#there that's the short version of a very complicated relationship with religion lmao

[jessmalia]

i just clicked on the safari app on my phone, which was open on some filthy smut on ao3, then created a new tab to look up the bible online, and i gotta tell you i think that's the funniest thing i've ever done

[normal-thoughts-official]

HEY SO u didn’t wanna go on a trans!magnus tangent in ur sexuality post but *I* want you to go on a trans!magnus tangent! Tell me more about him coming to terms w/ his identity & how it’s influenced his life and all that. Essentially just give me all the trans!magnus content in ur brain. Love u ❤️❤️❤️ ~cursedlightwood

here’s my hot take: magnus’ gender is Tired. and yes, i will elaborate, because Ive spent the last 2-3 weeks doing research for this ask, so this is probably the most well-informed theory you’ll see on this subject. yeah, we’re doomed

EDIT: i was gonna say this from the get-go but i forgot, so: english is not my first language and i’m unsure about the usage of some terms that i found during research, particularly those referring to traditional javanese religions and customs; so, if you spot anything that is problematic, racist or colonialist please let me know and i’ll change it. 

ok, so i want to start this off by saying that, although javanese society had a binary gender system, they had pretty egalitarian views on gender, and from what i’ve seen the division of labor wasn’t really set in stone - although they were less common than male ones, there were female warriors, for instance. both men and women could be the sovereign and were equally respected, both could ask for a divorce, etc. the most important part of their gender views, to me, seems to be that they believed women were better for diplomatic roles and trading, because they believed men were too emotional and not as good as debating and making compromises as women were (same source)

so i’m just gonna say this, here and now: AFAB!Magnus makes a lot of sense because Magnus is the most diplomatic person you’ll ever fucking see, and in this context, if he were AFAB, he would have been socialized to be for a very young age. and i dont mean hes diplomatic just on the sense that he’s literally keeping most of the characters together and preventing fights (remember when he had to stop a Raphael VS Simon catfight? ugh), but also in the sense that out of everyone hes the one who best handles the seelie queen, for example. he’s good at Wit Battles, negotiating, building bridges and dealing with power relations when its needed.

and i mean, this would also be a pretty good start on why he’d be like “no thanks” when it comes to this whole Womanhood thing, because yeah, Magnus is good at that, he has to be, but does he like it? to me it’s pretty clear that he doesn’t, that he’s absolutely uninterested in anything involving power and negotiations and this whole ridiculous dance it involves. also he’s constantly giving himself the short end of the stick so y’know. honestly, at heart, magnus is an inventor, an explorer; he likes to create things, he likes to learn, he likes to explore the world around him, meet people, help them, build relationships - but on equal grounds, not this whole give-some-take-some thing diplomacy entails. and as a Woman™ in pre-colonial java society, it’s pretty much that, be a farmer, or a concubine - we’re gonna get to that a little bit later on.

so i think in this context little magnus would be like “no thanks” and wanting to go around and, i don’t know, look at plants and learn their properties and figure out why apples fall, or something. it’s not exactly a Man’s Role™ either, although to be fair i found it a little hard to figure out what exactly were men’s roles in javanese society because gender studies usually just focus on women and treat men as the standard and don’t really explore how manhood is construed. but anyway. i know that they were warriors more frequently than women (same source), but women could be warriors as well. like i said, gender roles in javanese society weren’t really set in stone. [alec voice] they’re not rules, they’re suggestions.

add to that the fact that magnus lived in a port city - he had to, since in the early 1600s the dutch were only settling in important ports and trading centers - and the ports in java were very important trading centers that had been attracting people from all over Asia and Europe for centuries, and had a quite good share of migrants and immigrants living there, including quite a good share of Buginese, aka the people who had a 5-gender division. jakarta, which is in java, has like the 10th biggest buginese population in the world, not to mention the countless other societies that had their own views on gender relations; and you have a pretty good and accepting environment when it comes to differences. the javanese were flexible, they were well aware that culture isn’t set in stone, and they were very prone to syncretism. the kingdom allowed people to have any religion they wanted, even if its “official” religion at the time was buddhism. so really: the javanese were actually not very into the whole “imposing cultural constructs” thing, especially the coastal javanese. so magnus would have likely had the freedom to explore and to not really want to conform to any gender stereotypes without that being a HUGE deal, in my opinion.

