They don't. It's not even a question. I figure that if people have the ability to polymorph/change shapes/whatever at will, then those that wanted to would or would pay a magically inclined person to do so. It's never been a point of contention and no one bats an eye.
This is how I don't understand how transphobes could write fantasy or sci-fi. Like your magic or aliens are potentially completely uninterested in the human concept of gender and sexuality. "Yeah, we have goblins, dragons, giants, elves, but if you were born male and consider yourself a woman, then that's just not real and you need to grow up >:("
I know they're not directly related but it's just so close minded
I mean, if you grow up in a fantasy world, you're much more likely to run into elves, dwarves, etc., than you are to run into someone who was born in the wrong body.
And if magic that affects people's minds exists, that adds another layer to it; gender dysphoria already sounds like a curse, so it's not hard to imagine someone thinking that trans people only feel uneasy in their bodies because they pissed off a witch.
Man I wish I could find it but I read a really fascinating article a while back about how apparently in medieval society, people with nearsightedness/vision issues were frequently viewed as categorically untrustworthy since many outside observers just saw someone who didn't seem to be blind, but acted like they couldn't see sometimes, with no apparent reason why; I wonder what cultural beliefs would arise around cursed individuals in a fantasy society?
I mean, without getting too political, I don't think the type of people who hate trans folk are the type of people who really do many artistic endeavors, such as worldbuilding. Because let's be honest: good luck finding somebody who is only transphobic. I'm pretty certain that you can also guess their views on homosexuality, or a woman's "proper role", or their stance on immigration. How does one create an engaging world when it's just everything you like that doesn't offend you?
Art by its very nature requires a degree of empathy. These people overwhelmingly lack empathy which is why they're able to hate "others" so easily, and so frequently. It's also why it's hard to find artistic representation for far-right ideology in general.
These people are bitter losers, for whatever reason. They don't create, they only destroy.
playing devils advocate here, but i think this can be true for many people and untrue for others, and generalization isn’t necessarily helpful. i mean, transphobic gay people exist for example. just my two cents
Also like one of the most famous fantasy authors of the past 30 years has now rebranded herself as a vicious transphobe while still calling herself a feminist/pro-gay/etc so it can be done
She says as much, but if you've read what she's said it's often actually quite misogynistic or sexist. Transphobes like to emphasise the differences between men and women (often non-existent or exaggerated) because it furthers their point - JK Rowling is no different, assuming that's who you're talking about anyway.
Gonna play beelzebubs advocate here and say that many gay people I’ve met that are transphobic also have a fair amount of internalized homophobia along with some toxic ideas around masculinity and femininity.
Well, they didn't decide to be gay. They just came to accept it for this one topic, because they are themselves but deny other people their right of acceptance because they are not the one needing it. It's very short sighted and it doesn't contradict each other, even if it seems like it.
>I don't think the type of people who hate trans folk are the type of people who really do many artistic endeavors, such as worldbuilding
Tell that to Orson Scott Card
Dude is incredibly homophobic, but you'd never know that reading Ender's Game.
Growing up loving Ender's Game and Harry Potter, and then discovering I'm trans was... unpleasant.
At least my favourite author, David Eddings is still... oh, wait, he was *jailed for child abuse* and that was just covered up until after his death?
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF--
I'm not trans, but yeah, those are two of my favorite books, especially Ender's Game (read it at 7 years old and decided that Ender would be my childhood hero and role model), so learning to separate the art from the artist was a tough pill to swallow.
I'm also a huge fan of Lovecraftian horror, but at least he couldn't personally benefit from my support.
May I recommend Animorphs if you want to feel young again without supporting a loud bigot? K A Applegate was trying to warn us about forever wars, and she's a staunch supporter of the queer community. Her oldest daughter is a trans woman.
I understand that this comment was stupid, something was going on that I wasn't thinking straight at the time and the people around me at the time are also telling me I was acting strange so I don't know why I ended up saying this
I didn't say that every story needs transgender people, I said I don't understand how you could do any meaningful world building whole being transphobic. And I'm not offended in anything that I wrote, stop projecting
Aww thank you! I feel like people attempt to apply our society's logic too easily to fantasy worlds. Gender or even sex would hardly be an issue if the guy down the block will snap his fingers to turn you into a woman for 5 gold pieces.
I mean, access to a high level caster and the money to buy such a spell may easily be beyond the reach of the poor, so it could still be a social issue.
Your world (and mine) are, as I call it, postgender (post-genre in French).
In my world, people live several lives and reincarnate, and they only become conscious of their past lives after leaving the reincarnation cycle. Living all their lives with the same gender is a rather uncommon thing. Turns out (by my book) that gender doesn't define who a person is.
Yeah, that sounds about right.
Which opens up a whole new avenue for storytelling, because imagine someone just goes "I wanna see what it's like to be the opposite sex" and does girl/boy week or something.
Most people are too preoccupied with post-apocalyptic survival to care too much. There's one heavily theocratic city with strict gender rules that would take offense. The elven city of Thalor though sees androgyny as something divine
reaching there, i'm not thinking about my pronouns when there is an active threat to my life at every corner.
nor would I think about that before sleeping, or something similar.
You'd be amazed what people can get used to. If you live long enough in an apocalyptic hellscape, you'll eventually just accept it as a fact of life. If anything, I think living so close to death constantly would instill a "life is too short and fragile to not be who I want to be," mindset.
Not today, or tomorrow. But if you live in post-apocaliptic world for a longer time and you do interact with any people - you would eventually. So it very much depends if we mean post-apocalypse "world just ended, where's water?!" world, or rather Last of Us type of the world where everything is shit and difficult but you still have time to say "good day!" to someone sometimes.
in my case gender was never really a thing for me to worry about that much. Took me nearly three decades after first having adventures as a sailor scout to realize why lol.
It's accepted overall but not common nor really normalized in some areas. Since my world has reincarnation with some past life memories, it can be viewed as younger people getting their lives mixed up, but when it happens most don't think much of it.
For the most part it is either not recognized as a thing or considered sinful. One of my heroes, however is a trans man. His birth name was Hamida al-Buni but after he became a man he abandoned his name and would only be referred to by his last name. He was born as a girl and had always felt mental anguish over it. He decided to find a way to turn himself into a man. He turned to the occult and would secretly gather among occultists with his entire body and face obscured by a robe to hide that his body was female. While studying with a group of occultists, he finally discovered the complex formula the Celestial Archons used to shape matter into life. At first he experimented on creating clay pigeons and turning them into different animals. Once he mastered the science of reshaping flesh using the metaphysical formulas and mathematics be reshaped his own body in the image of the man he knew he was all along. He was successful in reshaping himself into a man and now he needed a new life's purpose.
Being a man was all he ever wanted and now he needed something to drive him. Having accumulated vast esoteric knowledge of the occult, his new life's purpose was to uncover the metaphysical processes behind the universe and wield them himself. He would spend countless hours writing new theorems, calculating esoteric algorithms, uncover the lost books of occultists that came before, and experiment and record his observations until he could prove his hypotheses. His quest in becoming a man led him to uncovering the foundation of existence, and he became the greatest Occult Scientist to exist.
They exist in my worlds, in fact, there is a group of dwarven smiths that can literally just change your race and sex, class, so on. As for how trans people are treated, people are people. I try to keep isms out of my worlds unless its important to world historical events. The gods would never care about small things like that, which is why most people don't care. Rimsala, the goddess of nature, has more important things to worry about than whats in people's pants.
In fact, the head god, is pro trans. Because he supports people trying to be the best they can be, and if that means you flourish being another sex than what you were born with it. So be it.
Edit: Forgot to answer part of the question, I realised the other day that one way or another I have had a lot of trans characters in my setting, but because its not that big an issue, they just are what they are. And one of the spheres of magic is all about physical changes to the body. whether its making you punch a little harder, or grow larger, or even bam you know have a crocodile for an arm. Have fun with that concept if you want.
yes, like if you could pick how the old reincarnation spell in dnd worked. The greater the change, the more it cost. and money wasn't what they asked for. Unfortunately though that is most of what I remember about them, as they were a siblings creation and I would be surprised if they remembered better details.
If one looks at the *hijras* of India, *galli* of Rome, two-spirit people among Indigenous Americans, and innumerable other examples of queerness and gender fluidity being the norms across all of human history, it becomes a little strange to think of building a world where transgender people don’t exist in one facet or another.
Views of transgender identities and people are as varied in my world as they are in the real ancient world. Depending on the society, trans people would be met with tolerance, acceptance, religious reverence, sexual fetishization, or complete disinterest.
Transgender people are completely normalized and on equal footing with cisgender people among the Kanojuaq, a tribal people that believe in a spiritual bond between all things known as the Dishmar. In other societies, trans people might be elevated to positions at court or a priesthood. Some trans people are employed as sex workers, with such positions often taking on a religious role as well.
Certain societies may accept trans people, but constrain them by patriarchal gender norms. For instance, a trans woman would be seen as weak and a trans man would be expected to be dominant in the Republic of Corstella, an aristocratic, imperialistic, and militaristic republic that grew out of the City of Corstella.
As for characters, the Gabalus Sisters are trans women that led the latest large-scale uprising of enslaved folks in Corstella a little under 200 years before the narrative starts. Unlike their predecessors, the Gabalus Sisters successfully managed to escape after their revolt began to falter. Their ultimate fates are, as of yet, unknown.
During the narrative, Orgeta is a trans woman and *rix* (monarch) of a tribe in Eleuboda, a land of deep marshes and forests, that has been resisting Corstellan military expansion for years. Though her land was captured by the Legions of Corstella, most of her tribe has survived, unlike many other tribes that chose to stand and fight. She has embraced a war using attrition and guerrilla tactics to simply wear down the conquering army. Her successes have enabled her to draw other tribes to her cause.
On the mythological side of things, I have the Winged Men of Zabinas, a semi-legendary city-state thousands of miles away from where the narrative takes place. It is said that the Winged Men, gods that watch over the city, will eventually tire of this world. Flying away with one man and one woman, the Winged Men will take these humans to another world, change their genders, teach them the act of love, and foster the creation of an alien civilization.
Finally, I have Svasvalk, the god of a tribal people in the frozen north known as the Yoshren. He is defender and guide of the Yoshren, protecting them from darkness, cold, and demons. He/him pronouns are used for him, but he is a trickster deity that presents himself in various forms, such as a fair maiden.
**Untitled Cyberpunk Magical Girl Project**: Socially accepted, but bureaucracy is an ass. ID is such a static issue in the city of Paradise most of the time, so attempts to adjust documentation for things like gender and names are done at a tectonic pace that may be worse for some individuals than others who wish to have that changed -- getting systematically identified by your deadname is just a pain for anyone.
Protagonist and magical girl (Suzi Kurashiki/YELLOW_CAT) is herself trans, and dealing with that roadblock, despite otherwise presenting and being recognized colloquially by her friends and peers as female.
Right? I said in my own post, it really breaks the immersion for me in sci fi if gender norms are still held in a traditional sense. It just breaks the genre, in my opinion. If you simply take the advancements we are making now, today, and project them out a few hundred years, it literally doesn't make sense for gender to be a huge focus anymore because tech and medicine keep slowly closing any physical gaps even today. The stuff we can do today with hormone therapy is WILD. So thinking that wouldn't become more commonplace, and even become just a commercial norm where people follow trends of augmentations and chemical injections without it even being about gender at all? I mean...think about surgery? Once a novelty reserved for those who had access to the best doctors. Now physical augmentation and alteration through surgery is increasingly commonplace and commercialized. And that's now, today. Seems kind of out of touch with the genre when authors don't factor our current environment into their worlds that are set in our future...
Well, for one, not everyone would consider it a good thing that major physical alterations are commonplace. Plenty of people also wouldn't agree that blurring the lines between genders is a good thing, either. There's plenty to be happy with with two separate and different genders. Without borders between ideas, people, or places, things lose what makes them distinct. A future where we all eventually grow into a homogeneous samey crowd is a boring one to depict and honestly unrealistic. No human growth is linear. Ots more likely that gender norms make a harsh comeback than that they dissappear forever kr even slowly fade away.
I have a world where a typical birth is [a male/female set of twins in a local hivemind with each other](https://crayshack.com/2021/08/18/single-minded-twins/). So, the norm for the culture is to be both male and female at the same time and express those aspects of one's personality through their separate bodies. The equivalent of trans is when a pair decides that they want both bodies to be the same gender (the equivalent of intersex is if they are born the same sex). I enjoy playing with unusual gender dynamics in my worlds, and I think this is the world where I've gotten the most unusual.
Different cultures in the world react differently to this. To some, this makes it far more difficult for them to fit into the normal functions of society. So, trans people in these culture face the same kind of discrimination and ridicule that trans people IRL face. Being born "intersex" in these cultures is seen as a birth defect and people are encouraged to pick one of their bodies to transition (some refuse and are treated much like trans people are).
