# Transexualism in Science-Fiction **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 4, 2016, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transexualism-in-science-fiction/765052 "2016-09-04T21:29:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Atomic\_Alex](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atomic_alex/32/175_2.png) [@Atomic\_Alex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atomic_Alex)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2016, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transexualism-in-science-fiction/765052/1 "2016-09-04T21:29:00Z")
The recent threads on Star Trek and the issue of minorities had me wondering, has the subject of transexuality ever came up in the series, I imagine with the future technology shown changing gender would be fairly easy, but is it ever explicitly stated? What about other science-fiction, in whatever medium, in The Culture series of books by Iain M. Banks for example changing sex is not only common its something basically every person tries at least once in their life, one main character is considered strange and something of a throw-back because he has never been female or ever really considered giving it a try. I’m also interested in what methods are used to facilitate the physical transformation. In this story-universe the process is easy but lengthy, a person only has to conciously decide they want to do it _(Culture citizens have much more control over their own bodies than we do)_ and their body automatically starts changing, but its a slow process, taking a year or so to complete. Then there is the story-universe of Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan where people’s uploaded memories are emplaced into new physical bodies, not always of their choice and sometimes just what’s available. One character has committed the crime of ‘double sleeving’ where he has downloaded his memories and personality into two seperate bodies, one male and one female. Any other examples? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2016, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transexualism-in-science-fiction/765052/2 "2016-09-04T21:47:57Z")
STtNG [_The Host_](http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/The_Host_(episode)) touches more on homosexuality, but there is an element of transgenderism, too. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2016, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transexualism-in-science-fiction/765052/3 "2016-09-04T22:12:24Z")
The TNG episode “The Outcast”, there’s a kind of “half-transgender” thing going on. The alien species of the week is androgynous and it’s considered taboo to feel or display any sort of gender on their planet. Riker falls in love with one of them, who starts to feel “feminine” and eventually gets assigned to a re-education camp kind of thing to get hir back under the spell, so to speak. It was intended as an attempt to address homosexuality and the kind of discrimination and prejudice LGBT faced in the mid-90s (as a fulfillment of the ST creators’ promises to FINALLY address that), but it was really halfhearted and more than a little opaque about it and wasn’t really received favorably by the sci-fi fan LGBT community. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2016, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transexualism-in-science-fiction/765052/4 "2016-09-04T22:14:24Z")
> [@Disposable Hero](#): > > The recent threads on Star Trek and the issue of minorities had me wondering, has the subject of transexuality ever came up in the series, I imagine with the future technology shown changing gender would be fairly easy, but is it ever explicitly stated? > > What about other science-fiction, in whatever medium, in The Culture series of books by Iain M. Banks for example changing sex is not only common its something basically every person tries at least once in their life, one main character is considered strange and something of a throw-back because he has never been female or ever really considered giving it a try. Back in the 70s, Varley’s “9 Worlds” series featured easy body modification; even in the story “Options” when the process was relatively new (in-story), a character could change sex in a matter of a day or so, though it required visiting a medical office. ---
**Author:** ![Strinka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/strinka/32/512_2.png) [@Strinka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Strinka)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2016, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transexualism-in-science-fiction/765052/5 "2016-09-04T22:23:25Z")
In Ursula K. Le Guin’s _The Left Hand of Darnkess_, the Gethen are “ambisexual”. They’re sexless 24 days out of every 26, and become either male or female during the other 2. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2016, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transexualism-in-science-fiction/765052/6 "2016-09-04T22:28:08Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > Back in the 70s, Varley’s “9 Worlds” series featured easy body modification; even in the story “Options” when the process was relatively new (in-story), a character could change sex in a matter of a day or so, though it required visiting a medical office. Steel Beach first came to mind. Is that part of 9 Worlds? ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2016, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transexualism-in-science-fiction/765052/7 "2016-09-04T22:43:24Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Steel Beach first came to mind. Is that part of 9 Worlds? In the 1990s, Varley took many of the features of The Nine Worlds when he wrote Steel Beach and The Golden Globe, but he explicitly chose not to make those novels completely consistent with the earlier stories. It is worth noting that in the Golden Globe, an actor changes sex **during** each performance of a play. ---
