#questioning characters

Hello and happy Wednesday! This week, we’re centering the Q, which often stands for both Queer and Questioning. Today’s books feature teens who are still figuring their identities out or who don’t feel like they need a specific label for themselves. Check below the cut for full descriptions of Odd One Out by Nic Stone, Ship It by Britta Lundin, and This is Kind of an Epic Love Story by Kacen Callender. Happy reading!

For transparency’s sake, I bounced this one off my partner, who is a trans woman. (I am transmisogyny-exempt.)

This is a hard one and there’s not an easy answer, really. Probably the best option would be just to avoid gendered pronouns in the narration (dialogue is fine - use whatever pronouns in dialogue that match the socially expected ones) at all, until finding the right ones. That would be really difficult because it means rearranging sentences and trying to convey meaning in the way you want to, despite rearranging sentences around minding the pronouns.

It also kind of skirts a line because using ‘they’ is not all too different from avoiding gendered pronouns altogether. But there isn’t much better you can do, honestly. And there’s a bit of a difference between de-gendering and pronouns for use while questioning, or to refer to a past self that may have identified differently. I always use my current name and pronouns in reference to my past self even though I have experienced fluidity in those things, because I was still the me I am now, just a bit differently. (I think of past identities I’ve had as part of the journey to the current me.) I also don’t count people using different pronouns I did prefer in the past as misgendering, because those were my right pronouns then. They just aren’t now, and thus I use the pronouns that reflect the me that is currently here. If that makes sense.

Another thing I think you could probably do with regards to easing into finding the right pronouns is depicting the trans character in some way have some kind of subtle (or not subtle) change in feeling when the wrong pronouns are used, or when the right pronouns are used. Maybe have a character call your protagonist she/her accidentally and your protagonist have some kind of inner dialogue about that, or some kind of inner feeling that is written about.

All in all a lot of the point of not misgendering fictional characters in text is because of the way it sets a standard for cis readers, and the sense of confidence and trust trans readers have in certain authors over others.

But all that is just assuming your character feels she/her were the right pronouns all along, and the others are wrong.

If your character felt a sense of fluidity, and it is clear, to the reader, that that’s what is going on, or that your character prefers a certain set of pronouns at a certain point in time, that should be a-ok. 

But think about reviewers, and how you want them to gender your character. Make sure it’s clear to readers, fans, reviewers, how to gender your character, and whether gendering your protagonist correctly could qualify as spoilers. Ideally, the protagonist being gendered correctly should not constitute spoilers, because otherwise is kind of edging into some less-ok territory. (Like potentially using the gender reveal thing as shock value.) 

It might be a good idea to have it written in the synopsis or preview some kind of hint or explicit statement that helps the reader know how to gender the character when they talk about your character.

    Susan’s personal belongings fit into a single suitcase. She never wanted much in life. Mostly from her upbringing when they had little. But with a bookshop at her disposal, she never needed much else.

    Anthony walked into the bookstore. “My father has dispatched some men to crate up the books. They will be here within the hour. They left right after me.”

    Susan watched Anthony a moment, not fully comprehending. She nodded. “Will we wait for them?”

    “Do you want to?” Anthony squeezed her shoulders and then slid his hands down to thread their fingers together. “A lot is changing for the pair of us. We needn’t rush any of it.”

    “This was my life, Anthony.” Susan removed her hands from his. “All those years spent playing among these books.” She turned in a slow circle. “I had my first kiss with a boy just here.” She stopped in the middle of the room. “And my first kiss with a girl there.” She pointed to the back of the room. She walked to the front door and smiled. “And I remember the first day you stepped through this door. You took a deep breath in and said that it smelled like home.”

If it’s clearly mentioned what she is actually there for, and that is the focus of her actual care there, I don’t think it’s a big concern, honestly.

I would say it is not enough to imply someone is questioning. But I mean that in a way outside of even this context. I don’t think that any implications are enough to represent this. Implying is just not really enough to make it representation. Representation is more about making people from said group, able to connect themselves to the characters. A set of pronouns can help as a starting point, or seeing a few mentions of dysphoria might help depending on those scenes and the angle they come from. But ultimately, in my opinion anyway, leaving it entirely to implications (for the majority of it) ends up making it feel like queerbaiting, even if it is not, because the resolution is canonical about who your character is.

Questioning can be something that people do passively or put on the back of their mind, for sure. But it’s a process that is done consciously. People don’t really question accidentally- they show ‘signs’ accidentally, maybe. But questioning involves asking yourself questions. It involves exploring the what-ifs, even if just mentally, and from a narrator character, it would make sense to have your character exploring this, if you do actually intend to represent them as questioning, rather than in egg mode. 

A gender questioning character will probably be mentally seeing how different identities fit, pronouns, figuring out what they feel is their actual taste in aesthetics rather than what they’ve been trained, things like that. When I was questioning, I’d take a bunch of different selfies trying to move my hair around into shapes that I thought looked like haircuts I wasn’t ready to have yet. I had a digital diary/journal type of thing where I would sign my name after entries, and it’d be different from time to time. I’d wear things I owned in ways that weren’t curated in order to intentionally look like how others expected and wanted me to be.

This post might help with some things that happen with closeted folks, as a lot of those things can be translatable to questioning folks. (Things like trying on different clothes or whatever when alone are translatable, it’s just some motivations are different.)

I’d say though, if you’re looking to depict a character in egg mode, that’s totally fine. Implications for egg mode, and sprinkling in “signs” and whatnot are generally enough for that.