Transphobic Tropes #5 – The "man in a dress"/stealthy deceiver double bind
So, I haven’t done one of these for awhile. Yes, I’m a bit rubbish, I’m aware.
Anyway, onto the next trope. This might seem to be two tropes, and indeed they can and do work separately, but I’m going to do them together because I think they very often work together (especially in the criminal justice system). This one is trans women specific.
First, there’s the frequently touted idea that trans women are really just men in dresses. The man in a dress is a pitiful figure, trying and failing miserably to pass as a woman. The notion occasionally touted by some online feminists that trans women will be immediately and obviously be readable as trans–and hence able to be kept out of womyn’s “safe space”–relies on this idea. This is often the figure of trans women in popular culture, the laughingstock who can’t gender themselves properly (always played by a cis man, with bonus hilarity points if there’s facial and body hair).
This second half, the stealthy deceiver, is closely allied to my first trope (“Really a [assigned birth sex]“) except that it posits the trans person as actively fraudulent. The idea is that appearances are deceptive, that we are able to mimic cis femininity so well that we can trick innocent people (usually men) into believing we are something we are not. To live your life in your gender, and most particularly, to expect to have sex with someone, is inherently a lie.
This is the trans person as surprise plot twist that fuels movies like The Crying Game, though it’s more pervasive and pernicious than sheer entertainment. The figure of the stealthy trans woman fuels the notorious “trans panic” defense that seemingly every murderer of a trans woman seeks to defend themselves. Unsurprisingly, it is nearly always almost an enormous bloody lie, the evidence frequently conclusively points to murderers having known their victims were trans and then cold bloodedly killing them.
What remains profoundly foreign to this trope, of course, is the perspectives of trans women ourselves, that being born forced to attempt to live in a male gender role and sexed body might have been far more a profound lie that living as women.
So, these tropes seem to in one sense be wildly opposed – in one, transness is immediately apparent, in the other, it is a secret. But in another sense, they work together, because one can easily move from one to the other, because a cis view of trans people tends to scrutinise, looking for signs of inauthenticity, of our “real” genders. So, trans women are placed in the double bind of coming out – either come out and have your gender disregarded and ridiculed, or remain stealth and risk being exposed as a deceiver.
Both, I should point out, have incredible risks of violence.
What is more incredible is how they can both appear at the same time. Trans women are ridiculed for the obvious and apparent inauthenticity of our genders – massive bloody attention is paid to appearance, to make-up, clothing, shaving, to shoulder size, to Adam’s apples. See, for instance, this article about the murder of Sanesha Stewart:
Stewart, more than 6 feet tall, was known to wear stylish, provocative outfits with towering high heels, neighbors said.
Stewart also apparently had undergone surgery to give him larger breasts and other female characteristics, neighbors said.
“She looked like a girl but when she turned around, you knew it was a man,” a 17-year-old neighbor said. “She had a big jaw and an Adam’s apple.”
And yet the original title of the story, I should point out, was “Fooled John Stabbed Bronx Tranny” (until GLAAD complained and the title was changed). The article proceeded typically, without any evidence whatsoever besides the fact that Sanesha Stewart was a trans woman of colour, from the later-proved-to-be-faulty assumption that she was not only a sex worker, but a stealthy deceptive one at that. The incoherence of this, that she was somehow both immediately and obviously trans, and yet able to fool a man into thinking she was cis, should be immediately obvious to anyone with even a quarter of a functioning brain. And yet.
Transphobia doesn’t work on the level of literal sense, instead it proceeds along a path mapped out long before, relying more on a cis common sense of how things “should be” (and therefore are) than on any real knowledge of trans lives. And so, this trope appears again and again and again – in Kellie Telesford’s trial, she was described as possessing a man’s strength (ludicrously unlikely given the time she’d been on hormones), yet simultaneously she was able to deceive the defendent into having sex with her.
