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  • cardamomo [none/use name]
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    edit-2
    4 years ago

    in general, most forms of media aren't great at having realistic trans or femboy characters. usually our existence get's reduced to a joke or someones fetish. some things like futanari even exist purely as a fetish, being neither really a femboy nor a trans woman, but instead "a cis women with a dick". and just like the concept of a trp, futa also isn't really about the character itself, but about what they bring to the show: a cope for men who are insecure in their heterosexuality and like chicks with dicks. i personally don't mind tranny (don't know if that word would get me autobanned) but dislike tr*p because it's essentially about a cis hetero mans dick, not about me.

    what a "trp" identifies as is often completely meaningless to the authors of the show. and the characters are fictional, so they don't care. relevant is only what the viewers make of it: as you might have noticed, trans people like anime overproportionally much, because trps feel kinda like a "normal" representation for us (regardless of what the manga says they identify as. shut up weebs). and this whole shitshow is a bunch of cis men (who have about 70% of anime characters to identify with) saying that these few last characters we could empathize with aren't trans or whatever, they're just a plot or masturbation device. tr*ps have always been the anime version of trans women and femboys, and it's time to evolve from that term. it's not a healthy term for either of them.

    • charly4994 [she/her, comrade/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      I've personally found futa stuff to be really empowering in general and I know that it doesn't necessarily empower everyone out there so it's more of a personal thing but I feel like there is more to elicit from stuff of this nature with self acceptance. 男の娘 (otoko no ko, quite similar to femboy but a Japanese pun where it sounds like boy when spoken but is written boy-girl in the more literal sense) stuff is a bit more varied and full of problems since it has to run up against these issues more head on since unlike futa you have a real life counterpart for this stuff and in general the audience isn't as full of cis-het people because of obvious reasons.

      I've had a fairly extensive relationship with futa in general amongst a bunch of other gender non-conforming porn in general. I feel like there's more to it than just simply 'a cis woman with a dick.' Yes there's stuff like that out there but I feel like that's only a segment of the genre. You have situations where in an otherwise cis-het story a girl being given a penis. Look to the multitude of princess raping stories to find that kind of thing popping up relatively frequently. I'm showing my age a bit but the easiest example would be something from Black Lilith like Soukou Kijo Iris. It's not quite a princess but whatever. At one point in the plot while being captured the main character's friend is 'given' (had it grown on?) a penis and uses it a bit in the progression of things. It's not really thought of as anything other than 'gross and disgusting' on a woman. But it allows the audience to enjoy the spectacle of a woman with a penis without having to worry about losing their cis-het pride. This kind of stuff exists but I feel like there's more to be had with the genre and it comes more down to independent creators, even if they are more successful than others at times.

      An artist like Red-Rum tends to do more with more vanilla het stuff but the girl just so happens to have a penis while also having a vagina. The penis is acknowledged but it's not really 'used.' There's no real hardcore diving into gender identity or anything like that but it does sometimes acknowledge how having a penis can be a barrier to a romantic relationship. I never really identify with this kind of stuff but it's out there.

      You have other artists that draw a world where it's just accepted as common fact that girls have a penis sometimes. Again, there's no real revelations coming from this group but it is nice to have stories out there that depict non-cis-het bodies as the norm and that it's simply the day to day fact of this universe. You have artists like Dulce-Q (more recent works mainly, Dulce Report is not really fitting here) and Aoba Q Madou falling into this category.

      There are others that basically write a lesbian story but toss a dick in it for reasons of sex. People convert more common tropes into futa x girl. So you'll see rehashes of older tropes but without the men involved.

      Finally at least in terms of what I'm bringing up are the much rarer but far more interesting pieces that do actually address some of these other parts. While usually cranked up to an absurd degree with way more sex than would ever happen, you have some things that stand out to me as being more gender revolutionary. That there is a third sex in this world and maybe it's not accepted in the world but it exists and people are people. I personally love to bring up Moriya Gia's Futanarist as an example of this. It's an oversexed version of gender revolution in a way. There's this group of men in black that are implied to have strong control over society and they go around murdering any futanari they find. The main character loves exhibition and gets herself in a pickle but is saved by a mysterious girl that says she's fighting for the liberation of futanari. Things happen and like I said it's oversexed but they end up wresting power away from the MiB and set up a school for futanari kids to go and be safe as themselves.

      I feel like there's more that can come from these stories in general than just resigning it all as an effort to appeal to cis-het guys. They're a massive consuming population for pornography so that stuff is going to be a given, but I feel like there's some deeper meaning to it all even if it isn't necessarily intended by the artists. These works like I said before have had a profound impact on who I am and how I've accepted myself as trans.

      Going into the other side though, 男の娘 stuff is very mixed and filled to the brim with problems. There's good stuff out there, but in general if you don't go in ready to make some adjustments in your head you're going to have a bad time. The most standout example from recent memory is Ruuen Rouga's recent new series. First part was actually kinda amazing. Character cracks their egg, gets interested in trying their sexuality, has a bad experience and is upset that they weren't given a chance to really express their gender adequately so the next time they make sure to wear what they want out in public. They then proceed to present full time and feel able to fall for their best friend eventually starting hormones because there's no way those boobs just magically appeared. The second part kinda crushes some of that by making the character stop referring to themselves with female pronouns back to male ones and everyone saying they're a guy again but then going back by the end. You see this issue crop up a lot all over the place that one can never escape the 'but they're a guy' mentality. While I would like to cite other stuff to show the good out there, I feel like it's not as prevalent as futanari stuff since you run into these issues much more frequently whereas futa can sidestep a fair bit of it. I will say that I feel like the medium is evolving though and compared to 10 years ago when I was barely out of the closet and had almost no exposure to this stuff, looking back at a lot of older stuff you can see these issues much more obviously. Japan is slow to move on social issues.

      In the mainstream you see things like Fukakai na Boku no Subete wo really making strides. It is long past time to move past terms like tr*p in that it's damaging to people and used as a way to normalize trans panic. I've seen the term tomgirl used for years now as the opposite to tomboy. The term femboy is gaining traction and I feel like I don't have to necessarily use Japanese terminology to refer to a lot of this stuff now whereas a few years ago, 男の娘 was the only way I felt like I could refer to this stuff since all English terms came with unneeded baggage and even in Japanese, 男の娘 has its issues and erases trans people. It doesn't carry the same negative weight as trp but it's picking up baggage over the years.