Bridget (GG Strive) gender

Yoto_tata said:
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Look man I can tell you probably mean well but 95% of your response is completely irrelevant to the topic at best, and concerning at worst. This website is rooted in Japanese culture beginning with its very domain name, if you find this upsetting you are by definition the antithesis of the target audience.

It's been reiterated multiple times that anime tagging procedures are not a reflection of the userbase's perception of actual trans people. As with any other controversial fictional content (which danbooru is full of, by the way), you need to be able to divorce it from real world attitudes. Bridget is a video game character created for our enjoyment, not a real person whose feelings need to be taken into consideration, and even if he were, we've already established he has no problem being called male in the JP version. It seems he was not originally written as a trans woman, only adapted into one in the English version because the concept of femboys transcending gender is pretty alien to western audiences. If an anime imageboard calling an otoko no ko a boy is the last straw that causes someone to kill themselves then their situation is dire enough to warrant getting off the internet altogether. Providing representation for representation's sake is not the function nor responsibility of this site.

avidd said:

The domestic community of the character's origin does not seem to acknowledge or even care about a transition.

Achelexus said:

Sites like Pixiv still have artists tagging Bridget as a boy. If you want to keep things closest to the (probable) canon, I'd suggest doing the same.

Diet_Soda said:

Agreed with the sentiment that JP fanbase attitudes should be a decisive factor. It's hard to dance around Danbooru's predominant supply of Bridget content being made by people who enjoy him as an otoko no ko, for people who enjoy him as an otoko no ko, and so far there's no indication at all of this changing: as mentioned a few posts back, if you look into sources of posts from Pixiv over half is tagged with 男の娘, and not a single one includes tags or descriptions you'd use for a girl. Twitter entries can't be gauged as accurately, but skimming artist interactions in replies yields similar results.

All this discussion over what the attitude of the JP fanbase is, and no one's brought up Bridget's article on Pixpedia. Or rather, its edit history and comments, which make it very clear that the Japanese are arguing about this just as much as we are.

When feline lump and I had last brought up Pixiv, the article identified her as female. And in the time since, it had first changed to "remorsefully identifying her as female" and now an entirely new section exists under "トランス女性としての位置づけ" just discussing all this, which seems to ultimately conclude with "the overseas versions are more explicit with it, but we're more vague, but it's not like ArcSys wouldn't do something like this, so yeah". One of the editors even brought up the character Arisugawa Sakura (有栖川桜) from the manga BARCODE FIGHTER as an example of an otokonoko character that is a trans woman, which could explain why Bridget continues to be tagged with otokonoko on Pixiv (which means, by Japanese standards, 1girl otoko_no_ko appears to be valid).

Ultimately however, this is a discussion about how to tag her, given we're continuing it, as evazion said, under the assumption "canon is true and Bridget is unequivocally trans and figure out where to go from there." I still feel tagging only Strive Bridget as a girl except when genitals are seen is the simplest solution, and one most consistent with how we've handled other trans characters (and no, Lily isn't the only one like this on site - despite assertions that the *boy and *girl tags are about biological sex, that only holds true when it 'obviously' looks like so, as I noted at the start of the thread). If the vast majority of the site sticks to tagging her as a boy at all times, then, as much as I disagree, I can't exactly challenge it by myself.

Damian0358 said:

All this discussion over what the attitude of the JP fanbase is, and no one's brought up Bridget's article on Pixpedia. Or rather, its edit history and comments, which make it very clear that the Japanese are arguing about this just as much as we are.

When feline lump and I had last brought up Pixiv, the article identified her as female. And in the time since, it had first changed to "remorsefully identifying her as female" and now an entirely new section exists under "トランス女性としての位置づけ" just discussing all this, which seems to ultimately conclude with "the overseas versions are more explicit with it, but we're more vague, but it's not like ArcSys wouldn't do something like this, so yeah". One of the editors even brought up the character Arisugawa Sakura (有栖川桜) from the manga BARCODE FIGHTER as an example of an otokonoko character that is a trans woman, which could explain why Bridget continues to be tagged with otokonoko on Pixiv (which means, by Japanese standards, 1girl otoko_no_ko appears to be valid).

