120 Handling Change
I thanked Vicky when we got to my door. “This is a first, isn’t it?” I commented morosely. “I’m pretty sure you’ve never walked me home before. A fitting burial for my erstwhile manhood.”
“Marsh, I don’t know what else to say,” she said, hugging me. “I’ll keep trying to think of something. I don’t think I’m very good at comforting, but… well, do you want me to come in and talk some more?”
I shook my head. “I think I just need time to myself for now. Thank you, though.” I hugged her back and then let myself in.
But ‘time to myself’ was not in the cards just then. Lee Ann popped her head out of her room and spotted me. “Marsh? What’s wrong?”
“I… just got some disappointing news,” I temporized. Then I remembered that she knew my secret – or at least part of it – and explained further. “We thought we had a lead on how to find the guys who did this to me – to us – and we did, only all the leads dried up.”
“And…?”
“Well, I’d really wanted to talk to them; find out how it all happened and if there was some way for me to change back.”
She rolled her eyes. “Because you think you’re too… small?” she scoffed, indicating her chest. “Marsh, you look great and you’ve got great friends, and from I hear, a great boyfriend, too.” By now she had come out of her bedroom and had grasped my hands. “I understand that this has been a great shock to you, but you’ve adjusted so well, and from what you’ve told us, you’re probably a happier girl now than before. Do you want to talk about it?”
My first thought was that if I were to tell her the whole truth, she’d have to be on my side – if she knew just how big the change had been, she’d never tell me to accept it. My second thought was that she’d be so horrified that she’d make me move out and would never speak to me again. I clamped my mouth shut and shook my head.
“I just need to be alone,” I told her, gently pulling my hands free. I started walking to my room, then stopped and turned around. She hadn’t moved. “Thank you,” I murmured before going inside.
I automatically started to reach for the guitar, but remembered that I could no longer play it properly. Badly played blues would just be annoying, rather than comforting, and the guitar itself was just a reminder of what I’d lost. With a sigh of resignation, I grabbed the next job on my garment rack and sat down at the sewing machine. At least that was something I could do while brooding, and it was more productive than smashing things in frustration.
I’d been sewing for maybe twenty minutes when I was startled by a knock at my door. Although I wasn’t really in the mood for further conversation, I stopped the machine and got up to answer it. To my surprise, Jeremy was standing there when I opened it.
“Wh- what are you doing here?” I gasped.
“Are you OK?” he asked, at almost the same time. I goggled at him, unable to form words. “Your roommate was worried about you,” he continued. “She said I should come over and try to make you feel better.”
“Uh…” was all I managed. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate him coming over; only right now, when I was mourning my lost masculinity, it seemed awkward to be playing girlfriend. OK, that really wasn’t fair. I wasn’t playing at anything. I really was his girlfriend; it just wasn’t something I wanted to think about right now. And then he put his arms around me and I humiliated myself by bursting into tears.
He said, “Oh boy,” and starting rubbing my back while I sobbed against his shoulder. “Do you… want to talk about it?”
I shook my head, still pressed against him. How could I discuss this with him, of all people? Telling my parents had turned out alright, and I’d been unable to avoid letting my roommates know part of the truth, but letting Jeremy know would be a disaster. Maybe I did need to talk things out, but not with him. Not about this.
He offered me his sleeve to wipe my eyes when I finally stopped bawling. “Feeling better?” he asked.
“Not really,” I said, “but thanks. I guess I needed to cry on somebody’s shoulder. I’m such a mess.”
“No, you look fine. I mean you’re beautiful. Um, do you want to talk? About something else, maybe? To take your mind off of… whatever it is you don’t want to talk about? You know, so you feel I’m here for you? That’s what makes girls feel better, right? Talking?”
I shrugged, and then he kissed me. “So should we talk? Or cuddle? Or… do you want me to leave?”
I smiled. “I don’t want you to leave. I guess we can talk about something. I don’t feel much like cuddling, but I don’t think I want to be alone, after all.”
He led me over to my bed and we sat next to each other. “So, what should we talk about?” he asked. “Um, sports? Do you like sports?”
I snickered. “Jer, you don’t even like sports.”
“How about what happens after school?” he suggested.
“You mean, like now?” I asked, amused. He was definitely making it harder for me to feel sorry for myself.
“Well… actually, I meant sort of after we graduate. Like, I told you I’m going to business school, right?” I nodded. “And I got decent scores on my GMATs, and I expect to get into a decent school, and then I figure with an engineering degree and an MBA I should be able to score a job that pays really well, even in today’s economy.”
“It’s really great that you know what you want for your future,” I said.
“And you?”
“You know I’m hoping to go to medical school.”
“Right, and then… internship and residency?”
I nodded. At least this was something that hadn’t changed in my life – it was an area of stability, and was all the more important as a result. “And maybe a fellowship, depending on what area of medicine I want to go into. I haven’t really decided yet.”
“So… that’s what… ten years after you get out of Piques before you’re done with training and really in the ‘real world’?”
“There’s an awful lot to learn, so yeah,” I said. “I mean, you’re playing with people’s lives.”
He looked a bit puzzled about something. “And are you… do you think you’re going to have children?”
Such a simple question, and six months ago it would have been so easy to answer. After all, getting married and having kids was something most people did when they grew up, right? I’d always expected that I’d find a wife sometime in my twenties and we’d have two children, just like my parents did. But until he raised the subject, it hadn’t occurred to me that now, I’d be the one bearing any children I had. And even ignoring the whole squickiness of the idea, that meant somehow working around my medical training and possibly having some restrictions in residencies… I’d have to find out about that. Agghh… it was so much easier when I was a guy!
