Bridget - Guilty Gear Strive

evazion said:

• What about when the character looks female, but the artist says it's an otoko no ko? See this Pixiv search; many Japanese artists still tag Bridget as 男の娘. Sometimes even in conjunction with transgender tags. What takes precedence, the developer's intent, the artist's intent, or the viewer's interpretation?

To compound on this, as pointed out last thread, there are those over on JP who see no issue in identifying otoko no ko characters as trans and still tag them as otoko no ko. Bridget's Pixivpedia article brings up the character Arisugawa Sakura (有栖川桜) from the manga BARCODE FIGHTER as one such example, and it was noted soon after that Sakura isn't universally seen as trans in the JP community. So, if trans tags aren't included and there's no other tags identifying her as male, having only otoko no ko by itself on a post there isn't enough to infer the artist's intent; which just further complicates things in a scenario where that is what we take as precedent.

At this point, it's worth recognizing, again, that the crux of the issue ultimately doesn't lay only with Bridget, but with how the underlying tags of *girl*/*boy*/*other* function, as I noted earlier. Unless someone can resolve all of evazion's points, the only other avenue of change is figuring out a more flexible system, and how to implement it without compromising what those searches do right now as well as resolve the issue that is the sheer scope associated with such an implementation.

evazion said:

I'm not opposed to the idea of tagging Bridget as a girl when she's presented as a girl. And I'm not opposed to the idea of tagging Bridget as transgender when she's presented as transgender. But there are still many unanswered questions about how this would actually work:

• If we tag Bridget as a girl, then do we tag every single Bridget post as a girl? Only Strive posts? Only SFW Strive posts? Only SFW Strive posts where she passes as a girl?
• If we tag every Bridget post as a girl, then what about posts from 15 years ago, when the character was universally considered male? Don't say "well obviously we're not going to do that" because it's not obvious, there are people arguing exactly for this.

Yes, Bridget is a female character. Emphasis on "is" - as in the current moment.

Imagine you have a friend named Frank. A few weeks ago, he talked to your friend group about how he doesn't like his given name. Maybe his parents are shit and he wants to move away from the name they gave him. But for whatever reason, he's using his middle name of Mike now.
Now, when you're going through old photos and you see him in them, you wouldn't say "damn, Frank was wild back then" would you? That's not his name anymore and it's obvious that doing so would be a mistake if said in error and an insult if said on purpose.

That's how gender works as well.
You don't refer to a grown adult as a baby or a child just because they were born as such.
They've changed and are no longer those things.

(Yes, I'll admit that things get... troublesome? with "genderswapped" art, but I'd say that's more of an issue with how those tags are named and described in the wiki. I'd personally rename them to something like "alternate sex" a la alternate breast size, but that also seems bad. Shooting from the hip here.)

verybigsaku said:

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't there a distinction between female and woman, or sex and gender? Bridget's undoubtedly male, not female. I think this would mean the tag should stay as 1boy.

"Sex" and "Gender" both refer to a variety of different concepts that sometimes interact with each other.
"Female" is an adjective (unless you're using it as a noun for animals in a formal context)
"Woman" is an adult female person

Bridget clearly states that she's a girl in the game and as such, is undoubtedly a female person and thus, should be tagged as 1girl, 2girls, etc.

DeinGott said:

"Woman" is an adult female person

Which Bridget is not. If the character was fully genderswapped then we we wouldn't have had this discussion in the first place, we would've just tagged them as 1girl and moved on. The issue is that Bridget still has a male body. There is zero indication that they transitioned and that it's not the case anymore.

If your friend named Frank decides to start having gay anal sex and post pictures of it online, it's still gay porn no matter what name Frank goes by, and people who don't want to see gay porn are not going to be convinced by the argument that "don't worry, he identifies as a woman now".

nonamethanks said:

Which Bridget is not. If the character was fully genderswapped then we we wouldn't have had this discussion in the first place, we would've just tagged them as 1girl and moved on. The issue is that Bridget still has a male body. There is zero indication that they transitioned and that it's not the case anymore.

If your friend named Frank decides to start having gay anal sex and post pictures of it online, it's still gay porn no matter what name Frank goes by, and people who don't want to see gay porn are not going to be convinced by the argument that "don't worry, he identifies as a woman now".

Calling anyone by a gender they are not is hateful. In the case of a trans person, this would be transphobic hate speech.
Bridget's a girl, which means that referring to her with "they" or "them" is also hateful misgendering.
The "issue" here seems to be that transphobic bigots here want to twist the English language to perpetuate hate.

You can loosely separate the process of transitioning into social changes and physical changes, but the important thing is that not everyone takes the same steps. Some people will skip certain parts entirely or choose to not focus on certain concepts, but this does not change the gender that they are.

