Upside Down

by Jaym Gates

  The magical/instant transition trope turns transgender people into a rhetorical device to examine the gender hang-ups of the cisgender author or readers. In this way, it takes our lived experiences, erases them from the most elementary framework of our lives (transition), and replaces those experiences with an exclusionary thought experiment or joke.

  As a side-note, there are some pieces of science fiction and fantasy that deal with “hermaphrodite” characters, but those characters are usually aliens or other magical races. Regardless of whether the hermaphroditic characters are human or not, their lives and experiences seem to bear little to no resemblance to the lives of actual intersex people. The depiction of this character often focuses in lurid detail on their genitalia, typically with an overly simplified elementary school health class understanding of the biology involved in sex and gender. Although these characters are often non-human races, I have run across occasional depictions of human hermaphrodites, and these often postulate a being with Perfectly Functional Cis-Normative versions of “both” sets of genitalia. In reality, “hermaphrodites” are fictional as the term is no longer accepted for use when describing people with these conditions (ISNA). I’ve read a few depictions of intersex characters that I thought were interesting, for example, the protagonists in Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312 are well-written otherwise, and their lives don’t revolve around their genders.

  That said, I get extremely uncomfortable when I read about characters described as “hermaphrodites,” especially if they’re intended to be humans because I expect the depiction to be less than ideal.

  Trans People Don’t Need Your Incorrect, Fictional Warnings. Seriously.

  When not imagining a world in which transition is painless and instant, tropes about transition focus on warning people away. Often the focus of these warnings is on transition’s permanence, which is not always true depending on how one decides to transition. In the case of transgender children, the effects of transition are typically not permanent at all. Pre-pubescent transgender children, for example, will typically transition by telling others of their new name and pronouns and possibly changing their physical appearance via their chosen clothing and perhaps a haircut. That’s hardly permanent. Older children are sometimes placed on puberty blockers so that when they begin to take hormones (typically starting between the ages of 16 and 18), they will only have to endure one puberty. The blockers are reversible. Nobody is rushing out and giving permanent surgery to young children.

  While it is true that some of the effects of transition are permanent, trans people are not jumping into medical interventions without consideration of the effects. Trans people are typically well educated regarding our options, so much so that attending new doctors is disappointing because we often end up educating our doctors rather than vice versa. In the United States, the coverage for transgender treatments, especially surgeries, is often dependent on individual insurance companies. Worse, as I discovered a few years ago when researching options for top surgery, coverage is often dependent on the particular plan that your employer is offering. I was in the interesting position of working for a trans-friendly employer, with a plan from a company that covered transgender treatments in general, but the particular plan that I was offered through my employer did not have coverage. That has since changed, but unfortunately only did so a month before I got laid off.

  Very recently — as in, while I was writing this essay — an episode of the Power Puff Girls reboot was released in which the tropes of instant, permanent, ignorant transition are played for body horror and an intensely ill-considered statement regarding trans issues.

  The episode features a pony named Donny who wants to be a unicorn. Of course, The Professor has been working on a transmogrification ray that will do just that thing. The show depicts Donny ignoring a massive pile of potential side effects, and, of course, being punished for his desire to change his body by experiencing every horrible side effect that he blithely ignored (Jitterbug Jive).

  The trope that transition will happen immediately and be completely permanent in every way was one of the things used to try and scare me away from making any changes to my body. My initial discussions with medical professionals about taking hormones essentially involved those professionals trying to talk me out of taking them. This will be permanent. You might not like all the changes. There are side effects when testosterone is taken by women. Etc. You will regret it. What if you regret it? Letting someone know the effects of the treatment is one thing, but trying to pressure us into not transitioning is something else entirely.

  I still remember being told that when I started taking testosterone, it would turn me into a hulking, hairy, masculine rage monster. I did grow more body hair, that’s normal. And I did have moments when my emotions were overwhelming. But … as a transgender person who also suffers from depression and who has dealt with his share of PMS prior to taking testosterone, it wasn’t anything that unusual.

  The trope, however, is that testosterone is a horrific poison that is singularly responsible for all the evils in the world. Bullshit. Men don’t act badly because of testosterone alone. Hormones aren’t the only thing that controls our behavior. Testosterone is not the cause of toxic masculinity. Trans men don’t take a shot of testosterone and then immediately go out to punch women in the street.

  The irony, of course, is the number of people who would rail against gender essentialism in almost any other case who immediately became concerned that testosterone would send me into a massive “‘roid rage.” Starting hormone treatments can be a time of massive emotional upheaval for trans people, but the scaremongering is vastly overstated. I’m no angrier now than I was before I started testosterone.

