I Am Not a Product of a Problem

[bcholmes]

Earlier today, I attended a panel called "Pushing the Envelope". It was an interesting panel, mostly because of some of the names that were on the panel: Jed Hartman, Aaron Lichtov, Melissa Scott, Joan Horan, and Elizabeth Bear.

The panelists were really great (and Aaron consistently says things that prompt me to Deep Thoughts), but there were some things said by panel attendees that kinda bugged me.

Jed told a story about a Gordon Van Gelder editorial that summarized a number of trends he'd seen. One of those trends was that Van Gelder received a lot of complaints about the number of gay-themed stories. Jed even went on to talk about his editorial about the dearth of sexual minorities in SF; Jed reported that he received several e-mails from people saying, in essence, that in the future, the queer problem will have been resolved and therefore it only makes sense that they won't show up in future worlds. Jed told these stories in a voice heavy with "I wish the universe was different than it is."

Anyway, it was with some annoyance that I heard audience members talk, not too long afterward, about the idea that in a nice, utopian future, trans people shouldn't exist. And that got me reflecting.

Aaron made an explicit call to talk more specifically about what "the envelope" was and what it meant to "push" it. And I think that made me reflect on what my particular envelopes are and what they have been in the past. For me, getting beyond binary thinking has long been a Topic To Consider. But I think, at some time in the past, the big cultural story I wanted to attack was the cultural story that there are only two genders: man and woman.

I didn't feel like that story included me, and I tried to challenge the story whenever I could. And what's more, I felt sustained by any depiction of non-binary sex/gender. When the planet of Gethen was described in The Left Hand of Darkness, I felt validated because there was at least some inhabitants outside of the binary. When I read Varley's works, I felt validated. But neither of these were my story. These people didn't have to come out; didn't have to make difficult choices in a society that worked against them; didn't have to loose family, friends or jobs. But, nonetheless, I was willing to claim those stories as somehow being like me in a way that so much else was not.

I am less sustained, now, than I was then by pushing on the envelope of binary sex/gender. That's not the binary that bugs me now. And I think I had a bit of a flash of insight today. The binary that bugs me, now, is this: there's a way of looking at the trans phenomenon that says that trans people are the result of unusual biology. Something happens: maybe it's pre-natal hormones or whatnot. But this point of view says that transness exists because of a biological quirk. In essence, a biological problem. Some of our own language buys in to thise point of view. Some trans folk say "I was born with a minor birth defect that, with the help of surgery, was corrected."

Run with this in SF, and you get the scene in which the doctor tells the expectant mother, "Tests were almost completely normal. We noticed a minor problem with gender non-congruence, so I'm prescribing 2 milligrams of Regenderex 5. Take one pill a day after meals." Problem solved, and here's another future universe without trans people.

On the other end of the binary, you get the whole "gender is social construct, and your gender discomfort will go away completely once we have created the future that's less hung up on gender roles. You won't have to change your body to express yourself, 'cause what the bodies look like don't matter." One woman in the panel today said almost exactly that (complete with "This may offend some trans people but..." caveat). (I've seen her on other panels, and I get the impression that she is wreslting to understand the Why of Trans, and can't, but is willing to opine about it in the meantime).

I was talking about this statement with wild_irises afterward, and she likened that response to the whole "I think everybody's really bisexual" argument. wild_irises described the "everybody's bisexual" position as a "heterosexual fantasy", by which she meant that het people say things like this to, at the same time, say "it's just a fault with society and that's too big for me to take any responsibility over trying to fix it" and also to glom on to the problem in a way that says, "as a het person, I'm affected by society's lack of acceptance of the idea that everybody's really bisexual, and I should therefore get the same kind of sympathy and consideration that people who deal with minor things like homophobia get."

So I've described two poles. On the one hand, in the "biology quirk" view, trans people are a result of a congruence "problem" that can be corrected via surgery, and in the other extreme, trans people are the product of the rigidity of social expectations about gender roles. Since both of those problems are going to be fixed Real Soon Now, trans people just go away. No trans, no problem.

But now, that's the envelope that I want to push against. I want other options. I want out-of-the-box thinking about where gender comes from. Maybe it's metaphysical, or transdimensional, or something. I want a new narrative about gender that doesn't have to eradicate my existence in order to arrive at a happy ending.

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