Why are almost all the great magicians males while women are almost always hedge witches making small potions in small...

It's like asking why average character in an "adult book" is mid-40 English teacher, angsty about mid-life crisis and his boring life.
Because that's what average author of those books is.

But I'll give you that, you made me reply, 2/10

Nobody said they had to be heroes, just that they had to be great magicians.

Also male characters are just inherently way more interesting than female ones.

...

the wisdom of wizards

...

Towers are a peculiarity of most wizards. According to many female, earthy, druidic persons of an unshaven armpits persuasion they are…

‘Towering symbols of the lascivious thaumaturgical dominance of the wizardly profession expressed in architectural form to compensate for their inadequacy and to express their believed supremacy over female oriented earth magic.’

Quite what any of that means most people are not sure but wizards who have seen the patches of mud these people call holy tend to attribute it to ‘tower envy’ and add an extra storey.

It's true though. Google Galbrush for an explanation of why.

In order to be a good character you need to have flaws, weaknesses and hardships, and female characters can't have those because that's sexist.

because if feminists were all actually smart and useful to society, they will not enter a student debt just to graduate with useless degree such as gender studies.

Isnt it because wizards are based on astronomers and other scientific dudes of old and witches into women who made illegal breweries or were actual village witch doctors?

Sexism turned into tradition mostly.

Says you. My witches are the real deal.

Wouldn't think it's the "patriarchy", seriously. You'd probably find more women-knights in pre-1900 fiction than order of witches and whatnot. But probably not that many orders of wizards either (I'd venture to say Tolkien kinda bore out the idea, but amusingly enough his "wizards" are pretty much not school of wizards).

In chivalric literature you find wizards (evil, by default) and sorceress (slightly less evil but perhaps more dangerous). Generally both figure are pretty much sexualised (wizards needs princess, sorceress likes a tiny bit too much the knight) but amusingly enough there isn't a real power gap, and they don't really have an "order" or whatnot (notice that if you take Conan's stories -in the thirties- it's like this: many apprentices-masters bonds, not a single school of whatever. Which is kinda amusing, considering how he uses religion, but I digress).

Honestly I think the "wizards seem more scientifical so they're more powerful" approach is kinda retarded or at least very boring (if I want "SCIENCE!" I play soft scifi), but even then, I think it's really a RPG thing, before that it wasn't so.

Notice that for all of ther shit Rowling, not coming from a RPG background, doesn't even differentiate the twos - and she's an influence at least as heavy as DND and derivatives.

>Cassandra

>evil

Dude, if anything Homer says that 90% of men are bastards, and 10% of women are. Even Circe is debatable, whereas Ulysses is simply astoninshingly bad.

>whereas Ulysses is simply astoninshingly bad.
t.Roman

>constantly cheats on his wife
>gets all his men killed
>murders his wife's suitors for no good reason

For some reason I'm imaging Belgarath or similar type wizard listening to that sort of drivel and then saying

"Nah, I just like the view".

>crying like a little bitch with Ecuba when captured

>killing for loot greeks when the war is finished

>crying about home and then fucking Calypso for years

No, seriously. It's difficult to imagine him worshipped, it you take into account all of his deeds.

And people say shit about Achilles like he was a musclehead (he was the only one opposing of Ifigenia's sacrifice, I think).

Depends on setting, story, time-period, who's doing the editing of the story, when the editing was done...
In short - it fucking really depends.

Best case of this phenomena is probably the legendary queen of what's today Somalia. Her legend went through so many retellings, edits, changes and what's not that in the same time you have now two most popular version: one where she's an evil, Godless sorceress tempting the rightful king and master of the realm and the obedient, but cunning first wife of said king, Sheherezade style, also dealing with magic at times.
Neither has nothing to do with original version of the semi-real legend, where there was a tribe with a queen, but this is just story evolution for you, user.

Most wizards in myhtology are evil too, numbnuts. Merlin is the exception, though that has more to do with him being on Arthurs side than any inherent goodness of his person.

>for no good reason
How about them trying to take his throne and wife when he wasn't present?

Also - if you seriously want to judge any of the Greek "heroes", you are going to have a really bad time, since they were almost all rageful adulters killing people and things because they wanted to.

>Merlin is the exception
Depends on the version of the story.

