Lt. Commander Angela Kirin of Star Wars' Corporate Sector Authority fleet. She may not know it, but she's evidently one of the only women in recorded history with a command of her own. ( A black and white sketch of a confident woman in military uniform standing, arms folded, before the schematics of her command ship. )
What can strike a social critic about the fantastic vistas of science fiction and fantasy is both how starkly different and how suspiciously similar they are to those of our own very real world. It’s been remarked upon in many ways that sci-fi and fantasy too often give us a world of magical whizbang, whether it’s in the form of dragons or spaceships, yet present the gamer or reader with a social world that is forced to be an analogue of their own.
This social world is the world of racial, gendered, class-based, and sexual relations; it remains all too rare that writers of SF/F dare to use the blank easel of their fantasy to imagine different relations of that particular sort. Star Wars, of course, proves to be an example of this.
Admiral Forn Dodonna, one of the only women commanders in recorded history. ( A light skinned, middle aged human woman wearing a red and charcoal Republic navy uniform. )
Being both a fan of the Knights of the Old Republic series and a total dork I decided to peruse the bios of the various characters from the first game. As many who’ve played it might know, one regularly finds women in positions of power, authority, and strength throughout the game. Several of your companions on your main quest in this RPG are women of varying personality types shown to have equal capacities and skills to their male counterparts. Even some of the smaller, secondary characters stood out as strong women rather than window dressing. One such woman was Admiral Forn Dodonna which Wookiepedia glowingly described:
Admiral Dodonna was a very strong-willed woman. After all, she was one of the few female fleet commanders in recorded history. Despite her gender, she was respected by her officers, and they served with her faithfully. Dodonna was a very compassionate person, and cared for her entire fleet, showing concern for it and considering a retreat several times during the Battle of the Star Forge. Dodonna was also appreciative of those who helped her, and she was modest enough to accept help when offered. Dodonna awarded the crew of the Ebon Hawk with the Cross of Glory, and gave them credit for the battle’s outcome, not keeping any of the glory for herself.
Yet look again at that paragraph. “One of the few female fleet commanders in recorded history”? According to the citations this comes directly from the canonical Complete Star Wars Encyclopaedia. But how could this be? Let’s take stock of the dimensions of our problem for one moment here. The Republic as an entity- the political union in whose military Admiral Dodonna served- has been around for twenty thousand years. Real life humans haven’t been able to write for that long, yet the Republic has existed as a high civilisation with faster than light speed technology for twenty millennia. Think on this for a moment. Just as they are more advanced than us technologically, it stands to reason that in all of that time there might have been concomitant social advances as well. On top of this, the Republic was merely the beginning of intergalactic political union, advanced civilisations had existed for millennia prior to its founding.
What’s more, the Republic is hardly monolithic; it’s made up of countless species from literally millions of member worlds with highly diverse cultures. To again cite Wookiepedia:
“ The exact number of planets in the Republic fluctuated, ranging from three million worlds to just over a thousand, but in 21 BBY it was a little less than 1.3 million planets,”
…
“The Galactic Republic had a very diverse culture. Member worlds were able to maintain their own culture in accordance with local beliefs, customs, and traditions. There was a wide variety of different cultures within the Republic: from religious communities like the Jedi to hive-like communes.”
So, given all of this it seems quite reasonable, from a sociological perspective, to ask: how, in all of this time, with all of these trillions of people coming from every culture imaginable, did no one think it a good idea for the Republic military to not discriminate against women?
This is one example among a multitude one can find in SF/F of magical thinking that enables the writers and developers to create a world that is socially identical to ours. To be sure, we live in a society where women generals and admirals are altogether rare as a result of the longstanding patriarchy that has existed in many of Earth’s societies. Yet no halfway decent explanation is given of what the Republic’s story is here. Why should their gender arrangement be anything like ours? No answers appear forthcoming, one is left to conclude that it is ‘just the way things are.’
