Quick Sketch: Bridget of Guilty Gear

This post is about how I don't understand my own sexuality. My own sexuality is very vanilla, very well documented and represented in fiction and non-fiction, in history, in illustration, in painting, in sculpture in cave painting. It's been studied for a long time, I don't understand it.

I'm heterosexual. Man that seeks women. 

Now something everyone knows about heterosexual men, is that obviously they are attracted obviously, to all women. Of course, a heterosexual male should not be confused with a heterosexual paedophile, so all women obviously means, obviously, to the point of being obvious that as a heterosexual man I am attracted to all women from half-my-age-plus-7-upwards thru, by symmetry, women double-my-age-minus-7.

Obviously, as a heterosexual male, I obviously am into fat women, skinny women, women who climb on rocks; tough women, sissy women; even women with chicken pox; (provided they are at least half-my-age-plus-7, I don't want you to draw the wrong inference from chicken pox).  

My obligation to conform to the statement "I am attracted to women" as though it reads "I am attracted to all women" is something I understand. That's not the part of my sexuality I don't understand.

I don't know, but if I was placed in a prison cell, I don't know if I would fight or if I would just roll over. I don't believe Ice Cube would advise in "Check Yo'self before you wreck yo'self" that "big dicks in your arse are bad for your health." for no reason even if he isn't Dr. Cube, and despite being one of the progenators of Gangsta Rap has never to my knowledge actually been to prison. I assume he heard stories, but you don't know, late 80s south central was a different time.

There's a fair chance that despite deciding that rather than risk my face, I would just blow a guy, let him put a porno mag on my back and have at me, I might size up my roommate and think "piece of cake." and establish my physical dominance. I mean what am I going to prison for at this point? My country has universal healthcare I'm not going to start cooking meth.

The point is, prison aside, why wouldn't I kiss a man? Why do I feel no desire to kiss a man? If my sexuality is based in reproduction, which I get, and maybe has some relationship to hygene, which I also get, why didn't my straight friends and I ever flirt with the idea of giving each other blowjobs? I mean we weren't going to catch anything or have an unplanned pregnancy.

If the reason we tend not to be attracted to our own siblings is because of ingrained incest taboos, why don't people date their brothers? Furthermore, men don't have breasts, so I get why I wouldn't be excited about shoving my face into a mans chest, but I also find exciting the prospect of shoving my face between a woman's butt cheeks (obviously, all women, obviously) but that's a gastrointestinal tract, so why do I have no interest and even whince slightly picturing it, shoving my face between a man's butt cheeks? Is it just because I share public bathrooms with these people? I've seen women eat burritos.

Near as I can figure, my sexuality must have something to do with chemistry. A lot about human sexuality is just plain weird, Alan De Botton talks about it a lot, better than I. The question of whether I want my tastebuds to directly contact the genitals of a woman (all women, obviously) is very context dependent. I don't generally feel that desire strongly, first thing in the morning, but it can occur in the morning if foreplay gets me in the mood for it. By contrast in the evening, if the woman I am with so chooses, to stand up and drop her draws and sit down on my face, I would regard it as a wonderful surprise.

I have had my sexuality all my life. I knew, before I was attracted to girls via a pubescent sexual awakening, that that was how I rolled. I fell in love with women long before I knew what men and women got up to. I remember trying to console myself, in grade 2, when the first girl I had ever crushed on moved away. I still don't understand my sexuality, that doesn't mean that I am possibly getting it wrong. It appears to function, without my understanding it.

Which brings me to Bridget, almost. The subject of today's post, because there's plenty I understand about my sexuality even if I don't in totality understand it.

For example:

Catwoman is someone I find attractive, when realized by Michelle Pfeiffer in Tim Burton's commercially disappointing sequel Batman Returns, I am able to recognize that I am attracted to a fictional character. That an actress is portraying Catwoman, but that Catwoman isn't real. Yet Selina Kyle, major love interest of the emotionally stunted, possibly repressed homosexual, Bruce Wayne, is a very attractive fictitious character. I understand why I find Michelle Pfeiffer, in a professional capacity pretending to be someone who doesn't actually exist, a compelling point of my sexual attention, it's that my heterosexuality can reach into the realm of fiction and fall in love with all kinds of literary types. Even women that are written by men like Joseph Heller's Luciana, Frank Herbert's Chani etc.

