okay i really got carried away and i dont mean to vent in ur asks but ur post about being uncomfortable with the way fandom misgenders sam and leans into the misogyny of the show is so relatable i had to say something on it. feel free to publish this ask or to add ur own opinion, i dont mind!
i think now i am less uncomfortable with girl sam headcanons and i even enjoy transfem sam hcs in the later seasons,, but especially when i was first joining the fandom seeing the amount of misgendering and girlifying of sam made me so bone deep uncomfortable. because i saw the way sam was degraded and feminized in canon and i related to him so much in a transmasc way instead
then to go into the fandom and see people leaning into the misgendering and calling him a woman for being a man who *checks notes* is nice to people? has long hair. likes to be clean?? felt like it was just perpetuating the sexism of the show. it felt incredibly invalidating to say the least,, and to say a lot more, it made me feel uncomfortable being trans in the spn fandom.
even now its incredibly hard to trust anyone in the spn fandom to not be transphobic or hold transphobic values. someone can have 'terfs dni' in their pinned post all they want but are they really challenging sexism, bioessentialism, or transphobia by calling men women for acting slightly feminine? are trans people supposed to be comfortable around them when they see a man with the slightest amount of ass, with a tiny bit of hip and waist visible, and pointing at him laughing and calling him a woman? (also its made worse by the fact that sams not all that feminine? hes a very masculine big buff guy. the way the show misgenders him is almost comical when paired with that fact, but the way fandom perpetuates it and doubles down on it is something else entirely.)
its hard because i understand that people are going to relate to the show differently to me. i relate to sam in a way that ties into my trans male identity. other people might relate to him and the way hes treated as feminine because of their feminine identity. to some people it could be liberating and an expression of their own identity to focus on sams femininity and i dont want to ruin or make people feel bad for enjoying that. but this fandom makes me feel like im fucking crazy for being uncomfortable with sexism and transphobia sometimes.
-hellhoundlair
i completely get all of this and feel the same honestly!
one of the things that makes me relate so much to sam, whether he's written a cis man or a trans man, is that he's masculine in ways that are non-typical in the environment he's in. especially when it comes to headcanoning him as trans - it's important to me that he has these traits that can be read as feminine and has asserted his identity as a man anyway. it's important to me that he's unapologetic for the ways that he defies expectation and i'm always going to prefer headcanons that center his masculinity as a big part of his identity.
sometimes it can feel like people see the 'feminine' traits sam has and make the same jump that i used to see when it came to autistic-coded characters. feminine traits = trans woman, autistic traits = ace or agender. and while it's true for some people, i think that making that jump in every instance you see can be really disillusioning for people in that community who don't fit into those boxes. it can make you feel like there's something wrong with you for being trans in a particular direction when you still have traits that are 'typical' for your assigned gender or vice versa, or make you feel like you have to adhere to an identity that doesn't quite fit because everyone talks like it's a given for your personality. when i was younger i really did think and feel like i was ace when i wasn't because of just how many people were convinced the characters i related to were. turns out autistic people can just have very different relationships with sex and i'm very normal for an autistic person! i was never ace, i was just really disconnected with the allistic way of looking at sex.
it's the same with trans headcanons for me. a lot, and i mean a lot of characters that people think of as trans fem have been characters that for me have been huge comfort characters or kin characters, both in this fandom and in others. often for the same reasons that i personally see myself in them - those atypical traits that make me feel like oh that's a guy who's like me! - and every time i have found myself going the other way, and ending up really firm on my own trans masc headcanons. you don't have to be the dictionary definition of masculine to be a man. you can be masculine in ways that are different to what is expected of you and those ways are still just as important and valuable and manly.
again, this isn't necessarily a rebuke to trans fem sam headcanons. this shit is personal and i fully understand that. the above are my personal reasons for my headcanons and the way i am about them.
