Basic Trope: A transgender character is supernaturally proved to be the gender they identify with.
- Straight: Alice, a transgender woman realizes she's definitely a woman when she discovers the capacity for the kind of magic only women can use.
- Exaggerated:
- A booming voice from the heavens literally announces "Alice is a woman!" after she gets in an argument with someone who thinks she's a man.
- Alice is treated as a woman before she even realizes she's trans.
- Downplayed: A fortune teller said that a woman from Tropetown would kill the evil overlord, and Alice just happens to be the one to land the killing blow. However the story never answers whether or not the fortune teller really had supernatural powers.
- Justified: The Applied Phlebotinum in question was explicitly designed by its creator to work off of the user's gender identity rather than their sex assigned at birth.
- Inverted:
- The supernatural test specifically prevents Alice from being counted amongst other women because it treats her as a man.
- Alex, a trans man, is pissed off that he was chosen as the next huntress of evil and to his frustration gets misgendered by every supernatural. Even when it ends poorly for them due to Super-Strength stacking with his Berserk Button.
- The supernatural test excludes Claire, a cisgender woman, because she has androgen insensitivity syndrome and a Y chromosome.
- Subverted:
- Alice enters the temple of the Goddess to seek a blessing, but instead is cursed by her patron because "only women are allowed to enter" and the Goddess insists she is a man.
- All magic is based on your view of yourself when you were young. While this doesn't matter for many practitioners, some feel haunted by their past, such as the pacifist Carol getting gruesome Black Magic because she was violent as a kid. Alice ends up in the latter category, receiving what should be male-exclusive magic because she was never consciously aware she was closeted in her childhood.
- Double Subverted:
- The setting makes it clear that the Goddess in question is wrong. The King of the Gods orders her to personally apologize and remove the curse.
- The Goddess in question was confused, and was under the impression that Alice was a transgender man. Transgender women have always been welcome in her temple.
- However, when she finally comes to terms with her past, her magical abilities change to female-exclusive magic in response
- Parodied: Alice is an "egg", who insists she can't possibly be trans ("I mean, all guys wish they were girls sometimes, right?"). Magical events treating her as a woman becomes a Running Gag.
- Deconstructed:
- Bob, a cis man, has access to magical powers that are ostensibly only available to women. To his chagrin, everyone around him insists this must mean that Bob is transgender, despite him having no such inclinations. It is later revealed that those powers are not actually gender-based, but Bob is so annoyed at the (in-universe) popular misconception that he avoids using them.
- Since only women can use witch magic and only men can use warlock magic, it's difficult for closeted trans people to hide that they're trans if they gain such powers. Situations where they have to use magic in public get them Forced Out of the Closet.
- Reconstructed:
- It becomes widely known that the powers are not gender locked, since many people can use them regardless of gender; it's just more common for women to use them because they're viewed as unmanly.
- There's little to no transphobia in universe, because nobody can accuse trans people of being delusional or "not real men/women" if there's undeniable proof they're the gender they identify as. And non-binary people are held in high regard for having access to both witch and warlock magic.
- Zig-Zagged:
- Alice is an out trans woman, and magic considers her a woman for all intents and purposes, but Bob (who's closeted for the show's run) is only treated as such some of the time. Clyde, who's nonbinary, never seems to have the same effect twice.
- There are magical powers that 98% of cis women can access, but only 55% of trans women, and a similar statistic exists for men. Scholars of magic can't come to an agreement as to whether this invalidates the gender identity of the trans person, or the assumptions made about who has access to which powers.
- Averted:
- There are no supernatural elements in the story.
- There are no transgender characters in the story.
- While there are supernatural elements, none of them confirm or deny what a transgender person's true identity is.
- No transgender character ever uses a Gender-Restricted Ability.
- Enforced:
- The writer thought a trans character fulfilling a prophecy would be a cool twist, and writes it into the plot.
- A trans character is being introduced in a setting where some abilities are locked by gender. Ignoring this would be contrived, and averting it would carry Unfortunate Implications.
- Lampshaded: Claire has a sword men can't hold without getting burnt. Dan acts surprised when Alice (who he knows is trans) is able to pick it up and pass it to Claire, earning him a cold stare from both women.
- Invoked: Some powers are gender locked. Alice specifically trains as a mage to prove she's as much a woman as her cisgender peers by becoming able to use them.
- Exploited:
- Bob, a closeted transgender woman, challenges the evil overlord (who was prophesised to be defeated by a woman), knowing he won't expect her to fulfill the prophecy.
- Alice uses this event to show that the laws of the universe prove transgender people are real and valid.
- Defied: The gods that made the universe don't want to get into questions of mortal sexuality and gender identity, so they leave such a test out of the magic system.
- Discussed: "The prophecy says no man can kill the emperor. I wonder how that applies to trans people."
- Conversed: "I'm sure trans people would have it so much easier if their gender could be validated via magic."
- Played for Laughs: Non-binary characters have access to all types of gendered magic, making them powerful spellcasters. Once the He-Man Woman Hater (who is not closeted) learns this, he goes from calling them "indecisive freaks" to claiming he's never really felt entirely male anyway.
- Played for Drama: Alice is closeted and fears using her female-specific powers lest she out herself.
Back to Supernaturally-Validated Trans Person.