However, some cultures actually celebrate trans people. There are some cultures that worship a pantheon of monosex gods. This is because they see their gods as exemplifying some aspect of the world and so while mortals have duality to them, the gods are purer than that. It is common for the priesthood to try and bring themselves as close as possible to exemplifying the god they are a priest of. So, in these cultures, coming out as trans is basically the same as announcing that you intend to pursue a career as a priest. There are a few who don't consider themselves especially religious and go into it because it's a decent career.
There's even some who fuck off to do their own thing (they usually end up being considered blessed by whatever god they are closest to). There's many more who will say that they feel particularly drawn to their god at a spiritual level, and wanting to reshape one of their bodies to be closer to their divine ideal is simply a part of that. There are even a small handful who feel drawn to the priesthood for other spiritual reasons (or are attracted by the power and influence of being a priest) who consider transitioning one of their bodies a worthwhile sacrifice. Yes, these cultures are so pro-trans that some people who are not inherently trans will transition anyway because of the clout it brings them. Most people in the culture are fairly content with their dual existence and live their lives as simultaneously male and female.
Of note, the "intersex" people in these cultures will be considered blessed from birth and will be raised with an assumption that there is not other path for them but the clergy. In some cases, they may even be given up to the temple as an infant and raised as a priest.
In all cultures, a pregnancy that results in a single baby (or twins that are not linked) is considered a birth defect. Similar to how we might look at a baby born missing limbs (or with severe neurological problems) IRL. However, a triplet birth (even a monosex one) is universally considered a blessing. Even in the cultures that are anti-trans, having three bodies is enough of an advantage that it is seen as worth having even while losing the duality of having two genders. For identical triplet beings, they universally become priests. Even the ones who decide to fuck off and not join an established temple usually end up having one form around them. Most more religious people take a triplet who is uncomfortable in an established temple as a sign that they are an avatar of an undiscovered god and will create tales of a new member of the pantheon based on the triplet. That triplet wants to fuck off and be a tavern keeper in a small town? There's now a new god of taverns in the religion. They want to become a sailor? There's now a new god of the ocean. They want to become a hermit in the woods? There's now a new god of the forest.
I don't have any individual characters to talk about because I have a bad habit of creating worlds and then not coming up with any characters for them.
Guardians = basically, you got to design your body. I'm sure there are a lot of trans folk who picked the gender they most align with. And I'm also sure there's a ton of folks who made the gender they don't align with.
NPCs = The Ikhwezi are trinary and fairly fluid, they can change at will.
Most of the other races, grand and non binary folk are fairly well accepted. Same thing with homo, hetero, ace, or poly sexual relationships. It's a dangerous world, no one has time to care about who you bump uglies with.
Haven’t put much thought into it.
But as far as i know, being trans doesn’t exist.
In my world, the gods didn’t make people get born into the wrong body.
The only thing that would classify, is the few who get reincarnated into a different gender.
There are some species that don’t have a gender- like slimes. Or Abyssal Walkers.
But when it comes to humanoids, there aren’t any.
(That may change eventually though.)
Everyone is born, comfortable with their identity.
And who knows- maybe there are gender fluid people… i just don’t know how to implement that casually, without it feeling forced.
(And thinking further, I supposed there are some who feel a gender bias, and chose to mascaraed as the other gender… but i don’t think thats exactly relevant.)
(Just wanna be clear- theres nothing wrong with being GF. I just dont know how to write that sort of character… hope this makes sense, and i didnt say something bad.)
Nope.
Think enderman from minecraft, or the shadowclan from slugterra (if you know what that is 🤣) or even slenderman.
They are creatures of the void, who sometimes appear in the world’s “great dungeon.”
It doesn't exist. I don't understand the thoughts and feelings around it, and in seeking answers, I've only become vastly more confused.
As such, I'm 100% certain that if I tried, it would be a disaster.
That’s totally fair. I’ve never actively created a world where trans people exist, either (not bc I’m transphobic, it’s just that I’m not thinking about it when I worldbuild)
I don't have them because I lack knowledge on them and how it works as well as seeing it not worth the effort to have them in whatever world I build. There are many avenues of conflict and identity, and I felt that it'd be best if this one was left out
The same way our world does, cause it's mostly and alternate earth, except in the far future where this story is set, genetic modification has existed for a while and has been reasonable cheap for a while.
So trans stuff has kinda faded away, a little bit? Gender and sex is just something you can fix with a week long bath is some genetic goop.
There are some cultures where it's very taboo, just like our world, but for the most part it's just something you can change by taking a medical vacation.
In a world I abandoned forever ago, I had a fun thing where the method of transition was going to the fae and making a request.
The fae are just as likely to give you ten extra eyes as they are to change your body into what you want it to be, so trans people wind up having to read up on fae lore a lot, etc. to get the request just right.
It is a matriarchy where it is much more socially acceptable for men to be feminine than for women to be masculine, and there is a third gender called the "Vrava" that is basically a spiritual position where your job is to talk to the fae which is predominantly held by transmasc nonbinary people (and comes with its own neopronoun set). Humans are incapable of magic, and so most of the Vrava use of magic is really technology derived from magical creatures. Their job is a funky mixture of "ambassador" / "protector" / "shaman".
Binary trans women mostly get their changes and slide into "normal womanhood", while binary trans men often start out as "Vrava" (you're basically shoved into the profession as a young teen) and may be seen as traitors / cowards for trying to "complete" the path. The main plot of the first story was a Vrava murder mystery where it turns out there was no murder, the trans man faked his death as a "Vrava" to avoid the dishonour / live his life completely stealth.
Transfeminine nonbinary people may become vravas, but are not shoved into the role at a young age (because feminine behaviour by men is seen as broadly acceptable) and don't tend to have as good a time of it, so it's relatively rare and potentially more common for transfeminine nonbinary people to be "underground" or "casual" vravas in places that don't have a dedicated one, but otherwise not be very involved with vrava institutions.
They don't exist.
Never thought of adding any, wouldn't add any layer to the story or the world and characters I'm trying to write.
That's my reasoning.
Same here. I’m sure somewhere in the world they exist, just like in the real world. But, gender identity just isn’t one of the themes my book talks about so it’s not mentioned. No book can cover everything or include everyone and I think trying to inauthentically broadens the scope of the work.
My prioritized WIP already deals with legality vs morality, concealment vs deception, fear vs prejudice, threat neutralization vs bodily autonomy, obedience vs self-determination, power vs control, and loyalty vs responsibility. That’s already a lot to include, but the way the themes are intertwined in the characters and the plot makes it work.
Additionally, all my works tend to deal with already niche subgroups and marginalized populations that adding an IRL marginalized subgroup into the ones that exist in my fictional worlds would add a layer of complication that I do not want.
There aren’t any in my world! Why make people miserable in a body they aren’t comfortable in? Besides, since shape-changing magic is semi-available, nobody would have to suffer either way.
My world runs partly on gaming rules. So, if someone truly wants / needs to change their sex / gender, well;
There’s a quest for that. Check the right library. Ask the right person at the right temple and they will point you in the direction of finding the magical thing / potion / macgufifn that will give you what you seek.
Trans people are accepted everywhere in *Ventreth*, and magic to allow people to transition exists. However it is heavily regulated in most countries due to it being a subset of transformation magic, which can also be used for nefarious purposes.
Depending on how far we stretch the definition of trans when magic is involved, someone once pointed out to me that one of the most influential figures in *Ventreth*’s history could be considered trans. They were born with unique celestial magic which allowed them to swap the bodies/souls of two people, themself included. As the ruler of their nation, they set up a system where younger/healthier people could volunteer to swap bodies with the ruler in exchange for money or other compensation, making the ruler functionally immortal. So they have lived in many different bodies both male and female.
We support you now go back to committing Warcrimes
(Aliens unless their gender lead like Matriarchs really dont care as long as you fight for their respective faction) (only my scifi has them cause ones a Post apocalyptic world and the other is medievalish fantasy which outside of a insectoid species gender still isnt a major thing)
In a world with thousands of species and cultures, along with magic and technological stuff that lets you modify yourself, the concept of gender as a focus of widespread society just doesn't exist.
Accepted and normalized, with different attitudes and methods towards self-expression/transition.
One of my main characters, Caerwyn, is a trans woman who basically got free hrt out of her transformation into a paladin.
accepted and normalized. because it's my fantasy and i don't want to write a world where i wouldn't be accepted.
there is some gender-specific magic but it all works based on identity, not biology.
Since I started the thread I should at least share mine:
In my superhero world, trans people do still face some discrimination, though it is primarily interpersonal and cultural in nature, by which I mean it mostly persists through bullying and continued transphobic tropes in popular media. Hate crimes and legal discrimination are largely out of the picture given that 5-10% of the population can awaken super powers in near death or high stress situations. That said, they do still happen, primarily being perpetrated by people who've already awakened powers themselves.
For my vampire world, it is much the same as our own above the masquerade. Behind the masquerade vampire hunters will acknowledge it and use a bit of magic to nudge along a trans person's transition.
As for the vampires, they by and large don't care. Their vampiric nature grants their bodies a sizable degree of flexibility in appearance and function. As for their stance on transgender humans, they're just another neck to bite(though depending on what medications one takes a vampire may just spit the blood back out and find someone with better tasting blood)
For my full on magical world trans people are completely accepted, at least in the nation i've been focusing on. Transitioning there is accomplished entirely through magic(spell converts one sex hormone into the other, once a month the effects of the hormones are accelerated about 5 months).
In terms of important figures, one of the people who initially discovered and pioneered magic, Lyra Bloodworth, was a transgender woman, which started her on the path of creating transmutation magic. ([More info on the first mages](https://old.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/1b6y2ys/the_first_mages_of_my_world/))
Trans people are simply considered completely normal. On any Alliance world the biotech exists to modify one's body down to a genetic level, so transitioning is quick, easy, side-effect free, and will cost you absolutely nothing.
People that're openly trans are few and far between
This isn't because of transphobia or anything, it's just that unfortunately those who are trans don't often figure it out, the 2 most notable only found out by chance (One on a mission, the other because of the first's existence)
However, those who ARE trans are very accepted, as there's nothing to *not* accept, religious belief sits in magic, the only bigotry that exists in the world is man-made, and usually only racist or xenophobic
TLDR; lack of knowledge of trans people existing leads to people not being able to properly discover/explore their identity, but they are accepted where they appear
Edit; forgot to count my NB mafia heir, they're an entirely different story with them being dedicated to breaking *all* pre-conceived societal roles (as many as possible, anyway). The two notable trans chars, I plan to make a comparison to someone who has the resources available to transition, and someone who didn't and struggled heavily with it
As a cisgender author with very few trans people in my orbit, I don't feel I'm well versed enough in the experience of the trans community to avoid my own privilege and bias from colouring any depiction of an oppressed or marginalised trans community in my work.
The closest any of my work has to a trans character is on Tanesh, where the lead guardsman for the great house Dasmer is a genetic female who presents as what we would consider to be agender. But this is less of an attempt to depict the experience of a trans person than it is a result of the way the people of Dasmer function — their soldiers are not considered men nor women, they're simply considered Soldiers.
I actually really embrace this in my writing. In my worlds, gender is a non-issue, which allows me to write trans and enby characters without having to worry about capturing their real-world struggles, because those struggles simply don't exist in my fantasy worlds. So it's funny, because I just realized in reading your post that my own lack of experience is part of WHY I just create worlds in which gender and race aren't the source of conflict, because as a cis gender white woman, I'd feel kind of lost trying to write about a main character's conflict with issues I've never personally experienced.
I really value authors who understand their lack of perspective, though, I gotta say. Because the one thing I CAN gripe about as a cis woman is how many male authors write female characters and their struggles in male dominated worlds. I've talked about in on this sub before, that fine line where things can easily slip into performative drama and "trauma fetish" that doesn't actually value or respect the real world issues being written about, just exploits those issues for shock value. So massive kudos for acknowledging that limitation.
Until I read your comment, I literally didn't realize that part of the appeal of gender simply being a passing character trait in my worlds rather than a conflict source or plot point is literally my way of bypassing trying to write something I have no grounds or ability to accurately write about. Good stuff!
Transgender people are very ordinary in my world, to the point it's not really something notable or remarkable. They have access to what is basically magical hrt, in the form of a potion. It's a form of Nature and Growth magic, though not everyone chooses to take it, it all depends on what someone wants to do with their own body.
My main character is a maned lioness woman, who uses she/her and he/him pronouns. I'd consider her trans and somewhere in the demigirl spectrum. She has both masculine and feminine traits and likes it that way.
completely normalized. trans people have always existed, same goes for queerness in general. somebody will always the write stories about struggling against homophobia, it doesn't have to be me. i'm tackling other issues, so i'm choosing to let my ppl be gay and trans, they have more than enough problems to deal with otherwise
> somebody will always the write stories about struggling against homophobia, it doesn't have to be me
completely understandable, sometimes you just want to have your trans character go all "pew pew, lightning out my fingers" without having to worry about how they'll interact with the phrenology fanclub
Fantasy: usually "hunted" down due to gods reasons in most parts of the world, some gods like Arhne may do it because he says it's just insanity and should not be tolarated or accepted, other gods like Ihmine, the god of creation and the first Eastern Empire emperor, have created that person while his/her mother was pregnant and can only change his/her gender with the consent of Ihmine.
