How To Write Non-Binary Gender Characters

It became patently obvious to me that I was taking this business of non-binary gender characters in Science Fiction completely wrong. And I thank the delightful Sarah Hoyt for this insight.

In simple easy to understand terms the answer is: Don't write Cardboard Characters.

Now, if you are unable to understand what it is to be a human being, and what it is to reflect the multiple internal tensions at play in the typical human heart, then you cannot depict the manly man who has a soft spot in his heart for his mother's knitted hat.

If you can't depict a character as humans are in real life, then you have to create some mash-up of all the stereotypes associated with the victim group you're trying to bean count. Oh, i need more gays in my story, so I'll make one of the women a softball player, and make one of the guys a hairdresser. I've railed against this sort of insulting stereotyping earlier.

While writers I follow were having too-much fun writing about non-binary gender characters in Science Fiction, I was writing a story wherein the POV character has to deal with an astrophysicist named A. Dankhopf. As you can probably guess, this sets up the POV character who expects to meet a German man, when the character later proves to be an Indian woman.

The mistaken identity trick has been done by writers since well before Shakespeare, probably the Ancient Greeks.

Then it occurred to me how Schrodinger's cat can help the Science Fiction writer in search of a non-binary gender character.

If you nodded off during Quantum Mechanics class, you may have missed a gedanken experiment wherein a sealed box is populated with a cat, a vial of poison gas, a hammer, and a radioactive source. Then some fiddly bits are added to cause the hammer to break the vial when the radioactive source emits a particle. The magic of Quantum Mechanics is something called "superposition" wherein the cat is both alive and dead until you open the box and look in.

Now, you'd think that, nine-lives notwithstanding, a cat is in a binary state of being either all alive or all dead. But in this experiment the cat is half-living and half-dead until you observe the system. I used this gimmick in my anthology Finding Time.

In this same Quantum Mechanical sense I was writing a non-binary gender character because until the hero observes A. Dankhopf, s/he is half-boy and half-girl. I feel so Politically Correct.

You can, too, just put your manly man in a girly hat, maybe name him Jayne, and until that character is actually observed, you can rely upon quantum superposition to maintain that you have a non-binary gender character.

That's Raaaacist!

I ran an early draft of a story past my friend who told me all my characters were white guys. Since a person's race, or sex is doesn't disqualify one from our shared humanity, I thought, "That's not right."

And then I had a second thought, "How do you know Skip Collins is a white guy? Or Art Donway?"

In a fit of pique I asked, "Should I have one of them start speaking in ebonics?"

If you are a racist and a sexist, it matters whether these characters are white or black, boy or girl. If you're a human, maybe you can relate to the characters' humanity without heavy-handed labels branded on them.

One of the reasons why I like Bollywood movies so much is that all the characters are light enough to be not-black and tan enough to be not-white.

Racism and sexism now mean something different from what I have always thought they meant. What I always thought these terms meant was treating someone badly because they identify with the out group. But once all the laws get passed prohibiting favorable treatment, the people in the racism and sexism industry need to raise the bar. It's not enough to treat everyone equally and relate to them on the basis of their common humanity and respect them on the basis of bearing the image of God.

We somehow have to please self-appointed bean counters: Who complain that there aren't enough blacks in Science Fiction, or enough women, or that there are too many cismale gendernormative fascists.

So, what's a writer to do? Write a scene where the character goes into the girls' bathroom, and laments her boy-parts? Or vice-versa?

Sure, that'll sell a lot of books.

This tendency toward bean counting has engendered push-back. And if a "cismale gendernormative fascist" isn't polite enough when he pushes back, there's someone out there to concern-troll him.

Writing should be able to effectively and richly convey who a character is with just words and no gimmicks. Giving a character an Afro hair-cut or a name like LaFonda is a gimmick.

No, wait, Napoleon Dynamite was a white guy with an Afro. But he could dance, and don't they say that black people have rhythm--Raaaaacist!

So, the bean counters want us to convey the racial and sexual identity of our characters when the easiest ways to do that with the written word include racial and sexual stereotypes. But they have to be the right racial stereotypes or you'll be crucified for being a racist/sexist.

This game is not worth the candle. It doesn't matter whether my characters are black or white, male or female, because their humanity is more important.

(No, I don't think black people have rhythm, Motown records notwithstanding.)

I'm tempted to write a story with characters named Alex and Sidney who are the opposite sex, race, etc. than what everyone expects.