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Post by scint on Dec 21, 2018 22:19:13 GMT -5
Do you guys think that warrior names should/are genderized? Some examples I've seen are:
Flint- > Tom prefix -tooth > Tom suffix Dawn- > She-cat prefix -flower > She-cat suffix So basically names like Flinttooth and Dawnflower would be considered a tom name and she-cat name respectively.
Personally I really hate genderized naming and the idea of it but I was curious to see what you guys think. Do you like it? And do you use it when creating Warriors OCs at all (if you make them of course)?
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Post by halogen on Dec 21, 2018 22:44:41 GMT -5
It's stupid. Why should we impose our ideas of gender stereotypes (like flowers being feminine) on cats? I hate when authors writing fictional societies give them exactly the same stereotypes as our society has (like how human names based on flowers or the name Dawn are always for girls). It's like the stereotypes are so ingrained they think it is a constant for all societies forever no matter how alien (and not even human) they are. I doubt the Erins are even realizing they are doing it.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 21, 2018 22:54:57 GMT -5
Names are definitely gendered or at least when I hear certain names without knowing the gender it might make me automatically think Tom/she-cat and I don't mind it at all, doesn't mean you/they can't switch it up a little if that even makes any sense
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Post by Deleted on Dec 21, 2018 23:23:10 GMT -5
They shouldn't be, but they definitely are in some cases. Especially with -flower, most people usually associate that suffix with queens even though, at the time of the warrior naming ceremony, the leader really has no way of knowing if that cat will be in the nursery a lot unless she's specifically expressed a desire for a lot of kits/to be a permanent queen, etc.
But for some of these names, it really makes no sense for them to be gendered. Why is Dawn feminine? It's a time of day. Dusk isn't gendered, but for some reason Dawn is? I also don't see why -tooth is masculine. All cats have teeth, lol. Same with -claw, -fang, etc. It actually really annoys me that there's so few females with the suffix -claw compared to the amount of males.
I feel like people only associate certain names with male/female because a notable cat has had that name. For example, Bracken is probably seen as masculine because Brackenfur has had that name, and Fern is seen as feminine because of Ferncloud, Fern Leaf, etc. But they're literally just plants. In fact, bracken is literally just another type of fern. But if you take a plant that hasn't been used yet in-series, like Root, there's no gender association there. Rootpaw could be a male or a female, but at the end of the next arc, if we have a male Rootstripe, people will start seeing that name as masculine.
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Post by Hawkflower on Dec 22, 2018 9:08:30 GMT -5
It makes sense that Warrior names are gendered since we live in a gendered society. I find it easier to remember a cats gender if their name leans towards a feminine or masculine “meaning”, especially if they’re a background character and it’s hard to remember that they even exist in the first place.
It’s the society that the Erins and the editors created, and they chose to make it that way. If we bring gender into this, females are naturally more more caring, nurturing, etc, than males, among many other examples of female and male traits. It’s our natural instinct. So if a name is used to describe how one warrior acts, they were most likely named because the Erins/editors thought it was a good fit for that cat.
I’m also not saying that females and males are vastly different. In the case of a female having a claw prefix, she must have been seen as more masculine to have that name.
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Post by Brindlefern on Dec 22, 2018 12:12:50 GMT -5
They shouldn't be and I HATE when people try to strictly gender prefixes/suffixes. Even the person that started the traditional name trend stated that the names shouldn't be gendered and to do whatever you want/have fun with them. Stuff like the -flower suffix has a feminine UNDERTONE and can have folks assuming yes (Like how people thought Fernsong was a female when he was released for instance), but that doesn't mean it should be a female-only suffix.
When I asked for suggestions for feminine prefixes/suffixes on tumblr to use for a future tomcat character of mine, I got someone telling me people freaked the hell out over them having a tomcat with the Dawn- prefix for it being feminine-sounding and just... ffs, it's just a NAME. Guys having feminine names isn't new, same for vice-versa, people shouldn't get all serious about this sorta thing.
