#anyway in the noble and immortal words of nathaniel

[izzyspussy]

controversial take but like. i don't like trans eddie headcanons because i feel like.

1: his entire character arc and storyline are so intrinsically wrapped up in the outside expectations of his assigned gender and sexuality as a straight man and how having the specific pressures associated with that hinder him as a developing person. i don't think him being afab makes sense in the context of his story and the character interactions, especially with his mother (and therefore also It, and therefore the entire plot, because that's how that works in this case). i simply don't think you can make him afab and still have even remotely the same fundamental storyline, and if you don't have that then you don't have that character anymore.

characters where their gender is not so inherent to their arc and/or is not quite so dependent on the specific experience of one particular gender and the socially attached sexuality don't have this problem. say izzy hands, whose gender is not that important beyond that the generalized thesis of his canon is "this is what it means to be a man". he could be any type of man and still be the same guy playing the same role in the narrative and having - generally speaking - the same dynamic with the other characters. or dean winchester, whose character does have some dependency on the gender and sexuality expectations others have for him (and that he has for himself), but in a way that is a little more nebulous and not concretely connected to the actual plot. the villains would be the same, the plot points would be the same, and even the primary on-screen character dynamics would be - again generally speaking - basically the same if he were afab. i really do not think this is true for eddie.

i think you could still have eddie if you made him a trans woman. and i even think you could make a close enough mirror of him as a cis woman (if you did it right re: the themes and why his gender is so important in the original and how that would translate, which in the cis-swaps i've seen in this fandom has not been the case - but then again cis-swaps as a general rule are not very good or well thought out lol). but i really think that in order to make him ftm you'd have to change so much about how the story goes, and if you try to keep everything the same it doesn't work narratively/mechanically speaking. things just plain would not have happened that way, and no one seems to even try to make them happen the way they would have in those different circumstances.

and because of this, most trans eddie headcanons really come off as shallow and even though i know in most cases they probably aren't they do feel transphobic to me. like... why him? because he's small? because he's prissy? because he doesn't perform and arguably does not enjoy the specific kind of masculinity expected of him, one of the fundamental conflicts of his character as-is like i mentioned above? why not, say, mike or ben? hell, why not bev?

and 2: i think it's important to acknowledge and be comfortable with and celebrate when cis men and trans men have experiences that can strongly relate to each other. as a trans man, i really identify with eddie and some of the experiences he's had or that i imagine he would have if his story continued.

this is obviously more personal and not so much connected with narrative coherence, but a cis man who knows how i felt the first time i wore gender affirming underwear, or finally had sex with the right gender dynamic, or shed the gender roles assigned to me one by one until i was just left with who i genuinely am, or made the choice to recover from childhood gender-motivated abuse, etc etc etc is really validating and nice. and tbh i think that is its own kind of representation.

it's not just true that trans women and cis women both have Women's ExperiencesTM and that trans men and cis men both have Men's ExperiencesTM, but also that many experiences we might associate with transness are not exclusive to transness and nor are they things that only happen to or are felt by people of the same assigned gender. like. it's not only that trans women have experiences of womanhood that cis women have, it's also that cis women have experiences of womanhood that trans women have (and the same goes for men), you know what i mean?

and it's just really disappointing to me that ftm trans eddie specifically is the most popular trans headcanon in the IT fandom, to the point of any other trans headcanon being fringe. and that it does generally seem to be because of transandrophobia-typical reasons like his size and "feminine" qualities (and frequently he is made to be more "nonthreatening" as well, even when not trans smdh). and that no one seems to want to engage with the particular gendered experiences involved in his character unless they make him trans first (in which case tbh they just erase them Differently, not less).

you don't have to be trans to have a complicated or interesting gender! you don't have to only identify with people who are just like you! sometimes trans men and cis men is the same! i just wish we could do something different one time!!