  This trope also showed up in a book I read a few years ago. White Horse by Alex Adams is about a magical plague wiping out most of humanity. The book takes place in the post-apocalyptic wasteland left behind. Besides the frustration that I felt in being served up yet another apocalypse story in which women are constantly dealing with rape and rape threats, the book had one of the most transphobic character depictions that I have read in a book. The villain, a terrible, violent man who had captured and wanted to rape the protagonist, was revealed to have been a woman before the magical transformation. The shift to a body that contained testosterone turned her (now him) into a horrifying monster who was willing to rape and murder everyone in revenge for having lost her (his) female body. The book somehow managed to hit both the anti-trans masculine trans trope of testosterone rage and the anti-trans feminine trope of the evil trans woman who is planning to rape and murder cis women to make up for her lack of a female body. Nice trick, that.

  In retrospect, whether it was intentional or not, I’m rather impressed that the author managed to turn the “testosterone makes people violent” and “trans people are dangerous” tropes into a book that is wildly offensive against both trans men and trans women at the same time.

  The Scary Trans Person Trope: We’re Not Monsters, Seriously.

  What’s truly pernicious about anti-trans tropes is that they are often reiterated and kept alive by people who ought to know better. Several years ago, I was sitting in a room with a very good friend of mine when their boyfriend came into the room. “Hey, have you heard about the Black Widow?”

  What followed was the regurgitation of an urban legend in which a large, black trans woman seeks out cisgender men to lure in with her femininity, and then rapes, kills, and/or otherwise assaults them. We let him finish, listening with a sense of growing horror, and then explained in no uncertain terms that he needed to never, ever, ever repeat that story again.

  Ever.

  The “scary trans woman” tends to be more of a societal trope rather than one in science fiction or fantasy (although, as I write this, I’m certain that someone, somewhere, is writing this trope into a story right now). This imaginary monster of a trans woman is overlaid on real trans women and creates a boogeyman that erases the very real dangers that
trans women face. Worse, this imaginary threat puts trans women in even more danger.

  Trans women, especially trans women of color, are the LGBTQ people most likely to be targeted in a hate crime. When we discuss people who have been murdered for being queer, most of these are trans women of color. Yet, because of the societal notion that the fragile masculinity of cis men must be protected at all costs from these women, the danger that trans women are in is upheld, protected, and justified.

  We see this in the use (and success) of the “trans panic defense” when trans women are murdered. In this case, the murder of a woman whose transgender existence was a figurative assault on her murderer’s masculinity. This was recently used in the defense of Jessica Laude’s murderer, a U.S. Marine who killed her after discovering that she was a trans woman (Brydum).

  Islan Nettles, a young black trans woman, was murdered in 2013 by a man who beat her to death in the street because he felt that his masculinity had been threatened by Islan’s gender. The prevalence of the “trans panic” defense with respect to murdered trans women is so common that feelings tended toward relief when Nettles’ murderer was charged with manslaughter (instead of murder) because at least he wouldn’t be set free. (McKinley).

  We also see this complete disregard given to the reasons why a trans woman being assaulted in the street would fight to defend herself. Look at the story of CeCe McDonald, who was sent to prison for two years because she killed a man in self-defense after he and his friends attacked her in the street (Erdely). The stats, the stories, these all led to the conclusion that a trans woman attacked by a man can expect to be a “Transgender woman murdered” headline (National LGBTQ Task Force). As of 2015, the number of trans women murdered seems to be increasing yearly (Michaels).

  The trope is that trans women are dangerous predators. The reality is that trans women are simply women trying to get by in a world that is determined to hate them.

  As an aside, I felt torn writing this section of the essay. As a white, financially surviving trans man, the pain of trans women of color is decidedly not mine to write about. On the other hand, ignoring the very real harm done to trans women of color would be just another erasure. Please seek out the voices of trans women of color. Monica Roberts at Transgriot (Roberts) writes about these issues often.

  It’s All About Control

  Most of the tropes that have a negative impact on trans people are based in the ways in which a cissexist world tries to control our behavior and lives. If physical barriers to transition, body horror scares, and violence against us aren’t enough to dissuade us, the next option is accusations of selfishness.

  Cis people are used to viewing our lives through our own perspective. To many, we are, if not laughable or dangerous, simply incomprehensible. Unable to truly understand what a trans person is going through, it’s easier for some people to only think about their own feelings. In this case, the idea that a trans person is doing what is necessary to live their own lives is taken as, if not openly hostile to the cis people in their life, selfish and inconsiderate. Pay attention next time you listen to an argument about whether or not a trans person should have been treated better by their family and community after coming out. Most likely, you will hear cisgender people trying to reframe the situation around their own feelings. Yes, they’ll say, but how do you think I feel, finding out that this person was “really” a woman/man.

