(no subject)

[winneganfake]

Ok, this sums up my reaction fairly well, given that I finished the book half an hour ago, and I'm still having trouble parsing complete sentences:



The difference would be the fact that I'm currently still muttering a lot less complimentary language about said author.

Comments

[julzerator.livejournal.com]

I think I might be glad that Penguin and Amazon are having a kerfluffle, and it's not available for Kindle yet...

[winneganfake.livejournal.com]

Be glad. It's more than worth it, but man, the ending really has you climbing up the walls.

[esmeraldus-neo.livejournal.com]

I was reading about the Dresden Files series the other day, and I just feel it's not for me. So I expect to be spared this pain.

[winneganfake.livejournal.com]

Actually, to be honest, I pretty much would recommend either of Butcher's series (serii?) to damned near anyone. The man writes geek, writes it amazingly well, and the books are downright addictive for how much fun they are.

[esmeraldus-neo.livejournal.com]

Well, I'll take it under advisement, but here's a thing. You're a guy geek.

Have a look at this discussion, and tell me whether you think any of the criticism is fair: http://vito-excalibur.livejournal.com/270933.html?nc=61

I have always been one to read entire series of books to give them a shot. I read the entire works of Kurt Vonnegut despite not appreciating him the time, because I thought I should. I read 9 of the Left Behind series, because I felt like I couldn't criticize them unless I had read them.

But I am beginning to feel like there aren't enough hours in the day to waste on books with problems like sexism. And I can't be sure, having not read it, but like Avatar--a film a friend criticized me heavily for writing about critically before watching--the critical buzz turned out to be right. I gave in and watched it and found out that I agreed it was racist, imperialist, and badly written.

So I'd be interested in what you think, if you read all of that, plus the comments. I value your opinion, but even though I'm a geek, I'm a woman. Our points of view are not necessarily identical. Is the criticism fair?

[kadath.livejournal.com]

This is my reason for not bothering with the Dresden Files books. I keep hearing from people I trust that Harry's head is an unbearable place to be.

hoo boy, this opens up a can of worms....

[winneganfake.livejournal.com]

All right. Let's put it this way- the Dresden novels were pretty much exclusively recommended to me by nothing but female geeks- at least threee of them that I can think of. One of whom runs her own feminist discussion site/blog. None of which has any bearing on whether or not you'd enjoy the books or not.

Is Harry Dresden a bit sexist/chivlarous/whatever way you'd rather spin the coin? Yes. Does that go with his characterization in general? Also yes. Personally, were I in Dresden's shoes, I'd probably find myself thinking and acting the exact same way- hell, it goes with the gumshoe/cowboy genre in general. And if it fits the character, then no, to my mind, it's not a bad thing. And honestly, Harry's attitudes about himself or other people make up a very small fraction of the books. Most of it's fully of stuff more like this:


(Fuck being spoilery. That part's pretty damn obvious, and well, Zombie Tyrannosaurs still work as the best book advertisement ever.)

I think the post you reference has issues- namely that the writer has found a few things to be offended at and blown them out of proportion in relation to the rest of the book. Then again, I think all the recent race/sex/species-fail kerfuffles on the internets have also been hugely guilty of that. Hells, you can argue that any media is racist or sexist depending on how much you want to spin your perceptions of what happens in the book. The Lord of the Rings? Racist and sexist to an extreme- why does nobody attack that? Hell, better yet, why is it worth spending that much time and energy over importing your politics into your choice of entertainment? Read what you like- you're supporting authors, not some deep-seated regime of oppression and hatred. Why should it matter this deeply that we feel guilt over the imagined plight of imaginary protagonists that we refuse to support artists and writers because of it? It is fiction, not historical reference. It is meant to be read for fun, not to make us feel good about our political or lifestyle choices.

OK, I could rant about this all afternoon, but as it is, I need to go get the van's tires replaced, and well, I should quit running my mouth, before it turns into one long screed about oversensitive hypocrites like the author of that critique.

Re: hoo boy, this opens up a can of worms....

[kadath.livejournal.com]

Jeez, man. If you want to convince someone to read something, dismissing their concerns as "oversensitive hypocrisy" is really not the way to go about it.

