#definitely also influences his understanding of masculinity | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

grovekeepers · 6 months

Note

robin <3 i'd love to hear about robins own, personal views on his sex and gender, please!

Thanks for the ask, Fray!! (answering it gives me something to do while i wait for the electricity to come back on!)

I'm putting this under a cut, because I've been typing for a while now and I feel like this'll be a long one. I will add that I'm briefly mentioning an eating disorder under the cut, in case you or anyone else wants to back out of reading that.

For the longest time Robin didn't really have any views on his sex or gender. He had a lot going on as a neurodivergent kid/teen due to poverty and, well, the repressed queerness; was just out there functioning/surviving somehow and was in general just pretty miserable all around, so any discomfort about his gender identity/expression was just part of a big heap of everyday sensory overload. There really wasn't time for him to focus on or take a closer look at himself much, and besides, he wouldn't have known the terms needed to put it into words.

He developed a bunch of unhealthy coping mechanisms about All Of That (drugs, sex, an eating disorder, ...) and really spiralled for a while until he met this man called Murdoc, who sort of became a mentor to him, and set him straight again.

And if Murdoc's one thing, it's perceptive.

So while Robin and him travelled together for a while, he provided him with the space he needed to just take a breather for once. Maybe express himself for once. And the option to talk about his feelings instead of having to bottle them up. And most importantly, since his wife Cynthia is a trans woman, he taught him the terms he needed to put all that dysphoria related turmoil he had going on into words.

So really, up until that point Robin hadn't thought about it much. Not thinking about it meant not having to deal with it, he was just hoping all those weird feelings, whatever they are, would go away one day. But of course they wouldn't have if he'd just continued to keep on going like that.

Now that he'd talked those feelings through with someone and then went on to change up his gender presentation, though, things got a hell of a lot easier. Murdoc used the right pronouns for him, called him by the name they'd chosen together (one of his favorite wildshapes to use to spy on people is an odd looking robin, and they both decided it's a nice fit), and after a while of that, Robin began to cook up medicine (cough, testosterone) that would change his body.

And all of a sudden he just felt GOOD about himself for once. His body wasn't just existing to carry him through the days anymore, instead he actively liked looking at it. His voice didn't hurt his ears anymore, it just sounded right. There was growth and hair in the right places and muscles where there used to be softness that he'd previously tried to get rid of by starving himself down to the bones.

See, and only then is when he started to really develop views on his gender and sex.

He is and always was, by all definitions of the word, a bisexual man, even when he was still blocking out the thought and just hoping for the dysphoria to go away on its own. Gender non-conforming (if he can wear them in a masculine way, he still wears many of his old clothes because he can't afford new ones for example, and he's insanely fond of jewelry, be that piercings, earrings, rings, bracelets, ankle bracelets, waist chains, etc) and somewhat gentler than other men he's gotten to know so far, sure, but really not all that different. Transitioning, to him, was like a lifeline he didn't know he needed extended to him, but now that he's gotten a hold of it, he wouldn't ever let it go.

Masculinity can be expressed in very many ways, and his way of expressing it is being forceful like rumbling thunder and strong like a centuries old oak that you can shelter underneath. He'll bear the brunt of the storm for you and keep you safe. And when it's over, and you open your eyes, rather than the lashing rain, you'll see the beauty of the sun's first rays shining through the greenest leaves you've ever seen, while their warmth caresses you.

(One thing I'll say (and it is really just more of a game-related issue) is that his in-game model looks pretty unchanged in terms of testosterone changes even after all the mods I installed to get him a little closer looking to himself. It does unfortunately have a lot of people jumping to the conclusion that he's some flavor of non-binary or futch/butch (and leaving comments that make ME dysphoric at the end of the day lmfao), when in reality, looking at him would not really differentiate him from a cis man and I'm simply limited by the game. There is no room to doubt his gender if going off "traditional" (binary) characteristics. He does bind his chest sometimes, and he usually wears his clothes in a way that covers/hides the shape of what's underneath. Funny enough, I am currently working on a painting of him and I'm kinda hyped about the absolute physical likeness I'm achieving with it, so I'm adding a little WIP!!)

#bg3 #ask #there is so much more that weighs into his gender expression #he's biracial and one way or another that does also influence it somewhat #growing up cut off from his infernal heritage and avoiding it because of it being the root cause of generational trauma #definitely also influences his understanding of masculinity #but all in all he wasn't really thinking about his gender and sex much until someone nudged him towards exploring it #after they caught on to him being uncomfortable with himself #and from then on he really fell in love with himself #is the tl;dr of it #without the an*rexia talk that's under the cut #i'm sorry if this is all disjointed i have been typing for like an hour lmfao #i'm also not sure if going into the horniness of it all is a wise move on a fandom blog so i'm keeping this as a footnote pretty much #but now that he's more comfortable in his body he's definitely enjoying that whole corner a lot more too and he's also very secure in that #department #and you can tell. like he has a certain devilish charm about him that was entirely repressed before he transitioned #big ole confident flirt

7 notes · View notes

thearchercore · 2 months

Note

lestappen is not real as a romantic relationship, we know it, there's no need for speculation here. but would you want to see it be real? of course we dont know how they act in their general romantic relationships or their private life, if they are straight/bi/gay etc, but the way they act so soft and domestic around each other, max being a literal fan of charles, defending him (the example is just two days ago on the cooldown room and theres a lot lot more lol) charles having things that he only does for max, and adding all the rivalry, im curious about your opinion

i mean, let's be real first. even if one (or more) drivers were anything other than straight, f1 is a business that thrives in countries where it's illegal so for a driver to come out publicly under the current conditions? yeah.. that's not really a great option. the most they can do is when lewis had his rainbow helmet in qatar or when charles said he's not against same sex relationships because "he has gay friends". it's not exactly a sport where it would be encouraged to be diverse in that sense, or even an acitivist. drivers also have clauses that prevent them for speaking out about political issues in their contracts so there's not a lot that can be done there without risking a person's career.

other than that, it's a very masculine sport and a lot of men project their idea of masculinity onto other drivers (as @tsarinablogs once said, a lot of men who disliked the lewis dominance found themselves in max and became a fan of his, but max does not really present their idea of masculinity in real life. he's just a high profile athlete that other men create sort of a parasocial relationship with -- trust me, when men attack girls for liking f1 and calling them parasocial, it sure goes both ways.)

people like charles (or even lewis) who express interest in not typically masculine things like music or fashion also tend to struggle in the public eye whenever male fans need to find a reason to dislike them.

so all in all, we have to understand two things -- do i think any drivers have a secret relationship? no. if yes, i'm gonna be genuinely surprised more than when lewis moved to ferrari lol. and i definitely don't think the current state of the sport allows a driver to come out on their own terms without destroying their reputation. sure, some drivers have more influence on the sport than others but as of now, it does not seem realistic.

what i think most people find "odd" in terms of whatever friendship max and charles have going on is that they aren't the type of "rivals" that men would expect - they respect each other and actually think very highly of one another so you won't find them beefing it out behind the track like the nascar drivers do (by the way, yes, nascar drivers get into physical fights after races lol) they don't hate one another, they admire each other's skills and talent and it's not really the "drama" you see in other sports where the rivarly can get to toxic extremes (let's say, mma) and that's what makes them stand out.

#lestappen

96 notes · View notes

wito-chan-bla-bla · 1 year

Text

This is a little bit about Satoru's parents

I know that no one has ever asked for this, but... here.

To somehow justify what is happening, I added a little “(Y/N)”

I know this is a fairly rare opinion, but…

What if Satoru's parents are normal?

There are many works where his parents are described as people who have never loved each other and who have an unhappy marriage, but if... if they really aren't?

I think of Satoru as an exact copy of his father, except that older Gojo has a more serious look and a more masculine expression. He was not born "the strongest", but he was born like the heir of the clan, and therefore from childhood was surrounded by intrigues, conspiracies and elders who tried to control him. Gojo was forced to learn everything (from techniques to economics), because otherwise his clan could be destroyed by other sorcerers. Gojo was forced to endure pressure and strict upbringing, constant advice from "people who know better how to act." As a result, Satoru's father grew up as a man with an unchanging face and no emotions, listening to the elders' words, but secretly despising them and hating them for constantly trying to pry into his affairs.

He was the one who would instill in his son a dislike for the elders. He would throw random phrases here and there while talking to his wife or to himself, but Satoru hears everything. "They might all be three times my age together, but I'm the head of the clan. If they think they can influence me because of my status, then they're wrong! " "Someday I'll retire, go crazy, and finally be able to throw hot tea in that idiot's face. He talks so much that I almost lost my ears at the last meeting." "If any of them even once tries to marry two relatives to get a "child with incredible strength," I'll just spit in everyone's face.""

Gojo would try to protect his son as much as possible from the pressure that was put on him as a child, but he still wouldn't be able to completely hide the cruel world of sorcerers from Satoru. However, he would also show his son that power decides everything, especially if this power can trample another person and turn them to dust under his feet.

In his spare moments, he would teach Satoru techniques and maybe even go to some festival with him, so that little Gojo would feel like a child at least a little. Otherwise, Gojo would be swamped with paperwork and forced to attend official meetings.

He would be the one who would invite you to the manor "for a cup of tea" as soon as he found out about the relationship. The man seemed intimidating and passive-aggressive, but once you get to know him better, you realize that your lover's father is not so bad, moreover, he is quite cute. Gojo would like to learn more about your relationship with his son, so that you can understand how much it is worth to break your hopes and warn you about the endless attempts on your life that are definitely waiting for you as soon as you decide to get even closer to Satoru.

(After several meetings with you, Satoru would be thrilled to tell you how another photo appeared on his father's desk: next to the photo of the clan head, his wife, and son, there was a separate one showing you holding the hand of your lover with a big smile.)

I think Satoru's mother is like a woman from some noble clan who is crazy enough to cross the elders' path, beautiful enough to make all the men turn to look at her, and tall enough to change a light bulb without a ladder. She and her husband would meet when Gojo was looking for a bride. (The man, then still a teenager, was simply not interested in a relationship because of how much paperwork was piled on his white-haired head.) Standing in front of many young girls, the clan heir would simply say something like, "Whichever of you wins will become my wife. I went to double-check the annual report." In the end, just five minutes later, in the middle of a field of groaning wizards, Satoru's mother one left, grinning, her kimono torn, but with a big, cheeky smile on her lips.

She was the one who would make Satoru what he is... that is, a spoiled and cheeky boy. She would spoil her son to the point where even her husband would have questions. "Can you stop giving him gifts just because he exists?! " "But he's so nice and cute, look at him! And he didn't do "anything". He learned a new technique!" "He learned the technique three months ago, and you still give him gifts!" In response, the woman would simply continue to hold her son to her and kiss his face.

She would open "the world of sweets" to Satoru. Yes, he actively started eating sweets only in high school, but before that, the woman constantly dragged him some goodies from the city. She would also steal her son from official meetings where the little kid simply has nothing to do, and go throw a "little party" in the city while boring men discuss their boring affairs.

She would accept you into the family even if you were only in a relationship with her son for one day. The woman is so tired of the monotony of living in a large clan that she would just drag you to go shopping every single day, taking advantage of the fact that she has an infinite amount of money due to her position as the wife of the clan head. She would definitely show a LOT of photos of her son as a child, and even the "the strongest" couldn't stop the woman from showing you Satoru in cute pajamas as some kind of animal sitting on the floor with a big plush toy and chewing on its paw.

Whenever you visited the clan to attend family dinners, Satoru would run with wild screams and wide-open arms to hug his parents. His mother would rush forward to jump on her son, and his father would just silently but lovingly slap him on the back or shoulder. They would not allow you to meet the elders once again, preferring to go to a restaurant in the city or even a picnic in the park, even if it is not as safe as in the clan territory.

They would be the happiest people once they knew that their son had found love. They would do anything for you, help you give advice during a fight, or just listen. They won't let you feel alone or forgotten, even when their son is on a mission in another country.

They don't care if you're a sorcerer from a great clan, just a sorcerer, or an ordinary person. They will love and protect you like Satoru does, because their son's favorite person is their favorite person.

