The cost of getting this wrong is too great.
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Fluidphobia and transphobia in episode 5 of Loki
16 minutes in. “Have any of you ever met a woman variant of us?” “No, never.” “Sounds terrifying.” I don’t even have words for how much that made me want to cry. That’s so unbelievably stupidly fluidphobic. Loki is also a woman, Loki is genderfluid, it’s likely all Loki variants are. So by saying that Loki has never seen himself as a woman is incorrect, it sounding ‘terrifying’ is beyond upsetting, and all of it is fluidphobic. (And also one of the variants with President Loki is played by a female actor anyway so??)
This is disgusting. It’s pure fludphobia. And if this was homophobia or transphobia you all would be talking way more about it. Posts talking against it would be getting more notice. The media would be talking about it. The Marvel team would have to address it. But no one cares enough about genderfluid voices.
And they had the audacity to say this:
It would have been better if they’d just not made MCU Loki genderfluid. I can’t believe I’m saying that. But the fact that they had the audacity to boast about how great they were for doing it, and then gave us fluidphobic representation. Not no representation, bad representation. I’d rather no representation that bad representation. At least no representation can’t create new slurs used against genderfluid people. No representation can’t create misunderstandings about how genderfluid have to shape-shift to be a different gender, how they’re a different person when they’re a different gender. No representation wouldn’t have caused the surge in fluidphobia in the fandom. Just yesterday a tweet was going around and getting popular saying Sylvie can’t be genderfluid because her name is ‘Laufeydottir’... Even though Loki’s is ‘Laufeyson’ and he’s genderfluid you know almost like someone can change what their assgined-at-birth gender is.
And it goes beyond fluidphobia into pure transphobia when you see “sex: fluid”. Parts of the fandom are now saying “sexfluid” to refer to genderfluid people. It’s not only now basically become a slur, but think about the implications. ‘Sexfluid’ means someone must change their genitalia when they’re identifying as another gender. That’s fluidphobic because of course real genderfluid people can’t shapeshift. However, it’s also transphobic because it implies that in order to be a woman Loki must have a vulva, meaning that one needs a vulva in order to be a woman, meaning that they’re implying trans women without vulva’s aren’t really women. That’s a transmed belief, a transphobic belief. You could look at that and say I’m reaching, or that I’m reading too much into it. But sex and gender don’t mean the same thing and this is how fans are using the word, this is what viewers of the show think the words means.
I’m not talking about the fans on here, or even the fans on Twitter, I’m talking about the majority of Marvel viewers. Because the majority aren’t part of fandom communities, aren’t part of LGBT+ communities, they don’t go on social media to look at what people are saying about the show, and all they know about genderfluidity is what they see in this show. And even then, just search “Loki female self” on Twitter and there are hundreds of people calling Sylvie that. The main stream media keep calling Sylvie “Lady Loki’”in their articles. ScreenRant keeps doing it, official Loki merch on Gamestop is doing it.
I’m not sorry if me talking about this and complaining is ruining your experience of watching the show, that just means before you were ignorant to the fluidphobia in the series. I’m not saying the show should be cancelled, I’m not saying you can’t watch it or you can’t enjoy watching it because I’m still watching it, I’m still finding moments I enjoy in it. You can be critical of something and still watch and enjoy it.
EDIT: you know what? “that’s terrifying” is also kinda fucking sexist
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