Someone on Discord: Wait, why is there genderbend discourse?
Me, popping up like a dog that just heard the word “walk”: Let me give you an essay on how it’s a matter of conflicting needs and poor genre rep.
Okay it’s not quite an essay, but I wrote most of it when was on mobile and added a bunch just now to streamline/add examples.
The reason genderbend discourse is a thing is because the way cishet people do it is generally transphobic, but it’s also a gateway for questioning queer people to enter queer fandom a little more quietly if they’re not in a safe environment. That’s part of how it was for me, and part of why I feel so strongly about genderbends being a genre that doesn’t inherently impact trans fandom negatively: genderbends are how a lot of people got into exploring their gender in the first place. It’s a stepping stone for a lot of us.
But hey, let’s talk misogyny. Genderbending has a significant history as an entry point for female fans to project wider female presence in fandoms that have a majority male cast. Genderbending BEGAN as a subversive thing: ‘this series is almost all male, and I want to see myself in it, so I will change the main character to a woman and explore how that affects the plot and the way the character interacts with the world.’ Female fans got mocked for creating original female characters as much as they did for writing the MC as a woman. It’s a way of taking control of a story that does not have a place for you, which is one of those places where we run into ‘representation is important.’
A decent example of an official production that does this kind of genderbend is “Elementary,” where John Watson is reinterpreted as Joan Watson, a Chinese-American woman. In doing so, the narrative now has a place for women and Chinese-Americans, and anyone who finds it easier to identify with such a character without necessarily sharing the exact same background (e.g. a Korean-Canadian nonbinary person might not share such a background in specifics, but probably has an easier time relating to Joan than they would to white, British, male John of the original).
The problem comes from the fact that… well, for one thing, representation isn’t a zero sum game, but it often feels like it is. Elementary having “Joan” as a character isn’t taking away representation from trans people by providing it to women, and interpreting it as such just leads to production houses having less room for both, and hopping back over to Straight White Cis Men.
The other problem, of course, is that a lot of genderbend fics, either those by new writers OR those by bigoted writers, tend to be gender essentialist, transphobic, or enforcing a binary. This goes for both ‘born cisswap’ fics and ‘magical change in biology’ fics. Again, both plots have their place, whether for those who want to process their own experiences of misogyny, and for those exploring their own gender identity, but they are very easy to fuck up.
The way I usually describe it when it comes to fic is like using Tony Stark. In canon, he’s in STEM and went to college in the 1980s (at least in the MCU, the decade is different in the comics depending on when the story was written). He is a rich cis white man, so his barrier to entry was much lower than most people’s, including his own father (who was born to a poor family, likely Jewish immigrants).
Cis man Tony, trans woman Tony, trans man Tony, cis woman Tony, and nb Tony are ALL going to have a different experience based on the world around them and their own identity.
Tony was a public figure from birth, so “passing” isn’t a thing. Tony’s options are staying in the closet, or being loud and proud.
Meanwhile, there’s a massive bias against women in STEM, one that’s even stronger in the 80s, and while it would apply to every option except cis male Tony, it’s going to apply in different ways.
Each gender variant provides a different opportunity for exploration with regards to misogyny, transphobia, and the intersection of the two, and always in different ways.
The story written by a cis woman currently doing her STEM undergrad might be her intentionally projecting onto a character in order to express her frustrations with gender harassment she’s experiencing from male classmates. The trans woman story written by a trans teenager who’s getting the runaround from teachers on whether or not she can report the transphobic harassment from the boys on her robotics team is going to focus on different forms of oppression and microaggressions.
There’s overlap in the experiences, but both stories perform a vital function for both the writer and readers with similar experiences, and writing the first story with a cis woman Tony does not (inherently) invalidate the existence of trans women like the second author. It’s just an exploration of a different need and experience on the part of the author. It’s ‘I want to see myself in this character I love, a character that was not made with an audience like myself in mind’ for different people, and the fandom at large wants neither of them.
But as mentioned, a lot of people DON’T approach it that way, and it ends up transphobic, even if the intent was, say, exploration of gender and power dynamics in a heavily misogynistic industry. What you end up with is a lot of people whose first association with the CONCEPT of genderbending is “that transphobic/gender essentialist thing that hurt me.” In many cases, even well-done explorations of the concept by queer authors are triggering just due to the connection of terminology, and that’s… not great.
