I was going to do some research on the history of the character Poison from the Final Fight franchise and also found in the Street Fighter franchise, but I found a twenty minute video by MegatonStammer that covered the topic very well (you can see it at the bottom of this article). The video was released on YouTube on February 26, 2012 just over a week before the release of Street Fighter X Tekken.
Some of his language that the YouTuber uses when talking about the subject is cringe worthy. MegatonStammer never does state his/her gender identity in the video. Going by voice alone it sounds like he is a male. It would be easy to say that he is a cisgender male that interested in transgender women as a fetish and holds views of transgender women from the media’s representation of us. Yet, I don’t think he is being transphobic but it rather just naive. In his video he is generally respectful when talking about Poison and defending that she is a transgender woman.
There were several times where he was arguing that Poison is transgender woman that he used masculine pronouns. You should always use feminine pronouns when you are talking about a male-to-female transgender.
The opposition to Poison as being transgender he labeled as “100% female”. Using this word to describe a female who is not transgender makes it appear that transgender women are less of a woman. I have never heard this term used by the transgender community. My generation use to call them genetic girls. The popular term currently is cisgender female.
Near the beginning of the video he used the word “tranny”. In my opinion, perhaps the worse word someone could use to describe us. I didn’t have much hope that it was going to be a positive video after he said that, but he only used it once and overall I think he was respectful.
I’ve never actually played Final Fight but I did play Street Fighter. I got into the second game in the series. I use to have fun playing as Chun-Li at the local arcades in the early 90s. Poison wasn’t introduced in the Street Fighter franchise until Street Fighter VI was released in 2008. By that time I lost my interest in fighting games. Street Fighter V is scheduled to be released in 2016. I didn’t see any official announcement that Poison would be in the game. I might pick it up if she was.
