Help me out here, internets
Oct. 21st, 2012 12:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettSo I have finally got around to reading the Song of the Lioness quartet by Tamora Pierce - and, um, I am kind of horrified?
Like, I kept seeing it recced places because the protagonist is a woman who fights damn well, and who wants sex and who has it and who isn't shamed for it, and as far as it goes that's true, BUT.
... pretty much the entirety of the first book is a trans* narrative, and it barely touches at all on the dysphoria that induces (there are many things wrong with Self-Made Man but it does give some insight).
... the relationships between Alanna and George and Jonathan are REALLY SKEEVY AND COERCIVE AND PRESSURE-Y.
... I am part-way through the third book, and I am not off the top of my head recalling any convincing Bechdel passes. Maybe there have been some in the third book. Maybe.
...
... and that is before we get onto the racism. I mean, wow, these books are racist. Holy (literally) Magical Negro [TVtropes], my word. There is an entire race (yep!) who live as tribes (yep!) in the desert (yep!) and have no written history until whitey asks for it whereupon they deliver (yep!) and are described in character voice with the phrase "Your people seem to be wise and old" (!!!) and by the narrative as ~proud~ and as being ~walnut-brown~ and they have clearly Arabic-coded names (UNLIKE WHITEY WHO HAS ~FANTASY NAME~) and are explicitly identified as being distinctly in awe of at least one god who is explicitly described as having SPARKLING WHITE SKIN. In the book I am currently part-way through, colonial whitey prince is about to become the Voice of the Tribes - a kind of spiritual leader - having had approximately no contact with them... apart from when he & whitey protagonist ~fulfilled a prophecy~ in book 1 and delivered the Bazhir from an ~evil curse upon their lands~.
...
So now you know, and I hope never again to see an uncritical review of those books, because WOW I was not expecting any of that going in. Like, I'd be kind of fascinated to know what explanation people have for the uncritical recs apart from "BUT IT'S NOT RACIIIIIIIIIIST", but I sort of suspect there isn't one.
Like, I kept seeing it recced places because the protagonist is a woman who fights damn well, and who wants sex and who has it and who isn't shamed for it, and as far as it goes that's true, BUT.
... pretty much the entirety of the first book is a trans* narrative, and it barely touches at all on the dysphoria that induces (there are many things wrong with Self-Made Man but it does give some insight).
... the relationships between Alanna and George and Jonathan are REALLY SKEEVY AND COERCIVE AND PRESSURE-Y.
... I am part-way through the third book, and I am not off the top of my head recalling any convincing Bechdel passes. Maybe there have been some in the third book. Maybe.
...
... and that is before we get onto the racism. I mean, wow, these books are racist. Holy (literally) Magical Negro [TVtropes], my word. There is an entire race (yep!) who live as tribes (yep!) in the desert (yep!) and have no written history until whitey asks for it whereupon they deliver (yep!) and are described in character voice with the phrase "Your people seem to be wise and old" (!!!) and by the narrative as ~proud~ and as being ~walnut-brown~ and they have clearly Arabic-coded names (UNLIKE WHITEY WHO HAS ~FANTASY NAME~) and are explicitly identified as being distinctly in awe of at least one god who is explicitly described as having SPARKLING WHITE SKIN. In the book I am currently part-way through, colonial whitey prince is about to become the Voice of the Tribes - a kind of spiritual leader - having had approximately no contact with them... apart from when he & whitey protagonist ~fulfilled a prophecy~ in book 1 and delivered the Bazhir from an ~evil curse upon their lands~.
...
So now you know, and I hope never again to see an uncritical review of those books, because WOW I was not expecting any of that going in. Like, I'd be kind of fascinated to know what explanation people have for the uncritical recs apart from "BUT IT'S NOT RACIIIIIIIIIIST", but I sort of suspect there isn't one.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-21 12:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-21 12:28 am (UTC)Jonathan and George's behavior did always make me uncomfortable and I really felt that Alanna's relationship with George, other than being coercive, was kinda shoehorned into the narrative.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-21 12:31 am (UTC)And, to be clear, I am totally okay with the idea that people can enjoy problematic media
Frank Turner, and I do totally get the value in seeing Alanna go off and do ~boy things~ and have dudes be okay with that <3But. Yeah. See above re: Bitch magazine. My feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit, etc. :-/
(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-21 12:38 am (UTC)YIIIIIKES.
