The forgiveness I felt was flawed as well, I do think there was an attempt to say something complicated but the mechanisms didn’t out work well. Forgiving perpetrators as the “right” thing to do, I think, is a bad trope IMO.
That said, I know one person who felt she benefited from Bakker’s idea behind conditioning, that we can understand the outside mechanisms that inform our personality helped on some level for her to see varied abuses that had occurred in her life…
I think this is why he and I always go at it over so many posts, I feel like his heart is in the right place but there’s a vision issue.
acrackedmoon
/ February 14, 2012His claims of fighting misogyny become very, deeply suspect when he has talked over women multiple times, insisted on things like “the Dude”, and doesn’t even attempt to take to task the fuckwad who spewed some gibberish about how infantilization of women will help open sexist minds to gender equality–from his responses, I’d guess he quite agrees with the idea. Then there’s “I think about sexism for half an hour,” which is wonderfully dismissive of the fact that women have to deal with this shit in real life, not half an hour once in a blue moon.
In short, I don’t at all believe that he’s interested in questioning sexism in any way. He is very much of that breed of men who want to say they are against misogyny simply to look good and feel good about themselves. When push comes to shove, like women actually voicing disagreement, the true colors come out and it’s not even a bit pretty.
saajanpatel
/ February 14, 2012“In short, I don’t at all believe that he’s interested in questioning sexism in any way.”
Yeah, I’ve actually gotten varied responses from women all saying the same thing. :-(
In the hopes that I’m right, and he does care, ideally it will be an eye opener…though in light of what you mention I do realize no one else is holding their breath.
kalbear
/ February 21, 2012Given his stance on biology and sexism I’m starting to think that he wants to establish that men cannot help but be sexist and thus show the best way to combat this is to…castrate them? make women wear burqas? Show that all women actually want to be treated in a misogynistic way (because if all men must use sexual violence, then all women must want it for the species to be viable).
I think he’s no longer interested in questioning sexism as much as he’s interested in giving it a rational explanation. And then accepting that as the status quo and moving on. At the very least, the viewpoint that he is only interested in bringing up the ways sexism is bad or misogyny is bad without providing any hints at resolution points to this.
saajanpatel
/ February 21, 2012I’m not even sure what to think – I’m going to wait for the last book in the series and see where we end up. Though I don’t think he’s writing an apologia for sexism, the underlying message of compassion seems to belie that.
As I said to Scott directly, I’m a bit frustrated that the dialogue stayed on the ground floor, when it seems discussions about privilege and discussions about conditioning would go hand-in-hand.
acrackedmoon
/ February 21, 2012Bakker, at a guess, perhaps doesn’t even believe in the concept of privilege–much less that he possesses any. His philosophizing is of the navel-gazing sort, and seems to largely overlook that he’s as susceptible to the things he scrutinizes in others as anyone, like saying that my blog “encourages” group-think whereas his apparently does not (which… oh, so wrong). There’s a gaping hole there where some trickle of self-awareness should have been.
acrackedmoon
/ February 21, 2012Bakker perhaps doesn’t even believe in the concept of privilege–much less that he possesses any. His philosophizing is of the navel-gazing sort, and seems to largely overlook that he’s as susceptible to the things he scrutinizes in others as anyone, like saying that my blog “encourages” group-think whereas his apparently does not (which… oh, so wrong). There’s a gaping hole there where some trickle of self-awareness should have been.
saajanpatel
/ February 14, 2012Oh, and I do realize being male gives me the privilege of not taking direct offense to the things you mention.
Athena Andreadis
/ February 14, 2012Saajan, I’ve seen you put up apologia for Mr. Bakker in several blogs (“Sady Doyle, therefore kumbaya!”). I realize he must be a good friend, which is an explanation but not necessarily an excuse. The main issue is Mr. Bakker’s works; attached to that, and indicative of his mindset, is the fact that he chose to devote so many entries in his blog, so long after the fact, to the critique of Acrackedmoon — and that the entries are essentially convoluted, polysyllabic versions of “You’re mean to meee! Plus my mom/wife/concubine/fanbois think I am too a feminist! Also, Deleuze because he was the topic of my master’s thesis, which proves unsophisticated brains cannot grasp my subtle depths!”
In my opinion, nobody needs to write yet another work that “interrogates” misogyny by having a heavy-duty, heavy-handed patriarchal setting — particularly not a white Anglo man who rather obviously has led a comfortable life and lacks any context for such a narrative. It has been done ad nauseam — still is being done by the Abercrombie crowd. Some writers have done it well: Sherri Tepper in The Gate to Women’s Country; Le Guin in several of her stories; Margaret Atwood in The Handmaid’s Tale. Resorting to traditional-viewpoint retellings of abrahamic religion lookalikes is neither daring nor imaginative.
If Mr. Bakker cannot shape his material to convey his (purported) meaning, he’s a poor writer. Additionally, judging from the length, vapidity and navel-gazing of his blog entries, it looks like his ambition is to become the Ayn Rand of Neckbeards. I discussed this type of personality in Storytelling, Empathy and the Whiny Solipsist’s Disingenuous Angst. The overrepresentation of such writers in SF/F is toxic to the genre.”
Zach
/ February 14, 2012“The overrepresentation of such writers in SF/F is toxic to the genre.”
Amen.
Further, it’s been years since I suffered through these books, but I recall being extremely disturbed by his fetishistic/victim-shaming approach to writing rape scenes, which kind of gives the lie to his ridiculous “secret feminist agenda” claims (as if anyone needed any more proof after “the dude” and the constant dismissive sneering towards women).
linesdrawninred
/ February 14, 2012I think I’m falling in love with that Elodie person.
