Corruption and Bondage — Gender within Dark Souls
Introduction
It is an uncontroversial point (in so far as there are any) to consider Dark Souls as premising much of its narrative drive on the polarity between light and dark. Though originally introduced to these metaphysical concepts as an antagonistic binary,[1] there are many points throughout the fragmented narrative of the games that calls this binary into question. A staple of its distinct narrative style, Dark Souls is no stranger to the persistent disruption of the stories that it chooses to reveal — whether these disruptions are about questioning the fundamental nature of the world as we experience it, doubting that our character is truly the prophesied figure of divinely mandated destiny, or instilling a suspicion of the motives of other characters as they presented.[2] Disruption as the motivation to question, to doubt, to regard with suspicion, is a pervasive and inextricable part of Souls’ storytelling, and the dualistic metaphysics of light and dark are no exception to this. And yet, when we consider the question(s) of gender with regard to the series, we are immediately met with a vision of gender that almost without exception repeats and reinforces the traditional binary of man and woman. This is to say that despite its broader concern with structuring its narrative around a series of disruptions and shades of grey, gender is continually reasserted as a naturalised narrative site within Souls. As is to be expected, the work the series does to maintain this binary and thereby the salience of gender to its story is often done through stylistic moves that mobilise various kinds of norm that play into the conceptual structures of misogyny, sexism, and homophobia (though this is not an exhaustive list).
My concern within this essay to make explicit the mechanisms with which gender is uncritically repeated within the Souls games. Beginning with the overt ways that gender plays into the very metaphysical assumptions of the Souls’ universe(s?), I shall explore how womanhood is essentialised within the narrative and how this essence is aligned with the metaphysical ‘dark’ in a way that is either absent or far less overt with male characters. Given the numerous ways in which the series replays symbolic associations between darkness and evil, the figure of the woman within Souls is maintained in the position of the other — specifically the other as a threat. Just as the opening cutseen instills us with a fear that the dark might win out over the light — for “soon the flames will fade and only Dark will remain. Even now there are only embers, and man sees not light, but only endless nights”[3] — the game gives us a parade of female figures that are to be feared for the corruption with which they are so frequently equated. And we shall see the precise kinds of violation and violence that the fear of women is seen to justify within the narrative.
This essay shall also track the ways in which Souls inadvertently reveals the failure of the traditional gender binary. As such, the final part of this essay will consider the figure of Darkmoon Gwyndolin — whose gender nonconformity provides a useful site of contention for examining how gender works in the series as a whole. Through Gwyndolin, we shall examine not only Souls’ use of gender as a coercive structure within the power dynamics of Lordran, but also the possibility of seeing within the figure of Gwyndoin the ultimate failure of binarist conceptions of gender.
It is important to note that none of these critiques should be regarded as damning or as holding Dark Souls in contempt. Contrarily, they are motivated by a passionate interest in the Dark Souls games, and consider my personal love of these games as a key motivation for my critique.
Corruption — Essentially Women, Essentially Dark
Aside from the select example discussed below, Dark Souls presents a binarist conception of sex and gender. Much like most other RPGs, we begin each game with character creation and are at once faced with the decision: male or female? This is such a common experience within videogames that the process of character creation passes us by without this binary being altogether conspicuous. A game is far more likely to be noteworthy for its inclusion of non-binary or non-cis* characters[4] than it is for repeating gender binaries. Yet gender is far from the only binary within Souls (though it is arguable the most stable of them) for the foundational metaphysics of the world rest on the interplay between a binary of light and dark.
The world of Dark Souls is dominated by the interplay between light and dark, particularly between the desire to preserve a world that is illuminated by the divine light of the fire flame and the fear of a world that altogether lacks this. As I discussed in greater detail another essay, ‘The World Soul of Flame’, our understanding of the relationship between light and dark — the way that it is presented to us in the game — is never distinct from the various political desires of whichever character is discussing it. We need look no further than the polarity between the accounts given by Kingseeker Frampt and Darkstalker Kaathe to note that the First Flame can be regarded as either the greatest of treasures or the most malignant of curses. The narrative we often experience is either that of the Great Lord Gwyn — who gave his life to ensure that the Age of Fire and the power of the Gods would persist (not that it worked out) — or a response to Gwyn’s story. Indeed, this is the frame given to us by the diaspora between Frampt and Kaathe. As Gwyn’s story holds so much influence over the world of Dark Souls (he is, after all, synonymous with ‘God’),[5] we are presented with a world that takes the light/dark binary as its foundation and then extends this into numerous other binary distinctions, such as good/evil, life/death, and importantly divine/human.
The man/woman binary is yet another framing of antagonistic opposites that fits comfortably into this structure, and it is of little surprise that women are associated with the dark. Souls aligns humanity itself with darkness, for the metaphysical essence of humanity within the game is a literal fragment of the titular dark soul, the very essence of the dark itself. Just as light and dark find themselves collapsed into metaphysical essences, gender is treated as a fixed and essential binary. This is achieved through an uncritical use of biological essentialism — the understanding that gender is strictly a matter of simplified biology. Souls presents a vision of woman that ignores the sex/gender distinction so widely discussed within feminist theory. Broadly speaking, this distinction speaks of gender in terms of sociology — as the roles, expectations, and permissible performances[6] that are assigned to individuals on the basis of their (perceived) biological sex. The distinction then speaks of sex as a matter of how one’s physical body is categorised[7] based upon its biological make up, its primary and secondary sex characteristics. Much contemporary feminist theory considers the interplay between these distinguished categories, though maintains that neither can ever be comprehensively collapsed into the other — as has been the historical norm throughout history and remains commonplace within everyday parlance. That Dark Souls is manifestly in the dark when it comes to this distinction (feminist theory is perhaps not as widely read in some circles as would be preferably) leads to its presentation of gender as sex and sex as gender. The two become united into one and in so doing produce its female characters as those who bear a distinct kind of feminine essence. As such, the female body itself becomes a site of narrative focus — and that it is almost exclusively seen as an explicitly female body that is engaged it feminised behaviours leaves the gender binary unquestioned. Womanhood becomes a determining mark for those characters that bear it.
