Depiction in Fiction

[auntysarah]

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.

A Different girl

[bcgirl19872006.livejournal.com]

It's rather long, so I put it in a cut right ( here )

(no subject)

[elegancewaves.livejournal.com]

I have NO idea how the hell my first post got so butchered, so I apologize for those who may have read it haha.

 

Anyway. As I said in the first one. I had my first psychologist appointment today in reguards to my transitioning. He seemed very positive on the outlook of it. He seemed to think I'm fairly educated in what I'm getting myself in to, and even though he has a good outlook on me so far, he doesn't know me that well yet and wants to see me for the full three months before he refers me to a physician for my hormone treatment. He thinks that I'm well enough off that I should only need to see him every three weeks, or even just once a month, as he understands costs are a big concern of mine.. This week he's sending off paperwork to get me on the waiting list at the Gender Identity Clinic in Edmonton where I'll have a final assessment by an endocrynologist, and the psychiatrist who'll approve my SRS (the only one in the province with the authority to do so). He sees that, so far, unless something comes up in our talks, I should have my vagina (edited for the PC police) by the time I'm 24 :) He said its just a waiting game now and letting the hormones do their thing for two years, and hopefully by then, Alberta will have reinstated funding for SRS.

Which, by the way, was voted on yesterday, and it was axed. So $700,000 was saved by cutting medically necessary surgery, and the Human Rights Commission magically GAINED $700,000 in its budget. Hmm...