kitsunebi

Except again, that character was essentially removed from the USA release of the version most people played, and most of us never heard that the character was transgender until many years later. Design specs for the character suggest that the decision to make the character transgender happened before the game was ever released (though it's true that the decision was made for the benefit of a later release in America), though the developer only considers the Western version of the character to be transgender, while the Japanese version is female. The entire thing was a miscalculation which was made completely in Japan. It wasn't America who asked her to be changed into a transgender character (not in a million years LOL.) So if anyone's to be blamed for the bad optics of deciding that it's less controversial to beat a transgender character than a woman, it's Capcom Japan, who only did it because they had no understanding whatsoever of the political climate in the USA, thus inadvertently making something MORE controversial in the attempt to make it less controversial.

Making Poison transgender was pointless back then, especially if it was meant to make the game less controversial in America (boy did they EVER misread the room!!!). Which is why Poison isn't even IN the SNES version of the game, which is what most Americans are familiar with. She was replaced with a completely different sprite of a 100% male character, since in that political climate, the only thing worse than beating up women was the very existence of a transgender character. However, making her transgender has certainly done the character a lot of favors in the years since then. Would such a minor character even be remembered today if not for that status?