cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1422074
The manga: a college guy meets his childhood friend, who was formerly a boy but is now a woman, and has run away from home after an unspecified disagreement with her family which has left her with a significant amount of trauma; it’s implied she was bullied heavily in the time since they’ve last seen each other.
But don’t worry, she’s not trans! She just got an illness which turned her into a woman!
The manga: a high school boy with an interest in make-up uses his gloomy, depressed (male) childhood friend as a model to improve his skills. This causes said friend to have an “awakening” and start dressing as a woman, and to overall be a much happier, brighter, outgoing person.
But don’t worry, the friend is not trans! He’s just a boy who crossdresses because his childhood friend likes him better that way!
The manga: a high school boy joins a club where the members can turn into magical girls, which in his case involves physically transforming into a girl. When in girlmode, he’s much happier and enjoys his life much more, and overall prefers staying in girl mode; when the ability to transform is temporarily taken away from him, he sinks into a deep depressive episode.
But don’t worry, he’s not trans! He’s just a boy who enjoys being a girl!
The manga: a college student loses a bet and has to crossdress for a night out on the town, and meets and hooks up with a butch girl; they fall in love and start dating. The boy always crossdressed when they meet, and starts enjoying being “treated like a girl” in the relationship and starts crossdressing even when he doesn’t have to meet his girlfriend and enjoys activities such as clothes shopping and make-up and putting on nail polish.
But don’t worry, he’s not trans! He’s just a boy who crossdresses to please his butch girlfriend!
The manga: a guy is magically turned into a girl as a result of saving his best friend, the crown prince, from an assassination attempt. The prince decides that he has to take responsibility, and asks the new girl to marry him; despite being smitten she refuses, wanting to date first. She is later offered a way to go back to being a man, but when she does turn back she’s disgusted by her own appearance and depressed all the time, ultimately deciding to stay a girl.
But don’t worry, she’s not trans! She’s just a boy who’s been magically turned into a woman! And decides not to turn back when she can! Because she’s not trans! Somehow!
“But we can’t write trans women in manga! It’s just not something that you do!”
I don’t know if this is always the case but those seem like the sort of stories you’d write if you were trans but didn’t have the language to describe what you feel and had no other people to talk to about it so it just comes out in your stories as a desire to be closer to your desired gender.
definitely. a few of the mangaka have literally said they work out their desires to become a girl through their art. but unless there are a LOT of eggs in the industry it’s not all of them. i read a lot of stuff like this as an egg, but i really don’t think everyone who was posting “everyone is gay for bridget” memes in 2003 was just closeted. i think there are a lot of cis dudes who like the transgression of it but don’t like to acknowledge that trans people can exist and be happy, and the amount of anger that people recieve for suggesting these characters may possibly be anything other than cis makes me think that might be the majority of the audience
a series that’s useful for thinking about this is love me for who i am which is by a cis author who wanted to write an otokonoko story until he realized trans people exist and shifted it so it’s about a gay crossdresser, 2 trans women, and a femme enby. it’s not perfect, but the author is trying to actually interface with the real world in a meaningful way, unlike a lot of these
these are all real btw
1st: Kare to Kanojo no Sentaku (The Choice Is His & Hers)
2nd: Koisuru (Otome) no Tsukurikata (I Think I Turned My Childhood Friend Into a Girl)
3nd: Magical Trans! and Mahou Shoujo Bu e Youkoso! by the same author
4th: Ikemen Joshi to Josou Danshi (Handsome Girl and Crossdressing Boy)
5th: Shinyuu Ouji to Koshiginchaku (The Prince’s Close Friend and Follower)
the following is not from the og post and is where my own opinions come inthe really grating thing about this isn’t any one specific example. if one of these existed as-is and the rest were willing to actually acknowledge transness and genderqueerness as it exists in the real world i wouldn’t mind so much. or if the characters discussed the possibility of transitioning and decided it wasn’t for them. and it’s not even just these 5, there are dozens of other examples. these are just off the top of my head! these are mostly characters that pass (though some had some magic involved) and the narrative never accepts the possibility they might be trans, or even that they could choose to be a gender other than the one they were assigned at birth. 1 is transmasc, but most are transfem
chihiro danganronpa
any of the fgo ones, astolfo, chevalier d’eon etc.
naoto persona
ferris re:zero
dragona jjba (who even takes “injections to give the appearance of breasts”!!! that’s hormones!!! she’s taking hormones!!!)
as well as several other ranma characters, like ukyo or konatsu
rosado fire emblem
mizuki project sekai
hato genshiken
loran turn a gundam (only kind of, and i’m willing to give this one a pass given it’s not really about the gender stuff and also takes place ~1914)
hibari stop hibari-kunand none of these are from the otokonoko genre because i don’t read it because it pisses me off, but there’s a whole genre of stuff closer to what the og post is about where the gender is the entire focus of the story (which is only the case for hibari of the ones i mentioned). this is a massive trend and it far outnumbers the amount of actual trans characters in these spaces
