Dare to Speak Their Name: Including the Queer in Worldbuilding

Published Categorised as Guests of Honour, Panels, Video
Octo Trans Day Visibility

This panel from Octocon 2020 is brought to you in honour of International Transgender Day of Visibility 2022.

To find out more about it, visit our 2021 charity: BeLonG To Youth Services is the national organisation supporting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI+) young people in Ireland.

Panel Description

Speculative fiction can give us many opportunities to step outside familiar constructs of gender and sexuality. Whether the world is one without obvious prejudice where all genders are treated as equally as possible and queerness is unremarkable, or one in which gender isn’t assigned at birth or just doesn’t matter at all, how does SFF queer its worlds? What can these secondary worlds show readers and viewers who had previously only been exposed to straight culture?

Moderator: David Ferguson
Panelists: Helen Corcoran, Quinn Clancy, Philippa Ryder (GOH for 2020 and 2022), Robert JE Simpson

This panel was originally streamed live Saturday 10 October 2020 during Octocon 2020 at https://www.twitch.tv/OctoconIRL, where short clips can be viewed and shared.

Intro Music: Happy Times by Alejandro Magaña from https://mixkit.co/
Outro Music: Sleepy Fish – Fall’s Echoes https://chll.to/8c30d93f
https://chillhop.ffm.to/creatorcred