Cindy McBride asked this question about
Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota, #1):
Ummm, so does this book imply approval or disapproval of divergent gender identities and the validity (or lack thereof) of religion? Answers will determine whether or not I'll be interested in reading. Thanks!
Ada Palmer
Great question! Separate answers on gender & religion, but parallel in some ways: in these books I'm attempting to depict a future that has developed …moreGreat question! Separate answers on gender & religion, but parallel in some ways: in these books I'm attempting to depict a future that has developed very well on some fronts, but badly on others, with some great successes (150 year lifespan! World peace!) and some great failures (Another world war, censorship...) Two of its greatest failures/tensions are on the fronts of gender & religion.
On the religious front, fear of organized religion, caused by religious violence, has led to severe censorship of religious discourse & the outlawing of any organized religion outside of "reservations" <= an intentionally very alarming term. All people are expected to have religious opinions, and have religious discourse with licensed "sensayers" in a one-on-one therapy setting, but to even discuss it in a group is both taboo and illegal. The book then looks at the effects this has on people, and looks especially at the problems created by stifling discourse, especially when something which appears to be a genuine miracle occurs but no one is allowed to talk about it, let alone deal with its global consequences.
I certainly intend the book to be respectful of and positive about religion, and to be commenting on a tension which has been growing in our society of late, between people who feel it's important to be public/out about religion, and people who feel uncomfortable when asked about their religion, as if it were a violation of privacy. I've had a mixture of reactions to the book, from some readers who say it feels like a paradise having religion be silenced and private like that, to others who say it feels like an oppressive dystopia with no place for them if they can't have religious gatherings or wear a religious symbol in public. That split is precisely what I was aiming for, since much of my goal is to look at a tension within our own society that isn't discussed much, and to demonstrate how people who want religion to be public and people who want it to be private can be in tension with each other even if they both happen to be believers, or even share the same faith.
As for gender, this is only begun in book 1 and really fleshed out in book 2, but this is intended to be a future that botched its gender development, where a our current efforts to secure more openness toward gender variation, our transgender rights efforts, our feminist efforts, a vast array of social efforts related to gender, all failed without people realizing that they failed. The narrator argues that the society he lives in is not a gender neutral society, but just pretends to be gender neutral; the only acceptable pronouns are they/them/theirs, and gendered expression is taboo, something which most people think is a great step toward equality without thinking about what it stifles. While people in this world believe that gender is a thing of the past, the narrator believes that gender is still a powerful force in how people think, creating tensions, inequalities, vulnerabilities, and suppressing self-expression. Because the society has declared that gender is gone, all dialog about the issue ended, so all efforts toward improving on it are now impossible. The conversation ended too soon, and now people who want to express gender can only do so in secret or transgressive ways. Over the course of the book, the reader is supposed to think about the narrator's opinions about gender in this society, and decide whether we believe his analysis.
The narrator applies gendered pronouns to the characters, but we know that the narrator is doing this himself, without the consent of those he is gendering, and we also know that he's doing it, not based on bodies/assigned gender, but based on his opinions of people's personalities and how they fit his own sense of gender. Sometimes he oscillates or professes uncertainty about which to use. Gender identities other than "male" and "female" come into play more in book 2, and we see some of our narrator's ineptitudes in dealing with them. This narrator seems to be comfortable with "he" and "she" being related to personality rather than anatomy, but struggles when people are in-between, demonstrating how he too is trapped in this future's failure to complete gender liberation.
The whole reading experience -- experiencing this gender-silenced world and the narrator's inept obsession with gender -- are supposed to show the possible negative consequences of us giving up the conversation too soon. From time to time you hear people say things like "Feminism is finished" or "Women have the vote, feminism is done, it's time to move on," which is, of course, deeply false, and indeed dangerous, since we have so much further to go. This book posits a future where society DID move on too soon, both from the feminism conversation and from the gender/transgender/intersex/divergent gender conversation, achieving the surface victory of gender neutral pronouns and declaring it to be a kind of liberation whereas it is actually a vast act of censorship masking the fact that the much deeper, larger liberation which we're fighting for now has, in this future, been thrown away. Looking at a world that failed on gender is uncomfortable, intentionally so, but I hope it will help people come away with the conviction that we must do better than this, offering a new way to prove how important it is to keep fighting.
