Interview in OUT
Apr. 5th, 2008 08:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adelaideseanDan Rubinstein of OUT magazine recently interviewed me for their transgender issue. Why? Because Saturn Returns features a male character "reborn" into a woman body, and the third book plays with his gender even more overtly. The piece didn't make the print version, alas, but has appeared on-line.
Here's the link to Dan's final version, and below the cut is the full interview, which runs over two thousand words.
1) In the past decade, how do you feel gender politics have changed in sci-fi? Has it evolved? How so?
I can't speak for all SF, but I know that my own writing has been thoroughly influenced by Japanime. Shows like Ghost in the Shell and Last Exile, and Studio Ghibli's recent adaptation of Ursula Le Guin's Earths books, Gedosenki, feature characters that, to our Western eyes, seem profoundly ambiguous in a gender sense. Some people are confused or confronted by that, but I and lots of other viewers have found such characters all the more interesting for that very reason. And anyone writing seriously about the future--in which all aspects of human life and culture must be examined, alongside technology and science, to see how they might change--must come up against this issue at some point. It's one thing to talk blithely bout life extension, increasing intelligence or physical fitness, freedom from disease, etc--but to ignore the gender flexibility that will inevitably come from a greater understanding of our own bodies would be irresponsible, or at least a failure of imagination. Science fiction, on the whole, is in my opinion, the only genre that can fully explore both the question and the many, many available answers.
Anyway, to answer your question, I think the rise of the New Space Opera has given SF writers a new venue in which to explore this issue. Formerly, I suppose, it might have fallen more readily under the Mundane umbrella--near-future fiction, set right here on Earth. Now, thanks to writers like Iain M Banks, transgender characters own the galaxy.
2) Are there any events or scientific breakthroughs that have occurred lately that have influenced your latest book?
Not really. Saturn Returns is set 877,000 years from now, so what's happening in the biosciences now bears little relevance to the events in the book. But I've been following social developments--like the rise of the asex movement--with great interest. I take these and other developments as a very positive sign.
3) What inspired you to address this as a topic?
Again, I can't speak for most people, but gender issues have fascinated me all my life. Doesn't every man wonder what it would be like to be a woman--and vice versa? The cage of gender is one I've not exactly railed at, but I've often wished I could change it at will, if only to see what life is like on the "other side". I've also wished sometimes for the ability to turn off or on certain aspects of sexuality. Most people, I guess, would think immediately of drugs like Viagra that allow men to have sex more ably, but I'm talking about turning desire off, not on--desire for a particular person or gender, or desire in general, because it can be distracting sometimes. Possessing greater control--possessing choice--over this aspect of life, like health and longevity, could only make us happier, saner people, I'm sure.
So in this series I decided it was time to explore the topic more intimately. Sex and sexuality are themes I've touched on before, but never so overtly because they are hard to write about. That's the challenge I felt ready to face at the moment. Every time I hit a wall in that area--the thoughts "Will anyone want to read this?" "Can I possibly write well about this?" or especially "Am I going too far?"--I forced myself to press on. Meeting and overcoming internal blocks is half the battle with writing. I would never know what I was capable of if I didn't push myself, hard.
4) What issues does your character face when he's reborn as a woman? Any challenges?
Imre Bergamasc occupies what we would consider a fairly masculine role in his society--leader of a band of mercenaries and political aspects who has until now presented himself as "male". On paper, he's an action hero. (That he looks like a character lifted straight from a Japanime show, though, is a clue that what passes for "male" in his world is not the same as that of present-day movies and TV shows.) When he wakes as a partial amnesiac in the body of a woman, his quest to return the gender he finds most familiar mirrors the rediscovery of his self. He's not unhappy in his new body because it's female; he's unhappy because he no longer looks like himself.
His journey back to the way he wants to be is a complex one--of course, or there'd be no story!--because there are multiple versions of himself out there with whom he has no contact, and which he initially regards as his "true" self, but from which he later feels alienated. Eventually (in the book I'm writing at the moment, the third in the series) he comes to question his usual gender and consider a move back to female, or elsewhere. I've always known exactly where Imre would end up; getting him there is a large part of the fun.
