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April's Birthday Gift


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  • 2 weeks later...

Disclaimer regarding my story.

I know if you are down this far on the thread then you have likely read a good amount of my story so far, however there is a criticism I would like to get ahead of regarding my characters. No one has brought this to my attention thus far but I realize that my story seems to fetishize the idea of a transgender woman who has a penis. This can be upsetting to trans people, especially those who experience dysphoria from having a penis. Fetishizing and/or distressing trans people was not my intention, I can only speak on my own experience but I've come to see this was likely a tone-deaf decision in hindsight. As such I intend to retcon Elise's character as being gender-fluid from now on. This may seem like a pedantic decision to some but as someone who has dealt with feelings of dysphoria in the past I do not wish to inflict it upon any members of this community. I sincerely apologize for any harm or distress I may have caused and I encourage everyone to raise your concerns you may have regarding my characters' depictions in the future, as I've said I only have my experiences to speak from. Take care of yourselves, everybody!! ❤️❤️❤️

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I'm speaking here as a cis guy who I hope is an ally.   I'm also speaking as someone of a certain age who I freely admit struggles with a lot of the terminology, I make mistakes and would never intentionally offend.

I'm also speaking as a member of the team and a human being with a deep interest in making sure our community is as open, inclusive and accepting of all who share our kink, and making sure all who do have an appropriate respect for others.

So - on that basis - if the criticism you refer to has come from others in our community then we need to distinguish between positive constructive criticism and anything more negative.  The latter can be addressed by staff since it would fall short of the PF ethos.

I suspect more you mean self critique, which is always a valuable exercise - as long as it doesn't result in us beating ourselves up unnecessarily.   You've said there a couple of times that your fiction is based on your experiences, and your life path is no less important or valid than anyone else's.   If you wish to progress Elise's character in a similar direction to your own steps then of course do so.  It's right to respect and be thoughtful for the experiences of others but please balance any pressure, guilt or worry against your own self belief and self-esteem.

Final comment - I said above we aim to be an inclusive community - but that doesn't mean every byte of data on the site will appeal to every use, how ever could it?   So, if your writing doesn't appeal to someone due to their dysphoria of a penis, if it doesn't appeal to someone with rigidly straight preferences, or whatever other reason, they are welcome to use the 'back' button to quietly head off in the direction of something more to their taste.  We all know you're not writing to offend.

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19 minutes ago, gldenwetgoose said:

Final comment - I said above we aim to be an inclusive community - but that doesn't mean every byte of data on the site will appeal to every use, how ever could it?   So, if your writing doesn't appeal to someone due to their dysphoria of a penis, if it doesn't appeal to someone with rigidly straight preferences, or whatever other reason, they are welcome to use the 'back' button to quietly head off in the direction of something more to their taste.  We all know you're not writing to offend.

I appreciate your input! I don't mean to sound self-flagellating. My main purpose was to discourage viewing my depiction of transgender people in the story as a fetish. It's reductive and unfortunately common amongst pornography to fetishize transgender people and I simply wanted to avoid that connotation.

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1 hour ago, Peenicks said:

Disclaimer regarding my story.

I know if you are down this far on the thread then you have likely read a good amount of my story so far, however there is a criticism I would like to get ahead of regarding my characters. No one has brought this to my attention thus far but I realize that my story seems to fetishize the idea of a transgender woman who has a penis. This can be upsetting to trans people, especially those who experience dysphoria from having a penis. Fetishizing and/or distressing trans people was not my intention, I can only speak on my own experience but I've come to see this was likely a tone-deaf decision in hindsight. As such I intend to retcon Elise's character as being gender-fluid from now on. This may seem like a pedantic decision to some but as someone who has dealt with feelings of dysphoria in the past I do not wish to inflict it upon any members of this community. I sincerely apologize for any harm or distress I may have caused and I encourage everyone to raise your concerns you may have regarding my characters' depictions in the future, as I've said I only have my experiences to speak from. Take care of yourselves, everybody!! ❤️❤️❤️

Honestly as somebody who quite often detests the fact that i was not born a ”real woman” your story was really good and didn’t come across as offensive at all atleast that’s my opinion just wanted to let you know. 💖

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My one area of comment is nothing to do with the characters or their actions.  Just the observation that in the most part your narrative is in the past tense but on occasions jumps into present tense description.

My personal preference for what it’s worth is definitely for the past tense description of story telling. It feels much more natural for me to have a person relaying on what they saw, heard and said rather than the third person telling me what they are seeing, hearing and saying. 

Otherwise I really enjoyed everything about the stories and the characters there. Quite believable and real. Looking forward to reading more. 

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Yeah, I believe some of my other stories had that issue too. I thought that certain scenes would work better in present tense such as the first scene and parts of the fountain but as I wanted to skip ahead and provide more detail the diegesis sort of naturally shifted.

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