[Hard Contact] Chapter 1: FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

[mamuzzy]

This entry is a bit more personal than the rest but I wanted to share what eyes I see the world with.

I finished with the dissection of Darman for now, and finally I can head to the next part of the chapter which is introducting the secondary protagonist of the book: Etain Tur-Mukan. 

 

When I first blogged about this section, I went overboard with bashing the fandom. I truly hated - despised - how fandom treated the topic of misogyny, especially that now I remember, at that time when I read Republic Commando, I was working a job that is typically “male-oriented” manual labor job and I had to deal with sexist remarks against my gender from both men and women customers. 

 

My stance is: depicting misogyny in literature is not an act of misogyny.

 

There are ways you can depict fictional women in humiliating and hateful environment that treats them like shit, and there are ways you can depict fictional women in an environment, that is straightout propaganda for "how to be a proper breeding-cattle in patriarchial society".

 

Etain on Qiluura - a very poor rural and definitely not progressive society -, was the most realistic thing I could read. (honestly its rawness someway reminds me of Witcher books from Andrzej Sapkowski. Hmm. Maybe I should do a Witcher blogging too? I haven't read the last two books yet.)

Now to understand my point,

[somethingsomething personal oversharing section about living in a post-soviet shithole where actual life destroying misogyny is still a thing and women divorcing their husbands was still considered a shameful act in the 90s]
 

 

I remember talking about Ilippi’s divorce from Kal on Tumblr and how it was fucking awesome badass move… no one cared? Because the more you head toward the west on the map, the more you think: but divorcing is not a big deal, everyone does that and there is no social consequences. 

 

Now I first read RepComm in 2023, but the first book came out in 2004. Imagine me reading this in a book: Kal is considered a shitty person in his own culture, because he failed to be a good father and a good husband. KT wrote about a culture where MEN got the retribution for failing their family. And Kal didn’t take revenge on Ilippi for leaving him. If you gave me this book in the early 2000’s, I would have considered this the most feminist thing I have ever encountered in fiction. 

 

[RAGE].7zip

 

So uhm. Yeah. Damn I got worked up again. I need to touch grass.

 

And you know what? I think these stuff will become relevant again if not already relevant.
 

Comments

[ithillia]

I totally agree!
I think many people right now in the fandom (especially born / raised in the west) cannot see this, because it was never *their* reality. They never saw opression first-hand, never lived misogyny within their families, their societies, never were surrounded by rural life and deep poorness. If they were, they would understood these books differently.
ILIPPI IS A FUCKING BAD-ASS. Divorcing your shit husband is one of the greatest enablement a woman can do for herself. I wish my mom would have had the same courage when she did the opportunity to do so, and wouldn't stay in an abusive, toxic marrige to appease her environment.
And yes, having a culture where the men take the fall for a divorce is literally a feminist dream. Also Kal Skirata not going after her, not hunting her down, not taking back "what is his", not shittalking or blaming her and just owning that he fucked up his own marriage is just a prime example on healthy masculinity (and being a normal person, really). I wish my father would be like that.
Speaking of him, one time I asked him to teach/show me how to do soldering (I needed it for a hobby project). You know what he said? "I would have taught you if you were a boy. But you are not. So what's the point to show it to you?" So I learned from youtube. See, that's misogyny right there, not when men open you doors and offer to carry your baggages.

Also, since you mentioned Etain - I just cannot contain myself. My absolute fav line from the first book was when she said she was about to get raped and the answer was: "You're not that pretty". I love dark humor and this one line just made me laugh for minutes. This felt so real, so comic-caricaturally true, it really made me love these books and KT's writing even more.

[mamuzzy]

I think I went overboard with my "us vs them" mentality a little bit.

But you get it, what I'm saying. Today's feminism is not about women having choices in their life what they want to do regardless what they have between their legs, today's feminism wave is about hating on men, and I'm not vibing with this. Though sometimes I get annoyed by "shining knights" you mentioned, I don't want to punish kind behavior, regardless if its coming from the heart, or just social gender indoctrination. So especially thank you for sharing your experiences with your Dad too, because it is really shows how the term "misogyny" is just doesn't have a true meaning in the online spaces anymore.

We need this kind of "problematic" fiction, that actually depicts problematic stuff in the most naturalistic way, because people tend to forget from what point the progression started. That people didn't always have this good, and we are still not at the desired end. Fiction is not a manifesto, but a mirror and sometimes it's not even deliberate. Internet makes it possible to get access to different generations, but it also messes up the sense of time, and people bash media that was produced decades ago, sometimes centuries ago.

And I definitely want to talk about these particular scenes with Etain, so it's good you mention. <3 But yes, fandom were shocked that the book just casually talk about rape, without any narrative opinion tied to it how this is bad and they think it's misogynystic this way. But like... why do they need someone to tell them, it's bad? Isn't it supposed to be a common sense? Why an adult book should teach a moral lesson? Why 20 years olds behave like they are still in kindergarten needing a moral guidance? But maybe... maybe the west is not that advanced how I always hoped.