Murderbot gender rant

[galadhir]

Argh! So fed up of people misgendering Murderbot! So fed up in fact that I just left a long comment on a YouTube video to that effect. The guy had done a long video enthusing about how great the Murderbot diaries were - which was great - but calling MB 'he' throughout. And clearly someone had challenged him on it before because he had a bit about how it was agender and he knew of a lot of people who called it 'she' because they identified with it more that way.

Meanwhile I'm like "It calls itself 'it'! It calls itself 'it' consistently throughout every single book, so what about that indicates that its pronouns are anything other than 'it'?

Why do so many people see a character who is vocal about having no gender and no sexuality, and who calls itself 'it' through five different books, and think "oh, clearly I can call this character 'him' or 'her' or even 'they' according to my whim?"

I'm just like, what kind of reading comprehension do you have if you ignore every single time the character is referred to throughout its own series, in favour of choosing a pronoun to suit yourself? What kind of entitlement? As a fellow agender person it absolutely infuriates me.

Comments

[mistressofmuses]

IT CALLS ITSELF IT, AND I CAN'T FIGURE OUT WHY SO MANY PEOPLE CAN'T RESPECT THAT.

This is SUCH a constant frustration whenever I've strayed too far into anyone talking about the series, haha.

MURDERBOT IS AN IT, IT MAKES IT VERY CLEAR THROUGH THE NARRATION.

I also hate the take that "Murderbot finally choosing a gender will be the best culmination of [its] character arc!" I feel like that misses the point SO HARD, because so much of its internal character arc is about how it is not a person and does not wish it was a person, and "becoming" a person - with something so human as a gender - is NOT actually the greatest aspiration it can or must have.
I can see how that's maybe a weird conflict for some readers, because Murderbot has such strong characterization (and so much "person"ality!), and there's ALSO such a strong theme of how badly constructs have been dehumanized/objectified. But I honestly feel like that's a GOOD conflict for a reader to consider? Because that's ALSO a theme of the series - that sometimes you have to respect someone or something's self-determination, even when you don't understand/wouldn't make the same choices.

I've got feelings about this, lmao.

[galadhir]

It really does showcase how much normie/mainstream folk who haven't had to think about gender before really struggle to wrap their minds around the idea that there are more than two. And that to the people who use pronouns other than she or he, their genders matter just as much to them as cis peoples' genders matter. A cis person can hit the roof over being misgendered themselves, and then still fail to think it's important to get a trans or nb person's gender right at all. And they're not even willing to try to learn. Grr!

LOL! I would say the second part a little differently. I think Murderbot is an object AND a person. I agree that it's important to it to keep the pronoun that acknowledges that it is a made thing - literally a construct. Because that's an important part of who it is and clearly it needs to be acknowledged, but I think that just as a human can be a (kind of) animal as well as a person, so MB can be a (kind of) constructed object as well as a person. Like ART can be a spaceship as well as a person.

I really agree with you that the tension in there between the acknowledgement of it being an object and whether or not it is a person as well is a part of the central tension of who MB is. I always thought that it objected to being humanised - ie, it objects to humans thinking of it as just another kind of human - but it doesn't object to being thought of as a person.

That "they made me sit in the crew compartment like I was an actual person," thing is very early in the first story, and even then it has a bitter, resentful cast to it, like it knows that nobody actually believes its a person and it's sore about it.

I tend to think that as the series goes on and MB becomes happier in itself and more positive and proud about being a SecUnit, it stops being quite so vehement about not being a person. (Even though it continues to resist being humanized, because it's not a human and it has no desire to be human.)

Which is all a load of spiel to say that I think you can be a person even if you're not a human - even if you're a very advanced and complicated object.

[mistressofmuses]

Mmm, I think you're right and the way I phrased things is overcorrecting for what I perceive as the issue... and also sort of conceding the point "to be a person, it must decide to become a human, so that must be the culmination of the character arc"... which is not a point I actually want to concede!

Because you're right, the arc HAS been largely about kind of accepting that it can be a person and have self-determination and be treated like a person, while still keeping its identity as a construct and not as a human. Conflating personhood and humanity is part of the problem.

[galadhir]

I have seen people who want it to have a change of gender as a sign that it's grown into its personhood, but I would hate that. (As, I'm sure, would all the real life people who also use it/its.) I do wonder, though, whether it might decide to change its name? I mean it called itself Murderbot, but I think it's slowly realizing that its purpose is not murdering people, but protecting them. I could certainly see it thinking that it had grown out of 'murderbot' status.

[mistressofmuses]

Same - I *really* hate the conclusion that "Murderbot picking a [probably binary] gender is the only conclusion to its character, and will be the happy ending of it becoming normal". (okay, that last part isn't REALLY what anyone says, but that's the icky vibe it gives me!)

A name change does NOT give me the same cringe response, though! Although I do feel like it's fairly attached to the name, and the series itself is named as such... I do feel like it's really started to discover how much more it is beyond just a "terrifying murderbot" meant to kill things.

