# Historically Accurate Sexism in Fantasy



## Chilari (Dec 9, 2012)

I have come across an article on Historical Authentic Sexism in Fantasy. I found it quite interesting and thought I'd share. It has inspired me to dig a bit deeper in history that what you see in the school text books and TV documentaries.

So: thoughts, impression, books where the issue is dealt with well or badly?

I think the Farseer trilogy by Robin Hobb dealt well with powerful and interesting women in a patriarchal setting. And her Liveships trilogy, for that matter - that was fascinating, a society which is becoming more patriarchal after being almost equal and showing how various characters deal with their changing place in a changing world.


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## saellys (Dec 9, 2012)

What a great article. So many people (not talking about any specific writers here, but more commonly fans defending their favorite show/book/movie) use patriarchy in a setting as a justification for either having no female protagonists, or having one-dimensional female protagonists, or not bothering to pass the Bechdel test, or any of a hundred other problems. These things aren't difficult to fix.

I had an hours-long discussion with my husband yesterday about how attitudes in media influence attitudes in the real world (inspired by the latest Bond film), and toward the end he asked if I thought men were capable of writing well-rounded female characters. Chyeah, of course they are! But what every writer, male or female, has to understand is that when patriarchy is an aspect of the setting, female characters will have a slightly different set of challenges from those male characters face in the course of a given story, just as male characters would have a different set of challenges in a matriarchal setting. You can't just gloss it over and expect people to accept it. 

As far as writers go, it's not fantasy, but Stieg Larsson did it brilliantly in _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_. _Game of Thrones_ was already mentioned, but I'm going to mention it again because Martin made all his female characters' femininity an important facet of their personalities without making it the only facet, and gave them entirely distinct goals and challenges and attitudes toward their roles in socie.  I'll check out Robin Hobb and I'll also see if my husband still has a copy of _Monstrous Regiment_--he's a bigger Pratchett fan than me.

I'm not going to advise anyone to not put patriarchy (or sexism at any level, or racism, or any other prejudice or injustice) in their fantasy world, because utopias are boring and external conflict on an institutional level is an important part of storytelling. I'm a woman living in a patriarchy--so is every other woman I know. Do justice to us.


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## Amanita (Dec 9, 2012)

The article is well-written and interesting even though most of it isn't really news for me. A result of studying history with at least one teacher very interested in the way women have been written out of history. 
I have to admit that I'm avoiding books with strictly misogynist societies. There are two main reasons for this. Most of these books are written by two groups of authors: (Mostly) male writers expressing their hatred against women (or some weird sexual fantasies) through them, or (mostly) female writers who go on and on about the suffering of their female characters from evil men. It's probably obvious why I as a woman dislike the first, the second doesn't make for interesting stories either though. I really prefer stories with more positive relationships among the genders which do exist in real life as well after all and always have.

This doesn't mean that I'm not writing patriarchal societies, I have a few and with the others, I'm not quite sure myself. They have some matriarchal  elements but aren't really pure matriarchies. Others are former patriarchies with changing gender roles like our own. It's quite important to me that being part of one of those societies doesn't make anyone good or evil by default.

I have trouble understanding the obsession with "historical accuracy" as far as gender roles are concerned while plenty of other things can be changed and it's happening. Garth Nyx is doing quite well in writing a more gender-equal society in his _Abhorsen-trilogy[/quote] and at least to me, it doesn't seem forced at all. He also manages to write a teenage girl really well as a male writer.
Marion Zimmer-Bradley sometimes tends to stray far into the "evil-patriarchry" territory in her Darkover books but I still think that she often found a good way to give women a certain amount of plot-related things to do given the nature of their society so. The setting and especially the magic system were the most captivating things about this series for me though, this made me put up with the other stuff which I might not do in another story with less focus on these things. 
Those are the English-language books that come to my mind, I doubt posting about books published only in German would be much use._


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## Feo Takahari (Dec 9, 2012)

Like the article says, magic is a very good out for sexism--it's hard to discriminate against someone who can throw you through a wall by squinting really hard, and much easier to discriminate against the men and women who were unfortunate enough to be born without such squinty-throwing powers.

