hope I don't break my arm falling out of the treehouse

[intertribal]

Fantasy fans frustrate me sometimes.

Alison Flood (who I often disagree with) writes at The Guardian about her experience reading Conan stories and how turned off she is by the way different races are described, and the way women are described, and the way intersectionality brings the two together into a horrible union: The more lily-white a woman's skin, the more prized she is, says Flood.  So she wonders: "Is it ridiculous to criticise Robert E Howard's enjoyably pulpy Conan stories for their 1930s attitudes to women and race?"

The resounding response to this question: of course it is!  (And of course Flood responds to all this hysterical defensiveness of Conan with "but I really did enjoy a lot of it, I swear!  I promise!"  Ugh.)

- so what...take it in context. Do you critique sub-Saharan African or Oriental literature for its focus on particular races?
personally, as soon as you say Oriental you are docked like 1,000 points in my book.
- attempting to over-analyse them is the wrong way to approach them.
- its like dissing Harlequin romance novels for heaving breasts, wimpy heroines saved by manly men, and schmaltz writing.* Conan was always the romance novels for teenage boys.
- Oh, on the matter of political correctness or whatever you want to call it, I don't think it's all that bad. It's reconstructed, perhaps, and there's some stuff sitting between noble savage paternalism and popular xenophobia, but they are by no means Nazi screeds or something. I'm a pretty wishy-washy PC sort of a guy, but I don't see that as a big failing in the Conan stories, particularly if you consider the times and - more so - the men's adventure writing genre.
- No, you couldn't get away with writing like that today but so what? They're still good tales. The racism jarred? Just as well you didn't read the Del Ray editions which are the definitive texts, unlike your edition which was based on texts edited in the 1970's to make them more politically correct.

Man, it is SO AWESOME when "politically correct" is used like this.  Geez, thinking that women who are not porcelain white can be attractive is so PC, geez.  Gosh, if we were just BEING HONEST... /sarcasm

I get "taking things in context."  I really do.  I let a lot of classic lit take a pass because of this, and because there are redeeming values in the book.  Obviously I am a fan of the Mythos (though one of the lovely things about that is that it is constantly reinvented today without Lovecraft's B.S.), but that doesn't mean I just say "so what" to Lovecraft's racism (and hey, what interesting implications for horror as it pertains to changing social values, eh?).  Heart of Darkness is one of my all-time favorite books, although I also think that Achebe's criticisms of the way it depicts Africans are totally valid.  I have never read Conan and I don't want to (because epic barbarianism is not my genre), but I suspect if I did I would probably think it was funny in a pathetic way, remember that it is a product of its time, put it back on the shelf, and point and laugh at people who read it.  This isn't even about Conan.  You can replace Conan with any number of things that now come with the warning, "product of its time."

It's the responses that really get to me, the "who cares if it has that because I had fun reading it when I was an adolescent boy" thing.  Does that mean they'd give it to their sons?  Probably, yeah.  After all, so what?  Why not?  So Conan lives on, Conan with his lily-white women, Conan who ironically cannot be criticized because he is not to be taken seriously.  Whereas classic lit, which is actually, you know, meaningful and interesting and not the equivalent of a Michael Bay movie with half the intelligence, is constantly called out for its outdated bullshit.  Which is good, interesting, and ultimately necessary, because we are people living TODAY, analyzing it TODAY.  Like my Colonial Encounters class, talking about the way Tin Tin and Babar have been changed over the years, to get rid of the horrific racist cartoons in one and the weird-ass imperialist mindset in the other.  Nobody said let's go out and burn all copies of Rin Tin Tin.  It's saying, "hey, let's talk about this, look at how norms change over time, look at how embedded colonial narratives were, even in ads for detergent and coffee, did any of you pick up on this as kids?"  I wrote a paper on how Peter Pan is an iteration of the Noble Savage myth.  I love Peter Pan, but hey, it was an interesting idea.  Like this awesome thing I found on Victorian Chromatic Anxiety in Jane Eyre (i.e. "Jane's all white"). 

And some of the comments on that site did engage with what Flood brought up, suggest other works to try, explain things in a more in-depth way, etc, while still liking Conan stories.  There are, of course, Tolkien fights.  Which is fine.  Engagement and discussion, that's what you want!

