#i'm sorry to say that it's because (white cis)men have more variety in the kinds of stories told about them? generally speaking?

[kayvsworld]

okay. like. giving it the benefit of the doubt, right, dipping my toe so slowly back into thinking about the mcu (piranha filled fish tank) as fictional analyzable media (cocks gun),

i just wrote like 3 paragraphs of an unrelated post about how iron man 1 is kind of weird because it puts so much focus on tony's internal struggles re: his social life and Image and Loss Of Agency, the gala sequence, etc.

and how obie's not the kind of villain/villain reveal i'm used to seeing in Superhero Brand Action Movies (family friend betraying you in a weirdly intimate dialogue-heavy scene on your couch in your dimly lit living room). and i had to delete it because like actually all of the iron man movies and their villains and their problems are just kind of Like That

obadiah is his dad's handsy gaslighty friend, hammer is some guy in his field who gets overly familiar when he's trying to avoid him in public, killian is a jilted stalker whose goons zip-tie tony to a bed frame this is not the kind of rogues gallery other guy-written dude superheroes are getting like that's fair i can nod at that i can get that i can see that

like i can't find the old article that went around about this (not the post not the post not the tumblr essay not the post) but insane literal interpretation of "tony stark is WOMAN CODED which makes him less privileged and hating him is misogynistic, losing your agency is INHERENTLY FEMININE" aside, flashbacks i'm having flashbacks, going "hey, they kind of give this guy the kinds of problems and narrative framing of those problems that you might more usually see from Men Writing Women TM during this time period" isn't altogether a meritless take

like we're walking a thin line here, but sure that's an interesting concept to try to dig into, if we're specifically like. evaluating tropes and structures in media that have been usually assigned to cisfemale characters and seeing similarities there and going "huh, neat". like i think that's fine. DOYLISTICALLY

to the anonymous person who helpfully sent me the tony stark is female-coded post when i said i was enjoying finding old tony meta: you are firing gunshots outside my home. through my window even

[commsroom]

sorry if u answered this before but do you hc Eiffel as any particular race? I know him being white would probably match how he sees himself as the everyman. But on the other hand he gives me light skin vibes and I can't explain why. (Also no matter what he has long hair but curly haired Eiffel just speaks to me)

mm. i know you're just asking for my opinion, but that's a complicated question. and i am not the right person to be talking about this, so please take it with a grain of salt. one of the few legitimate criticisms i have of wolf 359 is that it's a show about personal identity, resisting dehumanization, and recognizing that other people navigate the world in different ways, but it tries to be raceblind. which. it can't. particularly when something like minkowski's identity as a polish immigrant is addressed.

i think one of the reasons that wolf 359 characters feel as real as they do is how collaborative the character development process was; they are really roles that are shaped by and belong to those actors. lovelace is played by a black actress, cecilia lynn-jacobs's input determined a lot of things about her, and the audience reaction to lovelace getting shot near the end of s3 was the way it was because there was an understanding of her as a black woman. whether she was initially written to be black is kind of irrelevant in that case, i think - she still is, and she resonates with people that way.

but every other main character in wolf 359 is played by, and similarly influenced by, a white person. and that's a problem. no matter how you approach it, wolf 359 is not a diverse show: if they were written as non-white, then being played by white people would be a problem. raceblindness also enforces a default assumption of whiteness. i think if eiffel wasn't meant to be read as white, then there are aspects of his character arc, his assumption of himself as the "default" person and general ignorance of how it feels to be "other", that probably could've been explored from a different angle.

i know people who see him as white because of that, and i know people who see him as another race because of how they connect with him as a character. and i can understand both perspectives on that, but i don't think there's a right way to approach it. i think the show unfortunately, in this one specific way, kind of dug its own grave. gabriel urbina has said however you see these characters, that's correct, and i can agree with the sentiment, but it's also mired in a lot of difficult context, because these are specific people, and these things should matter to them. it can't be interchangeable, and so it can't be that ambiguous. it could be handled a lot better. and based on his more recent work + politics, i wonder if he would've approached it differently, if he had all the information then.

