Tales of the City, a 10-book series about life in San Francisco from the 1970s onwards are my all-time favourite books. The characters created by Armistead Maupin have accompanied me through all of my adult life. Michael ‘Mouse’ Tolliver. Mary Ann Singleton. Brian Hawkins. Mona Ramsay. Jon Fielding. DeDe and D’orothea. Thack. Ben. And Mrs Madrigal.
Mrs Madrigal, arguably the best fictional trans character that has ever been created, took in lodgers at her ramshackle town house at 28 Barbary Lane. There, they became a ‘logical’ family, thus creating a new version of family that replaced their somewhat dysfunctional ‘biological’ ones. Their lives, intertwined forever, are real and raw and funny and sad and everything else.
From biological to logical.
It’s a beautiful play on words, but it’s also a cool concept.
I have been thinking about the biological vs logical language recently and wondering whether it’s worth playing with this as part of our gender discussions in these turbulent times.
Sex as biological.
Sex as logical.
Over to you.
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Image:
Mary Ann Singleton (Laura Linney) and Anna Madrigal (Olympia Dukakis) in Netflix’s Tales of the City. Credit: Nino Munoz/Netflix.