Bifauxnen: Difference between revisions

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The major distinction between them and [[Tomboy]]s is a direct association with elegance and style, and they often appear [[Younger Than They Look|older than they really are]]. Tomboys are often associated with playfulness and immaturity, but are still clearly female.

It's worth noting that bifauxnen do not include trans men, simply because the latter actually identify as men while bifauxnen do not - in fact bifauxnen are very much ''in touch'' with their femininity and carry the outside handsome, androgynous veneer as a kind of fashion, whether by choice or by circumstance. That being said, it is pretty hard to tell trans men from bifauxnen in fiction without adequate context - for example, Takatsuki from ''[[Wandering Son]]'' looks quite a lot like a Bifauxnen to an uninitiated fan, but readers will know that Takatsuki is, actually, the ~~latter~~.

It's worth noting that bifauxnen do not include trans men, simply because the latter actually identify as men while bifauxnen do not - in fact bifauxnen are very much ''in touch'' with their femininity and carry the outside handsome, androgynous veneer as a kind of fashion, whether by choice or by circumstance. That being said, it is pretty hard to tell trans men from bifauxnen in fiction without adequate context - for example, Takatsuki from ''[[Wandering Son]]'' looks quite a lot like a Bifauxnen to an uninitiated fan, but readers will know that Takatsuki is, actually, the former. Trans women who crossdress as men are hard to categorize and, as such, are not true Bifauxnen, mostly due to their rarity.

This is mainly a Japanese trope. Western examples do exist, dressing this way either throughout a work or in a single scene, but the Western example is generally '''not''' straight. Rather, dressing a female character up as a [[Sharp-Dressed Man]] was, in European and North American works in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a standard [[Getting Crap Past the Radar]] way to imply that she was lesbian or bisexual when open acknowledgement and depiction of her sexuality would have been forbidden by taste-and-decency standards.