Here’s a sadly common thing I see, especially on Hentai Foundry: A decent, well crafted image of a lady fucking another girl using her dick. The artist’s tags mention futa and futanari are in place. There’s just one problem: The girl with the dick doesn’t have a pussy. In other words, she’s not a futanari. She’s, for lack of a better term at the better term for the moment, a shemale.
You might not think much of the term, but there’s a very specific definition to futanari. However, it gets ignored frequently by many artists with regularity for the sake of “sales” or “traffic.” Such things dilute what it means, and can make customers believe that any girl with a dick is a futa, which limits what future artists can do creatively.
Recently, Marie Fasolt pointed out that our mascot futanari Sayako’s pussy needs some quality fucking, possibly from Tara growing her own dick as shown above (one can dream). Most artists who use the term “futa” wouldn’t even consider that a possibility, because they don’t make futas. It’s time to set the record straight on the term, and where to go from here.
But What Is A Futa?
The girls on the middle and right are futanari. The girl on the left is just a girl…for now 
It’s time for a Vox-level explainer, only without the stuck-up attitude that comes with it. Futanari, in kana ふたなり, literally translates to “two kinds” or “two forms.” Applying this on a sexual level, the closest equivalent translation is hermaphrodite – a term that comes from a Greek god who fused with a female water nymph and liked the results. In ancient and medieval times, when Japanese culture wasn’t influenced by Jewish/Christian/Islamic gender binaries, the term more broadly encompassed androgyny. There was a lot of folklore related to the term, such as the belief that certain people could change their gender at the half-moon – not unlike werewolves at a full moon but with a lot less fur and silly furry ideas.
Modern terminology of futanari applied the hermaphrodite idea in a way that was unique and specific. It now means a complete female who also possesses a dick. The complete and also is what makes it specific, for they are still hermaphrodites. I mean, it’s in the name: They have two forms, i.e. two sets of genitals!
Now, there’s definitely some room to question why the modern term came to be. As dezmondel of the famous Stone Sorceress series once asked me, why aren’t guys with vaginas as common? But the point here is futanari are hermaphrodites, pure and simple.
So why do artists screw up on such a simple concept and use futanari to describe women who aren’t that?
Shemales and Excess Baggage
Auntie Nino, like many of Smerinka’s girls with dicks, is not a futanari.
Arguably, the common refrain I hear from artists who get called out on what seems to be semantics is “that’s what the fans want,” and I shouldn’t complain. But is that what the fans really want, that they’re that dick-obsessed? Or are artists just uncomfortable with using the term “shemale?”
If the latter, it wouldn’t exactly be a surprise. Our culture now obsesses over individual identity and creating a politics around it. Thus the term shemale – which usually means a pre-op trans woman – is now as loaded as Sayako would be if she avoided sexual contact for about a month. What was once the best option to describe women with dicks in real life is now borderline transphobic.
Girls! Learn to grow your dicks the Bible Black way! Guaranteed to keep your pussy, or your money back! 
Moreover, fiction eschews the biological realities often associated with a person’s sex. While shemales have a specific look to them, the women with dicks (but not pussies) in 3DX and 2D/hentai porn still appear visually female. It’s essentially as if all that happened to the woman as her genitals. Or, it may be a woman who is able turn her clit into a dick while closing up her labia and vagina (which sounds painful), because the latter for some reason is necessary.
(This opens up the question of why it’s necessary to remove the vagina from the equation to begin with, but that’s for another time)
There’s nothing wrong with any of these types of characters, mind you. Some of our best artists specialize in those types of women. It’s just that there’s not really a name for them that fits them specifically, or even just in general. Which brings up another possibility: The reason these women are called futanari is artists are too lazy to come up with a term on their own. As someone who has lived with messy and flaky artists, that would be the least surprising reason of all.
A Better Term: Dickgirl
Perhaps the best solution is to create a new term all together. One that encompasses not only women with dicks, but futanari, shemales, and others.
We, thankfully, already came up with a better, more straightforward term in porn: Dickgirl. It’s not SEO friendly yet, but now’s a good a time as any to work on it. The term works because of its generality and simplicity: The name implies the girl has a dick. Whether she’s a futanari or not is irrelevant. There’s no need for semantics because it answers its own primary question.
Our site style guide (yes, we have one) uses this as our catch-all term for such matters. It keeps things simple: Instead of having to figure out whether the girl with a dick also has a vagina, we just conclude at the first point and move on.
Miro recently proposed a mainstream term for it: D-Girl. Feel free to poke fun of him for it in the comments, as I doubt anyone can take a term like that seriously.
Hentai Foundry also uses the “dickgirl” term in its category system. However, they join it with “Futanari,” which only sows further confusion. We suggest they just drop “futanari” outright from their categories, and let their audience figure out themselves what they want, and understand what the original term means means.
Porn, especially 3DX, benefits from clarity. By knowing what fetishes they’re toying with, artists can actually create quality work. Moreover, by understanding what a futanari actually is, an artist has more options on what to do with her than they would before. Oh, the possibilities…
Stay Tuned for More Naughty Thoughts…and leave your comments below!
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