#not the gender way but in general

[neptunejheart]

Yeh even perfect me gets triggered and has to self regulate. Being human is wack. I should be happy in every moment of my life but alas, I am still human. I have to experience different things "for the plot." But not all of it will always feel good. That's part of it.

[anghraine]

It's always been intriguing to me that, even when Elizabeth hates Darcy and thinks he's genuinely a monstrous, predatory human being, she does not ever perceive him as sexually predatory. In fact, literally no one in the novel suggests or believes he is sexually dangerous at any point. There's not the slightest hint of that as a factor in the rumors surrounding him, even though eighteenth-century fiction writers very often linked masculine villainy to a possibility of sexual predation in the subtext or just text*. Austen herself does this over and over when it comes to the true villains of her novels.

Even as a supposed villain, though, Darcy is broadly understood to be predatory and callous towards men who are weaker than him in status, power, and personality—with no real hint of sexual threat about it at all (certainly none towards women). Darcy's "villainy" is overwhelmingly about abusing his socioeconomic power over other men, like Wickham and Bingley. This can have secondhand effects on women's lives, but as collateral damage. Nobody thinks he's targeting women.

In addition, Elizabeth's interpretations of Darcy in the first half of the book tend to involve associating him with relatively prestigious women by contrast to the men in his life (he's seen as extremely dissimilar from his male friends and, as a villain, from his father). So Elizabeth understands Darcy-as-villain not in terms of the popular, often very sexualized images of masculine villainy at the time, but in terms of rich women she personally despises like Caroline Bingley and Lady Catherine de Bourgh (and even Georgiana Darcy; Elizabeth assumes a lot about Georgiana in service of her hatred of Darcy before ever meeting her).

The only people in Elizabeth's own community who side with Darcy at this time are, interestingly, both women, and likely the highest-status unmarried women in her community: Charlotte Lucas and Jane Bennet. Both have some temperamental affinities with Darcy, and while it's not clear if he recognizes this, he quietly approves of them without even knowing they've been sticking up for him behind the scenes.

This concept of Darcy-as-villain is not just Elizabeth's, either. Darcy is never seen by anyone as a sexual threat no matter how "bad" he's supposed to be. No one is concerned about any danger he might pose to their daughters or sisters. Kitty is afraid of him, but because she's easily intimidated rather than any sense of actual peril. Even another man, Mr Bennet, seems genuinely surprised to discover late in the novel that Darcy experiences attraction to anything other than his own ego.

I was thinking about this because of how often the concept of Darcy as an anti-hero before Elizabeth "fixes him" seems caught up in a hypermasculine, sexually dangerous, bad boy image of him that even people who actively hate him in the novel never subscribe to or remotely imply. Wickham doesn't suggest anything of the kind, Elizabeth doesn't, the various gossips of Meryton don't, Mr Bennet and the Gardiners don't, nobody does. If anything, he's perceived as cold and sexless.

Wickham in particular defines Darcy's villainy in opposition to the patriarchal ideal his father represented. Wickham's version of their history works to link Darcy to Lady Anne, Lady Catherine (primarily), and Georgiana rather than any kind of masculine sexuality. This version of Darcy is a villain who colludes with unsympathetic high-status women to harm men of less power than themselves, but villain!Darcy poses no direct threat to women of any kind.

It's always seemed to me that there's a very strong tendency among fans and academics to frame Darcy as this ultra-gendered figure with some kind of sexual menace going on, textually or subtextually. He's so often understood entirely in terms of masculinity and sexual desire, with his flaws closely tied to both (whether those flaws are his real ones, exaggerated, or entirely manufactured). Yet that doesn't seem to be his vibe to other characters in the story. There's a level at which he does not register to other characters as highly masculine in his affiliations, highly sexual, or in general as at all unsafe** to be around, even when they think he's a monster. And I kind of feel like this makes the revelations of his actual decency all along and his full-on heroism later easier to accept in the end.

