These Are My Reasons: Why I Like Genderswap, Part Two

[browngirl]

Having written an entire entry disavowing and countering commonly cited reasons attributed to those of us who like genderswap, here's an entry where I try to explain what my reasons actually are.

Soon after I got into the Star Trek Reboot fandom, when everything felt wide open and full of limitless possibilities, I read this post by Liviapenn where she cast STXI with a gender-reversed set of actors. This post, and the discussions I read subsequently both on and off st_genderswap, galvanized my imagination; I haven't yet written a story where I have genderswapped everyone, but I've thought about what changing any one or more of them might do to their trajectory in the fictional universe.

One character I've written a great deal about is Leah McCoy, MD, CMO of one version of the ISS Enterprise. I put Leonard McCoy through two transformations at once, to the Mirrorverse and from [assumed to be -- more on that later] cisgendered male to cisgendered female; I did so at first because an intriguing prompt caught my eye, but I've kept writing about Leah McCoy because I find her a fascinating character, exploring how she is and isn't like Leonard McCoy, the intersections of how being female changes her and how the Mirror Universe changes her.

Generally... one of my reasons for writing and reading genderswap overlaps with one of my reasons for writing and reading about minor, unnamed-in-canon and offscreen female characters. For me, my primary canon for Star Trek Reboot is a two-hour-long movie (I was not particularly a Star Trek TOS fan) and there's one major female character and a handful of secondary characters. I love that major female character, but Nyota Uhura isn't and shouldn't have to be the entirety of womanhood in the Star Trek universe, so I write and read a seemingly disproportionate amount about minor female characters, and I also ask myself what the fictional universe would look like if a larger proportion of characters whatsoever were female. That's my main reason for writing genderswap. The specter of 'Mary Sue' is invoked nearly any time we write about female characters, including against genderswap, but I think female characters are worth considering and that the threat of Mary Sues is greatly overblown (but that's another discussion).

As I put it elsewhen, "I first picked up a genderswap prompt because I thought, "What if Character X, with Y canon role, were female instead of male? And then I ran with it. There's no more complicated reason than that, putting more women into the fictional universe and seeing how being female affects a character's in-universe life and in-story 'jobs'."

Although, I've since found that it is more complicated. For instance, I elided at least two aspects of genderswap in my explanation above.

One: despite liviapenn's brilliant fancasting of Leonard Roberts & Tom Welling, I haven't switched a female character to male. I have seen that presented as a challenge to writers of genderswap, essentially, "Why do you ignore the female characters?" Ignoring them isn't my intent; however, because I want more women in the fictional universe, I'm not as interested in changing the female characters that exist to male. It could make for a very interesting story to write the dynamic of a crew composed of one man and several women and to compare it with the dynamic of one woman and several men, or to mutually swap a het canon couple (Georgina & Winston?) but I haven't written those stories yet, is all.

Two: In my entire discussion above I've conflated 'male' with 'cisgender male' and 'female' with 'cisgender female', and now I want to pull that apart. Another valid and underdone way of writing stories that include more women would be to write about transgender women, as part of writing more about transgender people, who aren't included anywhere near as much as they should be. I've been thinking about this more than my fic output so far likely suggests, since I have only one story so far that could be said to be about a transgender character. As with any other important subject I have not personally lived, I want to do my best. However, as I said in my last post, I don't think stories about transgender characters and stories about cisgender genderswapped characters necessarly occupy the same space, nor do they need to crowd out each other. I'm not done writing yet, and I for one intend to write both genres if I can do so successfully.

I wrote this entry because most of the discussions I've seen of genderswap have been negative portrayals of the practice, so I wanted to start from a positive take on the subject. My friend azephirin asked once: Do you just plunk the traits of the canon/original version onto their alternately-gendered counterpart, or do you consider how the character would relate to hirself and society as a person of another gender, which tends to change things somewhat? Her words have inspired me ever since.

Comments

[oldgurl.livejournal.com]

i love your take on this topic. your 4th paragraph expresses how i feel about the subject explicitly.

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

Thank you. :)

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

I didn't write this to convince people to like genderswap, actually. I wrote this to ask people to stop speaking ill of those of us who do.

They don’t have to but they do. I see a ton of genderswap stories. I don’t see many about transgender individuals.

All right. Suppose I stopped writing my genderswap stories and deleted the ones I've written off LJ and AO3. Suppose I never wrote another word of any fic. Would that magically cause stories about transgender characters to appear, whether written by me or by other authors? Will we get more stories about transgender characters by attacking the writing of genderswap?

