Despite the common use of she/her pronouns for Grelle by both the author and fans, my interpretation perceives Grelle as a man exhibiting an extreme degree of femininity
Some men harbor jealousy towards women and their bodies. Their fantasies center around becoming that which they covet, a woman, and they might identify as women later on. That's the kind of man Grelle seems to be
What's your opinion on this?
What are your Headcanons for characters in Black Butler? I’m just curious. I’ll give you some of mine:
Sebastian would have some cat merchandise if he was in the modern times.
Because of Finnian’s job as the gardener, I’d like to think he knows a lot about rare & exotic kinds of plants.
Ciel probably has a few spare eye patches just incase. Once Elizabeth decorated one, and he doesn’t wear the eye patch because of it.
Grell would like slasher films or anything with gore or blood. She’d also like some romance movies.
Undertaker would like horror and thriller in general.
Ok so when I first watched the anime, I noticed that in episode 5, grille refers to herself as an actress, which is the female version of an actor, saying that grelle referred to herself as female, but in the manga (vol II), Sebastian calls grelle “Mister Sutcliff” multiple times. so is grelle non-binary or is Sebastian just bad at telling girls and boys apart??
I was watching ep 5 and noticed that grelle referred to herself as an actress, which is what you would call a female(a male would be called an actor)
So my guess is that grelle is a girl since she referrers to herself as an actress
I hope everyone is having a nice day. Long post incoming.
I see that the wiki is using she/her pronouns for Grelle, and I also see that the admins have decided to stop waiting for “official confirmation” on her gender. I wanted to give my two cents, which is that there already was “official confirmation” on Toboso’s blog, when Yana said Grelle was a man with a maiden’s heart. I’m not linking the blog post here because I’m guessing everyone is already familiar with it, but this is how Japanese speakers normally talk about transgender women.
If you want an idea of how extremely common it is for Japanese speakers to use this terminology when talking about trans women, you can copy and paste 心は女 (“heart is a woman/female”) into your search engine of choice. You’ll notice virtually every result is discussing trans people. Meanwhile, when Yana talks about Grelle in her post, she says 心は乙女 (literally, “[Grelle’s] heart is a maiden/girl”), which is just a more flowery version of the same thing.
Even though this kind of terminology is considered a little outdated by now, 心の性 (kokoro no sei, “sex of the heart”) is still more commonly used as a layperson’s term than the official Japanese term for gender identity, which is 性同一性 (sei douitsusei). That’s probably because it’s been around for a lot longer (people have been using this terminology for half a century) than the official term. Here are two examples of this terminology cropping which are accessible to English speakers:
Interview of the owner of an FtM bar in Tokyo with English subtitles (see 3:00)
A scene in One Piece that caused a lot of trouble in that fandom
To be clear, “heart is a woman/maiden” would never be used to describe someone who is merely a feminine cisgender man; you would actually say the opposite in those cases. For example, Felix Argyle, the little crossdressing catboy from Re:Zero, says this about himself in the Japanese web novel:
「そう、フェリちゃんは身も心も男にゃのです」
“Sou, Feri-chan wa mi mo kokoro mo otoko nya no desu”
“That’s right, Feli-chan is male in both body and heart”
Generally when Japanese speakers bring up the topic of Grelle’s gender identity, whether it’s the narration in a Pixiv fanfiction or in a discussion on Twitter, they echo these terms because Yana saying “Grelle’s heart is a girl” is already seen as confirmation. I was about to go to bed when writing this so I only pulled up a handful of examples of Japanese speakers talking about her this way, but if anyone asks for more I’ll be happy to supply some. If not, just trust me that these terms are commonly used and understood within the Japanese fandom.
Pixiv’s page for Grelle, which cites the character guide in the same sentence it claims her heart is female
Example of someone using the exact same phrase while examining statements she makes about her gender in the manga and anime
Another person explaining the different uses of “onee” using the same phrase to describe the difference between cis male crossdressers and gay men (whose hearts are male) compared to trans women
TL;DR, some of the language Yana uses to describe Grelle would never be used by Japanese speakers to describe a feminine cis man, because it refers to a trans woman.
Kuroshitsuji Wiki acknowledges that Grelle Sutcliff identifies as a woman, and thus our articles use she/her pronouns for Grelle.
With regard to the story's universe, our primary source, Grelle has, time and time again, in unambiguous terms, referred to herself as a woman, and that takes precedence over all else.
We hope that this decision will unite the community. Thank you for your patience.
For full transparency, the discussion can be found on the #wiki-inquiries channel of our Discord.