The next thing I knew he had sprung away from me as though I were radioactive and was staring at me with horror in his eyes. Surely, I couldn’t have said that last thought out loud, could I? The blood drained from my face. I couldn’t blow my secret like that. I couldn’t lose him through such stupidity. I forced myself to laugh. “I was joking. I mean you should see your face. What I meant to say was that it would be so much easier if I was a guy.”
He stared at me warily and for a bit longer than I would have liked. Then he shook his head, but it looked as though he wasn’t completely sure. “I… no, you couldn’t be…”
“Of course not,” I said with confidence I didn’t really feel.
“I guess… for a moment I thought you were saying that you were trans.”
Again I forced a laugh. “Jeremy, you know I’m not just wearing girl clothes. You’ve seen me naked. You know I’m a girl under this outfit.”
He blinked. “Not transvestite, Marsh. Transsexual. You know, somebody who is born one sex and changes to the other?”
I winced, feeling stupid. “Oh. Right. Well, still, I don’t see how you could have thought that, even for a second. I mean, I don’t look like a boy at all, do I? I don’t know what they’re teaching you in those engineering classes,” I laughed, “but boys and girls are kind of different physically, haven’t you noticed? I mean, guys are tall and muscled, and, and girls are mostly short and curvy; it’s not just what you have between your legs. You can’t turn somebody who looks like you into somebody who looks like me.” Not without getting caught in an out-of-control time travel experiment, anyway.
“You can make a pretty good approximation, Marsh.”
He sounded so certain of himself. “Why would you think that was even possible?” I asked, incredulous.
“It’s kind of common knowledge, actually. But I actually know somebody.”
I stared again. “Somebody who… changed sex?”
“Mmhmm.” He sat next to me again. “Freshman year, my first lab course, I had this guy as a lab partner. He wasn’t what you might call the most masculine guy you ever met. I don’t mean he was gay or anything, he definitely liked girls, but there was something… different about him. The kind of thing that probably got him teased a lot in high school.
“Well, we got along pretty well, and even hung out sometimes outside of class, so I looked for him again as a partner the next semester. Only, he was gone. He hadn’t said anything, but he’d clearly dropped out of school, and none of our few mutual friends knew what had happened to the guy.”
Jeremy stood up and started pacing nervously. “Well, last year, second semester, I was helping out with the freshman lab, and this girl asked for my help, and she knew my name. Now, you know I’m not the most adept guy when it comes to girls…”
“I’m not complaining,” I whispered, but he ignored me.
“… but it really bothered me that a girl – any girl – would know me and I’d have forgotten her. At the end of the lab, she said, ‘You don’t know who am I, do you?’ and I had to admit that I didn’t, expecting her to tell me when we’d met, but she didn’t.
“I think it was like the third week of the lab when she asked me as we were walking out if I remembered the guy I mentioned to you earlier – my old lab partner – and then I realized why she’d looked familiar and I asked if she was his sister. And she just shook her head and said, ‘no, I was him.’”
“And you believed her?” I asked.
“I just stood there in shock for a moment. I mean I’d heard of sex changes but I’d never actually met anyone who had done it. But I ran after her and she agreed to meet me at the Grill and explain.”
“And she actually was a girl?”
“Well, I never saw her undressed, but yeah, she definitely looked female to me. Not that I’m an expert or anything, but I’ve been looking at girls for a long time, and I didn’t even suspect until she mentioned it to me.
“So we met and it turned out she knew way too much about me and my freshman lab to be a complete stranger. She said she’d had a lot of hesitation about telling me, but we’d been good friends in the past, so… apparently she’d had plastic surgery to make her face look feminine, and was taking hormones, which had changed her body, too…”
“That much?” I asked, not really wanting to believe him. “I thought it was just, you know, down there.”
“I don’t know about down there, but she looked pretty convincingly female to me. I didn’t ask to confirm, in case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t. But…” I stammered, “But what about body hair, and… lots of things?”
“She said she’d had to go through a lot. Like zapping hairs all over her body, and having her Adam’s Apple removed.” My hand moved involuntarily to my throat. “She made it sound really expensive. And there’s a long recovery time, too, which is why she’d missed two years of school.”
“I… I never realized all that,” I said, a bit shaken. “It sounds horribly painful. I guess I’d never really thought about it that much. I can’t imagine wanting it so badly – and after all that, she doesn’t wind up completely female, either, right? I mean, even if she looks the part.” I can’t say that I’d ever much considered the option for myself, for that reason. I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t have been happy with the result, even if I’d been willing to undergo all the surgery.
“She told me it was pretty much either that or suicide.” He looked at me closely. “Are you OK? Did I just upset you?”
“No, I just… I’m just a bit dumbfounded…” I wondered if that was why everything had fallen through. Had I just not wanted it enough to take even a semblance of manhood at great cost and great pain? I’d been hoping for an easy solution – I’d wanted just to wake up one day as a guy again, with my old body and… I shook my head. The sex change solution had never appealed to me; to look male on the outside but be female on the inside wasn’t good enough.
“Oh boy. I just messed up, didn’t I?” Jeremy said, putting his hands on my shoulders. “I came over to make you feel better and now I’ve made you feel worse.”
“You didn’t,” I reassured him, putting my hand over his and kissing him on the cheek. “You’ve just sort of surprised me, is all. I think the term too much information might apply. Thank you so much for coming over, but I think I need to be alone to rest now.”