Fast forward a few more millennia in the galaxy’s history up to the events of the Star Wars films themselves and we find, of course, a world in which Leia Organa appeared, at times, to be the only woman. Padme Amidala was similarly situated in the prequels. Since I also grew up as a nerd I read a lot of the Star Wars expanded universe novels as well, and it can be said of them that many do a somewhat better job representing gender than the films do. Yet they too need to be critically examined. Let’s look at another admiral, one from those books (and one that I love, admittedly).
While she was a talented student and officer at the Imperial Academy, she was continually passed over for promotion due to her gender, though accounts by Imperial military officers said that she argued too much. To take out her frustrations toward the male-dominated military, she made herself a false computer identity. Under this alias, Daala was able to defeat many high-level officers, including some of her own instructors, in simulated battles. Many of her tactics were based upon ideas formed by former Galactic Republic commander Jan Dodonna. Her tactics were studied and implemented throughout the entire Imperial military, despite the fact that no one was aware of her true identity. Daala graduated from the Academy, but ended up a non-commissioned officer in the Imperial Army.
Admiral Daala, another of the few women commanders in recorded history. ( A light skinned human woman with braided red hair wearing an Imperial uniform, part of her face shadowed as she stares ahead intently. )
Note again the presence of unexplained and always-already extant systematic sexism. Clearly, Daala is situated as a character who beat the system, who heroically overcame the patriarchal establishment of the Imperial Army and beat them at their own game. She is there to be sympathised with, even cheered on in her efforts to defeat sexism. Yet the other side of the narrative is that this is all too familiar to real women in our world who have to combat stereotypes and degradation, working twice as hard to be seen as half as good. Why is this a problem in a diverse society with countless millennia of high civilisation? This is never explained. Once again, it merely exists.
The Empire, unlike the Republic that preceded it, was explicitly patriarchal rather than nominally so. There were actual laws and decrees restricting much of the power structure to men only. It was precisely this ideology that Daala fought on her way to becoming an admiral. This certainly adds to the aura of fascist evil that the Empire was supposed to represent yet what always bothered me was that an explicitly (and familiarly) patriarchal ideology had somehow sprung up out of nowhere. What social forces had gathered that made this form of patriarchy an inevitable development? One could argue that the soft patriarchy of the Republic lead to it but that too is unexplained and it remains turtles all the way down. The real answer is, of course, that this form of patriarchy was what the people writing Star Wars books knew and took for granted, even if they nominally disagreed with it. It was the only social organisation imaginable to them.
But the cost is a fantasy universe lacking in sociological verisimilitude. Given all of the conditions operating on the Republic, and then on the Empire, patriarchy seems to arise from nothing and against a whole host of social forces that would act as countervailing winds.
What makes Daala’s backstory even more infuriating is how she became an admiral:
Due to her talents, she soon gained the attention of Moff Wilhuff Tarkin. He investigated Daala’s hidden exploits at the Academy, hiring two black-market slicers who worked for several months to find the identity of the hidden strategist. He was pleasantly surprised to discover her true identity. At the time, Daala held the rank of corporal and had first been a computer clerk, then a member of the kitchen staff preparing food for Star Destroyers. When the Carida staff discovered her identity, they planned to reassign her to a meteorological station at the planet’s southern pole. However, Tarkin took her on as his protégé and mistress, using his influence to bypass the normal military hierarchy and promote her. Daala eventually received the rank of admiral…
Many quietly complained that Daala was sleeping her way to the top. When one of those remarks made its way back to Tarkin, he searched out the officer who had made it. He had the officer sealed inside an environmental suit and ejected him into the space over a planet as punishment. Tarkin had the suit’s radio left on so that others could hear the man over the course of 24 hours as his orbit decayed. The officer’s orbit decayed to the point where he finally entered the planet’s atmosphere and burned upon reentry. However, the allegations were in fact partly accurate, as Daala did have an affair with Tarkin.
