Writing trans characters and other genders in dating games

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Eight Rooks
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Re: Writing trans characters and other genders in dating gam

#16 Post by Eight Rooks »

That doesn't clear up all my queries, but it's very difficult for me to respond to that because I'm just some guy on the internet, I don't have anything to manage in my daily life that's anything remotely similar and I'm painfully aware if I try to articulate my thoughts I'd either be telling you how you should feel or I'd sound like I was. Which isn't something I want to do! So I'm not sure how much further I can take this discussion. :?

Thank you for writing that, though. Seriously, I really appreciate the honesty, even if you're basically some random internet person too. And it does give me a lot to think about. I want to keep having my preconceptions challenged. I still think, though, that a lot of these arguments (not necessarily what anyone here is saying, mind) feel as if they're implying it's a direct line from "happy and secure with myself" to "violence and murder around every corner" and I'm not comfortable with that kind of premise, any more than I am with the suggestion writers have some kind of responsibility to make every social injustice better (Anita Sarkeesian's latest videos stop just short of saying this). I just wish I could properly articulate why. :(

If it helps at all, strip most of the setting away and my trans character is basically the "daughter" of two talented magic users in a country where only the ruling theocracy are allowed to wave that stuff around. (I'm going to use female pronouns for now because this post is proving difficult for me to write - hope that doesn't cause offence!) Anyone who can use magic is expected to either sign up with the powers that be or... I haven't explicitly codified what the alternative would be yet <_< but let's just say it's not very nice. If two people who can do it have kids, and their kids can use magic, they're expected to hand the kids over too. So this girl is in danger from people who think she's got a duty to use her talent for the good of the state, like it or not - but she's also in danger because what she is, who she is, falls way outside societal norms. People don't look very kindly on women (or men) who don't fit the mould - that is not meant to imply violence and murder around every corner, but it does imply a lot of serious trouble if someone keeps on rocking the boat. The girl's already got herself in trouble by wanting to see how far she can take being a boy - again, that is not meant to imply that everyone who's found out reacts with horror/threatens her with murder etc., etc., but enough people with serious influence don't approve that she's caused her parents no small amount of grief.

They love her, they don't want to blame or shame her, but they're only human, so they end up venting their stress on the girl sometimes, even when they don't mean to - and while she gets that her mother and father don't hate her she's not quite old enough to be able to shrug and wave it all away. When the parents decide they've had enough and they can't support the regime any longer, they go on the run - and the girl views that, too, as somehow her fault, for all the rational part of her knows it wasn't. She's not ashamed of who she is. She likes being a boy, she knows on some level that it's "right" for her (though she doesn't completely want to abandon her feminine side either) but she can't help but wonder - for all she knows it's ridiculous - if she could have changed what's happened to the family by having done something differently, somehow. When the escape goes off the rails and her parents end up dead, she doesn't get raped or abused or anything like that, but it only deepens the suspicion that somehow, in some way, she's done something "wrong", and that if she wasn't who she is, none of this would ever have happened.

(All of this is backstory, by the way, not the actual novel.)

It has a happy ending (well, I haven't written it yet, but... y'know). The girl suffers, sure, but I'm trying my hardest to make it more than just cheap melodrama. Her "otherness" doesn't get held up just to score plot points. I repeat, she doesn't get raped or abused or mutilated or any such thing. The implication is supposed to be that yes, some people would find her weird or freakish or what have you, and I'm still debating over how far to take that (keeping in mind what I just said) but other people would not. At worst they'd... raise an eyebrow? but realise they were being dumb, and resolve to work to get over any discomfort. (This is part of the other protagonist's character arc, basically.)

If anything in that raises any red flags for you or anyone else reading this then please, by all means say so. (I swear, I, uh, did not actually plan this as a "plz critique my synopsis, kthxbai" post. :oops: This barely covers any of what happens in the actual book.) I'm more than willing to listen to someone's arguments - I've already started thinking about stuff I could do with the plot after what other people have said in this thread, and that's awesome. I'm really grateful. But so far I'm not seeing any reason I should basically scrap the book - I don't like the thought of hurting people with anything I've written, but again, I can't believe it's a good thing to just gloss over something like this because people wouldn't want to read it.

