Trans Clone Week 2024 Day 3: Clone Gender Expression vs Other's Expectations / Vod'e Cultural Gender Markers / Tattoos
“That’s when–” Raz pauses, their gaze dropping to Winter’s chestplate. “Winter and his team will flank from the right.”
They keep talking, but Winter’s distracted by Sky nudging shoulders with him.
“Why’d he look at you like that?”
“Gender dots,” Winter whispers back, trying to at least half-listen to the rest of the briefing. But when Sky gives him a completely clueless look, he realises that he didn’t quite explain things. “After, okay?”
Raz is a competent commander, and it doesn’t take long for them to wrap things up in a surprisingly efficient manner.
And of course, as Winter leaves the briefing room with the twins in tow, it’s not long before Silver is the one with a question now.
“They looked at Bee’s , too, and got their pronouns right. What was Raz looking for?”
“These,” Winter says, tapping at the top of his chestplate. On his left are four dots – black, grey, white circled with black, and green. They’re a match for the tattoo on the back of his neck, though there, the white stands out on its own, without any need to make it distinct from standard-issues white plastoid.
“Your gender,” Sky acknowledges. “But that doesn’t explain Bee.”
“Mine are my pronouns,” Bee explains, their helmet tucked under their arm. “Four for they, five for he and she, six for he and they, and seven for she and they. The natborns don’t pick up on it, think it’s just decoration. We know what it means.”
“Didn’t you ever wonder why there’s so many more trans clones out here, compared to on Kamino?” Winter asks.
“They’re older?” Silver questions, audibly unsure of himself.
Bee shakes their head with a little snort.
“It’s because,” Winter says, ignoring them, “the Kaminoans don’t like it. They see this as aberrations. Like when a tubie is decanted with extra fingers or a crooked back. This, they call it a learned aberration. We were made as men, and they expect us to stay that way. They don’t like that we change what we are. They think it’s going to make us…”
He shrugs. The Kaminoans had never really bothered explaining. Clones generally didn’t ask many questions. Especially not with the people who could get them decommissioned if they asked too many.
“But once we get away from them,” he continues, “and meet other clones like us, we learn more. Like how Sunny changed pronouns after being assigned to us. Used to use pronouns like yours and mine, right?”
“A lot of clones will have the same colours on their helmet cheeks,” Bee adds. “Stripes for gender, most of the time, and dots for pronouns. Sometimes armour gets dirty when we’re deployed on long missions, but we always keep our visors clean. Cleaning the rest of the helmet is a lot easier than cleaning a chestplate.”
“Is that why your helmet has stripes?” Silver wants to know.
“No, mine are across the top.” They hand their helmet over so he can see. “More like Jewel’s helmet stripes. You can ask zhir about those.”
“But zhi doesn’t have dots on zhir armour. For gender or pronouns.”
“Some clones don’t feel safe telling everyone they meet. So without the dots, people just say ‘he’ and ‘him’. The other clones in their squad will know their real pronouns, but use the standard issue ones around other people.”
“That,” Winter agrees, “and there’s too many different sets of pronouns to have all of them. Sometimes, clones like that, they’ll have a black bar with white dots in the middle. Means that they have pronouns, just different ones. If it’s one circle, they don’t use pronouns at all.”
“They just use their name. Like this – Bee is meeting me in Bee’s quarters so we can work on Bee’s flimsiwork, since Bee never does it on Bee’s own.”
“Lies and slander,” they inform him, even though they both know it’s the truth. “But look – see that purple helmet? The stripes on the cheeks? She’s got the same ones on her blaster barrel. On the handguard where it’s not hot enough that the paint will peel off.”
“Cool,” the twins murmur. “What if the blaster breaks?”
“Same thing as armour. Paint the new one. The recyclers will strip the paint off before breaking down the parts. Whoever inherits a blaster won’t know what it used to have.”
It’s kind of sad, in Winter’s opinion, but he understands. And even though it’s sad for a clone’s identity to be lost, he supports it. Otherwise inheriting someone’s pronoun marks would just get too confusing.
“Is she not gonna grow her hair?” Sky wants to know. “The lady with the purple helmet. Natborn human girls almost always have long hair.”
Bee shrugs. Theirs is almost to their waist, in their braid. They didn’t grow it out until they were reassigned to the task force. Before that, long missions made long hair impractical.
“Could be that they’re low on supplies and it’s too much hassle. Could be that she doesn’t like the feeling of long hair. But a lot of girl clones won’t grow their hair out. They keep it short, like the men. Some natborns will do a lot to make sure they look like their culture’s idea of a woman. General Nima had surgery to have ear cones, like most other Twi’lek women have, and she always wears dresses. Clones can’t always do that.”
“Because of the Kaminoans?”
“Sometimes. But what a lot of natborns would see as masculine – we don’t see it the same way. A clone could look like Boom, and we wouldn’t have any problem calling her a girl.”
Boom’s taller and wider than them, all muscle, with a shaved head and facial hair. He’s looked like that since before they met him, and presumably his appearance will never change much.
