chaos gf

@zip

she/her

annoying @vogon since 2014. still gay tho.
low energy software menace. i like taking photos, learning weird programming languages and being on the internet.

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chaos gf @zip8/28/2023, 1:01 PM

God but anime nerds are annoying

So the other day I stumbled upon this music video for COLORs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYAgBRO-aT8

And it's beautifully and lovingly animated and it is so obviously about a trans girl. You only ever see her dressed as a boy at school, looking sad and away from the camera, with cool colours. With her long pink hair she gets warm colours, joyful smiles, confident glances. And of course there's the butterflies.

But boy howdy are the anime nerds of reddit mad at the suggestion that she's anything other than a crossdresser and I just cannot fathom why they're so invested. I've had one refute that there were trans flag colours -- I never said there were! -- and I've had explanations that crossdressers exist actually, and that Japan has never heard of trans people (Stop! Hibari-kun is 42 years old) and have other westerners tell me that I am imposing my westerner view on Japanese culture.

Anyway it's super weird how determined they are to argue about it. I see a trans metaphor in some art and enjoy it on that basis and these fellas stand ready to refute me at every turn. I'm not sure I have a point. I guess it's just weird that there's folks who are so annoyed about anything that might be trans representation that they'll take silly positions and argue them down a dozen posts.

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in reply to @zip's post:

Alice D.@StarWitch8/28/2023, 1:27 PM

it's super interesting how colonialism is cool and good right up until a society is homophobic, in which case commenting on it is bad because colonialism is bad.

there is literally a trans medical clinic in Akiba (aka the Anime District of Tokyo) that gives trans people prescription hormone injections. you can literally go to the same neighbourhood to buy cringey daki as you can to get tits.

chaos gf @zip8/28/2023, 1:36 PM

what I find weird is how much these men appear to enjoy content with trans characters to the extent that they’ll spend ages arguing on the internet about the media in question, as long as they can tell themselves that the character is crossdressing.

an equally hilarious phenomenon is being in the comment section of a gender bender manga, 97 chapters deep and 5 pages in and finding some guy complaining about the ts/tf content. like sir why are you here

Alice D.@StarWitch8/28/2023, 3:34 PM

tbh I think it comes down to propaganda. these people have it in their heads that crossdressers == pretty, and trans women == ugly. they also take offence to the idea that their sexual attraction could be wrapped up in something that's become "political," which harshes their vibes.

chaos gf @zip8/28/2023, 5:14 PM

If you think about it, it's the estrogen that causes the hairy legs and the bad wigs

~@modulusshift8/28/2023, 1:34 PM

It's stupid because I'm sure at least a few of these people are actually allies when it doesn't come to Japanese media. I found myself gently agreeing with a weaker form of this argument at one time. But eventually the balance of people in my life changed, and I found myself wanting these things to be trans stories, for the people I cared about to enjoy.

Fundamentally I think these people would have a lot less to argue about if they knew that genderqueer and genderfluid people are welcome in the trans label, and they're welcome to keep their assigned pronouns and still be trans if they like. "Crossdressing" was never a mutually exclusive category with trans people.