But when the response to the idea of a discussion of these issues is a defensive "so what"... damn, it makes me want to break stuff.  This is the same thing that people say to defend Enid Blyton, another product of her time - "it doesn't matter, it's just for fun" or "it doesn't matter, it's just for kids". 

What the he-ell does that imply, exactly? 

I'm not saying no one is allowed to read Conan or what the hell have you.  You can even read Enid fucking Blyton for all I care - I don't even want to ban Mein Kampf, so far be it for me to try to disallow literature with psycho ideas and norms.  I'm saying this sort of response to criticisms that a book has racist/sexist imagery is really frustrating.  Nasty little tidbits tucked in books - especially books for adolescents, especially books for entertainment - do not mean nothing. 
 
ETA: As Lindsey says below, media does not in and of itself cause people to be prejudiced - not in the olden days, not now.  If it wasn't a problem in society, it wouldn't be a problem in a book.  Obviously it is a problem in society, however.

* Just to note, I don't let romance novels off this hook either.

Comments

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I guess I don't really read docking 1000 points as warning lights, but I guess that only goes to show that interpretation is a shaky thing.

I just think it's more productive to be angry at the system, because that's something you can do something about (theoretically at least), whereas getting offended by people only hurts you. I think people will only do their part to be personally responsible on about the same average that they do for anything else, and the most you can do is get the word out, try to change the circumstances that cause the problems in the first place, etc.

It's not something I just 'know' about him--it's clear from what he says, his attitude, etc. But I'm not really offended if other people use it either. Maybe I would be if my boyfriend or friend called me that in all seriousness. But I guess to me, it's about on par with calling me a fucking asshole. If I think I'm right, then whoever calls me that is clearly mistaken. ;) If I'm insecure, though...

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

(which isn't to say you shouldn't argue w/ people or get them to recognize their personal responsibility--i just wouldn't waste too much time on it. 'It is not your lot to be a swatter of flies' and all that.)

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

You know I talk in hyperbole. If I was upset by something I would devote a lot more space and profanity to it.

Interesting! You think you can do something about the system now (and it's not composed of just the sum total of daily interactions with actual people)? I think getting the word out is important, though. Especially when what you're dealing with is ignorance. And I think it's possible for people to become more conscientious of these things.

Well, yeah, that's what I mean about "you know that about him." Obviously I'm not implying that you're psychic. And I think that's a good attitude to have. It's interesting that you give the whole thing about it being gendered no attention. A lot of times that's part of the objection to "cunt." Or is that something you can choose to ignore/disregard?

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Actually, I don't know. I really don't understand you sometimes. Sorry!

Well, I mean that if you're dealing with something systemic, you have to deal with it as a systemic thing. Sure, you can have conversations about it as such, but what's not productive is women getting offended at men and blaming things on men and so on--because men aren't the problem for feminism, patriarchy is. So I'm not saying anything against 'getting the word out', though I do think arguing with some people is beyond hope. It'd be better, if possible, to have something more organized than individual interactions, too, but every little bit helps, or something. I think things can always change, even if we've got this defeatist mindset now, but it's not easy.

I mean that it's not that I already know that about him (I mean, now I do, but I didn't always). Words like that have never really affected me. I never got the impact of a 'fuck', or 'cunt', or anything like that. Racial slurs I didn't even know till I was older, except for 'nigger', but somehow they seem more loaded to me. Maybe 'cause I don't identify with women or feel insulted if someone puts me down as a woman, but I'm conscious of my status as a white person? I don't know. To me words that are insults directed at women just seem like insults for everybody that happen to be used on women, and if they're used in a sexist way, then so much the worse for the person using them, I guess. Because I do recognize that calling a woman a bitch when she does something any man could do is sexist, but there's nothing about the word itself that seems sexist to me, only its use in that context. It would be just as sexist to call her an asshole for doing what any man could do in the same situation, you know? Or to call her nothing at all but discriminate against her.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Well, for future reference, "docking someone 100 points" should be taken lightly. Like I said, when something really upsets me I tend to devote much more time and profanity to it. I probably could have said "docked 1 point" to communicate the whole "warning light" thing (I probably shouldn't consider people to be earning/losing points, but whatever), but it's like saying one movie is 48 million times better than another movie, it's sort of manic hyperbole.

