#trans!dipper

We'll begin with names.

In the episode Double Dipper, Dipper is trying to get Wendy to dance with him and through the various hijinks that ensue, we find out that not only is Dipper's actual name Mason, Dipper being only a nickname based on his big dipper forehead birthmark, but he wishes his name was Tyrone. He even names his first clone Tyrone.

It's not uncommon for trans people to go by a nickname instead of their deadname. (I've even done it) If Dipper wasn't out to his parents, it'd make complete sense that he wouldn't want to out himself by using Tyrone, and instead make a workable middle ground with Dipper. And when given the chance, he named himself Tyrone, even if it was only a clone of himself.

In the same episode he talks to Wendy while she waits for the bathroom, and the two have a sweet moment when they acknowledge and laugh over their shared weirdness. Wendy shows a picture of herself from when she was about 12, and Dipper reveals his birthmark, the source of his nickname. Wendy has also been said to have been bisexual from behind the scenes. Queer also means weird, and queerness has been treated as weird, so a tender moment between these two about weirdness could also serve as a tender moment between two queer people, not hating or despising their weirdness but enjoying and celebrating it.

Next we have the episode Dipper vs. Manliness, and as it states, it's about Dipper tackling manliness.

Dipper tries to beat a 'manliness' test, in reality just a strength tester to get free pancakes for his family, and fails, while the very masculine manly lumberjack beats it easily. At the table he gets poked and teased for not having chest hair, for being small and scrawny, for listening to girly pop music, and the failure to beat the manliness test drives him over the edge and he runs off. Stan simply laughs and asks how he's related to 'that'.

Even a completely unrelated comment from a woman looking for a mailman prods his nerves, and he asks 'Oh what? Are you saying I'm not a "male man?" Is that what you're trying to say? I'm not male? I'm not a man? Is that-is that what you're getting at?' And he runs off with tears in his eyes.

He runs to the woods and tries to do situps and fails. In his sorrow, the beef jerky he holds accidentally summons a manotaur, the very epitome of hyper/toxic masculinity. Dipper begs him to teach him to be a man, and after winning the favor of the manotaurs, like hairy Li Shangs, he and the other manotaurs vow to make a man out of him.

After completing many trials, juxtaposed to Stan's journey to try and win the favor of Lazy Susan, much of them involving pain and being generally typically masculine, he only has one task left. Kill the Multi-Bear, and he'll finally be a man.

He hesitates, but when the manotaurs find his CD of BABBA and begin doubting him, he resolves himself to go kill the Multi-Bear.

When he finally is poised to kill the Multi-Bear, the beast has but one request for his last moments, for Dipper to put on his favorite song. Disco Girl by BABBA.

While the Multi-Bear accepts his face, Dipper can't bring himself to do it. The Multi-Bear doesn't deserve to die for not being man enough, and is it really manly to do something like this?

Dipper goes back to the manotaurs and refuses his task. He doesn't need to do all of this to be a man, and he won't kill for it. He doesn't change the manotaurs, and he gets thrown out on his ass, shuffling his way back to the diner.

He explains what happens to Mabel and Stan, and Stan, the biggest source of teasing and mockery directed at Dipper, tells him what he did was quite manly in his opinion. He stood up for himself and did what he thought was right, sounds manly enough for Stan.

Dipper gets his first chest hair after that, and after Stan asks Susan out, the episode ends.

Another episode that points to Dipper possibly being trans, Bottomless Pit! is a multistory episode, where Soos, Dipper, and Mabel tell stories while the three and Stan are stranded in the bottomless pit.

Dipper's story is called Voice-Over, and features him getting made fun of for having a cracking high pitched voice. Upset and looking for a solution, he takes McGucket's solution to make his voice deeper.

It distresses Mabel and sounds weird on him, but finally, he has a deep and manly voice, and no one can make fun of his old voice.

Unfortunately it gets him in trouble and he begs McGucket for a different voice. McGucket gives him a new vial, a permanent voice, and Dipper pauses. He listens to the mixtape of his voice Wendy, Soos, and Mabel made, and he finds a sweet message at the end from the trio, and he doesn't drink it. He's okay with his voice, it isn't perfect, but it's his.

These are only the highlights of Dipper's struggle with masculinity and himself and how people treat him, Stan being tough and assigning tough chores on him to make him more of a man is an additional highlight, it's quite common for well meaning relatives to do such things to make their trans family members more like what they think of a person of their gender should be. There's plenty more instances of Dipper trying to be more manly and masculine to avoid ridicule or to earn respect, plenty more instances of him struggling to be and find himself.

While it may not have been written as a trans story, it could be read as a trans story.

And yet, everything about her felt familiar. They had the same face. They had the same build, the same skin, the same hair. When he passed by a pool of water and looked in, he didn't see Mabel possessed by a demon. He only saw himself.

Sometimes he was Alcor, the distant and powerful demon, puppetting this mortal in fulfilment of the basest instincts that ran through his species. He could revel in the ability to touch and move and be real, to have an impact on the world, to carry out his deeds.

And sometimes he was Dipper Pines, once again trapped inside a girl's body, and that was when things became too real.

It was times like that when he did not feel like a puppeteer, reaching into reality from above. It was times like that when he felt suffocated by her skin. He'd try to alleviate it by putting on his old vest and t-shirt, and by tucking his long hair into his pine tree hat. But in a way that only made things worse, because it put him right back to when he used to do that in his own flesh.

Before he transitioned.

Before the Transcendence.

As he went to work on whatever cult needed bashing or whatever mystery needed solving, that feeling remained a palpable presence on his mind. And later on, when he stood in the shower, cleaning off the blood and letting the bruises heal so that Mabel didn't have to deal with them, Dipper could not help but notice the ways in which her body was not the same as his.

It was a reminder of what he'd been heading toward, back when his body was on the cusp of entering the wrong puberty. Back when everyone else thought he was girl just because of the way he was born. And though he still enjoyed the feeling of walking around in a suit made of matter, it made him feel grateful that he was only puppetting the body; that at the end of the day, he could slip back out of that suit and into a more comfortable form.