Trans guy here, just to chime in in the flower situation. Tbh I do think the way the nursery is structured is transphobic but I don't really there is much of a problem with it in a story sense.
Not all worldbuilding has to or should be fair, injustices like this give characters motivations and struggles they have to overcome.
I remember you saying something on the lines of the simple mention of a "he" pronoun stressing out the queens and as someone who has been denied healthcare before "so as to not make the women in the clinic nervous" my heart went out to the trans tom stuck in the nursery as everyone dances around his existence and presence there.
For a society doesn't care too much about gender and is culturally asexual, the nursery is the one place were a sex binary is enforced and upheld and I think that's kinda cool. I'm not someone who cares much for the "no social issues here, everything is perfect :)" stories, they seem either disingenuous or immature to me, and this worldbuilding has been very evocative for me to think of diferent trans cats and their struggles and tbh that's a win for me!
Very glad to hear from an actual trans person on this particular topic! Thank you for adding your thoughts to the conversation.
Lynx had a very good post back a while discussing the notion of removing societal issues in a Clan setting that could be deemed "problematic" in the name of inclusiveness. I'm inclined to agree with you and that post - if for nothing else, because having an unfair system like that is good fodder for a story. In this case, I was going with the notion of a humanish society ran by animals who are still animals, so the nursery became a contentious place in that regard. I can't say too much on it for...future reasons...but it IS relevant to the story.
For the record, to those doubtful few: I do not agree with the cats' cultural decisions (the nursery OR their bias against outsiders), but I understand where they're coming from. I try to instill that feeling in readers as well, to...varying degrees of success. It's a lot easier to ingest something a society or character does when you get why they think they way they do.
Genetics ask! I know that male torties/torbies are very rare and caused by a genetic mutation, but with those who do exist, are there any prerequisites with their parents? I’m assuming they’d have to carry the red gene since tortoiseshell is one red, one not-red, but I barely know anything. And based on this, is it better to just headcanon cats like Redtail as biologically female?
alright! hello, anon.
since i had to do more research than usual for this one, reminder that:
i am not an expert. i can and will be wrong. you can find my self-corrections under #corrections, but those are only things i or others have noticed, and that i've had the time to write a correction to and explain.
disclaimers out of the way, let's talk about tortie toms. (and torbie toms, and calico toms, it's all the same deal.)
if you know how ginger works, you can skip the next few paragraphs.
orange (ginger, red, etc.) is sex-linked in cats. what this means is that the gene that causes orange cats is on the x chromosome. it is also codominant, which means that having an orange x chromosome (Xo) and a non-orange x chromosome (X) is not black or orange, but both.
basically:
X or XX: black
Xo or XoXo: orange
XXo: tortoiseshell
yeah?
now, for the rest of this post, i'm going to be writing O and o instead of Xo and X because it's one less character and i don't run the risk of putting three x chromosomes together.
okay. so because torties need two x chromosomes, they're typically female. the way tortie itself works is basically, cells activate one of the genes (O or o) at random, creating patches. so you need two copies.
wikipedia says about a third of male torties have klinefelter's, which is the XXY karyotype. while this does have physical changes associated with it, the only way to confirm (humans have) klinefelter's is to test it genetically.
luckily, cats are very helpful about demonstrating it. what with them being tortie and all.
(we're also lumping in the variations of klinefelter's here. you can get XXYY, etc., and they all fit into the same broad idea.)
anyway, the extra x chromosome can come from either the mother or the father. this makes tortie toms...not quite easier, since the prereqs are the same, but y'know. if mom is Oo, dad doesn't matter. if mom is OO, dad has to be o, and if mom is oo, dad has to be O. same rules as usual.
XXY toms are going to be...not sterile, but pretty infertile. using human stats, about 50% can produce sperm, although the likelihood of them having kits is still low. humans with klinefelter's are also taller than average, so keep that in mind.
again, and this might be a correction on my part, i can't remember, but tortie toms aren't strictly going to be visibly different than other toms.
okay, so most people stop at klinefelter's, but there are two other ways to get tortie toms: mosiacism and chimerism. these are often confused/combined, but because i strive for generally being accurate, i'll go over them both.
mosaic cats carry multiple genetic lines, because of a mutation. this can either be somatic (happens in the body, is not hereditary), or germline (happens in reproductive cells of parents, is hereditary).
this is not always a gain of a line, you can lose a chromosome as well. the difference between somatic and germline and how it affects torties goes over my head, so i'm not going to speak to it, other than i'm pretty sure we're talking about somatic mosaicism. i think. again, not a biologist or geneticist, just a hobbyist with an internet connection.
