[Debate] Purpose of Gender Benders?

[Black Aeronaut]

Bob Schroeck said:

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Guys. Off-topic in this thread. Spawn a new one -- and from the way the language is starting to escalate, maybe it ought to be in Politics.




Do it, or I lock the thread.

Yeah, I had no idea it was going to get that bad. Sorry about that, Bob.

Personally, though, I'm hoping that we can all be grown up enough to keep it from going the way of the Political Forum.

That said, let me point out something here: I said nothing about Author-Avatars. My primary beef was in flopping genders for already established characters
who do not flop genders in canon. That said (and no offense meant), I could hardly care less if your alter-ego likes the idea of being a girl better -
that's your own set of issues to deal with and I'm not touching it with a ten foot pole. However, I'll probably enjoy your writing very much as
long as it's well done and happens to be among the fandoms I cater to.

I myself won't be writing such stories for my own alter-ego. I'm satisfied with my gender orientation and wouldn't even dream of changing it.

So, to restate the question: Why on Earth do people feel they need to change the geneder roles of characters that are already established as solidly male or
female? Thoughts, opinions, anecdotes, and even statistics and facts are welcome - just keep it mature and non-vitriolic.

[katreus]

Eh... I don't know which thread this is coming from so no idea on the background. However, it's just interesting sometimes to see how people would
react differently as the opposite gender. All gender bender... fics? ... are just another form of AUs at heart. If it has an interesting premise / story line /
protagonist, I'll read it.

[ECSNorway]

In my experience, there are a couple of reasons.

#1: For the sake of doing something different.

#2: For the Yuri, my gods, the Yuri!

#3: Because it actually makes a little sense, for some reason. Like the hypothetical that got tossed around at one point claiming that if you reverse the
pilots' genders, Evangelion suddenly becomes a standard action series, with Asuka as the hero, Rei as the Lancer, and Shinji as the Chick....
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Black Aeronaut]

tjalorak: I made a post in regards to this a few days ago back on the Crossovers That Should Not Be thread and it nearly spiraled into a flame war (EDIT: what
I find darkly amusing about it is that it required no further input from me - I've been away from then to now). Fortunately, cooler heads usually prevail
in these forums.

RE: #1 - See RE: #2.

RE: #2 - Yeeeeaaaaahhhh, Yuri's nice and all, but the perversion level involved in doing it with a male lead who's been gender-swapped... Just not my
style. Guess it's all a matter of personal preference.

RE: #3 - *SNRT!* That actually makes disturbing sense. Too bad they made it into a total mind-job at the end.

[Acyl]

I recall a particular gender-bender fic I read some time back...one of those AU stories where a certain male character was recast as female from the very beginning. I'm intentionally not naming the story here, because discussion of the specifics would detract from the point.
Anyway.
The author claimed her intent was to explore the canon differently - the interactions between characters would be different, the protagonist would react to situations in different ways, and develop as a person in new directions... that kinda thing.
I did follow this for a while, because the writing was actually pretty good. But with all these changes, was the new protagonist really the same character, or just an OC with the name? Or worse, a thinly-veiled author insert?
I wrote to the author regarding this, and she acknowledged it as a valid criticism. She said that wasn't what she wanted, but yes, it could be seen that way.
It bears mentioning that some point after this, one of the canon rivalry/friendship relationships - between two guys, in the canon - started to be painted as a romantic heterosexual one.
I couldn't decide whether that was the fic jumping the shark, or it simply living up to the expected conventions of this kind of AU fic...or the author simply following plot threads and premise to a logical conclusion.
I'm never sure what to make of these things, but those are my thoughts, anyway. =P
-- Acyl

[Black Aeronaut]

I don't really like having to delve into it too much myself, except when something starts to bug the holy hell out of me. For the most part, I either like
a fic or I don't. I'll have my reasons, for certian, but it really just boils down to that.

[anowack]

Acyl wrote:

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It bears mentioning that some point after this, one of the canon rivalry/friendship relationships - between two guys, in the canon - started to be painted as
a romantic heterosexual one.




I couldn't decide whether that was the fic jumping the shark, or it simply living up to the expected conventions of this kind of AU fic...or the
author simply following plot threads and premise to a logical conclusion.

I don't understand what the problem is. The whole point of that particular genre of fic is "what if so and so was born a girl?"
Unless the writer decides to either a) make the gender-swapped character homosexual, or b) never deal at all with romantic entanglements - both of which seem
to me to be dodging a lot of the interesting things to be done with the premise - then that sort of thing will happen, and there's nothing terribly
disconcerting about it to me. The gender-swapped character is not the original character, and is going to interact differently with the rest of the cast -
that's the whole point. In my mind, it's really no different than any other AU-type fic - if you do... I don't know, "what if Ranma really
was a big pervert?", then it's perfectly ordinary in the story for him to be a pervert, and do perverted
things. If you do "what if Ukyou really was a boy?", then it's perfectly ordinary for him to be a boy, and Ranma's rival for Akane rather
than Akane's rival for Ranma.

