An Open Rant Regarding The Genre Of "Genderswap," Specifically Referring To Supernatural And Weemo Bandslash Fandoms
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| Title: | An Open Rant Regarding The Genre Of "Genderswap," Specifically Referring To Supernatural And Weemo Bandslash Fandoms |
| Creator: | thespurpleswitch |
| Date(s): | May 10, 2007 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | |
| Topic: | Genderswap trope |
| External Links: | An Open Rant Regarding The Genre Of "Genderswap," Specifically Referring To Supernatural And Weemo Bandslash Fandoms page one archive link page two |
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An Open Rant Regarding The Genre Of "Genderswap," Specifically Referring To Supernatural And Weemo Bandslash Fandoms is a 2007 essay by thepurpleswitch.
It is also referred to as "put your hand between an aching head and an aching wound."
The post has 107 comments.
Topics Discussed
- genderswap
- how genderswap is really sexswap
- bodyswap
- how personalities in fanfic shouldn't change because of sexswap
- despite "Supernatural" in the title, it is only briefly mentioned
- weemo
Most of the Post
So. A rant, about "genderswap".
It's almost disguised as meta, because of the rational language, relative lack of capslock, and list format. Do not be fooled. I am Ranty McRantpants.
An Open Rant Regarding The Genre Of "Genderswap," Specifically Referring To Supernatural And Weemo Bandslash Fandoms Or, Wherefore Does Patrick Turn Into a Smoking Redhead With No Qualms About Wearing Belly Shirts As Soon As He Has Breasts? Why, Fandom, Why?
To clarify and lay out my biases and base of knowledge beforehand: I'm transgender.
On with it, then:
1. Any gender theory course worth its salt will start with this point and the next: sex is determined by the genitalia you've got. Medically, there are at least three: female, male, and intersex.
2. Gender is the way you behave socially. Generally, most people assume that there are just two genders: feminine and masculine. For many people, gender coincides with sex, which has led to widespread assumption that gender=sex, and that the terms "sex" and "gender" are interchangeable. They ain't.
3. When Character A wakes up feeling funny and discovers that he's grown breasts and his penis has been turned all higgledy-piggledy, his gender has not changed. His genitalia has changed--his SEX has changed.
4. Growing breasts and a vagina will not automatically change the way Character A wishes to be perceived by the world, or the way he perceives himself, which is as male (and, because sex=gender for most people, as a person with masculine gender. A guy).
5. Incidentally, I've never ever seen a "genderswap" fic where Character A actually wanted to be female before the swap occurred. That might be kind of neat.
6. A sex change does not necessitate a shift in pronouns, especially in Character A's POV. A sex change does not necessitate a change in the way Character A dresses, walks, or speaks. Because having breasts and a vagina does not mean being possessed by a mystical uterine desire to wear make-up, high-heeled sandals, and flirty skirts.
7. Speaking of mystical uterine desires--if Character A grows breasts and a vagina, does he also grow ovaries? Has his endocrine system changed?
8. If so, since hormones do change the way your brain works after prolonged exposure (which equals "not THE NEXT DAY"), it's possible that Character A would eventually start feeling more feminine than masculine, after a few months. He might start enjoying stereotypical feminine activities, and disliking stereotypical masculine activities. He might start displaying stereotypical feminine personality traits, and stop displaying stereotypical masculine personality traits.
9. HE ALSO MIGHT NOT. He might be a flannel-wearing, beer-swilling, football-watching bulldyke, regardless of how femme he was before the swap. I mean, seriously, since his prior butchiness (see link for "femme") doesn't seem to factor either. In SPN fandom, at least some of this has Actually Happened to Dean in "genderswap" fics, because seriously, he is kind of a dyke already.
10. With further regard to the ovaries issue (everybody's got at least one)--a frequent complaint I hear about "genderswap" is the idea that Straight Sex Fixes Everything! And, in case there's a pressing deadline, Unprotected Straight Sex Fixes Everything Faster!
[quote from impasto snipped]
11. Which, don't get me started on the Menstrual Goddess and her trials of bloody humiliation and rage. Or pregnancy angst and the relative lack thereof.
12. I've also never seen a female>>male swap. Has anybody? Or is it like the missing link: logically, we know it must exist, and yet.
13. Anyway. What I'm saying is that the swap in "genderswap" is really an accelerated, non-consensual sex reassignment process.
14. EG, "genderswap" is really "sexswap."
15. I'll give you that "genderswap" certainly sounds better than "sexswap," and doesn't bring to mind some seedy 1970s key party. Still.
