On sex and gender

For discussion of John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel Låt den rätte komma in
Post Reply
User avatar
crazychristina
Posts: 654
Joined: Sat Nov 13, 2010 1:17 am

On sex and gender

Post by crazychristina » Fri Nov 19, 2010 7:43 am

This is a general opinion (of mine) about sex and gender that I hope might be useful in discussions. Unlike many people I see sex (biology), gender (identity) and gender role (behaviour) as three separate but interacting aspects of personality. Sex is about male/female, based on chromosomes. Gender is about man/woman, based on how a person idenitifies. Gender role is about masucline/feminine based on some fairly universal stereotypes about how men and women should act.

Although the most common pattern is for males to identify as men and act in a fairly masucline manner, and for females to identify as women and and act in fairly feminine ways, this is by no means universal. I'd guess that a fairly butch dyke is female, identifies as a woman, but prefers to act in fairly masculine ways. I know a lot of transexual people (being one myself) including MtoF and FtoM people. Here sex and gender certainly don't align in the typical way. What social role a TS person prefers (or has been conditioned to) can be anything.

Quite apart from these aspects coming together in different ways, they are not binary categories anyway. There is a fairly high percentage of people who are not either XX or XY as far as chromosomes go. Throw in the fact that other genes also have an influence and things are not as simple as they seem. People with AIS (androgen insensitivity syndrome) are genetically XY males, but lack of another gene prevents the development of receptors on cells that respond to testosterone, so they exhibit none of the characteristics of males. Often they appear to be and are raised as girls and it's not until puberty when they fail to menstruate that it is discovered that they are not genetically female.

As far as identity goes there are people who refer to themselves as neutrois who do not identify as men or women (boy or girl). To them gender is irrelevant, even though they do belong to one sex or the other (or maybe somewhere in-between). And as for social role, these are quite a bit more fluid today than they once might have been.

None of this has specific relevance to LTROI, but it might be a useful framework for thinking about where Eli might stand in all this.

User avatar
sauvin
Moderator
Posts: 3410
Joined: Sun Dec 06, 2009 5:52 am
Location: A cornfield in heartland USA

Re: On sex and gender

Post by sauvin » Fri Nov 19, 2010 9:01 am

"I'm not a girl. Not a boy. Not old. Not young. I'm nothing", or words to such effect. This is what Eli says to Oskar when he asks what she means when she says she's not a girl.

I think it's operative. What she didn't say is that she's not human, and not a vampire... but if he'd already known about her, she very well might have. The strongest impression I get of Eli just with regards to her humanity (forgetting sexuality/gender/sex/whatever) is that if pressed, she'll admit she's alive, and that's about as far as she'd go. She doesn't seem to identify very strongly with anything otherwise.

"Are you a vampire?" "No. I need blood to live, but I'm not.... that. There's a very big difference." We never really get an answer to what Eli considers a "vampire", and while the implication seems to be that this is what Hakan is, it's never clearly spelled out, and a zombie Hakan could be yet another kind of critter entirely - but whatever Eli's idea of a "true" vampire is, she denies being such a thing.

In other topics, Eli's gender, sexual identity and sexuality have been explored pretty much to the limits of the forum's tolerance. I myself have probably gone further than most would dare in speculating on what her past experience with other Hakans might have been, but did so in order to try to understand where she might be emotionally and socially in the "present time" (when she meets Oskar).

I have a very strong suspicion that the whole concept of gender and sexuality are almost completely irrelevant to her. Her foremost long-term problem is in being isolated from humanity because of her diet. She may (or may not) deliberately choose to present as a female for a couple of reasons, the more obvious and probably easily acceptable being that such presentation eases her survival. People respond more readily and more openly to a girl than to a boy. The second reason (which is a matter of speculation among board members) has to do with Eli's feelings for the mother she never saw again after being taken.

