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Old 01-18-2016, 07:53 AM   #7
Faramir Jones
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White-Hand Something coherent drowned in incoherence

While I agree with you, IxnaY AintsaY, that Ms. Lilly was trying to say something coherent, it was drowned in a greater amount of incoherence.

She began by saying that her question was 'sassy', and that she was in a 'sassy mood'. Miriam-Webster online (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sassy) defines this as '1. Impudent; 2. Vigorous, lively; 3. Distinctively smart and stylish'. I'm taking it from the context that definitions 1 and 2 are relevant here.

If Ms. Lilly, or anyone else, wants to ask a provocative question, that's fine. The point is that the questioner should then be prepared for a response, and to argue his or her point, presenting evidence, in this case that J. R. R. Tolkien hated women.

After asking it, she then undercut her own question, saying that Tolkien 'started writing incredibly well for women in the 1970s, once the women's lib movement happened'. She said that what Tolkien did in the 1930s was 'then not so much'. It was 'a societal thing'.

In my view, if Ms. Lilly began with such a provocative question to Tolkien, of 'Do you hate women?' I would have expected her to be ready to defend it; but she undercut it by a claim which showed her ignorance of Tolkien and his works, including that he died in 1973.

She then groped towards a coherent point when she said that Tolkien's writing in the 1930s was influenced by the society in which he grew up in and in which he lived, like the works of any writer. Certainly he was educated in, worked in, and socialised in mostly male-dominated environments, which may have influenced what he wrote; but it's not an indication of any 'hate' regarding women, a very strong term to use.

The problem was that she had already showed (in my opinion) she didn't have the evidence (shown by her ignorance about Tolkien in the 1970s) to coherently argue her question.

What do you and others think of this?
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