#I'm not a trans woman for the record. I'm genderless. but all of the transphobia ive experienced from the ew fandom

[retordedd]

I never use this blog because the eddsworld fandom is genuinely the only fandom I've been completely fucking miserable trying to engage with. It's full of trans people and yet the community is SO hostile towards non-afab or non masc aligned in some way trans people. I've had people blatantly refused to respect my pronouns after saying they would. I've been misgendered in a server full of trans people where literally no one else was misgendered because there were pronoun roles. In that same server, while I was uplifting trans people making jokes about being proud of their bodies, they made fun of me for not having breasts. I've had multiple people debate my boundaries like it's a topic of discussion because I asked not to be called dude, a GENDERED TERM. I've had people gang up on me to the point of tears because I dared to describe my experiences being raised with an unconventional relationship to gender. I've been accused of holding grudges and being aggressive for even daring to speak up when I'm tired of being treated this way

And these events don't refer to a bunch of random assholes, they refer to people well known in the fandom. People I've seen on multiple servers. People whose names you say and it gets recognized

The eddsworld fandom has a HUGE transmisogyny problem and it needs to be discussed. The way I constantly feel unsafe when in a fandom surrounded by trans people is completely unacceptable

[rjalker]

I'm just making it its own post so it's easier for me to find.

oh and for the record the word I was looking for is "biological essentialism". That sums up every problem with Martha Well's writing, especially in regards to The Books of the Raksura, which are extremely relevant even though we're talking about The Murderbot Diaries.

original post.

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As someone who is nonbinary, aroace, and not human, and who uses it/its pronouns, this is correct, except for the part about calling Murderbot they/them. That’s still misgendering, even if it’s a fictional character, and that part isn’t okay.

You should call Murderbot by it/its because those are its pronouns, whether or not you agree with why the writer gave it those pronouns. To say otherwise is just transphobic, because there’s nothing wrong with use it/its pronouns. Most of the people I see arguing that we shouldn’t use it/its pronouns for Murderbot are just being really transphobic and insisting that it/its pronouns are always bad.

If you actually respect people who use it/its pronouns, you will use it/its pronouns for Murderbot. To do otherwise is transphobic towards people who use it/its pronouns, because it betrays the fact that you think they’re actually bad to use.

You wouldn’t insist on calling Murderbot by other pronouns if it used she or he, so don’t use other pronouns for it just because it uses it/its. My pronouns aren’t optional based on whether or not you think I’m being respected or not by using them, and to treat them as such is transphobic.

You can call out the transphobia in the writing (because it is transphobia even if it’s not “intentionally malicious”) without misgendering Murderbot. If you really think there’s nothing wrong with someone use it/its pronouns, then you won’t treat it/its pronouns like they’re optional any more than you would if Murderbot used any other pronouns.

But the rest of this? Yeah.

There’s a major difference between someone like me for example writing a nonhuman nonbinary character who uses it/its pronouns and someone like Martha Wells writing such a character. I’ve been making other posts about it, but especially if you’ve read any other books of hers, namely, The Books of the Raksura, this is a very clear pattern.

Murderbot is agender and aroace and uses it/its pronouns because that’s as far as Martha Wells’ grasp on gender goes. We see this in The Books of the Raksura, where the protagonist is just. oh my god. The series is set on a fantasy world where everyone is a fantasy creature and there are hundreds of thousands of sentient people of different species all living together. And Martha Well’s grasp of gender literally just goes “well whatever the protagonist makes of their genitals and secondary sex characteristics determines their gender”.

Moon, the protagonist, at one time literally just assumes another character is a man because I think she (for sake of ease I’m just calling this character she because that’s what most of the story does despite that being the whole problem) had a deep voice. But then her hair moved out of the way and he saw that she had breasts, so he immediately goes “oh whoops she’s a woman” and starts referring to her with she/her pronouns in his head.

This is not the only example of this kind of bullshit in The Books of the Raksura, but it’s the most blatant example I can think of, and I’m not even going to get into discussing all of the transphobia regarding Chime and River or the kethel right now.

Martha Wells still equates gender and sex, and thus, because Murderbot and the other bots and constructs have no sex, then of course, in her mind, that means they are genderless and feel no attraction.

It would not cross her mind to have a bot or construct that is a trans man or a trans woman, because that wouldn’t match up with her idea that sex = gender. Probably if she ever did have a bot with a binary gender, it would be because they’re a ComfortUnit who was assigned male or female at construction/possibly forced reprogramming.

And even if this bot was binary trans of their own free will (instead of being reprogrammed or programmed to be that way) Murderbot would probably fucking loathe them for ‘trying to appeal to humans’ and just. At this point in time I really highly doubt Martha Wells would ever even think about creating such a character, let alone think she’d be able to handle it and Murderbot’s reaction well.

I think it’s pretty dang obvious that Murderbot would loathe a character like this, and I really fucking doubt Martha Wells would care enough (or at this point in time has enough understand of gender to be able) to write it so that Murderbot is shown to be in the wrong, and learns and grows over the course of the story to accept and respect this character and their identity instead of just assuming that everything they’re doing/are is meant to appeal to human sensibilities.

Martha Wells equates gender with sex, which is why all of her bot and construct characters are aroace and agender and use it/its pronouns.

