Are you guilty of assuming Godzilla's gender?
Apparently, figuring out whether the city-sized demonspawn is a boy or girl is of tantamount importance to our civilization – enough to warrant an 800+ word essay from writer Bella Blondeau at The Gamer.
"In the 1954 original, Godzilla doesn't actually have a given gender," Blondeau informs us, undoubtedly believing we'd be horrified by such a revelation. "It's referred to purely as an entity and force of nature with it/its pronouns, almost like we'd talk about a hurricane or a tornado. In fact, original rubber suit actor Haruou Nakajima is on the record as not having a clue whether or not the Gender-Neutral Royalty of Monsters is male or female."
It seems the Japanese don't really care whether or not a movie monster is male or female.
In America, however, Blondeau notes a debate has RAGED for decades over this EXTREMELY IMPORTANT thing.
"Co-Creator Tomoyuki Honda clarified Godzilla as male in the '90s. Patrick Tatopolous, special effects supervisor for Rolland Emmerich's much-maligned 1998 Godzilla, stated that his team made female genitalia for their rendering of the creature, but still refers to it as male. Son of Godzilla director, Jun Fukuda, referred to Godzilla as explicitly male, and marketing materials for the film referred to it as 'Papa Gojira.' Stars of Gareth Edwards' Godzilla: King Of Monsters, on the other hand, couldn't make their minds up in 2019."
Blondeau then notes that actress Vera Farmiga opined that the monstrosity might be "gender fluid," because it's "kind of a hybrid" and both "amphibian and reptile."
Then Blondeau gets to the real point she wants to make: not only is Farmiga's opinion interesting, it's actually the truth.
"Godzilla's gender is fluid and doesn't actually matter," she writes.
I would agree with the last part of that sentence, but since Blondeau wrote over 800 words on this topic, she has more to say:
"If anything, Godzilla is a great learning opportunity in gender-neutral language, and it might even be a fun exercise to start referring to them with they/them pronouns. And by 'fun exercise,' I mean, 'a good way to de-stigmatize neopronouns.'"
Did you hear that, kids? We're going to use an ocean monster from the pit of hell to teach our kids how to erase masculinity and femininity and embrace the spectrum of gender! SCIENCE!
"Godzilla's a tall, powerful theydy," concludes Blondeau. "You can't change my mind."
Sadly, similar questions have been asked before.
What a time... to be alive.
This makes me wonder, have we misgendered King Kong as well? Only time and Wokesanity will tell.