5) Did you find it easy or hard to write a character like that? Did you take any cues from existing characters or real life personalities as inspiration for him (and later, her)? Or maybe you built upon other characters in your earlier works?
I've never written a character like Imre Bergamasc before. Letting him find his own voice has been a joy for me, and I've sought inspiration for that voice in sources not usually associated with space opera. Gothic literature is one such source--a veritable cavalcade of confused, tortured souls obsessed with bodies, incest, trasngression, and the like. Then there's the music of electronic pioneer Gary Numan--whose lyrics literally provide the words for another character in the book. But ultimately, as with most characters, Imre has my voice--he shares many of my anxieties and curiosities about gender and sex, and although I have yet to manifest any of them the way he does, I do feel that he comes from a place in me that rarely gets to show itself. Letting that part of me free has been liberating.
For instance, very early in the novel, there's a scene where Imre, in his new and unfamiliar female body, masturbates. To me, that seemed an obvious move, and it's one I discovered (after asking around) that most of my male friends would also try. I grew up in the 1980s, the era of bad gender-swap movies, and it was an immense relief to be able to explore an issue that I had always wondered about as a teenager. :-)
6) Now that real technology has advanced so far in the past 50 years, (in some cases, catching up to what was once considered sci-fi of the past -- cell phones, virtual worlds, etc) do you feel these kinds of "internal" and philosophical frontiers (cloning/gender/memory/perception) are becoming more poignant?
I think we as a culture are beginning to realise that we are limited solely by our imagination. We have been making our dreams (and some nightmares) reality for long enough now that to have sunk in. So the issue of what we can do is becoming less important for some writers than how we feel about it when it happens. I'm heartened by the mainstream's recent embrace of science fiction tropes (time travel, cloning for body parts, and post-apocalyptic landscapes, to name just three) because it shows that our culture is ready to start internalising some of the hypotheticals that have been bouncing around in SF for years. I hope that technologically-blurred gender lines will be something else the mainstream looks at soon.
7) Is there anything that a real transgendered person could learn from your character's struggle, as far as learning about identity goes?
I would hesitate to claim that, having experienced life as a transgendered person only secondhand. That said, I hope that my portrayal of world in which a person's interior is considered more important than their exterior is a positive one. Imre's former companions--including a lover--treat him no differently as female as they did male, and he expects the same things from himself too, regardless of gender. His transformation from female to male is accepted as uncontroversial--and future transformations are regarded the same way.
There's a clear distinction in this world between sex and gender. Imre is a masculine character in a female body. He retains the masculine pronoun throughout. That he has a female body in no way changes the person he is, within that body.
Changing gender in this world is no longer a political statement, or a declaration of identity. Neither is it as easy as changing clothes or hairstyles. It's more like having cosmetic surgery.
That's not to say that I believe that the body has no influence on the mind. They are intimately connected in our society, and will likely remain that way in the foreseeable future. I simply wanted to present a case in which they might not be so firmly connected. That is the principle thing I'm hoping to bring to this debate. Imre is a man in a woman's body, but he never once ascribes the changes in his character to any subtle "femininity" he might have inherited with that form. The world allows him to be who he is, regardless of what he looks like. His role in that society depends on his character, not his chromosomes.
8) Why do you think we don't see more transgendered people in other mediums of sci-fi (gaming, film)?
That's a curly question. Is it the audience or is it the producers of the media? Probably a little of both. I have a friend who works in the computer game industry, a woman, and she has occasionally expressed frustration at the alpha male mentality endemic in the industry. Women must be large-breasted and sexually available for the hero; men must be square-jawed and hypermasculine in all things. The persistence of this stereotype is justified by the need to satisfy the appetites of teenage boys and young men, who make up the vast majority of game players. But has anyone tried to add a little gender-blurriness to see what happens? In the context of a good story--something many games lack--much can be accommodated, I'm sure. The industry should be more flexible and have more faith in its audience.
