#not the first word i would use to describe a quality inherent to sex work actually! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mostly-mundane-atla · 3 years

Note

Hi, I’m writing a fanfiction and from your posts on marriage it’s clear that Yue might actually have a lot of choices and agency for marriage specifically but I was wondering how much power does a wife have? I mean this in two ways, how much power does she have in the family and how much would a leader’s wife have in a community? Like, as wife of the chief (or daughter of the chief) would she ever make decisions for the community/lead or is it more an advisor thing or none of the above?

This is exactly my shit omg

So, a lot of people will say that among the Inuit, men dominate. This is not exactly true, and for the Inupiat specifically, it's been said that these preconceptions of men dominating or being seen as inherently superior or more valued are unfounded and based in misunderstandings and stereotypes. Men go out and bring food home to share with the village, but they understood that they would be foolish to think their wives had nothing to do with their success. Who was making their clothes and keeping them warm with mending so they could go out and bring home food? Who gave them a warm meal before? Whose forethought gave them peace of mind enough to sleep? Husbands and wives were interdependent and respected that. It's not a case of "yeah men are more valued, but women do the important work" but rather men and women both acknowledged that they each contributed things of equal importance. A wife wasn't obedient, she served her husband as her husband served her. The dynamic was built on trust and reciprocity.

There's also some stuff to be said about sexuality, because that's a big part in the perception of marriage and gender roles. The long periods of breastfeeding required to nourish children under the age of six years in such a harsh environment acted as a natural contraceptive. This gave women (and especially wives) a bit more wiggle room than there was to be found in cultures where contraceptives were tabooed. Sex wasn't something that had to be kept in a marriage. It wasn't something you were supposed to prioritize, but it wasn't something you had to save either. It was understood that most liked it because it felt good. There was no virginity requirement for marrying, and simply wanting or being curious about it was not considered morally wrong. Extramarital affairs were only looked down upon if there was dishonesty involved. Therefore, the whole concept of a husband's right to his wife? Not a thing among us. If any man wanted to sleep with any woman, she said yes or she said no and not always with words. (A lot of our communication is nonverbal, due to what could be described as a shy demeanor.) If she said no, maybe she'll change her mind, but a no for now is still a no, and the man in question was expected to respect that, and vice versa.

Men were often away tracking, hunting, whaling, doing what it took to bring the food in while women typically kept up the other duties. These were often outside the home in the warmer months, things like food prep and clothing and childcare, in social settings. The husband and father was given special consideration, as his work was more physically demanding, and the wife and mother would keep a store of food specifically for him that neither she nor the children they had would take from. In fact, the planning of food being stored, prepared, and distributed within the household was the wife/mother's responsibility. Such women, even those with arrogant or unthoughtful husbands, being smart with food can save entire villages from starvation. One story where this happens has the woman's husband fall to his knees and kiss her hands, full of both gratitude that she was among them and pride that someone like her chose to marry him.

This sort of power the women had over food manifested even in a young man's rite of passage. The first animal a boy ever successfully hunted was to be gifted to his mother or aunt. This first catch was typically something small like a bird or rabbit that the matriarch in question would make into a soup that could feed the whole family. And though it's true that men brought in the big game, women also provided through trapping, fishing, and bird hunting.

Due to men specializing in work that required long hours of attentive silence away from home, the more social aspects were handled by women. If you were arranged to be married to someone, it was more likely a discussion between your and your betrothed's mothers rather than fathers. This may have been why a young man who had never been married before needed to be deemed ready by his mother or other family member, while a young woman who had never been married before was trusted to know for herself.

So for the record: wives in general

-could have relationships with men who weren't their husbands

-didn't owe their husbands sex just because they were married

-had complete control over food distribution within the household, regardless of who brought it home

-were more involved with social things, like rites of passage and marriage arrangements.

Now when it comes to the Umialik, his wife (or "main wife" as it must be remembered: we were not a strictly monogamous people before the Christians showed up and decided they knew better than us) could lead in his name, but there's something that should be cleared up. The writers decided that it best suited the universe they created and the story they wanted to tell to treat the chief of the Northern Water Tribe as a monarch. This is not reflective of the way an Inupiaq Umialik was treated. While the image one might have based on Chief Arnook is one of higher quality clothes and a big beautiful house and delegating the grunt work to his subordinates, among the Inupiaq, leading the people meant putting more work into it. It was less about power and more about responsibility, and this responsibility was shared with his wife.

Among the Umialik's wife's responsibilities were sewing warm clothes for the whalers (she could recruit women of the village to help her), distributing food at a potlatch, and some important ceremonial roles to do with the whaling season. Like her husband, she was expected to remain chaste just before and during the whaling season. She was also expected to remain in the home while the whalers were away (a sort of pact with the whale, if that makes any sense), and when the whale was brought home, as with any other marine mammal catch, she was the one to pour water down its throat so it wouldn't die thirsty.

An Umialik likely did seek his wife's councel, but that would be true of any husband. Only an idiot would treat his wife like she has nothing of value to offer and a man ought to be humble enough to listen if he wants to marry. The Umialik was the man with the biggest family, likely because they would support his claim and it was hard to defy someone so connected to the village, but another reason could be that, with the largest family, he'd likely be exposed to the most states a person can find themself in, granting him more experience. As mentioned before, women were more in-tune with the social aspects than men usually were, so any wife but especially that of the Umialik would have an important perspective that her husband might not.

As for the Umialik's children in general, primogeniture was not the hard and fast rule among Inupiat as it wass with many cultures we're used to. An Umialik's daughter had no more rights than the average woman and his son had no more rights than the average man. They might find themselves on the receiving end of exceptional kindness to win their father's favor, but there was no guarantee either would inherit

#response #eskimo on main #i had to connect a lot of dots for this one so I hope you liked it

253 notes · View notes

monipoka · 3 years

Text

Addressing Content Warning Concerns

I am writing in response to points that were brought up concerning my recent post. If you haven’t read that post, you can find it here.

Be warned that this is a very long post (2.8k words). It deals with the topics of pedophilia and rape. Opinions expressed are my own; however, I do offer some resources for you to better educate yourself on this post’s content.

I will not provide a link to the user that responded as she had no ill intentions. Disclaimer if the said user reads this post, I write with peace and love at 4:00 A.M. There are a couple of places where I may sound aggressive or petty, but it is analytical and not meant to invalidate you or your opinions.

Red = user’s response with minimal changes (adjusted for grammar and clarification)

Black = my response

Part 1: Age Regression and Infantilization

To learn more about age regression, here are two lovely articles describing what age regression means medically and socially.

“Age regression [agere] is a form of coping meant to eliminate stress in potentially triggering situations. Agere is not a part of sexual play and never should be. I believe [Moni] is confusing agere for age play.”

This completely misses the mark. I understand that age regressors enter a younger psychological state often as a coping mechanism. There is nothing inherently wrong with age regression as therapy. My complaints are that people are FETISHIZING age regression. As stated in my post, age regressors enter the mindset of a child commonly called a “little space.” These individuals are to be treated like children as it helps them feel safe and loved.

In my experience on Tumblr, writers commonly misinterpret Daddy Dominant, Little Girl (DDLG) or Age Play (the larger, umbrella term) for age regression. For the purposes of explanation, I am going to be using DDLG and she/her pronouns. DDLG is a type of BDSM relationship where the dominant partner (male) takes on the role of a care-giver while the submissive partner (female) takes on the role of a child. This dynamic is pretend and intended for sexual interactions. Keyword here: pretend. While the submissive portrays childish behavior, she still has an adult mindset; therefore, she can give meaningful consent. Once writers describe the submissive slipping into “little space,” her mindset is corrupt as she has age regressed; therefore, she cannot give meaningful consent making the interaction non-consensual as she embodies a child.

“Infantilization is treating somebody as if they’re a child. For example, ‘babying’ someone is the best explanation for it. This, in my opinion, is not pedophilia because it’s not inherently sexual. If it IS sexual, I wouldn’t necessarily classify it as pedophilic, but it is questionable.”

Again, this misses the mark. In a non-sexual context, infantilization is completely okay. My complaints are that people are FETISHIZING the infantilization of characters. I used this term as an alternative language to age regression because I have encountered both on this site.

“Age Play, in my opinion, is pedophilic due to how the 'older’ of the partners is benefitting from it. So if [Moni] and I are thinking the same thing, but not really using the same terminology, then I agree.”

Age Play is a kink in the BDSM community between two consenting and level-headed adults.

Age Regression is characterized by regressing back to a younger headspace.

Sexualizing age regression is pedophilic because age regressors feel, act, and exhibit childlike qualities; they genuinely believe that they are a child.

If age play includes “little space,” then it is pedophilic because the submissive has age regressed.

“None of these is what I would consider illegal due to the fact that both parties are consenting adults. But age play definitely is pedophilic. But, obviously, if both people are adults, it can’t be considered illegal.”

I called pedophilia (and rape) illegal. In the eyes of the law, sexualizing age play--given that the individual is of age--is legal. This point used the transitive property of equality (Trans POE) to point out the hypocrisy in condemning pedophilia but supporting the fetishization of age regression. To clarify, it may not be illegal, but it is morally wrong.

“Infantilization and age regression aren’t inherently pedophilic because they revolve around the idea of a mindset and not physicality.”

This is contradictory to your previous point and only half true. Age regressors largely rely on physical objects (ie. clothes, stuffed animals, pacifiers) to feel safe. While the root of age regression involves a change in psyche, it is reflected in their appearance and environment.

Part 2: Dubious Consent and Non-consensual

To learn more about rape, here is a wonderful article on non-consensual sex.

“Secondly, I’m quite confused on what she [Moni] is saying regarding calling dubcon [dubious consent] and noncon [non-consentual] rape instead of dubcon and noncon.

They are rape, or at least some form of sexual assault, but I don’t think anyone’s trying to mask them from being as such.”

I whole-heartedly disagree. It is apparent by the staggering number of dubcon and noncon posts that people use these terms to try and justify writing rape because they consider it a “fetish.” The reason I am against these terms is that writers never specifically condemn them. Oftentimes, writers mix the content of the fic into their warning section. So, by writing ‘blowjob’ next to ‘dubcon’ it underscores the severity of the situation.

“Categorizing both of the two as 'rape’ could potentially end up being very damaging. Rape is a very triggering and harsh word for some people, which is why I believe a lot of people use non-consensual sex as a term to avoid potentially triggering people.”

Again, I believe that people use dubcon and noncon to try and justify their rape “fetish.” However, if using the term “rape” is triggering to some individuals and the terms “dubcon” and “noncon” are used as a substitution, why aren’t these writers coming out and explicitly saying that they do not support these types of interactions? Furthermore, why are they writing and sharing this content in the first place if they acknowledge it as rape?

“Also, I think it’s important to clarify whether the 'sexual assault’ in fiction is dubious or non-consensual. There’s a big difference between both parties being drunk in a fic (dubcon) and hard rape, and it’s important to distinguish the two in warning columns.”

Drunk people can’t consent. Both situations are rape. The “level” of rape that you refer to, being how consensual it is, is more damaging in my opinion. Because they were drunk, it means less than if they were sober. This perpetuates victim shaming. She was asking for it. She shouldn’t have drunk so much. Rape is rape. It is never okay. And one rape is never better than another.

“Dubcon is also very important to clarify in fics due to the fact that dubcon is only a fictional concept. It helps indicate the level of consent given in the fiction because someone could be not triggered by sex under intoxication but can be triggered by hard noncon.”

I’m going to use a quote I cited from this source because I feel that the writer describes dubcon more eloquently than I can: “What bothers me the most about this situation, and what I think you are partly getting at here, is when people say that their fic isn't "noncon" or they say it is "dubcon" or "noncon depending on your point of view." Come on! Have the guts to admit that what they're writing is rape. Dubious consent bothers me as a qualifier because if you aren't sure whether someone is consenting, you don't do it or it's rape. No excuses. So, I think that people should just bite the bullet and say, this is a rape fic.... If people want to write rape fic, go for it, and I will probably read it, but let's step up and acknowledge what it is we are writing. I take issue with these qualifiers because I think that it is far more insidious than out and out rape porn. At least when we say it is rape, then we can move on to the next step: saying it's wrong, just a fantasy, etc. But avoiding the label perpetuates the rape myths that have had such a damaging effect on victims and justice: did she enjoy it, she didn't really say no, she was a tease, they've done it before. None of those things matter, and when a person labels their fic, they need to stop pretending they do.”

Essentially, the writer is reiterating what I explained in my previous comment that rape is rape. Another statement that I found describes how damaging fiction can be in real life. While most readers understand that what occurred didn’t really happen, there are real-life consequences attributed to it: “...However, not everyone in fandom uses those terms in those ways. And I think that's a problem that we need to fix. Because, especially when situations that exist in real life and that would be called rape in real life are labeled "dubcon," I think it does real harm to us all.....We currently live in a culture where not fighting back - because, for example, the rapist has threatened to kill you, or someone else, or your pet, if you don't go along with it - will very often get a rape case overturned in court. Where judges and juries and god knows the popular media will pick out and analyze every detail of a person's life to determine whether they were asking for it, whether they secretly wanted it, whether they could have conceivably fought back more than they did, why they didn't scream, why they didn't report the blackmail that was used to control them, whether or not their "consent" might've been implicitly given by winks or nods or secret handshakes or a general miasma of sexual invitation. In other words, we live in a world in which rape culture, a thing we all unwittingly participate in at one time or another, works very very hard to label things dubcon when they're really noncon.”

“Most people 'romanticizing’ non-consensual sex are victims who are trying to gain some sort of control over their trauma, so they have every right to do so. If a victim of rape should have the ability to choose whether or not they want to read/write a noncon fic and if they don’t want to use the word rape because it makes them uncomfortable, they don’t have to and shouldn’t be forced to.

As a victim of rape and sexual assault, I find peace in having the control and ability to write about my trauma. It's a way for me to gain back control that I lost and the word rape does make me uncomfortable, it makes many victims uncomfortable, and if I prefer not to use that word then I should not have to if people know synonymous terms.”

Romanticize: deal with or describe in an idealized or unrealistic fashion; make (something) seem better or more appealing than it really is.

If you are writing/reading smut, you are trying to get off. If you are writing/reading dubcon/noncon smut, you are getting off to rape. Instead of writing/reading about how heinous rape is and how disgusting rape culture is, you write/read fics romanticizing rape since as a reader you enjoy the content to some extent: it is with your favorite character, it takes place in a cool universe, it got you horny, you felt good after reading it. Romanticizing rape is damaging to society as it subconsciously makes rape appealing. I doubt that is the intention, but you can’t deny that these underlying connections exist.

There is a difference between writing to cope and writing to entertain. My intention has never been to victim shame. But writing non-consensual sex between anime characters and a reader-insert is a form of entertainment. Remember the purposes of writing we learned about in elementary school? Yeah, I have a hard time believing that this is therapeutic. Journal therapy uses reflective writing to work through trauma and mental health issues. In sexual assault cases specifically, victims often write about their experience and/or letters to their perpetrator(s). However, if this is your way to cope, that’s fine. But writing rape fics is not the same as sharing rape fics.

“People know the severity of noncon and dubcon, which is what I think [Moni] is missing. No one is trying to not make noncon rape because it is rape. People know that it is. Most people just chose to say 'noncon’ to avoid unnecessarily triggering others.”

Do they? I think to my previous comments in this section, people use these terms to downplay the seriousness of rape.

“And there are far more 'consensual’ fics out there than noncon/dubcon fics, so I don’t exactly understand what [Moni] means by 'romanticize’ or 'normalize it.’”

Two comments up I describe what romanticization is and how it is being done in the community. I’m going to ignore the number part of this statement because I feel that there is no relevance; If there is a platform for rape fics and people are engaging with them, numbers don’t matter relative to another type of fic. I call that authors romanticize consensual sex because it is oftentimes not explicitly stated, and I think it should be. The character(s) and reader are in a relationship and sex is a byproduct of that (I do not consider this dubcon). Personally, I have found very few fics where explicit consent is written in. People sometimes think that asking for consent interrupts the flow and ruins a moment. Works of fiction have an impact on real life, and writing/reading about consent serves to reinforce healthy practices.

“Going off of that, I don’t understand what [Moni] means by 'fairly young’ audiences. I'm hoping that most 18+ consumers are, you know, eighteen or older (obviously that's not the case in all situations), and eighteen is a legal adult. Most people over the age of eighteen are very aware of what these terms mean, and they know right from wrong. So, there should be no need to clarify what 'noncon’ is for them.”

My point is that this community is relatively young. I have not encountered many writers or readers who are over the age of 25 (if you are, kudos). At this age, you lack experience. Many of these readers have never had sex or been in a relationship before. While you might know the difference between rape and consensual sex on paper, some of these things are more subtle--especially in person. You referenced drunk sex as something that you’d classify as dubcon although intoxicated individuals can’t consent. I recently read a fic where the reader was drunk and picked up at the bar by a character. He asked the reader if they consented to sex and they agreed. This is still rape as you cannot consent while intoxicated since alcohol impairs judgment. Regardless of enjoyment, which the reader experienced, this is still sexual assault. Can you see the confusion by labeling that dubcon? What is a young adult to think when they’ve been manipulated into sex but told they consented? It’s confusing, so these terms should be clarified.

Part 3: Fiction

To learn more about how fiction affects reality, here is this interesting TED-Ed animation that summarizes fiction’s impact. Also, I read this article that cites more examples.

“Also, our writing shouldn’t have to equate 'good practices,’ because a healthy-minded individual knows how to separate fiction and reality. Give people the freedom to write about whatever they want, whether it’s in private or not, that's what fiction is for.”

You claim that you don’t want to use the word rape to trigger people, so you acknowledge that not all readers are health-minded as they could be suffering from trauma or mental illness. Likewise, some individuals can’t discern fiction from reality.

More importantly, there is a connection between fiction and reality.

“Finally, I don't think we should be so open with connecting real-life issues with fictional ones. No one is going to become a rapist or want to be raped because they read fiction on it unless they’re truly a rapist or have been raped. Equating fictional works to real-life problems is a little insulting, whether [Moni] intended it to be or not.”

Watch the video and read the article. Fiction directly impacts culture and society. It may be insulting, but it’s factual.

“Because in the end, in rape fiction, no one actually got raped. In pedophilic fiction (I don’t support it don’t get me wrong), no one was actually a victim of pedophilia. Because they’re all fictional.”

That doesn’t make it okay. Again, my problem is that writers ROMANTICIZE these topics which reflect poorly on society.

“If someone is concerned about pedophilia and rape fiction, I believe it would be best to work towards real-life solutions to those real-life problems compared to criticizing fiction authors.”

If you’re concerned about pedophilia and rape FICTION, I’d hope you’d criticize FICTION authors. Honestly, this seems to be a diversion tactic to avoid accountability.

Part 4: “No Offense, but You’re Wrong About Everything”

“Overall, I think [Moni] had good intentions, but it was poorly worded.

You pose a counter argument to each of my points and make it sound like I did not educate myself beforehand. You then deflect to talking about rape and pedophilia in real-world context to downplay the severity of pedophilia and rape in fiction.

I sound petty here, and I do not mean for my words to hurt. I wish that there was some communication beforehand since it seems that there was confusion. If my original post was unclear, I hope my comments help.

Conclusion

This is for everyone:

Please check out the resources I provided and do your own research to understand the situation before forming your own opinion.

No hate to the writer of the response. I just wish you would have reached out directly for clarification before taking my words out of context and assuming their meaning.

73 notes · View notes

electricbluebutterflies · 3 years

Note

Nina/Mattias + fight sex but they’re idly bickering about something that doesn’t matter very much

Canon-divergent / the little adventure up in frozen hell took long enough for this dynamic to develop (because what even is a timeline and I have no clue how long it actually was on the show). Also, for plot purposes and context, this does make use of my belief that everyone is just SLIGHTLY aged up on the show and in my head most of the main lineup is 20ish. Oh, and first time writing these babes so fingers crossed I got characterization okay. Obviously NSFWish ahead, a little more graphic than I’ve written in a while and also involves a First Time...

He’s keeping the third blanket from her.