The point is then, trans women do not have stable position in cis-sexist discourse, moving instead through incoherently contradictory counter-propositions as needs permit, but all the while denied an authenticity and truthfulness for our identities which cis gender normative people take for granted.
The inherent doublethink in cissexist “arguments” such as these makes it almost impossible to combat logically and directly also. Such is the nature of this phobia:(
z
30 Sep 08 at 11:52 pm
This is the best so far – and combining the two makes much sense. Julia Serano did the same.
Lisa Harney
1 Oct 08 at 1:01 am
That’s a bloody good explanation of something which will never stop baffling me.
QoT
1 Oct 08 at 4:22 am
what this means is … you know that “liminal space” that we trans women (and all trans folk) all supposedly live in? It doesn’t exist. We *have no space* to just live our lives.
GallingGalla
1 Oct 08 at 4:48 am
Lisa, she did? Bollocks, I’d totally forgotten that!
GG: Yes and no. In terms of actually living, well obviously we do (and as such we’re still capable of kyriarchal oppression, like almost everyone is).
In terms of cultural discourse, absolutely, there is basically no real space to carve a trans narrative that’s not already thoroughly overdetermined with cis meanings that work to silence you. Because it doesn’t matter what you do, any aspect of your life can be rewritten after the fact without the slightest bit of fact-checking, simply on the knowledge that you’re trans.
queen emily
1 Oct 08 at 8:20 am
“(always played by a cis man, with bonus hilarity points if there’s facial and body hair)” – srsly, why is that? It seems like when trans characters show up in films, they’re always played by cis people of the opposite gender. :/
Thene
1 Oct 08 at 8:33 am
Well, I think it is so we know the trans person is “really” whatever their assigned sex was – to emphasise both the inauthenticity of the trans character’s gender *and* for us to appreciate the amazing acting abilities required to play the other sex.
I can think of a couple other examples where the actor’s been the post-transition sex (Transamerica, Ugly Betty), but that itself puts us through a different cis lens. Also, both do still do play these two tropes together in different ways.
I think the only major thing I can think of with a trans actor is Dirty Sexy Money, which I haven’t bothered watching.
queen emily
1 Oct 08 at 8:43 am
What always surprises me is that trans people resist the idea that cis people shouldn’t play trans characters.
The only actor I can think of that’s done a decent job of it is Rebecca Romijn.
Lisa Harney
1 Oct 08 at 10:33 am
I think this is the best breakdown of the issue I have read. I honestly think this is the greatest tactic in day to day dialogue to silence and/or shame trans* folks. Making our voices suspect before the first word is uttered or typed.
rioTgirl
1 Oct 08 at 1:03 pm
Lisa – there was also the actress who plays Dr Cuddy on House, who appeared on an episode of Ally McBeal as a transwoman. I thought it was a fairly decent (if one-ep-only) portrayal, though that was back in the days, and, of course, it was Ally McBeal.
On the super-down side, an NZ juice company has decided that a really Clever, Original and Edgy advertisement should involve three incredibly masculine men in silly fluorescent outfits doing a “drag” act. Facial hair, square jaws and squeaky falsettos galore. Fuck I hate “bloke” culture.
QoT
1 Oct 08 at 2:27 pm
The trans woman character on Ally McBeal apparently was especially suited for sex work and went back to it only to be murdered at the end. I didn’t find it all that decent.
There was some other stuff about the way the role was written that makes it hard for me to separate that from how the role was played.
Lisa Harney
1 Oct 08 at 2:33 pm
Fair enough, Lisa. I was working on ancient memories there; I think it was more my first encounter of a cis person playing a trans person, I was stunned that they would even have a trans character who wasn’t obviously Really A Man.
QoT
1 Oct 08 at 3:30 pm
There were some fun comments in there, like “I can tell she’s really a man because male elbows are hinged differently than female elbows.”
F’realz, but probably phrased differently.
