(note: the articles cite a good number of linked sources within the text itself that are far too many to link here, so it's recommended to go to the articles on the site itself if you're interested in sources for the authors' many claims)
https://www.publicmedievalist.com/race-in-asoif/
...and another on the kind of general grimdark fantasy genre that ASOIAF embodies, basically the fantasy equivalent of scifi fans who take Warhammer 40k way too seriously:Race in A Song of Ice and Fire: Medievalism Posing as Authenticity
by Shiloh Carroll
The idea of the Middle Ages as a uniform white culture is probably one of the most entrenched misconceptions about the medieval period. This is especially true when it comes to fantasy literature.
Western medievalist fantasy literature relies heavily on European history and mythological traditions. When people of color do appear in classic fantasy texts, they are very often portrayed as an “Other.” They are The Enemy, or at least a group against which the reader is expected to compare the dominant, white culture.
Helen Young, scholar of fantasy interpretations of the Middle Ages and author of Race and Popular Fantasy Literature, offers several examples of this in our most popular fantasy literature. She has pointed out that fantasy is built on a foundation of racist stereotyping in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian. While neither of these are technically medievalist, being intended more as prehistoric fantastic histories than medieval fantasies, they have still had a profound influence on the way medievalist fantasy approaches race. For example, in The Lord of the Rings, you need look no further than to Tolkien’s treatment of Orcs, Uruk-hai, and Haradrim, all of whom are evil, and the only ones described as having dark skin. There was also a very clear geographical division between his “white” elves, humans, dwarves, and hobbits and the dark, evil lands of Orcs (Mordor) and Haradrim (Harad) in the south.
C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia also does this. Lewis’ Calormenes, a pseduo-Middle Eastern culture, are the villains in The Horse and His Boy and The Last Battle.
These authors may not have intended for their work to be racist. If they were alive, they might be horrified at these allegations. But whether these authors intended for their work to be racist doesn’t really matter. The works of these authors began a tradition that has profoundly (though, one hopes, not irrevocably) shaped how race is treated in fantasy up to the present day. This has kept our fantasy literature’s treatment of race rooted in thinking from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s.
Tolkien’s portrayal of the “pseudo-medieval” world of Middle Earth strongly influenced subsequent fantasy literature. By proxy, this has had a significant impact on the broader public understanding of the Middle Ages. This is the beginning of what Young, in her studies of fantasy fandoms, has described as a “feedback loop.” In this feedback loop, readers are exposed to a medievalist version of the Middle Ages through fantasy. They then come to believe that this medievalist version is an “accurate” portrayal of the Middle Ages. Having done that, people then insist on this version of the Middle Ages in future literature because it is “accurate.” Round and round it goes. Eventually, all fantasy versions of the Middle Ages look more-or-less the same.
And few fantasy books are more a product of this self-reinforcing process than George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series.
A Song of White People and Fire
George R.R. Martin’s epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire has been, more than nearly any other fantasy work in modern history, examined for its basis in real medieval history. Martin himself claimed that his novels are more-solidly based in history than any other fantasy work, even Tolkien. He told John Hodgeman in an interview:
"I sort of had a problem with a lot of the fantasy I was reading, because it seemed to me that the middle ages or some version of the quasi middle ages was the preferred setting of a vast majority of the fantasy novels that I was reading by Tolkien imitators and other fantasists, yet they were getting it all wrong."
In a 1996 Publishers Weekly interview, Martin also said:
"Tolkien had a great influence on me, but the other influence on A Song of Ice and Fire was historical fiction, which I don’t think is really true for a lot of the other fantasies that are coming out. Their historical background, the texture of their worlds, tends to be rather thin."
He frequently decries the “Tolkien-imitators” with their “Ren Faire Middle Ages,” because they include tendencies he sees as inaccurate: “peasants sassing princesses,” black-and-white morality, indestructible heroes, and an unwavering belief in, and adherence to, a code of chivalry.
Historical authenticity is the well he returns to time and again to explain issues in his construction of Westerosi culture. When fans have expressed disappointment that there aren’t more people of color in the books (or that those people of color—such as the Dornish—are cast as far whiter than they hoped in the show), he tries to explain it away. His explanation: in medieval England, France, and Scotland “there was the occasional person of color, but certainly not in any great numbers,” due to the difficulty of travel.
