Book Review: The Tomoe Gozen Trilogy, by Jessica Amanda Salmonson

[inverarity]

Comments

[fpb]

Just a small remark. Ms.Salmonson did not actually have to go as far as Japan and a historically dubious figure to find female warrior heroes. Marzia degli Ordelaffi, Joan of Arc, Queen Tamar of Georgia and Queen Isabel of Castile (who commanded the long and bitter war for Grenada, although she does not seem to have fought in person) were indubitably real persons, and were only the best known of a considerable number of fighting women of the period. Italy was particularly rich in them. As with many other things, the so-called Protestant Reformation was a disaster in this field as well: one of Luther's own goals was to get the girls "back" into the kitchen, to which Western civilization had never previously confined them.

[inverarity]

I imagine Salmonson wrote about Tomoe Gozen because she was interested in Tomoe Gozen, not because she'd never heard of any other women warriors.

[fpb]

I imagine that a 1970s feminist would sooner have been skinned alive than admit anything good about Western, let alone medieval, civilization.

[inverarity]

Oh, FFS.

[fpb]

That is not an argument. And as I was around at the time and saw that kind of mind at close quarters, you can't tell me that I am being ignorant. I grew up in that kind of atmosphere; it was a natural form of mind to go look for any kind of non-Western culture - preferably distant and tribal, but Japan would do at a pinch - for all the wonderful values and grand equalities that were so obviously missing in ours. History and anthropology were (and are) regularly reduced to mining areas for misunderstood and misrepresented factoids. Once again, you act disgusted and astonished because someone has a viewpoint you haven't met before. And the awful thing is that in both natural and cultivated intellectual capacity you stand head and shoulders above most of us, but still you simply cannot cope with anything really approaching diversity. You dismiss it with angry contempt. I don't have much to say in favour of American conservatives and libertarians, but I must say that what I see of the narrow-mindedness and deliberate, self-

Oh, fpb is making wank out of nothing, it must be a day ending in 'y'

[inverarity]

What I react to with angry contempt is your ridiculous assumptions

Re: Oh, fpb is making wank out of nothing, it must be a day ending in 'y'

[fpb]

I am a historian. The first thing I do with people and things I don't know is look them up. The first thing I found out about Ms.Salmonson is that she was a seventies feminist. It is evident even in her brief wiki entry, with her date of birth, activity, and above all the very telling list of sites she maintains. And therefore your "she might... she might.." and so on is simply out of court. And I am ASTONISHED that you should make the lack of information about a person - because your "she might, or she might", only amounts to this: that you don't know whether she does or not - to be an argument, when the information may be got in about one minute flat.

Re: Oh, fpb is making wank out of nothing, it must be a day ending in 'y'

[inverarity]

So, she's a seventies feminist, and therefore she hates Western civilization, and that's why she wrote about Tomoe Gozen instead of Joan of Arc. Okay.

and above all the very telling list of sites she maintains

Salmonson's website, Violet Books, is a "domain for fans & collectors of literary ghost stories, Victorian science fiction." Salmonson is a frequent contributor to online news groups, often critiquing or criticizing others posts and creative works. She also maintains an extensive film blog [1] in which she reviews films of all kinds, art films to exploitation film, with coverage in particular of horror films, Japanese cinema, and Chinese cinema. Her third website is [2], a temperate gardening site on the web.

Yeah, that's telling all right. Oozing with hatred of Western civilization.

Re: Oh, fpb is making wank out of nothing, it must be a day ending in 'y'

[fpb]

First: yes, it is telling. The aggressively "alternative" kind of cinema she patronizes - art movies, exploitation movies, Chinese and Japanese films, etc - are absolutely typical of that particular kind of time and age. Even the gardening website is. I will say that these are creative and constructive developments in that kind of seventies mentality, but you seem unaware that all the little revolutionary boys and girls of 1974 or so used to meet in little amateur film clubs investigating obscure or ancient works. It was one of the most culturally enriching ways of sticking it to The Man - The Man, at the time, being Hollywood and mainstream TV. As for gardening, do you have any idea how many hippies and revolutionaries chose to go "back to nature" that way? It is not the single things that talk to me of a whole bygone world, it is the combination.