Souls thereby marks its female characters as particular — their experiences are overtly gendered in ways that male characters rarely are. This manifests in the narrative treatment of women, for a majority of female characters are embroiled in stories that pivot around their womanhood — their gender is made conspicuous and given primacy by their narrative such that their stories are told explicitly as the stories of women. This is to say that their gender is consistently reasserted as the central and inescapable feature of these characters. For instance, the Fire Keepers are exclusively female, and are presented as women who tend to the bonfires whence our character draws the vital force to maintain their undead ‘lives’: estus. This role links the Fire Keepers to archetypes of motherhood, as characters whose stories entail a sacrifice of personal agency that is postponed and forfeited such that they can nurture both our character and the world (through the fire). Fire Keepers are explicitly linked with the trope of the maiden, an archetype that is further reproduced in other characters (such as Rhea of Thorolund) and which repeats all of the gendered stereotypes that limit her character to traditional, female tropes of familial duty, passivity, and who is in constant need of salvation through the player’s intervention. This denotation of their narrative(s)[8] as female persists in the central role that familial duty plays within the stories of so many female characters — which not only binds so many of their stories to their relationships with male relatives (a narrative trope that often serves to make their stories about these foregrounded men about whom the stories of women come to focus on) but also invoking and repeating the symbolic connection between womanhood and domesticity.[9] We have the examples of Sieglinde (whose purpose centres around her father), Sirris (whose purpose centres around her grandfather), and Ciaran (whose only narrative role is to mourn Artorias).[10] For all the nuance of her character, Lucatiel’s plotline has a set trajectory that follows the path of her brother: Aslatiel.[11] As such storytelling that surrounds female characters is a continual reflection of the stereotypical tropes of their femininity or womanhood as a site that distinguishes them from male characters, that makes them specific in a way that male characters are not. Within Souls, the stories of women are definitively women’s narratives, rather than simply narratives involving women.
Furthermore, Souls maintains femininity as a form of otherness, for the centrality of womanhood is only ever maintained in the narratives of other characters. Despite the possibility of playing a female character, the game’s fundamental attitude to the player does not shift based upon this choice. Far from being an indication that femininity does not always constitute a determining force for female characters, the player’s immunity from the determining force of womanhood is an indication that this womanhood is always conceptualised as belonging to somebody else. A female player character constitutes a notable exception to the usual rules of gendering within Souls, precisely because there is such a disparity between how the gender of the player, and the gender of other female characters are treated. The glaring nature of this disparity, the absence of all bur superficial gendering for the female player character, only serves to make clearer the gendered nature of Dark Souls’ non-player characters. Whereas our female character moves through the world unimpeded by any such gendered mark, she is alone in this.
Through so premising the existence of its female characters upon this essentialised femininity/womanhood, the narrative homogenises its female cast in such a way as to collapse its gender binary into the binary of light and dark.
A large portion of the prominent female characters within Dark Souls are Fire Keepers,[12] each of who possesses a “soul […] gnawed by infinite humanity”.[13] We see that the light of their soul is frayed and warped by its exposure of darkness. Though they are indispensable to the light and were seemingly brought into being to support the power of the flame, the Fire Keepers are women defined not only by their affinity for the darkness of humanity, but by the corrupting power of its rampant influence that is barely contained within their skin.
A Fire Keeper’s soul is a draw for humanity, and held within their bosoms, below just a thin layer of skin, are swarms of humanity that writhe and squirm.[14]
The physical bodies of the Fire Keepers, which is to say female bodies, are made serviceable to the ends of Gwyn’s legacy. Their flesh is transformed into a vessel, filled with the corrupting influence of excessive darkness. It is thus through the mortification of the female body — for the Fire Keeper’s of Dark Souls are recognisable as such through their association with deformity — that the dark can be instrumentalised into the service of fire. It is only through the suffering and violation of female bodies that the dark can be rendered pliable. But it is not just that the Fire Keepers house or imprison the dark, the dark seeps into their soul, transforming them not into mere vessels but avatars of the dark. Fire Keepers are at once marked by the essence of their womanhood and the essence of darkness itself.
This is reinforced within Dark Souls II, where we encounter additional manifestations of the dark in the form of the fragments of Manus (otherwise known as the Sisters of the Dark). When he appeared within Dark Souls, Manus was representative of primeval man, who’s torture and mutilation led to the rampant spread of metaphysical darkness in the form of the Abyss throughout the land of Oolacile. Our Chosen Undead faces Manus ‘The Father of the Abyss’, and rescues Princess Dusk from his clutches.[15] Upon his defeat, his soul fragments forming the sisters of the dark — four female characters that each represent the negative parts of Manus’ psyche (excessive desire, wrath, loneliness, and fear).[16] Not only do these sisters literally embody the fragmented will of their ‘father’, but their existence within the plot of Dark Souls II is defined by the corruption they bring. With but one pertinent exception,[17] the fragments of Manus each pursue a male monarch, hoping to sway these men away from a more righteous path of kingship so that their power can serve darker ends. As such, the sisters of the dark are literal manifestations of a darkness that actively seek to corrupt and ruin the influence of fire — here embodied in the righteous rule of men.[18]
Again, in Dark Souls III, the organisation most closely associated with the dark is the Sable Church of Londor, a religious body that is dominated by (at this point I think unsurprisingly) three sisters. We meet two of these sisters and both of them exist to corrupt the player away from their originary goals and lead us astray — or at the very least to manipulate us into serving their own ends. The first is Yuria, who seeks to manipulate us away from our originary goal of strengthening the first flame — instead hoping that we will “wrest the fire from its mantle”[19] and thus instigate an age of dark. Secondly, we encounter Freide, who has turned the people of Ariandel away from their customary ritual of transformation through fire, instead forcing them to endure the rot that fire’s absence enables. Not only has she styled herself as a goddess, but her desire to uphold her disavowal of flame leads her to spread suffering amongst the people of the painted world. Upon meeting with her, she tries to dissuade us from pursuing the very purpose for which we agreed to enter the painting to begin with: to bring fire to Ariandel. When we face her as a boss enemy, she wields the dark flames of humanity under the moniker ‘Blackflame Freide’, further belying her affinity for darkness.
Thus, a significant number of major female characters from each of the Souls games is directly related to the dark — and as such it is their very gender itself that denotes them as a source of corruption.
