Transgender: Difference between revisions

{{Useful Notes}}

{{Contested}}

'''Transgender''' (usually shortened to '''trans''') people are those whose experienced gender is not the one typically associated with the sex assigned to them at birth. Some trans people pursue means (e.g. hormone replacement, plastic surgery) to make their bodies match their experienced gender more closely, but others do not. Trans people are not a new group; there are documented examples going back at least as far as the [[The Empire|Roman Empire]]. Trans characters can be a source of interesting [[conflict]] in a story, and may have a lot of parallels to a coming out story for a homosexual or bisexual person, but with a lot more visual representation of change.<ref>With respects to the [[Rule of Cautious Editing Judgement]], see [[The Other Wiki]] for more details on trans people.</ref>

 

* "Trans" or "transgender" describes any person whose experienced gender differs from the sex assigned to them at birth.

** These terms are purely adjectives, not nouns, when used properly. There is no such thing as "a trans"; there are "trans people", "trans men", "trans women", etc.

* "Enby" (plural "enbies") is a term often (but not necessarily always) accepted by nonbinary people. It comes from "NB", which stands for "non-binary", and it is a noun that can be used for nonbinary people in the same vain as "man" or "woman".

* "Queer" is generally an umbrella term for non-normative people, that is, people whose existence contradict cisnormativity and heteronormativity. Exact definitions vary and are constantly evolving, but it is most typically associated with opposition to the gender binary and is popular with nonbinary people.

* A [[Crossdresser]] is someone who wears clothing stereotypically associated with a different gender than their experienced gender, such as a man dressing as a woman (which is specifically called a [[Drag Queen]]). Crossdressers are ''not'' the same as trans people; unlike drag queens, who are men, trans women are women. At the same time, there is no way to distinguish between crossdressers and trans people except by who tells you that they are a crossdresser and who tells you that they are trans. Drag queens can look just as if not more feminine than even cis women.

** At the same time, historical trans people (from around the mid-20th century) would have self-identified as "transvestites" (an older term for cross-dressers) or "drag queens" at the time, both because the term "transgender" wasn't in common use at the time and because of historical oppression of trans people. This is why many figures from that era who identified as such (such as Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera) are commonly identified as transgender people in hindsight today. It's worth noting that an unknown transvestite kicked off the the famous Stonewall riots by refusing to show her genitals to police (yes, that was a thing), and in general trans people (often self-identifying as transvestites) were at the forefront of LGBTQ+ liberation.

* "Transphobia" is prejudice against trans people in general, and "enbyphobia" is prejudice against nonbinary people specifically. Another term you might come across is "transmisogyny", which generally refers specifically to prejudice against trans women.

* All trans people are described as the gender they experience, not the sex assigned to them at birth. So for example, a person who was assigned male at birth and whose experienced gender is female is a trans ''woman'', and a person who was assigned female at birth and whose experienced gender is male is a trans ''man''. Similarly, sexuality is always properly described from this context; a trans woman who is attracted exclusively to women is a lesbian, and a trans man who is attracted exclusively to women is straight. This gets a little more complicated with nonbinary people who are not bisexual or pansexual; if unsure, it's better to ask than risk misgendering them.

* If you don't know for sure what pronouns someone would prefer for you to use for them, using singular "they" is an easy way to get around that and widely accepted in the trans community. That being said, if you know that someone prefers a different pronoun, the polite thing to do is to use that pronoun when you refer to them. Also, this should go without saying, but intentionally going out of your way to misgender someone (like calling a trans woman "he" when you know she prefers "she") is very hurtful to trans people and never okay. This goes for nonbinary people who prefer "they" or one of the less common neo-pronouns (fae, e, ze, etc), too.

* There are a lot of transphobic slurs out there, most of them still unfortunately common in the porn industry. Such terms include "tranny", "shemale", and "trap". '''Never''' use '''any''' of these terms under any circumstance unless you have [[N-Word Privileges|T-Word Privileges]] or want to get justifiably punched in the teeth.

