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Fuwafu
Image Comments 01 May 20:35
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joined Mar 22, 2021
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^ It is a bit of a complicated topic but I will try to break it down to the best of my understanding, apologies/warning in advance for the long comment and a bit of medical talk. Worth noting that this is my perspective and understanding, I am sure others would feel differently.

The term futanari taken literally just means "two forms"/"two parts", although it was generally used to refer to people that were androgynous or had both a dick and a vagina, what would at the time be known as a (fairly insensitive and largely outdated) term like hermaphrodite. However, the term generally was not synonymous with porn like it nowadays is (especially in the West), and mostly just meant a figure was "somewhere in-between" so to speak.
Eventually, around the late-20th century, some ero artists began to latch onto the idea for porn (some sources I have seen even specifically claim that transgender porn from the U.S. inspired a bunch of the earliest futanari comics, but I am not certain if it truly began the trend.) Fast forward several years (plus countless porn manga finding their way to the West) and the term has taken on a modern meaning that is almost completely sexual (at least over here, I do not know about its use in Japan but it is certainly more sexual than it once was.) That modern meaning largely falls into two categories: a person with fully-developed breasts, vagina, and penis, or a person with fully-developed breasts and a penis.

The former doesn't really have a real-life comparison, although it largely plays into an inaccurate stereotype of intersex people (the more respectful modern term for a number of differences linked to uncommon configurations of the sex chromosomes.) To my understanding, there are no common conditions which could cause someone to develop both a fully-formed penis and vagina, however there are some which result in under-development forms of both. Meanwhile, the latter form does have real-life equivalents, most prominently seen in two places: certain intersex people with Gynecomastia and trans women who have begun Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) but who have not undergone bottom surgery (surgery to replace their penis with a vagina, essentially.)
Regardless, whichever form is portrayed it still largely plays into the fetishization of both groups (seen as a hot fantasy by certain unpleasant people on the internet), because of how similar most portrayals of futanari are to said real-life perceptions. This is especially frustrating because it has led a large number of trans artists' drawings to be labelled futanari when they were simply trying to draw trans women in porn.

I'm not entirely sure how the terminology goes nowadays in Japan, unfortunately. It's possible futanari is still the common term for intersex people over there, it's possible some other term has been invented/borrowed. That said, I am a bit more familiar with Japanese terminology for trans people, and while I could see futanari potentially being used for a trans person it feels unlikely. More often you'll tend to see either "男の娘" (otokonoko, basically boygirl, although often used to describe cross-dressing too (which itself is sometimes confused as the same thing both here and there)) or I have seen some use "トランスジェンダー" (lit. transgender in katakana.) That said, in the West most trans women I know consider the term futa/futanari to be fairly offensive, comparable to a term like trap or sh*male (myself included.)

I am sure I glossed over some stuff here and there, since gender and public understanding thereof is a complicated subject even before accounting for differences in language, but that's what I mean both wrt when I talk about women with dicks that are not futa, and also my comments about the genre writ large.

Fuwafu
Image Comments 01 May 15:14
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joined Mar 22, 2021
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^ I don't know, since the artist never said one way or the other, but it's certainly not out of the question.
That said, I think it's a problem when art of women with dicks is instantly assumed to be futa (for what little futa as a genre can exist outside of weird hyper-fetishization of trans women and/or intersex people.)

Fuwafu
Image Comments 01 May 12:19
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joined Mar 22, 2021
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It seems pretty unlikely that Reyna doesn't have a dick here (unless she's got one hell of a left thigh), but given that the artist linked in the source goes by any pronouns and has recently retweeted other art of girls with penii that specifically request against using the term futa, I don't know that I would necessarily assume that this image is intended as such.

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joined Mar 22, 2021

This one was a bit shaky at first, especially with the whole youtuber aspect that's just sort of there, but it really finds its footing. Always a pleasure to have more trans manga out there, especially a longer one like this.

Fuwafu
Mirage discussion 24 Mar 01:12
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joined Mar 22, 2021

i was definitely getting trans vibes towards the beginning??

Just because a lesbian hates herself for liking women and being made fun of for wearing whatever she wants doesn't mean that she truly wants to. This happens to almost every lesbian at some point, self hate and homophobia are shitty things we go through and we can't help but think that if we were dudes we wouldn't be so hated, targeted, harassed, or even raped and murdered.

If society worldwide was different and accepting of homosexuals, we wouldn't have so much self hate and suicidal tendencies, not to mention wishing things were different like being straight or the opposite sex. It just sucks living in a homophobic society, even if you live in a good country for gay people, you still face discrimination from people every now and then, specially if you want a child.

The thing people are picking up on here is less so the "if I were a guy it'd be easier to admit my feelings for this girl" aspect (a pretty common trope in all sorts of lgbt media, even if it's a mildly unfortunate one), and moreso the repeated emphasis of how much the protag hates their voice and thinks its ugly, and the emphasis put on how masculine they draw themself, as well as the extended monologue about wanting to be a guy that they give upon it being brought up. Obviously, that's not what they went for in the end, but it feels a lot like that's where they intended it to go, even if it wasn't, and I can totally understand why someone would interpret it as such.

That's not to say that there isn't room for narratives like this (I enjoyed this comic, even if it didn't go where I thought it was going), but to instantly write it off as "every lesbian goes through a self-hatred phase at some point" is not only pretty harmful and generalizing of lesbians, but also quietly glosses over some really harmful stereotypes about trans men (including the mistaken notion that trans men are just cis lesbians with self-hatred issues). Is it possible for lesbians to have a phase where they want to be a man just to escape homophobia, and eventually they'll feel confident in being lesbians? Sure. But also it's possible some of those people feel that way because they're close to realizing that they're trans men.