Making up for lost LGBTQ+ tropes

Something that struck me recently is that Gender-Blending Tropes has a significant subset of appearance- and costume-related tropes based on drag and crossdressing, but not a lot that can be applied to trans and non-binary characters. Obviously this is a potentially delicate subject, as it can pertain directly to real-world issues about "passing" and what it means to "look trans" and some of the first things that come to mind are malicious stereotypes. But it's also annoying that I can trope male or female characters with unconventional wardrobes on pages like Real Men Wear Pink or Real Women Don't Wear Dresses, but when nonbinary characters make the same kinds of gender-transformative fashion choices the nearest thing I can find is Ambiguous Gender. I think there's room for improvement here.

(Relatedly, I'd thought that Gendered Outfit would be a supertrope for costuming-indicates-gender tropes like Bare Midriffs Are Feminine or Sharp-Dressed Man, but apparently not exactly? Clothing Reflects Personality has male and female sub-indices, though.)

Anyway, the most basic trope I can think of is nonbinary or androgynous characters whose fashion sense simply combines articles of clothing that are each strongly gender-coded in conflicting directions (e.g. Osana Najimi, whose Non-Uniform Uniform is made of the upper half of a boys' and the lower half of a girls'). Thoughts?

I definitely think a character being both supermasculine and superfeminine in appearance in some way to denote them GNC is tropeworthy. It's like a stereotype of what people think being GNC/nonbinary is. We'd just have to make sure it doesn't devolve into like, "Jean has kind of long hair but has a blue shirt."

That would definitely work, and I can even provide an example.

I'm not directly worried about "long hair blue shirt", but it is related to other things I'm thinking about. It'd be helpful to have a list somewhere of what kinds of clothing are strongly gendered (hence my attention to Gendered Outfit) but even something like "women wear necklaces, men wear ties" has so many exceptions that ultimately it has to be contextual... especially in works that aren't set in a modern world or urban fantasy setting. If this is a setting where most boys have long hair and girls don't, and most girls wear blue and boys don't, and Jean is an exception to both, that seems like it would be an example with sufficient context.

(In practice, it often has more to do with more specific design choices like fabric, cut, pattern, and (yes) colour scheme. But in any case, it seems inappropriate to try to establish rigid gender categories on the same trope page about deliberately mixing them.)

• Light Girl, Dark Boy - lighter hues and more complex decorative patterns, vs dark neutral-toned blocks of colours
• Masculine Lines, Feminine Curves - men's clothing is more rigid and angular, women's clothing is flowy or form-fitting
• There's also some kind of complicated historical relation to Camp Gay, by way of Trans Equals Gay, as campy affectations often include breaking gendered fashion norms as part of the style.

Anyway, thank you for the feedback! I'll start putting together a draft.

Edited by Noaqiyeum on Mar 13th 2023 at 12:56:55 PM

Not sure if it's OK to ask in this thread, but recently Paperjamrachel edited the LGBT Representation in Media page to replace all instances of LGBT(Q) to LGBTQIA+. I'm all for added inclusion especially of groups that are traditionally neglected like intersex and ace people but making so many unilateral changes like that without discussing it first via what is probably a bot comes off as clunky.

Might be one for the ROCEJ thread, as that generally takes an interest in those pages.

Or the Unilateral Changes thread.

Bumping for attention - I finally revised my description of Multi-Gendered Outfit enough to post it to TLP.

OK, so I see the concept of "disaster bisexual/messy bisexual get a lot of use in bi circles. It describes a bisexual person that might tend to falls in love easy + is messy, disorganized and otherwise chaotic in their social life. People usually use the term to describe themselves but it has seen usage in fandome circles. I wonder if it's enough of a pattern to be tropable in media.

Edited by MacronNotes on Nov 17th 2023 at 1:49:23 PM

The thing is it's not clear. at least in most fiction, there's a clear narrative intention of there being a correlation of their quirky and lovably messy social life and their bi-ness, or if its just coincidence and they just happen to be bi while simultaneously being disorganized/socially awkward.

Plus, it seems like the whole "disaster bi" thing is more of a meme in the bi community than an actual character trope. Any examples where an awkward and disorganized person also happens to be bi seem to be mostly coincidental. The exceptions, of course, are usually stories where the author is aware of the meme.

Edited by AudioSpeaks2 on Nov 18th 2023 at 3:04:03 AM

Yeah, that makes more sense. I just wondered if there was more to it.

I think it's really just that a lot of people in queer circles are fans of Self-Deprecation. Gay people and ace people joke about being socially awkward messes, too. I think the closest we have to something actually tropable in that is Depraved Bisexual.

I think it's more an occasional component of Rainbow Lens than it is a trope, unless there's a way to identify it more specifically.

I think there's some merit to a "disaster bisexual" trope, but maybe it'd work best under a general trope regarding the tendency for works to have their canonically bisexual characters associated with traits like being extroverted, outgoing, emotionally-driven, wild, chaotic, et cetera, if that's not too broad. As a bisexual person, it feels like a stereotype I've seen a lot.

I feel like there's been a trend of works using bisexuality as a way to denote that a character is a "free spirit".

I think you’d have to be very firm about not letting misuse through in the TLP and post-launch, but it could work.

Is Bisexual Bohemian a decent name? I know bohemian means nonconformist/free spirit in general, but most people associate the word with hippies and new age types.

Bisexuals as free-spirited or extroverted has been brought up before. (Or relatedly, flirty/promiscuous.)