Wiscon Panel notes: Transsexuality as Trope

[firecat]

Transsexuality as Trope
Feminism, Sex, and Gender track
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, BC Holmes, Jennifer Pelland

bcholmes mostly speaks for me in her report about this panel. So I'm just listing here some stories/books mentioned in the panel that sounded interesting.


Varley story dealing with trans process, maybe in Blue Champagne eta: "Options," sez james_nicoll

Charlie Stross Glass House includes notion of transitioning from being "human" to being gendered. The transition is not entirely consensual.

Grant Morrison Invisibles comic book series

Norah Vincent, Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey into Manhood and Back is a controversial book by a journalist who passed as a man to report on male culture and the psychology of men

Comments

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Varley story dealing with trans process, maybe in Blue Champagne

Options, I think.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Any discussion of Lois McMaster Bujold's A Civil Campaign?

[tedesson.livejournal.com]

I just finished reading "The Mythology of Self-Imitation in Passing: Race, Gender, and Politics" by Wendy Doniger (University of Chicago)

http://marty-center.uchicago.edu/webforum/122004/commentary.shtml

It's an excerpt from her book The Woman Who Pretended To Be Who She Was (Oxford University Press, 2004).

Someone needs to write a screen play about d'Eon, which would then be filmed once with John Malkovich in the title role, and once with Scarlett Johanssen.