For anyone.
competing representation needs are a heck of a thing
i’d also like to play the trans card (HI IM TRANS) and chime in with: there isn’t one single, easy to find, easy to follow, applicable to all situations standard for what is and isn’t transphobic, and what is and isn’t good trans representation.
i personally figured out i was trans in my late twenties, and feel alienated by the insistence that all trans men were always men and real trans people always know. i can’t relate to characters that figured out they were trans as kids. meanwhile, the kind of trans people that spent their teen years ferociously demanding to be recognized for what they already knew they were are understandably not pleased to see a character spend their teens and twenties confused, repressed, silenced, invalidated. and while all of us are the authorities on our own lived experiences, and keenly want to be heard and respected, we are also likely to misunderstand, overlook, and maybe even get really pissed off at, other people with diametrically opposite experiences, identities, and needs.
“internalized transphobia” is a tidy little phrase, but an enormous and unending clusterfuck of a situation. even when we mean well, we have to be engaged in constant listening and learning, and most of us are doing it while stressed the fuck out due to, yknow, external transphobia.
ANYWAY, it’s hard to make a statement about the breathtaking plurality of the trans experience in, well, one statement. so when it comes to what’s transphobic, some stuff is obvious, some stuff is complicated, some stuff is subjective.
i’m not saying let terfs and avowed transphobes off the hook, obviously. but i am trying to point out that acts of transphobia and, i guess you could call it transphillia, need to be engaged with as an ongoing discussion, rather than a series of isolated, easy-to-diagnose problems.
Yeah I didn’t realize I was a lesbian until I was an adult, and didn’t really realize I was trans (due to never having heard about fluid or nonbinary identities until I was already an adult) until like five or six years later.
The sorts of stories I want to read and tell about that kind of experience could easily come across as homophobic or transphobic to someone who “always knew they were different”, because I DIDN’T realize that my experiences weren’t normal for your average cishet girl. I was weird and awkward and had a strange relationship with girlhood and boys but it never occurred to me that I was anything but a cishet girl and I DON’T feel like I was “always trans all along” in the sense of not referring to my younger self as a girl.
There are all kinds of needs and ways to be queer and to be trans and to need to see yourself in fiction, AND sometimes people will want to explore that in fiction even if it wasn’t THEIR experience and that’s not a bad thing - it’s just a matter of being open to discussion on all sides and being willing to say “I did that badly” but also to say “I hadn’t thought about people needing to see that take” sometimes.
(and obviously this only goes for good faith actions etc etc etc)
All good additions! I do want to add one thing that I’ve been seeing crop up in the notes a lot (not in the above reblogs), which is… assuming bad faith for common transphobic elements, most obviously the “magic cisswap where the characters treat genitalia as being gender.”
Which… yes, it can be transphobic, but part of what my original post was trying to address was that you can generally find a valid reason for anything if you assume things are being written in good faith. I can bet that a solid number of those fics are being written by teenagers who don’t yet know what gender euphoria is, but are subconsciously processing what they think about their own bodies and identities through the lens of genderbend fic. They’re only just starting to think about gender critically, and maybe their community is gender essentialist, and they’re projecting with the thought of ‘well, if this happened to me, I’d be ready to identify as a gender other than what I currently identify as’ without having the safety or context to recognize what it is that they’re feeling.
Yes, some of it is absolutely being written by cis adults who should know better. There is definitely TERF rhetoric in some of these.
