On Transgender Fiction

An Essay by Valentina Michelle Smith

When I began my ongoing journey of discovery, the process of coming to terms with my own transgendered nature, I sought out the experiences and insights of others who had gone before me. I discovered a wealth of written material. Much of it was a recounting of the author's experiences on life's highway. Here I found a measure of validation and comfort, to know that I was not alone in my experience. As I sought more information, I discovered a world of transgender writing not limited to a description of individual experience. I discovered transgender poetry. And I discovered transgender fiction.

Transgender poetry is quite beautiful. With its economy of statement and lyrical structure, it speaks to the soul of the reader. The poetry of transgendered folk is a marvelously diverse world of sorrow, pain, and frustration, but also of elation, wonder, and delight. The pain of rejection, loss, and ostracism is juxtaposed with the ecstasy of discovery, the insight of reality, the liberation of truth. Like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon, it chronicles the transition from a state of self-deprecation to one of self-esteem.

If only transgender fiction were so wonderful. Sadly, most transgender fiction is little more than thinly disguised pornography. It serves only to perpetuate the stereotypes and prejudices currently held by mainstream society. It describes, in excruciating detail, bondage, rape, child abuse, mutilation, sadism, masochism, and degradation of the most loathsome sort. What I find incredulous is that transgendered people purportedly write much of this drivel. It's somewhat like finding a collection of racist jokes written by Jesse Jackson.

I have to tell you, I do not advocate censorship in any manner. I feel that individuals should be free to select whatever reading material they see fit and enjoy it with no interference from the State. I find government control of the press (and the Internet for that matter) to be an unconscionable abridgement of our inalienable liberty. Our minds are free, and only a tyrant seeks to control the thoughts of the people. While I personally find pornography to be repugnant, clearly there are many that do not. It is ironic to defend the noble principles of personal liberty and freedom of the press with such distasteful offerings, but defend it I shall.

I do feel, however, that there should be an alternative. There should be transgender fiction that does not serve as an excuse for pornography. Surely one may explore transgender topics without descending into an ocean of repellant sexual deviation. Is there no room for romance, for drama, or for love? Can there be transgender fiction without pornography?

This is why I started writing my little stories; to provide an alternative. The time has come for a new form of transgender fiction, one that does not perpetuate the myths and bigotry of the past, but which shatters them. We are capable of romance, love, heroism, and yes, deceit, deception, and cowardice. In short, we transgendered folk are human beings, with all of the strength, complexity, frailty, and emotions of the entire human condition. It's high time we got out of the gutter.

I have written a few stories that I have posted here in my web site. I hope you like them. And I hope you write a few of your own.

The Encounter is the first transgender story I wrote. I am a big fan of alien abduction stories. I am also a skeptic. I take accounts of alien abductions with more than a few grains of salt. I don't know if they are the products of overactive imaginations or deliberate fraud, but they are amusing. As I was reading one of these, I wondered just what conclusions an alien might draw if he abducted a crossdresser.

I set about to shatter several myths. First of all, I deliberately designed an alien race that was unlike the popular tabloid image of extraterrestrials. I made them short and gave them an olive complexion, so they truly were little green men. I made them nonviolent. I also made them sexual hermaphrodites. Then I crafted the abductee. Rather than an experienced crossdresser, I decided on a newcomer to the transgender world. Her experience was limited to solitary experiments and a few furtive late-night excursions. This set the stage for a well-intentioned but colossal misunderstanding.

Men In Black Dresses was inspired by, of all things, the Philadelphia Mummers' Parade. One of the comic clubs skewered the movie Men In Black with a bit they called "Men In Drag". This started me thinking. The phrase "Men In Black Dresses" popped into my head. I recalled the case of a British nuclear physicist who was found dead wearing a lace negligee and fishnet stockings. This started the ball rolling. I threw in some of what I read about the Philadelphia Police Force "Granny Squad", cops who dress as little old ladies to lure muggers away from potential victims.

