Artie

So, the argument for the use of the term femboy, which many well-meaning people (including myself in the past) have made is that it simply refers to feminine men. That there must be *some* term for men who like presenting femininely to use and femboy might as well be it. Of course, you can ask why these people can't be referred to "feminine men", why there exists a need for a literal third gendered term in the form of a compound noun, if not to allow the men who are attracted to so-called "femboys" to rhetorically other them from maleness for the purpose of sexual objectification. But that argument gets into the weeds of arguing the linguistic significance of portmanteaus of adjectives and nouns, which is unlikely to go down well on a website where a significant number of people still say "transwomen".

It's much better to actually demonstrate *how* these words are used in practice. It is well established that femboy as a term was brought into the public conciousness as a "politically correct" alternative to the term "trap", which was explicitly transmisogynistic and nowawadays widely recognized as a slur. This was not the result of a conspiracy to create a dogwhistle or something, but rather the organic result of tension between certain leaders in western anime fandoms and their desire to not be seen as regressive in a world increasingly more trans-supportive, and those anime fans who wanted to continue their exact behaviour and attitudes towards transfem-coded and textually transfem characters in their favorite media, producing the term "femboy" as one of the most impressive linguistic sleight-of-hands in history.

While knowing that history is enough for some people to discard the term entirely, I don't find it a fully satisfying reason. After all, terms are defined by usage. So this is where I get to the actual case study.

In the latest chapter of the serialized release of the RPG DELTARUNE, a previously moderately transfem-coded character named Ralsei was confirmed more explicitly as textually transfeminine as part of their arc of finding their own identity separate from the wants of others, notably being conspicuously referred to with they/them pronouns in some of the games voice-of-god narration.

What's more important for this post than how Ralsei is portrayed in game is how large parts of the fanbase reacted to this. What was already a common response to transgender Ralsei theorist became a deafening overture in certain parts of the fandom: "we don't like this. It's *femboy erasure*". Similar arguments went: "This is just sending the message that all femboys are secretly trans women, people only read into this because [they're] feminine!".

Now, if you're familiar with Toby Fox games, you might already spot a pretty glaring flaw in people claiming that Ralsei's transition erases "femboy representation". Notably, *there are plenty of feminine men in Toby Fox games*. Notably, DELTARUNE Chapter 5 includes Blue, a black-coded male ballet dancer who presents very feminine, and yet, the people whose first reactions to Ch5 were to talk about how sad it would be to lose precious femboy rep didn't seem particularly enthused about this at all. Going further back, one of the main bosses of Undertale, Mettaton, is an even more openly feminine man who is even textually transmasculine, but yet people in the UT/DR fandom act like *Ralsei* of all characters is the last bastion of uncomplicatedly male characters who like presenting femininely.

People will often cite this as a gotcha, like it reveals an underlying ridiculousness to the arguments against Ralsei being trans, but I rarely see people reading more into the actual implications of it. Which is that Blue and Mettaton are not "femboys", despite being feminine presenting men. This should be obvious if you have been exposed to the term "femboy" enough that you have a subconciously understanding of its definition, you can just look at those characters and implicitly know they aren't "femboys". Because femboy has never meant a feminine man, it's always meant the exact same thing as "trap", that is, a transfem-coded character. A character who is confident in being male can never be a "femboy", only a character who demonstrates a complete alienation from masculinity. In real life, "femboy" doesn't refer to drag queens or other men who express themselves through femininity, but rather primarily to pornstars who dress like newly-out trans women (a significant portion of whom actually *are* trans women who are forced to adopt the label to appeal to men who, surprise surprise, want to be able to degender and sexually objectify them easier).

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i've been seeing this take a lot & wanted to offer a counter argument. this scene focuses on ralsei choosing who THEY want to be, independently of their duty to serve susie and kris. flowery blatantly states this:

it would be thematically contradictory for the blue and pink to represent susie and kris, as the scene is all about ralsei choosing a drink based on their own tastes rather than thinking about their friends. so it makes no sense for ralsei to pick the "susie and kris" drink. additionally, i don't think the game has ever referred to susie as "pink." she's pretty consistently been "the purple girl."

This is something I've noticed mostly on the Deltarune subreddit, so maybe it's just a reddit thing, but I can't help but notice how every queer interpretation of Deltarune's themes get bashed as being just bad and nonsense theories.

Of course, things like the transfemme Ralsei theory or the reading that Kris is AMAB (which is all but explicitly in the text given shit like Man Country) are expected to have a poor reception. Those theories are for the trannies. But what's been bothering me is that even "the Weird Route is a metaphor for heteronormativity" receives backlash. Like, isn't that just the most obvious interpretation of the text? Usually when I see pushback against this interpretation, it's coupled with the argument that the theory somehow invalidates Kris's gender, treating them as a man, because of course in order for the heteronormativity to be true, Kris has to be male. But that's a misunderstanding of how heteronormativity and a misunderstanding of the horror of the Weird Route. Yes, part of it is that Kris is being forced into a masculine role, that's how heteronormativity functions. Yet here, I think, we come into why this theory is so lambasted, it requires reading Kris as AMAB which Deltarune fans seem categorically against. Because of course, that would require a transfeminine reading of the text rather than a vague, "generically trans" interpretation or, let's face it, an AFAB interpretation of Kris.

pretty much every single person in the comments agreeing with them aside from the lone person standing up to them with "i can sorta see why its a interpetation but why cant we just use canon pronouns only" followed by "heh ralsei wiki is gonna need all the he/him citations like how kris's is"

remember if yall think its bad on here, the official deltarune reddit rules and community equate talking about the transfem parallels/discussion of ralsei should be scrutinized more if not heavier than explicilty misgendering kris. ralsei in a dress calling herself princess is just as offensive as misgendering kris actually because ralsei cant be a girl actualy becasue they are called he so much! he's actually not even "they" either because hes refered to that only like two or threee timesssss it doenst count! asgores just wrong actually its nothin deeper than that and if you even TRY to have a conversation about what any of the trans symbolism means YOUR WRONG AND ARE GONNA GET DELETED!

to the point where there’s someone in gooseworx’s inbox begging to be allowed to headcanon jax as something besides a trans woman, which is what she explicitly canonically is, in the text of the show. to the point that “headcanoning” her as otherwise is just, yknow, contradictory what is shown onscreen.

and the same shit happens as ralsei goes from “likely implied transfem” to “would only be more explicit if she went out and said ‘i ralsei deltarune am a repressed/closeted transfem’” in chapter 5, and even before then (i have had multiple friends pre ch5 talk about how any discussion of transfem ralsei as a concept in servers, especially when said discussion was prompted by a trans woman or other transfem person, is swiftly met with people interrupting to say how they could never see her as a woman, how its So Important that ralsei is a feminine man, and how youre still Allowed to headcanon her as such)

there’s this sense of defensiveness to it that really irks me. there’s a constant need for validation- why you get reddit posts like this:

or endless psa posts in tadc tag about how you’re valid if you think she’s a man. there’s this burning need for these people to be told it’s OKAY to ignore canonical transfem characters, you’re NOT being transphobic, you’re NOT being transmisogynistic, i promise! you’re a good person.

without any reflection at all on why they feel such a need to deny when transfem characters exist, why the idea of a character they like being revealed to be a trans woman is uncomfortable to them, why (often as trans people themselves) they can’t bring themselves to find a canonically transfem character relatable.

like, coming back to that ask asking goose if people are Allowed to hc jax as a non-trans woman, the phrasing on that really gets me. like, say she answered no- the fuck would that even mean? what’s she gonna do? arrest you? “allowed” here really just means that they don’t want people to be mad at them for it.