#gender a wider lens

[the-land-of-women]

Elliot page has said she wanted to be a ten year old and I immediately thought of the ‘gender: a wider lens’ episode about how many dysphoric teens and young adults transition mainly because they don’t want to grow up.

I think Page probably has had long lasting dysphoria as opposed to ROGD but I think it might still fit her otherwise

[devilsskettle]

i think some of the popularity that meta horror has garnered is a little bit disingenuous tbqh even though i do like some of the movies that have come out of the subgenre, people don’t realize that the foundation of the slasher genre was established in the 60s/70s and a lot of the 80s movies that have become so classic were already riffing off of the tropes established by those movies before full fledged meta took off. the idea to make friday the 13th was sparked by the commercial success of halloween. the original script for slumber party massacre was a parody of the genre and the movie retains much of that humor which is referential to past slashers by nature. + it intentionally uses typical slasher tropes around gender and sexuality to bring forward the concerns of teenage girls. is that not something that meta horror is frequently touted as doing? child’s play is like a slasher, “except —” which is what a lot of meta horror comedies do now (“slasher except it’s a possessed doll” is not that far off from “slasher except it’s freaky friday” and whatnot). this isn’t to say that scream isn’t foundational to what the slasher genre evolved into or that contemporary meta slashers aren’t doing something interesting but i also think they tend to lean towards cynicism towards the movies they’re deriving their themes from + they’re not even as different as they think they are from “classic” 80s movies that already are borrowing from classic slashers which in turn borrowed from even older horror (for example, in halloween, laurie is watching the thing from another world from the 50s which was adapted into the now classic john carpenter’s the thing in the 80s). and of course many of these older horror movies were adapted from literature which also inspired more literature. like the shelley/byron/polidori scary story writing contest is now legendary but also you don’t get the shining without the haunting of hill house (and you don’t get the haunting of hill house without turn of the screw, for example) and the shining is probably one of the most referenced movies by other media of all time. horror has always been an intertextual genre let’s stop pretending it didn’t become “self aware” until 1996

[scrawnytreedemon]

Seriously tempted to make a highkey detached headcanon/pseudo-analysis post regarding Zant and gender. Probably a bad idea.

[intearsaboutrobots]

ok i came into Ethan of Athos with curiousity but also some trepidation as to how this book from the 80s would handle a man from a planet of only men questing into the wider world. i knew that Gender would be happening, but i had not expected it to be used as this sort of lens to examine gendered bias and oppression!!! ty ms. bujold!

[ariseur]

hi... i've come to throw a request something for prompto...

could i perchance ask for like, a cute date with prompto? idk... maybe the aquarium or going to a coffee shop. or whatever other place you have teehee (and gender neutral reader, if you could!!) i love your blog sm

“ooh—! look at this one!” you hear from your left, eyes begrudgingly drawn away from the vibrancy of the fish floating around in the cool blueness of the water.

a tall swoop of messy, blonde hair catches your eye first, crouching down to see one of the sea creatures at eye level. cocking your head, you squat down along with him as your eyes flicker between the tank and your boyfriend — a boyish grin on his face. your eyes widen in an almost child-like wonder, admiring the blue hue that paints his face from the proximity of the water.

you can’t help but feel your smile slowly form on your face, too.

prompto’s eyes flit over to you for a split second, before doing a double take and turning his head towards you. “babe, you’re supposed to be looking at the fish,” he laughs. you can feel your cheeks warm up as you scoff out a chuckle and turn towards the glass now, watching the colorful coral wave with the swishing of the water.

your simper remains placid on your face, calm as you listen to the soft giggles of children behind you — holding their parents’ hands while they run around the aquarium. eyes trailing off to the left side, fixated on a small clownfish, they dart back to the pair of big blues burning holes into the side of your face.

you just look at each other, his smile never faltering, cheeks rosy and everything. huffing, you tear your eyes away from him as you mutter a curt, “take a photo, it’ll last longer.”

prompto’s eyes light up with the joke, clearly taking it serious as he fumbles in the small bag you had reminded him to pack.