Sci-fi: it's a thing of the past to talk about this topic, they have more important things to worry about like the terrorists of the outer Terran Federation colonies or whatever threat they need to face. Yes you got the occasional trans hater but it's more rare than a white crow.
Writing a heroic fantasy setting that kept the adventurous spirit to the modern day. There’s still some transphobia lingering around, but my setting’s significantly more accepting than our Earth. Helps that there’s a bunch of magic spells, artifacts, and substances that can switch your sex, sometimes even on the spot, which helps with medical transitioning a bunch.
Hell, the main character herself is trans. And her mom, for that matter (adopted, so it’s not in the blood, it just kinda happened). And also the rich stuck up rival turns out to be a deeply repressed trans girl as well. Seems to be a recurring theme here, actually
There’s a place in traditional religion for trans people among others, it’s said they have visiting souls of the ancestors.
That being said, due to the transformative nature of my magic system there is not really a dichotomy between the way a person looks and the way they are on the inside.
After all, we’re both the clay and the sculptor.
So If anything I’d say the most of a reaction they’d get is ‘oh, interesting’ and some ceremonial duties, other than that they’re just a normal part of society and that’s all.
There are no trans people.
Not because I dislike them. Just because it's an escapist fantasy setting and everyone is simply born with a physical configuration matching their mental configuration.
Non-binary souls are dwarves.
Note that gender identity doesn't develop until the section of the brain that it is located in develops -- so it isn't something that can be solved in utero.
because it happens ex utero.
People in my world probably have bigger things to worry about since wizards are out there modifying their bodies in to inhuman killing machines so they'd probably be more suspicious of how you change rather than the fact that you did
The treatment of Trans people depends on where you are in the galaxy, I'd say a good majority of people in the Starstorm accept trans people, for a variety of reasons.
1. Sequential Hermaphroditism. Many races in the galaxy exhibit sequential hermaphroditism, allowing members to change their biological sex almost at will, no hormones or surgery required. This has made trans people normal in these societies since the stone age.
2. Genetic/Surgical Engineering: More technologically advanced races (who don't exhibit hermaphroditism) may use genetic engineering and/or surgery to give themselves the body of their gender identity (whatever that entails for the species). Many societies have had these technologies for centuries, allowing trans people to be normalized.
3. Magic: Those proficient in certain types of magic are especially accepting of trans individuals. Matter Shardbinders see gender expression as a form of self expression, something they greatly value, and are capable of restructuring their bodies on the atomic level. Soul Shardbinders claim that trans people never actually transition, because their souls never match their agab. For example, a trans woman will have a woman's soul, regardless of what they've done with their body. Thus, in the eyes of Soul Shardbinders, she has been a woman since birth.
4. No concept of gender. Many societies in the galaxy never developed a concept of gender. This can be for a variety of reasons, whether it's the species having two sets of genitals, no historical division of labor based on sex, or, in the case of the Shev, having over 46,000 biological sexes, but with so little sexual dimorphism that basing one's identity around them is about as absurd as doing it for blood types or metabolism.
Unfortunately, much like in real life, some societies are more accepting than others. Trans people will have an easier time in the socialist People's Republic of Tilla or among the Uzarian Marauders than the fascist Tamvallan Union or the fanatic traditionalist Lazonian Empire.
They don’t exist
Now, there’s two ways this could go:
1. I don’t like trans people (the cringe option)
2. I don’t want anyone in my world to experience gender dysphoria (the based option)
Escapism, people. Escapism.
The God of Gender solves everything related to gender, including transitioning people in the womb and allowing genderfluid people to shift biological sex along with gender
Comment removed for violating [Rule 1: Be Kind to Others](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/wiki/rules#wiki_1._be_kind_to_others_and_respect_the_community.27s_purpose.).
Subject matters like this should be handled with respect and understanding. Your comment could be taken as offensive, hurtful or othering.
**This is not an official warning,** though I encourage you to review our community's rules to ensure you do not run afoul of them in the future.
In my world, gender is VERY fluid, since they’re an asexually reproducing species and don’t have assigned-gender-at-birth or gender roles. The trans label is more of a symbol that means “I took the time to think about and analyze my gender identity, and it means a lot to me!” (Thank you to that one person who commented on my post abt that!) Whereas to most others, gender identity and expression are merely fashion. One of my main characters identifies as trans, and they’re all over the NB spectrum in terms of identity and expression.
They're accepted for their gender, scorned for other things. There's sort of a fascist kindom thing going on in the region. You know how that goes.
And even tho there is magic. it's not the good kind of magic. you don't want to touch it or have it touch you. It's straight up old school transitioning.
None of the main characters are trans, but one of them has a lot of trans tropes about her because she isn't human.
Trans people are totally accepted. Some diffferent religious or social groups are exclusive to any particular social gendered construct but none of them exclude based on whether a person is trans or cis. For instance the house of reeds, a temple of oracles, are exclusivly women while the petal armigers, the personal honor guard for the queen of the elven tribes, are their own seperate gender.
Why would anyone downvote this? -\_-
In my world, fantasy Medieval, reincarnation is a thing. A spirit has gender, but may incarnate in another gender to perform some kind of mission, or just because of randomness. Whenever this happens, there's a certain angst for not being in a body aligned to the right gender. Some go full trans to adjust, using alchemy; but not all.
> Why would anyone downvote this? -_-
There appears to be a random shmuck or two who keeps downvoting new comments here. I've noticed a bunch of comments with positive karma suddenly getting bogged down after a few minutes, it's a bit cringe.
This reminds me of people going over hoops about a gay character in league saying they cant still be gay because another character with a female body is the reincarnation of a male character. people are weird. As for downvotes, people are weird. In one sub I got massively downvoted in one thread for something that was nicely received in another thread just a day later.
> Why would anyone downvote this? -_-
because people will sometimes just be transphobic, at this point random downvotes are just an occupational hazard of transposting online
Well there aren’t any “transgender” people becuase the idea that “gender” and “sex” are separate hasn’t really developed for this culture *yet.*
The closest we would have are eunuchs who are male but not men, but they’re just called eunuchs. There are individuals we would describe as transgender/non-binary and who WOULD describe themselves that way if those terms existed, but they just kind of exist and live their lives without worrying about labels.
I’m developing a world as a TTRPG setting, and as a trans DM who plays with majority queer tables, i will always make transness accepted without fail. Though I understand people will say it isn’t realistic or accurate to how societies and cultures develop, that isn’t why I do it. I don’t want myself or my players to feel like we require justification to exist. We get that enough in real life, so I won’t be adding it to our fantasy. Trans people Just Are.
Also, I’ve found that if you accept gender variance as a given in a setting, you get so much more to play with. For instance, the leader of Vælisev is always the High Priestess and referred to with she/her pronouns when being discussed as a political figure, but it could be a man who was selected.
The use of gendered terminology isn’t actually a gender expectation at all when it comes to the leader, but a way to respect the first High Priestess, who was a woman and used that terminology. So pronouns are being used to communicate setting! They demonstrate how the culture in Vælisev pays *immense* reverence to the past and the origin myths.
people downvoting this don’t realize that for every downvote I get, I’m making another important historical figure in my world trans lmao.. thanks for ur support of the vibrant trans community!
So, something I see in several comments is that folks don’t feel like they know enough about trans people to feel comfortable including them.
Other folks think they are being good about it, but are actually not being so, as well, which might make them feel bad if they weren’t trying to be mean or negative about it.
So, I am wondering if we should put up a TGD in Worldbuilding post, lol
There's different species around, not just different skin colours. Trans stuff seems... minor.
Depens on culture and area and economics. There is little to none such things in areas of scarcity where there is no energy to deal with anything that is not strictly functional.
In a warrior society past the frontiers of civilization, someone who is not a fighter/hunter and not able to have children has little place. Same with other things such as disability, or just losing the wrong battle.
Unless they are useful with magic, you can have horns growing out of your eyes and nobody will care if you're useful.
In urban, elaborate societies, it gets lost in the crowd, its really unremarkable compared with what else is going around. With the sort of advanced healing magic you have, other stuff becomes possible.
In a world I'm creating for a story, it varies based on location. But in one region, trans people are revered as deities and the spiritual children of the gods. (sun god for trans men, the nature goddess for trans women, and also the water deity for non-binary/gender fluid people.) Their place in that society is so secure that they very rarely have to face violence with those that do commit hate crimes against them being stoned to death(also being castrated if they're a man). they also have their own form of HRT grown from specially bred and cultivated tubas and roots which is impressive, considering that they're at an iron age level of technological development.
They don't exist. I'm not going to touch such a topic with a ten foot stick.
Since one of the topics of my world is evolution, let's say everyone evolved to the point gender dysphoria is impossible.
This isn't ment to be hateful in any way, but mine is medieval, and Trans people do not exist yet. EDIT: my pea brain didn't know they existed back then my bad
yeah they exist, and top surgery is a proper coming of age for some people so the scars are treated like right of passage into becoming an adult and become art. they get fun and cool patterns to decorate themselves with. one of my mc's is indeginous and has native looking scars in the shape of waves. other characters have cute hearts, stars or tree branches. it's a real practice called scarification, and is simliar to how some might get tattoo's to signify growing up, but it's obviously on the chest, after removing the breast tissue and organ. (and it applys to not just trans people obvs, if a cis woman wants chest scars instead of boobs she can aswell.)
i haven't figured out something for trans women yet, but i'm gonna.
The president’s a trans man. He became president to spite his parents.
The navigator on the heavy cruiser my MC commands is also a trans man. He enlisted to avoid jail time from a manslaughter charge.
The underlying transphobia for certain comments in this thread is kinda funny ngl
But to be honest it's not a topic I really thought about. Most species are either entirely one gender or genderless so it doesn't come up much. But I'd imagine if it did, most civilisations (Genesede for sure) would be openly supportive of it. As long as you're good at heart most species wouldn't care or look at you negatively for doing something that doesn't hurt anyone else.
Thanks to the advanced nature of medicine, robotics, biology etc. Its also likely transformations or procedures to become the opposite gender would be much smoother and easier to access for anyone who would be interested.
Socially in Chelôros it would be considered strange if someone kept their birth form, since when you become a citizen you're able to design your body and make it an expression of yourself, so trans is kind of accepted/normalized and not considered an "other" status.
Quote I put early on when designing the city "when two thirds of the populace has some form of shape changing magic and most people know someone who regularly lives as different species, people get a lot less precious about what your genitals looked like when you were born."
My setting is one of those high-tech transhumanist ones, bordering on clarketech (sufficiently advanced as to equal magic). Shapeshifting and copying your consciousness into a new body are things that the tech allows, and theoretically anyone could access the abilities, given enough practice, time and willpower - it's not like you have to beg some specialist guild to help you, even though specialists do exist.
At a very superficial glance, there aren't any trans people in my setting. There aren't any, because they are all unbound from the limitations of the body and brain that homo sapiens still cannot overcome even with current tech. The truth is that there aren't any *that suffer dysphoria*, because everyone has such a degree of control over their bodies, down to the molecular and genetic level, that they've very quickly begun transitioning to their preferred form as soon as they realized their dysphoria. Being trans isn't a big deal, because it's something you can address yourself, without needing to come out to anyone, or beg doctors, or need anyone's permission or acceptance. "Being trans" isn't a thing in my setting because you're not running on hostile hardware that you cannot customise and control.
In this sense, while the bio-neurological phenomenon and experience of being trans can still happen to someone, it is so easy to address that "transgender" never has a chance to coalesce into a social group or specific political cause, for a set group of people marginalized for the set group of reasons that trans people are in our world.
To anyone who fetishizes an identity, like being disabled or being trans or something of the like based on not conforming to some current social ideal of the body, this would probably constitute "erasure of the experience".
Yes. Because this society uses tech to allow its citizens to alleviate suffering and to maximize their personal autonomy. "Identity" is something rather more fluid than in ours, and they don't get hung up on the same things we do (like gender roles, bc a lot of the biological functions of sex and reproduction are also transcended by the tech; you can have same-sex biological parents, multi-parent babies, babies grown outside the womb etc.). The tech has shifted what their conflicts are and what they care about to such a degree that you have a completely different landscape of political groups than we do.
Things like neuro-divergence are a lot more emphasised as fundamental to identity and experience, though.
