#so when I needed to pee I went the direction that my friend (a cis guy) went | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

theclaravoyant · 7 years

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also okay - if you're ever wanting to write more in the trans!fitz universe, i'd absolutely love to see a fic where someone on the team learns what 'nonbinary' is and decides they might be nb, and come talk to fitz about it! :) and maybe talk about fitz's experiences being trans and his view of gender and stuff like that

AN ~ awesome prompt! It was a lot of fun exploring nonbinary-ness and different experiences of gender (which is probably why this almost hit 2K!).

Disclaimer: I’m a cis woman, but I based what Fitz talks about on experiences of several trans and non binary people (from these sources as well as past research, friends, tumblr posts, etc.). I hope I have done the topic some justice!

For those not familiar with my trans!fitz universe, this fic takes place in the Bridget!verse where Fitz transitioned (FTM) from a young age. He is out only to a few select people as trans, and prefers it that way, although this fic also allows for him to be more out re: his sexuality (which is not specified in this fic, but implied to be non-straight).

As for who he’s talking to… I know they’re not part of “the team” exactly but I couldn’t resist using this opportunity to write about everyone’s favourite nb lesbian, Agent Piper!

Anyway, without further ado-

Read on AO3 (~2000wd)

Piper

Pride season was an opportunity for a splash of colour in the increasingly gloomy lives of Shield’s now-underground team. The younger Agents especially filled the base with life and vibrancy while the older ones, for whom Pride was much if not more a commemoration than a festivity, provided strength and fortitude, serving as living reminders of a whole range of struggles that could affect an Agent, and a whole range of ways of being a survivor. Pride was a light in the darkness not unlike the end of year holiday season, if directed at a smaller cohort.

Tonight, many of the Agents were preparing to drive out to a Pride Parade in a nearby city, and were donning all manner of bright colours and some of them even preparing spectacular outfits for a night on the town. Daisy had on a hot-pink sundress with platform sandals and chunky jewellery in blue, purple and silver. Jemma went for a look that somehow managed to be more subdued, in a bright canary-yellow t-shirt and black jeans, with a pink bandana tied around her neck. Fitz was stuck in his room trying to figure out what to wear that was different, but that didn’t scream a Pride flag vomited all over me, when he heard a knock at the door.

“Oh, thank God,” he sighed. “Jemma, I-“

Fitz cut himself off when he pulled the door open and saw not Jemma, but the shorter, stockier, also somewhat-bewildered-looking Agent Piper waiting for him. She was still wearing fatigues, not yet prepared for the evening’s outing, and her expression was a little too serious for Fitz’s liking.

“Um. Hi,” Fitz greeted after a moment. “Can I help you? Is something going on?”

He stuck his head further into the hallway, but Piper shook her head before he could work himself into too much of a panic.

“Nothing, it’s all good out here, I was actually wondering if I could – maybe – have a private conversation with you.”

“Okay. Sure.” Still a little unsettled, Fitz invited Piper into his and Jemma’s room. He waved a hand apologetically at the suit-jackets, feather boa, dresses, heels, and button-ups that had sprawled across the room during their preparations, but Piper seemed content to ignore them even as her eyes cast about the room a little, not quite sure how to broach the subject she’d come here to speak about.

“Sorry,” she said eventually, bringing her eyes back to Fitz as she seemed to remember she was prying in a private space. “It’s just, I know you’re not really out with it and I didn’t want to be creepy. I wanted to talk about… gender. I’ve been thinking about some stuff and Jemma sort of mentioned that you might be someone who knows something about it. If you’re not comfortable with talking to me you can send me on my way and I won’t breathe a word of it – I know how it is – but it’d be really cool if you could help me out, man.”

Fitz shrugged. “It’s alright.”

“You sure?”

“Sure.” He smiled. “Happy to help out if I can.”

“Awesome.” Piper sighed, and a lot of the tension left her body. For want of a better place to plant herself, she perched on the corner of a desk.

Fitz sat nearby, in a clear space at the edge of the bed, and waited for Piper to gather her thoughts. He hoped she wouldn’t ask too much about him. Then again, he hoped she would. If it would help. If it would maybe mean he was sharing something of himself with someone who might get it in a way that the others didn’t. He wondered what she would ask. What was questioning even like? What was it like not to wake up and know? Of course, he’d been through his own questioning period, but most of that had been forced upon him, particularly by his father’s efforts to reshape him. Inside Piper’s head, Fitz knew, there could be a whole different set of sensations going on. Legitimate questions. Questions in which politics and oppression only played a part. Questions that could be daunting, and probably moreso to a thirty-year-old mind than to a seven-year-old, who didn’t yet understand so much about the weight of the world.

“Want me to start?” Fitz offered. Piper groaned.

“God, please.”

“Do you think you’re a man?”

Piper recoiled from the suggestion, but quickly recovered.

“Sorry. But no. I don’t think so – it feels wrong. It’s just that… I’m not really sure I’m a woman either. Does that make sense? Is that possible? I mean, I’ve always been a bit of a tomboy but like… recently, it feels different somehow. It’s difficult to describe. Maybe I’m just being weird, but to be honest, it’s kind of freaking me out. I thought I’d already done the whole identity-crisis thing, you know?”

