Transgender

aka: Transsexual

Transgender people ("trans" for short) are those whose gender, meaning their innate mental blueprint of how male or female they are or aren't, doesn't match their physical looks and/or the gender they were assigned at birth. (Which is why in some countries, a birth certificate will now say "sex" instead of gender, leaving it up to the individual to find out instead.) Gender falls on a big gradient — some people are strictly male or female, and others have aspects of both, or are neither.

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Transgender people can experience gender dysphoria (distress caused by the sex or gender assigned to them at birth) on physical or social levels, and can pursue medical means (e.g. hormone replacement, surgery, etc.) to help mitigate this discomfort. Others don't pursue medical treatment for various reasons — for example, because they don't experience discomfort, because socially transitioning is enough for them, or because no available medical options fit their gender. Since medical science has only been able to alleviate dysphoria for about a century, the vast majority of transgender people in history did not have the option to change their bodies, and many today still don't have access to medical transitioning options.

Transgender people aren't a new group; their existence has been documented throughout history, but they're typically discriminated against in their respective societies, which clouds their visibility. They're often used as a source of interesting Conflict in a story, partly because their coming-out stories can depict change very visually. See the Useful Notes on Transgender people for a more Real Life-oriented and complete description. There's a general craving by most of the trans community for more representation of them as just regular people — just like not every female character's story has to be about battling sexism or traditional gender roles, many trans people too would like to see themselves depicted in all traditional narratives.

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Note that an older term now considered more outdated would be transsexual, which is often used in older contexts up until fairly relatively recently. The language around trans discourse changes very rapidly, due to being de-pathologised and re-written by trans people themselves instead of by outside onlookers. The demarcation between gender, sex, gender expression and orientation is also subject to constant historical and cultural shifts in perspective — the realisation that these are different things with only some overlapping points is slowly seeping into our modern narratives. This should be kept in mind with context to older media and stories from foreign cultures. As a matter of fact, there is still a lot that isn't understood, and because research on the subject is always yielding new discoveries in relatively quick succession, in addition to shifting societal norms and growing understanding that even biology isn't as cut-and-dry as it once was thought to be. It's best to keep an open mind as previously rigidly held, commonplace ideas are constantly challenged.

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Now for some definitions of the terminology involved:

Terminology

• Trans is used as an umbrella term for all non-cis people, and is short for "transgender".
• Cisgender or just cis is the opposite of transgender. A cis person is someone whose gender identity matches the one they were assigned at birth. "Cis" is a Latin prefix that is the opposite of "trans," meaning "not across," as used in chemistry or "cisatlantic/transatlantic." Non-trans is also used. Saying "normal" or "real" instead of cis is implies that trans people aren't ''really'' their gender, so don't do that thing. Cis is also sometimes jokingly de-abbreviated as "comfortable in skin" (although many trans people are comfortable with their bodies and identities, suffering only from the stigma).
• Gender is someone's innate mental blueprint of how male and how female they are. Gender is on a massive gradient with many different points. It can fluctuate over time for some people, but on the whole it seems to be immune to outside influence. Gender roles, on the other hand, are a changeable social construct, and include things like "girls like pink" or "the English word for men is he."
• Sex are the male and female bits of someone's body that can be seen, either with the naked eye or using scientific equipment. The word encompasses things like genitals, chromosomes, hormones and hair growth. Like gender, sex is on a gradient with many points in between male and female. Unlike gender, most parts of sex can nowadays be changed by medical science, which many trans people are happy to do. The term "biological" sex is often used to describe someone's sexual characteristics at birth, but it's quickly falling out of favour as it implies people's gender being somehow less biological than the rest of them.
• Transitioning is when a trans person changes their looks and/or social roles to match their gender. This can consist of picking a new wardrobe, changing names and pronouns, or choosing hormones and surgical options. The term "sex change" is an old-fashioned and overly simplistic description of many different surgical procedures, and the term has been replaced with "gender confirmation/reassignment surgery."
• Gender dysphoria means discomfort that can arise when someone's gender, sex and social roles are mismatched. The word dysphoria means "bad feeling." Not all trans people experience dysphoria, although some people define dysphoria simply as the mismatch itself (leading to many, many internet arguments over semantics). The opposite is gender euphoria, which is the happy feeling when someone's gender, sex and social roles finally match up.
• Homosexuality means being sexually attracted to the same sex and/or gender. Trans people can have any sexual orientation, and are not just gay people "Up to Eleven." The "T" is in "LGBT" because transphobia and homophobia have similar motives — both target the main idea of what a man or woman "is" or "should be." Although some uninformed people see all relationships that trans people engage in as homosexual relationships, it's up to trans individuals and their partners to pick their own orientation labels.
• Non-binary and related words describe genders that aren't strictly male or female. The knowledge of gender as a gradient appears throughout world history — non-binary is a recent Western umbrella term for this knowledge and includes many points on the gender spectrum. Synonyms include genderqueer, gender variant, third gender and androgynous, all of which have their own connotations and cultural histories. People whose gender varies over time may choose the word genderfluid, and people who don't experience any gender may call themselves agender. Different cultures have tons of different words. There are many points on the cis-to-trans scale, and it's important to keep in mind that distress over one's body is never a prerequisite.
• AFAB (Assigned Female At Birth) and AMAB (Assigned Male At Birth) refer to the interpretation of a person's genitals by doctors/their parents at birth. Variations on these terms include FAAB (Female Assigned At Birth), CAFAB (Coercively Assigned Female At Birth), AXAB (Assigned Intersex At Birth), UAB (Unassigned At Birth), and so on. Calling someone's body a "female body" or "male body" can be misleading — it's always up to trans people themselves what words they use for their parts. It's also rude to ask a transgender person what they look like under their clothes, as those questions are invasive and privacy-violating ("Anyway, how's your sex life?"). A person can decide to share that, but if they don't, DON'T ASK. Same goes for transition-related questions. If you aren't close enough to someone to ask for intensely personal medical details about their genitals, don't make an exception for people who are already going through a lot of stigma.
• Crossdresser and Transvestite refer to wearing clothing that's traditionally culturally coded as belonging to a different sex or gender. They may or may not be used interchangeably and don't automatically entail either transgenderism or homosexuality, but they also don't preclude either. That other wiki has an entry for "transvestic fetishism". Transvestite is often considered an offensive term because of its history, and shouldn't be used to refer to people who crossdress, although this again strongly depends on culture.
• Drag Queens and Drag Kings are theatrical performers who dress as a specific sex. Drag being an exquisitely camp job, drag performers (whether cis or trans) will gleefully ham it up onstage. Although many drag performers are on the trans spectrum, they often appear as Camp Gay men and Butch Lesbians who gender-bend specifically to entertain, which can contribute to the mistaken notion that all trans people are "just super gay". The history of drag is deeply interlinked with the trans community, and was the sole outlet for many trans people in less friendly times. Some drag performers act out caricatures, abstract interpretations of gender roles or exaggerated stereotypes, whereas others simply look good. Drag personas can be fictional characters or can be serious expressions of the performer's gender, or a combination of both. Note that anyone of any sex and gender can do drag — so AFAB people in lady drag and AMAB people in guy drag are also part of this community.
• "Intersex" refers to atypical prenatal development of genitals, hormones and/or chromosomes, and is approximately as common as having red hair. (People with intersex conditions are sometimes called "Hermaphrodite" depending on culture, though this has fallen out of favour in English.) Like all people, intersex people can have male, female or non-binary genders, and may identify as transgender if their gender doesn't match their bodies or their assigned social roles. Some intersex conditions have a high correlation with gender dysphoria. The exact link between intersex conditions and being trans is currently being scientifically explored.
• "Shemale," "He-She," "Tranny," "It," etc. are almost always considered insults. If you don't know whether you have N-Word Privileges, you don't.

Portrayals of trans people range between Acceptable Targets and Once Acceptable Targets. While many portrayals are sympathetic, many are also built around jokes about the character "really" being another gender — plus, bigoted and inaccurate "trans panic" jokes portraying trans people as deceptive cross-dressers ("Oh no, the hot chick is really a man!") are still common. Because this line of reasoning is often a motive for murder in Real Life, this type of humor goes beyond mere Unfortunate Implications.

Trans women are more common in media than trans men, whose existence is largely ignored by the mainstream despite statistically being equally common in Real Life. When a shapeshift causes characters to get transformed into another sex though, it's almost always male characters getting stuck with female bodies. Rarely does a female character end up inhabiting a male body.

Stereotypes and caricatures of trans women in the media can range from heavily masculine-bodied people wearing unflattering budget dresses and wigs, to highly attractive and feminine women whom men fear. In live-action movies, trans people are almost always played by either a cis man or a cis woman, as opposed to actual trans actors, which doesn't exactly do wonders for visibility. Sometimes, two different actors are used before and after the transition.

Contrast Gender Bender, which is a trope about characters changing to another sex through magic or Applied Phlebotinum. Gender Bender often also changes DNA, thus allowing plots such as the now-biologically-male or now-biologically-female person being able to conceive a child, further complicating things. Also contrast Easy Sex Change; though it has at least a pretense of realism, it minimizes or ignores many physical, psychological, and/or social complications of sex change. Also see Trans Equals Gay for common misconceptions. Ambiguous Gender Identity is a trope for characters who may or may not be transgender.

Has nothing to do with Transhumans; the shared root "trans-" ^note Latin for "across" or "beyond" is the only commonality, and even then both terms use different definitions of it. The root "trans-" here roughly means "across".

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Examples:

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• In a Sprite ad for Latin-America, a guy reunites with his school friends, and each encounter finishes with "[insert friend's childhood nickname], eeeeeeeh!" and a hug/group hug. The last one, nicknamed "Oso" ("bear" in Spanish), turns out to have transitioned from male to female; we only see her from the back but she's clearly using heels and a minidress. What do her friends do? "Oso...? [blinkblink] OSO!! EEEEEEEH! [group hug]".