“You can’t troll me because I’m trolling YOU,” he sobs into his cornflakes, surreptitiously Googling Godwin’s Law and wondering what a tone argument is. “Why do you keep saying mean things to me? Here I am, talking over you ONLY in order to argue on your behalf, with more vocabulary words than you used – why can’t you just shut up and be grateful? Why do you have to get so ANGRY!”
He pauses to marshal his thoughts. “I’m Oppressed too,” he goes on. “ONLY I CAN DEFINE RACISM AND SEXISM! My definitions are so much better than yours! My oppression runs so much deeper! Why won’t you just shut up when I’m talking to you?”
His sadness turns slowly to rage. “WHY DIDN’T THAT ONE BITCH LIKE MY BOOK,” he seethes. “THINGS WOULD HAVE BEEN SO MUCH EASIER IF THAT ONE ANGRY BITCH HAD JUST SHUT UP AND LIKED MY BOOK SIX MONTHS AGO! Now people are coming on to my blog, being glib at me! Dismissing me! Telling me I’m not relevant! Telling me I’m sexist! People who actually know me tell me that I’m VERY relevant and NOT sexist! They tell me so frequently!”
Knowledge dawns on him in the darkness. “The feminists are here to steal the bread from my family’s mouths,” he breathes. “THAT’S IT.”
*swoons* <3 It's in the Requires Only That You Haidt comments.
Emil Söderman
/ February 14, 2012^ Said person is doing a wonderful Bakker impersonation, and it’s obvious he can’t handle it at all.
saajanpatel
/ February 14, 2012“Saajan, I’ve seen you put up apologia for Mr. Bakker in several blogs (“Sady Doyle, therefore kumbaya!”). I realize he must be a good friend, which is an explanation but not necessarily an excuse.”
Oh I cringed when he presented Sady as an example of his concept of feminism, I knew it would go over badly.
Oh, I didn’t mean to present it as an apologia but rather that he might actually be open to hearing criticism on, if nothing else, why his four-posts-and-running defense has done nothing but mount evidence in the eyes of many that he is, in fact, a “Prince of Misogyny”.
I hate to see him burn so many bridges so quickly, especially when I think there’s a powerful message in his books useful to unlocking people’s understanding of privilege. (Admittedly, and I’ve told him as much, the female character depictions have been fumbled.)
shardbaenre
/ February 15, 2012A few things:
1) He’s being subversive/interrogating the ills of society/illuminating it:
In anything like this, you must have a counterfactual. So, Bakker’s premise is: In this world, women are chattel and are raped and the hierarchy expresses extreme examples of whatever -ism you can imagine. So what is Bakker’s counterfactual to subvert or illuminate his premise as negative? If you don’t show people who express these views being harmed by their own assumptions (i.e. the villain who thought the woman was dumb because she was a woman is horribly murdered by that woman via a Rube Goldbergian method), then what have you subverted?
If there are no consequences to that behavior, then all you are writing is the premise and you aren’t negating it or showing how it harms society at all. The above example is an obvious one. It doesn’t have to be that obvious. It can be subtle, but it can’t be so subtle that you are only writing the premise. So, if in this book, a woman is raped and killed and her husband/boyfriend/male in her life is a witness, what then happens to make what happened to her express the true horror of the ramifications of that culture? The male suffering? NO! That is the patriarchy and is not subverting the trope. It is following the trope! It is validating that she is not for herself. And never was and in no way does that bite anyone in the ass. Or, if he was really interested in showing the ills of society, he could just write about actual people suffering and then positing suggestions and notions to fix it that actively engages the situation. Where is the straight man in this work that exhibits horror and works to end this particular thing? And how does the protagonist do it? By…allowing the trope to continue? That isn’t subverting or illuminating anything about the issue. It is propagating the notion because the journey is exactly the same.
Denaerys Targaeryan is sold into marriage and I guess finds out she loves him. She then makes a decision that renders her strapping barbarian POC a vegetable. She then decides to mercifully kill him. His tribe no longer follows her because she is not one of them nor is she male. She has dragon eggs and burns herself, her dead barbarian, and the dragon eggs. She lives, but can no longer have children. There is no part of that that doesn’t conform to the patriarchy and to racism. All at once, you have her choosing between her career/ aspirations/goals and motherhood, while simultaneously setting her up as Mighty Whitey. Where is the subversion? And you can do this with every female character and non-white in the show. Is her story arc of how she is going to reclaim her birthright the subverting part? Or maybe when she frees them slaves over yonder? Or maybe when she marries again? Or what? Classism, racism, sexism. In that order.
So ask yourself: What is Bakker’s counterfactual?
2) Tolerance
People are so lulzy about this. No. I will not tolerate your views if you express something I find morally reprehensible. No one is obligated to allow you to keep your destructive -isms. It’s like, you can call me out on my views but all of a sudden it becomes intimidation or tone or bullying when it happens to you. No one is a snowflake. And generally I find that people are fine in the abstract. Oh, how they are fine with saying “I don’t want my tax dollars going to illegal immigrants/people who can’t speak the language/people not like me who didn’t do it the right way.”
But, bring it down a level and ask them what measures would they put in place, such as “Would you empower hospitals to not treat people? Does that mean you are ok with people dying when aid could’ve been rendered?”, “Would you allow people to be profiled. If so, who? Everyone? Just people with accents? Just people of color? Which people of color?” And then all of a sudden they realize how cruel it sounds. They want to be able to say it without feeling the weight of being called a terrible person. And they are.
People don’t want to think of themselves as assholes. But, newsflash: if your primary beef with a characterization is because someone walked you through the ramifications of the views you expressed, then you are doing life wrong.
3) If, for one minute, you have to assess what and why and whether you will do the decent thing is, then clearly you are privileged and have no home training.
trevoresque
/ February 15, 2012Your stuff about having a counterfactual is super interesting. Thanks for posting it. If you’ve written more on this elsewhere I’d love to read it.
