#but I think he's reckoned with sex and gender as social constructs in a more critical way than his peers have

[agnesandhilda]

watched conclave last night and then read the wikipedia entry for the book and now I'm wondering about the category ten shitstorm that a publicly intersex pope would cause

[clare-with-no-i]

can i also ask, what do hc all the marauders era characters’ sexualities to be?? sorry if you don’t want questions i just jumped on the bandwagon cause of the last anon and i find your answers so in depth and interesting xx

(cue Lizzo’s I BEEN WAITING FOR THIS ONE! TURN IT UP!)

also you all are absolutely welcome to ask questions always! I love answering them!! Truly I am still so surprised anyone cares what I think lmfao!!!!

I guess I headcanon James and Lily to be straight, mostly because they’re the only relationship I even really think about with each other lmao ? I don’t have any particularly hard feelings about it though because I think straightness is super socially constructed and no one is, like... 100% straight?? So I am very open to different takes on this one as long as the two of them end up together lol

My hc’s for Sirius and Remus are that Sirius is pansexual (AKA, he is Very Horny but also Feels So Much All The Time and gender just Isn’t Important) and Remus is bisexual - following the canon to pair him with Tonks later on, during HP. I love Tonks! I want to give her fair credit. & I’m not going to state this explicitly unless the situation comes up in a particular story, but that’s the world under which I’m working :)

Given that he commits crimes I guess Peter would be straight but I only ship him with prison, so

I go back and forth about Marlene! In BaF, Marlene is straight but in a way where she Doesn’t Really Like Men but unfortunately Was Programmed That Way, so she utilizes men for sex but the whole feelings thing is just not gonna happen. But I’m also open to Blackinnon because, based on the way I write her and Sirius, I think their energies complement each other really well. But that could just be as bros or as love interests! I’ve also read some really good Dorcas/Marlene stuff, and in NAR I must be honest with myself they give off couple vibes so I think my subconscious was like put them together, you coward!!!

Dorcas is gay to the point that men actively repulse her, which is just a toughie for Sirius because what do you mean someone doesn’t want to fuck me?? I’m so excited to flesh out her character tbh she’s just an icon and deserves more love

Mary also goes different ways depending on the story, I suppose? I know a lot of fic tends to place her as the boy-crazy comic relief friend, but I know that in Bond and Free, at least, I wanted to give an opportunity for female readers to see a character really reckon with her sexuality and be supported and loved by her friends and family. I have such a near place in my heart for BaF Mary and she’s one of my favorite perspectives to write, tbh

Alice and Frank are that sweet straight couple who just want to see everyone happy and would also probably accidentally wander into a gay club because it has a cool neon sign out front

I think that’s everyone? If I’m forgetting people please let me know so I can bonk myself over the head

thanks for this question sweet-T!

[gotatext]

hello, it’s swamp witch nora again…. i couldn’t stay away.... hitting u with a tiny baby boy who is also terrible (sometimes).  musical softboi who loves karl marx and hates children dying in cobalt mines to make smart phones. as is tradition, here’s the pinterest board, have a peruse. fyi sorry for those of u who have read this intro a thousand times i literally.... can never b bothred to change it n i think thats really sexy of me x

CHARLIE PLUMMER / DEMI-BOY — don’t look now, but is that rory bergström  i see? the 23 year old music student is in their junior year and he is a rochester alum. i hear they can be whimsical, impassioned, self-indulgent and nitpicky, so maybe keep that in mind. i bet he / they will make a name for themselves living in griffin street. ( nora. 24. gmt. she/her. )

aesthetics.

bed hair from a permanent state of slumber, calloused fingertips from strumming bass into the early hours and djing into the blacklit night, self-help books thumbed once and thrown beneath your bed, battered copies of choose your own adventure books, spliffs passed half-arsed across rooftops while light pollution obscures low-hanging stars, marxist literature in stacks against your bedroom walls, a burner phone twice-shattered and a stash of replacement sim cards.

tw ocd, anxiety, drugs

half-swedish, half-british. the swedish is on his mother’s side. he’s bilingual but thinks in english. only really speaks swedish around his mother. only child, and kinda put a lot of pressure on himself to be the perfect kid when he was young, but his parents are honestly, quite decent? and just want him to have a nice life, they don’t care if he isn’t successful or rich or anything, they’re honestly rather solid. (wow imagine having nice parents, a first for all my characters, im literally this meme)

grew up in peckham, a suburb of london. growing up, his mum was a model / actress / waitress who later retrained as a speech therapist and his dad worked in her majesty’s service at buckingham palace. his dad wasn’t allowed to tell his family what his job entailed but rory suspects it’s probably very boring and just involves a lot of…. logistics n security.

was bullied a lot at school. [cole sprouse voice] he didn’t fit in and he didn’t want to fit in. unironically wore a trenchcoat to school every day of his life. spent most of his lunchtimes in the library because it was his safe space. as a result he knows…. loads of useless information because 30% of his school years were spent reading anthologies on space and the vikings etc. would be good on a game show. obsessively recorded every episode of university challenge as a child.