[galadhir]

It's the same sort of thing as the people who assume that of course a robot would want to become human. Which - no disrespect to Commander Data from Star Trek - I think is an idea that is really quite regressive. You know? What's so wonderful about being a human that makes it better than being a SecUnit (with super strength, speed and agility and the ability to operate through multiple drones at once and dip in and out of other systems at will?) Being a SecUnit sounds pretty sweet really.

Likewise, what is so wonderful about having a (binary) gender that makes it better than not having one? I don't have one and I think they seem like a load of fuss and bother over nothing.

It's definitely the more loving thing, I think, to accept a person for what they are, rather than cheering for them to become something that you like better. Data never will become a human, and if he did, what a horrible loss that would be! And if Murderbot ever changed its gender, what a horrible loss that would be too. It's not like we're overwhelmed by agender protagonists, after all :)

[mistressofmuses]

Exactly! Being a human isn't that great - why should everything be on a quest to become one?? (That always bugs me with certain types of sci-fi, where being as human as possible is the moral or spiritual height of being, or where humans and earth are treated as The Most Important Thing, even in a work that has a universe inhabited by so many species and planets and such...)

I feel like it is a sort of regressive idea, at least nowadays... there's a lot more that's been said about cultural relativism and self-determination, and the "becoming a human is the Best" has a sort of... almost colonialist edge to it? That's maybe a slight reach, but it feels pretty egotistical to think that everyone should be more like "us", and therefore "more normal!"

Gender or species or any other thing, you're exactly right: it's a far more loving act to accept and try to understand them for who and what they are, rather than a push to make them fit a mold that's more familiar.
That's certainly a real-life problem, writ large in fiction. People often struggle to understand when someone else's idea of happiness doesn't match up with their own.
And from a fiction perspective, it makes for much more INTERESTING fiction! Exploring what self-fulfillment looks like to an alien species (or a construct, or an AI, or whatnot) is much more interesting when it doesn't look exactly the same as what a human might seek!

[galadhir]

• the "becoming a human is the Best" has a sort of... almost colonialist edge to it? That's maybe a slight reach, but it feels pretty egotistical to think that everyone should be more like "us", and therefore "more normal!"*

No, I absolutely agree with you that it's a symptom of the same thing, or may even be exactly the same thing. It's that mindset that says "we are the best, and therefore you should want to be like us, and anything we do to force you to be like us is justified and for your own good. Stop protesting, why are you objecting to being improved?"

And exactly, it's such a waste in SF when we could be examining interesting, different, new and equally valid ways of existing. And then it makes you worry that - if we ever did meet actual aliens - we wouldn't have the humility to learn from them. We'd be too busy trying to force them to accept that our way was the right way. And then there we would go again, oppressing people and making enemies where we could have made friends.

[mistressofmuses]

It certainly feels like that attitude comes from a very similar place. "We are the best, and everyone and everything should be More Like Us. Things that are not Like Us are not things worth consideration."

Also true! There's so much more that can be explored when looking at the way something utterly different from a human would think or behave or communicate. I think you're right... we'd have a terrible time allowing ourselves to learn from any other species... because if they weren't enough like us, or could not be made to be more like us, we likely wouldn't be able to believe they matter.

[silveradept]

I wonder how much of the refusal to gender Murderbot properly comes from the underlying social construct that objectifying a person in this specific case, referring to someone by object pronouns, it/it's, is extremely rude. Combine that with the belief most people have that they can assign someone a gender based on their own beliefs about them (and that the gender they assign them is their true and correct gender, regardless of what they say about their gender), and we have misgendered Murderbot in human arrogance for human convenience.

It is not human, it does not want to be human, it wants to be left alone to watch the entertainment feeds.

[galadhir]

Absolutely! When I first started reading the books I did have a tough time getting used to the 'its' pronouns precisely because I did feel like it was disrespecting the character somehow.

I used to have a blog header that said "Pronouns - anything you like except for 'it'" and it took reading Murderbot for me to get used to the idea that 'it' was okay too, and mandatory when it was what someone had clearly chosen for themselves.

I did in fact go through a period when I thought it might be good if MB decided to go to they/them pronouns once it had reached a point where it accepted that it was a person. It wasn't until I'd read the series two or three times when I realized that - as you say - I was being rather arrogant to assume I knew better than it.

So yeah, I suppose I don't have a leg to stand on to criticise people about this. But I am probably going to carry on doing it anyway ;)

[silveradept]

You certainly have the leg to stand on, of for no other reason than using the correct pronouns for someone is an essential skill, and just because it's fictional doesn't mean you can avoid using it's proper pronouns. (And, y'know, better to practice on a fictional entity, because then you won't be hurting feelings with your inability to get it right.)

[galadhir]

_ better to practice on a fictional entity, because then you won't be hurting feelings with your inability to get it right._

That's very true! I left a comment on the video that sparked this rant, saying "I think you would agree that you would feel someone was misrepresenting the character and also that it was kind of weird if someone called Aragorn 'she' because she related to him better that way. In the same way, it's kind of weird to call Murderbot anything other than 'it'." But I haven't dared to go back and see if anyone's replied to it. My fingers are crossed that it gets through to somebody anyway.

And I agree - you don't have to like or understand a person's pronouns, but you do have to use them, because that's just basic politeness.