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Ancillary Justice
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AJ: Language (I think I've kept it spoiler free)
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This is why I was happy the book was chosen. It's got meaty, big issues along with a great story. Breq not only misidentified gender, she does it even when she hears a correction. This goes to the core of identity since, of course, Justice of Toren's ancillaries could be male, female or both and it didn't really matter to the ship - they were just ancillaries. This is compounded by the attitude of the Radchai to non-Radchai which is a typical conquerer one- we're People, others are not People.
And your last point is why I truly loved this book - Leckie's writing shows the issues (both with gender and with personal identity at all). The way she shows us multiple points of view (all of her ancillaries are 'one of me' not individual which is just an alien way of thinking is also really impressive.
Great post Rob.Language and its relationship to culture is definitely a strong background point in this book and it's done so well. How often do you get a cross-language pun explained in a way that it's actually funny? (Radchaai/civilized dual meaning in one language, single meaning in Radchaai).
As to how Radchaai gender works and the language of it, it really reminds me of Lena Boroditsky's work that got covered on Radiolab a couple of years back in this episode and in this Scientific American article. Specifically the Pormpuraaw language where spacial positioning is fundamentally important to communication, so the Australian Aboriginals that speak it have a hyper-awareness of spacial positioning even from a very young age. I think what the author is saying is that English is like that and that from a Radchaai point-of-view we're hyper-aware of gender.
Oh I made comment in the other thread before I read this - but I'll repeat myself here. I am under the impression 30% in that Breq's problem with identifying gender is a consequence of her being a machine mind - not because human Radchaai (ancillaries are neither considered Radchaai or human) are unable to identify gender. That is, though Radchaai culture and language place no emphasis on gender, doesn't necessarily imply they have a problem identifying gender and applying it correctly if speaking another language. But it makes sense that the ship machine minds have problems with gender.
Leaving the question - was the Radchaai language developed by machine minds and hence the absence of gender references?
David, to your point on the reason Breq misgenders people, whether it's her origin as an AI or because she is culturally Radchaai, I'd put this comment from Strigan about where you are in the book:“The gender thing is a giveaway, though. Only a Radchaai would misgender people the way you do.”
That being said, I don't think it has to be either/or. I don't imagine an origin as an AI and sudden limitation to just human senses plus implants would help the innate cultural bias.
So quickly I want to throw out another point that I think is interesting; whatever is going on with language, a similar thingy is going on with religion. Think about the passage where they talk about introducing the Radchaai religion to the Orsian populace- Breq notes that often the Radchaai god would simply by identified with the major god of the planet, but in this case that kind of translation is impossible.
And then her discussion with Strigen about Radchaai views on fate vs free will if everything is ordained by god.
I love that the novel is able to incorporate religion in these wider questions in a non-preachy, interesting way (especially since religion in genre fiction [outside of Chalion, which I loved ] is typically insert Christian analogue here, insert pagan analogue here, come up with dumb names, you got a stew goin)
Anyway, regarding the AI= gender problems; yeah, I think Lindsay's quote is pretty revealing about the Radchaai in general, and honestly I would expect an AI to be better at picking up on small details and social cues than a human, especially with thousands of years of experience (though I don't know at this point just how much of that memory Breq has access to, she hasn't given us any indication 33% through that it's extremely limited or anything).
David Sven wrote: "Leaving the question - was the Radchaai langauge developed by machine minds and hence the absence of gender references?"
Yeah, this is an extremely interesting question, and the related broader one of is Radchaai culture a product of the machines, or vice versa? And if so, exactly what does that tell us, since the machine minds are so different from the emotionless, calculating AI's we're used to?
(Also please forgive me everyone for my ongoing conflation of Radchaai and Radchaai-produced AI's; I get now that in the book the one term doesn't include the other, it's just convenient to group them both together since they seem to both hold the same cultural values. Wait....I'm grouping together separate groups in a discussion for convenience's sake and thus eliminating some nuance from my thoughts...I'VE BEEN RE-EDUCATED TO THINK LIKE A RADCHAAI).
Rob wrote: "I'VE BEEN RE-EDUCATED TO THINK LIKE A RADCHAAI"Well, at least now you're civilized.
