I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter

The helicopter flown by the protagonist is the fictional "AH-70 Apache Mystic", possibly a development of the AH-64 Apache shown here.

Some time in the near future, the United States is fighting a war against the "Pear Mesa Budget Committee", a local AI government that emerged from an environmental and medical catastrophe on the Gulf Coast. The story is told from the perspective of Barb (a call sign, not "Barbara"), formerly called Seo Ji Hee. The U.S. Army neuromedically reassigned Barb's gender to "attack helicopter" to make her a better helicopter pilot – warfare is now part of Barb's gender role, much as wearing skirts would be part of a woman's.

The story interlaces scenes from the war, in which Barb and the gunner Axis bomb a high school and escape from an enemy aircraft, with recollections of Barb's previous life as a woman, and reflections about her altered sexuality: The acts of flying, of controlled violence, are now also sexual acts between Barb and Axis. As they fly home, Barb consoles Axis, who struggles with their reassigned gender, considering that Axis' uncertainty may reflect a "new queerness" as necessary as intentional instability is to combat aircraft.[1]

The phrase "I sexually identify as an attack helicopter" is a transphobic Internet meme.[2][3][4] The phrase originated from a player of Team Fortress 2 in 2014, before spreading as a copypasta on the Internet forum Reddit, which spread to other forums such as 4chan, where it was used (peaking in 2015) to mock transgender people.[5] A 2020 Australian study identified those who identified their gender as "attack helicopter" in online surveys as belonging to "incel" and "troll" subpopulations, and described them, on average, as "single Caucasian males, high school educated, with average to low incomes, and some degree of non-heterosexual attraction".[6]

Isabel Fall's story of the same title appeared on 9 January 2020 in the January issue (no. 160) of Clarkesworld Magazine. The accompanying biographical note read: "Isabel Fall was born in 1988".[1] The story provoked "vehement" responses, according to Wired.[5] Many readers appreciated the story, including the authors Carmen Maria Machado and Chuck Tingle. But there were also many loud detractors, many of which were social justice activists and queer people. These readers objected to the use of an offensive meme as the title, and suspected that the story agreed with the meme's transphobia, or was an exercise in trolling.[5]

The editor of Clarkesworld, Neil Clarke, removed the story from the online magazine's website a few days later.[7] According to Clarke's initial note, the withdrawal was made at the author's request.[5] In a later statement, Clarke explained that he had removed the story after a "barrage of attacks" on Fall, "for her own personal safety and health".[8] He wrote that Fall was a trans woman, but had not been out as such at the time of publication, and used an intentionally short biography and "negligible" Internet presence.[8] According to Clarke, the story was not a hoax, and Fall was not a Neo-Nazi (as some had assumed because "88" is a Neo-Nazi code). He wrote that the story was an attempt by Fall to "take away some of the power of that very hurtful meme" by subverting it.[8] Clarke wrote that the story had been subject to many revisions and it had been reviewed by trans sensitivity readers, but he apologized "to those who were hurt by the story or the ensuing storms".[8][4]

Rocket Stack Rank favorably reviewed the story, noting that the author's transparent narration allowed her to effectively convey to cisgender people "a bit about what it means to be trans (...) in a very different way than anything I've ever seen before."[9] File 770 collected a number of reactions from science fiction writers and fans, some of which read the story as transphobic, while others appreciated it and deplored its removal.[10]

One of the story's critics, Arinn Dembo, the acting president of Canada's National Association for Speculative Fiction Professionals, wrote that "this reads like it was written by a straight white dude who doesn't really get gender theory or transition & has no right to invoke transphobic dog whistles for profit".[11] After the story's removal, Dembo stood by her critique, saying that "a lot of people might have been spared a lot of mental anguish" if a statement about Fall's identity and intentions had been provided.[11] The writer N. K. Jemisin wrote that she was glad about the story's removal: "Not all art is good art. Sometimes art causes harm. And granted that marginalized creators end up held to a higher standard than others, which is shit, but... that's [because] we know what that harm feels like. Artists should strive to do no (more of this) harm."[12] Jemisin later wrote that she had not read the story.[12]

Multiple writers regretted the story's removal and the attacks on its writer: Robby Soave, a senior editor at Reason, called the story's removal an example of "cancel culture".[13] Emily VanDerWerff of Vox wrote: "Art should embrace our weakness, our shame, and our doubt, too. To insist otherwise is its own kind of prejudice."[11][14] Similarly, Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic wrote: "The controversy over 'Attack Helicopter' is another case study suggesting that rejecting 'art's [sic] for art's sake' in favor of 'art for justice's sake' doesn't necessarily yield more justice. It may help no one, harm many, and impede the ability of artists to circulate work that makes us think, feel, grapple, empathize, and learn."[11] And at The Outline, Gretchen Felker-Martin criticized fans for believing that art should communicate moral lessons and that "minorities in fiction must be represented in a uniformly positive light".[12] Attacking stories such as Fall's just because some readers reacted with hurt to it, she wrote, blocked a necessary outlet for marginalized artists and represented "a retreat into the black and white moral absolutism of adolescence, or theocracy".[12]