- Edited
This was meant to be a reply post to “The new genre policy regarding LGBT+ stories is sexist and homophobic” but the forum was locked before I posted it and I put a lot of work into it so I’m making a new discussion here under the new title How Webnovel Browse/Browser/Content/Category/Sorting/Tag/Tagging/UI/User Interface/Search/Search Interface System is Flawed . just to make sure people will find this when they are searching by different terms/keywords
I know others have already addressed a lot of what I am about to say but I feel that I can expand on what has been said and maybe add to it. Note that I don't advocate for Webnovel this is just my thoughts on what their reasoning would be for why they have LGBT+ listed under Female Lead. Here's my take.
Others have said it has to do with preventing/because of homophobia. I disagree with these assumptions. what I can say is that the most likely reason why Webnovel chose to have LGBT+ listed under female lead is that the majority of the genre's readers would be female.
I believe that the reason this matters is that the Categorization system as a whole is not only flawed and unintentional homophobic but also sexist. And I believe the site knows about this problem and That is why they put LGBT+ under Female Lead.
Below I will talk about the site's history, Its flaws, and how LGBT+ fits in, why Webnovel knows their system is flawed and how LGBT+ fits in and final how it could be fixed.
To quickly get to one of these sections use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+F and type Site History, Site Flaws, LGBT+ Data, Problems with Tags, How Webnovel knows their system is flawed, and How To Fix These Flaws.
Site History
First of all I believe the reason why it's set up like this even though it doesn't work all ties into the site's history. This site originally only contained content from china and uses the skeleton of the original site's sorting system. the original site even goes as far as creating two different UI for whether you're looking at female or male content you can get to the female site by going to Qidian main site select “全部作品” or all works if you have English page view on then 女生 or Schoolgirl. You can also reach the site directly at links.
This just shows how much the so-called lead plays into what is actual gender divided content.
Why would you change the look of your site so much just because of the gender of your protagonist unless the change isn't about the story but the reader?
This system works fine for content out of China where it appears that the gender of the protagonist plays a lot more into what the story will be about and the targeted gender of the reader. So it would be reasonable for Webnovel to categorize their site like this.
They probably thought “It worked in China, why not in the English speaking world, right?”
The only story that I could find on Webnovel that defies this observation is “A Stay-at-home Dad's Restaurant In An Alternate World”
Sites Flaws
The problems kick in as soon as you get into the original content on their site. Here is an explanation on why it fails to function and some examples I know of showing how the categorization system fails.
It fails because they assume that genders mean anything when it comes to what the story will be about. This is shown through the fact that all genres other than teen and LGBT+ in female lead content contain the suffix romance. they work on the assumption that all female protagonists would be romances not accounting for any other possibilities.
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A woman can just as much be a killing badass with no romantic ties as she can be a mother and wife. It's inherently sexist to focus so much on romance when related to females period.
When authors want to write a purely sci-fi content-based book that also happens to have a female lead they can't categorize it under female lead because that would not represent the story. A good example of this problem in action is the book “Dark Star Survivor” that happens to have a female protagonist. It is categorized under sci-fi but has female protagonist as a tag.
Another work worth mentioning is “Once Human, Now a Parasite” it has a heavy focus on the romance part of the story and should be categorized under fantasy romance but isn't because the protagonist is male.
Another thing to note is this categorization system has no way to properly deal with a protagonist that doesn't identify as their natural gender or doesn't have a natural gender, you see this with original works like “Chrysalis” (protagonist by necessity is a female ant but was a male in a past life and still identifies as male)
LGBT+ Data
I reasoned that most LGBT+ content was for females by expanding on what Cantiara links said about demographics and content.under the LGBT+ category by looking at content related to tags and the paid content under the LGBT+ genres between 24 and the 26 of may 2020.
for paid content that falls under LGBT+ they all are BL content doesn't matter if it's translation or original.
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something to also note is that the translated novels weren't sourced from Qidian.
By looking at those numbers below we can infer that the majority of LGBT+ content falls squarely under Boys Love/yaoi and by looking at demographics it is apparent that its a female dominated category making it financially logical for them to place it under Female Lead.