Lindsay wrote: "“The gender thing is a giveaway, though. Only a Radchaai would misgender people the way you do.”"Yes, but I don't think outsiders make the same technical distinction between Radchaai and ancillaries. To someone not indoctrinated into Radchaaii culture ancillaries are Radchaai as well. Esk One is addressed as "Radchaai" by the locals when she is on planet with Lieutenant Awn. And in the passage containing this particular quote, Strigan is hinting that Breq is an ancillary all while calling her "Radchaai."
But I don't think it would be unusual for a "human" Radchaai to misgender as a "slip up" as a consequence of switching from a gender neutral language even if they were gender aware. I don't find it very convincing that a human would be so unaware of self as too misgender themselves or opposites to themselves. That would imply some impairment of their sense of self. While a Ship AI's sense of self would not be tied to any particular biological segment - the Ship AI is not their bodies - so that makes sense enough to me for suspension of disbelief.
As we are only getting Breq's POV, I still don't have any reason to think (so far) that Radchaai humans are unaware of gender
Several decades ago, I had a co-worker from Taiwan who sometimes misgendered, which always baffled me, until she explained. My memory is that her version of Chinese didn't have gender, so she used the pronouns for the gender of the person she was talking *to* rather than the person she was talking *about*.
That's true Rob, you would think an AI would be good at distinguishing genders, judging by how smart the AI later in the novel was, named (view spoiler).I didn't even think much about religion while reading the book. Maybe I rushed through it and missed some things.
Rob wrote: "I would expect an AI to be better at picking up on small details and social cues than a human, especially with thousands of years of experience"I'm not so sure an AI would be as good at distinguishing gender as a human. Distinguishing gender isn't really a matter of experience or intelligence - we pretty much figure things out early on as children without that much "training" or education. It's not a "skill" so to speak that has to be drummed into us. It's more instinctive - part of our biological drive to perpetuate our genes. We can even distinguish gender in most cases at a distance. An AI doesn't have all that. I suppose without that same biological drive to perpetuate genes an AI would need to be programmed to look for things like breasts in women and other body typing and social cues- but the latter may not be so valid if dealing with multiple cultures with different social cues. And what if the underlying programming has been done by another AI that doesn't care about gender anyway?
Tamahome wrote: "I didn't even think much about religion"
Couple of other things about this:
I forgot to mention before that the primary act of worship in Radchaai culture seems to be the casting and then translating of omens- and One Esk is noted to be the one with experience enough to interpret all possible outcomes.
Here's a quote I just got to about the interactions between different religions in the Radchaai empire:
"It was normal practice to absorb any religion the Radch ran across, to fit its gods into an already blindingly complex genealogy, or to say merely that the supreme, creator deity was Amaat under another name and let the rest sort themselves out. Some quirk of Valskaayan religion made this difficult for them, and the result had been destructive. Among the recent changes in Radch policy, Anaander Mianaai had legalized the practice of Valskaay's insistently separate religion, and the governor of Valskaay had given the building back [a temple whose rose windows adorn the interior of the Justice of Torren]. There had been talk of returning the windows...but ultimately they were replaced with copies. Not long after, the decades below Esk were emptied and closed, but the windows still hung on the walls of the empty, dark decade rooms."
So there you go with the translating one religion into another. I don't know what to make of the remaining rose windows; the image of the darkened rooms with the large stained glass is kind of haunting.
A decade is a group of ten soldiers?
Tamahome wrote: "A decade is a group of ten soldiers?"A decade is actually 400 ancillaries. 20 lieutenants each in charge of twenty ancillaries. One Esk is part of Esk Decade which consists of One Esk through to Twenty Esk. There are 4 other active decades on Justice of Torin (Amaat,Toren, Etrepa and Bo Decades) each one occupying a deck on the ship - making a total of 2000 active ancillaries on board. There are a further 5 inactive decades held in storage in the 5 bottom decks of the ship. Each Decade has a decade commander and then I'm assuming the Hundred Captain is in charge of all the lieutenants - there being one hundred lieutenants in total.
I think it's a large group of ancillaries. Near the start of the novel awn is referred to as the "Esk decade lieutenant." Each deck seems to be associated with different groups of ancillaries; it seems like each decade has two groups but only one is active on the ship at a time. There are also 20 "Esk lieutenants" including awn.
