okay, so like there's straight up an ACTUAL JAPANESE WORD for the anime trope that doesn't have the associations with deception baked into it but weebs will still use the fucking slur. Lovely. https://witches.town/media/mjsltRJeo_ntbz710cc
O_o is it using different symbols than 男の子?
@sydneyfalk It uses 男の娘, apparently
@sydneyfalk No, I was specifically talking about English speaking fandom and the use of "trap", since this seems to be a better alternative to saying that.
I'm not saying it's not a better alternative, it is
but I'm saying if you ask a random Japanese person what 'otokonoko' means they're not going to say 'a crossdressing young boy', they'll say 'a young boy', just as if you plug "otokonoko' into google translate you just get 'boy'
also I'm saying that most English speakers aren't going to copy and paste (much less understand) the correct slang term
@sydneyfalk Okay, fair enough. I don't know the language end wouldn't know any of this stuff. Sorry.
No worries, and nothing to apologize for. I just wanted to weigh in on why this had almost no way to get traction with English speaking audiences. (Honestly. I'm stretching my scant knowledge of the language explaining it, really.)
even plugging 男の娘 into google translate shows other fail -- 'no' is a particle, 男 means 'male' and can be read as 'man', so a literal reading of the SYMBOLS 男の娘 can be 'otoko no musume', i.e., 'a man's daughter'
which also has super disturbing implications in OTHER ways when you consider how often the, ah, fetish concept is applied to someone who's seen as a piece of property for some uber-masculine type >_>
(to clarify: "traction" for gaikokujin anime fans, I'm sure 男の娘 has no small amount of traction in written Japanese (and probably spoken too, if someone provided enough context about it)
@BadWrongFun
that might be why it never got traction -- they're pronounced the same but 娘 is a symbol for 'daughter' that happens to have a pronunciation fitting the end of 男の子, which is (IIRC) generically for 'young males'
the romanization 'otokonoko' would be slightly ambiguous but the go-to default definition wouldn't be the trope, it would be 'young male'.