This is somehow one of my least favorite points in this entire clusterfuck of a thread.
The only opinion I have about this tag discussion has been exactly this. I'm still following the discussion (for better or for worse) but it's hard to make out some signal when the topic itself is a huge flame-torched pile of shit from people either not reading back or making hollow points (which I only somewhat get due to its emotionally-charged nature) and unfortunately the sewage drain isn't coming from just the North, it's coming from East, South and West too. All four cardinal directions. One big waterpark slide of slime into the center.
I'm only personally concerned about the Bridget-esque vandalism that may start occurring in the wake of this decision because some people are just not mature enough to fight out their problems in the forums or because they can't just ignore it and move on. Though yeah I'm saying all this as one of the non-needle movers who only voted in regards to supposedly correcting the name to the proper romanisation was it...? And not for either keeping or changing the tag. Besides the bad name suggestions, I downvoted those because they sucked for search purposes.
The thing that's always irked me about this topic has been the lack of delineation between characters who are merely crossdressing for the sake of fashion/personal beauty standards/humor/whatever, characters that are trans and wearing clothing coded to the gender they wish to present as, and characters who are—for lack of better term—designed to trap the viewer into mistaking their gender (either for a quick "gotcha!" or because this is the character's personality).
The latter of which is what I would label a trap and is how I feel *most* such characters in the anime, manga, and light novel space have been designed. But, just because the majority of characters are traps made for a quick joke/author fetish doesn't mean they all are. Would a possible solution be a splitting of the tag into trap for bait characters and otoko_no_ko (or something else) for more deliberate/nuanced takes on crossdressers and transfemme characters? I'd imagine it to be a pretty tough thing to moderate, but, I feel it's better than this eleven-years-dead horse getting beaten for even longer.
Ai-to-Yukai said: Would a possible solution be a splitting of the tag into trap for bait characters and otoko_no_ko (or something else) for more deliberate/nuanced takes on crossdressers and transfemme characters?
This seems like a way to get dragged into infinite arguments over authorial intent, whether a character is being depicted in a positive or negative way, etc. down to depiction of the same character tags by different artists.
The thing that's always irked me about this topic has been the lack of delineation between characters who are merely crossdressing for the sake of fashion/personal beauty standards/humor/whatever, characters that are trans and wearing clothing coded to the gender they wish to present as, and characters who are—for lack of better term—designed to trap the viewer into mistaking their gender (either for a quick "gotcha!" or because this is the character's personality).
The latter of which is what I would label a trap and is how I feel *most* such characters in the anime, manga, and light novel space have been designed. But, just because the majority of characters are traps made for a quick joke/author fetish doesn't mean they all are. Would a possible solution be a splitting of the tag into trap for bait characters and otoko_no_ko (or something else) for more deliberate/nuanced takes on crossdressers and transfemme characters? I'd imagine it to be a pretty tough thing to moderate, but, I feel it's better than this eleven-years-dead horse getting beaten for even longer.
We do delineate between those things, do we not? At least as far as being a trap and crossdressing is concerned.
We have crossdressing for the general practice of wearing clothes coded for the opposite of the wearer's gender, and we have trap for male characters that pass convincingly as girls, and reverse trap for women that pass as men. Crossdressing and being a trap are neither implicated nor mutually exclusive. Splitting crossdressing into different tags for male and female examples might be a discussion worth having, though.
What we don't have is a tag for characters that identify as trans, but this has been discussed multiple times and never gone anywhere because the idea opens several very messy cans of worms.
The thing that's always irked me about this topic has been the lack of delineation between characters who are merely crossdressing for the sake of fashion/personal beauty standards/humor/whatever, characters that are trans and wearing clothing coded to the gender they wish to present as, and characters who are—for lack of better term—designed to trap the viewer into mistaking their gender (either for a quick "gotcha!" or because this is the character's personality).
The latter of which is what I would label a trap and is how I feel *most* such characters in the anime, manga, and light novel space have been designed. But, just because the majority of characters are traps made for a quick joke/author fetish doesn't mean they all are. Would a possible solution be a splitting of the tag into trap for bait characters and otoko_no_ko (or something else) for more deliberate/nuanced takes on crossdressers and transfemme characters? I'd imagine it to be a pretty tough thing to moderate, but, I feel it's better than this eleven-years-dead horse getting beaten for even longer.
