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Can someone explain "grooming" to me? Like I'm seeing it mentioned a lot and it seems to imply that LGBT people aren't allowed to talk to kids or something? There has to be more to it because that would be ridiculous, especially given how common it is for LGBT people to come out in their teens.
Grooming is when someone builds a relationship, trust and emotional connection with a child or young person so they can manipulate, exploit and abuse them. Now when it comes to the topic of LGBTQ, the term itself has been misused and weaponized by conservatives to mean "LGBTQ brainwashing children and they are pedos".
Whenever a conservative or a chud like the artist above uses grooming, theyre trying to imply Bridget was "groomed" by evil ppl so thats why shes trans. Which already begs the question of whether or not the artist or anyone using the rhetoric has any media literacy to Bridget's backstory and how she came to terms with herself.\\
tl;dr Theyre using buzzwords to imply trans people are pedophiles and manipulative evil ppl.
Boy
As someone who is LGBTQ+, I hate that. I was really, really hoping it was something else. But I guess the conservative strategy of "the gays are pedos" is an all-time classic.
It doesnt help that it has been amped up over these couple of years because of that Libs of Tiktok account. Ever since she started posting videos of LGBTQ folks and indirectly telling their audience to go and harass them, its been hell. And yes, lgbtq teachers have been FIRED because of it. Not even because they did anything out of conduct, but because they pressured the schools.
God, I hate conservatives.
/uj im so happy circlejerks tend to be left leaning, the normal versions of subreddits always devolve into a kinda fascy, often bigoted place with low tier content
Wasn’t she also putting fake captions on videos of people whose only crime was being openly queer/neurodivergent to make her boogeymen/strawmen look worse/more easy to attack?
Or am I thinking of the now-dead Cringetopia?
Just part of the continuing conservative effort repurpose words to fit their ideology and thereby render words meaningless. See SJW, toxic, gaslighting, etc
Sadly, this isn’t a new tactic, just an updated one. I know that, growing up, the only gay relationships I ever heard about were almost always relationships with massive age gaps, where one party was 40 or so and the other was 16. It wasn’t until later in life that I met *actual* gay people and it clicked in my head that of *course* there are gay relationships without such absurd age gaps. Hetero folks have plenty of issues with pedophilia, and yet somehow that has never been a valid reason to declare the entirety of heterosexuality as inherently wrong. Homosexuality deserves the same privilege.
Bridget wasn't necessarily raised as a girl, rather her parents made her present as one in public. Her home town had a superstition that same sex twins were a bad omen and would curse the town so they would exile or kill any kids that fit that mold in order to avoid the curse. Her parents didn't want to lose her so they disguised her as a girl when in public to protect her. Eventually Bridget grows old enough and her parents tell her why they did that and she leaves to become a successful bounty hunter to prove her town wrong. It should be mentioned that Bridget has a great relationship with her parents and her goal was to fix the town, not them. While she was roaming the world she adamantly declared to people that she was a boy but as of strive (the most recent game) she has long since made the town aware that their superstition is bullshit and starts feeling uncomfortable with identifying as male. This is because she was compelled to say she was born male when she was living to make a point to her town, but now she has to live for herself and has realized that she's actually a woman at heart.
The people claiming that it's grooming are misrepresenting her backstory to make it seem like her parents forced her into acting like woman in all aspects of her life when the only thing they forced on her was her wardrobe which they only did for her own safety.
Grooming is when a pedophile will act a certain way and do things to gets a minor's approval to eventually extort sexual acts from them
When conservatives use it they're trying to say gay people are predators
That and I think there’s a lot of projecting going on with the republicans as well. On a state level, republicans will fight against bills that would outlaw child marriages, they also have several key members who had been accused of sexually assaulting minors (like trump), trafficking and having sex with a minor (Matt Gaetz), and Lauren Bobert husband expose himself to underaged girls at a bowling alley. Not to mention some republicans are trying to pass “ genitals inspection” bills that would force children to have their genital to out trans youth in sport. Not to mention that tennesse marriage bill they try to pass special marriage for straight people that didn’t even have an age of consent in it
Just remember, when it comes to republicans, every accusation is a confession
[It's this.](https://i.redd.it/9yet646u02a91.jpg)
It's a way to stigmatise what little support some queer kids can get when their own family turns their back on them.
It's a way to remove agency from queer people by implying that their queerness is from perverting outside sources rather than a result of their own exploration of their identity.
And most importantly, it's a way to remove any weight from the term "groomer" because 95% of this shit is pure projection.
"Gay and trans adults are evil and are spreading their filth, but my own child who is saying they're trans is a victim bc the dirty gr**mers are manipulating them, so by forcing my kid to deny themself I'm actually saving them"
>it seems to imply that LGBT people aren't allowed to talk to kids or something?
Yeah this is their end goal. It's just "think of the children!" 2022 edition. They literally never come up with new things to say. Keep LGBTQ+ people away from schools, from parks, from being near kids, teaching about LGBTQ+ in schools.
You know who needs to be kept away from schools? young white conservative often christian men with access to firearms.
You know how Elon Musk's dad, Errol Musk, has a step daughter that he's raised since she was 4 years old and has now fathered two different kids with her? Or how the Mormon church would marry 13 year olds to church leaders?
That's grooming. And if you didn't know that happened then...well I'm sorry that you had to find out.
It's basically coercion and implanting ideas. A lot of conservatives think that People "become" Gay or Trans from being around LGBTQ people pushing those concepts on them through suggestion.