And as a queer person I can say your thoughts on “tolerance” ring so true. I’ve definitely heard “be tolerant of my intolerance” too often. It reminds me of Brandon Sanderson invoking the supposed hardships of being a Mormon, and complaining about being called a bigot, all while discussing the superiority of heterosexuality.
acrackedmoon
/ February 16, 2012There’s nothing straight white dudes love more than crying about the horrors of being called a bigot. Nothing.
See also Jay Lake declaring he felt unsafe at WisCon because women and POC might THREATEN him or something.
John Edwards Cummings
/ February 17, 2012And not a single fuck was given that day… :~(
s s (@quietsmith)
/ February 19, 2012It’s been eye-opening watching the ripples this post has caused :O
Did you have any plans to consider Bakker’s non-fantasy work, please?
‘Neuropath’ is in Bakker’s words “about psychopaths, serial murderers, which for whatever reason happen to be serial rapists as well.”
Because the characters are serial rapists “for whatever reason” (that is, for no reason), the book can’t be said to have the same, ahem, feminist subtext as PoN and AE.
Bakker does go the extra yard with his portrayal of misogyny, though, with the occasional spot of stream-of-consciousness: “Bursting into pounding groins and howling fear-fuck-love-fuck-hate-fuck-horror-joy-jealousy-rage. Canines bared. A million women and a million rapes. Claw-kill-you-fucking-cunt-pussy-cunt-I-will-fucking-kill-kill-kill-kill!”
…
Tchoo.
Anyway, keep up the good fight, ma’am!
–smith
(Gosh darn it all to heck! I had to open a twitter account to post this!)
acrackedmoon
/ February 19, 2012You’ve seen the Peter Watts post about it, I assume? The comments are quite the cesspit, there.
Holy shit, I had to check to make sure that wasn’t made up just to pull my leg. What the fuck? And… “for whatever reason” in his own words? I don’t know, I suddenly want to go and punch Bakker gently in the nose.
I’m afraid I won’t be reading it, though. It’s just, welp, there are better books to read and I’m already very certain beyond doubt that Bakker’s stuff isn’t anything I would like to read beyond what I already have.
s s (@quietsmith)
/ February 19, 2012Sorry — here’s the link to his original post where he said they werre rapists “for whatever reason”, rather than to someone who quoted him saying it.
Bakker was replying to Kalbear’s post, I think.
It’s interesting that Bakker was concerned about being seen to write what he called, “hairy-palmed teenage fantasy.”
kalbear
/ February 21, 2012To try and be fair, I think that’s a bad sentence and the meaning is that ‘for whatever reason in the real world it is common for serial murderers to be serial rapists’, not ‘in my fiction the serial murderers are serial rapists…just for the lulz’.
I could be wrong though, and at this point I tire quite a bit about giving Bakker charitable interpretations.
walterwart
/ March 22, 2012You say that you only read a few pages into the first book. But somehow you already know everything you need to about it and can offer a critique.
If you haven’t read the book you don’t have an opinion. You have no right to say you have an opinion. What you have is prejudice – prejudgment.
There are many legitimate reasons to dislike Bakker’s work. But they are reserved for people who have actually read it. You haven’t, so nothing you have to say on the subject is worth listening to. Come back when you can offer an opinion based on something other than ignorance.
shardbaenre
/ March 22, 2012“If you haven’t read the book you don’t have an opinion. You have no right to say you have an opinion. What you have is prejudice – prejudgment.”
I don’t think you know what any of those words mean if you can write a sentence like this that makes absolutely no sense.
But really, what you’re saying amounts to “You can’t tell people about how shitty the shit sandwich is if you only take one bite.” Which is astoundingly stupid and false.
Furthermore, Bakker is so derivative and indicative of the current grimdark skid mark trend that you don’t really even need to read the whole of the work to know exactly how it will begin, progress, and end. It is that stupid, that offensive, and that unimaginative. So, going by the transitive property, we could go ahead and say that you are those same things, but that would be rude. I’ll just let what you wrote above be indications of how offensive and unimaginative and possibly dumb you are.
Dave Carr
/ April 6, 2012Personally I found The Prince of Nothing trilogy to be quite enjoyable.
I think Esmenet is one of the strongest female protagonist I’ve ever read. Lifting yourself up from the bottom wrung of society to ruling an Empire in all but name is no small feet. Bakker goes so far as to blatantly say that she is more intelligent and capable than anyone else (save for the Dunyain). Sure you could make the argument that it is demeaning that she was a prostitute, but I think that this was more of a throw back to Marry Magdalene than to slight women.
Anywho, I’m going to assume that this post won’t sway anyone’s opinion. Everyone seems to have made up their minds already. I think this post is an example of one of my favorite sayings. When you are a hammer, everything else looks like a nail. Meaning, if feminism is your cause, you will tend to see misogyny everywhere (whether it’s really there or not).
Lastly, aren’t you a pot calling the kettle black. I find your repeated demeaning use of words like sweetums and boyo distasteful (probably meant to be emasculating). If I went around referring to women as babe, or girly girl ect. I’d be shot to peaces (and rightfully so).
Well. That’s my 2 cents. Count me successfully trolled
sologdin
/ April 6, 2012repeated demeaning use of words like sweetums and boyo distasteful
think of it this way: gustatory aside, there is no history and institution of violence and discrimination that gives effect to the terms quoted above. babe and girl, to the extent that they signify female, are residue of coverture and seraglio.
phrased another way: the terms directed at males are not injurious in themselves. a male may not like them, but they are incapable of being harmful in their mere utterance. they do not signify anything other than ineffective retaliation at times, or, as here, ironic protest.
they are in essence complaints that the principal beneficiaries of patriarchal domination need not hear, and perhaps do not hear. those who make of show of having been provoked by them are likely shilling for interest other than maleness or are rgistering a real complaint against a real enemy (i.e. women and/or feminism is not an enemy) in the unreal language of “male rights” because the proper language of protest is unavailable or forbidden.
