I wanna talk about genderbends.
Genderbends are not transphobic.
[ Please don’t reblog, I’m not interested in starting a fight with Tumblr, I just want to have this as a pinned post on my blog. ]
You’re going to find all kinds of ways for a character to be portrayed and written, and telling people that they have to write them in a specific way is never going to fly.
I am genderqueer myself, and I felt myself best represented when I made Velocity--I wanted to write Sonic as a cis girl. “Just make her mtf!” I don’t have the lived experience of a trans woman, and to say that the experiences are identical is very dismissive of trans women and cis women. Wanting to write something doesn’t mean you’re saying the other options are bad--it’s just wanting to write a specific thing. I have other characters who I made to be ftm, but Velocity is a character that I wanted to write as dfab and girl-identifying. (Personally, I think taking the idea that you should only write trans people instead of writing any cis people is not so great for anyone still learning about themselves. I would not have figured out that I am genderqueer if I hadn’t written Velocity as a genderbend. This was how I was able to understand it better for myself.)
Velocity is dfab, and she mostly identifies with being a girl. She’s not a stereotype, she’s not what society decided girls are like. She’s just her.
There are TONS of people in the trans and NB communities who do not view genderbends as transphobic, and then there are people who do--but I think it is dangerous to decide that one take is shared by everyone. It is silencing the experiences and voices of people who don’t often feel brave enough to share.
It’s okay if you don’t want to write with genderbends, or if certain genderbends make you uncomfortable--you can always curate your experience. Yes there will always be people who make awful comments and generalizations about what is and isn’t male or female because they are narrow minded. But let’s not throw everything out! Genderbending is a practice in fiction that is very creative and helps inspire artists and writers.
It’s okay to not like something! But be careful of trying to make something a moral justification--it’s your responsibility to invest in stuff that you’re interested in. You can avoid something without trying to ruin it for other people. I think we should be trying to bring back “Don’t Like, Don’t Read.”
[ Please don’t reblog, I’m not interested in starting a fight with Tumblr, I just want to have this as a pinned post on my blog. ]
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