Lately Iâve been seeing people discuss why âgenderbendingâ isnât transphobic, or why itâs something thatâs fine and should be accepted. Most of the people who have been discussing this are cis, which is an issue right off the bat, so Iâm going to preface this post by saying that if you are not trans, you do not have the right to determine what is or is not transphobic. Full. Stop. So if youâre cis, and your first instinct is to argue with me on this, I would like for you to consider why you believe that you can recognize transphobia better than someone who is routinely subject to it. That being said, letâs get into this.Â
To start off, what is âgenderbending?â Most fansites will define it as the act of âswitchingâ a characterâs gender, but thereâs already an issue with this. âGenderbendingâ, or ârule 63â as is called in some circles, it not just about switching a characterâs gender, it is about changing that characterâs body as well. I have yet to see a âgenderbentâ version of a male character who lacked breasts and a dfab body. This the first and most obvious reason why âgenderbendingâ is inherently transphobic - it assumes that physical traits and gender are the same thing, and that you cannot be female without also being dfab. This is cissexism, and this is transphobic. The message that âgenderbendingâ says is that you must have breasts and a vagina to be female, and you must have a penis and a flat chest to be male. I should not have to explain why that message is transphobic.
However, the way âgenderbendsâ are carried out also has distinctly transphobic implications in how it switches out the physical traits of characters to make them âthe opposite genderâ ( the notion of there being âopposite gendersâ is some fresh bullshit that Iâll cover later in this post ). For example, by giving a male character breasts and curves when âgenderbendingâ him, the message is clear that this character was cis to begin with. âGenderbendingâ inherently implies that all characters are cisgender by default, and erases any possibility of these characters being trans. This is not as overtly transphobic as the first point, but it is harmful to trans people within fandom spaces, as the assumption that all characters are cis until explicitly stated otherwise pushes us out of media and removes whatever representation we might try to make for ourselves.Â
The third issue with âgenderbendingâ is that it is always cis male <â> cis female, and nothing else. I have never seen people âgenderbendâ characters by making them nonbinary or intersex. I have never seen a genderbend of a female character which made her a trans male instead. âGenderbendingâ implies that there are only two options when it comes to gender: cis male and cis female. There is no such thing as nonbinary people within this ideology. Intersex people are laughable at best. Agender people are little better than a distant myth. âGenderbendingâ ignores that it is impossible to make a character âthe opposite genderâ, because there is no such thing as an âopposite genderâ. Gender is a spectrum, not a binary, but you wouldnât know that from the way fandom spaces treat it.Â
Of course, there are some reasons for âgenderbendingâ cis male characters into cis females that will always get brought up in discussions on the politics of âgenderbending.â The most frequent is that cis girls, who only see themselves as one-dimensional characters in media, want to have characters like them who are just as multifaceted and developed as the male characters that we are given, so they make their male faves female to give themselves the representation they desire. This is a decent reason for âgenderbendingâ, but it does not excuse the fact that the way in which âgenderbendingâ is done is inherently transphobic, and it gives fans yet another excuse to ignore female characters in favor of focusing on their male faves.Â
Another reason for âgenderbendingâ that Iâve heard is âitâs for the sake of character exploration - like, what if this character had been born as male/female instead?â This excuse is cissexist and transphobic from first blush. The idea behind it is that someone âborn as femaleâ, aka with breasts/vagina will automatically be a cis female, allowing fans to explore what that characterâs life would have been like if they were female. Why not explore the possibility of a character being designated female at birth, but still identifying as male? Why do you need a character to be cis for you to find their personality and life interesting to explore? Why do you automatically reject the notion of your fave being trans? If you want to explore what it would have been like for your male fave to have struggled with sexism, consider them being a trans woman, or a closeted dfab trans person.
As a closing statement, I want to make one thing very clear. âGenderbendingâ does harm trans people. It perpetuates dangerous cissexist notions and the idea of a gender binary being a valid construct, erases nonbinary and intersex people, and others trans people. These are what we call microaggressions - they are not as dangerous as outright harassment and assault, but they enforce and support a system and ideology in which we are other, and we are worthy of hate and violence because we do not fit in.Â
âGenderbendingâ is a transphobic practice, and if you engage in it, you need to be aware of and acknowledge this.
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