Monstrous Regiment

[JellySaurus]

Dd is reading Monstrous Regiment. She loved Wyrd Sisters.

Dd is 18, totally gayqueerace TWAW, yet equally aware of the differences between males and females and the effects of patriarchy on women. The cognitive dissonance tears her up.

I wonder what she makes of Monstrous Regiment.

Knox?

Honestly one of my favourite books ever. The ending where the Sargent feels she has to go back as a ‘grandfather’ because she thinks she won’t be accepted as a ‘grandmother’ really sums it up.

Sorry for the derail, but what does gayqueerace mean?

I loved that book. A few weeks ago Rhiannon Pratchett said something on Twitter to the effect that her Dad would certainly not have been gender critical. There ensued some dispiriting days on Twitter [Are there any others? Ed.]. Dozens of kneejerk TWAWTMAMNBPAV responses. Total incredulity from many that TP would have seen some nuance in the current situation. It was pretty clear that many of them have jumped to the conclusion that 'gender critical' means 'I hate gender nonconforming and trans people'.

Monstrous Regiment was the book most talked about, along with Cheery and Carrot. I thought it was very clear when I read Discworld books that Ankh Morporkh, like London and other huge cities, was a place some people went to to escape the stifling conformity of home, and the army in MR was serving the same function.

Cheery was a female dwarf and in AM felt able to dress in a way that indicated femininity in a typically AM way, whereas at home she would have had to dress and present exactly like a male. (Cf Chinese Cultural Revolution unisex overalls.) Carrot was brought up in a dwarf community but wasn't a dwarf, and in adult life this was abundantly clear because he had a human body. Hence he no longer fitted in in the same way.

None of this is straightforward to translate to our own world, but what always shone through to me reading the Discworld was the importance of accepting people for what they were. This is not the same thing as believing manifest untruths people tell about themselves.

Great post @Gasp0de. Surely the point of Monstrous Regiment (SPOILER ALERT) is not that the women believe they are really men, but that society is constructed in such a way that they can only achieve what they want by dressing and acting as men? That, and the futility of war. I thought the Twitter debate around this was depressing and pointless.You just can’t make assumptions about what someone who very sadly is no longer here would have thought about a debate the terms of which have changed utterly.

Yes! I was absolutely gobsmacked to see legions of youngsters (I hope they were all young, it's even worse if they have a bit of life experience behind them) earnestly banging on about these women escaping to the army to be their authentic selves and meaning by that that they really were men and that's why they wanted to do those things.

Terry Pratchett wrote female characters better than almost any male writer I can think of and I am absolutely certain that's not what he meant to put across.

Monsterous Regiment and The Nightwatch are the two books of Sir TP's that I love the most as tragedies (my favourite of all time being the much over-looked Small Gods)

I thought he wrote the women and girls in MR so gently - whilst understanding that even these hugely damaged girls could still be hard as nails when they needed to be. Anyone taking any kind of hopeful personal liberation message from that book is reading it very differently from me. I read it as a damning indictment of patriarchal society (and how it damages everyone), and the hope that individuals can give each other even when all really is lost, and the best you can hope for is a couple of days of rest with some small pleasures if you're lucky.

And I don't mind that. I don't mind books that make me think and don't have a happy ending, so long as I can find some hope in them somewhere.

I thought he wrote the women and girls in MR so gently - whilst understanding that even these hugely damaged girls could still be hard as nails when they needed to be. Anyone taking any kind of hopeful personal liberation message from that book is reading it very differently from me. I read it as a damning indictment of patriarchal society (and how it damages everyone), and the hope that individuals can give each other even when all really is lost, and the best you can hope for is a couple of days of rest with some small pleasures if you're lucky.

I totally agree.

I suggest books to dd, drop them off casually in her room, very casually. Only not really. Actually with great thought and care. Wyrd Sisters, so she could read about strong female characters, strong women, with flaws and uncertainties like real women. I suggested Monstrous Regiment over a year ago for her to see women 'identifying' as men in order to escape enforced feminine stereotypes and gender roles. I don't know what she'll take from it. All I can hope is for her to get the strength to escape from the gaslighting.

@CreepingDeath

Sorry for the derail, but what does gayqueerace mean?

She's confused. Dd feels obliged to adopt an identity label. But none of them fit. The only one that fits is 'young woman, not yet discovered her sexuality, terrified of the demands of society'.

There is a film interview with Terry Pratchett talking about his research for Monstrous Regiment. I'll try and find a link. It is clear he thought of these characters as women facing women's challenges. Not least because he consistently calls them "women"!

I did despair when all the chatter about Cheery surfaced the other week. I fail to see that TP would have been anything other than GC he was always so sympathetic to his female characters and his awareness of societal pressures was always superb.

I read the books pretty much as they were written so I first met the characters in the lens of those times rather than current issues, and got to see them evolve as Prachett's world view evolved.

I think Cheery started out as a simple "reverse" satire about society's unfair rules on what women should wear. At the time I got what he was trying to do but felt it didn't quite hit the mark because it implied her femaleness was why she liked these stereotypical female things. It felt oddly regressive.