But Martin isn’t a very good medieval historian. While he has a clear fascination with history, his approach focuses on “juicy stuff”—big historical movements like the Hundred Years War and the Wars of the Roses—while avoiding “academic tomes about changing patterns of land use.” He readily admits, in interviews, to changing or “heightening” history to make it more interesting and fantastical. In other interviews, especially when challenged on the violence, rape, sexual assault, child marriage, and other disturbing elements in the novels, he falls back on their supposed historical authenticity.
He has a tendency to generalize, taking the culture of a specific place or time in the Middle Ages and using it as a marker for the entirety of the era. When he talks about history, he rarely gets more specific than “the Middle Ages” (he never says, for example, “the Tudor era”), and makes broad, general claims about the period, such as “It was very classist, dividing people into three classes. And they had strong ideas about the roles of women.” Therefore, while his arguments that travel and immigration were rare in the Middle Ages may be true of some places and times, it is not true (as this series has repeatedly shown) of all of the Middle Ages, either temporally or geographically.
Of course, Martin isn’t writing history, or even historical fiction. He isn’t required to be historically accurate. Fantasy is, by its nature, transformative and speculative. It allows us to create better worlds, to explore the lives of others, to strip away the banalities of everyday life and dive deep into our hopes, fears, dreams, psyches, pasts, and futures. Martin himself waxed poetic about the power of fantasy in Patti Parret’s The Faces of Fantasy, saying:
"We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the song the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La."
In writing A Song of Ice and Fire, Martin did not choose to be bound to the Wars of the Roses; he chose to write a medievalist fantasy world. And his world doesn’t include a lot of mixing of races. That is the problem.
This has been disappointing for his fans, many of whom are people of color who would like to see themselves reflected in his world. And moreover, these fantasy fans of color would love to see more good characters of color in works as major and influential as A Song of Ice and Fire. But not including them is Martin’s prerogative.
The problem truly arises when his fans believe (with his encouragement) that his neomedieval world is authentically medieval and use that belief to shape their idea of history rather than the other way around.
The problem is the feedback loop. Martin argues that a primarily white Middle Ages is historically accurate. This leads some of his readers to believe that Westeros is an accurate depiction of the Middle Ages (because Martin says it is). Thus, anything Martin writes is an accurate depiction of the Middle Ages. This is, of course, all based on what the reader “feels” the Middle Ages was like, and much of this “feeling” comes from reading medievalist fantasy. Of course, many readers push back against this, arguing for a more nuanced view of the Middle Ages, or (as I have here) that medievalist fantasy is not historical fiction. But reading critically and against the text can be very difficult, and often the loudest voices in the room are from those who refuse to interrogate their preconceived notions.
Game of White People
In this way, of course, Martin’s issues with race are quite different from Tolkien’s. Tolkien, as I mentioned in the beginning of this article, runs into trouble with his simple white skin/black skin, good/evil dichotomy. Martin’s work suffers from somewhat-subtler issues, namely a lack of representation, and when he does choose to include people of color, he also includes some pretty ugly stereotypes about them.
These stereotypes are most evident in Daenerys Targaryen’s storyline. Her story begins with her wedding to a Dothraki horse lord—which, without “at least three deaths,” she is told, “would be a dull affair.” She winds up becoming a “white savior” for the enslaved peoples of Slavers Bay. Martin reacted to one question about the stereotypical portrayal of the Dothraki by arguing that he doesn’t have any Dothraki point-of-view characters, indicating that the Dothraki might look very different from the inside. But he also doesn’t express any intention of adding a Dothraki point-of-view character, or, presumably, a Meereenese one or Astapori one.
Not until A Feast for Crows, the fourth book in the series, do we get any person of color at all as a point-of-view character (Arianne Martell), though she is still technically Westerosi, being from Dorne. In fact, only one point-of-view character (Melisandre) is from outside Westeros, and not only does she have only one chapter so far, she’s white.
When it comes to portraying Martin’s fantasy world in the HBO TV series, the problems get even worse. When John Boyega (star of, among other things, the latest Star Wars films) mentioned how overwhelmingly white the cast of Game of Thrones is (along with The Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars), the comments section on fan site Winter is Coming descended into hostile, often nakedly racist, remarks.
They argued that the Middle Ages wasn’t diverse. They argued that attempting to “force” diversity is “politically correct nonsense” that panders to “snowflakes.” And they even accused Boyega of being a racist for bringing up this problem at all. In their minds, even discussing racial inequality is racist. By their warped logic, the only way not to be racist is to pretend race does not exist.
