#but like the western concept of gender

[switchcase]

Could I ask what your gender identity is within nonbinary? Is it like systemfluid?

To white people I am strictly an amorphous and sexless set of particles akin to a fine and imperceptible mist. If you see me no you don't.

#I technically use nonbinary but I find 'nonbinary' to be somewhat restrictive #In that it positions me still along the axis of western gender concepts #I use the label solely to make communicating things simpler #So basically I would not like to ascribe an even more specific label to myself #But no out of all things I would not consider DID to be a big factor in my gender. Being intersex had a bigger impact For Me Personally #ask #anonymous

[freshairforrabbits]

WIP Wednesday

Totally not doing this as an excuse to see other people's writing (/no pressure but also I am a greedy little cretin who devours people's writing like delicious treats)

This is for 'pretty boy snuff film' and probably long as hell for a wip snippet, but fuck it.

Tags: Max Patel PoV, themes of death, nothing too wild but it is pretty boy so y'know Jake's doing rough as fuck and everyone's struggling

For all that Max understands about the demons that continue to gnaw on his brain each night between the RDA's thundering fistful of bullets and hellfire, he knows that this one is going to haunt him.

The way he leapt out of the Samson, made his way across the rocks on Norm's blue heels, only to watch as Jake was sliced up under that flashlight beam.

Max's stomach had done a sudden colorful tango so violent he felt all the blood drain from his face when it exposed every inch of his friend's condition. Jake's arm thrown up to shield a face that was gaunt, limbs thinner than Jake had been even that first day in the avatar, skin wrapped tight as shrinkwrap stabbed through with more stripes of ferocious, pulsing red than dark blue. Max pinpointed what looked infected, what was half-healed, the hypertrophic ridges of the oldest wounds stitched by too much collagen, electrical burns stretched up from Jake's neck, to his chin, his cheek— all with a practiced eye, second nature.

Signs of atrophy, Jake's ankles shaking. Wobbling across the jetty's slick rocks far more than they should with each heavy-footed step, tail swinging listlessly without acting as a counterbalance, burns on the tips of Jake's ears, chunks cut out of pinna the way Max once notched cloned cattle ears back in undergraduate research labs. Pupils slightly different sizes under the harsh light Max cuts across Jake's frame just to be sure it's him because Jake's familiar-unfamiliar silhouette backlit by all those stars is moving the way hordes of the undead in old films do, bioluminescent freckles dulled as well. A blood curdling paranoia grips Max, mind firing illogical cylinders that he quickly places under control with a swift self-assurance that this is the man he's known for years and not some strange, warped imposter wearing Jake's skin.

Jake's skin….skin smeared with bruising like an impressionist painting, a deep gouge in Jake's upper lip. This small upside down triangle carved through the flesh exposing the barest hint of teeth. Leaving a deep trail of grey-pink slashed all the way up across his left cheek, through his brow. Jake falls to his knees as he hands off that RDA soldier, the enemy he clutches to his chest as if she's a daughter. A smile, desperate and stained in the warm clutch of eclipse's dark.

Jake's knees crack rock again because Max is a little too caught up in the mixture of relief, trepidation, the pound-thud of his heart as he presses the comm button on his mask and lets Neytiri know they found him. Inadvertently blinding Jake under the white sting of the flashlight in his hand with the movement, again. Against all odds; it's him, it is, he's alive, a given definition of safe.

Her voice cracks back through on a sob that is quickly wiped out the way Max has heard her smear her emotions into nothing for the past six months. After losing Neteyam, after losing Jake, after High Camp came under fire and they were forced to fight, to flee with their tails between their legs to the reefs of the Eastern Sea, the rest of the Omatikaya splitting off to New Kelutral. Families fractured and communities shattered on repeat.

Stumbling across First Reef like a miracle, setting up a base of operations with the rattle of death in their bones. After Max found her in Awa'atlu with Jake's rifle in her hands, field stripping the weapon with a jagged clumsiness that comes from burnt palms still healing, cleaning it as her bow sat gleaming in front of the marui's waxflower hearth fire–

She hasn't been the same, tackling the world with a bite to her fangs, a cold glint to her eyes, a ferocious protectiveness extended out across every blue body under her charge as a resistance leader with her face broadcasted across the metal snare web of the RDA's influence; Kill On Sight. Throwing herself into her work as healer and warrior without a proper night's sleep left to take. Her children watched carefully by the village, the aytsantu— Wanted, Marked for Death, targets painted on them, too— when she's not around, they grow cold and distant in their own ways, but he knows they're all trying desperately to cling to what they have left. Sometimes it feels like that's all they can do in-between the days that rumble with the apocalypse.

Rutal of the Ta'unui, Saeyla of the Omatikaya, sometimes even Ronal and Tonowari, many more coming together; all watching over the children. All coming together to make sure Neytiri eats, sleeps, and takes care of herself, Rutal especially, they seemed to be the one to get her to step away from her self-destructive path the most. Of all of them, Rutal was the one who managed to calm Bob down, Jake's ikran snapping at the others, drawing blood in a frenzy that first night after the explosion, when Bob had to practically be dragged away from circling the wreckage of the drilling rig over and over, screeches turned to whistled whines.

It only stood to reason Rutal would wind up being the one to eventually get Neytiri to sit down at the Metkayina mo'ara for a few hours to redo all her braids– shorter than they used to be when she was forced to chop off the parts that had burnt, the ones she cut in mourning.

And the scientists, they were trying their best. Him and Norm spent many a quiet day showing Tuk videos of her dad, letting her place the prettiest shells she found on the shrine near the BioLab's aluminum shack living quarters beside the rest of the numerous offerings for the deceased. The lost, the ones they have never been able to find. Pictures hung in homemade frames of lovingly crafted wood, beads, flax, symbols from their own beliefs, their gods carried over to this new world. Jake's photo rests there, one of his entire family, something taken back at the old settlement near Hell's Gate. Kiri, Lo'ak, Spider placing their own offerings, exchanging out the old fruits, the sweet meats, participating in something they don't have to, but sharing in it nonetheless.

