#like masculinity is a social construct
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i also don’t think ‘security in your masculinity’ functions as a cure for violence against women. in fact, the cure is (put simply) compassion and empathy for women, the recognition that women are human beings, which is something masculinity is explicitly constructed against. because masculinity isn’t a biological reality, it’s a social construct defined against a feminine ‘other’ and associated with power. traits/behaviours/embodiment that one culture and time period associates with masculinity are associated with femininity in another. In that context ‘security in your masculinity’ means... security that you don’t have to behave like [insert racialised/class-prejudiced portrayal of stereotypes male violence here] to preserve the privileges you expect to be surrounded by as a member of the dominant gender class. the irony in the ‘secure in my masculinity’ brag is that it makes the men with genuine cause to fear for their place in masculine hegemony (disabled men, gay men, trans men, men of colour, jewish men, immigrant men, working class men, etc) more of a threat than the men who are most secure within it. and now, under this framework, striving for inclusion within the privileged class, fighting to maintain its definitions, and subscribing to its values, is... feminist praxis? and of course, in all of this, men’s experiences are centralised in the conversation of violence against women. violence against women becomes a tribal issue between groups of men, a.k.a 'feminist’ men are taking fundamentally the same perspective as the 3750 year old code of hammurabi.
#its so lazyyyyy#and when people are like im secure enough in my masculinity to paint my nails or whatever the whole thing really falls apart#like masculinity is a social construct#either youre saying 'im secure enough in my adherence to this social construct to occasionally divert from it' (thus legitimising the#construct) or you're just subscribing to a bioessentialist notion of some fundamental masculinity#that still protects you even when you aren't performing masculinity#like. stfu#i really dont know where these (almost invariably straight) guys think gnc people fit into this. chances are they dont think at all lol#and i love how he draws attention in that article to how often the implied 'insecure man' is working class and/or not white#because it's like yeah you're a threat in your struggle to secure power (and ofc marginalised men often DO hurt women around them in order#to do this) BUT the men who don't have to do this because..their power is already ultimate...are framed as the good guys#rather than. the even worse guys.#anyway as always compare butch masculinity with men's masculinity and you'll find masculinity is not just a neutral set of traits that#just randomly happen to be associated with men for no reason#okay anyway im done i dont care any more im breathing into a paper bag
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Staying up thinking about aclaimed Old Hollywood actor Ronald Colman and how he has a very masculine face yet something in him is very soft almost femenine and that makes him incredibly atractive in a way i don't know how to describe
#It's his eyelashes maybe?#His mannerisms?#He is everything i want and i would like to be#Is this gender envy?#I just love how he is seen as this “gentleman” but i think all of the things that make him atractive are not necesarely “masculine”#Yes yes gender is a social construct what is femenine what is masculinity etc etc BUT#Maybe he just stole all the gender and left nothing for us#Ronald Colman#(Also i think this is something that a lot of silent film stars have which might be the explanation on why i like them so much)
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whats fun about barry as a protagonist vs other Morally Complicated Guy Shows is that he seriously has no ambition lol, his wildest dreams arent like becoming super rich or relishing in holding power over people, like all he wants is simple happiness, maybe career success, normal life stuff, his wildest dreams are like…. being able to have a wedding. having a kid or two. and theres something reasonable about that, it makes him relatable for a while until the show is very clearly like No dude, that is a fucking serial killer, you should not gaf! and you’re like oh right lol. it’s crazy to make such a simple desire seem so malicious but still human
#like the true success of the show is that he feels just as entitled as walter white even though what he wants is so much smaller#L + serial killer + you’re a war criminal + you’re abusive + kys#barry#but i think it threads the line a little where by s5 of brba i had 0 care for walt i did not feel any emotional attachment#and tbh by the end i didnt even find the whole corruption arc interesting because he was just so painfully malignant and annoying#but barry wants sooooo little. and he’s sooooo stupid. and hes soooo arrested development 15 year old boy#that it still manages to be compelling and he still manages to feel like a human being#not a knock on brba which is incredible television obviously just doing different stuff#idk. something about how it’s tragic but also held at an appropriate distance so as to be laughed at too#like: the irremovable mark doing violence leaves on you.. the inescapability of it… IS sad! it’s sad#and most often IS the result of social conditioning and masculinity constructs and your dads friend grooming you etc#but it’s not the prime sadness. which would be of course the victims of that violence#like. duh#walter my reaction is just. Well i wouldnt do that. I would never choose to do that so who cares#but with barry. all he wants is to not be defined by the hurt he has caused. which is something everybody wants!#but the extents of that hurt are so extreme and are teased apart so well in the show. like theres 0 apologia just exploration#anyway if im doing brba comparisons barry is literally todd
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btw sexuality labels do not have to be super specific with strict boundaries of what "qualifies" as being that sexuality. you do not have to base how you define your sexuality on the first description that comes up on google; history, culture, the nuances of personal experience, and what you feel connected to are just as important a part of how you choose to identify!