middle-class and lowkey quite wealthy but rarely talks about money, one of those well-off people who still wears really old shitty shoes and only spends money if they absolutely have to

virgin who can’t drive

into star wars, not into the big bang theory. feminist. can’t watch horror movies

favourite film is where the wild things are. also loves the florida project. thinks kids are the sweetest thing and can’t wait to be a dad to some

has been musical for as long as they can remember. first picked up guitar because he thought it would make this girl esther who he was in love with like him, but he just ended up falling in love with music instead.

formulated several different bands as a kid but ultimately had to give it up cos he was quite controlling and got fixated on making a certain sound so it wasn’t really fun for the others. got into electronic music because it was something he could do basically on his own and keep tweaking until he got it perfect

always drumming their fingers or strumming invisible guitar strings. tends to avoid parties bc he has quite has specific tastes when it comes to music and doesn’t like listening to r&b for eight hours while people throw up into plastic cups.

a techno connoisseur. has been making electronic music since he was about twelve.

after his parents divorce, when he was fourteen, rory & his mother moved to run-down suburban neighbourhood, pittsfield, massachussets.

big into photography. he mostly uses a canon 35mm camera, but occasionally uses disposable ones when he wants that more rustic feel.

moving to the states, their photography became more focused on suburban neighborhoods and are often quite dark and cinematic (think gregory crewsden). here are some shots of pittsfield i really like which rory has on his wall [1] [2] [3]

falls in love 12 times a day. never had a girlfriend or boyfriend. gets sweaty when someone cute looks at him. flirting?? what?? would prefer to idealise them from a distance

gender??? hm. rory don’t really know where they fit yet, sometimes he feels like a guy and sometimes they dont feel like anything at all!! slippin out of his physical form into the spirit realm! isn’t really bothered, cos they think it’s a social construct anyway. uses he/they pronouns interchangeably, but currently feels like ‘he’ is more fitting. won’t necessarily pull anyone up on it cos he knows having an identity that’s constantly…. in flux.. can be annoying for others … and doesn’t want to be a burden even tho it isn’t at all?? rory internalises guilt

everything is socially constructed. mirrors let you move through time. the whole thing’s a metaphor. he thinks he’s got free will but really he’s trapped in a maze. in a system. all he can do is consume. people think it’s a happy game. it’s not a happy game — it’s a fucking nightmare world, and the worst thing is, it’s real and we live in it!!!!

has ocd. tries to let it affect his life as little as possible, but obviously it’s incredibly hard to control a compulsive disorder. was teased for it at school when other kids started to notice. he was obsessed with the number five, would wash his hands five times, count stairs i groups of five, he could only use the corridors in one direction and always had to keep his hands busy. it manifests itself in hyper-fixations (trains when he was a child – specifically steam engines – then later he became obsessed with space and the patterns of constellations, and now he’s obsessed with synthesizers) and repetitive behaviours like counting stairs. doesn’t really affect his social life at all, he can jst get a bit locked-on n hyper-focused sometimes.

has insomnia. barely ever sleeps. finds it hard to switch off from work / writing / gaming / whatever’s preoccupying him in that moment. he’s always awake at 5am and quite often sleeps in through classes but still gets really good grades because he’s very good at his course. rarely attends classes. prefers to work independently. doesn’t really trust his tutors are intelligent enough to be teaching him, and is particularly suspicious of the lockwood tutors. a music snob tbh

occasionally deals weed n pills when strapped for cash, but only 2 ppl he knows, and on a very small scale grass-roots level!! (so its ok???) rollerskates around campus dealing cos they dnt have a car. we love to see it

aesthetics: bed hair from a permanent state of slumber, calloused fingertips from strumming bass into the early hours and drumming into blacklit night, self-help books thumbed once and thrown beneath your bed, watching vine compilations until your eyes turn square, battered copies of choose your own adventure books, spliffs passed half-arsed across rooftops while light pollution obscures low-hanging stars

likes: techno, the webpage cats on synthesizers in space, allen ginsberg, vintage gramophones,  floating points, lcd soundsystem, marijuana, soft dogs that let you pet them, late-night strolls talking about the universe, independent films, cigarettes, herbal tea, gallows humour, long showers, brown eyes, tchaikovsky, dr. seuss, constellations, photography, late night jazz, vintage game boys and girls who could rip his still-beating heart out of his chest and use it as an ashtray. dislikes:  weddings, funerals, formality, button-up shirts that people actually button-up, bananas, hot coffee, social media, people who watch and play sports, rap music – especially of the misogynistic variety, indie wankers in wire-framed glasses that play ed sheeran songs at open mic nights.

plot ! with ! me ! i’d say all the usual “exes fwb hookups spiel” but rory… has never hooked up with anyone… i feel like a deer in the headlights of love……. so give me

study buddies,

people who are also into techno and are music snobs about it,

people who love all kinds of music,

people who are in bands that maybe rory’s recorded and produced stuff for,

people he actually jams with (he plays bass and synth),

unrequited crushes!!

