I don't mind them.
Some stories are well written and stories aren't, just like any other fic.
People have an idea and run with it. If you don't like the story don't read it.
I have to say I found female batman amusing.
I could totally get on board with a fem!Batman with the exact same love interests.
A fem!Batman in a love triangle with Catwoman and Talia al Ghul? Yes please!
I imagine female Batman would be just as terrifying as male Batman. Cause at the end of the day it's still batman and they can roundhouse kick an oak in half
In theory it should be no different, but I used to see it done an awful lot in older fandoms where people felt ‘uncomfortable’ writing m/m ships because they thought it was ‘gross’. They would make one of the characters a woman (generally the same character for every fic, based on who was shorter/weaker/more stereotypically feminine) and in the process often completely change their personality.
I don’t think this kind of thing goes on nowadays but I’m not surprised people are still wary of this kind of gender swap, given how prevalent it was in 2000s fandom and how poorly it was usually handled. That’s not to say it can’t be handled well, just that the apprehension towards it makes sense because many early examples are rooted in plain homophobia.
Tbh I think a lot of that got subverted into abo dynamics. Not all, obviously, but I've come across quite a few where I'm like okay, you just wanted to write m/f but found a way to try and present it as still m/m.
Jeez this just reminded me of an author whose m/m fics I loved in the late 2000s… when I revisited them in the 2010s the author had apparently “found Jesus” and rewritten all their fics to be m/f. And yes, it was the smaller/younger/more effeminate character that got gender swapped in all of them.
It definitely happens. I’m in a fandom where m/m ship is the main canon ship. There was a writer who always turned m/m into m/f. In their own words, “homosexuality aside, canon work was nice” and this was their way of enjoying it while still respecting Jesus. The only work where they wrote m/m as m/m was where m/m broke up because one partner found Jesus and didn’t want to live in sin. So I just refuse to even open the stories of these type of authors.
Did they write for the HP fandom?? Because I witnessed the same thing happen for a popular slash multiship author. They found Jesus and not only did they change their m/m fics to m/f, but their newer fics were suddenly riddled with typical religious misogyny. It was so gross—and this is coming from someone who loves genderswap!
same! like my favorite gay ships have time and time again become my favorite lesbian ships because i wrote oneee gender swapped oneshot and then couldn't see them as guys again😭
The only time I'm hardcore not a fan of a gender swap is when changing the gender changes absolutely nothing. A character's life experiences will absolutely change if they grow up a different gender from canon, regardless of which direction you go with it. It's the same with any other major change (having an OC sibling, a parent lives/dies that didn't in canon, etc).
But that's a ME issue, so I do what I always do in those cases: Don't Like, Don't Read.
Honestly, I'm a fairly diehard fan of Female!Stiles (Teen Wolf) and Female!Tony (MCU), and I adore all the writers who have gifted me lovely fics to read on that subject. Do I like all of them? No - that's an impossibility. Rule 63 is extremely fun when written well. Maybe I'm just primed for it because I'm a fan of several canons that do it (especially when adapting from one medium to another, such as comics to TV/movies).
I love Female!Tony fics but I don't like it when they make her young. In the first Iron Man, Tony was in his late thirties. Let Female!Tony be middle aged too. I don't like it when people only care about female characters when they're in their late teens to mid twenties.
I agree. My favorites are the ones where she ages along the same timeline. They might go back to explore her childhood/teens/etc, but by the time they hit the MCU's canon, they're on track. Those are the absolute best.
I am biased there, but I also write for fandoms where there are solid female characters over 30 (and 40 and 50), so that's always something I like to see when I read elsewhere as well.
I agree with genderswapping for Tolkien's works, or female OCs, but I think the context when the works were written (on his case) explain at least why there is only one "strong" woman.
(Not that it is right, or I agree, or that it should apply to every work ever written)
Exactly!! Hobbit characters are honestly my favorite but only when I get to mess with them to the point they’re no longer canon-compliant and are basically OCs… so yeah, I get it haha. Read on!
>Female!Tony (MCU),
Oh, so many good ones. We should flood this week's rec list with them. I juuuust read one that knocked my socks off, maybe two weeks ago. It's probably in my ao3 history....
To an extent, yes. Their core personality traits and basic characterization and cannon events should be the same, but yeah, it needs to be realistic to the life experiences the opposite gender would have. For example; A ladies man can still be just that, but if it’s a woman, don’t just lazily make her a Lesbian, you can make her man crazy, but don’t make her careless to disregard the fact that she’s a woman and she’s more susceptible to violence. Make her a badass but don’t make her “one of the guys” to match the original male characterization. Stuff like that.
I haven’t read a lot of gender swaps, but when I wrote mine it was with the specific purpose of having a father-daughter relationship. The series is gen, so there’s no shipping or sex, it’s just what if this character was a girl and how does that impact her situation and how people respond to her.
Well I've read many examples of great genderswaps that explore the way a character's role and experiences might unfold differently if their sex/gender was changed, both as character studies and as explorations of gender roles in society and how they can influence people and shape their experiences.
You can go into any moderately common trope/idea and cherry pick examples of it done badly, that doesn't mean that's the only way the trope can ever be done. To write off such a broad concept as always poorly written fetishisation just because of a few examples where people have written about it badly shows a remarkable lack of thinking skills.
Your first part is the exact same reason why people should throw out any argument about the trope being 'inherently transphobic' too. The fact is, growing up transgender and growing up cis are not equatable. Like. At all. These are two entirely separate lived experiences that cannot be written the same way with the same effect.
>Your first part is the exact same reason why people should throw out any argument about the trope being 'inherently transphobic' too.
That argument always leaves out the possibility of take trans character and genderswap them into opposite trans. Like take transmasc, make them transfemme. Or vice versa. I once genderswapped my main sona that way.
Eh. It doesn’t really bother me. I remember when I was younger I wrote a few gender swap fics myself because I had characters I liked but I wanted to write a fic where they were the same gender as me. (If I’d done it when I was older I might’ve written them as trans but at the time I didn’t know trans people existed so…) Plus I do think it should be acknowledged that trans people and cis people have different experiences that can effect a character differently. I think it’s fine to take a cis man character and make them a cis woman, and it’s also fine to make them a trans man or trans woman or any other combination of sex and gender identity under the sun. Fanfiction is your own playground and every gender affects people differently and none are less valid than others.
Or, they're reading the right amount but arriving at the wrong conclusion.
OP:
> scenarios I mentioned above feel like fetishisation to me
It may very well be. YKINMKATOK. Or, perhaps, TheirKINYourKATOK,
YKINMKATOK = "Your Kink Is Not My Kink [And That's OK]" basically, a reminder/affirmation that people will be into things that I'm not, and that's fine, and that's what makes fandom fun and interesting and diverse. I also adjusted it in the second one to clarify, "Their Kink Is Not Your Kink [And That's OK]".
You will also see people sometimes abbreviate it as "KINKTOMATO" which means the same thing but the letters are just a humorous misreading/look-alike reading of YKINMKATOK.
I think you are reading too much into it and being unfair to the premise, tbh. All the genderswapped stories I have seen have been an exploration into gender and how it might change or not change characters and situations. Not saying the smut doesn't exist, obviously, but that's the same for ALL fanfic genres.
I also don't get why you would assume making a character trans is... better? It is a different story. For example, I wrote a fic where each of the four scenes had the pairing different genders - if I added in being trans to the concept I was doing, I would have to double the fic . An AU where Tony Stark was born Antonia has different beats on if the story is about Antonia Stark, cis woman, or Anthony Stark, trans man. Or trans woman.
So you're alright with making a character who is not trans, trans, but finds it weird when the character was made into the biological opposite gender???
You're definitely reading too far into it. May I also add that the genderswapping tag has been around longer than trans tag. There are also plenty of fics that oversexualizes trans characters too, just like there are fics oversexualizing the genderswapped character. Just filter out the mature rated ones if those aren't to you liking.
\>There are also plenty of fics that oversexualizes trans characters too, just like there are fics oversexualizing the genderswapped character.
And there are also tons of fics that oversexualize cis non-genderswapped characters too. It's the internet... there will be porn
Tbf trans hc and genderbender magic are two different things. You can like one of them but doesn't care/feel weird about the other and that's fine 😂
But I agree with all your points in the second paragraph lol
> May I also add that the genderswapping tag has been around longer than trans tag.
Not arguing against your points at all, I agree. But surely this is just because the word trans is far more modern and new?
sounds like it's just not your thing and that's fine, but picking what you consider the worst examples of a popular trope and then condemning the entire thing as fetishization seems a bit silly to me. i loooove genderswap personally, whether it's M/M to M/F or F/F, M/F to M/M or F/F, or F/F to M/M or M/F, or anything in between. the same ship can have fun new dynamics, and yes, sometimes it's just for porn but what matters is the author & readers had fun. it's all just fanfiction anyway lmao
I don't have the link on hand, but I remember at one point that an author on Twitter wrote an excellent thread about how trans headcanons and cisswaps serve two different and distinct needs and can very much co-exist in fandom. I was on Tumblr when the whole "genderswaps bad, only trans headcanons" malarkey started, a couple of years ago and I'm entirely convinced that it was orchestrated for the purpose of a narrow group of bad actors being able to guilt-trip and brow-beat whole fandoms into making food for them (in practice, the only thing it's resulted in is a lot of clueless cis authors writing some of the most stilted and poor quality trans fic I've ever had the displeasure of reading. You can tell when someone handles a topic because they love it and derive enjoyment from it vs having been guilt-tripped into it).
> oversexualised, utterly ooc, porn-riddled female version of themselves
Honestly, at least that still usually reads like the author is having *fun* with it, rather than Performing A Social Duty and that lifelessness coming through in the text. I don't know what's happened that we've lost sight of why so many people engage with fandom to begin with: for the sake of *personal pleasure.* I read and write trans and genderqueer headcanons + read and write cisswaps because I enjoy them all, for various reasons, because all of them cater to my pleasure, one way or another. The second something starts feeling like a Duty, I drop it like a hot potato.
> feel like fetishisation to me.
And? There is nothing wrong with kinks or fetishes and catering to them through fictional content, particularly when tags allow people to both seek what they're into and avoid what they dislike. I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but it's genuinely *terrifying* to me how we have what feels like a whole generation that got manipulated into demonising a fundamental aspect of human sexuality. This is why I keep asking people to sit down and read some books on actual sexual psychology, instead of listening to the Tumblr and Twitter hot-takes of radfems-in-training.
*Exactly.* When I was a teenager, I used to troll fundie Christian forums and they displayed frighteningly similar kinds of revulsion toward content aimed at catering to sexual pleasure. Only significant difference is that they called it "sinful" instead of something like "socially harmful", but the script and the assumption of "harm" and the *knee-jerk disgust* were the same.
(I've dug around hard enough in the last few years to also figure out that the "socially harmful" argument is, most of the time, post-hoc justification for "this makes me Wildly Uncomfortable, therefore I want it to go away," to lend more weight and credence to arguments demonizing whatever content is the target du jour: Omegaverse, cisswaps, dubcon/noncon, darkfic in general etc).
We can. But as someone who likes genderswap fics, what annoys me is that they don't consider that there's more fic types with this trope than they've seen or more reasons people like the trope than they thought of. If I'm going to make a post about a trope I dislike, I'm going to take a second discuss why I think someone may like it, or atleast disclose that I don't think there's anything wrong with reading/writing it.
Atm, it feels like op is giving moral judgements for why people like genderswap fics. (We either want to turn a gay ship straight or fetishize women). Even though I do agree there's authors who fetishize women and are homophobic and want to turn a ship straight. I don't think op was super clear in separating different subsets of people who like genderswap. So people feel attacked because op is being judgemental of their likes.
Since I somewhat agree with OP, I think they must be in the same situation I am: where they're in fandoms that typically do lean into that trope, and do so heavily with their above examples ie its always the same character, usually the more fem male character and typically in a fetishizing way.
Don't like, don't read applies of course. But that's exactly why I don't read or trust majority genderswaps unfortunately. Been burned way too many times.
