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The Fool, the Fitz, and Fanfic

July 9th, 2007

by Yonmei

The trilogy of trilogies by Robin Hobb (The Farseer Trilogy: Assassin’s Apprentice (1995), Royal Assassin (1996), Assassin’s Quest (1997). The Liveship Traders Trilogy: Ship of Magic (1998), The Mad Ship (1999), Ship of Destiny (2000). The Tawny Man Trilogy: Fool’s Errand (2002), Golden Fool (2003), Fool’s Fate (2003)) are special in multiple ways, but I only want to talk about one.

The first and the last three books are set in a kingdom called “the Six Duchies”, where children, especially the children of nobles and royalty, are often given virtue-names: thus we have Shrewd, Verity, and Chivalry, Regal and Desire and Dutiful. Children given virtue-names often seem to grow into those virtues: names have power. The two central characters in this trilogy of trilogies have no definite names of their own: “Fitz” just means “son”, and is a commonly-used tag for a royal bastard, and “Fool” is just that; King Shrewd’s fool.

I’ll avoid spoilers, under the tag, but there is one central spoiler I want to discuss, and its implications. This spoiler has no effect on any of the plot twists. It’s simply this: What is the Fool’s gender?

The character we first meet as the Fool is – then – white-skinned and white-haired, and indeed is identified, much later, as “a White”: a member of a third (or fourth) intelligent species in this world, who claims to be a prophet, to be able to see the future in visions. Through time, the White’s skin changes, becoming darker: amber, tawny, finally – if a White lives long enough, and they are much longer-lived than human – completely black. We meet two other Whites in the nine books.

Fitz thinks of the Fool as male, through all six books in which he appears. Fitz is telepathic, gifted with both Wit and Skill: but he cannot read the Fool with either Wit or Skill, and his wolf-companion refers to the Fool as “the Scentless One”. In the third book, Assassin’s Quest, a minstrel says that the Fool is female and is in love with Fitz, and the Fool admits openly to loving Fitz and laughs at Fitz for being disturbed at accusations about gender. In the seventh book, Fool’s Errand, when Fitz and the Fool meet again, the Fool’s new persona is Lord Golden, a wealthy foreign aristocrat.

In the middle three books, the story moves to another part of the world, the trade port of Bingtown, the Rain Wilds, neighbouring kingdoms, and the Pirate Isles. A large part of it takes place aboard liveships, carved out of wizardwood, which become alive after three generations of their family die aboard them. The character we’ve known as the Fool appears in these books as Amber, a woodcarver. Amber is accepted by everyone in these books as a woman: when Jek, a sailor who knew Amber in Bingtown, appears in Golden Fool, Jek is startled to find that everyone who knows Lord Golden, including those who knew Lord Golden before as Shrewd’s Fool, accept Amber as a man. Fitz overhears Amber and Jek talking, and talking as two women together: discovers that Jek knows the Fool/Amber/Lord Golden loves Fitz, and is horrified right down to his heterosexual manhood at the thought.

I re-read all nine books recently, the first time I’d read all nine in succession close together (a friend leant me the nine books from her collection, one after the other as she acquired them, in 2002 and 2003) and was impressed all over again with what an inspired piece of genderfuckery the Fool is.

Through the first three books, until the minstrel annoys Fitz (and it is presented as an annoying misunderstanding) no one questions the Fool’s gender: he’s male. Through the second three books, without question, Amber is female. (I didn’t figure out Amber and the Fool were the same person until the third set of books, but the clues are there for anyone to see: I just wasn’t thinking about it on the first read-through). Through the third three books, no one, except for Jek, questions Lord Golden’s gender: he’s male. Though I think by that time Hobb intended us to be questioning that, as well as everything else we thought we knew about the Fool.

I had read the books initially taking the Fool as male, and that was one reason why I never registered that Amber and the Fool are the same person. Re-reading all nine in succession, aware of Amber as I read the first three, I had half a thought that perhaps Hobb was writing the Fool as a woman disguised as a man. And Hobb says herself that she didn’t initially intend to go back to the Six Duchies and write more about the Farseers: she thought when she closed Assassin’s Quest that this would be the last story of the Fool and the Fitz. If we had only the first six books, not the last three, I think that though one could argue that the Fool is a woman disguised as a man, or that Amber is a man disguised as a woman, and there would be no way to win either argument, Amber is better accepted as a woman than the Fool is as a man.

My answer, for what it’s worth, is that this White is intersex: that perhaps all Whites are. That not only did this White choose a characterisation to fit into each place (the king’s fool; the woodcarver; the foreign nobleman) the gender of each characterisation was also a distinct choice. Towards the end of the ninth book, I think Fitz realises this, though never explicitly: the books end as they began, with Fitz referring to “the Fool” and using “he”. But that’s my answer: Hobb meant us to read nine books about this person and not know that person’s gender. I said it was inspired. It’s brilliant.

The friend who leant me the books, though, was just as certain that the character was really male.

Authorship is a much more complicated thing than ownership. But Robin Hobb certainly both wrote and owns these nine books, and as a living writer who objects to fanfic about her books, though I think her reasons are foolish, I would absolutely maintain her right to say fans mustn’t write fanfic about her stories.

But of course, some fans will and do. The impulse to write fanfic isn’t one that can necessarily be stifled just by the fact that you know the author to whose work you are reacting doesn’t like your doing it: and publishing on the Internet isn’t terribly distinct between “I wrote this story and I want my friends to read it” and “I wrote this story and I want the whole world to read it”. The rant Hobb wrote is no longer available at her site, but two or three years ago, apparently chiefly in reaction to some slash fiction (Fitz/Fool) she’d read (or possibly, just heard about) she published a lengthy execration of fanfic, fanfic writers, and slash.

Some fans who reacted badly to Hobb’s essay were objecting to her presumption that all fanfic is badly written, or that all fanfic writers are wasting our time, or that all slash is badly written. Others were reacting badly to a writer they liked telling them they shouldn’t be writing or reading fanfic about the books they loved.

My reaction to it, though (and I wish it were still available, because I’d like to re-read it now) was that Hobb was bitterly disappointed that so many of her readers hadn’t appreciated the brilliant genderfuckery of the central character, and had not accepted her resolution of the nine book series. (Hobb says plainly that she’ll probably never write another book about the Fitz and the Fool, and indeed it’s hard to see how she could, given the resolution of the last book.) Hobb discovered via fanfiction that some people were reading her books very differently from how she’d wanted them read. There is some beautiful parallelism in the last book between the relationship between the two central characters, and between Fitz and his wolf-companion, but it’s not a parallel that people who want to read the books as a slash story can accept (and they do make a wonderfully slashy romance).

I found the prejudice and ignorance expressed in Hobb’s essay about fanfic annoying: I think she utterly misunderstands the impulse people have to write and read fanfiction.

I admit that if I’d done something that damn clever as Hobb did with the Fool/Amber/Lord Golden, I’d probably be fairly damn narked at readers who seemed to be deliberately misunderstanding or ignoring what I did. But you can’t force readers to think the right thoughts when reading what you wrote. (You can try, because that’s what writing’s all about: but you have to leave open the strong possibility that, well, they just won’t.)

Hobb claims she doesn’t permit fanfiction because fanfiction could be “confused” with her own writing: that someone might read a fanfic story set in the Six Duchies or with the liveships and think that Hobb herself had written it. This is pure nonsense, and I’m sure Hobb is smart enough to realise this: there are a couple of good legal reasons for formally refusing fanfiction (or permitting fanfiction only under tight control), but “confusion” isn’t one of them. No one ever read a fanfic story and seriously thought “I wonder if that’s actually by the author of the original book!”

What does happen with fanfiction, though, is that people present, in fictional format, their ideas about somebody else’s universe. How compelling their ideas are depends on how good their writing is and how interesting their ideas are. And this is, once you’re writing about a universe out of copyright, a perfectly respectable literary tradition, from Sophocles writing plays about the legends of Oedipus and his sister-daughters, to T.H.White writing fanfic about Mallory’s The Morte d’Arthur. (Bear in mind that modern copyright is being increasingly extended primarily because the Disney corporation does not want to lose their copyright to Mickey Mouse. Kipling went out of copyright and back into copyright because of Disney. Bizarre but true. Authorship is way more complicated than ownership, but ownership is where the money is.)

Not writing fanfic about a living author’s works when she’s said she doesn’t want fanfic is a courtesy: Robin Hobb is entitled to dislike this fictional depiction of the ideas her readers have, and to say so, and I think fanwriters should respect that wish, whatever we think of her reasons.

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- More blogging by Yonmei at http://yonmei.insanejournal.com

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Filed under Books & Literature, Sexuality & queerness, slash, vulgarisation | Comments (57)

57 Responses to “The Fool, the Fitz, and Fanfic”

Cam on July 9, 2007 11:20 am
Her essay is still available through the Internet Archive.
sarah on July 9, 2007 11:26 am
These books are probably my favorite series ever (with an emphasis on the Liveships trilogy). Personally, since I read Liveships first, I didn’t get to have that moment where I “figured out” that Amber was the Fool. I hadn’t read Assassin, so I took her as a woman, albeit one with some kind of mysterious prophetic tendencies.

