A Ballsy Look at Gender and Probably More

“Manly? Womanly? Are those random values that others made up really what you were striving toward? If things were so clear cut, then neither men, women, you, or me would be leading such painful lives.”

If there was one popular manga arc that said quite a lot about society standards, this is one of them. The Gintama anime finally covered one of the more intriguing arcs in its decade-long run, the Genderbend Arc (which was published in Volume 50). It expands more on the character of Kyubei Yagyu, who I discussed years ago, and her continued struggle to fulfill an assigned gender role. The arc really highlights the changing times in the psychology of many youth in Japan.

The arc starts with Kyubei running into a mysterious fortuneteller who somehow knows about her struggle to be a man. The fortuneteller says she can ease Kyubei’s emotional pain by turning her into a man completely. Kyubei becomes reluctant at first, but decides to humor the fortuneteller. A big laser from the sky hits Kyubei and the entire town of Kabukicho (the main setting of Gintama).
Kyubei wakes up to see that she looks very masculine and has male genitalia. She laments that she’s become Jyubei Yagyu, which is a pun on her name.

However, it’s not only her that switched biological sexes. All the citizens of Kabukicho, including the Yorozuya, Shinsengumi, Ayane “Sacchan” Sarutobi, and Tsukuyo, have switched. It turns out the fortuneteller was part of a cult that worships a god called Dekobokko, which preaches strict guidelines for gender roles. The heroes decide to fight against the cult and ends up learning several lessons about each other in their new roles along the way.

The Dekobokko cult believes that both men and women have been acting disgusting with their behaviors. They criticized men for being otaku and women for being aggressive. The cult preaches an ideology that isn’t different from religions that preach defined roles for families. Take for example, Christianity. When I was really struggling with depression years ago, I decided to go to a Christian church to make friends. At first, I was happy since they made me feel loved. Over time though, something bothered me about them. I didn’t say anything to any of the church attendees, but I slowly felt that they seemed to disrespect the role of women.

The church I went to suggested that women have to submit to their husband’s will. As someone who made friends with strong women who were non-religious, something felt off. I could be wrong (I’m sure someone give me a solid answer), but I stopped going overall because of that and more. Dekobokko makes me think about those days as enforced ideals are sometimes dangerous and not perfect for everyone as they are used as psychological bait (due to no one being taught how to question ideas) to convince confused individuals.

Kyubei was a perfect target for the cult because they both shared confusion over their assigned gender roles in society. Both struggle to be men and/or women. They feel angry at forces beyond their control. The psychological concept of gender placed a huge hold on them. When one looks at Kyubei after her initial debut, she becomes a bit more open compared to the coldness she displayed when acting as a “male” at first. Yet as Kyubei admits, she became a joke character as she is portrayed as another stalker-type character in Tae Shimura’s life and someone who desperately wants a penis. It’s easy to make a change, but if the whole world keeps telling you otherwise, then what can you do?

At the same time, Kyubei is still an teenager. She’s 17. She will make mistakes that can be forgiven. There was a point where Kyubei was angry at herself because she let other people get involved in her desire to be a man. Her love for Tae Shimura, who wasn’t affected by the sex switch as she was out of Kabukicho when it was hit, guided her thought process. She said that she wasn’t a man or a woman, just “cowardly scum.” Kyubei learns an important lesson that many people don’t realize – being born a certain sex has little impact on one’s personality. Female Gintoki Sakata reminds Kyubei of that with the quote stated above.

What’s more interesting is how the other characters react to their sex changes. While they still retained the idiotic parts of their personalities, a few of the characters thought about their satisfaction with their new roles. The female characters of Gintama, now turned male, showed off their toughness even more, much to the displeasure of Gintoki. Tae made a remark that the former male characters should just stay women because they were useless. Tsukuyo even suggested that they all become prostitutes for Yoshiwara. Both sides argued until the Dekobokko cult pulls a cruel trick on the heroes as it restores the town to normal except them, since they were attacking an underground base of the cult’s. The main characters decide to accept their new roles at first, but choose to return to their previous genders in the end.

Even though fans knew everyone was going back to normal, why would anyone decide to go back to their original sex even if their new role provides enlightenment? In one scene after everyone’s reluctant acceptance, female Kondo Isao, the famous stalker of Tae’s, talked about how he never thought about masculinity and femininity until he became a woman. He admitted that it changed his perspective for the better. But perhaps that’s the thing – he started thinking about it all of a sudden. What’s worse was that the change was a forced one. There was always a possibility that trying to live up to strict gender expectations will drive anyone (male or female) mad at some point.

It’s interesting since we’re all taught to imagine what it’s like to be in another person’s shoes. What if we suddenly were in the shoes of someone completely different from us? Does it really change people? It makes me think about the social experiments where certain individuals decide to become homeless for a set period of time. They come out with a better understanding of what it’s like to be homeless, but the thing is that they had the option of backing out (which homeless people don’t have) that provided a sense of control if things went wrong. Imagine if they were homeless for a really long period of time with no guarantee of available resources. That’s what the Gintama characters seemed to experience – an experiment that should stay an experiment with no potential cure in sight.

Right now, Japanese youth (and many other youth in the world for that matter) are facing situations where they have to act like how their assigned sex is supposed to behave. Boys have to be “boys,” while girls have to be “girls.” There are studies that show that forcing gender roles onto children doesn’t do them any good. It’s as if the general mentality is to let men run into the wild as they were born to do so and that women should be there to calm them down when necessary. Why? Because the world thrives on families and communities that follow orders. Rampant individualism doesn’t benefit since it’s all about the self and no one else. But don’t some folks realize that being different is an attractive quality to people and that their actions can unintentionally make the world a better place?

There was a gag in the arc where female Kondo performs outdoor defecation in an empty alley as s/he was unaware of gender bathroom norms. Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to take a dump on those gender roles and come away with a cleaner planet not clogged with them.