fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #6551 ]

[ SECRET POST #6551 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6551 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 06 secrets from Secret Submission Post #936.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
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Maybe I'm just bad at communicating but I do not understand what's with all the replies to this. Y'all are saying "m/m implies cock" like yeah I'm aware. That's cisnormativity and it's what I'm complaining about. I am saying we should stop assuming that, and start treating trans and cis people the same.

Yes, yes we all transphobic
*sighs

Being cis is normative. It's the vast majority of the population.

Trans people are rare. You don't have to pretend otherwise to support civil rights.

It's ancient knowledge that you tag this stuff if you change something in canon. If a guy in canon is cis but you write him as trans you tag it so you don't accidentaly cause dysphoria or dysmorphia to your fellow fans because not everyone sees gender euphoria the same way you do.

I don't think wanting to read about certain things in your porn and having yeses and nos about combinations of genitals is discriminating against trans people. Readers have all sorts of preferences about fiction and when fandom tries to guilt them into spending their free time doing something virtuous at the expense of what they actually want, that tends to go badly and create resentment.

Y'all are saying "m/m implies cock"

Of course it does if the characters are cis in canon.

But it's perfectly fine to write M/M with the assumption that a male character who has only been attracted to women in canon is bi, because being bi is normal and common and doesn't need canon to confirm it, unlike being trans?

Are you daft? The m/m part is usually tagged, mostly by an actual m/m tag and also by the pairing tag if you know the characters in question. So yes, it's generally tagged, even if the character is gay in canon. So you won't break your precious little fingers if you have to tag your trans pussy which is in 99% of cases not actually canon.

NA

I would call that tagged, though. If a male character who has only been shown to be attracted to women is in a fic paired with another male character, then the pairing tag tells me he's bi (or gay).

DA

It's fine to write fiction that diverges from canon, full stop. No writer is "making an assumption that a character is bi" on account of shipping them with whoever they want.

I'm going to give this another shot, because I think my previous reply might have been needlessly curt. IMO, no one needs canon to "confirm" anythig they put in a fanfic. You can change what you want and focus the story as you please. But it's reasonable to be upfront about canon divergences, because people are reading about these specific characters and setting out of an interest that started with canon.

When I'm reading about a fairly feminine-presenting man, I like him as he is and don't want to wade through fics where he has those character traits "because" he's actually a gender-conforming, submissive woman, or a trans woman, or even (in one instance) a not-very-masculine or pronoun-attached trans man. Of course, you as an author don't know me, and you've got every right to write whatever moves you. But the compromise that helps me find that character being the person I want to read more about, and helps the people who want to read (canon) him the way you're writing (fanon) her is clear communication about what's different.

NAYRT

Hm, maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but I cannot think of a lot of guy characters in my fandoms who are canonically cis. I can think of many who are *presumably* cis because they are played by a cis male actor (/voice actor), but I'm not one of those people who think that trans characters can only be depicted by trans actors and same with cis characters, so they are not necessarily cis to me. And then for many of my canons, the characters have neither actors nor voice actors, so whether the character is cis or trans is fully up in the air.

It's very rare for a canon to have a character have their genitals confirmed or to mention that they were assigned male at birth or whatever. So I dunno, maybe your canons are different or you disagree with me that characters played by cis actors could still be read as trans. But yeah, for all my fandoms, I wouldn't mind if people specified "both the guys in this fic have cis male anatomy" even if the characters were presumably cis. If my experiences in fandom were such that it was a toss-up whether people would depict these characters with cis male biology, I would *definitely* appreciate a tag saying "they're both cis in this one." I don't know what that tag would be, but it would help.

You are just playing dumb at this point.

Its really not. Sorry but that's not how this works. Characters are normative unless stated otherwise. You can be wilfully obtuse and pretend that you don't really ~knoooow~ if a character is his but it's not actually a reasonable assumption that a large amount of characters doesn't have the genitals of their apparent sex.

