Posts tagged It's actually such a beautiful story

There is an incredibly well-written fanfiction called I Always Wanted a Brother, by Jay-Ell-Gee, that recounts and explores the life of Adam and Drew Torres before and during Degrassi from Drew’s point of view. In the story Drew refers to and thinks of Adam before he came out of the closet as “Gracie”, and “she”. The author does an excellent job of showing us the way Drew views his family situation and his emotional struggle to accept Adam, but I’ve found that the problem arises in the comments and attitudes of the readers.

You are not, outside of quotations, ever supposed to refer to a transperson by the assigned-at-birth gender that was forced on them when talking about their past. Adam was never Gracie. There is no such thing or person as Gracie, you don’t ever get to refer to Adam from before he came out as “Gracie” or “she”. He didn’t used to be a girl and then became a boy. The only difference between Adam before he started transitioning and after is thatother people knew he was a boy.He was a boy when he was wearing a dress, he was a boy when he was a child. He wasn’t “Gracie”, that’s what people called him because they didn’t know.

People didn’t use to know the Earth was round, but after we found out the truth, no one ever says “Well back when the Earth was round”- NO, we say “Back when people THOUGHT the Earth was round”. The Earth wasn’t flat up until the point people figured out the truth. Adam was still Adam before everybody was clued in.

He didn’t used to be Gracie, he’s always been Adam.

There is no reason to call him “she” unless you specifically quoting something someone said from his childhood, such as

Drew: When we were little mom used to say “Gracie is so smart, she’s such a great student.” Adam sure did read a lot back then.

In this situation that just happens to be what was actually said.

Otherwise,

NO.