#...who are racialized in terms of gender and how they do/don't 'fit in' with often white supremacist views on gender/dynamics

[uncanny-tranny]

At this point, gender nonconformity is about what the person says their experience is.

If a woman with a beard or a man with lipstick and a mustache says they're gender nonconforming, then they are! If a woman with short hair or a man with long hair says they aren't, they aren't! And that's not even getting into the awesome nonbinary, abinary, genderqueer, intersex, and general genderfuckery that may both be and not be conforming.

So much of what is even considered gender conforming or gender nonconforming is based on a world of exclusion. When we start defining one's conformity with whether they fit into white cishetero perisex standards or not, we play into the idea that there's only a very narrow window of what is considered worthy of time and thought.

[butch-with-a-deep-voice]

What made you feel like using the term “butch” to describe yourself despite some of your obvious feminine qualities? (This is an absolutely genuine question coming from somebody who is trying their best to figure out “which box” they fit into).

I guess I’m having a hard time figuring out if I’m “butch enough” which I know sounds ridiculous. I know that there’s such a spectrum and not everybody is strictly “butch” or “femme” but I guess I feel called to butchhood. But I invalidate my own feelings by finding all the ways in which I’m “too feminine” for it.

I’m genderqueer as well so it can be hard for me to find the right balance between my masculine and feminine features that make me feel euphoric.

Hey anon, so this is a very good question, and one I really want to take some time with. As such, I will provide two answers. A short copout answer if you don't have the energy to read a lot, and a long answer.

Short answer, and I really hate when I have to pull out this answer but well...

It's no different than gender euphoria in of itself. Each person is different, and it is based off of well, vibes. It's things like how I can be beside my he/they nonbinary friend, let's call him C, in the exact same outfit as him, and all our friends are like "yup, Nomi looks butch, and C looks boy-adjacent". It's vibes, and there's no real easy way to explain it further than that.

Now lovely anon/reader, if you want something a little more... nuanced (and just as inconclusive), strap in. Pun fully intended.

So I've been mulling over this for a few hours already before typing, and of course my overly analytic ass started scripting this whole thing around exploring the history of butch and femme identities, the gender politics of the matter, the racial contexts, etc. before realizing that doesn't answer your question; how did I specifically, a trans-feminine two-spirit person, reach butch being where I felt the most at home in myself despite apparent feminine aspects of myself? Understanding the history, cultural implications, and other nuanced portions of "butch" as an identity was a huge part of how I got there, and so I'll briefly go over that, but it's also important to keep my copout answer in mind as well. You know yourself best. It's well, vibes.

Let's start with the barebones identity of butch. I think a good place to start is understanding that while all butches are masculine, not all mascs are butch. Same with femme vs. feminine. It's something you claim, you embody. It's well, an identity. For many, myself included, it's an inseparable part of ones gender identity to boot. And like all identities, it is often intersectional with other facets of your life. Gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, culture, etc. For me, Butch ties directly to my Two-Spirit identity. Part of being a Michif (Métis) Two-Spirit person is holding both the masculine and feminine at all times. While not necessarily a woman in the western sense, I feel woman-adjacent. My "feminine spirit" comes from feeling woman-adjacent, and honestly when around other Michif women, like a Michif woman (but that's a conversation for another day). My "masculine spirit" comes from being a butch Michif lesbian, amongst other things. If I had to describe how my gender "feels", Two-Spirit Butch feels honestly the most accurate, even if that doesn't fit into a Western queer lens that nicely. I may have, as you said anon, apparent feminine aspects to myself that counter my masculinity, but part of being Two-Spirit is holding those with love, honor, and compassion. Feminine spirit doesn't negate my queer masculinity, if anything it augments it. But, exploration of my Two-Spirit identity and how it relates to being butch likely won't be of much help to most of the non-indigenous readers.

Let's look at a more Western approach, because Butch is just that, a rather Western queer term. I do want to preface that as a trans-feminine person there are many within queer spaces that believe I do not have the right to claim butch for myself. To them I counter, bugger off terfs. I would also like to point out that while in a modern sense butch more or less refers to a masculine lesbian identity, that was not always the case. Butch for many many years was an identity to describe queer masculinity as a baseline, regardless of lesbian, gay, bisexual, etc. Especially in queer BIPOC communities. Butch becoming a lesbian-centric term is much newer within the queer lexicon (with some pointing to white queer culture stealing a term from BIPOC queer culture, but that is a topic I do not have the expertise to go into). While both butch itself, and queer masculinity as a whole have evolved since those times, I think keeping that historical context in mind is important.