#brought to you by a lesbian continously annoyed at the 'non man loving non men' description of lesbianism#i used to think i had to wall myself off from being attracted to certain genders in order to continue identifying as a lesbian#but like. gender is weird and silly and so is sexuality!!#this isn't something i'm the most knowledgeable on but to my understanding before lesbian separatism the term lesbian was used a bit#differently than it is today - being attracted to men didn't make someone not a lesbian#which i like! cus i identify a lot with (especially femme) lesbian history#i like queer masculinity! in the particular way that is common for femme lesbians#to me being a femme lesbian describes my experience with the way i feel within myself and the way i love queer masculinity. it doesn't feel#contradictory to me to be in relationships with men. i luuuuv my boyfriends and#me being a lesbian doesn't mean i don't or that i don't see them as men or anything#i am not particularly good at the whole Social Constructs thing due to autism so that probly plays into it#it is all confusing and i don't necessarily understand some of it (even my own identities) but i go with what makes me feel like me#^-^#meg (boyfriend) saw this post and said ''i used to think i wasn't attracted to men. i was just looking at the wrong men''#which is sooo true
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Love how in the last two Earthsea books Le Guin just drops “all mages are celibate and most witches are lesbians” and then just moves on with the story, icon shit tbh
#not to mention how sorcerers are like the fucjin GBTQ masculinity reading gold mine#masculinity marked by proximity to socially constructed womanhood & exclusion from institutional masculinity#specifically referring to the sorcerer magic gender in Earthsea not at large here#also reading the Farthest Shore as a kid made me think ‘I wish I could be a boy on a boat’ so now I have a tattoo about it#abe.txt
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last night in the pub after the anti terf protests I was talking to this guy whose PhD was in I think linguistic constructions around gender? the phenomenology of gender? idk I was quite drunk and it was very loud. anyway we were talking about defining gender identity and he was increasingly enthusiastically going STOP. SHUT UP. I HEARD PEOPLE SAYING THE EXACT SAME STUFF AT A GENDER CONFERENCE LAST WEEK. YOU'RE ON THE CUTTING EDGE OF CONTEMPORARY FEMINIST THOUGHT WHY ARE YOU NOT DOING A PHD????
and I was like first of all ayyyyy ✌️😘 second of all pal you expect me to like. Justify my thoughts academically? I've met doctoral candidates you bitches are all miserable. and third literally all I was actually saying was stuff like 'there are different definitions of womanhood that are useful in different contexts' and 'there are different meanings to gender in a social and in an individual context' and 'in a lot of liberationist contexts "person who experiences misogyny" is the most useful definition, but aside from finetuning what that actually means and how it relates to people who are subject to misogyny but don't consider themselves women etc, where does that leave us in imagining a post-oppressive womanhood if we don't fill in subscribe to a gender abolitionist standpoint, which I don't, because I like being a woman and find joy in it' and like. all of those are not Deeply Considered Academic Theories as much as they're Having Thought About My Experiences In The World
so I mean fair play bc I do think it's a good sign if your academic theory is something that a layman can come to on their own terms. imo the job of academics is not to invent theory but to codify it and make it explicit and specific. so like if your theory is reflected in where people outside academic philosophy end up that's probably a positive. same as Marx right, like Marx didn't invent the idea of capitalist alienation or collective action but he did codify it and make it easier to build off.
Like I appreciate this. I appreciate when we can recognise that a theory that people NEVER come to outside academia is probably. not a very useful theory.
