Once More, With Queering: ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Gender Identity 25 Years Later
The Master: You’re dead.
Buffy: I may be dead, but I’m still pretty. Which is more than I can say for you.
The Master: You were destined to die! It was written!
Buffy: What can I say? I flunked the written.
—Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “Prophecy Girl,” Season 1, Episode 12
An exchange like this one is typical for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a show that maintains cultural relevance and personal relatability no matter how many years go by—and it just so happens to be its twenty-fifth birthday this year. While it is a comedic, perfectly-timed exchange, I’ve never once been able to laugh at it. Regardless of the ridiculous makeup and prosthetics The Master dawns, the dramatic framing and camerawork, or Sarah Michelle Gellar’s expert delivery, this scene never fails to make me cry. After making my way through the layers of camp, charisma, and high school drama, getting to “Prophecy Girl,” the finale of season one, was more of a cathartic release than I expected.
From Tumblr tags to DVD box sets (yes I still have them, physical media for life!) to comics and talks of reboots, Buffy has lived many lives since its debut in 1997. Thanks to streaming and great books being written about the show to this day, the newest generation of potentials are coming in stronger than ever. From thirsty TikToks to Twitter threads of Buffy’s most iconic looks, the show continues to grow in popularity and significance—but what was it like being a Buffy fan ten years ago?
I was nineteen years old, it was 2013, and I had just gone on a Tumblr deep-dive for two searches in tandem: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the word “nonbinary.”
Flash-forward to ten years, lots of therapy, and one tattoo (more are coming) of a wooden stake later: I still live and breathe Buffy. I’m also still nonbinary. Surprise!
But back in 2013 college kids my age either didn’t know what Buffy was about, or thought that it was a show for “girls.” This was the time of New Girl and Parks and Recreation. Don’t get me wrong, those shows hold special places in my heart too, but campy horror TV wasn’t exactly in the zeitgeist (unless you count Pretty Little Liars, which I ABSOLUTELY do). The internet was still newish at this point, Buffy had been off the air for almost 10 years and it was not even streaming, so you had to dig fairly deep for anything of substance-related to the show—whether you needed message boards, explanations or deeper meanings for parts you didn’t fully grasp, or just a friend to talk to. And you could say the same was true for finding information about gender identity and exploration.
I cannot imagine where my life would’ve gone if I hadn’t found Tumblr and Buffy when I did. This is for a few reasons: one being the broadness of what being nonbinary means. It didn’t feel as broad as you may have thought it did in 2013. Things were still very black-and-white (for me). Next, podcasting, recap channels, and even Twitter stan accounts weren’t as popular as they are now. Younger people who are truly tapped into internet culture hadn’t “discovered” nineties pop culture yet, and now the decade is hotter than ever. And lastly, I don’t think the engrained social impact of Buffy had really hit us as a culture yet—and this, for some reason, made it feel more personal, more private, like it was mine.
I’m sure all of this makes me sound very old, but I’m only twenty seven (I wasn’t even able to watch the show as it was airing). Thanks to online communities, access has changed drastically in the last ten years. We have more information now more than ever, the Buffy resurgence is still going strong, and over the pandemic TikTok made everyone realize they’re actually gay.
So, how do all of these points connect with each other? In my eyes, my gender journey and Buffy the Vampire Slayer go hand-in-hand.
Season 1: Oh Shit, I’m Not “Just a Girl”
I think I knew that my entire life. But it wasn’t until early college when I started questioning why it felt like a slap in the face to be called “Miss,” or how I always rejected clothes that stuck too close to my body. I wore all black to hide any curves. You couldn’t pay me to wear nail polish, jewelry, or anything too colorful. This is how I felt like I could survive—to blend in and not make too much noise. All I actually wanted at the time was the language to express how I felt.
After a few late nights searching through the #nonbinary and #genderqueer Tumblr tags, I developed certain ideas in my head about how I should look, act, and feel like a person who doesn’t conform to the gender binary. There are a lot of things I thought I “had” to do—like reject typical forms of femininity if I wanted to start identifying as nonbinary and embrace my more masculine qualities and features. Thankfully, I’ve grown out of the need to conform to an identity that rejects conformity, even in its own name. And in a lot of ways, I feel like I was able to do that in the way Buffy came to understand the identity of the slayer. But it took a long time to get there—first, we had to take a trip through the Hellmouth.
Season 2: Fun and Games
“Bad Eggs.” “Reptile Boy.” “School Hard.” Some of the campiest, most out-of-pocket episodes of Buffy snuck their way into the second season. This experimental vibe that comes after the initial drama and realization of slayerhood (and nonbinariness) seems like a natural progression: I have the language, now what? Who do I tell first? Will my friends and family accept me for who I am? And most importantly, what do I wear?
But it’s not all fun and games. In “Becoming: Part Two,” the season two finale, Buffy and her mom Joyce have one of the rawest and most relatable conversations of the entire show. Joyce badgers Buffy with the typical responses us queers and trans folks are bothered with on a regular basis: “Are you sure you’re a slayer?” “Have you tried not being a slayer?” “It’s ‘cause you didn’t have a strong father figure, isn’t it?” “You can’t just drop something like this on me and pretend it’s nothing!” Buffy answers the only way she knows how:
“It doesn’t stop. It never stops. Do you think I chose to be like this? Do you have any idea how lonely it is, how dangerous? I would love to be upstairs watching TV or gossiping about boys, or God, even studying! But I have to save the world. Again.”
