I keep seeing people say that Murderbot refers to itself as "she/her" in the books (you know, the ones I wrote). Could someone comment with a quote (from the books I wrote) or point me (the writer) to where that is? Maybe I can clear up the confusion. In the books. Which I wrote.
Comments
I will say I get a handwavy very slightly female-ish vibe from it, but that is entirely how it reads to me subjectively and clearly not in the text. I don't honestly know why. It's still clearly "it" though
Italian has no neutral nouns, and I assume they chose female pronouns because Murderbot = Macchina Assassina, and Macchina is a female noun.
It definitely doesn’t gender itself at least in the first novella.
I read MB as female, my wife read it as male. It's whatever you want it to bem
Murderbot and Ancillary Justice have little in common besides quality level & decade of publication, but... maybe?
So my wild theory is that readers are getting the character and the writer confused or blend them together.
If the sentence uses Bot, like "the bot is doing" then it's male, as bot is male in German.
If its Einheit/unit, then female is used, as Einheit is female
Apparently it/das is not really used, despite it being the preferred pronoun
(I do know at least one NB person here whose name is "Elle", which occasionally distracts me into misgendering them.)
I’ve always found that pretty intriguing. As if a human doesn’t acquire gender until puberty. Then again there’s “der Knabe” masculine, for boy.
Name: SecUnit
Gender: N/A
After a reread, she pointed at the part where Murderbot is referring to the security consultant Rin with she/her pronouns. It uses that name later so mum had that association
I also realized quite late that the use of she/her pronouns in Ancillary meant that I had attributed female gender to a lot of characters that other readers saw as male.
MB admires, likes & trusts her, so it made absolute sense to me that the ‘absolutely no-sex-parts (gross!)’ character would make that choice.
I mean in other books I had characters change genders accidentally, due to shoddy editing, but not once in yours.
I think MB's "voice" is definitely not stereotypical male, but I don't think I'm qualified to say it sounds female. I definitely think MB sounds like an SF/fantasy reader :-)
...
and, um, now I need to write some Murderbot/ART/Justice of Toren fanfic. hijinks ensue...
If I remember correctly, you quickly corrected their misinterpretation.
It would be entirely like them to target you for that.
(please note: I am being sarcastic.)
(sorry if someone already said this in the many replies)
Which was a nice lesson on personal biases, and exactly why we need fiction that challenges them.
Which is nonetheless a reader-mistake, but perhaps how it might happen.
I have written several stories with a nonbinary, agender, asexual PI (they/them) and readers still gender them M or F, pretty randomly.
I imagine Murderbot as having a smaller build than a man because who wants bulky humanoids in a habitat.
The question in this case is what pronoun Murderbot refers to itself.
It's stated multiple times that it prefers "it", not she (or he/they/them/...)
bones and muscles vs metal and non-flesh muscle-equivalents,
and whether the parts get leaky if shot at.
Mensah happened to be a bigger issue for me. Read the translation and our language doesn't have gendered personal pronouns, so we have to guess the gender. Took me two books to realize Mensah was female 🤦
Some may also be inclined to see "Eden," the alias SecUnit briefly lifts from Sanctuary Moon, as a "feminine" name?
I caught myself using "she" for Murderbot when enthusing to friends about the books, but once I realized, I corrected myself.
I can understand being upset at yourself for missing it, but it's wild to be mad at anyone else.
It’s your story, you own it and you care for it.
Thank you for that!
Love these books, please write more!
(Not a gotcha, genuinely, it's just fascinating how deeply embedded this stuff is!)
But I also had an effeminate but androgynous form in my head for some reason.
(I always thought of Sec Unit as a tall, slender athlete, as if Jaye Davidson in his Crying Game/Atlantis stage lifted weights for the role. But Sec Unit was quite clear that sex organs had no place in its life, thank-you very much.)
I think folks are just very very hung up on binaries and even those of us who proclaim to be “above” assuming/assigning gender have to fight against the knee jerk inclination to do so.
She/her'ing MurderBot was a new one on me. Frustrating to hear people can get it wrong in so many directions.
Why not pick neuter? I'd think it's a pretty direct translation of Murderbot's preferred it/its, but I only have basic knowledge of German. Maybe there's an interesting story the translator can tell?
¹: When not requested.
²: Which, I mean, is SecUnit's *point*
So a massive thank you for that from here!
What's that? Oh, sorry Ratthi. I meant as a human, which is the kind of person I'm familiar with. But I know it prefers it.
Now you have!
(The "dehumanisation" comes from the belief that to be human requires gender, but we're starting to realise that's not necessarily true.)
And some languages, like German, just don't work without genders at all, unless you use neo pronouns or reform grammar completely which is horrible.
I always loved English for not being as gendered on comparison.
Not saying it's wrong to prefer it! Just explaining why it feels off to people who are absolutely fine with neo pronouns or they/them.
On the upside, SecUnit is amazing.
Some people prefer agender or genderqueer
and since murderbot is not human and hates gender identifiers
and has a completely different context, again I'm not saying you are wrong. I am also saying, the point is that it would be hard for me to assign a gender marker
(No I don't think this a reasonable reason.)
Seems clear to me.
I was just taking about this last week! Even though I knew Murderbot was without gender, I read in my voice & I’m a woman.
I asked my partner about Murderbot’s voice in the audiobook. A dude ☺️
It was very interesting to hear how we perceived Murderbot differently!
I still kinda got a 'female' vibe from the first one, but I knew that was me reading into the text.
Well, that and the gratuitous amount of snark. 😁