Today you get a guest column, courtesy of the fantastic Hannah Dame. You are probably already familiar with Hannah as the producer of Girl-Wonder.org’s podcast, Four Color Heroines. You can also learn more about Hannah from today’s Meet The Board interview, up here.
Avid comics readers know how to recognize a good book: it engrosses you and interests you, teasing you along and challenging you to figure out the answers it is hiding before it gives them away. And the end is still satisfying even if it wasn’t the outcome you’d have preferred.
Until you get the answers in the last way you expected, ruining any possible enjoyment you had previously gotten from the work.
Looking at this situation, it could be describing that one fight between Superman and Batman, wherein even prep time couldn’t save Batman from being hurled into the sun at Mach 3.
Or it could be describing the moment for any minority reader when they find out their paper mirrors may not be as durable or reflective as they thought.
In this case, I’ll be considering this moment from the perspective of a trans reader. This column breaks down into three sections: first, to set the stage, an examination of the two archetypes for presentation of gender transgressive characters; a consideration of the climax of the trans narrative and its problems, relative to the breakdown of the trans reader’s paper mirror; and an example of this problem in a comic, American Virgin.
In narrative, there are two types of gender transgressive characters, broken down by general characteristics: magical, or genitally gender transgressive, and realistic, or socially gender transgressive. Before going further, as with any other archetype, it’s important to note that neither of these constructions is true all the time for any given story involving genital change or gender transition; many of the best stories are ones that defy such simple breakdowns.
Magical genital change stories are by far the most common. In them, a character somehow magically finds their body with genitals and attendant secondary sex characteristics such as build and musculature which do not match their identified gender. The character is then forced to undergo the ‘trial’ of presenting as another gender. Throughout, they tend to react by superficially accepting the social connotations of their new genitals and present the gender they are ‘supposed to be’ in culturally stereotypical ways. And more often than not, hilarity ensues.
And that hilarity stems from the fact magical genital change stories tell the experience of a cisgendered person’s gender identity being forcibly violated. But it is a violation readers sympathize with, because the character does not (at least initially) want the change. Magical genital change excuses the character from the social realities of gender transition and thus excuses their gender transgression, often making it impossible for a trans reader to see themselves in the character. Realistic representations of a transperson’s emotional experience may appear as a character develops, but often by that point it is too late for the trans reader.
Magical genital change when the character identifies as trans places a trans reader, who would presumably identify with the trans character, in a difficult position. After all, said trans character is having their body match their mind without trauma, without pain, without realism. It is that lack of realism which makes a magically transitioned trans character nothing more than a mirror of impossibility for the trans reader.
Realistic trans stories, by contrast, provide not only a touchstone for a trans reader, but representations of their actual life. Realistic trans characters go through and are affected by the process of physical and mental transition, with all of its attendant pains, anxieties, and problems. Whereas a magically transformed character may find themselves a social and gender outcast not of their own will, realistic trans characters willfully socially transgress by presenting as a gender which they were not assigned at birth.
Realistic trans characters appear by and large in transition narratives. Like other similar minority-owned narratives (ex. the coming out story), the transition narrative is the only story structure wholly unique to trans individuals, and the only one wherein realistic trans characters can exist without the reader fearing they will turn evil, vanish into invisibility, or be killed off.
Compared to magical genital change, realistic trans characters often have less problematic elements because they are reflecting real-life. No representation is flawless, however. Realistic characters can sometimes run a fine line between the standards of gender presentation and performance of drag performance and transpeople, confusing and conflating the two.
Drag, at its best, creatively challenges, questions, or remakes established gender norms; at its worst, it is ‘drag clowning,’ turning trans people into foppish parodies for the amusement of the privileged. Also, drag performers are, well, performers. They often wish to be showy, noticeable. Passing as their presented gender is less important than publicly and openly challenging the existing gender norms.
For the trans individual, passing as their preferred gender is not an act of challenge but a part of daily life, regardless of whether they are open about their birth gender. Their presentation in and response to any given situation is an act of personal choice, not an essential characteristic of their persona.