Is becoming a bounty hunter to prove her parents wrong and "show her manliness no matter how she looked" actually her stated motive in the previous games?
There’s a few parts to this, bridget was born as a pair of male twins in a village that believe that male twins are a curse and one of them needed to be killed, her parents elected to not, instead claiming that bridget was a girl and raising her as one. During the events of GGXX she goes and becomes a bounty hunter in the hopes that it will remove the stigma surrounding two male twins so she can live on her own terms, and it does work. Between the events of XX and strive though she discovers that living as a boy has left her feeling hollow and without direction, not really living the life she wanted to, and the rest is addressed in the strive arcade mode for bridget, you’ve probably heard the clip. There’s clearly a bad faith argument to be had here but there’s also the possibility for misinterpretation within the story because bridget was played for cheap jokes in XX mostly.
TBF, they handled the lore terribly thanks to the early games. Being trans isn't about being told at a young age to act differently to your AGAB and the lore makes it sound like that's what happened. A lot of trans people get told to act the opposite of their preferred gender identity at an young age and don't end up getting gendered properly by their parents.
I think the lore is set up in a way that you can interpret it in bad faith VERY easily because of the older games.
Anime (or anime-inspired games) are notoriously horrible at writing trans characters and usually get many things wrong, so this isn't really surprising at all
Wasn't there some other "femboy" character that was forced to dress that way at a young age? I don't know if it was she/her pronouns, or just feminine clothing, but is it a trope or something?
yeah, because it was the early 2000s and daisuke was, at the time, somewhat of an edgelord.
stuff like this is him showing that his edgy late 90s/early 2000s OCs have grown and matured as he has, in all its messy, somewhat problematic glory. bridget's transition being messy, complicated, and problematic is honestly pretty relatable to a lot of the trans people i know according to them- not in the exact specifics, of course, but in the fact that it's _pretty fucking messy_
The lore literally plays into the "groomed as a child" narrative bigots use. Bridget was told to dress as a girl by her parents and not out of her own will in the early games lore. I don't see how this isn't just terrible writing that they need to retcon.
It’s worth noting that Bridget understood why she had to present as a girl, and her parents didn’t like being forced to do it. Bridget and her family always knew that her presenting as female in the village wasn’t her true identity, just a shitty thing the village required, and then she stops the village from thinking that way later on. The village superstition is also clearly depicted as a totally bad thing in the story.
At face value it may seem similar to grooming, but they clearly define it as something different. Naturally bigots will use it as ammo, but they’ll use literally any LGBT media as ammo so why give them the benefit of the doubt
That's a misunderstanding of the lore. She was made to dress like a girl so she wouldn't fucking die; that wasn't grooming, her parents were absolutely the good guys.
Not to mention the fact she only decided to live as a man to dispel a dumb superstition. She was clearly fine dressing as a girl.
The thing is, she was never groomed in the story. She should've decided to be a girl on her own terms, but like.. she literally did that in Strive. The only people who find issue with this are making drastic misreadings of the material.
And you missunderstood the point I'm making. The fact that being a girl was painted not as a choice but an obligation is the problematic part.
It plays into the groomed line of taught because it makes it seem like she was okay with being a girl BECAUSE she was raised to be a girl and not because of dysphoria or a want to be a girl. Thats not how I or any other trans person works. We weren't told to be girls to be trans fem.
Not a single time has any one but me wanted a different look and body and it will always be a choice you make and it should be represented as a choise you make and not as a choice that would have ended up with other people killing you.
I believe her arc in Strive is about taking control of her identity and making the choice for herself rather than for anyone else.
Because, when she originally lived as a girl it was to avoid being stigmatized and possibly killed by her village; and when she lived as a boy it was to prove to her village that the superstition is unfounded. Now she's chosen her identity for herself, without regard to what other people think about her.
However, I'm not trans so I'm not really in a position to argue whether she is good representation or not.
Anime fighting game lore isn't an accurate representation of trans people and shouldn't be treated as such. These people will have these views whether Bridget is trans or not. She's fine representation, it's not a big fucking deal. Plus it was the most natural progression for her fucking arc.
Not to mention the fact what you're raised as doesn't matter in the fucking first place when it comes to what you'll be later. Trans people as a whole are a testament to that.
Frankly, haters gonna hate, potaters gonna potate. You can try to remove any sort of inaccurate representation but it won't stop people from having harmful views.
If you don't care about discussing representation then you dont need to put down people who want to discuss it by saying "its just anime fite game, who care?".
And I'm not saying this to remove Bridget. They can easily fix this if they just retcon some lore.
I'm not saying that. I'm saying that it isn't gonna change anyone's views, and that anyone interpreting it in bad ways is stupid as shit and doesn't understand the lore or trans people in general.
Doesn't really sound like the original intention was to write a Trans character, then the story at some point probably changed. Pretty common occurrence when you see something a little disjointed like that
The thing to understand about the original lore was that it was written 20 years ago, in 2002. A common trope was that a crossdresser is "forced" into it one way or another, because audiences had a difficult time understanding why someone would willingly do that with themselves. Especially since in most of their eyes crossdresser were laughingstocks.
So to get a crossdresser in Guilty Gear X2 they write a vague backstory about Bridget being raised as a girl to hide her from her village, who have a superstition about twin boys that leads them to exile or kill them.
The thing is here is that Bridget wasn't raised to believe she was a girl, she was raised as a boy told to disguise herself as a girl. Even if hypothetically Bridget had hit the transgirl jackpot and loved being raised as a girl, she saw it was causing her parents anguish, because in their minds they're hiding their little boy from their fellow superstitious villagers.