right, so what happens is basically, some cells lose their extra x chromosome, giving you a cat with karyotype XXY/XY. these cats are more likely to be fertile and generally have less effects of klinefelter's. i'm not entirely sure how this affects tortie presentation, if at all, but it does happen.
i suppose you could also have some kind of mutation that gives you an extra x spontaneously, but that would be unlikely to cause torties, because it would also have to mutate into the other O allele.
again, i really want to stress that while i'm not bullshitting, i'm also not speaking definitively here.
last up is chimerism, where two embryos fuse in the womb, creating mixed genes.
i'm using a picture of a dog, here, because this is what goes through my head when i think of chimeras. you'll have to take my word for it, but while this would be a normal tortie cat, it can't really happen in dogs without some kind of mutation. and chimerism, given the extent of the patching, is pretty likely.
right! chimera torties are going to be, afaik, normal levels of fertile, although it's likely that they can pass on either black or red, not both.
(while i'm here, before we move on, there are a lot of types of chimeras. this type is called tetragametic chimerism, and it's rare in humans but more common in other animals. it's hard to know how common it is, because the differences are often very subtle, and hard to test. it's also not mutually exclusive with mosaics or klinefelter's, just to really muddy the waters.)
i don't have statistics for how common mosaics and chimeras are, and there's always, "a different type of mutation that doesn't fall into this category"
for mosaics and chimeras, the rules for inheritance seem to be the same as for klinefelter's. there's the added note that, because there can be multiple sires within one litter, a ginger queen could have kits with a ginger tom, and get a tortie son, as long as she also...ahem...with a black(/brown, etc.) tom. (or vice versa, with all brown and a ginger.)
okay! so that's basically how it happens.
as for the second part of this question, well. "is it better?" is a matter of opinion. i don't think anyone is wrong for having tortie toms. i don't care. (a) it is possible, and (b) we're all just having fun.
i, personally, do not think redtail is karyotype XX, because i like him being sandstorm's father with brindleface. idk. i like brindleface. yes, i know this raises huge genetic problems, and it's not very canon. i don't really care. i read that redtail fic where he thinks about sand&brindle as he's dying and it hasn't left me.
that said, i'm still a sucker for trans redtail. love it. idk, this is kind of hard to explain. like? it's not my headcanon, but i still appreciate it.
anyway! to the point: if you care about statistics and likelihoods and how many tortie toms you've had in the clan, yes, you're probably better off saving your chromosome anomalies for when they need to have kits, and using XX karyotype for the rest.
(under the cut: matthew rambles about trans cats and gender identity for a while)
i'm pretty sure cats don't have the western concept of gender. i don't think they have a human concept of gender, either, but at some point i need to be able to pin down something, and i think a third/fourth gender is closer to what they have.
i've been thinking about this a lot lately, because i decided i wasn't satisfied with my old approach to trans cats. i can do better than that. i decided cats don't have gendered pronouns, so why should the solution be, "trans cats don't really get to do anything about it"
no. i am dissatisfied with that.
at the same time, for specific reasons: i also don't think cats are trans in the western sense of the word.
because if for nothing else, remember that cat sexual dimorphism has a bigger effect on their life than in humans.
like, queens are going to be uncomfortable around male cats they don't hella trust and their kits. that doesn't go away if said male cat isn't a tom. y'know?
i'm in a constant state of tweaks with this, because i basically: form opinion, test opinion, refine opinion. my initial opinion was too harsh. and!
part of what's changed is i decided i wanted fernsong to be able to raise his kits in the nursery instead of ivypool. so i had to adjust how i think the nursery and queens work, slightly, to permit for that. now, i can turn back to gender and think about it some more.
i'm not going to coin any new terms, because i'm not in that kind of mood, but i think there is some idea of a female cat who is not a she-cat. i don't think the cats would call them a tom, but i'm not sure what they would say or how they would describe it.
i think they would just, on some level, get it.
actually okay you know what! i do need some lingo here. queens = cats who are raising kits in the nursery. she-cats = XX karyotype, considers self female (cis, if you will). toms = XY karyotype, considers self male (cis, again). and uh...we'll go with...
god i hate. i don't want anything i say in this ramble to be considered "words i am going to now use consistently" because i literally just need some way to describe this for my own sanity. with that in mind, let us use molly for XY karyotype, but not a tom, and...how about gib for XX karyotype, not a she-cat.
again, i don't want that to be considered permanent, i'm just fishing at words people use to describe cats so i can have something to work with.
