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they-them-that · 4 months

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The Complex Misogyny Enacted by Queer Men

Call outs: James Somerton, Trixie Mattel, Katya, Le'Ron Readus, The Roundtable, Rupaul, Karl Lagerfeld, Dolce and Gabana

With the James Somerton scandal, although I only watched some of his videos in passing, it has definitely made me make sure to be more vigilant about the content I consume and how they source.

I also want to address James' misogyny, something that tragically isn't unique to him. The "straight girl" scapegoat many queer men target has bothered me for a long time. They try to frame it in a way that is "punching up" at the privileged but their problem is entirely against them being women. Trixie Mattel has a habit of complaining about "straight" girls that has put me off, especially when her complaints are incredibly presumptuous and small minded. We wouldn't know random women's sexuality yet we choose to assume they're straight so we can openly ridicule them. Even if these women are straight, the problems queer men levy towards them doesn't so much call out any discriminatory behavior as it is shaming women for what they think is "shrill", "annoying", or just for sharing a space with them.

I recall an episode of UNHhhh where Trixie and Katya said how straight people are guests in queer spaces and in the same way, they can be "uninvited". Even though they use a gender neutral term here, we know that the bulk of straight people who attend queer events are women. In the same way that queer spaces are a safe space for gay men, it's also a safe space for women who want to avoid sexual advancements and sexual violence. Gay men overlook women's issues and needs when they find their presence inconvenient despite women posing little threat to them.

I've also seen the way queer men target queer women when they feel like they've been benefiting more than them. James Somerton, La'Ron Readus, and Tom from The Roundtable have all argued how the ratio of wlw representation in media compared to mlm is due to favouritism towards wlw relationships. This is a pure assumption, at the point they made this argument, we never heard of a canon mlm relationship being shot down by TV or movies and the accusers provided no examples of such, just that wlw representation has been making a breakthrough at the time thanks to the vehement pushing of its writers and show creators. It has nothing to do with preferences for wlw relationships as these studios have tried to stop it and still push back against it to "appeal to a broad audience". It just so happens that the queer creatives who have made waves for representation wanted to represent queer femmes, most identifying closely with sapphic experiences. To underestimate the amount of discrimination these queer creators got for getting wlw representation out there by assuming they have some type of privilege over queer CIS men is grossly ignorant. Although mlm representation is important, it's upsetting to see queer men look at wlw representation and respond with jealousy, unknowing of how queerness already centralizes them. RuPaul's Drag Race, for example, was only allowed for CIS men before trans women were recognized as legitimate drag performers, many of the "CIS" contestants turning out to be trans women. Drag kings still have not made any appearances on the show and are still overlooked and undervalued in the Drag community.

Even though queer men cry for their turn when it comes to something like queer representation in the media (even though it exists, they just have a problem with women having more than them), they don't bat an eye in the way queer men dominate places like the fashion industry that heavily discriminate against women (Karl Lagerfeld and Dolce and Gabana being infamously misogynistic). They also wince at gay shipping culture and mlm representation when it's created by women, accusing them of fetishism, something I've been guilty of in the past. Although, there's an understandable desire for mlm content that is also written by queer men and discomfort about women being voyeurs in gay fiction, we're also assuming these women aren't queer themselves or that they even identify as women. Love Simon's author, Becky Albertalli was forced to come out as bisexual after years of scrutiny for being a "straight woman profiting off of queer romance".

"I legitimately didn't realize. I'm thirty-seven years old. I've been happily married to a guy for almost ten years. I have two kids and a cat. I've never kissed a girl. I never even realized I wanted to. But if I rewind further, I'm pretty sure I've had crushes on boys and girls for most of my life. I just didn't realize the girl crushes were crushes."

There is an oversight on how many people divulge in queer fiction in order to explore their sexuality and gender long before they even consider that they could be queer themselves (I know that was my experience). But even with straight women, many of them are actually drawn to gay fiction because it subtracts women from the equation. Female characters are subject to sexist tropes and many of their romances are imbalanced and toxic. Gay fiction has been a way for women to enjoy romance without feeling the weight of patriarchy through femme-presenting characters.

All this to say that misogyny is still fervent in the queer community and queer men do not get a pass on how they talk about and treat women. I noticed that the most privileged of the queer community, that being White CIS gay men, are the ones who act the most entitled in the queer spaces they enter, not the "straight" women they constantly antagonize. Queer men still struggle with what all men struggle with and that's acknowledging their privileges. Even if they swear their problem with women is because of their sexuality, it really ends up coming down to their gender.

#james somerton #trixie and katya #trixie mattel #katya zamolodchikova #rupaul's drag race #karl lagerfeld #dolce & gabbana #mysogyny #feminism #queer issues #lgbtq

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dueling-jesters · 20 days

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What are your thoughts on women romanticising or fetishising gay men via shipping. And when you draw the line when this happened. (Sorry for bad english)

Anyone who's been following me since I started this blog knows that I'm personally annoyed with the fetishization of gay people that has run rampant in fandom spaces for decades. Shipping on its own is completely fine, but I think it becomes something of an issue when people use it to implement harmful stereotypes or to hurt someone directly.

One way I often see is when some people will take two male characters and change their appearance and personalities to project heteropatriarchal standards upon them, essentially turning them into a stand-in for an abusive straight couple. This is, of course, an extreme example.

One related form of it is,via headcanon, the association of body type, personalities, and sexual positions (i.e., making the shorter or curvier male character more feminine, weak, and submissive). This oftentimes overlaps with fandom racism (making a darker-skinned character aggressive and abusive) and transphobia (people who have a trend of making all of their transmasculine-headcanoned characters soft, submissive bottoms exclusively paired with cis-male-headcanoned characters).

One of the most obvious indicators of someone doing this is if they are obsessed over whoever is the top and who is the bottom in a way that's one step from asking "But who really is the guy and who's the girl in the relationship?". This becomes incredibly apparent when a multishipper exclusively headcanons submissive/feminine bottoms and dominant/masculine tops, devoid of any variety or versatility. It's a telltale sign that someone may not care what gay people are actually like in reality.

This doesn't necessarily mean that top and bottom headcanons are inherently fetishizing, but rather, when there is an amalgamation of it being a fandom member's main priority in shipping alongside reinforcing heteronormative stereotypes.

I personally think it's fine for someone to be primarily focused on shipping characters in fandom. It's extremely common for lgbt+ fans to project their experiences onto characters or to otherwise feel connected to them through shipping-even if they're of a different gender/ orientation. (Cisgender, heterosexual fans can be avid shippers as well without harming gay people!) A fan lusting over a character and shipping through projection is not inherently problematic, either. Perhaps my stance is biased as I am guilty of both. There could be a grey area or situations that may seem suspicious if taken out of context.

The perpetrators of fetishization are not exclusively women, nor should they be blamed for it as a whole. Just as some gay people are homophobic, and some trans people are transphobic, there are occasionally members of our community who treat gayness and/or transness as an "othering" quality- whether they separate themselves from the rest of us in doing so, or if it's a form of internalized bigotry.

There are, of course, plenty of cisgender, heterosexual men who display a similar, dehumanizing attitude towards lesbians and bisexual women - whether through media or in-person. In its entirety, this is not a fandom-exclusive phenomenon.

Fetishizing behavior has been weaponized in harassment and abuse towards gay people. Essentially, the preconceived bigotries and assumptions one may have fuel harmful stereotypes cast upon fictional characters, which in turn reinforce one's beliefs and can result in one holding the same assumptions about actual people. I won't go into much detail, but I have personally experienced and witnessed sexual harassment from self-proclaimed allies and fellow members of the lgbt community due to fanfiction-influenced mindsets.

In many aspects, I think the fetishization of gay men in fandom runs parallel to the patriarchal gaze prevalent in similar spaces - although it can absolutely converge at times. It can definitely make someone who would otherwise participate as a fan, or even as a shipper, feel alienated.

#ace's answers #thanks for sending this ask in!#although i am curious to if there was anything specific that prompted you to ask me this?#i hope my answer makes sense! i have many thoughts on this topic but it was difficult to coalesce all of them together into a solid respons #long post #this might completely go over the heads of some...#others may be too scared to interact with this post for they know themselves very well to be crossing the line

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scrambleseggy · 4 months

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I think something wild about being an afab going on T at almost 30 and also being someone who’s lived an overall queer experience under a somewhat tedious labeling process is that I have MET toxic masculine trans men. For the record, I very much appear as a cis woman to people, and most people I meet just kinda sum me up as “some sorta lesbian.”

TW from some harsher personal experiences.

Back in my early 20’s, one of my FTM franchise managers sexually harassed me at a company party very inappropriately. Within the same time frame, one of my now ex-friends and on-site manager was dating a trans men who fit ALL the stereotypes of toxic masculinity: disregard for others, pavement princess giant truck, constantly talking over others or using his strength as a source of intimidation (and I would say a source of overcompensation as well lets be real here lol). At a certain point he made this ex-friend cry so much, I had to ban him from my house and tell him I’d try to get a restraining order if he came back.

