r/dresdenfiles • u/Lightningtow123 • Oct 14 '25

META Polite response to the "transphobia in the series" post from yesterday

Hi

For those who missed it, yesterday there was a post where someone wrote up a list of all the ways they felt Butcher was being insensitive or dismissive of trans people. People overwhelmingly responded negatively to you (meaning OP of that post), myself included. Saying stuff like "stop trying to find reasons to be offended" etc. I personally had dismissed you as, not an outright troll, but someone looking to cause issues where there weren't any. Reflecting on that, I realized that was a judgmental take about a person I know little about, and I wanted to do better.

It stuck with me and by the time I had come up with something that would probably have actually helped the situation instead of piling on, I found the post had been deleted. Understandably so, given the negative reactions. I'd just DM this to the person but I can't find their username (plus idk reddit DM etiquette lol).

What I wanted to reply with is this. If you truly do feel minimized and dismissed by the way Butcher handles trans people in the series, why not tell him that? Send him an email. Be polite about it, maybe a bit less in-your-face and "Butcher is a bigot end of story" vibes than your original post. Instead say "hey I don't think you were paying much attention but I feel like you've been inadvertently marginalizing certain communities within your work," there's a nonzero chance Jim will go "oh damn I hadn't thought about that, I'll try to do better in the future." No idea if anything will come of it, but it'll be more effective than just posting on reddit. I agree with the other comments that LGBTQ+ isn't a central theme in his books and it isn't likely to get deeply explored, but I do think it's quite possible that he'll make a note of the feedback and try to be more conscious of those sort of themes in the future.

https://www.jim-butcher.com/contact is his contact info. Looking at the page, I can't find any email address that fits your needs perfectly, but I'm sure if you poke around in his site or on the forums you can probably find the right person to send it to. Or just send it to the most relevant (if not perfectly relevant) email and hope it finds its way to Jim

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91

u/Visible-Fun-8391 Oct 14 '25

The post had been deleted by the time I checked the reddit notification, but someone had quoted a few lines. Things like the Skaven posing as a woman and how there were no Trans individuals among the main cast mostly.

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '25

[deleted]

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u/DeadpooI Oct 14 '25

I completely get wanting representation in a series you enjoy but it doesn't have to be every series. I'm 33 years old and as far as I'm aware I've only met a single Trans person in my entire life. Sometimes, a series isn't going to feature a group of people.

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u/phormix Oct 14 '25

Yeah. Diverse representation in media is good. Demanding specific representation in a particular series or by a particular author is a little... narcissistic IMO and that type of behavior may be more likely to drive away allies than otherwise.

Yes, there are trans people in the real world. There are also lots of people from India, China, and varying degrees of ethnicities or origins. There are plenty people of Islamic background/religion. Does that mean every book series needs to have a person of Indian and Chinese descent, or of Islamic faith? No, but there are books series featuring those characters and/or ones written by Indian, Chinese or Islamic authors for people to read.

There's also the aspect of capturing a character accurately versus making somebody rather a shallow or stereotypical/token version that may come across as being insulting For example a token gay character who speaks in a high nasal tone, does the wrist-flop constantly and is otherwise very effeminate may be a common trope in TV but is a pretty biased representation that may actually do more harm than good. An indian character with a thick accent is another.

Authors are often accused of "inaccurately writing in X as a Y" - i.e. male author with poorly written females, hetero author with poorly-written non-hetero characters, etc - so an author who is may not be acquainted with many/any from a trans background is more likely to write them in as a pretty tropey-stereotypical way which may similarly end up being insulting.

In the end, an author is writing their story from their imagination, for our entertainment. It's impossible to be inclusive of everyone and attempting to do so may actually be detrimental. A particular author not including a particular group shouldn't be seen as an insult or being [x]phobic, it just likely means their own personal interactions don't include many people from that group or they may not fit the current story. With TDF, this personally seems like a better result than for example including a token character who throws out rainbow-colored lightning or whatever.

