ABOUT SAKURA'S GENDER

May 02, 2010 14:27

Gender in Sakura's canon is a little bit complicated, so I thought I would have a go at explaining right from the start. If you understand Takarazuka terms, he's effectively an otokoyaku except living the role rather than acting, and if you don't then here is some tl;dr for you.

Basically, in Sakura's world there are only females. The government, using hilarious logic, decided that people still needed to be divided into two groups, and one group should take care of kids and the home while the other should take care of having jobs and being in government and stuff, and the twain should only meet to get married and act like a proper het couple. It is pretty likely that the plot is about deconstructing just how ridiculous this system is, but for now that's how it is and Sakura is very much part of the system.

That system raised Sakura to be masculine, but not necessarily to be a man. He's not transsexual and doesn't experience any kind of bodily dysphoria- he's quite comfortable with being female. He's an Adam, not a man. We use masculine pronouns because Adams use strongly masculine Japanese, are referred to in canon with masculine pronouns, and they do think of themselves as masculine in general. We don't know yet whether the system is arbitrary or if people choose at a young age which they'd rather be, but Sakura at least is perfectly comfortable in his identity as an Adam.

So if people point out that he's a girl, he won't mind. He already knows that. The distinction between "man" and "woman" is irrelevant in his world since there are only women, it's the distinction between "Adam" and "Eve" that matters. That said, he'd be more confused than offended if anyone thought he was an Eve, since he dresses and moves and talks completely differently to one. It's a little difficult to describe and I'm not sure I've done a great job of it, but that's hopefully the basics.
Previous post Next post
Up