“OK… are you going to be over for the study group on Thursday?”
“I will,” I promised him, and walked him out. I had a lot of thinking to do.
Like, seriously??
I can’t count the number of ways in which this chapter is awful.
Oh, well.
I think it’s very difficult to judge, because it seems to be a transition chapter that is leading into something else. Whether this chapter is awesome or not will depend greatly on what is to follow.
Grammatically, this might be the best chapter that I’ve ever seen. 😉
I liked it. It finally put an end to the icky vikki love triangle, and it moved marsh from saving his manhood to living as a girl. Its lose, and funny. I guess the Transsexual discussion was a bit much, if I would critique it. Either way, I like the transitionals, and the faster updates!
>>Grammatically, this might be the best chapter that I’ve ever seen.
While grammar makes a difference to me, particularly in how well I understand a chapter, flow, etc., it is not what I judge web novels on, figuring that they are not yet edited. I look for story content, flow, plotting, character development, etc.
And as one of at least two people that are of the ‘let’s make Marsh’s intelligence quotient somewhere above that of my toaster’ the idea that a pre-med college student of today does NOT know about this particular sexual perversion is beyond comprehension. Half the sit-coms and drama shows have dealt with it at some point. My extremely conservative Christian children, those above the age of ten, have all heard of it.
And as a plot element it is tension destroying.
>>it moved marsh from saving his manhood to living as a girl.
Huh?? Did you read the conclusion to the chapter? I read it as… ‘hey, even if I can’t get the to work I can always go down for surgery and get myself fixed that way’.
And, besides, the bit about not being able to figure out how to fix it is just Marsh blowing his poor-pitiful-and-dumb me again.
Dude, I think you need to lighten up. I was joking!
Well, the fact that transsexuality has nothing to do with sex — and therefore couldn’t be a sexual perversion, even if one were going to be judgmental like that — goes to show that maybe folks don’t know as much about it as they think. Given Marsh’s current body, if Marsh does feel that he is a man, then bam: Marsh is a transsexual.
Now, if you feel that Marsh’s knowledge of transsexuality is insufficient given her status as a pre-med student who had her own gender changed, well, I think that’s a valid point. I mean, if it were me, personally, in Marsh’s situation, I probably would have done endless research on the Internet about transsexuality by this point. I can tell you the chapter moved considerably away from (imo unrealistic) ignorance, compared to the first draft. Of course, Marsh grew up as male, and, in my experience, men tend to have both less tolerance and knowledge of gender fluidity than women do.
I read the chapter in the same way as Jerf, I think. I certainly didn’t as “oh whew, I can fix all my problems with surgery if need be”. While I have no idea where the transsexual segue is going to lead, it does certainly provide an impetus for Marsh to do some much needed introspection about just how important his or her original gender is.
She may decide that, over time, she has come to feel like a woman. Or she may decide that she doesn’t feel like her gender is that important either way. Or he may decide that he feels like a man, but not enough to go through the grueling meat grinder that is changing one’s gender. Or, I suppose, he could decide that is in fact very important to him, and that he may want to transition genders, if he can’t fix the time-traveling thing in any kind of reasonable time frame. No matter what decision Marsh makes, she at least now has a good reason to think about it.
>>probably would have done endless research on the Internet about transsexuality by this point.
I was not speaking of ‘research’ but of general life knowledge long before he came to this point.
>>in my experience, men tend to have both less tolerance and knowledge of gender fluidity than women do.
Thank you for the compliment.
>>I certainly didn’t as “oh whew, I can fix all my problems with surgery if need be”.
Not what I said. The problem here is that the tension of the book needs to be focused, not diluted; heightened, not diminished; and this distracts, not adds.
Marsh has at least two vital tensions: 1) Do I want to continue in my current identity (with my current friends, my current family, the current time line), or (2) do I want (and, to resume the moral courage issue, do I owe everyone who was changed by the transformation) to fight against those people who manipulated everyone’s life in a blatantly immoral way…. and (to appeal to shallow modern morality) a way that has left many people very unhappy.
The moral choice is, of course, (2). Given that, the tension becomes, how do I do that? What mountain needs climbing, what bridge needs building, what enemies need to be obliterated, to get that done?
(It is amazing to me, again, how much people get caught up in the rather trivial boy/girl issue here. Marsh can lead a perfectly valid, helpful, and loving life as a boy or as a girl. That is, basically, irrelevant. However someone has acted here in a way that (how to put this in a way so moderns would understand it?) has violated the ‘rights’ of hundreds, even thousands of people… stripping from them their self-determination, their important relationships, etc. For all we know people were crippled or even killed by this experiment. And all we care about is whether he is going to inseminate or bear children?! Is that how shallow our society has become?
Get real. This story presents real, live, present evil. Evil that needs combating. So get off your pretty little derriere and start kicking some… well, you know.)
Russ, on Skype, asked me to clarify my ‘tension’ comments. We had the following conversation (pasted by permission)
Von: (speaking about the book tension)…you have diluted it here
Von: you have added, not subtracted
Von: a focus subtracts
Von: If I add ten new exhibits to my museum I have not ‘focused’… especially if they are exhibits that are different from the previous
Von: If I take away extraneous exhibits, that focuses
Von: If I take away extraneous, and add relevant, that focuses
Von: let me ask you, what should I be thinking the major tension is right now???
Russ: how is Marsh going to cope with the new reality?
Von: but you haven’t allowed that to be the tension
Von: indeed, this chapter makes that worse
Russ: oh?