Merlin was the greatest "no sense of right and wrong" wizard.

>Honestly I think the "wizards seem more scientifical so they're more powerful" approach is kinda retarded or at least very boring (if I want "SCIENCE!" I play soft scifi), but even then, I think it's really a RPG thing, before that it wasn't so.

Yeah, it rather is. As you start needing to go 'So how are these two spellcaster classes different?'. I don't mind 'More scientific magic' as long as it's not the same as 'The best in every way'.

I liked how 4e separated it. The wizard has more knowledge and a lot of precision, much more capable of subtle magic. The Sorcerer? They've got magic in the blood, an innate understanding of what they can make magic do that lets them pull off innately what most wizards would consider staggering difficult.

For a wizard, transforming even from one animal to another is a difficult task. There is a huge amount of precision required to make it work right, many variables and very complex magic.

For a sorcerer? Transforming themselves into a living lightning bolt, blitzing through half a dozen people and reforming unharmed at the other end is child's play because they are not working with a complex spell, the are working with an innate sense for themselves and the magic that is part of them.

Rather than say, 3.5's 'Sorcerers are Wizards that have gone retarded'

Yeah. Hence why he is only leaning 'good' due to proximity to Arthur.

>How about them trying to take his throne and wife when he wasn't present?
After the guy has been lost at sea for 10 years.

>Also - if you seriously want to judge any of the Greek "heroes", you are going to have a really bad time, since they were almost all rageful adulters killing people and things because they wanted to.
No shit, Sherlock, that's because they're from a fucked up time.

We measure greatness by feats of power. That sort of magical dickwaving is generally a male priority. Female spellcasters arent less powerful or knowledgeable, they just have different priorities. A male wizard builds a giant tower and summons archfiends, a female sorceress lives in a cozy house on an island where everyone who lands there is under her power, whether they realize it or not. A wizard masters control over death so he can become an immortal lich, a sorceress thinks that sounds gross and just stays young forever.

At least most of Hercs bad moments came from Hera being a bitch

Peter Jackson's bullshit is not cannon.

Lets ask Schoppenhauer, shall we?

>The nobler and more perfect a thing is, the later and slower is it in reaching maturity. Man reaches the maturity of his reasoning and mental faculties scarcely before he is eight-and-twenty; woman when she is eighteen; but hers is reason of very narrow limitations. This is why women remain children all their lives, for they always see only what is near at hand, cling to the present, take the appearance of a thing for reality, and prefer trifling matters to the most important. It is by virtue of man’s reasoning powers that he does not live in the present only, like the brute, but observes and ponders over the past and future; and from this spring discretion, care, and that anxiety which we so frequently notice in people. The advantages, as well as the disadvantages, that this entails, make woman, in consequence of her weaker reasoning powers, less of a partaker in them. Moreover, she is intellectually short-sighted, for although her intuitive understanding quickly perceives what is near to her, on the other hand her circle of vision is limited and does not embrace anything that is remote; hence everything that is absent or past, or in the future, affects women in a less degree than men. This is why they have greater inclination for extravagance, which sometimes borders on madness. Women in their hearts think that men are intended to earn money so that they may spend it, if possible during their husband’s lifetime, but at any rate after his death.

Women can't into math, and irl magic was full of math

Well, I think the judgment thing is at least as old as Homer. Was it right to tell Agamennon to fuck off? Much shit came from that.

Personally i really like DW third-party witches. Thematically, they have no rituals like the wizards, nor specific spells, but they can:

a) use a generic enchantment to deal damage
b) prepare potions. With enought time/ingredients/whatever constraints is appropriate, they can anything that conceivably a potion could do.

Also, they fucking fly with a broom.

She was probably third, with Elrond second, so not really much of a difference.

Also, I think the fallic thing is exaggerated. Witches are more linked to earth, wizards are brainy social fuckups (and yes, the idea isn't anything new). And towers aren't generally that comfortable.

In older literature enchatresses didn't exactly live like squatters, they had palaces and shit.

>Schoppenhauer

Galadriel > every living elf in Valinor or Middle Earth during the 3rd age, as per Tolkien's ranking of Eldar (Luthien>Galadriel=Fëanor). Only maiar are stronger magic users.

So Witches need to live in vast temples with a domed roof with a cupola, as to resemble a majestic breast.