Lisa Harney
1 Oct 08 at 5:01 pm
Wow, great entry. I’ve observed the phenomena, and of course read you and others discussing it, but I’ve never seen it laid out so clearly and succinctly before. Am bookmarking!
hexy
1 Oct 08 at 11:24 pm
“What is more incredible is how they can both appear at the same time.”
OMG, does that mean trans women are quantical ?
It’s interesting to point out how contradictory those kind of reasonings can be. I think it shows what is already implied by the “phobia” part of “transphobia”: that it is irrational.
Queen Emily:
«I think the only major thing I can think of with a trans actor is Dirty Sexy Money, which I haven’t bothered watching.»
Ah, back to actors :) I think there is also a trans actor portraying a trans character in Almodovar’s “All about my mother”. I know also a french movie where the main character and actor is a trans woman, and there must be others. The problem is that usually it’s small movies, not blockbusters.
I have the impression that there are very few (outed) trans actors who are well known (and every trans actor I know is a woman, by the way, no guys ?), and I think that’s what make access to big movies very hard, but maybe I’m wrong :s
(And well, the more mainstream a movie is, the more cis and heterosexual it tends to be, so there would be no room for trans-as-trans either, but I would still be satisfied if, e.g., the next actor playing james bond was a trans man)
Elly Rouge
2 Oct 08 at 12:34 am
I hate the “men in drag is soooo funny!” thing in bloke culture.
one note comic relief or tragedy; twas ever thus with exoticized minorities in Hollywood…
belledame222
2 Oct 08 at 12:47 am
the next actor playing james bond was a trans man>>
that would be AWESOME.
belledame222
2 Oct 08 at 12:48 am
Two instances of trans men playing trans men I can recall are:
1) the support group scene of ‘transamerica’–that actor is david harrison and…
2) well, the scene(s?) of The L Word a couple of seasons back when Max is at an ftm support group.
stufftransmenlike
2 Oct 08 at 2:40 am
Exactly and it is contemptuous. Using another persons lived experience in this way further supports the idea that trans people are inauthentic people. What bothers me most about it is the social acceptability of the performance. Though it is obviously bigotry and hatred few outside of trans people and their allies will stand up and call it out for what it is. The other thing that bothers me is the fact that it is often so blatant. It is not something that one could usually interpret in different ways. I don’t know if you have seen this yet but check it out. The NAACP saw the racism but missed the trans bigotry.
Renee
2 Oct 08 at 1:03 pm
I always admit to men that I am a transsexual “female”. But still they think I am delusional or confused and brand me a “male”. So I asked them what make them say that. They said it is because I have a penis. It seems to be the case these days, people are too fixated on the penis as a marker for male or female, or maleness or femaleness. They cannot accept that I want it cut off, because in these men’s minds, having a penis is somewhat a “proof” of superiority. As if it is a “privilege”.
Yuki Choe
2 Oct 08 at 1:13 pm
I always like radical feminists who critique the need for surgery as reifying gender norms, while at the same time using the presence of a penis to deny humanity and womanhood to trans women.
But then their essentialist bigotry never makes sense.
Yuki,
Yeah, cissexual people make trans all about the genitals, and not about one’s life, all the time. Lots of women have trouble with the idea too – women who wouldn’t blink at allowing complete hysterectomies on demand will insist that surgery to “mutilate healthy tissue” is wrong.
Lisa Harney
2 Oct 08 at 4:31 pm
Yeah, cissexual people make trans all about the genitals, and not about one’s life, all the time.
I see this a great failing of feminism. It has fought since inception to say that ability should not be determined by genitalia. I feel that pointing out genitalia when it comes to trans people feminism is being hypocritical. As a movement it continually fights against women being reduced to breasts are or vaginas so why is it acceptable to reduce others to their genitalia. The idea that certain standards apply to certain bodies only helps reify difference which is what we as society need to moving away from.
