My WIP would be far more subversive, and dare I say, dangerous, if I change the main character from male to female. I'm almost tempted to scrap the whole thing and rewrite it with a female protagonist, but it feels like a cheap method of writing something "edgy." A male protagonist is always assumed to have agency, where a female one doesn't and I've write a lot of acclaimed, "edgy" literature where the female MC is merely vessel for which bad things happen.
On a semi-related note, I've been reading a lot of Edmund White lately. I read a quote (which I now can't find) that said his work was too vulgar for a mainstream (read straight) audience. I don't see his novels as vulgar but intimate, almost breathtakingly so.