A common trope that afflicts exceptional powerful women who are portrayed in worlds like this is precisely this Daddy’s Little Girl syndrome where the average reader/gamer is left to conclude that this woman got to where she was because she A) was the daughter of a powerful man or B) slept with a powerful man.
Director Ysanne Isard, one of the few women in reco... ah, I give up. ( A light skinned woman with white and dark hair, a crimson red Imperial uniform, and differently coloured eyes, blue and red. )
An example of the former would be yet another ‘female exception,’ Ysanne Isard who was the Director of Imperial Intelligence for the Empire. Her father was her predecessor, in essence.[1]
It is certainly true that among a welter of patriarchal resistance strategies that women may employ, taking advantage of one’s father’s station or even using one’s body are part of that toolkit. But their vast over-emphasis in male-dominated media represents a fixation on the part of men to ensure that these are the only ways women with power could ever be explained. As always and forever requiring the generosity and defence of a man. In the above example with Admiral Daala we find that Grand Moff Tarkin took it upon himself to violently execute a man who accused Daala of getting her station only through sexual favours, an act of brutality to be quite sure. Yet the ‘neutral’ author of the Wookiepedia entry agrees with the hapless officer by saying that the allegations “were in fact partly accurate.”
Over the course of the expanded universe series Daala demonstrates her competence and skill again and again, but is always marked by the stigma of being Tarkin’s mistress. An opportunity to do something unique with a woman character ends up reiterating a welter of sexist clichés that arise out of unexplained social relations.
To return to Admiral Dodonna, who at least seems to owe her station to none but herself, we find her in a world where women are in abundance. Bioware and Obsidian, in crafting the KotOR universe, show women in a variety of roles. Jedi, scholars, soldiers, corporate executives, mercenaries, random bad guys, politicians and administrators, Sith officers, and more. Thus it remains very much unexplained why patriarchy appears to pervade the upper tiers of social organisation in this world, and why the Star Wars Encyclopaedia saw no problem in saying that she was one of the few women commanders “in recorded history.”
This magical thinking hinders the portrayal of women in countless games, and it operates similarly on people of colour. After all, it might not have escaped your notice that even among these exceptional women, they remain unanimously women of pallor. Why is everyone white? Well, they just are. Why is everyone heterosexual? ‘Cause. Why is everyone cisgender? Ciswhatnow?
We simply always ‘happen’ to have a society in which the relations of ruling are all but identical to our own.
In Star Wars we find a decade’s worth of progress stretched out over twenty thousand years. A twenty millennia decade where technology excelled but society remained oddly stagnant. This is not to suggest, by way of the mythology of inevitable progress, that patriarchy could not endure for 20,000 years. But the issue is that no reason is given for it, hardly any at all in the copious materials written about the SW universe. It is presented as something that is always already there, something that is just natural and unquestionable in its universality. The rare exceptions, like the matriarchal Hapan, are set up precisely as male-nightmares in stark contrast to the familiar and safe world in which the rulers are men and there are only token women in positions of power. Such exceptions also serve to subtly suggest that if women ever became anything more than tokens that it would necessarily come at the expense of men and result in their oppression; the male nightmare writ large.
In all of this I still love Admiral Dodonna, of course. Admiral Daala is also a favourite villain of mine, one whose morality becomes deliciously complex as the EU books roll on. Ysanne Isard presents a more unalloyed villainy. And in the upcoming Old Republic MMO we have General Garza, an older woman clearly defined by her skill and who is set to play an interesting role in the evolving story of that game. One just wishes that writers and developers would let go of their attachment to our rather boring old distribution of power. We can tell empowering stories about women without using clichés about being the only woman to do so and so, emphasising the particularity of women’s situation rather than the limitless possibility accorded to sci-fi men. If we must romp through familiar gendered space, give us a reason worthy of your universe’s vastness in your universe’s own terms. Make it interesting and compelling, call attention to it and set it front and centre for your gamers and readers to mull over.
Better still, try to do something different altogether.