9) What do you think the social and political landscape of gender politics and identity will be like in 50 years? 100 years?
That's a very difficult question to answer. You and I both live in countries that fail to recognise gay marriages--something I find utterly incomprehensible in this day and age. I hope this situation will be turned around soon, but who really knows what the future holds? The steep rise of conservative values in the last decade took me by surprise, and although I hope the pendulum is swinging back here in Australia, it's a little too early to tell. Society is so divided, and will probably remain so as world population rises and resources are stretched thinner. I don't have a lot of confidence that broader social issues will be high on the agenda when crops are failing and icecaps are melting.
That said, I have a lot of faith in the current generation, who are growing up in a world where gender issues can be openly discussed among friends or on line, or even in the classroom. I think that's laying important groundwork for the world of the future. One day, gender reassignment procedures will be simpler, cheaper and (I hope) less controversial. People like me might be able to see what life is like in a different body. That has to make us better people, and our society healthier. So there's hope for the future, too. I'm looking forward to it.
10) Is there anything else you'd like to add? Feel free to vent!
Ha! Where to stop? :-)
I'll just say that my decision to make Imre's transformation non-political is itself a potentially political statement. For many people, this is a very real and a profoundly traumatic situation, and I would never want them to think that I am trivialising their feelings or experiences. These are important issues to share and discuss, and I hope only that I've added something new to the debate, in a small way--that a future might exist in which we are liberated from a present-day anxieties, so people can be who they want to be, how they want to be, and they will be judged for the former, not the latter.
I'm also aware that I'm writing from what might seem to be a privileged position, being a married white male in city famous for its churches (and its gruesome murders, but that's another story). There's no value in claiming first-hand experience at this particular issue. But I do have gay friends, of both gender. I have experienced desire for, fantasised about, and kissed men. In that sense, I think I'm completely normal. The difference between what society regards as normal in the ideal and what actually passes for it in the real world is fascinating to explore, and I am very pleased that I can write about this issue in a way that doesn't immediately brand it as being anything other than it is.
Icon courtesy of Nick Stathopoulos.
Here's the link to Dan's final version, and below the cut is the full interview, which runs over two thousand words.
1) In the past decade, how do you feel gender politics have changed in sci-fi? Has it evolved? How so?
I can't speak for all SF, but I know that my own writing has been thoroughly influenced by Japanime. Shows like Ghost in the Shell and Last Exile, and Studio Ghibli's recent adaptation of Ursula Le Guin's Earths books, Gedosenki, feature characters that, to our Western eyes, seem profoundly ambiguous in a gender sense. Some people are confused or confronted by that, but I and lots of other viewers have found such characters all the more interesting for that very reason. And anyone writing seriously about the future--in which all aspects of human life and culture must be examined, alongside technology and science, to see how they might change--must come up against this issue at some point. It's one thing to talk blithely bout life extension, increasing intelligence or physical fitness, freedom from disease, etc--but to ignore the gender flexibility that will inevitably come from a greater understanding of our own bodies would be irresponsible, or at least a failure of imagination. Science fiction, on the whole, is in my opinion, the only genre that can fully explore both the question and the many, many available answers.
Anyway, to answer your question, I think the rise of the New Space Opera has given SF writers a new venue in which to explore this issue. Formerly, I suppose, it might have fallen more readily under the Mundane umbrella--near-future fiction, set right here on Earth. Now, thanks to writers like Iain M Banks, transgender characters own the galaxy.
2) Are there any events or scientific breakthroughs that have occurred lately that have influenced your latest book?
Not really. Saturn Returns is set 877,000 years from now, so what's happening in the biosciences now bears little relevance to the events in the book. But I've been following social developments--like the rise of the asex movement--with great interest. I take these and other developments as a very positive sign.
3) What inspired you to address this as a topic?
