#bc if u a diaspora kid like me u know what the level of the discourse is sadly

[mchiti]

i will delete this post do not reblog but his weirdo brother hinting at him being gay is still the most surreal shit

[izzyovercoffee]

I'm sorry if you've already answered this, but what's the deal with Mandalorian society and sexuality? Would a larger portion of the population be of one sexuality than others? Would sexuality be the same as we know it since they don't recognize gender? etc

I’m sorry for the delay in answering this !! I haven’t actually answered / addressed this topic quite just yet, bc they’re both easy and difficult questions to answer, if that makes sense. 

So I’m gonna do the short/long again. 

The Short Answer to the three questions is this: Mandalorians don’t care about your sexuality inasmuch as, within mandalorian community and society, specifically, it’s not a big deal — or any deal, at all. And because there is no compulsive heteronormativity, and because mandalorians as a society have a heavy emphasis on adoption and sharing the burden of child rearing with the entire clan, the population’s sexuality should not skew in any specific way. 

If I had to guess, I would suggest that the society leans more bi/pan, if only because there’s no stigmatization to be tied in with a gender binary that doesn’t exist to them. Ideally, though, I would think that there would be equal representation of every combination, and every iteration, of relationship under the sun — so long as everyone involved are consenting fully-grown adults. 

The long answer is … it’s complicated.

The thing is … uniquely, as a society, mandalorians don’t recognize gender in the same way that we do. So, it’s safe to assume that sexuality is dependent entirely on each individual’s personal frame of attraction. Procreation via popping out babies (crude, I know but u kno) would not take such a strong focus or precedence or moral imperative because mandalorians don’t just accept adoption as an option — mandalorian society strictly enforces the legal equality of adoption.

That is, the negative attitudes surrounding adoption just don’t exist. And because they don’t exist, the societal pressures tied up in maintaining a blood line disappear. 

Our society’s understanding of sexuality is, in part, highly contingent on the framework of the gender binary and the nuclear family. I would even go so far as to suggest that a heavy skew towards a cis-centric heterosexual population is, at least in part, due to the homophobia inherent in a heteronormative society. And none of these things exist in mandalorian society.

Thus it’s hard to say if sexuality would still resemble sexuality as we know it, or if it would take a completely different definition or range, or if it would be somewhere in-between. After all, mandalorian society is not one that is wholly isolated, as it’s hard to be so when so many societies are interconnected by necessity and diplomatic allegiances across the known galaxy — and the rest of the Galaxy Far Far Away seems to have the machinations of sexism and homophobia still in place (whether or not you want to chalk that up to writers imposing their internalized sexism / homophobia on the material, knowingly or otherwise, is up to you). So even if these terms and way of thinking aren’t natural to mandalorians, that doesn’t necessarily mean they wouldn’t be present at all.

That said, I’m of the opinion that the general mandalorian society may actually skew in the direction of pansexual/bisexual.

Explanation going under the cut, because this got … very long.

So. Why Pansexual? Because pansexuality is generally defined as an attraction either in spite of or without consideration to gender. The distinction of gender does not actively exist in mandalorian thought (or language) and so attraction becomes something that does not actively consider gender.

Why Bisexual? Because bisexuality is defined as an attraction to same and other genders, and the logic that follows is that all mandalorians should accept all genders, aka all genders are recognized. In a society that doesn’t stigmatize any gender, everyone has their personhood recognized (heteronormativity has no place and thus little to no influence) and thus celebrated.

Either way both bisexuality and pansexuality encompasses the full field / range that would actually, actively, exist in mandalorian society.

Pan-normativity / Bi-normativity, I guess. Lmao.

I would also suggest that the nature of a population’s sexuality (and guessing at the population percentage of x sexuality) becomes difficult to discern, because it’s heavily dependent on the population and where they’re located, and how many are adoptees — and how many of those adoptees were adopted when they were children vs. already socialized adults.

How deeply has a mandalorian diaspora or ethnic enclave’s community participated in assimilation with whatever society they find themselves in? Communities that are located in, say, Coruscant under the Empire might skew towards a heterocentric human focus due to the pressures of the surrounding environment — or they might go in the complete opposite direction and raise a vibrantly rainbow one finger salute right up the Emperor’s nose. 