It is, objectively, the most petty Nina has felt since the whole almost-dying thing happened, maybe even since the getting-captured bit. Trying to get under his skin, trying to handle the daily shifting of their dynamic, has been almost as exhausting as trying to stay alive. Which in itself is enough of a challenge, because somehow they are lost and whenever Nina gets back to civilization she is going to have so many comments about Druskelle navigational instincts or the apparent total lack thereof. So. Many. Comments. The moment she has a possibly appreciative audience, because she is not wasting her breath on that here right now and-

At least tonight they’re in some kind of fishing shack again, clear space to build a fire and a pile of blankets of various questionable quality. There have been nights they haven’t been so lucky. She’s saving her energy for where it matters. But on the other hand, she is a delicate fragile creature who has made a point of avoiding this sort of climate, and…

Mathias still has the third blanket, and the fire is going well enough that they objectively can stay on opposite sides of this space, and Nina decides it’s time to change the game.

He’s pretty, okay? He’s annoying and stubborn and honestly at this point him technically being The Enemy is relatively low on the list of reasons he’s stomping on her every last nerve, but the man has two things in his favor – he’s loyal, and he is very nice to look at. Nina does not historically have the attention span when it comes to that level of pretty, but this one has decided to make it difficult for her. Like, he can say up and down that he does not want her, but they’ve shared a sleep-space – “bed” is too nice a word for most of those situations – for a week or so and she doesn’t need words, she knows what she wakes up to.

And she knows how damn respectful he is, she thinks as she starts undoing her vest buttons. This outfit, while very cute two weeks ago before her entire life took a very undesired detour, was not made for seduction. But if she does it slow enough, she hopes she won’t set him off. The other time she had to deal with that element of things, he was polite and turned his back even though she didn’t ask him to, and she assumes the same will happen here and she’ll get nowhere and-

Okay, fine, it’s not like taking off her vest reveals anything outright explicit. The current light makes her shirt a little more see-through than it’s meant to be, but still. She is about as decent as she ever gets.

“What are you doing?” he asks, tone about as calm as she’s ever heard him.

“You do not need two blankets,” Nina counters. “I want.”

And oh does that phrase cover more than his little Fjerdan mind has probably ever thought of. All those comments he’s made about assuming she’s trying to seduce him? Yeah, hasn’t been the main goal yet but she’s thought about it. Seeing what she could do to him – she does not expect he’d take any initiative there, highly doubts he’s ever even kissed anyone – would not be the worst way to spend an evening. So, that’s part of the plan now. Make him squirm, get on top of him, and take her prize. Should be easy.

As if to prove her point, she starts loosening the laces of her shirt just enough to easily take it off. She hadn’t bothered to wear anything under it, another brilliant idea proving that two-weeks-ago Nina had questionable judgment in all things, and it is all too easy to push it up over her shoulders and off her arms and…

He’s still watching. He looks wide-eyed and possibly concussed, but he’s still watching.

If Nina were a different sort of person, and probably also if she had gotten laid within the past six months (for the record it has been eight and that cute little bartender with the long nails was a way better lover than she was an informant), she would cross her arms over her breasts and stop here and wait for whatever protective instincts Mathias has to kick in. Even given what she’s just done, she looks vulnerable and cute enough to wake him up like that, and-

“What are you doing?” he asks again, this time more hostile. Good. When he’s frustrated his voice gets all growly, and that does things to her, and-

“Can we get this over with?”

“This?”

“The part where we have questionable hatesex that I will forget ever happened within the next year and you will remember for the rest of your life because whatever little creature gets stuck with you someday will not fuck you like I want to.”

For a moment, she’s pretty sure she broke him. This is definitely not about the blanket anymore, and-

“I. Don’t. Hate. You.”

Nina laughs. “Yeah well you are deeper in denial than anybody I’ve ever met. I am everything that scares you and you are stuck with me and I’m not sure which part of your code I do not violate but I am sure you would’ve-”

“You saved my life. I owe you everything.”

“Cute. Obligation. Great reason to put up with someone but still do everything you can to drag your feet about it.”

“Why do you… want me?” He sounds all hesitant, and good grief has nobody ever told this man what he looks like? Or do all of his people look that good at that age… that’s plausible enough…

“Limited options right now. It’s you or my hand and you’re warmer.”

She is not sure what she’s expecting beyond not what he actually does.

Fine, so she’s been good and hasn’t looked more than she had to when he’s been in a state of undress. Watching him strip right now, layers of leathers and furs that are apparently frightfully easy to take off, is different. He is wanting her to watch, keeping his eyes on her the whole time until he is completely naked in front of her and… she can’t help licking her lips, he is pretty and she wants all of that all over her. Now.

“This or your hand,” he repeats in a way that suggests that at least she probably won’t have to explain the general patterns of female masturbation to him. “Make your choice.”

She about tackles him.

He’s built like a damn tree, Nina reminds herself in the process. Solid enough to handle her attempt at literally jumping him, which doesn’t exactly work but does throw off his balance for a moment, and she gets him pulled down for a bitey kiss. He has just a little bit of scruff now and she’d wanna see what that feels like between her legs but also she is pretty sure Fjerdan men do not do that and she doesn’t want to completely wreck him in one go, and while she still suspects all of this is new to him, he has good instincts.

Her skirt and underwear are feeling like too much of an undesired obstacle, so she undoes them with her free hand while trying to stick her tongue down his throat. So she’s a little aggressive, whatever, he’s clearly into it and nobody gets hurt by it.

“What do you need me to do,” he breathes, and oh he can admit being clueless, this is a treasure, this is-

She grabs his wrist and puts his hand between her thighs. “Poke around until you like the noises I’m making.”

Mathias has good hands. She’s known this for several days now, but it is a different thing to know it with one of said hands exploring her soft parts. She feels a fingertip inside her then quickly pulled back, another batting her clit back and forth with uncertainty. Then the finger inside her is back, and she knows how wet she is, and-

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he murmurs.

“That’s why I’m leading. I’m not giving you the chance.”

But he couldn’t hurt her like this, she thinks. Not with his hands prepping her and a second finger up inside her and accidentally finding her sensitive spot, not with his prick hard against her belly, not with his mouth taking kisses as he learns what he likes. There is something inherently good in him and she worries for a moment that what they are about to do will break it, and yet-

“Get on your back,” she orders. Easier for both of them if she leads, she reminds herself.

He does without any complaint, and she takes a moment to enjoy the view. The solidness of him, for the next few minutes all hers. Would any of the girls he might get stuck with back home be able to handle this? And the way he’s looking up at her, a scared but willing participant in whatever she decides to do. Maybe he’s right. Maybe hatesex is the wrong word.

She straddles him, knees around his hips, and drops.

Blame the dry spell. Blame the absolute weirdness of the situation. Blame the fact that she is tired and hungry and cold. None of that matters. He feels good inside her and she makes a noise she cannot describe and-

“Am I…?”

“No. Feels good.”

She rolls her hips against his to prove a point, works him even deeper into her and leans down for more kisses. She can taste the shock and the innocence of him. This isn’t how he thought his first time would go, she is sure of it now, and yet he is allowing her and-

His hips jerk up and she makes a shocked little noise. “Do that again.”

He does, and she continues her pattern, and… it’s good, on her side. Not the best sex she’s ever had, but his hesitance is useful enough. She doesn’t trust him to say if he’s getting close, so she stays focused on his face, looking for signs, looking for-

She shifts her angle just a little bit, his prick hits the right spot inside her harder than she expects, and she shatters.

As she comes down, she sees that his expression has turned to something worse, scared and worried and unable to speak. He’s still hard inside her, at least, but he is motionless and cold and she doesn’t-

“Did I hurt you?”

Nina laughs. She shouldn’t, this is a legitimately valid question, but-

“No. What you just did felt amazing. Your turn.”

She resumes rolling her hips against his to indicate the conversation is over and she does not want to explain herself, and a few clenches of her inner walls later he spills inside her. It’s a beautiful thing to experience, the sudden warmth overlapping with the strangled gasp of surprise and-

“You know this means I have to marry you,” he says when he’s capable of coherent thought. “If there’s any chance…”

She shifts position so their bodies are no longer connected. “No. It doesn’t.”

“But I…”

“We’re too different,” she murmurs. “You know that. There’s nowhere safe. If anything… if the worst happens, I’ll lie.”

“Honor is honor. If there is even a chance-“

And oh, for a moment she wants it too. For a moment, she lets herself think about the impossibility of being all that she could be, both Grisha and wife, not forced to choose between her complexities. Unrealistic, she knows, a flighty daydream at best but she wants all the same.

“Nothing to worry about. My last cycle finished three days before your people tried to kill me, so… right now I can’t get pregnant.”

“Still. If it happened… I would stand by you.”

She kisses his face, covers the angles of him in wet kisses. “Good to know.”

#pixievixen #helnik #nina x mathias #ebf writes fic

53 notes · View notes

veliseraptor · 4 years

Text

Down in the Yi City Pit: A Recs Post

So as anyone following me may have noticed, I’ve been spiraling ever deeper into a pit called Yi City Feelings. I’m down at the bottom and I’m still digging. This also means I’ve been doing a lot of fic reading, and I figure it’s about time that I wrote a recs list, since I said I’d do it and some people expressed interest.

Heads up that I am a dirty Xue Yang stan first and foremost, so this list is going to skew in, uh, that direction. Just so we’re all aware.

Divided these into canonverse recs and modern au recs, since apparently this is the only thing I’ll read modern aus for! It’s a brave new world out here.

Also like. blanket warnings across the board here for The Inherent Dubiousness of Xue Yang/Xiao Xingchen as a Pairing, Generally. I’ll offer more specific/major ones as they’re relevant/I remember, but please check the tags/authors notes as well.

CANONVERSE

lover to your nightmare by Zaatar (@ameliarating) . Xue Yang uses Xiao Xingchen getting sick as an opportunity to fuck around a little. Second person POV sickfic, except XueXiao flavored sickfic which means it’s messy and full of good things like “delirium” and “people taking advantage of other peoples’ confusion and disorientation to mess with them psychologically.” This fic also does the thing I love really well where Xue Yang’s internal monologue/self-justification is full of indications that he’s having Feelings that he neither recognizes nor acknowledges. Crunchy, delicious.

Samsara / 輪迴 by ForgivenMemes. Upsetting fic full of every content warning ever alert! (Off the top of my head: violence, rape, suicide, self-harm.) I keep going back to this fic and rereading it because it hurts so bad and I love it, because it hurts in the best worst self-sabotage recapitulating-mistakes-over-and-over way. Like, I am a sucker for a time loop fic always, and usually I read them as a route to fixing things - but honestly I’ve always loved the part of time loop fics that’s “everything getting worse first.” And this is a whole fic of “everything getting worse.” Aka, the one where Xue Yang has thousands of chances to get it right, but there’s no getting it right.

compromise by Sectionladvivi. Xiao Xingchen convinces Song Lan and Xue Yang to kiss. (aka, obviously Yi City AU where Song Lan gets folded into things, Xiao Xingchen still doesn’t know about Xue Yang being Xue Yang, and an uneasy detente where the two of them don’t touch each other gets interrupted by Xiao Xingchen Wanting Things, which is, of course, a priority always).

til dawn by Sectionladvivi. Xue Yang takes care of Xiao Xingchen’s body after his death, and mind the tags. This is that perfect Yi City level of “horrifying and also very sad, I feel bad for my boy but also he is sort of defiling a corpse (though it is just kissing).” This might not sound like a recommendation but it is absolutely a recommendation.

Our Antebellum Innocence by spockandawe (@spockandawe). First time XueXiao. Xue Yang lays the groundwork for his first time with Xiao Xingchen with meticulous care. This author always delivers, both in terms of excellent porn and in terms of characterization, and this is no exception.

life’s illusions I recall by Sour_Idealist (@souridealist). The basics of this fic is just “outdoor sex at a river” and it is delicious for that, but what I love about it in particular is this author’s Xue Yang voice. It’s always good (they are the genius behind the incredible Jiang Yanli/Xue Yang fic - no, really), and this is a fic I come back to a lot for that reason. I also love the tag “two characters experiencing two very different fics” which feels like a very apt description for the XueXiao dynamic, generally speaking.

Selenographia by lightningwaltz. A lovely, short-ish fic about the Yi City years. I don’t feel like I have a good description for this one - it’s just one of those beautiful character/moment portrait pieces, very well done.

Stories from A Lonely City by blackwatervial. A series of snapshots/vignettes from the three years in Yi City. Sweetness, bittersweetness, and of course, ultimately, a sad end. This was one of the first Yi City fics I read.

yi city depression hours by glueskin (series). Just. You know. Some feelings. There’s two fics in this one, both short character study type fics making me feel feelings.

a bird caught in this winter blizzard by cherriru. I do love a good grief/mourning fic, especially featuring someone realizing slowly the sheer miserable depths of their fuck-up. Aka, Xue Yang after Xiao Xingchen’s death. It’s just sad.

all I ever knew of love by Sour_Idealist (@souridealist). See what I said above about the Xue Yang voice and this author; this one also featuring blistering hot porn (first time), a little light praise kink, and huddling for warmth as an excuse for sex. It’s a perfect blend of filth and tenderness and I love it.

revelations wallet wood burn art by Sectionladvivi. This one describes itself in the summary as “grim pwp” and yeah, that fits (and also! is such a XueXiao vibe, whoop whoop); it’s based off the simple premise of ‘Xue Yang tells Xiao Xingchen who he is, in the middle of sex.’ Honestly, one of my favorite things about this fic is the ending, which is horrifying in the best possible way.

Your Heart Inside My Hands by williamshooketh (@ectoplasm-james). This fic is fabulously made for me in the specific subgenre of “Xue Yang thinks he knows what he is getting into when having sex with Xiao Xingchen and, it turns out, does not.” This one featuring some of my favorite things including praise kink and Xue Yang getting extremely fucked up by someone being very nice to him.

Sleep Until the Sun Goes Down by spockandawe (@spockandawe). Love me some Xiao Xingchen seducing Xue Yang with candy. First time fic, second person POV, absolutely delightful.

pass the time by short_tandem_repeats (@yiling). A-Qing and Xue Yang bonding hours. I am actually such a sucker for their weird relationship (I don’t poke at it enough in my own stuff, should work on that) and the way they recognize each other in ways that Xiao Xingchen doesn’t, and also a-Qing having to reckon with the ways in which she’s more like Xue Yang than like Xiao Xingchen. Just a very good fic with a delightful a-Qing.

Three Springs by Verbana. Just a really excellent Xiao Xingchen POV of the three years in Yi City and a developing relationship between Xiao Xingchen and Xue Yang. Beautifully written, a lovely escalation, and I’m absolutely delighted by the gentle loneliness of the Xiao Xingchen POV here.

Red Azalea by CeNedraRiva (@cenedrariva) (WIP). A longfic in progress following the continuing adventures of the Yi City Crew after Xiao Xingchen survives his suicide attempt and Xue Yang reconsiders some life choices. Recently got tag-updated to SongXueXiao which has me absolutely thrilled. Updates every Wednesday.

ephemeral by im_krying (WIP). Xue Yang, traveling around wearing Xiao Xingchen’s face, decides it is time to go looking for the last remaining part of Xiao Xingchen that he doesn’t already possess. That is to say, the eyes in Song Lan’s head. I’m really curious where this is going - it smells up my alley at this point though it’s been a bit since the last update.

Heaven Has a Road But No One Walks It by Silvestris (@silvysartfulness) (WIP). Things I love: beating on Xue Yang, SongXueXiao, terrible road trips, fix-its where there’s a lot of suffering involved. Things this fic has: all of the above. I’m in love.

MODERN AU

(There are other recs to this one but for various reasons (pwp reasons) triggered my self-consciousness slightly too much to put on this post. Go check my bookmarks, you’ll find stuff there.

Most of these are PWP to greater or lesser extents (Rewritten and Misalignment are, I’d say, the exceptions); all very hot and fantastically written.)

circling like vultures by brawlite (@brawlite) (series). Truly quality porn, featuring mostly Xue Yang/Song Lan both pining for Xiao Xingchen, which is a thing that it turns out I really like. The sex is rough and mean and I’m really into it. (Okay, mostly the sex in the first one is mean, the second one is actually XueYao, and the third one is actually verging on nice. Wow! Growth. Anyway, it’s all very good and very My Scene.

Rewritten by incendir (series). This series is like. Everything I want from a modern AU and that was true even before the most recent fic gifted me a beat up Xue Yang suffering, so you know. I don’t have a good summary for this series other than that it’s basically a married Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen adopting Xue Yang as a third partner and it’s just. So well done, such good writing, such good characterization, I would read 20,000 more words of this and probably still be hungry.

catalyst by Ajaxthegreat. If there is a porny fic I’ve reread more than this one, I’m not sure what it would be. I’ve reread this one a lot. It’s very good. It’s very hot. I’m trying not to be self-conscious. SongXueXiao first time rough sex and boy is it tasty.

biting the bullet by Sectionladvivi. Xiao Xingchen doesn’t want to have to choose between his two boyfriends and so he doesn’t. Sectionladvivi in general writes some very sexy modern au PWP (including a few different Xue Yang/Lan Wangji fics which...didn’t see that one coming! But it works when they do it), so general rec for author but this one (as, you know, SongXueXiao porn), is one of my favorites, probably.

sxx configurations by rynleaf (series). This is a SongXueXiao series on AO3 based off of @kevinkevinson‘s modern reincarnation AU and I am in love with both the art for that AU (go look!) and these fics, they’re so good, I’ve reread several times.

Misalignment by Kasasagi (WIP). The one with a reincarnated Xue Yang and a Xiao Xingchen who arrives in the modern world from the past, fresh off his suicide.

And Once Again, if I’m Allowed to Rec My Own Fic

a kindness you can’t afford. Early days in Yi City after Xue Yang wakes up.

lick your exit wounds. I wanted canonverse-era bottom Xue Yang praise kink, so I wrote it for myself in the hopes others would also find this an interesting prospect.

this place could be beautiful. Xue Yang vs. domestic living.

tear out all your tenderness. Xue Yang gets turned on by murder and makes it a project to get Xiao Xingchen to lose control.

the beauty of your repair. PWP, modern AU SongXueXiao; there’s not an inkling of plot here, it’s really just an excuse to get Xue Yang wrecked, but nicely.

#finally posting this!!!#yi city crew #fic rec #song lan #xue yang #xiao xingchen #i'm sure i'm missing things but there's only so much i can do #xuexiao #songxue #songxuexiao

221 notes · View notes

buildingrelationshipsinanarchy · 4 years

Text

A New Intimacy Model

So what spurred this project is a culmination of a few things. Namely, frustration with the imprecise and incomprehensible words, Platonic, Romantic, and Sexual. The English language hasn’t been great at adapting the words for personal relationships as our times and values change.

I fell into Anarchism only very recently, stumbling into the language of ‘relationship anarchy’ through the internet in discussion with forms of polyamory years ago when I started this blog. Over the last year, I’ve been getting into radical politics and finding how my un-politicized opinions were validated, and then stretched the more I learned and studied up. While I’m still learning more about Radical politics, Anarchism, Marxism, Queer and Feminist theory specifically, the more I wanted to link some of my perspectives on intimate relationships with these political and theoretical texts.

“The Personal is Political.” - Carol Hanisch, Feminist Author.

@mythr1der wrote a post detailing a bit of the frustration I also share in regards to how the Dichotomy between Platonic and Sexual (which almost all definitions of Romance boil back into), leave much to be desired when discussing attraction, desire, intimacy and relationships in general. I believe that this very simple dichotomy reflects, oddly enough, capitalism and the history of the role of state power in culture. I rant a little bit about it as a response to @mythr1der‘s post here.

It’s long, and incomplete, but I proposed an idea of just building entirely new words, so we can build an entirely new map for talking about love, desire, attraction, and relationships that actually discuss what its like to be next to someone you like to be next to!

What is intimacy? It’s closeness right? To be near some ‘intimate’ part of another person, or them near something meaningful about why you’re you. I wanted to start this series by talking about what it means to be close to someone. If you remember my birthday without Facebook, that might make me feel a bit special. But if you remember how badly I was abused by an old friend, its because I trusted you enough to share some of the sadness that I’m not as loud about.

Intimacy isn’t always trauma, sometimes its tears of joy hearing that your cousin is out of prison, or the laughter of your friends. Being close to each other in a hyper-digitized age is a bit tricky, but phone calls, facetime, snapchat are only some of the tools we use to keep each other updating on what we’re feeling. Whether its about our love life, sex life, work life, or home life, just sharing that information can be real special, and bonding.

When we say that we have friends or that we are [Queer] Platonic Partners, does that mean we’ve decided how often we’re gonna talk or what we’re gonna talk about? What if we just send each other memes or rant about politics? Am I supposed to devalue those interactions because they aren’t the person I’m crying on the phone with?