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*The incompetently awful villain(?) in Sanditon, for instance, imagines himself another Lovelace (a reference to the famous rapist-villain of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa). Evelina's sheltered education and lack of protectors makes her vulnerable to sexual exploitation in Frances Burney's Evelina, though she ultimately manages to avoid it. There's frequently an element of sexual predation in Gothic novels even of very different kinds (e.g. Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho and Matthew Lewis's The Monk both lean into this, in their wildly dissimilar styles). William Godwin's novel Caleb Williams, a book mostly about the destructive evils of class hierarchies and landowning classes specifically, depicts the mutual obsession of the genteel villain Falkland and working class hero Caleb in notoriously homoerotic terms (Godwin himself added a preface in 1832 saying, "Falkland was my Bluebeard, who had perpetrated atrocious crimes ... Caleb Williams was the wife"). This list could go on for a very long time.

**Darcy is also not usually perceived by other characters as a particularly sexual, highly masculine person in a safe way, either, even once his true character is known. Elizabeth emphasizes the resilience of Darcy's love for her more than the passionate intensity they both evidently feel; in the later book, she does sometimes makes assumptions about his true feelings or intentions based on his gender, but these assumptions are pretty much invariably shown to be wrong. In general the cast is completely oblivious to the attraction he does feel; even Charlotte, who wonders about something in that quarter, ends up doubting her own suspicions and wonders if he's just very absent-minded.

The novel emphasizes that he is physically attractive, but it goes to pains to distinguish this from Wickham's sex appeal or the charisma of a Bingley or Fitzwilliam. Mr Bennet (as mentioned above) seems to have assumed Darcy is functionally asexual, insofar as he has a concept of that. Most of the fandom-beloved moments in which Darcy is framed as highly sexual, or where he himself is sexualized for the audience, are very significantly changed in adaptation or just invented altogether for the adaptations they appear in. Darcy watching Elizabeth after his bath in the 1995 is invented for that version, him snapping at Elizabeth in their debates out of UST is a persistent change from his smiling banter with her in the book, the fencing to purge his feelings is invented, the pond swim/wet shirt is invented. In the 2005 P&P, the instant reaction to Elizabeth is invented, the hand flex of repressed passion is invented, the Netherfield Ball dance as anything but an exercise in mutual frustration is invented, the near-kiss after the proposal in invented, etc. And in those as well, he's never presented as sexually predatory, not even as a "villain."

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Reasons to play In Stars and Time: Canon Pronoun Warfare.

[abalidoth]

to me "girl" feels like a lego brick (not a lot on its own, but a fun component to make something cool) but "woman" feels like a funko pop (just like. an immutable premade object that you can't do anything with other than put it on a shelf)

does that make sense

[dilfcherricola]

I think there’s also a conversation to be had about how people think androgyny is waify and thin and wolf cuts and eyeliner. like some people are butch. some people have crew cuts and body hair and tits to the moon. or beards and hourglass figures.

i feel like everyone is all uncomfortable seeing people who are androgynous in a non tiktok kind of way but thats most of the androgyny i know! i know normal people who arent put together 24/7 who are androgynous in sweat pants and sundresses and first thing in the morning. there is more than one way to be androgynous and it isnt always a choice.

[scintillyyy]

ngl sometimes i think the inverse to the fanon inability to meaningfully interact with a character flaw that's not "my friends and family would say that my main problem is that i care too much" is the canon hyper critical you can only like a character because of all their flaws and you should never say anything nice about what you think their good points are without a million astericks about how much they really do suck, actually

[langernameohnebedeutung]

.

[myimaginationplain]

It kind of fucks me up to see some people come out of watching RGU having absorbed absolutely nothing of what the show has to say about patriarchy, misogyny, & queerphobia, outside of "men bad, lesbian good." Which like.....sure, I guess? in the absolute barest sense, I suppose RGU is partially about that.

