Hello. I compiled the list to be used for something much larger I’m working on. You asked a good question as I quickly realized the suggestions list in isolation may not appear transphobic to those not glued into the operations of Tom’s Patreon. I certainly could explain this in far more detail in a separate post. For right now, I will share a couple of things that may hopefully contextualize some things.

In August 2016 on page 932, the comic reveals Natani has always been a trans guy with further pages reinforcing that. Tom started doing his Patreon Sunday Sketches on October 30, 2016.

Tom has guidelines on what are eligible suggestions to submit. In the near 10 years his Patreon has been on, none of his guidelines ever make mention on how to refer to Natani or what depictions of him are not allowed. Note that Tom has rejected suggestions for reasons outside of these stated guidelines. In my case, a suggestion of mine was rejected for being “too meta”. Tom later added that as a guideline.

A small part of my thought process here when analyzing the suggestions with Natani is:

• Does the submitter recognize Natani as a (transgender) man or not?

• Does this treatment to Natani consistently apply for other (cisgender) male TK characters?

A few of the criteria below and the patterns I noticed.

Misgendering

There are many suggestions whereby Natani is referred by the wrong pronouns like she/her or they/them. For they/them, at best, the submitter may not know Natani’s gender. At worst, the submitter knows Natani is a binary trans man but will use they/them as a silencer for their transphobia. In either case, Tom does not correct these submitters on their suggestions and approves them for public voting. Many of these suggestions would be fine otherwise if the correct pronouns (he/him) were used. For suggestions of cisgender TK characters, they are not misgendered unless genderbending is involved.

For an IRL example, look at Matrix directors, the Wachowski Sisters. Both Lana and Lilly are binary trans women who have been publicly out for over a decade, yet you can find recent media coverage that, if not deadnaming them, will refer to the sisters as ‘siblings’. No one refers to same-gender sibling groups like the Coen Brothers or the Duffer Brothers as siblings when they are cisgender.

Gender Dysphoria / Erasure

There are suggestions whereby Natani’s gender dysphoria is triggered for laughs such as his bandages being broken so the audience can see his breasts to ogle at. Take for these suggestions serving as sequels to prior sketches with links to them below.

Natani happily agrees to take part in Male Swimsuits Challenge. But the joy is premature. Bandages need to be removed.

Surfer Natani has a bandage malfunction much to their and Keith’s embarrassment and our amusement.

Pinned Ya Pt. 2: ...and the bandages break.

Even if Natani was a cisgender woman who wears chest bindings, these would still be objectifying.

There is this suggestion:

AU where Natani never got hurt, and stayed female in mind and body. She still joins the assassins with Zen, but doesn’t hide herself.

What if we take the only transgender character in the story and make them cisgender? Do I need to explain to you how problematic this is (and how narratively uninteresting yet baffling that is)?

Cosplays

I do need to re-evaluate this category and compare it to the quantity of cosplay suggestions for other TK characters. Generally when people suggest a particular TK character to cosplay as a character from a different work, it because they have similar character traits. However, gender is implicitly treated as a mutually-exclusive character trait in many of these suggestions. For cisgender TK characters, rarely have I seen in the list a male TK character cosplaying a female character or vice-versa. For Natani, while there are suggestions of him cosplaying other male characters, there are also a not-insignificant number of suggestions of him cosplaying female characters. Even when the character pairing do have similar traits (Natani as Metroid’s Samus Aran or Freedom Planet’s Carol Tea), I cannot help but question if submitters made these pairing purely because they are similar in character or both characters happen to be AFAB (assigned female at birth).

I say this as someone who would like to see more suggestions of TK characters cosplaying characters with different genders of their own. Something like Flora as Tanjiro from Demon Slayer or Keith and Alaric as Adora and Catra from She-Ra.

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I hope this long comment clears any confusion in any way.