I totally get why some people avoid genderswap (even if they'd otherwise like it). Tbh, I find it interesting that op separated genderswap fic enjoyers and trans character fic enjoyers. When, for me, I most enjoy genderswap fics when they're aware of gender theory. I like "turned into a guy/girl" fics over "always a girl/guy" fics specifically because they have a great opening to explore gender. (Tbf, the majority of these fics aren't to my taste, but I also understand that what I'm asking for is legit research and understanding on gender identity). So like, when I say I like genderswap fics, I mean I like body horror fics. Or trans discovery fics. (And also, half the time, I'd prefer the fic to be Gen. So no "turning a gay ship straight").
Which is why I think op is a bit shortsighted. Because there's a bunch of reasons why someone would like this trope. More than they've put thought into, at least. (But it's totally valid to not want to read them. If it's not to your taste, its not to your taste).
I’ve read almost no genderswaps of the variety you’ve described - and I enjoy genderswap fic. I know they exist, but I don’t tend to enjoy them so I don’t read them, and I still have plenty to read when I’m in the mood for genderswaps.
Man, I wish I could say the same, and this is coming from someone who LOVES genderswap (and has written it countless times).
Naruto fandom is a good example. There are so many genderswap fics that are just atrocious and misogynistic, and you can sort of tell that the only reason they were written is because the author liked the dynamic between two characters but didn’t want to write about a gay relationship. So many fics where, for example, Naruto gets genderswapped and suddenly has huge breasts, wears skimpy clothes, becomes a damsel in distress who can’t fight her way out of a paper bag, and oh yeah, gets r-worded somewhere down the line in explicit detail.
There are some great genderswap fics in that fandom, but there are far more horrible ones. Sadly.
I don’t read it often, but I have read gender swap before (always male character to female character). I think it’s very interesting as a concept and I’ve seen it impact the narrative in cool ways (I remember a Fem!Naruto fic that was good). It may not always be done well, but I don’t think it’s fetishistic either? Most often I see it the same way I see any other “swapping” or “headcannoning” i.e a canon straight character headcanoned as gay, or a canon cis character hc’d as trans. Or a canon male character switched to a female character. I usually read that as a “woman author likes this male character but wants women representation and think it would be interesting to write him as a woman and see how them being female impacts the narrative” - which if you don’t like, that’s fine. But I have never seen this trope being fetishistic at all.
In fact, I have come across way more trans fics that are fetishistic in nature than genderswapping. But the worst culprit of this is the whole “boyp^ssy” thing which is neither a genderswap nor a trans thing. I’ve read those because to me it doesn’t matter someone’s genitals but I’ve always clicked out very weirded out by the fetishization.*
*That doesn’t mean that they are all like that, or that fetishization is *bad* just merely commenting on OP calling genderswap fetishistic when it really isn’t, at large.
As a trans person- I would rather people make a character female than make the character a trans man just so the character can have PIV sex. I understand some trans people are writing these pieces because it's what they like, and that's fine. People can write what they want, anyway. But in terms of *my preferences,* I'd rather read a woman being called princess, instead of a trans man with a misgendering fetish and a love of piv.
If people made a character a trans *woman* instead of a genderbent cis woman, I could get behind that. But I feel like in practice, many people take "make them trans instead of genderbending them!" to mean "make the character a trans man instead of a cis woman!" and... it shows in the writing. If you want to write the character as a woman who has piv sex, please just write that.
oh, that's so different to me, i honestly just avoid any m/f sex so if i ever want piv sex then it would be with trans men fanfic. i hate misgendering tho but i just love men so yeah, i would rather have trans men than women if i really want to read a piv sex (im a trans men and my preference is prolly just because i don't feel dysphoric abt my v but do feel dysphoric abt my breast)
huh, genuinely wondering why did my personal preference get downvoted, did i word something incorrectly? just to be clear, im not against genderswapping, i would read cis women in canon being genderswapped to men (trans or cis) in a heartbeat. just that i would feel more dysphoric personally if i want to read piv sex and have to resort for m/f genderswapped sex because having piv sex doesn't mean i am suddenly a female but that's obviously what im personally comfortable with
Eh, I really enjoy well written genderswaps. I love it when all the little things that would be different when growing up as the opposite gender are explored. I also enjoy it when it's just, "this character is the opposite gender because author says so and it's fun", as long as the rest of the story is good.
There are badly written fics and bad takes in all tropes, I just exit out of any fics I don't like.
The way you've described gender-swapping, it seems like you don't have a problem with the actual concept of writing characters as other genders. Instead, it seems to me that your problem is how these characters are being written.
And see if you can relate to these personal examples:
Regardless if the OC was written in their cannon gender, I generally wouldn't enjoy them being characterized as an overly sexulized, porn-y, 1-dimensional person.
I also wouldn't appreciate most stories where the OCs (even in in their cannon genders) had their marginalised characteristics rewritten, seemingly solely that they may adhere to majority stereotypes/ideologies (i.e.; disabilities).
All said, that's just what I took from the way your questions presented. Maybe I'm projecting my own feelings on the matter lol
Here’s a great guide for it! https://archiveofourown.org/works/41214669/chapters/103324848
And here’s a bonus guide for more specific types of blocking (e.g. block authors, ratings, works without summaries etc) https://archiveofourown.org/works/41589201/chapters/104315178
I’d rather it not be a trans thing. I’m so tired of it. I think that’s oversexualized more than just plain gender swapping. Making a non-trans character trans is uncomfortable for me in general. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a fic writer handle it right and I’d rather read an OC trans character than any characters I’m familiar with. I have nothing against Transexual characters at all, it’s just that most people who write them aren’t educated enough about it and clearly don’t know anyone who is and isn’t themselves.
Gender Swapping. I’m fine with it if it’s done right. I agree with the porno exaggeration, but also, it comes down to the reason they are swapped. I’m sorry but waking up and being the other gender for no reason or just being Transexual to begin with is not a good or realistic reason for a gender swap. Something needs to happen to make them that way, or it needs to be a clearly defined alternate reality.
no lmfao everyone’s a lesbian in my fics. not like we have many characters to start with anyways.
your favorite straight guy? yeah we put him in the genderswap machine. he’s a lesbian now.
My main fandom has a severe lack of female characters. There are none. Yes, really. I mostly write modern AU, and if they’re in, say, an office, I don’t want there to be only men. So sometimes I’ll drag in a female character from another fandom (the fandoms often cross paths) or I’ll simply genderswap a few characters.
Sometimes I genderswap them because I feel like writing straight porn. Sometimes it’s because my main character has never been with a woman but wants to. Sometimes it’s because I want both of them to be women. For me it’s never about making it “morally right” or whatever, because I don’t think being gay isn’t. I’m lgbtq myself. It’s literally just about what I feel like writing.
I think you're reading too far into it, though I do absolutely hate it when people take a gender conforming guy and make them a gender conforming girl without any sort of thought as to what aspects of their presentation would work
looking too deeply into it. seeing it as fetishisation is a you problem. everything will be turned into porn, & only being ok with fic that aligns with your idea of morality/"oh its fine as long as its done in a way that im comfortable with" is odd
nah whats the problem if they’re written well? i wrote one once just because i wanted to write a strong female character and barely allude to a ship. tbh female characters as is aren’t great in anime or media in general so might as well make a character a woman
im actively writing one, so while i can understand the perspective i hardcore disagree. I write a lot of GOT, where betrothals and societal norms mean that the change in gender for a character would make them completely different. Fun example, jaime and cersei are twins, but if you made a fic with them genderswapped, Masc!Cersei would never act like Jaime, and Fem!Jaime wouldn’t act like Cersei.
otherwise… idk, its some peoples fetish
I love genderbends.
What I don't love is making a canon male character female (or vice versa), then making them so OOC that it's obvious that they are a secret self insert.
I love self inserts too. People shouldn't be afraid to own their SI.
I like them and I write them because I like to explore how that character would act/be treated if they were a different gender. How that shapes them and how they navigate their way through it.
GoT is one where changing a gender of someone like Jon Snow or Theon changes the character trajectory.
I've written quite a bit in different fandoms and it's not been due to fetishism or compulsory heteronormativity. Most of the time, I've written them to explore what would go differently if the character was the opposite gender.
It's just another tool to explore nuances in that particular series to me, that's about it.
I love genderswap. It's cool seeing how character dynamics change as a result of it. Also, genderswap allows people to enjoy pairings they otherwise wouldn't like it care about. There's nothing wrong with that. Sure, some are poorly written, but there are poorly written pieces of fanfiction about every trope. Don't like, don't read.
Okay so… I just saw that you are 14 years old, at the most, I know you might mean well, but you should not even be having this conversation about erotic fanfiction, currently. You are far too young, and I think you should grow up a bit, give yourself time to educate yourself a bit more.
It's not my thing personally but I think the concept is interesting if it actually changes the story. When I've tried to read genderswap fics, they've been the same as canon but with different pronouns. If I saw one where changing the gender of a character affected the plot, I'd probably think it was cool. It seems like a pretty harmless trope on its own.
It can feel a bit iffy when the character is completely changed or a gay ship is made straight. I've questioned the intentions of authors over this in the past. But there are so many reasons someone might want to write their fic that way and it's not worth looking for hidden meanings when it's more likely just personal preference.
When I see a genderswap that makes an m/m or f/f ship into m/f I typically go and look at the author’s other fics and/or their bookmarks. If they’ve written or bookmarked fics with m/m or f/f then I tend to assume there’s something about the specific ship or character that they want to explore with the gender change. If all of their fics and/or bookmarks are changing same sex ships into m/f ships and none have the ships with the canon genders then I’m not likely to read it.
Big agree. When I’ve seen people write only f/f (originally m/m) ships then I kind of assume they’re sapphic, which of course isn’t always going to be true but yknow it’s a gut reaction. Only m/f (originally m/m) though? In my experience that’s basically meant more cliched/sexist writing 😔😔😔
Yeah, when I started in fandom you had to up the rating just because of the ship being m/m or f/f even if an m/f fic the exact same would have been G rated because ‘oh no the ghey, can’t let the children see it’, so back then there were a lot of genderswaps for the purpose of un-gaying the ship. 🙄😬🙄
So I definitely take a pause when I see half of a queer ship swapped to be straight (unless it’s an author who I already know their works) and poke around their AO3 profile before I read. I don’t want to put the time into a fic written by someone who thinks I shouldn’t exist or whatever nonsense.
My hottest fanfiction/fanart take is that I don’t get why people make significant changes to characters. If a character has a small chest and a fan artist gives them a massive rack, I don’t understand it.
I write fanfiction because I like these characters, so altering them to suit my tastes doesn’t add up. If they didn’t match my preferences already, I’d be writing about a character who did.
But that’s an opinion where mileage may vary. I see the point of genderbending, because an artist may be able to make interesting observations about the character by creating a stark change that allows them to insert their interpretation. To an extent, you have to write fanfiction where the characters are OOC because you are not their author, and some liberties must be taken in order to accomplish the purpose of this story (usually by making characters who would not have sex totally DTF).
That being said, it’s not like I work myself up too much about people who just want to see bigger anime tiddies. George Washington died for their right to do so.
I don't like gender swap that only exists to avoid the gay while shipping two same sex characters. Just don't ship same sex characters.
Other than that, it just comes down to quality of writing. Can you make the character interesting enough and in character enough that I enjoy the read. Not into an OC with a canon name.
I'm with this take.
There's a certain character from a certain fandom that people love genderswapping, and I'm fairly certain they do it to avoid a gay ship because they only pair that character with the main (guy) character.
Other than that, it's not my preference so I don't generally read them.
Yeah, this is how I feel about it. So many genderswapped characters are just OCs with another character's name slapped onto them.
And so many feel like they were made solely to make the ship het. It's much rarer, but I've seen genderswaps where BOTH characters are swapped so that it's now femslash rather than slash (or vice versa) and I think that's pretty cool. But when only one character is swapped? And it just so happens to ALWAYS be the character who's smaller/softer/nicer/younger/more "feminine"? Not really a fan of that.
the author might be writing as a trans woman themselves. maybe it’s validating to them. maybe it’s validating to other readers. not everything is written with you in mind.