So it does really annoy me that there seems to be an ignorant group of people who form online when trans women speak about transmisogyny within the community. Because there are trans men out there who act like complete douchebags and assholes to validate themselves in their identity or they’re just plainly assholes, and this is something I would see a lot at gay clubs as opposed to tight knit groups or niche online circles. Trans women and others are trying to tell ya’ll that this is a problem that happens and some of you are childishly sticking your fingers in your ears and going “LALALA TRANSANDROPHOBIA SHHHHHH” and it’s like… Ya’ll, you don’t have to turn a blind eye to this shit because quite frankly it’s embarrassing and very misinformed.

I will say however that as someone who is thinking about transition now, I can empathize with the knee-jerk reaction as well. It’s really scary to have people tell you the negative things you could become or ways you could hurt people. It can actually in my experience be a whole driving force in continuing to remain dysphoric through your life because it’s better to do that than feel like you may end up being completely alienated from everyone, especially if all women are a very important part to you in your life.

The whole “T is poison” thing runs deep. I always had this fear that the moment I’d start it would be the moment I would become the very thing I’m made to be afraid of even if it’s what I want to be. It’s such a difficult ball of yarn to unravel. What if I did get male privilege, but even in my gender euphoria, I end up hating myself anyway? What if I don’t get male privilege or “pass” but people in the “community” (such a loose and confusing word imo) also hate me and then I have no one? If straight women treat me bad after or before “passing”, if lesbian women see me in ways I don’t want to be seen, if cis straight men think I’m a freak and gay men think I’m an intruder… Where does that place me in the world? And who really am I? Will people believe me less or more when I’m hurt by others?

I think it’s atleast something for people to consider because as someone who’s dealing with really bad dysphoria right now, these are the kinds of thoughts that have been running through my head.

It’s also good to remember that online is online and real life is real life. Yes sometimes they reflect each other, but oftentimes, people lie on the internet (GASP!) and speak in exaggerations.

This is why it’s always good to try and strive for local connects to maintain your own sanity. At the end of the day, I know my own friends who still see me as the same person. And getting to know my own family of queer people of all kinds who I love dearly and they love me back does make the world feel like a more understanding place and less like a cruel and divisive one. I guess it’s just something to keep in mind.

#trans men #transgender #lgbtq+

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genderplugin · 7 months

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tw// me being annoying

ok so like for gender and sexuality are completely divorced people shut up i haven’t reconciled that and ever since i came out and it has broken my brain >:(

i guess i am probably bisexual but i def like boys more but i seriously hate talking about dating stuff/attraction with my friends because i swear i can literally feel their perception of my gender change whenever i talk about it. it really scares me because like i will feel lots of guilt around my gender and how i’m “performing” and idk i’ve had so many experiences now where i’ll talk about boys i’m obsessed with and people will just talk to me like i’m a faggot or twink 😭 idk i usually feel pretty ok with how i’m perceived with friends but like as soon as i talk about attraction like i literally wanna put my hands on my head and rip my skin off. i’m def not lesbian but there’s like such a stigma around all trans girls being lesbians and i’m terrified to be seen that way too… i feel like people poke fun at it in both ways where if i like boys i’m gay and if i like girls i’m actually just a straight man and i can’t fucking win… i don’t know the amount of times i have been called a twink when i go out dancing has had such a bad effect on my sense of self 😵‍💫😵‍💫 (also fuck djboywife lol). it’s gotten to the point where i like literally get sad when gay men are attracted to me and it happens literally all the time. even last summer i was seeing this guy for like a month and he would say so much shit to me that wasn’t mean spirited but would get in my head so badly :-( like he would always ask my to top him and one time said my facial hair was tickling his face (immediately started laser after this) and i was like oh this person definitely sees me as a man :)))) and like i was dumb enough to ask him about it and he said he was attracted to how “androgynous” i am 😭

like i don’t know i don’t actually hate the idea that sometimes during sex i should feel more fem and sometimes i should feel more masc like that’s kind of a pretty idea but i swear i’ve had some of my most dysphoric moments during it and like i will literally go nonverbal.

and ALSOOO like big thing i hate the way other trans women talk to me so much. like haha funny trans women are all horny but literally they just say deranged shit to me that i doubt they would say to a cis woman so quickly and it makes me feel so gross like how about u be nice to me for like 10 texts instead of talking about what u want to do to me!!!! and then i feel like i can’t even be mad at them because i’m like a prude or something and should just be comfortable with people saying deranged shit to me when i barely know them just because we are both trans???????????? like i get being down bad sexting is fun but it’s seriously like the lack of even seeing me as a person before they start that that makes me wanna cry

really i’m just exhausted and angry because whenever i yearn i feel like i have to do it correctly or else it will affect people’s perception of me and it’s so fucking annoying. i could be literally crazy and projecting my insecurities ig but also like, i don’t know i see that pattern with how people treat me 😭😭 like i just wanna like pretty boys who actually see me as a woman but it always feels so impossible!!!!!!!!

anyways this was entirely incoherent i’m sure i started points and didn’t finish them but i’m not reading any of this again before i post i am just sad methinks

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musical-chick-13 · 11 months

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6, 7, 8, 10, 13?

YES THANK YOU. BLESS YOU.

6. Which ship fans are the most annoying?

Oh, God. Um. Most of the popular ones, if I'm being honest. There are a bunch of different ways I could answer this, from "it's everywhere" to "people misunderstand this canon dynamic" to "people make disgusting bigoted comments toward another, '''in the way''' character" to "most destructively moralistic" so I'll talk about the fanbase that historically has encompassed all of these, which is. The J*hnlockers.

I don't think I can EVER explain how utterly unhinged (derogatory) this fandom was when the show was airing. People straight-up labeling their analyses as a "conspiracy," convincing others that there was a Super Secret Actual Finale Episode that would "fix" their ship not being canon. They paired the main villain up with a character who didn't even exist in canon because doing anything involving the women was, presumably, too much to ask. The absolutely horrendous things they would say about the female characters, ESPECIALLY to fans of them who were minding their own business. (Also, they called one of the gay co-creators "actually a straight man" for not canonizing this ship which is completely and utterly WILD to me.) Genuinely there was NO space more unsafe fandom-wise that I have EVER been in. I cosplayed Irene for a con one time and, though luckily nothing happened, I was AFRAID FOR MY LIFE THE WHOLE TIME. Like. The level of vitriol and misogyny and biphobia (I'm not even going to get into that one) was UNREAL. To the point where genuinely I hope we never get new content of any kind so I don't have to think about people who act like this ever again.

7. What character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how how the fandom acts about them?

...........at the risk of getting murdered. MCU Steve. He was just kind of. There. To me. I didn't particularly care about him because he read to me as "generic good guy" which isn't an archetype that particularly resonates with me, but...then the fandom just. My God. Saying that EVERYTHING he ever did was right, that NO ONE had any points when they questioned him, that he EPITOMIZED goodness in a way no other character did ever, that anyone who liked Tony (or anyone who was ever perceived as being in Steve's "way" about anything, don't get me started on how people treated Sharon) was A War Criminal Apologist Irl and was Singlehandedly Upholding Every Type of Oppression, like it was. SO annoying. I went from indifference to borderline-hatred out of spite.

8. Common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

GOT SEASON 8 WAS NOT THAT BAD, GOT SEASON 8 WAS NOT THAT BAD, GOT SEASON 8 WAS NOT THAT BAD, GOT SEASON 8 WAS NOT THAT BAD, GOT SEASON 8 WAS NOT THAT BAD, GOT SEASON 8---*I am forcibly removed from the building*

(On a more, uh...eloquent note, Lady Macbeth is not a badass gender-binary-shattering Girlboss™ femme fatale, she is a complete mess struggling with layers and layers of psychological issues that she does not let herself process, as well as a HELL of a lot of internalized misogyny. I love her, too, but this creation of her into some sort of suave or cool monarch lady genuinely baffles me. But then again, this play was my Capstone Research Project my final year of college and I wrote a 50-page paper on it, so maybe I'm a little too invested in how people present her, lmao.)

10. Worst part of fanon

Tbh, everyone who insists that two characters [usually (cis, white, abled) men] MUST be in romantic love because they care about each other. Like...don't get me wrong, I love looking at a LOT of non-canon pairings through a romantic lens because It's Neat™, but showing physical affection or willing to throw down/break the law for someone or calling them things like "admirable" or "amazing" are not? Inherently romantic?? Like by so many people's standards I'd be in romantic love with all my platonic friends, I guess, and that's very annoying. Romance isn't the only kind of love that exists!!! Nor is it the only important or significant one!!!

(On a more specific note, there's a fairly pervasive idea that Aki/Himeno is...a grooming relationship? When according to the established timeline and personal events that would. Literally be impossible. People take the "I'm not old enough to smoke" line that happens not long after they meet as some sort of confirmation that Aki was, like, fifteen or sixteen at the time? Or something? Instead of like. Nineteen. Dude has to have time in the three years he's known her to change significantly in appearance, become old enough to smoke (the legal age for that is 20 over there btw), and develop a substance dependence. And given the visual markers of Himeno's appearance when the two of them meet and how drastically her appearance changes in the intervening years, she can't be more than a couple of years older than him? People also take a comment that's meant to convey that he's been at his job three years longer than another character as saying that he's only three years older age-wise than said character. Which, again, given the timeline. Would be impossible. And also. There is an example of grooming in this story! It's really important to the plot actually! It's meant to be seen as horrifying! You would assume that the fact that this relationship is not presented in the same way means something! Don't get me wrong, Himeno's done her fair share of shitty things, but grooming her fight partner was not one of them. There are plenty of reasons this ship isn't for everyone, you don't have to make shit up, lmao.)

