u/PhantomFoxThief

Edit: Moving my edit statement up here because people have missed it at the bottom. I was using the wrong term for the gender identity that I meant to refer to. By “transfem”, I was referring to the specific interpretation that Jax identifies only as female.

It’s hilarious, honestly, how some people are acting like Jax MUST be strictly female, when you can find evidence to the contrary! Even Goose’s confirmation that Jax being trans doesn’t specify! You’re so focused on defending your headcanon that you don’t see a problem with acting like other possible identities that include the use of she/her pronouns are not possible. The irony is glorious!

Now let me be clear on two things:
I am NOT arguing that Jax is definitely genderfluid.
I acknowledge Goose’s recent post uses she/her pronouns for Jax, and if it turns out later that she confirms Jax is specifically a trans woman, cool. But as I’m arguing in favor of the possibility of genderfluid Jax and we don’t know their preferred pronouns, I’m going to use pronouns based on where I feel they belong.

I am arguing that genderfluid Jax is a perfectly reasonable interpretation that keeps getting dismissed out of hand, and that some of the arguments used against it end up sounding suspiciously like genderfluid erasure.

The Egg Line

One of the biggest pieces of evidence people bring up is the egg line.

Personally, I never interpreted that scene as “Jax is secretly a trans woman and is upset that people figured it out.”

What I heard was frustration.

“I’m just a misunderstood little chicken fetus in an egg that needs to be cracked open? Well I am am not!”

That doesn’t sound like someone embracing a label.

It sounds like someone mocking people who keep insisting they know his identity better than he does.

As a genderfluid person, that line hit me very differently than it apparently hit a lot of transfem fans.
I’m not particularly bothered by pronouns.
But I do know the frustration of someone insisting that your gender identity has to be something it’s not.

The frustration I heard in Jax’s voice felt familiar.
Not because it proves he’s genderfluid.
Because it sounds like someone tired of being categorized.

The Masculinity Argument

The other argument I constantly see uses Jax complaining that he was told that he wasn’t “manly enough.”

But the actual story is much more complicated than that.
When Leeroy accepted abuse, his mother told him he wasn’t man enough.
When he pushed back, she accused him of becoming his father.

So what exactly was he supposed to do?

The issue wasn’t that he failed to perform masculinity correctly.
The issue was that no version of masculinity he could perform was acceptable.
That’s a very different thing.

And it’s an experience that can resonate with far more identities than just trans women.

The Tail

This isn’t evidence.
This is just an observation I find interesting.

Jax explicitly says:
“My tail is peak masculinity.”

Immediately, the show directly acknowledges that her tail sometimes disappears, confirming it’s something that happens in-universe, not an animation error.

“You don’t have a tail.”
“What?! Where’d it go?!”

Could it just be a joke?
Absolutely.

But if Jax were genderfluid, it would be interesting that the thing she personally associates with masculinity is also the thing that occasionally vanishes.
I’m not saying that’s what the writers intended.
I’m saying it’s a detail that fits surprisingly well.

Zooble

This is where things get really interesting.
Jax seems irritated when Zooble reveals on the beach that they’ve become more comfortable with themself.

Then we get the abstraction scenarios.
The common interpretation I’ve seen is that they’re about how Jax would react if someone abstracted.

I think they might also be about what parts of Jax survive when people abstract.
In the Zooble scenario, everyone is preparing a celebration of life.

Gangle is directing everyone.
Zooble was confident.
Zooble was comfortable with their identity.

Meanwhile Jax is wearing a maid outfit, openly flirting with Gangle, and generally behaving in ways that don’t fit the hypermasculine image she usually projects. Not because Jax necessarily has romantic interest in Gangle, but it’s their jealousy of Zooble being played to the extreme.

Almost like she’s trying to claim something Zooble had in an attempt to reach that confidence and comfort that she envied so much.

Not Zooble themselves.
What Zooble represented to her.

Confidence.
Comfort.
Authenticity.
Again, not proof.
Just interesting.

Ribbit

In the Ribbit scene, Jax never explicitly states what Leeroy told his mother. He just says simply that he shared something deep and personal hoping that it would get her mother off her back.

This could be coming out related to her gender identity, or it could have been Leeroy chose something that looked like a safer first step into that conversation.

Remember, her abuse towards Leeroy was over gender roles. Gender identity may have probably been a very sensitive and dangerous feeling subject. I can very easily see the thought process being “Maybe if she accepts that I’m not straight, it’ll be safe to tell her the rest if she backs off.”