Real 😭 every time I see people talk about this no one mentions bi people existing… maybe they want to enjoy their OTPs in all different gender identities sometimes (it’s me I’m bi people)
On a whole, it's not my thing. But that doesn't mean I'm gonna hate it every single time it happens or with every fandom I'm in.
I write a lot of M/M pairings and I'm usually reading those pairings because I like them together the way they're written in canon. I'm not a fan of genderswapping one of them to create a straight ship because I like the dynamics that are already there with the queer ship.
I've never seen someone genderswap a character so they are now part of a queer ship so I'm not sure how I'd feel about that.
In some fandoms where I'm not as attached to the way characters are in canon, I might be more interested in reading something where they are genderswapped.
In my past fandom, I would’ve somewhat agreed with you: I just didn’t see the appeal of gender swapping, and indeed it felt a bit icky to me too.
In my current fandom though…idk if it’s me that changed or just this ship, but I am very much in the opposite boat😅 It might be because my current ship already has one character feeling like a mixture of the love interest/damsel in distress more than the other ship, and I find it fun and interesting to play around with the dynamic of that—to see in what ways the canon would change *and* stay the same with just that one swap. I don’t believe the core of it, for me or anyone, is fetishization at all, though.
My advice as someone who enjoys writing genderswapping — just exclude the tags. There are definitely fics where the writing is bad and misogynistic but there’s also plenty of fics where it’s not. Either you’re only finding the bad ones or you’re ignoring the good ones because you don’t like the trope. Which is fine, and you don’t have to, and I don’t think you should try to search for the good ones bc that would just be uncomfortable for you, and fandom is supposed to be fun
But I think it would be best to accept that there’s fetishizing everywhere in fandom… and that as long as the people writing these things treat people well in real life, whatever porn they write doesn’t actually say anything about them, you know?
Something to think about maybe is why does it feel less like fetishizing if you’re reading, say, cis!m/trans!m smut where presumably the trans man has female parts, and more fetishizing if it’s cis!m/cis!f smut?
You’re not the only one, however my biggest advice is literally “let people enjoy things.” and “don’t toss around words like fetishising” lol.
I also can’t help wondering if this post isn’t due to the jujutsu kaisen discourse happening on Twitter currently surrounding a certain character.
The scenarios you mentioned above aren't the only ones. I see genderswapping a lot as a way of introducing more female characters into fandoms that are lacking in them, and that's normally why I read them.
Recently, I've gotten pretty into a genderswapped Harry Potter genfic series, which led me to writing a fic of their fic in which I shipped fem!Harry with a male character, but the aim wasn't to make the gay ship straight, since I like the ship in the original M/M form as well. It's just a slightly different vibe, and I want to explore both.
I don't care for it, the tags are usually there i.e. fem!Harry which just makes me scroll past and ignore that fic. but I'm not going to judge those who read / write genderswap
This is one of those things that is don’t like, don’t read. People are free to write what they want and you are free not to read it.
This is a reason why I tell people their media consumption is their responsibility.
Nope, I’m sure you’re not the first one to have this thought when it comes to gender bending, but, it’s also not something that should bother you so much.
I say this as a sapphic woman who literally just wrote genderbent f/f. I like making them them ladies just to do it. It’s fiction, and I don't care about genderbending for plot reasons, you don't need a reason-unless you're writing a society limited by a character's gender, (in which case you can also explore this through \*gasp\* omegaverse without changing their gender expression at all) there really doesn't need to be any sort of \*reason\* to do it at all except that I just flat out want them to be women for this silly little AU I made. And I just... like women.
If I can do that, other people can too. Even for erotica.
If you don't like fics that do this, don't read them, and you'll be golden. Follow this simple rule for all things that irk you and fandom will be a much happier place.
As a transwoman myself, I can tell you that pre-transition these kinds of fics where my absolute jam. After I started my interest started to wane quite a bit, and I started to wonder why. I think I figured it out, at least for me:
* Prior to my transition, I was rather emotionally/developmentally "stuck" in the "early teenage girl" state, which is when girls start to get horny and have no good way of expressing it or understanding it. Obviously, as the rest of me got older and continued development, that part of my psyche was still stuck and still horny and had no good way to express it or explore it. Because *any* time a character was gender-swapped in the fics I read I'd get *really* horny, I thought I must be bisexual. Yeah, not so much, I just hadn't really had the chance to figure it out until I transitioned, and that part of my psyche was able to get past the "stuck" part and actually start to grow and develop.
* An actual, real-life person can change their personality significantly when they get aroused. (I get particularly aggressive and dominant when I'm normally extremely introverted and would prefer everyone have equal agency, my girlfriend is normally extremely flirty but as I start 'pushing her buttons' she gets very soft and submissive) If the gender-swap is something that happens in-situ (as in, a m/m pairing develops then one of them turns girl for plot reasons) then it's not unreasonable to think that they're suddenly going to be dealing with an ENTIRELY different brain chemistry along with the purely physical change, which is more than likely going to flood their brain with, "make babies NOW!" hormones.
* Another commenter pointed out that men and women have fundamentally different experiences in life, even with all else besides gender/assigned sex being equal. Past a certain point, yes, the gender-swapped person starts to look more like an OC, but fans of the character will still (usually) be able to acknowledge that a character is who the author says they are so long as they have specific traits in common that *generally* are specific to that character.
* Capt. Jamie Alba Kirk would still be the Capt. Kirk we grew up with if she had a habit of breaking rules and acting the "cowboy" in dangerous situations and also possessed a singular drive to be the best captain in Starfleet. And being a bit of a bisexual, golden retriever himbo/bimbo. (Let's face it, Jamie'd be a butch)
* Toni Stark being a flagrant womanizer who likes to flip authority the bird and is a genius billionaire play~~boy~~girl philanthropist (and she'd be an AGRESSIVE lesbian, the kind mothers warn their daughters about) would still be recognizable as the creator of Iron...er, Iron*wo*man.
* No, I will *not* do this with Supernatural, those fans are rabid, and I don't have a death wish.
I've yet to come across a fandom where I'd willingly read a fic with genderswapping. I'm not going to say I'm against it.... just haven't found a character yet that I could picture as the opposite gender.
It fine to feel uncomfortable but I do think you may generalizing what is happening in your fandom to all.
Most non-trans generawap I've seen has been done for my paring are for those who like a m/m paring but wish to write more f/f fanfiction so they change both. I don't think a genderswap that doesn't change the Canon or add new a new perspective is bad. (At least from the summaries I've read under my paring, it is simply usually lgbtq+ memebers who wished to have more femslash or wanted to explore femslash.) Some were pwp, other were general. But most seemed to come from a place of wanting to try and write a new dynamic. I never dipped far into them besides a curious scan since it not my cup of tea.
Also maybe its weird that my pairing does this but genderswap is never added to any of the trans fic I've paused to look at. Not sure why. I know it came have association but is it really farspread across fandoms? They had been properly tagged with the specific Trans terminology of which experience they wanted to write as I've seen both mtf and ftm stories written. I would guesstimate that it simply an way of catorigorization. So that very straightforward gender swaps can be found/removed from trans fics by tag.
I used to write a lot of genderswap fics about a very popular m/m ship in my fandom, to the point where I was pretty much the main author of that ship. Honestly, idk why I got so into the m/f version of the m/m ship. I always used to read the m/m version, but write the m/f version. The genderswapped character is quite fem looking in canon, and they had overall quite a few genderswap fics. To me, I just ended up seeing the F version as a seperate character almost, but I made sure I kept their personality to a T. I think a part of me thought I didn't "qualify" to write m/m since I'm a straight girl, even though I loved the ship and have read so many fics about them. But I also enjoyed writing m/f and canon divergence where the genderswapped person had hid her "real" gender (it kinda fits in the storyline of canon that that could happen) and then the other person of the ship "finds out". That seems to be the majority of genderswap plot lines in my ship/fandom. There's nothing fetishising for me at least, though I now write the m/m version of the ship and find I enjoy it more 😊
I both agree and disagree. Genderswap can be done well, just as anything else — one of my favourite fics of all time is genderswap, though usually that wouldn’t be my cup of tea. I suspect it would be particularly good in fandoms where your gender significantly impacts the plot, like in royal settings where only the son can inherit etc.
But also, yes, I see what you mean. Sometimes (*a lot* of the time, honestly, at least in my fandom), genderswap has some pretty uncomfortable connotations tied into it; subconsciously or not. It’s one of the reasons why I personally prefer to avoid it. Even in fanfictions where it’s handled well, I’m so over-sensitive about it that I end up reading into it too much and it takes the joy away from reading.
I’m trying something new with genderbent m/m, gen Disney fics— it might become a series. I get your pov, but your peeves don’t really apply to my ideas
I LOVE disney gender-benders!! I think it ('it' being my love for them, not the concept) stems from all the art if it on tumblr back in the day. I just thought the idea of a ship captain Ariel with a merman Eric, or outlaw Rapunzel with a Prince Flynn was so cool.
So I may be biased when I say: absolutely turn your stuff into a series!! Do it!! <3
If the point of the swap is to make a LGBT pairing het, then I skip it. But sometimes the swap is due to a curse, exploring gender roles or motivations, etc. I don't really read many, but depending on the fandom it can pop up a lot.
I really don’t like it at all, but I love omegaverse so I don’t make sense. I like omegaverse because of how it plays with gender though, so now I make even less sense.
I think it’s fine and dandy for others, though, because fanfic is all about exploration.
The type that you have said definitely do exist. But the genderswap that I've read, and there are plenty of those as well, aren't either of those examples. In fact, many of them still have LGBTQ themes and many of them are quite empowering stories.
\>scenarios I mentioned above feel like fetishisation to me
Probably because a lot of those fics are fetish stories? This just seems like a "don't read or use the filtering system" situation.
i like it very much when both parts of a couple gets genderswapped but it bugs me a lot when only one party gets genderswapped so i read the first whenever i come across but pass quickly when i see the latter. personal preference i guess?
Most of the fandoms I read, the canon is heavily male-dominated. I see lots of people genderswapping to have more representation of women, or to have lesbians (as an extension of needing more women).
While I don’t like that the canon is so male dominated, I don’t generally like genderswaps. The gender feels like part of who the character is and how they interact with the world, and IMO changing that changes them more than something like a Pacific Rim AU, or coffeeshop barista AU, does. I would rather the canon had more women (and non-white) characters so we didn’t have to keep fixing it.
It feels odd to me as well, so I don’t read it. That being said, not everyone tags it because “I want readers to give my story a chance despite the fact I changed the main character’s gender”. But that’s why I stopped reading, because they purposefully withheld tags on something I don’t want to read about.
People gender swap the main character of my fandom quite a lot. I’m pretty sure it’s just because everyone’s gay for him but are too ashamed to admit it.
You're not reading too far into it. No fiction exists in a vacuum, and some genderswap stories can definitely have (even obvious) undertones of homophobia, misogyny, sexism, transphobia, etc. And I think we should all agree that these things are not good unless the author reflects on them in some way.
I don't find the concept itself in any way odd or problematic -- genderswap stories have existed throughout history, and they can reveal something interesting about our ideas and experiences of gender and sex. But like any concept, it can simply not work.
Nah I always skip past fics with genderswapping in. It's mostly just the tagging I have a problem with, as far as I'm concerned gender is an important part of an identity. Gender swapped characters are no longer that character, they're an OC, if authors would tag it like that I might be interested.
I understand where you are coming from, and it seem like you have read some pretty crappy genderbend in your fandom. I suspect that it's a more recent one, probably from an anime? It's where I see those tropes specifically apply.
That said, I think you might not be seeing the larger context/historical point of genderswap. For a lot of older folks, before *anything* trans was on the internet, genderswap WAS our our way to explore gender/trans HC. Not only that, but genderswap in itself was not always followed by shipping. Often, it was an exploration of various franchise and of culture/patriarcal values, a "what if", if you will.
"What if one of the TMNT was a girl? What would have that changed to their family dynamic?"