13. Worst blorbo-ification

Genuinely I cannot choose between these two, so we're gonna make this post even longer.

Why do people like K*lo R*n. I don't understand. He was given the barest hint of sort-of, hazy tragic "backstory" and people...very much disagreed with me when I said I didn't think that was enough from a narrative standpoint to actually mean anything. And that's not taking into account that this blorbo-ification happened before we even knew that. When all we knew was that he felt kind of lost sometimes and killed his dad while helping head up a fascist empire, people went wild, and not in a "I like villains" kind of way. In a "he's MEANT to be read as mentally ill" kind of way (my God, please stop saying this about every character who is mean and exhibits one emotion) and "his parents MUST have been abusive to him" kind of way. Neither of those things. Has any basis in canon. Just. Just admit you like a character who's not a good person. And that you like a ship that's a dark romance. You won't explode, I promise.

The other one is Light. People want him to be a tragic anti-hero SO bad, I am incredibly tired. He went from zero to beyond 100 in the space of a couple of in-story hours. He's not some misguided utopian visionary, he's a hypocrite with a god complex. I have met too many people like this irl to get behind any positive or sympathetic interpretation of this character. (And don't get me wrong. I think in order to most effectively present the Themes™ of the work as a whole, he had to be written like this. I don't begrudge the creator (in this instance, anyway), I begrudge the fanbase. There's actually a lot I could say about this piece of media and general reaction to it, but my God this is already long enough.)

I choose violence asks

#tw: grooming mention #tw: abuse mention #long post #hope y'all like me being salty lmao #prepared to get a small slew of unfollows as per what usually happens when I do things like this lmao #multi t(ASK)ing #re: the last part-I saw something that said coming into contact w/the title object only allowed him to fully embody the person he was all #along. that he now had something that gave him the permission & ability to do what had always been simmering under the surface. and that's #ultimately how I view things as well #salty mc13 is salty

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boasamishipper · 2 years

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character ask, tell me about Owen baybeeeee 👀👀👀

Sexuality Headcanon: Owen has always been attracted to men and women, but wrote off the former in a 'who hasn't had gay thoughts am i right guys' way for many years. (He likes his men like he likes his women: driven, intelligent, infuriating, and snarky.) Once he comes to terms with his attraction to men, he is slightly overwhelmed by All The Labels out there that well-meaning people try to foist upon him (you're pan! you're bi! are you sure you're not straight?). He feels most comfortable labeling himself as queer and just living his best life.

Gender Headcanon: Cis male.

A ship I have with said character: Owen/Billy has taken over my entire brain (as evidenced by this entire blog and my ao3). Narrative foils!! Snark and sexual tension!! Enemies to friends to lovers!! Chaotic dumbass old men!! This ship has it all. (I also have a soft spot for Owen/Gwyn; they have an Excellent dynamic.)

A BROTP I have with said character: Owen and Tommy are the BEST. Team mom and dad who can be petty and childish around each other (see: Completely Valid and Consuming Hatred for Pearce Risher) while still being supportive friends and co-workers. Give me more Owen&Tommy in s4!

A NOTP I have with said character: Owen/Catherine. I know Rob Lowe is a Republican but you CANNOT ever convince me that Owen is one or would date one, let alone date one who works for the governor of Texas and was canonically called 'Ann Coulter without the warmth'. And honestly?? They can Both do better. I hope to God we have seen the last of her.

A random headcanon: When TK was five and the three of them were at that wedding in Montauk that TK talked about in 3x09, Owen couldn't react or even breathe when he saw TK fall headfirst off the pier. After Gwyn saved TK and he saw that his son was okay, Owen shook TK hard and yelled at him for wandering off, and then hugged him So Hard and apologized for yelling. (He excused himself while Gwyn comforted TK and locked himself in the bathroom and had one of the most excruciating panic attacks of his life). After that, Owen insisted on being the one to teach TK how to swim, and every time he and Gwyn took TK to the ocean or the pool (or any body of water) after that, he didn't take his eyes off TK for even a second. Just In Case.

General Opinion over said character: I was mostly neutral about him at first (I didn't hate him, but I did find him annoying) but he's grown on me a lot, especially over the course of this last season. He's an impulsive idiot who makes a lot of bad decisions, but he's loyal and loves very fiercely and has a lot of pain and guilt beneath the superficial facade he puts on, and I'm very intrigued where they're going to take his character next. (And honestly, some of the hate he gets from the fandom feels very unwarranted. He's not a bad dad or a bad guy! He's just Not Perfect, and that's okay - a realization that I hope is part of his arc in the episodes to come.)

send me a character and i'll answer these questions

#thanks for asking!#911 ls #owen strand #tk strand #gwyneth morgan #billy tyson #owen x gwyn #billy x owen #yes he's annoying. yes he's my blorbo. no i will not clarify <3

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extremeexhaustion · 3 years

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One Piece Pride Headcanons

Straw Hats:

Luffy- Demisexual, Panromantic, and Genderflexible; Luffy's concepts of gender, sex, and romance are drastically different from most as he grew up in unusual circumstances. He's only been shown to display sexual interest in people he was close to (ex. Nami vs Hancock, Franky in one scene in a filler episode). There is a little projection from me as a demisexual individual starving for a character to relate to. You know this ray of sunshine is full of love for everyone and everything. I highly doubt gender matters to him when it comes to romance. On the same note, isn't overly concerned with pronouns used towards him or what others view him as (ex. had no issue using a feminine name like Lucy or trying on a dress). May take this oblivious rubber person a few tries using pronouns besides he/him to realize you're talking to him, but will respond once he realizes this.

Zoro- Gay, Demiromantic, and Cis; no sexual interest shown in woman (didn't join the peeping on Nami & Vivi). A respect for woman and attraction to them is not the same thing. Zoro clearly values loyalty and honor which gives me the impression that he wouldn't date just anyone. Feeds my Zolu soul as he only follows Luffy and treats him as his sole superior besides maybe Mihawk. Tries to act blasé about gender, but has clear ideas of gender clearly drilled into his mind. Fine with being a man and identifying as such.

Nami- Lesbian, Homoromantic, and Cis; has no signs of wanting to be a man despite pretending to be one for a few episodes. Nami has had reactions to two female characters where she showed a level of physical attraction to them. She has also shown no interest in dating or the looks of men. Sure, she has flirted with men, but it was more to achieve a goal. A means to an end and not attraction. She has only been fairly sweet to female characters with the main one being Vivi (one of the first F/F ships I ever had). How she reacts to the crew, it gave me the vibes of an annoyed lesbian tired of the others.

Usopp- Bisexual, Biromantic, and FTM Trans; well I got roped into the cult of transman!Usopp. I cultivated my own idea that he makes his own T as he's an expert with chemicals and he grows a plant that creates seeds that have a stronger effect than his previous chemicals. Maybe that it even changed his anatomy. Haven't thought much on it. Our boy here has only shown interest in women so far, but he also has an interesting attachment to Sanji. I'd say with Usopp's curious nature that he'd at least be willing to try dating/having intercourse with a man.

Sanji- Bisexual, Biromantic, and Cis; I think it's fairly clear that he has attached much of his identity to being a man and Judge wouldn't been decent enough to call a trans child by their preferred pronouns. Sanji is a loving and passionate man. Once he works through the gender trauma from his childhood, he becomes more open to his attraction to men. Still has a preference for woman, but does have feelings for the occasional man.

Chopper- Questioning; he is only a teenager. Baby doesn't have to know what he likes yet. He does careful exploration like when he's trying to make a new medicine.

Robin- Pansexual, Biromantic, and Demigirl; I wasn't sure what to peg Robin as but hetero/cis was not it. Like Usopp, our resident archeologist is fairly curious. I'd imagine she'd be open in terms of sex and romance although she's a little more cautious about who she dates. I also think she wouldn't have issues with being referred to in a neutral or masculine way, but she leans more towards being a woman.

Franky- Heterosexual, Heteroromantic, and Cis; a straight that's doing okay and is a wonderful ally.

Brooke- Heterosexual (flexible), Heteroromantic, and Demiboy; secure enough in manhood to have messed around when he was alive and has some gender hangups due to skeletal state.

Jinbei- Heterosexual, Heteroromantic, and Cis; haven't seen much evidence to the contrary.

Others:

Law- Asexual and Aromantic; this man has never shown sexual or romantic interest in anyone. He just likes his select group and no one else which is why he had to be bullied into being Luffy's friend. I swear some of you guys just ship him with people cause you think he's hot. Personally, I love the trope of the Tired Asexual(TM) just trying to keep everyone from dying. I know it's not a common one, so I take it where I can get it.

