Could Sam Berlant Ride the Train in Pennsylvania?
19 Sep
An upcoming issue of MP focuses in part on transgender. Mainstream society has definite gender expectations . As an example there was a recent firestorm over a J Crew ad that showed a mother painting her young son’s toenails pink. Another is the reception one mother received when she allowed her five year old son to attend a pre-school Halloween party dressed as Daphne from “Scooby Doo.”
Regimented systems such as prisons, college dormitories, even transit systems, can insist that people publicly identify themselves (or be indentified against their will) as either male or female. It is, in fact, almost impossible to go through life without being identified as one or the other.
Even in popular culture characters are identified as male or female. An exception is Pat from “Saturday Night Live,” whose gender ambiguity was a source of humor. More seriously, science fiction writer Jon Scalzi created a character in his novel Android Sheep, Sam Berlant, who gender is never provided. Sam is clearly in a relationship with another character, Archie, who is indentified as male. Scalzi deliberately didn’t assign Sam a gender. In a blog post, “What Sex is Sam Berlant?” he writes that some people contacted him, irked because they didn’t know Sam’s gender and therefore didn’t know if Archie is heterosexual or homosexual. Scalzi says he doesn’t know what gender Sam is. Presumably Sam knows, as does Archie, but if anyone else in the book has noticed, they don’t mention it.