[1] It should be said that Isard’s history is a bit more complicated. Her own story goes as follows: “ Ysanne was incredibly ambitious, and, after flourishing and growing into an expert field agent, she began to plot her ascension behind his back. She did not take advantage of her father’s position, using her own talents—augmented by her vigor and ruthlessness when dealing with enemies of the Empire—to rise above her peers.” This distances her from the trope, yet Isard gained her not inconsiderable skill from her father’s tutelage and thus she does not entirely escape it.
Does the patriarchy-by-default continue in the New Republic after the events of the movies?
Vague Spoilers Ahead, for the Star Wars EU, at any rate:
It does to a large extent but the exceptions begin to multiply dramatically. The office of Chief of State of the New Republic, their president of sorts, is held for a very long time by Mon Mothma, who is a woman, and “Princess” Leia becomes the powerful political leader she was clearly made to be when she succeeds her. Her daughter Jaina becomes quite important, several members of the New Jedi Order are women, Daala is introduced as a villain, Mara Jade comes to the fore as a hero in her own right (gah, I can’t believe I remember this after all these years).
Each character suffers from problems in terms of how they are conceptualised in relation to men, often, but they are also better than what came before in the films. That said, do we still see the ‘women-as-exceptions’ issue? Yes, from what I could tell. Most characters ended up being male.
What’s more, there’s something from Daala’s late biography that really hammers it home:
” She had some changes to make to the Moff Council as well. The new council would be composed of an equal amount of females as males, something still unheard of decades after Emperor Palpatine’s death.”
The events being described here are, as is made clear, *decades* after the events of the movies. I think we’re talking nigh on forty years here. Yet, apparently, gender parity on a political council is “unheard of.” This Moff Council is not, as the name implies, in the Empire but in a successor ‘democracy’ to the New Republic, the new generic democratic superstate in this late phase of the EU. And gender parity is ‘unheard of.’
The Empire was specifically designed by George Lucas to be both sexist and racist in order to add to its evil nature and for people to root for its downfall. I believe that Emperor Palpatine was racist and sexist (I know for a fact he was racist) and that his views defined the “New Order” (or whatever the Empire’s doctrine was called).
That explains the empire, but I agree with you about the Old Republic. I am puzzled by the fact that there were so few women generals and admirals in the Old Republic. I would have thought that the Republic’s military would have been an equal-opportunity military. Plenty of politicians and high ranking Jedi are female in the Old Republic, so that glass ceiling was broken. You’d think there would be more high ranking women in the military.
I heard this explanation about the Empire before, and it amuses me in a very cynical way. Soooo the bad guys are (explicitly) sexist and racist — and that is supposed to be a sign they are bad. But the good guys are ALSO (somewhat less explicitly) sexist and racist — and yet no one sees any problem with them or with that fact, except when once in a blue moon it is used it as a throwaway background for some token sexpot character. Lovely lovely double standard in action.
I agree. I believe that it is inconsistent. If the Empire is sexist and racist, which is a reflection of how “bad” it is, then the Republic should be equal opportunity. That keeps a consistent atmosphere and a consistent message of representative governments being “better” than tyrannical empires. You could argue that the Old Republic is like the U.S. in that regard. While it is a representative government, there is a distinct lack of women in leadership roles and positions of power (especially the military) in the United States.
It’s the whole patriarchal bent on sci-fi that makes it hard to read/watch. Also the fact Sci-fi tends to use the word ‘females’ a lot for women. Star Trek seems to fall into the same trap that most all alien cultures are patriarchal.
What also stands to wonder not just about the Empire, but how do the Rebels fare? From what I saw they seemed to fall into the same trap.
See my reply to Hirvox to answer part of your question:
http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=5248&cpage=1#comment-10988
As to the Rebels as portrayed in the film and books (i.e. before they became the New Republic) it’s pretty much the same thing, yeah. In Return of the Jedi we see Mon Mothma (her famous line being “many Bothans died to bring us this information”) situated as leader of the Rebel Alliance, which is something… except for her 3 minutes or so of screen time.
