LGBTQ+ HORROR MONTH: ​THE STRUGGLE: WRITING TRANSGENDER REPRESENTATION BY DIE BOOTH

 
As an author and fan of horror, and a transgender man, representation is hard to find. On the rare occasions that there is a trans masculine character in a horror story, the narrative often still falls foul of certain tropes that I find personally very alienating. See, for example, me lasting all of twenty minutes into the Netflix remake of Sabrina the Teenage Witch that everyone seemed to love so much. A gender non-conforming character? Brilliant! And then, as is so often the case, that character is portrayed as being bullied for their gender identity, and the white, cis, heterosexual heroine steps in to save them.

This is the biggest problem I see in current representation of trans characters. Whilst we may be slowly moving on from the days when any trans women (because it was always women) existed solely as punchlines, dramatic revelations, deceitful seductresses, or pitiful victims to be rescued by a cis character, we still have a way to go. Even the most well-meaning and inclusive narratives (often own-voices work too) tend to focus on what I call The Struggle. That is, they focus on trans characters dealing with angst, prejudice, and the hardships of transitioning, rather than presenting trans characters incidentally in a story that has nothing to do with their gender identity. A lot of stories still read like a manifesto or a trans 101, and seem to take excessive pains to explain the experiences of being trans, or what it means to be trans - suggesting that they're aimed at a cis readership. I'm not sure fiction is always the place to try and educate non-trans readers. Especially not at the expense of a trans readership who need representation and (speaking for myself) would like characters they can relate to on levels other than merely transitioning or hardship.
 
This issue of representation is still something I’m struggling (pardon the pun) to work out how to handle myself.

I’m currently working on a book of short horror stories that each has a trans protagonist. Even as a trans person myself, I’m giving a lot of thought to trying to ‘get it right’. There is a wide spectrum of trans identity (not always binary), and every trans experience is different, because every human experience is different. I’m trying to create believable, individual characters, across the variation in plot and character that short stories afford. And, more crucially, I am trying to ensure that each of these characters are defined by more than merely their gender, across the gamut of roles – heroes, villains, victims and saviours – that I’m writing. In short, I’m writing incidental trans characters.

This in itself is proving a bit of a tightrope to walk. I need to show that my characters are trans, because representation necessitates visibility. However, I don’t want to do this clumsily, or to make the narrative about The Struggle. Because I write horror, there are other elements at play, too. I often worry that some of my stories will come across a bit ‘kill your gays’ – because, let’s face it, an awful lot of protagonists don’t end very well in horror stories! However, the main point is that if these characters were cisgender then they’d be part of the same stories and very probably end up exactly the same way.

Even in horror, I’m a firm believer in life imitating art, and the more incidental trans characters who are written into every type of story, the more ‘de sensationalised’ the trans narrative will hopefully become, and the more accepted and integrated trans people will become in real life.
 
In short, I am writing the characters that I want to read, in the genre that I want to read. I can only encourage other writers to do the same, and for readers of every identity to give trans writers a chance and read their work.

FOR MORE INFO ON DIE BOOTH AND TO PURCHASE THEIR BOOKS PLEASE FOLLOW THE LINKS BELOW 

Website: https://diebooth.wordpress.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dieboothauthor/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/diebooth ( @diebooth )
Sales page (Lulu): http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/diebooth
List of publications and sales links: https://diebooth.wordpress.com/writing/