Anime & Manga

• Black Butler: Grell Sutcliff, who seems to behave like a flamboyant okama, is actually a trans girl. This is made clear when she sympathized with Madame Red due to their similar inability of giving birth. This also makes her the only member of the known Shinigami who identifies herself as female.
• Black Jack: Kisaragi Kei. He was formerly a woman called Megumi, but after having a cancer that required removing his uterus, he begins to present himself as a man and adopts the masculine identity of "Kei". As seen in this manga page◊, he tells Black Jack that he is happy he quit being a woman. And although the fandom is heavily debated on this, as he can also be seen as simply a Bifauxnen woman, the manga seems more adamant in portraying him as being trans.
• In the manga adaption of Welcome to the N.H.K., one chapter has Yamazaki befriending a pre-op transgender woman, and even getting a job to pay for her operation. Unfortunately, this charity offends her, and she ends the friendship.
• Maho, one of the two main characters in the manga Double House, is a trans woman, as are a number of the secondary characters.
• Isabella in Paradise Kiss is a post-operative trans girl who dresses in Elegant Gothic Lolita.
• The Trigun Maximum manga has Elendira the Crimsonnail, although she is presented as a transvestite. Vash is the only one who briefly recognizes her as female, and then only to insult her. She glared and said 'a woman like you' out of Wolfwood when he called her a guy one time. Apart from Meryl categorizing her as a transvestite (and complimenting her figure) after she falls out of the sky, it doesn't really come up otherwise; people are busy. The actual question is how everyone can tell by looking at her. It could be that she has a masculine voice, albeit very effeminate, which is quite common.
• Angel Sanctuary:
  • Arakune/Arachne, who doesn't have reassignment surgery because it'd mean she would lose some of her strength. Whether Arakune is trans or simply prefers crossdressing is a little bit unclear. Yuki-sensei used some terms early on and then switched to using others later, and with the time period, limited research material available, and the natural evolution of trans language, it's all but impossible to tell now.
  • Sevothtarte/Sevy, previously named Laila is a trans man... sort of. In this character's case, it's as a result of the trauma of being gang-raped, living in denial of her previous existence as Laila, and goes as far as undergoing treatment to inhibit her breasts. She also wears a machine that makes her voice sound 'masculine'. This results in some Unfortunate Implications and wouldn't be a good example, except that Yuki-sensei played with gender and sexuality in several other characters in the same series.
  • Belial, the Mad Hatter, explicitly identifies as neither male nor female and deliberately resorts to genderfuck clothing and make-up to play on their androgynous appearance. Some scenes shows them as more masculine or feminine than other ones, though; in the presence of Kira or Lucifer, Belial usually looks very much like a wounded Femme Fatale. To make this powerful Trickster character even more complex in terms of gender and sexuality, Kaori Yuki also makes them omnisexual, madly in love with Lucifer, seduces Kurai partly by taking the appearance of one of her male suitors and generally acting like a campy male.
  • Kurai herself has some trouble in identifying as female, although it's probably partly because she starts off as a young teenager. She seems to have less trouble with her gender identity once she 'develops' at an extremely quick rate. However, she explicitly compares herself to Arachne, mentioning that their families had problems with Arachne being what they thought was a 'transvestite' and Kurai being a 'tomboy'.
  • Alexiel and Rosiel. While she laments to have been "born female", because she had too many feelings to deal with and wished to be reborn as male (which led to her reincarnation as Setsuna), she seems to embrace her true self in the end, she still has gender issues. Meanwhile, her brother wants to be her, he has her beauty/face and even pretends to be female once.
• Family Compo has so many transgender and Crossdresser characters that it's hard to count. The main character's adoptive parents (both of them — that is, the dad is AFAB, the mom is AMAB), his adoptive father's assistants (all transgender, some post-op, some not), several dozen bit characters, and one of the character's love interests — his adoptive sister and cousin — may or may not be AMAB, given that about every 6 months she'd switch genders as she was growing up (It's never explained in the manga, although she's shown buying tampons at one point which strongly implies that she's AFAB.)
• Seiko, born and originally named Seishirou, from Lovely Complex. One chapter has her voice breaking which causes her to become depressed and she detransitions. The other characters try to convince her otherwise. She eventually transitions again after she goes to the hospital and gets a shot, which she says was for a cold that reversed her voice.
• Akari in Samurai Deeper Kyo was raised as a woman to make her shamanic powers stronger, and it stuck. The series mostly ignores the implications of transgenderism (except as gag fodder) and makes her the strongest of Kyo's followers and, therefore, a complete badass.
• Commander Teral from God Sigma is literally a woman in a fairly masculine man's body. Ironically, she's the noble prince-type of the story despite being one of the main villains. She gets very little snark, which is pretty open-minded for an early '80s show.
• Shuuichi Nitori (trans girl) and Yoshino Takatsuki (trans boy) from Wandering Son. Also their adult friend Yuki Yoshida (trans woman), who is implied to have had a full physical transition, as well as Nitori's classmate Makoto Ariga (trans girl) and Taiichirou Ebina (trans woman). In Takatsuki's case in particular, at least one character suggested that it wasn't so much that Takatsuki wanted to be male so much as they disliked being female. Their gender identity is left very ambiguous in the end.
• Hibari Oozora of Stop!! Hibari-kun! loudly voiced her disappointment in the fact that she doesn't have breasts and plans to eventually marry Kousaku. The anime avoids ever showing her naked chest despite the fact that she doesn't have anything to hide there. There's also a random island girl that looks almost exactly like Hibari (resulting in another Unsettling Gender Reveal moment for Kousaku and a girlfriend of Ibari's — one whom he doesn't know is trans.
• The protagonist of Riyoko Ikeda's Claudine...!, Claudine de Montesse. He's a very woobie-like trans man with a sensitive heart and horrible luck, who ever since he was a child was sure that he was a male, and in the end commits suicide after his lover Sirene gets engaged to his eldest brother Andre. His doctor (who doubles as Narrator All Along) reminiscences about Claudine's case, and concludes that he was right into identifying as a male.
• Futaba Aoi from You're Under Arrest!, one of the prettier woman officers in the Bokuto Station. ("She's girlier and cuter than all of us!") In an episode in the second season where she asks for help with a date with a man, Aoi says, "I have the body of a man, but the heart of a woman". Episode 6 explicitly mentions "transsexual".
• The BL light novel and anime Sukisho has transgender Team Mom Nanami.
• The Day of Revolution is a two volume manga series about an intersex but genetically female high school boy who elects (under pressure from his family) to become a girl because he sees it as a choice between being an 'incomplete man' or a 'complete woman'. He quickly finds that letting go of his old male identity isn't going to be easy or simple.
• The Yuri anthology Mermaid Line has a Slice of Life story where a trans woman and her (apparently bisexual) fiancé decide what to do about her transition.
• Criff/Cliff from Infinite Ryvius is a trans woman who transitioned a good time before the series started. You'd never know if it weren't for Word of God statements and a blink-and-you-will-miss-it line from her sister.
• Pet Shop of Horrors:
  • One of the stories has Leon investigating the murder of who turned out to be a transgender man with a beautiful female alternate persona, who kept rooms of aquariums of transgender fish and a virtual pet of a beautiful female fish. She was killed by the bartender who had a crush on her when he found out.
  • In the Tokyo version, Count D and a friend visit a club for transvestites and trans women, all of whom are portrayed very sympathetically. The bartender/owner comments that they're just women looking for husbands and also makes reference to a place a floor up where men can meet other like-minded men. Count D is apparently on good terms with some of them and has tea with the group on a regular basis.
  • Tokyo has a rather tragic inversion, with a beautiful female model who was once a homosexual man. The sex change was done not because of gender identity but out of the mistaken belief that the guy he was in love with was straight and made himself the beautiful woman he felt his crush wanted and deserved. The crush, as it turns out, was a deeply-closeted homosexual and found the model's female body upsetting. The trans bartender comments that all the pain would have been avoided if the two had been able to be honest about their orientations.
• Strange Mansion features a Stalker with a Crush who moves into the title apartment to be near her bishounen classmate. She discovers that her crush became a woman to be with her love interest (he was a bit disappointed that his first declaration of love came from a man but handled it calmly), which causes a Heroic BSoD. Of course, her wealthy conservative parents know nothing.
• The main character from Ai no Shintairiku, Nikotama Sara, is a trans girl high schooler who falls for a boy at her new school.
• A little known manga titled Gender Identity Disorder follows the life of a trans man. It begins with his childhood (telling his father he wants Santa to give him a penis for Christmas), and ends with him transitioned and leading a successful life, reconciling with his father before he dies.
• Arisugawa "Alice" Kintarou from Maria-sama ga Miteru hates her masculine name and wishes she could have gone to an all-girls school instead of an all-boys school.
• There is a LOT of Internet Backdraft on whether Nuriko of Fushigi Yuugi fits as a trans woman or as a Wholesome Crossdresser. It's best to thread VERY carefully around it.
• Yoshiki Kitazawa from the manga Gravitation is an trans woman. In the first series, she's only had hormones to encourage breast growth but her lower half is still physically male. In the sequel, EX, she finishes her surgery on her lower half as well, like she's wanted to since she was 14-15 as stated in the fanbook.
• Izumi Nachi/Lady Nachi in Mugen Densetsu Takamagahara: Dream Saga is pre-operative in Nakatsukuni, and post-operative in Takamagahara. She takes full advantage of her female form, attempting to become the perfect girlfriend that she could never be in Nakatsukuni because of societal expectations... to a guy that didn't want her. The rest of Nachi's evolution goes from Clingy Jealous Girl to I Want My Beloved to Be Happy.
• One episode of Dirty Pair featured a wealthy business owner framing his son's fiance for kidnapping when really they were trying to elope. It's eventually revealed that the reason he objects to their marriage is because the fiance is AMAB and had a sex change. After a moment of surprise, Kei and Yuri respond: "So what? That's so closed-minded!" and "In these days, one out of every ten people has had a sex change!"
• Celebrity stylist Nao from Ice Revolution, who forgives uber-Tomboy Masaki for destroying her favorite scissors, gives a makeover that makes her appear truly feminine "on camera" for the first time, and even leaves the fee for later. After The Reveal, Nao tells Masaki that they're Not So Different: both of them had a hyper-aggressive male appearance that they're no longer comfortable with. Notably, she is the only person outside of Masaki's friends and family who can tell she's a girl at first sight.
  Masaki: How did you... know I'm a... girl...?
  Nao: Isn't it obvious?
  Masaki: (is completely mystified)
• Mikihisa from Level E is a trans man and has felt male since he was four, and it turns out he's also intersex, with XY chromosomes. After much tribulation, the alien princess who's in love with him gives him a really high-tech sex reassignment.
• Mitsuko, the main characters' sidekick in Leviathan, is a trans woman, and while her characterization in itself is fine, her friends take every opportunity to point out that she's not a real woman and use mildly offensive terms to refer to her. And this is all supposed to be played for laughs.
• A chapter of the manga How I Became a Pokémon Card is about a trans boy named Akari. He lived as a boy all of his childhood, to the point where his best friend didn't know his sex, but has to wear a female school uniform as he's entering middle school. He gets a Pikachu for his birthday, which he's mad about since it's not a "cool" Pokémon but a "cute" one. Akari eventually got over it and learned that it doesn't matter what a Pokémon looks like, that they all can be cool.
• Genkaku Picasso has Yosuke Hishida, who is explicitly described as suffering from Gender identity disorder. She puts on a good show of acting like a normal boy, so this causes some problems when [[spoiler:she's caught in the girls' bathroom. She's almost driven to suicide, but when Sugiura saves her and offers to listen to her troubles, Picasso (who has been inside the sketch of her heart) rallies the class to go to where she is and listen to her. When they do, they apologize for how they treated her and rally to let her wear the girls' uniform.
• The protagonist of After School Nightmare is an intersex boy. The first page in the manga has him averting No Periods, Period, much to his discomfort. She later identifies as a female, but then it turns out she was never actually an intersex person at all, but was actually two people. It's complicated.
• From Ludwig Kakumei, the Goose-Girl in the Well, Princess Julianna, whom we know for most of the series as Lui's "step-brother" Prince Julius. She very explicitly states that she doesn't identify as a man (or almost does before she cuts herself off), but everyone else seems to think of her as a crossdresser of some nature or another.
• Sorcerer Stabber Orphen has the local Cool Big Sis and Orphen's first travel partner, Stephanie. Orphen explains to Majik and Cleao that she used to be Stephan until few years ago, when she was seriously injured in a training accident and her body was horribly torn apart. During her recovery, she explained her situation to the local healers and asked them for sex change; they accepted, and she' much more happy and comfortable. Cleao and Majic are rather surprised when Orphen tells them (Cleao wonders if Stephanie's boyfriend and eventual husband Tim knows), but Orphen himself seems to be pretty nonchalant about the whole deal and it's never discussed again.
• Nathan Seymore of Tiger & Bunny is confirmed in supplementary sources to be agendered.
• The shoujo manga "Go! Go! Ichigo" is about a girl who falls for her old childhood friend who came back several years later as a girl.
• Marika of Bokura no Hentai is a transgender girl. The other two main characters are Wholesome Crossdressers she met on a site for crossdressers. Not soon after her voice starts cracking she comes out to her mom who starts visiting a hospital with her. After seeing a therapist she begins living as a girl.
• Chaplin from Deadman Wonderland is transgender. The first time she used her Branch Of Sin was when she was living as a male. Her lover was using her as a source of money. She got mad at the woman he was sleeping with and accidentally stabbed her. She was Adapted Out of the anime.
• The third story in the one volume manga Mascara Blues revolves around a trans girl who falls for a boy.
• Ren's sister in Sazanami Cherry is revealed to be transgender in the second to last chapter. Not even Ren knew because of their age gap. Ren only remembers her as a girl.
• Mariandel from Ixion Saga DT.
• Kore wa Koi no Hanashi has Satomi, a woman who used to go to the same all boys' school as the protagonist, prior to her sex-change.
• Played with in BC, aka. Commander Tenmei Uragasumi from Vandread, who is revealed to be a male agent who'd undergone gender reassignment to infiltrate the female pirate ship undercover. By the end of the series, he/she seems to have accepted living as a woman permanently.
• Jun's mother in Boku to Boku is a trans woman. Jun became a Wholesome Crossdresser because his fashion designer mom would try out clothes on him. He originally hated but eventually gained a taste for feminine attire.
• Alluka Zoldyck from Hunter × Hunter is probably a transgender girl. Her brother Killua, who is the only member of her family to treat her with any affection, refers to her as a girl, while her other brothers call her a boy, although her gender assigned at birth is not officially confirmed.
• One of the protagonists of Yuureitou, Tetsuo, is a transgender man. He killed his adopted mom after disputes about his gender two years prior to the manga. Despite this he's a pretty sympathetic if antiheroic character.
• Kyou Kara Yonshimai is about a girl whose brother comes back from college living as a woman.
• The one-shot Cotton Candy Love is a Yuri Genre manga with the most major character being an elementary school aged trans girl, who gets bullied by classmates.
• While not actually present within Boku Girl, as it features boy who was Gender Bent, characters who are aware Mizuki is physically female but not that he was originally male usually take his declarations that he's a man as falling under being transgender. Another character, his crush Fujiwara, knows for a fact he was male but then has seen him doing things like wearing dresses (to visit a bathhouse away from his all-male dorm) or wearing panties (his roommate hung his regular underwear to dry in the rain) and thus comes to the opposite conclusion that Mizuki is a trans woman.
• Yuji from Liar Game is a trans woman. For some reason the Live-Action Adaptation made her a cis male with a different design who was originally Disguised in Drag.
• Kei from Moyashimon is a rare case of a character transitioning as the series occurs. She is introduced at the start, inexplicably disappears, and comes back later living as a woman. There's some ambiguity to her gender due to some lines implying she is cis but she's overall considered trans by fans.
• Shounen Note has genderqueer characters, such as Yutaka's older sibling. The mangaka (who also made Nabari no Ou) is nonbinary themself.
• Alice Arisuin from Chivalry of a Failed Knight is a non-operative trans woman. Her fellow mains quickly just accept that that's part of who she is.
• Hanayome Wa Motodanshi is an educational, autobiographical manga about a Happily Married trans woman and her husband.
• Kaoru from Tamako Market is the sweet local florist voiced by Daisuke Ono. She's implied to be a trans woman.
• Gintama has some characters who are transgender, mostly trans women who belong to the okama club. Their portrayal is mostly unimpressive (the okama club members for example are very perverted and get frequently called monsters), but there are two standouts:
  • The widowed okama club leader Saigo has her own story where she has trouble raising her bullied son as a trans parent and said son (who's otherwise supportive) feels the need to prove that he's a man. After she saves his life, he gets the courage to invite her and everyone else in the club to parents' day and writes about how "beautiful" their hearts are.
  • Kyubei is biologically female and was Raised as the Opposite Gender but does not consider themself to be either male or female. A whole arc is dedicated to this realization: the arc's antagonist questions Kyubei's feelings about their gender identity, and changes everyone's sexes as "punishment" for not abiding to gender roles. Despite having considered a sex change before, Kyubei finds little satisfaction in being male and eventually decides they are neither "manly nor womanly".
• In My Hero Academia, Tiger from the Wild Wild Pussycats team is stated in an omake to be a trans man who went to Thailand for sex reassignment surgery. A one-off gag mentioned how out of place a muscular man is among a group of Cat Girl-costumed heroes, but it's otherwise not taken into attention.
  • Minor villain Magne was also eventually confirmed to be a transgender woman.
• The class of 3C in Sket Dance meet the new board director's troubled son and The Voiceless Yuuki, who is eventually revealed to be biologically female while having "a heart of a boy". At that point, Yuuki had been bullied at school for this, and he stopped speaking as his voice would give his biological sex away. His father's concern is what lead to him trying to make Kaimei Academy stricter and separated by sex, as he believes expressing individuality will only get him bullied. The class does not react negatively, with Bossun saying that expressing individuality is a good thing and everyone will accept him for who he is.
• Hana in Tokyo Godfathers says, "I am a mistake made by God. In my heart, I am a woman."
• Christian of Innocents Shounen Juujigun is debatably a trans girl. It's a bit unclear if she's actually trans (or just using wanting to be a woman as an excuse to herself for loving a man), but considering the amount of emotional investment she shows to the idea of being a woman, it's most likely the former.
• Sechs from Battle Angel Alita, who is a transgender robot. Originally a member of the "Tuned" series, mass-produced copies of Alita's cybernetic body with an AI instead of a human brain, Sechs decided at some point to start referring to himself as male because he thought it suited his personality better, gradually upgrades his body with more masculine-looking components and eventually has his Personality Chip transferred into a fully male technorganic body. The odd thing is that none of his "sisters" seem uncomfortable with their assigned gender, though Alita once thinks she'd probably have an easier time concentrating on fighting and not worrying about emotional concerns if she'd been born a man.
• Yayoi and her other female work colleagues in Futari Ecchi are trans women. They have a mostly decent portrayal: some characters such as the protagonists are generally amicable/respectful of her (occasional remarks aside) and the mangaka often includes information on trans women (such as their history in Japan, the different body types and what's considered acceptable and derogatory terms). One subplot in the series is Yayoi's relationship with Okahama: being the jerk he is, Okahama is disgusted when he first sees the pre-operative Yayoi's genitalia and has a "mental breakdown" over his attraction to her; although he takes a genuine interest her, he still refers to her as a man and often talks about her or their relationship in a derogatory way, leaving his progress to be a mixed bag.
• Played with in Punchline. Yuuta was a boy who switched bodies with a girl ten years ago. He's been stuck that way since but the Second Law of Gender Bending didn't work out for him. He hates being a girl and still lives as a boy.
• In Zombie Land Saga, it's revealed that Lily Hoshikawa, the Token Mini-Moe of the zombie idol group, was originally named Masao Go and assigned male at birth but identified as a girl from a very young age. The discovery that she was growing facial hair, along with the stress of overwork and her father seemingly caring more about her acting career than her, led her to die of mental shock. After the initial surprise wears off and Saki has cracked a handful of jokes over her extremely butch birth name, all of the girls quickly accommodate to the revelation once Lily firmly states that she's always going to be "Lily", while their manager plainly states he knew all along and rebukes the girls for thinking he might kick her off the group because of it. As for her father, he has proven to be largely accepting of her, although he mostly still calls her "Masao", which annoys her greatly.

