Rescued from a short twitter thread in 2021
This is the post (obscured) that started me off.
From a tumblr post asking about if a trans protagonist was coming
While I never say “never,” the likelihood of a transgendered lead character is so slim as to be invisible.Here is why. I support myself with my writing; I do not have the luxury of writing books for special-interest audiences. In my limited experience, so much of a transgendered person’s life and thought is tied up in their gender difficulties, the ordinary reader would swiftly become bored with such a character; even Vanyel’s whinging grates on some peoples’ nerves. A wider audience wants to see a character with problems that are solvable; in a modern or sf context, a transgendered person could solve the situation with surgery, genetic modification, body-swap, or whatever. Those options are not available to a fantasy author.[a tumblr user that I can ID, but choose not to because they already got dog-piled for this daft take in 2021, and perhaps amended some of their notions.]
I call bullshit.
I write a universe with Healing; it’s working towards effective Mind Healing from both the religious and secular directions.
And their Healing tech has recently taken several giant leaps forward because they use it like technology not “Thoughts & Prayers”.
And because their universe does have a wide range of telepathy and telekinetics, at least some of the telepaths and intuitives are able to understand other people at the level of memory and emotion, so the idea that it’s just too hard to empathize is lazy.
Which is not to say they don’t have lazy people — of COURSE they do. And malicious ones. And ones who have convinced themselves that doing cruelty is necessary to be a good citizen, or to be kind, or faithful to their religion. And just general jackwagons.
But when between 10% and 30% of the population live with other people’s feelings being shoved up their nose all the fucking time?
They develop better fucking social norms when it comes to supporting each other.
They have to.
It’s self defense.
If you’re a telepath, you want a better world because you want to be out living in it, not confined to an island in the middle of an ocean.
Telepaths want an iron-clad social safety net because when they get too tired or sick or drunk or the telepathic equivalent of the Yips/Bendies/Twisties on their defenses, they do not want to be surrounded by hunger and suffering.
It hurts too much.
And a society that has spent even 100 years with a high level of telepathy/telekinetics/impaths in the community is a society that has learned that their telepaths are not only valuable, but vulnerable.
That a telepath under assault is a danger to themselves and others.
If the society hasn’t learned that, the society is evil, and based in cruelty, and doomed, and the sooner it falls, the better.
So yeah, a society of telepaths will be highly aware that brains and outward bodies don’t always match. And that it’s real.
That same society, with any level of Healing, is well aware of intersexuality, and of the wide variations in “normal” binary, from PCOS to low testosterone.
More importantly, their Healers will be able to perceive the variations, and act on them.
The ethics of manipulation of the variations will get sticky as hell, because people who can EXPERIENCE other people’s pain won’t want to cause more, but they’re also going to be a lot better at medical and social consent.
If they’re a good society.
And they will be a society that supports all genders and orientations, because a society WITH wide support is a society that hurts LESS.
And if the telepaths have even a scrap of power, they’re going to work incredibly hard to ameliorate all pain… or else.
Because telepaths are also weapons.
They are valuable, and they are vulnerable, and they will wield their power to protect themselves.
If they’re going to be experiencing their society’s pain ANYWAY, well… a strike of the telepaths and their telekinetic accomplices could bring that society down.
Just saying.
In book V of Rebellion (Revolution & Redemption), I briefly mentioned one character who will be carrying a portion of this plot — the noble who told his parents he was a boy; his parents petitioned for his recognition.
Elan Destriari is on-stage in the current series and a major figure for book II and III of the Hellions.
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