Tag alias: trap <-> otokonoko

While I've conceived "trap" as an observer's mistake over a subject's deceit, the latter's charge warrants replacement, in pursuit of tag neutrality. It being slang isn't enough (we use ass for brevity and pussy as a catch-all), but bathroom brainstorming suggests this: female_appearance (and male_appearance), which could regard solely the visuals, as most tags do. While not specific in phrase, they could be handled as, say, no_testicles, which is implicitly for depictions which would assume such, namely the male genitalia of futanari (though the rare male example surely exists). "*_guise" might alternately be considered, though it also implies deceitful intent.

So, suggestion thrown.

葉月 said:

It's all kinds of horrible as a tag, as Log points out, and as an absolute kicker, people who know Japanese are more likely to get confused by it (as evidenced by this very thread).

The assertion about trap being offensive is IMHO way overblown. Yes, the origins you could well take as offensive, but it's such a widespread and entrenched term by now that it has come to have a technical meaning with no valuation attached. It's pretty much the word used in the English-speaking crowd, including by people who do actual crossdressing. Which, btw, has little to do with any kind of gender dysphoria -- being trans and being a trap are pretty much distinct things.

http://tobiichi.wordpress.com/2013/10/17/a-trap-by-any-other-name/

As for preference on the tag, I personally don't care in the end what we use. I will say this though, Otoko no Ko is at least a less worse tag than Trap was. Otoko no Ko is "ambiguous" and "confusing" between a concept we will not being make a tag for (boy) and one we would be (effeminate males characters to the point of not be able to determine gender). In comparison though, "trap" was a worse name because we actually tag both concepts that would fall under the term (booby traps vs. the effeminate male character), so it a worse offender on the issue of being "ambiguous" and being "confusing."

葉月 said:

It's all kinds of horrible as a tag, as Log points out, and as an absolute kicker, people who know Japanese are more likely to get confused by it (as evidenced by this very thread).

You have a proposal then for the replacement of the fujoshi tag? Since people more familiar with Japanese should be equally prone to confusing this term.

In anime they have gags between those who understand the terminology and those who don't, but even then listeners wouldn't be able to read the difference in characters used, they'd rely on context of how the terms are used. Given that we're an "anime" site, wouldn't that fact be enough of a context to give understanding for how we're likely to be using the terms?

Fencedude said:

http://tobiichi.wordpress.com/2013/10/17/a-trap-by-any-other-name/

Is that part on the origin in the Vietnam War accurate? That portion sounds to me like a tall tale, which kind of lowers my opinion of the writer. Out of all the various shit soldiers faced in Vietnam they would reserved "trap" to specifically refer to transsexuals who would lead a GI off by himself so they could rape the soldier?... I just can't buy that unless the writer cites actual sources.

Ironbottom said:

Three different people already pointed out in this thread: trap is transphobic and offensive.

People talking about offensive on Danbooru. Dudes, we've got images of child rape, tentacles, torture and humiliation. And you are raising such an issue about one word?
Seriously, please leave the tag alone.

NWF_Renim said:

Otoko no Ko is "ambiguous" and "confusing" between a concept we will not being make a tag for (boy) and one we would be (effeminate males characters to the point of not be able to determine gender).

We already have a tag for the concept "boy" - it's named 1boy.

NWF_Renim said:

Is that part on the origin in the Vietnam War accurate? That portion sounds to me like a tall tale, which kind of lowers my opinion of the writer. Out of all the various shit soldiers faced in Vietnam they would reserved "trap" to specifically refer to transsexuals who would lead a GI off by himself so they could rape the soldier?... I just can't buy that unless the writer cites actual sources.

I also find that part very difficult to believe. For one if you Google 'vietnam war trap transgender' or whatever, the first (and apparently only relevant) result is that very blog article.

Also I'm pretty sure trap originated with the It's a Trap! 4chan meme. That's where I first heard it, and that would explain why trap generally tends to be used in an anime context - if it was really that old a phrase from something as not-anime-related as the Vietnam war, wouldn't you expect it to see more widespread general usage? Sources I can find like Know Your Meme or Urban Dictionary support this origin theory. Meaning the term trap originated from a joke, nothing else.

MagicalAsparagus said:

People talking about offensive on Danbooru. Dudes, we've got images of child rape, tentacles, torture and humiliation. And you are raising such an issue about one word?

Seriously, out of all things to be offended over, a word originating from a joke about a Star Wars alien warning people about traps is the worst? ???

And besides. If you find the trap tag offending then why not go further? Request all the images falling under trap rape deleted. That's implicit humiliation of homosexuals or transsexuals or whatever you are defending. jhx, please, return the tag back to normal, that's plain ridiculous.