Intimacy can be as deep as childhood scars and as simple as surprising me with my favorite snack. It all just means you know who I am, what I like, and what I care about. I want to intentionally forge those connections. And this why I set these definitions first.

Other Words:

A Daekkon (n.) would be person/partner whom you’ve developed intentionally this kind of relationship with.

If you desired this kind of relationship with a certain person, you’d be feeling Daekeen (adj.) for/about that person.

People who are desiring or actively doing these activities together are Daekkoning (v.).

This would be understood as Daekkonic (adj.) behavior; as in, “My roomate isn’t super talkative with me, but is deakkonic (adj.) with Sandra from the Mosque.”

“Tom is going through it, he’s felt deakkonically (adv.) deprived since the move.”

________________________________________________________________

In our sex-negative, ironically repressed culture, we seem to think that if you’re touching your bodies together at all, it means *something*. I want to remove that idea. I want to reclaim physical affection. I want to be touch and be touched by others. I don’t want my afab friends who have experienced some sort of sexual violence in their lives, to ever feel weary about the fact that I’m physically affectionate. It’s been my #1 Love Language for the last 10 years.

Fighting r*pe culture is a full-time fight, but I think adding a word, and therefore an idea[l], can be useful in reclaiming safety, and boundaries regarding bodily autonomy, for all of us. Clear communication and respected boundaries and asking consent for everything are the bedrock we need to continually practice. And as trust builds, I believe this could be very useful theoretically tool for improving the quality of our relationships and help create clearer discussion about our individual boundaries, needs, and desires. I feel like this leads me to a relevant question. What activities are inherently platonic, romantic or sexual? Is holding hands inherently romantic when almost all of us have done it with a friend? What about those of us who are religious or spiritual and have held hands with members of church, mosque or synagogue; do you think we’re out here non-stop blushing at the Pastor? Or when we held hands with family members? Doesn’t sound like it holds up, huh?

What about snuggling a roommate? Holding a teammate while celebrating a victory? The kiss my bestfriend gave me on our shared birthday dinner? Are we left to through our Aro and Ace friends’ out of the discussion, just because our culture has bad takes on sex and romance as the only forms possible of significant physical touch? Physical touch is such an important way to communicate love and affection, as well as care, concern, and comfort. They don’t get to cast their shadow on this space anymore!

Other Words:

If you had this desire for someone, or wanted to approach cultivating these forms of affection in a relationship, you could say you’re feeling Phaddish (adj.) for that person.

.Participating or initiating acts of a non-sexual physical intimacy Phadronic (adj.) quality are said to be phade-ing/phading (v.).

A Phadrone (n.) could be the name of a person/partner you share this kind of relationship with.

Phadroning (v.) would the act of cultivating this kind of intimacy with another person.

Phadronically (adv.) could describe a certain level of intimacy implicit in a physical touch between to particular people.

________________________________________________________________

Now lets talk about Sex. That’s the thing the everyone’s mind always gravitates to when discuss words like, intimacy, attraction, desire. It’s the thing we want to stay away from when you use the Platonic or Friendly. But, lets be real. Haven’t many of us had sex with people didn’t even consider friends? Or people who became our “Strictly Platonic” friends after we may have had sex, once or several times, with them?

People who gravitate toward polyamory or non-monogamy tend have had a “hoe-phase.” The boundary between friend and lover, or partner and fuckbuddy have been blurred in a good chunk of people’s lives. Non-monogamous or not, I think it’s useful to talk directly about our sexual experiences, desires, fantasies, and how different it can be with different people, or in different stages of our lives. But what makes an experience sexual? Maybe that sounds redundant or obvious; I mean, it’s got the word SEX in it, maybe that’s got something to do with it? But maybe not...

Lets ask an odd question. Is sex inherently sexual? Who wouldn’t assume the answer is automatically yes? Well, my first thought is to talk to those in the Adult Entertainment industry or friends of ours who are sex-workers, in whatever capacity. Is every client sexy or shoot erotic? Those of us who have sex, have we never been doing it and been bored through most of at least one experience?

If sex is inherently sexual, why do we have so many Sexual Health Educators, Marriage Counselors, Pornstars, Yoga Teachers, Personal trainers and Writers telling us how to have sexy sex? Dating Coaches and Websites, telling us how we are getting something that’s supposed to sound so easy wrong.

I’ve come to the opinion that sex isn’t about body parts, genitalia, certain body motions, or even clothing [or lack thereof]. I believe that sex, or eroticism, is all about the context and the people involved. There’s nothing inherently sexy about fruit, or food in general, but if woman eats a banana in public, there are at least several men in area thinking of something than her healthy food choices.

This is why talking about sex directly is good. And understanding it as an energy that you imbue to any activity or circumstance, could help have better sex; and and on the flip-side, show us how we may need to more aware of how we may take up space with our body language. I do also feel, that in part, some of our Ace friends (those who aren’t sex repulsed), may be able to find some resonance with this model; sex doesn’t have to feel passionate or any particular way at all (other than good?), because sex isn’t about sexiness, but about human connection and pleasure.

Other Words:

Serotic (adj.) activities include any activity that is engaged due to, or is infused with, sexual desire and/or erotic intention. It also describes the type of desire you’re feeling for another person.

A Serato (n.) is any person you engage in serotic activities or feelings with.

An activity that was originally un-serotic (adj.), but became sexually or erotically charged, we could described as having become Serotically (adv.) charged.

When you are cultivating or charging an act with serotic energy, you are Seroticizing (v.) that activity

________________________________________________________________

Lately, especially since diving into Radical Politics, I find less and less desire in defining Who I Am as a part of a relationship unit. It’s an overlay from monogamy, The Couple being the only social unit that is recognized, as it’s necessary to the Nuclear Family; a super important thing for Capitalism to sustain itself. The relationships I cultivate with others, with whatever forms of intimacy or interactions therein, cant be understood by that model. I am more than my interactions with a handful of people; I am a human person, and my engagement with the world isn’t actually reducible to whether or not I’m having sex with someone or not.

We’ve talked about multiple forms of intimacy, and some of the desires or interests associated with them. Have you noticed that in the desire, or need, to discuss relationships on a basis of, ‘sex: yes or no?’, that we haven’t talked about the webs that form because we are all reliant on each other to survive? Not everyone in your community or workplace or online spaces, you’ll get to know or talk to. Do they, as people, matter less because they aren’t in your contacts list or your DM’s?

This is a space where not a lot of us to tend think or engage as much. An easy word to discuss this space is community. But is a community the people or the place you spend your time, whether online or off? Is the community the place you live and your neighbors? Is it the people who may share some of your identifiers or face similar forms of oppression, despite living in a different city, state, country?

We are multi-dimensional beings, and with the use of technology, there are so many ways to form relationships, and share resources. I think the ‘community’ is any space you find yourself in, which means that mutual aid is something you are always able to engage in. Whether it’s feeding the homeless guys who hang out by the intersection, or dropping a few bucks in a trans kid’s venmo, mutual aid is so much easier.

But what if that feels so inconsequential? It’s not! But it does, from time to time, feel like the problems of the world are so big, and that you and so many you know are suffering in ways you wish you could help. Well, community organizing is always happening somewhere, online and off. It becomes important to join up with others in order feel like we can actually make a positive impact on the lives of others. We don’t have to wait on a government who’s interest isn’t ours, don’t have to wait for some politician to fail on a promise to Make Things Better.

We have each other, and we are all we really have. At the end of the day, all of our concepts are man-made. COVID-19 showed us how drastically things could be different if the people in power made decisions that actually benefited us. A lot of us understand the need to do something. Capitalism says that competition is what drove human kind into evolution, the fight for survival in a meaningless, terrifying world. Anarchism, as I’m learning, throws the whole idea in the trash where it belongs.

Peter Kropotkin, whose been called both the Godfather and Santa Claus of Anarchism, penned in Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902), “under any circumstances sociability is the greatest advantage in the struggle for life.”

We are better off together. Capitalism and the property relationships in our compulsively monogamous society try to tell us other wise. We don’t have to follow that model.

Other Words:

To Mudshop (v.) is to build a mudship with a particular person, organinzation, or community; Mud-shopping (v.).

A Mudshipper (n.) is an individual in a mudship of any scale.

I’ve said a lot. I hope this reads as accessible to as many people as it can be. I built this because I want to tell the people in my life why I love them as dearly as I do. And that I’d love to build relationships with as many awesome, lovely people as I can.

If you try to use the words Romantic and Platonic while you look at this post, and find it almost impossible, I’ve done my job.

I hope those words die along with oppressive ideas they uphold.

426 notes · View notes

butyouvealwaysbeenthecaretaker · 3 years

Text

There's something I'm trying to put into words,

about the discomfort of straight women who are very into slash and yaoi. It's been bothering me in a quiet way for a while, and then over the weekend it exploded, and I'm trying to pick my way through pain constructively.

There's a couple of things.

~*~

Point zero is that desire is good, actually, and so is fantasy. Keep this in mind, we'll come back to it.

~*~

The first thing is shame. People who are choosing to approach their own desire from the side, not willing to recognise their own bodies or vocalise their desire in their own voice, or think about sex in which their bodies participate. People who are too afraid to work on their own liberation, so take yours.

After all, feminist sexual writing is a whole genre and tradition. The only reason why queer men's liberation feels appealing to these women is that they have nothing at stake in it: it's fantasy, it's safe, it's nothing to do with or about them.

For actual queer men, the process of liberationary sex writing is - of course - mortifying; or there is a stage of mortification and pain one experiences in approaching it. It is not, and never will be, your safe space; that's why you're trying to transform it into one.

~*~

The second thing is privacy. I'd wake up and log on and there would be a full-flown gigglefest about sex in slash, and not being able to quite put my finger on how to say - this is making me feel bad and weird. And in retrospect, this picks up on point 1. Whose bodies are we sexualising in this space. I want to go back and start a conversation about how I prefer girl-on-top and how people who read missionary fic are gross, and hey when you read Barbie/Ken fic, do you see them mostly doing it doggy style?

Because I think that would make-it-real, for these women to feel their own bodies are at stake and being scrutinised in the conversation.

Making my morning coffee, I wonder what kinds of sexual relationships these women have, and if they know that "gay missionary" isn't this abstract concept that appears in fanfiction but a kind of sex they have all the right anatomy to experience for themselves. I suspect they would not like that, and that also the purpose of these conversations is specifically so that nobody envisages them having sex, or being sexual beings.

~*~

The third is experience.

A. thinks that it's a problem that teenagers watch gay porn. (A. wrote her dissertation on gay porn.) A has never had her rights removed on the basis that the world must be made "safe for children".

B thinks there's too much gross stuff in fanfic and it should be banned. B has never experienced fanfic archives removing LGBT material under the aegis of child-protection and removing what is "gross". B has never experienced a reasonable-sounding expansion of anti-kink laws being used in the vaccum where anti-gay laws once stood, the way they disproportionately target queer porn, or are used to harass sex workers, or arrest queer people.

C thinks that anyone who has a gross fantasy, is a hair-trigger away from actually hurting somebody. C is cisgender, and will never be arrested in a bathroom or have her body regarded as inherently a gross sexual fetish. C does not date women, and has never come to learn that a fist may be more easy to take than a kiss, when you are made to feel disgusting for desiring love. C is also asexual - the shame associated with having a sexual expression of any kind is not on her radar. C does not experience gender dysphoria, and had to wrestle with the downright odd things you brain does to manage a libido and an incoherent body all at once. C has never dated someone who survived the peak of AIDS, and has formed intimate connections between blood and sex and death, forged by decades of homophobic media and law. C. cannot tolerate the concept of erotic horror because she has never been made to experience her own body and desires as horrifying.

All these women spend all their free time making stories about imaginary gay and crossdressing men, talking about drag race, and sylvester.

This is not dissonant to them. As we have said, these women see queer man culture as a a place of safety - an escape from patriarchy and their own discomfort. They are unable to comprehend queer expression as a thing that is not safe.

They are very certain that they can tell the difference between a sexual expression that is gross and nongross; and hurting the gross is therefore OK, because punishing perverts will never be co-opted in their soft-focus world of tender coffeshop AUs and gentle longing and having the right kind of gay sex that is photogenic for women to consume.

~*~ A corollary: these things are not for you. What if we defined queer media - one of many possible definitions - as a thing that excludes. Their defining quality is a conversation between queer artist and queer listener, drawn from the conversations the artist had with their friends and lovers, or conversations with the world which anyone within the wall will find familiar.

I am suddenly, humbling-ly and viscerally aware of where the *don’t like white people who like ballroom culture* people are coming from

~*~

The fourth thing is that broader conversation about women with privilege (whiteness, class, straightness), being unable to consider that their behaviour could ever be dangerous or destructive.

Their own narrative of sexual victimhood and shame is central in their own hearts, and they are incapable of adopting an intersectional perspective which adds nuance to their experiences.

~*~

And the fifth is how much they hate you when you try and bring actual queer politics into their fragile world.

Simultaneously asking, on the one hand - could we make this space safe for work again, so it feels a little less like it does now? and being howled at, as if that's an outrageous restriction on their right to talk about pornography.

And on the other, if we are to be a porn conversation place, can we try and rethink the judgemental "anyone who likes weird sex is a threat" attitudes that come up over, and over, and over again.

Needless to say, the needle for "this man is a sexual predator" fired in under 30 seconds and, shortly after demanding I leave the community I established, nobody has spoken to me since.

~*~

There's a particular soreness, I think, of being around people who want to casually chat about drag and feel like Born This Way is theirs and want to PM you about their dissertation on gay porn studios of the 1970s and stan the Marquis de Sade

but cannot take the reality of being around queer people or their lives.

An ugliness, a grossness, a grossness that compounds the passively "being treated like a sexual object" into an active bar on having sexual subjectivity. A be seen but not heard of the bedroom: be seen, a Bowie-chiselled Velour-glamoured Cowley-sparkling Velvet Goldmine vision;

but not heard, as in, don't ever cross that line into talking about real sex in our fantasies (even when our fantasies are your real sex), and don't ever make us consider that our words have weight.

I'm spending time in a little world with women who like Interview with a Vampire, the Company of Wolves, David Lynch and the Marquis de fucking Sade, and who are so fragile around their own fears of desire that they cannot tolerate someone saying - it's fine to be into stuff, and not be ashamed.

This odd middle space, where on the one hand I am comfortable in spaces which are sexually silent - where the horror and challenge of my body and life never come up; and on the other, I am comfortable in spaces which are radically sexually open, in which no-one need feel afraid or judged.

These women, on the other hand, want something else: this desire to talk about sex billowing out of them, irrepressably, but also to use that freedom to box other sexualities down tight - to judge, to shame, to define themselves coyly by describing others as disgusting, to feel that urge spilling into view only to publically run away from it and demand others do the same.

Erotica, without wanking. Desiring men, without women. Thinking about the sex lives of your toy dolls, but not being into that weird stuff. Fantasies, with no bodies. Male sexuality, with no actual men in it.

~*~

I am the last of three queer people who has left that community; and still, I imagine, the "define our own sexuality in coded ways by judging things we are not as gross, and creating in the gaps around our own bodies and desires a world of gay men who are like I wish to be" conversations are going on; but unobserved by any actual queers who might break the fantasy.

And reader, I liked these people. I'm heartbroken.

#longreads #responses welcome but reblog with care #I have this lovely little note I was sent last week from one of them saying how much they appreciated the work I'd put in to making such a n #nice community #The bedroom politics tag #the feminism tag

24 notes · View notes

bloodraven55 · 4 years

Text

“But Bumbleby was rushed/forced to pander to the gays—”

There are a number of glaring flaws in this argument, most of all the fact that no straight relationship is ever called “forced” or “pandering” even if people don’t like it, let alone “rushed” when it’s only on the verge of officially happening seven seasons into the show, but I want to break down all of the many levels on which it’s wrong in order to hopefully kill it once and for all.

“It came out of nowhere—”

Jaune was crushing on Weiss the second he saw her, Sun was crushing on Blake the moment he saw her, Pyrrha developed feelings for Jaune in just one Volume and showed some interest from the moment she saw him, and Blake goes from being consistently annoyed at Sun throughout Volumes 1 and 2 to suddenly having a crush on him in Volume 3.

If Bumbleby supposedly “came out of nowhere,” then so did W/hite Knight, A/rkos, and B/lacksun. But no one ever has an issue with the speed at which those characters started having romantic interest in each other. And I’m not even saying they should—they’re all very valid ships and whether they came out of nowhere or not isn’t the point of this—but there’s a clear double standard applied to same sex ships as opposed to heterosexual ships here and it invalidates this point right out of the gate.

“It was rushed—”

Blake and Yang are only just now close to becoming an official couple after more than six whole Volumes of knowing each other. There is no possible universe where this would qualify as “rushed.” Again, W/hite Knight and B/lacksun albeit both one-sided at least to begin with both became obvious things within literal episodes of the characters meeting, and Jaune and Pyrrha were showing blatant romantic interest in each other by Volume 2 before kissing in Volume 3.

In the last case you can argue that it went at a faster pace because Pyrrha was going to die, but that doesn't change the fact that no one complained that it went too quickly—or about the other two ships I mentioned which were both initially based solely on one (1) instance of a guy showing interest in a girl—and yet people say it’s too soon for Blake and Yang to get together when they’ve had over twice as long for their relationship to develop.

“The shippers forced it into the show—”

I don’t think I even need to add any more here when the words of CRWBY speak for themselves.

“Toxic shippers think everything is gay—”

I mean, I’m gay and I only truly ship a handful of the possible same sex pairings in the show—certainly far from the majority of them—and I also ship a number of straight ships, but go off I guess.

I already made a post on this here, but it’s insanely dismissive and ridiculous for heterosexual people i.e. the ones who usually use this “argument” to assume that they know better than actual LGBT+ people what is or isn’t good LGBT+ representation, and for them to assume that just because they missed build up that it therefore isn’t there.

I can’t take someone seriously when they go into a discussion determined to believe that they’re already right and don’t listen to a word you say to prove otherwise, especially when they’re debating on a topic which doesn’t directly affect them and which they don’t have the same level of firsthand knowledge of.

“The wasps only care about Blake and Yang getting in each other’s pants—”

Actually, it’s the people who are most aggressively against Blake and Yang being a couple that tend to reduce their relationship to being entirely about sex even though they haven’t had a single remotely sexual interaction in the show, but if this were true then surely Bumbleby shippers would be very unhappy with the show because Blake and Yang have still not “got in each other’s pants,” or “swapped clit juice” as I once saw someone tastefully describe it?

But that isn’t right. Because in general us Bee shippers are currently exceedingly happy with everything that’s happening in the show to do with Blake and Yang’s relationship. So how can that be if all we care about is whether they fuck or not?

The answer is of course that we don’t only care about whether they fuck or not—in fact most of us couldn’t care less whether it’s ever so much as hinted that they have sex, both because the show almost certainly won’t ever go there and because that isn’t our priority—we’re just enjoying watching them fall in love.

Honestly this argument is one of the most lazy because one look at RWBY will tell you that none of the romances are at all sexual thus far so any shippers who truly only care about that aspect wouldn’t stick around very long when they’ll just end up disappointed. And of course the way that these people inherently view same sex relationships as sexual is homophobic and disgusting too.

“CRWBY rushed it to give the rabid shippers what they want—”

Like the last two points, this is a “criticism” that I’ve only ever seen levelled at same sex ships and never straight ships, so it’s yet another example of double standards and hypocrisy, but that’s only the start of what’s wrong with it.

The most galling thing about this is that these people insist that all LGBT+ people because as I’ve already mentioned that is always the group which statements like this are aimed at just want to see two characters of the same gender make out as soon as possible, which is simply not true.

No one would ever claim that straight people just want to see a man and a woman get it on as soon as possible and dismiss the worth of a straight relationship because of it. So it’s ridiculous to try and force that logic onto shippers of same sex ships, who are primarily LGBT+ people themselves.

If anything, we care even more about the quality of our ships—how healthy they are, whether they’re well built up or not, etc.—because we hardly have any to begin with in comparison. If one straight ship is rushed or poorly written, then there are plenty of well-handled ones to choose from instead, but the same isn’t the case for same sex ships.

We want to be represented well, which means that we want healthy relationships with plenty of development where the characters actually have chemistry and complement each other. We might still support rushed or badly-written same sex ships sometimes because it’s still representation which we are overall sorely lacking, but we don’t want them.