To me, part of why I claimed "Butch" specifically is how it relates to non-conformity of expected womanhood. While I do not claim woman in the Western sense, during the early phases of transition, I began by identifying as a woman, and trying to abandon all of masculinity and what it came with. You can find a bit more of how that went in this post. I dove headfirst into femininity and hit my head on the floor of the pool so hard I ended up right back in dysphoria central, just a different kind. But, that exploration of womanhood and femininity were integral in why I claimed butch for myself. I don't think I ever would have claimed it had I not. One of the common factors with every AFAB butch I've met is a rejection of the expectations of womanhood that Western culture thrusts upon them. Personally, I don't think it would have been right for me to claim butch without having first explored Western femininity and it's expectations to the extent I had.

Eventually I finally admitted to myself that, while I knew for certain I wasn't a man, I didn't feel right as a feminine (Western) woman either. So, what was I? I felt more at home, more welcome, and more loved amongst queer women, lesbians especially, than I ever had with queer men. Hard androgyny and genderqueer (which btw I do not identify with genderqueer, not upset with you though) didn't feel right either. There were aspects of classical womanhood from a physical standpoint I knew were in line with myself after many years of HRT. Breasts, my waist line, my now feminine skin texture, my legs, honestly my entire estrogen-sculpted body. Hell, while I haven't gotten full vaginoplasty for medical reasons, I would if I could, Stone Top identity aside. I felt at home around women and lesbians, as a Michif woman/lesbian, but not in femininity. As described in the post I linked in the previous paragraph, the first true step was reclaiming masculinity, and making room for healthy queer masculinity separate from gender.

I want to bring up this exploration of the meaning behind the colours of the lesbian flag for a moment. For me, Butch and all it encompasses, is a part of all of these. Gender non-conformity I think is self explanatory. I am a walking defiance of gender norms and expectation at this point, and butchness as a whole is as well. Independence can mean many different things to different people, but I feel self sufficient as a butch. I feel competent. I feel secure. Mostly importantly though, it is an identity I feel independent in. For years and years I let my expression of gender and sexuality be defined by those around me. Past partners, friends, family, coworkers, etc. I could not claim butch until I took a step away from all of those. I stopped letting them dictate who I was, and let myself learn who I was independently. Community and butch is always going to be linked. Butch is a community-centric identity. When I tell someone in the queer community I'm butch, they know what it means. In a single word I can describe large swathes of my experience and how I relate to the world. But it also comes with community role and responsibilities. Butches and Femmes protect eachother. Butches provide safe masculinity in queer spaces that heals wounds for so many people, including other butches. Butches take up space in a room to ensure other non-butch women have space. We protect, we heal, we love. Butch love is so fucking unique and important to a community. Butch comes with a community meaning, but also community role and responsibility, and to me that is a big part of why I feel comfortable claiming it. Serenity and Peace is so many things. Both internal and external. I have peace within myself as a butch. I feel more peace with myself now than I did for so many years. When I finally said it outloud, said I was a butch lesbian, and people affirmed that, it was like a weight I never even knew existed was lifted. I've felt happier in my time openly being butch than I have in ages, and everyone around me as noticed it too. Friends, family, coworkers all comment on just how happy, confident, and at peace internally I've been. Love and Sex this is a doozy of a topic that I truthfully do not have the desire to explore right now. It is important, but I am not in the headspace for it. But butch love is unique in itself. As for sex, well. Please refer to the wild swathes of queer theory and discourse out there. As an off-hand example relating to myself though, see Stone Butch. Unique Relationships to Womanhood/Feminity. I explicitly wanted to link these together. As a Two-Spirit butch, and a trans-femme one at that, my relationship to womanhood and femininity is unique, complicated, and at times inexplicable. The fact that I can say I don't identify as a Western woman, but with other Michif woman I do feel like a woman, is one confusing way. The fact that butch being a gender identity to me is another. But one aspect I want to explore is this notion that masculine and feminine are antithetical to eachother, when I don't think they need to be. I'm not androgynous. I hold both masculine and feminine, not a middle thing. My masculinity is queer masculinity, and I genuinely think queer masculinity MUST be in some way shape or form partially feminine. There is a softness to queer masculinity. A vulnerability. A tenderness. Queer masculinity is often gentle, loving, soothing. All things associated with Western notions of femininity, not masculinity. But queer masculinity, non-Western masculinity, makes room for those things. You wouldn't look at a mother bear protecting her cubs and say "that's not motherly behaviour, that's not womanhood". My relationship to my feminine self is in relationship to my masculine self. They are tied, and being butch, being a soft butch at that, encompasses it.

