#why are you assuming that different genders are inherently different to raise

[shadelorde]

okay you know what. my least favorite fandom discourse ever is when people genuinely fight over whether a character would have a son or a daughter. it’s like. actually really gross to me. you’re so obsessed with that gender role gender reveal shit that you project it onto fictional characters? gross.

[vamptastic]

i just tire of having to listen to every therapist and medical professional present a tired and obviously untrue hypothesis in regards to my own life, desires, and identity. like ok my dad hit me im bisexual and i have what some consider an intersex condition. i think you will find many people with a similar background that feel like their body in its natural state is their own and have not spent a lifetime plagued by dreams (like literal zzz sleepytime dreams) in which they have the opposite secondary sex characteristics. i am simply like this.

conversations about the nature of gender, whether transsexuality is defined by the desire to change ones sex or by a desire to occupy a different gender role or both, these are things i do not mind discussing in terms of theory. it's interesting.

it is however extremely annoying when people immediately make an assumption upon hearing some fact of my life that they have cracked the code and identified what made me trans (and presumably what would make me not-trans if it did not happen). i find it to be far more often an expression of the person's own complicated feelings on their own gender than an accurate analysis of my own. it's a lot of projection quite frankly.

[molsno]

I've already written about why male socialization is a myth that needs to be discarded, but in the responses to those posts, I sometimes find tme trans people who concede that yes, the concept of male socialization should be rejected, but refuse to let go of their own supposed female socialization. this always makes me quite reasonably angry, for two reasons:

I dislike it when people hijack my posts about transmisogyny to talk about things that aren't transmisogyny.

rejecting male socialization but embracing female socialization is still innately transmisogynistic.

you might find yourself wondering how that second point could possibly be true. it's true for a lot of reasons, and I'll explain to the best of my ability.

"female socialization" is the idea that people who were assigned female at birth undergo a universal experience of girlhood that stays with them the rest of their lives.

right off the bat, this concept raises alarm bells. first, it is a bold (and horribly incorrect) assertion to claim that there is any universal experience of girlhood that is shared by all people who were afab. what exactly constitutes girlhood varies greatly based on culture, time period, race, class, sexual orientation, and many, many other factors. disregarding transness for a moment, can you really say that, for example, white women and black women in modern day america, even with all else being equal, are socialized in the same way? the differences in "socialization" only become more stark the fewer commonalities two given people have. to give another example, a white gay trans man born in 2001 to an upper middle class family in a progressive city in the north is going to have a very different life than a cis straight mexican woman born in 1952 to an impoverished family and risked her life immigrating to the us in the deep south. can you really say anything meaningful about the "female socialization" that these two supposedly have in common? I think that b. binaohan said it best in "decolonizing trans/gender 101":

Then in a singular sense we most certainly cannot talk about 'male socialization' or 'female socialization' as things that exist. We can only talk about 'male socialization**s**' and 'female socialization**s**'. For if we take the multiplicity of identity seriously, as we must, then we are socialized as a whole person based on the nexus of the parts of our identity and our axes of oppression. ... Indeed, it gets complex enough that we could assert, easily, that each individual is socialized in unique ways that cannot be assumed true of any other person, since no one else shares our **exact** context. Not even my sister was socialized in the same way that I was.

and while I could just leave it at that and tell you to read the rest of their book (which you should), it wouldn't sit right with me if I just debunked the concept without explaining exactly why it's transmisogynistic at its core.

now, I should preface this by saying that I believe trans people have a right to identify however they want, and I think that trans people deserve the space to talk about their lives before transition without facing judgment. there are tme trans people who consider themselves women and there are trans men who don't consider themselves women at all but nonetheless have a lot of negative experiences with being expected to conform to womanhood. I don't want to deprive these people of the ability to talk about their life experiences. however, I do want them to keep in mind a few things.

first of all, "female socialization" is terf rhetoric. terfs talk all the time about how womanhood is inherently traumatic, which they regularly use as a talking point to convince trans men to detransition and join their side. when your whole ideology hinges on the belief that having been afab predestines you to a life of suffering, who is a better target to indoctrinate than trans people for whom being expected to conform to womanhood was a major source of trauma and dysphoria? the myth of female socialization is precisely why there are detransitioners in the terf movement who vehemently oppose trans rights.

that's why when tme trans people talk about having undergone female socialization, it's almost always steeped in the underlying implication that womanhood is an innately negative experience. even if they don't buy into the biological determinism central to radical feminism, that implication is still present. because, you see, womanhood can still be innately negative because the result of being viewed as and expected to be a woman is that you are inundated with misogyny.

that right there is why clinging to the notion of female socialization is transmisogynistic. it allows tme trans people, many of whom don't even consider themselves women, to position themselves as experts who understand womanhood and misogyny better than any trans woman ever could. that's why I find it disingenuous when a tme trans person claims to reject male socialization but still considers themself as having undergone female socialization; how could they possibly benefit from doing so, other than by claiming to be more oppressed than trans women, by virtue of supposedly experiencing more misogyny?

by being viewed as more oppressed than trans women on the basis of female socialization, they gain access to "women's only" spaces that trans women are denied access to. their voices are given priority in discussions about gendered oppression. people more readily view them as the victims when they come into interpersonal conflict with trans women. they become incapable of perpetrating transmisogyny on the basis of being the "more oppressed" category of trans people.

how exactly could such a person not be transmisogynistic, though? if they believe that gendered socialization is a valid and universal truth that one can never escape from, then what does it even mean for them to reject the concept of male socialization? if they were to actually, vehemently reject it, then they would no longer be able to leverage their own "female socialization" to imply that trans women aren't real, genuine women on account of not having experienced it. and make no mistake - there are very few tme trans people who subscribe to the myth of gendered socialization that even claim to reject male socialization. most of the time, they're very clear about their beliefs that trans women have some "masculine energy" that we can never truly get rid of after having undergone a lifetime of being expected to conform to manhood. and as a result, they continue to treat trans women as dangerous oppressors.

that's why gendered socialization as a concept needs to be abandoned wholesale. there's nothing wrong with talking about your experiences as a trans person, but giving any validity to this vile terf rhetoric always harms trans women, just like it was intended to do from its very inception.

[fishing-lesbian-catgirl]

kinda fucked up for you to see a gender non conforming woman (samsus) and automatically make them trans. you get what i mean about how thats just reinforcing gender stereotypes (that cis women are feminine and would never commit genocide even a little while transwomen would do masculine evil things like shoot gun (because they’ve kept their man vibes) or whatever

yeah

I can’t tell if this is like a shitpost or a really poorly worded commentary because I have no idea who you are. Frankly I would normally assume the worst block you, buuuuut since I like talking about it I’d love to explain why Samus Aran is extremely transgender.

Tbh I am still tempted to block you but the terrible grammar, spelling error, and nonsensical nature of the ask almost make it seem like a shitpost

First of all Samus being trans-coded was very core to her character from the very beginning. Regardless of the reasons they did it, the original Metroid was intentionally made and marketed to have people assume she was a man. This isn’t even just because people would see a person in a power suit and assume they were a man, the games manual explicitly refers to Samus with he/him pronouns. The immediate assumption that she’s a man because she’s tall, broad shouldered, badass, and wears a power suit that obscures her feminine features until the big reveal is inherently a trans theme. Taking that away makes her a less compelling character. It’s also continued in that Metroid media has continually joked that a lot of the Galaxy assumes that Samus Aran, the greatest bounty hunter in the Galaxy, is a man.

Secondly there was that one Metroid dev who said in an interview that Samus was transgender. The terminology used was outdated and it was explicitly a transphobic joke, but it’s too late she’s ours now.

Thirdly she is (was) built like one of us. That is, prior to the later zero suit designs trying way too hard to be sexy. Like seriously when I first found this image a few years ago I was the same height and weight as her. I miss the big buff broad shouldered Samus design so much and her later redesigns are honestly kinda pathetic by comparison

Fourth, Samus was raised by the Chozo and trained to become a powerful warrior. Part of what they did to make her strong was body modification via Chozo DNA splicing to make her stronger and more agile than a normal human. This is a sci-fi setting where she was raised by an extremely advanced alien race who could change her very DNA, acting like she couldn’t look like she does and be a trans woman is simply not even an argument.

