#and really think why a man who looks feminine isn’t perceived as a man yet a woman who dresses and looks masculine

[folksy]

sorry one of the worst things is the implication someone is not their gender because they’re doing it wrong especially when it’s framed in a progressive lens

[transgenderteensurvivalguide]

“Elliot Page doesn’t remember exactly how long he had been asking.

But he does remember the acute feeling of triumph when, around age 9, he was finally allowed to cut his hair short. “I felt like a boy,” Page says. “I wanted to be a boy. I would ask my mom if I could be someday.” Growing up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Page visualized himself as a boy in imaginary games, freed from the discomfort of how other people saw him: as a girl. After the haircut, strangers finally started perceiving him the way he saw himself, and it felt both right and exciting.

The joy was short-lived. Months later, Page got his first break, landing a part as a daughter in a Canadian mining family in the TV movie Pit Pony. He wore a wig for the film, and when Pit Pony became a TV show, he grew his hair out again. “I became a professional actor at the age of 10,” Page says. And pursuing that passion came with a difficult compromise. “Of course I had to look a certain way.”

We are speaking in late February. It is the first interview Page, 34, has given since disclosing in December that he is transgender, in a heartfelt letter posted to Instagram, and he is crying before I have even uttered a question. “Sorry, I’m going to be emotional, but that’s cool, right?” he says, smiling through his tears.

It’s hard for him to talk about the days that led up to that disclosure. When I ask how he was feeling, he looks away, his neck exposed by a new short haircut. After a pause, he presses his hand to his heart and closes his eyes. “This feeling of true excitement and deep gratitude to have made it to this point in my life,” he says, “mixed with a lot of fear and anxiety.”

It’s not hard to understand why a trans person would be dealing with conflicting feelings in this moment. Increased social acceptance has led to more young people describing themselves as trans—1.8% of Gen Z compared with 0.2% of boomers, according to a recent Gallup poll—yet this has fueled conservatives who are stoking fears about a “transgender craze.” President Joe Biden has restored the right of transgender military members to serve openly, and in Hollywood, trans people have never had more meaningful time onscreen. Meanwhile, J.K. Rowling is leveraging her cultural capital to oppose transgender equality in the name of feminism, and lawmakers are arguing in the halls of Congress over the validity of gender identities. “Sex has become a political football in the culture wars,” says Chase Strangio, deputy director for transgender justice at the ACLU.

(Full article with photos continued under the “read more”)

And so Page—who charmed America as a precocious pregnant teenager in Juno, constructed dreamscapes in Inception and now stars in Netflix’s hit superhero show The Umbrella Academy, the third season of which he’s filming in Toronto—expected that his news would be met with both applause and vitriol. “What I was anticipating was a lot of support and love and a massive amount of hatred and transphobia,” says Page. “That’s essentially what happened.” What he did not anticipate was just how big this story would be. Page’s announcement, which made him one of the most famous out trans people in the world, started trending on Twitter in more than 20 countries. He gained more than 400,000 new followers on Instagram on that day alone. Thousands of articles were published. Likes and shares reached the millions. Right-wing podcasters readied their rhetoric about “women in men’s locker rooms.” Casting directors reached out to Page’s manager saying it would be an honor to cast Page in their next big movie.

So, it was a lot. Over the course of two conversations, Page will say that understanding himself in all the specifics remains a work in progress. Fathoming one’s gender, an identity innate and performed, personal and social, fixed and evolving, is complicated enough without being under a spotlight that never seems to turn off. But having arrived at a critical juncture, Page feels a deep sense of responsibility to share his truth. “Extremely influential people are spreading these myths and damaging rhetoric—every day you’re seeing our existence debated,” Page says. “Transgender people are so very real.”

That role in Pit Pony led to other productions and eventually, when Page was 16, to a film called Mouth to Mouth. Playing a young anarchist, Page had a chance to cut his hair again. This time, he shaved it off completely. The kids at his high school teased him, but in photos he has posted from that time on social media he looks at ease. Page’s head was still shaved when he mailed in an audition tape for the 2005 thriller Hard Candy. The people in charge of casting asked him to audition again in a wig. Soon, the hair was back.

Page’s tour de force performance in Hard Candy led, two years later, to Juno, a low-budget indie film that brought Page Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations and sudden megafame. The actor, then 21, struggled with the stresses of that ascension. The endless primping, red carpets and magazine spreads were all agonizing reminders of the disconnect between how the world saw Page and who he knew himself to be. “I just never recognized myself,” Page says. “For a long time I could not even look at a photo of myself.” It was difficult to watch the movies too, especially ones in which he played more feminine roles.

Page loved making movies, but he also felt alienated by Hollywood and its standards. Alia Shawkat, a close friend and co-star in 2009’s Whip It,describes all the attention from Juno as scarring. “He had a really hard time with the press and expectations,” Shawkat says. “‘Put this on! And look this way! And this is sexy!’”

By the time he appeared in blockbusters like X-Men: The Last Stand and Inception, Page was suffering from depression, anxiety and panic attacks. He didn’t know, he says, “how to explain to people that even though [I was] an actor, just putting on a T-shirt cut for a woman would make me so unwell.” Shawkat recalls Page’s struggles with clothes. “I’d be like, ‘Hey, look at all these nice outfits you’re getting,’ and he would say, ‘It’s not me. It feels like a costume,’” she says. Page tried to convince himself that he was fine, that someone who was fortunate enough to have made it shouldn’t have complaints. But he felt exhausted by the work required to “just exist,” and thought more than once about quitting acting.

In 2014, Page came out as gay, despite feeling for years that “being out was impossible” given his career. (Gender identity and sexual orientation are, of course, distinct, but one queer identity can coexist with another.) In an emotional speech at a Human Rights Campaign conference, Page talked about being part of an industry “that places crushing standards” on actors and viewers alike. “There are pervasive stereotypes about masculinity and femininity that define how we’re all supposed to act, dress and speak,” Page went on. “And they serve no one.”

The actor started wearing suits on the red carpet. He found love, marrying choreographer Emma Portner in 2018. He asserted more agency in his career, producing his own films with LGBTQ leads like Freeheld and My Days of Mercy. And he made a masculine wardrobe a condition of taking roles. Yet the daily discord was becoming unbearable. “The difference in how I felt before coming out as gay to after was massive,” says Page. “But did the discomfort in my body ever go away? No, no, no, no.”

In part, it was the isolation forced by the pandemic that brought to a head Page’s wrestling with gender. (Page and Portner separated last summer, and the two divorced in early 2021. “We’ve remained close friends,” Page says.) “I had a lot of time on my own to really focus on things that I think, in so many ways, unconsciously, I was avoiding,” he says. He was inspired by trailblazing trans icons like Janet Mock and Laverne Cox, who found success in Hollywood while living authentically. Trans writers helped him understand his feelings; Page saw himself reflected in P. Carl’s memoir Becoming a Man. Eventually “shame and discomfort” gave way to revelation. “I was finally able to embrace being transgender,” Page says, “and letting myself fully become who I am.”

This led to a series of decisions. One was asking the world to call him by a different name, Elliot, which he says he’s always liked. Page has a tattoo that says E.P. PHONE HOME, a reference to a movie about a young boy with that name. “I loved E.T. when I was a kid and always wanted to look like the boys in the movies, right?” he says. The other decision was to use different pronouns—for the record, both he/him and they/them are fine. (When I ask if he has a preference on pronouns for the purposes of this story, Page says, “He/him is great.”)

A day before we first speak, Page will talk to his mom about this interview and she will tell him, “I’m just so proud of my son.” He grows emotional relating this and tries to explain that his mom, the daughter of a minister, who was born in the 1950s, was always trying to do what she thought was best for her child, even if that meant encouraging young Page to act like a girl. “She wants me to be who I am and supports me fully,” Page says. “It is a testament to how people really change.”

Another decision was to get top surgery. Page volunteers this information early in our conversation; at the time he posted his disclosure on Instagram, he was recovering in Toronto. Like many trans people, Page emphasizes being trans isn’t all about surgery. For some people, it’s unnecessary. For others, it’s unaffordable. For the wider world, the media’s focus on it has sensationalized transgender bodies, inviting invasive and inappropriate questions. But Page describes surgery as something that, for him, has made it possible to finally recognize himself when he looks in the mirror, providing catharsis he’s been waiting for since the “total hell” of puberty. “It has completely transformed my life,” he says. So much of his energy was spent on being uncomfortable in his body, he says. Now he has that energy back.

For the transgender community at large, visibility does not automatically lead to acceptance. Around the globe, transgender people deal disproportionately with violence and discrimination. Anti-trans hate crimes are on the rise in the U.K. along with increasingly transphobic rhetoric in newspapers and tabloids. In the U.S., in addition to the perennial challenges trans people face with issues like poverty and homelessness, a flurry of bills in state legislatures would make it a crime to provide transition-related medical care to trans youth. And crass old jokes are still in circulation. When Biden lifted the ban on open service for transgender troops, Saturday Night Live’s Michael Che did a bit on Weekend Update about the policy being called “don’t ask, don’t tuck.”

Page says coming out as trans was “selfish” on one level: “It’s for me. I want to live and be who I am.” But he also felt a moral imperative to do so, given the times. Human identity is complicated and mysterious, but politics insists on fitting everything into boxes. In today’s culture wars, simplistic beliefs about gender—e.g., chromosomes = destiny—are so widespread and so deep-seated that many people who hold those beliefs don’t feel compelled to consider whether they might be incomplete or prejudiced. On Feb. 24, after a passionate debate on legislation that would ban discrimination against LGBTQ people, Representative Marie Newman, an Illinois Democrat, proudly displayed the pride flag in support of her daughter, who is trans. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, responded by hanging a poster outside her office that read: There are TWO genders: MALE & FEMALE.

The next day Dr. Rachel Levine, who stands to become the first openly transgender federal official confirmed by the Senate, endured a tirade from Senator Rand Paul about “genital mutilation” during her confirmation hearing. My second conversation with Page happens shortly after this. He brings it up almost immediately, and seems both heartbroken and determined. He wants to emphasize that top surgery, for him, was “not only life-changing but lifesaving.” He implores people to educate themselves about trans lives, to learn how crucial medical care can be, to understand that lack of access to it is one of the many reasons that an estimated 41% of transgender people have attempted suicide, according to one survey.

Page has been in the political trenches for a while, having leaned into progressive activism after coming out as queer in 2014. For two seasons, he and best friend Ian Daniel filmed Gaycation, a Viceland series that explored LGBTQ culture around the world and, at one point, showed Page grilling Senator Ted Cruz at the Iowa State Fair about discrimination against queer people. In 2019, Page made a documentary called There’s Something in the Water, which explores environmental hardships experienced by communities of color in Nova Scotia, with $350,000 of his own money. That activism extends to his own industry: in 2017, he published a Facebook post that, among other things, accused director Brett Ratner of forcibly outing him as gay on the set of an X-Men movie. (A representative for Ratner did not respond to a request for comment.)

As a trans person who is white, wealthy and famous, Page has a unique kind of privilege, and with it an opportunity to advocate for those with less. According to the U.S. Trans Survey, a large-scale report from 2015, transgender people of color are more likely to experience unemployment, harassment by police and refusals of medical care. Nearly half of all Black respondents reported being denied equal treatment, verbally harassed and/or physically attacked in the past year. Trans people as a group fare much worse on such stats than the general population. “My privilege has allowed me to have resources to get through and to be where I am today,” Page says, “and of course I want to use that privilege and platform to help in the ways I can.”

Since his disclosure, Page has been mostly quiet on social media. One exception has been to tweet on behalf of the ACLU, which is in the midst of fighting anti-trans bills and laws around the country, including those that ban transgender girls and women from participating in sports. Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves says he will sign such a bill in the name of “protect[ing] young girls.” Page played competitive soccer and vividly recalls the agony of being told he would have to play on the girls’ team once he aged out of mixed-gender squads. After an appeal, Page was allowed to play with the boys for an additional year. Today, several bills list genitalia as a requirement for deciding who plays on which team. “I would have been in that position as a kid,” Page says. “It’s horrific.”

All this advocacy is unlikely to make life easier. “You can’t enter into certain spaces as a public trans person,” says the ACLU’s Strangio, “without being prepared to spend some percentage of your life being threatened and harassed.” Yet, while he seems overwhelmed at times, Page is also eager. Many of the political attacks on trans people—whether it is a mandate that bathroom use be determined by birth sex, a blanket ban on medical interventions for trans kids or the suggestion that trans men are simply wayward women beguiled by male privilege—carry the same subtext: that trans people are mistaken about who they are. “We know who we are,” Page says. “People cling to these firm ideas [about gender] because it makes people feel safe. But if we could just celebrate all the wonderful complexities of people, the world would be such a better place.”

Even if Page weren’t vocal, his public presence would communicate something powerful. That is in part because of what Paisley Currah, a professor of political science at Brooklyn College, calls “visibility gaps.” Historically, trans women have been more visible, in culture and in Hollywood, than trans men. There are many explanations: Our culture is obsessed with femininity. Men’s bodies are less policed and scrutinized. Patriarchal people tend to get more emotional about who is considered to be in the same category as their daughters. “And a lot of trans men don’t stand out as trans,” says Currah, who is a trans man himself. “I think we’ve taken up less of the public’s attention because masculinity is sort of the norm.”

During our interviews, Page will repeatedly refer to himself as a “transgender guy.” He also calls himself nonbinary and queer, but for him, transmasculinity is at the center of the conversation right now. “It’s a complicated journey,” he says, “and an ongoing process.”

While the visibility gap means that trans men have been spared some of the hate endured by trans women, it has also meant that people like Page have had fewer models. “There were no examples,” Page says of growing up in Halifax in the 1990s. There are many queer people who have felt “that how they feel deep inside isn’t a real thing because they never saw it reflected back to them,” says Tiq Milan, an activist, author and transgender man. Page offers a reflection: “They can see that and say, ‘You know what, that’s who I am too,’” Milan says. When there aren’t examples, he says, “people make monsters of us.”

For decades, that was something Hollywood did. As detailed in the 2020 Netflix documentary Disclosure, transgender people have been portrayed onscreen as villainous and deceitful, tragic subplots or the butt of jokes. In a sign of just how far the industry has come—spurred on by productions like Pose and trailblazers like Mock—Netflix offered to change the credits on The Umbrella Academy the same day that its star posted his statement on social media. Now when an episode ends, the first words viewers see are “Elliot Page.”