about how i see eiffel: i've said many times before that i see him as a man who could be reasonably played by zach valenti, so the eiffel in my head is white. the eiffel in the art i commission, or the art where i'm like "oh!! eiffel!!" is not necessarily. the second most eiffel-like guy i can think of, who i also use as a reference sometimes, is iranian. but for me to say that eiffel was iranian is not really a claim i think it would be right for me to make, and i think it is probably not true.

the main features that i think eiffel must have are dark, wavy/curly hair, prominent nose, noticeable body hair, generally expressive. he absolutely cannot be light haired, clean shaven, or pale. and from a general standpoint, like... a wide variety of men could meet those qualifications. i don't want to reinforce an assumption of whiteness, but i'm also extremely wary about treating race as functionally cosmetic, since. again. it can't be. no show is removed from real life social contexts, and wolf 359 is about a lot of very real things.

i think if you do interpret eiffel as specifically a cis, able-bodied white guy, there's something very real and very unfortunate about the fact he initially ignores lovelace and hera, two marginalized women, and seeks reassurance from minkowski that they were overreacting. he listens eventually, but the person who gets through to him is presumably the Next Most Visibly Privileged Person, and that's... hm.

[prehistoricalcats]

I'm really interested in your Cats universe! It seems like you have them living like humans but humans also exist? Can you describe your universe a bit more, if you'd like to? :)

I'd love to!

I must warn you though, this is a very in-depth universe, and even focusing on specific points and trying to simplify things as much as I could, I still managed to make to this about a mile long. Damn I wish Tumblr mobile let me do a read more cut

First of all, yes the Cats are anthropomorphic, and yes humans also exist in this universe. Anthro Dogs, Rats, and Mice all definitely also exist, and I'm considering a few other anthro races like Hyenas and maybe like Rabbits and some others, but haven't put too much thought to that yet.

Just for reference, if it's capitalized (Dog, Cat, etc) it's the anthro race, if it's lower case (dog, cat, etc) it's the fourlegger

Some Basic Terminology:

Non-human beings/non-human people - collective term for all anthro races

NHP - non-human person(s)

Furfolk - common English slang for non-human beings, not politically correct but still pretty widely used. There is also a version of this word for each specific race, Catfolk, Ratfolk, etc. (Note: Mice and Rats often are collectively refered to as Rodents or Rodentfolk)

Fourlegger - regular dogs, cats, etc. Used mostly by NHPs to differentiate between them and NHPs

Bald-bodies - humans. Used by NHPs, considered derogatory by most (nearly everyone uses it anyway)

Kit - kid, child, teenager (for Cats). Short for kitten

Tom - you know this one, an adult or teenage male Cat

Mot - an adult or teenage female Cat, an alternative word for "queen"

License Name - once called the "family name" back when it was still quite common for Cats to work for a human family in a residential household. Essentially this is the name that humans assign to Cats because Particular Names are often "too hard" for humans to remember/pronounce. It's their "official" name that appears on most legal documents, including their "license" which is essentially a registration card and number that all Cats are required to have. Most Cats have a license, and a license name, by age three, some get theirs as infants. Sometimes the parents have a say in what the license name will be, sometimes not. Sometimes a Cat will prefer their license name, some prefer their Particular Name, others don't care and will respond to either.

The Junkyard - a slum, mostly populated by Cats, on the outskirts of the metropolitan area of an unnamed imaginary British city, comprised partly of makeshift shelters scattered throughout an actual dump/landfill/junkyard, and partly of several large shantytowns built on the unused land surrounding the dump

Some biology stuff:

Okay brief anatomy lesson before we begin

(For real though, please at least glance over that link before continuing, it is fairly brief and it makes what I'm about to try to explain a lot less complicated)

I've had to do some fantasy science to work out how Cats can have retractable claws without becoming less dextrous than humans (because I need them to be able to play instruments made for human hands). What I've essentially gone with so far is that Cats have extra bones in their hands/feet, which would make them unlike any other known tetrapod either living or in the fossil record, so the science side of me rebels at this, but the art side of me says it's a story about bipedal talking felines with mystical powers it's already science fiction they could have duckbills if I wanted them to (I don't), and so I think this is a decent compromise. I can go into further detail about the way the claws work later on if you like, but this post is already going to be pretty long so for now I'll just say that you can describe the claw as an extra joint attached to the end of the distal phalange.