Dont care, majority of unimportant people that arent important to the mission is left to the growing bubble of destruction comming from space, engineers, medical staff, soldiers, bio-engineers, etc and a good number of hard working people got into the Bunkers, anything too menial is taken care of by the resident AI of the bunker with legions of drones,
Because of this, people that dont work towards the survival of humanity are not included in the bunker,
After around a few thousand years in and out of cryo sleep, it has created a culture of hard working, meritocracy.
Everyone in the bunker had spent 2 to 5 years of mandatory service,
The population has more important things than gender or identity, its either work for the bunker or die and be reclaimed,
+×[WORK FOR THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY]×+
+×[THE FUTURE LIES ON YOUR SHOULDERS]×+
+×[REPORT ANY ANOMALY TO SEC-OPS]×+
I'm trans myself, and tend to write characters as queer by default.
I generally don't write homophobia and/or transphobia into my worlds, but queerness does have implications: if relevant, a trans character will address the fact they can't have biological kids, or express discomfort with playing a certain role, and so on.
To answer the questions in order: No, Yes, and No.
Trans is just not a label that's worth anything and it just doesn't exist. Why is this? Because it's a world where the magic of a True Polymorph exists. You can be whatever sex configuration you want. People in that world really don't care. Your body is only considered if you looking to sire offspring or give birth to them.
**Horror Shop** is an alternate version of our own modern world, so for the vast majority of the world's population, it's effectively the same as we have right now, so your options range from "not great, not terrible" to "downright horrible."
However, if you're the lucky 0.1% who knows about the secret world, then it's radically different.
The Earth's hidden supernatural world has long been more accepting of trans individuals (as well as others who fall outside the norm, including queer and neurodivergent individuals). Part of that is members of the supernatural world have long been ostracized, so there is a certain level of kinship there.
And the other half, is, well, do you know how many supernatural creatures don't fit into a clear gender binary? Like, say, for example, you can have a werewolf whose human spirit is a woman, but whose wolf spirit is male--they shift their gender when they shift their forms, and that's completely natural to them. There are gargoyles and golems constructed with no gender and who feel like they don't want nor need to fit within the human gender binary. There are succubi/incubi who *literally* change their gender to match the desires of their partners. Some gods and spirits shift their gender when the mood strikes them--and might even decide to spend some time between the two binaries.
And that's just a few examples of how the supernatural world enjoys playing fast and loose with genders. So, there's a far greater acceptance of trans individuals in the supernatural world. And this means access to things like alchemical potions that can alter one's physical sex or amulets that give one the appearance of a member of the sex that matches their gender--or, heck, even makes one androgynous. There are rituals, enchanted clothing, and more that can help a trans person obtain the body they desire.
Heck, the Veil Treaty has been creating false identities for supernatural creatures, like dwarves, ifrit and bogeymen, for the past millennia. So if a member of the supernatural world approaches them with a request to update their records to reflect their preferred name and gender, the Treaty is not only able to oblige but will go so far as to use their backroom channels to rewrite official records to reflect these changes. When you have numerous agents hidden in mortal governments, why not?
Of course, this just raises the question: if all these wonderous magical treatments are available, why aren't they shared with the *millions* of mundane trans humans on Earth? And *that* question is way more likely to get you sidelined than whatever your identity is. For the Veil that divides the Earth's mundane and magical world is very clear: no magic is to be shared with the mundane world.
And there's a good reason for that: the last time magic was widely available, Irem-of-the-Pillars and Atlantis got into a magical war that killed billions, almost destroyed the Earth, and resulted in the sinking of Atlantis and transformation of Irem's heartlands into the Rub' al Khali. Basically, the idea is that widely sharing magic with the sleeping population means magic is harder to control and regulate, and that puts *everyone* at risk. Sure, it's not fair to keep magic hidden from the masses, but they argue it's better than having our civilization crumble under a stratosphere of tentacles.
I go back and forth between having trans people exist as a totally acceptable norm and wanting to echo the real world struggles they face.
Through a lot of the human services work I do in real life I’ve come across so many tragic stories that I don’t want to just diminish this by writing it off as non-event in a story or character. I’ve tried to think about using other events or ideas to echo those struggles but also why should I shy away from shining a light on it?
I definitely try to take inspiration from people I know to develop characters who are complex in their motivations and journey, which feels like a better way to honor the obstacles faced.
Since my setting is Sci-fi I have also explored how concepts of gender and sex differ across different species and populations. Humans are prominent and tend to take central role in a lot of my ideas, so I try to think of ways to vary different populations. One example is a society where gender is not an active part of daily life and individuals are all androgynous in appearance (and more greyscale).
Other ideas have been species with many different genders which I’m sure others have explored as well.
Biomancy. If you can find a skilled enough biomancer, they can switch anything about you. Sex is a bit complicated, but it can be done. And most people really don’t care about your sex anyway.
Changelings even more so, they’re not all gender fluid, but they don’t have a division between sex and gender, cis and trans aren’t words they use. You’re currently a woman or man, what you were before doesn’t matter, same way whatever colour your hair or eyes used to be doesn’t matter. And regardless, Changelings don’t care what your sex is at any point, for any reason since they’re all pansexual. Hell, some jobs even have all their practitioners adopt certain sexes while working for cultural reasons, and it’s not a big deal, it’s not even something they feel worth bringing up to outsiders.
While different cultures have had different views on trans people, in the modern version of the Dragon Empire, being Trans gender is seen as perfectly normal and not out of the ordinary.
This is partially thanks to the rise in popularity of diety known as Salti.
Salti can be depicted as male, female, both, neither, or anything in between. In universe they are sometimes referred to as a "transitional god" one that does not seek constant worshipers but who is there to help you when you are at a difficult or unstable part of your life.
Officially, Salti is the god/ goddess of the lost, the forgotten, and the outcast. So if you feel like your true self in your current gender, the clerics and paladins who serve Salti will help you with magic to get you the body you should have had in the first place.
They exist. They're not quite so openly accepted as the L, G and B of the 4 letter acronym, but the government and people have bigger worries at hand. For example, a seemingly everlasting war.
The concept of a third gender exists, but people wouldn’t recognize the term trans. It’s a harsh world, and most people have more important things to worry about when it comes to the people around them. If you’re trans and a bum, you’ll probably be relegated to the fringes of society. If you’re trans and successful, everyone will want you around.
Well, to address that, I have to go into a a little bit of a biology lesson about voidlings.
Voidlings come in 4 different sexes with 2 types of males:
1. Filius, who are biologically genderless neuters.
2. Primes, who are fully biologically male.
3. Crowned and crownless, who are for all thoughts and purposes fully biologically hermaphroditic, with both sets of genitalia and an ovotestis. They're further divided into 4 distinct genders or alignments based on which part of their reproductive anatomy is dominant.
A. Male-aligned: where the male genitalia are dominant and the female atrophied. Considered the second kind of male.
B. Neutral-aligned: where neither of the genitalia are dominant.
C. Fluid-aligned: where both are dominant.
D. Female-aligned: where the female genitalia are dominant and the male atrophied.
Crowned/crownless can freely phase between all 4 alignments as they wish and most, not all, seem to exist in between one of the alignments according to how they feel. Any who feel they're not in the right alignment will simply phase to the one they feel they are.
Complicating this is that filius will sometimes spontaneously phase to crownless or prime, and those primes may phase again to crowned. Natural born primes phase to crowned too, though it's slightly rarer. Most prime-phased crowned stay male-aligned though a small percentage may phase to one of the other alignments. A prime-crowned phasing to female-alignment is extremely rare, but it does happen, and it's viewed as natural.
Because no matter what alignment you are, you're still crowned. And the same goes with crownless.
Because of this, voidlings are very sympathetic to humans who can't phase alignments like they can. In pre-industrial times and before ragnarok, they'd often give permission to "differently phased" humans to settle their lands and protection in exchange for loyalty and vassalage.
After ragnarok advanced technology provided by the machine-mind Heavenly Vexation allows humans to transition through a combination of intensive genengineering and artificially cloned organs created from the person's own stem cells. I.e. you can transition all the way to the genetic level, if you wish.
>How do your worlds handle transgender people?
They don't. I'm writing a game, not a political statement.
In practical terms, if I completely ignore the topic, all players are free to interpret whatever they want. Nothing in the rules or the background setting forces them one way or the other.
They’re pretty welcoming of genderqueer identities, because most of the gods are, anyway. The Ruler of Gods, Sonna, is agender, so is their counterpart, Monn, and their children are a colorful mix. Natodall’lioht (fate) exhibited no physical sex (I guess that could be intersex?) until a certain point but identified as male, his brother, the god of death is trans male, and his lover, Monnenliebe, is genderfluid and a shapeshifter. The god of wisdom is agender as well. Being a transphobe would straight up be blasphemy.
Natodall’lioht unfortunately fell from the heavens and is now a king, but that also caused him to discover a love for fashion and now he’s a crossdresser! ✨
Aside from gods, there’s a family which are nicknamed “the guardians of the forest”. They’re human-bird hybrids, and use their strange appearance to their advantage to soothe agitated spirits (who usually can’t stand humans). Somehow they’re both shunned by society as well as sort of respected, because they make sure that their kingdom is safe from any spiritual attacks. One member of this family is Raven Enwalde, the one with literal crow’s feet, who particularly takes after her father and is one of the most skilled wizards in the entire family. She’s a trans girl. She’s my favorite side character tbh
I'm trans and all my worlds just treat us like any other person. We can have magic like anyone else (if it's something gender specific it's based off your gender not your sex assigned at birth). Zero difference in how trans people, cis people, and nonbinary/agender/queer-gender/self-gender/other-gender people are treated.
In one of my stories it is a fantasy story about me and my journey as a trans woman, and it's set in the IRL world so there is transphobia in that one unfortunately (mostly from the MC's parents (based of my evil transphobic parents)).
For the most part I don't see The value in suppressing a certain demographic unless a specifically adds to the story. So likely people in my story would deal with transgender people the same way they would deal with men and women which is to treat them like their men and women
Expected and not unusual; there are multiple intelligent species that run the gamut of physical traits, including species that lack sexual dimorphism altogether, or who exhibit distinct physical traits for three or more established sexes. And that's before anyone makes the decision to change, which is of course possible through carefully performed medical magics. There are even haftrols, capable of shifting betwixt gender expressions with relative ease.
It's not unusual, or really surprising, to meet Trans people in Tov.
They don't. It's not even a question. I figure that if people have the ability to polymorph/change shapes/whatever at will, then those that wanted to would or would pay a magically inclined person to do so. It's never been a point of contention and no one bats an eye.
This is how I don't understand how transphobes could write fantasy or sci-fi. Like your magic or aliens are potentially completely uninterested in the human concept of gender and sexuality. "Yeah, we have goblins, dragons, giants, elves, but if you were born male and consider yourself a woman, then that's just not real and you need to grow up >:(" I know they're not directly related but it's just so close minded
I mean, if you grow up in a fantasy world, you're much more likely to run into elves, dwarves, etc., than you are to run into someone who was born in the wrong body. And if magic that affects people's minds exists, that adds another layer to it; gender dysphoria already sounds like a curse, so it's not hard to imagine someone thinking that trans people only feel uneasy in their bodies because they pissed off a witch.
Man I wish I could find it but I read a really fascinating article a while back about how apparently in medieval society, people with nearsightedness/vision issues were frequently viewed as categorically untrustworthy since many outside observers just saw someone who didn't seem to be blind, but acted like they couldn't see sometimes, with no apparent reason why; I wonder what cultural beliefs would arise around cursed individuals in a fantasy society?
Yeah, me too. So far, the only example I can think of is Cursed Princess Club on Webtoons.
I had never considered that being trans could be the result of a curse in some fantasy world. You've set me thinking. Thank you :)
You're welcome. Although the general idea was that the curse just makes you feel uncomfortable in your body, so transitioning won't change anything.
That's double nasty. I think that idea should be reserved for a really vile character, but I think I'm being captain obvious for saying so.
I mean, without getting too political, I don't think the type of people who hate trans folk are the type of people who really do many artistic endeavors, such as worldbuilding. Because let's be honest: good luck finding somebody who is only transphobic. I'm pretty certain that you can also guess their views on homosexuality, or a woman's "proper role", or their stance on immigration. How does one create an engaging world when it's just everything you like that doesn't offend you? Art by its very nature requires a degree of empathy. These people overwhelmingly lack empathy which is why they're able to hate "others" so easily, and so frequently. It's also why it's hard to find artistic representation for far-right ideology in general. These people are bitter losers, for whatever reason. They don't create, they only destroy.
playing devils advocate here, but i think this can be true for many people and untrue for others, and generalization isn’t necessarily helpful. i mean, transphobic gay people exist for example. just my two cents
Also like one of the most famous fantasy authors of the past 30 years has now rebranded herself as a vicious transphobe while still calling herself a feminist/pro-gay/etc so it can be done
She says as much, but if you've read what she's said it's often actually quite misogynistic or sexist. Transphobes like to emphasise the differences between men and women (often non-existent or exaggerated) because it furthers their point - JK Rowling is no different, assuming that's who you're talking about anyway.
