Writing is a revealing process, a disgorging of the contents of one’s soul, messy, raw, and strange as they may be, for the perusal of an audience. I find my soul too messy, raw, and strange to present so easily; but, like all writers, I am a narcissist, hungry for that sort of attention. I’m familiar with the manipulation of presentations—existing while trans is a [[game of masks]], of carefully managed perceptions—thus, I edit, compulsively. I see what happens to trans women who write too openly: harassed over [[a provocative title]] and pushed into withdrawing a story from publication and withdrawing back into the closet; abused and [[exploited]] by communities claiming to be inclusive and social-justice-oriented.
[[Next->P2]]Empty Spaces is a literary and aesthetic movement beginning as a loosely connected group of writers on Twitter circa 2021, later spreading to other sites such as Discord, Tumblr, and Bluesky. Most Empty Spaces writing takes the form of microfiction and flash fiction, due both to constraints of social media formatting and the movement prioritizing the use of evocative language, vivid imagery, and a set of common character archetypes to convey its themes.
The Empty Spaces Dictionary, "specifically made to make singular solid definitions like a canon wiki impossible" (Sheepwave), offers randomly-selected, Twitter-crowdsourced definitions for many of the archetypes and ideas present in the movement.
A potential definition for the items witch, doll, angel, combat doll, spider, moth, drone, synth, pactbound, fae, vampire, puppy, clown: "A trans lesbian with autism, [[CPTSD]] and dissociative identity disorder." (Sheepwave)
A significant percentage of writing under the Empty Spaces umbrella is [[erotica]]."I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter" (Isabel Fall, 2020) is a short story by Isabel Fall, published in Clarkesworld magazine, later a finalist in the 2021 Hugo Awards under the title "Helicopter Story." The story was retracted shortly after publication due to harassment surrounding the memetic origins of the title and Fall's bio indicating only that she was born in 1988 (the number 88 being a neo-Nazi dogwhistle). Fall's online presence and bio information were limited to avoid transphobic harassment, but drew harassment from the social-justice-oriented trans-positive sector, forcing her to out herself. (Neil Clarke, 2020)
Reactions to the story included speculation Fall was a cis man writing a "[[flat and fake]]" portrayal of gender transition and life as a woman and a statement by critically-acclaimed sci-fi/fantasy author N. K. Jemisin expressing gladness that the story had been taken down, because "not all art is good art... Artists should strive to do no (more of this) harm." Jemisin admitted to not having read the story. (Gretchen Felker-Martin, 2020).Trans women are disposable. We have the lowest average wage out of all gender groups (HRC Foundation); we are overrepresented in sex work (Erin Fitzgerald et al., 2015); we are afforded few avenues of survival. "Queer spaces" should be welcoming places to trans women, but all too often they are sources of further abuse. Cis queers and non-transfem trans people often have no reason to question transmisogyny when it doesn't affect them, and continue to perpetuate it in the places trans women should be safest.
Transfems are useful; a source of labor, of sex, of queerness, which can be discarded at any time. The moral strictures of queer and feminist scenes tighten most harshly around trans women. When disposing of them: "No one mourns them, no one asks questions. Everyone agrees that they must have been crazy and problematic and that is why they were gone." (Porpentine, 2015)
[[Return->P1]]References
Clarke, Neil. (2020, January 17). About the Story by Isabel Fall.” <cite>Clarkesworld</cite>. <a href="https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/fall_01_20/" target="_blank">https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/fall_01_20/</a>.
Online Etymology Dictionary. (n.d.). <cite>Etymology of “travesty.”</cite> Retrieved May 7, 2025, from <a href="https://www.etymonline.com/word/travesty" target="_blank">https://www.etymonline.com/word/travesty</a>
Online Etymology Dictionary. (n.d.). <cite>Etymology of “bad.”</cite> Retrieved May 7, 2025, from <a href="https://www.etymonline.com/word/bad" target="_blank">https://www.etymonline.com/word/bad</a>
Fall, Isabel. (2020, January 1). I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter. <cite>Clarkesworld</cite>, <i>160</i>.
Felker-Martin, Gretchen. (2020, January 24). What’s the harm in reading? <cite>The Outline</cite>. <a href="https://theoutline.com/post/8600/isabel-fall-attack-helicopter-moralism" target="_blank">https://theoutline.com/post/8600/isabel-fall-attack-helicopter-moralism</a>
Fitzgerald, Erin; Patterson, Sarah Elspeth; Hickey, Darby; Biko, Cherno; & Tobin, Harper Jean. (2015). <i>Meaningful Work: Transgender Experiences in the Sex Trade</i>. National Center for Transgender Equality.