( it was yours, decorated with tiny chocobo stickers and starry charms hanging off of the straps. he didn’t care when noctis had made fun of him for it, any part of you was a part of him, too. )

“as a matter of fact, i will,” he tilts his head up at you in playful defiance.

your lips part once you see his hand grab onto something bulky whilst your huff and shake your hands with a rushed, “i was just kidding—!”

“well, i wasn’t,” he replies smugly, thumbing at the digital buttons as he fiddles with the different controls; trying to get it just right. shoulders deflating knowing he wasn’t going to give it up, you scoff out an amused chuckle as you smile sheepishly — waiting for him to give you your cue.

his eyes flicker up to yours once he sees your submission, it only makes him beam wider. you can feel your cheeks warm.

finally, he lifts his arms up to point the camera at you — the dark, circular lens aimed right at you. “ready?” he asks ( although, he’s half sure of himself that you’d say yes regardless. ) you nod gently, eyes following his hand as he gestures for you to lift your head up.

this was a daily thing with prompto and by now you had learned the motions, all the tips and tricks he’d mutter out when he was behind the camera.

he doesn’t mention it to you, but his finger feels heavy on the shutter with only a hesitation to how nice you always look — he always wonders how you do it.

“one, two — three,” prompto mumbles a small countdown, his smile growing as the contagion of yours reaches him. he can feel his cheekbones start to ache. he’s so gonna brag about this to gladio once you guys get back home, he thinks.

“prom?” you call out, tilting your head to try and take away his attention from the photo. head snapping up, he beams at you sweetly when you stifle a giggle at him.

“h—wha—?” he cocks his head confusedly once you stand up, laughing and running away near the jellyfish exhibit, the luminescent sea animals bouncing about in their own tank. he sees you spin on your heels, look at him, and keep running with a big smile painted across your face.

he looks back at his camera, seeing the glint in your eyes through the screen as he shuffles through the saved album he has of the two of you; your giddy look in the one he had just taken. astrals only knew how much he adored you, but he could only hope that you had the slightest idea, too.

prompto turns his camera off with a chuckle, before shoving it back into his bag and running off to chase you again.

𐙚 comment to be added to taglist ; @sagetealeafs @camryn-haitani

𐙚 requests are open — october sixth, 2024

[zinniajones]

These "expert" pediatricians were paid by a far-right legal group to come up with evidence to attack the WPATH transgender standards of care

What this is: Leaked documents show the anti-LGBT legal group Alliance Defending Freedom paying manufactured experts to attack WPATH’s transgender standards of care, asking them to find evidence for harmful anti-trans myths that they knew were baseless and unsubstantiated. This is an original finding and report by Zinnia Jones (she/her), a transgender Florida resident of 11 years whose access to HRT is now jeopardized by the enactment of state law and policy based on work from these same experts.

Detailed summary: From 2019 onward, states across the US have been faced with an intensely active wave of reused anti-trans experts, recurring characters who keep repeating the same spurious arguments against gender-affirming care in court cases, legislatures, and other policy bodies. Where did they come from, and why did this start happening?

Due to the Florida-based anti-LGBT hate group American College of Pediatricians choosing to set one of their Google Drive folders to be publicly viewable by anyone, files were released this month showing the contents of their staff’s communications and other working notes over several years.

These documents included records of the Alliance Defending Freedom - another hate group who are also responsible for bringing the mifepristone case with ACP as a plaintiff - approaching ACP's leaders in 2018 and 2019 to offer them a grant of $10,000 or more. The ADF wanted the pediatricians “to draft a white paper that refutes the WPATH Standards of Care”, “for use in litigation and should also benefit many other allies at State and Federal Level”.

ACP’s president Quentin Van Meter and executive director Michelle Cretella promptly got to work on this “Special Project”, and the ADF hosted expert witness workshops at ACP's conferences. ACP members including Van Meter went on to present anti-trans testimony in several ADF-litigated cases and ADF-involved trans youth care bans.

In May 2022, Van Meter authored a sham report for Florida Medicaid to justify their trans coverage exclusion, mostly drawing from previous ACP position statements; court filings later revealed Michelle Cretella was recommended by the Florida governor’s office, and she pointed the way to all the other anti-trans experts hired by Florida in 2022 to support the Medicaid exclusion of transition care.

