Was it always Tales of Androgyny? What inspired the name change?
Yea, agreed.
Brain-dump warning - armchair psychology and dumb analogies ahoy:
Our intention isn't to imply that being gay or bi or trans is wrong. I don't think people who use the term are necessarily implying that they are, either - many now identify as gay or bi or even trans themselves - that isn't to say it's not a slur rooted in some pretty messed up ideas, but it probably goes to show that for many, the fetish itself is about the perceived "wrongness", whether they personally feel it's "wrong" or not. A lot of kink is like that - social taboos and sexual fetishes being what they are. And going further than that, for some, it's a bridge to "wrongness", a way to make it feel alright. That's why erotica that features dubious or even a lack of consent is consumed by people who self-insert into the passive character: without agency, actual desires can remain subconscious and still be fantasized about, rather than envisioning themselves as an active, consensual participant who has to explicitly say, for instance, "do me up the bum!"
That might seem like a form of self-harm, but fantasies can remain fantasies, and for those who break themselves free of that kind of self-denying or even self-loathing thinking, it can still be comforting to fantasize in that same vein while consciously acknowledging that you're not being "trapped" or that you're not "trapping" anyone; you're seduced or being seduced by someone, in the typical fantasy case, who has a penis, and who has a gender and sexual identity that you are completely comfortable with, just as you're comfortable with your own. The "naughtiness" or "trickery" of it, then, is the same "naughtiness" or "trickery" as "you've been a very bad boy, and I'm a sexy cop, so I'm going to sexily arrest you, with sex." "Oh no officer, not with your boobs all over my face!"
This isn't a blanket excuse of "it's just porn" - we try to think about how people can take attitudes away from it (just a quick rundown of things we would want to clarify - sex isn't sex without consent; both men and women, regardless of any context, never deserve to be raped; men and women, regardless of genitalia, are people first and foremost and should be treated and respected as such; your gender and sexuality are just fine; gender isn't defined by noodly bits or what you wear for fun times; don't reduce whole people to fetish objects or objects of worship - it's still dehumanizing; be good to each other) We try to make it as explicit as possible when we're delving into themes for the sake of making a point about real life and when we are solely for the purposes of a fantasy, and it's always an ongoing process. Sometimes the best we can do is a disclaimer warning along the lines of "don't try this at home!", but it is notoriously difficult to avoid reinforcing some awful idea or another, even in something that seems otherwise innocuous. We're making smut that we hope to be inclusive with, not because we want to save the world through the power of dicks, but because it sucks to feel excluded or demonized for no reason, whether it's smut or not.
tl;dr - It's a slur; fetishes do as fetishes does; just because I think wearing lacy underwear is "dirty" and "naughty" in a sexual context doesn't mean I can't take pride in and enjoy wearing ladies unmentionables; dehumanization sucks.
You kinda missed the point of what I meant. This isn't how you or people with that fetish think. The truth of the matter is that many trans women face harm and death because of simply being trans women. Because men who are infatuated with their feminine looks but faced with finding out (some way or the other) they have a penis feel like they have been tricked into being/acting gay and act with aggression. In fact, there have been actual murder cases where men who killed trans women were acquitted because of "the shock" also known as the "trans panic defense". Using a term like trap isn't harming you or me. But it reinforces the idea of "if they have a penis but dress like a girl they are a trap, a threat to your heterosexuality".
None of this is about "you shouldn't make a game about rape because rape is a crime" etc. - it is merely about harmful language. Also, a disclaimer - a respectful one - is actually a really good thing. If you tell people what is in the game (as you do on the game page), you give them the power to decide if they want to confront themselves with that or not.
I'm familiar with trans panic and the general danger women who are trans face simply for being who they are, and like I said, I agree it's a slur for that reason and also the general dehumanization of reducing someone to a concept.
Yeah, what I meant with the disclaimer was - I don't really think it's sufficient just to slap a disclaimer on; not that you shouldn't put a disclaimer, but that by itself, a disclaimer isn't carte blanche to write anything and everything without regards to the consequences. We're going to try to put disclaimers where we can, and to make it clear that we're not trying to say anything hurtful about anyone.
I'm curious, did you mean to say that this isn't how I or people with that fetish think, or this isn't about how I or them think? I'll admit I was a little upset when I read the former, but reading your whole post I think you meant the latter, which I can understand - I digressed.
This is a mostly irrelevant, but the game itself is devoid of the language we're talking about here (and always was, actually), and in fact of any of the slurs you might expect to find. It was a blind spot not to recognize the previous title as being harmful, and I'm sorry about that - it was never our intention to harm anyone.
Yeah, agree. My digression was mostly just in defense of the fetish itself - the language offends me also, and the only reason I used it was unthinking expedience, something along the lines of "the fetish is X, I'm making an RPG called X, I'll call it X RPG for now". A week or so before the takedown we actually had a discussion in one of our streams about the implications of the term, and what to replace it with - and really, there isn't much that doesn't also have either other negative implications, is also recognized as a slur, or isn't really accurate to the subject matter. We eventually struck on Androgyny, and as fans of androgynous figures that worked well for us, but the most common usage of the word is to denote someone of ambiguous gender, which isn't quite what we're going for, but regardless, it's leagues better than the previous title.
That's a common misconception. The truth is actually much, much sillier than that: it's a reference to an old Admiral Ackbar line that would be used as a joke (oh I thought it was a girl at first but it was actually a boy etc) when westerners discovered otoko no ko art (which in itself is a silly Japanese pun). This style of art/character is one where boys look feminine enough to be sexually androgynous and may or may not include crossdressing. It's actually entirely free of implication of sexuality or gender; otoko no ko characters are depicted as liking girls, liking boys, both, crossdressing, not crossdressing, as identifying as a boy or as a girl - there's really no standard to it at all because it's an aesthetic, not something people use as an identity marker of any sort.
So anyway after that joke got so prevalent people then organically began calling otoko no ko characters "traps" and so, naturally, the reverse (a girl who's handsome enough to be sexually androgynous whether crossdressing or not) became known as a "reverse trap". That alone should tell you that it's not actually referring to some notion that the character in question is actually trying to "trap" or deceive anyone; "reverse trap" would make absolutely no sense whatsoever in that context.
The misconception is very easy to make if you're not familiar with the etymology of the term but it's not a slur. It's a goofy-but-now-it's-in-the-lexicon word for an archetype/aesthetic; it's really only used to refer to fictional characters.
There's really nothing to "argue" - that's where it came from and that's what it refers to. Slurs refer to a specific group of people in a derogatory way. The word "trap" refers only to an aesthetic in art of fictional characters and the word itself comes from a stupid joke that became a meme. A trans or gay character could -be- a trap/otoko no ko but that's not what the terms refer to.
I'm not telling you what you can or can't be offended by but you should at least keep your mind open enough to hear the actual history of something before you go writing your own.