You bleed for days each month and don't die? You must be some sort of devil-worshipping witch.

           Simply saying the word ‘menstruation’ often evokes reactions of disgust and feelings of discomfort for many, even some women. We have been cultured to be uncomfortable without realizing it and tend to forget just how long this stigma has surrounded such a normal and natural occurrence in women.

Making a deal with the devil each month.

            A basic state of mind all through history before doctors discovered that periods were linked to ovulation was that women needed to bleed to release their emotional, hysterical, and half-formed natures. Men were seen as being formed in a warm and dry womb while women suffered a cold and wet womb and didn’t develop fully. A nun by the name of Hildegard von Bingen published medical texts saying that period blood cured leprosy, but many also thought that drinking period blood gave one leprosy, so by their beliefs, one had a 50/50 chance of being cured or condemned, which doesn’t seem to be the best healing method. Many also believed the event to have supernatural powers or that could be used to cure sickness or that intercourse during menstruation would result in a monster being born. This specific superstition around women is part of the story of how Merlin is born in HKB when the act of being a woman immediately means that there is something monstrous or demonic about them. Around the middle ages, stories and tales about the superstition surrounding menstruation began accumulate and the ‘insult’ of calling a man a woman or to accuse him of menstruation and being weak became more well-known and accepted as an insult as stories were written down. These instances of insult can be found often throughout the text and since the text is so popular and read by many, being called a woman has remained a demeaning phrase throughout the years and still exists today in many forms.

         

Period blood? Must be witchcraft.

   I suppose to a mind from the distant past, menstruation being a bad thing sounds somewhat logical only due to the fact that losing any amount of blood was seen as dangerous. Women losing blood every month must have really freaked the men out when they had no understanding of the processes of a woman’s body. The need to attribute it to some kind of mysterious cause is understandable, as they had no way to have any more information. Yes, these ideas grew into a hatred for women and all that they are, but the initial and simple concerns were valid. 

Tolkien; Racist or Nah?

There seems to be a big hullabaloo over whether or not Tolkien’s made up races and characters were created out of racist intentions. Personally I do not believe it but I will shallowly delve into these arguments in this 400 word blog post. We as a class got all up in that whole “Dwarves as Jews?” debate so I am going to focus on the belief that Tolkien’s elves were created from an Aryan perspective. From a physical aspect the elves relate to Aryan characteristics with their fair skin, hair, and eyes, etc. Although there are exceptions with elves with darker hair colors and eyes these are shown by Tolkien as the more wild elves than their Rivendell and Lothlórien counterparts. 

Look at those gorgeous pale men

Many critics view Tolkien’s alleged Aryan inspiration as something presented by his constant portrayal of good as white and black as bad. Think about it, almost every good character (besides Saruman the White) is described as white at some point. And all the bad characters are related to darkness and black, “It’s clear that the most noble races are white and the least noble (Orcs and Haradrim) are swarthy or black” (Source 2). While this idea of white vs. dark as good vs. evil has been around for literally forever some critics choose to see it as Tolkien’s way of being a racist. Take all of this as you will, racist or not racist because all I see are extremely attractive Elven men and women and that is all that really matters anyway right?  

YAASS

I mean come on...

Source One: http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Racism_in_Tolkien's_Works

Source Two: https://faustusnotes.wordpress.com/2009/06/06/tolkiens-racial-theories/

  

Are You At Risk For A Potato Baby?

Are you in an interracial relationship and planning on having children? You may be at risk for having a child with physical deformities or mental gaps.

           The Sultan and the Princess of Tars were not the same on a cultural or racial level, or even a religious level. This made their relationship very difficult at the beginning until the Princess lied about her faith to make the Sultan happy. When they finally had their child, their precious baby was nothing more than a lump of flesh with no features or bones. That is when the Sultan realized they were not alike at all, he knew his wife had lied to his face about her faith. The couple began to blame each other and have a pray off. In the end, the Princess's religion, (Christianity) won. The Sultan converted to Christianity and  became white, like the Princess. After his transformation and the baby's baptism their child became an actual person.

           After reading King of Tars and discussing the lump child, I wanted to look into the risks that biracial couples have to face when welcoming a child into the world. Many websites I stumbled across believed that the babies of interracial parents were at significantly higher risks for birth defects, such as imperforate anus (being born without an anus) or cleft lip. I found one government based website that does show the higher risks per race BUT it says that the risks are barely higher. It is just there to show that there are difference between races for risks.

         Other websites I found were obviously published by racist people that wanted their perfect race like Hitler. These websites were filled with excuses and lies for reasons that two people of different races should not be together and have children. Their main reason was to keep different facial features across the world.

