On not revealing gender in fiction

[firecat]

"Post-Binary Gender in SF: Writing Without Revealing Gender" by Alex Dally Macfarlane

Alex says, "I like and dislike this" and gives good reasons why.

But the main reason I'm posting it is that it brought back a high school memory for me. We were assigned to write a short story. I wrote a science fiction story in the first person. The story ended with flirting between my protagonist, who was female, and another character, who was male. I wasn't trying to hide anyone's gender in the story, but the teacher assumed that my protagonist was male and so was "concerned" that I had written a story with Teh Gay in it. When I said that the character was female the teacher said I should make that more clear. I identified as het cis female at the time and I did not understand why the teacher thought my protagonist was male. But apparently characters who don't do explicitly girly things are male by default. Especially if they are in space exploration stories.

Comments

[flarenut]

Because we live in an alternate universe where Ursula LeGuin never wrote anything? It really is kinda amazing how much the "unmarked=male" default still holds. (There was also an interesting discussion of this partway through the enormous hugo-nomination discussion thread at making light, where the jerkwads couldn't conceive of anyone not male being in a story unless there was some plot or thematic reason for it.)

[firecat]

Agh. Right. And apparently in the mind of my female teacher, "unmarked = male" was even stronger than "first person protagonist written by a girl = possibly not male".