Do you think there's a way to actually correctly write an in denial, trans woman, who pretends to be okay with 'being a guy'? Like, I wrote an in the closet trans woman before, who knows who she was and hid it from the world (outside transphobia) before, but wondering if you think the issue of hiding it from yourself (internal transphobia/denial) can be done in a non-harmful way?
I'm trans (ftm) myself and talked myself out of it for a long time, so I assume it could be the same on the other side?
I'm just wondering if you can foresee any pitfalls one might fall into that would be transphobic or fetishize trans women?
I write trans women in my fic bc I want to write something in contrast to all of the g!p that claims rep, and put something better into the fandom. (I think I did a good job, thanks to your help before. Thank you so much).
Do I think it's a feasible concept? Sure, yeah, it's doable. I'd trust trans woman authors to do that, since it'd need to draw on transmisogyny and experiences of transfemininity pretty deeply. Like, even with those who only realized and came out later in their lives, there's pretty much always things they noticed retroactively that were particularly telling and explained/illuminated sources of discomfort and disparity that they'd generalized and made efforts to ignore/move past. And for those who know they're trans but are fighting that truth, and/or are just deep in the closet and struggling with not knowing when or if it'll be safe to be themselves (and therefore need to fight to present as a boy/man), that's a complicated experience. Having to combine that with writing the social environment that fostered their situation and how they processed that messaging and reacted to that messaging, how they succeeded and failed to reproduce various elements of that gender performance...it's tough to navigate those seas and not end up taking on water even if you are familiar with the experiences.
A story that placed any real focus on that would need to be an authentic read if it was to have any merit, so yeah, that's a narrative arc I'd think trans women would need to tell because others would probably get it wrong. Not out of ill intent, necessarily, but I think there's too many knowledge gaps for others to traverse, and a more general take on the experience likely wouldn't sufficiently engage with the experiences, leading to a shallower arc as a whole, and that's not really what you're looking for in the kind of story that would focus on this, since you're most likely within the realm of the 'character study' sort of material than anything else, and running shallow in that respect sort of defeats the purpose.
So yeah, I think the best outcome would be a trans woman author handling that subject material. Could someone else manage it? Possibly, with enough commitment to sensitivity writers/editors and a willingness to walk back on and rewrite whole swaths of the resulting work if it's not hitting the mark authentically.
I’m so confused! I know it’s not your responsibility to educate me but in your post bringing awareness to the negative aspects of g!p fanfic you say
“Why do these g!p characters rarely if ever involve experiences reflective of trans/intersex women? Why are they so utterly cis and perisex-washed? Why do nearly all writers have zero idea that tucking is a thing? “
Doesn’t that answer your original question? The reason they don’t reflect those groups of ppl is bc g!p isn’t trying to represent those groups of people or else it WOULD be transphobic to limit them to one specific fetish right? it just refers to a canonically female character with the addition of a penis (I don’t argue the name “g!p” should be changed bc that’s a no brainer why that could be offensive). But the fanfic in general, how could it be harmful? I’ve noticed in my time reading it as a non binary person it’s given me great gender euphoria reading a reader insert where reader has a penis while being a femme representing person just bc that’s a reflection of my personal experience. I don’t see anywhere where g!p fanfic ever references or tries to emulate the experiences of trans or intersex people so how could it be offensive?
Sorry this is way too long I’m just very confused
I'm going to try and lay this out as politely as I can. It's after 3:30 in the morning here, so this could be a bit disjointed and rambling. More under the cut:
In real life, ~99.999999% of women with penises are trans women. Which puts us in a tricky situation of (A) being the only women with penises around for media involving women with penises to reflect back on, and (B) being in the lovely position of precious few people actually having had meaningful real life exposure to trans women, meaning (C.) all those stigmas and all that misinformation are going to purely affect us and it’s going to be uncritically gobbled up by the masses, since they don’t have any meaningful information to fill in the blanks with instead.
When we peer into the depths of femslash fandoms and see all these folks who aren't trans women writing about women with penises, and using cis women’s bodies as platforms for these penises, it’s the simplest thing.
I mean, some of those folks might actually be struggling and confused about why they’re into it, what the real appeal is, why they get off on it, why they might have some feelings about wanting a penis of their own…
…but from our vantage point, it’s really easy to gauge 99.99% of the time. We can generally see valid, legitimate yearning to have a penis pretty damn easily in a piece of art/writing, and we can also see when people who create this media are just hung up on a boatload of baggage and fetishization.
And 99.9% of the time, the creators are just hung up on a boatload of baggage and fetishization, and see trans women’s bodies as a perfect vehicle to tap into that, generally due to deeply held cissexist views that link us and our bodies and genitals directly to cis men, to maleness. As if penises are rooted in maleness and masculinity (which is absolutely not true).