The thing is -- in your examples of bad genderswap stories and bad het stories -- why don't the bad slash stories also invalidate the good ones? If they don't, how come the bad genderswap and het stories can somehow invalidate the good ones, such that they shouldn't exist? I can't unwrite bad stories, I can just write mine as well as I possibly can, and I am no more responsible for every single bad genderswap story than you are for every single bad slash story.

The thing is men and women are wired differently.

Humans are an incredibly social species; from before birth we are influenced by each other. Are you absolutely certain that the differences between men and women are innate and inflexible? Have you never, for instance, met siblings who are uncannily similar though they're brother and sister? Besides, one of the reasons I'm writing genderswap stories is indeed to explore the differences socialized into us.

just my opinion which I know varies from everyone else’s.

Actually, as I addressed in the post before this one, there are a great many people who agree with you. My post here was an attempt for once to start a discussion of genderswap from the POV of someone who doesn't disapprove of it. Besides, if you're right that I can't write genderswap without having these horrible reasons and invoking these horrible consequences, then it's not just your opinion, it's a reason for me to stop writing, so I have to address it.

Look, you don't have to like genderswap. De gustibus non disputandum and all that. But I don't have to accept the idea that I write it because I'm an idiot or a bad writer or transphobic, either.

[(Anonymous)]

I wasn't implying that genderswap stories were crowding out stories about transexuals.

No, you didn't. You stated that much outright, when you said this:

I don't think that genderswap stories have to crowd out stories about transgender people.
They don’t have to but they do*. I see a ton of genderswap stories. I don’t see many about transgender individuals. "

*emphasis mine

I'm not going to touch your argument itself, because it looks like the justifications are grounded in a combination evolutionary psychology which I have a standing policy of not engaging, as well as a small sample size. However, to deny you said something which you clearly did say is just flat-out ridiculous.

Maybe in the future you'll consider how your words might be read before you say them, rather than apologizing with an "I didn't mean to" after the fact.

--C., anon for a lack of desire to see the response in her inbox.

[ilthit.livejournal.com]

I seem to keep derailing this conversation into trans* stories and there are a dozen stray thoughts I kind of want to bring to it - Y: The Last Man (so so so transfaily, but all but one character are female), canon genderswap (Red Dwarf) or apparent-sex swap (like in Ranma 1/2) and my fandom experiences of the reaction to them and my feelings for it in the canon, theories and thoughts about genderswap potentiality in other fandoms, my wild distaste of the very idea of Kevin Smith's Ms. Kato in his Green Hornet comics vs. my total joy at the female Starbuck in BSG and how that's probably got to do with the characters' original versions' different archetypal roles, especially since a friend's suggestion of a genderswapped Kato AND Britt didn't squick me nearly as much, and heaven save me, I'd even like to talk about His Girl Friday (1940), which is a genderswap romance filmed fanfic for The Front Page (1931), and how this is a Trope As Old As Time. That would take a lot of writing, though.

There was one commenter here - not the one directly above - who said their initial dislike of genderswap as an idea was related to the suspicion it was slash writers' attempt to garner feminist cred without having to take the focus away from their adored men, which I guess happens, and I have to admit this has been my suspicion in the past too. At the same time I totally get the attraction of riffing on a character by changing their gender and how this is fun and creates new characters, more or less, who are YOURS but at the same time ALSO the character you love, and you can play with them in whole new ways while still having a framework to refer back to. (I always get bored with my entirely original characters because I could make them do/say/be anything and there doesn't seem to be much challenge to writing them.) So there are all those enticing reasons to write genderswap that are NOT "I want feminist cred but I don't find women characters interesting", and so I also KNOW that that suspicion is just prejudice, and not going to be true in all, perhaps not most, cases.

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

Goodness, you're not derailing at all! It's just that that's going to be an area where I have less to say because I don't think I know enough to comment decisively, because I'm still learning.

There was one commenter here - not the one directly above - who said their initial dislike of genderswap as an idea was related to the suspicion it was slash writers' attempt to garner feminist cred without having to take the focus away from their adored men, which I guess happens, and I have to admit this has been my suspicion in the past too.

One of the things the great Slash May Be Evil discussion made me realize is that I am responsible to the world but I'm not responsible for it. (This is bigger than it sounds -- I tend to feel responsible for everything.) Just as I can't be responsible for all the badfic, but for making my stories as good as I can, I cannot be responsible for all the people who write genderswap from bad motives; what I can do is make sure those motives aren't mine, and to encourage others not to write from those motives, but if I stop writing because other people wrote from bad motives I won't benefit myself or anyone else.

Or, yeah, I know, but that's not why I write genderswap either, and I can't undo that other people may, though I can perhaps encourage them not to. But not by not writing.

