Metroid's Samus Aran Is a Transgendered Woman, Deal with It

"Metroids Samus Aran Is a Transgendered Woman, Deal with It" (stylised as Metroid Samus Aran Is a Transgendered Woman. Deal with It.') is an article written by Brianna Wu and Ellen McGrody for The Mary Sue. It was written on September 1, 2015.

The article talks about a comment in the official 1994 Japanese strategy guide for Super Metroid where the writers of the guide asked questions to secrets about Samus Aran. Hirofumi Matsuoka, who was one of the lead designers of Samus Aran claimed that Samus was not a woman but a "newhalf," which was a Japanese term for transgender people though it also meant mixed ancestry. Because of this, Brianna Wu claimed this as absolute proof that Samus Aran was a transgender woman, despite the fact that the source was merely a graphic designer who didn't create the character, and the statement was most likely a joke in the first place.

However, Yoshio Sakamoto, the co-creator of the Metroid franchise, denied Samus was a transgender woman and soon, people started to call out the inaccuracy of the article and pointed out that this article only hurts transgender people by making them a stepping stone for gender discussion. People also pointed out that changing well established characters to fit their narratives was ultimately lazy and should have made transgender characters themselves.

However, the facts, logic and legitimate criticism fell upon deaf ears and Brianna Wu posted another article entitled, Well, That Escalated Quickly: A Samus Followup claiming to have been abused by "transphobes."