(Just don't try to distract his father while working or try to steal his mother's food: it will end up very sad).

All in all, the Gojo clan is a dangerous and scary place. But if you do decide to become part of this family, the people closest to you will definitely support you.

(Just be careful when you get married to Satoru. His mother really wants to see her grandchildren).

#satoru gojo #gojo #Jujutsu Kaisen #satoru x reader #gojo x reader #x reader

229 notes · View notes

romatique · 8 months

Text

˚₊‧ ꒰ choi san's ideal type ꒱ ‧₊˚

gif by @bblsan

updated september 2023.

hello! i'm lina, your new ateez tarot reader. i decided to make my first post about san since i connect with him easily, so i hope you enjoy it and give me some feedback too <3

(this is tarot based and for entertainment purposes only. all alleged and shouldn't be taken as 100% truth).

am i allowed to share this? the fool; "sure, go ahead."

01┆physical appearance (the hanged man rx, the chariot, the emperor rx, king of wands rx)

when i tell you my cards literally FLEW. he's pretty much into anything and everything, just like he's said in the past. still, since this is the idealization of a person, here's what i got:

i'm getting a lot of mysterious vibes. like watery traits. san's very open minded and he likes people that dress differently. someone who stands out in the crowd. maybe an alternative style? could be even a person who dresses like they're from another decade. a LOT of presence. athletic slim shape but body positive towards everyone. uses strong and dark colors. red lipstick. deep eyes. he said "androgynous", so i believe someone who balances out what we, as a society, call "feminine" and "masculine" fashion. or maybe it's just the fact he doesn't mind what that person looks like at all. also very out there but still deep.

star signs energy: aquarius or capricorn venus and scorpio mars/moon.

02┆emotional traits (the moon, the empress, death, knight of pentacles rx)

you see, san's been going through a private time, so this is definitely an introverted person. it is important to understand how his energy also affects the type of person he's into.

emotional. mess. but this person is such a control freak, so as much intense as they can be, they won't let it show easily. they've had a pretty intense past and has a hard time letting go of it, even if they don't know it yet ("i can't let go of what happened"). worried about social status. money is an important subject here. mother-like nature: kind, giving and caring. but still demands so much respect. like they wanna be seen as someone bigger. as fragile as this person is, they wanna have a good and strong reputation.

also, we're definitely talking about an artist.

song i heard: butterfly - bts.

star signs energy: cancer sun/saturn, capricorn mars, scorpio mercury.

03┆career (king of wands, lovers, page of cups, page of wands rx)

proactive. "makes a lot of money". leader position. really controlling. could be a lead role actress/actor or a film director. artist. passionate about their job. "do what you love, love what you do". flies around a lot so probably someone with a big influence. busy life but definitely creative. i can also picture drawing as a hobby here.

is this person an idol? (page of cups rx).

no. "i don't wanna cause drama in the industry."

star signs energy: capricorn or pisces midheaven.

#ateez #tarot #ateez tarot #san tarot #choi san #san ateez #san #choi san tarot #tarot reading #ateez ideal type #Spotify

76 notes · View notes

vveakfish · 6 months

Note

do you have any thoughts about the core four whose gender(s) are basically just a trans fruit cocktail that you would like to talk about? because I would love to listen

oh boy DO I !!!

I have So Many thoughts about them Anon, so thank you for giving me an excuse to try and put it into words beyond “Damn, these bitches trans! Good for them.”

Honestly, there are so many different ways to explore these characters genders based on how you choose to interpret their life experiences, and their aesthetic changes, and their relationships with each other. I am of the belief that any of them could be trans in any direction

But, that said, I Do have particular gender headcanons for YJ that i am very fond of, so thats what I’ll be talking about today.

(Small disclaimer. I have not finished all of the comics referenced in this. I am using the information i have to inform these, but you know, i might come back to this post at some point in the future and look at it like “wow, i don’t agree with any of this anymore.” And i think thats okay.

I’m just here to have fun, and i thoroughly enjoy these little guys, and think abt them alot, so enjoy

(also if you dont want to read 4.1k words of blorbo gender analysis, or would like to avoid spoilers for Superboy (1993), Young Justice (1998) & (2019), and Red Robin (2009) in varying degrees of detail, or you just want to see what lables i assigned them, scroll down to the bottom <3))

lets get started.

Bart:

Bart's gender is the most complex, but his thought process about it is also the most simple. I think his view of gender would be very much influenced by the fact that he grew up in VR in the future like…

A body is just an avatar, do what ever the fuck you want with it.

That said, the lil guy has always given me transmasc vibes. These vibes, however, are by no means binary.

He understands that in the 21st century a lot of people do not have his sort of “throw things at the wall and see what sticks” approach to gender, so he’s okay with being put in the box of Boy™. But his gender is a lot more * hand waves vaguely *

Clothes don’t have gender in his eyes, they’re fabric you put on your body. Wear what ever you want forever!

Bart in skirts is something i have seen many people draw/talk about before, and its something i agree with wholeheartedly. He likes hair clips, and like, those loud (actually loud and visually loud) beaded bracelet type things that ravers wear. He like nail polish. He doesn’t grow facial hair, but he wouldn’t care if he did. He’s not on hormones, but he definitely considered it for the bit. “Gotta drink my boy juice” Kind of vibes.

For him gender has Nothing to do with performance, its all about comfort. About wearing what feels right, regardless of whether or not he’s adhering to expectations of masculinity.

Yes, he Will wear that god awful outfit out of the house, haters can die mad

Cassie:

Anon, I need you to understand how much i love early yj98 cass. She is everything to me — her process of coming to terms with herself, and being able to watch her start to feel at home in her own skin. It makes me absolutely feral.

lets see if i can explain why… succinctly

When we first meet her in yj98, her identity as “Wonder Girl” is this sort of amalgamation of What it Means To Be A Hero in her eyes. She has her party city blunt bob wig (Because Diana is who she looks up to), the gloves, leather jacket, goggles combo (that so clearly take inspiration from Kon).

At this point in her life Wonder Girl is not really her. Its very clearly a mask she’s putting on. which is what makes it the perfect avenue for her to explore gender expression without it having to actually be about her gender.

I think the part that specifically makes me feral though is her… we’ll call it admiration of Kon.

The girl is a self proclaimed Superboy stan + theres all the weird not-drama between Cassie and Cissie over wanting attention from Kon. (And i say Not Drama bc its like… Kon flirting with cissie (which like… have you met 90’s Kon?? he flirts with everything that moves) and Cassie being upset that he’s Not flirting with her. and cissie is just along for the ride. She’s not quite as much of a flirt as kon is, but she has her moments)

All of this to say i feel like its impossible to have a conversation about Cassie’s gender without also talking about her experiences with comphet and lesbianism.

At the beginning, Cassie sees Kon — this cocksure, conventionally attractive boy with powers that (at first glance) seem very similar to hers, and felt something about it. And, in the way of teen girls who have been told since grade school that they’re supposed to like boys, Cassie comes to the conclusion that what she feels for Kon must be romantic in nature, right?.

All of this, the jealousy over Kon and Cissie flirting, basing her costume off Superboy’s (intentionally or otherwise), the fact that she wont let her team see her without the wig and goggles at all for so much of yj98. To me it all reads as the tangled mix of undiscovered lesbianism and gender dysphoria that the poor girl simply doesn’t have the words to define yet.

So, then what IS cassie’s deal with gender???

i am so very glad you asked.

She, too, is a transmasc of the nonbinary variety.

I think her relationship to femininity is complex, and ever changing. She doesn’t feel comfortable performing femininity the way the world expects her to, but she is also part Amazon. And i think having a relationship with both Diana and Donna would greatly influence how she felt about femininity as a whole.

The Amazons are strong, their femininity isn’t about beauty, or being soft spoken — it isn’t about Men at all. On Themyscira, to be a Woman is about bravery, honor, skill, and in some ways, divinity. Getting closer with her Amazonian sisters would change her relationship to womanhood immensely.

But it still wouldn’t feel Right. She would be able to see that womanhood can be defined differently, but that wouldn’t change the connotations that womanhood had as she was growing up. She’d never be able to lean into it the way Diana or Donna do — they both grew up only having woman defined as strong and brave and confident. Their experiences are not analogous.

The baggage of growing up a girl under the patriarchy wouldn’t just… vanish because she sees that it Doesn’t have to be that way. In some ways, the knowledge that it didn’t have to be that way could make her dysphoria all that stronger (especially if she hasn’t quite deciphered that dysphoria is what she’s feeling).

but i think there would be a point where two things sharpen into focus for her.

fiirstly she has a big fat crush on cissie king-jones.

and second (which would only come AFTER realizing her feelings for cissie) is that what she feels for Kon is Not the same as what she feels for Ciss.

She didn’t want to be with Kon romantically, she just wanted his gender.

I could see her experimenting with wearing a binder, liking that she can get rid of her boobs if she isn’t feeling them that day.

She already has her short hair, and her leather jacket and jeans, and shes big and buff and strong (because she deserves to be butch!!! okay???).

I still think she would use she/her pronouns, but she wouldn’t be picky ab it (if she gets called sir while at the pizza place, she’s not going to correct them.)

But here’s the kicker — I think leaning hard into her masculinity would be EXACTLY what she needs in order to actually ENJOY expressing femininity again.

When putting on the mask that is ‘womanhood’ becomes something that she can Choose to do, rather than something that is being forced on her, it can be pleasant. Like playing dress up.

She has a new appreciation for it, especially since her friends respect her gender, and she knows at the end of the day, when she takes the makeup, the clothes, and the wig off, underneath it all she’s just her.

(Small addendum re: TT’03 Cassie’s fem phase. I have Many thoughts about this as well, and while they end up in roughly the same place, i exploring her experience with comphet and her decision to dress in a more traditionally feminine in that run is something id like to explore in another post (once i’ve actually read the run too.)

Cissie (bonus):

This one should be shorter than Cassies, mainly because my reasoning for it is much simpler.

YJ'98 (#11)

She lists all these names, all of them feminine except for Fucking Ralph. “One weird phase” she calls it.

To me, Cissie is a transgirl through and through. She has this huge list of femme names she tried on while she tried to find the one that fit best. She mentions ralph in this off handed way, as if its not important, and i think thats just her way of dismissing her deadname as something of little consequence.

(that said, i think there’s lots of fun to be had with transmasc cissie, or tried transing-her-gender and realized it wasn’t for her Cissie. But as a transfemme, tgirl cissie is So important to me <3)

Kon:

other people on here have made posts about Kon’s gender that are much more coherent than this will be, but i’m putting the words down anyway. bear with me.

Kon’s experience with identity (especially in his earlier years) is almost entirely about the external rather than the internal.

Kon has his whole life planned out for him from the moment he opens his eyes. It’s simple really — become Superman.

So you have this freshly hatched teenage boy, saving the world as Superman (not the Only one, but definitely the coolest one (Kon would argue)). All eyes on him, all the time. In some ways, performance is inseparable from who he is. From the very beginning, everything he does is on display.

He starts his life with a Name (Superman), a life path (…again, Superman), and all the confidence of a sixteen year old jock with nothing but wins under his belt. then it all gets taken away.

Turns out Clark ISNT dead, and the world doesn’t need its pint sized superman anymore now that its got the real thing.

enter Superboy

Kon’s entire identity, his whole purpose for being alive, was to step into the shoes of a dead man who is no longer dead. So where does that leave our genetically engineered test tube baby?

lost, and extremely confused.

But he’s good at using his charisma as a shield, and even better at keeping himself busy. His problems aren’t there if he doesn’t have the time to think about them, right?

and i think that’s true about his gender as well.

Similar to Cassie, his discovery and exploration of his gender feels incredibly tied to his sexuality (to me). If you’ve read sb93, you know Kon’s deal with women. He is cute & conventionally attractive & he's like superman with a fashion sense, so of course there are people fawning over him.

And he loves the attention. He likes that people want him, or that they are looking at him. The issue is he doesn’t have the life experience to realize that their reasons for paying attention to him are often very shallow, manipulative, or selfish.