(As for accuracy, I'm pretty sure this is an excuse. I've heard men say that _Grand Theft Auto_ should be accurate to modern gang life by not having female gang members, and accuracy is normally the last thing someone requests from that series.)


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## MotherofDragons (Dec 10, 2012)

That was a very good article, even if, like Amanita said, most if it isn't news. 

One thing I would like to add to the discussion is that while the history writers themselves may have forgotten or neglected or downright ignored women's voices, and many (many, many, many) cultures and societies that have sprung up around the world over the millenia have been patriarchal, that doesn't mean all men were and are sexist pigs. Just as there are plenty of men now -- my husband, my brother, many of my hetero/homo/other male friends, my sons when they grow up one day -- who respect women and treat them as equals and do their part to make the world a better, more equal place for women, I imagine there *had* to be men like that through the ages. Not just "rescuey" men who were out to mansplain things to the poor stupid women who didn't know they were being oppressed, or who felt the need to take the little lady away from all this and show her a better world, but real men who were fine fighting side by side with the ladies, or who loved, listened to, and supported their womenfolk. To create a fantasy world that is patriarchal, and use that as an excuse to either demonize all men or to justify violence against women is not only to do a great disservice to women, but to men as well.


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## Shockley (Dec 10, 2012)

As a guy with a degree in history, who spends 8+ hours a day reading history in some form or another, this is the kind of article that makes me want to rant and scream and crack some skulls. 



> History is actually a long series of centuries of men writing down what they thought was important and interesting, and FORGETTING TO WRITE ABOUT WOMEN. It’s also a long series of centuries of women’s work and women’s writing being actively denigrated by men. Writings were destroyed, contributions were downplayed, and women were actively oppressed against, absolutely.



 *Massages temples*

 We have a very strong tendency to view the last thousand years of history as being an accurate reflection of the fifty thousand years of human history (some recorded, most not) that predated it, and viewing the problems that defined western civilization as being identical to every culture. So let me break down some things:

 1. Sexism depended on where you were and when you were, and the 'when' in that sentence does not mean any time before 1900. For example, pre-democratic Athens was a relatively progressive place for women, but any of those rights were rolled back as men obtained near-universal suffrage. For another example, there was no real legal distinction between males and females in Egypt under the Pharoahs. 

 2. There was not an intentional effort to ignore women or to ignore their contributions - we just have to accept that for a good portion of time women were excluded from the processes that allowed them to contribute. There are many women leaders, politicians, scientists, etc. who appear in the historical record, despite the apparent conspiracy to wipe them out. Just today I was reading a work on Theodora, the Roman Empress who rose from an actor/prostitute to the single most powerful figure in Byzantine Rome.

 It's not a sexism on the part of historians, but a sexism on the part of ancient cultures. The contributions were not so much downplayed - we have a fairly accurate view of what role women played in a number of nations, cultures, regimes, etc. - they just didn't have as much of an opportunity to play those roles.



> But the forgetting part is vitally important. Most historians and other writers of what we now consider “primary sources” simply didn’t think about women and their contribution to society. They took it for granted, except when that contribution or its lack directly affected men.



 We have plenty of primary sources relating to women. Again referencing Theodora, she appears prominently in the writings of Procopia, Agathias, Menander, John Malalas, etc. When the women played a prominent role, the historians did a perfectly adequate job of depicting them.



> Here’s an example from my honours days: most of the history books looking at Roman state religion were clear that women’s participation in the religious rituals of the state was probably less important or politically relevant, because women were excluded from making blood sacrifice.



 In this case, the author proves that she is operating on an agenda. The religious rituals of women were incredibly important to ancient Rome, as even a cursory understanding of the system would indicate. The Vestal Virgins were second only to the Pontifex Maximus in their importance, and events like the Festival of the Good Goddess triggered more than their fair share of mayhem, troubles and political disasters (Julius Caesar's early political career was destroyed because of an incident at the Festival of the Good Goddess, which his wife was presiding over as high priestess). This was used as evidence, in fact, that women weren’t that important to politics in general. 

 As to her point that we only assume that the men had the dominant role in religion was because of blood sacrifice and the idea that blood sacrifice was actually deemed important because it was only performed by men, again I have to point to the Pontifex Maximus. We assume that the rituals performed by men had more political significance because the Pontifex Maximus was closed to women, and figures like Julius Caesar and Augustus actively pursued said office (Caesar was kicked out of the office, Augustus managed to hold it). 