One notable document found in the ACP’s drive contains “Transgender Research Requests”, with the ADF asking Cretella and other ACP leaders to “substantiate” now-commonplace anti-trans talking points. These included bizarre claims by the ADF such as “it is normal during adolescence for children to go through a phase when they identify (to some degree) with the opposite sex”, and “For those who have undergone hormone therapy and genital change surgery, a paper that says they are no happier (and perhaps worse off if the research supports it)”.

The ADF was asking this anti-trans group to come up with anything that could support the arguments they were already planning to make.

This appears to be one of the very sites where those baseless myths about suicide, social contagion and other supposed harms, now regularly repeated in court cases and testimony and uncritically accepted by the mainstream right wing, were conceived and gestated.

These same experts then substantially reused these work products in their reports for Florida Medicaid, a public health agency whose accepted standards determination process is supposed to be a transparent and open-ended evaluation of peer-reviewed medical evidence.

Altogether, these documents appear to demonstrate a paid smear by a hate group and right-wing law firm against a leading professional transgender healthcare organization following the best available evidence and medical practices, as well as misconduct on the part of ACP experts who reused this work in their reports for a Florida public health agency.

(asks are open)

[praggiere]

Re-Analyzing butchness and what it means to me from the perspective of a gender identity and not just a means of gender expression has been a very important and yet difficult stage of understanding myself in my most recent revelations about my identity.

I spent a large portion of my post-transition life as a hardcore transmedicalist, kalvin garrah clit rider and such. I was very hasty to point out aspects of queerness I deemed ‘invalid’ based on the idea that they somehow would minimize queer voices. I didn’t notice it so clearly at that time, but each of my arguments on the subject, as well thought out as some of them wound up being- would all in the end boil down to how the wider cishet population viewed and understood us as queer people.

This manifested strongly in my (now abandoned) views on many non binary identities and means of expressing them, aswell as my perspective of those who would break the predisposed mould of what gender is meant to be. I was once a person convinced that a woman taking T was an affront toward trans men, an insult to everything I had worked so hard for.

I wouldn’t allow myself to view my own gender through a nuanced lens, I was a man, it was that simple. I was easy to digest, easy to explain, I wasn’t too forlorn to a cis persons pallet. I dressed and acted the part down to the smallest aspects. I was, what I thought to be, happy- because I had earned respect of the cis people in my life. I was ‘one of the good ones’. I was quiet and subservient, I didn’t fuss or make my identity ‘my whole personality’ as some so boldly put it. Even in the face of fellow well-meaning queers trying to inform me of our history, or of how my perspectives were shaped and influenced from a place of fear, I’d shove it off.

The thought of my gender being anything but trans man unsettled me, yet as weeks turned to months I realized it never fully fit. Was I a detransitioner? That was the only other option I would’ve allowed myself to entertain. But it wasn’t so, it isn’t so. I have a deep voice, I socialize in a man’s environment, I am perceived as a man, that still affirms me- it never stopped being so.

But at the same time, I began to realize I wasn’t a man in such a typical sense, I began to realize that I had less transitioned into a man, and moreso into a masc. masculinity speaks to me deeply, but I never could fully relate to the ideas of what a man was. Male terms still speak to me: sir, he, his, brother, son. But now there was an entirely separate clause, one id chosen for so long to ignore- that I also never quite stopped being a woman.

I’d always desired to love and be loved as a woman, to express my gentleness through the lens of womanhood. I could never see myself grow into anything but a grandmother. And I’ve now, these last few weeks, allowed myself to accept that my gender feels undeniably, unapologetically, butch.

I connect with the feminine parts of my body now with no rudeness, I feel confident with my flat chest, my stomach hair, my Tdick- but also adore how androgynous my face has grown, I could wear the mask of a woman if I so wanted. I feel like both a man and a woman, and neither. I was so fussed to have an ‘actual’ label, like bigender or agender, because I was and am so used to having such strict labels.

But I know now it’s not always that simple, my gender doesn’t need to be strictly confined, it ebbs and flows as does natures rivers. It is butch, I am butch, and I have never felt more affirmed.