I think the majority of the fans out there who press Hobb to reveal whether the Fool is male or female truly don’t get it. I agree that the character is probably an attempt at a character that is either/both. The gender isn’t the point, and I really think she tried to stress that and her rant is (part of) her frustration at fans not getting it. In the same way that Fitz himself doesn’t get it. He thinks when the Fool says he loves him, it means “oh no homosexual!” and he gets freaked out. But the Fool thinks his love is just love, and that it doesn’t matter what gender s/he is.

I respect Hobb’s right to say she doesn’t want fan fiction. It is, after all, her intellectual property. But then, I’m not a fanfic writer.
Ellen on July 9, 2007 11:26 am
I’ve been avoiding Robin Hobb because I read (most of) one of her books under the name Megan Lindholm and didn’t like it at all, but this is almost enough to make me go out and buy the whole nine-book series right now. It sounds fascinating! I think, just based on what you’ve said here, I would/will probably read the Fool as intersex, but I’ll try as much as possible to approach it with an open mind.
Yonmei on July 10, 2007 9:13 am
Cam, thanks! I should have thought of that. :-(

—

Sarah: Personally, since I read Liveships first, I didn’t get to have that moment where I “figured out” that Amber was the Fool. I hadn’t read Assassin, so I took her as a woman, albeit one with some kind of mysterious prophetic tendencies.

So did you have the moment when you “figured out” that the Fool was Amber?

I think the majority of the fans out there who press Hobb to reveal whether the Fool is male or female truly don’t get it. I agree that the character is probably an attempt at a character that is either/both. The gender isn’t the point, and I really think she tried to stress that and her rant is (part of) her frustration at fans not getting it.

Sure. And I think it would be a better answer to say “It doesn’t matter what gender the Fool is” than to get mad at fans who want to know which.

In the same way that Fitz himself doesn’t get it. He thinks when the Fool says he loves him, it means “oh no homosexual!” and he gets freaked out.

You know, it’s only just now occurred to me to wonder why the Six Duchies is a homophobic culture. There doesn’t seem to be any particular stricture of religion to make it so: we know it is only by reaction to the Fool.

I respect Hobb’s right to say she doesn’t want fan fiction. It is, after all, her intellectual property. But then, I’m not a fanfic writer.

I respect her feelings, rather than her right. The legality of fiction that is derived from/inspired by another author is a grey area, ranging from the complete legality of parody to the complete illegality of plagiarism. But it seems clear that her rant against fanfic was inspired more by people who were thinking about her work the wrong way than anything else.

—

Ellen: I’ve been avoiding Robin Hobb because I read (most of) one of her books under the name Megan Lindholm and didn’t like it at all, but this is almost enough to make me go out and buy the whole nine-book series right now. It sounds fascinating!

It really is! The only book by Megan Lindholm I’ve read is The Wizard of the Pigeons, which I loved: and I’ve read but not been terribly keen on the first volume of the new Robin Hobb trilogy. But these nine books are splendid stuff. I’d recommend buying them in three-volume chunks rather than the whole nine books at once…
sarah on July 10, 2007 10:21 am
Ellen: I haven’t read any Megan Lindholm, but I’ve heard it said that if you like one pseudonym, it’s not guaranteed you will like the other, because the styles are different. So it’s possible you would like Hobb’s work.

Yonmei: You’re right, it is pretty obvious from her rant that she doesn’t want Fitz/Fool slash out there. It is a rant against a particular type of fanfic.

I didn’t figure out the Fool was Amber until the very, very end of the third Assassin book, because there was no reason for me to– regardless of gender, they didn’t look alike. But then when he darkens it becomes obvious– I believe by that point his color is referred to as “amber,” and also there are the references to woodcarving, and the fact that Paragon’s new face is actually Fitz’s. But the woodcarving pretty much cemented it for me.

Now that I think about it, I’m sure there must be some other gay characters in the Six Duchies, despite Fitz’s homophobia. I feel as if there’s someone I’m forgetting. But maybe I’m not. He seems to see it as something that might be OK in the foreign, exotic places the Fool has traveled, but not here at home. You forget that, for all his experiences, he isn’t terribly well-traveled. Still it seems to me that there was a minor gay character at court, but I could just be guessing.
Yonmei on July 10, 2007 6:23 pm
Now that I think about it, I’m sure there must be some other gay characters in the Six Duchies, despite Fitz’s homophobia.

No, there’s not. (Having just read all nine.)

The only male-male sex described in the Liveship trilogy is of adult man forcing young boy: no same-sex relationships whatsoever exist in the Six Duchies books, aside from Fitz’s fear that his friendship with the Fool will be assumed to be so.

Fitz’s homophobia quite literally comes out of nowhere, without explanation or cultural background.
sarah on July 10, 2007 10:11 pm
Interesting. I thought one or two of the courtiers might have been mentioned in a very background way… but I guess not. I have just come off a reread of George R.R. Martin, in which homosexual relationships are going on in the background, so I might have that in my head. (It’s always fun to then go online and read fanboys refusing to believe Renly and Loras were gay.)

So his homophobia is really without explanation.
Yonmei on July 11, 2007 9:33 am
Well, there are possible external explanations, such as Robin Hobbs just taking for granted that a man of action like Fitz would “naturally” be homophobic.

It’s interesting, because she sets out quite neatly how sexism in cultures goes along with the economic dependence of women – she doesn’t just take for granted that all cultures discriminate against women, she’s created a varying set of cultures with varying degrees of economic dependence/legal equality/cultural acceptance of equality/independence for women.

(And racism just doesn’t exist, as far as I can see, in any of her cultures; there are slaves, but no racial tie to slavery and no apparent prejudice on racial grounds, though of course much cultural prejudice between different cultures.)

But she seems to take homophobia for granted, as something natural, requiring no explanation. And I confess, I didn’t even notice that the explanation wasn’t there till this discussion so soon after reading all nine books. But it isn’t: there are no openly gay people, and yet there’s clearly a strong culture of homophobia against same-sex relationships. Combined with Robin Hobb’s rant against slash, I do think this is telling of Hobb’s feelings about homosexuality.
Mervi on July 11, 2007 4:14 pm
First of all, it was a delight to read such a well-written and coherent post about this topic. I have read way too many theatrically dramatic writings about selfish writers who deny “all the fun” from their fans etc. So thank you. :)

I don’t claim to have an insight into Robin Hobb’s mind, but I have long been a frequent reader of her newsgroup and have seen several of her responses to questions about fanfiction. I agree with you that her rant was clearly a reaction to a very narrow part of what can be labelled as fanfic in general, but then again, she quite clearly stated exactly that in the beginning of her rant. What I am not so sure about is that her reaction has been only to slash: I can remember clearly that she once mentioned a story sent to her where Fitz raped Molly to teach her something. If that kind of stuff has been her experience of the world of fanfic, one can hardly blame her for her rant.

About gay characters and homophobia in the Six Duchies. I think it’s clear that it’s not only Fitz who finds it abhorring. There are the young guards in the steams who have heard rumours about Lord Golden’s servant and find it distasteful and there’s Civil Bresinga who is afraid that Lord Golden will seduce Swift as well. So I do think that it’s a prevailing attitude in the Duchies. Although there are no explicitly named openly gay characters, there are a couple of men mentioned within Lord Golden’s admirers at the court that behave suspiciously – Lalwick is the only one of them who openly suggests anything and even then, only to Badgerlock.

Your notion about the seeming lack of virtue-names of the main characters was very interesting and one I hadn’t thought about before.

I wholeheartedly agree with you about the question of the Fool’s gender. I do not believe we are supposed to know the answer but to realize that it is not relevant in understanding who the Fool is.
Foley on July 11, 2007 8:41 pm
A good excuse would be the traditionalism ever present in Hobb’s work. There is ALWAYS descrimination towards people will different ways of life. The Wit users take the brunt of it in the farseer books, and the plains people are descriminated in the soldier son’s trilogy. Lord Golden was tolerated and not always shunned because he was accepted as being foreign… but Badgerlock was seen not only as a deviant but even as something of a whore (As he was paid to be Lord Golden’s Man-At-Arms). The rest of the society DOES shun him (believing him to be gay with Golden) until an older warrior basically sees all of his scars and proclaims that more or less a man with those battlescars is too manly to be queer! … I hate to say it because I love her books, but interviews and whatnot that I’ve read lead me to believe that in reality she’s prolly pretty close minded and bigotted (Though perhaps in reverse, ie the world will doesn’t need reasons to hate someone for being different… They just will!). That IS prolly the real reason for the farseers’ world’s homophobia.

(shrugs) thats my thoughts atleast
Mervi on July 17, 2007 9:28 pm
Foley, I’m not sure I understood what you’re saying. My Oxford American dictionary/thesaurus (I’m not a native English speaker, so I checked) says “…it is the bigot who causes the most trouble, exhibiting obstinate and often blind devotion to his or her beliefs and opinions. In contrast to fanatic and zealot, the term bigot implies intolerance and contempt for those who do not agree…”
This certainly does not sound like the Robin Hobb I’ve met and whose books I’ve read. For example this very recent post in her newsgroup shows (to me, at least) that she is very accepting of different values and opinions:
http://webnews.sff.net/read?cmd=read&group=sff.people.robin-hobb&artnum=29816
Yonmei on July 18, 2007 5:41 am
This certainly does not sound like the Robin Hobb I’ve met and whose books I’ve read.

