Matt&Pidge - Tumblr Posts
Remember me… / instagram
been thinking about: matt and pidge as trans siblings who traded genders, first names, and hair lengths…
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!
lazy long hair feels good again. it’s nice to be yourself. to know you’ll be recognized as still yourself, no matter how you look.