Hi there, Yeah, I know they never use gender-neutral for him in there, but---I guess I did so anyway. Hopefully I didn't deny the character any agency ;). I do agree w.you that one can't toss out the whole book because of this one trope that is more than a bit fucked up. Especially since gender-studies people can react kneejerk to things like this: popular books featuring an intersexed protagonist tend to make you wary. I know I judged it before I even started reading it.
Also, on the first page of the book Eugenides acknowledges his sources. Some are sorta notorious to us q.t. kids--Money, etc--but he also mentions The Intersex Society of North America and the journal Hermaphrodites with Attitude. So I think, at this point, that his book is too nuanced to resort to either the scary "'hermaphrodites' are freaks of nature caused by incest" approach or the "I'm shoving Foucauldian theory in readers' faces" approach.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2004-08-06 03:20 am (UTC)Yeah, I know they never use gender-neutral for him in there, but---I guess I did so anyway. Hopefully I didn't deny the character any agency ;). I do agree w.you that one can't toss out the whole book because of this one trope that is more than a bit fucked up. Especially since gender-studies people can react kneejerk to things like this: popular books featuring an intersexed protagonist tend to make you wary. I know I judged it before I even started reading it.
Also, on the first page of the book Eugenides acknowledges his sources. Some are sorta notorious to us q.t. kids--Money, etc--but he also mentions The Intersex Society of North America and the journal Hermaphrodites with Attitude. So I think, at this point, that his book is too nuanced to resort to either the scary "'hermaphrodites' are freaks of nature caused by incest" approach or the "I'm shoving Foucauldian theory in readers' faces" approach.