Fitz laughed a little. He could relate.

“There’s no need for a crisis. You’ll figure it out eventually. And believe me, I get the double-take. Identity is an ever-changing beast.”

“How was it for you, though?” Piper wondered. “The gender thing I mean. How did you know?”

“I don’t think I can really help you with that one, unfortunately. I’m one of those people who just always, sort of, knew. I’ve known since I was a kid. I don’t really know why. Some of it was the obvious I guess. I played with model trains and cars instead of dolls. I hated wearing dresses. Tried to cut off all my hair with scissors. I wanted a pee-pee.” He snorted. “Seven-year-old me didn’t really get into the philosophy of it all, but there must be something to it, because… well, let’s just say I went through some things that would have chased it out of me if that were possible.”

Piper nodded solemnly.

“Not all the confusion is bad though,” Fitz continued. “My mum raised me, mostly, and she did it without a lot of that masculine bravado bullshit. She taught me to be gentle, sensitive, forgiving… sometimes it felt like I was less of a guy because of that kind of stuff, and the teasing didn’t help, but in the end it gave me faith in my identity. Mum always told me there should be more guys like me. That it shouldn’t be left to the girls to be the soft ones.“

“I like your mom,” Piper put in.

“Me too.” Fitz smiled. “And honestly I think having someone who believed in me like that made it all so much easier, even though she didn’t get it entirely. She started calling me by the right pronouns – you know, he and him and all that - and even gave me a different name. Helped me transition in lots of other ways, too. I couldn’t have done it without her.”

“Oh, I don’t want to transition, either,” Piper clarified. “I’m happy with my body just the way it is. Is that – I mean, does that mean anything?”

“Not really,” Fitz explained. “I mean, for me it did. I had… I had dysphoria in a big way. Phantom body parts. Huge discomfort about my dead name and pronouns. Not every trans person gets that. Some have it the other way, actually. Euphoria, it’s called. They just feel more happy when they express as their gender, or when they’re referred to by some other name or pronouns or, you know, gendered words, even if they’re not particularly unhappy with their assigned ones.”

“See, that sounds more like me,” Piper agreed. “But can you be, like, gender-neutral trans? Or is that a different thing, I don’t know. But can you?”

“You mean like nonbinary?” Fitz suggested. “Some people think of it as trans and some don’t, but yeah, sure. It’s a thing.”

“It means you’re like, somewhere between a boy and a girl, right?” Piper speculated. “Like on the spectrum.”

“Basically,” Fitz agreed. “I mean, for some people it’s more complicated than that, and just like with sexual orientation there’s a whole bunch of subsets. Some people like the spectrum, some people go with a third non-spectrum gender, some people even prefer no gender at all. It’s up to you. I can’t really tell you which one to pick, unfortunately – I mean as far as I’m aware, we as a scientific community still don’t know what gender even is yet – but if you’re feeling like nonbinary’s an option for you, try it out. There’s no harm in a label if you’re safe and happy with it. And even if it doesn’t work out, it’s not like you’re getting in anyone’s way.”

“Really?” Piper checked. “You think I should go for it?”

Fitz held his hands up, palms out. “You don’t need my permission.”

“Can I keep my name?”

“Sure, if you’re happy with it.”

“What about that pronoun stuff?”

“Well, if it bothers you when people call you she/her, tell them so. If not, you can keep them and still be non-binary. It depends on you. If you’re looking for a more neutral pronoun, ‘they’ is getting pretty popular, relatively. There are some more obscure ones around, so Google it maybe, but if it’s not a strong point of contention for you, or none of the others really speak to you, you could try they/theirs.”

“You’re right, that does sound better,” Piper agreed, a smile breaking out across her face at last. “Thanks so much, Fitz, honestly. I feel like I’ve lined up so many things in my brain right now.”

“My pleasure.” Fitz found himself beaming too, unexpectedly broadly. He kicked his legs in glee. “Glad I could help.”

“Wait.” Piper interrupted, her tone heavier again all of a sudden and, if Fitz was not mistaken, tainted with dread. “Can I still be a lesbian, then?”

Fitz’s excitement faded a little too. With the weight Piper put on it, he could tell, this part of her identity was important to her. Painstakingly so. Handling it with care was essential, and yet, he had to walk blindly into it and do the best he could.

“Well, I don’t know,” he offered truthfully. “If someone else, if another lesbian, came to you with something like this, what would you say, d’you think?”

Piper’s eyes searched the floor, the carpet, the nose of Fitz’s dress shoes poking out from under one of Jemma’s discarded dresses. She took a deep breath.

“Well, I’m sure as hell not a man. And even if I’m not a woman exactly, I still feel pretty close to it. I’d like to think I’m enough of a woman to be a lesbian still.”

“Then there you have it, I guess. Maybe talk to the girls, they might have more to say about it, but I think that’s fair enough.”

