Discussion Main / AmbiguousGenderIdentity

That whole sentence reads like it could be subjective/YMMV.

Most of it seems like word cruft, and/or spoilers, as well.

I don't think this specific example fits. You say Raine is non-binary. You then say there's "no ambiguity about their gender", which is a reassurance that they're non-binary. The fact that they "present themselves in an ambiguous way" is part of ther non-binary status. So there's no ambiguity to speak of here.

That makes sense.

Wrong post.

A few corrections on your previous post:

1. There's no disagreement between gender studies and biology. Biological academia generally agrees that biological sex and gender are different things.
2. The concept of nonbinary gender, or genderqueer, has existed for far longer than a few years. The issue is that in prior decades, queer was uniformly considered to mean "gay"/"homosexual".
3. Either a character's gender is portrayed as ambiguous in the work, or it isn't. If it's just how fans feel, then the proper trope is Viewer Gender Confusion, which IS YMMV.

1. Agree to disagree, as a biology student I've come to find that most do. 2. Maybe in pornography, but the terms "nonbinary" and "genderqueer" are extremely new. It wasn't until the last few years that people began referring to genders that aren't male or female, even transgender wasn't considered a seperate thing. 3. There are maybe five or six examples on this page, then, because without huge WMG it's impossible to tell whether the author seriously portrayed it as ambiguous, mentioned it for a joke, or didn't even consider the concept in the first place. The only true examples here are where there is explicit reference to identity (and only identity, because otherwise it's Ambiguous Gender) or Word of God

1. Well you're the one who brought it up. Either those "disagreements" are worth discussing or they aren't.
2. Concepts can exist independent of terminology; in fact, the most natural course is that terminology is created to describe concepts that were poorly understood. Depending on the society, the notion of gender ambiguity or non-binarity has existed for thousands of years. And it's definitely existed for longer than a few years in fiction, which is what we trope.
3. I don't think it matters whether or not it was a joke or if the author "considered the concept". Is the character's gender identity portrayed as ambiguous? According to the descriptions for both pages, the difference between AG and AGI is whether or not the audience knows the physical sex of the character. For example, I think the Giselle from Bleach example is a case of AG because she clearly identifies as female, but the audience doesn't know what her biology states.

So what the audience thinks is irrelevant to whether it's Ambiguous Gender Identity, only what the audience thinks is?

I'm saying that this trope is inapplicable in those situations because a character cannot be portrayed as anything that wasn't intended, and to apply a nonbinary gender to a character that isn't very explicitly meant to be, either in story or by author explanation, is an independant and most definitely arguable interpretation. That is, YMMV.

I'm not going to get into an argument about gender, I shouldn't have brought it up in the first place, but besides the inevitable flame war it's pointless to argue about that specific topic anyways without providing sources of any kind, which I'm not willing to spend time doing right now. My main point is about the trope, stick to that.

Sure, we can stick to discussing the trope.

Your point, however, is incorrect. Tropes are not always intentional. Few writers, for example, intentionally set out to invoke Death Is Cheap; that trope is a consequence of plot decisions which create a meaning whether or not the writer intended it. Likewise, Unexplained Recovery is about the LACK of specifics in a story, such as missing explanation for why a character's injury has vanished. There's also tropes like Depending on the Writer and Depending on the Artist, which trope cases where the audience notices that two or more creators wrote information that contradicts each other.

In short, there's no reason that "The audience is never told what biological sex this character is" can't be a trope. Especially given that writing gender and/or sex in an ambiguous way often takes MORE effort, as most languages have different terms, grammar or syntax that depend on the gender binary.

I never said tropes have to be intentional. I said characters do, including their traits such as gender identity. No one accidentally makes a trans character, there's a specific reason that that person is written to be trans, usually because the author is making a point. What I was saying is that if the character doesn't fit this trope according to the author, then it's a matter of opinion or interpretation to say that they do, and doesn't belong on a main page as if it were inarguable fact.

It's perfectly fine for "the audience is never told what biological sex this character is" to be a trope. That's called Ambiguous Gender, and judging from a lot of these examples where despite being well established as one particular gender the character qualifies because they cross-dressed a bit or did something un-masculine or un-feminine, that's not what this trope is about. This trope just seems to be examples of Ambiguous Gender that would only count if the only existing material regarding that character were those moments of deviant gender behavior, deviant in the psychological sense, with exceptions that are specifically mentioned to be non-binary like discussed in the thread below.

So your position is that a trans character is, by default, a character that has exist for a specific reason? A trans character can't be trans, just because? Does there also need to be a reason why a character is straight? Or white? Or only when they deviate from that? (I hope you see what I'm getting at here and why that argument has issues.) Also, I'll point out that this particular trope is not specifically about "trans" persons (as in, the person may not even BE trans) but "ambiguous", meaning they don't conform in some way to either gender.

Also, my assessment of the two descriptions is that Ambiguous Gender is when the audience knows NEITHER the identity nor the biological assigned sex of the character. Ambiguous Gender Identity is when they don't know the former, but DO know the latter. Going through the examples, I definitely see room for lots of cleanup (for example, the Inside Out example should definitely be cut) but not quite to the extent you're asking for.

Pretty much, yes. Usually it's a Token Minority, occasionally it's actually relevant to the plot, but in fiction there is never a character that is specifically gay, trans, or otherwise without it being far more important than it should actually be. Maybe it's a problem of society generally being too ignorant to produce a writer that can do it right, maybe it's because we as a society keep putting complete pants-on-head idiots like Anthony Burch in charge of writing them. Either way, that's how it currently is.

I said trans as an example, don't cherrypick, and all I'm asking for is to either rewrite the trope to be more clear and to clean it up or to classify it as YMMV. Or do both and split the arguable examples into a Viewer Gender Confusion counterpart. There's a lot of ways to go about it really.

I'm not cherrypicking. The entire reason that I find fault with your argument is because it conflates the broad spectrum of gender identity. Your apparent belief is that no character can ever be gay, trans, or "otherwise" without it being "more important than it should actually be".

How, exactly, can that statement even be proven? What's the criteria? If there's one gay person in the story, he's a Token Minority, but if there's a bunch of them where would it draw the line before it becomes a Cast Full of Gay? 40%? 60%? Exactly half? Why don't we hold, for example, a straight and/or male character to the same standard? Wouldn't the default reason to have such a character to be an Audience Surrogate, or to appeal to a specific demographic?

Or take a character like Leo from Tekken, for example. For years, Leo's gender has never been stated. When asked about it, the director of Tekken, Katsuhiro Harada, has stated that he only wanted to make a "beautiful" character and that gender had nothing to do with it. When asked about the fact that the character can be customized with female items in newer games, he persisted that "Leo is a Leo" and refused to go deeper than that. It was only in one interview that he stated that Leo was female in concept but became "neutral" in the finished work so they'd be ambiguously attractive. He never announced that the character is gender queer, or that the character even presents themselves as gender ambiguous. What's Anvilicious here? What's "more important than it should actually be"? He simply refused to state a gender when asked. So is it Harada's fault that he made an attractive character and people desperately want to know their gender?

My point being: this trope is about LACK of information regarding gender coding. It isn't YMMV; either a character is gender-coded or they aren't. We don't specifically need Word of God confirming the lack of information, nor an apparent reason why the information is lacking.

The comment about Anthony Burch also makes this whole debate come across as way too political. I'm aware that he's unpopular in certain sections of Reddit and more reactionary spaces because he actively tries to diversify the games he writes.