#gender euphoria isn’t always fireworks sometimes it’s just | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

pentanguine · 4 years ago

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1. Do you use any other terms to define or explain your gender?

So…I got a little carried away. Most of these posts will not be this long, but I had a lot I wanted to say, and a long drizzly afternoon to work on saying it, so.

Aside from genderqueer, trans, and nonbinary…

I’ve started feeling more at home with the word transmasculine this year, after several years of circling it warily and ultimately running away because it would just be ALL TOO SHOCKING. Other people interpret transmasculine in a wide variety of ways, many of which make me deeply uncomfortable (eg “Transmasc = physically transitioning in all the same ways trans men usually do;” “Transmasc = trans man but woke about it;” “Transmasc = I have aligned myself against women and forsaken feminism and I love asserting my dominant gender role”), and voluntarily using a word that’s ripe for misinterpretation made my control-obsessed brain fuck right off.

But ultimately it’s not really about using words (what does that even mean? putting them in your tumblr bio? buying the pride flag?) so much as knowing, however privately, that you are a thing. And I’m transmasculine! It’s a word that feels comfortable, and homey, and exciting. Other people who use that word sound like me! They look like me, and they look how I want to look! I get such a blooming, leaping, light-filled feeling in my chest when I see these people, because I instinctively feel that these are People Like Me. I recognize myself in their experiences of gender, and sometimes I feel like my whole body’s going to shake apart with a euphoria that’s like being on fire. Every time I read something by Daniel M. Lavery I end up rolling around on the floor in paroxysms of delight and Feeling Seen, and my brain lights up like a fireworks display when I see awkward bi men with curly brown hair and glasses. There is still a little part of my brain that’s convinced referring to myself as transmasc will make everyone deeply disappointed in me, and obligate me to go out and befriend a footballer named Chad, but I’ve been casually referring to myself that way since May in semi-public venues and the sky hasn’t fallen in yet.

Transmasc feels like a useful word for me because it makes me feel more settled. I think a lot of times nonbinary gender is simplified to gender neutrality (which it is for some people!), while for me it’s more like a stewing mess full of things that don’t make coherent sense in anyone’s mind but my own. So I can like masculine words and gender presentations, and that doesn’t mean I’m equating neutrality with masculinity, and I can also express my gender in the numerous non-masc ways that feel natural to me while still having that anchor to come back to. Ultimately, I think it just means that I have a more meaningful relationship with masculinity than I have with femininity, neutrality, or androgyny, and that I’m deliberately moving in a more masc-coded direction that the one I started out. And that’s it!

The other big gender-conceptualization-thing that I’ve been thinking a lot about is the complicated muddle of doubleness and inversion that I feel between gender identity, gender presentation, sexuality, and gender expression. I don’t feel bigender, because that sounds like I have two discrete gender experiences sitting side by side, and I’m not genderfluid, because it’s not like my gender actually changes, but I do feel like I’m part woman-affiliated agender person, and part genderqueer guy with the genderqueer dialed up to eleven and the guy dialed down to two. Part of me feels apart from gender, but nebulously attached to queer ideas of womanhood (lesbian! spinster! middle school girl at a sleepover who promises to love her friends more than any passing crush!), and then part of me feels apart from gender, but like I picked Guy Gender to steal for myself and imitate and relentlessly queer by virtue of not taking it seriously enough. But it’s all mixed together, you know? Like paint swirling on a palette, or light bringing out iridescence on fish scales. Sometimes it will be more like one thing, sometimes more like another, but it’s always whole and completely intertwined.

Earlier this year a Miriam Zoila Perez quote about being a faggy butch was going around, and man, that gave me a lot of gender feelings. I first encountered the term fairy butch on this old blog called The Butchelor, and while I loved it then, I didn’t use it because of a radfem-induced trepidation that it was all an elaborate joke everyone understood but me. I also have an extremely annoyed relationship to the word butch, because I’m not butch at all, and I doubt anyone else would think I am, but this seems to be the only word anyone is capable of using to describe queer masculinity. It’s like other people are determined to smash you into yet another binary (ironically, a binary that’s jealously guarded by the same people who keep enfolding you in it) because you’re afab and like wearing ties. It’s annoying!

But the phrase fairy butch just seems so delightful to me, because it’s whimsical and complex, and also so genderfucky. I’m not masculine in any of the ways that usually cohere to the word butch—I don’t have the interests, or the mannerisms, or the sexual propensities or the haircut or the total dislike for anything feminine-coded (why is masculinity always all or nothing, and all about absence?). I love my socks with the sparkly pink foxgloves, I love smiling (why must men never smile?), I like sitting with my legs crossed and talking with my hands. I’m not feminine, I’m effeminate. I’m a double invert, gay for women and gay for men, a too-boyish-“woman” who doubles right back around as a too-feminine-“man.” Maybe I’m not a butch, or even a (faggy) butch, but dammit I’m a fairy/butch. Two queers in one, two inextricable, contradicting queernesses that complicate and complement and mitigate and enhance each other.