#red said#also had a good chat spinning off the gender abolitionism thing#with! someone who i did NOT expect to see there who's someone who was friends with all my Oxford friends in like 2011#and has since moved countries and genders and has Very Nice Hair#and i feel like we came down on like. gender without misogyny would certainly look different but like. is it imaginable?#good chat we were tossing around comparisons with social models of disability which like. that IS something i have mild academic backing on#like what does it mean to agree that gendered experience of self exists but to problematise the way we CATEGORISE those#like. so much of the CATEGORIES of gender are in relationship to gendered hierarchy#in the same way as eg autism is categorised as deviant from 'neurotypicality' femininity is categorised by distance from masculinity#but 8n both cases while the EXPERIENCES are real and meaningful the CLUSTER DEFINITION is fully arbitrary and formed around deviance#in a world where autism was normalised and autsistic people faced no additional barriers i would still intuitively Get the experience#of ppl who are the same flavour of brainweird as me in a way i didn't with ppl whose brains are different flavours.#but i also get on better with people who like wrestling than people who like mma but we don't construct those as separate social categories#so like what does it look like to approach gender in a more fluid cluster setting?#like not gender neutral or gender unimportant but gender personal flavour#a grab bag of unattached signifiers and identity
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terfs kys challenge
#idec anymore. i fucking hate terfs and bigots like that. i sincerely hope they just fuck off the planet.#they say shit like “oh trans ppl are like 'i dont dress like a girl so i must be a boy!'”#LITERALLY NOBODY SAYS THAT ITS MORE COMPLICATED ITS A WHOLE SOUL SEARCHING FUCKING PROCESS#i hate them i hate them i hate them#yes we know that women can look like whatever they want. WE ENDORSE GETTING RID OF GENDER NORMS#WE JUST KNOW THAT GENDER IS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT AND WE DO WTF WE WANT#A TRANS WOMAN COULD BE MASCULINE AND STILL BE A WOMAN#SAME WAY A CIS WOMAN COULD BE MASCULINE AND STILL BE A WOMAN#the way we dress doesnt make us another gender its what we are that makes us another gender#and terfs are too fucking stupid abd brainwashed to realize that#terfs dni#transphobes dni#terfs kys
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yikes just had to block a mutual cus we dont gatekeep identities around here
#'male and masculinity are two different things' theyre also social constructs and nuanced#also very fucking online type beat discourse imo#dunno just#like we both know its not your straight guy named josh who identify as a mspec lesbian yk#but i digress idc ab investing in these type of arguments just wanted to make a fyi
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Dean winchester is a trans woman and cas literary does not have a gender. T4T goals.
if you hc a male character as a trans man you will get 50 people spawning out of the woodwork to agree and say so true and if you hc a male character as a trans woman the crowd goes mild and one person reblogs your post and says "i dont agree i think hes trans masc but this is a cute idea!"
#dean winchester#castiel#supernatural#sam is an ally#i just like the idea of sam being cis het but super progressive#like he knows gender is a social construct but he is comfortable im his manhood#and is like positivly masculine#so when dean is having the sexuality and gender crisis sam is just like#i know a really good book about this#his elective in college was queer theory or some shit
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writes many many words to explain why I'm fascinated by stories examining the dovetailing of personal and political/systemic violence in families and how it's rooted in patriarchal worldviews when I could just post "tfw there is no ethical way to be a paterfamilias" and leave it at that
#bolo speaks#I use the word ''patriarchal'' in the literal sense of the head of a household who is by default assumed to be male and#to have special powers over any women and children under his purview.#the social construct of ''family'' is still generally held as beyond reproach/skepticism even as lots of other societal categories#are being challenged.#and the role of ''father'' is traditionally its chief enforcer.#you can talk about positive masculinity all you want but can you REALLY defang what was designed to be an authoritarian system#by putting someone who promises really really hard he won't abuse his power at the helm?#also just personally speaking I think tolstoy was right that every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way#and that's a car crash that I feel like I could watch forever. so.
