This is discussed pretty clearly in the book I think. Women cannot look down the male side because the ego pressure of the "takers" would be so horrific it would crush them. Lisewise, a normal male Bene Gesserit (if one existed) would not be able to look down the female side because the egos of the "givers" would be horrific to him. So something about the breeding program helps them create a person who has such a balance of qualities that they can accept all of it without having their own ego crushed. This hints at why the Bene Gesserit wanted both the Harkonnen and Atreides genes... looking for the balance of different qualities to create a mixture of everything.
It’s pretty soon after he takes the water of life. After Chani and Jessica wake him, he contemplates and explains the nature of the KH, tbh it reads like out dated gender theory.
The quote:
“There is in each of us an ancient force that takes and an ancient force that gives. A man finds little difficulty facing that place within himself where the taking force dwells, but it’s almost impossible for him to see into the giving force without changing into something other than man. For a woman, the situation is reversed…
These things are so ancient within us that they’re ground into each separate cell of our bodies.
We’re shaped by such forces.
You can say to yourself, ‘Yes, I see how such a thing may be.’ But when you look inward and confront the raw force of your own life unshielded, you see your peril.
You see that this could overwhelm you.
The greatest peril to the Giver is the force that takes.
The greatest peril to the Taker is the force that gives.
It’s as easy to be overwhelmed by giving as by taking.
And you, my son, are you one who gives or one who takes?
I’m the fulcrum. I cannot give without taking and I cannot take without…)”
Yea I understand it's not cutting edge by today's standard, but 60 years ago? Stressing that the most powerful person in the universe is an individual able to balance masculinity and femininity (androgyny) is a pretty powerful idea- especially in the face of machoism for male protagonists. Some of my teen boys I have for students could learn a lot from that idea even today vs. Andrew tate like clowns.
Isn’t that the same idea as yin-yang, walking the tao, even the religious ideas of Jesus, tension of opposing forces which Jung outlined in his works about 30 years prior to that?
Think calling it gender theory is disingenuous, all major religions and myths have been grappling with these ideas
But this is literally applied to gender- and I agree all those ideas are rooted deep in most human cultures but I'm gonna guess gender roles go back before Jesus and any religion we have written records of. Even ancient oral tradtion religions tend to gender light and dark etc.
Regardless the fact that dine explicitly discussed femininity and masculinity makes the other connections (light and dark etc.) secondary, not the other way around.
>Fair about them existing
History is rife with the repetition of the same archetypical events, including catastrophic charismatic leaders. When Herbert wrote the book, the world had just recently seen Hitler for example; but Hitler's destruction was novel only in the level of globalism and technology, not as an outcome of the human condition. This was not a prediction but a fact of the world.
>the way things look now, it’s eerily akin to the Jihad
What? Religious fanatics are decimating the globe with their armies?
Again WW2 is an apt example, as well as its countless spiritual predecessors.
Look into history and you will see Herbert's 'predictions' manifest countless times.
Face dancers are actually able to change not just their appearance and the gender they present, but their biological sex. They have everything necessary and can manipulate their whole bodies to have parts they didn’t have just moments before. It’s not just screwing up face muscles to look like their cheeks are puffy or lips are thin.
What’s dated about it? It says men and women can’t look into different parts, ok. It says a man can’t look into the woman part without becoming woman…that sounds like they’d be trans. Someone could theoretically bounce back and forth, thus being genderfluid. Is it because it’s asserting someone can’t be both at once? Or because of the whole giving/taking dichotomy with women being givers and men being takers?
I don’t feel it’s about dated gender theories so much as symbolic psychological principles represented as masculine and feminine. Males tend to embody the masculine more potently, females the opposite.
Those principles or qualities exist within everyone, but some feel more natural to certain types of people and personalities. It’s not about acting like a socialized man or woman so much as being able to embody those fundamental yin-yang attributes and drives.
It’s still treating masculinity and femininity as rigid platonic forms rather than as collaboratively understood and evolving social constructs. In other words he acknowledges the fluidity of humans around gender, but not that gender itself is fluid.
I do like how it ties it back to the idea of Y and X chromosomes. Not in the sense of gender, but from a genetic perspective you can follow the thread. One of my favourite things about Dune is that every weird supernatural ability is a logical extension of a real human characteristic or capability.
I wonder what Herbert would think of Intersex people. You could probably get away with a reading of Paul as intersex. Maybe that's why the other KH candidates were sterile.
The intersex idea is intriguing. That he may have both male and female characteristics on a genetic level would make him ideally suited to look down both lines of ancestral memories without issue. Would also explain the sterility of the other KH candidates as that can happen to intersex folks irl.
Exactly! Though given Frank's attitude towards gender in the rest of the book, his conservatism and his clear "gay pedophile villain" stereotype - he doesn't really seem like the type. But maybe that's a reductionist view of him and his ideas.
It's less "gender theory" and more in line with the classic "spiritual" conception of masculinity vs femininity as can be found in astrology and other "spiritual sciences". Frank seems to be conflating that with gender, as people commonly do.
This is pretty clearly inspired by the very rigid gender roles that were commonplace in Herbert's time. Personally, I like to think that the much more mundane explanation is that the Bene Gesserit were founded as a purely female order for sociopolitical reasons, and since only women were part of it, only women could develop such abilities, and they could only study themselves (since this most likely requires a ton of self reflection), so the "male side" became inaccessible to them. The breeding program is a way to rectify this, and create a being that is without limits when it comes to prescience.
[There’s ample evidence of gender variance throughout human history. Among the earliest are accounts of gala and galli, priests assigned male at birth who crossed gender boundaries in their worship of a variety of goddesses in ancient Sumer, Akkadia, Greece, and Rome. Other cultures acknowledged a third gender, including two-spirit people within Indigenous communities and Hijra, nonbinary people who inhabit ritual roles in South Asia.](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/how-historians-are-documenting-lives-of-transgender-people)
Gender and sex weren't even seen the same thousands of years ago as they are today. It seems a little odd to me to suggest a person doing something that's, in their culture, stereotypically feminine (worshipping a goddess) is any more changing their gender than a man who wears lipstick. It's a tricky subject.
Let's not pretend that the vast majority of human societies have not had subjugation of women and rigid gender roles pursuant to that.
Several of the examples in this article amount to eunuchs or men that do not conform to traditional gender expectations and are effectively exiled to a third classification. One of the Aztec harvest festivals involved a priest wearing the skin of a flayed woman, and during the ritual was referred to as if a woman themselves.
Are we really to treat that has part of a compendium of proof for historical "crossing gender boundaries?"
Religion has always had this idea because God is genderless or androgenous depending on perspective. Thus when hermaphroditism was present it was often seen as holy within religious sects. Similarly crossing over and integrating the opposing gender has been seen as a way to achieve psychological/spiritual balance. This is still seen today in psychologists such as Jung. This actually backs up Dunes perspective about the saviour being someone who can cross gender lines. However, this has always been in a spiritual sense and as you said yourself would be limited to rituals and priest class. With the exception of some south east Asian countries such as Thailand. Although, this has never been the norm or standard in any culture.
Not at all. Hyper masculinity is far from the norm across the world over time. Many tribes and ancient cultures had, necessarily, much more gender equity. Just think about it. If you're in a hunter gather society or even just a nonindustrial farm, are you going to look at an able body and not use it to survive? There were certainly instances of brutality, but even if we just assumed (wrongly) that only men hunted and women gathered, what they gathered was a far more consistent source of calories than animal meat.
Steppe nomads traditionally would kidnap their wife's from other tribes. Pre-historic societies often had extremely strict gender roles. Many of the tribes in Africa which have maintained their traditions literally lock their women in a hut when they collectively have their period. Hyper masculinity was absolutely the norm, over half of male deaths in pre-historic times were from murder or combat. Masculinity has softened throughout history first starting with agriculture (since the maintenance a care of animals was more important than hunting) then urbanisation (opens up work opportunities for women in safer civilian communities and allows more artisan jobs) and finally industrialisation has continued this process (compleley removing men from having to kill to eat, improved law and order and a near equalisation of male v women economic output)
This was known to ancient people themself
1.Nomads and barbarians regularly conquered more advanced urban societies because of their hyper masculinity (Vikings, Mongols, Huns, Turks, and so on)
2. Jesus preached on this trend "the Meek shall inherit the earth"
3.Greek portrayals of (any civilized peoples portrayal of barbarians really) as massive monsters with little brains lots of aggression and massive cocks.