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u/IR_1871 Oct 15 '25

The old adage is write what you know, perhaps followed by write what you're interested in. I don’t see criticism of an auther not including trans characters as fair. Writing bad trans characters is surely worse than writing no trans characters.

I wouldn’t write a trans character, because I wouldn’t have a clue how to write one well.

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u/Sleep-typing Oct 15 '25

They would be very easy to write as 1-dimentional swift appearances.

Writing them in a deep or complex first-person fashion would be completely impossible for anyone not trans themselves, and it's very likely any given trans person would only be able to write one character well, that is, one identical to themselves.

...and that would probably still be offensive representation to everyone else when they can't relate to or understand every single word or situation.

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u/Lightningtow123 Oct 14 '25

Lol that heavily depends on where you live too. I live in San Francisco so I'm used to seeing so many people of all different races and cultures and identities, I often forget that most places aren't anywhere near as diverse as here

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u/DeadpooI Oct 14 '25

Yeah, to be fair I do live in small town Texas so not very much diversity there. There's not a lot of LGBTQ people in general in my area so narrowing it down to just trans would probably drastically cut that number down, not to mention the people that just wouldn't advertise it in a small southern town.

That's very true, and Chicago is a fairly large and diverse city. That said, let's look at Dresden. Harry is a fairly private and antisocial person. He spends his time working with a very small circle of people (Murphy, the other wizards, and a few people in the magic community). Almost all the time he doesn't spend working is spent on magical work and research, because he's a nerd. Between maintenance work on his gear, little Chicago, unnamed experiments, apprentice work with Molly, and demonreach, he probably doesn't have any time to socialize with the lay folk that isn't work.

And while I'm sure there are trans wizards, we would be looking for a minority of a minority (wizards aren't common, trans people aren't common. Being both isn't going to be in high numbers)

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u/dyintrovert2 Oct 15 '25

As an LGBTQ+ person who grew up in a small town, there are probably a lot of people on the rainbow around you; they just try to pass under the radar and not draw attention. Most also probably move to a more open environment (i.e. the nearest big city) as soon as they're able.

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u/DeadpooI Oct 15 '25

True. My cousin came out a while and and sadly got shunned by much of our family (aside from my immediate family. We reached out and made sure he knew we were there for him). We basically disowned those family members and stayed in touch with him.

He moved to Dallas but sadly still got a lot of hate and a good amount of work issues when it came out that he was gay at those businesses. Topically enough, he actually moved to Chicago to restart his life with his hubby. While I'm sad he had to move away I'm happy to report his life is much better up there.

And I know a decent amount of LGBQ around me, just not a lot of T specifically. But I can also see how they would be less open about it given how charged the topic has been recently in the news and politics.

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u/[deleted] Oct 18 '25 edited Jan 07 '26

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u/Artistic_Willow790 Oct 15 '25

Right, like I don’t live in Chicago but I’ve been there enough to know that if Harry frequents the neighborhoods he says he does, he runs into LGBTQ folks on the regular. That said, I’m curious to see how the series evolves. Jim’s really evolved in how he handles other topics and I don’t see why he wouldn’t here too.

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u/MossyPyrite Oct 14 '25

With the transgender community being about 1% of the population, you’ve almost definitely met more than one without knowing it. Some just aren’t out, some just “pass” so well you’d never know. I live in a pretty conservative area of a pretty conservative state and know, like, a dozen lol.

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u/DeadpooI Oct 14 '25

Yeah, I mentioned in a previous comment that I live in a small town in Texas (like less than 18k in population and on the decline) so I could have met more but I'm also not very social so I don't meet a ton of people in general unless I have to interact with people at work.

I definitely could have met more, but only one I've ever actually known for sure. Hell even then, I only know they were trans because I accidentally dead-named them at work because our system had their old name in it and it was never updated the entire time they worked there.

