October Review Challenge, #8 - Most ahead of its time

October Review Challenge, #8 - "What moment in your work is most ahead of its time?"

This prompt was suggested to me by my friend Jonathan, when I was first brainstorming the list. I confess most of my work is not exactly cutting-edge; I am partial to very conventional narrative styles, and while my viewpoints tend toward the progressive, my subject matter is rarely that far out there. But the most transgressive piece I have, by far, is Adonis.



The central conceit is a gender-flipped ancient Rome, for the purposes of examining the destructive effects of objectification and instrumentalization— but where women perpetrate it on men rather than how in our world, it more often happens the other way around. The flip is to throw into sharp relief those things that we might take for granted, because we're so accustomed to seeing men perpetrate such things on women, but so rarely ever see the other way around.

It's a bit much for some people. Obviously a lot of people have a hard time even believing a man ever could be a victim of objectification or assault in that way. But others find it even more off-putting than when it happens to women— it violates too many gendered expectations, and the lack of inurement makes it too hard to take. But I think that's the point; by doing the flip, it doesn't let the horror of it just slide by because of your expectations. And I do think it's important to acknowledge that men can have their boundaries violated as well. Many men don't feel so vulnerable to it, but there are also many that do, and it's no less awful if their bodily autonomy is not respected. So while most of my work isn't that transgressive, I think this takes the most cutting-edge position of anything I've done so far.