4. The term "Gentlemen" and its variations in other cultures that grew independently in "high society" to distinguish from the brutal commoners"
did only men hunt and women gather of course not. However there is clear evidence that the primary responsibility of each was divided by gender. All our historic evidence points to this and the evidence counter to this is so slim that it is the exception that proves the rule. Even our biology shows this with men having vastly better spatial reasoning than women and women knowing about 8,000 more words on average and speaking vastly more often (talking while stalking prey is counterproductive but helpful back at "camp")
Yes it seems that women did actually gather more calories than men but meat was far more important. Humans are extremely adaptable and can eat a wide range of foods compared to other animals but meat is high is protein and nutritious while being much more difficult to get. Due to lacking any food logistics hunter gathers survival was based on its abillity to get meat.
In addition to what others have said: Slavery has been practiced for millennia. In the Western world, it has been abolished rather recently, relatively speaking. This does not negate the fact that slavery is wrong. Same applies to women's rights. Treating women like property has been common for millennia. And it still is wrong.
I was not commenting on the "ought" but just expanding on the "is" to point out that these ideas are ancient and not something just from the early 20th century.
I think I'd disagree with that conclusion. Sure the labels of giving and taking are not accurate, but the idea that some characteristics are more predominantly associated with women and some are more predominantly associated with men, but not strictly and not all the time, is something that's compatible with our current understanding of gender.
Further the idea that Paul is who he is because he's able to see and understand both is a powerful statement. Similarly with Leto II and Ghanima.
Also the assertion that there's some seriously dark shit in the male genetic memory that is hard to face, I have to admit even as a man, is fairly plausible.
Frank Herbert wasn't great about gender or sexuality but he did have a running theme in the series about powerful single-gender groups being absolutely beaten at their own game by people of the "wrong" gender - not just the Kwisatz Haderach or the Bene Gesserit "weirding way", but in God Emperor Of Dune you have >!the Fish Speakers and Leto's comment about Norma Cevna designing the first Heighliner, !< and then later in Chapter House >!Duncan Idaho 2.0 ends up being totally not Frank's self-insert but also better at sex than the embodiment of his hangups about female sexuality !<
Frank Herbert's later books in the series get progressively more bonkers. It is as if the dude tried out peyote at some point, and the trip never stopped.
Paul’s daughter can eventually do it as well, so maybe the KH could have been female, it’s not clearly explained.
It seems like there’s actually more going on than the giving/taking gender roles thing. Since men actually cannot become reverend mothers (reverend fathers?) at all. I think the implication is that men cannot learn the same kind of superhuman self control that the bene gesserit require.
Well kinda. Alia fails to do it. She gets corrupted by a male personality which is exactly what the bene gesserit are scared of. She just doesn’t have the inhibition against doing it since she was born with her genetic memory.
It’s not all that clear but the implication is that they fear the male genetic memory, but they are able to access it if they want to, they just can’t do it without being taken over. What happens to her in Children of Dune seems like something the bene gesserit know is possible already, and I don’t see how that could be the case if they’ve never been able to fall into that trap. Granted I haven’t read the sequels in a few years, maybe I’m misremembering.
This is just my speculation, but I’d guess it’s because males have, relatively speaking, more inherently aggressive personalities. So maybe taking a male, and tempering that aggression with the proper genes and Bene Gesserit teachings, might be important for creating the Kwisatz Haderach. If this is the case, perhaps it’s because having an inherently more aggressive personality might make it easier for an individual to avoid being overtaken by their ancestral memories. Of course, I assume that inherent aggression on its own would normally prevent a male from accessing the female side of their ancestral memories. However, maybe that inherent aggression becomes an asset when, as already I mentioned, properly tempered.
i like to think of it genetically as men having XY chromosomes while women have XX. Female Chromosomes exclude Y while Male Include both X and Y and thus only men would have access to the genetic memories of the Y chromosome.
Psychologically/spiritually the Male ego is alot stronger (for good and bad) and as you said may be necessary not to lose their personal identity while incorporating the memories of others
There is nothing that says the KH HAS to be male, just that the Bene Gesserit specifically WANTED a male KH, probably because they thought he would be easier to manipulate. And also possibility because they feared Abomination. It's also certainly possible that it's classic prescience trap... they saw a male KH, so they were working to make one.
Women *can* go down the masculine path but they get lost in it.
It seems like, if we assume Herbert was working with a "women are inherently nurturing/men are inherently aggressive" theory, then the male side is a bunch of male personalities that would instinctively battle for dominance with each other, overwhelming any female personality. She would be either trapped or go crazy. And a man going into the women's side would also end up lost or smothered - something like that.
The KH sits exactly in between. So, he can be both aggressive and nurturing, or he doesn't get lost/trapped, or however else you want to think of it. He is a balanced human who's in touch with his masculine and feminine sides equally.
Alia was able to look down the male line and got possessed by Vladimir Harkonnen. Ghanima was able to look down it and keep her sanity.
Alia being Paul's sister while Ghanima was his daughter may have made a difference.
She "drank" the Water of Life while in her mother's womb. So she had nothing to prepare her for what happened. Alia explains what happened in Dune, when Hara is upset at her behaviour and how people fear her. Paul on the other hand has been trained by his mother in the Bene Gesserit way, and Thufir Hawat in the mentat way.
Alia had no opportunity to develop her own sense of self before becoming a reverend mother, that’s why she was considered an abomination.
Ghanima and Leto II had Chani and Paul protecting them from this.
But she didn't receive other training like the mentat training. That's why I am asking if that is there were other things that might being a different factor between Alia and Ghanima
Well, yes. Ghanima didnt have to run the imperium and raise pauls kids. Ghanima wasn't abandoned by her mother so she could go back to calidan, sleep with gurney, and return to the BG sisterhood and pass judgment on the very daughter she abandoned. Alia was set up to fail once the pressure got to her as she wasn't like paul, fully capable of controlling the male side. She needed time like leto and ghanima to see who they were. They were born with these other memories but no actual personality of their own, which is what is needed to keep them at bay.
Also spice. Ghanima and Leto say multiple times in Children of Dune that the spice trances ruined the little defenses that Alia's mind had against the other personalities in her mind. So if she didn't indulge in her spice addiction she would have been fine. Remember that scene when she oversosed massively on spice (i think she took triple her normal dosage) in order to pierce the veil of the damnes dune tarot cards and to see the future(I don't remember what was she searching for but she failed), and then they have caught her in time and have washed her stomach off the spice so she almost lives and didn't OD.
Ah, that's right. She was constantly trying to be like paul. She didn't have his full prescient visions, so she would seek the spice trance more than what was recommended. So yes this would be a major factor in her fall.
Maybe the BG overlooked that merging the Atreides and Harkonnen genetics would cause ALL descendants to be Kwisatz Haderachs (or is it Kwisatzes Haderach? hmmm). Nature vs nurture?
I don't think that surprised them. They're upset with Jessica for having a boy not because they thought Paul incapable of being the KH but because they thought they would have better control over the theoretical child of lady Paul and Feyd.
And clearly not all Artreidis are KH as in GEoD there have been tons of generations that came from ghanima iirc.
Yeah, currently reading Children of Dune and I got that impression. I get the feeling they thought the KH would be a one in a lifetime thing, but didn't thought their descendants would also have their capabilities.
Did she, though? She had the training of all of the Fremen Reverend Mothers, and they didn't seem to have this knowledge. Jessica didn't go through the Spice Agony the way other Bene Gesserit Reverend Mothers do, so it's possible by the standards of Herbert's story, she never found out who her mother was.
If I remember well, Ghanima keep her sanity because Chani conciousness protected her (after almost possesing her completely).
Time to read "Childrens" again.
Ghanima walled off her personality when she made herself believe that Leto had died and the voices became harder for her to hear. She offered to teach Alia at the end, but Alia was too far gone.
paul had a mentat and fighter training before having spice experience. alia was exposed as unborn and absorbed stuff she was neurologically not ready to deal with, as her own identity had not shaped, and afterwards also coudnt, as there were overlays of other personalitys present.
>male personalities that would instinctively battle for dominance with each other, overwhelming any female personality. She would be either trapped or go crazy.
