recently i had a dream. in the dream i was walking up to the 24th floor of a building where my daughter would be living. we walked into the apartment and it was nice, cosy and fully furnished. then i left her to go find mine on the 17th floor. as i walked downwards i found the structure was not complete. the steel rods lay bare. and my apartment was unfinished. it had only the mere sense of walls. perturbed i ran to the bottom where i saw an old man whom i later identified as george rr martin passing out cupcakes.
i spent a many engrossed hours thinking about this dream, learning from it and marvelling again in the way dreams provide me with so much knowledge about myself.
george rr martin at the bottom was a surprise. i think his song of ice and fire books are incredible. i love the way he writes characters and breaks all the rules about point of view and plot. i love even more how complete his world is in detail. but i hate that his world is so sexist and how he paints women into very limited gender roles. sure there are strong women in the story but the story is set in a patriarchal world where women are treated as sex objects and crimes like rape are normalised. in that, and other things, the imaginary world he's created is very much like ours. when a long winter is coming which fools would spend their lives warring instead of co-operating to wisely use limited resources i wonder. yes, thats just what we do in our world too.
so i hate the books and his world as much as i love them. while full and entertaining they also are helping maintain the very structures of our world that i hate. he explains it away in an interview by saying that is the world he knows. but fantasy to me is about imagining and creating any kind of world.
another writer i love - and hate - is patrick rothfuss. his prose is lyrical and flows out like soul stirring musical notes. his language so rich and evocative. his story line is simpler, more linear and sometimes a bit predictable but still i delightfully devoured all 600 pages of his first book. alternately loving, feeling sorry for, hating and pitying the protagonist. yet i am reluctant to read his next book. simply because his world is also sexist. why would i, a woman, enjoy reading a book about a university where the female-male ratio of the students is about ten in every hundred? it seems to suggest to me that patrick rothfusss thinks women are not smart enough to be in university, just like our forefathers. and his lead female wanders in and out of the book on the arms of different men and this existence of hers is explained by 'what else can a pretty girl do.' a bit distasteful!
so why are there so few fantasy books with egalitarian social structures? why don't people share and co-operate to maximise the use of limited resources? if i were creating a world thats the one i would create. and if i was writing about rape i would make it seem abnormal instead of the norm. that is the world i want to read about. stories subtly act on our unconscious and reading stories which don't have the same discriminatory structures and prejudices against women will go a long in changing our inner world.
i spent a many engrossed hours thinking about this dream, learning from it and marvelling again in the way dreams provide me with so much knowledge about myself.
george rr martin at the bottom was a surprise. i think his song of ice and fire books are incredible. i love the way he writes characters and breaks all the rules about point of view and plot. i love even more how complete his world is in detail. but i hate that his world is so sexist and how he paints women into very limited gender roles. sure there are strong women in the story but the story is set in a patriarchal world where women are treated as sex objects and crimes like rape are normalised. in that, and other things, the imaginary world he's created is very much like ours. when a long winter is coming which fools would spend their lives warring instead of co-operating to wisely use limited resources i wonder. yes, thats just what we do in our world too.
so i hate the books and his world as much as i love them. while full and entertaining they also are helping maintain the very structures of our world that i hate. he explains it away in an interview by saying that is the world he knows. but fantasy to me is about imagining and creating any kind of world.
another writer i love - and hate - is patrick rothfuss. his prose is lyrical and flows out like soul stirring musical notes. his language so rich and evocative. his story line is simpler, more linear and sometimes a bit predictable but still i delightfully devoured all 600 pages of his first book. alternately loving, feeling sorry for, hating and pitying the protagonist. yet i am reluctant to read his next book. simply because his world is also sexist. why would i, a woman, enjoy reading a book about a university where the female-male ratio of the students is about ten in every hundred? it seems to suggest to me that patrick rothfusss thinks women are not smart enough to be in university, just like our forefathers. and his lead female wanders in and out of the book on the arms of different men and this existence of hers is explained by 'what else can a pretty girl do.' a bit distasteful!
so why are there so few fantasy books with egalitarian social structures? why don't people share and co-operate to maximise the use of limited resources? if i were creating a world thats the one i would create. and if i was writing about rape i would make it seem abnormal instead of the norm. that is the world i want to read about. stories subtly act on our unconscious and reading stories which don't have the same discriminatory structures and prejudices against women will go a long in changing our inner world.
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