But saying ‘this handling of the trope is always transphobic’ is pretty much the exact opposite of what I was going for. There’s almost always a good reason for something to be written, in theory. We just need to think critically when we can, and tag appropriately so people can avoid things they find triggering.
so many intelligent and thoughtful points here. me, i just wish there was a way to tell “i made naruto female because i’m female and i want to see myself in this world and kishi did the girls wrong” fics from “i made naruto female because i wanna ship him with boys but i don’t like the gay” fics.
unfortunately the only way to do that is read both fics ):
just watched a video from caitlin doughty aka ask a mortician and she finally had to make THAT video. all year, she has said that her funeral home in l.a. has been able to handle the amount of bodies they were getting. but now after reaching an insane number of deaths and counting, her funeral home is finally completely overrun with bodies, just like all the other funeral homes, crematoriums and hospitals. the bodies are quite literally stacking up.
the government is nowhere to be seen to help them in this absolute crisis. she along with disaster relief professionals have incredible ideas on how to alleviate the situation even slightly. she said that people were dying at home with no hospice care or pain medication. ambulances are so tied up that they are having to make the call on who needs care over others. she said there has been a huge mask issue, with little penalties or arrests.
the cases soared after the holidays because people cannot stop traveling and having parties and all this nonsense. yall really need to wear your masks. we just cremated my 92 year old grandmother who was doing well up until she caught covid because nurses at her assisted living facility werent wearing masks when one of them was positive.
caitlin and everyone who works with her from other funeral home directors to autopsy doctors to anyone and everyone else involved in the death process are so overwhelmed that they are now afraid.
please call your local representatives and let them know how you feel about the lack of assistance places like los angeles are recieving.
Please watch this video. Especially if you live in the Los Angeles area / anywhere else in California. L.A. is one the current (if not the worst) COVID hotspots in America and with Governor, Gavin Newsom lifting the stay at homeorder (Jan 25th) at a time like this, brings a high chance of positive cases going up rapidly. All (especially in harder hit areas) frontline workers and funeral homes are overwhelmed at this point. This has to get under control somehow! Please call your representatives, Californians! And please share this YouTube video on other platforms!!! Stay safe and wear a mask!
My mother died on the 2nd. Please note her death was NOT FROM COVID—she’d been sick with COPD for quite some time and her heart simply gave out.
It took TWO WEEKS for her to have a funeral because everything is so jammed. Two weeks. The normal lead time is 2-3 days.
That’s where we’re at right now. Two weeks.
I have watched every single YouTube video that Caitlin Doughty has ever made or guest-starred in, and I have never seen her this visibly shaken and pissed off. I can only imagine the hell that healthcare & deathcare professionals are dealing with right now. Jesus.
unrelated to last post but topical: as the child of lawyers, I got one thing drilled into me from age 10: don’t fucken talk to cops. never talk to cops.
Don’t talk to cops about insignificant things, it’s a trick to get you into a talking-mode to gradually work to more sensitive questions.
Don’t talk to workers inside a police station (medics, cleaners, people bringing bitter cold coffee), assume they’re all cops.
If you absolutely must talk to a medic, deliver your essential medical information to them in one sentence and go back to ‘no comment’ after that. Do not get in a conversation.
Don’t accept a lawyer offered by the cops or a lawyer you don’t know. ONLY take the lawyer provided by the activist organization you’re part of and ask to see their ID. Do not believe people who claim they represent the same firm. If in doubt, keep your mouth shut.
I’ve been detained. I’ve been arrested. I know the instinct when you’re around other human beings is to try to relate to them on a human level. I get it, being detained is scary, you’re in cuffs, maybe you’re in the back of a squad car, or in a van in the event of mass arrest. The first thing you’re going to want to do is just… Talk to someone. Anyone. To remember that we’re all human here, or to try to win them over.
Don’t. Cops aren’t people. They aren’t your friends, and they aren’t there to protect you. They’re the bloodhounds of the state. Every comment is a hint, every question has ulterior motives, and they are just trying to pump your for information.
The coffee is a trick, your one call is monitored, they are not your fucking friends. You’re an enemy combatant and every single interaction you have with them is a component of an interrogation. Close your mouth, ask for legal counsel, and always remember, cops aren’t just allowed to lie to you, it’s one of their favorite things to do.
you cannot win a cop over. you cannot befriend a cop. a cop does not see you as a person, they see you as a perpetrator - you should view them the same.
Also be careful about anyone in the same arrest van / cell as you because - cops are known to put undercovers in cells to interrogate the arrested - everything is monitored all the time
Comfort and support your comrades, but do not share personal details or discuss anything that could be used against you.
I highly recommend everyone read this thread and watch this video at the end. Pulling the video out for easy access/in case that link ever gets broken:
