I think I started having "trans fem buffy summers" as a headcanon while rewatching the high school seasons and realizing something:
The way that the show handles the conflict between Buffy's slayer duties and her desire to have a normal life is frequently portrayed using gendered language. It is not simply that she wants a normal life, it is that she wants to be a normal girl.
I don't have exact quotes and specific examples but Buffy definitely has a habit of being extremely appreciative of fairly basic and mundane parts of performing femininity because...
Her slayer duties frequently lead to authority figures (such as giles) gatekeeping her ability to have the female experience that she wants - the one I always point to here is "Never Kill a Boy on the First Date" in part because of a post by @/herinsectreflection pointing out her line to Owen "I almost feel like a girl" but also because the episode as a whole highlights this part of the buffy-giles dynamic.
Many people have discussed the "vampire Slayer as a queer category" so I will not go into that here, but I think it is crucial to my argument that this queer category, as stated, frequently conflicts with her ability to do gender in the way that she wants.