I think finally a topic I've been dancing around, though alluded to multiple times, is that first copout answer. Vibes, and gender euphoria as a part of vibes. From the vibes standpoint, what I have to offer is this anecdotal piece. When I told my friends that I was mulling around with the idea of claiming butch, basically every single one went "... yeah? You didn't know that?" Off of vibes alone every single one of my queer friends already knew I was butch. From behaviour, to what I was most comfortable in fashion wise, to how I related to others, they all knew that my "vibes" were butch already, well before I had even remotely considered it. As for the other hard to define aspect... As a non-cis person yourself anon, you mentioned it already. Gender euphoria is a weirdly difficult to attain thing. I spent years on years of experimentation, exploration, and rumination trying to find my euphoria. Trying to find the spot I'm in now, where I find myself loving what's in the mirror every single day. Butch got me to the point that I legitimately look in my mirror and love what I see Every. Single. Day. I take selfies of myself because I love what I look like, even in just a hoodie in sweats, every day now. I put more casual care into how I look now, because I love myself, more than I ever did before. I take better care of my health. I have more self confidence. I'm happier and more stable emotionally. Hell, I'm a better friend, coworker, and community member now as a butch than I ever had capacity to be beforehand. It's not just me noticing that too. Near everyone in my life started making note of it anytime I took another step into fully claiming butch for myself. The biggest reason I feel right in claiming butch is that frankly, how can you look at secure, holistic, stable happiness like this and not say it's right.

There's a lot more I want to say here, but I've already been at this for nearly three hours, and that's on top of the two hours I spent just thinking on the matter to boot. I hope I was able to answer your question at least partially anon, and that it helps you with your own gender expression/identity journey. I think the only other thing I want to say is that it's okay if what you identify with now changes. It doesn't invalidate what you feel now, just like how you are now doesn't invalidate what you felt was right for your say, 5 years ago. Human experience and identity evolves, it grows, it changes. If you feel right with butch now, excellent. If you end up realizing that it was just a stepping stone in discovering your unique patch of gender euphoria, that is just as excellent. Rootin' for ya anon 💕

[hiiragi7]

what are your thoughts/input on transandrophobia?

I think that a lot of people inappropriately view masculinity itself as synonymous with privilege, when it is far more complex than that. The presence of masculinity itself is not privilege, nor is it even seen as an inherent goodness; for individuals who do not fit societal expectations for masculinity (socially, sexually, chromosomally, hormonally, and so on), rather than being viewed as near or moving towards embodying a "perfect" male body, those with any ambiguity or cross-sex experiences are viewed as disordered and non-conforming.

Intersex people are systemically altered and mutilated for traits deemed masculine, so masculinity is not inherently seen as positive; transgender men are also often strongly discouraged from transitioning towards masculinity. In examining this, I find that while maleness is associated with privilege, it is only so as long as that maleness aligns with colonialist concepts of what maleness is and how it performs. In other words, it is conditional, and it upholds dyadic and cis binaries.

Even in the case of trans men who are "stereotypically male" in terms of their bodies and how they behave socially, who have a flat chest, testicles, a penis, and do not have a vagina, uterus, and ovaries, and whom pass, they are still viewed as queerly disordered; factors such as being born female or intersex but transitioning to manhood, being raised socially as a different gender, being on HRT for the rest of their lives, having had surgeries done in order to reaffirm their gender, these are things which fall outside of sexual and gender norms and which affect the ways in which a person can access privilege. For those who do not fit bodily or social expectations of masculinity, it is even more ambiguous.

A large discourse I have seen with regards to transandrophobia/antitransmasculinity is that it pushes the idea that misandry is a systemic issue, which I strongly disagree with; trans men and transmasculine people will experience oppression based on masculine traits and manhood, and this concept is not particularly out there or odd to me, as an intersex person which sees intersex people oppressed specifically for expressing manhood or masculinity. When masculinity or manhood is experienced outside of the rules of the enforced gender sex binary, it is repressed and exorcised.

While individual trans men may conditionally experience aspects of male privilege in some areas of life, this is not true of most trans men. I don't find it useful when people make broad statements like "transitioned trans men have male privilege" or "trans men are inherently privileged over trans women because they are men" or so on. I also find it ignores racial and cultural differences and how that impacts privilege.

So, in closing, I do find that trans men and transmasculine people experience oppression based on expressing masculinity or manhood, though similarly to transmisogyny I do not believe this oppression is inherently unique to them, and may be experienced by trans people outside of trans men and transmasculine people depending on the circumstances. I think language to describe that experience is important, as with transmisogyny. I also find that transandrophobia/antitransmasculinity and transmisogyny are not in conflict with each other, and rather are deeply intertwined expressions of overlapping oppressive systems.

[rotationalsymmetry]

No no no, fat acceptance is exactly the same as queer liberation. They're exactly the same thing.

Restricting pleasure (see also ABA, I didn't understand this before but it really is all the same thing) is a tool of social control. Or individual control depending. Or both. It's about CONTROL. Coercion. Authoritarianism.

