Continuum X: Moving Beyond the Gender Binary

I was thrilled this past Friday to speak at Continuum X, the 53rd annual Australian National Science Fiction Convention. I was on a panel called Moving Beyond The Gender Binary with several other lovely people who were very erudite and much better at the lit-crit side of things than me. Our charming moderator has provided a list of the texts that were mentioned during the discussion and I mean to pick up all the ones I haven’t read and would encourage everyone else interested in the topic to do the same.

I announced a while back that I’d signed a contract for a book called Defying Convention. There is a part of that book that addresses my frustrations with the way con panels on ~diversity~ tend to be disingenuous at best and harmful at worst, but Continuum was very different, very earnest, and I was pleasantly surprised to see the room packed with people who wanted to hear what the panel had to say about non-binary issues and inclusion.

I wished AJ from that book could have been there. AJ isn’t real, obviously, but if they were I would have wanted them to see this panel. I would have wanted them to swap with me, actually, but that’s beside the point. It was exactly what it should have been and I’m glad I got to be a part of it, and I hope the discussion will continue in various forms for years to come.