WisCon: Transsexuality as Trope

[bcholmes]

So, I had a panel yesterday morning: "Transsexuality as Trope". The topic was the idea that, in sf, transsexuality is seldom presented as a process. I liked this panel a great deal more than I liked the "Counting Past Two" panel, and I think that some interesting discussion came out of it. In particular, I was happy to be able to argue and debate with another trans woman about our respective wants from representations of changing sex/gender in science fiction.

I was annoyed by two things on the panel, however.

1. First was that some of our panelists seemed to not want to talk about the topic. One panelist (whom I'll call Janet, even though her real name is Elizabeth Bear) seemed to want to make jokes, rather than talk about the issues. It seemed to take a very long time to get the panel topic going because some of the panelists just wanted to be funny.
2. Another dynamic, that started to bug me, was the dynamic of responding to a statement like, "I feel that we don't see aspect X of transness in these speculative gender stories" with "well you should write a book that includes that". The suggestion might be true, and wild_irises made a very similar challenge to me a few years ago (which I found motivational). But in this instance, the response seemed to be designed to silence the critique, rather than to further the discussion.

Later in the panel, someone asked a question (I wish I could reproduce it word-for-word). The essence of the question was, "For what design purpose should an author include a trans character in an sf story. What function would that trans person play?"

To her credit, Bear identified this as a problematic question. But I think epi_lj teased out its dumbness a great deal better a few hours afterward: that if you were to substitute black for trans the idea of including black characters for a purpose sounds really offensive. Like, they have to have some good reason to be included.

kalikanzeros also made a good comment at dinner a bit later: we were talking about a fantasy writer who gets angry letters because her fictional universe contains alligators. This was an example brought up in a panel about what authors owe their readers. It seemed unreasonable that her readers expect her universe would be yet another fantasy-world-based-on-Europe. But then that raises the question: is it unreasonable for trans readers to expect that sf writers should talk about transness in certain ways?

I think that the crux of that question relates to individual choices versus societal choices. I think I respect individual choices of sf writers to create the stories they want to tell, but when every one of them makes the same choice in a particular area, I think something bigger is going on and that can stand to have some kind of interruption.

Comments

[heyfoureyes.livejournal.com]

thank you. yes, that was about the gist of it.

what I'm getting from BC is, why should we question WHY to have trans characters? why would we NOT include trans people? if we imagine a world where people don't 'need' to transition, is it because we're not really ok with trans people in the present? that's a good point as well.

I did think of the sense of seeing trans characters as somewhat being related to my own recently only realized need to see Latinos positively portrayed in entertainment. When Ugly Betty came out, it filled a need for me that I didn't know was there -- just to see a Hispanic family on tv, made up of regular working people and no criminals. it was so cathartic for me.

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's about right. That's sort of the motivation behind the quotation I mentioned at the con: "no one should be denied their image in art."

For what it's worth, I really appreciate you clarifying your intent behind this question; it helps me understand where you're coming from a great deal.