With people repeatedly speaking for the Japanese fans, without sharing anything they're actually saying, it's really nice to see a comment like this.

I think it's pointless to put so much focus on an entirely separate community, especially if we're just going to blindly use them to support our arguments as if they're a hivemind.

We're a western based English-speaking site with an English-speaking userbase, it really doesn't make sense for us to be basing how we tag something like this on how Japanese fans feel, as if they're any more of an authority on the matter than we are.

Yoto_tata said:

Hello !

I will try to address the issues with some of the logic here :

-Should we really base our opinion on Japan though ? Even more concerning such territory that is highly social and discriminatory ? Let's not forget that Japan has one of the highest suicide rate, that life for female (and it is just one example) is a living hell and worse it's hard to even talk about those things, even if it is getting better.
-While usually I agree that we should always try to see the world from other's perspective, it is purely from a compassion and understanding point. Kinda like in science you always try to prove you are wrong, it is a method to understand the world. But here, I've got a problem because we see the world, once again, throught not the trans people (or even the LGBT), we see it throught the eyes of people that always have the same answer "Yeah but let's just keep things how they are" or "trans is just a phase don't worry". Which, in my book, is not really cool and missing the perspective of the trans people out there while trying to use the view of everyone except them. And, well, aren't they the first concerned about this ?
-We can apply exactly this to every website. Be it Pixiv or anything really. I have yet to discover a website that for once try to look from the eyes of the discriminated, living, breathing person's that have feelings.
-I am 100% on your line with "Why would they make Bridget a girl now ?". She was indeed a cool character that suplexed the usual way men are described. But then, if I am sad on this point, I find the character development to be fantastic. Showing that mistakes happen. That being forced sucks (concerning her parents) and at the end of the day, the choice is up to you and you should be the only one to decide about yourself. Little thought experiment : Have you already been forced to do something you like ? Did it feel good even if you like it ? Studies have shown that a lot of person don't like being forced even if they like the thing they are forced into.

All of this to say : I know that a lot of people will be surprised with Bridget being tagged as 1girl. But the fact is that on most images she looks like one most of the time for the Tag What You See rule. Even then, is gender only what you have in your pants ? Or chromosomes ? Because this brings even more question and a lot of suffering (Gender dysphoria for example). Even science is not as strict as "These is 2 sex, male and female".
She also feels like a girl, so denying that is... well kinda rude for those that are trans (suffering, gender dysphoria for example).

And even THEN, the way the trans tag works is just not it at all. I liked this site for several year, and it is such suffering to see such conservative forces to act when we could offer beautiful things and keep people from killing themselves because of misrepresentation or saying "Yeah it's just a phase you will grow out of this". Because this is what we are talking about. Deaths. Daily deaths. And murder also...

On this sad note, I'm going to cry a bit lol.

Have a nice day you all. I really hope that this site will offer something beautiful.

Edit : I mistakenly wrote "the choice is up to you" talking about trans identity, which is not really how it works. It has more to do with feelings (mainly even if not always I guess) which are not controllable.

And is America such a bastion of human rights? At least the Japanese don't face incredible rates of incarceration, homicide, poor healthcare, etc, in their country. America also has anti-LGBT laws coming out nearly every week. So should we just ignore americans' opinions then? You're still forgetting that the developers have spent the past 2 decades explicitly claiming that Bridget is a boy despite any confusion regarding it. They haven't exactly contradicted themselves yet.

Damian0358 said:

All this discussion over what the attitude of the JP fanbase is, and no one's brought up Bridget's article on Pixpedia. Or rather, its edit history and comments, which make it very clear that the Japanese are arguing about this just as much as we are.

