“...there is more evidence that she is transgender than cisgender.”
December 18, 2018 5:55 PM   Subscribe

Metroid’s Samus Aran is a Transgender Woman. Deal With It. [The Mary Sue] “Representation for transgender people is equally tough to find in gaming. Both Dangonronpa and Persona 4 managed to blunder transgender representation. One of the most famous transgender video game characters, Poison from Final Fight, is empowered but blatantly oversexualized. Characters and stories like this reinforce the harmful idea that transgender women only have societal value in their sex appeal. That’s why I’m thrilled to tell you that one of the most famous women in videogame history happens to also be a transgender woman! It’s none other that Nintendo’s Samus Aran! It’s true!”

“In 1994, the writers of the official Japanese Super Metroid strategy guide asked Metroid’s developers if they could share any secrets about the intergalactic bounty hunter. Hirofumi Matsuoka, who helped work on the original design for Samus Aran, claimed that she “wasn’t a woman,” but instead, “ニューハーフ,” or “newhalf.” This language has its own issues, but terminology used for gender in the early 90s was as different in Japan as it was in the West. There has been some debate asking if the comment was in jest or genuine. Some have compared Matsuoka’s use of “newhalf” to the offensive Western term “shemale.” It’s possible to interpret this as an ugly joke about Samus’s traditionally masculine appearance, as illustrated in the 80s by Nintendo Power, where she is said to be six foot three and 198 pounds.”

• Well, That Escalated Quickly: A Samus Followup [The Mary Sue]
“What would you do if you had a large platform to speak from? Would you post cat videos? Would you talk about Game of Thrones? Would you ask everyone to send you a dollar? This is something I’ve thought about a lot as a public figure. It’s my opinion that if you have an audience, you have a moral responsibility to do everything you can to make the world a better place. This is why I spend so much time advocating for social justice issues. Yesterday, a story came out that broke my heart. A transgender high school student had over 150 people protest her taking gym class. So many transgender friends have told me that story made them cry. I’ve thought a lot about what it must be like to be a teenager and get that amount of hate thrown at you. I wrote her a long support letter, but that’s simply not enough. I have a responsibility to stand up to transphobia, and so do you. If the idea of Samus, a fictional character, possibly being a transgender woman upsets you – you have some growing to do.”
• The Power of Trans Samus by Jaime Gonzalez [Videodame]
“We do need better trans representation in video games, ones that are confirmed in-game, main characters not just NPCs you meet once or transphobic stereotypes of villains. That's why even though her confirmation as a trans character is problematic...she's still our bounty hunter to claim.”
• Why Entitled Male Gamers Can’t Stand Critiques of Samus Aran [Houston Press]
“I don’t know if Matsuoka was serious or making a crude joke, nor do I know if Samus is trans or not. The theory is interesting, regardless, and does actually shed some light on some of the themes of the original trilogy. I’ve always felt that Super Metroid was basically about a fear of motherhood, but if Wu and McGrody are right those themes might indicate regret of the inability to bear biological children. There’s a fascinating conversation to be had. Unfortunately, entitled male gamers really don’t want that conversation. [...] Samus as a good example of a badass woman who can hold her own in a video game and never needs rescuing is something the average entitled male gamer can hold up as proof that it’s not all bad in games. Just as people deny widespread systemic racism in America still exists in America because why would a racist nation elect a black man as president, so do certain gamers deny sexist tropes exist in meaningful numbers because Samus couldn’t exist if that were true.”
• Whether Samus Is Transgender Isn’t The Issue, Transphobia Is [Planet Transgender]
“Whilst it is a possibility that it was just one person making an offensive joke, it’s also possible that it’s also true. Don’t forget, during the whole of the first Metroid game players were led to believe that Samus was male, even using male pronouns in the guide and instruction book so as to surprise people when she removed her power suit in the finale. Though, once again hiding her gender may have been nothing more than a simply ploy for surprise with no other intentions at all. What needs to be remembered, however, is that the person who made this statement back in 1994, wasn’t the creator of the character. They had no authority to make a statement like tat and for it to be true. In the piece that started it the authors, Brianna Wu and Ellen McGrody, described it as being like when J.K. Rowling said Dumblebore was gay, except it isn’t. It’s more like if the costume designer on one of the Harry Potter films said Dumbledore was gay, because the person who said Samus was a Newhalf wasn’t the creator, just someone who worked on the look of the character. Whether Samus is or isn’t transgender isn’t what I’m wanting to talk about though, it’s the reaction from many gamers at the very idea that she may have been born genetically male that’s disturbing.”
posted by Fizz (31 comments total) 23 users marked this as a favorite
 
If she's transgender, that makes Samus all the more a badass. It also makes Other M all the more a travesty.
posted by bfranklin at 6:20 PM on December 18, 2018 [7 favorites]


YAAAAS FINALLY

*dons powered armor, shoots a hole in the ceiling with a huge laser blast and bomb-jumps right out of the room*
posted by loquacious at 6:25 PM on December 18, 2018 [22 favorites]


"...there is more evidence that she is transgender than cisgender."