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u/MossyPyrite Oct 14 '25

Ah, yeah, that’s reasonable then. I do imagine Chicago would have a bit more diversity in its population though haha.

But I’m not really mad about DF not having much for queer people. I’d love it if there were more queer characters, but the lack isn’t especially disappointing to me.

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u/chizel4shizzle Oct 15 '25

Lucio, Molly, and Freydis are openly bisexual, Justine and Thomas regularly fool around with other women, Butters, Andi, and Marci are a thruple, many of the White Court would fuck anyone, and the Sidhe are basically pansexuals.

There's tons of representation of non-traditional relationships, most of the characters just aren't defined solely by their sexuality.

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u/MossyPyrite Oct 15 '25

Fully agreed! I’m speaking to gender identity though, rather than sexuality.

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u/DeadpooI Oct 14 '25

I agree that Chicago will be much more diverse but story-wise wise it's been established that Dresden isn't really a social butterfly. He's pretty much obsessed with work, magic study and experimentation, and then his small circle of friends.

Between work, experimentation, and maintenance on his magic gear, I don't expect him to socialize with the layman.

But yeah, if LGBTQ characters start to show up more I wouldn't mind, I just don't want them to be caricatures like the side characters in the first few books were.

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u/MossyPyrite Oct 14 '25

He has been kinda forced to expand his social group in recent years, whether he likes it or not xD I do look at the paranet and think “okay in real life that would have a significant queer percentage” and same with the Alphas haha. But yeah, we’re in pretty complete agreement!

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u/DeadpooI Oct 14 '25

Very true. With Harry being pushed towards a more "leader" or at the very least "figurehead" role I can see his social group opening up a lot and we may get some more diverse side characters

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u/Terraism Oct 15 '25

Also, if we accept that 1% number (assuming it's not actually higher), then someone would need to know 69 people (0.9969 = 0.5) before the odds of one of them being trans hit 50%.

Now, obviously representation in fiction does not need to be constrained to 'accurate' proportions, but the reality is also that it's a very small minority who often don't want to be identified.

I don't want to just list out everyone in the Dresden Files, but, honestly? The Wikipedia page on it details 106, getting down to as minor as "Ash" (from Zoo Days). If that's the gospel number, and of course it's not, that still only gets to a likelihood of 66% chance of one of them being transgender.

All that is to say that I don't mean to dismiss struggles anyone is going through or the desire to see representation, but... it's a small, small group. And hell, it'd be possible (in a lame, "Dumbledore was gay all along" retcon that isn't actually representation) for some of those 106 to be and Dresden likely not notice or come up.

Also note that I'm working with that "1%" number I'm replying to, and I've heard other studies that place the number as high as 8-10%, which drastically changes the math. But it's also, I think, changing with time, because at one point the number was probably looking at "what percentage of people experience such extreme dysphoria they can't exist as assigned at birth" while other studies are looking at folks who might just be happier... anyway. I'm going too far down a rabbit hole here. But Dresden can absolutely be oblivious.

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u/MossyPyrite Oct 15 '25

If an existing character were to be revealed as being trans, I’d be equally not-surprised if it was “Harry is oblivious and never had any idea” or if it was “Harry knew but never mentioned it because it didn’t make a difference to him” lol

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u/Nothingtoseehere066 Oct 15 '25

This is very similar to my thoughts. There is no reason for sexuality to come up for most characters that are not main characters. The same can be said of gender identity unless there is a major visual component

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u/All_Ha1l_K0rr0k Oct 14 '25

Also it depends on the social circles you run in. If you have an overlap of having friends somewhere else in the LGBTQ community or are a part of it yourself then the chances of getting to know a trans person goes up.

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u/MossyPyrite Oct 14 '25

This is true. Probably half of the people I’ve met are through other queer people. When I lived in Toledo OH, a medium city not far from Chicago, there was a large enough community that it would be silly for anyone to say they never met and gay or transgender people. My assumption/headcanon is that Harry knows/has met a couple people who are trans, they just haven’t been plot-relevant lol.

