How do I tastefully handle a female-to-male transforming character?

Question

My character is a girl who is later revealed in my story to be under a curse that allows her to transform into an older man. She is sharing a body with a powerful male spirit who can take control and transform her body into his own. She is also able to do this willingly.

I am interested in tackling some LGBT themes in my story, but am unsure of how to go about this respectfully.

My character is fully aware when she is transformed by this spirit and can see everything he does in her body and vice-versa. There are obviously wrong or even fetishized ways of going about this. I just want to know how I can do so and effectively get the point across.

This character is not the protagonist, but a side-character who becomes a POV character later in the story.

Answer 1

I personally don't see it much as an LGBT story. The girl and the male spirit are two independent beings, in flesh and in spirit. The only quirk here is that they (at least the girl) are a first-person observers of other's actions.

Of course it can be made tasteless, for example by male spirit's lewd comments or girl's own desire to make sexual conquests in man's body - but you don't have to write it that way.