Congress Page Abstract

It’s a Straight, Straight World: Redressing the Absence of Gender Diversity in Contemporary Non-genre Fiction

KRISTY DAVIDSON, THE SCHOOL OF CULTURE, COMMUNICATION AND LANGUAGES AT VICTORIA UNIVERSITY, AUSTRALIA

There has been a recent upsurge of interest in diverse gender identities in Australian popular culture, with numerous appearances in all forms of mass media in the last few years. On film and television, transgendered people have been portrayed in documentaries, feature films, television series, advertisements, lifestyle shows and reality television shows. In the print media, articles have appeared in newspapers, magazines, and in other various non-fiction forms. However, while gender diversity and transgenderism are concerns circulating in much contemporary popular culture, this is not the case in mainstream literary fiction. This paper critically examines the few portrayals of transgendered people that are available in contemporary non-genre fiction and discusses the writing of a work-in-progress that undertakes to "redress" in some way, the absence of gender diverse identities in this medium.

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