HRC Foundation. (n.d.). The Wage Gap Among LGBTQ+ Workers in the United States. <cite>Human Rights Campaign</cite>. Retrieved May 6, 2025, from <a href="https://www.hrc.org/resources/the-wage-gap-among-lgbtq-workers-in-the-united-states">https://www.hrc.org/resources/the-wage-gap-among-lgbtq-workers-in-the-united-states</a>
Porpentine. (2015, May 11). Hot Allostatic Load. <cite>The New Inquiry</cite>. <a href="https://thenewinquiry.com/hot-allostatic-load/" target="_blank">https://thenewinquiry.com/hot-allostatic-load/</a>
Porpentine. (2016, February 19). <cite>Psycho Nymph Exile</cite>. <a href="https://porpentine.itch.io/nymph" target="_blank">https://porpentine.itch.io/nymph<a>
Sheepwave. (n.d.). <cite>Empty Spaces Dictionary</cite>. Retrieved May 7, 2025, from <a href="https://www.sheepwave.com/what-is-a" target="_blank">https://www.sheepwave.com/what-is-a</a>
Capacitor. (2025). In Wikipedia. Retrieved May 7, 2025 from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor</a>
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[[References]]"When you have PTSD, everything you make is about PTSD." (Porpentine, 2015)
<i>Psycho Nymph Exile</i> is a "gurowave novella about a disgraced biomech pilot and an ex-magical girl" (Porpentine, 2016). Reading it is feverish and dizzying. The protagonists, Vellus and Isidol, suffer from Despare Syndrome with Temporal Purge (DSTP).
<blockquote><b>DSTP Symptoms</b>
Future death^^1^^
Temporal displacement^^2^^
Life-death^^3^^
Psycho-irradiation^^4^^
Pheromone poisoning^^5^^
---
(text-size: .75)[1. The part of the brain that has a future is destroyed.
2. Sudden and violent memory recall, brain shuts down against
this annihilatory doom, memory-forming glands are jettisoned,
the person’s soul leaves their body, or another soul enters their
body, and they are forced to act out its haunting.
3. The sensation of being dead while still alive.
4. The entire structure of your body changes down to the
genetic code, twisted in the hands of god. Hair falls out
and grows where it never grew before. Skin tone shifts by a
degree. Mysterious rashes. Freckles shuffle their constellations.
Skin hangs different. Depressed immune system. Mysterious
pains. Crippling fatigue. And far more below the spectrum of
observation.
5. You will know.] (p. 25)
---</blockquote>
[[Return->P1]]“Shitty first drafts” are hard to write, in this mindset concerned with every subtlety of how my work will be read. I self-edit continually, trim back the unpalatable, clean and clear up ideas. I have a taste for long sentences, stitched together with comma, em-dash, semicolon, and parenthetical, hard to shorten lest I break their flow; but I worry about the danger of run-ons, of my over-reliance on poetic language and pretty prose. My authorial voice, like my speaking voice, reveals my inadequacy. I’m too [[clocky]].
[[Next->P3]]I take creative writing courses, in part to force myself to share my work. I write a sci-fi piece for an intro class. Before the workshop, I share it with some friends outside the class, ask for their opinions. I’m worried that the themes I’m working with are over-blunt, over-personal, ideas of [[bodily mutability, abuse, and exploitation]] too revealing of that unpalatable piece of my soul. They like it, tell me: stop worrying over it. It’s fine. I really like the ending. I don’t think it’s too blunt, it works well.
Not that I needed to worry. The main comments I get in workshop are asking me to explain what a [[capacitor]] is.
[[Next->P4]]I am my own worst critic. I worry that everything I write is the same story over and over again, that my themes become trite. My experiences are hackneyed, to me, because I lived them. My past is already cliché. I try writing shitty drafts and find myself cutting away at them prematurely, seeking perfect clarity, perfect rhythm, perfect language. I thrive on praise, demand perfection to achieve it even when the imperfect thing I called “good enough” at the final deadline was, in fact, good enough. Even as I write this, I cut and stitch, return to the top of the page to rewrite again, redo sentences as they come. I critique my sentence length and word choice. Am I using the same linguistic forms too often? Is the rhythm good? Does the word “good” feel ungainly, there? Friends read my writing and tell me to stop worrying over it, tell me: it’s fine. I really like the ending. I don’t think it’s too blunt, it works well.
[[Next->P5]]Sometimes it’s hard to tell who I’m writing for. I identify rhetorical situations, target audiences of peers in workshop or professors’ rubric standards, but they feel lacking. A professor wants me to produce a publishable research paper on bicycle usage across genders, which I know won’t be happening because I have to work over the summer. A class has, as its final project, an advocacy letter, which I fail to write in advocacy of anything because the research I did leading up to it produced no persuasive argument, and I hand in what reads more as an internal strategy memo, target audience falsified. My creative work feels similarly dubious. The work that inspires me is more upfront with its themes than I feel able to be. There’s some other audience out there that I want to write for, people who have the background knowledge to understand what texts I’m in conversation with, who have the experience to recognize the themes I’m putting forth.