Kiri always staring with a distant look, ears twitching as if she could hear something. Grace and Trudy and Sylwanin placed right by Jake, Tsu'tey's visor beside them.

Neytiri only stopping by with fresh bruises and scuffs from the latest guerilla fight as she would gather Tuk up in her arms, the girl tucked up under an Olangi saddle blanket, laying on a floor cushion that's too small for her by the shrine, curled around a holopad paused on the next video of her dad's human face. Neytiri lingering by the offerings, her eyes tracing a line across the ever increasing number, low tables built from driftwood to add to the space they had, she would cast a look towards Max as he picked up the holopad, shutting the screen off. Every time she had something like death wreathed around her shoulders as she then dipped her head, turning to duck through the airlock. Tail low, ears back.

Death chasing them relentlessly, change forcing their hands. To see Jake sprung back from the grave and not just his voice crackling through the comm is a haunting in itself, striking Max like a puncture wound, hurting in a way that doesn't make sense, horrifying in a way that he can't compute. Because death has its fangs sunk in Jake's neck, that much is obvious, holding him like a palulukan ready to make her kill. Untold fallout from something mapped across Jake's body, but all they have is what they can only guess.

And more, so much more, a rattling, wheezing of fluid in Jake's lungs that Max could hear through every second of Jake's sudden twist into begging as Norm held Jake up. Jake cowering, something that wrapped talons around Max's throat and made him seize in place at the sight as Norm locked panicked eyes with him. As Jake went from curling in, clutching at Norm's hand like a lost child with his eyes rolling, wide and seeing nothing, to blinking, shaking his head with a rough jerk, snarling, shoving Norm off. Snapping just like Bob had.

Wounded, with only threats spinning in his gold eyes.

Tagging @this-world-of-beautiful-monsters @kayjaydee17 @adrixagr and anyone else who sees this who wants to share their work! (Again no pressure!)

#Rutal as my OC who is my homage to the fact Na'vi would not have Western concepts of gender #he/they but in a way that is like untranslatable not man not woman not non-binary but Rutal #also just winging it writing Max's pov trying my best and i love him and need more writing for him out there #ignore the verbage on this first draft is me just being like sounds good makes shit up #also the way this is just the first initial impression of how bad Jake is and it just gets way worse from here and keeps going #and then after this chapter of Max and the others being like holy fuck this guy might actually be dying #it goes right back to Jakes pov and him trying to be like 'okay things Might be bad but its not that big of a deal' #pretty boy film #anatomy of a house

[wild-at-mind]

Every International Women's Day, you will find that progressive publications publish their manditory IWD article about how we should focus more on women in the global south and yet we can't because upper class white women have their pink cupcakes and their CEO jobs exploiting the working woman by being customers and crying about Barbie not getting an Oscar nomination. I always read it and think....I have really good news for you, journalist writing this, about what you could do with the article you're being paid to write!!

#IWD #honestly where is the sport in these tired rhetorical touchstones-pink cupcakes or pussy hats- it's tired #and fyi everyone i saw talking about the barbie movie oscars thing was clearly not being fully serious/serious at all #i am not clear how wealthy women in particular are exploiting people by being customers- #IWD isn't a public holiday that the low paid still have to work #anyway look class disparity is really important to talk about and CEOs as a concept are not value neutral #but women being CEOs not just men is value neutral- as in it's not worse when women do it #i just get tired of the same point being made every year and them never doing the thing they could be doing- spotlight global south women #i really feel strongly that people only like doing this if they can make snarky tweetable points- for it's own sake it's nothing to them #if you read the guardian's IWD article i'm sure my examples seem very familiar! #I recommend 'feminism and nationalism in the third world' by kumari jayawardena #it covers the history of activism thought and gendered struggle of women in specific asian and middle eastern countries #it's a dense and very factual read- definitely not a snarky tweets book #though my edition has a foreword addressed to western feminists that's the only area it even slightly overlaps with that kind of book #oh yeah forgot to say it only goes up to the 1980s (was originally published in '86) #but it's sooo interesting to see the tension between nationalism and anticolonialism and women's liberation laid out #and how the different classes of women experienced it differently

[misttiddies]

id: second mizukage gengetsu sitting at his desk saying “hehe YES! FINALLY some IMPORTANT LEGISLATION! then a picture of the document on the desk, which says “bill of illegalize assigned gender at birth,” which he signs with a pen with a clam at the top. the third image is a photo of a chicken with overlayed text that says ‘by interacting with this post you agree every trans person deserves respect, human rights, and $500,000′ /end id

#misttiddies posts #misttiddies meta #gengetsu hozuki #trans ninjas #guys. i wrote out a whole thing about like #when i say everyone in kiri is trans i don't mean it by the real world sense of the term i mean they have a different understanding #of gender there. the hozuki have never had gender and many other clans differentiate each other in ways that don't relate to gender #it's not a completely foreign concept but it's one that in kiri people have a lot more freedom over than in other places #it's more important to be good at killing than to be one thing or the other #warlords keeping track of names as they change so they can hire the best shinobi #i was going to say pronouns too but that's a p western way of looking at it. they pay attention to gender not in a discriminatory way but #as means of being respectful is what i mean. address your sword properly #i don't want to say gender doesn't exist because it does matter to a lot of ppl #haku wouldn't have declared himself to be a boy if he wasn't one; it mattered to him that naruto stop calling him 'sis' #it's just different and the clans who already didn't gender their children kind of thought it barbaric that ppl did that #don't you know what you're doing to them?? #then they proposed a bill to gengetsu and The Trans Ninja Gengetsu Hozuki went FUCK YEAH #kirigakure #kiri musings

[existentialcrisis-24-7]

maybe i'm betraying the lgbt community but I actually do like the concept of aliens or other inhuman beings being technically non-binary because they don't get the concept of sex and gender in the same way humans do. like I get that having actual human non-binary rep is important but exploring gender, how it could be viewed in other cultures and worlds, and pushing boundaries sounds far more interesting. Even if the alien does eventually decide that the human concept of gender does fit them, it would be interesting to think about.

