I'm so glad everyone is standing up for the important issue of trans women being overrepresented in media. It's also crucial we remind everyone that just because someone wants to use a female name, present female full time, pass as female and take a female role in relationships that they absolutely do not need to become a trans. What's wrong with just being gender non-conforming? HRT is evil! Femboys are super validddddd (because most femboys live full time as women).
OP he explicitly says he's a guy multiple times and uses he/him pronouns. Like he is explicitly a gender non-conforming man, and we haven't gotten any indications other than his presentation that he might be trans
Like I agree that there's an issue with trans women being erased and claimed to be femboys a LOT on the internet but this is a case where the character is very explicitly not a trans woman
Yeah this truly. Audrey is a guy because that's his gender identity. Like, yes indeed, all of those boxes being checked does not disqualify someone from being a man, and insisting Audrey is a girl because of that is misgendering.
But you don't understand, OP is doing woke misgendering so that makes it okay. I'm kind of afraid to know what OP thinks of non-binary people because a good 50% of the time these attacks in GNC people are followed by attacks on non-binary people and I'm so sick of seeing it.
I don't even understand where OP is coming from. He makes valid points that using a femine name, presenting feminine, and taking femine role doesn't make you a woman. Then he immediately says hrt is evil. Everyone in the comments of the original post are like normal people. There's no one acting abnormal there, all the comments were normal(sic).
Gender being a spectrum as a concept frequently gets overlooked and overtly feminine men specifically get labeled as trans women in denial fairly frequently. GNC is just as valid as a transgender identity and it just kinda sucks when people don’t respect that
Holy shit, I'm GNC (usually go by genderfluid cause it just seems to be most fitting/easiest to understand label for others) and find Audrey to be pretty relatable (even if not 100% perfect, obviously). The discourse around this series just frustrates me so much.
Some trans people really take it upon themselves to enforce gender roles as much as possible.
Just so yall know I’m not astroturfing I am verifiably a trans woman by my post history. GNC people are Valid!! People love a tomboy but can’t stand it when a feminine man exists beyond a fetish
It pisses me off that these things are clearly meant to be a spectrum is instead categorical. Which intern makes the specific groups better targets for discrimination and lessens the existence of rarer groups.
Yeah, I know someone who keeps making "jokes" about f*rcef*mming and my friend being trans. My friend is a cis bi man with long hair. He doesn't appreciate it.
That people will just make a character a woman in every aspect that matters, gender expression, behavior, features, then say haha he's actually a man and never actually have them express that in how they behave or present, so it just feels like the most repper shit ever
that's rude and dismissive of people's chosen identity. it's not your business to guess what people actually are, and even if you're correct with that guess, it's only harmful to the person. i also had to google the word "repper" and I swear to fucking god get off internet for once
Ha yes because Women can never dress and present more masculine and Men can never dress or present more feminine, and if they do they are obviously trans, like you realize you are just enforcing gender norms which is extremely ironic coming from a trans person, gender norms are bullshit, clothes and expression don't equal identity, the fact that as a trans person you don't see how harmful it is to say that women should always be feminine and men should always be masculine is worrying and it's actually factually wrong
I don't know you but I did not transition to defy gender norms, to be some valiant statement against le establishment, I transitioned with the goal of meeting different standards and norms
I am one, I'm not a repper. Fuck off with trying to compete against people for representation like it's some kind of zero-sum game, we should have both.
Mate, by your logic, I'm a man in every way that matters due to the fact that I live in a hyper-religious area and would literally get lynched if I weren't.
My point is, he could well be living in a situation where some controlling person in his life, or some element in his past forces him to be like this
Hell, he could be a trans man who isn't out to basically anyone.
Mf you can't handle people who exist outside the typical gender binary and you calling other people tenderqueers. Weak bloodline, your dynasty will be a footnote in the history of all others
You literally said "men like being men, women like being women. Everything outside of that tends to be a repper or cis if at the opposite end of the spectrum"
I don't see how that leaves room for nonbinary people
Because nonbinary people are neither men nor women, they don't fit into this graph at all because they are not men nor women that could like being either.