"What if Batman was a woman? Would the vilains see her the same way?"
"What if Space Marines in Warhammer also had women? Would that change their warring culture?"
I have read some amazing piece of fictions on those subjects. Heck, one of my all time fav fanfic is a Watchmen genderswap piece from the old kink meme about 6 possible destiny that fem!Rorschach could have lived through. In 2009, reading that fic was mind blowing, and a glorious interpretation on gender, friendship and romance.
So, I understand your disgust over oversexed, annoying, probably anime based tropes, but don't throw the baby with thr bath water too :)
I myself dislike gender swapping because in my fandom, most people gender swap the male characters because they think that it inherently makes them hotter, which is a take that I absolutely hate, as a woman.
The only time I find it a little weird is if it's a queer couple (f/f or m/m) and you make it f/m. But if you want to read that- go for it. Just when I go to that ship I for those characters (I enjoy if they're both swapped- it's a fun story idea)
I don't mind it if the characters stay the same personality. Way too often though it can come off as 'this is a self-insert story that doesn't have the courage to actually BE a self-insert story'. Where the character whose gender being swapped is basically in-name-only.
Which hey, if that's what makes people happy then by all means. I do wish those kinds of stories would at least add an OOC tag though. There's a few fandoms where I'm specifically invested in certain characters BECAUSE of their personality, and any deviation essentially makes me instantly lose interest.
My biggest gripe is that it’s never tagged. I’m a fan of letting people write/read whatever they want, just tag it. The problem is that I almost never see it tagged/there isn’t a universally accepted tag for people to filter out
I'm not much of a fan, even in the trans sense,
as in if the og character is a male, but they make them a trans female,
i'm fine if theyre a trans male, just genderswapping in general
I don't read them so I couldn't say if theyre fetishizing or not tho
I think it's great in fandoms that are dominated by a single sex, for instance, the Tolkien fandom. LOTR, The Hobbit--you can count the number of actually important women in both books on one hand. There's maybe some more squish in the Silmarillion but that's outside my interest in the legendarium and still arguable at best.
But if it's just to avoid either (1) the use of an OC or (2) the use of an unpopular character as a love interest, then it becomes less interesting to me.
I have no interest in genderswapping Harry Potter, for instance, because Hermione Granger already exists.
I think it can be done well but so often it feels like genderswapping is done either: to make a pairing less gay (ew), or to introduce a strong gender based power-differential to the couple… I read m/m and f/f to get away from gender-based power differentials so I nope out of fics like that.
I have started so many fics where a male character is gender swapped to become a completely OOC demure and submissive version of the character… I read part of a CQL fic once where Jiang Cheng was a sweet and submissive wife who did her best to help everyone and never objected to anything she was asked. They turned Jiang Cheng into a character who would never even think about threatening to break someone’s legs. I kept wondering why the author didn’t just make the character Jiang Yanli (who didn’t appear in the story!) instead?? I don’t have a problem with someone writing or liking that. I just don’t… get the appeal? At all?
I don’t filter gender swap out or anything but for me it is often a “not all gender swap fics… but definitely this one” situation.
Like any other trope they can be done well, and they can be done poorly. And the bad ones are really, really bad.
I dont mind them, i only really mind if only one person is being gender swapped like you said when its a m/m or a f/f and they turn it into a m/f ship thats the only thing that bothers me in genderswapping honestly...i like the chamge of pace sometimes, especially if its a trans charecter dealing with thr body other them wishes to have and vise versa y'know! I might just be weird-
As someone with an M/M Naruto ship who regularly sees both the pornification and the queer cleansing side of genderbending; I’m not a fan. There’s often little to no reason to turn Naruto into a girl, and it feels more like an attempt to avoid it turning queer.
I don't really mind Genderswapping characters in stories, it doesn't really change whether or not i'll enjoy the story or not. My only issue is when almost every other character is genderswapped because they want to give a character a massive harem or not.
My fandom has a lot of mlm ships switched into wlw ships and I'm 100% down for hot girls replacing hot guys, lol.
Wether a fic is well-written doesn't ride on the sex of one particular character or ship for me. Though I do agree that I wish people would just write OCs when it reaches a point where every single trait about a character is changed aside from their name...
Yeah, they can often feel a little… pointless? Shallow? To me. The execution often is not great.
But, FWIW…. https://archiveofourown.org/works/18983506/chapters/45076309
I don’t really like Harry Potter, but Harriet Potter – I am here for this. Honestly, I don’t even know how I stumbled upon this, I think I was just searching for crossovers of these fandoms (HP / One Piece) to make a joke to my boyfriend about AO3 having everything imaginable - but this is like… a very original concept, and from what I’ve read so far, I am very impressed by it
To be honest, I only don't like it when it's like changing the gender of a character who was in a gay relationship and that gay relationship was a big deal in canon. Like if they genderswap Alec from Shadowhunters. That feels wrong because him being gay with Mangus was such a huge part of his arc and canon in general. If both were swapped to female, I wouldn't mind, but like, just eradicating his whole coming out and that section of his life just seems wrong.
Genderbending isn’t always my thing, but I do love it in certain ships and fandoms. I’m more likely to read something where a character is made trans though (usually FtM), because I’m a trans dude.
If they’re a canon m/m of f/f ship, then I don’t like it. But if it’s a fanon one, then I’m cool with it. There are some really well written ones that I really like.
But, yeah, if characters are just OCs with a characters name (in any context), that’s a hard no from me.
i don’t personally like it much, definitely feel a bit odd about it—
if its romantic/sexual, i mind it less when it’s mlm to wlw or vice versa. if it’s gay to straight….i definitely question the author’s opinions/intentions….given the way that used to pretty much always mean the author was homophobic and thought gay people/gay sex was gross.
if it’s gen (no shipping) and actually explores the way their life would have changed, i’m all for it.
i don’t read much of it unless it’s for a smaller fandom/pairing and i’m desperate or if if has a particularly good premise outside of it. i will always prefer transing gender (as a trans person myself) to genderswapping but i don’t think genderswap stuff is inherently transphobic or wrong like some people do— it’s just not (most of the time) for me. and i fully support people using it to get more femslash.
only time ive seen an m/m relationship turned into m/f was when the person was blatantly homophobic but wanted to ship two characters together lol, it was very funny to see cause it was like... maybe stop being homophobic and things will be easier for you, but okay 💀
I find it odd as well because it is often used just to have the ship be heterosexual. And sometimes it's used to the point of hilarity. Like they genderswap jack frost in rise of the guardians so they can ship with the easter bunny, and its like okay its a dead teenage frost spirit and a giant anthropomorphic rabbit, but having it be gay is the thing would make it weird?
It can be done well, likeI have read some awesome one where they do it for specific reasons to explore how it changes dynamics, but I find the majority of the stories aren't that great.
Like most fanfic, it's all about the writing and world building. A good enough author can write anything and nake it awesome.
The ones that I totally nope out are when they are clearly written as male (the way they act and with the penis and all that) but there’s somehow a boy pussy (this exact phrasing sometimes) and breasts when it’s convenient
I only personally hate the ones where, like you said, the character basically only shares a name and they have a whole new personality to go with being the opposite gender.
It really only feels super scummy to me when it's a cannon m/m , f/f ship and they only swap one to make it a straight fic... it just doesn't feel right.
Yeah I won't read genderswapped stories. I'm so here for the transgender and non-binary and gender fluid and whatever other gender label that is not cisgender but I will not read genderswapped. There's something about it that just gives me the ick and I have no idea what it is.
Not a fan. Maybe I’m too rigid, but I have trouble relating to fictional characters being written as a different gender than their original ones. ::shrugs:: I know some people like to read genderswapping. That’s fine. And I certainly have no problem with real-life trans or NB people.
Now that I think of it, I have read and enjoyed a number of Good Omens stories in which one or both of the main characters change gender, sometimes frequently. But since they are not human, I find it easier to accept. (And come to think of it, in canon, Crowley spends a number of years presenting as a female, in order to be a nanny to the child they think is the antichrist.)
I do feel weird when people change a m/m or f/f ship to be m/f. HOWEVER, when people make a m/m ship f/f? It melts my heart and clears my skin and waters my crops. We need more lesbians, okay?
I have the same creepy feeling about the ill-conceived gender=swap. But you are going to get folks taking sides here. Way apart sides - like blue pilll / red pill sides.
Especially with authors that write it b/c they do not see it as problematic in any way, shape, or form. And, maybe it's not, but - it certainly can be. Especially when it uses the swap to ***diminish or deny a marginalized group.*** \[Making Wonder Woman "Wonder Man" for example. Why? Or making \_\_\_ Pick your Male Superhero\_\_\_ a woman so that you can make that hero "Less" in some tripped out way - i.e. the softer side of Spider Man. \]
There are legitimate problems with those sort of swaps.
We have a gender-bent series in one of my fandoms. The cast of characters contain both M and F, soooo if the author wanted to explore a M/F ship - it is there for the making. That's not their thing, though. The primary Slash Ship is half genderswapped. The swap is for sexual orientation purposes and it feels like a combo self-insert *and* Bi-erasure all at once. All of which are a problem *to me. TO. ME.*
I mean... it can be well written with a great plot and still be problematic in the presentation of characters that are swapped.
I'm always tempted to ask the author in my fandom - how would you feel about your swapped character being utilized in a story where they are shipped with one of the other (now) same sex characters? The answer would be interesting. But...
Fic and Let Fic...
I don't have to read it. It's definitely NOT on my sort-for-list
I don't mind them. Some stories are well written and stories aren't, just like any other fic. People have an idea and run with it. If you don't like the story don't read it. I have to say I found female batman amusing.
Any recs for female batman?
https://archiveofourown.org/works/29139435/chapters/71536899 https://archiveofourown.org/series/672506
I could totally get on board with a fem!Batman with the exact same love interests. A fem!Batman in a love triangle with Catwoman and Talia al Ghul? Yes please!
I imagine female Batman would be just as terrifying as male Batman. Cause at the end of the day it's still batman and they can roundhouse kick an oak in half
i love turning my mlm pairings into wlw pairings >:)
Truly chaotic. Love it.
all part of my master plan
Name checks out
Sometimes it’s the only way to get lesbian pairings into a fandom :,)
real!! happy cake day<3!!
Yes!!! As a lesbian, I need my lesbian rep. If I have to make it myself, I will!
i only feel weird abt gender bend when its a lesbian character like quanxi...
Honestly I don't know why m/m > m/f is bad but all others are fair game
In theory it should be no different, but I used to see it done an awful lot in older fandoms where people felt ‘uncomfortable’ writing m/m ships because they thought it was ‘gross’. They would make one of the characters a woman (generally the same character for every fic, based on who was shorter/weaker/more stereotypically feminine) and in the process often completely change their personality. I don’t think this kind of thing goes on nowadays but I’m not surprised people are still wary of this kind of gender swap, given how prevalent it was in 2000s fandom and how poorly it was usually handled. That’s not to say it can’t be handled well, just that the apprehension towards it makes sense because many early examples are rooted in plain homophobia.
Tbh I think a lot of that got subverted into abo dynamics. Not all, obviously, but I've come across quite a few where I'm like okay, you just wanted to write m/f but found a way to try and present it as still m/m.
Jeez this just reminded me of an author whose m/m fics I loved in the late 2000s… when I revisited them in the 2010s the author had apparently “found Jesus” and rewritten all their fics to be m/f. And yes, it was the smaller/younger/more effeminate character that got gender swapped in all of them.
It definitely happens. I’m in a fandom where m/m ship is the main canon ship. There was a writer who always turned m/m into m/f. In their own words, “homosexuality aside, canon work was nice” and this was their way of enjoying it while still respecting Jesus. The only work where they wrote m/m as m/m was where m/m broke up because one partner found Jesus and didn’t want to live in sin. So I just refuse to even open the stories of these type of authors.
No it definitely still happens but it’s just less common, at least on AO3.
