Swords & Sorority

"When I was younger, as well as liking Conan, I was a fan of Red Sonja," says Scott. "so I do firmly believe that if you're writing a fantasy book, if you can't have an axe-wielding barbarian woman in a chainmail bikini - and the chainmail bikini is very important - then there's no point in writing it, really."
 - Christopher Wright, and while I suspect he's being a little facetious, he's being far too subtle about it

I like “pulp” and “Sword and Sorcery” in all its gory, sexist, glory. Big, awesome barbarians, though an occasional wizard or rouge can slip in. Women are to be barmaids, princesses, slave girls, dancers, victims to be rescued, etc. Blacks and MezoAmerican like peoples are either rare “Noble Savages” or hideous cannibals with filed teeth. Orientals are sinister characters, though their women look hot but unless they are “Rescued sacrifice victim” also very sinister. Of course, awesome “Noble Savages” think Kubotai from “Conan the Barbarian”! Mix in lovecraft, westerns, maybe some not too queer Burroughs like stuff…
Really, do women, blacks, orientals, Mexicans, etc. buy “Heroic Fantasy/Sci-Fi” enough that the damage of not sucking sucking sucking up to them will be less than the damage of alienating your base customer market?
 - Green Gestalt on John O'Neill's post on Realms of Fantasy

I don't see posts like this very often, but when I do, they leave a bad taste in my mouth. I'm reminded of the Cross Assault sexual harassment scandal over which the Internet had once again exploded (one wonders how the series of tubes could survive all these conflagrations):

Those are jokes and if you were really a member of the fighting game community, you would know that. This is a community that's, you know, 15 or 20 years old, and the sexual harassment is part of a culture, and if you remove that from the fighting game community, it's not the fighting game community — it's StarCraft."
 - Bakhtanians "justifying" the concerted verbal abuse which caused a fellow player to drop out

Sword-and-Sorcery has often been accused of being one of those genres that belongs to the past, a different time when "all men are strong, all women beautiful, all life adventurous, and all problems simple." Sword-and-Sorcery, some might say, is outdated, an embarrassment, relevant in our more enlightened times only to show how far we've come since the bad old days of 1950s advertisements.

Then again...

Is sexism inherent to Sword-and-Sorcery? It's the sort of thing many have wrestled with in print and on the 'Net. Well, I figure the best way to address that is talk about my favourite female Sword-and-Sorcery characters, hopefully showing that not only is Sword-and-Sorcery not the exclusive domain of manly men, but that it never was. And since it's International Women's Day, it seems appropriate to post some of my favourites.

A Word on Female Fans, Femininity and Fandom

 Yes, this is an actual cover for an actual upcoming monthly for Conan the Barbarian. My thoughts? It's the most amazing troll I've seen since the Darrow cover. Fantastic job, Dark Horse.

I've been holding off on "80 Years of Conan: The Frost-Giant's Daughter" because I've been wrestling with one of the key issues with the story.  I've been conversing with a number of individuals I believe to be more experienced and authoritative in said issue, because while I really don't want to talk about the deeply unpleasant subject, I also think it's important to acknowledge it. In any case, I'll be providing links to places that do talk about it, even if my take is going to be quite limited. However, there's another reason.

Robert E. Howard and the Bechdel Test

/bech·del test/ n.

1. It has to have at least two women in it

2. Who talk to each other

3. About something besides a man

As far as I can understand it, the Bechdel Test is a deceptively simple test which, while not damning or indicting in itself, does highlight a somewhat disquieting trend in the cinematic treatment of female characters.

This video from The Feminist Frequency (who I have my disagreements with, but largely respect her opinions on some matters) gives us the gist of it, as well as highlights how worryingly common it is, even in recent times.



Hmm...

International Women's Day

You're right; women are great actors. But I cant agree with you in your statement that the great women can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Men have sat at the feet of women down the ages and our civilization, bad or good, we owe to the influence of women.
Let us look at the records of the great women.
- Robert E. Howard, Letter to Harold Preece, December 1928

While I find it somewhat preposterous that we still celebrate 50% of the population on a single day, the disparity between men and women is still shockingly high, and many great women continue to be ignored. In previous decades this was a sad fact of life: nowadays, in our allegedly more enlightened age, there's no such excuse.

So, on this very special International Women's Day, the 100th Anniversary of the holiday, I'm going to tip the glass to some of my favourite females, past and present, along with some choice quotes from Robert E. Howard.

Mysterious Anonymous Posters, Vanishing Comments, and What Is A Feminist?

Something odd happened just the now: I got an email alert saying an anonymous poster left a comment at my discussion of Alison Flood's review of a Tanith Lee book, and the discussion of Howard therein.  Yet when I went over there, it had mysteriously vanished.  I can only assume Blogger fouled up, because I know I sure didn't delete it.  In any case, I felt the comment needed to be addressed, because the honour of Howardom was at stake.   

Someone was wrong.  On the Internet.

Return of the Flood, and something that'd been bothering me

A while back, I discussed Alison Flood's discussion of Conan, along with her rather amazing admission that she hadn't read all the stories.  Sheee's baaaaack.