Kiku- Canon MTF transgender; shown improvement of Oda's former bigotry; treated like a normal person; 10/10

Yamato- Canon FTM transgender; shown improvement of Oda's former bigotry; treated like a normal person; 10/10

#zolu #namivivi #lgbt pride

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bao3bei4 · 3 years

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girlbosses, male wives, and other lesbian genders

a post about jing wei qing shang. but also mostly about another unrelated movie. spoiler-free.

for a lot of people, mulan 1998 is their definitive “ohhh i’m a chinese woman dressing as a man for contrived reasons and i get absolutely nooo erotic pleasure from this” movie.

however, because i am very special and unique, for me it’s the love eterne 1963. it’s the shaw brothers adaptation of butterfly lovers, the classic chinese folktale. here’s how i’d summarize the movie:

zhu yingtai, an aspiring scholar, convinces her parents to let her dress as a man to attend school. on the way there, she meets liang shanbo, another prospective student, and they become sworn brothers. they study together for three years, growing closer, until zhu yingtai returns home. liang shangbo accompanies her for the eighteen-li journey home while she hints she’s a woman, but he remains oblivious. by the time he learns her gender, her parents have engaged her to another man. he dies of grief, and while she mourns at his grave, it splits open, and she buries herself inside with him. two scraps of her torn outfit turn into butterflies and fly away.

it’s worth noting here that like. this movie is made in the huangmei opera style. so both zhu yingtai and liang shanbo are played by women (betty loh ti and ivy ling po respectively). because of this, basically every level of the film is preoccupied with gender: if we take zhu yingtai’s male performance as credible (as the characters in the movie do) the leads bond through male homoeroticism; the text is ultimately about a heterosexual romance; it is acted out by two women, in a performance that is difficult to mistake as heterosexual or even feminine; and the dialogue of the movie can’t help but remark on this.

basically it asks: what if lesbians could be gay both ways? wouldn’t that be based?

like opera was traditionally made by single gender casts, so roles tended to be genderless, in that the gender of the actor doesn’t determine the gender of the role they play. roles are instead typed into four categories: dan (fem), sheng (masc), chou (clown), and jing (painted face). it’s a sick gender quadinary. each of these roles has further subtypes that are represented through stylized patterns of singing, makeup, costuming, movement etc.

so in butterfly lovers, betty loh ti plays a dan, and ivy ling po plays a sheng. but because of the textual cross-gender play, you end up with a woman playing a woman playing a man who falls in love with a woman playing a man.

i’m going to make a brief digression here into talking about like.. acting theory. in the european tradition, you see it evolving out of early concerns (from stanislavski, brecht) about the fourth wall, and its permeability or lack thereof. in chinese opera tradition, the fourth wall didn’t ever really exist. and mei lanfang, the legendary fanchuan performer, claimed that his success wasn’t just due to his appearance, but rather, his mastery of some nonliteral feminine subjectivity.

If I kept my male feelings, even just a trace, it will betray my true self; then how can I compete for the audience’s affection for feminine beauty and guile?

i’m not going to argue that there’s like, an essence to being a woman because i’m not a fucking idiot. but there’s something to be said for the idea that the gendered interplay between the audience’s perception of the actor, the actor’s perception of themself, and the character they play is a massive part of the appeal of fanchuan performance.

this is echoed by david hwang’s m. butterfly, in which gallimard memorably says, “i’m a man who loved a woman created by a man. everything else—simply falls short.” btw sorry for having the type of brain disease where i constantly reference chinese crossdressing related media. you already know why i have it.

anyway. parallel to that (but far less morally detestably), jin jiang argues “young male impersonators in yue opera embody women’s ideal men—elegant, graceful, capable, caring, gentle, and loyal.” so, trivially, 1) the eroticism embodied by fanchuan performers is distinctly different from their “straight” counterparts, and perhaps less trivially 2) it’s way better.

back to the love eterne for a bit. one of the many reasons it’s lodged itself into my psyche is because there’s something more interesting at play than just all that. normally in opera, to compensate for any perceived residual femininity in the sheng, the dan camps it up even further. so this is how zhu yingtai first appears, this bratty femme pastiche of womanhood. yet within a couple minutes she’s dressed as a man, which she’ll stay as for the bulk of the movie. they do however make compromises with the makeup--more gently lifted eyebrows than the steep angles of the sheng opera beat, and an improbably masculine smoky eye.

that’s right. they performed girlbossification on her.

i don’t want to suggest that she’s straightforwardly feminine. i could write an entire other thing on her relationship to masculinity. instead i want to highlight the erotic interplay not just between the “girl” and the “boss” but also between her and her counterpart: the male wife.

liang shanbo is ostensibly straightforwardly male, but his relationship with zhu yingtai isn’t gay in the ahaha what if i was into my bro way-- it’s a what if i was into my bro and i was his wife way.

that’s right. they performed force fem on a cis woman-man. like when zhu yingtai tells him he can’t watch over her as she recovers from an illness because “boys and girls can’t sleep together,” liang shanbo asks “are you implying that I’m a girl?”

there’s a lot of shit like this that builds up over the course of the movie. it all culminates in that final 18 mile journey. along the way, zhu yingtai compares them to a pair of mandarin ducks, one male & one female. liang shanbo sputters “i am a man inside out-- you shouldn’t--” before graciously conceding, “you may compare me to a woman.”

this is like. a simple punchline. but it’s incredible. it’s true! liang shanbo isn’t a man inside out in that he’s a man and only a man, but rather that he’s a man seen inside first, built for desiring, by a woman & for a woman. as a perpetual object, he becomes a more believable woman than zhu yingtai. and at least in his view, it seems more likely that he could be a woman than her. but beyond that, his permissive tone reads as a kind of wanting in itself--recast, if she wants, “for you, i’ll be a woman.”

obviously this is a classic lesbian mood. who among us has not seen “no gender only lesbian” posts. and speaking of classic lesbians, you might ask. did you just tiresomely reinvent butches and femmes but with a more annoying name? yes. no. okay. well.

first, like butch/femme dynamics have both historical specificity and a classed character such that it’s not rlly that appropriate to impose them on the love eterne. and i guess more importantly, i wanna talk about stuff that isn’t real.

we fight all day about people who confuse performance with performativity, (i use we lightly here. for instance, i go outside every day so i don’t care about discourse) but what if we actually wanted to talk about the former for once? something specifically, whether we choose or are forced into it, that we pretend to be?

anyway. what the hell does all that have to do with jing wei qing shang. i’m going to start by first making the argument that there’s no such thing as a naturally occurring girlboss. i think, honestly, she’s a product of capitalism (“boss” should be the tipoff here) but because both of these stories are set in ambiguously historical china, i’m going to say, instead that she’s a product of uhhh primitive accumulation.

semantics so that i can be canon compliant with marxism aside, if girlbosses are made not born, can you choose to be a girlboss? sheryl sandberg says yes. i don’t disagree, i guess, but i will say: stop glamorizing it! humans only become girlbosses when they’re greatly distressed.

you become a girlboss when you have no other choice not to be one. when your wants are too great to be a woman, when the things you want are not things that women should want-- whether that’s something that really no one should want, like being a ceo, or whether that’s just something like loving a woman (or, as it is quite often, both) -- you have to become something else.

another important part of being a girlboss is that other people are not. your excesses mean that not only do you lose something in the process, but your bosshood comes at the expense of others. the girlboss necessitates a girlworker, or so to speak.

now we’re getting to jwqs. i’m assuming that you haven’t read jwqs, because most people haven’t. that was me until like four days ago. in broad strokes, the novel is about a woman, qiyan agula, who was raised as a prince, and her quest for revenge against the kingdom who slaughtered her people. of course, this involves marrying one of the princesses of that kingdom. it’s all very exciting (lesbian).

what’s striking about jwqs is that both of them seem to fit the girlboss paradigm, in vaguely similar ways. qi yan (agula’s assumed name) seems to follow the lineage of zhu yingtai, who pretends to be a man to achieve her goals. she’s forced to give up much in the process, and also sacrifices a, uh, lot of innocent people. similarly, nangong jingnu, the princess, is inherently a girlboss because royalty sucks. but also, qi yan girlbossifies her over the course of their relationship.

but i wouldn’t say jwqs is girlboss4girlboss. there’s something a little more complicated happening. qi yan isn’t zhu yingtai in that she’s a dan pretending to be a sheng. it seems more like that she was a sheng all along. it’s something that the women of the novel return to often: qi yan seems to be better than a man.

for instance, nangong sunu, jingnu’s older sister, reflects on this.

Nangong Sunu had seen many foolishly loving women who sacrificed everything for the sake of their husbands, but there were rarely any men who would do the same for them.

(...)

Thinking it through, Nangong Sunu felt that Qi Yan was truly becoming more interesting. She intended to observe discreetly for a while, to verify if such a man truly existed in this world. (ch 221)

and i forgot to write down the citation for this, but nangong jingnu also seems to argue that not only is qi yan prettier than a man, but she also seems to be prettier than a woman. (it’s the bit where she’s watching qi yan sleep. help me out here.)

moreover, the way qi yan relates to nangong jingnu is suggestive. jingnu brings out the elements of wanting to be a woman in her. it’s jingnu’s body that makes her wonder what she would look like if she was more feminine. it’s jingnu’s happiness that she resents, wishing that her people could have that as well. it’s her desire for jingnu that makes her a woman.

