Transsexuality as Trope (WisCon 31 panel)

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132 Transsexuality as Trope

Feminism, Sex, and Gender•Assembly• Sunday, 10:00-11:15 a.m.

Much science fiction and fantasy of recent years deals with changing sex. But it treats it as a trope rather than a process: Larque on the Wing, I Will Fear No Evil, "Changes," the work of John Varley. While there is no denying the usefulness of transsexuality as a trope in discussing the social construction of gender, what are we missing by eliding transsexuality's nature as a process?

M: Lyda Morehouse, Charlie Anders, Elizabeth Bear, B. C. Holmes, Jennifer Pelland

Panel reports, notes, transcripts

Transcript

transsexuality as trope - uncorrected transcript done hastily by laura Quilter

BC Holmes - various glbt people talking about how sf was great for alternative representations; they came up with a booklist and it looked like a lot of other lists and at some point i said actually this doesn't represent transsexual people's experience. no coming out to parents, worrying about gender, etc. the closest is the water cooler moment in Steel Beach / John Varley when someone is like ooh you've changed your gender, what's up with that. i was interested in talking about trans process as opposd to process.

CA: much the same panel last year and i was sort of annoyed by it. i was in the audience. i had written a book, a mainstream non-spec novel that dealt with some aspects of the process. i don't think there's any should -- i think thinking about futures where you don't have to think about it opens up story possibilities. so that's where i'm coming from.

EB: i'm Elizabeth Bear & i was probably one of the people who annoyed charlie last year.

LM: i was trying to wonder if i was on it too

CA: (looking slightly embarrassed) it wasn't the people it was the panel

EB: i think i'm on this panel because i said i wanted to go to it.

aud: that happened a lot this year

EB: ... John Varley / Blue Champagne

LM: i was wondering if we knew why varley writes about these issues - does anybody know why.

EB: jed hartman comes in. oh look it's jed.

aud/everybody " hi jed"

EB: when i'm not being very flighty & distracted i'm elizabeth bear. honestly i think the reason i'm on this panel is b/c i'm very intersted in issues of class & gender & sexuality & i do a fair amt of work with it which has something to do w/ being raised having a nontrad childhood & ... anthropologist training ... and not thinking of any of these categories as fixed or rigid something we do in this culture

JP: i'm jennifer pelland i write short stories which people publish and novels which they don't. bastards. ... boston's queer genderfuck community which changed me. i do play with some of that stuff in my writing. so many friends who've been in this process. ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends, feel it's important to write about it and not just people in the process.

LM: that's awesome ... gender in-laws.

JP: i'm writing that down. it's 10 in the morning i'm not going to remember this.

LM: turning to CA & BCH - more about what encouraged you to request this panel. tell us what we did wrong.

CA: so last year's panel on -- for some reason it annoyed me -- it wasn't any particular person ... i found the fetishization of the transition process a little distrubing, i don't think there were any trans people on the panel

cor - i think it had one

CA: yes i think it had one. i think the essential of thinking moving back and forth is very difficult and if you don't have the correct polarity to breach the difficult polarity the universe will self-destruct. ... to me it's like transitioning, changing your gender, changing your sex, is sort of like being pregnant i say not having been pregnant. hormonal, people coming up to you on the street & asking you stupid questions, dealing with officialdom and also medical establishment. ... if you're writing a novel it can be okay to elide it or treat it. imagine you're writing a story about someone becoming a cockroach you can do it with them noticing that they're growing little cockroachy appendages or waking up one day.

BCH: one thing to disagree - that it's okay to have discussion of gender. what i think is not okay is the complete absence of other stories which explore the issue. early wiscon i came to is the glbt 201 panel. one problem i have is the complete idea that in the future it will all be okay and that it's okay to not talk about the struggle. b/c if you're not talking about the struggle in some way you're not talking about us. ... i think one of the things that drove me crazy about the panel last year ... i perceived ... two attitudes, one that transness is just a product of competely uptight attitudes about transgender roles - that we were the product of a problem and that we would go away when the problem would go away; and the other is that trans people are the victim of a medical problem or whatever, and again once we've identified that particular problem it will go away we can correct this problem at birth or whatever. and i was thinking about - appalled at about talking about a future in which we don't exist.

LM: i see people talking about race the same ways. ... how would you envision a story that keeps transsexuality in the future in ways that are both a process and ... what's your ideal. ... i come to wiscon looking for writing ideas?