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Re: Writing trans characters and other genders in dating gam

#17 Post by trooper6 »

Hello, hello!

I'm going to jump around in your post, if you don't mind, for my response.
Eight Rooks wrote:If anything in that raises any red flags for you or anyone else reading this then please, by all means say so. (I swear, I, uh, did not actually plan this as a "plz critique my synopsis, kthxbai" post. :oops: This barely covers any of what happens in the actual book.) I'm more than willing to listen to someone's arguments - I've already started thinking about stuff I could do with the plot after what other people have said in this thread, and that's awesome. I'm really grateful. But so far I'm not seeing any reason I should basically scrap the book - I don't like the thought of hurting people with anything I've written, but again, I can't believe it's a good thing to just gloss over something like this because people wouldn't want to read it.
First thing I want to say. Don't scrap your project! I find it isn't in the what necessarily, but the how. Good stories have drama...and drama can be done well...or less well, you know? There is nothing inherently questionable about your premise. So go for it!

That said...I do have one red flag. That is not in the premise, but how you talk about it:
Eight Rooks wrote:If it helps at all, strip most of the setting away and my trans character is basically the "daughter" of two talented magic users in a country where only the ruling theocracy are allowed to wave that stuff around. (I'm going to use female pronouns for now because this post is proving difficult for me to write - hope that doesn't cause offence!)
It is quite offensive to use improper pronouns. This main character identifies as a boy, so the pronouns you, as an author and ally to your character, use should also be male pronouns. In the novel there may be lots of people who use female pronouns because they are not allies, because they reject your character's identity, etc. That is valid as a part of the game world and should also happen--I mean, it happened to be when I first started transition (doesn't ever happen any more, though). But *you* should be using male pronouns...as should the narrator if the narrator is not a character in the story. As an author if you really want to write from the position of an ally to trans people really come to terms with the idea that your character...if they are indeed trans...is not a girl dressing up like a boy, but a boy. Your character is a boy, but his body doesn't fit what people think boys bodies should be like. Your character is a boy, but the majority of people thinks he is a girl...can you imagine how frustrating that would be? Your character is a boy. I would encourage you to really, really come to a place where you as an author can also see this character as a boy, even if there are characters in the world of the book who can't. That will really help you write this character is a more respectful (and realistic) way. When describing your characters situation, you can say things like, "The mage character is a transman" or "The mage character is a boy who was assigned female at birth."

Does that make any sense?
Eight Rooks wrote:.. I'm not comfortable with that kind of premise, any more than I am with the suggestion writers have some kind of responsibility to make every social injustice better (Anita Sarkeesian's latest videos stop just short of saying this). I just wish I could properly articulate why. :(
I actually quite like Sarkeesian's videos. Anyhow, I'm going to say this on the topic os social responsibility...this is my opinion.
You don't have the responsibility to make every social injustice better. But I do think you (or me, or anyone) has a responsibility not to increase social injustice. Unless increasing social injustice if part of your goal...for example, you want to further the dehumanization and objectification of women because you like that sort of thing. If you do...well, I certainly can't stop you from doing that. Free speech and all that. But free speech means that I can also speak out against your work if I think it is harming me. If I'm a crazy person, no one will listen to me. If I have merit, then people might well listen. And then we have the social debate...which is how society changes, one way or another.

So...it isn't your responsibility to single-handedly cure transphobia from the world. But I'd hope you would NOT increase the amount of transphobia in the world.

Edited to fix that typo!

Note: This doesn't mean that you can't create worlds that has transphobia in them. But there is a difference between depicting something and endorsing something...if you know what I mean.