Women within Souls are perpetually associated with darkness — frequently serving as its embodiments, avatars, and vessels. Through this association, Souls maintains an ancient (yet no less misogynistic) affinity between women and irrationality — a trait which reads into the behaviour of women a deficiency of capacity, which renders them dangerous and destructive. This plays into an older (and yet culturally pervasive) mapping of the man/woman binary onto the binaries of reason/emotion and mind/body — which serve to reduce women to narrow conceptions of female biology, and to account for the presupposed lack of rational capacity in terms of their bodily functions. It is this mapping of womanhood and irrationality that fuels sexist jokes about menstruation, and has even been used as post-facto justifications for acts of sexual assault and coercive rape — the ‘argument’ effectively being that women simply lack the agency to meaningfully consent. Interestingly, Bloodborne, due to its heavy interest in themes of birth and motherhood, plays more directly with these, and the narrative is laced with both explicit and implicit references to pregnancy and menstruation.
This equation between womanhood and the irrational corruption of ‘pure’ masculine reason is further reflected in the various forms of magic within Souls. Across the series, there are four kinds of magic: sorcery, miracles, pyromancy, and the ‘dark magic’ of hexes (although these are not strictly distinct from either sorcery or miracles in terms of their mechanics). Sorcery is directly linked to intellect and is a practice of rigorous study motivated by “an unquenchable desire for the truth”.[20] With one exception, all the sorcery trainers within the games are men, and the dragon Seathe (something of a father figure for sorcery) uses women as test subjects, transforming them into ‘monstrosities’. Importantly, this exception — Princess Dusk, who as already noted has narrative links to Manus and Oolacile, and thus to the corruption of darkness — teaches us illusion magic, which is to say magic that conceals, manipulates and distorts the truth. As we will discuss in greater detail in the later section on Gwyndolin, illusion magic is highly gendered within Souls, and that the only female teacher of sorcery is associated with manipulating and bending the truth — especially in a discipline defined by “an unsound fixation”[21] with progress — is yet another instance of womanhood’s incompatibility with the project of sorcery. It seems that for Souls, for women are simply too drawn to irrationality.
That witch Yuria is quite a compelling woman. She uses a different type of magic than I. Hers is powered by emotion; a lesser type of miracle. I wonder if it is related to her gender?[22]
Those few female sorcerers[23] we do encounter throughout the game often bear the gendered moniker of ‘Witch’ and their magic is viewed as distinct from that of men. This begins with Demon’s Souls, within which Sage Freke (the game’s master of sorcery) takes interested in Yuria the Witch precisely because her magic is defined by her gender, and it is notable that the kind of magic Yuria teaches us is considered ‘dark’.[24] She describes her “witchcraft” as “of a dark nature” that “arouses suspicions”, as a “dark, dependant art” and as a “black craft” that is “intrinsically evil”.[25] In Dark Souls III, Yuria’s role is reprised (largely unchanged)[26] by Karla, who once again teaches us dark sorcery. Not only does Karla explicitly refer to herself as a “wretched child of the Abyss”, but she further describes her sorcery as being “a detestable sort”,[27] which again paints her as a corrupted figure with only her corrupting art to give.[28] But it is not merely dark sorceries that Karla can impart. She can teach us dark miracles, despite never having studied them, as well as the blackflame pyromancies that our usual teacher, Cornyx, refuses to for they are “forbidden”,[29] hence demonstrating Karla’s affinity for darkness of all sorts. As such, Demon’s Souls’ Yuria and Dark Souls III’s Karla are the two most prominent witch characters of the series, and what appears to mark them as witches is not only their gender, but their affinity for the dark.[30]
So, if sorcery is definitively male, dark magic is definitively female — as is pyromancy. It is notable that Karla is able to teach us pyromancy in Dark Souls III, but only those that are specifically gendered. Upon being asked to teach us these female pyromancies, Cornyx, says: “I regret to say, I cannot accept this. Quelana’s pyromancies are for witches, and must be learned from a mistress. But thank you, for allowing me to peer upon such a thing. If only I were a woman.”[31] He then laughs (what a ridiculous notion, that he could be a woman!). Despite the relative gender balance of its teachers, pyromancy’s originators are women, and given Souls’ treatment of womanhood as an essential character, it is unsurprising that its notion of femininity is expressed in pyromancy itself. Whereas sorcery is a cold, calculated science, pyromancy is a gamble with the uncontrollable forces of chaos — a discipline wherein one must forever acknowledge that the very flame one wields is ever beyond one’s control. This is yet another repetition of the conflation of womanhood with irrationality, for pyromancy is the emotive and chaotic foil to the intellectual rigor of sorcery.
Pyromancy’s origins are within the culture of Izalith, a culture ruled over by the Witch of Izalith (one of the great Lords) and her ‘daughters of Chaos’. Given the heavy presence of women at the head of its hierarchy, some have considered Izalith as an example of a matriarchal society (which perhaps says something about the total lack of other women in positions of power across the series). As such, pyromancy is itself connected to its ‘Godmother’[32] (The Witch) and its mother (Quelana, one of the daughters of chaos) — it’s a practice developed by women. And the art itself is defined as female in the way that it is associated with “nature” (the immanent, corporeal world), as opposed to rationality or intellect (the transcendent ideal) as is the masculine art of sorcery. Furthermore, Izalith’s history is one that is ultimately marked by the Witch’s creation of the chaos flame — and the ensuing destruction in her subsequent loss of control. The Witch’s invention — the chaos flame — is defined by its corrupt nature, by the way in which it must be contained lest its irrational power cause such great destruction. Its defined by its excess, by its intemperance, by its inability to control itself. Evidently, the Witch’s control is also found wanting.
The notion that a woman’s power or nature must be controlled is yet another misogynistic trope that manifests throughout history. One parallel, literary example is found in Virgil’s Aeneid, an epic poem that gives a mythical account of the origins of Rome. Within the text, the heroic figure of Aeneas must flee the destruction of Troy and eventually lead to the founding of the settlement that would one day become Rome itself. This duty brings him into conflict with Juno (for those of you who are more acquainted with the Greek nomenclature, Juno is the Roman name for Hera) who seeks to punish him.[33] Yet despite her constant attempts to destroy him, Juno could never succeed in her task as Aeneas’ victory is fated. Juno is an embodiment of furor, of destructive and uncontrollable rage, and her actions are cast as such primarily because of their self-destructive nature.[34] Eventually, Jupiter (Zeus) as the voice of fate, has to step in and control Juno, for there can be no standing in the way of fate. As such, Juno is prevented from her passionate self-destruction by the intervention of masculine rationality. Of course, the Witch of Izalith has no equivalent of Jupiter, and she succumbs to her own passion, ignited into a flame of chaos, and plunges her civilisation into smouldering ruin.
