Jun 3 2014 8:00am

Post-Binary Gender in SF: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

Ann Leckie Ancillary JusticeI enjoyed Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (Orbit, 2013) a lot. It’s such fun. A spaceship AI with human bodies that it uses to sing! Fragmentation of many-bodied entities! A culture with a non-gendered norm!



















This post originally appeared February 18th on Tor.com


Deana Whitney
1. Braid_Tug
Thank you! The use of "She" when the culture was non-gendered bugged me too. There are gender neutral pronouns from non-English world languages. Couldn't she have used one of those?

Or, Bujold used "ba" for a non-gendered race in her universe. Create a short word, explain it in book, then run with it. Readers are smart, they can follow along.
The story was good, the ‘she’ as the non-gendered pronoun was an irritation.
2. DOD
I think this is pretty unfair. If Leckie had chosen not to include alternative gender systems, which she could have, since they are not, as you point out, central to the plot, she could have avoided this criticism. If she had engaged in actual erasure, she would have avoided your accusation of erasure. There are a million books out there that do not include any characters or treatment of this population, and they don't get this criticism, because their erasure was more effective, I guess, and not worthy of comment.
3. Ginger
Being irritated by the use of "she" as the "non-gendered" pronoun in English leads me to suspect that the writer has never considered the use of "he" as the default pronoun for everyone. I believe this is the actual point being made in Ancillary Justice.
Scott Silver
4. hihosilver28
I enjoyed the comments on gender that the book was trying to make as well as the shifting viewpoint necessary in an AI with multiple simultaneous points of view, but I thought the plot was a little discombobulated. Which disappointed me.
5. Green Fire
In English, maritime conventions refer to ships as "she" regardless of the ship’s namesake. For example, even though she is named after a man and her nickname is the “Big Stick” the USS Theodore Roosevelt is still a “she”. Justice of Toren is "she" (in English) regardless of the sexual characteristics of the individual ancillary units. I feel the English female pronoun translation convention adheres to this English maritime naming convention, since the story is told from Justice of Toren's POV. Perhaps, if the POV shifted to Seivarden the pronouns would have shifted to he/him/his.

To me it is just a translation (non)issue and I am glad Ann Leckie didn't make up pronouns. I've read some Star Trek New Frontier and found the "hir" and other pronouns when dealing with hermats very annoying.
Gerd K
6. Kah-thurak
This is a very odd statement. I have so far only read the excerpt included in the Hugo voters package and from that I would conclude that the book (or better, the authors interest in writing it) is all about gender. Right now I am struggling with decision whether I need to give the book chance to win me over, because I have to make an informed vote for the Hugos... but I have yet to find a book that I liked in the end after it left me so utterly desinterested after the first few chapters. I guess I will just read the other nominated works first...

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