Chapter Text
Thor had noticed that his daughter had been withdrawing into herself, purchasing men’s clothing, and wearing dresses with less frequency recently, but he didn’t know what any of it meant. She had never been particularly feminine, rarely wearing skirts or makeup and having a passionate hatred for all things pink. But she had never seemed so unsure of herself before. Sure, she put on a good face and acted like everything was okay, but Thor could see through the mask and see that it wasn’t.
The changes had been small to begin with. She had cut her blonde hair short, sporting a cute pixie cut. She had started wearing jeans and t-shirts more and her few skirts and dresses less. She had started using more gender-neutral language, which took him a while to pick up on since English wasn’t his native tongue. She wore mainly sports bras and set aside anything with padding. Over the course of a year she had gone from the bubbly teenage girl he remembered to this quiet solemn girl, too mature for her years, who seemed to find no peace with herself. He wanted to know what had changed, wanted to ask, but he dared not push.
Finally, the waiting paid off, and Astrid came to him.
“Daddy,” she said. “I have something I want to talk about.”
“Of course, dear one.”
She was silent for a moment before asking, “I know that you’ve at least heard of transgender people, but do you know anything about non-binary gender identities?” She scuffed her shoe on the ground as she waited for his response.
“No. I know not of what you speak. Would you care to enlighten me?”
“Well. The gender binary is a social construct. Most people, when they are born, are assigned either ‘male’ or ‘female’ and our society has certain expectations of children based on that assignment which is usually made based pretty much entirely on the outward appearance of their genitalia. Males are supposed to grow up to be men. Females are supposed to grow up to be women. Men are strong, aggressive, and dominant. And women are weak, passive, and submissive. But this is a false binary. First it assumes that there are only two sexes, which is patently false. There are hundreds of different intersex conditions which affect people in various ways and may not even be apparent at birth. And then there are the stupid gender roles that have practically no basis in fact but are perpetuated by society in the way we teach and socialize children and by acting like they are real. But that’s really more about sexism and gender expression than gender identity. Some people are assigned male at birth but later identify as a woman or vice versa. Some people have an intersex condition that causes ‘ambiguous genitalia’ and therefore no clear assigned sex who later identify fully as a man or a woman. And there are some people who are assigned something at birth but who later feel like that doesn’t fit and neither does the other binary option. Some people feel like a mixture of both genders, some like a third gender, some like they don’t have a gender at all. And some people simply don’t know or have a word to describe how they feel. And all of these identities are called non-binary.
“So, anyways, I feel like that, and I have started identifying as non-binary. As genderqueer, specifically. And I’d really like it if you would use they/them pronouns for me…?” they ended hesitantly, coming down from their earlier rant.
“Okay,” Thor said. “I do not truly understand. But I know that this is important to you, and you are my dau- my child. And I love you. I want you to be happy and to love yourself. And if this is what makes you happy, then I cannot say nay.”
Astrid hurled themself at him, and he pulled them close, squeezing them tight and briefly lifting their feet off the floor. He could feel them crying against his chest and said nothing, just holding them close.