#‘pretty boy gender’ =/= man that is pretty

[sflow-er]

"I think we who 'fit the norms' have a responsibility to understand those who live their lives differently. We need to know how to listen." Axel Åhman, Efter nio, 2020

One of the great things about discovering KAJ is that I have also fallen a tiny bit in love with Axel Åhman outside of the group. I mean, I haven't even had the chance to read his books yet, but the kinds of things I've seen him discuss in his writer and journalist role have already really endeared him to me.

It started with his documentary show Utanför boxen. Most specifically, episode 4, in which Axel talked to a nonbinary ace person, a sexologist, and two poly people (one of whom may have also been bi) about allonormativity, amatonormativity, and gender normativity. Even if those terms weren't used in the episode itself.

It's hard to even explain how happy it made me to see asexuality discussed in such an affirmative way on Finnish TV. Axel had even deduced on his own that the estimate of 1% of the world's population being ace was probably an understatement, which the sexologist and ace person confirmed for him. As someone who only discovered my aceness in my thirties, I really appreciated that being covered.

But perhaps even more than the ace side of things, I loved how Axel genuinely seemed to listen to his guests and wanted to learn from them.

"I'm starting to see how privileged I actually am as a straight man. Nobody questions me. Life is an open motorway before me. All I need to do is drive on; I won't be stopped at any red lights. Eri for example has to explain themself in several respects, basically every day. It's strong [of them] to be up to having that discussion every time."

This lesson on privilege clearly wasn't one Axel just learned for the show and forgot. He also repeated it in interviews conducted after his first book came out, such as the Efter nio clip linked at the top of this post and an interview with his alma mater's student paper.

Speaking of his first book, it's a short story collection with masculinity as the overarching theme. It's titled Klein; a dialectal variant of the word klen (meaning frail, weak, feeble or delicate), used to disparage men who don't conform to normative masculinity.

The interview in the student paper is by far not the only one where Axel has talked about how strict social norms weigh people down and how it should be okay for a man to be kle(i)n, but these snippets from said interview are still pretty illustrative.

In his stories, he examines behaviours connected to masculinity. Competition, rivalry and lifting oneself up by putting others down are some of the things Åhman highlights as problematic. [--] Åhman thinks there are definitely problematic sides to masculinity, and that a certain culture of machismo is still alive today.

"I think confidence has a lot to do with being a man. We are taught that we are allowed to take space, and nobody questions us when we do. We men are allowed to be more visible and audible." Åhman says he wasn't particularly good at playing instruments or singing when he first got on stage, but he still had the nerve to get up there and perform. He believes the bar is higher for girls to make it on to the stage than it is for boys. "It's stupid to raise a child into a specific gender role. I hope increased awareness can help solve that problem in the future."

When asked what he thinks of the phrase 'Boys will be boys', he says he finds it incredibly problematic. Boys are more seldom held accountable for their actions, and society makes excuses for them.

This thread of highlighting problematic aspects of masculinity doesn't end with Axel's book authorship, either. It even extends to the workplace comedy series Halln, which he wrote with Joel Rönn (and in which Jakob from KAJ starred alongside Joel).

The two guys vying for power at the company are both sexist in their own ways. Joel's character (Mikael) acts very overtly and anciently sexist, often treats graphic designer Emilia like his personal assistant, has even put up a "girl calendar" in the break room.

Next to Mikael, Jakob's character (Jona) seems like a very sweet and modern man, which he in many ways is! Yet he still doesn't listen to Emilia after asking her impressions on what could be improved at the company. He latches on to her mention of a ping pong table because he used to be a ping pong champion, but he completely disregards her wishes. When a romance develops between them, he decides that they will move together to his father's villa in Spain - and when she asks what she's supposed to do there, he says she can just chill by the pool until he comes home from work (!).

"Let me ask you this: where do you see yourself in five years?" "I don't know." "Exactly. You don't know. Do you know where I see you?" "Well?" "In Spain, with me."

