#feminism and coding

[forsapphics]

I Thought I Was Just Incredibly Girl Positive Turns Out I’m A Lesbian An Autobiography

[prettyp1nkbunny]

[whereserpentswalk]

Just saw a "feminist" video essay (by someone who just happens to only talk about feminism in relation to cishet white able bodied women) say that the Hays Code was good for women because it "prevented them from sexualizing women by preventing onscreen depictions of sex". Never before has a video said something that made me vocalize my disgust of it's takes, but this did it.

I didn't think I would have to say this but if you defend the Hays code you are horrible and not in any way progressive. And if you don't know what it is please look it up because it's probably the most important piece of history when it comes to all media analysis in the western world.

[http-tempted]

I don’t want to date men. I want men to be obsessed with me whilst I stay single and unbothered

[ladyhoneydarlinglove]

it’s ‘the feminization of sanji as a way of exploring his issues with gender norms and/or recontextualizing his time in the kamabakka kingdom as a positive experience that helped him come to terms with his own gender expressions’ vs ‘the feminization of sanji because he’s skinnier than the guy he’s usually shipped with and has a set of domestic skills typically ascribed to cis women so it’s very easy to slot him into the (wo)man’s role of heteronormative brand yaoi’ do you unDERSTAND WHAT I AM SAYING—

[sleepynegress]

AKELA COOPER, you brilliant sonuvabitch genre writer.... The fact that HELL FEST, MALIGNANT, and M3GAN are all written from a Black woman's gaze and are mostly dwelling in the "camp" space... IMO, makes the larger sociological niches she's mining (akin to Romero's Dawn of the Dead in sociopolitical prescience) that much more invisible in how apt and *well* she's doing it. But society will eventually catch-up. Her debut, HELL FEST was about a white man, a normal person day-to-day who hides a horrific alter-ego to kill for one night, which gives so many of the Christian family men online calling Rachel Zegler a "cunt"... MALIGNANT was ultimately about women's body autonomy, choice and sisterhood, beneath all the *amazingly* fun bloody campy action scenes. ...And finally, we have M3GAN, who unlike the naive Alita: Battle Angel (written from the male gaze), is snarky, in control, and perfectly aware of how to manipulate the gaze on her girl-child-like visage to her own control and advantage. Also, ...the usage of Britney Spears?! *PER-FECT* People keep sleeping on Akela Cooper and one day, they'll catch-up.

[khattikeri]

you ever think about how japanese villainess stories overwhelmingly tend to follow the trend of "everyone calls her a villainess but ACTUALLY she's a genuinely kind, downtrodden, misunderstood girl whose actions and intentions get maliciously twisted by her enemies!!!" and then ponder the beautiful parallels between that and japanese war crime denialism

[prettyp1nkbunny]

[vouam]

Woman is when uncomfy jeans

Man is when comfy jeans

[lacyramen]

If Naruto taught me one thing it’s that all pretty boys with long hair are EVIL

[starcurtain]

1/?

I use an automatic translator, I'm terribly sorry in advance for any possible mistakes!First of all, I want to wholeheartedly thank the author for the excellent analytics of phaedei! It's hard to overestimate how useful this turned out to be for me as a person who is also starting to look at peyring, but wants to find this line between queerbating and queercoding, between real chemistry and potential and just a pragmatic desire to attract an audience "at any cost."

I would like to leave comments on the entire text, but it seems that I need time for the material to settle in my head and I can draw objective conclusions. But for now, I can write my thoughts on the thesis that it is "atypical" for Hoyoverse to portray MLM dynamics outside the heteronormative framework, because I don't quite seem to agree with him.

I can't say that ship with characters who don't have a clear imbalance of canonical feminine/masculine traits is something new and unusual for Hoyo games.The desire to reduce one character to a feminine image and the other to a masculine one is often more a product of fandom activity. In the canon, these qualities could be distributed much more heterogeneously and ambiguously.

Ayato and Thoma have an imbalance of power, but not femininity and masculinity, and many, on the contrary, interpret Ayato as more refined and aristocratic, "with delicate marble skin" and all that, and Thoma as a more down-to-earth person accustomed to rough and dirty physical work (he is not only a "housewife", but also a mercenary and a "problem solver").

