Meaning of LGBTQ+ labels in an extremely accepting world with magical transition
Hey, Iām currently working in a fantasy world where that is accepting, and Iām thinking that even if transitioning via magic is widely available, would some trans people still not want toĀ - Iām not sure how to put this sorry if it comes out wrong - transition to exactly what their body would be had they been cis? And what might be some of their reasoning for this? I looked through your magical transition tag and the biggest problem seemed to be that transitioning via magic leaves out a pretty big chunk of experiences that would be valuable to trans readers today, and yeah, Iām not sure how to avoid that, considering in this world 1) wouldnāt be prejudiced - so I canāt do what, for example, Dreadnought by April Daniels does showing the parts of being trans outside of transitions (nor do I think I should, really, since Iām cis and itās not up to me) and 2) the magic system Iāve made would definitely be able to help trans people transition so Iām not quite sure what to do with that.
Currently, Iām thinking that, since bodies wouldnāt really be gendered, most would alter(would that be a good word? Itās the best I currently thought of but it doesnāt sound right?) parts of their body that causes them dysphoria but otherwise just live their lives.Ā Thereās also this bit about me being unsure as to how to define āgayā if nonbinary people are normalised but and also if people stopped defining gender by genitals, what childhood would look like in that world but. I do wonder if Iāve cast the concept a bit too far and if I should just rein it in a bit and have it maybe a bit less, for lack of a better word, ālike thatā? I guess my biggest question is how a world like that would look like and function, and since Iām cis I thought itād be better if I asked some trans people their thoughts?
Also thereās two parts that didnāt quite fit about first same sex political marriages and a bit about how trans peopleĀ tendĀ to be better at medical magic, since something that makes practitioners of medical magic more effective is being able to mentally separate the concept of the body from the concept of the person and I wonder your thoughts on it.
Sorry that this turned out really rambly or sounds kind of half baked lol. I started this out just wanting to ask about magical transitions but then the fact that Iām sending an ask made my socially anxious self question parts of my logic, haha. So uh- yeah-
So, Iām going to try and segment this one out, in order of whatās easiest for me to answer. I realize youāve looked through our blog a bit, so I apologize for the things I inevitably repeat, but I do feel they are important to address.
How to define gay with trans people (esp nonbinary people) normalized
Being gay is not currently defined by genitalia, contrary to what T*RFs seem to believe. To get to what it actually is, Iāll explain how orientation labels tend to be used in the trans community. To me, being gay means that I am interested in people who identify similarly to me in some way in terms of queerness. For some people, itās trans lesbians who date women regardless of them being cis or trans. Whether nonbinary people are automatically part of that depends on the individuals. Iāve dated lesbians before (who were trans - I would not feel comf dating a cis lesbian) who used the older definition of it that means what we use the word āsapphicā to mean today. I also know people who use the term gay as shorthand for āIām a man who is generally attracted to people in the vicinity of manhoodā or even masculinity (even though masculinity and manhood are different - itās complicated, people are complicated).
The point of labels is that they are a shorthand to communicate complex topics. They arenāt meant to replace those longer explanations, they are only to make communication referring to those complex identities easier. Labels are descriptive and not prescriptive, and every gay person has slightly different feelings.
Iām not going to tap into this too much because it only gets more complicated, but thereās also people who may feel differently about their orientation based on if they are attracted to androgynous people who may identify as the same gender to them, vs agender people who may not. I have to be honest that I havenāt actually heard anyone take this all too seriously or account that into the labels they ultimately choose to give, but itās something sometimes that people talk about. I donāt think you need to go into it in your story, or even that you should per se, I just would feel remiss to not mention it as a thing people think about. I would generally say this is more of the binary variant folks who tend to wonder about it though, I donāt think cis people who date us worry about it. Itās not something that has a conclusion or universal answer. Itās just something people question the technicalities of sometimes in extended conversations.
My assumption for the future is that people will probably be taking to account community culture and history when using labels. This is already kind of a thing and itās why a lot more people tend to identify with bi than pan, in part. There are a lot of people who identify as transsexual these days also because of the specific history of the community and what that means in relation to how they see themselves. This isnāt a flawless thing and thereās always a lot of intra-community discourse about the validity of weighing this vs your actual felt experience, and whether there is a prescription experience for every label that people using it should meet. (Again, this is So Dicey, I am not doing justice to the immensity of how much has been said about it. But itās a thing people talk about in-community sometimes.)
Would trans people all want to look cis if they could? Why/why not?
I absolutely do not want to look cis. Being trans is an integral part of who I am, and people cannot know who I am without knowing that I am trans. Iād say that the majority of trans people who stay community-involved/connected to other trans people skew towards preferring to be visibly trans in some way. At least in a way that other trans people recognize us. But I also know a lot of trans people who love their bodies and donāt want to change anything. And no one does need to change anything to be a different gender than they were assigned. Thatās all being trans means. (Add nuance for cultures outside of the colonial one Iām speaking from, who may have different ways of doing gender stuff.)
I think a lot of people with marginalized bodies, regardless of transness, can probably relate to being more concerned with how other people view our bodies than how we do. Iām perfectly content to let myself be fat and cozy and stim in the comfort of my own home, but I do feel like I have to put my guard up in public to get respect. Iām put in a position where I basically have to assume people expect me to apologize for my body. (Especially as a person who uses a rollator, and constantly needs accommodations from the public to open doors, move aside, etc.)
