![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
WisCon 30 Panel: Pushing the Envelope
PANEL: Pushing the Envelope
PARTICIPANTS: Jed Hartman, Aaron Lichtov, Joan Haran, Elizabeth Bear, Melissa Scott
DESCRIPTION: Melissa Scott's Shadow Man is an example of the thesis that the most cutting-edge writing/thinking about gender (i.e., about deconstructing the binary sex-gender system) is happening in science fiction, though almost no SF/F out there has pushed our ideas about sex-and-gender as radically as that book did (though some have come close). In his post-W28 livejournal, Jed Hartmann said, "I think the real-world spectrum of gender possibilities is more interesting and broader than most of what's available in SF." Sadly, that appears to be true. How do we push the envelope? How do we effectively clamor for more radical thinking/imagining about sex and gender in SF/F? What can fans do? What can writers do?
NOTES: Shadow Man was the core text of the panel, a fact which Melissa Scott seemed to find a little embarrassing, and the first question asked was: what are the silencing factors that prevent more books like SM from being written?
Melissa had one answer: SM sold very poorly.
The analytic triangle seemed to be desire---politics---performance.
Aaron had a list of aspects of gender: biology, gender assignment, gender expression, sexual orientation, cultural affiliation, relationship structure. And Jed had a list of sexualities that push the envelope (a practice which the panelists agreed is both highly subjective and, if you're doing it right, frightening): queer, poly, kinky, transsexual. So the kind of sf the panel hoped to generate (and I think this was very much a panel about trying to get more of this stuff being written and being read) is sf that rejects the heterosexist, heterocentric, biologically-determinist vanilla monogamist norm and tries to ask different questions and find different answers. It's sf that DOES NOT OTHER, that is interested in exploration instead of exploitation.
Someone (Jed?) pointed out much later in the panel that people in the norm also have sexual orientation and gender, and writing about the transgressive is a way to turn the spotlight back on the normative.
The Left Hand of Darkness was for Melissa Scott the same kind of transformative text that Shadow Man was for some of the panelists.
An audience member asked about the absense of transsexual women as protagonists in sf. This sparked a great deal of discussion about discomfort thresholds and about how much any one book can be expected to do. Also discussion about why male-to-female transsexuals tend to get scapegoated and Othered. The answer is relatively obvious, but still bears repeating: it is still true that "male" is a higher status label than "female," and therefore normative society thinks it "understands" women who want to be men. Because OBVIOUSLY any woman in her right mind would want to be a man. [/sarcasm] But a man wanting to be a woman ... that's deeply disruptive.
It is also true that discomfort is useful, and that it's better to confront it than to avoid it. But it's hard to do.
Melissa talked a little bit about the way in which writing as she does very deeply within sf conventions buys her time for the transgressive discussion of gender.
There was also a question about why sf has to engage with these problems, why we can't just write about utopias in which they've been "solved." (I am all about the sarcastic quote markes this morning.) There were several different answers.
1. That would be boring.
2. Human social interactions are always going to be complicated; if it isn't one set of factors, it will be another.
3. sf is always, in its dark and secret heart, about now ("now" being the author's subjective space-time coordinates in the process of writing the book).
Melissa pointed out that there is also room for books (quoting a librarian talking about Tony Hillerman's books) in which the underdog wins.
This panel left me with two knottily theoretical thoughts:
1. people who deploy "color-blind casting" and propose writing sf in which gender/sexuality "doesn't matter" are people who don't want to give up their privileges. Because you only deny the importance of inequality if you're the dog on top. [ETA: clarification here.]
2. personal --- political is one axis. But public --- private is also an axis. They aren't the same. (This was part of a conversation in the bar afterwards, and I can't remember the context. But it still feels important.)
PARTICIPANTS: Jed Hartman, Aaron Lichtov, Joan Haran, Elizabeth Bear, Melissa Scott
DESCRIPTION: Melissa Scott's Shadow Man is an example of the thesis that the most cutting-edge writing/thinking about gender (i.e., about deconstructing the binary sex-gender system) is happening in science fiction, though almost no SF/F out there has pushed our ideas about sex-and-gender as radically as that book did (though some have come close). In his post-W28 livejournal, Jed Hartmann said, "I think the real-world spectrum of gender possibilities is more interesting and broader than most of what's available in SF." Sadly, that appears to be true. How do we push the envelope? How do we effectively clamor for more radical thinking/imagining about sex and gender in SF/F? What can fans do? What can writers do?
NOTES: Shadow Man was the core text of the panel, a fact which Melissa Scott seemed to find a little embarrassing, and the first question asked was: what are the silencing factors that prevent more books like SM from being written?
Melissa had one answer: SM sold very poorly.
The analytic triangle seemed to be desire---politics---performance.
Aaron had a list of aspects of gender: biology, gender assignment, gender expression, sexual orientation, cultural affiliation, relationship structure. And Jed had a list of sexualities that push the envelope (a practice which the panelists agreed is both highly subjective and, if you're doing it right, frightening): queer, poly, kinky, transsexual. So the kind of sf the panel hoped to generate (and I think this was very much a panel about trying to get more of this stuff being written and being read) is sf that rejects the heterosexist, heterocentric, biologically-determinist vanilla monogamist norm and tries to ask different questions and find different answers. It's sf that DOES NOT OTHER, that is interested in exploration instead of exploitation.
Someone (Jed?) pointed out much later in the panel that people in the norm also have sexual orientation and gender, and writing about the transgressive is a way to turn the spotlight back on the normative.
The Left Hand of Darkness was for Melissa Scott the same kind of transformative text that Shadow Man was for some of the panelists.
An audience member asked about the absense of transsexual women as protagonists in sf. This sparked a great deal of discussion about discomfort thresholds and about how much any one book can be expected to do. Also discussion about why male-to-female transsexuals tend to get scapegoated and Othered. The answer is relatively obvious, but still bears repeating: it is still true that "male" is a higher status label than "female," and therefore normative society thinks it "understands" women who want to be men. Because OBVIOUSLY any woman in her right mind would want to be a man. [/sarcasm] But a man wanting to be a woman ... that's deeply disruptive.
It is also true that discomfort is useful, and that it's better to confront it than to avoid it. But it's hard to do.
Melissa talked a little bit about the way in which writing as she does very deeply within sf conventions buys her time for the transgressive discussion of gender.
There was also a question about why sf has to engage with these problems, why we can't just write about utopias in which they've been "solved." (I am all about the sarcastic quote markes this morning.) There were several different answers.
1. That would be boring.
2. Human social interactions are always going to be complicated; if it isn't one set of factors, it will be another.
3. sf is always, in its dark and secret heart, about now ("now" being the author's subjective space-time coordinates in the process of writing the book).
Melissa pointed out that there is also room for books (quoting a librarian talking about Tony Hillerman's books) in which the underdog wins.
This panel left me with two knottily theoretical thoughts:
1. people who deploy "color-blind casting" and propose writing sf in which gender/sexuality "doesn't matter" are people who don't want to give up their privileges. Because you only deny the importance of inequality if you're the dog on top. [ETA: clarification here.]
2. personal --- political is one axis. But public --- private is also an axis. They aren't the same. (This was part of a conversation in the bar afterwards, and I can't remember the context. But it still feels important.)