The single most exhausting thing about discussions of portrayals of trans characters in media is "well the author said they were [incorrect gender] so they're not trans"

Like when a writer clearly portrays a character as identifying as, say a man, then calls them a woman, that

doesn't mean the character is a woman actually, it means the writer sees all trans men as actually men.

It becomes this cyclical gotcha where it's not transphobic for the author to misgender him, why? because he's not really a man! Why? Because the author misgendered him

It's an stupid as hell ignorance to the broader issues that influence why an author would write a trans character that way at best, and willful denial of your fav thing's transphobia at worst

Can you believe that there are people who say Erica from Catherine, a character who has literally canonly had gender confirmation surgery, is actually not a woman and just a "crossdressing feminine boy" because the credits misgender her

There are more complicated situations like chihiro or ritsu where a writer is clearly trying to write about cis people and just ends up drawing from trans aesthetics to do so in a way that makes it difficult for an audience to know for sure the character's gender

But with cases like Yamato, Erica, Naoto, Mutsuki etc there's absolutely no ambiguity. When a character directly says they are a certain gender in response to someone misgendering them, when their narrative involves mention of gender confirmation surgery or binding,

it is undeniable that what the writers are commenting on is trans people, and the way they misgender their trans character is a reflection of how they see all trans people.

To say otherwise is willful ignorance

Also sorry there's a typo in this thread where I say "sees all trans men as actually men" instead of "all trans men as actually women"