“One is nOt bOrn a ClaymOre”

Gender issues in claymore

Setting of Claymore

• Medieval European dark fantasy setting

• Demonic beings called “yoma” infiltrate and prey upon human settlements

• A nameless agency simply termed “The Organization” provides protection for a price from yoma with a force of female warriors

Who and what are Claymores?

• Half-human warriors created by implanting the flesh of a yoma into a human to create a hybrid

• Only females are made into Claymores

• Fight by tapping into “yoki”, or demonic energy to enhance strength and speed

This is your body on yoki

Philosophical Underpinnings “Existence precedes

essence”

• Humans have no inherent value or meaning, born as an empty vessel (Existence)

• It is through conscious choice do we create meaning

• Life is a struggle to create meaning (Essence)

“One is not born a woman, but becomes

one”

• What we understand “woman” to mean is a historical idea

• Concept that imposes a set of expectations and ideas we hold to be “natural”

• Claymores are humans turned into warriors by the Organization

• Meant to serve the Organization

• Role is to serve and protect humanity

Traditional vs Atypical

Feminine Clare

• Demure

• Submissive

• Non-confrontational

• Modest

• Raki defends her honor against Cid

Warrior Clare

• Aggressive

• Powerful

• Determined

• Practical

• Saves Raki from humans and Yoma

Clare, while undercover in Rabona

Clare, while on her mission in Rabona

ClaymOre as “Other”

• De Beauvoir spoke of women as “objects” that history and society treat them as a mysterious “other”

• Claymores are under the command of men who decide when and where they will go

• We learn that Claymores are merely an experiment in a greater conflict

• Claymores are expected to obey, to perform their function as tools

• The Organization is invested in keeping control of the Claymores for their own ends

OrganizatiOn as “self”

• Organization “created” Claymore

• Organization possess knowledge and goals beyond that of the Claymores

• The purpose of a Claymore is to protect humans from Yoma

• Yoma are also created by the Organization

• The agency, the ability of a Claymore to make an impact, is nullified as she is impotent compared to the Organization

Why is Subjectivity important?

• Subjectivity allows for Transcendence

• Transcendence is the moving beyond the limits of one’s situation

• It allows one to create meaning (Existence moving to create Essence)

• Clare, Miria and others realize they cannot continue serving the Organization

• To continue with the Organization would have been to live in “Bad faith”

• That is realizing one’s ability to choose and instead rejecting it.

Historical Reality

• Myths of women as creator/destroyer

• Belief in inferiority of women’s bodies and minds

• Pseudo-historical and scientific “proof” of said beliefs

• Real gains of women’s rights only latter half of the 19th century

Fictional analog

• Medieval European mindset and values

• Addition of yoma flesh enables a reconception of gender

• Claymores exist outside normal power structure of church and society

• Still subservient to patriarchal authority

Organization as oppression

• The Organization utilizes several methods for keeping control and limiting the transcendence of Claymores

– Perpetuates scenario that produces orphans to recruit for experiments

– Planned obsolescence of each Claymore generation

– Training of an anti-warrior Claymore to cull rebellious agents

Claymores as Transcendence • Beginning with the

survivors of the Pieta campaign ,each choose their own method of expressing their subjectivity.

– Clare’s search for Raki

– Tabitha’s dedication to Miria

– Deneve and Helen’s friendship

– Yuma and Cynthia’s sense of duty

• Galatea’s role as mother to the orphans in Rabona

• Clarice and Miata’s familial relationship to each other

• Anastasia’s loyalty to her comrades

• Biological determinism- belief that the sexual characteristics signify behavioral and psychological differences between men and women

• Sex is the biological reality while gender is a socially constructed artificiality

– Male/female vs Man/Woman

Bib page

• http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-gender/#SexDis

• http://www.iep.utm.edu/beauvoir/#SH3a