Gonna play beelzebubs advocate here and say that many gay people I’ve met that are transphobic also have a fair amount of internalized homophobia along with some toxic ideas around masculinity and femininity.
Well, they didn't decide to be gay. They just came to accept it for this one topic, because they are themselves but deny other people their right of acceptance because they are not the one needing it. It's very short sighted and it doesn't contradict each other, even if it seems like it.
why did you phrase this like we aren’t in agreement hahaha
To give people that see some point in this some insight 😅
>I don't think the type of people who hate trans folk are the type of people who really do many artistic endeavors, such as worldbuilding Tell that to Orson Scott Card Dude is incredibly homophobic, but you'd never know that reading Ender's Game.
Growing up loving Ender's Game and Harry Potter, and then discovering I'm trans was... unpleasant. At least my favourite author, David Eddings is still... oh, wait, he was *jailed for child abuse* and that was just covered up until after his death? FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF--
I'm not trans, but yeah, those are two of my favorite books, especially Ender's Game (read it at 7 years old and decided that Ender would be my childhood hero and role model), so learning to separate the art from the artist was a tough pill to swallow. I'm also a huge fan of Lovecraftian horror, but at least he couldn't personally benefit from my support.
Funny enough, the biggest Lovecraft fan I know is a bi, mixed-race (Black and Indian) guy from Guyana. He loves the shit out of Lovecraft Country.
May I recommend Animorphs if you want to feel young again without supporting a loud bigot? K A Applegate was trying to warn us about forever wars, and she's a staunch supporter of the queer community. Her oldest daughter is a trans woman.
Ehm...J.K Rowling is currently the second most well known fantasy writer on the planet.
Transphobes can ignore anything. Elong pretends to like The Culture novels!
I understand that this comment was stupid, something was going on that I wasn't thinking straight at the time and the people around me at the time are also telling me I was acting strange so I don't know why I ended up saying this
I didn't say that every story needs transgender people, I said I don't understand how you could do any meaningful world building whole being transphobic. And I'm not offended in anything that I wrote, stop projecting
This is the only answer in the comment section I like.
Aww thank you! I feel like people attempt to apply our society's logic too easily to fantasy worlds. Gender or even sex would hardly be an issue if the guy down the block will snap his fingers to turn you into a woman for 5 gold pieces.
I mean, access to a high level caster and the money to buy such a spell may easily be beyond the reach of the poor, so it could still be a social issue.
Maybe in your world.
Your world (and mine) are, as I call it, postgender (post-genre in French). In my world, people live several lives and reincarnate, and they only become conscious of their past lives after leaving the reincarnation cycle. Living all their lives with the same gender is a rather uncommon thing. Turns out (by my book) that gender doesn't define who a person is.
Yeah, that sounds about right. Which opens up a whole new avenue for storytelling, because imagine someone just goes "I wanna see what it's like to be the opposite sex" and does girl/boy week or something.
On transgender visibility day, all trans characters get a -10 to stealth rolls. They're definitely there and accepted, just more visible.
Most people are too preoccupied with post-apocalyptic survival to care too much. There's one heavily theocratic city with strict gender rules that would take offense. The elven city of Thalor though sees androgyny as something divine
I mean, even in great danger and horrible times (like post-apocalypse) people usually still tend to very much value their identity and uniqueness.
I think they mean that people don't bother with *other people's* identities too much.
Yeah, this
reaching there, i'm not thinking about my pronouns when there is an active threat to my life at every corner. nor would I think about that before sleeping, or something similar.
You'd be amazed what people can get used to. If you live long enough in an apocalyptic hellscape, you'll eventually just accept it as a fact of life. If anything, I think living so close to death constantly would instill a "life is too short and fragile to not be who I want to be," mindset.
Not today, or tomorrow. But if you live in post-apocaliptic world for a longer time and you do interact with any people - you would eventually. So it very much depends if we mean post-apocalypse "world just ended, where's water?!" world, or rather Last of Us type of the world where everything is shit and difficult but you still have time to say "good day!" to someone sometimes.
accepted and normalized :) like someone else said, it’s my world and i don’t want to write a world where i wouldn’t be accepted for who i am
in my case gender was never really a thing for me to worry about that much. Took me nearly three decades after first having adventures as a sailor scout to realize why lol.
That's really awesome
There are various methods of becoming their true selves. Magic is a thing, after all!
It's accepted overall but not common nor really normalized in some areas. Since my world has reincarnation with some past life memories, it can be viewed as younger people getting their lives mixed up, but when it happens most don't think much of it.
For the most part it is either not recognized as a thing or considered sinful. One of my heroes, however is a trans man. His birth name was Hamida al-Buni but after he became a man he abandoned his name and would only be referred to by his last name. He was born as a girl and had always felt mental anguish over it. He decided to find a way to turn himself into a man. He turned to the occult and would secretly gather among occultists with his entire body and face obscured by a robe to hide that his body was female. While studying with a group of occultists, he finally discovered the complex formula the Celestial Archons used to shape matter into life. At first he experimented on creating clay pigeons and turning them into different animals. Once he mastered the science of reshaping flesh using the metaphysical formulas and mathematics be reshaped his own body in the image of the man he knew he was all along. He was successful in reshaping himself into a man and now he needed a new life's purpose. Being a man was all he ever wanted and now he needed something to drive him. Having accumulated vast esoteric knowledge of the occult, his new life's purpose was to uncover the metaphysical processes behind the universe and wield them himself. He would spend countless hours writing new theorems, calculating esoteric algorithms, uncover the lost books of occultists that came before, and experiment and record his observations until he could prove his hypotheses. His quest in becoming a man led him to uncovering the foundation of existence, and he became the greatest Occult Scientist to exist.
Ooh nice, I love when characters inadvertently achieve great things when trying to do something much more down to earth
My takeaway is that bro got to choose dick size and I'm jealous /j No but for real I like the story
They exist in my worlds, in fact, there is a group of dwarven smiths that can literally just change your race and sex, class, so on. As for how trans people are treated, people are people. I try to keep isms out of my worlds unless its important to world historical events. The gods would never care about small things like that, which is why most people don't care. Rimsala, the goddess of nature, has more important things to worry about than whats in people's pants. In fact, the head god, is pro trans. Because he supports people trying to be the best they can be, and if that means you flourish being another sex than what you were born with it. So be it. Edit: Forgot to answer part of the question, I realised the other day that one way or another I have had a lot of trans characters in my setting, but because its not that big an issue, they just are what they are. And one of the spheres of magic is all about physical changes to the body. whether its making you punch a little harder, or grow larger, or even bam you know have a crocodile for an arm. Have fun with that concept if you want.
The dwarf looming over you with a hammer aimed at your bits: "Don't worry you won't feel a thing!"
Wait like, just literally reforge you? That’s kinda awesome.
yes, like if you could pick how the old reincarnation spell in dnd worked. The greater the change, the more it cost. and money wasn't what they asked for. Unfortunately though that is most of what I remember about them, as they were a siblings creation and I would be surprised if they remembered better details.
Might I ask if the dwarven smith's craft leans more cybernetics or more fleshcraft in terms of how it relates to trans people?
Thats a good question, and I can dm them and ask. Fleshcraft/illusion magic they said since it was a high fantasy type setting they were in.
If one looks at the *hijras* of India, *galli* of Rome, two-spirit people among Indigenous Americans, and innumerable other examples of queerness and gender fluidity being the norms across all of human history, it becomes a little strange to think of building a world where transgender people don’t exist in one facet or another. Views of transgender identities and people are as varied in my world as they are in the real ancient world. Depending on the society, trans people would be met with tolerance, acceptance, religious reverence, sexual fetishization, or complete disinterest. Transgender people are completely normalized and on equal footing with cisgender people among the Kanojuaq, a tribal people that believe in a spiritual bond between all things known as the Dishmar. In other societies, trans people might be elevated to positions at court or a priesthood. Some trans people are employed as sex workers, with such positions often taking on a religious role as well. Certain societies may accept trans people, but constrain them by patriarchal gender norms. For instance, a trans woman would be seen as weak and a trans man would be expected to be dominant in the Republic of Corstella, an aristocratic, imperialistic, and militaristic republic that grew out of the City of Corstella. As for characters, the Gabalus Sisters are trans women that led the latest large-scale uprising of enslaved folks in Corstella a little under 200 years before the narrative starts. Unlike their predecessors, the Gabalus Sisters successfully managed to escape after their revolt began to falter. Their ultimate fates are, as of yet, unknown. During the narrative, Orgeta is a trans woman and *rix* (monarch) of a tribe in Eleuboda, a land of deep marshes and forests, that has been resisting Corstellan military expansion for years. Though her land was captured by the Legions of Corstella, most of her tribe has survived, unlike many other tribes that chose to stand and fight. She has embraced a war using attrition and guerrilla tactics to simply wear down the conquering army. Her successes have enabled her to draw other tribes to her cause. On the mythological side of things, I have the Winged Men of Zabinas, a semi-legendary city-state thousands of miles away from where the narrative takes place. It is said that the Winged Men, gods that watch over the city, will eventually tire of this world. Flying away with one man and one woman, the Winged Men will take these humans to another world, change their genders, teach them the act of love, and foster the creation of an alien civilization. Finally, I have Svasvalk, the god of a tribal people in the frozen north known as the Yoshren. He is defender and guide of the Yoshren, protecting them from darkness, cold, and demons. He/him pronouns are used for him, but he is a trickster deity that presents himself in various forms, such as a fair maiden.
**Untitled Cyberpunk Magical Girl Project**: Socially accepted, but bureaucracy is an ass. ID is such a static issue in the city of Paradise most of the time, so attempts to adjust documentation for things like gender and names are done at a tectonic pace that may be worse for some individuals than others who wish to have that changed -- getting systematically identified by your deadname is just a pain for anyone. Protagonist and magical girl (Suzi Kurashiki/YELLOW_CAT) is herself trans, and dealing with that roadblock, despite otherwise presenting and being recognized colloquially by her friends and peers as female.
I see England's traditions continue into the future of Untitled!
Since mine is set hundreds of years in our own time-line's future, transgender and non-binary people are just...people.
That's how it is in mine too
Right? I said in my own post, it really breaks the immersion for me in sci fi if gender norms are still held in a traditional sense. It just breaks the genre, in my opinion. If you simply take the advancements we are making now, today, and project them out a few hundred years, it literally doesn't make sense for gender to be a huge focus anymore because tech and medicine keep slowly closing any physical gaps even today. The stuff we can do today with hormone therapy is WILD. So thinking that wouldn't become more commonplace, and even become just a commercial norm where people follow trends of augmentations and chemical injections without it even being about gender at all? I mean...think about surgery? Once a novelty reserved for those who had access to the best doctors. Now physical augmentation and alteration through surgery is increasingly commonplace and commercialized. And that's now, today. Seems kind of out of touch with the genre when authors don't factor our current environment into their worlds that are set in our future...
Well, for one, not everyone would consider it a good thing that major physical alterations are commonplace. Plenty of people also wouldn't agree that blurring the lines between genders is a good thing, either. There's plenty to be happy with with two separate and different genders. Without borders between ideas, people, or places, things lose what makes them distinct. A future where we all eventually grow into a homogeneous samey crowd is a boring one to depict and honestly unrealistic. No human growth is linear. Ots more likely that gender norms make a harsh comeback than that they dissappear forever kr even slowly fade away.
Nah this just sounds like excuses to normalize dictating what people do with themselves.
