The LGBT and Anime Community

So, I realize that this is a touchy subject, and hopefully I'm not stepping on any toes, but this is a topic that is incredibly important to me personally. The thing about it is, for some reason or another, I see these two communities crossing each other surprisingly often. Now, one might not see how or why these two lifestyles have anything to do with one another, but I believe it's quite evident when you look at the cosplay community. Women often cosplay as male characters, and *Less commonly* men also cosplay as female characters. This practice is called 'Crossplaying,' Personally, I find this fascinating and consider this a form of trans-related life. I'm gonna drop the ball here and mention that I myself am trans *Waves prideful flag* but anyway, I don't really know what kind of discussion I wanted to bring about here, I just sort of wanted to bring it up since no one really talks about it, and I'm curious to how you guys feel about this 'controvertial' aspect being a part of a community that you're involved with.

Mmm I dont mind it in the least, I believe everyone is free to do what he wants as long as his liberty doesnt cross against other people liberty. So I feel as if everything fine, thats my opinion at least.

I think that people in both communities experience discrimination and hardship due to what they like. It would make sense for people in such situations to welcome one another and be supportive. Anime indirectly teaches one to have an open mind as the wide variety of characters and backgrounds that one is exposed to is quite diverse. Granted not all anime fans are that way, but I believe the medium encourages that.

*mock salute* Trans here, too, but I had to deal with that bloody mess that was a two-choice "pick your sex" application option (Edit: Oh, I dd mean "bloody mess" in the British sense, not the brutish sense). I agree with securitysam that anyone willing to be openly into anime is more willing to be openly LGBTQ if they were LGBTQ in the first place. I'll expand on that with the point that anime also has genres like yaoi, yuri, girls/boys' love (none of which are outright pornographic, but can be very, very close), bara-esque action shows, and genres that cross over between boys' and girls' stereotypical lines (whereas until this last decade, She-Ra was probably a typical example of western non-stereotypical genre targeting). For that last point, people are going to be more willing to cross stereotype and conformity lines when they were already predisposed to do so. As for crossplay, I really don't think it's an LGBT thing, any more than kigurumi usually is (I consider the latter to be a very, very Q thing, but not G or T or anything like that). From what I've seen and from a few statistics I vaguely remember, transpeople are more likely to dress as their sex instead of their gender when cosplaying with no ulterior point (such as when my group did a group cosplay based on personality instead of looks). It's kind of like drag; it's less about being yourself, for most people (but far from all people), and more about getting out of yourself or playing a different, "lulzy" side of yourself. Oh, and there are also stereotypes that anime is all full of girls in short schoolgirl skirts that somehow appeal to gay male kids and other things like that, which attract curious people who end up realizing the stereotype is stupidly wrong but stay because they liked the reality of the medium or culture. Less relevant, but still relevant.