OP, detailed answer would take quite a lot of time to explain, and quite a LOT of evidence to be supported, but in very simplified way:

IT SEEMS that (almost) universally through out human cultures, feminity is associated with Chaos, and masculinity with Order. It seems to be a form of a cognitive universality and it's actually kinda logical when you think about it.

The "WIZARDS" that we usually think of in context of fantasy and mythology are usually men who represent order: Scholars of their fields, lords and masters, characters inspired by mythological figures like Odin, Merlin: Rulers, people who keep order in their domain. Much of it was also inspired by magic as we know it from the historical European "occultist science", the hermeneutic philosophies, astrologies etc: forms of magic that presume ORDER in the world, and aim to discover that order in the world.

That is why an image of such a wizard is going to be associated with masculinity, the orderly part of the world.

Meanwhile, feminine magic is going to be associate with chaos, both good and bad. That is why characters such as Morgana, Baba Yaga, Circe are morally ambiguous, natural, spontaneous, intuitive: and so is most form of magic associated with witches, wise women, god-women etc.

So basically, OP chose a inherently male-associated, orderly form of magic and asked "why it is it male-dominated": well, because that is what the image represents: male, order-focused perspective on supernatural powers.

That is, at least as far as I'm concerned, the GIST of it. Of course in reality it's a bit more complicated.

>Schoppenhauer
He is a pretty cool dude if you know HOW to read him, know a little about his background, and can take him not too seriously.

Speaking from experience, huh?

Hey, Betty is a great magician!

>Also, I think the fallic thing is exaggerated.
Uh... no? The fallic thing is not exaggerated, it's JUST COMPLETE BULLSHIT.
It is, quite literally, about the fucking view. It's like saying that towers in general are build to represent a dick, instead of assuming that they are build so that you could SEE FUCKING FURTHER.

>Galbrush
>Gamergate
Sorry, once you invoke gamergate to defend your point, you kind of automatically lose the argument.

>I dont like who made this reasonable explanation so you lost

wew lad

Beards

'Female characters having flaws is sexist so male characters are better' isn't really a reasonable argument.

I mean, one of the most well known mythological female characters is Guinevere and she's a very flawed person. Or Liriel from the Old Kingdom series, who has a bad tendency to leap before she looks that bites her in the ass.

But he didnt invoke Gamergate, you did. He only mentioned the Galbrush-Paradox.

Does this mean you lost the argument?

Personally I'd say this too but at the Grey Havens, I quote the professor:

There was Gildor and many fair Elven folk; and there to Sam's wonder rode Elrond and
Galadriel. Elrond wore a mantle of grey and had a star upon his forehead, and a silver harp was in his hand, and upon his finger was a ring of gold with a great blue stone, Vilya, mightiest of the Three. But Galadriel sat upon a white palfrey and was robed all in glimmering white, like clouds about the Moon; for she herself seemed to shine with a soft light. On her finger was Nenya, the ring wrought of _mithril_, that bore a single white stone flickering like a frosty star. Riding slowly behind on a small grey pony, and seeming to nod in his sleep, was Bilbo himself.

He doesn't rank the three, but still, as much as I love Galadriel (my actual favorite character in the legendarium) one is supposed to have some doubts. On the other hand she did lay waste to Dol Guldur like it was nobody's business, but I tend to think it was more due to her personal background and personality.

If anything, females might be connected to impurity (to have a not-western example, it's pretty clear in Japanese mythology with Ukemochi-no-kami).

The male orderliness is kinda bullshit even taking into account greek myths, no matter egyptian ones (to take some that informed western culture). It's actually really a jewish thing.

I would lie if I said that the caludron vs the tower has absolutely no freudian connection to me, tough.

(even the broom might have some. The book is the only one that might "neutral)

It's a problem in american popular culture right now. Or at least it's percevied so.

Not that really stops anyone. Hardly any charachter, woman, man or half-wold in SOIAF is flawless.

>isn't really a reasonable argument.
Yet you didn't bother to elaborate wy its not a reasonable argument other than providing counterexamples that kinda miss the point.

>I mean, one of the most well known mythological female characters is Guinevere and she's a very flawed person.
And it proves what the other dude said since feminazis hate her in nearly every version and especially harp how her portrayal in Mists of Avalon is sexist.

