Talk:Tooru Mutsuki/@comment-142.105.20.200-20150124050012/@comment-10733658-20150124062846

To the second Anon,

Congratulations, you managed to completely misunderstand everything I stated. I suppose I should rephrase things and be more clear, since you seem to have trouble figuring out what I was actually stating.

Mulan is a good Crossdressing story.

Utena is a good one too.

Naoto is another good example.

These are all examples of women that had a specific goal in mind, and used wearing men's clothing or pretending to be a dude to help accomplish their mission.

There is an enormous difference between those narratives and the "Abused/Raped Girl tries to be a man to cope" cliche. That is the one I have never seen done well, since it typically involves considerable internalized misogyny, the idea that being a girl = weakness, and using LGBT themes in a negative fashion.

Like I already stated, right now the narrative with Mutsuki has me very torn because it could go in different directions. I would be fine with a Trans narrative, or with a narrative of a woman deciding to use a male identity to accomplish a goal she could not do normally (disguised as part of a larger goal to get revenge or conceal identity as a Witness/Lone Survivor). Those are narratives that could be very interesting.

But if the narrative for Mutsuki is simply pretending to be a guy because of abuse/rape, I think that is a weak concept that I have never seen utilized well. It touches on very uncomfortable ideas about lesbians or transmen only being the way they are "because of abuse", and the need to "become normal again" in order to heal. It also tends to ignore actual coping mechanisms and psychology, since generally a survivor is not going to further expose themselves to the thing they fear -- a raped woman with a major fear of men isn't going to expose herself to them further in the way that living a male identity does. They're not going to be comfortable in a men's restroom, or joking with men about other women (hey, she's cute/hot).

Ishida is an excellent writer and does psychology very well. So I'm going to do my best to trust that his plan for things is going to be good. Right now, we have so many mixed signals being given out. The Trans readers I've seen discussing things seem to think Mutsuki's entire portrayal has been absolutely accurate so far, in terms of phrasing and thought processes so far. But we ultimately don't know Ishida's mind or his game plan.

I just hope, when we know for certain, it doesn't turn into another negative stereotype on either LGBT people or rape survivors.