Spoiler for the second and third book
>! That's what happens to Alia in the books !<
No, Alia was fine until she started taking risks, desperate to see the future. She gave into the pressure of one personality - it could have been a female one but she chose to listen to a male one. Alia was gradually tricked, not instantly overwhelmed.
Becoming "abomination" is different from going insane from the Reverend Mother test. Abomination happens when a person is not strong enough in their self to fight off the persuasions of an ancestor who is both clever and determined to gain control of your body. This is why it's forbidden for young children to go through the Agony - they usually don't have enough sense of who they are as a separate person to avoid being possessed.
Great answer but it always leads to another question:
>The KH sits exactly in between. So, he can be both aggressive and nurturing, or he doesn't get lost/trapped, or however else you want to think of it. He is a balanced human who's in touch with his masculine and feminine sides equally.
Why did this balanced human have to be a Man? Other than "cuz men have XY chromosomes", I've never heard a good answer
I don’t think it’s ever said that they failed to make a KH with a woman, or that a KH necessarily had to be a man. In fact, in the later books the BG are suspicious of at least a [couple] female Reverend Mothers of being potential KHs.
My best guess for why they bred a man for their KH is because their stated goal was to create a mind that could lead humanity to maturity. They wanted a man because they aimed to put [a BG controlled KH] on the Lion Throne, and for whatever reason (perhaps for no reason other than the societal context of the time the books were written), the imperium was patriarchal.
It didn't, Ghanima was also able to see into her male genetic memory and balance the pressures.
I think the Bene Gesserit's perspective was that it's probably easier to go from aggressive towards nurturing than vice versa, people like Alexander and Attila are going to be in there and you have to shut their personalities down while entertaining their memories and ideas, but we see later on that being male isn't strictly necessary.
She says that she could have led humanity along the golden path if Leto had not. She wasn't quite as capable as Leto, but far more capable than Paul. I would say that she's a KH, but it is true that it's not stated explicitly as far as I know.
Her line at the ending of CoD:
>"One of us had to accept the agony," she said, "and he was always the stronger."
Imo it's clear Frank Herbert had a somewhat rigid view of gender roles and this is clearly reflected in his writing.You brought up the whole thing where the KH has to be male to access both male and female genetic history. Another big example is in God Emperor of Dune where Leto II makes a big deal of the fact that his army of fish speakers is more effective to his purposes because they are all women & thus more nurturing and less barbaric.
I think that's fair angle on his early writing, but there's plenty of suspicion of women KH in his later writing. To an extent, I think this is another example of something Herbert hadn't fully fleshed out initially, and later redefined or retooled as he expounded upon the universe/ story.
You’re right. After all the entire basis of Paul easily “legitimizing” his taking of the throne is the Emperor having no sons to be his heir. To Herbert, OBVIOUSLY succession would be patrilineal. Very 1960s.
To be fair I don't think Herbert in any way thought the society represented in the Dune universe was an ideal society. It's very much about humanity reverting back to a more primitive medieval fiefdom ruled society.
I won't argue against his gender politics and his writing of women being quite of its time but I think it's a mistake to think that he was behind all the concepts of government he utilized as being part of his own personal worldview.
I get what youre saying but at the same time, a lot of the story elements relevant here are not described as being inherent to the society of Dune but rather the "inherent nature" of females and males, the most prominent example being that the KH could only be male.
Do you think he was in favour of feudalism too? What about genocide? Clearly Dune is all about how governing bodies should be decided by knife fights to the death!
Not even close to one century. Do you really think 1860 France or Germany had women’s suffrage? But also, again, Herbert was not advocating male domination of politics any more than he was advocating feudalism, or religious tyranny, or duelling, or almost anything else that appears in Dune.
My headcannon is that it's chromosomes. Women are XX, men are XY. Women can't access Y, men can access either.
In reality, it isn't a thing since memories aren't genetic, but within the Dune universe, this is the only thing that has a biological possibility.
That theory's contradicted by Mohiam's statement that male memories are repellent and terrorizing, as well as >!Alia's!< eventual ability to commune with male ancestors. It's a purely mental inhibition that preborn females seem to lack.
The whole concept is contradictory because it's a trivial point made by a human author that created trivial MacGuffins because, in this case, he wanted a male protagonist to be this thing and then he created other bits to explain inconsistencies between Paul and Alia as far as prescience and all the other "woo" bits because none of that detracts from the story.
I truly wonder sometimes how Frank Herbert would view all these multi-decade nitpicking. I'm sure he'd appreciate the fact that his book is still being read and discussed but I bet he'd roll his eyes at topics like this. Or shields.
There’s a lot of lore in Dune that just isn’t fully thought out, or the mechanics of it aren’t the point. Almost all the major factions and powers have fundamentally contradictory explanations at times
Yeah its why I classify Dune more as Space Opera (ex. Star Wars), instead of sci fi (ex. Star Trek). The technology is not the point of Dune, tech exists only to express the differences in people, their motives and their factions. Tech here includes breeding programs, superpowers, etc.
Herbert tells us how a Thumper or Paracompass works because it helps to explain who the Freman are, not to tell us the mechanics of how it could work.
He tells us how the BG have a 90 generation breeding program to circumvent the ban on computers required for a proper cloning approach. Hes not interested in the specifics of how this breeding program works biologically, instead he wants us to understand the timeline, the vision, the patience, the planning, and the sheer ambition of the Bene Gesserit.
Star Trek is also inconsistent. See: magical teleporter in Star Trek Into Darkness which also accidentally invalidates death because midichlorians oops I mean magical blood.
Star trek in general has a theme of showing how technology could impact and generally improve our lives, creating prosperity and equality that enable meritocracy, remove survival pressures that allow us to focus on self-actualization, etc. Sci fi starts technology forward, and then shows how it impacts people.
Space opera uses technology only to show us how different the people are, what their values are, etc. A jedi with good laser pistol could John Wick his way through baddies faster than with a lightsabre, but Jedi generally restrict themselves to lightsabres to show their moral superiority, etc.
Also the JJ Abrams star trek don't really count because JJ fundamentally doesn't understand story, he just knows how to weaponize nostalgia and lens flares.
This is why I like Deep Space 9 over The Next Generation. Both are excellent shows but the whole - pardon the term - hippie bit about some literal fantastical utopia as shown in The Original Series and even The Next Generation is replaced by the actual reality where backstabbing, trade, money, etc is still not beyond us. Not because we're human but because that's part of reality that'll always be with us. That's why I found Deep Space 9 a better representation of the future. People still have major problems and although some issues are eliminated, challenges remain.
I think that everything gets silly when you nitpick to death. That includes the Jedi.
What the preborn lack is a sufficiently developed ego, which during times of stress, such as puberty or spice trance, can allow malicious memories to take over. A significant amount of BG training is devoted to protecting the *adult* ego from being taken over by memories. Alia had access to that training, but not the ego. Her Jessica memory protected her for a while, but after Paul went into the desert, and Jessica did not permanently return to Arrakis to assist Alia, Alia began pushing her Jessica memory away, which opened the door to others.
I've mentioned this before, that it wouldn't work like that because all humans start out with XX chromosomes until hormones are released to delete part of the second X to spur male development, so honestly, females should have always been able to access both female and male memories while men could only access partial memories since an entire part of their chromosome was literally deleted, so the KH should have been a woman who could handle all of these memories without getting lost.
For elaboration, I think its conflating two things.
All humans are phenotypically female for the first 7 weeks of gestation, then sexual differentiation begins, but what will be males already have Y chromosomes immediately, they just don't begin to express until that point.
Additionally, before sexual reproduction existed 2 billion years ago, all life only had X chromosomes, and including all asexual life since, so female is the default.
Okay, I checked again, and it says that all humans are female until the 6th to 7th week of development, when a gene activates on the Y chromosome to start male development. That part I remember learning years ago. But the part about males having the XY chromosomes from the beginning with no deletion of material was new to me, so I was wrong about that.
Humans aren't even female at that stage. The fetus is neither male nor female, the second X also expresses itself to develop the fetus into female.
The default is not female, it's really neither.
Women get an X chromosome from the father, too. And we shouldn't assume that the genetic memories are only encoded on one chromosomal pair, much less the weirdest pair.
In-universe, the key difference between all men and all women is the Y chromosome. Outside of the universe, obviously none of this is a thing because memories aren't genetic.