Renee
2 Oct 08 at 4:42 pm
And it’s such a hugely hypocritical double-standard: Getting surgery is wrong, because it reifies the gender binary and concedes to patriarchal demands of what a woman’s body should look like. But not getting surgery is wrong, because now you’re a woman with a penis and thus really a man.
But you also have radical feminists who insist that a) they want to annihilate gender and b) they want to have cis women-only spaces.
It’s not consistent, and it’s not different from the rest of society except in the academic and theoretical justifications they use.
When it comes to using cissexual privilege against trans people, the attitudes of men and women tend to relatively indistinguishable to me – only the language changes.
Lisa Harney
2 Oct 08 at 5:56 pm
That is to say what Yuki Choe says above: That having a penis is seen as a privilege, and the desire to get rid of it is incomprehensible, bad, invalid, wrong. That the penis itself carries essential man-ness.
Lisa Harney
2 Oct 08 at 5:57 pm
“That the penis itself carries essential man-ness.”
And not even that, that the “ghost” of a penis carries man-ness, cause “you can’t cut off the penis in your head”. Yeah, right.
“But you also have radical feminists who insist that a) they want to annihilate gender and b) they want to have cis women-only spaces.”
For some I have the impression that “annihilating gender” is actually “using only biological sex as separation”. Which actually seems to me as what has been done for centuries, reducing “women” to their reproductory organs and saying every difference came naturally from biological sex.
This being said, I don’t think it’s contradictory wanting to annihilate gender and wanting women-only spaces (whatever you want in the future, gender and oppression exists right now). What I find contradictory is fighting patriarchy and using patriarchy’s definition of what a woman is.
Elly Rouge
2 Oct 08 at 7:41 pm
Elly, it’s not:
* Annihilate Gender
* We Want women-only spaces
It’s
* We want to annihilate gender
* You don’t live your life as if gender doesn’t exist
* We live our lives as if gender exists
* Therefore, you can’t come into our highly gendered spaces.
The way they apply it to trans women is contradictory and essentialist, whatever they try to dress it up as.
Lisa Harney
2 Oct 08 at 7:51 pm
It’s not even that they do anything to smash gender, they just throw that burden onto trans people and act like we’re committing a horrible sin because we don’t commit to a goal that would be genocidal for trans people to fulfill, per their own definitions.
Lisa Harney
2 Oct 08 at 7:57 pm
Because they focus on genital sex, *socialization,* and gender roles, us trans women seem like men to them, and the trans men seem like women to them. (For the most part, we were raised in our assigned sex. We might or might not have been socialized in our assigned sex.)
However, our identities may reference these but often conflict with these.
I think that queer theory and non-TS TG politics both tend to privilege “subverting the gender binary” over transition. It makes sense for them. And it makes us look like hopeless sexist reactionaries.
IIRC, this came up in Transphobic Tropes #4.
Marja
2 Oct 08 at 9:12 pm
I don’t quite agree. I think it’s more like queer theory and no-TS TG politics tend to privilege subverting the gender binary and transitioning female-to-male over transitioning male-to-female.
Also, I think it’s a bit oversimplified to say we were raised in our assigned sex, whether or not we were socialized in our assigned sex (and I think that’s typically unlikely too).
Lisa Harney
3 Oct 08 at 12:09 am
Hum? I don’t see the problem with queer theory (concerning trans issues at least). Maybe the situation is different here than in US/UK, but I had the impression that most “queer” people were very pro-trans (including transition) and many trans activists were also very positive about queer theory.
Elly Rouge
3 Oct 08 at 1:43 am
It may be different. My experience of queer theory in the US is that FTM is transgressive and MTF is conservative.
Lisa Harney
3 Oct 08 at 2:45 am
My experience of queer theory in the US is that FTM is transgressive and MTF is conservative.