Now, of course, you could refute all this by saying “but Cordelia, we know what Samus looked like as a kid from Metroid Zero Mission and the manga and she was clearly a little girl not a boy.” Now even without addressing the fact that it’s very possible for people to realize they are transgender as children and that children don’t even really have secondary sex characteristics to make it easy to tell what their gender is, this what Samus actually looked as a child:

The combination of all of this gives us trans women a lot of good reasons to believe she is transgender. But also, literally none of this is necessary for me to headcanon a character as trans. Trans women come in all shapes and sizes with all different stories and not a single thing in Metroid canon even remotely suggests that Samus Aran has to be cisgender. And if you try to say “but Samus has no bulge in canonical zero suit Samus depictions!” you’d have to be intentionally dense. Samus Aran is a chimera with a cocktail of human, Chozo, and Metroid DNA and, again, was raised by a race of super advanced aliens. Not only could they have easily given her bottom surgery, but they could’ve even changed her fucking sex chromosomes if she wanted them to. There is literally nothing in Metroid canon that even remotely gives me a reason not to insist that she’s transgender. To be honest, there is more evidence for her being trans than against.

To anyway anyone who actually read this far, I hope you understand the truth. Nintendo’s redesigns are too afraid to show us, but you and I both know that her cock is huge

[orphee-aux-enfers]

I. Don’t understand how being against homophobia and misogyny and informational suppression is cultural relativism? Yeah I have a #USAmerican raised Christian bias but I think not being bioessentialist and anti-intellectual is. Normal???? Genuinely don’t understand

Okay so. My guess from how this was written is that you are either a child or just into your 20s. I'd expect much different wording and approach if you were older. So. I'm going to try and be as gentle and clear cut as possible.

1) Orthodox Judaism is actually quite diverse and also different from Christianity, even fundamentalist Christianity .

2) What you're witnessing is not necessarily indicative of the actual community values; you are interpreting without insider perspective, or seemingly any actual knowledge. You're also ascribing motive to actions that may or may not be there.

3) many orthodox Jews, myself included, are queer and trans and embraced by our community. Every person of authority I've spoken to on the matter says that my incredibly queer, t4t marriage that gets read as gay no matter what, still gets the mitzvah of sex on erev Shabbos, and that includes my main community of Chabad.

4) many books are screened before being given to children by all people everywhere for a variety of reasons. Just because you don't fully understand the reasons as you are not yourself Orthodox Jewish doesn't mean that they are automatically something to be hated due to your preconceived notions.

5) Assuming a group is inherently homophobic, misogynistic, etc. Simply because you don't understand them as you are not part of their community is in fact a bad behaviour, yes. Don't do that. Most of the time, in most communities people are at worst confused.

6) As for misogyny... It's important to know the ways in which Judaism actually structures it's sex roles. No one has different sex roles because they're lesser, which misogyny implies. And every SINGLE person I have ever met observes mitzvos based on sex due to actually desire, not coercion. But for example, married women cover their hair as a way of making their marriage even more holy. Men meanwhile are told to cover their head at all times so they are mindful of G-d at all times. What does this imply at first glance? Why, that women are capable of remembering G-d at all times and the men are silly and must forget G-d if not reminded! Do we think this is all to the interpretation?

So. Before you judge our community so harshly... Perhaps also consider the last century of human history alone. We are being killed and hurt at alarming rates again, especially in the USA. Is it any wonder we don't stop in the streets to justify our existence to you?

Lastly, an oversharing of my personal details because as I am currently safe and well at home, I feel I ought to give you opportunity to understand that you aren't seeing/understanding the complexity of sex roles in Judaism

7) so, yes, orthodox Judaism has gender/sex based roles. It also is, in my experience, pretty flexible to meet individuals. I was coercively assigned female at birth. I was however by Jewish law, tumtum. In English terms, I had ambiguous genitals which could be surgically changed. My sister wanted a baby sister. And so, I was surgically "corrected" and raised female, until puberty and onset of hormonal problems that indicated that it wasn't just a genital mutation. I felt disconnected from binary gender, and at time, in part of my community having a label for me while the hospital I was born at had simply labeled me "incorrect", I came to embrace a masculine social standing. Because I was unable to be sexed as an infant, have masculine levels of testosterone and a lack of menses for years at a time, I have to adhere to both male and female sex based mitzvos. Religiously, I am operating with the strictest possible adherence, but this is all written and debated, as are all of the other sexes in Judaism. I am, however, allowed to exist as intersex in a Jewish community in a way that I am NEVER allowed to exist as intersex without a fight in the secular world, to the point that if it's not relevant I identify only as trans, because otherwise it becomes too complicated in the secular world. And this is genuinely because there is actually a space for me to exist in, as there are six Talmudic sexes.

Being trans and intersex is "allowed". Being queer is "allowed". Some communities differ, but I've lived in seven, and all of them have been more accepting of me being queer, trans, and intersex, than any secular space, including liberal and leftist spaces. At WORST, I am met with curiosity because I am new to the community. I think, perhaps, too many people in this world mistake curiosity with hatred.

[melloneah]

How would a female near, mello, and Matt be in your opinion? Would it affect the story?

oh. my. GOD. you have opened the pandoras box rn.

so tbh ive never thought about this before u sent me this ask but god do I have some stuff to say now that I’ve given it a little tinker

obviously this will be deeply rooted in my own belief system and personal experiences bc it’s undeniably connected to gender stereotypes and nature vs nurture

Prepare for a literal essay rn. Proper punctuation and capitalisation n shit.

To start, I wanna mention that my belief is that men and women don’t differ that much in behaviours and personalities inherently or biologically, but they’re raised based on stereotypes and assumptions which forms them into individuals that are either more masculine or feminine (behaviourally, so stereotypically). This is not including the slight biological differences that testosterone vs estrogen might cause, as i do not have much knowledge on the specifics (sorry I hate biology…) and obviously some people can be born with an innate tendency towards stereotypical masculinity or femininity in their personality.

This will require me to make some assumptions regarding how old Matt, Mello and Near were when they joined Wammy’s house. Also, obviously, this analysis will be based on if they were raised as cisgendered females; this is really important to analyse how their personalities could differ based on their experiences.

So let’s assume: they all joined Wammy’s House at a young enough age to have no real recollection of their biological families. This means that their guardians’ parenting styles had no real effect on their personalities (at least no effect on their typically gendered characteristics). This also makes it easier as we have a little bit of insight into what Wammy’s could be like in the context of parenting, while we have none on the biological families. This will still pretty much be a guessing game, but at least the guesses will be somewhat calculated.

Now we could be optimistic and claim that Wammy’s is “above” gender stereotypes and the (often unconscious) differences in raising girls vs boys. As much as I would love to believe this, I feel like the story being set in the early 2000s already negates it. I am a strong believer of the fact that society and your general environment greatly affect you, no matter how hard you try to break free of the mould. There will always be internalised beliefs and tendencies for certain actions caused by your environment that are just beyond your control, and they are often unconscious. Trying to change ones biases is hard work and a long process demanding self awareness and dedication.

Roger and Wammy are old men; as much as I’d love them to be allies💅 that don’t let gender affect their decisions and behaviour towards people, I do think the bias is inherently there to some extent. They wouldn’t decide against a girl being L’s successor simply because she’s a girl - they’re above that - but I do think as girls, Matt, Mello and Near could have a tougher time at the orphanage.

Ok moving on to specifically how/why it could affect their personalities. (god this is getting so long already I am so sorry)

Mello

We all know Mello has a super fiery personality and is filled with determination, so this one is the most fun to think about for me!!!

Most importantly, her looks would be very feminine. She’d love fashion, love skirts and dresses, and be stereotypical in that context, but would be VERY PROUD OF IT!!! EXCEPT. Her personality is canonically extremely contrasting to her looks/style. She’d get in so much more trouble at Wammy’s for being loud and bullying others, because it would just be more shocking for the teachers to see a girl act that way rather than a boy. There would be no concessions. No getting out of any smallest bit of trouble just because “boys will be boys”. But this wouldn’t make her timid; it was bound to fuel her anger even more.

It was infuriating to her when people saw a "girl in a leather mini skirt", and on account of that she wasn’t taken seriously in the pursuit of her goals. But when she acted up, all eyes were on her, and the punishment was always dire.

This also brings me to the fact that getting into the mafia was NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE. Nobody took this teenaged girl in stilettos seriously, so she had to improvise. Mello as a girl would have had to be far more ruthless in her journey trying to join the mob. Crueler. Angrier. Scare people by drastic means and desperate measures into finally taking her seriously and seeing her as worthy of respect. I think female Mello would have had much more blood on her hands, and would have been really scary...

I also think Mello would be a radical feminist. She would eventually HATE MEN as a whole, as she’d get objectified SO MUCH in the mafia. She’d just be completely done with their shit, so much so, that she would just channel her anger at an entire gender bc she was just fed. up. (and probably a little traumatised)

Her most hated phrase is “that’s not ladylike”. She values her femininity very much, and hates when people use empty stereotypes to belittle it. She can scream her head off at Near and still be a Lady!

