Gender Space
Feb02
on 2017-02-02
at 00:01
Too Much Information – an online comic
An old house, a geek, a cute transvestite, a very tall lesbian, and at least one ghost–what could happen? – Adult situations and artistic nudity. Not suitable for children.
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I’m going to assume that Hermas is the balance pole of Hanyo. I’ll admit curiosity as to the appropriate pronoun for them.
Considering how much they’re (or rather Andy is) borrowing from Japanese? I’m pretty sure it would be “futa”.
“Han” means “half”, and is being used here to describe individuals with effectively no, or a neutral gender/sex. Given the context of all the details about “hanyo” that have been exposited, it’s rather accurate and descriptive… and as such I would tend to think of it as not insulting or derogatory unless the speaker intended it to be so (like most words).
The Japanese word for “both” is “futa”, which, despite what your experiences with Japanese-flavoured Internet porn may have led you to believe, is a harmless word –or more often part of many compound words (example: “futari” means “together”)– with no kinky implications on its own. The word for a hermaphrodite is “futanari” which literally means “both forms”. English speaking hentai fans are the only ones who shorten it to “futa” and they do so in error. That’s like shortening the word “crossdresser” down to “cross”; the meaning is lost.
Not… really lost, as those who know what the word ‘futa’ means know what is being implied
Implying that a ‘futanari’ and a ‘crossdresser’ are the same is a total inaccuracy
O_o
…Good thing I did nothing of the sort then.
I used the latter as a comparable example of grammar; of how you can lose the meaning of a word if you abbreviate it carelessly (especially if you happen not to know what the root words literally mean).
While Hermaphrodite is considered derogatory these days it comes from the offspring of two Greek gods Hermes and Aphrodite.As the two parents were considered to be very attractive, I can’t imagine the child was not also found to be so. They were noted as having the genitals of both genders (which demonstrates that even back then it was a known possibility.)
I’ve always figured that the way to deal with the fact that most feminine terms include the masculine term (fe-male, wo-men) is to take off most of the masculine word and leave just the m. So instead of female, call a wom “Fem.” This also lets the combined terms refer to all humans of any sex, which currently requires the plural as the only gender neutral version of the words.