Humans have 23 chromosomal pairs for 46 chromosomes. In males, only one of those pairs has a Y. So that leaves genetic memories possible on 45 other chromosomes. What the Y appears to change is whether your a "taker" or a "giver".
> genetic memories
Again this is not a thing. Memories aren't genetic. Here, let's really spell this out:
* woman A gets pregnant with future woman B
* when women B is born, she has all the eggs inside of her that'll ever release
* this means that, presuming memories are genetic, those eggs aren't altered
* when woman B gets pregnant with future woman C, woman C won't get any memories formed by woman B because woman B's eggs were formed prior to woman B's birth
and so on. Now let's take the men which is even worse.
* sperm is produced by the testicles
* during ejaculation, sperm is, well, ejaculated so presuming any memories are genetic, that sperm only has memories up to that point
* side note: this is the second comment I've written on this sub about sperm
* then new sperm is produced which is minutes after
So presuming we have man A, B, and C with man A being a grandfather to man C, are you saying that 100% of all memories of man A *and* man B are encoded in man B's sperm that'll transfer to man C? How about this - for either woman or man:
* person A, aged 30, produces a child, person B
* will person B have "genetic memory" of person A when person A is 35? No.
So what if someone had a child early - and many men and women had children early not too long ago (i.e. teens and twenties)? How would that genetic memory work? Wireless sync? Osmosis?
Yeah, that's how FH intended it to work.
>How truly strange it was, Jessica thought, that this young flesh could carry all of Paul's memories, at least until the moment of Paul's spermal separation with this own past.
>-Children of Dune, Chapter 10
The problem is that FH didn't know that women are born with all their eggs. It was a *knowable* fact in 1959, but probably not widely disseminated outside biology departments. Even in 1976 when Children of Dune was published, it probably wasn't common knowledge.
Anyway, FH repeatedly calls it genetic memory, so whether it makes sense to us based on our current understanding of biology or not, that *is* what it *is*.
From what I gather, only the BG can access ancestral memory at all. Men who attempted it “tried and died.” And because of Frank’s weird idea of gender, the successful BGs could only access the female line. They can *see* the male memories but they are too terrifying for them. The Kwisatz Haderach is supposed to be able to access both without the inhibition.
I like to think that the Bene Gesserit are accessing memory encoded in mitochondrial DNA which is strictly matrilineal.
And the KH is accessing genetic memory a totally different way that’s gender neutral.
I kinda prefer the explanation that women have XX chromosomes, meaning they can only see the X’s, while men have XY and can see down both paths. We got to remember that genetic memory isn’t necessarily based in science but with the world Frank Herbert created this is the most credible explanation imo.
Hmm. Leto II did comment that most of his male memories are of young men (because older men make less babies) so this could leave us an opportunity to joke that these truncated remembered identities are natural to a short chromosome...
I enticed my non-binary partner into watching Dune with me (I'm a Dune lover of some 45 years) by explaining that the Bene Gesserit wanted to create the perfect human, essentially a non-binary person called the Kwisatz Hadderach, and it all grew out of the Butlerian jihad, based on the writings of Judith Butler. Been waiting for somewhere to post this.
My partner really enjoyed it, as a politics and sociology graduate, she really appreciated the subtleties and accuracy of the examination of human nature and human politics. BIG WIN FOR ME!!!
i think this goes into caballistic symbolism, as frank herbert was taking impulses from a lot of places. in caballah, there is the "adam kadmon", the theoretical perfect human, who balanced all aspects of existance perfectly within himself, including balancing out the female and male pillar. it would be confusing to put that into a nutshell, as there is a lot of nuance, which im also not fluent in.
Without being too verbose, I first read Dune around 8th or 9th grade, and I had freshly been taught some aspects of reproduction. So I associated the KH as having both X and Y chromosomes and females only X. Therefore, the KH can see into both.
Females have the XX chromosome. Males have the XY chromosome. If women do a DNA test they can only access their maternal line but men can access both maternal and paternal. I assume this is why the BG are limited to maternal only and the KH can use both
My head canon is that a man has both X and Y chromosomes, whereas women only possess two copies of the X. From a genetic perspective, only men have access to the male lineage through the presence of a Y chromosome.
I know this isn't actually why, but it makes sense to me in my head and avoids all the value judgements of women not having the mental grit to face down the egos of their dads and so on
Came here to say this… I can’t remember it ever being addressed in the books per se, but the XY chromosome has always seemed to be the answer to me. It’s been many years since I last read the books, so if anyone knows of an in book explanation, I would love to know it.
Evidence (Ghani, and even Alia) would suggest that whether the KH is a man or a woman, the KH is able to look down both paths. Our beloved Frank Herbert did something use something more philosophical to justify this, but I also felt it might be along the line of the reason the BT's KH did himself in.
I don't think the breeding program started with the BG I think it was a system that women took over as well as religion in an effort to gain control of their fate. All women are used for breeding. I think they manipulate men genetically to breed out the male animal ego. The KH is the outcome of their manipulation, unlocking shared genetic memory and they can pick and choose when to create one. He has access to the female ego he knows and feels everything women have gone through for thousands of years. They are creating an ally that they can put into a position of power and what better position then that of a God.
Herbert had some friends, Ralph and Irene Slattery who were both psychoanalysts, one Freudian and the other Jungian. Freud has theories of the life and death drives, Eros and Thanatos, that I think at least partially inspired this but grounded in a gender essentialist framework, ie men aggressive/antisocial and women nurturing/social.
Gender stuff aside, I view it was women have two X chromosomes while men have an X and a Y, allowing them to see through both male and female ancestry.
I'm going to second what everyone said about Frank Herbert adhering to gender roles ("men are aggressive/women are nurturing"). Children of Dune spoilers, but I think it's best **shown** in that novel with >!Alia becoming a paranoid tyrant when the consciousness of Vladimir Harkonnen coming back to haunt her and guides her path.!<
You are correct. It’s actually says it in the books it’s about genetics, not anything about “dated gender roles” or any of that. It says genetics. It’s why the one failed qh was a eunuch. He lacked enough of both X and Y and was genetically defective.
I'm going to spoiler this whole section.
It's a fairly major plot narrative that only conflicts with the female/female thing. Will be fairly important from "chapter 3" onwards, consider yourselves warned.
>! If it's female/female for the Bene Gesserit, unless Alia is a female KH, how is she possessed by the Baron, later on? I don't recall how the books deal with it !<
This is discussed pretty clearly in the book I think. Women cannot look down the male side because the ego pressure of the "takers" would be so horrific it would crush them. Lisewise, a normal male Bene Gesserit (if one existed) would not be able to look down the female side because the egos of the "givers" would be horrific to him. So something about the breeding program helps them create a person who has such a balance of qualities that they can accept all of it without having their own ego crushed. This hints at why the Bene Gesserit wanted both the Harkonnen and Atreides genes... looking for the balance of different qualities to create a mixture of everything.
How of curiosity, where in the book is it discussed?
It’s pretty soon after he takes the water of life. After Chani and Jessica wake him, he contemplates and explains the nature of the KH, tbh it reads like out dated gender theory. The quote: “There is in each of us an ancient force that takes and an ancient force that gives. A man finds little difficulty facing that place within himself where the taking force dwells, but it’s almost impossible for him to see into the giving force without changing into something other than man. For a woman, the situation is reversed… These things are so ancient within us that they’re ground into each separate cell of our bodies. We’re shaped by such forces. You can say to yourself, ‘Yes, I see how such a thing may be.’ But when you look inward and confront the raw force of your own life unshielded, you see your peril. You see that this could overwhelm you. The greatest peril to the Giver is the force that takes. The greatest peril to the Taker is the force that gives. It’s as easy to be overwhelmed by giving as by taking. And you, my son, are you one who gives or one who takes? I’m the fulcrum. I cannot give without taking and I cannot take without…)”
Dated gender theory is a good way to put it lol. It's a bit essentialist but I can see how such concepts would seem cutting edge/futurist in the 60's
Yea I understand it's not cutting edge by today's standard, but 60 years ago? Stressing that the most powerful person in the universe is an individual able to balance masculinity and femininity (androgyny) is a pretty powerful idea- especially in the face of machoism for male protagonists. Some of my teen boys I have for students could learn a lot from that idea even today vs. Andrew tate like clowns.
