#is it possible to perform heterosexuality and also treat women as people

[despazito]

leftism without economic theory is painful to watch like it is nuts that women are now fantasizing of becoming stay at home housewives again as a solution to the current state of “work”. or people imagining utopias where work doesn’t exist at all, im sorry that’s just completely unrealistic regardless of how much we can automate

i think that a deep drive to pursue goals is an intrinsic part of the human condition. we like to work, we feel good when we solve something complicated or finish a task, our brain gives us good chemicals in return. even those of us with disabilities who can struggle to work still want to do something. the issue is how labour gets treated and which labour is rewarded by society.

our current system values antisocial leadership practices that will do anything to improve capital, and creates bullshit jobs nobody likes for the sole purpose of extracting the most capital possible. it’s no surprise people feel alienated from such employment especially if your job is scamming people with a few extra steps. i think the disappearance of family trades run by dedicated craftsmen who owned their own means of production has also hurt. instead it’s been emotionally sterilized through college courses and employment by faceless corporations who kindly let you use their equipment in return for a fraction of your labour’s actual value.

jobs like teaching and nursing are the backbone of society but instead their labour is deemed worthless, so even folks performing these important meaningful roles want to quit because financially the world is telling them to go fuck themselves.

it doesn’t help that the new consumerist class has been groomed to feel entitled to everything and anything, combined with the aggravated political polarization its just a molotov cocktail for any potential social interaction with a stranger to become a nightmare. i don’t blame people who want to lay flat and check out of this environment, but in the long term removing yourself entirely from the labour force and removing yourself physically from everybody you may not like or want to be around won’t fix any of these community problems!!

imagine a society instead where jobs were created out of social need and valued by how they can improve life both physically and spiritually. personally the stuff i wanna do most falls squarely under ‘volunteer’ work in this current system. i’d love to donate my time to wildlife rehab and animal shelters, hell i’d gladly pick up trash from parks all day and clean up the environment if i got a living wage. because i know i’m doing something of value instead of making my boss richer.

there’s a reason women fought so hard for equal opportunities in the work force. we wanted to find societal roles and value beyond those ascribed to us from birth. i’m not gonna let tiktokers girlboss our way back into tradlife!! (not to mention the setup of supporting an entire family on a single income was very much a heterosexual white middle class concept, many poor and nonwhite women couldn’t be stay at home moms even if they wanted to!)

[half-moonshine-full-eclipse]

the thing about g*ylor is… there isn’t really one thing about g*ylor. it’s a shifting sand of several truths at once.

harassing and doxxing people who interpret an ambiguous song as possibly being about a woman and threatening to out a minor to her homophobic family because she was one of those people is fucked up, and wrong.

it’s true that Taylor Alison Swift has never explicitly stated that she’s queer, and she primarily writes songs about men.

acting as if the only ways to signal queerness are disconnected from femininity and feminine aesthetics is fucked up, and wrong.

it’s true that most of Taylor’s music can be directly connected to a man she was interested in, even if some of it does feel performative and superficial.

extreme hostility toward any queer women in the fanbase who connects with the songs Taylor writes because of her own queerness and not in spite of it is fucked up, and wrong.

it’s true that most g*ylor theories are in direct defiance of observed “lore”, are sometimes extremely complicated and self-referential, and are often backed by pretty flawed analysis or understandings of a situation.

treating fans whose opinions will never be seen by Taylor unless she explicitly goes looking for them as if they’re hurting her simply by existing, and attempting to harass and dismiss them out of hand when plenty of inappropriate and invasive behavior is displayed by fans who think she’s straight, is fucked up, and wrong.

it’s also true that Taylor has never said that she’s straight, and has dodged the question in interviews and in her own statements. saying “stop assuming I’m dating my friends” and “even if I associate with women the public assumes I’m romantically involved with everyone because they’re obsessed with my romantic relationships” is not a confirmation of heterosexuality.

she definitely does not go around picking boyfriends so that she can use them to cover up the women the songs are “actually” about.

the timelines around writing certain songs, and the references that correspond to her life, and her secret messages, do indicate that her public persona and the public narrative is purposefully different from what actually happened.

there’s a serious biphobia problem in g*ylor communities - there’s a real refusal to believe that she could be genuinely into men at all, which translates to hostility toward bi people in these spaces.

there are an awful lot of songs about ambiguously gendered partners, and several love songs explicitly referencing traits or behaviors associated with her female friends. there’s a real discomfort with acknowledging this in the broader fandom.

and I could go on, but uh. mostly? g*ylor, right now, is really fucking racist, because the major spaces are absolutely insistent that instead of Taylor going crazy for a hot boy who ended up being really terrible, she’s choosing to stunt with a racist who materially set back gay rights in Malaysia and argues with Muslim teenagers on Twitter about how religion is fake, because those things matter less to her than being outed as a lesbian. Matty being a PR cover > Taylor making a mistake and trying to apologize and process.

lmao nope.

[lunarsilkscreen]

The Bible, The Lord, The God, The Women, and The Labor

There's a lot of debate as to what they're talking about in the Bible when it comes to "heterosexual unions" and Gendered people. But what does it really mean?

You should consider first; that much of the old testament is, by nature, a book of Laws. And the "Lords Assembly" may literally be defined as "Lord of the Lands." Or; is the people in charge.

Throughout the Bible; God is used interchangeable for several things. These include; "Human Soul", "Knowledge", "Ethics", "Morality", "Law", "Leadership", and "Kings".

It used to be _through_ God's power that Kings were appointed. And this is *why* all these terms are synonymous. Knowledge used to also be a secret; kept from the "common man". The idea being; that the common man would abuse all knowledge and should not be trusted with it.

For Christians; It was Christ that pointed out several things; The Land was a mess. The common man was not being represented; there was a very *big* difference between all those words. *AND* that the only "God" is "God". Nobody is being ethical. The laws are hurting people who aren't doing much; and people are being forced into situations where they can't possibly follow the rules.

*AND* On top of that; people, assuming the Laws were ethical and just, would do whatever was legal *despite* the immorality of it.

I'm saying the dangerous bits out loud. I will be accosted by Christians for this.

It is Christ who suggests; Man is not God. Man's laws are not God's law; and being of Man; they are fallible. And so are words, as they routinely change definition and usage. For example; we do not use even the same languages as 2000 years ago. Even the ones thought closest to dead languages; aren't the same form as they used to be. And the proof of that is in the story about the "Tower of Babel". Something noted in the Bible itself!

What does this have to do with Women and Worker's rights you might be asking?

Well early on, and you can tell in the Bible; when trying to describe new and previously unheard of concepts. We have this idea of "Labor."

And, as described in Genesis; Labor is a woman's pain. Labor is pain that produces new life. That creates something. Ergo; the synonym between "Labor" to produce children. And "Labor" to do work.

And when they're talking about, and writing laws all throughout the Bible; they're saying: Similarly to how women should be treated fairly for the labor that they perform for a man: so should people that do Labor for a man.

In these contexts we're talking about tribes and societies. A "Man" also seems to be synonymous with "Tribal Leader", "God" as in the head of a family, and society as a whole. Depicting Man as a group of people; and women as individuals.

We are part of the greater whole known as "Mankind" or "Man". Ergo: we individually are not men, but *We* are men.

However, many are stories in the Bible, where again; God and Person are used synonymously; same with *leader* confusing themselves for the greater *thing*, or God.

Moses himself feared being treated as God after his death. And had his closest people obfuscate his burial place for this reason.

And this is why contracts that we have are between varying people. From slaves, to women, to anybody that does something for *you*. And why *false promises* are considered "evil".

According to the works in the Bible; you would not kill a women for getting pregnant. You would pay her for life for bringing life into this world. So to; should the same be considered for the work individuals do.

Therefore; taking a work, or a creation from somebody who creates without compensation is akin to beating a woman. And destroying something that somebody creates is akin to abortion.

They never suggest that any of these is *better* than a woman's labor in giving birth. Only that; the labor produced by somebody is akin to that of a womans labor.

And therefore should be treated as such.

And therefore we have this Heirarchy; where the only men are the men at the Top..the "Ruler", "the law" or even, as some called themselves "a god". And hence the reason why the Jewish Bible condemns the creation of further God's besides the one.

And delineates the difference between them. A ruler or leader is not the Law. The Law is not morality. And Morality is not often seen to be carried by politicians. And therefore; none of those can be "God" if "God" is both Moral *and* Just.

And; further: Says that all those that do work for a kingdom. A Lord. A city. A society. Should have a place in it. Because if they don't; then you're unfairly raping people. Forcing them *into* labor; into bondage; slavery; even for money is rape. Slavery *is* rape.

This is because labor without acceptance; is rape. Because it places people above their fellow man.

The reason a Christian people hated a Jewish or Muslim people; is because they outright deny the teachings of Jesus as moral. Not that he isn't the son of God. Or God at all.

This disconnect is what creates a rift between religions. And while I know plenty of Jewish people that believe similar things to Christians; it's always seemed odd to me they never understood why it was an insult to deny another religion entirely. (Despite being very similar in structure.)

No religious hatred here; I'm just pointing out the things that people should know about the way the world works.

[not-a-space-alien]

What do you think gay men are attracted to in men that they can’t be attracted to in women?

It can’t be anything about femininity or masculinity obviously. That’s both sexist, and cultural so can’t be what drives men-only attraction.

It can’t be anything about stated identity because someone could lie just as easily as they could tell the truth in such a statement, and it makes no sense because homosexuality and heterosexuality exists in other species with no stated identities. It’s not like other animals without gender are all pan.

Saying idk it’s the vibes or some indescribable trait men have that women can’t but “I can’t explain” is a nonanswer.

Soooooooo what is it? Or do you think any sexuality but bi/pan is just cultural performance or an identity rather than an inborn orientation?

- [ ]

I'm not sure what prompted this but sexual orientation, like sex and gender identity, operates on fuzzy categories such that there is no way to rigidly define parts of it in a way that includes all of X and excludes all of Y 100% of the time. You can't walk up a gay man and demand he explains what exact criteria determines whether or not he's attracted to someone in a way that excludes everyone he's not attracted to because that's not how attraction works. I'm attracted to men with long hair but it's not like if I find out a man with long hair is actually a woman that somehow invalidates that attraction or means I'm not actually attracted to men with long hair. It's also not like a gay man is attracted to every single man and not attracted at all to every single woman, because again that's not how it works. People can find certain features that appear predominantly in one sex or another attractive such as body hair or big muscles or broad stature and because they're mostly attracted to men because of that and then identify as gay doesn't mean they're making an equivocal statement about sex and gender for everyone else. Please don't treat orientation like a science where there are objective, clearly defined categories that human beings can be objectively sorted into. Labels are only meaningful in social contexts and are broad strokes to define a huge variety of experiences. The idea that because something is "cultural" means it can't be driving attraction, as though attraction is a static, innate biological trait, is a fallacy and not true. I find effeminate men and masculine women attractive and that's probably been informed by the cultural context I grew up in where these things were rare. That doesn't make my attraction fake or less meaningful. If I identified as an identity only attracted to men but I was still only attracted to feminine men that wouldn't mean I'm saying men I'm not attracted to aren't men, that's just me having a type. Like there are factors other than gender, sex, and orientation that determine attraction and it's borderline homophobic to suggest having an orientation that isn't bi/pan is somehow fake or less meaningful. I think maybe you need to reevaluate how you view orientation because you have proposed a weird false dichotomy between identities as cultural performance vs identities as some immutable, inborn trait as though basically everything humans do isn't some nebulous mix of cultural performance and genetic predisposition. Identity and cultural performance are integral to the human experience even in tons of areas outside the concept of gender and orientation and not somehow meaningless.

