Leida Mothma and the struggle for identity

Mon Mothma says about her daughter Leida practicing traditions: "It's weird. It's stronger here than it is at home." And I can't stop thinking about Leida Mothma and her portrayal as a very privileged yet uprooted kid with a migrant background being unusually traditional.

Growing up away from the culture and the people she is supposed to be part of, is challenging and confusing. It is hard to find identity as a teenage migrant, culture and personal access to her people's traditions when removed from it. And it is not surprising that Leida seeks out the most overt and uncomplicated access she can find to her culture and heritage, even if those are conservative and regressive. Those practices are a lifeline for her, simply because she has or knows of no other options.

As someone with a fairly similar background IRL I sympathise deeply with her character. It is a failure of the society she lives in to include her as she is in a way, that would not drive her into dogmatic traditionalism for identity. And it is worryingly normal for kids to feel like they have to hyper-conform in one way or another to have access to their migrant families background or the societal expectations of the place they live in now. It's as if we still haven't figured out how to be inclusive of those we don't understand. And the most vulnerable are the collateral of that.

At this point if anyone asks Junmo what he feels about Gicheol, he'll just shoot them in the face and then blow his own brains off.

afhiri is intersex and it was decided at birth that they would be raised as a boy, but she developed more feminine features as they aged. this left afhiri feeling disillusioned and dysphoric over their body, and began taking testosterone to better fit the body they feel they should have, and the body she ultimately wanted. i see afhiri as transfem and nonbinary and absolutely not a girl or a boy. afhiri is afhiri

i think that while micro labels can seem useful and affirming ultimately they're isolating and kind of an obstacle to your understanding of self. that's because you can never find a word specific enough. there will never be a label or two labels or even ten, twenty of them to perfectly capture and describe all of your thoughts, feelings, experiences, preferences, needs, interests, identities, etc. because you learn more and more about yourself every day and then you change and your wants and needs change with you. having to hop between labels, fearing that you don't 'fit' into a label anymore (both in your own and others eyes), worrying how soon your current label will wear out, questioning if you'll ever fully fit a single one. all that causes a lot of uncertainty and anxiety which could be avoided by just picking a more general thing and molding it according to what it means to YOU. because words will always mean different things to different people, you will never be understood immediately and maybe never completely by anyone but yourself and that's fine

You know, even if somebody was "turned queer" because of trauma, that is:

1. Not your business

2. Not something you should be interrogating them about, be you queer or otherwise (see point one)

Trauma is a deeply harrowing experience, and it's oftentimes something people don't want to share if they don't feel safe or comfortable. Creating environments where queer people have to both interrogate their queerness and defend themselves is simply hostile.

If somebody seemingly became queer after a traumatic event, what you do is support them. Likely the last thing that person needs is you barging in and demanding explanations and justifications before they're allowed to be queer and/or exist around you.

names

Fandom aro culture is wanting to be obnoxious about your arospec headcanons but the idea of anyone coming after you for them makes you want to scream

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Ink October day twenty-five: Contexture

The act of weaving or assembling parts into a whole.

An arrangement of interconnected parts; a structure.

The arrangement and union of the constituent parts of a thing; a weaving together of parts; structural character of a thing; system; constitution; texture.

even as someone who has technically I guess 'de/re-transitioned' I am so wary of detransition 'safe space' accounts. I see the way posts from these accounts get co-opted by those who would (and do) do harm to trans people and I often get nervous about the motives of the people running the accounts

not dipping back there again after this, but my opinion on where the discourse re: us politics is heading is not getting any nicer.

thinking about nile having nightmares and not being able to sleep post london and then being very tired during the day and taking naps on whoever's around

I sent the anon about a lack of gay rumors about Harry. I don't think you read all I said because I never said he was straight and I never said there weren't any gay rumors. I even said that I didn't think he was straight. I was asking is it possible that all these women who said they've hooked up with him, and there are tons, all lying and were put up to it by Jeff? Like the bachelor contestant? Love island contestant. Influencers, models. Is it all lies or is it more likely that he is bi?

