Bridget - Guilty Gear Strive

I completely understand why trans women are upset about the current tagging situation - it can be annoying seeing a character who affirms you tagged incorrectly. I think the issue here is that it's a battle between two groups: people who liked Bridget before, and people who like Bridget as she is now. Personally, being an otoko_no_ko fan, Bridget being trans has made me have no more interest in seeing her when I search for the otoko_no_ko tag, as trans women are not what I'm searching for. I'll side with the people who want to bring back the transgender tag or add transgender_(mtf) as a tag, in addition to using it specifically for her appearance in Strive. I feel acknowledging a character's gender indentity in spite of what they were assigned at birth is the correct thing, i.e. tagging Bridget as 1girl with the transgender tag, and extending that to all characters who identify as female but were AMAB.

The two-tag limit for most users would mean people could just search for bridget_(guilty_gear)+transgender and get all the images that acknowledge her as such, while also not invalidating those on the Japanese side who consider her otoko_no_ko, i.e. a male who physically appears to be female or appears feminine. The unfortunate fact is that Japanese online culture is kind of clashing with current western cultural values here, which means Japan basically still considers her a boy in spite of her current gender identity and it'll take a while for people to acknowledge that. Heck, Japan was treating Lily as an otoko no ko when it was revealed she was AMAB. It just is what it is and we should work to try and acknowledge the current lore without invalidating people for what they identify as. (That being said, I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to keeping her tagged as 1boy due to what she was assigned at birth, as this is a complicated situation that has to deal with TWYS as a policy. I'll leave that decision to you all to take care of.)

I hate making accounts just because, but I feel I have to give my 2 cents on the subject because Danbooru has some level of influence over other related sites:

1. Besides matching Bridget's new pronouns, is there any practical benefit to replacing Bridget's 1boy tag (and any other tag where the presence of men and women is important) with 1girl? What justifies messing the search results of people looking for characters with "masculine traits" (like having a dick and lacking breasts) and those trying to avoid them? Is it worth the risk of worsening the user experience for a larger portion of users just so a smaller group can rejoice for a moment in calling Bridget "she" in the tags?

Bridget uses female pronouns in GG:Strive, and calling her "a boy" may be considered incorrect and even offensive in the real world. However, boorus are not the real world or members of any social cause (besides being art archives), and in boorus making things easy to find and hide is a key priority, one that would need a huge response to justify changing the current tags and filters for the worse. For that reason, in my opinion and until Bridget undergoes more "radical" physical changes (like Poison) or someone thinks of a better reason to label a character with more male than female characteristics as 1girl Bridget should continue to be labeled as "boy", because changing Bridget's current sex/gender tags would affect lots of things, like images tagged as yaoi being changed to "straight", and "straight" would become yuri, causing problems for 3 different demographics and even "going against the artists' original intentions" as people mentioned in previous discussions.

2. Regardless of the decision the admins and mods make, I think it is necessary to "split" Bridget in 2 different tags. One label would be for pre-Strive Bridget, where he still identifies as a boy and is depicted with a "classic" appearance (complexion of a child, short straight hair, a "nun veil" and spats, etc.), and another for post-Strive Bridget, where she identifies as a girl and has a new appearance (young adult complexion, wide hips, long and slightly curved hair, blue jacket and skirt instead of a nun's outfit, etc.) that will surely keep changing in subsequent installments.

This would decrease by a huge amount the number of images that would have to be changed in the event that gender tag changes are chosen AND the complaints that these changes would come about (because Bridget did not always identify as a girl, and using the 1girl tag on pre-Strive art would be just as "wrong" as not doing so on post-game art, following the logic used in these arguments).

Just having both a penis and a flat chest doesn't signal that a character is male. post #5397340 is tagged with 1girl, flat chest, and futanari despite being indistinguishable from a typical otoko no ko, or a trans girl who hasn't undergone bodily transition and would currently be tagged as male.

agglego2 said:

Just having both a penis and a flat chest doesn't signal that a character is male. post #5397340 is tagged with 1girl, flat chest, and futanari despite being indistinguishable from a typical otoko no ko, or a trans girl who hasn't undergone bodily transition and would currently be tagged as male.

