Novels that treat transgender side characters in a good way

There are some good discussions about transgender representation in books going on, most of them focusing on the works of visibly queer and transgender authors. That got me thinking: What about strong transgender characters in other books? 

There are a lot of novels and stories that presents negative and bigoted views of trans people, and in particular trans women. These characters are often sexualized, pathologized, ridiculed and presented as "traps" – a threat to cisgender adults and children.

However, there are also good books that do the opposite, books where the transgender side characters are just people like everyone else. I am going to present two books that passed my trans humanization test, and one that does not quite make it.

Summon The Angels by J.J. Campanella 

Campanella has published two books in their Eddy Bratenahl series. These are exciting and entertaining crime/thrillers with some drops of horror added – well written and well researched.

Bratenahl is a policed psychologist at the Chicago Police Department. As such he is not really supposed to take part in investigations, but for reasons that will become clear to the readers of the books he does end up doing detective work anyway, due to his experience and contacts. 

Amanda Richards is introduced in book 1, A Sum of Destructions, but it is in the second book, Summon the Angels, she plays an essential role. You do not have to have read book 1 to read book 2. 

Minor spoilers from here on.

When Amanda disappears she leaves her nephew Joshua in Bratenahl's care. He is soon engaged in the search for Amanda. The book then follows this search in parallel with a presentation of Amanda's past, including her training as a glass artisan in Japan. 

Campanella has clearly done a lot of research on Japanese culture, and that alone makes the book worth reading.

The reason Campanella passes my trans humanizing test is because Amanda is presented as a complete human being. She is treated with respect by the author (and most of the other characters), and the story about her transgender journey and her life as a transgender woman seems true and believable.

By the way, there is another strong female character that caught my interest. Mary Kate Calderon is a veteran  homicide detective working side by side with Bratenahl, and she has powers you rarely see in books like these. The book definitely passes the Behcdel test.

Summon of the Angels is a  real page-turner, but what makes me love it is the way they go beyond pure entertainment and explores more existential questions like the role of evil and suffering in people's lives. Amanda's life story therefore becomes one of many threads in a tapestry depicting love and hate in a world that is often hard to understand and embrace.

J.J. Campanella: Summon the Angels

Transgender and nonbinary news curation in social media

We provide links to the latest transgender and queer news and resources through our social media channels on twitter, tumblr, Flipboard and Telegram.

Anyone who wants to keep track of the transgender and queer debate – whether this applies to culture, politics, health or models of understanding – is facing a serious challenge as to how to find relevant news and quality content.

Search engines like Google are becoming increasingly irrelevant in this respect, as few of us go beyond the first two pages of search results and because so much of the content delivered is produced by anti-trans and anti-queer activists.

This is why we need curators who can identify and share relevant content with those who want to know more about trans, nonbinary and queer issues.

Here's the problem: There is, to our knowledge, very few who provide such services. Reddit provides some input of this kind, but it is limited to the interests of those active there. Sites like Pink News, The Advocate, LGBTQ Nation, and Washington Blade provide a lot of useful information, but they are – for obvious reasons – focusing on their own content.

This is why we are providing transgender, nonbinary and queer news curation in several channels, the latest of which is our Transgender World Telegram channels.

Here are our our transgender and queer news sites and accounts:

Trans Express on twitter.
This is our most expansive and up to date news source. We post some five to ten links of relevant content every day.

Trans Express on tumblr.
On average we publish one new post presenting relevant transgender and queer content every day.

Transgender News on Flipboard
Here we present much of the same content as on twitter, but in a practical newspaper format.

Transgender World on Telegram
Telegram is our newest offering. We realized that there were no serious transgender news sources on this popular platform and decided to provide our own. This channel will present selected links from the sources mentioned above.

Photo: Alessandro Biascioli

What modern art can tell us about gender identity and biological sex

But is it real?

The history of the use of linear perspective in art has a lot to teach us about the way be approach the "reality"  of biological sex and gender.

I had an interesting discussion with a friend about the reality of reality  the other day  and we came over the following example:

Two-dimensional perspective images

At some point in time someone came up with the idea of two-dimensional linear perspective drawing (first in Antiquity and then again in the Renaissance). From the 15th century onwards this gradually became the norm for how "the real world" should be depicted. 

