The Fool's Gender? (possible spoilers)

[Fortuna]

I think this is something that Robin Hobb has always wanted to keep us guessing about.

I also think that the fact that the fool appears genderless is another comment on the relationship / friendship between the fool and Fitz (It is so difficult not to write he or she). The friendship is supposed to transcend gender. It doesn’t, because human beings are too complicated to be that straightforward, but I think it is supposed to. Someone stop me if I am rambling.

 

[elvet]

I would say that the Fool is anatomically a male, or else Fitz would have commented on it when he dealt with the Fool's body. Having said that, I think that Fool did seem to have more of a feminine aspect to his character. I like the idea that his gender was flexible in a way that allowed him to assume different guises as befitted his need. It also sets him apart from the humans in the story, along with his lifespan and darkening skin.

 

[the_faery_queen]

i think its because he was more sensitive in many ways than other characters and i think because gender really didn't matter to him. he may well have been bi, but i think its more a case of it wasn't sex that drove him to who he loved, it wasn't based on sexual attraction. he seemed to love people for who they were, he saw more in people than a lot of other people see, so perhaps that's why it made it easier for him to be more gender neutral. without being worried about sexuality, or gender roles. it was definetly more a personality thing tho, not something from his society. because, again, the woman prophet was VERY female and very feminine in the way she came across. so in their society there must have been some gender roles and sexuality, it just seems that the fool went beyond it.

 

[Void Dragon]

The fool is male: otherwise Fitz wouldn't consider the love the fool felt for him as pervert...
It's normal in a medieval society that homosexuality is considered pervert (I even do so nowadays, no offence...)

 

[the_faery_queen]

that's not really the point. the fool appears male to fitz, just as he appears female to althea in the liveship traders. that doesn't mean he IS male or female, which is what the topic is about. fitz thinks he's male, it doesn't mean that the fool IS male. he has a very good understanding of the female body (the fool) far more than most men in that sort of world, without proper medical adivse would, he also passes himself off as female very well, and gets on well with women (starling) in a way that she thinks makes him female. so its not a simple fact that fitz thinks he is male, that means he is.

and i have to say, the farseer society is VERy far from true medieval. the women have pretty much an equal status to the men, they can come and go as they want, no one is treating them like brood mares. rape and violence is also pretty low, which people keep telling me it wasn't in medieval society. it may have castles and kings but it isn't a true medieval society. just because something is fantasy, it doesn't mean it is historially medieval. so perhaps homosexuality was disliked in medieval society, this world isn't medieval particularly, so that actually has nothing to do with anything. after all, from what i can gather of medieval society, if homopsexuality WAS disliked that is because of its christian elements (no offense to any christians i hope) the same reason that it is often disliked in religious countries now. but religion isn't that strong in the farseer world, so there isn't any real reason for them to be homophobic.

 

[Sketti]

Definitely a man. Like Teir said, Fitz would have known. Not to mention that when he found Fool dead in the dungeon, Fool was nekkid. I think he would have gone "OMG! WTF? Fool you have boobies!" if Fool was a girl
So he has deep feelings for Fitz, doesn't make him automatically female or changing. He's also a very good actor remember? When he was Amber he was acting female, he also comes from a place much more open it seems to me and that he would be considered "feminine" by a harsher society is normal.

 

[Sketti]

i think its because he was more sensitive in many ways than other characters and i think because gender really didn't matter to him. he may well have been bi, but i think its more a case of it wasn't sex that drove him to who he loved, it wasn't based on sexual attraction. he seemed to love people for who they were, he saw more in people than a lot of other people see, so perhaps that's why it made it easier for him to be more gender neutral. without being worried about sexuality, or gender roles. it was definetly more a personality thing tho, not something from his society. because, again, the woman prophet was VERY female and very feminine in the way she came across. so in their society there must have been some gender roles and sexuality, it just seems that the fool went beyond it.

