Talk:Tooru Mutsuki/Article guidelines/@comment-32222793-20170607003635/@comment-31606823-20180701213203

(warning for tons of spoilers bellow)

Its fair you see Mutsuki as a girl but its still canon he uses masculine terms for himself during the current date and that is a fact but it seems you are digging for my opinion so here it is. For my personal assessment for the character, I believe that Mutsuki is trans or more likely genderfluid of some sort.

To start, he canonically has gender/body dysphoria. During the nutcracker mission he mentions how much he hates how much people stare at him, how he doesn't want men to see him like that, like a "toy". He has a brief panic attack before Sasaki reassures him that he looks fine, Tooru mumbling that being "pretty/cute" (depending on translation, but still a fem term) isn't what he was worried about, implying he doesn't like looking like a girl even if it's for a mission, pushing away from your point about him pretending to be a boy for the job. tldr; Mutsuki dislikes having a female body and leads me to believe that he has body dysphoria similar to that of a transgender person.

My next point is his adamant hate for women, now this is definitely one of the weaker and more blink n’ miss it points but it's worth a mention. This doesn’t show until later chapters but his highly uncomfortable around women (exception being Yonebayashi, who he does later attack), starting briefly the first time the quinx team enter the :re coffee shop, watching Touka closely even when there wasn’t a relation between Sasaki and Touka canon at the time. Another is during the island fight when he yells at Akira sighting that it’s against the law to shield a ghoul, then stabbing only her when he could have easily struck Takizawa through her. It gets more blaring during his raid arc, declaring “all women should die” and how “disgusting” they are, this isn’t like as a ‘wow men hate all ladies’ but more of Tooru dislikes women to the point of being okay with killing any with little reason, again, making it seems how he perceives himself is not that of female. tldr; Tooru dislikes women and its likely because he hasn’t killed himself yet means he doesn’t completely see himself as one.

Now the elephant in the room, his mental breakdown. Now what I meant by “during the underground raid (/ the time he was highly unstable)” is that he didn't use all masculine or all feminine, but he mixed them up, that of a child or someone unfamiliar with how gendered words are in the language. I am rather inclined to believe that Mutsuki is a native speaker of japanese so its not likely a mistake but during this time he could be described as childlike during his hunt for Kaneki, yelling, getting mad when he didn't get what he wanted, having very little morals, ect. What does this mean? Well it’s likely that Tooru was not only having a psychotic breakdown but suffering from brief moments of age regression some people who have bipolar or personality disorders experience, explaining a little why he would use femm and masc terms for himself during that time. More so during his fight with his ex-squad mates he finally snaps out of the psychosis he tells them he’s sorry and can’t hurt them, talking a knife to his throat to attempt suicide before it is knocked away by Yonebayashi. He later tells Urie he can’t talk to Kaneki because he knows all of what he did was wrong and he cant face it. tldr; Mutsuki “mental breakdown” self is not actually a reflection of himself but more so of the trauma and abuse he received as a child forming heavy mental damage that caused him to form an unnatural bound to Kaneki.

Now I know I wrote an entire essay, so I left some tldr; for each point, I still recommend you really through all of the full points because it adds context and evidence. You seem to be a more rational person than others I’ve spoken too, honestly I expected another “*she” but you actually spoke like a normal human, which sets the bar low but still good on you. (Sorry for errors, I’m pretty damn dyslexic so anything I didn’t catch tends to look ‘normal’ for me)