sexual politics in Chalker’s Soul Rider series

I’ve finished Jack Chalker’s five volume “Soul Rider” series and since, I’ve been obsessing more and more about issues of sex, gender and sexuality raised by the work.

So here we are on this amazing place called World. There are areas that are more or less like our planet where the “conventional” physical laws work: the Anchors. And there are areas surrounding these made of “pure Flux” in which machines and certain people by willpower alone can create anything from the Flux energy. That’s pretty neat if you can control the Flux, though most folks can’t and therefore they’re afraid of the stuff.

graffiti and Jack Chalker transform life: or is this what a New Human looks like?

The series starts out innocently enough in a charming communal farm in a pre-industrial village. Three childhood friends, Cassie, Dar and Suzl are about to come of age. Through various mishaps, they’re thrown into Flux with a number of other unfortunates. Then things really start to get wild.

Chalker makes a big point about people’s conscious and unconscious desires, emotions and wishes leading to physical and emotional changes in Flux. In “Birth,” Toby Haller makes love to his future wife, Mickey, in that medium. Their passionate desire is somehow converted into this life-long emotional bond that gets hardwired into the pair. They’re both content with the arrangement. Usually things don’t go quite so well.

In “Spirits,” Dar is captured by a sadistic wizard who has his genitals mutilated. Dar survives and eventually the wound is “magically” transformed into fully functioning female genitals. Later in the series, when Dar and Suzl try to have the “curse” lifted, the spell backfires and leads Suzl to develop a fully functioning, oversized set of male genitals. In “Masters,” we learn that Coydt van Haas has a similar “curse” in which he feels like a “man” but was involuntarily given magically created female genitals that he is unable to have changed back. The reactions of the three are telling. Both Dar and Coydt are overwhelmed with distress, shame and anger; yet Suzl accepts the change and just goes with it.

These partial transformations in Flux are strange. But that’s not all. There are numerous examples of folks being completely changed from one sex to the other. Toby and Mickey Haller’s super-great grandson, Mervyn, who identifies as male, will magically transform into a woman when it’s convenient for travel in Anchor. As a punishment for failing to act in a “manly way,” New Eden courts will have men transformed into “Fluxgirls:” super sexy, over-sexed women who are mentally just a little “slower” then the men folk. That’s what happens to Suzl’s husband, Weiz. (It’s so wrong that chief Justice Adam Tilghman orders the punishment then turns around and takes Suzl as his second wife!) It kind of backfires on the old boys in “Children” when Weiz-come-Ayesha starts the ball rolling for New Eden’s eventual destruction and containment. I guess forcing guys that you don’t like into literally becoming women is a male fantasy for the sexually and emotionally insecure. But it doesn’t look like a good idea, at least in hindsight.

I’ve been wondering, too, about the whole Fluxgirl/Fluxwife concept. Men impose this on women, most of the time against their will, which seems very troubling. Yet we see powerful female wizards and intelligent, liberated female scientists choose to become or remain Fluxgirls even when they don’t have to. Maybe some people are happy with the lifestyle? But why is it so one-sided? “Fluxdudes” would be pretty cool, too. And to be honest, sometimes I think that I wouldn’t mind that kind of thing myself. Weird.

Part of the problem with the Fluxgirl idea is the suggestion that these women are somehow inferior to their unchanged female and male counterparts. That’s why folks are appalled when Cassie voluntarily commits to becoming a Fluxwife and Connie in “Birth” transforms herself into “Kitten.” What does this really mean? What is Chalker intending us to think? Is someone “less-than” or perhaps “greater-than” living this simplified life of beauty, erotic satisfaction and contentment? I wonder. It seemed ideal in the Well World series when Nathan Brazil and Terry get trapped on the tropical island with their memories blocked. Later Brazil recalls the experience as one of the happiest in his very long life. Is that the message from Kitten and Cassie and even Morgaine? It’s better?

Major Verdugo in “Children” is eventually transformed from chauvinistic man into lovely passive woman, in what the female characters seem to imply is his just desserts. We’re led to believe that the Stringer, Matson, voluntarily submits to being changed into the likeness of his daughter, Sondra, so that he can train the women fighters of Suzl’s great army in “Children.” Though it turns out that it’s a trick and it was Sondra pretending to be Matson pretending to be Sondra. So Matson himself never becomes a woman. I can just hear him thinking, “Whew!” But what’s up with that?

