![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
There's been some interesting discussion in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
transgender about "A Game of You," which was a story in Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. (I'd link but it's a locked post.) You can read a synopsis of the plot at Wikipedia.
One of the major characters of this storyline is Wanda, a transsexual woman. Many of the folk in that community have, as do i, very mixed feelings about the way Wanda's place in the story was handled. Is it a sympathetic portrayal? An objectifying portrayal? Why is transgender even an element of the story at all? Was the purpose simply to make one of the characters quirky? Or is the intention to explore something deeper?
I'll start by saying that i do believe that Gaiman (and Grant Morrison, whose portrayal of Lord Fanny in The Invisibles i want to compare and contrast) does not seem to approach transgender as a metaphor or literary device (e.g. movies like "The Crying Game" or "Hedwig and the Angry Inch"). It doesn't "mean something," it is just a way some people are. He also does seem to understand that transgender is rooted primally in a transperson's experience. It is fundamentally an aspect of what it is like to be me; it does not come from culture or abstract gender conceptualization, although the way in which it manifests is shaped by those things. It is not a religion to which i converted; there was never a time in my life when i was not transgender. Gaiman seems to understand these things about Wanda.
I also want to say at the outset that authors are not required to do things that make us happy. I don't mean that in the sense of, was his portrayal tolerant or intolerant. I mean, sometimes an author may, if it suits his or her purpose on the way to making a bigger point, narratively affirm a concept or point which seems discordant.
And so it is during the part of the story when Thessaly, who turns out to be a witch who by hook and crook has kept herself alive for thousands of years, draws down the moon and creates a bridge into the dreamworld. Two other women who are present can cross; but not Wanda, because she was born male and has no menstrual blood to offer. A disembodied face Thessaly has nailed to the wall, who speaks with supernatural knowledge, affirms this and refers to Wanda as a man. Actually i found an excerpt of the dialogue between Wanda and the disembodied face:
( Read more... )
transgender about "A Game of You," which was a story in Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. (I'd link but it's a locked post.) You can read a synopsis of the plot at Wikipedia.One of the major characters of this storyline is Wanda, a transsexual woman. Many of the folk in that community have, as do i, very mixed feelings about the way Wanda's place in the story was handled. Is it a sympathetic portrayal? An objectifying portrayal? Why is transgender even an element of the story at all? Was the purpose simply to make one of the characters quirky? Or is the intention to explore something deeper?
I'll start by saying that i do believe that Gaiman (and Grant Morrison, whose portrayal of Lord Fanny in The Invisibles i want to compare and contrast) does not seem to approach transgender as a metaphor or literary device (e.g. movies like "The Crying Game" or "Hedwig and the Angry Inch"). It doesn't "mean something," it is just a way some people are. He also does seem to understand that transgender is rooted primally in a transperson's experience. It is fundamentally an aspect of what it is like to be me; it does not come from culture or abstract gender conceptualization, although the way in which it manifests is shaped by those things. It is not a religion to which i converted; there was never a time in my life when i was not transgender. Gaiman seems to understand these things about Wanda.
I also want to say at the outset that authors are not required to do things that make us happy. I don't mean that in the sense of, was his portrayal tolerant or intolerant. I mean, sometimes an author may, if it suits his or her purpose on the way to making a bigger point, narratively affirm a concept or point which seems discordant.
And so it is during the part of the story when Thessaly, who turns out to be a witch who by hook and crook has kept herself alive for thousands of years, draws down the moon and creates a bridge into the dreamworld. Two other women who are present can cross; but not Wanda, because she was born male and has no menstrual blood to offer. A disembodied face Thessaly has nailed to the wall, who speaks with supernatural knowledge, affirms this and refers to Wanda as a man. Actually i found an excerpt of the dialogue between Wanda and the disembodied face:
( Read more... )
