#also as an enby who doesn't use they it super rubs me the wrong way to see people insisting on calling her they

[svartalfhild]

Unsurprisingly, people are already being fucking weird about Mizu's gender.

Headcanons are all well and good, but maybe we shouldn't be so eager to apply modern Western gender politics and terms to a character whose identity is so tied to the time, place, and circumstances in which she exists.

Please remember that Mizu was forced to present as male for her own safety and agency. Please remember that allowing others to see her as a man and call her he/him is not a choice; it's protection; it's a means to an end. Until we see Mizu talk about her gender in further detail, that's all the context we have.

Don't project what you want to see onto her and then treat it as fact.

[androgynousblackbox]

That post about being owed androgyny bothers me honestly because yes we are expected to be androgynous and yes we are punished if we aren't. The fact that we're still punished either way is just the regular old catch 22 part of oppression, see also women and femininity, esp. trans women. That being a feminine trans woman is also hated and punishable doesn't mean there isn't the expectation that she has to be, especially in the trans community. "Where in society are we expected to be androgynous" looks super dumb from the perspective of anyone who's been in trans spaces, on socmed, ever had anyone irl say "then why do you dress like a boy/girl?", etc, and the shit androgynous ppl go through doesn't disprove that, it just proves that there isn't a right way to be queer.

Idk it just rubs me the wrong way, I feel like there was a different way to word "androgynous nb people are not free from harassment" than to pretend there isn't this quite prevalent expectation nb people like me can't escape.

The reblog I shared I personally thought it was very poignant when they said stuff like this: "When you say things like "I'm misgendered and told I'm not really nonbinary because my body isn't androgynous enough", I do hear the pain, not just of being misgendered and invalidated, but of having to accept that this will never go away.

It's not true, though. It's not because your body isn't androgynous enough. It's because forcible binarization is how society treats nonbinary people. [...] At other times, forcible binarization of nonbinary people takes the form of disingenuous promises that if you were just a bit more androgynous, a little more masculine, a little more feminine, a little less this or a bit more that, then surely they'd respect your gender then.

But that's a binarist lie.

And yes, it's a lie that gets told by queer people, liberals, leftists, people who'll swear up and down they have nothing against nonbinary people, because it's a lie that people are telling themselves. But it's something we have to let go of to fight forcible binarization." I do think this is something we tend to forget when our queer spaces are reduced to socmeds. No shame if that is the only queer space many people have access to, I know that is not something people necesarily chose to happen, but we concentrate on certain things on such a way we start missing the forest for the trees. Like, as non binary people, as trans people, we are all fucked already, even in our communities, because our communities are part of this society and this society fucking hate us already. Our communities are not this separate entity with rules completely devoid of any connection with what happens on the rest of the world, but statements where we look the expectation of androgyny RATHER than the forced binarization of non binary people as a whole doesn't... really do much? Because then we start arguing between each other ("people who want to be androgynous ARE valid!", "people who don't want to be androgynous are valid!", "being androgynous doesn't make you stereotype!", etc) instead to pointing to the actual source of this shit. Following your example, femenine trans women/femme enbies are fucked, not because of them being femenine or not being femenine, but because society is build in transmisogyny/misogyny/colonialistic ideas of gender as it is and we, as a community, are absolutely capable of absorbing and repeating those ideas without examining our own biases. Just look at the way trans femme black and other MOC are treated. It's fucking horrid and we are not desconstructing anything by saying "non binary people don't owe you androgyny" because yeah, we don't, but the focus can and should be first in how our genders deserves to be aknowledged and respected regardless of any fucking presentation, because that is part of what respecting our human dignity fucking means. I don't know, maybe I am doing a shit job explaining it and I don't want to invalidate anyone's struggles or feelings regarding their own experiences, but to me personally feels like a message I needed to be reminded too because I don't like to think that if I were more this or less that or whatever then my gender would be respected. Because that is bullshit and I know is bullshit because I literally tried almost everything anyone could try, and it didn't worked and it wasn't my fault, and everything wouldn't have worked either even if I magically could turn myself into this ideal that exist only on my head. I would just be facing a different set of troubles, not less. It's all part of the exact same shit coin, both consequences of a single shitter. "it just proves that there isn't a right way to be queer." Fucking exactly. So why we act as if there is by implying that things would be better if we were androgynous, if we were more femme, if we were more masc, and any issue we face is because we failed to be any of those things, when the truth is we are all hurting because of the same rules we are all breaking and it fucking sucks?

[notanotherfandombloge]

#also as an enby who doesn't use they it super rubs me the wrong way to see people insisting on calling her they#even if she *is* genderqueer or nonbinary (and we don't know that she is) that does not mean that they automatically applies#and if you think that it does please go back to Gender 101 do not pass go do not collect $100#on top of that there's the whole issue of applying English pronoun politics to a Japanese speaker#like I'm begging y'all to consider cultural and historical context before y'all go gallivanting off with your readings of Mizu's gender#taking a baseball bat to a hornet's nest with this one I know but I'm Bothered

#THIS#!!!!#mizu herself makes it very clear that she HAD to be a man in order to survive and pursue her interests#we clearly see her reluctance to start binding at a young age and the sadness on her face when she has to shave her head#like it’s very clear that mizu has never been allowed to be herself#and yet a lot of you (mainly white queers) are acting like this is a good thing#like seriously#how is it that so many of you completely missed the point of this show??#the only time mizu was ever allowed to be openly a woman she got shunned and was called a monster simply because she’s not submissive#women who are not traditionally feminine are still women fyi#enjoy your headcanons and interpret the story/characters however you want but please do so without disrespecting the show’s poc creators (via blue-eye-samurai)

Unsurprisingly, people are already being fucking weird about Mizu's gender.

Headcanons are all well and good, but maybe we shouldn't be so eager to apply modern Western gender politics and terms to a character whose identity is so tied to the time, place, and circumstances in which she exists.

Please remember that Mizu was forced to present as male for her own safety and agency. Please remember that allowing others to see her as a man and call her he/him is not a choice; it's protection; it's a means to an end. Until we see Mizu talk about her gender in further detail, that's all the context we have.

Don't project what you want to see onto her and then treat it as fact.