So much fail
Jan. 2nd, 2012 02:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettUgh. Things I am kicking myself for not having been aware of, and passing on for those of you as are also likely to care. :-(
kaberettUgh. Things I am kicking myself for not having been aware of, and passing on for those of you as are also likely to care. :-(
long comment is long
Date: 2012-01-03 12:23 pm (UTC)Accurate science oh heavens yes! One of the things that really makes me furious is that Bujold is regularly dismissed as "just" writing space opera, even though plenty of male authors who take far less care about scientific accuracy are automatically classified as hard SF, and gah.
I definitely think it's a step forward that there are non-binary characters (plural, and so much love for that plural) and disabled characters at all, and they are so much less faily than they could be. To me the biggest intersectionality problem is the way that she does world-building based on fairly obvious ethnic stereotypes, some of which look a bit orientialist from here.
I am very ambivalent about Miles as a disabled character, but he is the protagonist and he does avoid the most obnoxious cliches and stereotypes, and that goes a long way. I also very much love the stuff she does with MH in the later books. But in both the physical and the mental cases I'm speaking as an abled reader, and my analysis is fairly superficial.
The thing about Bel is that, well, I actually like Bel very much as a character. Bel is in some ways more like me than pretty much any binary gendered fictional character, certainly more so than most women including the liberated sort, and more than unmarked default cis male characters. I don't like the term hermaphrodite, and I don't like the pronoun choice; sure, it's explained in-story, but Bujold still made the choice to make it Bel's preferred pronoun when she is writing in English in a real world where it has been used to oppress lots of gender variant people. The big thing that I don't like about Bel is the sudden appearance of stereotypical femininity when Bel is being sexual (eg trying to seduce Miles), even though the binary gendered women in the book aren't particularly stereotypical as sexual beings!
Also, Dono. I was going to comment on your post with brief notes about what you were reading last year, but this is a better place for it. I'm surprised you thought ACC handled trans issues because I, as a cis woman, felt really uncomfortable about the whole Dono arc. As with Bel, it's nice to have a trans character at all, and it's nice that said trans character stays well away from some of the worst stereotypes (the fact that it's about a trans man is already a very good start). But to me it felt like appropriating / trivializing trans narratives in order to make a point about sexism in the binary gendered world. Again, it's appealing to its core audience of privileged cis women who might indeed fantasize about magically switching to male and not having to deal with bothersome sexism any more. This impression was reinforced when I read that that part of the story was based on the experiences of a cis female friend of Bujold's who went to a drag workshop and had an awesome time being treated respectfully when in male drag. I mean, that's cool and all, but it bothered me as a depiction of actually transitioning.
So, ok, I am very much the sort of "typical" Bujold reader I'm complaining about here: I am privileged to live in a situation where I have a vocabulary for noodling about not really having a very strong gender identity, and not get any real grief for that, but at the same time I'm pretty much content being socially and somatically female, so I am not at all in a good position to assess literary portrayals of non-binary, genderqueer and trans characters!
Re: long comment is long
Date: 2012-01-05 06:02 am (UTC)I'm really, really hacked off about the lingering descriptions of Miles' body with which it's apparently necessary to start each book he features in.
[actually this tab has been open all day so have some bulletpoints]
- yes, very poor authorial choices about hermaphrodite, "it", etc, but I am still sufficiently starved for that kind of character that willing to forgive (hopefully in 10 years' time I'll look back & be appalled)
- Dono: yeah, not perfect, and yeah, I should maybe go back and reread (but not right now), and wow I hadn't come across that back story and it's really problematic... but honestly I felt it was a much better portrayal of trans* characters than we normally get in SFF, it was something I could in part relate to, it didn't seem TOTALLY OBVIOUSLY WRONG, which... yeah, better than expected. my notes in the spreadsheet were v much intended for self - when I started this off I didn't expect to share them - so they are rather more shorthandy and less elaborate than tehy would be otherwise. Also I suspect I am just really envious of Betan technology.
Might come back to all of this more later when I am less woefully attention-spanned and insomniac. Sorry for disjointedness, but didn't want to leave this awesome thought-provoking comment without any response :-(
(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-05 11:25 am (UTC)I hope this isn't coming across as one of those internet arguments where there's a competition to be more outraged than thou about some authorial imperfection. I don't at all think you're wrong to appreciate the good things about Miles, Bel and Dono being present; I likewise appreciate them being there at all, being characters in their own right and not just there to teach the normative majority a Special Life Lesson.
I got overexcited about the surgically created nutes in Ian McDonald's River of Gods, even though if I put my political analysis hat on, I think there's a lot wrong with the way that book handles gender variance (not to mention that it's yet another European writing about exotic India). So in some ways yes, I know how you feel about Bel. And envious of Betan technology, I can't even begin to emphasise sufficiently how much I agree with you there!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-05 11:56 am (UTC)It seems very often the case there is a novel is famous for writing a strong, sympathetic character from group X, which was an incredibly, incredibly positive role model compared to the majority of previous fiction, which tended to show people from group X as non-existant, as abberations, as inherently inferior and/or as villains.
But that at the same time, the portrayal of the character is actually offensively ignorant compared to the modern standards.
I think people often go through the same sort of revelation as they get older: a story they loved when they were younger for doing P, Q and R well they now are revolted by by how badly it handled X, Y and Z, which they'd never thought about when they were younger. (As in "this story has been visited by the 'suck fairy' or 'racism fairy' who added racism to the story since I last read it.)
It's difficult to deal with because we automatically want to say "this does this well" or "this does this badly", and so you have people getting polarised: people who happened to be exposed to the positive aspects first get more and more defensive about how it's good, and people who happen to be exposed to the negative aspects first get more and more critical. (Congratulations to Alex and Liv for NOT doing this, not that I'd expect it.)
And it can be very controvertial to consider whether the author "should" have been able to do better.
It seems likely this is the case with Dono. It's incredibly, incredibly uplifting to see a trans character who is, well, awesome (and there are practically none other AT ALL) and Bujold does very well by not shying away from it. But (although I don't know enough to speak authoritatively) it seems likely that several things about him (the assumption that it's possible to choose a gender? the assumption that she/he remains attracted to the opposite sex?) while possible, are sort of ignorant of real-life transsexuality, and (I guess) some people may find very offensive, even though I don't _want_ to dwell on the ways an awesome character may fall short..?
(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-05 01:46 pm (UTC)As for changes in sexuality... no, that's pretty common (on the other hand, so is sexuality remaining static!). My experience is very much that my sexuality is fluid depending on what I'm doing with HRT at the time (I thus far have asexual, pansexual and MAAAAAAAAAAAANLY MEN covered), and I know other trans* people with the same experience, so I was actually totally fine with that.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-05 01:43 pm (UTC)