When they asked if she had named the hamster, she said “Fred”. When they said that was a boy’s name she said it was short for Fredreika. - Holy Fire, (Pg. 75)
Bruce Sterling’s Holy Fire, details a futuristic global society that is a prophetic/satirical vision of our own. A Society run by an older generation of identifiable “post-humans”, Gerontocrats, each granted an unnaturally prolonged life span in exchange for being model citizens. This vision of the world is so focused on the “future”, medical perfection, and seeing what humanity can accomplish, that the scene of naming the hamster with “a boy’s name” is so bizarre.
With society getting an intense rewrite, socially legible ideas of gender should also get a similar rewrite. In the first chapter Mia and Mercedes even discuss being post-women and post-sex, where individuals having lifespans prolonged so long by medicine have caused parts of theirs bodies to no longer function. Only the important organs and tissues work so as to keep the person moving and continuing their routine. This already begins to queer the social legibility of sex and gender whereas once one is beyond functionality, post-functional, they are no longer read as women or sexual beings, they are post. Similar in ways today with ideas of our older generations who are pictured as “old people” just sitting around with no particular function.
The Hamster naming does not happen when Mia/Maya is post-function, it occurs when Maya is newly functional, where everything works again as if she was young, and the only post, is post-human. (And post-Hamster.) What makes the hamster naming so bizarre to me is we are talking about a futuristic society where even hamsters cannot have certain names based on their apparent gender. To have to correct and tell Mia that Fred is “a boy’s name” and have her defend herself and say it is short for “Fredreika”, feels so dated for the future Sterling is imagining. It is a clear indicator of when this piece was written, where this would not of even had to be something to cross Bruce Sterling’s mind. But now in 2016, we’re seeing ideas of gender evolve right in front of us, names included, where this Hamster named fred would not of been questioned. Not to mention that this all takes place in San Francisco, a city constantly queering ideas of gender and sex. Of course this could be satirical, as much of the book is, but this doesn’t feel as clear as other obviously satirical instances.
Even with the book being so futuristic and advanced, certain things, like the gender binary, feel so...old fashioned. It is not just the Gerontocracy running everything, but subtle something's about Sterling’s writing where you can tell it was written in the beginning of the digital age, and not the point where we are now. Not that this is good or bad, simply something that Sterling could not have accounted for. With it already being very prophetic, it is clear that is not going to prophesize everything. The evolution of gender being one of them, as it has evolved in pop culture at a parabolic rate. If we look at norms of a decade ago, 2006, a lot has changed in such a short time. Nowadays the traditional binary is being questioned much more often by more people, where in discussing the future it can be brought up the idea of a post-gender society as we already have a much more trans-inclusive society. (But still not a totally trans-inclusive society, moving towards something does not mean it has been achieved.)
Arguments against post-gender societies usually revolve around carrying on reproduction and preserving the human race. In today’s world we are dealing with severe overpopulation where being able to reproduce should not be as much of a concern, as counteracting and controlling overpopulation. While in Holy Fire underpopulation seems to be more of the issue following the plagues, genocides, and incidents that led to the creation of The Polity. Most likely this world had overpopulation that’s numbers were severely cut down from these incidents. To counteract underpopulation, The Polity has a population that can outlive any previous human lifespan significantly, and as this population gets older some ideas of sex and gender do change based on physical functionality, being post-sex and post-woman. But overall the idea of the binary is still there, and is more evident within the more functional bodies, the younger generations and Maya-vs-Mia. Even to the contemporary idea of a post-gender society and the worry of reproduction, it is a simple misunderstanding of gender. Regardless of gender(s), humans be able too, and definitely will, reproduce. With our ever increasing knowledge of biology and the genome, reproduction has been queered to something that no longer needs the act of sex to happen.
If we are to have a world like that of The Polity, then reproduction will not a be a worry. It seems that when extinction/survival of the human race is not a priority, gender can begin to evolve to something “post”. Post-woman, post-sex, post-gender. With regards to the medical regime of The Polity as a possibility of our advancing society, you cannot tell me that societies so infused with the futurity of medicine and medical advancements does not have research with reproduction to carry on the genome beyond the same aged bodies. If they can melt people down into bio-Jell-O to create a whole new body of youth, then it is beyond a safe bet to say that similar facilities of the polity have little post-fetal pudding cups of Jell-O-Genome babies for excited post-human parents.
And Jell-O doesn’t need a gender.
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