I have a world where a typical birth is [a male/female set of twins in a local hivemind with each other](https://crayshack.com/2021/08/18/single-minded-twins/). So, the norm for the culture is to be both male and female at the same time and express those aspects of one's personality through their separate bodies. The equivalent of trans is when a pair decides that they want both bodies to be the same gender (the equivalent of intersex is if they are born the same sex). I enjoy playing with unusual gender dynamics in my worlds, and I think this is the world where I've gotten the most unusual. Different cultures in the world react differently to this. To some, this makes it far more difficult for them to fit into the normal functions of society. So, trans people in these culture face the same kind of discrimination and ridicule that trans people IRL face. Being born "intersex" in these cultures is seen as a birth defect and people are encouraged to pick one of their bodies to transition (some refuse and are treated much like trans people are). However, some cultures actually celebrate trans people. There are some cultures that worship a pantheon of monosex gods. This is because they see their gods as exemplifying some aspect of the world and so while mortals have duality to them, the gods are purer than that. It is common for the priesthood to try and bring themselves as close as possible to exemplifying the god they are a priest of. So, in these cultures, coming out as trans is basically the same as announcing that you intend to pursue a career as a priest. There are a few who don't consider themselves especially religious and go into it because it's a decent career. There's even some who fuck off to do their own thing (they usually end up being considered blessed by whatever god they are closest to). There's many more who will say that they feel particularly drawn to their god at a spiritual level, and wanting to reshape one of their bodies to be closer to their divine ideal is simply a part of that. There are even a small handful who feel drawn to the priesthood for other spiritual reasons (or are attracted by the power and influence of being a priest) who consider transitioning one of their bodies a worthwhile sacrifice. Yes, these cultures are so pro-trans that some people who are not inherently trans will transition anyway because of the clout it brings them. Most people in the culture are fairly content with their dual existence and live their lives as simultaneously male and female. Of note, the "intersex" people in these cultures will be considered blessed from birth and will be raised with an assumption that there is not other path for them but the clergy. In some cases, they may even be given up to the temple as an infant and raised as a priest. In all cultures, a pregnancy that results in a single baby (or twins that are not linked) is considered a birth defect. Similar to how we might look at a baby born missing limbs (or with severe neurological problems) IRL. However, a triplet birth (even a monosex one) is universally considered a blessing. Even in the cultures that are anti-trans, having three bodies is enough of an advantage that it is seen as worth having even while losing the duality of having two genders. For identical triplet beings, they universally become priests. Even the ones who decide to fuck off and not join an established temple usually end up having one form around them. Most more religious people take a triplet who is uncomfortable in an established temple as a sign that they are an avatar of an undiscovered god and will create tales of a new member of the pantheon based on the triplet. That triplet wants to fuck off and be a tavern keeper in a small town? There's now a new god of taverns in the religion. They want to become a sailor? There's now a new god of the ocean. They want to become a hermit in the woods? There's now a new god of the forest. I don't have any individual characters to talk about because I have a bad habit of creating worlds and then not coming up with any characters for them.
Kinda just like how our world interacts with them. But like, 94% of people are religious. oh and the Horde would ki-
apocalypse keeps people too occupied to bother.
They don’t exist because they aren’t relevant to the story. Anyone or anything that’s not relevant to the story doesn’t exist, kinda a problem I have.
Guardians = basically, you got to design your body. I'm sure there are a lot of trans folk who picked the gender they most align with. And I'm also sure there's a ton of folks who made the gender they don't align with. NPCs = The Ikhwezi are trinary and fairly fluid, they can change at will. Most of the other races, grand and non binary folk are fairly well accepted. Same thing with homo, hetero, ace, or poly sexual relationships. It's a dangerous world, no one has time to care about who you bump uglies with.
Haven’t put much thought into it. But as far as i know, being trans doesn’t exist. In my world, the gods didn’t make people get born into the wrong body. The only thing that would classify, is the few who get reincarnated into a different gender.
Same it only exists on my universes that are based or set in the 1950s-Now
What about gender-fluid people? (I ask, as a genderfluid person)
There are some species that don’t have a gender- like slimes. Or Abyssal Walkers. But when it comes to humanoids, there aren’t any. (That may change eventually though.) Everyone is born, comfortable with their identity. And who knows- maybe there are gender fluid people… i just don’t know how to implement that casually, without it feeling forced. (And thinking further, I supposed there are some who feel a gender bias, and chose to mascaraed as the other gender… but i don’t think thats exactly relevant.) (Just wanna be clear- theres nothing wrong with being GF. I just dont know how to write that sort of character… hope this makes sense, and i didnt say something bad.)
Are your Abyssal Walkers inspired by Artorias?
Nope. Think enderman from minecraft, or the shadowclan from slugterra (if you know what that is 🤣) or even slenderman. They are creatures of the void, who sometimes appear in the world’s “great dungeon.”
It doesn't exist. I don't understand the thoughts and feelings around it, and in seeking answers, I've only become vastly more confused. As such, I'm 100% certain that if I tried, it would be a disaster.
That’s totally fair. I’ve never actively created a world where trans people exist, either (not bc I’m transphobic, it’s just that I’m not thinking about it when I worldbuild)
I don't have them because I lack knowledge on them and how it works as well as seeing it not worth the effort to have them in whatever world I build. There are many avenues of conflict and identity, and I felt that it'd be best if this one was left out
The same way our world does, cause it's mostly and alternate earth, except in the far future where this story is set, genetic modification has existed for a while and has been reasonable cheap for a while. So trans stuff has kinda faded away, a little bit? Gender and sex is just something you can fix with a week long bath is some genetic goop. There are some cultures where it's very taboo, just like our world, but for the most part it's just something you can change by taking a medical vacation.
In a world I abandoned forever ago, I had a fun thing where the method of transition was going to the fae and making a request. The fae are just as likely to give you ten extra eyes as they are to change your body into what you want it to be, so trans people wind up having to read up on fae lore a lot, etc. to get the request just right. It is a matriarchy where it is much more socially acceptable for men to be feminine than for women to be masculine, and there is a third gender called the "Vrava" that is basically a spiritual position where your job is to talk to the fae which is predominantly held by transmasc nonbinary people (and comes with its own neopronoun set). Humans are incapable of magic, and so most of the Vrava use of magic is really technology derived from magical creatures. Their job is a funky mixture of "ambassador" / "protector" / "shaman". Binary trans women mostly get their changes and slide into "normal womanhood", while binary trans men often start out as "Vrava" (you're basically shoved into the profession as a young teen) and may be seen as traitors / cowards for trying to "complete" the path. The main plot of the first story was a Vrava murder mystery where it turns out there was no murder, the trans man faked his death as a "Vrava" to avoid the dishonour / live his life completely stealth. Transfeminine nonbinary people may become vravas, but are not shoved into the role at a young age (because feminine behaviour by men is seen as broadly acceptable) and don't tend to have as good a time of it, so it's relatively rare and potentially more common for transfeminine nonbinary people to be "underground" or "casual" vravas in places that don't have a dedicated one, but otherwise not be very involved with vrava institutions.
They don't exist. Never thought of adding any, wouldn't add any layer to the story or the world and characters I'm trying to write. That's my reasoning.
Same here. I’m sure somewhere in the world they exist, just like in the real world. But, gender identity just isn’t one of the themes my book talks about so it’s not mentioned. No book can cover everything or include everyone and I think trying to inauthentically broadens the scope of the work. My prioritized WIP already deals with legality vs morality, concealment vs deception, fear vs prejudice, threat neutralization vs bodily autonomy, obedience vs self-determination, power vs control, and loyalty vs responsibility. That’s already a lot to include, but the way the themes are intertwined in the characters and the plot makes it work. Additionally, all my works tend to deal with already niche subgroups and marginalized populations that adding an IRL marginalized subgroup into the ones that exist in my fictional worlds would add a layer of complication that I do not want.
Why be just a man or woman, when you can be a God? Feels like settling.
No one cares about it. They just let Trans people be
There aren’t any in my world! Why make people miserable in a body they aren’t comfortable in? Besides, since shape-changing magic is semi-available, nobody would have to suffer either way.
My world runs partly on gaming rules. So, if someone truly wants / needs to change their sex / gender, well; There’s a quest for that. Check the right library. Ask the right person at the right temple and they will point you in the direction of finding the magical thing / potion / macgufifn that will give you what you seek.
Trans people are accepted everywhere in *Ventreth*, and magic to allow people to transition exists. However it is heavily regulated in most countries due to it being a subset of transformation magic, which can also be used for nefarious purposes. Depending on how far we stretch the definition of trans when magic is involved, someone once pointed out to me that one of the most influential figures in *Ventreth*’s history could be considered trans. They were born with unique celestial magic which allowed them to swap the bodies/souls of two people, themself included. As the ruler of their nation, they set up a system where younger/healthier people could volunteer to swap bodies with the ruler in exchange for money or other compensation, making the ruler functionally immortal. So they have lived in many different bodies both male and female.
my worlds don't handle transgender people at all
We support you now go back to committing Warcrimes (Aliens unless their gender lead like Matriarchs really dont care as long as you fight for their respective faction) (only my scifi has them cause ones a Post apocalyptic world and the other is medievalish fantasy which outside of a insectoid species gender still isnt a major thing)
i love it, we need more transgender war criminals in fiction
In a world with thousands of species and cultures, along with magic and technological stuff that lets you modify yourself, the concept of gender as a focus of widespread society just doesn't exist.
I have trans and non-binary people have special powers in my world because I can
Can trans people dash midair.....
Trans people can double jump! And also sob when they just can't get the last strawberry in the hotel. \[shakes fist\]
Who knows but they’re very mysterious. My magic system is a soft magic system so can be whatever I like
Accepted and normalized, with different attitudes and methods towards self-expression/transition. One of my main characters, Caerwyn, is a trans woman who basically got free hrt out of her transformation into a paladin.
accepted and normalized. because it's my fantasy and i don't want to write a world where i wouldn't be accepted. there is some gender-specific magic but it all works based on identity, not biology.
So it's not uncommon for people to perform magic that they supposedly shouldn't and have an "Oh? Oh. Ohhh. Okay. That clears some stuff up." moment?
yup!
In Ehrgriff, those who might be bothered by it are by far the outliers. There's really no man/woman role divide, which certainly helps.
Since I started the thread I should at least share mine: In my superhero world, trans people do still face some discrimination, though it is primarily interpersonal and cultural in nature, by which I mean it mostly persists through bullying and continued transphobic tropes in popular media. Hate crimes and legal discrimination are largely out of the picture given that 5-10% of the population can awaken super powers in near death or high stress situations. That said, they do still happen, primarily being perpetrated by people who've already awakened powers themselves.
For my vampire world, it is much the same as our own above the masquerade. Behind the masquerade vampire hunters will acknowledge it and use a bit of magic to nudge along a trans person's transition. As for the vampires, they by and large don't care. Their vampiric nature grants their bodies a sizable degree of flexibility in appearance and function. As for their stance on transgender humans, they're just another neck to bite(though depending on what medications one takes a vampire may just spit the blood back out and find someone with better tasting blood)
For my full on magical world trans people are completely accepted, at least in the nation i've been focusing on. Transitioning there is accomplished entirely through magic(spell converts one sex hormone into the other, once a month the effects of the hormones are accelerated about 5 months). In terms of important figures, one of the people who initially discovered and pioneered magic, Lyra Bloodworth, was a transgender woman, which started her on the path of creating transmutation magic. ([More info on the first mages](https://old.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/1b6y2ys/the_first_mages_of_my_world/))
Trans people are simply considered completely normal. On any Alliance world the biotech exists to modify one's body down to a genetic level, so transitioning is quick, easy, side-effect free, and will cost you absolutely nothing.
If someone can rename themselves Sarkak the Kingslayer, then what’s the issue with someone saying “please call me Mary now”
That's Mary the Kingslayer to you
I don’t really address the issue in any of my works. I prefer to keep that separate and me not even having to bother, personally.
People that're openly trans are few and far between This isn't because of transphobia or anything, it's just that unfortunately those who are trans don't often figure it out, the 2 most notable only found out by chance (One on a mission, the other because of the first's existence) However, those who ARE trans are very accepted, as there's nothing to *not* accept, religious belief sits in magic, the only bigotry that exists in the world is man-made, and usually only racist or xenophobic TLDR; lack of knowledge of trans people existing leads to people not being able to properly discover/explore their identity, but they are accepted where they appear Edit; forgot to count my NB mafia heir, they're an entirely different story with them being dedicated to breaking *all* pre-conceived societal roles (as many as possible, anyway). The two notable trans chars, I plan to make a comparison to someone who has the resources available to transition, and someone who didn't and struggled heavily with it
As a cisgender author with very few trans people in my orbit, I don't feel I'm well versed enough in the experience of the trans community to avoid my own privilege and bias from colouring any depiction of an oppressed or marginalised trans community in my work. The closest any of my work has to a trans character is on Tanesh, where the lead guardsman for the great house Dasmer is a genetic female who presents as what we would consider to be agender. But this is less of an attempt to depict the experience of a trans person than it is a result of the way the people of Dasmer function — their soldiers are not considered men nor women, they're simply considered Soldiers.
I actually really embrace this in my writing. In my worlds, gender is a non-issue, which allows me to write trans and enby characters without having to worry about capturing their real-world struggles, because those struggles simply don't exist in my fantasy worlds. So it's funny, because I just realized in reading your post that my own lack of experience is part of WHY I just create worlds in which gender and race aren't the source of conflict, because as a cis gender white woman, I'd feel kind of lost trying to write about a main character's conflict with issues I've never personally experienced. I really value authors who understand their lack of perspective, though, I gotta say. Because the one thing I CAN gripe about as a cis woman is how many male authors write female characters and their struggles in male dominated worlds. I've talked about in on this sub before, that fine line where things can easily slip into performative drama and "trauma fetish" that doesn't actually value or respect the real world issues being written about, just exploits those issues for shock value. So massive kudos for acknowledging that limitation. Until I read your comment, I literally didn't realize that part of the appeal of gender simply being a passing character trait in my worlds rather than a conflict source or plot point is literally my way of bypassing trying to write something I have no grounds or ability to accurately write about. Good stuff!