When feline lump and I had last brought up Pixiv, the article identified her as female. And in the time since, it had first changed to "remorsefully identifying her as female" and now an entirely new section exists under "トランス女性としての位置づけ" just discussing all this, which seems to ultimately conclude with "the overseas versions are more explicit with it, but we're more vague, but it's not like ArcSys wouldn't do something like this, so yeah". One of the editors even brought up the character Arisugawa Sakura (有栖川桜) from the manga BARCODE FIGHTER as an example of an otokonoko character that is a trans woman, which could explain why Bridget continues to be tagged with otokonoko on Pixiv (which means, by Japanese standards, 1girl otoko_no_ko appears to be valid).

Ultimately however, this is a discussion about how to tag her, given we're continuing it, as evazion said, under the assumption "canon is true and Bridget is unequivocally trans and figure out where to go from there." I still feel tagging only Strive Bridget as a girl except when genitals are seen is the simplest solution, and one most consistent with how we've handled other trans characters (and no, Lily isn't the only one like this on site - despite assertions that the *boy and *girl tags are about biological sex, that only holds true when it 'obviously' looks like so, as I noted at the start of the thread). If the vast majority of the site sticks to tagging her as a boy at all times, then, as much as I disagree, I can't exactly challenge it by myself.

I don't think the "1girk Otoko-no-ko" is an opinion held by the majority of the Japanese audience. Many Japanese people have been saying that Trans and Otoko-no-ko are different things, you can find this even on the links you provided, and their discussion seems to be on the same foot as ours. During the discussions about Otoko-no-ko from last week, many people brought Barcode Fighters, but many didn't saw the Otoko-no-ko character as trans, as seen by the comments and jokes made. Also if my translation doesn't fail me, the work also saw him as a boy.
https://twitter.com/am9hEuCGI65a9Y2/status/1556908486499667968?t=Va9wD0AWi0l_ujTf7Ss4TA&s=19
https://twitter.com/situmonmania/status/1557403198998007808?t=7qaelFPnkVA5e2HguzTNCw&s=19

Japan isn't a monolith, so obviously there will be people who hold different opinions and views on this issue, but i believe that we should stay with the majority, since this is what gonna dictate the content of most works.
However, I believe that it could be a good to add "Transgender" to pics who were already tagged as such by the original author or have this intention clearly expressed on the work. The problem would be on the tiny minority of cases, like with Jairou, were he's tagged as both or is tagged as only transgender, but the work it's too similar to boy https://www.pixiv.net/artworks/10036629
(In jairou case i believe that we should keep only Otoko-no-ko, since that's what he's known for and the work or author doesn't give much indication to the other side)

blindVigil said:

With people repeatedly speaking for the Japanese fans, without sharing anything they're actually saying, it's really nice to see a comment like this.

I think it's pointless to put so much focus on an entirely separate community, especially if we're just going to blindly use them to support our arguments as if they're a hivemind.

We're a western based English-speaking site with an English-speaking userbase, it really doesn't make sense for us to be basing how we tag something like this on how Japanese fans feel, as if they're any more of an authority on the matter than we are.

I believe it's useful to have their opinion in mind, since a lot of Bridget work posted here come from Japan, not only that, usually we use their tags and opinions as our base of understanding for the characters. For example, when discussing the gender and identity of characters like Astolfo, Felix, and Naoto, many people use the Japanese version of the work as argument, and many people use the Pixiv tags as basis for their tagging and/or searches.

Damian0358 said:
I still feel tagging only Strive Bridget as a girl except when genitals are seen is the simplest solution, and one most consistent with how we've handled other trans characters (and no, Lily isn't the only one like this on site - despite assertions that the *boy and *girl tags are about biological sex, that only holds true when it 'obviously' looks like so, as I noted at the start of the thread). If the vast majority of the site sticks to tagging her as a boy at all times, then, as much as I disagree, I can't exactly challenge it by myself.

