First, thank you very much for bringing this up to my attention. I am nb myself, and the last thing I had when posting this was bad intentions.
Secondly, this is a new piece of information for me. I am a fandom Olde, so these terms were something used at the very formation of my fandom interactions. Interpreting narrative as an AU where MC(s) had been a different gender, and the similarities or differences therein, was commonplace and as much for gender exploration as anything else. I view it as a very literal definition, the gender being switched as part of the AU, with no harmful or bad intentions to trans/nb/gnc folks at all.
That being said, I would very much like to know if there is newer and more accurate terminology out in the fandom world that expresses this type of storytelling that isn’t considered harmful. Even AO3 uses ‘genderbending’ as a primary tag, as well as ‘Alternate Universe - Gender Changes’. I’m definitely willing to use updated terms if they exist, and I can also add ‘gender changes’ to the tags on my post. I can’t presume to speak for the asker, but based on the term they also used, this may be a relatively new concept to some folks who have been in fandom awhile.
Thank you again! I appreciate the heads up!