Serendi wrote: "Several decades ago, I had a co-worker from Taiwan who sometimes misgendered, which always baffled me, until she explained. My memory is that her version of Chinese didn't have gender, so she used ..."This. My roommate's first language is Mandarin. She says that, when writing, different characters are used for he, she, and it, but they're all pronounced the same so the gender of the pronoun isn't marked when speaking. Occasionally she'll use the wrong pronoun when speaking English, but it's not because she doesn't know the gender of the person she's talking about.
This might be the problem that human Radchaai have; they understand gender and can identify the gender of a person, but they're not used to having to pick out the right pronoun on the fly so they make mistakes.
What i thought was interesting was, that breq, from my point of view, was just misgendering males. Everybody is female first to breq. I am only about 20% , though.
I work in a rather male dominated field and so everybody is assumed to be male first. So i got misgendered a lot, making me very aware of stuff like that.
I'm about a third of the way into the book. And while I'm very open to anything the author is trying to communicate re: the gender pronoun thing, I have to admit that I'm a bit confused as to why an artificial intelligence would assign the specific, albeit mistaken, gender pronoun 'she' to the humans with whom it communicated, rather than the truly neutral pronoun 'it'.But as I said, I'm only a third or so of the way into the story, so perhaps this will become clearer the further I go.
Walter wrote: "I'm about a third of the way into the book. And while I'm very open to anything the author is trying to communicate re: the gender pronoun thing, I have to admit that I'm a bit confused as to why a..."I don't know if it's ever explicitly stated, but I notice that Breq uses "it" for some AIs she encounters later on in the book (view spoiler). It's possible that "it" should only be used for nonhumans (or noncitizens!, though I doubt it).
Yeah "it" has connotations of non-personhood.Here's Anne Leckie's thoughts on Why she chose "she" for the dominant pronoun of narration, posted in another thread: "http://www.orbitbooks.net/2013/10/01/...
That doesn't explain why, however, she does indeed seem to misgender *in dialogue* people as female consistently and rarely if ever as male. Good catch guys.
Walter wrote: "I'm about a third of the way into the book. And while I'm very open to anything the author is trying to communicate re: the gender pronoun thing, I have to admit that I'm a bit confused as to why a..."You're looking at it from the wrong angle. The AI doesn't assign "she" to people. It isn't speaking in English. Breq speaks Radchaai (most of the time), Radchaai uses a genderless pronoun instead of she. As to why the author choose to translate that genderless pronoun to "she" in English (instead of defaulting to "he" like most people do, or making up gender neutral one), read the blogpost Rob linked above.
I think he's talking about in actual dialogue, not narration though. Like when strigan chides Breq on misgendering, Breq had used "she" in the conversation I'm pretty sure.
David Sven wrote: "Rob wrote: "I would expect an AI to be better at picking up on small details and social cues than a human, especially with thousands of years of experience"I'm not so sure an AI would be as good ..."
I got the impression that, in addition to the Radchaai language not having distinguishing gender pronouns, that the whole society considered gender to be more fluid. At one point, when Strigan implies that Breq has misgendered her, she replies: "I can't see under your clothes. And even if I could, that's not always a reliable indicator." To me, that implied that when they did make note of gender, the Radchaai cared more about gender identity than reproductive organs.
Breq states towards the beginning of the book that she is aware Seivarden was male. I figure this is because Seivarden once served on Justice of Toren, and her constant connection to him gave her ample time to learn about Seivarden and understand what his particular gender identity was. I imagine she knew the gender for most the officers she regularly dealt with, even if it didn't matter to her. It's people she doesn't know that she can't identify, because she doesn't see outward appearances as being particularly relevant.
Gina wrote: "To me, that implied that when they did make note of gender, the Radchaai cared more about gender identity than reproductive organs. "I'm not sure that is explicitly stated or implied - rather "not always" implies "most of the time" there is harmony between gender identity and reproductive organs - otherwise why mention "seeing under clothes" at all?