 

Trans people may or may not experience [[wikipedia:gender dysphoria|gender dysphoria]], where distress (sometimes relatively minor, often quite severe) results from a mismatch between a trans person's experienced gender and anatomy and/or hormones. (The earlier psychiatric term "gender identity disorder" is deprecated; let's just say that the relationship between the trans community and the medical community has historically been a bit complex.) It is not always obvious to the person suffering from gender dysphoria what it is, leading to some trans people taking years to identify it as such. On the flipside, it's also very common for trans people to experience "gender euphoria", which is the opposite feeling of great happiness (euphoria) after making physical changes to their bodies. Physical changes made to treat dysphoria and cause euphoria include hormone replacement therapy, hair removal, surgeries (of various kinds; there is no one "the surgery" and not every trans person gets surgery at all), and even just dressing in a way stereotypically associated with the gender they experience. Every trans person's needs are different in this respect.

 

{{examples|Portrayals of trans people and trans issues in fiction include:}}

== Anime and Manga ==

* Maho, one of the two main characters in the manga ''[[Double House]]'', is a transwoman, as are a number of the secondary characters.

* Isabella in ''[[Paradise Kiss]]'' is a non-operative transgender woman.

* Watarase Jun from ''[[Happiness! (visual novel)|Happiness!]]''. Dresses as a girl, participates in the girls' sports instead of with the boys, and is overjoyed when magic accidentally turns her into a physical girl.

* Episode 7 of ''[[Dirty Pair]]'' featured a wealthy business owner framing his son's fiancée for kidnapping when really they were trying to elope. It's eventually revealed that the reason he objects to their marriage is because the fiancée used to be a man and had a sex change (there was nothing to suggest this other than the woman was tall and had a square face). After a moment of surprise, Kei and Yuri respond: "So what? That's so closed-minded!" and "In these days, one out of every ten people has had a sex change!"

* Celebrity stylist Nao from ''[[Ice Revolution]]'', who forgives uber-[[Tomboy]] Masaki for destroying her favorite scissors, gives a makeover that makes her appear truly feminine "on camera" for the first time, and even leaves the fee for later. Notably, she is the ''only person'' outside of Masaki's friends and family who can tell she's a girl at first sight.

{{quote|'''Masaki:''' How did you... know I'm a... girl...?

* In ''[[Sorcerer Stabber Orphen]]'', we have {{spoiler|the local [[Cool Big Sis]] and Orphen's first travel partner, Stephanie}}. Orphen explains to Majik and Cleao that {{spoiler|she used to be a male-bodied magic user named Stephan until few years ago, when she was seriously injured and her male body was horribly torn apart. During her recovery, she asked the healers if they could turn said male body into a female one; they accepted, and now Stephan''ie'' has a female body that she's very comfortable with.}} Cleao and Majic are rather surprised when Orphen tells them (and in fact, Cleao wonders if {{spoiler|Stephanie's boyfriend Tim}} knows), but Orphen himself seems to be pretty nonchalant about the whole deal and it's never discussed again.

* [[Haruki Murakami|Murakami]]'s ''[[Kafka on the Shore]]'' has Oshima, a gay trans man.

* Nathan Seymore of ''[[Tiger and Bunny]]'' is confirmed in [[All There in the Manual|supplementary sources to be agendered.]]

* In a particularly weird example, the early episodes of ''[[Bakuon!!]]'' have Baita, a talking (or perhaps telepathic) Honda Su-Four motorcycle on which main character Hane learns to drive, who describes herself as "transsexual". According to Baita (who has a [[Kikuko Inoue|female voice]]), the components which would have given her the engine power to be a proper road bike have been removed in order to render her safe for beginners, and in her opinion converting her from male to female.

 

== Fan Works ==

* "Nightelf" later wrote a [[Self-Insert Fic]] for the ''[https://shifti.org/wiki/Xanadu_%28setting%29 Xanadu Universe]'' [[Shared World]] project which explored some of those issues. Entitled ''[https://shifti.org/wiki/Ami's_Song Ami's Song]'', it chronicled the unexpected transformation of Nightelf's [[Author Avatar]] into Mizuno Ami from ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' during the Xanadu event; one subplot deals explicitly with his mental adjustments to what was essentially [[Wish Fulfillment]] for a young transgender man.

 

== Film ==

* The French/Belgian movie [[wikipedia:Ma vie en rose|Ma vie en rose]] ("[[My Life in Pink]]") is a very tasteful presentation of a young trans woman and her dilemmas. A possibly FtM youngster appears near the end of the movie as well.

