Consent and Mind Control

[settecorvi]

I’ve started listening to podcasts while I run, since I discovered the delicious number of free fantasy and scifi stories on iTunes. One of the first I stumbled upon was Metamor City, a scifi/ fantasy fusion, and it kept me entertained on the elliptical until episode seven. Then I flew into a teeth-gnashing rage and promptly lost all sympathy for

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[settecorvi]

Time for a great big teal deer response to your jokey comment!

Short version: You don’t need androgynes to have grade A genderfail.

Long version: I’m the exact opposite - I’d love to see more authors tackling genderfluid and sexchanging characters. And trans characters, and agendered characters, and everyone on the spectrum of sexuality and off of it. The potential for metric tons of fail is strong, since the setup could so easily sink into a soapbox for the author’s biases, but (IMO) the potential for interesting worlds and stories is stronger. I might vociferously disagree with the way the issue was presented in Metamor City, but I still enjoyed hearing about a protagonist who was (nominally) outside the usual binary.*

Where I think Metamor City went off the rails is in implicitly presenting the author’s opinion as the One Objective Truth about sex and gender. I could have accepted the speech we get from one of the androgynes on how women are Supposed To Be as simply that one character’s opinion, if not for the way the unisexed characters echoed their pseudoscientific evopsych bs. There were no characters presenting alternate viewpoints, or showing us other ways to live. Daniel, the main character, is simply told “women are x,” and every woman in the story is shown conforming to that statement. In the end, assumptions about ‘natural’ gender roles pervaded every thread of the story, and they would have been just as noxious if the main character didn’t become an androgyne.

* Okay, last ranty mcranterson comment on the confluence of idiocy in this story, I promise. When Daniel becomes an androgyne, he himself doesn’t become a woman, an entirely new female personality takes up residence in his head. His soul literally splits in two, and memory carryover between the two sides seems sketchy at best, a bit like having an event described to you rather than experiencing it firsthand. One side can “trade off” to the other when they don’t want to deal with a situation. So really, it’s more like having another person moving into your body and, uh, remind me why anybody would want this again? You don’t get to experience being the other sex, you’ve just cut your effective lifespan in half. What’s worse, Our Hero is so stupidly incurious that he doesn’t make certain he understand the repercussions of this life-changing, irreversible choice he’s making and is completely shocked when he finds out about the soul splitting. His friends are either sociopathically indifferent or merely careless enough that they don’t ensure he knows what will happen.

[anison]

Oh, I'd definitely love to see more gender and sexuality diversity. I just... only read terrible books, I guess. So which mainstream author would be most likely to rescue that story premise from utter fail? I honestly can't think of any. If I'm going to read a trans or genderfluid character, I'd rather be getting it from a trans or genderfluid author, which means that I'm not getting anything because I only read terrible mainstream books. Which is bad behavior from both me and the publishing industry. I should seek out better sources of reading material.

Anyway, the problem I have with the story as you've described it isn't just that it's a cisgendered dude writing about a trans or genderfluid experience, but it's also a dude having a male character that can turn into a woman for a lark, experience the ways in which it sucks to be a woman, and then switch back and escape them, probably while acting all enlightened about it and using his new-found wisdom and sensitivity from being catcalled once on the street as a lever to pick up chicks afterward. That's what was running through my horrified imagination, anyway. It sounds like it's actually slightly less stupid in the gender-switching department and more stupid in that the characters lack basic common sense and decency.

Also, I once read an absolutely hilariously terrible manga that had almost that exact split-soul plot, except that the guy couldn't choose when his female personality took over, and the female personality was secretly the evil overlord's soul mate. The male personality was named Lapis and the female personality was Lazuli. I swear, I can't make this stuff up. See what I mean about only reading terrible books?

cont'd

[settecorvi]

Anyway, the problem I have with the story as you've described it isn't just that it's a cisgendered dude writing about a trans or genderfluid experience, but it's also a dude having a male character that can turn into a woman for a lark, experience the ways in which it sucks to be a woman, and then switch back and escape them, probably while acting all enlightened about it and using his new-found wisdom and sensitivity from being catcalled once on the street as a lever to pick up chicks afterward. That's what was running through my horrified imagination, anyway.

I think you’re absolutely right about the root of the problem. I’m certain there are cis male authors who could handle the topic with respect, but Daniel’s experience reads transparently like a man’s fantasy about what being a woman is like. The way I remember it - and I freely admit that by that point I was losing patience with both character and plot and wasn’t being particularly forgiving - it was dude writing about a male character turning into a woman for a lark and experiencing the ways in which it is awesome to be a woman. Or rather, the ways in which guys assume it’s awesome being a (hot) woman. She feels sexy and likes it when guys ogle her! She suddenly has an interest in clothes shopping! Multiple orgasms! Nobody catcalls her, or makes her feel physically unsafe, or condescends to her in a way she finds offputting.