Did you ask her why the Six Duchies is a homophobic culture?

For example this very recent post in her newsgroup shows (to me, at least) that she is very accepting of different values and opinions:

And what relevance does a post about body mods have in a discussion about gender, homophobia, and fanfic?
Mervi on July 18, 2007 12:45 pm
No, I did not ask her that. (I remember we discussed wolves and the research she had done for some of her Lindholm stories etc. FF was a relatively new book then, and we were all trying to avoid spoilers.)

It hadn’t crossed my mind that someone might believe that the attitudes of a fictional community would reflect those of the author – unless, of course, the books are an allegory, which I honestly do not believe they are. And even if they were, why should we think that it is the 6D culture that reflects them? Why not the Outislanders (who quite often seem to think that women are better than men), or the Mountain folk (with their “euthanasia” for the elderly and the disfigured), or the Bingtown folk (with their strict social hierarchies)? Or, why not the Jamaillians, who allegedly do accept gays in their culture (unless that is just something Lord Golden has made the Buckkeep court believe).

I’ve always thought that the very existence of the Fool in these books and his gender “problem” is a sign that Hobb is a very open-minded person. A “bigotted” author would simply have not written him at all or would have made him a “warning example”.

What relevance does that post have? Well, in my experience, a person who says (and I know she does not like being quoted out of the context so please read that whole post) “I certainly understand when people realign their physical bodies to mesh with their sexual identities” is unlikely to be a close-minded bigotted homophobe. That’s just the feeling I have…

Anyway, if you remember what those interviews you read were, I’d be really interested to take a look. :)
Yonmei on July 18, 2007 9:17 pm
No, I did not ask her that.

Then you are not speaking from a directly nformed position, any more than the rest of us are.

It hadn’t crossed my mind that someone might believe that the attitudes of a fictional community would reflect those of the author

Really? Because it’s something that does cross my mind: especially when these are attitudes that appear to be taken for granted by the author as natural – needing no explanation nor given much thought.

As for example: Asimov’s Caves of Steel invents a future universe, giving considerable attention to the things Asimov thought would change: but Asimov took for granted that, however far in the future, families would still consist of one man, one woman, and their children. I think that reflected Asimov’s attitudes, don’t you? Similiarly, while it’s clear Hobb thought through the gender politics of Six Duchies and the other countries, it’s very far from clear to me that she thought about why Six Duchies culture might be homophobic: like Asimov’s assumptions about the “natural” nuclear family, she seems to have assumed that people “naturally” would be homophobic.

“I certainly understand when people realign their physical bodies to mesh with their sexual identities” is unlikely to be a close-minded bigotted homophobe.

Because you assume that someone who thinks it’s OK for a mtf transsexual or ftm transsexual to have surgery, won’t be homophobic? That really doesn’t follow.
laura q on July 19, 2007 1:20 pm
M: “I certainly understand when people realign their physical bodies to mesh with their sexual identities” is unlikely to be a close-minded bigotted homophobe.

Y: Because you assume that someone who thinks it’s OK for a mtf transsexual or ftm transsexual to have surgery, won’t be homophobic? That really doesn’t follow.

It doesn’t follow in a deductive logic 101 kind of way, no, but it does follow in a social sciences fuzzy logic kinda way. As in, trans- and homosexuality-acceptance or -phobic attitudes are likely to be clustered. As evidenced by the “queer” community and greater acceptance of trans issues by cultures/people that accept same-sex sexuality, and vice versa. The borders of opinions here are not at all strictly defined, of course; there are plenty of transphobic gay-friendlies and plenty of homophobes who can accept transsexuality.

that said, i’m not sure that the statement quoted above (“I certainly understand when people realign their physical bodies to mesh with their sexual identities”) provide supports for the proposition that the author is gay-friendly. in fact i would argue that it provides weak support for the proposition that the author is not gay-friendly. at best, it suggests that she is open to thinking about ideas of sex, sexuality, and gender, but is not necessarily “there”.

anyway, obviously (to me) when one reads a text one can reasonably interrogate it for evidence of the author’s opinions. it’s just that the text and the authors and the authors’ opinions are all so variable in combination that one can’t make a rule about it. plus with living authors it can sometimes be a little weird to do it, right? i mean, people change their opinions all the time. and certainly in “the west” attitudes about same-sex sexuality have evolved significantly in the last 20 years, and even in the last 10 years.
Mervi on July 23, 2007 12:39 pm
I never said that I was speaking from a more informed position, quite the opposite. I however have tried to give sources from which I have gained my feeling of things (the newsgroup, meeting with her etc).
Foley said:
“but interviews and whatnot that I’ve read lead me to believe.
and I would very much like to see those interviews (or whatnot) – maybe it would affect my opinion too? Pulling other authors in as examples just isn’t very convincing, because different authors have different motives for writing, and like I said, I don’t think there’s any reason to assume that a character’s opinions are the same as the author’s unless the author is known for writing allegories. Many writers seem to write just to tell stories, not to declare their own opinions about different issues. Great authors, like Hobb, tell stories that show different opinions by characters that have varying backgrounds (her latest trilogy, the Soldier Son, is a fine example of this).
Yonmei on July 23, 2007 12:57 pm
I don’t think there’s any reason to assume that a character’s opinions are the same as the author’s unless the author is known for writing allegories.

As no one has suggested we should make this assumption, I’m at a loss to see why you brought it up.

Many writers seem to write just to tell stories, not to declare their own opinions about different issues.

But we can – as Laura puts it – “interrogate the text for evidence of the author’s opinions”. What I’m more interested in is why the homophobia in the Six Duchies comes out of nowhere without cultural explanation, than whether Robin Hobb is homophobic.
Mervi on July 23, 2007 1:52 pm
Umm. The text can reflect the author’s opinions but the character’s opinions don’t? Now I’m confused.

…why the homophobia in the Six Duchies comes out of nowhere without cultural explanation…
Isn’t it cultural explanation enough that a) gay people are a minority in the Duchies b) the characters are human, and humans tend to be suspicious of anything that’s “different”? (I’m NOT saying homophobia is acceptable, just that there IS a cultural explanation.)
IF the story was written from the point of view of a non-human race (the Whites, or the Elderlings for example) and/or the majority of the population were gay, then it would be weird if the culture was still homophobic.
Yonmei on July 23, 2007 5:24 pm
Mervi: Isn’t it cultural explanation enough that a) gay people are a minority in the Duchies b) the characters are human, and humans tend to be suspicious of anything that’s “different”?

No.

You’re making the same mistake I think Robin Hobb made: that homophobia is natural and universal, and that it is natural and universal to split up human sexual orientation into “being attracted to the same sex” and “being attracted to the opposite sex”. This is as big a mistake as it would be to assume “Women are naturally inferior and made to serve men”, or “Black people are always slaves and bought and sold” without ever explaining how this had come about.
Yonmei on July 23, 2007 5:31 pm
Umm. The text can reflect the author’s opinions but the character’s opinions don’t? Now I’m confused.

Really?

Okay. When Fitz explodes with disgust at the Fool and says explicitly he doesn’t ever want to have sex with him, that tells us what Fitz thinks: it doesn’t (necessarily) tell us what Robin Hobb thinks.

When Robin Hobb appears to take for granted that homophobia will always exist, that it’s normal and natural and needs no special explanation when people regard people who are attracted to the same sex with disgust, that tells us something about how she thinks: just as it would if, without explanation, she had had people of colour in the Six Duchies who worked the fields and were bought and sold like farm animals, without explaining how this culture of slavery had come to be.
J-tree on July 23, 2007 7:11 pm
Interesting discussion.

As cultural explanations go, could 6D’s homophobia simply be Hobb’s way of emphasize the more rural or ‘less developed’ view of 6D from the southern capital’s perspective? Remember how even Bingtown, I think, was shocked at how ‘barbaric’ the 6D were and what commodities they lacked.
It may have been merely a way to present the status of their cultural ‘development’ (as the author historically might perceive it): just as some circumstances and flaws the 6D happened had (and they did have quite a few).

It’s a pretty gross exaggeration to take this one offhandedly expressed world view and claim that it is certainly the author’s personal opinion instead of a plot device. No, that’s pretty silly I’m afraid. :)

I’ve personally always considered the writer as humanely, deeply considerate and deliberately unconventional when it comes to portraying women, gender or eventually (allegedly) homosexuality (I for one always liked the androgynous-Fool theory) and I’m sure, having read the books, we agree on this for most parts. (It also makes this conversation rather puzzling for me.)

However, having said that I have to also agree with you on one infallibility when it comes to Hobb’s views on genders and this is only due to my disapointment at the ‘conclusion’ of the Fool’s gender issue in the final book (Fool’s Fate). It seemed to me that the author didn’t quite follow up to the unconventionality of presenting genders her previous books were so well liked for. This, and the fact that I got the distinct impression the Fool’s gender was vaguely pointed as male (though the issue was more like ‘deemed unimportant’ than revealed) whereas the ‘White woman’ was grossly presented as female (illusion or not), were not what I had come to expect from her.

