Babs Gori dress up in men's clothes? I'm hereby extremely upset! Well, OK, I'm not actually in the slightest, but I do question the mythic logic of this. BGers aren't in any sense adopting male behaviour patterns, IMO, they're manifesting the dark side of the female. Perhaps to steal from Pagan Shore Érainn, they have a 'Femininity' type power (which would imply having the attire to use it).
As David D. and I were saying, though, being a warrior isn't really a 'core' male activity, cultural stereotyping aside. Being a mother decidedly is a female one. So Vinga is hardly as 'convention violating' as Nandan, by a distance, if one chooses to look at it that way.
Is there 'discomfort' on the list about Nandan? Perhaps there is, but it's a dangerous path to look into the recesses of people's psyche and confidently say so. I think one might as well ascribe them simply to a different mythic and aesthetic 'take' on the world (stirred in with a certain amount of schoolboy tittering, perhaps), and indeed somewhat better so, for the sake of the Pax Digestica.
> However, having said that, this whole debate looks on the verge of
> becoming a flame war.
Let's hope not. I fully understand this is an issue with very loaded RWish 'carryover' for people, but the discussion so far has been largely to the point, and is unearthing valid, open questions about the Nandan role, at least for my money.
Cheers,
Alex.
End of The Glorantha Digest V8 #15
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