* Noxeema from ''[[To Wong Fu Thanks for Everything Julie Newmar|To Wong Fu, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar]]'' gives Chi-Chi a rundown of genderqueer types, doubling as a [["The Reason You Suck" Speech]].<ref>Noxeema's speech is obviously one person's oversimplified and subjective take. As the trope description above suggests, one could write an entire book just attempting to accurately define even ''one'' of these terms.</ref>

* The main character in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's film ''In a Year of 13 Moons'' is a male homosexual who gets a sex change to be more appealing to his lover. Somewhat subverted as the character did not consider himself a woman pre-surgery. This and the fact that {{spoiler|[[Bury Your Gays|he kills himself at the end]]}} has earned it the ire of critics who say it paints trans people in an [[Did Not Do the Research|inaccurate]] and [[Unfortunate Implications|unfavorable]] light.

* ''Open'', an independent film by Jake Yuzna showed a positive same-gender relationship between a gay male pair: one cisgender, one transgender. Possibly no feature-length fiction film had shown such a relationship before.

* {{spoiler|Commander Ambrose}} in Maria V. Snyder's ''Study'' trilogy. {{spoiler|As it turns out, the Commander has both a female and male personality within a female-gendered body due to magic -- his mother died giving birth to him and her spirit entered his body (and apparently changed his genitalia). The female personality is allowed out whenever the Commander leaves the country, and is officially an ambassador.}}

* [[Angela Carter]]'s ''[[The Passion of New Eve]]'' (1977) is a novel about a British man, Evelyn, who is, well, ''castrated by [[Militant Feminists]]'' and made into "a New Eve". It's a satire on Feminism in general, Freudianism, and all other sorts of things. Also features a Dystopic America in the process of caving in on itself.

* Coydt Van Haaz, the women-hating [[Big Bad]] of [[Jack Chalker]]'s ''Empires of Flux & Anchor'', turns out to be a trans man with a very tragic [[Backstory]]. {{spoiler|1=Turns out he was biologically male originally, until he was castrated and then given an involuntary (and irreversible) MtF [[Gender Bender]] as a teen. He wants his manhood back and he wants it bad. Since that's not possible he wants to make all women suffer for what happened to him.}} This is very unusual in a 'verse where [[Easy Sex Change|Easy Sex Changes]] are canon.

* In [[John Varley]]'s ''Eight Worlds'' series, sex changes have become so easy and common that anyone who goes through their entire lives as the same sex is considered a little weird, and population control laws have boiled down to "one person, one child."

 

 

* ''[[Nip Tuck]]'' seems to have a bit of a fascination with transition (understandably, as the show is largely concerned with sex and plastic surgery); the most notable of these is Ava Moore (played by Famke Janssen), whom main character Christian calls "the goddamn Hope Diamond of trans people."

* ''The Education Of Max Bickford'' had a reasonably realistic trans character for its first season or so, who was an old school chum of Max's.

* One of the reasons why the Argentinian telenovela ''Los [[Rold Ã]]¡n'' was so succesful? The fun-loving trans character played by actress Florencia de la V, who ''is'' a trans woman in [[Truth in Television|Real Life]].

* A transman features in ''[[Two and A Half Men]]'' when Evelyn's new boyfriend turns out to be one of Charlie's old girlfriends. Once the obligatory torrent of puerile jokes are through, the episode is surprisingly sensitive.

{{quote|'''Female Agent''': Does he still like it rough?

'''Housewife''': Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. }}

** This is also the twist of a later episode, "Last Respects", where a female lawyer hired by a dying rich man turns out to be the man's long-lost son. Her father doesn't learn this until after he attempts to seduce her, prompting her to disrobe for him.

* An episode of ''[[Night Court]]'' had an old university friend of Dan Fielding show up as a post-op trans woman, in the process of getting married; with Dan naturally playing the role of rabid homo/transphobe. The show being what it was, this was mostly played for laughs; but also a [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming]] as well.

* Cassandra from the "The End Of The World" and "New Earth" episodes of ''[[Doctor Who]]'' is a trans woman. She's also thousands of years old and had so much plastic surgery that she's now only a face on a ''very'' thin layer of skin {{spoiler|or at least until she begins to possess Rose's, the Doctor's and ultimately her caretaker's bodies}}, so being trans is one of the ''least'' notable things about her.