and then there’s the fact that the concept of womanhood was a pretty disputed one at the time; yes, the javanese had their own views, but it’s important to note that by the 1600s most of the coastal javanese population had converted to Islam, which led to a few differences as well; when compared to other southeast asian communities, for example, the rate of women in trade was a little different - while it was a steady 50% in almost all countries and cultures, in indonesia it was around 30%, because muslim communities had more of a “women stay at home” view. however, when compared to other asian societies such as the chinese society, where the rate was of 1-5%, you can see that the javanese’s egalitarian views on gender stood a fair amount of ground. also, in indonesia, precisely due to their more open views, Islam mostly syncretised with local religions and customs, including the gender views; in Bugis, for instance, the 5-gender system was kept, as were traditional customs such as “ritual transvestism” and homosexuality. so, yes, it was disputed, and people had many views on what people could or couldn’t do, but that mostly ended up becoming a kind of “live and let live” thing. which is the perfect environment for 1- AFAB!Magnus be Very Tired of this whole womanhood thing that no one can even decide what it is anyway; 2- Magnus to say “fuck this” and live as a masc-leaning genderless entity that just wanted to make some goddamn potions.

but then there’s the colonial relations, right? how do the dutch come into this already very complicated and delicately balanced equation? that was honestly the main point of my research, trying to figure out just how much influence the dutch had at such an early stage of colonisation, and also what it would be like to live in a mixed-culture household such as magnus’. here’s what i have:

during the first century of dutch colonisation (aka the part we’re talking about) the dutch and the europeans didn’t really have a big influence in javanese cultural and political relations. the javanese were pretty well organised and had a powerful and strong society so the europeans didn’t really manage to invade them successfully - even the portuguese, the most powerful european nation at the time, tried and failed to invade them for the whole 16th century (get rekt lmao). so what the dutch did was, they simply established themselves as one of the many companies that settled in jakarta to trade, and slowly built their power and influence from there. don’t get me wrong, the dutch were very violent colonisers and in other parts of indonesia they were doing the european thing of mass genocide as much as any other country. they weren’t a “softer” version of colonisers, they just didn’t have the power to subjugate the javanese, so they had to try a slower approach. during the early 1600s, the only dutch people in java were the VOC workers (VOC is the dutch east india company - the acronym is in dutch. basically the company that was there to get some nice spices to sell to the rest of europe so they could shove it all up their assholes or smth since up to this day their food is bland as shit), and they weren’t permanent settlers; they could only stay in java for the duration of their contract with the VOC and they couldn’t bring their wives and children with them, and they couldn’t bring any wives or mixed children they had while in java back to europe, either (same source).

this weird relationship meant that magnus’ “stepfather” and his mother probably had a relationship of concubinage (told you we’d get back to that), which was not uncommon in java neither before nor after the arrival of the dutch. in short, his mother was supposed to take care of his house, make him food and all that jazz, and also have a sexual relationship with him, in exchange for money (same source). it was not prostitution and it worked pretty much as a marriage, except it was temporary and contractual. BUT it meant that magnus’ mother would have to have converted to christianism (same source) and due to the fact that she was in a temporary contract, she couldn’t divorce him, and in their home he would treat her as, well, europeans treated their wives - with the particular western brand of sexism that they so kindly forced unto the rest of us. so that makes the whole thing even more disputed and complicated.

but as a VOC worker, magnus’ stepfather wouldn’t even be home for most of the day, and he couldn’t really keep magnus or his mom from, like, leaving the house and doing their things. i think he wouldn’t even try because that would prolly be very looked down upon in java; spousal abuse in southeast asia as a whole was pretty rare, since anyone could divorce whenever they wanted and women were politically and financially independent, so i think if he tried to pull something like that he would be in trouble - again, the dutch were the minority, and for the most part, they lived as the javanese did, in their villages, in their homes, eating their food and mostly adapting to their customs (same source). they even mostly spoke indonesian in their homes, since most indonesians didn’t speak dutch, and indonesia was kind of the universal language at the time, since there were many languages spoken both in and outside of java (this also explains why magnus speaks indonesian instead of javanese; that would have been the language spoken at his home. you have no idea how relieved having an explanation for this makes me). also there’s the pressing question of, would he even give a shit what magnus does or doesn’t do? magnus wasn’t his biological son, and most of these guys didn’t care about any biological children they might have had with these women, since they were women of color and they would leave them eventually anyway. honestly this is all the more reason for him to treat magnus like shit - he was javanese, he was brown, and he wasn’t even related to him by blood. this was also probably grounds for him to treat magnus’ mom even worse, since in his christian eyes the fact that she had a child outside of marriage made her even lesser than other indonesians.

