Welcome back to The Messy Middle, where we focus on crafting complex characters and building dynamic worlds that connect with readers from marginalized communities.
Out of the numerous current events that have demanded our attention (and response) lately, I could not have predicted the surge of 490 proposals for anti-trans legislation that was introduced in 47 U.S. states this year. Instead of focusing on the numerous complex challenges that our country continues to face, our leaders have waged a one-sided war against trans people, in the name of “protecting” society from drag shows, among other fictional concerns.
Well, isn’t that just special?
The “discourse” in defense of these bills highlights how willfully ignorant society remains about transgender identity (people who do not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth) and the harmful impact of misrepresenting trans communities in the media.
In a previous post, It’s Messy in the Middle: Rethinking Transgender Narratives, we reflected on the problematic publishing trend of cisgender (people who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth) authors profiting by writing transgender narratives. Thus, making trans characters so trendy that I wouldn’t be surprised if Marvel hasn’t already optioned a YA or fantasy series with a trans vampire witch zombie that joins the Avengers. I’m joking…I hope.
However, after news anchors started referring to a singular act of tragic gun violence committed by a trans person as “trans terrorism,” followed by the rising panic over a supposed “Trans Day of Vengeance,” I felt a responsibility to refocus on deconstructing trans stereotypes in fiction.
We will do this by examining the specific pitfalls of the young adult (YA) novel Luna. Luna offers an excellent “case study” for understanding the potential impact of misrepresentation of trans identity. To be clear, I do not intend this to be an attack on the author; I am, however, offering a critical reflection on the novel.
Luna was published in 2004 by cisgender author Julia Ann Peters and is considered one of the first YA novels to center on transgender identity. Luna was quickly championed as a groundbreaking insight into trans culture and was eventually nominated for over 15 literary awards and honors. It is still one of the most highly recommended novels for understanding transgender identity, which makes my eye twitch.
However, I would argue that Peters’s portrayals in Luna provide a classic example of misrepresenting trans culture because she ultimately relies on harmful stereotypes that reinforce transphobia and transmisogyny.
Snarky Summary (With Spoilers)
Luna tells the story of a 16-year-old cisgender girl named Regan and her struggle to accept her older trans sister Luna. Unlike Regan, Luna is super popular at school and inexplicably independently wealthy. Luna, who was assigned male at birth and named Liam, presents as Liam during the day to please her family and community. At night, Luna can be herself (hyper-feminine), by hoarding wigs, makeup, purses, nail polish, etc. All in an effort to perfect what can only be described as a 70’s flight attendant chic aesthetic (despite the story seeming to take place in the early aughts).
Yes, Luna checks all the boxes for contemporary standards of YA fiction. Luna is a coming-of-age story that features a teenage protagonist that experiences conflict and complex emotions in her journey of overcoming a crisis.
Consequently, selecting Regan as the protagonist of the story and Luna as a plot device that Regan must overcome inherently sends the novel down the wrong path before it starts and continues with a collection of missteps made in developing the characters, plotline, and world building.
Entering through the Basement
A commonly recommended approach to inclusive writing and character development is to “enter through the side door” by adding supporting characters with marginalized identities. This can be a particularly useful way to represent marginalized identities, especially if the author does not have a direct experience with the identity that they are writing about.
However, applying this framework to Luna created multiple problems for the novel. By centering on a cisgender main character in a story that seeks to guide and inform readers about trans identity, Luna felt like muddling through the basement of trans culture.
Following Regan as our only guide for understanding trans identity not only disconnects the readers from Luna but also Luna from her own story. The reader connects, sympathizes, and roots for Regan in a way that is not possible with Luna because Luna seems to be a background character. The story would have been more powerful if the reader was also guided by Luna’s direct experiences, feelings, and opinions. If the aim of the story is to explore trans identity, then the main characters should be trans.
Additionally, placing Regan as the sole protagonist positioned her as the “expert” on trans culture, which was problematic because she held unchecked transphobic and transmisogynistic views. Regan is also a problematic expert because she is never challenged to explore her own cisgender identity, gender expression, or cis privilege. It ultimately led to the undesired effect of casting Luna as “abnormal” and Regan as “normal.”
“Entering through the side door” can be an effective way to include marginalized or diverse character experiences when characters are given a voice to narrate their own experiences and characters with majority identities are able to explore privilege and inequality.
It is also important that marginalized characters are developed beyond their marginalized identity and that their identity is not used as the inciting incident for the story.
An Unfortunate Inciting Incident
An inciting incident is an important storytelling element that is utilized in all writing genres. Most stories are crafted to build up to a specific incident or the aftermath and impact of that incident.
In Luna, the novel is structured around the aftermath of the family suffering from an unknown incident and each chapter moves the reader closer to understanding the root of the family’s pain. This is presented through a series of flashbacks until the last third of the book when the reader is given the complete picture, in which Regan dramatically recovers a traumatic memory of Luna’s genital self-harm. Thus, Luna’s transness becomes the bomb that detonates and destroys Regan’s family.
Again, a book that seeks to offer support to transgender youth and education to cisgender youth should not portray trans identity as an inciting incident that results in the breakdown of a family. This is especially true, considering the unnecessary and punishing ways that the family languishes in the aftermath of the incident.
After the incident, Regan’s mother physically and emotionally abandons the family, by escaping into her work and ignoring her husband’s hatred for Liam. Because the father was not around when the incident happened with little Liam, he decides that his child’s feminine gender expression must mean that Liam is gay. In response, he sets out to try and “fix it” through intimidation, emotional neglect, and abuse.
