The last few years has seen trans characters in mainstream media move from being defined by their transness to being incidentally trans. And that’s important.
We can be very enthusiastic about saying “representation matters,” but sometimes that can be misread as “any representation matters” when really “accurate representation matters.” To understand why the current trend is so important to us, you need to understand the exponential change that we’ve seen in media’s portrayal of the Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming (TGNC) community over just the last 30 years. We can look at the three key phases for this.
The Villainous Joke
Queer-coded villains have been around for a long time. We only need to look at *checks notes* Every-Disney-Villain-Ever to see that. But they tend to take the form of men with high personal grooming standards and/or effeminate mannerisms, or in Ursula’s case were famously modeled on the drag queen Divine. With a growing awareness of trans people in the 90s, this trope shifting to more directly include them was maybe inevitable.
Perhaps the most egregious case of this was in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994). The film culminates in an unmasking of the villain hitting all the most harmful tropes from “man-in-a-dress,” to “tricking-straight-men-into-sleeping-with-you” and of course trans-panic “I-kissed-a-man.” (If you had successfully repressed all memories of that scene, I apologize for making you mentally relive that.)
This was fresh on the heels of the perhaps-less-overtly but still extremely problematic 1993 Mrs. Doubtfire. On top of all the underlying transphobia, in hindsight it is easy to see the film as perpetuating the idea that a man will dress up as a woman to enter a private space, which hits a particular nerve with more recent efforts to legislate trans people out of bathrooms and sports.
And of course this trend continued on and is pervasive through all of your favorite late-90s/early-2000s sitcoms, whether that’s Friends, Scrubs, or How I Met Your Mother. But don’t worry. The Simpsons did this first too.
The Trans Narrative
In the mid-00s we slowly started to see more actual trans characters appearing on screen, as opposed to the comedic props that they were before. However, these characters seemed to only be allowed to exist as a specifically trans character in which their arc was about their transness.
Transamerica in 2004 told a story of a transwoman who had to confront her past before being allowed to complete her desired surgeries. Whether intentional or just a plot device, this does something to highlight some of the gatekeeping that trans people must go through to attain their healthcare, and also showed a more nuanced portrayal of a trans person.
But the film hits the same pitfall so many from this period do: the character is portrayed by Felicity Huffmann, a cis woman (the movie got some credit for at least not casting a cis man in the role). The Dallas Buyers Club (2013) hit this problem by casting Jared Leto as a fictional trans woman, and The Danish Girl (2015) hit it by casting Eddie Redmayne in the role of a historical trans woman. With the latter, the move to tell a story based on a real person from a time that too many people think didn’t contain trans people (I’m sure some pundits will insist that TGNC people were invented in the last decade or so) might be lauded, but having a cis actor portray her perpetuates the “man-in-a-dress” issue and shuts out acting opportunities for trans people. It’s notable that both Leto and Redmayne were nominated for Oscars for their roles, while the only TGNC actor to have even been nominated for an Academy Award is Elliot Page, and that was before they came out.
One of the better portrayals from this period comes from Laverne Cox as Sophia Burset in Orange is the New Black (2013-2019). Credit is due for casting a trans person to play a trans role, and they used the show to highlight some of the real issues that trans people can go through in prison and society at large. But we’re still in the era where much of her narrative arcs still revolve around her trans identity.
We do see a move towards the next phase with Transparent (2014-2019). The tale certainly centers on the trans experience of the main character and how it affects those around her, however it also includes other trans characters and arcs, some portrayed by trans performers. And while the main character was played by a cis actor for the first four seasons, when Jeffrey Tambor was fired over sexual harassment allegations the feature-length musical finale that replaced the remaining seasons killed the character off and had her spirit represented by a trans woman. Some of the more delicate storytelling in this situation might be credited to the narrative being based in part on the experience of creator Joey Soloway both having a parent come out as trans and then coming out as nonbinary themselves. Accurate representation matters on both sides of the camera, after all.
The backlash that both The Danish Girl and Transparent received for their casting, coupled with Scarlett Johansson being cast as a trans character and then backing out in response to the outpouring of criticism at the move, makes it seem that we’re unlikely to see to many more trans characters played by cis people.