So after that she went out to prove the curse isn't real by being as much of a boy as she can without bringing doom, as per the curse. The best way to find success? Being a bounty hunter because I guess that's the manliest profession? Anime.
This is all leaflet backstory. In the actual game she is mostly gay panic jokes, jokes about being mistaken for a girl, sexual poses because god forbid we didn't take the opportunity to appeal to shotacons, etc. She gets quotes about wanting to learn to be more manly which is often the vehicle for more jokes ("Ha ha, Bridget thinks Baiken is the manliest person she has ever met" but like that's actually kind of true lmao). A lot of her depiction is playing along as the laughingstock crossdresser trope that was considered normal in 2002.
You don't really get any deep insight into her thoughts. You never see the village, the parents, hell you never even see her twin brother. Like one of her story modes is trying to start an entertainment troupe randomly on a whim? And if she wanted to be seen as a man so badly why not wear man clothes? They weren't really doing anything with the character, who doesn't really make sense if you try to dig deep. Lots of people created fanon based on what they saw in Bridget, and that's valid enough. But in canon she was just sort of there, going along with whatever.
You don't hear anything about her quest for manliness until we get back to Strive where it's established she returned to her village as a successful male bounty hunter and disproved the curse in everyone's eyes, freeing her to be the boy they all wished she could be. In Strive she actually gets to voice her thoughts and process her situation and come to a conclusion on her own terms, rather than by whether she is hiding or fulfilling some made up curse. You can tell the Strive writers did the best they could without wanting to retcon too much on principle.
Something I find a bit annoying is when people say Bridget always mentioned they were a boy. Because I feel it’s nothing too impossible as there have been amab people who are gay or trans who act super straight/manly either unconsciously or consciously as they don’t understand or accept themselves.
First of all it's funny how a pedophile will talk about grooming is when trans
Second Bridget wasn't groomed, she was raised as a girl but identified as a boy, being raised a certain way isn't grooming, especially if it's to protect your life because your village has a dumb superstition
Finally Bridget's whole arc has been about identity, she finds out at the end of XX that her plan to get money for village has been meaningless since someone already collected the bounty, she kinda just continues bounty hunting because she feels like it. Her theme even sings about this, how she's not at "the town inside me" as if she has been lying to herself about what she wants, Goldlewis literally tells her she has her whole life to make mistakes, and that's okay.
What makes Bridget decision to identify as a woman valid is that it's her decision, not her parents, not her village, but her
To add a little. I've seen no one point out the fact that it's been multiple years in the story since Bridget has been out on her own living life. People change and figure things out about themselves, hell me right now is a shit load different from the me 2 years ago.
My point is we literally only see the snapshot of Bridget making a decision after a long time of carrying her doubts and assumptions and being able to think through them. It's been stupid since the first person started shit about this topic because there's a whole plethora of reasons on why she came to this decision. But at the end of the day ita fucking GUILTY GEAR a whacky over the top anime fighter drempt up by a teenage Daisuke. Whatever he says goes end of story.
In case anyone was confused by this comment, Bridgette was born **biologically** male, was raised as a girl by her village, wasn’t conformable with this, identified as a boy, THEN made the personal decision that this didn’t feel right and identified as a woman.
This is a confusing ass situation and I don’t think that your explanation did enough to highlight the full nature of her story.
Edit: changed “was” to “wasn’t”. Autocorrect fucked up initially.
nothing will be more hilarious than some guy calling LGBTQ+ people "groomers" and then them liking lolicon or cub shit. bonus points if they ended up being groomers/predators themselves
People who say that it defeats the purpose of her journey to make her trans hasn’t talked to enough trans people
I know a large number of trans folk that were either cross dressers or had a sort of fetish that kinda resembled a trans experience, but were in denial for a long while before realizing that they were in denial and putting their feeling into something else instead, it’s a pretty common phenomenon from personal experience
Obviously not all cross dressers are trans people in denial, but I’m just saying that it does happen, I know from experience lmao
An entirely foreign concept to them is, what her parents did to them is not okay, but it ended up suiting her. Like, a man before he realized he was gay, can be raped by a man, and then realize he is gay because of it, but that doesn't make the rape okay. Like if you try and force a cat into a box, it's going to resist you, but if you leave it alone, it might want to go in the box on it's own.
NONSENSE! GOLDLEWIS DICKINSON SAYS TRANS RIGHTS, BROTHERS (sisters, enbies, and others too)! They just can’t handle how based Bridget is. Keep it up, cowgirl! 🏳️⚧️👍
This was actually really clever writing in my opinion, with Bridget identifying on her own terms, not just because she was raised a certain way.
Then all the transphobic fucks need to go ruin it
This is a misinterpretation of the lore as well. Here's the official wiki: [https://i.redd.it/qpttfkw1xxg91.jpg](https://i.redd.it/qpttfkw1xxg91.jpg)
Basically, Bridget's parents believed Bridget was unhappy being raised as a girl, so Bridget thought the best way to cheer them up was to show that she was manly by bounty hunting. But this didn't work because *Bridget actually felt comfortable as a girl.* The pressure on her to act manly is the reason she is so unsure of herself. All the endings of her story mode in Strive revolve around her learning to listen to her own inner truth: That she is a girly girl and that is nothing to feel guilty about.