EB: are we doing your homework for you lyda?

LM: yes absolutely.

JP - ?

EB: you guys can have it i'm booked thru

LM: You are booked thru. what stories ... make you really mad?

EB: i'd like to say something. this came up speaking up gay/lesbian/bisexual issues. this came up a couple of years ago during brokeback mountain. there were people who were pissed off that it wasn't a heroic drag queen movie.

aud: Priscilla

karen swanberg (jennifer?) - about speaking up

EB: ... there are, actuualy, heroic drag queen movies exist and it's interesting to have something different altho it would be good to have one where the character doesn't die in the end. ... every single story cannot meet every reader's needs and desires. what i would like to see happen is to have enough stuff out there that each individual narrative does not have to serve as a poster child - i think it's not a quality issue so much as a quantity issue. and if you have a vibrant discussion going on -- you know when there's only one female character in a tv show when you're looking at it from a feminist perspective if she has any flaws you're pissed off but if there are 7 they can all be fucked up.

LM: are you talking about Battlestar Galactica?

something

EB: you're just into women in sports bras

JP: why am i here

EB: ... every single story doesn't have to be a poster child ...

LM: on a panel i was on earlier about ... we were doing sexism as ... i was probably moderator. i had the same problem both of you (pointing to BCH & CA) had - i was pointing to Ripley as example of strong woman she has to go back for cat and later for child. i was thinking there's not enough options and everything gets hung on this one character. why can't she just wake up in the morning alone. and at the same thinking what's wrong with her going back for the cat. ... we all look for ourselves and i think that's totally acceptable to do. i know that one of the reasons i came to sf was that i was looking for queerness ... at the same time it's valid to look for the poster child and also want more options.

CA: i'm not looking for the poster child. i want to rip the poster child up.

EB: yes!

CA: i read speculative fiction for thought experiments, for escapism sometimes, occasionally for really short sentences that are paragraphs. i don't really read it to find myself. i read a lot of nonspec fic as well. ... doing it in a way that's supposed to be a reflection of today's experience ...

BCH: are there no thought experiments that are about today's experiences like coming out to your parents?

JP: but if you're writing science fiction you're writing about the future. so myself is that when i'm writing about this future i'm hoping that it will be easier. ... i would like to donate an ovary because i'm only using it to not grow a mustache. laughter. i'm sure i just need one. i look at what my friends are going thru and i want it to be not so hard.

CA: or at least hard in a different way

JP: the physical will be easier so i completely understand ... but i'm writing science fiction but i don't want to write a future where it's so hard

BCH: but you've essentialized it - i think there are important things about the growth of self etc.

CA: but you're talking about a process that has only existed for a few decades and something else will have replaced it. back in the 60s ... you can't believe that nobody that people will still be using the same processes

JP: saw a special on 5-year-old kids ...

EB: interjection - fighting is fun. we're writing for the people for today not the people 30 years from now

JP: they'll laugh at us.

EB: if we think we're predicting the future they'll laugh at us. ... the real power of sf for me is that we're taking a present-day issue, converting it to a metaphor and talking it in different terms, so you can talk about the process of becoming an alien and transforming and dealing with it and the process o... it would be interesting to have a society in which gender changes very fluidly and something else is alienated so we can inspect that.

LM: i think what bc is talking about is that it's not baggage

EB: i'm talking about society's baggage. alienation as a powerful intelledctual tool b/c you remove yourself from society & its assumptions & you look at it.

LM: i'm playing devil's advocate b/c i like fighting you ... and i like where we get to when i'm wrong. here's my thought which i hope i didn't just lose. one of the assumptions that this half of the table makes is that the end part is one or the other

EB: no you're projecting

LM: maybe ... sf assumption makes that if we could change gender fluidly wouldn't there be people in between

aud/Karen swanberg - this is true in Iain Banks' ... novel

CA: bring up bc holmes comment about breaking down gender roles i do believe in reaking down gender roles & having more fluidity but i believe that for many people there probably is and always will be a diff b/w being a butch woman & a femme boy there will always be gender roles that are more or less fixed w/in that and people who want to move from one to the other and the trans experience will continue to be relevant. it's not like we're going to be erased. i do believe that. ... if i were writing a sf story it would be easier in some ways but ... your guy who wakes up as a cockroach is still going to have a lot to deal with now that he's a cockroach. ... one of the things i wrote in my notes is that it's not just transpeople who change after they're 25 we all change ... i like what you (EB) say about about alienating ...