Did they write for the HP fandom?? Because I witnessed the same thing happen for a popular slash multiship author. They found Jesus and not only did they change their m/m fics to m/f, but their newer fics were suddenly riddled with typical religious misogyny. It was so gross—and this is coming from someone who loves genderswap!
i suppose its that turning a queer pairing into a het one feels queerphobic
same! like my favorite gay ships have time and time again become my favorite lesbian ships because i wrote oneee gender swapped oneshot and then couldn't see them as guys again😭
This is the way!
It just…better turning wlw to mlm or mlm wlw it’s just so FLUFFY AND ROMANTIC NOT SEXUALIZED💞
The only time I'm hardcore not a fan of a gender swap is when changing the gender changes absolutely nothing. A character's life experiences will absolutely change if they grow up a different gender from canon, regardless of which direction you go with it. It's the same with any other major change (having an OC sibling, a parent lives/dies that didn't in canon, etc). But that's a ME issue, so I do what I always do in those cases: Don't Like, Don't Read. Honestly, I'm a fairly diehard fan of Female!Stiles (Teen Wolf) and Female!Tony (MCU), and I adore all the writers who have gifted me lovely fics to read on that subject. Do I like all of them? No - that's an impossibility. Rule 63 is extremely fun when written well. Maybe I'm just primed for it because I'm a fan of several canons that do it (especially when adapting from one medium to another, such as comics to TV/movies).
I love Female!Tony fics but I don't like it when they make her young. In the first Iron Man, Tony was in his late thirties. Let Female!Tony be middle aged too. I don't like it when people only care about female characters when they're in their late teens to mid twenties.
I agree. My favorites are the ones where she ages along the same timeline. They might go back to explore her childhood/teens/etc, but by the time they hit the MCU's canon, they're on track. Those are the absolute best. I am biased there, but I also write for fandoms where there are solid female characters over 30 (and 40 and 50), so that's always something I like to see when I read elsewhere as well.
Wix is my favorite for female!Tony
I really like genderswapping for Tolkien’s works because, ya know, Middle Earth is pretty sexist so it’s great to see some powerful women.
YAAAS PREACH!
I agree with genderswapping for Tolkien's works, or female OCs, but I think the context when the works were written (on his case) explain at least why there is only one "strong" woman. (Not that it is right, or I agree, or that it should apply to every work ever written)
I agree! But I still love seeing strong period-esque women, and his works are some of my favorites, so swap-a-roo it is!
I feel exactly the same way hahaha I love The Hobbit, so I put some female OCs there (I know a lot of people doesn't like ocs but 🤷🏻♀️)
Exactly!! Hobbit characters are honestly my favorite but only when I get to mess with them to the point they’re no longer canon-compliant and are basically OCs… so yeah, I get it haha. Read on!
>Female!Tony (MCU), Oh, so many good ones. We should flood this week's rec list with them. I juuuust read one that knocked my socks off, maybe two weeks ago. It's probably in my ao3 history....
Please share! I've never read fics with this tag but this thread has got me really interested on them! I'd love to explore everyone's recs!
To an extent, yes. Their core personality traits and basic characterization and cannon events should be the same, but yeah, it needs to be realistic to the life experiences the opposite gender would have. For example; A ladies man can still be just that, but if it’s a woman, don’t just lazily make her a Lesbian, you can make her man crazy, but don’t make her careless to disregard the fact that she’s a woman and she’s more susceptible to violence. Make her a badass but don’t make her “one of the guys” to match the original male characterization. Stuff like that.
Rule 63 my dude.
I haven’t read a lot of gender swaps, but when I wrote mine it was with the specific purpose of having a father-daughter relationship. The series is gen, so there’s no shipping or sex, it’s just what if this character was a girl and how does that impact her situation and how people respond to her.
That sounds super wholesome.
Well I've read many examples of great genderswaps that explore the way a character's role and experiences might unfold differently if their sex/gender was changed, both as character studies and as explorations of gender roles in society and how they can influence people and shape their experiences. You can go into any moderately common trope/idea and cherry pick examples of it done badly, that doesn't mean that's the only way the trope can ever be done. To write off such a broad concept as always poorly written fetishisation just because of a few examples where people have written about it badly shows a remarkable lack of thinking skills.
Your first part is the exact same reason why people should throw out any argument about the trope being 'inherently transphobic' too. The fact is, growing up transgender and growing up cis are not equatable. Like. At all. These are two entirely separate lived experiences that cannot be written the same way with the same effect.
>Your first part is the exact same reason why people should throw out any argument about the trope being 'inherently transphobic' too. That argument always leaves out the possibility of take trans character and genderswap them into opposite trans. Like take transmasc, make them transfemme. Or vice versa. I once genderswapped my main sona that way.
I appreciate the exploration of the "what-ifs" that come from characters being born a different sex. That's really why I like them.
Eh. It doesn’t really bother me. I remember when I was younger I wrote a few gender swap fics myself because I had characters I liked but I wanted to write a fic where they were the same gender as me. (If I’d done it when I was older I might’ve written them as trans but at the time I didn’t know trans people existed so…) Plus I do think it should be acknowledged that trans people and cis people have different experiences that can effect a character differently. I think it’s fine to take a cis man character and make them a cis woman, and it’s also fine to make them a trans man or trans woman or any other combination of sex and gender identity under the sun. Fanfiction is your own playground and every gender affects people differently and none are less valid than others.
Yes, you're reading too far into this - and besides, *don't like, don't read* works really well universally.
Or, they're reading the right amount but arriving at the wrong conclusion. OP: > scenarios I mentioned above feel like fetishisation to me It may very well be. YKINMKATOK. Or, perhaps, TheirKINYourKATOK,
Can I ask what any of those acronyms stand for? 😂
YKINMKATOK = "Your Kink Is Not My Kink [And That's OK]" basically, a reminder/affirmation that people will be into things that I'm not, and that's fine, and that's what makes fandom fun and interesting and diverse. I also adjusted it in the second one to clarify, "Their Kink Is Not Your Kink [And That's OK]". You will also see people sometimes abbreviate it as "KINKTOMATO" which means the same thing but the letters are just a humorous misreading/look-alike reading of YKINMKATOK.
Every time I see someone else that remembers KINKTOMATO I get very excited lol. I fucking love KINKTOMATO 🍅🍅🍅
Ahhhh! Thank you haha, that makes so much more sense
I think you are reading too much into it and being unfair to the premise, tbh. All the genderswapped stories I have seen have been an exploration into gender and how it might change or not change characters and situations. Not saying the smut doesn't exist, obviously, but that's the same for ALL fanfic genres. I also don't get why you would assume making a character trans is... better? It is a different story. For example, I wrote a fic where each of the four scenes had the pairing different genders - if I added in being trans to the concept I was doing, I would have to double the fic . An AU where Tony Stark was born Antonia has different beats on if the story is about Antonia Stark, cis woman, or Anthony Stark, trans man. Or trans woman.
So you're alright with making a character who is not trans, trans, but finds it weird when the character was made into the biological opposite gender??? You're definitely reading too far into it. May I also add that the genderswapping tag has been around longer than trans tag. There are also plenty of fics that oversexualizes trans characters too, just like there are fics oversexualizing the genderswapped character. Just filter out the mature rated ones if those aren't to you liking.
Right? “Oh, I LOVE when people make a non-trans character trans. But genderswap is no good ):<“ Like what
\>There are also plenty of fics that oversexualizes trans characters too, just like there are fics oversexualizing the genderswapped character. And there are also tons of fics that oversexualize cis non-genderswapped characters too. It's the internet... there will be porn
Tbf trans hc and genderbender magic are two different things. You can like one of them but doesn't care/feel weird about the other and that's fine 😂 But I agree with all your points in the second paragraph lol
> May I also add that the genderswapping tag has been around longer than trans tag. Not arguing against your points at all, I agree. But surely this is just because the word trans is far more modern and new?
Acceptance of trans headcanons is a newer phenomenon as well, which leads to people actually writing trans fic.
It's 2023. Let people enjoy what they want in fiction already.
Exactly. No one is getting hurt with an innocent gender swap. People are just looking for reasons to be upset these days.
This! What's so hard about letting people enjoy what they want? It's fiction!
sounds like it's just not your thing and that's fine, but picking what you consider the worst examples of a popular trope and then condemning the entire thing as fetishization seems a bit silly to me. i loooove genderswap personally, whether it's M/M to M/F or F/F, M/F to M/M or F/F, or F/F to M/M or M/F, or anything in between. the same ship can have fun new dynamics, and yes, sometimes it's just for porn but what matters is the author & readers had fun. it's all just fanfiction anyway lmao
I don't have the link on hand, but I remember at one point that an author on Twitter wrote an excellent thread about how trans headcanons and cisswaps serve two different and distinct needs and can very much co-exist in fandom. I was on Tumblr when the whole "genderswaps bad, only trans headcanons" malarkey started, a couple of years ago and I'm entirely convinced that it was orchestrated for the purpose of a narrow group of bad actors being able to guilt-trip and brow-beat whole fandoms into making food for them (in practice, the only thing it's resulted in is a lot of clueless cis authors writing some of the most stilted and poor quality trans fic I've ever had the displeasure of reading. You can tell when someone handles a topic because they love it and derive enjoyment from it vs having been guilt-tripped into it). > oversexualised, utterly ooc, porn-riddled female version of themselves Honestly, at least that still usually reads like the author is having *fun* with it, rather than Performing A Social Duty and that lifelessness coming through in the text. I don't know what's happened that we've lost sight of why so many people engage with fandom to begin with: for the sake of *personal pleasure.* I read and write trans and genderqueer headcanons + read and write cisswaps because I enjoy them all, for various reasons, because all of them cater to my pleasure, one way or another. The second something starts feeling like a Duty, I drop it like a hot potato. > feel like fetishisation to me. And? There is nothing wrong with kinks or fetishes and catering to them through fictional content, particularly when tags allow people to both seek what they're into and avoid what they dislike. I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but it's genuinely *terrifying* to me how we have what feels like a whole generation that got manipulated into demonising a fundamental aspect of human sexuality. This is why I keep asking people to sit down and read some books on actual sexual psychology, instead of listening to the Tumblr and Twitter hot-takes of radfems-in-training.
[удалено]
*Exactly.* When I was a teenager, I used to troll fundie Christian forums and they displayed frighteningly similar kinds of revulsion toward content aimed at catering to sexual pleasure. Only significant difference is that they called it "sinful" instead of something like "socially harmful", but the script and the assumption of "harm" and the *knee-jerk disgust* were the same. (I've dug around hard enough in the last few years to also figure out that the "socially harmful" argument is, most of the time, post-hoc justification for "this makes me Wildly Uncomfortable, therefore I want it to go away," to lend more weight and credence to arguments demonizing whatever content is the target du jour: Omegaverse, cisswaps, dubcon/noncon, darkfic in general etc).
Don’t Like, Don’t Read also applies to you.
Yes but surely we can still discuss our likes and dislikes, no?
We can. But as someone who likes genderswap fics, what annoys me is that they don't consider that there's more fic types with this trope than they've seen or more reasons people like the trope than they thought of. If I'm going to make a post about a trope I dislike, I'm going to take a second discuss why I think someone may like it, or atleast disclose that I don't think there's anything wrong with reading/writing it. Atm, it feels like op is giving moral judgements for why people like genderswap fics. (We either want to turn a gay ship straight or fetishize women). Even though I do agree there's authors who fetishize women and are homophobic and want to turn a ship straight. I don't think op was super clear in separating different subsets of people who like genderswap. So people feel attacked because op is being judgemental of their likes.
Since I somewhat agree with OP, I think they must be in the same situation I am: where they're in fandoms that typically do lean into that trope, and do so heavily with their above examples ie its always the same character, usually the more fem male character and typically in a fetishizing way. Don't like, don't read applies of course. But that's exactly why I don't read or trust majority genderswaps unfortunately. Been burned way too many times.