97 Votes in Poll
Amv Black Butler reapers
It has Grell Sutcliff, William T. Spears, and Ronald Knox
A lot of people say Grell is gay, but if s/he happens to be trans which is very possible, then there’s a chance s/he’s not. If we take Madam Red into account then it’s pretty clear s/he’s bisexual, but honestly to me it makes more sense for her/him to be pansexual- of course there probably aren’t any nonbinary people in bb (and Jesus Christ if there are please don’t criticise me I’m only on ep 12) so we’ll never really know for sure anyway.
35 Votes in Poll
So, im under the trans umbrella (agender but heavily masc leaning, afab). Grell's character is quite different between the anime and manga so i'm going to talk about them both individually
(Side note: i am not done the manga or the anime)
Manga: now, Grell starts out a bit iffy, but Toboso has more then made up for that in her later attempts at writing her. she started out as comedic relief, but has immensely evolved into a respectable character, which is one of my favorite things about her. trans representation doesn't come around often, and when it does, it is used for comedy. though Grell still has many issues, she is taken seriously, and i love that.
Anime: this is the one i have a problem with. she is constantly misgendered even though she refers to herself with feminine pronouns/labels, and its honestly infuriating. she is also pretty much only used for comedy in the anime, and since im pretty sure more people watch the anime than read the manga, it has caused such immense confusion that it's nearly irreparable, no matter how much we may try.
In conclusion, i love Grell as a character, and i love finding characters that i can relate to, such as her, but the anime at least could've done way better.
SOMEONE PLZ TALK TO ME
😥😥😥😥😥😥😥😥😥😥😥😥😥😥😥😥😥😥😥😥😥😥😥😥😥😥
Btw grell is transgender Yana herself answered that Grell was born in the wrong gender (male) and is a trans. Yana Toboso hasn't publicly said anything one way or another. ... But also jokingly/seductively refer to their own body parts as feminine ones, despite them being biologically male.
I just added chapter 173 to the wiki, can some do the summary for the page please?
Why dont they change it to she/her already? Yana Toboso confirmed shes a trans woman, right? this is my biggest problem with the anime, it misgendered her and caused so much confusion that people still are unsure. its annoying. this is lowkey a vent, but also a question. if you read this far, have a cute pic for your troubles
Is Grell a girl or boy ??
YES I know it's a stupid question
But is Grell a female or male ??
Plz I wanna know !!
TW / mentions of suicide, misgendering, Sebac!el
Grell has always referred to herself with she/her pronouns and feminine terms, has always wanted to have female reproductive organs, was shown to be jealous of women with feminine body features (you know when Sebastian had an “appointment” with Beast? Grell later said if that’s what Seb likes, she’d be willing to curl her hair.), and very much shows many symptoms of gender dysphoria. In addition, since we found out Shinigamis are humans who ended their own lives and now are punished for it, there’s a theory going around that she committed it because she couldn’t have kids or other trauma related to gender identity. I also have images from the extra pages in the BB manga to back it up. Obviously this isn’t the best MTF rep in anime/manga (because she also gets misgendered by the other characters countless times, but are you gonna trust the bystanders or the first person?) so not everyone noticed it immediately, but as of right now, this can’t be more obvious, can it be?
If this bit from Grell’s confessional in Volume 2 doesn’t open your eyes even a little bit then I don’t know what does.
But no, this fandom is so stuck in 2010 that these people keep pushing their “Gwell ish a dwag boi” agenda and straight up close their ears instead of educating themselves. In my opinion, Grell misgenderers are the second worst group in the BB fandom, with only S*baciel/Cl*udelois shippers above them. There are still people who WILLINGLY dismiss all of this just to feed their little ships and it’s amazing how uncomfortable it can make me (I’m cis by the way). Nowadays, a lot of people see her as a comfort character because there are real, non-2D people who share her struggles and experiences and all of this discourse is disrespectful not only to this character, but also to hundreds, thousands, millions of real people.
And no, don’t get me started on the “well, let’s keep their articles with gender neutral pronouns because it’s still all unknown!”. You’re not the L Lawliet you think you are. Stop trying to be master detectives and listen to the woman for once. I challenge the admins here to do their research and start to use fem pronouns to refer to her (if the HXH page can do it with Alluka, then this page can too). It especially got on my nerves when I tried making Sebagrell a het ship to respect her identity, and it all got undone. I don’t care if it’s a hot topic in the fandom. Go argue with a wall because I’m not willing to waste time on some creeps here. Grell is a queen and you must treat her as such. That is all I have to say.