Gourmet Neurovore
/ April 7, 2012Yeah, basically, the thing about using terms like ‘sweetums’ and ‘boyo’ to address a guy is that there isn’t a long history of oppression behind it. As such, it doesn’t have the same weight as, say, calling a woman a ‘cunt’, or a gay guy a ‘fag’.
Racial/gendered slurs are all about context – they don’t derive offensiveness from their dictionary definitions so much as they do from how they’ve been used in the past.
acrackedmoon
/ April 6, 2012Men are such fragile little creatures we need to lock up to protect them from themselves if all it takes to make you feel distaste is calling a man “boyo” and “sweetums.” When was the last time you raised your voice in protest of a woman being called a chick, a babe, or goodness forbid, a bitch?
Your priorities, and what you find distasteful, are all too revealing. The rest of your post isn’t worth the pixels they’re printed on, but I choose to be merciful and deigned to let your comment through simply to serve as an example, to wit: men are fragile and need to be locked up, etc.
ginmar
/ April 12, 2012Nothing like a guy telling women that it’s stupid for them to see the world through the lens of feminism—–and then whining about emasculation over the sarcastic terms tossed his way.
Kit Walls
/ April 13, 2012Just read the books. He’s a good writer, and any attempt to say the books are derivative or unimaginative is simply untrue. I’ve read plenty of fantasy, and Bakker’s work is top tier.
It’s dark fantasy/psuedo historical fiction. It’s a condemnation of religious fanaticism. It’s meant to be harsh because it was set during a harsh time when the women’s lib movement hadn’t gotten off the ground yet and nary a bra had been burned. Getting pissed at the treatment of women in this book is like those nut jobs who got pissed that the lionesses did all the hunting in “The Lion King.” Guess what? They do.
That being said, two of Bakker’s toughest characters are women. Esmenet and Mimara are strong, brilliant, and in possession of an insight I’m okay saying is unique to women.
With this said I’m pretty amazed at the arrogance it requires to admit ignorance, yet proceed with an uninformed condemnation. I’d say you’d be perfect on Fox News, but they wouldn’t allow you any disclaimers. I hope you’re not in any way responsible for determining what people read.
P.S. Words don’t matter. Intent does. If someone calls you a “babe” or a “chick” and it bothers you, let them know before you dub them a “pig” or a “dick”. Or don’t. No one calls me anything that offends me unless I make the choice to let it. Stop being victims ladies. I mean women…er uh, dames..?
acrackedmoon
/ April 13, 2012Oh hey, another barely-sentient shitlord.
Don’t worry, I’ve turned a lot of people off Bakker, Jim Butcher, and Peter Watts just to name three. Bakker directly attributes his drop in sales to “accusations of misogyny.” Oh sweet justice!
Gourmet Neurovore
/ April 13, 2012No one calls me anything that offends me unless I make the choice to let it. Stop being victims ladies. I mean women…er uh, dames..?
Classy. Way classy.
the twisted spinster
/ April 13, 2012You know, the problem with Ms. Wall’s comment is that it looks like something someone thought out carefully before pressing “post comment,” it looks like it has Something To Say… but it’s completely bogus. It came out of a box, or maybe one of those on-line Madlib things. It’s completely hackneyed as well: for example, it’s not enough to say you liked Bakker’s books, they have to be “top tier.” You’re writing blurbs and pre-digested “controversial” fauxpinions. Twenty — okay, maybe ten years ago I would have thought this sort of thing was “edgy.” Now I know better.
the twisted spinster
/ April 13, 2012Aaand just out of curiosity I went and looked up some Bakker on Amazon. Yes, he’s made samples available. I selected one at random and started to read, but I couldn’t get past all the Tolkien-esque made-up unpronounceable names complete with unnecessary diacritical marks placed over random vowels. What I could manage to read was pretentious and boring as shit. “Top tier,” huh.
shardbaenre
/ April 13, 2012“No one calls me anything that offends me unless I make the choice to let it. Stop being victims ladies. I mean women…er uh, dames..?”
Unless those names you’ve been called have ever lead you or other people who most resemble you (ethnicity, race, gender, culture, religion, thought structure, sexuality to name the obvious) to being beaten or abused in any way, I would kindly ask you to STFU. The privilege of being what you are means that you don’t have to care because no one has made you care via violence or legislation.
Every point you made has been rebutted and discussed and shown to be lacking, but apparently you are the lone super speshul snowflake who will get us to change our ways or somehow be more eloquent in the discharging of your word bile. Rest assured, you are the least of them that came before you.
And if you think those are tough characters I pity the women you surround yourself with. I really and truly do. Because either they’ve internalized your bullshit or they actually don’t like being around you.
Seth J Dickinson (@sethjdickinson)
/ April 14, 2012You know, I just thought of (another) profoundly creepy thing about the way Bakker writes rape. It won’t surprise you at all so, so maybe it’s not worth posting — but damn, it feels like yet another distasteful wrinkle.
I’m not going to go ahead and rant without permission because I guess it could be triggering.
acrackedmoon
/ April 14, 2012Oh, go ahead!
Seth J Dickinson (@sethjdickinson)
/ April 14, 2012Oof, sorry, login-by-Twitter really seems to dislike replies. :(
There’s a scene in Neuropath, the only book I’ve ever actually tossed into a trash can, where a woman graphically and at some length rapes one of the male characters. It’s exactly like the Prince of Nothing rape scenes in that we get loving, pornographic descriptions of her body, her movements, her sounds — everything necessary to eroticize the scene.