And yes, a friend of mine and I were just talking about Star Trek, it suffers from many of the same problems. What put it under Border House’s purview is that these tropes shape the video games and their narratives, unfortunately.
“Also the fact Sci-fi tends to use the word ‘females’ a lot for women.”
I see this a lot, and it bothers me that people fling around the clinical and subtly dehumanizing “females” when they mean “women” quite often.
Part of the reason I love Iain Banks’ Culture novels: the Culture is explicitly stated and shown to be gender-agnostic, with what positions of power and influence there are available (ie. not filled by machines) going to men and women. Citizens of the Culture can change sex at will and there is no suggestion that men or women exceed the other in any task, physical or intellectual. The author himself tries to live up to this conception of the culture of the Culture and usually succeeds.
Plus, y’know, whizz-bang spaceships with silly names. Gotta love that.
They’d be so much better if they actually had queer characters in the story and didn’t, you know, star a generic straight cis man EVERY TIME.
(the spaceship names are cool though)
I agree, although his latest does better there. I always get the feeling he’s been struggling against his notion that he won’t be able to write a queer character who “feels right”. His intentions are better than his execution
Yeah I tend to give him a bit of a pass on that too since aside from his silly fear of writing a main character he feels like he might not do justice, the rest of every Culture book I’ve read is pretty uniformly positive and good. And I don’t even mean that they’re all rah rah go everything whee, there’s plenty of grit, tragedy, and generally everything else you’d see in what is generally considered ‘serious’ fiction, but the message at the end isn’t that things are bad and nothing can change that, instead it’s things are frequently bad and definitely wont change if you do nothing but mope about it.
Star Trek had some female-dominant scenarios too, but they never stuck around.
There was a terrible episode early in TNG with a planet where men were supposed to be decorative and subservient, Riker thought this was cool and promptly dressed up in their silky clothes and slept with their president lady (or something, it’s been AGES since I saw this). never mentioned again.
There was a matriarchal culture that came through the wormhole on DS9 and the female council leaders tsked about their silly men. This was handled better (it came in slowly through the episode IIRC) but they also vanished after that episode and were never mentioned again.
There was an episode on DS9 that said that in Cardassian culture, women were known to make the best scientists/engineer, and a Cardassian woman had trouble accepting O’Brien as an engineer at all, and then decided he must be flirting with her by pretending to be as good as a woman. Interesting angle, but again, I don’t think that aspect of Cardassian culture was EVER touched on again.
in contrast, patriarchal cultures and exceptional women struggling against the confines of them were well-integrated into the fabric of the trek universe.
The whole Star Wars franchise started as an attempt to repackage 1930′s adventure serials, 1940′s war movies, and 1950′s Kurosawa in a futuristic setting – from the Casablanca feel of the cantina to the Gungans (Third World lackeys a-la Gunga Din). Pretty much everything problematic in that franchise can be traced to that decision. If you take the 1940′s as your reference point for the Empire and the Republic, it’s a wonder women admirals are allowed in at all – and the expanded universe certainly takes that attitude.
Dodonna’s biography makes me want to punch someone. Seriously, I cannot think of many more sickeningly sexist stereotypes they could have stuck into that big stinking heap of “typical meek female enabler” traits. I checked the site, and thankfully the next paragraph does mention her competence, but that first paragraph alone is enough to “ruin” a character.
She’s the only one of the mentioned characters whom I “know” personally, and it only gets worse from there doesn’t it? The second one does have the additional stereotypes I had in mind: “being some bigwig’s trophy” and “regarded as sleeping her way to the top”.
In my opinion, you were too polite to the writers/creators. I am quite convinced that it is not that they CANNOT imagine anything else. They do not WANT to. It’s a Boyz Own Adventure, wish fulfillment from A to Z, and if you’re sitting on a sky-high mountain of privilege, you cannot possibly be expected to ruin your enjoyment by examining that privilege, now can you?