#i just have feelings #but even realistically the concept of gender used today is inherently western and colonial and we need to deconstruct that #also personal rant but like i only use non-binary as a label to get across the message but I don't even really identify with it. i don't #identify with gender. at all. and maybe that's just a me thing but being able to see different characters across media have different #concepts and understandings of gender actually makes me feel that bit more human which is also a thing I have never truly felt comfortable #calling myself because of the way gender is so boxed in. even non-binary itself is considered a “third gender” when by virtue of its namesa #it is exactly the opposite. it is “outside the binary” #maybe this is truly a me thing but also people still get into arguments over neopronouns and genders so maybe we should start considering i #vent #<- tagging it as such because of my tag ramble. still okay to rb #writing #queer #gender identity #gender #non binary #enby #man idk

[sanstropfremir]

Omg! I saw you briefly mentioned Tomorrow in an ask and I just finished the show. I have so many thoughts about it and not sure if they’re all good but I would love to hear your opinion about the overall show (especially the distinct costume design of each character and the set design!!). For a show that navigated some heavy material — it was full of such bright color and fun fashion decisions! Unsure if you talk about shows but I thought to ask because you always provide such interesting and thoughtful critiques.

THE COSTUME DESIGN IN TOMORROW!!!!!! it's soooooooooooo good it was one of the things that kept me watching bc yes there some glaringly obvious problems with the script. the production/set design are excellent too, especially for jumadeung. literally framing it as a company is a.....choice, but visually framing it with art deco style architecture a la the chrysler building is a smart way to keep it feeling outside time, because our brains still interpret art deco as a relatively modern style because of its scarcity and association with wealth, but in reality art deco is approaching it's centennial in just a couple of years.

ok i'm gonna talk about some major plot beats so spoiler warning for anyone who hasn't finished the show or cares about that kind of thing.

tbh i actually think the best costume design was in the scenes with all the team leaders because they were so quick and so infrequent but each of them had such a clear signature that tbh i spent like five minutes stopping and starting that first intro scene where we see everyone just to try and pick up all the little details.

other than that though, they do such a good job with koo ryeon, joong-gil and ryung-gu and interpreting how very old/essentially immortal characters would interpret clothing and what they would be comfortable in. jun-woong is fine, but the show itself kind of acknowledges by the back half that really he's the vehicle for the rest of their stories, so imo his design choices are all intentionally wallflower-y. but koo ryeon, joong-gil, and ryung-gu all share some key character traits: they're all extremely loyal, dedicated, defensive, AND they all lived their formative lives pre the invention of the zipper and stretch fabric. i know this sounds like a very weird point to make, but trust me on this one, i'll get to it. and all three of these characters embody all of these traits in their clothing. many of the creature comforts that we associate with fashion are very very modern, think within the last 100-150 years. zippers? the 1910s. spandex/lycra/synthetic stretch fabrics? 1958. hell, even the concept of sportswear and leisure clothing only started cropping up in the mid 1800s. for a lot of cultures and for long periods of history, clothing consisted of a lot of layers and a fair amount of internal structure, by virtue of fabric being a solid weave. for a significant portion of their lives, all three of these characters were wearing anywhere between two and probably five layers at all times, with koo ryeon and joong-gil for about 250yrs longer and also with much more intricacy due to their higher class. clothing plays a very big part into how someone presents themselves to the world, and it can be a protective measure. this might be a bit difficult for some to understand for some, especially in our modern 'comfort first' fashion culture, but the structure and weight of a lot of layers and the rituals around getting dressed a specific way can be both a defensive mechanism and also a physical comfort. you see it with older generations and their likelihood of wearing older styles/styles that were 'on trend' in their youth; think grannies who still get their hair permed and put on lipstick every time they leave the house, or someone like my grandfather, who never stopped wearing the same style of highwaisted slacks and dress shirts from the early 60s. and i think it's a very fair trait to extrapolate to characters who 1) have had particularly traumatic lives, 2) have spent a very long time wearing the same thing, and 3) have a textually noted extended/different understanding of time.

let's start with joong-gil, who exclusively wears a three piece suit post-becoming a reaper. this means he's wearing at least three well structured layers, and i'd be willing to bet that he'd be the type to wear a singlet/underlayer as well, which brings that total up to four. he's also frequently shown wearing an additional jacket (five layers) and gloves, another further barrier. given the fact that jumadeung appears to have 'westernized' aesthetically when korea was freed from japanese colonial rule***, three piece suits were still standard business attire. and he's very strict about his own dress code, he's either in white shirt and three piece or a black shirt and three piece. obviously this is also a physical manifestation of his discipline and dedication of the 'rules', as we can see that when he deviates from that uniform it is as a specific character point for him. the most notable instances of this are in the last episode, where he's wearing a turtleneck (but still a waistcoat) when jun-woong goes to try and reason with him, and then again later in the episode when joong-gil is taking his punishment in his shirtsleeves. and then for a third time at the very end of the episode, where his black three piece has been exchanged for a grey one, signalling his softening and the merging of his two selves (his pre-reaper self that wore mostly lighter colours, and his post-reaper self that wore mostly black).