A similar issue occurred at another Game of Thrones fan-community website: Watchers on the Wall. When Lupita Nyong’o mentioned—in passing—that she’d like to cameo on Game of Thrones, one of the contributors wrote a thoughtful piece discussing the issues of representation in the show. These attitudes raised the question of how much of a viewer’s expectation for a white Westeros comes from a preconceived notion of a “white Middle Ages,” and how much is resistance to so-called “political correctness”—namely when people of color ask for a seat at the table. The comments section, while not as horrid as the Winter is Coming one, again leaned heavily on the “historical accuracy,” artistic freedom, and “not everything needs to be about race” arguments to dismiss said contributor’s concerns.
Racist Fantasies vs. Inclusive Histories
Westeros, of course, is a fantasy world. Like Tolkien’s Middle Earth, you can argue that it does not owe anything to any real, historical period on Earth. But it is the continuous insistence, on the part of Martin and many fans, that Westeros is a relatively accurate representation of the Middle Ages that makes this discussion necessary. You can’t have it both ways.
Many people get their ideas of what the Middle Ages were like from fantasy works like A Song of Ice and Fire. As such, it is important for medievalists to point out that the kind of historical accuracy that Martin strives for is ultimately impossible; works like Game of Thrones are, fundamentally, fantasies. This is especially true now, with the renewed attempt by white supremacists to co-opt the Middle Ages. The myth of a “whites-only Middle Ages” that is perpetuated through the fantasy genre in general (and through massively popular shows like Game of Thrones in particular), is indeed a myth. The past is much more complicated, and inclusive, than many give it credit for.
https://www.publicmedievalist.com/grimdark-medievalism/
Grimdark Medievalism in A Song of Ice and Fire
by Shiloh Carroll
As I wrote back in November, George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series has been celebrated—by Martin himself as well as by some reviewers, fans, and even a few scholars—as a more-historically authentic take on medievalesque fantasy. But, it simply isn’t. And more than that, believing that it is can lead to some awful conclusions about the medieval past and the present.
In my previous article, I discussed how Martin’s “all-white” Westeros (I called it A Song of White People and Fire) was bunk. And more, that believing it to be true was both easy and toxic:
"The problem is the feedback loop. Martin argues that a primarily white Middle Ages is historically accurate. This leads some of his readers to believe that Westeros is an accurate depiction of the Middle Ages (because Martin says it is). Thus, anything Martin writes is an accurate depiction of the Middle Ages. This is, of course, all based on what the reader “feels” the Middle Ages was like, and much of this “feeling” comes from reading medievalist fantasy. Of course, many readers push back against this, arguing for a more nuanced view of the Middle Ages, or (as I have here) that medievalist fantasy is not historical fiction. But reading critically and against the text can be very difficult, and often the loudest voices in the room are from those who refuse to interrogate their preconceived notions."
But there is much more to discuss than Martin’s take on race. Another area in which Martin’s view of the medieval world, as reflected in his books, conflicts with reality in toxic ways is through its hyper-violence. Why does Martin’s especially brutal view of the Middle Ages appeal so much to people in the modern world?
“Fantasy for People Who Hate Fantasy”
George R. R. Martin’s particular flavor of medievalism—meaning, his overarching way of reimaginging the Middle Ages—is violent, dark, brutal, and relentlessly masculine. Martin certainly isn’t alone in doing this. In a 1986 essay called “Dreaming of the Middle Ages,” Italian medievalist and author Umberto Eco invented ten categories of medievalisms. Martin’s medievalism is what Eco calls “Barbaric Age” medievalism, which he describes as “Dark par excellence,” a medievalism that celebrates “virile, brute force” and “the glories of a new Aryanism.” More recently, Amy Kaufman calls it a “muscular medievalism” that “imagines the past as a man’s world in which masculinity was powerful, impenetrable, and uniquely privileged.”
Martin’s Middle Ages were terrible for everyone. Children are orphaned, women are constantly subject to the threat of rape, the common folk suffer as the nobility fight among themselves, and the only way to have any sort of power is through physical violence. In Westeros, Martin has created a patriarchal society with a brand of masculinity so toxic that no one—not even men—escape from it unscathed. He’s even turned toxic masculinity up to eleven.