> Women’s history, sadly, was not much of a thing, and what words women did write down were not preserved over the next millennium.
> 
> Guess why. Go on, guess.
> 
> Women’s lives were not written down except on the rare occasions that they were useful tools in the politics of men, or where maligning/celebrating them was relevant to the politics of men, bu that doesn’t mean they weren’t really, really interesting by modern standards.



 I'm going to take this time to point out that the last director of the Great Library of Alexandria (the library, by this point, had been moved to Asia Minor) was a woman, and she was murdered by a mob that consisted mostly of women. We most certainly have her writings. 



> History is not society. It only covers one aspect. History is imperfect, and biased, and it always, always has omissions. The most common omissions are the bits that the writer of that history took for granted that his readers would know.



 I disagree, and would argue that the greatest omissions are those matters that amateur, armchair historians decide to pontificate on without any real knowledge of what history is, why it's recorded, etc. 

 This is my rant, and I know it will probably offend someone. I just go through this mess all day, in some form or another - whether it be women or other minorities, or just entire groups of people. The amateur historian has a disgusting amount of clout these days.


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## saellys (Dec 10, 2012)

Shockley said:


> There was not an intentional effort to ignore women or to ignore their contributions - we just have to accept that for a good portion of time women were excluded from the processes that allowed them to contribute. There are many women leaders, politicians, scientists, etc. who appear in the historical record, despite the apparent conspiracy to wipe them out. Just today I was reading a work on Theodora, the Roman Empress who rose from an actor/prostitute to the single most powerful figure in Byzantine Rome.
> 
> It's not a sexism on the part of historians, but a sexism on the part of ancient cultures. The contributions were not so much downplayed - we have a fairly accurate view of what role women played in a number of nations, cultures, regimes, etc. - they just didn't have as much of an opportunity to play those roles.



I fail to see the practical, affecting-daily-life difference between your point and the article's ultimate conclusion. Roberts concludes that in order to find the women in history, you have to read more history, and that seems to be what you're advising too. Roberts made broad (possibly generalized) statements about an absence of women's voices in history, whereas you made extremely specific statements about prominent women in history. I don't think you and Roberts are really working at cross purposes here.


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## Steerpike (Dec 10, 2012)

Interesting article, Chilari.

It shouldn't be too surprising, I suppose. A patriarchal society gives more weight to traditionally male roles than traditionally female roles. Taken from a broad vantage point, history can be expected to emphasize those events or people that appear to have greater value. Even feminists fall into this trap (well, some of them: liberal feminists, for example), where the patriarchal value system is at least tacitly deemed the correct one and judgments about women's roles and value occur in that context.


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## Shockley (Dec 10, 2012)

@Saellys: Had her point been that one has to look hard to find women in history, she'd still be wrong and we'd still disagree.

 My general complaint is just that she characterizes the absence of women from the historical record (which is fallacious) as an intentional act by male historians, which is not the case.


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## Feo Takahari (Dec 11, 2012)

There's a difference between "absent from the historical record" and "absent from the history books students are assigned in school". To give an example unrelated to sexism, there's a surprising amount in the historical record related to the importation of African crops to America by slaves, but every history book I was assigned in middle and high school that mentioned these crops treated them as having been brought over by Europeans. With the exception of Shockley, I'd guess that most of the writers in this forum got their history from middle and high school classes, so it's no surprise if we don't have much information on the things that  (to use the American case) wouldn't be approved for a textbook sold in Texas.

P.S. Actually, maybe I should go one step further--there were certainly cases where _certain information_ relevant to women was largely removed from the historical record. (For instance, we've lost a lot of information about natural abortifacients, including how the word "abortifacient" was even pronounced--see Schiebinger's "Plants and Empire".)


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## Chilari (Dec 11, 2012)

Feo Takahari said:


> There's a difference between "absent from the historical record" and "absent from the history books students are assigned in school".



