FOGCon: Outlaw Bodies Roundtable Notes
Apr. 3rd, 2012 05:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pantryslutOn Friday afternoon I ran a roundtable discussion on the subject of "outlaw bodies," seeing as I am currently co-editing an anthology by that title and all. But just to be clear, the roundtable was intended to discuss the kinds of issues that I hope will inform the stories; otherwise the two things were unrelated.
I took a few notes here and there and had a bunch more prepared as well. This is not intended as a definitive write-up of the roundtable at all, but a further think-and-discuss spark.
1. Outlaw Bodies of Today (and Yesterday)
This was my "icebreaker" question. I went around the room and asked people to name a situation in which people's bodies were declared outlaw today. Some vectors:
* Health care, insurance
* Disability and accessibility, services for the disabled
* Trans and gender-nonconforming bodies
* Fat bodies
* Black and brown bodies, "suspicious" bodies
* Women's autonomy over birth control and reproduction
* Chemical castration
* Performance-enhancing drugs (Barry Bonds is an outlaw body)
* Drug tests for employees
* Pharmaceutical mental health management and Federal drug schedules, etc.
* Assisted suicide
* Historical: escaped slaves; bastards
* Children ("free range kids" and their decline)
* Tattoos and piercings (esp. historically)
2. Extralegal vs. Illegal Bodies
Also: Social Outlaw vs. Body Outlaw
3. Outlaw Bodies of the Future (and such)
* What is considered natural, what is considered artificial?
* What happens when something is natural *and* illegal? (cf. X-Men, below)
* Which body modifications etc. are acceptable and which are proscribed, socially or legally or both?
* Deviance from the norm vs. movement toward the norm
* Tension between self-expression and need to physically survive, need to survive vs. existential death, and how this is navigated
* Subcultures creating pockets of tolerance and expression, insulation from "the law" -- how to maintain, how do they collapse?
* The invisibility of age and how it allows for more freedom to be radical in many directions
4. The Outlaw Body in Literature
* Frankenstein's Monster (Hello Ghost of Honor) -- and why did they have to stitch up a bunch of bodies, anyway? (Did they do this for the Bride?)
* Octavia Butler, Xenogenesis (consent vs. coercion)
* Varley's "planet of the Barbies" and glossing over what a society like that would really look like -- explore the implications
* X-Men
(I am sure I have forgotten others we discussed, but it was not a reading-rec-heavy panel)
I took a few notes here and there and had a bunch more prepared as well. This is not intended as a definitive write-up of the roundtable at all, but a further think-and-discuss spark.
1. Outlaw Bodies of Today (and Yesterday)
This was my "icebreaker" question. I went around the room and asked people to name a situation in which people's bodies were declared outlaw today. Some vectors:
* Health care, insurance
* Disability and accessibility, services for the disabled
* Trans and gender-nonconforming bodies
* Fat bodies
* Black and brown bodies, "suspicious" bodies
* Women's autonomy over birth control and reproduction
* Chemical castration
* Performance-enhancing drugs (Barry Bonds is an outlaw body)
* Drug tests for employees
* Pharmaceutical mental health management and Federal drug schedules, etc.
* Assisted suicide
* Historical: escaped slaves; bastards
* Children ("free range kids" and their decline)
* Tattoos and piercings (esp. historically)
2. Extralegal vs. Illegal Bodies
Also: Social Outlaw vs. Body Outlaw
3. Outlaw Bodies of the Future (and such)
* What is considered natural, what is considered artificial?
* What happens when something is natural *and* illegal? (cf. X-Men, below)
* Which body modifications etc. are acceptable and which are proscribed, socially or legally or both?
* Deviance from the norm vs. movement toward the norm
* Tension between self-expression and need to physically survive, need to survive vs. existential death, and how this is navigated
* Subcultures creating pockets of tolerance and expression, insulation from "the law" -- how to maintain, how do they collapse?
* The invisibility of age and how it allows for more freedom to be radical in many directions
4. The Outlaw Body in Literature
* Frankenstein's Monster (Hello Ghost of Honor) -- and why did they have to stitch up a bunch of bodies, anyway? (Did they do this for the Bride?)
* Octavia Butler, Xenogenesis (consent vs. coercion)
* Varley's "planet of the Barbies" and glossing over what a society like that would really look like -- explore the implications
* X-Men
(I am sure I have forgotten others we discussed, but it was not a reading-rec-heavy panel)