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l@imari has a place in my heart fr
#m/f ways? Extremely Bisexual. f/f ways? smirks...#cannot help but project my autism gender/sexuality onto laios due to woke#1. gender is extremely constructed and not directly correlated to personality all the time. though i generally find gnc people more#attractive regardless of gender but it depends. 2. i despise the social expecation of sex and gender and i think no matter my sex assigned#would probably be trans because i dont feel specifically Male but i refuse and reject being defined by my body and social rules regarding i#social rules chafe my assssssssssss i get ittttt pretty feathers cute little dance watever courting is weird#Why do people suppress themselves?their interests? why is fun childish? these are things that play into our gender perception too#i have genuinely come to believe autistic people and other NDs serve just as important a social function as things like social cohesion and#that is not having the same instinct to fit in as is appropriate#because sometimes fitting in isnt appropriate whether youre conscious of it or not i think its just stupid we cant play tuoys#once were too old or its weird#SIGHS. this became more about me than l@imari.#anyways. thats why i like tfem laios i dont think shed even bother thinking about who specifically she likes genderwise shed be distracted#with other stuff whether the Gender the King stuff or a romantic exploit#no matter how much i think on it i cant define my sexuality#i like droopy or unique eye shapes#i like muscles and fat#i like long hair i like larger lips i like gentleness and conscientiousness and openness and it always goes like this lol#i prefer my men feminine and my women masculine but not always#umm oh body hair <3 <3 <3 <3 and tits. not of any particular size but they gotta be good.#i know genitals that look more pleasing to the eye from ones that are less. they arent all just weird and ugly to me or anything but#other than that stuff i dont think i can call myself bi or pan because its not just about personality and gender does matter in ways but#IDK im nonbinary and gay so whatever its no matter... i think i would get a weird sense of euphoria if a nb/gnc lesbian was attracted to m
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Local bird found the word to fit the term! Im Apathgender and I use the he/she (or she/he idc)
#birb art#birb squark#this have been something i been thinking on for years#like gender is a social construct and im too autistic to care#but i also feel very connected to more masculine things and stuff#idk not something to worry about#fun fact i discovered the term watching galaxy clan of all things so that's funny
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it is worth considering that the line between support for cosmetic surgeries and support for medically transitioning is fairly blurry, and it's worth interrogating where (and why) you draw the line on bodily autonomy
stop the madness no more nose jobs
#no hate it's just an interesting interrogation that i really do Not have an answer for#on the one hand beauty standards should be absolutely shattered#and many people choose cosmetic surgery as a result of the social pressure stemming from beauty standards#BUT drawing the line between that and medically transitioning brings up so many questions about - well - GENDER standards#assuming that you are of the belief that gender is socially constructed#like i cannot answer the question 'why do you want to go on T?' without simply saying#'it would make me happier because i want to feel more masculine'#masculinity is constructed; beauty is constructed;#we may rightfully exalt being trans and disparage beauty standards#but the places of origin for cosmetic surgeries and medically transitioning are very similar: social constructs and#bodily autonomy. am i making sense? it's difficult to write well in the tags#should've done it on the post. but anyway!!#of course this all depends on where your deeper beliefs lie! i firmly believe that gender and physical beauty#are culturally constructed - and so that is where my thoughts come from#Essentially: i may not like the idea of people feeling like they HAVE to get cosmetic surgeries#but i cannot easily reconcile that dislike with my support of access to medically transitioningZ#if you have thoughts or arguments against this i would love to hear them!!
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i would actually like to hear more of your thoughts on whipping girl, whenever you feel ready enough to talk about it. i've only ever heard positive recommendations for it. i was thinking of reading it. i've read one or two introductory 101 texts on transmisogyny as well as some medium/substack posts, and always looking to read more as a tme person. ty!
thanks for asking! I'm gonna try to be concise because I'm stuck on my phone for the month, but here are my thoughts on whipping girl:
serano is at her strongest in the book in three areas: manifestations of transmisogyny in media (e.g. how trans caricatures pervade movies), the history of medical institutions developing a pathology of transsexuality (like the diagnostics of blanchard et al. or how trans people seeking healthcare were and continue to be forced into acting out prescribed expressions and manufacturing memories), and the construction of her own transition narrative (telling the reader what it was like for her to grow up desiring femininity in a way that confused her, the experience of crossdressing, the effects of hrt for her)
whenever she's just sticking to this, I think she effectively communicates a lot that the unaware reader could benefit from—even many trans women/transfems/tma people who are otherwise in tune with the history of medicalized transsexualism and our popular depictions could probably benefit from her own personal narrative, by nature of how variegated our experiences can be.