so honestly, what i’m picturing is something like - most of the time it was pretty okay, there were certain expectations and a certain kind of female socialization but it was okay that he didn’t really fit in there, and then with his stepfather the whole thing was just shit. 

also, the fact that his mom was probably a concubine means there was a fair chance that his stepfather would have other concubines, and listen, yes i may be flexing, but you can’t stop me from imagining that maybe magnus was raised in a multicultural home with lots of other southeast asian women and children and maybe even buginese because again you can’t fucking STOP ME.

but either way, even if his home wasn’t like that, his city was - we don’t know which city he lived in, but it doesn’t matter, really; all cities with dutch settlers were port cities and therefore followed pretty much the same pattern of being a cultural tapestry with all sorts of influences coexisting in peace.

so really, little magnus lived in a pretty rich environment when it came to exploring his identity. he and his mom lived in a pretty egalitarian society gender-wise, he had the space and the opportunity to explore the world and figure out what he liked and didn’t like. am i going crazy imagining a tiny magnus with his mom, running around in other farms and listening, enraptured, stories of people from all over the world, about their cultures and lives, and learning there is so much to see and wanting to just go wherever he could, getting himself a passion for travelling that would later fuel his want to invent a quick way to go anywhere he wanted to, going to the port and seeing all the stuff they had available, from plants with healing properties to spices, and just loving to figure out their properties and how they could be mixed together to create new things, loving this world full of wonder and possibilities? maybe. god.

but anyway, what i’m trying to get at here is that it’s really impossible to think of a cis magnus in this context, no matter if you think AMAB or AFAB trans magnus - i know ive been focused on AFAB magnus here but really that’s mostly because 1- Projection; 2- thinking about AFAB magnus brings in new layers of complexity that need further exploration in my opinion; but really this applies to any magnus. what would being “cis” even mean, in a context where the very concepts of manhood and womanhood were so disputed and complex? and that’s not even going into the fact that after so many centuries, complying to gender roles of that time looked nothing like complying to our modern gender roles. really, it’s a lost cause. magnus kind of has a culturally-specific gender that…. no one but other warlocks born in similar situations could, really? there’s no word for it. there’s no explaining it with words. it is [REDACTED GOOD OMENS REFERENCE]

the closest we have is masc-leaning enby, since somewhere along the way he seems to have decided to use male pronouns and have a mostly masc-presenting body, even if paired with a more fem-presenting appearance fashion and mannerisms-wise. but again it’s too unique, there are way too many influences here.

and honestly that’s kind of beautiful! i love imagining small magnus having contact with people with all kinds of views on gender and society throughout his childhood, exploring, trying on their clothes, learning about their religions and customs, having elderly friends from different backgrounds and also young friends who were raised in very different ways, and sharing all of that, and learning about who he is amidst all of that, and being able to explore that and talk about that to his mom and friends and close people because they are used to these differences. even if when at home he was probably met with some kind of transphobic rhetoric and violence because of his stepfather and the imposed christianity that came with it - and that unlike other religions, didn’t syncretize at all.

which brings us to a second, very important point on the whole trans magnus ordeal, which is how deeply tied to racism the transphobia he’s suffered and the general understanding of his gender was. of course, this applies to every single of-color and non-western born person, but magnus has lived that through history. from a very young age, the blunt of the violence he was met with came from a racist standpoint that believed his very identity and existence made him lesser and in need to be corrected - because that’s what, after all, the colonizers were doing. their whole rhetoric was that the colonized were barbaric and needed them to learn the right ways through violence. it is worth noticing that the javanese have been referred to as “the most inhuman of all people” by dutch colonizers, and amongst the reasons for that was the fact that their views on gender were so different from the european’s (same source).

so really we’re mixing in the fact that he was a “bastard” child in his stepfather’s eyes, a warlock, and trans… and yeah, oof. there’s no way he was treated with anything other than violence from way before his mom’s suicide and the subsequent drowning attempt. in his stepfather’s eyes, everything about magnus’ existence was demonic, impure, and all the more reason why he and his mom were dirty and needed to be corrected.