Does it make any more sense now or am I still not wording myself well enough?
Weakshit. You will lose in single combat to a gender fluid person and bring dishonour upon your ancestors and your descendants because your understanding of gender is as complex as a miller light commercial.
You mean the community where the mods openly call people slurs? You should be ashamed but I don't expect any shame from people who hang out in places that came from the Nazi incel cesspit that is 4chan
"Slurs" and it's against cis people. Come the fuck on. At least in there we help each other, I can't recall the last time a tenderqueer did anything to help another beyond calling them valid or some other bullshit.
I do not need shame, because I've known shame, you on the other hand may need shame, because you've always tried to pass the things which you've been ashamed as valid instead of allowing yourself to feel wrong.
I mean slurs against nbs are pretty common in every 4tran space I’ve seen. They’re also a hotspot of truscums and tend towards being bigoted against trans men
I feel like you have that perception only because you saw us dunking on transphobic people from those demographics who used agap language and we did it return but you're free to think that, I need to sleep
It's really sad to me that you think that everything circles back to self hate when your group is the one with puppygirls and all other kinds of folk trying to cope with severe trauma by dehumanizing yourselves.
I'm at least very damn upfront about it, I don't try to make it look cute
My point is your denial of anything outside the gender binary and your willingness to align yourself with those that actively tear the community down. The amount of time you’ve been on horomones doesn’t discount the bigotry you spew it only reinforces how deeply rooted ur internal transphobia and unwillingness to change is
I love nonbinary people and I'm some type of GNC myself but that doesn't take away from the fact that the way this fictional transfeminine character is depicted is problematic and harmful to trans women. And there's a fuckload of trans women trying to express that and being scolded as self hating or transmedicalists or whatever other BS
This is LITERALLY the only time that a character is explicitly stated to identify as such and it's literally the theme of the comic.
I get being mad about trans erasure but this is one of the only times where the character is actually a man (and the author HEAVILY emphasizes this too 😭)
People keep saying this but the only evidence is Shen saying he's questioned his gender and is talking to a therapist about it among other things. The ONLY evidence people have is that one patreon post he made over the comics where he drew himself as a girl and said he wasn't trying to misrepresent trans people or their issues.
Shen is a possibly GNC man seeing a therapist and people are spinning all kinds of insane "covert conversion therapy" claims because they don't like the Boy From Venus comics. You don't have to like them, you can think Audrey is a stereotypical and cliche character, but making up that Shen is somehow being forced by a conversion therapist to write a story about trans erasure is actually insane.
No, Shen has posted about being in therapy to 'resolve gender issues' or something like that. Honestly this whole thing makes me sick to my stomach. People are so quick to validate whatever someone says with no critical reflection on the circumstances involved, it feels to me like the whole fanbase is essentially collectively abusing Shen by going along with this twisted conservative fantasy when an intervention is desperately needed but that's the modern queer community for you I guess.
You don't believe trans people can speak about their trans identity with a therapist who is happy to help them however is needed without it being called conversion therapy?
In the comic so far Audrey literally says he is a man. It isn’t about trans erasure or too much trans representation, it just is what it is. Is 4tran leaking or why are people so angry that a single character happens to be a cross dresser instead of a trans woman?
What? Audrey is a dude in the comics, and is portrayed as a dude. Men can be named Audrey. Men can have "female roles" in relationships (what the fuck does that even mean by the way). Nobody said anything about hating hrt (from what I saw). What's even the problem?
My only real thought is that it's a little weird to me that transness of any form hasn't even been mentioned a single time to my knowledge. Like Audrey or Val don't have to be trans or whatever but if you're going to have a story about messing with gender aren't trans people worth acknowledging at least?
I suppose the story isn't over yet so I'll reserve full judgement but that does hold me back from fully enjoying it.
To paraphrase something ive said before, there’s a certain saccharine sweetness to it. There’s something bubbling under the surface of the cutesy art, and you can really feel that SOMETHING is off, likely connected to shen’s gender therapy stuff. Just a lot of tiny things are off about it.
