#voltrans

matt struggled with his gender from early on, but didn’t manage to start presenting how he wanted until his teens. when pidge started expressing the same sort of antipathy to gender that he had, he had to finally confront that he was probably-definitely trans and not just a tomboy, and that he needed to help her out like he’d wanted-- sam and colleen were accepting of the general concept of trans people, but they just didn’t know enough to be able to suggest/recognize/encourage it in matt. he had to advocate for himself, try things out by himself, research by himself... so even if pidge may not be trans for sure, he wanted to make sure she’d know the concept, and feel able to choose it.

he’d been hesitant about officially changing his name and pronouns yet, when pidge came to him saying “i might be... like you,” and he’d said “wouldn’t it be nice if i was matt, and you were katie” as a frustrated joke, but... it actually felt better and ended up sticking. realizing how much she liked the name made pidge certain that she really was a girl. and their parents liked the idea, too-- it quelled the weird “i’ve lost my son/daughter” feelings parents get, to think that their kids hadn’t changed or gone anywhere, they were just... flipped from what had been expected. matt advocated intensely for pidge to get to start blockers/hrt as soon as needed, because he wished he could’ve figured it out in time for that option too. knowing pidge and matt, they created a whole binder of compiled research and plans to present. color-coded, of course.

they started out with their ‘new’ genders trying to fit into expectations, trying to ‘look the part’ as much as possible in order to pass easily and make things easy for their parents to understand, but... it wasn’t necessarily what they wanted most, especially for pidge. it’s what they had to do, but not ideal. trying to convince people to accept you as trans and then doing anything not standard to your gender-- even if it’s things cis people can do all the time without having their gender questioned-- is risky and scary. both of them ran into issues with this due to their garrison aspirations: matt being asked “why are you afraid to be a strong woman in STEM? don’t you know you can do this without being a man? do you lack female role models?”, pidge being asked “don’t you like any regular girl things?” and being treated like she’s somehow suddenly less smart than she was before. so they had to dress traditionally to compensate. 

and after kerberos, pidge knew she would stand out too much trying to get into the garrison as another trans girl who just happens to look like katie holt... so she had to join as a cis boy. had to step back from all the progress she’d made in establishing herself as a girl. had to try to fit in with cis boys when she’d never been able to before. but it was worth it, for matt. 

and once the paladins had told her they knew she was really a girl, even with short hair, even with her scientific interests, her baggy tomboy clothes, that made her stop mourning the long hair-- she didn’t need it to be a girl, and she doesn’t need to wear a dress to convince her friends that she really is one. she can wear what she wants!

and while matt was never very feminine, he hates having to style his hair at all... and simple ponytails got him through a lot of his youth comfortably... and in space, gender isn’t as strict-- you meet an alien, you just accept whatever their professed gender is, because no one can be or really wants to be an expert and police on dozens and dozens of cultures-- so! 

Title: 7am sleepover

Characters: all of Voltron; lowkey Klance; Shiro & Lance

Rating: K

Words: 2 570+

Language: English

“What’s happening?” “Ugh, period day.” “Oh, sure. What did you guys set up?” “Mostly blankets and warm plushies. Hunk and Coran are trying to make some kind of tea, Allura’s making a show with the mice, Keith is dying, and Lance and I were thinking of joining this 7am sleepover. You in?” “Of course.”

in which Keith got his periods so they all declared it's a break day. Emotional conversations & stories ensue because what kind of sleepover would it be if it didn't?

So what if Lance was so shocked that Pidge was a girl bc he’s trans? Not a new concept, yet one that I fully support.

But what if he grew up surrounded by very non-gendered things in his house? What if he had an extremely gender neutral experience growing up and a lot of his family was varied on the gender spectrum and such.

I’m talking about him having a trans girl sister, his brother and maybe a few cousins are drag queens/kings, one of his siblings’ kids is agender, they have genderfluid, demigirl, and autigender friends, one of his mom or dads’ siblings is nonbinary, his Uncle is a demiboy, etc.

So he grew up with little to no concept of the gender binary (if you use school as an excuse to debunk this, he could have been homeschooled). His family warned him about the Garrison and how closed minded it would be. So he was stealth for his whole time there (except to Hunk, a childhood friend and later roommate at the Garrison). Being around such closed minded people for so long may have affected him and that’s why it took a while to get comfortable around the rest of the Paladins with his gender expression.

When Pidge came out, he was shocked because “a trans person??!!!? So far away from his home??!?” And he must have been both shocked and amazed and maybe homesick.

He never really comes out to the team. He shows off his surgery scars when he takes his shirt off when training; he causally mentions how his period was a bitch to Pidge when they were talking; he insults people/things/aliens by calling them cishets (ie, calling a table a cishet if he stubs his toe on it or calling rude aliens cishets behind their backs).

Once they were reminiscing about earth and he mentions that he misses doing makeup with his bro before one of his shows. And the others were like “what do you mean??”

So he explains how his bro is a drag queen along with a few cousins, and a few of those cousins are drag kings. And the others are still like “really?? “ And he’s continues with something’s along the lines of: “yeah, and almost all of my family is genderqueer in some way and since I was homeschooled until the Garrison, I didn’t really experience the gender binary till I left for the school. Honestly, it’s great to be away from the gender binary out here in space, feels like home.”

Later, he teaches Allura and Coran about the earth gender binary and all if it’s issues.

If I used any offensive terms in the this, please tell me and I will fix it. Also, this is just an idea, I am not in any way suggesting this is actually canon, so please don’t take offense.

C.....Curly haired trans Lance with freckles and glasses......featuring inconsistencies