The fanfiction issue in an interesting one, too.

Hobb’s objection to it has always seemed to me more like an ‘artistic possessiveness’ than anything else, which is, of course, understandable as creative work is often very personal. And I also do think this whim of hers should mostly be respected out of common courtesy. But – sadly the whole concept of ‘owning’ ones brainchild in an ‘artistic’ or in ‘creative’ sense After publication (Note! not ‘owning’ in a legal sense, that’s naturally a different matter) is a tricky one, and in some ways fundamentally very much impossible. Attempting to cage the subjective experience of a creative piece, completed, built and filtered through the recipients imagination is rather a lost battle. No one truly reads, sees and hears the same book, and no piece of creativity is truly original and without influence from other creative pieces, no matter their medium.

Then again I understand that’s another matter she has referred to: that fanfiction of a book uses the same medium as the source material, and is therefor ‘less creative’ perhaps? As Yonmei stated the very literary tradition contradicts this from oral myths that were also likely developed, improved, deviated or exaggerated by centuries worth of various story-tellers to the (little) more modern examples like, well Sherlock Holmes comes to mind etc. All collective efforts always attract various kinds of people equipped with various kinds of skills, world views and powers of understanding, so naturally the results are hardly uniform. But the fact remains that exploration like that is just all too natural a way to handle a received creative concept, again no matter the medium. It’s the very filterless internet that presents it again in a different light because of the sheer ease of that kind of sharing. It’s only too unfortunate that she must likely have made excruciatingly common mistake of attempting to find fan written fiction without any criticism or self-imposed filter whatsoever to what she’d decided to lay her eyes and her time on. (You wouldn’t readily eat just any beginner cook’s blowfish, would you? ;) )

Funnily, I seem to remember she also mentioned once in a chat discussion something like that you wouldn’t want to paint a moustache on a Mona Lisa (and I’m very sorry to quote her on this as I do understand I’m truly unfairly nitpicking a single sentence), but it does exemplify the fallacy (and perhaps irrationality) of her view as the fact that this very act Can be done is very nearly the corner-stone of modern art. But humour aside, using others creative work as an influence, or as a frame of reference, or as in a form of a respectful pastiche (like they commonly are, really) or even as a satire, it is the standard mode of producing new creative work. Fan fiction is merely a little more direct in this and has a Lot more loose norms of self-criticism. This fact brings the ‘fun’-theory to it and emphasizes it’s entertainment value as a free-er, more liberal amateur-lever media, that almost all find chiefly simply relaxing (and perhaps, just because of the non-commercial nature of it).

I admit I have not read her essey on this linked here, and feel little compelled to do so knowing I’ll how disagree with her views, and rather just will ‘agree to disagree’ with her without wanting to judge her for her stubbornness on this little matter.
Yonmei on July 24, 2007 3:18 am
J-Tree: As cultural explanations go, could 6D’s homophobia simply be Hobb’s way of emphasize the more rural or ‘less developed’ view of 6D from the southern capital’s perspective? Remember how even Bingtown, I think, was shocked at how ‘barbaric’ the 6D were and what commodities they lacked.

Certainly, if Hobbs had written other cultures differently: created same-sex couples or recognition of same-sex relationships in other parts of the world. But she didn’t.

It’s a pretty gross exaggeration to take this one offhandedly expressed world view and claim that it is certainly the author’s personal opinion instead of a plot device. No, that’s pretty silly I’m afraid. :)

No one said “certainly”: and it is absurd to argue that how a writer writes – what plot devices she chooses – does not in any way reflect her personal worldview. It would be truly silly to come in at the end of a long discussion and weigh in with a comment like that. :)
Mervi on July 24, 2007 6:00 am
I think all fear of differences is “natural” and universal. I’ve known dogs that can’t stand members of other breeds, even to the point of attacking them. I’ve seen a mixture of different horses put in a same pasture immediately pick friends that are of the same colour or breed. It is the animal in all of us that screams DANGER when we encounter something that is not similar to us. Recognizing it does not make it acceptable behaviour, but it means that we have to consciously work in both individual level and in communities to overcome those fears. We should raise kids in environments where they meet people of all colours and orientations, so that they grow up thinking that diversity is normal.
Ide Cyan on July 24, 2007 7:12 am
When you’re writing (or reading) fantasy, you can’t quite rely on the excuse that something is “natural” (in the “real” world) to justify it, because these are artificial worlds.

Fears that come about out of living in *societies* are social constructions. While fear of the unknown may be natural, to some degree (it depends on the context within which the unknown is encountered), the concept of homophobia isn’t, nor is any heterosexual institution which perceives homosexuality as a danger.
Yonmei on July 24, 2007 8:33 am
I think all fear of differences is “natural” and universal. I’ve known dogs that can’t stand members of other breeds, even to the point of attacking them.

But I bet you’ve never known a dog that would viciously attack any dog that had been sexually involved with a dog of the same gender. ;-)

The perception that people who are attracted to the same gender are different is neither natural nor universal.

Also, what Ide Cyan said.
Mervi on July 24, 2007 12:06 pm
Fantasy worlds might be artificial, but they still have to be believable (or as Tolkien put it, it is possible to imagine what a green sun looks like, but it is quite difficult to create a world where a green sun would be credible). A fantasy world where homogenous characters that are clearly meant to be of human race who have very limited experience of cultures outside their own but who would still openly accept diversity without prejudice would be very unbelievable indeed.
J-tree on July 24, 2007 2:19 pm
Yonmei, I hope you won’t misunderstand me now. Naturally, a writer must write from her own view point, but the mere fact that she presents a concept, such as homophobia, rape or even the very profession of an assassin, is not the same as impressing on her readers as to how exactly they should react to that concept.

I’m afraid there’s not enough to convince me that her reasons for bringing the (very much existing) matter of homophobia to 6D could be consciously driven by personal distrust (at least not when Fool, her own favourite protagonist, is the ‘accused’). But as I said before, other parts of her writing do make me question her courage and integrity when it comes to unconventional gender roles.

And I’m aware that I contradict my earlier speculation now :) but I think there was homophobia in Bingtown as well: both Jek’s and Althea’s close friendship with Amber was frowned upon at some point as I remember.

Even occasional, natural equality is a fine ideal of course, but there is a long history of discrimination to invite pessimism here. I fear that often enough the concept of homophobia is every bit as common as rape or prostitution etc.
Yonmei on July 24, 2007 3:17 pm
Mervi: A fantasy world where homogenous characters that are clearly meant to be of human race who have very limited experience of cultures outside their own but who would still openly accept diversity without prejudice would be very unbelievable indeed.

But because the people of the Six Duchies are clearly meant to be human, we know that same-gender and mixed-gender sexual attraction will be among their normal sexual experience. What we don’t know is why they would regard part of the normal range of sexual orientation as something they should regard with loathing, which must be concealed and frustrated. In Western culture, we know this belief arose about a thousand years ago, interrelated with and enforced by Christianity. But no such equivalent religion exists in the Six Duchies: nor does is any other cultural construct offered to explain their homophobia.

J-tree: Yonmei, I hope you won’t misunderstand me now. Naturally, a writer must write from her own view point, but the mere fact that she presents a concept, such as homophobia, rape or even the very profession of an assassin, is not the same as impressing on her readers as to how exactly they should react to that concept.

I think we’re actually moving a little beyond this now. What is coming up in my discussion with Mervi is that people reared in a culture which regards homophobia as normal, and who have never had occasion to wonder why people think homophobia is normal, will tend to write homophobia into any culture they create because they assume they will need a special reason not to have a homophobic culture. Just as someone accustomed to racism will assume it’s normal to have a racist culture: just as someone accustomed to sexism will assume it’s normal to have a sexist culture.

This does not speak to the writer (or the reader) who assumes that homophobia is normal being homophobic in the sense we normally mean it: just that they have never questioned that it’s normal to regard same-gender attraction as “other” and “different”, even though this is by no means normal human behaviour, no more than monotheist religion is.

Even occasional, natural equality is a fine ideal of course, but there is a long history of discrimination to invite pessimism here.

I think you’re confusing the issue. As an LGBT activist, I am naturally all for LGBT equality: but as a student of human cultures, I acknowledge that the absence of homophobia does not mean equality.
Mervi on July 24, 2007 6:04 pm
Surely some religions have reinforced homophobia, but I do not think that they started it, just as they did not start racism. Maybe I’m a cynic, but I really do believe that all humans have within them a fear for the unknown and for what is different. In my experience, many people face difficulties trying to accept *anything* that is outside their own norms or experiences, whether it is skin colour, clothing, dialect, schooling, beliefs, taste in music, or sexual orientation. The intensity of this fear of course varies, and thereby the reactions, but in the end it all comes down to the same: “they are not like us”. I don’t see any difference between someone who despises handicapped people or someone who hates gays.
Yonmei on July 24, 2007 7:50 pm
Mervi: Surely some religions have reinforced homophobia, but I do not think that they started it

On what do you base that thought? What historical research have you done to justify that presumption? (Note: I’m not saying that you are incorrect. I can point to how modern homophobia in Western cultures has a clear history traceable to medieval Christianity, but if you’ve got an example outside Western culture to offer of homophobic cultures where you believe homophobia originated without reference to Godly directives, please cite it. I can’t think of any.)

