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Ur heteronormativity, u have shown me it.
Sep. 22nd, 2009 05:59 pmSo, I like genderbender fic. Both of the always-was variety and the spontaneous-change variety. I like it a lot. It's interesting to explore how gender informs our responses, and making characters switch gender is an interesting thought experiment, which makes it sound much more srs than it has to be. It's not an academic paper...but on the other hand, in a good story it involves some serious thinking about gender, sex, and whatnot. (In bad stories, it tells you a lot about cultural gender models of the authors, which is useful but not fun.)
But. Something really bugs me about a lot of spontaneous-sex-change fic I've read, including the one I'm reading right now.
Pronouns.
What do I mean? Well, even in stories where the genderbent character (usually male) talks a lot about how he's still himself, just in a female body, which is weird and uncomfortable and kinda icky, in a lot of stories the narration disagrees. As soon as his body is female, the narration starts calling him "she", even while he's thinking about how much this body is wrong, sowrong.
This bothers me, because:
1)It's hella confusing. I keep wondering where this woman came from, and I'm not about to associate "her" with the man I've been watching for the chapters before the switch, and
2) It's wrong. No, seriously, no space for wiggle-room, it's flat-out incorrect. The character's sex has been changed, but there's no reason his gender should follow suit. And in my world, pronouns follow gender, not sex. Especially the narrator, which is usually more or less inside the affected character's head. While you're having him go "WTF did they do to me!!", it undermines the whole thing if he's switched pronouns in his head automatically.
I mean, really, we say "Character X was turned into a woman", but really, he's not a woman; he's been turned FtM trans. His gender is still where it was (assuming for the sake of argument that he was previous cisgendered, which is usually the case), but his sex has changed. As such, he's still "he", particularly in his own head. In polite company, people who think of themselves as male should be addressed as such. Particularly by the universe.
On that subject, this particular fic has a qualified mediwitch (damn HP fandom...) say that his (the victim is our poor Remus, bee-tee-dubs) sexuality should for some reason switch from heterosexual male to...heterosexual female?! No. No. Sexuality does not work that way. What is true is that if you were attracted to men in one body, that's unlikely to change. Duh. Because it was a physical change, not a personality rewrite. Also duh.
Now that I think of it, the really accurate thing to do, which I've never seen done, *would* be for a sexswapped character to be treated as having suddenly become trans, with all the inherent issues. Since, you know, that's what the character technically is. Suddenly, the character is inundated with cultural pressures that are not only inappropriate for his personality, but also freak him out, because he is not. a. woman, and would people please stop saying he is?!!
Damn. There goes another plotbunny. Anyone want?
But. Something really bugs me about a lot of spontaneous-sex-change fic I've read, including the one I'm reading right now.
Pronouns.
What do I mean? Well, even in stories where the genderbent character (usually male) talks a lot about how he's still himself, just in a female body, which is weird and uncomfortable and kinda icky, in a lot of stories the narration disagrees. As soon as his body is female, the narration starts calling him "she", even while he's thinking about how much this body is wrong, sowrong.
This bothers me, because:
1)It's hella confusing. I keep wondering where this woman came from, and I'm not about to associate "her" with the man I've been watching for the chapters before the switch, and
2) It's wrong. No, seriously, no space for wiggle-room, it's flat-out incorrect. The character's sex has been changed, but there's no reason his gender should follow suit. And in my world, pronouns follow gender, not sex. Especially the narrator, which is usually more or less inside the affected character's head. While you're having him go "WTF did they do to me!!", it undermines the whole thing if he's switched pronouns in his head automatically.
I mean, really, we say "Character X was turned into a woman", but really, he's not a woman; he's been turned FtM trans. His gender is still where it was (assuming for the sake of argument that he was previous cisgendered, which is usually the case), but his sex has changed. As such, he's still "he", particularly in his own head. In polite company, people who think of themselves as male should be addressed as such. Particularly by the universe.
On that subject, this particular fic has a qualified mediwitch (damn HP fandom...) say that his (the victim is our poor Remus, bee-tee-dubs) sexuality should for some reason switch from heterosexual male to...heterosexual female?! No. No. Sexuality does not work that way. What is true is that if you were attracted to men in one body, that's unlikely to change. Duh. Because it was a physical change, not a personality rewrite. Also duh.
Now that I think of it, the really accurate thing to do, which I've never seen done, *would* be for a sexswapped character to be treated as having suddenly become trans, with all the inherent issues. Since, you know, that's what the character technically is. Suddenly, the character is inundated with cultural pressures that are not only inappropriate for his personality, but also freak him out, because he is not. a. woman, and would people please stop saying he is?!!
Damn. There goes another plotbunny. Anyone want?