Ugh.
I am glad the explicit sexism of the franchise didn’t make it into KotOR. There were issues, “of course”, but at least there was never a “despite her gender” or “one of the few female whatevers” or “lol ur a gurl u no can do this”.
You’re right, and I’m sorry I didn’t dwell on that more. I thought it was a bit silly to ascribe all of that to her; we could certainly use more caring on the part of our military officers, but male generals/admirals/etc. are rarely if ever described with empathetic qualities and this was certainly another example of asinine essentialism. Every woman is your mommy!
I just focused on the sheer inanity of that final sentence that I really harped on it. You are also correct to critique my language (cannot vs. want to) and I agree with you. Simply put, as radical as I am, I still find myself checking myself and ‘toning it down’- a habit of internalised oppression I’m trying to get myself out of. As I illustrated with my “No More Excuses” column it is indeed true that the flimsiest of excuses are made so that writers (usually white men) can justify their fantasies of ‘reliving the good ol days’ in their work.
Long and short of it is I agree with you.
Yes, that awful internalized “don’t be mean” censorship is a complete pain (especially in combination with low self-esteem). I’m still learning, slowly, to deal with that too. And you’re right that parts of that description are not bad per se — we definitely need more “leaders” who show concern, compassion and humility! It’s simply the way it is written and the context that made me see red because it feels almost condescending and destructive to any impression that this is a person with competence and power. “Every woman is your mommy!” is a good way to put it, too.
And what really gets my goat is when the men who design and describe a female (or black/gay/whatever) character that way feel all smug and progressive for including her at all, and refuse to see why terms like “despite her gender” and the complete lack of reflection and respect it shows in both the setting and the fans are so damn offensive.
What a startling lack of creativity on the part of the Star Wars official fan fiction authors! I mean, EU…
Derisory comments about the EU aside, the best you can hope for is that these authors were just lazy, and when it came to describing women in power, they use the “one of the few women” feat rather than “among the most distinguished leaders” or “stands out among commanders, male or female” or anything. Because let’s be honest, the “best of the best” page from EU and film canon would be hundreds of pages long, but pretty pink slowflake women generals get to be part of a dozen-strong club. Brand name recognition?
Me, I’m not that generous. Star Wars has always had loads of issues, ranging from gender to ideological to race, and George “there are no bras in space” Lucas is at the forefront of most of these. Is it chicken and egg? Does it begin to appeal to people that want a “simpler” sci-fi that reminds them of the “good old days” when people didn’t even bother trying?
I have never really analysed Star Wars films because to me they are quite childish and the Star Wars universe never really made much sense. Frankly, it shouldn’t even be called science fiction: it is rather a space fantasy with colourful swords and magic and princesses and knights, and all the sexism shown it it seems to reflect some perception of medieval times. In fact, the only Star Wars production that gave me any food for though, which made me think about the universe depicted in it, was KOTOR 2.
I also dislike the quotation about admiral Dodonna, but for different reasons than already mentioned. Did you notice that all the traits that the author of that fragment praises her for are generally associated with women? We are told that she is compassionate, modest and that she cares for those that serve under her. These are all good traits to have, no doubt, but they are not necessarily the best for a military commander and caring too much for one’s soldiers could even be considered a disadvantage in some situations during a war. I would liked it much better if I could read about her courage, cunning or charisma.
These are all good traits to have, no doubt, but they are not necessarily the best for a military commander and caring too much for one’s soldiers could even be considered a disadvantage in some situations during a war.
This.
All I could think when reading that she “cared for her entire fleet, showing concern for it and considering a retreat several times during the Battle of the Star Forge” was that she really doesn’t sound like the kind of person who would be able to stand firm when things were bad. Whoever wrote the article seemed to think it was a good thing, but it seems like it’s allowed to be a liability in practice to me.
Very insightful article.