Again, I can't speak for most people, but gender issues have fascinated me all my life. Doesn't every man wonder what it would be like to be a woman--and vice versa? The cage of gender is one I've not exactly railed at, but I've often wished I could change it at will, if only to see what life is like on the "other side". I've also wished sometimes for the ability to turn off or on certain aspects of sexuality. Most people, I guess, would think immediately of drugs like Viagra that allow men to have sex more ably, but I'm talking about turning desire off, not on--desire for a particular person or gender, or desire in general, because it can be distracting sometimes. Possessing greater control--possessing choice--over this aspect of life, like health and longevity, could only make us happier, saner people, I'm sure.
So in this series I decided it was time to explore the topic more intimately. Sex and sexuality are themes I've touched on before, but never so overtly because they are hard to write about. That's the challenge I felt ready to face at the moment. Every time I hit a wall in that area--the thoughts "Will anyone want to read this?" "Can I possibly write well about this?" or especially "Am I going too far?"--I forced myself to press on. Meeting and overcoming internal blocks is half the battle with writing. I would never know what I was capable of if I didn't push myself, hard.
4) What issues does your character face when he's reborn as a woman? Any challenges?
Imre Bergamasc occupies what we would consider a fairly masculine role in his society--leader of a band of mercenaries and political aspects who has until now presented himself as "male". On paper, he's an action hero. (That he looks like a character lifted straight from a Japanime show, though, is a clue that what passes for "male" in his world is not the same as that of present-day movies and TV shows.) When he wakes as a partial amnesiac in the body of a woman, his quest to return the gender he finds most familiar mirrors the rediscovery of his self. He's not unhappy in his new body because it's female; he's unhappy because he no longer looks like himself.
His journey back to the way he wants to be is a complex one--of course, or there'd be no story!--because there are multiple versions of himself out there with whom he has no contact, and which he initially regards as his "true" self, but from which he later feels alienated. Eventually (in the book I'm writing at the moment, the third in the series) he comes to question his usual gender and consider a move back to female, or elsewhere. I've always known exactly where Imre would end up; getting him there is a large part of the fun.
5) Did you find it easy or hard to write a character like that? Did you take any cues from existing characters or real life personalities as inspiration for him (and later, her)? Or maybe you built upon other characters in your earlier works?
I've never written a character like Imre Bergamasc before. Letting him find his own voice has been a joy for me, and I've sought inspiration for that voice in sources not usually associated with space opera. Gothic literature is one such source--a veritable cavalcade of confused, tortured souls obsessed with bodies, incest, trasngression, and the like. Then there's the music of electronic pioneer Gary Numan--whose lyrics literally provide the words for another character in the book. But ultimately, as with most characters, Imre has my voice--he shares many of my anxieties and curiosities about gender and sex, and although I have yet to manifest any of them the way he does, I do feel that he comes from a place in me that rarely gets to show itself. Letting that part of me free has been liberating.
For instance, very early in the novel, there's a scene where Imre, in his new and unfamiliar female body, masturbates. To me, that seemed an obvious move, and it's one I discovered (after asking around) that most of my male friends would also try. I grew up in the 1980s, the era of bad gender-swap movies, and it was an immense relief to be able to explore an issue that I had always wondered about as a teenager. :-)
6) Now that real technology has advanced so far in the past 50 years, (in some cases, catching up to what was once considered sci-fi of the past -- cell phones, virtual worlds, etc) do you feel these kinds of "internal" and philosophical frontiers (cloning/gender/memory/perception) are becoming more poignant?
I think we as a culture are beginning to realise that we are limited solely by our imagination. We have been making our dreams (and some nightmares) reality for long enough now that to have sunk in. So the issue of what we can do is becoming less important for some writers than how we feel about it when it happens. I'm heartened by the mainstream's recent embrace of science fiction tropes (time travel, cloning for body parts, and post-apocalyptic landscapes, to name just three) because it shows that our culture is ready to start internalising some of the hypotheticals that have been bouncing around in SF for years. I hope that technologically-blurred gender lines will be something else the mainstream looks at soon.
