I don’t remember if the Culture was my first experience of trans charcters, but it must have been close. I read the books at around the same time as The Sandman when I was about fifteen. So it was probably one of those.
Trans characters barely existed in UK media of the early 90s. The only depictions I recall were “transvestites” shown as burly men in fishnets as “criminal of the week” in The Bill.
Culture citizens are able to change sex at will, a transformation that takes a few weeks once incited. As the Culture are a high tech utopia who live for meny centuries everyone lives as both male and female.
Except Gurgeh “The Player of Games”, who is aggresively masculine. When he tries to pull Yay Meristinoux, as they are are transitioning between male and female, he’s told that only ever being male is “weird”.
Gurgeh is chosen for a mission to a world that has three sexes – male, female and apex. And has the barbarous practice of using gender intentity to define social status. Yuck! Males and females are slaves, only apices can hold power.
As we learn in Excession the Culture standard is for a couple to have two children, each partner becoming female to bear one. Which makes a lot of sense when you think about it.
Science fiction was a long way ahead of the curve exploring trans identity. Le Guin and others got there decades before Banks. And trans people have been central to the SF community for a long time.
So a major test of the Culture series in development from Amazon is whether it truly represents the values of the Culture. Values I would describe as
Woke Marxist Social Justice Warrior Space Hippies….With Guns.
The Culture are so Woke that their favourite hobby is finding non-woke civilisations and making them Go Woke.
Peacefully. Where possible. But the Culture aren’t above using dirty tricks on civilisations that won’t let go of their caste system
like cough flaying their upper caste leaders alive cough
Some folks have confused my ciriticisms of NuTrek and Foundation as anti-woke.
Au contraire. These shows failed in part by being nowhere near Woke enough. By replacing truly radical ideas with bland “corporate wokeness”.
If a Culture tv show doesn’t make at least a third of the ‘Murican public go into a shrieking hysterical anti-woke meltdown it will have failed. And given how hard Bezos was sucking up to Trump, I strongly suspect Amazon studios won’t allow the true Woke on the screen.
Which is why I made a pledge at the end of my feature length Culture video essay, that if I ever got a shot at putting the Culture on screen, I would keep it 100% woke 🤣
Damien Walter 