  Trans people who have transitioned are portrayed as having made sacrifices that they shouldn’t have (or that weren’t theirs to make) in order to succeed. Frequently, this is also a method of blaming trans people for the bigotry that they face.

  According to this trope, trans people transition without any thought or concern for the other people in our lives. This is, in fact, the direct opposite of my experience and that of many other trans people. So many of the people who have transitioned later in life (40+ years) considered transition much earlier in their lives but denied themselves out of concern for the world around them. Trans people often spend much of our lives trying to determine when and how we should tell our friends and family. That was one of the biggest hurdles for me. Changing my name was one thing, telling my parents that I had done so (and why) was much harder.

  The trope that trans people are selfish about the decisions we make with respect to our own bodies and outwardly facing identities are based on a cisgender discomfort. We are saying that, having considered how the people around us will feel, we have still decided that transition is the best option.

  The trope also ignores the fact that for many of us, transition (especially for those of us who are undergoing physical transition due to body dysphoria) is essential and life-saving.

  “She’s Still Dead.”

  The tragically dying queer trope also applies to trans people. In many cases, the tragic death of the trans person doesn’t even happen during the course of the story, and the depiction is limited to a dead sex worker found at the beginning of a detective story. This isn’t the only way that trans people die in fiction. Sometimes we die during the course of the story, occasionally to forward the cause of the cisgender heroes.

  I do sometimes wonder if one of the reasons that trans people die so often in fiction is that our lives are so devalued. It’s as if, when writing about a trans character, in order to get an emotional response out of readers, authors feel that they need to push the feelings buttons harder. What better way to wring an emotion out of a reader than by killing the character?

  Death is also an easy punishment or way of encouraging sorrow. A death can be divorced from the specific pains that marginalized people experience in their lives. You have to exercise empathy to understand a disappointment or punishment that would not unduly punish you. It doesn’t take much more empathy beyond, “Wow, I don’t want to be dead” to feel sad about someone having died.

  Pay attention next time you read a book with a trans character (who is very rarely the protagonist anyway). Typically, this character will suffer, constantly, and probably die at the end. Or in the middle. Or even near the beginning.

  I feel like I should have more to say about this trope, but it’s also one of the tropes that has been discussed the most online. Think about a story that has a transgender character in it. Does she (or he, even more rarely) die before the end? Probably.

  I was once on a panel that discussed LGBTQ characters in fiction, and we discussed the Dead Lesbian trope. Someone in the audience brought up Tara’s death in Buffy, asking, “Well, but what about a character who is well developed and who dies because it’s the right thing for the story?”

  The answer I gave then was, “She’s still dead.”

  This doesn’t mean that no trans or other queer character may ever die in fiction. It does mean that creators should be aware that this trope exists and that no matter how well done the death is, there will always be people who are tired of seeing these characters die. The problem isn’t that a single, individual character has died. Characters die in fiction all the time. The problem is that every one of these characters dies. A similar issue came up recently with the death of Abbie on Sleepy Hollow. Abbie was not a queer or trans character, but cisgender black women in media face some of the same treatments. In this case, the strong black woman character was called upon to sacrifice herself to save her white, male, co-lead. The problem was not that Abbie died — it was that Abbie died to forward the stories of the white characters and highlighted the problematic treatment of characters of color in Sleepy Hollow (Butler).

  An example that comes to mind is Wanda from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comics, although I hesitate to bring her up because she is a contentious case. When I read the comic in 2004, she was actually the first transgender character I had read about in any science fiction or fantasy story who was dealt with in a sympathetic manner. While I was sad that her womanhood was denied in life and upset that she died, I read her story as, “It’s dangerous to tell trans women that they aren’t women because doing so literally ki
lls them.” This is a truth.

  I’ve ended up talking about Wanda with many trans people. I’ve met trans women for whom Wanda was an important character, and who love her. I’ve also met trans people who say the same thing that I did on that panel regarding Tara, “Yes, but she’s still dead.”

  This is true. Finding value in a work does not mean that it is no longer a part of a trope. It just means that we have either seen past a trope, accepted the trope in that case, seen that the trope is used for something greater, or, in the case of the stories in this book, decided to invert the trope.

  The problem is not specifically that Wanda died. The problem is that Wanda died … and so did nearly every other trans person in science fiction and fantasy stories.

  By the way, don’t be surprised if trans people disagree about the quality of any one depiction of a trans character. We are a very scattered group of people who are only loosely called a “community,” and we come at these stories from extremely different backgrounds. It is for this reason that I also tend to use Wanda as an example of a problematic depiction. She’s problematic because while she has meant a lot to some trans people, she is seen as harmful by others. How many of the problems come from Gaiman’s writing, and how many come from the notion of womanhood that he was writing about and critiquing? Etc.