Toks said:

We already have a tag for the concept "boy" - it's named 1boy.

I think it depends on how we're defining "boy" in usage, which for 1boy is simply "1 male character present." "Boy" could be used to refer to "male," which male is already a tag, a "male child," or it could be "young male character." Otoko no ko though specifically refers to a "young male" or "male child" and so isn't the same meaning as "boy" used in our "1boy" tag.

For tagging purposes "male child" would fall under our tag child (or shota) tags instead, as teens and college age (young males) don't always visually look that different from older male characters. The biggest visual divide and the one that would be worth tagging would be the divide between what would be classified as a child and those are aren't.

MagicalAsparagus said:

And besides. If you find the trap tag offending then why not go further? Request all the images falling under trap rape deleted. That's implicit humiliation of homosexuals or transsexuals or whatever you are defending. jhx, please, return the tag back to normal, that's plain ridiculous.

Emotions aside, there is a difference between a meta tag being changed to be less offensive, while still retaining its functionality, and censoring images based on how offensive they are.

This isn't a slippery slope where suddenly images themselves will be censored because a tag is changed.

Considering loli/shota is much more likely to be offensive, content-wise, than anything else, I think that's a silly argument.

I agree that the Vietnam-era origin explanation is bullshit, however.

I'd prefer it not to be trap for reasons of clarity.

NWF_Renim said:

You have a proposal then for the replacement of the fujoshi tag? Since people more familiar with Japanese should be equally prone to confusing this term.

I would argue that the rotten girl form of fujoshi has taken on a life of it's own in the west as there's not really a better term for it and as such it's a non-issue.

I like the idea of *_appearance more than either of the other options. A tag like this shouldn't be based slang that is almost exclusively used on the internet, is potentially offense as well as being ambigous.

This is a bad idea. The two things have different applications. Trap means images where you can't tell in the image that the male in question is a female, that is why it is called a trap.

otoko_no_ko is basically ANY male that sees themselves as a woman. In other words, this tag can be applied to bearded men wearing skirts.

The two tags are different and should be treated as such. That said, looking at the date this thread was created, it seems to me it is directly related to Gelbooru where some users got butthurt about the taging policy over there.

In other words, the person that created this thread did NOT do so because he felt offended by the tag "trap", but because he wants to be able to use said tag on Gelbooru to find images where a androgynous bout takes a cock up the butt while showing off his own dick.

So the whole "I'm offended" claim doesn't hold water and is just an attempt to mislead the mods on Danbooru.

Setsunator said:

otoko_no_ko is basically ANY male that sees themselves as a woman. In other words, this tag can be applied to bearded men wearing skirts.

That's not even remotely true. Here's the first line of the Pixpedia article for 男の娘

男の娘とは「女の子のような」可愛い「男の子」のこと。

Otoko no ko refers to cute boys that look like girls.

Bearded men wearing skirts don't look like girls and they're not cute. They're not "boys" either. Whether someone sees themselves as a woman or not is not a factor in determining whether the term otoko no ko applies to them.

Setsunator said:

So the whole "I'm offended" claim doesn't hold water and is just an attempt to mislead the mods on Danbooru.

Also, you realize the person who first made the claim that trap is "deeply offensive" was jxh himself, an admin. You think jxh is trying to mislead himself...?

NeverGonnaGive said:
...female_appearance (and male_appearance)...

+1 to that. Clear and unambiguous.

I don't think that trap's perceived offensiveness is really so much of a problem that we shouldn't use it though. As Hazuki said, the term is so established by now that it has ceased to be (if it ever was) particularly offensive.

NeverGonnaGive said:

female_appearance

I don't know, that sounds pretty awkward to me. And for a literal name it still manages to leave an important part out: that it refers to specifically a boy with a female appearance. Not a girl with a female appearance, not an alien or a monster with a female appearance, a boy. So it would still be ambiguous.

I just remembered, what about the term femboy? "Femboy" is a term that people actually use, unlike female_appearance. It also manages to be pretty literally accurate ("feminine-looking boy"), and it's not ambiguous afaik. And I'm pretty sure nobody's going to find femboy offensive (not that I see how trap is offensive either though).

Toks said:

That's not even remotely true. Here's the first line of the Pixpedia article for 男の娘

You are using a wikipedia that ANYONE can change as proof? Of course the wikiepedia doesn't say that a man sporting a beard cannot be a "otoko no ko", it says that a man that at a glance can be mistaken for a girl.
Even so, if the penis can be seen, then a boy can NOT be mistaken for a girl at a glance can they? Hence, all images where the penis can be seen should not have the "otoko no ko" tag applied to it?