My apologies, I had a lot of similar asks come in all at once that were a) long-winded, b) didn't clarify what they were asking, and c) went off on tangents that kept me stuck on the first bit, and in this case, yeah, I got stuck on your ask's "there aren't any gay rumors" about him because, uh, there are?? Like, a lot?? To answer your question, I don't think Jeff has the ability to encourage random women to make that kind of claim (or the interest: it seems like a lot of work, and he reads as a shirker), and as a rule, I don't think women are liars. That said, are there really "tons" of women saying they've hooked up with Harry Styles, like, truly? I can think of one or two one-off anecdotes, but it gets muddied by media speculation, randos "connecting" "dots," or people linked to him officially. And all of THAT said, I have no clue as to Harry Styleseseses' real-life sex life, but since you ask, sure, he could be bi! Annnnd I think he could also be exploring his own sexuality in a much deeper and layered way than a lot of people in today's tumblr.biz fandom space are ready to consider because, frankly, a) they can't handle too many levels of nuance and b) don't understand that the deepest, most private real-life facets of someone else's sexuality are none of their biz. And that pulls in another part of this ask that kind of raises my hackles, and it's the "is it all lies" bit because none of us are owed the truth from someone we don't know. We see *maybe* 5% of any person's actual lived life! Anyone telling you they have it all locked in w/r/t a stranger is full of shit!

ETA: check out the replies for stuff I should have included but was too sleepy to really get to because YEAH, NAILED IT FURTHER

are people really mad about team rocket winning because its "just going oh gender!" because that is not true. vivian is canon trans but meowth was for nearly a decade voiced by a trans woman (maddie blaustein) that credited the experience to part of why she was able to come out! a significant amount of the votes towards team rocket will be a result of this (and the common man in a dress jokes around james, something that while intended as just a repeated punchline is commonly reclaimed by trans fans.)

YEAH no absolutely, couldn't have said it better myself

havin a gender crisis at the train station lol #epic

God that last post is so fucking frustrating because Asians experience so many microaggressions for names especially when you live in a non Asian country and it's the worst thing. Because names MEAN something and in Asian cultures the mean a whole lot they're about history and extend so far back. They have deep and complex meanings that vary from country to country. And people make fun of them or mispronounce them and continue to do so or ask "can I call you -whitename- instead" like it's a nickname that's cute no fuck off, or like how sometimes we have multiple names because we have to or we have to make up a name cause we think we need to or even consider changing our own name to something dumb like Betty because the incredible culturally significant and beautiful name we have ends up bringing us nothing but pain because it's just another way to ostracize and bully and exclude us. That we have to make ourselves palletable to white folks because "wow you're so pretty and foreign I wish I had your eyes/hair/skin" but "your name is hard to say can I call you this instead"

It's disgusting, and if you find you disagree then you need to stop fetishizing us and learn some Goddamn empathy and respect or go read your dumb white vampire book or your stupid hoover lady and leave our spaces alone

o/ <- little fella raising his hand . why are we calling anthony leora what makes it her GirlName

so!! for context (you probably know this already) there's that "thy fear will eat you dead / Leora" line in bombsquad. well someone asked anthony about it by text and dunes posted it on their twitter

"Who is Leora?" "I am." HENCE: GIRLNAME. lsdunesarchive has the image itself here w/ link to tweet

but on a more serious level.. i was thinking of writing this out in tags/in a reblog/etc but if this takes off i dont want it to circulate without this context.

as a registered [gender]anthony i would like to clarify: i'm not really on board with any sort of speculation/assumption/projection of trans identities onto anthony. with the amount of love and support he shows the trans community (including his daughter!!!!) i think it's very unlikely that he's like.. an 'egg' in the sense that he hasnt realized 'hey, i could be a girl if i want', and in the event that he isn't cis and is choosing to stay in the closet, that's very much nobody's business but the people he chooses to tell.

in regards to specifically the hoodwink 'i think i was meant to be a woman' thing, anthony just says shit all the time & with the way he talks about the rush/high of performing, i dont feel like that can really be taken at face value. and also he was ummmm really unstable that whole year. and in regards to lyric analysis, especially things about keeping secrets: i have no issue with trans readings of those in a way that's like 'i am trans and i feel this lyric relates to my experiences' but i am kind of uncomfortable about people assuming there are gender-related implications to some of them because uhhh. often times i think the secret that he's keeping from all his loved ones or whatever is like. very often drug/addiction related. and to me there's something... callous? about assuming there's an intentional trans subtext when it's pretty clear in retrospect that it's about like. heroin. (that last bit is particularly about violent waves. and also, this is not in response to any particular analysis)

In General while i may joke around and call anthony a girl or use she/her pronouns or things like that, i don't really think anthony is trans and if he is, it's not our business unless he makes it public. i think he's just a guy who is gnc