Janky Trans Characters And The People That Write Them
So, I don’t want to pitch a piece on how cis people fuck up trans representation because if I’m going to get space in a publication, I’d rather use it to platform trans writers. But also, I am stumbling on a lot of Cis People With Good Intentions putting trans characters in their novels and fucking up in pretty much the same ways every time. And I wanted to catalogue them. For my own amusement. Especially because book reviews in the UK are so blindingly cisnormative that half the time the reviewers can’t even figure out what type of trans person the book is talking about. Sure, David! You go ahead with assuming that character is a trans woman! They’re the only kind that exist, after all!
Here are some Types.
- Hello, Here Is My Deadname, Here Are My Medical Records, Please Love Me
Sometimes, YA authors like to take us up as a Cause, and write books about the much-maligned trans child. Specifically, a kind of trans child who fits the DSM-V criteria with unnerving precision, has never so much as torrented a movie in their entire life, and has all the personality of a cardboard placard with PLEASE DON’T HATECRIME ME written on it. They are very eager to give out as much detail on their life and transition as possible, which somehow ends up being the same detail in every book. This is all directed at a fluffy, substanceless conclusion which involves accepting each other’s differences and being our True Selves (in as non-abject a way as possible, preferably). There will be a tearjerking scene involving a dress at some point.
2. This Would Make An Excellent Plot Device
“Sure, I could spend some time – during my deeply researched feminist novel about women’s prisons – focusing on the trans women who enter the prison halfway through the novel, and articulating their particular experience and perspective. And that would perhaps be cooler than spending all my time with the cis women who are debating their presence in the prison. But if I don’t do that, I can instead just use their presence in the women’s prison to provoke a riot, which provides my Very Important Cis Main Character an opportunity to escape!”
3. Just In Case You Forgot This Character Is Trans We Mentioned Her Bulge Again
But tastefully, of course.
4. Ovid, But Make It Diagnostically Accurate
Transitioning is an absolute dream subject for anyone who enjoys fairytales, monsters, cryptids, and mythology. Please do knock yourselves out, God knows I do. But nervous cis people have a tendency to do this weird hybrid of realism and fantasy, where the trans person’s transness is deniable because of the fantastical/ambiguous elements (which means you can functionally talk about them as a cis character whenever you like and deadname them accordingly), but also you’re so hardwired into ‘Trans = Very Specific Childhood Narrative’ thinking that we have to learn that the fantastical trans character played with Tonka trucks as a kid while crying ‘Why am I entrappèd in this biologically female form?’ to the moon.
Pick one: either this is transness as we understand it in real life, and thus you have a lot of responsibilities that go with that, or this is transness in a looser, less bounded fictional sense, in which case you have to do something with it rather than just using it to add a bit of spooky perfume or to fulfil the Prophecy. At least give them tentacles or something.
5. Transness Is A Popular Trend Now
When they’re not depicting hate crimes, cis authors have an insidious little habit of portraying transness as somewhat more Popular and Hip than it is in reality, particularly among The Youths. The nonbinary character in Girl, Woman, Other has a million Twitter followers on their account called Trans Warrior, where they talk about their transition and tweet stuff like this:
Just seen #TheLastAmazonofDahomey @ NationalTheatre. OMG, warrior women kicking ass on stage! Pure African Amazon blackness. Feeeeeerce! Heart-breaking and ball-breaking! All hail #AmmaBonsu #allblackhistorymatters Book now or cry later, peepalls!!! @ RogueNation
Dude, fucking Jaboukie doesn’t have a million followers, and he impersonated the CATS Film account to confirm that the cats would have realistic spiked penises. Morgan is sitting on 10k at best.
And sure, that’s just social media boomer logic (Evaristo is 62), but the point is that this is swiftly followed by this passage:
their Twitter account brings them invites to everything: concerts, first nights, film premieres, book launches, private views, hotels, edgy fashion shows
Morgan doesn’t have a clue how to analyse or contextualize a play, book or film, it doesn’t matter, it’s their following that counts, not the quality of their critique or prose
Even generally trans-positive people — and while I’m not done bitching about GWO, Evaristo has stuck her neck out for trans people on several occasions— are very susceptible to resentment over the idea that trans people have too many Cool Dollars that they can somehow exchange for untold cultural riches, which means that these authors can end up indulging in some…barbed fantasies. And sure, this is critique of ‘influencers’, not of nonbinary people, but when you present nonbinariness as cool in a way that supposedly translates to unearned cultural capital (lol, tell that to my bank balance), it can let in some poisonous thoughts about whether trans people are maybe a bit too accepted and shouldn’t we put the brakes on?
6. But Have You Considered That Trans Women Might Be Getting A Bit Too Comfortable
Speaking of which…
Bibi explained over mocha that as tarting up in high heels, tight skirts and wearing a thick layer of face paint is all about gender and not biological sex, she wears what she likes and feels comfortable doing so, although other trans females might think that being a woman is all about adhering to a stereotyped version of womanhood, when clearly most women can’t be arsed with it all?
she gestured at the women walking around the station, look at them
Megan felt rattled at Bibi in effect mansplaining, she was a woman with male confidence, who went on to say that dressing like a woman means wearing every variety of clothing you can imagine, including baggies like these, she pulled at her blue jeans
you don’t have to tell me, Megan said when she could get a word in edgeways, pointing out her own baggy jeans and outsized red and white check shirt, sleeves rolled up (the tats cost enough), don’t forget I’m the expert here
of course you are, Bibi exclaimed, look at me telling you, you have to stop me from becoming one of those trans females who think they know more about being a woman than those who’ve lived their entire lives as one
- Girl, Woman, Other
Well. That’s a lot.