A lot of the defense of Bakker’s raperaperape fixation pivots on the notion that the victim is eroticized for some philosophical or narrative reason. But given the chance to eroticize a MALE victim – not that eroticizing a rape victim is really, you know, a great idea in the first place – it’s suddenly all about the attacker. There’s not one description of his physical or emotional reactions. In fact, he’s calm and in control the entire time. The rape is supposed to break him and render him susceptible to interrogation, but it doesn’t work at all. The female characters in PoN are constantly broken and demeaned by rape, but this guy’s untouchable.
What really squicked me out – ha, as if that weren’t enough – is that the female character in question is supposed to be a highly trained, extremely capable agent who’s undergone neural conditioning. When she captures the man who has the information she needs, for some contrived reason her first thought isn’t to bring him in to her commander, or Jack Bauer torture him – it’s to strip COMPLETELY NAKED, then rape the guy WITH ALL HIS CLOTHES STILL ON. No matter who’s the aggressor and who the victim in Bakker rape, the woman’s got to look sexy!
Oh, and it gets worse. When she rapes this guy, she’s overwhelmed by how much she likes it. It’s like some kind of bizarre escalation of slut shaming – she literally take so much pleasure in raping the man that she has some kind of neural breakdown. At one point she even bemoans that she’s not a man raping a woman, because it would be even more pleasurable that way, because :evolutionary psychology: or something fuck I don’t know
And worse yet, raping the guy makes her stupid! It actively leads to the failure of her mission and her death! She’s so intent on taking all her clothes off and raping him, in lovingly described breast-heaving multiple-orgasm detail, that she doesn’t even secure all the guns lying around – and another male POV character lying nearby works his way free, gets a gun, and in the middle of her rant about how here, at last, without society’s rules, she can finally rape anyone she pleases, shoots her in the head. He delivers a one-liner, too!
So: a female on male rape scene in which the female is still the one eroticized, in which the female character abandons her training and mission in order to rape, in which she is literally overwhelmed by how great it is to rape people, and which concludes with her being shot in the head and (more or less) spat on for being such a crazy slutbitch.
After she’s killed mid-graphic-rape, her body is left lying completely naked on the floor in this cabin for several hours (days?) of narrative time. The main character ends up with her panties in his coat pocket (for some reason – she forgot them at his house earlier, I think?) and it’s made into a big joke later in the story.
The scene is completely unnecessary to the narrative and the character’s mission, and it’s completely disgusting at that. But most of all, it seems to speak directly to the falsehood of a lot of the defense of Bakker rape: the notion that for some reason we need to hear about shining breasts and eager moaning and geoiqhghh
acrackedmoon
/ April 14, 2012This is the scene that Bakker cited as subversive? This is the thing he said would clinch his credential as the Grand Poobah of Feminists?
…………..wow. I’m tempted to track down an epub just to find this scene so I can write up another post and cause seven more months of Bakker’s buttfurious.
My jaw dropped IRL. Even beyond everything else the sheer puerility of this is extraordinary.
Next Friday
/ April 14, 2012Hopefully, mr Bakker hasn’t run out of friends that still believe in his noble feminist intentions. He’ll need LOTS of support.
green_knight
/ April 14, 2012This description just goes to prove that sometimes, one does not need to read a single page to be convinced of a writer’s misogyny: the summary is enough.
Dear Seth: have some brain bleach. You’ll need it.
s s (@quietsmith)
/ April 15, 2012“so I can write up another post and cause seven more months of Bakker’s buttfurious”. If you do, and I wouldn’t wish the book on you, here’s the gist of Neuropath in six easy panels (minus the raping and murdering and stodge). That’s also the gist of Prince of Nothing, too, if you were wondering what happened beyond page six (imagine she’s a whore and he’s a prophet but remove the economy of storytelling to bloat it out to a trilogy and add rape). Interested to read your thoughts on Neuropath.
acrackedmoon
/ April 15, 2012I fear I wouldn’t actually read the thing. I’ve located the text of the rape scene in question and that’s about all I will bother with. I’ll say that it’s all on its own plenty condemning enough, as much as his interview (or possibly more). Seth described it right down to a tee.
That comic is eerily appropriate. Almost tailor-made. But since it’s not, it appears there are other people who think like Bakker. Distressing.
Gourmet Neurovore
/ April 15, 2012Mhm. I’m starting to suspect that Bakker has something quite seriously wrong with him up top. He doesn’t really seem to get people.
s s (@quietsmith)
/ April 15, 2012The Scott Adams cartoon isn’t distressing, I don’t think, outside of unfortunately mirroring Bakker’s plots, which are themselves distressing for the wrong reasons.
Adams is making a joke, a good one, and it’s worth noting that the lone attempted joke in Prince of Nothing is a rehash of an old one about penis length. Bakker’s sense of humour isn’t as sophisticated as Adams’. A tired knob joke is as good as Bakker gets. A big dick – hurr, hurr, hurr. A neckbeard classic.
Lots of people think, in the broadest sense of the word, like Bakker re the broad strokes of the Adams cartoon. Neuro-linguistic programming and whatnot has been around for a while now but not everyone comes across like they’ve re-invented the wheel every time they mention it. There is, I’m sure, a reason why Bakker failed to complete a PhD in philosophy other than the obvious ones (which are of course unrelated to the female tutor who he himself admitted on his blog considered him to be sexist). Not everyone posts online like they are trying to pad out an essay — I think the earliest example of this was the spat he had with Jeff Vandermeer, when most folk, including John C Wright, scratched their noses etc..
