PickleMeThis

pinknarc:

As part of our 3rd Year Anniversary celebration, we are offering the Kindle version of our latest feminist speculative fiction anthology, Daughters of Icarus, for FREE, now through March 21st.

Please check it out! And (especially if you enjoy it) please consider leaving us a review on Amazon or Goodreads. 

Doot dee doo, no self interest whatsoever ;)

Writing under a name that can be interpreted in any number of ways has provided a fascinating education in how people construct gender on the basis of very few social cues, and how they’re willing to overlook cues in order to maintain their idea of a writer’s gender. It’s also illustrated how important it seems to be to many people to know what someone’s gender is, to force someone into a tight category before relating to that person’s work.

Yet, our social construction and approach to gender is so warped and limiting that this approach is inherently flawed and troubling. There are so many people who occupy liminal, complex spaces, who are in transition, who don’t have easily-defined genders, that this insistence on knowing the gender behind the name can be tremendously damaging. It makes me wonder sometimes if perhaps “The Economist” has the right idea, allowing the writing to stand on its own as part of a collective.

 When M.C. was just 16 months old and in the care of the South Carolina Department of Social Services, doctors and department officials decided the child should undergo sex assignment surgery to make M.C. a girl. There was no medical reason to perform this surgery, which robbed M.C. not only of his healthy genital tissue but also of the opportunity to decide what should happen to his own body.

Now 8 years old, M.C. identifies as a boy – wearing boy clothes and hairstyles – despite an irreversible surgery that has left him with female genitalia. He has announced to his school and his religious community that he has always been a boy.

The Southern Poverty Law Center filed a groundbreaking lawsuit today on behalf of M.C.’s adoptive parents, Mark and Pam Crawford. It charges that the state of South Carolina violated M.C.’s constitutional rights when doctors surgically removed his phallus while he was in foster care, potentially sterilizing him and greatly reducing, if not eliminating, his sexual function.