> Or Liriel from the Old Kingdom series, who has a bad tendency to leap before she looks that bites her in the ass.
No idea who that is so I cant argue.

>Not that really stops anyone. Hardly any charachter, woman, man or half-wold in SOIAF is flawless.

Yeah, SOIAF is kinda really popular right now and basically everyone in that is several kinds of flawed.

Men are more magically powerful. As Man was made to have dominion over Woman, Man masters Woman in all things.

It's not *fair*, but it's just how things work. It's like how your average man is always stronger than your average woman.

Which was created by?

True. Male characters are defined by who they are and what they do, while female characters are defined by the males in their lives. It's like comparing Sun which radiates light to Moon which reflects that light.

>Mists of Avalon

Well, Mists of Avalon is a pretty shitty book. It's also a book that really gives her the short end of the stick, basically portraying her as singlehandledly responsible for everything bad due to being a religious zealot against Good and Pure Celtic Paganism.

>misogynistic circlejerk write about gender politics
>'reasonable' explanation
You're a special kind of stupid, aren't you?

Name one strong woman character in a successful bit of fantasy literature or culture that you think was written to have no flaws in order to appease feminists, and someone here will show you that you are wrong.

>If anything, females might be connected to impurity
And impurity is an aspect of chaos. As are diseases, water, fire, night, birth etc...

Ukemochi-no-kami is not a great example, because you could come up with five other female dieties in Shinto pantheon that are not associated with impurity (Amaterasu, for starters?), and more importantly, the main symbolic relevance of Ukemochi is that SHE GIVES BIRTH to something (much like Izanami), with the impurity being secondary - a sort of risk that always comes with the ability to create/birth.

>he male orderliness is kinda bullshit even taking into account greek myths
Even the greek myths still feature this aspect, even if less pronounced. Egyptian mythology has it strongly featured (remember Ra, Bat, Hathor?)
It really is a pretty universal feature. The fact that it is universal as a pattern does not mean that it's equally as explicity in all faucets of all cultures though.

>I would lie if I said that the caludron vs the tower has absolutely no freudian connection to me, tough.
Those associations are 100% arbitrary. Hell, it's not like cauldron is exactly an universal trait of a female magician to begin with: it's mostly popular due to Shakespear.
And even if we argued that it's more universal than I think it is: cauldron is again a place of transformation or birth of new things - chaotic place where things mix together, are destroied and form new things. Tower is a place of sight: that is far more logical symbolic reading than assuming they have to be associate with sexual organs due to similarity of shape.

I have no idea. Is it like the Hacker know as Veeky Forums?

>misogynistic circlejerk write about gender politics
I must missed the part where it was writtern by the artist formerly known as Mr. Gamergate according to you?

>You're a special kind of stupid, aren't you?
no u

That's amusing.

Circe and Baba Yaga are insanely powerful. Most deities of magic are female (Odin isn't a god of magic - he learned magic, he didn't just HAVE it). Most sorcerous power is kept by women rather than men - only after a culture is 'civilized' do men step up in the magical world, and you can bet that's not because they earned it, but because the histories have been rewritten. Even Solomon was undone by a witch..

>No idea who that is so I cant argue.

It's a dark (But not grim) fantasy book series with (Generally, they are the title characters for a lot of books but the viewpoint does shift about) female characters as the leads. Sabriel, Liriel, Abhorson. They are really not defined by the male characters in the series and well rounded characters. Sabriel puts way too much on her own shoulders and is very bad at accepting other's help, Liriel tends to leap before she looks and Clariel has a vengeful streak a mile wide that overrules her better judgement a lot of the time.

Sure. After you mention one strong woman character in a successful bit of fantasy literature or culture that you think was written to have flaws that feminists don't think is a sexist/misogynist portrayal of a woman, and someone here will show you that you are wrong.

>Gamergate
>misogynistic circlejerk

wew lad

Name three male wizards who were not undone by a female witch or sorceress

You get Gandalf as a freebie.

You were arguing that women characters can't be interesting because they don't have flaws.

I asked you to name an example, and you shifted the argument to "some feminists are unreasonable", which I would agree with, but that's not what you were arguing.

Now name a character.

Female Thor.
Rey from Stah Wahs Episode lel
Furiosa from Mad Max

And those are just the ones were the writers/directors actually stated that they want a feminist hero.

