Hmm. I think this is a bit ignorant of him, definitely disrespectful but I think it would be up to the son whether it's homophobic or not. Mainly, I think it's ignorant because it's obviously very important to the son, and coming out in a heteronormative society is a big deal when it feels like it is. I think the specifics other than that depend on what is said and how, and how it all falls out from there. I think it also says a lot about a character that they prioritize their boss in this circumstance and assume that their boss would not understand.

(Also, I don't think all boss phone calls are equal? Like if it's a regular thing about a schedule change it's got a different vibe than if someone were in a performance review, or if someone were talking about budget cuts where someone might end up getting fired.)

Whether writing this is homophobic? I think you're totally fine to write this scene. It's definitely a thing that happens with some people unfortunately. As long as you make sure the audience knows that you as a writer are on the same page about it being unsupportive, it should be fine.

mod nat

I agree with the criticism you've received, personally.

The fact that you as an author are using these pronouns for the character when communicating to me, does feel indicative of a larger problem. You describe this character as being "in denial" yet still seem to want to say that the character identifies as a boy. These are two somewhat different ways of relating to a past. There are many trans people who will say things like, "when I was a boy" etc, but generally they do not necessarily see those periods as being in denial, so much as a genuine identification with that gender at the time. Many people also have fluid identities, or may be a trans woman who just happens to like the way he/him sounds, or maybe just doesn't care about pronouns. But the way that you are going about this doesn't really read to me like it's aligning with an intention to understand and represent an authentic trans experience. You are an author with the omniscient level of understanding of your story and characters, and it feels gross to not use that to respect a trans character's identity as you know it. It seems weird that you would want to rep this like self-discovery of an identity that was felt the whole time, but still want to rep this like a fluidity approach where you're referring to the character as though you yourself are another character in this story. Also, the egg experience sometimes includes signs. Sometimes it doesn't, but sometimes it does.

If it is your specific trans experience, as an openly trans author, to experience this simultaneous fluidity and also having identified a given way all along without realizing it, that is a different matter. You'd be writing from your own experience, and the readers would know that you were being authentic and not just looking for an excuse to misgender a character.

When writing about trans characters before they are out, you need to understand and respect your trans audience members, and the way you write your trans characters will be something that some people will go back and re-read and maybe have to process their feelings about.

What might writing this (a character coming out partway through a story) look like? Maybe it's having the story written in the distant past, or through flashbacks. What kind of narration are you using? Third person? Whose point of view? Is this a major character, or a minor character mentioned a couple times? Is there a way to make information clear to the audience and utilize dramatic irony?

Also, WHY does this need to be framed as a surprise or plot twist? What indicators are you having of the character being in egg mode (if applicable)? How are you handling this character with care and seeking to represent trans people as we feel represented by?

I Wish You All The Best by Mason Deaver did a great job of showing the first scene as being the point where a traumatic coming out had already happened, and the audience read what happened in the coming chapters. This is also a great way to frame coming out to the audience.

Think about it this way: if someone puts down your book and talks about the character, they need to be gendered correctly by that audience. You as an author are already being really weird about that. (I'm open to other trans followers feeling differently about this and sharing their thoughts in the replies/reblogs.)

We also have a whole Closeted Characters tag, a Coming Out: To The Reader Tag, among others.

This post also includes us (ScriptLGBT) asking trans folks their feelings on the topic of writing trans characters before they are out.

Just personally, I feel really weird about the way you're writing this and talking about this and I think you're punching above your weight class in terms of trying to represent this specific kind of trans experience. I would either just not do it this way, or heavily change what you're doing.

The books of Tess of the Road by Rachel Hartman (I believe In The Serpent's Wake had this part) include a character called Spira, who is intersex and who uses they/them until the end of one of the books where Spira is offered the chance to try on other pronouns, where Spira opts to try on she/her as an experiment. The POV (from what I can recall) was third person limited, with a bit of a revolving point of view, and this scene is told through a different character's point of view. The narration changes at this point, but I feel like that's done really well because it's seen as just kind of a surface level trying-on-as-an-experiment thing, and that they/them were also very much accurate pronouns, and she/her isn't necessarily representative of womanhood, so much as pronouns themselves.

Honestly I may need to percolate on this one a bit more, but these are all my initial impressions of your approach as a trans person.

mod nat

As a bi polyamorous person, I think the idea that polyamory is some kind of stereotype, or bisexuality is some kind of stereotype, inherently is someone pigeonholing those identities in a harmful way. It sounds like whoever made that post thinks that polyamory implies greed, when it doesn't. It's just a relationship format. It works for some people and for others it doesn't.