Comic Books

• In "A Game of You", a Story Arc in The Sandman, the protagonist, Barbie, is friends with a trans woman named Wanda. When Wanda dies, she shows up with Death with a female form.
  Neighbor: Wanda? You've got a... thingie.
  Wanda: Don't you know it's rude to point out a lady's shortcomings?
• In Y: The Last Man, trans men are widely accepted in the post-Gendercide world as a way of avoiding Sit Sexuality (except by the man-hating Daughters of the Amazon who are likely to kill them on sight). The eponymous protagonist is often mistaken for one at first glance, due to his situation. Presumably transgender women died when the men died because the virus specifically affected the Y chromosome, but this isn't explicitly stated.
• DC's Doom Patrol had a relatively short lived trans woman character named Coagula (real name Kate Godwin). The character was created by transgender science fiction writer Rachel Pollack.
• Grant Morrison's The Invisibles features a character called Lord Fanny who blurs the line of several types of transgenderism, her origin and things she says throughout the series suggesting that she has identified (or simultaneously identifies) as transsexual, transvestite, and drag queen. The contradictory nature of this may have been done on purpose, or more likely was sloppy research.
• Alison Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For started by introducing trans woman character named Jillian who hung out for a few strips. Later, a trans man character named Jerry was introduced; Lois developed a crush on him, which later moved on to a fairly durable friendship. Finally, Jasmine's child Jonas became more and more insistent about identifying as a girl, and eventually started living full-time, taking hormones, and identifying as Janis, with Lois's support.
• DTWF Follow the Leader Jane's World has Chelle's "mother", a trans man. A female trucker who fell in love with him thought she was gay after learning about it.
• Marisa Rahm, the lead character of Milestone Comics' Deathwish miniseries, is a realistically-portrayed trans woman police detective. The series was written by Maddie Blaustein (better known as the voice of Meowth from Pokémon^note Dat's right!), who was transgender herself.
• The Highland Laddie arc of The Boys had a secondary character known as Big Bobby, first met in a pub wearing heels, a frock, makeup and a wig, the 6+ foot Big Guy self-identifies as a lesbian, although she was pre-op at the time. The storyline sees her emasculated by a fat psychotic lady with a pair of hedgeclippers. Bobby takes this in stride, and asks the doctors not to sew the severed genitalia back on, but to treat it as the first stage in gender-reassignment surgery. Played very sympathetically, with nary a joke in sight (initial surprise on the part of Wee Hughie, who hadn't seen Bobby for several years; Bobby is referred to by male pronouns, although not when present. There is one genital mutilation gag near the end).
• Alisa Yeoh, a supporting character and Barbara Gordon's roommate in Batgirl is a trans woman as revealed in issue 19. Though reported by multiple media outlets as "the first" transgender character in a superhero comic, author Gail Simone has repeatedly stated that this is not the case, as the Sandman example and others above show.
• Sir Ystin from Demon Knights has a nonbinary gender identity, as she explains to Exoristos.
  I was born this way. I've kept saying, whenever anyone asks. I'm not just a man or a woman. I'm both.
• New character Blaze from Jem and the Holograms is a trans woman. She's a musician and a huge fan of The Misfits, which results in her becoming an Ascended Fangirl after Pizzazz's larynx is injured and she's hired as a temporary lead singer. She also may or may not be a love interest to Clash, The Misfits' resident groupie, who she is friends with.
• In Thor & Loki, Loki uses Voluntary Shapeshifting to alternate between male and female forms. Odin eventually refers to Loki as "My child who is both [my son and my daughter]".
• Black Canary in DC Comics Bombshells is a trans woman. She mentions how she came out young and her mother was supportive of her.
• Jo from Lumberjanes is a trans lesbian. Notable since she's a main character and this doesn't actually come out until volume 7 or 8 of the series when she's talking to a non-binary character who wants to joing the Lumberjanes' all-girl summer camp.

Fan Works

• Steven Universe:
  • In We Are The Chatroom Gems, Smoky Quartz is Agender, implied AFAB.
  • Momentum has "Genderfluid Amethyst" as an actual tag.
  • Portraying Pearl as Transgender is also a minor trend, as you can see here.
• Magical Metamorposis is about a transgender Harry Potter. who eventually chooses the name Holly. It is very in depth and accurate about the trans experience, though with added fantastical elements.
• Pokémon Reset Bloodlines reveals that Melissa is a trans woman. This is a nod to how her anime counterpart was male in the original Japanese, but was dubbed as female.
• Bloom re-imagines Max Caulfield as a trans girl who recently started taking hormones.
• The Warriors fic Little Fires is about a tortoiseshell OC who is a transgender she-cat. Considering how tortie toms work, Emberpaw has heavy implications of being intersex as well.
• Hyrule Castle High is a Legend of Zelda High School A.U. where Zelda is a trans boy who later begins going by "Sheik".
• Celadon's New Blossom is a story about how Ash is Disguised in Drag after he becomes Erika's student. He is a cisgender crossdresser, but to go along with the guise his ID is changed for simplicity's sake. A Pokémon League investigator comes to inquire on the change and comes to the conclusion that Ash is transgender. Ash is too stunned to deny her. In the end, Erika and Ash both conclude that maybe people thinking he's a trans girl will make thinks easier for now. It'll be trouble when he eventually goes back to Ash, but for now Ash uses being trans as cover-up for whenever people learn that he's male.

Films — Live-Action

• The excellent film Breakfast on Pluto, based on a novel of the same name, is all about the life of fictional Irish transgender woman Kitten Braden.
• One of the most unlikely transformations is found in the 1970 film Myra Breckinridge, in which Myron Breckinridge (played by film critic Rex Reed, of all people) goes under the knife and becomes Myra (played by Racquel Welch).
• Hedwig of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a gay man who got the operation on the spur of the moment to qualify for a Citizenship Marriage with his lover. Predictably, the shady doctor screwed up, and the vulva didn't form properly, leaving him/her with nothing but a urethra, the titular "angry inch", and a scar. (In Real Life, surgeons generally invert and alter the penis, so this probably would not happen.) Hedwig spends the movie dealing with living as a trans woman, until at the end he comes, at least in the film version, to embrace a masculine identity.
• Transamerica is a film centering on a transgender woman, played by Felicity Hoffmann.
• The Crying Game gives us Dil, the love interest of the movie.
• Different for Girls is the story of a post-op transgender woman meeting up with her male punk friend and protector from high school, ten years later. At first, the male friend is revolted, then accepting, then aroused in the end; they decide that they don't do too well apart, and become lovers. They are both unemployed, but sell the story of their relationship to a tabloid for a sick amount of money.
• This is the whole plot of the movie Boys Don't Cry in which a young trans man (played by Hilary Swank) uses a combination of haircut, bandages holding down his breasts and leaving his hometown to express himself properly as a man: Brandon Teena. He even manages to have sex with a girl without her noticing sort of. Confusion might arise for some viewers as to whether or not Brandon was actually a trans man due to his own claims that he was a hermaphrodite, but he was in a women's prison at the time and trying to keep his secret from the woman he loved, so this was pretty obviously a lie. Especially when taking into account the shower scene after his violent and traumatic rape.
• Bernadette in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is a trans woman (rather than a Drag Queen like her two companions). One guaranteed way to make her angry is to call her "Ralph"...
• Judy Squires in Better Than Chocolate. She's also a singer at a local lesbian nightclub, and gets a rather tart musical number explaining the differences between drag queens and trans women.
• Ace Ventura: Pet Detective features one of the less flattering parodies of The Crying Game, revealing that the villain is actually Lt. Lois Einhorn, who this whole time was really the missing football player Ray Finkle, having gone through complete transition (but remaining non-op), adopted the identity of a missing hiker, and became a police lieutenant, seemingly all in the sake of the perfect disguise. Roger Podacter, who was attracted to her, discovered this, finding "Captain Winkie" during a romantic encounter with her and getting murdered for it.
• Tom from The Cement Garden is a boy who would rather be a girl, although it's unclear if he's actually trans or just thinks he wouldn't get bullied if he were a girl. In any case his sisters eventually give him a makeover, and his best friend William takes on a new interest in him.
• Noxeema from To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar gives Chi-Chi a rundown of genderqueer types, doubling as a "The Reason You Suck" Speech.^note Noxeema's speech is obviously one person's oversimplified and subjective take. As the trope description above suggests, one could write an entire book just attempting to accurately define even one of these terms.
  Noxeema: When a straight man puts on a dress to get his sexual kicks, he is a transvestite. When a man is a woman trapped in a man's body and has the little operation, he is a transsexual. When a gay man has waaay too much fashion sense for one gender, he is a Drag Queen. And when a tired little Latin boy puts on a dress, he is simply a boy in a dress.
• Open, an independent film by Jake Yuzna showed a positive same-gender relationship between a gay male pair: one cisgender, one transgender.
• Elvis & Madonna, a Brazilian film, is a positive depiction of a cisgender lesbian and a bisexual trans woman falling in love.
• The Thai film Beautiful Boxer is a biopic about the famous trans woman and former Muay Thai boxer, Nong Thoom. Thailand is known for its "kathoey", literally "third gender".
• Played for Laughs with Stan/Loretta from Monty Python's Life of Brian, although to the credit of her friends, after the initial joking they accept her decision.
• There's a German film called Romeos where a gay trans man falls for a cis gay friend.
• The 2011 French film Tomboy is about a 10 year old girl who moves to a new neighborhood and decides to pass as a boy to the neighborhood kids.
• Ma Vie En Rose, the movie Tomboy is a Spiritual Successor to, is about a young boy named Ludo who identifies as a girl. The end of the movie implies that the child of Ludo's family's new neighbors, Chris/Christine, may be trans as well. She at least seems to identify primarily with masculine traits, at least.
• The World According to Garp features John Lithgow as Roberta Muldoon.
• German movie Zettl (Spiritual Successor to Kir Royal) has the mayor of Berlin as this. Might be a parody on the Real Life gay mayor, one of the first openly gay ones. Completely with a billionaire who has a thing for pre-op transgender people. And is pissed off when she finally does the operation (in the Cuban embassy, of all places) since this makes her "a totally ordinary woman!"
• Sam from Gutterballs. After being killed, BBK adds insult to injury by bisecting her penis to create a "mangina".
• Come Back To the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, the James Dean fan club reunion is joined by a stranger, Joanne, played by Karen Black, who turns out to have been better known to the rest of the club 20 years ago as Joe. Oh, and it wasn't James Dean who fathered the club president's son.
• The Chilean film Naomi Campbel is about the life of Yermen, a trans woman who enters a Reality Show to get the chance to finish her reassignment therapy.
• About Ray was initially presented as a trans boy's Coming-of-Age Story. But after the transgender community criticised the movie for having a cis woman play a trans boy and having no trans people at all in the production, the director backpedaled and defended her decision by saying the movie is actually about "a girl who is presenting in a very ineffectual way as a boy [...] to actually use a trans boy was not an option because this isn’t what my story is about", which is all sorts of unfortunate implications and ended up further angering trans people. Early in its production history it was also known as 3 Generations.
• Joan Lambert from Alien is a trans woman, according to bonus material in the Alien Anthology blu-ray set.
• Racing Daylight has an incredible amount of genderfuck so the audience can draw its own conclusions. The gossip (played by actress Denny Dillon) may be a transgender man. In his previous life he was the prissy Religious Wife, Henrietta, but Anna said everyone knew Henrietta was a man. The Busy-Body (played by John Seidman) is either a drag queen or a trans woman, and in the past was Henrietta's husband Rev. "Troll-Man" Potts.
• Escape from L.A. reveals that Hershe Las Palmas is in fact a trans woman and an old associate of Snake's originally named "Carjack" Malone.
• The Danish Girl depicted the story of Einar Wegener, an artist in 1920s Denmark who was the first man to undergo a sex-change operation to become a woman named Lili Elbe.
• Zus & Zo: About halfway through the movie, Nino says "I don't like my body" and shortly thereafter comes out as transgender. This complicates his upcoming Marriage of Convenience to a woman, Bo (by the terms of his father's will he has to get married to inherit a $1.9 million hotel).
• Normal (2003) is about a middle-aged trans woman named Ruth who comes out to her family after 25 years of marriage.