“But they ship baited with Blake and Sun—”

First off, straight ships can’t be baited the same way that same sex ships can. It’s simply not a comparable situation. But of course B/lacksun shippers are entitled to feel disappointed that their ship didn’t become canon. That’s utterly valid and understandable. However, that doesn’t mean that the writers or the show in any way misled viewers regarding what was happening.

“But Sun winked at Blake—”

And Yang also winked at Blake in Volume 2 while asking her to the dance, just like Sun winked at Blake in Volume 1 and then asked Blake to the dance. And Blake turned Sun down when he asked initially, specifically told him that they were only “technically” going together when she ran into him outside, and told him definitively that she had chosen to give her first dance to Yang.

“But Blake blushed at Sun—”

And now she’s also blushed at Yang, in a far more intimate scene at that. Next point.

“But Sun met Blake’s parents—”

And? Simply meeting someone’s parents doesn’t on any level automatically imply romance. Ghira didn’t even like Sun, and while a lot of people like to claim that Kali “ships it” which would be extremely flimsy evidence to base the canonicity of a ship on anyway, she’s someone who would do the same with anyone Blake brought home so it means nothing. If Blake had actually chosen to take Sun home with her herself then this would be a valid point, but she didn’t, so it has no weight whatsoever overall.

“But Blake kissed Sun on the cheek—”

And I kiss my mother on the cheek the exact same way every time I say goodbye to her. If you think that type of kiss on the cheek has to be romantic then quite frankly I’m not sure what world you’re living in. If the camera had been close up, if there had been any shots at all of their reactions, any blushing or lingering looks, a more private setting— literally anything to give it some actual weight and make it feel significant, then this might mean something, but it’s framed as a totally platonic goodbye with zero romantic coding.

And that’s without even mentioning the fact that right after that moment Sun flat out states that his time with Blake was “never about [romance],” which sort of kills the idea that anything about that scene was supposed to be taken as romantic. There was no reason to include that line except to make it clear to the audience that Sun and Blake parted ways as friends who now have no intention of ever becoming anything more.

Seriously, if they wanted us to think that there was still something there, then Blake would have been shown to be thinking about or missing Sun even one since they separated, but he hasn’t been brought up for even a second. If they wanted to set up a continuation of anything romantic for them when the group reach Vacuo, say, then they would have started doing it by now.

Plus the reverse argument that Blake and Sun have never hugged or held hands—both of which Blake and Yang have done multiple times—works just as well, perhaps even better since handholding is a well-established romantic cue in the show already thanks to A/rkos, R/enora, and O/zma and Salem.

“But why was Sun even there in Volumes 4 and 5 then—”

Because Blake needed a friend who she could exposition to about her thought processes and personal problems so that the audience could understand what she was going through, and she wasn’t as likely to open up to her parents about that stuff right away when she was convinced they’d hate her for leaving.

Sun was there to support Blake as she developed and to tell her that running away hurt the very people she was trying to protect. That was his narrative role in that arc. There was nothing to indicate that a romance was being built in those more than twenty episodes they spent together and if it was going to happen that would have been the time to do it.

On the other hand Blake and Yang’s shared arc together is built on the fact that Blake’s romantic ex, who Blake had already directly contrasted with Yang and whose Semblance was already a foil to Yang’s, maimed Yang specifically because Blake loves her. The basis of that arc has romantic weight, which is what makes the difference here. Though the scene at the end of Volume 3 where Adam takes Yang’s arm isn’t romantic in and of itself, I should clarify, it just has romantic significance in that it makes it clear that Blake and Yang’s feelings go beyond mere friendship.

In short, the summary of this whole section pretty much boils down to: two characters spending time together doesn't inherently equal romantic development, and it isn’t in any way “baiting” if those two characters don’t then get together.

The characters’ feelings follow a fairly logical progression over the course of the show, with Blake showing interest in both Sun and Yang in V1-V3, then ceasing to show interest in Sun after that as their relationship becomes totally platonic by Volume 5/the beginning of Volume 6 at the very latest, while the events of the Fall of Beacon only solidified how strong her feelings for Yang were and once she reunites with Yang their relationship begins to head towards romance.

It’s a pretty realistic depiction of how human feelings work, and a far less messy situation than in a lot of other shows where there isn’t the same massive level of hatred and vitriol towards the “victorious” pairing, because this was never even really presented as a love triangle or rivalry.

To conclude, I just want to list some of the contradictions that I’ve seen within the arguments made against Bumbleby, because I think it’s very telling that the people who are against it can’t even settle on one coherent narrative on why it’s bad.

“Bumbleby has no development, but also the show focusses too much on Bumbleby.”

“Monty wouldn’t have wanted Bumbleby—it goes against his vision—even though I didn’t know him and have no idea what his vision actually was, and he explicitly stated that he wanted LGBT+ characters in the show who might already be in the main cast and that he wanted Blake and Yang to have a shared arc together, as well as being responsible for the set up of that arc with Blake and Yang being introduced as Beauty and the Beast while Adam canonically represents Gaston.”

“The Bumbleby shippers have so much influence that they forced the writers to make the ship canon, but they’re also just a vocal minority who don’t matter.”

“Blake and Yang hardly interact—they’re barely even friends—but they also interact too much and it’s making Bumbleby take over the show.”

“Arryn is a victim of the toxic wasps who harrassed her and sent her death threats for saying that the song Bmblb doesn't automatically make the ship canon, which there is zero evidence of, but Arryn is also an unprofessional cunt for expressing her support of Bumbleby.”

“None of Blake and Yang’s scenes together are romantic so Bumbleby is forced, but even when they have undeniably romantic interactions I’ll ignore them or deny that they mean anything so I can still pretend it has no build up.”

“Bumbleby is bad because Team RWBY are a sisterhood, but all of the other straight relationships within teams—even those who’ve flat out called each other ”family”—are fine, and I’ll just pretend that there aren’t other definitions of the word sisterhood which have nothing to do with actual sisters and are the ones that actually apply in this case.”

“Blake and Yang’s relationship could be seen as romantic or platonic, but I personally think they’re just friends so Bumbleby is bad and came out of nowhere.”

I’ve seen all of these countless times with my own two eyes and it’s absolutely hilarious to be honest. Anyway that’s it. I have yet to see a single logical argument as to why Bumbleby is bad that isn’t made in bad faith, fallacious, or just doesn’t hold up when you actually look at the show. It’s about to be canon, and at this point to be honest anyone who doesn't like that can simply accept it or go and watch something else that will pander to their specific tastes instead.

#rwby #rwde #bumbleby #blake belladonna #yang xiao long #raven is salty about stuff

1K notes · View notes

pass-the-bechdel · 4 years

Text

Alias season one full review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

Seventeen out of twenty-two (77.27%).

What is the average percentage per episode of female characters with names and lines?

25.08%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Zero.

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

Three: 1.09 – “Mea Culpa” (16.67%); 1.11 – “The Confession” (9.09%); and 1.14 – “The Coup” (17.65%)

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Twenty-two. Sixteen who appeared in more than one episode, two who appeared in at least half the episodes, and one who appeared in every episode.

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Eighty. Thirty-one who appeared in more than one episode, seven who appeared in at least half the episodes, and four who appeared in every episode.

Positive Content Status:

While it could have done much worse, it could have also done considerably better. The white male perspective shines through in ways that are often individually minor but collectively major (average rating of 2.86).

General Season Quality: Mindless fun, at least the first time around. However, once subjected to scrutiny, only the performances save what is in many ways a mess.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

Alias’ first season is often considered to be among the series’ best, and it’s not hard to see why: it’s the most confident (at least on the surface), it’s the one that is most distinct from other TV shows, and features level of extravagance that is not seen in many of the future seasons. It’s also the season most in control of its various elements: while not all of them are used to their best effect, we can at least understand why they are there, and they all have a role to play. This is very often not the case with this series.

And yet, I find that season one, which I had once considered my favorite, is actually the one that stands up least well to rewatching. With the twists and turns that define its narrative having long since lost their bite, there is very little about it that is engaging in the way future seasons are. While it features elements which I wish had been kept and not abandoned, the more I rewatch, the more it becomes clear that these elements were often just not used well.

Take Rambaldi. While a lot of the fandom would eventually lose patience with the device and blame it for the series’ flagging quality, it is clear, upon reconsideration, that it wasn’t a good idea from the start. Are Rambaldi missions marginally more interesting than those that don’t involve Rambaldi? Sure—but that’s not exactly hard. The problem with those early non-Rambaldi missions wasn’t the absence of a mystery box featuring a Leonardo Da Vinci knock-off, it was that there was absolutely no resonance to them. They did not tell us anything about characters. They did not feature interesting elements. They did not further the stories that existed outside of them. However, none of these are actually inherent qualities of the stories. Having non-Rambaldi stories that did not feel as if they mattered was a choice. Furthermore, none of these problems with the early missions are actually fixed by having Rambaldi in them. Rambaldi stories are often exactly as hollow as the others—they just happen to also include The Tease, which is by definition attention-grabbing and helps make it easier to ignore other crucial things—like, for example, how meaningless it all is.

“Meaningless,” sadly, is a word that can be used to describe many of the stories this season, which could accurately be described as a twenty-two episode version of the first three quarters of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, also by J.J. Abrams—go to Place A to do Thing B, so you can then go to Place C and do Thing D, repeat ad nauseum. What does Rambaldi tell us about anything? What did Charlie tell us about Francie? What makes the C.I.A. fundamentally different from SD-6? What is the point of all this prophecy business? What’s the red ball about, and why should we care, when the series is not giving us any reason to beyond “you should care”? What is the series saying?

The closest thing the season has to a theme, as mentioned in previous reviews, is the idea that people have different faces, many of which we choose to or are forced to keep hidden for one reason or another. It’s…fine, as themes go (although it’s worth noting that Rambaldi contributes nothing to that conversation), but the season is, at best, ambivalent about it. Given how universal the thesis is, it feels very much like it should be applied to everyone, and yet this is very clearly not the case, with a very clear line between characters who get to be multifaceted and those who don’t. Additionally, a robust exploration of the theme would require a greater interest in people than the show has demonstrated; that the standard mission features the barest amount of human interaction feels like a serious misstep, and is one of the reasons why large parts of this season feel unmemorable. As crucial as Sydney’s costumes are for the series’ brand identity, the missions that facilitate them are also often the least interesting part of any given episode.

(On a related note, it’s worth noting once again that the series is also not at all interested in the various places it takes its characters to. All the jet-setting the series does exists largely to provide the barest amount of local color, and nothing else—the philosophy behind Sydney’s costumes, applied to scenery.)

One thing that is consistently interesting about season one, though, is the difference between the Sydney the writers thought they were writing and the Sydney they actually wrote. I’ve mentioned multiple times that there is a consistent sense that the writers were afraid of making Sydney a character that could be considered objectionable, in a way that led them to strip away every bit of complexity from her situation, and undermining the show’s very premise. Yes, she worked for a terrorist group for seven years, but Alias is not a redemption story—Sydney is never shown to have done anything that could be considered immoral. Yes, she’s actually still working for them now, but none of her missions actually require her to consider compromising her beliefs. Yes, her job requires her to dress much more sexily than she does when she’s not playing a role, but never that she have sex —spysex is bad. Yes, SD-6 is the most formative experience of her life as a young adult, but that doesn’t mean she’s in any way ambivalent about it or has seven years of history to recontextualize. No, she has no reason why to trust the government, but that doesn’t mean she is anything other than completely loyal to U.S. intelligence interests. A situation that is nothing but complicated edges—a woman who has turned against the institution that made her who she is because she realized it was evil and that she was facilitating that evil—is as toothless as Clifford the Big Red Ball.

(Making things worse still is that the writers don’t actually morally object to the things they contrive to prevent Sydney from doing. The scene where SpyDaddy tortures and kills Haladki is not meant to make viewers think worse of SpyDaddy—just the opposite, in fact. And this has very real implications: arguing that male characters like Jack or Sloane get to have edges and imperfections while female heroes only get to be worthwhile if they’re virginal is textbook sexism.)

This, however, isn’t to say that Sydney is flawless—but rather, that Alias, having decided to leave the natural implications of its premise unexplored, has to look elsewhere to provide imperfections. The first of these imperfections, which feels like the show’s version of the clumsy female YA protagonist trope, is that Sydney…is not smart. She’s very clever in the moment, but she is consistently very bad at long-term thinking, or at dealing with people (Alias does not care about people). While she sometimes gets called out on this—such as when she’s told her impulsive plan to quit SD-6 and still keep her normal life is impulsive and had no chance of working—it still feels exceedingly odd for a veteran spy to be thinking this way, and inexplicable in one that has been in the business for seven years and is supposedly very good at her job. That characters like SpyDaddy are, in turn, allowed to be competent in ways she isn’t make things even more baffling: if you know well enough to make your characters tactically smart, then why not allow your supposedly-smart main character to actually make tactically smart decisions?

Sydney’s lack of critical thinking mixes with the aforementioned fear of allowing her to be morally compromised in ways that further serve to undermine the character. A person who has no need to make moral compromises is much more likely to not understand the concept of compromise or moral complexity, which is very often how Sydney is written—she just loves that high horse—in a way that actively harms the series, because the series then has to warp its universe in order to fit the narrative. It makes no sense for Sydney to consider her mother to be evil for being a KGB assassin—not in light of Sydney’s own work for SD-6—unless one makes it so that her work for SD-6 was somehow not immoral or visibly harmful. Similarly, it makes no sense for Sydney to consider being lied to for large parts of her life as indefensible, given her life and how much of it is lying to others. And while Sydney is free to have feelings that are logically inconsistent or even hypocritical, the fact that she is never seriously called out on these inconsistencies strongly suggests that the writers have not spotted them either.

And so, we have a Sydney who can accurately be described as a Karen: someone who (often correctly) believes systems and rules and morals are only suggestions when they apply to her but unbreakable rules when used against those she doesn’t like, and who uses her relatively minor oppression as a way to ignore her considerable privilege, which she consistently uses for her own personal benefit. Not only is her “original” sin—telling Danny about SD-6—borne from this belief, we see it consistently in ways both major (her belief that the anti-SD-6 effort should follow her lead, even after she’d just learned that she knew nothing about the group; her attempts to secure Vaughn as her handler; her general belief that only she gets to determine who and who does not get forgiven) and minor (her blithe attempts to get an extension on classwork she didn’t do). While she’s far from the worst example of a Karen—she lacks, for example, the cruelty that characterizes those who call cops to kill Black people—she nevertheless fits the profile with shocking exactness.

And honestly, that’s fantastic.

One of the reasons I can still appreciate Alias, despite its multiple flaws, is because it’s part of a genre that is both fairly derivative and which gets a fair amount of play—the original Nikita (the 1990 Luc Besson film) begat La Femme Nikita (the 1997-2001 TV series) begat Alias (2001-2006) begat Nikita (the 2010-2013 series) and to a lesser extent Person of Interest (2011-2016)—which means that everything it’s done badly has probably been done well elsewhere. This, in turn, allows me to enjoy Alias on its own terms. I don’t really need to see Sydney the hypercompetent, empathetic super-spy—that’s what Nikita Mears is there for, and if Sydney were more like her, then she would not be nearly as memorable or fascinating.

(It helps immeasurably that Jennifer Garner is fantastic at making Sydney feel fundamentally likeable. Were it not for that, the series would have been unbearable.)

That said, that doesn’t mean that Sydney doesn’t present a problem for the show. As fascinating as Hypocritical Entitled Princess SpyBarbie is, she would be even more so as the main character in a world that reacts to her idiosyncrasies in a way that makes sense. That this is not the case is one of the season’s biggest problems. To go back to Sydney Doesn’t Kill, even if one could justify it in-universe, one would still need to explain why it goes on completely unremarked by anyone. The only explanation for that is to argue that SD-6 just has a general non-killing policy, which makes absolutely no sense. More generally, keeping the show’s version of Sydney viable means breaking the series’ moral parameters—SD-6 is terrible except when it isn’t—which further hinders the season or its attempts to say anything worthwhile.

On another note entirely, let’s talk about those Bechdel Test results. When I began working on this, I was honestly expecting this season to do far worse than it did, since I remembered the bulk of Sydney and Francie’s conversations being about the men in their lives. While this turned out to be not the whole truth, it is still largely accurate in ways that do not speak well of the season.

The Bechdel test presents, by design, a very low bar to clear. Passing is not hard to do, and it is even less hard when the main character of the work is female—you almost have to actively work at failing in order to consistently do so. And yet, this is what almost happens with Alias. Take away Francie from the main cast—which is actually shockingly easy to do, especially in the second half of the season—and the passing rate falls dramatically.

It’s also worth noting how few of the passes actually take place outside of Sydney’s domestic life. This is a serious problem! First of all, it means that the series is very often passing by the skin of its teeth, since Sydney’s domestic life is not often the focus of the series, especially as the season progresses. More importantly, it indicates that Sydney’s worlds outside the purely domestic realm are ones made up nearly entirely of men.

Now, it’s bad enough that Sydney is very nearly the only female intelligence operative in the world, in a world where even the desk jockeys are overwhelmingly male. But this goes beyond that. It’s not just that Sydney does not interact with female agents. It’s that she very rarely interacts with female scientists, female doctors, female party hosts, female corporate bigwigs (or, in college, with female professors). Why has the world of the show been set up this way?

Well, consider this: in a heteronormative world—which Alias very much is, no matter how much we all love Anna Espinosa and her no-heterosexual-explanation-for-this chemistry with Sydney—seduction is not a valid interaction between two women.

I’ve noted that Sydney’s aliases are almost never about adopting concrete personas, and instead about adopting particular aesthetics, which almost always accept the modifier “sexy”—sexy maid, sexy club-goer, sexy IT person—even when there’s no actual need for it, according to stated mission parameters. While this is, to a degree, about genre convention (sexy spies gotta sexy) there is something deeper going on here. Sydney’s aliases tend to be about being sexy because it’s Sydney’s chief interaction (whenever interaction is needed—it often is not, as mentioned earlier)—or at the very least, the use of feminine wiles is. This, in turn, is only possible because Sydney’s spy work takes place in a world largely devoid of women. It’s a vicious circle: Sydney’s missions don’t have women because sexy costumes are not needed to interact with women. Sexy costumes are needed because Sydney is always interacting with men, and the only valid interactions with them involve the possibility of sex.

Consider, in contrast, what happens with Dixon. Sydney dons costumes; Dixon adopts personas. Given that seduction is not an option for Dixon in a world with almost no women, his interactions get to be more complex—the rich person lording his privilege over the people who want his money; the cocky poker player. Heck, even Vaughn, with his limited screen time, gets to have fairly complex interactions. His alias in “The Solution” involves a more complex interaction than Sydney has ever had in the whole season, with the possible exception of…sigh…her brownface alias (which note, is also one where seduction is not available to her).

In short: Alias’ mission sequences are often so samey and uninspired because writers cannot conceive of a world in which Sydney interacts with women, or one when she can have non-sexual interactions with men. One could hardly find a better example of how sexism actively makes works worse and is inextricably linked with quality.

I’ve been fairly negative during this review so far, so it’s important to note that Alias is far from all bad. In fact, part of the reason why this season is so frustrating is because what we actually got, as disappointing as it is, is still generally so enjoyable, and makes me want the series to be its best self. So let’s talk about things I do like.

The first and foremost element in Alias’ plus column is its excellent cast, which does an incredible job of elevating writing that, as we’ve established, often does not do them any favors. Usually, bad writing results in unlikeable characters, but not here; this is actually a supremely engaging group of people, which makes the series surprisingly easy to get through. There’s no character whose presence will stop me from enjoying an episode because of the haaaaate, and that’s a rare blessing. Even Will, who has the audacity to both date his twenty-year-old intern and then very visibly not appreciate her, even when she’s great and looks like Sarah Shahi (whose Sarah Shahi-ness is 98% of the reason why the character is great; it certainly isn’t because of the way she’s written), is someone I really, really like, which is a bona fide miracle.

(Also, shout out to unproblematic favorites Dixon and Francie, who are wonderful and don’t get nearly the development they deserve.)