actually i think rory had sex w delilah in the last version of this rp so if u want a hook up plot its possible just unlikely. they’d hav 2 be the driving force i reckon cos rory doesn’t really act on impulses like desire or anythin.... jst bottles that shit up !!! but yea we could do a spicy hook up plot maybs, depending on the person

someone they met at a knitting club in freshman year and have remained friends with despite no longer going to it

people rory knows from open mic nights and gigs

library girlfriends / boyfriends that he stares at longingly while paging through leatherbound volumes

gamers !!! social recluses !!! hermits !!

people he deals weed to on his rollerskates (why r all my characters obsessed with rollerskates)

skaters. rory is really shit at skateboarding. like really shit. help the smol

[sapphiccritique]

Observations of the double standards of the definition of sex and the conflicting emotions they entail: two case studies

What is sex? What is not sex?

A friend of mine often talks to me about her distress over her conflicting emotions of wanting sex yet being reluctant to lose her virginity. Interestingly, she has a boyfriend who is also a virgin and eager to lose his virginity to her. They subtly test each other’s boundaries, and conflicting messages are all they can manage. He would tell her about his favourite Japanese porn-star and prob about her viewing preferences and masturbation habits. She would tell him she likes vanilla-type porn-stars and she masturbates once a month when really she knows more porn-types than he does and she masturbates twice or more daily. Why does a woman feel compelled to lie to protect her reputation as a pure girl ignorant of and aversive to sexual pleasures? Why is this a preferred gender ideal in Hong Kong (which is where this SapphicTrash is based in)? Most puzzlingly, what marks sex with a boyfriend as sex, and yet masturbation as not sex and thus not ‘harming’ her virgin status?

As a cisgender gay woman, I find myself also questioning if the sex I have regularly with my girlfriend qualifies as sex. When I offer her fingering or oral sex, my mind drifts off and I wonder if it is adequate and if she wants more, while also dreading that she indeed does, someday, some time. When she actually expresses her desire to include toys into the bedroom, I find myself agreeing and yet internally unable to come to terms with what she wants. I couldn’t help but wonder if only penetration by an object with more girth qualifies as sex, and I am endlessly bothered by the shapes of the toys resembling so much the phallus. What if what she really wants or needs is a penis? Why can I not think of toys, a dildo or a strap-on, as an extension of my body, and thus our bedroom time still as simple as me making love to her, and her me? Why do I feel close to being raped when she uses them on me? Why do I get worked up over this intrusion of the phallus into our bedroom, and its contamination of it? What is sex between two women? Is sex exclusive to us in the absence of the phallus, making the phallus the true and only definition of sex?

These two cases seem vastly different, but they lead to the same questionable conclusion: only with penetration by a phallus there is sex. Why?

In my confusion, I tried to consult contemporary Feminist studies (or rather, contemporary Feminist debates) on the topic. I gained many insights especially from Jackson, Stevi, and Sue Scott. "Sexual skirmishes and feminist factions: twenty-five years of debate on women and sexuality." Feminism and sexuality: A reader (1996): 1-31. Jackson and Scott write, ‘What counts as erotic is itself socially constructed in terms of relations of dominance, to the extent that it is difficult even to think of sex outside of the patriarchal language and culture which shape our thoughts, desires and fantasies’ (17) To a large extent, I agree with this notion that sex is a socially constructed understanding highly embedded in relations of dominance, often rendering our subconsciousness unable to think of sex in non-patriarchal ideas and conventions. Koedt, Anne. "The myth of the vaginal orgasm." Radical feminism: A documentary reader (1970): 371-7 also gave me multiple critical hits on the dilemma. Koedt writes, women have long been ‘duped into expecting to derive maximum pleasure from minimal clitoral contact’ in the sex repertoire revolving around men’s ownership of sex, initiative role and the definition of sex as vaginal penetration by the phallus, even though mainstream sexological research suggested that the female orgasm was centered not on the vagina but the clitoris (371). This sufficiently puts the situation into simple wordings: in sex, male pleasure is more focused on than female pleasure. Female pleasure is unimportant, or even irrelevant, for something to be called sex. Jackson and Scott further write, ‘For many women, steeped in the mythology of male sexual needs and female sexual obligations, the idea that they had a right to pleasure at all was relatively new … Men’s desires are seen as uncontrollable urges which women are paradoxically expected both to satisfy and to restrain’ (12-18). These new findings satisfy some of the queries I had. Female sexual pleasure is the ‘other’ in sex. One could venture to say, sex that focused on female sexual pleasure is not sex. The woman is socially constructed to not expect a right to pleasure at all in sex. Instead, she is taught that it is her job to satisfy a man’s needs and to restrain her own needs (that she apparently ‘doesn’t have’, paradoxically).

To truly become a sexual subject, I reckon the woman must first kill the inner demons put into her by power relations and the society and subvert the narratives of sex as it is now by embracing other kinds of sex and the female sexual pleasure.