Posted under Tags
I don't particularly like any of the alternatives, but I think that bifauxnen is probably the worst one, not only the name is kinda cringe and not particularly intuitive thanks to TVTropes ohsocleverandfunnyxd naming practices, and not immediately obvious to anyone who didn't spend the early 2010s scrolling through TVTropes, but also refers to a specific character archetype, much like dansou no reijin.
specifically: bifauxnen implies a specific character archetype with some relation to bishounen, dansou no reijin implies crossdressing, others are uncommon and not plainly descriptive as far as I know
I'm not really up to speed on the lore of when trap became a slur (I know of the word and have seen it used in anime circles a lot but never really heard about the whole shift of the word's use) and I have basically zero stake in this conversation as I don't search or upload these tags but I'll at least say that some of these options sound confusing or misleading.
While the point of aliases is to redirect and people searching for the old name would be redirected to the new name, I think going with something closer to a descriptive alternative triumps over any concerns over the length of the tag's name. The other options sound either misleading or lean too hard on a pun and these are not useful to searchers who are trying to find this content. That's my reason for downvoting the weird options.
I didn't downvote dansou no reijin because of the Pixiv tag translation so besides reverse otoko no ko, at least that one is rooted in something people might actually know. Overall though I have a muted opinion about the word "trap" and have no strong feeling about retaining the current tag or getting rid of it, so I didn't explicitly upvote anything either.
"Can we change <common name everyone understands> to <obscure term nobody has ever heard of> because <issue absolutely nobody browsing the tag has>?"
Nah.
Otoko no Ko's tag name was aliased a while back for self-explanatory reasons.
Well no, it was aliased WITHOUT reasons, and without giving people a chance to argue, which still causes butthurt to this day. Let's not do that again. Just look at the backlash in topic #10521, where it was done.
Everyone on the internet still calls anime femboys traps. Changing the tag name didn't achieve anything other than confuse trap enjoyers who come to danbooru and find otoko no ko as the tag name.
Ultexia said:
It always held the connotation that a character could be presented as being so convincingly feminine that the audience got "trapped" into thinking it was a girl while it was "actually" a boy
And that's the appeal. What complainers don't seem to understand is that people jerking off to this want to be trapped.
Updated by nonamethanks
WRS said:
I'm not really up to speed on the lore of when trap became a slur (I know of the word and have seen it used in anime circles a lot but never really heard about the whole shift of the word's use) and I have basically zero stake in this conversation as I don't search or upload these tags but I'll at least say that some of these options sound confusing or misleading.
I've personally never seen any actual evidence that it actually has a history as a slur. Out of all the things I've heard actually used to refer to trans people, including terms from before I was born, that has never been one of them. People just one day started saying it had a history as a slur, and when you try to look up why, it all leads back to this single article claiming it was used as a slur with zero corroborating sources. People always talk about its "dark history" but no one ever claims to have actually been called one or knew anyone who was, and seemingly the only experience anyone around here personally has with it (including myself) is its usage by the anime community to refer to characters like Bridget (guilty gear).
The only IRL people who are regularly called traps are the ones who take it as a compliment, and engage in online communities that specifically cater to trap enthusiasts. It's a very different subculture from the people commonly known as transsexual/transgender. The whole "it's a slur" narrative was born out of ignorance of older internet culture, and it has sadly become the norm in certain spaces due to the influence of e-celebs.
At this point, I don't think it really matters whether trap is actually a slur or not. What's important is that a lot of people seem to believe it is and despite NNT's claim that everyone uses it, the places they can do so are probably limited. There should be plenty of subreddits where they can still say it, but I have a strong feeling that sites like TV Tropes or Fandom would ban them if they tried to say it there. I think I also remember hearing about the term being phased out of official anime subtitles, which shows the debate is not just affecting fan communities. Whether they're right or not, the anti-trap group seems to be winning the war.
I believe we should use the least potentially offensive terms we can afford to, but I also understand some terms cannot be cleaned up. For example, the two most offensive tags we have are probably these two, since they unquestionably contain homophobic slurs in the tag names. I've never seen anyone suggest changing them, and I can see why. We might be able to alias the former to drawfriend, but there's absolutely nothing that can be done about the latter.
I don't think we'll ever be able to go back to using trap, especially after 10 years. However, the silver lining is that now that Danbooru users are more used to otoko no ko, aliasing reverse trap to reverse otoko no ko should cause fewer problems than the original otoko no ko alias did (which itself seemed pretty minimal). If we were still using trap, then I would be less in favor of those two suggestions.
I'm not here to debate my opinion on the word either way (It's not something that personally effects me), but I will say that to my knowledge the idea of "trap" as a slur isn't related to its use for anime femboys and is more based in the trans panic defense and its history, as well as usage of the word to refer to trans pornstars online.