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Post by halogen on Dec 22, 2018 12:30:37 GMT -5
It makes sense that Warrior names are gendered since we live in a gendered society. I find it easier to remember a cats gender if their name leans towards a feminine or masculine “meaning”, especially if they’re a background character and it’s hard to remember that they even exist in the first place. It’s the society that the Erins and the editors created, and they chose to make it that way. If we bring gender into this, females are naturally more more caring, nurturing, etc, than males, among many other examples of female and male traits. It’s our natural instinct. So if a name is used to describe how one warrior acts, they were most likely named because the Erins/editors thought it was a good fit for that cat. I’m also not saying that females and males are vastly different. In the case of a female having a claw prefix, she must have been seen as more masculine to have that name. Yes, we live in a gendered society, but why does this completely different and alien (at least in theory, the Erins don't seem to be good at really getting in a societally alien mindset) society have to have exactly the same gender stereotypes as ours, even though they aren't even human! A good author is perfectly capable of thinking about how the world they are writing would actually work without resulting to stereotypes from their own, they are not forced to have these stereotypes because "it's our natural instinct". Yes, the Erins chose to make the society that way but it's pretty uncreative and implausible to make that society line up with our own that way. And if the leaders really aren't stereotyping and just judging by the cats' actual traits, and yet only one or two female cats ever in the thousands of Clan cats we've seen have been masculine enough to get a "claw" name, then female and male warrior cats really would be vastly different, which we don't see in the actual series (it is not the case that there are barely any female cats who like to fight, yet barely any get claw names?)
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Post by Hawkflower on Dec 22, 2018 14:49:24 GMT -5
It makes sense that Warrior names are gendered since we live in a gendered society. I find it easier to remember a cats gender if their name leans towards a feminine or masculine “meaning”, especially if they’re a background character and it’s hard to remember that they even exist in the first place. It’s the society that the Erins and the editors created, and they chose to make it that way. If we bring gender into this, females are naturally more more caring, nurturing, etc, than males, among many other examples of female and male traits. It’s our natural instinct. So if a name is used to describe how one warrior acts, they were most likely named because the Erins/editors thought it was a good fit for that cat. I’m also not saying that females and males are vastly different. In the case of a female having a claw prefix, she must have been seen as more masculine to have that name. Yes, we live in a gendered society, but why does this completely different and alien (at least in theory, the Erins don't seem to be good at really getting in a societally alien mindset) society have to have exactly the same gender stereotypes as ours, even though they aren't even human! A good author is perfectly capable of thinking about how the world they are writing would actually work without resulting to stereotypes from their own, they are not forced to have these stereotypes because "it's our natural instinct". Yes, the Erins chose to make the society that way but it's pretty uncreative and implausible to make that society line up with our own that way. And if the leaders really aren't stereotyping and just judging by the cats' actual traits, and yet only one or two female cats ever in the thousands of Clan cats we've seen have been masculine enough to get a "claw" name, then female and male warrior cats really would be vastly different, which we don't see in the actual series (it is not the case that there are barely any female cats who like to fight, yet barely any get claw names?) I agree with you about the Erins. Good authors can create highly complex worlds, but in the case of Warriors, they do take on very human like qualities.
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Post by ᏞᎪᎠᎽ Ꮎf fᎪᏁᎠᎾms ミ☆ on Dec 22, 2018 15:00:58 GMT -5
i want to go through the list on the wiki and put what i think the stereotypes are for each prefix, but i realized, looking at the list, that it all comes down to association. flower names are girl names in real life (Daisy, Rose, Lily, etc.) that's why it'll always be feminine to us. even character association. if there's only one or a few characters named a certain prefix, you will associate the name with the character, even with their gender. But it's nice to see names like Bramble be used for both, such as Brambleclaw and Brambleberry.