Today, there are many out trans and nonbinary actors, directors and producers. Storylines involving trans people are more common, more respectful. Sometimes that aspect of identity is even incidental, rather than the crux of a morality tale. And yet Hollywood can still seem a frightening place for LGBTQ people to come out. “It’s an industry that says, ‘Don’t do that,’” says director Silas Howard, who got his break on Amazon’s show Transparent, which made efforts to hire transgender crew members. “I wouldn’t have been hired if they didn’t have a trans initiative,” Howard says. “I’m always aware of that.”

So what will it mean for Page’s career? While Page has appeared in many projects, he also faced challenges landing female leads because he didn’t fit Hollywood’s narrow mold. Since Page’s Instagram post, his team is seeing more activity than they have in years. Many of the offers coming in—to direct, to produce, to act—are trans-related, but there are also some “dude roles.”

Downtime in quarantine helped Page accept his gender identity. “I was finally able to embrace being transgender,” he says.

Page was attracted to the role of Vanya in The Umbrella Academy because—in the first season, released in 2019—Vanya is crushed by self-loathing, believing herself to be the only ordinary sibling in an extraordinary family. The character can barely summon the courage to move through the world. “I related to how much Vanya was closed off,” Page says. Now on set filming the third season, co-workers have seen a change in the actor. “It seems like there’s a tremendous weight off his shoulders, a feeling of comfort,” says showrunner Steve Blackman. “There’s a lightness, a lot more smiling.” For Page, returning to set has been validating, if awkward at times. Yes, people accidentally use the wrong pronouns—“It’s going to be an adjustment,” Page says—but co-workers also see and acknowledge him.

The debate over whether cisgender people, who have repeatedly collected awards for playing trans characters, should continue to do so has largely been settled. However, trans actors have rarely been considered for cisgender parts. Whatever challenges might lie ahead, Page seems exuberant about playing a new spectrum of roles. “I’m really excited to act, now that I’m fully who I am, in this body,” Page says. “No matter the challenges and difficult moments of this, nothing amounts to getting to feel how I feel now.”

This includes having short hair again. During our interview, Page keeps rearranging strands on his forehead. It took a long time for him to return to the barber’s chair and ask to cut it short, but he got there. And how did that haircut feel?

Page tears up again, then smiles. “I just could not have enjoyed it more,” he says.”

[seawitchkaraoke]

The first time I watched hairspray I was really confused why Edna was played by a man - I was like ?? is this supposed to be a trans woman? Huh? And my google search just told me that the role is ‘‘traditionally played by a man’‘ so I essentially went huh okay weird one of those weird theater things I guess, whatever

Well youtube randomly pushed You Can’t Stop The Beat back on my dash and of course I watched it and almost cried but well. It also made me think about this again. And man this isn’t a proper meta bc I haven’t actually watched the movie in ages and have never seen the musical live but

Edna isn’t a trans woman. If she was there’d probably be a lot of discourse about casting John Travolta to play her (largely justified, though ppl do sometimes miss some nuance in these discussions re ppl not being out yet). But she’s not. Fuck man, no one was probably even thinking about trans woman at all when they first cast a man for that role.

What Edna is, is a woman who is derided as ugly and fat who struggles with that quite a bti, who does not fit societies beauty standarts and then throughout the story becomes more confident and self assured and in You Can’t Stop The Beat finally steps on stage (literally) and sings ‘‘You can’t stop my happiness ‘cause I like the way I am’‘

And I think for that casting a cis man really works.

Because, yes fatness is one aspect of what is often seen as ugly in people (more strongly in people perceived as women than men? idk? possibly). But manliness specifically is something that is seen as ugly in women.

How many women (both cis and trans!) struggle with being too tall? too muscular? too hairy? with not being curvy enough or their faces being too hard or their voices being too deep? Many do. Many many many do. My mom always hated being as tall as she is. I struggled a lot with ‘‘looking like a man in a dress’‘ whenever I tried on dresses as a teenager (I still sometimes do! My brain still sometimes gives that as an immediate response when I try on a dress that doesn’t flatter my body type! Even though I’m nonbinary now! Even though I rationally know men can damn well put on dresses and look great in them!)

John Travolta isn’t playing a trans woman in the movie hairspray, he’s playing a woman who is fat and mainly looking and self concious and derided as ugly by the villians of the movie. And she’s relatable! To trans women? Sure! Bc trans women struggle a lot with passing aka not being feminine enough. But also for cis women bc they struggle with that a lot too! And even for some nonbinary ppl bc sadly we can’t escape all the gender specific beauty standarts drilled into our brains even if we escape gender itself

I just think it’s really fun and interesting how much Edna being played by a man does for the show. People notice, people are confused, I googled what Edna’s name was for this bc I couldn’t remember and literally the first autocomplete it gave me was hairspray ‘’john travolta why’‘ yeah why indeed. I still don’t know why they originally did that but I like it

[spanishskulduggery]

Hi! I'm very curious about something regarding the Spanish language. I'm currently studying A2 Spanish but I had this question and my teacher did not seem too willing to discuss it. Here it goes:

I know that Spanish has, something my Spanish teacher says, linguistic gender. I was wondering how do the people who don't align themselves with the gender binary (masculine and feminine) speak/write in it? I have read this article about Spanish speaking people from US adding "x" Or "@" and people from Argentina using "e" to make the words gender neutral.

Thank you so much for responding, whenever you get to it. Also love your blog. ❤

Short answer, in general speaking terms people are tending towards the -e now because the other two are very hard to actually speak, and because Spanish-speakers feel the -e is more authentic

What you're most likely to see in Spanish is masculine plural as the default, or in written things you might see todos y todas or like un/una alumno/a "a student", or like se busca empleado/a "employees wanted" / "looking for an employee"

If it's something official or academic you typically include both [todas y todas] or you go masculine plural [todos] unless it's specifically feminine plural

-

Related, linguistic gender applies to all things, not just people. Why is la mesa "table" feminine, but el libro "book" masculine? Just linguistic gender. I can tell you that most loanwords (that aren't people) in Spanish are masculine, and that there are certain words that come from Greek are masculine, and that -ista words are unisex most of the time... And I can tell you there are some words like testigo or modelo that are unisex and don't change for gender. Aside from that, speaking about nouns and grammatical gender... those particular things are harder to parse for regular people, but if you go into the field of linguistics you can explore that more deeply. Some of it is source language (i.e. "it came from Latin this way") or things like that. And in general when talking about nouns it's unimportant and not considered sexist, that's just how it is.

There is such a thing where it gets a little too far the other way and people will say "history? what about herstory" which is a nice thought but the etymology has nothing to do with gender there

When it comes to people - and when it comes to gendered attitudes - that's where it gets more confusing and more complicated.

I believe there was an experiment where people had French and Spanish speakers [I believe it was Spanish] try to identify how a "fork" would sound. French people gave it a more feminine voice because "fork" is feminine in French, while Spanish speakers gave it a more masculine voice because it's masculine in Spanish.

Whether we like it or not, certain gendered things do influence our thoughts and feelings and reactions. A similar thing in English exists where the old joke was something like "There was a car accident; a boy is rushed to the ER and the surgeon but the father was killed. When they got to the ER the doctor said 'I can't operate on him, he's my son!'" and it's like "well who could the doctor be?" ...and the doctor is his mother. We associate "doctor" as masculine and "nurse" as feminine.

There's a gender bias in our language thought patterns, even though the language changes. And that does exist in Spanish too, to different extents.

There are certain cultural and gendered stereotypes or connotations attached to certain words, many tend to be more despective or pejorative when it's women.

For example - and I know this has changed in many places or it isn't as prevalent - el jinete "horseman/rider", while the female form is la amazona "horsewoman/rider". Because la jinete or la jineta was sometimes "promiscuous woman".

There were also debates about things like la presidente vs. la presidenta or what the female version of juez should be, whether it should be la juez or la jueza

Most languages with gendered language have varying degrees of this, and all languages I'm aware of have gendered stereotypes related to professions or cultural attitudes in some way, and not just for women, and not all in the same way with some of them being very culturally based

-

The longer answer involves a bit of history, and I'll be honest, some of it is contested or considered a little controversial in Spanish-speaking countries particularly in the conservative parts (which honestly should come as no surprise)

The first symbol that I know of that came about was the X

First piece of contested history: As far as I know, it was the trans/queer and drag communities in Latin America who started the trend of X. When there were signs or bulletins that had the gendered endings - specifically masculine plural as the default plural - people would write a big X through the O. This was a way of being inclusive and also a very smash the patriarchy move.

Some people attribute this to women's rights activists which may also be true, but a good portion of the things I read from people say it was the trans/queer/drag communities in Latin America doing this.

I've also read it originated in Brazil with Portuguese; still Latin America, but not a Spanish-speaking country.

Where it's most contested is that some people will say that this trend started in the Hispanic communities of the United States. And - not without reason - people are upset that this is perceived as a very gringo movement.

That's why Latinx is considered a very American-Hispanic experience

-

The arroba (@) is relatively new. I remember seeing it in the 2000s. I don't know if it existed earlier for gender inclusivity.

People used it because it looks like a combination of O and A, so it was meant to be cut down on saying things like todos y todas or niños y niñas in informal written speech

I remember quite a few (informal) emails starting like hola tod@s or muy buenas a tod@s or things like that

I think of it more as convenience especially in the information age where you never knew who you were talking to and it's easier than including both words, especially when masculine plural might be clumsy or insensitive

Still, it's practically impossible to use the @ in spoken Spanish, so it's better for writing casually. You also likely won't be allowed to use the @ in anything academic, but in chatrooms, blogs, or forums it's an option

-

I love the E ending. And the gender neutral form in singular is elle... so it's él "he", ella "she", and elle "they (singular)"

The -e ending is I think became more common within the past 10 years though it might have existed longer than that. These sorts of changes tend to come from the queer or trans communities and tend to be more insular before becoming more of an outside thing that then the general population finds out about

It came about because there are some adjectives in Spanish that end in -e that are unisex. It's not an A, it's not an O, but it's something grammatically neutral for Spanish

It's not as awkward as X, and E exists very firmly in Spanish so it's not perceived as some outside (typically gringo) influence

The good news is, it's pretty widespread on the internet. Not so much in person (yet), but especially in Spain and Argentina at least from what I've seen, particularly in the queer communities and online culture.

The only issues with it are that for non-native speakers, you have to get used to any spelling changes. Like amigo and amiga, but to use the E ending you have to add a U... so it's amigue.

That's because there are certain words where you have to do spelling changes to preserve the sound; gue has a hard G sound like -go does [like guerra]... but ge has the equivalent of an English H sound [gelatina for example]. Another one is cómico/a "funny" which would go to cómique. Again, because co has a hard C/K sound, while ce is a soft sound more like an S or in some contexts TH/Z sound; like centro is a soft sound, while cola is a hard sound

Unless you make it to the preterite forms where you come across like pagué, alcancé, practiqué with those types of endings... or subjunctive forms, pague, alcance, practique ... Basically you'd have to be exposed to those spelling rules or you'd be really confused if you were a total beginner.

It all makes sense when you speak it, but spelling might be harder before you learn those rules

The other drawback is that the E endings are sometimes not applicable. Like in damas y caballeros "ladies and gentlemen" there's not really a gender neutral variation on that, it's all binary there. And while la caballero "female knight" does exist, you'd never see a male variation on dama; the closest I've ever seen is calling a guy a damisela en apuros "damsel in distress" in some contexts where the man needs rescuing, and it's feminine una/la damisela, and it's very tongue-in-cheek

There are also some contexts like jefe vs jefa where I guess you would say jefe for "boss" if you were going the neutral route, but it's a bit weird because it's also the masculine option.

I can't speak for how people might feel about those if they're non-binary or agender because every so often you kind of get forced into the binary whether you like it or not

I totally support the E, I just recognize there are some limitations there and it's quirks of the Spanish language itself

Important Note: Just to reiterate, E endings are the ones most Spanish-speakers prefer because it's easiest to speak and doesn't have the American connotation that X does in some circles

-

Where it gets very "Facebook comment section" is that you'll see many Latin Americans traditionalists and conservatives claim that "this is just the gringos colonizing our language" and "grammatical gender doesn't matter in Spanish". They'll say that the "gender movement" is an American feminist movement and that it's a gringo thing and doesn't reflect actual Latin Americans or Spanish-speakers

Which on the one hand, yes, English does have a lot of undue influence on other languages because of colonization, and American influence and meddling in Latin American politics is a big important issue

But as far as I'm aware of the X (and especially the E) were created by Latin Americans

The other issue I personally have is that any time this conversation comes up, someone will say something like somos latinOs and claim that masculine plural is gender neutral

To that I say, first of all, "masculine plural" is inherently gendered. Additionally, there is a gender neutral in Spanish but it's lo or ello and it's only used with "it" so it sounds very unfriendly to use on an actual person... and in plural it looks like masculine plural and everything applies like masculine plural

Second, the reason masculine plural is default is because of machismo. It's more important that we don't possibly misgender a man, so it has to be masculine plural. It's changed in some places, but growing up when I was learning Spanish, if it was 99 women and 1 man you still had to put masculine plural

I'm not opposed to there being a default, and I understand why it's easier to use masculine plural, but some people get very upset at the idea of inclusive language

...

In general, my biggest issues with these comments come when people act like non-binary/queer/trans people don't exist in Spanish-speaking countries, like English invented them somehow. So it's nice to see linguistic self-determination and seeing native speakers using the E endings.

[tokyokookmin]

Why is Jimin labelled the most feminine when his natural style is anything but? He normally wears casual wear pants/hoodies in practices, and a plain T-shirt and jeans. When he’s feeling fancy he will wear a shirt and boots.

His stage clothing is feminine, but he himself doesn’t wear feminine clothing or wear make up outside work. So where’s this whole most feminine thing come from? His facial features are cute and pretty but only with make up he looks more “feminine”.

Aka what I’m trying to say is “how” is jimin labelled feminine a lot? I don’t mean this in a derogatory way, men and women can be feminine, just in the way where I see jimin as jimin outside work or casual and I see anything but.

Work clothing/make up ≠ jimin outside work/free time

jimin outside work isn’t feminine yet he’s labelled as such. I understand presentation and Kpop make up ect but “femininity” would normally translate to how they present or dress outside work, but it doesn’t. None of the members embrace “femininity” outside work.

Jungkook I think is the only member who wears make up casually as expressed by him. Has worn more feminine clothes cause he doesn’t care about gender of clothing. Yet he’s not called feminine.