I agree
Where the Fool is from struck me (from what little we get of it) as a more open society than the one on the continent the story is on. The pale woman didn't seem to find it odd at all that Fool had feelings for Fitz. Also, the whole exchange of names thing I can't imagine from a society that doesn't appreciate feelings and phylosophy quite a bit. It makes perfect sense to me that the Fool wouldn't have a hard time being "gender neutral" personality wise. There's also the fact that he chose to appear male to Fitz, and then there's the bit (not sure if I'm remembering correctly) where the Fool was comparing his feelings for Fitz with what Fitz felt for Nighteyes and there was something about him being "too male" in the same conversation(need to find the passage).

In the mean time, the end annoyed me I wanted the Fool and Fitz to stay together. Molly was sooooo boring and ughhh and she just didn't get it that he had a more important purpose than her! *squeezes Molly's neck"

 

[In search of forever]

An effeminate male with bisexual tendencies.

 

[the_faery_queen]

i don't thik he was effeminitate. effiminate, to me, implies camp. he wasn't camp, except for as lord golden, and that was a show. he wasn't female, he wasn't male, he transcedied gender traits, he just was a person who was free of gender. there are a lot of peole who feel that they're neither gender, they dont' relate to either, and i think the fool was like that, his love for fitz was definatly more than sexual love, it was love love. and i don't think he was bi or gay or straight, i dont' think he was bothered by bodies or gender at all. he just loved who he loved. gay or straight or bi implies some sort of preference (well bi likes both clearly) but i think he would have felt the same about anyone, any creature, any animal, anything, because he loved who they were, not their bodies.

 

[Teir]

*quiet snigger as teir has a few flashbacks*
well......he was a bit camp on occasion......even just as the fool

Though with him it was always hard to tell whether that was a personality trait, a facade, or just a bit of warped sense of humour *Grin*

 

[the_faery_queen]

i always thought it was put of his fool routine thing. i never saw him as that camp really.

 

[cornelius]

ok that gave me some flashbacks... maybe i should get the next trilogy a go now ( i have only read the first trilogy (farseer) so far)

 

[Teir]

i always thought it was put of his fool routine thing. i never saw him as that camp really.

*nod*
but sometimes you just knew he was doing it just to enjoy driving fitz crazy

 

[the_faery_queen]

oh totally! that's part of why i loved him. he was such a messer! he liked to stir things up. the way he was with fitz at the start of the tawny man seemed a lot more earnest and sensitive and quiet, less campy and outrageous, i always thought of that fool as the real one, the others as more of an act. because he was never one way all the time. must have been SO cool to have as a friend, in a frustrating way

 

[Teir]

ok that gave me some flashbacks... maybe i should get the next trilogy a go now ( i have only read the first trilogy (farseer) so far)

yes,
yes you should

i always thought of that fool as the real one, the others as more of an act. because he was never one way all the time. must have been SO cool to have as a friend, in a frustrating way

love the way you look at him and i believe you should have put a 'very very' in between 'a' and 'frustrating'

 

[the_faery_queen]

yeah poor fitz. must have been driven nuts sometimes

 

[ScottSF]

Since seer type people are born of human parents as a result of the original seer people interbreeding with humans then they are probably not sexless. Here's a thought, human embryos start out sexless (or was it all female?) and gender develops a bit later in the process. Maybe seers remain somewhat sexless untill they reach a certain stage in their long lives. Perhaps once they have fulfilled their role then they can settle on a gender. Unfortunately none of the three seer nobody showed any interest in breeding so there's not a lot to go on there. The only convincing evidence that was mentioned in the thread is that fits saw her naked when she was dead. Now I want to re-read that part to see if there is any squigle room. Hobb was very careful about not leaving any give aways but that may have been overlooked.
The Fool is emotionally very female. Other than the mentioned death scene, she always shows up fully dressed. (I admit that could be about hiding the tatoo) When she shows fits the tatoo on her back she covers her chest. When Fitz switches bodies he notes how "different" the Fool is physiologically. The fool compares the difference between herself and Fritz to the difference between Fritz and Nighteyes. If Beloved is so different, even supperior, compared to humans then gender may be more of a grey area. And can the average human tell the gender of a dragon on sight? Perhaps she can appear male but the way she acts, especially in Tawny (wo)Man , screams chick to me. I had the same feeling of frustration when she had her tiffs with Fitz as I do when arguing with a girlfriend.

