We’re just squeaking into the last hours of Pride Month and I am so happy to bring you an article that I’ve been dying to read! I spoke to Meru some months ago about an article for Okazu, about navigating Yuri fandom as a queer black Yuri fan in a world where fandom seems to be filled with more angry people who take their shitty choices out on others than it used to be. Time got away from both of us, but now I’m super excited to have this article right now, at the end of what has been a month of jumping years backwards.

As a reminder, Stonewall Uprisings were a protest against mistreatment by cops and government – it was followed by the first Pride March, as queer folks stood up and said “We Exist.” This Pride month, the story we’re sharing is that no matter what the worst people say, we can’t be made to go backwards. It’s not possible. We’re still here and are joyfully embracing our truest selves.

Please welcome back Meru to Okazu with your warmest thoughts.

This article has been a long time coming: I’ve thought of a multitude of topics, of ways to approach. Initially, this was going to be about being a Yuri fan in Japan: I was going to recount going to events and reflect fondly on Yuriten 2019 in a world where conventions seem like a dream to me. But this Pride Month, I’ve decided to do something wholly personal and brave since Erica’s given me the space to continue to be myself.

I’m going to come out as trans, and yes, it’s because of Yuri.

I first got into Yuri as a middle-schooler on the cusp of matriculating into high school via Kashimashi, also known as Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl. The first volume, published in English on November 29, 2006 by Seven Seas, was precious to me, spirited away from the shelves of my hometown’s Borders bookstore to my rickety particle board bookshelf heaped with discounted manga from the local Half Price Books. I passed the volumes around between childhood friends, the sole sapphic in our group. Secretly, I envied Kashimashi’s lead Hazumu, a trans girl who well… got to transition. I couldn’t place the feeling at the time: I thought my jealousy was more about , especially since I was, technically, female. It was the gender marked on my birth certificate: presumably, I’d always circle “F”. After all, what else could there be?

Growing up, I believe that I was a girl: society told me I was, my parents told me I was, and the burgeoning, often frightening changes in my body told me I was going to be female, whether I wanted to be or not. I grew my hair to the middle of my back, wore pinks and pastels and soft colors, learned to sway my hips, raised the pitch of my voice, and did all the things girls should do. At the height of my adolescent femininity, I added makeup, smearing on caked-on layers of vivid gold eyeshadow from the local pharmacy via dipping my thumb directly into the palette. I tried so hard to be a girl, tried so hard to give into being soft and pliable and feminine. It was a daily struggle: I thought that if I could erase my fatness, which I now readily embrace, I’d be one step closer. When that didn’t work, I thought if I just doubled down and was hyperfeminine, that might cancel out my physical body.

Amidst that all, I frequently lamented having hormones: when my cycle came, unpredictable and unrelenting due to my PCOS, I wept, begging my mother to take me somewhere where I could get my hormones removed. I wanted to rid myself of my endocrine system, so desperately desired to toss the whole thing out and be born anew. I don’t think I wanted to look different: I just wanted to not be a girl. I didn’t have the words and wouldn’t until about 2012 when I joined Tumblr and found the word “non-binary” on a blog post.

By proxy, my Yuri collection started to grow: BL —Boy’s Love— has always appealed to me, but as my gender started to flux and force me to ask questions too big for my teenage mind, I snuck more Yuri into my collection. My next volume, after sneaking in Kashimashi’s five volume run, was Voiceful: fitting for a bass clarinet player in love with music. After that, it grew and grew. I added bigger and better titles while in college: in Japan, I’d start to collect Kase-san, Yuri is My Job!, and a slew of Japanese titles. When I left Japan on August 11, 2020, the bulk of my collection followed me back to the US, bouncing around from residence to residence until I came to reside in Northern Washington just two months ago. I’ve since added Sailor Moon, which I suspect will be incredibly formative to my gender exploration with Haruka and Michiru, and heck, even Usagi and her crushes on her fellow feminine teammates.

But in the end, I always seemed to come back to Kashimashi.

