I Will Not Be a Girl
- Thread starter MangaDex
- Start date
Dex-chan lover
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2019
- Messages
- 656
fuck off, i get enough of this bullshit propaganda in my hentai. i'm going to leave now, and never think of this pathetic piece of perfidious and pernicious pestilence ever again.
i suppose it's possible that this bullshit is a facade, and that this will actually turn out to be an intelligent and thoughtful story. unlikely, but if it does, call my name and i shall appear.
i suppose it's possible that this bullshit is a facade, and that this will actually turn out to be an intelligent and thoughtful story. unlikely, but if it does, call my name and i shall appear.
Double-page supporter
- Joined
- Jan 18, 2018
- Messages
- 832
@verypeeved But can it beat goku tho?
Dex-chan lover
- Joined
- Mar 27, 2019
- Messages
- 2,382
Weird but funny.
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2018
- Messages
- 3,231
@gum_rummy being cute and attracted to your own appearance is all that matters
being a guy is boring
being a guy is boring
Dex-chan lover
- Joined
- Jul 29, 2019
- Messages
- 1,995
Resist it BOY!
Contributor
- Joined
- Jan 19, 2018
- Messages
- 4,898
Alternate title: This Boy Will Become Trans In 100 Days
@Verypeeved
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
@Verypeeved
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
Member
- Joined
- May 31, 2020
- Messages
- 90
Hehehehe I my eyes are on you now
Dex-chan lover
- Joined
- Jul 9, 2018
- Messages
- 2,525
@Plykiya yah I think one thing that gets me about these series is that everyone always equates being cute with being a girl. But lots of girls are ugly and miserable. Especially by anime standards, I think boys can just as easily be as cute as or cuter than girls. But then I also feel like people do not think about the future since according to “society” our cute/sexy years only last for about 2 decades of our lives, being generous. The “cute” thing is ultimately a precarious place for anyone to centralize a person’s worth. I get wanting to be a girl, but I also think people really over-romanticize it or never consider some of the many worst case scenarios. I know this is just a fun manga but the overall trend is like...ahhh, portraying everything as sunshine when it’s bleak AF out here.
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2018
- Messages
- 3,231
@gum_rummy Well, it's not like they're going to draw manga depicting the opposite, lol. No one would read it, and I doubt the artist would enjoy drawing it.
Guys generally don't find other guys cute the way girls are, especially when there's full on facial hair and chest/stomach/etc hair to deal with. It's not necessarily about being an idealistic cute, it's just about being happy with your appearance for once. Clothing options for men are also insanely boring in comparison to what girls can choose from, what's the point in improving how you look if you aren't happy or interested with the options you have. Actual standards for being "cute" are pretty low, the kind of people into this would just be happy with any improvement over their current situation where they basically live a life with nothing to look forward to and nobody complimenting them.
Applies to a lot more manga topics than just this, but again, doubt people are out here just to read stuff that's just going to make them feel like shit lol. Like the OL stories where they get to come home to a shota doing all their chores for them, reality for being an office worker is still garbage, at least it's nice to fantasize about it getting magically better
Contributor
- Joined
- Jan 18, 2018
- Messages
- 3,644
The ways in which this relies on other series' comically warped depictions of reality to create it's own meta-warped reality is sort of fascinating. (The thing itself seems definitely no more substantive than cheerful garbage to me, though.)
@gum_rummy:
Edit: Wow this became a wall of text. ^^; Spoiler'ed some of the more rambling bits, for length.
I'm not saying making important life decisions based around purely around people's appearance isn't dumb and destructive, mind: Just proposing that it perhaps isn't always inherently self-defeating. Let us say, a plausibly-valid lifestyle choice that one should probably ideally only go into with both eyes open (which one usually doesn't).
@Plykiya:
Complicating the matter I feel is the conflation between "adorable" and "attractive" definitions of cute, and the fact that the former is considered demeaning by many men and the latter forbidden by our current set of social rules which forbid men pointing out that other men are attractive (at least not without very careful phrasing). Whereas women have neither of those problems with other women?—Crucially, gay and bisexual men as a group seem to join women in having much less of a problem "noticing" that there are cute guys around.
To be fair, objectively, though, it's also true that some of the physical markers we consider adorably or cute (usually for similarities to infants, because humans are really simple like that on some evolutionary level I guess) are more found in women (smaller, rounder face, that sort of thing) and inverse-associated with testosterone. Let it not be forgotten that there's also behavioral cuteness too, though.
Edit: Also spoiler'ed for length
@gum_rummy:
Edit: Wow this became a wall of text. ^^; Spoiler'ed some of the more rambling bits, for length.
Honestly I can't see this particular manga as anything more than an ode to self-indulgent gender-swap fantasies. I mean, it feels like it doesn't even properly subvert it's own knowingly-degenerate premise that the protagonist is trying to create himself a harem by making everyone into girls: Instead it just suggests that he should also become a girl first before somehow gratification will magically fall into his lap...
(And I feel like it should be just about self-evident, that, in general, either being a boy or being a girl is indeed frequently a horrific experience in the pubescent age range we're talking here.)