When I was first trying to understand about gay liberation, I didn't get it, because what I was being exposed to was gay rights, and gay rights is about limiting suffering but gay liberation is about, well,

Liberation.

And I didn't get it because if it's about limiting suffering, why can't, you know, you just not? Ok not being gay isn't an option, orientation is hardwired, but behavior is a choice and people can not do gay (have same-sex sex and/or relationships) or not do trans (not transition) and I didn't understand where it fit into everything else, fighting climate change and progressive taxation and public transit and racial equality (people don't "do" their skin color or their country of origin, and people do "do" religion but somehow that always seemed different) and restricting corporate power and immigration rights and labor rights and all that. I didn't see where it fit in.

And I didn't understand where sex fit into the rest of life and why it seemed so different from everything else.

But now I think, it's not different. It's pleasure. It's about pleasure, joy, satisfaction, connection.

And authoritarian systems don't just try to control sex, you can't do this you have to do that. They control everything! Go on a diet, for your health. Don't fidget in class and don't run in the hallways, but do exercise during gym whether you want to or not. Rules for how you dress, how you present. ("Of course you have blue hair and pronouns.") Rules for how you interact, rules made by someone else that you have no say in. Rules for what your face looks like. Say thank you for gifts you didn't want. Say sorry whether you're actually sorry or not.

Your interests need to be what's acceptable, if what you like is too childish or too weird or not for your gender you have to stop.

It's not just sex. It's all like that.

People seeing food primarily in terms of weight loss (or muscle building, or whatever) is the same as seeing relationships primarily in terms of whether your parents or your friends or your colleagues will think you chose well. It's exactly the same. Food tastes good! You can notice it tastes good if you interact with food primarily as a source of pleasure and connection and joy. You can't do that if you're all caught up in good food/bad food nonsense.

(And it's also the same because people don't actually control their body shapes and people shouldn't be penalized for things they shouldn't control. But. Dieting provides some control, at least in the short term, often enough that people believe people control their body shapes. Which is probably why weight is given so much social significance. If it wasn't something people could help, it wouldn't be as effective in controlling people's behavior, and not just the behavior of fat people, also very much the behavior of thin people afraid of the penalties of being fat.) (in much the same way that penalizing poor people for being poor isn't mostly about controlling the behavior of people who need benefits right now, it's mostly about controlling the behavior of people who have more money and don't want to lose it. Keeps people in shitty jobs and shitty relationships so they don't fall into the void.)

[russilton]

I don't like omegaverse, the trope just makes me kinda uncomfortable, even though I can see how, if executed well, it can be interesting and ambiguous to read and write. It's just not my thing and I mostly avoid it. But even I have to admit that reading your take on it is not only interesting but also enjoyable, just because you seem to have given it a lot of thought that isn't at all superficial and also because you seem so passionate about it, which I love! ♡

It’s perfectly understandable that a/b/o makes you uncomfortable! When its written wrong, it makes ME uncomfortable. I won’t touch a fic that flips the dynamics I enjoy. I don’t ever begrudge people for not liking the stuff I create, I’m writing it for me and people’ like me.

A/b/o is, and always will be, so so controversial. It is the marmite of fic tropes. Some people hate it, some are indifferent, and some, like me, LOOOOOOOVE it. It’s why I’m so passionate when I talk about it. It is at its core a trope created so that male slash pairings could experience societal and systemic sexism, with bonus werewolf tropes. It’s kinda dumb. Even I think it’s silly when I’m writing it.

But once you flip off that top crust I think there’s a rich opportunity to explore gender and sex expression without having to make a world up from scratch, or risk misrepresenting incredibly fragile topics. I’ve seen it argued before that a/b/o is transphobic and while I understand where those people are coming from, I believe they are categorically wrong. Through a/b/o I’ve seen greater acceptance and understanding of intersex anatomy, and it lets me, as a trans man, impart trauma and issues I experience in my life, on ‘cis’ men. It makes you feel less othered, not having to use the trans label to explore those things because often when writing trans characters I feel burdened to write in a way cis people won’t misrepresent… and sometimes I don’t want to?

Sometimes I want to write about men and heat cycles to impart my feelings about periods, I want to write male pregnancy without it being weird and laughed at. I want to write about how horrifying and gross it can be to feel damp when you don’t want to. How isolating it can feel to not fit with a societal standard of gender, and on the other side the euphoria of living authentically. I want to write about alphas thinking consciously about how their hormones effect others, or how some use that as a weapon. Or about omegas doing comfortable traditionally feminine things like nesting or seeking comfort without it being a big deal? I like writing about alphas who worry about being a slave to hormones, and omegas who are comfortable and confident in their bodies

And that’s just the dynamic part of it. A/b/o has such rich ties to other tropes, like how packs are real, tangible, found families. The soulmatism of scent bonds and bonding as a whole. How body language becomes so much more important that I get to write about it like everyone is living through my lens as an autistic person.