There are so many real life people that will probably feel represented by this kind of work. There also already is some representation with mspec (bi/pan/otherwise multiple-gender-attracted people) polyamory out there and they write it pretty well. Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao is one great example of this I think. Really Cute People by Markus Harwood-Jones is another example of a queer triad of everyone being mspec.

Basically, I wouldn't worry about it. Some people who have misunderstandings about polyamory or bisexuality may feel weird about it, but I think that stems from their own ignorance. Neither of those things make someone greedy or entitled. Polyamory is not being careless with other people's hearts, it's not being entitled, etc. (Though there are people who call themselves polyamorous who haven't done much inner work, who may be like that.) If you're really concerned, you can always add some monogamous bi rep in there in passing, but I don't think it's necessary in order to make the main bi4bi4bi triad good representation.

mod nat

[I'm assuming a lot about the culture of the particular 70s you're referring to. My POV is that I am "canadian" and much of my own personal knowledge of transness in this era comes from research in US archives. YMMV when it comes to places outside the heavily American sphere of cultural influence.]

So first of all, the 70s had a bit of a renaissance of androgyny. A common thing I'll see in advice columns of the era is someone asking what to do as a customer service worker when they "can't tell" what gender they think someone is, because of their hairstyle and the way they are dressed. I imagine there probably were a lot of people who took refuge in that ambiguity. A fro, a pageboy haircut, all these are something that people of any gender (not necessarily every texture but I digress) could wear.

Secondly, I figured out I was nonbinary before I knew it existed, before I had the words for it. (Though the term genderqueer was the in vogue one in the community at the time I figured my stuff out.) It's just that I sort of saw it as, "hmmm, well, I feel kind of between these things." And I think I'd seen it as sort of "half-trans" until I really understood transness better. (Note: this was for like a week tops.) I also went through a period of time a few years before this where I just sort of saw myself as a crossdresser (not drag - just someone who chooses to dress and cut their hair as they are comfortable and feel happy), but like, that as my gender identity, if that makes sense. I didn't have access to community of other people who felt like I did in order to compare to. But at the time, this also meant that when I talked about my feelings with others, they wouldn't have the same hangups about what it would mean for them if they said they felt the same. There were a lot of people I talked to in 2011ish who basically said they experienced gender as I did, only, I don't think most of them would understand for another 4 years at least.

One day I'd like to post more info about nonbinary history (especially in the 70s), but I'm just dumping info at this point. Something I will suggest for more on the topic is reading Lou Sullivan's diary, and reading autobiographies from trans people who were alive then. Even when they weren't out, they still existed, and lived in a world where they were carving out spaces for themselves.

To my understanding also, a lot of trans culture at the time sort of distinguished "transvestite" (trans people generally? but who haven't accessed medical transition) and "transsexual" (trans people who have or are intending to transition medically). Trans people of every variety might change gender expression based on their outness or the safety they had, and this didn't make them less seen as trans per se. A lot of people who ID'd either way (though more for "transvestite") would have a variety of approaches to things like name and pronouns. If this were the dominant terminology of the time that I were figuring things out, I'd probably have called myself a transvestite, though I would have likely been questioning the transsexual label for a while and ultimately not been able to access medical transition. (Though it depends on when in the 70s iirc - there was a time earlier on where it was easier to access I believe, but I'd need to fact check.)

In terms of general nonbinary egg mode stuff, or at least egg for an era where being nonbinary is not widely known to be a thing, here's some 'signs' (some are just straight up "that's canon if you put that in") I've brainstormed.

Re: misgendering through the whole story. A really convenient way to curb this would be to just have the character feel like the way they are (mis)gendered is also a part of their identity, it just isn't the whole picture. Another thing I sort of thought of in my early years was like, if people think I'm a woman, at least they understand there is something off about it. Whether they think I'm a butch lesbian or intersex (which was very regularly assumed throughout my life, at least until the general public started to catch wind of genderqueer identities). It matters to me that they at least understand my approach to gender is queer.

Another approach would be to have the story written from a distant past tense where the reader knows the identity of the character, because everything is told in distant hindsight. This is my favourite approach personally.

-mod nat

Genuinely I think there's nothing wrong with flirty promiscuous characters of any orientation, just so long as it's not all the rep for those identities within a given work. Your mileage may vary in the future though, the more queer characters we have represented in general.

-mod nat

On the surface, there is nothing overtly wrong with this, but it does seem a bit weird to me.