I have an even stronger suspicion that even if you were to be able to talk to her personally, presenting her with the post you've just presented us with, she'd wrinkle up her nose, shake her head a couple of times, and say "Um... huh!?" She doesn't have testosterone or estrogen, for one thing, and so can't even have the beginnings of the stirrings that most children her apparent age feel - and she has nothing to feel these stirrings with, and her long, essentially solitary existence has probably mitigated against much in the way of training for any particular "role" beyond the sex- or gender-entangled uglinesses I've speculated on in other topics.

To be blunt, the whole issue of Eli's sexual identity, gender and sexuality seem generally much more important to people around her. She's not confused - there's nothing to be confused about - but other people frequently are, and it's their confusion that can complicate and curse her life so much when she has to maintain anything resembling a relationship with another human being.

This may well in fact be one of the major factors in her being drawn towards Oskar. He just doesn't seem to give a d%#n.
Fais tomber les barrières entre nous qui sommes tous des frères

User avatar
drakkar
Posts: 3833
Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2009 8:26 am
Location: Trondheim, Norway

Re: On sex and gender

Post by drakkar » Fri Nov 19, 2010 11:33 am

For me, the gender issue adds to Eli's complexity, and to the profoundness of the main plot. It makes Eli even more difficult for me to fully grasp (which I never will). Emotionally I get it, so it is the gap between my emotions and my rational thinking which is opening up another notch by the gender issue. How large this notch is, varies a lot, it seems.
The gap between my emotional and mental take on LTROI make it a story I must choose to fully surrender to or not. Now, you know what I did..
For the heart life is simple. It beats as long as it can.
- Karl Ove Knausgård

daimonos
Posts: 19
Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2010 11:42 pm
Location: Omaha, Nebraska

Re: On sex and gender

Post by daimonos » Fri Nov 19, 2010 8:37 pm

sauvin wrote:"I'm not a girl. Not a boy. Not old. Not young. I'm nothing", or words to such effect. This is what Eli says to Oskar when he asks what she means when she says she's not a girl.

I think it's operative. What she didn't say is that she's not human, and not a vampire... but if he'd already known about her, she very well might have. The strongest impression I get of Eli just with regards to her humanity (forgetting sexuality/gender/sex/whatever) is that if pressed, she'll admit she's alive, and that's about as far as she'd go. She doesn't seem to identify very strongly with anything otherwise.

"Are you a vampire?" "No. I need blood to live, but I'm not.... that. There's a very big difference." We never really get an answer to what Eli considers a "vampire", and while the implication seems to be that this is what Hakan is, it's never clearly spelled out, and a zombie Hakan could be yet another kind of critter entirely - but whatever Eli's idea of a "true" vampire is, she denies being such a thing.

In other topics, Eli's gender, sexual identity and sexuality have been explored pretty much to the limits of the forum's tolerance. I myself have probably gone further than most would dare in speculating on what her past experience with other Hakans might have been, but did so in order to try to understand where she might be emotionally and socially in the "present time" (when she meets Oskar).

I have a very strong suspicion that the whole concept of gender and sexuality are almost completely irrelevant to her. Her foremost long-term problem is in being isolated from humanity because of her diet. She may (or may not) deliberately choose to present as a female for a couple of reasons, the more obvious and probably easily acceptable being that such presentation eases her survival. People respond more readily and more openly to a girl than to a boy. The second reason (which is a matter of speculation among board members) has to do with Eli's feelings for the mother she never saw again after being taken.

I have an even stronger suspicion that even if you were to be able to talk to her personally, presenting her with the post you've just presented us with, she'd wrinkle up her nose, shake her head a couple of times, and say "Um... huh!?" She doesn't have testosterone or estrogen, for one thing, and so can't even have the beginnings of the stirrings that most children her apparent age feel - and she has nothing to feel these stirrings with, and her long, essentially solitary existence has probably mitigated against much in the way of training for any particular "role" beyond the sex- or gender-entangled uglinesses I've speculated on in other topics.

To be blunt, the whole issue of Eli's sexual identity, gender and sexuality seem generally much more important to people around her. She's not confused - there's nothing to be confused about - but other people frequently are, and it's their confusion that can complicate and curse her life so much when she has to maintain anything resembling a relationship with another human being.