unsurprisingly, koo ryeon is also a very defensive dresser. all the same observations from joong-gil apply here, but with koo ryeon instead of her being a dedicated rule-follower, her dedication manifests as rule-breaking in order to achieve her goals; as you can see she wears a lot of colours in counter to joong-gil's monochrome. but i think the most interesting of her visual 'rule-breaking' is that she doesn't particularly follow the convenions of 'feminine' coded dressing. this is most noticable in when the rm team goes on 'assignment' in different workplaces, where ryeon will wear nearly identical suits to jun-woong and ryung-gu (interestingly, it's pointedly not her wearing men's clothes, she's always wearing a 'female' version even if the cuts are virtually identical. you can tell bc the button closures are opposite). she also dresses very 'modestly', she doesn't show any skin at all and more notably, she doesn't wear anything form fitting. she favours boxy and bulky shapes with a predominance for longer lines and wider shapes on her lower body. now there's two reasons to speculate for this: the first is the same as for joong-gil, that she's very used to layers and a specific silhouette, especially considering that the shape of female hanbok is not even close to being form-fitting and has heavy skirting. and the second is that her trauma is directly tied to people's perception of her femininity. literally the reason ryeon died is because she was stigmatized for 'using her femininity to get out of an adverse situation' even though we are explicitly shown that that is emphatically not the case. thus her rejection of more western feminine silhouettes is directly related to how she wants there to be no question that the reason she is so accomplished at her job is purely because of her skills, and not for any other reason.

and ryung-gu! more similar to koo ryeon in style than joong-gil, but again they all share that propensity for numerous heavy and obscurative layers that echoes a more traditional style of dress. because ryung-gu is younger (literal age wise but also i'm pretty sure he died younger as well) there's a little more flexibility in his materials and cuts, and because he's of a lower class than koo ryeon and joong-gil, he tends towards less formal shapes too. although i would not describe koo ryeon as a 'formal' dresser, she wears a lot of blazers and two piece suits, as well as heavy wools and fabrics that are generally associated with business and formalwear. ryung-gu however, almost exclusively picks his shapes from garments that have a working class or blue collar origin; lots of jeans, informal but still structured jackets like bombers and denim jackets, and a fair amount of casual sportswear, practical wear, and synthetic fabrics. and although ryung-gu is framed as being rebellious like koo ryeon, unlike ryeon his rebellion always comes as an active response to something that upsets his internal or external systems. as a child he is dutifully and lovingly reverent of his mother, she's the centre of his world, and even as a reaper he isn't shown to have any real issues with authority. sure he clocks out right at eight hours, but that's not being rebellious, that's just following the rules to a technicality. it's only when his mother is taken from his life and he loses that external structure that he actively 'becomes rebellious', and even then i think rebellion is the wrong word; it's actually just self destructive behaviour that is 'morally' grey according to the wider societal system. when his story arc finally concludes and he has his mother back in his life (sort of), he visually sheds some of his more 'rebelliously' attributes by cutting and redying his hair to the 'standard masculine' haircut and showing up to work in a suit and/or less flamboyant patterns and garments. but he does still keep the same number of layers and shapes as he did before.

---

***when japan surrendered in 1945 it ceded all its territories to the us, so really korea was actually just colonized again. you can see in the korean war vet episode that in flashbacks joong-gil is wearing a western style suit as a reaper, which would have been between 1950-53, but in the comfort women episode he's still wearing hanbok, which would have been at the earliest 1930ish. also it would makes sense logistically as jumadeung is supposed to mirror the 'real' world. i also think this is where the framing of it as a 'company' comes from as well.

#OK I HAVE TO STOP NOW THIS IS WAY TOO LONG #non kpop questions #if more ppl start asking me about shows and stuff i might start a general media analysis tag #tomorrow #netflix tomorrow #tv #this show had like a TON of problems but i think the heart of it was really good and it was probably necessary? #like the fact that it was extremely empathetic is very important but also. it wasn't realistic at all #and also it was relatively kind to character stereotypes that don't normally receive kindness? like fat characters #AND the fact that ryung-gu is explicitly a recovered addict and still framed sooo empathetically is a huge deal #esp for a country with massive drug stigmas still #but the fact that christian morality is SO deeply baked into just the concept of the show is big oof. like huge massive very large OOF #anyways. here's my very long essay on defensive dressing and how immortal characters arent just gonna dress in the latest trends #text #answers #also further point about ryeon. i think the reason we rarely saw her as a reaper in the period between when jumadeung 'westernized' #and the present is bc it would be a huge betrayal of her character to dress her in something 'traditionally' feminine from that time frame #but they couldn't feasibly dress her as more gender-nonconforming because it would have pretty much instantly coded her as a lesbian #which i think they were actively trying to avoid #OH I FORGOT ABT JOONG-GILS CAMEL NUMBER IN EP5 #thats an important character beat for him tho too so it still fits the pattern #since its the first time he makes an effort to try and see a different perspective. even if it doesn't actually work and he regresses lol #anyways these three characters are sooooooo interesting and unusual and i really like all of them #yes ryung-gu is my favourite and no its not just bc he cries pretty! i have real reasons!!

[wackernagels]

jin samurai champloo is actually a very good way to exemplify what i’m trying to do here w my gender. like i am a man. this is something nobody questions. but i am also hot enough to pass as a woman if i wear the right fit. and i can be pretty. but I am undoubtedly a guy. not chad at the gym kind of guy but bitch composing poetry in a garden in 1500s ming china kind of guy. 1930s opera dan actor out of costume guy.

#mumbles #samurai champloo #alternatively: my gender can also be explained with nezha #i am a guy. i can also look like a very pretty girl. everyone has tacitly agreed i am a guy #nobody questions that I am very hot and would also fight god #this can probably be a whole discussion on east asian vs western concepts of masculinity but i’m not being smart today #used all my braincells to write code

[pancakejikook]

"what is "he's so gender" even supposed to mean?"

If you get a clear answer please share with the class cause I have no f clue what the new generation obsession with this ‘gender’ thing is all about. Pretty sure it’s just an expression that is cool nowadays but makes no much sense

lol anon, sadly I haven't got an answer. the expression confuses me because we all know what gender is (a series of stereotypes imposed on people based on their sex) so if someone says that a guy "is so gender" I would interepret it as a clumsy way to say he's, uh, gender-comforming, yet it seems to be used in the exact opposite way somehow? idk. I'm with you though, I don't get this gender obsession either, I gues I'm too old.

