Trans Women In Mainstream Gaming - Her Name is Birdetta

Birdo thinks he is a girl and likes to be called Birdetta. He likes to wear a bow on his head and shoot eggs from his mouth.

-Super Mario Bros 2 US Manual

In Japan, Catherine is male as well, and likes to believe that he is female. Like Birdo, he likes to be called Cathy as opposed to his real name, Catherine. As recently as Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Birdo's Trophy description describes the character as “gender indeterminate,” and uses the pronoun “it” rather than gender-specific pronouns such as “he” or “she”.

Popple pauses before settling on calling Birdo a “dame” in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga

In the game Captain Rainbow, Birdo is heard with a deep, male voice which gets high-pitched when she gets angry or excited. Additionally, in the game’s second trailer, Little Mac from Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! speaks about Birdo, calling her a “young lady,” only to take a short break and ponder. His final verdict is “Depending on one’s view point, she is a young lady.” In the game, Birdo’s indeterminate gender also forms the basis for a side quest to find proof that she is a girl (which is found, but censored).

In the official Japanese site for Mario Kart: Double Dash!! the description for Catherine states “Catherine appears to be Yoshi’s girlfriend… or does that mean boyfriend!?”

-Super Mario Wiki

When it comes to the subject of trans women in mainstream games, they are frequently presented as cisgender women unless the companies want to take a jab at trans women. Birdetta is a good example of this. She’s presented as a cis woman in most of the games in the US, but Superstar Saga still makes a joke of her, and in Japan it’s even worse.

(One could also look at Final Fight’s Poison. Presented as cisgender, but Capcom still had to be convinced not to include lines in Street Fighter X Tekken saying she isn’t a real woman.)

Video game characters aren’t real. So it’s actually possible for them to exist in gender nebulous presentations that actual people do not. Essentially, Poison and Birdetta are cisgender unless someone wants to make a joke of trans women, then and only then are they trans.

This is why Nintendo still refers to Birdetta as Birdo. To call her Birdetta as anything but a joke would be to acknowledge a context wherein she is trans in a positive way.

There are a lot of reasons they don’t want to do that. Part of it is simple transphobia. Another is that trans women don’t fit in with their appeals to mainstream gamers, nor their carefully manufactured American Christian Family image.

It’ll probably be a few more years, bare minimum, before we see trans women being treated with any modicum of respect by mainstream game culture. At the very least, it would be nice to do what we can to acknowledge this stuff.

What I’d love to see is both general gamers and games journalists refer to her as Birdetta. It is her name, after all, and it’s a name inextricably tied to her identity as a trans woman.

I’m not asking anyone to get into arguments about it. You don’t have to defend or explain your calling her Birdetta. In fact, it’s probably better if you don’t go at length to explain and defend that decision except when necessary. I don’t want calling her Birdetta to be a battleground. I simply want it to gradually become stranger and stranger to see her referred to by any other name.

When you write about her, call her Birdetta. When you talk about her, call her Birdetta. Doesn’t matter whether it’s an at length discussion or casually mentioning her presence in the latest Mario Kart. Just call her Birdetta.

Maybe someday, a few years from now, Nintendo will do the same.