Season 3: Thinking You’ve Seen It All
Much like Buffy and the Scooby Gang in season three, I had no idea how long, tiring, and confusing the journey I was about to go on would be. High school was over, at least there was that. But now, once the Big Bad dust has settled and we realize that we’ve all made it out alive (for the most part, RIP Harmony and Principal Snyder), the evil only grows with us. It asks for more muscle, perseverance, and emotional labor than ever before. Maybe you put your pronouns in your Twitter and Instagram bios, or maybe you buy your first binder. I did both, and those things didn’t give me the sense of acceptance or comfort that I thought they would. Whatever happened to Buffy’s Class Protector award? Is the umbrella buried under Sunnydale rubble? These are stepping stones. They’re important ones, but there’s more to unpack.
Oh, we were also introduced to Faith in this season, as if I needed to confirm my gayness even more than I already had.
Season 4: Becoming an Adult
And just when you think you’ve seen and experienced it all, college begins. When the Scooby Gang traded the Sunnydale High library for dorm rooms, I admit it felt like the show lost a part of its charm (pre-Tara, of course). College provides freedom and a lot of change—so much so that sometimes it can feel like you’re becoming a different person, at least, I did. Change is an idea I’ve grappled with my entire life, something I still struggle with.
But Buffy ended up showing me that it wasn’t all bad—sometimes changing can save your life. Sometimes you can communicate with the people you love most without needing to say anything, like in “Hush.” Sometimes you need to see life through another person’s perspective to better understand and know them, like in “Who Are You?” Sometimes facing your innermost fears can prepare you for what’s to come, like in “Restless.”
I really thought now that I knew how to define myself to those who asked, the pain was over. My professors knew my pronouns and (occasionally) used them, my hair was finally as short as I wanted it to be (which came with constant negative comments from my family), and I was starting to feel like maybe I was at ease in my own skin for the first time. But I wasn’t.
Season 5: Grief is Lifelong
When I think of grief, I typically imagine that it’s something I do for another person. My grandfather passed away last week, and I’m grieving that loss now. This process, this type of grief makes perfect sense—but how do you grieve for yourself? How do I grieve the person I used to be: a sister, a daughter, a girl?
Season five of Buffy the Vampire Slayer helped me answer these questions I had for years. When Buffy learns that Dawn isn’t technically her sister and all their memories weren’t real, she mourns her idea of what sisterhood was. When Joyce’s death affects the entire trajectory of the season and Buffy’s life as a whole, she grieves what she thought it meant to be a daughter. In “The Gift,” when Buffy sacrifices her life to save Dawn and the entire world, she grieves the life she had before the new Big Bad, the impending evil, the constant Hellmouth. If Buffy could do all of that and survive, why couldn’t I?
“The hardest thing in this world is to live in it. Be brave. Live.”
Season 6: Depression (Lots of Therapy)
Once that Hellmouth opened, I found a therapist.
A trans therapist who did drag, embraced every part of themselves, and worked with me to facilitate my own exploration of gender and all the things it can be. I embraced my found family and my biological family for all that they are. This was something I was able to mirror once I saw Xander’s care for Willow no matter the death and destruction—through the most excruciating moments in life, we all have someone.
Season six of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is an uncanny portrayal of depression. There are instances of regret, doubt, hopelessness, resentment, and even humor. The season shows unique types of misery—types that our main protagonists had built up against them for many years that ultimately hit some breaking points (looking at you, Willow). These characters revealed the worst parts of themselves to us and said take it or leave it, and my love for them just grew deeper. They showed that we can become our worst selves and still, we manage to get through it all.
I became a happier person when I accepted the fact that I couldn’t control all of the things I was trying to: the way people perceived me, their opinions about how I live my life, how I was born and raised, the list goes on and on.
“The hardest thing in this world is to live in it.” If we are brave and live the lives we want to live, maybe that makes it a little easier for us in the long run.
Season 7: Finding Strength
What does it mean to be a slayer, and how do they survive in a world that refuses to accept their existence, power, and humanity?
Buffy thought she was the only slayer for so long. That amount of pressure, uncertainty, and egocentricity is a lot to take on for a person. For a very long time, I thought my identity was something to keep hidden, something no one else could relate to or understand. While my identity is still only what I define it as and how I feel, I know others can acknowledge the times of struggle and the moments we choose to celebrate.
There are so many slayers. There are so many ways to be a slayer. This is what season seven teaches us, and it provides some of the best, most compelling episodes of the entire show (namely “Same Time, Same Place,” “Conversations with Dead People,” “Selfless,” and of course, “Chosen”). While many don’t hold the same opinion as I do, season seven of Buffy helped me come to terms with the fact that endings are rarely happy or wrapped up in a perfectly neat package. We can create our own endings, identities, powers, faults.
In the end, you never have to have it all fully figured out. Grief, anxiety, depression, hope, identity, love—these are lifelong, human feelings, not just phases of life or themes from a TV show. I don’t know when or if I would’ve fully embraced that if it weren’t for Buffy. My hair is the longest it’s been since I was a child. I still mostly wear all black, but I’m not scared to add pops of color, nail polish, some jewelry. I don’t think I feel “complete,” and I’ve let go of the belief that I ever have to be.
Twenty-five years from now, I hope I’m still writing about this show. I hope I’ve gotten more Buffy-themed tattoos. Perhaps I’ll even have fulfilled my lifelong goal of meeting Sarah Michelle Gellar and being able to tell her thank you without passing out. In my wildest dreams, I’ll be writing my own book about this experimental, hopeful, smart, endearing, iconic piece of media. Or maybe none of that happened, and that’s totally fine too. All I can truly hope for is that I’m still changing.
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