Even if you're not a radical social constructionist feminist/queer theorist, if you're a fan of accurate history then using a medical model for defining transgender is still pretty wacky - because the origin and modern meaning of the term did not come from doctors, it came from trans activists.

Like futanaries incidentally.

Cute. Only unlike futanaries, they're not incredibly stigmatized in this community and banned from being considered yuri and don't make any lesbian women with penises reading it feel like gross stains on yuri.

last edited at Apr 15, 2017 6:36AM

For anyone sincerely confused about semantics of transgender tags (probably just Nya-chan): You is clearly and unambiguously both presenting, performing, and claiming womanhood. There is nothing to indicate she identifies as a man. Thus, she's a woman. As a woman with a penis, she could choose to identify as intersex, transgender, genderqueer, ect. For the sake of tagging and utility, gender identity that subverts 'normal' expectations of genitia/sex is labeled transgender, which functions in this context as an umbrella term for a variety of queered bodies.

Edit: To clarify, obviously you can still present as masculine and be a woman. I just mean in this case its exceptionally unambiguous.

last edited at Apr 15, 2017 6:19AM

It wouldn't change anything immediately, but it'd have dynasty take a stance and show that they consider trans women to be women rather than "futanari". Progress is made by small steps like that.

Fortunately, dynasty already consider trans women to be women and yuri. But they are also simultaneously committed to preserving the futa tag as the default (unless manga is explicitly trans) interpretation of women with penises, in order to prevent fetish porny stuff from being labeled transgender. The drawbacks of this policy have been noted.

YuriSensei, I've been wondering where your pic is from? I want to find out more about that kind girl.

I think I've just been permanently cured of my prejudice towards subtext. I thought I wanted yuri but maybe all I really needed was blackmail to be happy.

And I'm 100% sure that drpepperfan is not transphobic, or something. He just went with the common conception that "if there's a dick, then it can't be yuri".

Long story short, that Vivian person started a flamewar for no good reason, and could just have pointed the error, instead of hurling insults at another poster. That she's a transwoman adds nothing to the discussion.

It might be a common belief, but that doesn't mean its not a transphobic belief. It just illustrates that transphobia is common. And yeah, calling someone a cunt is always a really shitty thing to do, and she's admitted it was a bad response, but I'm ultimately more invested in challenging people who perpetuate transphobia than badgering traumatized victims of transphobia into being more respectable.

Solution to the language barrier, ask author if the story is "fetish material about a woman fucking a giant dick with the life support system for a pair of tits attached" or if its about a girl with a dick pursuing that sweet age gap yuri.

Someone go ask Pito

Kind of a bummer that lacking explicit authorial permission is being set up as a shield to justify transphobia. Apparently trans goggles must be kept under lock and key. But I'm glad Nez is on team yuri and I do hope they succeed in reaching out to Pito.

last edited at Apr 14, 2017 3:06PM

Minutoh don't argue with him, it is our dynasty Troll-kun next alternative account. There is no reasoning with this guy.

You're wrong. Even IF you were right, that's ad hominem. Please stop.

But remember, you and everyone else, that all I'm saying is that "Character A is being depicted doing things that were never implied in the original and those things are of a morally questionable nature"

This has nothing to do with slut shaming, it's about portraying a character and a series as something that they aren't. It's also about quality standards (dynasty's).
Don't bring morality to this discussion please.

Yeah...def not trolling...

Good yuri. I'm a sucker for disaffected girls pursuing age gap.

Nice double standards. If you think faceless generic female is good, then by the same logic a faceless generic male is also good, unless of course you have some weird bias going on, like the "females are more pure" bullshit...

I appreciate that you're applying your healthy and not weird slut-shaming bias towards any fan work, regardless of the genders of the sluts in question. Look forward to seeing you bring the hammer down on all dynasty's promiscuous girls, and presumably not just the transgender ones.

last edited at Apr 14, 2017 2:02AM

I'm going cross-eyed, how did we get here from "what's yuri" again?

Well, this thread was started around a discussion of how feminism does or does not relate to yuri, so I was actually just doing my best to get the conversation back on topic.

Imura Ei makes that melancholy yuri hurt so good. Also, the title is pretty charming.

Sure, there's a huge market for respectable gay fiction that mimics dynamics of het love stories without challenge gender roles / sexism,

Yeah, that is awfully general. I think that part got away from me a little bit, in terms of specifically talking about yuri.

So because of that we should avoid using word natural because you have bad history with it?

Nah, you can use natural. Its a good word. I was just trying to explain why it made me uncomfortable in the context of me clapping the authors on the back for being good, good feminists.

No shade by the way, I'm honestly not trying to troll you or anything, I just really like yuri and also feminism. Also, you're going to hate this, but I believe that fun is political.

last edited at Apr 13, 2017 6:29AM

I'm still pretty sure the japanese feminism and american one are quite different and the vibe I'm getting from frigidbones posts is they are speaking about american's.

