A Single Unified LGBT Character Thread

She sounds fine. Trans women are allowed to be muscular if they want to. Being afraid of stereotypes and made up boogeymen would just end up herding trans woman representation into hyper-stereotypical femininity roles.

Ah the question was about buff transwomen? I agree with that they're fine but if you wanna be extra safe, you probably should have more trans women characters with different body types and personalities and such.

It's also worth noting that stereotypes surrounding trans women tend to be a bit grosser and more demeaning than just "they're muscular". If she's treated at all empathetically by the narrative at large (as you seem to be taking care to do), you're probably in the clear.

Edited by Chortleous on May 5th 2023 at 3:15:38 AM

Ultimately she sounds like an actual character. And don't be afraid to write a romance arc if you have a good idea for one and it explores interesting aspects of her character. Not only is romance not inherently bad (no matter what some people will say), but trans women — hell, buff women in general — being the subject of a genuine romance arc is pretty refreshing.

So, i read that you can get estrogen from pregnant horse urine. Could that work for HRT? Could it be sustainable on long term? I've also read that estrogen only works on amab people when they take testosterone blockers, what is there to be done for that in a post-apocalyptic setting?

This in the context of the trans woman character i previously mentioned. The location is an ambiguous desert in a war-torn near-future, and she's an elite member of a scattered guerrilla army.

Premarin is what you're thinking of. It was used for HRT for menopausal cis women for most of the early 20th century; it was surpassed by bioidentical oestrogen for trans and cis women as soon as synthetic oestrogen became a thing (since it's way easier to produce).

It's worth mentioning that there are plants that could be used for birth control (silphium; said to have been made extinct by the Romans overusing it), so it's not much of a stretch that a culture could have access to something that can be used to regulate hormones.

As for T blockers; Oestrogen has a feminising effect either way (I was actually started on oestrogen because some trans women find it's all they need; a lot of NB folk also only take oestrogen) and can shut down T production on its own. In any case, I don't need to take T-blockers any more for thanks to other medical affirmations, so...

I'm not yet sure what kind of tech do the desert guerrillas even have, since they're hiding from the evil army in a cave or a mine and the entire world has collapsed to different degrees at this point. Would synthetizing estrogen actually be easy or possible without advanced tools?

Edited by Nukeli on May 22nd 2023 at 7:11:52 PM

How do i describe the earlier-mentioned trans guerrilla woman as muscular without sounding dubious? Also she's supposed to be attractive, but honestly i have no idea how sexiness or sexual attraction actually work because i'm ace.

Also on the warlord's head scientist mentioned on prev page (afab nonbinary) i thought i could get his afabness across to the reader by passingly mentioning his chest, but is there a way to do that without sounding weird or like something out of r/menwritingwomen?

1. I wouldn't worry so much about that, as "how can I do this without possibly offending anybody ever" is a fraught mindset and can by itself lead to awkward, unnatural writing and characterization. My advice would be to simply look at any female athlete, like lifters, MMA fighters etc and think more about how you might describe them. Muscular woman (many of said athletes, natch) are by themselves incredibly attractive to a lot of people.

2. Emphasizing an AFAB person's breasts is probably going to come off that way no matter what. Less blunt ways of going about it might be passing mentions of him having a noticeably feminine voice, smaller build and softer features compared to adjacent presumably-AMAB cis men, etc.

Edited by Chortleous on Jun 12th 2023 at 12:26:08 PM

1. I know that. I also know many men do view muscular women as attractive despite societal stigma. I was just worried about my ability to describe her in a way that sounds attractive, and/or people misinterpreting me calling her muscular.