Bakker, for a writer or otherwise, can’t express himself well online. As Mark Twain said: “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” Bakker should’ve let his books speak for themselves – he’s only been removing doubt for some time now.
logicalrudeness
/ May 23, 2012I can’t resist pointing to Peter Suber’s article on “Logical Rudeness,” which I think captures the problem with much of the discussion in this thread.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/rudeness.htm
I’ve read some of R. Scott Bakker’s works under discussion, and don’t necessarily disagree with your overall point of view. But I’m repelled by the way you state your case.
acrackedmoon
/ May 23, 2012Go google up tone argument, you silly pseudo-intellectual.
logicalrudeness
/ May 24, 2012I probably deserve that labelling. Sorry if I’ve offended.
coplexit
/ February 28, 2013(I know that the comment to that I am replying is nearly a year old.)
I went through that article (mild spoilers! lel) and much of it read like a retelling of familiar concepts in different terms. Notably, it explores very explicitly how the so-called logical rudeness is something that inherently must be part of etiquette, or “manners”, and that (logical) rudeness is not actually indicative of being illogical. In short, it specifically rejects the tone argument (as far as “logic” is concerned). Of course we already knew about that, but I’m considering whether to fold dudebros with a brief reference to the article if (when) they again attempt to use phrases like “what you say is illogical” in the odd way that apparently means “what you say is calling-out-my-misogyny-or-otherwise-not-adhering-to-your-place-as-a-woman”. Or even when they actually want to *~debate~* me.
Anyway, the article also turns more involved, with some fairly interesting conclusions on logical rudeness potentially being a logical (hah!) way to go about applying one’s views in conversations. Other bits include: some very applicable (to me) passages about someone not necessarily playing the game that is debate even if someone else demands it of them; and a listing of debate (game) behaviour that includes direct equivalents to concern trolling, mockery, obtuse conclusions, dictionary definitions (as “fall back on definitions”), and obscure alternative meanings of words ie “words mean whatever I want them to mean!!” (as “refuse to fall back on definitions”!). Assuming you haven’t read it yet, I’d rec it for such rhetorical toying, though it’s wordy and in parts very dry. It was mostly fun to read for me. (If you’re interested, I can also quote some stretches I found particularly enjoyable.)
By the way, to be “repelled by the way you state your case” is not at all a conclusion that would follow from the article’s content (not by its rhetoric and certainly not “logically”). Hence: I’m repelled by the way the initial commenter stated their case =P
Note a content warning on the article, due to some unfortunate parts on rape in legal settings, both hypothetical and actual apparently.
s s (@quietsmith)
/ May 27, 2012Good article here about the “rape module”.
Jaqen (@Jaqen1)
/ August 22, 2012It’s always cool when someone starts the critic of an author by professing that he hasn’t read his books. Makes you think of how much his statement will bring. I haven’t read Bakker, and I probably won’t like him too much if I do. I’ve read you and know for a fact that I don’t like you too much either (even more so now that I see you’re editing the answers to your blog).
Took me long enough to read all of Goodkind so I can say he writes crap and he is an asshole. If you want to talk about Bakker, read him. If you don’t want to read him, don’t make useless blog articles about your not reading him.
That’s all quite fair and simple.
ginmar
/ August 22, 2012That’s all quite fair and simple.
Really? Then why didn’t you read the post you claim you’re answering?
Jaqen (@Jaqen1)
/ August 22, 2012Allow me to present you with two people. These two people are reacting to an interview where an author claims he’s doing something with a hidden purpose, and they say that this hidden purpose is fake.
The first person explains to you how this is not possible. He quotes part of the author’s work, where it is blatant that his writing isn’t in adequation with his pretended goals. He exposes the liar for what he is, through analysis and proof. He is being thorough and committed.
The second person tells you how this is not possible. He can’t quote books, cause he has no time or will to read them. He quotes interviews and says “lie, lie, lie”. That author is lying because I know he’s lying, because we know he’s lying. Because he’s an asshole, and assholes tend to lie.
If those two people are talking about the same author, then they are both right. However, one of them only deserves attention. Because he is talking about facts, not about truths. Because he is convincing, where the other is only persuasive.
Only one of them can make things move.
Now you can be the first person in comments, chat logs, wherever ; some people don’t have time to hate properly, I can understand that. But when you take the time to publish a full, articulted, article in which you flame a writer, be sure to belong to the right category. Otherwise it isn’t worth anything.
acrackedmoon
/ August 23, 2012ginmar
/ August 23, 2012Because his comments aren’t enough to make you hate him. If you’re a silly bitch, in other words.
Awesome mansplaining, asshole. But you’re a shitty person to half the human race.
Jaqen (@Jaqen1)
/ August 23, 2012Thank you both for acknowledging I’m right.
ginmar
/ August 23, 2012Neither of us have done anything of the sort but thanks for proving you’re in the third grade.
Tomislav Augustinčić
/ February 12, 2013Firstly, answer me this: how can you call yourself a critic of any sorts and of any genre without having read beyond five pages? Furthermore, how can one give a critique to a work that he hasn’t read, or slander an author, based on an single statement, a sigle idea, that in his setting women are „objectively-spiritually inferior to men“.
(You start without an understanding of the book. The boy isn’t raped, the’s lured by an old man who wants to rape him. But the opening chapter isn’t about rape, it’s about the arrival of the Dunyain.)
„It’s a lot of rape to go around, a lot of juvenile grimdark“. I believe woman, who are raped more than men, often state that rape was the most traumatic experience of their life. Maybe the fact that rape is put on paper gives it less strenght, but it depicts the ultimate act of violence and hatred towards an person, the ultimate disgrace and trauma. And warriors have always raped those conquered; the Russian Cossacks during WWII raped every village, and so did the Turks during the expansion of the Ottoman Empire; look to other fantasy works especially those that are of newer origin and you’ll find rape as a central motiff in war.