That isnāt to say that none of us would want to change a thing if we all had the equal chance and freedom to do so. But it wouldnāt be as big of a deal, and we would have more freedom to pick and choose the stuff we want. It is not that I want to be any particular gender, it is that I want to be myself, I want to make my body something Iām comfortable with. Thereās some explaination of what dysphoria is here which might help parse out the particulars. (For the love of all that is good: please do not use the DSM to tell you what gender dysphoria is. Thatās not what it is to the community, and the DSM should not have transness in it to begin with.)
But in an ideal world I would also have a lot of retractable body parts. And to be frank, I think there are cis people who would also probably find utility in such a thing. Iām going out on a limb here but I bet there are cis perisex women who would probably like to be able to retract their breasts while running down the stairs. And there are probably cis perisex men who would want to turn off boners at will too. There already are cis people who take HRT for a variety of reasons and who get surgeries of all kind. Trans people are not all that unique in any way besides our oppression in this particular regard.
The main thing that defines us is that we identify outside how we were assigned, gender-wise.
Ethics of magical transition in your specific world
I want you to investigate your purpose for your story. Do you want representation or do you just want to write a whimsical story?
I generally give advice on writing good representation, including in a fantasy context. I feel that it nullifies representation when the audience of that demographic isā¦ wellā¦ not represented.
Transitioning via magic would not just leave out āa chunkā of trans experiences today - they would literally leave all of us out. We donāt have magic to transition.
There are aspects of the way transition can be written in a magical context to replicate real-world hormones and procedures, and thatās generally what I recommend to people. You can even enhance it and make it so that you can customize the formula for what you want.
Trans people being better at medical magic because of better ability to separate concept of body + person
I donāt personally like this because the idea of us not being our body is a narrative used to take away our bodily autonomy. Hereās an article I wrote about it in 2018 and hereās some stuff weāve written before going into the issues with the āborn in the wrong bodyā narrative. It isnāt our body as the fundamental difference here. My body is mine, tits or not. There are definitely trans people who resonate with this, but itās more complicated.
You could also probably talk about this lens when it comes to disabled people. As a disabled person, my worth is often seen as what kind of labour I can put forth in order to give somebody else a profit. My worth is seen as limited, because my body is limited. Thatās ridiculous.
But I think itās reasonable that a person who is disabled would be better at medical magic because weāre more likely to know how different parts of the body work in order to problem-solve when possible. Iāve learned WAY more about how pain is experienced, what different bones, joints are, how collagen and cartilage works, different tests to figure out where an endocrine tumour is and what the risks associated are, etc etc from disabled people, than I have ever learned from a doctor or even a first aid course. Iāve also learned a lot about how to adjust and make accommodations for specific contexts and ways my body doesnāt work, and what kinds of help I need for that. That might be something to work with instead of trans people specifically.
I would honestly just try and frame it away from the person vs body thing. I think you could definitely write it in a way that works, but I think thereās a lot of work that would be needed to do it properly. You would need to understand the level of subhumanization implied when it comes to separating people from their bodies. You need to be able to acknowledge that even if we may be separate from our bodies in some regard, like if we have souls or whatever, we still have ownership of our bodies, some kind of tethered bond, at least as long as we are alive.
What this world would look like, if written well
I hope Iāve gotten to most of what you were wondering about, feel free to send a message when we can open the ask box again if thereās something Iāve left out. (Or reply, etc.)
Iād say that ultimately itās okay if your story is not wholly utopian, and I think even if you go for that (at least in terms of Acceptance), it probably isnāt a good idea to label it that way because there might be more to the situation.
There are also ways to acknowledge trans experience in a world where questioning is totally normal. I mean, we already question who we are in so many other regards as people when we grow up. And for the rest of our lives even. Existing in a living body is an act of constant creation and regeneration until we die, and even then, we decay into an earth which grows things.
Have characters who are still figuring it our or who arenāt sure. Or who are, and change their presentation or transition-related stuff more often than those who arenāt, because fluidity is part of their nature. (I go on and off testosterone all the time! Thatās totally fine and normal and doesnāt mean I am insecure about what I want at any given time.) (I donāt even identify as genderfluid, sometimes I like estrogen more than testosterone and vice versa. Though my gender has evolved a bit over time.)
I think thereās a lot of different and cool possibilities for what the future may hold and what fantasy can hold when it comes to trans people. I would also say that you donāt need to go in depth with this stuff, itās just extremely helpful to know as much as you can. It makes it easier to write and to know where to step for representation that truly makes us feel seen, or like kin to a character.
Itās important to keep in mind that even if your story is super accepting, your audience is still living in a world that isnāt exactly that.
How a character in a very accepting world may feel about magical transition, is obviously going to be different than how it lands with your audience. The trick to good representation is writing a world that reaches enough out to us to pull us in, and makes us want to keep reading. Seeing fully 3 dimensional trans characters is part of that. Even if we canāt see ourselves as a 1:1 parallel, it is nice to see data points that we might relate to our see our community members in.
This may not be for your story, but I also want to put it out there that itās okay to have minor characters having their own problems and conflicts and not addressing that onscreen. A lot of cis people are understandably steering away from making huge complicated coming-out-went-awry (as the main focus) stories about trans people. But that doesnāt mean you should only ever represent trans people who were always completely accepted. Tbh, even trans people who are now accepted may have had roadbumps in that or lost a friend or several. Itās not always 100% good or 100% bad. And you absolutely Do Not need to make that part of the plot in order to write trans people who have been through that kind of thing. It can be in the past or offscreen, it can be just something that shows in your trans characterās decisions about who to trust or whatever. Not every obstacle weāve been through is death, and not every acceptance weāve had was easy or unfought for. Our lives are complicated and nuanced and there is room along the gradients. Develop your charactersā internal and external lives far beyond what goes on in the scenes you write, and your audience will recognize the difference.