“So all genders look the same, with clones, a lot of the time,” Sky repeats, waiting for Winter’s nod to confirm that he understood. “So that’s why the dots help. Bee’s got long hair but isn’t a girl. That purple helmet was a girl but she had short hair. That’s kind of cool.”
That’s not the extent of it, Winter knows. The top padding and bottom tucking that so many natborns do, that’s not an option for them in their armour. And skintight body gloves tend to not be particularly comfortable either, when it comes to stuffing things up their shirts. Civilian clothes are fine, sometimes, if they’re loose fit – but those tend to be in short supply.
“Natborns tend to read me as – I forget their word,” Bee says, waving a hand vaguely before reaching to take their helmet back. “Androgynous. Because a lot of them see what they think is a man with long hair, and wonder why. Other clones don’t expect things like that. It’s nice, actually. I know Jewel likes long hair so zhi can play with it, but when you two were still cadets, we had a girl named Algebra who couldn’t stand anything more than a buzzcut. She said she liked that she could be seen as a girl no matter what her hair was like. That natborns weren’t always the same way.”
“That sucks,” Silver says with a frown. “She’s a girl, is that so hard?”
Winter smiles. The squad might not have had the twins for long, but they’ve all tried to teach their shinies about the way things are. About how to accept people. With all of them being queer, and half of them being trans in some way, it was important to them. To Winter, especially.
“Is there more you want to know?”
“Yeah,” Sky cuts in, excited to be able to learn. “I thought you just liked the colours, but the tattoo on your neck, it’s for your gender, right?”
“Right. A lot of clones have similar ones. Most of them are ones that are hidden by our clothes. Just under the neck, so a shirt can be pulled down, or on the inside of the wrist, so a sleeve can be rolled up. Being able to choose who sees is important to a lot of us.”
“No, it can be different. It can be – Maia! Can you show the shinies your tattoo?”
“Sure thing, Win,” she agrees easily. She sets down the box she was carrying to a gravsled and rolls her right sleeve up to show a ⚥ in a dark maroon colour. “Telling the shinies about things, huh?” She smiles at his nod and holds her wrist out so the twins can see it better. “We call it two-gender. Sometimes I’m a guy, sometimes I’m a woman.”
“Then why have pronoun dots on your chestplate?” Silver wants to know. “Don’t they change?”
“These are marker. Put this–” she knocks on her chestplate “–through an armour wash and the dots will come right off so I can change it to what I want. Some people, their gender changes fast. Mine’s slow. I’ll be a girl for another six months, probably. Maybe five or four. But long enough that the marker works for me.
“I have a sister whose gender changes fast between being a girl and not feeling like anything. She has a tattoo like mine, just the female symbol, or the null symbol, the one that looks like rays shooting out of the top. She does it in temporary ink so she can rub it out with her fingers. She keeps the pen for it in her belt pouches. Hey, did Win tell you about helmets?”
She turns to the stack of crates already on the gravsled and takes it down, turning it so they can see the front. Over the visor is a pair of Mando’a letters, a pair of Ts, one above the other with one upside down.
“This is our symbol. Flip the letter when you flip your gender, I say.”
“And nobody else does,” Winter says dryly.
“I’ll get it to catch on, just you wait,” she tells him. “Some people, like my sister, they’ll have it in four ways, like a compass rose. For multigender or genderfluid.”
“Thank you for telling us, Ms Maia,” Silver says politely, and Sky echoes him.
“Any time, kiddos. Come find me whenever, if you have questions. My squad’s bunking closest to the cargo bay. Permanent support staff, I’ll be here longer than you are. Oh, and Winter – tell Jewel I’ll be by for those pins after curfew, okay?”
“Okay,” he agrees, and steps back as a mouse droid darts between them. “We’ll leave you to it, Maia, thank you.”
She waves them off, and Winter guides the twins to stay along the wall, now that there’s more foot traffic than before.
“Do you know what pins she was talking about?” Sky asks.
“Like Nebula’s pin, with xyr pronouns on it. There’s not a lot of printers that can be used for whatever we want. Jewel’s got one, so zhi’s popular with other trans clones, when we meet them. A lot of them put it on the inside of their sleeves, around where Maia’s tattoo is. They can show it easily, and hide it easily.”
“Oh,” Sky says, but quieter than before.
“Oh, what?” Winter prompts, setting a hand on his shoulder for a moment.
“You all have to hide, don’t you? Because of the Kaminoans and the natborns?”
“Unfortunately. But when the war ends, we’ve all got plans. For surgeries and voice training and new hairstyles and tattoos.” Winter offers both twins what is, hopefully, a reassuring smile. “And if you want something – a tattoo, pin, marker pen, whatever – we’ll get it for you. Either of you. Both of you. Doesn’t matter. Okay?”
“Can I get a marker?” Sky asks hesitantly.
“I can go get it right now,” Bee offers, and Sky smiles.
“I’d like that,” he says.
Winter wraps an arm around Sky’s shoulders, and starts drawing up a mental list of the clones he knows that are around and would be willing to talk about who they are, and who Sky can be, if he wants to.