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Post by Kibui on Dec 22, 2018 15:56:34 GMT -5
supposedly there's only ever been one female character with the suffix "-claw", a background character that only ever showed up in the allegiances they're pretty blatant in the way that most of the ugly or tough prefixes/suffixes go to the toms while the delicate ones go to the mollies, though there have been a couple exceptions here and there. considering how they're all literally cats living out the same war-torn lives, i don't really get where this would come from in their universe There are currently six she-cats with -claw as suffix (Ebonyclaw, Plumclaw, Frostclaw, Brindleclaw, Reedclaw and Willowclaw) with only one of them being an allegiances-only cat (Willowclaw) ---- I personally never thought the names were strictly genderized - especially not now with toms like Fernsong and Larksong. The only common pre/suffixes used solely on she-cats so far are dawn (like op mentioned), petal and flower but apart from that I can't really think of any other often used pre/suffixes that are strictly linked to the one or the other gender. I would say I'm neutral on this. I'm pretty sure I've used more "tough" sounding names for a few of my male characters and a few "gentle" sounding ones for she-cats in the past myself and I don't mind it if it's used in the books as well - as long as they don't overdo it (like, say, giving all those typical "gentle, kind queens/she-cats" a name with flower in it or something) and have a nice mix of some more feminine sounding names for toms (like, again, Fernsong for example) and some more masculine sounding names for she-cats (like Reedclaw), too
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Post by embertuft on Dec 22, 2018 16:07:42 GMT -5
I remember when I was naming one of my OC’s back when I was eleven, and I was thinking of names for my OC Fallowbreeze, but then I got all worried because all the characters with “Fallow” as a prefix are she cats, and thought I would get told that my OC’s name was a “girls name”, I went through with it anyway. XD Two years later my dear Fallowbreeze and his littermates story have never been updated.
Onto the topic of gendered names- they definitely are. It kinda frustrates me a bit, but I just hate the ones who are like “That’s a tom name” and “That’s a she-cat name”. Why does it matter if a “she-cats name” is given to a tom, or the other way round?
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Lesbian
Owl
always writing, never finishing
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Post by Owl on Dec 22, 2018 17:48:13 GMT -5
supposedly there's only ever been one female character with the suffix "-claw", a background character that only ever showed up in the allegiances they're pretty blatant in the way that most of the ugly or tough prefixes/suffixes go to the toms while the delicate ones go to the mollies, though there have been a couple exceptions here and there. considering how they're all literally cats living out the same war-torn lives, i don't really get where this would come from in their universe There are currently six she-cats with -claw as suffix (Ebonyclaw, Plumclaw, Frostclaw, Brindleclaw, Reedclaw and Willowclaw) with only one of them being an allegiances-only cat (Willowclaw) you're right! i forgot about ebonyclaw. i'm a little confused as to why i saw a few people complaining about the -claw thing once, in that case
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Post by Tas on Dec 22, 2018 17:59:48 GMT -5
The same way there are "boy names" and "girl names". Nothing wrong with that because they're cats. Some names suggest masculinity or femeninity, and some are truly neutral. Thats all there is to it.
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Post by Tas on Dec 22, 2018 18:01:36 GMT -5
It makes sense that Warrior names are gendered since we live in a gendered society. I find it easier to remember a cats gender if their name leans towards a feminine or masculine “meaning”, especially if they’re a background character and it’s hard to remember that they even exist in the first place. It’s the society that the Erins and the editors created, and they chose to make it that way. If we bring gender into this, females are naturally more more caring, nurturing, etc, than males, among many other examples of female and male traits. It’s our natural instinct. So if a name is used to describe how one warrior acts, they were most likely named because the Erins/editors thought it was a good fit for that cat. I’m also not saying that females and males are vastly different. In the case of a female having a claw prefix, she must have been seen as more masculine to have that name. I couldnt agree more. You have a lot of guts to say this, in my opinion.
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Post by halogen on Dec 23, 2018 0:38:27 GMT -5
The same way there are "boy names" and "girl names". Nothing wrong with that because they're cats. Some names suggest masculinity or femeninity, and some are truly neutral. Thats all there is to it. No, there's nothing wrong with a fictional society having gender-coded names, the problem is when those names exactly match our own very particular gender stereotypes, it kind of destroys suspension of disbelief that these are cats and they don't have the same culture as us. If names had gender stereotypes but they weren't like our stereotypes (and weren't the exact inverse/opposite either, that would still be defining the cats based on our own society) then that would be fine. To be fair, the gender name thing is hardly the only time in the series where the Erins made the cats more like humans (and 21st-century British/American humans at that) for no real story purpose, like how they made the cats diurnal essentially because they didn't like how the scenery looked in their heads at night (?) and then added English-dependent puns (sigh...). Some day I should make a list of ways the Erins mess up like this in designing the Clans' culture and even biology...
