Or should it be ungendering, degendering, ingendering, engendering? Then there's genderbend, genderfuck... Oh the fun you can have!
Anyway, Viola's Bookshelf: A Gender Exchange Library takes creative commons licensed and out of copyright fiction and switches the genders of the characters in order to "help provide an understanding of gender construction in fiction and to an extent in everyday life."
It is interesting to read Cory Doctorow's Scroogled in a gender-switched format:
When she returned home, she discovered that all of her fake pre-Columbian statues had been broken, and her brand-new white cotton Mexican shirt had an ominous boot print in the middle of it. Her clothes no longer smelled of Mexico. They smelled like airport.
She wasn’t going to sleep. No way. She needed to talk about this. There was only one person who would get it. Luckily, he was usually awake around this hour.
Sam had started working at Google two years after Alex had. It was he who’d convinced her to go to Mexico after she cashed out: Anywhere, he’d said, that she could reboot her existence.
Sam had two giant chocolate labs and a very, very patient boyfriend named Laurie who’d put up with anything except being dragged around Dolores Park at 6 a.m. by 350 pounds of drooling canine.
Sam reached for his Mace as Alex jogged toward him, then did a double take and threw his arms open, dropping the leashes and trapping them under his sneaker. “Where’s the rest of you? Dude, you look hot!”
She hugged him back, suddenly conscious of the way she smelled after a night of invasive Googling. “Sam,” she said, “what do you know about Google and the DHS?"
Here's a post from Hoyden About Town on the project that includes some interesting comments from the "translator" of Scroogled, Sajbrfem. Viola's Bookshelf originated as part of Fifty Two Acts, a cyberfeminist project. Here's a longer post from Sajbrfem about the translation of Scroogled.
In the Viola's Bookshelf about page, it is mentioned that originally a schedule of one novel a month was planned. They also requested that readers send genderswitched books in order to help out. I noticed just now that Viola's Bookshelf has not been updated in 2009. This kind of project is a lot of work. Maybe you could help.
Actually, a few things ring false to me. Like Sam reaching for his mace as Alex approaches, and, oddly enough, his references to Alex's appearance.
Posted by: Jessica Freely | June 16, 2009 at 11:07 PM
I love that changing all of the gender references in this Cory Doctrow excerpt doesn't actually change anything.
Posted by: roninkakuhito | June 16, 2009 at 10:33 PM