Von: it dilutes it
Von: OK, let me use and example
Von: the Wizard of Oz
Von: (hereafter ‘Oz’)
Von: tension: how do I get home?
Von: right?
Russ: y
Von: focus of tension: the wizard can send you home, thus, find wizard, force him to send you home.
Von: right?
Russ: y
Von: OK, so, what if, in chapter three, we add that, perhaps Glinda could send you home
Von: and then, in chapter four, we decide we might not want to go home
[Von: and then, chapter five, maybe we want to go to the south sea islands
Von: bammmm… tension blurred
Von: no?
Russ: k
Von: then we get to wizard, find out he can’t send you home… oh, well, maybe I’ll stay
Von: WHAT???
Von: or, maybe I’ll go to the south sea islands
Von: or maybe go see Glinda
Von: but in the meantime, they make a mean chocolate sunday here at the emerald city
Von: UC???
Von: massively blurrred tension
Von: diluted
Von: uc??
Russ: y
Von: so, same as here
Von: maybe I’ll get changed back by these guys
Von: maybe I’ll decide to stay
Von: maybe I’ll have a sex change operation
Von: but, in the meantime, should I have sex with Jeremy?
Von: blurrrrrrrrr
Von: Would you like door number one, or two… or three? maybe you don’t want a door, we have a nice curtain…
Von: blurrrrr
Von: There is an enemy… but we might not fight them
Von: I am horribly uncomfortable and freaked out being a girl… well, I was, sort of, but sex might be fun, and that’s a cute dress
Von: I have been stripped away from my family, my friends, my life, my memories…everyone I knew and was.. but, you know, this is kind of nice like this, sort of, and I can sing really well
Von: uc???
Von: that is what I mean
Russ: point made
So, my point is that the addition of sex-change to the discussion adds another ‘out’ and lessens the overall tension. If he had rejected the idea, that would have raised the tension a bit.
I have hidden a number of comments that focused more on morality and departed from the discussion of the book. If people really want to see them, I can bring them back.
Well, at this point, it seems that Marsh doesn’t have enough information to decide for or against it either way. I’m reserving my judgment on what it does to the story’s tension until the next chapter or two resolves it. I know Russ definitely wants to take this plotline somewhere, but it could honestly go in a million directions at this point.
In my head, I have ways I think that the chapter could be made more dense and tense (har!), but it really depends on where things end up. Some bits that I think could get cut now might end up being vitally important down the line. I know I’ll be keeping a close eye on my RSS feed until I find out. *grins*
>>I have hidden a number of comments that focused more on morality and departed from the discussion of the book. If people really want to see them, I can bring them back.
I saved a copy. I’ll post them on my blog if April doesn’t mind.
Go ahead, although I’d prefer if you didn’t use my URL. Thanks.
np.
posted: http://vonstakes.blogspot.com/2010/12/calling-it-perversion.html
Substantially revised – the chapter was hinting at something I hadn’t quite intended, and my original plan of leaving it to the next chapter to explain it was clearly not working.
Nice work on the revision! I think it really sharpened the chapter up a bunch.
Better. Still not clear on why this chapter is here, but it is now just a void instead of a positive nuisance. That’s good, right?
Thank you for removing the morality discussion. I still find some of the comments left on this page to be highly offensive. I am shocked at the insensitivity and judgement some people express toward something they cannot possibly understand, no matter how many TLAs and titles they claim to prove their qualifications.
http://web.mac.com/klock/LWEC/Living_Words/Entries/2008/8/17_Judgmentalism.html
Now on to the chapter. I found it a bit confusing. Certainly it will provoke some introspection. Most likely it will help Marsh FOCUS on what s/he needs to do. Either accept life as a woman or take action. The transgender story demonstrates the lengths to which an individual with a gender identity crisis will go. If Marsh cannot accept life as a woman, he can never give up. Brooding won’t change anything.
>>some of the comments
Some? As in plural? Wow, even after Russ deleted practically everything I said? I can only find one.
>>I am shocked at the…
Well, you’re more than welcome to head on over to my blog and castigate me there… assuming I am the ‘some people’ referred to. I would be interested, for example, to know (over there) whether your ‘cannot possibly’ merely means that I haven’t tried hard enough of whether you see it as physically impossible.
(I often tell my wife, “You cannot possibly understand how much I…(ref Prov 5)” and I do, indeed, mean it is physically impossible, so I am not being pedantic, but really want to know.)
>>Now on to the chapter. I found it a bit confusing. Certainly it will provoke some introspection. Most likely it will help Marsh FOCUS on what s/he needs to do. Either accept life as a woman or take action. The transgender story demonstrates the lengths to which an individual with a gender identity crisis will go. If Marsh cannot accept life as a woman, he can never give up. Brooding won’t change anything.
So then, reading between the lines somewhat, you took this in the same way I did… as providing another option for Marsh? Do you still read it that way after the rewrite? For example, this: “I shook my head. The sex change solution had never appealed to me; to look male on the outside but be female on the inside wasn’t good enough.”
It seems that Russ is at least trying to rule this out of the park… that the current Marsh ‘feels’ himself to be currently female on the outside and on the inside… thus a ‘gender reassignment’ operation would end up leaving him ‘feeling’ worse, not better.
Or did I misread you or Russ?
Oh, and permission to quote/reference your comments on my blog?