(another important distinction i suppose--while one person can’t be both a butch and a femme, because the girlboss and the male wife are things we pretend to be until we embody them / them us -- there’s greater slippage between the two.)

anyway, the girlboss/male wife dynamic is reversed wrt who’s actually dressing as a different gender. that suggests an inversion in the implications we see from the love eterne, if we are to take the love eterne as the paradigmatic girlboss text. which i do, for no reason in particular.

so then, is qi yan pretending to be a man? under the opera framework, we’re forced to say no. she’s not pretending to be a man any more so than liang shanbo (as acted by ivy ling po) was. but that, of course, feels incorrect, just looking at the text. is she, then, pretending to be a sheng? i’d strongly say no. the things that others see in her, they authentically see; and she does authentically feel the same things as liang shanbo wrt femininity.

so it has to be the opera framework that jwqs is subverting then. if qi yan kept some trace of her once-womanhood, if qi yan reveals her true self, and yet she still can compete for the audience’s affection-- jwqs’s inversion of the opera framework seems to argue instead that it’s that true self that allows you to compete. it’s being masc that lets you be a desirable woman; it’s being feminine that lets you be a desirable man.

there’s an increased gender ambivalence to jwqs, which make sense, i guess, seeing as it’s not meant to be a het story the way that the love eterne was. for instance, nangong jingnu crossdresses to go out in public, and qi yan remarks that jingnu’s disguise fooled her on their first meeting. when qi yan and jingnu go out in public, both disguised as men, they’re repeatedly perceived as a gay male couple. there’s freedom in that: they could be gay women only privately, they could be straight officially, but they could be anonymously gay publicly.

so it’s through the gay male pretense that they can be gay women; it’s through the qi yan pretense that agula can love women; it’s the qi yan caring husband persona that coaxes jingnu in caring for qi yan in return-- jwqs, more precisely, argues that you can’t be a woman if you’re going to love them, and even less so if you’re going to be loved by one.

this is perhaps well-trodden ground for anyone who has read wittig & certainly many people who haven’t. but it’s the layer of pretense that for me complicates these two narratives.

i think it’s a relatable feeling: wanting something anticipating getting something, or wanting something for yourself anticipating knowing that you already had it. that is, desire in itself being constitutive of that reality.

or less abstractly, knowing that you’d want to be a lesbian if you could, knowing that you’d want not to be a woman if you could-- anticipating any realization of either.

the dramatic excesses & wants of the girlboss, i think, are a decent literary stand in for being a lesbian.

i wanna note here that this is rlly just based on my experience being a transmisogyny exempt nonbinary diaspora lesbian lol. it’s fun & cathartic to overread this history & place myself in the accidental implications.

i don’t think most of the things i say are literally true. and i don’t want to overstep & say any of this can be generalized. please lmk if something here doesn’t read right! ok kisses bye

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kitkatopinions · 3 years

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I always assumed Ironwood wasn't straight. I mean he's a dude in his 40s who's unmarried and has no previous family or children to speak of. Then again he did dance with Glynda that one time so who knows?

That's just the thing, there's no way of knowing. Here are things that literally would not go against Ironwood's suggested feelings for Glynda.

Asexual and Biromantic, Panromantic, or Heteroromantic. Bisexual and Biromantic, Panromantic, or Heteroromantic. Pansexual, and Biromantic, Panromantic, or Heteroromantic. Homosexual and biromantic, panromantic, or heteroromantic. Homosexual and homoromantic, but using compulsory heteronormativity (idc what MKEK said outside of canon, their own heteronormative writing in the early seasons makes it impossible to believe that there aren't things like Homophobia, transphobia, and sexism in the world of RWBY.) Asexual and Aromantic - Flirting does not mean that you're not aromantic. Heterosexual and Heteroromantic but trans, non-binary, or genderqueer (although he looks male-presenting, that's not an indication that he's definitely canon cisgender, and yes, he goes by he/him pronouns, but I have a non-binary sibling who mostly goes by she/her and stills calls herself my sister. You never know just by someone's appearance or even their pronouns.) Any of the above, and still not meaning anything really by his somewhat flirtatious tone and asking Glynda to dance in the same way that Yang winking at a White Fang member before attacking him says literally nothing about her canon sexuality since she's casually flirty, because he might just be casually flirty and that doesn't even mean that he's trying to appear straight even if the writers were clearly heteronormative themselves when they wrote everyone in the first three seasons before they decided to think about making Pilot Boi their first queer character. Heterosexual and heteroromantic and cisgengered.

Personally, I myself see James Ironwood as a bisexual, biromantic man who deeply respected Glynda, was attracted to her appearance, but more wanted something to be between them than actually having real feelings for her. But it's perfectly valid to headcanon any of the above.

Currently Ironwood's sexuality (and his gender for that matter) has yet to be confirmed. Even if the show writers stated that James Ironwood is just the straightest most straight, cis, non-LGBTQ+ character in their show, it still wouldn't be show proper canon, because Word of the Author is a broke system that many people threw out sometime around JK Rowling telling everyone wizards used to just pee and poop all over themselves at random and magic away the evidence. And even if the show writers wrote Qrow or Winter or something to say "Yeah, James is the straightest most straight cisgendered hetero guy we knew," post-death, it still would not be wrong to headcanon anything different.

James Ironwood is as gay as you want him to be, I guess is what I'm saying. James Ironwood is not a canon straight guy, I guess is also what I'm saying. It's deeply flawed and rooted in bi, ace, and pan erasure to assume that anyone is straight just because they make advances towards someone of the opposite gender. I already see so much biphobia specifically in the RWBY fandom, especially in regards to Blake, Yang, and even Qrow these days. It just really makes me frustrated that people have this mentality. Either they are Homosexuals or they are straight. Either Yang oogling men in season one means she's straight and now they're retconning her sexuality or Yang's a lesbian who was clearly just being comphet/Yang's a lesbian and if you're still clinging onto the first season, you're stupid. Either Blake's straight and it was wrong of the showrunners to 'pretend otherwise' to force her to be anything else or Blake's a lesbian and anyone still shipping her with Sun or other men are denial ridden homophobes themselves. Either Qrow is straight and anyone paying attention to lingering looks, hugs, and blushes are idiots reading into unintended framing or people shipping Qrow and Winter are just so stupid to ignore that Qrow winking at her meant nothing and people who read romantic tension in their fight have 'hetero goggles' on. Btw, there's nothing wrong in my opinion with headcanoning Yang as not attracted to men at all, Qrow as not attracted to women at all, or even Blake as not attracted to men at all and only thinking she had been. But that's not canon, and trying to enforce it is rooted in biphobia.

And now it's 'James is established straight from the get go,' because he said a somewhat flirty line to a woman and asked her to dance. It's very annoying. James is no more of a canon straight than Yang, Weiss, Blake, or Penny is. Expressing a very casual slight attraction towards someone of the opposite sex very much so doesn't determine someone's sexuality.

You're right, who knows? Nobody. Because currently, James Ironwood could be pretty much anything (even alive!) and we wouldn't know.

#rwde #pro james ironwood #LGBTQ+ James Ironwood #James Ironwood antis kindly don't reply thanks :)

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live-love-laugh-lesbian · 2 years

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To be blunt, I have no vested interest in talking much about trans stuff on here. It's annoying and a lot of you take any take that isn't "uwu trans women are the most valid women ever" as "trans people deserve to die horribly then burn in hell", so I don't expect nuance to be understood.

But since I've had some asks, I might as well clarify.

First off, to be clear, disclaimer, I do not hate your average trans person. I was transgender, and only reidentified right before I was about to start hormones. I'm still dysphoric, and I get that some of you have severe and enduring dysphoria. I hold no ill will towards you for wanting to be the opposite sex or even somewhere inbetween.

I also get that for some, medical transition helps. I know some people transition and live very happily and just live their lives. I hold no ill will towards them.

However, this is typically in rare cases of severe dysphoria where all other treatments have failed and it impacts the quality of life enough that medical transition outweighs the drawbacks.

Or, at least, this is how it was.

Frankly, what used to be recognised as a mental illness, or possibly a neurological one, usually found in homosexual men and usually was "grown out of", has now become more of an ideology. And a lot of it is rooted in sexism and homophobia.

Disclaimer again: This is not me saying "all trans people are sexist and homophobic". This is me saying that trans stuff has become almost like religion - an individual may be fine but overall it's toxic.

You cannot become the opposite sex. You might be able to live and present as such, but you cannot become it. A man cannot become a woman and vice versa, no matter how they feel or how badly they want it. Change your name, dress and look however you want, I don't care. Personally I kept my name change, I cut my hair off, and I generally prefer a slightly more "masculine" style. I support you in having fun and wearing and doing what you like. But no, a trans woman is not a woman, a trans man is not a man, and non binary people are the sex they were born as. I'm sorry because I know it's distressing but it's true.

Now, onto the "gender critical" parts. AKA, my feelings towards the current state of transgender affairs.

Once again, a disclaimer, this is issues that come from the general collective. Many of you are chill people suffering dysphoria, many of you do not do shitty things, etc. I do not hate you.