This may well in fact be one of the major factors in her being drawn towards Oskar. He just doesn't seem to give a damn.
I believe that Eli does give us the necessary information for us to be able to infer what she considers a vampire. Her previous experiences with vampires were the nobleman and the woman she met. Both of these characters seemed to not only enjoy but revel in their existence of being a vampire. The nobleman is a sadist whom enjoys torturing others as we are shown from the flashbacks dealing with him.

The way I interpreted Eli saying that she is not a vampire was similar to how she said that "I'm not a girl. Not a boy. Not old. Not young....". Eli is not a girl because she was born a boy. She is not a boy because she lacks the necessary genitalia. She is not old because she will forever be 12. She is not young because she has lived for 220~years. These are all examples of her identity crisis. Another example of Eli's lack of identity is that she denies being a vampire. I believe that Eli identifies vampires with sadism, as we are shown through her previous encounters with vampires. Thus she is unable to identify with being a vampire as she does not revel in the existence of living as a vampire and the pain that this existence causes her prey. Indeed Eli's nature seems to be contrary to this as she does not torture the elderly cancer inflicted woman addled by morphine but instead she consoles her by telling her a beautiful story. By her saying that she lives on blood but is not that, she acknowledges a necessity to live off blood but disavows any other relationship that she has with her aforementioned vampire acquaintances.

As to not completely derail the OP, I'll attempt to get back on topic. I think using conventional sexual standards when discussing this relationship is misguided. My interpretation of their romantic relationship was that it was deeply rooted in friendship. Eli was not attracted to Oskar because he was born a biological male but because of WHO Oskar was and vice versa.

User avatar
crazychristina
Posts: 654
Joined: Sat Nov 13, 2010 1:17 am

Re: On sex and gender

Post by crazychristina » Fri Nov 19, 2010 9:40 pm

I must re-read the book but I don't recall that the woman 'revelled' in being a vampire, rather she said that most could not bear to live with what they had to do to survive. Perhaps she was like Eli, but older. A bit of research (wikipedia) shows that the original idea of a vampire was more what we think of as a zombie, a dead person re-animated. The idea of living off blood came later (1800s I think). From this framework Hakan would have been a vampire after he died because he was reanimated by the infection, but Eli wouldn't have been because she didn''t die in the first place. Eli was careful to kill her victims by breaking their necks to prevent them from being reanimated (presumably as vampires). I suspect this is what Lindqvist was thinking when he wrote the book, but as most people don't share this interpretation it was changed in the film, so Eli in the film said yes but in the book s/he said no. Oskar did ask if she was dead, so this question was an important one for him too.

ETA: I also think their relationship was a deep friendship, not sexual. I decided to write the original post because it's a topic that is frequently discussed, and frankly I wish JAL hadn't raised this particular issue in the first place because I don't think it adds much to the story. On the other hand, perhaps it's one of the factors that makes this story so fascinating, even if it isn't 'necessary'.

daimonos
Posts: 19
Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2010 11:42 pm
Location: Omaha, Nebraska

Re: On sex and gender

Post by daimonos » Sat Nov 20, 2010 2:09 am

crazychristina wrote:I must re-read the book but I don't recall that the woman 'revelled' in being a vampire, rather she said that most could not bear to live with what they had to do to survive. Perhaps she was like Eli, but older. A bit of research (wikipedia) shows that the original idea of a vampire was more what we think of as a zombie, a dead person re-animated. The idea of living off blood came later (1800s I think). From this framework Hakan would have been a vampire after he died because he was reanimated by the infection, but Eli wouldn't have been because she didn''t die in the first place. Eli was careful to kill her victims by breaking their necks to prevent them from being reanimated (presumably as vampires). I suspect this is what Lindqvist was thinking when he wrote the book, but as most people don't share this interpretation it was changed in the film, so Eli in the film said yes but in the book s/he said no. Oskar did ask if she was dead, so this question was an important one for him too.