unfortunately I think the book fails at its primary—stated—goal, which is to theorize about transmisogyny. in the big picture this is a bifurcated failure:
on one branch of her argument, she remains committed to there being something biologically essential/innate about gender. this manifests thru multiple claims: that we have "innate inclinations" toward masculinity/femininity and "subconscious sex" rather than what I believe, which is that the latter are constructed categories imposed on different matrices of behaviour/expression/desire in different cultural contexts; that there is "definitely a biological component to gender" (close paraphrase) after a discussion of how she believes E and T tend to affect people (thus equivocating gender with dominant hormones!); that we have such a thing as "physical sex" which is the composition of our culturally decided "sex characteristics" (don't ask me how the dividing line is drawn) even as she says we should stop using "biological sex" as a term; that there is "no harm" in agreeing that "sex" is largely bimodal with some exceptions; that social constructionism is necessarily erasure of transsexual experiences in early childhood... altogether she is unwilling to relinquish arguments about the partial "innateness" of femininity/masculinity and gender. this is at tension with her admission on several occasions that these are neither culturally/geographically nor temporally stable concepts! but that doesn't seem to be a line she can follow thru on.
on another, intertwining branch, she engages in what I think is a deep and widespread mistake in the theorizing of transmisogyny: reducing it (mechanistically) to what she calls effemimania* or essentially anti-femininity. it is her stated thesis at the start that masculinity is universally preferred to femininity. she doesn't offer a definition of either term until one of the final chapters, where she defines them as the behaviours and expressions associated with a particular gender. but I think this reduction just misunderstands transmisogyny. it is even in tension with an observation she makes early on, that trans women are often punished for their perceived masculinity! but again, this is a thought she seems unable or unwilling to follow thru with.
my problem with the thesis is that masculinity and femininity do not float free of gender—it is not possible to speak of their valuation in the abstract. anyone who grew up as a masculine cis girl and never "grew out" of that "phase" can attest to the violence wrought upon expressions of masculinity from women. and this applies doubly so to the subjects of transmisogyny! not only are we punished for any perceived bleed-through of masculinity from our supposed "underlying male selves", those of us who are willingly masculine and thriving as mascs are punished for our failure to conform to the rules of the normative womanhood that is imposed on us (just as we are punished for any willing femininity as "false" and predatory upon cis womanhood—observe that transmisogyny is reactive degendering in every case!).
on both branches serano makes only perfunctory remarks about the intersections with race, class, and colonialism. "sex" as such was made to only be accessible to the "civilized", most of all the white european! for a racialized person and particularly a Black person navigating gender the waters are just not the same; the signifiers of sex neither available in the same way, nor granted the same medical legitimacy. what is the "physical sex" of someone who is de-sexed altogether? how can gender have a "biologically innate" component when its expressions between the bourgeoisie and the working class are at total odds with one another? this all goes for the masculine/feminine distinctions as well. what sense is there in the claim that we have innately masculine/feminine inclinations when globally (and transmisogyny has been made global!) what is feminine and masculine can be very nearly mirrored? nor is "masculinity is always considered superior to femininity" innocent of obviating race. transmisogynoir adds yet further degendering thru the coercive masculinization of someone as a Black woman—masculinization as punishment, again!
and as a final point, the account fails to be materialist. there is no attempt to place transmisogyny in its role as an instrument of political economy or, as jules gill-peterson might say, as a tool of statecraft. it is just a psychological response to the way the world is, as far as serano has anything to say about it. but how did the world become that way, and why?? serano's solution, the abolition of what she calls gender entitlement, is naive to the fact that gender entitlement is necessary to the maintenance of the capitalist state, which is structured thru patriarchy and built on colonialism. it is not possible to reskin this into something innocuous!
this is why I cannot recommend whipping girl as a work about transmisogyny except at the most shallow level. it could be a helpful critical read, but imo, it is just wrong about transmisogyny.
