I don’t think this trope means what you think it means.

[bodlon]

There’s been a fair bit of discussion here and there about transness in fiction sparked by this post that I linked to a few days ago. The more I think about it, and the more I discuss this with people I like and trust, the more I feel like my stance on stories in which a cisgendered character finds him or herself in a body belonging to another sex is that they are not trans narratives. They’re cis narratives.

Here’s why:

• Swapfic is about cispeople for whom the conflict is finding themselves in bodies of the other sex. Their point of origin is one of comfort, and they know what going back to that point of comfort should be like.
• In spite of being in the wrong body, swapped characters are in bodies that are complete and socially acceptable. Trans bodies, even after hormonal and surgical intervention, are inevitably hybrid, require upkeep that cisgendered bodies do not, and are frequently stigmatized.
• While the swapped character may experience dysphoria in his or her new body, this distress rarely echoes my own trans experience, or the experience other trans people have described to me. It’s a cisgendered person’s distress because it comes from a different body of experience. The points of reference are all off.
• Temporary swaps are often played as romps because I think most people given the opportunity to try the other body on for a little while would treat it like a romp. It’s body tourism, played for laughs and titillation. Transness is, if not a polar opposite to this, damn close to it.
• The difficulties swapped characters have no connection to the real difficulties trans people have with violence, discrimination, and day-to-day challenges that most people don’t have to worry about.

Do I think it’s good and useful for people to engage the topic? Sure. But I think it does us no favors to pretend that swapfic makes anyone hipper or smarter or more savvy to the real issues, or that it’s automatically queer literature because a straight couple is suddenly a same-sex couple for the duration of the plot (or same-sex suddenly a mixed set), or because someone usually quite butch and be-dicked is distressed by the sudden appearance of a perfect set of lady parts betwixt his thighs.

That doesn’t make it bad or wrong. It’s pure fantasy, and it’s fun in a ‘what if’ kind of way. I like ‘what if’ very much. It’s fun and interesting seeing people have to negotiate a different set of rules and circumstances. I’m just saying we need to call a spade a spade here. Swapfic isn’t about transpeople. It’s about cispeople’s lives going awry. There’s a tremendous difference, and confusing one for the other is at best a mistaken view.

This post has been mirrored from Christian A. Young's Dimlight Archive. To see it in its original format, visit dimlightarchive.com