Not Tropeworthy: Transgender

A case of People Sit on Chairs. If "Character is X" is not tropeworthy, then Transgender likely should not be its own trope either. It should be removed for the sake of consistency in keeping with the new definition of what's worthy of being a trope.

Although some people don't like to use parallels as an argument, the fact remains that a lot of the same arguments apply as to other removed LGBT trope pages. This is a trope that is considered tropeworthy simply for it's rarity, which does not fit the definition of a trope anymore.

The trope page is very clearly filled with just "Media has character X who is trans." examples. There's so many I'm trying to avoid just simply copying the entire thing onto the wick check, as that would just be horribly redundant.

Example checking in progress at https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Sandbox/TransgenderWickCheck

The difficult part of completing a wickcheck is differentiating the difference between People Sit on Chairs and when it goes beyond that into tropeworthy territory. There's definitely a ton of plain "Character is X" examples, but some examples explain the impact on the story. But even the most minor of character traits can have some sort of impact on a story, let alone an LGBT trait. If multiple transgender characters experience the same patterns, does that make Transgender a trope? What percentage of the examples on a page need the same pattern for a trait to be a trope? Or does that simply make the consistent experience they go through its own trope instead? Things like this are still extremely inconsistent on tvtropes.

Of the wicks mentioned, the majority are just mentions that are used as adjective. The rest are used to describe how a character went through hardship as a result of being trans. However, "if being transgender leads to hardship" was enough to make it worthy of being a trope, then Homosexuality would also be a trope. Since Homosexuality is not a trope, "Transgender people have a consistent theme of hardship." should not qualify it as a trope either. Several of the trope pages that mention trans hardship also mention homosexual hardship and bullying as well. Just like there are several trope pages of gender related issues, there are also several trope pages that are various variations of gaynst and the social issues being gay can cause.

Does this mean that Transgender has enough consistent bullying themes and related tropes to qualify it as a trope? Or does this mean that Homosexuality does not have enough to qualify it as a trope? What number is necessary?

Edited by BXM on Apr 15th 2021 at 1:01:50 AM

Opening.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Cut. Coming-out stories are already covered by, well, Coming-Out Story, and problems associated with being trans are covered by Trans Tribulations, so any non-Chairs examples could be moved to either of those.

Edit: I forgot to mention that we have UsefulNotes.Transgender to migrate inline wicks to.

Edited by GastonRabbit on May 11th 2021 at 5:00:32 AM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

What does "anymore" mean. Has there been a shift in our policy that I am not aware of? I do remember times when the argument "rarity = conscious choice by the creator = trope" was a viable reason to shoot down TRS requests like this one. (just playing devil's advocate here)

As far as I know it's not so much that rare things are no longer tropes but rather that people are now arguing that transgenderism is commonly depicted in fiction and thus no longer rare.

Personally I think both arguments are equally bogus [the latter simply means that only old works can have genuine examples]

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Coming from the characters' perspective, I think wanting and choosing to live out against one's biological sex is a pretty significant decision (still is and probably will continue to be), and is more noteworthy than "being a male" or "being a female".

just woke up, here are some scattered incoherent thoughts

• "character is trans" doesn't feel tropey by itself but maybe that's just cause i'm trans and seek out trans stuff so it feels more common to me than it really is
• there are definitely particular portrayals of trans people that are tropes, a nice thorough wick check could find them and bring them to TLP
• there's been this movement lately of "hey let's define good representation as non-tropey". outside the wiki obviously, mainly by people who think tropes are bad. but as a result a lot of offsite people are literally more interested in "good representation without tropes", both creating and consuming

Trouble Cube continues to be a general-purpose forum for those who desire such a thing.

Yes, this is definitely chairs. Trans people exist in real life, demonstrably, so the simple presence of trans characters isn't in and of itself a trope — but as wingedcatgirl said, there are certainly plenty of tropes and narratives associated with trans people, so I'd also support giving this page a thorough look-over to see if there's anything to extract and bring to TLP. We've already got Trans Tribulations and Coming-Out Story, but I wouldn't be surprised to find other things in there.

"Listen up, Marina, because this is SUPER important. Whatever you do, don't eat th“ “DON'T EAT WHAT?! Your text box ran out of space!”

Exactly my thoughts as well. “Character is trans” by itself is chairs- there’s nothing notable about being trans by itself that isn’t covered by tropes such as Trans Tribulations. However, I do hope that a more thorough look through the page and its wicks will show more patterns in how trans people are depicted in fiction that could allow for new, more specific tropes to be created.

back lol

Oof. Get your umbrellas ready for another shitstorm.