Pyromancy symbolically echoes the aforementioned associations between femininity and irrationality — importantly an irrationality that, if left untampered, will corrupt everything around it, resulting in destruction, loss, and collapse.
The engulfment of Izalith within the chaos flame of pyromancy mirrors the engulfment of Oolacile in the dark of the Abyss. It is again important to note here that the primary representative of Oolacile is Princess Dusk — a character who not only demonstrates the corrupting influence of a woman within sorcery, but who is also imprisoned within the dark for most of her story. It is fitting to end this section with a return to Princess Dusk, for it is within her story that we see an idealised femininity (she is, of course, a princess) directly embroiled with corruption. Oolacile is a perfect, summary example of how Souls equates women with irrational, destructive power — the kind that must be controlled and contained. And it is this motif that underpins many of the images we encounter in the following section.
Bondage
Souls is awash with images of female bodies that are constrained, imprisoned, sealed-away, and bound.
The central hub of Dark Souls literally rests atop a notable and macabre feature. As we descend the winding steps around the side of Firelink shrine, we see a woman sealed into the very stone by a set of iron bars. She is unresponsive if we attempt to speak to her, and this is revealed to be the result of a mutilation of her “impure tongue”[35] — “so that she’d never say any god’s name in vain”.[36] Not only is her tongue removed, but her clothing hints that she has been maimed so as to prevent her escape.[37] As we later learn, this is Anastacia of Astora, the Fire Keeper bound to the bonfire around which this shrine is focused. It is fitting that she is both the first Fire Keeper we meet, and that her station is portrayed through the literal bondage of imprisonment. The Firelink Shrine of Dark Souls forms a central image that has become a somewhat iconic representation of the game itself — not only because it constitutes as safe a space as can be found within a Souls game, but also because it’s a space that bears a great amount of narrative weight (with the veritable parade of characters that pass through it). Whereas the other Fire Keepers encountered throughout the games have this bondage portrayed in a more symbolic manner, Anastacia is interred, literally buried beneath the flame she is supposed to nurture.
The image of the female body, broken and bound beneath the fire establishes the relationship between the keeper and her flame. Fire Keepers are described as “a corporeal manifestation of her bonfire”,[38] as the women themselves are nothing beyond their relationship to the flames. Though they nurture and tend to the fire — which we have noted paints them in a maternal light — their relationship is altogether one of subservience wherein they become absolutely instrumentalised into the service of the flame and those that seek to preserve it. The justification for Anastacia’s treatment is not only that she may be tempted to sin against the Gods — the very faction that are almost unanimously aligned with the flame — but also because it is her life that sustains Firelink Shrine’s bonfire. Upon her death at the hands of Knight Lautrec, the bonfire is extinguished for it is robbed of its source of sustenance: her soul.[39] As such, what is valued about Anastacia as a Fire Keeper is that her own life gives life to the fire, and those that seek to preserve flame see this as justification enough to violate both her autonomy and her body in order to ensure that she cannot elude this role.
We see this mutilation repeated again in Dark Souls III, in an altogether more schematic form. The Fire Keepers in Dark Souls III, appear to be far more uniform that those we have previously seen, with all of them depicted as wearing identical clothing — an indication that their duty has become far more institutionalised. This is suggested to us in the early game by the shared blindness of our unnamed Fire Keeper, and Irina of Carim who (at least for most of the story) is a nun who failed to become a true keeper of the flames.[40] In the later game, we learn that all Fire Keepers are robbed of their eyes. Should we wander into the shadowy recesses of Dark Souls III’s Firelink Shrine, we discover a tower filled with corpses of Fire Keepers from ages past. The key to this tower informs us:
The Bell Tower is the grave of Fire Keepers past. When a Fire Keeper has served her purpose, she is led to true darkness, where she enjoys a long-deserved sleep.[41]
So not only do we see that Fire Keepers are destined to be discarded as soon as they are no longer useful, but this disposal is regarded as a reward — as having been earned through a duty fulfilled. The entire shrine, the process of relinking the fire, and therefore the persistence of the world itself rests upon the broken, scarred bodies of women, whose only reward is to rot away in a tower — joining a mountain of their sisters’ bones.
A further insight into the lot of the Fire Keepers is within the dark instance of Firelink shrine found within the Untended Graves, there we find a pair of Fire Keeper’s eyes, which tell us:
Said to be the eyes of the first Fire Keeper, and the light that was lost by all Fire Keepers to come. It reveals to the sightless Fire Keepers things that they should never see.[42]
The institutionalised creation of Fire Keepers practices a ritualised oedipism, wherein those women who seek the ‘esteem’ of the Fire Keeper’s lot must be mutilated before they can serve this purpose. Of course, we know precisely why Fire Keepers must be blinded — for should we decide to give these eyes to our own Fire Keeper, it enables us to turn her away from her duty and achieve an ending to our story that is defined as the betrayal of fire. It is no coincidence that in one variation of this ending, our player can brutally murder our Fire Keeper, and this act becomes an almost banal continuation of the routine violation endured by these women. After all — Fire Keepers are subservient — their own agency has already been forfeited in the name of their duty. What this ending further reveals is our own Fire Keeper’s total lack of agency even in the selection and actualisation of her own vows, for though she encourages you to fulfil your duty and rekindle the flame (which is her literal reason for being) should you ask her to betray this she does not resist. Again, this simply solidifies the role of the Fire Keeper as one who serves — whose agency is denied through their very station.
We see variations of this in the other two Fire Keepers of Dark Souls: The Fair Lady and the Darkmoon Knightess. Both of these characters are bound by duties, and both are marked by the need to give themselves over to the service of others. In the case of the Fair Lady, she is immobilised next to her bonfire,[43] having taken upon herself the corrupting poison of Blight Town in an effort to protect its people. The Fair Lady combines a self-imposed martyrdom with the constraints of her allegiance to the Chaos Flame, the covenant for which she is the primary avatar. The Darkmoon Knightness is bound to her duty as a Blade of the Darkmoon, and — depending on the player’s actions — will willingly give her life to avenge any wrongdoings against the Gods (specifically the illusory figure of Gwynevere).