Photography became so popular because the photos produced lived up to the ideal of two-dimensional perspective.

By two-dimensional perspective I mean using various tricks to give the illusion of depth in an image on a flat surface, as paper or canvas. One such trick is to present parallel lines as converging in order to give the illusion of depth and distance.

Leon Battista Alberti, Della Pictura drawing showing a horizon line and vanishing point, 1435. Via Classical Art.

Two-dimensional perspective art (and later photos)  became the default standard for "real". "I like paintings that look like reality," people would say and point to pictures like this one:

William Shakespeare’s Love for a Transfeminine Crossdreamer

The third earl of Southampton en femme.

If I told you William Shakespeare was in love with a transfeminine crossdreamer, would you believe me? 

Some will tell you that gender variance is a recent phenomenon. It is not. Transgender and gender variant people have existed all the way back to Antiquity and beyond, and they have been found many different cultures. See, for instance, my post on the poem written by a European Medieval transgender woman  and the article on transgender characters in the Indian Kama Sutra.

And yes, Shakespeare was in love with a male to female crossdreamer/gender variant person/transgender woman.  Our modern terms do not translate easily into the context of the English Renaissance, and we cannot ask dead people about their identities, but I am pretty sure that at least one of these terms hits pretty close to home.

When does a woman look like a man? What AI can tell us about gender.

Most of the images are generated by an artificial intelligence (Artbreeder).
None of these persons exist in the real world.

The way an AI (artificial intelligence) interprets gender can tell us something about how we humans see gender. It seems there is a very narrow tipping point where we start to reclassify from male to female and vice versa.

Artbreeder

Gulliver made me aware of a new artificial intelligence (AI)  based app called Artbreeder over at Crossdream Life. It lets you transform images and photos in a wide variety of ways, including merging photos of two persons and adjust "genes", i.e. variables that defines physical traits.

One such "gene" is gender. You can take a photo of a person, adjust the "gender gene", and watch how feminine traits turn into masculine features.

This software is using machine learning, and it  its calculations are based on  input from a vide variety of photos and pictures. I am not sure how they define feminine and masculine in these algorithms, but keep in mind that the input is culturally defined. AI has a tendency of reproducing contemporary cultural biases.

That being said, what interests me here is not how the AI sees gender, but how I see it, how human beings see it.

Strike a Pose! On Trans and Crossdreamer Cultures.

The TV series Pose tells us how amazingly creative crossdreamers and trans people can be, when they need to explore and express who they are.

Poster for the TV series Pose.

Crossdreamers are people who sometimes or constantly dream about becoming another gender. They may identify as trans, cisgender or nonbinary. There is an amazing variety in the way they dream about – and express – their longings.

You should think the fact that we have this cross-gender orientation in common, would make us want to share and learn from each other.

But no, instead the interplay between gender roles, sexual orientation, assigned gender and race has divided us into different tribes.

This is unfortunate, because there is so much to learn from how other crossdreamers have expressed themselves and explored their identities.

This is one of the reasons the TV series Pose should be of great interest to all crossdreamers and gender variant people.

Pose is a work of fiction, but it follows up the 1990 documentary Paris is Burning, a film about the 1990s ball culture of New York.

How language makes us shame women, femininity and trans people

Culture's contempt of women and femininity drives many male to female crossdreamers and trans people back into the closet. Bullying and harassment play important roles, but language itself also shapes the way we think about sex and gender.

Woman as vampire (Edvard Munch)

The reason so many seem to despise male to female gender crossings more than the female to male ones, is that being a woman is understood as something negative. Womanhood is associated with weakness, both physical and mental.

To use the terminology of the day: Women are less privileged than men, and the dream of becoming a woman is therefore a sign of some kind of mental desease or madness. A woman striving for masculine interests and expressions, on the other hand, is reaching for greatness.

