Was wondering about the same. Homophobes will claim that gay men adopting boys are doing it for the sex but by definition an asexual character probably won't try anything.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanAt worst there's a chance they might be single (though nothing says they're also Aromantic, so they could be married or dating), but that's it.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallI'm asexual and I... kinda intend to adopt eventually? I'm still on the fence about whether I want to/will ever actually be able to raise kids, but I know that if I do, they'll be adopted.
tldr no there's nothing weird about an ace adopting
Suddenly I'm... still rotating Fallen London in my mind even though I've stopped actively playing it.In my story I'm writing - set from March 2007 to December 2008, I've got a transgender character, although she's non-op.
My character's 31 years old (well, 29 at the time, she turns 30 on March 18 2007 in-canon/In-Universe).
She looks feminine enough and her transgender issues are secondary to her role in the story. She does have a girlfriend too, but the girlfriend isn't a Flat Character (her girlfriend Kate is integral to her story arc).
She's also a Girly Girl too, in some ways, and gets on with Sabrina, one of the main characters of my story.
She meets Sabrina in LA in April 2007.
The recession of 2007-2009 is more of a backdrop than crucial to the setting.
She doesn't have a transgender Story Arc, she's more of a secondary character who's The Consigliere (of sorts) to a friend of hers (the friend is biologically female) and has George Jetson Job Security (not due to disciplinary, but the 2007-08 recession).
My character is a dual Canadian/U.S. citizen who appears in Los Angeles, and she was born in Toronto, Ontario (one of its suburbs) and has a prominent accent.
She's also a Knowledge Broker too (there's four in this story).
The main issue I have is how to write them as a character, especially as them being transgender is part of the problem of writing them; I've got their role figured out in the story, it's handling the topic sensitively.
But there's a bigger question... how to make it realistically fit the time period of 2007-2008 for this Period Piece writing, especially as transgender issues were treated differently then?
Is my character - who's as yet unnamed - interesting enough, and got a story arc that's different to typical stories which involve LGBT?
Edited by Merseyuser1 on Mar 21st 2021 at 12:51:43 PM
The late 2000's where when trans issues weren't well known, so all the tropes and misunderstandings of the late 20th century were still the norm (erasure of enby and AFAB trans people, reduction of trans people to medical procedures, the idea that trans women were just extra gay men, etc).
FWIW, avoid the phrase "biologically female". It's not technically accurate (human biology is a little more nuanced than), and it's often used as a transphobic dogwhistle (basically trying to define a trans person by their AGAB with vaguely scientifically sounding language). Ditto with terms like "born man/woman" or "natal man/woman".
TV Tropes's No. 1 bread themed lesbian. she/her, fae/faerRelated question, because if this ever comes up, I don't want to be an asshole- what about "biosex male/female"? I've heard Sexplanations
use it in the form of "biosex males should get screened for these conditons, etc.", and that channel works very hard to provide fully LGBT-inclusive sexual education. Would verbiage like that be okay within a medical/scientific context, never...?
Well, the fact that Google Scholar shows no instance of "biosex" being used in a medical context argues strongly against it.
I've seen "anatomically (fe)male" but mostly in the context of "born as..." when one is specifically discussing the appearance of genitalia.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanBiosex is just a contraction of "biological sex".
At best it's meaningless (sex is defined as a collection of biological traitsnote , and gender identity), at worst it's (as I said) a dogwhistle for "trans people are actually their AGAB/cis people are more their gender than trans people".
The terms "Assigned Female/Male At Birth" would be the accurate ones (usually abbreviated to AFAB and AMAB, sometimes with a C for "Coercively" appended to the beginning; CAFAB and CAMAB for trans and intersex folk).
"Born as" or "natal" are O Kish, but still a little dicey depending on context (a lot of transphobes basically inflect in the same way as "biological", such is the euphemism treadmill). Especially if you mean "cisgender", since it carries an air of "trans people have less a claim to their own gender than someone who was assigned it" (e.g. "She's a trans woman, but her girlfriend's a born woman" is a lot more questionable compared to "she's a trans woman, but her girlfriend is cisgender").
TV Tropes's No. 1 bread themed lesbian. she/her, fae/faerThere is also Assigned Intersex At Birth (AXAB) for when one has ambiguous genitalia. Usually, for the child, the parents choosing which genitalia to keep is pretty psychologically harmful, regardless of whether they are intersex or not. For example, there was one man who had a botched circumcision and thus was raised as if he were female. However, he started to feel gender dysphoria from it, feeling so much more masculine. He found out the truth around 18 after coming out as trans and was devastated. At the age of 33, he committed suicide.
she/her/they | wall | sandboxI think that's the David Reimer case or whatever his name was.
I do something similar with one of my characters (someone born with ambiguous genitalia), except that his parents decided to raise him as male under the assumption that someone with functioning testes at birth is more likely than not to identify as male. And they turn out to be right.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanYeah he's the classic example that you can not force a gender identity on somebody, no matter how much you abuse them.