[ilthit.livejournal.com]

Definitely you are not responsible for bad fic and bad fic in a particular trope or field should not deter you from writing in that trope or field - quite the contrary! Like, I am aware that there's some pretty darn problematic Green Hornet fic (as well as some totally to-die-for awesome fic), but that just makes me want to write in the fandom more, to provide balance. Besides, it's not like there isn't femslash with canonically female characters out there that is misogynistic! You can only watch your own writing, not everybody else's.

So yes, to end on a joyful note, I love female characters playing central roles that are almost always left to men in pop fiction. Let me list some: Captain Amelia in Treasure Planet (spaceship captain!), Modesty Blaise in the comics of the same name (ex-crime boss, now independent contractor to Great Britain), Hildy Johnson in His Girl Friday (workaholic reporter trying to quit), the angels from Charlie's Angels (the movies, I never watched the show - brilliant private eye superheroes), Chel from Road to El Dorado (trickster), Parker from Leverage (burglar; though my favourite character from that show will always be Hardison, Parker and Sophie come directly after), Kaylee Frye (mechanic), Zoe Washburn (taciturn soldier), Xena (warlord/hero), the Romulan commander (ST:TOS), Ruffnut and Astrid from HTTYD (thugs), etc...

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

My icon is smiling to see herself up there. :)

[secretsolitaire.livejournal.com]

I don't have anything intelligent to say about this right now, but I really enjoyed reading both of these essays.

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

Thank you for telling me so. :)

[azephirin.livejournal.com]

This post is good and you should feel good, and not just because you quoted me. :P

In all seriousness, though, it's fabulous (and a relief) to see a thoughtful, eloquent defense of genderswap, because Cthulhu knows I have seen enough attacks on it. So thank you for writing this.

My first genderswap story was in SPN fandom, girl!Dean/Castiel. My memory of where the idea came from is hazy, but I'm pretty sure I just saw the pairing mentioned somewhere (the fandom newsletter, maybe?) and thought, "NEAT! How would that work?" (That thought is the impetus for 95% of my fic writing, really.) I thought it was a fun, interesting exploration and kept going.

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

*beam* I am, of course, extra specially glad that you like this.

"NEAT! How would that work?" (That thought is the impetus for 95% of my fic writing, really.

Amen! So often a story of mine grows out of a question I can't resist thinking about.

[sharpestscalpel.livejournal.com]

Today, especially in the context of the essay I linked to earlier, I have been thinking about negative response to genderswap (when cannonically male characters are swapped to female) in terms of internalized misogyny - not on the part of men but on the part of women who've been socialized just as unconsciously to privilege men (and I mean "men" and "women" in the broadest of ways - transwomen are women, for example). If one buys into gender essentialism (yes, biology does have an impact but social construction is a huge part of our various makeups as well) then it really does have to be disconcerting to see strong men flopped into female characters while retaining "essentially" male characteristics. That's the thing that bothers me about the Mary Sue argument - because, yes, actually women CAN be badass.

Maybe it's just that my internal definition of a Mary Sue is more of a literary one than a fandom one? I mean, it's not a concept unique to fandom; a Mary Sue is a character who fills a wish-fulfillment role and who has no discernible flaws. I think the second characteristic is the more important one - flaws are what make characters human (and, really, I think flaws are what make people human, too). It's a source of realism and it's often the pivot on which dramatic tension turns.

Reading through the comments here, I'm surprised to realize, in a really concrete way, that I have FAR less interest in OCs than I do in genderswapped characters. Because, frankly, as cool as any given OC is, I'm not here to play with OCs. I'm here to play with Star Trek characters. And, also frankly, if I wanted to read original fiction, I'd do so. I have a lot less patience with craft issues when someone is writing an OC because I'm not, in effect, hanging out with someone I know. That's why I'm occasionally reluctant to read stories about lesser-known female characters as well - though I'll give them a lot more leeway.

Tangent: I participate on the fringes of a couple of steampunk communities and I am often consumed with thoughts of class. On the one hand, it's EASIER to construct a narrative about the captain of the airship because we have a better cultural concept of that narrative - we know the general shape of it already because that's what we're used to seeing. There is a lot more grey area when we're constructing identities for airship mechanics because we perceive them as individuals with less personal power and less standing (though I'd argue they're more interesting in the long run).

Maybe that DOES come into play somewhat when reading fic? I'm just thinking my way through this a bit, not saying anything in particular. I think familiarity is a huge part of what I'm more interested in a genderswapped main character than an unknown OC - I LIKE Kirk and McCoy and I want to spend more time with them in all sorts of incarnations. I don't think it's because only department heads have interesting lives and adventures - but the classic structure of Trek (especially TOS Trek) does privilege the higher ranking characters - Ricky the ensign doesn't get a lot of cred, you know? Huh. I'll have to think about this more.

tl;dr: I think this is an excellent set of essays and I am so glad you wrote them.

