My story Exopunk’s Not Dead has just been reprinted, so I wanted to talk about how it came together, because it’s an experience that left a bad taste in my mouth in a way that only made sense after I came out.
I originally submitted it to a certain high-paying (now defunct) market with a strict word limit (real heads know), and they asked me to consider rewriting it so that instead of it being a meet-cute between two queer women, it was two men. As this editor saw me as a cis man, they thought the original draft was too male-gazey.
If you’ve read my work you know that’s not my style. It wasn’t a titillating story about two lesbians hooking up – it was the same sweet and silly meet-cute with an anti-fascist heart that it is now. (The main way the published story is better is that in rethinking the characters I was able to get some good/bad jokes out of their names.)
But I also thought I was a cis man, so I was hypersensitive to that sort of criticism and I went ahead and rewrote the story. They didn’t take it, and In the process of regendering the story I’d done so much work making it better in other small ways it was now too different/difficult to revert.
So I kept it as it was – a story about 2 gay men falling for each other at a punk show – and the punk show aspect of it was the only part that had any relevance to my life whatsoever. And then I sold the story, and that was a good thing, right?
But looking back at that original interaction, it still hurts. Having my gender, my sexuality, and my transness being denied right to my face, when I didn’t even know they were things I desperately needed to claim.
It doesn’t matter that I didn’t know, it still hurt. Dysphoria is fucking weird.