[ SECRET POST #2946 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2946 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 038 secrets from Secret Submission Post #421.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

07. http://i.imgur.com/RIMq9KR.png

Transcript by OP

[fscom]

I had to stop reading this book only a few chapters in. I was really bothered by every man in it getting misgendered. (I'm a trans man. It's not some farfetched science fiction thing to me, it's my everyday life.)

[(Anonymous)]

I'm sorry, that sucks.

Although from what I've read about the book, my sense is that it was more of a hypothetical science fiction-y thing than anything else? Like in Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, where the gender stuff is part of a larger thematic examination of gender and sexuality?

[(Anonymous)]

That's what's happening in the book, yes, but my understanding was that it's still super uncomfortable for OP because the word 'she' is being used in narration about guys, even though they know it's for scifi purposes.

OP: that sucks a lot, I'm sorry. It's a great book but your own mental health and comfort have to come first. If you're interested in this kind of thinky new wave scifi, you should definitely check out Spin State by Chris Moriarty. It has some of the same awesome philosophical and worldbuilding richness, without that particular gender thing going on.

[(Anonymous)]

That's not an unreasonable problem to have at all. "Male as default" is a problem that most women have, therefore it's interesting to read a book with the opposite. "Misgendering men as women" is a particular problem many trans men (and some cis men) have, so the premise isn't interesting or novel to you at all.

[(Anonymous)]

I found "she/her" as default an odd choice given that we know the narrator's culture doesn't have "gender" anymore and that the language they're speaking is not really English, but some unnamed fictional language that presumably has only one pronoun which is gender-neutral. So "she" is really a fictionalized translation convention, and I don't think the best one for the author to choose if she wanted to show that the narrator defaults to genderblindness. It made me wonder if the author was one of those people who nitpick about how "they" can't be singular.

[sarillia]

That does sound like an odd choice.

[(Anonymous)]

... I would also think it was weird if "he" was the default pronoun (and more annoying), by the way.

[lb_lee]

This is fascinating to me, because I had a similar linguistics headache with one of my series. (The language the characters speak has basically three sets of pronouns: I/we, you/y'all, it/they, and often whether it's singular or plural is skipped.) I ended up even having to make a meta post on it, explaining that I was often inserting gender, because using 'it' all the time would come off as UBER-dehumanizing and creepy, depending on what was going on in the story.

Fictional translation woes, man.

--Rogan

[(Anonymous)]

It made me wonder if the author was one of those people who nitpick about how "they" can't be singular.

"'They' was a distinct possibility, but while I am a huge supporter of singular 'they' in general, it didn’t feel right doing that for an entire novel. (I’m hoping to see someone pull that off, though!)" -- http://www.fantasybookreview.co.uk/interview/2014/ann-leckie/

[ariakas]

How is it misgendering, though, if the narrator tries to pick up on social cues (something she struggles with, since gender doesn't exist in her society) to determine the speaker's gender and always refers to them by the correct one in their language? She isn't saying "you're a woman because that's what you look like to me" - the pronoun "he" doesn't exist in her language. When she's speaking their language, the narrator makes repeatedly clear that she always tries to use the right pronoun and, if corrected, switches to the correct one.

Of course if you quit a couple of chapters in, I realize that it's possible you missed that.

[cbrachyrhynchos]

And the Raadchai are all Raadchai gendered. There's no indication that Seivarden (the only Raadchai whose physical sex is described as male) isn't completely comfortable with her lack of a gender role in her culture.

[likeadeuce]

I know FS posters like the assumption that 'hdu critize this supposedly progressive thing?' Is the only response they will receive but I feel like there was actually a lot of discussion about this aspect of the book, and quite a bit of criticism from trans* and genderqueer people for just this reason. So a lot of people had similar feelings, OP, it's not just you.

[(Anonymous)]

did a tumblrina write this book or?

[(Anonymous)]

Oh for fuck's sake, no. If anything, a tumblrina wrote the secret.

[(Anonymous)]

I understand where you're coming from, but at the same time, if someone comes from a culture where gender cues are completely different -- or completely absent -- then...what do you expect them to do? It's gonna be tough for them to always get "man" and "woman" correct if they're in a different society.

Also, the main character in this book understands the misgendering problem, so she tries not to use a pronoun until she gets a cue. And when she does misgender, she corrects herself immediately.