(and I hope that paragraph above wasn't as much of a mess as it looks. Not very concise, I know, but I can't figure out how to improve it right now.)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-21 12:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-21 12:39 am (UTC)I think it was initially written in the 80s and there wasn't as large a social justice scene back then to say "hey, this kind of trope is not ok". The Bazhir are rather two-dimensional in the SOLT quartet and get fleshed out a little bit more in the successive books as Jonathan's kingdom/empire expands. That part always bothered me, but when her book was classified as YA by the publisher it got split into 4 and there was a length limit imposed, so some things got a bit squished in the process. I'm not sure if she would have expanded upon them otherwise, like she starts to some in 3/4, but to a large degree authorial intent doesn't matter nearly as much as the finished product. I don't have any doubt that she intended it that way, but... yeah, I can definitely see that being there nonetheless. (I read it as a kid so that kind of thing wasn't on my radar back then for sure, and that is likely to be the case with many people recommending it as well.)
I don't necessarily see it as a trans narrative, because Alanna isn't a boy, and doesn't want to be a boy, she just wants to be something everyone is insisting only a boy can be. She deals with the uncomfortableness of the breast bindings and hiding her sex from the other pages/squires, but also learns how to be comfortable as a woman from George's mother, from dealing with periods to dresses and such. She's always been a tomboy, doing what she's doing as a knight in training, and actually has a harder time accepting how to be a comfortable in her skin as a beautiful woman than acting like what people expect out of a man. I think that this is also a more prominent theme in books 3 & 4. However, that's my viewpoint and I very well may be wrong. I do believe that it was intended as a narrative about gender equality rather than gender identity, but again, intent isn't always what matters.
Jonathan is an entitled prat; I never really liked him and Alanna. (Though his eventual wife does end up putting him in his place, but I think that's either book 4 or a later quartet.) The way that I read things between him and Alanna is that he was an example of what's not ok in a relationship, and how it's easy to fall for someone that really isn't good for you-- and an example of when to say "no, I will not change who I am to become who you want me to be". I think that might come to surface in book 4, though; I can't remember when she leaves him and goes to George.
All that said, her later books are better in terms of social justice aspects, I believe. Alanna's series is just often pointed out because it was a strong feministic character at a time where there weren't many to be had. There's actually a blogger that is doing a blow by blow review as he reads through them, and Tammy has been wincing at some of the appropriate critiques he's been raising... critiques that she's agreeing with. I do believe that many things would be different if she had a chance to go back and do a rewrite of the series.
I'm trying not to come across as defensive, as it's a series that I love by an author that I love, but you're right that it has issues and it falls under the category of "liking problematic things".
(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-21 12:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-21 12:50 am (UTC)What I won't forgive - as I said to Josh, above - is the entirely uncritical reviews published in Bitch magazine in 2010, and every other person I've seen in the realms of social justice in the last 3-4 years recommend Songs of the Lioness without a "btw it's really racist and stalkery" every time people have asked for fantasy that actually features female characters.
Re trans* narrative - I agree that she isn't a boy, and doesn't want to be a boy - but as per Self-Made Man, people put in that situation do tend to experience pretty severe dysphoria, and that doesn't seem to be dealt with at all. And, again, book written however many decades ago - and honestly that's a pretty mild grump and if it were all that was wrong with the book I would sulk slightly but not think too much of it. However, given that this post is basically a catalogue of "WOW THIS IS FUCKED UP", I didn't feel like leaving it out ;)
Thanks for your detailed comment - I know it can be really hard to engage thoughtfully rather than defensively with critical readings of things we love, and I think you've done a fantastic job of it.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-21 12:58 am (UTC)(also, insert possibly inappropriate squee at you being friends with an author that I have always looked up to as a young writer, problematic material or not! That's awesome!)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-21 01:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-21 12:45 am (UTC)For myself, and I suspect many people, books we read and love as children acquire blind spots of handwavium from sheer sentiment unless we reread them as adults with a critical, rather than nostalgic, mindset.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-21 12:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-21 12:50 am (UTC)I'd read everything the library had to offer in fantasy aimed at children and young teens and everyone was so damn white in them, with their sparkling blue/golden/green eyes and pale/creamy/alabaster skin and finally there were people who had dark skin and weren't part of the typically homogeneous Northern Europeanish landscape.