Cats are super bendy, for the same reason that (fourlegger) cats are bendy. They have extra bones/joints in their spines. Cats have 7 cervical, 13 thoracic, 7 lumbar, 5 sacral, and 19-23 caudal. They have more sacral bones than fourleggers because they're bipedal.

Cats are habitual bipeds, like humans. But unlike humans, they are perfectly comfortable wandering around on their hands and knees. Though the bipedal stance is more comfortable and usually perfered by adults especially, most non-elderly Cats are still perfectly fine crawling on the ground on their hands and knees. You're generally more likely to see kits and young adults doing this, but older adults do it to. If they want to move fast or run, they use a bipedal stance. Beyond that it's just whatever feels right for the situation.

Some culture stuff

Cats and other NHPs (except Rats) don't need clothing to cover their privates. I'm not going to go into the anatomy of how that works. For now let's just imagine it's the fur that's hiding it. They do wear clothes, especially in winter, but it's not so much for modesty as it is for functionality and fashion. Basically clothes for Cats are for three purposes: to protect from the elements (cold, rain, sun, etc), to shut the outraged humans up, and to look good. It's pretty common in the summer to see Cats wearing nothing but some arm/leg warmers or other fashion accessory, and a belt/rope around their waist to store things on in the absence of pockets,(even if they also have a bag)

If you've ever owned or seen or been around a male rat you probably know why I say "except Rats" and I'm not going to get into it here, just know Rat men always where pants/trousers

Cats exist globally and have a variety of different cultures, often greatly influenced by the human culture of that region, but one of the most universal elements of Cat culture is the idea that "It's considerably dishonorable for a Cat to use anything but their own claws (and teeth in many cultures) in combat against another unarmed Cat." Translation: Cats generally frown on using weapons, though many recognize the need to know how to use them, because humans use weapons, and a claws against a machete or a cattle prod or a gun isn't fair. By the same line many modern Cats consider it okay to use weapons against a (dishonorable) Cat that pulled a weapon on you first, though many elders still frown upon this.

The relationship between Cats (and other NHPs) and humans isn't very good, and the relationship between different types of NHPs isn't much better. There's a social hierarchy that puts humans (especially white straight cis male humans) at the top. The hierarchy goes humans > Dogs > Cats > Rodents

About the Jellicles

The Jellicles are the name of a specific tribe that once was primarily a religious tribe. Back a really fuck long time ago when Deuteronomy was still a kitten, the Jellicles lived off the land and practiced their religion (still working out the details of that sorry but I do have a few things)

The Jellicle Choice is a real thing, though I haven't decided if it started with Deuteronomy or if he was the next in a line sorta kinda but not exactly like the Avatar. The Jellicle Ball is held every year and people used to come from all over hoping to be picked. The humans didn't like this mass gathering, and the space they had in their own territory couldn't quite handle it anyway, so the Jellicles had to start keeping the Ball's location a secret until the day of, to keep the attendance numbers down somewhat. A Choice isn't made every year, though there's always a chance one will be made, and they've had a dry spell for the past 20 or 30 or so years before Grizabella. They don't have to keep the locale a secret anymore, most people don't bother coming and some even think the Jellicle Choice is just a myth. Few people remember when the Jellicles were primarily religious

Deut was trained as a shaman from early childhood, and groomed to be the next leader since he was ten, but he's always been a performer at heart. At some point after taking over as lead, he met (a very very young) Gus and invited him into the tribe. With Gus's help he organized plays and small musical performances, slowly and gradually getting other members in on it as well, until putting on plays every now and then was just a part of Jellicle life. And it was a good thing too, because by this point the tribe had been forced to give up their land and had to move to an industrial slum in the nearest city. No longer able to live off the land, they turned to performance to make a living. This was all well before Skimble/Jenny/Jelly/Spara (Jr)/Griz were born. These days the Jellicles are known primarily as a tribe of performers. Every current member that was born into the tribe except Deut was brought up as a performer

The play we see is an actual play being put on by the Jellicles as a dramatization of the events of That One Particular Jellice Ball™ which happened three years prior to the current timeline.

I think that covers the basic rundown. You can also see this jumbled mess for my first attempt at explaining all this crap lol.