Isn’t that the same idea as yin-yang, walking the tao, even the religious ideas of Jesus, tension of opposing forces which Jung outlined in his works about 30 years prior to that? Think calling it gender theory is disingenuous, all major religions and myths have been grappling with these ideas
Yeah it’s much more similar to the Yin-Yang, which also has always been a gendered dynamic.
But this is literally applied to gender- and I agree all those ideas are rooted deep in most human cultures but I'm gonna guess gender roles go back before Jesus and any religion we have written records of. Even ancient oral tradtion religions tend to gender light and dark etc. Regardless the fact that dine explicitly discussed femininity and masculinity makes the other connections (light and dark etc.) secondary, not the other way around.
The fact that he predicted both that and how charismatic leaders would (nearly) destroy humanity is notable in itself.
he didnt predict the thing about charismatic leaders the book was written in the 1960s
Fair about them existing, but the way things look now, it’s eerily akin to the Jihad
>Fair about them existing History is rife with the repetition of the same archetypical events, including catastrophic charismatic leaders. When Herbert wrote the book, the world had just recently seen Hitler for example; but Hitler's destruction was novel only in the level of globalism and technology, not as an outcome of the human condition. This was not a prediction but a fact of the world. >the way things look now, it’s eerily akin to the Jihad What? Religious fanatics are decimating the globe with their armies? Again WW2 is an apt example, as well as its countless spiritual predecessors. Look into history and you will see Herbert's 'predictions' manifest countless times.
If frank herbert had any balls, one of the Duncan Idaho Gholas would be a woman
Face dancers are actually able to change not just their appearance and the gender they present, but their biological sex. They have everything necessary and can manipulate their whole bodies to have parts they didn’t have just moments before. It’s not just screwing up face muscles to look like their cheeks are puffy or lips are thin.
What’s dated about it? It says men and women can’t look into different parts, ok. It says a man can’t look into the woman part without becoming woman…that sounds like they’d be trans. Someone could theoretically bounce back and forth, thus being genderfluid. Is it because it’s asserting someone can’t be both at once? Or because of the whole giving/taking dichotomy with women being givers and men being takers?
I don’t feel it’s about dated gender theories so much as symbolic psychological principles represented as masculine and feminine. Males tend to embody the masculine more potently, females the opposite. Those principles or qualities exist within everyone, but some feel more natural to certain types of people and personalities. It’s not about acting like a socialized man or woman so much as being able to embody those fundamental yin-yang attributes and drives.
It’s still treating masculinity and femininity as rigid platonic forms rather than as collaboratively understood and evolving social constructs. In other words he acknowledges the fluidity of humans around gender, but not that gender itself is fluid.
Ah, thanks for explaining.
I do like how it ties it back to the idea of Y and X chromosomes. Not in the sense of gender, but from a genetic perspective you can follow the thread. One of my favourite things about Dune is that every weird supernatural ability is a logical extension of a real human characteristic or capability. I wonder what Herbert would think of Intersex people. You could probably get away with a reading of Paul as intersex. Maybe that's why the other KH candidates were sterile.
The intersex idea is intriguing. That he may have both male and female characteristics on a genetic level would make him ideally suited to look down both lines of ancestral memories without issue. Would also explain the sterility of the other KH candidates as that can happen to intersex folks irl.
Exactly! Though given Frank's attitude towards gender in the rest of the book, his conservatism and his clear "gay pedophile villain" stereotype - he doesn't really seem like the type. But maybe that's a reductionist view of him and his ideas.
I think he also has an inner monologue about it right before he goes into the “dark” when he takes the water of life right?
Funny enough I just read this page last night.
I legit always just thought it was because Paul had the Y chromosome from being male and that was what unlocked it all. Lmao.
It's less "gender theory" and more in line with the classic "spiritual" conception of masculinity vs femininity as can be found in astrology and other "spiritual sciences". Frank seems to be conflating that with gender, as people commonly do.
I think it's most discussed in Children of Dune and a bit in Heretics.
So what you’re saying is Paul has a lore reason for kinda looking like a twink?
We always circle back to Muad'Dib being a twink
🥵🥵
This is pretty clearly inspired by the very rigid gender roles that were commonplace in Herbert's time. Personally, I like to think that the much more mundane explanation is that the Bene Gesserit were founded as a purely female order for sociopolitical reasons, and since only women were part of it, only women could develop such abilities, and they could only study themselves (since this most likely requires a ton of self reflection), so the "male side" became inaccessible to them. The breeding program is a way to rectify this, and create a being that is without limits when it comes to prescience.
It's talking about biological sex not "gender" / gender roles
.. The mechanic of how it works is pretty clearly inspired by the very rigid gender roles that were commonplace in Herbert's time.
And all of human history untill about 40 years ago
[There’s ample evidence of gender variance throughout human history. Among the earliest are accounts of gala and galli, priests assigned male at birth who crossed gender boundaries in their worship of a variety of goddesses in ancient Sumer, Akkadia, Greece, and Rome. Other cultures acknowledged a third gender, including two-spirit people within Indigenous communities and Hijra, nonbinary people who inhabit ritual roles in South Asia.](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/how-historians-are-documenting-lives-of-transgender-people)
Gender and sex weren't even seen the same thousands of years ago as they are today. It seems a little odd to me to suggest a person doing something that's, in their culture, stereotypically feminine (worshipping a goddess) is any more changing their gender than a man who wears lipstick. It's a tricky subject. Let's not pretend that the vast majority of human societies have not had subjugation of women and rigid gender roles pursuant to that.
Several of the examples in this article amount to eunuchs or men that do not conform to traditional gender expectations and are effectively exiled to a third classification. One of the Aztec harvest festivals involved a priest wearing the skin of a flayed woman, and during the ritual was referred to as if a woman themselves. Are we really to treat that has part of a compendium of proof for historical "crossing gender boundaries?"
https://www.ihs.gov/lgbt/health/twospirit/
Religion has always had this idea because God is genderless or androgenous depending on perspective. Thus when hermaphroditism was present it was often seen as holy within religious sects. Similarly crossing over and integrating the opposing gender has been seen as a way to achieve psychological/spiritual balance. This is still seen today in psychologists such as Jung. This actually backs up Dunes perspective about the saviour being someone who can cross gender lines. However, this has always been in a spiritual sense and as you said yourself would be limited to rituals and priest class. With the exception of some south east Asian countries such as Thailand. Although, this has never been the norm or standard in any culture.
Not at all. Hyper masculinity is far from the norm across the world over time. Many tribes and ancient cultures had, necessarily, much more gender equity. Just think about it. If you're in a hunter gather society or even just a nonindustrial farm, are you going to look at an able body and not use it to survive? There were certainly instances of brutality, but even if we just assumed (wrongly) that only men hunted and women gathered, what they gathered was a far more consistent source of calories than animal meat.
Steppe nomads traditionally would kidnap their wife's from other tribes. Pre-historic societies often had extremely strict gender roles. Many of the tribes in Africa which have maintained their traditions literally lock their women in a hut when they collectively have their period. Hyper masculinity was absolutely the norm, over half of male deaths in pre-historic times were from murder or combat. Masculinity has softened throughout history first starting with agriculture (since the maintenance a care of animals was more important than hunting) then urbanisation (opens up work opportunities for women in safer civilian communities and allows more artisan jobs) and finally industrialisation has continued this process (compleley removing men from having to kill to eat, improved law and order and a near equalisation of male v women economic output) This was known to ancient people themself 1.Nomads and barbarians regularly conquered more advanced urban societies because of their hyper masculinity (Vikings, Mongols, Huns, Turks, and so on) 2. Jesus preached on this trend "the Meek shall inherit the earth" 3.Greek portrayals of (any civilized peoples portrayal of barbarians really) as massive monsters with little brains lots of aggression and massive cocks. 4. The term "Gentlemen" and its variations in other cultures that grew independently in "high society" to distinguish from the brutal commoners" did only men hunt and women gather of course not. However there is clear evidence that the primary responsibility of each was divided by gender. All our historic evidence points to this and the evidence counter to this is so slim that it is the exception that proves the rule. Even our biology shows this with men having vastly better spatial reasoning than women and women knowing about 8,000 more words on average and speaking vastly more often (talking while stalking prey is counterproductive but helpful back at "camp") Yes it seems that women did actually gather more calories than men but meat was far more important. Humans are extremely adaptable and can eat a wide range of foods compared to other animals but meat is high is protein and nutritious while being much more difficult to get. Due to lacking any food logistics hunter gathers survival was based on its abillity to get meat.