Personally, I grew up with one of the most common names for my birth year, in the place where I was born and grew up. (In the top 15-30 names, depending how far you want to zoom out in terms of region, with it being more popular in my region.) Even now I know many people who have this name, either by choice or by gift at birth. Personally, I can't escape my given name, so I've had to process that probably more than people who have a rarer given name. But: a name is genuinely just a name.

It's not some kind of implication of any sort of alter ego. These two are different characters who, in their world, would happen to have the same name by mere coincidence. It feels like you might be writing/reading more into this than there is normally, but I guess there can be some creative poetry in that too. But I also wouldn't write a character's dead name to the reader unless it was necessary. (I'd say that an openly* trans author doing so would be an exception.)

With regards to a trans person's relationship to people who have our deadname, it can be a bit jarring at first but mostly it's just kind of normal, and not something super fixated on. However, I know so, so many people who just on principle will not date anyone with their deadname. (Out of the sample size of 6 people who I have been in a relationship with, 1 has shared my deadname, but did not generally go by it.) I also met someone who would block everyone they came across online who had their deadname, but they were very newly self-recognized as trans at the time. I find it gets more benign feeling with time.

I think maybe having a sort of meetcute where the trans man who maybe recently changed his legal name looks up when he's called for something paperwork-adjacent (maybe for Americans that would be the DMV or something?) and thus notices this other person. But I don't think this would really benefit from being emphasized beyond that.

I encourage other trans folks to reply with your thoughts though!

-mod nat

*I specify "openly" because I understand that sometimes closeted people do things that would only be socially acceptable to the wider trans community if it were known that this person was trans. While any trans person should theoretically be comfortable with this kind of thing, there are many instances of closeted writers feeling coerced out of the closet because someone tried to call them on cis privilege. If a closeted author isn't ready to come out, I'd advise against doing things which may only be seen as acceptable if it is known that you are trans. In cases where you're representing or portraying the community in some public way, it matters that the audience knows who is getting amplified. It's also true that being out (by choice or not) comes with unique danger, and we need to ensure safety of people who are out in order to ensure safety for people who are closeted.

This advice is going to lean on the "sociopath" term a bit because I have more advice to give on the topic, and it's also not something we've explored in this way before on the blog.

I have some biases here because I have a Cluster B personality disorder (a cluster which includes disorders that are often labelled as "sociopath"). The term sociopath is generally considered outdated at best and derogatory at worst, with people mainly only using the term to harken to a legacy of criminalizing and institutionalizing people who don't express care for others in a way that is legible to others, or whose care is not expressed in a healthy way.

Based on your wording here, I'm assuming that you are using the term in an earnest way to describe a neurodivergent experience, and do not believe in these ableist assumptions yourself.

Because of this, I would recommend determining more specifically what you mean by "sociopath," and then dropping the term. Do you mean low/no empathy? Do you mean a specific disorder (and which one)? What does this look like for them, and what does their emotional and mental experience feel like for them? There are resources out there for learning more about what these things feel like for people who have low/no empathy, or who have disorders that are categorized this way, but I think if it is not a thing that you experience, I would tread with a lot of caution and find a beta reader or sensitivity reader with these experiences who is comfortable talking about this with you.

Re: Aroace - there are people who are asexual and aromantic who have had pretty much every experience and identity alongside this. What makes a stereotype harmful is when:

These can be countered by having more characters of the same identity who vary from the character you are concerned with, and making the characters all as multi-faceted as possible. You may not be able to explore every character's whole lives in depth in front of the reader, but to a reader, it still matters that this intricate life they have is implied and hinted at within the context.

But that is generally good writing advice, in my opinion. So many authors have characters that are written to fit a role within the life of the protagonist. Best friends are there to fawn over them and be supportive, but don't have hobbies or interests or an unrelated life thing going on offscreen. When you write, ask yourself, could someone feel inspired to write fanfiction of this character? Is there enough that they could put them in an AU and they would still be recognizably them? Or do they only exist by their relationship to the protagonist?

mod nat

Firstly I want to reassure you that from what you've said, this is a sweet and wholesome way of handling this topic/issue (both by you the author with regard to writing this in this way, and by the friend character).

The following isn't necessarily advice you don't already know, but I'll list some things that I think make these kinds of things feel better to read, in terms of the "man in a dress" trope. (But please note that I am transmisogyny exempt, and people who are transmisogyny affected may have different or more things to say.)

All this said, I might also consider more how the trauma of the other character is being handled. I'm speaking as a trans person who has trauma around being forced to perform femininity, but a cis woman can feel just as horrible about this.

