Fandom Lounge's Journal - Day

11:40AM - When gender theory goes too far

Sorry to be a spammer (gasp two posts in three days!!!), but I just had to share this.

According to Wikipedia, Kate Bornstein is a transgender author, playwright, performance artist and gender theorist. She also has a blog. I wouldn't have even noticed if not for the most recent entry in her blog, which is a bit... well.

WALL•E: A Butch/Femme Love Story... or Silly Rabbit! Robots Have No Gender

Yes. Gender ambiguity in Wall-E. I suppose it's valid, Wall-E and Eve being robots, and all, but... I'm not under the impression that Stanton was trying to confuse anyone. Seems to me like he meant for Wall-E to be a boy-bot and for Eve to be a girl-bot. Their names and designs and behaviors are very indicative of that. Trying to turn Wall-E and Eve into lesbians strikes me as... wishful thinking, really. Also it's a little lulzy.

But I'm used to this kind of thing from Transfandom. What REALLY killed me was the last paragraph.


This isn't Disney's first whack at the cultural gender binary. Mu-Lan is a film about a female to male cross-dresser. And what about Pinocchio? An animated block of wood spends an entire movie trying to become a "real" boy—aided by a blue fairy and an asexual cricket. And what gender exactly was Ariel (a non-gender specific name, by the way) when that little mermaid had a fishy tail? Did she go through a gender change when she grew legs which (presumably) had something between them so she could be a "real" girl? And getting down to basics, can anyone prove that Mickey and Minnie Mouse are male and female?


SEE, NOW I'M LAUGHING.