fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5694 ]

[ SECRET POST #5694 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5694 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 33 secrets from Secret Submission Post #815.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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They revealed that Bridget is officially a trans girl in the new Guilty Gear Strive.

I, a trans person... have Thoughts about this.

On one hand, yay! More trans rep! On the other hand...

Originally Bridget was born in a set of same-sex male twins. The fictional culture in which they were born stigmatised same-sex twins as a bad omen. This means that there's a lot of pressure for infanticide. Instead, Bridget's parents raise them as a girl, to preserve their life, and to hide the truth from everybody else.

In past games, Bridget outwardly identifies as male. Strongly, even. Their whole things was that they were like "Even though I was raised this way and I've strong feminine inclinations, I'm still a boy!"

In the most recent game, Bridget says they are, indeed, a girl. But that's really uncomfortable for me. To me it feels like Bridget's gave into the gender put upon them by their parents and ended up reinforcing that one shitty idea that parents force trans identities on their kids. Then there's the whole erasing feminine cis men. Like there's no way for a cis man to be feminine without having trans inclinations.

I'm so fucking torn. It really hit me like a gut punch when I saw the scene.

It sounds to me (a cis person who doesn't believe in gender tbh) more like a "gender expression can be influenced by others, and people can give in to gender norms even if they don't feel like it as long as they (unfortunately) exist" statement. More like a "*shrug* guess I am a girl then" kinda thing.

But leaving personal feelings of foreigners aside we must take into account the cultural background too - issues of sex and gender expression are dealt with very differently in Japan and there were a lot of societal changes in the past decade, parallel to the west's own changes, so... I think there are some deep, interesting discussions to be made. Unfortunately if there is one thing that P4 and CT fandoms have taught me it is that they arent gonna happen

Bridget's entire characterization was "my community are assholes that forced me to be a girl when I want to be a boy, so I'm going to go out and prove to them that their superstition is bullshit and that me being a boy is just fine." They hated having been raised as a girl, wanted to assert their masculinity, consistently called themself a boy, and actively wanted to experience things they'd missed out on due to their upbringing. They chose to identify as a boy as soon as they left home.

But it's also been like... a seven year stretch. It's entirely possible they came to realize that they ARE a girl outside the influence of their village and being on their own the whole time and came to this realization on their own. But it's like... I dunno. Like I said, I'm feeling some kind of way about it.

In the end, more trans rep! I won't take this victory away from the trans girls and trans women. I'm really happy for them!

Oh, so there was a time gap then? Just replied to the other comment before reading this ... Didn't play the game, no idea how it was handled or whether it felt in-character or not but if it did, sounds like a win in terms of representation and as for your concern about any ill intent or unfortunate implication, again I think that a Japanese perspective (if the author's isn't possible) could be more enlightening than trying to assume the worst. Because it's easy to do that when you don't consider different cultural backgrounds.

More like a "*shrug* guess I am a girl then" kinda thing.

That's the exact opposite of how the scene went, though. It started out with her saying she was a guy and the other two characters involved (gently) pointing out that she didn't seem too happy when she said that, and then letting her sort of talk through her own feelings about it for a few minutes until at the end she confidently states that she's a girl.

AYRT here, wow that sounds just OOC then, sad. Again, just my impressions from what I was told as a third party who has never played GG.

See, if it had been a "*shrug* guess I am a girl then" kind of thing then I would've had a problem with it, but I thought it was actually done quite well. Bridget had the time and opportunity to ID as male, did so for quite a while, and then ultimately decided that wasn't right and that she actively wanted to ID as female.

And it's not like she's the only non-cis character in the series, either - Testament is canonically NB.

Testament being NB (and getting a hombofied redesign to match) is pretty recent though.

Himbofied

Bloody hell I'm too tired for this. Yassified. The word I was searching for was yassified.

I just peeked Testament's redesign and... Yikes. Like... I love the outfit. It's fantastic. But did they really have to take away their originally more masculine figure to hammer in their non-binary identity?

Yeah that's my main issue. It's such a downgrade.

This reminds me of Danganronpa in the opposite direction. There is a character introduced as a girl who later it turns out is a boy who pretended to be a girl because he was ashamed of how weak and unmanly he was. His story arc consists of him gaining the courage to admit this secret to others and become determined to stop pretending.

This would have been much cooler as a trans story, because the idea of boys escaping into being girls because they can't hack it as boys is.... not good. But also because there is a very touching (it's Danganronpa so bear with me) part of the story where his murderer goes out of his way to conceal the fact that he was killed in the boys' locker room, to protect his secret. If this character had been a trans girl this could have been a powerful act of affirmation. It also would explain away why the game and other characters keep treating him like a girl even after it is revealed.

It also would explain away why the game and other characters keep treating him like a girl even after it is revealed.

...but they don't. They call him a boy and immediately switch to he/him (and -kun instead of -san in Japanese) as soon as they examine the body. That's before they even know why he was pretending to be a girl, so from the POV of someone who doesn't know the full story, it looks like they're misgendering a what is most likely a trans girl. I was relieved when he turned out to identify as a boy after all, because them treating him like a boy immediately was very uncomfortable.

However, the game was made 10 years ago, and when I was in high school I probably would have immediately assumed "boy pretending to be a girl" before "trans girl" too.

I personally believe there is more to treating people like one gender or the other than pronouns. It's been a hot minute but I vaguely remember the guys who had a crush on him saying something like he's still a girl to them or something.

Eh, other trans people seem happy with it. Bridget's entire backstory is a mess for handling gender identity in either way, and when the original was written the idea of transness probably wasn't even a consideration, it was just a backstory-driven excuse to put a boy in a dress because that's a popular trope. So like. It seems like it could have been written better but I see how trans people would appreciate the effort.

Also not a fan of any quibbles that have to do with "erasing feminine boys" because it's almost always used as a talking point next to the transphobic talking point that trans people are trying to "trans" gender-nonconforming kids. The trans community by and large is more accepting than your average cis of gender-nonconformity in both cis and trans people of all genders. Nobody says if a boy is feminine then he's really a girl. However, many feminine "boys" turn out to be trans girls. That's not an issue.

To put it another blunter way, the idea behind Bridget in the original game was that most people will grow up identifying as the gender that matches the one associated with their genitals, regardless of which gender they're assigned and raised as. The idea behind the new story is that most people will grow up identifying as the gender they're assigned and raised with. The latter is true more true than the former. Trans people are the exception. So in the original game, Bridget was accidentally written as trans. Yes, trans -- assigned female at birth, identifies as male. In the new one, she's probably accidentally cis for the same reason, but at least with a better understanding of how gender identity really works which will probably be more helpful in the long run for understanding why some people are trans.

My wife strongly identified as a girl because she felt it was all she had because her mother would get sulky if she expressed anything "masculine." Then she identified as a man after leaving, before realizing her problem wasn't femininity but the way femininity was treated. She had to be demure, girly, like pink, play with dolls, have feminine hobbies, do the cleaning and cooking, be domestic.

She's since decided fuck that. She's enby but isn't so shy of she/her anymore. Bridget feels like that's what's going on, instead. Less, "I guess..." And more, "Soooo, my problems were the type of femininity they tried to shove onto me. I'm a girl, and that's okay, I don't have to be the girl they wanted me to be."

I've lost interest in Guilty Gear a while ago and these things all cement that, sadly. I'm really tired of characters who get canonically forced into presenting as the opposite gender getting lauded as some sort of trans icon.

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[ SECRET POST #5694 ]

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