I think Trans* people should be in control of their own stories the same way I believe that any community should be in control of their own stories. This isn’t to say that other writers can’t include Trans* characters in their stories—they absolutely should—but that Trans* folks should be the ones to own the Trans* narrative. We should decide what is an authentic recounting of our own experiences. No one else knows the experience like we do, and when others take over our stories, they tell it wrong, boiling down the Trans* experience to stereotypes: focusing on surgery, making their Trans* characters completely androgynous, or minimizing the experiences of dysphoria.