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Post by Tas on Dec 24, 2018 7:14:21 GMT -5
The same way there are "boy names" and "girl names". Nothing wrong with that because they're cats. Some names suggest masculinity or femeninity, and some are truly neutral. Thats all there is to it. No, there's nothing wrong with a fictional society having gender-coded names, the problem is when those names exactly match our own very particular gender stereotypes, it kind of destroys suspension of disbelief that these are cats and they don't have the same culture as us. If names had gender stereotypes but they weren't like our stereotypes (and weren't the exact inverse/opposite either, that would still be defining the cats based on our own society) then that would be fine. To be fair, the gender name thing is hardly the only time in the series where the Erins made the cats more like humans (and 21st-century British/American humans at that) for no real story purpose, like how they made the cats diurnal essentially because they didn't like how the scenery looked in their heads at night (?) and then added English-dependent puns (sigh...). Some day I should make a list of ways the Erins mess up like this in designing the Clans' culture and even biology... Why is this a mess-up? I always assumed it was intentional how much the cats reflected us. Maybe it was obtuse of me, but I thought it was on purpose that the society and politics of the cats was identical to ours. It makes it easier to understand and to relate to. To say that the authors' choices destroy a suspension of disbelief is contradictory, because it is the authors' prerogative that all choices they make (exempt the editors; they might as well not be canon) maintains what is "real" and to be "trusted" by the readers. That was the issue with Sue and Vicky. we didn't know what was canon and what wasn't. The cats do have the same culture as us. It's extreme, and it's feral at the core, and they're cats, but from an objective and purely political point of view, the cats are almost allegories for our culture. They do share our culture, and so the only disbelief I would be suspending is the thought that gender/sexuality stereotypes are safe from the reflection to avoid conversations like these. You make a good argument!
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Post by halogen on Dec 24, 2018 11:26:15 GMT -5
No, there's nothing wrong with a fictional society having gender-coded names, the problem is when those names exactly match our own very particular gender stereotypes, it kind of destroys suspension of disbelief that these are cats and they don't have the same culture as us. If names had gender stereotypes but they weren't like our stereotypes (and weren't the exact inverse/opposite either, that would still be defining the cats based on our own society) then that would be fine. To be fair, the gender name thing is hardly the only time in the series where the Erins made the cats more like humans (and 21st-century British/American humans at that) for no real story purpose, like how they made the cats diurnal essentially because they didn't like how the scenery looked in their heads at night (?) and then added English-dependent puns (sigh...). Some day I should make a list of ways the Erins mess up like this in designing the Clans' culture and even biology... Why is this a mess-up? I always assumed it was intentional how much the cats reflected us. Maybe it was obtuse of me, but I thought it was on purpose that the society and politics of the cats was identical to ours. It makes it easier to understand and to relate to. To say that the authors' choices destroy a suspension of disbelief is contradictory, because it is the authors' prerogative that all choices they make (exempt the editors; they might as well not be canon) maintains what is "real" and to be "trusted" by the readers. That was the issue with Sue and Vicky. we didn't know what was canon and what wasn't. The cats do have the same culture as us. It's extreme, and it's feral at the core, and they're cats, but from an objective and purely political point of view, the cats are almost allegories for our culture. They do share our culture, and so the only disbelief I would be suspending is the thought that gender/sexuality stereotypes are safe from the reflection to avoid conversations like these. You make a good argument! All books are written by the authors, usually by the authors' prerogative, and that doesn't mean all books successfully maintain suspension of belief. By your logic, even something ridiculous like Starkit's Prophecy must maintain suspension of belief because there was an author who chose how that world would work and we have to accept it. Yes, its important to understand and relate to characters, but I feel like a good author can write characters in a completely different background, setting and culture than our own and still make them relatable and deeply human (or feline?). And the Erins do try to add some aspects to the Clans, their politics and their beliefs that are clearly different from our own, even if they don't really go all the way. The inter-Clan politics resemble ours in some ways but often seem distinct to the Clans, their morals and code sometimes really don't match with our own, and they are much more theocratic. However, since the Erins make the cats so similar to us in some ways, it becomes hard to tell whether the differences are deliberate or the Erins actually think of the world in some way, which can lead to the books being criticized for messed up values in a way that they wouldn't be if they were more alien. Like with the whole issue of cats valuing being biologically related so much and seeing adoptive parents as not their "real" parents (with some cats like Hollyleaf in particular having a very strong reaction to finding out they were adopted) - this would be a perfectly valid thing to include in Clan culture that from our perspective would be ultimately flawed and self-destructive. The problem is that by treating the Clans' culture as ours, it makes it look like the Erins really believe that adoptive parents aren't "real" parents. Similarly, Ithink why people are particularly focusing on gender stereotypes is that, when the Erins are writing these cats that are in a (at least in theory) completely different background than ours and yet keep the gender stereotypes, it makes it seem as though they are sending a message that gender stereotypes are something immutable throughout all living things, that everywhere in the world and for all time and for every species of animal and even for cultures where both males and females fight equally, flowers and dawn are feminine and tough-sounding things like claws and teeth are masculine.
