What Gender Is Ryuji Ayukawa from Blue Period?

Out of all the characters from Blue Period, Ryuji Ayukawa is definitely one of the most intriguing ones. Yatora’s classmate and friend does not only have a very flamboyant personality that makes the character extremely lovable, but there is also a very intriguing and deep story behind Ryuji Ayukawa. In this article, we are going to tell you a bit about that story, as we reveal the gender of Ryuji Ayukawa in Blue Period.

Ryuji Ayukawa was born a male and is biologically a male character. Still, the character is gender-fluid and dresses in a combination of male and female clothes, which is why it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the gender, unless you know the facts. Ryuji Ayukawa can be identified as a genderqueer bisexual in modern terms.

The rest of this article is going to focus on the character of Ryuji Ayukawa. We are going to reveal a bit about the character and the story behind who Ryuji Ayukawa really is. This is a truly intriguing character with a brilliant story, which is why we have decided to dedicate this whole article to who Ryuji Ayukawa really is.

Is Ryuji Ayukawa a boy or a girl?

Also known as “Yuka”, Ryuji Ayukawa is impetuous and seemingly confident, though they carries many fears. With their generally cute and dazzling appearance, Yuka attracts many people. Yuka’s grandmother influenced the decision to study Japanese art, and that is why Yuka is so close to her. Yuka often pretends to be radiant in front of her and in stressful situations they are often reckless and impulsive.

Both Yuka’s mother and father disapprove of Yuka’s identity and lifestyle. It is apparent that their home life is unsafe and sometimes violent. Yuka can only find comfort in the company of their grandmother, who accepts Yuka as a person and Yuka’s aspirations. It is implied that Yuka often goes out at night to get away from home, and that Yuka’s parents suspect that Yuka is making dates with men for money.

Yuka is tall and slender and has pale skin. Yuka has long, natural blonde hair that reaches her waist and long, thin bangs that are often combed to the side. Yuka’s eyes are a dark, bright purple.

Yuka wears a mixture of male and female school uniforms. Sometimes they wear a skirt with a boys’ uniform blazer, other times they wear a boys’ uniform pants and a girls’ uniform blouse. This is a deliberate style choice and highlights Yuka’s resistance to conformity. When painting, Yuka prefers to wear a French maid-style apron to match their cute, feminine esthetic.

As you can see, the story of Yuka’s gender is not simple. Yuka was, definitely, born as a male and is biologically male. Yet, they seem to identify as a female and while Yuka does look more like a girl than a boy, she is ultimately genderqueer and she seems to be bisexual. In the next section, we are going to explain what that means – exactly.

What is a genderqueer bisexual?

Non-binary gender identity (short: non-binary) is a collective term for gender identities from the transgender spectrum that do not identify exclusively as male or female, i.e., outside of this two-part, binary gender order (in contrast to trans women and trans men). The term genderqueer is also frequently used to identify this group of individuals.

A person’s non-binarity has nothing to do with biological sex or sex characteristics, and some intersex people also identify as non-binary. Gender identity must be distinguished from sexual identity: the romantic orientations and sexual orientations of non-binary people are just as different and varied as those of “binary” people (cisgender or transgender men and women).

Non-binary gender identity is often not reflected in a person’s appearance or behavior and need not be androgynous (combining masculine and feminine characteristics) – non-binary people express their sense of identity in different ways. The expression gender fluid (“flowing”) moves between the genders male-female (or others), sometimes in changing forms or changeable. A bigender identity combines elements of two genders, as the term pangender includes all genders.

There are also people who (temporarily) do not feel they belong to any gender and who define themselves as agender (“ungendered”) or neutral. In addition, there are other self-designations to describe one’s own identity. People who identify as non-binary are also people who identify as a third gender or a completely different gender concept (like X-gender, post-gender).

People who deliberately do not specify their gender identity and do not want to be tied to a traditional gender role also describe themselves as non-binary. Most non-binary people prefer gender-neutral pronouns (pronouns), especially the singular they in English-speaking countries. The concept of non-binarity emerged in the United States in the 1990s and, as of 2010, has been increasingly featured in the media around the world.

