He, She, They, or Godzilla

It’s Pride Month (HAPPY PRIDE!), let’s talk about Godzilla.

I was listening to a podcast which focused on failed movies, this episode focusing on Godzilla by Roland Emmerich, and I almost stopped listening. It wasn’t because they were lampooning a fantastic piece of cinema that the world had cast aside as crap, they made really good points, and let’s face it the movie flopped for a reason. I can’t deny that I had a lot of fun but, yeah, that movie deserves all the criticism it got. I questioned finishing the podcast because they kept referring to Godzilla as “he.”

I’m not even sure where but I remember hearing a producer on some older Godzilla movies talk about how Godzilla was in fact a female, but I can’t track down where I first heard that. Whenever I’d hear someone refer to Godzilla as “he,” I would immediately decide this person had no idea what they were talking about. Yes Godzilla has the moniker of “King of the Monsters,” but that is an American title (Much like how their true name is Gojira). Theories about why Godzilla is male or female populate the internet based on their ability to have kids but as we’ve seen with many trans women who elect not to have SRS and trans men who become pregnant, the ability to, and one’s role in the reproductive cycle is not linked to gender.

In an article on Slate entitled “Is Godzilla a Guy Lizard or a Girl Lizard” Aisha Harris stated that, “Not surprisingly, these debates often reveal more about fans’ ideas concerning gender than they do about Godzilla’s biological status.” She’s not wrong. Do we think Godzilla is male because the original Kaiju was a large city-destroying lizard who exudes power? Do we make misogynist jokes about Godzilla being a fire breathing scaly beast and therefore a woman? More to the point, why do I care what Godzilla’s gender and/or sex actually is?

Their gender is none of my damn business and to lump biological sex into the conversation (In Roland Emerich’s vision, Godzilla reproduced asexually, which leads to other theories, many based on ill-informed stereotypes about intersex humans) doesn’t make sense because we’re not talking about sex and reproduction, we’re talking about gender.

I’d been basing my ire on the fact that people who own the rights to Godzilla said that Godzilla was a woman, but there’s no statement from the creator to justify it (not that that matters as much as), Godzilla can’t speak human languages so they won’t be able to tell us what pronouns they use, so most of the discussion is moot anyways! And that is actually the point — if talking about Godzilla’s gender reveals more about the one making the comment than it does about Godzilla, I hate being misgendered and so when I hear Godzilla being misgendered I get pissed off. Yet because I am not Godzilla I have no right to be so angry.

In the end Godzilla’s gender shouldn’t matter, not just because Godzilla is a fictional, non-human, somewhat cognitive character, but because if Godzilla were male, female, or non-binary their actions would be the same, their character would be the same, and how people interact with them would be the same. It is none of my business how Godzilla identifies much like how it is none of my business how the person on the bus with an undercut identifies. I don’t know them and, unless I need to, I’m not going to have a meaningful conversation with them. What I think about Godzilla’s gender says more about me than Godzilla, and I think it says we all need to know is arbitrary, because unless we are Godzilla’s partner, doctor, or they choose to communicate their pronouns to us, it’s none of our business.

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See Ashley Lauren Rogers in PASS/FAIL as part of the Transgender Theatre Festival at The Brick in Brooklyn NY, June 11, 19, and 20.