Paradigmism

I had a fascinating conversation last night with James Bach and Cem Kaner. As a result, I found myself thinking about this:

I recently wrote about Jed Hartman's essay on Strange Horizons. I was particularly interested in this paragraph:

Chris Claremont, legendary writer of the X-Men in the comic's heyday, used to ask, about new characters being developed, "Is there any reason this character can't be a woman?"

There's a similar strategy that I recall reading. One of the set designers for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine liked to increase the alien-ness of the decorations that people would bring him by turning them upside-down. There's something nifty about the way that these exercises force one to see things in a different way.

This came up in my mind because we briefly discussed "allergic" reactions that people have to certain phrases. I can imagine, for example, that some people might hear a repeated question, "Is there any reason this character can't be a woman?" as a belief that most of the characters should be women, which is not, I think, what the exercise was designed to accomplish.