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[TamerVirus]

"MAGAMartyr"
Oh no...
I think that, somewhere, a new Timothy McVeigh was created.

[MrRoboto75]

I still don't think it's right as just because a nasty person made the emote doesn't mean the emote itself is somehow evil.

I mean the emote is literally his face but alright.

[Eschar]

Plus nobody here, and AFAIK nobody else, said "the emote itself is evil."

[Iduno]

The woman shoot in the chest and 3 medical complications? One of those a heart attack.... so sad.

I read more about the heart attack victim.

[LordBaal]

Oh sorry meth I completely forgot. Sure there is some neutral term in Japanese.

[methylatedspirit]

Oh sorry meth I completely forgot. Sure there is some neutral term in Japanese.

Eh, it's fine. I know you're not actively trying to misgender me. My sister refers to me in the third-person as he/him because a) I'm very much closeted, so it's quite dangerous to use they/them for fear of my parents finding out, and b) she's not used to the kind of rapid pronoun-switching I do on the daily. I'm not expecting people to understand my pronouns as quickly as I did. I would really like they/them to be used, of course, but I'm not gonna go out on a manhunt if you don't use them by accident.

Now, you do that intentionally, I'd be pissed.

[delphonso]

Japanese is an oddball of a language (from an indo-european languages standpoint, don't know any others) in that second person is generally gender-neutral (no he/she), but first person is not, the existence of a plethora of gender-specific "I"s being the most striking example[1]. You could probably go for "watashi" though, as I understand it it is more or less gender-neutral[2]. Of course, anime and manga like to spice it up, with lots of characters having "odd" speech patterns, and combining that with characters scarcely gendering each other you get lots of characters of unclear/unspecified gender, which is pretty neat.

How widespread the notion of the nonbinary is I'm less sure about. Sure, characters of unclear gender are not rare, and gender roles have been played around with in popular media at least since Osamu Tezuka's Princess Knight, but Japan is also a very conservative country. My guess is that while the notion of gender neutrality and a tradition of playing with gender roles both exist, and so does of course a domestic LGBT+ community producing media with a higher concentration of such themes, the average person is still at best uninformed and at worst highly prejudiced.

Of course, one of the wonderful points about producing/imagining your own media is that you can put anything you want in it, disregarding previous tropes and standards.

[1] "Watashi", "uchi", "atashi", "boku", "ore", and "jibun" being the most common, probably. Using your first-name as a pronoun also occurs, mostly by kids. Then there's very formal pronouns like "watakushi" and "ware" and lots of lots of pronouns you'd only hear in anime, either because they are archaic ("sessha" used by samurai) or otherwise ridiculous ("ore-sama", adding a "revering" honorific to an already boisterous pronoun. Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z, uses this sometimes).
[2] Apropos, I've gathered there's an entire genre of so called "watashi novels" written entirely in first person with the narrator/MC's name not necessarily ever being disclosed. Pretty sure that e.g. the anime Tatami Galaxy and Humanity Has Declined were both based on such novels.  Note that the formal has a male MC, the latter a female, both referred to using "watashi".

In my understanding, this is pretty accurate. Watashi, I learned was gender-neutral, but trended on feminine because women tend to use more "polite" language, or at least less casual language. My experience roughly reflects that. I did see some trans activism while I lived in Japan - both in Osaka and the smaller city I lived in. That should suggest the topic has at least been tackled by activists in Japan.

If people are really very interested, I could ask around and see if anyone I know has more information, but I doubt anyone I know is an expert.


EDIT: Also looking forward to more methmanga.

[Vector]

Beyond the Binary: A Queer Take on Gendered Japanese

Intended for a general audience.

[MrRoboto75]

Also looking forward to more methmanga.

I hope bike-senpai notices me today.

[Naturegirl1999]

I hope bike-senpai notices me today.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

GLaDOS’s voice, shows all messages processed. Some are vulgar but most are fine

[KittyTac]

I still don't think it's right as just because a nasty person made the emote doesn't mean the emote itself is somehow evil.

I mean the emote is literally his face but alright.

Yes and? It's not related to him saying those things.

[MaxTheFox]

pog

Yeah KT I agree with you. I hate fascists. But censoring random things they made is useless.

[Frumple]

They probably do have some kind of legal agreement to use his likeness, I'd imagine.

I'd be nixing that and most other connections with someone supporting a coup attempt and encouraging deadly violence if I were a company, too, tbh.

Also if not a company in most cases, really.

[KittyTac]

They probably do have some kind of legal agreement to use his likeness, I'd imagine.

I'd be nixing that and most other connections with someone supporting a coup attempt and encouraging deadly violence if I were a company, too, tbh.

Also if not a company in most cases, really.

If there was a contract, fair enough.

[voliol]

Beyond the Binary: A Queer Take on Gendered Japanese

Intended for a general audience.

I wouldn’t say it’s for a general audience, considering it contains both untranscibed hiragana/katakana and some (pretty basic I’m sure) kanji. You need to have studied/study japanese to read that article. :/

Regarding the PogChamp thing, Pepe the Frog was claimed by the alt-right some years ago but nowadays he’s really common again (outside the alt-right), in the form of Twitch emotes like POGGERS and monkaS. Memes can be reclaimed (or at least not lost further) if they’re just used enough by people who are not alt-right. I guess it being his face complicates it further though.