He isn’t treated as a person very often. He’s a brand, a product, a tool, a weapon. He’s arm candy, he’s a photo op, he’s a headline, he’s a paycheck. And it takes him a long time to be able to tell the difference between someone Liking Him & someone Using Him.

For the longest Time, Superboy is all he is. He doesn’t have a name outside of that identity (except for the various pet names the women in his life give him (kid & pup, mainly)).

And even when Clark does give him his real name, Kon-El, its still Attatched to his identity as Superboy.

I dont think that he would really even be able to start dissecting how HE feels about his identity until he’s much older.

Part of this would come from the space to be someone else that gaining a civilian identity would give him. As Superboy, the goal has always been to stand out, to be seen, to shine like the sun.

As Conner Kent, he has to blend in. He doesnt want to draw attention to himself, or the Kents, or Clark. He has to fit in, which was never something he had to do as Kon. And i think it would kind of chafe at him — but he wouldn’t really know why.

I think he’d chalk it up to how different of an experience it is. Not being loud, having to be normal™. And so i think he’d just… continue to play the part. For a while anyway.

And like, part of being Normalest Boy Conner Kent would also involve actively un-queer coding himself for the sake of fitting into the ecosystem of Smallville High. and its like…

Young Justice, as a friend group, is SOOO queerplatonic. The lines between romantic and platonic intimacy are so blurred, and Prior to Kon’s YJ days he he was also like… living with these woman who he had complicated relationships with that also blurred the lines between platonic, romantic, and sexual (…looking at you, Knockout).

So learning where the line is when it comes to how he can acceptably interact with his civilian friends (particularly the boys) would Really open his eyes to just how close he is with Bart and Tim, and how similar his feelings for them are to his feelings for… lets say, Simon Valentine.

But i dont think That is what would actually tip the scale. I think realizing that these feelings for his friends aren’t considered ‘normal’ would make him shove them down deeper. As ‘Conner’ anyway.

from here it could go two ways, right?

Either we get Teen Titans ‘03 t-shirt Kon, who sheds his GNC 90s swag in exchange for adhering closer to traditional (read; boring) masculine gender roles.

or we get a Kon who leans Harder into his punk roots, but its a conscious choice now.

(this isn’t even digging into how he would feel once Jon comes into the picture, because while Kon cares for that boy Deeply, his feelings abt the new kiddo in the family could also be very complicated. But that’s a post for another time.)

Personally i prefer the second one.

Kon has always been a curious kid, i love the way he makes pop culture references, and how he bases his behavior off of 90’s teen tropes that he Most Definitely learned from TV. In his early days this wasn’t done in a research way necessarily, but he Did want to learn what it was like to Be a Teen™, and TV was the easiest way to figure that out.

(and, playing in the space of Kon adaptations, his love of media/pop culture, and just over all thirst for knowledge, are present both in the Reign of the Supermen Movie, and in his iteration during the n52 (which is one of the few things i personally have internalized from reading n52 Superboy/Teen Titans)).

But post gay awakening, i feel liked he’d be interested not just in behaviors, but also the context of them. Digging into punk as a subculture rather than as an aesthetic. Learning about its connections to queerness, and community, and self expression. And i think this would be extremely freeing for him. (especially if this were around the time of Jon becoming Superboy v.3, but again, not the point of this post.)

this all culminates in Kon being like yk? gender just… isnt for me. Like, it takes im a long time to get to this point, but realizing that the path that was set out for him is just one of the potential paths he can take, and while he might not know where this new path will take him, its his, that that matters.

And also like, Because his friends are who they are, he’s seen different versions of queerness, and transness, but i think it would take him a bit to see himself as someone who Isn’t Cis bc like… he doesnt have dysphoria in the traditional sense.

He’s still the beefcake he’s always been, but i think he’d start playing with makeup when he realizes it makes him feel good (he shows up the the cave one day with smudgy eye liner and Cissie is immediately like a) you look so good and b) can i Please do your makeup? (and then she does it, and he looks so pretty, and he gets these weird giddy feelings that he doesn’t realize is gender euphoria until his friends start talking abt gender euphoria)

His uniform starts to get more personalized too, like the designs where he has knee patches, and all his little belts, and stuff. maybe he starts experimenting with showing skin. bc he deserves it

(’its for maximum sun exposure!!!’ is the what he tells clark… he’s not sure if clark bought it or not)

And hey, exploring gender presentation more as Superboy might help him do the same as Conner. Cassie will take him thrifting, he’ll try of a flowy skirt or a sun dress or something and then its Over. Gender euphoria part two, electric boogagloo.

In the end, its about realizing that adhering gender roles (and truthfully, any socially imposed ‘rule’ about self expression) is something he can simply Choose not to do. And i think this freedom would be something that benefits him in his civilian life as well.

His gender is: literally what ever, man.

Tim:

Ok, here’s the thing about Tim and gender, right? I think he’s kind of just comfortable as he is. He’s good at playing the roles he needs to in what ever situation hes thrown into. ‘Robin’ and ‘Tim Drake’ (and even ‘Tim Drake-Wayne’ if you want to split hairs) might be masks he wears, but that doesn’t mean they’re any less him. if that makes sense. like…

Lets look at the differences between Bruce (or Brucie) and Batman for a second. They really are different people. Batman is who bruce is at his core, ‘bruce’ is this sort of liminal space between the cowl and his public persona, and then theres Brucie™, and well, you know how he is. These are personas that Bruce puts on.

With Tim its like he just highlights different aspects of himself when a situation requires it. (oh no, the autistic!Tim head canons are being loud today.) But like, he’s Always been masking. And i think this is something he would look at as like… getting a good grade in adapting. or something. He’s comfortable, all the roles he plays are ones he’s familiar with, and he doesn’t really question who he is outside of who he needs to be.

That is, until Caroline Hill makes an appearance.

I feel that the decision to go undercover as a woman was a wholly practical decision in the moment. It’s what the mission required, and therefore tim stepped up. Its just another mask, right? Surely this wont awaken anything in him…right?

But this is an entirely new mask. And i think it might like… shift the way he looks at/thinks about the other masks he puts on. He was able to step into a role that was very foreign to him, and it Worked. (and he felt pretty, which like… woah, thats a new feeling. and he kinda liked it? file that under ‘thoughts he doesn’t have the bandwidth to process right now.’ Bruce needs him back at the cave! its time to debreif! and he has a biology test tmrw! no time for gender scaries!!!).

I think it would take a while for him to be able to admit it to himself though. Because like… hes Not uncomfortable with his body, but he also keeps thinking about how good he felt dressed up femininely, and how he felt powerful, in a way. That putting on that mask felt just as good as putting on his domino.

Personally, i think itd be funny if instead of coming out right away, Tim doing undercover missions essentially in drag becomes a recurring thing. And i imagine some people give him a hard time. (not in a transphobic way or anything, i just mean like, teasing him fondly or what ever.) (Also, i like to imagine that when cissie Did kons makeup, bart and Tim jumped in there too bc like hey why not, and hoooooo boy, if Tims egg hadn’t cracked before then, it sure would have cracked after.)

The thing about him is, i’m not sure if he’d come to the realization himself. You know, that he would like to present femme sometimes, in a situation that has Nothing to do with a mission.

I could see Tim convincing himself that its a pointless or frivolous desire, which is Why he relegates his time presenting femme to when he can prove that it’s useful.

but i have this image in my mind, right? Of him, taking his makeup and wig off, and hes chatting with whoever is in the room with him (literally anyone else mentioned above… or Dick). And Tim’s just talking about how he wishes he could present this way in situations other than missions.

and the other person in the room is just like… i mean, you literally can.

and hes just like…. shit you’re right. i Can :0

I could probably go further into depth abt this, but i think this just frees him to start playing with gender more as Tim. and start to recognize when he’s feeling more masculine, more feminine, or somewhere in between.

His gender isn’t consistent, its this thing he’s constantly listening to, and trying to understand. but in the mean time, he can paint his face, and wear pretty clothes, or dress like just Some Guy, or be a hedgehog dressed in traffic light colors, or what ever his heart desires.

As far as like… how He describes his gender, i think he’d say something corny like bi^2 (bi of both the sexual and the gendered varieties). Or shrug, handwave, generally give a non-helpful vague description. Or tell who evers asking to buzz off.

(small addendum wrt Kon and Cassie in TT’03. I haven’t read this run yet, so i didn’t really include it in this post. But i Do have thoughts about what might cause the two of them (my gnc besties from my comics books) to lean sooooo hard into traditional gender roles after being So Queercoded in their other appearences. Before i talk abt that though, i want to read the comic. So, that will have to be a post for another time)

ANYWAY, heres that TL;DR i promised.

Bart: NB Transmasc Cassie: NB Lesbian (of the transmasc variety) Kon: Agender Tim: Fluid (bi-gender) + Cissie: Transgirl

Thank you soooooo much for giving me the opporrtunity to ramble abt the silles and how Not Cis i think they are. Love you forever.

#𓆟 #𓆟 | 📨#anon #disclaimer: this all for fun! i love these kiddos & am working on reading more of their comics #And my thoughts here are based on things that i have extrapolated from what they have gone through in canon & how that might influence #their relationships to their own genders #Core Four #Young Just Us #Bart Allen #Cassie Sandsmark #Cissie King Jones #Kon-El #Tim Drake #LOL will Tumblr let me post this now?#(i spent like... 15 minutes futzing with the formatting just for it to go 'srry cant post this hehe'

45 notes · View notes

velvet4510 · 1 month

Note

i saw these two people in the tolkien discord server i’m in say this, and while i can see their point (i 100% believe that men should be able to be affectionate without romantic undertones), i just feel like so many people get the wrong idea that samfro shippers merely see them as “gay and cute”

most of us accept all interpretations of their relationship, whether that’s soulmates, queer-platonic, romantic, etc

i was wondering what your opinion on this is??

Great question! SO sorry for the delay in responding. I hope to make my reply worth the wait. Also, this answer will be really long - sorry again - but I have many thoughts on this.

I completely agree that men should be able to be affectionate without it being romantic. Women do not have this problem of fearing open affection due to assumptions about sexuality, and I think it’s a terrible symptom of toxic masculinity for men to forbid themselves from showing affection out of fear of it being misinterpreted. LOTR is full of many beautiful examples of how men can be emotionally vulnerable with each other and how platonic friends can still physically express innocent affection (Aragorn’s kiss to Boromir’s forehead is a great example). Modern society should definitely follow the examples set by these characters.

The thing is, as a straight woman, I did not go into LOTR expecting to see any same-sex romances at all. And the majority of male friendships depicted in the book and films never gave me any sense of romantic undertones. Unlike many fans, I do not ship Legolas and Gimli because I recognize that their relationship is a bridge between Elves and Dwarves, proof that they can get along, that despite their differences, they can still find common ground and respect each other and be friends. This to me is a far more important message than a generic “forbidden romantic love story” that many view their relationship as. Their bond isn’t necessarily about wanting to sleep together, but more about recognizing that they can like and be fond of each other, and not allow their parents or cultures to influence how they view each other. I do not hate the Gigolas ship, of course, and people can feel free to ship them if they want to. But to me, they fall under the category described in the discord that you have shared: their friendly intimacy does not necessarily signify anything romantic. Even their journey into the West together does not have to be a romantic thing; I see it as Gimli not wanting to say goodbye to any more of his friends, after losing Merry, Pippin, and Aragorn, and instead going on one last adventure with his soul-brother Legolas.

Frodo and Sam, however, have always stood out to me as being different from all the other friendships in LOTR. I didn’t even take any pause in the fact that they’re both male. I just saw two people in love. It’s just in how they are written, and in Elijah and Sean’s beautiful performances. I totally agree that ANY interpretation of their relationship is valid. I think it is very wrong for any shipper of these two to insult or declare someone “wrong” to see them as just friends. But it’s the same the other way around. It is unfair for non-shippers to hate on shippers. While the argument regarding Tolkien’s Catholicism is an understandable one, texts and characters do develop lives of their own over time. Texts are meant to be interpreted. Tolkien himself wrote that he did not want to enforce his own beliefs within the story, and instead preferred to leave it open to readers to apply their own views and perspectives to it. He basically was inviting us to make interpretations that deviate from his own. He may not have had sexuality in mind when he wrote this, but if he were alive, I very much doubt he’d be hypocritical enough to criticize people for doing the very thing he encouraged them to do, especially since he was smart enough to know that not every reader of his work was or would be Catholic, and thus may not see certain aspects the way he did.