And I have sympathy for NB folks (certainly TME ones who have reached out to me in the past about this) who might be struggling with that, but just because they’re non-binary, it doesn’t mean they get to appropriate our bodies and reproduce transmisogyny and trans fetishization in their attempts at feeling better. Shit doesn't work like that.
Because again, the only women with penises in this world, essentially, are trans women. Meaning any woman with a penis in media is a trans woman, implicitly or explicitly. Meaning that when people who aren’t us want to write us, intent doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter if it’s just the writer’s fantasy, it’s still going to attach a variety of messages directly onto us.
And more often than not, due to cissexism, those messages are linking us to maleness, to toxic masculinity, etc..
While I do want to believe they're a fairly small minority, a lot of NB folks in fandom spaces like g!p characters in part because they see penises as male and the rest of the body as female and think that duality is interesting and would be comfortable, and is a nice balance of “both worlds” or a nice position “between male and female”, but that’s a wholly cissexist, transmisogynistic view to have, and it’s one that absolutely cannot be supported without directing sexual violence against trans women and invalidating our entire existence. Certainly not all NB folks into g!p like it for that reason, but holy shit a fair bit of them do and it’s weird and wrong and fetishistic.
g!p emerged from the idea that women can't have penises, and drew on the transmisogyny and cissexism of tr*nny porn to structure that frame of desire and the core patterns and trends within these works. It's always been trans women's bodies being used as a vehicle, whether or not the writers of these fics are explicitly aware of it, because the trope itself still holds true to its original patterns and cissexism. It's not the name that's the problem, it's the content; changing the name would be a surface level change that wouldn't affect anything.
g!p objectifies women with penises (trans women). A woman with a penis is more than just a woman with a penis, but the use of the term and trope is literally to (A) remind people that women don't have penises, otherwise the g!p term wouldn't be needed if people actually accepted women with penises as women, and that (B) this is a story centered on a scenario where there's a woman with a penis, with key focus on that genitalia specifically. it's the drawing point, it's the lure, it's what everything is centered on. It is a means for folks to write lesbian sex while also writing about penis in vagina and getting off to it. It's also no surprise that the penises so clearly emulate cis men's penises in these works, that is by design.
As I’ve said many times before, if you’re only writing trans women’s bodies to showcase cis men’s penises, you’re not respecting the womanhood of trans women, and this ultimately has nothing inherent to do with penis-owning women, it has to do with (cis) men and their penises, because trans women are just being used as a vehicle to emulate them.
When NB folks do the same thing, and imagining themselves as those g!p characters, they are ultimately embodying cis men, their maleness, and often toxic masculinity, in a way that feels safe and distanced enough for them, a shell that they often code as cisnormative due to their own unprocessed cissexism.
And trans women don’t deserve that.
You seem caught in the idea that if something doesn't directly perfectly reflect trans women, that it can't be linked to us., which ignores the long long history of media being used to misrepresent marginalized peoples and cast us in insulting, dehumanizing lights. You show a lack of understanding of the g!p trope and the long history of its usage across a few other names, even if the content and patterns remained the same. It shows a lack of understanding of tr*nny porn and transmisogynistic stigmas, which the trope draws heavily from.
I think we can all recognize that most 'lesbian' prn that's made does not represent actual lesbians, it's overwhelmingly catered to the male gaze. We can also recognize that this category of porn has led to a lot of harassment towards lesbians from cis men who at the very least want to believe lesbians are just like they are in the porn he watches, that lesbians just need the right man. Lesbians are being used as a vehicle for a fantasy that was created externally to them, and doesn't represent their realities.
It's the same kind of situation here. The way g!p fics play out overwhelmingly doesn't reflect trans women's realities, but they are inherently linked to us regardless, as we're the vehicles for those fantasies, as unrealistic and harmful as they may be.
g!p characters are built in our fetishized image that’s based on a deeply cissexist misunderstanding of us, of the gender binary, and of bodies in general.
I mean, when 99% of cis folks don’t understand how trans women tend to be sexually intimate… when they don’t understand what dysphoria is and how it works and how it can affect us physically and emotionally…when they don’t understand almost any of our lived experiences…then they’re not going to be able to accurately portray us even if they wanted to.
And I’ve read enough g!p fics where authors wrote those as a means of trying to add trans rep, but because they didn’t understand us at all, it wasn’t remotely representative, and it was ultimately fetishistic, even if there was an undercurrent of sympathy and a lack of following certain common g!p patterns there that differentiated it from the norm.
If g!p fics were at all about reducing dysphoria or finding euphoria, then it wouldn’t be explicitly tied up in the performance of very specific sex acts, very specific forms of misogyny and toxic masculinity, very specific forms of sexual violence and exertion of sexual power, etc.
But it is.
