OOC - Wrath of Trees

[sythyry]

The world and people of Wrath of Trees are annoying me more and more, so thought I'd annoy you some, too.

The main intelligent species of Kono is sexually dimorphic. Rather a lot: men average 6' tall and wiry, with colorful wattles; women average 4' tall and rather plump, but with plainer coloration. Sex roles are quite distinct, too, and in almost-familiar ways: e.g., reading and writing are female things; most physical jobs are male things.

Also, women have an estrous cycle. They compare being on heat to being hungry: they want satisfaction, and they're certainly easier to seduce than at other times, but heat doesn't override intelligence or free will or conscience or common sense. Estrous women are not (generally) slutty, either by their standards or by the reader's, and the book isn't a parade of sexual adventures. (I'm not Jack Chalker.) I do plan to explore what this does to social institutions, and of course it will be relevant for some plots; it's an integral part of Kono culture.

Now, RL, I'm as egalitarian as possible under the circumstances -- yeah, I work days and my wife takes care of Rhys days, but that wasn't inevitable. I'm vaguely gender dysphoric. I'd really hate being either gender on Kono. Some authors' treatments of sexual dimorphism annoy me in ways that seem to reflect badly on the author -- Larry Niven's races with nonsentient females, for one.

And philosophically it shouldn't bother me, the way I'm doing it. There is certainly "men's work" and "women's work" on Kono, but by having intellectual and administrative stuff on the female side -- and by some of consequences of the estrous cycle -- neither sex dominates the other to the degree that, say, human men dominate human women in most human cultures.

Now, to some extent it is good that I find it disturbing. Melyl, the narrator, isn't that kind of girl -- she's not even in the same phylum. She has an outsider's perspective on Kono society. She doesn't like it very much. Admittedly, for different reasons, but it's probably helpful for writing if our opinions are similar.

Anyways, what do you think about sexual dimorphism, estrous cycles, and the real-life politics thereof?

[Poll #658749]

Comments

I do have an opinion....

[(Anonymous)]

and as a Fan of the dear departed Mr. Chalker, (may his trip to heaven be on a ferry) I must ask which book did you read to think that Chalker's work was a parade of sexual adventures? if anything, the only thing you can count on more often than not is the protagonist not being the same creature it started out as. It would be like a Goromor becoming a Bonstable and then a Orren.
I found most of his works interesting in that way....

Winterbeast

Re: I do have an opinion....

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Changewinds, Four Lords of the Diamonds, Flux and... whateveritwascalled, River of Dancing Gods, Rings of the Master... and I think there was one more series where in addition to the obligatory mind control and involuntary transformations he had people compelled to have sex.

But that's why we love him!

Re: I do have an opinion....

[(Anonymous)]

okay, those books. I admit they had those elements, and I did not care for them that much. I did thoroughly enjoy the Well Of Souls series, which did involve several invoulentary transformations.....

if we went to the world tree, what would we be?

Winterbeast

[alonewiththemoon]

I answered the poll questions, but the addendum to all of my answers would be "it depends on how the author handles this." If the author were Niven-esque, then all those things might bother me a hell of a lot. If the author were say Octavia Butler, I'd probably be highly intrigued.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Well, the author is me. I expect I'll handle them rather matter-of-factly, and rather anthropologically, and rather like Sythyry. Everyone in the book will pretty much accept their local biological and cultural conditions as the one absolute right way to do things without thinking about it. We'll probably get to see one boy and one girl go through adolescence.

What about Niven bothers you? I haven't read anything he's written in, oh, fifteen or twenty years. I was thinking of some bits of his older books (the races with nonsentient females) as examples of gratuituous details that bothered me.

[mazlynn.livejournal.com]

I'm a biologist, so well written novels in which interesting societies develop as a direct consequence of interesting biology intrigues me. I see nothing disturbing or offensive in exploring those worlds in a novel of the type you describe.

