(First published on Tumblr on 04/12/2023)
One thing I've noticed, generally speaking, when witnessing, or even participating in, discussions about trans narratives in media where cis people are involved is the willful refusal of any possible trans perspective in media
This is something that obviously happens a lot in discussions about anime, which has a rich history of gender non-conforming and straight up canonically LGBT characters. While I will not pretend to be an expert on Japanese culture and politics regarding LGBT topics and representation, it's clear that there is a genealogy to be made, dating back from Osamu Tezuka's Princess Knight to the character of Hideri in Blend S or Astolfo in the Fate series, while including a number of works like The Rose of Versailles and its protagonist Oscar or Utena Tenjou from Revolutionary Girl Utena, or even Ryuunosuke Fujinami from Urusei Yatsura.
Ryuunosuke particularly came as a surprise to me. Watching the 2022 version of the Urusei Yatsura series, I went in blind, not knowing much about the series, and was struck by how her entire arc and narrative, despite her being a cis woman, is overwhelmingly transgender. Her longing to be understood and recognised by her father as who she is rather than who the father in question perceives her to be, the maladroit yet sympathetic way she experiences her first moments of feeling affirmed in her gender identity; Ryuunosuke is a trans women in every way shy of birth and name.
There's the rub however. It's difficult to say what defines a character, and this is something that probably shifts from case to case. It also depends heavily on the type of story being told. There is something to be said, however, about good characters being more than their words. Essentially, what will often define a character is not just what they say/do, and what is said of them, but it's how they do it, how they interact with the world around them, how they fit into this world or how they sometimes don't. In this sense, Ryuunosuke is a transgender woman, because the way she interacts with the world is an overtly trans one.
This is something that becomes more complicated when narratives become open to interpretation. Yume Nikki, an independent video game which has, over time, become a cult classic, is often noted as being a very disarming and confusing experience. Some themes seem clear and reoccuring throughout the game, where the purpose it to walk through the main character's dreams. Of course, many people have since then tried to draw meaning from the game, and to piece together a meanng from the dreams of this woman named Madotsuki. Particularly, a lot of those themes have to do with bodies, both yonic and phallic imagery seeming present throughout the game, and at times being an apparent source of detress for Madotsuki. From there, one of the theories that has emerged from the game is that Madotsuki might be transgender. It should be noted that, due to the open ended nature of the game, nothing has ever been confirmed as far as I'm aware, and though this theory is not necessarily the most popular one, it's not without arguments or pertinence. Sadly, as I have witnessed myself, it seems to be often met with absolute vitriol, with claims that the people recognising themselves in Madotsuki and their dreams are inserting themes of gender identity where there's none, and citing the lack of explicit references to a potential trans identity in a game where any kind of explicit reference to anything is almost non-existant.
Another work in which I have seen the trans narratives be rejected is The Matrix. Written and directed by two trans women, this is a movie that has, over the years, been subject to many analyses and theories regarding its meaning. From Plato to New Age spiritualities, the many interpretations are a testament to the richness and depth of the themes developped in the movie hereas well. The trans interpretation, one of many in this instance, (And one that Lana Wachowski has admitted was, though unintended at first, very true and related to her own experiences as a then-closeted trans woman) is one that deserves just as much regard as any other, and yet I've seen shut down immediately for lack of literal proof. Essentially, The Matrix can never be a trans allegory because Neo doesn't come into the Neb's kitchen one morning to announce he is coming out as trans to the whole crew.
So we end up with a question that seems, to me, important. What makes a transgender character trans? Ironically enough, trans characters in media are finding themselves with the burden to prove their transness. Declared cis until otherwise proven, the question remains of how to prove a character is trans. The answer, I think, lies in the function of coming out in many works of fiction. It is, on the one hand, didactic. It reassures the cis viewer that this trans character is not hostile, that they are willing to take the time and be patient enough to explain their identity as well as answer any question the cis characters, and through them the viewer, might have. On the other hand, it is othering. The character's transness becomes a thing they explain, rather than something they live. They are trans, yes, but not in the way cis characters are cis. They stop being who they are and become who they say they are, which is to say that their character is no longer defined through their themes and narratives, but has to apologetically present themselves as trans so the cis viewer might not accidentally perceive them as deeply human as any other cisgender character. For many people, what makes a character trans is how to offer themselves to the voyeuristic cis gaze.