So the notion that creating g!p fics helps NB folks? Nope. It CAN certainly prevent/delay those folks from facing a whole boatload of shit they’ve internalized, and coddle them at the expense of trans women.
Because if it was really about bodies and dysphoria/euphoria, there would be a considerable push (allying with out own) to end our fetishization and to represent us in and out of sexual contexts with accuracy, respect, and care. Because they wouldn’t care what sex acts were performed and what smut beats were hit, they’d just want to see someone with a body like their ideal being loved, being sexual, connecting, being authentic, etc. Which very much is not the case in the overwhelming majority of g!p fics. That's what we want, and it's not what g!p writers want, it's nothing they give a shit about.
Like, a ways back I started doing random pulls of g!p fics from various fandoms and assessing them for certain elements to provide some quantitative clarity. I started on The 100 here, and did OuaT here. Never finished the 100 one since the results leveled out and stayed pretty consistent as the sample size grew, so I didn't really see the point in continuing any further after about 140 fics when the data wasn't really changing much at all.
Lastly, media influences people. I've read countless posts and comments from people who use fanfiction as a sex ed guide, in essence. Which is ridiculous, but I also know sex ed curricula often isn't very accurate or extensive in a lot of areas, so people take what they can get. Representation in media can be powerful, and when it overwhelmingly misrepresents people, that's also powerful. Just because fandom is a bit smaller than televised media, it doesn't make that impact any lesser, certainly not for those whose primary media intake is within fandom.
Virtually all trans representation in f/f fanfiction is misrepresentative of us. That has a cost in how people understand us, how people react to us, and how people treat us. Not just online, but in physical spaces, and in intimate settings.
I invite you to read that post you referenced again, or perhaps this longer one which is a response to a trans guy who seemed to feel something similar to you with this trope.
All I can do is lay it out there and try to explain this. It's up to you how you handle this. All I know is whenever there's a big surge in g!p in a fandom, trans women generally leave it en masse, because it's a very clear and consistent message that we're not valued, respected, and that people value getting off on us over finding community with us.
Have you also talked about b!p, or is g!p/m!c the most common thing you've seen and talked about? /gen
I have talked about b!p and trans fetishization of trans men, but I generally try to boost the voices of trans men who write about it rather than inserting my own voice, since they're the experts on that front.
Took a brief foray into my archive and here's some posts related to b!p/mpreg and trans men's fetishization in fandom
(1/2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)
But yeah, trans men are the best equipped to speak on this. Pretty much anything I've said on my own posts about it mirrors what they've said about it, along with any general understanding of trans fetishization I can bring in to the discussion.
g!p is something I'm more familiar with and directly impacted by, so that's something I'll speak on at a comparatively greater rate
I literally wasn’t arguing I was asking a question chill out with all that damn you over tweaking for what just because you one trans person doesn’t like it don’t mean mfs gotta stop writing it go about yo business and block people who do cause there are many trans people who write g!p on here you gon tell them to stop? Ion think so
Literally nobodies complaining now I can’t tell you how to feel but you’re the only person who’s complaining because you feel some type of way there are multiple trans people who don’t care at all there’s literally women with dicks and they are not trans or intersex they are just a woman with a dick it’s not that hard like there’s men with vaginas?
The way you just made yourself look stupid are YOUR goals suddenly acceptable because you’re trans? Ion think so I just want to let you know a lot of trans writers encouraged me to write g!p and I will continue to do so
There was literally no question in what you sent me. Can you show me where the question is in your previous submission?:
"You don’t like g!p like ik you said you don’t like it but there’s plenty of trans people who said they didn’t mind"
You're just telling me some people don't mind g!p, that's not a surprise to me. I've even butted heads with a bunch of transmisogynistic trans-fetishistic trans guys and NB folks in the past who have pushed support for it, you're not telling me anything new.
And I cannot make anyone do anything, but I can say a few things with absolute objective certainty.
g!p works cause material harm, and they are transmisogynistic, trans fetishistic, intersexist, intersex fetishistic, cissexist, transphobic, etc., and make fandom spaces hostile to trans women and intersex folks
People who write g!p works care more about their fandom popularity and getting off on trans women's bodies than they do trans women, so by default they are not and cannot be trans allies. You can't actively fetishize us and spread your fetishization of us, and ignore our voices, and still claim allyship.
People who read g!p works and support those works and their authors care more about their trans-exclusive fandom community and getting off on trans women's bodies than they do trans women, so by default they are not and cannot be trans allies. You can't actively fetishize us and spread your fetishization of us, and ignore our voices, and still claim allyship.
If someone feels bad about any of the above facts, that's their own baggage to deal with. I can't stop people from writing/reading g!p, but I can lay out the facts for folks so that they can't just pretend everything is good and fine when it isn't.
