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

[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.