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“Men can’t get pregnant” “Men don’t need abortions” “Men can’t have boobs” “Transmen scare women, they shouldn’t be in maternity wards or the women’s restroom. Also menstrual products shouldn’t be in the men’s room” “Men don’t need women’s healthcare. We’re not treating you.” “Testosterone is gonna make you aggressive and sexual. I don’t know if I want to hang out anymore.” “Testosterone isn’t gonna make you a twink, you’re gonna have acne and be bald and ugly and sweaty and gross and get fat and hairy (these are bad things to me)” “You wear a packer? Why would you want a dick, is it like, sexual?” “Phalloplasty is fucking disgusting. It’s not like a real dick, why would you want that? You’re mutilating yourself. No, that can’t be transphobic, I’m trans.” “Lol obviously trans men can’t top, they don’t have a dick”
But you’re telling me the social construction of manhood and masculinity specifically has nothing to do with the transphobia trans men face? Yup, just “garden-variety” transphobia
#obviously gender intersects with transness race class etc. no matter what gender this is intersectionality 101#transandrophobia tw#transphobia tw#transphobia#transandrophobia#antimasculinism#transfeminism#intracommunity issues tag#mine
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the "labru chapter" is the kabru chapter
this is a dungeon meshi love manifesto, but not in the way you think. sorry not sorry for the labrubait
what makes chapter 76 so amazing is kabru’s desperation has little to do with laios specifically. it’s not just about kabru being obsessed with laios and making sure he doesn't cause tragedy, either. I think this chapter emphasizes kabru's struggle with the concept of love and companionship. the point of this chapter is that every critical part of kabru collides at once and renders him useless.
(disclaimer: this post includes a lot of projection/speculation but it's to understand kabru's character arc i promise. for clearer analysis and examination of how kabru's ideologies are constructed, check out this really great post)
kabru is a lone visionary
in ch 76, kabru’s threatened by lycion exposing his true intentions to laios not only bc he wants to prevent laios from joining marcille in her destruction, but also bc laios is also from a short-lived race and kabru needs an ally in his power struggle against elves (esp when the chips are down)
but has kabru really accepted his need for allies in his plight? kabru has spent his adult life suppressing a human urge to connect meaningfully with others. he even keeps rinsha et al. at arm's length in the name of achieving his masculine hero complex/survivor's guilt goals. he's already quite disillusioned bc most adventurers don't have the same goal as he does. so he uses people and gets on their good side for systematic support. he’s well-intentioned and takes care of his party. but the idea that an ally could also protect HIM and make HIM feel safe as well doesn’t really register with him until later on in the narrative bc camaraderie and allyship, at its core, is about acknowledging intimacy. kabru struggles with intimacy sub-textually (his self-neglect and social insincerity) even though he knows how to simulate it to gain others' trust.
but he can’t crack laios, he can’t get him to listen. for lack of a better word, kabru is spoiled by the fruits of his superb perception and emotional intelligence. he also doesn’t cope well with failure (bc his goal is too valuable to ~not~ devote himself to) he puts too much value in conquering laios and when he thinks he's failed, he basically crashes out. the real problem is he still doesn’t understand his true feelings--not feelings for laios, but the root of his desire. the root of his goals and the endless search for companionship.
kabru is a strategic historian
at his core, kabru is a storyteller. he tells himself a variety of stories about his trauma and his goals, which serve as motivation and to some extent, self-protection (as shown in his conversation w mithrun). he deeply understands the role of storytelling in regards to the construction of history and drastic shifts in power.
as an utayan, he understands that the tragedy that overcame his people was not random, but resulted from elven negligence of a disenfranchised people. it is imperative for kabru to cement himself as a voice for otherwise voiceless people. in his story, he has no choice but to handle the hero, if not become the hero himself.
kabru even has a story about his pursuit of laios, mainly that laios is currently the most capable person of defeating the mage and that he must do whatever it takes to ensure laios doesn’t fuck it up. his instincts are right, sure, but at first, he places special value in laios’ capabilities that almost seems unearned… like yes he’s studied the island adventurers with frightening expertise, so it makes sense he would have a good idea about who is the most equipped to succeed. but his early suspicions of the toudens seems to complicate my perception of his knowledge by adding emotional depth and a layer of tinhattery so to speak.
canonically, kabru has been rebuffed by laios multiple times (which is so... lolll) when he's talking with his party, kabru hides behind the excuse of dungeon but he’s been trying to get his attention this whole time. to me it reads like he's got a bruised ego from being ignored and is being a hater about it (so real lol). it's funny bc kabru is usually great at taking shit from others (esp elves) if it means nobody suspects/interrogates his true intentions and he can keep the peace. so why does laios tick him off so bad? now we have to get into the psychoanalysis of it all!