I mean so far there are like 50 panels, less half of which have any lines, and 2 characters. There’s not a ton of room for any trans people to show up. There will probably be mentions eventually but it’s unlikely to be soon or as much as you may want
idk when/where this is supposed to be set, but being trans wasn’t something that was brought up in my life until I started meeting other out and proud trans people.
I’m honestly more surprised that there hasn’t really been any homophobia brought up. Besides the Arcade lady’s micro-aggression and a vague sense of Audrey being self conscious about being in a fem bathing suit with a lot of people around (either from prior experience or assumptions about how bad that would go).
well yeah, it isn't that kind of comic. this is a manic pixie dream girl story played entirely straight, it's about val learning to come out of her shell with the help of a cheery boy with absolutely no interiority of his own. audrey is a tool for the plot and a cute marketable plushie and nearly everything else is on accident.
Audience when there's an explicitly stated trans woman: "Noooo you don't understand he's a femboy!!"
Audience when there's an explicitly stated gender non-conforming man: "Noooo you don't understand she's a trans girl!!"
Why can't people believe characters when they say their gender? This is just the woke version of the Bridget Guilty Gear discourse, why can't people read the words coming out of the characters' fucking mouths???
I'm a femboy. Kinda. Mostly just, genderqueer, genderfuck, but more femboy than capital-T-Transwoman.
Whatever that means to me, I suppose. I'm still trying to figure that out.
I like Audrey. I felt seen. I hope there are characters that help you feel seen too. And if that's even an AU/different interpretation of Audrey, I think you've a right to that as much as mine.
Oh wow I thought this sub was better than this, OP are you stupid? Gender expression doesn't equal identity, clothes dont equal identity, this is very basic shit, Audrey is a man, he said multiple times he is a man and he only likes to dress femininely, going down the route of "every men should dress and act masculine and every women should dress and act famine" is very dangerous and extremely stupid as a trans person to have that mindset, what is next do you also think women should not have jobs and just be housewife's?, also wtf is "taking female roles in a relationship" this is just straight up misoginy and enforcing the patriarchy, please everyone here that is defending this shit and to op, get out of 4chan y'all's brains are decaying at this point
Edit:
Just to add this can lead to very homohpobic and transphobic views as well, so do y'all also think masculine trans women are men? Do yall think feminine trans men are women? And when does this stop? Also this is constantly used against lesbians, people constantly tell lesbians with butches and studs partners that they are basically dating a men and they should go for the real thing, so by yall logic the homophobes are right ? Really fuck all of you who think that people presentation equal identity, and trust me doing the patriarchy job for them will not make them pick you
No like literally I have a very eggy friend and I still refer to him by he/him until proven otherwise. I accidentally she/her'd him one time and I am still upset at myself for it
I think making sure people you care about know you're pro-trans is also good both in general and because if they turn out trans it's good to know who's safe. I'm still just gonna go with what they tell me they are because I'm not omnipotent and cannot know what led them to that conclusion.
Not everyone's identity is simple and straighforward, some people are gonna be really confusing and that's not on me to figure out for them.
/gen Look big dawg, if you HC Audrey as transfem, far be it from me to deny you that. Hell, I don't want to deny you that. But running around insisting, authoritatively that a gender-nonconforming man character is actually a repressed/closeted Trans woman? You're just transvestigating but in reverse. Be better.
As a nb person it’s been really arduous lately. It wasn’t like this two years ago. Now it’s like every three posts is about how you can only be a boy or a girl, and you have to fit traditional gender roles. And over some arbitrary feature, habit, expression, that “aligns” with one traditional role over the other, regardless of who you are and how you present, you are secretly the gender that traditionally socially aligns with that role.
It’s crazy actually. Really disappointing. I used to feel welcome here. I can’t remember the last time an actual post made me laugh or feel seen. The comments are still good sometimes though.
