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ivyficThe rereading of A Spell for Chameleon continues and it is...not good. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I present for your consideration:
- Bink takes place in a rape trial. I should say that I know this book from an abridged audiotape, so this and the following example I'm dead certain were completely excised from that. How to make a book less sexist by judicious deletion. Anyway, in this trial, to preserve the anonymity of the victim and the accuser, three people stand in on each side, Bink as one of them. The girl sitting across from Bink is Wynne, introduced with an exclamation of "What a figure!" After the charges are read, the judge renders his verdict:
A woman can't possibly be raped if she knew her rapist. If she didn't want to have sex, she'd have run away. And she probably tempted him into it anyway!
I should point out, again, that this has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the book. Anthony just threw in a rape trial where the rapist got off...cause.
Immediately following this, Bink, our hero, thinks this:
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? The hero we are supposed to like thinks that there is no purpose for a beautiful woman other than being raped? Can I reach through the pages and kick Anthony in the gonads?
- Wynne is, of course, so stupid that she exists for no other purpose than fucking. A few pages later, Bink is talking about having to pay the Good Magician Humfrey for an answer. And we get this:
He stops her cause he is MORAL and has a WOMAN BACK HOME, but she's upset cause what would he want with her other than a fuck? *grinds teeth*
- After he gets separated from Wynne and shows a remarkable lack of giving a fuck about her well-being, Bink ends up on the Isle of Illusion with a sorceress. This was definitely cut from the audiobook. She wants him to stay and marry her, and he is resisting, so she tempts him.
He later thinks back wistfully, wondering why he didn't fuck the fourteen-year-old form when he had a chance. Ugh ugh ugh. We're supposed to like this would-be raping pedophile cause he holds himself back for the love of Xanth?
More than these specific examples, though, is the relentlessness of it. Every woman we meet is described in terms of her physical beauty, breast size, and state of undress. Men are only described vaguely--the only physical description of Bink is: "He was the huskiest boy in the village."
Every single man we meet, too, seems to have the identical views of women. Crombie, the wounded soldier, goes on a diatribe about how all women turn into shrieking shrews when you marry them, which is why he's never going to marry, though he'll "touch" plenty of women. When it turns out that Crombie is like this cause he's afraid of rejection, Bink thinks:
NO IT FUCKING ISN'T.
Then there's the Good Magician Humfrey, who says, out of the blue: "Iris [the sorceress of illusion from above] doesn't need power half so much as she needs a good man." OF COURSE SHE DOES. Everyone knows that ambitious women just need a good fuck.
The breast obsession shows up everywhere, even in the most mundane of descriptions. For example: "Within the shielded area there was a fine greensward rising in soft hillocks, rather like the torso of a woman." Or, of a creature in a tree: "A birdlike thing perched there, possibly a variety of harpy. She had full woman-breasts and a coiled snake tail."
I GET IT. YOU LOVE TEH BOOBIES. It seems like Bink's magic talent, that he is looking for, is the ability of his dick to point him at the nearest set of tits.
Here's the thing. I can understand writing a character who is immature and breast-obsessed and thinks with his dick. But in this book, it's not just a character. It's all of them. It's the whole world. There is an absolutely unabating objectification and diminution of women in almost every sentence of the book. To the point wherre I don't know how this thing won best first novel except that the judges are so naturalized to that viewpoint that it doesn't clock them as at all wrong that women, in this book, exist to be raped. So I just feel like reading this book is a bit like being in the company of those creepy guys at cons who follow you around and stare at your chest and refuse to talk to you, as if they can't even hear you speaking.
- Bink takes place in a rape trial. I should say that I know this book from an abridged audiotape, so this and the following example I'm dead certain were completely excised from that. How to make a book less sexist by judicious deletion. Anyway, in this trial, to preserve the anonymity of the victim and the accuser, three people stand in on each side, Bink as one of them. The girl sitting across from Bink is Wynne, introduced with an exclamation of "What a figure!" After the charges are read, the judge renders his verdict:
I presume she would have fled him at the outset, had she disliked him--and that he would not have forced her if she trusted him. In a small community like this, people get to know each other very well, and there are few actual surprises. This is not conclusive, but it strongly suggests she had no strong aversion to contact with him, and may have tempted him with consequence she later regretted. I would...find the man not guilty of the charge, by virtue of reasonable doubt.
A woman can't possibly be raped if she knew her rapist. If she didn't want to have sex, she'd have run away. And she probably tempted him into it anyway!
I should point out, again, that this has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the book. Anthony just threw in a rape trial where the rapist got off...cause.
Immediately following this, Bink, our hero, thinks this:
Bink felt sorry for [Wynne]. How could she avoid being seductive? She was a creature constructed for no other visible purpose than ra--than love.
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? The hero we are supposed to like thinks that there is no purpose for a beautiful woman other than being raped? Can I reach through the pages and kick Anthony in the gonads?
- Wynne is, of course, so stupid that she exists for no other purpose than fucking. A few pages later, Bink is talking about having to pay the Good Magician Humfrey for an answer. And we get this:
She looked at him in perplexity. Then she brightened, standing upright on the path above him. "You want payment?" She put one hand to the front of her dress.