Anyway, I'd be really excited to read a great VN with an awesome FtM character. That would be awesome! Please write it!
Last edited by trooper6 on Wed Aug 27, 2014 10:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Writing trans characters and other genders in dating gam

#18 Post by Eight Rooks »

No no no, I think you misunderstand me :) I was just using the pronouns there to make that post easier for me to set out. I totally understand why it's important to use the one a trans person would like you to use in their particular case! The book switches back and forth, but that's because it's (more or less) from the perspective of the other protagonist, who is basically going through what you're telling me to go through. He sees the trans character sometimes as a boy, sometimes as a girl - he's got no problem with them as such right from the off, he just can't quite process how to think about them, at least to start with.

But I... probably should have used "he" here, I admit. My apologies for that. <_< I think it's partly because I'm more focused on the backstory and haven't totally finalised ...his? character in my head - he's not 100% real to me just yet because the book's not done, so like the other protagonist, sometimes I see him as the boy he is (or wants to be), sometimes the girl he was (and still is, a little). There's not going to be any adult content in it, certainly nothing explicit (I'm trying to write at kind of a YA level) so I haven't made any definite decisions about exactly what he's got down there. There's some references to that, but those could change - there's a female supporting character he's got a crush on, and I'm trying to decide where to take that plot thread. Since reading these posts I've been wondering whether to give it more importance - it was never going to go Boys Don't Cry anyway, honest! but I started to think I could easily make it a much bigger part of the story. Anyway! Seriously, I am aware this is a big deal - it's part of the point of the book, after all. I don't know if I'll get it "right", but I'm trying.

EDIT: Oh, and I respect Anita Sarkeesian - she's a smart lady, everyone in the games industry ought to be watching her videos, and the kneejerk hate she attracts disgusts me. No argument there. She does even say quite clearly "Look, you can like these games but still find fault with this stuff" and I totally agree. But the latest ones, to me, did seem to push a lot further than usual towards "As a writer or designer, you have a responsibility to never do A and always do B". Which I didn't like.

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Re: Writing trans characters and other genders in dating gam

#19 Post by Mad Harlequin »

trooper6 wrote:So...it isn't your responsibility to single-handedly cure transphobia from the world. But I'd hope you would increase the amount of transphobia in the world.
Uh . . . you mean "decrease," right?
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Re: Writing trans characters and other genders in dating gam

#20 Post by Eight Rooks »

I'd hope so. Kind of an unfortunate typo, though!

Oh, and trooper6, this particular story isn't going to be turned into a VN, unfortunately. Certainly not any time soon. It's not even 100% finished, and it's far more complicated than the story I am actually working on in Ren'Py. "Knowing" (it's over in the Ideas thread) is pretty much finished as a story, it just needs re-doing so it's a better fit as a game, and that's a pretty straightforward process, it just takes a while. No trans characters in that one, though, I'm afraid.

(I do have another idea where the posts I've made on this forum had me wondering if it would work as a VN instead of a novella or a book... but that's still at the planning stages - I haven't written a word for it in any form.)

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Re: Writing trans characters and other genders in dating gam

#21 Post by trooper6 »

Mad Harlequin wrote:
trooper6 wrote:So...it isn't your responsibility to single-handedly cure transphobia from the world. But I'd hope you would increase the amount of transphobia in the world.
Uh . . . you mean "decrease," right?
D'oh! I did make a typo!

I meant to say "I'd hope you would not increase the amount of transphobia."

I wanted to phrase it that way because there are many bad things in the world. We can't decrease all the many different kinds of badness in the world with one piece of art. That is a bit too high of a bar. I just think *not* increasing badness is the basic goal I'd have for all my fellows...and myself!

Eight Rooks, I certainly think that your story has potential not only not to increase bad, but to possibly increase good. Especially if you can really understand what it means to be trans for this character

