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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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.