Something I also really enjoy about this season is its management of Sydney’s love life, which feels atypical for the genre in a way I appreciate. Both Will and Vaughn have really good chemistry with Sydney, and you could see her being happy with either. You can see why they all like each other. The pacing feels just right: neither Will nor Vaughn dither when it comes to expressing their feelings, and yet the evolution of said feelings and how they express them simmers at just the right speed. Will gets to have his feelings rebuffed and deal with them in exactly the right way (at least when it comes to his interactions with Sydney). None of their characters treat romance as the only worthwhile endgame of their relationships. It won’t last, but for now, this element of the series is very appreciated.

Finally, there is something about this season’s expansive approach to world-building, which is very appealing for reasons I can’t quite describe. As someone who’s a big fan of narratives featuring tangential storylines running in tandem, I really appreciate just how many different social circles the series establishes in a very short amount of time. It could have done better by pretty much all of them, but ultimately, I am interested and invested in the world the show has established.

In the end, though, season one’s chief asset may just be its ability to bluff, using the appearance of confidence, showmanship and excellent production values to make up for its various sins. It’s largely illusory, of course, but if you let yourself get caught up in the magicians’ misdirection, you end up with a propulsive fun experience that is also unlike anything that was going on at the time and which despite various imitators hasn’t quite been replicated since. It may not always be great, but it’s never a slog.

Alias season 1 is not the best season of the show; it’s not even among the better ones. Still, despite it significant and arguably fatal flaws, I can’t hate it—just the opposite, really. It’s a lot like Sydney Bristow that way.

#Alias #Alias Season One #Female Representation #Bechdel Test #MimeParadox

12 notes · View notes

juleswolverton-hyde · 4 years

Text

The Words upon the Window Pane | Chanyeol

Genre: Smut, Angst (only a wee bit), PwP

Pairing: Auhor!Chanyeol x Reader

Warnings: Top!/Dom!Chanyeol, fingering, unprotected wall sex (ALWAYS do it safely, lads and lasses!), subtle dom/sub themes, swearing/cussing, dirty talk, love bites

Summary: The relation between Logic and Passion is often difficult for artists and certainly so when the involved parties dabble in words. Because language has the power to conceal the truth, to say what otherwise might not be said.

The words upon the window pane.

However, one night, a mouth is brave enough to at last utter them.

And to bring about unexpected consequences.

Author’s Note: The title is derived from the play of the same name by W.B. Yeats, who is, as you may or may not know, one of my favourite poets and greatest inspirations as of late. Furthermore, this is the first EXO smut piece to be written by this wee birdy, which hopefully shall not disappoint more experienced EXO-Ls.

All in all, I hope you enjoy the work of a feather.

Making a living as an author is not easy, especially when starting out and having only a single book to one’s name. However, Voice is not merely a literary tool to use in order to be heard, since it can also realistically become audible when speaking. All in all, it remains a fluent phenomenon and so it is of great benefit to storytellers to have mastery over it. To provide experiences that ignite vivid imagery thanks to simply creating an ambience with sound when not craftily doing the same on the page. Such is the talent of the author rapidly grown popular online due to a deep voice and funny personality, thousands of women drooling over the tailored experiences provided to them on multiple platforms.

But none of them has ever gotten the real deal, their sensual emotions remaining one-sided whereas those of a newbie novelist are answered.

Sometimes.

The relationship started after the romance department of the same publishing house contracting the famous erotic writer took a bold chance by offering a contract to an unknown name having just completed a manuscript about an innocent coffee shop romance. During the meeting with the assigned editor, icy pale locks wandered into the modern cafeteria and toward the table where a conversation about the next steps towards actual publishing took place, sitting down wordlessly and merely observing. Withal, basalt irises blatantly ignored rapidly flushing rosy cheeks on the adjacent seat, focused intently on the ones across the table that tried to maintain a steady composure.

Yet it crumbled bit by bit as genuine interest was shown during a spontaneous proposal to drink coffee together sometime after the editor held a brief round of introductions at the end of the important chat, which had gained an unintentional third participant. Piece by stiff piece got chipped away over warm beverages thereafter, talking about upcoming manuscripts and the professional giving a newbie a couple of tips to not stumble and, perhaps, fall without hopes of getting up.

And were entirely smoothed out among the sheets after the daring kiss when goodbye came on the first proper dinner date, Chanyeol leaning in without hesitance to rapidly turn a chaste caress of the cheek into sin once having been escorted safely to the front door of one’s own roof.

To make a heart fall for one which is unbound, according to the rumours spoken by the female tongues which all supposedly possess a sensual experience of sorts concerning the novelist. Notwithstanding, one can talk but not say anything, let alone the truth. Withal, the gossip has expanded while being in a strange type of relationship, always being the first to propose something to do and bleached smooth strands simply agreeing if the busy schedule allows it, of course. Spontaneous proposals for a movie night or trying out a new café are one-sided, the first time drinking coffee together being the sole occasion on which it came from the distant beloved. However, during the opportunities to be together, it never fails to feel genuine.

Sincere in spite of the mouths believing it is merely about sex, warning to get out now before it is too late.

The logical ship has left the safe haven.

It is too late.

Regardless of bravely sailing in an individual sea, the doubt can never be kept at bay since it lurks as a kraken in the darker waters coming up on the journey every now and again. After all, the fans of the deep voice catering supposedly “exclusive” experiences for them would loathe the fact their imaginary lover actually has a girlfriend. Moreover, the serpents roaming the office keep telling tales that steadily grow arms and legs, each limb stemming from the period in which minds were apart.

Those spans of time increase in frequency.

Lunch grows lonelier.

Days are spent in isolation.

Reassuring words do not hold significance on the floor of the publishing house nor on those of one of our apartments on a lucky night.

No acknowledgement.

All there is, is vagueness.

Just something.

Something.

Undefinable.

Certainly not pretty or comforting.

Empty. Yes, that is the best way to describe it.

Hollow, lonely, one-sided.

Unrequited.

And it takes away the hunger at the dinner table beneath the luxurious roof, the expensive wine and home-cooked meal using high-quality ingredients holding as much inherent value as a shilling in the gutter. So the fork is put down, the bite laboriously swallowed and focus averted from the porcelain plate presenting little yet seeming too stacked.

‘Baby, are you alright?’ Head cocked to the side in wonder, Chanyeol stops mid-bite, sensing something is off.

Something.

Always something is off.

Right now, it finds a voice in a lowly muttered remark as disappointed fingers shove the still full plate and cutlery away as far as possible. The stomach can live with the stone in it, like the heart slowly freezing itself thanks to the vicious tales of betrayal can continue to exist in ice. After all, even this week’s audio consisting of ‘’sexy’’ unboxing ramblings and testing out toys sent by mistresses somewhere else is but a mere drop in the overflowing bucket. ‘I’m not hungry.’

The limit has been reached.

End of the line.

Of this.

Us.

If there even ever has been a happy chronicling couple.

‘You’ve barely eaten.’ The unsuspecting fork picks up a perfectly grilled asparagus, endeavouring the feed a soul starved of happiness. A perfectly useless attempt at making things right for the culprit knows very well what goes on behind the scenes that are enacted every time at the workplace, the little faked though credible moments of two youngsters being solely friends but perhaps a bit more. No one knows for sure, but they do assume. Gossip has a way of being heard, even when feigning to ignore it in favour of personal fantasies. ‘At least have a few more vegetables.’

‘Did it...’ A wry smile carves itself on a face which is on the edge of tears, remembering every word said at the collective coffee machine in the cafeteria alongside the lovesick comments on every digital upload and equally sensual reaction to a novel novel. How can the detailed storyteller not notice the burning water droplets searing their way to the lash line?

Begging.

Begging to fall.

To be noticed.

Because they have had to hide so bloody long in loneliness.

Denied.

A significant detail.

‘Did it mean anything?’ God forbid that the words spilt between the sheets, on dates and in secrecy in the coffee corner did not hold any meaning. Withal, knowing how writers are for the craft is part of one’s own personality, there are no better tricksters. Words can be made pretty, cunningly serving to conceal the ugly truth.

‘What? Did what mean anything? Babe, what are you on about?’ The uncomprehending gravely worried furrowed brows relax, raven irises softening as they discover the tale of the Ice Queen’s heart and damnably igniting the thawing process. Looks can kill, as is the word on the street, and the big pale wolf knows it judging by the gentle smile only reserved for his foolish mistress. ‘You’ve been listening to gossip again. Look, I’ll say it again and I still mean it. I love you, Y/N. Only you. You ought to know that by now.’

The supposedly well-meaning palm resting between the abandoned dishes is not lovingly covered, digits remaining apart instead of entwining in blissful union. Instead, the chair is pushed back as the napkin that formerly rested on the lap is viciously thrown onto the table surface. Voice is barely controlled, dangerously close to cracking yet forced to maintain steady fury. ‘Don’t fucking lie to me! I know this means nothing.’

‘Means nothing? This means nothing?’ The actions are fiercely mimicked, the pleading tone in speech overruling the fabricated calm demeanour. ‘It does, babe. It really does.’

‘Yeah, right. As if you haven’t said that to one of those horny dolls who gladly listen to their fantasy boyfriend or read about all the wonderful things you’d do to them. What did you call them again? Your honeys?’ There is no stopping the jeering guided by the incomparable ache rendering every nerve paralyzed, an alternative ego who feels betrayed rising with every second of the outburst.

In the end, she, too, is one of many.

I am nothing.

‘Babe, please-’ Agonizingly following footsteps attempt to reason, begging to stay for a proper vis-á-vis to resolve this “problem” while making their way to the hallway.

Evidently without success. ‘Oh, piss off. I’m sure you had others in the time I was gone.’ The searing tears on lashes in the wee hall finally stream down the cheeks, lost in bittersweet memories of a time ruled by naivety. When every touch was so certain of love, felt protective and was believed to be sincere.

Notwithstanding, that was then.

This is now.

‘It really meant something to me, you know? I fucking gave myself to you because I stupidly trusted you, Chan! You were my first.’ A shake of the head brings about enough steadiness to remain coherent in speech, to at least keep a total breakdown at bay a little longer. The battle is almost won, a little bit more perseverance needs to be put in before all might become actually well. ‘But I could’ve, no, should’ve known better. So fuck off and leave me alone.’

Just as a hand reaches towards the knob of the front door, a firm palm wraps painfully around the left wrist. Once that power was loved, but now it is just that: hurt.

And it wants… needs to be left behind.

To make it pay for the solitude.

The agony needs to face the consequences.

‘No.’

The pain in the shape of the man who was believed to make up the world.

Stupid.

We both only have our stories to speak honestly in because they are the sole place where it is possible to be true.

Funny how a broken heart ignites a sense of creativity to exploit and there is a sudden haste to make use of it. Or so the mind wants this to be the reason behind the futile struggle for freedom for the real reason is the simple need to get away before breaking the character of the hard-headed sneering Ice Queen and leave oneself in fragments on the battlefield. ‘Let. Me. Go.’

A vicious tug makes feet stumble away from the entryway and slam into the wall opposite the stairs, Chanyeol’s face mere inches away and obsidian irises burning with sorrowful rage that has grown from incomprehension. All acting halts at once, alarmed breath coming out ragged as the powerful gentleman is sought frantically on a quietly raging beautiful expression. ‘I won’t. Not until you finally listen to me and know who you belong to, young lady.’

Slender digits clad in a chic ink-black jacket roughly push aside underwear, unapologetically disappearing beneath the skirt to exert sexual dominance as lips powerfully nullify all chances at protest. ‘This is mine. Only mine. All I can think about these days, so much so I can’t even write without giving you a role in my novel.’

The possessive growling fuels the heat below, slowly reducing the hurtful stretch, as all vocabulary is lost in the marks left behind on the throat by stark white teeth. Miraculously, the ability to resist the temptation remains although it falters and starts to stutter in the strong secure warmth of a familiar palm at the end of the spine. ‘I- I don’t be- believe you.’

‘Who do you think is more credible?’ A rough mind-boggling thrust goes paired with the branding being interrupted to snarl against a slightly open mouth, dominant despite oddly affectionately resting foreheads against one another and chuckling as haphazard fluttery palms rest on broad shoulders. ‘The man who loves you or some women you don’t even know?’

In spite of being barely able to respond, a piece of hateful Logic remains and is capable of jeering and mocking the question that should have served to set things right. ‘But y- you could’ve fucked.’

‘I didn’t. Listen to me, young lady.’ The hand that formerly rested on the small of the lower back rises to envelop the throat, forcing a lock of gazes while enchantingly cutting off access to air. ‘Ever since we met, I’ve been yours. I’d never give anyone else a role in my novels because nobody inspires me like you do.’

‘D- Don’t stop.’ There is too much deliria to persist in protesting, each movement beneath fabric erasing the thought of resisting the platinum wolf as soon as it arises. Instead, it gives rise to memories of beautiful naive nights that make up the horror and delight of an insane mistress of letters, both inside the pages and outside.

Throwing the heart back into bittersweet love.

‘Ah, there she is. There’s the helpless little slut I know.’ With an ashamedly wet noise, slim fingers undo the bodily connection that had been greedily gone along with, leading to an inevitable displeased whine that evokes a lovely dark chuckle.

A nudge of the nose asks to follow the focus of the seemingly only sane mind, see what the writer wants to be noticed without resorting to loathsome spoon-feeding. It is all in the details, that is where the heart of the tale lies. ‘See that?’

Lashes flutter innocently as gaze wanders lower and lower to restricting dusk-shaded denim, wordlessly remarking on the considerable outlined shape that the idiotic heart and persona meant to have walked out the door greatly want to exploit. ‘Only you do that to me, Y/N.’ An almost sweet peck on the forehead turns attention upward briefly before receiving another on the lips, after which a command makes hands act in too enthusiastic desirable greed. ‘Undo the zipper.’

It takes little time nor effort to force down sturdy and elastic fabric to bare burning desire to the chill air in the hallway. And it takes even less than that very same moment to be pinned against the wall once again, thighs supported by iron hands promising to never let go, and directly connect in body and soul.

Willingly.

Beautifully.

‘Fuck, every time is like the first. I remember our, grm, hrm, first night. How you begged me to go harder-’ the speed accelerates, snarls growing more and more savage with every advance as behaviour, too, becomes wonderfully harsher, ‘rough you up. All the while acting like an innocent doe, turning me on. Mewling, pinned to the bed, forced to take me. God, I love it when you’re like that. Helpless. Powerless. Submissive.’

Every word is accentuated by an animalistic thrust, a sweet kiss on the side of the neck contrasting with the teeth leaving behind plum marks of possession at equal intervals. A low rumble of delight at platinum locks being pulled on vibrates in the buff chest lovingly keeping the spine against the wall, rejoicing in the flowing waterfall of mere meek noises.

Exactly as we were during the first night.

Loving now as we had before.

Honestly.

Snarling sweet nothings against skin while erasing every thought in the chase for the satisfaction of primal desire. When tears of analyzed sadness turned into those of unadulterated pleasure. ‘Crying as you take my cock deep inside that dripping little pussy.’

‘Cha- Chanyeol-’ There are no words to break through the haze of bittersweet nostalgia, leaving the sentence unfinished. It does not matter for all focus is turned towards reaching temporary enlightenment as fast as possible in the most savage manner.

‘Cum on that cock, baby. Cream that fucking cock.’

Any sense of resistance that somehow managed to linger, loathing Logic deeming the act wrong in every aspect and begging for liberation, is erased in an instant as the command is pressed onto firm lips.

It is wonderful.

Incredibly gorgeous.

Having Chanyeol wrap his storytelling palm around the throat once more as the other presses bodies together until there cannot possibly be any distance left. Wolfish grunts fall from cushiony lips, chanting maddening “mine, mine, mine”s, while sprinting during the final bit of the primitive race, soon reaching the white light found between shivering thighs.

Who are crying silently in a paradoxical mixture that cannot be kept alive consisting of sensual delight, heartbroken self-hatred and rage directed towards loved pale locks.

Tears to, fortunately, be noticed once reason returns enough to no longer be under the influence of the desirable beast beneath the skin. Henceforth, it is the incredible author who affectionately wipes away the droplets running over the cheeks as onyx irises soften in comprehension of pain. ‘Hey, don’t cry, Y/N. Remember what I promised you?’

A head shake shows ignorance because there have been a great number of promises until now, which is acknowledged by the low chuckle that never fails to allow the usual guard to be let down and now disrupts the quiet panting betraying a sliver of glad exhaustion. The simple sound never fails to make the chest puff a little in pride and veins to bask in a loving warmth, even after being frozen in place without hopes of crumbling thanks to the vivid rumours floating around the office. ‘I know I have promised you a lot, but one thing is that I’d never make you cry because I’d never dare to break your heart. I genuinely love you, seriously am head over heels for you. Can you believe me when I say that?’

It is hard to respond negatively when bodies are still one and foolishly trusted palms envelop the cheeks, resulting in wavering speech on the verge of cracking. Withal, a little bit of strength is gathered from the tight grip on defined biceps engraved with ink. ‘I wa- want to, but... the gossip...’

‘Listen.’ A long tender kiss muffles the sobs aching to be released alongside the gasp at the sudden hollow feeling when the physical spell is lifted. Another one asks for focus on talking things over instead of paying attention on the faint sound of liquid dripping onto the hallway tiles. ‘You crying makes me want to cry because it hurts me to see you like this. It really does, babe. And people will always talk, but, perhaps, it might help if we go public? I have an interview soon.’

‘People will think I’m only dating you for your money.’ No matter if a statement will be made, the way of thought lies outside the influence of words. Authors know this first and foremost for each sentence that is penned down fails to fully convey what might be going on in vivid imagination and thus fails to be entirely understood.

A bittersweet smile tugs on the corners of the mouth as messy snow white locks fall obscure the sight of lips drawn into a stern line speaking melancholically, mocking oneself. ‘I wouldn’t mind if you’d do.’

With more fierceness than expected, an answer to the rhetorical assumption bursts from a panicked mouth uncensored, clutching the soft fabric of clothes as if not doing so will induce an unbridgeable abyss. ‘But I don’t!’

‘I know that, Y/N. I know.’ Thumbs start to caress the sides of the face, somberly smoothing the anxious sorrow in self-reflection. ‘You know I hate losing, be it games or bets, but- but I- I-‘ Breaths grow short as tears start to brim in the corner of beautiful almond-shaped eyes. Hands fall away from the cheeks to wrap around the middle, the waist caught in a sturdy grip. Foreheads rest against each other and the arms of a claimed mistress wrap around the neck, fingertips playing with the pale strands at the back. ‘I would scorn myself if I’d lose you.’

‘You’ll lose readers if we go public.’ After all, not everyone enjoys a real life romance and certainly not those imagining one individual as their partner while he is, in truth, already faithfully bonded to another woman.

‘Doesn’t matter, I don’t care. If they’re true fans, they’ll be happy for us.’ Chanyeol’s voice has renovated its ocean deep steadiness, tiny lights appearing out of nowhere to illuminate a sudden bright cheery idea in a nightly gaze creating a bit of distance. ‘You know what? I’ll buy you a ring and a matching one for myself so everyone can see you’re mine.’ A palm shows itself from behind the small of the back to grab the left wrist and trace over the second-to-last digit. ‘To wear on this finger.’

‘You’d do that?’

‘Yes.’ The breathless chuckle is strangely melancholic yet delighted, the curious combination taking over demeanour entirely. ‘Yes, of course. Anything to keep you with me.’ The mere embrace suddenly turns into an inescapable hug, broad shoulders blocking out the world that wants to be temporarily forgotten. ‘I want you with me, only you. Please, stay with me. Here.’ The nose often kissed in the morning or cheekily out of sight of the publishing house staff nuzzles the side of the neck, whispering against the warm skin. ‘I want you to move in.’

‘Is that a wish or a command? I’m my own person, you know?’ The weak attempt at humour is seemingly appreciated, Chan tangibly chuckling before sighing in relief when being kissed on the top of the head.

‘There she is, there’s my good clever girl.’ Foreheads come to rest against each other once more in the air scented by whatever remains of dinner, perspiration and our perfumes combined, creating a weird musky howbeit fruity undertone. The chin is lifted by a curled finger after calmly being put to rest against the wall instead of being fully at the mercy of the writer’s engraved arms. ‘But you know very well what I mean, young lady.’

‘I do,’ fingertips bashfully run over the side of the storyteller’s neck, leaving behind a growling trail of anticipating goosebumps before rising to comb through pale strands, ‘sir.’

‘Don’t.’

A peck.

‘Tease.’

A kiss.

‘Me like that.’

Lip caught between teeth.

And freed once having clearly asserted dominance. ‘I’m yours.’ Although the inquiring peck on the cheek does not partake in the sensual teasing but is severe in character. ‘And you’re mine?’

