It may be more pronounced to us nonbinary folks, although I'm sure anyone could relate to this. I've been thinking about my childhood fictional influences lately, because I've been writing a story where a character has to think about a lot of similar stuff. I've found mainly two things:
1. Only when I realized I was nonbinary did it finally make sense to me why some characters immediately feel like "my kin" even if I don't relate to their personality.
2. It irritates me a lot how throughout my childhood I was always automatically assumed to relate to only female characters.
It's not surprising, I know, and this isn't to say that anyone should have known better than to assume. I'm not writing this to make anyone feel bad or to claim anyone should understand anything they're not exposed to, or automatically know how to correct every assumption they've been taught to make since their own childhood. It's not anyone's responsibility to know what goes on in other people's heads.
But. That doesn't mean I don't get to be irritated about it. You get to be irritated about your broken leg, even if it wasn't someone's fault. So, in the same way, I get to be irritated that the world is what it is and was what it was.
Sometimes what you need to do is to put into words what you couldn't when you were a kid.
So, I'm gonna share some highlights of incidents that made me feel misunderstood through characters that made me feel understood.
The earliest example I can think of is Peter Pan. One of my earliest special interests. I watched the Disney movie so, so many times.
I will never forget this particularly embarrassing summer day when I was walking through some marketplace with my mom. I may have been five or six. We ran into one of my mom's friends, and I think I may have seen something Peter Pan related in the marketplace, I don't remember exactly how things led to it, but I remember what was said so well, because it stayed with me. Basically, my mom started telling this friend how "in love" with Peter Pan I was. And somehow, that felt completely humiliating and wrong to me. I couldn't put my finger on why, back then, but I do now.
*Sigh*
No, gross, I wasn't in love with Peter Pan. I wanted to be Peter Pan. I mean, come on? He's the only one who can fly without fairy dust? I was obsessed with flying. All I ever did in my lucid dreams at that age was fly until I felt tired even in a dream. I wanted to be the one to take other kids to adventures, not just a passenger. I also related to the feeling of not wanting to grow up for a long time, which should be kind of understandable from a nonbinary perspective.
But of course I was always dubbed as Wendy, any time I played Peter Pan with anyone. Because I looked the part, and I was the big sister in most contexts. I probably wouldn't still be so annoyed about it, if Wendy wasn't literally my least favourite female lead of any cartoon I can remember.
(I shipped Peter and Tinker Bell even as a little kid. :D I even had a whole elaborate headcanon when I was in middle school, where they were both reborn as humans and were childhood friends who had to rediscover their memories and redefine their relationship. Peter and Wendy just scream everything that can go wrong in straight relationships, and I disliked them since their very first interaction. No wonder my wife is more like Tink, but let's not go there...)
When I was nine, I saw Spirited Away and fell in love. (No, still not with a character.) It was the most magical and touching story I had ever seen.
Nothing new here, I was expected to want to be Chihiro. I like her story of course, her character development is great, and I like that she finds a way to sort of cheat the system and befriends the monsters.
But, it was Haku who caused this pang of familiarity in my chest that was such a rare treat. Not that I wanted to be him, but more like I just related. It may have been a little bit about personality, too. (Like being stubborn enough to sometimes go to self-destructive lengths to achieve something.) But a lot of it was because I perceived this character as androgynous, which I didn't realize then, but looking back it's obvious.
In my teens, I think I also connected with Haku because the way he's a helper to Chihiro for most of the movie, resembled what my role usually was in friendships at that age. Sometimes still is.
Then there's Mulan, my favourite Disney princess since always.
I was told by someone that I relate to her because she's a girl who wants to be a guy. And that... was such a gross misinterpretation of both Mulan's character and me.
I think Mulan is such an enby story. Of course, you don't have to interpret it that way, and I'm not saying that's what any of the creators meant, but from the eyes of someone who is nonbinary, that's totally how it reads.
She literally tries to be a woman and fails.
Then she literally tries to be a man and fails.
And then she ends up with something that seems neither but kind of both, and fucking blooms.
Because it's not like she completely failed at either.
Anyway, I just feel like Mulan is so authentic by the end and I love it. Again, you can relate to this no matter what gender you are and gender expression doesn't equal gender, etc. etc.
But this is still a very satisfying interpretation to me.
Not to say I have strong opinions of any of these characters actually being nonbinary, that isn't the point of this post at all. It's just to self-reflect and write about some assumptions that annoy me.
Good night.
