It is definitely interesting to think about. To draw a parallel to another fictional universe for a moment, one of the things I loved in Destiny’s lore (I know, I know...) was the way the Krill (a species that eventually became the enemies known as the Hive) treated gender. Their species had a 10-year life cycle, and were capable of multiple different metamorphoses after 5 years, with the specific metamorphosis depending on certain external factors like if they ate Mother Jelly (and Mothers could actually live longer than 10 years). All Krill larvae are referred to with “she/her” pronouns, as were Mothers, but Knights and Kings were referred to by “he/him.” The Lore went into the backstory of one of the series major villains, who started out as a Krill larva , and is referred to as “she” in the Lore until the point in her backstory where she takes on the King morph, from which point on he is referred to as “he.” Now, I would absolutely consider that a gender system, and it does contain an element of social class (though admittedly not economic class, and it also contains a bilological element.) I would say that if Aurash (this character’s original name) had identified as the Krill’s equivalent of male, or Auryx (the villain’s adult name, chosen after taking on the King morph) had identified as their equivalent of female, I would consider them trans. Interestingly, later on Auryx acquires a McGuffin that gives him crazy space magic and he changes his name to Oryx, marking it as a transformation metaphorically equivalent to his earlier physical metamorphosis from larva to King. If he had at that point started using she/her pronouns, I would have considered him trans as well. Shame Bungie didn’t take advantage of the opportunity.