But Fire Keepers are not the only instances of female bondage within Souls. The descent down the steps of Firelink Shrine to discover Anastacia in Dark Souls mirrors the descent into the cage atop the Grand Archives of Dark Souls III, where we find the husked corpse of Gertrude.[44] The mirroring of Anastacia and Gertrude’s stories is further manifest in the physical mutilation they face as a response to their perceived blasphemy — as Gertrude’s imprisonment comes as a response to her preaching of angelic heresies. Gertrude lost “both her sight and voice”[45] indicating a continuity with the eyeless Fire Keepers and the tongueless Anastacia. In both cases, the female body is violated and broken in order to force its comportment to a particular political and religious ideology. The violence is an attempt to hobble the dark and retain the purity of the light.
And yet — again Anastacia and Gertrude are not the only women to have specifically lost their tongues. Sealed away atop the Cathedral of the Deep in Dark Souls III, behind a macabre door covered in chains and decorated with corpses nailed to the wall is Rosaria the mother of rebirth. Rosaria herself is mute, yet she is the focal point of the Rosaria’s Fingers covenant — who invade the worlds of others as dark spirits in order to bring their mistress offerings. These take the form of the pale tongues of their victims, which are offered to Rosaria, a “speechless goddess”.[46] Not only does Rosaria’s state echo other women in the plot through her mutilation and her containment, her plot is a direct mirror of Anastacia’s. Just as Knight Lautrec pillages Anastacia’s soul in Dark Souls, Rosaria’s soul is likewise pillaged by Ringfinger Leonard — and again the player must hunt him down using precisely the same mechanics.[47] Upon reclaiming her soul, the player can choose either to revive her or to instrumentalise her soul, moulding it into a potent healing miracle, literally bending it into a tool to sustain their own lives. It’s further telling that even without her soul, Rosaria’s corpse can be used to access many of the same services she offered whilst alive.
Souls is littered with additional examples of female bondage, both overtly in the form of locked doors and cages, as well as magically constraints. Dark Souls’ painted world introduces us to Priscilla who, though perhaps not trapped within the painting, appears unable to leave without facing the threat of violence.[48] In Dark Souls II, the Lost Sinner — the reincarnation of the Witch of Izalith no less — is bound in chains when first encountered. Weaponsmith Ornifex is found in a locked room, requiring the player to free her. The Milfanito — a group of four unnamed sisters[49] that sing to sooth the undead — are not only bound in place by the call of their duty, but we first encounter one of them who has been locked in a cage. Mytha, the Baleful Queen, is found stewing in a pit of poison, a self-inflicted state motivated by her desire to be seen as beautiful by the Old Iron King. And of course there is Rosabeth the pyromancer, who is not only found petrified but once freed literally requires the player to clothe her.[50] Dark Souls III brings us Yhorshka, who remains sealed away at the top of a tower — and seems to possess no agency (nor even a name) aside from the purpose assigned to her by Gwyndolin. We then have the all-female[51] Irithyll slaves who have been denied so much that they have almost faded into nothingness. Need we go on?
These images of female bondage constitute a persistent schematic within Souls that portrays these many forms of violation as a direct consequence of the essential womanhood inscribed onto female characters within the game and the symbolic association of this womanhood with a malignant, corrupting darkness. Fire Keepers are useful because of their affinity for the corrupting dark — but it is for this reason that the violence committed against them is immediately regarded as justifiable and necessary. Gertrude ‘earns’ her violent treatment by her heresy. Rosaria is sealed away for her corrupting influence and then slain in the name of her own good.[52] It is the very mark of womanhood that ‘earns’ women their mistreatment.
The Breakdown of a Binary — Dark Sun Gwyndolin and the Failure of Gender
Thus far, I have focused my attention on the pervasive gender binary throughout the Souls games. Yet at the point where the pressures of gendered meanings are at their most intense, we are also most able to see the deep fissures that run throughout the narrow notions of gender and sex that the rest of the game takes for granted. For my purposes, I consider the character of Dark Sun Gwyndolin as a kind of nexus around which the structures of binary gender become conspicuous.
From his clothing, we learn that:
The power of the moon was strong in Gwyndolin, and thus he was raised as a daughter.[53]
Gwyndolin’s situation appears to be that he was born as Gwyn’s younger son, the implication being that in biological terms he would be considered male. It is clear that his affiliation with masculinity persists throughout the English versions of Dark Souls, which exclusive refer to Gwyndolin with the masculine he/him pronouns,[54] (It is for this reason alone that I repeat these pronouns within this essay, rather than any commitment to what Gwyndolin’s ‘real’ gender is) and his voice actor is male.[55] This is repeated in Dark Souls III, where Yhorska consistently refers to him as ‘brother’. Yet despite this association with manhood, Gwyndolin is raised as a goddess — he has been socialised as a woman. This was because of his affinity with the moon, which we know is tied to the power of illusions — for Gwyndolin’s power maintains a mirage of Anor Londo as it was before the other Gods fled and its power faded into the twilight.[56]
Through this dissonance between his sex and gender, Souls makes at least some use of the sex/gender distinction.[57] As mentioned previously, this distinction is central to much contemporary feminist theory, and speaks of sex in terms of biology and gender in terms of sociology. Importantly, the point of this distinction is not to argue that biological categories constitute some deeper or ‘more true’ layer of gender, but merely to note that the scientific categorisation of bodies and the sociological roles into which these bodies are disciplined are conceptually distinct. Yet this distinction does not argue that sex and gender can be divorced from one another, for the process of gendering another, of coming to expect a particular, gendered behaviour from them, more often than not follows from a perception as to their biological sex. The very notion of gender and sex categories as naturally discrete is a function of socio-political attitudes, wherein we create distinct roles — embedding them so deeply within our cultural psyche such that they come to be seen as products of nature itself.[58] The importance of the sex/gender distinction then, is that whilst both sex and gender are constituted by discourses and are thus both constructs, these are often distinct from one another, and have different concerns.