Also the Radchaai are a conglomerate of annexed human planets - I'm not sure Leckie has given a mechanism for why there would be a single uniform Radchaai culture where everyone treats gender fluidly. Just imagine what it would take, for example, to get all Americans to conform to a single uniform culture. And then the problem compounds as you add other countries and then from there other planets with their various continents and people groups.
I suppose a process of reeducation through implants might make a difference - but then that idea falls apart when even Anaander can't keep a single uniform system of thought within himself.
But I don't think the book labours the Radchaai gender identity heavily beyond the AI's difficulty and Radchaai language. Perhaps Leckie intends to in later books?
One of the features of the Roman Empire is that a couple of generations after being conquered many of the client states' cultures were functionally indistinguishable from Roman.There's some text in the book that backs this up with Skiaat explaining to Awn:
“You know how annexations work. I mean, yes, they work by sheer, undeniable force, but after. After the executions and the transportations and once all the last bits of idiots who think they can fight back are cleaned up. Once all that’s done, we fit whoever’s left into Radchaai society—they form up into houses, and take clientage, and in a generation or two they’re as Radchaai as anybody. And mostly that happens because we go to the top of the local hierarchy—there pretty much always is one—and offer them all sorts of benefits in exchange for behaving like citizens, offer them clientage contracts, which allows them to offer contracts to whoever is below them, and before you know it the whole local setup is tied into Radchaai society, with minimal disruption.”
That's pretty much how the Romans did it too.
I don't know if this is in the physical books, but the ebook has an interview with Leckie at the back where she addresses this a bit: “You have shown us elements of Radch culture in great detail, and reading Ancillary Justice, one gets the sense that you know far more about this civilization than appears in the novel. Can you tell us a little about what inspired the Radch?
I’m not sure I could say truthfully that any particular real-world example inspired the Radch. It was built piece by piece as time went by. That said, some of those pieces did come from the real world. I took a number of things from the Romans—though their theology isn’t particularly Roman, the Radchaai attitude toward religion is fairly similar, particularly the way the gods of conquered peoples can be integrated into an already-familiar pantheon. And the careful attention to omens and divination—though the Radchaai logic behind that is quite different.
The Romans have provided a lot of writers with a model for various interstellar empires, of course, and no wonder. The Roman Empire is a really good example of a large empire that, in one form or another, functioned for quite a long time over a very large area. And over that time, there was all sorts of exciting drama—civil wars “so long ago that any educated Westerner learned Greek and Latin as a matter of course, and read Virgil and Ovid and Cicero and Caesar and a host of other writers as part of that education.
But I didn’t want my future—however fanciful it was—to be entirely European. The Radchaai aren’t meant to be Romans in Space.”
Lindsay wrote: "One of the features of the Roman Empire is that a couple of generations after being conquered many of the client states' cultures were functionally indistinguishable from Roman."I think Roman culture actually looked up to and incorporated a lot of Greek culture. So provinces that were largely Hellenistic may have been indistinguishable from other Hellenistic cultures - but generally speaking, though the elites in a new Roman province may have adopted Roman culture, that didn't extinguish the cults and traditions and religions among the grass roots population - so while Roman culture may have permeated a new province, Rome was still very much multi-cultural at the grass roots level at least. I think the Romans would have like it to work as it did for the Radchaai in this book - but it didn't happen that way. The further a province got from Rome, the harder it was to impose Roman culture on the populace to the exclusion of that provinces original culture.
David Sven wrote: "LI think Roman culture actually looked up to and incorporated a lot of Greek culture. So provinces that were largely Hellenistic may have been indistinguishable from other Hellenistic cultures."This is true: the formerly Hellenistic provinces, i.e. the Eastern Empire, maintained a strong Hellenistic culture throughout the existence of the Roman Empire and even into the Byzantine era. This Latin West/Greek East divide within the empire anticipated the East-West Schism of Christianity in 1053.
It's also likely that "Romanization" had a stronger affect on urban dwellers and the ruling and intellectual classes (i.e., the people who actually wrote the histories) than on the lower classes of society. For an example from late antiquity, "pagan" comes from "rustic" or "rural", and was used starting in the 4th century to label those mostly-rural subjects of the empire who still held to older polytheistic beliefs long after most of the elites and city-dwellers of the empire had converted to Christianity.