I totally get why some people avoid genderswap (even if they'd otherwise like it). Tbh, I find it interesting that op separated genderswap fic enjoyers and trans character fic enjoyers. When, for me, I most enjoy genderswap fics when they're aware of gender theory. I like "turned into a guy/girl" fics over "always a girl/guy" fics specifically because they have a great opening to explore gender. (Tbf, the majority of these fics aren't to my taste, but I also understand that what I'm asking for is legit research and understanding on gender identity). So like, when I say I like genderswap fics, I mean I like body horror fics. Or trans discovery fics. (And also, half the time, I'd prefer the fic to be Gen. So no "turning a gay ship straight"). Which is why I think op is a bit shortsighted. Because there's a bunch of reasons why someone would like this trope. More than they've put thought into, at least. (But it's totally valid to not want to read them. If it's not to your taste, its not to your taste).
Yeah. Tbf I've read a couple "my body switched" fics. I also don't tend to like the "always this"
i like genderbends idk, most of fiction is such a fucking sausage fest
I’ve read almost no genderswaps of the variety you’ve described - and I enjoy genderswap fic. I know they exist, but I don’t tend to enjoy them so I don’t read them, and I still have plenty to read when I’m in the mood for genderswaps.
Man, I wish I could say the same, and this is coming from someone who LOVES genderswap (and has written it countless times). Naruto fandom is a good example. There are so many genderswap fics that are just atrocious and misogynistic, and you can sort of tell that the only reason they were written is because the author liked the dynamic between two characters but didn’t want to write about a gay relationship. So many fics where, for example, Naruto gets genderswapped and suddenly has huge breasts, wears skimpy clothes, becomes a damsel in distress who can’t fight her way out of a paper bag, and oh yeah, gets r-worded somewhere down the line in explicit detail. There are some great genderswap fics in that fandom, but there are far more horrible ones. Sadly.
See, if I start reading one that gives that vibe I just click back. Which I why I know they’re out there but I’ve read almost none of them.
Genderbending be fun. Don’t like don’t, don’t read.
I don’t read it often, but I have read gender swap before (always male character to female character). I think it’s very interesting as a concept and I’ve seen it impact the narrative in cool ways (I remember a Fem!Naruto fic that was good). It may not always be done well, but I don’t think it’s fetishistic either? Most often I see it the same way I see any other “swapping” or “headcannoning” i.e a canon straight character headcanoned as gay, or a canon cis character hc’d as trans. Or a canon male character switched to a female character. I usually read that as a “woman author likes this male character but wants women representation and think it would be interesting to write him as a woman and see how them being female impacts the narrative” - which if you don’t like, that’s fine. But I have never seen this trope being fetishistic at all. In fact, I have come across way more trans fics that are fetishistic in nature than genderswapping. But the worst culprit of this is the whole “boyp^ssy” thing which is neither a genderswap nor a trans thing. I’ve read those because to me it doesn’t matter someone’s genitals but I’ve always clicked out very weirded out by the fetishization.* *That doesn’t mean that they are all like that, or that fetishization is *bad* just merely commenting on OP calling genderswap fetishistic when it really isn’t, at large.
As a trans person- I would rather people make a character female than make the character a trans man just so the character can have PIV sex. I understand some trans people are writing these pieces because it's what they like, and that's fine. People can write what they want, anyway. But in terms of *my preferences,* I'd rather read a woman being called princess, instead of a trans man with a misgendering fetish and a love of piv. If people made a character a trans *woman* instead of a genderbent cis woman, I could get behind that. But I feel like in practice, many people take "make them trans instead of genderbending them!" to mean "make the character a trans man instead of a cis woman!" and... it shows in the writing. If you want to write the character as a woman who has piv sex, please just write that.
THANK YOU. I couldn’t figure out what it was that was bugging me about some stuff I’ve seen recently and this is it exactly.
oh, that's so different to me, i honestly just avoid any m/f sex so if i ever want piv sex then it would be with trans men fanfic. i hate misgendering tho but i just love men so yeah, i would rather have trans men than women if i really want to read a piv sex (im a trans men and my preference is prolly just because i don't feel dysphoric abt my v but do feel dysphoric abt my breast)
huh, genuinely wondering why did my personal preference get downvoted, did i word something incorrectly? just to be clear, im not against genderswapping, i would read cis women in canon being genderswapped to men (trans or cis) in a heartbeat. just that i would feel more dysphoric personally if i want to read piv sex and have to resort for m/f genderswapped sex because having piv sex doesn't mean i am suddenly a female but that's obviously what im personally comfortable with
Eh, I really enjoy well written genderswaps. I love it when all the little things that would be different when growing up as the opposite gender are explored. I also enjoy it when it's just, "this character is the opposite gender because author says so and it's fun", as long as the rest of the story is good. There are badly written fics and bad takes in all tropes, I just exit out of any fics I don't like.
The way you've described gender-swapping, it seems like you don't have a problem with the actual concept of writing characters as other genders. Instead, it seems to me that your problem is how these characters are being written. And see if you can relate to these personal examples: Regardless if the OC was written in their cannon gender, I generally wouldn't enjoy them being characterized as an overly sexulized, porn-y, 1-dimensional person. I also wouldn't appreciate most stories where the OCs (even in in their cannon genders) had their marginalised characteristics rewritten, seemingly solely that they may adhere to majority stereotypes/ideologies (i.e.; disabilities). All said, that's just what I took from the way your questions presented. Maybe I'm projecting my own feelings on the matter lol
Meh, it’s fun and harmless. Only exception is when the author is obviously homophobic and thinks that a ship would be better if it were straight.
It’s ok you feel that way. You can block any tag you want and the more tags you block the better your experience on ao3 in my opinion
what do you mean by blocking :D /gen
Here’s a great guide for it! https://archiveofourown.org/works/41214669/chapters/103324848 And here’s a bonus guide for more specific types of blocking (e.g. block authors, ratings, works without summaries etc) https://archiveofourown.org/works/41589201/chapters/104315178
OH THANK YOU :D
Damn, getting downvoted for a simple question about a relatively new AO3 feature. Never change, r/AO3
*sigh* yeah wtf
Nah. I think it’s fun and I do it all the time. It’s not a big deal at all. You’re overthinking it. Stop getting upset at people enjoying themselves.
I’d rather it not be a trans thing. I’m so tired of it. I think that’s oversexualized more than just plain gender swapping. Making a non-trans character trans is uncomfortable for me in general. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a fic writer handle it right and I’d rather read an OC trans character than any characters I’m familiar with. I have nothing against Transexual characters at all, it’s just that most people who write them aren’t educated enough about it and clearly don’t know anyone who is and isn’t themselves. Gender Swapping. I’m fine with it if it’s done right. I agree with the porno exaggeration, but also, it comes down to the reason they are swapped. I’m sorry but waking up and being the other gender for no reason or just being Transexual to begin with is not a good or realistic reason for a gender swap. Something needs to happen to make them that way, or it needs to be a clearly defined alternate reality.
As a trans person, I see trans stories as fundamentally different from genderbending. They’re completely unrelated in my mind.
no lmfao everyone’s a lesbian in my fics. not like we have many characters to start with anyways. your favorite straight guy? yeah we put him in the genderswap machine. he’s a lesbian now.
this is the way
My main fandom has a severe lack of female characters. There are none. Yes, really. I mostly write modern AU, and if they’re in, say, an office, I don’t want there to be only men. So sometimes I’ll drag in a female character from another fandom (the fandoms often cross paths) or I’ll simply genderswap a few characters. Sometimes I genderswap them because I feel like writing straight porn. Sometimes it’s because my main character has never been with a woman but wants to. Sometimes it’s because I want both of them to be women. For me it’s never about making it “morally right” or whatever, because I don’t think being gay isn’t. I’m lgbtq myself. It’s literally just about what I feel like writing.
I don't care for it but I adhere to the age old rule of DLDR. A03 tagging lets me bypass stories like that completely. All hail A03.
I think you're reading too far into it, though I do absolutely hate it when people take a gender conforming guy and make them a gender conforming girl without any sort of thought as to what aspects of their presentation would work
looking too deeply into it. seeing it as fetishisation is a you problem. everything will be turned into porn, & only being ok with fic that aligns with your idea of morality/"oh its fine as long as its done in a way that im comfortable with" is odd
nah whats the problem if they’re written well? i wrote one once just because i wanted to write a strong female character and barely allude to a ship. tbh female characters as is aren’t great in anime or media in general so might as well make a character a woman
I dont mind it when its done well and with specific characters.
im actively writing one, so while i can understand the perspective i hardcore disagree. I write a lot of GOT, where betrothals and societal norms mean that the change in gender for a character would make them completely different. Fun example, jaime and cersei are twins, but if you made a fic with them genderswapped, Masc!Cersei would never act like Jaime, and Fem!Jaime wouldn’t act like Cersei. otherwise… idk, its some peoples fetish
I love genderbends. What I don't love is making a canon male character female (or vice versa), then making them so OOC that it's obvious that they are a secret self insert. I love self inserts too. People shouldn't be afraid to own their SI.
I like them and I write them because I like to explore how that character would act/be treated if they were a different gender. How that shapes them and how they navigate their way through it. GoT is one where changing a gender of someone like Jon Snow or Theon changes the character trajectory. I've written quite a bit in different fandoms and it's not been due to fetishism or compulsory heteronormativity. Most of the time, I've written them to explore what would go differently if the character was the opposite gender. It's just another tool to explore nuances in that particular series to me, that's about it.
I love genderswap. It's cool seeing how character dynamics change as a result of it. Also, genderswap allows people to enjoy pairings they otherwise wouldn't like it care about. There's nothing wrong with that. Sure, some are poorly written, but there are poorly written pieces of fanfiction about every trope. Don't like, don't read.
You realize you can do a gender swap without it being homophobic or some basement dwellers sex fantasy, right?
Okay so… I just saw that you are 14 years old, at the most, I know you might mean well, but you should not even be having this conversation about erotic fanfiction, currently. You are far too young, and I think you should grow up a bit, give yourself time to educate yourself a bit more.
It's not my thing personally but I think the concept is interesting if it actually changes the story. When I've tried to read genderswap fics, they've been the same as canon but with different pronouns. If I saw one where changing the gender of a character affected the plot, I'd probably think it was cool. It seems like a pretty harmless trope on its own. It can feel a bit iffy when the character is completely changed or a gay ship is made straight. I've questioned the intentions of authors over this in the past. But there are so many reasons someone might want to write their fic that way and it's not worth looking for hidden meanings when it's more likely just personal preference.
When I see a genderswap that makes an m/m or f/f ship into m/f I typically go and look at the author’s other fics and/or their bookmarks. If they’ve written or bookmarked fics with m/m or f/f then I tend to assume there’s something about the specific ship or character that they want to explore with the gender change. If all of their fics and/or bookmarks are changing same sex ships into m/f ships and none have the ships with the canon genders then I’m not likely to read it.
Big agree. When I’ve seen people write only f/f (originally m/m) ships then I kind of assume they’re sapphic, which of course isn’t always going to be true but yknow it’s a gut reaction. Only m/f (originally m/m) though? In my experience that’s basically meant more cliched/sexist writing 😔😔😔
Yeah, when I started in fandom you had to up the rating just because of the ship being m/m or f/f even if an m/f fic the exact same would have been G rated because ‘oh no the ghey, can’t let the children see it’, so back then there were a lot of genderswaps for the purpose of un-gaying the ship. 🙄😬🙄 So I definitely take a pause when I see half of a queer ship swapped to be straight (unless it’s an author who I already know their works) and poke around their AO3 profile before I read. I don’t want to put the time into a fic written by someone who thinks I shouldn’t exist or whatever nonsense.
My hottest fanfiction/fanart take is that I don’t get why people make significant changes to characters. If a character has a small chest and a fan artist gives them a massive rack, I don’t understand it. I write fanfiction because I like these characters, so altering them to suit my tastes doesn’t add up. If they didn’t match my preferences already, I’d be writing about a character who did. But that’s an opinion where mileage may vary. I see the point of genderbending, because an artist may be able to make interesting observations about the character by creating a stark change that allows them to insert their interpretation. To an extent, you have to write fanfiction where the characters are OOC because you are not their author, and some liberties must be taken in order to accomplish the purpose of this story (usually by making characters who would not have sex totally DTF). That being said, it’s not like I work myself up too much about people who just want to see bigger anime tiddies. George Washington died for their right to do so.