It is important to note that Gwyndolin’s divergence from standardised gender is part of a greater pattern within FromSoftware games that aligns gender non-conformity with a loss of personhood, with the status of being a monster. This is particularly reflected in Gwyndolin’s lower-body trailing off into a nest of vipers and with his appearance described as “repulsive” and “frail”.[59] So whilst Gwyndolin’s situation does enable us to witness gender in a state of crises, the game’s alignment of his non-conformity with a bestial loss of humanity seeks to naturalise its own gender binary as the basic condition of personhood. The suggestion is that within Souls, to escape gender is to escape humanity,[60] and its desire to support the binary that underpins so much of its story telling results in Gwyndolin’s character design repeating many elements of ‘trans/gay panic’.[61] It is no coincidence that certain high-profile members of the Souls community have made derogatory and transphobic comments about Gwyndolin.[62]
It is difficult to directly identify Gwyndolin’s situation with that of contemporary trans* women given the emphasis within contemporary trans* identities on the right to self-determination and self-identification. Dark Souls is wholly unclear as whether Gwyndolin’s gender is a matter of self-determination, though it is clear that goddess was an identity that has been assigned to him. As such, despite the game’s indication that he was born male, he appears to have been assigned a gender that does not align with this. Yet the influence of how he was raised should not be taken to mark Gwyndolin’s goddess identity as less authentic than other forms of gender expression, for all kinds of gendering and gendered performances take places within cultural matrices of power — and are always influenced and shaped by others as much as they are determined by the individuals themselves.[63] As such, though Gwyndolin does not comfortably fit with mainstream articulations of trans* identity, it is clear that his situation complicates the very notion of gender identification such that he cannot comfortably be considered cis* either.
Conversely, Gwyndolin constitutes a site of gendered tension, wherein he is positioned at the centre of a series of conflicting expectations — each serving to pull his identity in a disparate direction. We have the attempt to establish his sex as male, an identification which is disturbed by the visible breasts on his character model, and the tension between the games’ constant attempts to present him as both a Goddess and the persistent use of the masculine pronoun. As such, all categories of sex and gender appear to ‘stick’ to Gwyndolin, yet each of them only has enough traction to fail. Gwyndolin fails to be straightforwardly intelligible to us in terms of the matrices of sex and gender, for each assigned identification must selectively omit certain facets of his character if they are to appear as stable. Gwyndolin fails to fit the binary categories Souls requires, and as such reveals the failure of this framework of gender to become a universal description.
This amounts to saying that there is no underlying reality for Gwyndolin’s sex or gender.[64] It is not that Gwyndolin is really a man, or really a woman, but the form of his existence ruptures the stability of these categories. And through the positioning of Gwyndolin, we see not only his individual defiance of normative sex and gender — but the ultimate failure of all assignments of these identities. Gwyndolin is an example of where narrow gender and sex identities go when taken to extreme lengths — they collapse under their own rigidity, for they lose all explanatory power.
We should not forget that Gwyndolin is responsible for the illusory Gwynevere we encounter within Anor Londo’s cathedral. Gwynevere as we see her here represented is an idealised form of femininity. She is depicted in a reclined, sensuous pose that constructs her character as welcoming, gentle, and — despite her size — unimposing. The design of her character, for which archetypes of fertility Goddesses are no doubt to blame, is highly sexual (which is reflected in her vulgar treatment by so many players).[65] She is soft-spoken, greeting the player as a champion, massaging their ego and granting you the Lordvessel — an object of great utility. However this Gwynevere is an idea, and as all ideals of gender she proves to be absolutely hollow — collapsing into shimmers of light once the lie is exposed. Gwyndolin fashions for us an idol of femininity, and reveals that this ideal feminine can only exist as a transient illusion.
Yet for all that can be read into Gwyndolin’s situation, we must not forget how binary Souls is and not only how that binary rises against Gwyndolin’s defiance of it, but also how it undermines the player’s own attempts to do so. In Dark Souls III, the player is able to create a gender non-conforming character in a way that was impossible in previous games. In particular, specific hair styles or the option to have facial hair are no longer restricted to characters of particular sexes — allowing the creation of characters that, at least in some small way, defy gender binaries. And yet all this amounts to nothing, for Dark Souls III contains a character whose gender switches depending on that of the players. Anri of Astora appears variably as a man or a woman (but, of course, never beyond this binary), the opposite to the gender of the player. Now the fact that we can make use of the term opposite here is indicative of the manner with which the flexibility of Anri’s gender reasserts the binary. No matter how the player tries to defy the binary, the game reasserts that their character must really be either a man or a woman — and enforces this through having Anri’s gender fall so neatly into the opposite category. This is ostensibly because one possible plotline involves the character’s ‘marriage’ to Anri — and even though this involves no consummation, that such a marriage is only possible between two characters constituted on opposing sides of a narrow binary belies Souls underlying commitment to storytelling that relies not only on binary gender, but upon a strict heteronormativity.[66]
The gendered intensity of Gwyndolin’s situation make conspicuous how closed Souls’ use of gender otherwise remains. Gwyndolin garners so much attention because he is so singular an example of gendered narratives being called into question and subverted. As such, he constitutes a peculiar exception that reasserts the norm of Souls gendered storytelling.
Conclusion
As we have seen, Souls mobilises a form of womanhood to create a stable form of gendered essence. This essential womanhood is attributed to the female characters that move within the game space, serving to delineate the kinds of movement that the narrative permits to them. Through so binding the kinds of movement its female characters can undergo to this essentialised gender we see the stories of women within Souls as definitively female stories that partake in a host of gendering tropes. This finds its most consistent expression in the constant equation of the man/woman binary onto the foundational binary of light/dark that underpins the entire series. As such, the women of Souls are seen as representatives of the corrupting dark — an association that becomes a justification for the routine violence and violation they endure throughout the series. And yet, this closed system of absolute definition, of roles that cannot be escaped or denied is exposed as a fake — as a mirage that not only requires Godlike power to sustain, but comes at such a great cost. And nowhere is this cost so fully felt that by those characters who are seen to bear this essence of womanhood.
Notes
[1] For some of my other thoughts on the metaphysical concepts at play within Dark Souls, check out my essay ‘The World Soul of Flame’.
