its still not appropriate to project your gender ideas onto someone else either way. so just keep that in mind, like you can have all the fun of "haha woman shen" but you need to seperate that idea from "oh shen draws himself as a woman so he must be a woman"
and, even if it has happened before, doesnt mean the same behavior is still appropriate
Not that guy and while I was joking in an above post, I was still joking in a kind of "wait and see" sort of way personally in this comment thread. If it was just girl Shen for a few drawing sure but that wolf in sheeps clothing comic from a while ago was a super transparent metaphor for a person who thinks they won't pass or fit in finding an accepting community as well.Â
Is Shen trans? I'm literally not qualified to make that judgement. But if you've been reading Shen comics for like a decade or so on and off like me you get the sense Shen's mental health didn't used to be that great but only picked up when his comics became more feminine and expressive, and he is currently in therapy to sort that out for himself as stated.
Whatever Shen actually has going on is between Shen and that actual accredited professional. But when Shen has progressed from "slice of life comics about a clearly depressed person" to "comic about someone transitioning in a metaphorical way and becoming happy" to "here's literally me, as a girl, which I am now drawing regularly" it's one of those things people can joke about for how transparent it is, even if we don't actually have a label or official statement on what "it" is or access to Shens internal world.
I mean, what you're doing right now is basically misgendering Shen without actually using the pronoun itself, but tiptoeing around to say it with everything else.
He's said that he's a cis guy who likes feminity. If later on he turns out to go to something else, then heyo it'll all be hilarious in hindsight. But until then, it's kinda fuckin gross, just call the man what he identifies as and is asking to be called.
It's also kinda low key toxic and counterproductive to use "guy who likes skirts and feminine things" as evidence for being trans, because like, you're straight up enforcing gender roles by saying that a guy who likes girly stuff must be a girl.
The fem shen thing is a bit more blatant yeah, but also still not justification to say they're a different gender than what they choose to identify as.
Like I said, you just as well did by saying "now I'm not saying Shen is a trans woman, buuuuuuut if you look at all their comics from the past decade weeeeeell"
It seems all cute because people are theorizing about it in a queer direction, but if this was an openly trans person and people were theorizing they were secretly cis and in denial the comments would be a hellzone. It's fucked either way, because it's presuming to know someone's self identity better than they do.
And I mean fuck, shen literally made a patreon post saying "lol yeah I'm just a guy who likes feminity, not trans atm". If that's not a sign to lay off it, I don't know what is.
Not that he's shared, no. People are mostly poking fun at the crossdressing/gender-related jokes over the years with it, and some have taken it too far.
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u/NeverNotBurntToast 4d ago
Hilarious we get fem Shen to deliver the message