The main audience of “Deep End” appears to be transgender science fiction readers, although people who are either transgender or science fiction readers can probably equally enjoy the story. Since Lightspeed and So Long Been Dreaming are science fiction and fantasy magazines, it was probably targeted towards science fiction fans while also addressing themes of transgender identity.
Once you manage to piece together the setting, there seem to be a couple theses. First, a person’s body is a tied to that person’s identity; when one inhabits a body, they either value and protect it, or they should be allowed to find a “new” body that is desired. A second thesis is that even as technology progresses and creates so many possibilities, social norms can limit the uses and applications of that technology.
I can only guess about the goal of the story, but I think Shawl created this story to have readers question their own society’s norms about gender, especially transgender, identity. In a world where minds can be downloaded into any body, those in charge simply don’t allow transgender downloads; the AI in charge of the system has no justification other than they’re not allowed to do it. The readers can also look at different perspectives within the story. Some completely avoid downloads into physical bodies to stay in “freespace,” while others put up with their bodies and go to a new planet for a new life. Shawl probably wants readers to reflect on what they themselves might do.
I really like the universe that Shawl built. It has familiar science fiction themes like the divide between cyberspace and the real world, being inside someone else’s body, and being part of a colony on another planet, yet it’s lived through different eyes. The story barely gives enough context clues to build the world, a lot of unfamiliar terms are thrown at the reader, and the dialogue can be strange or illogical, but once you put everything together it’s very interesting.
I’ve read some works concerning the body, and something I’ve learned is that a body is a text. Features of and actions done by a body reflect different values in culture, and a change in the body is often shown to be a change in character. Last year, I wrote a think piece on the character Zero from Mega Man Zero 3 and the significance of a robot’s body in that video game and series. It’s an interesting topic to look at, especially in science fiction.
In terms of questions, I’m interested in finding out what the children of the clones will be like. I want to see what, if any, differences will be between the clone’s children and the original bodies’ children. How will identity play out there?
I wouldn’t have thought of Shawl’s story as being specifically concerned with transgender identity, though it includes that theme – but you draw out those elements in the story very effectively! Your question about the children is a great one – we can imagine that the powerful group whose bodies the prisoners’ minds were transferred into would imagine that the children the prisoners gave birth to would be “theirs” because of their biology, but I am not at all convinced that would be the case.