I realise now that my post could have easily been interpreted as bashing the trope and people who like it, so I apologise if you felt in any way slighted; that was not my intention. :)
It's possible that I may have had my impression of this trope skewed a little by some of the gender-bend fics I have stumbled across - there are a lot of them in the Teen Wolf fandom, with tags like always a girl!Stiles, which seem to be an excuse for turning that character into The Girl That Everyone Wants To Bone. And that's... annoying, because for me that plays into the gender stereotypes of how girls should be because what more could a girl want than the attention of all the boys, right? *eyeroll* So maybe I've just been negatively influenced by the fics in this trope that I have actually read, because the vast majority of them have literally been about trying to conform to heteronormative gender stereotypes, unfortunately.
However, I can understand your point about having the opportunity to explore gender and sexuality, because that does make sense to me. I once read a Dean/Castiel gender-bend fic, where Dean was turned into a girl for a few months and during the course learned that he can still be a 'macho' man while also being queer, and that the way he treats women in general is really not very nice; it was actually quite a nice way to explore and deal with sexism, in that way.
I can also understand the desire to explore gender fluidity and its impact on relationships (as I said later on in the post), so I get why some people would want to read and/or write about that. You've actually given me a lot to think about in that regard, because one of my best friends is gender fluid. They told me when my eldest daughter was 2 years old, so I gave them some of my dresses and taught them how to do their make up while my daughter told everyone about her Uncle Dave and how "he has a willy but sometimes he likes to pretend that he doesn't." (bless her, we still tease her over that.) But as easy as it was for me to accept, I know that others wouldn't have found it so simple, so I can understand why that would want to be explored in fic.
So in retrospect, maybe my 'dislike' would actually be more specific, in that I don't like gender-bend fics when they are written purely as a way of conforming to heteronormative gender stereotypes?
Thank you for your thought-provoking comment, I'm going to be mulling this over all day now! <3
(also, I love mpreg too, but for some reason only when it can be explained away by ~Magic!~ haha!)
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It's possible that I may have had my impression of this trope skewed a little by some of the gender-bend fics I have stumbled across - there are a lot of them in the Teen Wolf fandom, with tags like always a girl!Stiles, which seem to be an excuse for turning that character into The Girl That Everyone Wants To Bone. And that's... annoying, because for me that plays into the gender stereotypes of how girls should be because what more could a girl want than the attention of all the boys, right? *eyeroll* So maybe I've just been negatively influenced by the fics in this trope that I have actually read, because the vast majority of them have literally been about trying to conform to heteronormative gender stereotypes, unfortunately.
However, I can understand your point about having the opportunity to explore gender and sexuality, because that does make sense to me. I once read a Dean/Castiel gender-bend fic, where Dean was turned into a girl for a few months and during the course learned that he can still be a 'macho' man while also being queer, and that the way he treats women in general is really not very nice; it was actually quite a nice way to explore and deal with sexism, in that way.
I can also understand the desire to explore gender fluidity and its impact on relationships (as I said later on in the post), so I get why some people would want to read and/or write about that. You've actually given me a lot to think about in that regard, because one of my best friends is gender fluid. They told me when my eldest daughter was 2 years old, so I gave them some of my dresses and taught them how to do their make up while my daughter told everyone about her Uncle Dave and how "he has a willy but sometimes he likes to pretend that he doesn't." (bless her, we still tease her over that.) But as easy as it was for me to accept, I know that others wouldn't have found it so simple, so I can understand why that would want to be explored in fic.
So in retrospect, maybe my 'dislike' would actually be more specific, in that I don't like gender-bend fics when they are written purely as a way of conforming to heteronormative gender stereotypes?
Thank you for your thought-provoking comment, I'm going to be mulling this over all day now! <3
(also, I love mpreg too, but for some reason only when it can be explained away by ~Magic!~ haha!)