But if this show's thesis were really as simple as "lesbian good," then Juri & her role as an antagonist on the mini patriarchy that is the Student Council would simply not exist at all. Juri would've won all the duels, kicked Akio in the nuts, freed Anthy, & ridden away into the sunset with Shiori in her arms before Utena even showed up if that were the case. But she obviously didn't do any of that despite being a lesbian, so there must be something more complicated at work here.

A lot of RGU's narrative is dedicated to deconstructing binary social systems & the ways in which they harm those trying to and/or being forced to fit within one of two narrow boxes; man vs woman, adult vs child, princess vs witch, prince vs devil, special vs not special, romantic vs platonic, etc. So for someone to watch all of that beautiful complexity, only to filter it through yet another essentialist binary...sucks, to say the least.

[myopicry]

sometimes I think so much of "queer" discourse surrounds semantics and identity labels because people engaging in these spaces legitimately do not live life outside of the internet. I don't just mean they don't go outside or talk to real people, but the way they interact with real people is never truly free from the internet. I think this is just sort of how gen z are now unfortunately, so much of our lives are consumed by handheld devices and social media platforms, but I find it way more prevalent in artsy, liberal, tra-positive communities. (the amount of times I just hear people straight up quote popular tumblr posts or tiktok trends...)

and surrounding yourself in real life with people who frequent the same internet circles as you and thus hold the same beliefs is a great way to not end up experiencing anything actually real, and thus you never really learn anything from your life experiences or from other perspectives, much less experiences of relationships or sex or romance. leading to people caring way too much about words and perception with things like pronouns or microlabels or "validity." everything is about optics and holding the "correct" opinions because that's the state of the internet these days! of course they'd ignore the actual material aspects of oppression, what is the internet if not a breeding ground for consumerist distraction from dealing with the various staggering issues in society?

"touch grass" isn't even a good enough solution anymore. can you partake in any hobby without thinking of how other people would percieve it? can you have a conversation without parroting the words of a tiktok post? can you seek love and relationships without obscuring it in layers of branding? can you understand yourself, truly understand who you are, without obsessing over how it looks on a screen?

[athina-blaine]

kabru's relationship with his eyes makes for suuuuuch a fantastic trans allegory (an aspect of your body alienating you from your community, being compelled to understand the perspective of someone who also has a complicated relationship with their body in the hopes that you'll better understand your own, people straight up misunderstanding biology) it makes me kind of insane because now I feel like I can't dig into any complicated feelings he might have about his body in relation to his gender without feeling like im just ... double dipping?? like fifjpejgh ryoko kui straight up already told that story in a way that exquisitely fucks??

[serpentface]

What does Jazaiti social structure look like, irt mothers? Or like, what role do they play

Some things to be clear on beforehand:

Child: a young Jazait is considered functionally genderless and occupies this age-gender group until puberty. A child is classified as a man when testes descend (though occupies a secondary ‘young man’ space until full completion of puberty). A child becomes a woman at completion of baseline female puberty (having a fully developed mane and having undergone a growth spurt). Man: gender assignment for adult individuals with a penis and testes. They will be wed to mothers. Woman: gender assignment for adult individuals with vaginas who do NOT have active estrus cycles. Most will remain women throughout their lives and be unwed, some will become mothers. Mother: gender assignment for individuals with vaginas who DO have active estrus cycles (considered a mother regardless of if they have actually had children or not). A woman can become a mother and all mothers were once women, but these are distinct and separate gender roles. Elder mother: not a specific gender role- a post-fertile mother who no longer has an active estrus cycle. Clanmother: not a specific gender role- the current eldest mother in any given clan, who acts as its leader.

In typical elowey development, sexually mature males + nonreproductive females are minimally dimorphic, and sexual traits apart from genitalia are usually indistinct. Average size and build is approximately the same, females tend to have larger cuspids. The most strongly dimorphic feature is in scent, with most adult males and females having distinct smells.

