Been thinking about the animorphs series (been getting back into the audiobooks too), specifically how much would change or not change if Tobias has been trapped in the body of a female red tailed hawk all those years. I think Tobias would have at least become genderfluid, definitely genderqueer in some aspect.
As a fellow animorphs enthusiast, do you have any thoughts? Do you think it would have changed much?
Not really. I don't think Tobias cares much about the sex of his hawk body, and I don't think the other kids would talk about him as a girl if he was in a girl hawk, if that's what you mean -- they morph across sexes all the time and never have much to say about it except for that one time really early on that Marco complained about being a "girl wolf". Being a hawk is a radically different experience than being a human already, and I don't think that female hawkitude is any closer physiologically or socially to female humanity than male hawkitude is. I think the main difference, if Tobias had a female hawk body, would be slightly different teasing from Marco.
More illuminating re: Tobias' gender is his reaction to being in a female human body, which he finds to be an incredibly positive experience in a very pointed way. Also, his discomfort with his own human body, which can have a lot of causes (his shitty home life and the bullying will cause this regardless), but in combination with his reluctance to be a human boy when he has the option even in safe and supported circumstances and his reaction to morphing Taylor, is extremely telling. Tobias has a lot of indicators of being trans (I personally think of him as trans), but I don't think being a female hawk would have changed much.