Re: hoo boy, this opens up a can of worms....

[winneganfake.livejournal.com]

I'm not dismissing her concerns- I'm commenting on the character of the writer of a critique who is basing their critique off of less than a fifth of the material of an entire piece.

That kind of reaction screams oversensitivity to me in a bad way- It's like someone looking at one of my digital art pieces, and then posting up a rant that critiques the hell out of the skull in the lower left corner, yet fails to mention any other significant detail of the piece at all. They consciously chose to go off on their trigger issue, rather than looking at any other part of the piece as a whole.

And yes, I'll admit hypocrisy was a lousy word to use- I was short on time getting out the door, and wanted to make sure I at least got the comment posted, as so many of my posts have been getting dumped by the wayside lately due to me being too busy with stuff around here instead of online. "Short-sightedness" might have been a better choice to go with. Or perhaps "rampant idiocy." Were this critique based on anything other than trigger issues like sexism or racism, that'd be the reaction it would receive, and in my mind likely deserves.

Re: hoo boy, this opens up a can of worms....

[esmeraldus-neo.livejournal.com]

Well, I asked whether you thought the crit was fair. Clearly you don't.

But I could say the same thing--it appears to me that you are oversensitive to the criticism of a fellow artist by a critic. This is something a see a lot. There is a divide between the writers/artists and the critics--we never really seem to see things the same way, even if we're friends.

Trigger issues...racism, sexism, homophobia...there are probably more, but if you eliminate those, what you are doing is eliminating the issues that are still problems. You don't see the issue with that? That's why they are still problems for which people are criticized in their fiction. They are still actively problematic out in the world, and people get it badly wrong sometimes. That's what makes it an issue of substance--yeah, if it were something less important, it wouldn't be as big a deal...that's pretty obvious. It would be less IMPORTANT.

Ad hominem comments, OTOH, not so much. I think the political is important, and nothing is "just entertainment" for me. I did my MA thesis on Terry Pratchett, and one of my PhD areas is SF and Fantasy. I deconstruct film and literature as a matter of course, which doesn't ruin them for me. It does, however, mean that I come to books and movies from a cultural studies perspective, and I can't turn that off. There are a very large number of women, especially in academia, who are very tired of pointing out possibly problematic texts and hearing at once "you're too sensitive."

Re: hoo boy, this opens up a can of worms....

[esmeraldus-neo.livejournal.com]

I have a significant issue with this.

Sexism as a trigger issue. Racism too, but I don't want to go off track.

How much sexism are you expecting anyone to cope with in a particular body of work before considering it too flawed to want to consume?

For me, sexism and racism are both fatal flaws, and I would consider them reasons for outright rejection. I don't need to consider the merits of the rest of the work, because those are both valid reasons for rejecting them outright.

Much like a person I'm considering dating. If you're hot, intelligent, wealthy, and otherwise an incredible catch--if you reveal that you are sexist (or racist), you're automatically disqualified. I don't want you, and I don't appreciate your other qualities, goodbye.

If I were writing a critical essay about one of these novels from a feminist approach, I would be concentrating on exactly these things.

That means that I would be consciously "going off on a trigger issue."

Would that make me the same kind of short-sighted idiot? I mean, there is an entire critical discipline devoted to it.

Re: hoo boy, this opens up a can of worms....

[winneganfake.livejournal.com]

And for the record- I figure it's up to people to decide for themselves whether or not to do something- my words will and should have little impact on the matter. Hell, despite all the recommendations, I resisted picking up any of these books until last summer.

Re: hoo boy, this opens up a can of worms....

[esmeraldus-neo.livejournal.com]

The Lord of the Rings was written a while back, and we're supposed to have learned from the mistakes of the past. That author is dead, and you can't expect him to write the next book better.

I'm interested in why you're calling vito_excalibur a hypocrite.

I think that politics and entertainment aren't completely separate entities that never infringe upon each other, and I'm not sure that trying to keep them completely apart is a good idea. Have you ever heard this quote?

“Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”

In other terms, the things that you consume as entertainment are in your head. If you consume a lot of it, it's in your head a lot. There is some risk, I feel, of some problematic ways of interaction becoming more normative than they might otherwise if you didn't consume so much.

I wouldn't judge you for it, but I'm not altogether sure I want Harry Dresden around in my head. I mean, you didn't actually answer my question. He seems like an ass of a character. I don't actually care that he rides zombie dinosaurs. The books seem sexist, and that's a problem for me. I don't care that it's "just entertainment."

And I don't regard this as importing my politics into my entertainment, or making myself feel better about my life choices. Being female isn't really a life choice.

I have looked at these books, and decided they might be too problematic to bother with reading. And now I have another male friend telling me that critics are "oversensitive." So if I go read one, and decide the critics are right, I am going to be so seriously fucking pissed you will not believe it.

Re: hoo boy, this opens up a can of worms....

[kadath.livejournal.com]

+1 on this. Somehow it's never a problem when I mention I haven't been able to get into something because I'm an aerospace engineer and I can't manage to suspend my disbelief over the physics, but if I don't want to read something because I find the politics or some set of social assumptions on the part of the characters or author objectionable (unless it's trendy to hate it, like Twilight), I suddenly become "oversensitive." Unless there are a bunch of equations on the page (sometimes even then), I'm reading for fun. Not wanting to spend my leisure time pissed off is not some crime against auctorial freedom.

Also, people do point out the racism and sexism in LotR. David Brin's essay about it is a classic.

Re: hoo boy, this opens up a can of worms....

[loopback.livejournal.com]

Without going into any particular spoilers, the problems'the character has with his attitudes towards women, which are often very 'old fashioned' (ie, sexist) and often clearly wrong in the face of reality:

* get him nearly killed when people take advantage of his prejudices.
* cause him to take idiotic risks that he is effectively punished for as a result, though (being our protagonist) he does emerge alive, though often not unscathed.
* get challenged by the various women in the story. (who, yes, are by and large all written as being extremely attractive. So are all the men. That is one point, at least, where he's quite consistent.
* over time, he changes his attitude towards some-women-in-specific, but acknowledges he's still a Goddamn Caveman in a lot of ways.

The character doesn't think he's RIGHT for behaving that way, it's that he was raised a certain way, and still has those beliefs and attitudes.

I can certainly understand not wanting to read a flawed main character who embodies a lot of the prevailing crap attitudes that can be seen in various places. And I can understand being pissy about the poor chicago geography in the books if you are a chicago resident. But when the 'hero' of a series is, more often than not, fucked over by his own prejudices and assumptions, and frequently saved from Painful Terrible Death by the women who are more competent, powerful, organized, aware, or experienced than he is, I think it's a grave mistake to say the books themselves are sexist.

Are they terrible writing? quite possibly. I don't personally think so. Are they sexist? I think the main character is, but I think his sexism is written as a weakness and flaw in who he is as a person. Does his 'chivalry' occasionally net him a moment of a woman thinking it's charming? sometimes. More often, he gets eyes rolled at him at about 2,000 rpm for being a sexist dork.

but in short: if you don't wanna read it, don't read it.

Re: hoo boy, this opens up a can of worms....

[loopback.livejournal.com]

oh and I have a penis or two.

Re: hoo boy, this opens up a can of worms....

[esmeraldus-neo.livejournal.com]

That's all well and good, and more or less what I was asking in the first place: do you think the criticism of the books is fair.

Obviously the answer is "no."

Re: hoo boy, this opens up a can of worms....

[loopback.livejournal.com]

'fair' has nothing to do with it. The criticism is simply off base and incorrect. Or failing that, it's an essay on someone's personal taste, and not criticism in any sense of the word that I would use.

Re: hoo boy, this opens up a can of worms....

[sirriamnis.livejournal.com]

I'm going to chime in as the owner of both tits AND a vagina, lifelong feminist and purveyor of a geek blog that focuses on sexism in Geek media.

I like the Dresden books a lot.

As at least a couple people have pointed out, yes, Harry Dresden is sexist, and it bites him in the ass. Repeatedly.

