writterings:

hey anon, i can see where this confusion comes from. basically, let me give you the low-down as to why i believe pidge is a trans girl in canon and why i’m not really down with the nonbinary/trans boy pidge headcanon. i hope you don’t mind that i do this in bullet-point format. 

why i believe pidge is a trans girl:

• it doesn’t say anywhere in the show that pidge was assigned female at birth. i know it’s probably easier to assume that considering she was shown wearing a dress and presenting rather feminine around her family, but the thing is that supportive families do exist and kids can figure out they’re trans at a young age. 
• pidge has NO REASON to disguise herself as a boy to enter the garrison, unless it was because she had an AMAB body. frankly, if she was AFAB and tried to sneak into the garrison that way, that would just make things HARDER on her in regards to getting in and in regards to going incognito. it’s a military school, they do physicals and body checks regularly. 
• she literally came out as a girl. that scene paralleled a lot of coming out scenes and a lot of coming out experiences i’ve witnessed. 
• if we assume that she is a trans girl, it makes everyone really sweet in how fast they accepted her and in how they all assured her that they already thought of her as a girl. 
• the bathroom scene was a real cincher for all this. as a trans person that has been harassed in public bathrooms before, and has been uncomfortable to even go in them sometimes, that scene meant something to me that a cis and gender-conforming person probably wouldn’t understand. 
• frankly, headcanoning pidge as nonbinary/a trans boy is kinda cruel to her, and pretty transphobic. first, it disregards her desire to been seen as a girl. second, it makes EVERYONE, even the mice, transphobic af. third, it equates being a girl to having a vagina, which is pretty transmisogynistic. and fourth, (EDIT 4/15/2017 for better wording), it’s transphobic to see her saying “i’m a girl” as “i’m a trans boy/nonbinary person” for obvious reasons.
• there are like….less then five named female characters that are important. to take one away is the opposite of progressive, especially when you can headcanon/see any of the “male” characters as trans or nonbinary. 
• the writers have stated several times that she is a girl, and have hinted that there may be some explicit LGBTQ+ rep in later seasons.

td;lr: pidge is my trans daughter and i love her so much