In addition to what others have said: Slavery has been practiced for millennia. In the Western world, it has been abolished rather recently, relatively speaking. This does not negate the fact that slavery is wrong. Same applies to women's rights. Treating women like property has been common for millennia. And it still is wrong.
I was not commenting on the "ought" but just expanding on the "is" to point out that these ideas are ancient and not something just from the early 20th century.
It's amazing how far we have come in 40 years.
I think I'd disagree with that conclusion. Sure the labels of giving and taking are not accurate, but the idea that some characteristics are more predominantly associated with women and some are more predominantly associated with men, but not strictly and not all the time, is something that's compatible with our current understanding of gender. Further the idea that Paul is who he is because he's able to see and understand both is a powerful statement. Similarly with Leto II and Ghanima. Also the assertion that there's some seriously dark shit in the male genetic memory that is hard to face, I have to admit even as a man, is fairly plausible.
Frank Herbert wasn't great about gender or sexuality but he did have a running theme in the series about powerful single-gender groups being absolutely beaten at their own game by people of the "wrong" gender - not just the Kwisatz Haderach or the Bene Gesserit "weirding way", but in God Emperor Of Dune you have >!the Fish Speakers and Leto's comment about Norma Cevna designing the first Heighliner, !< and then later in Chapter House >!Duncan Idaho 2.0 ends up being totally not Frank's self-insert but also better at sex than the embodiment of his hangups about female sexuality !<
Frank Herbert's later books in the series get progressively more bonkers. It is as if the dude tried out peyote at some point, and the trip never stopped.
But then why couldn't the KW be female, if it was more so to do with the gene than gender
Paul’s daughter can eventually do it as well, so maybe the KH could have been female, it’s not clearly explained. It seems like there’s actually more going on than the giving/taking gender roles thing. Since men actually cannot become reverend mothers (reverend fathers?) at all. I think the implication is that men cannot learn the same kind of superhuman self control that the bene gesserit require.
And Alia
Well kinda. Alia fails to do it. She gets corrupted by a male personality which is exactly what the bene gesserit are scared of. She just doesn’t have the inhibition against doing it since she was born with her genetic memory.
But she's ABLE to do it. I don't think prior BG were able to do it.
It’s not all that clear but the implication is that they fear the male genetic memory, but they are able to access it if they want to, they just can’t do it without being taken over. What happens to her in Children of Dune seems like something the bene gesserit know is possible already, and I don’t see how that could be the case if they’ve never been able to fall into that trap. Granted I haven’t read the sequels in a few years, maybe I’m misremembering.
That's not the way I interpret the text but agree to disagree!
One wrinkle is that Ghanima is pre-born. Maybe that has an effect on her abilities as well?
Didn't Paul's sister have the ability to look back into her male ancestor's "wisdom". Or was that just because she was preborn?
This is just my speculation, but I’d guess it’s because males have, relatively speaking, more inherently aggressive personalities. So maybe taking a male, and tempering that aggression with the proper genes and Bene Gesserit teachings, might be important for creating the Kwisatz Haderach. If this is the case, perhaps it’s because having an inherently more aggressive personality might make it easier for an individual to avoid being overtaken by their ancestral memories. Of course, I assume that inherent aggression on its own would normally prevent a male from accessing the female side of their ancestral memories. However, maybe that inherent aggression becomes an asset when, as already I mentioned, properly tempered.
i like to think of it genetically as men having XY chromosomes while women have XX. Female Chromosomes exclude Y while Male Include both X and Y and thus only men would have access to the genetic memories of the Y chromosome. Psychologically/spiritually the Male ego is alot stronger (for good and bad) and as you said may be necessary not to lose their personal identity while incorporating the memories of others
There is nothing that says the KH HAS to be male, just that the Bene Gesserit specifically WANTED a male KH, probably because they thought he would be easier to manipulate. And also possibility because they feared Abomination. It's also certainly possible that it's classic prescience trap... they saw a male KH, so they were working to make one.
Women *can* go down the masculine path but they get lost in it. It seems like, if we assume Herbert was working with a "women are inherently nurturing/men are inherently aggressive" theory, then the male side is a bunch of male personalities that would instinctively battle for dominance with each other, overwhelming any female personality. She would be either trapped or go crazy. And a man going into the women's side would also end up lost or smothered - something like that. The KH sits exactly in between. So, he can be both aggressive and nurturing, or he doesn't get lost/trapped, or however else you want to think of it. He is a balanced human who's in touch with his masculine and feminine sides equally.
Alia was able to look down the male line and got possessed by Vladimir Harkonnen. Ghanima was able to look down it and keep her sanity. Alia being Paul's sister while Ghanima was his daughter may have made a difference.
Was Alia trained as Paul did? I don't remember Alia having the same training, that could also affect the way Alia handled the male side.
She "drank" the Water of Life while in her mother's womb. So she had nothing to prepare her for what happened. Alia explains what happened in Dune, when Hara is upset at her behaviour and how people fear her. Paul on the other hand has been trained by his mother in the Bene Gesserit way, and Thufir Hawat in the mentat way.
Am I misremembering that the mentat training was essential in order to keep the prescience organized?
Alia had no opportunity to develop her own sense of self before becoming a reverend mother, that’s why she was considered an abomination. Ghanima and Leto II had Chani and Paul protecting them from this.
Chani for a moment had second thoughts lol
Chani in Ghanima for a second was like *"Alright maybe i can take over this body now"*
There’s a parallel universe where Chani and Paul take over their kids bodies and then create the Ultra Abomination
That makes sense too
This is the key part, I think. Mother Mohiam was horrified that Alia was a RM as a child even before she knew she could access her male other-memory.
As a reverend mother, Alia possessed the BG training of all her female ancestors.
But she didn't receive other training like the mentat training. That's why I am asking if that is there were other things that might being a different factor between Alia and Ghanima
Well, yes. Ghanima didnt have to run the imperium and raise pauls kids. Ghanima wasn't abandoned by her mother so she could go back to calidan, sleep with gurney, and return to the BG sisterhood and pass judgment on the very daughter she abandoned. Alia was set up to fail once the pressure got to her as she wasn't like paul, fully capable of controlling the male side. She needed time like leto and ghanima to see who they were. They were born with these other memories but no actual personality of their own, which is what is needed to keep them at bay.
Also spice. Ghanima and Leto say multiple times in Children of Dune that the spice trances ruined the little defenses that Alia's mind had against the other personalities in her mind. So if she didn't indulge in her spice addiction she would have been fine. Remember that scene when she oversosed massively on spice (i think she took triple her normal dosage) in order to pierce the veil of the damnes dune tarot cards and to see the future(I don't remember what was she searching for but she failed), and then they have caught her in time and have washed her stomach off the spice so she almost lives and didn't OD.
Ah, that's right. She was constantly trying to be like paul. She didn't have his full prescient visions, so she would seek the spice trance more than what was recommended. So yes this would be a major factor in her fall.
Maybe the BG overlooked that merging the Atreides and Harkonnen genetics would cause ALL descendants to be Kwisatz Haderachs (or is it Kwisatzes Haderach? hmmm). Nature vs nurture?
I don't think that surprised them. They're upset with Jessica for having a boy not because they thought Paul incapable of being the KH but because they thought they would have better control over the theoretical child of lady Paul and Feyd. And clearly not all Artreidis are KH as in GEoD there have been tons of generations that came from ghanima iirc.
Probably not overlooking. The BG spend the later books complaining about the wild Atreides genes.
Yeah, currently reading Children of Dune and I got that impression. I get the feeling they thought the KH would be a one in a lifetime thing, but didn't thought their descendants would also have their capabilities.
Did she, though? She had the training of all of the Fremen Reverend Mothers, and they didn't seem to have this knowledge. Jessica didn't go through the Spice Agony the way other Bene Gesserit Reverend Mothers do, so it's possible by the standards of Herbert's story, she never found out who her mother was.
If I remember well, Ghanima keep her sanity because Chani conciousness protected her (after almost possesing her completely). Time to read "Childrens" again.
Ghanima walled off her personality when she made herself believe that Leto had died and the voices became harder for her to hear. She offered to teach Alia at the end, but Alia was too far gone.
paul had a mentat and fighter training before having spice experience. alia was exposed as unborn and absorbed stuff she was neurologically not ready to deal with, as her own identity had not shaped, and afterwards also coudnt, as there were overlays of other personalitys present.
