In japan they dont take ur gender seriously unless u changed ur sex with operation. Kaba chan (trans woman who inspired some of grells mannerisms) was seen as a gay crossdresser until she traveled aboard and changed her sex and she had to fight REALLY hard to make people accept her gender. This might be the reason why Yana called Grell a "he" before (even though she refers to grell as a woman in more recent twitter posts) this is how it is in japan and many other cultures.
Transphobia in Japanese Society
Dear Anon, thank you for your input about transphobia in Japanese society, as it is indeed a very relevant topic. Only this spring (spring 2019), Japan exploded with hot debates regarding the outdated Japanese laws that were not only harmful against transgender individuals, but were straight up against Human Rights and the Constitution.
Here is an article in English.
But to sum it up, under the ‘GID Special Cases Act’ in Japan, in order for transgender individuals to be legally recognised as their true gender, these people were forced by law to undergo sterilisation surgery, and must also be single, on top of not having children under the age of 20.
This goes directly against the Human rights, more specifically, Article 3: “Freedom from torture and inhuman or degrading treatment,” and Article 13 of the Japanese Constitution, which protects the human right of being respected and not to be submitted to physical and mental harm. (Yikes, GID Law, Yikes).
Yana, Kuroshitsuji, and Grelle
Previously I have very briefly touched upon the topic of KABA-chan in this post, but as I already wrote there, as far as I know there is no connection between KABA-chan and Grelle, other than that both of them happen to be transgender women. Also to the best of my knowledge, Yana never referenced or even mentioned KABA-chan in any of her tweets nor old blog.
Please witness this barren field of search results from Yana’s twitter↓
As for why Yana referred to Grell as a ‘he’ at the beginning.
As explained in this post and this post, Yana never once referred to Grell as a man, EXCEPT that one time she wrote on her old blog: “Yes, Grell is a man, but has the heart of a maiden.” That however, was simply the lack of accurate terminology in Japanese for a transgender woman 10 years ago.
Otherwise the only thing Yana has called Grell is ‘okama’, but as I have explained in this post too, that term is both a slur as well as outdated.
The misconception that Yana did refer to Grell as ‘he’ is purely and entirely the result of transphobic (subconscious or otherwise) mistranslation. Japanese is a null-subject language, so Yana hardly uses pronouns to begin with. As explained in the same post I referred to above, the only instances in the entire manga, as well as anything posted by Yana, where gendered pronouns are being used for Grelle, was by Grelle herself.
I hope this both adds relevancy to the topic, as well as clearing up a few misunderstandings ^^
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