Up until very recently, trans characters basically served, essentially, two purposes – to be the butt of jokes, and to be the mentally unhinged foil of the cis protagonist. The manga series “One Piece”, the most popular Japanese comic book of all time, depicted a character who finds himself stuck on an island populated nothing but trans women. His presence on the island as the single cis male, naturally, causes all of the women to cease their everyday life and start pursuing him relentlessly in order to, in no uncertain terms, sexually assault him. This backstory is used as the explanation for the character’s newfound ability to run on air, which he needed to learn and master in order to get away from them crazy trans people. In the undeniably wonderful “Silence of the Lambs”, the villain is a man in the process of transitioning into a woman… By killing women, skinning them and wearing their skin. Obviously, if he’s trans, he’s also a psychopath.
But recently, the audience’s values changed, and naturally, so did art. More positive portrayals of trans characters, like Nomi from “Sense8” and Lili from “The Danish Girl”, started to become prevalent. Some pieces of media thoroughly explore the nature of being trans, as well as the struggles that a trans man or woman meets in their daily lives, while others simply throw a trans character in there somewhere and don’t acknowledge that in any way. Ned, a character in “Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate” is a trans male – the first for the long-lasting series. In one of the endings of “Catherine” it’s revealed that Erica, a server at the bar where the main character goes every evening and part of his group of friends, used to be a male in high school. And in the game “Dream Daddy”, where the main character can choose to date a large assortment of dads, one of those dads, Damien, was confirmed to be trans by the developers.
But the thing is, in a lot of these examples, the characters being trans is either only hinted at or not shown at all in the source material. These characters merely ARE trans, without that fact contributing to the plot or narrative in any way, just like in real life some people can just be trans without making this their entire identity. But at the same time, it’s undeniable that being trans is at least SOME part of one’s identity, however small, and is refusing to acknowledge it robbing the character of a part of themselves? One could go through the entirety of “Dream Daddy” and not once spot even a hint of the fact that Damien isn’t cis, not even if you choose to engage in a very intimate relationship with him. So isn’t that a bit disrespectful towards him? What’s the point of representation if nothing is actually represented? If tomorrow Harrison Ford said that Han Solo was born as a girl, would that even change a thing about the character or “Star Wars” in general, and more importantly, should it?
The answer is complicated, as it often is with these things, but in my belief, it largely depends on asking one very important question: Would the work’s narrative and immersion suffer if a character’s transition is revealed to the audience? If the answer is yes, then the transition should be narrated in some way. The show “Two and a Half Men” has featured several trans characters, like one of Alan’s girlfriends who was a recurring character, or one of Charlie’s ex-hookups that had since transitioned into a man. Without the trans context, these episodes simply wouldn’t work at all – for example, the latter case would just be about Charlie meeting up an old friend, and that’s not particularly exciting nor offer as many comedic possibilities. The idea that Charlie – a sexist sleaze whose whole life is dedicated to being a womanizer – needs to deal with the idea that one of his former one-night stands actually identifies as a male is far funnier than if they had simply created a character who was wacky or crazy in some way. Presented like this, the joke falls on Charlie and not on his friend. On the other end of the spectrum there’s the aforementioned “Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate”, which takes place in Victorian London – a time and place where trans folk weren’t exactly accepted, and many found themselves forced to live in the closet out of fear of imprisonment in an insane asylum. The fact that not a single person acknowledges the fact that Ned is biologically female, not even in passing or to be shut down by him, is extremely weird for a series that prides itself on historical accuracy, and could take quite a lot of players out of the experience.
