#i love imogen and i love her because she’s riddled with complexity that gives reason for her to be unlikeable

[shorthaltsjester]

free my complex female character, she did the same thing as complex male characters but the fandom takes Any analysis of her actions/choices/motivations that doesn’t strip her of all of her agency in bad faith and claims that only misogynists would dare to critique the things that they’ve noticed in her character because she’s a woman, completely ignoring the over-presence of discourse about similarly traited male characters in their fandom.

[jeanjauthor]

“Lilah SturgesOctober 11 at 3:31pm · People sometimes ask me if it's okay for a cisgender person to write a transgender character, and so here are my thoughts on that. The answer is: yes, you can and should write a transgender character, but there are a couple of very important caveats. The most important caveat is that the central conflict of the story must not be the character's transness.

There are two reasons for this. The first is that it is very unlikely that you, a cisgender person, grok the complexities of a trans narrative enough to do it justice. And why would you want to do it anyway? There are already plenty of trans writers who write about transness with astonishing eloquence. Two examples are Imogen Binnie, author of the seminal trans novel NEVADA, and Casey Plett, author of the collection A SAFE GIRL TO LOVE. (You should read those books regardless; they are both fantastic.)

The second is that our culture has a long history of privileged people using the stories of marginalized people for their own profit. This is catastrophically true about white culture's theft of black culture, but similar situations pertain with every marginalized group. So don't center your story on transness. Just... don't.

The other big caveat is that you should probably *know* something about trans people before writing them. Even if your story is about a trans veterinarian who tends to space dinosaurs, you still need to have some idea of the trans experience. And you have to get this knowledge through a valid channel: by hanging out with trans people (we're awesome), by reading the books mentioned earlier, etc. Do not attempt to glean an understanding of trans people from books, TV shows, and movies about us made by cisgender people. Even the most well-meaning of these tend to get a lot of things about transness wrong.

They also perpetuate a lot of unhelpful myths, mostly about trans women, and employ a lot of cliches about us. Here are some clichés to avoid. If your story contains any of these things, stop and reconsider: Cliché 1: the trans hooker. There are indeed trans sex workers but there are also trans people doing just about every other job.

Cliché 2: the trap. This is a cisgender-appearing trans woman who tricks straight men into having sex with her.

Cliché 3: makeup. We're not generally as obsessed with makeup as y'all seem to think we are.

Cliché 4: genitals. Being trans is about way more than genitals. Note that the "reveal" has been done; please don't do it. The "reveal" is when you let us know a character is a trans woman by showing us her genitals. When you're trans, it tends to come up a lot; there are plenty of ways to tell your audience that a character is trans without showing us her junk.

If you are serious about writing a trans character, please HIRE A SENSITIVITY READER. This is not expensive and very effective. A sensitivity reader will look at your work and tell you if something you've written seems off to them. LISTEN TO WHAT THEY TELL YOU. There are lots of people who will do this, or you can pay me to do it if I'm available.

To summarize: know what you're writing about, avoid harmful clichés, and don't capitalize on the experiences of marginalized people. As long as you follow those three simple rules, write about trans people ALL DAMN DAY IF YOU WANT.

(PRO TIP: The mere fact that you have a trans friend will not magically protect you from writing absolute garbage about trans people.)“

I have a book coming up, set in a universe which is riddled with magic, and genuine, miracle-casting Gods and Goddesses that are real and can manifest tangibly, in which one of the characters was designated male at birth, but which revealed later on, no, she is very much female.  In her youth, she visited the local Deities to ask why They put her “in the wrong body” when she was born, and They answered “So that you can understand how to view life from both perspectives”

After making sure how much of a transformation she wanted, the Gods helped her to undergo a powerful and very holy transformation to make her fully female, and finishes growing up as she was meant to be, a female with the perspective of what life is like when one is viewed as a male.  (Which is also a part of a lurking prophecy.)

In the cultures in which she lives, such transformations are rare, but are seen as important and holy.  Only those who are called by the need for it it ever undertake this transformation, and they are always accepted and treated as the gender they assert themselves to be.  This is how the Gods made them, after all, and that extra perspective is appreciated for the empathy and understanding it imparts upon the person so blessed by the Gods.

However, all that being said...that is just backstory.  That isn’t the plot of the novel.  (Not going to go into the plot, because I don’t want to give it away.)  It does have some minor impact on the plot (in specific, it affects the timing of certain events), but it is not the central plot by any means.

And yes, I have a transgender lady friend I’m going to run this story past, to make sure she’s okay with the story I want to tell.  But the story isn’t about the transformation; that’s long since over, literally two decades or so in the past.  It’s about other things almost entirely.

In short, I am going into this tale with the awareness then I need to be careful when writing it, and keep that carefulness firmly in the uppermost layers of my thoughts.