Hello! First of all thank you for hosting a sapphic SW event and promoting a community and content, I've been excited about the upcoming Sapphic SW week event--but I do have some concerns about the "genderbending" day.
I want to preface by saying this is not an attack on the event or anyone running the event, I understand this is a lot of work and time and in the end it's all just for fun. But I would be remiss if I did not voice my concerns on who we are excluding from sapphic spaces and who we are prioritizing with the inclusion of this prompt. While at first I took this as a day as "genderbending" canonic men into women to make a mlm or m/f ship into a wlw ship so that it would shift focus to the value and exploration of relationships between women or imagining characters as trans women, I have found the explanation of this day increasingly worrying in the context of a sapphic and women centered event and space.
First of all with the term and practice of "genderbending," while it can be fun it is also steeped in gender binary thinking and stereotypes and often inconsiderate of trans people and how the complexities of gender and gender nonconformity play out.
I think celebrating and exploring masculinity in women and sapphics is fantastic and can be done through butch, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming identities, we can celebrate those who are not only part of the community but often excluded from it without prioritizing men and relationships between men. Perhaps the "genderbending" prompt can be shifted in some way to reflect that?
While I'm thrilled about the butch4butch and femme4femme prompt, I feel it is a bit reductive to use that prompt as the only avenue and placeholder for masculinity in women and sapphics and also still ignores the issue that by shifting binary women to binary men the focus is shifted away from women/sapphics and relationships between women/sapphics, which is vastly undervalued in not only fandom spaces--Star Wars fandom spaces specifically--but society at large. It's just disappointing to see some of the small space we have carved out to make more room for men and relationships between men.
There is no one being excluded by asking for a prompt that asks to explore the possibility of women being men. If anything the prompt can be amended to include nonbinary headcanons. If the prompt was cisswap as has been a suggested term instead of genderbending, the concern about trans identities being excluded would make more sense. But this is asking that women be men, if someone were to use a character that is already established as trans or non binary we aren't asking that those identities be erased, the non binary character doesn't even need anything to be changed about them. It is simply, if there is a woman in the relationship what would be the wider impacts on the story and universe of Star Wars at large if she were a man this time.
The implication that we are only thinking in binary thinking by putting a caveat of asking that women be men for this prompt, to let people who genderbend their mxm ships know that this is still not the space for their content, feels as if it ignores the ways that this event has been run in the past. Sure, trans headcanons have never been ask for specifically, there has never been a community submission for that prompt in the past, that doesn't mean that they haven't been allowed in the past. It is open ended and welcome to everyone to do at any point if that is what they feel like making.
This blog has always been about centering the female characters, we have a rule that allows for mxf ships to be genderbent to fit into the fxf cetegory because sometimes it's fun to imagine what if the mxf ship were sapphic. Because of the amount of content that is made where some of the most popular mxm ships are now fxf we have been adamant about keeping that content off of the blog due to the fact that the women of Star Wars by and large do not get nearly as much content or attention as the men do. We simply do not want to open the floodgates of having the most popular mxm ships become the center of sapphic week even if it's for a day.
This prompt is one day of the week, one prompt of 14 that have been put out this year. It isn't required to be used by anyone. It was simply a prompt to explore a thought experiment. If people want to explore deep and wide explorations of gender and the wider narrative through this prompt that is great! But if they just want to explore how aesthetics might change in a visual piece where Padme and Sabe are now men, that is fine too. It is an open ended prompt that is not telling anyone that they have to adhere to any gender constructs aside from what would it be like if this woman were now a man.
If anything genderbending has for a long time now been men being bent to be women. It was a tongue in cheek ask of the community to do the opposite of what the common trends are. It's a subversion of expectations and a space to queer the narrative in ways that may not have been considered before.
This will be the final post on this topic. If you feel like this isn't the space for you that is fine, we just ask that we all move on peacefully. This just isn't the space for having these kinds of conversations. This is a blog for hosting events around sapphic ships, not a blog about gender and sexuality.
