Loves and stratagems

@holyholstein asked me to explain my thoughts on Bashir being intersex, so here we go. 

The first thing that made me think this was Body Parts, where Bashir says that there were two wombs which he could put Keiko’s baby in - Kira’s and his own. To that, Sisko says something like “You made a perfectly sound choice” or something, not “and you don’t have one”. That made me think that hm, perhaps Bashir has a uterus, then. 

It was Doctor Bashir, I Presume that really brought this into focus for me. I do want to say that I know that both the above uterus mention and the fact that he objects to the name Jules can be read as him being trans, and I am perfectly open to that idea and definitely not trying to argue against it. What made me think of him as intersex in particular is the way the genetic augmentation is like attempts to ‘fix’ intersex people. It might be that they wanted to ‘fix’ not just his neuro-atypicalness but also his being intersex. That would add another layer to his anger at them. (I would love to think that attempts to get intersex kids into one of two categories would be completely alien to people of the 24th century, but apparently it’s a culture where some parents feel the need to genetically manipulate their children, so… :/ ) 

In addition to this, there are a bunch of small interesting things. For instance, when Bashir’s been imprisoned for about a month in In Purgatory’s Shadow, he has almost no stubble, and I’m pretty sure the Jem’Hadar aren’t the kind of jailors to let people do personal grooming. In general, he’s not a very muscly guy. In Doctor Bashir, I Presume, he says that he’s not “the family type” when asked if he thinks about having children, which clearly has a lot to do with the fact that his family is super-dysfunctional, but also, perhaps he can’t have children. (As for Children of Time, there is nothing to say that those Bashir descendants are biologically related to him. They’re the doctors, and as they’re completely isolated on that planet I imagine that Bashir taught the next generation. Also I kind of like the idea of Bashir being the stepdad of any kids who didn’t have a father around. There might be other things that might poke holes in this [I’m only halfway through series 6], but this is a headcanon and I tend to view canon as something malleable anyway.) 

So in conclusion: he has a uterus, not much of a beard and not much musculature. Also, his struggles of passing as one thing while hiding the truth and his parents’ attempts at bettering him without his consent closely parallels the struggles of some intersex people today. At the end of the day, I think the reasoning behind this as with so many of my headcanons is ‘why not?’ That’s the beauty of headcanons. 

This is all Statistical Probabilities’ fault.

wobblycompetencies:

Hey! For anyone out there who may have read and enjoyed my post-canon fic Scenes from a Disaster Zone, I am here to tell the audiophiles among y’all that the amazing @jellyfishfire made a podfic of it, and you can find it HERE.

I was sufficiently re-inspired while listening to it that I decided a bonus illustration was in order – so I drew the sleeping arrangements in their shipping crate.

airyairyquitecontrary:

anunfinishedman:

22. In battle, side by side

I like giving Garak knives ~ ~ ~

I like the fact that Julian has a phaser but is getting his ass/face kicked, while Garak has a small knife and is evidently having fun.

(via venndaai)