Art by Jim Lee, from DC Comics Batman run "Hush"

Such that, I can also be attracted to a drawing of a woman. As above, Jim Lee draws a very attractive Selina Kyle enjoying a night at some theatrical event next to Bruce Wayne, who seems to resent her covering her cleavage with a gloved hand.

To channel a little, but not too much, of Douglas Hoffstader - this is an illusion of an attractive woman. It is pixels on a screen, creating the illusion of the original artwork that was a combination of dots of CMYK to appear to be a colourised copy of Jim Lee's two dimensional sketch on paper of the character of Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman. 

I can find such an image attractive, without being so confused by my own perception colliding with my sexuality that I'm going to fuck a screen. 

Complicatedly, I know that I think that I am looking at someone I am sexually compatible with. My sexuality works such that I can find the drawing of a dude, attractive. I as a heterosexual male am attracted to dudes' drawings.

Fan art of Ranma in his girl form and Ryoga in his pig form aka "P-chan" from Ranma 1/2 by Rumiko Takehashi

Above is a pin-up depicting Ranma protagonist of Ranma 1/2 a romantic comedy japanese comic about a boy who fell into a cursed spring where a girl had tragically drowned and subsequently turns into a girl any time he is exposed to cold(?) water and can only change back with hot(?) water. I would class it as a pin-up on account of the gratuitous cleavage that is the centre of the composition, that is not consistent with how Ranma is usually portrayed (his breasts are usually beneath his Chinese men's top whatever they are called).

Ranma is a boy, there's an interesting case to be made that in his female form Ranma becomes temporarily a trans-man psychologically though while he clearly doesn't like that he transforms into a female often at inconvenient times and one of his major motivations is to find the cursed spring of a drowned boy to neutralize his own curse, he generally doesn't display much disphoria. Ranma's depiction of female Ranma or "Pig-tail girl" as his major heterosexual admirer refers to him, is often quite cynical and exploitative, even willingly posing for gravure photos as a female to be sold to his male admirers. I don't know, I suspect that while many children undergoing some experience of gender dysphoria might gravitate toward the story of Ranma 1/2 this is a series that concluded in the late 80s and is very Japanese culturally and the boy-girl switching is played mostly for laughs. It is also depicted alongside characters who switch from man-to-panda and back, boy-to-piglet, girl-to-cat, boy-to-goose and so on. I guess furries might also be into Ranma, but I'd be inclined to conclude that while the literal fluid method by which Ranma transforms might be a captivating idea, but has little to instruct me or anyone on gender dysphoria in any useful way.

The point being, is that in the same way that I know that I think an image of Selina Kyle is an image of someone I am sexually compatible with. I like lady Ranma's breasts, even though I know they are an image of breasts attached to an underage highschool boy. That's how my sexuality works.

There's an uncomfortable question there, of if my best friend at any point in my younger years when my best friend was typically a male, if my best friend fell into a cursed spring that left him transforming into a woman with a light spritzing of cold water, and having played with his own breasts and fingered his own vagina and stuck inanimate objects up there until he was bored and his curiosity drove him to leave an offer on my table - would I fuck him? I don't know. It's an uncomfortable question.

Then there's Bridget:

Bridget of the Guilty Gear Franchise

Contrary to Bridget's name and appearance, Bridget was introduced to the Guilty Gear fighting game series as male. That is, I have explicitly been told that Bridget is male. 

Now, to be clear, one thing I understand about my sexuality is the difference between the statements "I find her attractive." and "I would have sex with her." In that, while my finding someone attractive is a good predictor of my willingness to have sex, or any form of physical intimacy with them, it is not an equivalent statement. There are many women I will honestly disclose I find attractive while having no interest or intention of actually touching them. Hence the need among myself and my friends like "I wouldn't touch her with your dick."

There's also the beautiful confusion of ambivalence, when I find myself physically attracted to someone I find in character repulsive. The "hate-fuck" if you will, when mind and body do seem to be in a dualistic opposition. 