There’s a difference between “being in touch with your feminine side” not minding wearing make up/feminine clothes vs actually being feminine.

Hello anon, had a little hiccup, took a while to retrieve your ask. 😊

Anyways anon, I definitely do agree with your opinion, Jimin clothing on stage is feminine while his clothing irl is something casual that he feels comfortable in.

One of my similar posts to this ask (i briefly talked about his body) .

Though I might disagree with a part of your argument, not all casual clothes that Jimin wears are casual or you can say masculine cloths. Jimin does wear women clothing ( or clothes styles and designs which has a feminine touch) such as a 'v' cut, denim etc.

* I just hate one thing, clothes are labeled, clothes has a gender. I don't like that, people can wear whatever they would want to be in. A girl can wear a boyish clothing and the same goes to boys. I dont know why people are not given the freedom to wear what they really wish to. *

These are only a few pics, but you can see sometimes that he does wear 'women' clothing.

Anyways.... This here....

You see, Jimin features in general screams feminism. His lips, jawline, earrings,makeup (what you said).

Coming to JK's opinion, I really have no idea bcuz for me, jk is just being himself all time by wearing his usual casual black clothes, tho, his facial features is similar to women's. The jawline, aura... yk...

He definitely does feminine clothing, but I never really had noticed it lol. I tried to find a few pics, very little came up on Google images.. sorry!

Jungkook is perceived as a manly and as a masculine man all the time, his abs, sportsmanship etc definitely is the reason to it. What people do not notice is that he actually is a 'softy'. He is delicate boy. My mums first impression of him was calling him a sissy boy'.

BTS keeps their private life away from us,we don't even know what they do, whether they embrace femininity or not.

Personally, I think Joon wears the most feminine cloths in the group.

It's a stupid to discuss over this topic, each and everyone has their own right over themselves and no one can change them....

[innovativestruggles]

What the Free! anime can teach us about male heterosexuality and toxic masculinity

I’m going to start off by saying this. I am a feminist. And as a feminist who is also a self-professed otaku, the two cannot be anymore incongruent. Despite the large amount of misogyny seen in a still conservative country like Japan, and the unfortunate toxicity seen in some fandoms, I am still able to find joy in watching and reading my fair share of anime/manga.

I am relatively late to the party with the Free! anime, nevertheless I am still glad I gave it a chance. I was initially skeptical, because though it is not a BL genre, I would say from my experience being in numerous anime fandoms, I can already predict what a fanservice anime full of gorgeous half naked men would entail amongst fans. Needless to say, I was correct. However, that isn’t the point of this post. This post came about because I was so pleasantly surprised with the characters, their development and their interactions with each other.

Free! is more than just fanservice. It is about friendship and the freedom to express emotions without repercussion. I absolutely love love how every male character have their own way of expressing their feelings. I love the friendship between them and how they can be vulnerable in front of each other and about each other. It gives that incredible perspective into men and emotions - that they are also human, that it is okay for them to experience vulnerabilities, to be in touch with their emotions, to talk about their feelings with their male friends and to touch each other - all without the idea that they would be perceived as gay.

Character sexuality

I am going to disregard that there are some people out there who fish for a romantic interaction between the characters as soon as one or the other show some sort of vulnerable emotion or experience physical touch. Don’t get me wrong, I ship a lot of the male characters with each other, but this post is not about shipping.

Although the anime does not explicitly state the characters’ sexuality I am going to presume that the majority of them are most likely heterosexual. My reasoning for this is the canonical evidence I see and my interpretation based on these canonical scenes. See below.

When the boys played a game and asked Haru what his first romantic encounter was like, they all assumed it was a beautiful woman...

Makoto’s comment on the girls being cute and correcting Chigusa’s question that it’s not just their yukatas... so to me it genuinely sounds like he thinks the girls are cute

The assumption that Rei has a girlfriend

Gou (being a girl that she is) insists on wanting to know more about Rei’s “love” situation

Gou obviously explained she thought he has a girlfriend but he does not believe in love. So he doesn’t explicitly deny that he doesn’t like girls.

And Rin’s host family asking whether he has a girlfriend, to which Rin has a lot of hesitation because he is in love with Haru and the only person he would think of in that way is Haru

So because of the impression that these guys are most likely heterosexual, it just makes the basis of their interactions with each other so much more important in the sphere of toxic masculinity. 

Men are taught to never show their emotions, their vulnerabilities - especially towards each other. Any form of emotions between male friends, and physical touch would automatically earn them their sexuality - being gay. So when men hold onto these rigid gender stereotypes, it perpetuates and dictates how men should be, how women should be, and therefore, it disadvantages women and reinforces gender inequality. 

As much as anime and manga are fictitious, it is still based on how society portrays men and women. it comes from somewhere, and because the fandom is always in discussion about their thoughts and feelings of the anime, and how the fandom treats other fans within the fandom, there are repercussions that comes from watching/reading fiction.

Character names

One of the first things Free! emphasised on were the “girly” names each of the male protagonists have. What I really like about this, is that just because you have a girly name, just because you show emotions and just because you genuinely love and care for your male friends, as a male character, this does not necessarily mean that you are gay. 

Society dictates that as soon as a man falls outside the male norm - i.e. if he doesn’t have a masculine name, if he has feminine features, if he show emotions, if he hugs his male friends, if he cries - then he must be gay. And this is the disconcerting thing I find with some fandoms - the need to categorise males and females into one box. It seems to me that men tend to have less of a leeway with these kinds of things. If you look at Gou for example, she does not have a feminine name. Her name gears toward more masculine or gender neutral, yet the anime clearly depicts her as having an interest in men. No one bats an eye. But this is different for the male characters, because when you feminise a man in any way, you have this misconception that he must be gay. Such perception reinforces toxic masculinity and ultimately increases the gender inequality gap. This is why women continue to be subjected to gender based violence, because people believe that men should not express their emotions, that they should express them in more unhealthy, aggressive ways or “manly ways”. And so violence towards women is condoned.

Free! is such a breath of fresh air. Not once throughout the entire show when I watched all three seasons did I say “oh, he cried in front of his friends, therefore he must be gay” or “he hugged his friend, therefore he must be gay.” Because heterosexual men should be able to do all this. They should be free to be what we call “being feminine” without being afraid that they would be labelled as gay. 

Heterosexual men can have close loving friendships with their male friends. They can tell their male friends that they love them, they care about them, that they can kiss them, without being labelled as gay. Because women do this to each other all the time and no one makes the assumption that she is a lesbian.

Heterosexual men can cry and be vulnerable to each other without the assumption of being labelled as gay

It’s okay for men to cry in front of their mates

Heterosexual men can hug each other and show physical affection without being labelled as gay

They should be able to express their feelings to each other and how much they care about each other.

And most importantly for the above scenes, heterosexual men should be able to say this to each other. There is nothing wrong with men being vulnerable and emotional, and telling each other that they care and love their friends.

Emotions, vulnerabilities and expressing feelings should be normalised amongst heterosexual men without them being labelled as gay. This is the only way to dismantle the patriarchy and the toxic masculinity that continuously plays in society, amongst film and fiction, and reality.

The characters spoke of their fears, their dreams, their friendships, their future, their past, and their struggles. This is not often something men talk about (let alone to each other) because they view discussions like this as weak and it makes them feel less of a man. But the Free! characters broke through these barriers and really put it all into perspective. And as young men, they portrayed this so well.

So thank you Free! for showing viewers (especially heterosexual male fans) that they can be vulnerable and that it is okay to be affectionate towards your mates.

Feel free to share your thoughts! And please be respectful! 💞

[nightswithkookmin]

still same anon. this was another one of my asks from months ago. basically it was a comment I made about jikook's intimacy. it was from this interview: https://youtu.be/T--BOS8oTec the moment I'm talking about happens from 3:00 minute timestamp onwards. i was saying how despite this moment being "skinship" or whatever, it kinda hit different? there's also intimacy there. bc you see how jimin doesn't have to say anything and jungkook immediately understands what to do and starts massaging his neck. jimin literally threw a glance at him, tilted his neck a lil and jungkook didn't need a second more to know what to do. I wanted to talk to you about it since I know that you're not big on skinship defining jikook's relationship, but I think there ARE jikook skinship moments worth noting and this is one of them imo.

Oh ok. Thanks.

SKINSHIP IN CONTEXT

I think skinship by it's very definition is an intimate act depending on the level of familiarity between the parties involved in the act.

From my understanding of skinship, it's basically interactions that would otherwise be viewed as sexual outside of their culture but viewed as acceptable platonic behavior between the same sex or even the opposite sex.

The objective of skinship is to be intimate with another person on a level that's only next to romance.

I remember my sister telling me how shook she was when she found out for the first time, around 2011 when she first moved to Seoul, how she couldn't even keep her pants on at a 'Jimjirban' because all the gals in there were expected to walk around butt naked in the spa. No towels, no pants, no robes butt nakedttt.

'Mehn, this doesn't happen where I'm coming from' she said to her companion.

A. I'm black.

B. I'm not flat.

C. I'm wearing my pants.

Her very naked friend, a native SK, whom she says she'd only met for like a week, then grabbed her underwear and pulled it down her thighs exposing her deforested vagina to the winds and a dozen other curious gazes. All females.

'For a second, I thought I had been tricked into an orgy of a sort. I was very naked without my consent. Wind whistling through my shy butt cracks. Watching very naked females of varying ages stare on with pride and smiles on their faces as if I had just saved a village or something and when I jiggled when I walked I could hear them gasp, amazed- Goldy, how is this not gay?'

'You think skinship between their men is weird, wait till you see their women. Wait till a very attractive Korean girl is breathing down your neck and caressing your nape and complementing your skin while showing you pictures of her boyfriend on her phone.'

She says it took her a while to get used to the skinship between women in SK and seeing the men interact in a certain way messed with her brains for a while. She said she felt her intelligence was being played with most of the time.

I guess if you want to look at Jikook's skinship as intimate then there's nothing wrong it.

Skinship is intimate at the very least.

But skinship, for all intent and purposes, is platonic and nonsexual in nature. And maybe this is a fatal flaw on my part. Or maybe thanks to my sister, I'm desensitized to this form of interaction but I have a hard time seeing Jikook's intimacy as platonic or even seeing most of their skinship as romantic- in anyway. It will make sense in a bit, hold on.

I have a hard time equating skinship with romantic intimacy. But that's just me.

I wasn't able to click on the link you sent but I'm guessing this is the moment you are talking about?

I wouldn't call this skinship. I mean it is but I wouldn't call it that. Skinship is meant to show how close two people are. How familiar they are with eachother.

This doesn't show how close Jikook are. But It shows how caring and affectionate JK is as human being, as a dongsaeng, and as a boyfriend.

I'd rather we celebrate that. JK doesn't get highlighted enough. He caters to the people he cares about. He is an attentive person.

Hate to be a grinch but I can pull up a couple of times JK has done that very gesture with Jin or Tae or Hobi. Remember Soop? Remember when Jin complained of feeling cold and JK went up to him immediately and 'warmed' him up?

Of course, Jimin kept stealing glances at him like he could throw a shoe at the back of his head if he could but that's beside the point.

The man is an empath. He's said several times he feels a lot of pain watching his hyungs go through it. Fact is, Jk cares about people. He's kind, loving and he shows this aspect of him through gestures like these.

He does it for Jimin. He does it for all the members because as he's said, they are all a family.

It's stressful hearing people claim he doesn't give a fuck about Jimin, that he doesn't care about JM because he shows affections for others besides JM.

At some point we would have to make a distinction between what acts flows from their unique personalities because of who they are at their core and what act flows from them being a couple.

Most people who see Jimin as a natural nurturer and what not are able to separate this identity from his ship moments but JK isn't accorded the same privilege. It is why most people are quick to lash out at him when he interacts with others in the same way he interacts with Jimin.

When JM acts nurturing towards V or RM or Suga he is seen a good, kind person.

When JK does something affectionate it's seen as a beautiful Jikook moment or Taekook moment or Jinkook moment and is soon swept under the carpet, soon forgotten and never tied to the personality of JK- perhaps because most of these shippers don't care to know who JK is as a person and as a human.

When Jimin does something affectionate its 'awww Jimin is such an amazing person' even if that act is merely performative sometimes.

I try not to engage in conversations that perpetuate this horrifying discrimination against either of Jikook. They are both individuals.

There are a lot of Asks sitting in my box highlighting the various ways JM is awesome and kind and amazing as s boyfriend to JK and not a single out of 500 plus posts talking about how empathetic JK really is. How thoughtful he is to even pack motion sickness drugs to go on trips even though he doesn't get motion illness and JM is the one that often complains about motion sickness on trips.

The heteronormative lens, on opposite ends of the spectrum in the shipping community, which dictates we perceive on Jikook as either feminine or masculine is a telltale sign of the misogyny and misandry prevalent within this fandom.

The fandom's heteronormative lens filters Jimin as the wildly feminine archetype, wildly fragile, sexy and womanly right down to the way we praise him as the 'good woman' in his relationship with JK- loyal, faithful, nurturing, kind, silent in that he continues to perform Jikook even when Jikook are not in a great place. etc.

Yet because he is seen as womanly or feminine, the part of the fandom that hates women hate Jimin. That's where all the slut shaming, bullying and harassment stems from- misogyny.

Jk is viewed as the opposite of that. By most, he is very masculine man and as such harbors all the traits of masculinity the modern woman detests- toxic masculinity, cheating, disloyal, fuckboy who treats women like shit. All forms of hatred and intolerance towards men is projected on to him especially by male intolerant people or dare I say feminist women within the fandom.

And you see them in the way they are always fighting for Jimin against JK as if Jimin were a fragile faithful woman whose man don't treat him right thus further perpetuating the heteronormative stereotypes of Jimin.

What's disconcerting is Jikook are both men and yet depending on how their masculinity or femininity is perceived, they are both treated very differently.

You hear Tuktukkers talk about how Jikook is as a result of heteronormativity and thus prescribe Taekook as the ideal homonormative ship- because to them, Tae and JK are both seen as two whole men.

To them Jimin is just not man enough to even be gay- isn't that the foundation of homophobia?

Gay men not seen as men at all?

Whereas amongst Jokers, Jimin's manliness is often forgiven and JK's is abhorred. Jk is too much of a man and men just ain't shit.

This may sound like an over simplification but Tuktukkers hate women, Jokers hate men and either side suck. In my opinion.

Jimin is a nurturer he cares about people including his boyfriend. JK is an empath he feels the pain of those close to him including his boyfriend and is often moved to ease or take away some of that pain.

