TransSF

[bcholmes]

In the last bunch of cons I've attended, queer sf panels have talked about a number of trans sf stories: Commitment Hour, Steel Beach, The Left Hand of Darkness, Identity Matrix and others. Usually, this discussion comes off sounding as though trans people get better representation in sf than gay/lesbian/bi people. People point to I Will Fear No Evil and even The Marvelous Land of Oz and say, "Hey, trans people have been represented for a long, long time".

But I don't see these examples as trans sf. Similarly, I don't see Ethan of Athos as gay sf.

That's an oversimplification. I do think that speculative and fantastical treatments of gender are things that trans discourse should be interested in. But there are attributes of the type of trans people that I know that are missing from this so-called trans sf.

I remember a good panel from WisCon called GLBT 201. One of the panelists talked about the problem that sf has in representing queer people. Because sf often presents the future, there's usually an assumption that people have gotten over queer prejudice. But, the panelist said, if you're not writing about the conflict that queer people have with society, in many ways you're not writing about us.

That's a big part of what I feel is missing from so-called trans sf. There's no conflict of gender. There's no agency about addressing that conflict. There're no real coming out scenes.

I'm sure I'm blanking on some examples, but Neil Gaiman's A Game of You is probably the closest thing I've seen to real trans sf.

Comments

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

a-ha!

so it feels to you like people are trying to skip a step.

i'm not sure i'm talking about this very well; so please bear with me.

there's the stories where people (and i'm using this word in the "feminism is the theory that women are people" sense) have to deal with the other, and it's weird and wrong.

there's the stories where people have to deal with the other and they congratulate themselves on doing it well.

there's the stories where the other is shown to be as competent as or as good as people, and isn't that amazing! (i'm thinking the "sword and sorceress" anthologies here, for women being the other.)

then the coming out stories, written from the perspective of the other. (s&s occasionally hits this category, too.)

and then there are the stories where it's not an issue anymore. some of these stories are good and pleasing, and some of these stories are overassuming and don't know what they're going on about.

it sounds to me like, in my terms, you're saying that those last three steps have been mostly skipped, and people are going straight to "it's not an issue", and they're doing it poorly.

blather blather blather blather. ask me to rant at you sometime about the disability in sf panel at wiscon a few years ago.

p.s. if you don't submit a panel idea or two on this, i shall be very cross. :)

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

How about "Science Fiction and the Oversimplification of Difference"?

Re:

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

submitted. :P

(but i had to make up a description. hope i got close to what you were envisioning.)