#WOMEN and that straight relationships are inherently very unequal
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I feel a bit sad that some people seem to consider gender identity as something that is purely outside heterosexuality, with 2 groups, the sad straights and the cool fun genderqueer people. I guess they are right in a way* but I’m not sure putting heterosexual partnerships in the boring box, separate from us in every way, sits right somehow if you care about inequality. Heterosexual relationships are still one of the biggest sites of inequality for women in most countries, definitely here in the UK, when it comes to domestic work and raising children. That goes double and triple if the child has additional needs (add hours wrestling bureaucracy to get your child the state help they need). I won’t add emotional labour as such as the term has become meaningless and I guess appropriated from workplaces (?), but in heterosexual marriages and partnerships there is often a level of caretaking of the man in the relationship as well. Often invisibly to him.
In one way of talking about oppression straight people oppress the LGBTQ community, and this is true, so by that axis of oppression they are all privileged over us. But in another way of talking about it, it’s much more complicated, because in a heterosexual partnership the woman is likely to have less power in the ways she participates in stuff to do with relationships, sex and gender. (All kinds of oppression are more complicated than tumblr was pretending it was for all those years.) While the LGBTQ community is outside of societal norms and often embraces this, the unequal heterosexual partnership is the backbone of our society, still, and whatever that says about us, so it ends up touching everyone’s lives in some way. Inequality behind closed doors does matter. Isn’t this what ‘the personal is political’ meant?
(I’m currently reading Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World by Kumari Jayawardena and I haven’t gotten that far yet but the author has already several times stated that feminism in the countries covered often made very little impact on dynamics between men and women in the home. This suggests the domestic sphere is likely to be the last place to become more equal.)
I don’t know, I’m was ‘straight passing’ and all, still am really depending on your eye. You don’t have to listen to me. It just seems sad. I don’t really know what I’m getting at any more. In my life all I wanted was to escape the trap of heterosexuality, the thing that had harmed me greatly, but for me it wasn’t just about ‘that’s inherently not who I am’, it was more ‘that’s not what I want’. In a world where we’ve come far enough to be able to talk about some LGBTQ identities as being a matter of choice, what you want to be, how you want to appear etc, does that make sense? Where people sometimes choose to transition not because they are in terrible pain if they don’t, but because they might have a chance at joy if they do?
Maybe we are lucky to be able to escape the ‘straight life’. We can’t forget those who are still in it though.
*straight, binary trans people exist of course, but I have a feeling this kind of person assumes that no one in this position could possibly do anything interesting with gender (not true, in my experience)
#gender#sexuality#heterosexuality#relationship equality#rambling again sorry#i'm glad people are having fun with gender even if it remains a source of self loathing for me#i do occasionally Get It but the loathing comes from feeling like i don't have a right to my own identity#look back with kindness
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seeing a lot of posts (im guessing because of the grimes/musk/banks saga) about how straight women soliciting other women for threesomes with them and their boyfriends are the devil incarnate and just as bad as their boyfriends and responsible for the fetishization of bi women and lesbians and maybe this is me being a shill for straight women again but i feel sorry for those women more than anything
like i don’t deny that they are using the other women in these hypothetical triads as a prop and that this mentality hurts bi women and lesbians, or that being solicited for a threesome isn’t often deeply hurtful and invasive regardless of the gender of the person doing the asking, but i ultimately don’t really think the coupled women in this situation are immune to being harmed by it either
i’ve seen a lot of women talking about having threesomes with their boyfriends and other women and deeply regretting it and feeling gross afterwards, both because they didn’t like interacting sexually with other women and because they felt weird about seeing other women interact sexually with their boyfriend. personally, i find it sad and deeply upsetting that straight women often push down their own desires (or lack of desires) and make themselves perform in a certain way to appeal to the fetishes of straight men. straight women should not feel pressured to have sex with people or genders theyre not attracted to, or to forego exclusivity with their partner if they would prefer it. often, the coupled woman in a m/w/w threesome is being seen by her partner as a prop in his sexual fantasy as well.
i also don’t think this issue is as split by sexuality as it is by misogyny--there are plenty of m/w couples trying to get straight women to take part in threesomes with them, and there are plenty of bi women being pressured by their male partners to be involved in threesomes with other women. if a bi woman’s boyfriend convinces her to ask her bi friend for a threesome, is she also irredeemable? is she fetishizing herself?
ultimately, the idea of a m/w/w threesome is unfortunately something that is marketed to men as an ultimate fantasy, and it’s something that a lot of straight men relentlessly pressure their girlfriends for. i don’t think it’s as cut and dry as “straight women are just as bad as straight men because they push wlw into threesomes in order to cater to their men” because a lot of the time that woman (who might not even be straight) isn’t so much acting in her own sexual interest but “giving in” to pressure from her partner because she feels like his sexual needs are more important than her own.
#this is MUCH longer than i expected but like. if yall recognized that there are huge inequalities between men and women YES EVEN STRAIGHT WO#WOMEN and that straight relationships are inherently very unequal#and stopped talking about how Straight Men And Women Are Equally Bad like gender doesn't play a role in homophobia...i would be much happier
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Cutie Pie promised us a treatise on marriage equality but gave us a handbook to patriarchal paternalism instead
A typical romance trope retold in a BL adaptation is supposed to expose all the flaws of straight romance and show the radical potential for a more progressive, humane outcome if it were between two men. Instead of doing that Cutie Pie presented the sexist scenario but neither the story development nor the characters grow from there in 11 episodes, because they remain stuck in a culdesac of patriarchal paternalism.
From episode 1-11, Kuea and Lian’s relationship trajectory remains the same - Kuea trying to win Lian’s affection for who he is while hiding parts of his life he feels Lian might not like, and Lian trying to become what he also feels he is not - the dominant financial breadwinner on whom Kuea can depend while hiding life-changing decisions he is taking without Kia’s knowledge. With one more episode left it’s probably safe to predict that this couple will remain at series’ end tragically trapped in the traditional gender binaries they begin in: a dependent, less powerful, feminine identified man and a much more financially powerful, hyper masculine male, unequally yoked together.
Sexual consent is a radical idea. Not just because it is a concept that most are still grappling with in the absence of an instruction manual from parents or schools, but because it is a new idea in the realm of intimate relationships. It is a lens that allows us to make visible, question, and dismantle many of the oppressive structures and systems we usually take for granted. Consent is therefore central to BL romance well beyond the superficial ways it is often understood.
Women are often questioned as to their interest in creating, reading or watching romance between men-loving-men. The most obvious answer is that the gender most negatively affected by gender inequality is naturally very interested in exploring love and romance that isn’t mediated by male-female gender constraints. But that’s only part of the answer and not even the most interesting.
When it comes to sex, eliminating the heteronormative norm of penis and vagina from the equation and instead replacing them with two penises, means the negotiation of consent immediately enters the chat, whereas the boundaries and conditions of sex in heterosexual sex is usually largely presumed a priori.
When fujoshis write this trope they explicitly do not presume perfect equality because gender is no longer a factor, but deliberately infuse the mlm relationship with other power differentials like class, masculinity through the seme/uke dynamic, and even the fantastical ability of cis male pregnancy.
Through these residual tensions between the couples, which means consent is not black and white but inherently complicated, fujoshis have introduced a category very familiar to women, of dubious consent or dub-con for short, that makes the observer have to interrogate in context not just when “no means no” but also when yes still does not entail meaningful consent.
Similarly, the attraction of the popular arranged marriage trope in BL, is basically about how the men will negotiate the couple’s given inequalities and get to a point where the romance can be consummated in a relationship that is shaped over the course of the story by both partners meaningfully consenting to the marriage. Many writers try to write this complicated arc centred around the terms of consent to marriage; not all succeed.
Cutie Pie the Series is one of those that does not. The classic arranged marriage trope usually involves a dependent woman who is forced to marry a more powerful man. The story is told through the woman’s eyes so that her unequal position in the marriage is the central conflict which is resolved over the storyline, by the woman essentially adjusting herself to the existing power structure. She does this through gender appropriate means: personality adaptations, subterfuge, sexual acquiescence, ego management and quiet machinations - otherwise known as weapons of the weak, without the power dynamic changing. This is what Kuea has done up to the engagement proposal in episode 11.
When fujoshis write the arranged marriage trope it is told from the position of the man whose happiness in the marriage most depends on the discretion exercised by the more powerful person. But from there the dependent male’s story trajectory should diverge. In the arranged marriage BL trope, the man who is more powerful at the outset is the man who will go through the most challenging process of change to adapt himself to new circumstances in which power relations are transformed and equalised between them over the course of the story. He must do most of the introspection, the crying, the caring labour, the compensatory adjustment, and the emotional work necessary to undermine the power imbalances that determine their relationship. It is never on a 50-50, false equivalency ratio from where the adjustment must come.
When the series opens we meet a polite but lively, aristocratic, Kuea who in his thoughts and spoken declarations to other characters is already in love with his fiancé Lian for as long as he can remember. Kuea’s presentation and masculinity is soft and accommodating, he is creative but not ambitious and is popular with a wide circle of friends. His priority is hiding the parts of his life from Lian that might irritate hi fiancé in order to finally win Lian’s love which he is aware he does not have.
Lian is a much older, already successful business tycoon, from humble roots, who is driven, rigid and considers himself necessarily self-sacrificing in order for the arranged marriage he agreed to with Kuea’s grandfathers - his benefactors, to take place. At the outset he point blank tells Kuea he doesn’t love him back and disparages his presentation as not human referencing two different, unattractive dolls from US culture. It is hard not to get the impression that the dehumanising doll references constitute an outright rejection of Kuea’s feminine presentation. Later we learn Lian’s equally elaborately contrived, hyper masculine presentation is part of the persona he cultivates in his choices, especially in business, in order to become the financially secure breadwinner on whom Kuea can depend in the marriage. To achieve their goals - Kuea to be loved in return by Lian and Lian to be financially worthy of being Kuea’s husband, both men keep parts of their lives and actions hidden and this ostensibly will drive the plot to conclusion.
The first time we see Lian leveraging his power position it is to be, not protective of Kuea, but to be abusive, reducing him to tears and a drinking binge. This is a pattern that repeats over each episode mapping into the classic Cycle of Abuse that many straight women face within unequal marriage. The next several episodes follow this structure - beginning from tension with Kuea trying his best to placate his abuser, peaking with Lian lashing out in anger leaving Kuea broken and in tears, followed by the honeymoon stage of Lian’s apologies and affection/sexual attention set to romantic music - repeat.
One recurring theme that is particularly worrisome, is that despite several no’s from Kuea to sexual activity, Lian’s response is to force the issue until Kuea relents and gives in, thereby assenting to sex. While both the writers and many viewers consider this to be consent this is actually dub-con because Kuea is acquiescing to sex to please his fiancé, not to fulfil his own autonomous sexual desire. Even the sex is not consensual never mind the terms of any union they might have.