That’s why I guess it feels like I’ve put so much thought into peoples designations and how they relate to each other, cause I have! It’s so interesting; to play with the new webs created by packs and bonds and hormones. How they would effect F1 as a whole and inner team dynamics. It’s stupid but it’s also stupid FUN

Anyone who’s read to the end of this weird little ramble, uh, thank you! And I also wanted to impart a lesson I was taught in my old fandom, which is that’s a/b/o shouldn’t be written without the slashes or not in all caps (ABO) as it is too close to the racial slur used against aboriginal Australians. If you are prone to forget like me, set up a keyboard shortcut that auto corrects ab* to a/b/o, or just use the term omegaverse as the anon did here hahah.

[somethingmissingthiswaycomes]

It's unfortunate that often the instinct when hearing the term "bi lesbian" is often to assume it has to do with trans women. Like... "including them in lesbianism." There's also people who at least talk like that would be a legitimate sexuality, though I'm not sure if any of them are... acting in good faith? Probably not. It's very transphobic.

To be clear, no identity whose entire premise is "includes/excludes a facet of people I would otherwise be naturally attracted to anyway but either choose not to or need an explanation for it because they don't fit" is valid. Like... "superstraight"... racial preferences... the also-common misreading of pansexuality as "includes trans people," etc.

Lesbianism didn't always have ANYTHING to do with whether a woman was also attracted to men. (Just like... look over the wiki page of the history of the word? They've got sources. We should look into them.) And sometimes, often when people still feel their attraction to women is very significant, they may want to reclaim that.

More obvious/specific reasons to have the identity include forms of split attraction, flexibility, and feeling that it most accurately describes a complicated relationship with one's attraction to nonbinary people whose gender aren't female-aligned.

(Before anyone shouts about NB people being included in lesbianism, yes of course, but the connotation in saying that generally is that all NB people are woman-aligned, and what I hear is that we're all "women lite™". There's a myriad of identities and I personally would be very uncomfortable as a genderfluid person who is often a man if my partner didn't take that into account; the combination of terms is sometimes necessary because just "lesbian" usually communicates an exclusion of attraction to men now and has for a long time. If a lesbian—not an mspec one—wanted to date me and didn't explicitly communicate that I'm an exception—very much so since finding themselves attracted to me has apparently not changed how they identify (exceptions are legit; sexuality/romanticism isn't as cozy and strict as we'd sometimes like it to be)—I would assume they weren't valuing my manhood.)

(That was a lot of not-well-written sentences sorry)

I should note that yeah, I've been using gender neutral language for lesbians. That's because nonbinary lesbians exist and sometimes use they/them or he/him pronouns.

Whether you let people use terms that describe their experiences won't make them go away, so like.... yeah, fuckin'... respect us.

Respect my NB pan lesbian girlfriend. 🖕

[thesharondefenseleague]

mlm imo werent sexualized to the degree that wlw were in most canon media mostly because of the male gaze. Gay and Lesbian relationships or moments got very limited representation. One was probably more sympathetic but also heart breaking like say brokeback mountain. One was explicit but depicted as grotesque or twisted or perverted or immoral in some way. And the last version was the titillating version. In western media because of the assumed straight male gaze lesbians making out to titlate guys was a common thing like say in Jennifer's body. The equivalent of that with guys wasnt really that common not in western media. Not that wlw couldn't like that content but it was made to be fanservice for men .

So thats what I kind of mean by wlw were sexualized at least in western media. This equivalent with mlm in fandom never really existed they never made out for girls to find hot in the same way. It was never marketed like oh look hot guys making out. Fandom did that but not canon.

As for comic book men being sexualized kind of. There is definitely the unrealistic beauty standards but theres that debate of was it for the purpose of titillating women? Or a result of toxic masculinity putting this unattainable unsustainable goal for men. Maybe both? But both in comics and the movies they are based on the posing and clothing and moments with women get made to clearly sexualize them . It especially ovbious with comics with them twisting their bodies so their boobs and butts are jutting out. Or like movie moments like Bruce landing in Natasha's clevage. Or angles where you are staring down a female character's shirt or she has a boob window for some contrived reason. Or just reasons to give full page spreads of them in skimpy clothing.

Its rare men get depicted like this or posed like this. And when they do it often stands out because its not the norm. It's something unique. Not true with men. Even in form fitting spandex they are often posed and framed to make to make them look powerful or intelligent or to reveal things about their character.

Again not that men never get sexualized or that fanservice is always bad. Or that its not a concern that men are having these terrible body image issues. But just that for women for the sexualization its so pervasive and constant was my point.