right so, i don't think cats think gib and tom are equivalent, but i also don't think they (as a society) care about that.
like, okay, let's say redtail is XX, but not a she-cat. there's nothing to really be done (heck, if he wants to be a queen, that's still fine), cats don't have gendered pronouns or names, but at the same time, there's an intuitive understanding of what that means.
this kind of ties into the matriarchy, kind of? like, hm, queens are an important part of the matriarchy, but at the same time, she-cats inherit family lines. not that cats inherit much, but still.
i'm getting very abstract here. take, uh, like let's say a hypothetical trans mothwing. i think a lot of people have that headcanon?
and i think, like, mothwing would not be considered a tom. if cats had a concept of sexuality, leafpool would not be straight, because she likes mothwing, and mothwing is not a tom.
but! i would still think willowshine probably is the first line for nursery visits, at least when the kits are very young.
and i don't think anyone there would be unhappy with that deal.
right. i just kept rambling for a while, because i've been thinking about this and obviously it's semi-tied to the question.
tl/dr: cats don't care about gender, because they are cats meowing at each other in the woods. if a cat says they're not agab, everyone is just cool with that.
Hello! I was searching for some trans warrior cats post on Google when I saw your account, I would really like some advice for handling a trans warrior cats character I'm writing in my AU.
He presents as a she cat at the beginning but later on comes out as trans, I was wondering about how should I approach the transition itself. The first ideas I had are: for him to do vocal exercises with the medicine cat which will help lower his voice (that is one of his main insecurities) , his clan mates will switch to male pronouns and he will get extra food so he could grow larger and more masculine looking (Cats that have a stable diet while they're growing are going to be bigger and stronger) along with herbs that are supposed to stop/repress ovulation in she cats (I'm not that great at biology but I think that would also affect his hormone levels)
Do you have any other ideas?
PS: Thank you for your help and time!
Hello there! Thank you for writing in, but I’m sorry, this blog is not here to provide this kind of help. If you look in the tag here, I’ve done what I can in the past and I hope some of it is useful to you, but as I’ve said before, I’m not looking to talk more on the topic. It’s not wrong to want to write about trans characters, so you’re not in trouble for asking or anything, but I’m not comfortable being consulted for this information.
In fact, if I’m totally and maybe a little brutally honest with you, I think that if you’re at the stage of writing about a complex and highly personal experience where you’re asking random strangers on the internet for advice, you’ve probably got a little way longer to go before you’re ready to actually write about the topic and I’m sorry if that’s difficult to hear. My guess is that you’re probably not transgender yourself, because otherwise why would you be asking me about it? Surely you know your experience better.
I don’t think that means you can’t write about this topic eventually and I think there is genuinely a good intention in trying to seek out information, but please consider the sources from which you’re seeking this information. There are literally books (both fiction and nonfiction) written by transgender people and I feel like reading work by those people--i.e., the people who have first-hand experience--is a great place to begin learning about how to write on this topic.
I know you’re coming to my blog because it’s about Warriors and you’re looking to write about a transgender cat, but I think before you can try to transpose this concept onto the world of Warriors, you need to really learn about the concept itself in detail from a variety of sources and then you can focus in on how it might be interpreted in a different context--i.e., in cats.
For example, you’ve mentioned “male pronouns”--but actually there’s no such thing as male pronouns. He/him is traditionally assigned to men, but there’s a lot of lesbians who also use those pronouns. There’s nonbinary people. There’s a lot of transgender women who haven’t come out. I understand what you mean to say when you say that, but pronouns are actually just one aspect of identity and performance of self and they’re as fluid and open to interpretation as the rest.
It’s all constructs and I personally think if you want to write in a space that is actively discussing gender and what gender is and what gender can be and the kind of inherent boundary-breaking and remaking and reworking that comes with that territory, it’s worth really sitting down and thinking about these things and being careful with how you actually want to position your character and story and the language you use, etc. etc., and again, I think if you’re asking me for guidance, there’s probably a chance you’re not quite there yet.
I want to mention as well that “coming out” stories in general are greatly over-represented when it comes to ‘queer’ stories by non-queer writers in mainstream media. You’re writing fanfiction for fun and that’s allowed and okay, but it does seem that the story you’re looking to tell is ultimately about this character coming out. You’ve focused a ton on the transition aspects of this character and if I’m totally honest with you, that strikes me as maybe not a great move, since it’s a very cis approach to writing about transgender characters to fixate on the “process” (often with an invasive, objectifying kind of lens). I’m not saying that your intention or necessarily what your story would be, but I do feel it’s worth pointing out so that you can be sure to avoid it.