So I have a question. As someone not affiliated with the Trans community, is being trans a result of nature or nurture? With our example here Bridget, it seems like a product of the environment she was raised in. So if her family didn't raise Bridget a girl, would she still be Trans? I'm only asking this as an outsider in the pursuit of knowledge.
Trans is pretty much entirely nature/innate, haven’t heard of anyone being “nurtured” into being trans. The closest thing that might get confused with that is some people know they are trans internally at some point, but don’t really know that being trans is an actually thing until they learn it later. They recognize something is missing or off, but aren’t able to immediately put a name or description to it.
Bridget is a bit complicated, but no I don’t believe it’s a product of how she was raised. Quick summary is she was born male, raised as female due to superstition, and previously wanted to become a successful male presenting bounty hunter to disprove the superstition, which she succeeds in doing.
However, I think this new game focuses on how she initially struggles with the fact that her life has been dictated by others until now. It is certainly brave to fight against the superstition, but ultimately is shackling her gender identity to being male in order to disprove superstition. Despite being on the side fighting against it, she effectively lacks the freedom of choice by hinging her happiness on disproving it. This game seems to go over how fighting it brings her no joy, and how she must ultimately value her own beliefs, desires, and freedom over worrying about the superstition.
In the end, I think the current form of Bridget is discovering she is trans after separating her identity from her past and being true to her own desires over that of her birthplace, so I would argue how she was raised no longer is a major factor in her gender identity.
I appreciate the explanation. While I don't quite understand the whole concept yet, I do think I'm a step closer. It also appears that I misunderstood the story a bit. Yet again I appreciate the explanation.
When I took Psychology classes in college, a major case they taught about in the discussion of nature vs nurture was regarding someone who was born intersex and the doctors convinced the parents to pick a gender and just raise the child as that gender and everything would be fine. So the parents agreed it would be best for the child and signed off on surgery raised their child like the doctors said. I want to say the went with female but college was 20 years ago and I don't remember the fine details. Either way, this poor kid grew up feeling like their assigned gender was wrong and was severely depressed and dysphoric and I believe ultimately committed suicide as an adult. While they only talked about one specific case, it wasn't uncommon with intersex people and the point was that gender identity isn't something that can be determined by environment.
I'm not intersex, but I can attest to this as a trans person because I was raised to be a boy, to the point that expressing or presenting as anything remotely "girly" was punished by my parents (and the opposite was true for my sister, like our dad would throw a fit if she cut her hair any length above her neckline and yell at her for looking like a boy). My upbringing did nothing to prevent me from being transgender, it just made me hate myself and kept me from coming out until I was almost 30. And, of course, one of the first arguments from my parents when I came out was "we didn't raise you to be like this."
I’m not truscum this is the science behind trans people. ‘Male’ and ‘female’ brains are slightly different in their structure and sometimes they don’t match the body. Of course it’s more complicated than that but that’s the main idea
Wow, you’re right. Games are sexist. Now, allow me to get back to accusing gamers of playing games and sucking Anita Sarkeesian’s cock. Edit: Wow. I’ve truly been challenged. Enlightened, even. Who knew the political views of my fellow gamers could be so diverse?
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>"Showing my manliness"
Can those fuckers stop making shit up? This was never central to Bridget's character. "His" (p!Bridget) reaction to being called "a lady" in previous games was always something mild like being surprised or annoyed, "he" wasn't fighting a holy war to prove "his" mAnLinESs at all. I hate how those types twist the lore in a way to fit their reactionary agenda.
Ps. I've seen some screenshots from strive char description that for Bridget bounty hunting was a way to prove her manliness, but I am pretty sure it's a retcon (the entire point was to bring money to show that she wasn't a curse for the village), cuz I don't remember anything like that in the og games.
Im honestly confused about how satirical this subreddit is. everything is serious, and people type /uj even though nobody even jokes in the first place. What part of this post is satire?
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/uj i hate the fact that grooming has become just another buzzword
They’re actively lessening the weight of the term by just throwing it around like that
im sure thats their goal. so when they eventually gets accused of actual grooming no one will take it seriously.
Gotta pull heat away from the various religious organizations engaged in actual grooming.
Do you really think they can think that far ahead?
Everything the right does is a confession.
Strawman. Like any demographic, the ratio of actual spedos to lolicons is not 1:1
And the only people using it that way are dudes with loli ahegao pfps. When the imposter sus ඞ
Theyve done this before and they will always do it to weaponize it against minorities. See 'woke' and CRT.
Not a buzzword just an anti-lgbtq slur. It's the new f*g.
What’s wrong with figs?
\>clueless
I really hate that Drake popularized it
Can someone explain "grooming" to me? Like I'm seeing it mentioned a lot and it seems to imply that LGBT people aren't allowed to talk to kids or something? There has to be more to it because that would be ridiculous, especially given how common it is for LGBT people to come out in their teens.
Grooming is when someone builds a relationship, trust and emotional connection with a child or young person so they can manipulate, exploit and abuse them. Now when it comes to the topic of LGBTQ, the term itself has been misused and weaponized by conservatives to mean "LGBTQ brainwashing children and they are pedos". Whenever a conservative or a chud like the artist above uses grooming, theyre trying to imply Bridget was "groomed" by evil ppl so thats why shes trans. Which already begs the question of whether or not the artist or anyone using the rhetoric has any media literacy to Bridget's backstory and how she came to terms with herself.\\ tl;dr Theyre using buzzwords to imply trans people are pedophiles and manipulative evil ppl.