* In an episode of ''[[St. Elsewhere]],'' one of Dr. Craig's old pals shows up at the hospital. All goes well until he happens to mention that he's having sexual reassignment surgery. After having a trademark freakout for most of the episode, Craig finally accepts the situation.

* One episode of ''[[The Sarah Connor Chronicles]]'' features Sarah searching for a man on the run from Skynet, only to find out he's been hiding his identity by living as a woman. None of this is played for laughs, and with zero amount of freaking out or any talk about sex. Alan/Eileen later admits to being strangely grateful for the opportunity to live as her true self, despite being hunted.

** In another ''CSI'' episode, the victim was a pre-op trans woman, killed by an actor after he goes to bed with her, discovers her sexual identity and freaks out about the fact damaging his carreer. It ended with Grissom saying:

* Two episodes (that I recall) of ''[[NCIS]]'' had trans characters. One became a (brief) running joke after Tony made out with her, and whilst the subject wasn't dealt with insensitively, it wasn't amazing either. The other was a character who was dead by the time the episode really began (suicide), and was dealt with a lot better, even if there was the obligatory "he... she... he-she" moment.

* An episode of ''[[The Listener]]'', "Lisa Says," had a trans character. Well dealt with and reasonably unusual because the character was FtM.

* An episode of ''[[ER]]'' called "Next Of Kin" stars a child named Morgan. The episode doesn't [[Downer Ending|end well,]] since she's forced to live like a boy after moving in with her mom when her dad dies; apparently due to the fact her step-dad would not accept her as a girl.

* One of the dozens of subplots in ''[[Dirty Sexy Money]]'' revolves around Patrick Darling's relationship with a post-op trans woman named Carmelita, which he attempts to maintain despite (a) being married to someone else and (b) running for the U.S. Senate.

 

== Music ==

 

== Video Games ==

* Poison and Roxy from ''[[Final Fight]]'', both male-to-female. They [[Bowdlerise|didn't make it]] Stateside in the console versions, though (thank you very much, [[Censorship Bureau|Nintendo Standards and Practices]]). In fact, Poison doesn't reappear until ''Final Fight Revenge''. From that point forward, she sticks around as Hugo Andore's manager/bodyguard/bickering best friend, i.e. that's how we see her in ''Street Fighter III''.

** The amusing fact is that this whole situation actually arose out of trying to ''prevent'' censorship. Capcom of Japan knew that it was not kosher to depict violence against women - [[Critical Research Failure|so their excuse was that the characters weren't born as women in the first place]]. They have gone further on record that Poison's status is post-op in America and pre-op in Japan.

** (As [http://kotaku.com/5888814/a-twenty+minute-documentary-about-the-gender-of-final-fights-poison this] in-depth documentary points out,) Poison and Roxy are both labeled as "newhalf" in their concept art and Poison has the term in the original Japanese instruction booklets for the first two games in the series. As the booklet came out two years in Japan before it hit Stateside, it is unlikely that Capcom made this change simply to accommodate Nintendo. While Capcom may not have considered them to be women, they were still "newhalves" from the very beginning.

* It's a hot point of debate in the ''[[Persona 4]]'' fandom whether this character is {{spoiler|[[Bifauxnen]]}} or {{spoiler|trans}}, but one can make a pretty strong case for {{spoiler|1=Naoto being FtM. He dresses and identifies as male to match his ideal mental self, a "hard-boiled" ace detective. Additionally his shadow, representing his repressed emotions, while it does reveal his biological sex, also attempts to perform do-it-yourself surgery on him.}}

** This interpretation doesn't hold much water, since {{spoiler|Naoto}} very clearly states that she accepts her gender:

{{quote|{{spoiler|'''Naoto''': I have to be an adult...I have to be a man...with that way of thinking, I was running away from myself. I finally think I can accept myself. I am a woman. And a detective.}}}}

* Examples from [[Dept. Heaven]]'s "Union" games:

** [[Lethal Joke Character]] Eater from ''[[Blaze Union]]'' has two personalities, one of which is male. Eater is biologically female, but when the male half is in control, he is treated by all other characters and by the game system itself (which has different unit formations based on gender) as a man who just so happens to be running around in the girly clothes his other personality put on in the morning.

