Saturday, July 11, 2009

Dear Chris of ISB

I mean, I know that she was originally intended to be female, and then changed because Capcom thought the American SNES-buying audience would be happier with a transvestite hooker than Mike Haggar actually piledriving a woman, and then replaced with two decidedly male characters for the American release, and the whole thing’s way more complex than it ought to be. Even this issue seems to have fun with it, with Cody’s “you’re not much of a lady” and her irate response, which could be taken a couple of ways.

Not that I particularly mind, you understand, but it’d be nice to know which comics I read involved cross-dressing prostitutes. My filing system is oddly specific.


Dear Chris of ISB,

Transvesite, Transexual and Transgender are three separate and individual words. They have three different meanings. They correspond to sexual identity, orientation, gender, civil rights and sexuality and sexual expression. Transvestite is the one that 99.9 percent corresponds to sexuality (the act of being sexual) and sexual expression (how one performs the acts of being sexual).

While I understand in POST RACIAL AMERCIA (which is apparently POST ISM AMERICA), it's all the rage to be a bigot big and bold, your words are incredibly crass and ignorant. I have a difficult time believing that in the comicbook blogsphere, you are unaware of non cisgendered, non heterosexual comic bloggers. Your little 'joke', hurt and aggravated two people I care deeply about and just PLAIN PISSED ME OFF.

It doesn't matter that CapCom has a hole in the corporate brain and a need to appease 'Americans who don't believe in hitting women'. It doesn't matter that the word Futanari (which is basically a third sex in Japanese art) does not translate well. This is Laura Framingham level 'research' and 'caring' here, that you couldn't stop and think of Posion as transgendered.

For the record, She Is. As stated officially by Capcom representatives, her pre or post op status depending on country being inconsequential. An operation doesn't make someone a girl, being a girl makes someone a girl. Just like the fact you have a penis, doesn't make you man, but instead seems to make you an asshole.