my bony fealty posted:

the dumbest thing is people who actually research sex will tell you that it's very much not a clear cut binary. all these fuckers hiding behind science when the actual science says the opposite of what they use to justify their bigotry

Apparatchik Magnet posted:

Let me blow your mind: it's true to say that "human beings have five fingers per hand" not withstanding some fringe cases of six fingered people. We don't need to take the six-fingered lobby seriously and waste time changing social definitions to make them happy, even if we shouldn't be rude to them about their unusual condition.

Apparatchik Magnet posted:

Let me blow your mind: it's true to say that "human beings have five fingers per hand" not withstanding some fringe cases of six fingered people. We don't need to take the six-fingered lobby seriously and waste time changing social definitions to make them happy, even if we shouldn't be rude to them about their unusual condition.

Apparatchik Magnet posted:

Let me blow your mind: it's true to say that "human beings have five fingers per hand" not withstanding some fringe cases of six fingered people. We don't need to take the six-fingered lobby seriously and waste time changing social definitions to make them happy, even if we shouldn't be rude to them about their unusual condition.

my bony fealty posted:

the dumbest thing is people who actually research sex will tell you that it's very much not a clear cut binary. all these fuckers hiding behind science when the actual science says the opposite of what they use to justify their bigotry

Apparatchik Magnet posted:

Let me blow your mind: it's true to say that "human beings have five fingers per hand" not withstanding some fringe cases of six fingered people. We don't need to take the six-fingered lobby seriously and waste time changing social definitions to make them happy, even if we shouldn't be rude to them about their unusual condition.

StrixNebulosa posted:

To turn this into a good thing: I know of two trans authors off the top of my head: Yoon Ha Lee and Caitlin R Kiernan. Are there any others out there? I've got money and a need for more books to hoard.

StrixNebulosa posted:

To turn this into a good thing: I know of two trans authors off the top of my head: Yoon Ha Lee and Caitlin R Kiernan. Are there any others out there? I've got money and a need for more books to hoard.

Fart of Presto posted:

Charlie Jane Anders.
I have All The Birds in the Sky on my Kindle but still haven't read it. She won a Nebula and Locus award for that.

anilEhilated posted:

It's pretty good for YA. Predictable but a very enjoyable read.
A bit too much focus on the romance for my liking, but that applies to any focus on any kind of romance in any kind of book.

Apparatchik Magnet posted:

Sex is about sexual reproduction. There are two sexes involved in sexual reproduction. In some rare cases there are also binary sexed individuals (who produce both gametes) or unsexed individuals (who produce no gametes).

StrixNebulosa posted:

To turn this into a good thing: I know of two trans authors off the top of my head: Yoon Ha Lee and Caitlin R Kiernan. Are there any others out there? I've got money and a need for more books to hoard.

MockingQuantum posted:

Heh same, I would be completely fine with scifi/fantasy authors just kind of giving up on romance plots for the most part. That's more a personal preference than some sweeping statement on the genre, though. But they can gently caress right off when it comes to sex scenes, I don't think I've read any genre book with a sex scene that didn't make me cringe or roll my eyes at least once.


On a related note, I've found I have near-zero patience for reading fight scenes. Some of it is just flat-out bad writing (you can tell which sf/f writers are like martial arts or HEMA enthusiasts because they write the most blisteringly boring blow-by-blow fight scenes), some of it is that most fight scenes or combat scenes in books seem to just be about the fight and not about developing characters, or setting a scene, or moving the action along, or literally anything but two dudes wrasslin. So that said, does anybody do combat or fights really well? It seems like a bit of a unicorn.

Ben Nevis posted:

For short stories Daniel Mallory Ortberg (Written and probably sold as Mallory, has since transitioned to Daniel)

MockingQuantum posted:

Heh same, I would be completely fine with scifi/fantasy authors just kind of giving up on romance plots for the most part. That's more a personal preference than some sweeping statement on the genre, though. But they can gently caress right off when it comes to sex scenes, I don't think I've read any genre book with a sex scene that didn't make me cringe or roll my eyes at least once.

StrixNebulosa posted:

To turn this into a good thing: I know of two trans authors off the top of my head: Yoon Ha Lee and Caitlin R Kiernan. Are there any others out there? I've got money and a need for more books to hoard.

Hiro Protagonist posted:

I hadn't heard of Yoon Ha Lee. I looked up his work and it looks interesting. Is Dragon Pearl good? It looks like it's YA, but Korean Space Opera sounds awesome.

