#still this whole situation fascinates me both from a anthropological perspective and from a queer one

[genderqueer-karma]

having thoughts about mana. my brain’s working overtime today, so feel free to ignore.

so i was trying to show my classmate about mana sama and went to the wikipedia page about him.

after i showed her the information i’d been looking for, i decided to scroll and look to the sources and do some reading, mostly for fun. naturally, most of the sources had very vague, surface-level information about him due to how private he actually manages to keep his personal life, which i’ve come to expect and also admire. (nowadays i prefer to know less about people i look up to. keeps me stable, so to speak.)

anyway, multiple of these sources highlight his current and very famous androgynous fashion and general appearance along with how he (seemingly ironically) disliked femininity and feminine styles in his youth.

most importantly, a few of these claim that he himself claimed to have discovered his “inner woman”.

to my little genderqueer heart, that’s a very interesting notion, particularly the part about being very “macho” and “hating” femininity. that specific narrative reminds me of one i’ve heard tossed around in regards to many trans/genderqueer people and discovering their identities, which is that they tried to over-perform their assigned gender at birth before accepting how tiring that really was.

given the time period he would have most likely experienced his adolescence in, the above sentiment goes double. not speculating, but it is quite an interesting thing to think about.

naturally, with being very private about his personal life (even his age is technically a mystery, though people have made guesses based on context clues, plus for a very long time he just straight up lied about that type of shit in interviews and stuff) aspects of his identity, including and especially his gender identity and sexuality, are unknown. of course, i’m not here to make assumptions, but i find the seeming fluidity/ambiguity of his gender in particular to be intriguing and inspirational.

as a young person who never actually gets to see genderqueer people represented outside of fictional characters and headcanons, seeing someone who embodies a very specific presentation and feeling of gender (regardless of actual identity) and who isn’t white*** is quite … it makes me feel … warm? having a role model who has supposedly claimed somewhat queer feelings without being tied to any labels that give him a concrete queer identity is genuinely something i greatly appreciate.

as someone who actually fluctuates between multiple labels in regards to their own identity and thinks of gender more as a fun piece of flavoring rather than a concrete thing, hearing about “dual nature” and whatnot from a person i admire for things unrelated to gender is something i hold dear.

long story short, mana and his 4d chess gender captivate me, regardless of his actual specific label, because i think fucking around with gender is fun and cool 👍

*** yeah yeah whiteness is a western concept and there are prominent genderqueer people i could look up to, but idk. he has a certain air about him that i’m just very drawn to. plus he’s a very talented person in many different ways. more often than not, people aren’t exactly known for being a jack of all trades (and arguably a master of the same ones). plus i feel like most of the prominent genderqueers out there are white. i don’t vibe with mainly seeing one type of person be the gq rep i get anywhere, ya dig?