[pineapplerightsideupcake]

how do you as a bisexual come to terms with the fact that the trans community has literally made homophobia much worse. ppl are proudly being openly homophobic and when you dig deeper it’s actually the “queers” and transgenders who think kids can transition who they have a problem with (not all of course but a good chunk) I believe ppl who wouldn’t otherwise be homophobic are being homophobic bc of the trans community. I use to really struggle w internalized homophobia, and still do, it was only this past year where I came to terms w it and told my sister/close friends. I wish it could be just a normal thing to be gay and you’d be left alone, I believe we were on a trajectory for that. But now things have gotten worse, and thanks to the gender nonsense, openly bigoted ppl (especially religious) are being praised and promoted. All this bc of trans activism. I don’t even care anymore about what they do to themselves, but the damage they’ve done to actual gay ppl is insane and we’re already facing the backlash. I’m not sure if we’ll ever live in a world where being lgb isn’t a big deal.

Honestly? I think the benefit of pushing 40 is that I have a wider lens through which to view activism. And I feel the same way about LGB rights as I do about women’s rights.

Which is to say, every time a big gain is won, there is backlash. There are parts of society that get worse as the culture tries desperately to adjust around the new changes.

Men today are more porn sick and sexually aggressive than 20 years ago. In some ways. People are polling less positively about the LGTBQI+ but how much of that backlash is really directed at the LGB? Are polling groups even bothering to distinguish between LGB and “queer” people?

Let me tell you what life was like as a bisexual teen in 2003. Let’s go back 20 years and I can tell you the world has changed so much for the better. 20 years ago gay rights activists started really making headway towards civil rights guarantees. Suddenly middle Americans had to confront that gay people were among them and not just haunting bars and bathhouses. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such rigid gender norm adherence as I did back then. Men couldn’t wear pastels or purple or pink. Guys got called gay for having a messenger bag. There is an entire episode of “Friends” about it. Sussing out the Gays Among Us became obsessive. Emo culture was a direct response to how frantic straight people were to appear duly heterosexual. TV shows still depicted us as degenerate freaks if they depicted us at all. A few HBO shows that were soft core porn more than anything and Will and Grace was all anybody had. Shows like Xena and Buffy got away with lesbians because men said out loud that hot women kissing was fine. These were the early days of straight men having open lesbian fetishizes. We couldn’t get married. We could get fired for being gay.

For women there was no movement to normalize our natural bodies. I’d spend hours shaving myself smooth. Not wearing makeup was unheard of. Cellulite wasn’t even a word I knew let alone knew was normal. There weren’t a million online resources teaching women that vaginal discharge is normal and I grew up thinking (as did many others) that it was a private shame.

And as far as MeToo stuff? It’s easy to feel defeated in the moment but nobody was using the word ‘consent’ in my day. Men getting women drunk was a joke. Men pushing for sex was a joke. Men calling a woman that had one too many dates or boyfriends a slut was normal. Three of my male friends pinned me down on several occasions and took turns rubbing their dicks on me to completion.

The therapist I told said I “needed to work on my boundaries”. The word rape never even entered my mind. Rape was something a stranger with a knife did. It wasn’t something your best friends did to you and then laughed about. It isn’t something you submitted to because fawn and freeze are real fear responses. No one told me my friend forcing my hand down his pants was abuse because I continued to go over his house, didn’t I? No one told me about red flags or cycles of abuse.

And the older women you told rolled their eyes. What I endured was so mild compared to many other women. Men forcing themselves onto women was just normal.

I can’t tell you what it means to me to see so many young women calling it out. Refusing to stay in a bad situation. Refusing to date entirely sometimes. Women sharing red flags and advice to stay not just safe but thriving.

Don’t get me wrong- the current gender movement is regressive and dangerous. I’m not saying it’ll all work itself out. Activism is constant work but things ARE getting better. They really are, even if sometimes it doesn’t feel like it. 💜

[queenmomo1210]

Reframing the Monster: Black Women & the Gaze of Horror by Monica Benros De Barros

© Youtube-Fantasia 2021

Saturday, December 7, 2024

I have just completed seeing Rooney Elmi's video essay titled “Black Femininity as the Monstrous,” and wow, it gave me a lot to think about. I have long appreciated the horror genre, yet I’ve often found the representation of Black women in these films to be lacking. Elmi’s analysis explores these themes in a remarkably nuanced manner.