Maybe I’m a cynic, but I really do believe that all humans have within them a fear for the unknown and for what is different.

I’m really not sure how many times I have to say this to you, but it’s becoming irritating that I have to keep repeating it: you’re trying to claim that ordinary human sexual behavior falls within the category of “unknown and different”. You’re offering no explanation for why you think this, you just keep repeating it as if it were a universal truth. This doesn’t make you “a cynic”: it makes you ignorant. That isn’t your fault, of course: what can I do to enlighten your ignorance? Is it that you’re genuinely unaware that human cultures which do not separate off same-gendered sexual orientation as “unknown and different” exist now and are known to have existed in the past?

The intensity of this fear of course varies, and thereby the reactions, but in the end it all comes down to the same: “they are not like us”.

This is rather like explaining sexism on the grounds that “naturally” men face difficulties trying to accept women, because “they are not like us”.

I don’t see any difference between someone who despises handicapped people or someone who hates gays.

Yes; I suppose both ultimately originate from defining a handicapped person and a gay person as “not normal”, which is exactly what you are doing here.
Mervi on July 25, 2007 8:04 am
I’m really feeling the language barrier here, and I believe much of the misunderstanding here stems from the words “normal” and “natural” which are very difficult, if not impossible, to define even when both parties of a discussion are using the same language as natives.

I am NOT saying that *I* believe gay people are “unknown and different” or that a handicapped person and a gay person are “not normal”. I am trying to say that there are people who do think and believe so, and that’s why homophobia exists: because many people are afraid to accept gays as normal, just as they are afraid to accept that people with disabilities are just as “normal” as they are. Because they think that anything that minorities do is weird, and out of the ordinary. (Again, not my opinion.)

I do know that religious beliefs are very often used to back up the claim that gays are unacceptable, but I’ve heard just as many arguments that gays are unnatural from non-religious people backed up with “biological” proof (not being able to reproduce etc, which is of course ridiculous because other animals have been proven to have gay relationships as well which debunks the myth that sex is for reproduction only). Anyway, I don’t think it would be fair to claim that all homophobia (even “modern homophobia” as you put it) originates from religions. And again, those are not my views.

I’m not an expert in religions, but aren’t gays just as shunned by the Muslims and the Jews as they are by the Catholics? And, well, this is of course a matter of belief, and of religious debate, but who wrote those laws? Even many priests argue that many of the laws in the Bible reflect the attitudes of times past, and not the actual will of God. And if those laws were written by men, without any divine inspiration, then I think we’re back to the problem being in people’s attitudes and fears.
Yonmei on July 25, 2007 8:50 am
Mervi: I am trying to say that there are people who do think and believe so, and that’s why homophobia exists

No, I get that. But what you are saying is that you think homophobia is natural and inherent in humans, that there is no need to explain why people are phobic about a normal human sexual orientation, they “just do”. And that is absurd. I am not accusing you of being directly homophobic: I am saying that you evidently feel that the homophobic cultural values that you grew up with are inherently human, that you can’t have a human society that doesn’t have such values – or at least that a society that has such values requires no further explanation.

Now if that were so, then since same-gender sexual attraction exists in all cultures throughout recorded human history (and, from what we know of our closest primate relatives, is likely to have existed in the millennia before recorded human history began, too) so also would have existed this “inherent” homophobia.

But it doesn’t. The specific kind of homophobia that you are arguing is inherently human is quite clearly traceable in Western culture to a specific religious tradition which harks back to the laws written by priests of a nation of nomad tribes, common to all three Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Islam, Christianity. (The ostensibly “non-religious” argument that lesbians and gays can’t have children is traceable to the same source.)

If the Six Duchies had a version of the Abrahamic religion in their culture, it would be reasonable to think that Robin Hobb had decided that all Abrahamic religions were homophobic. If the Six Duchies were derived from nomadic tribes who had settled, it would be reasonable to think that Robin Hobb had decided that all nomad tribes tend to be homophobic (though there are examples of nomad tribes who are not). But neither is true.

What seems more and more likely is that cultural homophobia simply went unexamined by Robin Hobb as a basic assumption: it never occurred to her to think through where homophobia comes from, because, like you, she just assumed it is inherently human to dislike/fear/despise same-gendered sexual attraction.
Mervi on July 25, 2007 3:29 pm
Yonmei, I just read through most of this discussion again, and I do think that I understand what you are saying about homophobia in modern Western culture. I don’t necessarily agree with it completely, but you have certainly given me much to think about – thank you. Also, I’d be curious to hear what you think is the reason that originally sparked that hate, because you do seem to agree that it is of human origin?

Going back to where we started: I find this discussion very interesting. It’s quite amusing how wide the spectrum of opinions and responses to a singular story can be – elsewhere I’ve read opinions that the WItted persecution must be a metaphor for the oppression of gays and how the author is clearly sympathetic for them. I honestly couldn’t say where the line between what an author intended to say and what a reader wants to see in the story lies.

I find it quite scary that you seem to have come to some sort of a conclusion about Hobb’s “basic assumptions” based on this conversation (the last part of your post): I am certainly much more ignorant than her about many things, and there’s no guarantee that she shares any of my opinions. It would be much safer to just ask her politely about why she wrote Fitz and the 6D culture the way she did than to make assuptions based on a fan’s interpretations. ;)
Haibanne on December 2, 2007 8:34 pm
I know I’m coming a bit late but I find this discussion very interesting and I can’t stand not saying my point of view.

I think the point isn’t about if homophobia is considered as “normal” in the 6D, but about the fact that gays are a minority. In history, nearly all the minorities have been persecuted at a time or another, and I assume it’s because the human being need a “black sheep”. And to me it’s not a question of “normality”.

…ugh. It seems to me I can’t correctly explain what I wanted to… Never mind, I tried, and maybe you will understand me. Aniway I understand what you have said so don’t be mad at me ^^

And about the very beginning of the discussion ie the fool’s gender, it seems to me that maybe he is not male nor femel. And what leads me to think that, would you ask me ? Because of this passage in the last book, when Fitz’s soul is in the Fool’s corpse and trying to rebuild it : (Have I the right to quote the text ? I don’t know and I apologize if I don’t) “Nor was the Fool completely human. That night, I confronted completely his strangeness. [...]He was human only in the same way that I was a wolf.” I know this is an ambiguous passage, but it’s how I interprate it.

(and sorry if I’m not very clear or if my English is approximative, but it’s not my native language and I’m still young)
Yonmei on December 2, 2007 8:46 pm
I’m glad you commented, because I’d been thinking about it too.

Some people can roll their tongue into a tube, and some people can’t. The proportion of people who can roll their tongue ranges from 65 to 81 percent, with a slightly higher proportion of tongue-rollers in females than in males. I fall into the minority of females who can’t.

This is a clear instance of a minority group. Can you offer any examples, anywhere in history, where people who could not roll their tongues into a tube were persecuted? Yet we have never been a majority.

I can give you other examples. True, the human species is genetically extremely homogeneous, or rather the species outside Africa is, but there are many examples of minority groups… which have never been persecuted. (Men, for example, are a numerical minority in any country where sex selection is not practiced by abortion or infanticide.)

People do not pick on minorities because we are minorities. People persecute groups that they have been told are inferior. No one – to my knowledge – has ever decided that it’s a mark of inferiority not to be able to roll your tongue into a tube.

Persecuting people for their sexual orientation is not a “natural” phenomenon: it’s a cultural one. No reason is ever given why the culture of the Six Duchies is homophobic: I concluded from the discussion thread here that Robin Hobb really believes it’s “natural” to be homophobic, not least because it’s clear that so many people also think that: it’s evidently a fairly common phenomenon in cultures which are imbued with homophobia.
Sixteen on January 27, 2008 9:58 am
About the Fool’s gender, I have been thinking about it for quite a long time now, I’ve read all the books and I’m still wondering about it.

Actually, I do think the Fool is male, but I still doubt it sometimes, when I read Liveship Traders for instance. I was wondering why doesn’t he tell at least Fitz, because if he turns to be a she, a love story would be possible between them. We know that the fool is deeply in love with Fitz and when they argue in Fool’s errand (if I remember well, in France, there are 13 books instead of 6), the fool could have said “well, there’s no point in being bothered because guess what, I’m a woman !” as he was both very mad at Fitz and sad. He even hurt Fitz so I guess he could have been eager to reveal such a secret.
Well, in fact that’s a very good question. We know that the pale woman is surely a woman and that the other prophet really seems to be male, so I think that the Fool must be either male, or female, but not something between.

Well, if you want to talk about it, as I really like talking about Robin Hobb’s book, just feel free to contact me !
Yonmei on January 27, 2008 1:45 pm
We know that the pale woman is surely a woman and that the other prophet really seems to be male, so I think that the Fool must be either male, or female, but not something between.

