A review by klettie
Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 160 by Isabel Fall, Rita Chang-Eppig, I-hyeong Yun, Chen Qiufan, Neil Clarke, Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko, Naomi Kritzer
4.0
I read this story without prior knowledge of the controversy as part of the Hugo packet. I found it fascinating, as others have, and I enjoyed a lot of the points it makes about how "natural" gender feels to us. The subversion -- that it does not feel natural that "helicopter" be a gender -- is well executed.
One quote in particular stood out to me:
“Maybe what Axis feels is a necessary new queerness. One which pries the tool of gender back from the hands of the state and the economy and the war. I like that idea. I cannot think of myself as a failure, as something wrong, a perversion of a liberty that past generations fought to gain.
But Axis can. And maybe you can too. That skepticism is not what I need . . . but it is necessary anyway.
I have tried to show you what I am. I have tried to do it without judgment. That I leave to you."
I like to mirror this back onto our concepts of gender today, to say think of them as a failure, something wrong, manufactured by our culture similar to the way Barb's gender is. That doesn't have to be the way they are, it just has to be a way we can think about them. The skepticism is necessary.
One quote in particular stood out to me:
“Maybe what Axis feels is a necessary new queerness. One which pries the tool of gender back from the hands of the state and the economy and the war. I like that idea. I cannot think of myself as a failure, as something wrong, a perversion of a liberty that past generations fought to gain.
But Axis can. And maybe you can too. That skepticism is not what I need . . . but it is necessary anyway.
I have tried to show you what I am. I have tried to do it without judgment. That I leave to you."
I like to mirror this back onto our concepts of gender today, to say think of them as a failure, something wrong, manufactured by our culture similar to the way Barb's gender is. That doesn't have to be the way they are, it just has to be a way we can think about them. The skepticism is necessary.