it’s also worth noting that sorcery was a very big part of javanese culture that was also syncretized with pretty much every religion. the javanese believed in sorcery, believed everyone could do magic, and the dutch, of course, despised that. the source above is a pretty interesting article that argues that the european’s so-called “skepticism” on magic and “rational-based” culture was actually part of a construction of whiteness that hoped precisely to differentiate them from the “savage” others. i mean, the guys were burning women at the stake because they were “witches”, but every other culture’s religions, rituals and magic were just bullshit and couldn’t be trusted because the europeans were too rational and knew better? okay buddy. it also features an amazing story about a dutch colonizer who got hexxed because of his racism that is, quite frankly, heartwarming. but i digress.

so yeah listen i know i already talked about this on the other ask but there’s really no way the reason his mother killed herself was because she found out magnus was a warlock or a demon’s son or whatever. magic was part of their culture. it was what they believed in. it was a part of nature to them. it’s way more likely that the reason she killed herself was the constant violence she was met with in daily life that she couldn’t get away from, and his stepfather simply blamed magnus because, to him, he represented everything that was wrong with their culture - and that makes even more sense if we think about trans!magnus, because that makes him an even deeper abomination. it’s very likely that most of the violence and belittling his mother had to face was related to magnus as well - look what you created, what you do, your culture is an abomination, this is unacceptable. but magnus was way too small at that time, and he believed what his stepfather told him, because i mean, what else would he believe in?

i also think that asmodeus kind of messed with his perception of how the whole thing went down, telling him that he “murdered” him when really it was clearly self defense, erasing the violence his stepfather directed towards magnus and focusing on the end to convince magnus that he was evil, unredeemable, that no one would accept him but asmodeus, that he had no other choice. so that’s super fun! but yeah i do believe that asmodeus spent enough time gaslighting magnus and rewriting this whole story for this to be considered magnus’ worst memory, seen by him as a reminder of his “ugly side” that doesn’t really even exist. asmodeus weaponized this, which served the double purpose of convincing magnus he had no choice but to follow asmodeus, and teaching him that violence is normal and there’s nothing wrong with it, and that retaliating makes him bad. 

this is all i have to say about the asmodeus years, really, because like i said before i don’t think he gives a shit about gender, he’s way older than it and who cares. but the trauma that the whole thing put magnus through is easily weaponizable. @thesorrowoflizards also wrote this amazing fic that features the headcanon that asmodeus used magnus’ transness to manipulate him as well, using spells that made him more masculine and stuff but only if magnus obeyed him. fun! especially considering that he was with asmodeus through his puberty (or at least that’s likely) when his body would have begun to change, so for him to have such a masc-presenting body…. yeah. this is very plausible. i love pain.

and then we get to england, where again, everyone is an asshole, about everything, all the time. like holy shit, he thought the europeans cared too much when he was in java, but that is nothing compared to the brits and their casual sentencing people to death for being gender non conforming. also, to the europeans, asian men were seen as emasculate and their gender relations as a whole was unnatural, and listen, i know that in 18th-19th century england men also wore makeup and stuff, but i mean, magnus was probably seen as exotic in his “effeminate” mannerisms and non-compliance to gender roles, even if people didn’t know he was AFAB or just trans in general. he was probably objectified in that sense, kinda like a human-zoo sorta thing. fascinating, these emasculated asians with weird bodies and customs. ugh.

so yeah gender got particularly exhausting at that time, too. thankfully there were the warlocks, who were old enough to know all of this was bullshit and who had people from all kinds of cultural backgrounds, thousands of people with culturally-specific genders, as well as other people who were raised in similar environments as him. so in there he finds a home of sorts, a place where this doesn’t matter and where he can be himself and nobody cares, and also has access to different cultures and views and knowledge, and really it’s like the good parts of his childhood again. he learns more about magic and potion-making, about other cultures and places, travels the world, learns about science and the workings behind his magic. creates new potions, new spells, continues his education, learns and remembers how much he loves this, the cultural effervency, the chances to learn and explore and create. really the warlock community is so amazing and it’s like, golden era.

but he’s also living amongst mundanes and to some extent he likes them - not to mention, he likes travelling and learning about different places and cultures. and they seem to care more and more about differentiating genders as time goes by, and to be getting more and more violent in their never-ending quest to force people to fit into these roles, and it’s. tiring. exhausting. who cares. it makes less and less sense to him, and this alienation from the whole thing only solidifies his non-conformance and general inability to fit. sometimes he feels old, and alone, even if he has other people who are Like Him now - the shadow world can get tiring, sometimes, and there’s also the shadowhunters racism thing going on that’s also inevitably trying to subjugate their spaces and looks down on their culture - so it also has the downsides of his childhood. sometimes it’s like there’s no word for who he is, no one that can understand it, no place where he can be fully himself and loved for it. and this only intensifies by the middle of the 19th century, when suddenly makeup and colorful clothing is not for men anymore, and he’s even less conforming than before - he was a pretty respectable Man™ to their standarts up to that point, but from then on that is lost. it doesn’t matter too much, because even if he is masc-leaning, he still doesn’t really see himself as a man in the sense that he seems to be expected to. but that furthers the alienation, and the feeling of loneliness and of being old and unfit for this world.

