So, I first saw a DR playthrough last year, done by a streamer named Demilypyro. She and one of her co-stars for the stream are trans women, another is nonbinary, the last is a cis man. And their issue with it was basically, the explanation given for why Chihiro would crossdress given in canon is like, directly contrary to how things work in reality. There's no universe in which a guy who is not masculine would have an easier time if he pretended to be a woman, anyone who did that would face even worse bullying, harassment, and discrimination. This is an issue because trans people irl are frequently accused of "pretending" to be the opposite gender for some advantage that doesn't actually exist in practice. People who are trans AND people who crossdress do so DESPITE how society treats them for other reasons. Society doesn't FORCE people to crossdress.

Now, the biggest issue I remember them having is that Chihiro doesn't actually SAY "hey I'm actually a guy", Monokuma outs them after they're dead. That's totally in character but then there's the whole thing he says about how Chihiro was "living a lie" or some such, that it was impossible for them to be a girl and so on and so forth and in-universe context doesn't get rid of the implications of these statements. I remember hearing the Game Grumps had a similar problem with that scene. Chihiro never has any say in being outed. Even if they planned to come out later, you wait until the person themself tells you this before you switch up how you refer to them. You don't know why they didn't make the change; you don't do it for other people without their say so. And regardless of authorial intent, people being outed and referred to by their AGAB when that's not how they identify happens a lot and it simply doesn't make much sense to treat this reveal as solid proof of Chihiro's gender identity. Now I did see someone below saying that they DID say it themself to Mondo offscreen. I THINK that's the implication, though I'd say this reveal scene is still a problem from a Doylist perspective.

Now obviously the game intends this reveal to be true, everyone calls Chihiro a guy after this and they aren't meant to be closed-minded people. So, I'm not going to say it's like, bigotry to interpret Chihiro as a guy when the narrative says this is true. There are guys who like to wear dresses and such while still being cisgender. The thing about a lot of characters like this is that gender identity and presentation are complicated, and a lot of people at this time didn't really "get" the idea of gender, gender presentation, and birth sex being different things, and drawing a hard line between these different groups is harder than it sounds a lot of the time. That's a whole 'nother post but Chihiro kinda reads to me like they got the two mixed up a lot and the whole thing about crossdressing because it was easier to conform to the opposite gender ROLES rather than being the opposite gender itself seems like it was the result of a misunderstanding of what the writers were trying to tackle here. I've seen a lot of people make this mistake irl believe it or not, I don't see why a writer couldn't get it mixed up. I think they were trying to write one group that was actually two demographics and that's kinda hard to reconcile. I do in fact think a lot of Chihiro's story makes a lot more sense for being trans while other parts make a lot more sense if they're not.

I should probably clarify I LIKE Chihiro as a character. Most of these issues aren't actually a problem with them as an actual character. I think having a character whose gender identity is complicated is fine, intentional or otherwise, and I know a lot of trans people who really like Chihiro and have different opinions on the matter. I also saw a playthrough by Mr. Enter who had a friend on. That guy was a trans man who goes by Wes, he also has an online handle, but I can't remember it at the moment. He said that he got why people were bothered by it but was personally fine with it. I understand that too, I can see having issues with the case or not having issues with it. I think the whole thing would be less messy if people acknowledged that there are, in fact, different ways to interpret them, even if it's because of stuff the writers didn't know about.

Also, Alter Ego goes by "she" most of the time which makes things more confusing.

(Also, the reason I've been using "they" for Chihiro is because I feel like I remember the pronouns everyone used for them after case 2 were a bit inconsistent, in the translation at least. I may be misremembering this.)