16. The thing is that "genderswap" as a genre is living the unexamined life right now (when the genre first emerged in SPN fandom, I was impressed by the depth of thought that was going into the characterisations of Dean and Sam as suddenly female, but the quality has gone swiftly and sadly downhill. Weemo bandom--well, it's hard to find quality fic at all, so). If I got the feeling that an author was writing with some mindfulness of what sex and gender actually are and mean (even if the author's beliefs about those things are different from mine), I would be much less likely to stop reading their fic in disgust. It is the assumption of gender and sex binaries and that crazy sex=gender thing which drive me batshit insane.
17. I probably will never stop complaining about the incorrect use of "gender" in "genderswap," though. Just so you know.
Fan Comments
The "sex solves everything" trope isn't my biggest peeve (since I share pretty much every one you've mentioned) but it's at the top of my head these days since it seems to be so prevalent in weemo fic. Almost as prevalent as the trope that when someone turns into a girl, the first response is to phone either Pete Wentz or Bill Beckett, because they are clearly the Gurus of Weird Shit That Happens.
quasiradiant: THANK YOU. the only thing that thing post is missing is the phrases "Taco Show" and "Magic Stick". also, i don't know what weemo means.
i have long meant to write something (perhaps someday i will) about how "genderswap" (and yes, i am with you about how that's totally the wrong word for it) fic wherein two males become two females IS NOT GIRLSLASH. it isn't. it is boyslash wherein the boys involved have girl-parts. that's all.
because saying that m/m-->f/f (wherein --> is the magic genderswap machine of magic) is girlslash or m/m-->m/f is het is to contend that a person's gender has nothing to do with anything except their dickishness or dicklessness. which... bwuh? i find this absolutely bewildering.
bexone: Because having breasts and a vagina does not mean being possessed by a mystical uterine desire to wear make-up, high-heeled sandals, and flirty skirts.
But I do like it when it's clear in the story that they're consciously performing the gender. In Supernatural I don't really buy it unless there's a solid reason (i.e., Agent Hendrikson is looking for two kind of rough, hard living guys in an Impala, and a guy and a bulldyke in that same disreputable car might catch his eye, but an attractive clean-cut upper-middle yuppie couple in their lovingly restored classic vehicle won't), but I can see it in bandom just because so many of the guys are still so young.
violinroad: I do think that bandom seems a little more likely than other fandoms** to have an overwhelming number of writers who haven't had much if any experience with how the dynamics between friends (or otherwise) change once sex is added to the equation
As someone in bandom, I am desperately curious as to how you drew this conclusion.
bexone: Honestly? Age, plain and simple. This is the first fandom I've been involved in where not only are there large numbers of active under-18s, they're all willing to come right on out and admit it. (In my day, we walked uphill both ways in the snow to enter our fake birthdays and liked it!) I kind of feel like I ought to be stomping around waving my walker and yelling at all the damn kids to get off my lawn, half the time. As the age skews younger, the probability of less-or-no experience goes up. *shrugs*
Again, this is limited to purely my own subjective experience: I've been hanging out in lotrips and its enormous extended fandom mostly, with occasional scouting trips into HP, Supernatural and some other, smallish things. I'm not in anime at all and the last time I was in any kind of band related fandom I actually was twelve and the band was New Kids On The Block. Yes, before they shortened it to just NKOTB. And, in case that hasn't dated me nearly enough, I'm 29, which I think makes me older than everyone in these bands. *checks dentures*
molotov bitch: Ah, that explains it, because I was going to ask you whether your comment about sex in friendships meant gender-sex or sex the act. Clearly it's the latter. I was wondering how age affected the likelihood that you had trans friends and was all "bzuh?"
I think a lot of the handwaving of it in fic is because the whole "but we're best friends and I don't want to ruin that! This might break up the band!" thing is used so much it's practically a ritual, so perhaps that isn't mentioned because people assume it and are tired of it, and they would handwave it anyway. I'm slightly disturbed by the implication that gender would instantly make that not an issue though.
And damn, I *should* know what you're talking about here because I *have* had a friend turn into a boyfriend, and yet I don't. I guess cos a lot of fic is based on this idealized male friendship where because you're friends and both male, there's no relationship drama, they just carry on like they did before and, I guess, they never really break up. Of course my experience isn't going to match up to that. I sometimes wonder if anything like that could exist, though I guess I wouldn't know.
I suppose that, since bodyswap fics can take place between two males or two females, that's why it's considered separate from genderswap (I've seen male to male in fanfic, at least, and certainly the episodes of Buffy where Buffy and Faith switch bodies is an example of female to female). I don't know, though. I wonder if that B/G fic should be considered both body- and gender-swap.
mightyfastpig: About the body transformation thing. Maybe a person in such a hypothetical situation would have their behavior change suddenly and radically. "I now have the body of a woman, therefore I should act like (my idea of) a woman."
