I'm so glad I'm not the only one who saw that mannequin and thought "huh?" and immediately had a transfem Leland headcanon form in my head.
Though I personally prefer a transmasc Leland headcanon instead, since a lot of his behavior makes sense through the transmasc lens too.
One thing that is canon is that he is bisexual who is struggling to accept his attraction to men, so he lashes out violently and basically conveys his love through abuse. He's like me in a sense that he never learned what actual genuine love feels like, so his way of loving is conveyed through abuse. Torture is foreplay. Someone once told me that Coyle has "at least a little bit of a crush on each of his victims" and it fascinated me. When your way of loving somebody is hurting them, and you spend your entire time just torturing and harming random people, well, it just makes sense.
As a trans man myself who has been wrestling my entire life trying to attain masculinity and feeling genuinely insecure in it constantly, feeling like I should fight for it and prove myself to be a man, I saw myself in Coyle in a way that he's also somebody who is highly insecure in being a man, and as such needs to present as masculine as possible to justify being male. (Ironically, this is something both transfems in denial and transmascs attempting to affirm their gender identity would do, I recognize that)
But what really tipped me off towards the transmasc headcanon specifically is that Coyle's weapon is very explicitly a phallic metaphor. In one of the pre-trial animations he thrusts it against a mannequin's ass. Many mannequins in the Police Station have burn marks in suggestive spots, both male and female. While in a cis man's symbolism (like Franco, who wrestles with impotence) this could read as "my penis isn't good enough", in a trans man's symbolism this could very well read as "I don't even have a penis, so I will use my weapon as one instead".
Which in turn actually makes Coyle's tendency to pleasure himself with his own baton even more interesting (the crotch-shocking pre-trial animation). That animation is actually what gave me the idea for this headcanon in the first place, as it looked kind of like how someone with a pussy would use a wand toy. Leland's animation of furiously rubbing his crotch in a circular motion as a response to reagents getting incapacitated also reminded me of a way someone with a clitoris would stimulate themselves. That's probably me thinking too hard, but, you know. Funny thought.
Coyle's also got so much issues, especially parental issues, that his loathing for any gender would make a lot of sense. (trust me, as a fellow mommy issues haver [and Coyle definitely has mommy issues, no one without mommy issues marries women 3 times in the span of less than 20 years and immediately fails the marriage; he also remarks that Gooseberry reminds him of his mother while actively admitting he finds Phyllis attractive], the internalized misogyny that I have to wrestle with every day for it to not become overt is real)
It's very much possible to read his misogyny as a manifestation of his mommy issues, where his mother and the shaky bond with her gave him a template to what a relationship with woman would be like, so his future romantic relationships with women always end up in abuse or otherwise failure, and that only cements the loathing for women. (is it me projecting too much? probably~)
That's really the beauty of Coyle's character. There is so much room for various representations of gender and sexuality issues taking a form of something severely depraved and harmful.
Although a transmasc headcanon wouldn't make any sense in the time period, but this is fucking fiction, who fucking cares, this is just a funny headcanon I got and I toy around with sometimes. Stranger things have happened in the Outlast lore!
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