For the past few weeks, I’ve been making an effort to cross-post more, in order to make sure that communities that I’m interested in have some content and attention. I’ve been primarily focused on keeping up a steady stream of posts to !teen_loli, but a lot of those also fit in on !rapehentai and !incest_hentai, and occasionally !bdsm_hentai_and_art or !bluearchive. I tend to stick to just posting to the two most relevant communities for any given post, though.
I also created and have been posting to !dickgirl_hentai, but I tend to refrain from cross-posting those elsewhere. I get the feeling that maybe people don’t want to see those posts, even if their fetishes are otherwise involved?
It feels like I’m creating/following a weird double-standard though. For rape/incest/etc content, I just tag the fetish in the title so that those that don’t want to see it can avoid clicking. I don’t think of trans women as a fetish though, so it feels weird to warn about them? Additionally, the original creator of !incest_hentai designated it as trans-inclusive (and I’ve done the same with !teen_loli), so it’s extra-weird to avoid cross-posting there, which is what got me thinking about this in the first place. What do?
As an aside, the name of !dickgirl_hentai has also been bothering me. I originally went with that because it’s what booru sites typically use to differentiate transgirl futanari from intersex. It feels kind of offensive though? Is there a better name that would still get the point across? Am I overthinking this?
I’d say that dick girl is seen as a not good not nice term for trans women. I’d say if a trans women here had an idea for a name or wanted to keep it we should listen to them until more trans women were here and complained about it. But that is just me
This is going to be a wall of text because I have a lot to say!
For starters, would you mind if I cross-post this to !lgbt@burggit.moe, tweaked a bit to be SFW? I think part of this discussion would have value there.
I am transfemme and have complicated feelings on this. I’ll probably end up giving you more questions than answers, but I’m glad you made this post because I think it is a worthwhile discussion to have. I’m going to fix some nonstandard terminology here so that reading this post is not tedious: FPWP = Feminine presenting with a penis, FPPWP = Feminine presenting person/people with a penis.
I identified three main points in your post:
- Is FPWP content acceptable to cross-post if there are no explicit rules against it?
- Should FPWP content outside of designated communities be tagged as such?
- What is inclusive terminology we can use for FPWP content?
— 1 —
I don’t really have anything interesting to say about the first item. Personally, in the rare event that I am browsing Burggit with NSFW content enabled, I like seeing FPWP content regardless of the community (who doesn’t like seeing content they can identify the most with?). If there aren’t rules against it, I say go for it and see what happens. Worst case is you get told off and the rules are clarified.
— 2 —
For the second item, my personal take is that it doesn’t matter, as I use the tampermonkey script to auto-expand images (and I enjoy the content anyway). Let’s suppose that there is someone out there that absolutely abhors FPWP content and could filter out posts with an appropriate tag, for the sake of argument. I could see why they would benefit from tagging these posts. We have to balance that against the interesting point you made: is tagging FPWP content fetishizing FPPWP? That’s a tough question to answer so I’ll just present my thoughts on all sides.
- No: there are many communities outside of Burggit (for example, on Reddit) which will flair posts as depicting someone presenting masculine or feminine (usually [M] or [F]), especially in specialized fetish communities where it doesn’t make sense to segregate (say, for population reasons) and in r4r communities. Many people use these flairs not to actively seek out content depicting masculine or feminine presenting people but to actually filter out what they dislike: quite the opposite of fetishization.
- Yes: the argument laid out above doesn’t apply to FPWP content as masc/fem presentations are not fetishized in the same way that content involving transgender women is. While people do actively seek out content displaying cisgender women far more than cisgender men, and cisgender women are historically objectified, it is not a minority class and thus cannot be considered a fetish in any reasonable sense of the term.
- Yes, but this is not an issue: why would there be? Fetishizing (real) FPPWP in a context in which they are sexualizing themselves is reasonable and not problematic. Do (reasonable) people generally take issue with (real) Asian content, another historically fetishized class? No, not when everyone is consenting to the acts and the filming. Why should it be different from FPPWP? The issue with fetishizing any class is when this escapes designated acceptable areas. If I were to post a nude selfie in !fem_penis_3d@burggit.moe, I have no right reason to be upset if people view that content expressly because I am a FPPWP. But if I am walking down the street, I certainly do not want to be harassed about this (even if I have invited such interaction in other areas of my life). I feel replacing (real) with (art) above doesn’t really change much of the argument, morally speaking.
I have mostly talked myself into the third point above, though there are reasonable people who take issue with Asian fetishization in pornography, I do not see it as such a big issue. There is no other way to categorify it and people should not feel ashamed for their attractions if nobody is being harmed.
— 3 —
Lastly, what is inclusive terminology we can use for FPWP content? As a disclaimer, I use what is perhaps aggressive language here, but I am in no way attacking you personally. Any usage of “you” as follows refers not literally to you, but rather a hypothetical person (English sucks: 2nd person singular impersonal).