Your clothes are red!

Furiosa wasn't flawless. Her obsession with finding a perfect place rather than improving a bad place nearly got herself and everyone else killed. First with the Vuvalini, then attempting to go across the salt flats.

There probably is a pinch of truth in comics, tough. Amusingly enough this is the one field where the "anti-jsw" crowd MIGHT have some reasons, females in these nowdays are pretty shitty because they need to be perfect, the artists/editors fearing what might happen with a bad role model.

>implying the Moon isn't the male like in nordic myths

I think it's kinda of hard implication to make. The concept of chaos isn't really that universal.

Ukemochi is considered impure because of the food. Amaterasu isn't, but I don't use Susano as a an example of all men in that mythology being murderhobos, it's a connection.

In the other hand, greeks seems to picture men as fucking serial rapists alright, and the chaos is pretty much male as well (Titans, etc.).
Amusingly enough Sehkmet might be a good example of fermale chaos (albeti it's chaos for justice) but actual evil chaos is rapist Set.

Not gonna argue with the caludron thing, to me it's pretty clear, to you it's not. Amen.

Pic somewhat related to japanese myths.

Good point. How can you compare a male like Tsukiyomi with a woman like Amaterasu?

The male-female dichotomy usually operates on activity-passivity in most myths.
I can't think of a female mythological character that is proactive instead of reactive.

>You were arguing that women characters can't be interesting because they don't have flaws.
No. The Galbrush paradox in fact explains that we cant have a strong female character with flaws without feminists complaining that that character is sexist as if making a female lead with flaws itself is sexist.

>I asked you to name an example, and you shifted the argument to "some feminists are unreasonable"
I never did. I recommend you read what the Galbrush-Paradox actually describes.

>Now name a character.
Right after you. You made the claim that you can have an interesting female protag with flaws that can be objectively recognized as such.

Why are almost all the greats in nearly every profession male?

How about the Old Kingdom series being mentioned? Or the fact that ASOIAF is super popular right now and it's characters are all some degree of horribly flawed.

Bitches become witches

To be fair, I'm Chinese. In Asian magical tradition, the men are the sorcerers.

Men tend to have more extremes, like there are more dumb-dumbs in the male side, but also more genius.
Also Testosterone it's a hell of a drug, it makes you want to compete, take risks and gives you energy and drive.

Because:

>It is only the man whose intellect is clouded by his sexual instinct that could give that stunted, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and short-legged race the name of the fair sex; for the entire beauty of the sex is based on this instinct. One would be more justified in calling them the unaesthetic sex than the beautiful. Neither for music, nor for poetry, nor for fine art have they any real or true sense and susceptibility, and it is mere mockery on their part, in their desire to please, if they affect any such thing.

>This makes them incapable of taking a purely objective interest in anything, and the reason for it is, I fancy, as follows. A man strives to get direct mastery over things either by understanding them or by compulsion. But a woman is always and everywhere driven to indirect mastery, namely through a man; all her direct mastery being limited to him alone. Therefore it lies in woman’s nature to look upon everything only as a means for winning man, and her interest in anything else is always a simulated one, a mere roundabout way to gain her ends, consisting of coquetry and pretence. Hence Rousseau said, Les femmes, en général, n’aiment aucun art, ne se connoissent à aucun et n’ont aucun génie (Lettre à d’Alembert, note xx.). Every one who can see through a sham must have found this to be the case. One need only watch the way they behave at a concert, the opera, or the play; the childish simplicity, for instance, with which they keep on chattering during the finest passages in the greatest masterpieces. If it is true that the Greeks forbade women to go to the play, they acted in a right way; for they would at any rate be able to hear something. In our day it would be more appropriate to substitute taceat mulier in theatro for taceat mulier in ecclesia; and this might perhaps be put up in big letters on the curtain.

>Female Thor
>Successful
>Rey
Unwilling to open up to others because of her over reliance on the self. She's not well written or interesting but she does have character flaws.
>Furiosa
Not fantasy, she's an action heroine. I will agree that hollywood action films are an excellent source of the boring female protagonists you bemoan.

Don't you know? Men have been keeping women subjugated collectively for centuries, which has been the sole factor in them failing to succeed in their endeavors. Somehow, this doesn't make men superior.