Late to the party again; I’m going to have to go back to checking this every day. Franky, I read this chapter with an increasing feeling of “Oh, no… he’s not really going that way… nononono!” For the most part, for the reasons in what’s left of von’s comments. In fact, it may be fortunate I didn’t see the prior revision of the text, and the rest of the comments, particularly the “morality” bits. Might put me off the story entirely.
Aside from plot direction, the first thing that glares out from the page is the unfortunately-necessary-for-plot “spoken instead of thought” bit. Honestly, outside of fiction, do people actually DO that? In the last five and a half decades, I’ve done that ONCE – when I was four.
For the rest, I’m not sure of the point of this chapter, other than the plot dilution previously mentioned. The shutdown in the previous chapter was brutal, but not total – the experimenters still exist somewhere. It may be that I underestimate how important this is to most people – for me, my identity isn’t locked up in the shape of my body – but it seems to me as long as there’s the slightest possibility of a “magical” and complete resolution, the much more difficult “conventional” path wouldn’t enter one’s mind.
Oh, and (GRIN) on Marsh’s lack of knowledge on transsexuality – s/he’s NEVER had a clue before, or ANY of the knowledge and personality traits I’ve seen in pre-med students. Why would we expect it now?
Great post Scott. A bit hard on poor Russ tho.
>> Great post Scott. A bit hard on poor Russ tho.
Because I (mostly) agree with you? (GRIN) I don’t mean to be hard on Russ or anyone else; and I try to slip in a “Yay!” from time to time as appropriate. It may be that I spent too much time beta-testing computer hardware and software: “The stack didn’t overflow!” or “THIS battery didn’t burst into flame” wouldn’t have gotten me a lot of points at Apple.
I like your story, Russ.
I don’t know if I’ve ever done it, but it is a popular device for moving the plot forward:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ptitlensfzkfi4
I think Marsha has done it a few times now? But I could be thinking of something else.
I dunno… I think it’s easy to feel like one’s identity isn’t locked up in the shape of their body, when their body feels appropriate. Of course, it’s just a thought experiment for most people. It seems like it would be an interesting and enjoyable experience, but I suspect it would feel horribly dysphoric for most people. The fact that transgender people go through one of the most complicated, torturous experiences humanely possible — often losing their jobs, their families, their friends, their children, spending tens of thousands of dollars in savings, undergoing painful surgeries, and being regularly subjected to ridicule and hate crimes — says to me that feeling like your gender is off must be a more unpleasant experience than we give it credit for.
That said, you may not be one of those people. 🙂
I think this lack of dysphoria makes Marsha a somewhat unusual character. I find myself wanting to know *why* she feels that being male on the outside is worse than not being male at all. After all, transmen pass *extremely* well, and tend to not have many issues when it comes to being accepted as male.
I think you’re pretty on, here. I don’t know if Marsh has ever really felt like a pre-med student to me, either. She clearly doesn’t seem to get the same enjoyment from it that she does from singing, acting, playing music, or heck, even sewing. She doesn’t really seem to have that… drive… that most pre-med students have. But other than providing a setting, I don’t think it’s really played that major of a role in the story, has it?
>>Because I (mostly) agree with you? (GRIN)
No. I have the same mindset you do. If I’m still reading and commenting, that’s either because I’m getting paid (which Russ knows I’m not) or because there is something worth commenting on. I think Russ is a good beginning writer. He is better at some things than others: he can be a bit defensive, but he writes (often) from his heart. He is horrible at tension and setting, but is technically very good and pays attention to details. I have (how many times now Russ?) said I would love to write together, and combine our strengths (and our weaknesses, probably).
When people comment on my stories I love:
1) Wow, I’m enjoying your story.
But I like:
2) Wow, I’m enjoying your story. I was totally confused by Bobbi’s motivation for…
better.
I even like.
3) I can’t believe how insensitive you have your main character being. Doesn’t he care about…
better than (1). And even:
4) Wow, what a horrible story
is better than
5)
(which is something I don’t often say, myself 😉 )
>>But other than providing a setting, I don’t think it’s really played that major of a role in the story, has it?
Which is, again, a focus issue. Good details expand and enrich the story, bad details distract, and horrible details contradict. This detail, for Scott and I anyway, contradicts; whereas if he was an art major, or an acting major, or something, that would flow well. And, as you say, it doesn’t really play any role in the story so why not just have Marsh wake up an art major? 😉
>>I think it’s easy to feel like one’s identity isn’t locked up in the shape of their body
Ironically I agree with you here. While you and I may disagree violently as to what the appropriate response to this situation is, I disagree with Scott that it is trivial. I am most upset, however, that the hundreds of other non-trivial issues related to this change are not even dismissed as trivial, but simply ignored. It seems, again, that this is a plot element which distracts, at least for me (and, if I recall, for Scott, too, in the past. I could be wrong).
>>I think this lack of dysphoria makes Marsha a somewhat unusual character.
I think you have missed a vital part of the story. AS I read it Marsh is experiencing being a female both on the inside and the outside. Right now he is gender-unified. His desire to resume his old life is a desire to regain being totally male, inside and outside. A change, outside of a technobabble change, would of necessity be partial… and would leave a female inside a males body… a socially, emotionally, and sexually female. It would make the situation worse, not better.
As I read it Marsh is a female inside a female’s body whose only real issue (or the only one he acknowledges, anyway) is that he remembers having been male… with all the roles and priveledges appertaining thereto.