It needs to be said, that Japan has a massive paedophilia problem. It is inextricably intwined with a culture I have pretty much no time for at all being "Kawaii culture" and the strong positive correlation between economic stagnation and infantalism of a population. Kawaii being the Japanese adjective for "cute" and it receives way more attention than "kireii" Japan's word for "beautiful/clean". It likely also has to do with the Japanese male's anachronistic cultural obsession with the idea that women basically expire at age 25, see the pejorative "christmas cake" I feel this prejudice/stigmatization has lessened, but I don't think it's because Japan is as progressive as the westerners that fetishize it hope it is. My impression of pin-up art coming out of Asia in general, especially post advent of Nijijourney AI-generated art, is that way too many men want to put a 12 year old's head on a 28 year old's body and masturbate in front of it Louis CK style.

So in attempting to discuss Bridget, and if I find Bridget attractive, the obvious answer is "No" because Bridget is depicted as a sexually immature female*.

Fan art of Baiken, also a character from the Guilty Gear video game franchise.

By contrast, if you were to ask me if I found Baiken attractive, a character from the same franchise, I'd say yes, because Baiken is depicted as a sexually mature female. I find Baiken attractive even though she is also depicted as missing an eye and an arm, and a smoker. Hint, it's the massive naugs that suggest to my eye, that Baiken isn't 14 years old.

The thing is, Baiken isn't just depicted as a sexually mature female, we are told by her authors as it were, that she is a sexually mature female.

Bridget is the character that looks like a girl, speaks like a girl, acts like a girl and that we are told is a boy. I should disclose, there may be some point in the Guilty Gear series where Bridget presents as male, in a very unambiguous way. I doubt the game violent as the fighting genre is, would depict Bridget pulling out her dick and pissing while standing, or pulling the padding out of her top and throwing it, but all there really is to tell my ocular senses that Bridget is, in accordance with the cannon - actually male, doesn't come through the depiction of the character, just what narration asserts. For example the female character Jam "smells" that Bridget is male, but a bit too young for her (Jam is boy crazy) and tells Bridget to call her in 5 years time. 

My heterosexuality probably works like Jam's heterosexuality, in that while not conscious, I suspect that my nose in some way or another objects to a man who appears as a sexually mature female that ordinarily I would be attracted to. While I've been targeted by women in my life, I've never had one confess that they dabbed their fingers in their vagina and then on their necks so the pheromones would unconsciously prime my attraction to them. I don't know if this works, because I can't imagine any woman trying it, for the obvious reason that few would risk having all of the office attracted to them, instead of a specific guy they could, you know, flirt with, through speech. Directed speech.

Bridget conceptually however, breaks down chemical objections to her attractiveness, even going so far as to describe Bridget as a "pretty girl" in much the way the Chinese called Anthony Albanese a "handsome boy" and I don't think any of those CCP officials really wanted to fuck our prime minister, because in Bridget's case - authorial intent is irrelevant.

I've written about Renet Magritte's "The Treachery Of Images" before, in my post about how to believe anything you want. It's a painting of a pipe with printed letters "this is not a pipe" which it isn't, because it's an image of a pipe. Bridget is neither boy nor girl because Bridget is a drawing. Bridget is a series of drawings gathered into frames that played in sequence create the illusion of motion that we commonly call animation. These animations respond to player inputs on game controllers and so and so fourth.

My understanding is, that Bridget as per the cannon of the latest instalment in the game franchise, has arrived at the point that the character of Bridget, an actor (english voice actor Kelly Ohanian) reading a script into a recording device, said the line:

"Cowgirl is fine, because...I'm a girl!"

 This moment is regarded as significant by at least one person. I did not watch the full video I linked to, because from the introduction I was not convinced that if I invested the time in hearing the argument for this conclusion, I would actually hear an interesting case put forth. Of more interest and significance to me is the relationship between fiction and sexuality, the ideas that Ranma 1/2 and Bridget stimulate (hint they aren't ideas I masturbate to).

To me there is no significance to a character drawn as a girl, voiced by as far as I can discern exclusively natal females ceasing to pretend they are a boy. It somewhat contravenes the general writing advice of "Show don't Tell" and "Informed Attribute".