Infamy! Infamy! A follow-up

A quick follow-up to Et Tu, Alan?, wherein I elaborate on an excellent point Monsterhoodoo and David J. West bring up.  Let's have a look at that first paragraph again:

How many times have you opened up a copy of Savage Sword of Conan to find some barbarian forcing a lithe Kothian dancing girl back into the hay, ignoring her feeble half-hearted complaints and taking his cue from the delirious ecstatic look that the artist has drawn onto her face, showing you that she doesn't mind really. In fact, she likes this sort of treatment. Sure she does. Anyone would enjoy being sexually assaulted by an illiterate musclebound oaf who stinks of bear grease. That's most people's idea of a good night out.

Now, I forgot to mention that Moore is clearly making the mistake/misinterpretation of assuming that the "some barbarian" is meant to be the hero.  Judging by his later "Conan the Rapist" remark, it's clear he's trying to say that Conan would be among them.  I can't recall Conan ever forcing any girl, lithe, Kothian or dancer, into the hay in Savage Sword (at least up to 84, I haven't read beyond yet) but I can recall many merciless, violent bullies who do.  And, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the audience is supposed to be rooting for filth like Constantius the Falcon.

Does this look like the kind of guy the reader's supposed to root for?

Et tu, Alan?

I'm rather sad now.

I kind of got the impression that Alan Moore wouldn't have liked Robert E. Howard.  Moore, for all his undoubted genius and coolness, was one of those people would've been likely taken in by the myths and misconceptions regarding Conan's creator that were riddling the world 25 years ago.  This was the age of Dark Valley Destiny, after all - and just a year after the appearance of Conan the Barbarian in cinemas. 

Feminism and the Women in Robert E. Howard's Fictional Worlds

A while back, I talked about Howard's feminism - or more specifically, a particular letter Howard wrote to Harold Preece.  This was inspired by Barbara Barrett & Amy Kerr's work on an ACA/PCA conference paper.  Now, the two Howardian Shield-Maidens have returned to those waters on REH: Two-Gun Raconteur, with an expanded version of their fantastic and well-received ACA/PCA conference paper, to be posted in multiple parts.

While the women in Howard’s real world had the vote and could own property, the attitude that women were inferior to men still prevailed throughout most of the world during his lifetime. Robert E. Howard’s fictional world was an exception.  In it he created women who fought bravely, skillfully and fearlessly beside men as well as against them.  In fact, each of Howard’s strong women lived the life she chose for herself and when necessary, she fought to maintain that way of living.  Long before the feminist definition of empowerment, Howard’s heroines, took control over the decisions and issues that shaped their lives.

One of the unavoidable conundrums of feminism in a male author is, while the idea is to offer forward ideals of equality and equal opportunities, an argument sounds much more compelling when made by a woman.  I guess it's due to perspective: after all, it'd be like an Englishman writing a history of Scotland, or a white man talking of modern urban black society.  They can be as learned as any person can be on the subject, but unless they actually are part of the demographic in question, there's always that niggling concern in the back of the mind: how can you really know what it's like?

Thus, because Barbara and Amy are women, the impression is that they are simply more qualified to speak on the feminist elements of Howard's fiction than a man could.  It would seem to contradict the essential point of feminism - that of equal opportunities, not female superiority - to value someone's opinion more simply because of their gender, but at least in this case, it makes sense.  It's the old astronomer/astronaut question: when you want to know about the moon, do you ask the one who's studied it from afar from 50 years, or the one who's actually been there?

"You wanna see immature and misogynistic? Check out Robert E. Howard!"

... where Conan rides off into the sunset with a bucket of gold under one arm and a scantily-clad female under the other at the end of every story! Except I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that either, because, just like The Witcher, it’s just escapist fiction after all, and if that makes me immature and misogynist, well my girlfirend of 8 years doesn’t seem to mind!
- "manveruppd" doesn't exactly have perfect recall when it comes to the Conan stories

Personally I saw it as a more clever take on Conan-esque fantasy, so I saw the girl cards as just goofy and over-the-top silliness, not intended to be taken seriously...
- "invisiblejesus" apparently doesn't think Conan-esque fantasy can be clever

From this discussion on the misogynistic elements in The Witcher. For those not in the know, one of the miniature storylines in The Witcher is that, due to his bizarre racial makeup, Geralt of Rivia happens to be both sterile, and free of any sort of sexually-transmitted disease, making him ideal for girls of a pre-industrial world to get their rocks off without having to worry. Somehow, people translate it as either "positive discrimination" as it turns Geralt himself into a sex object instead of the girls (which it surely doesn't come across as in the game, where every girl you get it on with has a card to collect), or it's a parody of that sort of thing in "adolescent wish-fulfillment fantasies like Conan."

If you have sex with Morenn in The Witcher, you get this cool card. You can collect a whole set. Gotta catch 'em all! I fail to see how this is any better than the "Maidens" you could rescue in Nihilistic's Conan, frankly, and at least then they're not reduced to freaking collectible cards.

Yeah... no.