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Post by Tas on Dec 24, 2018 14:25:24 GMT -5
All books are written by the authors, usually by the authors' prerogative, and that doesn't mean all books successfully maintain suspension of belief. By your logic, even something ridiculous like Starkit's Prophecy must maintain suspension of belief because there was an author who chose how that world would work and we have to accept it. Starkit's Prophecy is a satire and so doesn't really apply to my logic, but that's beside the point. I agree with you, and trust me, I am one of the louder voices in the "the Erins are poor writers" club. However, I think (as I said before) it's clear that the Erins have set up this world deliberately; if there's one thing that's remained consistent throughout the series, it's the political and social set-up. Everyone knows there have to be Clans, with leaders and deputies and senior warrior council. Everyone (unless they're evil) knows there must be a Code to maintain order. Hollyleaf represents that. What I meant was that the world the cats live in is the Erins' creation. They decide how "in-between" the world is. We cannot argue that certain things shouldn't or can't be more or less humane or feline. But we don't treat the Clan culture as ours, we acknowledge that it is more similar to ours than to any other animal (owls or wolves, for example) that is known to celebrate hierarchy, and even to how cats obviously would behave if alone in the wild. These Warrior cats are like human-cat hybrids, physically feline and socially human, with a few cat-isms thrown in here and there. That's what the Erins have been going for since 2003. I highly doubt, and no one should assume, that the Erins believe what the cats believe in certain scenarios. Would you have the Erins on the side of Tigerstar and Thistleclaw, advocating for pure-blood or bust, just because they wrote about and from the perspective of characters like that? Gender stereotypes are one of the things the Erins chose to take from our society and give to these cats, and I can understand why. I bet you if other animals had language and named their children, they would base it off gender too. Why not? Again: the cats are not in a completely different background than us (physically yes, but as I continue to repeat myself for lack of better terms, politically and socially no) and gender stereotypes are one of the many things kept. And dawn and flower are feminine. Tooth and claw are masculine. Let's remember that the Warriors world is not even close to sexist. There are perfectly equal rights among toms and she-cats. There are just as many good female as male leaders, deputies, and main characters. Cats are not discriminated against for their gender, and their names are not made fun of but respected and adhered to. When have we seen a she-cat ever be disappointed by her name? Names are such a huge part of Clan life and tradition. And gender stereotypes are subjective. To us, who live in a world where Tom and Richard are boy names and Mary and Sarah are girl names, we see that reflected in the cats. But they don't, at least not that we know of. They're just cats with names, and they don't care. And the point about queens in particular having especially feminine names, I don't deny it. But they're the cats without personality, whose role is to fill up the allegiances and the Gatherings. Look at Ratscar.
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Robinstreak
Cats rule. Thank you for coming to my TEDed talk.
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Post by Robinstreak on Dec 24, 2018 20:51:51 GMT -5
I think the prefix Feather is for she-cats, whereas he suffix -feather would be for males... or generally grumpy cats I also think Blue, Blossom, and Pebble are some prefixes for she-cats. (Tbh there should be more "tough" shecat names imo.)
