Depiction in Fiction
May. 8th, 2009 12:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
auntysarah posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
transHaving 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.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-17 06:34 am (UTC)I just finished Bangkok Tattoo, which is a thriller/mystery with some issues regarding culture but I was surprised to find that one of the secondary characters was mtf and it was accepted pretty easily by everyone in the novel, which also mentioned the mtf sexworkers in Bangkok (of course, half the characters were prostitutes or pimps so the topic didn't seem particularly out of place).