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Student Publishes Extensive Statistics On the Population of Middle-Earth
First time accepted submitter dsjodin writes "There are only 19% females in Tolkien's works and the life expectancy of a Hobbit is 96.24 years. In January 2012 chemical engineering student Emil Johansson published a website with the hope for it to become a complete Middle-Earth genealogy. Now, ten months later, he has published some interesting numbers derived from the database of 923 characters. The site features a set of unique graphs helping us understand the world Tolkien described. Perhaps the most interesting ones are showing the decrease of the longevity of Men and the change in population of Middle-Earth throughout history. The latter was also recently published in the September edition of Wired Magazine."
Flores man is thought to have become small due to island dwarfism. But what sort of environment would select for the traits ascribed to Tolkien's hobbits and especially the apparent population explosion starting around the 26th century T.A. (10th century S.R.) as seen here?
At the risk of sounding like a misogynist... is the lack of women really a bad thing in and of itself? It's certainly quite "realistic" (as much as a fantasy setting can be): in medieval cultures, women weren't adventurers or warriors, and LOTR is focused almost exclusively on adventure and fighting. And for good reason: it's a simple biological fact (source, warning that the picture at the top is full frontal male/female nudity, so probably NSFW) that men have a greater upper body strength than women, on average, and when wielding 50+ pound swords and 100+ pound draw weights on bows, upper body strength is kinda important (which is not to say women could not be fighters and archers, but the average woman would be worse at it than the average man: obviously, some women are far stronger than most men).
There is also the fact that LOTR isn't concerned with gender inequality: it's simply not one of the themes of the book, so if you expect it to deal with it, you will obviously be disappointed. I'd say that isn't even the point of the genre, as a whole. It's like expecting sci-fi to explore what it's like to be a single person living in New York city: it's kind of missing the point. Gender equality is an issue in our day-to-day world. Writing fantasy to explore the issue, while possible, is a bit underwhelming. The point of fantasy is it can explore grand themes of the struggle between good and evil and power/corruption in a way no book set in everday life ever could. OTOH, a book set in everday life can explore the issues of gender inequality in a way that fantasy can't, because fantasy is by definition disconnected from the real world, so exploring real-world issues using fantasy will create some issues in the translation.
Mind you, I'm not saying you should write a book to specifically exclude women or paint them in a bad light, that would be misogynistic. But simply ignoring the issue isn't a problem, IMO, if you don't mean to be dealing with it.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
I think it's more nearly the truth that Tolkien (like many men of his class and generation) was quite alienated from women. I don't think you'd exactly call him a misoynist - although many of his attitudes look very misoynistic to modern eyes - but he had no sympathetic ability to understand what it was to be a woman, not to write from a woman's view point. His understanding of women is pretty much as sexless and passive creatures. The outstanding exceptions to passivity are Eowyn and perhaps Luthien, but Eowyn at least is clearly unable to express the sexuality of her feeling for Aragorn[1], and is apparently virgin until her marriage to Faramir. I don't remember the Luthien narrative in detail, but my memory of it is that he pursues her, not the other way around; so again there's little evidence of any erotic feeling on her part. The only couple in the whole damned epic (I include the Silmarillion and the Hobbit) to appear to have anything approaching what we'd describe as a normal healthy sex-life are Sam and Rosie Gamgee, and that happens in a few pages at the very end of the text.
I have very conflicted feelings about Tolkien, and this is one of the issues. In the end he's telling a very reactionary story, a story of primogeniture, divine right, and male supremacy. A story, undoubtedly, influenced both by his Catholicism and his experience of the Great War. But seriously, do you see Arwen as good in the sack? Do images of Galadriel have you writhing in the night? No, didn't think so. Me neither. And, actually, I think the story would be stronger if they did.
Perhaps the reason that the population of Middle Earth is so small and doesn't grow in anything like a natural way is that Middle Earth women just don't like sex very much? Or perhaps Middle Earth men just aren't very good at it?
[1] I'm not suggesting that Eowyn 'ought' to have made an unsubtle pass at Aragorn; there are plenty of societies in which young women are very inhibited from doing that, although it's a little surprising in the robust horse-nomad society of the Rohirrim: but there are plenty of subtle ways in which Eowyn could have made a pass at him, and she just doesn't. She mopes about waiting for him to make a pass, and then when he doesn't goes all fey and suicidal.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
A lot of classical fantasy had a dearth of women as characters
With childhood death rates around 80% any culture that doesn't do the barefoot pregnant and in the kitchen thing is literally going to disappear in at most a couple generations. As the Bechdel wiki page contains "A work may fail the test for reasons unrelated to gender bias, such as because its setting works against the inclusion of women"
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I first thought bad female characterization was a problem with amateur writers such as myself, but even very good professional writers sometimes have issues with it. This can come up even if the writer is not bigoted, or trying not to be.
As a male, I worry about my ability to write female characters. I want to try, but I don’t want to screw up by doing it badly. I don’t want to make well-meaning mistakes. I want to include it without forcing it in. I can and should have good female characters without covering female-specific issues, but I want to try writing that too. I’m not actively trying to fail Bechdel, but I’m not actively trying to pass it either.
Perhaps understanding the group better helps write about them well, whichever comes first.
One woman advised me to make them well-written characters in general and not to overplay stereotypes.
Other differences (sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, social class, et cetera) present similar challenges. Although it’s not as much of a social issue, writers from a nondominant group might have trouble writing characters from the dominant group.
This could be a subset of “write what you know”. Also, people are often inspired by works similar to them.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.