In a less tragic, though still ofc very crappy, example I knew someone born with ambigious genitalia as well. The surgical assigment at birth left her with a host of hormonal problems, puberty basically didn't happen. She spent a while unsure of gender identity (going by a nonbinary they in the meantime) before settling on female and starting HRT.
I have to apologize for using biologically female, maybe genetically female was the right word.
But the setting's 2007-2008, and it's getting a Continuity Reboot anyway as some of my ideas don't quite work out on a larger scale.
"Genetically female" isn't really accurate either. The concepts of "male" and "female" were made up by people to group together several distinct things genetics and biology were already doing on their own, and reality is just too messy to be neatly sorted into two all-encompassing boxes with no overlap like that.
Whatever thing you're referring to, just say that thing. In this case, the word you're looking for is probably "cis".
Suddenly I'm... still rotating Fallen London in my mind even though I've stopped actively playing it.Basically, if you mean a woman who isn't transgender, they're a cisgender woman. The formal definitions are:
- Cisgender: Someone who identifies with the gender they were assigned at birth.
- Transgender: Someone who identifies with any gender other than the one they were assigned at birth.
You can use AFAB (assigned female at birth) to describe cis women and trans men, and AMAB (assigned male at birth) to describe cis men and trans women.
Arguably "genetically female" is even worse, since it's something specifically used by transphobes (genes are basically the only thing about a person that can't be changed, so transphobes are downright obsessed with them).
TV Tropes's No. 1 bread themed lesbian. she/her, fae/faerI mean, if there's a niche that hasn't been explored enough, someone will appreciate it.
Suddenly I'm... still rotating Fallen London in my mind even though I've stopped actively playing it.Hey, so in the novel I'm on-and-off writing there's a trans issue I (as a cis male) feel like I can't shake.
The protagonist is a trans girl, just turned 14, and she lives in a rural American town in 2017 with all the backwards views and bullying it entails, including her parent's messy divorce, being pressured into dropping sports, and starting puberty blockers (her mother tries to hide the cost from her but she's read the receipts). She then becomes a Supernaturally Validated Trans Person by gaining the ability to transform into a wolf, a female one. The theme of transformation, of seeing new and old things from other perspectives, is central to the story.
And that's the start of my problems. Would her "more ideal self" being in another body lessen or intensify her dysphoria? How would I convey her finding out her wolf form is female without having to reference things like genitalia (and would such a thing be appropriate)? By having this character more or less conform to the binary am I minimizing the existence of non-binaries (though I'm planning on having her friend that transformed her not really conform herself)? Was everything I just wrote super problematic? I've got a trans friend to bounce ideas off of, but I would like some other perspectives.
AMA about my unfinished writing projectsGender identities are always a difficult issue when dragged up and rolled on and on...
(Honestly, as far as I am concerned, one's gender identity is one's own business and nobody else's so I that's that. I still will get mad if anyone try to put a gender on a genderless existence just because, though...)
That said, adding a third identity (animal) sounds like it would make things even more complicated in this kind of case, especially if the altered state is mindless (aka, incapable of a human's thought process and running solely on instinct) and just acts as its instincts tells it to in accordance to the biological "standard setting" that the body was born as physically from the get-go and not as the identity the human picked.
In the altered state in this condition, the gender identity would be "Wolf" the most, rather than "Male" or "Female".
Just my few cents on this.
I'm not trans myself, so bear that in mind when reading my thoughts.
That said:
I would imagine that the wolf-form being female would be a very validating experience. In it she would finally get to experience a body that matches her self-perception; finally get to live without that internal conflict.
Conversely, however, I would imagine that having that experience of getting to live in a female body, but for a time, might then increase her dysphoria when back in her human form.
Depending on your audience, I don't see anything inherently inappropriate about referencing genitalia. Such referencing needn't be lewd—or even at all sexual—after all.
Indeed, it needn't even be direct: simply a mention of things being different "down there".
However, if you want to avoid genitalia, I might suggest noting the wolf-form having rows of teats.
Finally, it might be worth researching whether wolves have any other sex-indicators—not only physiological, but perhaps also chemical/olfactory.
(I wouldn't be surprised if there were a degree of sexual dimorphism, for example.)
As far as I see, few if any characters can bear the weight of all representation; to be one thing implies not being its converse.
(Theoretically, one could, I suppose, create a character that changes to such a degree that they do represent multiple different experiences. But that wouldn't suit all characters or all stories, I daresay.)
By comparison, if you made the character black, would that minimise the existence of East-Asian trans people, or vice versa? If you made them both black and East-Asian, would that minimise the existence of Latin-American trans people?
Furthermore:
This itself seems to me to indicate that non-binary people aren't being minimised.
My Games and Asset Packs

Why would there be?
"Jack, you have debauched my sloth."