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

If one buys into gender essentialism (yes, biology does have an impact but social construction is a huge part of our various makeups as well) then it really does have to be disconcerting to see strong men flopped into female characters while retaining "essentially" male characteristics.

*nod* And seen that way... back when I was in LOTR fandom I saw many complants about slash being "disrespectful" to the characters and their friendships, and when one investigated, the 'logic' behind that statement was that m/m relationships were necessarily emasculating and therefore weakened the characters. The thought process you've described reminds me of that. (Needless to say, I don't agree with either, and find both to have Really Unfortunate Implications.

Maybe it's just that my internal definition of a Mary Sue is more of a literary one than a fandom one?

*nod* Yours is sensible, and helps get Mary Sue back to being a useful term of literary discourse and not a condemnation of women who dare have agency.

Ah, OCs. I actually love OCs, but I see your point -- for me to write in a given fandom I have to love a universe as well as the characters, so I use OCs to interact with them in places the characters haven't gone or roles they haven't taken on, but I am weird that way. I certainly try to make my takes on the canon characters recognizeable, to evoke just that sense of comfortable recognition.

but the classic structure of Trek (especially TOS Trek) does privilege the higher ranking characters - Ricky the ensign doesn't get a lot of cred, you know?

*nod* Back when I was in TNG/DS9/Voyager fandom (under a different name and far less writing ability) I wrote a Below Decks-type story for just this reason. It's a huge universe, after all; what would a show about four Ensigns look like?

[alara-r.livejournal.com]

I appreciate this. I get really, really tired of people whining "but genderswap is homophobic because you just wanna get rid of the icky slash!" Right, and by that logic, slash is misogynist because it gets rid of the icky girls, right?

Here's my thing. When I first became aware of slash, I became aware of a body of work studying slash which claimed that the primary reason for slash was to "queer the text", to add back in the homoeroticism that is completely erased from most media products, and to present a vision of an egalitarian relationship. Well, I know that people write slash for many, many reasons, among them "two guys are hot", but if *any* element of it is about returning queerness to a universe where it was written out... then genderswap is about returning women to a universe where they were written out, and since we are 51% of the population I kind of think that may actually be more vital than queering the text. And don't get me started on "egalitarian relationships" being presented through slash just because the author couldn't figure out how to make a het relationship egalitarian.

In a lot of canons, there are barely any women to speak of. TOS has Uhura, who is played by an excellent actress who rarely gets anything to do. Fans have made her pretty damn badass, but it's only rarely actually *there* in the text. TOS also gives us Rand, who, in canon, hands off papers to be signed and asks Kirk to look at her legs, and Chapel, who, in canon, entered Starfleet to look for her boyfriend, and after deciding to stay on once she figured out he was dead, spent her time pining after an uninterested Vulcan. These characters are not even slightly badass in canon. The Romulan Commander is the most badass woman in canon, and she fell for Spock's seduction and got her ass kicked. (okay, Edith Keeler is also pretty badass, but from the wrong time period and she's also dead.) Spock's *mother* walks three steps behind her husband, raised a hybrid child to completely reject *her* heritage, and didn't show to her son's wedding, presumably, we guess, because her husband wouldn't let her, given that there's no evidence that Spock and Amanda were in communication in the years that Spock and Sarek weren't talking. Fans have worked hard to make these characters into something great, but... in canon, it's just not *there*. Badass Amanda Grayson is a fanon invention.

AOS actually made the situation *worse* because there's no Chapel or Rand. Spock's mother is at *least* shown to be a good mom, but then she gets thrown in a refrigerator. Winona Kirk only ever appears to have her baby, and then when we see her son, first he's stolen a car and nearly gotten himself killed, and then he's a punk. These things are not necessarily her fault, but it's not like the movie makes it clear that they're not, and people will generally blame a mother for anything that goes wrong in her kids' lives. Uhura, at least, is a total BAMF and an utterly awesome character, although I do kind of wonder why she has a massive chip on her shoulder when Nichols' Uhura seemed so calm and at peace (that being said, Nichols' Uhura was 10 years older and may have been calm because 10 years of maturity will do that to you; Spock also had a much bigger stick up his butt than he would 10 years later.) But she's ONLY ONE CHARACTER.

