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Notes -
For a pretty central example of progressive philosophy on it: Super Lesbian Animal RPG is exactly what you'd expect given the name, and the two trans characters have that matter a little less than their purely-aesthetic 'animal'. I don't think this is popular as a decision, yet, but a number of CRPGs have gone with it (sodiummuffin mentions Baldur's Gate, but there's a wide variety of RPGMaker clones that have taken that approach). Dragon Age: Inquisition kinda Special Episodes it, but more in the sense that everybody with a backstory in that game has a ton of angst thrown in.
This doesn't have to be quite so ham-handed as Super Lesbian Animal. The extreme case is just a character with the trans flag somewhere; this sometimes gets criticism as either purely-informed trait (could just be an ally!), but it's not going to get you cancelled.
I think it's lazy, but I can get why writers sometimes do it. (And it's better than eg. The Broken Earth's attempt.) I think there's more clever things you can do with either environmental storytelling, or by actually exploring and considering what having seen the other gender's norms in close detail, but I can understand if not agree with why those are more controversial.
There are also some times where the theme overlaps with a short Very Special Episode: Night In The Woods is about depression and has villains that are trying to cut out the disliked from their community to sacrifice in hopes of bringing back prosperity, so having a thrown-in comment saying one of the background characters/targets is trans is... well, at least no more preachy than the rest of the story. Damning with faint praise, admittedly.
Alternatively, you can make it relevant to the plot for other reasons. El Goonish Shive is a gender transformation magic comic, so questions like "is this person female" (which means they can summon hammers with magic because animu) or "did this person grow a dick" (and thus was probably exposed to magic somehow) end up having physically verifiable results in a variety of ways completely orthogonal to real-world questions (which... uh, admittedly do also separately get brought up, because it's ultimately a drama piece). You might be able to clock the FTM trans guy before it becomes plot relevant if you're really familiar with some stereotypes, but he gets a short arc that's neither a Very Special Episode for him nor something that could be not-passing for anyone except a magic alien squirrel.
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