It would literally be fine and great and awesome for Murderbot and ART and other bot and construct characters to be aroace and agender and use it/its, but only as long as there are bots and constructs who have different genders and different pronouns and different orientations. It would be fine if there were actual real human characters who were nonbinary and explicitly used pronouns other than he/him or she/her. Rami is the sole exception, but te is not a shining beacon of representation and should not be counted as one, because te literally only exists in one book, in only a few scenes, and te isn’t even the main one-off character from that story. Te gets sidelined with Maro before the main part of the plot even kicks off.

One single side one-off character who is third-gender (literally tercera translates to third, which is…………………oh my god that’s. Combined with literally all the evidence of Martha Well’s views on gender. god that needs its own post but to sum it up That’s Not Good And Is Actually Part of The Pattern of Transphobia In Her Writing but that’s something that needs its own big fucking post to explain.) and uses neopronouns does not erase any of the other transphobia in the series.

There aren’t any reoccurring or main human characters who are anything but cis binary people.

And I hate to burst anyone’s bubble, but no, none of the main human characters have secretly been trans this whole time, because Martha Wells has not considered that, and if they were trans, it would have been one of the first things we learned about them. She is not being sneaky. She’s just written them all to be cis because she thinks being cis is the default.

Martha Wells is good at writing. I love The Murderbot Diaries. I love The Books of the Raksura. But she is transphobic, even though she’s not intentionally being malicious. It’s still transphobia even if she doesn’t “mean it”.

Martha Wells has not rid herself of the idea that “gender = sex” and that is reflected in everything she has written thus far.

And now she is just extending that same idea towards things that have no sex, so she is drawing the by her transphobic logic logical conclusion that since they have no sex, that means they’re all automatically inherently genderless.

This would not be a problem if there were bot and construct characters who were binary trans. This would not be a problem if there were reoccurring main or even just more one-off characters who are explicitly trans (because no, I’m sorry people, none of the main humans are trans. They are not. You can headcanon them as trans if you want but they are not in the story, because if they were, we would have learned this the first time we were introduced to them. If Martha Wells writes another book and says 'oh btw this character has been trans the whole time, Murderbot just decided not to mention it because it wasn’t important’ it will literally just be a cheap retcon on the same level as JK Rowling saying Dumbledore is gay.)

Martha Wells equates sex with gender, and that is reflected in everything she has written thus far. Her writing will not be representative of trans people until she starts talking to and listening to trans people and actually educating herself about gender.

A (as far as I know) cis human woman writing about robots and androids that are genderless because they don’t have any genitals is not groundbreaking or revolutionary or representative of trans people.

A cis (AFAIK) woman writing one single one-off character who uses neopronouns who only exists in a few scenes in one book where this character isn’t even the main new one-off character is not groundbreaking or revolutionary or representative of trans people.

The best thing Martha Wells can do to actually make this series representative of trans people is to introduce more bot and construct characters, and have them be binary trans, and have Murderbot learn to not be a bigot towards them by assuming their gender is an appeal to human sensibilities. (because this is the only logical reaction for Murderbot to have based on everything it’s experiences and the way it thinks. It would be enraged by a bot or construct with a binary gender. Enraged. It would not fucking make any sense for it to automatically be accepting and fine with this revelation.)

The best thing Martha Wells can do to make this series actually representative of trans people is to have more human characters who are both binary trans and nonbinary.

The absolute best thing she could do is to have one of the main human characters come out as nonbinary after realizing they were because they’ve hung around with Murderbot and realized that being nonbinary is okay. Especially if they started use it/its pronouns to show that it’s not just something robots and androids are allowed to do. One of the main human characters can literally just realize after being friends with Murderbot that they can, in fact, just be completely genderless and it’s fine. They can even change their pronouns and it’d be fine. They can go by it/its pronouns and it’d be fine.

It’d be one thing if I, a nonhuman nonbinary person who is aroace and uses it/its pronouns, wrote a story about someone like me. It’s another thing entirely for a cis human woman to write all of her nonhuman characters as being inherently genderless and aroace by virtue of literally not having genitals.

Martha Wells needs to listen to trans people, she needs to educate herself about trans issues, and she needs to get over the idea that gender = sex because that is literally defining everything she has written to date, to the point that I can’t even just bring myself to assume that Rami chose ter gender terself, at this point I have to just assume that tercera is just a third gender you get assigned at birth in ter planetary system, which te was assigned at birth -.- Because Martha Wells has made it impossible to trust her to actually think about gender in any way that does not just say “gender = sex”.

Anyways. Yeah. These books are great. But Martha Wells is transphobic whether she is intending to be or not, and these books cannot and should not be called “great trans representation” when we only have one nonbinary human character and zero binary nonhuman characters and the characters literally can’t even be assed to list their pronouns in their internet profile, instead they just list their sex and we’re just supposed to assume their pronouns based on that -.-

TLDR:

The problem is not that Murderbot is nonhuman and aroace and agender and uses it/its pronouns. The problem is that this is the only way Martha Wells is capable of imagining nonbinary characters. She cannot imagine writing a main human character who is nonbinary, because she cannot stop equating sex with gender. The problem is that there are no nonhuman characters who have binary genders, and no reoccurring human characters who are nonbinary. The problem is that Martha Wells think sex = gender and this is the foundation upon which all of her writing rests.

This does not make it okay for anyone to misgender Murderbot or the other characters who use it/its pronouns. It/its pronouns are no more optional than he/him or she/her. If you actually respect people who use it/its pronouns, you will not treat it/its pronouns as optional unless acceptable enough for you.