** ''[[Gloria Union]]'' has Kyra, who identifies (and is treated by the game's system itself) as intergender.

{{quote|'''Husky Dwarf:''' I've got a little something for everybody.}}

* Subaru Kujou in the fifth ''[[Sakura Taisen]]'' game is pretty clearly genderqueer; zie always uses gender-neutral speech (at least in the Japanese version), refuses to indentify as male or female, and dresses in both masculine and feminine attire.

 

* {{spoiler|Kaine}} in ''[[A Profile]]''. It's handled pretty tactfully and pointed out that it makes things pretty difficult for him. He reacts poorly to the issue when it is mentioned. However, despite mostly being handled well there appears to have been some confusion on the part of the writers between this and homosexuality. Though it ''may'' just be his own inadequate understanding of the issue and that he simply happens to also be gay. {{spoiler|Kaine is biologically female, however, but never felt like one. So he/she started going to school in male clothing and took male hormones to be more masculine. Despite being trans, Kaine continues to be treated as a male. He gets more female attention than Masayuki despite being pretty open about it.}}

 

* ''[[Venus Envy]]'' is all about a trans teenage girl, who, at the beginning of the comic, has recently switched schools as she moves to living as a full-time female. She also has a friend the same age who is a transitioning trans man too.

* One of the lead characters in ''Closetspace'' is a transgender woman, who struggled with the decision of whether to undergo SRS, later regretting the surgery, but retaining her female identity. The other lead is also transgender, just starting her life as a woman.

* Tom and Charlie from ''[[Khaos Komix]]'' Tom being a FtM and Charlie being a MtF. The author also identifies as "Trans".

* Natani of ''[[Twokinds]]'' went from merely wishing she was male (instead of just pretending, due to her profession as an assassin) to actively believing it (due to her soul being merged with her brother's in order to save her from a dark curse). Though Natani lets her brother refer to her as "Sis" with minimal grumbling. Whether Natani counts as a "true" trans person or is just a self-loathing misogynist is probably deliberately left open.

* Ash from ''[[Misfile]]'' acts more like a genuinely transgender teen than the usual [[Man, I Feel Like a Woman]] protagonist of a [[Gender Bender]] webcomic.

* [http://mylifeinblue.comicgenesis.com/d/20020302.html Marius] from ''[[My Life in Blue]]''.

* The minor character Aubrey in ''[[Boy Meets Boy]]'' is a pre-op FtM.

* A trans character receives a surprisingly sympathetic treatment in ''[[Exiern]]'', a comic which normally plays its [[Gender Bender|gender benders]] for laughs, when one of a group of gender-bent priests is shown to view it less as a curse and more as a liberation, and her backstory clearly describes someone who entered the priesthood primarily because she was unhappy with her birth gender.

* ''[[The Dragon Queen]]'' features the eponymous hero, the city's "first and only transvestite super-hero" who was born Bradley Bartlett but currently dresses female, identifies as Brandywine Bartlett, and has the people around hir use female pronouns.

* In ''[[Tales of a Gay Asian]]'', there is a trans woman sengchou who has stubble and gets further surgery to look like Lady Gaga.

* Casually mentioned in ''[[Dominic Deegan Oracle For Hire]]''; the "alterist" (magical plastic surgeon/fertility doctor) Dominic and Luna go to see gives herself as an example of the non-[[Mad Scientist]] applications of alterist magic when Dominic gets freaked out. She looks entirely like an average biological woman (even allowing for the [[Only Six Faces]] artstyle), her status doesn't matter to the story, and the situation isn't played for either laughs or angst.

* The protagonist of ''[http://whatsnormalanyway.net/ What's Normal Anyway?]'' is a FtM, and the webcomic mainly revolves around gags related to him.

* One of the leading characters in ''[http://mrnormal.com/ Mr. Normal]'' is a closeted MtF trying to not be MtF.

* In ''[[Greg (webcomic)|Greg]]'', Greg is hit on by the same trans person in multiple strips despite his unwillingness to engage. An example [http://gregcomic.com/2011/11/23/storyline-the-facebook-part-2/ here].

* ''[[Karabear Comics Unlimited]]'' debuted Eiderdown, an MTF superhero, in issue 3.

* Acchan from the [[Hentai|cub]] comic, ''The Neon Children''.

 

== Web Original ==

[[Category:Gender Blending Tropes]]

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