Today’s installment of John Scalzi’s “The Big Idea”, in which he gives fellow authors a chance to talk about their new books, features Lauren McLaughlin talking about her debut novel, Cycler. Scalzi describes the plot as follows:
Jill McTeague discovers that during her time, her body goes through entirely different changes than most girls — specifically, four days a month, she becomes Jack, right down to all the appropriate plumbing.
And here’s what McLaughlin has to say about it:
Gender is a prison. That was the Big Idea behind Cycler. I actually wrote it in sharpie on a piece of white paper and taped it above my desk as I worked. I wanted this story, about a girl who turns into a boy four days out of every month, to be an examination of gender as a cultural construct. I wanted to explore the ways in which gender identity constrains us, shapes us, limits is.
My first impression reading Scalzi’s post is that McLaughlin doesn’t have much understanding of gender identity – she is assuming gender is entirely socially imposed. On the other hand, she does say:
But one thing I wanted to avoid in Cycler, was replacing one Theory of Gender with another.
So maybe there’s hope. And it is definitely a book that belongs on my “to read” pile.
From reading the description, it sounds like Jack and Jill are almost two separate people, which makes the premise less interesting to me.
If Jill had to deal with being male four days, instead of a male personality with access to Jill’s memories, that’d sound more like something I could relate to, I guess. That’s not a condemnation, but something that struck me as odd about Lauren’s plot, and of course it could be overly simplified.
Lauren’s smart and has been known to go to Wiscon, so I doubt she’s made any of the obvious mistakes.
David:
Depending on who you talk to there, attending Wiscon is one of the best ways there is of acquiring misguided ideas about transgender people.
why? I’m curious actually…although its much farther than I would usually be willing to go to attend a con, I’ve heard interesting rthyings about it and have been tempted to go some day after I’ve recovered from Anticipation and the wedding and changing jobs and all that.
You can always tell me off-line (so to speak) of course.
Because hard line feminists are some of the most transphobic people you could hope to meet. Wiscon’s management are good people, but you are also liable to find quite a few people who will tell you that all gender is a social construction, that gender identity is purely a matter of personal choice, and that therefore transsexuals cannot exist.
I wish that radical feminists would be more careful about the assumption that “gender construction” = not real, or make the distinction between “gender” as how society defines men and women, and “gender identity” (which is misnomered, IMO), but their theory doesn’t even account for the possibility of a valid gender identity.
Social constructs are all over the place, and no one treats them as imaginary – race, religion, government, nations, borders, police, laws… hell, traffic lights are based on a social construct. All of these are real.
They’re often arbitrary and some cause harm to people, and they may not be based in physical realities, but their existence also serves to create physical realities for good or ill.
Run-on sentences are also a social construct. If they didn’t exist, my high school English grades would’ve been a bit higher.