The Era of the Incidentally Trans Character
Finally, we come to the moment that it has been refreshing to see. Examples might be limited right now, but we’re likely to see more as time goes on. This is where we come across the idea of an incidental trans character. Someone whose gender identity is mentioned in passing. It might cause some realistic complications in their lives, and people might have different reactions to them than they would to a cis character. But their identity is not equal to their plot and, ultimately, if you were to swap in a cis character the core story would still function, but some of the specific challenges would be different, just as if you were to swap a cis female character in for a cis male character.
An earlyish example of this comes from the extremely strange The OA (2016-2019). Buck Vu, portrayed by Ian Alexander, isn’t immediately defined as a trans character, but we see glimpses that his struggles in the world relate to it. His parents casually misgender and deadname him, and he meets up with the local drug dealer to get hooked up with hormone supplements. But in the foreground, his peers treat him as they would anyone else and his character’s trans identity is very much in the background without being whitewashed from existence. A similar sort of portrayal appears in season 4 (2018-2019) onwards of Supergirl (2015-2021) with Nicole Maines playing Nia Nal with only some parts of her storyline centering on her trans identity.
Arguably, a similar role is played by Asia Kate Dillon in the form of Taylor Mason in Billions (2016-Present). Their pronouns are stated bluntly from the off, but more is made of their prowess as a genius than of their gender identity. To an even further extent, however, we can turn to Dillon’s character of The Adjudicator in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019). The character is actually never gendered throughout the film and no pronouns are used for them. Movie-goers who weren’t thinking about it would only see Asia Kate Dillon’s own non-binary presentation to make whatever judgments they might make. Their gender appears to be entirely irrelevant to the character.
Which brings us to an interesting issue that we must face here. I can say with clarity that The Adjudicator is non-binary because Dillon has said in interviews that when they were brought on board, they looked at the script, found there was no need for gender, and asked of director Chad Stahelski and star Keanu Reeves that the character be made non-binary. The fact has been accepted into canon without being mentioned in the film.
This is the reality of the era of the incidentally trans character: we have gone from being portrayed by cis-actors who are mocking us, to cis-actors who are trying to tell our stories, to representing our stories ourselves, to a point where we are visible and accepted enough that we can play any character.
Now, this doesn’t mean that we should stop seeing trans people portraying realistic trans narratives. Indeed, we shouldn’t: there are real challenges that are faced by the TGNC community every day and education and acceptance for the wider population is most likely to come from mainstream media or personal knowledge of a trans person. It would be hazardous to have a character defined as trans but whitewash away the real complications of our lives. But it means that we have reached a moment where the character played by a trans person doesn’t have to be trans and actors have no need to have their performances centered on their own lived-traumas. It is worth noting that this is a trend that we are seeing with many marginalized groups at this time, and the push for non-trauma centered explorations of these lives is long overdue.
An example of this situation for trans people comes up in The Queen’s Gambit (2020). Miss Lonsdale is portrayed by a trans actress (Rebecca Root), and her gender is never discussed. The show is set in 1960s Kentucky and Lonsdale is a chaplain and choir director at a Christian girls’ orphanage. Without the context of the gender identity of the person portraying the character we would assume the figure was cis. However, if the character were intended to be trans, it might be considered disingenuous whitewashing of the era and location to put her in that role and historical setting without considering some of the challenges such an individual would face. So, we must conclude that the character is cis.
It will be interesting to see how season three of The Umbrella Academy handles Elliot Page’s coming out. Vanya feels like a character portrayed in a way that it would be believable for them to come out as transmasc, but there is also the freedom (if Page and the creators agree) to keep the character identifying as female and still portrayed by Page.
Ultimately, these representations are more important than can be easily stated. For many, they might be the only times that they knowingly come into contact with the idea of trans identities. The move to portray TGNC lives more accurately will likely save lives down the line by reducing the stigma that we face and making it easier for others to accept us for who we are. But just as importantly, seeing these characters on screen makes it easier for people to realize that they or their kids are TGNC earlier and helps them to see a path forward.
So at the end of the day, it becomes two sides of a coin. On one side we need to continue the increase in mainstream representation of trans characters who are people first and trans second, without glossing over the realities of that life (it has been too easy for me to pick the few good examples for this article). While on the other side of the coin we need trans actors to be able to play a character without their trans identity bringing a gatekeeping aspect to it so that we, as a society, can get used to the idea that trans people are just people.
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Good article. I particularly agree with the need for trans people to see themselves represented so that we can accept and understand ourselves. It’s hard to understand what you are when you don’t see any indication that anyone else has similar feelings.