I'm pretty sure it is not typical for otoko no kos to be drawn with womanly hips, so I wouldn't say that #5397340 is indistinguishable from a typical one. And male and female pelvises are very different so that post would not be indistinguishable from a transgirl regardless of where she is at transitionally. Technically you are correct that a penis and a flat chest doesn't always mean the character is male, but it is a very strong signal.

agglego2 said:
Just having both a penis and a flat chest doesn't signal that a character is male. post #5397340 is tagged with 1girl, flat chest, and futanari despite being indistinguishable from a typical otoko no ko, or a trans girl who hasn't undergone bodily transition and would currently be tagged as male.

The original artist didn't specify whether the character in the pp version was a hermaphrodite/futanari, a newhalf/transgender or a male trap/otoko no ko, so the uploader acted under his/her own judgement and tagged it as "1girl flat_chest futanari" because they had knowledge that the image is an alternate version of another image featuring the same character with female genitals.
Here's another image from the same artist that was tagged as 1boy because again the artist didn't provide enough details and the uploader did what he/she considered the best: post #5643488. Both approaches are technically correct.

Sanctity said:

I'm pretty sure it is not typical for otoko no kos to be drawn with womanly hips, so I wouldn't say that #5397340 is indistinguishable from a typical one. And male and female pelvises are very different so that post would not be indistinguishable from a transgirl regardless of where she is at transitionally. Technically you are correct that a penis and a flat chest doesn't always mean the character is male, but it is a very strong signal.

I haven't paid that much attention to characters' hip sizes, so I'll take your word for it.

I don't know much about anatomy, but I found what seems to be evidence to suggest hormones can affect development of the pelvis beyond puberty. Though, I can't find reliable info about how much the bones affect the external appearance of hips.

I didn't consider that hips would be that important in determining the sex of a character, but an experienced artist who draws these things would probably be more aware of it than I am.

that said, this is mostly off-topic unless we decide hip size is important when tagging Bridget.

As of now I think it's probably best to stick to 1boy tags for Bridget, at least until a time ever comes where she fully transitions physically into a female. If/when that ever comes about then we'd just tag pics of the new Bridget with 1girl while everything before will keep 1boy.

On the other hand, I feel like starting now would kind of be future proofing. The longer she's kept "1boy" the more art that is going to be made with her as a girl in mind, on top of this site becoming increasingly inconsistent with every other site that has anything to do with Bridget.

I really don't see what the debate is here, if you wanted to be consistent you'd have to go to basically any character like kaine (nier), hoshikawa lily, or pretty much most original characters in images tagged transgender flag and edit the gender tags to be the opposite (or 1other for Kaine), which would be an absurd result that would likely piss off everyone.

Things don't change just because it's Bridget being drawn; this could lead to a worst-case scenario where artists find out that their images are being tagged with tags that they strongly object to, and respond with takedown requests of all their work and possibly a boycott of the entire site. I'd rather that not happen; at the bare minimum if the artist intended to draw a girl, it should be tagged that way.

Correction, things don't change just because of words in a character bio or some stupid flag. Since you seem to love dodging the question, I'll ask again, what is the practical difference between Strive and previous artwork to warrant differing search results when they are turning up nearly identical content, especially on the NSFW side? Usually people care about "gender identity" about as much as the canonical age of Remilia Scarlet. What matters is loli is not tagged old and traps fucking each other in the ass aren't tagged hetero because one of them REALLY feels like they're a girl.

g6672D said:

What matters is loli is not tagged old and traps fucking each other in the ass aren't tagged hetero because one of them REALLY feels like they're a girl.

Just a head's up, I believe this argument is primarily concerning SFW content only.