The idea that I’ve been slowly winding towards is that contradiction is part of my gender. It’s not something that’s going to get smoothed out one day when I find The Perfect Word, and the questioning and revisiting isn’t going to end when I reach The Final Stage of Transition or whatever. I read an article a few weeks ago that nebulously cited Jack Halberstam as saying “refusal to resolve my gender ambiguity has become a kind of identity for me,” and that’s something that resonates with me so, so much. I don’t have to make myself neat and appropriate for consumption, because my gender doesn’t exist at the mercy of other people’s understanding. I’m not a problem that has yet to be shoved into a “woman-aligned” or “nonvir” box, I just am. Sitting amidst the dissonance of things that other people tell me are impossible to feel at the same time is my identity. I never want to cohere.

It reminds me of the way I feel about historical figures like Katharine Hepburn and Daphne DuMaurier, who were definitely genderqueer as fuck, but also closeted to the outside world for their entire lives, and unclassifiable in modern terminology. They were real, complex people who existed, and are now gone! It would be really weird to assign them a coherent identity, like “Hepburn was a nonbinary trans man” or “DuMaurier was genderfluid” or what-have-you, when all you have are decontextualized fragments of their gender feelings. (I feel comfortable calling them genderqueer because that can be used as an adjective to describe cis people who queer gender, which they definitely did)

Anyway: I feel very deeply connected to these people, and the way they saw themselves as being boys, or like-men, or men-in-certain-contexts, or men-and-women, or women-who-wanted-to-be-men. But the thing is, wherever they may have wanted to go, they never arrived. Would Hepburn have preferred to be known professionally as Jimmy, gone by he/him pronouns in all areas of life, and identified as a proud trans man? Barring some spectacular archival discovery, we’ll never know, because that was never a viable option in Hepburn’s lifetime. And that space of possibly-wanting, but not-arriving, feels like a destination to me. That gap, between wanting and actualization, or fantasizing and pursuing, or playing around and Identifying As, feels like it is part of my experience of gender. I’m not a man, I’m a woman-who-wants-to-be-a-man. There has to be that distance, and that wanting.

I’ve gone on for an absurd amount of time here, but ultimately: I’m queer! My gender is queer! Some people are men, some people are women, and I’m a queer.

#gqid asks #it occurs to me now that i've spent over an hour writing this out that most of this is stuff i've talked about before #admittedly usually in the tags here on tumblr or else very hesitantly one on one with friends #but still! i started writing this full of self-conscious trepidation and then by the time i'd finished i was like #'i don't think any of this is new information to any of your rl friends. genuinely this is not ALL TOO SHOCKING'#and that was a nice thing to realize because it makes me feel less like i hoard my entire sense of self under a rock #maybe sometimes i communicate with people i care about and that is good and fine #personal #it's a blustery autumn night here and dry leaves are whirling against the windows and rasping over the roof

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keets-writing-corner · 6 years ago

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Intro to Character

Minor mentions of: Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Star Trek

Specifically talked about in discussion: Toy Story, Inside Out, Happy Feet, Sleeping Beauty Disney), The Princess and the Frog

So what makes a story great? Well, a lot of different things actually. Cool plot, interesting setting, well use of point of view, but the most important part about a story is forgotten a lot ironically. I’m talking about characters. What do I mean by this? Well, if you’ve ever taken a Creative Writing class, you’ll usually find a ban on genre. By genre, they don’t mean horror, or comedy, they mean like anything that isn’t considered normal in the real world. No flying horses, unicorns, witches, and wizards. No myths, no fantasies, and no folklore. No extremely advanced robots, aliens or space travel. No zombies or vampires. No ghosts. No metaphysical entity and no science fiction.

Why is this though? It seems rather unfair, doesn’t it? I certainly thought so. After all, I had so many cool ideas involving myths from old religions, folklore, even an alternate earth that was a weird mix of medieval times and future technology. For years, I feared the day I would get a teacher or a professor that would enforce this rule on me (I’ve been lucky enough to have super chill teachers so far who didn’t enforce the Genre ban). Until I asked why such a rule existed.

