[ SECRET POST #2406 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2406 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 077 secrets from Secret Submission Post #344.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

12. http://i.imgur.com/UU0guOQ.png

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe the fics are just a little overly personal? A lot of people use fandom as an outlet for their own feelings, to compensate for the lack of representation out there, and because they saw something in the character that struck them in a personal way. Real life sucks a lot especially the more marginalized you are so if playing around with characters makes that easier to bear there's nothing wrong with that. But fandom contains people of all different ages and writing levels, and while I am sure this is not true for all of them, a lot of fics probably sound like the characters are mouthpieces for the authors. Which means they feel OOC to you, and you don't like the fic. And you don't have to. Just be civil.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh hey. Did I somehow make a secret in my sleep? Because that almost perfectly describes me. Maybe it's because I generally hate genderbending as a fic trope and it seems to me that at the moment, writing about trans* people is just an ~exotic~, trendy version of the trope for a lot of people. And it's true, a lot of them are so aggressive it's really turning people away who would have been accepting or indifferent otherwise. I also have zero interest in reading trans* smut. It's not that it disgusts me, I'm just completely uninterested.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm under the impression that most people with trans* headcanons are projecting (which isn't a bad thing in itself, by the way).

[(Anonymous)]

I only really hate it when some character being trans has turned into such a popular headcanon for a lot of people that people don't bother tagging it with any version of trans-related tags. Not everyone wants to read it - as with m-preg and lots of other things - and I would be completely happy to just go "don't like, don't read" - but there are some writers/artists who don't tag it on purpose to "trick" you into reading/looking at it. And that annoys the fuck out of me.

[(Anonymous)]

I think it's fine for you not to be interested in headcanons where characters are trans*. And you're definitely not the most awful person ever. But it might be worth examining why you're having such a strong reaction to people with trans* headcanons. Yes, the people you follow might be going overboard, but trans* people are under-represented at best and depicted terribly at worst, so reading characters they identify with as trans* is understandable. For full disclosures' sake, I am not trans* but as a lesbian I have similarly read characters I admire as possibly being gay/bisexual where it is canonically possible. When (good) characters like you are rare, it's often quite nice to find yourself represented in fanworks. They aren't always written well, but I can't find fault with the idea behind it.

Also, you don't have to like porn with trans* characters. There's nothing wrong with that not being your thing. But why do you care strongly if others view your favourite characters as trans*? It doesn't affect your interpretation of the character. Why do you care? I don't mean this in an aggressive sense, but rather maybe you need to examine why you're having these reactions. And to be honest, given the terribly transphobic society we live in, a lot of people are much worse than mildly transphobic. The fact that you're wondering if you are goes a long way.

[(Anonymous)]

We're allowed to be annoyed when people make every character in an entire cast unrealistically 100% gay then insist it's totally canon, so why not trans* too?

Unless we're not allowed to do that any more, for some reason.

warning for talk about transgenderism/transsexuality

[transcriptanon]

[Picture is... okay I'm sure it's some sort of symbol but it kinda looks like a cursive letter "V" that got drunk and spiraled out of control when it tried to join the next letter and then vomited a dot somewhere along the way, and I tried drawing it on GIMP and then reverse-searching that through Google but I got nothing.]

I really feel like the most awful person for this. Hence, the secret. I swear to god I have nothing against trans* people. I even went through a phase of mild gender dysphoria myself from my teenaged years to young adulthood, settling now into a genderfluid identity with a usually femme presentation. So I can't say "ZOh My God I totally know the feeling!", but I'm not foreign to the concept.

But trans*headcanons in fandom make me terribly uncomfortable. I backbutton the fuck out of them. I don't know why! I like fics when characters play with gender, but when characters go full-blown Male To Female or Female To Male I stop reading. I suspect it's because I mostly read porn, and trans* sex scenes... somehow are a "no" to me. I used to rationalize it thinking it was because those fics were almost always written by cis people who would only fetishize trans* bodies, but now it has gotten to a point in which actual trans* people on tumblr I follow post their headcanons and I get /so much second hand embarrassment/. I know the problem is mine but I still they're... well, really pushy. It's like every character under the sun is trans* for them, and I want to yell "NOT EVERYBODY IS GENDER-VARIANT, GODDAMMIT". It's worse when it's a character I love. What the fuck is wrong with me?

I fail at fandom and at queerness. And now I wonder if I'm mildly transphobic, and I hate the idea, and myself.

[reactions_r_us]

[thene]

Idk about anyone else, but I much prefer to have a little plausible deniability about a writer's personal life being part of their headcanon? This goes for all kinds of fics. I don't mind reading trans* fic whether it was written by a trans* writer or not, but I'm going to skip their meta about it.

[(Anonymous)]

I feel the same way. It feels so forced to me, specially since I'm a stickler for canon-compliant characterization and headcanons. But I realize it's mostly because the idea and the intent are so totally foreign to me that I can't relate at all, so I don't begrudge people for doing it.

...I still don't want to read them though...

[(Anonymous)]

Don't worry OP, as a trans person I do not read them as well. It's a personal preference. Before fandom gender awareness there had been a gender bender trend and it triggered the fuck out of me. Same with current trans* and non-binary fiction.