(note this chart only applies to novels section of webnovel search section no fan fiction or comics were included) (note tags aren't cap sensitive)
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*Note take transsexual numbers with a grain of salt seeing as gender bend is a sub-genre and a lot of other works are really more a commentary for women's rights and gender bias rather than dealing with transsexuality/transgender issues/people and lets not even get into where Futanari, dick girl and all that stuff fits in.
people miscategorize a lot of those contents into transexual content and vice versa obscuring the real numbers. For the sake of expediting this process I'm going to throw them all together.
links (75 to 85% female readers)
links (historical meant for females but now around 60/40 male/female readers)
The reason I point to yaoi and yuri as examples is because,
Firstly just by looking at the tags the majority use some variation of those terms or a term associated with it
Secondly, I feel these information sources more accurately represents the majority of work on Webnovel rather than say purely gay or lesbian literature in general.
my reasoning being the target demographic of this website seems to be young adults and seeing as the site started and is still dominated by eastern (primarily Chinese) works people expect more of an Asian take on homosexuality from the works on this site and seeing as their LGBT related translated works on here are abysmal with barely any readers**. People end up writing/posting works more in line with Japanese BL and GL works AKA yaoi and yuri.
** I know about “It's Not Easy to Be a Man After Travelling to the Future”, “National School Prince Is A Girl” and “Release that Man” are classed under gender bender but they contain more inline with heteronormative subjects and even in Webnovels database aren't recognized as LGBT+ content.
Problems with Tags
A historical problem with tags is that users use to be able to add tags to books, so when a user did not like that book they would spam tags like Feta (dick girl) and others on a book they didn't like.
I bring this up because it's still a problem even after they patch this because some of these tags are still on books that they don't belong to.
A good example of this is the book “A world worth protecting”, which is the only translated book left with a tag associated with gay content that I could find while researching this subject. It was given the tag at least a year ago yet no one has fixed it yet. Seen here literally a year ago.
(links
Another good example of people fucking with tags is Reverend Insanity which has the tag gender bender.
A newer problem with tags is no one is using them now that tags can’t be added by users. a lot of newly translated works don't have any tags because the translators don’t bother to add them.
Just look at any book posted in the last ~6 months and they won't have tags. This is inherently problematic because users don't know what to expect from the story. i point to “The Cat hides its Claws” as justification for why tags are necessary it has no tags and is listed under LGBT+ so the only thing a reader can infer from it is that its ether about a gay lesbian bi or trans person.
Lastly and most notable is when searching by tag it prioritizes paid content under the “popular” section of tags. My go to example for this is chrysalis when looking under the System tag links it would be listed in like 90th place even though its list 18th most popular overall on the platform this month as of writing this. links
How Webnovel knows their system is flawed
With all the information stated above in mind, it becomes apparent that Male and Female Lead content is really more about segregating content based on the gender of the reader.
Whether it's through the fact that their Chinese website goes as far as changing the web UI just based on the protagonist's gender. Or the fact that they have a male protagonist dominated genre like LGBT+ listed under Female Lead instead of splitting it up into gay, lesbian, bi, and trans. Just because the gay content is targeted for a female demographic.
You see If you believe that the categorization system is more of a method to categorize by the gender of the reader as I do. Classifying LGBT+ under female lead would make a lot of sense you don't want to place content targeted towards females in the section dedicated to male readers and you can't exactly put gay under female lead so to get around this problem they just use the term LGBT+.
This is why LGBT+ was placed under female lead. I believe this was done probably as a way to actually try and mitigate the exact outcry we are seeing on “The new genre policy regarding LGBT+ stories is sexist and homophobic” and also accurately market its material to the right demographic.
How To Fix These Flaws
To fix the categorization problem either.
A)Replace the word Lead with the term demographic or audience this would ensure that Webnovel doesn't have to actually change their system but the categories still function properly. This is still problematic because of the fact that a ton of content on either side would still appeal to the opposite gender and this change in wording would cement the divide making it a lot less likely for people to try the other's content.
B.)Revamp the system by removing gender distinctions so high up in the sorting system altogether and make them tags instead. merge the two categories that together ie sci-fi romance becomes sci-fi.
Finally, create some kind of system or scale to show whether the book would interest one gender or another you may also add a small section explaining what the book offers to the reader that might interest that gender this would primarily benefit books that primarily target one gender or another but could interest the other.
The problems with the tags being miscategorized can easily be fixed just by adding an upvote/ downvote and comment section to tags this shouldn't be too hard seeing as Webnovel added comments to paragraphs in chapters right?
This idea is already partially integrated with the heart function I don't know whether hearts affect where the tag sits in the overall order but if this new system is implemented the tags would be in order from most liked to lease liked and with the comments section for the tags people can write there how that tag pertains to the story or their lack of relevance. This would allow people to democratically agree on tags and learn how that tag ties into the story.
This would also address the problem of all recently translated works lacking tags as well as getting rid of tags that don't belong. When a tag gets to the point where it becomes mostly disliked, have a moderator check-in and remove it or if nothing else use a automated system to do it.