It's thus annoying to hear people out here yell and complain on every turn each time JK interacts with the others how JK 'doesn't act exclusive' with Jimin or how he doesn't care about Jimin.

Should he not care about anyone besides Jimin just because he is dating Jimin?

It's annoying when they say the same about Jimin. Jimin nurtures everyone ergo there's nothing special or exclusive about the way he nurtures JK.

Nonsense such as these are spewed without taking into account that those acts in themselves speak directly to who these people are as human beings first and foremost; secondly, to how they feel about the person at the recieving end of their affections.

If they are treating everyone the same it's probably because they love everyone too- in a non romantic way of course. It's their love language. They love others with the same heart they love eachother with.

It doesn't take away from how they feel about eachother. JK admiring another member does not mean when he admires Jimin it's nothing. It just mean he admires Jimin too.

Not everything has to be romanticized or given a romantic context. They are each expressing themselves and their feelings for their bandmates. It's about them not their bandmates or their relationship with said bandmates.

Certain moments are just attestation to their love language be it platonic or romantic and it says more about who they are as people than what their relationship with the other person is. It's not all about their relationship.

People need to start treating Jikook as individuals. They are humans first before a ship. Shipping them shouldn't take away from their authentic expressions of self.

That's how they each end up getting cussed out in these streets left and right.

It's ridiculous.

This is JK being JK. Imma leave it at that.

This is from the same interview where Tae was talking about how they love showcasing their bond.

It's ok to celebrate it. Just see it for what it is- as flowing from JK's kind self. This is not Jikook. This is JK. Jeon Jungkook.

Don't fume or act disappointed when you see him do the same kind gesture for another member just because of the meaning you are imposing on this moment. Know what I mean?

That being said, there are certain Jikook 'skinship' moments that crosses the line of skinship right into sexual foreplay.

If 'skinship' leaves you 'sexually excited' it's not skinship. Nobody can tell me nothing.

Make of this moment what you will. Just be responsible with it. I think. But don't mind me. I'm grumpy.

Signed,

GOLDY

[blogsanscontext]

A Closer Look at: Momoe Sawaki’s character arc; by a nonbinary (trans) viewer.

CW: Major spoilers for Wonder Egg Priority + mentions and discussion of sexual assault, transphobia, lesbophobia, self-harm; please proceed with caution.

Wonder Egg Priority came as a relatively pleasant surprise for me; I heard about it some time after the first few episodes aired, but I never actively went out of my way to ever try to watch it myself until, that is, a few days ago. I must say, I’m glad to have taken the initiative to experience such anime on my own.

With a stunning animation to accompany the heavy subjects this work touches on, I quickly fell in love with it; all the characters feel very grounded in reality, with their struggles (even someone like Neiru’s, who is a literal genius and CEO of her own company) feeling relatable in one way or another. Episode 7 became my favorite due to this very thing, Rika’s problems were things that not only have I seen in other works before, but that I know exist because of the stories told in the news every so often. It only helped, in my opinion, that they gave a character with her background such a hopeful ending.

That being said, Wonder Egg is not a perfect anime, and though I didn’t expect it to be in the first place, I do think talking about why some of the ways it handles a specific character of the main cast are problematic are worth the time. When I mentioned that “all the characters feel very grounded in reality”, I actually only meant three of them, a.k.a.: Ai, Rika and Neiru. The reason Momoe is not included in this group is what I will be discussing in the next paragraphs.

This anime lets you know, right off the bat, that it will not stray away from heavy subjects throughout the duration of its runtime; the show deals with suicidal idealization (and actual suicide as well as its aftermath; in fact, “female suicide” is at the very core of the show and is what essentially moves it forward), self-harm, sexual assault, same-sex relationships, transphobia, and being a gender noncomforming person in a society that punishes you for not adhering to the roles it has imposed on you since childhood. The last points are the ones I took issue with, however, and though they are mostly the show’s fault, they also took it upon themselves to make Momoe be at the center of all three.

See, when we are first introduced to Momoe, we can guess by context that she is a girl, however, the other characters aren’t aware of this fact yet, and so they seemingly go out of their way to call her a boy, which makes her deeply uncomfortable, and this (ie. her reaction to be treated or perceived as a boy) is a running theme throughout her arc. This, in itself, isn’t really the worst creative direction to take with a character, it’s a story that has been told time and time again, but there is a problem with the way Wonder Egg Priority specifically deals with it: Momoe is cisgender, and so far, there hasn’t been a sign of this changing whatsoever, so she will most likely remain cis until the show ends. Normally, a story about a gender noncomforming cis person wouldn’t be seen as anything out of the extraordinary, as I’ve mentioned before, but it seems that they wanted to… “innovate”, so to say, with her character. And it’s this innovation, in my opinion, that which makes Momoe’s struggles miss the mark for me.

Momoe is perceived, almost ridiculously so, as a boy by whoever even so much as stumbles upon her; her followers on Instagram most likely worship her because they’re under the impression that she’s a bishounen, and yet the show goes out of its way to deal with just how uncomfortable this makes her. This is the issue I take with her and her arc: the show has a keen awareness of AFAB people’s issues, and treats them with the respect they deserve (which is not to say some jokes at their expense aren’t made, but in general this tone is kept throughout the duration of the story), and yet the tone-deaf manner in which they deal with her issues feels… disappointing, to say the least.

Momoe’s struggles, though they are valid on their own, are not a societal issue, no matter how one may look at them; if she were a trans person (either a trans girl, boy, or nonbinary), the strong emphasis on her discomfort at being misgendered would have made so much more sense. The reason why ‘switching around’ the stereotype of a tomboy falls flat on its face is that there is no real pressure from society to present feminine, it’s what they want you to, or more accurately, force you to do if you’re perceived as being assigned female at birth; however, this is not where my issues with Momoe’s arc and character end.

At first, I imagined a variety of (albeit vague, still reasonable) reasons as to why this show couldn’t have just made Momoe be trans, and semi-understanding of this decision; that was, of course, until I watched the actual episode mostly focused on her struggles, and that’s when I got slightly mad. Being honest, I still think it was a good episode, and it definitely made Momoe seem way more sympathetic than any of her past appearances, but it also perfectly highlighted my problem with her, and subsequently, the show itself: using queer people’s actual, realistic, problems in order to push her, a cisgender character, forward.

The thing with Wonder Egg Priority is that I love how, despite all these girls literally risking their lives to save a specific person, they still seem to have conflicting feelings about them (ie. Rika’s mocking of Chiemi, Ai’s frustration towards Koito, etc.) but I also take issue with this when it comes to Momoe specifically; Haruka is very much intended to be seen as gay, yet when push comes to shove, we are supposed to be taking Momoe’s side in this conflict. We, the audience, see these events from her point of view, and are therefore made to feel, in one way or another, uncomfortable with Haruka’s attraction for her. Yes, Momoe has worked hard to bring her back to life, but the fact that she’s cis and heterosexual stands; this isn’t just exclusive to Haruka, however, but every egg she’s had to save in order to get her friend back. All of them express a clear attraction for Momoe, “despite her being a girl”, and it’s just very easy to read these attitudes as wlw-phobic, extremely so.

My biggest issue though lies within the very existence of Kaoru’s character, the trans boy she has to protect in the episode mainly focused on her; while he is an endearing and sympathetic character, and I like that despite him presenting ‘majorly female’, Momoe never misgenders him. The thing is: he’s made out to be almost a “parallel” of her own gender-related issues, and this is just a very tone-deaf statement to make; trans people fighting not to be misgendered, fighting to be called their chosen name (something Momoe, while being cis, can just freely enjoy) - trans people’s pain is very much real, which the show is aware of, but Momoe’s is very much an individual’s problem rather than the way society actually works, which Wonder Egg is seemingly unaware of, for whatever reason.

Before I arrive at my last point on why this comparison doesn’t work, I would like to quickly point out the fact that most, if not all, the eggs the girls have had to save until this point were specifically meant to be girls, in one way or another. Therefore, taking this into account, Kaoru makes me feel… a lot of things, the more time I spend thinking about it; the show acknowledges he’s a boy, though not cis of course, but still very much a boy, yet also places him in this very much ‘female’ space; no matter how I looked at it, I could find explanations both for an opinion in favor of this decision (the way a lot of trans men’s problems are defined by our patriarchal society seeing them as women) as well as some for an opinion against this decision (the fact that it could be read as the show ultimately deciding he’s ‘female-aligned’, etc.) and though I won’t be discussing this decision in-depth, I still possess that it’s an event worth examining from different lenses.

Now, onto the actual element that got me heated about Kaoru serving as a parallel to Momoe’s struggles: Kaoru was not only sexually assaulted by a man who’s always thought of him as a ‘pretty, delicate girl’, his death directly relates to the fact that he was abused and then impregnated by this man for not living up to his gross ideal of what a man and a woman are; contrast this to Momoe, who pretty much gets the treatment Kaoru would love to have: she’s pretty much right off the bat seen as a guy, she’s fawned over by women because of this fact as well, they literally call her ‘Momotaro’, etc. Taking all of this into account, it’s simply impossible for me to be okay with a comparison that ultimately decides a cisgender person’s discomfort is, in any sort of way, on equal grounds as a (might I remind you, dead) trans person’s basic human rights.

All in all, though her episode made me take a bigger liking to her character, it also served to almost perfectly highlight the very problem of her existence, as well as the “struggles” she’s intended to represent; I don’t hate Momoe in any sort of way, and though I know there must be someone somewhere who relates to her, I also think that they could’ve done something way more meaningful with her had they just made some changes that made her more realistic (as in, make her at least be LGBT rather than just cis and heterosexual); I will be patiently waiting for the finale, and who knows? Maybe something does change about her in the end, that would be even more of a pleasant surprise.

[ladyloveandjustice]

The Westing Game Chapter 21

The Fourth Bomb

In a wacky misunderstanding, Theo thinks Alice is the bomber and tries to blackmail her with the info so he can borrow her bike (Yes, really. Go big or go home is Theo’s motto) but of course Alice thinks he means he knows ANGELA is the bomber.

And in what might be the most touching moment in the book so far, Alice responds to this by setting off a bomb and writing a thing indicating that she is the bomber in order to throw all suspicion off Angela. She eve loses her trademark braid in the process.

It really is incredibly sweet. Alice is very caustic toward her sister, but this isn’t the first time she’s indicated she’s ride-or-die when it comes down to it (she got rid of the evidence for Angela and warned her not to say anything to the lawyer), and it’s also a very lovely response to Angela’s early sacrifice- where she took the bomb she made to her face rather than have it explode to her sisters. But while Angela’s sacrifice was spur-of-the-moment motivated by guilt and panic as well as love (not that it makes it less meaningful), Alice’s is one she planned out and considered. She had time to consider the consequences. She knew that Angela willingly put herself in this position. But she still chose to take the fall anyway, and set off a bomb after seeing what the same thing did to her sister’s face.

She already feels meaningless to her family in general, and maybe on the surface she feels her standing (with her mother in particular) can’t get any lower. “I’m already the troublemaker, I’m already the unwanted one, I have nothing to lose, but Angela would lose everything” was how she convinced herself. (in addition to being aware as a minor she wouldn’t be punished as harshly, smart girl that she is).

But it’s also clear that Alice DOES long for her mother’s love and approval, and I think she also had to contend with a deep fear that after this action, there’d be no going back for them, that she’d doomed herself to be the ‘bad one’ forever. Yet she still did it.

And the loss of her braid is of course, incredibly significant. Angela said earlier that the braid is her “crutch”- she bases a lot of her personality around it. It was her excuse to spend time with her mother and now her excuse to spend time with Flora, it’s the trademark thing people can pull on and she can then she gets excuse to kick them and get in fights and form connections, it’s how she gets attention and relationships for herself without exposing her own vulnerability. But she sacrificed what little that makes her stand out, what little social currency she has to protect the same sister who she envies for being in the spotlight- because that bond is more important than her jealousy and her need for attention. Just like her sister sacrificed one of the things that bring her adulation- her looks- to protect her. Love is more important than those petty things.

Alice is forced to talk to Judge Ford afterwards and, sharp as ever, Ford guesses that she’s protecting Angela.  This quote especially gets me:

The judge was astounded (…). Angela could not be the bomber, that sweet, pretty thing. Thing? Is that how she regarded the young woman, as a thing? And what had she ever said to her except “I hear you’re getting married, Angela” or “You’re so pretty, Angela”. Had anyone ever asked about her ideas, her hopes, her plans? If I had been treated like that, I’d have used dynamite, not fireworks; no, I would have just walked and kept on going. But Angela was different.

There’s a fascinating theme in this book about being marginalized, and the different ways these marginalized people both are pitted against each other and can overlook even each other while also finding connections and comradery with each other… I think I’ll have to wait until the end to fully get my thesis on the whole thing together, but I really find it interesting and appreciate it. Ford’s struggles as a black woman, Alice being overlooked for not performing femininity (thus envious of Angela despite knowing how shitty she has it), Angela being boxed because everyone wants to mold her as the perfect feminine ideal (thus feeling envious of Alice despite knowing how shitty she has it), Sun feeling out of place as a Chinese immigrant, Hoo knowing he’s looked down upon as a Chinese-American (yet still not considering the pain of his own wife), Chris struggling as a disabled kid, many people who are financially disadvantaged and/or feeling limited to the role of caretaker, Sydelle feeling overlooked in general and appropriating others’ struggles in her bizarre quest to get noticed- it’s all very interesting and pretty deftly handled, especially considering the time period the book was written in. 

And our antagonist is quintessential exploitative Rich White Man (obsessed with American Exceptionalism to boot), though it’s casually mentioned he’s the son of immigrants, an identity he seems to have actively shed, going so far as to change his name (if that’s why he changed it), so there’s even complexity there.

But the thing with Ford here is an interesting demonstration of that. Despite being smart and socially aware and having an even more fraught history of being dismissed and belittled, she didn’t give much thought to Angela and subconsciously went along with the same objectification everyone else does, putting her on a pedestal. (There’s a lot to be said about how Angela’s veneration and perceived “purity” by the others might interact with her whiteness, and how Ford realizing she bought into that narrative subconsciously might feel to her as a black woman, but I’m not really the person to discuss that. Anyway!)

The other important development here is that Alice also finally confesses that she saw Westing the night of his murder but mentions that the Westing she saw didn’t look dead, but asleep and like a wax dummy. This sets off alarm bells for both me and Ford.