The entire premise of this question is flawed. I try to say this gently because it's possible you're just some baby gay who doesn't know anything about anything and is genuinely curious and this isn't bad to ask at all but if this was asked in bad faith please know I'm extremely aware of how bad actors can use this train of thought to purposefully force people into a debate where they back into terf or homophobic talking points as a "gotcha"

[daisyachain]

When consuming works in translation or even cross-cultural works in the same language, your standard midwestern white US reader (and more broadly your standard anglophone) is going to bring their own cultural structures and impose them externally on the work no matter what. This is the weeb blog so we all know what I’m talking about.

One specific example of this is the way that white/anglophone/US cultural consumers treat male ‘femininity’. In US culture, it’s a truth universally known (by girls) that girls like a girly guy or at least that the male figure most attractive to female consumers (who make up the majority of the audience for fiction in the US whether or not they’re considered as such by marketing teams) is a figure that they can relate to. The floppy boy band member, the middle aged man with cooking skills, whatever. US/Anglo standards of masculinity are also bizarrely tilted towards performance. SoCal-type standard US culture is as misogynist as any other culture (ie it’s misogynist), it’s just that this misogyny has its own flavour of expressing itself. Everywhere does.

In the broad anglo milieu, any hint of personal grooming, self-awareness, shyness, emotivity, or non-ripped physique is interpreted as feminine. The skinny boy band member, the jeans-wearing metrosexual, the vegetarian, the fat kid who hangs out with the girls in gym class because that’s the path that is least likely to end in physical assault. These are all sissies. The merest lack of sufficient beer-n-bacon posturing is taken for wearing a pride flag. By US standards, a non-muscled man who wears even slightly fashionable clothes is [twelve year old boy voice] gayyyyyy. The standard homophobic gay stereotype is a finger-fluttering peacock who can’t stand to chip a nail.

Go over to eg Japanese culture (most commonly consumed works in translation in the US), the stereotype is completely different. The archetypical male heterosexual romantic lead isn’t a sleeve-busting hunk, it’s a skinny, floppy, long-haired guy with delicate fingers and sparkling eyes. The homophobic stereotype is a muscle-bound thick-jawed mascara-wearer. This doesn’t mean that the bishounen/ikemen archetype is necessarily considered feminine. On the contrary, it’s another masculine ideal. No one in the US could possibly (in the public imagination) aspire to be a patterned-tie fashionista unless he’s gay or foreign. But, overseas, the reserved and cutting-edge fashion-conscious man is revered as an object of female desire.

Well it’s not quite as clean cut as all that but you get what I’m saying. You can see it in the translation of ‘ikemen’ to ‘pretty boy’. The original just means ‘a hot guy’ the other is a homophobic insult 90% of the time, but English really doesn’t have an equivalent term. Also why 00s weebs just referred to ‘bishies’, it’s because there’s no English term for it that isn’t in some way homophobic. I’ve seen ‘hottie’ used as a translation as well, but that’s got its own baggage as it’s exclusively a term associated with women’s speech, so it doesn’t make sense to have male characters refer to it without coming off as overtly gay.

So that brings us to: it’s a common misinterpretation for the bishounen/ikemen characters or presentations to be read as ‘gay’ by a US audience. Viz. BTS fandom and haters, shippers, etc. This is because there’s no real equivalent to this concept in the US without homophobic overtones. The closest you might possibly get is ‘boy band member’, but that also has oodles of homophobia as all of us who were there for the Bieber era remember. Rather than ice-cold idols of female worship, the US interpretation of a bishounen is of a girly guy.

Except, we’ve gotten to the point where US consumption and regurgitation of foreign cultural tropes has is on its third or fourth cycle. People are now instantly imitating their favourite art as it comes out with the help of the internet. LoTR shows up in JJK. RWBY gets a mediocre 2D anime. And League, famous for being the midpoint of US cultural context and East Asian cultural influence, puts up promotional material for the character Hwei. Who seems to be made to fit into the line of bishounen characters that have been coming out of the League design factory (Aphelios, Viego, Sett, some Ezreal skins) but who doesn’t belong there at all and instead comes out as a startlingly straightforward (hah) design for a femme gay character

[nevereveraster]

"it's funny how bad you WANT me to be bad."" Throwing a childish tantrum over your words coming back to bite you, I see. "never did i ever imply that was all you're worth?" Lie.

Also, Protip: If you're going to attempt using rhetoric, it helps to know the subtleties of how rhetoric is used and what specific word arrangements mean with context and subtext. Strong reading comprehension and critical reading skills would have really helped you here. This one honestly isn't your fault, though. Critical thinking, critical reading, and interrogative analysis has mostly fallen by the wayside in schools since about 2008. If a student doesn't study it on their own time, they just won't learn it. Observe: "and yeah. you'd abuse your kids, absolutely." "actually does show what people like YOU do to your kids." "you'd treat your kids horribly." @mushroomchoir is he sole person in this contentious dialogue who is pushing the [my] kids narrative. I don't give a shit, because my ability to reproduce for a man's line continuance and ego doesn't define my worth as a human being (and never has.) "[My] kids is a laughable statement to me, because I would never put myself through the absolute slog of sacrifice and hardship required in most heterosexual marriages or coparenting arrangements, a sacrifice that falls almost exclusively on the woman. "if you ever managed to have someone like you enough to fuck you and not do everything they could to prevent you from being attached to them" Notice the details here in @mushroomchoir's misogynistic, woman-demeaning language: the fuck is an act of power done to me by a man in her fantasy scenario. "Somebody" (who must be a natal male to have viable sperm,) fucks me. He performs the fuck on my body. It is not a coming together of equals, it is a man asserting his dominance upon me. I do not perform the fuck because I do not have the power in her fantasy scenario. I, as the womanly inferior, cannot keep the superior man who has fucked and therefore conquested me- this man has done the fucking to me... and once he has done the fuck to me, his transient interest in me solely for the fucking he has now perpetrated upon me (I am a woman and therefore implicitly less in this fantasy scenario, and he can't possibly want me for any other reason) cannot be sustained -- which is presented as a loss to me, a diminishment of me now that he has done the fuck to me. I am less, and the idea that a man could do the fuck to me and then not be repulsed by my inferiority is difficult for @mushroomchoir to imagine. This is textbook internalized misogyny. The male fucks the female by performing the fuck upon her. The female is fucked. Once the male has used her for the fucking he did to her, it is understood that exceptional circumstances must be present for him not to abandon her as a used and therefore inferior conquest. I'll repeat this, because it still applies: "My worth, according to @mushroomchoir, is defined by having a man fuck me and impregnate me. Reproducing a man's lineage is my only chance at being happy. I am nothing without the role society tries to shove down my throat." Also: "you dumb bitch" Misogynistic slur directed at me. Yikes. We've got as lot of text to cover here. Let's continue. "in fact, you actually imply that women are only worth their uteruses, so... yeah. Oh cool, so it's more outright lies. I've gone back three times over this whole exchange and I still for the life of me can't suss out what on earth this kid is referring to. I see this lying nonsense directed at a lot of gender critical women online, and every time I'm left scratching my head.

How, on earth, does "you are a woman because you are the sexually dimorphic human whose genetic encoding has XX, irrespective of life experience, surgical or congenital organ defect or loss, or any other life event" translate to "women are only worth their uteruses?" The entire point is that uterus or not, you're still a woman if you are a woman. Only one of the dimorphic pair has the genetic encoding to gestate and create life. Only one of the pair is raped, harmed, acid attacked, beaten, slandered, and routinely subjugated as less by the other, typically bigger and stronger, of the pair. Absolute madness. Clearly not thought through in any way. Just parroting words that don't even make sense. "so... yeah. i actually, technically, put more worth in the childless version of you since that one is hurting less people." Wow she really is fixated on me having kids, huh. Me as I am, a beautiful and complete human who is an artist, writer, creator, scientist, and badass... is merely the "childless" version of me. I am apparently "hurting less people" -- by which she means "wahh, you said words that weren't kind and gentle to me and then called me out when I did the same but worse and used a misogynistic slur and far more unkind and hostile phrasing, wah no fair, you aren't performing gentle kind femininity enough for me. THIS IS HURTING ME THIS IS VIOLENCE."

No, child. I'm not "hurting you" because I textually smacked down your nonsense. You did not have misogynistic slurs written at you. You did not have deeply woman-hating language written at you. You are merely upset because you are not being affirmed -- that is, coddled -- in the echo chamber of your beliefs. You have gone so long in your short life without your thought patterns and talking points being interrogatively challenged in any way that you interpret being confronted with material reality as "harm." It's outright concerning.

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

A review (of sorts) of ‘Harry Styles’

When I read the Cameron Crowe interview, I was most surprised by the lyrics Crowe quoted: “Couldn't take you home to mother in a skirt that short/But I think that's what I like about it.” Surely they weren’t going to be in the album? Surely Harry hadn’t written a song like that? That question feels like a long time away now.   After thinking about it for a week (and having experiences in my own life that turned my feminist rage knob up to 11) I’m going to write about what I think about the depiction of women in Harry’s album and how that affects my view of the album as a whole.

The narrator of Only Angel is a misogynist fuckwit.  The song begins: “Open up your eyes, shut your mouth and see/That I'm still the only one who's been in love with me.” Then he talks about the woman’s skirt length, uses the phrase ‘make you mine’, has a weird possessive conversation with her brother, and then gets into some fucked up virgin/whore stuff comparing her to an Angel and a devil. You get no sense of the woman at all, except in terms of this man’s very limited allowable categories for women. With the controlling and arrogant opening – it could have been a song depicting misogyny where the narrator was understood to be a total asshole, but nothing about the production or development of the song suggests that at all.  It’s just Harry singing misogynist things.

I was worried about ‘Woman’ from the moment I heard the title and decided I hated it about thirty seconds in.  As I’ve said before, the early One Direction lyrics really bother me.  The basic genre is “how dare a girl that I want not want me. I am a man and the only thing that matters is my feelings.”  Now the girl is a woman, but otherwise these are the lyrics of I Would, Heart Attack and so many early One Direction songs.  I’d argue that this is a worse presentation of the same idea, because the object of the song is reduced to ‘woman’. She has no distinguishing characteristics at all – just her otherness and her refusal to do what the narrator wants.

I won’t go into so much detail about Carolina and Kiwi, but the basic approach is the same. The narrator is interested in women only as objects of his desire and as he describes them he pulls on misogynist ideas about women and sex.

A lot of people have argued that Harry isn’t talking about actual women in these songs.  That he’s talking about Cocaine or fame and personifying them as women. I think this is supposed to be a defence of the songs – it doesn’t work that way for me.

I don’t think Harry means any of this. I don’t think Harry is worried about the skirt lengths of the non-existent girlfriends he’s not taking home to Anne, Petra.  But, for me at least, that makes it worse – I’d find these songs less of a problem if I thought he meant them.

I was confused by Harry’s promo, until I listened to his album. Now I think that what he’s saying with both album and promo is: “I am a Rockstar like the Rockstars of old.”  The misogyny in the lyrics are a genre statement as much as anything else.  I don’t think Harry was trying to say anything about women with these songs, or even his sexuality, he was trying to construct himself as a Rockstar and used misogynist rock tropes about women to do it.