BCH so why are these books - I Will Fear No Evil - so unsatisfying

EB: so i think you should write a book

CA: write a book

LM: audience questions now

aud - specifically to bc and other people to a particular opinion about a book - The Bone Doll Twin series by Lynn Flewelling. it seems to me to be an example that does more what you're looking for - it's not perfect by any means. ... it does treat gender change as a struggle, a problematic struggle in many ways. The Bone Doll's Twin.

CA: ...

aud - discussion of Lynn Flewelling

aud: one word: Dragonslayer

rachel then over here - just wanted to mention Ozma of Oz - tip spends entire book searching for lost princess that turns out to be him.

EB: notice how he liked skirts - if i turned into a boy i would not be a femme boy. (mocks playing with suspenders)

aud: ... in sf/f you don't see transition as the heroic journey. it brings up for me the question what is the trope of transsexuality - is it the transition, is it dysphoria, is it the capacity to change and become who you are

CA: i would say thhere are some things better dealt w/ in mainstream fiction

BCH: cmt

CA: so write it yourself

BCH i actually had a story pubd in SH about a trans character ... the alien race where transsexuality exists and it's perceived very differently.

aud again - i think it's wish fulfillment in fsf that people don't deal w/ transition b/c it's hard & uncomfortable. i wonder what it would be like if we as sf writers took on the challenge of writing.

EB: i tend to think most people are about transition or transformation - not necessarily - i know personally as a writer i would be very intimidated to write a trans character in the process of transformation b/c it's not the kind of thing you cwant to get wrong and no matter what you write you know you're going to get it wrong for somebody. it would feel like cultural appropration.

CA; there's no typical trans experience

EB: in writing - what i would say - at this point i have no hesitation writing a char of another race or sexual orientation ... i'm discussing my own cowardice

CA: why are you more intimidated to write a trans than african-american ...

LM: because it's underpepresented

EB: b/c i don't want to write the poster child and get it wrong

JP: i have no problem writing trans characters

EB: i have no problem writing trans characters, just the process b/c i get enough hate mail

...

BCH: at galacticon - sitting at a panel and people talking about what would a third gender look like and i thought how can you guys not recognize all the third gender people around you?

JP: took a long time for people to realize sexuality fluid not binary. people confused about sexuality bisexuality - people confused b/c i'm bi and married to a guy - i look at more people - tough for people to understand that people move across the spectrum.

LM: i have a 3-1/2 year old at home ... i never worried when he was 2 & didn't know gender that he didn't know gender - i never worried about his gender pronoun confusion and i'm still not worried b/c gender is artificial. i never realized to what extent - it's really about - okay that's a cat when he was learning language he called all animals cats.

JP: when my nephew got a little sister he was trying to grok diffs b/w his body

(LQ comment as typing this: or actually social weight attached to gender)

EB: i sseem to recall not being aware of gender except parents

aud (aaron lichtov) - come back - the all stories deal with transition ... that kind of sizzled me. isn't that kind of what plot is.

EB: well it depends. are you writing a 17-book epic fantasy.

aud (aaron again?): if you sort of pause at that for a moment then there's a whole body of work about people who have transitioned or have changed something about their gender or who exist in a gender reality outside the binary but as a person who proposed the panel that annoyed charlie & bc last year - ... i realized that the panel i proposed is not what i envisioned ... this is a great next step ... the title was pushing the envelope ... i don't write fiction ... all i can say is that's not right that's not right but i can't see everything ...what i want is balanced breakfast ... i don't need every story to reflect all my experience ... middling amount of breakfast, i've read maybe 2-3 stories that satisified ... shadowman, sset this house in order, if i think of other ones i'll chime in. ... something in the story about a character with a non-standard gender in conflict with the world and that process and addressing that conflict. whereas Steel Beach however much i enjoyed that thought experiment doesn't address this

... sarah monette ... etc, mostly missed ...

LM: wow we could recreate that panel that pissed everyone off

EB: one particular sentence that's so great - i won't say it because it's a spoiler

aud - the one that makes you throw down the book and say yes

EB: it's the big reveal sentence

aud (F w/ red shirt) - i want to get back to a practical problem - various with lots of representations. ... since we don't have that right now, there is a process where we get to that. eliz said something that i think is important. eliz said she's afraid

CA: in spite of what charlie said that there's no typical transformative / transgender experiences this whole panel seems to rest on the idea that there are some typical and we're missing it. ... but that makes it very hard for whoever writes the first one because they are going to be criticized ....