Bridget's maleness has only ever been an informed attribute, otherwise she has been straight up lazily depicted as a young girl. Her headband in previous installments of the game sported the symbol for Mars or males, and the backstory said she was the younger of twin brothers that due to local superstitions against twin boys prompted her parents to raise the younger twin as a girl concealing her gender from everyone.

Among all trans-women, Bridget had such an easy time of "passing" that she could wear the symbol for male on her head, and would mostly not be "read" by anyone unless she told them she was a boy. Again, I have not followed so closely the convoluted in-game cutscene law to not know if, as the Japanese are willing to do, some scene where a dude assumes Bridget is as female as she appears and tries to force himself upon her, only to discover male genitalia or something.

Japanese comic artist and writer Oh!Great whose titles are known for sex and violence, had a similar character in Air-Gear drawn as a little girl wearing a little Bo Peep outfit that professes to be male and then demonstrates this by lifting up her dress to reveal to characters in the story his genitals - and don't get the wrong impression, Oh!Great doesn't just straight up graphic pornography involving high-school children, he comes as close as one might dare - the next panel features a euphamistic drawing of an African Elephant's head to suggest to the readers mind that the characters are looking at a wrinkly set of testicles and a penis. 

Oh!Great, much as I would never issue him a "Working With Children" check card, is a talented artist and visual explainer, he found a way to convince me through visual storytelling, if an unrealistic take on human behaviour that a character that looked female but we are told is male, is male within the story. 

Bridget on the other hand, just enjoys the luxury of the medium she exists in. Her personal journey through gender dysphoria, might be inspiring to real people and power to them, but that journey is at best analogous. Likely a false analogy, because Bridget appears to have come to accept the gaslighting of her parents, completing if you will a gender assignment process that was forced upon her. 

Certainly as regards my sexuality, I mean firstly, Bridget doesn't pose much of a challenge in the first place because Bridgette isn't an image of a sexually mature female. Ranma in his female form, is confusing on multiple levels because female Ranma qualifies as Jail Bait, particularly once you accept the cultural norm of Japanese artists in general to give sexually mature women immature faces in their depictions, the Japanese will rarely draw the bridge of a nose because it isn't cute, underdeveloped nose bones are not just a characteristic of pre-pubescent girls, they are more so a visual tell of babies. Same with the big eyes.

Bridget also doesn't pose a challenge though in terms of substituting the gender assignments onto a more adult pin-up character like Baiken or Selina Kyle. If DC were to announce tomorrow that Selina Kyle was retconned into a trans-woman, I wouldn't react like Ace Ventura. It would have no startling implications for my own sexuality, because much as my brain can judge images drawn by men as attractive or unattractive, turn ons or turn offs, I don't confuse them with actual women.

This is a basic adult competence, it is what would allow me to stand trial as a competent adult. 

Peter Boghossian, Tier-B or C public intellectual and BJJ nerd, is a street epistemologist interested but not so successful at having constructive conversations that works on a form of street epistemology he calls "spectrum street epistemology" but he has more techniques. 

One technique is modelling, to move past conversation blockages that another person is struggling with. And he uses an example pertaining to the mysteries of the most vanilla and best studied and attested of the spectrum of human sexuality: heterosexuality.

He asks if a straight man would sleep with a trans woman. The straight man struggles by uttering the non-word "uhhh..." Peter disrupts him as he tries to put his thoughts together and says "ask me the same question." and the straight man asks "would you sleep with a trans woman?" and Peter says "No." that's modelling and when Peter asks the straight man again "would you sleep with a trans woman?" the straight man offers the great answer "Not knowingly."

If I say I find Ranma in his female form attractive, my "yes" answer has many inbuilt explicit caveats that might make me go "uhhh..." if someone showed me a picture of Ranma in his red-haired female form. Like I automatically apply the context where I imagine myself as an age-appropriate peer of Ranma, because though I am now 40 I was once 18, 16, 14 and like now I was generally attracted to females in the vicinity of my own age. Obviously, as a heterosexual male, that means all women in the vicinity of my own age, fat ones, skinny ones, tall ones, short ones, pimply ones, sweaty ones etc. because it would be ludicrous to suggest that preferences might nest within each other. Obviously.

