Why I Hate Canon Character Gender-Switch
So, in case it was hard to tell by everything I've ever written, I'm a fairly all-embracing person. If you want to be attracted to effeminate men or butchy women or people with big hands or only guys with green eyes, whatever. That's your thing. And I do understand and respect that some people are trans-gender, or live as a member of the opposite sex from what they are biologically. So hopefully that clarifies that when I say I hate canon character gender-switches in fanfic, I am not saying that because I'm bigoted against people who define their sexuality in non-traditional ways.
If anyone is wondering what I mean by gender-switch, I'm talking about fanworks where someone who was a man in canon is changed to be a woman, or vice verse. Whether this is because of some contrived magical ordeal, or just one of those stories where the author decides so-and-so in their universe has always been a man/woman instead of what they were in canon, I really hate all versions of this trope. I very much respect a fanauthor's right to create whatever kind of works they want with the characters, and if this is your cup of tea, please go right ahead. I have nothing against the fact that this happens, and I'm not going to judge you for doing it, I just hate the concept itself.
The reason has to do with how most of these stories are set up. For the first kind (magically someone gets gender-switched as a plot point) there's a lot of "X male character gets turned into a girl and suddenly Y male character falls in love with her" plots, where it's made to seem that guy 1 wouldn't look twice at guy 2 but then guy 2 suddenly has tits and guy 1 is head over heels in love. That's about as realistic as your average romance novel--basically this person is falling in love with the other person's tits. And yeah, sometimes the author makes a point of having the person switch back in the end, but the fact that they couldn't fall in love without the impetus of being a heterosexual couple first just irritates me.
Then, there are a lot of "actually this person was a girl/boy all along" where, for example, someone who was male in canon has always been a girl in someone's fic 'verse. And I respect that sometimes this could lead some cool places, but the implications still bother me. First, there are things like (well, this is canon, but...) the alternate Marvel universe where Iron Man was actually a woman and married Captain America. What pisses me off about this, is that apparently Iron Man and Captain America are essentially the same people except for one gender-switch, and are "just good friends". But give Iron Man breasts, and suddenly it's okay for girl!Stark to be in love with Steve. It just seems unfair to me. I know that's pretty much how the world works, but I feel like we should be able to be more accepting in fiction.
With both of the above tropes, especially in fanfiction, I tend to get the feeling that many authors choose this sort of plot because they're uncomfortable with homosexuality. Now, I'm usually pretty against overplaying the homosexual victim card, but in this case I really do feel like many gender-switch stories are written so that the author can take a popular guy/guy pairing and gender-switch it into a hetero pairing. In one sense, it's still the popular pairing, so people will read it and/or they can pretend they like the same things as their friends (or whatever the reasoning), but on the other hand, they've managed to conveniently make a het couple that's okay to their minds. Now, I'm not saying all writers who have gender-switch fic have this same impetus, but I get that sense relatively often from this kind of story.
Additionally, there is the problem of a lot of these stories not being very well put together. There is often a very cheesy name swap (Harriet "Harry" Potter, Antonia "Toni" Stark) and then many authors feel like once they've created this odd hybrid canon-sue character, they can then do whatever they want with them with no regard for staying in character, because now, they're a different gender and obviously will behave differently.
The final considerations are that I am personally a huge canon whore and like m/m pairings for their inherent dynamic. I almost always love characters and pairings because the canon movie/show/book/game/whatever has built up interesting characters and dynamics and I just borrow them and put them in other situations. I love Draco as a character because he's an asshole who still cares a lot about his family and is ultimately far more human and vulnerable than we were led to believe--and that's what I love about him. And yes, you could write him that way as a female too, but changing his gender inherently changes who he is because, like it or not, your gender is a very big part of your identity. And the Draco I fell in love with is a boy, with all the baggage that brings.
Additionally, changing him to be female would also completely change the dynamic of his relationships. Changing a m/m pairing into a het one automatically means you lose the original dynamic. Society places expectations on the roles of a man and woman in a relationship, based on gender, but those expectations are very different in a relationship where there is no gender difference. Whether those expectations are followed or not, they are still much stronger for a het relationship, and will affect how things play out. Usually with pairings I like, there's something amazing about the two characters together, and I feel like changing their identity by gender-switch takes away from the dynamic I liked in the first place.
As I've said, I do respect everyone's rights to do whatever they want in their fanworks. I won't automatically dislike you if you enjoy and/or write gender-switch, so I hope no one was offended by this.