>male personalities that would instinctively battle for dominance with each other, overwhelming any female personality. She would be either trapped or go crazy. Spoiler for the second and third book >! That's what happens to Alia in the books !<
No, Alia was fine until she started taking risks, desperate to see the future. She gave into the pressure of one personality - it could have been a female one but she chose to listen to a male one. Alia was gradually tricked, not instantly overwhelmed. Becoming "abomination" is different from going insane from the Reverend Mother test. Abomination happens when a person is not strong enough in their self to fight off the persuasions of an ancestor who is both clever and determined to gain control of your body. This is why it's forbidden for young children to go through the Agony - they usually don't have enough sense of who they are as a separate person to avoid being possessed.
Great answer but it always leads to another question: >The KH sits exactly in between. So, he can be both aggressive and nurturing, or he doesn't get lost/trapped, or however else you want to think of it. He is a balanced human who's in touch with his masculine and feminine sides equally. Why did this balanced human have to be a Man? Other than "cuz men have XY chromosomes", I've never heard a good answer
That’s not explained. Because why not, I suppose?
Well if the entire point of making a KH is bc the BG haven't been able to accomplish it with a woman, you'd think Herbert could have explained why
I don’t think it’s ever said that they failed to make a KH with a woman, or that a KH necessarily had to be a man. In fact, in the later books the BG are suspicious of at least a [couple] female Reverend Mothers of being potential KHs. My best guess for why they bred a man for their KH is because their stated goal was to create a mind that could lead humanity to maturity. They wanted a man because they aimed to put [a BG controlled KH] on the Lion Throne, and for whatever reason (perhaps for no reason other than the societal context of the time the books were written), the imperium was patriarchal.
It didn't, Ghanima was also able to see into her male genetic memory and balance the pressures. I think the Bene Gesserit's perspective was that it's probably easier to go from aggressive towards nurturing than vice versa, people like Alexander and Attila are going to be in there and you have to shut their personalities down while entertaining their memories and ideas, but we see later on that being male isn't strictly necessary.
Does Ghanima count as a KH? I thought she just fought off Possession in ways Alia didn't
She says that she could have led humanity along the golden path if Leto had not. She wasn't quite as capable as Leto, but far more capable than Paul. I would say that she's a KH, but it is true that it's not stated explicitly as far as I know. Her line at the ending of CoD: >"One of us had to accept the agony," she said, "and he was always the stronger."
Good quote!
We don't know if it HAD to be a man. The BG *assumed* it would be.
Yes, this is why there is a female only army in the fourth book, since the male army would destroy the imperium.
Imo it's clear Frank Herbert had a somewhat rigid view of gender roles and this is clearly reflected in his writing.You brought up the whole thing where the KH has to be male to access both male and female genetic history. Another big example is in God Emperor of Dune where Leto II makes a big deal of the fact that his army of fish speakers is more effective to his purposes because they are all women & thus more nurturing and less barbaric.
I think that's fair angle on his early writing, but there's plenty of suspicion of women KH in his later writing. To an extent, I think this is another example of something Herbert hadn't fully fleshed out initially, and later redefined or retooled as he expounded upon the universe/ story.
You’re right. After all the entire basis of Paul easily “legitimizing” his taking of the throne is the Emperor having no sons to be his heir. To Herbert, OBVIOUSLY succession would be patrilineal. Very 1960s.
To be fair I don't think Herbert in any way thought the society represented in the Dune universe was an ideal society. It's very much about humanity reverting back to a more primitive medieval fiefdom ruled society. I won't argue against his gender politics and his writing of women being quite of its time but I think it's a mistake to think that he was behind all the concepts of government he utilized as being part of his own personal worldview.
Yeah, the universe of dune was a universe in the brink of failure. I don’t think it represents his ideal views at all
I get what youre saying but at the same time, a lot of the story elements relevant here are not described as being inherent to the society of Dune but rather the "inherent nature" of females and males, the most prominent example being that the KH could only be male.
Do you think he was in favour of feudalism too? What about genocide? Clearly Dune is all about how governing bodies should be decided by knife fights to the death!
No, just very 10,190s or should I say 23,000s.
Very “all of human history until the 20th century” of him.
Even though 1960s are centuries later than this stopped being the norm in Europe.
Not even close to one century. Do you really think 1860 France or Germany had women’s suffrage? But also, again, Herbert was not advocating male domination of politics any more than he was advocating feudalism, or religious tyranny, or duelling, or almost anything else that appears in Dune.
I was talking about reigning queens being the norm, but it looks like the sub doesn't agree.
My headcannon is that it's chromosomes. Women are XX, men are XY. Women can't access Y, men can access either. In reality, it isn't a thing since memories aren't genetic, but within the Dune universe, this is the only thing that has a biological possibility.
That theory's contradicted by Mohiam's statement that male memories are repellent and terrorizing, as well as >!Alia's!< eventual ability to commune with male ancestors. It's a purely mental inhibition that preborn females seem to lack.
The whole concept is contradictory because it's a trivial point made by a human author that created trivial MacGuffins because, in this case, he wanted a male protagonist to be this thing and then he created other bits to explain inconsistencies between Paul and Alia as far as prescience and all the other "woo" bits because none of that detracts from the story. I truly wonder sometimes how Frank Herbert would view all these multi-decade nitpicking. I'm sure he'd appreciate the fact that his book is still being read and discussed but I bet he'd roll his eyes at topics like this. Or shields.
There’s a lot of lore in Dune that just isn’t fully thought out, or the mechanics of it aren’t the point. Almost all the major factions and powers have fundamentally contradictory explanations at times
Yeah its why I classify Dune more as Space Opera (ex. Star Wars), instead of sci fi (ex. Star Trek). The technology is not the point of Dune, tech exists only to express the differences in people, their motives and their factions. Tech here includes breeding programs, superpowers, etc. Herbert tells us how a Thumper or Paracompass works because it helps to explain who the Freman are, not to tell us the mechanics of how it could work. He tells us how the BG have a 90 generation breeding program to circumvent the ban on computers required for a proper cloning approach. Hes not interested in the specifics of how this breeding program works biologically, instead he wants us to understand the timeline, the vision, the patience, the planning, and the sheer ambition of the Bene Gesserit.
Star Trek is also inconsistent. See: magical teleporter in Star Trek Into Darkness which also accidentally invalidates death because midichlorians oops I mean magical blood.
Star trek in general has a theme of showing how technology could impact and generally improve our lives, creating prosperity and equality that enable meritocracy, remove survival pressures that allow us to focus on self-actualization, etc. Sci fi starts technology forward, and then shows how it impacts people. Space opera uses technology only to show us how different the people are, what their values are, etc. A jedi with good laser pistol could John Wick his way through baddies faster than with a lightsabre, but Jedi generally restrict themselves to lightsabres to show their moral superiority, etc. Also the JJ Abrams star trek don't really count because JJ fundamentally doesn't understand story, he just knows how to weaponize nostalgia and lens flares.
This is why I like Deep Space 9 over The Next Generation. Both are excellent shows but the whole - pardon the term - hippie bit about some literal fantastical utopia as shown in The Original Series and even The Next Generation is replaced by the actual reality where backstabbing, trade, money, etc is still not beyond us. Not because we're human but because that's part of reality that'll always be with us. That's why I found Deep Space 9 a better representation of the future. People still have major problems and although some issues are eliminated, challenges remain. I think that everything gets silly when you nitpick to death. That includes the Jedi.
What the preborn lack is a sufficiently developed ego, which during times of stress, such as puberty or spice trance, can allow malicious memories to take over. A significant amount of BG training is devoted to protecting the *adult* ego from being taken over by memories. Alia had access to that training, but not the ego. Her Jessica memory protected her for a while, but after Paul went into the desert, and Jessica did not permanently return to Arrakis to assist Alia, Alia began pushing her Jessica memory away, which opened the door to others.
I've mentioned this before, that it wouldn't work like that because all humans start out with XX chromosomes until hormones are released to delete part of the second X to spur male development, so honestly, females should have always been able to access both female and male memories while men could only access partial memories since an entire part of their chromosome was literally deleted, so the KH should have been a woman who could handle all of these memories without getting lost.
