Gender ambiguity in fiction - three examples

Gender identity has always fascinated me to the point of absorption - allow me to introduce three very different fictional takes on the subject.

When Ursula Le Guin wrote 'The Left Hand of Darkness', her intention was to illustrate the role gender plays in our society, by creating a world where gender divisions seemed irrelevant.

The people of Gethen had the ability to shift into the role of male or female and were usually asexual. When in 'kemmer' they became sexually active and adopted the role which best suited the circumstances. Thus the roles of powerful king and nurturing bearer of life was not necessarily mutually exclusive.

The story was told from the perspective of a man who visited their isolated world as an emissary representing the Ekumen, a federation spanning many worlds across the stars. It could be seen as an experiment in attitudes and theories, dealing with the socio-politics of gender.

The Wraeththu books by Storm Constantine appeared in the late 1980s, almost twenty years after Ursula Le Guin's award-winning book. At the time, youth culture was at its most ambivalent. Punk had given way to the New Romantic Movement and early Goth culture, which celebrated androgyny. Boys wore make-up and big hairdo's with relish. Remember Boy George and Sigue Sigue Sputnik?

Storm Constantine, herself an active participant in these sub-cultures, took its ideals a few steps further, by creating a post-Apocalyptic world where the strains of one hermaphrodite mutant spread quickly through mankind's youths, usurping the place of humanity as we know it. As sometimes happens in gay culture, though, gender roles reasserted themselves, even where the actual biology had become arbitrary.

The hermaphrodites of the Wraeththu cycle called themselves 'hara', (singular 'har'), but their race was called Wraeththu. Youths became 'hara' when infected with the blood of a Wraeththu, but adults subjected to the same treatment, died. The option was not open to females, although in book three, a female variant of the form, called 'Kamagrian', was introduced, probably in response to early feminist criticism of the books. The original Wraeththu trilogy comprised 'The Enchantments of Flesh and Spirits', 'The Bewitchments of Love and Hate' and 'The Fulfilments of Fate and Desire'. Although never best sellers, the books gained a cult following, which led the author to publish a new trilogy, the first of which appeared in 2003.

Storm Constantine manages her own small press, Immanion Press, which had, since its advent, published numerous Wraeththu books by fans and several new Wraeththu books from her own pen

The works of Ursula Le Guin and Storm Constantine had been labelled science fiction, but a slightly more recent publication by Jeffrey Eugenides which also features a hermaphrodite character, made it to the mainstream shelves.

Calliope Stephanides, the hero/heroine of Jeffrey Eugenides' 'Middlesex' inhabits the same world we do. He/she grew up in middle America, the offspring of immigrants, so deceptively normal seeming, so mainstream and yet, she hid a secret. In fact she was a secret, and the end result of a scandalous secret. When her grandparents came to America, they left behind the truth of their family relationship. As a direct result, Calliope, later Cal, is what we now refer to as an intersexual, a hermaphrodite. Unlike the people of Gethen, unlike the hara of Wraeththu, what Cal is, is problematic to our world vision and opens her up to a lifetime of prejudice and misunderstanding.

The theme of 'Middlesex' deals with, is ultimately choice and identity. Although raised a girl, Cal, who embarks on a journey of self-discovery through her family history, later chooses to emulate a more masculine role.

Roses

I think of them and I think soft and I think sweet and I think of them as petals and parts, already falling to pieces. A rose, it seems, is born to die, but aren't we all. A rose unfolds, but it is only a rose for a moment. A rose is a memory of sweetness that cannot last. A precious gift, dear because it dies and so we mark our graves with roses, perhaps to mark the way, because soon, soon, we must follow them home.

(This was part of a writing exercise. My dad took a photograph of a yellow rose on the morning of the day he died - 29 September 1973. A little before his death, he planted four rose bushes, and the first rose opened on the morning of his death. The day after he died, which was a sunday, the second one opened. It was pink and the species name was 'Carina' - almost my name.)

Insecurities

'I want to hear you talk, not my insecurities'. That's what I told my muse this morning - because, well, they have been making so much noise... creating interference... and what my muse suggested was: write about them. So here goes... insecurities.