I honestly believe that placing strong female characters inside a trying-to-be-realistic/historic (and by this I don’t offend Bakkers work) fantasy novel, as is commonplace in high fantasy and gaming today, is really unrealistic. Furthermore, the „whore with a golden heart“ characters are outdated since the time 20th century literature.
I must clearly say that you are biased. With your first line, with your first comment and the “poetic” description in the right upper corner you ouze with hatred and warmongering, not even giving reasonable or argumented answers in this text.
And you actually confirmed all his comments. You decided that his books are misogynistic on a statement, pronounced him a misogyne, clearly you have an intent to prove your point, without reading the book (you could have read the summary, at least) nor without doing further reading or researching; and you’re proving your point on his statement, misplaced from context, doing exactly what he stated, not even aware of what you’re writing
“while it’s possible to explore feminism through creating a fictional misogynistic culture, it takes a good bit of finesse to do” – your statement. Back to my first argument, you haven’t even read more than five pages. He also uses a bit more finesse in writing, than you do, calling him “an egocentric little wanker with gargantuanly overinflated ideas”, with “Eat shit. The first bite tastes like shit” following the previous statement. And “Eat shit…” is your comment to his comment “And fifth, that the story is far from done, that my critics are passing judgment on factions of the whole”. Is that your comment? Eat shit? Seriously? Givinge a critique, and not able to argument more than “Eat shit”?
Honestly, my opinion on portraying patriarchal societies in literature is the following: in such works, women shouldn’t be even mentioned, except if their prostitutes; patriarchal societies don’t show women off to prove their social/intelectual/spiritual inferiority: they lock them away and refuse to acknowledge their existence, refuse to allow them publicity (in the sense of allowing them anything public or letting them in public).
Do you know how you sound? Stupid. Pretentious. Ill-informed. Rude. Preachy. An aggressive know-it-all who’s only point is to prove somebody wrong and all the above stated (and then some), a hillbilly trying to prove it’s point without any arguments, only by insulting. You are an offense to critics.
And again, he described you perfectly – “but they’ll crow about the one that confirms their criticism”, you’re draging him through the mud.
I declined to read other comments, as there is little space only to comment on your text, but his following statement described your clique: “making their case becomes a matter of in-group prestige”. Again, it seems you haven’t even grasped his statement, haven’t even thought it through – “Oh my goodness can you get any further up your own anus”. He wasn’t event talking about himself; he described how group mentality works when it comes to groups who think alike, and how the minds of such as yourself work.
You’re more self-important then him, thinking you’re above everything else. Everybody has a right to an opinion, and nobody has to interpret his books the way he wants. But, much like anuses opinions can be full of shit.
You didn’t get the whole pun on gay conservatives? Btw, you shouldn’t fragment his statments like this – he isn’t refering to people who think his books are misogynistic, but to those who are stuck on proving his books are misogynistics, and fruthermore, that he’s misogynistic, beyond all his statments and beyond the point to stop at a moment; people so caught up in proving him wrong (and very cowardly not writing this on his Forum but on a separate blog), and so “invested” that they lack any argument and offend; and if they have arguments, they get so caught up in the paradox of their own comments that they sound like gay conservatives. Gay conservatives being people who are gay, but consent to the conservative ideals. Think it overs.
Explain, please, this paragraph: “Why do all neckbeards trot out this one…”. You, the author of this piece of atrocity, are a sexist, chauvinist and a person with issues.
“The thought that people might be remotely justified at all never strikes them. It’s simply not possible. After all, people who know them say so. The rest of us who simply derive his attitudes from what he says and does online, well, we could never be magical enoguh to truly know him”
I honestly think you have issues at this point. I’m sure that your friends think you’re a dandily perfect human being, and you are actually quite smart and that you really hit the spot in your critiques, but I consider you, after reading this to this here point (but I guess that the rest won’t delusion me), reading what you have said and done online, an complete an utter idiot, a pretentious pseudo-writer that doesn’t know anything about critique nor literature, nor should use the term “critics” as you aren’t even able to read a book before venturing; that doesn’t even have the ability to argument his/hers tirades of anger and hatred; and refuse to even read anything other. Well, how does that shit-cake taste?
It’s simply not possible that you’re what I wrote above. After all, people who know you say so. The rest of us, such as me, who stumbled here, we could never be magical enough to truly know you. I’m just an idiot who doesn’t understand; moreover, I’m a chauvinist and a sexist and so on and so on.
Ad 1 – No, only the fault of non-readers like you.
Ad 2 – your statement: “it’s incomprehensible that anyone would find his texts misogynistic (despite the ‘woman are, objectively, spiritually inferior to men’), ‘perplexing sideshow’ even”. As said, you haven’t read any of the books – I quote: “I admit that I’ve never read beyond five pages of Bakker’s debut novel The Darkness that Comes Before“. He’s finished the first trilogy and doing well into the second at this point. So shut the fuck up.
I haven’t even attempted to defend his works, as I’ve read all of them except the last one, and am well able to defend him; but doing so, you will accuse me, a male, of being misogynistic; stating that I’m gay wouldn’t put you of your intent, because, all male gay people hate vaginas, I guess, or fear them, or see women as threats, and we end up misogynistic as well.
You’re a disgrace. And the worst part is, you won’t even understand what I said, and you’ll probably attack me the same way you did him.
I’m not defending Bakker. I don’t know him, but I like his works, I really do, and I found myself here while trying to find more info on Nonmen.
I regret it now, stumbling here, but I couldn’t have kept silent to this piece of rubbish.
Let me end with a quote on you, with a small change in wording: “Like everything else YOU say and do online, the excuses YOU throw up are incredibly wanky and pretentious. And then some.”