Solving what? otoko_no_ko exists for SFW images too and it's applied for traps no matter what they look like. It seems like an awkward attempt at compromise.

jhoanthan45:
I don't think the 1girk Otoko-no-ko is an opinion hold by the majority of the Japanese audience

Forget awkward, plain bad. I am not suggesting this take by any means.

Damian0358 said:

All this discussion over what the attitude of the JP fanbase is, and no one's brought up Bridget's article on Pixpedia. Or rather, its edit history and comments, which make it very clear that the Japanese are arguing about this just as much as we are.

When feline lump and I had last brought up Pixiv, the article identified her as female. And in the time since, it had first changed to "remorsefully identifying her as female" and now an entirely new section exists under "トランス女性としての位置づけ" just discussing all this, which seems to ultimately conclude with "the overseas versions are more explicit with it, but we're more vague, but it's not like ArcSys wouldn't do something like this, so yeah". One of the editors even brought up the character Arisugawa Sakura (有栖川桜) from the manga BARCODE FIGHTER as an example of an otokonoko character that is a trans woman, which could explain why Bridget continues to be tagged with otokonoko on Pixiv (which means, by Japanese standards, 1girl otoko_no_ko appears to be valid).

I'll study this pixiv article in more detail. If the japanese dialogue was written in an intentionally vague/ambiguous way, it strikes me odd that the english one would "pick a side" and be more explicit about it. FYI, Barcode Fighters is over 3 decades old. Back then crossdresser and transgender weren't exactly differentiated concepts. This wouldn't be something a western person would disagree with, only nowadays we bother to make a distinction. Guilty Gear XX came out about a decade after that manga, and by then I believe otokonoko was a term just used to describe cis crossdressers.

Ultimately however, this is a discussion about how to tag her, given we're continuing it, as evazion said, under the assumption "canon is true and Bridget is unequivocally trans and figure out where to go from there." I still feel tagging only Strive Bridget as a girl except when genitals are seen is the simplest solution, and one most consistent with how we've handled other trans characters (and no, Lily isn't the only one like this on site - despite assertions that the *boy and *girl tags are about biological sex, that only holds true when it 'obviously' looks like so, as I noted at the start of the thread). If the vast majority of the site sticks to tagging her as a boy at all times, then, as much as I disagree, I can't exactly challenge it by myself.

Until more clearance is given on Bridget's actual identity, it seems pointless to endlessly speculate what's the best way to change the tagging method.

"Trans" is a narrow western concept that awkwardly tries to fit several different things under one umbrella. At best it's a poor joke, and a clear sign of misunderstanding, trying to fit things like crossdressers, okamas, newhalfs, genderbenders, etc. under the label. At worst it's oppressive cultural imperialism. It's insane that this argument is still on-going.

Damian0358 said:

All this discussion over what the attitude of the JP fanbase is, and no one's brought up Bridget's article on Pixpedia. Or rather, its edit history and comments, which make it very clear that the Japanese are arguing about this just as much as we are.

When feline lump and I had last brought up Pixiv, the article identified her as female. And in the time since, it had first changed to "remorsefully identifying her as female" and now an entirely new section exists under "トランス女性としての位置づけ" just discussing all this, which seems to ultimately conclude with "the overseas versions are more explicit with it, but we're more vague, but it's not like ArcSys wouldn't do something like this, so yeah".

I did check the pixiv wiki when I made my first post, but didn't bother bringing it up because it painted the same picture as my other examples at that time. Correct me if I'm missing something, but as far back as the history you linked goes, the only point of contention seems to have been the prominence and wording of a "possible transgender/genderless identity", and no attempts have been made to rewrite descriptors such as 男性, 青少年 in either the general or Strive sections. Amusingly, the most heated revision note in sight is someone correcting misconceptions about the history of public opinion regarding crossdressing characters. The arcade mode dialogue is acknowledged, but almost unanimously considered ambiguous. Comment section has a total of 1 comment from August and it dismisses the transgender notion altogether. None of this really comes close to the conflict here.

