Gender(swap) Trouble
Genderswap stories proliferate in fandom: from Harriet Potter to Jeanne Picard to Shirley Holmes. The genre gained a foothold during the early 1990s, when queer fanfiction surged in popularity due to its transition from print-based zines to online. One of the most influential genderswap fics is My Fair Jeanne (Ruth Gifford, 1995), a Star Trek: The Next Generation fic in which Captain Picard is transformed into a woman by the alien trickster known as Q. By definition, genderswap fanfiction features characters whose biological sex is suddenly switched, usually by magic or technology. This allows for a harmless exploration of body parts familiar and foreign. However, there is also something troubling about genderswap fics, an underlying and ever-present erasure of transgender subjects and concerns.
One of genderswap’s most popular tropes is to show newly swapped male-to-female (MTF) characters learning how to cope with “female issues,” such as how to walk properly in high-heeled shoes, shave their legs without cutting themselves, deal with menstrual cramps, or (heaven forbid) pee sitting down. Considering these “female troubles” are typical of genderswap fics, it’s not surprising that the genre is often criticized by transgender (and other) fans.
Genderswap critics take issue with the fact that, in many fics, the acquisition of the opposite biological sex induces an eager desire for characters to start experimenting with their new body parts (both alone and with partners). For authors and readers, testing the waters of sex and gender is enjoyable and certainly the main appeal of these fics. However, the often one-dimensional focus on sexual gratification usually comes at the expense of transgender readers: traditional genderswap fics often gloss over tangible sex and gender issues that pertain to transgender individuals.
For instance, many genderswap fics pointedly ignore how transgender people cope with issues that accompany transitions, such as gender dysphoria, the use of proper pronouns, or the mechanics of sexual activity after sex reassignment surgery (SRS). Transgender fan Iambic Kilometer expresses this frustration in a 2010 meta post entitled “Five+ Ways Being Transgender in Fandom Really Sucks, and Why I Stick With It Anyway:”
Too often I will see the author switch into new pronouns to match the new body, or depict the character enthusiastically “trying out” their new body, often sexually. I can tell you for sure, suddenly having the wrong body means CRAZY issues. I can’t even look at myself undressed. A new body means learning to use it, first of all, and then all the dysphoria that comes with it, and one thing it isn’t going to do is turn its owner on.
When repeatedly presented through popular fictional characters in genderswap fics, these seemingly harmless (even clichéd) fan tropes can reinforce stereotypical portrayals of gendered behavior and perhaps lead to troubling assumptions about how nonfictional people behave. For example, in “And Now For Something Completely Different,” a story in which Harry Potter “wakes up as a girl,” he takes great pleasure in having his eyebrows “fixed” and writing “cutesy little declarations with a pink inkwell and sparkles” in his diary. Similarly, in “Seven Things That Didn’t Happen on Valentine’s Day at Hogwarts, Or Maybe They Did,” a genderswapped Sirius Black is charged with perfecting the proper way to walk: “there was a new sway in her steps, hard-earned through trial and error, an exaggeration of the round dip and slide with which girls walked always.”
To further highlight how these assumptions can be naturalized in fandom, it is necessary to point out a glaring blunder in the genre: the label of genderswap itself is a misnomer. The genre should really be called “sexswap” because in the vast majority of these fics, it is the biological sex that is switched, with the gender automatically following suit. As Iambic Kilometer insists, “if a character has suddenly switched bodies, you do NOT switch pronouns. They haven’t switched genders. If a character is transgendered, you refer to them by their gender pronoun, not their sex pronoun.” To press even further, the “swap” part of the compound “genderswap” implies gender as “either/or,” which erases the complex spaces that exist between socially established binaries like male/female, homo/hetero, cis/trans.
While the majority of traditional genderswap fics recycle the stereotypical fan tropes mentioned above (high-heels, shaved legs), there is a more recent trend in genderswap fanfiction of writers being more nuanced in their depiction of gender and sexuality. Many contemporary fan writers consciously subvert traditional genderswap tropes to draw attention to gender as construct. In “Being Liquid,” author Rotaryphones emphasizes that gender is learned behavior through her characterization of Metamorphmagus Teddy Lupin: “he [Teddy] taught himself to be female, just as Claire and Miranda and Victoire have been taught since birth.”
This is not to say that all subversions of genderswap fics offer perfect representations of transgender issues. In fact, despite their best intentions, many authors still make use of stereotypical genderswap tropes that trivialize transgender experiences. But if we take these efforts as proof that a fan impulse to present more complex presentations of queer and (trans)gender identities does exist, we can begin to examine how this shift has led to the emergence of a genre with an explicit mandate to address trans issues: transfic.
Originally published at fanslashfic.com on February 1, 2016.