Its just as bad in wlw in canon as it is for women in relationships with men in canon when it comes to that sexualization but i hear so much more about the problems about the wlw ship than the mlw ship. Like to use DC as a example i hear so much about how people sexualized or mishandle harleyivy but compared to that i hear very little about batcat in comparison even though Catwoman is often just as sexualized in that ship.

As for misogyny in shipping wars yes it definetly exists and is a problem as is racism and homophobia. But my issue is mostly that the problem isnt because the main popular ships are mlm. But so often I see the argument framed that way.

Like shipping wars existed between m/w ships and still do today. And they are still often pretty misogynistic towards the woman in the other ship. I don't even have to look at other fandoms I remember Steggy vs Starton getting real ugly.

Mysogny in fandom doesn't uniquely pop up when mlm are the more popular ship. Its often just as bad in fandoms where m/w is the popular ship. But people just bring it up alot more they make it bout valuing the men over the women .

Well i mean that goes both ways you could say its homophobic for valuing the straight ship as better than the gay one or liking it more. But either way its stupid they dont care bout sexism or homophobia only that their ship is more popular.

Thats the sentiment of all ship wars the gender dynamics and racial make up change nothing. Nothing except the bullshit you use for the ship war.

The problem is that people are being homophobic and mysogynistic and racist not just in regards to fictional characters but towards real people just to win a ship war. It comes out so easily. Thats the problem imo.

Mysogny for example i think isnt discussed as much when its a m/w vs m/w ship war or drama because as both ships have women it can't be used to slander the other ship. But when its drama between fans of a m/m and m/w it comes out alot again not because anyone really cares but because now because one ship lacks a woman it can be used as fodder for what people actually care about. Tearing down the other ship.

Again not that mlm fandom doesnt have mysogny. They definetly do. But they aren't mysogynistic because they ship two guys together. Thats not proof they hate women. Having a ship with women isnt proof that you aren't sexist towards women. There might be homophobia in fandoms of mlm ships and mysogny in fandoms of m/w ships.

But in the drama between a m/w and m/m ships that doesn't get brought up because no one cares if that problem can't be used to show that someone only doesn't ship your ship if they are bigoted against it. Who cares about misogyny if your ship is two guys? Who cares about homophobia if your ship is straight?

No one because they cared about the popularity of their ship not the actual issues.

Gonna under under the cut for length again.

This is a lot to read so I'm gonna respond paragraph by paragraph and hope for the best in terms of comprehension.

When it comes to media made about the LGBTQ+ community, you have to keep in mind when it was made, who made it, and who was it made for. And that it's been shown that straight women have had the same reactions to mlm content as straight men to wlw content. QaF was dumbfounded to find that the majority of their audience was straight women when the show's sex scenes were 95% between two or more men and yet that's what they ran with because hey, it got the views. The views of mlm and wlw content in the mainstream media before then was minimized, despite how fucked a lot of the other content could be. If by "most canon media" being directed at the male gaze being summer blockbusters, and more specifically comic book movies, then sure. If we step out of that box, then not really. The film examples you chose are interesting because BB is portrayed exactly how the author of the original short story wrote it which was meant to be heartbreaking since it was a tragic dramatic piece while JB has a woman who wrote and another woman who directed it while purposefully trying to allow to actress to have a level of sexuality without exploiting her as past directors have (also neither of the main characters are lesbians - one is bi, the other I think is straight but maybe questioning?).

The sexualization of wlw in modern western media is definitely a thing. I mean, the first Iron Man film has stewardesses on the private jet pole dancing if I remember correctly. It took until 2016 to stop sexualizing Scarlett in every movie: the changing scene in IM2, the lowered zipper in A1, the ass shot in Cap 2, the boob faceplant in AoU (in your third paragraph, but mentioning it here anyway). It's a joke that you know when a man directs a wlw indie film during the sex scenes. But the mlm equivalent did exist alongside it, and it's what kicked off the century.

Comics and their movies were always for men. The male bodies are male wish fulfilment for their physical appearance. The women are male wish fulfilment for their dream girls. Funnily enough, one of the least sexualized women in comics I've ever read is Sharon. She's rarely, if ever, drawn to be sexualized for the audience. I'm not even sure she's even been in those swimsuit issues Marvel did years ago. And it shows heavily that Marvel struggles to know how to appeal to women without being aggressively in your face about it. The best example of them appealing without pandering is WV, and the worst is the group shots the Russos did in IW and Endgame, especially the latter.