[2] Souls consistently uses unreliable narration.
[3] Dark Souls opening cinematic.
[4] For example, the attention received by Dragon Age: Inquisition for its inclusion of Krem.
[5] Character dialogue: Shira (Dark Souls III).
[6][6] I am here making reference to Judith Butler’s performative account of gender, see: Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (New York: Routledge, 1990); Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter on the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’ (Routledge, 2011); Judith Butler, Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012).
[7] As a part of formalised, scientific disciplines such as biology and medicine.
[8] One could go as far as to suggest that Souls reifies such a singular category of ‘woman’ that their stories become more or less a single story that varies ever so slightly. However uncharitable this may be, there remains some truth in it.
[9] The domestic as a space divided from contemporary society plays into the classical distinction between public and private space (see: Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 2nd edn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). and Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Polity Press, 1992).) We need look no further than Sophocles’ Antigone to see, par excellence, how women bear the burden of the tension between these two conceptual spaces, see: Sophocles, Antigone.
[10] In Ciaran’s case, she seems to serve the traditional role of the widow — including a duty to mourn the lost husband. If the player is feeling particularly cruel, they can enforce a shared death between them.
[11] The implication of Lucatiel’s dialogue is that her brother contracted the curse before her, that she has followed him into Drangleic.
[12] The original Dark Souls has : Anastacia of Astora, The Fair Lady, and the Darkmoon Knightess. Dark Souls II has a collection of old women in Things Betwixt and possibly The Emerald Herald (it depends who you choose to believe). Dark Souls III has an unnamed Fire Keeper and the possibility of transforming Irina of Carim into one.
[13] Item description: Fire Keeper Soul (Dark Souls).
[14] Item description: Fire Keeper Soul (Dark Souls III).
[15] And we again have a female character associated with the consumption of the dark.
[16] There is something pertinent to be said about the gendered dynamic of a single male character as the sum of four distinct female characters.
[17] This being Alsanna, who seems to have a loving relationship with the Burnt Ivory King.
[18] Though arguably the Old Iron King was hardly an ideal monarch — and he caused his own destruction long before his ‘dark bride’™ ever arrived.
[19] Character dialogue: Yuria of Londor.
[20] Character dialogue: Big Hat Logan.
[21] To twist Big Hat Logan’s own words.
[22] Character Dialogue: Sage Freke (Demon’s Souls).
[23] Additionally, there is Rosabeth the pyromancer, who longs to be a sorcerer and yet is unable to due to a lack of talent.
[24] Of course, this has a slightly different connotation within the realm of Demon’s Souls, where the metaphysics of the light/dark binary are not so central to the narrative structure.
[25] All quotes are taken from Yuria the Witch’s character dialogue.
[26] Both are found in prison cells, can be freed by the character and can be persuaded to a teach a craft which they consider to be evil.
[27] Character Dialogue: Karla (Dark Souls III).
[28] It is clear that learning her art is considered dangerous in and of itself — hence her fear that it will incite a ‘ruinous nostalgia’.
[29] Character Dialogue: Cornyx of the Great Swamp (Dark Souls III).
[30] The other notable witch is Beatrice, whom can be summoned twice in Dark Souls. Though both female and a witch, she appears to only use standard sorcery. She is, however, summonable when facing the Four Kings — a battle which takes place within the Abyss itself. As such, there remains a connection between Beatrice and the dark.
[31] Character Dialogue: Cornyx of the Great Swamp (Dark Souls III).
[32] Character Dialogue: Laurentius of the Great Swamp (Dark Souls).
[33] The reason for this is a combination of her hatred of the Trojans (due to an unfortunate incident involving three goddesses, a prince, and an apple, see: Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica (London: Loeb, 1936).) and that his duty forces him to abandon Dido, Queen of the Phoenicians (a chosen people of Juno’s). This in and of itself is Virgil using myth to justify the contemporary rivalry between Rome and Carthage.
[34] See: Nicole Smith, ‘Furor, Flames, and the Aeneid: The Theme of Rage in the Epic Poem by Virgil’, Article Myriad, 2011 <http://www.articlemyriad.com/furor-flames-aeneid-theme-rage/> [accessed 10 May 2018].
[35] Character Dialogue: Anastacia of Astora (Dark Souls).
[36] Character Dialogue: Crestfallen Warrior (Dark Souls).
[37] “It is thought to have once been the white skirt of a maiden, but its true origin is lost in patches of blood. Perhaps its former wearer was maimed to prevent escape?” — from Item description: Blood-Stained Skirt.
[38] Item description: Fire Keeper Souls (Dark Souls).
[39] Notably, all of Anastacia’s involvement in the plot surrounds the objectification of her soul — which is sought for its instrumental power. Knight Lautrec sits staring at her until taking her life — an act performed in order to obtain her soul. The player can reclaim this soul, and either instrumentalise it by using its power themselves or by returning Anastacia to life — a life wherein she is subservient to the flame.
[40] Irina parallels Anastacia in so far as both appear unable to walk due to having been deliberately crippled.
[41] Item description: Tower Key (Dark Souls III).
[42] Item description: Eyes of a Fire Keeper (Dark Souls III).
[43] This is not a reflection of her demonic form, as her sister — Quelana — assumes a similar form and yet is not only mobile but is fought as a boss.
[44] Or, at the very least, a corpse that is heavily implied to be Gertrude.
[45] Item description: Divine Pillars of Light (Dark Souls III).
[46] Item description: Pale Tongue (Dark Souls III).
[47] Namely the black eye orb.
[48] She is described as “an abomination who had
no place in this world” (Item description: peculiar doll, Dark Souls) and as “the stark white crossbreed trapped inside the Painted World” (Item description: Lifehunt Scythe, Dark Souls III).
[49] Again, their lack of names and the implication that they consider themselves to be a single entity is another instance of women being viewed as incomplete, as mere parts to a greater whole. The other instance of this is the sisters of the dark.
[50] How unsurprising that so many then take this opportunity to clothe her in the most revealing clothing the game provides — thereby reducing her character into a mere object of scopophilia.
[51] This was first noted (to my knowledge) by Casitive in her Dark Souls III: Lorethrough. See: Casitive, Dark Souls III: Lorethrough /Community (YouTube, 2017) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG_Wl_CvaJw&list=PLZZ6Fjbo6KNAOVxCsKCf60bGq0uzbuTdV>.
