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Yes, this is a disturbing part of the book. Quite fascist, arguably racist and, in the end, unnecessary for the narrative. A big price to pay for little to no p

Yes, this is a disturbing part of the book. Quite fascist, arguably racist and, in the end, unnecessary for the narrative. A big price to pay for little to no payoff.

lucubratory 3y ago
The idea that Chinese families give up their born infant babies because of gender is a racist extrapolation of sex-selective abortion, yes. It was one of the big issues I had with the book, along with some unnecessary racial slurs earlier. I don't see the fascism angle, though. What about the Mouse Army was a fascist story? I thought their story was good, aside from how the author justified the existence of this large group of unwanted children.
- javajosh 3y ago
  The Mouse Army was indoctrinated by lesser primers to treat Nell as a their leader. It was a rare big whiff from Stephenson, because he presented all of this uncritically. The fact that a white girl would rule a few hundred thousand chinese girls went without comment because OF COURSE she would. And I'm the last person to be sensitive to this sort of thing! The racism felt very in-your-face even at the time, and this was well before the hyper sensitivity of the modern age. I love Stephenson though so I chalked it up to miscommunication/overreach/him being terrible at endings, etc.
  - lucubratory 3y ago
    Oh that's interesting, Nell isn't Chinese? Isn't she born in China? I'm sure you're right, like I said it's been years since I read the book, but my mental picture of her is certainly of a young Chinese girl. I thought it was only the abusive stepdad that was white.
    - tialaramex 3y ago
      I don't think we're told Nell's ancestry in any detail, but, she's the daughter of Tequila and Bud. Tequila appears to be a typical "white trash" uneducated young woman who is living in the LT but whose ancestors are probably American or European, the discussion of the Freedom Machine (Diamond Age contraception) strongly suggests Tequila sees herself roughly this way. Bud is deliberately your generic Cyberpunk protagonist, if he has any Chinese ancestry it's unlikely he recognises or celebrates it. Yes, the LT is in China. It's an analogous situation to Hong Kong, physically it is in China, but as its name suggests ("Leased Territories") it is controlled by outsiders, hence the anger of groups like the Fists.
      - lucubratory 3y ago
        Hmm, okay. I did remember that these were people who were culturally pretty Europeanised in terms of name choices and some other things, but I just assumed that was a Hong Kong-like situation, like you said, where there's significant Euro cultural influence on a group of Chinese people. I don't know, maybe it's just my mental block because I read it when I was young, I just can't picture her as a little white girl.
        tialaramex 3y ago
        Huh. I'd always pictured Nell as a little white girl, but although there are strong hints (including when Madam Ping hires her for example) I don't think we're explicitly told that.
        lucubratory 3y ago
        Huh, I wonder if it was intentional to leave it ambiguous. I have recently (3-4 years ago) gone through vaguely similar conversations about various characters in the Wheel of Time, albeit those conversations were generally a lot more acrimonious. Overall, I just think it's weird how people get so hung up on ethnicity specifically. I understand it if someone's got a sore spot about not being historically represented in the culture they live in, fair play, but some people get really involved in it with no such concern. About the Wheel of Time, there were some people saying that they couldn't watch the show because some of the cast didn't match their headcanon in terms of appearance, and it's just like... if the obsession is that bad, maybe you should reframe this as "I can't deal with adaptations" rather than targeting it at the cast specifically. Anyway, sorry for getting sidetracked. I just can't stop thinking about Wheel of Time since the second season finished, what an incredible series of television. I haven't felt this way about a TV show since early Game of Thrones.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- hosh 3y ago