There's a graphic novel (can't remember the title) about brain swapping. A small, Jewish, left-wing, working poor woman gets her brain implanted into the body of a hulking Italian-American mobster. The newly transplanted woman immediately announces she's going to f*ck, steal or kill anything she wants, because she's tired of her previous life and because now she can get away with it. It could be that her physical self-perception changes her mental self-perception, and that cascades upwards into her higher thought processes, so that she abandons her moral and political principles. Or it could be that, now that she has an excuse, she gets to live out her Jungian shadow fantasy.
So, body/sex and mind/gender aren't completely separate.
sarken: A sex change does not necessitate a shift in pronouns, especially in Character A's POV.
Oh, word.
I've actually been working on a genderswap fic for a while now, and the pronoun thing has caused me a great deal of angst. In my story, Mulder returns from his alien encounter in "Requiem" as a woman. (Handwave-y scifi explanation goes here.) Since I'm a shameless Mulder/Scully 'shipper, this is, of course, an MSR story, and the vast majority of it is scenes that involve only Mulder and Scully, thus creating the pronoun issue. Honestly, half the reason I don't write slash with an regularity is because I've yet to figure out a good way to deal with the he/he or she/she problem. But, anway, after some debate, I thought settled on Mulder remaining a he, since he is still very much a he in terms of gender.
The thing about that, though, was that it solved one problem and created another, slightly more annoying, problem. Now I find myself writing and wondering, "Yes, but how do I keep providing reminders that Mulder's body is female?" For the time being, I find myself swinging back and forth between pronouns, using she for things that are primarily physical (like walking) and he for things that relate back to Mulder being Mulder, like saying or thinking something. It's sloppy as hell, I feel like, but I also wonder if that sloppiness works for the story, since it's from Scully's POV, and she's basically trying to come to terms with that fact that she's still in love with/attracted to Mulder in spite of the fact that his sex has changed.
alchemia: I've noticed that sometimes when the issue comes up with gay men commenting on slash, that sometimes it received in a neutral way, or in a hostile way. I could never put my finger on why. I do know with myself though, that I am in a better place now than I was back then, so its possible my mood back then attracted a more negative response, than if I had posted it now.
Id really like to see more trans fics, and when I first came to fandom, i thought the gender or body swap fics would have what I wanted there, but no, I was expecting something they were not, so my expectations were failed, and I was upset and others were pissed at me for 'telling women what to write' (I guess that either having been a woman or currently being a woman doesn't count). So then I decided to start writing my own. Blaise doesn't have alot of readers, probably because he's a minor character, but pigfeathers you may be pleased to know (Well at least I am!) has been read by 7500+ people (at least I think that's a lot for the genre) since it was posted Feb'06 and been translated into russian; although I've seen it listed under weird things a few times like "slash between two bisexual characters", the impression I have from FB/reviews is that most readers seem to get it, at least in part.
kyuuketsukirui: Word, word, word. I really don't mind if "gender"swap fics are not about trans issues and are just porn, but I'd at least like them to make sense and be logical, and so many of them just fail utterly with that.
8. If so, since hormones do change the way your brain works after prolonged exposure (which equals "not THE NEXT DAY"), it's possible that Character A would eventually start feeling more feminine than masculine, after a few months. He might start enjoying stereotypical feminine activities, and disliking stereotypical masculine activities.
This is the only bit I disagree with, because while he might find himself more comfortable enjoying things he culturally felt he shouldn't before, I find it really hard to believe that liking sports or liking romantic comedies is somehow biological and not cultural and dependent on one's personality.
kalpurna: No other fandom I've been in has done sex-swap as well as Due South, imho. (We tend to call it genderfuck, too, rather than genderswap, which – well, has at least slightly more interesting implications, even though it still uses "gender" rather than "sex", in that it has more to do with fucking with those categories rather than just, you know, switching them neatly and cleanly.)
Personally, I love genderfuck fic, because I like the particular male characters who make up my OTPs, and I like girls' bodies. Two great tastes that taste great together! Genderfuck is very effective porn for me, and can be very effective sociopolitical commentary – but I'd hesitate to say that it has to be, you know? I mean, I can get squicked by weird gender stuff in fic, too, but I'm not sure that sex-swap should be required to lead "the examined life." Then again, I'm also coming from a fandom experience where most of the people writing sex-swap were writing it from an intelligent, feminist, usually bisexual or lesbian context, and so maybe I just haven't run into this stuff you're complaining about.
Anyway, interesting post! Definitely made me think.