Near

Studies show that autism is only diagnosed at a 4:1 boys to girls ratio, which means that if Near were a girl, she may not have had the access to as many accomodations. She’d still be supported in many ways, but it could be done hesitantly. Her timid behaviour and hobbies could be seen as “feminine”, meaning that if she’d ask for accomodations, the necessity for them could be doubted. (I know Wammy’s probably doesn’t officially diagnose, but Near imo desperately needs accomodations to simply function) (also, this section is very much so an “if” in my mind; it could happen depending on the level of unconscious prejudice in the orphanage, but it’s extremely dependent on the staff).

I don’t think Near being a cis girl would really affect the plot, though. I genuinely believe Near’s character transcends gender a bit, maybe he’s immune to the influence of different methods of parenting? He’s just himself and doesn’t care if people tell him he should “go out and play” or “just be a boy”.

Matt

We know the least about Matt’s canon personality, so this will mostly be based on what I believe him to be like. We know that he doesn’t care about much, and he likes games.

I think Matt is the most “boyish” of our Wammy boys, so in my mind, as a girl, she’d be quite the tomboy. Her personality wouldn’t be that much different. She could have been force fed more “girly hobbies” rather than gaming (not sure if he picked up gaming himself, or if someone introduced him to it). If he was in fact introduced by someone to video games, I believe that as a girl, she could have been shown different hobbies that are more traditionally feminine instead. Or maybe just a different game, like the sims? (the sims 1 came out in 2000 so could happen) then she could branch out into different games herself.

IT is also a very masculine interest in people’s eyes, so when she found an interest for it, she may have been slightly discouraged by teachers, but that didn't stop her, and as soon as she started being decent at it, the teachers respected it.

I do feel like as a girl, the one thing that would definitely change in Matt is his attitude. She would simply care more, as she’d spent her childhood fighting wearing skirts, fighting for her hobbies and trying to run from stereotypical femininity.

She wouldn't be particularly furious at the world, more irritated, so she wouldn't chew someone out for telling her to wear a dress for an assembly - she'd just flat out refuse wearing it and ignore anyone who'd try to persuade her.

She didn't understand why everyone is so insistent on a girl having long hair or wearing make up, and it made her feel like she couldn't be herself. She always wanted to feel like a girl, but kept feeling like it was against the rules without looking feminine. She spent a long time feeling out of place, alienated and desperately wanting to be part of a community.

Once she got comfortable with herself, I feel like she'd constantly pick up typically boyish hobbies to piss people off. (But she would genuinely enjoy them too of course!!) (and be entertained by people getting mad at stupid and pointless shit like a girl being into cars)

ok jesus i spent hours on this. it’s 1400 words. i dont know how i managed this. i struggle to write 500 word essays for uni……i am normal about death note i am normal about death note i am normal about death note 🙏 ummmm enjoy? and please let me know what you guys think!!!

[zevranunderstander]

i have so many thoughts right now, but if gerudos were real, like, there are so many aspects of their culture that would be way different and its not even just that they dont make sense because the writers didnt properly think about them, they don't make sense because of the explicit desire of the writers to sexualize them and because the assumptions the writers had were so deeply western & christian that they just assumed them to be the default and oughhh i hate it so much

a culture of desert people would not fucking wear silks and expose tons of skin & hair all the time. especially OoT designs make no practical sense? its literally just so that they look hot and the following games kind of kept that design (they didnt appear in a lot of titles afterwards so this wasnt a super established part of the zelda canon, they clearly could have chosen a more practical design for their clothes for botw and totk, but, yk, they didnt)

and like. a society that doesnt really get the concept of "men", Why On Earth would they be monogamous and heteronormative? why would they care about men? like? even if your answer is "for reproduction", why would they strive to be in a *relationship* with a man? like? men arent exactly native to the regions they live in? why would *every* woman hike out to find some dude to date?

and like. i thought it was SO interesting that ganondorf has 2 moms, right? like, even though theyre twin sisters and not a lesbian couple, why WOULDNT a society like that raise children among sisters or friends or as a group, outside of relationships? but the concept never comes up again and they all apparently travel hyrule when they are old enough and look for a husband. (and you know its just like that because they couldnt even *consider* people thinking there was anything gay going on there)

and why would the gerudo make a man their king? thats kinda like if we as a society noticed an intersex person and immediately made them the pope? people usually do not really LIKE people that arent Like Them, and dont just make them their leader? only a person having a very patriarcial worldview (which just DOESNT MAKE SENSE for the gerudo to have) would decide that the only man born would be their leader?

and in every instance where you encounter gerudo talking about men, they clearly see them as weaker than them, like, you see this in so many interactions, that gerudo think of women to be the Stronger Gender, so why does that not apply to male gerudos? like? ganondorf is kind of a Sorcerer Who Has A Sword, so why would a folk of warrior women think of him as inherently superior to them and stronger than them in some way?

why would they even consider one instance of another gender to be something that should be split into a binary and identify it as a different identity than them?? why do the gerudo have a preconceived notion that male gerudos should wear different types of clothes than women??? why does ganondorf have different pronouns??? why do the gerudo have gendered language at all??

and for the newer games specifically, why would the gerudo be so boy-crazy? like, dont get me wrong i genuinely liked that they didnt just make them Tough Mean Women in the new game and allowed them to also be a bit silly and whimsical, but there would have been other ways to do that than making them Literally Obsessed With Men?

i think its fitting that a person who hasnt socialized much with men might be a bit akward and might not know what to say or might not be able to relate to them very well, but then why do they not seem to be bothered by talking to women of other races? i mean, they might be all women but theres probably more reason to be akward around a zora if you never met one than there is reason to be akward around a man if you never met one? does that make sense?

also. why on earth would men not be allowed in their town. WHY do these women go out and find husbands, but then the husbands are not allowed in town, that makes literally zero fucking sense. like i said these people shouldnt really care about gender as a binary in the first place, and instead just maybe be really bad at differentiating between genders. but why would they care that much that men dont enter their town?

like make it make sense nintendo

[askbensolo]

#Justice4Sweeper

Contemplating whether I should rant about droids’ rights and risk getting cancelled—okay I don’t care let’s gooo cancel me baby. It’s my college experience all over again!

So. I don’t believe in droids’ rights because I think the concept of “rights” applies to organic beings (with another split between organic sentient beings, aka “persons,” and organic non-sentient beings, aka “animals”—but for the sake of this argument I’m using the word “organic” to talk about persons here, so you can put your “but banthas are organic so why don’t you give them rights” strawman away).

Somehow, we sentients wound up in this galaxy—whether through some lucky cosmic accident and subsequent evolution or being born through the Force or whatever—who cares, somehow we got here, and we are what we call “alive.” That mysterious aliveness is unique to organic beings. We live, we die, we breathe, we reproduce, our cells replicate and regenerate—we’re alive. Nobody has to assemble us or program us. Two gamete cells come together (in most species, anyway) and automatically a new being begins to form according to the laws of nature.

Droids are not alive. We created them. True, we created them to mimic aliveness, we gave them the ability to use language in a way that mimics ours, we even gave them a capacity for data storage that we interpret as “memory” and programmed them to display certain behaviors that we interpret as “personalities.” But a droid does not come into existence without someone else manufacturing it and programming it and putting it together. It does not possess the aliveness that organic beings have by nature. Droids mimic life, but they do not possess it, and therefore they are inherently different from us and not entitled to the natural rights that organic sentients have.

Okay. So that’s my stance on droids’ rights. Now, when I tell people that, they assume I must, like, super hate droids and go around kicking every droid I see. No. Nooo. I may have a special hatred in my heart for Sweeper, but that’s just because he’s utterly incompetent. I go to a cafe and the waitress is a droid? Cool. I’m not going to leave her a tip, because droids don’t need money, but I’ll smile at her and say please and thank you, ‘cause my mama raised me right. When I visit home and see my mom’s protocol droid See-Threepio, I say hi and ask him how he’s doing and tease him and yeah, interact with him as if he’s a person. (I know some of the based red-pilled types will go so far as to refuse to use gendered pronouns for droids, but I do call droids “he” or “she.” I just do so without actually believing they’re people, like how we call spaceships “she” and stuff).

I’m nice to droids. Most of ‘em, anyway. I’m willing to suspend reality and entertain the fantasy that these machines, that we created to mimic us, think and feel like we do. But at the end of the day, I know that Threepio’s “personhood” is just a projection of my mind and my own sentient experience, not something innate to him.

Take Ren the Bantha of Indeterminate Gender or Origin for example. The stuffed bantha that Luke gave me for my sixteenth birthday. I love Ren. I used to talk to Ren. I used to imagine Ren talking back to me. I dressed Ren up and brought Ren everywhere and wrote fanfiction about me and Ren having adventures. I projected life and personhood onto my stuffed animal, but no one in their right mind would seriously argue that a stuffed animal has rights. It’s the same thing with droids—the only difference is that while I’m the only one pretending my stuffed animal is alive, we intentionally programmed droids to contribute toward their own illusion of life.