 

[ScottSF]

Also I don't know of any culture that would name a male child Beloved, admitted it is Fantasy. The fool acts very much like a woman pretending to be a man would with all the clothes. And it's very much like a woman to use her influence to make Fitz wear pretty clothes that he doesn't want. If I had to give a percent I would say 80% female at the least.

 

[Teir]

Since seer type people are born of human parents as a result of the original seer people interbreeding with humans then they are probably not sexless. Here's a thought, human embryos start out sexless (or was it all female?) and gender develops a bit later in the process. Maybe seers remain somewhat sexless untill they reach a certain stage in their long lives. Perhaps once they have fulfilled their role then they can settle on a gender. Unfortunately none of the three seer nobody showed any interest in breeding so there's not a lot to go on there. The only convincing evidence that was mentioned in the thread is that fits saw her naked when she was dead. Now I want to re-read that part to see if there is any squigle room. Hobb was very careful about not leaving any give aways but that may have been overlooked.
The Fool is emotionally very female. Other than the mentioned death scene, she always shows up fully dressed. (I admit that could be about hiding the tatoo) When she shows fits the tatoo on her back she covers her chest. When Fitz switches bodies he notes how "different" the Fool is physiologically. The fool compares the difference between herself and Fritz to the difference between Fritz and Nighteyes. If Beloved is so different, even supperior, compared to humans then gender may be more of a grey area. And can the average human tell the gender of a dragon on sight? Perhaps she can appear male but the way she acts, especially in Tawny (wo)Man , screams chick to me. I had the same feeling of frustration when she had her tiffs with Fitz as I do when arguing with a girlfriend.

Interesting. Going by your theory though, how do you explain the pale woman? It is clear that she never fulfills what was supposed to be her role and destiny and she is most assuredly 'settled' into a female gender. If nothing else, Fitz's description of her body quite determines that lol.

And just a thought - the fool and the pale women seem to share a history where at some point they had contact while he was a child. That was some time ago (the fools makes brief refferences to alot of time passing) and even back then he refers to her as female.
The fool has grown and by your reasoning has not yet reached the settled gender that his nemesis did.....

And I don't know about Fitz seeing the fool naked...i think i disagree with that wherever it was mentioned...i cant recall any specific point where hobb wrote that....but as i mentioned at the beginning - they did switch bodies and i cant see Fitz not taking any notice as to the fact that the body he was now in was female if the fool was indeed a woman. 'Different'..can be explained...at least i thought so....by the fact that the fool is from a different race...species if you will

Im not sure if the fools nature and attitude towards gender can be explained by his race. It might be something that is purely Fool

 

[the_faery_queen]

i don't thonk the fool acts anything like a woman trying to be a man. i think the problem is people are too hung up on gender roles and identitys, to be honest. and we find it hard to imagine that a man can behave the way that the fool did. but i know a lot of people who dont' identify with either gender, who are just themselves, despite being in a female or male body, and i think the fool is that. i think he's biologically male, because if he wasn't, the white prophettess woman would have known, she knew him as a child, and so would fitz, when they body swopped/mind linked all the rest of it. but he is emotionally genderless. he doesn't identify with either gender, as he says, it's just plumbing, it doesn't make you who you are. and i agree with that. im female but i don't identify with being female. have the bits, but they're meaningless to me (im asexual) and i think that the fool is like that. ok he's had sex, he said himself that he wasn't saving himself for fitz, but in other ways he loves like asexuals do, mind to mind, not with bodies. so for me, he's male, without having a male mindset, perhaps because of his upbringing (tho granted he had two fathers, from what i remember. so it's odd in that way that he isn't more masculine,)

for all we know tho, the female prophet could be the odd one. perhaps their culture isn't so sexual and she's the odd one out? or perhaps not. i just dont' think the fool is female at all. i don't think he's both or neither either. i think he's male, but without any of the concerns that go with gender identification. something i relate to. which is perhaps why i do think he's male, because i want him to be without that gender indentification, and if he was female, then he wouldn't have that.