Despite this backdrop, and the fact we are at the penultimate episode and neither man has undertaken a journey to challenge the existing toxic power dynamic in which their relationship is suffering. No attempt is made to focus Kuea on his own career, whether engineering or music, as a path to give him more financial independence, be capable of contributing financially to his family or make him more of an equal to his fiancé. Similarly, with most of the narrative behind us Lian has not even begun to reasses his role in the relationship and how it needs to be radically different from their current trajectory.
Things that are normalised in society often go without names. Naming things is radical because it points out how norms, like inequality in marriage are socially constructed and maintained. Misnaming phenomena or surface level gay-washing is not queer activism. Cutie Pie promised to tell a love story of how an arranged marriage could be a transformational experience but instead celebrates the gender binary, reaffirms heterosexual gender roles and of course entrenches gender inequality.
#cutie pie the series#cutie pie ep11#cutie pie episode 12#lian kuea#lian kilen wang#kuea keerati#arranged marriage#consent in BLs#zeenunew#zee pruk#nunew chawarin
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Actually, anti parabatai plot as a criticism of the oppressive regime would have been super interesting. Like they literally perform some magical ritual on minors. Moreover, it’s seen as prestigious and is highly encouraged. Moreover, if children have doubts they can’t even properly discuss them. Notice how in 2x03 Alec is left so alone he only has his baby sister to share his misgivings about the ritual. Moreover, he isn’t even happy about the upcoming ceremony. It really feels like he only ->
-> out of obligation (reminds me of ‘are you happy’, ‘yes, I’m following my duty’). Idk maybe it was indoctrinated that cancelling the ceremony once you gave your word is unthinkable, dishonourable, shameful or some other shit. Anyway, Alec didn’t look enthusiastic AT ALL. We don’t see what role Maryse and Robert played in this but they were probably their toxic selves. Besides, it’s strange to make a team out of two people so different both personality and career wise. And speaking of indoctrination, you can see children getting ingrained with this shit from the very young age. Like little Izzy may not have wanted a parabatai herself but you can see she was still affected. Jace legit said that they were gonna be REAL brothers as if something stopped him seeing Alec as such without a magical tattoo which is major yikes
EXACTLY!!! you get it!!!!!! not only that but the whole "the biggest pain a shadowhunter could ever know is losing a parabatai", "parabatai are the most important people to each other", "parabatai are in perfect tune" etc like so much shit that was straight up NOT SHOWN TO BE TRUE throughout the plot. valentine and luke were parabatai and he betrayed him, jace basically never gave a fuck about alec's wellbeing, he couldn't even tell when alec was literally dying lol also the bond isn't even that strong, like if ur away for a while or try to TRACK THEM it breaks??? and in the books robert and michael were parabatai as well and then they never talked again and robert legit straight up couldnt tell when michael DIED AND WAS REPLACED BY VALENTINE WITH A GLAMOUR like My God
my hc for this whole thing is that the parabatai thing was invented to increase sh loyalty to each other as well as their teamwork, and they made up this bunch of bullshit about it being like family and super important and their pain is your pain and blah blah blah to seem more desirable. kinda like how spartans encouraged relationships between soldiers to make them stronger? or how compulsory monogamy teaches you that the way to achieve happiness is through One Single Person who will be perfect for you always oops
actually o shit there are plenty of parallels between parabataiship and compulsory monogamy and i think i'm gonna go into that now. so mandatory disclaimer that compulsory monogamy =/= your monogamous relationship, just like heteronormativity =/= your heterosexual relationship. okay? okay. if yall come for me screaming that Monogamous People Aren't All Toxic i will ignore you because that's not what i'm saying and i just explicitly stated that. okay? okay
so i’m gonna skip the historical part because compulsory monogamy is very intimately related with the invention of capitalism, private property and etc., and that doesn’t work quite as well in the context of sh since it’s more of a military society than anything, and again, i do believe that it’s more of a “making them more likely to be loyal”/less likely to question missions and stuff thing. but the effects of parabataiship as it is constructed in sh lore are very similar to those of compulsory monogamy in real life:
the whole loyalty thing that can be very easily turned into toxicity/co-dependency/straight up abusive and unequal dynamics. again, i’m talking about monogamy as a system, not saying that all monogamous relationships are toxic, okay? if i sound insistent here, it’s because you wouldn’t believe the amount of times i put 4981749318 disclaimers like that and ppl still got offended on behalf of their monogamous relationships i wasn’t talking about
i’ll go further into that. monogamy ideology, like parabatai ideology, tells us that there’s a kind of relationship that is superior to all others and should be prioritized above all others (romantic relationships for monogamy ideology, parabataiship for parabatai ideology. compulsory monogamy and amatonormativity are more than just intimately related, they are a part of the other). this means that not putting the person you have this kind of relationship with above all others is seen as a crime and betrayal. and i’m not talking about cheating here, i’m talking about stuff such as “would you let your partner go to parties without you?”, seeing you at a place without your partner and asking where they are and why they didn’t come with you/assuming that you must have fought or broken up, considering that a relationship is doomed or not very close if its parts are not literally inseparable, turning the two parts of a relationship into some kind of almost symbiotic creature, where you stop being “A and B” and become “A-and-B” (this exact wording is even a trope in romantic fiction, esp fanfic), “would your missus let you come with us?”, having huge fights because one party wants to go somewhere and the other doesn’t and they can’t come to an agreement on that, etc., i think you get it by now
this mindset that the person you have this particular kind of relationship with should be prioritized above all others, that a part of your sense of self should be merged with theirs, that you essentially have to become a unit, and that it’s hard, but you have to fight to make it work (”love hurts”, “love is tough, it’s like that”, “if you love someone you have to make sacrifices for them”, etc) makes people feel guilty whenever they don’t put that person and their wishes above all else, or even when they want to do something without them, because that is seen as not loving them enough. not only that, but monogamy ideology promises you that once you find The One™ you will achieve a kind of happiness and perfection in your life that you couldn’t get any other way. this means that people are effectively scared of breaking up or of not having/wanting a relationship like that, because it means that they are broken and will never be truly happy (see what i meant when i said that amatonormativity and monogamy ideology are a part of each other?). that’s why you see people saying shit like “my greatest fear is to waste many years on a relationship and break up in the end”, “if you aren’t dating to get married you’re dating to get your heart broken”, etc.
so you see people trying their damn hardest to stay loyal to the relationship even when it obviously doesn’t make them happy, feeling guilty for not being happy, and accepting toxic mindsets and abuse because they feel like they owe it to them. especially the weakest link in the relationship - notably women in monogamy ideology, as monogamy is also inherently linked with the patriarchy and in monogamy ideology specifically a woman in a het relationship is seen as more than just a part of the man she is in a relationship with, she’s seen as his property, but that dynamic can also be inverted or ruled by other factors such as race, sexuality, gender identity, class, etc. - are way more likely to be seen as owing their partners loyalty. not just that, but in particular with people who are otherwise oppressed, being loved is seen as almost a favor, because again, being in a romantic relationship is supposed to be your exclusive golden ticket to heavenly happiness and whatnot, and oppressed people (esp queer ppl and poc) as seen as undeserving of that, and effectively denied that in many ways, so they are more likely to want to stay in a toxic relationship out of fear that they won’t ever find anything better (it’s not a coincidence that “no one will ever love you like i do” is such a common phrase to hear from abusers). also, let’s not forget that even the right to break up in itself is something that had to be fought for. the feminist movement spent years trying to make divorce legal (in the places where it is) and still fights to make it be seen as acceptable. if it weren’t for other pressures trying to change the rules of monogamy, a “breakup” would quite literally not even be allowed, and this always benefits the strongest link
so now that that’s been explained, back to parabataiship. i think the parallels here are very clear - i mean, for one, you can’t really break it up, unless you purposefully use soul tracking or stay away for a long time, so it’s like, old fashioned monogamy. but more than that, breaking your parabatai bond is seen as terrifying. there is a lot of purposeful rethoric that directly says that the pain of the parabatai bond being severed (whether by will or by one of the parts dying) is unmatchable, and that plants a horrible fear into people, to the point where villains use that against parabatai shadowhunters (for example, the owl possessing jace and telling him that it’ll kill alec so he knows what the pain of losing a parabatai is like). this means that loyalty is owed, because even if you just want to be away from your parabatai, this might break the bond and put you through unspeakable pain (in theory. as i’ve been saying, it’s basically been proved that that’s not true, because when jace died that was far from being the worst pain that alec’s ever felt)
moreover: the whole thing about how this kind of relationship is sacred, above all else, and will bring you a kind of happiness that is impossible to achieve otherwise. this is said many times - like you said, parabataiship is seen as something desirable and that brings honor. the vows are very similar to marriage (the highest pillar of monogamy) vows (“your family will be my family, your people will be my people”, “entreat me not to leave thee”), clary is constantly told that she could never understand the relationship jace and alec have because they’re parabatai and being parabatai is special and basically uncomparable to anything else, even by izzy, who never wanted to have a parabatai (and in the end she ends up wanting to, which reminds me of the whole “oh, you’ll want it once you grow up” trope with heterosexual romantic relationships. like, basically, you’ll want it once you find the right person. that is something aro, gay, and non-monog ppl hear all the damn time). the whole thing about how obviously jace is supposed to be the one alec loves the most, they’re parabatai, the whole thing about how “alec would die for me, we’re parabatai” like that is unquestionable; the souls becoming one, the being able to feel each other’s feelings and blah blah blah. in short: sacred, above all else, and, unless you do something very wrong, able to bring you a kind of connection and happiness you wouldn’t be able to get otherwise no matter how strong your feelings or your compatibility is; and once you get it, you can’t get out
and then there’s the imbalance it brings. like i said, notably in monogamy as a pillar of heteronormativity the imbalance lays on women, altho other factors can change that balance or be more prominent. with parabataiship, there’s an obvious trope of queer people getting heterosexual parabatai and being very obviously the weakest link (alec with jace, michael with robert, there are others but i don’t remember. the exception to this is luke, who is written as equally heterosexual and, in the books, equally white, to valentine, but who’s still the weakest link anyway because valentine gains power and prestige luke doesn’t have). again, the whole “alec would die for me” thing tells a lot. he didn’t say “we would die for each other”. he said “alec would die for me”. despite the rethoric being that both parts should be endlessly devoted, the expectation that one should fulfill that obviously falls harder on one than on the other. with monogamy, there’s even a kind of rethoric that you have to work for the reciprocation to be there (for example, victims of domestic abuse being told that if they dedicate themselves to their partners enough, the abuse would stop, like they owe their partners dedication and love and comprehension, and then their partners will give it back only once they get enough of it) that we haven’t really seen with parabatai (at least i don’t remember it) but that i wouldn’t be surprised to see present there. after all, alec can feel it when jace gets a papercut and jace can’t tell when alec is literally dying, and none of that is ever questioned in canon
and then the imbalance is kept because, again, breaking up parabataiship is unthinkable and shameful, not to mention kind of impossible/not allowed to do officially. so the weakest link is basically stuck in this situation of imbalance and, in many cases, toxicity and abuse, but can’t break out of it and effectively feel guilty because according to everything they’ve ever been told, they should be elated that they’ve found their one and they should be happy. if they aren’t happy, then they’re broken, or not trying hard enough, and it’s taboo to even talk about that
again, i’m not saying that all monogamous relationships or all parabataiships are toxic, okay? i’m saying that, as a structurer of our society (and sh’s fictional society) they favor this kind of dynamic, allow it, and justify it through their ideologies. in the same way that heteronormativity allied with misoginy makes it more likely for women to be abuse or r-word victims than men. is every het relationship toxic? no. is heteronormativity toxic? yes. monogamy works the same way
in short, parabataiship is not a relationship model. or rather, it is, but way before and more than that, parabataiship is an ideology that is specifically structured to subjugate shadowhunters, notably queer shadowhunters, and keep their loyalty to each other and to the clave, and most of its rethoric (nothing can ever be stronger than the love for a parabatai, nothing can match the pain of losing a parabatai, parabatai are one and the same and they share a soul) is absolute bullshit built to make it more desirable and make sure that structure is left unquestioned. a plotline that questions the buildings of parabataiship and shows how the whole myth that’s around parabataiship is that, a myth, built to subjugate and control people, would have been amazing, but of course we couldn’t get that so crumbles of meta it is
me: i’m tired of discourse in my blog i’m going to chill for now. me the very same day: what if i went on my first more detailed anti-monogamy rant when that is 100% guaranteed to attract aggressive people who can’t read and also criticized sh fandom’s beloved parabataiship all in one post?