Despite not believing in droids’ rights, I do actually think droid abuse is bad. Being cruel to droids for the fun of cruelty is messed up. Not because droids are people, but because the love of cruelty is evil. And I think “abuse” is an accurate term that doesn’t necessarily denote personhood—like how we talk about abuse of power, etc. Droid abuse is kind of a separate conversation though, even though people like to conflate the two.

Anyway—I think one thing that pisses me off the most about the droids’ rights issue is that people take it and run with it in ways that don’t make sense. Like…okay, I may not agree that protocol droids or other advanced processing droids are sentients, but I can see why you would feel that way and how you might come to that conclusion, especially when it comes to droids that haven’t had their databanks routinely wiped. I don’t think it’s insane to believe in advanced droid sentience—it’s incorrect, but not insane.

But…mouse droids? Gonk droids? Repair droids? Sweeper? My guy…my brother in the Force…no. That’s not a person. That’s a glorified toaster on wheels.

[cotarded]

Do you think the sex we are born as has an impact on our life and personality or is there a possibility we would be exactly the same in terms of our character etc if we were born the opposite sex (to as we are). Also if you had a choice would you still choose to be the sex you are or not really? If yes, why?

idk if its stupid or fake deep or what im tired and curious of your opinion ! cheers ☃️

Hey hi hello! This is not a stupid or fake deep question at all. I’m gonna ramble on a bit, hope you don’t mind. 

So one aspect of it is, at least to me, obvious and evident. Yes, the sex we are born as has a tremendous impact on our life. The way we are raised, perceived, the expectations of our families, schools, employers, what we are taught from the earliest days we should aspire to, what is the purpose of our life and the pinnacle of success - all of those depend on our sex. There’s so much research on the impact of sexed socialisation on boys and girls by now that if I wanted to cite something I wouldn’t know where to start. And if it is so pervasive, so omnipresent - why should we assume it doesn’t affect our personalities?

This is another obvious thing - men and women are characterologically and behaviourally different. Not in a discrete way, there are no “woman traits” and “man traits”, but in a similar way to height distribution - a lot of women will be taller than some men and a lot of men will be shorter than some women, but still as a whole men are significantly taller. Now, character traits are more difficult to compare than height - let’s take aggression; by all objective criteria men are more aggressive. But really, the only thing we can measure is the aggressive behaviour - so are women behaving less aggressively because they feel less aggression, or do they feel the same aggression but don’t display it because they were taught so? We are unable to distill character from societal influence, or at least I am unaware of any way of doing so. 

And now we are arriving at one of the “dangerous”, unsolved questions of feminism - are the characterological and behavioural differences between males and females inherent, borne of sex, or just a result of socialisation? I don’t know. My opinion, based on my own life and observations (and of course political opinions) is that there are biologically-determined differences in character trait distribution, but it is socialisation which accounts for the vast majority of differences in behaviour between men and women. 

I do think that two people with the exact same character preset, just a different sex (see, a biologist in me is already confused as to how would that work with eg. testosterone levels, but let’s roll with the hypothetical), raised in our society would still behave differently from one another. Raised in some ideal space with no gender stereotypes and sexed socialisation, probably they’d be the same person. Which is not to say that men and women can’t behave the same and have the same character traits, even with the socialisation - and if we suddenly got rid of misogyny and patriarchy, I’m sure we’d suddenly became much more similar.

In any way, I think I’d be different if I was born male and I shudder to think of it. Which neatly ties us into the last part - if I had a choice I would still choose to be female, even (or especially) in our misogynistic, patriarchal society. There's a story that I used to tell as a funny anecdote (that's become less funny in recent years): I was quite GNC as a child, and when I first learned about transsexualism (as it was still widely known then) in elementary school, I started wondering if maybe I was trans. So I read a bunch of blogs and articles and was getting ready to present my parents with my case, until one night I had a dream that I went through with it, became a boy, and as a result I had to stop hanging out with girls and start being friends with boys and use their bathrooms and changing rooms… Which cured me Instantly. Of course that’s a bit of tongue-in-cheek, but the fact remains - among a ton of other reasons, I appreciate being female for the connection it gives me to other women. I never got along with men and I have a rather low opinion on majority of them, which means I would prefer not to become one. 

I am also, at this point, quite attached to my “identity”. I know who I am, I grew up as her. I wouldn’t change any of her immutable traits, even to a more “beneficial” ones, because they are parts of me, they inform who I am, how I act and think. Circling back - a man could exhibit the exact same character traits as me, but I wouldn’t be myself if I were male.

Does that make sense?

Cheers! 🎃

[thorne1435]

jsyk female does not mean "motherly" or "fertile" from any perspective other than the most misogynistic, US-style conservative, pornsick, male opinion in existence.

if you hear "female" and your brain assumes "feminine, motherly, fertile," or frankly any specific personality or style characteristic at all, all that means is that YOU are a misogynist. and should probably stop watching so much porn.

Hm! Good point!

I mean, I'm not wild about the implicit anti-porn stance because I'm not a nun, but yeah, I would agree with you, otherwise. I don't think females as a category need to be (nor are they inherently) particularly motherly. Or feminine for that matter! And I also don't think that anyone should be expected to be fertile, but...well, the thing is...TERFs kinda do??

I was raised by a TERF! I can tell you exactly the logic that goes on in these people's heads and ultimately why they end up siding with the far-right. There is a belief in both radfem and traditional ideologies that "woman" and "female" are synonymous, and in order to enforce this synonymy without developing cognitive dissonance (which tbf some do) they need to establish inherent characteristics of "the female". This is either done directly, by drawing an outline of the inherent virtue of the feminine ("women are more caring", "women are more longsuffering" etc., all of which are meant to imply their suitability to a "homemaker" role), or it's done indirectly by drawing an outline of the inherent vice of the masculine with which to contrast the supposed nature of women ("men are more aggressive", "men are less emotional" etc., all of which are meant to imply their suitability to a "breadwinner" role)

The thing is, no matter how you do it, you end up conforming to a traditionalist idea about gender roles and why they exist, when the truth of the matter is that they don't really exist for a reason at all. If you could accept that they didn't have a purpose and that our society doesn't need them anymore (if it ever did, even), you could avoid a lot of headaches while subscribing to a genuinely feminist worldview. Instead, in radfems' effort to maintain the sanctity of women as an oppressed people, they have adopted the same patriarchal talking points about sex and gender that are ingrained in our society and that the far-right preys upon with their anti-queer rhetoric.

So, TL;DR: "Woman" means something different from "female", and though you use them as if they are synonymous, the implications that you make are clear: you think the feminine role and female sex are immutable. And this is why Nazis agree with you.

[thebreakfastgenie]

I am sending this on anon because I’m not sure how you’ll take this but if you’re open to a discussion about it I can PM you also. Also I know it was a reblog but I am sending this to you rather than OP as I do not follow OP.

The post you reblogged about feminism, gender studies and trans people really rubs me the wrong way. The idea that “dudes” need feminism because they think being trans means they understand gender could be interpreted in a few ways that I can see and none of them are good. Maybe there’s another way that I am missing. Either it is misgendering trans women and suggesting that they need feminism because they think just being trans means they understand gender (with the implication being that they are wrong, and need to learn feminist theory to set them straight) or it is implying that trans men need feminism because they think they understand gender as they are trans (and the only implication I can draw from this is that if they knew more about feminism, which is for women and not for trans men, that they might just be women?? I hope this is not what this is implying.)

There are a LOT of different branches and ideology within “feminism”; not all of which have historically been inviting or comfortable for trans people of any gender or assigned gender at birth. The idea that trans people need feminism is a loaded statement that could be championing feminism as a political ideology that is inviting of all gender minorities or it could be a veiled insult.

Cis feminists have done a lot for a lot of causes including trans rights and especially for the political successes and social understanding of women. However, I think it’s troubling at best to suggest that feminist theory is going to be better at understanding gender than trans people.

If you think I’ve misunderstood something here or that there is something that I’ve overlooked that would provide different context I am open to hearing it. Alternatively if you would like to discuss my views more please let me know.

Well, I think the context you're missing is OP's bio. I'm the biggest advocate of checking bios not being required on tumblr, and please don't take this as a criticism, but if I were in your shoes I would definitely try to get that context for myself if something rubbed me the wrong way.

OP is a trans nonbinary butch lesbian.

I'm happy to discuss this with you more, but I think that by itself changes the context significantly, so I want to give you a chance to revise your points.