that is also when he meets camille! and that’s canon because there was that one picture of him with camille and ragnor and the clothes they are wearing are very much from the 1840s (i talked about this here), which is precisely when the whole men’s fashion differentiating from women’s fashion thing was starting. so in the context of his gender this makes it even easier for camille to manipulate him into thinking that she’s the only one who will ever understand and accept him, and that he’s naive, and that he doesn’t fit into the world and doesn’t understand what’s best for him, and really he should trust her judgement better because he is a man out of his time, but she can help him, and- yeah. that good olde cis-girl-abuses-trans-person routine, with even more elements than usual. ggghhhghh

and it’s not until the 1960s and 70s that these notions start to actually be challenged. of course, trans people have always existed and were building their own communities and helping each other as well as they could, and magnus certainly was a part of that, because, well, that’s who he is. he doesn’t leave people in need and he knows how painful it is to go through all of this alone, so he does his best to help and adopts pretty much everyone he can. but for the most part, they are a diaspora, and the cissexist society that alienates and tries to kill them goes on unchallenged.

that gives him all the more reason to get so involved with stonewall and the subsequent building of the queer neighborhoods and communities, that feeling that maybe he can belong after all, that things might change and his life doesn’t have to be an infinite cycle of violence, isolation, abuse, and repeat. seeing these events unfold, helping keep people safe, meeting Sylvia Rivera and all the other trans people of color who were part of this, who had stories so similar to his, who were also bisexual (!!), who knew what it was like. that was healing, and that was important to him, and gjfdkafaskfa yeah.

and of course not everything is a sea of roses, because then the community starts to divide and trans and bi ppl, particularly of color, particularly those who are like him, start to be looked down on. Sylvia is arrested and even booed at Pride, suddenly he’s drawing the short end of the stick again. and then there’s the AIDS crisis, and he sees so many people die, and for a while, it feels like there’s no way out after all. and he even loses a lot of his warlock friends, the people who really understand him in his entirety, because sometime around that there’s the Circle massacre, as well. it’s a dark time for him, and honestly it’s a good thing he’s sworn off romance after the whole camille ordeal to clear his head, because after losing so many people he’s never felt this alienated, this alone, and to fall into the arms of another camille or asmodeus would have been just too easy.

but god, he heals. it’s crazy, but he has raphael, he has cat, ragnor, dot, elias, and he somehow builds himself up and relearns to trust and starts to believe that he has the love he’s always believed himself unworthy of having, that he believed impossible to him. and he starts to open up, and to feel more confident in his own skin, right in time to meet alec.

and look, trans!Magnus just makes malec all the more powerful. not only is this shadowhunter showing up and fully trusting a downworlder, giving him his strength, caring about him, cleaning his home (!) and taking care of him, something he hasn’t allowed himself to have for so long, something he didn’t believe he could have and that alec does so easily even when they’ve barely met. he shows magnus so much care and respect from day one and magnus doesn’t get that from anyone, let alone a shadowhunter, let alone a shadowhunter that’s there with jocelyn’s entitled daughter who treats him as a tool - and look, i know he loves clary, but she is entitled and magnus unfortunately enables her and other entitled shadowhunters to treat him as such, because even he treats himself as such most of the time, and it’s something he needs to work on, and probably has been at least since he broke up with camille.

but he’s also a white, gay man, and magnus has seen firsthand that these people can be nasty to people like him. yes he tried to help alec come to terms with his sexuality, and yes he’s surprised him before, but it’s also not like alec didn’t fuck up and wasn’t entirely… well, shadowhunter-y and had a lot of trouble believing that things didn’t have to be the shadowhunter, bigoted way for a while. but alec doesn’t give a shit if magnus is trans, it doesn’t lessen his attraction or love to him in any way, and it’s just. ugh. beautiful.

and yeah this has gotten too long and it already took me like 3 weeks to answer it because of the amount of research ive done and general tiredness so im gonna end this here, and on a positive note for a change! magnus is happy and learning to take care of himself and accepts himself and trans rights. hell yeah.