So, I think its safe to say my earlier theory Sam Westing isn’t dead is probably true. What of the corpse that was present at the will-reading? I think people would have noticed it was a wax dummy, but a disguised corpse from his coroner friend still makes some sense. So where is Westing now? Considering Barney Northup doesn’t exist, could he be Barney?

But speaking of Westing, if we need further confirmation the man is the scum of the earth, he’s a union buster and he fired Sandy for trying to organize one in the paper plant.

We also learn Ford’s backstory with Westing at last: Her parents were household staff at Westing’s mansion and she grew up there as a result. She played chess with Westing frequently as a child, but not only would he brag and take pride in beating a goddamn pre-teen, he mocked her with racialized insults. She never won, but Westing ended up financing her education (that’s the ‘debt’ she owes him). She believes he did this to get a judge he could control, but has refused to play along, removing herself from any case involving him.

I can’t help but think Westing would have known Ford wouldn’t play ball, though. So he may have had another motive for sending her to school. It could be something even more sinister. Or… in his own twisted way, did he actually like her? He obviously realized she was incredibly intelligent during those matches, even if he sadistically enjoyed mocking her, enough to know she’d do well with an education. Did he play chess with her so much not just because he enjoyed tormenting her, but enjoyed her as a person as well? It obviously does not excuse what a racist sadistic shithead he is, and I’m not saying he’s secretly nice- just that it could be he was incapable of relating to anyone in a healthy way. I actually think sending Ford to school could have just been an extension of his desire to torment her AND the only way he knew that would guarantee he remained important in her life. He didn’t ever plan to cash in on her debt, but knew it would kill her just to BE in his debt, and got pleasure out of that alone. He probably just thought it was funny and it was also a way to guarantee he’d live in her head rent free- and because deep down he knew she was a cool kid, he also wanted that. He didn’t want her to forget him, maybe, which is sick! But much more interesting than simply “he wanted a judge he could manipulate”.

But it’s also worth noting this is Ford’s (perhaps) final chance to win against Westing in the ultimate chess match. And I can’t help but think he is well aware how smart she is, so he invited her here specifically because he knew she could be his undoing, the one who unravels everything. So- if we go with the ‘Westing is seeking atonement’ theory- did he invite her to give her that satisfaction of finally beating him, like he always knew deep down she could? Because he WANTS to be beaten, to be found out and knows she deserves to be the one after all the hell he put her through? Or in the ‘Westing is still a complete monster’ theory- is his intention to torment her one last time, to show her she can’t win against him? (if it is, I think he may well find he’s gravely mistaken there).

I don’t think Westing can truly achieve “redemption” with this “game”, nor am I one to easily believe the Ultimate Shitty Capitalist can change easily, but if one thing can shake someone’s worldview and make them reevaluate how they live their life, the death of their child WOULD be a big one. So “this will actually be Westing’s weird twisted attempt at atonement” is a possibility I just can’t stop thinking about. If it is, it’s kind of funny and incredible he can’t stop being manipulative and traumatizing even when he decides he wants to do something good.

On top of all that, Angela and Sydelle get more clues and finally figure out the ‘America the Beautiful’ connection. God, so much to chew on this chapter! I really fear for these last nine chapters. I might end up writing a novel longer than the actual novel analyzing and recapping them if I’m not careful. But that’s how you know it’s a compelling story, so hats off to Ellen Raskin!

[catharsis-in-a-bottle]

ALL MY THOUGHTS ON GENDER:

A brain dump / essay-ish thing

Hello, dear humans! I had no particular inspiration for this massive chunk of text beyond “it’s late and there are thoughts in my little human brain.” And so here are all my current thoughts on gender - all of the thoughts that I can... think of... at least. Disclaimer: much of this is speculation and personal opinion. This isn’t a research essay. This is a brain dump. These are thoughts that have been shit out of my head, tidied up, and sprayed with perfume; proceed, therefore, with a critical mind.

There arises a thought, and likely a rather common one among those who think about gender on a regular basis. What if this heap of gender baggage - the expected appearance, personality, and occupation of a given sex - did not exist? What if people disregarded genitalia in favor of raising all sexes with the same status quo, or perhaps even without expressional expectations?

My question is: what, then, would become of gender dysphoria? If the differences between men and women in society were not so heightened - if the existence of nonbinary people was something normalized... I don’t think I would be dysphoric. My mind would be nonbinary - as gender itself is possibly an intrinsic part of neurology, whereas the gender baggage (roles and expectations) is socially constructed - my mind would be nonbinary, but there wouldn’t be an ideal body to ‘transition’ to. So what would I do? The only difference now would be biological sex. And perhaps, for some, this alone is enough for incongruence and/or dysphoria.

And if all sexes were raised not only equally, but better yet encouraged to express themselves as they wished - how might the face of the earth be changed? In terms of fashion, form-fitting clothing would not be made only to accentuate “feminine” curves. Maybe it would simply accentuate *human* curves and features. If the only recognized differences between sexes were natural physical appearances and roles in reproduction, and we DID NOT create gender roles to accommodate those roles in reproduction... Our world, the products we create, the ways we act... everything could be very, very different.

This imagined world is, of course, an unlikely outcome of our societal evolution. In the animal kingdom, different sexes are assigned different roles and jobs. Why should humans be any different? The task of physical labor to men arises from the sole biological factor of higher potential muscle mass - and in our prehistory, that muscle mass was real. Everyone was working hard as hell in the fight for survival.

And so the differences in sexes grew and grew. With a gap in the jobs they were expected to perform based on their reproductive and physical capabilities, societally recognized men and woman drifted apart. And as humankind grew, these differences were portrayed in wildly different ways in differently developing cultures. So in our prehistory, there were hunters and gatherers, caretakers and fighters; but in the beautifully diversifying cultures developing across the globe, the gender baggage differed. Ideas of femininity, masculinity, neutrality, and combination of expression were quite different as one moved from place to place. In western culture, neutrality was rejected and stomped upon, while in many non-western cultures, neutrality, ambiguity, and overall third genders received their own baggage and thrived in the gender arena (which is now a term, thank you very much.)

Gender expression and gender roles were socially constructed. But what of gender itself? What is gender? We say it’s a personal identity, what’s in our minds and hearts. Is it neurological? If so, that would explain gender incongruence at the base level - feeling that incongruence based solely upon one’s sex. If not, if gender itself is in fact entirely social construct and not just the baggage, what of transness? What would it mean to be trans? That’s not my place to answer, because I don’t know and all of these rhetorical questions are sheer speculation. Whether or not gender is an intrinsic, neurological part of our individual selves, trans people still exist.

And not only do trans people exist, but we deserve to live as the height of our true personal expression. Freedom is so fucking important. Speaking your mind and being yourself and showing the world, or showing a loved one, or knowing and loving who you are - this is all freedom, this is all personal expression. For trans people it is emancipation and liberation from the shackles of all of that gender baggage. In one way or another, gender differs from biological sex, and the sheer difference in what each gender is supposed to do, present as, act as - that difference is what feels so absolutely, goddamn confining. If we returned to my unrealistic little scenario in which we somehow suppressed the evolution of gender baggage, the societal confinement would not exist. It would be biological confinement. And who knows what that would entail; certainly not I, a non-omnipotent little Homo sapiens.

Being a woman and having society tell you you’re a man is confining. Being a man and having society tell you you’re a woman is confining. Being nonbinary and having cultures in which that is simply *not historically a thing* tell you that “you’re whatever’s in your pants” is confining. In my own personal experience in western society, this enby confinement is different than that of binary confinement, as a neutral role - a good old nonbinary baggage suitcase - is a new thing. Nonbinary PEOPLE are not new; a nonbinary suitcase (I love making terms up) is new though, once again illustrating the difference between the gender baggage and gender itself. The struggle of nonbinary people is not to be compared to that of binary trans people, as it is a separate category. They are related but not the same. Binary trans people push against gender baggage that has developed, evolved, and existed for centuries; nonbinary trans people are making a new category (in cultures in which that isn’t a defined gender role). And we don’t necessarily want to create any more ‘baggage’ for nonbinary people, as once again this is what causes that suffocating feeling of confinement within society.

Xenogenders are sort of similar in this sense - an entirely new category is surfacing. At first I did not understand them. But not understanding something is never a basis for disrespect. I don’t know the people identifying as xenogenders, and I don’t know how they feel or what their personal struggles are, so who am I to say “ahahaha trender”? Their existence does not affect me. “But they make the trans community look like a joke.” Well, people with xenogenders are not the face of the trans community, and those who think they are simply cherry-pick the “cringiest” examples in a varied community that they can find, which is already shitty in itself. And also, the problem is not “trenders”. The problem is people with already transphobic mindsets, whether that be passively transphobic or actively transphobic. That mindset is just being extended to this emerging group of people. I don’t give a shit if someone uses neopronouns or describes themself using a neogender, because I do not know them and their existence does not affect me negatively in any way, nor does it affect the trans community negatively. By simply their identity, they are not hateful or discriminatory. And so what trans people should really be fighting against is passive and active transphobia within society - the actual, real life problem. We shouldn’t be turning inwards and setting our own dogs loose on each other.

Here we are in the world. Femininity, masculinity, neutrality and ambiguity have become established fashion codes and expressional standards in my good ol’ western society. Occupational gender roles still exist heavily, because that’s literally an intrinsic part of our evolution as humans, but these occupational roles are being fought against. Which is due, because anything otherwise would be archaic and non-progressive. Personality and personal expression are still heavily scrutinized when differing from one’s own assigned gender. The latter is an issue; the fashion codes and expressional standards have their deep problems, such as violence on the basis of expression, but once femininity, masculinity, neutrality, and ambiguity have been extended and allowed to all genders and socially accepted, these issues should fade. It’s sad that we must base the resolution of violence on social acceptance. But we must push for this social acceptance. We must push for the elimination of confinement, and for the absolute freedom of personal expression for all people; once real, true freedom of expression becomes normalized, becomes the status quo, it will no longer be met with challenge and hate.

That’s one thing we want deeply in life. To exist as we wish to exist without challenge and hate.

That concludes my... words. I hope that entire thing could be perceived as relatively orderly. I encourage you to leave your thoughts in the notes or ask a question or whatever you want to do.

[im-the-punk-who]

Idk if ur the right person to send this to so feel free to ignore if you aren't but I'm beginning to realize that I might be a trans guy after years of thinking I'm enby and I'm really struggling with that? I've received a lot of the messages over the years about how men are bad and violent and I've also experienced a lot of gender based violence before I was out. I know intellectually that there's nothing wrong with manhood and yet I'm still really struggling. Idk do you have any thoughts on learning to accept your own manhood

Okay! Sorry this took a few days to answer but this is...definitely still a complicated thing for me, too.

First off I wanna say that whether you end up identifying as a binary trans man or somewhere in between that and nonbinary, that is very cool and valid and all of this can apply no matter where on the spectrum of masculinity you ultimately end up falling.

I saw a post which explains the basic thesis of what I'm gonna say, which is that your gender does not equal your morality. 

Tumblr in particular really likes to go hard on the misandry and it can be really hard not to internalize that. Especially when it comes in the form of so many jokes, and especially especially when some of it does line up with experiences you’ve had. The biggest thing to realize, is that just *being a man* doesn't make you inherently violent or toxic or bad. All of the things that Tumblr and feminism in general tends to equate to “being a man = bad” are things that are learned or encouraged over time, no matter how much terfs like to insist they are traits inherent in being born with a y chromosome. 

(And yes, these misandry arguments ALL have their basis in gender essentialism and in arguing why trans people can’t exist.)

As this relates to trans men, it becomes akin to walking a tightrope our entire lives. In both society at large and LGBT spaces we're made to fit as close as possible into gender norms to avoid violence or oppression(or the insistence we’re really just lesbians or self-hating cishets). But we also have first hand experience of the ways in which men are *socialized* to behave being harmful and don’t want to perpetuate them and be labeled a ‘bad person’. So we have to constantly walk this line of, I suppose trying to act manly enough while also trying not to cause waves (And, AS A NOTE, does that sound eerily similar to the argument most feminists say is purely a feminine experience? Is it almost like the very system that seeks to free cis women through hatred of men perpetrates those exact same systems onto other marginalized communities?)

And I will say, this is something I still struggle with. A lot. It's not going to be something you can take a magic pill for and never have to worry about again. I started transitioning almost a decade ago and I'm still trying to find the balance. Cis men can spend their *whole lives* trying to find that balance. I know quite a few - in case it feels like this is a purely trans experience. Reckoning with the way that male privilege has socialized men to harm at the same time radical feminism has socialized everyone it can that all men intentionally cause harm is a universal experience among men who are aware of it. 

It's not easy, and I guess just...if you feel like you're struggling on that front as you continue your gender journey(Laynie i hate you i hate you i hate you) try to remind yourself that you're not alone. And that what you’re fighting against is a systemic socialization, not something inherent in yourself. You’re going to screw up - that doesn't make you a bad person or a bad man.

I listen a lot to Brene Brown. 

I know people are probably sick of hearing me talk about her, but she is a shame researcher who honestly helped me a LOT in realizing why I was feeling so bad about parts of my personality or my gender expression. She’s excellent. If you find you’re having a lot of trouble reckoning with being this thing you have perceived as bad for a very long time, I highly recommend listening to some of her ted talks and other speeches. Most of them are on youtube. 

For a long time I was trying to base my gender off of what I thought people would love. I went over the top, dressed in popular styles, was WAY more feminine than I actually feel, and tried to make myself as unassuming as possible - in part because of childhood trauma but also because I was genuinely ashamed to be a man(particularly a gay man) because I had internalized the idea that men - especially gay men - were woman-haters. (And, because I hated *myself* as a woman, I thought that I also hated women, and I thought that I must be one of those Bad Gays.)

But once I stopped trying to do that? Once I was like ‘no I’m actually a gay-up man’ and stopped berating myself for not liking my feminie body and hating the parts of myself that I didn’t identify with but felt forced to perform? Once I started looking at what made *me* happy and not other people? It became so much easier to not feel those things. 

SO I guess, what I’m saying is that the best way to deal with internalized misandry is to try to forgive yourself, and recognize that the things that men perpetrated against you and that people say are ‘toxic male traits’ are not *inherent* to being a man. They are things that are taught to men(both cis and trans) by society. And also that like, these are also things that are not just inherent to men. Any toxic trait that a man exhibits a woman can too - and yeah there’s a discussion about how the general power imbalance between men and women makes it less likely a woman would cause as much damage but honestly? If you’re on tumblr you’re most likely in female dominated spaces where arguably that isn’t true, especially with the number of fucking TERFS on this website. 