I don’t see how that follows. We don’t actually know the gender of either the false White Prophet or the person known as the Black Man, in any case, any more than we know the Fool’s, but even if we did, it still wouldn’t prevent the Fool being intersex.
Ash on January 6, 2009 11:28 pm
This entire discussion appears to be about the homophobia in the series and whether or not Robin Hobb shares it. I’ll throw in my own 2 cents worth then.

I noticed the homophobia, yes, but I noticed the reason for it right away. I do not think the author shares it, it seems to be an additional part of the story working as a “catalyst” for other events. Basically, it was a tool that helped Hobb set the story in the path she wanted it to go. As for an explanation for it in the world itself, I believe it was an attitude held by the 6D, who, as it was hinted at many times, held a slightly culturally backward view of things. Just as sex before marriage was abhorred, same-sex relations were, as they couldn’t concieve children. Sex was treated very much as a thing that only a man and wife should share, so in their eyes a same-sex relationship would be distasteful.

As for whether the Fool is a man or women, I don’t know, though I disagree with the intersex idea. My reason for disregarding it is simple, it’s openly stated that the Fool had had sex with other people, and given the culture depicted in the novels, I believe that most, if not all partners would have been horrified and distressed by it. Hobb was deliberately ambiguous and I’m glad that she was, since it allowed you to know the character intimately without the confines of gender stereotypes. As for not knowing for certain about the Pale Woman’s gender, it really is quite clear that she’s a woman. Not just the mention of her curves and breasts, but before Fitz attacks her she has her legs open to seduce him. If she had been intersex, she would have had no chance of getting to him that way, and it would have been in the book if he’d seen something other than what he would have expected :P
Yonmei on January 7, 2009 4:57 am
. I do not think the author shares it

I think the conclusion we came to is that we have no way of knowing whether Robin Hobb is homophobic or not. We don’t know her, and no one was able to cite any evidence either way. Nor, really, does it matter – IMO.

I noticed the homophobia, yes, but I noticed the reason for it right away. …., it seems to be an additional part of the story working as a “catalyst” for other events. Basically, it was a tool that helped Hobb set the story in the path she wanted it to go.

Well, yes. If Fitz hadn’t been homophobic, perhaps the Fool wouldn’t have left him. But then, perhaps Amber was needed to exist anyway – so the Fool would have gone even without the homophobic rejection. And that I think could have made Fitz’s self-hatred/self-rejection even worse – if his friend whom he loved and who loved him had gone away.

I believe it was an attitude held by the 6D …. Just as sex before marriage was abhorred, same-sex relations were, as they couldn’t concieve children. Sex was treated very much as a thing that only a man and wife should share

I didn’t get that at all. What is evidently and canonically abhorred is the conception of children outside marriage. You may be right that there’s textual evidence for abhorring any sex outside marriage. That wouldn’t explain why the 6D don’t recognize same-sex couples pledging each other, as I do not recollect any textual evidence for abhorrence of sex that does not conceieve children.

My reason for disregarding it is simple, it’s openly stated that the Fool had had sex with other people

Is it? Where?

, and given the culture depicted in the novels, I believe that most, if not all partners would have been horrified and distressed by it.

Well, it would depend what they did, after all, and how physically intersex the Fool is. But I don’t actually recall it ever being stated that the Fool or Amber did ever have sex with anyone. Where/who are you thinking of? (Also, you’ve just emphasised that you believe they find sex outside marriage abhorrent… and the Fool certainly never marries.)

As for not knowing for certain about the Pale Woman’s gender, it really is quite clear that she’s a woman. Not just the mention of her curves and breasts, but before Fitz attacks her she has her legs open to seduce him.

I’d forgotten that Pale Woman was naked in that scene – I need to re-read it. Though again, it depends how intersex the Whites are… ;-)

I would say, if the Fool isn’t intersex, Amber’s interaction with the liveships would bring the evidence down on the Fool being female – it would certainly look that way if the series had ended, as Hobb originally intended, with the end of book six.
Ash on January 10, 2009 11:13 am
I agree with everything you’re saying, and my reason for thinking that same sex couples would be looked down upon is due to the sexually confined culture they live in. Even if it isn’t openly stated, it’s hinted at throughout the books. I always got the impression it was something they all did but no one would admit to!

As for the Fool having sex with other people, he says at one point (though it was in the middle of an argument) that he hadn’t been waiting for Fitz, that he’d had other partners. Also, perhaps the interaction between Lord Golden and Huntswoman Laurel, in the awkward scene where they’re in front of the fireplace, wasn’t sexual after all, though it was written to make us believe it was.
Anja on January 10, 2009 2:45 pm
What a wonderful blog about the genderfuckery in the wonderful series of trilogies about the Fool and the Fitz by Robin Hobb.

(Genderfuckery, by the way, is an expression hard to forget and at the same time so obviously correct and to the point that one simply must use it).

Your thoughts and speculations were very interesting and well put. And I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiments about the books as well as Hobb’s take on fanfiction.
norakh1 on May 5, 2009 8:13 am
I just read the ‘Tawny Man’ trilogy again, although it’s been years since I read the first six books and my recollections are a little vague. The thought occrs that the ‘changes’ the Fool goes through may be more than simply changes in his skin colour. In short, that he changes his gender as needed for his prophecies to be fulfilled. A child in the ‘Farseer’ trilogy, because that is what Fits needed – a friend in this childhood, a woman in the @Liveship’ trilogy – I think he even explains this as being what was necessary to be accepted in a way that would allow to do what was needed – and in the last trilogy a man, because that is what Fitz needed, he didn’t need a lover?
K. on May 13, 2009 3:45 am
I probably shouldn’t do this- but it is such a well written discussion. I did feel the need to correct something, or go on record, really, as it was a question left hanging. Is Robin Hobb homophobic?

No.
She’d have to reject some of her nearest and dearest. There is a lot of pain when people you love are rejected for who they are. It comes through and maybe it didn’t fulfill the political agenda people wanted it to but there you have it, its a story. Not an essay.

And in fact, I think it is interesting that people assign the most mainstream assumptions about her. Why assume she is even straight?

I work with her, I have for years. I am familiar with her friends and family. So I can say, as a direct source, no, not homophobic. Strong supporter of human rights.

Robin Hobb is not her characters. Or her world. They are parts of her sure, but to examine them as if they are a direct guide to what she thinks and feels about things will lead to mistaken conclusions. She tells a story. The sources that input into that are complicated and varied and are drawn from all parts of her life and all eras of her life. And they are never directly translated. Never.

People are complicated, the books are a complication that arise out of their complexity. Not a direct guide or resource into their political thoughts, opinions or viewpoints.
Yonmei on May 13, 2009 5:39 am
K, your comment reminds me inexpressibly but strongly of the many comments by white fans that were posted defending white SF writers for not being “political” about characters of colour in their SF – and in this lexicon, “political” would appear to mean “causing a disturbance in the status quo”.

What arose in this discussion was that the homophobia in the Six Duchies, the homophobia Fitz expresses towards the Fool, comes from nowhere – quite literally: there is no religious justification for it, no past cultural justification: it’s just there, as if – as at least one defender of Robin Hobb has expressed already – that’s just how things are: “normal” people just naturally hate and despise gay people.

This is a very subtle level of Fail, I will admit: it’s so subtle I (a lesbian activist) didn’t register it till well after re-reading the books. I am perfectly willing to acknowledge (sans input from Robin Hobb on the matter) that it’s probably a level of Fail that Hobb just didn’t think about: she needed a homophobic culture/homophobic Fitz for her plot, and never thought “But I need to explain why this bigotry towards gay people arose from a culture that has no apparent reason for it, in a man who – with his telepathy and empathy (Skill and Wit) – ought better than most to comprehend the normal range of mammalian sexual feeling, whether or not he himself shares it.”

In your comment, you’re confusing two matters: whether or not Hobb is personally homophobic – 1a either towards people she knows and cares about, or 1b actively in the wider world – or 2 whether Hobb as a writer is able to express in her fiction that same-gendered sexual feelings are normal and ordinary.

1a is nobody’s business but Hobb’s and her friends; 1b is of the public interest (but I’ve never heard of Hobb ever expressing a homophobic sentiment in that direction) but 2 is what counts in the literary analysis of Hobb’s work, and with regard to Six Duchies/Fitz homophobia, Hobb fails.
asni on June 14, 2009 3:10 am
Interesting discussion indeed. Though I have to apologize for skipping approximately the second half of the replies, purely for time reasons, so I hope I’m not duplicating what someone else has already said.

My feeling is that the general homophobia of the Six Duchies is a reflection of the generalized homophobia of our own (western) culture, speaking in very general terms. It has also seemed to me that in some ways, people’s attitudes to the Wit reflect conservative attitudes towards homosexuality (or other ways of being “different”) in our own culture. A lot of what Fitz (and others) experience, and perhaps in particular Burrich’s attitudes in trying to beat the Wit out of Fitz, and later Swift (while being witted himself) seem to me to reflect real issues that gay people have to face.

Other homosexual characters in the Six Duchies: While there seem to be no characters that are homosexual in that they *only* feel attracted to persons of the same sex (with the possible exception of that immmortal Lord Lalwick who insists in bumping his bum on Tom Badgerlock’s thighs) – I think there are a few characters who at least, develop very strong ties with another person of the same sex. Patience and Lacey, we find out quite casually toward the end of Fool’s Fate, share a bed. And the exact nature of Burrich’s attachment to Chivalry is never quite explained, but it appears that this emotional tie is the stronger one, when Burrich has to choose between Chivalry and Patience.

