Hi! I have this character that is basically a fire flame turned human by magic. In the first draft I planned to make them cis women ,but after some thinking, I realized i could do so much more with this concept. Not being born human they would have no concept of gender and sex. Thy could question the definition of gender, question their given one and maybe deicide on identifying non-binary or agender. Which brings me to my questions. Wouldn't making not fully human character not cis be harmfu
I’m going to separate this into sections because it’s easier to answer.
1. Human concepts of gender/sex vs alien
2. A trans character being used to add perspective
3. Nonhuman not cis characters and the appropriateness of that
And here’s what I will talk about on this.
1. Gender/sex is not necessarily a human-only thing. Gender isn’t the same anywhere either. Gender in humans isn’t some kind of universal truth, even within one culture, even within one neighbourhood or family. And there are lots of humans that already are talking on these things and taking leadership in activism surrounding. My concern is dehumanizing that activism. Or assuming that perspective on the matter requires someone to be wholly removed from it, and engaging with it for the first time to get that.
In general also, when it comes to characters interacting with unfamiliar cultures, you should do some research on things like cultural relativity, diaspora, migration and the psychology of moving and culture shock. There’s also the danger of making aliens seem too much like human cultural groups that have been traditionally dehumanized. ... Like in Captain Marvel, when the hongi was used by one of the alien groups. Mind you, I haven’t seen any Māori addressing this. I don’t know if it was okay. But I do imagine that someone seeing the hongi for the first time in that context, maybe might mean they misinterpret what its origins are, especially seeing as it was not at all acknowledged within the movie as what it was. (It strikes me as appropriation. But I am not Māori, so please do not take my word for this like it’s gospel.)
2. It strikes me that you are using a trans character to add layers to the plot. This can be okay, but I wouldn’t do it unless you can get a sensitivity reader/editor who is trans to go through it with you. Your character needs to be a character first and foremost, and it needs to be acknowledged that this character’s transness in no way takes away from that, but is part of that whole-person-ness. This will be more difficult for you to understand and balance properly if you’re not trans. And it is important to do this properly.
3. I think we’ve covered this part pretty well before via our aliens tag and our nonhuman characters tag. The gist for you is that you need to ensure there is human representation of these identities, just as prominent or more prominent, ideally.
Something else that’s kind of a red flag here for me is that you’re painting it as though trans/nonbinary identity is something people “decide” (your word) to be, like it’s something informed and enlightened and something we choose. That has a lot of problems, and I think most of them can be figured out just by my framing it that way.
A lot of non-nonbinary people seem to think that our identities are some kind of preaching. Like it’s an enlightened thing and that we are trying to seem special. This is extremely harmful and just not the truth. It’s only as ‘enlightened’ as anybody’s self-recognition is.