Re. female blacksmiths...

I actually dated a world champion female bodybuilder.  She is huge.  We're still friends.  She has more muscle than I've ever had, even when I was in the military.  She has far more muscle than almost every guy, except male bodybuilders.  However, she is obviously an extremely rare exception, which is why she was a world champion.

6 hours ago, henfen said:

In fact, the Aiel show us just how much gender is socially constructed.

While there have been women only orders of warriors in the real world, the existence of such in a work of fiction does not prove anything about gender being constructed socially or otherwise.

Even if any given thing was "socially constructed", what does that mean?  Does it mean it has no validity, no substance?  I've seen the term thrown around a lot, but never seen anyone logically explain what they think it means.

In the real world, men and women are different, from the individual cells up to muscular and skeletal formations, brain structure differences, hormones, and even sensory capabilities.

In fictional worlds, they can be whatever the creator wants.  Which raises the question: Did RJ write women as being the same as men?  Answer: No, he didn't.  He wrote them as extremely different to the men.

Depends on one's definition of feminism, I guess.  In TWOT, men and women across the entire range of nations have very different and separate roles.  In some cases the men have more power and influence; in other cases, the women (obviously) have more power and influence.  There is no equality or tokenistic quota-filling representation.

As with the casting, the show's creators have opted to seek approval points from the twitter cultists rather than stick close to the source material.

There were illustrated books (e.g. The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time, by Teresa Patterson, 1997) approved by RJ which showed what the characters looked like.  He also specifically wrote about the physical characteristics of people from different regions.

Here's a tip: In a world with limited movement of large numbers of people, it is very unlikely to miraculously find a village with one person from every possible ethnicity.

I fear that this show, like Foundation, has fallen victim to the producers who think they will automatically win awards by making social justice twitter cult points, rather than winning awards for making a good show.

Looks like my post was deleted by someone.  Why is that?