Literature

• Imogen Binnie's Nevada is renowned for being one of the first novel that focuses on a trans character's life years after they've transitioned. The main character, Maria Griffiths, is a trans woman who, after running into trouble in her personal and professional life, decides to take a road trip to Nevada on a whim.
• Roberta Muldoon in John Irving's The World According to Garp.
• Form And Void features not just one, but TWO transgender protagonists (makes sense, given that both authors are trans themselves). One of them, Caren, is a trans woman and foul-mouthed mage hunter. The other, Ash, is a stoic trans masculine alchemist. Together, They Fight Crime!
• Michelle Cliff's No Telephone to Heaven has the trans/genderqueer character Harry/Harriet (also known as H/H), who is AMAB and identifies as a blend of male and female. At the beginning of the novel, s/he has a masculine appearance wears bikinis, puts on feminine make-up, and occasionally dresses in the genderfuck style (for example with both a tuxedo and very campy make-up. Hilarity Ensues as this impish black Jamaican character passes for an African man to fool an American tourist, who really thinks he has just met "King Badnigga of Benin!"). Towards the end of the novel, H/H starts living and presumably identifying as Harriet, a white nurse, which involves double 'passing'. H/H is very aware that even as 'she' is respected as a generous nurse, s/he could literally get lynched for being trans and for passing for white, but makes this choice because a black man couldn't become a nurse. This character plays a huge role in the development of the very confused main character Clare Savage, a white-looking middle-class mixed-race Jamaican woman who questions the racist standards of her formerly slave-owning family and might further be bisexual. His/her ability to transcend social binaries and to fool racists and homophobes/transphobes is part of his/her attributes as a Trickster figure.
• Zoe Marriott's Shadows on the Moon has Akira, a trans woman. When she became the Shadow Bride she should have been killed when this was revealed, but the prince understood and described her as having a female heart.
• David Thomas's Girl is about Bradley, a macho, working class, rugby playing young man who accidentally goes through sexual reassignment surgery (and simultaneous breast augmentation) through a hospital error. It is actually quite sensitive and sweet, even if it is a bit of a stretch that the (almost stereotypically) blokish Bradley decides to commit himself to becoming a woman so quickly, ending up as a sweet-natured, pretty (thanks to hormones and plastic surgery) and content young woman named Jackie.
• Vorkosigan Saga:
  • In A Civil Campaign, the dashing and unconventional Lady Donna Vorrutyer undergoes gender reassignment at age 40 to become Lord Dono. As this is SF, Lord Dono's transformation is perfect — he's even fertile. Lady Donna chooses this course so that she can prevent a corrupt male relative from inheriting her dead brother's countship and its attendant responsibilities. Barrayaran law doesn't allow women to inherit countships, but neither is it exactly set up to deal with transgender people — in the end Dono prevails. And ends up engaged to be married. One assumes Donna was originally bisexual.
  • Elsewhere in the Vorkosigan series, it's stated that people who choose to have their brains transferred to younger clones often choose to change sex when they do.
• In Maria V. Snyder's Study trilogy, it turns out Commander Ambrose has both a female and male personality within an AFAB body due to magic — his mother died giving birth to him and her spirit entered his body (and apparently changed his genitalia). The female personality is allowed out whenever the Commander leaves the country, and is officially an ambassador.
• Angela Carter's The Passion of New Eve (1977) is a novel about a British man, Evelyn, who is, well, castrated by Straw Feminists and made into "a New Eve". It's a satire on Feminism in general, Freudianism, and all other sorts of things. Also features a Dystopic America in the process of caving in on itself.
• Diana Comet
• Coydt Van Haaz, the women-hating Big Bad of Jack Chalker's Empires of Flux & Anchor, turns out to be a trans woman with a very tragic Back Story. He was castrated and then given an involuntary (and irreversible) Gender Bender as a teen. He wants his manhood back and he wants it bad. Since that's not possible he wants to make all women suffer for what happened to him. This is very unusual in a 'verse where Easy Sex Changes are canon.
• In John Varley's Eight Worlds series, sex changes have become so easy and common that anyone who goes through their entire lives as the same sex is considered a little weird, and population control laws have boiled down to "one person, one child."
• In an odd twist, Gurgeh (from The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks) is regarded as being a bit odd because, although changing sex is the norm for most (human) citizens of the Culture, he has never done so. The strong implication is that Gurgeh regards everything as a game and at some level regards being a receptive sexual partner as losing. At the start of the book, it's mentioned that a distinct majority (six in ten?) of his ex-lovers have become, and stayed, FtM.
• Lady Dela from Alison Goodman's fantasy Eon: Dragoneye Reborn is a played straight and rather awesome version of this trope. The varied views of prejudice and acceptance surrounding her are also interesting, as the people of the Asian-inspired universe of the book seem to regard her either with respect for being a sacred "twin-soul", or a freak because they think she's a man living as a woman.
• Luna by Julie Anne Peters is about trans girl's teenage sister, Regan, who often has to lend Luna clothes or cover up for her, because their parents do not know.
• Parrotfish by Ellen Wittlinger is about a trans boy, Grady Katz-McNair. At the beginning of the book, Grady decides he wants to officially come out and change his name from Angela to Grady. The title of the book comes from his nerdy friend, who points out that female parrotfish often change to males.
• Neil Gaiman's short story Changes concerns the accidental creation of a drug that allows an Easy Sex Change and the ramifications of said drug on the global society. Gender identities are blurred as the drug takes on a recreational use, and in the end (as with every conflict of generations) it's seen as something ordinary (if mildly dirty) by the young and disgusting by the old.
• David Nobbs's Sex and Other Changes is about a transgender married couple, both of whom transition in the course of the novel.
• Anna Madrigal from Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City and its sequels, along with the television mini-series adaptations.
• A character in Tamora Pierce's book Bloodhound is a trans woman called Okha/Amber. In that world, it's apparently referred to as being 'tapped in the womb by the Trickster God'.
• The Bone Palace by Amanda Downum has Savedra Severos, the transgender mistress of the Crown Prince, as its second viewpoint character. Transgender people are only marginally accepted in this culture; they have a long history in the open, but most hijra (the "third sex", encompassing all varieties of transgender and agender people) live apart in the company of their own. Most are either in the priesthood, or are mystics and fortune-tellers. Savedra is lucky; she was born wealthy and her mother and family members accept her. Despite the magic of the setting, nothing seems to give any kind of Easy Sex Change; Savedra at one point laments her Adam's apple and her small breasts, and she retains functional male genitalia, so physical sex reassignment does not appear to be possible.
• One novel about a yuppie Latina in San Francisco working under the mayor's wife features a trans woman as a supporting character. She met her boyfriend in a gay men's dance troupe, meaning the author sadly missed the part about gays and transgender people not being one and the same.
• There's a children's book named 10000 Dresses, by Marcus Ewert and Rex Ray, about a young trans girl who wants to wear dresses but isn't accepted by her parents.
• There's a children's book called When Kathy is Keith by Dr. Wallace Wong, who works with transgender youth. It's about a trans boy named Kathy who no one believes is really a boy.
• The excellent novel by David Ebershoff called The Danish Girl is a fictionalized account of the first widely publicized gender reassignment surgery ever performed. The subject of the novel, Einar Wegener, begins to confront his body and gender issues after being asked by his wife to pose in a dress so that she may finish a commissioned portrait of a friend of the young couple. Einar is then moved by this experience to begin identifying himself as Lili. The novel explores the situations of both Lili and the ever-loving and supportive Greta as they come to terms with Lili's transformation. A film adaptation starring Eddie Redmayne as Lili and Alicia Vikander was released in 2015.
• The title character from I Am J by Cris Beam, a Jewish, Puerto Rican, trans boy teenager who is deeply insulted by being called a lesbian, or even by his confused parents calling him "my daughter".
• In Brian Katcher's Almost Perfect, the main character meets, and falls in love with the new girl, who happens to be a trans girl. He struggles to accept her, and eventually does so, based in part on the author's interviews with young transgender people.
• Isabel Allende's Eva Luna has Melecio, an Italian teacher who ever since young identified as a girl, much to the ire of her abusive father. Her Mamma supports her devotedly, though, and she get some solace in her Inter generational friendships with La Señora and Eva. When Eva returns to the capital after spending several years in a small village, she finds out that after a full-blown Break the Cutie process (which included politically-based incarceration, rape, torture, illness and many other terrible things), Melecio has begun to openly presents herself as female, is midway through transition, and has renamed herself as Mimi.
• F2M: The Boy Within by Hazel Edwards and Ryan Kennedy is about a teenage trans boy named Finn. He's also a part of a punk rock band called "Chronic Cramps".
• Murakami's Kafka on the Shore has Oshima, a gay trans man.
• Eriko from Banana Yoshimoto's Kitchen. The main character, Mikage Sakurai, stays in her and her son Yuichi's house after the death of the dear grandmother who raised her.
• When It Happens To You features a trans girl named Olivia/Oliver as a major secondary character.
• Revealed to be the case for The Princess in Velveteen vs. via origin story.
• In the second book of the Outlander Leander series, Valli is a trans man. Notably, he wears dresses and is considered beautiful, but these traits aren't considered feminine in their culture. Valli is accepted as a man without question.
• The comic neo-noir Get Blank features Lara Hernandez, a minor but helpful character who is a member of the Golden Dawn and has contacts in law enforcement. Her gender (and expression) isn't a plot point.
• In the German novel Gottes Bodenpersonal, the sex worker Loreen is violently attacked by a john who discovers her/his penis while he sexually assaults her/him. When not working, Loreen identifies as male and goes by the rather androgynous name "Lauren". Lauren says he feels okay in his male body, but really feels female in Loreen's clothes and make-up. The term "genderfluid" is not used, though. Later events hint that the trans identity issue was caused by childhood sexual abuse, and Lauren is most comfortable as a gay man.
• Though never stated out-right, Veronica from Eden Green is transgender; she transitioned as a teenager, causing some tension with best friend Eden.
• Cam of The Witchlands is biologically female, but prefers to be treated as male and can, understandably, get rather agitated when people don't take this seriously. Whether Cam is actually transgender is never really spelled out loud, but the implication is clear. Considering Merik's reaction (he finds it rather odd but decides to roll with it), this doesn't seem very common in the Witchlands.
• In The Machineries of Empire, Meng is non-binary, and always referred to by "they".
• Danny Tozer, the protagonist of the Nemesis Series, is a transgender superhero. The same series also features the non-binary Kinetiq.
• The Hearts We Sold has Riley, a trans girl. Her parents threw her out for it, and it's implied that she made a deal with the Daemon in exchange for a sex change operation, or possibly hormones.
• George by Alex Gino is about a 10 year old closeted trans girl who wants to play Charlotte in her school's play adaptation of Charlotte's Web.
• Lily and Dunkin is about a teenage tran girl and a boy with Bipolar Disorder who become friends.
• The Other Boy by M.G. Hennessey is about a twelve year old boy named Shane who is outed trans by a classmate.
• Gracefully Grayson is a Coming-Out Story about a twelve year old trans girl.
• The Art of being Normal is about a closeted fourteen year old trans girl who befriends the new boy at her school.
• The Pants Project is about a trans boy trying to change his school's dress code policy that requires boys to wear pants and girls to wear skirts.
• Symptoms of being Human is about a genderfluid teen named Riley who has a blog about being nonbinary. After their blog goes viral, someone at their school connects the blog to them and threatens to out them.
• Tonkee in The Fifth Season is transgender, which is only presented as an issue when she's living rough for a while and runs out of her hormone medication. In her past as Binof, her coming out caused friction with her family due to it disrupting their plans for her Arranged Marriage.
• The novelette Cinder Ella by S. T. Lynn is a retelling of Cinderella in which the titular character is a trans woman whose stepmother and sisters force her to present as male and use her dead name. The princess meets her in this guise, but has no complaints about her showing up to the ball in a dress and recognizes her immediately.
• In Seanan McGuire's Indexing series, main character Henry's twin brother appeared to be her twin sister at birth. Being transgender actually prevented them from falling into a Snow White Rose Red narrative, although Henry is still a Snow White.