My big problem with the portrayal of women in music (as I’ve said before) isn’t really the straight misogyny – but the way that women get constructed as objects over and over again. Rock songs deny women agency and humanity and over and over again depict women through the eyes of men who can’t imagine women are people.  

Harry’s album carries on this tradition of objectification in two ways.  One is that he has these songs which portray women as objects using misogynist tropes.  But there’s also a meta-level - because when he’s writing these songs depicting women as objects, he’s not even talking about women. He’s using the idea that women are objects to cement his own identity as a Rockstar. I think it’s worse to use misogynist portrayals of women as objects to talk about something else than it is to just have some misogynist things you want to say about women.

Ultimately Harry’s album comes across as if he thinks there are only two legitimate modes of rock music: “Look at this woman object.” And “I am a man and I have important feelings listen to them.” (he’s not necessarily wrong about the genre). And so as a rockstar his album features these two modes (and sometimes mixes them). For me, the very limited two modes on the album affect how I respond to all the song. I first noticed this when I couldn’t take ‘From the Dining Table’ seriously, because it followed straight on from Woman and repeated the same tropes.

My emotional response to Harry’s album has been: “If you don’t think I’m a person then I refuse to give a fuck about your feelings.”  I consider it a great blessing in my life that I’ve never been vulnerable to a sad man with a guitar and I’m not going to start with Harry Styles (if I was a fair godmother I would give to all girl children the following gift: “Don’t fall under the spell of men just because they strum while talking about their feelings for three minutes, make your own music). 

At the moment, my favourite song on the album is Kiwi.  Yes there’s a lot of objectifying bullshit in the lyrics, but there’s also interesting specificity and there’s pay off because the song goes off. I may have space for some of the other songs on the album as time goes on (I really liked the performance of Sweet Creature in Carpool Karaoke).  But at this stage in my life the way women are depicted in this album is a huge barrier to engaging with the pain of the man who is depicting them in this way.

It’s not as simple of that – of course it’s not.  I have a response to this album as a listening experience and then a whole other set of feelings about Harry.  I’ve been here for two and a half years – it’s not so simple as to say ‘I refuse to give a fuck about your feelings’. I care, I can’t help it.  And I have a whole other set of thoughts about what it means for Harry Styles, who has been treated as an object since he’s 16 to reclaim his own subjectivity in this way.  But that’s for another post.  The purpose of this post was to explore how I’d responded to the work of art Harry had put out into the world.  

[autisticandroids]

ok how would girls au work because i feel like to keep true with the theme of toxic gender roles them being cool and butch feels very at odds with that when like the girl version of that would be like christian girl with an instagram talking about country life and her future husband like it would be an interesting combo for them because john would be like ur an inherent failure for being a girl but also the expectations are lower already for them compared to john and sons

yeah it’s like weird! but i think about it a lot. i made a big fun post with it here.

basically my ideas are a combination of serious (dean) interesting (sam) and self-indulgent (cas).

like first of all i think sam is an out lesbian and i think she came out during the fight before stanford. like, i think she told dean when she was like fifteen, but she told john the night she left. she spat it in his face, actually. 

i think dean is like. dean loves her unconditionally but is also lightly homophobic to her about it, you know? they were accustomed to sharing motel room beds as kids but dean won’t do it anymore now that she knows sam likes girls. dean is also like, weird to her about her interactions with other women, and also talks constantly about men, as though men-liking were a cool exclusive club only dean is invited to.

i think sam has like butt length straight hair and doesn’t wear any makeup ever but doesn’t like. wear mens clothes or anything, like she wears plain clothes that are cut for women. on hunts she puts her hair in a braid. maybe she braids a spiked strap into it like beka cooper.

dean is like........ dean is a lot like young, pre-john mary i think. think the song remains the same. dean is obsessed with performing masculinity, while at the same time terrified of seeming mannish or queer. she walks a weird line, and ends up overperforming both masculinity and femininity. she regularly challenges dudes twice her size to arm wrestling contests in bars, but she never goes out of the motel room without a full face of makeup. like she’s obsessed with doing both. masculinity for respect, and femininity for conformity. you know that thing dean does with his voice? the harshening? the intentionally adopted accent and tough guy tones? she does that too. and her voice is raspy, like rachel miner’s. she’s just as invested in her “heterosexuality” as canon dean.

she wears dean’s same green army jacket but underneath it she ties up a flannel shirt so it bares her midriff. she wears her hair like s13 mary, except that sometimes she puts it in little pigtails. 

cas is the easiest because cas’ gender presentation doesn’t matter at all except in how OTHER PEOPLE relate to her, so it’s less a question of “how would cas do woman?” and more a question of “what would it be fun to see other people/dean specifically react to?”

so basically like. jimmy novak is a frumpy feminine christian mom. still wears the trench coat and probably a suit but when i say suit i mean blazer, pencil skirt, tights, blouse (or maaaybe a button down), low-ish heels. long hair in bouncy curls (think rowena’s hair but no bangs and black). actually jimmy novak probably pinned her hair up in a slight updo.

anyway i’ve decided that i refuse to try and remember what actually happened with cas falling in like, canon, like how close he got to human. this au’s cas gets close enough to human that she has to start like. showering. anyway she can’t take care of the hair so it gets tangled in a giant rat’s nest and dean gives her a bathroom chop. she has to borrow the winchester sisters’ clothes, because she has to start changing clothes but also because she can’t fucking walk in jimmy’s heels or in that confining skirt without the assistance of her grace. 

all the winchesters’ clothes look baggy on her because she’s kind of spindly and narrow and flat as a board. like dean and sam have big shoulders, big hips, and big breasts, and cas has zero out of three, so anything she wears looks like a smock. she keeps wearing the coat over whatever they give her. she’s tallish (five feet eight or nine inches?) but dean is taller and sam is freakishly tall. cas could probably pass for a man alone but when she’s with dean or sam it’s obvious she’s a woman just because of the heights.

when she returns to angelhood at the end of season five, she’s wearing jimmy’s white office button down, but no bra underneath because the only reasons she would need one would be to either make her boobs look bigger or to hide her nipples and cas isn’t interested in either of those things and bras are uncomfortable, no blazer on top, a set of cargo pants that look feminine and form fitting on dean because dean is in possession of an ass and hips, but baggy and dykey on cas because she is not, combat boots (also dean’s), and the coat, and her hair is just like canon cas’ hair but way choppier because dean cut it for her.

anyway, dean treats cas in a WILD way, like. they do some intricate rituals in season four? they are dean winchester and castiel, after all. but after cas butches up in season five and then stays that way dean pushes it into overdrive. “i wish you were a boy so i could date you” shit. dean lets cas put a hand on the small of her back. she jokes that cas is her boyfriend. when cas sleeps, they sleep in the same bed, “since you can’t possibly share with sam, she’s a dyke.” also she called cas cassie a lot when cas looked more feminine but switches exclusively to cas when cas looks more masculine. like it’s this whole “”””straight”””” girl intricate ritual where one is attracted to a masculine woman so one coercively masculinizes her further.

sam tries to check in with cas to see if cas is cool with this forcible masculinization and weird gender relationship, because sam is gay and Understands or at least thinks she does. she also catches wind that cas is here to smash a lot sooner than in canon. but anyway cas rebuffs her because cas hates sam. 

tangent, but one of my least favorite things that happens in mid spn, starting i think in s6, is that they start needing plausible deniability for cas, so they start pretending him and sam are like, friends. like 6.20 “i did it to protect the boys. or to protect myself. i don’t know anymore.” like there’s all this emotional stuff where cas is clearly talking about his emotional connection to dean, but sam gets included in order to make it seem SLIGHTLY less gay. and that’s annoying because of the no-homo-ness but it’s actually more annoying because 1) i liked s5 cas’ bitchiness towards sam i think that killed and 2) if sam and cas are gonna be friends after cas was a bitch and called sam an abomination and shit, develop it! develop it! don’t just Say that they are.

anyway it’s my au and i say what happens so the plausible deniability “both the brothers are important to me” shit does NOT happen and cas is a bitch to sam throughout s5&6. they do eventually bond later? like cas still takes sam’s hell trauma, and sam feels like she owes her for that (even though it was CAS’ FAULT IN THE FIRST PLACE but sam is batshit like that). so that’s what kind of gets them to eventually bond a little and become friends and comrades. 

also sam clocks cas as gay. obviously. sam tries to inform cas about being gay. because sam too is gay. it only kind of sticks. cas doesn’t really understand how human societal roles work. cas has HUGE angel autism and i support her.

also as long as we’re talking about five and six, why don’t we deal with male lisa. so obviously the kid thing doesn’t work. the thing that lisa does that makes dean like :o is not “have a kid that might be dean’s” but “tell dean he was going to propose.” this implies that they were dating in the past longer than canon dean and lisa but oh well. 

however, when dean gets pulled back into hunting, she’s six weeks pregnant by lisa and doesn’t know it. cas immediately tells her, and offers to give her an angelic abortion. she accepts without hesitating and cas does it. the fact that this - cas taking ownership of dean’s reproductive organs in a somewhat invasive way, even if it was wanted - contributes to their whole.... season six..... dynamic. dean never tells lisa about this.

that’s everything i can think of. i have work in four hours.

[salsa-and-light]

"I think universalist laws are the best ways to go about this so that everyone is on equal footing"

I would tend to agree, but equal does not always mean fair.

Hiyab(2005) is a Spanish short film that I've seen presented on at least three separate occasions in educational settings during the past fifteen years. It depicts a Muslim girl being harangued into removing her headscarf, all under the premise that "todos somos iguales" "we're all the same" and the rules don’t allow for personal accessories.

I won't spoil the ending if you want to watch it, but I can say that this rule was not heavily enforced, because of course it wasn't.

People as a rule are basing their understanding of the world based on their own experience, which is going to be limited no matter what you do; but where prejudice is involved people tend to manipulate the edges of gray space.

So in that sense, beyond very broad general principles, rules should be maleable when outside or unexpected circumstances arise.

...

A common piece of rhetoric from the pre-obergefell years was the claim that Queer people already had equal rights.

Which is to say that they had the right to have a heterosexual marriages just like any straight person.

Many of the "drag bans" of the past year or two have been so ignorant of what drag is that they have to include gray areas of the law just to cover everything that people are trying to bam

These regulations are so broad that many ban any type of gender variance, any type of personal styling or any type of performance.

Up to including perfectly benign things like women in pants or dancing.

Now, most people, including Queer activists, know that Dolly Parton isn't going to get arrested for wearing a wig in front of teenagers, and the local goth might even safe; but these laws are inherently subjective to the point where anyone can be a target but only certain people will be.

So I am not opposed to general legislation, but general equality alone is not a guarantee of Justice. So we just need to be cautious about that possibility.

Many of the laws that were made by explicitly Queer-friendly people with the intention of protecting Queer people, trans people included, have had to be amended to explicitly include trans people. Because Bigots especially will seek out ways to exploit gaps in legal protections.

"the fracturing of identities into these strange shards is ultimately reductive to the goal at hand."

Not necessarily, the fact of the matter is that if people's rights already protected then it shouldn't matter whether or not they are known and unknown.

When large numbers of Sikhs, Budhists and Muslims started to arrive in America, they were frequently not treated well and were most often abused and oppressed. But they did have the fortune of America having explicit protections for religious liberties. People had to fight for the recognition of that right no doubt, but they did not have to fight for the moral validity of the concept of the right to free religious expression.