Is there more evidence than just the quote from one of the designers?
posted by floomp at 7:02 PM on December 18, 2018 [4 favorites]


Is there more evidence than just the quote from one of the designers?

The point here is that there’s NO evidence that she is cisgender.
posted by ejs at 7:11 PM on December 18, 2018 [24 favorites]


The artistic environment that Samus partially arose from was very transhumanist - Japan in the 80s made some amazing art and was hugely and lastingly influential. But conceptions of gender and particularly trans issues in Japan have long been utterly fucked up.

I'm 100% on board with Samus being transgender, much the same way as I have recently adopted Link as the enby fashion plate protagonist of my heart. The author is dead and all that. But I'm highly doubtful of their being much validity to claims of transgender Samus being canonical.

Note that that really doesn't, like, matter though? I've been playing smash brothers with a friend who likes to main Samus - when I see her on Thursday I will gleefully inform her that she's repping our trans sisters with every bomb jump. Video games are highly collaborative creations and that doesn't stop with the programmers and artists.

This is interesting though: I’ve always felt that Super Metroid was basically about a fear of motherhood, but if Wu and McGrody are right those themes might indicate regret of the inability to bear biological children. Of the few conversations I've been lucky enough to have about this with my closest mtf friend, she's actually expressed motherhood fears that are similar to typical cisgendered women's fears once you take the physical pregnancy out of the equation. She evidently hesitated on publicly transitioning for a while because she didn't want to be seen as a mother, ever, and divorcing that from being a woman was a lot of work for her. Anyway my point in this context is, I don't know that trans Samus means reframing the metaphors of Super Metroid whatsoever.
posted by Mizu at 7:21 PM on December 18, 2018 [18 favorites]


I love characters like Samus because the minimal story structure of the best Metroid games let you imagine whoever you like inside that power armor. Even yourself! It's quite telling that games like the dreadful Other M stumble when they intrude with a heavy-handed narrative: the story you write about Samus will never satisfy us, because she started in our dreams.

Personally, I love the idea of Samus as trans. If you don't? Chill.
posted by selfnoise at 7:29 PM on December 18, 2018 [8 favorites]


On that note, I recently saw this very professional CG fanart of Samus, and was so taken with it that I began constructing a game in my head that will probably interfere with my enjoyment of whatever Nintendo ends up putting out on the Switch.
posted by selfnoise at 7:31 PM on December 18, 2018 [2 favorites]


Given how GG folks have moved on to brigading new releases like Battletech for even nominal trans inclusion, I'll agree that the issue is more transphobia within the fandom than whether Samus is or is not in "canon."

(Of course, I'm an anti-canon crank who notes that in many game franchises, character and narrative are not much more than rationalizations around the next fight mechanic.)
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 7:42 PM on December 18, 2018 [7 favorites]


"The point here is that there’s NO evidence that she is cisgender."

I guess so, but there are no trans themes or references in any of the games that I know about, so even if she is trans, it doesn't seem like that was very important to the creators. There should be more (and better, less one-dimensional) trans characters in games but it's weird to claim that Samus is one of them. Other than one quote from a designer she isn't really doing anything that any cis character couldn't do.

I know the point is that you shouldn't assume that a character is cis, and that even if a character is trans it doesn't have to be a big deal that takes over the story, but... yeah. I'm a trans woman and Samus being trans doesn't really do much for me since it seems like it didn't matter to her character at all.
posted by floomp at 8:07 PM on December 18, 2018 [14 favorites]


I'm also moderately anti "Word-of-God." The role of being a creative person in an industry often involves a bit of marketing, and lately I've become a bit sick of stories being oversold on LGBTQ ideas that were never actually produced or were cut into invisibility by an editor. What Matsuoka said is interesting but isn't necessarily text.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 8:23 PM on December 18, 2018 [7 favorites]


*rolls roaring back into the room dropping a trail of bombs, leaping and firing a wall of missiles at the screaming, seething horde of brain-sucking Metroid following them, leaving most of them behind*
posted by loquacious at 8:38 PM on December 18, 2018 [20 favorites]


I guess so, but there are no trans themes or references in any of the games that I know about

When the first game came out, no one even realized it was a woman in the armor until the very end of the game. The accompanying game manual for the first Metroid made deliberate use of masculine pronouns to refer to Samus, re-enforcing the already existing stereotype that the protagonist character in a sci-fi fi video game is obviously going to be a man. This was in an era where the main way to convey game lore was in the manual itself, because you couldn't include huge swaths of text in game.

