I always thought Shizumaru was a little girl. What is it with gender ambiguous characters and Japan?
there is a cultural history somewhere where certain men in ancient Japan preferred feminine looking boys to be their partners of some kind.
so some male homosexuals are said to find feminine boys to be more attractive it seems
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_Japan
didn't some japanese men have their wife sleep in a separate room or something?
Japan has a weird history of chauvinism, sexism, misogyny, homosexuality, but also had some history of honoring/coveting/worshipping/praising/glorifying the female sex and even having empresses.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empress_Suiko
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empress_regnant
some say confucianism besides buddism is partially at fault for corrupting and twisting japanese ideals and causing women to lose a lot of rights and respect. think things like buddism and confucianism also tainted Korean culture as well.
it is said that males are basically females that are modified with male sex role in order to provide females with the means to reproduce
https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-7531,00.html
so even scientifically, humans are perceived of possessing both male and female traits, which humans can be attracted to based on their preference and perspective.
so perhaps Japanese homosexual males find the female aspects of feminine males to be attractive somehow. its really a complex subject because normally, society views humanity as two halves, and dont really look past the genitals and realize that humans of both sexes are more alike than they realize, with profound differences, but there is no such thing as a
"100% male" or "100% female" human sex. humans are more like 90/10 or 70/30 depending on their body's masculine and feminine levels.
notice how scientific, medicine and biological revelations have discovered that males and females can be altered to the opposite sex (at least to some extent) through simply hormone replacement therapy (especially if they start before puberty they can transition to the opposite sex and with SRS can practically pass for the opposite sex. just lacking reproductive capabilities and their skeleton being the most difficult to alter). It doesnt alter everything, but there is video evidence over the years that humans are not locked to a specific sex, and in fact are part male/masculine, part female/feminine. one sex just happens to be the active sex, while the other side of the human body is normally passive. but just like humans inherit genes from both male and female parents, they possess traits of both genders as well, their body is simply configured to a certain form, but how masculine and feminine their body is is based on multiple factors and can be altered. even heterosexual people are attracted to the opposite sex via an instinctive combination of traits of both masculine and feminine components that their object of interest possesses.
and the 'ideal balance' that someone is attracted to is based on personal preference.
so perhaps japanese male homosexuals that are attracted to feminine boys, prefer males because its the sex they can relate to, and prefer feminine appearance because their masculine side is naturally attracted to feminine traits, even though they culturally or psychologically have some sort of resentment, paranoia, distrust, or fear towards females, which then causes them to choose feminine males instead as their preferred ideal mate/object of interest.
on the flipside, there are females that also have a preference of feminine males instead of masculine ones. the perks and eye candy that is exclusive to feminine potential, can be attractive to both sexes. so some find that feminine beauty appealing regardless of the person's sex.
though anyways, those are examples and maybe some insight to why there is such fascination towards the genders, and one gender resembling the other.
humans are sexual beings, and like a coin, possess two sides. so naturally, one side of a human can be attracted to the other side or certain combination of a human, even if they are of the same sex.
it may sound strange, but humans are more complex and flexible than most societies care to see and just perceive things from a one dimensional perspective. they dont see that humans are a varied balance between feminine and masculine traits. though even that is just the surface to the complex factors of why certain people are attracted to certain types of people.