[republicanism]

i think in some cases it's because it's easier to create a trans narrative where there isn't one than it is to confront the fact that Thing You Like isn't actually including People Like You in its canon

i guess that can go for slash too but often m/m fics pairing ostensibly straight dudes focus more on their relationship dynamics than they do on homosexuality in general

also it is frustrating when people say that because x character exhibits x trait they are totally trans! especially when this comes from the same people who are otherwise against the idea of gender roles

[(Anonymous)]

I'm a little confused. Is this about characters being written as trans* or is it about genderswap? Because those aren't the same thing and I see gendersawp in my fandoms a lot but I can't remember ever seeing a non-trans* character written as trans*.

[(Anonymous)]

Trans* is a really bizarre lifestyle/mentality that doesn't belong in fandom IMO.

Where do I start?
There are so many reasons why.

[(Anonymous)]

Don't worry, I'm FtM transsexual and I don't read fics about trans*-folk either. Mostly it's just that I deal with a lot of shit because of my transness in real life and fics are my escape, I don't want to read about the issues. I just want fluff/angst that doesn't hit too close to home for me.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, OP, I kind of feel in the same way.
But that's probably because in one of my fandoms, people are acting as if the trans*headcanon is canon.

I don't blame them completely because the canon was ambiguous at first, but I keep seeing people who have read the source material up to date and they keep insisting that that character is *trans.
Despite, you know, the fact he already said he thinks of himself as guy and we have seen him several times pretty comfortable as a guy. There's no gender dyphoria, doubts or anything.

Some few people are saying the character could be *trans an being in denial, which is at least a plausible theory based on some few details (though I keep thinking him being genderfluid would make more sense...), but still... there are just too many people acting as if it was canon and the fandom is too small to avoid them completely.

I just hope they don't start attacking the people who don't agree with them and ranting about the right pronouns.

[eaten_by_bears]

Easy, easy! As a trans guy in fandom, I think I can say that you need to slow your roll. You're not an awful person, and you don't have to read anything you don't like.

The fact is, you don't like those headcanons. So if I were you, I'd avoid them, and read things I do like instead. You don't have to comment telling your trans friends they're doing it wrong, you just don't have to comment at all. If you feel like investigating why you have these feelings, that might be a journey worth taking, but I think it would be a lot easier if you don't put pressure on yourself to like trans headcanons at the end of it. Maybe you never will, and that's okay.

Slight OT: Ignorant questions is ignorant

[(Anonymous)]

Why an asterisk is used in "trans*"?

[(Anonymous)]

I think this is similar to not reading slash involving someone you can't see as gay, or het involving someone you can't see as straight, or kidfic for someone you can't see as a parent, or high school AU fic for some canon that has nothing to do with high schools. You have a characterization/trope that you don't like. It's okay to not like things.

Personally there are VERY few fandom characters I could see as trans*, I've read only one trans-related fic that I've enjoyed. And that was a body horror fic in which a character who spent quite a bit of time bodiless (Alphonse Elric, a guy) was re-embodied into a female against his will. Not exactly a poster fic for trans acceptance, that one.

[(Anonymous)]

A few people I follow are younger and just now going through the whole sexual or gender identity. They are constantly making bisexual or trans* etc headcanons for all of their characters, with evidence of why this is canon, and it drives me nuts. I don't say anything, because I understand they're going through a phase and really it harms no one, but it bugs me. It bugs me sooo much.

And I'm genderqueer myself and I feel the same way as you with regards to reading trans* characters. I don't mind playing with gender but like you full on trans* just annoys me.

[(Anonymous)]

I have never seen trans* headcanons handled in a way that wasn't disgusting and fetishizing as all hell. Every time I've seen it done, the reasoning behind why they think the character is trans* is sexist and tied to gender essentialism - for instance, there are a lot of people who claim that Naoto from Persona 4 is trans* because she crossdressed and pretended to be a boy, completely ignoring the fact that she did so not because she identified as a boy, but because she felt that societal gender roles prevented her from pursuing the career path she wanted. In fact, she explicitly identifies as female in canon.

But obviously, she dresses like a boy so she must be trans*! As a cis female who has always presented in a more masculine fashion, I find that sort of assumption to be, quite frankly, disgusting and sexist. Girls can be masculine and still be female, just like boys can be feminine and still be male. Gender identity has nothing to do with presentation.

[(Anonymous)]

Basically why I hate a portion of SnK and P4 fandom.

[(Anonymous)]

"Genderfluid"? That's not a real thing..

[(Anonymous)]

I hardly ever read trans* fic and I don't see anything wrong in not having any interest in it. I can also kind of understand what you mean in terms of feeling secondhand embarrassment when reading headcanon posts -- I think I'd feel that way about anything that comes off so overly personal.

But that's just it, I don't actually have to read these fics and posts, do I? Even if it's people you follow, you can ignore them. Back in the days two of my closest LJ friends started really getting into writing my favorite character in our mutual fandom as trans*, and they would talk about it all the time. Did I feel an imperative to participate? Of course not, and back on LJ, the absence of someone's opinion in a small group of friends was even more noticeable. Did anyone care? No.

So I guess while it's pretty normal for you to have these feelings, you could stand to... lighten up a bit? Secondhand embarrassment shouldn't make you want to yell at people in annoyance, that's kind of extreme. Fandom activities are supposed to make you happy; those folks are writing and talking about trans* characters because it makes them happy. You should avoid them for the same reason. Go look at what you like instead.