#sh#shadowhunters#alec lightwood#sh meta#sh lore#meta#lore#anti jace herondale#anti parabatai#anti tsc#anti cc#anti tmi#anti sh#ask#anonymous#im actually happy with this one uwu#societal issues#discourse#salt#long post#cant believe i forgot to tag long post it's like so long
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been looking at a lot of terf blogs lately ....god they are so hopelessly misled about how the world works and just genuinely bitter spiteful evil people.....like the shit they believe about how men and women interact is so black and white like saying shit like “sex between a woman and man is inherently unequal” and saying that all men are scumbags..yeah i hate men as much as the next person and i’ve had my share of bad experiences with them but i don’t think all men are inherently bad and that take is getting us nowhere. like they genuinely believe that lesbians are pushed out of the queer community because they “aren’t allowed” to talk about their lack of attraction to men. they have fallen into the trap created by straight people that the world wants you to be bisexual instead of lesbian and pits those two identities against each other instead of seeing that the world actually wants you to be neither. and they are also mostly fucking racist. they swear they’re creating a safe space for women but i feel very unwelcome in terf spaces actually! like they view women in this weird fucking helpless way where we need to be protected and we are completely different and severed from men and are unable to have any equal, mutual, or enjoyable interaction or relationship with men.
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I always find it quite troubling is when I see posts by queer people that boil down to “abusive behaviours/relationships are stright culture”. And they always sound so gleeful about it?? It’s troubling for a number of reasons
Abuse can happen in queer relationships. I know people who’ve been in them. Just because you’re not in a straight relationship, doesn’t mean that you can’t be the victim of abuse.
On the flip side, I’ve known straight couples who could be anyone’s ‘Relationship Goals’. Straight relationships are not inherently abusive and no one should be told to expect to be in one.
Most of the time I see these sentiments appear in posts, it’s usually aimed at straight women who are either abuse victims or are in a very unequal relationship and instead of compassion the reaction is “silly straight women think this is good” which is just plain disgusting. Why do you look at a deeply misogynistic situation and think that the best reaction is to point and laugh? Please stop telling straight girls and women that their struggles in patriarchal society is actually their own fault for being too stupid and that they should expect to only ever be in shitty relationships.
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Abusive relations revisited
Now that the Fujigaya production of Rokumeikan has ended the story of Sweet Blue Flowers moves on to other matters. After the congratulations to the actors and reviews of the performances, the chapter ends with Fumi Manjome being surprised with the news that her cousin Chizu has a new baby and is coming to visit. The next chapter (“After the Banquet”) opens with an image of a young and vulnerable Fumi, and is devoted to (re)telling the story of Fumi’s childhood relationship with Chizu.
I’ve already had my say about the abusive nature of this relationship. Does this chapter actually add anything to our understanding of Fumi and Chizu? What follows are my thoughts on this question. (For a variety of reasons I found this post more difficult to write than any other thus far, and am open to comments and suggested corrections from any and all.)
First, a brief comment about the title of the chapter. The translator’s notes for the Viz Media edition are silent as to its origin and meaning, but other sources speculate that it is a reference to Yukio Mishima’s 1960 novel After the Banquet (宴のあと, Utage no Ato)—appropriate if true, since the last few chapter focused on another Mishima work. The novel portrays an ill-fated marriage between an elderly politician and a middle-aged restaurant owner, who first meet at a banquet held at her restaurant. The New York Times review summarizes the novel’s conclusion as “Love is strong, but too weak to hold disparate natures together.”
The theme of “disparate natures” in an equally ill-fated relationship marked by an age gap is certainly apropos here. The purpose of the chapter seems to be to explore the nuances of Chizu’s and Fumi’s relationship, although it also (perhaps deliberately?) contains clues to just how wide the gap in their ages was.
The story starts with Fumi beginning second grade, having moved away from Akira, whom she met in first grade. (See the previous post “Ten years(?) after” for more on the chronology.) Fumi would thus now be seven years old. We see Fumi’s introduction to her new class, her feelings of loneliness and thoughts of Akira, her unwillingness to go back to school after the first day, and (after her return) the beginning of what appears to be a budding friendship with two girls in her class. And then Chizu comes to play.
At this point in the story Chizu appears to be on the cusp of being a teenager (perhaps 12-13 years old?), “very rebellious” according to her mother, and not “obedient” like Fumi. Fumi clearly looks up to Chizu, looks forward to her visits, and is disappointed that she can’t sleep over.
Between page 126 and 127 of omnibus volume 3 the story then timeskips to a point when Fumi is in fifth grade, and thus at least ten years old. Chizu’s age is not referenced, but if we take her uniform as being that of a high schooler she is now at least 15 years old, and perhaps as old as 17—though her remark to Fumi that “You’re taller than me!” and her comment about “Girls these days!” seem to imply that Chizu herself sees the age gap between herself and Fumi as smaller than the five or more years it actually is.
Shortly thereafter Chizu’s family moves closer to Fumi’s, with the implication that the two girls will be seeing each other much more frequently. We then timeskip again between pages 128 and 129, with Chizu now headed off to university, and thus at least 17-18 years old, with Fumi presumably therefore around 12-13 years old, and perhaps slightly younger. The subsequent conversation over dinner and in bed highlights the pressure Chizu feels to marry, and Fumi’s lack of interest in boys.
Though it’s not spelled out in so many words, my sense is that the sexual activity between the two begins shortly after this. How frequent it was and long it continued are not clear, though it ended before the time that Fumi’s family moved back to Kamakura, Fumi began attending Matsuoka (at the age of 15), had her reunion with Akira, and was then surprised and shocked by Chizu’s marriage. (If we assume that the age gap between Fumi and Chizu is five years then at the time of her marriage Chizu would be 20 years old, now officially an adult, and would have completed at least two years of university.)
The final timeskip of the chapter is on the last panel of page 132 of omnibus volume 3, as we come back to the present day with an image of Chizu lost in rueful thought. She’s interrupted by Fumi bringing two cups of tea and a piece of cake—a hark back to earlier meetings between the two. (See pages 124 and 130.) Chizu enthuses about the possibility of moving to Kamakura near Fumi, stops and thinks better of it, and apologizes to Fumi: “Just kidding.” Fumi stares at her, drawn in a full-body profile view that echoes but reverses the image of a young and vulnerable Fumi with which the chapter begins.
The parallels to earlier scenes continue as Chizu again asks Fumi if she likes anyone. This time Fumi answers in the affirmative, and when further questioned as to the object of her affections replies “A girl.” Chizu apologizes again (“I’m the one who made you that way”), but Fumi seemingly resists this interpretation (”Don’t say it like that”).
As the conversation continues Chizu is seemingly overcome with regret and more than a hint of jealousy (“Do you like her more than me?”), muses on her daughter’s resemblance to Fumi, and finally breaks down in tears in contemplation of the path her own life has taken compared to Fumi’s (“I can’t be that kind of girl”).
The last (unspoken) words are Fumi’s. She thinks to herself, “My love for Chizu was real”, before seemingly drawing a line under the whole affair: “And that’s the truth.”
But of course we as readers can’t help wondering, what really is the truth here? It’s clear, at least to me, that Chizu thinks of herself, and by implication exonerates herself, as a victim of circumstances beyond her control—that she was pressured into marrying, and that social prejudices and ties of blood (“We’re girls ... and cousins”) kept her from having the relationship she wanted to have with Fumi.
What is less clear to me is whether Takako Shimura wants us to think of Chizu as a victim. Chizu was certainly hemmed in by the expectations of her family and society, expectations that limited whom she could love and have as a life partner. On the other hand, Fumi was just past childhood, and Chizu nearly an adult. If Chizu was drawn to women she could have and should have sought out someone closer to her own age, whether at high school or university. In Fumi she found and exploited a young girl for her own purposes, a girl who was predisposed to look up to her and follow her lead.
As for Fumi, I think it can be said that objectively speaking she was a victim of abuse, but she does not think of herself as such. I do not think this is because she was manipulated into this view (as abusers can do to those they abuse), but rather because this is consistent with her overall personality as portrayed in the manga.
To paraphrase what I previously wrote, Fumi is a person with a “steel core”, a deeply emotional person who ultimately does not let her emotions distract her from who she is and what she wants. To Fumi the question of whether Chizu “made [her] that way” is irrelevant. As she has already told Akira, and will tell others in chapters to come, she is “that kind of girl”, and that’s all there is to it. The final image of the chapter again echoes and reverses the chapter’s initial image of a young and vulnerable Fumi: eyes no longer cast down, she looks straight ahead, her glasses and her ponytail (a change from her typical more childish pigtails) marking the maturity that she is well on the way to achieving.
In the end I hark back to what I wrote earlier about Chizu: “Sweet Blue Flowers seems to valorize relationships between equals and implicitly criticize unequal relationships based on age or other hierarchies .... From this point of view Chizu’s relationship with Fumi provides the reader yet another example of the potential harms inherent in and inseparable from classic yuri tropes.”
