Meta Thread - Month of August 02, 2020

I absolutely have no issue with the rules, but I think it's necessary to add a section in the rules that explains what word to use instead. As a person that does not live in an English speaking country, in my country's anime fandom the word "trap" is extremely used and well revived. That is because the word, being in English, feels a technical term to refer to an anime characters. Transexuals and queers are not offended by it, because it's not translated in our language, which results in not having the literal meaning packed with it.

In fact, the whole "trap is offensive" theme is quite unknown, due to the simple fact that a lot of people, illiterate in English, does not know the literal meaning of the word.

The final result is that, even the English capable people, are not made aware of this insulting nuance, and when they might join this sub, they will inadvertently use the word all the time.

Much like animeme did, we need some sort of "safe word" to use instead, that might be linked in the rules, so that people will know what to say instead. Leaving the word's offensive nuance contained in the generic "don't be offensive" rule of the sub might disadvantage foreigners.

And for the love of god, don't push the "Otokonoko" word because that's just wrong.

"Otokono" is a Japanese wordplay based on the substitution of symbols of the writing. In latin letters it's just plain wrong.

In Japanese, 男の子 "otokonoko" means "boy, male, male person", and it's extremely used. You can hear that word 100 times in any anime, since it's probably the most common way of saying "a male person" in common dialogue.

The wordplay starts in the literal meaning of the symbols of 男の子, which technically means "youngster which is male". Then, by proceeding with switching the final symbol with 娘, commonly pronounced "musume" (yes, the musume from "monster musume") , it results in 男の娘 which would literally translated as "girl which is male", while having the same pronunciation.

But this is a wordplay that exists merely in the anime/manga world (in fact even the most popular online Japanese dictionaries does not contain an entry about it, since it's a niche slang) and has a meaning only when you type it with the symbols, because "otokonoko", as written without the symbols, it will automatically make any person with any base of Japanese think about the normal word (男の子).

And it's not just avoiding to use a word in a different way that the japanese due, it's avoiding to use a word that it's constantly used in anime (so you can hear it very well) with the normal meaning.

It's the same as arguing that a good replacement for "trap" is "baka". People are going to hear that term every 3 minutes in any anime, with a completely different meaning of what it has on the sub.

/r/anime Thread Parent