I will add a little bit about why I reblogged it. I have been thinking a lot lately about how in certain spaces, feminism is almost treated as something that's solved. This has led to things like a long twitter thread satirizing deadnaming trans people by writing a hypothetically situation about a married cis woman who didn't take her husband's last name. The situation was meant to be blatantly absurd, but the OP did not seem to realize that it was literally reality for women who keep their own names. I've also seen tumblr users assert that cis women don't experience oppression because of their gender and while I can take that in good faith and assume they were talking about kinds of gender related oppression that are specific to trans people, the blanket statement was still incorrect.

This intersected with another thing I've been thinking about a lot, which is people, many of who were raised with conservative beliefs, coming out as queer and thinking the work ends there. No one is automatically an expert on gender because of their identity. That's what I resonated with in that post. Trans people don't inherently understand the structural hierarchies at play in a patriarchal society. They often have unique insights because of the way they experience those systems, but that doesn't mean they don't need to consciously think about feminism. We all do.

That post doesn't mention feminist theory and I wasn't thinking about any school of feminism or particularly about theory. I was thinking about, truly, the very basics, which are increasingly lost.

[phantomspren]

I was just going to put this in tags but I'll put it here.

This is why I'm uncomfortable when people make sweeping generalizations about conservatives/Republicans.

On a fundamental level, I do disagree with the political beliefs that lead people to holding those labels.

But at the same time, there's such a huge difference between someone who is Republican because they think that we should have lower taxes, and someone who is Republican because they think rich white men are the only people worthy of rights.

When we make those blanket statements of "every Republican is racist" or whatever, we're making it less likely that those people are going to do stuff like this. Often it leads to people doubling down on their beliefs, even if they are inherently harmful.

You also have people like my mom. She is a registered Republican, born and raised in Idaho, super super Mormon.

She's a registered Republican because she thinks that society should be built to promote the family and help families thrive.

But she also supports universal healthcare.

I tell her all the things I think are cool about Harris and Walz and she's always like "wow, yeah, that is really cool!"

She's a high school teacher and because of that now supports gun control.

She doesn't give a shit that I'm aroace. (Haven't talked about gender stuff but I'd feel pretty comfortable bringing it up at this point to be honest.)

The thing is that the public/left awareness of the Republican party has shifted, following the people who are in power. Because those in power are getting more extreme.

There are people who have always held really extreme right-wing beliefs.

There are people like many who are voting for Trump who used to be less extreme, but have followed those in positions in power in gradually making their views more extreme.

There are those like my mom and dad who have some not great but far more reasonable beliefs who feel like the Republican party no longer represent them.

It's important to talk about those problematic beliefs that people like my parents hold, but at the end of the day they are genuinely good people. They've got internalized racism and homophobia and misogyny just like everyone else, but they're still good people.

Honestly even most hardcore Trump supporters are good people. (My grandparents voted for him! They're some of the kindest people I know!)

But if we just throw everyone under the label of "Republican" and then assume that includes things like homophobe, white supremacist, etc, you're going to end up with a lot of people who don't want to get behind what you're behind.

It's so much better, in my experience, to build a report, built trust, try to genuinely understand where the other person is coming from. I've talked to my Trump voting grandparents about trans people and they listened to me. I may not have changed their minds, but they have at least seen that other side from someone they respect.

That's going to go a whole lot more good in the long run than just calling them Republican and never talking to them again.

Of course there's more nuance than this, and if someone has like genuine beliefs that. Really really not great. Dump their ass. It's not worth it. There's a difference between someone who's a white supremacist because that's what they deeply believe, and someone who's just parroting what they saw elsewhere. The later deserve time and understanding, because they have the potential to turn into the former but aren't there yet.

And of course there are people like my mom. If she took a political compass quiz it would tell her she's liberal, hands down. Still a registered Republican.

Anyways, these are thoughts I've had for a bit and maybe I'll write something later that's a bit more planned out. Hope that makes sense.

And there's just a ton of nuance here that I can't get into because I've almost hit my time limit on Tumblr and I need to go take an exam. Plus it's dumb to expect me to elaborate on every possible way this could be misinterpreted. Just assume I kinda know what I'm talking about please, unless I accidentally said something blatantly incorrect. O7

Please vote tomorrow.

Be compassionate.

Imagine those around you complexly.

Think about my mom. :p

Have a cat picture for the road.

i'm a huge fan of Republicans, conservatives or however you want to be politically labeled choosing country over party. please let me see more stories. it's a brave thing to do this. even if you voted for him in both 2016 & 2020 but you changed your mind now, WELCOME. it's a massive deal to get out of any cult successfully & MAGA is no different. being filled with anger & hatred, & fear is intoxicating & honestly easier than choosing to do the right thing. i'm glad you saw the light.

check your registration status often & don't stop talking about Project 2025. they can pretend they're distancing themselves from it as much as they want but it's absolutely their policy. we can do this though if we just show up & VOTE. we got this 💙

[bao3bei4]

girlbosses, male wives, and other lesbian genders

a post about jing wei qing shang. but also mostly about another unrelated movie. spoiler-free.

for a lot of people, mulan 1998 is their definitive “ohhh i’m a chinese woman dressing as a man for contrived reasons and i get absolutely nooo erotic pleasure from this” movie. 

however, because i am very special and unique, for me it’s the love eterne 1963. it’s the shaw brothers adaptation of butterfly lovers, the classic chinese folktale. here’s how i’d summarize the movie: 

zhu yingtai, an aspiring scholar, convinces her parents to let her dress as a man to attend school. on the way there, she meets liang shanbo, another prospective student, and they become sworn brothers. they study together for three years, growing closer, until zhu yingtai returns home. liang shangbo accompanies her for the eighteen-li journey home while she hints she’s a woman, but he remains oblivious. by the time he learns her gender, her parents have engaged her to another man. he dies of grief, and while she mourns at his grave, it splits open, and she buries herself inside with him. two scraps of her torn outfit turn into butterflies and fly away.

it’s worth noting here that like. this movie is made in the huangmei opera style. so both zhu yingtai and liang shanbo are played by women (betty loh ti and ivy ling po respectively). because of this, basically every level of the film is preoccupied with gender: if we take zhu yingtai’s male performance as credible (as the characters in the movie do) the leads bond through male homoeroticism; the text is ultimately about a heterosexual romance; it is acted out by two women, in a performance that is difficult to mistake as heterosexual or even feminine; and the dialogue of the movie can’t help but remark on this.

basically it asks: what if lesbians could be gay both ways? wouldn’t that be based? 

like opera was traditionally made by single gender casts, so roles tended to be genderless, in that the gender of the actor doesn’t determine the gender of the role they play. roles are instead typed into four categories: dan (fem), sheng (masc), chou (clown), and jing (painted face). it’s a sick gender quadinary. each of these roles has further subtypes that are represented through stylized patterns of singing, makeup, costuming, movement etc.

so in butterfly lovers, betty loh ti plays a dan, and ivy ling po plays a sheng. but because of the textual cross-gender play, you end up with a woman playing a woman playing a man who falls in love with a woman playing a man.

i’m going to make a brief digression here into talking about like.. acting theory. in the european tradition, you see it evolving out of early concerns (from stanislavski, brecht) about the fourth wall, and its permeability or lack thereof. in chinese opera tradition, the fourth wall didn’t ever really exist. and mei lanfang, the legendary fanchuan performer, claimed that his success wasn’t just due to his appearance, but rather, his mastery of some nonliteral feminine subjectivity. 

If I kept my male feelings, even just a trace, it will betray my true self; then how can I compete for the audience’s affection for feminine beauty and guile?

i’m not going to argue that there’s like, an essence to being a woman because i’m not a fucking idiot. but there’s something to be said for the idea that the gendered interplay between the audience’s perception of the actor, the actor’s perception of themself, and the character they play is a massive part of the appeal of fanchuan performance.

this is echoed by david hwang’s m. butterfly, in which gallimard memorably says, “i’m a man who loved a woman created by a man. everything else—simply falls short.” btw sorry for having the type of brain disease where i constantly reference chinese crossdressing related media. you already know why i have it. 

anyway. parallel to that (but far less morally detestably), jin jiang argues “young male impersonators in yue opera embody women’s ideal men—elegant, graceful, capable, caring, gentle, and loyal.” so, trivially, 1) the eroticism embodied by fanchuan performers is distinctly different from their “straight” counterparts, and perhaps less trivially 2) it’s way better. 

back to the love eterne for a bit. one of the many reasons it’s lodged itself into my psyche is because there’s something more interesting at play than just all that. normally in opera, to compensate for any perceived residual femininity in the sheng, the dan camps it up even further. so this is how zhu yingtai first appears, this bratty femme pastiche of womanhood. yet within a couple minutes she’s dressed as a man, which she’ll stay as for the bulk of the movie. they do however make compromises with the makeup--more gently lifted eyebrows than the steep angles of the sheng opera beat, and an improbably masculine smoky eye. 