I haven’t read too many of the Star Wars books (and the few I have were a million years ago) and don’t know anything about the characters described. But could it be the author’s intent was to point out the stupidity in our own culture by ascribing our own failures in equality to a fictional setting? I could imagine a lot of readers would sympathize with the injustice Daala faces in the story, and perhaps start thinking about it in a real world sense.
Not everyone is aware of the massive inequalities in the treatment of men and women in our culture. Many people just don’t think about it. Maybe reading about it in the books, and seeing a character they grow to know and like suffering these sorts of crimes would help these people notice the same problems in our own world.
Hmm. I can’t really read any social criticism out of it. In my experience, people can be capable of sympathizing with a single “token minority” character while seeing nothing wrong with the treatment of that group(s) of people as a whole — especially if the character is written in such a way that stereotypes are affirmed at least as much as they are broken, like with the female characters discussed in this article.
I also recall quite a bit of ugliness and gloating and condescension towards female players when the protagonist of the first KotOR game was declared to be “canonically male” long after its release.
Star Wars just doesn’t strike me as a franchise that would specifically attract many privilege-examining fans. Of course it does happen, but I don’t think the franchise invites or encourages such behavior. There’s just too much pandering to the vaunted target audience.
Good points and well said. Again, excellent article!
“I also recall quite a bit of ugliness and gloating and condescension towards female players when the protagonist of the first KotOR game was declared to be “canonically male” long after its release.”
The situation is reversed in KOTOR 2: the Exile, the protagonist of the sequel, is female according to the canon. I don’t know, maybe this decision was supposed to introduce some balance between the genders in the series or something. I find that it silly that they establish the gender of a character, the decision which was made by every individual player of the games, in the canon in the first place. It serves no purpose but to alienate one or another group of players.
I’m not a huge fan of the Star Wars films or of any of the other iterations in tv/books/games, but my husband is so I’ve dabbled in them a bit. I’ve gotta say, you pointed out a lot of things that bug me about the cannon, and, frankly, about most sci-fi/fantasy. It seems to me that authors/word builders who are unaware of their own privilage constantly fail to turn a critical eye to the cultures they’re creating and always manage to create just another iteration of a patriarchal culture. Even when it makes absolutely no sense to do so or it goes against the idea of the culture they’re nominally trying to create.
You actually see it a lot in Bioware games. For instance Mass Effect’s Salarians were supposedly matriarchal, but set up in just such a way that the only people to hold power outside of the ‘domestic’ sphere (i.e. outside of their homeworld) are men. Same goes for Turians and Krogans, they weren’t explicitly patriarchal, just militarist or mercenary, and yet all you ever see are men doing manly things.
Couple that with Star War’s cannon that just so happens to be patriarchal-cause-there’s-no-imaginable-other-way-to-be and I have some serious misgivings and reservations about how SWTOR will turn out. We really don’t need another MMO out there that is unthinkingly sexist and exclusionary towards half of its subscribers.
The direction they took with Daala’s character never really sat right with me. Becoming Chief of State didn’t work for her since she had been a little to evil for evil’s sake to be sympathized with. mean, she slaughters that colony on Dantooine for no reason.
I don’t think they’ll ever match Kreia again, honestly.
I think that Dodonna being “one of the few female fleet commanders in recorded history” in a game that, as Quinnae pointed out, features plenty of strong, competent women is a textbook example of simple lack of awareness. It’s just silly that the Republic would have any kind of sexual discrimination in its military after all those thousands of years and I give the writers at Bioware enough credit to believe that they’d think it was silly if it was pointed out to them.
In my opinion, it highlights the need for open, frank and inclusive discussion about gender issues and privilege. I know that I’d never intentionally discriminate against anyone, but I’m also aware of the insidious effect of privilege and attempt to expose myself to alternate viewpoints as much as possible. I’m pretty sure that a lot of other men are in a similar position, which is why communication is so important.
Thanks to Quinnae for another fantastic article. Bone Palace is definitely going on my reading list.