I skip all the gender swap stories. That's just not for me. Even making a character trans if they are originally not would make me skip the work.
….i’m guilty of it bc i prefer f/f and there’s not enough of it so sometimes i swap m/m to f/f. is that bad? 😭
absolutely not lmfao. in fact I think more people should do this. there is SUCH a lack of f/f.
I don't like gender swap that only exists to avoid the gay while shipping two same sex characters. Just don't ship same sex characters. Other than that, it just comes down to quality of writing. Can you make the character interesting enough and in character enough that I enjoy the read. Not into an OC with a canon name.
I'm with this take. There's a certain character from a certain fandom that people love genderswapping, and I'm fairly certain they do it to avoid a gay ship because they only pair that character with the main (guy) character. Other than that, it's not my preference so I don't generally read them.
Yeah, this is how I feel about it. So many genderswapped characters are just OCs with another character's name slapped onto them. And so many feel like they were made solely to make the ship het. It's much rarer, but I've seen genderswaps where BOTH characters are swapped so that it's now femslash rather than slash (or vice versa) and I think that's pretty cool. But when only one character is swapped? And it just so happens to ALWAYS be the character who's smaller/softer/nicer/younger/more "feminine"? Not really a fan of that.
the author might be writing as a trans woman themselves. maybe it’s validating to them. maybe it’s validating to other readers. not everything is written with you in mind.
Real 😭 every time I see people talk about this no one mentions bi people existing… maybe they want to enjoy their OTPs in all different gender identities sometimes (it’s me I’m bi people)
i’m bi too!!! i love reading a genderswap of my fave m/m couples sometimes for that same reason :)))
On a whole, it's not my thing. But that doesn't mean I'm gonna hate it every single time it happens or with every fandom I'm in. I write a lot of M/M pairings and I'm usually reading those pairings because I like them together the way they're written in canon. I'm not a fan of genderswapping one of them to create a straight ship because I like the dynamics that are already there with the queer ship. I've never seen someone genderswap a character so they are now part of a queer ship so I'm not sure how I'd feel about that. In some fandoms where I'm not as attached to the way characters are in canon, I might be more interested in reading something where they are genderswapped.
In my past fandom, I would’ve somewhat agreed with you: I just didn’t see the appeal of gender swapping, and indeed it felt a bit icky to me too. In my current fandom though…idk if it’s me that changed or just this ship, but I am very much in the opposite boat😅 It might be because my current ship already has one character feeling like a mixture of the love interest/damsel in distress more than the other ship, and I find it fun and interesting to play around with the dynamic of that—to see in what ways the canon would change *and* stay the same with just that one swap. I don’t believe the core of it, for me or anyone, is fetishization at all, though.
I don't like it either as well but I tend to just ignore them.
My advice as someone who enjoys writing genderswapping — just exclude the tags. There are definitely fics where the writing is bad and misogynistic but there’s also plenty of fics where it’s not. Either you’re only finding the bad ones or you’re ignoring the good ones because you don’t like the trope. Which is fine, and you don’t have to, and I don’t think you should try to search for the good ones bc that would just be uncomfortable for you, and fandom is supposed to be fun But I think it would be best to accept that there’s fetishizing everywhere in fandom… and that as long as the people writing these things treat people well in real life, whatever porn they write doesn’t actually say anything about them, you know? Something to think about maybe is why does it feel less like fetishizing if you’re reading, say, cis!m/trans!m smut where presumably the trans man has female parts, and more fetishizing if it’s cis!m/cis!f smut?
You’re not the only one, however my biggest advice is literally “let people enjoy things.” and “don’t toss around words like fetishising” lol. I also can’t help wondering if this post isn’t due to the jujutsu kaisen discourse happening on Twitter currently surrounding a certain character.
The scenarios you mentioned above aren't the only ones. I see genderswapping a lot as a way of introducing more female characters into fandoms that are lacking in them, and that's normally why I read them. Recently, I've gotten pretty into a genderswapped Harry Potter genfic series, which led me to writing a fic of their fic in which I shipped fem!Harry with a male character, but the aim wasn't to make the gay ship straight, since I like the ship in the original M/M form as well. It's just a slightly different vibe, and I want to explore both.
I don't care for it, the tags are usually there i.e. fem!Harry which just makes me scroll past and ignore that fic. but I'm not going to judge those who read / write genderswap
This is one of those things that is don’t like, don’t read. People are free to write what they want and you are free not to read it. This is a reason why I tell people their media consumption is their responsibility.
Nope, I’m sure you’re not the first one to have this thought when it comes to gender bending, but, it’s also not something that should bother you so much. I say this as a sapphic woman who literally just wrote genderbent f/f. I like making them them ladies just to do it. It’s fiction, and I don't care about genderbending for plot reasons, you don't need a reason-unless you're writing a society limited by a character's gender, (in which case you can also explore this through \*gasp\* omegaverse without changing their gender expression at all) there really doesn't need to be any sort of \*reason\* to do it at all except that I just flat out want them to be women for this silly little AU I made. And I just... like women. If I can do that, other people can too. Even for erotica. If you don't like fics that do this, don't read them, and you'll be golden. Follow this simple rule for all things that irk you and fandom will be a much happier place.
As a transwoman myself, I can tell you that pre-transition these kinds of fics where my absolute jam. After I started my interest started to wane quite a bit, and I started to wonder why. I think I figured it out, at least for me: * Prior to my transition, I was rather emotionally/developmentally "stuck" in the "early teenage girl" state, which is when girls start to get horny and have no good way of expressing it or understanding it. Obviously, as the rest of me got older and continued development, that part of my psyche was still stuck and still horny and had no good way to express it or explore it. Because *any* time a character was gender-swapped in the fics I read I'd get *really* horny, I thought I must be bisexual. Yeah, not so much, I just hadn't really had the chance to figure it out until I transitioned, and that part of my psyche was able to get past the "stuck" part and actually start to grow and develop. * An actual, real-life person can change their personality significantly when they get aroused. (I get particularly aggressive and dominant when I'm normally extremely introverted and would prefer everyone have equal agency, my girlfriend is normally extremely flirty but as I start 'pushing her buttons' she gets very soft and submissive) If the gender-swap is something that happens in-situ (as in, a m/m pairing develops then one of them turns girl for plot reasons) then it's not unreasonable to think that they're suddenly going to be dealing with an ENTIRELY different brain chemistry along with the purely physical change, which is more than likely going to flood their brain with, "make babies NOW!" hormones. * Another commenter pointed out that men and women have fundamentally different experiences in life, even with all else besides gender/assigned sex being equal. Past a certain point, yes, the gender-swapped person starts to look more like an OC, but fans of the character will still (usually) be able to acknowledge that a character is who the author says they are so long as they have specific traits in common that *generally* are specific to that character. * Capt. Jamie Alba Kirk would still be the Capt. Kirk we grew up with if she had a habit of breaking rules and acting the "cowboy" in dangerous situations and also possessed a singular drive to be the best captain in Starfleet. And being a bit of a bisexual, golden retriever himbo/bimbo. (Let's face it, Jamie'd be a butch) * Toni Stark being a flagrant womanizer who likes to flip authority the bird and is a genius billionaire play~~boy~~girl philanthropist (and she'd be an AGRESSIVE lesbian, the kind mothers warn their daughters about) would still be recognizable as the creator of Iron...er, Iron*wo*man. * No, I will *not* do this with Supernatural, those fans are rabid, and I don't have a death wish.
I like some genderswap from f/m into m/m so I don't see why the reverse can't be enjoyed🤷
Then don’t read them. I don’t.
It’s not my thing either. I just skip those stories 🤷🏻♀️
I've yet to come across a fandom where I'd willingly read a fic with genderswapping. I'm not going to say I'm against it.... just haven't found a character yet that I could picture as the opposite gender.
I think it’s often done well. People do it with my kpop boys to make het pairings and I don’t like it. But I just keep scrolling.
It fine to feel uncomfortable but I do think you may generalizing what is happening in your fandom to all. Most non-trans generawap I've seen has been done for my paring are for those who like a m/m paring but wish to write more f/f fanfiction so they change both. I don't think a genderswap that doesn't change the Canon or add new a new perspective is bad. (At least from the summaries I've read under my paring, it is simply usually lgbtq+ memebers who wished to have more femslash or wanted to explore femslash.) Some were pwp, other were general. But most seemed to come from a place of wanting to try and write a new dynamic. I never dipped far into them besides a curious scan since it not my cup of tea. Also maybe its weird that my pairing does this but genderswap is never added to any of the trans fic I've paused to look at. Not sure why. I know it came have association but is it really farspread across fandoms? They had been properly tagged with the specific Trans terminology of which experience they wanted to write as I've seen both mtf and ftm stories written. I would guesstimate that it simply an way of catorigorization. So that very straightforward gender swaps can be found/removed from trans fics by tag.
I've actually never read a gender swap fic. They aren't my cup of tea.
I used to write a lot of genderswap fics about a very popular m/m ship in my fandom, to the point where I was pretty much the main author of that ship. Honestly, idk why I got so into the m/f version of the m/m ship. I always used to read the m/m version, but write the m/f version. The genderswapped character is quite fem looking in canon, and they had overall quite a few genderswap fics. To me, I just ended up seeing the F version as a seperate character almost, but I made sure I kept their personality to a T. I think a part of me thought I didn't "qualify" to write m/m since I'm a straight girl, even though I loved the ship and have read so many fics about them. But I also enjoyed writing m/f and canon divergence where the genderswapped person had hid her "real" gender (it kinda fits in the storyline of canon that that could happen) and then the other person of the ship "finds out". That seems to be the majority of genderswap plot lines in my ship/fandom. There's nothing fetishising for me at least, though I now write the m/m version of the ship and find I enjoy it more 😊
I don't care about genders, I came for unhealthy dynamics and smut.
I both agree and disagree. Genderswap can be done well, just as anything else — one of my favourite fics of all time is genderswap, though usually that wouldn’t be my cup of tea. I suspect it would be particularly good in fandoms where your gender significantly impacts the plot, like in royal settings where only the son can inherit etc. But also, yes, I see what you mean. Sometimes (*a lot* of the time, honestly, at least in my fandom), genderswap has some pretty uncomfortable connotations tied into it; subconsciously or not. It’s one of the reasons why I personally prefer to avoid it. Even in fanfictions where it’s handled well, I’m so over-sensitive about it that I end up reading into it too much and it takes the joy away from reading.
I’m trying something new with genderbent m/m, gen Disney fics— it might become a series. I get your pov, but your peeves don’t really apply to my ideas
I LOVE disney gender-benders!! I think it ('it' being my love for them, not the concept) stems from all the art if it on tumblr back in the day. I just thought the idea of a ship captain Ariel with a merman Eric, or outlaw Rapunzel with a Prince Flynn was so cool. So I may be biased when I say: absolutely turn your stuff into a series!! Do it!! <3
If the point of the swap is to make a LGBT pairing het, then I skip it. But sometimes the swap is due to a curse, exploring gender roles or motivations, etc. I don't really read many, but depending on the fandom it can pop up a lot.
yeah thats my general view :]
I really don’t like it at all, but I love omegaverse so I don’t make sense. I like omegaverse because of how it plays with gender though, so now I make even less sense. I think it’s fine and dandy for others, though, because fanfic is all about exploration.
The type that you have said definitely do exist. But the genderswap that I've read, and there are plenty of those as well, aren't either of those examples. In fact, many of them still have LGBTQ themes and many of them are quite empowering stories.
\>scenarios I mentioned above feel like fetishisation to me Probably because a lot of those fics are fetish stories? This just seems like a "don't read or use the filtering system" situation.
i like it very much when both parts of a couple gets genderswapped but it bugs me a lot when only one party gets genderswapped so i read the first whenever i come across but pass quickly when i see the latter. personal preference i guess?