Damian0358 said:
which means, by Japanese standards, 1girl otoko_no_ko appears to be valid

I wouldn't know how true this is for the other character you mentioned, but it certainly isn't for Bridget. Dig around JP fanart interactions on twitter and you'll notice an overwhelming prevalence of terms such as だが男だ, お姉ちゃん（♂）and variations thereof thrown at him, which doesn't correspond to how we use 1girl - he's still being treated as either a genderless being or run of the mill otoko no ko. There's people having a giggle over foreigners using female pronouns for him, assuming it's because they're not familiar with the character and his actual sex. I'm sure some groups out there will refer to him as a girl in the same sense we do, but they're by all accounts in the minority.

The Pixiv article has been revised awfully extensively to keep up with this argument. What hasn't changed since it was initially referenced is that it agrees that Bridget identifying as female is canon. However, aside from inserting the typical complaints about ArcSys being corrupted by political correctness, there are also remarks of people disputing (sometimes, not universally) whether identifying as female is transgender. This is markedly different from English-language disputes, which have no question about the latter at all, so they instead raise doubts about the former.

Something that's true in Japan, albeit universally unpopular in the West, is that otoko no ko being contrasted to "trans" doesn't make it "cis". It raises no distinctions about gender identity in the same way that "tranny" doesn't discriminate between transvestites and transsexuals. You can see on Pixiv that the tagging overlap between otoko no ko and newhalf (NSFW) is quite high, indicating that even physically transitioning won't automatically disqualify a character from being placed in that archetype. The conflict with the word "transgender" is instead more to do with people's feelings on trans activism - kind of like the way people used to put a wedge between yaoi/yuri and real gay people, I suppose.

So when the dispute comes from cultural readings of an identical piece of canon, what are we supposed to do? The way we talk about Hoshikawa Lily suggests that we'll meet a faction of Japanese artists halfway with the otoko no ko tag, but we'll still universally carry on with the Western consensus that she's trans.

Kaenbyou_Rin said:

"Trans" is a narrow western concept that awkwardly tries to fit several different things under one umbrella. At best it's a poor joke, and a clear sign of misunderstanding, trying to fit things like crossdressers, okamas, newhalfs, genderbenders, etc. under the label. At worst it's oppressive cultural imperialism. It's insane that this argument is still on-going.

If you want to appeal to cultural sensitivity, however, you should at least be aware that "okama" and "newhalf" are often regarded as dated slurs, and "transgender" and "X-gender" are increasingly common identities.

feline_lump said:
If you want to appeal to cultural sensitivity, however, you should at least be aware that "okama" and "newhalf" are often regarded as dated slurs, and "transgender" and "X-gender" are increasingly common identities.

Just as we still have people who identify as "drag queens" and "shemales" today, both within transsexual communities and outside of them, we still have people that identify as okamas and newhalves. Okamas in particular possess their own subculture, so I find it rather vile denying their existence for the sake of western sensibilities.

Kaenbyou_Rin said:

Just as we still have people who identify as "drag queens" and "shemales" today, both within transsexual communities and outside of them, we still have people that identify as okamas and newhalves. Okamas in particular possess their own subculture, so I find it rather vile denying their existence for the sake of western sensibilities.

No one did this, that's a borderline non-sequitur. We simply don't have a tag for okamas, although we do have girly boy as a somewhat-misused tag for onees.

feline_lump said:

Something that's true in Japan, albeit universally unpopular in the West, is that otoko no ko being contrasted to "trans" doesn't make it "cis". It raises no distinctions about gender identity in the same way that "tranny" doesn't discriminate between transvestites and transsexuals. You can see on Pixiv that the tagging overlap between otoko no ko and newhalf (NSFW) is quite high, indicating that even physically transitioning won't automatically disqualify a character from being placed in that archetype. The conflict with the word "transgender" is instead more to do with people's feelings on trans activism - kind of like the way people used to put a wedge between yaoi/yuri and real gay people, I suppose.