By saying that she's a girl, Bridget is one. If you have a problem with tagging her as such, then 1. you're gonna sound like a bigot and 2. you should be arguing for a cisgirl tag or to change the names of 1girl, 1boy, etc to something less gendered.

(And your aside about Hypothetical Frank makes no sense. I said nothing in my original post about him changing his gender, just his name. The fact that you decided to use his old name speaks volumes. Also, "gay anal sex" involving a transwoman would be lesbian porn since a transwoman is a woman regardless of if she "passes" or not and in order for her to have homosexual interactions with someone else, they would also need to be a woman.)

DeinGott said:

"Sex" and "Gender" both refer to a variety of different concepts that sometimes interact with each other.
"Female" is an adjective (unless you're using it as a noun for animals in a formal context)
"Woman" is an adult female person

Bridget clearly states that she's a girl in the game and as such, is undoubtedly a female person and thus, should be tagged as 1girl, 2girls, etc.

I firmly remember a distinction being made between sex and gender in the past decade or so, decoupling the two. Sex referring to what you're born as, either male or female, and gender being an expression. Bridget was born a male, this is a fact due to the village's superstition and Bridget's parents. Unless Bridget has gone through magical surgery/transformation/etc. that changed them on a fundamental level before appearing in Strive, they're still male. Saying Bridget is female is trying to couple sex and gender back together in the other direction, being two things you can change instead of two things you're born as. It's disingenuous wordplay.

mongirlfan said:

The case of Lily is pretty different than Bridget. Honestly, it's not helping to keep bringing up Lily without addressing the reasoning for it.

Hoshikawa Lily is treated as female from the start and all the time by the anime itself, other characters, etc. The information that the character was born male is a spoiler, as decided in forum #152601.

...

If we would separate the Bridget (strive) tag, we would treat her as a female by default there as well. I hope this makes sense.

evazion said:

Again: I'm not opposed to the idea of tagging Bridget as a girl or as transgender in certain situations. But how that would actually work is an open question. And it still wouldn't satisfy people who want every single Bridget post to be tagged as a girl.

Anyone who says this is easy, "just do X", is ignoring the complexity of the situation. We have 15 years worth of fanart, produced by hundreds of different artists, each of whom has their own interpretation of the character, on top of the viewer's interpretation of the character. Artists can depict the character in all sorts of ways that defy canon or that contradict one another. Our job is to somehow reconcile all this and tag the posts we've got in a way that makes sense to the average user, who may not even know or care who Bridget is, but who still wants tags to make sense when they search for them.

The last point is exactly why we would tag only Bridget's Strive design as female. Every other version of them, tag as 1boy, I guess? But I'll try to answer your questions for this specific change, as I don't feel fit to answer the other ones...

If we tag Bridget as a girl, then do we tag every single Bridget post as a girl? Only Strive posts? Only SFW Strive posts? Only SFW Strive posts where she passes as a girl?

Ideally, only SFW Bridget posts... or hell, even NSFW posts without a dick in them. Maybe we could use transgender tags on those posts as well, if that helps any? Instead of 1girl or 1boy, we could always tag 1transgirl... but I'm leaning more towards just "if there's a dick, regardless of Bridget's design, it's best to use 1boy".

If it's only on Strive posts, then is it on every Strive post? What about posts that predate the announcement (post #4380966)? What about when Bridget is drawn as a hyper-muscular male (post #5578244)? What about when the artist explicitly says their version of Bridget is a boy (pixiv #101019086, post #5668339)?

Only posts where Bridget appears more feminine or even androgynous, perhaps? And this would apply to all of Bridget's Strive design, regardless if its's predating or not. This is a tag change; if we were to go through and look up every single date where every post was uploaded, that would only be a hassle.

And for NSFW: if Bridget appears more feminine, and doesn't have a dick at all, still tag 1girl. I know I keep saying "SFW only", but I guess that's kind of dishonest; it's a blanket statement I'm making so people don't hyperfixate on dicks here. I apologize for my poor wording, as it's a mistake on my part.

What about when the character looks female, but the artist says it's an otoko no ko? See this Pixiv search; many Japanese artists still tag Bridget as 男の娘. Sometimes even in conjunction with transgender tags. What takes precedence, the developer's intent, the artist's intent, or the viewer's interpretation?

This is a question I'm still debating right now. I think for SFW only Bridget Strive posts, regardless of what is tagged, 1girl would likely be best...

If we just tag Bridget from Strive as a girl, and old Bridget as a boy, then what about posts like post #5624037? This is new Bridget together with old Bridget. Is this 2girls, 1girl+1boy, or 2boys? What about post #5624039; is this yaoi, yuri, or hetero

1boy and 1girl. For post #5624039: yaoi. There are dicks present for both of them...