#also let me add that I don't think anyone in bts has a concept of gender in the western sense #so it's kinda weird to push it on them like I see armys do quite often #they're just guys that are sometimes styled a bit androginously for photoshoots that's all #I'm sure these people mean no harm but still #*shrugs*

[lux-astrorum]

I watched the 2020 Disney Mulan again last night thinking maybe it's not as bad as I remember it being, maybe I was just disappointed at the time when it came out. turns out it was actually as bad as I remember it being

#the westernization is. palpable #like of COURSE the cartoon is westernized as well but what gets me about the film is the playing at being culturally legitimate #while at the same time inventing a mythology around the concept of chi that is just so so cringey #and using that as a framework for a metaphor about what is essentially the struggles of middle-upper class white cishet women #but projecting it onto Chinese women thousands of years ago and even inventing a completely unconvincing character to drive the point home #and i do feel like the elimination of mulan's hair cutting ties into this as well. i do. #in terms of both the gender politics of the story and the westernization #bc when its revealed that she's a woman the film constantly starts reminding you that she is female-presenting #she is doing the femininity #she is not wearing armor. she has a long inexplicably wavy blowout. her face is now magically clean all the time #like. not that you can't be stereotypically feminine and also crush the patriarchy #but i just feel like the cartoon had way more to say about gender roles and gender presentation

[moki-dokie]

been seeing some stuff on blue eye samurai and big yikes to nearly everyone pushing extremely western ideals onto these characters.

this is early edo period. 1600s. the japan you know now did not exist yet.

yall. please. there was NO concept of sexuality in pre-modern japan. that came with both the influx of christianity and western influence very very late in history. like, mid-1800s. (yes, there was christianity pre-1800s but it was not a widespread idea yet and wouldn't be until about the 1800s since, y'know, missionaries were routinely murdered before then)

"so and so is either bi and hasn't figured it out yet or..." no. that isn't how it worked then. nobody gave a shit what was between your legs. anyone could be attracted to anyone else. it was a little more common for male homosexual relationships to be between an adult and younger male - like many other places around the world - but two adult men could bang and love each other just as easily. relationships between women were quite common - especially since so many men were often away at war. there's tons of pornographic prints from the time depicting all manner of fun queer relationships. sex itself had absolutely no moral assignment to it. good sex was good health. it didn't matter who with. (well, social class/caste mattered more than anything else tbh but that didn't stop upper and lower class from fucking.) that isn't to say people didn't have preferences. of course they did. that is human nature. preferences arose more from physical appearance, caste, and circumstances with gender being about the last thing one would look for in a partner - romantic, casual, or otherwise. the only role in sex where gender actually mattered was for procreation.

there would be no queer awakening moment, no sudden switch flipped, no stigma to have internal conflicts about because it simply did not exist as a concept whatsoever. you were either attracted to a person or you weren't, it was that simple. gender played no role when it came to sex and sexual attraction. the japanese were lightyears ahead of western cultures in this particular area - like most cultures were before christianity came in and ruined everything with its backwards morals and strict good/evil dichotomy.

yall have got to realize queer rep will not and should not always adhere by modern western standards. there was no straight, gay, bi, or anything else of the sort. the closest they ever got was referring to roles during sex - as in who is giving and who is receiving.

i know this is mostly a made up story but it is still set within a very specific time period and culture, which should be honored and respected by not making it fit into our box. tons of research went into making this show historically accurate (albeit with some discrepancies but tbh they aren't really that huge) right down to the calligraphy writing. please please please don't whitewash the culture from these characters.

i say this mainly because without this knowledge, so many of you are going to build these characters up on a foundation they aren't meant to be on and then you'll rage about queerbaiting and bad queer rep if it isn't somehow super explicitly stated, if it doesn't match your very modern, very western ideal of what queer looks like. don't try to force this plot and narrative and characters into something they canonically and historically aren't. headcanons are a thing, AUs are a thing, fanfiction is a thing - leave your western thinking for those and let these characters simply exist as they should otherwise. this is one of those times where the queerness really does not need to be examined at all beyond what we get.

i know it can be hard to wrap your head around - sexuality is such a huge part of our identity in the western world and has slowly started to spread amongst other parts of the world in importance. but just keep in mind with these particular characters, that concept would be so very alien to them.

#blue eye samurai #i'm gonna bite people if i see complaints about queer anything in this show

[kingsandbastardz]

So for basically my whole life I'd grown up with and was resigned to accept that the chinese concept of formal/nice clothing of my and the previous generation has been western clothes. So at any awards ceremonies or performances, entertainers would show up mostly in western suits/dresses and maaaaaybe you'll spot the occasional cheongsam if they're going for a Wong Fei Hong vibe. Which, you know, kinda sucks if you have any concept of western cultural imperialism in asia.

So when the hanfu revivalist movement started, I was waiting to see when it would enter the mainstream -- my hope was for fashion designers to integrate traditional/dynastic elements into their work and make it common place enough that I can buy this shit online for ME. Because I WANT.

Though some of the designs can be a bit hit or miss, I am LOVING what various stars and entertainers are wearing out and about now.

Anyway - here's a collection of Xiao Shunyao's modern hanfu inspired/hybridized stage outfits from the last couple years. For his MLC performances, his stylists seem to be borrowing inspiration from his Di Feisheng and possibly other character costume silhouettes.

I'd been seeing a few comments about how his outfits play with gender - and some of his outfits do! But I think the interesting thing to discuss is from which standard is he playing with gender? Because from a western perspective, the things he does with his western suit tops, belting on top of the jacket for a tightly cinched waist, and the addition of a trailing skirt = femme. But if you're talking from a hanfu-hybridized pov, that's just a modern take on hanfu and having any of those elements is not inherently femme and would often read masc to me.

So these things aren't necessarily gendered because they exist traditionally in chinese men's clothing or costume designs (ie video games, comics, historical fiction illustrations and film, etc, so therefore in the modern lexicon of masculine/acceptable for men):

presence or lack of a skirt

silky, velvety, gauzy or sparkly material choice, esp in formal or stage clothing

short or long length of skirt

embroidery

flowers/floral/bird designs

folding fans

certain styles of makeup

beading, gold, tassels, jewels

non-chunky jewelry

headbands

widely flowing silhouettes

What XSY's stylists are doing with some western clothing items are interesting. I'm convinced there have been one or two western jacket tops made of thinner material that they're folding over the front, and belting down instead of buttoning (which then matches with his other outfits that are designed specifically to do this). Then they're adding a skirt, cloak or bracer element to it.