And the tired old "Don't Like Don't Read" fandom mantra is bullshit. Nah, I don't have to abide by people putting out and spreading oppressive, harmful bullshit. Not when it floods my fandoms and helps entrench harmful views about me and mine in ways that pushes us out of the fandoms we deserve to exist in.
If someone throws out transphobic slurs or transphobic diatribes, I'm 100% going to confront them about it, rightfully so. This is absolutely no different, and the only reason you think it's different is because you can't see how much harmful shit is packed into g!p works and you probably get off on it and don't want to feel guilty about your fetish. That's a you problem, and I've made loads of posts detailing these issues in the past, loads of education posts about trans stuff in general, so there's no excuse.
If you want to keep on writing g!p that's your prerogative, but let it be understood that you're a transmisogynist and you are not an ally to trans people, and you make fandom toxic. I hope one day you'll understand the harm you cause, but I am not holding my breath.
@araisanata said: williamshamspeare I'm very much not trans and very dummy, but by what I've read from these notes it seems that that's okay? I've seen it done by trans people as well, which kind of makes me think that it's fine to HC characters as trans men/women so long as you're not like... Saying that a male character (be it cis male or trans male) is actually a trans woman unless you see trans people doing so as well? Though anyone is free to correct me! It's just my understanding
I wrote the original post almost 4 years ago, although I haven't noticed much of a change in the trend of how people HC characters as trans, so it's still relevant.
Most characters people HC as trans women are male characters. I don't keep as up to date on trans man HCs, but I'd wager that probably most characters HCed as trans men are female characters.
This is Not Good™ . People who are not trans women should really interrogate themselves on what characters they HC as trans women, what the original gender of those characters is in the canon media, and why they made the decisions they did.
For instance, if a person has HCed multiple times more male characters as trans women as they have female characters, there's a near certainty that they have a tremendous amount of transmisogyny and cissexism baggage to unlearn that's leading to these decisions, and they should prioritize doing that, and should not HC more male characters as trans women, unless there's a pattern among trans women in general for HCing that character as a trans woman. Female characters should exclusively be used for trans woman HCs otherwise, since there are far too few instances of these.
tl;dr: People (who aren't trans women) who HC male characters as trans women almost always have bad reasons for doing so, fueled by cissexism and transmisogyny. People who have a pattern of doing this almost certainly see trans women as men at some foundational level, and they should fix that instead. Female characters should be used for trans woman HCs if you're not a trans woman yourself; similarly male characters should be used for trans man HCs if you're not a trans man.
takes a fetishized version of a trans woman’s body and uses it as a vehicle to write their smut and/or pregnancy fetish fics through
discards trans experience from their fics, and writes about our bodies in generally incorrect and/or impossible ways, basically showing zero interest in actually representing us, and full interest in misrepresenting us in ways that are directly tied to physical and sexual real life violence against us, purely to sate their sexual fantasies
(very common, but not always present) attaches their pent up baggage and taboo fantasies about cis men (due to compulsory heterosexuality and toxic masculinity) to the g!p characters, which more or less blatantly casts trans women as toxic, sexually predatory cis men. As an example, 50 Shades of Grey and Twilight both featured toxic cis men romantic leads that women in society tend to be conditioned to find attractive…some wlw see trans women and our bodies as close enough to manhood and maleness for them to engage in the compulsory het messages they were taught, so they can have that toxic, powerful/dominant, dangerous person with all the associated power dynamics, PiV sex, and potential pregnancy without necessarily compromising their sexuality so long as they accept trans women as women on the most superficial of levels
Characters chosen to be the g!p character in the fic tend to be the more masculine of the women, the more aggressive ones, the taller ones, the ones with more power/status, the more violent ones, the ones with more angular features, the darker-skinned characters, etc. I could list more, but the pattern should be fairly clear. Sometimes people label these fics as intersex representation, but they are no better intersex rep than they are trans rep, for the above listed reasons apply to intersex erasure and fetishization as well.
I have longer posts on the topic here and here if you are interested in learning more
Had a fun message bounce into my inbox here. I’ll answer in a standalone post because I don’t want to give the hate and cissexism a direct platform.
Trans men are men, biologically or otherwise. Trans men are often capable of getting pregnant. These truths are a matter of record, they are not up for debate.
It is vital to include trans men and NB folks in discussions and resources involving pregnancy. The idea that only women/female people can get pregnant is cissexist/transphobia, and makes it hard for these folks to gain access to necessary healthcare resources, services, and support
It is also vital to not minimize/dismiss trans men’s criticisms of Mpreg media and the deep fetishization and dehumanization that trope and its fanwork community spreads. This normalizes and entrenches cissexism/transphobia not just in fandom, but elsewhere, as we as humans do not compartmentalize our bigotry. It infects our perspectives across contexts.
