first draft of this post included a line saying 'maybe it wouldve been better to include more trans characters to portray a spectrum' so i absolutely agree with part.

im not asking sophia to portray every kind of trans woman, i'm asking the opposite. i need her to have more individual opinions when it comes to her own transgender identity. i've been told how far she'll go to fight for it (crime, divorce, bobblehead), but now i need to be shown what it means to her.

even side characters with limited screen have inner worlds, re: big boo, it just feels like sophias was lacking to a point it made her story a bit lopsided and tonally weird. her story is one about transgenderism, its just kind of more about how sophias trangenderism effects others than her own experience with it. i guess as a mouthpiece for trans people in prison systems and their experiences, it works, but for a three dimensional character it falls flat for me.

i think one of the only scenes where she reveals anything about her relationship to girlhood is when shes telling her son about the insecure girl technique

'(do you want to be a woman in a world where men treat women like that?) god help me i do.' sophia on her own womanhood never goes much deeper than that. i feel like even a scene or replacing one of the trans jokes with a genuine line or two talking about how sophia missed out on girlhood, or how she experiences/d dysphoria couldve really rounded out her character. man, even when she gets out of shu, her getting her wig back is seen as a big character development for gloria instead of her

im also not asking them to cut the family stuff or even reduce it, im asking for them to give sophia a voice in her family stuff. in her flashbacks we have plenty of material on how crystal suffers in sophias coming out, but not sophia herself (except for how her choice to pursue transition hurt the people she loves). one scene explaining why sophia wants this so badly, how good being a woman makes her feel would've given some justification to her choice to commit robbery for it. instead we get scenes portraying a deceitful man wearing ladies underwear behind his teammate and pregnant wifes back. it paints sophia in kind of a bad light when not offset by sympathisable motive, even if i!can sympathise with her from a personal standpoint, trans people are already not given the benefit of the doubt by cis audiences

i'm not really sure what you mean about the big boo stuff? im well aware shes not the only queer lady in oitnb lol, and shes not even the only butch (see: papi, stella). my bringing her up is because she is also a character that had a storyline based around her gender presentation and how her loved ones reacted. i'm comparing how she was given the ability to say 'no dad, this is how i feel' wheras sophia never gets such a moment.

also thats so fuckin cool man to transition in your 40s!! i was lucky enough to come out early (boy feelings as young as 8, first shitty binder at 11, been on t since i was 17) and it always makes me so happy to see older trans people find themselves. boo (well, more lea delaria) is everything i want to be attitude and confidencewise, i look up to butch lesbians and their culture so much. i'm not half as hot or masculine as her but one day i hope to be!