As another commenter mentioned, it depends a lot on how the author handles the situation. If the author seems to be using the fictional world setting as a thinly veiled "and this is the way it SHOULD be" propaganda, then I get extremely annoyed at it. But given the way you're likely to handle it, I don't see that as being a problem at all. Especially since you will have the outsider perspective to insert the occasional "but WHY is it this way" comment.

If it really bothers you, you could always do something silly like flipping around what you call the genders, so the tall strong "females" do the penguin thing and hand the kid off to the small, drab, "male" right away. But authors that do that without some story/world setting/philosophy reason behind it always seem to be trying too hard. Plus, the readers tend to think of the characters that act the way we expect males to act as males anyway, so it doesn't buy you much.

Re: I do have an opinion....

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Well World is everyone's favorite! Well, the first six or so... the most recent trilogy was kind of forgettable, IMO.

I loooved the River of Dancing Gods and Rings of the Master serieses, though.

[paka.livejournal.com]

I'll point out here, that Cherryh's Chanur series has gender inequalities as a major major plot point - and yet it works and isn't annoying.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Actually, it annoyed me quite a bit.

[rowyn]

I don't remember Niven's handling of such subjects bugging me particularly, but I've not read a lot of Niven. (Chalker, on the other hand, does annoy me. And he's weirdly smug about NOT being sexist in his novels. Go fig.)

I agree that Octavia Butler does a good job of presenting alien races and biology, though. :)

I expect Mr. Bloom will handle the subject well, too. The listed characteristics don't bother me in the abstract; in fact, I'm working on a story now with sexually dimorphic characters and a strong degree of male oppression of females. But the handling of such elements can be eye-roll-inducing, if handled badly or with a degree of prurience, or smug self-satisfaction. (You know, where the author projects that attitude of "Isn't this great? I wish the real world was like it!")

[alonewiththemoon]

I knew you were the author :-)

I was pretty much just following your example by using Niven. I'm trying to remember the names of other authors who have really irked me in their treament of gender, but I tend to forget the names of authors I didn't like. Not as much room in the brain as there used to be ;)

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Well, I think it's icky -- I didn't give answers to my own questions, but I'm more upset than most people who answered. Melyl hates her captors, understandably enough, and I don't think she'll have that attitude either.

[kris-schnee.livejournal.com]

Don't worry about it! Did you fret about having counter-revolutionary thoughts when inventing the Khtsoyis and Sleeth? Obsess over the Rassimel? Worry that the Orren were... what were we talking about?

You've established your credibility at creating a believable setting and races, and a sane reader understands that you don't necessarily agree with your characters' beliefs and practices. As long as you don't slide into propaganda by having everything be a blatant metaphor for How Things Ought To Be Here, or by having characters' virtue consistently equal to how much they agree with you, reasonable people won't be bothered by weird biology. Don't be intimidated into writing something normal!

I read only one of Chalker's books (Midnight at the Well of Souls) and kind of liked the "high concept" but thought the execution was clumsy; that one had a race of cattle-people with non-sentient females.

Hmm, how would Atlas Shrugged look on the World Tree?

Re: I do have an opinion....

[kris-schnee.livejournal.com]

A fun question! That ought to be a poll in its own right.
Hm, I'd choose Zi Ri for the immortality; failing that, Rassimel. Based on personality, I'd get assigned a prime based on being "a bit Orren-y, a bit Rassy." Probably more of the latter.

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

From what I know of you, I doubt that you'd be in the "...and this is the way things ought to be, dammit!" category. So, I have few problems with it.

As long as it's in the service of a great story, I'm willing to accept almost anything, even things that are far more (personally) disturbing.

[vik_thor]

basically what the others have said, regarding the Kono.

hmmm... you know, I never really thought about that it Niven's work... and never got around to reading anything by Chalker.

I've been rereading the World Tree sourcebook, and have a question regarding the Herethroy.
How does their chitin grow? Since they do have vertebrae (fused to the chitin) I take it that they don't shed the chitin. (How thick is the chitin?)
(Yes, I tend to ask odd questions like this. :)