This is another fantasy that cis women are susceptible to, particularly cis women who are lightly trans-positive: the fantasy where trans women, who are already an object of suspicion, overstep the line and start telling cis women about their own oppression! This part from GWO is really saying the quiet part loud — using the word ‘mansplaining’, and making clear that AFAB people are the ‘real experts’ on womanhood, relegating trans women to a deferential second-order womanhood — but I’ve seen more restrained passages conveying the same core dynamic: trans woman gets cocky, and a wounded but very decorous cis woman puts her back in her place. Cis women’s anxiety about losing their absolute authority over ‘womanhood’ is transmuted into their gracious guidance of wayward trans women into their territory, meaning they get to assert their moral superiority while also surreptitiously implying that trans women are victimising them, but it’s fine, you know, it’s fine.
7. These Days, They’ll Put You In Jail Just For Saying You’re Cis
Morgan, the nonbinary character in GWO, has a very angry trans woman girlfriend called Bibi, who is very angry that Morgan does not know ‘Feminism 101’ (which is actually more like Feminism 301) and is quick to express how mad she is at Morgan’s ignorance:
she found sanctuary in chat rooms with other young outsiders as pissed-off as she was, discovered the trans world, engaged in conversations with people on the trans spectrum
sometimes saying the wrong thing online, encountering someone called Bibi who wrote back, I’m going to hit the next person who confuses transsexual with transgender, I swear! people won’t tolerate ignorance on here, love, transgender people are only transsexual when they medically transition, okay?
right
fine
This is another example of transmuting cis anxiety (‘this trans person is going to be mad at me if I get stuff wrong around them, which I am definitely going to do’) into powerful fictional fantasy (‘look at this trans person getting unreasonably mad with a young person who hasn’t learned the basics, isn’t that wrong?’). Recognising where cis people are acting out their anxieties around trans people into a fantasy that dissolves them is really important for dissecting how transness works in cis books, particularly when these fundamentally cis anxieties are put into trans people’s mouths.
Also, aside from the fact that the example in question isn’t exactly a core part of important trans discourse — hard distinctions between ‘transgender’ and ‘transsexual’ are so very 2015, darling — it’s revealing when trans communities are portrayed as some big brain club where everyone has to know everything already or get thrown to the wolves, because it denies the existence of trans communities that are, by nature, pretty opaque to cis people. Like, it’s not all fuzzy and nurturing and kind over here, it’s kind of a shitshow like any other community, but no trans 18-year-old shows up to the first trans forum they find and has a leprechaun leap out of their computer cackling ‘if transgender you wish to be, first you must answer my riddles three!’
8. I Will Literally Kill You If You Misgender Me
Even though most trans people I know have begun their change in pronouns with ‘okay I want to use these pronouns, if that’s okay, I hope that’s okay, I won’t be mad if you get it wrong, please don’t hate me’, somehow most of the trans characters I find in cis people’s books are Angry Young People who get Too Angry at Well Meaning Cis People Who Are Trying Their Best. What the fuck do you mean you don’t know what xe/xem pronouns are? Fuck you! Racist! I’ll kill you!
9. Transition, With The Candlestick, In The Library
Some people have learned that the Surprise! A Penis reveal is a bad way to go about portraying your trans woman character. Which is good! Unfortunately, this has not taken away their impulse to ‘clue’ people’s transness like it’s the key to a murder mystery, which means that Surprise! A Penis is sometimes replaced with an awkward, tedious rigmarole where we have to figure out why you’re so interested in describing the Precise…Intriguing…Angularity of her jaw. Or the Interesting…Perplexing…Gravitas of her voice. Either you’re getting off on this discount skull-calipering, or you’re sweating nervously behind your typewriter, and neither is cute. Please be normal for five minutes.
10. We Just Want To Save You Please Let Us Save You Please
So many cis writers talk like they have never spoken to a trans person in their entire lives. They talk in panicked affirmations, in bombastic slogans, in pages of exposition that read like they come out of a doctor’s manual from 1995. But why? If we’re causing you so much stress, why do you want us in your book? What do we do for you? What are we alleviating? Because we’re probably alleviating something — an anxiety, a guilt. That’s not to say every cis representation of trans characters is suspect, but I haven’t really seen many cis writers who are interested in the creative possibilities of transness and how to use them while also being responsible towards a persecuted community. I don’t really see cis people who are driven by a genuine interest, unless it’s the kind of ‘interest’ where you poke at a pinned butterfly with tweezers.
If your primary motivator is resentment, or anxiety, or guilt, or a giddy saviour complex, then it’s probably unwise to write the character. Go to therapy. Make some trans friends online. And if you want to serve us, write about a squid instead. We fucking love squid.