The main, unchangeable, factual point about Frodo and Sam’s relationship is that they love each other. That’s it. They go from formal master and servant to two people who have been through hell and back together, and in the process, formed a bond that nobody else will ever understand. This point stands, whether their specific feelings for each other are platonic or romantic. To view them as lovers does not take away from or undermine the foundations of how Tolkien shaped their characters and the connection they build.

It also bothers me how those who criticize this ship use the word “gay.” Bear in mind, of course, that I’m not an actual member of the LGBT community, and I’m speaking based on my love for my many LGBT friends and relatives, and the efforts I’ve made to understand and empathize with this community, and to never be among those who hate people based on who they love. But I’ve learned enough by now to know that it is quite ignorant of people to truncate the idea of Frodo and Sam being in love as “they’re gay.” Sam is not gay, as shown by his love for Rosie. To ship Frodo and Sam is not to erase Rosie or pretend Sam doesn’t love her. Sam has the biggest heart of any fictional character I’ve ever seen, and I, like many shippers, don’t find it implausible that he has room enough in that heart to have two great loves.

On that note, I’ll now signify that in the text Frodo and Sam have many moments that no other pair of male characters have, which serve as actual potential evidence of a romance. It says in the text itself that he is “torn in two” between Frodo and Rosie. No other pair of male characters in LOTR has any moment like this. Aragorn does not feel torn between Arwen and his friends, for instance. Sam hesitating to marry Rosie if it means he can’t be near Frodo is a very unique detail that adds weight to this “ship.” Not to mention the way Sam strokes Frodo’s hand in Rivendell and blushes, or calls himself “your Sam,” or has a Romeo-like moment of falsely believing Frodo is dead, or longs for the touch of Frodo’s hand in the Tower of Cirith Ungol. Plus, don’t forget that in another of Tolkien’s writings, Elanor directly compares Sam losing Frodo to Celeborn losing his wife. Also, I and many others have described how Frodo and Sam’s story directly parallels that of two canon lovers, Beren and Lúthien. Again, platonic interpretations of all this are valid, but it’s important to remember that shippers are not making things up. We’re not saying or believing that Frodo and Sam are in love “because they’re cute”. There are many moments between them in the text that support this interpretation, not the least of which is a direct parallel to a canon romantic couple - and without context, many of their exchanges and moments could easily be seen in a romantic light. (Sam watching Frodo sleep and saying “I love him, whether or no,” and declaring his one wish after potentially completing the Quest alone is not to return to the Shire and Rosie, but to return to Frodo’s body and never leave him again … all these things are right there in the text. Merry and Pippin, Legolas and Gimli, Aragorn and Boromir, none of them have any moments like this.)

And Sam’s journey across the Sea does not have nearly as much ambiguity as Gimli’s. Gimli has more to gain by going than staying; to stay would be to be left alone with no family and no more Elves or hobbits around, while to go would be to stand by his best friend, see the woman he loves/deeply admires again (Galadriel), and not face any more goodbyes. He wouldn’t really lose anything by leaving with Legolas, only gain. Sam’s circumstances are completely different. He has many people in the Shire; 13 children and countless grandchildren who could take care of him. He could easily spend his last days peacefully living with Elanor and watching her children grow, as any old hobbit would typically do. To sail West would be to lose and permanently be separated from a countless number of loved ones. And though he was affected by the Ring as a Ring-bearer, he held it for a very brief time, short enough for it to not prevent him from having a normal life after the war. It cannot be easily assumed that the lasting effect of the Ring on him was so powerful that it made him happier to leave his family than to stay with them. Because what would be waiting for him in Valinor? Gimli had two people in Valinor to whom he was very close, Legolas and Galadriel, as opposed to no loved ones back in Middle-earth. But Sam had one person in Valinor to whom he was very close, Frodo, as opposed to dozens of loved ones back in Middle-earth. The fact that he chooses Frodo over his family, to live with Frodo rather than die with and rest beside Rosie, to see Frodo again rather than see his family as much as possible in his remaining days…is a major point worth considering, and another thing that adds a layer of credibility to the idea of shipping them.

So to sum it all up, to say “you just ship Frodo and Sam because you don’t know what friendship is, because you think they’re cute so they must want to sleep together” is a MASSIVE trivialization/oversimplification/misunderstanding and completely ignores the things I’ve just laid out, particularly the distinctions between their relationship and those of other male pairings in LOTR.

Ok, ramble time is over…Boy, I hope that made at least one lick of sense! Haha.

#lotr #jrr tolkien #samfro #lord of the rings #lotr books #frodo x sam #sam x frodo #samfrodo #frodo/sam #frodo baggins #samwise gamgee #rosie cotton #beren and luthien #legolas and gimli #gimli #legolas

23 notes · View notes

el-moscorrofio-y-el-mercachifle · 6 months

Text

Things that Could Have Been, but Weren't

So, this post is just to highlight things/scenarios that the novela suggested and could have been but never happened:

Starting off with my fav, Hugo and Armando’s friendship: the episode where Armando goes to the gay bar ti apologize to Hugo lets us see that they don’t really hate each other. They really don’t. In that scene they joke and laugh like they’re the best of friends, until a random person confused them for a couple and Armando no longer wants to be there. Their “rivalry” is mainly strong differences related to work, as well as the influence of the era’s social prejudices/judgments (Armando, as a straight man, could not be seen being close friends with Hugo, an openly homosexual man, without people assuming he’s also gay, which back then was seen as shameful and we all know how much Armando cares about people’s opinions). That scene alone shows us that Hugo and Armando, were not for the social prejudice and Armando’s impossible goals, they could have been friends.

Roman's "date" with Marcela and Patricia. This possibility was just absolutely hilarous, to me, okay? I really wanted to see it: Marcela and Patricia in one of those clubs completely weirded out, maybe even having to dance with one of the guys. Could have been interesting to see more of Roman's character beyong the "brainless Bully" as the episode in which Patricia gets arrested suggests, when Roman says to Marcela that not everyone who isn't of her social class isn't a criminal tryibg to harm her. Could have been interesting to explore this more humbke side of Roman and to see Marcela (Patricia is very bland as a character at this point of the novela so whatever) possibly becoming more humble after spending time with then. (( im definitely going to write a one shot one day about this))

Daniel’s pursue of Betty. I’m not talking about acutally loving her, that’d be a bit too ooc, but the show clearly implied he had attraction towards her, and him giving up so easily after the dinner felt ooc. Daniel is VERY insistent, and he cares very little for a woman’s actual interest or consent.

Dr. Sánchez and Sandra’s date. Look. I just.... think it is too cute to let it slip, ok? Sandra deserved to find love. Dr. Sánchez had his issues with his pringuesitos that’s true, but that man just NEEDS AN OPPORTUNITY, OK? SHE CAN FIX HIM (or honestly they can fix each other because wtf was that of diminishing all short men's masculinity like that)

Betty's letter. We see a scene back when Betty didn't yet know of the plan but was already Armando's lover where she leaves a letter for Armando on his desk. Can you imagine how sould crushing it could have been if it had been a love letter and that Mario were to read it, and then later on he writes the Sinister Letter as a parallel to Betty's love letter? Oh, the drama, the tragedy, the cruelty!

Efraín and Sofía's reconciliation. I don't mean that they get back to being a couple, I mean for them both to forgive each other and have an actual amicable relationship after what happened when Efraín was in jail. Those scenes really led us on to believe they were going to heal; that Efraín was going to admit and understand that Jenny didn't love him. They don't have to even still be in love with each other (although it is heabily implied that Sofia still loves him), just to understand that they weren't right for each other anymore. To truly move on, ans for Efraín to reflect about how he failed Sofía and his own kids. For Sofía to see that Efraín stopped loving her because she was aggressive and distant before he cheated (not a justification for cheating, just explaining his view)

Injust think it would have been great to see all these things more explored jn the novela, because after all, it left it clear that they COULD happen!

#ysblf #yo soy betty la fea #betty la fea #armando mendoza #beatriz pinzon solano #beatriz pinzón solano #marcela valencia #betty ysblf #armando ysblf

35 notes · View notes

ravenbloodshot · 1 year

Text

Kota Miura (Boxer)....Personality

- Here is a very overconfident guy, that finds himself to be quite attractive

- He also has big desires for fame/fortune. He definitely wants to shine in the boxing industry and prove himself.

- Here is another lover of women, that has the charm and seductive qualities to get girls easily( although I don't think he likes to get girls so easily, likes a bit of chase)

- He can be a very grounded guy when he needs to be and even a guy that can be airy as well, if needed. Like he can become whatever he has to become. Also, I see he has a deep understanding of himself and how he functions(he knows what pisses him off and what makes him happy). So this understanding makes it easier for him to avoid the things/people that rile him up and embrace the joys of life that make him feel alive

- He may have good senses(smell, taste, touch, hearing, sight). Almost like a panther, who can sense the slightest movement in the dark or in his peripheral

- He's quite the intelligent man that knows right from wrong and has integrity. He also actively let others know when they're doing wrong, he can be a good influence on those younger than him

- He may know a lot on various subjects but he can be very secretive and selective about what he shares with others. He can reveal things only when it benefits him, at times.

- But I do see that he can be selfless about the things he knows as well. Being a good teacher, communicator with others (especially if he feels like he knows more than someone else)

- He possesses a very masculine energy to him, he may embody his masculinity (like he puffs his chest out a lot, especially if he wants to look more intimidating)

- he's quite flexible and strong. May be gaining more muscle lately, working out more.

- He has a kit of potential for greatness that he may or may not know about, but his talents can definitely take him places.

- He has a great source of power and energy. Like he can pull engery from thin air if he really required it to win a boxing match or to keep running if he were in a marathon. (Doesn't give up easily)

Shine by Doja Cat is a song that fits this readings energy

#japanese tarot #tarot #gemini sun #Spotify #kota miura

76 notes · View notes

religion-is-a-mental-illness · 7 months

Text

By: Lisa Selin Davis

Published: Sept 21, 2023

In 1964, UCLA psychiatrist Robert Stoller published a paper, “A contribution to the study of gender identity.” “Gender identity is the sense of knowing to which sex one belongs, that is, the awareness ‘I am a male’ or ‘I am a female,’” wrote Stoller, who is credited with delineating the split between sex—biology—and gender: masculinity and femininity.

A feminine man might have a male gender identity, Stoller suggested, “although he recognizes his lack of so-called masculinity.” Stoller and his colleague Ralph Greenson speculated that this self-knowledge arose through a combination of genitals, familial and peer influence, and “a biological force, which, though hidden from conscious and preconscious awareness, nonetheless seems to provide some of the drive energy for gender identity.”

That is, by gender identity—later defined by Stoller as “core gender identity”—he meant that we all seem to know our sex. “It’s a fundamental component of human cognitive development,” said Alex Byrne, a professor of philosophy at MIT who has written extensively on gender identity. “Very early on, you come to realize not just that other people are divided into males and females, but that you’re either in one box or the other.” Stoller and others saw this clearly, he said. (Stoller doesn’t note that as toddlers and preschoolers, we understand sex in terms of sex stereotypes. It’s not until about age six or seven that most of us experience “sex constancy”—the realization that our bodies dictate our sex, not our adherence to stereotypes.)

There’s plenty of debate about who used the term gender identity first and what they meant; Byrne and others have been digging and debating and adding to the vault of knowledge in recent publications. Stoller asserted that he and Greenson coined the term after much discussion, though it had been used—if not clearly defined—by sexologists and psychologists like John Money and Evelyn Hooker in various papers and public talks in the years before, and UCLA’s Gender Identity Research Clinic had opened in 1962.

