Ai no Shintairiku

Nice scare quotes in the description. Trans women are real women, and this character pretty clearly identifies as a women. Hence they are a woman. Not that this is exactly the best portrayal of a trans woman, but still. It's a cute story, I like it.

(It shouldn't be tagged shounen ai, unless I missed some background boy characters hitting it off? Been a bit since I read it)

I think that's stupid. Do we need a different tag for biological shounen ai then? Just lump it all together for the convenience of the browser. You won't offend fictional characters for misgendering them. Like if I'm trying to find hentai, should trap not be tagged as yaoi if the trap says he's a girl? No. Because all I really care about is whether or not I'm in the mood to see an asshole or pussy gets pounded during that particular fap session.
If I want to read a manga about a pair of dicks struggling against the inherent sociological and personal dilemmas that accompany one of those dicks assigning themselves female gender roles and the how the remaining dick sees that dick; then I'm going to be searching the shounen ai tag.
Because if we start using mass opinion to decide genres, then everything hits the fan. That annoying reverse trap in a romcom that insists they're a dude? Now it's shounen ai. Now like 10,000 manga just became shounen ai.

Been awhile since I've read this so I decided to give it a quick reread. Overall I find it pretty enjoyable. Just wish the beginning wasn't so rushed.

I have always wonder one small thing. What is gender? how do you divide it?

By genetics? so how do you class those who have a XXY trisomie?

By the body? How do you class those who have male and female caracteritics (and not onlty the sexe, but bosom and male thing, or a girl with an hypertrophy of her clit, and so on?) Go read IS - Otoko demo Onna demo Nai Sei you'll see what I speak.

Or by how they see themself?

 

 

For me it's logic, the first two have exception so they can't be the right definition.

So Sarah is a girl whatever her body.

As a transwoman IRL, I kind of feel like I could contribute to this discussion, despite that it's long over. I would have to agree with both svines and Metrosio here, for the most part. Metrosio has an excellent point in that, no, it isn't shounen ai because Sara identifies and presents as a woman. Regardless of how everyone else may see her, to Sara herself she is a woman and eventually everyone accepts her as a woman (outside of her mother and maybe a select few of the students).

However, svines has a point in that yes, biologically, Sara is male and hasn't undergone any operations to change that. I can definitely connect with Sara in this aspect. Neither she nor I are so utterly blind to reality that we'd deny the fact that, yes, we do have male genitalia (I'm pre-op, so, yeah...)

Regardless of all that, I'm glad to have found a handful of supportive people on the internet, which as we all know is filled to the brim with trolls and other jerks. Thank you all for your support.

Yaoi and shounen ai get messed up as labels when they conflate with the 'gender-bender' genre, mostly because there's controversy over the validity of transgender identities; and most of those who don't live with them, even if they accept them still don't fully understand it.

Sara is male-bodied, which to a lot of people translates out as "technically a guy" - this is inaccurate in English (not sure about in Japanese) but that doesn't stop it from being a common idea. Those who don't understand the inaccuracy will see it as shounen-ai, those who do understand it won't see it as that.

Labels work great when they are applied correctly for specific situations. For example, in general it's not important to mention trans status when talking about someone, but sometimes it's necessary in order to point out something relevant. For another example, it's not important to point out that someone is tall unless it is relevant to the discussion ("No you can't ride this attraction because you are too tall"). Calling a trans girl a "boy" however, or labelling her love towards a boy as homosexual, is not applying labels correctly.

I see that you love labels and being labelled.

That "he might have found out Sarah is a boy" is clearly more of a "he might have found out Sarah is not a cis girl". But cis manga authors are often not very good with trans terminology, not to mention how it might get twisted during translation. Sarah quite clearly identifies as a girl in multiple explicit instances throughout the entire series. This is suddenly overridden by single exclamation during duress? Also, what the other characters thinks of her gender is irrelevant to what gender she is.

Label as a boy like the character himself does? Oh and the school, mother, friends, classmates? I mean Sarah clearly thinks "he might have found out that Sarah is a boy" on page 8 of chp 1. I mean even the character Souhei is quite aware he's a boy. But no matter, I'm done.

Yes. It is not listed as shounen ai on DokiDoki's webpage, even though they have a category for it (it is instead listed under "Other"). Frankly, it is also downright offensive to label a girl character a boy (through the tag of "shounen ai") just because she is trans.

So, in reading your comments from the beginning, you're saying you over-rode what the contributor actually wanted this to be described as, right?

This is not shounen ai, not to mention not being yaoi. It's a comedy romance story between a girl and a guy. Whether they are trans or cis is irrelevant. Please don't tag it as something it is not.

Just to reiterate, I agree with you. If it weren't for that pesky penis she has I'm sure everyone else would too.

Trans women are not technically guys.

Cuuuuute, thanks DokiDoki!!

@Metrosio
I agree with everything you're saying about gender identification, but this is shounen ai because Sara is a guy (at least technically). A nice little romance story, short and sweet.

Nice scare quotes in the description. Trans women are real women, and this character pretty clearly identifies as a women. Hence they are a woman. Not that this is exactly the best portrayal of a trans woman, but still. It's a cute story, I like it.

(It shouldn't be tagged shounen ai, unless I missed some background boy characters hitting it off? Been a bit since I read it)