  > The idea that Chinese families give up their born infant babies because of gender is a racist extrapolation of sex-selective abortion I'm not sure I understand this. Female infanticide due to the One Child Policy happened -- and similar things happened in previous eras of Chinese history by the Han ethnicity. So I'm not sure what you are saying here about an extrapolation.
  - lucubratory 3y ago
    No actually, it's a myth rooted in the racist belief that Chinese people care about their children less than other people, and therefore are willing to kill or abandon their children on a large scale rather than pay a fine, to a greater degree than other people - you actually indicate you believe the broader version of this racist myth with your "Han ethnicity" comment, indicating you believe that there is some relation between the Han ethnicity specifically and female infanticide. There's a reason the Wikipedia entry for it is full of [citation needed] on every claim that actually amounts to female infanticide, because there is no solid evidentiary basis for the claim. It's not backed up by demographic data, it doesn't account for the impacts of sex-selective abortion, it completely ignores the role of "white lie" corruption where Party officials would not count female children for the purposes of the One Child policy in the small rural villages where this behaviour supposedly occurred en masse, and it supposes a frankly absurd level of inhumanity by parents. The One Child policy was a stupid, bad policy instituted by a corrupt government, but the idea that the response of the Chinese population to this policy was mass female infanticide rather than sex selective abortion, minor corruption on the part of village officials in ignoring violations, or paying a fine is just racism without evidence.
    - hosh 3y ago
      I think you underestimate what people will do when desperate, or the extent of gender bias among the Hans. I was born in Taiwan and raised in America, and I still caught whiffs of it. I am not sure where you are getting the idea that people in the Imperial eras were capable of determining the sex of fetuses, and proceeding with abortion. As far as I know, that is a modern thing enabled by modern technology. If you are suggesting that people heard of this modern practice and projected it falsely into the past … I had thought so to, until I read through a history of Chinese martial arts. China’s history is very complex. There were imbalances in sex ratios, with large numbers of unmarried, unemployed men skilled in violence destabilizing the society, throughout centuries. By the Ming dynasty, every village trained militias because they had to, and it was a thin line into banditry. Villages, convoys — those were raided. Women kidnapped, and raped. It was a big enough problem that the Ming literates and intelligentsia talked about it, and it grew worse during the Qing. Corruption among local officials wasn’t minor. It was rampant. Land ownerships had locked people out of economic opportunities, and abusive landowners were the norm. Sects, secret societies were formed for a variety of reason, including mutual protection. Those were the seeds for the near constant uprisings and rebellions during the Qing dynasty, culminating to the Taiping Civil War (14 years of fighting, 20-30 million dead, 600 cities razed). That sex ratio imbalanced was a factor leading to all of this. China also has the world’s most complex watershed in the world, when taking agriculture into consideration. The only other comparable watershed in terms of complexity is that of the Sacramento River basin, and it does not compare to the scale of the Yellow River basin. The flooding of the Yellow River is frequent. Feast and famine is deeply ingrained in Chinese culture (“have you eaten?” is the equivalent of “how have you been?”). We are talking mass displacement of refugees and widespread hunger during the bad time. Even if it were not wars, rebellions, or bandits, this alone sets the circumstances for desperate times. You can call female infanticide “racism” if you like, but I think doing so denies the misery and cruelty buried in history. As for me, this — both the good and bad — are a part of my heritage. Female infanticide is one thread out of many that had happened. It’s in owning the whole thing that reform is possible.