The western portions often bring a military minimalist feel which they balance with a more gauzy material in the skirt or cloak portions.

Things I think are playing with gender:

row 1 - image 1: red di feisheng-inspired outfit

The lace-up girdle is there to match the bracers in both material and style. And it's positioned to be similar to the heavy belt that Di Feisheng wears. HOWEVER. That style of girdle/corset-like clothing item can't be divorced from the modern idea of sexy leather corsets. So imo, this waist piece on that outfit was a choice. Especially when paired with his allergic-to-collars-higher-than-his-sternum necklines. And if you take into context how masculine yet female coded his character is in the drama, the whole look evokes that.

row 2, image 1: black western suit with belt on top, hat, cloak, black boots and not-visible but also a black tassel fringe skirt

Hat and cloak moves the intention of the outfit from western toward a more Asian slant, because alone, it looks like a western black suit with western heeled boots, cinched waist with a lady's belt (seated photoshoot) and western style tassel skirt. The suit top consists of a vest and a shrug-like sleeve portion that appears masculine at first glance. But take the shrug and pair it with the tassel skirt (I can't find the red carpet photos but here is a better view of the skirt when seated), and I think you got a look that's both intentionally edging toward the femme in a western sense but also confusing matters by hiding within the parameters of both western and chinese traditional male styling.

row 2 - image 2 : white asymetrical western jacket styled in a front fold-over style, gauze skirt, trailing pearl embellishments

The more traditional leaning version of this is the white outfit in row 3 that he wears to the Hi6 Hello Saturday variety show -- the skirt portion on that outfit is one I'd consider non-gendered. Row 1, images 2 and 3 are examples of masculine/neutral uses of gauze that plays with flow of form but isn't inherently femme. This stage outfit is very western-appearing masculine suiting, until you hit the skirt which is giving me long ballerina tie-on skirt with the additional swan/mermaid pearl strings. Imo, another example of deliberately using traditional masculine styling but switching it up with the combination of material choice and make that is feminine.

row 2, image 3: black space military boots, black suiting, black -silver ombre sequin trailing skirt and white gauzy shawl with black floral design

The over all design is going for a masculine military-feel. (think this outfit for shen langhun) But instead of a thicker military cloak, it's replaced with a woman's gauze shawl and a skirt that trails behind him very much like the back of a woman's formal fish-tail gown when he moves around. If you take into context Wang Herun's outfit is a white-silver sequined dress cut in a way to also give a space-military-queen vibe, imo they both coordinated their outfits to balance out with both femme and masc qualities.

Thoughts? I'm curious what others think about this.

While I wait for the CNY photoshoot for XSY's red and black look, here's him with his stage collaborators with a nice range of skirt lengths, period influences and material choices. The woman in the center is the one with the most military-fighter design out of the bunch. The dudes are all in variations of formal-wear-with-good-kicking-boots (and lots of crotch space).

#xiao shunyao #mysterious lotus casebook cast #my royal ramblings #fashion #chinese fashion #gendered fashion in cultural context

[katrafiy]

I think about this image a lot. This is an image from the Aurat March (Women's March) in Karachi, Pakistan, on International Women's Day 2018. The women in the picture are Pakistani trans women, aka khwaja siras or hijras; one is a friend of a close friend of mine.

In the eyes of the Pakistani government and anthropologists, they're a "third gender." They're denied access to many resources that are available to cis women. Trans women in Pakistan didn't decide to be third-gendered; cis people force it on them whether they like it or not.

Western anthropologists are keen on seeing non-Western trans women as culturally constructed third genders, "neither male nor female," and often contrast them (a "legitimate" third gender accepted in its culture) with Western trans women (horrific parodies of female stereotypes).

There's a lot of smoke and mirrors and jargon used to obscure the fact that while each culture's trans women are treated as a single culturally constructed identity separate from all other trans women, cis women are treated as a universal category that can just be called "women."

Even though Pakistani aurat and German Frauen and Guatemalan mujer will generally lead extraordinarily different lives due to the differences in culture, they are universally recognized as women.

The transmisogynist will say, "Yes, but we can't ignore the way gender is culturally constructed, and hijras aren't trans women, they're a third gender. Now let's worry less about trans people and more about the rights of women in Burkina Faso."

In other words, to the transmisogynist, all cis women are women, and all trans women are something else.

"But Kat, you're not Indian or Pakistani. You're not a hijra or khwaja sira, why is this so important to you?"

Have you ever heard of the Neapolitan third gender "femminiello"? It's the term my moniker "The Femme in Yellow" is derived from, and yes, I'm Neapolitan. Shut up.

I'm going to tell you a little bit about the femminielli, and I want you to see if any of this sounds familiar. Femminielli are a third gender in Neapolitan culture of people assigned male at birth who have a feminine gender expression.

They are lauded and respected in the local culture, considered to be good omens and bringers of good luck. At festivals you'd bring a femminiello with you to go gambling, and often they would be brought in to give blessings to newborns. Noticing anything familiar yet?

Oh and also they were largely relegated to begging and sex work and were not allowed to be educated and many were homeless and lived in the back alleys of Naples, but you know we don't really like to mention that part because it sounds a lot less romantic and mystical.

And if you're sitting there, asking yourself why a an accurate description of femminiello sounds almost note for note like the same way hijras get described and talked about, then you can start to understand why that picture at the start of this post has so much meaning for me.

And you can also start to understand why I get so frustrated when I see other queer people buy into this fool notion that for some reason the transes from different cultures must never mix.

That friend I mentioned earlier is a white American trans woman. She spent years living in India, and as I recal the story the family she was staying with saw her as a white, foreign hijra and she was asked to use her magic hijra powers to bless the house she was staying in.

