Sexualized Saturdays: Holy Gender Roles

One of the things I’ve always loved about fantasy literature is that it provides an escape from the real world. When I’m comfortably ensconced in a Robin McKinley novel or re-reading the Wheel of Time series for the ninetieth time, I am not worried about real life things like job hunting or school loans. It’s a mini-vacation from the suckiness of meatspace, and so it’s all the more depressing when some of the crappiest things in real life—sexism, racism, entrenched heteronormativity—show up in my fantasy novels.

Me encountering unpleasant -isms in my fantasy novels.

One of my biggest frustrations in this sense is that, because fantasy novels seem to have become synonymous with “medieval stuff but with magic”, women are constantly relegated to the tasks and roles that would have been theirs during the Middle Ages. There’s a lot of embroidery and marriage-drama, and the female characters who do defy the gender norms are not met with societal acceptance or approval. Unfortunately, in the case of a lot of fantasy novels, even the mythical deities seem to have been stuck into very traditional gender roles.

Happy Hobbit Day! Have a Post Re-read Retrospective

I just finished re-reading The Hobbit yesterday (just as a refresher before the first movie this winter). It’s sadly been several years since I last traveled with thirteen dwarves and a burglar to the Lonely Mountain, so I figured it was time. And it’s interesting how different it is reading it as a sort-of-adult, and how much of it is like coming home.