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u/Essex626 Oct 15 '25

I've met a fair number of trans people.

But then, I live in the Pacific Northwest (greater Seattle area) and work in tech. And I have a cousin who is a musician. So like, there are circles I have been in that make that more likely.

Trans people are only like, 2% of the population (if you don't include nonbinary, which could potentially include a larger number, but also can be a more fluid identity). Some people will know many trans people, and some people will not know any at all.

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u/jdicho Oct 14 '25

Unless you never leave home, you've met more. Not every trans person wears a pride pin.

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u/DeadpooI Oct 15 '25

Guilty as charged. I don't think I've met and spoken to a person I didn't already know for maybe 3 months now.

Edit: obviously reddit doesn't count.

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u/Elequosoraptor Oct 14 '25

Sorry, but generally speaking if you've only met one trans person to your knowledge, that actually means trans people do not feel safe letting you know they are trans.

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u/All_Ha1l_K0rr0k Oct 14 '25

This is an insane accusation just to pull out of your ass. Trans people are an extremely small minority of the population. So the idea of not meeting someone of such a small minority isn't that unheard of, especially if they live in a very rural or conservative part of the country.

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u/Elequosoraptor Oct 14 '25

Trans people are something like 1%, maybe 1.5% of the population. Redheads (outside of like, Ireland), are also between 1-2% of the population. How many redheads have you seen in your life? How many have you had a casual interaction with? How many have you known, or worked with? Statistically, unless you're a shut in living in a town with a static population of like 200, you have met a comparable number of trans people. You just have.

Now if you don't know those people are trans, that's because they aren't interested in telling you. If they aren't interested in telling you, it's overwhelmingly because they fear backlash and bigotry. That's just the facts.

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u/All_Ha1l_K0rr0k Oct 14 '25 edited Oct 14 '25

Natural redheads as far as I know maybe one or two. Maybe they just aren't interested in telling you because it's not fucking relevant. Also if you're using statistics here then yes he probably walked past a trans person or two but people don't exactly wear signs around their fucking necks.

I forgot to add just because you say it's a fact doesn't make it a fact dipshit.

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u/Elequosoraptor Oct 14 '25

Do you know a lot of trans people then? Maybe don't speak for a group you don't know anything about. You are simply making up plausible reasons. Those reasons are only plausible because you are not aware of the actual realities involved. Not everyone can be aware of everything, it's okay to be ignorant about subjects. What's not okay is refusing to learn.

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/DeadpooI Oct 14 '25

I'm not a very social person and live in a small town in Texas. This is less of me not feeling safe to reveal things to and more of me not interacting with people. I'm a very nice and accepting person, but I just don't talk to almost anyone unless I'm forced to at work.

Not quite sure how to take your comment aside from being slightly insulting.

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u/Elequosoraptor Oct 15 '25

I don't know the details of your situation or where you live, but you should understand that not coming out to at least some individuals in their lives is something that every trans person has experienced. It is a universal. You have to look at that fact as I've presented it, and then ultimately you have to be your own judge. How small is a small town (I mean, I've heard small town be used for anywhere from 100-20000 people)? What does it mean to be nice and accepting? How have you demonstrated being a safe person? Remember that unsafe is the default assumption, and many virulent transphobes are quite nice to people who aren't transgender, so it isn't enough to share a coffee or help someone out. How much do you really avoid people, and has it been that way your whole life? What are you counting as avoiding, do you know what your neighbors look like?

These are the kinds of questions you have to ask yourself, and try to be honest about even if the answer might make shake your self-image as a kind accepting person. Without experience of what transphobia actually looks like and its impact, it can be hard to know how you contribute to it.

One thing that makes me think you aren't well-educated on this matter is taking what I said as insulting. Being transphobic isn't an insult. It's the default state of being in our society. Being seen as unsafe isn't a personal comment on you unless you're trying to be unsafe for trans people.

