<em>This post was originally posted in February of 2011 <ahref="http://annabunches.stringofbits.net/post/4388946430/wandering-son-reflections-episode-5-natsu-no-owari">here</a>. It has been updated substantially.</em><br/><br/>You can watch the episode <ahref="http://www.crunchyroll.com/hourou-musuko-wandering-son/episode-5-the-end-of-summer-568420">here</a>.<br/><br/><strong>Trigger Warning: this entry contains discussion of cissexist slurs, in particular the T-word. If you want to skip that, start reading below the ‘End of Trigger Warning’ message</strong><br/><br/><strong>Also, Spoiler Warning</strong><br/><br/>I’m going to start in the most obvious place: the subtitles in this episode use the word ‘tranny’. In fact, the word gets used several times in the series, but this is the first occurrence. So, let's talk about language.<br/><br/>When I read that subtitle, I winced; I’m particularly sensitive to the term, and even hearing it used in a reclamatory sense makes me cringe. I’m just not a fan of this word at all. It offends me. But more importantly, it is a slur - actively harmful language. To understand my perspective on this, I actually recommend something written by someone else - Kinsey Hope’s excellent post on <ahref="http://genderbitch.wordpress.com/2011/04/02/words-offense/">words and offense</a>. In fact, for the purposes of this discussion I’m assuming you've clicked that link and read her post.<br/><br/>So, Kinsey has hopefully established to your satisfaction that slurs are bad. If not, well, the rest of this discussion probably won't do much for you, and I'm honestly surprised you're reading my blog in the first place. However, in a fictional story designed to be roughly representational of reality, slurs can have a function. If slurs are used in contexts that demonstrate the bigotry of the speaker or challenge their usage, then they have a place in the story. And, of course, words used in a reclamatory context are as acceptable in fiction as they are in reality.<br/><br/>Before we can consider how the word is used in Wandering Son, though, we need to consider that this is a translated work. So, let's investigate the Japanese world being used here, and see whether the translation is accurate. The Japanese word that is being translated as 'tranny' is 'okama' (おかま). <ahref="http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwjdic.cgi?1C">Jim Breen’s WWWJDIC</a>, an all-around excellent Japanese language resource for English speakers, has this to say about the word 'okama' (only the relevant part of the definition is provided):<br/><br/><blockquote>(n) (colloquial, often derogatory) male homosexual; effeminate man; male transvestite</blockquote><br/><br/>While gay men and transvestites are certainly insulted using the word ‘tranny’, as a slur its function is to attack trans women. As a result, this definition and the translation chosen didn’t really sit well for me. So I did some more research, and found <ahref="http://books.google.com/books?id=j3J8P7g_O0wC&lpg=PP1&dq=Japanese%20language%2C%20gender%2C%20and%20ideology%3A%20cultural%20models%20and%20real%20people&pg=PA95#v=onepage&q&f=false">this book</a>, which discusses the use of 'okama' and gay male culture in Japan. The overall sense I got from this book's treatment of the term is that the dominant cultural elements in Japan often conflate gender identity and sexual orientation (this is unsurprising, as it is true of straight culture in the US as well), and while GLBT culture in Japan distinguishes between the two more accurately, there is still some degree of conflation between the two. I suggest reading the excerpts available from the book for a more detailed look at this.<br/><br/>The upshot of all of this is that I get the impression that the translation here is accurate in context; at least, it is accurate enough for our purposes. Given the target and the speaker of the word each time it is used, I believe it was always translated so that it is accurate after adjusting for American cultural expec
