fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #6036 ]

[ SECRET POST #6036 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6036 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

__________________________________________________

02.

__________________________________________________

03.

__________________________________________________

04.

__________________________________________________

05.

__________________________________________________

06.

__________________________________________________

07.

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 37 secrets from Secret Submission Post #863.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There are two things going on in this secret and everyone is fighting because they're not differentiating those things.

The 1st thing: OP dislikes smutfic where characters who aren't canonically trans, are trans in the fic. This is a preference. It's fine. There's nothing wrong with disliking it.

The 2nd thing: OP thinks most smutfics with trans characters are het in disguise. This is a baseless assumption with deeply transphobic roots, and I don't mean roots from the writers of the fic. (Because as much as you think you know what their intent was, you don't. The fact that you think you know their intent was to write het says something about you, not about them.) This assumption is going to upset people.

In the comments (and moreso in the comments on the "Secrets you don't want to make" thread with this secret in it), we have people getting shirty because they see people getting upset at the 2nd thing and assume it's linked to the 1st thing. When it's not. "Don't imply that gay sex is really het sex because it's PIV and one of them is trans; that's transphobic" seems to be getting read as "I take issue with this entire secret, including the OP having their own personal preferences" which leads to rebuttals of "You can't make me like something I don't like!" No. I don't see anyone saying you have to like something you don't like. What you can do, is say you don't like something, without saying you also know why people like it and that the reason is very problematic and you're just concerned really.

Or as I also see, that the reason is not problematic because "if they want to disguise their het as trans gay fic that's ~FINE~ I just want them to tag for it!" Here's what you can say instead: "I just want them to tag who is trans in their fic." That's it. Problem solved.

I'd say the OP and a lot of people in the comments honestly see PiV as one thing - one of the characters in the scene has a penis and the other has a vagina, and they have sex by putting the penis in the vagina. People who backbutton out of unwarned PiV are not looking at it in terms of which way the characters identify. They're avoiding a kind of sex that they don't want to read.

If you want to make the argument that not being able to tell PiV with trans people is different than PiV without trans people, go ahead? Sincerely. But I don't think just claiming that calling it het sex "is transphobic" will get us anywhere.

Did you forget some words at the end there? Your last three sentences don't make a lot of sense.

I did, sorry. Trying again:

If you want to make the argument that PiV with trans people is different than PiV without trans people, go ahead? Sincerely. But just asserting that calling it het sex "is transphobic" won't get us anywhere.

It doesn't matter if the physical act is different or the same. If we take a hypothetical scenario in which there were two rooms with a couple having sex in each -- Room 1 with a gay couple with a trans person and Room 2 with a cishet couple -- and both couples ended up going through the exact same identical PIV motions from start to finish, the couple in Room 1 would still not have had het sex, and calling it so would be transphobic. Because "het" means a man and a woman, and trans men aren't women. THAT is what makes calling it het transphobic.

The reason that I think "all PIV is het" is because it would mean that PIV sex between two gay men is het, which seems to me to imply that you don't accept the gender identity of the people involved.

Whoops, skipped a crucial word here.

The reason that I think that saying "all PIV is het" is transphobic is because I think it implies you don't accept the gender identities of the people involved. That's why I think it's a transphobic thing to say (maybe unintentionally so).

AYRT

Thanks for replying. I am thinking about this.

I think there are a couple more things going on in this discussion than just what you've listed.

For example, I don't think just tagging "Trans [character]" really addresses the problem OP is talking about because the fact that one character (or both) is trans doesn't actually imply PIV sex -- there are many ways to write a trans character having sex with someone that DOESN'T involve the cis man's penis going into the trans man's front hole. However, the overwhelming number of M/M fic featuring a trans character does have what is essentially a PIV sex act (you can replace the "V" in your mind with alternate, possibly gender neutral terminology but the sex act essentially remains the same). I think what we actually need is a more standard way of designating that explicit fic involves PIV sex acts, which is orthogonal to the question of whether there is a trans male character involved or what relationship category is selected on AO3 (even if there is correlation between these phenomena). Whether the character is trans or not isn't actually the issue, although it is true that trans characters are a common (but not the only) source of the problem of essentially untagged PIV (mentally replace with gender neutral version, if such a term exists). For example, I am in a fandom with a lot of alien characters and hoo boy do a lot of male aliens have pussies. Some people tag this but it's been kind of a mess especially since the fandom has created elaborate fanon terminology for certain species' anatomies that basically amount to "this guy (cis male alien) has both a penis and a vagina" but that is not obvious from the tagging unless you're in the know.

I think another issue that seems to be going on in the comments is that people don't like having the kind of sex they read/write called basic or heteronormative, even though PIV sex is certainly basic and could be seen as heteronormative as well (kind of debatable but it doesn't seem clear-cut one way or the other in my mind). As someone who writes pretty basic PIV sex a lot and also a lot of less basic sex acts but with dubious accuracy due to inexperience, I don't really think there is anything wrong with writing basic or heteronormative sex, but I do think people who have a lot of investment in their LGBT+ identities might take such an accusation quite personally for reasons I understand, and to me that seems to be an additional dimension going on here too. Calling PIV sex with trans characters "het sex" is definitely objectionable on transphobic grounds, but I think there is another point here that is "if I wanted to read about a penis going into a vagina, they're a dime a dozen in the M/F section"; this point about the commonness or "straightness" of certain sex acts isn't strictly about transphobia (IMO) but also about how "basic" or "alternative"/"progressive" such a sex act is, regardless of what pronouns the characters involved have, and that itself is another very contentious claim that it seems like people are arguing about in the comments or might at least be part of their emotional reaction to OP's complaint.

OP here. You are entirely off, as is really pretty much everyone. Though that's my fault, being ESL and the secret did end up a little too vague because of that. I understand why everyone's so stuck on PIV despite it not being mentioned once in the secret.

And that's the thing, PIV is what I care about least. This secret isn't about the sex acts, it's about the characters. To me, making a character trans shouldn't really change who they are. But in these fics, when a cis male character is made into a trans male, they're also feminized to a point where they don't read as male anymore. It's the way they're described and how their personalities get softened to be more feminine. The only fics I've seen trans men presented as masculine are non-smut ones. Smutty ones like to lean a lot into the femininity.

And then there's also the fact that the only body transmen are allowed is a fully 100% female one. No one has a flat chest with surgery scars, they must have boobs. And there can't be any body hair asides from pubic, definitely not any facial hair. And vaginas are absolute must, not even strapons are allowed, not to mention bottom surgery. Trans men must look as feminine as possible. And while not everyone wants to fully transition and many settings don't have it available, this is a thing in all of these fics. Smut fics I mean, again trans men non-smut get to look masculine.

And yeah, the PIV, the cherry on top, the only option trans men have for sex. Put this all together and you've got a masculine character vaginally fucking a feminine character. How am I not supposed to read it as het. It doesn't read as a cis male character made trans male, it reads as a cis male made cis female.

DA

This is fascinating and I think you're making an excellent point very clearly.

I wasn't seeing it before, but I certainly am, now.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #6036 ]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

DA

no subject

SA

Re: SA

no subject

no subject

no subject