Books with gendeerqueer/nonbinary characters?

[Jack]

Does anyone know of any books that include characters that are genderqueer or deal with the concept of fluid gender? Bonus points for non-YA, scifi, or authors that are themselves non-binary

Thanks for your help!

[Bill, Moderator]

There I a SciFi novel I have been trying to remember for years. I just have impressions left. I probably read it sometime in the 80's. It is about an explorer who visits alien worlds and has a way of falling into sensual situations with beings having as many as five or six genders or beings who can change genders on the fly (that is fluid!).

I've even asked on the What's The Name Of That Boos group, but without resolution.

[Alexandra]

AJ wrote: "Does anyone know of any books that include characters that are genderqueer or deal with the concept of fluid gender? Bonus points for non-YA, scifi, or authors that are themselves non-binary..."

Maureen F. McHugh's Mission Child. The protagonist seems a typical girl at first, then she has to pretend to be a boy for safety, but ends up identifying as neither.

Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series has a hermaphrodite (with functioning sex organs of both sexes) supporting character.

Ursula Le Guin's famous The Left Hand of Darkness.

Storm Constantine's Wraeththu series, with the Wraeththu being true hermaphrodites (again, functioning sex organs of both sexes).

There's also this list of sf/f starring characters with alternative sexualities by Mary Anne Mohanraj (http://maryannemohanraj.com/miscellan...).

[Akiva ꙮ]

You should join the Transgender Fiction group! https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...

I've worked hard on the bookshelf, and we currently have about 60 books listed under "gender-fluid." The classification is imperfect: some are characters who change gender during the story (such as Orlando) but don't identify any particular way about it, the author describes the character as gender-fluid but the character is probably better described by some other identity ("genderless" and "genderfluid" get mixed up a lot, same with "genderfluid" and "crossdressing," and sometimes binary trans characters are described as genderfluid), the character isn't human, etc.

It also turns out to be hard to classify a lot of sci fi and fantasy that explores gender. For instance, there are *so many* sci fi books with h*rm characters, but h*rm is a slur against intersex people, and I don't want to classify these characters as intersex because they just don't have any relationship to the reality of the intersex experience. Gah!

If you have any thoughts about the classification, I'd love to discuss it more!

https://www.goodreads.com/group/books...

[Greg]

Another one is the very strange book Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami with a significant side character who is transgender.

[Greg]

Oh, and how about the late 1800's Victorian classic with a major transgender character (?!*), The Story of an African Farm. It's an extremely interesting book - it's downbeat overall, though the treatment of the transgender character is quite shockingly matter of fact for the time period and is surprisingly not treated in a tragic way at all. A very philosophical work that reminds me somewhat of Candide by Voltaire.

[Tim]

Greg wrote: "Another one is the very strange book Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami with a significant side character who is transgender."

Greg, the two books you suggested look interesting, definitely adding them to be read.

On the light romance side, I recently finished a couple books with gender non-conforming characters:

Danced Close has a genderqueer leading man (PGP-he/him). I gave it four stars.

I thought Hopeless Romantic was also pretty good and just posted a review for it.

I would say these fall into the 'New Adult" category - the characters all are in their twenties. Both, though, are fairly formulaic romances.

[Stone]

I would add a significant caution about Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga. I determinedly munched through it over the past year and while I loved the genre aspects of it and Bujold's writing, it was absolutely angsty-cut-n-paste-zine-about-the-experience brutal for me as a queer reader.

The narratives about bisexuality start cringeworthy and end dubious, gay people are... generally not present, aside from the gay planet, and trans people, uh. Well, there's someone who medically transitions for inheritance purposes, and one book implies the existence of a trans person by the existence of a clone destined for death to serve someone's desire for a sex change (identifiable by her grossly exaggerated physique, no less). Depending on whether you consider members of bioengineered third sexes to be nonbinary, intersex, or neither, you might react differently to the ba and hermaphrodite (not a word I like to use to refer to humans!) characters, but in any case the narrative tends to treat them with quiet horror and a sort of condescending disgust that haunted me for months - "I think you're gross and freakish but someone less enlightened would attack you for it. This is the best you're going to get." essentially.

Don't get me wrong, I love the main nonbinary character, Bel Thorne, but... I spent the first five or six books thinking "this will get better at some point, right?" and uh. Eeeeehhh.

Anyway, Xan West hosts a list of reviews by trans and nonbinary people of trans and nonbinary books, available at https://xanwest.wordpress.com/2017/01... . If you care to comb through it - the reviews are NOT all recommendations.