Part of Martin’s mission is to debunk the idea of chivalry. This on its own isn’t necessarily a problem. “Chivalry,” as a universal code to protect the weak and uphold the law is mostly a myth, anyway. As Richard Kaeuper puts it in his excellent book Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe:
"[W]e must not forget that knighthood was nourished on aggressive impulses, that it existed to use its shining armour and sharp-edged weaponry in acts of showy and bloody violence."
But Martin perhaps goes too far the other way, counteracting a rosy vision of the past with one covered in mud. In the books, any knight foolish enough to be a true believer in chivalry is doomed.
A Song of Dead Knights and Murdered Chivalry
The longest-suffering victim of the chivalry delusion is Sansa Stark. She starts the series as a doe-eyed eleven-year-old who believes fully in the stories of heroic knights and gracious ladies. These beliefs blind her to the realities of the court intrigue she is doomed to encounter, and causes her to suffer at the hands of the sheer awfulness of Cersei and Joffrey Lannister.
Her naiveté is punished with imprisonment, the death of her father, psychological torture, physical abuse, and sexual assault. Her betrothed, Joffrey, appears to be a handsome prince at first. And Joffrey knows it, and thus manipulates her through her delusions about chivalry. When the veneer crumbles, he taunts her for it, assuring her that if their children are as stupid as she is, he’ll “chop off [her] head and find a smarter wife.”
Sansa’s naïveté also puts her in physical and sexual jeopardy: it is only by Tyrion’s intervention that she is kept from being stripped naked and beaten in front of the court on Joffrey’s orders. When Joffrey eventually casts her aside, he threatens to rape her whenever he feels like it.
Over the course of A Feast for Crows (as well as the “Alayne” sample chapter from the ever-forthcoming The Winds of Winter) Sansa is shown transforming into a keen political mind. But she’s doing it under the tutelage of a much older man who has creepy sexual interest in her because of his years-long obsession with her mother.
Jaime Lannister is another of chivalry’s victims. He initially strove to be a chivalric hero, having grown up and trained under legendary figures like Arthur Dayne (“the Sword of the Morning”) and Gerold Hightower. The villains of his childhood were the Robin-Hood-like Kingswood Brotherhood, with their colorful names such as Wenda the White Fawn, Big-Belly Ben, and the Smiling Knight. Yet Jaime becomes so disillusioned by court politics and oaths made to imperfect men that he eventually kills his own king:
"So many vows . . . They make you swear and swear. Defend the king. Obey the king. Keep his secrets. Your life for his. But obey your father. Love your sister. Protect the innocent. Defend the weak. Respect the gods. Obey the laws. It’s too much. No matter what you do, you’re forsaking one vow or another."
Jaime loses the respect of everyone around him, due to their chivalric expectations of him. Later, he loses his sword hand, the symbol of his knighthood. But as a male character, Jaime escapes worse sorts of torture and manipulation that Sansa endures. Instead, he wises up and rejects the myth of chivalry on his own.
A Savage Beast in Every Man
The disturbing implication of all of this brutality presented under the banner of “realism” is that it implies that a fictional world is more “real” if the men in it are violent rapists.
In the books, rape is expected in nearly every interaction between men and women, especially if the man has any kind of physical power. For example, Cersei Lannister assures Sansa Stark that if the keep where they’re hiding during the Battle of the Blackwater is breached,
"most of my guests are in for a bit of rape, I’d say. And you should never rule out mutilation, torture, and murder in times like these."
When Brienne and Jaime are captured by the Bloody Mummers, Brienne is constantly threatened with rape (despite her size, strength, and prowess with a sword). Only Jaime’s intercession prevents a sexual assault. And despite rescuing Brienne, Jaime still sees rape as an inevitable aspect of war. In his experience,
"Men [. . .] would kill at their lord’s command, rape when their blood was up after battle, and plunder wherever they could, but once the war was done, they would go back to their homes, trade their spears for hoes, wed their neighbor’s daughters, and raise a pack of squalling children."
Rape is a hallmark of Kaufman’s “muscular medievalism.” Almost no other facet of A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones is defended as vigorously with cries of “historical realism” by Martin and his fans. Comment threads on the topic are full of people who insist that people who are horrified by the amount of rape and violence in Westeros should “get over it” because “that’s just how it was back then.” Even Martin argues that rape is necessary to his story he’s telling, especially in times of war:
"When I read history books, rape is a part of all these wars. There’s never been a war where it wasn’t, and that includes wars that are going on today. It just seems to me that there’s something fundamentally dishonest if you write a war story and you leave that out."