Catching on to the need for credibility, the erotic novelist acknowledges it while sweetly yet sincerely murmuring. ‘Entirely yours. Not just in stories or audios, in real life as well. As long as possible, until we no longer breathe. This I promise.’

And thus this part of our tale ends, the fragment of the middle part leading to the end.

Of that which ink cannot fully capture on paper, in sounds or on skin.

Withal, it is not necessary because we have each other for inspiration and retellings.

Musing.

In love.

In medias res.

#ksmutclub #EXO #EXO smut #EXO x Reader #Chanyeol #Park Chanyeol #LOEY

68 notes · View notes

official-transsexual · 5 years

Text

FAQ

(last updated September 11, 2019)

Q: What is dysphoria? A: Dysphoria is a diagnostic term meaning “profound distress or discomfort.” It is a common symptom of many psychiatric disorders. It's been used this way for over a century (example 1, example 2, example 3). “Gender dysphoria” refers to dysphoria that occurs as a result of incongruence between a person’s assigned sex and gender identity. To meet the diagnostic criteria for the psychiatric disorder “Gender Dysphoria” the DSM-V specifically states that the incongruence must cause “significant distress or problems functioning.” Sex/gender incongruence that doesn’t cause this distress or dysfunction is NOT considered disordered.

Q: I was told that the APA defined gender dysphoria as “conflict between a person’s physical or assigned gender and the gender with which he/she/they identify.” A: This particular line is a quote from a page on the APA website that was meant to briefly summarize the diagnostic criteria for Gender Dysphoria. It is not the full diagnostic criteria, which is described further down the page. Along with the checklist of traits, the diagnostic criteria for both children and adults include “distress or inpairment functioning” as specific necessary condition: “In adolescents and adults gender dysphoria diagnosis involves a difference between one’s experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender, and significant distress or problems functioning [...] In children, gender dysphoria diagnosis involves at least six of the following and an associated significant distress or impairment in function, lasting at least six months.” Again: that “distress or problems functioning” criteria is mandatory; this is why the line meant to summarize gender dysphoria uses the word “conflict” instead of a more neutral term like “incongruence” or even “difference.” The APA’s endorsed expert opinion on the subject states more explicitly that “not all transgender people suffer from gender dysphoria.” According to members of the APA workgroup responsible for writing the Gender Dysphoria diagnostic criteria, the term “dysphoria” was chosen based on the logic that “if the new diagnosis would focus more on the dysphoria aspect (e.g., in the name) than does the current one, no separate distress criterion would be necessary, because the distress would be defined as inherent to the diagnosis” (sci-hub pdf). Note that they ended up keeping the distress criterion in the diagnosis despite the redundancy, presumably because they were afraid that it might not be clear enough that they were referring to distress while using a medical term that literally means “significant distress.” The exact DSM-5 criteria (which I transcribe here) further makes it clear that gender dysphoria requires distress, rather than simply gender incongruence.

Q: Why does it matter how we define dysphoria? A: It’s a matter of relevance. When discussing gender dysphoria in the context of the medical model, the relevant definition is the one that gets used within the medical system.

Q: But what if we worked to change the medical definition of gender dysphoria? A: I’ve see this idea brought up in my notes a few times, and it’s honestly just a terrible idea. The overpathologization of distress responses is a huge concern within psychology, and it’s one of the reasons the medical definition of gender dysphoria is so limited. Extending that definition to include things like “feeling bad when you’re mistreated” is, at best, a step backward.

Q: What makes a person transgender, if not dysphoria? A: An incongruence (mismatch) between their gender identity and their assigned sex category.

Q: How can someone know they're trans without dysphoria? A: Many non-dysphoric trans people cite "gender euphoria" as their main clue. Others simply describe feeling a strong desire to be a certain gender that differed from their assigned gender.

Q: Isn't that just dysphoria? A: No. As I've already pointed out, dysphoria is a diagnostic term referring specifically to profound distress. While it's certainly common for these other signs of gender incongruence to be accompanied by distress or discomfort, these are not themselves always inherently distressing experiences. The very epicurian idea that gender euphoria is simply a result of gender dysphoria is a false dichotomy based on a zero-sum understanding of pain and pleasure.

Q: Does this mean being transgender is a choice for non-dysphoric trans people? A: No. While all of us, dysphoric or otherwise, have a choice in what labels we use & which identities we claim, the process through which gender identity is formed is incredibly complex and not incredibly well understood. Non-dysphoric trans people may have less incentive to come out or transition than those of us who do experience dysphoria, but this isn't the same thing as choosing to have a transgender identity.

Q: Why would someone who’s 100% comfortable with their body transition? A: First off, most people aren’t 100% comfortable with their bodies, and there’s a wide range of experiences that exist between” complete and total comfort” and “significant distress.” Non-dysphoric trans people seek out medical transition for various reasons, including legal barriers to social transition (eg medical requirements to update ID), feelings of euphoria associated with specific traits, or simply a desire to present in a way that is more congruent with their identities.

Q: But why would non-dysphoric trans people seek out treatment for a condition they don’t have? Isn’t that like a doctor prescribing chemo drugs to someone without cancer? A: Many people- cis and trans alike- take HRT for reasons other than treatment of a disorder, including preventive care against future poor health or the potential for quality of life improvements. As of 2016, an estimated 1.67% of adult men under the age of 65 were making insurance claims to cover testosterone supplements, most of whom are cis men; the authors note that men over the age cutoff of the paper were expected to use testosterone supplements at higher rates due to age-related hypogonadism (in this case, the natural, non-disordered decrease in testosterone production cis men experience as they age). Additionally, doctors actually do prescribe chemo drugs to people without cancer fairly regularly, it’s called “off-label use.” A common example of this is Methotrexate, a chemotherapy drug which is regularly prescribed to treat noncancerous conditions like rheumatoid arthritis and ectopic pregnancy. Hormonal transition is itself considered an off-label use of HRT, regardless of whether the person transitioning is dysphoric

Q: What sources say that you don’t need dysphoria to be transgender? (Note: this list is not intended to be exhaustive) A: The American Psychiatric Association explicitly says that dysphoria is not necessary “ Not all transgender people suffer from gender dysphoria and that distinction is important to keep in mind. Gender dysphoria and/or coming out as transgender can occur at any age.” The World Health Organization's ICD-10 acknowledges the existence of non-dysphoric trans people with its description of "transsexualism" as "usually accompanied by a sense of discomfort... or inappropriateness." The American Psychological Association: “A psychological state is considered a mental disorder only if it causes significant distress or disability. Many transgender people do not experience their gender as distressing or disabling, which implies that identifying as transgender does not constitute a mental disorder.” The American Academy of Pediatrics describes gender dysphoria as a potential consequence of being trans: “ Some youths experience gender dysphoria when the incongruence between assigned sex at birth and asserted gender identity becomes so distressing that it impairs the youth in school, relationships and overall functioning... However, there is no evidence that risk for mental illness is inherently due to a gender-diverse identity.” The Canadian Paediatric Society provides this definition of Gender Dysphoria: “Describes the level of discomfort or suffering associated with the conflict that can exist between a person's assigned sex at birth and their true gender. Some transgender children experience no distress about their bodies, but others may be very uncomfortable with their assigned sex, especially at the start of puberty when their body starts to change.” The World Medical Association cites the APA definition of dysphoria: “The WMA asserts that gender incongruence is not in itself a mental disorder; however it can lead to discomfort or distress, which is referred to as gender dysphoria (DSM-5).” WPATH states that "the criteria currently listed for [Gender Dysphoria] are descriptive of many people who experience dissonance between their sex as assigned at birth and their gender identity... The DSM-5 descriptive criteria for gender dysphoria were developed to aid in diagnosis and treatment to alleviate the clinically significant distress and impairment that is frequently, though not universally, associated with transsexual and transgender conditions” (emphasis added).

Q: I was told the American Psychiatric Association isn't trustworthy, so why do you use it as a source? A: I've written a big post here analyzing criticism of the APA (and particularly, their handling of trans identities); the short version is that the APA has been very heavily criticised in the past for supporting many of the same positions truscum advocate in favour of today. While the APA & DSM aren't perfect, they aren't exactly the mess truscum claim they are either.

Q: What about brain scan research? Doesn't that prove dysphoria is required? A: No. Brain sex research in interesting, but the results are nowhere near as clear-cut as many people believe. Yes, there's been studies that have observed similarities between the brains of dysphoric binary trans people and cisgender people who share their identities. This is correlational research that can't be used to infer causation without further evidence, and researchers still aren't sure what exactly it means. There's also the problem of attempting to apply a body of research to non-dysphoric trans people that includes few, if any, results from non-dysphoric trans participants.

Q: How can someone transition without a dysphoria diagnosis? A: Depending on where you are, there may be clinics in your area that operate on an informed consent model of transition. Unlike the traditional gatekeeper model of transition, informed consent models allow anyone who is competent to make their own medical decisions to receive transition care. Note that this does not mean that they block (or should block) mentally ill people from transitioning, even those with delusional disorders; instead, this is about ensuring that a transitioning person is capable of understanding the changes to their body that transition care would lead to, and minimizing the risk of a crisis during a dangerous situation.

Q: What about John Money/David Reimer? Is this evidence that gender is not actually a construct? A: John Money was a conversion therapy advocate who believed that he could force a child to identify with the gender of his choosing, and that there was no point in someone identifying as male without a functioning penis. Nothing about this disproves the idea that our genders are constructed, though it does demonstrate that the process of gender construction is beyond human control, at least on an individual level. Some of the terms Money coined may still be in use, but his claims about being able to force children to identify as a specific gender are pretty thoroughly rejected outside of the conversion therapy crowd. Additionally, bringing up the fact that certain terms were coined by Money without recognizing that those terms are currently used in a context that otherwise rejects his views is often used as an attempt to poison the well.

Q: What does "radscum" mean? A: it's an old term for the category of rad/fem than includes what we now call "TE/RFs" and "SW/ERFs." It was still commonly used when the term "truscum" was coined to refer to post-HBS transmedicalism. In the communities I was active in, the term "truscum" caught on specifically because of how it reflected the relationship between the two groups (transmeds and radscum have a long history of co-operation, regardless of how any individual truscum today feels about that).

Q: Is it true that the person who coined the word “tucute” was a cis woman pretending to be trans? A: No, it’s not.

Q: Why did you remove my response with sources from the replies of your post? A: I didn’t.

Q: Will you promo my discourse blog? A: Sorry, no.

Q: Will you promo my fundraiser? A: Please add a link to this post as a reblog or comment instead of messaging me. About the mod:

Q: what are your pronouns? A: Ey/em (like “they” without the “th-”)

Q: Why do you call yourself "transsexual"? A: I've been using the term transsexual for myself for roughly a decade, and I refuse to give it up because some kids decided they own that word now.

Q: Do you ID as queer? A: That's one of the labels I use, yes.

Q: What other identity labels do you use? A: I'm being intentionally vague about certain aspects of my ID on this blog because it's interesting to watch what assumptions truscum make, but in general I'm neither straight nor cis & I use a variety of labels depending on the context I'm speaking in and the information I'm trying to communicate to my audience.

Q: How old are you? A: Over 30 (which is part of the reason why I stick to responding to people who interact with me first instead of seeking out bad posts to argue against)

#faq #ReadTheFAQ #op

770 notes · View notes

weather-witch · 5 years

Link

Maybe we could find common ground if you knew what we stood for.

It has been a while since I was sufficiently frustrated to sit down and write a bit by bit response to a piece of writing, but here I am baffled at how utterly misunderstood our position as gender critical feminists is. However, it is not my frustration nor my bewilderment that has me writing this tonight after sitting in Auckland traffic for over an hour. Nope. It is a pathetic skerrick of hope I have that if people who have expressed so much hate for us can be so fundamentally wrong about what we stand for then perhaps if they learnt the truth we could find just a little bit of middle ground.

Gotta love a trier, right?

The piece is What is ‘Gender Critical’ anyway? On essentialism and transphobia by Danielle Moreau — hopefully I can help her find out.

Transphobes are having a moment in Aotearoa. Attempts to pass a bill allowing transgender people to change the sex on their birth certificates without having to go through the courts have been met by vigorous opposition from a small but well-organised group of Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs) or — as they would rather be called — ‘gender critical feminists’. These activists, who probably number in the dozens rather than thousands, have been joined on social media and petition websites by a large contingent of overseas allies, most notably from the UK. In the process, we have learned of the existence in that country of a trans-exclusionary subculture that has been radicalised by, of all places, the parenting forum Mumsnet.

First of all, thank you. Our campaign to halt the BDMRR Bill and sex self-identification was hard work and I appreciate that you could see how well organised it was. However, the persistent myth that we are two ‘TERFs’ in a trenchcoat is as ever totally inaccurate. Likewise, the conspiracy theory of an army of Mumsnet poms wielding cups of tea and scary opinions is laughable. We are in contact with gender critical feminists in the UK though…and Canada…the United States, Australia, France, South Korea, Portugal, Argentina, Nigeria, and more. There is an international community of gender critical feminists because we are all fighting a lot of the same battles. We support each other; commiserate, celebrate, and share resources. We are just like any other community.

It may be a good time, then, to examine what being ‘gender critical’ actually means.

At first blush, the phrase ‘gender critical feminist’ is essentially meaningless: all feminism is ‘gender critical’ by definition. The TERF label is at least partially descriptive, since exponents of this ideology are certainly trans-exclusionary, but it may be too generous to suggest that they are either radical or feminists. Feminism is a big tent, but it is hard to welcome into it a group so dedicated to returning us to the values of the Victorians.

Feminism is at its roots (that’s where the name Radical Feminism comes from by the way) gender critical. Past iterations of feminism were entirely gender critical, but there is little that can be said to be gender critical about third wave feminism. This is why gender critical feminists reject it. We prefer the radical analysis of our foremothers. Radical does not mean wild or extreme it simply refers to “relating to or affecting the fundamental nature of something”. It is about stripping everything back and analysing the nature of female oppression. For gender critical or radical feminists our “central tenet is that women as a biological class are globally oppressed by men as a biological class.”

What makes TERF ideology reactionary rather than radical is its dedication to binary gender essentialism. The concept of gender essentialism is practically timeless, and reaction to it is key to understanding why feminist theory exists in the first place. Gender essentialism is the idea that there is an innate, immutable ‘womanness’ or ‘manness’ which expresses itself in what we consider ‘femininity’ or ‘masculinity’. It posits, for example, that women as a group are naturally more caring and empathetic and men as a group are more aggressive and clever, and — crucially — that these gendered qualities exist inherently, without societal influence. Another key aspect of essentialism is that it is often, but not always, tied to bodies and ‘biology’. So, because a lot of women give birth, gender essentialism associates childcare with women because they are biologically ‘destined’ for it.

I’ll ignore the incorrect use of the word radical for the rest of this piece and move on to the extraordinary claim that we are dedicated to “gender essentialism.” Not only are gender critical feminists not gender essentialists, we are actually the complete opposite. In our CRITIQUE of gender we are more accurately described as gender ABOLITIONISTS. There is nothing immutable about gender. It is not innate. Rather, based on thousands of years of socialisation, survival, hierarchy, and oppression, gender is the set of stereotypes and roles that we as societies have imposed on the sexes. A more accurate moniker for gender critical feminists would be “sex essentialist”. That is because we believe that it is our biological sex and our biological sex alone that makes us women. It is not the gender stereotypes that we are socialised to associate with womanhood. It is not the “empathy” or outward expressions of femininity like how we dress or style our hair. Our POTENTIAL to become pregnant is a core part of our femaleness and it is central to a lot of the experiences women have in common. I say ‘potential’ because not all women want to or are able to get pregnant. However, it is society’s perception of us as potential ‘breeders’ that brings with it some of our most acute oppressions around bodily autonomy and biological functions.

I am going to take my refutation of the assertion that gender critical feminists are “gender essentialists” a step further. I contend that it is in fact proponents of gender identity ideology who are gender essentialist. After all, it is they who think gender is so innate that someone can be born in the wrong body. They conceptualise gender as a kind of soul that exists as separate from the biology of the person. Is it not terribly gender essentialist to suggest that a man who feels an innate sense of ‘womanness’ because he is (perhaps) empathetic, nurturing, gentle, sensitive, and presents femininely, must actually be a woman? Because no man could possibly possess those characteristics and present in that way? Rather than embrace the feminine man or the masculine women, gender identity ideology would have them switch place to ‘match’ their gender identity to the ‘appropriate’ sex.

Destined for it?

Feminism’s first wave, popularly associated with the suffragists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, bought into gender essentialism in a big way. This wasn’t entirely their fault, for several reasons. They were heavily influenced by the dichotomous Victorian concept of ‘separate spheres’ for men and women — men in the world, women in the home — even if they tried to reject it in some limited ways. ‘HOUSEKEEPERS need the ballot to regulate the sanitary conditions under which they and their families must live… MOTHERS need the ballot to regulate the moral conditions under which their children must be brought up’, said the New York Woman Suffrage Association in 1915. The suffrage movement was more broadly linked to things like the temperance movement, and the temperance movement used essentialist ideas about women and their caring, empathetic natures in order to influence politics and get alcohol banned. (Alcohol was a huge issue for women mainly because they had so few other legal rights, and so drunk husbands could beat and rape them with no real recourse. We know now, unfortunately, that alcohol is not the thing doing the raping and beating.)

I have nothing to dispute here, but I will just point out that the history of the construction of public toilet facilities specifically for women is a fascinating part of the opening up of the public sphere to the female sex class.

Another reason for the first wave’s reliance on essentialism is that reliable contraception had yet to be invented. If you are not familiar with feminist theory, the cause and effect may seem quite tenuous here, but it is difficult for anyone to conceive of non-gendered, unfettered humanity if you are forced into a brood mare situation from young adulthood. As a result of these factors, among others, the first wave had painted itself into a theoretical corner with its essentialism. Buying into dichotomist ideas about gender used by patriarchy since time immemorial meant accepting hard limits. It meant accepting inferiority and never being able to achieve true equity.

I don’t agree that first wave feminists “relied” on gender essentialism. The realities of their sex (as you point out with reference to the lack of contraception) and the gender roles they enacted were simply all they knew. They weren’t using gender essentialism. It was the framework in which they existed and in fighting for a place in political life they were only beginning to peel the layers off their oppression.

With few exceptions, the second wave of feminist theory questioned and rejected gender essentialism. One of the important aspects of why the second wave was different from the first wave of feminist theory is that by this stage reliable contraception had being invented, accepted, and come into wide use. People were, for the first time, able to divorce their existence from sexual reproduction. Linda Cisler, in 1969: ‘different reproductive roles are the basic dichotomy in humankind, and have been used to rationalize all the other, ascribed differences between men and women and to justify all the oppression women have suffered.’ Feminists argued that social influence was the primary reason we assumed women were such-a-way and men were such-a-way; that men had written nearly all the history and psychology to that date; that patriarchy created hegemonic propaganda based on binary essentialist ideas. Second-wave writers were exhilarated by the newfound theoretical power to refute their inferiority, and you can feel it emanating from their engaged, emphatic, often uproarious writings.

In this paragraph, you see the beginnings of the gender critical movement. We as a movement identify far more with second wave feminism than with the convoluted nonsense that has followed. Cisler’s quote neatly encapsulates our true position on sex and gender. This is gender critical theory.

The second wave did, of course, get many things wrong. It tried to use its new powers of analysis to make ‘womanness’ many different things, theorising that women were a ‘class’, or ignoring voices that dealt with racism. Many of its ideas weren’t nuanced. Being associated with their bodies for their whole lives, and exploited within those bodies, gave some feminists from this era problematic ideas about sex and sexuality. There was also a subculture of hippy mysticism that associated the female reproductive organs with purity or power.

It is bizarre and, I cynically think, intentional that this idea of gender critical feminists as only white keeps getting rolled out. Believe it or not, when founder of race critical theory, Kimberlé Crenshaw, coined the term ‘intersectionality’, she used it to analyse the intersections of sex, race, and class, and this analysis is a core part of gender critical theory. This piece by Dr Holly Lawford-Smith explains really well what intersectionality really is and what it isn’t. We understand the ways race and class make us different while analysing how as a female class our lived experiences are unique from our male counterparts.