Anyways, I don't strongly feel that this tag name needs to change. "Trap"'s history isn't all that relevant here because "reverse trap" has never been used as a slur against trans men to begin with, and that's the topic of discussion. I can say with confidence that no one has ever referred to me as a "reverse trap" nor have I ever seen the word discussed in that context.
While I do like onnanoko for the parallel, ultimately I think the current name is fine and not causing any issues - and I don't think it will in the future given the very different audience the trope tends to attract (and it being more niche).
unlike otoko no ko "reverse otoko no ko" is not something ever actually used, if you search it up this very thread is one of the only instances (without spaces there's very little too, certainly <500 search results combined if you take out "reverse....otokonoko" incidentally appearing, so i think it has issues as a tag (japanese-name tag that doesn't actually represent a japanese term, etc)
on drawfags: these people are often self-describing as that due to the peculiarities of 4chan-speak, to censor that would be really meaningless unless imageboards suddenly become a happy place of nobody using homophobic slurs
There aren't any options actually used in Japanese for this specific meaning, and reverse trap is the only one used in English. We'd have to wait for new terms to become popular.
Though otoko no ko and reverse trap often aren't subjective, they do go against "tag what you see" (as they are indistinguishable from 1girl and 1boy).
While they shouldn't be nuked or converted to pools, if the names were ever changed, I would just make them very descriptive: "boy that looks like girl" and "girl that looks like boy". There is no way to shorten those without increasing ambiguity, especially considering tomboy and girly boy already exist for more obvious traps.
Updated by LQ
Confetto said:
I'm not particularly bothered by drawfag either given it's a self-given name, besides finding it eyeroll-worthy.
The drawfriend suggestion was really more of an acknowledgement that a possible solution existed if we actually wanted to change it instead of a serious proposal. They're still connected, so we probably should still alias it, or in the opposite direction (topic #12196), but that discussion is best left for another topic.
Blank_User said:
At this point, I don't think it really matters whether trap is actually a slur or not. What's important is that a lot of people seem to believe it is and despite NNT's claim that everyone uses it, the places they can do so are probably limited.
A lot of speculation to change a tag. "probably" is not good enough, not when the target audience doesn't actually have a problem with it and was vocal about a similar tag being changed before.
This is, as they say, a solution looking for a problem. The current tag name is fine, there's no reason to change it other than to appease tourists, and a dozen reasons not to.
Just look at the votes on these BURs. The only one that's not overwhelmingly negative is a proposal to change it to the Japanese word for "girl". It's a joke (and it's still half negative). The only reason these burs would ever get approved is if an admin got an aneurysm and tripped over their keyboard.
I should point out that "onna no ko" doesn't even work out in this context. The original pun for otoko no ko was that 男の子 (male child) became 男の娘 (male woman). In this joke of a rename proposal, we'd be going from 女の子 (female child) to 女の娘 (female woman). But 女の娘 does not mean crossdresser. It doesn't mean anything, it's not a real term.
Updated by nonamethanks
nonamethanks said:
A lot of speculation to change a tag. "probably" is not good enough, not when the target audience doesn't actually have a problem with it and was vocal about a similar tag being changed before.
This is, as they say, a solution looking for a problem. The current tag name is fine, there's no reason to change it other than to appease tourists, and a dozen reasons not to.
Just look at the votes on these BURs. The only one that's not overwhelmingly negative is a proposal to change it to the Japanese word for "girl". It's a joke (and it's still half negative). The only reason these burs would ever get approved is if an admin got an aneurysm and tripped over their keyboard.
I should point out that "onna no ko" doesn't even work out in this context. The original pun for otoko no ko was that 男の子 (male child) became 男の娘 (male woman). In this joke of a rename proposal, we'd be going from 女の子 (female child) to 女の娘 (female woman). But 女の娘 does not mean crossdresser. It doesn't mean anything, it's not a real term.
I noticed that despite the otoko no ko alias being a sore spot for years, no one actually attempted to create a BUR reversing it (Edit: Speak of the devil, we now have one). Why is that? Is it because they're afraid of being seen as transphobic or don't want to start a flame war in the forums?
I agree the alias was hastily made, but it's been the standard here for a decade. Does it still cause any practical problems for users? For anime fans new to Danbooru? Conversely, do you think reversing the alias will improve things? Or should we not rock the boat and just leave everything as is?
Blank_User said:
I noticed that despite the otoko no ko alias being a sore spot for years, no one actually attempted to create a BUR reversing it. Why is that? Is it because they're afraid of being seen as transphobic or don't want to start a flame war in the forums?
I agree the alias was hastily made, but it's been the standard here for a decade. Does it still cause any practical problems for users? For anime fans new to Danbooru? Conversely, do you think reversing the alias will improve things? Or should we not rock the boat and just leave everything as is?