In 2020, a US survey of 50,000 students revealed that 3.7% were non-binary people; In mid-2021, a US survey of 35,000 LGBT people found that 52% of transgender/nonbinary respondents had seriously considered suicide during 2020 and 20% had attempted it. In Germany, for example, these terms have entered legislation (in various forms) in July 2021, and the terms have been entering various legislations around the world for years.

The US anthropologist April Scarlett Callis traced the traditional gender binary back to the 19th century, when sexuality was first studied medically. In the early 20th century, sexuality was initially categorized according to gender identity rather than a sexual partner, while then in the mid-20th century the division into heterosexuality and homosexuality emerged, according to historian George Chauncey in his work from 1994.

In 1990, the American feminist philosopher Judith Butler published her book Gender Trouble, in which she questioned both a natural fact of the male/female “gender” and its exclusive dichotomy. This book was a pivotal work on the role of non-binary people in society and is still regarded as one of the best studies on that topic.

Since 2019, Butler has defined themselves as non-binary. 1994 saw the publication of the book Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us by American non-binary actress and author Kate Bornstein. Both gender studies and the emerging queer theory began to expand their research approaches to include non-binary gender and gender identities. Bornstein renewed her inventory in 2010 with the book Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation.

In English-speaking countries, the term “genderqueer” appeared in the mid-1990s, often in connection with the US transgender activist Riki Wilchins, particularly because of her co-editorship of the article collection GenderQueer: Voices from beyond the Sexual Binary, published in 2002. As early as 1995, Wilchins used the expression in the In Your Face newsletter, primarily to argue against heteronormative sexual rules, but also against discriminatory gender roles.

In 1997, she stated in her autobiography that she identified as genderqueer. Wilchins continued to publish actively and in 2017 published their own collection of articles entitled Burn the Binary!. Jim Sinclair, an intersex and autistic person, who became known as a co-initiator and activist of the international neurodiversity movement, publicly declared himself as gender-neutral in 1997.

As for popular culture, the phenomenon was represented as early as 1973, in the musical The Rocky Horror Picture Show, with the main character of the transvestite Dr. Frank N. Furter. His creator Richard O’Brien saw himself as transgender early on and later declared himself to be between the genders, more like a third gender.

In 2013, O’Brien told the BBC: “I probably see myself as around 70% male, 30% female.” The coming outs of famous show stars and actors such as Sam Smith (2017) or Elliot Page (2020) attracted international attention to the issue of non-binarity. In Japan, the expression “X-gender” (x-jendā) has been used since the turn of the millennium as a self-definition of gender outside of the two categories “man” and “woman” (e.g. by the manga artists Yūki Kamatani and Yuu Watase).

At the end of 2020, the South African government has passed a bill that has expanded the seventh digit of the identification number so that the person’s gender can be displayed beyond “male/female” and to enable gender-neutral identity cards. In May 2021, in the small town of Bangor, north-west Wales, UK, a non-binary person was elected mayor for the first time: Owen J. Hurcum, 23, non-partisan, uses the gender pronoun they/them and had come out two years earlier.

It is the first non-binary person in such an office in Europe – the second worldwide after Tony Briffa 2010-2012 in Hobsons Bay in the Australian state of Victoria. At the same time, Megan Rohrer became the first transgender person in a bishopric (Grace Lutheran Church) in the USA at the age of 41; Rohrer uses the gender-neutral they/them.

In July 2021, Argentina became the first country in Latin America to introduce a flag for non-binary people in ID documents: ID cards and passports can contain an “X” as the gender. The law on gender identity has been in force since 2012, which allows changing the gender entry without a psychiatric assessment or gender reassignment surgery. Uruguay has had a third gender option since late 2018, and Chile since early 2019. This, is, of course, just a rough outline of the issue, but it will allow you to grasp and understand the concept much better.