And because this idea[religious liberty] was established and fighting injustice in that regard helps all religious minorities.

The rules that protect Muslim women wearing Hijabs also protect Sikh men wearing turbans, the rules that protect atheists from participation in Christian practices also protect Buddhists. Allowing people to pray in the workplace protects you whether you're Muslim, Christian or Wiccan.

So in many ways, more specific and less usual concerns are actually a good method to protect against bias in the process of lawmaking.

Obviously this can be dependant on public opinion but this goes together with you're idea of getting your foot in the door and grandfathering in other Queer people.

If an AFAB nonbinary person establishes the right to not wear a skirt in the workplace and a Straight man establishes the right to wear a skirt in the workplace then we are now protecting the freedom of whole swathes of people, trans, cis, non-binary and other, and all with a wider range of possibilities for those who are still in the closet.

So in cases like that I think you're absolutely right. I do see what you mean about establishing one thing at a time.

I don't want to give the impression that I think that I'm taking an all or nothing approach to civil rights.

My main point is that legislation centered on L,G,B or T does not automatically cover all other Queer people and that those edge cases are important, and also that we shouldn't be muzzling less acceptable Queer people as an acceptable sacrifice for the benefit of the more accepted.

It wasn't a conventional Cis man drag queen who disrupted drag bans in Texas, it was an AFAB nonbinary drag queen.

Specific Queer experiences are not only useful in covering variations, they are sometimes essential to displaying a full and accurate picture.

I'm of the mind that we should be attacking this from all sides, cover every base you can.

If you can protect gay people, do it, if you can protect intersex people, do it. Queer liberation is a societal project and it is going to have to be done one step at a time. But that shouldn't stop us all from trying to move in the right direction.

"Most people are aware of Gay, Lesbian and Trans people,"

Well why do you think that is?

It's because for decades people have been marching and causing scenes and shocking people, maybe my upbringing was isolated but it was hardly ten years ago that most people I knew were entirely convinced that Queerness was something that only happened in places like San Francisco and New York.

The "Transgender Tipping Point" year was 2014.

More people are aware of trans people than non-binary people, but that's a current condition. It's not accurate to pretend that that's any more permanent than the relative ignorance of trans people ten years ago.

If it is required that we make these smaller issues know, we can do that. I don't think that it's strictly necessary, but it's perfectly possible.

I've already seen portrayals of transfemme non-binary people, polyamorous relationships and asexual people in media there is opportunity for awareness.

"and that should be the bulwark that queer rights are built upon. By using this as our anchor we can secure rights for everyone without having to explain the more eccentric identities like femboy catgirls to people that would otherwise be turned around from it because it sounds weird."

I'm in favor of protecting people's rights wherever possible, So I have no problem with this; because it's not an all or nothing proposition.

Any progress is progress, if a law protects suburban lesbian soccer moms than that's better than nothing.

But-

At the same time we also have a social problem instead of a legal problem.

Queer people are a group because we were collectively put into an outgroup,

Heteronormativity is one of those big scary words that scares people, but it is a legitimate concept and it is a bulwark of modern culture.

It's unlikely that we can completely eliminate social ingroups entirely but my concern when it comes to prioritizing cis-gay and gender-conforming trans people as the heads of Queer liberation is that we run the risk of moving these people from the category of unacceptable to acceptable instead of making the category for acceptable wider.

It's somewhat similar to the difference between women's liberation and simply adding secretary and nurse to the list of acceptable life paths for a woman.

Perhaps this is problem which will work itself out, like with Women's lib, but my concern is that some Queer people might sneak into society's good graces and pull the ladder up behind them,

There's already homopobic gay people, the "LGB" movement which is a transphobic group of gay people, transphobic and NBphobic trans people.

And there are plenty of Queer people who have internalized sex negative and anti-kink philosophies.

I'll say it again, I don't think trans liberation is an all or nothing proposition, but I am concerned that separating ourselves into smaller groups just allows for the growth of more minute prejudices even among the people who should really know better.

That was the message of the comic after all.

"Society, however, might take some time to adjust to the femboy catgirls among us."

Which brings me back to my previous point. Turn up the heat.

If we're going to make the world a better place for the "weird"(the queer if you will) then we can't demand that the strange become normal.

If people don't understand trans people, show them non-binary people.

If people can't handle drag queens, show them drag things.

If people balk at bondage, show them pup-play.

So long as this doesn't become a source for infighting, broader exposure can make things better for all involved.

Because if you face social repercussions being a gender conforming gay person or a person interested in light kink, then the Genderqueers and the pansexual swingers are going to be in hiding.

Might as well lay it all out there.

"Again, its about optics. You’re not fighting to convince the person who is bigoted against you to vote in your favor. You are fighting for the most lukewarm motherfucker who has never heard of this “nonbinary” thing."

I see what you mean, but it's a bit late in the game for this to be a realistic concern someplace like America.

If someone has been living in America for the past 20 to 60 years, and they're still on the fence about gay rights then I don't know what might push them over the edge, in either direction.

Sure some of these fence-sitters might be former bigots, but I imagine that the majority of these people have not had their minds changed by conscious thought but by a combination of desensitization and social consequence for open bigotry.

Which is all the more reason to not treat them with kiddie gloves.

My own blessed father is not an ally in any sense of the word, last I checked he still has some pretty homophobic beliefs.

But he can have a conversation with a gay person now, because he worked with a gay person, and professionalism demanded a certain level of decorum.

It's not an ideal, but it's still better.

And to a certain extent, trying to hide more unusual aspects of Queer culture has only created a time-release schedule for prejudice. Politicians might not be able to openly call gay men pedophiles and perverts anymore(mostly) but drag queens are something different. So much about what people are saying about drag queens in virtually unchanged from six decades ago. It's ultimately premised on the idea that Queer men are sexual deviants who want to harm children, now with the added transphobic tropes of violating the sanctity of womanhood.

Obviously some of the progression on Queer civil rights is based on societal attitudes of what is the least foreign for straight people, and not all of this is intentional; but I don't see the need to replicate the formula.

Unless there is a concrete reason to not tell someone, it might behoove us to put our cards on the table.

I have no problem with lying to bigots if it helps protect Queer people, but I'm content to carry the bit so far as to actually participate in their prejudice.

"There are a hundred bigots, but a million of that lukewarm dude who has never set foot on tumblr or twitter and has no idea about all these micro identities that start to sound like rpg character classes after awhile."

Awareness is one thing, sure, but where empathy fails, tolerance requires more awareness than prejudice.

Most homophobes are trained to hate certain traits far before they learn what those traits are supposedly tied too.

You don't need to understand the concept of being non-binary or to even have heard the word to exhibit hatred towards a perceived gender nonconformity.

A violent bigot is not going to ask if their target is non-binary, trans, gay or straight before they attack.

I was attacked a few years ago and it wasn't because I was doing anything gay. I was alone, but I was wearing a smidge of makeup(at a distance) and a choker and that was enough.

The flaw in your reasoning here is that non-homosexual, non-trans Queer people are safe in the meantime if we leave them out of the discussion. If that worked then it would be a very noble idea, but it's in conflict with reality.

These people are in danger already, they're being harmed already. This isn't hypothetical I'm afraid.

"And when people get confused they dont do what they want you to do."

Yes, of course; that is the operative problem.

But as I said, they don't need to understand to be dangerous, but they often do need to understand to improve.

"I want everyone to have full human rights and dignity as well. But I also want to understand that world."

Lots of people want to understand things before they accept them, and that is an understandable impulse but it is also a limitation on human empathy.

Understanding can be a useful tool in the fight against prejudice, but if we need to understand people before we treat them well then we will never escape prejudice, save by luck and coincidence.

It's a noble intent but I'm afraid that's sort of a non-starter.

I understand that I might sound a bit wishy washy, but this is a case of multiple things being true at the same time. Awareness is often necessary to reducing biggotry.. but no one can be aware of everything.

In that case we're just butting up against one of the fundamental problems with the human condition; limited and fickle empathy.

One of the quickest hacks for empathy is for people to have a personal connection with an issue. Exposure might lead to awareness but if someone is unempathetic then it won't make them care. This is why coming out is so impactful.

At the same time, no one can possibly have relevant personal connections to every vulnerable group of people.

Which is why laws and civil protections are such a big part of this.

"The fact that you consider explain ability or understanding to be irrelevant is mind-boggling to me because why would people support a cause for something that sounds made up?"

Well the cause isn't what's complicated.

The cause is very concrete and simple, what's complicated are the states and experiences which created the need for the cause in the first place.

But you don't need to understand the intricacies of Hinduism or Santeria to be able to recognize when religious minorities are having their rights attacked.

You don't need to speak Norwegian or Chinese to recognize that the American government's attempt to wipe out minority languages was immoral.

This all goes back to the empathy question.

I don't think that comprehensibility is entirely irrelevant, I probably misspoke there, but for so long as not understanding someone is a justification for prejudice, understanding alone is not a solution. Understanding is not empathy there will always be someone new to not understand.

So while helping people understand is a helpful tool, a necessary tool even, it can not be the only option for fighting prejudice.

And of course, we've been talking about swaying people quite a lot here, but I don't want to get caught up in the idea that the moral improvement of bigots is the most important thing here.

In a perfect world, I would love it for homophobes to no exist, but we don't live in a perfect world so second best is a world where homophobia doesn't matter.

"If you’re going on about femboy catgirl rights, a person not terminally online would hear something like “Oh i want rights for the floppity doo people” and therefore take the movement less seriously and thus lose support,"

That is a possibility, but I this goes back to empathy, and the value of social scripts.

Being silent might prevent people from being confused and then sinking into prejudice, but if that's all it takes.. then it's gonna' happen anyways.

My mother may not have ever seen a catboy, but she's seen a man in a skirt walking around in public.

She's a persona who thinks that men should never tweeze their eyebrows, cat ears and striped stockings are strictly out of the question.

Silence, where it has any effect, only moves the problem somewhere else.

Whereas, if someone hears of something possibly contentious from a peer or respected source, the baseline framing is going to be different.

This was partially why there was such a big emphasis on coming out in the early Queer rights movement, because having a personal connection to a Queer person was the quickest and most effective way to win people over; because it changed us from an abstract idea of radical change and deviancy to a human experience that someone cared about.

Because then, like now, Queer people are already in the public eye; better to learn from someone they know and trust than to base their perspective off of strangers or bigots.

Bigots are not traditionally quiet about their beliefs. So it's not so much a question of if someone is going to hear about something new and unusual, but where from.

Individuals can hide in the closet, but the collective is already known.

"And that would probably lead to further questions. Like “Why the hell would anyone do that?”"

Maybe, but "because they enjoy it", "because it fulfills them" or "because it feels right" is often enough to explain most things.

Goodness knows that I don't understand why people collect Funko pops or run marathons, but I don't really need to.

If they really want details then that could be an opportunity to introduce them to some sort of information about the topic.

But questions are good, the alternative is some dark blank space that people will fill with their worst fears.

I recently had a generally tolerant friend ask a lot of questions about gender transition and related surgeries and I had to opportunity to correct some misinformation.

"Which then leads to the three hour conversation where that person’s world is rocked to the core."

Or you could simply point out that the person in question also has interests and does things that don't appeal to other people.