Although Chizu is featured in character introductions later in omnibus volume 3 and volume 4, this is the last time she actually appears in the manga. As Chizu leaves the story of Sweet Blue Flowers, I say “good-bye and good luck” to her, but also “good riddance”.
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I think I’m so personally offended by the whole “it’s so refreshing they’re platonic” discourse because as a bisexual woman it feels like they’re reducing a woman being sexual to being nothing but a sexual object, because it’s like as soon as a woman has sex with a man she’s lesser. And yall would be all over two women being in a sexual relationship, but as soon as it’s an interracial m/f relationship it’s taboo?? Biphobia and racialized misogyny are not the same, but I still have this nagging feeling of “oh, they just think m/f sex is gross”...in this case because it’s Holmes/Watson and Watson is a Chinese American woman rather than a man, making Holmes/Watson m/f instead of m/m. It reminds me of how if a bisexual woman ends up with a man, she’s seen as betraying the LGBT community, she’s actually straight, she’s just a breeder, blah blah blah
I can’t explain the relation I’m feeling...I know the two things aren’t the same...but it’s like you guys think a woman being sexual with a man is just inherently bad...but only if it’s with the leading man (who is white...and a genius...and so you’re already lessening Joan’s role by saying she’s tainted if she has sex with him???) Like even if you say it’s because m/f romance is overdone, you can’t ignore the racism here. The whole mindset that a WOC lead having sex with a white male lead is wrong it’s just...disgusting on so many levels. And you should be more angry about women being reduced to their sexual relationships, not women in powerful roles getting into mutually respectful relationships with men. As a bisexual woman I just wish there was less focus on what genders make up a relationship and more about the healthy or unhealthy dynamics of a relationship, sexual or not. Just because Joan doesn’t have sex with Sherlock doesn’t mean their relationship is healthy. Just because Joan has sex with other men doesn’t mean those men respect her more than he does?? Like, look at fucking Mycroft. Walking Creeper Disaster. His relationship with Joan was all about his conflict with Sherlock, not Joan herself. That’s not respecting a WOC lead, that’s using her to further white men’s narratives. A m/f non-platonic relationship isn’t bad because it’s overdone, it’s bad if it’s unequal and unhealthy. There’s a huge difference!
Okay, so please if you think Joanlock, or any m/f relationship that can potentially be very healthy (or already is healthy), is bad, just think more about why. Is it because you think it would lessen the woman’s role? Why? There’s a difference between not trusting writers to treat a woman character right (I never do) and thinking a romantic m/f relationship will damage a woman somehow. The latter is such a gross mindset, we need to end it.
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"I want to get into ceremonial magic, but the gender/sex stuff is annoying af”
Don't worry, little sparrow! I'm so bothered by the anti-queer sexism in high magic, and this morning I have written a lot of words on why it's annoying and inaccurate; and capped it off with some "how to adapt this bullshit so you can participate without turning to drink" ideas.
I think translating that queer body into a strong man taking a vulnerable woman makes extremely clear that sexual imagery and sex itself, which have a host of egalitarian and sacred meanings in magic, has been tainted by society's shitty ideas about sex. You know, jumping straight from sex rituals to "man dominating woman!", says everything about the person jumping to that conclusion.
But the sexism was also there from the start.
You look at original Crowley, and he talks about the symbolic roles of the (male) Beast and (female) Scarlet Woman, and no amount of "both the male and female are sacred and have separate symbolic roles!" can compensate for his belief. That there was only one Beast, but Scarlet Women could be interchangeable - and in fact were, in his life, and you can read his notes about why his seven women all "failed". With no self awareness that, perhaps, he was an unworthy Beast to a succession of powerful women.
The very idea of the sacred feminine being so disposable makes me angry. I'm angry we call the Thoth tarot deck the "Crowley deck", and the trad deck the "Rider Waite". When in both cases they were illustrated by women who were occultists in their own right, who brought their own scholarship and insight to the decks, and yet for some reason the decks are still named for men. Lady Frieda Harris and Pamela Coleman-Smith were fiercely talented artists, and mages; but the sacred feminine is disposable and interchangeable.
Plus: high magic is built on drawing together stories and mysticism from throughout history. Crowley writes too fast for me to keep up; for all his flaws, the fucker knows a LOT about history, myth and culture. But those sources...are also all sexist. Arthur's knights; Egyptian myths; if you're drawing from the culture of the world, then you're inevitably drawing from the sexism of the world too.
No shit, this same imagery recurs across cultures? What if I told you that women internationally all experience sexism, in one way or another?
Yet also: from its inception, "sex magic" was very queer indeed.
Homosexual sex was a huge, and I mean huge part of Crowley's practice, and had specific ritual meanings. To do Thelema properly, you pretty much had to be au fait with bisexuality. There were different roles for solo, het and homo sexual acts in different rituals.
Now, I think it's good we've moved away from that. I think it's a Good Thing that people aren't being coerced into sex they're not into (which did happen in Crowley’s original working group). But when you look at sexy satanic imagery. It's all - alt white babes with normative bodies, being vessels and chalices for powerful dominant male avatars. In other word, we've replaced one Sex Expectation with a different one - as I hardly believe those images are the authentic form of sexual expression for 100% of Satanists.
I definitely like to consider queerness as a broader term, representing sex which is non-normative, and reflects genuine self-expression and will. And I think that's definitely key to the role queerness should play in Satanic/Thelemic/High magics. It's not so much about symbolic rituals between males and females, but about freedom, pleasure, the body, things for which you need to know your own desire and own it.
For some people, that's going to be ravishment by goat.
--
But it boils down to certain sexual expectations existing in magic, expectations that are unequal.
For Crowley, the expectations included gay sex; nowadays, it seemingly includes normative bodies, and het sex.
And unequal because, no matter how often a mage or a witch talks about men and women having equal, complimentary sacred roles...I don't believe it. I don't think anyone does. Crowley saw sacred women as interchangeable. Modern sexy Satanic art always puts a male figure dominant over a female one - by turning Baphomet's queer body into an explicitly male body (Have you ever seen sexy Baph art where Baph is a woman, or even a trans person? Of course you haven't. The cock maketh the man).
Sometimes I think, maybe it's sexist for me to be rejecting symbolic female imagery. Maybe disliking the passive/the cup/the receptive/the mystery is actually all about how I subconsciously rate masculinity over femininity. But no, it's just a shitty role. It still places active, will, and decision making as male qualities; "the sacred male embodies curiosity about the secret and hidden world of women, who hold the key to the mysteries" was clearly made up by male undergrads who desperately needed to get laid. The idea that women have a mysterious knowledge could only ever have been made up by a man. I don’t even know how to book a train ticket.
But it's endemic magically.
And...when you look at Thelma and Baphomet and stuff, it's a deeply queer ideology, where a true mage is neither male nor female, and engages sexually with both men and women.
And there doesn't seem to be a way to engage with it queerly, without relying at some stage on "here are the magical qualities of men and of women". You know, you could as a trans person with a Baphomet body use it to channel both male and female energies more potently, but there is nothing present in our magical culture challenging the fundamental man-as-active-lance-wielder and woman-as-passive-mysterious-vessel symbolism.
What can be done? Here are some thoughts.
So the role of sex in both high magic and Wicca and all that jazz goes something like this. Men and women have different symbolic roles. The true mage is powerful enough to have access to both energies. Sex is a kind of metaphor for the magical/alchemical process, where the male and female come together. Or magic is a kind of metaphor for sex, surpressed in our puritanical society. Either way, the coming together of opposites into a unity is a powerful magical symbol and magical act.
For those of you who just threw up a little in your mouth, let's try and make something a touch queerer and less essentalist from this mess.
"Male and Female energies"
Instead of relying on traditional symbols, seek out your own associations for the male and the female. What qualities do you associate with men? With women? With people who are neither? Build your own set of correspondences. Build up a list of figures who embody different genders as a personal bank of symbols.
Assuming you're coming from a queerfeminist bent, do try and come up with positive and negative qualities for both. “Men are inherently powerful dominant oppressors” is more or less what men have been saying since the dawn of time ;p
When thinking about sexual pairings - what associations do you have with these things? Trad gender magic plays with ideas of two halves of a whole coming together - sex, and metaphors for it, are at the core of most of it. Don't just consider the associations of men-with-women. What symbolism do you find in ff and mm couplings? What do you find when you consider other genders? Try and focus on the kinds of sex you have (or don't have) to avoid being needlessly skeezy. What is the meaning? What power and energies can you find in the kinds of things you do?
Think about non-sexual pairings. Trad gender magic always, at some point, boils down to a penis doing something with a vagina. Is that the most important way what people of different genders interact? Are there different, perhaps more powerful acts and behaviors, which could take the role of the sexual act in your gender magic.
Try and be aware of your cultural baggage. You don't have to reject it outright - pop culture magic has taught us that something doesn't have to be real to be powerful - but do know what you're dealing with, where it's coming from, and use that awareness to oomph up what you do. If you want to have feminine chalices, that's fine.
The goal is to yes, use gendered symbolism, but to use it on your own terms, and find your own meanings. It won't reflect reality perfectly. It won't necessarily have a lot to do with being a person in the world. It will always be slightly objectifying.
But you can probably do better than "women are indistinguishable vessels for men".
"The Mage is both Male and Female, as symbolised by Baphomet"
Be aware of your relationship to gender. If you are transgender or non-binary, you can incorporate that experience if you like.
How do you feel about that? What are your positive experiences of your gender? What qualities of other genders do you wish to cultivate? What sort of gender-based role models do you have and why?
I think the key is that mages ought to be powerful - if there are male and female energies, the mage must master both. Look back at your personal list of gender symbolism, and cultivate mastery of these things. If gender differences isn't a big thing in your life or system, replace this with seeking mastery over key dualities which are in your system.
If you do this, then reconsider whether sex is part of your system at all. For example, if your key duality is light and darkness - the dawn and the dusk, where the two powers are mingled as one, likely has the same charge as sex has in a system where the two powers are male and female.
"Sex magic which ought to be done as follows"
Sex magic & symbolism has two sorts of things going on.
The first is alchemical - the combination of opposites is powerful. We've already touched on this, but look at your sexuality - your real, authentic sexuality - and find its unique meanings and power. It could still be based on opposites coming together - but opposites with more egalitarian symbolism. A gay couple could find their magic in working with sameness; or with difference (say, butch-femme); or with something completely unrelated (say, the magic of reciprocity, of giving and receiving, which you practice with all your partners)
The second is the more Satanic approach, where it's about expressing yourself and hedonism. For this, too, you need to be expressing your authentic self, working on shame, working to tune out society's expectations. Again, if your authentic sexual self is monogamous and vanilla, this is as excellent and beautiful as any other expression. The greatest power is to be found in something you enjoy.