In this book, does Breq ever really deal with the lower classes of the Radch? Those who aren't directly serving the aristocracy or the military? We basically see Nilt, which isn't Radch-space, and Ors, which is in the middle of annexation and thus cultural assimilation hasn't even happened yet. Every other location in the book is either a military vessel or an administrative centre of the Radch. So it's possible the lower classes haven't completely assimilated to Radch-culture, but the book isn't concerned with them.
On the other hand, the Radch may have tools at their disposal making assimilation easier.
Alright, one last religion comment. I've finished the novel, and I think my favorite nuanced-language moment comes towards the end (this contains MINOR SPOILERS for those who haven't read the book and MAYBE SOME SLIGHTLY LESS MINOR IMPLICATIONS OF SPOILERS for those who are like a chapter away from the climax of the novel)"'Five hundred years of alien infiltration and corruption.'The word she used was a close cousin of the one [CHARACTER REMOVED] had used to describe my pollution of temple offerings."
Which connects Breq and her very human experiences to the "Social Justice Equality Now 99% of the Radch Wooooo" stuff.
Finished the book, and also read the post from the author on the pronoun issue Rob provided upstream.I'm still parsing this issue. Not because I have a problem with the use of 'she' as a gender neutral pronoun; it felt odd, but I got used to it, and I like having my brain challenged by bright and thoughtful authors.
The thing is, after reading the writer's post, I got the feeling that this issue has become a much larger part of the debate as regards the work itself than Ms. Leckie had either anticipated or planned for; at least, originally.
But then, that's most likely a good thing. I believe there are levels inside the brains of all storytellers where things get chewed over and made part of the narrative sans deliberate intention on the part of the author. The pronoun issue may be consuming a larger part of the debate over the story than the author consciously intended, but that might be the key word: consciously.
Walter wrote: "The thing is, after reading the writer's post, I got the feeling that this issue has become a much larger part of the debate as regards the work itself than Ms. Leckie had either anticipated or planned for; at least, originally."In this book gender doesn't matter. It does not seem to affect interpersonal relationships, it only comes up a couple of times in dialogue and it doesn't affect the plot in any way. With most of the book set in the Radchaai culture where gender appears to be a private thing only, it seems sensible that gender would have nothing to do with the story.
But we are reading this from the view point of a highly gendered culture and the author has chosen a generic pronoun which is diametrically opposite our usual generic pronoun. Hijinks ensue.
From our view point gender is fundamental to character. When we're reading this book through the lens of our culture we can't help trying to assign a gender to each character.
So we get results like one person on this forum saying that all of Justice of Toren's ancillaries are female, or others saying that the misgendering that Breq does is because she's an AI (because no human would ever not care about gender) even though she explicitly states in the text that all Radchaai have this problem and the Radchaai people themselves look androgynous. Take this passage:
I saw them all, suddenly, for just a moment, through non-Radchaai eyes, an eddying crowd of unnervingly ambiguously gendered people. I saw all the features that would mark gender for non-Radchaai—never, to my annoyance and inconvenience, the same way in each place. Short hair or long, worn unbound (trailing down a back, or in a thick, curled nimbus) or bound (braided, pinned, tied). Thick-bodied or thin-, faces delicate-featured or coarse-, with cosmetics or none. A profusion of colors that would have been gender-marked in other places. All of this matched randomly with bodies curving at breast and hip or not, bodies that one moment moved in ways various non-Radchaai would call feminine, the next moment masculine. Twenty years of habit overtook me, and for an instant I despaired of choosing the right pronouns, the right terms of address. But I didn’t need to do that here. I could drop that worry, a small but annoying weight I had carried all this time. I was home.
So we have a situation where gender hardly matters in the book, but because of who the reader is, it's absolutely central to the reading experience.
It's brilliant and clever. Going forward I think I'd buy Ms Leckie's shopping list if she published it.
Lindsay wrote: " even though she explicitly states in the text that all Radchaai have this problem and the Radchaai people themselves look androgynous. "I'm not sure it is explicitly stated that non ancillary Radchaai misgendering is more than an issue of cross cultural communication. I'm not arguing that the Radchaai aren't androgynous in dress and language and hairstyle etc. The passage you quote explains well how a non Radchaai would view the Radchaai on a first encounter - and yes, I can see they would be confused being in an environment where there are no gender cues they are familiar with - but that doesn't really explain why Radchaai themselves would be confused on who is what gender.