…but i think that impression comes from who’s steering the good ship Queer Theory. depending on the theoretical structure behind it, it often influences how different paradigms are viewed.
and for the record i’d just like to say that “stealthy deceiver” sounds a whole heck of a lot like “living receiver” (think donnie darko), but i’ve been waiting to have something constructive to say to add it…
algormortis
3 Oct 08 at 2:56 am
“…but i think that impression comes from who’s steering the good ship Queer Theory. depending on the theoretical structure behind it, it often influences how different paradigms are viewed.”
Yes, I think that, e.g., trans’s “queer” isn’t exactly the same as gay’s “queer”.
Now concerning mtf/ftm, I still think that a trans woman who is always very feminine will probably be more criticized than a trans man who is always very masculine, but I think the problem is more about feminity than transition.
Elly Rouge
3 Oct 08 at 7:11 am
I agree that what I’m talking about is all about femmephobia, but I think there’s some minimizing about how pervasive femmephobia is in the queer and genderqueer communities. There’s a reason that it’s common to celebrate trans men in lesbian spaces while deriding trans women in those same spaces.
‘Swhy I was specifying my experience.
Lisa Harney
3 Oct 08 at 2:36 pm
@Renee
>It seems to be the case these days, people are too fixated on the penis as a marker for male or female, or maleness or femaleness.
I had that discussion on youtube. It was arround Kim Petras and her Song and there where a lotes of (always male by the way) peole who gendered here mail because of her penise
http://www.youtube.com/comment_servlet?all_comments&v=P0wEKpY3f5g
By the way you can make a funny game out of it guessing which is my youtune nick
Kim was born with a penis, but by loving parents raised as a girl, lived as a girl, ecperienced her puberty as female (ok, she never lost some menstual blood), had female friends, but still people only gender her on that peace of flesh not really belonging to her (she tried to get permission to the op earlier)
Sarah
3 Oct 08 at 6:29 pm
omg the comments on that youtube video are sickening.
GallingGalla
3 Oct 08 at 9:29 pm
I agree that what I’m talking about is all about femmephobia, but I think there’s some minimizing about how pervasive femmephobia is in the queer and genderqueer communities. There’s a reason that it’s common to celebrate trans men in lesbian spaces while deriding trans women in those same spaces.
yes, THAT.
well and also, there’s stuff that looks just an awful lot like leftover straight misogyny/femphobia even among cis lesbians.
belledame222
4 Oct 08 at 6:53 pm
Yes, I was accidentally including misogyny under femmephobia.
And I’ve received some serious misogyny for wearing a skirt to a lesbian bar.
Lisa Harney
4 Oct 08 at 7:13 pm
“What is more incredible is how they can both appear at the same time.”
When you’re defending discrimination, the arguments can get pretty weird sometimes.
When people are arguing against autistic self-advocates, a similar pair of contradictory arguments can often be seen – ‘you’re not really autistic (or not autistic enough)’ paired with ‘you’re too autistic to understand the situation’. Here’s an excellent example:
“She herself claims to be autistic, but it is not clear who, if anyone, diagnosed her with the condition; she never explains the circumstances of her diagnosis. Is she autistic? She appears to be educated and highly verbal (although her endless, repetitive arguments do cry out for some serious editing). Moreover, while her continuous bashing of ABA and its practitioners is full of inconsistencies, leaps of logic, and personal attacks, one obvious reality that emerges from her meanderings is that she is not at all like my children, or any of the children I know who have autism. Yes, I know, autism is a spectrum disorder, but Dawson, while clearly more lacking in insight and empathy than my own two children, is just as clearly not impaired in her ability to communicate verbally. Dawson appears to be so vastly different than most people I know with autism, that she cannot and should not pretend to understand what it’s like to be them, much less have the audacity to speak for them.”
http://tinyurl.com/3hmd7n
Ettina
14 Oct 08 at 9:21 pm
Oh, that post was awful. Michelle Dawson’s been a tireless advocate for autistic people in Canada, and this is how she’s treated?