An important part of either approach is, of course, freely given consent. Violating the free will of others is Satanic no no.
"This is all bullshit"
...and that's ok. For a long time, I avoided gender magic entirely. I still think that's a wise approach.
Because I increasingly want to do the high magic thing, just without being someone’s bloody chalice; I'm hoping to use this framework to prevent my brains from dribbling out of my ears.
But if you want to ignore gender, that's cool too.
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Ace Like Jughead
This post is being written for January 2017′s Carnival of Aces, hosted by @aceadvice with the theme: “Many Ways To Be Ace.” This is what I was planning on writing about, but it also connected a lot to some feelings I had about this post about Jughead’s erased asexuality by Queer As Cat, so I included that response as well.
Asexual. It means a different thing for each asexual person in the world. It is also how I most prefer to identify. Not Greyromantic Asexual, which would also work, or Aromantic Asexual. Just Asexual.
For me, my asexuality and my aromanticism are not two different things. They are connected. They interact with each other, impact my life in much the same way as each other. When I call myself asexual, I mean something very similar to what someone who is sexually and romantically attracted to two or more genders means when they call themselves bisexual (as opposed to a biromantic bisexual). When I call myself asexual, I mean that I am not interested in people in a sexual/romantic way, regardless of their gender.
I am not opposed to using the word aromantic to discuss my experiences, especially within ace and aro circles. But I still feel that for me the two are connected, and identifying primarily as asexual is important to me.
Now, you might be thinking something along the lines of “But asexual means you don’t experience sexual attraction” or, “You are harming alloromantic asexuals with your personal identity.” That last one is the one I am most afraid of when discussing this among ace people. And to be totally honest, I am not cool with the idea that saying my personal identify harms others. (And it sort of reminds me of the whole “asexuality is inherently homophobic because it sexualizes gay people” thing.)
I am going to go on a tangent and talk about the second-wave feminism concept of “The Personal Is Political.” The idea is basically to have an awareness of how political and oppressive forces can shape our daily lives. However, this has somehow morphed into “I need to fight oppressive forces with my daily life or I am a bad person” (here is an example, cw for sex and kink mentions). And I disagree with that. All that leads to is burnout (and another oppressive force acting on your personal life).
Here is a link of some contemporary views on “The Personal Is Political.” I personally liked this quote the best:
The personal as the political was never meant to be a prescription of how to live your life. It was never meant to be a rallying cry to shave off your hair and take up with the lady next door. But what it was really meant to do was create an awareness of how our personal lives are ruled by political forces. Of how the fact that women were not economically or politically equal to men meant that their relationships were unequal too.
Katherine Viner, in On the Move: Feminism for a new generation
Awareness about how political and oppressive forces can shape our daily lives is meant to help us make informed decisions about our lives, and to help us figure out what we need to combat on a political level and how we are going to do that.
In preparation for the CW’s Riverdale, which is premiering later this month, I had seen several posts by other aces talking about how the comics have a canon asexual character in them. I had been feeling sort of upset about being ace for a week or so, and I decided it was probably because I was watching too many TV shows where the romance played a big part. So the not-so-easy remedy for this is to read/watch something with an ace character. I remembered what I had read about Jughead, and I decided to take a leap of faith (I haven’t read a graphic novel since I read Captain Underpants in the first grade) and buy Chip Zdarsky’s graphic novel Jughead, Volume One.
I loved it.
I cannot begin to express how much I loved it. In every issue, there was something pertaining to his asexuality mentioned somewhere. He actively deals with other people’s attitudes/awareness about his asexuality and it is... so great.
For those of you who have little exposure to the comics, Jughead is explicitly referred to as asexual by another character, he explicitly says he does not get crushes, and he has negatively reacted to touch (especially by girls flirting with him) on many occasions.
In other words, Jughead is ace like me. Sure, there are a few differences--I am a little less touch averse. I don’t have the superiority complex he has about it. Jughead never really says himself how he identifies, so we can’t be sure what he knows about asexuality/aromanticism and if he would identify like me or as aroace or something else, but either way, his asexuality and lack of romantic interest and touch aversion are all related and interconnected, much the way mine is.
Cole Sprouse recently said that, in spite of his efforts, Jughead is not currently being portrayed as asexual on the show. And most of the articles that reported about it said things like (note: these are not direct quotes, I reworded them to emphasize the issues in the logic) “Jughead will not be asexual because he will have romances” or “Jughead will not be asexual because he will want sex.” On the part of the people writing those articles (and possibly Cole Sprouse, but the context was given by the reporters so it is hard to tell), that wording is awful and wrong. And the show is not out yet, so we can’t even properly correct them because we don’t know what they were trying to say in the first place. Does he have romances? Does he have sex? Does he say “LOL I’m a straight dude?” It is not clear.
Here is a snippet of Queer As Cat’s post I mentioned at the beginning of this post:
sure, Jughead showing romantic (or sexual) interest in women may be out of character for him, but that’s not even what everyone’s making noise about. people are specifically fighting to “keep Jughead #asexual”, even though aces can “have romances”– in every possible sense of the word– with women (or anyone else) and still be asexual. given that, what is it that people are really fighting for?
the “One True Asexual Narrative”, that’s what.
and once again, whether people are consciously aware of it or not, the fight for that specific narrative is being had at the cost of asexual representation that deviates from that narrative.
When I get upset about the asexual erasure in the CW’s Riverdale, I am not upset about asexuality as a whole being erased, I am upset about Jughead’s asexuality being erased. Jughead’s asexuality means that he doesn’t have romances. I am not fighting for “The One True Asexual Narrative,” I am fighting for Jughead’s Asexual Narrative, which does not involve romance or sex or even casual touch. I am fighting for the narrative that could allow others to empathize with me, and give me something to relate to so I don’t feel like shit about my asexuality after watching too much TV.
There is actually only one asexual narrative of a recurring character that has been on TV so far (that I am aware of), and that is Voodoo from Sirens. And her character was alloromantic, dated, and masturbated. She was awesome and the best part of the series, not gonna lie. Jughead is a very different kind of ace from her (especially in the fact that he is a guy, there aren’t a lot of ace guys and I know that that bothers many of the ace men I know), so if you were to truly fight for having multiple asexual narratives on TV, Jughead’s from the comics would diversify it best. (Though I am really in the camp of any asexual narratives on TV being good. As long as it isn’t what happened in House.)
There are so many ways to be ace. My way is just one way. Jughead’s is another. And Queer As Cat’s is another. You, the reader, assuming you are asexual because you are reading this post, have another way of being asexual. None of these ways of being ace invalidate each other. Every time an ace character comes into the spotlight, it seems that there are the people who say “but they are not like me, so they are not good representation.” We get so little that we begin to fight over crumbs, and it does not help. We need to start fighting for all types of asexual narratives to be told, not just ones that are like our own. And celebrate when our ace friends of differing romantic orientations have their narratives told. Which unfortunately there is nothing to celebrate at the moment. So we need to fight. Together.
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Personal research.
The effect of insensitive language on Instagram.
Group dynamics in real life.
Language and communication is a big aspect on the social media platform Instagram. There is a lot of controversy with regards to control. Many hateful comments slip through but there is also difficulty with expressing yourself. Since the social media platform is so big, there is a bigger area to reach. Most people do not think about this when they are posting something. Especially for celebrities and A-listers, the comments under a picture can be extreme. Many people respond to not only the picture but also comments that other people have made, often resulting in hateful or insensitive language. Some people say that everyone is too sensitive and can’t handle a joke or that women should accept jokes and not be so feminist.
A group may disagree within itself as to what is acceptable and what is not. Many seemingly inoffensive terms develop negative meanings over time and become dated or go out of style as awareness changes. A "within the group" rule often applies, which allows a member of a group to use terms freely that would be considered offensive if used by a non-member of the group.
What is considered acceptable shifts constantly as people become more aware of language and its power. The rapid changes of the last few decades have left many people puzzled and afraid of unintentionally insulting someone. At the same time, these changes have angered others, who criticize what they see as extremes of ‘political correctness’ in rules that alter language to the point of confusing, even destroying, its meaning. The neglect of traditional usages has also upset many people. It is true that some are more extreme attempts to avoid offending language. It is also true that heightened sensitivity in language is a statement of respect, implies accuracy of thought, and is a positive move toward correcting the unequal social status between one group and another.
What are examples of insensitive language on Instagram?
Sexism
Sexism is the most difficult subject to avoid, in part because of the agreement of using man or men and he or his to refer to people of either sex. Other, more disrespectful principles include giving descriptions of women in terms of age and appearance while describing men in terms of accomplishment.
Sexual Orientation
The term homosexual to describe a man or woman is increasingly replaced by the terms gay for men and lesbian for women. Homosexual as a noun is sometimes used only in reference to a male. Among homosexuals, certain terms (such as queer and dyke) that are usually considered offensive have been gaining currency in recent years. However, it is still prudent to avoid these terms in standard contexts.
Avoiding Depersonalization of Persons with Disabilities or Illnesses Terminology that emphasizes the person rather than the disability is generally preferred. Handicap is used to refer to the environmental barrier that affects the person. (Stairs handicap a person who uses a wheelchair.) While words such as crazy, demented, and insane are used in facetious or informal contexts, these terms are not used to describe people with clinical diagnoses of mental illness. The synonyms argued, differently abled, and special are preferred by some people, but are often ridiculed and are best avoided.
What is insensitive language?
Language isn’t correct or incorrect, it’s a range from violent to freedom. Language is not about being correct or avoiding offense. It’s about creating the opportunity for perspectives that have historically been silenced to shine. It’s about empowerment, and agency, and collective care. It’s about liberation.
The idea that avoiding “offending” people is the primary goal of sensitive language is inherently minimizing—it automatically calls up the idea that being offended is a result of being either overcritical or oversensitive, nothing more. It also squarely puts the burden of how language is experienced on the people who are hearing or reading it. It says that if you are offended by particular language, it’s your fault, not the speaker or author’s.
Focusing on offense does not allow for the possibility that a person could be negatively impacted by careless or hostile language. The worst thing they can experience is being offended. Everything about this line of reasoning is rude in nature. The solution for “being offended” is not for responsibility to be taken by the person who caused the offense, it’s for the listening or reader to simply stop being offended: “toughen up,” recognize that no offense was intended, “grow up.” Whenever someone is called out for using sexist language, the first line of defense is always “but it was just a joke”.
So if someone asks two women, “So, who’s the man in your relationship?” those words build on a century of oppressive language that has kept non-heterosexual people downgraded. The two women might react with anger, frustration, tears or silence. Are they offended? Sure, but that’s not the point. The point is they’ve been hurt, and their pain has deep roots.
Perhaps the person didn’t mean to hurt anyone. After all, many people who ask that question are trying to be insulting, but many others are genuinely curious and have no idea how gender roles play out in same-sex relationships.