        Although many websites were completely misguiding and racist. I did find one that had great information. It explained that the more diversity a person had racial could be beneficial towards the gene pool because of the constant change in our surroundings. When populations migrate and have constant changing environments, diseases mutate. People of two races actually have a higher guard and resistance towards the mutated disease. The more multiracial the person is, the more resistance they have. In reality, people who have mixed babies are just looking out for their children. Those two races are giving to each other, not taking away from one another.

 Websites Used:
- http://interracialintersection.com/are-children-of-interracial-couples-at-increased-risk-of-genetic-defects/
- http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/birthdefects/data.html
- http://www.dailystormer.com/the-dire-consequences-of-interracial-breeding/

Not So Unintentional Racism

In The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the antagonists and all evil creatures come from far-off lands in the East. The places from which evil comes in Middle Earth is also the same places from which generally despised people and ideas arrive to Medieval Europeans. In this way it is evident that although Tolkien did not necessarily intend to slander one specific race or religion, the enemies of Western Europe in the middle ages are used as a basis for evil.

            Although it is not obvious in the film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, in his letters Tolkien writes Orcs as, "...squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes; in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types."(Letter 210). It is highly unlikely that Tolkien himself had a disposition against the Mongols that he would create these agreeably hideous creatures out of spite of them in his day, but it is not so far fetched that the Mongols are a good foundation for the antagonists in a world that is in some ways rather similar to medieval Europe.

Picture of a Mongol (maybe Guyuk Khan)

Uruk-Hai from Lord of the Rings

The Mongols conquered everything in their path and would not stop until it was unquestionably under the rule of the Khanate. To medieval Europeans, the Mongols were seen as a murderous, demonic race set on ruling the world and destroying the Western world. In 1241, the Mongols invaded Poland with an army of 150,000 men, and defeated the Poles at Leignitz with ease. They then went on to defeat the Hungarians at Mohi. The thought of a different race of people entering Europe and conquering it caused Europeans to be fearful of the conquerors and lead them to believe they were not quite human. This is not unlike the goal of Sauron and his army of Orcs in The Lord of the Rings” and his methods of gaining exactly what he desired. If he was not able to retrieve his Ring through deceit and temptation, he would tear the world apart by sheer force.

The Mongols are not the only enemy to Western Europe. The idea of Islam and the fear of Muslims gaining power was frightening to medieval Christians in western Europe. Their fear was out of a lack of understanding (and unwillingness to understand) of Islam and the Arab culture. Tolkien capitalizes on their fear by locating Mordor and its legions in the far east in a similar geographical position when compared to the “orient” as seen by the medieval western Europeans. Many people have criticized Tolkien for this far from coincidental placement of evil as a form of his inherent racism, but it is more probable that this intentional placement of Mordor is due to the perceptions of evil contained within Islam and the Muslims of the middle ages.

A map of Europe and Middle Earth compared in which Mordor is placed around Ottoman dominated Asia Minor

Other aspects of Sauron’s power have been attributed to the middle east such as: Sauron’s armies and the language and writing of Mordor. The depictions of the region in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy depict this.

The armies of Mordor used elephants, a tactic utilized by Asian and North African generals- most notable with Carthage’s Hannibal and his war against the Romans

While this is written in a fictional language, it does have some similarities to Arabic script

In The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, Tolkien writes the enemies of the (relatively) peaceful world of the men as reminiscent of the people of the Asian steppes, Asia Minor and the Middle East. Undoubtedly these racial foundations for the antagonists are somewhat problematic, but it is not done out of Tolkien’s animosity towards the races or religions of those respective regions but out of the perceptions of those regions by Western Europeans during the Middle Ages. This is not to say that Tolkien’s works do not have other racial biases, but merely that through a historical lens, the racial stresses of Mordor are done out of the distorted perceptions of different religions and races in Western Europe.   

The Rise of Christianity evolving into Roman Catholic in the Middle Ages

      During the middle ages, Christianity was one of the many religions but was one of the most recognized religions. It was not just any form of the Christian religion but of the Catholic religion form. When Christianity started to emerge it was seen as a threat to the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire wanted everyone to bow down and praise their Gods or the Emperor. When Christians refused to do this they were to be persecuted. When Constantine I became emperor the persecutions of Christians came to a stop because he was a part of the Christian religion. Christianity then became the official religion of the Roman Empire.

Catholic Church

    When the Roman Empire started falling. Christianity became known as the Catholic religion. The Catholic Church became extremely powerful. The church collected taxes and gifts of all kinds from people who either wanted a favor or wanted a special place in heaven. The church became even more powerful and was able to influence the king and other rulers of Europe. Anyone who opposed the Catholic Church was not able to attend church services and that person was going to go straight to hell once they died. Later there was an argument between the Eastern and Western churches over the Crusades. This argument led to a split which is known as the Great Schism. After this, the Catholic religion was referred to as the Roman Catholic religion.