2. Yeah, i was honestly thinking that too. I did actually have ideas about his appearance already; he isn't tall but not really short either, on the same range as the warlord's cis right-hand-man (5'7"-5'9") while i just googled it and apparently average Iranian afab height is '5'4", so eh (idk average persian height). The genetically engineeted kid is much taller, but he's 7'3" so everybody is shorter than him. The scientist is also shorter than his warlord boss who's a cis woman though she's well above average, and he's also somewhat buff as he works out to win in fights and be able to wield his BFG^note  (i'm a cis woman and i think i'm projecting my napoleon complex on afab characters. Even my own mother is taller than me). He hasn't medically transitioned and doesn't wear a binder or anything so his agab is pretty visible though. I hadn't really thought about his face because i have some sort of an actual face comprehension problem and can't even explain actually existing faces, so...

Edited by Nukeli on Jun 12th 2023 at 9:32:37 PM

Hey peeps. I am in the process of launching a trope called Trans Character Cis Actor. Would love to hear you guys discussion, suggestions and Hat / Bomb contribution

Edited by shatterstar on Jun 19th 2023 at 11:09:41 AM

Your link just leads to the add post button in this thread for some reason.

Based on my experiences, you might have accidentally copied the add post button's URL when you were trying to copy the URL for the TLP.

As it happens, I had the tab open RN.

Thank you. Such an annoying mistake lol

Trans Character, Cis Actor has been launched. Thank you guys for your contributions

Hello, I am writing a series, and in that series, 2 of the main characters are transgender. I do not want them being transgender to be a major focus of the series, but I don't want it to come off as a plot twist either. How can I introduce the idea of them being trans respectfully?

In the untitled scifi story the warlord was originally male, but i thought the baby-killing part would have less gender implications if the warlord was a woman so i changed it.

But i thought, can she still be buff and super tall (as in over 6ft) or would readers think she's trans/a caricature (she's cis)?

I do tall and buff gnc cis female characters a lot in my fiction, propably because i'm a gnc woman projecting my napoleon complex and hate the One Head Taller and Huge Guy, Tiny Girl tropes. The warlord wouldn't even be the only tall or gnc woman in the story.

Before the end of the world, the warlord had been a manual laborer and involved in an underground fighting ring and the surrounding betting. Now she's on hard drugs and going off the deep end.

Edited by Nukeli on Jul 10th 2023 at 1:50:10 PM

Tall and buff may not be the norm for cisgender women in real life, but it's not like they don't exist. If there's nothing in the story to suggest that she's trans other than her stature, I think you're in the clear.

(Disclaimer: I am a (mostly) cishet white guy, so take any advice I give about LGBT+ characters with a grain of salt)

I'd say the same thing, so no salt required. I'm confused about the part about the gender implications of baby-killing, though.

The evil scientist who made the test tube babies is he/him nonbinary (afab), and the warlord who wanted to kill the babies was originally male. I made the warlord female in attempt to avoid stereotypes about afab people and babies possibly hurting the scientist character.

Edited by Nukeli on Jul 14th 2023 at 11:37:18 AM

Wait...how can you be nonbinary and use gendered pronouns? (This isn't sarcasm, BTW; I'm genuinely curious.)

Assuming that that is an independent question (I don't see a post that it pertains to), I would not categorically assume that nonbinary people will use only non-gendered pronouns.

Edited by SeptimusHeap on Jul 14th 2023 at 11:44:05 AM

Nonbinary can mean a lot of things. Demiboys and demigirls for example, are nonbinary but tend towards one or the other. (Usually they'll use pronouns associated with that gender, but they might not. After all, there are otherwise cis people who use different pronouns too.) Nonbinary isn't just "there's three genders now", it's a word that includes everything that's not in the popular binary, which is basically every gender option you can think of and several you can't because you haven't seen them yet and are probably not even aware they're options.

Anyone can use any pronouns they want if they think they'll fit them, this includes enbies and gendered pronouns. If they're fine by he/him or she/her or something similar, then they go by such pronouns.

Edited by Cutegirl920fire on Jul 14th 2023 at 3:17:42 AM

Yep, it can go the other way, too.

I consider myself a binary (for want of a better word, considering being trans in any way isn't binary) trans woman, but I still used fae/faer as well as she/her.