Over in TNG, which does not have the excuse of "we're just remaking a sexist 60's show, we can't add in more women", we have a security chief who cries and then ends up dead, to be replaced by a man; a hybrid empath with a degree in psychology who is generally found stating the obvious; a badass doctor who somehow mostly gets defined in terms of her relationship to her dead husband, her wannabe lover captain, her son, and her Dude Of The Week; and a mysterious 800 year old woman who tends bar and dispenses wisdom, and has some kind of superpower but we never learn exactly what. These are... *better* choices than TOS gave us, but still not *good* choices.

(continued)

[alara-r.livejournal.com]

(continued)

And then there's the fact that, even in a canon with many interesting female characters, it's often the case that certain archetypes are reserved for men. I almost never see "team mentor" as a woman. I almost never see "ideological opponent of the good guys, who is a decent person but whose sincere beliefs drive them to fight the good guys" as a woman. I almost never see "trickster" as a woman. And we got to see exactly one female starship captain in action, and while she was a great character, she belongs to an overall very poorly written series.

So my feeling is, I want women back in my stories. I want women leaders with *strong* male second in commands. I want women leaders with strong *female* second in commands. I want women scientists who don't somehow end up deferring to men in everything. I want to see female Vulcans who actually use Vulcan superior strength to kick some ass like Spock did. I want to see women doctors who are cantankerous assholes. I want to see women who founded and trained superhero teams. I want to see mysterious female wizards. I want to see women who don't want to kill you, but if you continue to stand in their way, they will do so with regret. I want to see women who mock everyone.

So I write genderswaps. I have a genderswap TOS universe with Kirk and Spock swapped, where the point is to talk about TOS-era apparent sexism. I have swapped Charles Xavier and Magneto separately and at the same time. I have one X-Men based universe that swaps *all* the mutants. I swap Q all the time because it's really, really easy to do.

This doesn't stop me from writing slash, or writing het based in canon, or writing about strong female characters that actually exist, like Janeway, or writing about minor female characters and turning them into badasses, or strengthening the existing somewhat weak female characters by taking them back to their roots and writing them based on their character description, like making Troi actually a competent counselor. It hasn't stopped me from writing transgendered characters either -- I did an X-Men story in which we learn Charles Xavier was born female, based on utterly implausible canon where he had an identical twin sister. (How does that even happen, unless Xavier is a trans man?) But I think genderswap is very, very important, because we fan writers are primarily women writing about universes that were primarily created by men, and men seem to think that if more than 30% of the characters are female then the story is female-dominated. Real life has 50% women in it. Slash is not going to make up that difference and OCs, even when well written, don't have the history a canon character does and the built-in audience. The only thing that's going to add more women into a canon that hasn't got enough women, without adding OCs, is genderswap.

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

I don't have time to write a proper reply, but I had to say that I cheered when I read this. (Well, I squeaked when I saw I got a comment from you, because I've been eagerly reading your stories and thoughts since I was on Usenet, and then I read it and cheered.) Thank you so, so much for this!

[got_swagger]

Everything about this reply is beautiful and magnificent.

It was a pleasure to read.

[ansley15.livejournal.com]

Well, I know I'm super late to the party...but I JUST found out this comm exists, and I had to stop by and point out that these essays were awesome.

I personally love genderswap because I think it causes us to more deeply examine the hetero-patriarchal constructs of gender in pop culture. To me, it's not so much about how much a character changes but as to how little a character changes, and what that shows us about the portrayal of masculinity, feminity, sex appeal and/or sexuality in the original story. That, and my inner postmodernist loves to get all geeky and go Michel Foucault on my favorite fandoms.

"There was one commenter here - not the one directly above - who said their initial dislike of genderswap as an idea was related to the suspicion it was slash writers' attempt to garner feminist cred without having to take the focus away from their adored men, which I guess happens, and I have to admit this has been my suspicion in the past too."

Hmm, I have wondered that, too. Yet at the same time I DO find something kinda feminist about slash fiction...as long as it doesn't bash the female characters. There is something very subversive about undermining masculinity roles in slash and a beautiful queer sensibility about women (and most slashfic writers are women) taking mastery over the work for their own pleasure, and blurring lines between genders. There is an interesting article about gender dynamics in slash here: http://bitchmagazine.org/article/fan-tastic-voyage

But getting back to genderswap...I agree that some genderswap stories can be kinda transphobic or just trans ignorant. But they don't have to be. I'm a bit sensitive to transphobia because I have ALOT of trans friends but I feel like this is a problem with certain writers, not the medium itself.

Anyway, I'm being very random...but thank you for the intelligent essays!

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

Oh wow! It was absolutely wonderful to get this long and thoughtful comment on my wee essay! Thank you, very much!