ETA: I also think their relationship was a deep friendship, not sexual. I decided to write the original post because it's a topic that is frequently discussed, and frankly I wish JAL hadn't raised this particular issue in the first place because I don't think it adds much to the story. On the other hand, perhaps it's one of the factors that makes this story so fascinating, even if it isn't 'necessary'.

I wasn't referring to Virginia. Eli never formally meets Virginia. The only time we are even made aware that Eli knows of her existence is when Eli attacks her.

I was talking about the two sentient vampires that Eli is introduced to throughout the book. The first being the nobleman who fed from her after torturing her. The same man teaches Eli to fly (or tries to kill her) by dropping her midflight. He was a sadist and was portrayed to be particularly cruel.

If I remember correctly the second vampire (that is self-aware) is a woman that Eli meets who mentions, in an excited fashion, that she would like to go and feed.

These were the two vampires that Eli had previous knowledge of and both seemed to love and exploit their vampiric nature. Eli does not. She only feeds on people and kills them so that she may live while the other two seemed to do it because they drew pleasure from it.

Because of the previous knowledge Eli had with these two I believe that she identifies vampires with sadism. Eli does not identify with these two on any level other then the need to live off blood. By denying that she is a vampire she is denying this sadism which I believe she has identified to being a character trait of vampires.

Hakan was just the product of the infection or parasite taking over the host body after the host dies. So I do not believe that this was what she was referring to.
Last edited by daimonos on Sat Nov 20, 2010 2:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
crazychristina
Posts: 654
Joined: Sat Nov 13, 2010 1:17 am

Re: On sex and gender

Post by crazychristina » Sat Nov 20, 2010 2:39 am

I wasn't referring to Virginia either, just that I recall that the earlier woman had said something like that as to why there were so few vampires. I'll have to re-read the book. I'm probably just confused.

User avatar
sauvin
Moderator
Posts: 3410
Joined: Sun Dec 06, 2009 5:52 am
Location: A cornfield in heartland USA

Re: On sex and gender

Post by sauvin » Sat Nov 20, 2010 6:37 am

crazychristina wrote:I wasn't referring to Virginia either, just that I recall that the earlier woman had said something like that as to why there were so few vampires. I'll have to re-read the book. I'm probably just confused.
As I recall, Eli thought of the vampire woman as being "hollow", as well. I remember the woman's tonality as being mocking and sarcastic.
Fais tomber les barrières entre nous qui sommes tous des frères

ColBlair
Posts: 592
Joined: Wed Dec 08, 2010 11:05 pm

Re: On sex and gender

Post by ColBlair » Fri Dec 10, 2010 12:55 am

daimonos wrote:
sauvin wrote:"I'm not a girl. Not a boy. Not old. Not young. I'm nothing", or words to such effect. This is what Eli says to Oskar when he asks what she means when she says she's not a girl.

I think it's operative. What she didn't say is that she's not human, and not a vampire... but if he'd already known about her, she very well might have. The strongest impression I get of Eli just with regards to her humanity (forgetting sexuality/gender/sex/whatever) is that if pressed, she'll admit she's alive, and that's about as far as she'd go. She doesn't seem to identify very strongly with anything otherwise.

"Are you a vampire?" "No. I need blood to live, but I'm not.... that. There's a very big difference." We never really get an answer to what Eli considers a "vampire", and while the implication seems to be that this is what Hakan is, it's never clearly spelled out, and a zombie Hakan could be yet another kind of critter entirely - but whatever Eli's idea of a "true" vampire is, she denies being such a thing.

In other topics, Eli's gender, sexual identity and sexuality have been explored pretty much to the limits of the forum's tolerance. I myself have probably gone further than most would dare in speculating on what her past experience with other Hakans might have been, but did so in order to try to understand where she might be emotionally and socially in the "present time" (when she meets Oskar).