7) Is there anything that a real transgendered person could learn from your character's struggle, as far as learning about identity goes?
I would hesitate to claim that, having experienced life as a transgendered person only secondhand. That said, I hope that my portrayal of world in which a person's interior is considered more important than their exterior is a positive one. Imre's former companions--including a lover--treat him no differently as female as they did male, and he expects the same things from himself too, regardless of gender. His transformation from female to male is accepted as uncontroversial--and future transformations are regarded the same way.
There's a clear distinction in this world between sex and gender. Imre is a masculine character in a female body. He retains the masculine pronoun throughout. That he has a female body in no way changes the person he is, within that body.
Changing gender in this world is no longer a political statement, or a declaration of identity. Neither is it as easy as changing clothes or hairstyles. It's more like having cosmetic surgery.
That's not to say that I believe that the body has no influence on the mind. They are intimately connected in our society, and will likely remain that way in the foreseeable future. I simply wanted to present a case in which they might not be so firmly connected. That is the principle thing I'm hoping to bring to this debate. Imre is a man in a woman's body, but he never once ascribes the changes in his character to any subtle "femininity" he might have inherited with that form. The world allows him to be who he is, regardless of what he looks like. His role in that society depends on his character, not his chromosomes.
8) Why do you think we don't see more transgendered people in other mediums of sci-fi (gaming, film)?
That's a curly question. Is it the audience or is it the producers of the media? Probably a little of both. I have a friend who works in the computer game industry, a woman, and she has occasionally expressed frustration at the alpha male mentality endemic in the industry. Women must be large-breasted and sexually available for the hero; men must be square-jawed and hypermasculine in all things. The persistence of this stereotype is justified by the need to satisfy the appetites of teenage boys and young men, who make up the vast majority of game players. But has anyone tried to add a little gender-blurriness to see what happens? In the context of a good story--something many games lack--much can be accommodated, I'm sure. The industry should be more flexible and have more faith in its audience.
9) What do you think the social and political landscape of gender politics and identity will be like in 50 years? 100 years?
That's a very difficult question to answer. You and I both live in countries that fail to recognise gay marriages--something I find utterly incomprehensible in this day and age. I hope this situation will be turned around soon, but who really knows what the future holds? The steep rise of conservative values in the last decade took me by surprise, and although I hope the pendulum is swinging back here in Australia, it's a little too early to tell. Society is so divided, and will probably remain so as world population rises and resources are stretched thinner. I don't have a lot of confidence that broader social issues will be high on the agenda when crops are failing and icecaps are melting.
That said, I have a lot of faith in the current generation, who are growing up in a world where gender issues can be openly discussed among friends or on line, or even in the classroom. I think that's laying important groundwork for the world of the future. One day, gender reassignment procedures will be simpler, cheaper and (I hope) less controversial. People like me might be able to see what life is like in a different body. That has to make us better people, and our society healthier. So there's hope for the future, too. I'm looking forward to it.
10) Is there anything else you'd like to add? Feel free to vent!
Ha! Where to stop? :-)
I'll just say that my decision to make Imre's transformation non-political is itself a potentially political statement. For many people, this is a very real and a profoundly traumatic situation, and I would never want them to think that I am trivialising their feelings or experiences. These are important issues to share and discuss, and I hope only that I've added something new to the debate, in a small way--that a future might exist in which we are liberated from a present-day anxieties, so people can be who they want to be, how they want to be, and they will be judged for the former, not the latter.
I'm also aware that I'm writing from what might seem to be a privileged position, being a married white male in city famous for its churches (and its gruesome murders, but that's another story). There's no value in claiming first-hand experience at this particular issue. But I do have gay friends, of both gender. I have experienced desire for, fantasised about, and kissed men. In that sense, I think I'm completely normal. The difference between what society regards as normal in the ideal and what actually passes for it in the real world is fascinating to explore, and I am very pleased that I can write about this issue in a way that doesn't immediately brand it as being anything other than it is.
Icon courtesy of Nick Stathopoulos.