But rape is not just a part of war in Martin’s world. The threat of rape or actual rape happens constantly, even when battle and war are not factors. It’s so expected, in fact, that Sansa is surprised when Tyrion doesn’t rape her on their wedding night; it’s clear that the reader is supposed to admire him for his restraint rather than expecting that a woman would be treated with respect by default.
Rape and Violence in Game of Thrones
The HBO show takes the grimdark patriarchal brutality of A Song of Ice and Fire to another level. Consensual sex scenes—one between Daenerys and Drogo and one between Jaime and Cersei—were changed into rape scenes. And off-page rape scenes involving minor characters were amplified by putting them onscreen, and by transferring them to Sansa, where they could be acted out live. The showrunners defend these choices by claiming that they are creating a realistic Middle Ages through their depictions of violence and sexual assault. They also claim to be accurately representing Martin’s books, even when they aren’t.
HBO’s darkening of Martin’s vision of the past isn’t just a series of errors. It’s a feedback loop of medievalism in popular culture. When violence is seen as somehow more “serious” and “realistic” than other approaches, the cruel, barbaric fantasy view of the medieval world is amplified for cable television. It seems to become even more “real,” but actually just brings an already grimdark fantasy story closer to a genre like horror.
Game of Horrible Rapes and Tortures
Don’t get me wrong: A Song of Ice and Fire depicts an amazingly dense, layered world and a fascinating overall story. But its problems come from the barbaric medievalism Martin infused into his construction of Westeros. Martin has argued that his brutal version of the past is an antidote to what he calls the “Disneyland” or “Ren Faire” Middle Ages of other writers. Worse, he feels this has given the fantasy genre a reputation as “entertainment for children or particularly slow adults.”
Perhaps he is right. Perhaps one of the reasons Game of Thrones is so popular is because it makes us feel like adults, or like savvy viewers, by rejecting so violently a Disneyfied version of the past.
But Martin’s darker view of the past isn’t more real. Just because something is edgy doesn’t mean it’s true; as many of the articles here at The Public Medievalist have shown, there was a lot more to the Middle Ages than war, violence, whiteness, and sexism.
What does it say about modern readers and viewers that we’re ready to buy in to such a dark vision of the medieval past? Perhaps our fascination with barbaric medievalism lets us offload our own social problems onto a time period so far behind us that it’s practically alien. We can feel superior to those dirty, backwards medieval people. And we can feel safe in our own modern mythology of progress and decency, quietly ignoring any similarities George R. R. Martin’s world has with our own.
The first article is part of a (very big) series on the site Race, Racism and the Middle Ages on the myth of a uniformly white Middle Ages, which starts off going into detail how white supremacists, past and present, use this twisted view of medieval history to justify their racism. And sexism, and homophobia, and bigotry in general, when things were actually far less black-and-white (heh) and more nuanced than that:
https://www.publicmedievalist.com/no-more-fairy-tales/
One other sexism-related case of this that immediately springs to mind is the idea perpetuated by works like GoT and the Berserk manga/anime (another prime example of the “muscular medievalism" genre mentioned in the second article) that women's only involvement in medieval warfare was squeezing out future cannon fodder or getting raped save for extremely rare warrior women outliers like Brienne of Tarth or Casca (who of course still get subject to sexual assault at some point in the story, naturallyGender, Sexism, and the Middle Ages: No More Fairy Tales
by Amy S. Kaufman and Paul B. Sturtevant
We are standing in a crucial moment. Far right, populist leaders have swept into power on a rising tide of misogyny, racism, white nationalism, and xenophobia. Their supporters lash out with increasing violence at those who strive for equality in the face of entrenched power.
Over the past few weeks in the United States, those who would set social progress back have shown their teeth. When protests erupted over a Supreme Court nominee credibly accused of multiple counts of sexual assault—a nominee also with a well-established record of hostility to women’s rights—the response was snarling denial, possible perjury, and open mockery of the victim.
Heather Mac Donald, writing for the New York Post, knows exactly where to place the blame for Justice Kavanaugh’s conduct, and it’s not on Kavanaugh himself. Instead, the death of chivalry was to blame:
"The sexual revolution declared that the traditional restraints on the male libido—norms of male chivalry and gentlemanliness and of female modesty and prudence—were patriarchal and oppressive."
Medievalists have seen this song and dance before.