This. The someone who is studying history at degree level, you can see the contributions of women more clearly. But even in my degree, we had a specific lecture looking at women's spaces (and whether the idea was valid), but nothing about womens contributions to classical Greece. Now maybe that's just poor planning, but I don't think so; two of the foremost academics on the topic of women in ancient Greece were running the module. One of them was simultaneously publishing an article about loomweights and how they were probably handed down from mother to daughter and thus travelled far, if the daughter married someone who lived far away.

But at the basic level, the level at which most people know about history through school lessons and TV shows, women are underrepresented. I went to an all girls school and still learned almost nothing about prominent women in history. Elizabeth I and that was it, basically, and her mostly in the context of English lessons (because of Shakespeare) not history. Nothing about Matilda or Eleanor of Aquitane, and those were very prominent women in English history. Certainly nothing about Caesar's wife (I don't even know her name off the top of my head, now, after four years of university study which yes, did include study of Caesar's life and the civil war he was part of). Almost nothing about Boudicca, and again, she's pretty prominent.

Mostly what I learned in school history lessons was 1066, the Tudors, then WW1 and WW2; and even in those the contribution of women was barely touched on; I knew nothing of the Land Girls until far more recently, for example. It was all about men. And since watching Simon Sharma's History of Britain on Youtube, I've been wondering whether even that history education was woefully lacking in other areas too; I was surprised by how much of what he was talking about I didn't know.

So Shockley, what you learn in your studies is a priviledged position; you've clearly got a far more rounded look at things. To the rest of us, we might know the names of some prominent women, like Elizabeth I and Boudicca, but damned it I know more than the very basics of life as a woman in classical Athens (my specific area of study) or the names of any prominent women at this time. Granted, that was a time when women were very stringently controlled and naming a woman in public was to insult her, but even so. I think that what most people know, what the average "did history in school and watch the odd documentary" individual knows about women in history, is fairly accurately represented by the article.


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## Zireael (Dec 11, 2012)

Well, I'm here with a tangentially related question. Why people keep using "sexism", "racism" and the like to refer to the world depicted? These are RL terms. For example, for the discussion here, I think Sliding Scale of Gender Inequality - Television Tropes & Idioms is more relevant.


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## Shockley (Dec 11, 2012)

> This. The someone who is studying history at degree level, you can see the contributions of women more clearly. But even in my degree, we had a specific lecture looking at women's spaces (and whether the idea was valid), but nothing about womens contributions to classical Greece. Now maybe that's just poor planning, but I don't think so; two of the foremost academics on the topic of women in ancient Greece were running the module. One of them was simultaneously publishing an article about loomweights and how they were probably handed down from mother to daughter and thus travelled far, if the daughter married someone who lived far away.



 I'm afraid the problem with women's contributions to ancient Greece is that there were, bluntly said, only a few that ever broke out of the home scene. You have to remember how awful it was to be a woman in ancient Greece - you were denied access to the market place, often prevented from going out in public, etc. If you were out in public, there was a very real possibility (50%+) that you were nothing more than a prostitute. 



> But at the basic level, the level at which most people know about history through school lessons and TV shows, women are underrepresented. I went to an all girls school and still learned almost nothing about prominent women in history. Elizabeth I and that was it, basically, and her mostly in the context of English lessons (because of Shakespeare) not history. Nothing about Matilda or Eleanor of Aquitane, and those were very prominent women in English history. Certainly nothing about Caesar's wife (I don't even know her name off the top of my head, now, after four years of university study which yes, did include study of Caesar's life and the civil war he was part of). Almost nothing about Boudicca, and again, she's pretty prominent.



 A failure to lecture on Eleanor of Aquitane is a travesty, though you can get a good idea of English history without mentioning Matilda (I mean, chances are they didn't focus that much on William II, either). As for Caesar's wife, her big contribution was the Bonna Dea fiasco, and only because it led to the divorce. It didn't even manage to wreck the friendship between Caesar and Clodius.

 I think, fundamentally, the problem boils down to the idea that we specifically don't know a lot about women - that's a false idea, and the better statement is 'We don't know anything about 99.99999% of people who ever lived.' Think about it like this:

A. How many people stabbed Julius Caesar?
B. How many of them can you name off the top of your head?

 The usual answer, for people even with that kind of training, is 23 and 2. There are 21 men who participated in one of the most dramatic, important events in history that we know next to nothing about. Two of the people are completely lost to history, and it was a total sixty person conspiracy and we know the names of only two thirds of the participants. 

