Worried my WIP might be offensive.

RichardGarfinkle said:

I'm concerned that this background and character might be offensive. Help please.

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Offensive to whom?

It's likely that someone will be offended by any book. Especially SF/F.

But I don't see anything particularly offensive to me, or people I know who identify as QUILTBAG.

I'm assuming that the MC 's parents are not shape-shifters? Or am I reading wrongly?

Have you gotten to the point where you might post here and elsewhere asking for beta readers? That might help.

I'm not sure I understand your concern.

Might it offend some people? Yeah.

But might it also be worth the discomfort? Heck yeah. Sort of like Ursula K LeGuin challenged gender in Left Hand of Darkness, it seems to me that finding ways to challenge perceptions and even identitites is one of the grand potentials of SF/F.

Depending on how you tell the story, it might be worth the heat.

Yeah, I'm sure it will offend some people, but I wouldn't worry about it. All stories are offensive to certain groups. I personally don't see why transient gender would be a big deal for a group of shape-shifters who regularly change into different creatures with a plethora of different instincts, but that's just me. It seems that by nature, because they are two or more creatures in one as well, they wouldn't find the idea of transgenderism so scary or radical. It seems like they might understand more than others. But of course I don't know the details to the story so you could very well have reason for it

Well, it wouldn't offend me - actually a bit of exploration of gender and identity through your character could be quite interesting to read.

I don't see why someone assuming your character (ie. his parents) is trans would be offensive. I mean, if there's this long tract of trans-bashing in the novel, sure, it'd be offensive (unless it really was imperative to the story, but that'd be hard to justify). Note, I said "long tract". A bit of transphobia would be justifiably realistic. Long tracts would probably seem like the author trying to make a point.

I think the key thing here is that it's not offensive (unless intended that way by transphobes) to assume a non-trans character is trans. I can see why you're worried - it's this mechanism which gets your MC kicked out of home.

But I don't think you really have to worry, unless you have some sort of agenda here.

(I also agree, however, that every book will offend at least some people.)

If you're really worried, maybe slipping in the line, "It's not a bad thing to be trans, so why did they kick me out?" could help? (Or something positive like that, whatever floats your boat.)

It sounds like you're in the neurotic phase of the writing process. For people like me this phase tends to overlap andoror engulf all the other phases.

Take a few deep breaths. Exhale through the nose. If that doesn't calm you, resort to some form substance abuse.

I dearly hope there's nothing offensive in gender-confused shapeshifters because my MC is one (see picture to the left)... Unless you portray being different as wrong and everybody is kicking your MC around for daring to have a fluid gender identity, I wouldn't expect it to be a problem.

I'm interested to know, what do you do about gender pronouns? Do you always use them in relation to the apparent gender the shapeshifter is currently using? One thing I like about writing shapeshifters is what you can convey by, for example, calling a currently-male shifter 'she' to signal she identifies as female regardless of current plumbing. Little things like that.

I was actually thinking about this very topic today. Trans characters are usually seen as mentally ill or as deviants so I was curious about finding 'normal' characters in literature. I have a shapeshifting character too, but I never thought about the gender aspect.

No worries.

If you're really scared, show both good and bad and leave off on a neutral side. Just make sure you're not preaching good or evil.

That's bi-gender, genderqueer, or gender fluid, and it's part of the real-life transgender spectrum. So, no worries. You could just have a small comment somewhere that basically identifies the character as transgender spectrum, but not binary-identified transsexual (which is what some people think of when they think "transgender," but which isn't the only category.)

Basically, just somehow acknowledge that some transgender people are gender fluid but that all of us aren't, and it'd be awesome. Mainly because books that play around with gender fluidity often present that as the sole form of transgenderism and don't acknowledge that there's plenty of us transsexual folk out there that just identify with one gender.

(Example: "My friend Beth is transsexual. Everyone else said she was a boy, and she always knew she was a girl, and now that she's older, she's going to start hormone therapy. But my gender isn't so clear for me, though. I'm not sure I could ever be comfortable with sticking to one for the rest of my life.")

(Not my greatest writing but you get the idea. But seriously, as long as you avoid "trans people are crazy and pathetic," "trans people are predators," and "trans people are comic relief," you're probably going to get a good reception.)

If you're still in the draft stages of what you write, don't even think about the audience yet. When it's ready for beta, if you have trustworthy beta readers, I'm sure they'll let you know if there really is a problem that goes beyond the arena of personal and unpredictable tastes.

Yeah, just write and don't worry. Should be an interesting result no matter which route you take.

Looks like you got it settled. But I also find nothing offensive about any of your concerns.

And if you write worrying about whom you'll offend, you won't have much of a book.

When I write, I have to block my family's reactions from my mind.

sounds like a good book to me, somebody somewhere might be offended but their just crazy's so it don't much matter

Not offensive to me and I am trans. Obviously the character's not trans but more in the gender-fluid range with the enviable ability to change shape/gender at will. Pretty interesting and yes, rather sexy character. I'm bi and think androgynous people are cool. Transphobic parents? Tragic but not offensive in a book, that's a challenge for the character. I think your concept is cool. Stretch the gender range a little farther, gender's not always as simple as my life was.

Worry less about offending people and more about hurting people. Someone's always going to be offended. You can't avoid it, especially when dealing with an issue like gender identity. Also when you offend people it generates buzz, and that's good. Hurting people is just bad juju though, for everyone. And you don't seem to be trying to do that at all, so I believe you're on the right path.