I cannot really think of examples of women becoming men in the series beyond Sondra’s short-lived masquerade as her father. Yeah, sure, women take on elements of male anatomy, but it sort of stops there. Even Suzl’s “New Human,” a kind of hybrid man/woman that’s fully functional as both but is truly neither, looks more like a “regular woman,” apparently because the biology of pregnancy requires it, whatever that means. Honestly, Dar was menstruating in “Spirits” but looked like a guy. Why in the world can’t the New Human look whatever way in “Children?”

Coydt van Haas becomes the mastermind in the creation of the rigidly gender-stereotyped New Eden by collecting a group of powerful men that have been used as sex slaves by more powerful female wizards in Flux. They’re all seeking revenge against women, I suppose for their sense of humiliation. That revenge turns out simply to be imposing the opposite, equally troubling, though perhaps, more familiar system of women subservient to men, on the entire population of Anchor.

New Eden’s the whole reason that Suzl rounds up her army of volunteer and Flux-conscripted women in the first place. She wants to prevent the sexist culture from spreading to other Anchors and possibly to all of World. Yet are her methods any different? She insists that everyone be female or New Human, her single-sex “solution” to the problem of gender difference. Male sex is no obstacle as she simply has men magically changed into women, whether they want to or not.

With all of this sexual stuff, obviously these characters engage in the “real thing” too. Surprisingly, or maybe not, it’s usually heterosexual or same-sex lesbian style only. There are the occasional situations with the male character with the female genitals having sex with women (e.g. van Haas) or when a male-identified character with female genitals has sex with a female-identified character with male genitals (e.g. Dar and Suzl). To me these are just creative variations of heterosexuality.

The lesbian stuff is simply everywhere! In “Birth” with the computer-manipulated formation of the matriarchal Mother Church, woman-on-woman sex is even given a religious and spiritual basis and sanction. Yet where’s the guy-on-guy action?

Suzl briefly hooks up with a gay male Stringer. It’s when she looks like a woman but is blessed with ample male equipment. It’s convenient at the time for both of them, though not perfect. She prefers women; he likes men. Plus the whole deal’s on the down low, which is awkward. We hear her earnestly confide the arrangement and problems to a woman friend. She rationalizes it at the time with the thought that she needs protection in Flux, which her bf provides, and she offers sex more to his liking while allowing him to save face in the Stringer corps. It seems that there’s just no place for a gay Stringer. How Eighties!

What possible difference can it make who you sleep with in a place where anyone can look like anyone or anything? The only time romantic same-sex male relationships are noted is in “Masters” when Matson is sent as an envoy to New Eden. He stays overnight in a small town outside the capital and observes two New Eden men kissing passionately. He’s ‘tolerant’ but makes a big point of noting that other men expressing any interest in him would be unacceptable.

Most of the story is from the perspective of the female characters: Cassie, Suzl, Spirit and Morgaine. These women are written in a compassionate, real way that makes them seem like ‘whole’ people, rather than science fiction-style, two dimensional plastic dolls. I get the sense that Chalker genuinely likes these women. The series places women in powerful roles as heads of the Church, Saint-like religious crusaders, Army commanders, heads of internal security and powerful psychologists. During the Samish crisis with the opening of the Hellgates, we learn that more women than men have been selected by the Soul Riders and Guardians to control the Flux machinery to fight off the invading aliens. I have the idea that’s supposed to suggest that women are either more powerful than men in terms of Flux control or perhaps that they have more self-restraint and therefore are more fit for the power. Of course, Matson waltzes in to provide a battle plan for the ladies…

It’s also suggested several times throughout that men are more expendable than women, as you only need a few guys to carry on the tribe. My response to that is “puh-leese!” The only reason humans exist is to procreate? Give me a break!

So what’s it all mean? Is the Soul Rider series sexist, or heterosexist? Is it an attempt to rise above gender itself or is the point to demonstrate why that’s so impossible for us? Is it somehow related to contemporary Eighties stuff? Maybe Chalker didn’t want to push the envelope too far? I don’t know. I really like the guy and his crazy novels. And these gendered questions are one of the big reasons. Probably it doesn’t even matter, as the novels are all out of print and most likely I’m the only one reading this stuff anymore anyway.

If you are into the series, please contact me! I’d love to hear your thoughts.