**Author:** ![Lightray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lightray/32/391_2.png) [@Lightray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightray)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2016, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transexualism-in-science-fiction/765052/8 "2016-09-04T22:44:16Z")
Tanith Lee’s _Don’t Bite the Sun_ / _Drinking Sapphire Wine_ is about a decadent society with casual body-swapping that is falling to ennui. The characters recognize that they may be predominantly male or female, but swap genders casually. The protagonist is predominantly female, but spends most of one book as a male. Although it’s not specifically about transgender identity, it is definitely all focused on _identity_. (Also, it’s a fantastic duology.) Charles Sheffield’s _Proteus_ series has casual body-changing, too, but while gender-changing is mentioned in passing, it’s basically only in passing. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2016, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transexualism-in-science-fiction/765052/9 "2016-09-04T22:47:28Z")
One read a science fiction story, many years ago, discussing a love affair between two characters. The woman of the pair was described as an “XY” because early (it may have been pre-birth) testing showed she had enormous “aptitude” for being a woman so her culture made her one. What was remarkable to me, both at the time and even today, was that this was treated as a side-comment, along with her hair color and the fact she smelled of peanut butter. Can’t remember the name or author - does anyone else recall it? ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2016, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transexualism-in-science-fiction/765052/10 "2016-09-04T22:55:57Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > One read a science fiction story, many years ago, discussing a love affair between two characters. The woman of the pair was described as an “XY” because early (it may have been pre-birth) testing showed she had enormous “aptitude” for being a woman so her culture made her one. What was remarkable to me, both at the time and even today, was that this was treated as a side-comment, along with her hair color and the fact she smelled of peanut butter. > > Can’t remember the name or author - does anyone else recall it? “Day Million” by Pohl [Day Million - Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_Million) Here it is online at Baen [- \Day Million\](http://www.baen.com/Chapters/9781451637892/9781451637892___9.htm) ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2016, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transexualism-in-science-fiction/765052/11 "2016-09-04T23:22:40Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > Back in the 70s, Varley’s “9 Worlds” series featured easy body modification; even in the story “Options” when the process was relatively new (in-story), a character could change sex in a matter of a day or so, though it required visiting a medical office. The short-lived 90s Sci-Fi anthology series **Welcome to Paradox** had an episode where a woman reacted to her husband cheating on her by getting a sex change to see what being a man was like. Full sex changes only involved a day or 2 at a clinic, but it wasn’t a mainstream thing. She was really surprised when one of her girlfriends causally mentioned she used to be a man. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2016, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transexualism-in-science-fiction/765052/12 "2016-09-05T00:48:41Z")
The protagonist in Jack Chalker’s _Dowtiming the Night Side_ changes from male to female and back through the course of the book. IIRC, you time travel and can be changed into a person who doesn’t affect the time stream. Cordwainer Smith’s “The Crime and Glory of Commander Suzdal” has a society on a planet where human female hormones turn carcinogenic, so all the settlers are turned into men via surgery. It’s an impressive story, though Smith’s attitude toward homosexuality is very ugly today. Of course, Thorne Smith dealt with it in _Turnabout_ in the 1920s, but that was a fantasy novel – the sexes of a married couple were switched by an ancient idol. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2016, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transexualism-in-science-fiction/765052/13 "2016-09-05T00:55:03Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > . . . Cordwainer Smith’s “The Crime and Glory of Commander Suzdal” has a society on a planet where human female hormones turn carcinogenic, so all the settlers are turned into men via surgery. It’s an impressive story, though Smith’s attitude toward homosexuality is very ugly today. . . . Yes. A brilliant story, but, by today’s standards, a failure, for being much too judgemental, much too hetero-normative. A world with all gay men, after the first few generations, would be perfectly adaptive. They wouldn’t have any reason to think it wasn’t a completely normal way of life. Smith did a nicer take with Lord Roderick Eleanor, a woman in a man’s body, who decided she kinda likes it that way. ---