It might rock their world, but if they've reached adulthood, without realizing that people can be perfectly reasonable and also act completely differently than them then it's about time that it was rocked.

Speaking more broadly, if you actually do want to get into the nittty-gritty of the conversation, that can be difficult, I will acknolwedge; but that can usually be solved by matching the level of detail to the level of knowledge of the person.

That requires a basic level of knowledge yourself of course, but sometimes you just have to get creative.

I have had to explain the difference between trans women and drag queens to multiple people and often I've compared it to the difference between an animal mascot and a furry: One being performative and the other being a permanent feature that persists throughout your private live.

It's not a perfect comparison, it's not something I would usually bring up in "woke" political circles, but it's worked so far. Not every tool needs to be sharp.

"Yeah, people’s refusal to learn is a problem. One that I dont think anyone can solve unless the people that refuse to learn overcome that refusal and…well learn."

Yes, I agree, but people learn unconsciously to a certain extent, whether they want to or not. I've watched gay movies from ~2010 and they frequently call trans women drag queens. Now I've met homophobes who know the difference.

So that's all the more reason to give them exposure, especially when they know you or their held in check by social and professional niceties.

"Ill have to agree to disagree on that last part. Its pretty easy actually to never encounter that sort of stuff if you’re a normie."

Define stuff?

And define normie?

I grew up on a farm in Rural Arkansas, my parents very rarely leave the property save for work and church, which means that in either case their social circles are small and overlapping groups of primarily Southern Conservative Protestants.

All the same, over the course of the past two decades, they have met new people, they have gone to new places, and had new experienes where they've seen men in skirts and women holding hands.

They've also watched TV in the past twenty years.

In fact to not have seen an explicitly Queer person on film in the past decade, would require a constant and conscious effort. 1 in 5 studio films included an Queer character in 2021

I know we roll our eyes at the four seconds of a Queer couple in th background and the "explicitly gay" characters that lots of Disney movies do but they are there, and they are marketed that way.

The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes just came out, my parents go to movies maybe once, twice a year, and this Christmas they saw that.

A movie featuring a trans actress as a principle character.

And I don't mean to paint them as tolerant, they're not. But they're about as isolated from the rest of society as they can get without living off the grid and they still went to see a movie with a prominent trans actress.

"if these people hardly know how a wireless mouse dongle works, they sure as shit aint reading anything about queer people."

In my experience IT people infamous for being isolated or antisocial, I don't know how true that is, but they also trend younger, and Queer people are a lot more unavoidable than.. mouse dongles.. or whatever.

If you work at a company big enough to have an IT department there are Queer people there, and in most cases several of them are out and obvious.

My last job in America(in the South) had ~20 people, and there were out Queer people, not including me.

"I certainly do approve the use of self defense if people are gunning for you thats for sure."

Well I'm glad we can agree on that.

But something that we can be aware of is the social influence on justice. If someone comes at trans woman with a knife, it might not matter how justified the self-defense is depending on who's holding the knife and what the public attitude is.

It's not hard to imagine that if a young woman or a mother attacks a trans woman, at pool for example, that people would conceptualize a unprovoked attack as a brave act of self-defense.

Trans and Gay panic defenses are still legally valid arguments in over half of American states. So as much as I am pro-self defense and a living Queer person arguing for fairness is better than a dead one.. it's worth remembering the that there is a disparity;

Which is why this can be a touchy subject.

When those men tried to kill me.. I didn't tell anyone, I didn't report it to the police. I was an abused, poor, closeted Queer who was technically supposed to be almost a hundred miles away at the time.

"Hmm, im just some guy, and I do support equal rights, so maybe my ideas and perceptions arent as keen as I would like them to be, im not really on the front lines of politics, just some irrelevant blogger sharing my thoughts."

I've been operating under the impression that you are essentially well-meaning, don't worry.

I don't claim to be an expert, but this does matter and I think that unity or at least solidarity is important. I don't see much use in cutting people out of the fold.

"In retrospect, Visibility is definitely important, people shouldnt hide who they are, as I understand it, as much as a cis guy can at any rate, the closet is a terrible thing to be in."

Too true, which in many ways makes our conversation moot.

People are going to come into the public eye, when they are able and comfortable. We can barely speed it up, we can't slow it down.

As opinionated as I am, even I'm not as out as I would like to be.

A common refrain that I say about the Queer community is that "hurt people, hurt people". Lot's of Queer people are sort of bumbling along in their pursuit of a better world so my intention here has not been to degrade people who have a different idea of how to do things. Queer people can't even agree, why should anyone else know the solution.

The fact that there are even straight people to have this conversation with is a privilege of our current society.

So, we do have at least one thing in the win column for today.

Note the assumption that all LGBT people automatically support each other.

Even though many TERFs/“Gender-critical feminists” are lesbians.

Also, many people specifically say that their issue is not with LGBT people, it’s with “degenerates” hiding behind a minority label.

Including some LGBT people who don’t want to get dragged down with the pervs.

Most of the people who talk about “degeneracy” will apply that label to straight, non-trans people too.

[freddiekluger]

Why Cap Being Internally Closeted Is Not Only Possible, But Valid Representation 

i wrote this to a lot of mitski and onsind, so you can’t blame me for any feelings that bleed through

now i don’t know if it actually exists, but i’ve heard of there being a lot of discourse surrounding the captains story arc regarding his sexuality- i believe the general gist is that having a queer character that remains closeted to themselves is either unrealistic or ‘bad’ representation, and as someone who really treasures the captain and relates to his story so far a lot, i thought i might break this down a bit. 

i’ve divded up every complaint i’ve heard about this into four main questions which i’ll be covering below the ‘keep reading’, because this is gonna be pretty comprehensive. full disclaimer i reference my experiences as an ex-evangelical non binary butch lesbian a couple times, and i spent a year studying repression and the psychological impacts of high demand sexual ethics for my graduating sociology paper, so this is coming with some background to it i swear

the big questions:

can you EVEN be gay and not know it????

but isn't this just ANOTHER coming out arc, and aren't we supposed to be moving beyond those?

but if cap can't have a relationship with a man because he's a ghost, what's the point?

since cap's dead, isn't this technically bury your gays, and isn't that bad? 

1. "but is it really possible to not know? Isn't that bad representation?"

short answer: no and no.

before i get into the validity of the captain's ignorance about his own orientation as 21st century rep, let's break down how the hell the captain can be so clearly attracted to men and still not even consider the possibility that he might be gay, as brought to you by someone who literally experienced this shit.

the captain's particular situation is both a direct result of the lack of information around human sexuality he would have had (aka clear messaging that it's actually possible for him to be attracted to men. i don't mean acceptable or allowed, i mean physically capable of happening- the idea that orientations other than heterosexual exist and are available to him, a man), and a subconscious survival mechanism. the environment in which he lives is outright hostile to gay people, while the military man identity he has constructed for himself doesn't allow for any form of deviation from societal norms, let alone one so base level and major. as a result of this killer combo of information and environment, instincts take over and the mind does it's best to repress the ‘deviant’ feelings until a. one of these two things changes, or b. the act of repression becomes so destructive and/or exhuasting that it becomes impossible to maintain. the key to maintaining a long-term state of repression of desire is diverting that energy elsewhere, and a high-demand group such as the military is the perfect place for the captain to do this (this technqiue is frequented by religions and extremist ideologies worldwide, but that’s not really what we’re here to focus on). 

while the brain is actively repressing ‘deviant’ feelings (aka gay shit), this doesn't mean you don't experience the feelings at all. when performed as a subconscious act of survival, the aim of repression is to minimise/transform the feelings into a state where they can no longer cause immediate danger, and something as big as sexual/romantic orientation is going to keep popping up, but as long as the individual in question never understands what they’re feeling, they’ll be able to continue relatively undisturbed. you know how in heist movies, the leader of the group will only tell each team member part of the plan so they can’t screw things up for everyone else if they get caught? it’s kind of like that.

this is how the captain appears to have operated in life AND in death, and it’s a relatively common experience for lgbtq people who’ve grown up in similar circumstances (aka with a lack of information and in an unfriendly-to-hostile environment), and accounts for how some people can even go on to get married and have children before realising that they’re gay and/or trans. 

personally, while i can now identify what were strong homo crushes all the way back to childhood, at the time i genuinely had no idea. there was the underlying sense that i probably shouldn't tell people how attached i was to these girls because i would seem weird, and that my feelings were stronger than the ones other people used to describe friendships, but like-like them in the way that other girls like-liked boys? no way! actually scratch that, it wasn't even a no way, because i had no idea that i even could. i even had my own havers, at least in terms of the emotional hold and devotion she got from me, except she treated me way less well than cap’s beau. snatches of the existence of lgbt people made it through the cone of silence, i definitely heard the words gay and lesbian, but my levels of informations mirrored those that the captain would have had: virtually none, beyond the idea that these words exist, some people are them, and that's not something that we support or think is okay, so let's just not speak about it. despite only attending religious schools for the first couple years of primary, until i got my own technology and social media accounts to explore lgbtq content on my own- option a out of the two catalysts for change- the possibility of me being gay was not at all on my radar. don’t even get me started on how long it took me to explore butchness and my overall gender, two things which now feel glaringly obvious. 

when shit starts to break down, you can also make the conscious choice to repress which can delay the eventual smashing down of the mental closet door for a time (essentially when the closet door starts to open, you just say ‘no thanks’ and shut it again by pointedly Not Thinking About It). in the abscence of identifying yourself by your attractions, it becomes quite common to identify with a lack- in my case, this meant becoming proud of how sensible and not boy crazy i was, and in the captain’s case, this means becoming proud of how sensible and not sensuous/wild (aka woman crazy) he was, identifying with his LACK of desire for women and partying (which, even in the 40s, involved the expectation of opposite sex romances and hook ups). i’m not saying that’s the only reason he’s a rule follower, but i think the contrast between About Last Night and Perfect Day pretty much support this. (the captain getting on his high horse about general party antics that he inherently felt excluded from because of underlying awareness of his difference & his tendency to project his regimented expectations of himself onto others, vs. joining in the reception party, awareness of how the environment supports difference in the form of clare and sam, and relaxing his own rules by dancing with men- the captain doesn’t mind a party when feels like he has a place there.)

so the captain was operating in a high demand, highly regulated environment (primarily the military, but also early 20th century England itself), with regimented roles, rules, and expectations. working on the assumption that he wouldn't have had out/disclosing lgbt friends, he would have had little to no exposure to lgbt identities, and what information he did receive would have been hushed and negatively geared. while my world started to open up when i started high school was allowed to have my own phone + instagram account, resulting in me realising something wasn't quite 'right' within a few years (making me a relatively early realiser compared to those who don't come out to themselves until adulthood), in life the captain never had that experience. he didn't receive the information he needed, his environment didn't grow less hostile. with the near-exception of havers related heartbreak, his well disciplined and lifelong method of repression never became destructive/exhaustive enough to permanently override the danger signals in his mind and allow him to put his feelings into words. neither of the most common catalysts for change happened for him, so he continued as usual, even after his death.