As for the shortsightedness of caring about appearance first and foremost in long-term life-planning decisions... I mean, it makes evolutionary sense that we're wired wrong to think that way (because what we find physically "attractive" are frequently hormone-markers for those who will make pragmatically functional mates? Which is not particularly useful in the urban jungle... though actually that gets interesting: Like there's some data that first-world, physically-secure women are more likely to prefer "cuter" boys, which (oversimplifying) means less testosterone, which means choosing men that can't fight off a tiger, but are more agreeable... so maybe we somewhat still do know what we're doing, who knows?).
Of course by the time you've abstracted it to "I want to be cute because I want to look at cute things", it obviously doesn't make strategic sense anymore on that level. On the other hand, since all you need to satisfy for that is one's own definition of cute (not society's), it's entirely possible in theory to keep that going for a lifetime if that's really what makes one happy. (And I mean, there's honestly plenty of men and women much older than myself that I've thought to be adorable in one way or another).
(And I feel like it should be just about self-evident, that, in general, either being a boy or being a girl is indeed frequently a horrific experience in the pubescent age range we're talking here.)
As for the shortsightedness of caring about appearance first and foremost in long-term life-planning decisions... I mean, it makes evolutionary sense that we're wired wrong to think that way (because what we find physically "attractive" are frequently hormone-markers for those who will make pragmatically functional mates? Which is not particularly useful in the urban jungle... though actually that gets interesting: Like there's some data that first-world, physically-secure women are more likely to prefer "cuter" boys, which (oversimplifying) means less testosterone, which means choosing men that can't fight off a tiger, but are more agreeable... so maybe we somewhat still do know what we're doing, who knows?).
Of course by the time you've abstracted it to "I want to be cute because I want to look at cute things", it obviously doesn't make strategic sense anymore on that level. On the other hand, since all you need to satisfy for that is one's own definition of cute (not society's), it's entirely possible in theory to keep that going for a lifetime if that's really what makes one happy. (And I mean, there's honestly plenty of men and women much older than myself that I've thought to be adorable in one way or another).
I'm not saying making important life decisions based around purely around people's appearance isn't dumb and destructive, mind: Just proposing that it perhaps isn't always inherently self-defeating. Let us say, a plausibly-valid lifestyle choice that one should probably ideally only go into with both eyes open (which one usually doesn't).
@Plykiya:
Complicating the matter I feel is the conflation between "adorable" and "attractive" definitions of cute, and the fact that the former is considered demeaning by many men and the latter forbidden by our current set of social rules which forbid men pointing out that other men are attractive (at least not without very careful phrasing). Whereas women have neither of those problems with other women?—Crucially, gay and bisexual men as a group seem to join women in having much less of a problem "noticing" that there are cute guys around.
To be fair, objectively, though, it's also true that some of the physical markers we consider adorably or cute (usually for similarities to infants, because humans are really simple like that on some evolutionary level I guess) are more found in women (smaller, rounder face, that sort of thing) and inverse-associated with testosterone. Let it not be forgotten that there's also behavioral cuteness too, though.
Edit: Also spoiler'ed for length
Expanding on the importance of behaviour: Consider exhibit B, Reiwa Hanamaru Gakuen, where all the guys are physically guys (and drawn as such vaguely per seinen genre standards, albeit with a bit of fudge room) but acting a lot of the times like girls, and are frequently adorable (assuming one can get past just laughing at everything)—in large part made possible only because the series freely voids all the social contracts (both behaviour and dress) that we impose upon men.
Double-page supporter
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2020
- Messages
- 1,171
- Joined
- Feb 11, 2020
- Messages
- 21
Yurification!
Dex-chan lover
- Joined
- Jan 22, 2018
- Messages
- 945
I missed the part where writing unrealistic, self-indulgent stuff is supposed to be a bad thing.
Of course it's a self-indulgent fantasy. For some people we really can use that bit of escapism, myself included. At the same time, strongly disliking this sort of thing and its bizarre logic is valid too. I feel that way about a lot of stories and have criticism of them. ("Circle Zero's Otherworldly Hero Business" comes to mind)
But if there's one thing I'd force the entire internet to understand, even if I have to put them in a Clockwork Orange chair, is that "I don't like something" isn't synonymous with "this is bad, wrong and it shouldn't exist". You can have valid reasons for disliking (and even criticizing) things without making it about your reflexive disgust with the thing's existence. Or worse, antagonizing people who like it.
That behavior became way too popular on the internet in the last twenty years because performatively dunking or disgust-fueled snarking became how you get attention and eventually money.
Of course it's a self-indulgent fantasy. For some people we really can use that bit of escapism, myself included. At the same time, strongly disliking this sort of thing and its bizarre logic is valid too. I feel that way about a lot of stories and have criticism of them. ("Circle Zero's Otherworldly Hero Business" comes to mind)
But if there's one thing I'd force the entire internet to understand, even if I have to put them in a Clockwork Orange chair, is that "I don't like something" isn't synonymous with "this is bad, wrong and it shouldn't exist". You can have valid reasons for disliking (and even criticizing) things without making it about your reflexive disgust with the thing's existence. Or worse, antagonizing people who like it.
That behavior became way too popular on the internet in the last twenty years because performatively dunking or disgust-fueled snarking became how you get attention and eventually money.
Similar threads