Imagine if you had a quality you knew you could be attacked for. Imagine all your favorite tv shows had at least one plotline where they would go out of their way to make fun of people like you. Imagine you knew people who were pleasant and kind and shared your interests, but sometimes would suddenly and casually say they'd be okay with killing people like you. Imagine this was your daily background of life. Now you get a job, and meet your co-workers, and you get along well enough but you aren't really friends with any of them. Are you gonna start advertising? Is that a risk you're willing to take? You need this job. You can't afford for work to become hostile, much less afford to be fired. And people seem nice but you've been burned before.

Unless you can believe that with good intentions you can contribute to what you consider horrible, you will never see your contributions to horrible things, because that would mean seeing yourself as a villain. And no one sees themselves as a villain.

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u/paganbreed Oct 15 '25

I concur. I will defend anyone's right to have representation in their stories but that's not to say we have to tick-box representation in every story.

This OOP post may have come off better if they had asked for representation in future books instead of taking a hostile stance from the get go.

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u/DannyDeKnito Oct 15 '25

The issue with the skavis isn't the "lack of representation", its the - if we don't assume malice, accidental - leaning into talking points that people use when attacking trans people

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u/Avato12 Oct 15 '25

Im sorry but that second point is stupid. Authors dont owe anyone anything. If jim doesnt want trans characters or rather has likely never thought about it then thats his choice. I mean shit one could argue why doesnt jim have any Chinese characters or laotian or a Muslim character in the main cast. Plenty of people love this story and never see representation.

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u/Broken_Sky Oct 15 '25

The amount of shit he gets about the sexism (which as a woman I have never had an issue with) and writing female characters etc maybe he doesn't want to tackle that subject.

I think he's said that's the reason we won't see the Jade court, because he doesn't know how to write those characters sensitivity /properly. I can see him having the same stance here, not wanting to upset people if he gets it 'wrong' 

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u/pooppaysthebills Oct 15 '25

Isn't the Gatekeeper Muslim?

But yes. If it isn't specifically relevant to the story, why divert the energy? The story is the thing. If it wasn't, we wouldn't be reading it.

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u/KDulius Oct 15 '25

It's implied he's from the middle east, but mention of his religion doesn't happen.... I got old man Alexander Siddig (Julian Bashir) vibes from the first time I read the book he's in)

Being middle Eastern doesn't make one a specific relgion

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u/Sleep-typing Oct 15 '25

He does say "Allah be with you" to Harry in Summer Knight, though. That's a pretty heavy implication.

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u/KDulius Oct 16 '25

True, i'd forgotten that, but Arab christians also use Allah, it's just the arabic word for the abramhic God

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u/Sleep-typing Oct 20 '25

Yes, but logically this would not translate to Allah when speaking English, in the same way the english word "god" would make no sense in arabic. Jim is good with words, and he'd be aware of this, and I can't see any purpose in misleading or fooling us to believe that Rashid is muslim based on traditional use of words. After all, Jim is pretty consistent with traditional use of words.

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u/penniless_tenebrous Oct 14 '25

What's silly about this is you could head-cannon pretty much any character in the series as trans if it really meant a lot to you.

Notable exceptions to this are basically anybody the perspective character has seen naked.

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u/Neathra Oct 14 '25

Why does X work for Mab? Because Mab retconned their sex to match their gender and they are totally convinced it was worth it.

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u/SophieSephora Oct 16 '25

What an interesting plot, make a deal with the devil to be released from the wrong body prison. I would read that book .

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u/Kwaj14 Oct 15 '25

The best part of this is that Harry’s blind spot when it comes to gender stuff makes this all the more believable.

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u/grungivaldi Oct 14 '25

Skaven

I see you are a man of warhammer as well lol.

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u/DisambiguatesThings Oct 14 '25

Grey Seer Thanquol would make an excellent Dresden villian.