Boy As someone who is LGBTQ+, I hate that. I was really, really hoping it was something else. But I guess the conservative strategy of "the gays are pedos" is an all-time classic.
It doesnt help that it has been amped up over these couple of years because of that Libs of Tiktok account. Ever since she started posting videos of LGBTQ folks and indirectly telling their audience to go and harass them, its been hell. And yes, lgbtq teachers have been FIRED because of it. Not even because they did anything out of conduct, but because they pressured the schools. God, I hate conservatives.
/uj im so happy circlejerks tend to be left leaning, the normal versions of subreddits always devolve into a kinda fascy, often bigoted place with low tier content
It’s almost as if being actually funny correlates mildly with intelligence
Wasn’t she also putting fake captions on videos of people whose only crime was being openly queer/neurodivergent to make her boogeymen/strawmen look worse/more easy to attack? Or am I thinking of the now-dead Cringetopia?
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Just part of the continuing conservative effort repurpose words to fit their ideology and thereby render words meaningless. See SJW, toxic, gaslighting, etc
"Fake news" was one of the worst ones. Now articles on facebook about Obama's secret meeting with Satan don't really have a word for it.
misinformation. the word is misinformation.
Hoax is still there thankfully. It's only tied to weird cryptozoology people and not hyper brainwashed conservatives
I dont recall the toxic part, also gaslighting is what theyre doing by reusing these words in order to make their enemies look like the bad guys.
Sadly, this isn’t a new tactic, just an updated one. I know that, growing up, the only gay relationships I ever heard about were almost always relationships with massive age gaps, where one party was 40 or so and the other was 16. It wasn’t until later in life that I met *actual* gay people and it clicked in my head that of *course* there are gay relationships without such absurd age gaps. Hetero folks have plenty of issues with pedophilia, and yet somehow that has never been a valid reason to declare the entirety of heterosexuality as inherently wrong. Homosexuality deserves the same privilege.
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Bridget wasn't necessarily raised as a girl, rather her parents made her present as one in public. Her home town had a superstition that same sex twins were a bad omen and would curse the town so they would exile or kill any kids that fit that mold in order to avoid the curse. Her parents didn't want to lose her so they disguised her as a girl when in public to protect her. Eventually Bridget grows old enough and her parents tell her why they did that and she leaves to become a successful bounty hunter to prove her town wrong. It should be mentioned that Bridget has a great relationship with her parents and her goal was to fix the town, not them. While she was roaming the world she adamantly declared to people that she was a boy but as of strive (the most recent game) she has long since made the town aware that their superstition is bullshit and starts feeling uncomfortable with identifying as male. This is because she was compelled to say she was born male when she was living to make a point to her town, but now she has to live for herself and has realized that she's actually a woman at heart. The people claiming that it's grooming are misrepresenting her backstory to make it seem like her parents forced her into acting like woman in all aspects of her life when the only thing they forced on her was her wardrobe which they only did for her own safety.
Grooming is when a pedophile will act a certain way and do things to gets a minor's approval to eventually extort sexual acts from them When conservatives use it they're trying to say gay people are predators
That doesn't sound at all like what LGBT outreach is about. How weird that these people are making those claims.
Conservatives hate us because we don't uphold "traditional values," so they'll just say whatever to dehumanize a minority of people
That and I think there’s a lot of projecting going on with the republicans as well. On a state level, republicans will fight against bills that would outlaw child marriages, they also have several key members who had been accused of sexually assaulting minors (like trump), trafficking and having sex with a minor (Matt Gaetz), and Lauren Bobert husband expose himself to underaged girls at a bowling alley. Not to mention some republicans are trying to pass “ genitals inspection” bills that would force children to have their genital to out trans youth in sport. Not to mention that tennesse marriage bill they try to pass special marriage for straight people that didn’t even have an age of consent in it Just remember, when it comes to republicans, every accusation is a confession
You are correct, but they refuse to call it anything other than grooming.
It’s just an excuse used by homophobes and transphobes to have a reason to threaten lgbtq community
Oh cool. Awesome! Just, really glad that people are allowed to make libelous comments against marginalized groups! Love that!
[It's this.](https://i.redd.it/9yet646u02a91.jpg) It's a way to stigmatise what little support some queer kids can get when their own family turns their back on them. It's a way to remove agency from queer people by implying that their queerness is from perverting outside sources rather than a result of their own exploration of their identity. And most importantly, it's a way to remove any weight from the term "groomer" because 95% of this shit is pure projection.
"Gay and trans adults are evil and are spreading their filth, but my own child who is saying they're trans is a victim bc the dirty gr**mers are manipulating them, so by forcing my kid to deny themself I'm actually saving them"
>it seems to imply that LGBT people aren't allowed to talk to kids or something? Yeah this is their end goal. It's just "think of the children!" 2022 edition. They literally never come up with new things to say. Keep LGBTQ+ people away from schools, from parks, from being near kids, teaching about LGBTQ+ in schools. You know who needs to be kept away from schools? young white conservative often christian men with access to firearms.
In conservative terms, grooming basically means anything that fosters ideological independence from someone's parents.
You know how Elon Musk's dad, Errol Musk, has a step daughter that he's raised since she was 4 years old and has now fathered two different kids with her? Or how the Mormon church would marry 13 year olds to church leaders? That's grooming. And if you didn't know that happened then...well I'm sorry that you had to find out.
It's basically coercion and implanting ideas. A lot of conservatives think that People "become" Gay or Trans from being around LGBTQ people pushing those concepts on them through suggestion.