That can be explained because newhalf are, in a practical sense, otoko no ko with breasts. It's not uncommom for otoko no ko and newhalf to be paired together in hentai works and doujinshi. A character being a newhalf doesn't mean they are transgender, and from my experience, newhalf art is rarely about transgenderism/activism. kirihara torajyuro tatsumune is a newhalf that still identifies as a male (which technically make him a cis, not a trans), however, visually the character is pretty much a girl (with dick) so we tag as 1girl.

feline_lump said:
Something that's true in Japan, albeit universally unpopular in the West, is that otoko no ko being contrasted to "trans" doesn't make it "cis". It raises no distinctions about gender identity in the same way that "tranny" doesn't discriminate between transvestites and transsexuals. You can see on Pixiv that the tagging overlap between otoko no ko and newhalf (NSFW)

But this also would make them something also separated from trans, since the characters on those images don't need to transition or identify with a gender different from the they were born with

Since someone said that merely mentioning the Japanese at large don't care about the transition narrative wasn't enough, I figured I would collect a very sturdy sample-size that more or less affirms it. Many of the titles or descriptions of these threads still largely use the honorifics "kun/kyun" when referring to him, or placing possessive male context to the title, description, or subject matter. You can scroll through thousands of comments on these threads, and you will be very hard-pressed to find any that are acknowledging the west's trans narrative. Note that almost all of these threads began days to a week after the release, and the height of the "reveal".

https://twitter.com/rouzeki511/status/1558732607608606720
https://twitter.com/tsurutsuruman/status/1558965461152174080
https://twitter.com/kanekoshake/status/1558152765112627200
https://twitter.com/toriniku29/status/1558069139390210048
https://twitter.com/denfaminicogame/status/1556927491649835013
https://twitter.com/Victim_Girls/status/1557303680055279617
https://twitter.com/prwtrs/status/1559488350608039936
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGxcCMeXb_k

I *ACTUALLY* encourage everyone here to take a look through these, even if you have to use google translate, you'll get the gist of it. There is simply no controversy with the Japanese community at large.

I still fail to see why his "gender" matters.
This is an image board with a focus on NSFW content.
The purpose of the tagging and blacklist systems is to make it easy for users to find content they like, or prevent content they don't like from appearing in their searches.
Regardless of what people may or may not think some character may or may not "identify" as, Bridget is a dude (unless it's a genderswapped image) with male sexual attributes. He appeals to people looking for pictures of dudes, he does not appeal to people looking for pictures of women.
Tagging males as females would completely invalidate the tagging system.

GuntJohnson said:

This is an image board with a focus on NSFW content.

Please don’t use that as an argument because it’s objectively false.

Post count for is:nsfw: 1255237
Post count for is:sfw: 4308124

Danbooru allows NSFW content, but it’s not the main purpose. It’s undeniable that a large part of the userbase come here for the NSFW content, though.

GuntJohnson said:

The purpose of the tagging and blacklist systems is to make it easy for users to find content they like, or prevent content they don't like from appearing in their searches.
Regardless of what people may or may not think some character may or may not "identify" as, Bridget is a dude (unless it's a genderswapped image) with male sexual attributes. He appeals to people looking for pictures of dudes, he does not appeal to people looking for pictures of women.
Tagging males as females would completely invalidate the tagging system.

Except we do have plenty of images of women with penises, tagged as women (newhalf and futanari). So that alone doesn't determine whether a character is tagged female.

Trans women with penises are considered women while tagging, but only if there's visible breast growth, which was criticized in topic #21120 but didn't get resolved.

feline_lump said:

Yes, it seems the main difference between the English and Japanese scripts is the degree to which Bridget coming out as a girl is a spoiler. The Japanese version has multiple instances of Bridget being referred to as a boy initially, which don't appear to be present in the English version.

Probably because Japanese has an entire gender neutral section of it's language alongside male and female. English only has the two.