Does Bridget even identify as transgender? She doesn't say "I'm trans"; she says "I'm a girl". The developers don't say "Bridget is transgender"; they say "Bridget self-identifies as a woman and use female pronouns".

And that's why I'm leaning more towards using only 1girl. For all we know, this version of them really could have a vagina and it only applies to this one version of them.

Transgender people do exist in Japan, so for people saying it doesn't... look up X Gender if you must. I wouldn't be shocked if the developers end up putting Bridget under that umbrella.

DeinGott said:

Calling anyone by a gender they are not is hateful. In the case of a trans person, this would be transphobic hate speech.
Bridget's a girl, which means that referring to her with "they" or "them" is also hateful misgendering.
The "issue" here seems to be that transphobic bigots here want to twist the English language to perpetuate hate.

Calling a male a male is not "hate speech", regardless of what he identifies as. It's just an observation of a fact. Bridget is male. If he were female, then it would be impossible for him to be a trans girl, because then he would be a cis girl. And since trans girls are male, they should be tagged as male.
Call that "transphobic" all you like, if you want to devalue the term. But acknowledging facts is neither hateful nor wrong, including the fact that Bridget is male. If you claim that an act which is not hateful or wrong constitutes "transphobia", then you are claiming that transphobia is not inherently hateful and wrong. If that's what you want to do, go ahead. Just don't expect it to carry any weight; if you define transphobia such that it's not necessarily bad then don't be surprised if people don't care about being called transphobes.

anon7631 said:

Calling a male a male is not "hate speech", regardless of what he identifies as. It's just an observation of a fact. Bridget is male. If he were female, then it would be impossible for him to be a trans girl, because then he would be a cis girl. And since trans girls are male, they should be tagged as male.
Call that "transphobic" all you like, if you want to devalue the term. But acknowledging facts is neither hateful nor wrong, including the fact that Bridget is male. If you claim that an act which is not hateful or wrong constitutes "transphobia", then you are claiming that transphobia is not inherently hateful and wrong. If that's what you want to do, go ahead. Just don't expect it to carry any weight; if you define transphobia such that it's not necessarily bad then don't be surprised if people don't care about being called transphobes.

My god, please, stop. That goes to both of you.

We have already stated WAY earlier in the thread that chromosomes don't matter for fictional characters. Please, go to Reddit or Twitter if you want to argue about this; it's completely irrelevant to the discussion.

We aren't talking about biology, or psychology, or anything here. We're talking about how to tag a character. It's clear you two are using this as an excuse to argue.

sadodere said:

My god, please, stop. That goes to both of you.

We have already stated WAY earlier in the thread that chromosomes don't matter for fictional characters. Please, go to Reddit or Twitter if you want to argue about this; it's completely irrelevant to the discussion.

We aren't talking about biology, or psychology, or anything here. We're talking about how to tag a character. It's clear you two are using this as an excuse to argue.

Yes, this thread is about tagging a character. And the tags are based on something about the character. So it is very much relevant to discuss whether the tags should be based on what a character identifies as, versus what he is.
As for the transphobia/hate speech part, we're in agreement that it's irrelevant to the tagging discussion, and the point of the post was to point out that it's irrelevant and that trying to use it here is over-broadening the definition to the point of meaninglessness.

sadodere said:
And that's why I'm leaning more towards using only 1girl. For all we know, this version of them really could have a vagina and it only applies to this one version of them.

He doesn't even start accepting different pronouns except during an ending, and you expect me to believe this?

g6672D said:

He doesn't even start accepting different pronouns except during an ending, and you expect me to believe this?

The problem with taking endings into consideration for tagging is that all possible routes are considered canon. With Bridgets particular case, with my understanding, is that a normal route, him being self-conscious about his lifestyle leads him to affirming that he is a girl at the end but with a flawless route, he isn't self-conscious about his lifestyle and accepts that he is a boy through and through. Which muddies the water whether to tag him as a boy which most people achknowledge him as from previous titles or to tag him as a girl to acknowledge his gender identity in the current age.

Kommandant said:

The problem with taking endings into consideration for tagging is that all possible routes are considered canon. With Bridgets particular case, with my understanding, is that a normal route, him being self-conscious about his lifestyle leads him to affirming that he is a girl at the end but with a flawless route, he isn't self-conscious about his lifestyle and accepts that he is a boy through and through. Which muddies the water whether to tag him as a boy which most people achknowledge him as from previous titles or to tag him as a girl to acknowledge his gender identity in the current age.

This is not correct. The link in the OP clarifies that for all intents and purposes, Bridget has canonically come out as a girl. The idea that Bridget remained male in some endings was a rumor born from the controversy surrounding this decision.

DeinGott said:

Yes, Bridget is a female character. Emphasis on "is" - as in the current moment.

...

Bridget clearly states that she's a girl in the game and as such, is undoubtedly a female person and thus, should be tagged as 1girl, 2girls, etc.