Live-Action TV

• Very much Played for Laughs by Barbara Dixon, the grotesque taxi-driver of Royston Vasey in The League of Gentlemen.
• Nip/Tuck seems to have a bit of a fascination with transgender people (understandably, as the show is largely concerned with sex and plastic surgery); the most notable of these is Ava Moore (played by Famke Janssen), whom main character Christian calls "the goddamn Hope Diamond of transsexuals." They actually track down the surgeon responsible for Ava's near-flawless transformation, who agreed to do it because he was heterosexual and she was gay and in love with him.
• The Education Of Max Bickford had a reasonably realistic transgender character (well played by Helen Shaver), who was an old school chum of Max's.
• Coronation Street had a realistic and extremely sympathetic transgender woman, now written out as dead from cancer, marrying another long-time regular character.
• All My Children introduced a transgender character in the process of transitioning, in a relationship with a lesbian.
• The City (a reworking of the Soap Opera Loving, was the first Soap Opera to tackle this topic, with the gorgeous model Azure C. being revealed to have been born a man. Unfortunately, negative fan reaction and the actress' poor performance nixed the storyline. The character and her boyfriend were given a happy ending however, Riding into the Sunset after he accepted this.
• The L Word has had a drag king as a recurring character, and a transgender man as a member of the main cast.
• Ugly Betty has Alexis Meade, who lives as a woman after faking her death. Of course, her brother didn't know until after he starts hitting on her. In a later episode in which Daniel is displeased by his long-lost half-brother:
  Daniel: Don't call him my brother. My only brother is my sister, Alexis.
• One of the reasons why the Argentinian telenovela Los Roldán was so succesful? The fun-loving transgender character played by actress Florencia de la V, who is a trans woman in Real Life.
• Two and a Half Men:
  • In season 1, Evelyn's new boyfriend turns out to be one of Charlie's old girlfriends. Cue the torrent of puerile jokes.
  • In season 11, Alan dates a trans woman briefly. Her treatment is fairly sensitive, save a few jabs in the form of "masculine" behaviour (paying for him on a date, giving him her jacket, punching an obnoxious man being mean to him, and scratching her ‘phantom nuts’), which Alan doesn’t mind or even enjoys. In a twist, their relationship ends when she gets back together with her ex-wife, at Alan’s surprisingly selfless encouragement. (Although he does get a kick of watching them reconcile.)
• Tales from the Crypt:
  • "The Assassin" has a team of government assassins invade the home of a very stereotypical suburban Housewife because they're convinced her husband is a rogue former agent who used Magic Plastic Surgery to radically alter his appearance before going underground. Nothing she says can convince them otherwise so she turns the tables on them and easily kills them all. It turns out she was their rogue former agent after quite a bit more plastic surgery than even they had been prepared to believe.
  Female Agent: Does he still like it rough?
  Housewife: Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.
• The victim in one episode of Bones turns out to be a postoperative transgender woman. This is handled with surprising sensitivity, and despite the title of the episode that status is not the focus of the plot.
• Drop Dead Diva has two cases involving trans people, one, a widow played by transgender actress Candis Cayne is trying to keep her marital assets from being taken away by her wife’s parents. The other a boy takes on his private school when the head of the board insists he use the girls bathroom.
• An episode of Night Court had an old university friend of Dan Fielding show up as a post-op transgender woman, in the process of getting married; with Dan naturally playing the role of rabid homo/transphobe. Dan eventually accepted his friend.
• Doctor Who:
  • Cassandra from the "The End Of The World" and "New Earth" makes passing mention of when she was a boy. She's also thousands of years old and had so much plastic surgery that she's now only a face on a very thin layer of skin until she begins to possess Rose's body.
    Cassandra: Soon, the sun will blossom into a red giant, and my home will die. That's where I used to live, when I was a little boy, down there.
    • Although given her reaction to being forced to possess the 10th Doctor, said line could have been a joke.
  • "A Town Called Mercy" features a transgender horse. His name is Susan and he would like you to respect his life choices.
  • Many Time Lords apparently, given that regeneration makes for Easy Sex Change. The first one mentioned is the Corsair ("Didn't feel like himself unless he had that tattoo — or herself a few times."), and the first one seen is Missy, previously known as the Master. The Doctor gets in on this as well, with the Thirteenth Doctor being their first female incarnation.
• Mark in Ally McBeal found out that his girlfriend (played by the lovely Lisa Edelstein) was a pre-op trans woman. They tried to make it work anyway, but he was just too freaked out.
• In an episode of St. Elsewhere, one of Dr. Craig's old pals shows up at the hospital. All goes well until he happens to mention that he's having sexual reassignment surgery. After having a trademark freakout for most of the episode, Craig finally accepts the situation.
• One episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles features Sarah searching for a man on the run from Skynet, only to find out he's been hiding his identity by living as a woman. None of this is played for laughs, and with zero amount of freaking out or any talk about sex. Alan/Eileen later admits to being strangely grateful for the opportunity to live as her true self, despite being hunted.
• In one episode of Rab C. Nesbitt a new barmaid at Rab's local pub is a pre-op trans woman (played by David Tennant, no less!). At the end of the episode she helps Rab and Mary to get revenge on Mary's extremely sleazy new boss (who has been sexually harrassing her from her first day in the job) by taking Mary's place at work one day and seducing him in the broom cupboard, leading to a spectacularly horrified reaction.
• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit:
  • In one episode, the Victim of the Week, Cheryl (played by Kate Moennig), is on trial for beating a man to death. As the investigation continues, it's discovered that she is a pre-op transgender woman, and she acted in self defense. Long story short, she was put in a men's prison, and after her trial, she is gang-raped.
  • "Transitions" involved a pre-teen trans girl whose father refuses to let her start hormone therapy and transition. The episode treats the young girl quite sensitively, with most characters accepting and using her preferred identity and her father eventually coming around (even after being brutally attacked.)
  • Another episode revealed an involuntary trans person. Preteen twins, a boy and girl, were the main suspects in the accidental death of a gang member. The DNA evidence seemed to point to the boy twin even though his sister had admitted she was the culprit, until they learned the girl twin was actually born a boy. When he was born, he'd been mutilated by accident during his circumcision, so his parents forced him into transitioning genders when he was still a baby to avoid being an outcast because of what happened. When he's finally told that he was born a boy, he states that he never felt right with his body, and starts the transition back into a male identity.
  • A 2015 episode was about a transgender teenager who was mocked by other teens and was accidentally thrown off a bridge. She survived the injuries however suddenly died due to them later. The episode dealt with whether it was a hate crime or not.
  • A 2016 episode billed as a Very Special Episode involved a trans woman who was raped and beaten in a bathroom. The investigators had to find out whether it counted as a hate crime or not. It turns out to be music related as her boyfriend, who she is in a Secret Relationship with due to fears of being seen as gay, is a rapper. When she dies her boyfriend murders the man who killed her and ends up going to jail due to refusing to reveal his romance in court.
• CSI:
  • An episode features a well-intentioned doctor who did back-alley sex-change operations.
  • A similar case happens in CSI NY, where a trans woman (who was still transitioning) is found dead in the men's toilets of a very posh hotel that happened to have been running a political rally/party at the time. The initial suspect was a governor who had raped the woman's sister, but the murderer was actually a man who she'd made out with earlier that evening - finding this out enraged him (made worse by the fact that his friends knew, and found it hilarious that he'd kissed a man), and he flipped out when he saw that she was using the men's room "like a normal man".
• Two episodes of NCIS had transgender characters. One became a running joke after Tony made out with her. The other was a character who was dead by the time the episode really began (suicide), and was dealt with a lot better, even if there was the obligatory "he... she... he-she" moment.
• An episode of The Listener, "Lisa Says," had a trans man character.
• On Will & Grace Jack (a gay man) finds himself sexually aroused by a female stripper giving him a lap dance and starts to question his existence, but is relieved to find out that she is a pre-op transgender woman and he was just aroused by the feeling of her penis. How that works we have no idea.
• Adam in Degrassi: The Next Generation is introduced as a New Transfer Student, and we find out his secret at the same time as everyone in the school does. His grandmother still doesn't know. As a bonus, the character also has the title of the first fictional, transgender, teenaged character in the history of scripted television. However Trailers Always Spoil, this was heavily hinted in the promo for Season 10 to be the case. Adam was eventually Killed Off for Real for an aesop about texting and driving.
• In the French-Canadian series Un Gars Une Fille, Guy and Sylvie participate in a gay pride parade alongside Guy's lesbian half-sister. There, they encounter an old high school hockey teammate of Guy's, who has transitioned into a woman. A humorous line happens when Sylvie asks her if it was a difficult process.
  "Yes it was, and it took a lot of balls... which I no longer have!"
• Jasmine/Jason of Holly Oaks is a trans man who gets framed for murder by a Psycho Lesbian so he has to carry on living as a girl. It's... complicated.
• Cold Case:
  • The episode "Boy Crazy" features a young trans boy in the 1960's murdered for dressing and acting like a boy.
  • The earlier episode "Danieka" focused on a trans woman in the 70s that is Driven to Suicide when her boyfriend's father forced them to break up.
• An episode of ER called "Next Of Kin" stars a child named Morgan. The episode doesn't end well, since she's forced to live like a boy after moving in with her mom when her dad dies; apparently due to the fact her step-dad would not accept her as a girl.
• One of the dozens of subplots in Dirty Sexy Money revolves around Patrick Darling's relationship with a post-op transgender woman named Carmelita, which he attempts to maintain despite (a) being married to someone else and (b) running for the U.S. Senate.
• One episode of Dark Angel has Jam Pony's resident square Normal get into a relationship with a trans woman. When he finds out, he's still quite willing to go out with her, but she dumps him and expresses interest in resident lesbian Original Cindy, who is repulsed.
• Mrs. Hudson from Elementary. Interestingly, little has been made of it — she hasn't been treated differently, joked about, or anything really. She is also played by a trans woman.
• Nao, a character introduced in season 6, from 3-Nen B-Gumi Kinpachi-sensei was revealed to be trans. He was introduced as an antisocial, somewhat aggressive New Transfer Student who wears a long skirt instead of the standard mini-skirt. He's considered an influential character in Japan when it comes to transgender characters.
• Tony, introduced in episode 2.08 of Orphan Black, was assigned female at birth but identifies as male and has begun transitioning.
• Sophia Burset in Orange Is the New Black, who's in prison because when she was a firefighter she stole credit cards and financial information from burnt houses, to pay for hormones and surgery. Despite being a secondary character the show attracted wide praise for having one of the most sympathetic portrayals of a trans woman in film or television history, and her actress Laverne Cox (a trans woman in real life) has used the publicity to further her campaigns for the rights of transgender people.
• In a 2013 weekly-aired Chilean Reality Show about plastic surgery, one of the participants was a trans woman named Alejandra who entered it hoping to get the reassignment surgery. She won that round and was successfully operated on.
• In 2008, 5-time Jeopardy! champion Fred Ramen from 1997 underwent gender-reassignment surgery, becoming Catherine Ramen, Jeopardy's first transgender champion. She was considered for a fan-voted spot in the 90s-champions quarterfinal matches in 2014's "Battle of the Decades" tournament, but lost to 1996 College Tournament winner Shane Whitlock.
• Nomi from Sense8 is a transgender hacker. Her gender identity plays an important role in her story, but doesn't dominate it. Her relationship to her girlfriend, and skill with computers, is as essential to her story as her gender. Considering that the directors, Lana and Lilly Wachowski, are transgender women themselves, the positive treatment of her character isn't too surprising. Her actress, Jamie Clayton, is also transgender.
• Two similarly-named reality TV shows launched in 2015 focusing on transgender people: I Am Cait, following the very public transition of Caitlyn Jenner, and I Am Jazz, which follows a pre-teen trans girl as she enters into adolescence.
• On My Name Is Earl, Earl signs up for a pen-pal service while in Prison, and gets matched up with a woman named Annie. When Annie appears, she is...not quite what Earl was expecting, but manages to have a nice conversation with him all the same. They connect when Earl mentions that this whole "Karma" thing must be confusing, and she responds that people have been calling her "confusing" her whole life. She talks about how she's planning to complete her transition with bottom-surgery, and allows Earl to feel her breast implants, as "the top half is already done." Earl is impressed with how realistic they feel. Later, another inmate is seen going in for a conjugal visit with Annie.
• Glee gave us two trans characters: Unique (MTF) and Coach Beiste (FTM). Unique was presented as trans from the start and was immensely popular with fans, who often felt she was underused during the fourth and fifth seasons. Beiste, on the other hand, was introduced as a cisgender woman in the second season who later came out as a trans man in the sixth. This wasn't nearly as well-received, since Beiste was already popular with the genderqueer crowd for being a masculine cis/straight woman, and giving the message that just because she wasn't super-feminine didn't make her any less of a woman. As you can imagine, many viewers were upset by the revelation that Beiste secretly identified as a man all along.
• Dead of Summer gives us Drew (FTM), formerly known as Andrea. His mother was deeply disturbed by his identity and eventually left him because of it.
• Taylor Mason from Billions is non-binary, going by they/them pronouns.
• The Switch is a Canadian show about a trans woman who features a nonbinary character. Chris uses "zie/zir" pronouns.
• Butterfly is all about 11 year old Max transitioning into a girl called Maxine.
• An episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun plays it surprisingly straight (no pun intended) and gently. As the family gathers for their end-of-day rooftop debriefing, Sally ponders her experience with a gay man who mistook her for a transvestite. "Remember when we said that two sexes must be so limiting? I think Glenn found a loophole."