I think I understand what you’re saying, but I think it would be helpful to me if you were to use the generally accepted terminology:
sex == your physical body (male / female)
gender == your internal sense of being male or female (man / woman)
social gender == how others perceive you (he / she)
sexual orientation == who you’re attracted to (gay / straight / bisexual)
So, you’re saying that Marsh is a woman inside a female’s body, to which I would say that is generally how Marsh’s thoughts have “felt” to me as well, as a woman. I wouldn’t say that’s his only real issue, because I think it’s threefold:
– Marsh remembers having been a man, and knows how to “be” a man, although he seems to be forgetting some of these things; a fact he has found distressful
– Marsh doesn’t have knowledge of how to “be” a woman (and the learning thereof is one of my favorite parts of the story), sometimes finding those things unpleasant (such as in chapter, with crying being humiliating… of course, I’ve felt humiliated because of my crying at times, too, so it’s not just a Marsh thing)
– Marsh strongly desires some of the things that came with him being a man, many of which cannot be reacquired or learned (cousin, sexual orientation, and likely his friendships with other men)
Much of that is said with the stipulation that I can’t really know how men “feel” inside. So it could be an accurate representation of how they do feel, and I just don’t know it.
>> I disagree with Scott that it is trivial
PLEASE don’t put this word in my mouth. I’m well aware the wrong physical gender is a soul-destroying issue for some people; I’m also aware that, without personal knowledge, I may still be underestimating it. My point was that people who face that choice have no magic or technobabble solution. If they had, say, a ten percent chance of a waved magic wand, they might hold off on surgery for quite a while.
It’s also necessary to remember that everyone’s opinions are based on their own peculiarities. While happily and successfully male, I’ve been fascinated by the “magical sex change” storyline since I saw the movie “Goodbye Charlie” – when I was nine. I don’t feel locked into a body because most of what I enjoy is gender-neutral.
(GRIN) And April knows I like my VW’s stock, not modified. Given the choice, I’ll save up for a (hypothetical) Porsche than hop-up my Passat.
Wow, so I am going to have to learn a whole new language. So, in your language, what do the following terms mean?:
Male: As in “Joe is a male”
Female: ditto but reversed for Jane
Masculine: As in ‘he is very masculine
Feminine: ditto but reversed for Jane
??
I grew up with:
Sex: That which a man and wife did in bed (or in front of the fire, or in the back seat of the van, or by the edge of the pool), how they made babies, and what they got embarrassed talking to you about.
Gender: That which determined which bathroom you used, clothes you wore, toys you played with, and a fancy way for science teachers to talk about the embarrassing parts of the body without anyone knowing what they were talking about.
>>“magical sex change” storyline
…and much of the problem here is that it isn’t that. The ‘magical’ sex change is, well, magical (ie not produced by presumably comprehensible forces), typically only involves the individual themselves, does not change outside perceptions or interior self-identity. (and it is usually humorous in nature, as the person tries to cope, and to stay away from lecherous members of their own perceived gender…sex…whatever)
This story is more diluted because many people are involved, and the means are technical and reversible-in-theory. Imagine (now this would be a plot, eh) if one day aliens zapped the earth and all of the boys turned into girls and vice versa. That would be a comedy. I certainly can’t see the plot getting seriously into gender-reassignment.
>>PLEASE don’t put this word in my mouth.
I was reacting to the seeming simplicity of this comment:
>>my identity isn’t locked up in the shape of my body
Which seems to imply that the issue is mere ‘plumbing’ (a quote from several different authors… and a more inane statement is difficult to imagine). While, again, disagreeing with April as to the correct course of action, I agree with the complexity of the issue. Indeed, I think that she is being too simplistic 😉
>>a soul-destroying issue for some people
One wonders if Scott meant this as a theological statement? If so, I would be interested in hearing the rest of his theology… over on my blog, of course.
edited to add:
Man
Men
Woman
Women
He
She
etc.
>> One wonders if Scott meant this as a theological statement?
Hyperbole only; no theological significance implied. In retrospect, knowing von would read it, a poor choice of terms. Sorry.
>>In retrospect, knowing Von would read it, a poor choice of terms. Sorry.
ROTFL
It’s not really so much “my language” as it’s what’s in dictionaries, encyclopedias, research, and generally in usage when people are having non-casual conversations about this sort of thing. It helps to clarify what people are discussing, in much the same way that I imagine you would probably find it a bit confusing if I always used the term “God” even when referring to Jesus, even if you could probably figure out what I was intending from the context. I think it’s been the standard nomenclature since the late 1960s or so?
Sex is a bit confusing, because it’s both the thing you do in bed, and the body you have. On your birth certificate or medical records, it would list your Sex, not your gender. Your sex influences how people treat you, because people make assumptions about how you behave or should behave, based on it. Your sex generally determines which bathroom you’d use. Especially when you’re a child, it influences the toys you’d play with and the clothes that you’d wear, since you don’t really have much choice about it. As I said, it’s the physical part.
Gender is the huge complicated morass of the behaviors and roles that we expect people to follow. Masculine and feminine can refer to either sex or gender, depending on the context. What somebody’s gender involves changes depends quite strongly on the society they’re in.
Joe has a masculine jawline is referring to his sexual characteristics, or Jane the Mechanic is so masculine is referring to her gendered behavior.
Of course, it’s one of those terms that has slowly been shifting over time, and now people often use the term gender when they mean sex.
Gender identity is how you perceive yourself to be. So, your internal perception of yourself is of being a man or being a woman. Early on, Marsh’s gender identity was probably as a man, but her gender identity has clearly been slipping over time.