I self-identify as an American kill-joy feminist. But I did make an effort to ground my analysis of yuri as a political act in the work of Kazumi Nagaike

Best Quote: "Yurihime manga clearly represent women's subconscious desire to transcend the femaleness which has been imposed on them within the Japanese hetero-normative context. This analysis of lesbian sexuality/identity in contemporary Japan might well be enriched by examining the depiction of lesbian relationships in other kinds of manga and dōjinshi .... a comparative analysis may make it possible to discern how, in the Japanese sociocultural context, femaleness per se can be elaborated and thereby liberated from the patriarchal strictures which have previously been imposed."

last edited at Apr 13, 2017 4:45AM

love between 2 or more women is a good definition for the sake of utility and tagging. But for any other purpose, I think its unsatisfying to ignore that love between 2 women is a political act. You describe those politics as "the problem of sexuality in Japan" and Yuri is shaped by these politics (I mean the class S genre and the curse of infinite schoolgirl yuri didn't come from a cultural vacuum) - and yeah, it would be a mistake to position Western Feminism as the the most authentic voice for writing yuri, but I think its rewarding to at least try and engage with that history and note the authors, like Zaoh Taishi and Eiki Eiki, who are more conscious of yuri as a political act.

I said it has nothing to do with yuri. Yuri is about lesbians and lesbians has nothing to do with feminism.

The authors I quoted are pretty open about how responding to male supremacy is a central part of their creation of lesbian text. And yeah, most lesbians don't love women in order to piss off the patriarchy, at least not since the 1970s, but lesbians and lesbian fiction are two different kettles of fish. Sure, there's a huge market for respectable gay fiction that mimics dynamics of het love stories without challenge gender roles / sexism, but there are also lots of lesbian writes who actively engage with homophobia and gender norms in their work. Artists in general actually.

In fact the story you gave as example gets a lot flag.... Also I love how you shoehorn the "male gaze" in there.

Yep, she-wolf had good intentions but the execution was bad, its definitely easy to come away with the trope of "damaged lesbians." Also, you caught me, I threw the male-gaze in there as a modest self-indulgence.

I could bet it has nothing do to with feminism, which is mostly american creation anyway and for the most part lost its purpose long ago.

Since you indulged the male gaze, I'll indulge your post-feminism quip.

*admittedly, I don't love their use of "natural" in the quote

To clarify, radical feminists have a bad history with the term natural. Led to lots of transphobia, bierasure, kink shaming and other hierarchies of desire.

Yeah, its definitely not a representative characterization of how most artists write yuri, I just claim it as my favorite of the lot. Also, I wanted to give an example of at least 2 fairly explicitly feminist yuri creators. I'm not sure why denouncing male sexual dominance and male gazey, one-dimensional constructions of women's sexuality* would have nothing to do with feminism. Which is not to say that the authors achieve that perfectly through "she-wolf" but I love that they're at least engaging radical feminist lines of thought.
*admittedly, I don't love their use of "natural" in the quote

last edited at Apr 13, 2017 1:55AM

My favorite characterization of yuri is given by the artists behind the masterpiece "she-wolf," Eiki Eiki and Zaou Taishi, who said they create yuri "to denounce a society in which men always take the (sexual) initiative over women. We also wish to show our dissatisfaction toward men who don't understand women's natural sexual desires" = yuri as radical feminism

who could be opposed to a harm with so many flavours of cute but I'm also secretly happy because I'm lame and only ever order the flavor of vanilla, or chocolate if I'm feeling edgy

Is Othello (the game) popular in Japan? I've seen it referred to in a few different mangas.

Well, they did invent* the game, and its pretty consistently included in any list of the top 10 best selling board games of all time. But if you google "most popular japanese board games," it doesn't really come up, probably because its not really associated with Japan in popular culture.
*don't listen to the imperialist haters who would say otherwise

last edited at Apr 12, 2017 11:50PM

I have a weakness for damaged protagonists who are beset by the depressing as fuck tag so I was also a little disappointed by the suddenness of the happy end but, since this is nonfiction, I wish her all the sweet nectar and am secretly hoping for a fluffy and rosy sequel where the author further sticks it to her parents by moving in with the prostitute.

I love the consistent dismissal of Haruka's endless appetite for rice balls.

http://mutantmagic.com/page/34
Wonderfully weird and funny webcomic by Jillian Tamaki, closest thing to a main character is a closeted witch crushing on her mutant fox girl best friend.

May have been mentioned before but if you're into interactive fiction, I finally got around to playing Birdland recently (free at birdland.camp), and its one of the best twine games I've ever played and also a lesbian YA romance with talking birds.

http://emcarroll.com/comics/anu/page01.html
A short and sweet and very gay webcomic by Emily Carroll