I have a story published on Stardust called The Chosen.
When I wrote it, I envisioned a time in the not too far distant future, when the world was facing a crisis.
The story is about a world where girls are no longer being born. The consequence of this was, eventually we as a species would die out.
I will not go into the plot now, but a few comments indicated that they were uncomfortable with the forced fem aspect, i.e. boys were being transformed into girls for the good of all. I realise that some might not be comfortable with the subject matter and I respect that. I was conscious of this possibility and I too am somewhat uncomfortable with forced fem in many stories. I did try to deal with this as sensitively as possible, but this has led me to something of a moral dilemma regarding the continuation of the story and before I decide my course of action, I wanted to get opinions of others.
My question is do you consider that the ends justify the means if a group of people are changed against their will from boys into girls to enable the continuation of the species, if there is no other means available?
I would value your opinions.
Hugs
Sue
Comments
easy answer
In the way that you have written the story yes, The end justifies the means.
Sam
(looking forward to part two :) )
Selecton criteria / urgency
I suppose a lot would depend on the selection criteria and the urgency of the situation.
In the early stages of the problem at least, I suppose some form of appraisal and psych evaluation could be used to select those more likely to accept or least likely to resist "recruitment" - that should appease the society and a significant portion of readers at least.
The difficulty would come if you decided that the number of boys "recruited" by that method was insufficient, so other mechanisms such as physical appearance, academic results, criminal records or (desperate times call for desperate measures) the lottery you really don't want to win...
In such cases, a lot would depend on how you envisaged society dealing with the more reluctant (to put it mildly) recruits. If it is possibly to handle the subject tactfully and sensitively, you'll lose less readers / gain less criticism than, say, the combination of physical restraints + sedatives + hypnotic drugs + hormone megadoses.
--Ben
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
The Chosen
Sue,
Personally I am not a fan of most Forced Femme stories. Thats -MY- problem, not yours.
It's a question of Intent and Response.
If the Intent is a personal vendetta, malice, BDSM, perversity, anger etc, and/or the Response is truly unwilling then I lose interest rather quickly.
In reading your first chapter I did not detect the negative aspects of either Intent or Response. Yes the boy is not happy.
It was one of those "hard choices" scenarios. Unfortunately the selection process was left to the judgement of others which in itself can lead to abuse but did not seem to be going on at this early stage in story development.
Sue, there will always be people who love your work for the very reasons others hate your work. Clearly you have a story to tell so please write it for those who have an interest and please don't let your detractors write the story for you just because it makes them uncomfortable.
Remember Steven King makes millions of people very uncomfortable, those same people willingly pay millions for the privilege of having him do so.
Sue, it is a great big world out there
I think that too much forced fem on one's life may not be good, and in looking at it most of my stories are forced fem to one extent or another. Well, there you have it, maybe that is one of the causative factors to my own poor readership! Just so you know, perhaps there are perhaps just as many authors here who are supportive of forced fem.
What right thinking Male would want to be a woman anyhow? There is a huge psycological barrier there, and if one is forced, that removes all sorts of moral issues, doesn't it?
Looking back at my own origins, in a sense, I was a forced fem child. I was raised as a girl, and just loved it. I hated the bastard that took my dresses and long hair. So, here I was preconditioned, and there was no acceptable male for me to emulate. This is no "poor me" statement; it is simply a statement of what happened. I am back to being a female now and I love my life! No, I do not advocate criminal activity against young boys.
I'd just write your story, have a good time, and let the dust settle. The world has no shortage of narrowmindedness.
Ma Salaama
Khadijah
A Most Unhappy State of Affairs
Sue,
You've created a world where humanity is caught between a rock and a hard place. There is no good answer to the problem that has been presented. At least your conscripts are being handled with some gentleness. I shudder at the thought of police state methods, under the circumstances described.
"Foul times require foul tests." Clavell
G/R
Sue
Please yourself by what you create and let others enjoy it or not at their own discretion. It's the only way to be true to yourself and your fans.
=^.^=
BigCloset TopShelf
TGLibrary.com
I am always watching over you. Protecting you...
Come out into the light and enjoy life.
In war time
we condition men to do things they neither like or would do if given a choice.
On the other hand, given the numbers of transgender males there are apparently, I'd have thought you'd find enough volunteers not to need to coerce anyone.
I find it strange that something would kill off all the women, without doing the same to the men - after all they have an X chromosome too. Still, perhaps it operates through the shopping gene!
