Miscellaneous Musings on Gender Bender and Transgender Manga

Let me first off start by saying I don’t know anything!

I am definitely no expert in this topic (or in LGTBQ issues), and if you’re interested in these sort of things, you should definitely check out  FoxyLadyAyame, who makes excellent posts on sexuality and gender.

The best I can say is that I’m sort of an uneducated lay person who has quite a substantial interest in this area, but my prior forays into LGTBQ advocacy, introductory pamphlets, and the tumblr hivemind have left me immensely confused and dizzy-headed. >__________<

I’m not a particularly intelligent person, and the labels and diagrams and explanations and trigger-words and models and flow charts can be a bit overwhelming.

But it interests me, you know?

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Let’s start off first with my status. I’m interested in LGTBQ issues because, theoretically, I am part of that camp (though to be honest, I have never really felt extensive solidarity for my demographic, though perhaps that’s part of me not understanding LGTBQ things very well).

Like I’ve previously stated on my blog:

1. I am bisexual/pansexual.
2. I am sort of genderqueer(?) because dating/societal gender expectations confuse me immensely.

Though, I should probably give a fair warning that taking these labels at face value way oversimplifies my own confusion about my identity (the fact that it took years for me to label myself as those categories, and how, honestly I am still questioning).

For me, these above statements are not facts.

“I am Chinese American” is a fact.

“I am 21 years old” is a fact.

But I am about as sure I am genderqueer as I am sure INTP is my personality type, because the truth of the matter is that both are invented terms to classify the human personality into n-distinct categories.

I am just me, you know?

I am just me, and a lot of times I struggle with trying to figure out exactly what describes me best. I have observations—like knowing that I have been sexually attracted to both men and women in the past (one more frequently than the other)—that I enjoy ecchi manga just as much as smut filled with half-naked men, etc—but how does such a complicated thing end up being summarized in binary, trinary, or quaternary?

How do you explain, “who am I?”, to a world that likes to reduce to labels, tropes, categories, and divisions between normal/abnormal?

Matcha is confused, so let’s dive into the anime and manga.

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We’ll start off with a few panels from chapter one of Prunus Girl:

I love how Maki responds.

He chooses, BOTH candies at the same time! *cheers* XDDDDDDD

I mean, why not be a girl and a boy at the same time? Ambiguity is the best~

My personal preferences aside, the reason why I like gender bender and transgender manga so much is that they inevitably bring issues of gender straight to the forefront, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

It immediately raises the question of what is expected, or anticipated, of a man.

It immediately raises the question of what is expected, or anticipated, of a woman.

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Gender bender manga is actually slightly confusing for my brain (even though I like it) because many of them conform to binary stereotypes of gender.

An example would be Your and My Secret (by Ai Morinaga), in which protagonist Akira Uehara, a particularly feminine male, swaps bodies with his tomboyish crush. It turns out everybody ends up saying Uehara is “better off as a girl“, if only because he’s good at the things girls are supposed to be good at, even though he spends the broad majority of the series desperate to change back into a guy.

I mean, sure, Uehara-kun is supppppeeeeer moe (as you can see in the next mangacap), but doesn’t this seem problematic at all?

Also, the inverse of true of Uehara’s crush and body swapping counterpart, Nanako Momoi, who basically becomes the perfect egoistic asshole who gets away with anything smexy guy who makes every girl swoon (including his imouto) and loves it.

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Transgenderism and Gender Bender is a convoluted concept for my brain because to some extent it confirms and validates the difference between a boy and a girl.

In contrast, I’m simultaneously trying to tell myself “screw gender stereotypes” and be happy expressing myself the way I want to express myself no matter how I am publicly gendered. But isn’t that sort of paradoxical?

Hypothetical argument: If one screws all gender stereotypes, why should there be a reason to be want to be the other gender? Isn’t it superior to be gender blind rather than gendered?

Of course, I know pretty well that it doesn’t work that way. XD Gender blindness sounds really really great and all, but somehow there appears to be some kind of mysterious pressure that wants to maintain and embrace some sort of distinction (even if you’re like me and sometimes wavers between the boundary).

How should I put it? For me it’s sort of like, when I like a guy, I innately find myself acting and feeling more girly?

And when I like a girl, I sort of find myself feeling much less girly?

I’m not even sure if that makes sense, lol. Judith Butler once said that “gender is performative“, which basically means your behavior creates your gender. The extension of this is that your environment has an influence on the gender which you perceive yourself, because environment motivates behavior.

In other words, what I’m implying here is that sometimes happiness is connected to being more like one gender than the other^[1], thanks to externalities of the environment (for whatever reason, whether it is to fit in with your peers or do what feels natural with your significant other), and that drives gender behavior and perception.

Where is that happiness?

Well, sometimes that is in reading genderbender manga. XD

(jk actually I have no clue, but didn’t I make it a point that I was confused?)

*sigh* Aren’t yaoi/yuri ships just the best?

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1. This is also true of the complement: perception of unhappiness. In fact, unhappiness about the existing self is probably more of a motivating factor for gender dysphoria than the prospect of improved happiness.