It sounds like it's actually slightly less stupid in the gender-switching department…
I found the sex-switching stupid in part because it was first presented as one thing (you become the other sex), then revealed to be something different (someone of the other sex moves into your body), and nobody in the story seems to understand the distinction, or why someone might want the first option but be horrified by the second.

… and more stupid in that the characters lack basic common sense and decency.
What finally made me stop listening to the podcast was that I realized I loathed 95% of the characters. If I want to hear about morally bankrupt idiots making decisions that destroy their lives and the lives of everyone around them, I can go read the news.

Also, I once read an absolutely hilariously terrible manga that had almost that exact split-soul plot, except that the guy couldn't choose when his female personality took over, and the female personality was secretly the evil overlord's soul mate. The male personality was named Lapis and the female personality was Lazuli. I swear, I can't make this stuff up. See what I mean about only reading terrible books?

That sounds amazing in the most delightfully horrible of ways. Oddly enough, it almost seems like the author read the same manga. Danni, Daniel’s female side, could take over from Daniel more easily than he could resume control because *handwavehandwave.* Danni is, of course, sexually rapacious, bisexual, highly emotional, and latches onto the first man who shows interest in her, even though it’s later revealed that he unconsciously mind-controls people into doing what he wants. The whole “she doesn’t want to leave a relationship that’s making her happy even though she knows she’s been mindwhammied into it” was yet another idea that could have been interesting, and yet the carrythrough smelled subtly off. To me, the way it was written sounded like the rational Daniel needed to take control of needy, hysterical Danni…and I’m ranting about the plot again, after I’d said I wouldn’t. I think what really got my metaphorical goat about this particular story is that it had the potential to be interesting, and the author squandered it time and time again. A bit like Twilight, except with more gratuitous sex.

[settecorvi]

Sorry about the belated reply. Work’s been leaving drained enough that I get home and cannot brain.

I completely agree that I’d rather read about trans and genderfluid (and POC and disabled and all sorts of diverse) characters written by authors who belong to the groups they’re portraying. It’s so easy for a member of a majority with the best of intentions to swandive into a stereotype, or other a character, or indirectly lay claim to a history and suffering they don’t have any right to, or to end up writing a bunch of characters exactly like themselves with a thin veneer of color/disability/etc. overlaid, or just not have the life experience to imagine the world without a given privilege. To name a very few ways to screw up. Even if the character is well written, it still comes with nasty undertones of “group X needs the Mighty Majority to write about them for their own good.” Despite all of that, I still wish that more mainstream authors would include characters who don’t come from the same background as they do, especially as viewpoint characters. We’d certainly see a few head-desk inducing caricatures like the one that sparked this discussion, but at least it would get more nominal diversity into the published sphere, which (I hope) would make room for actual diversity. If a trans author sees a cis man successfully publishing a series about a trans protagonist, even if it’s rife with cringe-worthy stereotypes, they might decide there’s room in the market for a realistic trans protagonist.

Maybe that’s specious logic, or overly idealistic, and what would actually happen is that we’d all have rage aneurysms over the terribad so! very! exotic! characters engendered by the worst preconceptions of privileged dudes.

My taste in books isn’t any better than yours, and I can’t think of any mainstream sf/f author who identifies as trans or genderfluid. That’s probably a combination of my own ignorance and, as you mentioned, the publishing industry’s biases. If I had to choose a well-known author to try their hand at a sexchanging protagonist, I’d go with Ursula le Guin. The Left Hand of Darkness wasn’t perfect, and le Guin herself wrote an essay addressing some of its problems, but at least she thought about the scenario beyond “experiencing life on the other side would rock!”

Online, Shira Lipkin (shadesong) is an author who identifies as genderfluid, though primarily female, and she has a sextet of novels coming out next year. I disagree with many of M.C.A. Hogarth’s (haikujaguar) politics, but she’s written a novel and a few short stories about a society of trisexed aliens called the Jokka who can switch sexes at two puberties. As a warning, reading stories about the Jokka make me twitchy and viscerally uncomfortable, since being female in their society is a nightmare. It’s very well written, but a nightmare all the same. Almost all of her stories involve rape and at least three have featured force birth, so be prepared. With fewer caveats, you might be reading it already, but if not, Wonder City Stories is a superhero serial with a multitude of narrators, most of whom are POC, queer, trans, older folks, or some combination thereof.