So while I absolutely wish she'd done better, I'm mostly sad that even a rather stereotypical portrayal was something astonishing and new and welcome.
Hi, I have complicated feelings about this.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-21 12:54 am (UTC)Mostly I am just really, really cross with all the ~feminist reading lists~ I've seen it show up on in the last 5 years without even a whisper of a "by the way" :-/
And thank you for saying.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-21 01:09 am (UTC)I quite like the Wild Magic quartet but The Emperor Mage takes it to Not Egypt and while she does do reasonably good things with the university and centre of learning bit, it's still something I wince at. Also another relationship with a big age difference, hurrah.
The Protector of the Small quartet does much more interesting things about the process of rebuilding a kingdom, the various alliances that have to be built and maintained and the main character is a girl training to be a knight as a girl, so experiences much more sexism. However, it's also the quartet where Pierce Discovers Japan and...yeah. Not good.
I tend to read Alanna as a straightforward, pragmatic character not really given to introspection. She wants to be a knight and the only way to do that is to be a boy, so she'll live as a boy then. She's not doing it as a meditation on gender - it's because she wants something and it's the only way she can get it.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-21 01:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-21 05:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-21 01:14 pm (UTC)George... Yeah, I can see the stalkerish tendencies, but IDK, it's never felt blatant enough, or at all intending harm, that it ever pinged anything for me? And I know people have problems with the age difference, but that has, literally, never been a problem for me. Anyway, I've never gotten the impression that it was more than 12 years at the max, and Daine and Numair (The Immortals quartet)? Easily at least 16 years difference, PLUS teacher-student. I don't mind it, in fact it makes me squee more (yes I am weird, which you knew ♥), but I do know people twitch over it.
The Immortals is, hands down, my favourite quartet. I'm a sucker for all things Daine and Numair, and Kitten, and the Not Egypt (I am forgiving. Or possibly just someone that loves Ancient Egypt enough to cheerfully gloss; slight differences, eh? xD), and, well. Favourite. I AM BIASED AND ADMIT IT.
I detest Protector of the Small because Kel never felt rounded to me, while also, in some ways, being very Sue-ish, IDK. I've never managed to re-read Protector of the Small, because it just never sat right. *shrug*
I think, though, that you might enjoy the Beka Cooper books; they're much more recent than any other Tortall book, and are generally tightly written and Conscious Of Issues. I do have to say that the genderqueer drag performer (...am honestly not sure what gender they prefer although they answer readily enough to "female" onstage and "male but very effeminate" offstage) feels handled a little ishly but I'm not sure if that was me reading with too much expectation or what. (The sole plothole I noticed on my readthrough was that the dog was mentioned to be spayed in book 2, but was magically NOT spayed in book 3.)
(The book covers having some interesting anatomical issues are not plot holes, sadly. >_>)
ANYWAY lots of pointless TL;DR rambling, sorry!
I am sorry that SOTL is making you D:-face a lot! *offers hugs and ♥*
(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-22 08:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-22 10:32 am (UTC)a) people are short sighted. As a white woman, I'm more likely to see the awesomeness of Alanna than the fail of the way the non-white characters are handled. This is not an excuse.
b) people were _young_. Even the authors of the bitch and f-words reviews are writing a) through a large lens of nostalgia and b) about a book we all mostly read before our consciences were raised.
c) it was so much better than anything else we had in the 80s.
d) People really really really loved Alanna. And it's easy with something you love to go 'I love this so it must be perfect', rather than 'I love this even though it is flawed'. This is also not an excuse.
I'm glad you're calling people on this, and making us think more about what we like. I'm comfortably uncomfortable with liking problematic stuff (I think really there'd be vanishingly little left to read that doesn't have any problems, because really, this stuff seeps deep) but I'm also grateful when someone makes me stop and think about it all.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-22 11:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-31 05:43 pm (UTC)I think the problem highlighted (and please do correct me if wrong) is less "people with vaginas who dress as men are trans men and please write them as such" and more "cis-women who live their lives in a male role might expect to experience some gender dysphoria from presenting as male when they are actually female".
I'm not sure I think that is always the case; partly because I don't think everyone has an equally strong internal feeling of what gender they are, partly because I think taking on a male persona is easier if *chosen* than if forced onto you. But I've not tried presenting as male for more than a few hours at a time.
But that doesn't even start on the race fail.