Music

• Suzanne Vega song "As Girls Go" about a trans woman.
• The Velvet Underground's "Lady Godiva's Operation," focusing on a trans woman first going under the knife. Things don't really work out.
• Dolly Parton's "Travelin' Thru" was written with the process of transition in mind. It is played at the credits of the previously mentioned movie movie Transamerica.
• The Scorpions hit "He's A Woman, She's A Man".
• The most common interpretation of the song "For Today I Am A Boy" by Antony & The Johnsons is that it's about a transgender person. The songs "You Are My Sister" and "I Fell In Love With A Dead Boy" have the same interpretations.
• ''Confused Gender'' by Ravens Moreland, "a song about a transsexual before it was cool".
• Avicii's "Silhouettes" video involves a trans woman undergoing sex reassignment surgery.
• The lead singer and guitarist for the band ''Against Me!'' is trans woman Laura Jane Grace. The band's discography includes several songs addressing or centered around the difficulties of being transgender, the most obvious of which is entitled "Transgender Dysphoria Blues".

Podcasts

• In the D&D actual-play podcast The Adventure Zone there's Lup, an NPC who is Taako's twin sister and is revealed to be trans by Griffin, the DM, during her introduction.
• In Sequinox, Harmony's father Charles is a trans man. In the Gemini arc Chell states that she's a trans woman, though it wasn't a reveal so much as stating an open secret.

Tabletop Games

• Exalted has three examples. The Tya are woman in the West who, after getting intricate tattoos and drinking a tonic that sterilizes them, are legally considered males, and can sail without fear of Storm Mothers, who destroy any ship that has a woman more beautiful then them, which includes pretty much any woman. The Dereth are Delzhan who wear a special gray sash and are legally and culturally recognized as the opposite gender. The Lunar Exalt Silver Python is agender; as a form of homage to Luna, who's associated with gender fluidity, zhe regularly switches genders every twenty years, and no longer remembers or cares which zhe started out as.
• The World of Warcraft Tabletop RPG touches on this, by explaining how quilboar — a race of warthog-like humanoids, who are Always Chaotic Evil in the MMO but are given a somewhat more sympathetic portrayal in the tabletop game — operate under a strict Stay in the Kitchen rule, but if a female proves herself to be a strong and capable warrior, then she is declared to be a male by the tribe's shaman, and will live as a male and even take wives from that point forward.
• Pathfinder, due to not being hampered by the "decency codes" that constrained earlier editions of Dungeons & Dragons, freely embraces a more adult stance on things and so openly includes homosexuality and transgenderism in its setting, something that has given the game a notable LGBT Fanbase. Transgender and gender-neutral characters are quite common through the game books, including such figures as the androgynous angelic Empyreal Lord^note lesser god of Neutral Good Arshea, whose portfolio covers freedom, physical beauty and sexuality, and whose gender ambiguity means that individuals, regardless of gender or personal sexuality, find Arshea to be ravishingly beautiful and sexually enticing.
  • More explicit examples include an NPC named Anevia Tirabade (who willingly went undercover as a girl in her youth, figured out in the process that she actually was one, and was eventually given an early version of the serum of sex shift from Starfinder as a wedding present from her future bride; another NPC named Marislova (who, while living in her ex-girlfriend's nearly all-female sanctuary, gradually discovered that she actually fit in); iconic shaman Shardra Geltl (who used an alchemical treatment in order to conform), and two male side characters named Xomar Glavit (a dwarven oracle) and Rexus Vicotora (a sorcerer and heir to a largely-defunct noble house). The name of the Rivethun faction (with whom Shardra and Xomar are both at least tangentially associated) has become almost synonymous in-universe with being either trans or a staunch ally.
• Starfinder officially introduces both the serum of sex shift and the explicitly non-binary iconic operative Iseph.
• Dungeons & Dragons has embraced transgender and gender-nonconforming characters in its fifth edition, with a sidebar encouraging players to explore different options of gender expression and identity when creating a new character.
• Magic: The Gathering has Alesha as a canonically transgender character. And a pretty badass one, at that.
• Shadowrun has fully embraced transgenderism to the point that there are cybernetic mods in sourcebooks specifically for transgender characters as well as rules for changing a character's sex via gene therapy (a longer process, but causes less essence drain). Two of the NPC commentators in Jackpoint are transgender, as well- the Conspiracy Theorist Cloud 9 who regularly changes sex due to a surgical addiction (but always identifies as male regardless), and Hard Exit, who changes sex so often that other character have to ask which gender pronouns are appropriate at the moment.

Theater

• Sweetie in Bombay Dreams, a beautiful trans woman who just wants her childhood friend and longtime crush Akaash to live his dreams and get what he wants, to the point of eventually performing a Heroic Sacrifice.

Video Games

• Persona:
  • In Persona 3 during "Operation Babe Hunt", Junpei, Akihiko, and the protagonist are victims of an Unsettling Gender Reveal when the only woman who actually is interested in you three seems rather suspiciously eager and vulgar minded. The reveal is when Akihiko realizes she has some hair on her chin and she outs herself, disappointed that you figured out her secret, and that she wanted you guys as "boytoys" anyway.
  • Subverted in Persona 4. Naoto Shirogane appears to be this at first, given her Shadow's actions and intentions, but it turns out she is a young woman who is trying desperately to be accepted in the very male-dominated line of work she's in, rather than being seen as Just a Kid. All of her detective heroes as a kid were male, and all of her co-workers are male, so she viewed those as role models, and aspired to be just like them, unfortunately causing her to mistakenly believe she had to make herself actually pass as a male to be taken seriously.
  • Barkeep Lala Escargot from Persona 5 may initially come off as just a Drag Queen, but she's implied to genuinely identify as a woman.
• Poison and Roxy from Final Fight, both trans women (and Palette Swaps of each other). They didn't make it stateside in the console versions, though (thank you very much, Nintendo Standards and Practices). Poison doesn't reappear until Final Fight Revenge, and from that point forward she sticks around as Hugo Andore's manager/bodyguard/bickering best friend. Capcom of Japan have gone on record that Poison's status is post-op in America and pre-op in Japan, though originally she was a hermaphrodite with a general feminine body-structure and masculine sexual organs.
• The Frozen Half, an ice magician described similarly to Poison in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. The Dracula X Chronicles rerelease changed the term to "transvestite". In both games the enemy is described as serving Galamoth, and it indeed first appeared in Kid Dracula, though wearing ice skates and looking Gonk.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Birdo was described in the manual of her first appearance as "wanting to be called Birdetta" and "wanting to be a girl". Later appearances have hinted that she has since had "the operation".
  • Vivian, from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is this in just about every version of the game except the English translation (where she's referred to as female with no indication that she is trans). In all other versions she identifies as female, but Bellam's insults to her involve calling her a man (the English translation changes them to calling Vivian "pug-ugly").
• Dept. Heaven:
  • Lethal Joke Character Eater from Blaze Union has two personalities, one of which is male. Eater is AFAB, but when the male half is in control, he is treated by all other characters and by the game system itself (which has different unit formations based on gender) as a man who just so happens to be running around in the girly clothes his other personality put on in the morning.
  • Gloria Union has Kyra, who identifies (and is treated by the game's system itself) as intergender.
• Erica, formerly Eric in Catherine. Notably, The Reveal is not treated as anything especially dramatic - it's mentioned rather nonchalantly in the Lovers True Ending, Toby is happily in a relationship with her (or at least one with a lot of mutual snarking), and Vincent, Johnny, and Orlando knew all along as they went to high school with her. In hindsight, there's a lot of foreshadowing for it.
• Dragon Age:
  • Played for laughs in Dragon Age: Origins and slightly less in Dragon Age II. In the former, at the Pearl, the PC has the option of saying "surprise me" and getting a very obviously male dwarf prostitute in a female costume. In the latter, at the Blooming Rose, the transgender elven prostitute at least has a female body model even if her voice is male.
  Husky Dwarf: I've got a little something for everybody.
  • There were transgender elven prostitutes in Origins as well, with such lines as "You have to slay the dragon before you can get to the princess". Also, the "surprise me" option can lead to a whole number of encounters, from the crossdressing dwarf to a room full of nugs- think a pig crossed with a naked mole-rat.
  • The comic books Those Who Speak and Until We Sleep has Maevaris, a Tevinter Magister who's the former lover of Varric's cousin who is revealed to be transgender later on. Other than that, her gender doesn't play into the story in any way,
  • Dragon Age: Inquisition has Krem, a trans male human who serves as Iron Bull's lieutenant. According to Bull, the Qunari term for transgender people is Aqun-Athlok and by their society are treated as whatever gender they recognize themselves as. He also states that any female that wishes to become warriors (traditionally a male role in Qunari society) and are skilled enough at it are treated as thus and sent to the military, though that's more a culture-specific thing.
  • The Aqun-Athlok concept is a bit different to most transgender experiences, however, in that it is based on what role a person takes under the Qun; if someone is a warrior, for example, they are a man because only men can be warriors, regardless of a person's assigned gender at birth. This is why Sten is so confused by a female warden, because in his culture, women literally cannot be warriors while still being women - they would be accepted and treated fully as men, however.
• Subaru Kujo in the fifth Sakura Wars game is pretty clearly genderqueer; zie always uses gender-neutral speech (at least in the Japanese version), refuses to identify as male or female, and dresses in both masculine and feminine attire.
• Pokémon X and Y has one "Beauty" trainer from Battle Tower mention: "Yes, a mere half year ago I was a Black Belt! Quite the transformation, wouldn't you say?" Black Belts are a type of trainer consisting exclusively of men (as opposed to their Distaff Counterparts, Battle Girls), suggesting this particular Beauty underwent gender reassignment surgery. The Japanese version of the game is less ambiguous: The Black Belts' Japanese name, Karateoh, translates into "Karate Kings"; and the Beauty makes mention of "modern medicine".
• Zonda from Azure Striker Gunvolt is bigender and is referred to using "xe" and "xem" pronouns (and the Self-Imposed Challenge for his level is called "Use Xyr Illusion").
  Zonda: Look at you, you're all boy!
  Gunvolt: I heard you're a little bit of both.
• The protagonist of Aerannis is a trans woman. This ends up being a major plot point, as the setting takes place in a dystopia ruled by TERFS.
• The Sims 4 added a feature called Custom Genders in June 2016. This feature allows one to choose the characters body frame and clothing preferences as being masculine or feminine, and whether they can become pregnant, or make others pregnant, or even neither. As a result, transgender characters are very easy to create.
• Guild Wars 2 has a trans woman character in Lion's Arch named Sya who your character previously met in the personal story as Simon.
• Technobabylon has Max Lao, female partner of protagonist Dr. Charlie Regis, who when asked about her past casually mentions attending a school that Charlie knows to be all-boys. She apparently "fit right in" at the time.
• In Read Only Memories, one of the player's major allies, TOMCAT, identifies as nonbinary (as can the player character, if you so choose).
• Bolt from Crypt Of The Necrodancer is nonbinary and goes by they/them.
• In South Park: The Fractured but Whole, you can make your character either transgender or gender-neutral when establishing your character's gender identity, which causes some minor alterations to other NPCs' dialog. Kyle's character Human Kite identifies as a "Gender-Neutral Alien" while Wendy's character Call Girl identifies as a Gender-Fluid individual, though this only applies for their superhero personas and not the actual characters.
• In Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear, the Cleric Mizhena offhandedly mentions that she chose her own name because her parents assumed her to be male and named her accordingly.
• In Pure Again by Kevin McGowan, two transgender characters undergo a voluntary "Freaky Friday" Flip.
• In Fallen London and its sequels it is possible to identify as an Individual of Mysterious and Indistinct Gender, and a number of NPCs also identify this way.

Visual Novels

• Kaine in A Profile. It's handled pretty tactfully and pointed out that it makes things pretty difficult for him. He reacts poorly to the issue when it is mentioned. However, despite mostly being handled well there appears to have been some confusion on the part of the writers between this and homosexuality, though it may just be that he simply happens to also be attracted to women. Kaine is AFAB but never felt like a woman, so he started going to school in male clothing and took male hormones to be more masculine. Kaine continues to be treated as a male and gets more female attention than Masayuki.
• Jun Watarase in Happiness is confirmed to be this. Although initially seen as a Wholesome Crossdresser by yuuma and hachi, the OVA in particular shows Jun overjoyed when accidentally actually turning biologically female (of course, she turns back before the end of the episode).
• Alex Cyprin from Astoria: Fate's Kiss is a non-binary demigod who dresses androgynously and goes by they/them pronouns.
• Avery, the protagonist of Hustle Cat can be played as non-binary; you have the option of "she", "he", and "they" pronouns, and can change them at any time.
• Fran from Missing Stars is nonbinary. They dress in the girl's uniform top paired with trousers. With their androgynous looks and a voice that is just as neutral, even Fran's friends don't know what to call them. Natalya thinks Fran's a girl, her sister Sofiya believes they're a boy, and Erik switches between "she" and "they". Fran is coy on the issue of their gender and lets people use whatever pronouns they want.