Reproductive females on the other hand are more strongly dimorphic- there is typically an additional growth spurt and gain of body fat/muscle, voices deepen, manes grow longer and thicker, nipples grow longer and some breast tissue is accumulated (though not as much as humans, elowey only have fully developed breasts during lactation). Their scent is also distinct from males and nonreproductive females.

All elowey undergo puberty that results in an individual becoming sexually mature and physiologically capable of reproduction, but the estrus/ovulation cycles of females are hormonally suppressed by proximity of a reproductive female. A female’s estrus cycle will initiate on its own with time in the absence of a reproductive female, and will be directly initiated through sexual activity. Non-reproductive females will typically have a sex drive equivalent to a reproductive female when not in estrus- sex may be desirable in being physically pleasurable or as an act of affection, but baseline libido levels are low. Hormonal suppression cannot completely preclude the initiation of estrus (though will typically cause it to be irregular) and would be supplemented by behavioral suppression (the socially dominant reproductive female preventing others from mating) in pre-behaviorally modern ancestors. Instinct towards behavioral suppression often translates into social control of female sexual activity in elowey cultures, but this is not universal.

(^^The baseline physiology described here is universal to elowey, not just Jazait)

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Jazait culture is mother-matriarchal, in which mothers are socially and politically dominant to men and women. All women have the potential to become mothers, but most never will, and only inherit the dominant social status upon this occurring. Being a mother is reckoned as a blessed, elevated state and one that is purely natural to occupy positions of strength and leadership, with related men and women being better suited for supporting roles and exacting her will.

Mothers have greater religious status in society and are deemed to be beings made in the sun-mother's image, who is the creator god in Jazaiti religious belief (accompanied by one other (non-creator) god, the moon-father(s), understood as one and three beings and her husband(s)). Their fertility is reckoned as being a gift from the sun-mother. This blessing extends beyond procreation and allows for mothers to work through the sun-mother to encourage needed growth and new life (in fish stocks, livestock, agriculture and forage, singing down the rains, etc). Jazaiti religion (and culture itself) is heavily decentralized, and a clanmother will be the spiritual leader of any given family group and will impart accumulated religious knowledge of generations onto her descendants.

The use of scent glands has strong applications in Jazait culture, particularly in the case of a clanmother. A clanmother will undergo a yearly ceremony in which she journeys around the limits of her clan's land and applies wrist gland secretions along the way, enforcing a protective ring that dissuades the entrance of evil spirits and forms a metaphysical boundary, a sense of 'here' and 'there'. She will also mark the faces of newborn children as means of fully initiating and accepting them into the clan. In any case where a person, place, or thing needs spiritual enforcement as belonging to a clan, this task falls to the clanmother. Any mother's scent is regarded as having properties of blessing, particularly in association with fertility.

A mother's status will generally be passed onto her eldest daughter upon completing rites of initiation, who will be wed and move out of her mothers household (thus eliminating hormonal suppression and allowing for sexual contact to more rapidly initiate estrus). The clanmother has the ultimate say in whether other daughters can become mothers, and will make this decision on a variety of factors- reading the will of the sun-mother, their own opinion on the daughter's suitability for the role, political strategy and necessity (or lack thereof) for additional marriages with another clan, and material concerns of territory and sustenance (a clan can only sustain so many families, with only the wealthiest and most powerful clans having many mothers therein).

This society has a clan system wherein the eldest mother (usually past reproductive age) has the primary and final say in the affairs of her clan. Her husbands will be considered clanfathers and have an elevated rank among other men in the clan. Clans follow a rank hierarchy of clanmother > mothers > clanfathers > husbands > women and unwed men > children.

The number of men is highly disproportionate to the number of mothers, and as such most marriages are polyandrous. One’s number of husbands is usually directly proportionate to one’s wealth, both in indicating access to resources to sustain a large family, and in practical measure, as a dowry is paid to the mother of each male spouse. Husbands will be absorbed into their wife’s clan (though this establishes ties and responsibilities with his former clan), and kinship is matrilineal and makes no distinction between children of different husbands.

