#also them being nonbinary to begin with bc gender and autism are weird

[tiny-feisty-gay]

taash is autistic and I'll die on that hill

[snowstories]

That's a difficult one, tbh. If you were writing from their perspective or maybe someone else's who thought of them favorably, they might complain about 'just starting their transition', but then that also implies that they have to transition to be trans. I guess they might encounter more dysphoria? Maybe someone meets them and accidentally uses the wrong pronouns, is told otherwise - maybe someone doesn't quite understand and said that they don't look like (what pronoun would imply)? Dunno 1/2

2/2 really. A nonpassing trans person is probably going to get a lot of misgendering by strangers, whether malicious or not. Maybe they go about trying to look a bit less like their agab and just make it harder to tell, eg an amab growing their hair out/wearing baggy clothes/wearing padded bras or such? I really don't know though. Hopefully you can find the answer! And I'm very sorry if this is bad/offensive, that was not at all my intent. I write too, and I'd love to do this respectfully.

Honestly, my problem is less describing the trans character from their own perspective, that’s easy - you just don’t describe their looks. I’m really bad at incorporating the pov’s appearance description in general, bc I just don’t see any reason why anyone would stop and describe to themselves what they look like, so it always comes out sounding stilted, so at this point I’ve just given up, which might not be the best solution, but it honestly works for me? so yeah, in the case of a non-passing trans character as a pov character, I’d just let people know they’re a non-passing trans person by having strangers misgender them, like you said, since that’s the easiest solution in that case.

my issue is more with the literal character description from someone else’s eyes; if the pov character encounters the trans person, how on Earth do I describe them in a way that doesn’t misgender them or falls into transphobic stereotypes? like it’s really bugging me - what I’ve gone with thusfar is just literally describing their looks, but I tend to end up focusing on ‘gendered’ characteristics like someone’s chest, which I wouldn’t do with other characters, so it ends up coming across as alienating and honestly pretty transphobic despite my intentions. But at the same time, the only way to really resolve that is to just straight up misgender trans characters and I? Don’t want to do that? So I’m in kind of a bind here. 

And then there’s also the added layer of difficulty in that I don’t want to imply that there’s a way certain trans people are ‘supposed’ to look, which is lowkey kind of what happens with some of your solutions, anon. while moving away from the typical appearance things expected from your agab is definitely something many trans people want, that’s not universal. and aside from that, gender non-conforming trans people exist, so gender presentation for trans people is a lot more layered and complex than people often give it credit for, which is something I want to incorporate in my writing. 

(and also a lot of trans people just straight up CANNOT pass, even with effort, and sometimes even if they’re on hrt! and on top of that, many methods used for passing (like tucking and binding) are very risky and painful, and often inaccessible or just plain not worth it. and besides, there’s a lot of very real issues with the expectations for passing placed on trans people (and again, ESPECIALLY with the expectations placed on trans women) that I’d like to address.)

but that ALSO circles back to the earlier problem; how do you respectfully describe a trans guy who chooses to wear dresses, or a trans women who chooses not to shave? this is a problem that’s a little less bad with nb characters since there’s really no way to ‘pass’ for an nb person so it makes it a little less weird for the audience that an nb person would lean towards a certain binary presentation (I think, at least), but with binary trans people and ESPECIALLY trans women this often just ends up being straight up transphobic (and transmisogynistic in the case of trans women), and it’s! not fun!

honestly, I’m trying to focus less on more general/stereotypical/wide-spread trans experience and more on my own (or other less common trans experiences), but because my experiences are so vastly different from the rest of the community, me writing my own honest experience (very little/no dysphoria, gender inherently tied to autism, trans experience inherently tied to autism, no real need to change appearance bc I never conformed to gender norms to begin with (due to again the autism), not passing and making no effort to because a) how in the heck am I gonna pass as a nonbinary person and b) I’ve never forced myself into an appearance I didn’t feel comfortable with because AGAIN the autism said fuck gender norms, etc.) almost always ends up coming across as very transphobic by accident simply bc a lot of what I have experienced and think about being trans goes directly against the trans narrative often pushed by the trans community as the ‘correct’ narrative. so you know. exceedingly not fun!

like. idk how I can solve this. I want to write about non-stereotypical trans experiences, but every time I try it, it ends up coming across as transhpobic and it’s really disheartening tbh. 

(also I hope I don’t come across as saying that I don’t appreciate your help or that you’re being problematic or anything, anon! I appreciate your help, this is just a very layered and complex problem for me and it’s. annoying.)