Wish I believed that, but I said "especially on the NSFW side" because that's the obvious example. However it's also pretty true of the SFW art and that Strive depictions aren't much (if at all) different and appeals (or doesn't) to largely the same demographic that pre-Strive depictions would.
Addition: Monkeying with the existing ones doesn't assist searching for such characters. You need new tags for that and in that case you can use those and leave the existing ones alone.

anon7631 said:

This is just a veiled way of saying the tagging system should conform to your political ideology, and those who disagree don't matter.

Insisting that the tag stay as 1boy simply because changing it would make people who do not respect the identification of transgender people upset is actually insisting that political ideology shape the tagging system, because it means the political preferences of one group of users on the site are being given elevated importance above the intentions of the artist or the original creator of the character, or the context of the character within the work.

People can take a political stand on any issue, there's no reason that means it has to be treated as a legitimate debate. Academics and medical professionals very heavily fall on the side that transgender individuals are the gender they identify as, or at the very least should be treated as such, and just because there are powerful forces in politics that insist otherwise doesn't make it an actual, legitimate debate. Politicians and pundits regularly argue all kinds of shit that isn't true, or is intentionally deceptive, it doesn't mean that it's all a legitimate debate. You've basically got one side doing the research and another side digging their heels in and going "Nuh uh, it scares me/makes me feel bad!"

The existence of an argument does not mean that they are both viewpoints worthy of equal consideration. Y'all keep bringing up "political ideology shouldn't decide this" as if "trans girls are not girls" isn't a position that is only thoroughly supported by politics and ideology and as if claiming that recognizing trans girls as girls is only political. It's a flimsy and transparent stance.

Seriously, this is incredibly short-sighted. Just tag her images post-Strive as 1girl and pre-Strive as 1boy by default, unless the artist commentary or other artist statements specifically imply otherwise. Especially since I can't think of a single trans character that's tagged the same way Bridget currently is in SFW works.

I could absolutely see artists who are seeing their work tagged with attributes they consider hateful being very unhappy about this. Especially if they see it as recontextualizing their art with messages that they don't endorse.

Do you want to spark a movement where an influential enough artists declares that they're going to take down all their work from this site because of that, and they're going to encourage every other artist they know to take their work down as well? Because that's likely what's going to happen if we keep this absurd status quo. I've already seen people on certain websites talking about it.

There are artists who are drawing art with an explicitly trans-supportive bent that have their work tagged as 1boy literally right now. Do you think that people looking for those would search with that tag? And do you think the artists will enjoy finding out? I can already see the hashtag being something like #DanbooruHatesArtists or whatever.

In the absolute worst case, then the people who were whining about "No PoLiTiCs On ThIs SiTe" have now given Danbooru an irreversibly political reputation.

Is that what you all want? Because if y'all keep sitting here with your thumbs up your asses instead of a decision maker putting their foot down and actually making a decision, it's basically guaranteed that the controversy here will eventually spread off-site. Which might not have any repercussions, but if it does affect Danbooru in any way, it won't do so to its benefit.

Arguing what-ifs isn't productive.

SevenColoredCat said:

In the absolute worst case, then the people who were whining about "No PoLiTiCs On ThIs SiTe" have now given Danbooru an irreversibly political reputation.

Is that what you all want? Because if y'all keep sitting here with your thumbs up your asses instead of a decision maker putting their foot down and actually making a decision, it's basically guaranteed that the controversy here will eventually spread off-site. Which might not have any repercussions, but if it does affect Danbooru in any way, it won't do so to its benefit.

What you are "predicting" is already happening, we have no lack of users doing this kind of vandalism and then boasting about it on twitter.
It should go without saying but we are not going to make decisions that hurt our users' ability to search for their fetishes just to appease terminally online people. If we decide to change our policy it's going to be because of valid reasons, not to avoid offending the feelings of an imaginary character.

nonamethanks said:

What you are "predicting" is already happening, we have no lack of users doing this kind of vandalism and then boasting about it on twitter.
It should go without saying but we are not going to make decisions that hurt our users' ability to search for their fetishes just to appease terminally online people. If we decide to change our policy it's going to be because of valid reasons, not to avoid offending the feelings of an imaginary character.