But the men get those poses in the movies too. Thor bathed shirtless for no reason in TDW. There's a scene in Endgame dedicated to talking about Steve's ass. Pratt in GotG. Rudd in Ant-Man. Most actors are expected to look good shirtless and put themselves through intense shit to look that way. So do the women, but they aren't doing it to have the glamor shots of their muscles. And the MCU is not the only film franchise like this. Most, if not all, franchises with majority or entirely male leads expects them all to look like bodybuilders. And I'm gonna take back that it's just for the male audience, because these bodies are meant to appeal to women who are intended to thirst for these actors too. They think these bodies is what will bring women to the theaters.

None of this will change, as you say, that women's sexualization is "constant and pervasive". The film industry is just a part of the larger whole of media. Television and advertising have a treatment of women that's beyond whatever you or I say because there are decades worth of shit to go through that would take dozens of essays worth of writing to fully divulge beyond "please stop it's gross".

Now DC is a whole other ballgame. They're pretty infamous for their artists' sexualization of heroines and villainesses. Harley, Ivy, and Selina are definitely pretty bad, but when I remember what I've seen drawn of Kara, Kori, or sometimes Barbara... But outside of one artist, I think Harley and Ivy as a couple have been drawn tamely. Can't say the same for Selina, because they just can't not draw every part of her body even when she's fully clothed.

I think it's hard not to talk about fandom misogyny outside of m/m ships because of how often popular m/m shippers have rooted their shipping into misogyny. And even with m/f ship wars, a lot of the time the "faulted" character is always the woman when majority of the time it's the man who sucks. I don't get why everyone is fighting for who should kiss Steve because Steve sucks and they'd be better off without him. But because Steve is the object of affection for our fave, we have to fight off everyone else.

Don't look at other fandoms for m/f ship wars. We don't appreciate how tame we were, even at our worst. I'm serious, I've seen so much worse.

I think why the topic of misogyny comes up more with m/m ships is because they follow a similar principle of the male characters being more developed in canon and fanon so it's who people gravitate towards.

There is definitely layers of homophobia in fandom, but there's many versions of how we see it. Homophobes who won't ship anything that's not m/f. Homophobes who ship m/m but won't support IRL rights. People who love m/m but abhor f/f, and vice-versa. The shippers who use them for personal fodder. But the sexism is more prevalent than the homophobia. And the racism way more than both combined.

And it does cause a lot of ammo, and much of it severely unjustified, in ship wars. Literally the bullshit I've seen pulled out of thin air to accuse Sharon of not being worthy because someone said she's a racist for [they literally had no reason just called her one because we said Sam and Sharon are friends because they are] and other nonsense.

The real world repercussions of the homophobia, the sexism, and the racism in fandom... there's just so much. Like we are all still people, and yet we decide because we hide behind screens to be antagonistic, and use homophobic, sexist, and racist shit to attack each other over ships just because we want to paint the other person as crazy, I guess? If you can't see that there are no enemies in ship wars and that the other side is still people, maybe you need to sit out and log off. It's baffling how often it still happens to people. Then it's no longer about ships, it's about who is an asshole.

I will say that Steve and Peggy vs Steve and Sharon is probably the only m/f ship war I've seen where misogyny is talked about. Is, not was, because it still is. Both sides call the others misogynistic. I don't think either side is, but you can see in individuals. Those who tweeted at a certain actress that she was a slut for kissing her costar certainly are though.

You are right that shipping m/m isn't inherently sexist. But tearing down women in those ships to prop up m/m has made me stop shipping certain characters altogether. People, seriously, we don't have to justify why we like them! We can just like them! And other characters can still exist! It's never been that deep.

And you're right, the popularity of the ship helps people ignore any deeper issues within them and this is a power used to silence valid criticism if it pops up.

(I hope I answered everything well for you.)

~Mod R

[maneaterwithtail]

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I disagree at least one aspect.

How about this I've been thinking about introducing a character who is male and uses a traditional form of Viking magic that was noted to make or require men to act or appear as women this is Even tied into certain myths about Odin and how he was presented.

This however would understandably change both the history presentation and what have you of the Asgard in Marvel Comics. This is very important because if we want ad and more gay characters then we by necessity add in the entire identity of being gay. And with that gay subculture, gay history, and gay politics. All of which is going to be relevant in one degree or another to their life. And some of this stuff isn't directly political just so much as it's so in congruous from common assumption that it's going to be in contrast and conflict to both the established narratives of the fiction and the expectations of the audience

This is going to be necessary point. A need for this Single Character to be a gateway to Gay Culture or gay lifestyle where previously none existed for the world.