 We don't know 99% of what there is to know about medieval peasants in general - that we have as large a gap in relation to women should not be surprising.


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## BronzeOracle (Oct 28, 2014)

Thanks very much for the link, its a timely reminder for me (though not all news) as I am writing a story with female protagonists set in the ancient world with some bitter elements like bigotry, slavery and sexism.  I totally agree that fantasy does not need to fully reflect history as yes we have that legacy but we are gradually changing towards equality and are hopefully continuing to evolve to something more enlightened. In the case of my story I ask myself what story do I want to write, what characters do I want and why?  And what I want are stories of social change and characters that include women as leaders and decision makers, because that as a society is where we are heading and should head, and I see plenty of women I admire in my life.  So I have two female protagonists and they butt against slavery and sexism as part of their lives, sometimes they win and sometimes they lose, but they grow because of it.  And they make decisions and make mistakes, they are conflicted and they have flaws, but they grow as protagonists do and this drives the story.  

I totally agree with politics and magic being completely open to women, and even warfare.  You just need the means of overcoming the strength bias of men which traditionally saw them in combat roles.  Yes, a man is taller, heavier and stronger all of which means he'll win with a sword or his fists - but all a woman needs is a ranged weapon (see Katniss or Ygritte with their bows) or magic (see Egwene and Nynaeve in Wheel of Time).  And that's if you must have women engaging in combat - you can see the influence Circe and Melisandre wield in Game of Thrones and they never touch a weapon.   Well done authors like George RR Martin - he's a guy like myself and he manages to write complex female characters who you can love and hate.


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## Jabrosky (Oct 28, 2014)

The core problem here is that we're trying to reconcile our infatuation with certain cultures and time periods with modern feminist ideals. Of course in fantasy we aren't obligated to make our settings perfectly in line with their historical inspirations, but we have to concede that there is a trade-off between modifying those cultures to fit our own tastes and giving the end results a perfect semblance to those inspirations.


BronzeOracle said:


> I totally agree with politics and magic being completely open to women, and even warfare.  You just need the means of overcoming the strength bias of men which traditionally saw them in combat roles.  Yes, a man is taller, heavier and stronger all of which means he'll win with a sword or his fists - but all a woman needs is a ranged weapon (see Katniss or Ygritte with their bows) or magic (see Egwene and Nynaeve in Wheel of Time).


I always thought the problem had more to do with the burdens of childbearing and suckling which are unique to women. Those wouldn't be such inconveniences in societies with modern levels of technology and healthcare, but in pre-industrial settings where infant mortality is high and farms need a lot of labor, most women would be encouraged to produce plenty of children.

One way you could get around this issue is to have a specialized class of female warriors who have sworn off sexual intimacy so long as they serve in the army. The so-called Amazons of Dahomey in West Africa are an example of this. They started off as this corps of female elephant-hunters, but they were later promoted to a royal bodyguard and then an elite military unit that were forbidden from sex. Any man that so much as touched them would be executed. Admittedly this kind of scenario wouldn't work so well if you want to get your warrior heroine involved in a romance, but that may not be an issue for hardcore feminist writers.


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## BronzeOracle (Oct 28, 2014)

Yes that's a good point Jabrosky childbearing and suckling are just as important as the strength difference, particularly when there were a lot of children born.  If we have female characters with several children to care for and a historically shorter lifespan then yes that will be a/the major focus of their lives rather than political pursuits or a magical career.  But again, do we make our stories to purely reflect historical limitations or do we write for today's society when we don't have them?  I'm choosing the later so I'm going to have reasons why the female protagonists don't have a lot of babies, as that is the case for most women in the western world today.  It is a plot choice to be made though I agree.


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## Steerpike (Oct 28, 2014)

In a fantasy setting, particularly, there are any number of ways around childbearing and suckling issues, bounded only by your imagination and however much reason you want to apply to magic in your world. The idea that those things _have_ to be problematic is too short-sighted, in my view. Of course, you can elect to construct your world in such a way that they are problematic, but it certainly isn't a necessary characteristic of the world. And even without resorting to magic you could address it if you wanted to. As said by BronzeOracle, above, real-world historical limitations are not necessary limitations of your fantasy world.