And what is with lacking in insight and empathy?
Way to completely negate a woman’s life.
Anyway, yeah, derailing and defending privilege, discrimination, and oppression can get downright bizarre – people have these scripts they play out that rely solely on the fact that oppressors have more social and institutional credibility than the oppressed. That just asserting it makes it true because people see them as “better.”
Lisa Harney
15 Oct 08 at 12:01 am
Hmmmm, my first encounter with a trans on TV was an episode of WKRP, waaaaay back when. Herb Tarlek was being seduced by a woman in a hotel room, and the woman eventually revealed that she is his old friend from when they were kids, who was a boy back then. The role was played by a woman (a very attractive blonde). Like most episodes of WKRP, it seemed to me that the intent was to get viewers to think about their prejudices, rather than just to shock them or get a cheap laugh. Certainly, there were jokes in the mix, but I don’t remember anything crass or egregious.
But yes, there have been plenty of SNL skits involving hairy men in dresses. (A piece with Kevin Nealon and John Lovitz comes to mind.) Really, they’re no different than the old black-face comedy routines. Amos and Andy, anyone?
Hg
Hydrargentium
15 Oct 08 at 10:29 am
[...] The “shock” of the trans plot twist, the revelation that a trans person is really [whatever]–what I call the Crying Game moment–legitimates trans panic. It is the same movement, and leads to the negation of real trans people. Fiction does have an effect on people, in terms of what “makes sense” culturally, and it’s this continued repetition of transphobic tropes in the media that legitimates real-life violence, and the perception that trans people are deceptive – killers, worthy of death or hilariously pathetic, [...]
A Brief Thought « Questioning Transphobia
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[...] Transphobic Tropes #5 – The “man in a dress”/stealthy deceiver double bind (tags: gender) [...]
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Get it together, CBeebies! « Mothers For Women’s Lib
27 Jan 09 at 6:27 am
Elly Rogue: “I know also a french movie where the main character and actor is a trans woman, and there must be others.”
I believe the film you’re thinking of is “Tiresia”. It was inspired by the Greek myth of Tiresias, the blind prophet of Thebes who revealed to Oedipus that he had murdered his father and married his mother, who had been transformed into a woman for seven years.
The title role was of a pre-or-non-op trans-girl, played by a pre-or-non-op trans-girl (I don’t know her name), working as a prostitute (gee, what a surprise!).
She (the character) gets abducted by a man with a sexually-based fixation on trans-girls – describing the metaphor in an internal monologue at the beginning of the film that “paper roses are so much better than real ones” (I’m paraphrasing) because we don’t bleed, or something like that, et cetera and so on – who picks her up, then restrains her upon getting her back to his place.
However, the character of the abductor never has sex with her or attempts sex with her throughout the film, only going so far as a scene in which he watches her shower through a peep-hole (revealing that she (the actor) is, in fact, trans).
Eventually, as a result of her being denied access to hormones, she begins to regress to looking like a man (I assume they switched actors), at which point her abductor loses his attraction, but rather than release her he gauges out her eyes with a knife or a pair of scissors and dumps her in the woods, blind, by the side of the road.
She (now apparently “he”) ends up being taken in by a church, where she lives (for the rest of the film) as a man, meanwhile developing some kind of seer-like ability to predict future events or see into people lives of some such supernatural shit, resultant from the state of blindness.
Again, not exactly the most trans-friendly movie, nor the most complementary depiction of trans-girls, but it is notable that it starred (for most of the film, at least) a real trans actor (particularly one that had not undergone surgery).
Shay
7 Oct 09 at 11:12 pm
Actually, I forgot to mention in my last post (I was kinda preoccupied with describing that French film), but I do recall seeing an episode of Law & Order: SVU in which the plot centred around a teenage trans-girl, whose father was found severely beaten. I don’t know if it starred any trans-actors – probably not – but it did seem to me to focus on building sympathy and empathy for trans-individuals, surprising as that may be.