It’s meditative, in a way. At least once every year and some, I circle back around to thumbing through physical and digital copies of the series, enough that I’ve even podcasted about it and have a small collection of merch dedicated to the series. When my thoughts go quiet, I drift back to Kashimashi’s storyline, and up until recently, I pondered why I still envied Hazumu when I had long since divorced myself from “she/her” and found mild comfort in “she/they.” As I shifted to the more fitting “they/she” and now fully to “they/them”, it became apparent to me, albeit over the course of about two years: I envied Hazumu’s transition, not their gender. I envied being able to wake up as a version of myself that was different, desired a paradigm shift from feminine to wholly de-gendered, save for the aspects of gender I wanted to play with.

Nowadays, the manga is very outdated, at least to me: the way Hazumu is treated makes me think of the kind of person who views transition, and generally being outside the binary, as something that changes the personality of the individual, versus being something that affirms them. As a feminist, I find it hard to read because there’s a lot of biological essentialism tucked around the edges, leaving very little space for any of the characters to question what it means to be attracted to someone pre- and post-transition, and how that may beautiful broaden their own understandings of their gender and sexuality. It’s also got the world’s worst dad, but… this isn’t about that. Plus, I think that there’s something radical about embracing flawed media: we’re not made of perfect instances after all. Each of us is wholly human: shouldn’t our media be just as messy?

I sit here, today, with an inch of hair, with a prominent mustache above my lips —a natural result of my PCOS and higher testosterone levels— and a gorgeous unibrow as thick as. I use they/them freely, and truncate my name to the more pleasant sounding “Meru” versus the overtly feminine sounding full name that I inch closer to casting aside. 

And now, when I look at Yuri, I see myself: I see the soft butches that could, in another series, be they/them or even they/he. I see bodies and ideals and identities that mirror myself. I feel less alone. I feel natural in a country that would rather me turn my back on playing at soft masculinity and gender ambivalence in exchange for kitten heels, a lack of body hair, and legs crossed at the ankle. When I crack open a volume of Yuri and see tomboys and boyish girls and girls straddling the lines of socially acceptable gender and being themselves. 

I see myself in hands held, in kisses traded between sapphic, feminine characters so in love with their partners that it becomes their sole reason for breathing. I find my own heart, genderless as it is, in series like Roadqueens, Our Teachers Are Dating, and My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness. (Really, anything Nagata Kabi writes, if we’re being 100% honest here.) Because of Yuri, my life is full of a desire to exist, and the more and more I see myself reflected in each manga or light novel I devour, the more and more Yuri guides me towards becoming who I desire to be.

I suppose that in the end, that’s why Yuri matters so much to me: it’s a look in the mirror at a version of myself worth loving, of a sapphic body that has meaning and is worth loving, kissing, and being affectionate with.  It’s my way of examining the world, a lens for my feminist praxis and by proxy, a way to telegraph my non-whiteness into media made by non-white creators. It’s a way to explore gender, and a way to radically recognize who I am and who I have the potential to be. Yuri is powerful like that, and something tells me its inherent power will only grow, given its century long history.

It’s why on today, June 30th, 2022, I can say/type this: My name, for now, is Meru, and I am a trans masc non-binary feminist who loves Yuri. (I am also a very, very soft boi too. Yuri brought me that as well.)

As my thoughts wrap up, there’s a multitude of people I’d like to thank: first and foremost, Erica here at Okazu for giving me the space. This is not at all the article I expected to write, but is very much so the one I needed to. I’d also like to thank Vrai Kaiser of Anime Feminist for (unknowingly) modeling tran masc happiness, and for generally being one of the best people in my life; TJ Ferentini, an Editor at Kodansha and a dear friend, for showing me that transition is what we make it, and that it only takes a declaration to yourself to be who you are; Kit, one of the cohosts of TomoChoco and my best friend who loves me all the time, no matter what pronouns I use; and my partner, Kaylyn Wylie, who has supported me and certainly will hold me when I inevitably weep from seeing this piece go live.

Honestly, I don’t know where my transition —ongoing as it is— will end: I don’t know if it’ll one day involve testosterone or if one day, I’ll decide that a different shape to my feminized body will suit who I am better. I suppose that’s why it’s called a transition, right? It’s a process with no time limit, even though there’s days where I’d love to be. My evolution into who I am is far from over: but hey, at least there’s heaps of good Yuri to help me envision a future where I am me and, by proxy, I matter and have a right to exist.

Erica here: Welcome to your self, Meru! You know you’re always welcome here as a writer and a Yuri fan. Thank you for this post and a happy  fucking Queer Pride to all of us. ^_^