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## BronzeOracle (Oct 28, 2014)

Well said!  I just think of any male protagonist in a fantasy novel - Pug, Garion, Seoman the list goes on - and their lives are anything but the mundane reality of most men in the middle ages.  Scullion becomes king / most powerful magician the world has ever seen!  Far more interesting than the 99.99% of peasants with bad teeth and a short life.  Given how selective we are in finding the interesting and adventurous life for our characters I think a female protagonist can manage to juggle kids ;o)


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## Legendary Sidekick (Oct 28, 2014)

So I read the above posts and considered a working mom in a fantasy world, and what popped into my head is an amazon warrior coming home (late from work, _again)_ to her husband and three kids. The husband has an ordinary job.

So it's something like _Madam Secretary,_ but with more dead orcs.


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## Mythopoet (Oct 29, 2014)

Jabrosky said:


> The core problem here is that we're trying to reconcile our infatuation with certain cultures and time periods with modern feminist ideals.



I think the problem is that modern feminist ideals only accept one form of equality between the sexes, they insist that women are the same as men, able to do anything and everything a man can do and just as well if not better. This is, however, patently ridiculous and is a VERY modern idea incompatible with pretty much every historical culture. There are many historical cultures that view men and women as equal in value, but not in function. This usually isn't enough for modern feminists.



Steerpike said:


> In a fantasy setting, particularly, there are any number of ways around childbearing and suckling issues, bounded only by your imagination and however much reason you want to apply to magic in your world.



For instance, in the sci fi show Farscape female Peacekeepers (a heavily militaristic society where men and woman serve equally) are able to keep a new fetus in stasis in their bodies for several years while on a campaign and then have the pregnancy activated when they have the time. Also, their pregnancies are short. Peacekeeper children are raised by society instead of in families. 

This is the sort of thing that it seems sci fi writers are more willing to experiment with than fantasy writers are, and I'm not sure why.


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## Graylorne (Oct 29, 2014)

Steerpike said:


> In a fantasy setting, particularly, there are any number of ways around childbearing and suckling issues, bounded only by your imagination and however much reason you want to apply to magic in your world. The idea that those things _have_ to be problematic is too short-sighted, in my view. Of course, you can elect to construct your world in such a way that they are problematic, but it certainly isn't a necessary characteristic of the world. And even without resorting to magic you could address it if you wanted to. As said by BronzeOracle, above, real-world historical limitations are not necessary limitations of your fantasy world.



My _Warlocky_ Kells are matriarchal warrioresses. When young, they have strong urges that help them fight but can be bothersome in peace. To alleviate this, they start practicing sex younger than we do. To prevent _accidents_, all Kell girls have a small preventive talisman under their skin that gets removed when they've reached a more mature age. 

My _Shardheld_ main female character starts adventuring carrying her baby around. No child care in the area. Later, she goes on running and riding while pregnant. Of course those Viking girls were quite hardy...

So I agree it's all quite possible. Just sit down and write it. And study a bit of obstetrics, there's plenty on the internet.


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## Gryphos (Oct 29, 2014)

Mythopoet said:
			
		

> I think the problem is that modern feminist ideals only accept one form of equality between the sexes, they insist that women are the same as men, able to do anything and everything a man can do and just as well if not better. This is, however, patently ridiculous and is a VERY modern idea incompatible with pretty much every historical culture. There are many historical cultures that view men and women as equal in value, but not in function. This usually isn't enough for modern feminists.



I personally never bought the whole separate but equal idea. Because isn't it just two-way sexism? It's one thing to say that man's role is the warrior, and woman's the child rearer, but what if you get a man who wants to care for the children, and a woman who wants to fight. Should they not be allowed to? No. Therefore, if they're not enforced, should those 'roles' even exist? No. Equality is not 'separate but equal', equality is the lack of roles imposed on men and women, and therefore them being allowed to pursue anything they wish without being judged for it.