These clinicians were working with similar, small populations: feminine boys; people with intersex conditions (then known as hermaphrodites); and transsexuals, as they were called, who were convinced they should have been, or desperately wanted to be, the opposite sex. They felt extreme distress about their sex, a sense that they were the wrong one, and a sharp aching to be the other: gender dysphoria. But they couldn’t feel that way without knowing which sex they were.

Clincians grasped at other terms to describe these patients’ experiences: “psychosexual identity,” “core sexual identity,” or “gender role and orientation as male or female,” as Money put it, among others. Eventually, Money settled on gender identity as “the private experience of gender role.” Gender role was “the public experience of gender identity.” That is, as definitions progressed, they closed in on themselves—circular, vague, and often contradictory.

The term chugged along into the 21st century. And, in this era, it morphed into something even more protean and slippery.

In 2007, the same year the first pediatric gender clinic opened in the United States, author Cynthia Winfield published Gender Identity: The Ultimate Teen Guide. As far as I know, this could be the first book about gender identity directly marketed to kids.

At birth, Winfield writes, children are “assigned a gender”—a word she doesn’t define and which seems to mean sex, sex-based expectations and gender identity. “For the majority, the gender assigned fits the inner self and the body’s physical appearance.” But there are also those children “whose gender, or biological sex, does not correspond to his or her gender identity.” Rather than knowing one’s sex, and possibly having deep distress about it, children now knew their gender, which was either a synonym of biological sex or identity or some other kind of category or, well, who knows.

By 2013, practitioners were defining gender identity as “the gender the child articulates as being—male, female, or something else,” and this articulated gender could match or mismatch one’s natal sex. The identity was “primarily informed by a child’s cognitions and emotions, rather than by genitalia and observable external sex characteristics.”

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s (WPATH) latest “standards of care,” published in 2022, define gender identity as “a person’s deeply felt, internal, intrinsic sense of their own gender.” (Gender includes “gender identity, gender expression, and/or social gender role, including understandings and expectations culturally tied to people who were assigned male or female at birth,” which doesn’t clarify what it means to have a sense of one’s own.) The advocacy group Human Rights Campaign says it’s “One’s innermost concept of self as male, female, a blend of both or neither—how individuals perceive themselves and what they call themselves.” NPR says it’s “one’s own internal sense of self and their gender.” It’s “a person’s self-identified gender,” per Cornell Law, or “an individual’s self-conception as a man or woman or as a boy or girl or as some combination of man/boy and woman/girl or as someone fluctuating between man/boy and woman/girl or as someone outside those categories altogether,” per Encyclopedia Brittanica. One school presentation defined gender identity as “the self.”

Now, of course, gender identity itself has been “queered,” like so much about gender research. There are tens, maybe hundreds of purported gender identities. Per the powers that be—activist and advocacy groups influencing everything from curricula to medical guidelines—everyone has a gender identity, which is not a sense of sex but of gender. If theirs happens to not match their sex, they should be affirmed as the opposite sex, or both sexes, or neither, or as non-binary or genderless or genderfluid or a demigirl, bigender or trigender or ambigender or genderfuck. Any attempt to reconcile gender identity with sex is now seen as “conversion therapy,” despite the fact that research on conversion therapy only pertained to sexuality, and it’s unclear how you reconcile sex with genderfuck, or change the body to match it.

Kids now learn about gender identity at school, and read books about kids, like Jazz Jennings, who had “a girl brain but a boy body”—this, her autobiographical kids’ picture book explains, is transgender. Gender identity is also a pink or blue brain.

[ Excerpt from I Am Jazz ]

Most importantly, the concept of gender identity has become so powerful that it shuts down discussion of where those ideas and feelings originate, and what other issues hide behind them. Rather than helping us to understand young people with gender distress, the term gender identity now terminates inquiry.

Gender dysphoria in kids was originally called “gender identity disorder of childhood.” That is, if the child “strongly and persistently” desired to be or insisted they were the opposite sex, along with other criteria, there was a disorder in gender identity.

There’s no doubt that some young children feel certain that they’re in the wrong category, whether or not they suffer over their bodily differences; from early on, they are typical of the opposite sex in mannerisms and gravitate toward the toys and clothes marketed to that sex. They also gravitate toward members of the opposite sex as playmates. A very experienced clinician once told me that gender identity as a term made sense for this population. Before they’re old enough to understand sex constancy, they may identify themselves as the opposite sex, felling they are or should be in the other category. The term is faulty but utilitarian.

And there’s no doubt that there are adolescents and adults—mostly, but not exclusively, men—who feel a deep desire to be the opposite sex, who see themselves that way, or have erotic fantasies about being women. For eons, they had to keep those desires to themselves because our society had so little tolerance for them. Or they acted on those desires, those visions, and were relegated to the societal margins as transsexuals, sometimes literally: the outer avenues of Manhattan where they sold sex, unable to secure employment elsewhere.

Dr. Ray Blanchard, who saw patients seeking sex-reassignment surgery at a Toronto clinic in the 1980s and 90s, divided these into separate, neutral clinical populations, based on etiology. The first were what he called the “homosexual subtype” of transsexuals. These were often very feminine boys and men (mostly males came to the clinic at the time) who were same-sex attracted. The others were heterosexual and what he called “autogynephilic”—attracted to the idea of themselves as women. Beneath the idea of gender identity were complex overlaps of sexuality and gender. Similar feelings could spring from disparate sources and lead to disparate outcomes. As clinicians would later articulate it: many pathways to gender dysphoria, and thus many pathways from it.

As the diagnosis shifted to “gender incongruence,” it solidified the idea of the simple gender identity/body mismatch as the cause of gender dysphoria. In this framing, etiology becomes moot—dysphoria is a medical problem, rather than a psychologically, socially, or culturally-informed problem. There’s only one pathway to gender dysphoria and, often, a single medical pathway out. “In effect, that just labels the thing to be explained,” says Byrne. “It doesn’t explain it.”

Now there’s a new clinical demographic: teens presenting with these newfangled gender identities, reading books or attending presentations about LGBTQ+ identities and locating their experiences there, recognizing something and claiming it, often passionately. Physician/researcher Dr. Lisa Littman categorized them as having “rapid onset gender dysphoria.”

Many of these kids have other mental health issues and no history of gender problems—an even more complex cohort, the etiology of their distress unknown and, because the term ROGD has become so heavily politicized, almost unknowable. Because their dysphoria is attributed to gender identity, it is seen as the source, rather than a symptom, of their problems. As a result, their mental health comorbidities often go untreated.

Many mental illnesses, like anorexia or self-harm, are expressions of suffering, announcements to the world that something is wrong, and a request for others to bear witness to it. If that’s the case, gender identity wouldn’t be the answer as to why the child is suffering, but a pathway for the expression of it. Sometimes I think this has befallen so many upper middle class white kids because their snowplow parents have obsessively spared them from pain and suffering in childhood, and their minds and bodies need to experience it in order to develop their emotional immune systems.

But boiling the desire to transition, or gender dysphoria, down to “gender identity,” ignores the relationship between gender dysphoria and cross-sex identities and sexuality. Indeed, gender educators insist that gender and sexuality are completely separate. This mindset ignores that the majority of trans women are autogynephilic—and that acknowledging the relationship to sexuality can help them understand themselves and make decisions about how best to treat their distress. We ignore that many proto-gay kids experience gender dysphoria, and the vast majority are likely to grow out of it—that is, if they aren’t socially transitioned. We ignore that there are rising numbers of ROGD kids claiming identities such as Raccoon gender or Ankylosaurugender or Shrewgender or Lilacgender or Pineapplegender or Gamegender‎ or Gastrogender‎ or Neutroboy or Spacegendervoid.

“The modern conception of gender identity has departed from the original one, at the price of obscurity,” said Byrne. “Gender identity is not simply the sense of yourself as male or female. Now it’s the sense of yourself as being a particular ‘gender’, but what gender is supposed to be is never properly explained.”

Some transsexuals disagree with this new concept of gender identities. They understand the reality of sex because they’ve had to work so hard to change their appearance, to take on the secondary sex characteristics of the opposite sex. Buck Angel, for instance, is well aware that he’s female. Indeed, he’s spent plenty of time trying to educate others about what happens to the female body on testosterone. In the old school sense, Buck would have a female gender identity—an awareness of his sex, but enough distress about it that he chose to transition.

But that understanding is now gone. “This is a postmodernist deconstructionist approach towards language,” said Dana Beyer, a transgender woman and retired doctor, with many decades of trans activism under her belt. “You can make it mean whatever the hell you want at any given time of day.” These days, she notes, gender identity is simultaneously something you’re born with that’s permanent and also something that’s fluid and can shift at any given time. “The inherent contradictions are just stunning,” she said—and if you try to point them out, you’re a bigot.

Yet Beyer believes that she is a woman, that gender identity is a deep sense of one’s sex, and that she’s female. “It's more than a feeling,” she said. “It’s a knowing.” Gender identity is “brain sex,” she said, echoing Jazz, and noting that several studies suggest the brains of transsexuals are different than those of non-transsexuals of the same sex. (There are plenty of objections to those studies, too.)

The fact that gender identity is now vague, unmeasurable, completely subjective, and becomes true by declaration—not by objective evaluation—makes it easier for kids to claim a newfangled gender identity, and perhaps to feel special and seen by doing so. They may find community, solidarity, and social capital—especially those who feel intense pressure not to be part of privileged “oppressor” groups. They can climb the social ladder by claiming to be stranded at the bottom of it. It’s the only identity one can opt into, manifest from magical thinking to reality by way of speaking aloud. Because only the child can know his/her/their/xir gender identity, and all the parent or doctor can do is wait for it to emerge, it’s the ultimate in child-led parenting, in patient-centered care.

If gender identity were a nickname or a look or a movement based on musical choice (Swifties, take note), it would be no big deal. But this vague, subjective and immeasurable idea becomes concretized when declared, and can lead to a cascade of very real and permanent interventions. At the very least, kids may be presented with gender support plans, often without parental knowledge, and have their names and pronouns changed on forms. At the most, they medicalize, assuming that they must change their body to align with their gender identity—that gender identity is fixed and sex is mutable, and nonbinary and genderfluid can somehow be etched onto the body.

The problem with “gender identity” is that it ends inquiry rather than spurring it. It erases questions of etiology, and it privileges the slippery notion of gender over the material reality of sex. But this idea, rather than being questioned, has been institutionalized in medicine, in law, in education, and in the minds of a generation.

There's no such thing as "brain sex." A "female brain" is the brain of a female body. A "male brain" is the brain of a male body. You aren't in your body, you are your body. You can't be "born in the wrong body," because you are your body. You are the thing your body does. Including things like depression, dysphoria and schizophrenia. That's why they're treated medically and physically, not with prayers and exorcisms. You are a biological being.

The idea that there's a metaphysical entity possessing your body, which it can be matched or mismatched to, is no different than the belief in the Xian "soul" or the Scientologist conception of "thetans."

If you think "nonbinary" is legit but laugh at "pineapplegender," then you need to ask yourself why. Why is your thing legit, but those other ones are just crazy? And who are you to say that they're not? What are the boundaries? If it is legit, is there anything that cannot be a "gender"? If everything is a "gender" then nothing is a gender, and the word becomes meaningless, invalidating any justification for getting upset at anyone. And you realize that this is the exact same logic believers use for their gods, right?

#Lisa Selin Davis #gender ideology #queer theory #gender identity #stereotypes #gender stereotypes #gender thetans #gendered souls #metaphysics #metaphysical #religion is a mental illness

30 notes · View notes

reflections-in-a-critical-eye · 1 year

Text

Framing Gender Identity Through Masquerade. Hybrid Masculinities in Jimin's Photo-folio

Up until the release of the photo-folio Me, Myself, And Jimin 'ID: Chaos, the performance of Filter for the online concert ON:E has been in the latest years, the most relevant representation of gender performativity for the artist. Jimin made use of visual and dress markers in order to exhibit the ways in which he can play with the idea of destabilizing conventional gender distinctions, but ultimately to ascertain a more conventional masculinity by changing the focus on the sexual undertones of his performance in order to maintain his power over how he is perceived and filtered by the audience. Through the concepts in the photo-folio, he is taking many steps further, committing to a more nuanced portrayal of identity.

