Even without context, saying that heterosexual romance story is somehow more queer than a lesbian love story just because the bloke in it cross-dresses is bizarre:
“why can’t it be two girls ☹️” THE POINT IS ABOUT BREAKING GENDER NORMS!!! Y’ALL ARE JUST ENFORCING GENDER NORMS BY SAYING THAT!!! DID YALL FORGET WHAT IT MEANS TO BE QUEER!!! THEY ARE QUEER
In context doesn’t get any better, the person here talking about Company and Private Life, a newly licensed manga about two office workers who dress up on the weekend: she as a punk girl, he in Lolita dresses. As the title hints, it’s about that contrast between how people dress and behave at work and in their private lives. It’s a nice little series by Kanazawa Shinnosuke about two co-workers who accidentally meet outside work when they literally run into each other in their weekend dress. Not knowing who the other “really” is, they strike up a friendship as their alter egos. So far it’s not really been romantic, at least in as far as it has been scanlated, but they did reveal themselves to each other in the latest episodes.
Is this a queer story?
Yes, in so far as it has the two leads being more comfortable in gender non-conforming clothing. She in butch punk outfits (torn jeans, t-shirts, leather jacket, gothic make-up, shortish hair), he in Lolita fashion (frilly dresses, blonde wig). But that’s all it has so far. There isn’t anything there that shows that dressing up this way is more than just a hobby for either of them, something they can do in their free time with no desire to do it full time. Ultimately this is still a hetero love story, not really a queer one, right?
The gothic lolita wearing Kanade-san fits in a long tradition of manga and anime boys cute and pretty enough to pass effortlessly as girls when they put on a dress, for whom putting on a dress is driven by little more than wanting to wear cute clothing. It’s very rare that any of these characters comes even close to being trans; dressing up is just a hobby, not something that they want or need to do to become their proper gender. Punk girl Aki-san too isn’t dysphoric or wanting to be seen as a man; she just likes her look and to be honest, you’d probably perceive her as female if you met her in real life. She looks a bit androgynous but not that much.
To think then that this is somehow more queer than having either be trans or having it be a lesbian romance (or both!) is just objectively wrong. Thinking that it’s groundbreaking to have a “feminine boy not be gay or trans” is absurd when these are actually the norm in manga and anime. Getting upset that some people would rather have a trans or lesbian romance instead is just plain silly. spend your energy on better things.
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