Thank you.
robotanna
/ February 12, 2013wow this sure is a really roundabout, longwinded way of saying “i am a worthless male piece of shit with garbage ideas not worth bothering with”
acrackedmoon
/ February 12, 2013Greetings! I was going to trash your comment but twitter people wanted to tear you apart for funsies. Have fun, here’s a vat of liquid shit in which you’re free to drown.
seanwillsalt
/ February 12, 2013Spend any time at all around white gay men and you’re liable to hear all the usual ‘jokes’ about hysterical women, two-faced women, ‘lol vaginas are gross’, body shaming, and garden-variety sexism. It all sounds depressingly familiar because it’s the exact same shit said by straight men. It’s got nothing to do with gay men ‘hating vaginas’. (And if people do have the idea that we hate vaginas…well, read over this paragraph again. Where do you think it came from?)
Being gay doesn’t make you immune from being a sexist shithead. It doesn’t make you immune from being racist (I’ve seen plenty of that too) or transphobic or from holding any other kind of prejudice you can name. Just because I’m gay doesn’t mean that I haven’t inherited all of the biases associated with male privilege, and it sure didn’t stop you from mansplaining your way into this comment thread.
I’m genuinely pleading with you on this one: do not use the ‘But I’m gay!!’ excuse if someone calls you out on sexism.
green_knight
/ February 13, 2013And to go one step further: being a member of [group] does not mean that you’re holding prejudices against [group]. Women can and do write highly sexist shit, etc etc.
ronanwills
/ February 12, 2013Very easily? Particularly when the intent of the critique is to focus on a particular issue (eg feminism) rather than just a straight up assessment of quality.
And yet the rape in fantasy novels so often doesn’t reflect this. It’s thrown into the story to up the grimdark quota, not to attempt to explore or examine the issue. This is as you say a traumatic event that many people are forced to go through in real life and treating it like a throwaway grit-factor is insulting.
Dude if we’re going to start this shit we’ll be here all year. Fantasy novels have tons and tons of unrealistic elements (I’m not talking about dragons and magic) so it’s pointless to declare that *this* particular element can’t be changed, or else it’d be UNREALISTIC MAN.
Speaking of which.
Why? Women have fought in wars and held positions of power and influence throughout history. Also, it’s a fantasy story so why is real-world historical precedent important? Or are fantasy authors so creatively stunted they can only imagine shallow pastiches of medieval Europe with elves and dwarves and shit thrown in?
Oh wait
OH NO
Everyone is biased. You or your favourite hobbies are not entitled to a fair hearing.
Let me just stop and point out that you’re seriously suggesting writing a book with no female characters except for prostitutes. Also: you seem to be operating on the assumption that the main character is going to be a man. Rather telling, isn’t it?
I have a feeling that when you say “patriarchal societies” you’re talking about some Middle Eastern countries. You’re probably one of these people who wouldn’t consider your own society patriarchal (hint: it is). So let me give you an example we can all agree on: post-World War 2 era America. Or really any time in US history before the very recent present (partially of course, see previous hint).
Were women “locked away”? No, because that would be fucking impossible. Even if you ignore the fact that there were jobs considered to be permissable for women to work in, *women were the home-makers*. The patriarchal ideas of the time considered child-raising housekeeping to be a woman’s natural role, which isn’t really compatible with “locking them away”. You certainly wouldn’t write a story set during this time where women were entirely absent from the narrative. Well you could, I suppose, if you were a shitty writer.
Even in the grimdark age fantasy authors love so much this wasn’t the case. No one looked at paintings of Queen Elizabeth and said “THE KING HAS TITS WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS”. Women were oppressed and confined to very rigid societal roles; they weren’t erased.
(try to argue the Elizabethan age wasn’t patriarchal because they had a queen, I fucking dare you)
Homework: read The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. No, shut up. Just do it.
So it’s alright to *think* his books are misogynistic….. but not to *prove* that they are?
Oh well if he SAYS he’s not then it’s clearly true. Why didn’t you say so earlier?
Hint number three: misogynists usually don’t know they’re misogynists. For example I’m writing a blog comment at the moment in reply to a guy who’s sexist as shit, but he totally doesn’t realize he is. It’s really funny.
No one cares.
layogenic
/ February 12, 2013Man I just spent an hour writing up a reply to this guy and you stole my thunder.
Tomislav Augustinčić
/ February 14, 2013Dear Author (acrackeddeamon?)
just erase my comments.
Take it for your pride that you and your gang “tore my apart for funsies”, I lost interest in this, and it only leaves me wordless (no other word fits). I accept my “defeat”, my “drowning” in this “liquid shit”.
Until never-reading-anything-from-you-again,
best of luck.
Gourmet Neurovore
/ February 2, 2012‘Feeling it’ doesn’t cut it afraid. The Nazis felt every bit as pious as you. More.
Ooh, a Godwin. Classy.
And he still doesn’t seem to have registered that you’re not a guy. So much for that vast, penetrating intellect, huh?
I’m very much reminded of the conversation going on in the Pat article about these folks’ bewilderment that other straight white people might disagree with them. Rather pleasing serendipity there.
Zach
/ February 2, 2012“I think women are gentle and meek and nurturing, how in the world could I be a misogynist?”
trevoresque
/ February 2, 2012He knows she isn’t a man, but is now referring to her as such on purpose. Someone corrected him on his blog, so he wrote: “Given the stupidity and the vitriol, I thought that was the safe way to go. But then that’s the point, isn’t it? There is no safe way!”
In the comments of that same blog post he referred to another woman as male. His response when she corrected him was: “So when someone pops up claiming that I’m sexist, I assume they must be a dude, because dudes are generally the lazier gender, statistically more prone to make unfounded assumptions.”
He pulls out the most bizarre excuses, like how he claimed he was writing in the “second person genitive” when his sockpuppetry was revealed at the Westeros forum.
Many PR lessons here for aspiring writers.