Aventurine and Ratio have a size difference, which fandom can interpret as a classic "yaoi" pattern, but at the same time, Aventurine is not canonically more feminine, shows many traits associated in society with masculine and even toxically masculine behavior, and Ratio is more sexualized, wears makeup, monitors hygiene, contains in his lore and name, references to goddesses (the words "veritas" and "ratio" themselves are linguistically feminine) and does not show bright masculine features. Even the way the characters sit in the materials with them is an example that they did not try to position Ratio as a "big rude man", but Aventurine as an elegant twink.

Thank you for such a detailed response to the post! I really appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts, and I read all the parts of the ask you sent in!

Regarding this point, I'm not sure if it was unfortunately lost in the translations, but I did actually mention this in the original post:

"I don't want to say that Hoyo's track record on this front is bad, because honestly it's not. Their male characters often have surprisingly complex expressions of gender identity, with interesting blends of masculine and feminine traits."

But in the long run... I'm just less concerned with how Hoyo conceived of their characters in totality and more concerned with how audiences are encouraged to perceive those characters, as ultimately, the "gain" Hoyo sees from creating queer characters comes from audiences' interest. I believe the developers are very conscious of how players perceive characters and what consumers want to see from male characters. I think no one knows better how audiences will reduce characters (both male and female) to one dimension than the devs themselves lol.

And so, I just don't think it's accidental that a massive majority of Hoyo's MLM ships can be easily crammed into heteronormative patterns by audiences. Hoyo knows what sells and what fandoms love to do with ship-baited characters, and they provide just enough fuel for the fire to achieve the sales they want. Even while developing decent three-dimensional characters of their own, they invoke the fandom tropes on purpose to sell to their specific target audiences.

Characters like Aventurine and Thoma have masculine traits, yes--but then Hoyo deliberately uses feminine traits to market them, so that fans can apply their stereotypical heteronormativity. There's no reason for Thoma to be a housekeeper as well as a mercenary, right? He could just be employed by the Kamisatos as a "problem-solver" alone, but Hoyo added the housekeeper bit for... what reason? He's only a housekeeper because that allows fans to imagine him in a specific heteronormative role. Almost his entire hangout focused on "feminine" aspects (like knitting sweaters, a cleaning challenge, literal housekeeping classes, etc.) intentionally to make him appeal to fans, who Hoyo knew would then feminize him even further. And Aventurine does have masculine traits, I agree, but one of the core traits Hoyo used to sell him is being "in need of rescue," so that the players can feel like white knights for him and generate entire narratives of Aventurine being "healed" by the love of a big strong man (lol), a stereotypical plot that Hoyo deliberately helped along by making Ratio one of his "saviors."

And even though I said Mydei and Phainon was an exception visually, I think they follow the exact same pattern in terms of personality. The reason there's so much bottom!Mydei in fandom is because the devs have intentionally marketed him to take that role. They didn't have to make him a sweet tooth, have characters in-game call him cute for drinking pink milk juice, have him play house, or make him the one who makes food for everyone. Hoyo invoked the trope of the housewife on purpose to sell him (largely to women, but also deliberately to yaoi fans), and the fandom responds by exacerbating that portrayal even further.

I do applaud Hoyo for creating characters that have depth and can play with gender-related concepts in interesting ways, but I'm not willing to say they're oblivious to how fandoms will perceive, adapt, and reduce those characters to stereotypes.

They know exactly what they're doing when they put out another twink next to a big buff man, I promise. 😂

[secretceremonies]

Movie mirror

[profeminist]

Girls Sent Home from School for Wearing Slacks, Chicago 1946

(Original Caption) 12/13/1946-Chicago, IL: Sent home from the Cregier Branch of the McKinley High School , Chicago, for wearing slcks and blue jeans are, Left to Right: Anda Lorci, Delores Lcascio, Grace Nanice, Jennie Nigro, and Priscilla Nicholas. When thjey returned wearring skirts and hose they were re-admitted to class. An estimated 250 students are out on strike protesting ban of slacks, fines for chewing gum and the lack of mirrors.

Source: https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sent-home-from-the-cregier-branch-of-the-mckinley-high-news-photo/514686842

[yourfaveisintersex]

Daniel Davenport from Lab Rats is an intersex trans woman, and her* variation is De la Chapelle Syndrome! Her traits (all pointed out by other characters in canon!) include having delayed puberty, short stature, and various features considered to be feminine.

Intersex flag-only and popular transfem flag edits under the cut!

*ask used she/her pronouns for character

[katyswrites]

I have no words. But y’all already know what I want to say…

[f3eelslikesugarinme]

IM SCREAMING!