I cannot see the name “Elizabeth Bear” without wincing a little inside.
[trigger warning: transphobia]
On some level I feel like I should be reading her writing, because technically and stylistically it’s very good, and for all I know the rest of her work is completely unproblematic, but of course, there was that one story.
I’m pretty sure I never went over all this on Tumblr but when I found the story “This Tragic Glass” on her website it almost made me physically sick. I must have been reading it wrong - when I sent her a (lengthy, distressed, now entirely embarrassing) email she replied that she wrote it specifically for a trans friend, and it was on the James Tiptree Jr. long list, so there must be a positive reading somewhere, but all I could see at the time was an incredibly hateful story about how your uterus will always define you. Oh, it’s okay if you want to be a man and run around and do man things, but detailed computer analysis will always tell us what you really are. And trying to fix yourself is disgusting.
I’m not sure what the point of posting this is except that it’s what goes through my head every single fucking time I see her name and I’m sick of it and I wish I could just erase the stupid thing from history so I wouldn’t have to bother with all this.
