Alright. I think it’s time I finally did something on this. These sorts of issues have been near and dear to my heart ever since I figured out more of who I am, and I would be remiss to never bring these issues up. That is to say, I care a great bit about queer issues in media, and it’s why I really do mean it when I say: Persona 4 handles LGBT+ issues in a bad, phobic way. I want to talk about why.
Persona has never been a series that’s historically very good with queer representation. The games I have the most experience with, Persona 3 and 5, basically don’t have any LGBT+ representation. Persona 3 has one off colour joke and one sort of maybe implied relationship, and Persona 5 has one horribly offensive gay couple and one maybe trans woman. So, generally, the Persona series has been pretty, how shall I say, overt, with its issues in these categories. Refusal to acknowledge our existence and bad jokes at our expense is par for the course, and sadly expected.
Persona 4 is a bit different. Ostensibly, Persona 4 has LGBT+ representation, and main party members at that! Kanji’s entire dungeon is basically shouting at you “HE’S GAY”, and Naoto presents as a man and is implied to be transgender at many points. So, uh, yeah, actual, positive representation? Yay?
...Everything I just said is a lie. Kanji is not gay, Naoto is not trans, and Persona 4 is not LGBT+ friendly. At all. Persona 4’s phobic tendencies are more insidious and not obvious on the surface at all, and what seems like positive representation gives way to tone deaf writing and very uncomfortable implications and statements.
So, to start, let’s talk about what Kanji and Naoto’s character arcs actually are. Kanji and Naoto are actually stories about societal roles, and the struggle to fit in and carve out a sense of self and place where others will accept you. Kanji struggles with his need to be a “real man” and be tough, at odds with his love of socially feminine activities like handicraft. Naoto wishes to be a great detective, but feels she cannot be taken seriously as a woman in such a position, and so presents as male to achieve her goals. Both of these characters go through understanding who they want to be, how they limited and misunderstood themselves, and how adhering to these societal expectations will only make them miserable.
Alright. Let’s look at Kanji. A large part of this disconnect between his idea of a “real man” and his interests manifests in insecurity in his sexuality. It’s pretty clear from his dungeon alone, it being a bathhouse, with his shadow being every stereotype of a gay man imaginable.
But, the thing is, he’s not… really… gay. For much of the story, Kanji has a crush on Naoto, who is, mostly, presenting male. But he still holds attraction to her after that is dropped, which, while you could maybe interpret to mean he is bisexual, absolutely reeks of the writers trying to rewrite him as straight, and trying to cast all that implication of him being gay under the rug. Kanji’s sexuality is a tool for the writers. Not a serious idea to explore, not a central character theme, his sexuality is a means to make him confused, and that is all. The fact that the game ever refuses to say the word “gay” is pretty telling. Persona 4 does not actually care about gay issues one bit. Persona 4 cares about making Kanji weird, confused, and othered.
There’s a lot of issues with this idea of just using being gay as a way to be confused. It calls up the ugly phrase many folks have heard from people: “Oh, you’re just confused”. It casts exploring one’s sexuality as an ugly, odd thing that you should ideally never do. Kanji gets more integrated into the group as he “grows out” of this phase thing, which is just, well. I hope I don’t have to explain why that’s a bit of an issue.
There’s the other half of this issue, which is that this is a dirty, dirty tease, and to just say “no he’s not actually gay” is honestly kind of insulting. The writers couldn’t have been blind, c’mon. This is a tease, whether they intend it or not, and to walk back on this is deeply troubling. And in the spirit of “a tease”... Naoto.
Naoto’s whole shtick is that she feels forced into presenting male due to what she wants to do in life. Which would be fine, except, pardon my language, holy shit, what a dirty tease this is. You have gotta know what you’re implying when you write lines about “body modification surgery”, seriously. Everything about her pretty much implies she’s being written as transgender than then, just… no. It’s this ridiculous thing that’s honestly pretty insulting.
To get to the overall point, all this leads up to one central idea: in Persona 4, being LGBT+ makes you the “other”. It makes you the weird social outcast, it makes you unstable inside, it makes you unaccepted. Characters find themselves in this game, but finding yourself means shedding that stuff, because that’s “weird” and “confusing”. Queerness is built up as this plot point, and a negative plot point at that.
Oh, Kanji’s not gay, he just likes feminine activities.
Oh, Naoto isn’t trans, she just looks up to male role models.
I’m sure you’ve probably heard those arguments before if you’re queer, or even if you’re not, you almost certainly know of them. They’re these destabilizing attacks on one’s identity, constantly doubting them. And this is basically exactly what Persona 4 says. To the game, you can have a story about defying society's expectations and being yourself, but for god’s sake, don’t put a gay person in there. That’d be weird.
I hope we can do better than this.
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