Oh, and does anyone else find it significant that there is an *earring* which changes ownership, from Burrich to Chivalry to Patience to Fitz to the Fool, back to Burrich, and eventually on to Swift? Do I attach too much importance to little details such as these? But then I highly doubt the author would have written something like that in entirely by accident.

Anyway, those are my 2 cents. I hope someone is still following this discussion… I’ll come back and read the rest of the posts later, promise. :D
Yonmei on June 14, 2009 9:24 am
Oh, and does anyone else find it significant that there is an *earring* which changes ownership, from Burrich to Chivalry to Patience to Fitz to the Fool, back to Burrich, and eventually on to Swift? Do I attach too much importance to little details such as these? But then I highly doubt the author would have written something like that in entirely by accident.

Ooh! The earring! Now you make me want to go back and re-read it to think about that.

My feeling is that the general homophobia of the Six Duchies is a reflection of the generalized homophobia of our own (western) culture, speaking in very general terms.

Oh yes: but is it conscious or unconscious? Did Robin Hobb realise she was writing a reflection of western-culture homophobia into her invented culture, and do so consciously for story purposes; or did she just think that western-culture homophobia is normal and would obviously exist?
asni on June 14, 2009 10:57 am
Yes indeed the earring… if it’s any comfort to you, I only caught on to that little detail towards the end of Fool’s Fate, myself. Mind if I quote? (from the beginning of Fool’s Errand, the Fool has just found Fitz in his hut):
“He flung his arms around my neck. He hugged me fiercely, Burrich’s earring pressing cold against my neck. For a long instant, he clung to me like a woman, until the wolf insistently thrust himself between us.”

:raises eyebrows:

Oh yes: but is it conscious or unconscious?

I think it’s entirely conscious. There’s a LOT to be read between the lines in those books, just how much I’m only beginning to realize on second reading. Robin Hobb strikes me as a very intelligent author, I don’t think it’s unconscious at all. Fitz is, throughout the books, quite emotionally naive. He has a deep belief about himself that he is not loveworthy (because his mother abandoned him and his father never looked after him?), and he takes a long time to figure out what people need from him emotionally, be it Molly or the Fool or Patience or even Chade and Burrich. And I think the author, when she uses Fitz as a narrator, is *very* careful to take his point of view, to the extend that his moods (eg after drinking Elfbark) affect how he (and we) perceive the reality around him. I don’t think it reflects her own views at all.

Again, I think that in a lot of ways the Wit, and people’s attitudes to it, can be seen as a parallel to homosexuality and people’s attitudes to it in our society. But with the Fitz and the Fool, I think she is trying to make a different point – which is that the Fool loves Fitz regardless of whether s/he’s male or female at any point in the story, and that love for a person should not depend on, well, plumbing. Or having sex, for that matter. Maybe I do overrate the complexity of the writing, but I have a suspicion that it is probably quite deliberate that one can perceive the end of Fool’s Fate as a bit of a let-down, even though it is what we were supposed to be rooting for since book one.

Also, I’ve noted that Chade seems to be quite aware of just how close Fitz and the Fool are, and he takes it in his stride – in fact, he ends up battling the Fool for Fitz’s affection. But then, like Patience and Lacey and the Black Man, he’s an older and wiser character, one who has seen it all, and is more accepting than for instance, that young and rather righteous hothead Civil. Or even Dutiful.

I think.

What do you think? :D
Yonmei on June 14, 2009 3:52 pm
I think it’s entirely conscious.

So, if it’s entirely conscious, why is no reason given for the homophobia in the Six Duchies/in Fitz? Upthread I noted that Fitz, gifted with both Wit and Skill, would be likely to know that there was nothing unusual about same-gendered sexual attraction – and there’s nothing in the culture that supports it. His homophobia simply comes out of nowhere, without justification.

I don’t think it reflects her own views at all.

What other people have asserted in this thread is the normality of homophobia – that there’s no need to offer any justification for a homophobia culture. I disagree, but Robin Hobb may not.

Again, I think that in a lot of ways the Wit, and people’s attitudes to it, can be seen as a parallel to homosexuality and people’s attitudes to it in our society.

Yes, and that part is cleverly done – but not Fitz’s own homophobia.

But with the Fitz and the Fool, I think she is trying to make a different point – which is that the Fool loves Fitz regardless of whether s/he’s male or female at any point in the story, and that love for a person should not depend on, well, plumbing.

Well, except for perfectly balanced bisexuals… it does, in fact, depend on gender, doesn’t it?
draconismoi on June 17, 2009 1:39 pm
Whenever I try to get to the main page I get a MalWare/Virus warning. :( Sorry this has nothing to do with this thread, but its the only page my computer thinks is safe to open.
asni on June 17, 2009 8:47 pm
So, if it’s entirely conscious, why is no reason given for the homophobia in the Six Duchies/in Fitz? Upthread I noted that Fitz, gifted with both Wit and Skill, would be likely to know that there was nothing unusual about same-gendered sexual attraction – and there’s nothing in the culture that supports it. His homophobia simply comes out of nowhere, without justification.
Does she justify the existence of Wit Magic or Skill Magic? The ability of some people to bond with beasts? The Witphobia of Six Duchies Culture? The near-equality of women in the Six Duchies, but not in Bingtown? The existence of Slavery in Chalced? the racial prejudices people in the Six Duchies express against the Fool? The contempt for Half-Wits? The use of swords and axes and bows as weapons, and horses as a means of transport? The legality of drugs like Elfbark and Carris Seed? The fact that people live in castles? That Bastards are not equal to people born within a marriage?

So why should she have to justify the existence of homophobia in the Six Duchies?

The author creates a world that has certain features. None of which she particularly justifies. The medievally setting is a staple of the fantasy genre. No one seems to have much trouble with that. Nor do I discover any discussion of the existence of Magic, and the kinds of Magic that Robin Hobb describes.

Some of the social features are emphatically not typical of the fantasy genre. The fact that she even lets us explicitly discover that there is homophobia, and racism, and prejudices against people with disabilities.

Forgive me if I say so, but reading some of the past discussion, it seems to me that this homophobia issue is a bit of a bone you’ve been gnawing on. I myself am not lesbian, nor an activist, so perhaps it is an issue that is less in the forefront of my mind, but I also think that trying to make the issues around gayness and homophobia the main point of the book, is a bit beside the point.

It seems to me that the author has given her world some features that allow her to write about issues – emotional issues, mostly – that she, for whatever reason, feels compelled to write about. As to Fitz’s homophobia – to me, as a straight person who has been hit on by friends who are gay, it does read a bit differently. Whether you like it or not, the experience of discovering that what you thought was a friendship, carries sexual overtones for the other person, is not a comfortable one. I myself, for instance, am not particularly interested in having a sexual relationship with anyone (been there, done that), and I find that I tend to seek out friendships with women rather than men because I expect them to lack the sexual undercurrents that often exist in friendships with men. I feel betrayed when I discover that is not so for the other person involved, AND it hurts me because I do not want to cause anyone that sort of pain – especially a close friend – but at the same time it really IS unthinkable for me to “bed with them”. Straightness exists. Sometimes I wish my gay friends could respect my sexual orientation as much as I respect theirs.

I think Robin Hobb writes about that issue beautifully, and I think that central scene in Golden Fool where the Fool finally outrightly declares his love, and the Fitz rejects him rather cruelly, out of shock I suspect more than out of genuine homophobia, is easily one of the best love scenes I have ever read. You are free to disagree of course – but personally, I think wanting to make those books into a statement for gay rights is just as narrowminded as trying to make the Fool into a woman to justify that he loves Fitz. Would the story really be more interesting, and relevant, and would we be discussing it to this extend, if the Six Duchies were some sort of non-homophobic utopia that does not actually reflect the attititudes all of us actually have to face in the real world?

As to the question whether or not the Fool actually has sex with anyone at any stage – that is an interesting one. He claims that he did, but so does Fitz claim that he was thinking of Molly when he was making love to Starling, after she has gone off and married someone else. What I truly admire about Robin Hobb’s writing, and Golden Fool in particular, is how she manages to twine the different relationships and strands of the action around each other so that they explain and illuminate each other, if you read them carefully.
Yonmei on June 18, 2009 4:07 am
Does she justify the existence of Wit Magic or Skill Magic? The ability of some people to bond with beasts? The Witphobia of Six Duchies Culture? The near-equality of women in the Six Duchies, but not in Bingtown? The existence of Slavery in Chalced? the racial prejudices people in the Six Duchies express against the Fool? The contempt for Half-Wits? The use of swords and axes and bows as weapons, and horses as a means of transport? The legality of drugs like Elfbark and Carris Seed? The fact that people live in castles? That Bastards are not equal to people born within a marriage?