“Cool.” Piper nodded once, and then twice more for good measure as she let it all settle in. Her eyes trailed the mess that was FitzSimmons’ room and, as the mess in her own head cleared away, she remembered why it was all there.

“Shit, we’d better get ready, hey?” she reminded Fitz. He escorted her to the door, as best he could through the widespread pig-sty.

“Again, thanks so much for the talk,” Piper continued. “It was really great. Really helpful. If you don’t mind though, can we keep it on the DL for now? Sprinkle a couple ‘they’s here and there if you could, but the other stuff, I’m still easing into it.”

“No worries,” Fitz promised. “And you know, my stuff –“

“Lock and key,” Piper promised in return. “See you tonight.”

“See you there.”

#leo fitz #agent piper #aospositivitynet #aosfic #bsquadbrigade #aosficnet2 #happy pride!#piper #piper vasquez #trans!fitz #prompt me stuff #clara's fic tag #buckysbears #aos fic

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thinkingthrough · 7 years

Text

on the troubles of others

The speed at which my thoughts on culture issues are changing is honestly scaring the shit out of me, and I have to be up front and tell you this all began with the Ferguson shooting, which is to say, it isn’t even Seattle’s fault.

Prior to the shooting of Michael Brown, everything was very black and white to me. There was some grey between them, but it was more like fog than mud. I wasn’t very concerned with it (a direct result of that bubble life). Then another cop shot another black man when I just happened to be good friends with Zavier and everything changed.

Coming of age in a segregated pearly white bubble meant that I had no idea what kind of trouble others had in life. I certainly had plenty of my own to worry about, so it never occurred to me to investigate theirs. When I first met Zavier, a black man working the shift opposite mine, I had no idea that he was about to completely change my worldview — all I saw was a post-it sticking out from beneath the keyboard on the desk. When I pulled it out, I found a list of Reach Records artists, to which I responded with all the excitement of a stereotypical white girl:

“What’s this?!” “Whatchu mean?” he asked. “You listen to these guys??” “You listen to these guys?”

And then we were friends. He had always intimidated me, and not even because of his race. He’s the epitome of the expression “tall, dark, and handsome” (I was constantly rolling my eyes at women popping into our cubicle at shift change to giggle and twirl their hair at him). To be honest, I was privately shocked we’d managed to find a genuine friendship, and it turned out I wasn’t the only one. “I’ma be honest,” he said to me one day, “you surprised me. I had no idea you were so cool.” And I laughed, because the feeling was mutual. I had made assumptions about this black guy from the west side. I figured he was probably too tough, too cool to be friends with a fat, boring, white girl.

But he wasn’t too tough and he wasn’t too cool. When Michael Brown was shot, when his whole community was mourning, and I was confused and a little callous, he was patient and kind. He explained everything, answered all my questions, was never once condescending. He went far back into the Civil Rights Movement, educating me about Dr. King and Malcom X, and though he was angry, and though that anger came out in his words and tone, he treated me gently and always, always gave me space to process after.

At the risk of sounding like an asshole (I kind of was, to be frank), this was the first time I ached with sympathy for a group of people who experienced American life differently than I did, and it changed everything.

[After my last day of work, I sat in my car in the garage and cried, gutted by knowledge that moving to Seattle meant our friendship was over. Even if we kept in touch, which we have, it would never be that same intimate meeting of minds that I treasured so deeply.]

Last year, President Obama issued guidance to public schools, saying that allowances must be made for transgendered students who are uncomfortable or fearful using the traditional girls’ and boys’ bathrooms and locker rooms. Now, for myself, I don’t give a crap who’s in the stall beside me while I pee. The concern that I had with unisex bathrooms is that there could be (and apparently have been) predators who will abuse the new guidelines as a means to gain access to potential victims. With the recent spotlight on rape culture, I’m still confused as to why this concern was dismissed out of hand by the left. In Seattle, I never found cause for concern, because in most restaurants, bars, and coffee shops, there were already private bathrooms, so most business just removed the distinctions, which new businesses started building unisex bathrooms containing stalls that didn’t have gaps at the top and bottom of the doors. Easy peasy; moving right along.

Yesterday, however, against the advice of his education secretary, Trump rescinded the Obama administration’s guidelines for protection of trans students. There have been protests and articles and Twitter rants.

Remember that previously mentioned grey fog wafting between the black and the white for me? It’s mud now. And you know what muddied it? Compassion. The thing in the forefront of my mind is that everyone is afraid — trans people are afraid of being shamed and physically hurt; cis people are afraid that predators will abuse the new guidelines to perverse ends; ignorant people are afraid of what they don’t understand. Everyone is afraid.

But we cannot, as individuals or as a society, live in that fear. We can debate the big issues, sure, but can we really debate whether having to pee should spark a personal crisis? I can’t help but think that a generous round of compassion would do a lot to temper people’s anxieties. We all need Zaviers, and we all need to be Zaviers to the people who don’t understand us.

Or maybe, maybe, we need to be more like Jesus and exemplify the fruit of the Spirit, because that’s what really changed me, and, I dare say, screaming across the aisles at your enemies never changed anyone.

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