A better tag for manga with trans characters :rejected:

[DekuDiamond]

Maybe it's just me, but seeing "gender bender" being used when a character is trans is kinda upsetting? Also its harder to find actual manga that have trans characters.

This is my first time using this forum so I apologize in advance if I did/said something wrong.

 

[ununseti]

There's been discussions previously about improving the specificity of tags, for example with mangaupdates-style community tags. There was also this thread about having separate tags for crossdressing and gender bender, which is related to your suggestion here. There doesn't seem to be any clear consensus about any of this, though.

I personally would be happy to see more specific tags, because the elaborate tagging system is the main reason why I greatly prefer AO3 over FF.net these days.

For the time being, mangaupdates probably has the most extensive catalog of manga tags. They have a transgender character tag and also a transgender protagonist tag.

 

[DekuDiamond]

I see, I agree about the ao3 thing. Thanks for the links and thanks for answering

 

[jak]

Except "gender bender" works. That tag incompasses trans, but also characters transformed from one gender to another via scifi/supernatural/etc. It's unnecessary to add another tag just for a specific thing when gender bender works fine.

 

[Plykiya]

A trans tag isn't necessary for MangaDex. According to MangaUpdates, there are less than 50 series where there is a trans protagonist and less than 200 series where there are transgender characters at all. Tags on MangaDex should be both useful to the reader but also applicable to a large number of series for the sake of efficiency.

https://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?category=Transgender+Protagonist

https://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?page=1&perpage=100&category=Transgender+Character%2Fs

As for fixing genderbender, splitting it between Genderswap and Crossdressing would be better for the reader. Genderswap if the character transforms/becomes a different gender than their norm, and crossdressing for guys/girls dressing up as girls/guys. The 50 or so series where the trans protagonist is a main detail wouldn't apply to either crossdressing or genderswap, which isn't that big of a deal to have excluded. Least it's not genderbend (which I still say only exists because it rhymes, it's a dumb overly general term when defined that can be applied to way too much unrelated content). If someone wants to find series that involve transgender characters, they can use MangaUpdates or other resources.

 

[tathra]

is there really a need for tags that indicate "mc is [x]" or "contains characters that are [x]"? the yuri/yaoi/sho-x ai tags aren't really descriptors of the characters but of the story and are indicative that the story is/contains non-traditional romance elements, and genderbend stories typically involve the troubles involved or created by the character suddenly changing genders, which kinda works for trans.

as plykiya points out, this is more of a niche thing right now, but in the future if there's more stories of non-traditional romances dealing specifically with trans characters then a partner tag to go along with yuri/yaoi/sho-x ai could become useful.