A child’s biological father will often be circumstantially known, but this direct relation is not of great importance as each husband is considered a father to all associated children. Due to potential ambiguity in fatherhood and purely matrilineal descent, extramaritial affairs are not of substantial consequence and resulting children will not be considered bastards, but this this is generally frowned upon as lowly and undignified behavior.

Clans are typically very large and spread widely with clan-affiliated families occupying vast territories. Different mothers in the same clan do not directly interact on a regular basis and typically only assemble for festivities and rites, or to discuss matters of utmost importance in person. They will instead use their husbands as messengers (often one husband ends up specifically designated as a messenger, which is a loosely esteemed status as this will often indicate the greatest trust and affection).

The Jazait have no specified warrior culture (this doesn’t mean conflict is nonexistant, just that there is no strongly developed traditions surrounding it). Most women and men will have learned basic self defense and will know how to handle a spear or knife, and will fill roles of warriors in times of conflict. Mothers tend to be protected from directly engaging in combat, and will act as commanders and mediators in all but the most dire of circumstances. Mothers entering combat is a common narrative motif in Jazait storytelling and folklore, used to demonstrate the profound gravity of a conflict.

All members of a family/clan participate in childcare, with married men and mothers being the primary childrearers and the most involved in the domestic sphere and near the home (producing textiles, cooking, farm labor, etc). Women perform the majority of non-domestic labor (in traditional subsistence, this will be fishing, leviathan hunting, foraging, and some herding). This is not itself a gendered role and is partially just pragmatism- most women will go their entire lives without becoming mothers (and will thus be unmarried), while most men will be married, so there’s a greater proportion of women available for tasks away from the home.

The sexual behavior of men and especially women is strongly controlled. Men are expected to solely engage in potentially reproductive behavior with mothers, and women are expected to engage in no sexual behavior with men whatsoever (unless in the context of becoming mothers, as dictated and approved by their own). A woman who becomes pregnant without her mother's consent will technically become a mother (as this act will have been in the context of the estrus cycle self-initiating via sexual contact, and the resulting physical changes will occur), but this is deeply shameful and the theft of a great gift, and will typically result in her exile from the clan, and she and her children being clanless (conceptually close to ‘bastard’ status). This status is effectively permanent and may be socially and materially devastating, depriving the mother and child from their support network and the core unit of Jazait society. The only potential salvation occurs if the father’s clanmother makes the decision to accept the clanless child (and sometimes mother) into her own clan.

Clanless Jazait often form their own communities as means for mutual support, or may be strongly driven to turn to finding work amid other peoples as means of supporting themselves and their children. A significant proportion of Jazait who participate in Imperial Wardi society are clanless, and most established Jazait diasporic communities are at least partly Wardinized- no communities at large are fully assimilated into Wardi culture, but most participate in Wardi-esque marriage patterns as a means of sustaining their communities in this different cultural/subsistence context, and many have adopted syncretic Jazaiti-Wardi faith systems.

There is no direct stigma towards homosexual behavior, though it will be seen as more natural between women (having no other sexual outlets) than between men. While homosexual behavior itself is unstigmatized, men and mothers are fully expected to play reproductive roles in a marriage, and women tasked with becoming mothers (which will involve sexual activity with a man via their first husband) have little say in the matter.

The conceptualization of gender is a strict trinary, with no specified roles that divergence from the man - woman - mother construction. The status of intersex people depends on their variation- many intersex traits will go unnoticed or interpreted as infertility (especially due to minimal sexual dimorphism between males and non-reproductive females), and others tend to be interpreted as negative physical abnormalities.