There is simply no way Axel didn't have a hand in writing Jona like this. I can't wait to see what happens and whether the character experiences any growth if the show gets a second season.

And although I said at the start that this would be about Axel in other roles, I do have to end this appreciation post on a KAJ note. Namely, I watched an interview today that I hadn't seen before, where the host asked Axel, what message would KAJ stand for if they had to get political?

Axel answered that they already sort of did that with Gambämark. They started writing it in 2017, when a musical about a conservative village that walls itself off from the world felt very topical and political. They wanted to advocate for a more open [inclusive] society and "letting all the flowers bloom", so to speak.

To the question "are you feminists?", he replied, "Yes, I think so. We think so, even as we are three men and sometimes wonder if we would have got the same opportunities if we were three women."

[stonefemblues]

“pretty boy” is such a good and fun gender i’m a big fan

[houseswife]

transgender detector going haywire rn…

[hvkno]

we are all will byers internally

[coern-art-very-cool-and-nice]

the boy in the spotlight versus the girl in the mirror

unshaded version

[totally-not-an-awkward-okapi]

Still thinking about that little angel I dreamt about a bit ago so I’ve been binging other angel stuff and felt inspired to try to draw him as @hoaxghost ‘s style of angel.

[foresakencryptid]

Some people have gender envy, but I just want to steal everything that Charles Rowland has going on

Which is to say that I also have gender envy

[themintman]

“Kill them with kindness”

WRONG. TRANSGENDER BEAM!!!! 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️⚧️🏳️‍🌈💥💥⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️💥⚧️💥⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈⚧️💥🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️💥🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️💥🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️💥🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️

[skylee-spider-lillis]

"Me? Oh yeah I'm lesbian I'm sure of that-"

* Jayden Revri as Charles Rowland comes in to my life *

...... Guess I'm bi spec.

(Fuck you Charles Rowland. Thanks for this mess again).

[gothicdolliez]

How I look with he/him in my bio

[boy-kisser-in-theory]

i talk about wanting to be called pretty and loved and being treated like someone’s everything but for some reason people don’t think you can be a binary trans man, or man in general, and want this.

so, this is for the masc binary trans men who want to be called pretty and to be loved and to be treated like someone’s everything.

you can want that too.

[thefishdeath]

Never feel more masc then the times I try to look fem

[everyones-favorite-butchboy]

The world will know my rage. They will see my face on the screen of death and scream my name as they perish. Gore will cover every conceivable surface. I will not let them bury me. If they try, I will dig myself up and dance to their sounds of terror as they see my dirt-covered body. My feet will stomp on the soil they tried to kill me with for the soil and I are one. They cannot destroy for I am everlasting and everloving. Fuck you.

[candleeyed]

i think big hunks of metal should have genders more. not because we need to gender things but because if the giant war machine wants to go by she/her and be a girl she should be allowed to. instant depth and also goes against the traditional masculine/feminine dichotomy. AND the world could always use more girls.

[thatgarden]

I find it interesting that, with the wide-mass adoption of the words transmasculine and transfeminine, some people can't really grasp anymore that someone can be a woman without being feminine.

I was trying to explain my complicated gender to someone, talking about an excerpt from Butch is a Noun which goes into transmasculine butchhood, and this person kept referring to my butch-lesbian-gender as "feminine", defining feminimity as a literal proximity to womanhood.

But seeing as how the two big parts of my gender, transmasculine and butch, both have to do with masculinity, of course I shut that down pretty instantly, explaining that feminimity doesn't always include women and it CERTAINLY usually doesn't include butches.

So, next time you start thinking about using phrases like "women and femmes" for defining lesbianism or making a space for marginalized genders expressions, maybe take a minute to think about us transgender butches that don't fit into your framework of womanhood or feminimity.

[racingintheriver]

Do you ever wanna steal someone’s gender? No? Well I do, I wanna steal his.