This pronoun misdirection was not just true for the English version of the manual, but also the original Japanese version, where the writers actually had to go out of their way to avoid typical Japanese sentence construction to include pronouns at all.

So gamers start out with the conception that this tough-as-nails space bounty hunter with a reputation of being able to accomplish the impossible is, as they would expect, a man, because that's exactly how the game world's lore is making this person appear to be. And then, if you had a good completion time and the helmet and armor come off, it's made explicit who she actually is inside, despite what societal expectations and initial appearance had mislead you to believe. If that's not a metaphor for the trans experience, I don't know what is.
posted by radwolf76 at 9:21 PM on December 18, 2018 [33 favorites]


Samus undoubtedly defies gender conformity, or at least, she did for the first sixteen years of the franchise. (It was Metroid Fusion in 2002 that first seemed to explicitly recognize Samus's gender in the narrative by making her subordinate to a male-coded A.I. character "Adam", who comes across variously as a love interest, a martyr, and her direct superior.) There could be no mistaking her femininity thanks to the games' endings, which portrayed her either without a helmet, in a form-fitting singlet, or in (essentially) space underwear, depending on how quickly the player had completed the game.

Those bits always struck me as kinda creepy, and that's why I still find Zero Suit Samus a little uncomfortable.

I 100% support her appropriation as a trans icon.
posted by jsnlxndrlv at 11:11 PM on December 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


OMG RUN YOU FOOLS WHAT ARE YOU DOING JAWING AWAY THE METROID ARE RIGHT BEHIND YOU

*pew pew pew pew pew*
posted by loquacious at 11:56 PM on December 18, 2018 [17 favorites]


I always thought this was the case, because as a kid I thought her name was "Seamus".
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:25 AM on December 19, 2018 [7 favorites]


It was Metroid Fusion in 2002 that first seemed to explicitly recognize Samus's gender in the narrative by making her subordinate to a male-coded A.I. character "Adam", who comes across variously as a love interest, a martyr, and her direct superior.

I always hated that Adam stuff, yet I couldn't quite pin down why. My reaction was too strong for it to just be "ugh keep your soap opera crap out of this badass character." It's clearer now, thanks to this thread.
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 3:12 AM on December 19, 2018


Mod note: A couple deleted. We do not entertain gross TERF arguments here, even by proxy of "I guess TERFs think X." Please do not do this.
posted by taz (staff) at 6:15 AM on December 19, 2018 [32 favorites]


I have to admit I had an initially negative reaction to this piece. I still remember the reveal of Samus as a woman and how blown away I was by it when I was in elementary school. I started to feel that "but my childhood!" feeling. Took a few minutes to realize that allowing for this to be part of Samus' character doesn't diminish that reveal in any way. In fact, it rules. Also, people are way too horny for Zero Suit Samus in Smash.
posted by runcibleshaw at 7:34 AM on December 19, 2018


And then, if you had a good completion time and the helmet and armor come off, it's made explicit who she actually is inside, despite what societal expectations and initial appearance had mislead you to believe. If that's not a metaphor for the trans experience, I don't know what is.

If that's a metaphor for the trans experience, it's a tedious, eye-rolling one (and arguably a damaging one--"always knew deep inside" or whatever sounds nice and pat, but it presents a significant barrier to many people questioning their gender).
posted by hoyland at 9:35 AM on December 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


Mod note: A few comments deleted. Sorry, that was a well-intentioned comment but with some idiosyncratic personal stuff in the background that meant it was *really* not landing well. Probably better to skip it.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:15 AM on December 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


I've spent most my life trying to find evidence of my existence in the ocean of media representing our cultural archetypes and I've long been just making my own stories up on top of the "canon" to the point that I don't really care what canon even means anymore, I just make out of it what I need to get out of it.

In my opinion, the most important story is the transphobia and how non-trans folks will intentionally or unintentionally antagonize trans people over this. That said though I respect other trans folks who feel a desire and need to know if Samus is really trans or not for their own personal reasons of needing concrete representation in situations like this.

What we need is a popular gaming franchise that makes a lead character unequivocally trans and then manages to do that in a way that captures the actual nuance and experience of what being trans is like.

