arashi is a very big comfort character for me.

i am not a trans woman. i'm afab genderfluid. but arashi's struggle with her identity and expressing discomfort with how others see her as something she's not is something deeply relatable to me. (1/?)

i have struggled with learning to love myself and finding my identity for a long time. i have struggled with people not respecting my pronouns because i look one way or the other. i used to be around people who would force me to identify as one gender or the other. (2/?)

beyond my gender identity, i have struggled with how i want to express myself while being a fat person (wearing cute things, wearing makeup etc.) vs. how society caters that aesthetic to skinny people while giving no opportunity to plus sized people to wear stuff like that. (3/?)

arashi, however, brings me immense comfort and shows that just because i look or express myself a certain way that is deemed unfavorable or as a joke to society, it doesn't mean i have to listen to what society says. i can be confident in how i express myself and (4/?)

i can love myself for who i am and not how others see me, even if i want to be validated by other people. i can put myself first, love myself first.

and having arashi be openly trans and openly be proud of it while expressing discomfort when she's seen as anything other (5/?)

than who she says she is is extremely powerful to me and speaks to me on a deep level. arashi is arashi, and she happens to be a woman.

seeing her be misgendered and having her gender be debated by western and eastern fans alike hurts to see. seeing transphobic takes from (6/?)

eastern fans and having western fans praise and agree with those takes after we fought for her pronouns to be restored on the wiki hurts even more.

i can't speak for trans women, or other trans people in general, but i know that i can speak for myself that if this were (7/?)

happening to me, that i would be really hurt and upset by this. i know it's silly to treat fictional characters like they're incredibly important and real, but having arashi be trans representation is powerful and meaningful to me.

so yes, let's keep this energy for real (8/?)

trans women, but also please don't treat 2D trans women as anything less just because they're 2D. because representation is important, representation matters. having characters you can see yourself in or find comfort in matters.

arashi deserves better. (9/9)

getting these thoughts out feels better. it really does. even if people don't end up seeing these tweets, it feels better to talk about arashi and be open about myself a little more.

https://trans--rights.carrd.co/  please consider signing these petitions.