Anyway - the real fun for me was in the AI and ancillaries and their multi POVs. The play on gender was fun too and it's fun exploring in a group conversation the limits of what you can do in that regard as far as world building goes. For example, the use of "She" as a proxy for the Radchaai nongender pronoun is interesting - but that's not the only anomaly you run into. Just look at the passage you quoted. Breq is distinguishing between masculine and feminine movement - something she isn't really supposed to understand - but how else do you get that information across to the reader? How does an ancillary put herself in the shoes of a non-Radchaai(ignoring that she herself is non-Radchaai) and reliably bring their POV across?
I agree with you - Hijinks ensue.
Walter wrote: "The thing is, after reading the writer's post, I got the feeling that this issue has become a much larger part of the debate as regards the work itself than Ms. Leckie had either anticipated or planned for; at least, originally."I don't think she intended it to become the focus it has for readers. Which explains why there are certain gaps in the world building if you try and follow the rabbit too far down the gender rabbit hole. For example, she doesn't explain how or why a society with two genders would be androgynous. Or how all the cultures being absorbed are converted to being androgynous cultures.
David Sven wrote: "Walter wrote: "The thing is, after reading the writer's post, I got the feeling that this issue has become a much larger part of the debate as regards the work itself than Ms. Leckie had either ant..."I don't see why there would be a reason to explain those things in this book. The story is told through Breq, and she wouldn't think about those things. As far as I remember she only explains thing that are relevant to her current situation and goal. We really don't know anything about the origin of the Radch and their culture.
KevinB wrote: "I don't see why there would be a reason to explain those things in this book. The story is told through Breq, and she wouldn't think about those things. "I agree with that. The story doesn't need to explain those things - and it is actually fun to speculate on what is not explained and examine the internal consistency of those speculations.
David Sven wrote: "but that doesn't really explain why Radchaai themselves would be confused on who is what gender"So according to the passage above there are no visual cues in Radchaai culture that distinguish between male and female. And there are clearly no language-based differences.
So how would a Radchaai be able to distinguish?
Why would a Radchaai need or want to distinguish?
Lindsay wrote: "So according to the passage above there are no visual cues in Radchaai culture that distinguish between male and female."I don't think it says there are no visual cues. I'm not sure that it mentions anywhere that Radchaai change there physiology. And while non Radchaai might have problems because they are used to seeing men and women with different gendered clothes and hairstyles and cosmetics, if they spent enough time among Radchaai they would figure it out - and the Radchaai are already used to not identifying gender by clothes or hairstyle so they should be even better at identifying gender than non-Radchaai - especially if they find themselves in a non-Radchaai environment.
Having said all that - it may very well be that your interpretation of what Leckie is trying to get across is right - but if that's the case it's a little ambiguous.
The problem I would have in that case is that the impression given is that Radchaai are human like us/me - ie genetically the same - and I simply can't imagine myself being so impaired or being so unaware of self that I couldn't generally distinguish a gender different to my own self - even in an androgynous culture. If she was talking about humans that have undergone a significant amount of genetic engineering or evolution so that the sexes have a uniform physiology - that I could imagine. But as the story currently stands there is no mechanism for why Radchaai would be incapable of distinguishing gender - which isn't a problem for me because I don't think it is explicitly stated that non ancillary Radchaai are incapable of determining gender -
Which makes me wonder as an aside - wouldn't a culture consisting of two sexes physically have to be extremely focused on gender to create an androgynous culture? I would imagine that care and effort as well as indoctrination would have to be taken not to be too male or too female - thus focusing more on gender than a gendered society?
Anyway - it's fun thinking about all this stuff and how it all works.
Yeah, I agree. I think it's going to be a shoo-in for the Tiptree Award this year because of it.
I never considered that the total lack of gender really could only originally result from a massive focus on "we have no gender!" In the culture. That seems pretty fitting for this novel's universe.Though maybe that's just my 21st brain thinking. Maybe the concept of gender could be slowly eliminated from society if everyone over several millennia adopted third wave feminist thinking w/r/t gender and medical technology had eliminated pregnancy as a thing? But that seems less fitting a history for the Radch.
