If you've been keeping up with gaming news lately, then you'd know our old pal Literally Wu, also known as Briana Wu, has come up with a wild idea: Samus Aran, one of the most famous and most important female characters in gaming, is not a woman from birth, but rather, a Male to Female Transsexual. On a recent article written on The Mary Sue, a website that caters to feminist geek interests, Wu, alongside fellow writer Ellen McGrody, made the argument that Samus Aran is a trans gender woman. Well, it wasn't so much an "argument" as it was an assertion, as an argument offers tangible proof, but I digress. Briana Wu and Ellen McGrody made the claim that Samus was trans, and they are treating this as fact. But, is it a fact?
If I were to read the original NES manual for Metroid, I'd find the manual refer to Samus as a "he". But, if I were to play the game, I'd find that Samus is, unquestionably, female. One could easily make the claim that having a female body does not necessarily equate to being female, but this is where authorial intent (which Wu and McGrody insist trumps all conjecture, ironically) must come into play. In every single appearance she has made, be it in video games or comic books, Samus Aran is consistently shown as unequivocally female. If I were to go to the Metroid Wiki, I'd find her gender to be listed as female. All canonical material points to Samus as female.
For those not in the know, "canon" means official. When I say that Samus Aran's canonical gender is female, I mean that her official gender is female. Nintendo lists it as female, her series' artists and directors list it as female, and every work she has appeared in which reveals her gender always, ALWAYS shows it to be female. Samus Aran, then, is unquestionably female.
But was she female ALL her life? Is there a possibility for Samus Aran to be a male to female transsexual? Besides her name, gender, and early life, very little is known about Samus Aran. Her personality is often kept outside of the games, leaving it to the player to interpret her as they see fit. We know she is six foot three (shorter than me by an inch!), and that she is blonde. It is therefore easy to interpret Samus as being anything: Example given, in the cartoon Captain N the Game Master, a late 80's cartoon that starred several Nintendo characters (albeit very much Out of Character), Samus was depicted as money hungry. In contrast, Metroid Other M depicts her as guilt ridden and suffering from PTSDT (the real kind, not the kind Melody Hensley got from Twitter).
And this is where the concept of headcanon comes in. Unlike canon, which is official, headcanon merely means what the individual takes to be true, but is not exactly official yet. An example of a headcanon is that Kirk and Spock from Star Trek feel romantic feelings for each other. One can interpret their deep friendship as an unspoken love neither is willing to act on, but this isn't official. That's the key word there, official.
When it comes to Samus, there are a lot of blanks to fill in with headcanon. What goes through her mind whenever she kills a Metroid, satisfaction, regret, nothing? What does she think about the galaxy around her? Is she a bounty hunter for the money, or for the sake of doing some good in the galaxy without having to answer to any military higher ups? Is she straight, gay, bisexual, or asexual? And most importantly, what was her life like after she got orphaned?
But the question is: is it possible that Samus, at some point in her life, was biologically male? We know so little of Samus' past that it could not be a stretch to believe that, perhaps, Samus was born male. We know that she has been genetically altered by aliens, so maybe, JUST maybe, there exists the possibility that Samus could be transsexual.
But that'd be a headcanon at best. What Briana Wu and Ellen McGrody did, however, was present Samus' transsexuality not as a possibility, but as a fact. This is known as conjecture: making stuff up. They based their claim on the word of one Hirofumi Matsuoka, who made the (uncertain if serious) claim that Samus was a shemale. Two things that need to be said: first off, the term "shemale" is considered offensive by many, though not all, transsexuals; second, Matsuoka himself was a background designer for the original Metroid on the SNES. Although his word has SOME weight to it, being a part of the original team that worked on the game, his word has considerably less weight than those of the game's director, creator, or the President of Nintendo himself.
Wu and McGrody were rather eager to make Samus' transsexuality canonical, to the point that they titled their article Metroid's Samus Aran is a Transgender Woman: Deal with it. The title of this article makes it clear that there is no room for argument against these two; they are treating their claim as fact. But it isn't a fact, it's conjecture based on the flimsiest evidence available.
I am not here to debunk their claim, as that has been done by several people already. Youtube vlogger and commentator MundaneMatt has released two videos in three days debunking this claim. Famed video game journalist Liana Kerzner has also made some comments regarding the issue. The only people who are taking Wu and McGrody seriously are the people who care more about what these two represent than what they are saying. And Wu and McGrody represent, unfortunately, a queer voice in gaming.
Let's get this out of the way: I am all for better LGBT representation in gaming. I'd love to see more dignified gay and lesbian characters in gaming; less fanservice, more character please. I want to see bisexuality actually acknowledged as a thing, not a fetish. And I'd like to see transsexuals actually treated as people, not a joke. And yes, there are many games that do that already; eg- the PS3 game Catherine has a sympathetic transsexual minor character. I am not saying there aren't games that treat the LGBT community with respect, I'm saying we could have more games like that.
But what Wu and McGrody are doing isn't helping the LGBT community, it's harming it, because it makes it look like the only way LGBT people can have representation in gaming is by making things up about popular, well established characters. "Oh, Samus is a tranny!" "Cloud is secretly gay for Sephiroth!" Instead of making a call for more LGBT representation, or in Wu's case actually MAKING that representation, what these two are doing is taking someone else's work and re-appropriating it to serve their agenda. This is stealing, there's literally no other word for it.
If you want to believe Samus is trans, go for it. There are people who see her as cold blooded and blood thirsty; others as aloof and money hungry. Some see her as a super hero for the galaxy; others see her as just a woman doing her job. Headcanon is harmless; the issue isn't with people seeing her as trans, the issue is with two people of renown and infamy presenting her transsexualism as a fact when it isn't. In the words of Christina Hoff Sommers "check your facts, not your privilege."
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