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.
I think a more interesting conversation re: morphing as gender fluidity is Rachel's tendency, when given the option to pick her own morphs, to target male morphs. She explains this as wanting the biggest animals and working from species where those happen to be male, but it's interesting that the Cheerleader Popular Girl who learns to react to stress with physical violence, a response somewhat acceptable in teenage boys but utterly unacceptable in teen girls in her culture, always indulges this stress reaction by turning into something male first.
ooooo thats a really good point
A different version of animorphs in a more trans-friendly environment at the time of writing could have had many transgender animorphs, especially if they learnt how to do the dna combo Ax does for his human morph. You could create your own, custom body to feel euphoric in for 2 hours a day and then never question that for several years.