In the meantime I'm just gonna make up my own shit in my head to satisfy me. Samus is non binary, Link and Zelda are the same person and Zelda is the boy, Princess Peach is trans, Ryu Hayabusa is a girl and every character in every game is gay.
posted by nikaspark at 11:32 AM on December 19, 2018 [6 favorites]


Proxy TERF arguments in this thread? In my MetaFilter?

YEAH I'VE GOT HOMING MISSILES AND FRICKIN' LASERS AND PARTICLE BEAM CANNONS. COME AT ME, YOU SQUARES AND I'LL DISSOCIATE ALL OF YOUR ELECTRONS FROM YOUR NEUTRONS.

*pew pew pew pew pew pew*

Yeah, I'm actually pretty happy about this news and I can work with this. Trans folk basically have almost zero representation in pop culture. Those of you that want to argue against this or even say anything like "Yeah, but.." or "Actually" you should seriously check yourself and back the fuck up and try to think about what it's like to grow up with zero representation of who you are in the world around you. It's really lonely and shitty.

Samus is now ours. Don't like it? Get out. Go enjoy everything else that readily represents you, which is basically everything under the sun.

posted by loquacious at 12:08 PM on December 19, 2018 [10 favorites]


Just stepping in as an Old Gamer ( Pong early adopter) who rejoiced in her feminist self and went, “HELLYEAH Samus is a FEMALE! About damn time!” We need to embrace and celebrate and I am 100% behind saying, “wow we finally played well enough to reveal HELLYEAH Samus is TRANS! About damn time!” And I not only have zero problems playing a game in which I am expected to identify with my trans fellow beings, but expect to find new layers of meaning in such play. And I am absolutely looking forward to the hypothetical Game In Which Our Trans First Person identity is not only clear and inarguable, but beautifully manifest. For now, though, for what exists? I’ll be playing as Trans Samus.


But first, I gotta grab some snacks and settle in to watch loquacious with this EPIC RUN.
posted by Nancy_LockIsLit_Palmer at 12:31 PM on December 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


Trans Icon Samus Aran is also mentioned in the lovely song "Fake Gamer Girl", about being a trans girl video game aficionado, by Ashby and the Oceanns.
posted by ITheCosmos at 12:37 PM on December 19, 2018


What we need is a popular gaming franchise that makes a lead character unequivocally trans and then manages to do that in a way that captures the actual nuance and experience of what being trans is like.

Once space that I'm seeing this type of representation is through indie games, dating simulators, games that show up on itch.io. Still, even as I type that, I struggle to name games or characters off the top of my head that are unequivocally trans in their representation or story.
posted by Fizz at 12:39 PM on December 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


Banish transphobia and transphobic humor, and let the player choose their gender, including the option to not have one. No fictional universe requires gender to tell a proper story.
posted by Brocktoon at 1:14 PM on December 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


Samus is now ours. Don't like it? Get out. Go enjoy everything else that readily represents you, which is basically everything under the sun.

Samus is also all other women's. Much as we trans women can (and are expected to) relate to cis women, so cis women can very much relate to and look up to trans women. Samus is still a woman. She's not being taken away from any woman or girl who grew up with her as a role model or just badass representation. She is no less a woman for being trans.
posted by Dysk at 2:25 PM on December 19, 2018 [9 favorites]


Kinda related: falsehoods programmers believe about gender or what I end up dealing with every time I encounter a CRPG character creator (with the arguable exception of Battletech.)

Extreme Meatpunks Forever! also pops to mind.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 2:34 PM on December 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


She is no less a woman for being trans.

Objection fully upheld and welcomed. No counter arguments here. My ire is reserved for GG misogynist types, or TERFs and definitely not cis women who want to share in the badassery.

I definitely remember finishing the original Metroid and being VERY MUCH INTO the fact that Samus was a woman and even a more than a little confused about why it was resonating so much with the pretty obvious transformation theme going on, and I don't really remember thinking about it or figuring it out until much, much later and going "Oh... OH."

I'm not just being kind of silly in this thread. This is actually kind of huge for me and really validating.

*Suddenly leaps 40 feet into the air, blasting a zoomer crawling towards us on the ceiling*
posted by loquacious at 3:01 PM on December 19, 2018 [4 favorites]


Extreme Meatpunks Forever! also pops to mind.

By MeFi's own brecc!
posted by cortex at 3:04 PM on December 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


*pew pew pew pew*
posted by loquacious at 5:29 PM on December 19, 2018 [4 favorites]


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