kabru is a cynic
first and foremost, kabru’s cynical philosophy about humans is challenged by the touden mission. but plenty of people don’t care about the impact of their actions, so why does kabru obsess over the toudens at the start? I figured kui changed gears with kabru's characterization following his introduction, but I want to try to connect it to kabru's unresolved survivor's guilt. kabru is the sole survivor of a catastrophe caused by negligence and oversight. he criticizes the negative impact of the toudens' generosity and naïveté and confirms his cynical worldview (the road to hell is paved with best intentions), but still maintains a level-headed perspective. on the other hand, kabru's interactions with laios are tinged with irrational jealousy/resentment/desperation, even prior to kabru learning laios' character/intentions as an adventurer. I cannot emphasize enough that I am employing a neutral definition of jealousy here--it seems kabru is jealous of the freedom to not care the way laios does not care about the fate of the island. this isn't to say laios doesn't care about humans, he does, but he seems so singleminded compared to kabru esp in ch 76. kabru sees laios going to the literal end of the world to save his sister. laios gets to be human selfishly, kind-natured but ultimately self-prioritizing.
kabru correctly assesses motives (besides his own maybe). falin said she’d do anything to protect laios and marcille. laios has been socially rejected by people his whole life, and at first, he only cares about his sister and monsters. kabru has survived horror but only by accident… he doesn't agree with their pov and more importantly, it doesn’t exactly compute with him. the toudens are wholly unaware of their impact, which does not sit well with kabru at all, who understands the impact of negligence better than anyone else, esp how it ends up harming the less fortunate and extremely marginalized in society. it's reminiscent of the age-old trolley problem. while kabru has been the victim of senseless pain, I suspect kabru can’t yet make sense of senseless love. he gets to look down at their cause and call it selfish because it directly contradicts his lived experience.
kabru is an ethicist with a heroic streak
it's easy to glean that kabru wants to be the hero utaya should’ve had. while he's hardcore and intense, but not paranoid enough to do something rash. he uses violence as a means of achieving peace. he's self-aware enough to know his skill limits, which seems rational at a glance but the pressure he puts on himself suggests he views himself as inadequate until he achieves his goal. the races of humans are so split up and he sees that this is a matter of power first and foremost.
with the canaries, kabru submits to political pageantry to make a separate case for innocent people. senseless tragedy is unforgivable, but so is the "too little too late" reality of the canary system. he takes on the impossible task of rallying people together to save the dungeon. one read is that he's saving his childhood self from trauma perhaps by saving those like him… he's wishing someone did something before it got bad, wondering why nobody intervened when they had every opportunity to step in. it’s deeper than a sense of duty or fairness, this is about betrayal and retribution.
throughout his life, kabru struggles with the material inequity and limits of love. the human population is fundamentally segmented into a hierarchy due to lifespans and access to power/resources. his mother was the only one who loved him in utaya and she was ostracized because of his appearance and then she was killed due to senseless tragedy. his frustration with the elves encapsulates this idea perfectly, because he is aware of of the limits of their empathy as a long-lived race and adjusts his strategy and rhetoric accordingly. I think milsiril’s love for kabru is genuine, but still infantilizing and smothering due to the racial imbalance. this continues to inform his politics, as he views their perception of short-lived races with contempt. the worst offense is that their bigotry is nonsensical, meaning their hearts cannot be reasoned with.
dungeon meshi is a story about power and politics, yes, but genuine love and acceptance are the catalysts of change and equality. the "invisible gulf" that marcille is referring to is the inability to view other races with love and care. such is the essence of camaraderie. kabru's backstory, family history, and beliefs/motivations raise two important questions for me: who gets to be loved enough to survive, and then to thrive?
kabru is a monster
the emphasis on distinguishing between humans and monsters is quite interesting too. of all sentient beings, who qualifies as worthy of "human" treatment? who deserves empathy and acceptance? kabru seeks these answers to fix the world, but also to justify his place in it.
