And until very recently, Michael Jackson was unambiguously correct.
Until very recently, this kind of exchange was the entire point of the character. Which was a fantastically useful distinction between presentation and internal state. Young Bridget literally fought to be treated as a boy in a dress. Parents can gender a wardrobe, but not their child’s brain.
Dudes attracted regardless had to learn to deal with it. Surprise, you’ll like anybody who’s cute as fuck. But now that’s just… straight. How boring.
I do not view this change as positive. Recontextualizing the internet’s most prominent femboy as trans is worse for both groups. This is a character that got she/her’d all the damn time, and politely corrected people. In some sense Bridget was assigned female at birth. At no point was Bridget’s gender identity in question.
And I’m still half-expecting to catch hands for saying so… no matter how much caution or context is involved. Like twenty years of championing a non-gender-conforming queer icon are retroactively hateful and oppressive, because the creator tried to do better and whiffed.
Dude, I’ve written enough posts about how Bridget is trans at this point. It’s been over a year now, if I compiled all of them the resulting tome would be bigger than Infinite Jest. All I want to say is it doesn’t matter how long Bridget was a femboy before or how much the internet says otherwise, Bridget is trans now and you should stop arguing about it.
Strive did similar things to every single character, not just Bridget. Nobody was protesting when Faust went from a game show host to a depressed cryptid. People weren’t crying “Girlboss erasure” when Baiken chilled the fuck out after years of nothing but rage filled searching for Asuka. Strive’s whole point in the story is taking all of these people who were living in the past this whole time and letting them move on in some meaningful way.
This post was a joke. There was another post I saw somewhere else with a soyjak where Michael is and only one “he” and I doubled it up and thought it was a funny nonsequiter. It wasn’t this deep and I thought it was going to be “random=funny” enough to not invite this discourse.
She’s trans, and you really should get over it.
There’s none of this backlash when people appreciate how Faust was.
People can freely discuss that version of the character, without getting-- this. This meta-rant blithely wondering what the big deal is, if you only had to write volumes about what a big deal it is.
Nobody whines about Baiken because giving up a ruinous quest for vengeance is character growth. Not inadvertently trolling the fandom by contradicting all prior motivation… in a way that makes describing that motivation sound like bigotry. Again: Bridget’s whole deal was to “man up.” Proving worth through bounty hunting, to be taken seriously, whilst staying comfortable with oneself. I.e., cute as fuck.
Rejecting the societal demand to prove gender identity would make perfect sense. Telling anyone to “man up” is toxic enforcement of prejudice. Rejecting that identity instead is bad, actually. It’s an endorsement of those gender roles. Bridget being trans now is not growth. It’s a sloppy misunderstanding of everything the character was about.
But all criticism of that bad writing has to walk on eggshells. I’m fretting over every reference to how Bridget used to be. I wind up editing every sentence a dozen times, scrubbing any hint of contemporary phrasing, like that wasn’t also a celebrated queer fictional character.
Old Baiken was not erased. Old Faust was not erased. But if someone today posts a 2010 drawing of Bridget on an image booru - how do you tag that?
imagine if Bridget were a real person then reread your last two paragraphs
No.
I’m not going to treat discussion of a fictional character a if it’s about a real person. Real people cannot be written badly - characters obviously can.
How would we ever discuss stories that handle these topics, if anything an author made up was as absolute as a living person’s private decisions? Sometimes authors fuck up. Sometimes that fuckup is more useful as a teachable moment than any kind of representation. I’d argue this qualifies, not because Bridget in Strive is handled poorly, but because Bridget was the goddamn patron saint of Y-boners. This character taught 4chan that Kinsey zeroes can still appreciate anime thighs of any gender. 4chan! And now it’s hard to even describe that situation, let alone fondly remember and praise it, specifically out of deference to how we address real living trans people.
If this was a new character - there’d be no issue whatsoever.
It’d be downright hilarious to introduce Bridget’s unnamed sibling, the entire reason Bridget was raised as a girl, and reveal their parents got it completely backwards.
But instead, all appreciation for who this character was is spoiled, all past support now sounds like hatred, and even acknowledging that shift is condemned. What needless turmoil over such a cheerful character in the silliest fighting game.
The only ones that seemed upset by the character growth were “teehee, trap” capital-G cishet Gamers.
I’m queer and I’m complaining about this.
I do agree that it is incredibly problematic, it’s already hard enough for Femboys and GNC individuals and this move could be seen as giving validation to the toxic idea that femboys are just trans girls in denial, which I still see pushed today either subtly or indirectly.
It also is very harmful to both parties because the idea that Femboys and Tomboys must just be trans actually reinforces those toxic gender stereotypes that inevitably come back to bite trans people, Transmasc femboys face quite a bit of transphobia because of this (yes telling a Transmasc that they should try being a girl is transphobic, even if you thought they were an AMAB), sometimes from their trans friends in their own trans communities.
I’m not saying the Bridget issue single-handedly caused the new age of toxic egg culture, not even that it contributed to a large portion of it. But it does mark a major loss for the GNC crowd as they essentially lose one of their biggest icons, and in the end just give a bit more credence to the idea that femboys are just trans girls.
I also don’t expect this to be looked on positively either because of the sentiment around Bridget and also the sentiment around egg culture as a whole.
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