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[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

[–]SeasideLimbs 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

You are right. And you are also wrong.

He is indeed everything you just wrote - at least if we are talking about the character they call "Astolfo" in that anime.

The character people see in hentai or RP as or sexualize in whatever else way? He is a girl. Don't believe me?

  • His face isn't even just that of a woman. His face is literally hyper-feminine. His face is more feminine than that of most female supermodels.

  • 99.9% of hentai portrays him as wanting to be penetrated like a woman and generally behaving the way a woman would.

  • He is always shown wearing feminine clothing, including lingerie.

  • He has a hyper-feminine hairstyle: long, braided and pink.

...I don't know about you, but that sure sounds like a woman to me.

But, oh, wait, I hear you say. "He has a penis." So? That makes him into a dickgirl. "No breasts!" A flat-chested dickgirl. In fact, much hentai of him actually portrays him not with the "flat chest" of a man, but with slight bumps that would be called a "flat chest" for women. "None of that matters because he's literally conceived as a male character by his creator." Literally doesn't matter when you're jerking it. How I can make such a claim? Simple. I hereby create my own character called "Miss Girlygirl" who is a female character beloved for her femininity by everyone in the world she inhabits, including winning many a beauty pageant and being lusted after by many straight men. She's also 6 foot 4, ripped, thick body hair all over, double-chin, a face like Sylvester Stallone, can tear you in half, no breast tissue at all, likes nothing better than spending her free time fisting random women. Got a vagina though, so there is that. Clit like a hyena, too. I'll go ahead and wait for all the straight male artists to draw hentai of her and all the straight male weebs to jerk off to her. She's female, after all. Because I said so.

Astolfo is female.

[–]VimRazz 11 insightful - 3 fun11 insightful - 2 fun12 insightful - 3 fun -  (1 child)

This is such trash.

Just because a boy doesn't fit with whatever bullshit societal stereotypes you think are appropriate for boys, that doesn't mean he's not a boy.

Just because a girl doesn't fit with whatever bullshit societal stereotypes you think are appropriate for girls, that doesn't mean she's not a girl.

Just because various alternate interpretations of a fictional character may present them in different ways, with different motivations, or different desires, that doesn't change the core identity of the character.

Just because you may have some personal fetish or fantasy that makes you want to think of a fictional character in a particular way, that doesn't change the core identity of the character, either.

The only thing your "argument" here shows is that you're too shallow to look past your favored biases and stereotypes.

[–]SeasideLimbs 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

(Also /u/1donteven )

Maybe I'm not explaining my case well. Let me try this again with a thought experiment. Imagine you do not care about nor know anything about anime, you simply like hentai and like jerking off to it. You have already been a fan of hentai for many years, and it has made you interested in some things you wouldn't have imagined being interested in or aroused by before. You sit down at your computer, open gelbooru and browse for pictures. You come across a picture of Astolfo. You look at it. You see a face that, were it real, would be one of the most feminine faces any woman has ever had and even for anime girls - who are already drawn in a hyperfeminine style - is unusually feminine. You look at the body, which is slender and feminine and features a flat chest - a staple in hentai. You look further down and see a penis. "Ah," you think. "A dickgirl. Why not!" and you begin to jerk off. Later images only serve to cement your idea of who this character is (in the context of hentai, at least): a hyperfeminine, submissive dickgirl.

Only when a person knows the source material does the character suddenly become a "boy."

For the last few years, leftists have often tried to apply the concept of postmodernism to literature by way of the concept of the "death of the author," which seeks to tell us that authorial intent is equally as good as anybody else's interpretation of the work. I've often argued against this. At the same time - as with anything else - an issue can be taken too far in either direction, not just the one. This here is a case where authorial intent actively runs counter to perception: a character who looks more womanly than even a very feminine woman and at least in depictions in hentai - which for most people are the only ones they are exposed to - behaves like a stereotypical anime girl is supposedly a "man."

Yet, the only thing that differentiates this from this is the tags. So, if there is anything you take away from this post, it's to please ask yourself the question what differentiates these two characters in these two pictures and whether whatever you deem the difference actually matters to the people who consume this content.