Oh yeah and before I forget, I haven't decided yet if "Peke" and especially "Pollicle" refer to a certain culture of Dog, a certain body type, or two specific gangs ("packs") that just happen to be mostly comprised of a certain culture and/or body type of Dog. But they do exist in this universe. At the very least they are fictional gangs made up for the Rumpus Cat comics (yeah he's a comic book hero in this), or else real gangs or cultures/types of Dog written into Munk's Rumpus Cat fanwork play.

There's also a very important event that I really need to go over at some point but it's a really heavy topic and this isn't the best time like politically to post it right now, or even for me emotionally to write it out. But I do need to get this out at some point...

[transgenderteensurvivalguide]

(1/6) In advance, sorry if this sounds clipped but I'm rewriting an 11 part ask because that's just too much and it feels like it would be rude to send such a long question. Somehow it's still long. So my background is: mostly used to aro and ace communities, don't have much experience with the lgbt+ community at large (trying to work on that), the way the aro/ace communities break concepts like attraction down really helped me figure out what my orientation was. Questioning my gender now and

(2/6) having a hard time finding resources that help me clarify my feelings instead of making me even more confused. I started researching thinking that they would be similar to aro and ace resources, going to the root of things and saying “What even is attraction, let’s define it” and breaking it down into chunks instead of trying to tackle the whole thing at once (see the split attraction model). Instead I found many lists of labels and pronouns, trans 101 that was at the same time too basic (3/6) and not basic enough, and “Gender is a feeling, masculinity/femininity/androgyny/etc are feelings too, no one can tell you what your gender is but you”. My request isn’t for anyone to tell me what my gender is, I’ll figure that out myself. But I feel I’m lacking the tools to do it. So does anyone have any resources, be they articles/blogs/life experiences and stories written by trans people/etc that breaks things like the feelings of gender as a whole, masculinity, femininity, androgyny,(4/6) agender, and dysphoria down (not coded behaviors or presentation, but what they actually FEEL like. These are the things that I’m most confused about and most want some sort of answer or definition for) in the style aro/ace resources do for attraction/orientation? To figure this out I need some sort of starting point or foothold or anchor for this instead of “it’s a feeling” when I don’t know what that feeling could be. But “Nobody can tell you what you are” sounds much more like defeat(5/6) than freedom to me rn. I’ve heard it said that gender is experienced differently by everyone, and if it’s really just some nebulous unidentifiable feeling that literally cannot be put into words then I can learn to live with the fact I’ll just never understand it, but… it just seems like there HAS to be some sort of commonality in the feeling of gender, the feeling of femininity/masculinity/all the rest that could be prevalent enough to say what that feeling IS and used to help people (6/6) figure out better who they are and who they want to be. For the ones like me who don’t even know what they’re feeling or what they want to be, just that they don’t want to feel like they do now.

Kii says:You’ve got a lot here, and you’re right. Gender is really confusing, and it really is something that 100 different people will give you 100 different answers about. Some people do feel their gender is best described by more visible aspects, such as behaviors, clothing, desired body, hobbies, etc, but some people don’t, and for them, it is just a feeling that isn’t describable, they just know internally what gender they are and can’t always explain why. 

However, just because there are feelings doesn’t mean that everyone’s feelings are the same, like the commonality you’re mentioning. You know the old “how do we know that your green is the same as my green?” Two people could be seeing the exact same item, both agree that it’s green, but how does anyone know that if I saw the same item through your eyes, I would still call it green? Your eyes might be structured completely differently than mine. Your green might be my purple, etc. I think the same goes for the words “masculine” and “feminine”- I can give you words that I associate with each, but a lot of people might disagree. 

Think of a person that you consider to be very masculine (whether they ID as a man or not)- why do you see them as masculine? Is it because of how they dress? What their body looks like? Because they like cars, sports, etc? How they act or other elements of their personality? Do the same for someone who you feel is very feminine (whether they ID as a woman or not). How is your “masculine” person different than your “feminine” person?

Androgyny is usually described as the intersection or mix of masculinity and femininity, so to figure out what you associate with androgyny, you kind of have to figure that out first.

We have a whole page about dysphoria, since that’s a more concrete concept. There are lots of descriptions there on how different people describe dysphoria and how it feels.