This analysis will look at various instances of gender performativity and will identify types of masculinities as taking on different roles in order to demonstrate the way in which Jimin is exerting his subjectivity. Moreover, gender performativity will also be characterized as a form of masquerade and how it becomes a method through which the subject is able to take on those roles, by creating various personas through the use of dressing and how they are used as a metaphor for identity.

By framing these roles as carrying certain visual markers which pertain to a more Western cultural sphere, it is necessary to take into consideration the danger posited by such a position, especially given the fact that masculinities are also influenced by race, class and other, more specific and local classifications. In trying to avoid turning the analysis into one which might be framed as orientalist thinking, I will use Adam Geczy's definition of transorientalism (2019), in which ''a stable cultural identity is really an agglomerate of signs, which, as with any linguistic system, are in the constant process of modification and change''. Globalization, as much as it's a term used more predominantly for the economic sphere, it exists culturally as well, especially given the present use of online connectiveness and the facilitation of crossing physical and metaphorical borders. The position taken in this essay as well, as Geczy understands it, is that identities become a blend or a composite, not parallel to one another. These identities can be material and cultural and can coexist ''in different frameworks at different times''. Such distinctions are made possible today, as they encompass a wider meaning of cultural exchanges, and not just one in which the West is imposing its presence and power over an imaginary East, as Edward Said conceptualized it. These nuances are important because transorientalism explains the fact that cultural identities can be transacted, and not just overpowered by a dangerous West over a helpless East. It also helps in steering away from the danger of nationalistic discourses over identities that disregard the influence of globalization and how identities can reach outside imaginary borders.

Hybrid masculinities versus hegemonic masculinities

Contemporary understandings of masculinities are nowadays understood as hybrids. More often than not, it is applied to white, middle class heterosexual men who borrow elements of non-hegemonic masculinities in order to construct their gender identities through the situational use of feminine or gay aesthetics or more precisely, marginalized identities (Bridges, Pascoe 2014). The vital question that needs to be asked in this context is if hybrid masculinity maintains or actually challenges gender inequality and if ultimately, remains a tool that keeps intact the gender order, or what it's called masculine balance (Young 2017). In most cases, hegemonic masculinity remains intact in situations in which men are able to mark their bodies, usually through dress, in order to perform a hybrid gender identity, but only in situations that allows them the freedom to do so, while at the same time, having the privilege to de-mark their gender performances when it's no longer suited, usually in the cases of reestablishing their hegemonic, normative masculinity and consequently, their heterosexuality.

The concept of hybrid masculinities has been recently used in an analysis of G-Dragon's gender identities across various media contents, specifically because gender acts are also situational (Kim & Lopez, 2021). G-Dragon's case is relevant for this analysis, as it's a case study of a K-Pop idol known for his thought-provoking gender performances. For Kim and Lopez, K-Pop has fashioned and promoted what they call manufactured versatile masculinity – one in which soft masculinity can coexist within the paradigm of conventional hegemonic masculinity. For the authors, G-Dragon's appearances in some music videos and photoshoots may appear and sometimes actually are non-conforming, but they always end up being balanced with situations in which the artist is reaffirming his normative, heterosexual masculinities. If G-Dragon is queering his gender in spaces which offer him that freedom, specifically those that require a more artistic and creative medium, such as a photoshoot, a public appearance on a television program or a performance during a concert become the spaces in which he balances that queerness by stressing a hyper masculine act, through resistance of irreverrance. Ultimately, the fact that G-Dragon is in the position in which he can choose and has the power of achieving that safe masculine balance, is seen as proof of how gender hierarchy is still intact. Despite that, there are scholars, such as Chuyun Oh and David Oh (2017) who see the mere use of queer aesthetics as perhaps a first step on challenging heteronormativity because it does manage to destabilize, even if it happens situationally, the gender system. One conclusion to this on going debate is that recognizing and acknowledging the effort and openness of presenting non-normative masculinities is one that needs to be taken into consideration, while at the same time, remembering that the possibility of choosing when to do so only exists because men have the power to do it though their gender privilege. It doesn't mean it completely cancels the fact that heteronormativity was being challenged.

Looking at the subject of this case study, another K-Pop idol from a different generation, with a different journey, but one that also challenges normative notions of masculinity, can we situate him in the same paradigm as G-Dragon? The answer is yes and no. Like GD, Jimin is more comfortable and more explicit in queering his gender performance in more artistic situations, such as photoshoots or a song performance. The difference is that Jimin (the present one, and not the one who's initial idol persona had to always reaffirm hyper-masculinity) is an idol that doesn't resort back to hyper-masculine acts or tries to loudly reaffirm heterosexuality in order to create that masculine balance. Instead, we find an absence of those situations, in which privacy offers the opportunity of not having to actively challenge the non-normative, carefully crafted masculinity, which seems to receive utmost attention and focus. But what does it say when that happens only in the context of artistic expression? I posit that it shows a form of privilege as well, one in which Jimin has the possibility of exerting his power in creating a hybrid masculinity, one that we'll see later in the analysis, when he takes on different masks and roles, in which his gender identity is a mixture of personas that makes use of aesthetics as a way of keeping a form of distance.

Masquerading gender identity. The Dandy, The Youthful Boy, The Lesbian Butch and The Dominant

The body is now considered to be a canvas, in which the social body can carry different meanings, mediated through culture and social norms. Dressing the social body turns it into a site for creating identities. For Efrat Tseëlon (2001), the concept of masquerade is a better suited paradigm for the 'clothed body' because it touches on the conscious and also unconscious use of disguise. More precisely, 'If the concept of masking evokes an epistemology of authentic identity (‘behind the mask’), locating it on the epistemological side of the notion of performance moves it away from ‘authentic identity’ and closer to ‘an appearance of authentic identity’. Finally, masking, more emphatically than performance, relies as much on visual artefacts as on metaphorical disguise'.

The reason why masquerade is a useful paradigm for the analysis of the concepts created by Jimin in his photo-folio is precisely the notion of the appearance of authentic identity. And this appearance becomes more obvious if we categorize each concept as a role, a specific character that Jimin decides to portray because it offers the frame through which he can express different identities, ultimately queering his gender performance.

In the Light & Darkness concept, we have what can be visually considered the image of a man dressed as a 19th century troubled bohemian. A melodramatic portrayal of suffering beauty, surrounded by broken mannequins, traces of other selves. It's interesting to note how the visual imagery and particularly through dressing, shows Jimin taking the role of a dandy. James Adams (Dandies and Desert Saints 2018) mentions that in Victorian society, masculinity was about doing gender, rather than being. It was a performative act, before non-normative masculinities were seen as pathological. One of those masculinities was the dandy. Despite no definitive notion of what the dandy was in its entirety, it was considered first and foremost, a masculinity that at that time, managed to blur the lines between sexual orientation. For Geczy and Karaminas (2018), 'the dandy strove for calm and relaxed expression. Simultaneously, he was a mixture of smouldering passions and sangfroid hidden depths masked by desuetude – what we might call the romantic epitome of cool. As Charles Baudelaire emphasizes, ''The dandy is blasé, or pretends to be so, for reason of policy and caste''.

In the making of video for the photoshoot, Jimin mentions that the concept shows 'a side within me that is full of thoughts, worries, and is a bit lonely'. His reflection of inner struggle is expressed through taking on a role. One that puts him in the position to be looked at, for his suffering to be admired, as his beauty takes center stage in a space that most likely, express that loneliness. He is confined in a poorly lit room, in which the inanimate object – the mannequin – becomes the visible bearer of a fragmented and tormented soul. Jimin is transferring his feelings in order for his own body to remain intact. It can be seen as a sign of vanity because no matter what he might be going through, the need to maintain a perfect appearance, with a blasé attitude works as a protective shield. There must be beauty even in suffering.

The 19th century Victorian influence seems to permeate another concept, despite not being quite obvious. Its traces are found including in the Color: Freedom concept, specifically through the use of objects – the bust of a Greek goddess and yet again, a celebration of beauty, now more directly associated with youth. All these elements are reminiscent of the Victorian obsession with Hellenism. More particularly, the projection of their fantasies in order to have the ability to show though symbol and metaphor what was not deemed appropriate in a socially constricted society. It's a temporally and spatially localized theme, but one that can be transposed presently in the context in which symbolism is a needed tool for self expression.

Hellenism in the 19th century had multiple functions. Used as a basis for beauty standards, but also as an inspiration for homoerotic works. Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray is a clear example of that and a connection with Jimin's continuous focus on youth, makes this correlation valid: 'Wilde writes for Lord Henry a monologue of hyperbolic and intense flattery that, as if in passing, but really with great rhetorical care, calls Dorian's attention to his own beauty: to his ''rose-red youth'' and his ''rose-white boyhood''(Heacox, 2004). Jimin wearing a colorful crown, with heavy makeup, visually positioning himself next to a Greek bust, while dressing himself in what looks like a more contemporary display of youthful dressing style, transforms himself in the ultimate Hellenistic fantasy. The boy who remains forever young, the image of someone who is untouchable, who can precisely exist in such a way only if he remains a fantasy, like Thomas Mann's Tadzio. What Jimin shows here is a character. He plays the role of the youthful boy, he wishes to remain that way forever and only though this role, he is able to gain his freedom. One that can only be expressed through visual metaphors.

In what can be considered one of the most fascinating concepts in the photo-folio, this particular gender performance is the most intricate one. It's no wonder that a few reactions to Jimin wearing what looks like a 1920s suit, associated his dressing with Victor/Victoria (1982) or Marlene Dietrich. Here, we have what Judith Butler calls drag as subversion of gender roles through the parodic imitation of those gender roles (Gender Trouble). And that parody and consequently the subversive element cannot exist without gender roles. In Victor/Victoria, the character of Julie Andrews is (in her own words), 'a woman who acts like a man who acts like a woman'. Despite the film ultimately affirming binary gender roles, Veronique Fernandez (2001) argues that in the instances in which Victoria acts as Victor, her ''appearance in masculine clothes can be seen as an image of lesbian style'' one that is visually connected to Marlene Dietrich. In her analysis of the double drag, Kennison (2002) explains that Dietrich's image was made out of incorporating classic elements of lesbian butch dress, as well as traditional elements of gay drag, which not only contributed to the erotic element of her performances, but also showed the power she made use of.

In order to explain the association between Dietrich and Victor/Victoria and Jimin's dress choice, I will make one last detour to filmic analysis, that of James's Dean character in Rebel Without a Cause. Marie Cartier's thesis is that through that role, James Dean presented a new type of masculinity, created post war, by the butch women in the urban culture. For a more nuanced interpretation, Cartier calls Dean's presentation as a 'slyly constructed butch' and ascertains that, in the vein of this new 1950s masculinity (of which Marlon Brando famously embodied as well) is that the man acted as a butch woman. The arguments as to why Dean's persona can be seen through this interpretation are one side, behavioral (the actions and dialogue of his character in the film), but also presentational, by choosing to dress himself in the fashion of a lesbian butch.

In the suit concept, to quote and at the same time change the order of the drag, Jimin is a man that looks like a woman that looks like a man. Except, instead of using an outdated understanding of what it means to transgress gender roles, just as James Dean's presentation was that of a 50s butch woman, Jimin's presentation is a 1920s butch lesbian, specifically the way in which it was embodied by Marlene Dietrich. It shows not only the artificiality of socially constructed gender roles, but also the means through which multiple instances of masculinities can coexist in the social body, through dress and through a decision of marking one's body in order to queer the gender performance.

The last role Jimin takes on is that of the Dominant who uses fetish fashion and objects in order to show the side of his inner self that has to be in control once again, through masquerade. For Valerie Steele (2001), masquerade and sexual identity are interlinked, in which fetish fashion is now a way of constructing a sexual identity. In Jimin's photoshoot, he wears leather pants and gloves, completing the fetishist look with a mask that covers his eyes, a prop used by a dominatrix and a slave as well, each for different purposes. In Jimin's case, he acts the role of the dominant. This particular type of fetish representation, ''black leather, its feel, smell, and touch, as well as its associations to animal skin and its predatory impulses, induce sexual excitement with their connection to discipline and domination'' (Geczy, Karaminas, 2018). In this concept, Jimin presents himself as a sexual being, focusing on a very specific erotic imagery and role. Taking on the role of a dominant, he once again shows the need he has for control, a motif that has its more visible origins in Filter. It also shows he still needs to keep parts of himself hidden, perhaps offering a peak through disguise, on taking upon himself a persona through which he can communicate. Showing himself in a fetish fashion accentuates the theatrical and artificial construction of this part of his self, in which artistic expression becomes a safe method to do that.