>ThisIsYourBrainOnFeminism.jpg

The Yellow Emperor
Rasputin
Elric
Moses

>I will agree that hollywood action films are an excellent source of the boring female protagonists you bemoan.

Mind you, hollywood action films are a pretty excellent source of boring male protagonists too.

>How about the Old Kingdom series being mentioned?
Which as I said I am not familiar with so I cannot tell you anything about its portrayal of characters.

>Or the fact that ASOIAF is super popular right now and it's characters are all some degree of horribly flawed.
Which from the very beginning had shitstorm after shitstorm how misogynist it is supposedly.

>You made the claim that you can have an interesting female protag with flaws that can be objectively recognized as such.

No I didn't. You've never read a book, have you?

And also, the objections of feminists don't cause books not to get written. You are afraid of phantoms.

Warhammer had the kekest of fantasy fiction outside of Pratchett.

>Which from the very beginning had shitstorm after shitstorm how misogynist it is supposedly.

Citation required? I'm googling this and not getting much beyond 'Occasionally someone wrote an online article that doesn't seem to have gone far' and just as many arguing that it's feminist. If you rule out everything that someone has ever said is misogynist you'll end up with basically nothing ever.

For sure. But when it's a woman character it's suddenly the fault of a cabal of scheming feminists, naturally!

The ranking of the rings doesn't reflect on the power of their bearers (Gandalf as Maia is naturally more powerful than any Child of Iluvatar but doesn't have the strongest ring), and Elrond isn't described as the best elf at any point, unlike Galadriel or Fëanor. The ranking of the Three is also actually unclear, there is a manuscript about the Elessar where Nenya is called "the Chief of the Three".

In any case the power of the Three is in preservation of good, not destruction. Even if that wasn't the case Galadriel dismantled Dol Guldur after the One Ring was destroyed, which meant the power of the Three was faded too.

It's a western approach (gotta thank the greeks nerfing down Artemis and the like, probably)

Isis has perhaps the most agency of the Egyptian pantheon, for example. And she has no real "dycotomy" with anyone.

We were talking about the nips before. for all the not-really-that-liberated RL women female deities don't really sound chaotic, even if impurity is present as a concept.

Eh, I still have my dobuts. But where does he say that Galadriel is best elf?

>she was to me, but still

kek

>She's not well written or interesting
You did not ask about well written or interesting, you asked about female characters without flaws that were written to appease feminists.

>Unwilling to open up to others because of her over reliance on the self.
Why does she need to open up to someone when she is perfect with everything?

Tolkien's essays published in the Book of Lost tales

>Galadriel was the greatest of the Noldor, except Fëanor maybe, though she was wiser than he, and her wisdom increased with the long years.

>These two kinsfolk [Galadriel and Feanor], the greatest of the Eldar of Valinor, were unfriends for ever.
In an author's note connected to this sentence:
>Who together with the greatest of all the Eldar, Lúthien Tinúviel, daughter of Elu Thingol, are the chief matter of the legends and histories of the Elves.

So the professor's ranking of all Elves is Lúthien > Galadriel = Fëanor > everyone else.

Wasn't there a Diskworld series that addressed exactly this?

>(Gandalf as Maia is naturally more powerful than any Child of Iluvatar
luthien and feanor disagree

>this year
>still thinking gamergate was ever anything but a misogynistic circlejerk

>I think it's kinda of hard implication to make. The concept of chaos isn't really that universal.
It really is and really isn't. I mean we are talking about scales that involve literally thousands of cultures and potentially tens of thousands of years, so of course what we are going to say is going to be a heuristic, a proposed pattern or model that is only very LOOSELY accurate, but when you break down mythologies... this is what you are going to find.

The concept of chaos, in the form of being both the birthing place and the source of evil: ambiguous force that counter-ballances order which is stable, but also dangerously totalitarian or stable to a point of being unrecognisable from death, is incredibly common across cultures. Best illustrations are with Tiamat vs. Marduk in Enuma Elish, or the general iconography of Hindu and East-Asian cultures (remember the Taijitu symbol), but you will also find it with aformentioned Egyptian dieties, across slavic and celtic mythologies, the Japanese mythology is INCREDIBLY pronounced in this regard and so on and so forth. It's actually mostly rooted in basic associative concepts that really are quite intuitive.