Quote Originally Posted by Lizwriter View Post
Hi folks - I am a straight, married female writer and am writing a character who is male CD, hetero and single about 33yrs. British, and 'happy' on the surface, but complex underneath...and partly as a consequence of his cross dressing/gender identity, is an acutely intuitive thinker 'out of the box' - hence making him a great detective. I've been online trying to research for my character, but it seems to me, after trawling the www, that CD is the poor cousin of other transgender situations. I really want to find out what makes my character tick; what might be at the root of his CD, and what it says about him. Of course I realise there won't be one single answer to this, but I don't want to just make up what a straight woman might perceive as a 'reason' or set of reasons for CD behaviours and - I hesitate to say 'compulsions', and I'd really be honoured if some of you might answer some direct questions. My questions are all totally out of respect and in pursuit of understanding and empathising with my character, who I do not want to be accused of being a stereotype. Would this be okay? Am I on the right forum? I did have a look at the writers' forum, but it seemed more for creatives rather than research. I am British and UK based, btw - though it seems most of your are from the US. But this site does seem the most CD friendly that I've found, as opposed to cross dressing as a step on the way to gender reassignment. Any advice would be very much appreciated, so... may I ask some quesions? Liz
So, if you're not familiar with it, this will take a while for you to really dig into. You really need to live in the skin of the character. It's unclear what you're suggesting in terms of the viewpoint of your piece, but given the depth of familiarity you should expect of yourself, it might be wise to not have that be the viewpoint character. Play Ishmael to his Ahab. That occludes his internal workings. There's a risk of cliche here, though -- the British detective duo and so on.

This is a really tricky business. Take "Kiss of the Spider Woman," which is a great experimental novel. Molina is an interesting character, and clearly Puig had some insight as he understands what it means to be transgender, even though in terms of terminology Molina is only defined as gay. And yet the book suffers from its age. It was forward thinking for its time, but really the footnotes need to be skipped now.

Really, if you hang around this forum, you'll see there's immense differences. In some sense, you can make this character your own if you wish. Still, be careful. There's a risk of saying that someone is intuitive because of this other factor. At the same time, however, many people use all sorts of things to take them out of their normal mindset and see problems through a different lens (drugs, crossdressing, travel, music, etc.).

I'm not saying you have a bad idea, for sure! Take your time and immerse yourself, but be a bit skeptical of what people say here. I'm not criticizing anyone, just saying that forum posts, while interesting, often simplify issues (as some people in this thread essentially point out). Ultimately, ask yourself if you can dream yourself into this character. Barbara Eisenberg once said that none of her stories are finished until they have the true quality of a dream, and that level of trust needs to be there. If not, maybe you need distance. Or maybe it should be a crossdressing woman instead. There are examples of that as well already, but it might shake up some tropes.