In character reviews, there will be a lot of recurring terms that are likely vital to understanding the overall message of my posts. In order to keep myself from explaining these several times over, I thought it would be best to collect what I thought would be the most important things to know when browsing this blog, as well as give direction to more resources to better help your understanding of the ways trans women are represented in media.
Cisgender – One who is cisgender identifies as their birth assignment. That is to say, of course, they are not transgender.
Coding – Probably the most critical term to know when exploring topics like this. ‘Coding’ refers to the ways a character is given traits (usually stereotypical ones) indicative of a certain group of people without ever explicitly stating (or actively avoiding stating) that the character actually belongs to that group. It is mostly used in the context of ‘queercoding’, where, for example, you often see male villains that are flamboyant, fashionable, and flirty with the male hero, but are never stated to be gay- he is simply given traits that are commonly associated with gay men in order to add a certain layer of shock to his character. In the context of this blog, you will often see characters that are referred to as simply crossdressers in canon, but are imbued with a lot of traits that are indicative of them being coded as transgender women. For more information on queercoding in particular, please read these.
Fetishization – When a trans character is being treated as a sexual object rather than, you know, a human being, they are being fetishized. They’re being reduced to their sexual characteristics to titillate the viewer. Common in extremely disrespectful depictions. (Also see: Otokonoko)
Okama – A Japanese slang term for ‘gay man’, usually roughly translated to ‘drag queen’, that also encompasses trans women. The way modern Japanese society views both gay men and transgender women is not very easily understood from a non-Japanese perspective, as the two groups are very often conflated in Japanese media thanks to its exploitative history with modern representation of both identities. Japanese stereotypes concerning gay men and transgender women are also very different than, say, ones that America has made popular in its media. In this video, an expat living in Japan talks a bit about how and why gay men and transgender women are seen as a single group through translated comments left by her Japanese viewers.
Otokonoko – A genre aimed at adult men, usually focusing on romantic and erotic portrayals of crossdressing- many of which inevitably feature characters both coded as and explicitly stated to be trans girls. Due to the nature of the genre, I will be mainly avoiding works that fall into this category. Just assume they all get a 0/5.
Transmisogyny – The intersection of misogyny and transphobia- an axis of discrimination unique to transgender women.
Trope – A convention or pattern in storytelling. A trope that is overused and becomes distracting or intrusive to the story’s intent becomes a cliché. You’ll likely see me complain about this often, since a lot of media representations of trans women tend to rely on already overdone tropes rather than creating a genuine character. Tropes specific to trans women can range from just annoying (‘Unrequited Crush On Male Protagonist’ or ‘Absurdly Self-Sacrificial’) to unrealistic and damaging (‘Literally A Serial Killer’).
Trans Women in Media 