Dr. Buni
Take me away from here...
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2010
- Messages
- 5,611
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- 85
Fair point and thanks for responding to the thread. I agree about the Machamp line not being perfectly suited to represent ftm transgender people. That said, should the suggestion of a ftm option be accepted, the Pokémon representative doesn't need to be Machamp. It could be any other often assumed to be male-only species by the fandom, like Alakazam (just an example, since one could argue Alakazam is almost as much as a caricature as Jynx, Machamp and others). There probably is a suitable Pokémon among the almost 800 currently known species.Gardevoir, to me, can equally represent someone who is biologically a woman but identifies as man (the appearance reflect their biological body, but the actual gender of M Gardevoir reflect what they identify as), or someone who is biologically a man but identify with the social role of women (M Gardevoir being M reflect their biological sex, but the appearance reflect their identity).
The fact that M Gardevoir is less caricatural and more ambiguous where Machamp is...well, it wouldn't know subtle if subtle hit it in the face with a clue-by-four made it a better choice. Gardevoir is kind of ambiguous (as in: it can represent multiple things). Machamp is to male caricatures as Jynx is to female caricatures. And if there was a M Jynx in the game, I don't think it would make a good transgender icon either.
Which is not to say we won't consider adding other options (though I'm afraid that we're never going to be able to cover all the myriad possible gender identities - there are only so many appropriate pokémon sprite, and constantly updating the list to add new terms take time and effort that we might not be able to afford).
Just that Gardevoir is not meant to represent specifically MtF or FtM at the expense of the other group.