I truly valued her exploration of the interplay between race, class, and gender. Understanding how these factors intertwine is crucial in shaping the unique experiences of Black women, particularly in the realm of horror. Her thoughts on Blaxploitation films? Spot on. It is disheartening to witness the ongoing reduction of Black women to mere stereotypes or the depiction of them as “monstrous” entities. It is essential to develop more intricate narratives that capture the complete range of their experiences. Moreover, I was genuinely taken aback by the extent to which blaxploitation has shaped the representation of Black women in the horror genre. It presents a multifaceted legacy, and I am eager to explore deeper into that.

Elmi situates her analysis within a broader theoretical context by referencing Barbara Creed’s “seven deadly sins,” thereby enriching the discussion and providing viewers with the lens to interpret the monstrous representations of Black femininity.

© Graveyard Shift Sisters

Nonetheless, I sense that she could be making some broad assumptions. The experiences of Black women are uniquely varied, and I believe it would have been beneficial to explore a wider range of perspectives. I also wish she had ventured beyond the confines of blaxploitation. Numerous other horror films showcasing Black women could have been enriched by the conversation.

Elmi's message resonates with clarity: It is essential to reassess the representation of Black femininity within the horror genre. Framing Black women as “monstrous” consistently perpetuates damaging stereotypes that lead to significant real-world repercussions. It is essential to have genuine and nuanced representations that honor the resilience, individuality, and intricacy of Black women. Rooney Elmi's video essay, “Black Femininity as the Monstrous,” resonated deeply with me. As a woman of color, I have certainly experienced a sense of misrepresentation in mainstream culture. It is important to question how these representations have shaped our views on race and gender, leading us to reevaluate some of our own convictions and prejudices. Engaging in these discussions and questioning our perspectives is truly in essential to our autonomy and identity. If you have an appreciation for horror or are curious about themes of race and representation, I strongly suggest exploring Elmi's work. It serves as a compelling reminder that horror transcends mere jump scares and gore; it can also function as a medium for social commentary and transformation.

[samueldays]

"gender is unary" started out as making fun of non-binary gender (which is implicitly more than two, not less) but I'm increasingly coming around to thinking it's a serious and underrated lens of analysis. There is one gender, and the gender is Men. Women are not men, children are not men, transgenders of either sex are not men, effeminate homosexual males are not men.

A central trait of men in this lens is that men are responsible for people who aren't men.

This is why it's acceptable for women and children (non-men) to publicly break down and cry and attract a man to help them out, but a man who breaks down and cries is contemptible. Non-men get to demand help from men, but men are supposed to be providing help, not demanding it.

This isn't "patriarchy", it's far wider than that. Feminists routinely demand that men, as a whole gender, must do something to solve the problems of a few worried women. Progressives set up "women and femmes" spaces for non-men, that allow adult dickhavers if they aren't men, and children of any sort. John Hopkins University put out a LGBTQ glossary defining "lesbian" as a non-man attracted to non-men.

Behind a strong independent non-man is usually a man, from the government-funded (meaning: man-funded) women's organizations, to Margaret Hamilton who slept with her male boss at NASA and got promoted onto and given credit for a space shuttle programming team that was halfway done when she joined, or Amelia Earhart who was flown over the Atlantic by a male pilot in 1928 and four years later she managed to do it herself and feminists pretended this was a great accomplishment.

[degenderates]

https://www.tumblr.com/degenderates/717500809289547776/if-u-have-piv-sex-ur-a-woman-cuz-no-trans-man?source=share

I saw this anon ask you had got from a truscum and the part where you mentioned where dysphoria comes from, could you explain that? /gen I'm cis myself, but I wanted to educate myself on it.

i think in that post i was referring to ray blanchard, but i definitely misattributed the idea of gender dysphoria to him, because while he's the guy behind transmisogynistic ideas such as autogynephilia (in short: the idea that trans women are either attracted to men or that their desire to be a woman is paraphilic*), he didn't come up with the idea of gender dysphoria. however, his writings on transsexuality became a cornerstone of how trans people fit into sexology--a rather stupid field founded in pseudoscience and utilized to control sexuality, as well as a rather racist and ableist field as well, but i won't get into that--so that's probably why i was referencing him.