kabru's lack of self-worth is evident here, but what’s more interesting is he knows many humans suffer worse fates than some monsters. the dehumanization/neglect of fellow humans does not compute, if the premise is humans are superior to demi-humans/non-humans because mutual empathy and understanding. he clings to the superiority of humanity as an appeal to ethos to those in power despite what he might actually believe about himself. to kabru, the true injustice is that humans won’t even save “inferior” humans despite being the same. his unclear heritage manifests as guilt, as he feels directly responsible for his mother's suffering because he is monstrous. then here comes laios, a human who somehow can find it in himself to love monsters.
kabru doesn’t want laios to love him, per se, but laios’ love for monsters and for falin reveals life-altering possibilities for kabru: there is a world where someone could love him even if he were a monster. there is a world where somebody would go to extreme measures just to save him. kabru does not know the extent of laios' trauma but recognizes a sort of kindred spirit but inverse. taking off the ship goggles here--it has less to do with laios specifically, and more to do with what his beliefs/abilities represent for the trajectory of the world (because kabru studies how beliefs/abilities manifest into material reality, after all)
kabru is seeking the power of love
in a different story, kabru would be laios’ archnemesis. they would have a disastrous battle of opposing worldviews in their struggle for dominion. kabru has every right to want to take laios out bc while his affinity for monsters is sympathetic and even charming, it is still a natural threat… kabru has the true hero pathology. he believes he only deserves to live if he can save people for a variety of reasons/traumas. he should do whatever it takes to exterminate laios. but the expectation is subverted in chapter 76 bc we see kabru’s curiosity and ongoing quest for understanding win over his worst fears.
I feel like I’ve been projecting a lot but bear with me... a huge part of kabru’s character is him trying to figure out how to matter to people, or figuring out why people matter to others in general. it’s not to say he doesn’t matter to his friends or milsiril, but why else would he bother with all the manipulative people-pleasing? it would be less meaningful if he had ulterior motives like greed or power, but he plays into people's expectations/desires for a disastrously noble cause. he’s still actively living in his trauma as a deeply traumatized adult. it’s pure serendipity that laios can send him right back to his past and then pull him right out again. I don't think it's crazy to say kabru (correctly) projects a lot of shit on laios bc he doesn’t know how to deal with those injustices and barriers between people himself.
this is also why I believe kabru's beef with laios is as personal as it is strategic. we have to consider the trajectories of their character arcs (their big missions, respectively) in relation to one another as foils. if laios' love for falin can move mountains and do impossible things, kabru is subconsciously drawn to the magnitude of that love like a magnet. his response to cognitive dissonance is quite remarkable as well. at the root of his unbelievable capacity for understanding and curiosity is the deep wound of being unloved and unprotected. kabru does not avoid or run away from his fears, he quite literally keeps running toward them and follows it down to hell. he wants to identify the true source of his deepest wound.
to me, this omake connects his childhood curiosity to his search for love, almost as to ask “is there enough room for me to be loved?" and the same can be said for marcille's character arc/ backstory. her biracial heritage has caused her great existential pain and social isolation.
in dungeon meshi, the issues of protection and justice continue to be interpreted through love. if kabru were to go back in time and save utaya, he would’ve needed incomprehensible magic, a supernatural power to save himself, his mother, his hometown. in contrast, laios' mission to save falin is just one manifestation of the surreality of love, all of the impossibilities it permits. the touden party wade through invisible gulfs to save falin, but also each other. kabru doesn’t hate their story, he just can’t fathom it yet.
kabru is a skilled strategist and communicator. and does not listen to his heart or body until he’s absolutely forced to do it. he has insane goals and expectations for himself and will go to great measures for those goals. as cerebral and cold as he might seem, it’s critical to understand that his character arc is about love too. in my opinion, it’s almost as if he’s trying to change his reality in hopes of finding love. my favorite thing about kabru is that he has all the narrative makings of the perfect misunderstood villain who self-destructs at the end of the story. but kabru is too smart for that, too focused on the big-picture impacts and the historical trajectory of the cause. instead, kabru finds the wherewithal to stand down once he understands that laios is capable of loving humanity like he does, or that he could help him see the value in humanity at all.
to love is to understand, and then to surrender.
#dungeon meshi#kabru#kabruganda#labru#dungeon meshi meta#long post#dungeon meshi spoilers#hits post and runs away#unfortunately everything is about love to me#mine
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