that’s right. they performed girlbossification on her. 

i don’t want to suggest that she’s straightforwardly feminine. i could write an entire other thing on her relationship to masculinity. instead i want to highlight the erotic interplay not just between the “girl” and the “boss” but also between her and her counterpart: the male wife. 

liang shanbo is ostensibly straightforwardly male, but his relationship with zhu yingtai isn’t gay in the ahaha what if i was into my bro way-- it’s a what if i was into my bro and i was his wife way.

that’s right. they performed force fem on a cis woman-man. like when zhu yingtai tells him he can’t watch over her as she recovers from an illness because “boys and girls can’t sleep together,” liang shanbo asks “are you implying that I’m a girl?”

there’s a lot of shit like this that builds up over the course of the movie. it all culminates in that final 18 mile journey. along the way, zhu yingtai compares them to a pair of mandarin ducks, one male & one female. liang shanbo sputters “i am a man inside out-- you shouldn’t--” before graciously conceding, “you may compare me to a woman.” 

this is like. a simple punchline. but it’s incredible. it’s true! liang shanbo isn’t a man inside out in that he’s a man and only a man, but rather that he’s a man seen inside first, built for desiring, by a woman & for a woman. as a perpetual object, he becomes a more believable woman than zhu yingtai. and at least in his view, it seems more likely that he could be a woman than her. but beyond that, his permissive tone reads as a kind of wanting in itself--recast, if she wants, “for you, i’ll be a woman.” 

obviously this is a classic lesbian mood. who among us has not seen “no gender only lesbian” posts. and speaking of classic lesbians, you might ask. did you just tiresomely reinvent butches and femmes but with a more annoying name? yes. no. okay. well. 

first, like butch/femme dynamics have both historical specificity and a classed character such that it’s not rlly that appropriate to impose them on the love eterne. and i guess more importantly, i wanna talk about stuff that isn’t real.

we fight all day about people who confuse performance with performativity, (i use we lightly here. for instance, i go outside every day so i don’t care about discourse) but what if we actually wanted to talk about the former for once? something specifically, whether we choose or are forced into it, that we pretend to be? 

anyway. what the hell does all that have to do with jing wei qing shang. i’m going to start by first making the argument that there’s no such thing as a naturally occurring girlboss. i think, honestly, she’s a product of capitalism (“boss” should be the tipoff here) but because both of these stories are set in ambiguously historical china, i’m going to say, instead that she’s a product of uhhh primitive accumulation.

semantics so that i can be canon compliant with marxism aside, if girlbosses are made not born, can you choose to be a girlboss? sheryl sandberg says yes. i don’t disagree, i guess, but i will say: stop glamorizing it! humans only become girlbosses when they’re greatly distressed. 

you become a girlboss when you have no other choice not to be one. when your wants are too great to be a woman, when the things you want are not things that women should want-- whether that’s something that really no one should want, like being a ceo, or whether that’s just something like loving a woman (or, as it is quite often, both) -- you have to become something else. 

another important part of being a girlboss is that other people are not. your excesses mean that not only do you lose something in the process, but your bosshood comes at the expense of others. the girlboss necessitates a girlworker, or so to speak. 

now we’re getting to jwqs. i’m assuming that you haven’t read jwqs, because most people haven’t. that was me until like four days ago. in broad strokes, the novel is about a woman, qiyan agula, who was raised as a prince, and her quest for revenge against the kingdom who slaughtered her people. of course, this involves marrying one of the princesses of that kingdom. it’s all very exciting (lesbian). 

what’s striking about jwqs is that both of them seem to fit the girlboss paradigm, in vaguely similar ways. qi yan (agula’s assumed name) seems to follow the lineage of zhu yingtai, who pretends to be a man to achieve her goals. she’s forced to give up much in the process, and also sacrifices a, uh, lot of innocent people. similarly, nangong jingnu, the princess, is inherently a girlboss because royalty sucks. but also, qi yan girlbossifies her over the course of their relationship. 

but i wouldn’t say jwqs is girlboss4girlboss. there’s something a little more complicated happening. qi yan isn’t zhu yingtai in that she’s a dan pretending to be a sheng. it seems more like that she was a sheng all along. it’s something that the women of the novel return to often: qi yan seems to be better than a man.

for instance, nangong sunu, jingnu’s older sister, reflects on this. 

Nangong Sunu had seen many foolishly loving women who sacrificed everything for the sake of their husbands, but there were rarely any men who would do the same for them. 

(...) 

Thinking it through, Nangong Sunu felt that Qi Yan was truly becoming more interesting. She intended to observe discreetly for a while, to verify if such a man truly existed in this world. (ch 221) 

and i forgot to write down the citation for this, but nangong jingnu also seems to argue that not only is qi yan prettier than a man, but she also seems to be prettier than a woman. (it’s the bit where she’s watching qi yan sleep. help me out here.)

moreover, the way qi yan relates to nangong jingnu is suggestive. jingnu brings out the elements of wanting to be a woman in her. it’s jingnu’s body that makes her wonder what she would look like if she was more feminine. it’s jingnu’s happiness that she resents, wishing that her people could have that as well. it’s her desire for jingnu that makes her a woman. 

(another important distinction i suppose--while one person can’t be both a butch and a femme, because the girlboss and the male wife are things we pretend to be until we embody them / them us -- there’s greater slippage between the two.)

anyway, the girlboss/male wife dynamic is reversed wrt who’s actually dressing as a different gender. that suggests an inversion in the implications we see from the love eterne, if we are to take the love eterne as the paradigmatic girlboss text. which i do, for no reason in particular. 

so then, is qi yan pretending to be a man? under the opera framework, we’re forced to say no. she’s not pretending to be a man any more so than liang shanbo (as acted by ivy ling po) was. but that, of course, feels incorrect, just looking at the text. is she, then, pretending to be a sheng? i’d strongly say no. the things that others see in her, they authentically see; and she does authentically feel the same things as liang shanbo wrt femininity.

so it has to be the opera framework that jwqs is subverting then. if qi yan kept some trace of her once-womanhood, if qi yan reveals her true self, and yet she still can compete for the audience’s affection-- jwqs’s inversion of the opera framework seems to argue instead that it’s that true self that allows you to compete. it’s being masc that lets you be a desirable woman; it’s being feminine that lets you be a desirable man.

there’s an increased gender ambivalence to jwqs, which make sense, i guess, seeing as it’s not meant to be a het story the way that the love eterne was. for instance, nangong jingnu crossdresses to go out in public, and qi yan remarks that jingnu’s disguise fooled her on their first meeting. when qi yan and jingnu go out in public, both disguised as men, they’re repeatedly perceived as a gay male couple. there’s freedom in that: they could be gay women only privately, they could be straight officially, but they could be anonymously gay publicly. 

so it’s through the gay male pretense that they can be gay women; it’s through the qi yan pretense that agula can love women; it’s the qi yan caring husband persona that coaxes jingnu in caring for qi yan in return-- jwqs, more precisely, argues that you can’t be a woman if you’re going to love them, and even less so if you’re going to be loved by one. 

this is perhaps well-trodden ground for anyone who has read wittig & certainly many people who haven’t. but it’s the layer of pretense that for me complicates these two narratives. 

i think it’s a relatable feeling: wanting something anticipating getting something, or wanting something for yourself anticipating knowing that you already had it. that is, desire in itself being constitutive of that reality. 

or less abstractly, knowing that you’d want to be a lesbian if you could, knowing that you’d want not to be a woman if you could-- anticipating any realization of either. 

the dramatic excesses & wants of the girlboss, i think, are a decent literary stand in for being a lesbian. 

i wanna note here that this is rlly just based on my experience being a transmisogyny exempt nonbinary diaspora lesbian lol. it’s fun & cathartic to overread this history & place myself in the accidental implications.

i don’t think most of the things i say are literally true. and i don’t want to overstep & say any of this can be generalized. please lmk if something here doesn’t read right! ok kisses bye

[wahbegan]

You see, trans rights are often conflated with feminism or the lesbian, gay, and bisexual community, but in truth, being trans resembles neither. Being transgender is neither sex, nor sexuality, nor indeed race, creed, financial status, or physical or mental disability. It is, in a word, wholly novel.

It is a rights movement for which there is no historical precedent. One can assume this is why the trans community searches to fit itself into other boxes, for fear of remaining completely unheard, gaining no traction. Yet, this has caused issues for it, as inter-community friction has built up, with a growing number of women and gay people becoming increasingly uncomfortable with, if not the trans community’s fusion with their own, at the very least with some of the things they campaign for.

Yes, one might look at the problem and think the trans community standing wholly apart, on its own merit, campaigning for its rights alone would be the solution, but I’d like to examine it from another perspective.

