When I came out, I went from every sci-fi/fantasy book I read containing a whole bunch of versions of the person I thought I was/was trying to be, to not seeing myself anywhere, whether that was in books, films, or on TV.
There are beginning to be some great examples of trans/non-binary representation out there in the world of speculative fiction, including the Once & Future series by Amy Rose Capetta and Cori McCarthy, and Nicole Maines’ stint on Super Girl as Dreamer, but the trans/enby community is so diverse that we’ve got a long way to go, before we can all see ourselves reflected in the stories we love.
As a lesbian trans woman who is early in her transition and hasn’t had voice training, I certainly haven’t ever seen someone like me in a sci-fi or fantasy story, but perhaps more importantly, there is a real dearth of trans masc peeps, trans BIPOC peeps, disabled trans peeps, neurodivergent trans peeps, and all non-binary peeps out there (not an exhaustive list) at varying ages and stages of transition.
But writing your own book, particularly one which you’re going to self-publish so that there’s no pesky corporate publisher looking over your shoulder and telling you to make your book more ‘palatable’ to a mainstream audience, is a great opportunity to write this wrong, isn’t it? Well yes, it is, but it’s also an opportunity which I haven’t taken very good advantage of, because I’m a bit shit.
When I started writing my short story collection, Talking to Lobsters (available here folks! https://tinyurl.com/talkingtolobsterscollection), I knew I wanted to include lots of wlw characters, but for some reason, I shied away from including any trans characters at all. I think I just got afraid of misrepresenting the community which I’m a part of and which means so much to me. If I’d made the trans community angry with me somehow, it would have been really difficult to deal with.
Exploring wlw characters, however, was a great opportunity for me to explore that side of me. For most of the time I’ve been an out trans woman, I’ve focussed on the trans side of my identity, mostly because it’s the side of me that required medical care, legal paperwork, a new wardrobe etc etc. But on the day I came out, I suddenly found myself a lesbian and I hadn’t really explored what that meant to me. I’ve engaged with the trans community online and in real life, but I haven’t participated in the lesbian community at all. So, writing Talking to Lobsters was a great chance to explore all that.
I’m lucky enough to be a lesbian trans woman who is in a fantastic relationship with my wife, so the first thing I wanted to do is see that reflected on the page. As a result, I wrote about a computer programmer on the Moon who is given the opportunity to work on a crashed alien spaceship, but she really misses her wife, and even though she’s part of the adventure of a lifetime, she can’t wait to get back home to be with the one she loves.
I also wrote about an artist who accidentally made a painting which manifested a portal and took her to a colony ship five billion years in the future. There, she met the captain of the ship, who returned with her to Earth in the 21st century along with her crew because her ship was dying. Once settled on Earth, the two fell in love and started a family, while going on a great many adventures along the way.
Finally, in another story, I wrote about two women who had settled in a fictional, yet picturesque, village in rural Cumbria. Together, they kept bees, grew apples, and made a living from selling cider and honey. They both had to deal with some demonically possessed bees who had taken over a local deconsecrated church later on, but their relationship was strong, so they dealt with it.
The thing that these relationships have in common is that they depict women who love each other fiercely and have formed extremely strong relationships. I found it comforting to see this kind of idyllic relationship in my stories; they let me explore how I felt about my relationship with my own wife now that we’re a queer couple attempting to navigate the world together.
I recognise that my depictions of wlw relationships in Talking to Lobsters are hardly novel, unique, or pushing queer representation forward, but they were really important to me in exploring a part of who I was, and that has really highlighted to me how cathartic writing can be in exploring your sense of self.
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