You’ve got a lot of things muddled together in this one paragraph, so let’s separate them out:

You ask about whether she “justifies” the fantasy inventions of her story: the Wit, the Skill, and the Witbonding, and you pair this off with:

The Witphobia of Six Duchies Culture

Yes, this is justified and explained – we’re shown the history of it, how it affects Witted people, Fitz discusses the “whys” of it in his mind, and we see how it affects not only Fitz and his wolf, but others, major and minor characters in the story.

The near-equality of women in the Six Duchies, but not in Bingtown? The existence of Slavery in Chalced?

Yes, this is all worked out in the narrative of the story. It doesn’t come out of nowhere, it isn’t something thrown in: Chalced is perhaps the least carefully worked out society, but the position of women in all three cultures is different and is justified in terms of the culture they come from. Bingtown is particularly neatly done as a culture derived from Chalced.

the racial prejudices people in the Six Duchies express against the Fool?

Yes: the Six Duchies are presented as a racially homogeneous society, and (to my recollection: I would need to re-read with that specifically in mind) what is expressed against the Fool is not so much racial prejudice as racial surprise – “He doesn’t look like us!” (Have you ever travelled in a very racially homogeneous society as a person not of the most common race? I have: it’s an extremely weird feeling.) But I’m not as confident of this as I should be: I would need to re-read.

The contempt for Half-Wits?

I don’t recollect this being a particular feature or plot point: if you can reference what you mean, we can discuss it.

The use of swords and axes and bows as weapons, and horses as a means of transport? The fact that people live in castles?

…I don’t follow this at all. She’s set the Six Duchies in a period of medieval technology, so that swords, axes, bows, and castles would be expected technological achievements: though we don’t see it, they clearly also know the use of kilns for baking and glazing pottery, and working glass.

The legality of drugs like Elfbark and Carris Seed?

…I don’t follow this at all. What’s your point here? Addictive, mood-altering drugs are known and legal at many times and in many cultures. Elfbark and carris seed are both Hobb’s inventions, like the Wit and the Skill, and neither one are simply dropped into the story – mention is made of the use of carris seed at festivals, and other people besides Fitz use elfbark. (It would, in fact, be unusual for a country with a medieval-level technology to have passed any law against the use of drugs processed from plants growing naturally, simply because of the practical impossibility of enforcing such a law.)

That Bastards are not equal to people born within a marriage?

That is made part of the culture: the importance of marriage, the importance of sex inside marriage only for both partners – that infidelity is a kind of disgrace. It is justified and worked into the story: it is not something thrown in out of nowhere.

So why should she have to justify the existence of homophobia in the Six Duchies?

Because unlike everything else you’ve brought up, homophobia is neither a natural and inevitable part of a country at a medieval level of technology (swords, axes, bows, castles, etc); nor is it worked into the culture; nor is it shown how it affects others than Fitz and the Fool, as with Witphobia. It just exists, a rock thrown into the story, a mcguffin of a plot point: Fitz has to feel homophobia for the story to work, so he does. Why? We don’t know: except that as I suggested above and as you appear to concur, Robin Hobb may simply have assumed that feeling homophobia/heterosexism was normal and didn’t need to be explained/justified.

Forgive me if I say so, but reading some of the past discussion, it seems to me that this homophobia issue is a bit of a bone you’ve been gnawing on.

*raises eyebrow* Isn’t it odd how people always say “forgive me for saying so” when they know they’re about to say something very offensive? No, I do not forgive this: why should I? The topic of homophobia came up in this discussion: you’ve responded to it, taking your own lengthy gnaw at this bone. Don’t be offensive by implying that there is something wrong with discussing it when you yourself have responded to this thread.

Sometimes I wish my gay friends could respect my sexual orientation as much as I respect theirs.

Sounds like they do – exactly as much. Which is not a lot, but you get back what you give out, no? (That is to say: “I tend to seek out friendships with women rather than men because I expect them to lack the sexual undercurrents that often exist in friendships with men” – you expect everyone you meet to be heterosexual, and you feel “betrayed” when it turns out this isn’t the case. If you want respect for your orientation towards celibacy, you really should work on respecting the orientation of others… ie, try not to feel betrayed when they turn out not to be heterosexual!)

I think that central scene in Golden Fool where the Fool finally outrightly declares his love, and the Fitz rejects him rather cruelly, out of shock I suspect more than out of genuine homophobia, is easily one of the best love scenes I have ever read.

I expect you enjoyed the romantic ending of Brokeback Mountain, too.
asni on June 18, 2009 6:02 am
You’re right, there is obviously no point in trying to discuss this with you, since you have already made up your opinion and will rather throw around random accusations of homophobia at anyone that disagrees with you, rather than engage with opinions or experiences different from your own.
Yonmei on June 18, 2009 6:11 am
Well, you were offensive before (and you knew you were being offensive, or you would not have used the phrase “forgive me for saying this”) so I guess I’m unsurprised you’re offensive now, but “random”? I responded with thought and precision to what you were saying. Not “random”: that is a random accusation meaning “I don’t like those implications, so I will smear you rather than consider what you’ve said”.
Xupz on July 17, 2009 3:09 pm
Er… sorry to interrupt your going at each other’s throat.

There are a few point that I would very like to discuss. :)
As far as the Fool’s gender is concerned, I think you missed a few points. For instance, Amber is said to have a masculine face, too masculine to be pretty (although as a man, Lord Golden is said to be very handsome). But she also gives Althea hints about how to hide the fact that you are a woman when you live near men; when I read that, I thought it sounded a lot like “look, look, the Fool might really have been a girl”. And during The Farseers, the Fool never lets Fitz see his chest. But there’s also the fact that at the end of FF, Fitz sees him half naked (after the skin of his back was stripped, I guess the Pale Woman didn’t gave him a sweater). So if he had small breasts, Fitz would have realized.
There’s also the intercourse situation. If the Fool did bed with someone before, I think this means he really looked totally like a woman or totally like a man (in such barbaric a place as the 6D, I don’t think he would have showed something that strange and out of the ordinary to any random guy). But he said it when he was trying to upset Fitz, so he might have been lying. And I personnally think he was, because if, as I think, he fell in love with Fitz during AQ, he was still young then and probably hadn’t done it before. And as his love is so unconditional and true, I doubt he would have bedded with anyone after he fell for him (unless he got really drunk and sad some lonely night :p)
Anyway, what is my point?
–> Definitely not completely a woman;
–> Definitely not intersex;
–> Hobb definitely hid on purpose his true gender by giving us many hints that could be interpreted both ways.
If he is anything, he is a man. But he might be able to “choose” his sex; that is, I think, a valid theory.
Moreover, the Pale Woman sure is female, there’s this whole talk about having children, and so giving Fitz what the Fool could never give him (she literally says it). Still, she might have been lying to seduce Fitz, but that’s another reason why I think Whites are NOT intersex (well, if the Fool is androgynous, then it has nothing to do with his being a White).
I do think he is a man, and I do think that’s irrelevant too.

As for the homophobia issue… I think everyone got it wrong.
In this world, the people think homophobia is normal. It could mean several things:
- Hobb thinks that humans take homophobia for granted and she decided to keep this in her fictional world to make it more real. She could still think it’s stupid and feel otherwise herself.
- Hobb thinks that, although in our culture people take homophobia for granted, humans in general shouldn’t take it for granted. She decided however not to make it an improvement inside her fictional world and to keep this defect. She could still think it’s stupid and feel otherwise herself.
- She thinks that people do not take homophobia for granted. However, she still decided to put that in her fictional world. She could still think it’s stupid and feel otherwise herself.
What does that tell us about her? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Anyone can think anything about how humanity behaves and think it’s stupid and a shame. Why should we have to solve whether or not homophobia is natural to humans? It is irrelevant, as is Hobb’s insight on the topic. It doesn’t prove anything about what she actually feels. So let’s drop it.

(To make my point clear, here’s an example: many people think humans are prone to killing each other. I myself think we are a degenerated race and always tend to hit our neighbours. That doesn’t mean I am violent. I even do my best not to be as stupid as I think humanity in general is. How is it any different?)

(Sorry for any bad english, it’s not my native language.)
Jill on September 15, 2009 1:31 pm
Is homophobia the natural human condition, and must it be an unquestioned part of imagined pre-industrial worlds? I don’t think so. One convincing bit of evidence is Iasca Leror in the Inda series by Sherwood Smith. I’d be interested in what folks think of the authorial choices in this series, where folks predominately experience different sex attraction, but some characters experience nearly exclusively same sex attraction, and other characters are truly bisexual. Some characters struggle with sexual ethics, and the sex of the person to whom they are attracted is sometimes a relevant factor, but not because same sex attraction is viewed as bad.
I Read the Internets – 7/14/07 | The Hathor Legacy on April 9, 2010 5:16 pm
[...] Feminist SF – The Blog!, Yonmei outlined some interesting thoughts about gender in Robin Hobb’s Farseer, Liveship Traders, and Tawny Man trilogies. I found the post particularly interesting after reading Firebird’s post about Poison Study and [...]
The Homophobia Keeper at Feminist SF – The Blog! on July 11, 2010 9:38 am
[...] post I made a few years ago about Robin Hobb’s Six Duchies/Liveships trilogy of trilogies, The Fool, the Fitz, and Fanfic brought up a question for me in the discussion thread that followed; Why is the culture of the Six [...]

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