The book seems to continually address the importance of nuance in language, the effects that language has upon culture, the effects further that it has on individual characters, and the problems that of translation.
Breq is not only constantly having to worry about what genders to apply to people, she's also constantly thinking about the formality of the language required, explaining nuances in a language that don't exist in another (like the idea that "unsteady" implies a lack of fitness for military service, that "religious songs" and "fun songs" would be two distinct things, or "coincidence" implies significance or destiny), noting that jokes work or don't work in one language, and often hilariously admonishing Awn " language Lieutenant!" Awn herself has an accent that slips or becomes too stiff and formal when confronted with varying situations. The gender discussion isn't preachy here, because it's just one example of this bigger thing.
I'm only a third through, but I think the book might have a couple of interesting points about language in general and the problems that cultures like the Radchai have.
Now, a lot of people seem to look at Breq's use of "she" as a very positive thing, in that it makes evident an arbitrariness in cultural gender and how it is expressed/indicated. I think however it might not be so positive. It seems that an inability to distinguish nuance in culture is a very problematic vice in Radchai culture. Think of the scenes where Awn is approached by Orsians nervous about class tensions, and when Awn visits the Upper City for a stuffy dinner with some stuck up rich folk. Awn tries to put forward the official notion that, post-annexation, "we're all Radchai," which could be translated as well as "we're all citizens" or "we're all civilized." The inability to deal with the reality that conquered citizens, conquered aristocrats, the conquering Radchai, and even those that rule the Radchai, are all varying degrees of "citizen" and "civilized" leads to problems shortly thereafter.
And then there's this passage about the Presger: "The Presger didn't care if a species was sentient or not, conscious or not, intelligent or not. The word they used-- or the concept, at any rate, as I understood they didn't speak in words-- was usually translated as significance. And only the Presger were significant."
Anyway. The inability to distinguish between genders in other cultures seems to me very much related to not distinguishing between Orsians and Tanmind, between natural citizens and conquered citizens, etc, and seems not too far away from the Presger's own mindset.
The other thing I'm getting from the book is kind of in the opposite direction.
So, if you've spent a lot of time on the progressive areas of tumblr, you know that "one's pronouns" are a big deal in the trans* community. Even moreso than whatever gender(s) people actually are, the pronouns they desire you to use seem to be a *major* part of their public identity. It's on their bios, it's often noted when they speak, and it's so important that the language of PTSD sufferers ("triggering") is sometimes used to describe the effect that using the wrong pronouns has on someone. (I realize that this behavior is on the more extreme end of the spectrum, but I feel that what that reaction of a few reveals about attitudes concerning how important pronouns are is pretty valid regardless)
I think that while Ancillary Justice might be pointing out how language can be oppressive, it's also saying that this kind of obsession with specific words is also problematic.
Breq is *constantly* misgendering everyone, which, again, may reveal really problematic cultural attitude, but in the end each individual act of misgendering is simply a social faux pas. She's rude, but not oppressive. And the reader, having access to her thoughts, sees that she really does want to be polite and get it right, but can't, and most importantly, that she does not think her mistakes in this area are a big deal (and since she's a fairly sympathetic narrator, the reader would probably tend to agree). This helps balance what I think Ancillary Justice might be trying to say about language- language can indeed be oppressive, and it does form culture, but the focus should not be on individuals and their mistakes, nor on specific words rather than wider attitudes.
It all reminds me a lot of David Foster Wallace's essay on the Dictionary Wars, "Authority and American Usage" and his discussion of political correctness (which you can find by googling for a pdf of the title on some university websites, or in the Consider the Lobster collection of essays)
ANYWAY that was long, and rambly, and I'm not sure if I got my (very vague) points clearly across, and I possibly offended someone since gender issues are very sensitive topics (for which I'm really sorry!), and yeah. Really loving the book, especially since most scifi or fantasy that brings up language is more often "ahhh, this character said lasheeeeeki, but actually should have used the second declension lashfooooooki, look at me and how my great worldbuilding includes languages just like Tolkien" rather than something really thoughtful that uses languages in a way that also feels a lot like real life.