So when it comes to various cultural trans identities there are two ways we can look at this. We can look at things from a standpoint of expressed identity, in which case we have to preferentially choose to translate one word for the local word, or to leave it untranslated.

If we translate it, people will say we're artificially imposing an outside category (so long as it's not cis people, that's fine). If we don't, what we're implying, is that this concept doesn't exist in the target language, which suggests that it's fundamentally a different thing

A concrete example is that Serena Nanda in her 1990 and 2000 books, bent over backwards to say that Hijras are categorically NOT trans women. Lots of them are!

And Don Kulick bent over backwards in his 1998 book to say that travesti are categorically NOT trans women, even though some of the ones he cited were then and are now trans women.

The other option, is to look at practice, and talk about a community of practice of people who are AMAB, who wear women's clothing, take women's names, fulfill women's social roles, use women's language and mannerisms, etc WITHIN THEIR OWN CULTURAL CONTEXT.

This community of practice, whatever we want to call it - trans woman, hijra, transfeminine, femminiello, fairy, queen, to name just a few - can then be seen to CLEARLY be trans-national and trans-cultural in a way that is not clearly evident in the other way of looking at things.

And this is important, in my mind, because it is this axis of similarity that is serving as the basis for a growing transnational transgender rights movement, particularly in South Asia. It's why you see pictures like this one taken at the 2018 Aurat March in Karachi, Pakistan.

And it also groups rather than splits, pointing out not only points of continuity in the practices of western trans women and fa'afafines, but also between trans women in South Asia outside the hijra community, and members of the hijra community both trans women and not.

To be blunt, I'm not all that interested in the word trans woman, or the word hijra. I'm not interested in the word femminiello or the word fa'afafine.

I'm interested in the fact that when I visit India, and I meet hijras (or trans women, self-expressed) and I say I'm a trans woman, we suddenly sit together, talk about life, they ask to see American hormones and compare them to Indian hormones.

There is a shared community of practice that creates a bond between us that cis people don't have. That's not to say that we all have the exact same internal sense of self, but for the most part, we belong to the same community of practice based on life histories and behavior.

I think that's something cis people have absolutely missed - largely in an effort to artificially isolate trans women. This practice of arguing about whether a particular "third gender" label = trans women or not, also tends to artificially homogenize trans women as a group.

You see this in Kulick and Nanda, where if you read them, you could be forgiven for thinking all American trans women are white, middle class, middle-aged, and college-educated, who all follow rigid codes of behavior and surgical schedules prescribed by male physicians.

There are trans women who think of themselves as separate from cis women, as literally another kind of thing, there are trans women who think of themselves as coterminous with cis women, there are trans women who think of themselves as anything under the sun you want to imagine.

The problem is that historically, cis people have gone to tremendous lengths to destroy points of continuity in the transgender community (see everything I've cited and more), and particularly this has been an exercise in transmisogyny of grotesque levels.

The question is do you want to talk about culturally different ways of being trans, or do you want to try to create as many neatly-boxed third genders as you can to prop up transphobic theoretical frameworks? To date, people have done the latter. I'm interested in the former.

I guess what I'm really trying to say with all of this is that we're all family y'all.

#transgender #third gender #hijras #femminielli #trans women are women #trans solidarity #trans rights #transmisogyny #transunity #transunitism #this is what trans unity looks like

[needle-noggins]

(CW for SA, suicidal ideation) Here we go. My favorite and simultaneously least favorite panel of Vash and Knives.

I've seen a few interpretations of this scene and before we dive into the one that really struck me, let's start with the more... chill one. We're finally introduced to the third gun of Trigun, Vash's angel arm. And the way we're introduced to it involves Knives forcing him to pull the trigger. Of course, since no one knows anything about Knives, the people of Noman's Land blame Vash for Fifth Moon, and Vash likewise blames himself (this is kinda a spoiler but if you've been paying attention, it's just par for the course). However, he's not the one who pulled the trigger, Knives is. It brings up an interesting moral question of blame - do we blame the gun (and Vash, who is being used/objectified as a weapon here), or the person who wanted it to happen? Guns don't kill people, genocidal twins do!

Now for the awful interpretation, the one that makes me cry and wish Vash was real so I could hug him and pay for his therapy. And really highlights how awful Knives is and how far he'd go for his brother in his own, fucked-up way. I touched on this in a previous post about Legato and the Murder Cafe, and the whole time I was thinking about Fifth Moon but didn't want to say anything for the sake of spoilers.

So. Pay attention to the way Vash and Knives are standing. Knives, when he first grabbed Vash's head, was standing in front of him. He moves behind him to better control him and yeah, he's still controlling him via hand on head, and now he's got his other hand gripping Vash's chest, where feathers/wings are manifesting. Knives is assaulting him. If you wanna get crazy with it and say that the angel arm is kinda phallic, you could say... yeah. This is rape. I heard that specific interpretation once and while I accepted it I also don't know if that would be generally accepted or if I'd be called out for it, so I'm trying to tread lightly here.

It also doesn't escape me that of course the angel arm has feminine features like the plants - the plants that, again, humans are exploiting for their ability to create. There's a lot of feminist commentary to be made here but many people have said it better than me. Specifically I'm thinking of this one post I saw about gender fuckery and Tristamp Vash. Anyway.

Also, the atomic bomb/black hole/sun/whatever that is in the middle... It's just so powerful. It's terrifying. The eldritch body horror here is a punch to the gut. What the fuck, Trigun? I thought this was a funky space western!!!

Oh, and here's more commentary on the following few panels:

Vashussy shot, Knives is still right behind him. Yeah, I wasn't kidding about how bad this pose is for them. Knives, you sick fuck.

Vash shoots himself in the leg (a key difference from '98 trigun, lol), because of course he does, but it doesn't free him from the arm.