BUT, and here’s where we come to why this is actually great representation, arrival of mike and Alison represents the opening up of new world. for the first time, the captain is actively made aware of the fact that his environment is no longer hostile, and better than that, it’s affirming. he’s also getting access to positively geared information about lgbtq people and identities, so option a of the two catalysts for change is absolutely present, and resoundingly positive. 

the captain’s arc is also relatively unique as it acknowledges the oppressive nature of his environment, but actually focuses on the internal consequences, and the way that systems like those that the captain lived in succeed because they turn us into our own oppressors. for whatever reason, we repress ourseslves, and often can’t help it, and i find that the significance of the journey to overcome that is often overlooked in more mainstream queer media. perhaps it’s just not very cinematic, or it remains too confronting for cishet audiences, but ghosts manages to touch on it with a lovely amount of humour and hope. Jamie Babbit’s But I’m A Cheerleader is another favourite piece of queer media for the same reasons.

not only does it show this, but as the captain continues to get gayer and lean into some of his less conventional traits (like an interest in fashion and the wedding planning), it shows lgbt people who have been or are going through this that there CAN be a positive outcome. it takes a lot to unlearn all the things that have painted you as wrong, especially when a massive institution is desperate to continue doing so, but you can do it, you can be happy, and it's never too late. (i've been meaning to say that last point for ages for ages, but a mutual beat me to it here)

2. not just another coming out arc

i absolutely support the demand for queer stories that don’t center around coming out (it’s like shrodinger’s queer: if you’re not coming out on screen, do you really even exist?), but i don’t align with the criticisms that the captain should already be out. for the reasons mentioned above, the captain’s particular story is fairly different to the ‘young white teenager who mostly knows gay is fine, it’s just everyone else that’s got the problem, but have a unremarkably straight sounding soundtrack, a trauma porn romance, and a cishet saviour’ that we keep seeing. the captain’s ongoing journey with his sexuality emphasises the overaching theme of the show: recovering from trauma and humanity’s endless capacity for growth, and i think that’s worth showing over and over again until it stops being true.

additionally, while the captain’s journey regarding his gayness is a big part of his character and story, ghosts makes it clear that it’s not the ONLY part, and being gay is far from his ONLY characteristic or dramatic/comedic engine. the fact that i’m even having to congratulate ghosts for doing that really shows how much film and television is struggling huh.

while all queer media is, and should be, subject to criticism, i think if it helps even one person then it absolutely deserves to exist, and i can say i’ve found the captain’s journey to be the lgbt story i’ve found that’s closest to my own, which says a lot considering he’s a dead world war 2 soldier who hangs out with other ghosts including a slutty Tory, a georgian noblewoman, and a literal caveman. 

3. if captain gay, why he no have boyfriend???? 

another complaint that’s been circulating is that since the captain doesn’t, and likely won’t, have a boyfriend, that makes him Bad Representation because it follows the sad single gay trope. i kind of get the logic from this one, and a lot of it is up to personal interpretation, but part of me really enjoys the fact that the captain’s journey towards accepting himself is separated from having a relationship.

coming out is often paired with having romantic/sexual relationships (either as the reason or reward for doing so). my own struggle with repression didn't end the second that came out, and i still struggle with letting myself develop & acknowledge romantic feelings as a result of actively shutting them (and most other feelings in general) down for years, and statistics show that lgbtq youth in particular tend not to live out their 'teen years' until their twenties. by not giving cap a relationship straight away, ghosts separates the act of claiming identity and sexual orientation from finding a partner (two things which are, more often than not, separate), and also provides some very nice validation to folks who have yet to have the relationship they want, especially when lots of mainstream queer media is now jumping on the cishet media bandwagon of acting as if every person loses their virginity and has a life defining relationship at sixteen. it’s essentially a continuation of the earlier theme of “it’s never too late”, and who’s to say the captain won’t get a gay bear ghost boyfriend to go haunt nazis with??? people die all the time, it could happen.

(also, i think him and julian will have definitely shagged at least once. it was a low moment for both of them and they refuse to speak of it.)

lots of asexual/ace spectrum fans have come out to say how much they’ve loved being able to headcanon cap as ace, and while that’s not a headcanon i personally have, i think it’s brilliant that ace fans feel seen by his character- we’re all in this soup together babey (and sorry for cursing everyone still reading this with that cap/julian headcanon. i’m just a vessel)

4. “okay, but cap’s a GHOST- doesn’t that make this Bury Your Gays?”

this is a bit of a complex one, but i’m going to say no as a result of the following break down.

Bury Your Gays (BYG), aka the trope where lgbtq characters are consistently killed off (and often with a heavy dose of trauma, while cishet characters survive) is probably one of my least favourite lgbt media tropes. BYG has two main points:

1. the lgbt character is killed, thus removing them from story entirely- hence the use of the phrase ‘killed OFF’ (killed off of the show/film)

2. the character’s death reinforces the perception that lgbtq people’s lives must end in tragedy, instead of being long and fulfilling, or are inherently less valuable. bonus points if the character is killed in a hate crime or confesses same-gender love right before they die (that one implies that queer love genuinely has no future!)

not every death of an lgbtq character is bury your gays, and i personally feel that the captain is an example of an lgbt death that isn’t. 

first of all, while the captain is dead, so are the vast majority of characters in ghosts. the premise of the show means that death is not the end of the line for its characters- for most of them, it’s the only reason we get to see them on screen at all. as such, the captain being dead doesn’t remove him from the story, so point one is irrelevant.

at the time of posting, we don’t know how or why the captain died, but we've had nothing to suggest his death was in any way related to his latent sexuality, so his mysterious death doesn’t actively play into the supposedly inherent tragedy of queer lives, nor the supposedly lesser value. that’s as of right now- since we don’t know the circumstances of his death it’s a little tough to analyse properly. while the captain’s life absolutely features missed opportunities and it’s fair share of tragedy, hope and growth (which seems to be the theme of this post) abounds in equal measure. the captain may not be alive, but we DO get to see him growing and having a relatively happy existence, that for the most part seems to be getting even better as he learns to open up and be himself unapologetically- that doesn’t feel like BYG to me.

while writng this, it’s just occured to me that death really is a second chance for most of the ghosts, especially with the introduction of alison. from mary learning to read, to thomas finding modern music, they’ve all been given the chance explore things they never could have while they were alive, and hopefully grow enough to one day be sucked off move on.

in conclusion,

i love the captain very much and i hope his arc lives up to the standards it’s set so far. i don’t know where to put this in this post, but i’d alo like to say i LOVE how in Perfect Day, the captain wasn’t used as an educational experienced for fanny at all. i am very tired of people expecting me to be the walking talking homophobe educator and rehabilitator, so the fact that it’s alison and the other ghosts that call fanny out while the captain just gets to have fun with the wedding organisation made me very happy.

here’s a few other cap posts that i’ve done:

the captain’s arc if adam and the film crew stayed

a possible cap coming out 

the captain backstory headcanon

if you’ve read this far,

thank you!

also check out @alex-ghosts-corner , this post inspired me very much to write this

[soulvomit]

This is just too long and nuanced to get into in one go, when I don’t have the time. But it’s something I’ve been thinking about. I’m a bisexual who dated guys as a teen, then mostly dated women in much of my 20s and 30s, and there are huge reasons I didn’t date men. Then in my 40s I got with the dude I’ve been with for the past 5 years (longest relationship) but it followed a completely different pattern and set of expectations than any other relationships I’d had with men, and I’m reflecting on this a bit.   Part of the reason I didn’t date men is because I liked being in a social dynamic with both women and men where I wasn’t seen as a potential hetero romantic partner by men - part of me felt like I could be seen as a potential partner OR seen as an equal, but not both. (This was especially bad when I was younger. It got better over time.) But even more, I wanted to be seen as off-limits to men by the women that my male coworkers were married to. I liked having actual platonic friendships and professional associations with men and being able to have intellectual conversations with them, and I liked women not seeing me as a threat. It’s weird that I feel like I identified as a lesbian for a long time at least partly for the benefit of heterosexuals.  But the biggest thing was that I just didn’t LIKE dating men. It wasn’t that I didn’t like individual men so much as all the SOCIAL STUFF that ANY men just came wrapped up with and part of it is because of the weird mores of my family. The thing is that dating men was just so FRAUGHT. It was wrapped up in all kinds of public moral performativity in my family and older people of my culture and local community, and it didn’t help that my mom was surrounded by gossips. Because my family refused to talk about or acknowledge the fact that I was dating women, it meant that dating women was treated as something relatively private and *for me* and that my family didn’t in any way intrude. It somehow didn’t seem “real” to them.  Whereas men were wrapped up with all kinds of weird, fraught traditionalist moralist stuff and dating any man (somehow, even if I lived a hundred miles away, if my family at all knew about it) meant that my family poked their nose in and felt it was Their Business. I’m realizing that some of the weird mores I grew up with around breakups (you shouldn’t be on good terms or even associate with an ex or be in a place where an ex is) and dating seem to be heavily based in the idea my mom had and some elders had where if sex happened in a relationship and the relationship broke up, or didn’t result in marriage, then this meant that the woman in the relationship had been “used.” Breakups were treated as something always Very Humiliating and not just relationships not working out. And that people would see the woman as slutty and that this was bad. Basically it all revolved around having to pretend to be a virgin, or to be as close to a virgin as possible. Also, the idea that it was humiliating to be a woman over 25 and be known to be unmarried, that if you were in a relationship (with a man, specifically) for a long time but weren’t married then it Looked Weird and other people Cared Very Much about how it looked. And any relationships a woman has that aren’t marriage Make Her Look Bad. 1) Like she wasn’t Good Enough to be a wife. (We need to talk about this because there’s a lot of hidden social class stuff in here. There is a lot about being “high class” enough to get married and it being seen as “low class” to NOT be married, let alone to be partnered but not married.) 2) Like HE wouldn’t marry HER (what if SHE was the one who didn’t want to get married? What if they love each other but just aren’t getting married for whatever reason? This was never considered. Marriage was ALWAYS evaluated like it was a woman winning a prize, or something a man offered a woman, and not a mutual decision between adults.) All of this is hardcore old school stuff.  A lot of this is why despite being bi, it was just much easier to date women. There is a lot of stuff I was able to keep out of my head dating women that I wasn’t able to while dating men. For one, my mom had absolutely no interest in any “non-conventional relationship” I had, absolutely didn’t want to hear about it. But my family intruded with men I dated like whoa, it was Very Much Their Business because they saw it as being their business who did or didn’t join the family and or how my behavior was going to make them look. (Somehow, being an androphile but not A Good Girl or properly married off, was morally worse than being in a queer relationship even though the whole reason a lesbian relationship was not seen as “the real thing” or the same kind of social threat was tbh homophobic.) Something changed in my 40s and all this social noise about marriage, who I was supposed to marry, etc, just evaporated. Suddenly I was free to date or fuck whoever I wanted to date or fuck. People just got off my case all of a sudden. The dynamics in my relationships with men changed overnight as soon as 1) I was no longer expected to be a virgin, 2) I was old enough for my teen/20something past to not matter (it was now half a life ago), 3) people no longer even expected me to get married.  What’s more is that people stopped even asking me when I was going to have children, or if. Everything I do stopped being evaluated in terms of what kind of example I might be setting for children that I’ve never had and will never have.  And poof, just like that, in my 40s, a ton of hangups and cares evaporated. I’m sure that 40something hormones may have something to do with it but I feel as if there are just a lot of social pressures that women in their 40s get let off the hook for. It’s only in my 40s that I feel like I’m free to be a fully sexual human being or own my sexuality or my body in any way, and it’s interesting to think about.

