Ship's Boy (5 Points)

Ship’s Boy is very obviously a story about being part of a marginalized group. More than that, it’s about being a marginalized person and still being undervalued even once you’ve proven that you’re far more capable than people think you are. There’s an exchange that illustrates this perfectly. At this point, David is essentially being asked to go on a suicide mission to save the ship from an enemy attack. The captain, after clarifying this, goes on to praise him for how brave and competent he is, telling him that the House of Marcus will make sure he’s well cared for. Then David says that all he wants to do is be a ship’s engineer. The captain laughs this off and says that he’ll try to pull some strings if they survive. He then says, “A Rabbit as a ship’s engineer? David, you simply must be reasonable about certain things!” Even after all the praise, even after he’s proven how intelligent and brave he is, the captain still sees him as just a Rabbit. 

 The saddest thing is whenever Pedro’s in a scene. He’s another slave Rabbit who buys into the oppression. He sees David and sees a fellow inferior being, completely unaware of how they’re put down. It’s depressing to see it happen in a book, and it’s even more depressing to see how it happens in real life. It’s not my place to talk about the plight of Black Americans, but I can talk about the divides in the Trans community. Seeing privileged trans men and women go online and put down their fellow trans people who don’t experience gender the “right” way. And I specify trans men and women because that’s where most of the internal damage is coming from; binary trans people who put down young nonbinary trans people because they don’t adhere to the rigid binary. I imagine they do this to present themselves as the “good” and “reasonable” trans people, but it’s just hurting our cause. They’ve internalized bigotry to a point where they’ve externalized it. They’re the Rabbit telling the other Rabbit that they’ll get in trouble for wearing a space suit.

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