[girlboyburger]

some sketches! cows n guys from my comic

layout/colors of these are v inspired by @/skunkes beautiful sketch pages :]

[poppurini]

general lilia who's all tough on the outside, known for his aggressiveness in the battlefield but as soon as you're by his side- it's like everything his soldiers knew about him disappeared. he lets you do his eyeliner even when it's messy, he lets you put pink ribbons in his hair and uniform, and he giggles n smiles like you have the sun on your fingertips with the way you warm his skin.

in my delusional era you have me down bad for this man omg. also i needed to this out of my system ihaven't written ANYTHING in so long *sobs

“Y/n, darling, not here-”

the fearsome general of briar valley could only sigh and go along with your whims as you tugged him to sit down, a soft giggle escaping your lips—that he missed dearly—as you instructed the general of briar valley to sit still, your voice jokingly stern.

his hair, his wrist, his arm— you busied yourself with tying some bows onto the man with baby pink ribbons while humming a calm tune. your laugh, like melody to his ears, ring occasionally in the night when you hear his quiet grumble.

when he saw his subordinates staring at him in silence, he only waved a dismissive hand before deadpanning at baul who stood not so far away.

even though he wasn’t particularly fond of your actions, he couldn’t bring himself to reject you when you looked so happy. especially since he knows he would have to leave you for another week or so after tonight; this was the least he could provide for you as your lover. you’d catch him gaze at you with adoration, concealed by that stoic demeanour he had put up for himself as briar valley’s protector. you’d grow hot and shy when he tucks a strand of your hair away, murmuring why you don’t just put the bows on yourself instead as you’d look way cuter than him before giving you a teasing tap on the cheek with the back of his finger, his smugness evident through the quiet chuckle he had let out. some tough general he is.

++ irah i can’t do this anymore when i made that post i wasn’t asking for an ask that made me evaporate into thin air??? you could’ve kept this to yourself why involve me???? i don’t even know who l*lia is i got nothing to do with that man pls stop harassing me /j

[pyrepostings]

Conditioned whumpee, whose caretaker is trying to convince xem it's ok to take off the collar now that whumper's gone.

Whumpee decides, in xeir head, that xey could explain to whumper if xey are recaptured that xey downgraded xeir collar because whumper wasn't there to give orders. See, xey still wore a collar, it's just made out of leather instead of gold. See, xey didn't think for a moment xey could be free.

And this way, Caretaker can be satisfied about aer "progress" in the meantime.

[fiona-fififi]

...

[nonbinarymlm]

It’s really awful that my partner is treated as predatory, dangerous, and unwelcome by the world for being bisexual and nonwhite. It’s doubly awful that so many queer spaces near us also treat him as predatory, dangerous, and unwelcome for being a cis man while ignoring his queer and non-passing mixed race experiences.

There is no way to make general queer spaces unwelcoming to cis men without throwing intersectionality out the window. No one needs to coddle cis men, but general queer spaces are not the places to treat queer cis men as dangerous or unwelcome or to randomly vent about men without checking in. (Generally you should be checking in before venting, by the way, this goes out the window way too much in progressive spaces.)

Queer men are already treated as dangerous and unwelcome by society for being queer. Men of color are already treated as dangerous and unwelcome by society for not being white. When queer spaces treat cis men as dangerous and unwelcome, they are repeating those societal patterns toward queer men and men of color.

Intersectionality means recognizing that privilege does not cancel out oppression as much as it means oppression does not cancel out privilege. All queer people face harm by society, all queer people need safe queer spaces. Choosing a subset of queer people to exclude from general queer spaces isn’t okay, even if it’s a relatively privileged subset in one specific way.

There are a lot of posts talking about how exclusion of cis men from queer spaces negatively impacts trans people of all stripes, and that is true and worth taking about! But also: cis queer men deserve to be in queer spaces because they are queer. Their relative privilege in one area does not cancel out their experiences of oppression.

And it truly is “relative privilege in one area” because some queer cis men are disabled, neurodivergent, black, Asian, indigenous, mixed race, working class, and many other marginalized identities not determined by gender.

All queer people deserve queer safe spaces. Period.