Incidentally, you haven't exactly proved your own contention that we cannot know where Ms.Salmonson comes from.

NEW RULE

[inverarity]

Holy fuck you are being ridiculous. I almost want to put this on fandom_wank myself.

(I'm not going to, but ye gads. "Gardening + Asian Cinema: The Western Civilization-Hating Feminist Agenda!")

Also, new rule: when you reply to one of my posts (or any other person's post on my LJ), make it one reply per post. If immediately upon posting your thoughts on yaoi why everyone who isn't you is wrong, you realize you have a few addenda with which to expand on that theme, edit your original post, or wait for a reply, do not keep writing second and third replies to the same post just because your fingers move faster than your brain.

Your habit of creating multiple long threads like MIRVs every time you get rolling actually annoys me more than your insults do.

Re: NEW RULE

[fpb]

I should apologize because I have something to say? Curious attitude, that. Of course it may make it more demanding to find something to answer, but frankly, I don't see where the offence is - or, indeed, where the reqwuirement is that, having been attacked as soon as I opened my mouth, I should make life easy for you. If I have something on my mind, I will say it. If it's offensive, I will apologize, but frankly, I can't see what is offensive here.

Re: NEW RULE

[fpb]

By the way, there is something very insidicous about the way this "new rule" of yours, which I reject utterly, has kept you from taking in all that I have said in favour of Ms.Salmonson or about other marginal things. What is all too evident is that you insist on pidgeonholing me in some sort of ranting anti-anti-woman's-lib cage which you have set up, and on treating with ridicule rather than with argument anything I may say about a period on which you don't seem at all well informed. So I will answer anything I see fit to answer, and if you don't like it, tough. Contrary to your own self-image, you really are not leaving any impression of being able to cope with really unexpected views other than with hostile ridicule.

Re: NEW RULE

[inverarity]

I've taken in every single thing you've said on this thread. I haven't responded to every single thing you've said with a point-by-point rebuttal (or by responding individually to each one of your posts) because that's what internet dorks waving their epeens do. Unlike you, I don't feel like I've "lost" the argument if I don't get the last word, and frankly, you haven't earned a serious response.

About the rule, though, I'm serious. Note that I have not told you you can't answer anything you see fit to answer. I haven't even told you to stop being insulting. (I would if I thought you could.) But one reply per post, period. That's not stifling you or censoring you or trying to constrain what you respond to, it's requiring that you show me a bare minimum level of courtesy in that I don't like have three or ten different threads going at once when I'm in the middle of an fpb-storm

Re: NEW RULE

[fpb]

I already told you that I utterly reject your rule. Nohting more needs to be said. You are free to do anything with your LJ, but telling me how to think - which is quite literally what this amounts to - is stupid. You perceive yourself as being insulted when I criticize certain patterns of behaviour: this time I have said in so many words that something you propose to do is stupid. Notice the difference.

Re: NEW RULE

[inverarity]

Calling people ignorant is not criticizing patterns of behavior, and telling you not to post multiple responses to the same post when you could just as well put them all in one post is not telling you how to think.

Re: NEW RULE

[fpb]

If I have successive ideas on the same subject, I am not going to wait till I can issue a pamphlet on the matter. Yes, you are telling me how I should think; how I should react, how I should organize my thought, and whether I should force them into one container whether they belong or not. That is telling me how to think (I hope you noticed that I did not charge you with telling me what to think). Calling people ignorant is not an insult if they turn out to be ignorant, especially in a specific field; and ridiculing my own memories of my own teen years and the way Ms.Salmonson's main concerns absolutely brought back the very feel and sense of them does not suggest to me that you know a whole lot about that period - for instance.