[ SECRET POST #2946 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2946 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 038 secrets from Secret Submission Post #421.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

She was an AI, but she was an AI designed to serve a particular culture. And one of the major plot points was that she was programmed to do certain things without her knowledge.

I could see her being programmed with a particular cultural identity. I mean, the Radchaai would WANT ships an ancillaries to be programmed that way, I'd think. She'd have less trouble seeing past that ID than regular humans, but she'd still have some trouble.

[esteefee]

Some trouble, at first, sure. But she'd spent 20 years hunting down the gun in a multitude of cultures, remember? Surely that's enough time to learn to pick up on gender cues. As Mianaai said "They have to be smart, they have to be able to think."

And we know she recognized the importance of gender in certain societies, but the author was so intent on making a statement that she let it get in the way. E.g., when Breq is talking to Strigan. The author makes the point that Breq had spent a week in Strigan's house with her belongings but when talking to Strigan was still helpless to gender her. But Breq wants something from Strigan. You don't alienate people you want something from. Misgendering people alienates them.

So, I just didn't find that at all believable. Nor the fact Seivarden is male according to Strigan's language yet she is gendered as female throughout the book because she is Radchaai. The writer is just being cute.

Anyway, imho, misgendering people is not the way to make a feminist statement. It's alienating and wrong.

[cbrachyrhynchos]

So, I just didn't find that at all believable. Nor the fact Seivarden is male according to Strigan's language yet she is gendered as female throughout the book because she is Radchaai. The writer is just being cute.

Why? Anatomy doesn't determine gender, and there's absolutely no indication across two books that she's in conflict with the way her culture constructs gender (which is described as both liberal and egalitarian, in contrast to the feudal system.) If anything, one of Seivarden's many faults is that she's Radchai to a fault, in contrast to Breq who, ironically, has more empathy for the cultures she's encountered than most of her human crew.

[esteefee]

Breq? Empathetic? Oh, dear. I don't think we read the same book at all. :D

>Anatomy doesn't determine gender

No, but anatomy tends to determine sex. It seems very clear that in the scene with Strigan, Leckie was intentionally (clumsily) identifying Seivarden as sexually male for the sole purpose of making her point not two pages later, when speaking to Seivarden again in Radchaai and referring to her as 'she', that Radchaai don't care about gender. This does not necessarily mean they do not have sexes. Of course, I haven't read the second book so I don't know. I don't intend to, at this point, because I found the first one really cold and distancing and, as I said, the characters mostly unempathetic. The only character I really liked was Awn. I really, really liked Awn.

[(Anonymous)]

You're conflating sex with gender. Sex and gender are not the same thing. Seivarden being what we would consider of male sex doesn't mean Seivarden is of male gender.

[cbrachyrhynchos]

> Breq? Empathetic? Oh, dear. I don't think we read the same book at all. :D

Of course not, you didn't read what I wrote. Breq recognizes that the cultures she encounters are cultures, with music worth learning, and language worth conversing in, which is repeatedly identified as a quirk of Justice of Toren. In fact, she coaches Awn regarding proper language, politics, and cultural forms. One of her objections to Seivarden in a flashback is Seivarden's callous treatment of prisoners (limited by Justice of Toren's programmed constraints). Her problem isn't empathy, it's sympathy.

> No, but anatomy tends to determine sex. It seems very clear that in the scene with Strigan, Leckie was intentionally (clumsily) identifying Seivarden as sexually male for the sole purpose of making her point not two pages later, when speaking to Seivarden again in Radchaai and referring to her as 'she', that Radchaai don't care about gender. This does not necessarily mean they do not have sexes.

Of course not. In fact it's explicitly stated that Radchai do have sexual differences, but those sexual differences don't determine social status or role (gender), and even childbearing isn't an obstacle with surgical intervention.

We have to weigh Strigan's view as a (well justified) bigot regarding Radchai culture against Seivarden's own character development and tendency toward cultural conservatism by Radchai standards over several chapters. There's just not any evidence that she's in conflict with her culture on issues of gender. (As opposed to class and cultural development, which are big conflicts for her.)