[homosociallyyours]

Your last post about the ideal stunt girlfriend! I have some thoughts on this as well. I think first of all as you said the preference is that they just do not exist that is essentially why anything and everything they do seems to be picked apart. I am not sure what it is that someone can do then if their existence is the problem. (This is only in context of the 1D fandom because I have no idea how stunt girlfriend might be treated elsewhere). The blame for the closeting is placed entirely on the shoulders of the stunt girlfriend as if she is the one forcing a closeting whereas we do not know anything going on behind the scenes. (Just want to add that there is nothing wrong with someone choosing to be closeted in order to navigate a homophobic industry and world and to protect oneself.) I know the common story told about larry is that external people are forcing things upon them or are sabotaging them and there may well have been times where they were advised strongly (or manipulated and mistreated when they were younger by those who should have tried to help them in the industry) to stay in the closet but that does not mean that they do not have any agency at all for anything especially not in the present day. Perhaps in an ideal world they may choose to disclose their sexuality and their relationship (but even if they did not they do not owe that to anyone. Anyways the problem is heteronormativity and assuming people are straight by default). I do personally believe that both Louis and Harry want to at least be recognized as part of the LBTQA community for as long as they do not state things publicly (and also show that they are together to those that recognize it. I am a larrie so that is my belief lol) and possibly do want to come out at some point (both about their individual sexualities and their relationship) but until then they do have to perform heterosexuality for many numbers of reasons. And while they do that there is a need for a stunt girlfriend whether as PR or just for the purpose of appearing straight depending on their career needs. I know people who will speak out against attacks on Olivia might still have issues with Eleanor because one is PR and one is not (this is a simplified version of the reasons and I don't want to go into comparisons or reasonings people have for anything. At the end of the day neither attacks is justified to me.)

Okay this is already quite long and I haven't yet got to the point sorry about that. I think at the end of the day the purpose of the stunt girlfriend (when there is no PR involved) is to help maintain the closet until the closet is required. It doesn't matter who the person is tbh. If it were not Eleanor it would have been someone else so people who say things about Eleanor's personality, looks, character, mistakes she may have made do not make sense to me. None of these people know her yet they have made their own head canon version of her which is always a negative version. It would be the same no matter who was in her place. I think Louis' purpose for Eleanor specifically has to do with the story he wants to tell with his music and in interviews (a story that could possibly be most similar to his actual relationship perhaps even if not entirely the same) and I do believe Eleanor specifically helps tell it (as his longest public relationship). It allows him to mention a girlfriend that has "helped him" through tough times and give anecdotes about his "girlfriend". I think Eleanor probably does other things behind the scenes like a personal assistant as well we just do not see it. But the Eleanor we do see is the image that we are shown, the image that tells the story that Louis wants told. And that story in itself is so interesting and to me just confirms things that I believe about his actual relationship. So its more intriguing to me than something to stress over or look at negatively. I don't know Eleanor but what I know is this is her job and she will do it. It is work and I don't know why it has been villainized. I understand being frustrated by the situation and feeling like Louis (and Harry) may have not been happy through stunts in the past (potentially) but that does not translate to hating the stunt girlfriend. Disliking a situation you are in does not mean you dislike everyone who is part of it. But yeah anyways the end point is I do not see any situation in which people would be happy with a stunt girlfriend.

It doesn't matter which song she posts there will always be some criticism over it. It doesn't matter if she just posts herself with dogs or doing influencing there will be a problem. It doesn't matter whether she posts about Louis or not there will be criticism in either case. Lastly it doesn't matter if she talks with Louis' sisters or not either way there will be arguments that they are not on good terms. So I am not quite sure what it is that an ideal stunt girlfriend can do for fans. I don't see any situation where people who have already decided to have a problem just based on the concept of her being a stunt girlfriend will suddenly stop. But talking about these things might help at least some people understand the bias? I just think the best approach is that she keep doing what she feels is best according to the story that she has to tell and ignore the criticism (which can be tough I know because of the immense amount of hate you can get for it). I think if I were to find and guide someone my focus would be on guiding them on how to navigate the hate and I guess general tips based on the story that needs telling. And I think when it comes to finding someone it is probably a mix of finding someone who would look like what the ideal image of a girlfriend to a popstar should look like (which has its own problems and really we need to reevaluate standards of deciding these things) and also someone who can do the other behind the scenes work too?

Idk I have done a lot of rambling (and still probably haven't got all my thoughts down lol) but it was definitely an interesting post that led to some thoughts I felt like discussing. I hope you do not mind my sending an anon with all these thoughts. You do not have to post it if you are afraid of the reaction and can instead reply in tags?

I just want to end with agreeing with what you said about considering bearding to be like sex work. And also thankyou for your post.

hi nonny! thank you for your long and thoughtful response :) i hope you don't mind that i'm publishing it-- i think you made some good points and i appreciate that you really tried to answer the question of who to pick and what to guide them to do. image would definitely be key, as would an internet presence of some kind. i imagine celeb pairings would mean more frequent but less involved appearances while a famous/not famous pair would be able to get away with fewer public spottings but maybe more in depth/intimate scenarios.

and i really think there's just no way to please everyone, but you're right that the blame for closeting seems to fall on the shoulders of the woman who's bearding. :/// that often goes hand in hand with the narrative that they're (still) being forcibly closeted instead of looking at the very real history of ex-boybanders and performers who came out, which is relatively bleak/unsuccessful and making a decision to try to gain more credibility as solo artists.

meanwhile i share your perception that they want to be seen/read as LGBTQ+ by those of us who are part of that community. signalling is real, and it's not based on stereotypes like "oh he wore makeup! he has a limp wrist!" i mean as a queer femme from the south, when i go home i tone myself down quite a lot, but i still wear/use symbols that other queer people are more likely to notice, tell stories about myself that indirectly mention my gender and sexuality, and engage with queer history when possible in ways that straight people just. wouldn't perceive.

but of course you can do all of that and STILL want or need to be in the closet!

i really appreciate you responding to my question, even though i think you're right that there's no answer that would make the hatred these women get any less virulent. i do hope that, like you said, talking about it is at least useful in getting more people to realize that maybe it's undeserved? beards don't build the closets, they just stand there to make sure nobody walks in on the person they're working with while they're half naked, basically.

[she-is-ovarit]

@nothorses went ahead and blocked right after responding.

There sure is quite a lot of "Correct The Record" on anything either to do with detransition stories or traumatic transitioning experiences. I wonder what effect dismissing, discrediting, devaluing, or correcting their experiences has on these people.

The original replier above states that men are just people who are men. What is a man? Why do transmen need to undergo extensive surgeries and hormone treatments to achieve self-actualization of being "men" if they already are? If a "real" man isn't someone who looks a certain way? Especially when, just as this original commenter acknowledges, this is a risk. It does happen. Isn't anyone who identifies as a man, a man?

What does it mean to "feel like a man"? How would you know what it means to feel like a man?

To anyone reading this, you shouldn't ignore your intuition and gut instinct when something doesn't feel right. That is your unconscious "you" giving those self-doubts and letting you know that something isn't right. This doesn't just go for feeling uneasy with transitioning, but anything in life.

"Cis" women feeling insecure about their bodies isn't "intrinsic", biological, etc. to being a woman. How much of it is intrinsic versus societally-influenced? It is all societally influenced. Your body is fine as it is, and also it is uncomfortable to be in. Both are true. There is a risk that transitioning will never fix feeling uncomfortable, and it may make it worse. It's a choice to decide whether lifelong dilation, uterine removal, multiple surgeries when complications arise, sterilization, and dangers from countering your bodies natural sex-based hormones with high levels of other hormones. And that is a big choice, especially when there are nearly 0 long-term studies on these effects. Overwhelmingly, any studies done on transitioning have focused on "patient satisfaction". If you gave patients struggling with an eating disorder liposuction, why wouldn't they be satisfied with the outcome?

Why we treating mental health issues with physical surgeries?

Even Robert Stoller, the founder of the concept of gender identity, described feeling unease at the "carnival-like atmosphere" pushed by early surgeons and psychiatrists performing transsexual surgeries. Most of these early patients even still believed and considered themselves as their sex post transition. It was conservative doctors who pushed the idea onto these patients that they weren't really their sex to begin with. They did this because they believed that it was the only way these (back then) predominately homosexual patients seeking transsexual surgeries could "live fulfilling lives as heterosexuals".

Your choices are yours, and not mine. I admit I would be lying if I said that I didn't hope that everybody is educating themselves as much as possible and attempting to resolve discomfort with their bodies through therapy prior to altering their bodies. I especially worry about teenagers, who naturally have fluid self-identities and are already drawn more to aesthetics/appearance and figuring themselves out. I especially worry about autistic, ADHD, traumatized, and gay people—because these are both populations who have higher rates of gender nonconformity (in mannerisms and other complex psycho-social ways), and also coincidentally are the populations most likely to transition. As the original commenter said, however, that is their choice to make and as much as I worry, I accept that their health isn't my responsibility.

One thing is true, and this is both to reaffirm @inazuma-fulgur 's statement and anyone else reading this, is that you are a person and you will always be a person.

Feelings are real—however, people often "make up" their beliefs to fit their feelings. This is the primary understanding in operant behavior. This is why people who struggle with anxiety genuinely believe everything is wrong with them or will go wrong, why a religious person feels elation and connection and joy and attributes this to God, why a man who struggles with anger and violence sees himself as the victim and his significant other as the abuser, etc. It doesn't mean their feelings aren't real, but it does mean their reality is bent due to having a condition, societal influence, or being told/assuming something subjective is reality because others in their social spheres believe in it.

:(

[thedreadvampy]

ok so this trip down memory lane kind of leads neatly into what I was wanting to talk about last night (even though it’s past 4am again oops)

which is the gendered nature of queerbaiting and of bi/homophobia

like last night @silly-slacker-person and I were talking about Glee and about how like...the Brittana relationship started with the improvised line “if having sex was dating, Santana and I would be dating” and how that fits into a Pattern

where queerbaiting with male characters is about emotional intimacy but They Can Never Kiss Or Touch Sexually, queerbaiting with female characters is...weird.

queerbaiting with female characters is often almost the inverse of queerbaiting with male characters. female characters will kiss on screen, touch constantly, and even actually have sex with each other, but the story will still regularly insist they’re straight. and romance is off-limits. emotional intimacy is withheld. it’s always waved away with being a performance, or an experiment, or a thing they’re doing because they’re horny and don’t have a boyfriend. 

and think about how often queerbaiting with women involves maneuvering them into a situation where they kiss onscreen but in a purely performative way (the example that springs inevitably to mind is Veronica and Betty in Riverdale - images of them kissing were all over the marketing for the show, and in reality they kissed as part of a choreographed performance in-story - I can also think of several examples where it’s as part of a game, a dare or because their boyfriends tell them to/to titillate their boyfriends) or like...it’s not technically Queerbaiting but how often women specifically are made bisexual but only in a teehee coy ‘it’s sexy when girls kiss’ way.

whereas queerbaiting with men is an “I love you...bro” or a quiet moment or a point of emotional intimacy and them touching remotely sexually/romantically is seen as the Proof Of Queerness, which writers will often shy away from committing to

it only tends to become A Canon Queer Thing when men express physical/sexual intimacy (kissing or sex)

it only tends to become A Canon Queer Thing when women express emotional/romantic intimacy (dating, “I love you”s, or monogamy)

and I feel...Some Kind Of Way about this and how it slots into the experience of exploring your own wlw identity. how women are still assumed to be and treated as straight even if they’re regularly seeking/having sex with other women unless they a) reject men utterly or b) enter a monogamous relationship.