I think in a situation where I was present and I was friends with someone who had no choice in this, I might consider ways to make it feel less like the kind of makeup and dresses that she was forced to wear. If you can't have autonomy over the fact of it being makeup or a dress, having autonomy over the kind of makeup or dress makes it easier. I might also suggest wearing shorts or pants under the dress, or even wearing a skort or a bifurcated skirt, like some kind of thing which looks like a skirt unless someone were to basically do the splits. Maybe there's a colour or specific type of makeup she wasn't allowed to wear for some reason that she gets to now. (Example: I was not allowed to wear black nail polish growing up or to dye my hair black, so an equivalent would be black nail polish and maybe a wig or dye.)

A lot of people (but not all) with trauma around being forced into a feminine gender expression also deal with the fact that performing a feminine gender expression was seen as the way to be "worthy" to potential man partners. But there are ways to explore feminine gender expression which are specifically not meant to be appealing to men. (I'd look into some of the lesbian makeup artists on tiktok for examples.)

tl;dr Autonomy, social safety, and respect for the art of aesthetics are the things you'll want to emphasize.

Absolutely! Anyone can use any pronouns. I think sometimes there's social awkwardness around assumptions someone might have around someone who presents that way, but that's not a problem in terms of who gets to use the pronouns.

-mod nat

I don't see an issue with this rep. Self-discovery is not the same as something being a phase, and being queer in general but not gay specifically is not somehow less LGBTQ+ than gay.

But I do want to note that he can also still ID as gay, whether that's because of how he experiences attraction or not. A lot of people feel like being gay/lesbian/etc was so much a part of them for a long time that they identify with the cultural space of it. There are also some genderfluid people who date gay people whose relationship dynamic changes a bit based on what gender they feel like at a given time. I also know people who identify themselves as mostly gay with an exception for their partner. I also know people who pretty much identify as gay no matter who they are with, and their gender seems to flow differently based on who they with.

There's nothing wrong with any of these things, and I don't think this comes off as a "it's just a phase" trope at all. I'm sure some followers have other thoughts they may like to weigh in with.

-mod nat

I think people often underestimate the minds of children, and what they are capable of learning and understanding, and what they will end up learning in difficult ways if they are not informed in ways that are healthy, respectful, and responsible. Many kids learn "how babies are made" if they live on a farm and see animals around, or if they have a younger sibling and natural curiosity inspires them to ask about it. If they are trying to understand something, it's probably best to try to explain it to them within the best of your capacity.

The age and prior understanding of any given child would influence an explanation of these topics, but if I were talking to someone who were around 9 years old (by that age most children who have had access to sex ed should know what sex is, I learned about it around age 7 from a friend, and then age 9 at school), I'd explain what attraction is. I'd say that it's when people feel compelled to be with each other in some way, or that there's something they like about another person that makes them want to look longer or think about them more. I'd use other abstract examples. And then I'd explain different types of attraction, and how they often inspire someone to want to do specific things with a specific other person. Like with romance, maybe they want to go on a date with another person. With sexual attraction, that means that they may feel something that makes them want to have sex with another person. I'd also explain platonic attraction.

I'd also explain that adults often don't understand how children feel, and that they don't have to sort their feelings into any of these categories. Lots of people decide to use these labels at different ages. This is just something that can be helpful to some people to find other people who feel like they do. This framework was made to help people understand and communicate very complicated feelings.

I'd also open the floor to any questions they have and try to answer.

I'm not sure what writing setting you're needing to explain this in, but it may be helpful to look up "how I explained asexuality to my child" or "questions my child had about sex ed" or something like that to get an idea of what someone might ask.

-mod nat

Temporarily Open Ask Box

For the first time in a gazillion years, the ask box is open. As a lil treat! I do not know how long it will be open for. (Sorry.)

Remember to check out our Ask Rules page before sending a message, and check out our Before You Ask page to learn how to get your ask answered quicker. I will also add that a briefer ask (less than 2 paragraphs) is a bit easier to respond to, though it's still preferred you include details which feel important to the context of your question(s).

Obligatory disclaimer that we always get a lot of inbox traffic, and can't guarantee an answer. If you have an urgent or incredibly important ask, it's always better to go with a paid sensitivity reader who can dedicate time to helping you specifically.

Please also feel free to use the search function on our blog. You can view this on desktop in the upper left corner of the page, or by typing scriptlgbt.com/search/YOUR SEARCH HERE in your browser.

As always, thank you for your patience with us.

-mod nat