Short of removing it entirely, King of the Dinosaurs might be a fit with some extra context. Not sure if it's an actual example though given he's a teacher as opposed to, say, the Principal, which takes him out of the closest thing to "king".
Should Yena Madaraba be troped as a tomboy or a transgender male?
I've followed the series off-and-on and, to me, it's always seemed pretty unambiguous that Yena is a male-identifying transgender and I have troped Yena accordingly. A couple of times, I've seen the transgender tropes changed over to tropes such as The Ladette and Lady Looks Like A Dude, most recently from The_Spanish_Inquisitor. I PM'd them about changing it back but their opinion is that yena comes off more as 'genderfluid', if not just a tomboy, since episode seven of the anime featured him being as fine with female honorifics (Yena-chan) as male (Yena-kun), however his whole arc seemed, to me, about asserting his masculinity as a male. Yena is, on multiple occasions, literally saying "I'm a male!" so, again, it seems pretty unambiguous to me.
Also, manga spoilers, but there's a later arc in which his masculinity is questioned by a Yak herd and is all about re-affirming Yena as a male.
I've changed things from tomboy to transgender once already. While those changes are done by someone else, so it wouldn't really be an Edit War, I don't want to chance it. So I'd like to get a concensus on how to trope Yena going forward that can be pointed to.
I'll make sure The_Spanish_Inquisitor knows about the discussion so they can include their side/correct anything I've already noted.
If this goes nowhere in a few days I'll try Ask The Tropers instead.
Edited by sgamer82 Hide / Show Replies
Out of curiosity, which is this chapter you're referring to? I'm quite behind on the manga's progress, seeing as I watched the anime first.
Chapters 96-100 "We Are All Growing". Looking at it again real quick, among other things Yena says he could never start his own pack because, as he says at the end, FEMALES are the pack leaders.
Edited by sgamer82
After reading through the chapter, I understood it (and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong), but the part about being a "male among males" is what Hitomi considers him/her to be. And only Hitomi seems to consider Yena to be male as far as the manga is concerned.
As for why Yena is crushed when the big male yak denigrated her/him as merely a "female with a penis", it's more along the lines of him calling Yena a poser, seeing as they clearly value muscles and physical size over strength of personality, which Yena clearly doesn't have a lot of.
Overall, I think Yena has a severe case of gender identity crisis, and he/she seems awfully ready to accept either case, hence why I considered him/her to be genderfluid and not quite transgender.
Still seems pretty unambiguous to me, since Yena's whole issue in that arc is his status as a male is being called into question.
It's bordering on Running Gag at this point to be honest. I've seen Yena going through that phase quite often that it gives me the impression that it's more of a personal image problem instead of gender dysphoria. Almost every time this happened, it's because somebody denigrated Yena for "looking like a girl" who's not obviously strong, instead of actually "being a girl". For a character based on female hyenas, who are the strong pack leaders IRL, this would be a serious blow to their ego. Whereas Yena fully believed him/herself to be male before meeting the Cooking Club, from that point onwards he/she seems to be in doubt of his/her own gender.
But you do you, I suppose.
You say that, but I'm not seeing it.
The ultimate question, to me, is how does Yena see himself, and everything from Yena taking "Be Yourself"/"Live how you like" to assert his masculinity, being uncomfortable with being feminine, becoming depressed when said masculinity is questioned, believing he shouldn't/couldn't be a pack leader because that's a role for female hyenas, never dressing in a feminine manner after that initial bit of doubt, to literally saying "I am male" multiple times, comes off as Yena identifying as male.
By my understanding, no matter how masculine they behave, a tomboy would still identify as female. Yena does not and never really does following the events of episode 7.
As I said, you do you.
I've made my points, and whether you see them or not is entirely up to you. If you're still dead-set on seeing Yena as male then I can't and won't force you. Let's agree to disagree, then?
Edited by The_Spanish_Inquisitor
We kind of already were doing that, which is why we're here in the first place.
Regardless, I'll leave it there for now and see if anyone else chimes in. If nobody does so in a few days I'll pop the question over to Ask The Tropers for additional opinions.
The only problem I have with enforcing that Yena be a trans male is that most tropes we have on the site are rather gender-specific, and don't necessarily apply to transgender characters, since many of them are based on the visual descriptions of said characters with the assumption that they are binary. In layman's terms, it means you don't use male tropes to refer to female characters and vice versa. Yena being biologically female but identifies as male complicates things because you can't exactly use all of the tropes for any one gender.
And unlike most transgenders in some games or manga that I've edited tropes for, Yena swings back and forth between being male and female as per the Running Gag I mentioned, so most of the tropes under his/her section will have to be removed or reworded in rather roundabout ways to suit this.
The most glaring example would be an appearance trope. Should that be Dude Looks Like a Lady or Lady Looks Like a Dude? Because from a design perspective, Yena is definitely female as per Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism and the character is definitely biologically female. Also, how will we handle tropes like Girliness Upgrade if Yena is to be considered male? Since Yena clearly identified as female for however long that was.
Given that, Hitomi's Ship Tease with Yena should be considered as Ambiguously Gay, not Ambiguously Bi, since she's still attracted to an individual who's biologically of the same sex.
Edited by The_Spanish_Inquisitor
Removed from main page, as there is a cleanup effort on one of the pages linked here underway and I am not sure what to do with this entry:
- Tyrannosaurus Rex: He sure is. He's also a teacher here.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman Hide / Show Replies