I will say that this is something that does bother me - otoko no ko was more neutral for the few hot button characters that are canonically trans - labeling post-Strive Bridget as a "trap" for example comes with a lot more cultural baggage and connotations than "otoko no ko" (which the Pixiv dictionary article has a section about its overlap with trans characters) did, at least for some people.
That is still, of course, a minority of the cases... But it's a minority that makes people on the internet very angry. Well, obviously, people would be mad about tagging Bridget as "femboy", too, but even that doesn't have quite the same connotations that make people so upset about the particular term.
Just wanted to put in my two cents in that regard. I also agree with the others that canon tagging like you suggest is near-impossible to enforce. We can barely even handle the recurring trolls who retag Bridget art where she has boobs as is. Trying to enforce a delineation between "trap" (fetish bait) and "otoko no ko" (nuanced takes on gender expression) would be like pouring gasoline on a fire.
Also characters like Bridget are kind of an anomaly tagging-wise - most explicit trans characters I come across, whether OCs or otherwise, are just tagged as you'd expect since they're introduced as their identity from the start and never shown otherwise. It's just that you don't hear about those examples because nobody's up in arms to cause flame wars over them. It is really just a couple characters that fall into this area of controversy.
Return otoko_no_ko to its former glory. "It makes more sense for english speakers" is a moot point when we use japanese naming conventions for characters, japanese names of media, and many terms use the japanese name, like paizuri.
Putting aside the debate entirely, how in the nine circles of Hell is it remotely fair for a BUR to be approved when the mods rejected it by a roughly 3:2 margin? Why even have a vote at all if it'll be disregarded?
Something something, people who count the vote decide everything.
Putting aside the debate entirely, how in the nine circles of Hell is it remotely fair for a BUR to be approved when the mods rejected it by a roughly 3:2 margin? Why even have a vote at all if it'll be disregarded?
Something something, people who count the vote decide everything.
From my understanding, the logic is that, considering who voted what in both votes for trap and femboy, members did agree that otoko no ko should be changed, but didn't necessarily agree on what that change should be. There are tables in page 8 explaining this in greater detail.
"It makes more sense for english speakers" is a moot point when we use japanese naming conventions for characters, japanese names of media, and many terms use the japanese name, like paizuri.
Characters and copyrights are a different ball game though and not a comparable situation. When dealing with characters and copyrights, we aren't dealing with how understandable it is, but rather how accurate it is. General tags, however, are meant to describe what's in the image or what's going on with it, and that's where we tend to go off of vibes what the best name is to use. Sometimes it's more sensible to go with the proper English or English equivalent term while in others we have the original names because you know, anime fans will know what those are (e.g. onsen, futon).
That being said, at least for copyrights - and more especially licensed ones with proper English-localised names - we have a specific topic dedicated to making them utility aliases.
I find it a bit disingenuous to place the onus on voting when: • It's been well known by most users and sometimes stated by modmins that voting is not an election, it's part of a discussion. • If you need fancy math and tables to suss out a partial possible bias toward one side, there's not really a bias (lies and statistics and all that). • This subject has come up many, many times before and we were largely fine with leaving it as is specifically to avoid a shitstorm like this.
To also say that it was four times support for trap is... strange. Even more so to mark real life connotations of femboy as a reason to pick trap given the far more significant real life issues with trap.
Ultimately, it's just a weird choice all the way. But I also recognize that many users, NNT included, want trap. Once a change like this is made it is often very heavily entrenched and nigh impossible to change. Thus, trap it shall be, apparently.
I find it a bit disingenuous to place the onus on voting when: • It's been well known by most users and sometimes stated by modmins that voting is not an election, it's part of a discussion. • If you need fancy math and tables to suss out a partial possible bias toward one side, there's not really a bias (lies and statistics and all that). • This subject has come up many, many times before and we were largely fine with leaving it as is specifically to avoid a shitstorm like this.
To also say that it was four times support for trap is... strange. Even more so to mark real life connotations of femboy as a reason to pick trap given the far more significant real life issues with trap.
Ultimately, it's just a weird choice all the way. But I also recognize that many users, NNT included, want trap. Once a change like this is made it is often very heavily entrenched and nigh impossible to change. Thus, trap it shall be, apparently.
It did seem clear that the tag was likely to change either way, but popular opinion was still used as a justification for the decision. It's fair to question the rationale behind deciding what it was. That said, while I think there are better ways to gauge popular opinion, I think it is very likely that trap really was the most popular choice.