To add to that understanding, I comment on two things you said:
Eight Rooks wrote: But I... probably should have used "he" here, I admit. My apologies for that. <_< I think it's partly because I'm more focused on the backstory and haven't totally finalised ...his? character in my head - he's not 100% real to me just yet because the book's not done, so like the other protagonist, sometimes I see him as the boy he is (or wants to be), sometimes the girl he was (and still is, a little).
I was never a girl. People thought I was a girl. People treated me like a girl...so I know what it is like to be treated like a girl. I have had some experiences that girls have...but I've never been a girl. My internal sense of self has always been the same. So it isn't that I was a girl and now I'm a boy. It is that I was living as and being treated as a girl, even though I wasn't, and now I'm being treated as the boy I am. Now my external body and my internal body are in congruence...which is a huge relief.
Eight Rooks wrote: There's not going to be any adult content in it, certainly nothing explicit (I'm trying to write at kind of a YA level) so I haven't made any definite decisions about exactly what he's got down there.
Doesn't matter what is going on down there. As I say when I teach trans sensitivity classes...gender does not equal genitals...or gonads, for that matter. A woman who has a hysterectomy is still a woman. A man who loses his genitals in an accident is still a man.

Note: Quite a lot of what I'm saying will be different if your character identifies as gender queer or as multi gendered. If zie identifies as multi-gendered, then zie might be both boy and girl. Or neither. Hir identity might be non-binary, or third gender.

As for Anita Sarkeesian. Sometimes I disagree with some specific small details of her analyses, but I think it is very good that she is here saying things for us to grapple with.
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Re: Writing trans characters and other genders in dating gam

#22 Post by Eight Rooks »

Oh, I have asked myself various questions along these lines... is this character really trans, then? Am I creating someone, I dunno, genderfluid? Would that be a lazy getout because it makes the character easier for me to write (because I can use him or her whenever I feel like), or does that ambiguity do a better job of selling the themes? I'm still not sure.

Going by what you said, I guess maybe his experience would be vaguely similar to yours? Emotionally, at least? He'd have been less certain he wasn't a girl, perhaps: we're talking a world pretty close to Earth in the 19th century or so, and like I said, against a fairly repressive, conservative political background, so he'd have had people constantly reinforcing the idea that boys are like this, girls are like this. He'd look in the mirror and never see any outward sign they were wrong. But - if I'm reading you right - yes, he'd know: that sense of self would still be there, inside, even if he never had anyone to help him decipher it, at least not to begin with.

I only mentioned what's going on down there because of how other people might or might not react. Not the character himself. Like I said, various aspects of this story could still be re-written, but I've already got him saying that doesn't change who he is. Awkwardly, maybe, like he hasn't fully internalised that idea - he's young, he's nervous about this stuff, he's not completely certain that he can tell the world hey, up yours if you don't like it. But he does explicitly say "What does that matter, exactly?" a few times already. :)

It's also something I wonder about because if he's biologically female but knows he's male, then what if I have to leave him outwardly the same? This isn't a world where magic means you can just snap your fingers and sort out something like this (and I'd be wary of implying it's something that can be... sorted, fixed, put right... does that make sense? They feel like loaded words).

I don't want to fall into the trap of the stereotypical miserable trans person, but could it work the other way round? Could he be fine with what he sees in the mirror if he's happy with the idea that the inside and the outside aren't necessarily related? Or would that be insulting in some way ("Oh, you'll be fine if you just think yourself past it")?

Not expecting you to answer all these questions, just trying to show you a little of what's going on inside my head when I approach this. It's definitely one of the trickier things I've tried to write! Unfortunately that's one reason it keeps going on the backburner... I've got the other story for my VN that still needs to be rewritten, I've got another novella that's complete but which I'm trying to expand into a full book, I've got three or four other works in progress at various stages, I've got a whole bunch of finished pieces that need proofing and editing and so on... I want to get back to Nika, but... it's tricky. :?

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Re: Writing trans characters and other genders in dating gam

#23 Post by Clestae »

Hey, sorry to step in, but would any of you mind hearing out an idea from me that has to do with this topic? I'm so very sorry to suddenly take this topic and go "Hey what about me!?" but I would adore some challenges toward my ideas and misconceptions.

One thing I want to make clear before I start: I am pursuing a psychology degree and hope to go into therapy. Our perceptions of mental illness and psychology in general is, therefore, a big interest to me. Also, I do not believe that anyone who identifies as trans* is mentally ill (I mention this because my premise will seem like I think that way--I DO NOT :) ). Sadly the psychology community is only just slowly getting to that realization.