Angharad
Angharad
No easy answers
Sue, as one who has an intense dislike of FF, I still say you should write the story, as others would still appreciate it even though I might not. ibasmuch as you label it such, noone would be be able to gainsay it for that reason, and since you write so well, most will love it anyways.
That said, I might find it implausible, as the "norm" is to be female and the facts tend to support a decline in the male of the species with the poisoning of the environment. And as to the FF of the males, is it necessary? could the male not be used as an incubator for the next generation without the need for FF? just some ideas.
Diana
I have once read
A story with a similar premise at Sapphire's. It was geared as a nation-wide lottery for every district, that was recorded and broadcasted several hours later to make sure all preparations were set in place to start transition. It used some sort of a pod that made the necessary changes to both mind and body, that kicked in during sleep.
It was also noted that, as some tobacco companies lobbied the change, all the new women were smokers. It was also mentioned that the situation was well into it, with several generations born from altered, and that the scientists were successfully working on restoring the natural female gestation.
Apparently, the ends did justify the means. Survival of species is of paramount concern, so...
Faraway
P.S. Lottery by Diane Christy.
Big Closet Top Shelf
Where you can fool around like you want to and most you get is some bemused good ribbing!
Faraway
Big Closet Top Shelf
Where you can fool around like you want to and most you get is some bemused good ribbing!
The Chosen
I read fiction as an escape and enjoy many different subjects (except BDSM!). 'The Chosen' has an interesting premise and I would like to see how you develop it.
A year or so ago I read a story with the same concept. (Terrorist released virus kills all women in US of an age to reproduce. Government develops feminizing process and initiates a mandatory draft. Protagonist never accepts feminizing, escapes into the southwest desert in attempt to reach safety of Mexico and dies in the process.)
This is one scenario your story could present. Not a happy ending but a good read nonetheless.
However you take your story, I say 'Write On'.
Rosie
Rose
Survival...
of the species is built into our genetics. Suppose our race reproduced by parthenogenises (Immaculate conception - some lizards among higher animals do it) and we suddenly lost the ability to reproduce that way. Scientists invent the y chromosome and some females have their second x chromosome replaced, and they turn into males. Fertilization has to occur through sexual intercourse. How disgusting. If a species doesn't try to survive, in becomes extinct.
In the world you created that was the only way that the species could continue. Mene mene tekel upharsin.
Portia
Portia
I totally agree, and I might take it a step further...
...knowing the capacity for our own species to rise above challenges along with the strength of character that so many display, I imagine that there would be men lining up for purely altruistic and humanitarian purposes to volunteer for the change. I would expect no less in the universe that Sue has created.
She was born for all the wrong reasons but grew up for all the right ones.
Possa Dio riccamente vi benedica, tutto il mio amore, Andrea
Love, Andrea Lena
Many years ago I read a story called
The White Plague
The premise was a genetically engineered retaliation of the females of the specie within a narrow confine of genetic parameters.
The individual who engineer the plague lost his wife I believe while they were on vacation and at the hands of "terrorists" of that particular nation. Many years later he released his engineered plague into the populace with the intent of wiping out all who were of the genetic type.
Of course the plague mutated and began to kill off all women globally. As the story was not TG this approach to solving the problem was not presented and as a result the population was drastically reduced during the course of a few generations. Even female children born later were affected and died.
I, for one, would be interested in reading your story with this approach to a solution as it might permit some continuation of the specie as work toward a cure for the plague continued.
Renae
Do they ever?
My personal opinion is no.
That said, the end may be a highly desirable place, maybe (as you indicate in your story) even necessary for some reason. I might even agree that something must be done, but I don't believe that this end justifies it. Were I to be convinced that I had to "order" or support some set of actions that I believe are immoral or wrong, in order to reach some highly desirable place, I would hope that I were held accountable for my actions.
BTW - I don't know if any research is still happening in this area, but back in the '80s, there was a study on apes - where an embryo was implanted into a male ape's abdomen - in a place where it could receive the blood needed. The embryo was allowed to develop for a few weeks, then removed and "tested" and it had developed normally.
There are other "conceivable" alternatives to forced gender change. Several SciFi stories use the concept of "tube babies" and artificial wombs. Such a concept would address your "death of the female" issue. (Though, some of the research I've read indicate that death of the male is more likely, as the Y chromosome continues to lose genes.)
I don't have a problem with the approach you took in your story. My qualms are related to RL, and any actions I might take.