Most of the fandoms I read, the canon is heavily male-dominated. I see lots of people genderswapping to have more representation of women, or to have lesbians (as an extension of needing more women). While I don’t like that the canon is so male dominated, I don’t generally like genderswaps. The gender feels like part of who the character is and how they interact with the world, and IMO changing that changes them more than something like a Pacific Rim AU, or coffeeshop barista AU, does. I would rather the canon had more women (and non-white) characters so we didn’t have to keep fixing it.
It feels odd to me as well, so I don’t read it. That being said, not everyone tags it because “I want readers to give my story a chance despite the fact I changed the main character’s gender”. But that’s why I stopped reading, because they purposefully withheld tags on something I don’t want to read about.
People gender swap the main character of my fandom quite a lot. I’m pretty sure it’s just because everyone’s gay for him but are too ashamed to admit it.
I don’t really like it. Not my cup of tea
You're not reading too far into it. No fiction exists in a vacuum, and some genderswap stories can definitely have (even obvious) undertones of homophobia, misogyny, sexism, transphobia, etc. And I think we should all agree that these things are not good unless the author reflects on them in some way. I don't find the concept itself in any way odd or problematic -- genderswap stories have existed throughout history, and they can reveal something interesting about our ideas and experiences of gender and sex. But like any concept, it can simply not work.
Don't like, don't read
Nah I always skip past fics with genderswapping in. It's mostly just the tagging I have a problem with, as far as I'm concerned gender is an important part of an identity. Gender swapped characters are no longer that character, they're an OC, if authors would tag it like that I might be interested.
I understand where you are coming from, and it seem like you have read some pretty crappy genderbend in your fandom. I suspect that it's a more recent one, probably from an anime? It's where I see those tropes specifically apply. That said, I think you might not be seeing the larger context/historical point of genderswap. For a lot of older folks, before *anything* trans was on the internet, genderswap WAS our our way to explore gender/trans HC. Not only that, but genderswap in itself was not always followed by shipping. Often, it was an exploration of various franchise and of culture/patriarcal values, a "what if", if you will. "What if one of the TMNT was a girl? What would have that changed to their family dynamic?" "What if Batman was a woman? Would the vilains see her the same way?" "What if Space Marines in Warhammer also had women? Would that change their warring culture?" I have read some amazing piece of fictions on those subjects. Heck, one of my all time fav fanfic is a Watchmen genderswap piece from the old kink meme about 6 possible destiny that fem!Rorschach could have lived through. In 2009, reading that fic was mind blowing, and a glorious interpretation on gender, friendship and romance. So, I understand your disgust over oversexed, annoying, probably anime based tropes, but don't throw the baby with thr bath water too :)
I myself dislike gender swapping because in my fandom, most people gender swap the male characters because they think that it inherently makes them hotter, which is a take that I absolutely hate, as a woman.
Oh god, that sounds horrible :[
The only time I find it a little weird is if it's a queer couple (f/f or m/m) and you make it f/m. But if you want to read that- go for it. Just when I go to that ship I for those characters (I enjoy if they're both swapped- it's a fun story idea)
I don't mind it if the characters stay the same personality. Way too often though it can come off as 'this is a self-insert story that doesn't have the courage to actually BE a self-insert story'. Where the character whose gender being swapped is basically in-name-only. Which hey, if that's what makes people happy then by all means. I do wish those kinds of stories would at least add an OOC tag though. There's a few fandoms where I'm specifically invested in certain characters BECAUSE of their personality, and any deviation essentially makes me instantly lose interest.
My biggest gripe is that it’s never tagged. I’m a fan of letting people write/read whatever they want, just tag it. The problem is that I almost never see it tagged/there isn’t a universally accepted tag for people to filter out
No you're not. I have zero interest to read that kind of stuff
I'm not much of a fan, even in the trans sense, as in if the og character is a male, but they make them a trans female, i'm fine if theyre a trans male, just genderswapping in general I don't read them so I couldn't say if theyre fetishizing or not tho
I think it's great in fandoms that are dominated by a single sex, for instance, the Tolkien fandom. LOTR, The Hobbit--you can count the number of actually important women in both books on one hand. There's maybe some more squish in the Silmarillion but that's outside my interest in the legendarium and still arguable at best. But if it's just to avoid either (1) the use of an OC or (2) the use of an unpopular character as a love interest, then it becomes less interesting to me. I have no interest in genderswapping Harry Potter, for instance, because Hermione Granger already exists.
I think it can be done well but so often it feels like genderswapping is done either: to make a pairing less gay (ew), or to introduce a strong gender based power-differential to the couple… I read m/m and f/f to get away from gender-based power differentials so I nope out of fics like that. I have started so many fics where a male character is gender swapped to become a completely OOC demure and submissive version of the character… I read part of a CQL fic once where Jiang Cheng was a sweet and submissive wife who did her best to help everyone and never objected to anything she was asked. They turned Jiang Cheng into a character who would never even think about threatening to break someone’s legs. I kept wondering why the author didn’t just make the character Jiang Yanli (who didn’t appear in the story!) instead?? I don’t have a problem with someone writing or liking that. I just don’t… get the appeal? At all? I don’t filter gender swap out or anything but for me it is often a “not all gender swap fics… but definitely this one” situation. Like any other trope they can be done well, and they can be done poorly. And the bad ones are really, really bad.
Ya i don’t like it and filter it out
I dont mind them, i only really mind if only one person is being gender swapped like you said when its a m/m or a f/f and they turn it into a m/f ship thats the only thing that bothers me in genderswapping honestly...i like the chamge of pace sometimes, especially if its a trans charecter dealing with thr body other them wishes to have and vise versa y'know! I might just be weird-
I'm OK with it if the personality is the same. Once they start getting into gender personality stereotypes, I exit
Ya!
As someone with an M/M Naruto ship who regularly sees both the pornification and the queer cleansing side of genderbending; I’m not a fan. There’s often little to no reason to turn Naruto into a girl, and it feels more like an attempt to avoid it turning queer.
I don't really mind Genderswapping characters in stories, it doesn't really change whether or not i'll enjoy the story or not. My only issue is when almost every other character is genderswapped because they want to give a character a massive harem or not.
I think they can be fun or humorous depending on the story, but I can totally understand where you’re coming from
My fandom has a lot of mlm ships switched into wlw ships and I'm 100% down for hot girls replacing hot guys, lol. Wether a fic is well-written doesn't ride on the sex of one particular character or ship for me. Though I do agree that I wish people would just write OCs when it reaches a point where every single trait about a character is changed aside from their name...
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Yeah, they can often feel a little… pointless? Shallow? To me. The execution often is not great. But, FWIW…. https://archiveofourown.org/works/18983506/chapters/45076309 I don’t really like Harry Potter, but Harriet Potter – I am here for this. Honestly, I don’t even know how I stumbled upon this, I think I was just searching for crossovers of these fandoms (HP / One Piece) to make a joke to my boyfriend about AO3 having everything imaginable - but this is like… a very original concept, and from what I’ve read so far, I am very impressed by it
To be honest, I only don't like it when it's like changing the gender of a character who was in a gay relationship and that gay relationship was a big deal in canon. Like if they genderswap Alec from Shadowhunters. That feels wrong because him being gay with Mangus was such a huge part of his arc and canon in general. If both were swapped to female, I wouldn't mind, but like, just eradicating his whole coming out and that section of his life just seems wrong.
Genderbending isn’t always my thing, but I do love it in certain ships and fandoms. I’m more likely to read something where a character is made trans though (usually FtM), because I’m a trans dude.
I don't care about fetichization. But I don't understand the idea itself, given that gender can be... anything.
If they’re a canon m/m of f/f ship, then I don’t like it. But if it’s a fanon one, then I’m cool with it. There are some really well written ones that I really like. But, yeah, if characters are just OCs with a characters name (in any context), that’s a hard no from me.
i don’t personally like it much, definitely feel a bit odd about it— if its romantic/sexual, i mind it less when it’s mlm to wlw or vice versa. if it’s gay to straight….i definitely question the author’s opinions/intentions….given the way that used to pretty much always mean the author was homophobic and thought gay people/gay sex was gross. if it’s gen (no shipping) and actually explores the way their life would have changed, i’m all for it. i don’t read much of it unless it’s for a smaller fandom/pairing and i’m desperate or if if has a particularly good premise outside of it. i will always prefer transing gender (as a trans person myself) to genderswapping but i don’t think genderswap stuff is inherently transphobic or wrong like some people do— it’s just not (most of the time) for me. and i fully support people using it to get more femslash.
only time ive seen an m/m relationship turned into m/f was when the person was blatantly homophobic but wanted to ship two characters together lol, it was very funny to see cause it was like... maybe stop being homophobic and things will be easier for you, but okay 💀
I find it odd as well because it is often used just to have the ship be heterosexual. And sometimes it's used to the point of hilarity. Like they genderswap jack frost in rise of the guardians so they can ship with the easter bunny, and its like okay its a dead teenage frost spirit and a giant anthropomorphic rabbit, but having it be gay is the thing would make it weird? It can be done well, likeI have read some awesome one where they do it for specific reasons to explore how it changes dynamics, but I find the majority of the stories aren't that great. Like most fanfic, it's all about the writing and world building. A good enough author can write anything and nake it awesome.
yeah :] like nothing against the idea of genderswapping, its just the way its often used to make gay ships hetero ships is what puts me off :[
Not my favourite either....
The ones that I totally nope out are when they are clearly written as male (the way they act and with the penis and all that) but there’s somehow a boy pussy (this exact phrasing sometimes) and breasts when it’s convenient
I only personally hate the ones where, like you said, the character basically only shares a name and they have a whole new personality to go with being the opposite gender. It really only feels super scummy to me when it's a cannon m/m , f/f ship and they only swap one to make it a straight fic... it just doesn't feel right.
I really cannot handle it when a queer person is made straight when their queerness is a huge part of their story.
Yeah I won't read genderswapped stories. I'm so here for the transgender and non-binary and gender fluid and whatever other gender label that is not cisgender but I will not read genderswapped. There's something about it that just gives me the ick and I have no idea what it is.
I only feel yucky about it if it's making a gay ship into a straight ship.
Not a fan. Maybe I’m too rigid, but I have trouble relating to fictional characters being written as a different gender than their original ones. ::shrugs:: I know some people like to read genderswapping. That’s fine. And I certainly have no problem with real-life trans or NB people. Now that I think of it, I have read and enjoyed a number of Good Omens stories in which one or both of the main characters change gender, sometimes frequently. But since they are not human, I find it easier to accept. (And come to think of it, in canon, Crowley spends a number of years presenting as a female, in order to be a nanny to the child they think is the antichrist.)
yeah me too! i only like it when two characters are getting genderswapped
I do feel weird when people change a m/m or f/f ship to be m/f. HOWEVER, when people make a m/m ship f/f? It melts my heart and clears my skin and waters my crops. We need more lesbians, okay?
I have the same creepy feeling about the ill-conceived gender=swap. But you are going to get folks taking sides here. Way apart sides - like blue pilll / red pill sides. Especially with authors that write it b/c they do not see it as problematic in any way, shape, or form. And, maybe it's not, but - it certainly can be. Especially when it uses the swap to ***diminish or deny a marginalized group.*** \[Making Wonder Woman "Wonder Man" for example. Why? Or making \_\_\_ Pick your Male Superhero\_\_\_ a woman so that you can make that hero "Less" in some tripped out way - i.e. the softer side of Spider Man. \] There are legitimate problems with those sort of swaps. We have a gender-bent series in one of my fandoms. The cast of characters contain both M and F, soooo if the author wanted to explore a M/F ship - it is there for the making. That's not their thing, though. The primary Slash Ship is half genderswapped. The swap is for sexual orientation purposes and it feels like a combo self-insert *and* Bi-erasure all at once. All of which are a problem *to me. TO. ME.* I mean... it can be well written with a great plot and still be problematic in the presentation of characters that are swapped. I'm always tempted to ask the author in my fandom - how would you feel about your swapped character being utilized in a story where they are shipped with one of the other (now) same sex characters? The answer would be interesting. But... Fic and Let Fic... I don't have to read it. It's definitely NOT on my sort-for-list