I am sure that as trans people became more visible Pratchett saw the parallels between Cheery and trans people's challenges and, while not making Cheery explicitly trans, was happy to let her be metaphorically trans, if you see what I mean, and wrote her a little more in that direction in later books. Her adoption of Ankh-Morpork human female dress norms becomes a way to say "I am female like them and want to say so" instead of "I am female so despite being raised in an entirely different culture I nevertheless have a natural desire to paint my nails".

I suspect if we had the opportunity to ask him (sob) he'd have been non-committal about whether Cheery was "really" trans, not in any way because he would not want a trans character but simply because I can't see him nailing her down to a roundworld issue that explicitly, in the same way that he didn't write about racism, he had his humans, trolls and dwarves act like racists. I think it's an entirely valid reading of the character to see Cheery as trans, and it's also entirely valid to see her as a female who is challenging her cultural role. It's good that she has made trans people feel represented and accepted.

And of course there is the Low King.....who has been in the job for many years before she feels able to come out as actually being the Queen in Raising Steam (one of my favourites), again because of societal expectations.

Cheery really did start it all off in Feet of Clay.

I agree that he wrote female characters so brilliantly, Susan Sto Helit is a particular favourite.

It's been a while since I read the books but how can Cheery be trans? Cheery is female. She adopts the social signifiers of female sex from the other cultures she comes into contact with in Ankh Morpork. She's challenging her culture not changing her "gender".

I agree. Surely she is the opposite of trans by accepting and embracing her biological sex?!

I remember a bit in Feet of Clay where Angua says a lot of human women would like the dwarf way, where women are treated the same as men and can do the same things that men do, and Cheery said yes, but they can only do what the men do..... So just as restrictive but in the opposite way to the patriarchy in our world.

I'd like to think that such a sharp observer of people and society would not be hoodwinked by the trans ideology, but there are many situations in his books where characters 'pass' as what they are not, and where they enjoy being what they are not. It doesn't mean that they are trans, but it does mean that you can interpret them through either a Gender Critical Lens or a Gender Ideology.

I feel I have a very limited time to help dd before she heads off for a Stonewalled university. And I have to do it very subtly - she knows I am GC.

@WomaninBoots

It's been a while since I read the books but how can Cheery be trans? Cheery is female. She adopts the social signifiers of female sex from the other cultures she comes into contact with in Ankh Morpork. She's challenging her culture not changing her "gender".

She can be female and still have her story be a metaphor/nod towards trans people. I can see entirely why a character whose culture doesn't allow her to express her gender would strike a chord for trans people. The fact she is physically female and wants to express a female gender isn't the point in that reading, its that that her culture tells her expressing her gender is shameful but she doesn't accept that.

(Also trans people would say they are really their target gender as well, it's just society that is stopping it being recognised).

It's literature, not an instruction manual!

How have I implied it is an instruction manual? Your post is very confusing. I don't see how Cheery can be interpreted as trans. She's embracing different culture norms not expressing cross-sex gendered stereotypes. It is more analogous to a person from a restrictive religious background moving to the city and gradually becoming less restricted in their behaviour as they explore their new freedom. That's the story I always found in it rather than any kind of "gender" story. But gender didn't exist as A Thing when I read it.

@KittenKong

Knox?

Pratchett

I agree that someone who is totally on board with the TG movement would read it differently to me who is GC. I see it as more along the lines of what @WomaninBoots said.

How have I implied it is an instruction manual? Your post is very confusing. I don't see how Cheery can be interpreted as trans.

By "It's literature, not an instruction manual" I mean that a factual piece of writing like an instruction manual has to represent its subject factually to do its job but fiction doesn't. Cheery can be not literally transgender in a human sense and still embody something that trans people (and others) see as a meaningful representation of trans experience.

It genuinely doesn't matter whether or not Pratchett explicitly intended her to be read that way (although as I said earlier, I suspect he didn't initially have transgender people in mind but later saw the parallels and consciously decided to develop her and some other dwarves to allow that reading as well as his initial more direct feminist reading), it's still a justifiable and valid way to think about the chararcter.

The only time I object to "transing" fictional characters is when the people who do it claim is was the author's explicit intention when the text and author's comments doesn't support it, or shut down any other reading of a character. (Both of which I've seen from TRAs in Pratchett fandom).

One could even think that Cheery's story reading equally validly either literally*, as a biological female fighting the constraints her society applies to people of her sex, or metaphorically, as a trans woman fighting to express a gender outside the one she is socially expected to have, is a nice demonstration of how much trans women and feminists could have in common standing against social gender constructs that are assigned to sex if trans activism would just acknowledge that sex is separate to gender identity not sublimated by gender identity.

• (as literally as a member of an imaginary race living in a fantasy universe can be written )

To be completely fair I do see where you are coming from now (I do want to dig my heels in and go "no" like a stroppy toddler because I enjoy being entrenched in my opinion as much as anyone but you have been generous in your explanation so I will not continue to be an arse ). I struggle with it because I am very literally minded so I don't really see it but I appreciate what you are saying nonetheless.

For me it will always be a story about breaking free from strict religious constraints though.

Well, I can't find the interview I remember about Pratchett's research for Monstrous Regiment but I did find this, which apart from being a lovely interview has an unexpectedly in depth and respectful (on both sides) lengthy discussion about trans ideology/reality (

@KittenKong

Knox?

I was wondering that and then rejecting that in favour of Thomas Berger's Novel, Regiment of Women where Monstrous is heavily implied.