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browngirlHaving 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![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
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![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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 friendazephirin 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.
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.
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no subject
Date: 2011-03-29 06:44 pm (UTC)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)