EB: ideally what happens is that people who are upset about it go write their own response

LM: which is how my science fiction started

CA: can i make a point?

EB: no! grabs bear. rar!

CA: here are a couple. how about a story set in present day someone goes and gets black market hormones and maybe they have magic powers and

JP: turns them into a cockroach. cyber cockroach!

CA: just throwing things out there.

aud: growing wings

CA: chevalier d'eon 18th century was a french spy lived as a woman and was a spy. what if he were actually a time travelling spy for an interdimensional french monarchy. Catalina de rousa. 1595 - was a spanish noblewoman who passed as a man joined an army went to chile & peru killed a dozen men and became a celebrity & was granted the right t owear men's clothing. what if she found something interesting in chile or peru something not of this world. there's a big called ... nun?

LM: this is awesome. i'm done now.

CA: you could have them meet each other!

aud: they fight crime.

JP: future story - body swap.

LM: somebody else - unless to EB you were goin to say something clever?

aud (Annalee Newitz) - transition i think is interesting is if you go from a human to having a gender and the process of being socialized into a gender. i just finished reading Charles Stross Glass House which is interesting b/c it takes place in varley-like universe and character goes into experimental environment where people recreate genders of 20th century & are no longer allowed to switch genders. character prefers to be a man but is put into a 20th century body. and it's actually - that part of the novel is incredibly emotionally arresting in my opinion. b/c it really captures the feeling of being trapped in a gender - not just in a sex but in a gender role - within of course a universe in which switching gender is the norm.

aud (karen f. sylte) - varley isn't right, flewelling not quite right either, and oz wasn't quite right - but we have to give them credit for trying.

other aud - because little girls are heroes.

EB: kick-ass in high heels

aud (karen f sylte) - it's easy for me to critique varley ... but if we fall short we're all going to fall short, we're all going to get criticized. ... he didn't act black enough not authentic. i know that's the whole cultural appropriation thing but i think that's how we understand each other and we have to keep taking shots at understanding each other. ... taught varley to small class in minnesota & it blew their heads off.

EB: corollary - if you take a shot at it and get it right - the mainstream will go wait you got it wrong b/c that's really interesting b/c you're not conforming to their cliches

aud (F w/ purple shirt) - i don't remember gender socializing from my parents i remember it from school - what's your mommie's name, oh now that's your mommy's name pat ...

aud - have you read Mission Child / Maureen McHugh. definitely explores transofrmation - FTM. something else interesting. i don't know if i can think of difficulty of transition that are also by choice. b/c in mission child and in a lot of things in glass house it's forced.

aud - The Warrior Who Carried Life (Geoff Ryman)

aud (F) - culture can be painted in broad strokes but that's not necessarily the way it works & everybody can be diff. experience i found enlightenning. i was invited to participate in a larp. we have a lot of women could you please play a male role b/c we have a lot of women characters. i had no problem stepping into a male role. but monday when it's all over with and i come down those stairs & it's all over with - who played peter strick - wow that guy was really good and (raising hand) it amazed me. i got a lot of anger from fellow actors for betraying / fooling them. i'm not kidding. ... isn't this the science fiction community we all know and love.

LM: alas we're all people.

aud (M) - i hated that book - (Mission Child)

aud (black & green shirt) - purpose of having trans characters - i can't think of a book w/ sexually active trans characters

aud (Ian Hagemann) - Shadow Man (Melissa Scott)

aud - is the purpose so that you as a transsexual or gender queer person can see yourself in the fiction or is the purpose so that we can illustrate the experienc more so that we can change policy and change society

JP: i know when i see a lot of these things i think people are using trans people as shorthand for two things: One "look at how advanced my future is i have trans people" or because the war between what we see in ourselves and what we are. ... i think it's a useful shorthand but it shortchanges the actual experience ....

EB: i really - i dislike the phrase "use transgendered characters for"

JP: i don't like it either but that's what i see

EB: i can only speak for my own work but i'm not going to to utter the three dread words - you know the 3 dread words?

general murmur: "in my novel"

EB: i think as more people become exposed to persons who are trans or othersexed or perform genderfuck they will become part of landscape of people you know.

JP: ... i have relatives who when i was saying i was talking to mone of my transgendered friends - they say you have multiple trans friends?

back-and-forth

JP: most people are different .... fandom / sf ... my sister & i grew up in same household and she has no transgendered people

LM: that she knows

JP: that she knows.