For Narnia! A Comparison of Worlds and Races Between J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit And C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series

Personally, it is hard for me to read from Tolkien and not think about C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia series. After all, the two worlds, and the two men themselves, have a lot in common. Their stories both contain multitudes of different races in a fantastical medieval setting, as well as mythological references and a bit of the British lifestyle sprinkled in. Both men spent a lot of time at Oxford, were Christians of some denomination, and environmentalists. While these two agreed on many things, their stories are unique to them. It is obvious Tolkien took more interest in medieval history than Lewis, but Lewis delved into mythology more deeply than Tolkien did. One aspect of Tolkien and Lewis’s fantasy worlds that differ is their portrayal of the race of Dwarves.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit is filled to the brim with multiple different races, including Hobbits, Men, Elves, Wizards, Orcs, Goblins, giant spiders, eagles, and many more in his continuing saga. These Middle Earth races are notably likened to races of people throughout real world history. In The Hobbit specifically, the race of Dwarves in Middle Earth is incredibly similar to the caricature view of the Jewish race. Their short stature, multi-colored hoods, bearded men and women, and their obsession with gold fall under the Jewish stereotypes, but Tolkien is not portraying all of these traits as antagonistic. Dwarves are actually part of the more heroic races in Middle Earth. The only difference the Dwarves have from the other protagonist races is that they are more flawed, more susceptible to greed.

One of the original illustrations from The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe

Lewis’s take on Dwarfs (that’s how he spells it) and other races is similar to Tolkien’s but with some alterations. Narnia is filled with a broad variety of races. Many of these are talking animals; others are mythical in nature, like centaurs, fauns, Minotaurs, and even a Pegasus. There are also several races of humans in the world of Narnia, including the Telmarines and the Calormen. The Dwarf race in Narnia is interesting because, unlike Tolkien’s Dwarves, the race is split down the middle when it comes to heroics. Their description is similar to the Dwarves in Middle Earth, short, bearded, and with some type of head covering. At the beginning of the series there are two varieties of Dwarfs, Black and Red. Black Dwarfs have black, thick beards and tend to associate more with the villains of Narnia, while the Red Dwarfs ally themselves with Aslan, the ultimate source of good in Narnia. One other aspect of the Dwarfs that is unique to Lewis’s tale is the matter of Dwarf women. There is no evidence of any Dwarf women at all throughout the Narnia series; however, there are several part Dwarf characters roaming around (e.g. Cornelius, Prince Caspian’s tutor, is half Dwarf). There does not seem to be any division between Dwarfs and regular humans in Narnia as far as mating is concerned.

Both Lewis and Tolkien’s portrayal of Dwarves in their fictional worlds are blatantly similar to the stereotype of the Jewish people, short with more rugged features and some evil tendencies. This representation of Jews is inaccurate and would normally lean toward insulting; however, Lewis and Tolkien both depict their Dwarf characters as capable of both good and evil. While the stereotype is heavily present, the two authors show respect towards those characters by making the race more complex than the others.

Low Key Racial Biases

In the year 2015, it’s fair to say that the human race has become much more progressive on many social issues. However, it is important not to let ourselves believe that our progress is complete. While we have made great strides for human rights and equality, there is still more to be done. One such issue that has improved but has yet to become ideal is race. We have certainly come a long way from atrocities such as the Holocaust, slavery, and segregation, but race is still an issue that is still prominent today, albeit more subtle.

               For example, in his novel, The Hobbit, J.R.R Tolkien has admitted that he modeled the fantasy dwarf race after the Jewish race. At first glance this doesn’t seem to be much of an issue when reading about the dwarves. The dwarves are not depicted in a particularly negative way; they are portrayed as one of the heroic, good races. They also share the same historical misfortune of the Jewish race in that they are forced to wander and are lacking a true home. However, some of the other similarities they share are perhaps due to Tolkien’s racial biases and subconscious stereotyping. The dwarf race, despite being heroic, are also portrayed as being very greedy and overly fond of treasure, the same avarice that the Jewish race is stereotyped as having in modern times. Additionally, the dwarf race is depicted as small in stature with rugged, rough features. On the other hand, the Elven race, modeled after Aryans, are of normal height and depicted as being quite fair. It also says something that while the novel already had a race of men, the Jewish race was projected to the dwarf race rather than the standard race of man.

               While these are certainly not egregious issues, they serve to show that despite being the progress we have made on issues, there are still biases, assumptions, and stereotypes that are ingrained into people. It’s not always easy to recognize these issues, as they have become increasingly subtle, but it is important to try to realize that they are present so that we can continue to make progress for human rights and equality.