(Stories where the character has their gender altered during the course of the story - i.e., they were once a boy and a plot device turns them into a girl -
are a whole different barrel of worms when it comes to romance, and it is a lot more difficult to pull that particular plot line off well.)

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Aaron Nowack

[CattyNebulart]

what strikes me as odd is that genderbending often goes from male to female, and rarely the reverse. I guess it's because everything goes better with
boobs, but it does seem to underline the high intellectual point of it.

Still there are some good genderswapped stories that make you think, but i can't recall any of them right now.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[Shay Guy]

Well, Mandy's Law of Anime Gender Bending does say that "once a girl has been created, circumstances will conspire to keep her a girl." It is interesting that so few fanfic writers have tried the reverse, except for when a whole cast gets swapped.

Are there any instances we can look at that aren't from and weren't influenced by Japanese popular culture? All I can think of is "All You Zombies," where a girl was discovered to be a hermaphrodite and had to have her female reproductive organs surgically removed.

---

Pronounced "shy guy."

[Foxboy]

"Tiresias" from Ovid's Metamorphoses for one. And there's a WHOLE lotta crossdressing in myth and legend, as well.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[Acyl]

But crossdressing isn't quite the same thing. Comparable, I agree. Not the same, though.

Hm. Any examples of this kinda deal that ain't from Japanese media? I want to jokingly point to Starbuck being female in the modern Battlestar Galactica reboot, but honestly that's just an element of the new universe from the get-go, and hardly a major element.

The thing about genderswap fanfics, as A. Nowack rightly pointed out above... the genderswap is the entire point of the story.
-- Acyl

[Epsilon]

Well, if you're going to get all serious about the answer.

There are basically three reason that genderswaps are common in fandom.

1: Sex appeal. No it doesn't make sense from an intellecutal standpoint, but who cares? Some people like the hawtness and if they have a favorite character
who is the wrong gender for their particular hawtness sometimes they will make them the right gender so that hawtness can proceed. This isn't
always going one way either. Girls manga is full of female crossdressers or effective genderswaps as much as boys manga is full of male crossdressers and
effective genderswaps. Most such stories (and images) are basically PWP. (This is the same impetus behind slash fiction. Yes it doesn't make sense, no the
author doesn't care.)

2: Exploration of themes regarding gender identity, sexuality, kink, fetishization and other factors. These are all major factors that effect a significant
portion of the human race and some authors want to explore those themes. Some authors want to explore a transhumanist mythos in their work and since gender is
such a large part of what defines human in our mind then naturally going "past human" means going past gender as well. You can also explore the
societal expectations of a work and see how it would have worked differently with the sexes of one (or all) character reversed. For instance Haruhi comes
across as quite a different beast when the characters are all genderswapped. For example, how would Negima play out if you reversed everyone's genders?
Quite a different beast, even if everyone acts exactly the same for some reason the audience expectation would be entirely different.

3: The final one is simply basic. There are authors (and artists and so on) out there that are transgendered. Like all human beings, they like to write stories
about things they understand. They want to have characters in stories that appeal to them. It's the same with homosexuality. They at least like to have an
author acknowledge they exist. If a story happens to not include any homosexual characters then some author is going to come along and add
them to the story. Similarly if a story includes no nods towards transgenderism and becomes popular enough some author is going to add it at some point.

Hm. Any examples of this kinda deal that ain't from Japanese media?

Star Trek would be the first one I can think of. The Fairly Oddparents cartoon had a few episodes about it as well. There are
probably dozens of others, I'm certain you could find them online.

If you want to go to fandoms then I can say for certain that Harry Potter, Star Wars, Buffy the Vamire Slayer, Supernatural and lots of other series have had
fics and art which explored themes of transgenderism. So no, it isn't a "Japan" thing, its a "human" thing.

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Epsilon

[Berk]

There are times, considering Takahashi's reactions to the subject, that I wonder if she had no idea the can of worms she was opening when she first came up
with Ranma.
- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead

[Black Aeronaut]

I will say that the Genderbenders where the character is rebuilt from the ground up (i.e.: born as an XX instead onf an XY) are a hell of a lot more tolerable.
After all, a lot of us got used to the idea of woman!Starbuck (hawtness aside, they just pull it off so well).

Indeed, the GB's where the hapless guy is simply thrown to the wolves as a female tend to rub me the wrong way, unless they're done just right. I used
to keep up with a webcomic that looks that this in detail, called Misfile. It is about a boy, loves racing cars (to the point where he was working on a major
experiment) who's files in Heaven get misfiled as a 'female'. Ooops. Now he deals with all sorts of things from mundane (periods, mood swings,
underwear) to the supernatural (meddling angels, vengeful spirits), and a few things he never expected to deal with (attraction to women as a woman).

Not only does the author throw him into the role as a female (we never see him as a male in the begining) we also see how his life was different as a girl. For
example, as a boy he never had any contact with his estranged mother, however as a girl she broke down and wrote a heart wrending letter that brought the
mother back into her life.

So there are a few exceptions - but they are indeed exceptional. Personaly, I think that Sturgeon's Law applies to Gender Benders in a manner so extreme
that it surpasses the 90% qualifier.