(Ugh, the comment I was going to post deleted itself. I seriously need a session saver. Trying to reproduce the same text now.)
I recommend the Electric Tales of Pikachu too if you haven't read it already.
Yes, Red would make a model trans person. Zie would be trans, but Red isn't likely to focus on that and instead focus on things normal people of hir world would focus on. One problem with many LGBTQ works is that they tend to overfocus on the characters being "queer" and this overshadows everything else, reducing the characters into symbols and labels when it was exactly the thing they should be preventing. If LGBTQ people are just ordinary people who deserve the same rights as other ordinary people, then they should be presented as ordinary people with their sexuality on the same level as, say, preference for music. It would be accurate and necessary to bring up all the troubles of being queer in an oppressive society, but it shouldn't take all the place. There should be rooms to humanise the characters so that non-LGBTQ people can associate with them, to see the characters as same human beings as they are.
I see Silver as "I don't see myself as a boy or a girl" as opposed to the trans-N's "I am a boy or a girl (but mostly I want to be a woman)." It's not exactly a trans, but it's a gender queer by current standards. But I can totally see that you see him as "normal" as in he sees himself as a boy and is a boy. But to me he doesn't see himself as either. And he doesn't think too much about it.
I know that "the third gender" is an uncomfortable term. Gender identity is a spectrum, so theorically there could be infinite genders. But I don't know a better term, and in context I named two genders so Red is the third gender, numerically speaking.
(Don't worry, I'm also into gender issues because I'm a Questioning. But our views might still clash eventually.)
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Date: 2012-01-03 05:50 pm (UTC)I recommend the Electric Tales of Pikachu too if you haven't read it already.
Yes, Red would make a model trans person. Zie would be trans, but Red isn't likely to focus on that and instead focus on things normal people of hir world would focus on. One problem with many LGBTQ works is that they tend to overfocus on the characters being "queer" and this overshadows everything else, reducing the characters into symbols and labels when it was exactly the thing they should be preventing. If LGBTQ people are just ordinary people who deserve the same rights as other ordinary people, then they should be presented as ordinary people with their sexuality on the same level as, say, preference for music. It would be accurate and necessary to bring up all the troubles of being queer in an oppressive society, but it shouldn't take all the place. There should be rooms to humanise the characters so that non-LGBTQ people can associate with them, to see the characters as same human beings as they are.
I see Silver as "I don't see myself as a boy or a girl" as opposed to the trans-N's "I am a boy or a girl (but mostly I want to be a woman)." It's not exactly a trans, but it's a gender queer by current standards. But I can totally see that you see him as "normal" as in he sees himself as a boy and is a boy. But to me he doesn't see himself as either. And he doesn't think too much about it.
I know that "the third gender" is an uncomfortable term. Gender identity is a spectrum, so theorically there could be infinite genders. But I don't know a better term, and in context I named two genders so Red is the third gender, numerically speaking.
(Don't worry, I'm also into gender issues because I'm a Questioning. But our views might still clash eventually.)