What Should I Call You? On Trans Readings, Pronouns, and Naruto

By: Fabby Ann Garza

Most of mainstream media out there has very few queer characters, and when it comes to trans and non-binary characters that number drops even more. Take away all the characters whose genders are played up as a joke, and what you are left with is a very limited scope of media in which trans folk can watch and see themselves in.

I’ll be the first one to say support and “consume media made by queer and trans folks” because it will have the best representation, but what if you want to enjoy a piece of mainstream media? What if you see a character you identify with, whose journey mirrors your own, but they are not called explicitly trans by the work?

My first instinct, and I’ve seen this done a lot online, is to say: “this character reminds me of my trans journey, so I will adjust the character’s pronouns to fit my own.” Now this is complicated because most popular media was not made to be explicitly queer/trans, and queer/trans folks should be allowed to see themselves in whatever media they want. The world is hard and what we can use to help us we should, and these are fictional characters not real people for whom you must always use their correct pronouns and this is not up for debate.

But, I cannot help feel wrong when a character says I am a man/I am a woman, or these are my pronouns and then say, well no, this character is actually a trans woman not a man. So I decided to go the other way with my trans reading. If a character says, I am a man, then yes, he is, also he is a trans man, If a character says, I am a woman, she is a trans woman. Or perhaps these characters are nonbinary/agender/etc but use binary pronouns.

Let’s talk about Naruto, a manga and anime by Masashi Kishimoto. The titular character is a young ninja who has been ostracized by his community for circumstances related to his birth/infancy. These same circumstances have left Naruto with no family or support system and a deep desire for belonging and respect. These are things that are not unfamiliar to trans folk. Our assigned gender at birth can often feel like a demon fox we are forced to carry around.

I recently started watching Naruto, and while I like Naruto (the character), there’s another character that really stole the show. In one of the early arcs, there’s a person named Haku, and after meeting him, I just couldn’t stop thinking about him. Now, quick digression, Haku’s arc is about being a tool of another character who was the only one to ever make him feel useful and needed and while that is complicated and not healthy at all, fuck me if that’s not relatable trans content for me.

Haku is presented in a very feminine way, to make you, the viewer, think of him as a woman. The voice actors for both the Japanese and American versions are women. Yet, when he is introduced, everyone (but Naruto) uses he/him and treats him like a man. Haku himself corrects Naruto who calls him sister and says I am a man, but sadly, this is treated as a joke.

And while I may had already started to think of Haku as not Cis, the fact that he insists, “I am a man”, made me go, well obviously this character is not Cis, and he says  he is a man, so he must be a trans man. If you are trans, like I am, I would bet that you’ve had plenty of moments in your life where you either had to correct someone on your gender and pronouns, or wish you could correct them and just quietly got upset. I tend to do the latter.

To hear a character say “this is my gender, this is who I am” really affected me. It made me feel incredibly defensive of their gender and led me down this line of thinking. If we change a characters pronouns, are we doing a disservice to any transfolk that share those pronouns? I don’t know. But I don’t feel good doing it.  

I am not a trans man, I am a trans nonbinary genderfluid demiwoman, but, I feel this reading, and readings like this work for me. Staying true to the characters pronouns, but still seeing the character as trans. If they don’t work for you that’s ok. Your trans reading of a character is yours.  If you do have these trans or nonbinary reading that’s don’t change the character’s pronouns I would be very interested in listening about them.