Hope these answers help?(less)
On the religious front, fear of organized religion, caused by religious violence, has led to severe censorship of religious discourse & the outlawing of any organized religion outside of "reservations" <= an intentionally very alarming term. All people are expected to have religious opinions, and have religious discourse with licensed "sensayers" in a one-on-one therapy setting, but to even discuss it in a group is both taboo and illegal. The book then looks at the effects this has on people, and looks especially at the problems created by stifling discourse, especially when something which appears to be a genuine miracle occurs but no one is allowed to talk about it, let alone deal with its global consequences.
I certainly intend the book to be respectful of and positive about religion, and to be commenting on a tension which has been growing in our society of late, between people who feel it's important to be public/out about religion, and people who feel uncomfortable when asked about their religion, as if it were a violation of privacy. I've had a mixture of reactions to the book, from some readers who say it feels like a paradise having religion be silenced and private like that, to others who say it feels like an oppressive dystopia with no place for them if they can't have religious gatherings or wear a religious symbol in public. That split is precisely what I was aiming for, since much of my goal is to look at a tension within our own society that isn't discussed much, and to demonstrate how people who want religion to be public and people who want it to be private can be in tension with each other even if they both happen to be believers, or even share the same faith.
As for gender, this is only begun in book 1 and really fleshed out in book 2, but this is intended to be a future that botched its gender development, where a our current efforts to secure more openness toward gender variation, our transgender rights efforts, our feminist efforts, a vast array of social efforts related to gender, all failed without people realizing that they failed. The narrator argues that the society he lives in is not a gender neutral society, but just pretends to be gender neutral; the only acceptable pronouns are they/them/theirs, and gendered expression is taboo, something which most people think is a great step toward equality without thinking about what it stifles. While people in this world believe that gender is a thing of the past, the narrator believes that gender is still a powerful force in how people think, creating tensions, inequalities, vulnerabilities, and suppressing self-expression. Because the society has declared that gender is gone, all dialog about the issue ended, so all efforts toward improving on it are now impossible. The conversation ended too soon, and now people who want to express gender can only do so in secret or transgressive ways. Over the course of the book, the reader is supposed to think about the narrator's opinions about gender in this society, and decide whether we believe his analysis.
The narrator applies gendered pronouns to the characters, but we know that the narrator is doing this himself, without the consent of those he is gendering, and we also know that he's doing it, not based on bodies/assigned gender, but based on his opinions of people's personalities and how they fit his own sense of gender. Sometimes he oscillates or professes uncertainty about which to use. Gender identities other than "male" and "female" come into play more in book 2, and we see some of our narrator's ineptitudes in dealing with them. This narrator seems to be comfortable with "he" and "she" being related to personality rather than anatomy, but struggles when people are in-between, demonstrating how he too is trapped in this future's failure to complete gender liberation.
The whole reading experience -- experiencing this gender-silenced world and the narrator's inept obsession with gender -- are supposed to show the possible negative consequences of us giving up the conversation too soon. From time to time you hear people say things like "Feminism is finished" or "Women have the vote, feminism is done, it's time to move on," which is, of course, deeply false, and indeed dangerous, since we have so much further to go. This book posits a future where society DID move on too soon, both from the feminism conversation and from the gender/transgender/intersex/divergent gender conversation, achieving the surface victory of gender neutral pronouns and declaring it to be a kind of liberation whereas it is actually a vast act of censorship masking the fact that the much deeper, larger liberation which we're fighting for now has, in this future, been thrown away. Looking at a world that failed on gender is uncomfortable, intentionally so, but I hope it will help people come away with the conviction that we must do better than this, offering a new way to prove how important it is to keep fighting.
Hope these answers help?(less)
by
Ada Palmer (Goodreads Author)
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