Watashitachi wa Moto Joshi desu - Vol. 2 Ch. 11

[EchoGirl]

Ah, I see someone still has hope after reading the 807249265th heteronormative genderbend manga, you must have impressive mental fortitude.

https://mangadex.org/title/bda3a298-a84f-49dc-8821-b5e48c35bd67/haikei-seken-sama Dear Society ended up pretty good

 

[dedmoroz]

i am...genuinely impressed by the accuracy of SRS description and the little details scattered within. they got thailand right. they got colonvaginoplasty right. they got the fact that money alone can't get you an appointment, and if you show any sign of "not being 100% committed" the surgeon will turn you down on the spot. they got the intense dilation post-op care right. they even got the stigma surrounding transmedicalism and the horrors over toxic "genitals=gender" right.

---

The first red flag for me in this manga was the fact that Rinko's attraction to girls was attributed to the sudden increase in testosterone...we've known for decades that testosterone does not promote attraction to women in neither men nor women. It merely increases the sexual drive for whatever preference the person was born with (i.e. developed prenatally).

this is not 100% accurate. or, rather, it is a mistake to be so confident in this evaluation. evidence surrounding whether or not hormone change/HRT "actually" changes sexuality or merely manifests the latent sexuality is purely anecdotal and seems to differ on a person-to-person basis.

source: me

 

[immy]

I guess genitalia is just visible and visceral part of our lives that it "works".
But sometimes I think about scaring people from getting heart surgeries or gastrointestinal surgeries by showing gross videos where your body gest torn open, same way certain people do with SRS/GRS videos.

 

[Kirin-kun]

When you hold Blahaj, Blahaj doesn’t judge, Blahaj simply understands.

 

[zips]

this whole thing is a pretty obvious attempt to explain part of the trans experience to cis people.

if you're cis, you naturally try to imagine yourself changing sex and wonder why you'd ever do that, which you cannot understand, because you're cis. trying to understand how and why you'd try to get back to your original body after being magically sex-changed and suddenly being treated as that gender by everyone is a much closer analogy.

 

[poppinnow]

Fell for the classic looking up way too many details about a surgery, u can make almost any procedure this horrifying if you explain it the way the girl in the video did omg

This surgery is objectively horrifying lmao and why would you not look up the details of what is being done to you 😂

 

[Kirin-kun]

I think people here give too little credits to the author. For one, they explored gender change issues previously, in a darker way (that got their series cancelled) and this one added more comedy to make it less "depressing", but the themes are still there.

And they obviously did their homework, because the way they describe the surgery, etc, means they documented themselves on it quite a bit.

So, what is this manga about? It's about the journey of "former girls" in the context of a near-future Japan society. That's all.

From the context, you can understand that the disorder is something recent (Saya's brother still remember GB manga being a thing but having been cancelled) and that probably Japan laws didn't change that much (it's a conservative country). So, to be considered a woman in the family register, which is Japan specific, you have to not have a dick and be unable to have a child (though that may have changed in recent years). And since Rinko has a dick now, they would be considered a man in the family register. Call Japan a backward country if you want, but that's the way it is.

So, what the author does is presenting Rinko's pov, and probably other former girls in the future) and how it wrecks havoc in her life and in her relationships. The mother is here to represent the "conservative" side (though she's not against eventual SRS) and the father represents the "carefree" side, without much thoughts about the future but just witnesses the immediate pain of Rinko. We have the same opposition between Saya and Subaru, with one being like "just go for it" and the other being "hold your horses".

Now, Rinko got "magically" changed into a boy and now gets hardons when confronted with the female body.

I saw some comments that the author attributed this to the hormones. It's not really true. It's stated in a previous chapter that Rinko "always liked boobs". Which is a hint the author put to show that the sexual preferences of Rinko were not that clear cut, even before the change, but maybe the change just magnified that aspect. She was romantically attracted to Yuuki senpai and still is (?), but was she sexually attracted to him? It's not clear. But in the present, he just does nothing for Rinko's dick. That may have been comphet though, like before it was logical and normal for Rinko to think that liking Yuuki equates wanting to date him and be his girl, but with the change it's not clear anymore. Rinko may be bisexual OR may have only been attracted sexually to girls before without really thinking deeply about it.

What about the lack of talk about puberty blockers then? I doubt the author doesn't know about them, since they obviously did their research. But remember, it's a manga and the goal of the author is not necessarily to describe Rinko's journey to go back to being a girl. It's a mix of comedy and drama about former girls (plural) and putting Rinko on puberty blockers right off the bat would probably get in the way of what the author intends for the future. This is not a manga about the journey of a trans girl, which would get into the details of the transition of the MC (there are other manga that do that), it's about various characters and how they deal with the sudden change. Maybe some other character will be on puberty blockers in the future and explain what that entails, we don't know.