Genre creates distraction. Of course you want to work with all the cool stuff! Who doesn’t want to work with magic, and wizards? Especially after Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings make them so thrilling to read about. Of course you want to write science fiction with Star Wars and Star Trek out there? Have a favorite fairy tale? Why not make a variation on it? It’ll be so much fun! *gasp* Even better? Why not create an entire world?! Freezing popsicle sticks! Can you imagine all the possibilities?! The lore! The history! The alternate laws! The multiple cultures! The different species! Science fiction? What kind of tech do they have? Fantasy? What does their magic look like?

That’s exactly the “problem” with genre. You get so distracted about all these cool variables that the most important part of a story, the characters, have a tendency to become underdeveloped. This isn’t to say “Don’t create stories with genre”, after all, it’s because we have so many great stories that intermingle beautifully with genre that we want to work with it. But the reason so many Creative Writing classes have a tendency to ban genre is because, chances are, the people there are blossoming writers. They’re still learning how to write really good stories, and if they’re allowed that much freedom, the most important part of the story gets neglected in the euphoria of everything else. The reason that the ban is there is for writers to learn how to properly take care of and develop their characters BEFORE they start adding all these cool magic tricks and pyronetics. Without all of the flashy fireworks, seductive circus dancers, and glittery lights, writers can sit down and learn how to work with characters in a familiar setting, the real world. (I will make a post (or several? Not sure yet) about world building, but I will say, anyone who’s tried to make their own world KNOWS that it’s a lot harder than it looks. Some people can do it naturally, others have a harder time and need a preexisting world. Neither is wrong, the point is that by taking away that pressure to create a new world, writing is easier. You’re working with rules already established and familiar to everyone and you don’t need to make any of them up).

So why are characters so important? Well, Stories are kind of about them/revolve around them? I promise you, it doesn’t matter how cool your world is, how much you know about each culture and how much it’s explored in-story, if your characters are boring, underdeveloped and uninteresting, nobody is going to care.

So, I do have many posts planned about ‘Character’, but let’s give a quick rundown on what makes a good character. Remember, I’ll be doing separate posts going into detail about most, if not each, of these AND these are not the only things I’ll be covering about character.

Connection. Audience needs to be able to connect with the character. Sometimes it’s physical appearance, sometimes it’s the gender, sometimes it’s the place of origin. These are all superficial ways of connecting with a character (Superficial in this sense being used as surface level, a character’s physical appearance, and is not a “cheap” way of making a connection). But there are more ways of connecting with a character, aren’t there? After all I connected the most to a tap dancing penguin when I was a kid. There are different ways to connect with a character, superficial ways, and also deeper more internal ways. The main goal of a character (at least a main character) is to have audience be able to see themselves in that character in some way/shape/form.

Flaws. You hear it all the time. Characters are not allowed to be perfect (I’ll go into this when I cover Mary-Sues). Characters need flaws. What frustrates me however is that flaw is often confused with struggle. Supposedly, we connect with characters’ flaws(again, in my personal opinion this is completely untrue because we actually connect and sympathize with their struggle). What’s the differences between Flaws and Struggles? I literally have an entire post planned covering just that, so fret not! For now, let’s just summarize what I see a flaw as. I see a flaw as a character trait that keeps them from being a “perfect” character. It’s not something they need to overcome, it’s just a part of them. Sometimes a flaw can even be a strength in certain situations, or a strength can become a flaw.

Struggle. Now if you ask me, this is what really makes an audience connect with a character. Everyone struggles in life, or has something they struggle with. These are often confused with Flaws. Let me give a few examples to explain what struggle is. Let me go back to Mumble from Happy Feet. The entire movie, he’s struggling to be accepted. He’s not struggling to be normal or to be like the other penguins, he loves his talent, and he knows there’s nothing wrong with it. He just wishes the other emperor penguins could accept him, and he struggles with this the entire movie (I hope to also do an analysis on Happy Feet in the future, where I’ll be talking about this WAY more in depth). I’ve always felt like I’ve been struggling for people to accept me, especially since all the molds society wants to put me in just don’t work for me, the same way Mumble can’t sing, no matter how hard he tries. Another example. Woody, from the first Toy Story. He struggles with selfishness and jealousy. One might argue that these are his flaws, but I disagree. I think the biggest difference between flaws and struggles is that flaws are static. They don’t change. Struggles do. You overcome them. You learn from them. Woody had to learn to overcome his jealousy and his selfishness, and that’s what he does. Again, I’ve got a lot to say about Flaws VS Struggle (and their third often ignored little sister, maturity), so for the purpose of not making this post longer than it already is, I’m going to move on. Summary of this paragraph: Characters need something to struggle with, internally, externally, emotionally, whatever.

