new old profile cast rings reviews linkers random notes email layout host

� In this diary, I record my life as a transvestite. Perhaps it will help somebody else, who finds their lifestyle doesn't quite match that endorsed by the 'tranny mafia'. Well, I've been there... and survived. The debriefing starts here.

�loves: All kinds of stuff that society thinks I shouldn't.

�hates: Microsoft. Obviously.

�reads:
secret-motel
artgnome
enfinblue
stepfordtart
ten-oclock
boombasticat
lawliiet
annanotbob
fifidellabon
my-serenade

Lynn Jones
Becky
Samantha

Science Fiction Double Feature
6:32 a.m. -- 2008-07-26

In keeping with yesterday's theme, I present a "science fiction double feature"...

Science fiction shows us some interesting things about ourselves, even though it's fantasy. It's not actually about odd devices or strange events, but about people who are a lot like us. Science fiction devices appear in some truly awful tranny fiction, as a handy mechanism for giving the central character a perfect feminine guise. But gender also plays a role in some professional sci-fi; some of it done quite well.

In Iain M. Banks 'Culture' novels, a collection of spacefaring races lead lives improved by every device imaginable, including genetic and synthetic modifications to their bodies. In their society there is no currency, and there are few moral or social codes obliging the people to behave in any particular way. There is no sexism, no racism... no need to work for a living, or obey anybody. Within this utopia, Banks cleverly manages to present stories where the characters are anything but decadent fops.

In addition to being able to 'gland' any of a range of drugs, produced naturally within their own bodies, citizens of the Culture can issue a simple mental instruction, and their bodies will change sex, over a number of months. In 'The Player of Games' it is revealed that common practice within the Culture is to be father to one child, and mother to one. In fact, the hero is told by a friend that he is fascinating and maybe a little bit barbaric, because he has never opted to be anything but male.

The second part of our double feature is 'Day Million' by Fredrick Pohl. It's a simple, short story, about a boy and a girl who fall in love almost at once, and decide to marry. A ceremony is held, and they receive gifts from their friends, and so on... but life is different in Day Million, in some touching and some staggering ways.

What makes it interesting is all the asides and caveats that reveal what has changed in society, a million days after our calendar began (which means the story occurs around 2737 AD). For example, their marriage doesn't involve cohabiting. Each person receives an imprint of the other's personality, and they only live together within their own heads. After the wedding, she returns to her home under the ocean, and he to his ship. They never actually meet again.

"And they lived happily ever after... or anyway, until they decided not to bother anymore, and died."

One of the many other small things that are presented to the reader, in this matter-of-fact way is:

"But the girl is not a girl. She is a boy, and that fact does not trouble her, nor any of the people of Day Million."

If born in our time, she would have been a boy, but her need to be a girl was detected in utero... and corrected via a simple procedure, there and then. No fuss, no stigma... no sense of wrongness while growing up.

---

Two very different stories, both featuring people who can live for as long as they choose to, and who don't fear death. But imagine having your predispositions towards unhappiness eradicated before you were even born!

In contrast, consider another view of the future. This from veteran transvestite Jed Bland, who was speaking about the joys of parenthood, and grandparenting:

"I suppose when an etiology [a means of identifying those who will develop transgender tendencies] is found, people like me will be sterilised in childhood, or aborted, and not have that opportunity."

previous - next

|