As with Filter, and in the Light & Darkness concept, the mannequins are present here as well, introduced by Jimin as his other selves. They appear wearing a black suit and a mask, in a setting in which Jimin stands out, wearing white. It shows an objectification of self, of being able to look at various forms that are once part of him, but also can be seen as the filters through which others are seeing him. In this instance, Jimin takes on the role of the observer, while at the same time he's being watched, as he is surrounded by the mannequins – the former, artificially constructed selves.

A fragmented, controlled self?

Jimin's journey of self discovery is shown in this photo-folio through his gender performances. He finds a freedom in the context of artistic expression through the use of various roles he takes upon himself. His inner, raw self, as he explicitly mentioned in one of the teaser videos, is one that can be shown through disguise, which in turn, allows him to be in control of every narrative, of every role he plays, of the different forms of his hybrid masculinity. Jimin finds refuge in drag, in its subversion and exaggeration. The question is if his inner self is still kept hidden, a part that is not for public consumption to be analyzed and scrutinized, or its nothing but a fragmented self in which various personas coexist and which can rise to the surface as long as Jimin is completely in control of how he wants to be perceived?

List of references:

Marie Carter, The Butch Woman Inside James Dean or 'What Kind of Person Do You Think a Girl wants?' (2003)

Rebecca Kennison, Clothes Make the (Wo)man: Marlene Dietrich and 'Double Drag' (2002)

Veronique Fernandez, 'People Believe What They See': Clothing And Gender(s) in Victor/Victoria (2001)

Joanne Entwistle and Elizabeth Wilson eds., Body Dressing (2001)

Minjeong Kim and April Lopez, The deployment of gender for masculine balance: analyzing multi-platform K-Pop performances (2021)

Thomas L. Heacox, 'Idealized Through Greece': Hellenism And Homoeroticism in Works by Wilde, Symonds, Mann and Forster (2004)

Adam Geczy and Vicki Karaminas, Fashion and Masculinities in Popular Culture (2007)

Adam Geczy, Transorientalism in Art, Fashion and Film. Inventions of Identity (2018)

Ben Barry, (Re)Fashioning Masculinity: Social Identity and Context in Men's Hybrid Masculinities through Dress

#bmt blog #jimin #jimin photofolio #jimin gender performance #jimin masculinities #bts #k-pop

132 notes · View notes

moonspirit · 1 month

Note

That bitch kari again?? Gooddamnnnn when will he finally just jump off a cliff and let go of annie like i think ik well what was he thinking all the way.

No but really😭 will we get rid of him soon or will he be killed or he’ll continue being a delusional sick stalker to annie like that?

Hahaha xD Hello anon~

I understand your feelings - Kári was definitely annoying at first! He barged into Aruani's relationship thinking he was entitled to meddle in and destroy it.

But you see now; there's a shift between how things were in the beginning, and how things are at present. Kári is not what he seemed at first, there are factors decipherable from his mindset and his background that dictate and influence his behaviour and the way he acts. While I will expand on these factors in better detail soon enough, many of them are already obvious (let me know if you've spotted any!).

The scene where Armin carries Annie home is significant not only for the act alone - it is also a message to Kári that there is simply no room for him between these two. And he's no dumb guy, he's starting to get it. In his most recent interactions with Armin (ch 26: in the stamp-shop, and ch 29 latest), we see that he's mellowed down, that Armin's kind attitude toward him and lack of hostility have caused him to reassess what he thinks of Armin as compared to ch 14 where he he called him out on his low self-esteem and thought very poorly of him for being known as the Hero of Paradis, the Commander of the Survey Corps, and yet being so ashamed of himself.

In VBEOW, Armin is a guy who gets jealous as much as the next guy with a girlfriend, but the difference lies in the way he acts on it. He's not the kind to take a swing, engage in yelling, or make huge masculine declarations. He is kind, he is understanding, he is drowning in insecurity all the while, but he is still kind. He knows better than anyone else that people are a sum of many tiny parts of their past and present. It is the sole reason why Kári's interest in Annie infuriates him, but he doesn't display his jealousy with aggression. At the same time, he is protective of Annie, and while he may have thoughts that someone more confident will be better suited to be with Annie, he isn't going to let some dude with shallow intentions mess with her.

There is an interplay between all these different facets of behaviours and personalities that results in Kári softening from his initial brash impression. When he asks Armin if it's okay for him to still be interested in Annie in ch 29, it is less of a literal question and more of a way for him to understand why and how Armin is so different from what he expected. And as we can see, Armin's response to that surprises him.

It is why he apologizes to Armin at all, and their conversation finally ends on a friendly note, after all these months of a strained dynamic.

T_T Sorry for the long answer (if you found it annoying). I've thought a lot about both these OCs (Kári and Hikari), and it's very important to me how they influence Aruani & Co, and in return, how Aruani & Co influence them. While I don't want to bore anybody by talking too much about the OCs, since you asked me about Kari, I thought I'd take a minute to go into his character a bit deeper.

Thank you so much for reading (this, and VBEOW, both!) <3

#anon ask #VBEOW

10 notes · View notes

femmespoiled · 2 years

Note

Hi Bella! 💖

I don't know if you've already made a post about this before, but I was wondering if maybe you could explain the definitions and the difference between a high femme and a stone femme?

Thank you so much! I appreciate your efforts to bring butch/femme dynamic education to the tumblr community 💖💖 you're amazing and I admire you so much 🥰

Hi, first of all, I apologize for how long it took me to answer this, your ask got to me in the midst of a lot of drama going on around here and I had to take a little break to feel confident as a femme again, before I talked about this, so once again, I'm sorry. Also, thank you, you're very sweet ♥️

I think there are a few factors involved here*. There are a few meaning to those words that have been widely popularized in lgbtq+ spaces, therefore depending on what kind of circles you ask about it, you'll get different answers and I'm not here to talk about whether that's right or wrong and my feelings about it, though it may happen, we'll see.

So let's start with the definitions commonly used outside of our little butch/femme community. I think these are heavily, if not almost entirely, influenced by the futch scale and let's be honest that was a disservice to the butch/femme community at large, because high femme in said scale is portrayed only as a hyper feminine aesthetic/fashion choices/love for makeup etc, and while again some femmes do feel comfortable with that and love makeup, are hyper feminine, we're not an aesthetic and i speak about my frustration because daily, I explain to people that (I'm very grateful to everybody who takes my clarifications well, but that's not always the case). In the same scale, stone butches are depicted also entirely as an aesthetic, as this hyper masculine, hard aesthetic, aggressive and dominant etc and while that some butches may be ok with that, that's not what a stone butch is about either in my circles and in my community, unfortunately I feel that can bleed into femme as well, because they see stone and assume the same stereotypes they would for stone butches.

I feel strongly that a lot of these people who use those meanings regarding high femme/stone femme, see the meanings as valid and sure, that's ok, I guess (?), but I don't think they have an understanding about butch/femme (bar culture), our history, our community and how these are still used by us. While I'm here, I'll be the first to admit, we're not the only ones using butch and femme, they do have other contexts, but here I'm talking about butch/femme in sapphic spaces and the usage of those in said places.

Now that we covered that, around here in this community, in my experience*, both of those (high femme and stone femme) mean the same, they are sexual roles and sexual boundaries. When we talk about identities like butch and femme and say explicitly that they involve social, erotic, emotional reasons and contexts, stone terms are part of the erotic contexts.

High femme/stone femme/(even pillow princess sometimes) means a femme who has certain boundaries when it comes to giving or touching their partner(s) in a sexual situation, someone who doesn't like/feel comfortable/would rather not touch their partner(s) in certain ways for whatever reason they might have, it's important to understand that each stone femme has their own subjective boundaries and what, and to what extent, they're comfortable with, so you shouldn't assume one size fits all, same goes for stone butches. The counterpart of stone femme is a stone butch and that is a butch who has boundaries regards receiving/being touched by their partner(s) in sexual situations, a butch who doesn't like/feel comfortable/would rather not be touched in certain ways for whatever reason they might have. Oh and yes, doesn't have to be because of trauma, I have seen before people saying that stone femmes are only valid if their boundaries are attached to trauma, that's not true, you are allowed to just have boundaries, you're allowed to not want to do something, more importantly, you shouldn't be doing something you don't want in bed, all you need is someone compatible with you, same goes for stone butches, of course.

Stone butch and stone femme, in that order, can get confused with stone top: a person who is exclusively a top and also has boundaries around being touched and receiving during sex; and stone bottom: a person who is exclusively a bottom and has boundaries pertaining to giving during sex.

Can a butch be a stone bottom or a femme be a stone top? Absolutely. The first two sexual roles, stone butch and stone femme, as far as I'm concerned, are related to and pertain to the butch/femme identities and relationships, now the last two any person regardless of their identity can use.

While I'm here, I'll also clarify that being a bottom doesn't mean you're submissive, bottoms can be dominant and that's perfectly fine, being a top also doesn't mean you're dominant, tops can be submissive and that's also perfectly fine. And this one is important, being stone doesn't mean you're aggressive, dominant, any of that, it's about your boundaries. Top, bottom, vers =/= dominant, submissive, switch.

Another important thing about high femme and stone femme is that because of the widely popularized uses of these words and terms outside of our community I've seen femmes, myself included have a subjective relationship to those terms, for example, I prefer stone femme because I feel that it is less likely to get misunderstood by the meaning/stereotype that bothers me the most regarding to this, which is the "aesthetic", a lot of femmes prefer high femme, for the same and for whatever other personal reason, we have our own subjective relationships to it navigating this community, a lot of the time because of our desire to be understood. I hope this makes sense ♥️

*disclaimer: being a stone femme doesn't make me an expert or authority on the subjects, this is my experience and my knowledge.

#ask #bellas butch/femme tag #stone tag b

121 notes · View notes

hellraiseher · 4 months

Note

Hello Imogen! I hope you're doing great!

So I reread your Halloween book for probably about four times. The amount of details and love you put into it is fascinating. Truly remarkable. If that's your first time writing something so lengthy I'm truly impressed! It would have been interesting to hear about your influences and inspirations!

The character of Laurie is very complex and exquisite. She is rigid, stubborn, sometimes sassy, yet delicate and vulnerable.

I just love how carefully you designed her femininity. How you didn't shy away from it, but embrace it. The small things in her room displaying her girlhood, her relationship with her sexuality, her friendship with Annie and Lynda, how she perceive her beauty and just how she wanted to know if Michael finds her beautiful or not!

And that scene when she killed him... lives in my mind rent free to this day. Obsessed just how you merge and conjoin violence and sex and love. How the things that are so obscene and debaucherous can truly show their devotion to each other. So animalistic and carnal and sensual an-

The way you portray erotica and their intimacy are incredible. It filled with so much of that youthful curiosity and shyness, yet so sensual and sexy. Love Laurie's exploration of Michael's body, the contrast between his emotionless persona and very much real man's body is striking. How she herself having that realization during her close proximity to him. How she explores his humanity and pushes it even further and further, until she gets every piece of him. Laurie is a greedy girl.

And I want to emphasize just how I appreciate the fetishism in your work. Specifically the mask fetishism. I know it's bad manners to compare, but so far, your depiction of it has been the most validating and visible to me. Not only in Halloween fandom. The way you let Laurie acknowledge his plastic features, their unique shapes, how they changed after her passionate touches. How she sees and understands his every emotion, every mannerism. Searching for hints of the glimmering eye in those black pits of his. Hungry to take every clue that his mask will allow.

The scene when she cuts the hole where his mouth is. So perverted and so dear to my heart. Wanting his tongue and mouth, yet not wanting to part with his real face. The vision of a man desperately shoving his tongue, through plastic imitation of a mouth, to taste her, is very erotic.

