a question

[casualbird]

Please--if any of you know of any canonically non-binary characters in popular media, would you let me know? I'm thinking of writing a meta post about the sorry state of non-binary representation, and I'd like to see if I can't find some more evidence than I have right now.

Thank you!

Comments

[casualbird]

thank you! it's just that, like... all the non-binary characters i was able to think of off the top of my head were aliens or monsters or constructs and stuff!?? and some of them seem to stem from legitimate good intentions--the crystal gems are nonbinary probably so the network would Let Them Be Gay--and some of them really, really do not.

and, like, even if these things do come from a place of good intentions, what sort of message does that send to non-binary youth? that everyone even remotely like them is literally inhuman.

have you seen fullmetal alchemist?

[soc_puppet]

...O rite, Envy. Completely forgot about them.

I don't think that's actually the case with the Crystal Gems, but I can't cite anything ATM. Rebecca Sugar has recently come out as nonbinary herself (I think she still uses she/her?), and I do recall an argument that if she was prioritizing "trick the network into showing gay content", she/the team would've pulled the same move with Bubbline in Adventure Time ("It can't be gay, because Princess Bubblegum is candy, and candy doesn't have a gender!").

[casualbird]

envy is the case i'm thinking most about for the piece i'm planning to write. they're pretty much the most egregious example i can think of. (that futurama thing is gross, but also a mean joke, envy's existence posits that to have a fluid or nonexistent gender identity is monstrous and is serious about it. which disgusts me to the ends of the earth.)

i did not know that sugar worked on adventure time, and i hadn't heard about that statement that she made. i will just... casually amend my views and give her a little more credit.

[soc_puppet]

There's a lot of things I like about FMA, but the fact that Envy is the only nonbinary rep the series has is not one of them :/ Even one human nonbinary character might've helped mitigate the harm, but I guess it wasn't to be.

Yeah, Futurama is... Yeah. As with FMA, there are parts I love and parts I loathe, and that is not one of the parts I love. They have a more significant track record of gender essentialism and queerphobia, as does The Simpsons. So I can say that I'm not surprised by it, at least.

To be clear, the argument I heard (that she could have declared candy was agender) was made by fans rather than anyone on the Crewniverse (that I'm aware of), but yes, Sugar is out as both bisexual and nonbinary, and went into Steven Universe with a deliberate eye towards exploring some gender stuff. IIRC, she wanted to make a magical girl style show with a male protagonist? Exploring the same themes, but with a male main character. She was also doing everything she could to make a show that had a same gender romance front and center that was so wholesome that the network wouldn't be able to say it wasn't "E for Everyone", because she felt increasingly terrible that any same gender relationship automatically made a show "inappropriate" for younger kids. Whether folks in general know that the gems are agender, Ruby and Sapphire are inarguably the same gender. (Except in countries with more bullshit censorship laws, where they dub one of the two as male, depending on how butch they're dressed. *eyeroll forever*)

Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if, in the future, she worked on a show that had a canon human nonbinary character. Or if Mayor Dewey's kid turns out nonbinary, for that matter.

[soc_puppet]

BTW, here's a link for Rebecca Sugar coming out as nonbinary that also talks about her being bi, and some of the impact her identities have had on the show.