Sexism. So much of how people realise they're trans seems to be built off sexism. How many non binary "afabs" say stuff like "I don't feel like a woman, I feel like a human"? Newsflash, that's what being a woman feels like! All women "just feel like humans"! There's no special feeling that makes women think "yes I'm a woman". And there's a massive rise in the amount of trans women that play on sexist stereotypes and are sometimes just creeps. Who talk about stealing underwear from loved ones, about how euphoric make up feels, how gender affirming it is to be catcalled. Seriously, there's a disturbing trend of men just playing on sexist stereotypes and calling it "being a woman".

Homophobia. Homosexuality is the exclusive attraction to the same sex. End of. I acknowledge that if you've fully transitioned eg, male to female, and present as the sex you are attracted to, then calling yourself straight must feel odd, and frankly I don't envy your position. But you are. Homosexuality is not about gender identity. Lesbians don't like or have dicks, and are not born with them either. If you like trans women/men and cis women/men, congrats on discovering your bisexuality, genuinely! 🏳️‍🌈 But the push to redefine basic terms, the push to insist some gay people like the opposite sex, and at worst, that homosexuals are bigots for not being into the opposite sex, is deeply homophobic.

Defending Creeps. Holy shit some of you defend creeps so badly. Again, a lot of you don't, but as a group I've seen arguing that you should ~respect a rapist's pronouns~, the assumption that trans women in particular can do no wrong eg people arguing that real trans women won't hurt anyone in bathrooms (which you frankly can't argue when also arguing anyone who says they're trans is trans). I've seen people admitting to being literal neo nazis, alt right and perverts, and it's dismissed as them "figuring themselves out". And yes, it's mostly trans women. Why? Well.

Downplaying male privilege. Being born male, trans women have male privilege and male socialisation. Some may experience misdirected misogyny later in life if mistaken for a woman, and some may experience homophobia, as femininity in men is associated with being gay. Neither of these change the fact that they have male privilege, and frankly the reason they have such a loud voice in the community is that "afabs" are socialised to let men do that. Sorry, "amabs". If you were really being treated as women, you'd have gotten nowhere by now to be frank. Nobody would be clammering to appease and validate you.

Following this, no, "cis" women are not privilleged over "trans" women. Females are the oppressed class, not males. A male does not become the oppressed class by saying he is, that's ridiculous. It works in no other context with any other oppressed class, so seriously just think about it. But...

This has lead to a greater denial of misogyny and sex based oppression. When all of this is gonna get me branded a bigot, when every bit of it is literally just facts, with no hatred, just annoyance mostly, it's simply because men with gender identities are cared about more than women. You can't say women and mean women, adult human females, and this makes talking about our sex based oppression very difficult.

And misleading medical information, including to minors, is dangerous. Puberty blockers are not always reversible, frequently cause long term damage, and if you medically transition it should be an absolute last resort. As a community it's talked about far too casually. It is life changing and comes with all sorts of risks and complications. It often doesn't help long term. It's very dangerous how acceptable it's become to insist it's fine and dandy.

So yeah, I think that sums it up. I don't care a whole lot about the individual trans person. I want you to have access to housing, healthcare, education, benefits, jobs, etc. But as a collective it's very toxic. Hence critical.

And yes, this has had a lot of mentions of trans women. Males having male privilege and socialisation leads to them being loud, vocal, and often showing some of the worst of things. But plenty of women ("afabs") are guilty of these things too.

Final disclaimer: I don't care as in "not my business" not "fuck you".

#gender critical #this is gonna cause a shit storm #but hey

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adorpheus · 3 years

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on fujoshi and fetishization

Lately, more and more, both here on tumblr and on other sites, I keep seeing people spew unfiltered hatred at fujoshi - that is, women who like mlm content such as gay fanfic and fanart featuring men with other men. And I don’t mean like a specific type of fujoshi, like the ones who are genuinely being weird about it, but just like a general hatred for girls (but especially straight identifying girls) who express love for gay romance.

I hate to break this to you all, but women (including straight women!) actually are allowed to like mlm fanfiction and fanart, even enthusiastically so. A woman simply expressing her love of gay fanfic, even if it is in kind of a cringey way or a way that you personally don’t like, is NOT automatically fetishization.

I’ve been on the receiving end of fetishization for my entire life, from a very young age, as many black and brown folx have, so I consider myself pretty well acquainted with how it works. Fetishization isn’t just like, being really into drawings of boys kissing, or whatever the fuck y’all are trying to imply on this god forsaken site.

Fetishization is complicated imo, and can encompass a lot of things, such as (but not limited to):

1 - dehumanization, e.g. viewing a group of people as sexual objects who exist purely for entertainment purposes, rather than acknowledging them as actual people who deserve respect and rights

and

2 - projecting certain assumptions onto said people based on their race/sexuality/whatever is being fetishized. These assumptions are often, but not always, sexual in nature (like the idea that black people in general are more sexual than other races, etc etc etc).

I’m going to use myself as an example to illustrate my point. Please note this isn’t the best or most nuanced example, but it is the most simplistic. A white person finding me attractive and respectfully appreciating my black features as part of what makes me beautiful is not, on its own, fetishization. A white person finding me attractive solely or mostly because I’m a PoC is now in fetishization territory. Similarly, assuming I’m dominant because of my blackness (like saying “step on me mommy” and shit like that) is hella fetishistic.

That being said, theres definitely a difference between how fetishization works in real life with real people, and how it shows up in fandom.

Fetishization manifests in many different ways in fandom, but most commonly on the mlm side of things, I personally see it appear as conservative (or centrist) women who love the idea of two men together, but don’t actually like gay people, and don’t necessarily think LGBT+ people deserve rights (or “special treatment” as its sometimes dog whistled). These women view queer men as sexual objects for entertainment rather than an actual group of people who deserve to be protected from systemic oppression. I’ve noticed that they often don’t even think of the men they “ship” together as actually being gay, and may even express disgust at the idea of a character in an mlm ship being headcanon’d gay. In case its not obvious, this is pretty much exactly the same way a lot of cishet men fetishize lesbians (they see “lesbian” as a porn category, rather than like, what actual LGBT people think of when we read the word lesbian). There’s a pretty popular viral tweet thread going around where someone explains seeing this trend of conservative women who like mlm stuff, and I have also personally witnessed this phenomenon myself in more than one fandom.

The funny thing is, maybe its just me buuuut.... The place I see this particular kind of fetishization happen most is not in the anime/BL fandom, from which the term fujoshi originates - I actually see these type of women way way more in western fandom spaces like Supernatural, Harry Potter, and Hannibal. I can’t stress this enough, there’s a shocking amount of people who are like, straight up trump supporters in these fandoms. If you want to experience it, try joining a Hannigram or Destiel group on facebook and you will probably encounter one eventually especially if you happen to be living through a major historical event. Like these women probably wouldn’t even be considered “fujoshi”, because that term doesn’t really apply to them given they aren’t in the BL/anime fandom, yet they’re the ones I personally see actually doing the most harm.

Of course this isn’t the ONLY kind of fetishizing woman in the mlm/BL world, there are other ways fetishization shows up, but this is the most toxic kind that I see.

A girl just being really into BL or whatever may be “cringe” to you, or she may be expressing her love for BL in a “cringey” way, but a straight woman really enjoying BL is not, on its own, somehow inherently fetishization. Yes, sometimes teenage girls act kind of cringe about how much they like BL and that might be annoying to you, but its not necessarily ~problematic~.

That being said, IT NEEDS BE REMARKED that a lot of the “fujoshi” that you all hate so deeply, are actually closeted trans men or nonbinary people who haven’t yet come to terms with their gender identity, or are otherwise just NOT cishet. I know because I was one of these closeted people for years, and I honestly think tumblr and the cultural obsession around purity is one of the many reasons I was closeted so deeply for so long. STORYTIME LOL!!! In my early adolescence, I was a sort of proto “fujoshi”. I identified as a bi girl who was mostly attracted to men, or as most (biphobic) people called it, “practically straight”. I wrote and read “slash” fanfic and looked at as well as drew my own fanart. We didn’t use the term fujoshi back then, but that’s definitely how I could have been described. I was obsessed with yaoi, BL, whatever you want to call it, to a cringe-inducing degree. I really struggled to relate to most het romances, so when I first discovered yaoi fanfics (as we called them at the time), I fell in love and felt like I finally found the type of romance content that was made for me. I didn’t know exactly why, I just knew it hit different. LGBT+ fanart and fanfiction brought me an immense amount of joy, and I didn’t really think too hard about why.

At some point, in my early 20s, after reading lots of discourse™ here on tumblr and other places like twitter, I started to get the sinking feeling that my passion for gay fanfiction was ~problematic~. I had always felt a sense of guilt for being into mlm content, because literally anyone who found out I liked BL (especially the men I dated) shamed me for liking it all the fucking time (which btw is literally just homophobic, like can we talk about that?). In addition to THAT bullshit, now I’m seeing posts telling me that girls who like BL are cringey gross fetishists who inspire rage and should go die?

Let me tell you, I internalized the fuck out of messages like this. I desperately wanted to avoid being ~problematic~. At the time, I thought being problematic was like the worst thing you could be. I was terrified of being “cancelled”, before canceling was even really a thing. I thought to myself, “oh my god, I’m gross for liking this stuff? I should stop.” I beat myself up over this. I wanted so badly to be accepted, and to be deemed a Good Person by the internet and society at large.