I have a very strong suspicion that the whole concept of gender and sexuality are almost completely irrelevant to her. Her foremost long-term problem is in being isolated from humanity because of her diet. She may (or may not) deliberately choose to present as a female for a couple of reasons, the more obvious and probably easily acceptable being that such presentation eases her survival. People respond more readily and more openly to a girl than to a boy. The second reason (which is a matter of speculation among board members) has to do with Eli's feelings for the mother she never saw again after being taken.

I have an even stronger suspicion that even if you were to be able to talk to her personally, presenting her with the post you've just presented us with, she'd wrinkle up her nose, shake her head a couple of times, and say "Um... huh!?" She doesn't have testosterone or estrogen, for one thing, and so can't even have the beginnings of the stirrings that most children her apparent age feel - and she has nothing to feel these stirrings with, and her long, essentially solitary existence has probably mitigated against much in the way of training for any particular "role" beyond the sex- or gender-entangled uglinesses I've speculated on in other topics.

To be blunt, the whole issue of Eli's sexual identity, gender and sexuality seem generally much more important to people around her. She's not confused - there's nothing to be confused about - but other people frequently are, and it's their confusion that can complicate and curse her life so much when she has to maintain anything resembling a relationship with another human being.

This may well in fact be one of the major factors in her being drawn towards Oskar. He just doesn't seem to give a damn.
I believe that Eli does give us the necessary information for us to be able to infer what she considers a vampire. Her previous experiences with vampires were the nobleman and the woman she met. Both of these characters seemed to not only enjoy but revel in their existence of being a vampire. The nobleman is a sadist whom enjoys torturing others as we are shown from the flashbacks dealing with him.

The way I interpreted Eli saying that she is not a vampire was similar to how she said that "I'm not a girl. Not a boy. Not old. Not young....". Eli is not a girl because she was born a boy. She is not a boy because she lacks the necessary genitalia. She is not old because she will forever be 12. She is not young because she has lived for 220~years. These are all examples of her identity crisis. Another example of Eli's lack of identity is that she denies being a vampire. I believe that Eli identifies vampires with sadism, as we are shown through her previous encounters with vampires. Thus she is unable to identify with being a vampire as she does not revel in the existence of living as a vampire and the pain that this existence causes her prey. Indeed Eli's nature seems to be contrary to this as she does not torture the elderly cancer inflicted woman addled by morphine but instead she consoles her by telling her a beautiful story. By her saying that she lives on blood but is not that, she acknowledges a necessity to live off blood but disavows any other relationship that she has with her aforementioned vampire acquaintances.

As to not completely derail the OP, I'll attempt to get back on topic. I think using conventional sexual standards when discussing this relationship is misguided. My interpretation of their romantic relationship was that it was deeply rooted in friendship. Eli was not attracted to Oskar because he was born a biological male but because of WHO Oskar was and vice versa.

That's what I believe too, that Eli was attracted to Oskar cause he wasn't a male, but just a person and a person alone. That's probably why Oskar was in love with Eli too cause s/he was a person as well. TO me though, I think Eli chose to be more female cause of his castration and his looks also gave him the appearance of a girl. As Oskar thought in his mind, if Eli was older, he would of looked like his mother. This may give the idea why Eli chose the sundress over Oskar's clothing.

User avatar
babyboi102909
Posts: 81
Joined: Tue Feb 22, 2011 6:53 pm

Re: On sex and gender

Post by babyboi102909 » Thu Mar 03, 2011 5:44 am

I just want to say to crazychristina that I am an FTM transman. You and I both know both know what it is like for our gender to not match our sex, which is a very hard thing to go through.
Anyway, in regards to Eli, I think even before the castration, she was quite androgynous. I also firmly believe she is transgendered. I realize that some people think that the way she dresses is not enough to back that idea up. However, it's that the fact she dresses the way she does, it's WHY she does so. I believe that she does so because it is her way of expressing herself. There is a possibility that it could be for her survival as well, but I believe that is a small chance. Eli is truly a mystery, but so is gender.
We fell in love despite our differences...and once we did, something rare and beautiful was created.
---The Notebook

Post Reply

Return to “Let The Right One In (Novel)”