Note: this essay contains some spoilers for the show and assumes the reader’s familiarity with its characters.
“Not a girl,” corrects Janet in an endlessly patient voice over and over in The Good Place. Usually she’s talking to Jason, who has a habit of calling her “girl” as an endearment. Once or twice, she corrects a different character with a cheerful but firm, “Not a robot,” or “Not a woman.” It becomes a running joke in the show, one that never seems to grow old for me. “Me too, Janet” I whisper to the TV screen. “Me too.”
In a milder way, I also relate to the way Janet seems to work romantically and sexually. Over the many, many Jeremy Bearimys that the show spans, Jason is the only person we know Janet falls in love with. Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions, but I get the impression that Jason may be the only person Janet *can* ever fall in love with. Or at least, if she does end up being able to fall in love with other people, those people will be few and far between. And while Jason is open about the fact that he and Janet try to have sex, I don’t get the sense that she feels sexually attracted to him; rather, she knows that sex is something that he likes to do and she’s open to trying the experience for his sake.
I can relate. Despite years of trying to develop romantic or sexual attraction to people it seemed like I “should” be attracted to, I just can’t. So in addition to seeing my non-binaryness reflected in Janet, I also see my greyromantic and ace-spectrum experiences in her.
At the same time, I feel squirmy about the idea of relating so hard to Janet. As a general rule, robots, androids, and the like can work well for me as metaphors for how exploitative work culture affected me (zombies too, but that’s another post), but they do not work for me as metaphors for my experiences of being queer.
Exhibit A: A couple of years ago I read a short story written by a cisgender woman about an android who had a sense of gender, and their gender was non-binary. I felt super uncomfortable with this story, especially since the android was the only non-binary character. (Not to mention the fact that, although the android was the protagonist, they also seemed to be responsible for the destruction of humankind.)
I can see how an author might think an android isn’t too far off from the oft-repeated metaphors that trans, non-binary, and genderqueer writers use to describe their own experiences, such as aliens. After all, in spec fic, androids and aliens can both be humanoid, both be viewed by the dominant culture on Earth with suspicion or fear, and both are Othered by mainstream human societies. But there’s one hugely important difference, and that is origin. While androids are human-made, aliens are naturally occurring.
On top of that, it’s different when trans, non-binary, and other queer folx write aliens, fantasy creatures, and the like as metaphors for our own experiences because we often feel Othered in our native cultures. We often feel that those around us view us as they might view an extraterrestrial or fantasy creature - with confusion and fascination at best, fear and hatred at worst. But when a cis person writes trans, non-binary, or genderqueer characters only as aliens or fantasy folk or androids, the effect is not one of validation but rather of reinforcing the message: You are Other. You are not like us, the true humans.
Exhibit B: While discussing the film Under the Skin (2013) with a small group of people in 2020, I was suddenly struck by the realization that aspects of the main character’s arc remind me of my own experience as a demi-sexual person trying to navigate mainstream culture. (More on this, perhaps, in a future post.) But the minute someone suggested that the main character might have been a robot or other kind of programmed entity, I balked. I could be excited about mapping my queer experience onto the story of an alien, but mapping that same experience onto the story of a robot or android felt completely wrong. Again, because of the organic vs. human-made thing, but also because of the programming thing.
A robot, android, or the like is programmed by another sentient lifeform. For this very reason, one might argue that a robot is an ideal metaphor for examining cultural norms like sexuality, gender, or romantic orientation: People are programmed by culture just as robots are programmed by their masters.
But if we use that metaphor, then marginalized sexualities, genders, and romantic orientations become glitches, errors, and flaws rather than simply a factor of organic diversity. We become malfunctioning things to be fixed or destroyed rather than valid beings to understand, accept, and include in our conceptions of what exists in the natural universe.
Though not a robot, Janet is described as being a physical representation of the repository of knowledge of all things in the universe. She is constantly “updated,” has a personality, has the ability to learn and acquire new traits, and can be shut down or rebooted with the press of a button. Furthermore, there are several versions of her, and they all look more or less the same, kind of like the cylons in Battlestar Galactica. Not a robot (I respect you, Janet) or an android, but she does seem like some kind of AI with a body who can manipulate reality. Why then does it feel right to read my queer experiences in her but not in Data from Star Trek or the cylons in Battlestar Galactica or in other humanoid technologies?
I’ve wracked my brain about this, and there are only a couple of significant differences I can see between Janet and, say, a cylon. First: origin. No Janet was ever made by humans. From what I gather, she was created by the same being that created humans, demons, and angels. Thus, if humans, demons, and angels can be said to be “naturally occurring,” then so can Janet. Just as I am naturally occurring, same as cisgender, allosexual, alloromantic people.
Second, is the way Janet’s character “growth” is treated. Like Data or the cylons, Janet changes over time, becoming more like the people she’s surrounded by. She develops her own sense of humor, forms friendships, becomes loyal to the humans and Michael, and even falls in love. But while Data has a lifelong goal of becoming “more human” and is praised for it, and while the cylons become less threatening as a result of their becoming “more human,” I don’t remember the other characters talking about Janet’s development that way.
For starters, Janet’s differences do not make her scary. She’s never viewed with suspicion or fear, nor do the other characters treat her as a thing rather than a person. The fact that she doesn’t have friendships at first, doesn’t have a gender, and is a unique entity whose identity and reality is hard for the humans to conceptually grasp or relate to aren’t things to be feared or fixed. Second, it also means the show doesn’t equate her romantic attraction to Jason with becoming “more human,” - important to me, as someone who is greyromantic and also still a human.
But mostly I relate to Janet because, as a non-binary person who is frequently mistaken for a woman because of the way I look, I am constantly having to inform or remind people that I’m “not a girl.” The lesson Janet imparts to a mainstream audience is this: you can have a female-coded body, wear dresses and jewelry, have long hair, and still not be a woman.
Exactly. Thank you, Janet.
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