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Post by Hawkflower on Dec 25, 2018 9:54:52 GMT -5
Similarly, Ithink why people are particularly focusing on gender stereotypes is that, when the Erins are writing these cats that are in a (at least in theory) completely different background than ours and yet keep the gender stereotypes, it makes it seem as though they are sending a message that gender stereotypes are something immutable throughout all living things, that everywhere in the world and for all time and for every species of animal and even for cultures where both males and females fight equally, flowers and dawn are feminine and tough-sounding things like claws and teeth are masculine. I do not believe that Warriors sends that message, but I understand your point of view. Gender stereotypes are imbedded into our culture, and Warriors is an example of that. Gender stereotypes are profound. They are located in a lot of the art and literature we see around us. Warriors taking this quality is not different or unique in any way—there are so examples of animals in literature or media just like Warriors, or human society in general. Gender stereotypes are learned behaviors and passed on throughout generations, and sometimes they’re so fixed in our minds that we don’t even think about them.
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Post by halogen on Dec 25, 2018 11:19:48 GMT -5
I was using Starkit's Prophecy as a reductio ad absurdum here - the point is that concepts can be criticized even if it was the authors who thought of them. Just as some people write plots or characters better, some people write more self-consistent, "realistic" (in term so how cultures actually behave) and compelling worlds and societies. Yes, the culture of the Clans is the basis for the series, but we can still criticize it and say it was better if it was tweaked. And while to some extent I'm sure they set things up deliberately, I feel like it's giving too much credit to the average author to say it was all deliberate. I know I constantly slip up when trying to design worlds and cultures, where I might realize far later "wait, that was something from my own standpoint that actually doesn't make sense from the perspective of these characters and this society". It's very hard thinking to avoid, especially in the case of the Erins where they were demanded by the publishers to make a series about feral cats, and they just put it together as a chore to get money way before they actually got invested. There were some aspects that were clearly purposeful to be more related (like they admitted they added romance because the fans were being fans and obsessed with shipping plus the desire to make the cats role models since it was a children's series), and some of it was purposeful but for very flimsy reasons that when you think hard about it aren't necessary in the slightest and just make things more confusing (like making them diurnal), but not all of it. I really doubt they thought in the later books with English-dependent puns "oh, we know it doesn't make sure for the cats to literally speak English but we don't care", that's probably just how hey naturally thought because they speak English and they've spoken English their whole lives. If they had really thought about it, then they wouldn't have done it at least because of how their books are translated into a lot of different languages.
And its fair that the Erins don't always believe what the cats believe, but in the example you gave it's something only some cats believe (pure blood superiority), and the fact that almost no protagonists believe it and characters who do believe it are almost always depicted as villainous and unsavory in lots of ways completely unrelated to their belief in pure-blood superiority. With the adoption issue, pretty much everyone sees adoptive parents as not real and not as important in the series, and it is supported by the events as well as the characters (like how Leafpool is with Hollyleaf as she dies and not Squirrelflight), which makes it really hard to tell if this is just a cultural bias or if the Erins actually believe that. And the more purposefully human you make a culture, the harder it is to tell, which mean the Erins have to resort to unsubtle, overly moralistic tools like giving views that they think are obviously bad to the villains. All of this could be avoided if they made the culture a little less human, then they wouldn't have to practically shout "THIS IS WRONG" to some of the Clans' beliefs, and they wouldn't have to leave people wondering if they actually have such messed-up views on Clan beliefs where the Erins aren't making things so obvious.
And yes, it is true that the Clans aren't that sexist, but that's exactly the point. We have gender-stereotyped names because of our own sexism, and remember most of these names have been around for centuries or millennia so the stereotyping is somewhat an artifact of the particular stereotypes of cultures from that long ago, so the way we don't delineate people by gender quite as strongly as the name stereotypes would imply actually makes sense. But warrior cats don't have any reason to have this stereotypes, and they don't have any history of being more sexist as far as I know. Yes, it does make sense to say that animals who had languages and names would use gender stereotypes (there are certainly differences in gender roles for a lot of social animals, though they usually don't exactly mirror ours), but again the problem is that they exactly mirror ours, and it's like a transplant from a human culture divorced from the context in which it arose. Especially since even within humanity, there can be variation in which concepts are associated with which gender (look at how in languages with gender, a word can be masculine in one language in feminine and another, or one polytheistic religion can associate a god with a concept and another with a goddess), it doesn't make sense that the Warrior cats should align perfectly well with the Anglo-American conception.