Ben Nevis posted:

Abercrombie's Heroes has my favorite fight scene, and also does pretty well with characters. It's a standalone in the same world as his doorstopper trilogy, but I read it without having read the series, so it can be done.

pseudorandom name posted:

You haven't read any Mary Robinette Kowal.

Hiro Protagonist posted:

I hadn't heard of Yoon Ha Lee. I looked up his work and it looks interesting. Is Dragon Pearl good? It looks like it's YA, but Korean Space Opera sounds awesome.

General Battuta posted:

General Battuta posted:

I guess it's worth articulating, for anyone in the bleachers who's wondering why everyone yelled at the reddit guy, that 'biological sex is real' isn't the problem. Yes, there's a physical sex, and most people do fall in the XX or XY karyotopes. There are developmental consequences of these karyotopes which generally but not exclusively sort into two big heaps, 'male' and 'female'. Those wacky social justice warriors aren't denying this.

What people are rightly angry about is the use of this fact as a dogwhistle to justify hurting or outright killing trans people. It's very important to anti-trans rhetoric that everything be reduced to biological sex: that there be absolutely no way to decide whether you're a man or a woman except your karyotope. If terfs don't have that reductionism to fall back on, they have to admit they just hate trans people. This means terfs will dodge any suggestion that your gender can be determined by anything but an XX or XY karyotope - despite mountains of empirical evidence to the contrary.

MockingQuantum posted:

Which one was your favorite, out of curiosity? I just read this, and I will agree that in general Abercrombie does a better job than most, in part because he does a good job of depicting how much of a hosed up mess actual fights are (or inevitably become).

Ben Nevis posted:

I probably should have specifically said battle scene, I suppose. It's the one where it jumps from character to character with each dying in turn and culminating in Whirrun's death. It was quite well done, I thought, and gave you a little bit of a lot of things and did show what a mess it actually all is.

MockingQuantum posted:

So that said, does anybody do combat or fights really well? It seems like a bit of a unicorn.

less laughter posted:

Iain M. Banks

MockingQuantum posted:

On a related note, I've found I have near-zero patience for reading fight scenes. Some of it is just flat-out bad writing (you can tell which sf/f writers are like martial arts or HEMA enthusiasts because they write the most blisteringly boring blow-by-blow fight scenes), some of it is that most fight scenes or combat scenes in books seem to just be about the fight and not about developing characters, or setting a scene, or moving the action along, or literally anything but two dudes wrasslin. So that said, does anybody do combat or fights really well? It seems like a bit of a unicorn.

General Battuta posted:

I guess it's worth articulating, for anyone in the bleachers who's wondering why everyone yelled at the reddit guy, that 'biological sex is real' isn't the problem. Yes, there's a physical sex, and most people do fall in the XX or XY karyotopes. There are developmental consequences of these karyotopes which generally but not exclusively sort into two big heaps, 'male' and 'female'. Those wacky social justice warriors aren't denying this.

What people are rightly angry about is the use of this fact as a dogwhistle to justify hurting or outright killing trans people. It's very important to anti-trans rhetoric that everything be reduced to biological sex: that there be absolutely no way to decide whether you're a man or a woman except your karyotope. (This doesn’t work, since karyotope doesn’t translate cleanly to phenotype, but terfs are normative: they want to protect a core definition from all the edge cases, so they don’t care). If terfs don't have that reductionism to fall back on, they have to admit they just hate trans people. This means terfs will dodge any suggestion that your gender can be determined by anything but an XX or XY karyotope - despite mountains of empirical evidence to the contrary.

Being transgender, identifying as a gender different from your birth sex, is also a biological fact (and, hell, even if it was socially or environmentally determined, who cares? we go to enormous lengths to protect social constructs like marriage or banks; we see them as vital to society and individual freedom). Morgan went to bat for Rowling, who was going to bat for someone who believed trans people should, in essence, be erased: forcibly treated as if they were cis, with no regard to their own wiring or individual will, or to the clinical outcomes this treatment produces (suicide). Both research and basic ethics can tell you this is a terrible idea that harms and kills trans people.

The medically and ethically correct response to someone saying 'I am this gender' is to support their determination, just as the medically and ethically correct response to someone saying 'I am attracted to these (consenting adult) people' is to say 'go for it.' Any appeal to , to the notion that 'there are only two sexes and all else is delusion', is a dodge. It is a way to hide from the fact that trans people clearly do exist and clearly do benefit from transitioning.

Of course, even if there were only one trans person in the world, the first in history, it's easy to make a purely ethical argument that their identity should be recognized. But that's another post.

PST posted:

(Actually, some sort of 'these are good people to buy' list would be good in general)