CW, transphobic slurs
I really super hate terms like “dick-girl,” “trap,” “tranny,” “futa,” (this last one mostly because it seems to equivocate real people with hentai) and I know many trans women who take exception to “t-girl,” even. Some of those are slurs, others are borderline. I know very few transgender women who ever like seeing these terms, in sexual contexts or otherwise. The most favorable responses to these terms I’ve seen by transgender women have mostly been “meh, whatever, I don’t care”: not exactly a ringing endorsement. The only people I see defending them are usually cisgender people who just find it convenient to continue using language they’ve been using and are annoyed that others are trying to make them “feel bad” for doing so. I don’t think that’s a very reasonable stance to take. If the people you are describing with these terms are overwhelmingly telling you to stop, then just stop. Even if it is inconvenient, it really would not take much effort.
.
So that begs the question: what is better terminology? Well, FPWP is essentially perfect as far as using standard inclusive language goes, but it is not at all recognizable to those who don’t know it and thus essentially worthless as a quick-reference term (such as for tags). Trans-girl/trans-woman is recognizable, but also exclusive of trans women who have undergone bottom surgery (and intersex people AFAB and any other person who might present feminine and have a penis). Despite that, I think this is a good option for a compromise between recognizability and inclusivity. Perhaps something like fem-penis could work: we do have a community named this way and it is practically the same as FPWP, so I think that is my favorite option so far. Maybe others have better recommendations?
Thanks for coming to my TED talk. Please feel free to share your thoughts on what I have to say, even if you are not yourself trans or queer in any way. Also, something to keep in mind is that I do not frequent booru or similar sites, so I don’t have much to say RE: that culture. I don’t really see this as a problem because a lot of those sites have some pretty disturbing cultural behaviors anyway.
CW continuing transphobic slur discussion
I don’t have much to contribute to the cross-posting discussion, but I would like to know more about your issues with with “futa”. I 100% understand why the other examples you gave would be hurtful, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard any discussion on that with regards to futa. I’m not sure I understand what you mean by “equivocating real people with hentai”. Curious to hear your perspective!
Sure! First, did you see my reply to rinkan, in the comments that were lost to the time warp? If so, which of the three uses would you like me to clarify?
I did not see that reply… 🤦 that does answer a lot of my questions. I wholeheartedly agree that using it to describe real people or canonically trans characters is bad.
I have seen some people online get rather specific about their definition of “futa”. Some say that it has to be a character with both a penis and a vagina, but many people will use it to refer to characters that don’t have a vagina. It gets even more complicated when you start considering things like gender. I guess at the heart of this is a level of ambiguity that is often present in fictional works. I often will not know anything about the characters involved in a hentai image, and sometimes there isn’t any real “canonical” info to know in the first place. With Japanese content in particular there is a cultural and linguistic element that can make it even harder.
It’s tricky, because I want to use language that allows all lgbt people to be comfortable, but at the same time there is a reason why a lot of online porn/fetish communities have coalesced around certain Japanese words (Japan makes good porn 😂). I would be perfectly happy getting rid of “futa” as a term, but there are decades worth of online content that are tagged with futa. I personally enjoy content that is described under a wide selection of terms, with varying degrees of overlap.
I think some variation of “fem-penis” might be the best bet for inclusive language that is also useful for pornography. It allows for some wiggle room in the gender identity of the character and is less cumbersome to read and understand than “FPWP” imho.
So I guess I don’t have a specific question any more, but I would love to hear your thoughts on dealing with gender ambiguity in fictional porn relating to this.
– In this comment I assume a gender binary for clarity. Arguments extend naturally to gender spectrum! –
I think you brushed on the most important detail here:
It gets even more complicated when you start considering things like gender.
I don’t think (and correct me if I am wrong) the term “futa” makes any assertion, a priori, on the gender of the character it references. The problem with our terminology in English is multifaceted:
- There are not great distinctions in terminology between gender identifiers and sex identifiers. Some people use “woman/man” to refer to gender and “female/male” to refer to sex, but this is not a consensus in practically any community.
- There are not great terms to refer to anything outside of the sex binary. There is intersex, but this is not useful for the case you describe as it does not describe genitalia consistently.
So, unfortunately, we are stuck with either
- Inventing new words
- Using loan words
- Using phrases
The first is nearly impossible for obvious reasons. The second is what we currently do with “futa” in combination with the third. I’ve seen “full-package futa” to refer to a character with a vagina, penis, and testicles, for example.
I understand that people have different preferences for what they’re attracted to: people could want to see any combination of the three genitalia above, and so terms to refer to any such combination is reasonable. As long as it refers to non-real people (that does not allow artistic depictions of real people, to be clear), and is not used as a sole term1 for characters with canonical gender identities involving their assigned gender at birth2, “<adjective> futa” seems like a fine term to me.