Call me a hippy, but I love celebrating the wonder of the female body. The world we live in is a jumble of phallic one-up-manship. The male is everywhere; our architecture, art, cultures, everything! Phalluses everywhere! I love that second wave feminists decided to do a bit of collective self love. As females we are pitted against our own body from day dot and I fail to see what is wrong with celebrating its power. To be honest, it is a bit of fun too. Having shared iconography that represents shared realities is a wonderful part of bonding as a community of any kind.

However, although feminists with uteruses or vaginas wanted to know more about them — because that knowledge had been systematically hidden or controlled by ‘men of science’ — they rejected being defined by their bodies. Binary gender essentialism was, in sum, not the primary theoretical view of second-wave feminists. In fact, second-wave theory laid much of the groundwork for our current, welcome conception of a society-wide removal of a restrictive gender binary. Karen Sacks wrote in 1970: ‘For women to merely fight men would be to miss the point. The point is to change the social order …. Perhaps for the first time in human history we are faced with the possibility of a pan-human, non-exploitative society.’ By 1986 Judith Butler had taken the ideas of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex to their logical conclusion: ‘it is no longer possible to attribute the values or social functions of women to biological necessity … it becomes unclear whether being a given sex has any necessary consequence for becoming a given gender.’

Women still don’t know enough about our bodies. Research and funding for male bodies and medicine far outstrips that for females. Simply compare the money and care that has gone into developing erectile dysfunction medication to the relative void of information on the debilitating condition endometriosis which affects approximately 10% of women. The true form of the clitoris and all its glory were not known until shamefully recently either. We have every right to be obsessed with learning about our bodies; there is so much yet to learn.

Judith Butler has a lot to answer for. Her post-modern, deconstructive anarchism is at the heart of the worst parts of gender identity ideology. Please tell me you aren’t going to quote Foucault. However, that particular quote is one of her more benign. She is right that as women we should not be valued primarily on our biological ability to bear life. Our lives need not be dictated by breeding, however, that does not erase our bodies. It does not erase the fact that society still treats us in certain ways because of their perception of our ability to become pregnant. We are still oppressed in many ways because we belong to the sex class of female.

TERFs ultimately tie rights to body parts. Their approach seems to be that, because women were originally oppressed to some extent because of their bodies, their rights should be forever tied to qualities within those bodies, when in fact the precise opposite is true. Their reactionary ideology, with its obsession with binary gender essentialism, is actively harmful to all genders. TERFs aren’t even calling back to the second wave — they’re calling back to the first wave. Their ideas are over one hundred years old, and they aren’t good ones.

This is a bizarre conclusion to draw. But I’m glad I got to the end without having to read a Michel Foucault quote so, thank you. I have a question for you, Danielle. A genuine one.

If not because of our bodies, our sex, why were and are women oppressed?

It is our bodies which have always differentiated us from men. It is the fact, as you say, that before contraception we spent our lives pregnant and in the home. It is our bodies and our potential to become mothers that sees us valued less in the workforce (as well as gendered sex stereotypes). It is because we are female that we are overwhelmingly the victims of sexual violence, but rarely the perpetrators. It is because we are female that in some parts of the world little girls have their genitals mutilated, are married off to men, and deprived of education. I am terribly and genuinely confused as to what you think sexism, female oppression, and male violence are, if not based around our respective realities as members of our sex classes. What is feminism for if not to liberate the female sex class?

This does not mean that any of this oppression is our destiny. However, we simply must know what we are fighting for and against if we are to effect change. Sex is WHY we are oppressed. Gender is HOW we are oppressed.

I really hope you read some of this at least. I’m not telling you how to think, I’m telling you how we think. You have seriously misunderstood our position on things that seem to form the basis for why you hate us. It is your choice if you wish to still paint a picture of us as the antithesis of decency, but I wanted to make sure you’re at least hating us for positions we actually hold.

My Twitter DMs are always open for respectful, confidential conversation. I welcome questions and hope that maybe some of you who are afraid to be seen engaging in taboo subjects with blacklisted people will feel comfortable to reach out privately.

We need to talk to avoid further misunderstandings.

#ani o'brien #gender critical #radical feminism #radfem #gendercritical

10 notes · View notes

loubuggins · 6 years

Text

She’s probably feeling better now, but when @nightglider124 said she was feeling under the weather, this little drabble popped in my head. Which is a first for me, as I don’t think I have ever been inspired to write anything RobStar lol. So forgive me if they aren’t perfectly in character! Anyway, I hope you like this Night and I hope you are feeling better!

Human Soup of Sickness

*~*~*

“Ahh...ahhh...chew!”

Even standing outside the door, Robin could easily hear the high pitch sneeze that came from inside a very familiar bedroom. The sound reminded him of a mouse’s squeak and that thought made his lips turn up into a small smile. Looking up at the door, he paused to listen for the voice that made his stomach jump to his throat every time he heard it. The person on the other side released a long, agonizing moan and suddenly any adorable qualities he had associated with her current state were replaced with worries.

He gripped the handle to the oversized mug in his hand and took a deep breath over the intoxicating aroma of chicken and broth that rose from the steaming bowl. His stomach growled at the smell, yearning for a taste, but he shook the treacherous idea out of his head. He would eat later. Right now, she was his first priority, even if that realization made him blush and made his body all sweaty with nerves.

Finally regaining his confidence, he lifted his gloved hand to the door while carefully balancing the cup of soup in his other. After just a quick knock, he heard her voice call through the door.

“Come in!”

Though she had raised it to ensure he would hear, it still came out strained and forced. Very unlike her normally whimsical demeanor. Robin pushed a button on the side of the door and watched it slide open to allow him entrance inside. Her bedroom was still pink as ever, with girly decorations hung all over the walls and furniture. She also had an assortment of random Earth objects that she proudly kept as souvenirs. What was strange, however, were the piles of tissues that covered her bed and slid down to the floor.

“Star?” He questioned with a look that made his mask wrinkle. He looked pointly at the mountain of soiled tissues as they shook and rolled off the bed like an avalanche. Eventually, he saw his very tired and sick friend rise from the pile she had created. Her usual glowing emerald eyes were dulled and a pink tinge outlined the corners of her eyes and puffy nose. Even in her dire state, he still felt his breath hitch in his throat at the natural beauty and soft innocence that radiated off her so easily. Her long and wild rose-pink locks were matted and sticky from sweat and she wore only a nightgown instead of her usual armored uniform. Yet she still managed to flash him a warm smile.

“Greetings, Friend Robin. I apologize for my current unhealthiness. I am beginning to think this is a human disease, for the symptoms have become more severe than as Friend Beast Boy called, a ‘Tamerian Flu.’”

Her voice was still as horse as when she welcomed him in, but she spoke as if everything was normal. It was true that when she had first mentioned she felt under the weather, she had assumed it was a Tamerian version of what they all knew to be the common cold. According to her, the “Tamerian Flu” only lasted for a few days and would not affect her daily responsibilities. All of them had been hesitant to believe her, but the warrior princess was not one to argue with. Still feeling worried when she missed a training session for the first time since they became a team, Robin had decided the sick girl could use a pick me up, and although it was a remedy for human illnesses, he assumed a bowl of warm chicken noodle soup would still feel good going down her throat.

He was still very anxious though, for he had never had to care for another person like this before, especially not a person of the opposite sex. He had depended on his memories of Alfred, his family’s butler, and used those memories to mimic what Alfred would do for him whenever he was not feeling well. That’s what gave him the idea for the soup.

His eyes drifted back to the sea of tissues covering her bed and he fought back the urge to grimace at the contaminating mess. “I’m starting to think so too.” He replied as he stepped closer to her and extended the deep mug in his hands. “I made you some soup. It should help.”

The princess peered at the foreign substance inside the bowl, then glanced up to meet the boy’s eyes that were hidden behind his mask. “Please, what is soup?” She inquired in a hushed, raspy voice.

“It’s uh…” Robin started, but he found it difficult to explain something he just inherently understood. One of the girl’s many quirks was her limited knowledge about human customs. It did, however, forced him to think about seemingly mundane things in a new light, and he welcomed the challenge of seeing things in a different perspective. It was a necessary skill to have in his line of work.

“It pieces of chicken and noodles mixed together in a broth. At this kind is. It’s meant to be warm and easy to eat. Perfect food for when you have a cold.”

She tilted her head like a confused puppy, so Robin took that as his cue to clarify. “A cold as in the human virus, not the weather.”

Her eye light up in understanding and she carefully took the bowl out of his hands and brought it to her lips. She took a deep breath over the thick, brown liquid and a relieved smile appeared on her face. “This smells delightful. Thank you for the Human Soup of Sickness.” She graciously nodded her head as she used one hand to pick up the spoon in the bowl and scooped up a blend of the contents in her meal.

The boy wonder tried his best to stifle his laughter at the phrase she used to describe his offering. “You’re welcome, Star.” He paused for a moment as she brought a spoonful of chicken and noodles to her opened mouth and took a tentative taste. He waited with baited breath for her reaction. Her jade eye widened and he heard a satisfied moan escape her lips.

“This is how you say, quite yummy!”

Robin beamed at her declaration and he stood just a bit straighter, taking pride in her praise. “I’m glad you like it Star. Is there anything else I can get you?”

She took in another spoonful of her soup, before answering him with a nod. “I am in need of some more soft paper.”

“Soft paper?” He muttered to himself as the gears in his head worked out what she had meant. “Oh, tissues! Yeah no problem. I’ll have to run into town to get some though, so it may take a bit.”

She gave another nod of head, a grateful smile on her face. “That is fine. I am appreciative of your kindness, friend.”

The fearless leader felt his cheeks burn with embarrassment and he nervously scratched the back of his head. “Of-a...of course. Happy to help!”

He had spent years training under the most stoic and vigilant detective of all time, and yet here he was reverting right back to his old nervous habits. How was she able to shake him up so badly that he forgot how to contain himself? What was it about this girl that made him act like a teenage boy with a high school crush?

“Can I, uh, get you some medicine or something? Would our medicine work on you?”

The girl responded with a shrug. “Truthfully, I do not know, but I suppose it is worth the shot?”

Robin smirked at her phrasing, but simply nodded his head. “Alright, then I’ll go pick up some tissues and some cold medicine. Until then, enjoy the soup and if you need anything, the rest of the team will be here to help.”

As the boy began to take his leave, the sound of her small voice stopped him in his tracks.

“Friend Robin?”

He looked over his shoulder and met her gaze. The mood in the room had shifted and judging by her crestfallen face and slumped shoulders, he suspected it had changed for the worst. “Yeah, Star?”

The princess dropped her gaze and stared into the soup bowl still in her hands. As innocent as she normally sounded, he had still never viewed her as weak or small. Everything about her was strong and magnificent. She was a force to be reckoned with, and she was always so full of life. It reminded him of her namesake. Nothing burned brighter than the fires of a star. Yet sitting before him, eyes distant and head lowered, she looked like an entirely different person. “I apologize for my current condition. My illness has hindered my ability to contribute to our team.”

Though her voice was strained due to illness, he knew the sorrow laced in it came naturally. He felt a sudden tightness in his chest and an urge to reach out to her, take her in his arms and do whatever it would take to bring back her cheerful smile. Instead, he gave her a sincere grin and spoke with an unusual softness in his voice.

“Hey, you don’t have to apologize for being sick. No one can control that. All you can do is focus on getting better, okay?” To add to his point he flashed her a reassuring smile.

The alien princess felt her cheeks heat up, but she knew it was not from her fever.

“I will do whatever it takes to combat this plague and I swear to be victorious in my battle.” She spoke confidently as she sat up a little straighter. He admired her tediousness, even with something as minor as a common cold.

“Alright Star, but uh, you know you can’t physically fight a virus right? It’s a microorganism that -“

“I know, Friend Robin. I was being the facetious.”

He smirked at his friend’s knowing look and realized that for all her innocence, she certainly picked up on things fast. Without another word, the boy wonder left the room, his cape billowing out behind him. It was the last thing she saw before the large metal door closed shut, leaving her alone once more. But despite being by herself in her room, she still felt oddly better than she had before. Perhaps it was just the soup.

#robstar #dickkory #robin #starfire #koriand'r #dick grayson #richard grayson #nightwing #teen titans #fanfics #drabble

46 notes · View notes

thereallyrealironman · 6 years

Text

On the three selves and worth of flow.

Ok, first of, imma DUMB teenager with a lean towards pseudoscientific Babel and general edginess so don't take all that follows as fact. it is probably wrong and I will probably revise my beliefs many times before I'm really happy with it. anyways, if y'all REALLY wanna read this shit then here it is

Ok first question, what makes someone a person. From my experience we can divide personhood/the self into two obvious and quantitatively different parts, the thinking self and the bodily self.

The thinking self is what produces thoughts and feelings, basically everything that can't directly interact with the physical world is part of the thinking self. Now, let's show the qualities of the thinking self and draw some conclusions:

1. The thinking self is inherently isolating.

This is because your thoughts can NEVER interact with the material world or other people without a medium. It can't interact with anything but itself.

2. The thinking self is omnipotent.

If you don't count Interacting with the material world then the thinking self can do whatever it likes however it likes, this power is the source of all joy in a persons Life (disclaimer: don't confuse joy with other things like meaning and exstasy, all good feelings are not joy and all joy is not always s good feeling). There is one exception I will talk of later.

Conclusion: The thinking self feels meaningless and inherently joyous.

Because the thinking self works with absolute power, absolute freedom of consequences and has no way of interacting with the bodily self all action of the thinking self often feel and always are worthless. (Note this is the fatal flaw of nihilists, they come to the conclusion that no meaning can exist because they can't find any logical meaning, the thing they ignore is that they look for meaning through an inherently meaningless and one sided lens i.e the thinking self totally ignoring the bodily self). I have already explained how it is inherently joyous under point 2.

Now let's do the same for the bodily self:

1. The bodily self is in essence constantly oppressed.

The bodily self contrary to the thinking self works under a strict set of rules that limit it, for example gravity, age, muscle and the fact that we can't change our bodies and surroundings easily and even if we do it is a shallow difference and hard to do. This leads to most of the sadness in life(disclaimer: sadness is not the only negative emotion and not all bas emotions are sad).

2. The bodily self is inherently social.

The bodily self is in a world where it always is in contact with things that are not it, everything from walls to air to clothes to other people, even if the bodily self was interacting with nothing then that nothing would be something other than your body. This lets us look at our bodies in relation to other things instead of just on it's own (phenomenology). This leads to us always having a way better knowledge of our bodies than our minds.

3. The bodily self can interact with the mind.

How the bodily self does this I will talk about later.

Conclusion: the bodily self is inherently meaningful and inherently sad.

Because the body has things to interact with other than itself, real effects and real winnings(like food or a good strength) the body has to have true meaning behind everything it does. Because everything it does is an effort and everything it does has an effect the bodily self won't do things it doesn't need to do. I have already explained why the bodily self is inherently sad in point one.

Now what I have (maybe its probably wrong) proven here is that

a: the body and mind are quantitatively different.

b: both are inherently bad and good in different ways.

C: you need both in life to be happy and complete

D: as they are quantitatively different and can't interact it is inefective and impossible to REALLY have both if we don't find something more that connects these two.

Now, can we find something else? If you are really smart(smarter than me) then you already have noticed that we can, how? Well by looking at the flaws, for example if the tho selves are quantitatively different then why do they have a similarity namely flow? There are two logical explanations,

a: the theory is absolutely wrong and I'm dumb or

b: there is a third hidden self I have not talked of yet.

I choose to go with option b. Now you are probably wondering what flow is, my definition of flow is pretty hard to put into words so I will just describe it, flow is the feeling you get when you are writing a paper on something you are REALLY exited about and know alot of, flow is the feeling you get when you've been doing a repetitive Physicsl activity for a long while and start to feel like it's not even you for example running, flow is when you feel like someone or something else is working through you, hopefully everyone that reads this can relate.

This third self we will call the ecstatic self.

Its first strange property is that it is a link between the two selves, the second strange property is that it is the only force that can control the thinking self in its own turf. Let's give an example to illustrate these two things, if you are told a very convincing argument then that argument exists only in the material world however, the ecstatic self picks it up and influences the thinking self into believing it, after the thinking self has been influenced (in this case very severely) it is impossible to go back to how it was before as it feels pathologicaly false(this is also why it is so hard to change opinions, changing your opinion is basically the ecstatic self opressing the thinking self which leads to sadnesse).

I guess the ecstatic self can be seen as the subconscious part of you, you can barely perceive it and it works on input from the bodily self and material world and then executes this input over the thinking self when you think. Now, how to come closer to the other two selves is pretty obvious (thinking to come closer to the thinking self and interacting with the world and your body for the bodily self) but to come closer to the ecstatic self or flow is much harder, if you ask me then the three best ways to come closer to the ecstatic self/reach ecstasy is through 1. Sex and 2. Dancing or moshing on drugs(ecstasy works best in my experience). This is because these two circumstances are when we are the furthest removed from the two other selves and it is then we feel the subconscious work through us the most.

Well why would we want to do this? I think we would want this for two reasons, the first one is to simply know oneself through separating your third self, if you know yourself then you will be more able to utilize that to better yourself. The second reason is to look at the world around you, as the ecstatic self is made up of the subconscious and the subconscious is made up of what we perceive in the material world, the ecstatic self will represent a mirroring of how our own world works and Nd the otherwise hidden systems in it .

Ok that s all, I'm not done with the theory so it's a work in progress. If you have anything to add or critique the please do. Thanks for listening to my insomnia fueled crackpot theory written at four am in the morning.

26 notes · View notes

aroworlds · 6 years

Note

First off, I loved your ask post about erasure, Scrooge, and representation. Anon, if you’re reading this, you’re a legend. Second, I haven’t read A Christmas Carol in a while, and I was curious how Scrooge is coded. In what ways do you see him as aro-ace? Thanks bunches!

First, I’m going to @ mention @thatmrgold, because I think they’re also a fan of Scrooge, additional to the original asking anon (or at least I’ve seen a reblog on one of my posts that suggests this–many apologies if I’m mistaken). I have read A Christmas Carol several times, but it’s many years ago now–my most recent engagement with the story is The Muppet Christmas Carol adaptation, seen last year! For this reason, I encourage anyone more familiar with the source material to expand upon my answer. I don’t have the detailed familiarity with the canon to answer save in broader strokes.

The main points where I think thatEbenezer Scrooge can be coded or seen as coded involve a previous failed romance (it’s depicted that he comes to love money more than hisfiancée, for which she leaves him), his long-running single-man-in-the-world status (he lives on his own, no partner, which is meant to indicate his hatefulness) and his isolation/disconnection from the world around him (demonstrated in a lack of compassion for his tenants, a refusal to allow his workers their Christmas, etc).

I’m going to explain why these points are effective coding, because written in a paragraph like that, they don’t seem like much. Thing is, they don’t have to be!

I’ll stress that much of this ties into long-running antagonistic aro-ace (and often autistic*) coding shared with other characters. A lot of a-spec coding is less about certain qualities suggesting a character’s being a-spec and more about those qualities being part of a broader literary canon of similarly-viewed characters. In other words, characters where people read those qualities together as having associations with a-spec identities, not because those character qualities are always inherently associated with being aro-ace or a-spec. In this sense, Scrooge is a-spec coded because Sherlock Holmes is a-spec coded and Clariel is specifically aro-ace and early The Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper is aro-ace coded, and all these characters have commonalities in how they see the world, how they connect to the world and, most particularly, how the rest of the world views them. Viewed in isolation, Scrooge isn’t necessarily aro-ace-coded. Viewed in a social and historical context of other characters interpreted as aro-ace, on the other hand, he is.

I’m going to use The Big Bang Theory to explain my point, because I think Sheldon Cooper is the most recognizable character, and despite not liking the source material, I’m quite familiar with it. The Big Bang Theory doesn’t properly describe early-seasons Sheldon as aro-ace; it compares him to aliens, to plants and the scientific understanding of asexual reproduction. I think it does once or twice use “asexual” but it’s never in the current understanding of “lacking sexual attraction” and more like “a being without sex”. He’s constantly dehumanised for the aro-ace qualities the show won’t name. He talks, though, in ways that clearly demonstrate a lack of sexual and romantic attraction, and because of amatonormativity, they later give him a slow-growing romantic relationship as part of character “progression”. (Which is handled so disrespectfully and antagonistically, but that’s another post.) When people first hear the words aro-ace, they’ll commonly think of early-seasons Sheldon, because that’s the undercurrent of his character compared to characters like Scrooge or Sherlock. Even people who’ve never heard words like asexual or aromantic have an idea of what they think it is on first listen, because they’ve been exposed to so much unlabelled coding: in a world lacking intentional and meaningful representation to properly educate audiences on lived experiences, coding instead forms the basis of understanding.