And in this exercise, if tomorrow I was magicked into a cartoon animated 16 year old version of myself attending Ranma and Akane's secondary school, I would readily admit that Ranma when transformed was an attractive female, I would want to be hooking up with first and foremost Kodachi the Black Rose, maybe until I met her Hawaii obsessed father. Shampoo also has it going on, but the fact that she turns into a cat is a big turn off, much as girl Ranma turning into a boy is a bit of a spanner in the works. Akane is cute, but her older sisters, particularly the middle one that sells pictures of Akane and girl Ranma is the kind of trouble I was always drawn to.

If asked if I'd sleep with a transwoman, this is the thing, heterosexuality doesn't work such that in being attracted to women, I am not anywhere close to being attracted to all women. I am attracted to women who have the key quality of being attractive. That seems to consist of phenotype cues pertaining to health and fertility. But also a bunch of curious things like how they laugh, how they hold a cigarette, because while I'm attracted to attractive women, I would not sleep with any of all the women I find attractive. Some I would rather have in my mental spank bank than in my bed.

I've also had the experience of sleeping with women I don't find attractive. Part of it is very circumstantial. My sexuality permits me to say to a trans woman "I really like your tits and arse, but I'm not a fan of your dick, and it kind of overrules the whole situation."

Bridget or Ranma as fictitious characters can enjoy the ease with which they pass, because they were designed by a literal creator to pass, in my assessment of their attractiveness. I can imagine being persuaded semantically that trans women are women but my answer would also be "not knowingly" and I have been in a situation where I genuinely did not know if I was hooking up with a guy or a girl until she got her period. Their are certain ethnicities where sexual dimorphism is less pronounced than my own, and while a very attractive woman, she did have a slight adams apple and clomped around like a clydesdale. 

But I found her attractive enough to be willing to find out something new about my sexuality. I deemed the situation one in which the person I thought was female was so likely a female that I would have no real cause for embarrassment should she reveal she was once a dude. Then I'd have to take it from there, because well I think ultimately, I am reluctant to form an attachment to someone for whom I can be certain that having kids will be a complicated and difficult process, even though I'm willing to get attached to someone with whom there is a chance having kids will be a complicated and difficult process. Reproduction is important.

The Japanese have made gameshows out of panel guests having to concoct tests and guess which of a group of presented females are actually boys. One memorably asked two candidates to mime how they would park a bicycle and the male revealed himself by kicking his pretend bike stand into place quite forcefully.

There are certainly things that genderqueer culture can learn from non-western cultures like Japan, like indigenous cultures, like India, like Mexico. It's just that learning process is very difficult given how difficult it is to approach alien-cultural artifacts with the biases of your own culture. I'm quite close to Japan and though it's been a good while, and my Japanese friends and I are no longer the over exposed and over examined youth culture, my guess is that Japan is not at the forefront of gender progressivism. Japan is the only G7 nation that legally excludes same-sex marriage and extending spousal benefits to same-sex couples.

In light of the depiction of Buddhist monk Tripitaka in "Monkey" 1978, played by Masako Natsume and dubbed into english by Maria Warburg, where in the show every single character treats the obviously female actress with the obviously female voiceover as the male she is portraying...to this day I have no idea why this particular casting decision was made, wikipedia as per occassionally has the answers though:

Masako won the part as she had matched contemporary descriptions of Sanzō-hōshi's appearance more closely than male actors who auditioned.

I would contend Masako's depiction of Tripitaka in the late 70s is about as significant as anything Bridget has done. I believe in stories, I believe in fiction as a technology, and the power of narratives. 

If Bridget reconciling some conception of herself helps anyone reconcile their own dysphoria whatever manner it manifests for them, power to you. Such fictions also help me explore the mysteries of my own sexuality though, and I've never felt any internal dysphoria, though sometimes I wake up and I find it weird to be me, almost like some Dark City shit is going on.

A categorical preference though is not consent. Teenage Tik-Tok users shouldn't have to be making up new sexualities like "Super-straight" to specify they are only attracted to cis-women because when asked if trans-women are women they go "uhhh...". Maybe they can't articulate that the prefix "trans" is a reliable predictor of belonging to the larger subset of all the women they as straight men are not attracted to, like women quintuple their age minus 7.