and it feeds into something I’ve thought about a lot over the years which is how thoroughly gendered the experience of bi/homophobia is (not in terms of how you identify but in terms of how the -phobe is reading you)

like ultimately it comes down to the idea that men define sexuality

all sexual contact with women is overridden/negated by sexual contact with men. women aren’t given the same power to define sexuality as men.

which means that if you are a man who kisses/sleeps with men even once, you are gay

if you are a woman, kissing/sleeping with a man even once will make you straight

so sexual contact between women isn’t threatening the way sexual contact between men is. however gay a woman gets you can always walk it back in the eyes of heteronormativity. but if a man Goes Gay even a little bit that’s his identity set in stone however many women he goes on to sleep with/date.

and ultimately not to be crass it’s about The World Revolving Around Men’s Dicks. literally. so much of the gendered construction of homo/biphobia is about a patriarchal society unable to comprehend the concept that you could sleep with a man and be unchanged by it. sex and sexuality has been framed so universally for so long in so many cultures as a matter of male power and that is so definitional to homo/biphobia and to mainstream ideas about sexuality.

and that means that homophobia and biphobia are very shaped by your perceived gender in relation to your attraction

gay men are threatening because male sexuality is seen as such a powerful, shaping force, that the mere presence of gay men could be enough to shape the sexuality of men around them. this horror of Being Turned Gay this utter distress at the fragility of heterosexuality is so foundational to the way homophobia is upheld and expressed. it’s vital to heteronormative masculinity to distance yourself from gayness by any means necessary, to violently reject gayness, because even slight contact with male sexual or romantic intimacy has the power to redefine you.

whereas a lot of lesbophobia rests on the idea that it’s a deliberate rejection of men, and a temporary one - you’ll find the right man. sex with a man has the power to change you. and because of that relationships between women aren’t seen as meaningful in their own right. like a lot of cultures prohibiting sex between men treat sex between women as a natural, expected adolescent experiment, or as irrelevant as long as you also fuck your husband. it isn’t threatening to heteronormativity to kiss, fuck or love women, until you say this is real and it matters. Then it’s threatening because you’re being mean. You’re saying the Not Serious Not Definitional relationship of women loving women is powerful, more powerful than the Defining Power of Man Dick, and that’s aberrant, and it’s also kind of seen as...childish? silly? like you just Don’t Understand that women loving women isn’t Real Attraction. you can’t define yourself through sex with women! they’re not men! women are defined by, they don’t define!

and as a bi woman who largely dates bi men, I’m particularly interested in the gendered nature of biphobia

bi men are assumed to be “really” gay and in the closet

bi women are assumed to be “really” straight and performing attraction to women for male attraction

and that brings us full-circle to glee

see Ty and I were talking about the two really offensive stories in glee which affected us as bi teenagers

he was talking about the story where Blaine says “I think I might be bi” and Kurt tells him “bi guys don’t exist, bisexual is just a label for closeted gay high schoolers”

I was talking about the story of Finn outing Santana, which is a CLUSTERFUCK. but aside from the outing, thinking about how everyone canonically knew that she was sleeping with Brittany but she was only put in danger when it was named as a queer love. like that she was still understood as entirely straight and Doing It For Attention even when holding hands, kissing and fucking another woman, as long as she didn’t call it love or a relationship.

and I’ve talked to a lot of other bi people about the experience of being a bi teenager and almost everyone who was read as a woman as a teenager speaks to doubting the veracity of their attraction to women, to being treated as an attention-seeker looking for male attention or someone going through an experimental phase. and I think that’s usually how we talk about biphobia. as being assumed “a straight person looking for attention”. but the experience of a lot of people of narratives about bi men are a bit different and so the experience of bi teenage boys is really different. for girls/”girls”, queerness is something that has to be constantly asserted and proved. for boys/”boys”, it’s straightness that has to be proved. even if you mostly date girls, if you ever like. kissed a boy at a party or expressed attraction to another guy then people assumed you were gay and your attraction to women was fake.

and the throughline isn’t comphet it’s. I guess...comp-liking-men. it’s the assumption that attraction to women is a shadow of attraction to men. it can’t possibly compete.

I have often expressed, often to girlfriends I just had sex with, my fear that I’m appropriating queerness by laying any claim to it. like they look at me like I’m an idiot but later they’ll tell me the same thing. and that’s a fragility that assumed-male queerness just doesn’t have. male heterosexuality is so fragile that anything straying even slightly away from it is seen as Deeply, Threateningly Queer. female heterosexuality is so default that queerness has to CONSTANTLY fight for any space against it - even glancing in the direction of heterosexuality is enough to negate queerness. if you sleep with a man, if you even express the opinion that a man is good-looking, you’re Straight Now. they’re mirror images of each other and ultimately yeah it really comes down to the expectation of male power 

and also kind of...the irrelevance of women’s feelings in sexuality? the construction of all sexuality (including heterosexuality) as Male Desire and Female Acquiescence - historically society tends to not give a shit what women want, feel or love as long as they have sex with their husbands and don’t run the risk of having another man’s babies. it honestly like, not to get all Straw Feminist on this but it comes down to the subjugation and dehumanisation of women. a woman in patriarchy is an object owned and used to serve a function and a relationship that doesn’t threaten the ownership or affect the function (you’re still having sex with him and he still knows your child is his) isn’t a threat. women aren’t owners, they’re owned. if you say ‘actually I belong to this other woman and not to you’ it becomes a threat. if you start refusing to be a wife or a sexual partner or a mother it becomes a threat. but “passionate friendships” and schoolgirl experimentation weren’t just tolerated but sometimes actively encouraged as long as you still fulfilled your function as a wife fully. like you can fuck other girls before you get married - that’ll help you learn to Do Sex without having you Tainted By Another Man. you can keep a live-in mistress as long as you understand that your husband will always take precedence - that way you can have those pesky emotional needs met but you won’t cheat on him with a man and cuckold him. it’s only when you say This Is Queer And This Matters And We Matter that it becomes a threat. when she starts mattering as much as him. when you don’t marry men but devote yourself to women. now you’re Failing In Your Function. obviously this isn’t how it’s framed now but like. these ideas seem to me to have a direct throughline to the ways queer women are recieved now - as either Basically Straight or as Aggressive Rejectors Of The Normal.

idk it’s 5:30 am now I should sleep. but. this is such a rich topic I could talk about it forever. 

[commlinson]

why isn't it in cishet women’s best interest to date homophobic straight men?

and why the Venn diagram of straight homophobic men and people who refuse to comprehend the concept of consent is a circle ⭕️

it is disturbing how many cis het women overlook their partner’s raging homophobic behaviour assuming it won’t affect their heterosexual relationship in any way. disregarding the fact that homophobia has deep roots in misogyny.

that is: the hatred of femininity within itself or performed by other men (or people in general) rounds up to tying traditionally feminine gender norms with wrong, inferior and weak. which is a huge ass red flag alone.

in a nutshell: we’re talking projection. straight homophobic men are terrified to be perceived or treated by gay men, the way they treat women - that is: as with their boodies seen as a right instead of a privilege.

how so? straight men are socialised to believe they own every single body to ever walk this planet. acting on this belief encloses complete disregard of consent and people’s boundaries, therefore they freak out at the possibility of roles being reversed and having other people treating them the way they treat women in their lives. sexuality, socially, you name it.

holding that thought, think about people you know: men who genuinely respect and treat women right mainly the ones they aren’t attracted to and do not rely on are most likely not homophobic

again, there are no homophobic men who aren’t also misogynistic because all systemic oppressions work together.

that’s why i’ve trained all my girls to always ask men on their first date if they’ve ever kissed other men, the reaction and the tone alone will say everything you’ll need to know

[traincat]

Hey so, why is it that so many,when talking about johnnys sexuality, keep using the word gay? Idk maybe im just damaged from all the bi erasure in other fandoms and in canonically queer characters but while there's a lot that implies johnnys attraction to men, that doesnt exactly negate his - albeit limited- attraction to women. Like i ofc want us to get an out and happy johnny but as a multisexual guy, I would hate to see them do what they did with iceman and just go for the Gay label, y'know?

Same anon as bi erasure one. I want to add that obviously i have nothing against gay people or gay rep, im just tired of how queer ppl (men in particular) get treated like we're all gay when theres such a wide spectrum and fluidity to sexuality, you know? Usually in comics we get shoved to the back with crap like "morally inverted tony stark fucks women AND men" or morally gray/evil characters as being promiscuous enough to sleep with all genders which... obviously sends a rather nasty message

I think I have to start this one off by saying the very obvious, which is that I am not in charge of any Marvel property in any way, shape, or form, and I really have no control over their decisions in the slightest. We’d be reading very different Spider-Man comics right now if I did. I also have no control over how other fans choose to think of Johnny Storm. In short:

I know that, personally, I have gone back in forth in how I think of Johnny’s sexuality, but that recently, while doing Fantastic Four readthroughs specifically focused on Johnny, I’ve said I think he’s gay and not bisexual because I think I’ve made a pretty good case that his attraction to women has by in large been written, whether intentionally or not, as performative, uncomfortable, or, at its mildest, just really awkward, ie not sincere in its presentation. I’ve talked about the myth of playboy Johnny before and how the point where it starts in canon is important. I also have a really long post about my personal thoughts on the decades and decades of queercoding where Johnny is concerned and how I came to my own personal conclusions on what I think about his sexuality and the writing trends that led me to this specific conclusion.  

I’m not erasing Johnny’s bisexuality because as far as Marvel has stated on the matter so far, at the time this post was written, Johnny is heterosexual. Even his brief sexual affair with Daken is subtextual, not hard canon -- Marjorie Liu has commented that it was written with that intention in mind, but it’s certainly possible to read the Dark Wolverine storylines Johnny appears in without a personal belief that they were fucking, because it’s not hard canon. (And if we want to talk about Marvel’s messy history of problematic bisexual representation, I personally think Daken “early appearances erotically asphyxiating a hookup to death” Akihiro is a pretty prime example, especially compared to the evil Iron Man orgy.) I think it’s interesting compare Johnny to Bobby -- something I do in the latter post linked above myself -- because, like Bobby, I think there’s a lot to dig into in Johnny’s canonical relationships with women that lend themselves well to this subtext, something I think it’s significantly harder to do with characters like, say, Spider-Man, specifically because of how those relationships were written. Which isn’t, in my opinion and from my standpoint, discounting those relationships entirely, but rather viewing in them in an alternative light. What I’m saying with Johnny specifically is that I think it would be harder to cast doubts about his genuine romantic or sexual attraction to women if there were fewer panels of him cringing away from being kissed by them. (They’re in the Johnny relationship history post. There’s a lot of them.) I also think it’s interesting that there are several out of main continuity universes that feature deeper dives into Johnny’s sexuality -- my go-to is always the incredible Startling Stories: Fantastic Four: Unstable Molecules, a mini-series dedicated to the lives of a fictional “real” group of people who inspired the Fantastic Four, where the Real Johnny is a teenager dealing with his sexuality in stifling ‘50s small town America. But I’m also not objecting to anyone’s personal read on Johnny as bisexual instead of gay, because, again, neither of these reads are canon at the moment, and also I really don’t want to get into the deep waters of fictional character sexuality discourse. It’s just my personal read on the character and I think I’ve previously made my case on why pretty well.