In recent years, there has been an explosion in transgender narratives in American media, particularly in the film and television industries. Many—if not most—of these stories are geared toward a cisgender audience, for the purpose of entertaining a cisgender audience. This fact, of course, expresses itself in several ugly ways.

One such example is the cliché gender affirming surgery (a.k.a. sex reassignment surgery) plot that reinforces the idea that the climax of a transgender person’s life is “the surgery.” Another common crime is casting cisgender men as transgender women or cisgender women as transgender men (the former case being much more prevalent). Both of these insinuate that, in the end, transgender people are still the gender they were assigned at birth until they have a “sex change,” and sometimes not even then.

But the one crime against transgender people that seems to weave its way into almost every transgender narrative is literary punishment, or—as I will articulate it here—“trans punishment.”

The term “trans punishment” does not imply that transgender characters cannot or should not be free from literary karma or other repercussions for their actions. Rather, “trans punishment” refers to the specific act of punishing a transgender character simply for being trans. Often, trans punishment expresses itself in the form of violence or social rejection after a character pursues any form of happiness. Most importantly, trans punishment is often unintentional, which is precisely why it is so necessary to point it out.

The worst—and most recent—offender of all of the above transgender storytelling gaffes is "The Danish Girl" (2015). "The Danish Girl" was the object of controversy leading up to and following its release due to its casting of a cisgender man, Eddie Redmayne, as a transgender woman, Lili Elbe. The film, based on the novel of the same name, tells the story of Lili Elbe and her wife Gerda Wegener as Elbe transitions and struggles with her newfound identity (spoiler alert coming ahead). The story ends with Lili Elbe dying of complications from a rushed gender affirming surgery. This is a clear example of the trans punishment: Lili Elbe comes out as trans, she wants to be at peace with her body and with her wife and dies while pursuing surgery.

It could be argued that Lili Elbe is instead being punished for her impatience that led to her rushed surgical procedures, rather than for her transness. Enacting punishment for impatience, however, has an infantilizing effect on an adult who can make her own decisions. Additionally, it adds insult to injury when a real-life transgender person is denied access to healthcare and then told to “be patient”—something that happens on an everyday basis.

But more overt examples of trans punishment exist. A famous one would be "Boys Don't Cry" (1999), which adapted the true story of Brandon Teena, a transgender man who fell in love with a cisgender woman named Lana Tisdel. Although Tisdel loved him back, her friends John Lotter and Tom Nissen discover Teena’s birth sex and subsequently beat, rape and eventually kill him. Likewise to the story of "The Danish Girl," Teena is punished for seeking a better life for himself when he was existing while trans (EWT).

Another argument that is posed to the concept of trans punishment is that, often, the stories are based on true acts of violence against transgender people. Since the stories are true, re-tellers claim that they are eliciting sympathy from a cisgender audience by bringing violence against transgender people to light. However, nonfiction or not, the constant portrayal of transgender people as being victims of violence unwittingly conditions an audience to the image of the beaten and violated transgender person. Transgender characters often become scapegoats of unnecessary drama that serve to satisfy the American audience’s grotesque thirst for “violence porn.”

The “violence porn” phenomenon is just one way in which the United States’ hyper-masculine militaristic society has been reflected in more private social spheres. It is easy to tell stories about transgender characters suffering from violence because, as the assumption goes, the audience will feel for the character, but not enough to be disturbed. This serves both to “other” transgender people and to reinforce the idea that transgender characters are only portrayed for the entertainment of a cisgender audience.

But even in a supposedly trans-positive media, transgender characters are punished on account of their transness. Sophia Burset, a trans woman appropriately portrayed by trans actress Laverne Cox, is one such example, in the popular prison-setting series "Orange Is the New Black." (Spoiler alert coming up.) OITNB came under fire after the release of its fourth season for killing one of its only openly queer characters—an example of the “queer punishment” theory within which the trans punishment theory lies.

But Burset, previously attacked by fellow inmates—in part due to her transgender status—was then condemned to indefinite time in a solitary confinement unit. The show did make an effort to display Burset’s confinement as wrong, but what remains is the repeated scenes of suffering and unhappiness on Burset’s part. When she is finally released from solitary confinement, she receives little compensation or justice for the trauma she experienced.

There are endless examples of American film and media portraying transgender people as undeserving of happiness or love. It is nigh impossible to justify the constant stream of fictional violence against trans characters without assuming that all transgender stories end in tragedy. It is equally incomprehensible to consider how the repetitive “trans punishment” narrative has affected trans youth throughout the United States. The film and television industries must take responsibility for the stories they tell. When the violence becomes constant, the stories with good intentions turn into stories of transgender people deserving pain over love.