Likability. Okay, this one veers more into protagonist territory, BUT if you want audiences to like/sympathize your antagonists or other characters, this applies as well. This one is basically “Why should I even care and root for this character?” Granted, some of the caring and rooting for them is interlaced with struggle, BUT it’s not until a character does something that’s considered likable that any of this really matters. Literally, you give a character ANY characteristics that fall under being a decent human being, and they will have some sort of a fanbase. Maybe they’re an underdog (this also falls under struggle :D ), maybe they just gave some food to a dog, maybe they have a soft spot for children, maybe they care about someone in their life, maybe they’re super polite! Anything! If a character does any of these things, the audience will automatically like them to a degree, even if they’re a horrible villain. If said villain shows that they care about dogs, or a specific person in their life, they’re instantly more likeable than a villain who treats everyone around them like dirt. On the flip side, there could be a horrible, selfish, anti-hero protagonist, but the moment there’s a quiet moment when they do something kind in secret, the audience goes, “SECRET HEART OF GOLD! YESSS”. Let’s go back to Pixar for a moment. Both in Toy Story and in Inside Out, in the original writings of the movie, the main protagonist was incredibly unpleasant and unlikable to viewers, being overly cruel, or too selfish. Pixar fixed this by doing two things: thing one, they gave these characters some “decent human” traits, and thing two: they gave these characters some struggles that everyone could get on board with. With Joy specifically, they fixed her jerkiness by making Sadness annoying. We’ve all had that one annoying person in our lives, so suddenly, Joy isn’t a jerk, she’s just annoyed by Sadness and is trying to get her to go away without hurting her feelings. Aww now Joy looks like this really nice person who’s tolerating that annoying person and trying her best not to hurt her even though nobody wants this annoying person around.

Motive. I’ve got a lot to say about this one too, so to keep it simple, characters need to want something. This could be a driving goal that moves the story, or not. It could also be something that fuels their decisions that may or may not go against what they need to do, which can cause juicy juicy conflict. If a principal character has no motive, then why are they in the spotlight? If they have no drive, they are passive and will generally not affect the story, which isn’t something a character in the spotlight should be.

Agency. How active is the character in the plot? Is the character letting things happen to them or are they actively trying to take control of the situation. I don’t mean assertive characters over shyer characters, I mean do they actually do anything in the story? Now, don’t get me wrong, Sleeping Beauty was my favorite Disney movie for a while when I was 5 (although, how much of that is due to the awesome dragon and how much of it is because it’s a fun princess story is debatable), but honestly, Aurora has exactly 0 agency the entire story. She gets cursed because her parents decided to not invite Maleficent -> not her fault. One of the good fairies makes the curse less lethal -> beyond her control. Her parents and guardian fairies decide to take her to the woods to protect her from Maleficent while she ages -> not her choice. This guy in the woods tells her he’s in love with her -> she’s a little creeped out at first, then just goes along with it. Her guardian fairies tell her that she’s actually a princess and she’s supposed to return to the castle tonight -> she doesn’t want to, but she literally just bows her head and goes. Curse gets activated -> she’s not in control of herself and succumbs and now she needs rescuing from Phillip. There is nothing wrong with Aurora except that she shouldn’t have been so heavily advertised as the main character. Literally, the only Disney main protagonist with less speaking lines than her, is Dumbo, who’s a baby elephant. He can’t talk. While it’s true that in real life, we can often be in completely helpless situations, that doesn’t mean we can’t do anything or at least try (for ourselves or others), and the same is true for the characters. Now, granted, using Sleeping Beauty as an example was a little cheaty of me because it’s quite common for local legends and folklore to have characters without a lot of agency (and also the time is was made it was encouraged for women to be this way). But it was a deliberate choice of the moviemakers to adapt the motion picture that way. Let’s look at another Disney example, The Princess and the Frog. Another folkloric legend in which the characters don’t have a lot of agency (still more than Aurora, but not much). In Disney’s version, Tiana is all over the place doing whatever she can do. She wants to own a restaurant, so she works two jobs and caters for her friend until she can buy it. Then the dealers go back on their promise. She’s sad, but she’s already thinking about what she can do about it (this is literally the entire reason she turned into a frog, Naveen promised her money which she could use to get her restaurant). Then she gets turned into a frog. What does she do? “Heck no! We’re going to break this curse!” And drags Naveen along. This goes on the entire movie. Tiana is FULL of agency, even in hopeless situations where she was otherwise helpless. Note: Not all characters need agency, but protagonists are not one of these characters. This is getting too long, so I’ll cut it short at this: Characters need to actually do stuff.

Of course, there’s A LOT more to characters than what I just mentioned. Again, I have multiple posts regarding different aspects of characters planned (from arcs, relationships, flaws, struggles, motives, anti-hero/anti-villain, etc). But for now, I think this is a good introductory to Character! Is there anything in here you recognized in your own favorites?

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