In all due respect, I don't think they're boasting about it. That user probably had the best intentions in mind. Permanently banning them seems like a bit of a reach, but I'm not going to say anything more about that because it isn't my business nor my place.

However, I agree with what CallingAllPriests said here:

Personally, being an otoko_no_ko fan, Bridget being trans has made me have no more interest in seeing her when I search for the otoko_no_ko tag, as trans women are not what I'm searching for. I'll side with the people who want to bring back the transgender tag or add transgender_(mtf) as a tag, in addition to using it specifically for her appearance in Strive.

Personally, I don't think Bridget could truly count as an otoko no ko. If they identify as a female, that's basically the same as... well, think of it this way:

Do you think fictional characters will go through sex changes, or "transitions"? No. That's something specifically reserved for certain characters in media that highlights LGBT problems. Guilty Gear Strive is most likely not going to do that. This argument holds no weight, no matter how many times it's repeated here. It's just as stupid and silly as the people bringing up chromosomes, for some reason.

Let's take a look at the otoko no ko wiki, as this is what most users use as reference here.

男の娘 (Otoko no ko) is a Japanese slang term used to refer to persons of natal males (male at birth) who have taken on the appearance and/or identity of the female gender. The term is a pun on 男の子 (otoko no ko), meaning "boy", replacing 子 with the ko reading of 娘 (commonly musume, girl).

A male at birth who took on a feminine appearance. Okay, sure, it works. Clearly doesn't involve identity most of the time, I don't know who changed it to that. But when a character is stated to be a female, isn't that a kind of different scenario? Bridget has always had an andorgynous appearance, has a female name, is mistaken by most people as female who aren't familiar with Guilty Gear at all... I only knew who Bridget was because, like CallingAllPriests, I consider myself to be a huge otoko no ko fan. It just feels different now looking at them and knowing, "Oh, this character isn't a true otoko no ko."

I also agree with the users wondering, "What if we only tag the Bridget from Guilty Gear Strive as 1girl?". There are some differences in design here, right? Again, this would only apply to SFW art, so don't bring that up....

We could:
- Make a different tag for Bridget in Guilty Gear Strive, which is very likely because there's already differences in design from the original version.
- Tag only this new potential tag with 1girl
- This would act as the best solution, because we wouldn't need to change the other character art from a long time ago that were drawn with the intent of being an otoko no ko
- We could make this new tag imply the original Bridget tag, if truly wanted

I don't know who came up with this solution, but it may be the happiest we could make both sides here.

(Please correct me if I'm wrong about the changes in design, however!)

Kaiterra said:

Academics and medical professionals very heavily fall on the side...

"Academics and medical professions" have also fallen on the side that homosexuality is a mental illness, or that not supporting the Soviet Union is a form of schizophrenia. Neither of those is true. The stance of academics and medical professionals is, unfortunately, itself highly susceptible to politics. Especially in times when disagreement means being threatened with legal action.
Current academic environments are downright stifling when it comes to talking about society, not just for political topics but for going against cultural "consensus" in general (such as entertainment media).

1boy for pre-strive and 1girl for strive is the easiest compromise. It best addresses the focus of the main contingent in the arguments: people who care more about her past get to keep that history as an otoko no ko, people who care more about keeping her new identity are likely to be focused on depictions featuring her new design that goes with it. Nobody will be perfectly happy with this, legitimately wouldn't be myself since my preference is toward total acceptance of 'Bridget is a girl', but that's the nature of compromise.

anon7631 said:

"Academics and medical professions" have also fallen on the side that homosexuality is a mental illness

True, and personally I feel as though in moving away from that kind of thinking we've made an advance. So it doesn't seem particularly great to perpetuate similar discriminatory and demeaning practices that ignore the identity of others.