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Post by Tas on Dec 26, 2018 20:04:03 GMT -5
Well said.
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Asexual
Mayflower
I am a Daisy and Ferncloud stan first, and a human being second
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Post by Mayflower on Dec 27, 2018 22:14:58 GMT -5
I do think it's worth mentioning that the Erins -- or at least Kate's case -- didn't make the world like that, or at least not deliberately, as someone here said. If she did, it may've been done subconsciously due to how deep rooted gender can be in everyday lives. She had many fans upset with Larksong and Fernsong's names, and have had to remind them a few times that the names indicated can be male or female...but as others have said here, we're in a gendered society, so it's of the fans' doing. Considering we've seen how little Kate is given input on names (Sparkpelt and Twigbranch, for example, even with Sparkpelt being a pretty minor character opposed to Twigbranch's importance), I'm not sure if she has been given particular say on any names who did make the cut and unintentionally assigned seemingly gender-specific names to she-cats opposed to toms or vice versa. I get the impression she at least had a say on Fernsong, since I think she said that's why she gave him that name, to show people that gender doesn't matter, name-wise. I don't think we've seen any word about it from Vicky, though, and obviously not Cherith, since who knows where the heck she is.
Interestingly, I realize that the gender-themed names seemed to definitely occur in the first arc, but not as much as it later. Like with Sandstorm, I don't view that as feminine, or Yellowfang or Cinderpelt...but I do see it like that for others, like Goldenflower, Spottedleaf, and Feathertail. They just sound soft/gentle/queen-like. For the toms, I almost always thought of their names paired with toms, because of how masculine they sounded -- Tigerstar, Brokenstar, Mudclaw, etc. Names like Littlecloud are exceptions, while Leopardstar or Graypool or Redtail sounded neutral. Gender-specific names feel more prominent in later arcs, but notably after TNP and in most of the super editions, imo.
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Post by Owlmoon on Dec 28, 2018 13:19:10 GMT -5
While I don't support it, I do think that warrior names can accidentally become gender-influenced. It's clear that it's happened in warriors at least a couple of times. I think it's just really hard not to be influenced by our world when you're a writer.
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Post by halogen on Dec 28, 2018 18:37:24 GMT -5
Here is a list of all gender-stereotyped prefixes. This is defined as either three of more of one gender and none of the other, or four or more of one gender and only one of the other, with ratios listed. I included some more common suffixes that have more than one of the less common gender with the name but the overall proportion difference is large. Masculine:
Adder 3:0 Ant 3:0 Cedar 3:0 Dust 3:0 (unless Dust Muzzle is the same cat as Duststar) Ember 4:1 Flame 3:0 Fox 4:1 Gorse 7:1 (and the one she-cat is mistakenly listed as male quite a lot of the time) Hawk 6:1 Marsh 3:0 Mole 4:0 Mud 5:0 Nettle 5:1 Oak 4:1 Oat 4:0 Owl 6:1 Patch 4:0 Pike 3:0 Rabbit 5:1 Red 5:1 Ripple 4:0 Rock 4:0 Snake 4:1 Spider 4:0 Stone 9:0 Toad 3:0 Vole 0:4
Feminine:
Apple: 1:4 Bird 0:4 Blossom 0:3 (though there is a male Bloomheart) Bright 0:5 Brindle 0:4 Clover 0:4 Daisy 0:3 Dawn 0:9 Echo 0:3 Fallow 0:4 Feather 1:5 Fern 1:4 Flower 0:4 Holly 0:7 Honey 1:4 Ivy 0:4 Lark 1:5 Leaf 1:5 Lily 0:6 Mist 1:5 (+ 2 for Misty, so 1:7) Morning 1:5 Petal 0:6 Plum 0:3 Poppy 0:3 Sorrel 0:3 Willow 0:7
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