Now that's out of the way, there are still many questions and it'll be up to Rinko, who will interact with the other "former girls", to find answers.

There are various ways this manga can go :

• Rinko decides to go back to being a girl, after weighing her options carefully and goes for the surgery, etc.
• Rinko accepts the new body and eventually adapts. Maybe Yuuki's own journey will play a role in that?
• Rinko changes back magically again

But what is sure is that the mangaka will introduce new characters and new challenges for Rinko and explore gender issues and will not cut her journey short by putting her on puberty blockers and go in Thailand. This is not the manga you're looking for.

 

[stilgar]

I want to add people complaining about the manga being "transphobic" are ridiculous.
They just dislike to be faced with the truth about their bad life choice that they will definitely regret sooner or later.

I wouldn't call reading manga a bad life choice

 

[Marrro90123]

It's the snip-snip chapter

 

[NinjaGoemon]

But what is sure is that the mangaka will introduce new characters and new challenges for Rinko and explore gender issues and will not cut her journey short by putting her on puberty blockers and go in Thailand. This is not the manga you're looking for.

This was all well put I appreciate it. TBH I completely forgot Japan still requires surgery to change their marker (although I think the supreme court ruled that unconstitutional recently) since there's other pov manga that go "well I'd have to divorce my wife if I wanted to change my marker so I didn't do it".

I think the author's intent is in part to make people experience dysphoria and confusion over what's going on because they're very very good at it. Definitely got me in a panic. So hopefully Rinko gets some solution some day that they're happy with.

 

[xyzzy]

Manga readers when a genre which has always acted like a metaphor for trans issues actually delves into trans issues

 

[MasterDonut]

Page 19 BLÀHAJ

 

[KimKowabunga]

This manga is a good case study of what a non-western culture makes of the binary western gender system.
Japan didnt have an issue with feminine men being either straight or gay, nor with transgenderism or crossdressing.
It's the west that brought over concepts that your genitals have to match your preference, so there's a cultural disconnect between how japan views topics like homosexuality and gender and how the puritan west views them.
The west went from lynching homosexuals to claiming every single feminine man with long hair is trans in a matter of a few decades, meanwhile japan had centuries of nuance that now get swept over by boorish protestant ideas from the west.
So give the author a break.

 

[nyannibalism]

Fell for the classic looking up way too many details about a surgery, u can make almost any procedure this horrifying if you explain it the way the girl in the video did omg

i got an eye surgery the other week and made the mistake of watching videos about it like two weeks before and took me like a week before i forgot about how the videos described them. definitely presentation has a huge impact

 

[Lame_Security]

This surgery is objectively horrifying lmao and why would you not look up the details of what is being done to you 😂

You could say the same to any surgery. You're basically cutting open parts of your body under sterilized (hopefully) environment in order to fix/do something with it.

 

[Ichaivalrose]

You could say the same to any surgery. You're basically cutting open parts of your body under sterilized (hopefully) environment in order to fix/do something with it.

Yeah this was my point lol any invasive surgery like srs is scary af if u look too much into it

 

[rkkn]

waiting to see if it will ever acknowledge the fact that you can do hormones without the surgery

 

[TheLostLight]

this is not 100% accurate. or, rather, it is a mistake to be so confident in this evaluation. evidence surrounding whether or not hormone change/HRT "actually" changes sexuality or merely manifests the latent sexuality is purely anecdotal and seems to differ on a person-to-person basis.

source: me

Good point. Sexual orientation is complex and nowhere near fully understood. It would be more accurate to say that many studies have attempted to provide a link between postnatal hormones and sexual orientation, and yet no link has ever been demonstrated. Our best working theory of sexual orientation is that it is largely developed prenatally, with much more evidence to support this view.

 

[dedmoroz]

Good point. Sexual orientation is complex and nowhere near fully understood. It would be more accurate to say that many studies have attempted to provide a link between postnatal hormones and sexual orientation, and yet no link has ever been demonstrated. Our best working theory of sexual orientation is that it is largely developed prenatally, with much more evidence to support this view.

also i completely forgot about this until just now but ch5 page 17, lol, lmao

 

[Elizzabeth2]

I am just reading this chapter and thinking how different they are making her character compared to the beginning. The beginning looked like a traditional anime girl and now I am starting to see the changes in art. props to the artist :3