Quite honestly, as a nonbinary person, I see what FrejaRachnea is getting at.

I also agree that the plot specifically presents Hildibrand as misrepresenting himself as a particular person, which everyone on this thread agrees isn't what's happening in transphobic situations.

But there are a fair number of folks here (at least in the US) who don't distinguish well between 'trans woman in a dress that the viewer feels isn't "passing"' and 'man in a dress'. In 2022, I think there's a wealth of incompetent and bumbling behaviors SquareEnix could have chosen from rather than the Dude In A Dress joke. And SquareEnix knows this, or they wouldn't have improved some of the dated Final Fantasy VII scenes with similar in the remake.

I don't personally read the choices as transphobic, but I do think they could have simply found a different way to Be Funny in this scene that wasn't adjacent to transphobia.