Yes, this is a disturbing part of the book. Quite fascist, arguably racist and, in the end, unnecessary for the narrative. A big price to pay for little to no payoff.

lucubratory 3y ago

The idea that Chinese families give up their born infant babies because of gender is a racist extrapolation of sex-selective abortion, yes. It was one of the big issues I had with the book, along with some unnecessary racial slurs earlier. I don't see the fascism angle, though. What about the Mouse Army was a fascist story? I thought their story was good, aside from how the author justified the existence of this large group of unwanted children.

javajosh 3y ago
The Mouse Army was indoctrinated by lesser primers to treat Nell as a their leader. It was a rare big whiff from Stephenson, because he presented all of this uncritically. The fact that a white girl would rule a few hundred thousand chinese girls went without comment because OF COURSE she would. And I'm the last person to be sensitive to this sort of thing! The racism felt very in-your-face even at the time, and this was well before the hyper sensitivity of the modern age. I love Stephenson though so I chalked it up to miscommunication/overreach/him being terrible at endings, etc.
- lucubratory 3y ago
  Oh that's interesting, Nell isn't Chinese? Isn't she born in China? I'm sure you're right, like I said it's been years since I read the book, but my mental picture of her is certainly of a young Chinese girl. I thought it was only the abusive stepdad that was white.
  - tialaramex 3y ago
    I don't think we're told Nell's ancestry in any detail, but, she's the daughter of Tequila and Bud. Tequila appears to be a typical "white trash" uneducated young woman who is living in the LT but whose ancestors are probably American or European, the discussion of the Freedom Machine (Diamond Age contraception) strongly suggests Tequila sees herself roughly this way. Bud is deliberately your generic Cyberpunk protagonist, if he has any Chinese ancestry it's unlikely he recognises or celebrates it. Yes, the LT is in China. It's an analogous situation to Hong Kong, physically it is in China, but as its name suggests ("Leased Territories") it is controlled by outsiders, hence the anger of groups like the Fists.
    - lucubratory 3y ago
      Hmm, okay. I did remember that these were people who were culturally pretty Europeanised in terms of name choices and some other things, but I just assumed that was a Hong Kong-like situation, like you said, where there's significant Euro cultural influence on a group of Chinese people. I don't know, maybe it's just my mental block because I read it when I was young, I just can't picture her as a little white girl.
      - tialaramex 3y ago
        Huh. I'd always pictured Nell as a little white girl, but although there are strong hints (including when Madam Ping hires her for example) I don't think we're explicitly told that.
        lucubratory 3y ago
        Huh, I wonder if it was intentional to leave it ambiguous. I have recently (3-4 years ago) gone through vaguely similar conversations about various characters in the Wheel of Time, albeit those conversations were generally a lot more acrimonious. Overall, I just think it's weird how people get so hung up on ethnicity specifically. I understand it if someone's got a sore spot about not being historically represented in the culture they live in, fair play, but some people get really involved in it with no such concern. About the Wheel of Time, there were some people saying that they couldn't watch the show because some of the cast didn't match their headcanon in terms of appearance, and it's just like... if the obsession is that bad, maybe you should reframe this as "I can't deal with adaptations" rather than targeting it at the cast specifically. Anyway, sorry for getting sidetracked. I just can't stop thinking about Wheel of Time since the second season finished, what an incredible series of television. I haven't felt this way about a TV show since early Game of Thrones.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hosh 3y ago
> The idea that Chinese families give up their born infant babies because of gender is a racist extrapolation of sex-selective abortion I'm not sure I understand this. Female infanticide due to the One Child Policy happened -- and similar things happened in previous eras of Chinese history by the Han ethnicity. So I'm not sure what you are saying here about an extrapolation.
- lucubratory 3y ago
  No actually, it's a myth rooted in the racist belief that Chinese people care about their children less than other people, and therefore are willing to kill or abandon their children on a large scale rather than pay a fine, to a greater degree than other people - you actually indicate you believe the broader version of this racist myth with your "Han ethnicity" comment, indicating you believe that there is some relation between the Han ethnicity specifically and female infanticide. There's a reason the Wikipedia entry for it is full of [citation needed] on every claim that actually amounts to female infanticide, because there is no solid evidentiary basis for the claim. It's not backed up by demographic data, it doesn't account for the impacts of sex-selective abortion, it completely ignores the role of "white lie" corruption where Party officials would not count female children for the purposes of the One Child policy in the small rural villages where this behaviour supposedly occurred en masse, and it supposes a frankly absurd level of inhumanity by parents. The One Child policy was a stupid, bad policy instituted by a corrupt government, but the idea that the response of the Chinese population to this policy was mass female infanticide rather than sex selective abortion, minor corruption on the part of village officials in ignoring violations, or paying a fine is just racism without evidence.
  - hosh 3y ago
    I think you underestimate what people will do when desperate, or the extent of gender bias among the Hans. I was born in Taiwan and raised in America, and I still caught whiffs of it. I am not sure where you are getting the idea that people in the Imperial eras were capable of determining the sex of fetuses, and proceeding with abortion. As far as I know, that is a modern thing enabled by modern technology. If you are suggesting that people heard of this modern practice and projected it falsely into the past … I had thought so to, until I read through a history of Chinese martial arts. China’s history is very complex. There were imbalances in sex ratios, with large numbers of unmarried, unemployed men skilled in violence destabilizing the society, throughout centuries. By the Ming dynasty, every village trained militias because they had to, and it was a thin line into banditry. Villages, convoys — those were raided. Women kidnapped, and raped. It was a big enough problem that the Ming literates and intelligentsia talked about it, and it grew worse during the Qing. Corruption among local officials wasn’t minor. It was rampant. Land ownerships had locked people out of economic opportunities, and abusive landowners were the norm. Sects, secret societies were formed for a variety of reason, including mutual protection. Those were the seeds for the near constant uprisings and rebellions during the Qing dynasty, culminating to the Taiping Civil War (14 years of fighting, 20-30 million dead, 600 cities razed). That sex ratio imbalanced was a factor leading to all of this. China also has the world’s most complex watershed in the world, when taking agriculture into consideration. The only other comparable watershed in terms of complexity is that of the Sacramento River basin, and it does not compare to the scale of the Yellow River basin. The flooding of the Yellow River is frequent. Feast and famine is deeply ingrained in Chinese culture (“have you eaten?” is the equivalent of “how have you been?”). We are talking mass displacement of refugees and widespread hunger during the bad time. Even if it were not wars, rebellions, or bandits, this alone sets the circumstances for desperate times. You can call female infanticide “racism” if you like, but I think doing so denies the misery and cruelty buried in history. As for me, this — both the good and bad — are a part of my heritage. Female infanticide is one thread out of many that had happened. It’s in owning the whole thing that reform is possible.