Thing: Gender Gap: Gender Discussion/Expression in (Fan)Fiction

[chasingtides]

So, I'm writing a story and I'm unsure of how to label it. Because I came up with this idea in church, I'm going to call it divinely inspired, but I'm mostly exploring boundaries in fiction that I am curious about in real life. And the purpose of exploring these boundaries, is, in part, exploring them as a dialogue, so I will be doing it through

Comments

[xtricks]

well, Jack's *gender*, which is the social and mental concept of your identity, is pretty clearly male. He dresses, self-identifies, and seems comfortable in male roles, being treated like and behaving like a man. His *sex*, which is that not-entirely-cut and dried combination of genes, hormones, biology and physical enviroment is hermaphrodite of a type that doesn't currenlty exist in humans

[chasingtides]

Trust me, I am fully aware that sex and gender are hardly the same thing. In this imagining of Jack, it's that he considers himself to be outside of the common male-female binary more than that he's a transguy (which is what I think you're hinting at, let me know if I'm wrong).

If I recall correctly (and god, I might not because it's been so long since I've watched all of the Torchwood episodes), the pregnancy comment isn't the only... non-binary-type comment he's made on the show, for lack of a better term. More accurately, he's expressed himself as more flexible than that

[xtricks]

I wasn't suggesting that he's neccesarily a transperson per se. My interpretation of his actions/etc would be that he's gender: male, sex: other/intersex(or whatever term he'd use for his own biological combination of sex-related characteristics).

The only referents to his 'flexibility' are in his sexual partners and sexual behavior - I don't recall him ever saying or implying that he considers himself other than male. Though, again, that can simply be because we don't have the concept for the gender he is at this time and place.

[chasingtides]

I guess, in my mind, Jack's gender identity and presentation don't have to match up. Perhaps he presents as male because male-roles/figures/ideas are more comfortable than female-roles/figures/ideas, in a society where he's faced with a binary choice or perhaps they're closer to his presentation in his own time.

(Or, you know, something else entirely, because who the hell knows what the 51st century is like, especially if we've integrated into alien cultures? It's not like all of Earth is stuck on this idea of two genders and two sexes.)

[littledarkvoice]

Haha, I'm working on a post about Hetalia and gender right now. Is it gender meta day? Wait, EVERY DAY is gender meta day with us. That's why we're awesome. (I think you might be interested in this meta I'm writing--it goes way too much into Feminism and post-Colonial studies?)

Granted, I don't follow Torchwood, but I'd say "A non-binary gendered Jack gets pregnant" is a good start despite the awkwardness of the construction. Or perhaps the "MPREG on the surface level, but explores gender binaries"?

Whatever the case, I think as far as advertising it for betas, you should specify that you want a beta who likes dealing with genderbending stuff, and over the course of writing the fic maybe you'll find a good way to advertise it. And... yeah. If I think of anything more, I'll let you know.

[chasingtides]

Everyday is post-colonial feminism day!

I've been thinking over some of my own thoughts and some of xtricks comments and maybe thinking that he presents as male because.... (I'm sort of stuck on this.) Well, he grew up on a war-torn outpost planet/region/thing. And we've seen that "pure humans" - at least some of them - have a purity thing going on. Maybe he presents as male because, you know, having a double reproductive system is a huge hint at not being 100% human and he's already got enough going against him in the system>

I might just go with that. I just wish there was a cleverer way of saying it. Can't wait for your meta.

[littledarkvoice]

And when it's Talk Like a Pirate Day (tomorrow) and post-colonial feminism day at the same time, we dress up like Anne Bonny and go around hitting folks with our copies of Said!

I really, really like the idea of presenting as male as part of a sort of... survival tactic, thing. I mean, since Jack can pass for male in the early 21st century, it only makes sense to stay male. But at the same time, as not-exactly-male but passing for it, it should give him insight into modern gender dynamics that folks within 21st century humanity wouldn't exactly have

[chasingtides]

That's actually the general idea. He's talked about how he's the first person from Boeshane to be recruited, that he was sort of a poster boy for the community he was coming from - could be interesting to do "presenting male/human as survival/safety/ensuring goodness for community." IIRC, I've got some good sources on some medieval saints doing that (IDing as, for example, female and born female, but passing as male, with the aid of their community, for a specific purpose, sometimes then living out lives as men.)

[not_rude_ginger]

Hi, not sure if this idea will be any help at all, but here we go

[chasingtides]

I actually wasn't thinking of Jack as transgender at all, but another sex entirely, outside of male and female. And logistically, if he is, I don't know, a schlee in Boeshane, 20th century English in Cardiff doesn't exactly have word for schlee, since the Welsh in the 20th century haven't encountered Jack's ancestors yet and therefore have no concept of Jack's sex/gender status. If he appears mostly male, then it would probably also be easier to pass as such than to sit people down in 1869 and try to explain that sex is not a binary and, by the way, he's technically still engaging in heterosexual relations when he's with a man, so why don't they let him get married to a man, too?

(I can also only imagine what Victorian Torchwood would put him through if they knew he could carry a child/wasn't male or female. Considering how they tortured him, I'm imagining something like forced pregnancies and then torturing the babies after taking them from him.)

[not_rude_ginger]

Well, that was exactly my point. Jack wouldn't be a transgender at all if he had an alien ancestor who was a totally seperate gender from male and female. But if the ancestor's people encountered humans, say on Boeshane, perhaps they would have catagorised their genders to aid in translations by saying that two of their genders shared some characteristics of human males and the other two had some characteristics of females, so Jack can be called male by everyone in Cardiff, he's happy to identify as male, because in his culture he was, but he was aware that he wasn't the same kind of male as, say, Ianto is. That doesn't make him a transgender, it makes him a seperate gender, but uses the 20th century pronouns because he's used to it from his childhood. And yes, by that logic he is still engaging in heterosexual relationships.

[chasingtides]

Exactly.

Sorry if I was incoherant enough to sound like I was disagreeing with you - mostly I was trying to do a resounding yes while looking at traditional representations of alternate sexes/genders.

[chasingtides]

That could work. I really want to avoid the connotations of "mpreg." I think I would lose people who would like the fic and I would also disappoint fans of mpreg - because while, to the outside world (ie Rhys, Rhiannon, Alice) it appears to be mpreg, Jack does have a normally functioning uterus and (small but functioning) mammary glands and all of those things that facilitate a live mammalian birth.

[smallcaps]

"third gender pregnancy"

?