The Age of Legends

I realized earlier that I should get ahold of the Wheel of Time encyclopedia for some more research material concerning gender, but here I am going to give a brief overview of the world as it was before the Breaking.

So, we are told that in the Age of Legends, strength in the One Power between the genders was balanced overall. Women are better generally with Water and Air, while men are better with Fire and Earth; Spirit is equal between the genders. Yes, this is material we all know, but it needs to be stated for framing my approach. So, the best things done in the Age of Legends required men and women to work together, but everything goes tits-up when Lanfear makes the bore to the Dark One.

Then we have the War of the Power, then Lews Therin tries to get women to help him go seal the bore, but for some reason they opted out of the best chance they had to seal the Dark One's evil ass up. So, Lews and the Hundred Companions, all men, fight their way to the bore, make the seven cuendillar seals, then the Dark One taints saidin. All the men go mad, the Breaking begins, and we end with the first scene in The Eye of the World.

What follows are three thousand years of cultural development and change, in which the only real constant is the White Tower and the taint on saidin. Symbolically the Aes Sedai change, going from the quasi-yin-yang to the Flame of Tar Valon, as well as the Dragon's Fang. Three thousand years of Aes Sedai hunting men, or even rumors of men, that can channel. As it turns out, even though Lews Therin and the Companions essentially sacrificed themselves in order to keep the Dark One at bay for any period of time, wilder men are just sought out, and executed. Oh, I'm sorry, "gentled." They cut him off from magic, and he loses the will to live. Fear of men that can channel becomes so ingrained in the culture, even though the Aes Sedai know the Prophecies, that even when Rand does use the Eye to touch pure saidin, the Aes Sedai that know what he is still feel that tug that he should be gentled.

So, I think here I will make my first assertion: the truth that men cannot touch the Source without being tainted, while Aes Sedai can still channel it, lessens the status of men in the various cultures of Randland. Now, I think it would be better to consider the issue of gender-status macroscopically, but in what comes next I will go over the various countries, their laws, if any, they have concerning channeling, and how men and women interact in these cultures.

I'm going slightly mad, Ishamael