He stops her cause he is MORAL and has a WOMAN BACK HOME, but she's upset cause what would he want with her other than a fuck? *grinds teeth*
- After he gets separated from Wynne and shows a remarkable lack of giving a fuck about her well-being, Bink ends up on the Isle of Illusion with a sorceress. This was definitely cut from the audiobook. She wants him to stay and marry her, and he is resisting, so she tempts him.
"What do you want in a woman?" she asked him. "Voluptuousness?" She became extremely well endowed, with an exaggerated hourglass figure. "Youth?" Suddenly she looked fourteen, very slender, lineless and innocent.
...
Bink was suddenly, forcefully tempted. There were times when he wanted this, though he had never dared admit it openly.
He later thinks back wistfully, wondering why he didn't fuck the fourteen-year-old form when he had a chance. Ugh ugh ugh. We're supposed to like this would-be raping pedophile cause he holds himself back for the love of Xanth?
More than these specific examples, though, is the relentlessness of it. Every woman we meet is described in terms of her physical beauty, breast size, and state of undress. Men are only described vaguely--the only physical description of Bink is: "He was the huskiest boy in the village."
Every single man we meet, too, seems to have the identical views of women. Crombie, the wounded soldier, goes on a diatribe about how all women turn into shrieking shrews when you marry them, which is why he's never going to marry, though he'll "touch" plenty of women. When it turns out that Crombie is like this cause he's afraid of rejection, Bink thinks:
So the soldier rejected all women because he felt they rejected him. Well, it was a good enough rationale.
NO IT FUCKING ISN'T.
Then there's the Good Magician Humfrey, who says, out of the blue: "Iris [the sorceress of illusion from above] doesn't need power half so much as she needs a good man." OF COURSE SHE DOES. Everyone knows that ambitious women just need a good fuck.
The breast obsession shows up everywhere, even in the most mundane of descriptions. For example: "Within the shielded area there was a fine greensward rising in soft hillocks, rather like the torso of a woman." Or, of a creature in a tree: "A birdlike thing perched there, possibly a variety of harpy. She had full woman-breasts and a coiled snake tail."
I GET IT. YOU LOVE TEH BOOBIES. It seems like Bink's magic talent, that he is looking for, is the ability of his dick to point him at the nearest set of tits.
Here's the thing. I can understand writing a character who is immature and breast-obsessed and thinks with his dick. But in this book, it's not just a character. It's all of them. It's the whole world. There is an absolutely unabating objectification and diminution of women in almost every sentence of the book. To the point wherre I don't know how this thing won best first novel except that the judges are so naturalized to that viewpoint that it doesn't clock them as at all wrong that women, in this book, exist to be raped. So I just feel like reading this book is a bit like being in the company of those creepy guys at cons who follow you around and stare at your chest and refuse to talk to you, as if they can't even hear you speaking.
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no subject
Date: 2012-08-13 05:30 pm (UTC)Yes.
Well.
Uh, I did mention that I haven't read this book since I was a callow teen myself, right? And that I don't remember any of that stuff? I'm a bit horrified now--and terrified to go back and reread any of the other books I loved back then, for fear they will be equally appalling.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-13 06:04 pm (UTC)But as an adult, it's really unpleasant. There's also a lot of first book-itis, where Bink decides hey, I should go on this quest or something. And I won't take a guide cause I'm manly! And then stuff randomly happens to him for a while, and he goes places, and more stuff happens, and a hundred pages in, it's like--oh right! Plot!
no subject
Date: 2012-08-13 07:40 pm (UTC)Like the characters in "Big Bang Theory?" (Except those guys have managed to "charm" me and I just love that show.) I do think the BBT guys have more maturity (except maybe Wolowitz) and would never be casual about rape.
Some of the things you quote from Anthony's writing are more than just immature but actually shocking (like the rape trial.) It seems to me if there must be writing about immature male obsession toward women in an only physical way a better writer would go deeper and get more thoughtful or philosophical (even if the characters are incapable of deep thought; the writer could still point that out as a weakness or show growth as a character actually falls in love for the first time and sees the other as an actual "person.") Anthony is simply a shallow writer with no depth so his male characters will be the same. He's an idiot. If he wanted to write about mindless sex so badly maybe he should've gone into writing romance novels where he could have male characters moon over women's breasts all day long and kiss them and fondle them and maybe it wouldn't seem so out of place. But he probably would've failed miserably if he was unable to write "relationships." Hmmm...maybe he needed to become simply a writer of hardcore, emotionless porn...
no subject
Date: 2012-08-13 07:59 pm (UTC)Yeah, he is not writing a book commenting on immaturity or objectification of women. Though I might not seek out such a book to read, I have no problem with something like that. He is writing a quest adventure book. The misogyny is just woven into the fabric of the thing. It's not commenting on it, because that is the writer's viewpoint.
He's written hardcore (http://www.amazon.com/Firefly-Piers-Anthony/dp/0380759500/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1344887860&sr=8-1&keywords=piers+anthony+firefly) pornography (http://www.amazon.com/Pornucopia-Piers-Anthony/dp/0972367012/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1344887860&sr=8-2&keywords=piers+anthony+firefly). Not actually any better. From what I've heard, quite a bit worse on the squick meter.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-13 10:53 pm (UTC)I think I have a copy of this book on my shelf that I need to get rid of.