The chivalric illusion dreamed up by people nostalgic for a more oppressive time is a fairy-tale version of gender, one imagined to be rooted in the Middle Ages. This medieval fairy tale relies on strict, binary gender roles: men were brave knights in shining armor; women were beautiful princesses longing to be rescued. Men were active, martial, and violent; women were passive, domestic, and social. Men were conquerors, women were conquered. It was a thousand-year pageant of chivalry and courtly love, and everyone fell neatly and quietly into one of two well-defined genders.
Well, we here at The Public Medievalist are overjoyed to call bullshit.
Battlefield Woman
Modern fantasies of medieval chivalry imagine a world of vulnerable women who disappear behind the glorious exploits, or villainous intrigues, of men. Popular culture’s idea of the medieval past may not be “men only” in the same way that it is “whites only”—women do appear in our imagination of the Middle Ages. But they are limited to a few, restricted roles in medieval-themed entertainment: virgins, prostitutes, witches, queens, or victims.
As much as anything, this is a result of how the Middle Ages are portrayed in our culture. There have been decades of excellent, groundbreaking scholarship that has done away with those simplistic categories and elevated stories of remarkable women. But that shift has been slow to filter into curricula and textbooks, and slower still to be seen in popular culture. You don’t have to be a misogynist to think that medieval women’s lives were a thousand-year tale of woe. You just have to watch TV.
Films and TV shows that depict the Middle Ages rarely pass the Bechdel test (which famously only requires two women to talk to each other about something other than a man). We have plenty of “exceptional women” in medieval fantasy settings—women like Game of Thrones’ chivalric warrior Brianne of Tarth, The Lord of the Rings’ shieldmaiden Éowyn, or the various “feisty” iterations of Maid Marian. But inevitably, those women are surrounded by hordes of other, nameless women exploited in the background, either as victims of violence or rewards for a man’s quest.
Pushback against these stereotypes, or any insertion of feminism into a medieval setting, is met with cries of “historical revisionism.” Some men seem terrified that their favorite things (video games, Star Wars, and even medieval history) will be “ruined” by being made more inclusive. But few things draw the trolls out from under the bridge more than putting women on the battlefield. For example, the latest outcry has been over historical video game Total War: Rome II adding female generals, despite both the literary and historical lineage of women at war with Rome. But their rage about inclusivity is a tale even older than Gamergate, the 2014 explosion of misogynistic harassment that targeted women video game developers and journalists.
When the 2004 film King Arthur turned the (fictional) character Guinevere into a leather-clad warrior queen, the internet went up in arms in a totally predictable way. A now-defunct IMDB discussion board entitled “Guinevere as Warrior” was full of complaints before the movie even came out, labeling her character “a triumph for femenazism” [sic]. One user complained,
"[Guinevere] happened not to be depicted as a warrior until the PC generation, and we’re supposed to swallow it whole and like it?"
Most of the resistance was based on the perception of ahistoricity. This included vast, sweeping assertions about the roles of women, such as this gem:
"In general, almost all women of ancient and medieval cultures subscribed to traditional gender roles, not only because of male chauvinism, but also unfortunate necessity. Life back in those times was much harder, and work was divided into what was thought best for each gender."
This person imagines medieval life as an ant colony, without room for diversity, choice or free will. But nothing could be further from the truth.
Others insisted that the movie’s “realism” had been compromised:
"Its okay if Charlie´s Angels do rather unrealistic stuff, because that movie is meant to be hilarious. But you cannot pretend to make a more “realistic” movie of the King Arthur legend and then drop in the en vogue, pc Warrior Woman."
There are myriad historical issues with this film. Not least is that it marketed itself as “the untold true story” of King Arthur (who is, himself, probably not real). But the (Badon) Hill this commenter chose to die on was women who fought. This is despite historical evidence of warrior-queens who inhabited the British Isles during the Roman occupation. And maybe the medieval literary Guinevere didn’t leap into battle with a flaming bow, but she did hold the Tower of London against Mordred’s invasion.
In fact, women have always been involved in war. This is true both in the twentieth century and in the twelfth. And the battlefield wasn’t the only place that women had power: they brewed beer, wrote books, led religious movements, healed people, and even ruled nations. Those who dismiss a broader range of roles for women as “activism” or “anachronism” refuse to acknowledge real women’s real experiences. They deny them the rich and varied lives led by actual, real people. And worse, they deny that women—past and present—have the capacity to learn, to grow, to fight, and to lead.