I would assume both reasons but this thread actually inspired me to make one forum #349526
For the record I normally don't like rocking the boat, but the context of this alias does bother me, and since I and the other sites I use don't consider it a slur I think it's a vote worth having. As long as it's an alias it's not a serious issue of course.
nonamethanks said:
A lot of speculation to change a tag. "probably" is not good enough, not when the target audience doesn't actually have a problem with it and was vocal about a similar tag being changed before.
This is, as they say, a solution looking for a problem. The current tag name is fine, there's no reason to change it other than to appease tourists, and a dozen reasons not to.
Just look at the votes on these BURs. The only one that's not overwhelmingly negative is a proposal to change it to the Japanese word for "girl". It's a joke (and it's still half negative). The only reason these burs would ever get approved is if an admin got an aneurysm and tripped over their keyboard.
I should point out that "onna no ko" doesn't even work out in this context. The original pun for otoko no ko was that 男の子 (male child) became 男の娘 (male woman). In this joke of a rename proposal, we'd be going from 女の子 (female child) to 女の娘 (female woman). But 女の娘 does not mean crossdresser. It doesn't mean anything, it's not a real term.
It's actually 雄んなの子. It works in Japanese, but it doesn't translate as well to English because English has a very poor capacity for character based puns because the alphabet system is relatively simplistic compared to glyph systems.
nonamethanks said:
Is it an actual used term? There's less than 300 results of it on pixiv, most of it from a single artist tagging all of their comics.
Pixiv has a Pixpedia entry for it, and according to Google Translate, it seems that it is a fairly recent term that emerged out of discourse resulting from the fact that Japanese doesn't have a standard term for this. Based on the edit history, it's been in use on Pixiv since 2010, so it's probably over two decades old at this point. Searching it on Google gives me results on Nicovideo, a Japanese cross-dressing party Twitter and Instagram account that uses it in tandem with otoko no ko in its title, a K-Manga search for the keyword (BL)雄んなの子・男装, a Yahoo! Answers thread, a blog post explaining the concept of both otoko no ko and onna no ko...
So it seems like it is, in fact, an actual used term. It's just uncommon because, per the Pixpedia entry, it seems to still be unstandardized in Japanese, so onna no ko will often just be lumped in with generally handsome women, tomboys, women wearing men's clothing generally, and so on (so generalizations which allow you to lump in stuff like Takarazuka Revue, ala otokoyaku). It seems that they just don't have as much of an interest in reverse otoko no ko in specific, which is probably why the tag on Pixiv is undertagged. The Pixpedia entry for the English term reverse trap expresses how it is difficult to actually render a native term that parallels otoko no ko in name punning, and while acknowledges 雄んなの子 as the Japanese equivalent to it, the machine translation comments it is "not a very natural word".
All of this is to say that the Japanese may or may not disagree with Rika (Pokemon) and Hiodoshi Ao being onna no ko/reverse otoko no ko or bifauxnen or whatever, they're just handsome women in their eyes, not a 'reverse' of any kind, wholly their own thing. On a funny note though, the Pixpedia entry for イケメン女子 is just a few months older than the one for 雄んなの子 (January 2011 compared to October 2010; reverse_trap was made in November 2013 meanwhile).
Updated by Damian0358
Damian0358 said:
All of this is to say that the Japanese may or may not disagree with Rika (Pokemon) and Hiodoshi Ao being onna no ko/reverse otoko no ko or bifauxnen or whatever, they're just handsome women in their eyes, not a 'reverse' of any kind, wholly their own thing. On a funny note though, the Pixpedia entry for イケメン女子 is just a few months older than the one for 雄んなの子 (January 2011 compared to October 2010; reverse_trap was made in November 2013 meanwhile).
Honestly I think it might be better off if the idea of reversibility gets abandoned. I get the aesthetic appeal in having x just by y but for male roles rather than female roles but it seems like that's just not what people are looking for what they're searching for women occupying male gender roles. イケメン女子 seems to indicate that people are looking more for behavior rather than just raw appearance.
Maybe nuke the tag and convert pool #6118 into an ikemen_joshi tag? Right now reverse_trap seems to serve as nothing more than an ersatz counterpart of the otokonoko tag, that artists and presumably viewers do not really use.
What are you even talking about? The appeal of reverse_trap is that post #149676 and post #1223428 are indistinguishable from boys it has nothing to do with the gender role, suits, or anything like that. It's purely a visual descriptor. Handsome Ladies is not an equivalent and what that JP term above seems to be talking about would be like if we lumped OnK in with Girly boy.
Dansou_no_reijin and the others above are much broader terms which is why if we need to change the term I'd rather it be blunt word swap. I get no one uses reverse_otoko_no_ko, that's because there isn't an equivalent term that isn't reverse_trap.
