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

[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.