Most of the times when I read stories with mask kink, it just, like, never or rarely mentioned, or the focus goes to what underneath the mask, which is quite disappointing... So I definitely want to compliment you on that!

The man that unleashed upon her such trauma and horror is the one that, in a way, freed her. He will always embrace and welcome her ugliness and rage. Because it mirrors his own.

His overall insanity over her, the surrender to her feminine force. She is his goddess of love and passion. She tempers his masculine and bestow the power of immortality and killing victories. He begs to serve and wants to love her to death.

Speaking of song references, I adore your Playlist for s1 of The Devil You Know ( haven't thoughtfully listened to the second one yet! Not in the right mood, my apologies!). The song choices and their lyrics definitely reflect the depth of your work. The collection of songs are very unique and some of them are definitely now in my listening drafts. Nora Guthrie, Dusty Springfield, Joyce Heath, The Shangri-Las, Jessie Ware to name a few. Filled with that girlish and feminine perspective, the lyrics and delivery are so touching. It's so refreshing to hear that type of style.

(Love how Laurie calls him tiger. Could be wrong, but something tells me it's Lana's influence...)

Also your blog is very thought-provoking and aesthetically pleasing to me! You're very intriguing and interesting young lady!

hello tsotsou!!! thank you so much for this gift of an ask, everything you've said will feed me well into 2024 🤍

i have tried to properly structure a response to all the aspects you've touched on, i'm prone to tangential infodumping when given enough incentive and if the platform allows. even trying to condense in my notes app was a challenge... but since most chapters clock out at around 17k-20k words, i don't think a modest 2k essay will overstay its welcome 🤭

my major inspiration/influences feature:

angela carter (namely the bloody chamber)

david lynch (namely twin peaks)

obvious but clive barker (also obvious namely: the hellbound heart/hellraiser. extending from this, i would say candyman but mainly the bernard rose adaptation)

emily bronte's wuthering heights, alongside charlotte bronte's jane eyre. while i think their works are ubiquitous and unspoken/spoken touchstones within a LOT of gothic romance/female-led horror fiction, i feel the formative influence their novels had on me is so potent that they can't go unmentioned.

helene cixous' essay the love of the wolf.

park chan-wook (namely thirst and stoker)

margaret atwood's power politics and the robber bridegroom

eiichi yamamoto's belladonna of sadness (our third eyes are looking directly at each other)

music!! which will undoubtedly be referenced now and then throughout subsequent paragraphs... i don't think there is a single instance where i can't link a certain scene i've written back to some kind of song or soundtrack!

anything that visually, thematically, conceptually or even emotionally to me if i decide, channels the death and the maiden trope.

originally i was going to detail why each feature had such an impact... but then this answer would be equally, if not just as long, as my chapters... and this reply is already a whole dissertation. if you (or anyone reading this) wants to know any specifics though i am more than happy to answer!

moving on!! to the most important topic: laurie laurie laurie!!

with her i feel like i was able to take advantage of what was already provided in the source material. teenage girls' bedrooms in contemporary horror are especially evocative of a decade and genre-specific youth, revealing so much about their interior lives in set-design that script may not allow ... (whoever pinned up that james ensor poster, thank you for my life etc.) but i think what i found the most endearing about her was how she's capable of being incredibly confident (babysitting tommy, answering a philosophical literary analysis question in class even after being distracted, girlchat with annie and lynda) but also painfully shy whenever BOYS are brought up - to such a degree that she relies on annie to call out michael stalking her.

however, as hesitant and dismissive as she is with annie's teasing about pursuing her crush on ben tramer, she is clearly a romantic - what with the lyrics of the song she sings. people use this as s diagnostic reason for michael stalking her, but it also reveals so much about her!! when she thinks she's alone, when she's just walking to school in the town she knows so well, she is fantasizing about Not Being Alone but Alone with Someone Else.

relevant digression but there is an interview with howard ashman, who wrote the songs for disney's the little mermaid and beauty and the beast, in which he pinpoints how the introductory songs that these heroines in musicals sing describe an ideal life. and i always interpreted laurie's introduction aligning with this paradigm. except while the likes of ariel and belle describe the desire to transcend their current provincial or inhibiting circumstances, wishing for a freedom they can only dream of comprehending, laurie sings of a lover she can only dream of comprehending, a companion who is peerless in mutual devotion - 'i wish i had you all alone, just the two of us' (although the attraction to rejection of societal expectation and norms is tied up in this, too). her fate also exists within the same constellation as the older, more brutal iterations of those fairy tales (hence angela carter influence). it's why chapter 6 of tdyk directly acknowledges snow white, sleeping beauty and references cinderella. the fairy tale heroine being the grandmother of the final girl.

she longs for fairy tale romance !! yet as soon as she's presented with the opportunity to pursue anything romantic - annie threatening to ring ben - laurie immediately shoots annie down. i don't think this is just her voiced insecurity from the lack of male attention she receives but that she also has more traditional and exacting standards of wanting to be courted.. but she would never say this because she is a Liberated Woman like her friends who is supremely self-sufficient and mature in all other aspects of her life!!

as much as she may consciously enforce this commonality with her friends, maybe she has less in common with them than she thinks. her distinction from them is obvious in her wardrobe design. her femininity is noticeable compared to annie and lynda's, her floral skirt and tights contrasting with their bell bottoms. she is comfortable in this femininity. her gait and mannerisms while she's walking to and from school have this graceful stride, almost floating... which makes her outfit change to a more masculine michael-coded blue palette so inchresting. when she changes after repeatedly seeing michael throughout the day, especially after seeing him watching her through the more invasive framing of her bedroom window, there's this awkwardness to her: when she hurries to annie's car struggling to carry the ridiculously large pumpkin, when she tries to smoke weed and just coughs and chokes, her fidgeting and twirling her hair. of course, this is understandably the anxious aftermath from being stalked but i do think there's a general discomfort displayed in this 'new skin' she's trying to assume.

it's why i wrote her as being envious of michael's masculinity - chapter 6, again - which he embodies to a patriarchal degree without any effort at all. in the next chapter there's more overt insight into this but on a more attraction-level-basis; an attraction to masculinity that laurie is able to consciously register and accept. now, she is much less concerned with being inaccessible to him by trying to adopt his infallibilty because he has increasingly made himself accessible to her... which brings us to...

THE KILL !!! i knew from the first chapter that Something Like That would go down, and it wouldn't be difficult considering DBD's Whole Deal to configure a plausible cresting point. that, and i wanted it to clearly be laurie's choice (deranged, albeit). and i wanted her agency to be integral. there is clearly a difference between attacking out of self-defense and attacking as a form of outlet. just as there's a difference between being groped and making sure michael is doing the groping right. from michael's perspective, much like how he doesn't just want to watch her but be watched by her, he doesn't just want the infatuation reciprocated but ALSO for her to reach the realisation the two of them are not so different after all. this reciprocation of attention and ego is so very key to me. if each boundary between them is a wall then michael isn't so much as demolishing through them kool-aid man style (anymore) but is the sledgehammer laurie is using... and this inevitably involves a convergence of languages they are each fluent in !! laurie in romance and michael in violence... except laurie is learning his very effectively!! vice versa! vice, indeed..

and on that note, greedy laurie, indeed!! not just biting but devouring the hand that feeds (literally in next chapter. somewhat. 🤐) did laurie effectively exercise girlpower by taking advantage of michael's sexual ignorance, essentially granting him with a sexuality?? probably not !! but where michael has (previously) been sexually ignorant, laurie has (previously) been sexually ignored. their navigation of this new mysterious world (and each other) has to consider this lack of experiental knowledge, resulting in this youthful curiosity as you phrased it (💓) but also that visceral physical communion and emotional/spiritual completion that comes with Two Becoming One... it is not enough to self-recognise through the other but to demolish the self and become the other!!

in terms of their sexual intimacy, from a writing perspective i trace a lot influence back to depeche mode's discography, especially their track in your room. a lot of their songs have an not-so-implicit eroticism in which the narrator (engendered as masculine with dave gahan's baritone vocals) embraces the subjugation in devotion, unashamedly worshipping his partner. this also relates to your point on michael easily and essentially deifying laurie. in your room is the pinnacle sex song (to me), just soooooooooooo heady and theatrical. the lumbering rhythm of the bass, the ghostly backing vocals, those synths that just build and build! and the lyrics !! how the narrator only finds true liberation in this clasutrophobic physicality - through this communion and only by completely possessing his partner, the lines 'i'm hanging on your words / living on your breath / feeling with your skin' parasitically merging subject and object, can his and her obsession be reconciled with.

i'm surprised michael's mask isn't fetishized more! but it just makes common sense to me that laurie's attraction to him would include the mask and this involves her gazing and touching and sometimes changing it... in chapter 4 i compare him to a hellenistic sculpture because it was a period of sculpture that valued expression. however, it's also paradoxical in the material being so rigid - the face is immobile but the action is hyperbolic. this comparison immediately mythologizes him but laurie has indellibly left her mark with his neck scar, thus creating a keyhole she can peer through when she wants to glimpse any of his humanity-inhumanity. and then of course the mouth she carves for him turns the keyhole into a door (into another door into another door)... and much more !!!!!!

if we are going to get even more Laurie Freak Strode... when considering michael doesn't have any eyes for show, the mask gives the sense that he can gaze at her without needing to blink - his voyuerism is eternal and omnipresent. there can be a 'guardian angel (demon)' value in this, and when laurie knows that the only person he wants to look at - and the only person he cares to acknowledge as a woman with thoughts and feelings - is her... while that should be horrifying, she eventually can't deny the pride that instills. because of this, instead of the fear that the mask would ordinarily evoke in others, there's an emotional inversion that laurie would experience as attraction and arousal. it turns out that laurie likes being watched equally as much as michael likes to watch.. everybody wins! (apart from anyone else who impedes on michael's view of her)

michael 'freeing' her, despite all previous crimes and abuses, is definitely apt!! it's safe to say that, at this point, any animosity or abuse laurie encounters (and has to tolerate) is in trials from other killers. if there are any destructive or abusive interactions with michael, she is often the instigator... which michael doesn't mind at all. he is more than happy to witness and enable any extremity of her emotional state!! if laurie is charging into the Coping Mechanism Store and picking the worst ones that are kept behind the adults only curtain, then he is carrying her shopping for her...

on a more sincere note, i've always kept the challenge of laurie trying to maintain her agency at the forefront of tdyk. she has very little within the confining context of the fog but then, by stark and overwhelming contrast, she can do whatever the hell she wants to (and with) michael. this strengthens her dependency on him and, in turn, makes the tenuous relationship she has with her team more frail. this major conflict is obviously apparent throughout tdyk but is especially so in the next chapter, laurie balancing her infatuation with him - the addictive affirmation of Being Seen and Being Known and Being Loved (to devastating degrees and effects) vs The Team conforming to a desensitisation and resignation to each other's routine deaths which is necessary for their survival. she is trying to balance on a thread-bare tightrope and it's only a matter of time and missteps until it snaps.....

i am glad you liked act one's playlist!! and of course no pressure to listen/like act two's! finding the right song with the right lyrics and atmosphere can really make a scene / chapter for me, and it's an ideal way to visualise how a certain scene will play out.

her nickname of 'tiger' mainly stemmed from the playful aspect of acknowledging and declawing his predatory status while he is pawing all over her.. but miss lana's influence can never be overstated !!!!!! NFR is a frequent album i put on while writing, how can it not be with those opening lyrics ....

and i'm glad you enjoy my little blog!! 💗i love the curation of yours, too, and adore your art of course!!!! (another inspiration). how you capture their likeness is so masterful and the depravity in their intimacy makes me lose my mind!! the size difference in their proportions 🥰 if it were safe to do so i would print out your galleria and liquefy it to directly inject into my veins ..

#i never talk about tdyk on here unless prompted otherwise this will happen #but thank you for the lovely review!! 🤍#i've almost finished the first draft of chapter 15 so i'm hoping to post it early 2024 🤗

8 notes · View notes