Hey, I'm sincerely asking out of curiousity, and if i upset you, it's totally not my intent and I apologize. I was just curious as to why you don't like "trans headcanons"? like, i'm not entirely sure what you mean or why, and i'm just curious! if i'm coming off rude i'm really sorry, i just see a lot of people use trans headcanons and i was unsure why some people thought it was ok and some didn't. you can answer pub or priv, w/e makes u more comfortable
you’re not coming off as rude at all! i’ll publish this, but you are off anon, so hmu if you would like me to take this down.
i feel like typically trans headcanons fetishize and romanticize an experience that people who develop the headcanons might not fully understand. i frequently see assumptions made about the trans body, the way it develops and changes, that are completely off-base and pretty offensive. this makes me wildly uncomfortable. also trans experiences and the transition process varies wildly for every person, yet trans narratives seem to almost always fall under “sad boy wearing a binder who no one!!! understands!!!” which i think is a lot of younger people projecting their own experiences struggling with gender identity--which, fine, it’s good that they found an outlet to deal with frustrations they have regarding their identity, and learning who they are. but understand that is a very limited, narrow understanding of the trans experience and to limit it to such a singular thing is kind of demeaning. furthermore it is really frustrating to see stories about trans characters be limited to their transition. to have a trans character be just like any other protagonist in a coffee shop AU would even be refreshing, just because it would be about them stuck in some other horrible trope that they weren’t normally relegated to.
so overall i think they can be (a) fetishizing (b) limited to a narrow worldview that only speaks to a very small spectrum of emotions and experiences trans people genuinely endure (c) limiting trans characters to their transition experience and not seeing them as individuals outside of that experience
