#trans coded

Like like please see the idea of "not being a good enough worm" as "not being a good enough boy/girl"

Anywho!! Life’s all good in your polycule.

Growing up you’ve always felt this hole in your chest. You didn’t feel pretty in dresses, never felt enough for past boyfriends, you felt nauseous at the sight of your own body.

Perhaps you didn’t feel feminine enough because you had smaller chests than average or guys didn’t pay much attention to you. You didn’t hate being feminine. You hate how it doesn’t feel good on you. You didn’t run away from it, instead compensating for it. You became louder, funnier, and a distraction from the whole thing.

Some nights you whisper his name. Sometimes there’s a reply. A heartbeat buried under self-loathing and desire.

One night at the dinner table when you’re extra quiet with no jokes or chit chat to distract yourself from the hole getting bigger, your lovers look over at you.

They’re everything you want to be. Tall, muscular, hairy, a man. “Why didn’t God make you a man. Why? Why can’t you be happy a woman? Why can’t [preferred name] just go away and stop terrorizing you?”

It’s a whirlwind of thoughts as your knee bounces with more speed under the table. The food infront of you no longer appealing but sickening. Picking at your nails till your fingers were bloody yet it did nothing to soothe you.

You flinch once a hand comes in contact with your back. Through the blur of tears you can make out Price’s form.

You push his hand off you and walk upstairs to your room. A few moments later, Simon knocks on your door before entering. “Everything okay love? Did something happen today?”

Yeah.

“But when I find something that says, ‘I recognize you—you’re like me,’ that’s when I’ll know…”

[In return, Abe wrote his own letter back to Hellboy, an account of his own dreams. Abe’s letter is full of a yearning to belong, but always feeling alienated, and feeling helpless to change it. All he can do is pretend] [Mignolaversity]

Do you remember last month when you said to me, right after Agent Keel and I got in that fight? “I know some of these guys are total jerks, but a lot of the getting along has to do with YOU. They don’t understand you, so YOU have to make the effort. Make them see you’re not so different. Do that, it’s better for everybody.” What I should have said back then, but didn’t, was: “That’s easy for you to say. Because I AM different. You were raised with people all around you. I also think you’ve just got the soul of an average joe in you. But me? As much as it would benefit everybody for me to get along, to fit in, to be one of the guys, I’m not. And the idea of making a big effort to pretend to be, just so everybody else feels more comfortable…you see, I’D rather be the comfortable one. I want that feeling that I belong, not the feeling that I’m TRYING to belong.”

“That shirt can’t be comfortable, Abe.” / “But you aren’t playin’ a part anymore, huh?” / “Should I let HIM define who I am now?”

“…We all sort of model ourselves off what we think we ought to be.”

“Whatever’s going on, I’m a man. I started out a man, I have the mind of a man, a man’s soul…”

Okay but like. Jenny is trans-coded and I think it's a really fascinating part of her story.

She wasn't born like a human girl but desperately desires to be one. She hates her old name (xj-9). Gets excited when she's called "a daughter" etc etc. Her experience AS a robot girl is OBJECTIVELY different from a human girl's. Yet... that doesn't make her any less of a girl!

And I think with the reading of her story as Trans.. you know what episode (to me) becomes FAR MORE interesting?

Raggedy Android.

For those unaware (aside from this being listed as "one of the creepiest episodes in cartoon history" which. like. IT IS.) In this episode Jenny gets excluded from a hangout spot BECAUSE she's a robot.

Eventually this leads to her putting on her human exo suit. She LOOKS and is TREATED like a normal girl for once!

But there's a cost to this.

The exo suit begins to control her against her will. Forcing her to sit out of fights. Jenny isn't herself.

The suit tells her "this is how normal girls behave"

The episode, of course, ends with Jenny busting out of the suit and being herself!

To me this episode is really interesting in the context of the accidental trans-coding of Jenny because it's something Trans people DO have to face!

"If you don't act super feminine as a trans woman than you're not a real woman!" Some might say.

And if that's how you want to present as a trans-woman that's entirely valid!

But that should be YOUR CHOICE!

Trans-men should be allowed to be feminine, trans-women should be allowed to be masculine! Nonbinary people are allowed to be some other third thing.