Transgender Cosplay

This past weekend, I spent Saturday at A-Kon 22 in Dallas, TX. It was my seventh straight A-Kon to attend and the 17th anime convention I've attended overall. I generally spend the entire weekend at a con but teaching and financial concerns limited me to just one day this year.

I've always loved anime conventions and only wish I'd discovered them before I was 23. One thing I've always enjoyed doing at cons is cosplaying. Below is a picture of me cosplaying as Yuki Nagato from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya at A-Kon this year.

I've always appreciated the generally open and accepting attitudes of con attendees. Anime cons like A-Kon were the first and, for a long time, the only spaces in which I felt comfortable expressing my transgender identity. While occasionally someone gives me a strange look or make a rude comment, I've found con attendees to be accepting of crossplay, the term coined for cosplaying characters of the opposite sex.

It was only last year that I thought a little more about crossplay as it applies to me and other transgender cosplayers. The key phrase in my definition above is "characters of the opposite sex." For a long time I fully embraced the term and appreciate the value of the term for creating a space for people to express their love of anime characters, regardless of gender. But I'm now beginning to wonder about the applicability of the term for me. I no longer consider cosplaying as a female character crossplaying for me personally; as a woman, it's only natural that I would choose to cosplay as a female character. Crossplaying for me now would be dressing as a male character should I ever choose to, as unlikely as that may be.

The tradition and acceptance of crossplay among anime fans, while a positive thing overall, becomes problematic for a transgender cosplayer. I noticed this weekend in comments about a "male Yuki" or a girl correcting her use of the pronoun "she" to "he" when explaining to her friend what character I was dressed as. Another example from last year would be a con acquaintance asking my name and after I replied "Lucy," he then asked for my "real" name instead of my character's name (which was actually Azmaria).

The acceptance of crossplay means that anime cons remain a generally safe space for transgender fans. I'm still deciding how to take the next step and figure out how to more fully communicate my identity as a woman and as a cosplayer.

Wandering Son - Hourou Musuko

Wandering Son is a new anime series that debuted January 13, 2011. The main character of the series is Shuichi Nitori, a boy beginning his first day of middle school. Shuichi has a number of close friends and is well-liked by his classmates. Shuichi, though, has a secret that is not known except to a small group of friends - Shuichi feels that he should be a girl.

Transgender themes and stories are not unfamiliar territory for anime. What is impressive about Wandering Son in terms of anime, or any other media for that matter, is the sensitivity and honesty with which the series handles its transgender subject matter. Absent are the usual external motivations for crossdressing or the fantastical elements that make the transgender elements seem to be just part of a larger-than-life narrative. Shuichi wants to be a girl because that is part of who he is. While Wandering Son is supportive of the transgender identity of its characters, the series is also seeking to realistically present the continuing struggles of transgender people to live in this binary-gendered world. Shuichi has come out to a group of supportive friends, but his sister yells at him and calls him "sick" after discovering him wearing her clothes.

Shuichi is not the only transgender character in the series. His female friend, Yoshino Takatsuki, wants to be a boy, though Shuichi is the focus of the first episode. The two young characters are still trying to figure out who they are and their place in society. Yoshino, for example, is envious of another girl in her class who comes to school wearing a boy's uniform just because she feels like it. After running into a sobbing Shuichi, Yoshino starts to give him the boy's uniform a friend gave her but then stops and says "this isn't what you need right now."

Reaction to the first episode has been mostly positive, though I will take a little issue with Gia Manry's characterization of Shuichi's transgender identity as a "hobby" in her review of the first episode on Anime News Network. While it remains to be seen how the series will develop over its entire 11 episode run, it seems pretty clear that Shuichi's desire to be a girl is more than just a hobby.

Wandering Son is currently steaming in the US on Crunchyroll - the first episode is available now for subscribers and will be available on Thursday, January 20 for non-subscribers. The first volume of the manga will also be coming out sometime this year from Fantagraphics Books.

Wandering Son follows last season's Princess Jellyfish - a series featuring a crossdresser that is available on Funimation Video. Check out either series if you want to see some of the most positive and supportive examples of transgender representation airing in Japan or anywhere!

Transgender Geek

After nearly a month, I'm finally back for a new post. It's always tough for me to get into the groove of things again at the start of a new semester and often makes it difficult to find time to other things, like post to a blog (at least that's the excuse I'm using for not having posted in so long...).

Anyway, I've been wanting to talk for a while about being a transgender geek. By "transgender geek" I mean a transgender person who also identifies as a geek, not a person who is a geek for trangender things (though I may be one of those too since I love discovering anything new related to trangenderism, including films, TV shows, books, blogs, etc.). I touched on this topic a little bit in an earlier post, Cosplay and Conventions on September 18, 2009, but I want to talk about it a little more in depth.

My life as a geek began at a very young age. I remember as a child watching cartoons like G.I. Joe, Voltron and He-Man but those were just preparation for what I consider my first geek passion: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I loved the cartoon and would spend hours playing with the action figures I had collected. The show also featured prominently in my early transgender identity. I remember watching the show one day and wishing I could grow up to be like April O'Neil, the Turtles sexy reporter friend, but feeling I was more likely to grow up to be like Irma, April's frumpy assistant. Dreaming of being a woman when I grew up did not seem strange to me; I was more interested in what type of woman I would be.

April O'Neil

My geek identity continued to develop along with my transgender identity. I've always tended to be more into viusal texts, the Star Wars films, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Audrey Hepbun films, etc., than other forms of expression. I've always been a slow reader and may have felt a little intimidated by the numerous books that made up long-running scifi and fantasy series. I was also really into videogames in junior high and high school, even receiving a scolding from my mother once for having my nose buried in a videogame magazine which she felt would lead me to "never get a girlfriend" (if she only knew at the time what she would be getting upset at me about in the future...). I still play videogames, I do have a Wii, when I can but videogames are usually the first thing to be put to the side when I get busy.

Not long into my high school life I discovered anime and that has remained my main geek passion for over ten years. After twisting my knee at a summer church camp, I was recuperating at home when I first saw the series Sailor Moon. Though I had seen some anime before, Sailor Moon was the first show that seemed noticably different to me. I loved the monster-of-the-week story that expanded as the series went on, the characters you could identify with and, of course, the cute costumes. The series also stood out to me because it featured a cast of female characters in the "boys only" world of afternoon cartoons.

Sailor Moon is a good example of the difficulty I have in separating my geek and transgender identities. For my developing transgender identity, shows like Sailor Moon proved an important milestone by offering female characters to identify with. My love of anime has grown over the years to include many more great shows and great characters. I also regularly attend anime conventions and participate in cosplay, dressing up as my favorite characters and also in my Gothic Lolita finery.

No one's identity can be defined by only one aspect. I believe people need to continue to explore the different aspects of their identity and the way these different aspects interact. I also don't think transgender people should have to hide certain parts of who they are; we've had to do too much of that in our lives. I'm not ashamed to have been a fan of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, to play videogames or to be an avid anime fan. I also don't think that having these passions make me any less of a woman. I hope that all transgender people can be as open about who they are and have been, not having to hide certain parts of who they are to try to fit some idea of what it means to be a woman or man.