Character pronoun and identity discussion

Leaning "it" but this seems to be weird.

To reply late to the Gender Bender stuff last page: yeah the frequent swapping of pronouns with Gender Benders is something I've seen used by several fan communities going as far back as the 90s, and the usage here comes off as relics of that. It comes off to me like people before the 2010s obsessing over properly tracking each "form" as if they were their own thing, and is caked in antiquated views of gender and what it means to "change gender".

Which leads to a larger point: gender-bending can be used as an allegory for being trans but is not inherently one, and a lot of gender-bending works can't really be analyzed from a trans lens because of that disconnect. It's especially true with older works that predate modern understandings of being trans and instead lean on associations with crossdressing and hermaphroditism - I don't think it's a coincidence that quite a number of gender-bending tropes including the "Three Laws" overlap significantly with crossdressing tropes. If anything it only highlights how much more important gender identity is when we're talking trans depictions and use of pronouns vs. physical gender.

Edited by Watchtower on Dec 26th 2022 at 5:59:57 AM

Reminds me of how I recently wrote a page for a Gender Bender film, and even though the protagonist was magically transformed into a women I repeatedly use male pronouns to describe them because it's clear that the character still identifies as a male, even referring to themselves as being "a man trapped in a woman's body" when justifying their crush on a female friend.

So when it comes to works themselves there's never going to be a definitive answer, it depends on the character and how they choose to identify. It could be portrayed as gender fluidity, transitioning into the proper gender, or being stuck as the wrong gender, or anything else.

As for the description, it's hard to know what to do because again we can't really make a definitive stance.

Same for Ash from Misfile. Gender-bent into a girl, but self-identifies as male in a female body.

I want to bring up F.F. from Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure Stone Ocean because while they are referred to with they/them pronouns in Stone Ocean’s heroes page, some other entries on this site (like Non-Human Non-Binary) refer to them with she/her pronouns.

Here’s what they’re character folder has in regards to this:

• Ambiguous Gender Identity: Well, F.F. originally has No Biological Sex, so it makes sense. While F.F.'s body is female, their behavior isn't especially masculine or feminine, and while they use the feminine pronoun "atashi" (most likely emulating Jolyne), their speech patterns are rather masculine. Some translations, such as the Netflix subtitles, use "she/her" pronouns for F.F., while the English dub uses "they/them" (which can be seen as either a gender-neutral singular pronoun, or as referring to F.F.'s biology literally being composed of millions of individual planktons). It's also worth mentioning that the JOJOVELLER art books lists F.F.'s gender as "female(?)".

The fact that the official sub and official dub use different pronouns from each other is probably the hard hard, since that means there are two official English sources to consider.

That being said, I'd prefer they/them, simply because they're literally a colony of planktons inside a human body.

I'd consider them gendreless Hive Mind non-human with "they", which seem to be a near unanimous take in the fandom. They primarly respond to "FF", though lean on feminine on the grounds of possessing a body. I don't think it's really explored.

Looks like the official English translation of the Stone Ocean manga uses they/them.

The Netflix subtitles aren't consistent. While it does use she/her sometimes, there are other times where it uses they/them.

Sandbox.First Law Of Gender Bending is up, for now only the description is done. Asking for feedback.

If that's so, Then I'd like to stick with they/them for F.F.

On Pokémon: Generation IX Families page, I saw someone changing most of the pronouns for Tinkatink line from the "animal it/its" to she/her. While the Tinkatin line is One-Gender Race, the franchise generally uses it/its when referring to a Pokémon species in general, only using gendered pronouns when talking about specific Pokémon if their gender is known. This is even the case with One-Gender Race such as both Nidoran lines, or even Legendaries/Mythicals with confirmed genders like Latios and Latias.

Edited by TPPR10 on Dec 30th 2022 at 10:35:18 PM

Yeah, that seems a bit weird because you don't use singular pronouns to describe an entire species.

I'm familiar with the series (especially the older games I guess), and it's rather clear to me that they use "it" to save time because it would take less time to write lines using "it" for all Pokemon than writing other lines that use gendered pronouns.

And, as you stated, gendered pronouns have been used for when the Pokemon's gender is known. You also stated that the series doesn't always use "it".

Plus, using "it" to refer to a female is technically misgendering and it's grammatically incorrect (I know "It" Is Dehumanizing exists in case I need to say that).

Again, this is an entire species, not a singular mon. If it was a legendary, yes I'd agree with using she/her, or if we were talking about an individual member of the species, she/her would also be correct. But it's weird to label an entire group "she/her" because that just isn't how grammar works. Hence why "they" exists (which obviously has other uses but yeah it's sort of universal).

When I said "This applies to", I mean it in the way of "Using it/its to refer to Pokémon species". For example, Enamorus is female and presumably Single Specimen Species, but the Pokédex refers to Enamorus as "it".

I meant when they're talking about a singular member of the Tinkatink line, hence why I said "a female" not "females" on the last paragraph. Also I know why "they" exists; I'm a native English speaker.

Also, I don't think "It" Is Dehumanizing really applies here because are treated like animals for the most part and since the pokedex is like a scientific journal, using its/it is what would be expected. Also yeah we usually don't use he/him and she/her to refer to a group as a whole in English.

Any more input on F.F.?

So on Hassan on Intoxicating Smoke again: Lego 3400 changed Smoke's pronouns from he/him to she/her under the edit reason of "I've been over this before, they would have used one of the male sprites from Acell/Zero if Intoxicating smoke was supposed to be a man. ALSO, she appears in the new work Lost Enejar, where yes, she's a woman."

To address some things, there are no "male sprites from Accel/Zero". While Asako's different personas do have gameplay sprites, they did not have story portraits to be used before Traum last year. The "Lost Enejar" refers to how the first volume of Fate Lost Einherjar was released few days ago, and in it we see that one of the Servants in it is a female Hassan. However, her moniker is not revealed in the volume itself, which comes into a problem as there are nineteen Hassan-i-Sabbah, of whom we only have full designs for less than half of them. So she could be just about any of the other Hassans we only have names for, or a new one. I haven't seen any real speculation about who she is from places I visit, so this seems like grasping at straws.

I'm going to agree it's jumping the gun as Speculative Troping so it should be reverted just for that.

I don't like the wording on that edit reason, but maybe that's just an instinctive dislike of anything that begins with "I've been over this before".

It always seems to preclude an edit war.

Support for they/them was unanimous, so I added them to the header plus a link to the discussion. (I noticed some entries don't have discussion links, so I might work on that later if another mod or the thread creator doesn't beat me to it.)

Has this case already been discussed? Checking because there isn't currently a listing in the header.

I brought it up here.

Between the support for he/him in the discussion then and in the discussion now, I'll update the header.

Edit: Done. Go ahead and revert the character page.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jan 4th 2023 at 2:18:59 PM