With regards to insensitive language, I have had many experiences. I often feel offended myself, I am a very sensitive person and can be offended really easily. Not with regards to sexism but mostly with the way that a person talks to me. Their words or sentences may not be meant insensitive but to me it can sound harsh or direct. If someone answers my question in a harsh matter, I can wonder about this all day and try to figure out the reason for this. With this being said, I am also a person that regularly makes mistakes and usually accidently hurt someone with my remarks. If I make a joke that is not suitable or a question that is misplaces, I definitely get a offended reaction back. This is why I know that I think faster than that I speak. My mind has already made a remark and said it while afterwards I am shocked myself.
Why are these comments even made?
Given so many people loudly object to offensive language, why do people continue to speak this way?
There is a research a women undertook with her colleague:
’’In a study I undertook with a colleague, we asked men to select a joke from a series of pairs that included a clearly sexist joke (such as, “What is the difference between a battery and a woman? A battery has a positive side”) and a joke that was not specifically offensive to women (such as, “Why don’t oysters give to charity? Because they’re shellfish”).
The male participants believe they were interacting over a computer with two other students, one male and one female. In reality, the students they were interacting with were computer-generated, and we altered the reactions these fake peers had to the sexist jokes to see if this influenced how many sexist jokes the participants would choose to send.
The male participants were not influenced by whether or not a woman objected to sexist jokes. They were, however, highly sensitive to how they thought another man would react to them, reducing their use of sexist jokes if they thought a man would be object.
What these results show is these jokes appear to have a “male bonding” function – that, primarily, men make such jokes typically to impress other men. Other research has suggested a similar function for homophobic slurs.
Most likely, making jokes about women or using homophobic slurs work to enhance (straight) male bonding because women and gay men represent the “other”; they are what social psychologists refer to as “out-groups” relative to a heterosexual male “in-group”.’’
Result:
These results surprised me very much actually. I did think that people are ‘followers’ and tend to follow up on someone’s opinion even when they think differently, but I did not think of insensitive language as a bonding tool. I usually think of insensitive language as a way of seeking attention. This research defines my opinion even more.
The effect of insensitive language on Instagram.
Photo-based activity on Instagram has been found as contributing to body image concerns. There are many studies that investigate the effect of number of likes accompanying Instagram images on women's own body dissatisfaction.
’’Participants in a recent studies were 220 female undergraduate students who were randomly assigned to view a set of the thin ideal or average images paired with a low or high number of likes presented in an Instagram frame. Results showed that exposure to thin-ideal images led to greater body and facial dissatisfaction than average images. While the number of likes had no effect on body dissatisfaction or appearance comparison, it had a positive effect on facial dissatisfaction. These effects were not moderated by Instagram’s involvement, but greater investment in Instagram’s likes was associated with more appearance comparison and facial dissatisfaction. The results demonstrate how the outstandingly social aspects of social media such as likes can affect someone’s body image.’’
Among young people, the rates of anxiety and depression have escalated rapidly over the past 25 years, increasing by 70 percent. Researchers have reason to believe social media has played a part in this increase. Heavy social media users have been found to report poor mental health. While all social networks appear to have a negative impact on users’ body image, body image issues are particularly frequent on Instagram, which is said to be used mainly by women and has a younger age demographic, 90 percent of Instagram users are under 35. Photos uploaded to Instagram present an unrealistic perfect image, as countless photos are thoroughly chosen and photoshopped to hide any flaws.
This is not only with regards to only likes or only women. Positive appearance comments on Instagram photos lead to greater body dissatisfaction. These comments can negatively impact body image and sleep, increases bullying, “FOMO” (fear of missing out), and leads to greater feelings of anxiety, depression, and loneliness. The positive effects of Instagram can be self-expression, self-identity, community building, and emotional support. Although many people love the app and see no harm. There is a very big hidden world. Celebrities or influencers are sharing their opinion more then ever. Many feel depressed, lonely or insecure. Their life is not as picture perfect as it seems to be. They feel left out (FOMO) when they cannot attend a party and many teenagers relate to this. Though there's nothing essentially dangerous about Instagram, the main scares are mean behavior among peers, inappropriate photos or videos that can hurt a teen's reputation or attract the wrong kind of attention, overuse, and of course, privacy.
I notice this behavior and actually relate to it myself. I, fortunately, do not receive rude or insensitive comments but I do feel miserable or lonely more often when I use Instagram.
Thankfully now Instagram users can control who can comment on their photos and videos. They can choose to: allow comments from everyone, people they follow and those people’s followers, just the people they follow, or their followers. Instagram users can also remove comments entirely from their posts. Instagram also has controls that help you manage the content you see and determine when comments are offensive or intended to bully or harass. There are filters that automatically remove offensive words and phrases and bullying comments.
Sources:
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Effect-of-Instagram-on-Self-Esteem-and-Life-Dion/5b94ce76bd38768e5d406faca4c16ae34ab5dd49
https://www.hffmcsd.org/site/handlers/filedownload.ashx?moduleinstanceid=211&dataid=868&FileName=avoiding%20insensitive%20and%20offensive%20language1.pdf
https://radicalcopyeditor.com/2016/10/24/part-5-put-political-correctness-back-where-it-belongs/
https://theconversation.com/its-just-a-joke-the-subtle-effects-of-offensive-language-62440
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326580674_The_effect_of_Instagram_likes_on_women's_social_comparison_and_body_dissatisfaction
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1740144518301360
https://www.psychalive.org/worst-mental-health-instagram-facebook-youtube/
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@millenniumvulcan said: I guess ideally we'd have an adaptation where Holmes and Watson were both qpoc in a relationship (like...a version where they're both gay men of colour? Or trans women of colour? Just because it's m/m or f/f doesn't mean it has to be white, in fact it would be very regressive in a different way if the first adaptation with canon Holmes/Watson also had them as conventionally attractive skinny cis gay white men). But I guess that would be a perfect world.
I very much agree. I would love your ideal - Holmes and Watson being two LGBT POC. I just don’t believe what we could have with Joanlock should be thought lesser (not that it will ever be canon, I understand that, and I don’t think the writers could do it well).
And you’re definitely right, conventionally attractive skinny cis gay Holmes/Watson would be regressive. As much as many J0hnlock shippers in the BBC fandom wanted it to happen with their show...after all the homophobic and racist and ableist things that show and it’s cast/creators have done, I’m personally relieved canon J0hnlock didn’t come out of it...
Good representation of POC and LGBT seems to happen in fits and starts. If it’s not demanded over and over by consumers the white creators/writers just don’t bother most of the time. Or if representation does happen it’s usually...disrespectful to say the least. It uses stereotypes, or it ignores the characters’ emotions, or it makes the white/straight characters far more important even if the POC/LGBT character is a lead... Although in my experience most LGBT rep I see is either negative (belong to an antagonist/criminal or the character dies/is written out), in a rare side character, or just nonexistent.
That’s why I get so irritated with Elementary fans who are so happy and vocal about their relief that JLM Holmes and Joan Watson are platonic. I know the creators and actors say over and over they won’t make them romantic, but I don’t think that’s progressive in itself. To me it just reflects how twisted and negative heterosexual romance has been depicted in media that the majority of people see it as cheap, contrived, gimmicky, boring (and often abusive and unequal to the woman character). For a WOC lead to be able to be in a healthy relationship with white male lead, that is progressive. It’s not contrived or boring. And frankly, I’m sick and tired of fans being so happy that the two leads of this show are platonic.
There’s also the fact that Joan, even if her relationship with Holmes is platonic, is not treated with equality or respect by the writers or by the character of Holmes himself. She is not treated as a lead. So to me her and Holmes being platonic has nothing to do with what makes this show good. Their relationship being platonic didn’t ensure Joan was treated as an equal. That’s a fact. And that’s mainly why I get so upset at people continually praising that aspect. It’s not something to praise, it doesn’t make the show better. And people who think it’s horrible to put Joan and JLM Holmes together romantically, they need to examine if that view has anything to do with how Joan’s character has been treated so horribly by the writers, or her race. That people can ship two white British men together so readily, but not a white man and a Chinese-American woman (not that they won’t ship it but they won’t even entertain or respect the idea!), really gets on my nerves. I know many other factors go into it, but people need to admit the racism and misogyny inherent in that concept.
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What do you do when the one who got away suddenly reappears in your life? In Justine's case, she tries to do her best to control her raging emotions while convincing her former love, Rafael, to loan her the money to save her failing newspaper. When Rafael proposes that she spend the month with him in exchange for helping her paper, Justine agrees. Not just for her employees, but also for herself. But is Rafael there to help her or destroy her?
The "Indecent Proposal" trope is an interesting one because of the power dynamic. Inherently, it is an unequal relationship which can lead to consent issues.
However, I need to give the author credit when it comes to handling it. Justine never loses her agency, and Rafael isn't the stereotypical billionaire alpha. There are definite callbacks to both “Indecent Proposal” and alpha romances, but the tropes are played with even if they are sometimes played straight in the end.
Both of the characters have depth and motivations that are outside of the romance, which is often forgotten. I adored that both Justine and Rafael owned their sexuality and that this book was very sex-positive. Sex positivity is rarer than you might think in romance. Women are often demonized or degraded for “not being pure” while men are encouraged to be promiscuous.. That wasn’t the case here. Both characters were up front with their sexual history and it wasn’t shamed and in fact, was actively discussed. I also loved that the characters had lost their virginity together in the past (not really a spoiler considering this is a second-chance romance).
My biggest quibble was that Rafael often fell into the "Hot Latin Lover" stereotype... and that some of the Spanish was a bit gratuitous... A bigger problem was that much of it was untranslated, which can be difficult for a reader who isn't fluent in the language.
This is especially true in regards to the slang which can vary from region to region. So, I’m actually moderately fluent in Spanish... at least when it comes to reading (don’t ask me to write or speak it.) But when I ran into the word “coño” I had to pause. Because where/how I learned Spanish was from speakers who came from either Chile or Spain. In Chile, it’s a pejorative for “Spaniard” while in Spain it means “cunt/pussy.” The actual line in question... “Coño, don’t think the worst of me.” and neither definition I knew worked. Apparently I needed to know that the Cuban meaning for coño is Fucker, Bastard, Damn, or Shit. Welcome to Slang... And you thought English was bad with the regional idioms...
That being said, the sex is incredibly hot. It’s incredibly well described and lovely to read. Frankly, all of the description in this book is lovely. As a former Florida resident, I appreciated the fact that the setting was as much of a character as the humans.
I also enjoyed the realism in regards to the newspaper industry. The author clearly knows her stuff when it comes to this, and it shows. Also there's an A+ Transmetropolitan reference, which tickled my inner graphic-novels geek.
In all, this is a solid and sexy second-chance romance.
And I'm happy to give it:
Four stars.
Get it now on Amazon.