Our psychological need for security manifests in the desire to be romantically loved, but in truth, you can find the deepest insecurity rooted in the quest for that love. And don't forget the fact that we all get kicked out of heaven at the start of our lives, which means that having rejection issues is probably one of the most common diseases among humans being. And then there is that trial-by-opinion we all fear so much, that moment we let the guard slip, when we fully own our words and our dreams and our fears without qualifying them or nullifying them, just in case, we will be help up for ridicule, and ridicule is so frightfully immediate, these days. Okay, here goes, you don't need anyone's permission to feel, to love, or to be human. Opening up can be frightening (to you) but perhaps it becomes reassuring and liberating for the next heavily armoured soul watching silently from the wings.

Your insecurities are there for a reason. Don't NOT listen to your insecurities, but recognize them for what they are. Insecurities. Your insecurities, not someone else's. YOURS!!!!!!! By all means chat to your insecurities, acknowledge their
existence, and set them free.

Amazing Journeys

When I was a child, we has a cat called Passepartout, named after the long-suffering sidekick of Phineas Fogg, the hero of Jules Verne's 'Around the World in 80 Days'.

What I did not know at the time, was that the book was based on the real-life adventures of George Francis Train, railway entrepreneur, author and eccentric, who made his first attempt to travel around the world in 80 days in 1870. The journey included some time spent in a jail in Lyons, but was nevertheless completed within 80 days. The book by Jules Verne, published in 1873, in turn inspired a reporter from the 'New York World', Nelly Bly, to travel around the world. She had at that time already achieved some fame for a well-documented ten day stay in Blackwell's Island Insane Asylum, in order to expose the harshly inhuman treatment that was common at the time in such institutions.

She began her round trip in New York on the 14th of November 1889, arriving back home 72 days, six hours, eleven minutes and fourteen seconds later.

Although he was a vocal supporter of women's rights, George Francis Train promptly undertook another journey around the world, to best Nelly's record by finishing within 67 days. A plaque in Tacoma, Washington marks the start and end point of this journey.

Today, anyone (with enough money) can round the world in just a few days, something Phil Keoghan, host of the television show Amazing Race has done many times. In 2009, though, Phil undertook an amazing race of a different nature when he crossed America, from coast to coast on a bicycle to raise funds for research to combat multiple sclerosis. Starting in Los Angeles on the 28th of March, he reached New York City on the 9th of May. Parts of the journey was videoed and released as a film to generate additional funds for the cause.

Holly Black introduces the worlds of fairy to the mortals of Ironside

Weird exotic looking Kaye has always seen fairies - Spike, Gristle and Lutie when she was young. At sixteen, her life is unconventional in a different way. She is the responsible adult, taking care of her wild rock chick mom Ellen. But when they hit a dry spell and are forced to move back in with Kaye's grandmother, the faeries return to her life in a big and perilous way. First there is Roiben, knight of the Unseelie court, whom she rescues from an injury. Then the thistlewitch reveals a startling new truth about Kaye's origin, and finds Kaye experimenting with new abilities, while her every move also endangers her friend Janet, and Janet's brother, Corny. Meanwhile, Samhaim nears and with it the time of the tithe, a sacrifice ment to bond the solitary fairies to the Unseelie court for the next seven years. What role will Kaye play in this? And what other double crosses are on the cards? Soon, Kaye is not sure who is friend and who is foe.

And if you enjoyed this, the good news is there's more where that came from. In 'Valiant', human girl Val leaves home after finding out a shocking secret about her mother. In New York City, she befriends Lolli, Sketchy Dave and Luis, who live somewhere in a disused section of the underground, hiding the magical secrets of their existence in the dark. When she herself becomes involved in the affairs of Ravus, who is really a troll, she has to find out who has been killing off the exiled fairies of the city.

'Ironside' returns to the further adventures of Kaye, now armed with new truths about her real identity, but still as confused about where she truly fits in, as her destiny shifts her between two conflicting courts of fairy, and she is charged with solving an impossible riddle to win the love of a king and perhaps save him in the process. Ironside, by the way, is how the fairies refer to our world.