**Author:** ![TonySinclair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@TonySinclair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TonySinclair)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2016, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transexualism-in-science-fiction/765052/14 "2016-09-05T01:10:05Z")
Robert Heinlein’s novel “I Will Fear No Evil” is about an old man whose brain is transplanted into the body of a young woman. It’s not considered one of his best. ---
**Author:** ![Lightray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lightray/32/391_2.png) [@Lightray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightray)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2016, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transexualism-in-science-fiction/765052/15 "2016-09-05T01:20:07Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > The protagonist in Jack Chalker’s _Dowtiming the Night Side_ changes from male to female and back through the course of the book. IIRC, you time travel and can be changed into a person who doesn’t affect the time stream. Quite a lot of Chalker’s work involves changing gender, usually involuntarily. Happens in both the Well World series and in the Flux & Anchor series. Probably in his Dancing Gods series, too, I reckon. Admixed with Chalker’s usual “mind controlled into being a slutty sex slave who lives only to satisfy her master’s every sexual fantasy” crap. Being a woman in a Chalker book can only lead to humiliation and degradation. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2016, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transexualism-in-science-fiction/765052/16 "2016-09-05T01:25:29Z")
And, of course, the classic transgender sci-fi story, Heinlein’s “All You Zombies”. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2016, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transexualism-in-science-fiction/765052/17 "2016-09-05T01:26:30Z")
In “A.R.M.” by Larry Niven (collected in _The Long A.R.M. of Gil Hamilton_ and _Flatlander_), one of the characters is transgender. Niven was attempting to be enlightened on the issue. I suspect today’s LGBT activists would say he botched it. In Roger Zelazny’s _Lord of Light_, people live forever by transferring their minds from an old body to a young vat-grown body. One of the important characters was originally female, but always transfers to butch male bodies. Another character makes a point of switching genders with each new incarnation. I cannot remember the title, but there is a Harlan Ellison story in which plastic surgery is quick, easy, and painless, and changing gender is one of the less odd things that people do. One character is described as having several vaginas on his torso. ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2016, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transexualism-in-science-fiction/765052/18 "2016-09-05T01:30:43Z")
In the video game _Soma_, The protagonist, a Canadian from 2015, wakes up in the future and doesn’t understand how he got there. It develops that his brain scan has been downloaded into the body of a woman (more or less), and later on, he’s downloaded into the body of another woman. There really isn’t anything made of it. ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2016, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transexualism-in-science-fiction/765052/19 "2016-09-05T04:35:50Z")
The Budayeen trilogy by George Effinger features many transgender characters prominently. The lead romantic/sexual interest (Jasmine) of the main character (Marid) is a post-op transgender woman. The transgender persons in the books are treated so-so - there is a respectful treatment in some passages, but often they are dismissed and sexualized. In one lover’s quarrel in the first book Marid violently misgenders and disrespects Jasmine, and is immediately and completely forgiven in a sorta unrealistic manner. And almost all the transgender persons in the series (there are a lot of them) are prostitutes, pimps, or gangsters. > **[When Gravity Fails](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Gravity_Fails)** > > When Gravity Fails is a cyberpunk science fiction novel by American writer George Alec Effinger, published in 1986. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1987 and the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1988. The title is taken from "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues", a song by Bob Dylan: "When your gravity fails and negativity don't pull you through". > Taking place in a futuristic Middle-Eastern setting, the series reverses some of the usual expectations of a future world order by painting... ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2016, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transexualism-in-science-fiction/765052/20 "2016-09-05T04:51:07Z")
I know this is kind of a leap from what you’re looking for, but the plot of Jurassic Park\* relies on the dinosaurs being able to change from female to male and breed. \*the movie anyways, I haven’t read the book, and it’s a pretty minor point, it could easily be taken out. ETA, I don’t know anything about the book [Next](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_(novel)) by Michael Crichton, but it appears to also be about transgenic animals. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transexualism-in-science-fiction/765052.md?page=2)