[Alexandra]

Stone wrote: "I would add a significant caution about Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga. I determinedly munched through it over the past year and while I loved the genre aspects of it and Bujold's writing, it was absolut..."

Wow, that's not the impression I got at all. But you've gotta remember, Bujold started writing back in the 1980s, and the fact that she got queer characters in is a feat in the first place.

And really, I don't think queer characters are lacking in the Vorkosigan series, there are: Aral Vorkosigan, Oliver Jole, Ges Vorrutyer, Ethan what's his name, Bel Throne, Dono Vorrutyer, Byerly Vorrutyer, etc. And apart from the explicitly gay planet Athos, Beta is probably also filled with queer people.

And while the books are mostly written from Miles' POV, I don't think he sees the queer characters with quiet horror or disgust. Although he refused Bel, he did kiss Bel back in the end, and was regretful that they never did anything. And it was mentioned that Ivan refused advances from males (sometimes fellow soldiers) politely, so gay/bi men exist on Barrayar, too.

I think many people on Barrayar are somewhat homophobic/transphobic, but that's different from the author or even Miles thinking the same.

I am unhappy that both of the prominent bisexual characters ended up with the same female character. But that's about the only beef I have with the books.

[Stone]

Alex wrote: "Stone wrote: "I would add a significant caution about Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga. I determinedly munched through it over the past year and while I loved the genre aspects of it and Bujold's writing, ..."

I agree that there's substantial queer presence in the series, but looking through that list, we've got main bi guy, main bi guy, evil depraved gay sexual predator, guy from the gay planet*, debatably nonbinary and/or intersex person for whom a flattering in-book description is "beautiful, in its own ironic way", person who transitioned for political gain, and a secondary bi guy. That list leaves out another evil depraved gay (or bi?) sexual predator and a sci fi take on the sinister eunuch.

So it has really substantial representation for bisexual men! Of course, the enlightened Cordelia Naismith says Aral "used to be bisexual, now he's monogamous" in relation to marrying her, but that was written in the eighties, when I guess people just didn't know better. In 2016, Bujold just wrote that Jole didn't really feel fulfilled or at peace in his bisexuality unless he was in a polyamorous relationship or with a bigender person, but that was 2016, which was also another time ;0) For anyone else, well, they're there, but they tend toward the... trope-fulfilling. Many of the tropes the fulfill are really not great.

I agree that the books are progressive for their times - including Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen. 2016, and 2017 for that matter, are not years with incredible gluts of bisexual protagonists in military science fiction, science fiction generally, or mainstream literature as a whole. It was just my experience that, in this case, progressive still called third-gender people "it". Progressive still featured queer characters as depraved villains. Progressive still asked if you could really be bi in a monogamous relationship. Progressive still repeatedly called intersex people failed experiments.

Miles flinches when Bel touches him. His Betan grandmother, supposedly acculturated to the presence of third-gender folk, would call Bel "pathologically incapable of making up [its] mind". I love Bel, but I don't feel like the characters of the Vorkosigan Saga do.

*Urquhart, by the way - Ethan of Athos was actually the first Vorkosigan Saga book that I read and one of my favorites, and I found it relatively unobjectionable re: queer stuff.

[Alexandra]

Mmm, the quaddies and Taura are 'failed' experiments, too. It doesn't mean they don't have a right to exist and be respected and accepted...? And presumably Nicol loves Bel.

Miles flinching is written pretty early on in the books. He changed his mind eventually.

Jole seems fairly fulfilled with only Cordelia?

Bujold does make everyone pair up and almost always start a family though. So that's one trope...

ETA: I don't mean intersex or trans people in real life are failed experiments, but that the h*rms in Vorkosiverse are results of an experiment.

[Bob]

Try Sacred Band. It's a sci-fi/superhero novel. It's a quick and fun read. I think you'll like it.

[Jazz]

You could check out the Magnus Chase series! The second book has an expressly genderqueer character, and it's certainly not lacking in POC! The humor is great too.
It may seem like something you won't want to read given Rick is a "children's book" writer, but he's actually adapted quite well as his audience (like me) has aged!
Also, Future Perfect has a side trans character, however it isn't quite focused on them as much as I would have liked. Still a lovely novel!
Hope I could help!

[Akiva ꙮ]

I know others who didn't like Cordelia's comment about was-bi-now-monogamous, and I respect that, but I don't agree. I'm bi as well, and I always read that as a cultural difference from Beta Colony. As far as she's concerned, he switched his metaphorical earrings from "I'm looking for a partner of any gender" to "I'm monogamously partnered, thanks." Beta is basically San-Francisco-in-space, and after a few hundred or thousand years, do they really need identity for identity's sake?