Also....you do not inherit cismale privilege just by identifying as a man. No matter how far you take your transition, you are *always* going to be at a different level of privilege from a cisman. Even if you transition as far as you are able to right now and live and pass as a cisman for the rest of your life, you are not a cisman and that is going to affect how you move through the world.

(That doesn’t mean you are not a *man* because you are not cis, btw. Just that there are things that cismen don’t have to worry about that are going to affect your life - things like ovarian cancer, breast cancer, hormonal dependence, corrective abuse, medical shortages, physical differences that out transpeople - there are a hundred things that trans men have to experience throughout their lives that cismen are never, ever going to deal with. And yes, this goes for transwomen / cis women as well.)

Something that helped me become comfortable living as a man was to look at specific traits of the men in my life. Why did I feel comfortable around this man, but not others, what red flags physically or emotionally did this behavior set off in me? And then focusing on those specific *behaviors* rather than the men themselves. If you can separate the individual traits from an overarching idea of 'manhood' that might be helpful in feeling like you can inhabit manhood without being toxic. 

Basically, my best advice is to tell yourself that what makes you a man does not make you inherently toxic. In fact what makes *all* men, men, does not make them inherently toxic. Men are not trash just because they’re men, and the fight against misandry *is* a fight for marginalized people. It hurts transmasculine people in exactly the ways you are hurting. No matter what TERFs say - no matter what male-critical or whatever they’re calling themselves to not have to call themselves TERFs say - men are not born evil, or bad, or trash. 

Toxic masculinity is a learned behavior. It is not something you are given the day you start identifying as a man, and it is not something you have to perpetuate. 

Calling it anything else does a disservice to everyone who identifies as masculine of center but especially trans men, who have to reckon with this exact knowledge that in affirming who they are, certain people are going to hate them and call them monsters and tell them they are trash and unworthy of loving without hurting. 

And that shit just isn’t true. It isn’t fucking true! Men are not toxic just because they are men, and you are not a bad person just because you are a transman. That’s, I suppose, the best advice I can offer you. I hope it helps, and I also just want to reiterate that I hope you find affirmation in whatever you end up deciding. <3 <3 <3

[werevulvi]

Perhaps it's not so special to just be a woman. Half the population is. So what? But to me it is a huge thing. To even be able to say those words "I am a woman." They feel magnetic somehow, clinging to my tongue. It's like the word "woman" has a texture in my mouth like no other word does, vibrating at a different frequency. As if it's poisonous to taste. Yet I taste it, yet I say it. And I will keep saying it until I've cleansed it, no matter how long it takes. No matter how annoyingly repetitive and unnecessary it may sound to you.

It is a big deal to me, because up until age 29, I never spoke of myself using that word. Not even once. To then pick it up, for the first time, at age 29... was huge. And it's been 2 years since then now, but I'm still struggling with it, and it's still huge. I still don't understand why it's so hard for me to hold and hold onto that word, yet I am fiercely protective of it. I toss it away, then pick it up again, remorseful and protective of it. And I do that again and again. For each time I pick it up again, it's as if I understand its value a little bit more. All the significance, trauma, love, pain and curiosity it carries. It is mine, and no matter how hard it is to hold... I refuse to ever truly let go of it.

I may not look like a woman, I may not even want to! But why does it matter? Why should it matter what a woman looks like? Am I taking it too far, with the masculinity, the beard and bald head? Am I pushing my idea of freedom for women's expression too far? "Yes, women can be masc and gnc, BUT..." is what I keep hearing. But what? "...but you're taking it too far by looking like a whole ass man" is what I feel like the rest of the sentence, which they do not speak, is. Perhaps I'm wrong, I can't read minds. But sometimes I feel like people's minds are so loud that I can't not hear their thoughts.

I get a lot of backlash for every time I state myself as a woman, with my obnoxious reluctance to pass as my true identity. It's difficult to properly word that, what I actually mean. Perhaps I mean to say that I refuse to look like the traditional ideal of what people expect a woman to roughly wanna look like, whether that be masculine or feminine, as long as it's clearly recognisably female in some way or another. And my "true identity" has nothing to do with my personality, or my preferred expression, but only my deep down true love for being bio female. Thus, my "reluctance to pass" is indeed my desire to keep and maintain my transition traits, and my "true identity" is my womanhood, but I don't mean it in the same way TRA's do.

That true love for being female, isn't an ideal, but rather something much closer to my survival instinct.

It's that feeling of wanting to protect yourself when in danger. It's that instant self defense you act on without thinking when you feel like you're being threatened. It's that instant reaction of removing yourself from danger the split second it touches you, your body. It doesn't matter which part of you that danger touches, whether it be your hand, knee, your love handles, scarred chest, hairy face or your genitals. No matter what part of you is touched by that danger, you will instinctively protect it. It's in that instinct that I found love for my female nature, in my instinct to protect it from harm. I found it beyond my survival instinct, because no matter what part of me is ever touched by danger, my subconscious mind recognises it as not just lovable and worthy of protection and care, but also as part of the whole. This means, that deep down I'm not just loving myself... I also know that I am whole. No matter how many parts of me are cut off or distorted... I will always be whole.

I don't always feel aware of that like in my frontal lobe, but damn, my reptile brain knows it and won't ever question it.

With that, I found that my dysphoria is a shallow creation of my frontal lobe, and that it's in contradiction of my survival instinct. Being suicidal and/or self-harming is similar to this. Even wanting to die, always came second to my survival instinct. That is probably why I never succeeded to kill myself, and also why I never succeeded to truly hate my body. This does NOT mean that such horrible suffering as dysphoria or whatever feelings lead to self harm, is somehow not real. That is not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying it's a kind of cognitive dissonance, which messes with the very core of your core instincts, and that... I think, makes such psychological issues especially harmful.

And I also mean that my self love may not always have been accessible to me on surface level, but that despite that, it has always been innate.

And with that said... having found my innate self-love, and invited it to my frontal lobe... that is sorta why I can't really regret my medical transition. Even though I still have days when I struggle. Because I can't think of my body as broken anymore. Not since I found that deep, deep, VERY deep down I view myself as whole, lovable, valuable, and worthy of respect, love and safety... no matter what ever happens to me. Because my body is me, and there is no true disconnect between my sense of self and my flesh. Only on surface level there can sometimes be disconnect.

Kinda like the branches on a tree may be disconnected at the crown, but deeper down they all share the same trunk. I see myself in a similar manner. That at the top of the tree is most of my conscious thoughts, feelings, memories, etc, as well as all the various parts of my body. Or that is what my frontal lobe is aware of. That is how I perceive myself on surface level, as a scattered mess of branches, twigs, leaves and what not, each representing aspect of me, seemingly chaotic and all disconnected. But I'm also partially aware of what's going on deeper within my mind. I'm aware of the trunk that connects all branches, twigs, leaves, etc, and I'm also aware of the roots. Not directly aware, but I sense it like an inkling. I can sense that not only is there a trunk and roots deep down that connects to all twigs, and all twigs to each other, but also there in lies my knowledge that no matter how many of my twigs are left intact... the tree will always be a whole tree.

And it doesn't matter what I look like, or what troubles my body has gone through. Survival will always be the first priority. And my self-love IS equal to my instinct to survive. Because the reason I will always come to my own rescue whenever faced with danger or threat, or perceived danger/threat, is because I love myself. Self-love is the first move before I'm even saving myself from the danger, before that split second reaction takes place. That is how fast, instant and innate my self-love is. It was too obvious to even be aware of, for most of my life.

I think that's why is was so hard for me to find my self love. Because well... it was more deeply buried than my survival instinct itself, which I thought must be the innermost core aspect of my existence. But I was wrong about that. Self-love goes even deeper than survival. THAT is the innermost core aspect. Or so I believe. Can't think of anything that would possibly go even deeper than that.

But also, although I am the most aware on my self-love in moments my survival instinct takes over, I am also aware of it in other moments.

This is also why I can't get rid of my transition traits such as my facial hair. Because finding that true self-love from deep within my core, basically made me fuse all my aspects and physical traits together into a complete wholeness. All needs to be protected and loved. Every twig, every leaf. Sacrificing bits and pieces of me that are not damaging to my health, is self harm and goes against my survival instinct/self-love. It does not matter if the parts of me are in their natural state or medically/cosmetically altered. Even if those parts of me are inconvenient for my social life.

You know how a people who get organ transplants, their bodies try to reject the new organ because their immune system regards it as foreign? Well, this is kinda like that, but the exact opposite. My body/immune system/whatever-the-fuck regards my transition traits as heakthy parts of my original body, and thus to be protected at all costs. Loss of them will result in pain and grief. Just like losing any other part of my body would. And why? Because we mourn the loss of what we love, and what we regard as "ours" and as important, whole, healthy, lovable.

Deep down I do not care as much about such things as having a functional social life. Deep down, I care much more about things like keeping myself whole, safe, healthy and loved. Getting rid of my beard goes against that. Even just shaving it goes against that. My subconscious mind regards such an act as self harm.

Does this make sense to you? That it has nothing to do with "gender," be it manhood, womanhood, dysphoria, femininity or masculinity. It has to do with self-love, self-respect and survival. And that is a hell of a lot more important than being read or respected as a woman by others. No matter how much it hurts, because respecting and reclaiming myself as a woman is also highly important to me. Thus, I have to find a way to be open and honest with myself as a woman, without further harming myself.

I know this is deep and complicated spiritual shit, but I'm just trying to explain something which I think is probably very important. This discovery I had changed my life dramatically. So am I trying to teach self-love? No, I dunno. I don't think I can do that. I don't think anyone can. Perhaps I'm just trying to show a possibility.

I also need to clarify that despite knowing I love myself deep down now, I still struggle to stay connected to that aspect of my brain. And when I'm disconnected from it, I override my survival instinct and it misinterprets itself. Basically I fall out of order and act in a self destructive way, thinking it's self protection when it's actually the opposite. With that I understand that my self-love and my survival instinct are dependent on each other and need to be in harmony with each other to really keep me alive, safe and healthy. And although I'm now sometimes aware of this bond deep with myself, I'm still in imbalance. Because I still confuse self destruction for survival sometimes. When I skip meals, when I stay up too late, when I ruminate, when I smoke cigarettes, when I skip exercising, when I let my dirty dishes mould, etc. So simply being aware isn't quite enough, but it got me very far ahead of myself.

Also, trivial matters and superficial woes still get to me. I'm still human. I'm still fallible. Which is okay, but also frustrating. And that is basically why I love being a woman, while at the same time I also still struggle to accept myself as a woman, because it does include accepting being too norm-breaking for the society that I live in to accept me. And that hurts. It's a challenge that I'm not gonna overcome over night, just because I found the most important key to my healing. It's still just a key, a framework or an attitude - not a cure or some kinda magical spell. It's highly valuable and extremely important, but I still need to properly work through my emotions and learn how to navigate my social issues.

But what I feel my self-love is doing to help me, is carrying me through all this, and soothing me when I most need it. It makes my struggle worth it, and it makes me see a hell of a lot more of my potential than I was ever aware of before. The only backside of it is... well, it seems it does get to my head sometimes, and causing me some mild narcissistic tendencies. It sometimes makes me impatient hearing people with low self-esteem go on and on about how worthless they feel. That isn't great, I know. I'm working on fixing that error too.

By Werevulvi, dated November 29th, 2020.

[ratingtheframe]

Everything Wrong With… Ep 2 - The Devil Wears Prada

Welcome back to Everything Wrong With...the series where dive head first into some of the seemingly okay-ish films and analyse why in fact they do more harm than good in providing us with satiable entertainment. Follow me on instagram @ratingtheframe for more movie related content and without further ado, let's get into this chick flick and see how far we’ve come since 2006.

If you aren’t aware, The Devil Wears Prada is a 2006 “chick flick” originally written as a book by Lauren Weisenburger. I remember seeing The Devil Wears Prada as one of those grown up lady films, for mature women on tampon adverts who had wine on Thursday evenings from M&S and wore heels practically everywhere. My perception of this film and the audience it caters towards has changed dramatically after watching it and it kills me inside to imagine the popularity and praise such a film got back in 2006, an extremely harsh time for women and the perception of beauty standards. 

The world was still getting into the internet, magazines and runways were adjusting to the 2000s and the way that women were viewed in the media was a lot more damaging than today. Former supermodels such as Kate Moss and Cara Delevingne have since come out and talked about their experiences in the modelling industry and how it creates unhealthy stereotypes for women and young girls to abide by. The ‘size 0’ and ‘heroin chic look’ has since been banished from the modelling industry, two expectations that were pretty popular in the late and early 2000s for models. We are witnessing a revolution for the modelling industry as they (very) slowly but surely are beginning to introduce more plus sized, diverse and unfiltered faces for their campaigns. We can breathe easier knowing that the only way is forward for the fashion industry and that very little people will stand for the mid 2000s ideologies that were pumped out to the entire world.

Back to 2006 and one of the year’s most popular films with female audiences; The Devil Wears Prada, starring the likes of Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep and Emily Blunt. The film follows Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) , a wannabe journalist newly welcomed into New York City and is currently on the hunt for her career. She manages to land a job at Runway Magazine, a large, corporate editorial magazine for women’s fashion run by the one and only Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), a devious, beautiful and highly successful media personality and editor.

So far so good as we have two tangible and likeable female leads. The opening sequence (one of the most important in any film) had me eye rolling a touch in the way it depicted women of the 2000s and seemingly created the idea that there are two sides to women. 

The five or so minute montage consisted of the various women who are models at Runway, getting ready for their long day of work, right from being undressed to fully made up. This was supposed to be a contrast to how our lead Andy gets ready, barely throwing on any makeup and throwing on whatever she wants whilst heading out the door. When you put the way women choose to be perceived in the world at an opposition, you create this divide between women and further place their worth on how they choose to look. The stereotype of a ‘pick me girl’ arises from this opposition, a girl who actively shames other women for choosing to be more openly feminine in their appearance and actions. The intelligence and respect of women should not be based on how they look when they show up, rather how they BEHAVE when they show up. I just thought this montage was a little unnecessary and if anything, introduced us into a misogynistic world of 2006 really well. One point for accuracy, no points for progression. Everyone gets dressed in the morning and (often) everyone wears underwear, showing this activity on screen didn’t really add much to the film besides the pressures of women to look a certain way. 