There is no factual foundation for such misogynistic beliefs, in the sense that biology gives women more or less the same abilities and temperaments as men. To the extent there are differences, they do not influence women’s abilities to take part in modern society negatively. They are as good as men (and even better if we look at the current enrollment in higher education). Still, even seemingly clear headed people fall back into the pool of stereotypes over and over again.

Internalized misogyny

This has obviously a profound effect on male to female gender variant people, from the occasional male to female (MTF) crossdresser to the transgender woman. They all sense that many people look down upon their identities and choices. This is also why so many male to female crossdreamers and transgender people stay in the closet.

Indeed, you will also see that many MTFs themselves share many of these prejudices, as expressed in fantasies, stories and role playing.

If There Was a Magic Pill

I got permission to publish this crossdreamer poem by Marion Raven Thorsdottir.

If there was a magic pill

Female Thor (Marvel)

That could make this innate urge go away

None of us would be here today

Why is it like this?

Because a society through its infinite

jurassic way of thinking

Has glorified war, violence, militarism

Scoffed at the moon Luna

The softness, the sway 

of the feminine wave

The life giving wave of of Yin

How much has changed

Our existence is no longer a sin

As if it ever were

how much things still are the same

None places either of us could go to

If presenting as we are today

With long standing internal strife

Hours, days, weeks, months, years on end

hoardings and Urges,

Anxiety and purges

Pain and pleasure all mixed together

Self imposed feelings of shame

Until some day

Finding that we are not alone

Listen to the ancient wisdom of the past

From places and cultures

Uninfested by fantasy fairy tales

Imposed on the world

Through conquest and war

Proclaimed as eternal Truths

How wrong they were

How wrong they are

Listen to the voices and signs from times

Before patriarchy replaced matriarchy

Where two spirits were respected

Feared and revered 

Listen to the water, listen to the wind

Also our voices of wisdom will be heard at last

As I take mine from the delicate storms of thunder

Is there a way 

Out of this rabbit hole?

Reflections on a Possible Crossdreamer Pride Flag

Transgender flag presented in Pride parade (Getty).

We are in the middle of the global Pride season. There seems to be a flag for any sexual and romantic orientation possible, and others for  gender identity.  But is there one for crossdreamers and crossdressers? And do we need one?

As regards the second question:

Probably not, as most -- if not all -- crossdressers and crossdreamers fit under the transgender umbrella. They are all -- in one way or the other -- gender variant.

The transgender flag

And we already do have a transgender flag, created by American trans woman Monica Helms in 1999.

The transgender flag

Helms described the meaning of the transgender pride flag as follows: 

"The stripes at the top and bottom are light blue, the traditional color for baby boys. The stripes next to them are pink, the traditional color for baby girls. The stripe in the middle is white, for those who are intersex, transitioning or consider themselves having a neutral or undefined gender. The pattern is such that no matter which way you fly it, it is always correct, signifying us finding correctness in our lives."

Some still find it a bit traditional, restrictive and binary (especially because of the baby color reference), but as far as I can see, there is ample room for non-binary transgender identities under this flag. The description may -- for instance -- include crossdreamers and crossdressers who present as their assigned gender, but who still feel the need to express the other side of their personality. 

Besides,  many crossdreamers find that they are  transsexual, and end up presenting and living as their target gender.

A crossdreamer flag proposal

But there is more to flags than actually having to fly them in public, as a recent discussion over at Crossdream Life  clearly demonstrates.

Lost247365  presented this sketch of a possible crossdreamer flag some days ago. It was Lost's presentation and the following discussion that caught my interest, more than the question of whether this flag will actually ever fly in a Pride parade.

The Medieval Transgender Woman

Jewish women in Haggadah for Passover (the ‘Golden Haggadah”)

The story about a medieval  poem on  becoming your true gender.

Many of you will have met the following argument in the transgender debate:

Since crossdreaming and transgender identities are social constructs, they are most likely to be the end product of modern Capitalist society, the Patriarchy or something equally sinister -- an line of argument which will most likely lead to a discussion about sexualization and fetishes.

This impression is reinforced by the fact that historians and art scholars have had a tendency to ignore -- or outright censor -- the voices of gender variant people from other cultures and epochs.