More on topic, it is a very difficult thing to deal with, and I think Jabrosky made a very good point about having to reconcile infatuation with past time periods with modern ideals. One thing I've found about my world building is that I don't have to be tied down at all by even modern ideals. For example, upon realising how inherently sexist it is that throughout the past and even today women are expected to take the man's last name, I decided to make it so in my 19th century inspired world that's not the inherent norm. In my world sometimes the woman takes the man's last name, and sometimes the man takes the woman's last name, decided by them.

Now, I fully understand that some writers (GRRM comes to mind) want to try and emulate a historical setting in their work, and therefore keep all the misogyny which was inherent to that period. It can make for interesting characters and scenarios. But I also think that more writers should, when coming up with these worlds, stop and think "does there really need to be sexism in this world, or am I just assuming there does?"


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## Jabrosky (Oct 29, 2014)

Gryphos said:


> I personally never bought the whole separate but equal idea. Because isn't it just two-way sexism? It's one thing to say that man's role is the warrior, and woman's the child rearer, but what if you get a man who wants to care for the children, and a woman who wants to fight. Should they not be allowed to? No. Therefore, if they're not enforced, should those 'roles' even exist? No. Equality is not 'separate but equal', equality is the lack of roles imposed on men and women, and therefore them being allowed to pursue anything they wish without being judged for it.


That is exactly what I understand feminism to mean. People should enjoy the opportunity to do whatever they want to do, regardless of gender or whatever, as long as they don't hurt others

With regards to the infatuation with history that I mentioned earlier, sometimes I wonder why we as fantasy writers so often look to the past for setting influences. I'd even go so far as to say that the major difference between conventional fantasy and science fiction is that fantasy looks backward and sci-fi looks forward. Why do we so often gravitate towards lower technology levels with all their limitations?

(Actually that might work better for a separate thread in the World-Building subforum...)


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## Devor (Oct 29, 2014)

First I just want to point out, in case some people missed it, that we have a necromancer in our midst.  This thread is a couple of years old and some of the people at the start of the thread may not be around to reply.

As for me, I'll let the historians argue about history.  I would be more concerned about authentic medieval sexism if I writing towards a medieval audience.  I think there are some reasonably valid concerns about women in the military or construction, and others surrounding the need for nursing, in a world that doesn't have our modern tools and conveniences. But as a modern reader, and a modern writer, I don't think I have much interest in stories or settings that are a little *too* authentic to certain times or places.

In my WIP the primary MC is a male, but the secondary POVs are about evenly split.  One of them is a woman who is part of a female cavalry unit, which is valued because their lighter weight is important to combat in the setting.  So while I will reiterate that I think some of the points above are valid as a starting place in a pre-modern setting, I don't by any means consider them insurmountable.


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## Feo Takahari (Oct 30, 2014)

Mythopoet said:


> I think the problem is that modern feminist ideals only accept one form of equality between the sexes, they insist that women are the same as men, able to do anything and everything a man can do and just as well if not better. This is, however, patently ridiculous and is a VERY modern idea incompatible with pretty much every historical culture. There are many historical cultures that view men and women as equal in value, but not in function. This usually isn't enough for modern feminists.



Reminds me of a theocratic monarchist I used to argue with on another site. He said voting was against human nature because all our myths are about kings and none are about Presidents. (He tended to pretend myths didn't exist when they weren't written by people who had the same skin color as him.)

Personally, I see it as a matter of history--but not our history. I have a setting that's just recovering from a war with higher casualty rates than WWI. Conscripts were mostly male, and the folks who didn't make it back had their jobs filled by women out of necessity. That society has very different gender roles than the one where magic exists and is traditionally only taught to white males!


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## skip.knox (Oct 30, 2014)

Shockley is right, and Feo makes a good point as well. FWIW, I have an MA in medieval history and a PhD in early modern social history--if nothing else, I can claim to have read many history books. 

I've also taught these subjects for 30 or so years. Over and over I have students who say essentially the same thing as the article, not only on this topic but on many others besides. The core message is the same--we were never taught this before. Someone must be suppressing the information.

Not at all. It's not suppressed or secret; the plain fact is, the person in question simply hasn't read enough history. Had they done so, they would, as Shockley has, realize the issue is way more complicated and interesting than that.

Despite the above, I am glad for the link!


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