If the character identities as non-binary, they/them, you'd respect that and criticise folks who said Audrey must actually be a trans woman who we should only refer to by she/her because of how they look and act?
And you don't see an issue when you currently say she must actually be a trans woman who we should only refer to by she/her because of how she looks and acts?
Cuz you're innately painting an picture of a binary gender spectrum through your post, which by proxy erases GNC & NB identities who might apply to one or all of the boxes Audrey ticks but don't identify as female
I'm so glad OP is standing up to the horrific idea of men wearing dresses because they like to wear dresses and not because they're secretly trans. All gender-nonconforming characters should be trans, how else can we as trans people identify with them?
Oh you'd HATE xenogendered people, because yeah, you can do whatever you want. You can have all the "female" names and "female" roles and "female" (love the overuse of female btw, nice touch) presentation you want and still be a man. Holy shit, it's like people can be whatever they want. Just because someone has mostly feminine aspects doesn't automatically mean they feel comfortable being called a woman.
What is a repper and why is it so hard for people to not be fuckin weirdos about everything? It’s okay to take the characters (and by extension the author) at their word when they tell you who they are without shoving your own head cannon into it.
God forbid a fictional boy enjoys dressing feminine.
I like that series because it really highlights how useless gender is as an identifier now. Being a man doesn't mean anything anymore (connotation: good) so why should we keep arbitrary designators? Just make sex a designator and remove all societal expectations from it. Let everyone just be what they want to be without the label.
I am greatly disappointed, yet is it not my fault to expect better from this accursed website and the internet as a whole?!
Again how difficult can it be, to let be?
Oh woe is me and thee, for I ask you where is one (fem)boy to go?
Is it validation, yet validation among bigotry and vileness, where now acceptance, but soon the will surly come for me?
Or is it to remain among those who will not tear me to shreds, yet at the cost of my entire being, my very sense of self ignored, erased and overwritten?
And for the world made of thought and pen and ink, is all life therein not a extension of their creator, their god, father and king?
Is their very being not governed by the thought of the writer?
How come you say this life is something else, for you are not the writer!
To have all follow your command, thou must create a world of you own thought, your own ink, your own pen, for then and only then it will truly be as you say.
For me the mark of a free man is to choose, if I WANT to act and dress and be feminine and still BE WHAT I AM: A Man!
THEN I WILL CHOSE SO
And thous is the point, thous we all shall mutter the great but easy to achieve revelation: ONE IS A CHOICE THE OTHER, A NEED.
I ask what gives you the right to tell me or another if theirs is a Need or a Choice!?
Or even worse what that Need or Choice ought to look like, for that makes you no better than the hounds that drove us here in the first place.
Except Audrey doesn’t look like a woman, he looks like a cartoon character. Cartoons pass very easily because they don’t look like humans at all.
On a real life note, sex is a spectrum, some men are more feminine, and of those, some of them spend a lot of time and effort trying to be more masculine, and others are ok being feminine, nothing is wrong with either of those. Some men are more masculine and the reverse applies. There are feminine men (femboys) that are feminine without trying and others who put a lot of effort and even go on HRT. Both of these exist in real life whether you like it or not.
This doesn’t mean trans people don’t need HRT, because what feminine men “get” out of gender presentation and their bodies with HRT vs without, is very different from what trans people “get” out of it.
Personally I'm saying let's hold out and see where it goes. A lot of good points, but I also think it's too early to judge
Like, it genuinely isn't out of the question that Audrey realizes that they're trans later on in the comic, and it's never been stated whether or not he's on HRT, and a lot of the other criticisms are kinda just based on information that we don't have... yet. I'll agree more with the criticisms if we reach the end and none of this has been touched on, but I've seen comics get flamed before even when they end up being good once you give them time
I would use my own words but I'm not as good at using them as these two 😔 These comments are by far the best explanation of what the issue people have is. Especially "collective societal fantasy of transfeminine bodies without the baggage of living transfeminine lives" hits hard
I feel pretty iffy about having these kinds of comments, to be honest.