Web Comics

• Gravity Break: Cataclysm Features several transgender character. The protagonist, Emilia, is a trans girl who has used an illegal substance to turn into a catgirl, as an alternative to conventional medical transition. Her girlfriend Erin is also transgender, while supporting characters Minkah and Charon are both non-binary.
• Questionable Content has Claire, a trans woman. She is currently in a relationship with Marten, and no one thinks anything is unusual about the situation. Tai the librarian mentions having had a phase of "identifying as a boy" (binding her breasts, "wearing lots of Carhartt stuff", etc.) but settled as a Tomboyish lesbian.
  • Claire is an interesting case, having apparently had a difficult transition and not being entirely happy with the present outcome, but unwilling to progress further.
• Venus Envy is all about a trans girl teenager, who, at the beginning of the comic, has recently switched schools as she moves to living as a full-time female. She also has a friend the same age who is a transitioning trans boy too.
• Groovy, Kinda Reade Turner, formerly Reed Turner, is a sarcastic used bookstore owner and mother of teenagers Tristan and Iseult.
• One of the lead characters in Closetspace is a transgender woman, who struggled with the decision of whether to undergo SRS, later she has the surgery and retains her female identity. The other lead is also transgender, just starting her life as a woman.
• The main subject of Trans Girl Diaries as it involves a main cast of transgender characters. Also its fan sequel to Venus Envy, "This is Your Life."
• In Jennifer Diane Reitz' series Unicorn Jelly, Wai Wai Ngo is eventually revealed to be a transgender man. This is a serious issue, as gender deviation is punished by death in the society of the time, and furthermore, this is discovered at a point After the End when everyone is obligated to have children due to the small surviving gene pool. In the Alternate Universe series To Save Her, we see a younger Wai struggling to get his father to recognize him as male; later, during their travels, he is given sex-reassignment surgery to become fully male (the medical science in the Splay they went to being highly advanced).
• Katie Lynne Sapphe: The Webcomic is a very irregularly updated Diary Comic by a transgender woman going through transition as a college student.
• Tom and Charlie from Khaos Komix, Tom being a trans man and Charlie being a trans woman. The author also identifies as "Trans". They became friends in high school but were severely bullied to the point where a group of kids beat Charlie up, wanted to rape Tom, and forced their families to move out of the town. Current time they're two college students whose arcs revolve around their boyfriends.
• Natani of TwoKinds is a particularly convoluted case. They started out as a tomboyish girl who dressed up as and pretended to be a boy so they could stay with their elder brother Zen, the last surviving member of their family, when he joined the incredibly misogynistic assassin's guild of their people, who would have executed the both of them if they found out they were AFAB. At some point, they understandably began idly wishing they were male, since it'd be so much less of a hassle. Then they flubbed an assassination attempt and they got hit with a Black Magic spell that destroyed parts of their soul, requiring their brother to let them use his to "fill in the gaps". A side effect of this Mental Fusion was a severe shakeup in identity, and so he came to see himself as a guy trapped in the body of a girl, with no small amount of self-loathing. During the events of the comic, their mental link to Zen is stifled, which provides the opportunity for a Journey to the Center of the Mind in which they confront their original self from before the soul-splitting. This alternate Natani calls the present Natani out on how some of their beliefs about themself are misguided, and even misogynistic, and whilst it is emphasized that Natani can't be "changed back" and that their mind will never completely heal its many fractures, this does lead to some mental healing. After this event, Natani is more of a gender-fluid character that perhaps closest aligns to The Lad-ette in nature; a female body, a strongly masculine mentality/personality, and a comfortable acceptance of both parts in themself. Further complicating the matter, during the Journey to the Center of the Mind, the Past Natani suggests that they were always a little gender-fluid. Their exact words being "I didn't mind being a girl, but... I liked being seen as a boy".
• Minor character Riley from Errant Story is intersex, which has caused chaos at least once.
• While Ash from Misfile is a Gender Bender, much of his struggles closely resemble those of a trans boy, such as his angst of being seen as a woman and the frustration over being trapped in the "wrong" body.
• Marius from My Life In Blue.
• While Dr Pegasus in Umlaut House is a fairly typical Gender Bender in the current stories, there have been a few hints that she had to deal with the problems typical of a Real Life transgender before that.
• Emerald, formerly Richard in 5ideways.
• Word of God is that Chelsie Warner of Concession identifies as female, but since she's ten years old and, going by her behaviour, suffering from a LOT of sex-related issues it's unclear in the comic. The Where Are They Now epilogue shows her at the age of eighteen, fully transitioned and apparently recovering from her traumatic childhood.
• Molly Ricketts in Witchprickers' Rule, Britannia is transgender. Although it's said early on that none of the other characters are sure whether he's a trans woman or a trans man, he's later revealed to be a trans man.
• The minor character Aubrey in Boy Meets Boy is a pre-op trans man.
• A transgender character receives a surprisingly sympathetic treatment in Exiern, a comic which normally plays its gender benders for laughs, when one of a group of gender-bent priests is shown to view it less as a curse and more as a liberation, and her backstory clearly describes someone who entered the priesthood primarily because she was unhappy with her birth gender.
• Rain is the title character of a slice-of-life dramedy webcomic that tells the story of a young transgender girl who is just starting out her senior year of high school and hoping to fit in and find her way as a woman.
• The Dragon Queen features the eponymous hero, the city's "first and only transvestite super-hero" who was born Bradley Bartlett but currently dresses female, identifies as Brandywine Bartlett, and has the people around her use female pronouns.
• In Tales of a Gay Asian, there is a trans woman sengchou who has stubble and gets further surgery to look like Lady Gaga.
• In The Dragon Doctors, there are plenty of Gender Benders, but one actual trans man does show up in Mori's backstory chapter. In a setting where magic can easily change your gender, this might not seem to be a big issue, but Lem came from a country where magic was strongly discouraged. Worse, Lem was self-medicating with cheap, temporary Gender Bender potions that had a toxic after-effect, and he nearly died from it.
• Z from the Slice of Life Journal Comic Gemini. An interesting case, as her body is not just her own; she shares it with a cis man.
• Casually mentioned in Dominic Deegan; the "alterist" (magical plastic surgeon/fertility doctor) Dominic and Luna go to see gives herself as an example of the non-Mad Scientist applications of alterist magic when Dominic gets freaked out. She looks entirely like an average biological woman (even allowing for the Only Six Faces artstyle), her status doesn't matter to the story, and the situation isn't played for either laughs or angst.
• The protagonist of What's Normal Anyway? is a trans man, and the webcomic mainly revolves around gags related to him. It begins to have more continuity as it goes on, with him dealing with his transition and dating another trans man.
• The now defunct Trane-generation comic was a bunch of gag comics revolving around transgender issues, mainly those of trans men.
• Mr. Normal is a Cringe Comedy webcomic about a closeted trans woman trying to not be one. She acts very transphobic to cover up her feelings and overcompensates being masculine.
• In Greg, Greg is hit on by the same transgender person in multiple strips despite his unwillingness to engage.
• Karabear Comics Unlimited debuted Eiderdown, a trans woman superhero, in issue 3.
• Unity:
  • Main character Juni Melrose identifies as neutrois (although their neural clone Zero seems to identify as more feminine, or uses feminine pronouns at least, and also refers to Juni retroactively as female). Juni also seems to get into relationships with other genderqueer characters, such as Sam Roarke. Later, Tanya Harris implies a potential neutrois identification.
  • Alda Henning in the Breeder sub-story
  • In Blackout, Min is implied to be female-identified but has a male's spurs
• The Princess revolves around a young trans girl named Sarah. Compared to the others it has a considerably lighter tone, being almost like a children's comic. There are other trans characters that pop up, including an older trans boy Sarah likes and Sarah's best friend eventually being revealed as nonbinary.
• Early on in 8-Bit Theater, Red Mage was shown to have various gender identity issues. Later subverted when it was revealed that he wasn't transgender at all, but that Thief had simply been playing headgames with him to make him think he was, for no apparent reason other than Thief's amusement at the emotional distress this caused him.
• Ghastly's Ghastly Comic featured Freddy, a woman with a penis and a male name whom the author referred to as "s/he": "I feel s/he transcends all normal concepts of gender. S/he's not gender dysphoric, s/he's gender euphoric."
• Senna in Ménage à 3 is or appears to be a Brazilian trans woman with a female figure so attractive that she has a job as an international lingerie model, but also with a fully functional penis, along with a highly active sex drive. The comic's cast page flags her as bisexual, but her main interest seems to be seducing attractive men; she's engaged in an extended game of Corrupt the Cutie with the naive Gary. Exact details of her condition are unclear; when asked, the writers admitted that they're keeping their options open regarding her history, status and future plans for treatment, but for now, she likes being the way she is. She mostly seems to be a joke about one or two real-world trans fashion models who've come out of Brazil, while also serving as a source of jokes about Gary's naivety.
• Bedivere in the modern and space arcs of Arthur, King of Time and Space following two successive Retcons to the original female version. (The first used a series of No Fourth Wall strips to establish he was now male but still in a relationship with Kay so the strip had a main gay couple; the second was that the earlier strips where he was physically female were still in continuity.)
• Ultra-Car from Shortpacked! is an odd example. As the name suggests, Ultra-Car starts as a super-powered robot car whom everyone addresses as male. However, eventually "he" wants to be a girl instead, and has Joe and Rachel build a Fem Bot body to transfer into. Given these circumstances, she actually refers to herself as a "transchassis woman."
• Dumbing of Age:
  • Jocelyne Brown, Joyce's older brother. At the time of the comic she seems to only use her preferred name in her writing and is not out to her parents.
  • Carla is a transgender woman, first according to Word of God and later confirmed. She's the human counterpart of Ultra-Car from Shortpacked!, above.
• Pheia Tessier is Holystone is the setting's equivalent of a trans woman. The spoken language has been stated to have gendered dialects, so her gender identity is treated as a non-issue by the rest of the cast.
• Calogrenant by Gillian Cameron centers on a trans female Knight of the Round Table.
• Validation by Christian Beranek is a slice of life comic about a transgender girl named Ally.
• El Goonish Shive:
  • Tedd is genderfluid. He didn't find this out until Grace told him that being genderfluid was a thing.
  Grace: You're just...I think it's genderfluid? I'm pretty sure that applies to you...
  Tedd: I'm—that's a thing? There's a name for it?
  • Apparently, Grace learned about transgender people from a trans guy comic store patron. Said guy, Sam, went on a not-exactly-a-date with Sarah.
  • If Tedd's talk with a space whale and the spell he cast is any indication, in the EGS 'verse non-cisgender identity stems from having a soul that's not the same gender/sex as your body. In Tedd's case, it looks like his soul switches from male to female occasionally.
• Gqutie has protagonist Ronnie, who is genderqueer, and their transgender partner, along with other trans characters.
• In Superego, one of the main characters, Sam, is a trans man.
• In Cucumber Quest, one of the Disaster Masters is a trans woman, as confirmed by Word of God. With the change in gender also came a change in name (Thornmaster —> Rosemaster); she's not particularly pleased that the legends still refer to her by her old title and pronoun.
• The two main characters of Between the Lines are teenage trans girls. Shay coaxes the reluctant protagonist to start dressing how she wants and go out as a girl despite her parents wishes. There's also Nikki, a Rich Bitch who ironically used to bully Shay for being effeminate. Shay finds it amusing the transphobic bully was also secretly transgender.
• "Mool Byung", one of Yang Jooha's friends who dropped out of high school in Welcome To Room 305. They meet years later but he tries to avoid her at first but eventually they reconcile. One of their two other school friends didn't react as positive when she finds out though.
• This The Non-Adventures of Wonderella strip reveals that Jesus considers himself this: since he was the result of a virgin birth, he doesn't have a Y-chromosome, but identifies as male.
• Tales of the Galli All the Galli are Gender Variant males who have undergone ritual castration for religious purposes. Thereafter some adopt feminine names and dress, while others don't.
• In Autumn Bay, Ghoul is a trans man. Not a lot of attention is drawn to the fact (except a bit of fanart displayed on the Transgender Day of Remembrance), but an introspective flashback shows a shadowy feminine figure.
• In Prague Race, Miko is transgender and has a relatively subtle reveal. Besides a handful of hints at the start of the series (some hints of concerns about his body shape and a character noting he has a "girly" scream), the scene in which he is being turned into a werewolf for the first time shows his chest binder being cut off as the rest of his clothes rip off. It's confirmed not long after that this is the case when he refuses to take human form again until he has another binder.
• About half the cast of the webcomic Jenny Haniver; most notably Jordan (starting at about 2/3 of the way through the comic), Charlie, Welsie, Orion, and Tweety (starting shortly after Jordan comes out as nonbinary).
• But I'm a Cat Person is an Urban Fantasy that features at least one nonbinary character. Timothy is a bigender person who goes by "Camellia" when presenting as female. He runs a branch of a Catholic hunger-relief charity. Timothy uses either pronoun, except at work due to not being out there.
• Eth's Skin (mostly safe for work except for casual nudity) is a fantasy webcomic where the protagonist, Eth, is nonbinary and a fisher. It takes place in an alternate version of British Columbia. They accidentally mistake a selkie for a "beach walker" and grab their seal skin. The clothing is magical and thus Eth is unable to stop holding it. They have to go on an adventure in order to remove it.
• Neve from Ignition Zero is genderfluid. They're extremely excitable and perky.
• The main character of Goodbye to Halos, Fenic, is a transgender girl with latent magical powers who's trapped in another world. There's also Jessica the bear bandit, who is nonbinary, and Leo, who considers himself "some kind of genderqueer" per Word of God.
• Leif & Thorn has Juniper (agender, they/them pronouns) and Delphinium (trans woman).
• In Maggot Boy, the muscular undead Action Girl Reth mentions being trans. For Owen Wright, undead Serial Killer Enfant Terrible, mentioning his trans status is a Berserk Button like none other.
• In The Wretched Ones, Charlie is revealed to be a trans man, and Sparkes is described as being genderqueer.
• In Sister Claire, Sister Oscar is a trans woman, and was raised by another trans woman, Sabine, who understood Oscar's gender identity issues and allowed her to present as a girl from a young age. The comic also has Magpie, who's genderqueer (and implied to have been assigned female at birth) but who uses magic to switch between physically male and female forms at will but typically presents as a male.
• In The Rock Cocks, Dakota is heavily implied to be a trans man (for example, he is shown wearing a binder). And the authors have confirmed this.
• The human kids in Neo Kosmos are raised by a One-Gender Race of aliens, so most of them end up being agender and using neutral pronouns for themselves, since they have little interest in the concept of gender. Iris is an exception, being what we would consider a trans girl.
• Ember in Blindsprings is Duine, a term in their world for non-binary gender.
• Never Satisfied has protagonist Lucy, fellow apprentice Tetsu, and one of the beggar kids, all of whom use they/them and are nonbinary.
  • The same comic has other transgender characters in the form of Ana, Broom Girl, and Su-Yeong as trans women and Franco Vasillia as a trans man.
• Monsterkind has Louise, who is later revealed by Word of God to be non-binary, and preferring they/them pronouns.
• Norn from Demon Street is non-binary. Norn isn't their birth name, but a name they chose for themself.
• The Alchemist from Agents of the Realm is referred to with "they". Word of God is they're non-binary.
• Sharp Zero has non-binary superheroes, like Grasshopper, who is genderfluid, and Deathwish, who is agender.
• In Pilot, since it's the future, people are a lot more mindful of non-binary gender identities. To combat ambiguity, the people of the future came up with a solution: Colored arm bands, which easily convey one's preferred pronouns so nobody gets confused. Going without an armband is perfectly legal, though you'd risk being accidentally misgendered.
• In Rock and Riot, Ace is agender, and their gang, The Bandits, are all non-binary and use "they", aside from Skip.
• In Alice and the Nightmare, Dee and Dum Vena identify as "they", and are both canonically nonbinary.
• Ivo Keys from Shaderunners is bigender.
• In Paranatural, side character RJ, member of the bully squad, is nonbinary and goes by "they/them" pronouns. They were introduced to the concept by going to a rock concert with edutaining lyrics and a magazine thrown into the audience.
• The main character in The Hazards Of Love is non-binary. Word of God is that if they knew the terms for it, they would identify as an "agender butch."
• In Sleepless Domain, a little girl Undine is protecting talks about how a cousin of hers recently got the dream that bestows Magical Girls with their powers. The girl says that it was a surprise because "we still thought she was a boy." In the author notes for that same comic, the author confirms that trans magical girls are a thing that can happen as, in the setting of the comic, any girl can become a magical girl. She also states that, no, she will not be fielding any questions on the physicality of it and she's not prepared to go into non-binary magical girls because that is too complex an issue for her to tackle without feeling like she isn't dictating to others about it. A comic soon after confirms the little girl's cousin is a recurring character, Zoe.
• Crow Cillers:
  • Something like a third of the cast of is trans girls. There's meek Juggalo Doris, artsy sisters Jamie and Chel, former inspirational pop star turned cultbuster Mintchip, brooding psychic Embry, lo-fi electronica duo Sour Gummy, and troubled tween edgelord Paisley, as well as As Told by Crittler and Meowth In A Dress and friends from the subcomics.
  • The eponymous depressed crossdresser from Cate's earlier comic Asscastle is confirmed to be trans in a cameo in Season 2.
• In ''Dear Children, there are numerous clues that a particular one of the protagonists is a transgirl, though it has not yet been explicitly stated.
• Lollipup, one of the title characters from Lemonhead And Lollipup is a trans girl.
• Kill Six Billion Demons: 82 White Chain Born in Emptiness Returns to Subdue Evil. As an angel, they are a bit of a strange example. Angels are naturally sexless, and consider gender to be just one of the many stupid things humans do. White Chain confesses to feeling "a bit feminine," which is treated as a sign that their time among humanity is corrupting and weakening them. Angels default to male nouns and pronouns, such as referring to each other as "brother" for the sake of convenience, and White Chain lampshades the Double Standard.
• Almighty Protectors has Flame Thrower and Mineral, a trans woman and trans man respectively.
• Widdershins: Eliza Swift is a trans woman pharmacist and Amateur Sleuth in 19^th-Century Alternate History England. It's only addressed when her childhood friend reminds his father of her new name, and later when she lends some of her pre-transition clothes to a man and bluntly tells him not to ask why she has them.