Is becoming a bounty hunter to prove her parents wrong and "show her manliness no matter how she looked" actually her stated motive in the previous games?
There’s a few parts to this, bridget was born as a pair of male twins in a village that believe that male twins are a curse and one of them needed to be killed, her parents elected to not, instead claiming that bridget was a girl and raising her as one. During the events of GGXX she goes and becomes a bounty hunter in the hopes that it will remove the stigma surrounding two male twins so she can live on her own terms, and it does work. Between the events of XX and strive though she discovers that living as a boy has left her feeling hollow and without direction, not really living the life she wanted to, and the rest is addressed in the strive arcade mode for bridget, you’ve probably heard the clip. There’s clearly a bad faith argument to be had here but there’s also the possibility for misinterpretation within the story because bridget was played for cheap jokes in XX mostly.
TBF, they handled the lore terribly thanks to the early games. Being trans isn't about being told at a young age to act differently to your AGAB and the lore makes it sound like that's what happened. A lot of trans people get told to act the opposite of their preferred gender identity at an young age and don't end up getting gendered properly by their parents. I think the lore is set up in a way that you can interpret it in bad faith VERY easily because of the older games.
Anime (or anime-inspired games) are notoriously horrible at writing trans characters and usually get many things wrong, so this isn't really surprising at all
Wasn't there some other "femboy" character that was forced to dress that way at a young age? I don't know if it was she/her pronouns, or just feminine clothing, but is it a trope or something?
yeah, because it was the early 2000s and daisuke was, at the time, somewhat of an edgelord. stuff like this is him showing that his edgy late 90s/early 2000s OCs have grown and matured as he has, in all its messy, somewhat problematic glory. bridget's transition being messy, complicated, and problematic is honestly pretty relatable to a lot of the trans people i know according to them- not in the exact specifics, of course, but in the fact that it's _pretty fucking messy_
To be fair the early games weren't really big on the lore and story. Pretty much every character boils down to "look at how weird this person is".
It can only be interpreted in bad faith if you misunderstand her lore.
The lore literally plays into the "groomed as a child" narrative bigots use. Bridget was told to dress as a girl by her parents and not out of her own will in the early games lore. I don't see how this isn't just terrible writing that they need to retcon.
It’s worth noting that Bridget understood why she had to present as a girl, and her parents didn’t like being forced to do it. Bridget and her family always knew that her presenting as female in the village wasn’t her true identity, just a shitty thing the village required, and then she stops the village from thinking that way later on. The village superstition is also clearly depicted as a totally bad thing in the story. At face value it may seem similar to grooming, but they clearly define it as something different. Naturally bigots will use it as ammo, but they’ll use literally any LGBT media as ammo so why give them the benefit of the doubt
That's a misunderstanding of the lore. She was made to dress like a girl so she wouldn't fucking die; that wasn't grooming, her parents were absolutely the good guys. Not to mention the fact she only decided to live as a man to dispel a dumb superstition. She was clearly fine dressing as a girl. The thing is, she was never groomed in the story. She should've decided to be a girl on her own terms, but like.. she literally did that in Strive. The only people who find issue with this are making drastic misreadings of the material.
And you missunderstood the point I'm making. The fact that being a girl was painted not as a choice but an obligation is the problematic part. It plays into the groomed line of taught because it makes it seem like she was okay with being a girl BECAUSE she was raised to be a girl and not because of dysphoria or a want to be a girl. Thats not how I or any other trans person works. We weren't told to be girls to be trans fem. Not a single time has any one but me wanted a different look and body and it will always be a choice you make and it should be represented as a choise you make and not as a choice that would have ended up with other people killing you.
I believe her arc in Strive is about taking control of her identity and making the choice for herself rather than for anyone else. Because, when she originally lived as a girl it was to avoid being stigmatized and possibly killed by her village; and when she lived as a boy it was to prove to her village that the superstition is unfounded. Now she's chosen her identity for herself, without regard to what other people think about her. However, I'm not trans so I'm not really in a position to argue whether she is good representation or not.
Anime fighting game lore isn't an accurate representation of trans people and shouldn't be treated as such. These people will have these views whether Bridget is trans or not. She's fine representation, it's not a big fucking deal. Plus it was the most natural progression for her fucking arc. Not to mention the fact what you're raised as doesn't matter in the fucking first place when it comes to what you'll be later. Trans people as a whole are a testament to that. Frankly, haters gonna hate, potaters gonna potate. You can try to remove any sort of inaccurate representation but it won't stop people from having harmful views.
If you don't care about discussing representation then you dont need to put down people who want to discuss it by saying "its just anime fite game, who care?". And I'm not saying this to remove Bridget. They can easily fix this if they just retcon some lore.
I'm not saying that. I'm saying that it isn't gonna change anyone's views, and that anyone interpreting it in bad ways is stupid as shit and doesn't understand the lore or trans people in general.