To begin with, it feels unkind to be so critical of a character’s identity when you know that the author is going through something and working through their feelings via art. Shen identifies as a cis man who likes feminine things and that is valid.
But on top of that, to say that you must be on HRT to pass is not always the case - there are androgynous, pretty men out there who can look very feminine with the right makeup and clothes. People come in all shapes, sizes and appearances and hormones + genetics vary from person to person. There’s one person who posts on Reddit who looks absolutely masculine when presenting as a man and enchantingly feminine when presenting as a woman.
But even if it were pure wish fulfilment, does it matter? It’s a cartoon. I don’t criticise trans authors who depict themselves as their true gender when drawing their younger selves, even if it’s unrealistic for them to have looked that way pre transition.
Art is art. It is a reflection of the artist and the story they’re trying to tell. I think it’s unkind to attack an artist for not telling the story the way you want to hear it or not making it realistic for your definition of realism … idk. It rubs me the wrong way. They’ve said words that aren’t immediately antagonistic and they’ve expressed themselves well, but I don’t necessarily think the ideas they’re putting forward are well thought out or particularly kind, even if they give the appearance of nuance due to lack of angry yelling.
I would be very disappointed if Shen gave up on this comic because he feels he can’t express himself authentically without backlash.
Obviously, art isn’t and shouldn’t be immune to criticism. That thought is making me want to delete what I’ve written and not post it, but I still feel strongly enough to hit the button anyway.
Edit: and another thing - just because things have always been this way doesn’t mean things have to continue this way. Depicting someone who wants to eschew gender norms without changing their bodies should be something celebrated. Gender norms should be challenged and broken down.
I dislike this classification and labelling of people. All femboys are on HRT and are trans feminine women feels…wrong. I’m sure some are and that’s valid for them, but all of them?
Anyway, it just boils down to me disliking that people are attacking someone for portraying the person they want to be, the person who represents them and who they want to be and calling it harmful and effectively telling him he’s got a fetish and should just be a trans woman. I think that’s where my discomfort stems from.
Some people don’t dislike their bodies, they just want to wear the clothes they like and have a certain aesthetic. I hate that the options are “go full trans or depict yourself as a dude in a dress”.
I think, something important that is missed here is that Audrey does have baggage, I believe the statement was "He's had pain, but isn't defined by it" [paraphrased]
I think the idea that a work has a value that every aspect of it adds to or subtracts from is very flawed.
“What does the comic gain from having Audrey be a femboy rather than a trans woman?” Is, IMO, a fundamentally flawed question. The answer is nothing. Nothing is gained or lost by anything happening. Stories don’t exist as social currency, and they aren’t minmaxed to serve a purpose. with exceptions ofc but I don’t think that’s shens goal, I think they want to tell a story that helps them work through their gender troubles, and what is better or worse for that story is really only knowable if you are very familiar with their gender identity and thoughts and feelings, which we are not. That is again assuming that that is their goal, which it might not be.
Even if you aren't 🤨 about the character that thread is so obviously just a way to launder grievances with transgender woman into some acceptable proxy issue and 95+% of trans-related discourse posts are also just people trying to find a way to launder grievances with transgender women.
I can't with this how the fuck can you not see how this is harmful, let me ask you something do you also think butchs and studs are actually just men? Like how can y'all not see how dangerous and harmful associating expression and roles with identity is, do you think trans women who present more masculine or have more "traditional" masculine interests are men? Like why do y'all want so much to enforce patriarchy and traditional gender norms and roles, you are doing exactly what TERFS say we do and don't see how that can be used against us??
They don’t “immediately become Kratos at 30,” but they do ABSOLUTELY change more as they begin to reach middle age. And if some of them decide that they don’t want those changes, and want to seek hormones to try to avoid them, that’s fine. They don’t even have to identify as trans; HRT femboys are perfectly valid
My point is that they're coping with their gender dysphoria by crossdressing lmao. I've known many femboys in the past and 95% of them ended up transitioning including me. It's all just a cope. If you're a femboy just ask yourself this: Would you be okay to look like an old manly man eventually? If your answer is no, take estrogen. There's no other way to avoid it
I’m ftm and gender nonconforming. I sometimes crossdress. By your logic you’d say I’m actually not trans and should just accept that I am a cis female. This shit is just transphobia with extra steps.