But this isn't just a burden it's also an opportunity I mean how have or how do the Asgard and Marvel Comics handle people being gay? In fact because of how gay has been erased in our society and how it by its own existence undermines a lot of social narratives kind of requires a more nuanced and complex way of viewing the world just to bring up even if the basic idea is very simple to get across - the idea of someone preferring their own gender in terms of romantic Pursuits. But that often has a knock-on effect with the number of people who we know for one thing also actually being gay. And this isn't just surface-level sketches. I mean remember finding Mary Poppins? The author of that book was a lesbian but in a supposed true story biopic this wasn't depicted. Erasure is a phenom a gay character contends

This is kind of the problem with increased representation it by necessity means disturbing pre-established narratives. Unfortunately this likely means your character is going to be or highly defined by their own Identity or have to import a lot of pre under stood identity politics or social narratives just by being a focus of distinction.

Now personally I think superhero comics are not well suited for this because a core of their appeal is action as opposed to drama or Romance. Having a coming-of-age drama deal with the fact that one or two or all of your characters are not straight or cisgendered is completely easy. After all the change of identity as you come to yourself as a large part of coming-of-age drama, so learning that you have an attraction to the same gender or that you may have be different gender expression easily slots into the beats and expectations of that

Unfortunately action-based conflicts don't exactly allow or are not well suited for dealing with struggles with being a minority even if you're past the hardships that are so going to inform where your character ended up in life. Not every person who's gay has trouble with their parents. But it's at the very least a very common and unique circumstance. There's going to be history there.

there's going to be weight there and it's such a large part of the gay identity that a large part of gay identity literature and politics centers around this reality. For instance part of the reason why intersectionality in terms of social justice or socialism has such a gay bent is because the implication that you can rely on traditional support structures such as church or family is not something that can be safely assumed if you've been gay for the last 50 years. There have been active campaigns to get rid of support network and infrastructure for gay communities. Or just dismissal so subject to crime and abuse. And traditional mainstream ones have actively excluded them such as the conflicts with the Salvation Army or other homeless shelters.

This is despite the fact that if you were a teenager and homeless chances are it's because you are LGBT and you've been kicked out of your home. This is especially important as you try to tackle social issues as a means of conflict and superheroes have been doing that longer than we've been recasting this character or that character as gay or black.

Finally there's just the fun in world-building what kind of gay community exists in a world where Captain America has been real since World War II. Has there been for instance at Revival of pagan beliefs with the onset of Thor? What kind has there been in what relationship do the asgardians have with it? They started to address some of this in one of the reboots of Thor but admittedly that was how they conflicted with conservative Christians in the Midwest. How do the actual Pagan face revivals that have been happening in Scandinavian countries intersect with the arrival of the MCU asgardians not least of which they don't fit the traditions and faith but may have inspired them or rip them off

These are all interesting plot threads but they grow from drama and not action. So I think in some ways superhero comics are trying to transition from action to more alternative Fantastical dramas. And considering that's been a big draw in terms of television and movies from Game of Thrones to Supernatural to God knows what else such as the Hunger Games Twilight The Vampire Diaries

and finally yeah some traditions do need to be attacked. The idea that everyone is straight except for a few crazy people who are gay who we should ignore at all times... it's probably at the heart of a lot of abuse. Whereas assuming queer Theory as a foundational truth meaning that not everyone is straight and gender and sexuality don't work as they have been traditionally thought of it's probably an okay thing especially as it's something that's understood to be the reality of the current zeitgeist as well as the audience.

Even people who consider themselves straight likely have had one or two phases of bisexuality or experimenting with gender. At the very least it's easier because everyone can pick a female Avatar. Or activities that are associated with being feminine are thought of as more gender-neutral such as fashion makeup romance or what have you

at the very least tapping into this thing that the young which is a major part of comics, it can't always just be to old people and how they see the world, it's important to give that a chance. especially as sexuality and gender identity are actual character traits whereas race is a bit more superficial unless we're talking about Heritage or more along the lines of ethnicity. for instance take Kamala Khan, for the most part I think she's a good character. Now there are bit pieces where things feel a little on-the-nose but it is very much aimed at a younger audience that comes from an ethnically diverse neighborhood they probably want someone to address the racial tensions that they've grown up with not least of which have been the issues with how Muslims are perceived and how their own culture and traditions have a plurality under a dome that's often reacted to hostilely

Finally some of its just adjustment both for the fans and the authors. I mean how did you really feel about Miles Morales when he first started? how did people react to him? you needed time to adjust to the idea that Peter got killed off and replaced with this guy who was very deliberately something of a token hire. and Brian Michael Bendis needed time to actually write a distinct character with his own feel and interesting ideas

finally listen to the music that kids are listening to ,read the web comics that they follow, or the Twitter discussions that they do and especially the manga that they're following and how they discuss it. I really do think that if we want Comics to remain they're going to have to change and one of those changes are going to have to be how they can appeal more to modern audiences, females, and yes trans

And some of this is going to require the characters in the world that they inhabit change in terms of assumption and presentation. There need to be gay and trans people as a community in a society that's so obvious that it's something that you discussing kindergarten without it being treated as exposing them to porn