However, Jim Butcher does not appear to be nearly so sexist as his creation, and Harry's sexism is used as a flaw (which kind of infers that Butcher thinks it's "bad" or at least stupid).

Harry's sexism makes him a more interesting character and it is a flaw he does manage, on occasion, to defeat. He also acknowledges pretty frequently he's one of a dying breed in that department.

I also find the rest of Vito's review to be, well, less than good. While I can't argue the Chicago geography thing, as I've only driven through or sprinted the airport, I can say that I cannot believe that compared with the Anita Blake* books he finds Butcher MORE sexist. Good fucking grief. Just because they're written by a woman doesn't make them A. lousy and B. pretty fucking sexist.

As to the eye thing... it affects EVERYONE like that, not just women.

*I have REAMS to say on the suckiness and internalized misogyny of Anita Blake.

Re: hoo boy, this opens up a can of worms....

[esmeraldus-neo.livejournal.com]

Aaaaaaand that would be fair. Aaaaand that would have been the answer to my original question.

Aaaand it would not be an ad homenim attack. AND it is not a knee-jerk "you're too sensitive" response.

NONE of which I mind in the slightist.

And I'm an Anita Blake fan. And when you say you have reams to say about the flaws, you know what my response is? "Oh, tell me more."

Re: hoo boy, this opens up a can of worms....

[sirriamnis.livejournal.com]

Ah ha! I did reply to the right person.

Ugh... Ok, later. But I remind you, you asked for it.

[kindofstrange.livejournal.com]

I have tits and I love the Dresden files books. Judging something prematurely due to gender seems wonky. It's like saying that someone with a penis could never appreciate the works of Jane Austen because she wrote primarily about women, so they should never give reading them a try. Not saying that said person is going to absolutely love them if they do, but it at least opens up the possibility.

The character of Harry does have a weakness when it comes to women, but unlike some other books I've read, it's a weakness that actually hurts him from time to time. It's part of his character and that character has some flaws. I tend to prefer that over the fantastic, unfaliable hero archetype.

[esmeraldus-neo.livejournal.com]

Well, the high command of GenCon said there was nothing wrong with their ball and chain logo for the partner events, mainly geared for the wives (though not excluding male companions) of con attendees.

A lot of people found that pretty offensive. Women *can* be sexist toward women. I'm not saying that you are, I am just pointing out that it is possible to overlook sexism if you are a woman.

I don't think it's at all like saying men couldn't appreciate Jane Austen. That's an outright sexist statement I would never make.

The critic I link to gave examples from the text that refer to sexist parts of the stories. I asked whether winneganfake agreed that the criticism was fair. I have historically read whole ten-book series in order to be fair, but I no longer have that kind of time, and a LOT of people are saying these books are deeply flawed.

I don't feel that I *owe* Jim Butcher my time or money.

[kindofstrange.livejournal.com]

Yes, women can be sexist towards other women. However, you made the point that Dmitri might not see your position because he is a guy geek. I am female geek and I don't agree with your position either.

That doesn't make me sexist, it makes me someone who disagrees with your stance on the books without having read them yourself. If you'd said 'I tried reading one of those, felt it was kind of sexist', I'd think we had a difference in our opinion of the book and likely go on my merry way.

If a male reader was to state that they were not interested in reading Jane Austen, you gave your opinion about how great the books were and then they replied with 'But here's the thing. You're a girl reader'. I feel like that draws some of the same connections. I feel like it's really more about personal opinions and interpretations.

And you're 100% right, you don't owe anyone anything. It would be ridiculous to claim that you absolutely MUST read something in the Harry Dresden books series. People are free to make recommendations and you are just as free to disregard them.

[esmeraldus-neo.livejournal.com]

EDIT: "You're a guy geek" would have been better phrased as "You're a man, and I would at least like to ask how aware you feel you are of male privilege in discussions of sexism in literature."

I shouldn't have attempted shorthand.

I don't know how much this actually changes anything.

You are a man, so you have this male privilege. I wanted to ask you whether you were aware of it. I wanted to know how it affected your opinion of the books. I thought because we chat, I could say "guy geek" and ask your opinion without having you go off on me.