#apparently it's a common experience for people perceived as women. i know people think im a woman even though im not

[cursed--alien]

It just occurred to me that I've actually never been catcalled, even when I had bahongaroos. I guess I have Ugly Privilege :3

[vinkumakkara]

real talk maybe too real but my own personal interpretation is that Zenigata’s oblivious to the fact he’s gay partly becus of pretty bad self-esteem issues and body image issues in particular that he apparently has in canon so he doesn’t really see himself as desirable to anyone, ever. the way i see it his self-esteem in general has just been steadily getting worse and worse after he devoted his life to Lupin becus of course it would, he experiences crushing failure and humiliation almost on a daily basis

beyond that it also stems from the whole thing where before meeting Lupin the sole driving force in his life was just doing What Was Expected of him, he’s highly educated and he became a cop because of his family name and when ur a guy you just Like Women and thats that. he got married and had a kid because that’s what you do (and his job basically demanded it anyways) but in the end his marriage failed and he never actually felt sexually attracted to his wife in the slightest, or really any woman ever so now he just accepts that hes a weird sexless creature who’s generally just not attracted to people. whenever he’s shown interest in women it’s always because they initiate and he both short circuits becus he thinks hes unfuckable and also because that is just what you’re supposed to do, of course he should act like he’s interested in return. also he is extremely touch and attention starved as i think he’s someone to whom physical closeness is very important, like it really affects his mental health even further and he doesn’t really have anyone else somewhat permanent in his life but the Lupin gang, and he can’t get that closeness from them (at least not with the canon status quo in effect, this isn’t about anyone else’s headcanons about happy poly families or w/e)

if he got over some of these issues and actually managed to take a look at his life i think his struggle with his sexuality - as opposed to your garden variety internalized homophobia i guess - would stem specifically from the fact that he’s in love with Lupin in particular and what that actually means in retrospect, like all the wild and sometimes highly illegal shit he’s done just for him, all the corruption he’s ignored just because it doesn’t directly concern him and what he considers to be his sole purpose in life... like however you might interpret his personal scale of justice, i think at his core Zenigata is a good, empathetic person and the fact that he’s spent so much of his life causing so much damage and hurt to other people not because of any higher cause or common good - whether he told himself it was all to protect society or do his peers and bosses proud or to save Lupin from himself, whatever - but rather something as selfish as his own feelings and sexuality could break him

imo his esteemed family background is specifically a huge source of his repression and his need to perform what he perceives to be his role. like even if he’s genuinely very proud of it and even if’s just a very liberal read by myself, even in (questionable) canon he actually seems to acknowledge that it has kind of forced him to take a specific path in life that he might not have taken otherwise, at least according to the unaired green jacket episode where he first meets Lupin. i think that Zenigata envisioning this impassable chasm between him and Lupin due to their family names is something that’s also implied/somewhat explored in stuff like the first and the even more important 4th episode of green jacket, like he wants to cross it but feels he just can’t. he’s in love with Lupin and desperately wants to be loved in return but - and im just repeating what i’ve said multiple times in the past but WHATEVER - he’s just so super anime he’s recontextualized his feelings as Destined Rivalry just like he’s probably done with other dudes in his life he’s crushed on (there’s literally one example in red jacket!). but Lupin also represents an unattainable goal in general that gives him something that he can more or less safely project his sexuality onto so he doesn’t ever have to truly face it. because he will never truly catch Lupin and deep down he knows that he doesn’t want to catch him, either