Anonymous asked:

Is there anything wrong with using "herm" when referring to yiff or "futanari" when referring to hentai? They both seem like very standard terms and I've never seen them used to degrade someone. Keep in mind, I'm not trying to defend derogatory slurs - if they're that - but I've only ever seen these words used as genres.

forbiddenflora answered:

There are a good amount of people who find problem with those words, but I don’t really have much to say other than relaying how others feel about those re: animals even

i’ve still only ever seen “trap” used as a self-description by people camming

it is really bizarre to hear that words are leaking from obscurish indie porn and ending up used by assholes somewhere out in the world

i’m kind of annoyed that words can be wrecked this way, but what is there to do about it?

kavukamari asked:

Just curious, Is it still wrong to call the art-side representation of a furry or human with multiple functional sexual parts a Hermaphrodite? I don't really see them as intersex, because the parts are fully functional usually. Is it more appropriate for furries but not for humans? I had always thought that the meaning of intersex was tied in with trans* to mean in transition, so I didn't want to use it for the other purpose, but is it more appropriate/correct than hermaphrodite?

iiiii don’t know.

“intersex” isn’t really right because that’s just not what the word means.  (it doesn’t imply transition either — intersex people can identify as whatever gender, or not, just like anyone else.)

any form of “trans” is clearly wrong

i only see “futa” used to describe japan’s usual interpretation of the idea which is a giant dick where the clit goes??  which isn’t even hermaphroditism?  also i have heard that it has not-great connotations in japan?  ???  i don’t know anything

i can’t think of any words offhand that actually mean the same thing

if we can just figure out how to pronounce “⚥”

vullo asked:

Hermaphrodite = used for animals/plants Intersex = used for humans Why is this so hard to get

forbiddenflora answered:

I don’t know

“intersex” refers to an individual who expresses (physiologically) some middle ground between the species’s sexual characteristics

“hermaphrodite” refers to an individual who expresses both of the species’s primary sexual characteristics — independently and fully-functional

they aren’t the same thing!

“hermaphrodite” doesn’t refer to humans because it cannot happen in humans. all our sexual characteristics develop from the same tissue — e.g. penis/testes are made from the same babystuff as clitoris/ovaries. but that tissue can also develop into something partway between the sexes, which is how you get intersex individuals.

afaik, hermaphroditism only really exists for species that reproduce that way — earthworms, for example, all produce both sperm and eggs.

:science:

anyway the reason this is an awkward problem in porn is that medical science used to use “hermaphrodite” to describe both conditions, and now there are a nontrivial number of people who think intersex humans are true hermaphrodites

so the word is technically correct but it’s gotten all muddied with historical context

dear everyone, stop ruining words? tia

eta: rofl mel said exactly all this while i was still typing it, goddammit

nishimikan: “ why did being a weeaboo become acceptable again (applies to all you weebs making jokes about “senpai” and “kouhai” and calling each other ___-kun or ___-sama or whatecer) Read More … but i’m learning japanese!: then speak it in full...

nishimikan:

why did being a weeaboo become acceptable again

(applies to all you weebs making jokes about “senpai” and “kouhai” and calling each other ___-kun or ___-sama or whatecer)

Read More

…

but i’m learning japanese!: then speak it in full sentences

umm, “kawaii” is a full sentence in japanese

however “made a thing” is not a full sentence in english, so, idk this bit is a pretty weird thing to say

djairsurfer:

pasteldaemon:

djairsurfer replied to your post:Okay so
why would u do that though u didn’t do anything wrong?? it’s people thinking everything is meant in a negative way as always and u shouldn’t cater to them because people will see u let them push u around until u cant utter a single word

It’s not like I have any intention to take every case of offense at face value, because you’ll never please everyone/some people will always find something. If I feel the need to put my foot down, I will.

But at the same time, just because my actions were unintentional or done without awareness it doesn’t absolve me of responsibility once it’s brought up, yeah? Like, it’s how a person reacts at that point that actually matters [and I kinda’ fluffed it initially but I think we got there in the end?]

Like, it might seem insignificant to you, in which case, since it’s clearly important to other people, is there a good reason not to oblige? I certainly can’t think of one.

What those people are saying is “you shouldn’t use this word because someone in bum fuck nowhere uses it in a negative manner and so it’s automatically a slur everywhere” which is fucking ridiculous because never have I heard the word trap be used as a derogatory term towards femboys.

plus the person who complained obviously didn’t know what they were talking about since they first called your character a dickgirl, and then said trap was harmful to trans people?? Like to my knowledge being androgynous doesn’t automatically make u trans.

When someone’s making chickens out of feathers, yes. You shouldn’t water yourself down just because some asshole on the other side of the planet told you to. What they’re making you do is not thinking “oh that word is offensive i shouldn’t use it” but “oh i shouldn’t use this word because i might offend this one person who has their head so far up their ass they’re starting to choke”

Besides, just because someone says a word might be offensive doesn’t mean it is. I (and I’m probably not the only one) who has never thought of trap or genderbend or whatever the fuck as something offensive. Just because the words might have negative or derogatory roots when they first were used in fucking 1800 or whatever doesn’t mean they are today. People need to learn to not take things so fucking literally, 

hi i’ve known multiple trans people who are bothered by “trap”

it doesn’t bother me, personally, but neither do most slurs, whether they apply to me or not. but i still don’t make a habit of using them freely around an unknown audience, because i’m dimly aware that there are people in the world besides me. wow. amazing.