Once Andy arrives at the company, she is rudely introduced by Emily (Emily Blunt) Miranda’s current right hand. Now the entire character of Emily is again, another concept to this film that is left better in the 2000s; a mean girl and a VERY mean one at that. This world is already a patriarchal mess for women like Andy and Emily and having women join the bandwagon in showing an oppressive side to those who don’t conform to the female societal norms is non progressive. It was almost as if Emily was an investor into the patriarchy by behaving abhorrently towards her from the way she dressed as opposed to her actual character and qualifications. Please, let's not have women against women based on their desirability in the eyes of the male gaze. Emily has already become a clear victim to her own policies, as her lack of eating is laid bare to us as an entertaining gimmick as opposed to a cause of concern. Last time I checked making fun of eating disorders wasn’t chic. 

Now the argument whether Miranda Priestly is also an investor in the patriarchy is a little clouded. Through her mean spirit and harsh words towards Andy and her appearance, she comes across as someone who is doing more harm than good by joining the patriarchal view of women in the 2000s. I found myself having to bite my tongue a little instead of calling her bitch because that would be letting my internalized misogyny get the best of me. 

Even though Miranda is tough talking and spiteful, I really can’t blame her for it as a character. She is one of the strongest female characters I’ve come across on screen for both her strengths and flaws. Had such a character been placed in a Roman Army or Italian Mob, my views of her would have stayed the same. She is a strong woman with enough versatility and strength to face any situation. The way she asserts her authority in a funny and patronizing way is hard not to fall in love with and any woman who asserts their authority and relishes in their own power is already technically against the patriarchy. Her industry may be patriarchal, however her spirit is not and the things she does in order to keep her status is admirable. I found myself comparing her to the way a man maneuvers the world (again, internalised misogyny, working on it) which in some parts is the reason there should be more Miranda Priestly's in films. Instead of comparing strong women to men, with more strong female leads we’ll start comparing these women to other women. 

Thank god for the zilch, overly graphic sex scenes in this film (maybe cuz the screenplay was written by a woman, but who knows-), however their is one character I’d like to address that rubbed me the wrong way and spoke for a big hole in the modelling/fashion industry that still exists today. Christian Thompson (Simon Baker) is this handsome, 40 summit journalist who meets Andy at a social event for a fashion designer. I admit he was charming in his demeanour but also overtly creepy at points. Andy and Christian bump into each other in Paris where he leads her down a street (his hand on THAT part of the elbow) and kisses Andy without consent, knowing she has a boyfriend. “Oh, it's just a movie” you’re probably thinking, but yet I couldn’t help but cringe at such a thing. Movies are a reflection of our society after all. He kisses her several more times until Andy gives in. If we’re trying to get films to reach audiences and affect them in some way, encouraging consent should be one of those things. Depicting such a madness on screen makes my rolls right to the back of my head and speaks for the entire society behind the modelling and fashion industry; a society run by men who can do what they like with or without consent. Though the wellbeing of Andy wasn’t in imminent danger, I felt Christian Thompson as a character to be a representation of those in the fashion industry who take advantage of women because of their status and so called connections. No more of this please!

Andy has a transformation a little later into the film, a concept that we thought had been left in the patriarchy trash can, but quickly emerged in Debby Ryan’s Insatiable (2018). Lasting only 2 seasons from 2018-19, the Netflix series followed Patty Bladell who gets afforded niceties and respect after she loses weight and becomes a “hot girl”. The show was created by Lauren Guissis based on an article about a (male) Pageant Guru who tells women how they can become pageant queens for a small fee...EW. The fact that such a show got picked up in a day and age that was beginning to open up to body positivity and more inclusivity in the media, the show was insensitive to its current surroundings. 

This same “ugly duckling” transformation isn’t something new or old apparently, with the one in The Devil Wears Prada being one of the least progressive moments of the film. Now that Andy looked like she could work at Runway, somehow she was working a lot better at Runway and was being afforded privileges she didn’t get before her new haircut. Is this the message we want to send out to the world anymore? That in order to get a one up in life, all you need is new clothes and better make up skills? Of course, glo ups can be fun but the purest, healthiest form of a glow up comes from within.

A tiring cliché that “beauty comes from within” but one that makes a lot of sense and something I experienced in my mid teens. Having never experienced male validity or the feeling of desirability, once I began to believe I was beautiful on the outside, others began to notice, because they could read the confidence and self worth I had from my outward energy. An energy that can’t be felt beyond a face tuned Instagram picture. Beauty can be an energy as well as a look and had Andy embraced this more and rejected the passing comments people made at her, it would have taught us that one doesn’t have to conform in order to be respected. On the other hand, I don’t want to shame nor blame her as conforming to societal standards as for most women ,it’s an act of survival, to secure their places in certain spaces, with Andy being no expectation. A sad reality that a woman may have to wear makeup in order to stay in people’s good books, but a choice that should be discussed as opposed to shamed. 

I truly could go on and on about the harmful stereotypes and implications of The Devil Wears Prada and it's sad, yet true similarities to the real fashion industry of today and the mid 2000s. It was and still is cut throat, with many models developing eating disorders, low self esteem issues and even substance abuse due to the mounting pressures of trying to reach perfection. A perfection that doesn’t exist seeing as the fashion and modelling industry alters their version of perfection every single day. I’m glad that by the end of the film Andy ditched Runway in favour of living a more healthy and truthful lifestyle, one that wasn’t swapped in ridiculous pressures and the threat to conform or else leave. Which she did in the end. Miranda isn’t a devil, but a force to be reckoned with in a world that is ready to make her feel lesser than herself because of her gender. I hope to never see such a film like The Devil Wears Prada, ever again, in a world that no longer needs this sort of film to represent the strengths of women. It's best left in 2006 and hopefully you’ve learnt something you’ve never thought about from this in depth analysis. 

[hardheadedbighearted]

Since Hayley is dying of no-Covid juice and I don't have any other watermelons stuffed with hamburger meat to chase around my enclosure for enrichment right now, I thought it might be a good chance to talk about some of my characters' relationships with gender.

(eta: Apparently it's non-binary people's day so I'm going to pretend that's why)

So, it doesn't get many opportunities to come up, but while most of my characters use the pronouns given to them by canon, that doesn't mean all of them are binary; it just means they all have binary pronouns (for various reasons, which I'll get into in a second). Along with "not really coming up much", another reason is that the characters themselves aren't really there yet, or because even I don't know what their gender will do once they actually get there.

Anyway, all that said, here are some of the characters that I know are non-binary, or who otherwise lack what we would think of as a traditional relationship with gender (which I'll explain in a minute).

-Neopolitan {Redacted}: Neo is the most obvious example, and the only one I've been able to have come up on screen that wasn't an oc. Neo's gender is "all", and "all your gender are belong to us", and "this gender is mine", and "gender: yes". When it comes to pronouns, her stance is not so much "I use all pronouns" as "all pronouns are equally correct". Most people default (herself included) to she just because she is to all appearances a woman, but if someone were to break out a he or a they or a xe or a hir or etc, she's not going to care or likely even notice unless a big deal is made.

However, Neo does at times take on personas in order to do her job, and her personas will sometimes have very different stances on their genders. Gideon, for example, uses exclusively they; if memory serves, the sphynx cat from the raid was a he, and the black cat with the green eyes that is underneath Neo's many illusions is exclusively a she. (There's a reason for this, but she informs me it's none of your business.)

(In before, the black cat with the green eyes is not Neo's "true" identity; insofar as she thinks of any of her personas as the "true" self, that would be Neo, the black cat with the green eyes is just her natural form. This is why the black cat with the green eyes doesn't have a name and is usually referred to using the name of the strawberry calico. The reasons for this are, again, none of your business.)

-Yang Xiao Long and Weiss Schneebird: I'm listing both of these together because they're both in the camp of "haven't gotten there yet" with a healthy dose of "I don't know what they'll do when they do get there". I know that I, personally, don't see either Yang or Weiss as binary girls, nor do I feel the urge to rub my trans man fingers all over them (that's for Ruby... maybe. we'll see). I think Yang will likely end up somewhere on the Butch side of the Butch/Trans cusp; I've been reading a lot of blogs from trans men and transmasc individuals recently and them talking about their experience, and I feel like Yang will probably settle in somewhere in that arena. Weiss, on the other hand... look, okay. Honesty time: years ago during an event I won't talk about, I threw out "nonbinary Weiss" as a counterexample to a point I shouldn't have even had to make, and that single, throwaway suggestion has lived in my brain rent-free for years. Now that I have finally moved past the part of me that is still bitter about what happened (okay.. I'm still bitter, but not as much as before), I feel safe to explore that without the negative associations. Also, I saw an edit last year of Weiss with short hair, and it unlocked something in my brain. I think Weiss will end up somewhere unadjacent to binary (contrary to Yang moving along the feminine to masculine line), with an attachment to certain specific identity labels as removed from the context of a binary identity. Also given how long this turned out probably I shouldn't have made them the same bullet point. (Side note, this early gender questioning is why Yang took care to ask Neo's pronouns.)

-Qrow and Raven: Okay, so this one is the one I meant when I alluded to "non-traditional relationships with gender". While both twins do exist on what we would think of as a binary axis (while not identifying either as binary or nonbinary man/woman, respectively), they didn't get there in the traditional "assigned at birth" or "transition" way.

See, here's the thing about ravens: they don't have much sexual dimorphism to speak of. Males are typically larger than females, but with such a broad overlap that even size isn't that reliable. From this, I headcanon that in DT society, ravens (and other birds that have matching genitals and no dimorphism) don't really have a concept of "assigned at birth gender". You find out what sex you are once puberty hits, and gender is something that ravens just explore, sometimes settling very quickly into one thing and sometimes trying on lots, sometimes moving fluidly throughout their entire life.

When it comes to their actual sex, we know that Raven is female. Qrow... I genuinely don't know. I know based on certain things coming down the pipeline it's a high probability that he's also female, but those are just loosely based on my assumptions about how those loose ideas will play out, and are irrelevant and unlikely to come up anyway.

As far as their relationship with genders go, Qrow settled into male sometime during childhood, while Raven tried on genders for awhile before deciding sometime in her twenties that female was "close enough". However, for both of them gender is about how they're perceived externally, and doesn't mean much as far as their internal relationship with gender goes (which is basically nonexistent).

Will also say that there was a time when Raven was absolutely prepared to try on male for awhile to see if it would get James into bed with her, but that was more out of horniness than anything else. When it's been awhile and your best friend is hot, just got fitted with a metal dick he should probably take for a test run, and is pining for your identical twin, a girl will consider anything. Apparently.

Note regarding Yang re: raven genders, Yang is half-tanager and appeared more tanager than raven until adolescence, so Raven kind of got vetoed by Tai and Summer (not in a deliberate way, just sort of happened like that). However, both Yang and Ruby were raised to think of their assigned gender as a "default setting" that they could change at any point they so chose.

-Reese Chloris: This one will come up as soon as I get the opening for it; Reese is a transmasculine woman, and is in fact early into hrt (this is why I took care to specify her as a peahen when she first turned up). She is also a straight transmasculine woman, something that she's only recently come to accept about herself, because of course a woman who wants to look like a man to the point of taking hormones to make that happen has to be sapphic, right? Reese is still on a journey when it comes to her gender and identity; the three things she knows for sure positive are: 1, wants to kiss boys, 2, doesn't want to be boys, 3, wants to be mistaken for boys.

-Emerald Sustrai: Listen, Mercury's comment that "Emerald's not a girl, she's Emerald" is easy to dismiss as Mercury not thinking of his partner as a potential romantic pursuit until you remember that Mercury and Emerald share a dreamscape and a mental connection and that Mercury is trans, and you start to wonder if maybe he just knows something we don't.

Anyway, Emerald's not a girl, she's Emerald. What that will mean for her... well, that's actually one of the ones that I already know, but Emerald hasn't gotten there yet. Give her time. :)

-Lie Ren: He's never actually onscreen, but I always sort of envision Ren as menderfluid- never a woman, not always a man. He's also aro-ace, but that's unrelated. I just wanted to put that out there. ("But Theo! What about Renora?!" What about Renora?)

-Neon Katt: Nonbinary woman. There's not much to say about this one; Neon just considers the box of "cis woman" to be too stifling for her taste. Strictly speaking she's a she/they and even has a pin advertising this, but it's never come up outright.

-Roman Torchwick and Robyn Hill: Binary man and woman, just not in the traditional way. Not gonna elaborate, they just belong on the list. Don't worry about it.

[movedkagen]

REI  TODOROKI  STUDY  /  MASTERPOST .

This is mostly ripped from discord so if it’s choppy that’s why ---

TRIGGER WARNINGS : MISOGYNY, DOMESTIC ABUSE, CHILD ABUSE, CHILDBIRTH, CHILD LOSS, GENDER DYSPHORIA.

Rei never necessarily dreamed of being a mother. She had a dream, once. She painted and has a profound natural talent for art, but her family was conservative and never entertained her getting a job. Girls like her were only good for getting married. The most rebellious thing she ever did was anonymously release a few paintings while she was engaged.

 Painting continued to be a coping mechanism when she was in the mental hospital, though they were much darker --- her paintings in there were very gruesome depictions of ... typically feminine things --- pregnancy, childbirth, housewife duties. She just painted them as very painful and bloody because that's how they felt to her and that's how she emotionally processed how she sees her own value as a woman. Obviously this isn’t too relevant in the grander scheme of things but I’m just providing some insight into Rei as a painter. 

Now before I start, I obviously don't write Rei as Black but i think about how in Black and poc cultures women are blamed for their abusive and shitty husbands.  If he hit them its because THEY made him mad, and if he cheated it's because THEY couldn't keep him/make him happy. And i write rei with those burdens. i say this bc i remember rei being on the phone like "i can't take it anymore i can't be around him i'm scared" right before she hurt shouto and i'm like ... if she did that then she must have called her mother before.  and like her mother obviously didn't tell her to leave so i hc her mother was always like "be a good wife and smooth things over, keep ur man happy, if ur household falls apart thats on u"

Rei struggled the most with Touya and fuyumi. She never hurt them or anything but she had weird behaviors around them...And her biggest crime w them was the "weak constitution" she had. With Touya she was still trying to make it work with endeavor so she kept excusing his abuse because she was trying to keep things smooth... like stupid shit like "don't make ur father upset" and "u know he has a temper". not intentional but honestly just how she was raised and she thought she was doing the right thing by avoiding conflict and keeping enji happy. She tried to protect him but honestly she didn’t resent Enji as much as she did later, with Shouto. 

