Quote Originally Posted by jinjitsu View Post
I think this has illustrated for me what my issue is with how representation, especially trans representation, is often handled in well-meaning "woke" works.

If a character is trans and being trans is a thing that makes their life complicated in some way, then I understand it being part of their identity; after all, the whole reason there's such attention paid to identity in the real world is that having a marginal identity makes one's life complicated, to put it comically lightly.

But if transition is simple, uncomplicated, and easy to access, and nobody in the setting views trans people as being any different from cis people, then it feels kind of weird to have it called out. Instead of the intended message of, "this character is a woman regardless of what people have thought about her in the past or want to think about her now" - which IME tends to be the desired view that real-life trans women want others to have of them - to feeling more like, "this character is basically a woman, but like... she's not totally a woman, to enough of a degree that I feel it necessary to point out that she's different from cis women."

I dunno, feels iffy to me, but I'm cis; take my views with a whole cellar of salt and ignore them if a trans person says I'm wrong.
Firstly; remember there are nonbinary folk, who can't simply disappear via medical transition either way. ;)

Secondly, being trans is more than a medical procedure. Every trans person has to think carefully about their gender identity and what makes them feel comfortable (far from an end point, medical intervention is just an event in a process that may never end).

Trans women are women, cis women are women. If the status as cis or trans of either group is irrelevant, you'd just say "woman". If a trans woman and a cis woman drove to the supermarket, bought some groceries, and went home, then "the two women went to the store to buy food" is all the info you need. Much in the same way you wouldn't need to throw in any other traits of the two women (you could use cis and trans to distinguish them, I guess, but that wouldn't tell you much).

I've told this story here before, but in a recent D&D game, the DM OK'd a trans character. I mentioned this to a friend, and she said "why wouldn't you just play a cis woman?". On the basis of why I'd want problems from my own life in the game. Thing is (aside from the fact the DM promised not to make transphobia a significant thing), this came from a (well meaning) assumption that the ideal of womanhood is cis womanhood, and that's what I aspire to. Why wouldn't I want to be represented in a literal representation of myself in the campaign setting? While my womanhood will always be different to that of a cis woman, there are many different ways woman are women (and men are men, and ways people twist, bent, or break the gender binary), and mind is just as good as the rest without being invalidated.

The same applies to representation in media. You could certainly create a setting where trans people are moot (whether or not that's realistic), but if your aim is to represent the experiences of trans people positively (that is to say, trans representation), you need to try harder.