Key to both archetypes is the ‘moment of genital reveal,’ more colloquially (and facetiously) known as the ‘oh my god, it’s a tranny!’ moment. In magical change stories it comes early, often soon after the change has occurred. For the first time, the character is forced to experience a violation of self in front of others. Whether or not nakedness is involved in this violation will vary from story to story; sometimes, just the existence of breasts underneath clothing on a former penis owner is enough.
It is far more complex in the realistic trans character’s story. It’s the moment of accepted deception, wherein the trans person reveals that they have been ‘deceiving’ the audience all along as to their ‘true’ nature. Unfortunately, it seems in most stories that a slip of the tongue and using a ‘wrong’ gender name or pronoun just doesn’t have the same impact as full-on, naked genitalia.
The nakedness is an essential element, since the transperson is ‘hiding’ something underneath their clothing. In stripping off the transperson’s clothing, one strips off their chosen gender and reduces them to their biology. And in violating the trans character, the trans reader is themselves violated. If the reader cannot find an image of transpeople in media that does not even a little bit reinforce the ultimate supremacy of physical biology over mental well-being, how can they expect to ever fully achieve their own well-being?
Now, to move beyond the archetypal to an example of ‘transpeople: ur doin it wrong.’ In Steven Seagle and Becky Cloonan’s American Virgin, Mel is an Australian mercenary who helps the main character, Adam, seek revenge on his girlfriend’s killers. He gradually gets more involved with Adam’s family, eventually dating Adam’s sister Cyndi.
The reader only gets a single hint to Mel’s transness, a throwaway line from a past lover. Until the time to get intimate comes, and the reveal clumsily lumbers across the page: big naked boobs bound with bandages, one nipple hanging out awkwardly.
Mel’s moment of reveal was, for a trans reader like me, a slap in the face. I’m supposed to believe this is a realistic transman who passes for both characters and readers while binding his breasts in such a sloppy, unsafe, and unrealistic manner? And given Mel’s constant, conspicuous stubble, one can safely assume he’s been on testosterone for a fairly notable amount of time, but I, the reader, am also to believe he has not yet even had a partial mastectomy?
After so much refreshing, unsensationalized realism, the reader of American Virgin gets a poorly done moment of shock value that retreads the single greatest problem with the depiction of trans characters, if I may make such an assertion, with clueless abandon.
Insult added to injury, Mel is one of the few major transmen in comics, which have by and large tended to prominently feature transwomen. Before the big boob flash, Mel was an admirable portrayal, which eschewed emphasizing the genital self over the preferred gender identity in action and art. One could even argue Seagle included references only someone familiar with the process of transition would get (In example: Mel also makes a joke about ‘Thailand? Best damn week of my life was in Thailand.’ (#17, p. 7) Though this appears on the surface a casual joke, many trans individuals must go abroad, often to Thailand, for surgery).
I won’t say all the good of Mel is erased by the reveal; Mel is still overall a good, non-stereotypical portrayal of a transperson. But I haven’t been able to find a copy of the final volume of American Virgin locally to purchase, and I’m not sure it’s worth it. About three-fourths of the way through reading the series, I mentioned to a friend that I was working on American Virgin and asked if he had read the series. Though he said he’d read parts of the first seven issues, he’d never picked the series up because (paraphrased), ‘I know people who talk like [Adam]. I don’t need to read the story of my life.’ (Adam is given to thoughtlessly passing judgment on the sexuality and sexual practices of other cultures from a position of privilege and can condescend to non-Christians.)
As a trans person who also grew up and lives among ‘people who talk like [Adam],’ I know all about the resistance to acceptance, the negativity, and assumption of deception Mel faced. And I live the life of a transperson who consumes media, wherein transpeople are reduced to their barest elements.
And that is, by far, the biggest hurdle for transpeople in comics and all media: moving characters and plotlines beyond the easy archetypal cues writers and artists are comfortable with. It’s about getting beyond the boob on the page and reaching the core of the boob owner, be they male or female. It’s not about the genitals but the person.
- Commenting on GRC Guest Columns: A Guide.
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