Annette
Interesting Question - Good that You Asked It!
Dear Sue,
this is one of those perennial philosophical Big Questions, isn't it? My answer would be that morally and ethically, the ends never justify the means. This is the always repeated argument and excuse of the tryrant and war criminal throughout history. If killing people is wrong then it is wrong. For those who still believe in religion, your ten commandments say "Thou shalt not kill", and not "Thou shalt not kill without good cause" or ".. unless the Government says it's OK to!"
Morally and ethically, we live in a family of mankind, and harming or acting forcibly against the will of a member of our own species is against our ethical and moral values and against the other person's human rights. Indeed, when such things can only be done by force or the threat of force, the quality of life for those living in such a society is so diminished that survival is scarcely worthwhile anyway.
Now that is MY attitude, and I realise that many alive today are so compromised through living in societies that conduct themselves, organise themselves by force,and indoctrinate their poor subjects to believe or accept that this is the normal way of things and that it is even impossible to have an ordered society without the constant use or threat of force against everyone it it.
Were they right who argue thus, then my argument would be invalid, but I do not accept that I am wrong. It feels so much nicer when I can feel free to decide things for myself, that having once enjoyed such freedom I will not surrender to any tyrannical regime, however well meaning and however powerful it may seem to be.
There would NEVER be a situation where one would be forced to turn boys into girls for the sake of human survival. There are already ways of assuring reproduction without females, just as there are even more ways of doing so without males. Ovae as well as sperms are stored frozen in liquid nitrogen already now. In vitro embryonic development is possible, as is implantation of human foetae inside the wombs of other mammals. Reproduction by the tissue culture of somatic cells would be possible. The implanting of two x chromosomes into a fertilized male egg would be no great problem to achieve now.
Were our species to use force en mass on children in order to survive, I submit that it would be kinder to let our species become extinct. This planet suffers already from the humans on it, and many now realise that it would be better for Life in general if we were extinct, before we render the planet into a lifeless piece of rock!
This does NOT mean that I disapprove of writing stories about such situations though. Indeed, by imagining such scenarios we learn to evaluate the use of such techniques and the quality of life under such regimes!
Briar
Briar
You make some very interesting points....
...I can't say I agree completely with your points about preserving life via those methods, but only because I believe Susan was speculating on what would need to take place if all other options were explored and found futile or ineffective. If it weren't the case, from my perspective it would be more humane to use the methods you describe. But here's where we diverge.
You state: Morally and ethically, we live in a family of mankind, and harming or acting forcibly against the will of a member of our own species is against our ethical and moral values and against the other person's human rights. I have no argument with that, but you apparently do.
Were our species to use force en mass on children in order to survive, I submit that it would be kinder to let our species become extinct. This planet suffers already from the humans on it, and many now realise that it would be better for Life in general if we were extinct, before we render the planet into a lifeless piece of rock!
Either we are valuable and precious as a species, with rights as you say, or we're valueless and a burden on the planet. When you say that many realize that it would be better for Life in general if we were extinct, who would be the beneficiary of our extinction? The Arctic Hare, a macaw, a chimpanzee, a millipede? Are any of them worth more than your friends or co-workers? I expect you have family near and dear to you; folks whom you treasure and love. Can you look at them as representative of humanity and believe the planet would be better off without them? Pick any author or commentator you find impressive or entertaining; Alyssa? Maddy? Persephone? Randalynn? Can you consign them to extinction to preserve a nuthatch or a marmoset? Penny? Stan? Nick? Erin? Are they less valuable than a glacier in Greenland or a rock formation in Arizona? I don't believe you think that for one minute, but that's how things go when you take them from the abstract to the concrete.
We have bears and raccoons and possums that visit our yard on a daily basis. As created beings, they are valuable to me as a representation of the diversity of life, but I don't find them any more valuable or more worthy of life than any human I have ever known. I would feel terrible if I woke up one morning and found out that these fascinating creatures no longer exist, However, I just said good morning to my wife, and I am confident as anything I've ever known that the world is a better place because she lives.
She was born for all the wrong reasons but grew up for all the right ones.
Possa Dio riccamente vi benedica, tutto il mio amore, Andrea
Love, Andrea Lena
My only Complaint
In the story, you have a TG character. If the world is in that much trouble. Anti-Androgenes right away. Then a full psych eval during the year. If pass the government would add that person and many others to their womanization process. Other than that excellent story.