Post by Felicity Banks on May 17, 2018 3:50:23 GMT
So twitter informs me that today is the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Intersexism, and Transphobia.
It's a good day to be writing a story with a transsexual woman as a main character (that is, "Emmeline's Empire").
Why did I choose to have a transsexual main character? Mainly because I wanted to use the name "Xiong", which means bear, but is a masculine name. "Emmeline's Empire" is linked to my steampunk series, which includes a lovely romance between two women (one bi, one gay), as well as (for various reasons which will be explained in the historical notes) a transvestite. Steampunk in general often features women dressed as men and men dressed as women for various reasons, and there are loads of historical stories of cross-dressing, and of (publicly known and accepted) gay romance. In the story, I chose to tone racism, sexism, and homophobia WAY down, mainly because I get bored/depressed writing accurately about such things. Sometimes, it's more fun and more useful to imagine a better world than to reflect the one we live in.
I'm bisexual myself (or, if I understand definitions* correctly, pansexual). "Murder in the Mail: A Bloody Birthday" also has a transsexual character; a suggestion that Naomi may or may not be straight; and one character whose gender is never specified.
"Magic in the Mail: Feuding Fae" features fairy creatures who presumably have different genders/sexualities (but I plan not to be specific about anything, because it is a story designed to be for absolutely any age, and I know parents get awful confused about such things sometimes).
*"Bi" means "two", so although "bisexual" often gets used as an umbrella term for anyone who's attracted to more than one gender, there are way more than two genders in the world (apart from anything else, there are intersex people, who can be both/neither depending on how people are defining "male" and "female" on any given day). Therefore, pansexual is a more accurate term. I've heard the definitions of bisexual and pansexual to be "Attracted to two genders" and "Attracted to the person first, regardless of gender" and I definitely (and gratefully) fall into the second category. In general life, however, I use "bisexual" as a convenient shorthand.
It's a good day to be writing a story with a transsexual woman as a main character (that is, "Emmeline's Empire").
Why did I choose to have a transsexual main character? Mainly because I wanted to use the name "Xiong", which means bear, but is a masculine name. "Emmeline's Empire" is linked to my steampunk series, which includes a lovely romance between two women (one bi, one gay), as well as (for various reasons which will be explained in the historical notes) a transvestite. Steampunk in general often features women dressed as men and men dressed as women for various reasons, and there are loads of historical stories of cross-dressing, and of (publicly known and accepted) gay romance. In the story, I chose to tone racism, sexism, and homophobia WAY down, mainly because I get bored/depressed writing accurately about such things. Sometimes, it's more fun and more useful to imagine a better world than to reflect the one we live in.
I'm bisexual myself (or, if I understand definitions* correctly, pansexual). "Murder in the Mail: A Bloody Birthday" also has a transsexual character; a suggestion that Naomi may or may not be straight; and one character whose gender is never specified.
"Magic in the Mail: Feuding Fae" features fairy creatures who presumably have different genders/sexualities (but I plan not to be specific about anything, because it is a story designed to be for absolutely any age, and I know parents get awful confused about such things sometimes).
*"Bi" means "two", so although "bisexual" often gets used as an umbrella term for anyone who's attracted to more than one gender, there are way more than two genders in the world (apart from anything else, there are intersex people, who can be both/neither depending on how people are defining "male" and "female" on any given day). Therefore, pansexual is a more accurate term. I've heard the definitions of bisexual and pansexual to be "Attracted to two genders" and "Attracted to the person first, regardless of gender" and I definitely (and gratefully) fall into the second category. In general life, however, I use "bisexual" as a convenient shorthand.