The arm's getting darker/the light inside is getting lighter! Stampede did an awesome job with their interpretation of the angel arm and I don't think I would have understood it without that. Also, on my first read I didn't notice that Vash is literally levitating, which is cool, but also terrifying because ?? he's not in control of that either??

Finally. A super painful, minimalist, double-page spread. Nightow loves 'em. Vash thinks he's dying (maybe?) and he wishes he had never existed. It's not suicidal ideation per se, but he wishes he didn't exist at all because he's already caused enough suffering. This is a low for him, because he believes so strongly in the concept of the Blank Ticket. (Come on, soupy brain bitch boy, get it together!) He's a monster, it's just how he was born, and he's not in control. Very specifically too, he says "we", and then changes it to "I"... he doesn't blame Knives at all, and that's very him. I want to shake him! Stop playing the martyr, Vash!

#trimax #trigunbookclub #cw assault #cw sa #ive never tagged content warnings before please help if i didnt do it well enough #cw sui ideation #vash the stampede #millions knives #also if you say ONE WORD about plancest i will kill you with my mind because you have sorely misunderstood the point here #posting this makes me so nervous ngl #dont hate me

[missmastectomy]

Speaking of men taking on female roles, can we talk about the supposed third genders the western trans community loves to trot around??

Almost ALL of the “third genders” throughout various cultures describe two phenomena: eunuchs or feminine/homosexual men who participated in traditionally feminine roles, and who sometimes had their own unique roles that they played out in society.

I hate when people bring it up as a gotcha because if anything it cements that “gender” as a concept is intertwined with sex, and that people who defy gender roles can literally be ousted from their birth sex. It’s also extremely telling that almost all these categories are male exclusive. The only exception I can think of are the sworn virgins of the Balkans. Like it’s so obvious that these third genders are designed to keep men and women into boxes, and if someone steps outside that box people will sometimes literally create a new box for them.

It also seems obvious to me that women are basically never allowed to be anything but women because most cultures are fundamentally patriarchal. Many cultures don’t even acknowledge lesbianism in the mainstream like they do male homosexuality, even if to condemn it. The idea that a woman could exist outside of men and could desire another woman the way she supposedly must desire a man is alien. For women, there is no escape from the female gender role. It says a lot about what gender actually is.

#gender critical #third gender #radical feminists do touch #radical feminist safe #radical feminists do interact

[cryptotheism]

So did the more western alchemists often gender the whole world in a yin and yang sort of way?

Also maybe that concept's a little messed up since it implies people of one gender are closer to the stars and those of another are closer to a pile of sludge, no matter of how crucial to universal harmony that conceptual pile of sludge (yin) might be.

Imo you're pretty close but thats not quite it. Western Alchemical Gender is kinda its own thing, separate from both the social conception of gender and similar spiritual concepts like Yin and Yang.

Like, when alchemists say that a substance is female, they mean "substances can dissolve in this substance" and when they say a substance is male, they mean "this will dissolve in another substance." Its a lot closer to like, how modern people think of acids.

That's not to say its unconnected to contemporary ideas about gender. But you gotta understand that when they say "male" they mean it in this weird platonic --as in the philosopher Plato-- sense.

Many byzantine/islamicate alchemists were heavily influenced by neoplatonism, which subscribes to platonic formalism. Iron is not male in the same way a dude with a penis is male. To a neoplatonic alchemist; both iron, and a dude with a penis, are just shadows of this principal abstract form of Maleness.

Both nashville fried chicken, and vegetable biryani, can be eaten for dinner, but that doesn't mean they share any particular essence of dinner-ness. Copper and the pussy are both alchemically female, but that's just because you can put stuff inside of them. Alchemically speaking, the butthole is female.

[fandomsandfeminism]

Every time I sit down to read about queer history, I'm always struck by how deeply sexuality and gender and gender expression used to be interwoven. (And for many of us still are.)

These days, I see people arguing that straight cis drag queens and GNC folks aren't "actually lgbt+" (one of the limits of using lgbt+ rather than queer), and acting like trans/nonbinary/genderqueer folks are a wholly separate group than lesbian/gay/bi/etc folks. People, lgbt+ people, talking bad about xenogenders and neopronouns because they are too weird, just for attention, giving us all a bad name, etc.

But this separation between gender, sexuality, and presentation is *new*

Looking back at history, especially within US and Western Europe, and either you were a heterosexual man/woman who presented accordingly, or you *werent.* That was the divide. If you transgressed on any 1 of those things- you were transgressing on ALL of them.

Being gay/bi inherently called your gender into question. Being gender nonconforming immediately reflected upon your sexuality. There wasn't a divide between these concepts. They were one and the same. You were *normal* or you were queer. And of course, not all gay/bi/lesbian folks were crossdressing (how else did one stay in the closet?) , and not all people in gender nonconforming clothing had a sexual interest in the same sex. But these ideas were constantly melding together. To be a man was to be straight and dress "like a man." To be a woman was to be straight and "dress like a woman." They defined each other.

In much of the country, you could be arrested if you weren't wearing at least 3 pieces of "correctly gendered" clothing. That's the rule that got a lot of folks arrested in gay bars- regardless of sex or gender. Even after same sex dancing was technically legalized, crossdressing would get you beaten and arrested by the cops. Cops would "inspect" bar patrons to ensure they were dressed in the "correct" clothes when raids occurred.

And that's not to say that the community was ever fully free of assimilationist/exclusionist factions. There have always been groups, generally of cis/gender-confirming gay, lesbian, and bisexuals who argued in favor of respectability and fitting in and showing a willingness to leave the crossdressers and drag queens and butches behind if it meant they could keep their white collar jobs. If it meant social tolerance and safety for *them.*

But we should be able to recognize that the heart and soul of queer Liberation is in unity and embracing the weird, not shunning it. That we are strongest when we stand together.

I don't think it's WRONG for us today to distinguish gender, sexuality, and presentation as different aspects of identity. But I think we should be very very careful to not let that nuance lead to exclusionary or over-compartmentalized thinking about queer issues.

#queer #pride #lgbt #queer history