Yeah, definitely! I was just thinking that given the very many things she was trying to do with gender in those books, it doesn't surprise me that it didn't connect with you on the nonbinary level.
What do you think being trans in Radch society might look like? I have kind of the same struggle with Radch as with Pratchett's dwarves in that I am not sure what gender means in a society with 0 to 1 genders, and therefore what does transness mean (Pratchett's dwarfs who adopt non-dwarf gender presentations either go for something adjacent to "human female" or to "human male" in the case of Casanunda, and as a metaphor that gets super confusing and I don't think Pratchett had any idea what he was doing)? I guess what I puzzle about is - if a society doesn't have the concept of gender at all (which I'd argue is true of the original Radchaai and would be true of Pratchett's dwarfs if he wrote them consistently), how does an individual in that society develop that concept (except through contact with other societies that do have gender)?
Apologies if this is too off-topic or out of line! I puzzle about gender a lot...
(I don't remember Provenance so well, but wasn't there a character who was refusing to choose an approved adult trinary gender? I remember thinking that could be read as either not ready to choose or as rejecting the socially available options. I may be completely misremembering, though.)
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What do you think being trans in Radch society might look like? I have kind of the same struggle with Radch as with Pratchett's dwarves in that I am not sure what gender means in a society with 0 to 1 genders, and therefore what does transness mean (Pratchett's dwarfs who adopt non-dwarf gender presentations either go for something adjacent to "human female" or to "human male" in the case of Casanunda, and as a metaphor that gets super confusing and I don't think Pratchett had any idea what he was doing)? I guess what I puzzle about is - if a society doesn't have the concept of gender at all (which I'd argue is true of the original Radchaai and would be true of Pratchett's dwarfs if he wrote them consistently), how does an individual in that society develop that concept (except through contact with other societies that do have gender)?
Apologies if this is too off-topic or out of line! I puzzle about gender a lot...
(I don't remember Provenance so well, but wasn't there a character who was refusing to choose an approved adult trinary gender? I remember thinking that could be read as either not ready to choose or as rejecting the socially available options. I may be completely misremembering, though.)