For reference, I am a pansexual demi-boy (i.e. nonbinary ftm).
So I just watched an episode of tv (Schitt's Creek) in which a character in his first gay relationship was unintentionally outed to his parents by a third party. I was annoyed, which only increased as it went on, as the episode ended up being "will his parents accept or reject him? oh the drama!" and the pain he's dealing with having to tell his parents he's bisexual (or at least, not het) to his parents before he was ready, while the other characters feel guilty about this whole thing. There was a couple in-the-closet jokes, too, which didn't help. It ended with mentioning things like the Trevor Project and It Gets Better as if it made up for it. The show has said dumb things about pansexuals early on but otherwise this gay relationship was being handled very well. Something about this being A Very Special Episode tm for The Straights really rubbed me the wrong way.
So it got me thinking...every queer character has to be "outed" in your story in some way, either to the reader or to other characters since the reader is probably assuming any given character is cishet unless told otherwise (like how many readers assume a character is white). But with race, you really can't hide it, nor can a character hide it from another character. Even in a perfect (fictional) world where there is no homophobia or transphobia, you still have to show and/or tell the reader that this character is queer, which is tricky because revealing this information might have been traumatic in some way for many of us (as well as for your readers). And as I think about this more, it also feels kinda yucky to have trans characters be treated differently (or worry they will be treated differently), but how can you say they're trans without outing them in some way? It's all confusing and I'm not sure what's the "right" answer. I know there is no one objective right answer, but there's probably better answers than others, aren't there?
In my current project there are 2 trans characters: a trans woman and a trans man. The trans woman (K) is a human and works with J and C and they all work for G. C is new and a child and J explains to C that K's body is different and people will sometimes say awful things about her, and to not listen to them. J feels really bad for having to do this but she worries C might hear rumors before K talks to him about it. The trans man (W) is a phoenix; like in real life birds that don't look sexually dimorphic to our (human) eyes have UV-colored markings to differentiate sex, so to humans he can say he's male and they're none the wiser (and because of how birds make sounds with their syrinx his voice wouldn't give him away). But phoenixes are more old-fashioned/conservative (you will have 1 mate for forever etc)(and this is ultimately the reason for the conflict of the story, the phoenix's very different worldview/morals compared to humanity's) so he was never able to "pass" among them. He gets into serious debt with G so he can learn the spell to take a human shape, and since that can look like whatever you want, he has_a_ body that passes all the time, but there are still people who question why he's choosing to be a human all the time. During the story, G offers him a deal to do [plot relevant thing] to erase the debt, and the MC is annoyed/upset he's doing [thing] for his own benefit, for a debt he won't tell her why, but as the story progresses he ends up doing [thing] out of genuine love/care for the MC. MC has her own secrets she's keeping from him (so villain won't target him, too, regular danger stuff), and at the (emotional) climax of the story they both come clean to each other, and she doesn't care that he's trans and it doesn't change how she views or treats him. And with the power of friendship and trust they can do a special magic thing and beat the bad guy.
The story doesn't revolve around these characters being trans, they do stuff besides hide this "secret," they have bad things happen to them and suffer for reasons besides being trans...but I can't help but worry that I'm going to come off in a way that will upset/hurt a lot of queer people. I've seen discourse on how it's bad to make trans characters shapeshifters (namely, Alex Fierro, child of Loki, from Riordan's books), or that characters should just be trans, don't ever bring up their past, don't treat them any differently for being trans. I know that since I'm trans myself I have that #ownvoices angle, but I also don't want to use it as a get-out-of-jail-free card for not doing a stellar job (I have an old friend who got her sff series published by That Big SFF Publisher and its "orientalism" and totally-not-Japan-even-though-we're-using-Japanese-honorifics get ignored/a free pass because she's PoC/queer <but not Asian>). I'm more aware of facial/body features that can hint someone is trans, but if I only imply a character is trans by using those things, I worry cis people won't get it at all, or trans people conscious/dysphoric about those features will be hurt. My characters don't live in a perfect world, prejudice between races (more specifically, species, and I know figuring out what word to use is a whole other post) is the source of all conflict, so transphobic people DO exist...it's just not in-your-face as it is IRL.
This is a long post! I worry about things a lot! Writing that coming out scene is going to be real rough and I know I'm going to doubt myself so much, and I know I can never write something that makes no one upset. The people who will get mad that queer people even exist in my world I couldn't care less about, my stories are not for them, but I also don't want to hurt a community that has done so much for me. If any of my fellow QUILTBAGs have tackled something like this in their writing (or at least, read things like this) I would really appreciate your insight.