*** I received a copy of this book through NetGalley
#Rose and Lark review books#romance review#romance reviews#second chance romance#contemporary romance#latino hero#interracial romance#four stars#seriously the slang threw me
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{#TransparentTuesday} Boy Jessi + Girl Jessi: What Gender Identity Has to Do With Body Image
Today we’re going to talk about gender.
Something I’ve noticed coming up a LOT in my webinars and coaching calls lately is the question of what it means to be female, and what to do when being “female” doesn’t quite feel right.
Now, I (like you, probably) grew up in a gender binary system. Our options used to be male, female, or “transexual.” Some men liked crossdressing and some lesbians liked looking butch, but gender and sex were basically the same thing and we were expected to like it.
In recent years, culture has changed to reflect a different understanding of gender, and I’ve changed along with it.
It is now widely recognized that sex is assigned at birth based on genitalia, while gender is the identity a person resonates with. That no longer means each person has to check the box next to “male” or “female,” either.
We have only begun to scratch the surface of recognizing intersex people, non-binary individuals, gender-fluid and gender-queer people, and more.
Gender identity and gender expression have created a whole new landscape for us to consider ourselves, our identities, and our bodies, as well as our beliefs about how things “should” be and where we have hang-ups. (Note: If you find this whole conversation ridiculous, offensive, or annoying, I humbly suggest you have some major hangups.)
So what does this new gender landscape have to do with body image?
Fucking EVERYTHING.
When I look back on my life, having been born into an unambiguously female body, I can see that the vast majority of my personal body shame and hatred came from the fact that I did not want to be female.
I had an older brother, and I was always EXTREMELY aware of how differently we were treated. From a very young age,I felt existentially cheated, and angry. He could run and show off and be difficult and get dirty and be forgiven for being an entitled dick sometimes (sorry Ben), while I was expected to be helpful, nice, calm, pretty, and polite.
Before I could even read or write I was aware that being a boy was indisputably better, and being a girl was indisputably worse. I was mad that I had to be a girl just because my stupid body said so, and I was mad that everyone treated me like one as if they couldn’t tell it didn’t suit me.
Questions I’ve asked myself a lot, as I process this experience within our new non-binary gender landscape:
How much of my resentment came from living in a sexist patriarchy, and how much was my inherent gender identity?
How much of my resentment came from an intuitive (and accurate) understanding that girls are more vulnerable targets, and that I was unsafe?
I’ll never know the answers.
My parents didn’t buy into gender roles the way some people did, thank goodness, so many of the messages I got about gender roles came from elsewhere, but they came nonetheless. My parents proudly empowered me to do and be whatever I wanted, which was great, but what I wanted was to be a boy, and that wasn’t on the table.
Examining and choosing my own gender identity wasn’t an option at the time. So a girl I stayed, and then I hit puberty and became a “woman” and I hated every fucking second of it.
I hated my breasts. I hated my vagina and the fact that I had periods and could get pregnant and had to take birth control. I hated that I was supposed to like girly stuff and supposed to want to get married and grow babies inside my body (NO THANK YOU) and generally just be something I wasn’t.
I hated the gross attention from men.
I hated the unfairness of how we females got treated, and the stories from history of how women had to work so hard to convince everyone that we were worthy of the vote, or physically capable of running a marathon. I hated that even today sexism and misogyny are alive and well, but also completely invisible to most straight men, who have the privilege of not being affected by it.
I hated how boys were taught to be entitled dicks whose only job in life was to convince girls to put out. I hated the fact that I had been initiated into my sexuality at the age of 7 by an older boy who felt like my female body existed for his pleasure.
I hated myself for being female, I hated my body for being female, and I was in an enormous amount of pain.
I was, however, way too others-conscious to do anything about this.
My boobs were huge, and I was a good kid from a good family in a hyper conservative town who wasn’t about to screw up my whole life by calling myself a boy when I obviously wasn’t a boy. No fucking way. Even if I’d had the language around gender expression we have now, I wouldn’t have risked being seen that way.
Instead, I learned to wield my female body like a weapon. I learned how to control everything, especially boys and men. I tried to find an identity that fit me while living in a body I resented, and the parts of my body that I hated the most were the ones that gave away my femaleness: my curves, my softness, my breasts.
I obsessively focused on my flaws, distracting myself with the wild goose chase of pursuing “body perfection” while trying to harden, tighten, and erase all the most female parts of me.
Looking back, I can see that many of these feelings were the result of terror and rage. Crushed under the weight of centuries of unequal treatment, I was afraid for my safety, and angry at the situation.
Being female in this world is scary, and unfair, and painful.
I’ve done a lot of work to heal my relationship with my body and my gender since then, and I’ve even come to love being a woman in some ways.
But I do so wish I’d had the freedom back then to NOT identify as female, without stigma, as I sorted through the experience of being in this body.
I’ve never felt a need to talk about gender identity before, although I’ve been slowly processing my own for years.
However, someone recently asked if my coaching program was open to people who weren’t sure if they identified as male or female or what, and I realized I’ve been doing a major disservice to the conversation on body image by not discussing gender.
So I’d like to make a few things clear:
Your sex is assigned at birth, and your gender is how you identify, based on what feels right for you.
Gender is no longer a male/female binary.
If everyone agrees respects everyone else’s gender identity without judgement than more people can explore themselves and their identity in a way that makes them feel safe, authentic, and accepted for who they are.
Body image and gender identity/expression are deeply interconnected, and for many women (even if they identify as fully female) this is a topic that needs to be discussed, considered, explored, and healed.
Please understand, this is absolutely terrifying for me to write, but I believe in transparency and I believe we need to talk about this.
Years ago, I told my best friend I was a boy sometimes.
I had been consciously exploring my own femininity for a while, and had committed to wearing dresses for an entire summer to see if I could face my distaste for female-ness head on.
I told him that I was doing it because deep down there is a boy Jessi and a girl Jessi, and that I was trying to get girl Jessi to show up more by making her feel welcome.
He gave me a look I’ll never forget, nodded supportively, and said “Wow… how does that feel to say out loud?”
It felt… liberating. Embarrassing. Exhilarating. Ridiculous. Glorious.
There is a Boy Jessi and a Girl Jessi!! It felt so hilariously and obviously true. I couldn’t believe I’d never let myself say that before.
In the years since, I have welcomed Woman Jessi, too. (Interestingly, I never feel like a Man. Just a Boy, Girl, or Woman.) Some days I feel more one or the other, and most days I feel like a blend.
When I started to write this, I had no intention of getting so personal or vulnerable. I actually had to stop midway through, to tremble and cry and come up with a thousand reasons not to send this. (It might not feel like a big reveal to you, but it sure as hell feels like one to me.)
But here you are reading it anyway.
My hope is that this helps us all open up a better, more nuanced, and compassionate conversation about gender, identity, and our relationships with our bodies.
There are SO many ways in which gender identity (and expression!) can affect your relationship with your body. Even if you don’t resonate with my story, I challenge you to think of ways in which traditional gender roles, expectations, and “norms” have helped you create (or reject) your identity, and the possible relationships between gender, safety, beauty standards, and feeling like you belong in your body.
I cannot believe I’m about to hit send on this.
I love you.
<3
Jessi
The post {#TransparentTuesday} Boy Jessi + Girl Jessi: What Gender Identity Has to Do With Body Image appeared first on Jessi Kneeland.
http://ift.tt/2E5yqOD
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{#TransparentTuesday} Boy Jessi + Girl Jessi: What Gender Identity Has to Do With Body Image
Today we’re going to talk about gender.
Something I’ve noticed coming up a LOT in my webinars and coaching calls lately is the question of what it means to be female, and what to do when being “female” doesn’t quite feel right.
Now, I (like you, probably) grew up in a gender binary system. Our options used to be male, female, or “transexual.” Some men liked crossdressing and some lesbians liked looking butch, but gender and sex were basically the same thing and we were expected to like it.
In recent years, culture has changed to reflect a different understanding of gender, and I’ve changed along with it.
It is now widely recognized that sex is assigned at birth based on genitalia, while gender is the identity a person resonates with. That no longer means each person has to check the box next to “male” or “female,” either.
We have only begun to scratch the surface of recognizing intersex people, non-binary individuals, gender-fluid and gender-queer people, and more.
Gender identity and gender expression have created a whole new landscape for us to consider ourselves, our identities, and our bodies, as well as our beliefs about how things “should” be and where we have hang-ups. (Note: If you find this whole conversation ridiculous, offensive, or annoying, I humbly suggest you have some major hangups.)
So what does this new gender landscape have to do with body image?
Fucking EVERYTHING.
When I look back on my life, having been born into an unambiguously female body, I can see that the vast majority of my personal body shame and hatred came from the fact that I did not want to be female.
I had an older brother, and I was always EXTREMELY aware of how differently we were treated. From a very young age,I felt existentially cheated, and angry. He could run and show off and be difficult and get dirty and be forgiven for being an entitled dick sometimes (sorry Ben), while I was expected to be helpful, nice, calm, pretty, and polite.
Before I could even read or write I was aware that being a boy was indisputably better, and being a girl was indisputably worse. I was mad that I had to be a girl just because my stupid body said so, and I was mad that everyone treated me like one as if they couldn’t tell it didn’t suit me.
Questions I’ve asked myself a lot, as I process this experience within our new non-binary gender landscape:
How much of my resentment came from living in a sexist patriarchy, and how much was my inherent gender identity?
How much of my resentment came from an intuitive (and accurate) understanding that girls are more vulnerable targets, and that I was unsafe?
I’ll never know the answers.
My parents didn’t buy into gender roles the way some people did, thank goodness, so many of the messages I got about gender roles came from elsewhere, but they came nonetheless. My parents proudly empowered me to do and be whatever I wanted, which was great, but what I wanted was to be a boy, and that wasn’t on the table.
Examining and choosing my own gender identity wasn’t an option at the time. So a girl I stayed, and then I hit puberty and became a “woman” and I hated every fucking second of it.
I hated my breasts. I hated my vagina and the fact that I had periods and could get pregnant and had to take birth control. I hated that I was supposed to like girly stuff and supposed to want to get married and grow babies inside my body (NO THANK YOU) and generally just be something I wasn’t.
I hated the gross attention from men.
I hated the unfairness of how we females got treated, and the stories from history of how women had to work so hard to convince everyone that we were worthy of the vote, or physically capable of running a marathon. I hated that even today sexism and misogyny are alive and well, but also completely invisible to most straight men, who have the privilege of not being affected by it.
I hated how boys were taught to be entitled dicks whose only job in life was to convince girls to put out. I hated the fact that I had been initiated into my sexuality at the age of 7 by an older boy who felt like my female body existed for his pleasure.
I hated myself for being female, I hated my body for being female, and I was in an enormous amount of pain.
I was, however, way too others-conscious to do anything about this.
