Intersex/Transgender Characters in Fanfiction

I'm in a moderately large fandom and was writing a mpreg oneshot fanfiction just for shits and giggles. I thought of adding a "you can interpret this as taking place in an omega!verse (a popular AU setting where Mister Seahorses are possible) or interpret the male character as a pre-op trans man. It doesn't really matter to me," as it wasn't particularly significant in the fic.

I realized that he would have been on testosterone for several years and would almost certainly be sterile (and I don't want to push the Willing Suspension Of Belief too far in a work that's supposed to be somewhat realistic)

Then I thought about having him be born with Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia and XX chromosomes (an intersex condition where one has a vagina, womb, etc. but a large clitoris that resembles a penis and develops "male" characteristic: lots of body hair, lack of feminine breasts, etc.) He was designated as female at birth (and didn't receive any corrective surgery) but made his male identity clear at a very young age and his parents allowed him to transition socially very early in his life (early enough that he can't really recall a time when he was a "girl")

Eventually he found out about it when he started menstruating; but due to the era in which he was raised, the fact his periods were very irregular and he passed very well as a man otherwise, he didn't get any HRT, surgery or medical assistance with his condition other than issues unrelated to his gender identity (such as cortisone deficiencies)

He later meets a pre-op trans woman who has been on HRT for several years and they engage in a sexual relationship. At one point they engage in (unprotected) penetrative sex (with him "on the bottom") and he manages to get pregnant, which is treated as being extremely improbably in-universe, but still possible. He is established to want a family a great deal (even in the actual canon of the show) cares deeply for the mother of his children and sees this as most likely his only chance at having biological children, so he has reason to keep the pregnancy other than "it allows for wacky hijinks."

TL;DR version: I was farting around and trying to bullshit an explanation for a Mister Seahorse in a fanfiction and accidentally created an semi-realistic AU that I want to explore in fic outside of the pregnancy. Would this be seen as really sensationalist and/or confusing, or does this sound fine?

edited 23rd Feb '15 7:04:23 PM by TheMuse

It's an mpreg you're doing for shits and giggles. It really doesn't matter as long as you're having fun.

I don't understand mpreg stuff to start with, but even if the subject matter was something I did partake of, I really doubt I'd care enough to pay attention to this level of explanation.

Intersex characters are one thing.

Transgender characters are another thing.

And characters who experience "M-preg" are another thing entirely, not related to the above two at all.

Thing is, the last one can be summed up with "magic" and there's no need to try to make it realistic in any way because it simply can't. The first one, on the other hand, while not seen with humans is still seen with certain other beings, and even if you used the same "magic" argument to make it possible for humans to have this trait, if done somewhat realistically it will result in "standard" pregnancies so it's not going to be "M-preg" at all.

And as for transgender in all of that, oh boy ... that one is mental if you want to classify it in any way, which already makes it different from the other two. And it does not affect "M-preg" at all because that one is "male pregnancy" and "male" is about the body and not about the mind. So you could, I guess, have a transgender woman who is experiencing said "M-preg", but that does not make it any more realistic.

Not to mention that reaching for transgender when trying to explain something unnatural like that is only going to have unfortunate implications which people who are transgender do not need at all.

This is a good post. You should listen to it.

The mpreg in itself doesn't really deal with the whole trans/intersex aspect at all (that explanation was mainly to show how/why I thought of this AU), but what I was mainly referring to is focusing the trans/intersex issues in a completely separate fan fiction (that would likely take place before the mpreg fic) where the characters are essentially the people they are in the show, but they also happen to be trans and intersex (obviously there's more to the plot of the fic than this)

It's less of a "Do I need this explanation to handwave something that isn't possible in the canon of the show?" and more of a "Would using trans/intersex interpretations of the characters be seen as exploitative?)

>> "It's less of a "Do I need this explanation to handwave something that isn't possible in the canon of the show?" and more of a "Would using trans/intersex interpretations of the characters be seen as exploitative?)"

As far as my opinion is concerned, depending on how you do it it might be seen as nothing unusual ... or it might be seen as silly, ignorant, or simply badly thought out.

If you wish to make an AU version of something with the characters being intersex and/or transgender, sure, there's nothing wrong with it.

If you wish to do the above and it just so happens that there is "M-preg" in that story, sure, nothing wrong with that either.

But make sure that you don't have anything that will be seen as a direct implication that intersex or transgender are the cause or the consequence of said "M-preg". And make sure to actually research transgender adequately rather than use the caricature of it like some people do. Because if you don't take care of that issue, you will end up slighting a certain group of people, a group that already feels discriminated against, and there probably would be something wrong with that.

I know a fair amount about transsexuality and transgender people (I actually have a good friend who's trans, so this isn't particularly alien to me) and am planning on doing research on the specific intersex condition the character has.

Mainly I'm worried about people 1.) Who are actually trans and/or intersex telling me my work is very inaccurate and/or written very badly, 2.) People being so put of by the concept that they don't read it and 3.) Being mistaken for an amateur writer who still thinks that simply adding LGBTQA characters into something makes it well written and/or more interesting.

>> "3.) Being mistaken for an amateur writer who still thinks that simply adding LGBTQA characters into something makes it well written and/or more interesting."

Erm ... well, if you want my opinion, isn't that exactly what you will be doing? I mean, adding those characters to make it more interesting; the "well-written" part is hubris so I will assume you don't think that.

To be honest, the whole thing is a bit ... dodgy, let's say. And I don't mean your idea of including those characters, but rather the whole battle to make people like that accepted and at the same time the outrage that results when someone tries to insert such a character just for the sake of variety, outrage not because the character was not written accurately but rather just because the character exists at all. It's weird because if being transgender is natural (for whatever definition of "natural" you choose) then there should be nothing wrong with such characters simply existing ... but then again, straw crusaders ride for every visible target, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised (that, and the vocal part is, as it usually tends to happen, the minority).

>> "2.) People being so put of by the concept that they don't read it"

That's ... normal, I guess. I mean, there are many stories out there with unique and potentially risky premises that people avoid just because of the premise, and yet there are gems to be found there. If it's fan-fiction, you need only a recommendation with a positive review that emphasises it being such a gem, and if it's an original work then you are already ahead of it.

A fine example of such a premise are self-insert stories. Oh boy, most of that is a mess that is a waste of monitor space, and yet there are exceptions to that.

The same about stories involving transgender characters, really. It's just that it's harder to find gems there simply because there aren't that many such stories and most people don't know ... insert whatever word you think applies ... about it.

>> "1.) Who are actually trans and/or intersex telling me my work is very inaccurate and/or written very badly"

Well, I don't know about intersex as I have no personal nor even quasi-personal experiences with that, but as far as transgender goes it doesn't make them mutants of some sort, they are still people. People who feel in a certain way about certain things and cope with it better or worse. And it all varies from person to person; there are people who can't stand to wait 5 minutes before announcing that they are transgender, and there are people who behave "normally" and about whom you would not know that they are transgender until you choose to dig very deep into who they are.

Then again, this actually serves to put forth the question: are all the complaints about "gender-bender" stories never being accurate because the one changed in such a way adapts easily actually justified? I mean, while authors seldom think of it, if we assume that transgender people exist, there is always the chance that the one changed like that was transgender before, and I don't think I need to say how that would change the situation.

Anyhow, the point is, you can't satisfy everyone. So for as long as you put the emphasis on "people" when writing about people who are transgender, and for as long as you don't make it correlate with something that it shouldn't correlate with (as I wrote in my previous post here), then you generally should be fine.