Watching a documentary on David Reimer was my introduction to gender vs sex. On the one hand it made an excellent crash course that gender =/= sex and having a gender that doesn't match your body causes serious psychological harm so I never went through a "gender is just bullshit" phase. On the other hand it was such a dramatic case that I didn't learn that there are other forms of dysphoria and the varying degrees that people can have until tumblr (I learned about the concept of a 3rd gender from the Taboo episode on gender so the whole "nonbinary" thing was pretty easy to understand and I'm kinda glad I didn't learn about that from stuff like "my gender is space" blogs).
The Ideal~ I think it happens a lot that people who don't get the things they want/need out of media get really defensive over what scraps they can cling to, and that leads to shitty situations where people need trans girls and people need NBs and people need cis gender nonconformant peeps, and then there's big old kurfuffles over having to share space, cause all those things can't exist in the same character. And then we have to play the "whose desires matter more" game. And that's never a fun time.
I absolutely agree with what you're saying here, but in the interests of being a pedantic little shit, I'm gonna point out that you can technically have your cake and eat it too in this particular situation, by way of Stevonnie.
world peace is achieved, glitter rains from the sky, and everything is happy forever and ever amen. no but in all seriousness, that's why representation is so important. the danger of a single story and all that. man tho, like every week i'm just so super glad steven universe is a show that exists, and there's a whole generation of kids who get to grow up watching it & learning those lessons.
> "hey I wonder if I will come across some cool meta or cute fanart in the trans steven tag" > checks tag > several posts about how fans are conflating crossdressing with being transgender and how trans Steven (or even nb Steven) would never be canon > at least one post about how headcanoning him as trans or nonbinary is horrible and disrespects his gender identity Well I think that's enough tumblr for me today why do I never learn every time I go to any steven universe tag on tumblr I have an awful experience
Huh. That seems. Off. You know, I see a lot of common trans headcanons, and they're mostly like "dude/lady character A is trans dude/lady", and not a whole lot of "chick/bro character B is trans dude/lady". It might be that people just don't want to "change" familiar characters like that. Or something. I dunno, honestly. Sucks, anyways. :< I like Steven as a dude, but he's hella cute every which way.
Yeah, I get that as far as we know, Steven is is a boy who likes feminine things an feels no shame about that. That's great as it is! But I personally like to headcanon him as nonbinary, and even if it's not my headcanon I think the trans girl headcanon is cute. I thought tumblr would be more accepting of trans headcanons, since IIRC Dipper and Danny Phantom being trans guys are fairly popular headcanons. I really didn't need several lectures about how I'm a terrible person for conflating gender presentation with gender and how I am misgendering a fictional character because I have a headcanon.
Yeah, I think that's the deal. I think I might have mucked it up a bit.... But, yeah. Danny and Dipper are guys in canon, and thinking that they're trans guys doesn't change that aspect of their characters. Thinking Steven isn't a guy might be more of a deviation from what they're used to than some peeps can handle. So, to make it clear, I think people might be more okay with keeping canon genders and changing the sex of characters, but they get squeamish over changing the canon gender and keeping the designated sex. Maybe cause the story of a beloved character learning that they're a different gender than what they (and the audience) first thought is very different from the story of a beloved character who is as he is and sorted out all or most of the trans stuff before the start of the story. Sorry if I'm fucking this up, haha. I'm not doing words good.
I can confirm, I've seen a lot of trans-danny on my dash, but that was a few months ago, along with trans-Striders. Honestly though, I've seen tumblr get on the case of anyone who has a gender head canon that's different from canon. Tumblr's extremely reactionary about many 'new' ideas, but usually the moaning and wailing will die down as soon as something new comes along. I remember there was a big 'backlash' against artists who drew the Crystal gems with breasts, but I haven't seen anyone crying about that lately.
...Did people somehow miss that Amethyst and Rose both have pretty distinct busts, and that while Garnet's figure is confusing in general I'm pretty sure her weird chest lump is also breasts? And if you count non-Garnet fusions, Rainbow Quartz and Opal both have breasts, and Sardonyx and Sugilite might too, it's hard to tell. Seriously, you could argue that Pearl doesn't have breasts, but she's the only Crystal Gem who's shown to be flat-chested, not counting Ruby and Sapphire (or Alexandrite, who's weird design-wise anyway). There's a bit more flatness with the others--Peridot in particular--but still. That's still several gems who have The Tiddies in canon.
[indistinct geologist muttering about lack of cleavage] #strictly speaking peridot should have more boobs than any of the crystal gems #well, except sugilite and alexandrite