The wikia later confuses the issue more and shows how inconsistent it is by mentioning R18 images where the penis is visible. Which of course makes the whole "at a glance" erroneous" at best.

Toks said:

Bearded men wearing skirts don't look like girls and they're not cute.

That's not what that wikia says though. It says "at a glance", so an otoko no ko could still have a beard as long as it wasn't noticeable at a glance. Say they wear a scarf covering their mouth/chin.

Setsunator said:

You are using a wikipedia that ANYONE can change as proof?

And you're using absolutely nothing as proof?

That's not what that wikia says though. It says "at a glance", so an otoko no ko could still have a beard as long as it wasn't noticeable at a glance. Say they wear a scarf covering their mouth/chin.

Its not like we haven't repurposed/misused terms outside of here before.

Setsunator said:

You are using a wikipedia that ANYONE can change as proof? Of course the wikiepedia doesn't say that a man sporting a beard cannot be a "otoko no ko", it says that a man that at a glance can be mistaken for a girl.

Yes the wiki can be written by anyone, but have you even bothered to browse the tag on pixiv? How you even bothered doing a google image search of 男の娘 and look at the results? Because I get the feeling you haven't, and if you have you've completely ignored the results because it goes against the case you're trying to make here. The results on that is hardly the act of one or just a handful of people.

Setsunator said:

Hence, all images where the penis can be seen should not have the "otoko no ko" tag applied to it?

The wikia later confuses the issue more and shows how inconsistent it is by mentioning R18 images where the penis is visible. Which of course makes the whole "at a glance" erroneous" at best.

You know, I seem to recall our trap tag having a very similar definition on if you couldn't tell the gender supposedly by the thumbnail then it would qualify for our trap tag. Obviously suggesting that if you could easily see the penis you weren't supposed to tag the image trap... much like the thing you're making a huge deal about with the otoko no ko definition they have. So we have our own "R18" problems and had to come up with our own solution for it, and obviously we have still ended up having people still use the tag anyway (otoko_no_ko penis).

Side note, went to yande.re and dug up that "rule of thumb" that existed on our wiki (their's says it is just a copy/paste of our own definition): As a rule of thumb, if you can correctly tell the gender with complete certainty from the thumbnail alone, it's not a trap.

Setsunator said:

That's not what that wikia says though. It says "at a glance", so an otoko no ko could still have a beard as long as it wasn't noticeable at a glance. Say they wear a scarf covering their mouth/chin.

It's hard to write down a definition without ending up with some "hole" in how it is written, but what you're doing is really ignoring the "intentions" of the tag and concept (which is obvious if you bothered to look at the images under it), which is young effeminate males that are essentially indistinguishable from girls.

Below is somewhat relevant to the discussion.

ANN on 2011-06-27 said:
Headline: Hot Spring Tour for Cross-Dressing Boys in Japan Planned
Description: Tour's participants, staff to be all otokonoko ("male maidens")

The Japanese travel agency HIS has announced that it is launching a two-day, one-night hot spring tour designed for cross-dressers — specifically those identifying themselves as otokonoko (literally, "male maidens"). Both the staff and tourists will be otokonoko, allowing participants to enjoy the trip without embarassment. The tour originates in Tokyo and travels by bus to the Hotel Shinko and hot spring. The trip costs 27,800 to 32,800 yen (about US$344 to $405) and will take place on August 6 and 7.

The otokonoko phenomenon has been on the rise in Japan. Last summer, publisher Ichijinsha announced an original anime DVD titled Mayo elle Otokonoko, and Million Publishing launched a manga magazine titled Oto☆Nyan, which features a variety of manga about "two-dimensional boys in girls' clothing," in October. Another Japanese publisher, Ichijinsha, had already launched its WAaI! boys in skirts magazine earlier last year. Nanami Igarashi, a former Johnny's Jr. male idol and the son of Candy Candy shōjo manga artist Yumiko Igarashi, published an essay manga book titled Wagahai wa "Otokonoko" dearu! ("I Am Otokonoko!") last November.

(Can't seem to quote on mobile.) I wouldn't be too opposed to femboy, since it meshes well enough with the *boys nomenclature(?) and provides for a bit broader scope of depictions. I never caught on to it personally, but I could jive. But then, what's the "masculine female" counterpa-- wait, would we really purpose "tomboy" (assuming I didn't just link a standing tag) for this? This, too, I could accept, but when I've seen it used in "animu" media to describe characters, they were still distinctly "girl"-looking, so I worry about dilution of the concept.

EDIT: I'd wager "tomboy"'ll be a "Scratch that," but I'm still drawing a blank to a more, eh, accurate term.