[[Next->P6]]I take a course on digital creative writing and the professor describes my prose as “lyrical and dynamic.” The syllabus features a piece by Porpentine, a writer and trans woman with massive influence on my work already. I tell the professor about this and find a rapport building, an appreciation for the medium and its potential, the types of story it makes possible.
I write an extended piece of hypertext fiction entitled STARMONSTER—but how do I speak on it here without explaining what hypertext fiction is, without explaining Porpentine’s complete works, without explaining the complexities of a niche literary movement among extremely online trans women and the summer I spent immersed within it? I spend weeks poring over every angle of the piece, editing not only text but tech, programming the piece to work perfectly, letting friends read and reread it, QA test and copy-edit all in one, cutting entire sections to perfect its flow and beauty. I lose sleep over subtleties of metaphor and delicate strokes of formatting.
[[Next->P7]]But I avoid, this time, the compulsion to cut away the soul of my work. I let my imagery sprawl strange, my prose flow dreamlike, my themes stand bold and uncompromising. The audience is present; my professor recognizes a key inspiration of the piece, understands what I’m going for, compliments the things I feel so self-conscious about, tells me she looks forward to reading more of my work. Friends outside of class tell me how much they love the piece, how genuine it feels.
When this audience I’ve been seeking presents itself, things click. I have to remember, now, who I’m writing for. It’s the audience I was a part of several years ago when I stumbled on a trans woman’s flash-fiction blog, when I played a game that made me cry with how perfectly it conveyed a feeling I had sought to express many times, when I read a multimedia novella so beautiful and feverish that I couldn’t think straight for weeks. In seeking that audience, I’ve been able to find it; I met the writer of some favorite pieces of flash fiction by chance in a trading card shop and got to share my work with her. I have shared writing with friends and let them pore through it, edit my work, help me call a piece complete. I signed up for my digital creative writing professor’s advanced course and fall easily into that element again, chatting about the texts that have inspired me. There are perfectionisms that are difficult to avoid, habits of editing-through-the-writing that will forever hinder my pace. But it’s easier, now, to avoid cutting the heart out of my work. The audience I’ve sought is close at hand.Trans women's bodies are seen as inherently sexual. Misogynystic objectification is compounded with the perception of trans women's bodies as unnatural, taboo, exciting. Trans women are disproportionately represented in the sex trade (Erin Fitzgerald et al., 2015). The first place many people—including many unrealized trans women—will encounter the idea of a trans woman is through porn.
However, expression of trans women's sexuality is stigmatized. The predominate image used to justify transmisogynistic legislation is the rapist sneaking into women's restrooms. Even in progressive circles, it's easy to get rid of a trans woman by insinuating her problematic sexuality.
If you try hide it, something will be discovered, or simply made up, and used against you. So what's the use? Why not leave it out in the open? At least you might have fun with it.
[[Return->P1]]<blockquote>travesty (n.)
1670s, of literature, "a burlesque treatment of a serious work," from adjective meaning "dressed so as to be made ridiculous, parodied, burlesqued"... from Latin trans "across, beyond; over" (see trans-) + vestire "to clothe" (Online Etymology Dictionary)</blockquote>
Consider also, if you will:
<blockquote>bad (adj.)
c. 1300, "inadequate, unsatisfactory, worthless; unfortunate;" late 14c., "wicked, evil, vicious; counterfeit;"...It is possibly from Old English derogatory term bæddel and its diminutive bædling "effeminate man, hermaphrodite, pederast," which probably are related to bædan "to defile." (Online Etymology Dictionary)
[[Return->P1]]Clock (v.)
To recognize a trans woman as such.
Clocky (adj.)
Easily clocked; non-passing.
[[Return->P2]]Empty Spaces centers on themes of trauma, abuse, and personhood. "Not a person" is a common refrain: a rejection of a humanity denied. It's not necessary anyway. "You get a complimentary set of it/its pronouns." (Sheepwave)
The most common character archetypes in Empty Spaces fiction (or at least at its peak) are that of the witch and doll, a pair defined by their relationship to each other. It is not a coincidence both titles connote femininity; this is a trans girls' writing circle, after all.
The witch, in many Empty Spaces writings, is a form of benevolent abuser. Someone willing to reshape you into something that serves them, but in doing so give you purpose. You are valued, loved, useful. In many other works, the witch remains abusive, but far from benevolent. You are disposable.
These are far from the only variations on the theme. These archetypes accumulate tangled webs of meaning, symbolize different things in different stories; or perhaps symbolize nothing at all. Maybe "all this Empty Spaces/Doll stuff is... some kind of kink or something" (Sheepwave)
[[Return->P3]]<img src="https://continuouscities.neocities.org/Editing%20Narrative/Capacitor%20-%20Wikipedia.png" width=100%>
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