So there are parts of it that I really like. The focus on dreams and the horror in them was super cool. I like hearing about the world and the different cultures and how different everyone speaks and dresses. I have liked the character development too, especially Perrin's. I actually felt like I related to his wolf stuff as a trans person.
But hooooooollllyyy shit how about a cis het sit down honey you need to fucking relax. Men and women aren't seperate fucking species you nonce. Also why can no one ever say what they mean?? In general but especially men and womens interactions are like halfway between a conversation and a discussion of platonic forms. I can't fucking handle it. It's bad enough that he can't seem to describe women without first establishing their relationship to men, and that he sees liking men as a moral thing, and everything I've mentioned so far.
But when Mr. Jordan decided to include dom/sub dynamics into THE FUCKING MAGIC SYSTEM I sincerely ragequit. FOR FUCKS SAKE. Not only that but a woman having to ask a man is treated like its a degrading, dishonorable thing, and the women who just sorta ask and want things like affection and sex are seen as strange and other! A woman flirted with a man you haven't even confessed to and you are contemplating kidnapping?? Murder??
AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
anyway the books really are neat but I am 50 shades of gay and I don't think it's going to get any better. Maybe when sanderson takes over it does but those are just the last two books soooooooooooo. I guess I could read summaries and then go to the last two books but I could also just read another series, considering red rising or malazaan book of the fallen. or kingkiller chronicles.
AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH
if anyone does want to vouch for it feel free, I'm already feeling pretty stockholmy
Women have a lot of social power. Everything seems to happen the way that women desire them to. Men are never really made to believe that they are in full control of their personal lives and that women are constantly making the real decisions. There is constant tension because of it, but ultimately men are unable to think outside of the immediate moment and women work together, leading to men being led around by women.
The Aes Sedai in the book seem to be idealized ideas of what women are, scheming, aloof, difficult to understand, but with good intentions (most of the time). Their ethereal, ageless beauty and the way that women deify them supports this as well.
Societies led by women are considered more moral in the books, those that push women down are chastised, and seen with contempt and anger.
It feels like he believes that women are meant to be in charge and that a matriarchy would be a good thing, but ultimately has no idea how to reconcile that with his own manhood. Men constantly desire to control women, or fight against them for no other reason than to feel manly, or because as men they feel like they ought to. It's like he is airdropping men and women from the modern, western, world into a society with matriarchal gender and social relations without taking any time to wonder how people in this society would actually behave.
I believe this is why he focuses so much on the sexual/romantic aspect of women. Women's desires for men are the only thing that men seem to have going for them in the book. Those women, especially aes sedai, who love men are seen as more trustworthy. The idea of an Aes Sedai who isn't forced into loving men through her sexuality is horrifying to Jordan, hence his portrayal of the reds.
The tension caused by Jordan's baby feminism is clearly, to me, with good intention. He clearly has a respect for women, but fears them. In a way I recognize from my past life as a man. But the way it permeates the book is just too exhausting for me. Even as a marxist-feminist I think that if I was cis het I would be able to make it through the books, but as a trans lesbian its just too much. The books clearly make no room for trans people and lesbianism would be treated with extraordinary mistrust. He'd probably make all the women jealous of the gay women and all the men feel completely emasculated in a lesbian's presence. I have a hunch that the Aiel's gender dynamics would be the best so far but I just don't want to trudge my way through this forced quagmire of gender politics my very existence undermines.
Based on what I wrote I think that the defense you mentioned has some truth, he just didn't change the people as much as the society, hence the tension.
The Aiel are pretty well covered culturally by the end of book 5, if you want to stick it out. Not really sure gender dynamics are so much better there, but as a cishet man I'm sure don't have as clear a perspective on that. (The historical stuff in there is cool enough that I'd personally argue it's worth suffering through another book or two, since you're not too far from it now. I won't explain what I mean, but it's really cool.) But as others have mentioned, all of this stuff you're talking about only gets worse, especially in books 8 and 9, at which point I remember being incredibly frustrated and wanting to shake the characters and be like "GO TALK TO HER/HIM FOR FUCK'S SAKE; YOU ARE ON THE SAME FUCKING SIDE HERE!" And I was a sexist teenage cishet boy at the time. So...yeah.
Edit: Oh, one more thing: there are hints of lesbianism in the White Tower, not sure if you've seen them yet, but they do exist.
Well, I'm glad that the Aiel stuff is as cool as I was hoping it to be. I might keep reading through book 5 but honestly I think that if I did that it would just make it harder to put down. There might be some youtubers who have put out some good WoT content that would be worth a watch.
I'd probably pop a blood vessel
I will say that all of this was less difficult to handle when I re-read it recently. I guess because I knew it was coming, and I kinda just relaxed and expected the plot to crawl along in books 7-10, and knew that the men and women were going to stubbornly refuse to actually talk to each other and thus make unfair assumptions about each other's motives and goals and actions, it wasn't as hard to handle as it was when I read it the first time. Not sure how useful that is for you, though.
Edit: To borrow a phrase from Sanderson, you gotta put journey before destination with WoT. The destination isn't bad, but the series is all about the journey to get there, you know?
A bit late, but just going to chime in that I'm 99% sure the reasoning behind women being in power is just "what if original sin was done by a man?", as Runcible notes below. The cultural norms being "western world in matriarchy land" also sort of make sense if you consider that the original sin took place after patriarchal societies (and the associated norms) had already developed.
It does not get better.