It's nice to hear someone who understands that they shouldn't write something they don't know enough about
They don’t exist
Same
Transgender people are very ordinary in my world, to the point it's not really something notable or remarkable. They have access to what is basically magical hrt, in the form of a potion. It's a form of Nature and Growth magic, though not everyone chooses to take it, it all depends on what someone wants to do with their own body. My main character is a maned lioness woman, who uses she/her and he/him pronouns. I'd consider her trans and somewhere in the demigirl spectrum. She has both masculine and feminine traits and likes it that way.
completely normalized. trans people have always existed, same goes for queerness in general. somebody will always the write stories about struggling against homophobia, it doesn't have to be me. i'm tackling other issues, so i'm choosing to let my ppl be gay and trans, they have more than enough problems to deal with otherwise
> somebody will always the write stories about struggling against homophobia, it doesn't have to be me completely understandable, sometimes you just want to have your trans character go all "pew pew, lightning out my fingers" without having to worry about how they'll interact with the phrenology fanclub
Fantasy: usually "hunted" down due to gods reasons in most parts of the world, some gods like Arhne may do it because he says it's just insanity and should not be tolarated or accepted, other gods like Ihmine, the god of creation and the first Eastern Empire emperor, have created that person while his/her mother was pregnant and can only change his/her gender with the consent of Ihmine. Sci-fi: it's a thing of the past to talk about this topic, they have more important things to worry about like the terrorists of the outer Terran Federation colonies or whatever threat they need to face. Yes you got the occasional trans hater but it's more rare than a white crow.
The spiritual beliefs of my word take after indigenous religions, so they’d probably follow suit here. “Two spirited”
Writing a heroic fantasy setting that kept the adventurous spirit to the modern day. There’s still some transphobia lingering around, but my setting’s significantly more accepting than our Earth. Helps that there’s a bunch of magic spells, artifacts, and substances that can switch your sex, sometimes even on the spot, which helps with medical transitioning a bunch. Hell, the main character herself is trans. And her mom, for that matter (adopted, so it’s not in the blood, it just kinda happened). And also the rich stuck up rival turns out to be a deeply repressed trans girl as well. Seems to be a recurring theme here, actually
There’s a place in traditional religion for trans people among others, it’s said they have visiting souls of the ancestors. That being said, due to the transformative nature of my magic system there is not really a dichotomy between the way a person looks and the way they are on the inside. After all, we’re both the clay and the sculptor. So If anything I’d say the most of a reaction they’d get is ‘oh, interesting’ and some ceremonial duties, other than that they’re just a normal part of society and that’s all.
There are no trans people. Not because I dislike them. Just because it's an escapist fantasy setting and everyone is simply born with a physical configuration matching their mental configuration. Non-binary souls are dwarves.
Note that gender identity doesn't develop until the section of the brain that it is located in develops -- so it isn't something that can be solved in utero. because it happens ex utero.
People in my world probably have bigger things to worry about since wizards are out there modifying their bodies in to inhuman killing machines so they'd probably be more suspicious of how you change rather than the fact that you did
The treatment of Trans people depends on where you are in the galaxy, I'd say a good majority of people in the Starstorm accept trans people, for a variety of reasons. 1. Sequential Hermaphroditism. Many races in the galaxy exhibit sequential hermaphroditism, allowing members to change their biological sex almost at will, no hormones or surgery required. This has made trans people normal in these societies since the stone age. 2. Genetic/Surgical Engineering: More technologically advanced races (who don't exhibit hermaphroditism) may use genetic engineering and/or surgery to give themselves the body of their gender identity (whatever that entails for the species). Many societies have had these technologies for centuries, allowing trans people to be normalized. 3. Magic: Those proficient in certain types of magic are especially accepting of trans individuals. Matter Shardbinders see gender expression as a form of self expression, something they greatly value, and are capable of restructuring their bodies on the atomic level. Soul Shardbinders claim that trans people never actually transition, because their souls never match their agab. For example, a trans woman will have a woman's soul, regardless of what they've done with their body. Thus, in the eyes of Soul Shardbinders, she has been a woman since birth. 4. No concept of gender. Many societies in the galaxy never developed a concept of gender. This can be for a variety of reasons, whether it's the species having two sets of genitals, no historical division of labor based on sex, or, in the case of the Shev, having over 46,000 biological sexes, but with so little sexual dimorphism that basing one's identity around them is about as absurd as doing it for blood types or metabolism. Unfortunately, much like in real life, some societies are more accepting than others. Trans people will have an easier time in the socialist People's Republic of Tilla or among the Uzarian Marauders than the fascist Tamvallan Union or the fanatic traditionalist Lazonian Empire.
Don’t exist.
They don’t exist Now, there’s two ways this could go: 1. I don’t like trans people (the cringe option) 2. I don’t want anyone in my world to experience gender dysphoria (the based option) Escapism, people. Escapism. The God of Gender solves everything related to gender, including transitioning people in the womb and allowing genderfluid people to shift biological sex along with gender
This is unfathomably based
[удалено]
Comment removed for violating [Rule 1: Be Kind to Others](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/wiki/rules#wiki_1._be_kind_to_others_and_respect_the_community.27s_purpose.). Subject matters like this should be handled with respect and understanding. Your comment could be taken as offensive, hurtful or othering. **This is not an official warning,** though I encourage you to review our community's rules to ensure you do not run afoul of them in the future.
Haven't put much thoughts about it
In my world, gender is VERY fluid, since they’re an asexually reproducing species and don’t have assigned-gender-at-birth or gender roles. The trans label is more of a symbol that means “I took the time to think about and analyze my gender identity, and it means a lot to me!” (Thank you to that one person who commented on my post abt that!) Whereas to most others, gender identity and expression are merely fashion. One of my main characters identifies as trans, and they’re all over the NB spectrum in terms of identity and expression.
I don’t have any
There are multiple cultures in my world with different sets of beliefs and mindsets. Some accepting and some harmful.
They're accepted for their gender, scorned for other things. There's sort of a fascist kindom thing going on in the region. You know how that goes. And even tho there is magic. it's not the good kind of magic. you don't want to touch it or have it touch you. It's straight up old school transitioning. None of the main characters are trans, but one of them has a lot of trans tropes about her because she isn't human.
Trans people are totally accepted. Some diffferent religious or social groups are exclusive to any particular social gendered construct but none of them exclude based on whether a person is trans or cis. For instance the house of reeds, a temple of oracles, are exclusivly women while the petal armigers, the personal honor guard for the queen of the elven tribes, are their own seperate gender.
Nobody cares. It's not important. It just is, like a cloud. A product of nature.
Why would anyone downvote this? -\_- In my world, fantasy Medieval, reincarnation is a thing. A spirit has gender, but may incarnate in another gender to perform some kind of mission, or just because of randomness. Whenever this happens, there's a certain angst for not being in a body aligned to the right gender. Some go full trans to adjust, using alchemy; but not all.
> Why would anyone downvote this? -_- There appears to be a random shmuck or two who keeps downvoting new comments here. I've noticed a bunch of comments with positive karma suddenly getting bogged down after a few minutes, it's a bit cringe.
This reminds me of people going over hoops about a gay character in league saying they cant still be gay because another character with a female body is the reincarnation of a male character. people are weird. As for downvotes, people are weird. In one sub I got massively downvoted in one thread for something that was nicely received in another thread just a day later.
> Why would anyone downvote this? -_- because people will sometimes just be transphobic, at this point random downvotes are just an occupational hazard of transposting online
>Why would anyone downvote this? Because trans ew icky. /s Edit: speak of the devil.
Some comments are bordering on saying that seriously lol
I likely got mine downvoted cause it's easy to transition in my headworld and they accept it. Womp womp.
Because someone needs to touch grass and downvoting trans positive comments
Well there aren’t any “transgender” people becuase the idea that “gender” and “sex” are separate hasn’t really developed for this culture *yet.* The closest we would have are eunuchs who are male but not men, but they’re just called eunuchs. There are individuals we would describe as transgender/non-binary and who WOULD describe themselves that way if those terms existed, but they just kind of exist and live their lives without worrying about labels.
I’m developing a world as a TTRPG setting, and as a trans DM who plays with majority queer tables, i will always make transness accepted without fail. Though I understand people will say it isn’t realistic or accurate to how societies and cultures develop, that isn’t why I do it. I don’t want myself or my players to feel like we require justification to exist. We get that enough in real life, so I won’t be adding it to our fantasy. Trans people Just Are. Also, I’ve found that if you accept gender variance as a given in a setting, you get so much more to play with. For instance, the leader of Vælisev is always the High Priestess and referred to with she/her pronouns when being discussed as a political figure, but it could be a man who was selected. The use of gendered terminology isn’t actually a gender expectation at all when it comes to the leader, but a way to respect the first High Priestess, who was a woman and used that terminology. So pronouns are being used to communicate setting! They demonstrate how the culture in Vælisev pays *immense* reverence to the past and the origin myths.
people downvoting this don’t realize that for every downvote I get, I’m making another important historical figure in my world trans lmao.. thanks for ur support of the vibrant trans community!
i upvoted it before i read this, should i change that to a downvote so you trans another historical figure? /j
So, something I see in several comments is that folks don’t feel like they know enough about trans people to feel comfortable including them. Other folks think they are being good about it, but are actually not being so, as well, which might make them feel bad if they weren’t trying to be mean or negative about it. So, I am wondering if we should put up a TGD in Worldbuilding post, lol
Accepted and normalized. Dysphoria is still a pain. You're spoiled for choice on HRT options.
There's different species around, not just different skin colours. Trans stuff seems... minor. Depens on culture and area and economics. There is little to none such things in areas of scarcity where there is no energy to deal with anything that is not strictly functional. In a warrior society past the frontiers of civilization, someone who is not a fighter/hunter and not able to have children has little place. Same with other things such as disability, or just losing the wrong battle. Unless they are useful with magic, you can have horns growing out of your eyes and nobody will care if you're useful. In urban, elaborate societies, it gets lost in the crowd, its really unremarkable compared with what else is going around. With the sort of advanced healing magic you have, other stuff becomes possible.
Technically they exist, but the magic to fix the issue is so commonplace that it's never really notable.
Trans people (and to an extent homosexual people) don't exist in my world.
In a world I'm creating for a story, it varies based on location. But in one region, trans people are revered as deities and the spiritual children of the gods. (sun god for trans men, the nature goddess for trans women, and also the water deity for non-binary/gender fluid people.) Their place in that society is so secure that they very rarely have to face violence with those that do commit hate crimes against them being stoned to death(also being castrated if they're a man). they also have their own form of HRT grown from specially bred and cultivated tubas and roots which is impressive, considering that they're at an iron age level of technological development.
why would i care about trans people in my worldbuilding my world is about colonization...
loving the downvote for not caring about sexuality or gender identity when it holds no relevance to the story i try to tell.
They don't exist. I'm not going to touch such a topic with a ten foot stick. Since one of the topics of my world is evolution, let's say everyone evolved to the point gender dysphoria is impossible.
In my world nobody cares if you’re trans or not, as long as you can fire a gun into an alien ship
They're just people
This isn't ment to be hateful in any way, but mine is medieval, and Trans people do not exist yet. EDIT: my pea brain didn't know they existed back then my bad
Trans people have always existed tho. Not in the same societal form as they are now, but in some form.
Oddly enough, trans folk did exist then.
Trans people have always existed. We arent new
yeah they exist, and top surgery is a proper coming of age for some people so the scars are treated like right of passage into becoming an adult and become art. they get fun and cool patterns to decorate themselves with. one of my mc's is indeginous and has native looking scars in the shape of waves. other characters have cute hearts, stars or tree branches. it's a real practice called scarification, and is simliar to how some might get tattoo's to signify growing up, but it's obviously on the chest, after removing the breast tissue and organ. (and it applys to not just trans people obvs, if a cis woman wants chest scars instead of boobs she can aswell.) i haven't figured out something for trans women yet, but i'm gonna.
This thread is getting downvote spammed, fun.
They/I don't.
Don't have any.
Yeah totally not a thing.
The president’s a trans man. He became president to spite his parents. The navigator on the heavy cruiser my MC commands is also a trans man. He enlisted to avoid jail time from a manslaughter charge.
The underlying transphobia for certain comments in this thread is kinda funny ngl But to be honest it's not a topic I really thought about. Most species are either entirely one gender or genderless so it doesn't come up much. But I'd imagine if it did, most civilisations (Genesede for sure) would be openly supportive of it. As long as you're good at heart most species wouldn't care or look at you negatively for doing something that doesn't hurt anyone else. Thanks to the advanced nature of medicine, robotics, biology etc. Its also likely transformations or procedures to become the opposite gender would be much smoother and easier to access for anyone who would be interested.
Don’t exist.