I’m not professing to know what Leeroy said, but I just don’t really see her jumping headfirst into the worst possible scenario when they could have a potentially safer and easier option they could try first.

Isn’t She Lovely

This is another piece of evidence I see brought up constantly.

The use of Isn’t She Lovely in the montage is often treated as confirmation that Jax is specifically a trans woman.
I don’t think that’s what it confirms.

Now, to be clear, I completely understand why transfem fans connect with that scene.
If Jax is a trans woman, the song choice makes perfect sense.

The problem is that some people act like that’s the ONLY interpretation the song supports.

Why?

The song doesn’t tell us what Jax’s exact identity is.

At most, it suggests that femininity is important to Jax’s journey.

But femininity and womanhood are not the same thing.
A genderfluid person can use she/her pronouns.
A nonbinary person can use she/her pronouns.
A genderfluid person can identify with femininity.
A nonbinary person can identify with femininity.

Even if the song is meant to tell us that she/her pronouns are part of Jax’s identity, that still doesn’t automatically narrow things down to “strictly a woman.”

That’s the leap I keep seeing people make.
The song is evidence.
It’s not a verdict.

The fact that the song uses feminine language doesn’t eliminate every identity that includes femininity.
It only eliminates identities that don’t.

And that’s a much larger group than some people seem willing to acknowledge.

Gooseworx

This is probably the argument I understand the most.
Goose confirmed that Jax is trans. Goose used “she.” The drawing accompanying the post presents Jax in a feminine way.

I fully understand why many people took that as support for trans woman Jax.

The problem is what happened next.
I see lot of fans started treating it as though every discussion was over because their answer has to be right.
But is it?

Because Goose still hasn’t actually said that Jax is exclusively female.
Goose still hasn’t said Jax uses exclusively she/her pronouns.
Goose still hasn’t said Jax isn’t genderfluid.
Goose still hasn’t said Jax isn’t nonbinary.
All we actually know is that Jax is trans and that she/her pronouns are involved somehow.

That’s it.
And honestly, that’s kind of my point.
The evidence people keep bringing up doesn’t eliminate genderfluidity.
It doesn’t eliminate nonbinary identities.
It doesn’t eliminate identities that use multiple pronoun sets.

It only confirms that femininity is part of the picture.
What I keep seeing is people treating:
“She is part of Jax’s identity.”
as though it automatically means:
“She is the entirety of Jax’s identity.”
Those are not the same statement.

As a genderfluid person, that’s a distinction I care about.
Because plenty of genderfluid people use she/her pronouns.
Plenty of genderfluid people identify as female sometimes.
Plenty of genderfluid people present femininely.
None of those things automatically make them women all of the time.

So when people cite Goose’s post as proof that Jax cannot possibly be anything but female, I don’t see confirmation.
I see an assumption.
An assumption that femininity automatically excludes fluidity.
And that’s exactly the kind of thinking that makes some genderfluid people feel invisible in the first place.

The Real Point

I don’t actually need Jax to be genderfluid.
My problem is how quickly people dismiss the possibility.
The evidence people use for trans woman Jax is almost entirely interpretive.

Yet somehow genderfluid Jax gets treated as impossible.

Why?

Why is one interpretation allowed to be possible while the other gets laughed out of the room?

If Goose comes out and says Jax is specifically a trans woman, cool.
If she says Jax is genderfluid, cool.
If she says Jax is something else entirely that includes she/her pronouns, cool.

What I don’t understand is why some people are so determined to reduce a character with a complicated relationship to gender and identity into a single acceptable answer while pretending that’s the inclusive position.

And that brings me to why I call it transphobia.

Why I Call It Transphobic

I’m not saying trans woman Jax fans hate trans people. That would be ridiculous.

I’m saying that insisting Jax can ONLY be a trans woman ends up erasing other trans identities that could fit the same evidence.

Genderfluid people exist.
Nonbinary people exist.
People who use multiple pronoun sets exist.

Treating femininity as proof that Jax must be strictly female doesn’t just exclude cis interpretations.
It excludes other trans interpretations too.
That’s why I think some of the policing around Jax comes uncomfortably close to transphobia through erasure, even if that’s not the intention.
That’s the irony I’m talking about.

Anyways, Genderfluid Jax is just my headcanon and it’s just a theory to me…. A JAX THEORY!

I’ve officially given up.

Kilo Lake isn’t even the first time Neopets has covered up a villain’s villainy.

Well. Guess I’m going to be saying no to the Fountain Faerie from time to time.

I think the transfem Jax policing is transphobic!