[esteefee]

I hear you, OP. There was definitely, too, almost a sense of...I want to call it disdain, from the narrator, for these silly gendered people with their silly gender identity preferences. It wasn't that that the narrator wasn't trying to make the assessment, but really, she was a brilliant AI capable of processing a zillion things a second, so I really just never bought that it was as difficult as all that to pick up on the necessary social cues to gender the people she came in contact with.

The whole thing struck me as a precious, distracting affectation on the writer's part that didn't do much to teach whatever lesson the writer wanted to.

[(Anonymous)]

She was an AI, but she was an AI designed to serve a particular culture. And one of the major plot points was that she was programmed to do certain things without her knowledge.

I could see her being programmed with a particular cultural identity. I mean, the Radchaai would WANT ships an ancillaries to be programmed that way, I'd think. She'd have less trouble seeing past that ID than regular humans, but she'd still have some trouble.

[cbrachyrhynchos]

To my memory the only person Breq misgenders is the doctor, who's not native to the planet and doesn't present the clothing cues that Breq uses elsewhere on that planet. (It's also possible that the doctor is objecting because he misgenders Seivarden as a man.) One of the points made early on is that any system of assigning gender to people (or things, if we're going to expand our linguistics beyond English) is arbitrary and inconsistent. It's an insoluble problem. No matter how much data you collect, or how many computing cycles you throw at the problem, your best guess is going to be wrong some of the time. You can ask for preferred forms of address in advance, or apologize and correct. Breq almost always does the latter.

But making most of the characters Radchai-gendered allows for multiple readings of some of the traditionally gendered plot lines of both novels, especially in the second novel that deals with intimate partner violence, privilege, and sexual abuse. Awn could be a classic woman in the refrigerator, but there's no reason to assume that Awn is, or would be a woman, and the relationship isn't exactly romantic. Both Awn's lover and Breq offer clientage and protection to Awn's sister, a traditionally masculine act, but we have no reason to assume either are men. The sister rejects both offers because of the sexual subtext, which is also traditionally gendered. Although we're told Seivarden's physical sex, there's no indication that she identifies as anything other than formerly upper-class Radchai, and she's possibly having a crush on Breq. (And it's hard to get more gendered than the cyborg space marine.)

[(Anonymous)]

I remember talking in the aughts about moving to a genderless society. There were lots of discussions about it among the LGBTQ crowd, and lots of talk about how it would be more just than our current society, where the construct of gender seems to separate us all.

Ten years later, the idea of a genderless society is offensive.

I wonder if Ann Leckie is a product of those types of conversations and didn't realize things had changed. I didn't realize it until recently.

[were_lemur]

It's funny -- the gender thing was THE THING that everybody talked about in regard to Ancillary Justice, but to me it read as a bit gimmicky. In general, I liked the book as a space opera with an interesting main character and society, but the gender thing was the thing I found least interesting.

[(Anonymous)]

The amount of people who miss the point of the female pronouns is staggering. It's a translation convention - when Radchaai say "she", they aren't saying she. They aren't speaking English. They're using a non-gendered pronoun that's "translated" for us as she (god only knows why "they" isn't good enough, but that's beside the point.)

OP, you are the only one misgendering here. The only person in the first few chapters who is known to be biologically male and referred to by female pronouns is Seivarden - but Seivarden is not a man. You'd think someone who is trans would understand genitals =/= gender. The reader is basically bashed over the head with the fact Radchaai don't give a single toss about genders and have no gendered pronouns in their language, so saying that any Radchaai is being misgendered is an incredible display of cissexism. You are literally saying: if they have a penis they're a man so using "she" when referring to them is wrong - completely ignoring what Seivarden's actual feelings on the matter are (hint, despite being referred to as "she" by pretty much everyone in the books, they don't object or even care. Because they're not being misgendered.) Whenever Breq actually misgenders someone it's quickly pointed out, corrected and apologised for.

I'm sorry about what you're going through OP, people misgendering you is awful. But you're projecting so hard you've completely missed the point.

[(Anonymous)]

It sure would have helped if you'd bothered to read far enough to realize you were incorrect in your assumption that the "man" in question was being misgendered, eh.

OT question: Should I read this?

[(Anonymous)]

OT, but: Do you think I would enjoy reading this book if I'm interested in how it works with gender/pronouns/language but can't stand space-faring scifi/military scifi?

[(Anonymous)]

I think if she had gone with "he", the readers would've assumed everyone in the books were male, misgendering them all. So I feel it was a good choice.