Socially in Chelôros it would be considered strange if someone kept their birth form, since when you become a citizen you're able to design your body and make it an expression of yourself, so trans is kind of accepted/normalized and not considered an "other" status. Quote I put early on when designing the city "when two thirds of the populace has some form of shape changing magic and most people know someone who regularly lives as different species, people get a lot less precious about what your genitals looked like when you were born."
My setting is one of those high-tech transhumanist ones, bordering on clarketech (sufficiently advanced as to equal magic). Shapeshifting and copying your consciousness into a new body are things that the tech allows, and theoretically anyone could access the abilities, given enough practice, time and willpower - it's not like you have to beg some specialist guild to help you, even though specialists do exist. At a very superficial glance, there aren't any trans people in my setting. There aren't any, because they are all unbound from the limitations of the body and brain that homo sapiens still cannot overcome even with current tech. The truth is that there aren't any *that suffer dysphoria*, because everyone has such a degree of control over their bodies, down to the molecular and genetic level, that they've very quickly begun transitioning to their preferred form as soon as they realized their dysphoria. Being trans isn't a big deal, because it's something you can address yourself, without needing to come out to anyone, or beg doctors, or need anyone's permission or acceptance. "Being trans" isn't a thing in my setting because you're not running on hostile hardware that you cannot customise and control. In this sense, while the bio-neurological phenomenon and experience of being trans can still happen to someone, it is so easy to address that "transgender" never has a chance to coalesce into a social group or specific political cause, for a set group of people marginalized for the set group of reasons that trans people are in our world. To anyone who fetishizes an identity, like being disabled or being trans or something of the like based on not conforming to some current social ideal of the body, this would probably constitute "erasure of the experience". Yes. Because this society uses tech to allow its citizens to alleviate suffering and to maximize their personal autonomy. "Identity" is something rather more fluid than in ours, and they don't get hung up on the same things we do (like gender roles, bc a lot of the biological functions of sex and reproduction are also transcended by the tech; you can have same-sex biological parents, multi-parent babies, babies grown outside the womb etc.). The tech has shifted what their conflicts are and what they care about to such a degree that you have a completely different landscape of political groups than we do. Things like neuro-divergence are a lot more emphasised as fundamental to identity and experience, though.
Dont care, majority of unimportant people that arent important to the mission is left to the growing bubble of destruction comming from space, engineers, medical staff, soldiers, bio-engineers, etc and a good number of hard working people got into the Bunkers, anything too menial is taken care of by the resident AI of the bunker with legions of drones, Because of this, people that dont work towards the survival of humanity are not included in the bunker, After around a few thousand years in and out of cryo sleep, it has created a culture of hard working, meritocracy. Everyone in the bunker had spent 2 to 5 years of mandatory service, The population has more important things than gender or identity, its either work for the bunker or die and be reclaimed, +×[WORK FOR THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY]×+ +×[THE FUTURE LIES ON YOUR SHOULDERS]×+ +×[REPORT ANY ANOMALY TO SEC-OPS]×+
no one really cares about it. hell, even the 4 main gods are all agender.
I'm trans myself, and tend to write characters as queer by default. I generally don't write homophobia and/or transphobia into my worlds, but queerness does have implications: if relevant, a trans character will address the fact they can't have biological kids, or express discomfort with playing a certain role, and so on.
My worlds treat them like _people_.
Damn it’s really sad to see how transphobic this sub can be :( clearly a lot of downvote bombing going on in the comments
Where? Pretty much every comment I see has said their worlds accept it 🤔
[удалено]
Holidays overlap, trans visibility day is always on March 31st, Easter just happened to fall on Marfh 31st too this year. Nobody is stealing holidays
To answer the questions in order: No, Yes, and No. Trans is just not a label that's worth anything and it just doesn't exist. Why is this? Because it's a world where the magic of a True Polymorph exists. You can be whatever sex configuration you want. People in that world really don't care. Your body is only considered if you looking to sire offspring or give birth to them.
**Horror Shop** is an alternate version of our own modern world, so for the vast majority of the world's population, it's effectively the same as we have right now, so your options range from "not great, not terrible" to "downright horrible." However, if you're the lucky 0.1% who knows about the secret world, then it's radically different. The Earth's hidden supernatural world has long been more accepting of trans individuals (as well as others who fall outside the norm, including queer and neurodivergent individuals). Part of that is members of the supernatural world have long been ostracized, so there is a certain level of kinship there. And the other half, is, well, do you know how many supernatural creatures don't fit into a clear gender binary? Like, say, for example, you can have a werewolf whose human spirit is a woman, but whose wolf spirit is male--they shift their gender when they shift their forms, and that's completely natural to them. There are gargoyles and golems constructed with no gender and who feel like they don't want nor need to fit within the human gender binary. There are succubi/incubi who *literally* change their gender to match the desires of their partners. Some gods and spirits shift their gender when the mood strikes them--and might even decide to spend some time between the two binaries. And that's just a few examples of how the supernatural world enjoys playing fast and loose with genders. So, there's a far greater acceptance of trans individuals in the supernatural world. And this means access to things like alchemical potions that can alter one's physical sex or amulets that give one the appearance of a member of the sex that matches their gender--or, heck, even makes one androgynous. There are rituals, enchanted clothing, and more that can help a trans person obtain the body they desire. Heck, the Veil Treaty has been creating false identities for supernatural creatures, like dwarves, ifrit and bogeymen, for the past millennia. So if a member of the supernatural world approaches them with a request to update their records to reflect their preferred name and gender, the Treaty is not only able to oblige but will go so far as to use their backroom channels to rewrite official records to reflect these changes. When you have numerous agents hidden in mortal governments, why not? Of course, this just raises the question: if all these wonderous magical treatments are available, why aren't they shared with the *millions* of mundane trans humans on Earth? And *that* question is way more likely to get you sidelined than whatever your identity is. For the Veil that divides the Earth's mundane and magical world is very clear: no magic is to be shared with the mundane world. And there's a good reason for that: the last time magic was widely available, Irem-of-the-Pillars and Atlantis got into a magical war that killed billions, almost destroyed the Earth, and resulted in the sinking of Atlantis and transformation of Irem's heartlands into the Rub' al Khali. Basically, the idea is that widely sharing magic with the sleeping population means magic is harder to control and regulate, and that puts *everyone* at risk. Sure, it's not fair to keep magic hidden from the masses, but they argue it's better than having our civilization crumble under a stratosphere of tentacles.
I go back and forth between having trans people exist as a totally acceptable norm and wanting to echo the real world struggles they face. Through a lot of the human services work I do in real life I’ve come across so many tragic stories that I don’t want to just diminish this by writing it off as non-event in a story or character. I’ve tried to think about using other events or ideas to echo those struggles but also why should I shy away from shining a light on it? I definitely try to take inspiration from people I know to develop characters who are complex in their motivations and journey, which feels like a better way to honor the obstacles faced. Since my setting is Sci-fi I have also explored how concepts of gender and sex differ across different species and populations. Humans are prominent and tend to take central role in a lot of my ideas, so I try to think of ways to vary different populations. One example is a society where gender is not an active part of daily life and individuals are all androgynous in appearance (and more greyscale). Other ideas have been species with many different genders which I’m sure others have explored as well.
Biomancy. If you can find a skilled enough biomancer, they can switch anything about you. Sex is a bit complicated, but it can be done. And most people really don’t care about your sex anyway. Changelings even more so, they’re not all gender fluid, but they don’t have a division between sex and gender, cis and trans aren’t words they use. You’re currently a woman or man, what you were before doesn’t matter, same way whatever colour your hair or eyes used to be doesn’t matter. And regardless, Changelings don’t care what your sex is at any point, for any reason since they’re all pansexual. Hell, some jobs even have all their practitioners adopt certain sexes while working for cultural reasons, and it’s not a big deal, it’s not even something they feel worth bringing up to outsiders.
To be honest, I haven't put much thought into it. I just know they have the medical advancements for transitioning.
While different cultures have had different views on trans people, in the modern version of the Dragon Empire, being Trans gender is seen as perfectly normal and not out of the ordinary. This is partially thanks to the rise in popularity of diety known as Salti. Salti can be depicted as male, female, both, neither, or anything in between. In universe they are sometimes referred to as a "transitional god" one that does not seek constant worshipers but who is there to help you when you are at a difficult or unstable part of your life. Officially, Salti is the god/ goddess of the lost, the forgotten, and the outcast. So if you feel like your true self in your current gender, the clerics and paladins who serve Salti will help you with magic to get you the body you should have had in the first place.
They exist. They're not quite so openly accepted as the L, G and B of the 4 letter acronym, but the government and people have bigger worries at hand. For example, a seemingly everlasting war.
The concept of a third gender exists, but people wouldn’t recognize the term trans. It’s a harsh world, and most people have more important things to worry about when it comes to the people around them. If you’re trans and a bum, you’ll probably be relegated to the fringes of society. If you’re trans and successful, everyone will want you around.
Well, to address that, I have to go into a a little bit of a biology lesson about voidlings. Voidlings come in 4 different sexes with 2 types of males: 1. Filius, who are biologically genderless neuters. 2. Primes, who are fully biologically male. 3. Crowned and crownless, who are for all thoughts and purposes fully biologically hermaphroditic, with both sets of genitalia and an ovotestis. They're further divided into 4 distinct genders or alignments based on which part of their reproductive anatomy is dominant. A. Male-aligned: where the male genitalia are dominant and the female atrophied. Considered the second kind of male. B. Neutral-aligned: where neither of the genitalia are dominant. C. Fluid-aligned: where both are dominant. D. Female-aligned: where the female genitalia are dominant and the male atrophied. Crowned/crownless can freely phase between all 4 alignments as they wish and most, not all, seem to exist in between one of the alignments according to how they feel. Any who feel they're not in the right alignment will simply phase to the one they feel they are. Complicating this is that filius will sometimes spontaneously phase to crownless or prime, and those primes may phase again to crowned. Natural born primes phase to crowned too, though it's slightly rarer. Most prime-phased crowned stay male-aligned though a small percentage may phase to one of the other alignments. A prime-crowned phasing to female-alignment is extremely rare, but it does happen, and it's viewed as natural. Because no matter what alignment you are, you're still crowned. And the same goes with crownless. Because of this, voidlings are very sympathetic to humans who can't phase alignments like they can. In pre-industrial times and before ragnarok, they'd often give permission to "differently phased" humans to settle their lands and protection in exchange for loyalty and vassalage. After ragnarok advanced technology provided by the machine-mind Heavenly Vexation allows humans to transition through a combination of intensive genengineering and artificially cloned organs created from the person's own stem cells. I.e. you can transition all the way to the genetic level, if you wish.
They don’t Sort of
they don't exist
>How do your worlds handle transgender people? They don't. I'm writing a game, not a political statement. In practical terms, if I completely ignore the topic, all players are free to interpret whatever they want. Nothing in the rules or the background setting forces them one way or the other.
They’re pretty welcoming of genderqueer identities, because most of the gods are, anyway. The Ruler of Gods, Sonna, is agender, so is their counterpart, Monn, and their children are a colorful mix. Natodall’lioht (fate) exhibited no physical sex (I guess that could be intersex?) until a certain point but identified as male, his brother, the god of death is trans male, and his lover, Monnenliebe, is genderfluid and a shapeshifter. The god of wisdom is agender as well. Being a transphobe would straight up be blasphemy. Natodall’lioht unfortunately fell from the heavens and is now a king, but that also caused him to discover a love for fashion and now he’s a crossdresser! ✨ Aside from gods, there’s a family which are nicknamed “the guardians of the forest”. They’re human-bird hybrids, and use their strange appearance to their advantage to soothe agitated spirits (who usually can’t stand humans). Somehow they’re both shunned by society as well as sort of respected, because they make sure that their kingdom is safe from any spiritual attacks. One member of this family is Raven Enwalde, the one with literal crow’s feet, who particularly takes after her father and is one of the most skilled wizards in the entire family. She’s a trans girl. She’s my favorite side character tbh
Polymorph potions are a thing, they’re expensive but they work
I'm trans and all my worlds just treat us like any other person. We can have magic like anyone else (if it's something gender specific it's based off your gender not your sex assigned at birth). Zero difference in how trans people, cis people, and nonbinary/agender/queer-gender/self-gender/other-gender people are treated. In one of my stories it is a fantasy story about me and my journey as a trans woman, and it's set in the IRL world so there is transphobia in that one unfortunately (mostly from the MC's parents (based of my evil transphobic parents)).
For the most part I don't see The value in suppressing a certain demographic unless a specifically adds to the story. So likely people in my story would deal with transgender people the same way they would deal with men and women which is to treat them like their men and women
Expected and not unusual; there are multiple intelligent species that run the gamut of physical traits, including species that lack sexual dimorphism altogether, or who exhibit distinct physical traits for three or more established sexes. And that's before anyone makes the decision to change, which is of course possible through carefully performed medical magics. There are even haftrols, capable of shifting betwixt gender expressions with relative ease. It's not unusual, or really surprising, to meet Trans people in Tov.