[52] When the player faces Leonhard, he claims to have taken her soul in order to prevent it from being corrupted.
[53] Item description: Gwyndolin Moonlight Set (Dark Souls).
[54] This reveals the gendering habits of the English language in particular, as the Japanese script avoids using gendered pronouns. See: eva problems, ‘YES, DARK SUN GWYNDOLIN IS A TRANS WOMAN, NO, YOU CAN’T HAVE HER’, Medium, 2015 <https://medium.com/mammon-machine-zeal/yes-dark-sun-gwyndolin-is-a-trans-woman-no-you-can-t-have-her-7a839d98cbcd>; Kaijin, ‘Translation Correction’, Medium, 2015 <https://medium.com/@Kaijin/hi-i-m-a-woman-who-lived-in-japan-for-several-years-6a6257d698d1>.
[55] This should not be taken to indicate that Gwyndolin is ‘really’ male and a man. Various portrayals of trans* people in media tend to use cis* actors, and usually these actors are chosen to align with the trans* person’s pre-transition identity. For example The Danish Girl, see: Tom Hooper, The Danish Girl (Universal Pictures, 2015).
[56] When we consider this alongside Princess Dusk, we have an established link between femininity and untruth.
[57] Additionally, the existence of the Ring of Reversal could constitute a nod towards gender performativity, see: Butler, Gender Trouble.
[58] See: Butler, Gender Trouble.
[59] Item description: Darkmoon Blade Covenant Ring (Dark Souls).
[60] This is a much bigger part of the aesthetic design within Bloodborne, though we cannot examine this in detail here.
[61] These are highly transphobic/homophobic phenomena wherein an individual justifies their (often violent) actions towards members of the LGBT* community as stemming from an uncontrollable fear response. This is so normalised that it can be used as a legal defence (see: Jordan Blair Woods, Model Legislation for Eliminating the Gay and Trans Panic Defenses (The Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law, 2018) <https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016-Model-GayTransPanic-Ban-Laws-final.pdf>.). It is also known as the ‘homosexual advance defence’ — we pity the fragility of straight people.
[62] Both VaatiVidya and Indeimaus have referred to Gwyndolin as a ‘trap’ before. (Also, as I search for images to punctuate this essay, ‘trap’ is a suggested addition to my search for ‘Gwyndolin’ on Google).
[63] See: Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, trans. by Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), i.
[64] I would further argue that it is the desire to settle an account of Gwyndolin’s identity once and for all that often leads to so many trans-exclusionary readings of his character.
[65] Messages such as ‘USE TWO HANDED’ will undoubtedly be vogue once more upon the release of the Dark Souls remaster.
[66] Upon playing Souls, we could be forgiven for asking: Where my gays at?
Works Cited
Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition, 2nd edn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999)
Butler, Judith, Bodies That Matter on the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’ (Routledge, 2011)
— — — , Gender Trouble (New York: Routledge, 1990)
— — — , Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012)
Casitive, Dark Souls III: Lorethrough /Community (YouTube, 2017) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG_Wl_CvaJw&list=PLZZ6Fjbo6KNAOVxCsKCf60bGq0uzbuTdV>
eva problems, ‘YES, DARK SUN GWYNDOLIN IS A TRANS WOMAN, NO, YOU CAN’T HAVE HER’, Medium, 2015 <https://medium.com/mammon-machine-zeal/yes-dark-sun-gwyndolin-is-a-trans-woman-no-you-can-t-have-her-7a839d98cbcd>
Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality, trans. by Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), i
Habermas, Jürgen, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Polity Press, 1992)
Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica (London: Loeb, 1936)
Hooper, Tom, The Danish Girl (Universal Pictures, 2015)
Kaijin, ‘Translation Correction’, Medium, 2015 <https://medium.com/@Kaijin/hi-i-m-a-woman-who-lived-in-japan-for-several-years-6a6257d698d1>
Miyazaki, Hidetaka, Bloodborne (From Software, 2015)
— — — , Dark Souls (From Software, 2011)
Miyazaki, Hidetaka, Isamu Okano, and Yui Tanimura, Dark Souls III (From Software, 2016)
Shibuya, Tomohiro, and Yui Tanimura, Dark Souls II (From Software, 2014)
Smith, Nicole, ‘Furor, Flames, and the Aeneid: The Theme of Rage in the Epic Poem by Virgil’, Article Myriad, 2011 <http://www.articlemyriad.com/furor-flames-aeneid-theme-rage/> [accessed 10 May 2018]
Sophocles, Antigone
Woods, Jordan Blair, Model Legislation for Eliminating the Gay and Trans Panic Defenses (The Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law, 2018) <https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016-Model-GayTransPanic-Ban-Laws-final.pdf>
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Aegon of Astora — Dark Souls III: Let’s Talk Lore [link]
Butler, Judith, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (New York: Verso Books, 2006)
Butler, Judith, Notes Towards a Performative Theory of Assembly (USA: Harvard University Press, 2015)
de Beauvoir, Simone, The Second Sex, trans. by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier (London: Jonathan Cape, 2009)
Dworkin, Andrea, Woman Hating (New York: Penguin Books, 1974)
Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish (London: Penguin, 1991)
— — — , Madness and Civilisaiton: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans. by Richard Howard (USA: Random House, 1965)
— — — , The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception, trans. by A.M. Sheridan (Tavistock: Routledge, 1973)
Halberstam, Judith, Female Masculinity (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998)
— — — , In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (New York: New York University Press, 2005)
— — — , The Queer Art of Failure (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011)
hooks, bell, Ain’t I a Woman? (USA: South End Press, 1981)
— — — , ‘Essentialism and Experience’, American Literary History, 3 (1991), 172–83
Irigaray, Luce, Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. by Gillian C. Gill (New York: Cornell University Press, 1974)
— — — , This Sex Which Is Not One (USA: Cornell University Press, 1985)
Jerks Sans Frontieres — Discussing Dark Souls III with Casitive [link]
Spelman, Elizabeth, Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought (Boston: Beacon Press, 1990)
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, The Spivak Reader, ed. by Donna Landry and Gerald Maclean (New York: Routledge, 1996)