CA: i don't think there are enough people people reading for it to be directed at us ... we need to recruit --

laughter

CA: recruit transpeople to be sf readers ... i thought transamerica was appallingly awful as a work of art and ... but a lot of straight people got something out of it ... my mother really said she learned so much. so i thought oh that's good.

BCH: i liked transamerica b/c the main character wasn't the posterchild for transness - she had such great flaws. ... i was thinking about what you said (aud) - quotes from black youths - no one should be denied their image in art which i thought was a really good idea. it is the job of art to provide what life does not.

LM: that's nice

BCH: both of those were in the my mind so what exemplfiies that - Neil Gaiman's sandman character [name?] ... trans character not major ... nightmare sequence where she's afraid ... rest of characters go off at the end ...

NG: oh i hated that - i said fuck you neil gaiman and if i ever meet him in person that's what i'm going to do.

EB: the invisibles / morrison

she's not only ...

aud (nevenah smith) - woman named norah vincent who wrote self-made man about experiment becoming a man and infiltrating certain very macho men's groups and observing their interactions w/ each other & it was an interesting book b/c - both of us read it - he thought she got it just right and i thought she got it so wrong. -

aud (joe karcezewski) - no, i simply i thought i learned more about myself as a man than from any other book i've ever read.

aud (NS) - it felt very incomplete to me

aud (JK) what i liked about it is that she described the emotional straitjacket and there are very few emotions that you can describe as a man and the biggtest one is anger

aud (F in tie-dye) - more of a two cents comment - goes back to what aaron lichtov said - ... parents pushing into girl scouts but i thought boy scouts were cool so i infiltrated the boy scouts and they were really pissed when they found out i was a girl. it was a big deal they called my parents. about four meetings.

aud (Aaron Lichtov) - again - Bone Dance (Emma Bull) was aseseome

LM: bone dance was great - opened my eyes

aaron - there aren't enough writers out there & i completely agree. therefore part of my audience is to make not just my audience but everybody crave & expect that experience. it's not just the trannies i want everyone to see more gender complexity in the fiction.

... sign came in

LM: we have only five minutes ... but i also really have to pee does someone want to take over for five seconds

aud is that all it takes?

LM: yes

laughter; Lyda runs out briefly

aud (david haseman) - The Left Hand of Darkness which is one of the works we want to look to ... as far as science fiction the thing that pisses me off more than anything else is taking 1950s society and putting it 2000 years in the future.

EB: could be really interesting

guy - it's really depressing. ... i want to encourage authors if it's 200 years and all the gizmos have changed our relationships have changed too - as a person very comfortable with being male i want to be sure that we deal with people in the future - no big deal - it takes all the tension out of the stories

JP: although something else has to become a big deal. one of the problems is that that takes out the tension. we have to have an other. humans are very good about having an other.

guy - it doesn't have to be your genes and your desire

JP: hopefully

EB: one of the things that i think is a lot of fun and gets me in a lot of trouble is telling the story from both points of view - you have these guys othering these guys and these guys on the other side othering the other guys

JP something

EB: yeah you get a dialectic

aud - yeah i wanted to put in another recommendation and then - Louise Marley Terrorists of Irustan - she does to great effect a cross-dressing character. ... sort of what i wondered my question for next year there is a way in which transsexuals, rather than erasing the lines b/w male & female, demonstrates the territories. in self-made man it's very clear that there are boundaries 7 differences.

EB: yes - illuminate boundaries

aud (F) - i know as sf people we want to say that there's no gender etc. but what if there really is gender. ... i would be very curious to hear if being a man & woman are very distinct things. what does it do to our feminism etc

aud (F floor woman) - James Tiptree, Jr.

EB: people get mad

aud (F Rachel in purple shirt)- gender is as real as you make it be.

BC - i think i would rather see more stories that talked about a different place in the process. not that moment of change but much earlier when people are trying to anticipate what might be coming or much later when they reflect on ten years ago this is what happened and now they're reflecting.

LM: nodding. okay - anybody else on the panel w/ last comments?

JP: sleepy.

aud w/ striped shirt - i was thinking about conflict & trying to talk about gender in the future world that can switch. there's an issue in the trans community about gender fluidity versus switching. ... world in which switching is an issue but fluidity is an issue or "no but i'm really a guy"

...

EB ... sort of like my fiet

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