1: At this point, I am working within the framework that “<adjective> futa” is a sex identifier, not a gender identifier; thus, there is no reason to object to its use in conjunction with a gender identifier so long as it does not take the place of said gender identifier as appropriate.
2: As a logical consequence one would also not like for “<adjective> futa” to be used in exclusion of “<adjective> futa woman”, where woman refers to gender. That being said, I am unsure if this is really necessary as it is unclear to me if one’s attraction to a “futa” character actually involves the gender of the character or only their sexual characteristics (after all, “futa” does describe sexual characteristics, so it would make sense that gender is not necessarily a factor for attraction here). As such, I only assert that it is problematic to use “futa” as a sole identifier when gender is made clear in the story. I mention assigned gender at birth since pronoun usage implicitly identifies a gender, more or less, which is a facet of language more than story-telling, and thus shouldn’t be the determining factor.
Keep in mind, I am a transgender woman, not an intersex person or a transgender person who has had bottom surgery resulting in a set of genitalia differing from the sex binary. I think those groups can identify more closely with characters who are called “futa” in pornography, so I would love to hear from someone in either of those groups!
Comments that were lost to the time warp
Me:
The description that I have in the sidebar of !dickgirl_hentai is
Girls. With dicks!
So maybe just “girlswithdicks_hentai” for a new community name?
Doesn’t really work as general terminology though, at least if we want something shorthand. I’ve been using “futa” in post titles. Playing around with a recent one:
- Futa dominating two other girls (original title)
- Girl with dick dominating two other girls
- FPWP dominating two other girls
- Girl dominating two other girls
These all feel varying degrees of awkward. I think I’d likely just try to come up with an entirely different title if I’m trying to avoid using “futa”.
Mousepad:
If you like that new community name, I find it reasonable!
I feel I should clarify: To describe art, if the character being described is a futa, I have no problem calling them that. My issue with the term is when it is used to:
- Describe real people,
- Describe canonically transgender characters (e.g. Bridget from Guilty Gear), or
- Describe all FPPWP as a catch-all (overlap with 2 here).
So I think the current post title is completely fine (assuming 2 does not apply; I do not recognize the character if so). Contrast this with terms like “trap,” which I would prefer to never see in any context, for the reason I mentioned in my reply to PB’s comment. Better terms for that do exist (femboy seems fine)!
Thanks again for making this post. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while, but I didn’t want to bring it up myself for fear of being “annoying,” or similar.
@Burger@burggit.moe Is it possible to change community names from the administrative side without too much hassle (and without breaking federation)? Or should I just create a new community and signpost it?
I can more than easily do it via manually going into the DB and changing the name. But I’m almost certain that it will break federation for this community. Hopefully someone else will chime in who knows more about activitypub than I do who can set the record straight. t
Figured that might be the case. I’ll go with the signpost option tomorrow night if nothing new comes up.
I thought on it more. What would likely happen is that while the community name would be updated here, on other instances it won’t be. Every instance has the community names stored in their local DB and there’s a flag that says whether the community is remote or local. I don’t think changing it will work at all, I’m afraid. There’d need to be some “message” that this instance sends out to other instances to update the name, and manually changing it through the DB definitely won’t trigger it.
"Trap"s aren’t transgender.
That’s true, and neither are futas necessarily (or “dick-girl”, for that matter). Despite that, both are frequently used to describe transgender women; “trap” in particular often hatefully1, so I figured it was worth including.
1: In the context that “trans women are trying to lure straight men into being gay.” That’s a sentiment that has lead to a lot of violence and several murders.
For starters, would you mind if I cross-post this to !lgbt@burggit.moe, tweaked a bit to be SFW? I think part of this discussion would have value there.
Oh yeah, definitely. Would be good to have the additional feedback.
tl;dr - You’re overthinking it :)
Regarding the “dickgirl vs trans” thing, the context is drawings of fictional characters so calling them “dickgirls” or “futas” is not the same as having a community of the same name for real people.
The PC Master Race community on another instance had a similar discussion a while ago about a potential name change for obvious reasons. Most people chose to keep the current name because it really doesn’t matter that much.
We’re all aware that nobody in that community actually believes there is a “master race”, much like we’re all aware that trans people are people too, and deserve the same respect and rights as everyone else.This is all also ignoring the very real possibility that the character(s) the artist drew are just… not trans. There are many art pieces and doujins that involve a girl acquiring a dick in one way or another without really wanting one. They never felt that they weren’t comfortable in their own body, and some vocalize that they’d prefer to go back to the way they were. This does not seem at all in line with the trans movement, so I think implying that (boobs + penis = trans) is simply not correct.
I still have more to say on the topic, but this should hopefully get the point across.
