#1

Your entire artistic team is cisgender.

Here’s the thing about trans stories in our world: historically, they’ve been told by cis people, and they have consistently repeated the same damaging tropes and stereotypes. Even if you use a source written by a trans person, remember that the only way a trans person can get published is if their story is palatable to their (almost universally) cis editors.

What this means is that, if you’re cis and you aren’t very closely tied to a trans community, you will be basing your story on your preconceived notions about what it’s like to be trans, rather than the reality of our experiences - and those preconceived notions are really harmful and dangerous for trans people.

It doesn’t matter how many trans consultants and actors and assistants you bring on board. If your story was conceived by cis people, and if the core artistic team is entirely cis (think the smallest group you’d bring together for the biggest decisions), your project has a 100% chance of being harmful to trans artists and audience members.

This goes for teams that are all-white, all-male, all-able bodied, and everything else too.

#2

It’s trauma porn.

The overwhelming majority of trans stories in the media fall into this category. I define trauma porn as any show where the character’s role is for the audience to feel sorry for them, rather than relating to them - sympathy, not empathy. Any show like this intrinsically presents trans people as pathetic humans who are capable of little more than suffering, and who need the charity of kind cis people to survive (this trope is a huge problem for the disabled community as well).

Ask yourself: is my trans character’s struggle all about their transness and dealing with discrimination and bigotry? Is it about the pain of transitioning? These are realities in our world that it’s important for us to acknowledge, but when all of our media focuses on these things, cis people cannot see us as fully human. There’s a direct line from those stereotypes to the violence perpetuated against trans people. We don’t need more fuel for them.

#3

It’s about cis people’s feelings about trans people.

A lot of cis-written stories aren’t actually about transness - they’re about how the cis characters feel about a person’s trans identity. The message these stories accidentally send is, “it’s okay if cis people struggle with this. Transness is really hard!”

The problem is that, by focusing on cis people’s reactions to transness, the way those reactions impact trans people is ignored. The most extreme version of this is the “trans panic defense,” where cis people have been acquitted of murdering trans people because the court deemed murder to be an understandable response to learning of someone’s trans identity. But less extreme manifestations are harmful too: I cannot count the number of parents I have seen who were intensely emotionally abusive towards their children, because they prioritized their feelings over their trans child’s well-being.

Being trans impacts trans people a lot more than it impacts the people around us. I promise. And stories that prioritize the feelings of cis people dehumanize us and send the message that how we feel doesn’t matter, because our identity is less about who we are, than it is something we are inflicting on others. Cis people aren’t the ones in need of help in this situation, and we need to stop ignoring trans characters’ feelings in favor of them.

#4

Your trans characters are one dimensional.

When cis writers write trans characters, typically one of two things happens:

• All the characters do is suffer and feel sorry for themselves and wish they could be cis (spoiler alert, most of us don’t wish that); or

• The trans characters are put on pedestals and drawn as flawless humans because the writer is scared to depict them in any kind of negative light.

Trans people are messy, three-dimensional humans just like anyone else, and we are filled with loves and needs and desires that don’t involve our gender, just like anyone else. We deserve stories that show us as such.

#5

It’s written for cis people.

Is the story crafted with both a cis and a trans audience in mind? Does the writing team have a deep understanding of how it will impact trans audiences, and how it will impact cis audience members’ perceptions about trans identities?

#6

You can’t ethically ask an actor to play the role.

Cisgender actors playing trans characters is a huge problem - Jen Richards speaks more eloquently on this than I ever will. But depending on what happens to the character, it may be unethical to cast a trans actor in the role, too. Particularly if the actor is a minor, asking them to play out trauma related to their personal identity is highly questionable. This can be true for adults too (before asking a trans actor to portray a suicide attempt on a nightly basis, consider that 41% of trans people attempt suicide in their lifetime, and that even if this actor has not, that’s going to hit real close to home). No show is important enough to traumatize its performers.

#7

It’s focused on the trans person’s body.

Trans people are often treated like our bodies are fair game for public consumption. People around us expect the right to know what they look like, what we’ve done or not done with them, etc. This information is intensely personal and wildly inappropriate to ask about, and discussing it openly in the context of a fictional character implies that asking it of real-life trans people is okay (and also usually implies that in order to “really” be our gender, a medical transition is necessary). Please don’t do it.

Note: there may be an exception to this if the story is about an intersex person, but this is incredibly complex and still less necessary than most people think. Please don’t undertake it if you don’t really know what you’re doing.

#8

The pitch is filled with red flags.

As trans artists, every time we are sent a project or a casting notice, we scan it closely to look for red flags. And when I tell someone I’m not willing to work on their project because of the red flags, they almost always ask what the red flags were so they can make a quick fix. I’ve never had someone step back to acknowledge what the presence of those red flags might mean about them or their ability to carefully create their project.

The problem is that if the red flags are fixed but the underlying issues that caused them are not addressed, it puts other trans artists in the vulnerable position of anticipating a supportive space and instead being harmed when they get there. So I don’t correct people’s red flags. If you’re working on a project about a particular group that you don’t belong to, then the onus is on you to do the research and figure out how to approach the project so you aren’t writing the red flags in the first place. After all, if we can’t make it through a three-paragraph description without problems, what is the 100-page script going to look like?

Also just noting: I have yet to encounter a cis writer who had done sufficient research into trans people to do this well.

#9

The trans characters are tokens.

If a character is there to represent all trans people, rather than to be an individual with a function in the story, that’s tokenism. Similarly, if a trans character’s only function in the story is to show how great the cis character is because they’re kind to them, that’s tokenism too.

This one is a bigger problem for Black folks than it is for trans folks, but it happens to every marginalized group at some point or another.

#10

Trans characters don’t get love, dreams, happy endings, etc. — or shows that aren’t about pain

When was the last time you saw a story about a trans person that involved any of these things (it doesn’t count if the dreams are about changing their body)? Yeah, me neither. Real-life trans people experience all of these things, and trans characters should too. So should BIPOC characters, other characters of color, fat characters, disabled characters, women characters, non-Christian characters, queer characters, and everyone else.