So I just watched an episode of tv (Schitt's Creek) in which a character in his first gay relationship was unintentionally outed to his parents by a third party. I was annoyed, which only increased as it went on, as the episode ended up being "will his parents accept or reject him? oh the drama!" and the pain he's dealing with having to tell his parents he's bisexual (or at least, not het) to his parents before he was ready, while the other characters feel guilty about this whole thing. There was a couple in-the-closet jokes, too, which didn't help. It ended with mentioning things like the Trevor Project and It Gets Better as if it made up for it. The show has said dumb things about pansexuals early on but otherwise this gay relationship was being handled very well. Something about this being A Very Special Episode tm for The Straights really rubbed me the wrong way.
So it got me thinking...every queer character has to be "outed" in your story in some way, either to the reader or to other characters since the reader is probably assuming any given character is cishet unless told otherwise (like how many readers assume a character is white). But with race, you really can't hide it, nor can a character hide it from another character. Even in a perfect (fictional) world where there is no homophobia or transphobia, you still have to show and/or tell the reader that this character is queer, which is tricky because revealing this information might have been traumatic in some way for many of us (as well as for your readers). And as I think about this more, it also feels kinda yucky to have trans characters be treated differently (or worry they will be treated differently), but how can you say they're trans without outing them in some way? It's all confusing and I'm not sure what's the "right" answer. I know there is no one objective right answer, but there's probably better answers than others, aren't there?
In my current project there are 2 trans characters: a trans woman and a trans man. The trans woman (K) is a human and works with J and C and they all work for G. C is new and a child and J explains to C that K's body is different and people will sometimes say awful things about her, and to not listen to them. J feels really bad for having to do this but she worries C might hear rumors before K talks to him about it. The trans man (W) is a phoenix; like in real life birds that don't look sexually dimorphic to our (human) eyes have UV-colored markings to differentiate sex, so to humans he can say he's male and they're none the wiser (and because of how birds make sounds with their syrinx his voice wouldn't give him away). But phoenixes are more old-fashioned/conservative (you will have 1 mate for forever etc)(and this is ultimately the reason for the conflict of the story, the phoenix's very different worldview/morals compared to humanity's) so he was never able to "pass" among them. He gets into serious debt with G so he can learn the spell to take a human shape, and since that can look like whatever you want, he has_a_ body that passes all the time, but there are still people who question why he's choosing to be a human all the time. During the story, G offers him a deal to do [plot relevant thing] to erase the debt, and the MC is annoyed/upset he's doing [thing] for his own benefit, for a debt he won't tell her why, but as the story progresses he ends up doing [thing] out of genuine love/care for the MC. MC has her own secrets she's keeping from him (so villain won't target him, too, regular danger stuff), and at the (emotional) climax of the story they both come clean to each other, and she doesn't care that he's trans and it doesn't change how she views or treats him. And with the power of friendship and trust they can do a special magic thing and beat the bad guy.
The story doesn't revolve around these characters being trans, they do stuff besides hide this "secret," they have bad things happen to them and suffer for reasons besides being trans...but I can't help but worry that I'm going to come off in a way that will upset/hurt a lot of queer people. I've seen discourse on how it's bad to make trans characters shapeshifters (namely, Alex Fierro, child of Loki, from Riordan's books), or that characters should just be trans, don't ever bring up their past, don't treat them any differently for being trans. I know that since I'm trans myself I have that #ownvoices angle, but I also don't want to use it as a get-out-of-jail-free card for not doing a stellar job (I have an old friend who got her sff series published by That Big SFF Publisher and its "orientalism" and totally-not-Japan-even-though-we're-using-Japanese-honorifics get ignored/a free pass because she's PoC/queer <but not Asian>). I'm more aware of facial/body features that can hint someone is trans, but if I only imply a character is trans by using those things, I worry cis people won't get it at all, or trans people conscious/dysphoric about those features will be hurt. My characters don't live in a perfect world, prejudice between races (more specifically, species, and I know figuring out what word to use is a whole other post) is the source of all conflict, so transphobic people DO exist...it's just not in-your-face as it is IRL.
This is a long post! I worry about things a lot! Writing that coming out scene is going to be real rough and I know I'm going to doubt myself so much, and I know I can never write something that makes no one upset. The people who will get mad that queer people even exist in my world I couldn't care less about, my stories are not for them, but I also don't want to hurt a community that has done so much for me. If any of my fellow QUILTBAGs have tackled something like this in their writing (or at least, read things like this) I would really appreciate your insight.