what i can say about the idea of gender dysphoria is that it's rather like race or sexuality or gender--a social construct that is real in how we make it real. wider cis society understands transness and gender variance from the binary patriarchy through the lens of gender dysphoria, so that makes it real. think of it this way: if i as a trans man feel uncomfortable or incongruent with my breasts, i could understand it as distress caused from a mis-match of gender under the gendered system we live in, or, i could understand it as simply a body part that i sometimes like and sometimes don't unrelated to "gender" at all, or, i could understand it as a body part i am perfectly happy with, only that i dislike the female-gendered perception of it.

the reason why "gender dysphoria" specifically is a tool of oppression is because it posits that the distress that trans people feel exists on an individual level, that the individual trans person is simply mis-aligned and can be "fixed" by the medical-industrial complex (or the worse option, denied healthcare because of conflation with mental illness). if one rejects the idea of gender dysphoria as a meter of transexuality, then systemic oppression of trans people becomes so much more obvious, because the categorization of gender itself is an oppression. transexuals and trans people cross and blur the boundaries of this everyday, but unfortunately the individualization and medicalization of our identity dilutes the revolutionary power that transexuality holds in potential

[sp-epari-digitalmedia]

Mortal Kombat's Sexualized Approach to Character Design

BLOG 7: Exoticism and Sexualization in Game Media

I turned to Mortal Kombat as a surprising and comforting release for my pent-up frustrations during the turbulent times of my adolescence. I found a therapeutic release from the difficulties and rage that surrounded me in the visceral world of fatalities and brutalities. I had no idea that beneath the surface of this legendary game was a rich tapestry of themes that I would not fully comprehend until much later.

I didn't start looking at the Mortal Kombat characters through a different lens until we got to talking about exoticism and sexualization. The very characters I controlled on screen, delivering vicious finishes, abruptly transcended the status of avatars and became representations of a widespread cultural phenomenon. This insight led me to set out on an investigative quest to analyze the complex interactions between exoticism and sexualization in the framework of a game that served as both a significant source of entertainment and a turning point in my coming-of-age story.

About Mortal Kombat

The 1992 arcade game Mortal Kombat, created by Ed Boon and John Tobias, introduced a revolutionary fusion of martial arts, fantasy, and digital graphics. Its popularity made way for more entries, ensuring its place in the gaming industry as a flagship franchise.

Mortal Kombat changed as time went on, embracing new storytelling techniques and technological breakthroughs. A pixelated fight turned into a cinematic experience with deep character arcs and narratives that drew players in and kept them interested beyond the boundaries of a normal fighting game.

Academic Standpoint

For a number of decades, academic discourse has focused on the intersection of gender representation and media, especially in the context of video games. The criticism of media representations that sexually objectify women has its origins in the 1970s, as Busby (1975) and other scholars have pointed out. (Ward, 2016)

Different definitions of sexual objectification have been offered within this scholarly framework. It explores the division of bodies, body parts, or sexual functions from one's identity and goes beyond the simple visual depiction of individuals. Sexual objectification reduces people to being nothing more than tools, existing mainly for the enjoyment and use of other people. Treating people as though their bodies are the only thing that can truly represent them is part of this dehumanizing process. (Ward, 2016)

Examining current beauty standards is an important part of the conversation about sexual objectification. According to research, there are certain standards of beauty for women in relation to American men. These standards frequently dictate a particular body type, such as slender and short or rounded and curved. The idealized female form consists of a bell-shaped lower torso, rounded arms, sloping shoulders, and a small waist tucked between a rounded bosom. The extremities are also examined, including the small, delicate feet and the hands with tapering fingers. The idealized complexion is described as white, and if colored, it may occasionally have a pink flush to the cheeks. (Mazur, 1986)

Character Case Studies

The case study is only focusing on women being sexualized in the game. It is not suggesting that women are the only characters which are sexualized in the game, it could be otherwise, and the data related to it will be absent in this post.

Just for the sake of this study we are going to consider three characters, namely Mileena, Kitana and Jade from Mortal Kombat.