I mean, do you really think this? All characters are *canonically* straight unless explicitly stated otherwise, all characters are *canonically* neurotypical unless stated otherwise, all characters are *canonically* allosexual unless stated otherwise, etc.? I think it's completely reasonable for a fan to make that assumption, but I wouldn't say they are CANONICALLY that unless it came up as a plot point somewhere, which is very possible and sometimes common. But genitals or how long someone has lived as the gender they are onscreen rarely come up as a plot point, is my point.

I'm not being wilfully obtuse and the assumption I am is honestly really frustrating to me. I am making a point about what it takes for a character to be canonically [x] and I think "it is reasonable to assume most characters are [x] unless stated otherwise" while I agree with it, is actually a very poor measure of canonicity, and nothing you've said in your comment seems to convince me otherwise.

I mean, do you really think this?

Yes. Because it's true.

In order to be inclusive, you are denying reality, which is that most people and most characters are the norm, not the outliers. And while it's fashionable to pretend that you can't tell what anyone's genitals are just by looking at them, the fact is that we all absolutely can, with close to 100% accuracy.

DA

See ... this is one of those things trans people tend to be chronically lied to about, especially by the people talking up hormones and surgeries, and the pressure on everyone else to be nice and pretend they can't tell does not help.

da

This is a strange thing to say. Some trans people pass as cis and some don't. I think anon up thread is approaching the question of tagging in an unproductive way, given that generally the intentions of the work of fiction and the assumption of people looking for fic/art is that the characters are cis, but it's true that some trans people pass in their day to day lives. No need to be snarky.

By this logic, every character in a book could also have anywhere from 1 to 5 eyes just because it's rarely explicitly described they have exactly 2. Also by that logic most characters don't ~canonically~ have any bowel movement because it's rarely shown they use the toilet.
That's just dumb.

"But what about slash, isn't that equally deviant and unsupported by canon" isn't a convincing argument. When fans write fic, we're writing what we want to read. Not "what we think the creators meant."

Most people making remarks that trans activists take offense at are not making any attempt to control what real people do with themselves and consenting others. They just care about the difference between activism that leaves them be if they don't want to engage and activism that demands everyone, everywhere change right now "for the righteous cause."

Only the Christian right was freaking out about gay erotica existing in an uncensored state on the internet because only they argued that "exposure to gay sex" would be the end of straight relationships. The fans writing it weren't gatecrashing straight ships and demanding everyone stop writing het in the name of "inclusivity," and the few that tried were rightly told to stop and ignored if they wouldn't. So, basically, you had a worldview that demanded everyone adopt it, or else be doomed, colliding with a worldview that was just existing more openly than it used to.

Trans, unfortunately, has copied the failed tactics of the former instead of the very successful appeal of the latter.

The fans writing it weren't gatecrashing straight ships and demanding everyone stop writing het in the name of "inclusivity," and the few that tried were rightly told to stop and ignored if they wouldn't.

Almost entirely true, except not everyone ignored them; there was an equally small but loud group of reactionaries that cried about the mean mean gays demanding that everyone write only gay ships and being afraid of being ostracized as a homophobe for liking het.

This entire pattern is exactly what's happening with trans fic now. And you, judging from your final sentence, along with several others on F!S, are one of the reactionaries.

Re: SA

(Anonymous) - 2024-12-14 00:10 (UTC) - Expand

Re: SA

(Anonymous) - 2024-12-14 06:20 (UTC) - Expand

Yes, because cis, straight, neurotypical, and allosexual is the majority of the human population, like it or not. Writers are going to write on that assumption for the simple fact that it's true.

Those are such boring normie assumptions though, even if some of the statistics are sound. Why do you want fandom, a place for exploring endless possibilities that canon wouldn't, to default those assumptions? Just go back to rewatching your canons if you want to see characters who are presumably straight white cis neurotypicals.

Re: SA

(Anonymous) - 2024-12-14 03:31 (UTC) - Expand

Damn, there is such a nice meme about you in my language and I can't even share.
Anyway.

Yes, most of people are cis and straight unless stated overwise. And people assume so, because patterns is what human brain is actually does. Tagging with a ship it states overwise, so tagging that in top of it is a bit redundant.

I get what you're saying but trans-specific tags are still relevant for both trans and cis readers, far more than cis-specific tags are. T

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