It’s hard to say lmao.

TBH like … I want to backtrack a little bit to talk about the nuclear family. 

So. Family is a HUGE part of what being a mandalorian is about. Raising children is being mandalorian — but we’ve seen that the children don’t always have to be “their’s” inasmuch as a parent to a child relation. They can be nieces/nephews, cousins’ cousins, even friends’ and friends’ family’s. The focus has always been on a community raising children together, rather than any conceptualization of a nuclear family.

Frankly, nuclear families have no place in mandalorian society anyway. Any society that engages war as a supposed common export would also have a high percentage of casualties — parents never coming home, parents severely injured in the line of their profession / duty, parents away for long periods of time. In the wake of absent parents, other members of the clan/community are expected to do their share and raise the children as if they are their own — and are ultimately treated and regarded as their own.

“Why are you so focused on children and child-raising when this is a question about sexuality?” Not that I think you would necessarily ask me that, but I think it’s an important question to be answered.

How we view sexuality, how we define it, how we see it expressed, how we criminalize that expression, how we victimize and marginalize people … is all tied up in other forces and expectations our society is built on. IMO, in order to understand what sexuality is to mandalorians, it bears repeating what mando society is not and does not have.

Example: I’ve noticed that people who are homophobic view homosexuality as a deviation from a perceived moral expectation — and it is a violently enforced moral compass that is hyper-focused on a “woman’s” (ciswoman’s) capacity to bear and raise children, and only devote her life to that one role.

Because mandalorian society is completely without that expectation, the foundations that would otherwise exist to enforce marginalization completely disappear. Can’t have children? Adopt, or help raise the kids in your clan. Don’t want / want to deal with children? Offer assistance to those who have / want to assist in raising children so they are free to do so more easily.

Because mandalorian society doesn’t recognize gender roles, the framework that misogyny and transphobia is built on ceases to exist and so anyone of any presentation is not someone to then be brutalized until they return to a gender binary, bc mandalorians don’t have a gender binary. 

Because mandalorian society encourages communal raising of children, the capitalistic forces contingent on the survival of the nuclear family structure cannot be found here. There is no two parent household — everyone works and lives together, or works and lives in large groups, supporting each other.

Romance, in general, is built on an assumption of the nuclear family’s goal: two people to a household to raise children, alone. Complete co-dependency between two people for all romantic and platonic emotional and interpersonal support. You don’t need friends nor family when you have someone to share your bed — but specifically someone to share a bed and produce children with.

And tbh … because mandalorians don’t HAVE an arbitrary moral system built on a foundation of misogyny, homophobia, and capitalistic ideals of a nuclear family, I wonder if monogamy is something that would be as heavily tied with morality as it is in ours — would it really be so expected? Less so? Would polyamory be more acceptable (bc let’s face it, it’s still in unacceptable territory)? Would single-parenting also be more acceptable (bc, again, single parenting is still viewed as unacceptable, as if there’s something wrong with the parent)? 

Identifying as anything not-hetero doesn’t come with a death sentence, however oblique or immediate or realized. 

What I’m saying is this: there are inherent pressures in our society that we don’t think about that affect us on a personal level, every day. Being gay, being bi, being ace, being pan, being trans, being gender nonconforming — even if we don’t actively think about it, we know on some level that our status in our society is ostracized at some level, if not every level. The subtle ways in which society treats and regards us ultimately has an effect on us — and how we perceive others, and can affect how we structure sexuality and our sexual identities.

The absence of those pressures would lead to a radically different society and social understanding of gender and sexuality. Both on a micro level, and a macro level.

And that’s really interesting, imo. These are great questions to ask — it’s a great topic to address and to try to write about and build upon — and I have no idea if any of my answer is adequate, because of how difficult it is for me to conceptualize sexuality in a society that isn’t burdened by a heterocentric gender-conforming monogamous hegemony focused on procreation. 

God I hope I answered your questions lmao. Sorry I’m so verbose !!