Let me ask you this: how would you tag post #49690, post #1421805, and post #2257199?

Kommandant said:

The problem with taking endings into consideration for tagging is that all possible routes are considered canon. With Bridgets particular case, with my understanding, is that a normal route, him being self-conscious about his lifestyle leads him to affirming that he is a girl at the end but with a flawless route, he isn't self-conscious about his lifestyle and accepts that he is a boy through and through. Which muddies the water whether to tag him as a boy which most people achknowledge him as from previous titles or to tag him as a girl to acknowledge his gender identity in the current age.

The Extreme or "flawless" ending is a direct follow up of the Hard ending, in which Bridget receives advice from Ky on how to face other people as her true self, that is, a girl. They're all canon because they tell the same story, there's nothing muddied or ambiguous about this. The Devs already confirmed that Bridget identifies as a woman. Whether she does or doesn't is not part of this debate. The discussion is on what to do with this information going forward.

evazion said:

Let me ask you this: how would you tag post #49690, post #1421805, and post #2257199?

While I'm not the person you're asking here, I believe the majority of people in this discussion agree that the pre-Strive incarnation of Bridget should remain a boy, since that was the character's canonical gender in every game beforehand. I think creating a new tag for the new design could help alleviate confusion between the two.

(The minority opinion seems to be based on the belief that an IRL transgender woman would also view their pre-transition self as a girl, which isn't universally true, and is basically speculative here. What we do know is that there was no indication that a coming out story was in the works before this game.)

verybigsaku said:

I firmly remember a distinction being made between sex and gender in the past decade or so, decoupling the two. Sex referring to what you're born as, either male or female, and gender being an expression. Bridget was born a male, this is a fact due to the village's superstition and Bridget's parents. Unless Bridget has gone through magical surgery/transformation/etc. that changed them on a fundamental level before appearing in Strive, they're still male. Saying Bridget is female is trying to couple sex and gender back together in the other direction, being two things you can change instead of two things you're born as. It's disingenuous wordplay.

I wasn't as clear as I could have been. Both "Sex" and "Gender" individually refer to multiple concepts that sometimes overlap.

Gender is both a person's identity, which no one else has any right to deny, and presentation, which has to do with societal norms and expectations and how the person.

Sex is typically used as a classification of bodies based on physical traits. But it can also be used to describe chromosomal configurations along with one or two other things that aren't coming to mind because I'm not a biologist. What I do know is that none of these are as straightforward as many think.

Female (Webster) is an adjective, the relevant definitions are below:

1. a. (1): of, relating to, or being the sex that typically has the capacity to bear young or produce eggs

Standard biology that we all learned in school. This is more or less the "sex" classification.

1. b. : having a gender identity that is the opposite of male

Standard practice when dealing with any person. Hey look, it even says "gender" for me.

Thus, a female person is someone who meets either of these definitions, but the one that matters is the second one.

Your mother is a female person not because she gave birth to you, but because she knows that she is one.
And she would continue to be one even as she enters menopause or if she had to have her ovaries removed for some reason.
She'd probably get mad at you if you described her as "male" because it would invalidate her identity.

Unless you're in a scientific or medical context where it matters, you'd never need to even know or think about if someone meets the first definition and even then, you'd still talk about the person as a person with the gender they ID as.

anon7631 said:
< bigoted things >

Referring to a man as a woman is wrong.
Referring to a woman as a man is wrong.
Easy facts.

Transmen are men.
Transwomen are women.
Also easy facts.

Calling a transman a "woman" is both wrong and transphobic since it involves willing disregard for a transgender person's identity.
Calling a transwoman a "man" is both wrong and transphobic since it involves willing disregard for a transgender person's identity.
Are you following?

See the definitions in my above reply.
Bridget says she is a girl. This is confirmation that she has a female gender identity.
This makes her a female character.

feline_lump said:
This is not correct. The link in the OP clarifies that for all intents and purposes, Bridget has canonically come out as a girl. The idea that Bridget remained male in some endings was a rumor born from the controversy surrounding this decision.

They did not grow a pussy for this game, and certainly not during an ending. Read up the reply chain.

I thought we were finally making some improvement in this discussion. This isn't about science at all. It's about a character and how they should be tagged and when.

The thread will probably be locked if we keep arguing the same stuff everyone argues nonstop and has argued on here multiple times as well.

While I'm not the person you're asking here, I believe the majority of people in this discussion agree that the pre-Strive incarnation of Bridget should remain a boy, since that was the character's canonical gender in every game beforehand. I think creating a new tag for the new design could help alleviate confusion between the two.

Thank you, spot on. This is what I and some others are trying to say. I don't know who came up with the idea, but I really think it's the best solution here.

What do we do in this case?

https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/5694822?q=bridget_%28guilty_gear%29