There’s a new, long interview with me up at Conflict of Interest, a magazine covering the visual art and literary communities in Austin, Texas. Rebecca Marino talked with me about “The New Mother,” writing process, influences, translation, and gave me room to ramble about lots of other things. This interview is, I think, the first time I’ve publicly articulated what my priorities would be were we faced with the spread of a condition like GDS.
I personally think our sexual dimorphism is nothing more than a happenstance of evolution, not invested with any kind of fundamental ethical importance. There are many in the story who believe that GDS heralds the extinction of men, and while the validity of that fear is left up to the reader, I don’t think it’s an unreasonable thing for people in the story to worry about. If GDS were to occur in the real world, I would have sentimental and aesthetic reasons to want preserve the human male phenotype if possible but not at the expense of individual human rights, which are ethically charged in a way that supersedes aesthetics and sentimentality. I’d rather see my own morphology disappear into history than persist via the subjugation of other people.