Also, as a side note that might interest you, cat voices don’t actually work like human voices. In human sexual dimorphism, testosterone levels rising in puberty result in a low voice--but cats don’t experience this in real life! Male cats don’t have lower voices than female cats, and the spectrum of “normal” cat voices can span from the very high to the quite low and gravelly regardless of the cat’s sex. To offer an anecdote, I have a skinny old Siamese who has an extremely deep yowl (which his mother also had) and a fluffy ginger cat with a very high, squeaky chirp, and they’re both male and desexed. So basically what I’m saying is transposing human experience onto cats (or frankly any animal) in this instance might be less straightforward than you’d expect, depending on how many cat characteristics versus human characteristics you want to include.
Anyway tl;dr: I strongly recommend undertaking genuine research into lived transgender experience as written by transgender people before attempting to tackle any kind of story like this. You’re welcome to look through the tag I’ve got on this blog for ideas on adapting that research to a Warriors context when the time comes but I really have to stress that this is a topic that requires effort, humility, and a willingness to both learn and acknowledge the limitations of your own perspective as a writer. I’m sorry if that’s not the feedback you wanted to hear, but I can’t in good conscience not say it.
hello! first off, best wishes with your hospital stay!! secondly, I recall reading a post by you about trans cats where one cat offered to announce something about their pronouns and such at the next gathering. do you think leaders would announce this? is there a specific way they would word it?
Thank you for the well wishes! It’s nice to be back on my feet and getting on with life. As for your question, I don’t remember ever saying anything anything about pronouns at gatherings, so you might be thinking of someone else? (The tag that’s been used in the past for similar questions is here, by the way). But I can still answer this question!
Firstly, I personally feel like it wouldn’t be a big deal to change pronouns within clan life, considering that it’s an in-built and valued part of their culture to change names multiple times throughout life. I also think it is mostly up to you as to how your clans handle it re: telling clan-mates and telling the other clans, and I don’t necessarily think one method is superior to another. If you really want a cat to be given the opportunity to step up and tell everyone, I don’t think that’s wrong.
That said, I would probably be inclined to put it as the leader’s responsibility to address both the clan and the other clans at the gathering, because I personally find that method to carry more authority and because it imitates in many ways the leader’s role of introducing new cats to the clan, as well as conducting apprentice and warrior ceremonies, which is something that the leader already has a script for.
As far as specific wording, I think you (again) have a lot of wiggle room, but I would generally expect a leader to step up and first address the attending crowd and then introduce the cat by modelling the use of new pronouns. So something along the lines of, “Cats of the clan, I gather you to witness your clan-mate as [correct updated pronoun] receives the renewed blessing of Starclan. [name of cat], step forward, and take your place among your clan-mates once again,” would be overall a satisfactory way to approach the matter--although of course the individual words and the rite can be bent in whatever way you want.
Perhaps the cat is expected to sit a new vigil afterwards, or beforehand, or maybe they’re not! Perhaps the rite is less spiritual, so rather than invoking Starclan and inviting a blessing from the ancestors, the leader calls upon the clan themselves to call out the warrior’s name, much like they do for a warrior ceremony. I think for the most part you can flavour this in whatever way makes the most sense for your clan’s belief system and worldview, based on the kind of world-building approach you’ve done.
As for gatherings, I think it would have a lot less flourish and would be more practical, included in with the acknowledgements of new apprentices and warriors. Something as simple as, “Our clan has two new warriors [name and name] and we also announce [name of cat], who has sat [cat’s pronoun] vigil,” would be plenty, I think.
My advice, from a writing perspective, is that it is best for a leader (or anyone announcing this information) to model its use rather than identify its use--i.e., the difference between “this is X, she is my friend,” and “X uses she/her pronouns.” This is for several reasons, but primarily from a fiction standpoint of the word “pronouns” (or similar) is very likely to send your reader into a spiral wondering if cats have grammar and that can take them out of the world you’ve put so much effort into crafting. Likewise, saying “she is my friend” is a lot less clunky than “please refer to her as she” (or a variation thereof) and while there may be times when the latter works for your story and characters, the former is a more natural-sounding piece of dialogue.
From a respect-for-people standpoint, modelling good use is typically the best option, because it teaches everyone else what’s correct to do as far as referring to the person (which is important for people of authority to do, as they often set the standard) and because it acknowledges the new pronouns as correct and mandatory, rather than as optional or “preferred.” I hope this helps!