I gave up on trying to analyze the votes a while ago since there doesn't seem to be an ideal way to do it. The tables, however, are completely objective, since they are just a combination of the results from the two relevant BURs using a script based on the one NNT used back in forum #350604. NNT didn't post the raw data, but you can see how he extracted it in the code.
The tallies of votes themselves are obviously objective but labeling people who vote for one thing and negative/neutral another as "supporting the change" in my opinion is not a clear conclusion
To also say that it was four times support for trap is... strange.
That's not what was said. I don't know what math NNT used to conclude that four times the votes were in favor of changing it, but he never suggested trap specifically won in a landslide victory. He just picked that one because he thought it was the better choice.
tamuraakemi said:
The tallies of votes themselves are obviously objective but labeling people who vote for one thing and negative/neutral another as "supporting the change" in my opinion is not a clear conclusion
Look, if you make up your own reasons for upvoting a BUR besides "I support this BUR being passed," that's on you. If you aren't in favor of something being changed then you shouldn't upvote the BUR about changing it. It doesn't matter if you didn't upvote both BURs, if you upvoted one of them then that's a vote in favor of change.
If you don't want your votes being interpreted that way, either vote how you really feel or don't vote at all. Voting yes then taking issue with that being interpreted as a yes just complicates the discussion.
I am mostly disagreeing with CAP's interpretation that 1 positive + 1 negative vote is pro-general change, where my interpretation is that downvoting a BUR is a "I oppose this BUR being passed"
That's not what was said. I don't know what math NNT used to conclude that four times the votes were in favor of changing it, but he never suggested trap specifically won in a landslide victory. He just picked that one because he thought it was the better choice.
If he is using his script from page 4 without alterations, then in his count only negative-negative votes are considered votes to keep otoko_no_ko, whereas my count includes negative-meh and negative-no vote combinations as votes for otoko_no_ko. I think either of our interpretations are reasonable because those additional votes that I include are hard to interpret firmly and the true sentiment is somewhere in between our counts, but even if you include them and give otoko_no_ko the best possible chance of winning, the motion to change otoko_no_ko to something else still wins.
tamuraakemi said:
I am mostly disagreeing with CAP's interpretation that 1 positive + 1 negative vote is pro-general change, where my interpretation is that downvoting a BUR is a "I oppose this BUR being passed"
I want to be fair in my interpretation, but I really can't see how a vote that is positive for otoko_no_ko to change to something else can be interpreted as anything other than a vote that otoko_no_ko should change. If someone thought otoko_no_ko was the best option, why would they positive vote a BUR to change it to something else? I understand that someone might do this for strategic reasons - they might think that otoko_no_ko is a lost cause and try to make sure that at least trap doesn't win - but you can't eat your cake and have it with strategic voting.
If he is using his script from page 4 without alterations, then in his count only negative-negative votes are considered votes to keep otoko_no_ko, whereas my count includes negative-meh and negative-no vote combinations as votes for otoko_no_ko. I think either of our interpretations are reasonable because those additional votes that I include are hard to interpret firmly and the true sentiment is somewhere in between our counts, but even if you include them and give otoko_no_ko the best possible chance of winning, the motion to change otoko_no_ko to something else still wins.
I think that's what some are taking issue with: that it's being interpreted as a binary vote of change vs. no change, then looking at the majority among the winning group. If you treat all three as separate groups instead, then according to your tally, otoko no ko has many more votes than trap or femboy.
I want to be fair in my interpretation, but I really can't see how a vote that is positive for otoko_no_ko to change to something else can be interpreted as anything other than a vote that otoko_no_ko should change. If someone thought otoko_no_ko was the best option, why would they positive vote a BUR to change it to something else? I understand that someone might do this for strategic reasons - they might think that otoko_no_ko is a lost cause and try to make sure that at least trap doesn't win - but you can't eat your cake and have it with strategic voting.
This assumes the voter knows the pro-trap and pro-femboy votes would be counted together as pro-change rather than being treated as separate groups. I don't think the latter is an unreasonable assumption to make.
To counter the sentiment that "nowhere else uses the term otokonoko", I'd like to point out that wikipedia has an article for it, whereas there's no article for trap. Probably since otokonoko is an actual term that isn't just something derived from an outdated, 20 year old star wars meme. But who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
