I Love The Transfem Sanji Headcanons And Fanarts And Fanfictions To Pieces, But I Think There Is Something

I love the transfem sanji headcanons and fanarts and fanfictions to pieces, but I think there is something so so important about him being a man who has personally suffered because of patriarchy.

Spoilers for whole cake island, and 3D2Y/marineford, under the cut

I’m sure it’s been said before, but Germa as a culture is patriarchy incarnate. The men of germa are expected to be emotionless killing machines, to the point where the king robbed his son’s of their emotions through genetic experimentation. And it’s not lost on me that Reiju still had her emotions in tact, because in Judge’s eyes women are supposed to be emotional. And Reiju had to spend her life suppressing her emotions in order to be seen as competent, for fear of being seen as just an emotional woman.

And then there’s Sanji. He’s everything Germa culture believes a man couldn’t be. He’s emotional, weak (by their standards), and soft (kind). To Judge, and Germa as a whole, those are very feminine traits, and that’s considered a bad thing. To them, being a man with feminine traits is worse than being a woman, and that’s why Sanji is abused so horribly.

It’s important to me that despite later developing a rough exterior and bad attitude, he retains these traditionally feminine qualities while still being a man.

Now I wanna talk about Kamabakka kingdom. I don’t know if the okama’s are supposed to be trans or if their drag queens or a combination of both, so forgive me if I get something wrong, but the important thing to note is that the second they meet Sanji, they essentially try to forcefem him. I think to them, his natural personality is like the ideal of femininity. Like in germa, Kamabakka kingdom sees Sanji’s emotionality and kindness as feminine traits, but unlike Germa, they see it as a good thing. Germa tried to force Sanji to give up those traits and beat the femininity out of him. Kamabakka kingdom wanted Sanji to embrace those traits but tried to force Sanji to become a woman because of them. And it works for a couple of weeks (until he sees what happened to Luffy in that one funny scene where the makeup literally melts off his face), but he’s not like them. He is not a woman, doesn’t want to be a woman, and doesn’t want to be perceived as a woman. He can love women and know he is not one.

Sanji isn’t a trans woman (canonically, but I absolutely love all the fanart and fics. This little analysis has no bearing on my love of non canon depictions of Sanji as trans). He is however, gender nonconforming in the context of the culture he was born into. I think in that brief time he went along with the okama’s ideas of him being trans, possibly had a lot to do with the doubts germa’s ideals cast on him about his gender identity. Germa taught him being emotional and kind were woman things, so with the Okama’s trying to convince him that he did feel that way, he might start to think, ‘well maybe I am a woman’, but the second he sees something that reminds him of Luffy, all that confusion goes away and he immediately goes, ‘no I am a man’.

Because Luffy doesn’t try to force Sanji into any kind of gendered box because of the traits that so many people he’s known have seen as feminine. Luffy doesn’t try to force him into traditional masculinity or try to force him to become a woman. To Luffy, Sanji’s kindness and emotionality are his best traits, and those traits are not connected to gender at all. Within the strawhats, Sanji has a freedom of gender expression that he didn’t have anywhere else (the baratie didn’t force anything on him but they were all kind of macho men so I don’t think Sanji would have felt super comfortable expressing his full range of emotions).

I think Sanji as a gender nonconforming man, fits better with his character narratively than sanji being transfem. Everything with Germa is a demonstration of how patriarchy is damaging to both men and women and nonbinary people. I think him being a man is very important to his relationship with the strawhats, and how he found acceptance with them as a man with a lot of traditionally feminine traits (in addition to him being emotional and kind, there’s also the fact that he’s a cook and is the only man on the crew to bathe everyday, specifically, he bathes as often as the girls). With the strawhats he is able to express himself fully without fear of judgment or of a label being forced onto him.

I guess my main point is, Sanji is an example of how patriarchy can hurt men, and how deconstructing traditional ideas of gender norms allows people to live more honest and fulfilling lives.

Sidenote 1: Luffy giving Sanji a space for freedom of expression is perfectly in line with his ideals of freedom.

Sidenote 2: Sanji’s sees woman as naturally emotional (a good thing to him) and kind because the only people he knew with thise characteristics besides himself were his mother and sister.

Sidenote 3: I sometimes see transmasc Sanji headcannons, which I love because they fit so well into his story.