#like im begging ppl to stop thinking they're woke for reinforcing gender roles just bc they flipped ur expectstions

[stedebonnit]

I want to be 100% clear that this post about examining your biases applies to everyone who exclusively enforces top/bottom gender roles in fandom (which I specify in the post, I'm not claiming that enjoying one character as a top and the other as a bottom is bad, I'm specifically talking about how this often extends into applying additional gendered roles based on the assignment of top vs. bottom)

Just because you're picking the "unexpected" person to be the bottom/sub/fem/soft/weak doesn't mean you're not reinforcing heteronormative gender roles.

Just because you've examined your racism and realized its wrong to be putting POC in the exclusively dominant role, but do so by putting them in the exclusively submissive role doesn't mean you aren't enforcing heteronormative gender roles (and similarly, just because you're not enforcing heteronormative gender roles doesn't mean that you have fully examined your racist interpretations of different characters, which goes deep enough to be its own post directed at fellow white queers)

Just because you picked the character who experiences explicit homophobia to be the top, but still engage in erasing all of their feminine traits and forcing them into a box that is directly opposed to how their character was written, doesn't mean you're not enforcing heteronormative gender roles!

Its ingrained in us. All of us. Its in me, too. But until you CHOOSE to notice it and actively break away from it, you will continue to be a part of the problem.