This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Looney Toons: I challenge including Utena here. Utena is never mistaken for a boy, nor does her boy's school uniform hide or obscure her gender.
Ununnilium: She's mistaken for a boy at the beginning of the movie; and anyway, the initial mistake isn't what makes a bifauxnen a bifauxnen. It's being a girl, who looks like a feminine boy, with an Aura of Cool.
Agree with the above, although this does get into the borderline divide if movies based on TV series count.
Looney Toons: Meh. The movie is such a complete head trip that I wouldn't consider it anyway. I see your distinction, though.
Shapeshifter: I do not think the bit on Kino has it quite right, here. It is not stated that Kino takes the name to honor the other Kino (although it's implied that, for instance, the coat is specifically for that reason) and the show presents the name selection as essentially an accident that was continued. It is mentioned that Kino did not like her given name (Sakura, if i remember correctly).
Kino definitely takes offense at being considered both male and female—specifically, in the Coliseum episodes—and depending on how you interpret the reaction may also explicitly deny being male or female. Furthermore, in the Kino movie, much more emphasis is placed on Kino and gender—specifically a scene where Kino oscillates between "boku" and "watashi" (again, if i remember correctly) as a personal pronoun, which is somewhat like trying to decide between "he" and "she" in English. Kino also exhibits both male and female behaviors.
In addition to that, we can take our cues from the show itself. The show certainly does not present or introduce Kino as male or female, and only one episode actually (indirectly) reveals Kino's sex. So, in the context of discussion about characters in a show we might look at how the show treats Kino.
(It might be incorrect to put Kino into "bifauxnen", anyway... but since we don't particularly have an entry for ambiguous/androgynous characters, not that there are too many to begin with, it seems reasonable.)
Gattsuru: Well, for starters, the official translations of Kino no Tabi have come across the pond as "Kino's Journey" rather than Travels, so I'll swap that out after posting this. I'd second the concerns about including it at all here, though. Kino's gender is merely not portrayed instead of being portrayed as male; there are few if any references to it in the actual media, so most of the actual bifauxnen assumptions only exist in a viewer's preconcieved viewpoints.
I guess you could say she follows common male perceptions because she is well-armed, a fast draw, and wears an older style trenchcoat, but that sort of definition seems a bit stretchy to me. Maybe I'm missing it, but what part of that is different from most aggressive female characters like Akane Tendo? Just the viewers getting confused about it?
Shapeshifter: I think the difference is that the show pays attention to Kino's gender specifically, both in explicit (the boku/watashi monologue) and implicit ways. The fact that you don't even find out whether Kino is a "boy or girl" until you're some way into the show (and even then the show never comes out and says "Kino is a XYZ") ought to be enough to trigger some suspicion. This might partly be a difference between the sub and dub, as i know in the dub they give it away much earlier and generally don't treat Kino's gender/sex with the same sort of subtlety. I think Kino is much different from, ie, Akane Tendo. For instance, i can't imagine Akane having difficulty deciding on which gendered pronoun to use or objecting to being treated as male AND objecting to being treated as female—or does this ever happen? Maybe i've missed some parts, i certainly haven't watched all of Ranma. Maybe Akane's probably is just being not that introspective, though... Actually, the general tone of the two shows (Ranma vs. Kino) makes straight comparisons a little bit difficult: Ranma tends to hit things with mallets, whereas Kino tends to subtly imply them. That said, i've been thinking a bit more about this and don't really have much objection to placing Kino in Bifauxnen after all. Ideally we'd have another page for androgynous characters, but there aren't too many of them out there. (Kino and like, maybe Haruhi from Ouran and maybe a few others?)
Dentaku:I don't think Kino can be seen as a bifauxnen. For one, she is not so much "bi", e.g. pretty or handsome, no matter how you view it. I think the episode in which she is shown in a frilly dress and a pretty bow in her hair is there mostly for letting her previous life contrast nicely with her later life as a tough-as-nails traveler. It has less to do with her gender, which is pretty irrelevant for most of the story. She also doesn't exhibit "typically" male or female behavior either, whatever those might mean in the first place.
Looney Toons: Pro-Mole, Crossdresser is not an index page, so I removed your index markup for it.
Suave IV: I was rather lazy about fixing this as part of the Scavenger Hunt, but I did what I could... ...though the image up top was a bit much...
fnord: Could Diva be considered a bifauxnen, after she kills riku and takes on his appearance?
Cassy: Haruhi's depiction and even inclusion in this entry is very inaccurate and I suggest we choose another character's picture. Once again folks, if you don't know what you're talking about then look for information before you even consider writing about it. This should be a golden rule for anything. There's really no shame in educating yourselves. You have no idea how damaging it is to real trans people, all this finger-pointing and lewd laughter and talk about 'cross-dressers'.
- You can refer to the Transsexual page for more information on transsexuality and non-normative genders.
- Anyway, I removed this:
- Haruhi from Ouran High School Host Club, who due to personal experience (her father is a Wholesome Crossdresser) has a very open idea of gender. Amakusa Benio from St. Lobelia is a more blatant, fanservicey version.
- Actually, Haruhi isn't a Bifauxnen but very likely [[Transsexual genderqueer]]. It should be noted, however, that s/he doesn't have any specific label for him/herself.
prescience: Pulled the following part of the Strawberry Panic example. I can't see how one could consider Hikari to be a bifauxnen, or where the bit about YaoiFangirls comes in.
- In an amusing irony, Amane is railroaded into the Etoile contest by being paired with another bifauxnen, under the logic that her fangirls would be less upset about that kind of setup.
Trouser Wearing Barbarian: Removed this, because it sound smore like an example of Transsexual than this trope, although Cold Case fans can correct me if I'm wrong.
- The Victim of the Week on Cold Case episode "Boy Crazy" was a Bifauxen...in 1968 America...when they thought that gender identity disorder was a crime...and that electroshock therapy was a good idea. Needless to say, her entire case is one big Break the Cutie, ending with her boyfriend preforming illegal euthanasia on her after said electroshock therapy leaves her in a vegatative state. Cold Case is not a show that pines for The '60s.
Doktor von Eurotrash: fixed the Vampire Chronicles entry that referred to Lestat's mother as "Gabriel" (she's not that masculine) and said that the era was "possibly the 1800s". You'd think the mention of Marie Antoinette and, oh, the outbreak of the Revolution would have tipped the troper off.
Taelia Rose: Is it just me, or is there something wrong in the phrasing "...they often appear Older Than They Look" (in the trope description). Does it mean that they are older than they look? That they just have an aura of being older? Anyway, I think it's confusing to say, basically, "they appear to look like," and I'd fix it myself, but I'm not sure what it's supposed to read as.