As I pointed out in my blog post on  crossdreamers in the Kama Sutra, until recently all English translations of that work skipped the part about straight women dominating straight men, most likely because it was considered threatening to the world order or impossible to understand.

So a lot of work is needed in this field. I am confident that if we look, we will find crossdreamers and transgender people in all cultures and all periods of time. They lives will be expressed in different manners according to  local language and cultural framework (as they are today), but they will have this in common: A desire or a need to express or be recognised as their true gender or as a blend of the two.

A Medieval Poem About the Longing to Become a Woman

A year ago Tuitey made me aware of a beautiful transgender poem over at tumblr.

The poem was written in the 14th century by a Jewish male to female transgender philosopher  and translator from Provence:  Kalonymos ben Kalonymus (also known as Qalonymos ben Qalonymos ben Meir). The poem was originally published in the book Even Bohan (or Eben Bohan) in 1322.

Great movies, documentaries and web series from the Transgender Film Festival in Kiel

Poster for The Danish Girl in Kiel.
(Photo from festival Facebook page)

Andy has sent me an overview of the awards of this year's Transgender Film Festival in Kiel.

There are a lot of interesting films here, and I have included some relevant clips for you below.

This festival is the only one of its kind in Germany, and as you will see, it takes a much needed broad approach to the term transgender.

The selection of movies, documentaries, TV/web shows and songs reflects the current surge in interest for transgender people as well as the artistic abilities of trans people themselves.


Best Film of the Year:

Her Story directed by Sydney Freeland, a web series on the dating lives of trans and queer women.



Best Trans-Performance:

Angelica Ross in Her Story
Khaleb Brooks in the web series Boxx

Khaleb Brooks

Prince as a Crossdreamer, and What it Means for the Transgender Debate

We have lost Prince, AKA Prince Rogers Nelson, one of the biggest pop artists and composers in modern history, and I find myself marvelling at the fact that the world is mourning one of the most well known crossdreamers of all time. People do not seem to mind that he was one!

Prince in a female pose on the cover of Lovesexy

Mr. Sexually Explicit

Prince had very limited inhibitions when it came to presenting his sexual fantasies in lyrics. This was, after all, the man who told us about his Darling Nikki that "she was a sex fiend. I met her in a hotel lobby, masturbating with a magazine".

Nikki was partly the cause for Tipper Gore founding  the Parents Music Resource Center in the US.  This led  to the use of "Parental Advisory" stickers on album covers in that country, assumedly protecting children from harmful content.

So yes, you can safely say that Prince caused controversy as a person who made "dirty lyrics" and as such was classified as a "pervert" by those more emotionally restricted.

But he was never slammed, as I can see, for being a crossdreamer or someone making gender-crossing sexy. When going through all the obituaries and articles, I can't find one single negative reference to this topic. Searching the Net I can't find one single page where Prince and the stigmatizing and invalidating concept of "autogynephilia" are mentioned in the same paragraph.

"I'm not a woman, I'm not a man"

People do use terms like "queer," "ambisexual," "androgynous" and "polysexual" when writing about Prince.

 This makes sense given lyrics like the ones found in "I Would Die 4 U", a love song with strong religious or mystical overtones. (Video here. Full lyrics here).

Prince sings:

I'm not a woman
I'm not a man
I am something that you'll never understand

Then there is the famous Prince symbol or logo, which unites the male and the female  in one glyph.


But most commenters discusses this kind of gender-crossing with respect, or at least some positive fascination.

People never use terms like "transvestite", "transvestic fetishist" or "autogynephiliac", in spite of Prince dressing up in clothes that are undeniable feminine.

A Transgender Novel Discussing "Autogynephilia" - Imogen Binnie's Nevada

Imogen Binnie has written a novel about the lives of two male to female crossdreamers. And yes, you should read it!

Photo of Imogen Binnie byJulie Blair 

There have been novels about crossdreaming before (Ernest Hemingway's Garden of Eden comes to mind), but I have never seen one who includes a discussion of the concept of "autogynephilia" (defined as men who get aroused by the idea of being women).

Imogen Binnie's Nevada does. And it does so because it is about two male to female crossdreamers: one lesbian punk trans woman, Maria Griffith, and one MTF crossdreamer living as a  heterosexual man: James.