In fact I think it’s probably worth looking up, although I don’t know the title or episode/season numbers. I don’t actually watch the series, I just watched that particular episode specifically because it was advertised as being about a trans-girl.
Definitely worth looking into, anyway, as the first and only time I’ve seen mainstream entertainment feature a seemingly unbiased account of what many trans-people (specifically MtFs) have to go through, in terms of day-to-day bigotry as well as transphobic violence.
The depiction of trans-individuals ourselves wasn’t exactly stellar (though I wouldn’t call it especially prejudiced, either), but what it did do a decent job of was possibly enlightening the casual viewer to a few of the experiences a lot of us are subjected to.
Shay
7 Oct 09 at 11:30 pm
There’s a transwoman character on Coronation Street called Haley Cropper, played by a woman. I didn’t start watching until after she was living with her male partner, so I missed the part where he found out and freaked and she somehow got him to understand and basically deal. Haley runs a shop or a cafe or something, and she’s sweet and kind of mousey as a person. Pretty good portrayal, now that I think of it.
Aine
25 Mar 10 at 7:46 pm
Emily – just to let you know I’m going to be writing to the Guardian and linking them to your (wonderful) post.
This is why:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/may/19/brighton-britains-coolest-city
kittyforward
19 May 10 at 6:27 am
[...] people get outed. See also the ideas that only visibly disabled people can really be disabled, that transsexual people who look pretty much like cissexual people of the same sex are hideous deceivers, that everyone with lightish skin is white (and a safe audience for racist jokes), that anyone who [...]
The right to hide our faces « This Wicked Day
16 Jul 10 at 9:02 am
[...] An eyeroll of “ugh- not this again”. It’s playing up the stereotype of “Trans women are men in dresses/wigs” (and, of course, when they aren’t- they’re deceivers). I can’t tell if [...]
8 Crazy Nights « Fiction Friday
31 Jul 10 at 8:23 pm
Given that I’m replying to a 2-year-old post, I don’t know if anyone other than Lisa the blogger will see this comment. But the movie that Shay mentions (in Oct ’09):
“She (now apparently “he”) ends up being taken in by a church, where she lives (for the rest of the film) as a man, meanwhile developing some kind of seer-like ability to predict future events or see into people lives of some such supernatural shit, resultant from the state of blindness.”
… Sounds like it is not only transphobic but also has shades of disablism. There is a major trope in which basically every character with a disability who appears in any sort of superhero context, or any sort of supernatural / magical / psychic context has some sort of supernatural ability that either cancels out their disability (so the author can get brownie points for creating a disabled character without having to, you know, actually WORK WITH a disabled character) or else is meant to be highly ironic in association with the disability. For example Xavier in X men who has powerful telekinesis skills and can therefore move lots of things with his mind, but cannot walk. Or the Daredevil superhereo who is blind but has such phenomenal hearing that he can use echolocation or whatever as a substitute for the eyesight he doesn’t have.
Of course, the other trope in superhero or supernatural fiction is the villian who becomes a villian BECAUSE they are disabled.
Just once, I’d like to see a disabled character with supernatural talent that has nothing to do with their disability — i.e., not canceling it out and not deliberately matched up to the disability in a way meant to be ironic. Say, a blind person with telekinetic powers, or a deaf person who can see the future or whatever.
Andrea S.
20 Sep 10 at 4:51 am
[...] enforced coming out of TS/TG women & men can be just as dangerous. We may be labelled as “deceptive” or “not really a man/woman” – and the Transgender Day of Remembrance each year [...]
National Coming Out Day - The F-Word
11 Oct 10 at 7:47 am
[...] while the first guard waves flirtingly at them. They, of course, had to assert that “men in dresses” (yes, in this case they actually are men in dresses- but women who look like them in dresses [...]
Mulan | Fiction Friday
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