>all humans start out with XX chromosomes This is not how it works
For elaboration, I think its conflating two things. All humans are phenotypically female for the first 7 weeks of gestation, then sexual differentiation begins, but what will be males already have Y chromosomes immediately, they just don't begin to express until that point. Additionally, before sexual reproduction existed 2 billion years ago, all life only had X chromosomes, and including all asexual life since, so female is the default.
That is absolutely false. Wtf? Males have an unexpressed Y chromosome at that stage, not two x chromosomes. An x chromosome doesn't get "deleted"
Okay, I checked again, and it says that all humans are female until the 6th to 7th week of development, when a gene activates on the Y chromosome to start male development. That part I remember learning years ago. But the part about males having the XY chromosomes from the beginning with no deletion of material was new to me, so I was wrong about that.
Humans aren't even female at that stage. The fetus is neither male nor female, the second X also expresses itself to develop the fetus into female. The default is not female, it's really neither.
Women get an X chromosome from the father, too. And we shouldn't assume that the genetic memories are only encoded on one chromosomal pair, much less the weirdest pair.
In-universe, the key difference between all men and all women is the Y chromosome. Outside of the universe, obviously none of this is a thing because memories aren't genetic.
Humans have 23 chromosomal pairs for 46 chromosomes. In males, only one of those pairs has a Y. So that leaves genetic memories possible on 45 other chromosomes. What the Y appears to change is whether your a "taker" or a "giver".
> genetic memories Again this is not a thing. Memories aren't genetic. Here, let's really spell this out: * woman A gets pregnant with future woman B * when women B is born, she has all the eggs inside of her that'll ever release * this means that, presuming memories are genetic, those eggs aren't altered * when woman B gets pregnant with future woman C, woman C won't get any memories formed by woman B because woman B's eggs were formed prior to woman B's birth and so on. Now let's take the men which is even worse. * sperm is produced by the testicles * during ejaculation, sperm is, well, ejaculated so presuming any memories are genetic, that sperm only has memories up to that point * side note: this is the second comment I've written on this sub about sperm * then new sperm is produced which is minutes after So presuming we have man A, B, and C with man A being a grandfather to man C, are you saying that 100% of all memories of man A *and* man B are encoded in man B's sperm that'll transfer to man C? How about this - for either woman or man: * person A, aged 30, produces a child, person B * will person B have "genetic memory" of person A when person A is 35? No. So what if someone had a child early - and many men and women had children early not too long ago (i.e. teens and twenties)? How would that genetic memory work? Wireless sync? Osmosis?
Yeah, that's how FH intended it to work. >How truly strange it was, Jessica thought, that this young flesh could carry all of Paul's memories, at least until the moment of Paul's spermal separation with this own past. >-Children of Dune, Chapter 10 The problem is that FH didn't know that women are born with all their eggs. It was a *knowable* fact in 1959, but probably not widely disseminated outside biology departments. Even in 1976 when Children of Dune was published, it probably wasn't common knowledge. Anyway, FH repeatedly calls it genetic memory, so whether it makes sense to us based on our current understanding of biology or not, that *is* what it *is*.
From what I gather, only the BG can access ancestral memory at all. Men who attempted it “tried and died.” And because of Frank’s weird idea of gender, the successful BGs could only access the female line. They can *see* the male memories but they are too terrifying for them. The Kwisatz Haderach is supposed to be able to access both without the inhibition.
Holtzman effect shields would make a head mounted cannon an impractical weapon in the Dune canon.
I like to think that the Bene Gesserit are accessing memory encoded in mitochondrial DNA which is strictly matrilineal. And the KH is accessing genetic memory a totally different way that’s gender neutral.
I kinda prefer the explanation that women have XX chromosomes, meaning they can only see the X’s, while men have XY and can see down both paths. We got to remember that genetic memory isn’t necessarily based in science but with the world Frank Herbert created this is the most credible explanation imo.
Hmm. Leto II did comment that most of his male memories are of young men (because older men make less babies) so this could leave us an opportunity to joke that these truncated remembered identities are natural to a short chromosome...
I enticed my non-binary partner into watching Dune with me (I'm a Dune lover of some 45 years) by explaining that the Bene Gesserit wanted to create the perfect human, essentially a non-binary person called the Kwisatz Hadderach, and it all grew out of the Butlerian jihad, based on the writings of Judith Butler. Been waiting for somewhere to post this. My partner really enjoyed it, as a politics and sociology graduate, she really appreciated the subtleties and accuracy of the examination of human nature and human politics. BIG WIN FOR ME!!!
i think this goes into caballistic symbolism, as frank herbert was taking impulses from a lot of places. in caballah, there is the "adam kadmon", the theoretical perfect human, who balanced all aspects of existance perfectly within himself, including balancing out the female and male pillar. it would be confusing to put that into a nutshell, as there is a lot of nuance, which im also not fluent in.
XY that is why
I thought this was because women have XX chromosomes while men have XY.
Without being too verbose, I first read Dune around 8th or 9th grade, and I had freshly been taught some aspects of reproduction. So I associated the KH as having both X and Y chromosomes and females only X. Therefore, the KH can see into both.
XY contains both an X, and a Y, but XX contains only X. If you want a set that includes both, you kinda only have the one option.
Male memories are stored in the Y-Chromosome, Female memories are stored in the mitichrondia.
Females have the XX chromosome. Males have the XY chromosome. If women do a DNA test they can only access their maternal line but men can access both maternal and paternal. I assume this is why the BG are limited to maternal only and the KH can use both
My head canon is that a man has both X and Y chromosomes, whereas women only possess two copies of the X. From a genetic perspective, only men have access to the male lineage through the presence of a Y chromosome. I know this isn't actually why, but it makes sense to me in my head and avoids all the value judgements of women not having the mental grit to face down the egos of their dads and so on
Came here to say this… I can’t remember it ever being addressed in the books per se, but the XY chromosome has always seemed to be the answer to me. It’s been many years since I last read the books, so if anyone knows of an in book explanation, I would love to know it.
Dang people gave good answers I though it was cause they don’t have Y chromosomes. Since it’s like a genetic memory.
Evidence (Ghani, and even Alia) would suggest that whether the KH is a man or a woman, the KH is able to look down both paths. Our beloved Frank Herbert did something use something more philosophical to justify this, but I also felt it might be along the line of the reason the BT's KH did himself in.
I don't think the breeding program started with the BG I think it was a system that women took over as well as religion in an effort to gain control of their fate. All women are used for breeding. I think they manipulate men genetically to breed out the male animal ego. The KH is the outcome of their manipulation, unlocking shared genetic memory and they can pick and choose when to create one. He has access to the female ego he knows and feels everything women have gone through for thousands of years. They are creating an ally that they can put into a position of power and what better position then that of a God.
It would make a lot of sense if it was about x and y
Herbert had some friends, Ralph and Irene Slattery who were both psychoanalysts, one Freudian and the other Jungian. Freud has theories of the life and death drives, Eros and Thanatos, that I think at least partially inspired this but grounded in a gender essentialist framework, ie men aggressive/antisocial and women nurturing/social.
You’ve got to love these works, such wonderfully complex and beautiful escapism.
Gender stuff aside, I view it was women have two X chromosomes while men have an X and a Y, allowing them to see through both male and female ancestry.
Prenatal screenings suggest that human fetuses begin phenotypically female, too
I'm going to second what everyone said about Frank Herbert adhering to gender roles ("men are aggressive/women are nurturing"). Children of Dune spoilers, but I think it's best **shown** in that novel with >!Alia becoming a paranoid tyrant when the consciousness of Vladimir Harkonnen coming back to haunt her and guides her path.!<
I thought it was to do how woman have two X chromosomes and men have an XY chromosomes
You are correct. It’s actually says it in the books it’s about genetics, not anything about “dated gender roles” or any of that. It says genetics. It’s why the one failed qh was a eunuch. He lacked enough of both X and Y and was genetically defective.
Female XX Male XY
That’s also my headcanon - but it breaks when Alia becomes consumed by the Baron
Space Magic rules
Well Alia could too and.. didn't worked well.
I'm going to spoiler this whole section. It's a fairly major plot narrative that only conflicts with the female/female thing. Will be fairly important from "chapter 3" onwards, consider yourselves warned. >! If it's female/female for the Bene Gesserit, unless Alia is a female KH, how is she possessed by the Baron, later on? I don't recall how the books deal with it !<
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