Raw

It is a roller-coaster ride of a book, completely unlike any trans autobiography you might have read.

The language is colorful and explicit, and Binnie does not sugarcoat the lives of transgender people. Both James and Maria are suffering from the kind of traumatic stress disorder that gender confusion can bring. They are struggling with self acceptance, and find it hard to believe and embrace the love of others.

Maria is definitely intellectualizing  in an attempt to avoid feeling the hurt.

Crossdreaming unfiltered

Unlike many trans authors Binnie does not hide the crossdreaming -- i.e. the fact that trans people, being those crossdressers, transsexuals or other gender variant persons, may get aroused by the idea of being their target sex. She faces it head on, bringing it out into the open.

The end of the chick flick -- on the media industry and gender

What comes first? Or inborn femininity or masculinity, or the expectations of the culture around it?

Those who have followed this blog will know that I am pretty much convinced that most of what we consider masculine or feminine is culturally defined, and that all "masculine" of "feminine" personality traits are -- in fact -- common to both sexes.

This does not mean that there cannot be some kind of pre-cultural personality core that is male of female, but it means that we cannot reduce what it means to be a man or a woman to, let's say, a propensity to ask for directions when out travelling.

The advertising industry has a set of categories that are closely correlated to cultural stereotypes. In this TED conference video, Johanna Blakely argues that the fact that women dominates social media will not make media more feminine. Instead they will kill off the genre categories like -- for instance -- chick flicks. The diversity among women will change the media industry.



 Johanna Blakley is Deputy Director of the Norman Lear Center (a media-focused think tank at the University of Southern California).

Call for trans and genderqueer poetry

TC Tolbert and Tim Peterson are editing a new collection of trans-poetry and are asking for contributions.

They say that their assumption is that the writing of trans and genderqueer folks has something more than coincidence in common with the experimental, the radical, and the innovative in poetry and poetics:

 

"With your help we’d like to manifest that something (or somethings) in a genderqueer multipoetics, a critical mass of trans fabulousness."

The deadline is November 30. You can read more about it here.

"You are not one of us!" said the separatist transsexual

The separatists  transwomen intensify their attacks on crossdressers and "transgender", immensely fearful of contamination by association.

White Pride

Separatist ideologue and HBS International general, Rose White, has now declared war on the presence of drag queens in Pride Parades in Calder-dale, Britain. The argument:

“Drag queens – homosexuals dressed as women – and drag kings, women dressed as men, performing as stereotypical crossdressers promote, foster and reinforce the belief among the audience that any bloke in a frock must be a homosexual.” she says. “If these people are allowed to perform in the town in the Pride, they must have a prominent sign stating ‘We are homosexual men – not transexuals’."

In other words: "You are not one of us!"

This is the same woman who in a recent book called grouped everyone she did not like into the following toxic salad:

"The enemies are Fouratist homos, the public, the press, bigots and fools, ignorant medics, penny pinching political manipulators, BRSS dykes, religious pedophiles, closed homos and unfortunately the unaccepting homos a.k.a. Manginas who themselves try to become HBS [Harry Benjamin Syndrome] in the vain hope that masquerading as a woman will help them refuse to confess that they are just homos and not HBS."

The "closet homos" also include crossdressers and crossdreamers.  We are all disgusting gay men in her view.

Rose is definitely at the extreme end of the separatist scale, but the fact is that there are quite a few that share  similar conspiracy theories of there being a Transgender Borg Collective of men masquerading as women.

The Borg

Suzan, who writes one of my favorite blogs on transsexual topics, dislikes Rose White intensely. She nevertheless falls into the same trap of turning all non-transsexual transgender people into a conspiracy: 

"The Transgender Borg collective are the real problem. They are like a cult demanding every one use the exact same language to describe their personal experiencing of what it means to have been born with transsexualism.

Transgender songs

I found this video by the Scottish/American rock group Garbage over at Calie's T-Tunes, a blog devoted to songs written around a TG theme. Garbage - Androgyny FULL Uploaded by bebepanda. - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.