#genderswaping

[dorovalley]

[ao3commentoftheday]

part 1 of 2 So I like writing genderswapped stories of all kind and I always tag my fics thoroughly so it's explicitly clear that the fic has a character whose gender has been changed and who that character is. But every now and then I'll get a comment where someone tells me they dislike the fic specifically because it's a genderswap and will even say "you didn't need to genderswap this character, you could have used this canon male/female character instead"

part 2 of 2 and I honestly don't get it. One, I tagged the fic. You knew what it was when you clicked it. And two, writing a genderswap of one character and writing another character entirely who shares a few personality traits with them are not the same to me! I don't want to write some random character who is kinda like them, I want to write a different version OF them. It's not the same thing

As a roleplayer as well as a fic writer, I hear you, anon. 

Genderswaps are a big thing in the RP community with some people even having dedicated blogs to a female Bucky Barnes, a Stephanie Rogers or a Toni Stark. We sometimes play our characters as the opposite sex for a day or a single thread. It’s just something we like to play around with and I see nothing wrong with it. That’s a fantastic way to explore your favorite character and how their gender role affects their personality.

That said, it’s far more “problematic” in the fanfic community with some readers finding it weird or vaguely offensive. They get on their high horses and decide to “correct” you. I don’t know why, anon. They just can’t wrap their heads around alternate universes, I guess?

I suggest you moderate comments and delete those annoying people’s ignorant comments. That’s my best advice.

Keep writing what you want, anon. Don’t listen to them. You’re doing great and I applaud you.

–Mod M

[lieutdreadhands]

Alright, I'm going to rant now. So don't read if you don't want to, just me letting off some steam!

So, I really don't like the phrase 'genderswap'. Not because I think that it's wrong to make the characters other genders, but because of what 'swap' implies.

We can all agree that there are more one gender, right? Good. So when someone uses 'genderswap' instead of, let's say 'genderbend', it's kind of like they're saying that there are only two genders. Or at least, that's how I see it. Maybe it's not like that. Maybe it's just me.

I don't know, what do you think?

[popagranda-blog]

Jailbreak the Patriarchy genderswaps the world for you. When it’s installed, everything you read in Chrome (except for gmail, so far) loads with pronouns and a reasonably thorough set of other gendered words swapped. For example: “he loved his mother very much” would read as “she loved her father very much”, “the patriarchy also hurts men” would read as “the matriarchy also hurts women”, that sort of thing.

This makes reading stuff on the internet a pretty fascinating and eye-opening experience, I must say. What would the world be like if we reversed the way we speak about women and men? Well, now you can find out!