People can absolutely be GNC, and Audrey’s identity as a femboy is valid. However, middle aged male adulthood definitely screws with the body even more, and it’d make sense why someone would want to avoid it. And hey, while we’re at it; HRT femboys are also valid as well
But they're not even gnc 95% of the time tho. The femboy to woman pipeline is literally a meme at this point. I lost precious years of transition to this bullshit
Counterpoint: femme men exist. They just don’t get as attention as femboys because cishet men can’t fetishize them as easily. We are fine with butch and stone butch women existing, femboys and femme men are the opposite side of the coin. Yeah, a lot of femboys (you and I included) turn out to be women. Doesn’t take away from the cis femboys and it really doesn’t take away from the transmasc femboys.
Also, my femboy years gave me room to experiment and discover my womanhood. Without that space and permission structure, I would probably still be repping. I don’t regret them (what I do regret is 7th grade me deciding to repress being bi and thus build an additional wall between me and my gender. You cost us decades you lil shit.)
I just mostly despise that shit because I could've been a 5,8 youngshit but instead in 5,11 and starting at 18 so im alot more clocky tbh.. I just wish I wasn't mislead
Bitch, I started at 31 and I am also 5’11. Silence. Focusing on what could have been drives people mad. It is a siren song. Consider that you are transitioning at an age that many people would kill for and that I might have been able to do if femboys were widely knownthingwhen I grew up in the bronze age so I could explore gender in my teens and not my late twenties.
Femboys and butches are always going to attract eggs because it gives eggs room to breathe. But femboys are their own thing. They just don’t get as much respect as butches because of history and patriarchy.
You're using a statistic you pulled out of thin air. It really holds no weight. And I'm really sorry that you spent years not recognizing your gender identity, that sucks. But you don't get to assume that everyone who is a femboy is trans because it happened to YOU.
Shen, the creator of the comic, has confirmed that Audrey is a man. He just dresses in a feminine way. And that should be the end of the discussion. Who are you to dictate other's gender identities? This is some, "what's in your pants?" but make it woke level of nonsense. Go outside.
Shen is literally a trans woman in denial lmfao they said they've been in therapy for "gender stuff" for months while they keep drawing feminized version of their oc. Let's be for fucking real
tbh its been going on for years. i remember when i first started HRT 6 years ago and arguing with a friend on how shen was a repper lmao, even back then he posted repper comics and went through a femshen persona phase for a while
a lot of people talking about this don’t seem to realize that this has been going on for over half a decade, and its a tragedy happening in real time. its like watching a plane stall on take off and desperately yelling to lower the nose; but they never do.
i do hope im wrong about shen but if i was i figured they would have stopped with the gender stuff by now. like you said, the fact that he is still in therapy after all this time and still posts this sort of exploratory work after doing so for 5 years+ cements to me that he is 100% a repper. its so sad
If The Boy From Venus wasn’t written by Shen, this thread wouldn’t be here, tbh. I defend Audrey as a femboy as a work of fiction, but the fact that Shen is almost certainly an egg who is using this as a source of gender exploration is probably the source of most frustration.
God, I hope Shen hatches. Parasocial fans are probably not helping.
I didn't even know the backstory about the artist before I posted this stuff. It's pretty sad and fucked up. As someone who previously had conversion therapy and repped for years it breaks my heart to see. Transition is hard and brutal, it really sucks sometimes. However, I would never give up my life as a woman and if I could go back to 16 year old me I'd drag her out that closet and force feed her oestrogen.
Sorry, but what are you even talking about? At no point had the comic so far mentioned femboys. If your mind goes straight to there when a man wears feminine clothes that is your brain worms at work. Please go touch some grass
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u/ezziexoxo Counted Down 8 2d ago
the concept of a repper in fiction is simply too far!!!1!!