Could you elaborate on how it's "fundamentally" transphobic? I can understand how it could very easily slip into that sort of territory, but there does seem to be a distinction between lying about your sex/gender and not providing info that you're not obliged to provide, such as what genitals you have.
Sure. The biggest narrative of transphobia is the idea that somebody's own gender, or how they talk about or express their gender, is somehow a violation of the people around them. This is used to justify controlling people's gender and gender expression, or punishing them for falling outside of accepted gender norms. This idea of gender nonconformity being a violation of how you should treat the people around you is often (although not exclusively) framed in terms of deception - i.e. a violation of trust and/or ability to give informed consent. This puts trans people in a double-bind: if you are out about being trans, you are accused of deceiving people by being a different gender than the one they think you "should" have, whereas if you're closeted, you are accused of deceiving people by not telling them your real gender. Either way, the accusation of "tricking people about what gender you 'really' are" functions to, again, justify control and/or punishment while obscuring the actual power dynamic. Someone point-blank lying about their gender does not give them power over another person in the same way that accusing someone of lying about their gender does. In the most extreme form, the person being subjected to gendered control and punishment is portrayed as the perpetrator, while the person actually enacting this transphobic abuse portrays themselves as the victim.
With that said, let's look at the narrative that is getting pulled out in the comments section here - the implication that Mitsuki is somehow doing wrong by Aya by letting Aya continue to believe she's a boy, and thus that she "needs" to tell Aya her real gender or else she is victimizing her. To quote:
Tricking someone pretending you're the gender you're not is uncool at best and downright nasty at worst. [...] But in any minimally realistic setting this treachery will hurt the victim horribly and bring only heartbreak and bitterness.
That's a) an accusation of gender deception while b) portraying the hypothetical person confused by gender ambiguity as a "victim", used to c) try to control how people present/talk about their genders (i.e. if you are androgynous you have to tell people your gender explicitly if they get the wrong idea). Again, don't know if it's intended as such, but that's the structure of the argument.
elevown brings up the fact that Mitsuki is not, in the story, trans, and says basically that hiding your gender is okay if you're trans and closeted but not okay otherwise. However, that just kicks the can down the road to the question of who is "really" trans. Someone trying to figure out if you're trans enough to be "allowed" to hide your gender is itself violating, and anyone who is judged to not be trans enough will be subject to aforementioned control and punishment of their gender expression anyway. (And while I'm primarily concerned for trans people, who are the most vulnerable to this kind of rhetoric, cis people deserve to not be controlled or punished for how they express/talk about their genders either.) Nobody gets to be appointed judge and jury of who has enough of a "reason" to hide their gender. The only principled position is to entirely reject the idea that letting someone have the wrong idea about your gender is somehow doing wrong by them. If they do have the wrong idea about your gender, that's a them problem unless and until you choose to correct them, it doesn't imply that you need to change how you present or what you do or do not say about your gender.
That's the fundamental level but also, on a practical level, no, there is not a distinction between lying about your sex/gender and simply not providing info that you're not obligated to provide. Cis society does not let you get away with just not providing info. It is basically impossible to successfully remain closeted (or stealth) without sometimes saying something directly untrue about your sex/gender - avoiding the question will itself make people clock you as some degree of gender-nonconforming, and will often get framed as attempted deceit anyways.
edit. My contention is basically that it's transphobic regardless of what OP considers to be "tricking someone" and "pretending you're the gender you're not", because of the way it plays into this real-world dynamic of accusing someone of being deceptive about their gender to control how they express or talk about it.
last edited at May 23, 2022 4:06AM
