Originally posted to Goodreads:

It is impossible to separate the fibers of sexism and racism that run through the very fabric of this book. Even within Herbert's criticisms of imperial/colonial systems, his own -isms make their mark. The Bene Gesserit in particular call to mind the great Ursula K. Le Guin's perspective on mystifying the feminine:

"But I didn’t and still don’t like making a cult of women’s knowledge, preening ourselves on knowing things men don’t know, women’s deep irrational wisdom, women’s instinctive knowledge of Nature, and so on. All that all too often merely reinforces the masculinist idea of women as primitive and inferior – women’s knowledge as elementary, primitive, always down below at the dark roots, while men get to cultivate and own the flowers and crops that come up into the light. But why should women keep talking baby talk while men get to grow up? Why should women feel blindly while men get to think?"
[See the cottage core, crunchy, trad wife content that is so popular currently]
[Le Guin's argument can also be applied to the mystifying of indigenous people and knowledge (see: calling indigenous people 'primitive')]

Dune falls victim to that which Le Guin avoids. The Bene Gesserit, and more broadly the very conceptualization of gender with the world of Dune mythicizes women's knowledge and by extension their power. It places women as the religious arbiters and power brokers of the universe. The Bene Gesserit are the "man behind the curtain". Herbert criticizes the religious establishment and strict gender roles while still mystifying the feminine.

Despite, or possibly in large part due to, Herbert's own prejudices Paul Muad'Dib, and Dune presents us with a complex cautionary tale that refuses to give an easy answer to any of the topics broached. Herbert positions Paul Muad'Dib at the crux of each topic. Paul finds himself at the fulcrum of the masculine and feminine, as a colonizer amongst the colonized, an anarchist imperialist. Paul comes of age as a product of these dichotomies.

Paul's ascension to Messiah was not linear nor was it inevitable. More often than not, historical and political events are seen as an inevitability, the culmination of some grand domino chain. There may be some critical mass beyond which there is no return, but more often than not, events are an amalgamation of millions of different paths converging for a split second only to break away again. Paul can see this web, but he is blinded by his own goals. His own motives. That which he has been bred and raised for. This is where Dune shines. As a tale of the hubris and complexity of saviors. 


Anyway, I liked it, Paul is nonbinary, I don't feel like writing a conclusion.

XOXO, 
CoronaKirby