I agree totally that patriarchy is the problem (and that patriarchy is bad for everyone). And hell, I'd also argue that colonialism and all the shit that went with that was also bad for everyone in the long-run (this is part of what I wrote my thesis on). I think if a woman gets offended by something a man says and just kind of rolls her eyes/stews silently, that's not productive. A lot of my problem with debates about race in the sf community on lj is that there's a lot of "talk to the hand" stuff, and then the offended person runs back to their home turf to bitch about the person doing the offense, when the person doing the offense often doesn't even know what the hell they did. That shit will not change anything. I'm a fan of being direct and being willing to discuss, although yeah, there are some people that it is hopeless with. But at least you will have tried. Nothing wrong with organized interactions, although sometimes I think what makes the difference for individual people is a personal interaction, not something that comes from the top down. I think top down stuff affects the next generation a lot more. But I don't know, I'm just kind of saying things.

Yeah, I see that, and to a certain extent I do see racial slurs as being more loaded (esp. certain slurs in America) because of the historical context of slavery and Jim Crow (like extremely systematic oppression) et al. I guess the only thing I would say is that if a man calls another man a cunt as a really, really big insult (not a term of endearment)(and same with "bitch"), is that implying "but for a boy to [act] like a girl is degrading, because you think that being a girl is degrading"? Cuz I'm not sure how useful that is, in terms of society and discrimination and all.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I think there's probably another step in here. It's not that being a girl is degrading. It's that being a girl is weak (and all the things that come with weakness, whether it's using manipulation instead of force to get your way or submission), and being weak is degrading. And a step further from that, even--feminized insults in English stop being about "women" or "girls" at all and only about what that femininity means. And until femininity changes from being subordinate and inferior, they won't stop meaning that, and it's useless to point to the language to try to create that change, because language doesn't change anything.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

That's a good point that I had not considered. I guess I still think it's problematic or unhelpful, but I agree that something larger needs to change there than the language.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Well, sometimes you have to work with what language gives you, and when you need a curse word for somebody who is being a fucking pussy...well, what do you say?

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Say "you're being a fucking yellow-bellied coward"? That's what I say.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

That's stupid...

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Anyway, I really don't think there's any point in doing so.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Why, and why do you think that's stupid?

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Just because I don't like how it sounds. It sounds like you're using fancy or silly language to avoid a more direct, vulgar curse.

I suppose I fail to see how they relate to women. Historically, of course they do. But I fail to see how anyone's individual use of such a term means they think lowly of women.

I admit I get confused here sometimes, though. And I'm also shutting off my email client so I can get some work done, so I'll continue this later.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yellow-bellied is pretty silly, admittedly. I don't think "coward" is, and I think "coward" is more straight to the point than saying someone resembles a vagina. Granted, coward is not vulgar. And it's not that I object to vulgarity - I just think saying someone's being such a woman is unclear and ridiculous.

To me it's obvious that it means they think lowly of women, because (with a few words different than what you said) women are weak or pathetic or whatnot, and that's why it's an insult to be one. I guess to me it doesn't just mean "you're weak," it means "you're weak like a woman." And fair enough that femininity is weak, but I don't see it as limited to femininity. I see it as being directly related to women - maybe partly because I doubt people who use it see a distinction between "femininity" and "women."

Yeah, I have work to do as well.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't think calling someone a pussy has anything to do with vaginas, but...that's me. And sometimes I really do want the punch of vulgarity, and I think that's something kind of new to me, because I never felt the need to say such things before. But I'm sick of being quiet and polite all the time. I think it's suffocating me. None of my thoughts are appropriate, and I just learned that "If you don't have something nice to say, you shouldn't say anything at all," like a good little girl but FUCK that. I'm sick of being punished for being the girl people want me to be, I'm sick of double standards, and I'm sick of keeping everything in.