The physical allure of Kitana, Jade, and Mileena adheres gracefully to conventional beauty standards, characterized by a fair or wheat-ish complexion and a harmonious balance between a slender, muscular physique. Each character embodies the timeless elegance of a bell-shaped lower torso, complemented by wider hips and a gracefully narrow waist, effectively encapsulating a universally accepted archetype of femininity. Their statuesque height further refines their curves, seamlessly harmonizing with established beauty norms.

Kitana, Jade, and Mileena's wardrobe choices are always form-fitting garments that skillfully draw attention to their figures' contours, combining martial skill with appealing beauty. Their purposeful use of form-fitting apparel draws attention to their defined curves and muscularity. The purposefully crafted costumes with well-placed openings that reveal skin with a deft artistic touch are what really catch the eye. The characters' visual appeal is enhanced by the meticulous creation, which also plays a significant role in the exoticization and sexualization of the characters by skillfully fusing sensuality into their combat personas. It's important to note how their wardrobe has changed over time, with some costumes gradually baring more skin, demonstrating the franchise's flexibility in response to shifting fashion trends and cultural quirks.

Conclusion

The Mortal Kombat characters Kitana, Jade, and Mileena represent a fascinating blend of conscious design choices and traditional beauty standards in the game's intricate weaving. Their pale skin tones, toned bodies, and balanced outlines capture both the traditional values and the changing aesthetic of the Mortal Kombat world. Beyond simple combat aesthetics, the deft combination of form-fitting clothing and well-placed gaps in their costumes reveals a complex interaction between exoticization and sexualization. As the characters' looks change over time, Mortal Kombat transforms into a dynamic canvas that adapts to shifting beauty standards and cultural quirks. Past the deaths and violence is a space for gaming, introspection, and scholarly conversation that provides an in-depth examination of societal narratives, identity, and representation in the gaming industry.

References

Ward, L.M. (2016) 'Media and Sexualization: State of Empirical Research, 1995–2015,' Journal of Sex Research, 53(4–5), pp. 560–577. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2016.1142496.

Mazur, A. (1986) 'U.S. trends in feminine beauty and overadaptation,' Journal of Sex Research, 22(3), pp. 281–303. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224498609551309.

[a7xlizardqueen]

I just discovered this wonderful podcast on Substack tonight. I just finished watching the entirety of the interview with Winston Marshall from Mumford & Sons. Great interview. Love that this is a podcast run by two women from different parts of the world. If you’re looking for great gender critical “media” I highly recommend.

[ex-foster]

I highly recommend this episode. This is about the impact of testosterone on female bodies (in the context of hormone replacement treatment for FtM patients).

It is so important for people to get informed on this topic because there is a lot of inaccurate information or preconceived ideas surrounding transition where people may not be aware of the harm.

HRT causes early menopause. It is already known that early menopause in women under 45 comes with greater health risks such as cardiovascular disease and dementia. So why are we giving these drugs to women under 25 years old? The testosterone being given to girls is also causing vaginal atrophy (which makes sexual intercourse very painful, impacts intimacy/relationships, causes vaginal tearing/bleeding that increases the risk of infection, and pregnancy complications that are not yet completely known).

I think as society we are starting to finally acknowledge the medical experiments that is gender ideology.

Years ago I did not understand the harms of gender ideology but now that I am more informed on the topic I could give hundreds of reasons to be concerned about its impact.

Unfortunately this message can be difficult to spread because it's often seen as "hateful" or "bigoted". Gender critical discourse is censored, deplatformed, demonetized, and those who speak out are threatened in their jobs and their very livelihood. Unlike trans propaganda, gender critical messages can also be difficult to make a slogan of. It requires nuance and in depth analysis which doesn't always summarize well.

[inqilabi]

hi! im working with a leftist theory podcast host and he wanted to have a marxist feminist as a guest (with gender critical views). do you know of anyone you'd recommend?

May be some of my followers. but also

https://x.com/HannahBerrelli?t=q10d7qK3z25EZ5PP_nkjvg&s=09

https://x.com/19brigid49?t=Qh6-uY83Ahwt2aRAt2a0-A&s=09

I also really like gender: wider lens podcast. They strictly cover all this stuff. And have views that I've always held myself

I am too but idk if I can do podcasts lol