I tried to shape up and become a good ally (lmfao). I stopped writing fanfic and deleted all the ones I was working on at the time. I made a concerted effort to assimilate into cishet culture, including trying to indulge myself more deeply in the few fandoms I could find that had het content I did enjoy (Buffy, True Blood, Pretty Little Liars, etc). I would occasionally look at BL/fanfic/etc in private, but then I would repress my interest in it and not look for a while. Instead I would look at women in straight relationships, and create extremely heterosexual Couple Goals pinterest boards, and try to figure out how I could become more like these women, so I, too, could be loved someday.

This cycle of repression lasted like eight years. Throughout it all, I was performing womanhood to the best of my ability and trying to become a woman that was worthy of being in a relationship. I went in and out of several “straight” relationships, wondering why they didn’t make me feel the way reading fanfic did. Most of all, I couldn’t figure out why straight intimacy didn’t work for me. I just didn’t enjoy it. I always preferred looking at or making gay fanfiction/fanart over actual intimacy with men in real life.

Eventually, I stumbled upon a trans coming out video that someone I was following posted online, my egg started to crack, and to make an extremely long story short, after like 3 years of introspection and many gender panic attacks that I still experience to this day, I realized that I’m uh... MAYBE... NOT CIS..!? :|

I truly believe if I had just been ALLOWED TO LIKE GAY STUFF WITHOUT BEING SHAMED FOR IT, I probably would have realized I was trans way way sooner. Because for me, indulging in my love of gay romance and writing gay fanfic wasn’t me being a weirdo fetishist, it was actually me exploring my own gender identity. It is what helped me come to terms with being a nonbinary trans boy.

Not everyone realizes they are trans at age 2 or whatever the fuck. Sometimes you have to go through a cringey fujoshi phase and multiple existential crises to realize how fucking gay you are AND THATS FINE.

And one more thing - can we just be real here?

A lot of anti-fujoshi sentiment is literally just misogyny. omg please realize this. Its “women aren’t allowed to enjoy things” but, like... with gay fanfics. Some of the anti-fujoshi posts I see come across my dash are clearly ppl projecting a caricature they invented in their head of a demonic fujoshi fetishist onto any woman who expresses what they consider to be a little too much enthusiasm for gay content and then using their perception of that individual as an excuse to justify their disdain for any women, especially straight women, ‘invading’ their ~oh so exclusive~ queer fandom spaces.

god get over yrselfs this is gatekeeping by another name

idk why i spent so long writing this no one is even going to read it, does anyone even still use this site

*EDIT: HOLY SHIT WHEN DOING RESEARCH FOR THIS POST I FOUND OUT THAT Y-GALLERY IS BACK OMG!!!

#rant #fujoshi #I SAID WHAT I SAID #personal #gender stuff

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sitruunavohveli · 3 years

Text

So I’ve been thinking about this for a few days and I’m just going to say it now. I’ve not done any media studies in my life, I studied environmental sciences ffs, so do not expect any sources or scientific analysis. This is just me being so fucking done and annoyed with everything after years of being a fan of things and always been low key ridiculed about my fandom interests by creators and even some other fans and ranting about it.

I’m so fucking done with heteronormativity and queerbaiting. I’m so fucking done with “will they, won’t they” relationships ALWAYS ending with “will ofc, duh” if the couple is a man and a woman and with “nah, don’t be ridiculous” or “wellllll, it could be INTERPRETED that way but… oops, they died anyway so it doesn’t MATTER, does it?” with queer couples. I’m so old I’ve seen this happen many, many, MANY times.

The thing is. I read comments on facebook and twitter where some fans still insisted that Cas saying “I love you” to Dean meant like BROTHERS and “stop bringing that gay shit into everything” and those comments weren’t RARE. Like. If the same scene, THE EXACTLY SAME SCENE, happened between a male character and a female character there would be NO PEOPLE saying it’s “sibling love”. There would be no people saying it’s not romantic AND sexual.

(I mean. It doesn’t have to be sexual, but it clearly is romantic. I’d need to write its own post about asexual/graysexual/demisexual erasure and lack of representation in media, because fuck that as well. But this is not that post.)

This shit is NOT NEW either. I grew up with Harry Potter like so many did. (Fuck JKR btw. Despite the author I’m still going to use HP as an example, because that’s easy for me.) The problem is that people are so much more comfortable with straight relationships, straight being the norm, assumed straightness. When you look at a random list of HP fanfiction relationships I swear that the queer ones seem “ridiculous” and “far-fetched” to most of the heteronormative fanbase. Harry/Hermione is a completely normal thing to ship and “they should have ended up together!” is not a controversial take. Even Harry/Luna seems reasonable. But let’s point out how Ron was “the one he’ll surely miss” or Harry running after Draco for all of the sixth year (“rapidly becoming obsessed with Draco Malfoy”), or that Remus and Sirius lived and gave Christmas gifts together, and I can almost hear everyone sighing “it doesn’t mean LIKE THAT, STOP MAKING EVERYTHING GAY”.

I’m not just tired of the queerbaiting and never seeing any same-sex relationships between main characters as plausible UNLESS THE WHOLE THING IS ABOUT SEXUALITY. (And yeah, there are SIDE CHARACTERS that are awesome and queer and just living their life, but making a main character queer while they’re just living their life and fighting bad guys and falling in love? Yeah no. Why would we ever want to have that! Why would we ever want to give the idea that queer people are JUST PEOPLE LIVING THEIR LIFE AND NOT JUST SIDE CHARACTERS?) I’m also just as fucking tired of ALWAYS reading every friendship between a man and a woman as a romantic one despite it being completely platonic. JUST TREAT THE RELATIONSHIPS THE SAME. STOP READING THEM DIFFERENTLY JUST BASED ON WHAT YOU ASSUME IS IN THEIR PANTS.

Back to HP. Even the “Dumbledore was gay all along” thing was shitty, because it would have been SO FUCKING EASY to just make Albus/Gellert canon IN THE BOOKS. Just ONE hint from Rita Skeeter on one page about the relationship or possible love/lust between them would have been enough. The MORE shitty thing however was when they asked about canon Albus/Gellert being possibly a thing in the Fantastic Beasts movies and TPTB were like “uhhhh, we hadn’t planned on it…”

Then there was Merlin. Five seasons of destiny and being two sides of the same coin and almost a love confession… until Arthur dies. And Merlin waits him for 1500+ years. (Btw when Rory did the same for Amy in Doctor Who, it was explicitly romantic.) Then there was Sherlock. Yeah, need I say more?

And now Dean/Cas. With just a few additional lines it would have been fine. It would have been the greatest slow burn love story ever. (I mean… it still is for those who see it. Just not explicitly for everyone. For many, many fans it’s still “take that gay fanfic shit away, THEY’RE LIKE BROTHERS”.) My lovely bisexual Dean Winchester would have been the bi icon he deserves to be. The growth of a man who for all of his life had to pretend to only be tough and hyper masculine just to SURVIVE and who hid all the femininity and weakness and insecurity and sadness and love under the tough-ass shell, who kicks fucking ass and finds men AND women* attractive. All the jokes about Dr Sexy and Dean’s cowboy thing and gay thing WOULD CANONICALLY NOT HAVE BEEN JOKES.

(*Sorry, non-binary friends. Your representation in media is even more awful and should also be written into a completely different post.)

So I’m tired. And annoyed. And so so so done.

Fuck heteronormativity. Fuck all the creators and TPTB for gaslighting us. Fuck them all for caring more about what conservative white straight cis males possibly think than what their actual fanbase thinks. Fuck them all for making us believe that true representation is possible. Fuck them all for not ever giving us the queer happy ending we deserve.

#deancas #destiel #sorry for the rant #I started writing and couldn't stop #i'm tired #and done #heteronormative bullshit #STOP MAKING EVERYTHING STRAIGHT

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southern-belle-outcasts · 3 years

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6. how do you feel about pride month? //You and all the babies

17. what’s your biggest pet peeve when it comes to lgbtqa characterization in media? //For you~

28. what’s the most annoying question you have ever gotten? //For you, Cisco, Padmé, and Rogue

@meretrixious

a pride meme...from the beginning of the month...

6. how do you feel about pride month?

//I love pride month, I love people celebrating who they are and rubbing it in the faces of people that don't want them to be that way and continuing to fight for equal treatment. I do wish it was more educational? Like had a long chat with Dragon and Rose on why pride con with educational speakers and lgbtqia+ artists/businesses, fun activities, accessibility (wheelchairs, A/C, seating, chill out zones for sensory overload, etc)...would be much better than just parade or heat stroke at festival with everyone crowded and shiz. Like, partying is fun and all but would love, especially as recently accepting of my queer status fully (have I said how much I hate the phrase 'baby gay'? cuz i despise it, i don't like infantilizing my sexuality to make it more palatable for people) to be better informed via pride event on history, resources, etc. Just my lil opinion on it. Can't combat shit when you're in the dark.