I vote cut, of course. I know that being trans can influence the story and there's tropes to find, but being Trans is not in and of itself a tropeworthy concept. Even if it was rare, being rare does not inherently make something a trope.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Thinking we can do a disambig, with the Useful Note and associated trans tropes as the destinations.

Edited by Berrenta on May 11th 2021 at 12:50:39 PM

she/her | TRS needs your help! | Contributor of Trope Report

Agreed with making this a disambiguation. If people can make tropes out of this, I guess they can.

Edited by Piterpicher on May 11th 2021 at 7:56:06 PM

Currently mostly inactive. An incremental game I tested: https://galaxy.click/play/176 (Gods of Incremental)

Over on this thread, someone proposed a general LGBT Representation Index which may solve the issue of listing characters by orientation/gender. Something to think about, after we lost Bi The Way, a lot of people were not happy.

Remind me, how common/casual are transgender characters in non-Western works and premodern Western works?

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

We have Closet Gay now, which is meant to be flexible enough to include trans characters, hence the Closet Trans redirect.

The thread there brings up the possibility of making a trope for when a character changes gender and/or sex mid-story for whichever reason, including but not limited to being transgender, which might be worth exploring (although its relationship with Gender Bender would need to made clear — I'd call the latter a subtrope?).

Can't say for non-western works, but in western ones much older than two, three decades, I'd say probably not very.

That's gonna be difficult because concepts of gender aren't static. There are works with characters that we might call trans today that aren't called that because the term didn't exist. Also, what's "premodern"? Before 1950? Before 1900?

Edited by TheMountainKing on May 11th 2021 at 4:56:51 AM

Right. One example I can think of is Angel from RENT, who is definitely gender non conforming in some way but 'twas the '90s, which didn't draw as clear of a distinction between "trans" and "drag queen". Productions sometimes favor one or the other.

I think I've made my stand on "noteworthy" vs "tropeworthy" clear several times before and I am on the side of cutting and disambiguating.

As an aside, would anyone mind if I crossposted this thread to the LGBT thread in Yack Fest?

Edited by Synchronicity on May 11th 2021 at 4:09:02 AM

I don’t mind.

And that's as recent as the past 30 years. Go before that and the understandings of gender get so different applying the label "trans" gets even harder.

Edited by TheMountainKing on May 11th 2021 at 5:10:45 AM

Eh, I'm not sure about this idea, Trans characters are still relatively rare in media.

CM Sandboxes, MB Sandboxes

But rarity by itself does not make something tropeworthy. Just because something is rare IRL or in fiction doesn't make it a storytelling device by itself.

Ambiguous Gender Identity, anyone?

But yeah, I would like to try more specific LGBT indices, though I don't know if it'll be popular given all the hubbub about "index bloat" lately. I would would like to go through the Transgender wicks and make a conscious effort to move examples to another trans trope and seek out specific patterns not covered by other trans tropes. That way we can avoid backlash, and also retain examples if we ever make a Transgender Media index. (Queer Media has come under scrutiny for including any work that has queer characters even if they're minor so this could help there as well.)

If we wanna trope the rarity of trans characters, maybe we could make a trope for trans characters that are not stereotypical or anything? Similar to Straight Gay, Good Parents, and Wholesome Crossdresser. That is a conscious writing decision after all. We could also do the inverse and trope the negative stereotypes but that would probably not help calm those who miss the list of trans rep in media.

Also remember we have UsefulNotes.Transgender so maybe we could move examples there?

Edited by mightymewtron on May 11th 2021 at 5:50:13 AM

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

Popping in from the LGBT thread...

Being trans isn't a trope, and I think it should be nixed for many of the same reasons of Bi The Way.

I don't have any experience actually editing said page, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was also the center of a lot of... tenuous discussions over characters that aren't explicitly labelled as trans despite it being heavily implied.

That being said, I do think that the page is an excellent resource for explaining what trans people even are to people who might not know, and does a great job explaining common questions cis people might have if they are aware but don't fully understand.

I'd be disappointed to see the page lost in its entirety, especially since it does also serve as a great compilation of trans characters in media which we are still very sorely lacking.

And, as a side note because I've seen it used here a few times, "transgenderism" isn't a proper term. It's just called being trans.

Edited by EpicBleye on May 11th 2021 at 6:00:30 AM

"There's not a girl alive who wouldn't be happy being called cute." ~Tamamo-no-Mae