Uh...moving on. I think the real difference is to me it's NOT obvious what someone thinks just because of what word they use. Words are not some monolithic blocks that just mean one thing and say one thing about the speaker and be used one way. Usage can't exist without context, and context, among other things, is essential to figuring out what somebody means. With some people, in some contexts, I would totally agree with your interpretation. With people like Alex, I don't, and I think I'm right in that because that's not really what he thinks. His gayness means he doesn't feel a need to pander to women, sure, but most of his friends are also women, and he has just about nothing in common with a mysogynistic womanizer (who nonetheless knows just what to say to women...). Myself, I don't use such words terribly often, but when I do it's usually with people who (I hope) already understand my pov or where I'm coming from, and I always use it as just a vulgar means of expressing that I think some action is weak or whatever, and I always use it equally for men and women (such that if a man or a woman did the action, it would merit the same response from me). I just fail to appreciate the gendered aspect, I think, because I don't see how "being a cunt" really has anything to do with being a woman. That said, I think the context is important. There are contexts in which it's clearly being used because the action is 'feminine', and I think those are the most sexist and to be avoided.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

*can be used one way

The funny thing is I'd written that at first, and then I hallucinated that there was a 'can' after 'that'...

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

*action or person

Anyway, words all seem a lot more trivial than actual problems women face.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, definitely.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I don't see how "being a cunt" really has anything to do with being a woman. I don't think calling someone a pussy has anything to do with vaginas

I think that is the big difference between us, because I think if it didn't have anything to do with that, you (general you) would choose a different word. Of course, what different word, I don't know. But something that is not a direct reference to female genitalia, perhaps?

I agree, though, that what someone thinks is not made obvious by the word they use - but I think words send an impression. And maybe I should remind myself of that more often - that I don't know that someone is being sexist or whatnot by using cunt, but I will still, forever, prefer a gender-neutral insult. Hence I'm a big fan of "fuck" in all its permutations, and "shit." I am totally sympathetic to you on the subject of vulgarity, OTOH, as I began to feel that way in college/late high school.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I mean that there is nothing about being a woman that has anything to do with what it means to act like a cunt. There is the association that the word has with femininity and thus with all the (bad) things femininity can signify to people, but that is a historical association. The word doesn't mean 'woman', or even 'feminine', though in other contexts yeah, female genitalia--but words are perfectly capable of having radically different meanings depending on context. I'd only use it because it seems stronger and more shocking than "asshole" or something like that.

Interestingly, wikipedia has this to say:

""Cunt" can also be used informally as a derogatory epithet in referring to a person of either sex, but this usage is relatively recent, dating back only as far as the late nineteenth century.[3] Reflecting different national usages, the Compact Oxford English Dictionary defines "cunt" as "an unpleasant or stupid person", whereas Merriam-Webster defines the term as "a disparaging term for a woman" and "a woman regarded as a sexual object"; the Macquarie Dictionary of Australian English defines it as "a despicable man". When used as a slang term with a positive qualifier (good, funny, clever, etc) in countries such as Great Britain, New Zealand and Australia, it conveys a positive sense of the object or person to which it refers."

Just pretend I'm British.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Anyway, I think it's obviously sexist to call someone a cunt simply because they're a woman, just like it's sexist to unfairly heap any criticism/insults/prejudice on someone because of their sex.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Vaguely related: there's a Flux of Pink Indians album called Fucking Cunts Treat Us Like Pricks. I thought that was clever...wish I liked the music better, though.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Isn't that the band Tara likes?

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

It's also similar to the part I cut out of DFW's PC thing, but the focus is different I guess:

"Usage is always political, but it's complexly political. With respect, for instance, to political change, usage conventions can function in two ways: on the one hand, they can be a reflection of political change, and on the other they can be an instrument of political change. What's important is that these two functions are different and have to be kept straight. Confusing them--in particular, mistaking for political efficacy what is really just a language's political symbolism--enables the bizarre conviction that America ceases to be elitist or unfair simply because Americans stop using certain vocabulary that is historically associated with elitism and unfairness. This is PCE's cor fallacy--that a society's mode of expression is productive of its attitudes rather than a product of those attitudes--and of course it's nothing but the obverse of the politically conservative SNOOT's delusion that social change can be retarded by restricting change in standard usage."

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Wonder when he thinks usage convention can be an instrument of political change.