Rogue- "Ah didn't go to anythin' pride related till last year...but yeah, Ah like it. Ah still ain't wrapped my head 'round why it bothers people so badly but Ah'm a bitch so yeah, rub it in people's faces. Start a riot if needed."

Sara- "Well, I don't see why I wouldn't jump at the chance to kiss a girl and piss some Karen off. I will always be proud of the fact I've loved men and women."

Cisco- "Good shit. Totally support it. My past relationships don't reduce my pan-ness."

Farrar- "If someone says you're not allowed to be with someone of your gender, I hope you kick their feckin' knees in."

Nilza- "I'll go if there's going to be drinking and dancing involved, otherwise I have better things to do than stand on the sidewalk all day hot. I don't need to go to pride to be able to fuck women."

Padmé (modern verse that I still haven't written up yet)- "Even after there is finally true equality, which legally is a long way off unfortunately, I don't ever see reason not to hold pride month."

Kaylee- "I don't have a problem with it...but I've never gone to pride. Please, seriously, don't say 'now you need to prove you're actually bi'." she might bite

17. what’s your biggest pet peeve when it comes to lgbtqia+ characterization in media?

//Oh, gods. You mean besides bury the gays? "I'm queer ergo that's my only character trait and I exist to be funny". This is not to be mistaken as my taking the side of the asshats that say "you make everything about your sexual/gender identity, shut up". No what I mean is that is LITERALLY the only thing they are on the show. They're only ever seen either a) sucking face of someone with the same gender, b) hitting on someone their gender, often without any degree of chemistry, sometimes to the point it could be considered harassment, or at least fall very much within 'cis white male' style of flirtation despite obvious differences in that character's identity, c) using their gayness or whatever as their source of humorous asshole-ism and it gives them a free pass to do shit a straight character wouldn't do naturally or without different consequences. Again, I'm not saying that sometimes these things don't occur in real life, or can't be well done...but you need a fleshed out character. I'm really sick of cardboard cookie cutter queers in media. And while yes, my brand of pan is 'not gay as in happy, but queer as in fuck you'...can we have more rep period? Soft and nice queers, shy queers, fat queers, disabled queers, queers of color. queers of a religious identity other than the hardcore atheist or the rebellious christian, queers that would be accused of being 'straight passing' or 'comphet'. Y'all we use a motherfuckin' rainbow to represent us, and just about each and every canonical queer instance in media is predictable af.

28. what’s the most annoying question you have ever gotten?

//"Why are you acting like you can just change your name and be a different person? You have to earn that, you need to show change in yourself. Is this for attention? Are you now throwing away science?." -this was all back to back so I'm counting the convo as one massive, headache inducing question-

Cisco- "'Don't you want kids?' As though it suddenly is impossible if I do end up being with someone that doesn't have said equipment. That...yeah no, there was yelling involved. And it's not as though I'm not still attracted to women!"

Padmé- "'What do you mean you don't imagine fucking attractive people you see? Everyone does that.' I quite literally do not. I said as much, I do not see why it needed repeating."

Rogue- "'You're not one of you sinful mothers, right? Like, you're not broken, you want a man in your life?' Ah swear t'god Ah almost committed murder...and momma wouldn't have actually given a shit had Ah done it."

#meretrixious #;headcanon the belle #;headcanon the canary #;headcanon the engineer #;headcanon the hunter #;headcanon the latina #;headcanon the senator #;headcanon the wolf #;little asks are made of gunpowder and lead #homophobia tw #transphobia tw #christian bigotry tw

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ourimpavidheroine · 4 years

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Do you think Bryke meant to queer-code Wu?

The short answer to this is that no, I don’t think Wu was meant to be queer-coded. I do not think Wu was meant to be gay at all.

That being said? I think there’s a lot more to it than that.

The long answer to this is that I think Wu is, as a character, queer-coded. I mean, wildly so. In fact, I think he’s the most blatantly queer-coded character in both ATLA and TLOK, and I am including characters that Bryke have told us after the fact are queer, including Smellerbee and Kya.

But do I think Bryke purposefully coded him that way? Nope. Not at all.

Now, what they did do was create a character that was meant to a)irritate us, b)eventually amuse us and c)mirror Mako’s growth as a character. To do that, they gave us a very spoiled, very clueless rich boy. However, as part of accomplishing their goal of a character who would give us A, B and C, they chose to make him both effeminate as well as someone who doesn’t respect social/personal boundaries.

As in, here’s an undeniable sissy-boy who has his hands all over Mako. But! Never fear! To “prove” that he wasn’t (GASP) Gay For Mako, they had him hit on women.

Because apparently, in the minds of cis white Gen X dudes, having a character hit on women, regardless of how badly he does it, sort of Erases The Gay that you’ve coded him into with all the mannerisms and grabby-hands characterization.

I could be wrong, but I am going to make a wild guess that they didn’t have a queer person - especially a gay man - in the writing room. Because I am pretty sure anyone on the rainbow spectrum could have told them that a part and parcel of being in the closet is enthusiastically proclaiming your sexual attraction to people of the opposite sex. Like, very enthusiastically. So everyone will get that you really, really super duper like people of the opposite sex and could not in anyway be construed as being gay/lesbian. Because wooooo-wee! Look at those ladies (men)! Pretty hot, huh? That’s because I am a heterosexual person! Very heterosexual! Yes, I am!

I mean oh my god. Methinks the lady doth protest too much, hello!

Do I think Mike or Bryan are homophobic? Well, I think that they don’t want to be. I think that it is very important to them to have representation and I think they are making a very big effort towards that. I fully believe them when they say they wanted Korra and Asami to be bi and have a relationship in the show and certainly the two of them are a couple in the comics. They had Kya come out in the comics as well and while I personally don’t like the whole coming out/homophobia in the Fire Nation/acceptance in the Air Nomads plotline that was written into canon via the comics I do appreciate that they included it because representation matters to them. Korra, Asami and Kyoshi have been specifically canoned Bi/Pan and Kya is a lesbian and Smellerbee and the nameless City Council clerk in TLOK are somewhere on the trans spectrum.

That being said? I will point out that at this time (unless I have missed it) there have been no actual canon gay men characters or canon bi/pan male characters.

Which is...par for the course. Lots of het cis guys will include queer female characters and consider that queer representation without realizing that they are excluding men. It happens a whole lot. If you call them on it, they will insist that they are not homophobic! They have lesbians! But gays? Eh, not so much.

(And there’s a whole fucking lot to unpack about that but there are plenty of amazing queer scholars who have already done that work and I don’t need to clumsily rehash it. It’s a well-researched and written about thing. It exists. Systematic homophobia exists.)

I think that Bryke could, if they chose, take a step back and ask themselves why they wrote Wu the way they did. They could also take a step back and ask themselves why, exactly, Wu and Mako could not be a couple when canonically speaking they really do suit each other very well. Mako yells at Wu and Wu doesn’t care! Mako gets all pedantic and pissy and Wu doesn’t care! Mako imparts Mako-wisdom and Wu not only listens but takes it to heart! Wu never shuts the fuck up but Mako’s lived with his brother and clearly doesn’t care! Wu orders Mako around and Mako clearly doesn’t care! Wu buys Mako shit and Mako is clearly used to this and not only doesn’t care but considers it par for the course!

Mako never quits the job, regardless of how annoying Wu is supposed to be. And he very easily could; he even just accepts it when Beifong tells him Raiko is planning on sending him to Ba Sing Se with Wu which is just bananas. I mean, a)Raiko has no authority to do that whatsoever and b)Mako isn’t even a citizen of the Earth Kingdom. But Mako just...goes along with that without a fight at all. The dude is a pro-bender. He’s the pal of the Avatar and has personal contacts with some of the most influential people in the world. He’s a decent cop (although not a particularly by the rules kind of one, see growing up on the streets in a criminal gang). The man does not need to settle for being a bodyguard if he doesn’t want to be, is all that I am saying. So why does he keep doing the job? Oh, I think we know.

I’ve said before that Mako, in Bryke’s eyes, is clearly the handsome young protagonist. He was a pro-bender and is a self-taught bending master! (There is no other character in either ATLA or TLOK who handles lightning the way Mako does.) He had both the Avatar as well as the beautiful Asami Sato as girlfriends! He had a tragically romantic background! But as the seasons go on it is revealed that actually, Mako is kind of a dork. He’s the Mom friend. He’s pedantic. He’s not really all that great of a cop and not much better as a bodyguard. He’s a socially awkward mess. (I personally think he’s autistic as well as suffering from massive PTSD, but that’s for another time.) But even still, handsome, manly Mako? He can’t possibly go for the Rich Disaster Twink. Because that’s not what handsome young protagonists do.

I wish like hell there had been a queer person in the writer’s room; I wish they could have taken Bryke aside and pointed out to them that using queer coding in order to make a character annoying is homophobic as fuck, even when you have the best of intentions. But clearly nobody did that, just as nobody has sat them down and said, so after the entirety of Season 4 and all of the good that Mako and Wu do for each other, why exactly are they not a couple? Because Mako is straight and has to remain that way because...why? Why exactly? It’s okay for women to be canonically queer but not men because....?

I just wish.

#blah blah blah #Prince Wu #queer coding #etc etc etc #long post #Anonymous

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