there are trans people who are fine with “trap”, trans people who actively identify as “trap”, trans people who use “trap” to describe a body type they find appealing, and trans people for whom “trap” is a reminder that they are not infrequently murdered for their crime of “tricking” a straight man — a trope the word quite literally reinforces.

so sure, it depends on your audience. but maybe if your audience speaks up and asks you not to use a slur because it’s bothersome, it would be common fucking decency to respect that. maybe other people’s comfort can take priority over your use of one word.

and hey, maybe you’d prefer to keep using the word for whatever reason. that happens sometimes, and this is a fuzzy case. but when that happens maybe you could just leave it at “sorry i’d rather keep using it” instead of being a colossal jackass and tearing someone to shreds for daring to be offended by a slur against them.

garblefart-deactivated20181217 asked:

by the way "trap" is a kind of offensive word to use for girls with dicks..

pasteldaemon answered:

I’m not? He’s not even a girl he just likes to dress up that way.

Like aside from not applying questionable fetish terms to actual people to begin with, I thought trap referred specifically to cis people who’re dressed up/disguised for whatever reason who is even running around applying it to girls with dicks?

this is kind of awkward since there are several groups of people who identify in different ways and who all use “trap” to refer to themselves

but the word originates from the idea that trans people actively try to fool unsuspecting straight people into having sex with them — an idea that almost certainly fuels a lot of trans mockery and violence

and that’s also awkward because there are not-entirely-straight people who fetishize that idea and use it as a weird compliment for other people who deliberately play the part (and are generally, afaict, not trans themselves?)

it’s a bizarre collision between a lot of people who all feel very differently about sex and gender. but unless you’re very sure of your audience and they’re tightly-scoped, probably best to avoid “trap”.

also the people replying to this with “HERE WE GO LOL” and “ugggh seriously??” are kind of dicks; maybe assume good faith and take a moment to care about what a marginalized group of people might find offensive

patriarchy

the word refers to a system

it doesn’t refer to all male persons within that system

if you see someone gripe about the patriarchy and your first reaction is “not all men” then you have completely misunderstood what is going on here

that’s like seeing someone gripe about democracy and having a gut reaction of “not all voters”

nobody would do that, because obviously “voter” is just a name we use for a type of person who tends to benefit from democracy. any one person may not directly benefit, depending on how the cards fall, but the system is skewed to be kinder to voters overall.

“man” is pulling double-duty as a name for a type of person who tends to benefit from patriarchy. any one person may not directly benefit, depending on how the cards fall, but the system is skewed to be kinder to men overall.

i mean, hell, you know what the word literally means right? same root as “monarchy” or “hierarchy” — i.e., the people on top are men, and the underlying influences historically come from men. that doesn’t mean every man is at the top.

do you think women should be able to vote? should they be able to function in a democracy just like any other voter?

well there you go then

Anonymous asked:

Just out of curiosity's sake, why don't you like using the 'they' pronoun?

because it doesn’t always work and i have some severe hangups about partial solutions.  also i have an excessive interest in systems and rules.

the example from the conversation i was just having about this was

Susan likes math.  They like science, too.

the other person agreed that this reads weirdly, and i suspect it’s because it looks like i’m trying to do this instead:

Susan likes math.  Other people like it, too.

i.e., use “too” to apply the same predicate to a different subject, except the predicate is different, so then you reparse the sentence to make the subject match, and now it makes sense but the ultimate effect is that it feels a bit unnatural.

someone then pointed out that this works fine:

My new student likes math.  They like science, too.

it feels very slightly iffy to me but for the most part entirely reasonable.

so the difference, i assume, is that singular-they is most commonly used for cases where the listener doesn’t expect to be able to know the gender of the subject.  “Susan” is a person’s name (and deliberately a gendered one), so it sounds like the speaker is at least familiar enough to know which pronoun to use.  “My new student” might suggest familiarity, but it’s not as certain, and there’s still the possibility that the speaker is deliberately obscuring the subject’s identity.  (so, ultimately a problem of a language built to assume that any subject can be easily categorized as “he” or “she” in the first place.)

maybe this is because we frequently use plural-they as a handwave for a group of people we can’t identify more specifically?

meanwhile i’ve had people tell me that the first example sounds perfectly natural to them.  so it’s clearly just about familiarity with that kind of use.  maybe even regional.

anyway i’m well aware this is nitpicking of the highest order and i really don’t care what anyone else does; there are plenty of grammatical things i take care to do that casual english has almost completely forgotten about.  i don’t even notice when no one else does them, and i don’t think anyone notices that i do them either.

but this leaves me in a sticky place because there’s nothing that’s obviously correct.  the traditional thing is to just use “he” and that’s clearly not going to work.  “s/he” is similarly wrong, and awkward to boot.  artificial pronouns like “ze” stand out way too much as exotic, which sort of defeats the purpose of using a neutral pronoun.  and singular-they just sounds awkward to me sometimes, and i would rather my own writing not feel awkward to me.

that leaves

  1. suck it up and use singular-they
  2. use spivak: e/ey, em, eir

i’ve been doing 2 for a couple years now, but i never really tried it out spoken aloud, and i know people who actively dislike it.  so it’s not really a universal solution either, for more…  practical reasons.  also it has not caught on at all in all the time i’ve been using it, which is fairly disappointing.  am i then drawing support away from the thing most likely to catch on?  but it’s still clearly neutral, and it has yet to confuse anyone.  mm.

i don’t know what i’ll do from here.  maybe option 3, forego pronouns entirely