Also, if I offend ANYONE with what I have written, please know I mean absolutely no disrespect. Please correct me. Please please. And I apologize in advance.

Okay, so the plot is you, the MC, have been assigned to partake in a special psychological experiment. I haven't worked out the details of what it entails, but the main thing that's important is you are assigned a group therapy to attend each week. The beginning would have a way to choose your character's name and gender at the beginning of the game. After that, you interact with the group therapy. The group therapy sessions would involve a lot of discussion about mental illness and society, but there will be "romance" aspects of it. There would be six characters; I split them evenly by binary gender and by straight, gay, and bisexual (so 1 straight male, 1 straight female; 1 gay male, 1 gay female; 1 bisexual male, 1 bisexual female).

However, here is where the potentially problematic (but important) issue involving the topic comes in: you find out that "you" as the MC are trans*. You were originally sent to this psych experiment for this reason (as horrible and wrong as that is). The gender you pick at the beginning is what your MC identifies and is (so if you picked "female" in the beginning, your MC is MtF--please let me know if that is offensive, I just want to make it clear). However, the idea is that depending on who you romance above, this realization could cause complications with the relationship (for example, the straight male may get incredibly uncomfortable), and so the story would be how to get through that and become comfortable with your true identity and be confident to tell the world that you are you.

The inspiration for this came from an exercise in my abnormal psychology class. We were discussing what it is like to identify as trans* and for this, he told the girls (for example) to close their eyes and imagine that, yes, they are female, but then he described how we may have "male anatomy" (is there a better name for that?) but identify as female.

Is this offensive? Terrible idea? Interesting? Thank you thank you.
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Re: Writing trans characters and other genders in dating gam

#24 Post by trooper6 »

It depends on how you do the game.
I think there is nothing inherently offensive about having the main character be trans without the player's permission. It is something I'd like to do in future games of my own.

I think if you run into trouble, you might run into trouble when you deal with the romance. For example, you mentioned that the straight male would have problems with you. Why pick the most stereotypical person to have transphobia problems? There are straight men who are find dating transwomen. And there are lesbian women who are super transphobic. You might think that the bisexual people wouldn't have problems dating trans people, but some of them do. And there are some people who *really* want to date trans people...but in a fetish-y way that might not feel good at all. And most importantly, some people are fine dating trans people.

I would hope the game you made didn't focus exclusively on reactions of disgust and rejection. Those things happen and they should be depicted, but they should not be the only reaction. Since you are wanting to balance things in terms of gender and sexuality, you should also balance things in terms of reactions. And you should make sure that you don't lean on the obvious notions on who'll be transphobic and who won't.
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Re: Writing trans characters and other genders in dating gam

#25 Post by Clestae »

I think if you run into trouble, you might run into trouble when you deal with the romance. For example, you mentioned that the straight male would have problems with you. Why pick the most stereotypical person to have transphobia problems? There are straight men who are find dating transwomen. And there are lesbian women who are super transphobic. You might think that the bisexual people wouldn't have problems dating trans people, but some of them do. And there are some people who *really* want to date trans people...but in a fetish-y way that might not feel good at all. And most importantly, some people are fine dating trans people.
My apologies, I used it as an example but I know everyone has different thoughts about it. I'm unfortunately aware that some gay women, for example, can be quite transphobic. Again, it was an example but not the rule.

I would hope the game you made didn't focus exclusively on reactions of disgust and rejection. Those things happen and they should be depicted, but they should not be the only reaction. Since you are wanting to balance things in terms of gender and sexuality, you should also balance things in terms of reactions. And you should make sure that you don't lean on the obvious notions on who'll be transphobic and who won't.
Right, I was intending on a balance. Part of the issue, too, was the idea that each character would also be going through some kind of psychological problem that is affecting their life. However, my worry is combining such subject matter together has the potential to become problematic. I haven't exactly fleshed it out >.> it was an idea I had, but I wasn't sure exactly how well it could be received. And I don't even know if I could do it justice to be honest. But thank you for the input!
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