We also have this post, which a lot of people have tried to make helpful to questioning people, as well as this ask where various mods described what gender feels like to them.

Harper Says:I would also suggest a broader understanding of gender (and sexuality). You’re looking for a commonality that is not found uniformly in lived/expressed experiences - perhaps you might find it fleetingly, strangely, but I doubt it will come with much uniform clarity. The assumption that there has to be a commonality, a universality, is one that potentially assumes a (purely) medical/psychological account of gender and sexuality. Experiences of gender will necessarily intersect with other forms of systematic oppression: race, disability, and so on; and so each account of gendered experience has to be uncommon.Try instead understanding gender as part of a wider system of oppression rigged to benefit white cis men. In this, bodies, activities, sexualities, (and many other things) are codified and performed within a system of oppression. This is the way as far as I, and many other thinkers, understand gender. When you ask for gender as “not coded behaviors or presentation, but what they actually FEEL like” I think you misunderstand that gender is easily and always both. The performances, the risks, the transgressions, that commonly make up transgender experiences are inescapably coded behaviours - we don’t live in a society that isn’t oppressive. That is why there is such fear and thrill in a trans woman shaving her legs for the first time, or a trans man using the men’s bathroom for the first time. The emotion and feeling wouldn’t be there if such transgressions weren’t coded in a system of oppression that frowns upon such behaviours. Gender is always on some level something that is done and the doing is bound up with being. To strive for a definition that reduces one to the other or excludes one or the other is as far as I understand it, a misunderstanding, and this is perhaps where your confusion comes from.With this understanding I would then say that it is not very surprising that you’re finding dead-ends and confusion by trying to parse an understanding of gender through split-attraction model type thinking. This is a relatively recent way of thinking about sexuality within the LGBT community, (one that I personally find no stock in), butting up against around thirty years of queer feminist thought, and a whole history of LGBT lives and experiences. You will probably find that trying to think through gender in ace/aro modes of thought is an impossible task without this appreciation of transgender history or an understanding of heterosexuality as the oppressive action of gender.I’m not surprised then, that you find defeat instead of freedom; for many, gender is something that is survived. Freedom can only come with the abolition of gender, that is the end of the “material, social, and economic dominance of men and exploitation of women” (Escalante). So to speak of a commonality, perhaps start reading about how these oppressive systems work. Understanding all of this is not an easy task. Below I’ll feed a few pointers on a theoretical level, and as such can throw up inaccessible language. My hope is that if you do struggle with any of it, from here you can google keywords and hopefully find more sources that suit you better.For the theoretical exploration of such see: Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, and Monique Wittig’s The Straight Mind and Other Essays (see One is Not Born a Woman - I haven’t yet managed to find a pdf for the whole book). Or key words: material feminism, Butler, gender performance, heterosexuality, the straight mind. CW: (this will be quite broad but I know Wittig talks about:) pornography, sexual harassment, slavery.For an account of gender which explores these concepts see Susan Stryker’s My Words to Victor Frankenstein…. In this Stryker mixes a lived personal experience with gender as a trans woman alongside theoretical musings. Key words: transfeminism, transgender studies, transgender rage. CW: surgery, suicide, TERF stuff, pregnancy, birth.I would also recommend investing yourself in transgender voices and histories, so you can see how a varied approach to gender throughout history has been undertaken and lived. How complexities and contradictions have been embodied and embraced complexly by trans individuals. See Paris is Burning for what has become an important moment in LGBT cinema and history. CW death, accounts of violence, mentions of surgery, talk about sex.Also check out One From the Vaults a trans history podcast by Morgan M. Page. (Also available on iTunes, etc. I think.) In this engrossing podcast, Page tells the stories of various trans - or at least gender transgressive - people throughout history, including clips of them, letters, interviews, etc.. It comes with “all the dirt, gossip, and glamour from trans history” and so shows the variety of our trans ancestors throughout history, good and bad, happy and sad; encompassing all different ways of doing gender and different ways of being.In terms of your own personal questioning of gender, I would do as I advised here. Do gender: evoke man, evoke woman, evoke neither. Try things out, see what you feel. Explore yourself and your own embodiment and explore the feelings that arise out of this. At the end of the day, gender isn’t something that originates from books and articles, it is lived and done out in the world.I wish you the very best on your journey!