Medieval Transgender, Genderqueer, and Genderfluid People
Perhaps even more conspicuous than the absence of women’s diverse lived experiences from popular medievalism is the complete erasure of transgender, genderqueer, and genderfluid medieval lives (note: for those not familiar with these terms or the distinctions among them, have a look at The Trevor Project’s helpful glossary here). These identities, which, collectively are often called “gender expansive” identities, have been systematically ignored to such a degree that you probably can’t think of a single medieval person who challenged gender norms, aside from Joan of Arc.
This is not, as some might tell you, because being gender expansive is a new thing. It’s not—though we now have words, social structures and technologies that better enable people to express their identities. For the past forty years, scholars have revealed that gender was not a strict binary for many medieval people. And exciting new work is being done today by scholars, reclaiming the lives of medieval people who, were they alive today, might not identify as cisgender.
Medieval literature and history is chock full of people interrogating their own gender identities. This runs the gamut from famous people, like St. Joan, to lesser-known literary heroes, like the protagonist of the 13th century tale Silence who is born anatomically female but asserts a male gender identity.
Despite this tectonic shift in scholarship about medieval gender identity, there has been a backlash from cultural reactionaries, who seek to erase transgender, genderqueer, or genderfluid lives from textbooks, denying people their history. Because if they have a history, then their lives demand to be seen not as some nouveau fad, but as part of the human condition. It’s a part of the human condition that deserves to be recognized to have the deep historical—even medieval—roots that it does.
Manly Medieval Men
Even though masculinity seems to be privileged in our neomedieval fairy tales, these myths hurt men too. Medieval men, as they are often depicted or imagined today, typically represent the worst of toxic masculinity. Their power only exists through violence. The knight who rides across the countryside: he attacks other violent men in the name of his king, or of a woman he worships, or just the abstract concept of “chivalry.” He uses his violence for good. But it is still violence. The other commonly available masculinity is the hyperviolent, ultra-masculine Viking, who makes his own rules, lives by the sword and uses his violence for personal gain.
In both, to be less than entirely violent is to be less than a man.
Popular medievalism offers only the narrowest versions of historical masculinity in which might makes right, conquest is success, and all relationships with women are, at best, transactional. The present-day men who wore homemade armor and waved neomedieval banners to “defend” a confederate statue at the white supremacist rally at Charlottesville, and the gang of bearded, muscle bound white men who beat a black protester after the rally, are really two sides of the same toxic coin.
The truth is, neither of these masculinities tell us much about real medieval men. But medieval literature and history are full of men who break the mold: knights who weep and faint, gentle scholars and religious leaders, nurturing depictions of Christ, and men better known for their cleverness with a joke than for their skill with a sword. Medieval men, like modern men—and like medieval women and transgender, genderqueer, and genderfluid medieval people—led full, rich, and varied lives.
A New Series
The goal of our Race, Racism, and the Middle Ages series was to dismantle the “whites only” idea of the medieval past. Our new series, Gender, Sexism, and the Middle Ages, will tear down the sexist fairy tales at the heart of how many people see the Middle Ages today.
We aim to show how and where systems of gender oppression existed, and to also highlight stories of the women, men, and nonbinary people who surmounted them. Because in some ways, medieval people are more like us than we might like to admit, and the same goes for expected gender roles and oppressions. And just like us, medieval people bent the rules, broke the rules, and made entirely new rules that worked for them.
But there were fundamental differences we must acknowledge. Many aspects of gender are culturally specific. This means that the ways in which people understood—and performed—masculinities and femininities have changed over time. So, with our series we will also show the ways in which medieval gender roles and identities were nothing like ours. Because gender is complicated.
So, no more fairy tales. It’s time to tell some new stories.
), when in actuality, women not going to war in great numbers is actually a relatively recent phenomenon. (In the case of Berserk, I've long since realized that if the Band of the Hawk were anything like a realistic Medieval European army, Casca would have most likely and ironically both been instantly accepted and never given the chance to become a soldier when she asked to join as a young girl, as she would've probably just been sent to the army's camp followers and raised there) Yes, there were things like racism, misogyny, sexual violence, and bad things in general during the Middle Ages (you know, just like today), but that kind of grimdark, white-as-the-driven-snow, rapey, hyper-masculine and hyper-violent take on history is no more "historically accurate" than Arthurian legends, dragons and all.
