The Bringer of Tea (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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trans2009-05-08 12:16 pm
auntysarah) wrote in trans2009-05-08 12:16 pm
Depiction in Fiction
Having read the first two of China Meiville's Bas-Lag steampunk novels, Perdido Street Station and The Scar, I've started reading the third, Iron Council.
Now in his fantasy world they have a magical surgical technology called Remaking, which is much more advanced than anything we have, and is capable not only of organ transplants, etc., but can blend two different species together, as well as blend human and machine. It's mostly used as punishment.
That being that case, it's somewhat surprising that it took him until the third novel to bring up trans people. When he does, they're all desperate male-to-female sex workers living in squalid and marginal conditions.
Now while that's a little disappointing, it's perhaps forgiveable because a major theme in the Bas-Lag novels is that the vast majority of the population are pretty downtrodden, living at the bottom of the heap in an anarcho-capitalistic oligarchy. What really bugged me is that there are gay and bisexual characters, and that's presented as part of their identity; the "men remade as women", however, are introduced in a brief aside as if they only exist as a product, because there are those who have a fetish for having sex with them. They're not trans because of who they are, they're trans because trans women are needed to cater to the market segment which exists because there are Bas-Lag's equivalent of trannychasers.
Now in his fantasy world they have a magical surgical technology called Remaking, which is much more advanced than anything we have, and is capable not only of organ transplants, etc., but can blend two different species together, as well as blend human and machine. It's mostly used as punishment.
That being that case, it's somewhat surprising that it took him until the third novel to bring up trans people. When he does, they're all desperate male-to-female sex workers living in squalid and marginal conditions.
Now while that's a little disappointing, it's perhaps forgiveable because a major theme in the Bas-Lag novels is that the vast majority of the population are pretty downtrodden, living at the bottom of the heap in an anarcho-capitalistic oligarchy. What really bugged me is that there are gay and bisexual characters, and that's presented as part of their identity; the "men remade as women", however, are introduced in a brief aside as if they only exist as a product, because there are those who have a fetish for having sex with them. They're not trans because of who they are, they're trans because trans women are needed to cater to the market segment which exists because there are Bas-Lag's equivalent of trannychasers.
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