As in “Joe is a male” <– Joe has a penis, likely XY chromosomes, male secondary sexual characteristics (body hair, etc.)
ditto but reversed for Jane <– Jane has a vagina, likely XX chromosomes, female secondary sexual characteristics (boobs, etc.)
As in ‘he is very masculine <– Depends on the context, but likely I would take it to mean that he exhibits many behaviors stereotypical of his gender
ditto but reversed for Jane <– Depends on the context, but likely I would take it to mean that she exhibits many behaviors stereotypical of his gender
People use "woman" when they mean female and "man" to mean male, because it works 99+% of the time. But, when you're talking about transsexuality, they're not the same things.
Of course, if it sounds confusing, that’s because it really is. It’s pretty much impossible to nail down even the physical characteristics that make somebody male versus female. I know the IOC has been trying, with little success, for about a century now.
>>stereotypical of his gender
so when you say ‘stereotypical’ (as opposed to the neutral word ‘typical’) are you trying to say that they are not, actually typical?
It is confusing, in large part, because we have made it so. Most societies have, linguistically, got along quite well with the ‘stereotypical’ use of the various terms for pretty much all of human history. Of course, a Eunuch has been recognized as a rather unique class, but, outside of that, the standard terms work pretty well. Outside of time travel stories, that is 😉
(and when I say ‘your’ language, I mean the language that you requested me to use. The English possessive is quite a flexible category. For example, ‘my’ book can mean the book I own, the book I checked out, the book I wrote, or even the book that I grabbed before my sister did.)
Stereotypical, typical, whatever.
Let’s not make an appeal to tradition when it comes to terminology. We have used the “sick” for pretty much all of human history, but now we distinguish between “the flu”, “cancer”, and a “vitamin deficiency” because we know better now. You can very well say somebody is “sick” in casual conversation just fine, but if you’re having a serious conversation about what is afflicting somebody, you will have a difficult time without using the proper terminology.
>>but if you’re having a serious conversation about what is afflicting somebody, you will have a difficult time without using the proper terminology.
And if you’re going to have a serious conversation about gender identity etc. with a conservative Christian (or, for that matter, any normal American) you will need to differentiate between the word ‘typical’ (meaning what people normally do, with some exceptions) and ‘sterotypical’ (which means, what you homophobic, sexist, racist bigots foolishly imagine people do, and language that you should be beaten on the public square for using).
(especially because I am a linguist)
Well, I am quite aware of the meaning of both terms. In my case, either stereotypical or typical would work, although I would say that the vast majority of the time that some calls someone else masculine or feminine, they are referring to the stereotypes, and not what is typical in a statistical sense. I actually find the use of the word “typical” to be a bit sloppy (much like “normal”), unless you more precisely define what you mean by typical, for example, done by at least 75% of the population being referred to.
As a linguist, I would think that you would better differentiate between a stereotype and a prejudice. A stereotype is merely a widely held, simplified belief about various groups of people. It can be positive or negative, and it certainly doesn’t have to be racist, homophobic, sexist, or otherwise bigoted in nature. Our brains naturally stereotype both people and things, as a way to reduce the complexity of the world.
Perhaps what you’re thinking of is a prejudice? They are quite different, and it’s a common mistake. Here are the Wikipedia articles on them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prejudice
The word ‘stereotypicaly’ or sterotype tends to be used in a negative, or perjoriative, sense: and, ironically, they can be used of the exact same dimension. Someone can say, “Males are typically stronger than females”; and someone else can say “It is a stereotype that males are stronger than females.” The second person is probably using the phrase in an argument, say as for why females should be in the military; the first person is probably using it in a more neutral sense, or with people that agree with him.
If someone says ‘it is a common sterotype that’… they mean, ‘people hold a false belief that’. If they say, on the other hand, “typically…’ then they are stating something they believe to be true. Thus if you said, “Males have a more limited view of Gender roles” and I called that a ‘sterotype’ I would be accusing you of stating a falsehood; whereas if I called that ‘typically true’ I would be agreeing with you. (And if I said, ‘that is typical’ I would be either saying that that is, indeed, true; or I would be saying, “Isn’t it just like a girl to think that,” 🙂 )
And, while the idea of ‘majority’ is certainly a valid way to measure ‘typical’ another way is a compared mean. So, for example, if I say that the men are stronger than women, I might well mean that the average strength for males (say, the ability to hold X amount of weight suspended for 60 seconds) is greater than the average strength for females.
Basically I would hold, as a linguist, that the word sterotype should be avoided except where one wishes to be insulting.
From a cultural anthropologist point of view, it is also important to distinguish between those things which are non normative, and those that are taboo… either for the culture at large or an individual sub-culture.
There are many things in this particular discussion which include elements of both: thinks that might be merely non-normative for the general culture but would be taboo for a particular sub-culture.
Fair enough. I agree with everything you just said. 🙂
In my defense of using the term, you did give me a somewhat ambiguous sentence (“He is very masculine.”) to work with; depending on the context, it could have gone either way.
True. For example, “He is very masculine” could mean:
1) He performs according to his cultures expectations of his gender role
2) He is very successful at avoiding gender taboo’s in his culture
3) He performs in a way that attracts females sexually
4) He successfully avoids all behaviors typically associated with Sodomites.
… and a large number of other things; all of which have a similar, core, denotative value but differ somewhat in their connotations.
Well, if scotts13 came late to the part, I’m shuffling the confetti with my feet.
Anyway, I would like to give my appreciation for all of the fine information gleaned in the comments, for one specific example: thanks to April’s remarks, I now have the site’s RSS feed in my news aggregator.
