#If Martha Wells wants to stop being transphobic she needs to actually talk to and listen to trans people

[rjalker]

you know what no just giving it its own new post so more people see it.

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My original joke post:

"Oh, my security consultant's profile has gender marked as 'indeterminate', and doesn't list any pronouns? I will simply not reffer to my security consultant with any pronouns."

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My new addition:

And see this is funny for these characters, but it's literally just part of the gods damned overarching problem with Martha Wells' ideas about gender.

None of these characters ever ask Murderbot what its pronouns are. It doesn't list any pronouns, so they don't use pronouns for it, but they never ask.

None of the characters ever list their pronouns in their feed profile even AFTER they all start hurriedly listing their sex. (because again to be blunt that is what they're doing. None of these characters have been trans this whole time without us knowing. They are not listing their gender, they are listing their sex)

Even when Murderbot uses they/them pronouns for a random one-off character, it's not because that character uses they/them pronouns, it's because uh well they didn't list their sex in their feed profile, so we're just....gonna call them they/them because we don't know what sex they are and don't know what we should call them but nooooo it's not like they actually tell people they use they/them pronouns, nooo, we can't do that even though it would take two seconds!! Nope!!! /sarcasm

You can't tell people The Murderbot Diaries are great trans representation when the characters who literally have floating internet profiles attached to them don't even list their pronouns, okay, people? Just don't. Please don't.

Rami, Maro, and Tapan not knowing Murderbot's pronouns so not using any pronouns at all for it is funny, but it's literally a symptom of the larger problem with Martha Wells' views on gender.

Why didn't they just ask it what pronouns it uses? Why? Because that's not something Martha Wells has ever imagined doing. Because Martha Wells thinks that having the characters list their sex in their bio is revolutionary, as though that tells you anything about their gender or pronouns.

This is the same fucking problem The Books of the Raksura had. Moon just fucking goes around arbitrarily assigning strangers with genders and pronouns based on how he perceives their appearance. He was like "oh this person is a man obviously" until he saw they had breasts then he was like "oh whoops no lol it's a woman". I'm not even joking. He regularly checks to see what genitals people have before he decides what he's going to refer to them as. Again this is not a joke or an exaggeration. And Martha Wells thought this was revolutionary.

The Murderbot Diaries are not as transphobic as The Books of the Raksura, but that does not mean they're now suddenly great trans representation.

Moon literally refuses point-blank to ask a kethel what its name or pronouns are, and switches between using he/him and it/its pronouns for it depending on how much he wants to murder it in cold blood at the moment. Again this is not a joke or exaggeration. I use it/its pronouns for it because those are the pronouns I use and I'd like to murder Moon.

Martha Wells needs to actually talk to and listen to trans people and fix the transphobic ways she writes before anyone should be telling anyone her stories have great trans representation.