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NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 11:33:15 -0500
Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.d
Subject: {ASSD} Genderfucking and Blasphemy in my SF series
From: "Elf M. Sternberg" <elf@speakeasy.net>
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 09:29:46 -0700
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===================
More than once, The Journal Entries has wandered into Star Trek
territory, commenting on social issues and having characters deliver
silly speeches that would probably have been better left on the
floor. I have returned to the Sterlings mini-series (a series in which
the Pendorians discover a Terran colony where everyone is, on the
surface, apparently feminine) to see if I can polish out the Polly &
Zia subplot (and with it, by necessity, the Dove & the Twins subplot)
and get them ready for release, when a ridiculous idea hit me last
night as I fell asleep.
One of the joys of being able to read Japanese is that the literature
is even weirder and wilder than the anime when it comes to erotic
themes. But the biggest message that comes through loud and clear in
all of Japanese fiction is a deep misogyny; it's rare to find stuff
that isn't brutal in its reduction of the feminine to mere component
parts. Even stuff presented as "nice" doesn't seem to appreciate
female sexuality all that much, so it's especially nice to come across
something where the woman is actually empowered in some way.
I think the whole futanari thing is weird because the whole idea is
basic: give women penises and see what happens. It's fascinating to
see where different writers will take this, but most of them do
realize one thing: giving a woman a penis doesn't empower her the way
men are empowered because she still looks too much like a girl. Polly
& Zia is a futanari story where I've tried to stay away from power
differentials based on gender assumptions. The power differentials
there are cultural, personal, and caused by each character
misunderstanding the other's motives.
My sleepy hallucination was about the opposite. I think it's the
Stranger's fault (the magazine, not the Billy Joel album); they had an
article entitled, "He's Having My Baby." I thought, why have I never
seen stories where there are major, masculine characters who are
equipped with vaginas? I realized that I shouldn't really write the
story: I'd already done it once going one way and it would be way to
Star Trek schlock to suppose the Terran galaxy coincidentally had
another isolated colony that had gone in exactly the opposite
direction. But I think the real reason is that a guy with a vagina is
a threat: it's perceived culturally as a loss of power and a
manifestation of castration fears. I then realized that that was
something I just had to play with.
So it's been with me all day: how would I write this story? I started
to play with the compare and contrast game: The Sterlings wanted to
emancipate women from a masculinist culture, but they had no desire to
actively denigrate men (although their culture evolved a revulsion
toward masculinity); the Adamists, on the other hand, created a
culture that actively pursues an agenda that is both anti-feminine and
anti-female. The Sterlings relied on young girls being easier to
oblige into modesty, whereas the Adamists would have to take into
account boys' more common inclinations to crudity and thrill-seeking
inquisitiveness. There would have to be a more rigidified mechanism
for introducing the two "sexes" into society without each individual
automatically knowing what sex the other (apparently masculine) person
is.
I had to do some driving today, which gave me some thinking time, and
then it all came together in an instant. Backstory, setting,
characters, all dropped right into my lap in the milliseconds after I
had a title. And the title said it all:
"The Perfect Burqa."
My mind is all twisty now. I go lie down now.
Elf
--
Elf M. Sternberg, Immanentizing the Eschaton since 1988
http://www.pendorwright.com/
"You know how some people treat their body like a temple?
I treat mine like issa amusement park!" - Kei