A Tale From The Wall was inspired by some of my own experiences in Thailand. Many of the places I described were real. The Corsair Club, the Bunker, the Burnt Offering Tent, and the Pentagon were real places. Kathoys really did gather at the Esso station. Many of the experiences I wrote about actually happened. The characters were amalgams of the people I interacted with daily. And there was a rumor going around that one of the flight nurses was a transsexual. I used this as a framework to craft a tale of heroism and friendship. On this framework I hung some of my own experiences and others I had borrowed. I cried when I wrote it.

Best Served Cold is an exploration of the darker side of my soul. I like to think that I am a civilized, rational being, beyond the need for vengeance. This bit of self-deception is shattered every day when I drive to work. What is road rage, or any form of rage for that matter, but an expression of our desire to seek revenge?

The story also serves as my own comment on the "forced feminization" tales so prevalent in transgender pornography. I decided it was high time for the slaves to revolt.

The Girl Friend is pure fantasy. I came out to my wife a few years ago. She took it well, but is not really crazy about the idea. This tale is a tale of what might have been. And it is also my first fantasy that incorporates sex as part of the story line. But instead of the usual orgy of sexual deviance found in transgender pornography, I explored tender, loving sexual relations between wife and husband. I am a romantic at heart.

A Day Of Surprises touches on a subject I briefly alluded to in Men In Black Dresses, multigenerational transgenderism. I started dressing as a teen and had several close calls when someone would return home unexpectedly. I used these experiences to write the story. And I took the opportunity to air my views on smoking. I really don't care if you smoke, but I reserve the right to warn you of the dangers,

The Brass Bottle was a sort of challenge to myself. Could I write a transgender story with no transformation? Could there be a transgender story in which the characters remain in their assigned sex throughout? I think I have succeeded.

The heroine of Best Served Cold refuses to be still. Her tale continues in something that I call Endgame. The cycle of revenge must eventually be broken before we are consumed by it. As Martin Luther King Junior once said, if "an eye for an eye" were enforced, we would all be blind.

High Tea For Jennifer is a ghost story. Originally I wanted to write a story about a crossdresser who is nurtured into the world of the feminine by a departed spirit. I also wanted to explore the strain that being transgendered can put on a relationship. Last year, my wife and I had the pleasure of touring a plantation in Virginia. As it turns out, the place is haunted. The owner related the story about the young girl who scratched her name in the window with her engagement ring. Her fiancé apparently never returned for her and her spirit remains resident in the mansion. This image changed the course my story was taking.

One story I am working on is tentatively titled Generations. It will begin with a chance encounter of a crossdresser and her uncle in a shopping mall. This tale shall also explore the concept of multigenerational transgenderism. It really seems that the younger generation is more accepting of crossdressing and of transsexualism. We children of the sixties have more hang-ups about gender identity than we care to admit.

Another back burner tale is about past lives. I have very vivid memories of several past lives, and in at least one of them I was a genetic woman. I recently sat on a rocking chair and had something of a past-life flashback. I recalled sitting in a similar rocker nursing a baby. I find it impossible to get this image out of my mind. I hope to incorporate it into a future story.

What else do I have in mind, one might ask? I would like to explore the possibility of a Gothic Romance with a transgender slant. Another possibility might be a murder mystery in which crossdressing plays an integral part. Perhaps I will write an historical fiction in which the hero (heroine?) is transgendered. Science Fiction has explored transgender themes from time to time (Heinlein and Varley come to mind) but I do not believe it has been the main subject of a science fiction story.

So there you have it. I only wish I were a better writer, so that I could craft a truly well written transgender tale. But I still believe that we as a community can do better. So here is my challenge to all potential authors. Write a transgender story we can be proud of. Break out of the ghetto of perversion and degradation and write something illuminating, uplifting, or just plain fun. Make us laugh. Make us cry. Make us fall in love again. But don't make us ashamed of who we are and what we are. Make us proud.

© 2000, Valentina Michelle Smith