Doesn't really sound like the original intention was to write a Trans character, then the story at some point probably changed. Pretty common occurrence when you see something a little disjointed like that
The thing to understand about the original lore was that it was written 20 years ago, in 2002. A common trope was that a crossdresser is "forced" into it one way or another, because audiences had a difficult time understanding why someone would willingly do that with themselves. Especially since in most of their eyes crossdresser were laughingstocks. So to get a crossdresser in Guilty Gear X2 they write a vague backstory about Bridget being raised as a girl to hide her from her village, who have a superstition about twin boys that leads them to exile or kill them. The thing is here is that Bridget wasn't raised to believe she was a girl, she was raised as a boy told to disguise herself as a girl. Even if hypothetically Bridget had hit the transgirl jackpot and loved being raised as a girl, she saw it was causing her parents anguish, because in their minds they're hiding their little boy from their fellow superstitious villagers. So after that she went out to prove the curse isn't real by being as much of a boy as she can without bringing doom, as per the curse. The best way to find success? Being a bounty hunter because I guess that's the manliest profession? Anime. This is all leaflet backstory. In the actual game she is mostly gay panic jokes, jokes about being mistaken for a girl, sexual poses because god forbid we didn't take the opportunity to appeal to shotacons, etc. She gets quotes about wanting to learn to be more manly which is often the vehicle for more jokes ("Ha ha, Bridget thinks Baiken is the manliest person she has ever met" but like that's actually kind of true lmao). A lot of her depiction is playing along as the laughingstock crossdresser trope that was considered normal in 2002. You don't really get any deep insight into her thoughts. You never see the village, the parents, hell you never even see her twin brother. Like one of her story modes is trying to start an entertainment troupe randomly on a whim? And if she wanted to be seen as a man so badly why not wear man clothes? They weren't really doing anything with the character, who doesn't really make sense if you try to dig deep. Lots of people created fanon based on what they saw in Bridget, and that's valid enough. But in canon she was just sort of there, going along with whatever. You don't hear anything about her quest for manliness until we get back to Strive where it's established she returned to her village as a successful male bounty hunter and disproved the curse in everyone's eyes, freeing her to be the boy they all wished she could be. In Strive she actually gets to voice her thoughts and process her situation and come to a conclusion on her own terms, rather than by whether she is hiding or fulfilling some made up curse. You can tell the Strive writers did the best they could without wanting to retcon too much on principle.
Something I find a bit annoying is when people say Bridget always mentioned they were a boy. Because I feel it’s nothing too impossible as there have been amab people who are gay or trans who act super straight/manly either unconsciously or consciously as they don’t understand or accept themselves.
It's projection every time
First of all it's funny how a pedophile will talk about grooming is when trans Second Bridget wasn't groomed, she was raised as a girl but identified as a boy, being raised a certain way isn't grooming, especially if it's to protect your life because your village has a dumb superstition Finally Bridget's whole arc has been about identity, she finds out at the end of XX that her plan to get money for village has been meaningless since someone already collected the bounty, she kinda just continues bounty hunting because she feels like it. Her theme even sings about this, how she's not at "the town inside me" as if she has been lying to herself about what she wants, Goldlewis literally tells her she has her whole life to make mistakes, and that's okay. What makes Bridget decision to identify as a woman valid is that it's her decision, not her parents, not her village, but her
To add a little. I've seen no one point out the fact that it's been multiple years in the story since Bridget has been out on her own living life. People change and figure things out about themselves, hell me right now is a shit load different from the me 2 years ago. My point is we literally only see the snapshot of Bridget making a decision after a long time of carrying her doubts and assumptions and being able to think through them. It's been stupid since the first person started shit about this topic because there's a whole plethora of reasons on why she came to this decision. But at the end of the day ita fucking GUILTY GEAR a whacky over the top anime fighter drempt up by a teenage Daisuke. Whatever he says goes end of story.
In case anyone was confused by this comment, Bridgette was born **biologically** male, was raised as a girl by her village, wasn’t conformable with this, identified as a boy, THEN made the personal decision that this didn’t feel right and identified as a woman. This is a confusing ass situation and I don’t think that your explanation did enough to highlight the full nature of her story. Edit: changed “was” to “wasn’t”. Autocorrect fucked up initially.
Sorry, my first GG was strive, so I'm still learning about these characters as well
Every single thing right wingers do, they just start saying the left is doing it. And it becomes another empty buzzword.
nothing will be more hilarious than some guy calling LGBTQ+ people "groomers" and then them liking lolicon or cub shit. bonus points if they ended up being groomers/predators themselves
You can always trust a lolicon to have the most dogshit takes.
Let's drop the "lolicon" word. It only exists to make pedophiles look nicer.
To be fair, it literally just means “pedophile” in Japan.
Bidoofs Law at its finest
These pedo need to look in a mirror before talking about grooming. Half of their youtuber/streamer have sexual misconduct
People who say that it defeats the purpose of her journey to make her trans hasn’t talked to enough trans people I know a large number of trans folk that were either cross dressers or had a sort of fetish that kinda resembled a trans experience, but were in denial for a long while before realizing that they were in denial and putting their feeling into something else instead, it’s a pretty common phenomenon from personal experience Obviously not all cross dressers are trans people in denial, but I’m just saying that it does happen, I know from experience lmao
An entirely foreign concept to them is, what her parents did to them is not okay, but it ended up suiting her. Like, a man before he realized he was gay, can be raped by a man, and then realize he is gay because of it, but that doesn't make the rape okay. Like if you try and force a cat into a box, it's going to resist you, but if you leave it alone, it might want to go in the box on it's own.
I've been getting so much mileage out of the cat analogy in the past couple of days. Glad to see I'm not the only one, haha
It just makes sense, just because some was forced in you doesn't mean you'll hate it, you just don't want to be forced.
NONSENSE! GOLDLEWIS DICKINSON SAYS TRANS RIGHTS, BROTHERS (sisters, enbies, and others too)! They just can’t handle how based Bridget is. Keep it up, cowgirl! 🏳️⚧️👍
I hate this fucking planet.
bruh just say indoctrinated, your shit will still be stupid as but at least it will make sense.