If we look at the root of why gender dysphoria and transition exists, sifting through countless accounts of trans individuals and those with dysphoria, clear patterns begin to emerge. Increasingly, trans people aren’t concerned with being in “the wrong body” or getting surgery, or if they do, only getting it to help be treated more completely as their identified gender.

It’s all about gender roles. About being more, about being uniquely human in a way that being called a man or a woman can’t convey with the implications those words carry. Put simply, I believe human psychological evolution is rapidly outstripping the antiquated gender roles still in place in societies around the world. Here the trans movement and radical feminism CAN find common ground, were it not that the proposed solutions were so radically different.

The trans solution is of course transition. Individuals essentially opting out of gender constraints placed upon them by society through certain behaviors, methods of dress, surgeries, hormones, etc. While certainly being the more instantly cathartic and beneficial for the mental health of the person in question, some of us believe it to be a band-aid fix. Short-term, individualistic, capitalistic in nature. Easily taken advantage of and misused.

The gender critical and radical feminism movements simply propose an alternate solution. Abolish the gender role entirely. Destroy all preconceived notions on inherent psychological and emotional differences between men and women, globally, as well as views on the differing worth to the community of the two. Raise boys and girls the exact same way, do not market any specific color, product, fashion, career, or mode of behavior to one sex over another. Turn the difference between man and woman into nothing more than a simple acknowledgement of divergent physical characteristics between the two sexes of the human species. No baggage. 

The belief is that long-term, overall, the world would not be so full of dysphoria, that men and women could dress and act exactly as the trans people of today do, but would simply feel no need to say they are the other sex. In this way, psychological stress about gender could, in theory, not just be alleviated but basically entirely destroyed, while keeping intact the main things the trans community comes into conflict with other communities about: namely, female biology and the language surrounding it, and the effects gender identity has on sexual orientation. 

Such work would be exhausting, difficult, many years away, fought every step of the way, and sounds like a pipe dream but it could be so much better for everyone

[boys-night]

Mickey and Ian - communication, sex, and relationship styles, post 11x07

Here’s my take on how Ian and Mickey relate to sexuality and relationship styles, thinking mainly about 11x07, but also looking more broadly at the series and including HoS. If you’re not interested in incorporating 11x07 in your version of canon, ignore this! I enjoyed 11x07 but I understand people have different ways of seeing Ian and Mickey’s relationship. I’m also doing the classic meta thing of taking seriously exaggerated/comic/contradictory elements in the show because that’s how I roll. 

Super long post under cut. 

I’ve been reading Sexuality: A Graphic Guide by Meg-John Barker and Jules Scheele which is where a lot of the following ideas and terminology come from. I’ve also been looking at Meg-John Barker’s free relationship zine on their website rewritingtherules.com. I highly recommend their work, including the podcast they have with Justin Hancock, The Meg-John and Justin podcast (although MJ has left now and it’s called Culture, Sex, Relationships, but you can check out the backlog!) 

They think about sex and relationship styles using various models including monogamy/polyamory, allosexuality/asexuality, romance/aromance etc. They look at these different facets of sexuality/relationship styles as complicated continua rather than binaries which shift over time. They also write about sexuality on an action/identity spectrum, communication strategies around relationships styles, and the windows into relationships. Here, I’m looking at all of these things thinking about Ian and Mickey’s relationship and as individuals within the relationship. 

The monogamy/polyamory continuum

I’ve seen a bit of debate about how to label Mickey and Ian’s relationship on the monogamy/polyamory spectrum and I think it’s a pretty complex question especially considering those labels mean different things to different people and that relationships shift a lot over time. While labels like these can be useful, they can also be rigid and restrictive in their own ways. 

Some terms that come close-ish to what they say they’ve decided in 11x07 are monoamorous and polysexual, considering they aren’t at all interested in romantic connections outside of each other but are up for sex (in a broad sense) with other people. But these terms don’t account for the agreement that they’re only exploring sex with other people when they’re together. 

As people have pointed out, some of the boundary setting around exactly how they’re involving other people in the relationship is left off-screen, and also they’re not necessarily going to form identities around how they act in one episode. I’ve also seen people suggest reading their relationship style as monagamish and/or that what they do with other people is part of kink/play. I think these make sense in different ways and that in 11x07 Ian and Mickey definitely focus more on what they do (action) rather than who they are (identity) in regards to monogamy/polyamory. 

In 11x01, Ian’s focus is more on identity. He sets up a binary choice between being monagamous or not in their relationship. 11x07 indicates they’ve moved through off-screen discussion into a much more personalised arrangement with more focus on actions allowing for flexibility over time. In 11x07, we see them agree on rules: sex in a broad sense is allowed outside of the primary partnership, love isn’t. They keep negotiations ongoing (e.g. in the bedroom, in the furniture store), and there is an indication that these rules could change over time. 

I’d love to read/explore more about the ways in which this approach has changed over the course of the whole show. At the start of their relationship, definitely prior to s4, they have much more implicit rules about who they can have sex with, and those implicit rules become problematic in s5, when they realise they’re not completely on the same page regarding them. They bring up clashing ideas around the rules when Mickey’s leaving prison in s10 too. In s11, their relationship becomes more intentional, with these rules stated aloud rather than assumed. 

The action/identity continuum in regards to gay sexuality 

On a slight tangent, I think there’s a comparison to be made here to how they relate to sexuality (specifically gender of attraction) and the idea of gay identity, which seems to develop in the other direction. For Mickey especially, for a long time having sex with men was something he did rather than something he was, and that’s gradually somewhat shifted over the course of the show. There’s so much more that can be explored here, for instance, about how the action-based approach is much more acceptable within the hyper-masculine environment he was raised. Terry also approaches it this way when talking about prison sex, for example. According to this very oppressive social script, having sex with men in certain circumstances can be OK but claiming that as part of who you are is absolutely not. 

But I also want to stress, I don’t think either approach to gay sexuality, looking at it through actions or through identity, is inherently better or worse. These different lenses on sexuality also intersect with class and levels of education. As explored in Sexuality: A Graphic Guide, the identity approach is also relatively a very modern way of seeing sexuality (late 20th century). Gender of attraction is also only one facet of sexuality (which includes amount of sex you want, type of sex, sexual roles etc.) but its now often regarded as the only or most important facet of sexuality. The identity-based approach is much more acceptable within the more aspirational/middle class settings they interact with in s10 and s11. In these seasons, Mickey and to a lesser extent Ian aren’t completely willing to accept it wholesale. I like how, for example, even well after “coming out”, Mickey often still approaches sexuality through actions rather than identity, e.g. his response to the woman at the flower shop asking if he’s a homosexual: “He is, I just like having another man’s dick up my ass.”

However, I also think it’s cool/interesting how Ian and Mickey both move towards and embrace various parts of mainstream gay identity in s11 too, and a large part of that involves combatting the sexism, femmephobia, and hypermasculinity with which they were raised, e.g. of course, singing and dancing to Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande in the bathroom.  

You could also look at the different ideas about the origins of their gay sexuality in HoS through this lens. Mickey goes for a psychological/behavioural approach (based in like early 20th century sexological theories); Ian goes for a born-this-way, biological/genetic approach (popularised in the 1980s as part of gay pride movements). 

Mickey’s approach is very old school (definitely a way of thinking that reflects his upbringing), which assumes straight is the norm from which gay deviates, to do with Freudian theory/the idea of homosexuality as pathology. He doesn’t, for example, seek to use the same model (Fiona’s bad relationship history) to explain why Lip is straight. Ian’s approach (”not because I was born this way?”) reflects his investment in the intractability of sexuality related to his strict opposition to conversion therapy models and the idea of being gay as a choice. It also reflects the way he reacts negatively/disbelievingly to Debbie’s more flexible sexuality (in s8?). While obviously it’s fucked up/impossible to force people to change their sexuality and it’s perfectly reasonable for him to define the origins of his own sexuality however he wants, this approach risks excluding more fluid experiences of sexuality. 

Again, Mickey’s approach is more behavioural/action oriented and Ian’s is more identity oriented. They both seem pretty willing to shift their ideas around this though (especially Mickey, who potentially is just regurgitating old stuff he’s heard without thinking). The concluding thought is that Ian is gay because he likes Mickey’s d, lol. 

Individual differences on sex and relationship continua

I really like the detail that Ian doesn't want to have sex and be friends with anyone else aside from Mickey. In 11x07, he doesn't want to make friends with the guys in the locker room although he's down for repeat sexual experiences which suggests he thinks he forms romantic attachment through a combination of both sex and friendship. It seems like it's important to him in his negotiation with Mickey that they don't form romantic attachments outside of their own relationship.