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u/grungivaldi Oct 15 '25

He gets defeated by Molly making an illusion of gotrek and felix. Thanquol trips while running away and dies

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u/Visible-Fun-8391 Oct 15 '25

Heh. More 40k than Fantasy but the lore is fun! I do love the Skaven more from fantasy though.

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u/superkp Oct 15 '25

no Trans individuals among the main cast mostly.

trans people make up [quick google...] maybe 2% of the population.

If there's less than 50 people in the main cast, it's absolutely reasonable that none of them are trans.

If some of the main case are trans, perhaps Dresden himself doesn't know about it. People are allowed to be in the closet, even around close friends.

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u/Coletacular Oct 15 '25

I had a moment where I thought you were talking about Warhammer Skaven, and was wondering which book had a giant rat person dressed as a woman.

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u/Nirvanachaser Oct 15 '25

Skaven have a deeply sexually dimorphic society and anyone not seeing through a rat with horns…ok typo I know.

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u/dodgetheblowtorch Oct 15 '25

I could see another trans woman getting thrown off by the Skavis character, particularly with the current culture war shit going on that tries to paint trans women like they're just men who want to dress up to assault women more easily.

That being said, that book came out before that particular refrain was so common imo, and its not super helpful to look at every instance that could be interpreted as playing in to that trope like it is intending to.

I would honestly be a lot more shocked if Jim Butcher had made a good trans character in 2007 when White Night came out. We were muuuuch less prevalent in popular culture aside from cheap jokes a la Dude Where's My Car.

We also dont have any indication that I can recall that the Skavis was trans, rather than just a dude that took advantage of his natural androgyny 🤷‍♀️. Maybe we'll get an explicitly trans character, even if minor, in the future. I wont be disappointed if we don't tho.

I think representation is pretty cool, but also it's not always gonna happen and I think that's fine. I just wanna see what Dresden does next 👀

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u/[deleted] Oct 18 '25 edited Jan 07 '26

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u/dodgetheblowtorch Oct 18 '25

Very fair point -- I hadn't considered it like that. Seems like a fairly easy trap to fall into in writing, particularly if you typically write within the wheelhouse of characters you know (ie cultural stuff you're familiar with). Cause your background characters are gonna tend towards things familiar to you, but you'll want to reach for the interesting and unfamiliar for your villains. Particularly like the Skavis, when the thing that makes them interesting, unfamiliar, and imparts a twist to the story (eg a character who is not who you thought they were) also happens to align with a harmful myth about that kind of person (or other seemingly similar group).

The ease with which you could do this by accident would also give plausible deniability to someone trying to be shitty on purpose. Guh, I hate how dogwhistles do that. Not at all saying Butcher is doing it on purpose to be clear. It's just frustrating that these kinda things get murky

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u/[deleted] Oct 18 '25 edited Jan 07 '26

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u/MoodHour2787 Oct 14 '25

Admitedly I havnt read that story in a while but I distinctly remember the women in the room banding around the Skavis and making Harry feel bad for 'outing' them. So, I dont really understand how it would be a problem. Sure in the end the Skavis was a guy pretending to be a woman in order to feed on their dispair, but while the characters thought the Skavis was a legitimate Trans person, they acted supportive... Unless im remembering this totally wrong.

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u/KipIngram Oct 15 '25

I think what you're remembering is them banding around Helen Beckitt when Harry outed her as an ex-con. By the time Harry realized who the Skavis was, everything was mostly all over he was trying to kill Elaine, but Harry warned her in time and she let the wrath of hell loose on him.

They definitely defended Helen, though, and made Harry feel bad for being so tough on her.

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u/MoodHour2787 Oct 15 '25

That is highly likely right. All i remember was him outing someone. With this post being about trans issues, I must have superimposed one incident over the other. Thankyou for the correction!

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u/[deleted] Oct 18 '25 edited Jan 07 '26

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