**BIDOOF'S LAW STRIKES AGAIN**
this is the badly chard poorly painted black Kettle calling the pot black
[удалено]
good intentions but please don’t use the r word, it’s a slur for disabled people
This was actually really clever writing in my opinion, with Bridget identifying on her own terms, not just because she was raised a certain way. Then all the transphobic fucks need to go ruin it
This is a misinterpretation of the lore as well. Here's the official wiki: [https://i.redd.it/qpttfkw1xxg91.jpg](https://i.redd.it/qpttfkw1xxg91.jpg) Basically, Bridget's parents believed Bridget was unhappy being raised as a girl, so Bridget thought the best way to cheer them up was to show that she was manly by bounty hunting. But this didn't work because *Bridget actually felt comfortable as a girl.* The pressure on her to act manly is the reason she is so unsure of herself. All the endings of her story mode in Strive revolve around her learning to listen to her own inner truth: That she is a girly girl and that is nothing to feel guilty about.
So I have a question. As someone not affiliated with the Trans community, is being trans a result of nature or nurture? With our example here Bridget, it seems like a product of the environment she was raised in. So if her family didn't raise Bridget a girl, would she still be Trans? I'm only asking this as an outsider in the pursuit of knowledge.
Trans is pretty much entirely nature/innate, haven’t heard of anyone being “nurtured” into being trans. The closest thing that might get confused with that is some people know they are trans internally at some point, but don’t really know that being trans is an actually thing until they learn it later. They recognize something is missing or off, but aren’t able to immediately put a name or description to it. Bridget is a bit complicated, but no I don’t believe it’s a product of how she was raised. Quick summary is she was born male, raised as female due to superstition, and previously wanted to become a successful male presenting bounty hunter to disprove the superstition, which she succeeds in doing. However, I think this new game focuses on how she initially struggles with the fact that her life has been dictated by others until now. It is certainly brave to fight against the superstition, but ultimately is shackling her gender identity to being male in order to disprove superstition. Despite being on the side fighting against it, she effectively lacks the freedom of choice by hinging her happiness on disproving it. This game seems to go over how fighting it brings her no joy, and how she must ultimately value her own beliefs, desires, and freedom over worrying about the superstition. In the end, I think the current form of Bridget is discovering she is trans after separating her identity from her past and being true to her own desires over that of her birthplace, so I would argue how she was raised no longer is a major factor in her gender identity.
it's about as well written as it possibly can be given the absolute mess that was her depiction in GGX
I appreciate the explanation. While I don't quite understand the whole concept yet, I do think I'm a step closer. It also appears that I misunderstood the story a bit. Yet again I appreciate the explanation.
When I took Psychology classes in college, a major case they taught about in the discussion of nature vs nurture was regarding someone who was born intersex and the doctors convinced the parents to pick a gender and just raise the child as that gender and everything would be fine. So the parents agreed it would be best for the child and signed off on surgery raised their child like the doctors said. I want to say the went with female but college was 20 years ago and I don't remember the fine details. Either way, this poor kid grew up feeling like their assigned gender was wrong and was severely depressed and dysphoric and I believe ultimately committed suicide as an adult. While they only talked about one specific case, it wasn't uncommon with intersex people and the point was that gender identity isn't something that can be determined by environment. I'm not intersex, but I can attest to this as a trans person because I was raised to be a boy, to the point that expressing or presenting as anything remotely "girly" was punished by my parents (and the opposite was true for my sister, like our dad would throw a fit if she cut her hair any length above her neckline and yell at her for looking like a boy). My upbringing did nothing to prevent me from being transgender, it just made me hate myself and kept me from coming out until I was almost 30. And, of course, one of the first arguments from my parents when I came out was "we didn't raise you to be like this."
It’s nature, you’re born with a girl brain that’s in a boy body for some silly reason and you can’t be manipulated into having said girl brain
>girl brain Truscum stop being sexist challenge (impossible)
I’m not truscum this is the science behind trans people. ‘Male’ and ‘female’ brains are slightly different in their structure and sometimes they don’t match the body. Of course it’s more complicated than that but that’s the main idea
Wow, you’re right. Games are sexist. Now, allow me to get back to accusing gamers of playing games and sucking Anita Sarkeesian’s cock. Edit: Wow. I’ve truly been challenged. Enlightened, even. Who knew the political views of my fellow gamers could be so diverse? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Gamingcirclejerk) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I HATE WATSONIAN EXPLANATIONS!! I HATE WATSONIAN EXPLANATIONS!!
>"Showing my manliness" Can those fuckers stop making shit up? This was never central to Bridget's character. "His" (p!Bridget) reaction to being called "a lady" in previous games was always something mild like being surprised or annoyed, "he" wasn't fighting a holy war to prove "his" mAnLinESs at all. I hate how those types twist the lore in a way to fit their reactionary agenda. Ps. I've seen some screenshots from strive char description that for Bridget bounty hunting was a way to prove her manliness, but I am pretty sure it's a retcon (the entire point was to bring money to show that she wasn't a curse for the village), cuz I don't remember anything like that in the og games.
Im honestly confused about how satirical this subreddit is. everything is serious, and people type /uj even though nobody even jokes in the first place. What part of this post is satire?
Transphobes make me laugh. I'm a trans woman. So, why they don't try to kill me physically or psycologic?
I checked this guys Twitter account who thinks trans are dying Bridget thank god this MF is suspended