Web Original

• The title character in The Saga of Tuck is a teenager who is physically intersexed, and (possibly) bi-gender. A number of minor characters are also transgender, and several more are Transvestites.
• Gender-bending is a common element of the Paradise setting. Some (not all) gender-bent characters are Wish Fulfillment Author Avatars for transgender individuals in real life. Perspectives being a mini-series in that universe about how a trans woman would have lived her teenage life if her best friend and not her had suffered Body Dysphoria instead.
• Gender-bending is even more common in FreeRIDErs which was created by the same person, in background material it was mentioned that many who tested out the Gender Bender Nanites in the earlier days of RIDE Development had signed up for it to cure their Gender Dysphoria. Paul Reverbek from the story "As A Woman I RIDE" is an Earth Boy who steals a RIDE to finally be free of her GID, it's written in first person perspective and she's played very sympathetically. On Earth where they don't have RIDEs, people can be scanned for Gender Identity Disorder and if they have it they are given nanites to make their bodies match their minds. There are those on Earth who are peeved because it is illegal to change someone with nanites unless they have GID, one gender-curious man without GID actually goes to Zharus just to see what being a woman is like. Finally it is noted that people who use RIDEs of another sex that they are have their brains modified by the nanites as well as their bodies to ensure they don't develop Gender Dysphoria... though some RIDEs intentionally sabotage themselves or are sabotaged by others in order to give their humans Gender Dysphoria.
• Jade Sinclair (nee Jared Reilley) of the Whateley Universe. Toni too, before she got her wish through Gender Bending (She was born Tony).
• Tales of MU features Steff, a trans female half-elf. In addition, the culture of the subterranean elves features an "ornamental" third gender of trans women called "halfkind," who undergo a magical transformation that enhances both breasts and penis/scrotum, and who serve mostly as a status symbol for their families. Steff eventually is given the halfkind potion by a subterranean friend.
• Shimmer: A Superhero Fantasy has to do with a trans female superheroine named Glimmer Girl.
• Twinfools of YouTube's "Fighting Dreamers Productions" Cosplay Group was very open about his transition on his own channel, but did not carry it into the groups main content. He remains the driving force behind the group playing a majority of the characters and as the main source of the funny.
• Worm has Circus, a minor supervillain who appears male in civilian identity and female in their costumed one. Even Tattletale isn't entirely sure which gender Circus identifies as, which is presumably their intention.
• Carmilla the Series has LaFontaine, who is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, and is only referred to by their family name because of their dislike of their feminine given name (Susan). This isn't addressed in the show itself because they aren't out yet, but Perry is seen correcting herself when she refers to them as "she".
• Coupleish stars two siblings (Dee and Amy) who go out looking for a third roommate. Their new roommate Rachel pretended to be Dee's partner in order to avoid being deported to Britain. The two begin to pretend to be a couple and that's the start of the rom-com series. Dee is nonbinary.
• Jas from Openness is non-binary and goes by "they".
• Mollymauk of Critical Role usually uses male pronouns, but Word of God has stated they are genderfluid.

Western Animation

• Family Guy:
  • Quagmire's Navy war hero father, Dan, undergoes surgery to become Ida, much to Quagmire's chagrin. Having bungled a Gay Aesop in a previous episode, the writers tried to make the character sympathetic, but still trotted out the old jokes (including an Unsettling Gender Reveal), and earned the ire of quite a few LGBT people. It didn't help that, when she wasn't acting stereotypical, Ida was a Flat Character at best. Seth MacFarlane then further infuriated the LGBT community by saying that he thought the character was "probably the most sympathetic portrayal of a transsexual character that has ever been on television." Many took this to be proof that MacFarlane had never seen a transgender character on TV.
  • The film Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story had future-Meg going to college and getting a sex change, becoming a man called Ron.
• Done once on The Cleveland Show but pulled off with even less tact than the Family Guy example above. The episode doesn't even try to portray Auntie Momma (yes, that's the character's name), originally Uncle Kevin, in a positive light, portraying her as someone who "manipulates" straight men into loving her and being called a "guy pretending to be a woman." At least with Family Guy there was an attempt at sensitivity and understanding, however clumsy.
• South Park:
  • Mr. Garrison, already a Depraved Homosexual, is this in the least sensitive way possible during Seasons 9-12, first as a straight trans woman and then a Psycho Lesbian trans woman, before identifying as a man again.
  • The Season 18 episode "The Cissy" has Cartman declaring himself transgender (all the while mispronouncing it as "Transginger") in order to gain access to the girl's bathroom and eventually his own private bathroom in school. In response, Wendy becomes "Wendyl" in order to point out Cartman's hypocrisy. The B-plot deals with the fact that Randy Marsh is secretly the singer Lorde, initially using the guise of a woman for the same reason as Cartman. Unlike Cartman however, he eventually develops genuine identity issues.
• The Bob's Burgers episode "Sheesh! Cab, Bob?" has a trio of friendly, funny transvestites (one being a pre-op trans woman) who befriend Bob on his taxi route, and their only negative attribute is the fact that they're implied to be crackwhores. They even help him out in the climax and only one blink-and-you-miss-it Unsettling Gender Reveal joke tucked in.
• Superjail!:
  • Alice is a trans woman, though it's played for laughs because she is very clearly masculine (which has lead to some controversy around the character and her implications). Also, clearly pre-operative given the always-noticeable bulge in her skirt, and (censored) depictions of her oversized genitalia. The Warden lusts after her and is initially unaware of this, though it appears he either forgets about seeing her genitalia at the end of season 2 (due to Negative Continuity) or doesn't mind it.
  • Bruce is the reverse of Alice and portrayed as overweight and lisping, with an aggressive temper. His personality is delved into less than hers, though he constantly tries to challenge and one-up her in his appearances.
• Recess (of all shows!) gave us Mikey mentioning his Uncle Mary. Vince is confused to why Mikey's uncle is named Mary, and Gretchen just tells him not to ask. However, it's not known if this is the case or if Mary is short for Marian (which some males, including a famous actor, have as names).
• Adventure Time: Whether BMO is referred to with he/him pronouns or gender neutral language changes depending on the episode, easily adopts "male" and "female" roles, and while he talks about wanting to Become a Real Boy he also has an alter ego called Football that wants to be a real girl. Word of God is that BMO is genderfluid, switching between male and female when desired.
• The Simpsons:
  • Judge Constance Harm says "You remind me of me when I was a little boy."
    Snake: Did she just said she used to be a dude?
  • There are a few characters who are implied to be trans but it may just be one-off jokes (For example, Helen Lovejoy). Brunella Pommelhorst, the elementary PE teacher, was supposed to transition but she still appears as a woman in future episodes.
  • In "Lisa's First Word" when discussing saving money Homer says Bart can sleep with them until he's 21 just like his cousin Frank. When Marge points out that he doesn't have a cousin named Frank he explains that he later became cousin Francine. Unfortunately, the context for this has it implied Frank became Francine because sleeping with his parents for so long warped his mind, and he ultimately joined a cult under the name "Mother Shabubu."
  • In "The Otto Show":
  Patty: Hello, my name's Patty. I'll be testing you. When you do well, I use the green pen. When you do bad, I use the red pen. Any questions?
  Otto: Yeah, one: Have you always been a chick? I mean, I don't want to offend you, but, you were born a man, weren't you? You can tell me, I'm open minded.
  Patty: (drops the green one) I won't be needing this.
• Done a couple of times in Futurama:
  • Bender becomes Coilette to keep his Olympic medals in 'Bend-her' and most of the cast have their genders swapped in 'Neutopia'.
  • A recurring minor character on the show is a male-to-female transgender robot called Hermaphrobot, whom Bender once tried to hit on before noticing her manbot-parts.
  Bender: [gasps] That ain't no fembot!
  Hermaphrobot: Damn, chico! One more upgrade and I'll be more lady than you can handle! Why you so stupid, stupid?
  Bender: Hey, bite my shiny metal ass!
  Hermaphrobot: You couldn't afford it, honey! [Snaps fingers.]
• Subverted with Dr. Girlfriend in The Venture Bros. Her deep voice makes several characters (and viewers, too) initially suspect this, but really she's just a very heavy smoker.
• Steven Universe: Most gems have an Ambiguous Gender Identity, due to implications that they might not identify as male or female, but use "she/her" pronouns. Fusions involving the half-human and male-identified Steven however seem to be nonbinary and use neutral pronouns. Stevonnie, the fusion of Steven and his female friend Connie, is confirmed by Word of God to use "they/them" pronouns. Smoky Quartz, the fusion of Steven and the (presumably female) Amethyst is similar.
• Brother Ken from Bro Town is Fa'afafine, a Samoan term referring to being born biologically male but embodying both male and female traits.
• In the Captain Sturdy [adult swim] pilot Captain Sturdy: The Originals, it is established that Captain Sturdy's teammate Commander Guts as undergone a sex change and now goes by Brianna.

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