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Last week, I tried to explain Warriors as kind of like Harry Potter with cats, which really doesn't do it justice. So imma try again:
The Warriors series basically revolves around the lives of a (pretty dang big) population of feral cats living in the wild. They live in a strict hierarchical society in which each of the four "clans" has a leader, deputy, medicine cat, etc. The clans (ThunderClan, RiverClan, WindClan, and ShadowClan) have an intense rivalry which means that they are almost always at odds with each other. They fight frequently over territory (although the "Warrior Code" mostly prevents them from killing each other) and meet peacefully only once a month in a central region at the heart of the entire forest. They worship/get guidance from their ancestors (united in "StarClan"), and live out their cat lives doing cat things like killing mice. On the surface, it seems pretty harmless. But it's really weird now to think that, as a kid, my favorite books were about anthropomorphized cats and their tendencies toward violence, nationalism and religious fanaticism.
In light of Thursday's discussion, I tried to remember to what extent the Warriors series dealt with feminist themes. The books were (and still are) written by a team of female authors under the pseudonym of "Erin Hunter." (I couldn't find if any of them actually explicitly said they were feminists, but I'd be surprised if any of them were very blatantly anti-feminist.) I read Warriors a lot (and I mean A LOT) during my formative years, so I wondered if that contributed to my current ideas about gender. So here's what I remember (and didn't realize) about gender and feminism with regards to the series:
In the original series, the main character (Rusty/Firepaw) is male. Most (if not all?) of his friends (and therefore the major characters) are male as well. At the beginning of the series, Rusty is a "kittypet" (housepet) who is convinced by Bluestar (the leader of ThunderClan, the local group of feral cats) to run away from his owners and join her clan. In the later generations, a lot more female characters (especially female main characters) are introduced. I wondered if Firepaw and his best friend being male was a marketing tactic (would the series appeal to a greater audience that way?) but also they're cats... Would it have really mattered if Firepaw was a gal-cat? Anyway, moving on...
In the first book, Bluestar and Spottedleaf (ThunderClan's medicine cat) are probably the most prominent female characters. And while they're in positions of power in the clan, they're also subject to martyrdom, which is too often coded as a feminine requirement.
Some quick background: when a member of clan leadership dies, the leader chooses a new deputy (or the deputy ascends to leader and then chooses a new deputy) shortly after. There aren't any technical gender-restrictions, but female cats currently nursing/taking care of young kits aren't ever chosen, presumably because they're currently "too busy" being mothers. Before she became a leader, Bluestar secretly had kittens with a RiverClan warrior (forbidden because they were from different clans). When the old leader of ThunderClan died, Bluestar was forced to bring her kits to RiverClan (pretending to have lost them to a fox) so that she could both follow her ambition of becoming deputy and prevent another hyper-aggressive cat from becoming it instead. In this way, ambition and motherhood are portrayed as incompatible -- Bluestar must sacrifice her children for the good of the clan.
As a medicine cat, Spottedleaf faces a similar scenario. Medicine cats are dual physicians and religious leaders; they're expected to dedicate their life to their practice, and are therefore not allowed to have a mate or kits. There are no gender-based restrictions on this position either, although most of the medicine cats shown early in the series are female. In the first book, Firepaw has a major crush on Spottedleaf. This ends in tragedy when she is soon killed off trying to protect ThunderClan's kittens from an attacking clan. (Similarly, Silverstream, the RiverClan bootycall of Firepaw's best friend Graystripe, dies tragically in childbirth/kittenbirth.) In a later series, a medicine cat named Leafpool (Firepaw's -- now Firestar's -- daughter) demotes herself from medicine cat when the clan finds out she had kits -- and not only that, but with a WindClan warrior (ooh, scandalous). In each case, the female characters are performing the ultimate sacrifice for the good of the clan, or are in some way punished/self-punish for breaking The Rules (TM), which seems almost slut-shamey, just in a weirdly non-human context.
The Warriors series basically revolves around the lives of a (pretty dang big) population of feral cats living in the wild. They live in a strict hierarchical society in which each of the four "clans" has a leader, deputy, medicine cat, etc. The clans (ThunderClan, RiverClan, WindClan, and ShadowClan) have an intense rivalry which means that they are almost always at odds with each other. They fight frequently over territory (although the "Warrior Code" mostly prevents them from killing each other) and meet peacefully only once a month in a central region at the heart of the entire forest. They worship/get guidance from their ancestors (united in "StarClan"), and live out their cat lives doing cat things like killing mice. On the surface, it seems pretty harmless. But it's really weird now to think that, as a kid, my favorite books were about anthropomorphized cats and their tendencies toward violence, nationalism and religious fanaticism.
In light of Thursday's discussion, I tried to remember to what extent the Warriors series dealt with feminist themes. The books were (and still are) written by a team of female authors under the pseudonym of "Erin Hunter." (I couldn't find if any of them actually explicitly said they were feminists, but I'd be surprised if any of them were very blatantly anti-feminist.) I read Warriors a lot (and I mean A LOT) during my formative years, so I wondered if that contributed to my current ideas about gender. So here's what I remember (and didn't realize) about gender and feminism with regards to the series:
In the original series, the main character (Rusty/Firepaw) is male. Most (if not all?) of his friends (and therefore the major characters) are male as well. At the beginning of the series, Rusty is a "kittypet" (housepet) who is convinced by Bluestar (the leader of ThunderClan, the local group of feral cats) to run away from his owners and join her clan. In the later generations, a lot more female characters (especially female main characters) are introduced. I wondered if Firepaw and his best friend being male was a marketing tactic (would the series appeal to a greater audience that way?) but also they're cats... Would it have really mattered if Firepaw was a gal-cat? Anyway, moving on...
In the first book, Bluestar and Spottedleaf (ThunderClan's medicine cat) are probably the most prominent female characters. And while they're in positions of power in the clan, they're also subject to martyrdom, which is too often coded as a feminine requirement.
Some quick background: when a member of clan leadership dies, the leader chooses a new deputy (or the deputy ascends to leader and then chooses a new deputy) shortly after. There aren't any technical gender-restrictions, but female cats currently nursing/taking care of young kits aren't ever chosen, presumably because they're currently "too busy" being mothers. Before she became a leader, Bluestar secretly had kittens with a RiverClan warrior (forbidden because they were from different clans). When the old leader of ThunderClan died, Bluestar was forced to bring her kits to RiverClan (pretending to have lost them to a fox) so that she could both follow her ambition of becoming deputy and prevent another hyper-aggressive cat from becoming it instead. In this way, ambition and motherhood are portrayed as incompatible -- Bluestar must sacrifice her children for the good of the clan.
As a medicine cat, Spottedleaf faces a similar scenario. Medicine cats are dual physicians and religious leaders; they're expected to dedicate their life to their practice, and are therefore not allowed to have a mate or kits. There are no gender-based restrictions on this position either, although most of the medicine cats shown early in the series are female. In the first book, Firepaw has a major crush on Spottedleaf. This ends in tragedy when she is soon killed off trying to protect ThunderClan's kittens from an attacking clan. (Similarly, Silverstream, the RiverClan bootycall of Firepaw's best friend Graystripe, dies tragically in childbirth/kittenbirth.) In a later series, a medicine cat named Leafpool (Firepaw's -- now Firestar's -- daughter) demotes herself from medicine cat when the clan finds out she had kits -- and not only that, but with a WindClan warrior (ooh, scandalous). In each case, the female characters are performing the ultimate sacrifice for the good of the clan, or are in some way punished/self-punish for breaking The Rules (TM), which seems almost slut-shamey, just in a weirdly non-human context.