With fuyumi....It’s more a personal hc but I told inad that like. Rei never wanted a daughter due to how she was raised. her family was very sexist and oppressive. She cried when fuyumi was born. she did NOT want a daughter and did not want fuyumi to be like her, a woman she perceived as weak. Because my rei KNOWS she’s weak. Her quirk may have been strong but her "constitution" emotionally was frail. But fuyumi is a child and doesn’t understand why her mom gets upset when she tries to help in the kitchen and Rei tells her to stop.

Touya has every right to resent Rei ---  unfortunately though, Abuse is usually a cycle… I hced Rei dealt with a lot of mental and emotional abuse from her parents, her mother especially. that's how rei's family was. and in my hc quirk marriage is just a revamped arranged marriage. like quirk marriages in and of themselves are not evil like it's just. a cultural practice basically. but rei's family w endeavor........... her abuse was most prominently her own mother, They were VERY conservative, Very “the woman should serve the man” type people. endeavor was looking for someone with the right quirk so like. It’s reasonable to think that rei’s quirk had potential to be as strong as endeavor’s, just with ice. Yet she NEVER became a pro-hero? I think it’s because her parents never even considered it. Her taking an active duty job would have been disgraceful.

And culturally, most arranged marriages are agreements. i don't think Enji stomped in and kidnapped rei. There was an agreement. He was young, too. Like. Rei probably got married at like 18-19...he was no. 2 by 20. He was so driven to be no. 1. He is 46 now, and fuyumi is 23. like he's been grinding his whole career.

So if touya’s older, they had him basically right when they got married. The kids are all about four years apart so it’s probable that he basically had a kid, waited for the quirk to manifest, and then would have another...and fuyumi is the ONLY one who doesn't have that 4 yr age gap. she's closer to touya's age than the other gaps. SO I hc Touya And fuyumi r closer in age like that Bc Touya was supposed to be the Child who Succeeded. his fire quirk WAS strong. and therefore fuyumi was actually just. a planned child. because at that time their marriage wasn't complete shit it was like. something rei was optimistic abt.

for anyone who’s seen game of thrones,  there's one scene where sb accuses cersei of hating the king and she talks almost wistfully about how she was so excited to marry him bc of how strong and famous he was and she was so nervous on her wedding night but then stannis stumbled in drunk and came in 2 minutes and said another woman's name and she quickly became disillusioned by the idea of her whole marriage. I compare Rei’s view on her marriage to that scene.

she agreed to marry endeavor and he was a desirable bachelor @ that point. she was excited to try and get to know him and "be a good wife" to him but. his focus on work was always first. and rei, raised how she was and trying to make things work how she was, did her best to maintain what she thought a good home was for HIM. to keep HIM happy. i don't actually think he started out smacking everyone around. i think physically, touya rei and shouto were the people he abused while natsuo and fuyumi never got that.

he was training touya and fuyumi was planned and that was the only "happy" part of the marriage

it was when touya started “failing” that the things got ugly. I think fuyumi has memories of the family being functional and happy because at the beginning they WERE ... they were functional and did things together and acted like a nuclear family. through a child’s perception, that’s what she wanted to go back to.

Anyways, Rei Met enji. And like., She ofc didn’t love him but she at least kind of liked him as a person. When a man like that comes and asks to marry your daughter it’s not some ogre carrying her off, he was a desirable bachelor & her parents LEAPT at it.

 Rei was hopeful @ first. She thought "he’s handsome and strong maybe this will be a good marriage". She romanticized him a little bit. She kept thinking about being “good enough” for him. She kept giving him children, cleaning the house, being subservient because she was taught that those things made a good wife. she tried to be a good wife. 

 every time he got angry or distant she just blamed herself. what did SHE do to upset him. what did SHE do that didn't make him happy enough. 

 Endeavor didn’t hit her until shouto in my hc ... I think w shouto he just seriously lost his mind bc 3 kids in and no perceived progress. But up until that point, every time he got angry or distant Rei blamed herself. Every time he didn’t want to look at natsuo or called Touya a failure she blamed herself. And like. That fantasy was falling apart.

A resentment started brewing. She was starting to really resent her husband to the point where Touya being so similar to him made her uncomfortable. i do hc that at the time touya looked the most like him / had a temper (obviously we know him being angry would be him lashing out bc he was abused, i'm not saying his temper is wrong or bad). And fuyumi was so similar to HER I think being around her made her sad. I don’t think rei was weak and a pushover at the beginning....She was trying her best and by the very end she was tired

Now going into when she had her youngest child. All the other children disappointed enji and by default were  rei’s “failures”. She didn't give him good enough children to make him happy. That was HER fault. She loved her children of course, but being a victim of abuse from her own family would sometimes get distant from them. Rei has very said, distant eyes. she's always been that way.

Whenever enji yelled at them (I don’t think he hit them @ that point in time) she would make excuses for him.  

Touya and her were developing a strained relationship bc she’d ask the wrong questions and say the wrong things... “You shouldn’t have made your father mad” and things like that in response to his abuse because in her head smoothing things over is still the best approach. She wasn’t trying to hurt him, she just...wasn’t thinking rationally. She thought she was, but she was speaking from a place of abuse herself. She was taught to keep her head down.

When Touya would get angry he’d look so much like enji she’d visibly flinch away from his yelling. It strained their relationship. Like you know how you can’t take it out on the person who makes you angry so you take it out on someone else? like that. again, 100% wrong on rei's part. she made mistakes and tried too hard to please enji. She lowkey put her fear of enji into Touya as he got older. Tried not to show it but it was so clear he made her uncomfortable. And Fuyumi. She kept thinking fuyumi was gonna end up just like her and hated that.

there's distance with both of them because of those feelings. Then she has shouto and like. He’s her whole world. He’s nothing like her or enji and he’s sweet and he thinks the world of rei...Rei ADORED shouto. Natsuo was also very close with rei because endeavor straight up ignored him.

 And the shit starts where he wants to train shouto and she’s trying to stop him. She wants to put her foot down. She doesn’t want him to take her baby and make him like himself. She couldn’t protect Touya, but she won’t let the same thing happen to shouto. SHe starts being defiant. The fighting starts, the hitting starts. 

And you remember how right before she burns him she was on the phone with her family? Saying “I can’t take this anymore” over and over...She wanted to leave. That HAS to mean she has called them before which means this entire time every time she had a problem she probably called her mother or something for advice. And like. I’m sure. SURE Her mother was always on the other end telling her to smooth things over. To fix it. To make it right. To be a good wife. Insinuating she was a bad one for having problems in her house.

Which is why rei never left, She didn’t think to. It never crossed her mind outside of being some silly intrusive thought she’d never entertain... She had mental health issues for years, Anxiety and depression that went unchecked and developed into a schizoaffective disorder. She didn’t hear voices but she would just develop this severe irrational paranoia. and it all came to a head when she burned shouto.

when she got to the mental hospital I don’t think she took it well at all, I think she got there and kept insisting she was fine, was in denial that she was sick. I think she kept screaming and begging enji not to take her kids from her. I think she tried refusing medications, Pocketing pills, Hiding shit. Thinking she didn’t need help, she’s not crazy! Trying to leave and walk out. Her first year there was hard because they had to restrain her, give her injections. The whole ordeal.

She was very resistant to care at first. I also hc like. She’s clearly fine and having worked in a mental hospital before a lot of people ARE fine while they’re there but they’re so scared of integrating back into society they just don’t want to leave. She's not so mentally unwell she needs to be inpatient for 10 years that's just. not realistic. She could have been discharged earlier, but she didn’t wanna go back home. She was afraid to live in the real world again. So she stayed of her own choice there.

REI DOESN’T WANT TO LIVE IN THE HOUSE ENJI BUILT. In fact, when she gets out, she sees natsuo and fuyumi argue about who is going to live with her (to take care of her) and rei just quietly says she’s decided not to live with either of them. She loves her kids, she wants to have a place in their lives again somehow, but she’s also ashamed of how Fuyumi, Natsuo, and Shouto all think they have to “save” her. She’s lost all the years to raise them, but if there’s one more thing she can do for them as a mother, it’s stand up on her own two feet and not burden them any more than she already has. She tells them that she’s sorry for being weak, but that she wants things to be different. And because of that, she says she’s gonna live in a group home for women until she can get a job and get her own place. She has help from the hospital and she’s going to use those resources. 

The kids try to dispute it, but Rei won’t budge. She knows she failed them as a mother and knows she can’t change her weakness in her past, but she refuses to do that to them any longer. She isn’t a fool --- she knows it will make an already hard transition that much harder, but all she’s ever been is someone’s daughter. someone’s sister. someone’s wife. someone’s mother.

For the first time in her life, she wants to be Rei. 

[tussive]

I have a lot of thoughts on this subject and some of them are touchy and I know many of my followers are trans.  I've never really spoken about most of this publicly, but I was just discussing this type of thing with @fresholivesfromtheolivebar and I thought having a place to organize my thoughts and get them out in a hopefully not too rambly/weird and mostly cohesive post.

I used to identify agender/non-binary for a period of time.  I've never identified as "male."  I don't understand men.  I don't get men.  They talk to me and it's like their way of thinking is completely foreign to me.  That isn't to say I'm not male.  I am very much male.  I was raised male.  I am seen as male.  I have been conditioned as  a male (possibly a faggy male lol) my entire life, including now, and that undoubtably affects how I perceive life and shapes my personality.  I've always mostly had women as friends, male friends generally I lost interest in talking to quickly, and I don't typically udnerstand their line of thinking/reasoning to begin with.

That's Colette quote sums it up really well for me.  "“I have nothing to say to men and never had.  Judging from the little time I’ve spent with them, their usual conversation is sickening.  Besides, they bore me.  I believe,” he hesitated, then concluded, “I believe I don’t understand men.”"

I have several male internet friends, but none who I'm especially close to.  We all go months without talking sometimes, but I do enjoy speaking  with them over shared interests.  William is the exception, but we have discussed these things at lengths and he feels almost (or maybe entirely) the same way as I do.  He doesn't really consider himsself "male" either.

I didn't like agender or non-binary or genderfluid or any of that, because I feel like they carry their own impressions that I didn't feel fit me.  When I was younger, I experienced a great deal of gender dysphoria.  I wanted to be born a girl.  Probably because I always got along better with the other girls school.  I spent a lot of time with my grandmother and her female friends.  My step-grandfather was in my life heavily and I loved him dearly, but I never connected with him on the same level I did with my grandmother.

I thought I may be trans when I was younger.  I looked into things, explored options, spoke with trans women and many of them were very pushy about transitioning.  I was under 18 at the time and one person actually threatened me with calling CPS, lying and saying I was abused, so I could go live with another family and could "be who I really was."

That experience put me off becoming trans a lot, if I'm being totally honest.  But also around that time I was questioning gender roles to to begin with.  Why are certain traits, behaviors and interests considered "female" and others are considered "male."  It didn't make sense to me.  So I just said fuck you to gender roles and started doing whatever I wanted and my gender dysphoria went away.  I still have aspects of my body I don't like and wish were different, but I think that's literally every human.  Mine may be based around my sex to a degree and wishing I looked more feminine, but the core of the problem is the same.

I went by  non-binary/agender for a while, but I didn't really love those because I felt like they came with their own implications, so I stil just called myself a male and would say like "male, kind of" or something when someone asked lol.  I generally say I'm straight, but I do find males to be sexually attractive, but I've never met a man who I was able to connect with emotionally on any level even close to resembling romantic attraction.  William is my only close male friend and I love him like a brother, not someone I want to put my dick into.  I know going by like "newer" more specific terms, I'd probably be like "agender/non-binary demisexual heteroromantic."  But I just feel like that is dumb.  I don't think a label needs to perfectly describe you, just give people a rough idea, personally.    

And like, I love trans people.  Let me say here, I do not view any issue with trans people and if they feel transitioning is their best shot at happiness, they should go that.  I am 100% believe in full bodily autonomy, you should be allowed to do anything with it that doesn't hurt someone.  I do think a minority of people have taken things with it too far and have started trying to "cancel" anyone who doesn't perfectly all in line with their idealogy, but the majority of trans people I've meant online and in person are not that, they just want to be happy in their own body.

That being sad, I do think a lot of "TERF" arguments are valid.  I think having spaces specifically for AFAB people is a good thing.  Being born male or female and raised and conditioned that way within a society WILL affect who you are as an adult, even if you were trans then and just didn't really realize it yet.  I like the "3rd gender neutral" bathroom idea, but I think it should go a step further.  Eliminate all multi stall bathrooms.  Every bathroom should be a single bathroom that anyone can use, regardless of sex or gender identity.

That all said, I view trans women as women.  And the above points aren't really fair to them,* I agree totally.  Like that is genuinely so shitty and my heart breaks for trans people who suffer through as much as they do.  It's not fair that it happens.  (Unfortunately a lot of things aren't fair.  Which doesn't mean "SUCK IT UP PUMPKIN" it just means shit is going to suck a lot and learning to roll with it is the best way to have any kind of peace of mind imo.  But I fully empathize.  I am no familiar with gender dysphoria.  And I still wish I was born female.

I just don't think transitioning is right for me because there's NOTHING that stops me from doing whatever I wanna do, wearing whatever I wanna wear, talking how I want to talk, etc as a male that I wouldn't be able to do.  So it doesn't matter all that much.  If other people want to transition, I fully support them and I think it should be easier for people to do so.

I love trans people, not to pull the "I even have some [x] friends!" card but basically every person I talk to regularly is a woman or trans/nb/queen/etc.  I do what I can to support them whenever I can.

I know some of what I said here probably comes across TERF-y, or whatever the male equivalent of that would be.  I don't claim that term, but I've been called it by random trans people online like hundreds of times.

If you feel like I'm a TERF or hate trans people or don't respect you or what you go through, by all means block/unfollow/message me to d iscuss it further.  If you unfollow, I get it, you won't offend me or anything.  Most of this is just me working out/posting my gender identity again because I feel good about it now really.  The trans stuff is just like there to try to add context of why I don't call myself trans.

(Kinda sidenote: honestly I've been calling myself "queer" more and more.  It's vague and doesn't give any specific impression other than "not cis opposite attracted person" and I think that's a good way to describe myself lol.)

Sorry this is long, sorry if this is confusing, I didn't proofread at all and sorry if this upsets you.  I'm happy to talk with you if you are upset about anything or if you just want nothing to do with someone like me, that's totally fine!

Anyway, if you read all of this, I tank you.  I know it's way too long but I just had some thoughts and feelings I felt relevant to things today and wanted to get  them out.

Love you. <3 Marcus