… Do it yourself.
There has been an interesting storm in a teacup recently over an article, posted on TOR’s webpage, calling for ‘an end to the default of binary gender in science fiction stories.’ I’m not sure I understand just what the author actually has in mind; as I see it, there are only two genders in human society – male and female. A homosexual man is still male, he’s merely a male who is interested in other males, while a lesbian is a female who is interested in other females. Physically, homosexuals of whatever sex are still members of that sex.
Now, there are quite a few books that have alien races which happen to have more than two genders. The Player of Games (Iain M. Banks) features an alien race which has three separate genders, rather than two. Or does the author of the article wish to include humans with a third gender or switching between genders? There’s quite a bit of science-fiction that includes both of those possibilities. (A character swapping sex is an important plot point in Excession, another novel by Banks.)
Or does the author wish someone to write (more) science-fiction that includes transgender characters and a plot that revolves around them being transgender?
There are, generally speaking, two separate ways to approach sexuality in a novel. You can have it as an aside, something that is part of a character’s nature, or you can focus on it specifically. If the latter, you have to be very careful to keep it from swallowing up the plot … unless, of course, your objective is to write porn of one kind or another, whereupon you might be forgiven for allowing sex to become the plot.
An example of the former might be Oscar Monroe, from Peter F. Hamilton’s Commonwealth novels. Oscar is gay and it’s ok … because his homosexuality doesn’t swallow up the plot and transform a science-fiction series into a mass of text that hammers home the message, over and over again, that being gay is ok, and perfectly natural, and absolutely wonderful, and …
Hell, no one likes to be nagged. And … well, most message-bearing books tend to nag.
Anyway, I’ve got a challenge for the author who started this debate. Why don’t you write a book that takes up your challenge of putting an end to the default of binary gender in science fiction stories?
It’s not easy to write a character who happens to be a different gender from yourself. I’ve written female characters and reactions have ranged from ‘getting in touch with your feminine side’ to ‘this jerk has clearly never met a woman.’ (My wife was very surprised to hear that <grin>.) I would find writing a transgender character to be very difficult, particularly one living in a world where the shift from gender to gender was imperfect.
But maybe the author could do better. Why not try?