Surprisingly, Regan is arguably the biggest victim of Luna’s transness and seems to suffer through life as a hostage of her sister’s secret trans identity. For example, Regan can’t sleep at night because Luna demands that she stay awake to judge her outfits. This causes Regan to be too tired to practice good hygiene or keep up with her homework. Regan has no friends because she excommunicated herself from her social circle after Luna was teased for wearing a dress to a grade school birthday party. In fact, Regan couldn’t even go on a date with her crush because of her fears about having a trans sister.
All the agony and fear that the family experiences stands in stark contrast to Luna’s life because she mostly enjoys an unburdened and carefree existence. In fact, Luna is portrayed as having a “perfect life.” She is super popular at school, dates the prettiest girl, and is adored by her teachers for her intellect. She also has tons of money to buy whatever she wants, including her own car or airfare because she runs her own computer repair business.
In isolation, these descriptions may seem like positive representations of Luna’s character. However, since they are narrated through the lens of Regan’s suffering and jealousy, Luna comes off as a self-centered character, which highlights the author’s poor character development of Luna and her tendency to info dump transgender theories throughout the story.
Info Dumping and Character Development
“Info dumping” refers to an ineffective method of storytelling that involves cramming large amounts of exposition into a story. While the information can be pertinent to the story, “info dumps” are often jarring for readers, as they can remove the reader from the story, by forcing them to listen to what feels like a detailed book report. Info dumping can sometimes be a sign of poor character development or world building, which seems to be the case with Luna.
Surprisingly, we learn about trans identity from Regan in at least three instances of her info-dumping gender terminology. This method greatly interrupts the flow of the story because it is not believable that a teenage girl would suddenly ruminate on the etymology of gender theories. It would seem reasonable to assume that Luna, the only trans character, would be guiding readers in understanding trans identity. Furthermore, Regan’s impressive gender vocabulary did not often translate into how she thought about and treated her sister, as she essentially seemed to be trying to force her sister to stay in the closet.
Ultimately, to get through this book, I decided to view Regan as having intrusive thoughts about gender vocabulary or that she was sometimes possessed by a gender studies professor. Because the majority of these info dumps are delivered in exposition reflections from Regan, the reader could miss the opportunity to connect with the story as they are suddenly flooded with gender terms.
It would have been more effective to break those terms and concepts into actionable dialogue or experiences that connected with both characters. I would argue that it’s less important for readers to walk away with an exhaustive list of gender vocabulary and more about connecting with the humanity of a character.
Either way, Regan’s info dumping underscores Luna’s lack of character development and dialogue in the novel, which confined Luna to the role of a stereotypical trans girl; an empty two-dimensional puppet used to move the plot along. Instead, readers need to be able to connect with Luna as a whole person, with fears, desires, and motivations beyond being trans.
Luna does not have a lot of dialogue, but, when she does speak, it is often related to her selfish, shallow, and vain obsession with her appearance and passing (being accepted and recognized as a girl in social situations). Luna’s focus on passing often comes at a great cost to Regan and at times places them both in danger. These scenes are particularly cringey because the reader is guided by Regan’s transphobia and discomfort.
Stereotypes about transgender people, particularly casting trans women as hyper-feminine, vain, and obsessive, have a long-standing and harmful history in the media. These misrepresentations are often the fuel for transphobic legislation and violence against trans women.
I cannot unpack the entire history of transgender stereotypes here, but I highly recommend watching the 2020 Netflix documentary Disclosure by Sam Feder, Amy Scholder, and Laverne Cox to better understand the history and impact of transgender stereotypes used in the media.
We Can Do Better
Hopefully, examining the specific pitfalls in Luna has provided a better understanding of what is at stake when we misrepresent a marginalized community. I hope this critical analysis did not scare you away from inclusive writing. It is possible to provide equitable and nuanced representations of marginalized communities when we are intentional with character development, world building, and plot.
There are also limitless resources available to guide our understanding of transgender identity. I am hesitant to provide an official list of these resources for understanding transgender identity for many reasons. For one thing, understanding marginalized communities’ experiences with systematic inequality and misrepresentation is less about memorizing terms and historical facts and more about understanding the humanity and resilience of each group.
We can gain that by surrounding ourselves with the stories and experiences of transgender people. Depending on how you prefer to learn and connect with others, I would start by reading trans memoirs and following trans people on social media and, because I am an academic to my core, I would also recommend reading more about theories on the social construction of gender.
Most importantly, we must elevate and support the work of trans authors and creators. Lastly, we need to hold each other accountable for appropriation and poor representation of marginalized communities, especially when the work is exploitative, inaccurate, or full of harmful stereotypes.
Please see my recommended list of memoirs and authors below.
Recommended Resources
Memoirs
- She’s Not There: A Life In Two Genders by Jennifer Finney Boylan
- Nina Here Nor There: My Journey Beyond Gender by Nick Kriege
- Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family by Amy Ellis Nutt
- Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More by Janet Mock
- Unprotected by Billy Porter
Academic and Social Science
- Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us by Kate Bornstein
- Undoing Gender by Judith Butler
- Beyond The Binary: Thinking About Sex and Gender by Shannon Dea
- Trans* In College Z. Nicolazzo
- Whipping Girl by Julia Serano
- Transgender History by Susan Stryker
- Beyond The Gender Binary Alok Vaid-Menon
Colice Sanders is a blogger and diversity, equity, and inclusion facilitator. Colice writes nonfiction, poetry, and memoir. Her blog, A Reason to Rise, chronicles her journey of radical self-acceptance through the lens of childhood trauma.