My boobs were huge, and I was a good kid from a good family in a hyper conservative town who wasn’t about to screw up my whole life by calling myself a boy when I obviously wasn’t a boy. No fucking way. Even if I’d had the language around gender expression we have now, I wouldn’t have risked being seen that way.
Instead, I learned to wield my female body like a weapon. I learned how to control everything, especially boys and men. I tried to find an identity that fit me while living in a body I resented, and the parts of my body that I hated the most were the ones that gave away my femaleness: my curves, my softness, my breasts.
I obsessively focused on my flaws, distracting myself with the wild goose chase of pursuing “body perfection” while trying to harden, tighten, and erase all the most female parts of me.
Looking back, I can see that many of these feelings were the result of terror and rage. Crushed under the weight of centuries of unequal treatment, I was afraid for my safety, and angry at the situation.
Being female in this world is scary, and unfair, and painful.
I’ve done a lot of work to heal my relationship with my body and my gender since then, and I’ve even come to love being a woman in some ways.
But I do so wish I’d had the freedom back then to NOT identify as female, without stigma, as I sorted through the experience of being in this body.
I’ve never felt a need to talk about gender identity before, although I’ve been slowly processing my own for years.
However, someone recently asked if my coaching program was open to people who weren’t sure if they identified as male or female or what, and I realized I’ve been doing a major disservice to the conversation on body image by not discussing gender.
So I’d like to make a few things clear:
Your sex is assigned at birth, and your gender is how you identify, based on what feels right for you.
Gender is no longer a male/female binary.
If everyone agrees respects everyone else’s gender identity without judgement than more people can explore themselves and their identity in a way that makes them feel safe, authentic, and accepted for who they are.
Body image and gender identity/expression are deeply interconnected, and for many women (even if they identify as fully female) this is a topic that needs to be discussed, considered, explored, and healed.
Please understand, this is absolutely terrifying for me to write, but I believe in transparency and I believe we need to talk about this.
Years ago, I told my best friend I was a boy sometimes.
I had been consciously exploring my own femininity for a while, and had committed to wearing dresses for an entire summer to see if I could face my distaste for female-ness head on.
I told him that I was doing it because deep down there is a boy Jessi and a girl Jessi, and that I was trying to get girl Jessi to show up more by making her feel welcome.
He gave me a look I’ll never forget, nodded supportively, and said “Wow… how does that feel to say out loud?”
It felt… liberating. Embarrassing. Exhilarating. Ridiculous. Glorious.
There is a Boy Jessi and a Girl Jessi!! It felt so hilariously and obviously true. I couldn’t believe I’d never let myself say that before.
In the years since, I have welcomed Woman Jessi, too. (Interestingly, I never feel like a Man. Just a Boy, Girl, or Woman.) Some days I feel more one or the other, and most days I feel like a blend.
When I started to write this, I had no intention of getting so personal or vulnerable. I actually had to stop midway through, to tremble and cry and come up with a thousand reasons not to send this. (It might not feel like a big reveal to you, but it sure as hell feels like one to me.)
But here you are reading it anyway.
My hope is that this helps us all open up a better, more nuanced, and compassionate conversation about gender, identity, and our relationships with our bodies.
There are SO many ways in which gender identity (and expression!) can affect your relationship with your body. Even if you don’t resonate with my story, I challenge you to think of ways in which traditional gender roles, expectations, and “norms” have helped you create (or reject) your identity, and the possible relationships between gender, safety, beauty standards, and feeling like you belong in your body.
I cannot believe I’m about to hit send on this.
I love you.
<3
Jessi
The post {#TransparentTuesday} Boy Jessi + Girl Jessi: What Gender Identity Has to Do With Body Image appeared first on Jessi Kneeland.
http://ift.tt/2E5yqOD
0 notes
Text
{#TransparentTuesday} Boy Jessi + Girl Jessi: What Gender Identity Has to Do With Body Image
Today we’re going to talk about gender.
Something I’ve noticed coming up a LOT in my webinars and coaching calls lately is the question of what it means to be female, and what to do when being “female” doesn’t quite feel right.
Now, I (like you, probably) grew up in a gender binary system. Our options used to be male, female, or “transexual.” Some men liked crossdressing and some lesbians liked looking butch, but gender and sex were basically the same thing and we were expected to like it.
In recent years, culture has changed to reflect a different understanding of gender, and I’ve changed along with it.
It is now widely recognized that sex is assigned at birth based on genitalia, while gender is the identity a person resonates with. That no longer means each person has to check the box next to “male” or “female,” either.
We have only begun to scratch the surface of recognizing intersex people, non-binary individuals, gender-fluid and gender-queer people, and more.
Gender identity and gender expression have created a whole new landscape for us to consider ourselves, our identities, and our bodies, as well as our beliefs about how things “should” be and where we have hang-ups. (Note: If you find this whole conversation ridiculous, offensive, or annoying, I humbly suggest you have some major hangups.)
So what does this new gender landscape have to do with body image?
Fucking EVERYTHING.
When I look back on my life, having been born into an unambiguously female body, I can see that the vast majority of my personal body shame and hatred came from the fact that I did not want to be female.
I had an older brother, and I was always EXTREMELY aware of how differently we were treated. From a very young age,I felt existentially cheated, and angry. He could run and show off and be difficult and get dirty and be forgiven for being an entitled dick sometimes (sorry Ben), while I was expected to be helpful, nice, calm, pretty, and polite.
Before I could even read or write I was aware that being a boy was indisputably better, and being a girl was indisputably worse. I was mad that I had to be a girl just because my stupid body said so, and I was mad that everyone treated me like one as if they couldn’t tell it didn’t suit me.
Questions I’ve asked myself a lot, as I process this experience within our new non-binary gender landscape:
How much of my resentment came from living in a sexist patriarchy, and how much was my inherent gender identity?
How much of my resentment came from an intuitive (and accurate) understanding that girls are more vulnerable targets, and that I was unsafe?
I’ll never know the answers.
My parents didn’t buy into gender roles the way some people did, thank goodness, so many of the messages I got about gender roles came from elsewhere, but they came nonetheless. My parents proudly empowered me to do and be whatever I wanted, which was great, but what I wanted was to be a boy, and that wasn’t on the table.
Examining and choosing my own gender identity wasn’t an option at the time. So a girl I stayed, and then I hit puberty and became a “woman” and I hated every fucking second of it.
I hated my breasts. I hated my vagina and the fact that I had periods and could get pregnant and had to take birth control. I hated that I was supposed to like girly stuff and supposed to want to get married and grow babies inside my body (NO THANK YOU) and generally just be something I wasn’t.
I hated the gross attention from men.
I hated the unfairness of how we females got treated, and the stories from history of how women had to work so hard to convince everyone that we were worthy of the vote, or physically capable of running a marathon. I hated that even today sexism and misogyny are alive and well, but also completely invisible to most straight men, who have the privilege of not being affected by it.
I hated how boys were taught to be entitled dicks whose only job in life was to convince girls to put out. I hated the fact that I had been initiated into my sexuality at the age of 7 by an older boy who felt like my female body existed for his pleasure.
I hated myself for being female, I hated my body for being female, and I was in an enormous amount of pain.
I was, however, way too others-conscious to do anything about this.
My boobs were huge, and I was a good kid from a good family in a hyper conservative town who wasn’t about to screw up my whole life by calling myself a boy when I obviously wasn’t a boy. No fucking way. Even if I’d had the language around gender expression we have now, I wouldn’t have risked being seen that way.
Instead, I learned to wield my female body like a weapon. I learned how to control everything, especially boys and men. I tried to find an identity that fit me while living in a body I resented, and the parts of my body that I hated the most were the ones that gave away my femaleness: my curves, my softness, my breasts.
I obsessively focused on my flaws, distracting myself with the wild goose chase of pursuing “body perfection” while trying to harden, tighten, and erase all the most female parts of me.
Looking back, I can see that many of these feelings were the result of terror and rage. Crushed under the weight of centuries of unequal treatment, I was afraid for my safety, and angry at the situation.
Being female in this world is scary, and unfair, and painful.
I’ve done a lot of work to heal my relationship with my body and my gender since then, and I’ve even come to love being a woman in some ways.
But I do so wish I’d had the freedom back then to NOT identify as female, without stigma, as I sorted through the experience of being in this body.
I’ve never felt a need to talk about gender identity before, although I’ve been slowly processing my own for years.
However, someone recently asked if my coaching program was open to people who weren’t sure if they identified as male or female or what, and I realized I’ve been doing a major disservice to the conversation on body image by not discussing gender.
So I’d like to make a few things clear:
Your sex is assigned at birth, and your gender is how you identify, based on what feels right for you.
Gender is no longer a male/female binary.
If everyone agrees respects everyone else’s gender identity without judgement than more people can explore themselves and their identity in a way that makes them feel safe, authentic, and accepted for who they are.
Body image and gender identity/expression are deeply interconnected, and for many women (even if they identify as fully female) this is a topic that needs to be discussed, considered, explored, and healed.
Please understand, this is absolutely terrifying for me to write, but I believe in transparency and I believe we need to talk about this.
Years ago, I told my best friend I was a boy sometimes.
I had been consciously exploring my own femininity for a while, and had committed to wearing dresses for an entire summer to see if I could face my distaste for female-ness head on.
I told him that I was doing it because deep down there is a boy Jessi and a girl Jessi, and that I was trying to get girl Jessi to show up more by making her feel welcome.
He gave me a look I’ll never forget, nodded supportively, and said “Wow… how does that feel to say out loud?”
It felt… liberating. Embarrassing. Exhilarating. Ridiculous. Glorious.
There is a Boy Jessi and a Girl Jessi!! It felt so hilariously and obviously true. I couldn’t believe I’d never let myself say that before.
In the years since, I have welcomed Woman Jessi, too. (Interestingly, I never feel like a Man. Just a Boy, Girl, or Woman.) Some days I feel more one or the other, and most days I feel like a blend.
When I started to write this, I had no intention of getting so personal or vulnerable. I actually had to stop midway through, to tremble and cry and come up with a thousand reasons not to send this. (It might not feel like a big reveal to you, but it sure as hell feels like one to me.)
But here you are reading it anyway.
My hope is that this helps us all open up a better, more nuanced, and compassionate conversation about gender, identity, and our relationships with our bodies.
There are SO many ways in which gender identity (and expression!) can affect your relationship with your body. Even if you don’t resonate with my story, I challenge you to think of ways in which traditional gender roles, expectations, and “norms” have helped you create (or reject) your identity, and the possible relationships between gender, safety, beauty standards, and feeling like you belong in your body.
I cannot believe I’m about to hit send on this.
I love you.
<3
Jessi
The post {#TransparentTuesday} Boy Jessi + Girl Jessi: What Gender Identity Has to Do With Body Image appeared first on Jessi Kneeland.
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