Now, I think that Leckie's gender utopia is a bit too optimistic in proposing that everyone can wear what they want, groom how they want, and get surgery as needed. But as a literary experiment, I don't see a problem with it.

[ariakas]

Now, I think that Leckie's gender utopia is a bit too optimistic

I'm not even sure Leckie is positing it as a utopia as far as gender is concerned. Very little about the (violent, colonizing) Radchaai is even positive, let alone utopian. Some of the non-Radchaai characters rankle at Breq's incorrect assumptions about their gender, and while the Radchaai characters assume their lack of gender makes them more "civilized" than the non-Radchaai, they assume that about a lot of things, including their right to bring that "civilization" to the galaxy. Forcing gendered societies to adopt non-gendered Radchaai society is part of a violent colonization process that Leckie is pretty clearly critical of throughout the entire novel. Given that they're already a GALACTIC SPACE EMPIRE replete with spotless uniforms and ships full of unwilling slaves, how many puppies do they have to eat for some of the denser readers to understand that Leckie isn't saying they're the good guys or approving of all of their cultural mores?

But fuck it, given how many times I've heard Walter White or Frank-fucking-Underwood referred to as "heroes", I'm beginning to despair that "told from the perspective of" =/= "author tacitly supports this point of view" is a level of nuance beyond the kids these days.

[cbrachyrhynchos]

Well utopia =/= tacit support either. Utopia is literally "no place," a thought experiment in culture-hacking.

[ariakas]

I misread your use of the word, then, because I agree completely. "Radchaai society" = interesting literary experiment, =/= personal endorsement of the author's opinion on how things should be.

To anyone with a brain and critical thinking skills, that is.

[(Anonymous)]

So, I just didn't find that at all believable. Nor the fact Seivarden is male according to Strigan's language yet she is gendered as female throughout the book because she is Radchaai. The writer is just being cute.

Seivarden is gendered in that way because that is how she is gendered in her culture and it is how she genders herself. It is YOU who are misgendering the character, based on your personal ideas of what gender is and which pronouns you think people with certain physical characteristics should use. And what's worse is that you're actually suggesting that someone should adopt and be referred to by a pronoun from a completely different culture and language simply because that culture and language happens to fall more in line with what you're used to.

It wasn't about making a feminist statement. It was about the entire concept of gender. It was about gender not necessarily aligning with a person's physical body. It was about gender cues being different depending on which society you find yourself in. It was about gender itself being different depending on which society you find yourself in. And, golly, is that message needed, because it's so painfully obvious we've fallen right back into essentialist mode and dressed it up in progressive clothes.

[esteefee]

Read my reply above. And if you really think Leckie was right in using solely a feminine pronoun to refer to a genderless society, then I wish you good luck with it. I'd be happy with a genderless pronoun, but Leckie wasn't willing to do the work. It was too hard.

[(Anonymous)]

That reply doesn't address a single thing that I've said.

[(Anonymous)]

Everything I read here about this book sounds so mind numbingly tedious.

[ariakas]

It's actually really excellent, but the discussions about it get bogged down by people who either didn't read it or barely read it (like the OP) and just want to harp on that single aspect of the premise. It's a space opera about a ship's AI out for revenge, ultimately, with decent suspense, exciting action, and a very likable protagonist.

[(Anonymous)]

That does sound interesting. Thanks for the more neutral summary!

[(Anonymous)]

That's because all anyone seems to talk about here is this one controversial aspect of it. In the book, the whole gender thing isn't harped upon or treated like a big deal. It's just a single aspect of the world-building. Someone mentioned 'The Left Hand of Darkness,' and it's a spot-on comparison: that book contains an effectively genderless world, but that's just treated as being part of the world.

Anyway, the actual story itself is a lot more interesting and contains a lot more action than people here would have you believe.

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks as well. I sometimes tend to get turned away from reading a book when all I read about it is tedious discussion about some ~problematic~ aspects, so I appreciate the more neutral summaries.