Islands in the stream of consciousness

One of the mixed blessings of social networks such as Facebook is the way it includes you in the random stream of consciousness of persons you have not really spent time with for years, maybe for the better part of a decade. It can be a more satisfying form of conversation than the old fashioned face to face method. Be honest. How many times have you rehearsed a conversation in your mind ad nauseum, only to have all your careful strategies dismantling with the other person's first response, and you leave, after half an hour, feeling vaguely cheated, feeling your mind is still unspoken. Well, no more. Most of us have fiercely embraced the practice of thought broadcasting, probably with a secret so-there-now-they-know warming our hearts.

Earlier this week, a woman whom I've seen only once briefly in the past ten years, asked in her status line: does love have an expiry date? And that got me thinking...

I once read about a British couple who kept a 29-year old meat pie in the back of their freezer... because they bought it from the place they met just before it closed down... obviously the meat pie had long ago ceased becoming useful as food, but it had transcended into something completely different for them. Just like society institutionalized the messy madness of spirituality and mysticism and called it religion, it claimed the insane chaos of love and called it marriage...

In our ever-changing universe, everything changes our world and by extention, us, because we are ourselves the change flowing through our universe.

Rewinding the holodeck of reality

In the past week, an intriguing video trended on youtube and in news media. The clip, showing one character in a 1928 Charlie Chaplin film talking animatedly into what appears to be a cell-phone has at least some viewers speculating whether this can be taken as proof of the future existence of time travel. Believers site other mysteries, such as the discovery of a Swiss watch found inside a Chinese grave sealed for 400 years, while unbelievers point to a 1924 Siemens patent for a hearing device that somewhat resembles a cell phone. If you haven't seen it yet, here's one of the clips:



Charlie Chaplin was an entertainer known for exerting a high degree of creative control in his movies. From 1917, he operated as an independent producer, using his own studios. He had been one of the founders of United Artists, a corporation dedicated to distributing the works of himself and other similarly minded actors such as Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. Some of the people who worked with him, joked that if he could have played all the parts in his movies himself, he would have. For 'The Kid', for instance, he shot more than fifty times the amount of footage needed in his quest for perfection. Leading a person to wonder what he would have made of the unscheduled appearance of an 'extra' extra from the future...

The movie that features the alleged time traveller is called 'The Circus'. Although it won him his first Academy Award in 1929, it is not mentioned at all in his autobiography. According to the website www.charliechaplin.com, the production was plagued by various misfortunes. Gale force winds destroyed the set before filming began and later on, a fire destroyed sets and props. Bad handling at the laboratory rendered much of the early footage unusable. At one stage, footage already shot was in danger of being seized by lawyers as assets of his studio became a matter of dispute in his divorce from Lita Grey. The legal battle also delayed filming by several months. Just before completion, part of the circus rig was stolen from the set as part of a student prank. Could all these stresses have contributed to a slip in his notorious attention to detail...?

As commented to some of the videoclips, Charlie Chaplin was highly creative in adding visual gags and testing his audience with visual riddles, people behaving oddly. In the same movie, for example, he included a boxing match between identical twins - which was filmed using the same actor and double exposure techniques. If this shows the unexpected synchronicity of strange behaviour depicted in a film from the past prophecying a future reality, one has to remember Leonardo da Vinci, who sketched helicopters and parachutes.

Theories abound. If the 'time traveller' is talking on a cell phone, that has to suggest a second time traveller somewhere, i.e. the person being spoken to. Or it this a ghost from the future? A time slip such as was apparently witnessed by two British ladies visiting Versailles in 1901? One of the more complicated theories suggest a holographic visitor, who is projecting from a future location, and makes much of comparing the density of the shadow of the 'time traveller' with that of the person preceding him/her.

Or perhaps it's just the cosmic joker at play again, teasingly lifting a veil to reveal the true nature of cosmic consciousness underlying and underlining all our actions.

If you are interested in scrutinizing a copy of your own (or just appreciating a gifted visionary from the past)...