(And it’s unexplored amatonormativity and aro/ace antagonism, of course, for why negative character traits are so often a-spec coding.)

This is why we end up with a character being aro-ace coded for things like not having a relationship and not connecting with people. These things do not inherently mean anything about the aro-ace experience, but they’re part of a social context where qualities indicate identities. Only the people who have a true need to understand–either as allies working with us or because they’re a-spec–go to a-spec communities to learn the diversity of experiences associated with our words, to look beyond the clumsy outline of coding.

(In fact, they have no concept of coding as distinct from representation.)

Additionally, especially because we a-specs are raised in a world where we are not seen or understood, we ourselves often come to relate to those qualities, however negative the coding and context, too. Not having a relationship says nothing about one’s lack of attraction, but many a-specs struggle to have a successful relationship, are pressured into ones we don’t want or are non-amorous. In a world where so few characters are depicted as long-term single in late adulthood, we’ll take that character for our own. Not connecting with society–well, I suspect the majority of aro-specs respect the need for Christians to celebrate their cultural and religious holidays, but when being a-spec is always a wall between us and the rest of the world, we feel and relate to that distance, that disconnect. When Christmas means people pestering us about our relationship status or lack of attraction, don’t we feel a bit like saying “Bah, humbug”? A romance failed by not loving someone else enough–not loving enough has been or will be levelled at many aro-specs, and I know that I’ve felt that because of my lack of romantic attraction, I must have loved something else over the “proper” romantic love for another person. It fits close enough to the amatonormativity we experience.

(There’s a reason why LGBTQIA+ and queer people so commonly relate to antagonistic characters, as their experiences of disconnection and alienation are as close as many of us get to our lived experiences. Only recently has there been, for some identities, anything close to representation, including representation that positively explores our alienation, enough that we might first see ourselves in anything other than antagonist characters.)

Lack of mainstream/broadly recognised representation, too, drives us to forge more intense connections with flimsier points of similarity than would be reasonable for a white, abled heterosexual cis woman connecting with white, abled, female cishet characters. She can be choosy about personality and character type in the characters she deems to be like her; we have the unconscious-but-constant knowledge that there’s few others like us and connect, in relief, just to have someone vaguely like us in the story, even if they’re clearly an antagonist.

On their own, these things are flimsy pieces of connection, but in a social context of coding and lack of representation, they become so much larger.

Does this make sense? A lot of what I see as aro-ace in Scrooge is less about descriptions of lack of attraction as it is broader brush-stroke images that correspond to lived experience or negative coding. Folks more familiar with the source material may be able to offer you more detailed examples, but for me it’s about the type of character Scrooge is in the social context of similar characters seen a particular way by a-specs and allosexual-and-alloromantic folks alike.

* Explanation of why I mention autistic coding under the cut for those who’d rather ignore the tangential murmuring:

A lot of aro-ace coding is also autistic coding because allo allistic writers cannot conceive of autistics being anything but aro-ace and aro-aces being anything but autistic. Both identities are seen as lacking empathy and connection to others, and both are subject to the dehumanising assumptions behind this kind of antagonistic coding, where aro-ace coding is used to show an autistic character as inhuman and autism coding is used to show an aro-ace character as inhuman.

Please note that the tendency for combining the coding does not mean that autistic aro-aces have full representation, as I see too many people argue: most of these characters are antagonists who don’t offer full, celebratory, supportive, intentional and beneficial depictions of aro-ace and autistic experiences. Aro-ace autistics are not positively depicted in the broader literary canon; surface aspects of their experiences are used to tell the audience a character is antagonistic. Given that I’m starting to see a few romance novels with autistic characters, by autistics and allistics alike, the idea that autistic aro-aces (and I don’t know of any autistic allo-aro character outside my own work!) are somehow more represented in fiction is raging amatonormativity. Again, coding is not representation and it’s disingenuous to conflate them.

24 notes · View notes

otapleonehalf · 6 years

Text

The Princess Knight Anime, Gender and Disappointment

The 1967 Princess Knight anime is an adaptation of Osamu Tezuka’s second rendition of the manga Princess Knight. While the anime’s plot diverges from its source material, the premise remains the same: To inherit the throne of Silverland, the princess has been raised and presented to the public as a prince. Only her close family and servants know she is really a girl. However, the evil Duke Duralumin seeks to reveal the secret of the “prince”, so that his son can claim the throne instead.

Princess Knight is falsely acclaimed by many as the first shoujo manga. As academic Deborah Shamoon puts it, “to single out Tezuka alone is to ignore the work of many other artists in the 1950s and 1960s who created manga for girls such as Takahashi Makoto whose visual style is much closer to subsequent trends in shoujo manga than Tezuka’s.”

Indeed, the original Princess Knight manga shares little resemblance to modern shoujo manga, beyond the fact that it features a female lead in a fairytale setting. To solely credit Tezuka with the beginnings of shoujo manga is to commit an injustice to Junichi Nakahara, Rune Naito, the aforementioned Takahashi Makoto and many other artists whose influence on the modern shoujo genre is more direct than that of Tezuka’s. Thus, it is much more practical to examine Princess Knight as a work from the God of Manga, rather than as a precursor to any modern genres.

Another common misconception about the Princess Knight franchise is that the anime is actually about the titular character. True enough the story follows Prince(ss) Knight, as she is referred to in the English dub of the anime. (From here forth, I will be referring to her as Sapphire, name she is given in the manga.) However, Sapphire isn’t always the focus of what’s going on and, as I will address later, her character lacks the depth one might expect. Her limelight is frequently stolen by various villains as well as her cherubic sidekick, referred to as Choppy in the English dub.

Choppy, a genital-less angel in Robin Hood attire, stars in both the opening and the ending theme of the series and has entire episodes dedicated to his antics. He serves as the child companion character, found throughout many of Tezuka’s works. (And he is just as annoying and creepy as his fellow munchkins.) Believe it or not, Choppy is crucial to the plot of Princess Knight.

The real reason behind Sapphire’s boyish mannerisms is due to Choppy causing a mix up when the princess was born. Instead of receiving a red heart meant for girls, Sapphire received an additional blue heart meant for boys. Thus, implying her masculine behavior isn’t solely a matter of nurture, but an accident on the part of heaven. Tezuka’s attempt at explaining gender with a color-coded binary, bestowed by a divine patriarch, fails to address the complexities of gender in any meaningful way.

Gender refers to the internalized social expectations for appearance and behavior that align with the societal roles associated with a person’s perceived sex. Sex is meant to dictate gender and gender is meant to portray sex. But by virtue of being comprised of two-dimensional lines, the characters of Princess Knight have no biological sex from which to derive their gender. Anime characters are described by scholar Susan Napier as “stateless” and while Napier uses this word to describe characters’ lack of national identity, I believe the same idea can be applied to describe characters’ lack of biological sex.

It is through suspension of disbelief that we believe drawings represent human beings and all the biological fanfare that comes with being human, when in reality anime characters are effectively “stateless” in regards to sex and all other genetic states. Anime characters must be portrayed performing a gender that implies their sex or have their canonical sex outright stated, else the audience is left to speculate. With no state to tether to the concept of gender, the anime characters of Princess Knight dismiss human biology almost entirely. Princess Knight makes no real attempt to suspend the audience’s disbelief that its characters have realistic biological qualities to begin with.

Aside from Sapphire being born from her mother, there are no allusions to biological sex in the series. Keeping in mind that this is a program made for television in the 1960s, Duke Duralumin cannot publicly strip Sapphire to reveal her secret to all of Silverland and the families watching at home. By extension, he cannot use the sound of her voice, her measurements, or her theoretical period as evidence against her claim to the throne. (After all this wouldn’t be a very long anime if all it took for Duralumin’s plans to succeed was a single pair of bloody tights.)

So instead of the more obvious routes for determining if Sapphire is a girl or boy, the villains of the series use more roundabout methods such as asking the opinions of ghosts and magic mirrors. There’s also things like magic pens that would make Sapphire write down that she is really a girl as well as a topical cream that turns blue when it touches a boy. Through these creative methods, Tezuka consistently portrays gender as something supernatural rather than something sociological.

If we step away from Tezuka’s interpretation of gender and instead use a more contemporary understanding of gender such as that popularized by feminist philosophers like Judith Butler, we can gain a better understanding of Sapphire’s character.

Our genders are not innate. They are the result of how we have learned to habitually react to our social environments. The gender we develop over time then informs our identities which serve to reinforce our habitual behavior. When gender is “performed” it is not a conscious act where everyone within proximity is aware of the façade. Gender is a constant series of small behaviors that are meant to go unnoticed and if ever noticed, be dismissed as inherent qualities inseparable from our sense of self, rather than the result of the rigorous teachings we absorb from birth through socialization.

Due to her circumstances Sapphire learned to present herself as either a boy or a girl depending on who she is around. She has developed two behavioral personas of conflicting gender: the Princess whom is known within the walls of the palace, and the Prince whom is shown to the outside world. When interacting with anyone outside of her private circle, Sapphire wears tights, a large brimmed hat, carries a sword and is read as masculine. (It’s important to recognize that attributes associated with any gender are highly dependent on societal context. Silverland’s setting is inspired by Medieval Europe and so within that context it’s understood that Sapphire’s daily attire is to be read as masculine within her society, even though her lack of pants and flamboyant hat would be read as feminine in a modern American context.)

While presenting her persona of the Prince to the outside world, sapphire is never unsure of her true status as a girl. She simply portrays a boy as necessity dictates, like many real-life women have had to do throughout history. It is because of her identity as a girl that Sapphire is so desperately committed to convincing others of the Prince’s masculinity. As the Prince she cannot brush off accusations of being unmanly, for they could raise suspicions and endanger her secret and by extension her kingdom. When fearful her secret could be discovered, and her country’s future could be at risk, she consciously attempts to act manlier. She competes in sports, challenges adult men to duels, and even starts bar fights in order to prove that she can perform feats that girls cannot. (Because obviously girls aren’t capable of any of those things, or at least those are things girls are not expected to do in Sapphire’s society.) It’s Sapphire’s ambition and rowdiness that successfully keep suspicion of her girlhood at bay. But by repeatedly performing the act of the Prince, Sapphire internalizes the masculine behaviors she puts on and they become a part of personality.

Ironically, Sapphire’s feats of toughness only prove to the audience that a girl can indeed do all the things she claims to others are proof that she must be a boy to her fellow countrymen. However, Sapphire’s accomplishments do nothing to challenge perceptions of women as it’s made clear to the audience that Sapphire is a very special exception and not the rule.

All the other women portrayed in the series fall neatly into the categories of: wicked witches, wise mothers, or daddy’s girls. For example, the characters of Queen Icicle, Sapphire’s mother and Zenda embody each of these categories respectively. These stereotype-based character’s do nothing to convince the audience that femininity has the capacity for competence. This unfortunate lack of depth to Princess Knight’s female characters even extends to Sapphire when she embodies her private persona of the Princess known within the palace walls as Princess Knight in the English dub.

In a hidden chamber connected to her bedroom is a wardrobe of wigs and dresses that Sapphire dresses up in when no one is around. In the anime, this hidden wardrobe is treated as an infatuation of Sapphire’s. Her servants grieve for Sapphire’s situation, wishing she could be a princess all the time, implying that Sapphire’s performance of femininity in the secret chamber is somehow a persona closer to her true self. It’s apparent that the servant’s view on Sapphire’s inner desires is shared by Tezuka himself. Tezuka wants the audience to pity a girl that has responsibilities beyond playing dress up, and that a girl who cannot be a princess destined to marry a prince is one allotted a cruel fate.

When Sapphire takes on her persona of the Princess all her personality traits fade to emphasize her beauty. As a Prince Sapphire doesn’t qualify as beautiful, but after quickly changing into a dress and a wig, she is suddenly beautiful enough to make a foreign prince, by the name of Prince Frank in the English dub, fall in love with her during a Cinderella-esque night of dancing.

Prince Frank only falls for Sapphire once he perceives her as a girl. When he initially meets her as the Prince of Silverland the two share a rivalry where they compete with one another as equals. When Frank perceives Sapphire as a boy he fights alongside her or tries to outdo her, but once he perceives Sapphire as a girl he becomes smitten and goes out of his way to discourage Sapphire from attending the battlefield, even when her own country in on the line. As her love interest, Prince Frank compliments Sapphire’s good looks above any other quality.

In a Snow White inspired episode, the mirror on the wall deems Sapphire’s Princess Persona the fairest of them all, emphasizing that Sapphire’s sole accomplishment as the Princess is her beauty. A shallow and stereotypical beauty, which is dependent on her state of dress and the opinion of those around her. What’s more, Sapphire’s beauty is purely due to her status as the heroine. Being a character on the side of good, Sapphire is spared of any imperfections that are found on the faces of the series’ various villainesses. Sapphire’s Princess persona is defined as a character solely by her looks, despite her literally being the same person and having the same face as Silverland’s Prince.

The audience is meant to sympathize more with Sapphire because she has the two traits deemed most desirable in women by patriarchal society, young and attractive. (Unfortunately, ugly female protagonists in anime are all too rare.) One of the most common mistakes made by men writing female characters is that they can forget women have their own perspective from which they look at things, as opposed to their existence revolving around being looked at.

At the halfway point of the series, Silverland’s sexist laws regarding the inheritance of the throne are changed and Sapphire’s secret is revealed to the public with no consequence. Once her secret is out, the show drops the surrounding conflict, and Sapphire finally represents a non-traditional take on gender within her own society, at least in appearances. Sapphire no longer must pretend to be a boy and begins to go by the title Princess full time, yet she doesn’t change her daily attire. When venturing into foreign countries where her reputation doesn’t precede her, she is still referred to as a boy. She doesn’t correct those around her, perhaps out of habit. But as for Sapphire’s masculine behavior, particularly her acts of heroism in combat, she finds a new persona to replace the Prince.

The Phantom Knight is a masked swordsman Sapphire developed in order to outwit a villain’s scheme. But even after the Phantom Knight is no longer needed, Sapphire continues to dress up and fight as him. Instead of consistently defying the sexism she encounters Princess Knight will humbly obey her orders to leave the battlefield on account of the fact that she is a girl and the Phantom Knight will miraculously appear to fight in her place. Indeed, Sapphire finds a type of individual freedom in seamlessly slipping from one persona to another to best fit her purposes without causing upset, but this does nothing to actually liberate Sapphire from her obligation to keep parts of herself a secret from everyone around her.

It’s no longer her country’s throne on the line but her reputation as a girl who upholds the role given to her. Sapphire’s clandestine heroism as the Phantom Knight is an outlet for when she doesn’t want to accept the social constraints of being perceived as a girl, but it’s not a remedy for the narrowminded people around her responsible for those constraints.

Sapphire continues to masquerade as a boy with the only real difference being that her two genders have traded spaces. She now presents her girl persona to the public and keeps her boy persona to herself. The Phantom Knight takes on the burdens of adventure, combat, justice and heroism so that Princess Knight can tend to her romance with Prince Frank, which she can freely pursue now that she’s perceived as a girl in the public eye. And as Sapphire displayed so adamantly in the first half of the series, girls are incapable of feats performed by a man such as the Phantom Knight.

With her new secret identity, Sapphire’s gendered personas are more cleanly split than before, and traditional depictions of gender are never really challenged by Sapphire or the series as a whole. After all, what Tezuka wants for Sapphire is not for her to have a secret identity or to lead the life of a prince/knight, but for her to ultimately take on the traditional goal of womanhood, marriage.

At the end of the series the final fight for Silverland’s future becomes dependent on a magic axe. Even during the most critical point of saving Silverland, when Sapphire is to use the axe to save her country, Prince Frank tries to take the weapon away from her as he deems it unfit for a girl to handle. Sapphire must take it back by force before she can run off and save her kingdom. Once the conflict is over, Choppy takes Sapphire’s blue boy heart with him as he returns to heaven. With her canonical source of masculine behavior gone, Sapphire marries Prince Frank. It’s heavily implied that she never takes on the persona of the Phantom Knight now that her country is at peace.

While the audience is supposed to be happy for Sapphire who has found love and can finally live the fantasy once confined to a secret chamber in the palace, it feels more like Tezuka has only made Sapphire finally submit to a traditional female gender role he always intended her for. Sapphire’s conservative ending is actually the second of the anime. It closely follows the solution to Zenda’s character.

Zenda is the daughter of Satan who after daring to show kindness toward a human boy, Zenda is punished and placed in an irreversible situation where she has lost all magical powers, cannot return to her family nor live on her own. The last we see of Zenda is her walking off in to the distance with a boy she barely knows. Sapphire’s and Zenda’s fates where they must trade power for a male partner parallel each other and make for a dissatisfying, if not depressing, ending to series.

Again, Princess Knight ultimately exemplifies a very simple view of gender, where once Sapphire trades her sword for a bouquet, all her stereotypical qualities of masculinity are discarded and the act of doing so is easy and magical.

It feels odd to compare Princess Knight, with its cliché fairytale wedding as its finale and ultimate lack of commentary on gender, to other manga and anime that properly tackle the complexities of crossdressing and gender. One such series that delves into gender as one of its main themes and is frequently brought up in conversations about Princess Knight is Rose of Versailles. The comparisons between these two specific series often feel misguided since Prince Knight is much less a story about crossdressing and gender performance as it is a story that happens to include those things. And yet many people not only compare Princess Knight to Rose of Versailles but even go as far to claim Princess Knight to be Rose of Versailles’ spiritual predecessor. This claim is most likely due to the similarities these two works share in their premises. In Rose of Versailles, the Commander of the Royal Guards fails to produce a male heir, so he decides to give his daughter the name Oscar and raise her as a boy.

Beyond their initial setups, the two series have little else in common. Oscar’s sex is not kept a secret. She was raised as a man, acts as a man, but is still indeed a woman. So all of Oscar’s accomplishments are as a woman, thus bending the gender expectations assigned to women, and ultimately defying the limitations placed on women by their social role in 18th century France. When it comes to Oscar’s masculine behaviors, Rose of Versailles argues nurture as the source while Princess Knight canonically argues nature.

Sapphire does not take on adventures and face danger because she was raised as a prince but because she was mistakenly given the heart of a boy. Tezuka’s simplistic approach to Sapphire’s identity means that her gender, despite being the crux of the story, it isn’t very crucial to Sapphire’s character. In a story like Rose of Versailles, swapping the protagonist’s gender would change the story entirely. But in Princess Knight, you could change the storyline to be about a male prince who happens to like dressing as a girl, but the secret could shame him out of the throne and the plot would play virtually the same. Sapphire doesn’t defy gender roles the way Oscar does. Sapphire is merely trying to uphold two roles at the same time.

As previously mentioned there is a distinct lack of sex and by extension sexuality in Princess Knight. Sapphire’s struggle with gender is never sexual. Where as in Rose of Versailles Oscar’s troubled relationships are dripping with sexual tension. Part of this is because Oscar’s struggle with gender is an internal one. She must struggle with her own self-image and how that image will affect the relationships she wants and the duties she must uphold. But Sapphire’s struggles in the Princess Knight anime are almost completely external. She only fears her secret being outed because of the threat of external backlash that’s presumed to follow. Sapphire is never unsure of who she is and what she wants, she just has to wait for the right time to reveal such things. Much like crediting Princess Knight as the first shoujo, crediting it as the spiritual predecessor to Rose a Versailles is a stretch at best.

Overall, I believe Princess Knight’s reputation over-hypes the anime series. I don’t think Princess Knight is a good introduction to Tezuka’s work, it’s certainly not his best, and I don’t think its aged very well to boot. (I think Black Jack in any of its iterations is a better place to start for those uninitiated to the God of Manga.)

The Princess Knight anime covers little new ground in its storytelling, especially when it comes to depictions of gender. Almost every episode’s premise is directed lifted from a classic fairytale and its conservation ending does nothing to challenge to audience’s nor society’s expectation for Sapphire as a female character conceived in the 1950s. Thankfully the decades that followed produced better anime with more to bite into when it comes to gender such as Rose of Versailles, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Ouran High School Host Club to name a few. Rather than looking backwards to Princess Knight’s depictions of gender and women, we should look forwards to the improved representations that have and will continue to be created as the landscape around such topics expands and deepens.

#princess knight #anime #osamu tezuka #rose of versailles

22 notes · View notes