I’m disappointed in the removal of the comments from before (but mildly; it’s not my comment section, so I have no say in how it’s run), but am glad that more has been said, and kept in its place.
Keep up the good work, Russ, and to the commenters, keep up the keen analysis, and help Russ to make his good work better!
Hello Mr. Gold, I’ve been reading your story for the better part of a year, and occasionally smiling as I shake my head at the comments. This time I decided I had to say something. Mostly this is a message to you, so you don’t have to post it at all. I don’t want to mess up the adorably edgy group dynamic. I’m not a professional writer or linguist. I’m an English teacher, and the extent of my fiction writing credentials is a very complimentary personalized rejection letter from Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine. Still, I think I know enough about fiction writing to provide some perspective.
Von has a point about distraction (more on that later), but his focus/tension rant had some holes. He asked you Marsh’s goals. You said,”how is Marsh going to cope with the new reality?”
Von didn’t listen. He continued along his own idea of what Marsh’s goals should be as stated in the comments:
“Marsh has at least two vital tensions: 1) Do I want to continue in my current identity (with my current friends, my current family, the current time line), or (2) do I want (and, to resume the moral courage issue, do I owe everyone who was changed by the transformation) to fight against those people who manipulated everyone’s life in a blatantly immoral way…. and (to appeal to shallow modern morality) a way that has left many people very unhappy.”
There is middle ground. Coping. You think Marsh needs to cope with a situation that is almost certainly beyond control, and Von thinks Marsh should drop out of life and hunt the evil scientists. Marsh is not that person, and never has been as far as I can tell. Marsh isn’t even sure he SHOULD reverse the experiment. Perhaps Von wants a black and white moral tale, but this ain’t it. Many, many real people would try like heck to get their lives back even as they took a little extra time to explore their impossible new situation. It is natural to be curious. More importantly, Marsh understands that he has a life in the new world. The people and relationships are real now even if they weren’t before. He doesn’t want to hurt them any more than his old relationships, and if things don’t work out with the experiment angle he is going to need the new life intact.
If he can’t balance a life he knows little about while uncovering a wide spread conspiracy he could fail at both. You have established that the university has an eye on him, and that admitting his predicament tends to ruin relationships (father, sister, best friend, ex-girlfriend, new boyfriend, etc…). Every time he lets somebody he trusts in on the secret it is as if he has killed Marsha again, but if he tells nobody he can’t hope to get things back to normal (not to mention that if he succeeds, Marsha, and everybody she knew would be erased for eternity…talk about tension). That balancing act (coping) is your tension, not pursuit of the experiment (or the Wizard, as Von would put it).
From that standpoint, every new aspect which threatens to unbalance Marsh’s life could potentially add tension, not diminish it. These unbalancing curve-balls are a well a establish fiction technique which some folks call a “disaster.” You put them in at the end of a scene to help maintain tension.
The problem with the transsexual angle is (and bare in mind that I didn’t catch the first version) we already knew Marsh well enough to assume it wouldn’t appeal to him. It didn’t unbalance anything. The imbalance came from Jeremy thinking he might have been a guy. Jeremy’s feelings toward Marsh were the unbalancing factor, and the discussion of transsexuals distracted from that only because we already felt we knew what Marsh would decide. It took us away from the argument we cared about; and it was given greater weight by the preceding events, so it pulled us farther still. But I maintain that it was not irrelevant.
It may be important later if Marsh undergoes a serious meltdown (which I doubt), and at the very least it should have been mentioned before, both to get it out of the way for people who might wonder, and to help establish Marsh’s strong sense of self (which most definitely includes his/her body). It was not a waste of space. It was merely misplaced. You might want to insert the argument before the reader gets to know Marsh so well, but I wouldn’t leave it out entirely. The question is inevitable and if it doesn’t ever get asked there will always be those who wonder why.
In any case, I have this strange feeling that nobody has disturbed time at all, so it might not matter. The whole set up sort of feels like an experiment fiddling with memory and the many worlds interpenetration of quantum physics. I have a feeling that the odd bits of memory weren’t Marsh’s remains, or Marsha taking over, but Marsh poking through the experiment’s results to interact with the world as it has always been. If that is correct, Marsh and Marsha will both rest easier knowing that nobody ceased to be. In this instance, Marsh would simply have been given a chance to exist. Of course, I’ve been wrong before, and if I am now I can write that story later.
If you would like to learn a little more about my take on maintaining tension, read Scene and Structure by Jack Brickham, or Jim Butcher’s live journal explanation of the same subject. I already guessed at most of what they have to say, but hearing it thoroughly explained by two successful authors was still a help.
Thanks for writing, and don’t take the criticism too hard. This is essentially a first draft after all. Feel free to e-mail with questions or clarifications.
>>Von didn’t listen.
ROTFL.
Jim can have no idea of the number of solid hours that Russ and I Skype on this issue.
But still, some interesting points. More later when I have time. (BTW, if you want to see my take on some of this, Jim, you can read my fan fic ish thing ‘Scrabbled’ on my site.)
Jim — thanks for your insightful and well-written comment. It’s always great to see fresh blood make comments; I hope you stick around and make many more in the future. 🙂
It is interesting, the whole Marshall-never-existing idea. In my opinion, it seems clear to me that at least *a* Marshall existed, either in their universe or another one. After all, Marsha knows things about people who didn’t participate in the experiment: for example, Chad’s porn stash. But I think you can make an explanation work, if you say that she has the memories of a Marshall in another dimension where things are largely similar.