This relates back to the 87% thing in HoS where Ian says he tends to get at least slightly attached to everyone he has sex with and Mickey has 87% of his heart. Mickey doesn’t like the 87% thing at all but I reckon it outlines a really interesting difference between the two characters in regards to relationship styles. It indicates that Ian is comfortable with a slightly less mononormative way of doing nurturance/care than Mickey, while Mickey seems to initiate more of the polysexuality than Ian in 11x07. (Although of course, we don’t see how Ian would react if Mickey were to tell him he’s got 87% of his heart! -- but this is a very difficult to imagine scenario).

Sex is a big part of their relationship for both of them. Both Ian and Mickey seem pretty allosexual (e.g. they feel sexual attraction for other people generally), but Mickey is possibly even more so than Ian. Mickey also maybe falls on the aromantic/grayromantic spectrum (once again, the labels can be really useful but I don’t want to be too prescriptive/rigid). Ian seems to be more alloromantic, with a capacity to experience romantic attraction to a whole bunch of people. For him, sex and romance seem to be more interconnected in all cases although he can definitely separate the two (especially when thinking about transactional sex etc).

But I think it's more complex than that. For instance, Mickey reserves certain sexual acts for just between him and Ian and its clear that they have both intimacy and exploration in their sex life. From the outset, Ian and Mickey’s relationship involves exploration and excitement with sex, and provides a freedom to explore their sexualities in regards to sexual roles and kink. It’s clear that Mickey values the safe space Ian specifically gives him in this regard from very early on in their relationship. There’s a parallel here with the bathroom Gaga/Grande scene where Ian’s instinct isn’t to tease or make fun of Mickey but support him embracing more stereotypical gay behaviours and/or more fluid gender roles to the ones he’s grown up with outside of sex too.

Also it might be useful to complicate the idea of romance itself which is a really difficult idea to pin down and which seems to mean different things for both of them. I love the stress on friendship in 11x07. Friendship and also family connection play such key parts in their relationship with one another and the way in which they are attached, arguably even more so than traditional models romance. Both HoS and the Hopper painting discussion are interesting to think about in regards to the ways Ian and Mickey think about the concept of romance differently and the ways it intersects with or differs from their ideas around friendship/family. I like how Mickey’s willing to see getting a coffee together as romantic in a positive way for instance after Ian explains that it’s about togetherness in hard times. While maybe Mickey sees Ian’s suggestion of having a bath together as awkward/weird because he views it more as trying to live up to a social script of what is “romantic”.

Communication strategies around relationship styles

In s11, Ian and Mickey’s relationship is very entwined, and, in comparison to Tami and Lip, for instance, they disclose a lot to each other. Ian asks that they tell each other everything, and although Mickey is more resistant to that initially, he becomes much more forthcoming with his feelings in s11 (around Terry, around moving to the West Side, around becoming a parent). 

While I appreciate Ian’s role in initiating more communication between the two of them, I felt sorry for Mickey in their initial discussion in 11x01 in re “monogamous or not”. The turning over the paper method is a pretty binary way to open up a discussion about a very charged and complicated thing. 

They do seem to complement each other in this regard though with Ian generally more keen to initiate conversation but also getting more trapped into binaries, narratives of normativity and should-stories. While Mickey totally still projects an image that is informed by local expectations around masculinity and white supremacy, he’s also a rule-breaker in many ways and doesn’t have the same desire to conform to what society perceives to be “normal” (thanks HoS), especially behind closed doors and within his relationship with Ian (“liking what I like don’t make me a bitch”).  @fiona-fififi had a really good point in the tags a while back about how Mickey’s investment in their wedding and its success might have spurred Ian on further to embrace more normative ways of doing relationships. This is super interesting, and also makes me think just about how being married itself prompts Ian to think about taking a more active role in pushing the relationship further up the relationship escalator and in pushing for more communication around these steps in general. 

There’s also something to be said about pressurising each other in 11x07, especially when they jokingly(?) threaten each other with sex with other men if both of them aren’t around. I doubt they were making these suggestions seriously but it definitely doesn’t strike me as the most consensual method of communication. But there’s parallels here with generally using sex as a bargaining chip earlier on in the season. Ian seems to do that after having exhausted his attempts at trying to have conversations around money/monogamy etc, as a tried and tested way of getting Mickey to engage with him. And it definitely reflects using sex with each other and sex/relationships with other people (e.g. s3 Angie/Ned, s10 Byron/Cole) as modes of communication in earlier seasons. It kind of makes sense that they still have these habits in s11 even if they are no longer the primary mode of communication. 

Ian and Mickey relied so much on implicit communication in the early seasons and they have highly developed nonverbal ways of communicating. I don’t want to say that either verbal or nonverbal ways of communicating are inherently better than the other. They seem to understand each other on a deep level, which is really cool, but people have pointed out can make them think they don’t need to verbally communicate when they do, because they assume that they’ll understand one another and be on the same page. It’s super interesting to see them maintain that deep connection and continue to use nonverbal cues while also adopting more explicit and intentional communication styles in s10 and s11. 

The windows of their relationship

The fandom is always bringing up how Ian and Mickey leave the doors open when they bang, lol, and also making fun of how much Ian overshares. I think this is v fair but it also strikes me as pretty healthy that he wants people to see into his and Mickey’s relationship, especially in his discussions with Lip. But Ian’s got plenty of people around him who can see and help when things get tough. 

In s11, it’s great to see Mickey get closer to the Gallagher family and see various members defending him or taking his side in arguments, but he definitely does have less of an on-screen support system than Ian. (I wish that they had developed his and Sandy’s relationship in s11). I think the aftermath of the City Hall incident in s10 really reveals this particular imbalance in their relationship. On one level, Mickey moves in with Byron as a reaction to being hurt and even maybe a strategy of revenge/manipulation, on another, he doesn’t really have anywhere to go aside from the Gallagher house when/if he needs to get away from Ian. Also, the way he retreats back to the Gallagher house when he can’t deal with the Westside is an interesting development of this in s11. 

Ian’s need to share stuff about their relationship is kind of exciting considering his history of being unforthcoming about his relationships (and his history of being in a lot of secret relationships), as well as how difficult he found it to talk about Mickey while Mickey was away. But there is a different problem with ongoing talk around privacy and boundaries here too (Mickey doesn’t want Ian to chat about how he’s not into rimming!). Although to be fair, Mickey also chats about a lot of explicit sex stuff with strangers. 

Although they do ultimately decide against pursuing the pretty inorganic way of making friends in 11x07, Ian’s desire to make gay friends who he can talk to about relationship stuff makes sense in terms of the way he has been pushing for a more intentional relationship with more communication and more explicit discussion and compromise this season (and last season too). It also intersects with an idea of him/both of them going further to embrace gay sexuality as an identity. 

It’s interesting that Mickey’s the one to initiate this decision through ribbing Ian about his relationship with Lip. Why’s Mickey doing that? Is it just to be a little shit or is he also trying (subconsciously?) to activate Ian in some direction? (And also, maybe there’s a parallel there to getting their apartment in the west side, where Mickey’s the one inadvertently introducing Ian to the idea by pushing for them to go play in the pool). 

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There’s a lot here which is just scratching the surface of thinking about Ian and Mickey’s relationship in the context of these different sexuality and relationship continua. For e.g. it would be really interesting to think more about this stuff in terms of shifting sex roles and kink exploration. Of course it’s all up for interpretation and I am sure I am highlighting areas that I’m personally interested in and inadvertently projecting myself/my own preferences and styles into this discussion. Very down for disagreements and discussions if other people are interested and manage to read all of this, lol. 

[crypticarchivist]

Unironically a pretty good example of cultural Christianity. Even if you yourself were raised secular that doesn’t mean your parents and your grandparents and your great grandparents didn’t pass down non secular ideas and value judgements to you like “pleasure is bad” because one of your great great grandparents was raised in a christian household that thought like that for non secular reasons.

Same is true for sex negativity, body negativity, assumed gender roles, ideas regarding the personhood of children and their right to disagree with you, perceptions of the homeless, ideas about what is or isn’t a fair amount of work just to make a living, and perceptions of the concept of race.

All of the above attitudes could come about due to a variety of reasons like Christian upbringing, poverty, abusive parents or relationships, government intervention, etc, and even after the causes of those attitudes they can continue to be passed down from parent to child for generations even if the parents stop being christian, or consciously racist, or homeless, or the government that enforced those behaviors isn’t around anymore.

This is why people have an inherent responsibility, a categorical imperative, if they want to change the status quo, to investigate the history of their own families and the country that they directly live in, and see how the status quo of multiple generations has marked them, otherwise they just end up perpetuating this same harmful ideas for different reasons.

i love when people say “dopamine addiction” to refer to anything that makes you feel good ever