“Angel, will you bring me my phone?” Kim called from the balcony. He heard it chime in the living room, but was too comfortable with his guitar to get it himself. Chay was closer, anyway.
“Sure,” Chay called back. He unburied himself from the piles of notes, books, and homework he’s been accumulating all afternoon, and located Kim’s phone amidst the mess he’s made of the coffee table. Kim had message previews disabled but Chay saw the sender’s ID. “It’s Kinn.”
“Thanks.” Chay drifted back towards his homework, but not before Kim gave him a sweet kiss on his hip and an encouraging pat to his butt. Kim watched him go, full of so much fondness and love for the other boy, he somehow wondered how he could survive the weight of it.
Then Kim opened his messages, and all the warmth left his body in the same rush that stole the breath from his lungs.
From: Kinn
It’s time to come home Pa is dying
Kim called his brother. Kinn picked up before the end of the first ring.
“What happened?” Kim asked, distantly proud of himself for keeping his voice even.
“Pa has cancer. Stage four, according to the doctor. Started in his liver, spread to his lungs. They’re suspecting his brain, as well.”
“What? How—since when?”
“Nearly two years now.” Kinn took a deep breath, He kept his voice steady, too, even though this had to be destroying him. “He was hiding it from us. Said he didn’t want us to worry.”
“Bullshit.”
“I believe him, Kim. He wouldn’t—he wouldn’t want to look weak. It’s why he retired to Chiang Mai. You know how he is.”
Another wave of cold. “I didn’t know he retired,” Kim said flatly.
“Oh.” A beat. “He did. Four years ago, now. Soon after…”
“After I left.” All this time, hating his father for never coming to see him. The entire time he was on the other side of the country, and no one bothered to tell Kim. Of course they hadn’t, he’d made it very clear when he stormed out that he didn’t want contact with any of them. “What… what do we do, now?”
“Tankhun has already moved up North to take care of Pa. I’m taking a sabbatical from the company to join him. I—we would appreciate it if you could come too.”
Kim felt his throat close up around any words he might have said.
“Not for long. Only a few days, at most. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t serious, Kim, but we don’t know how much time he has left. Please, I… Please.”
Kim hated the desperation in his brother’s voice. Would do anything to spare them both.
“No, I—I’ll come.” Kinn breathed a deep sigh of relief. Before he could do anything like thank Kim, he rushed to add, “I can’t promise how long I’ll stay. I’ll need to see how much—”
“Just a few days. Anything you can spare.”
“Okay. Okay, I… I’ll be there.”
“Thank you, Kim. I’ll let Tankhun know. Tell me when you have your travel details.”
“I will.” Feeling eyes on his back, Kim looked over his shoulder to find Chay hovering in the doorway, watching him with concern. “I have to go. We’ll talk soon.”
“Is everything alright, P’Kim?” Chay asked softly, after Kim hung up. He approached quietly, Kim turned back around, staring out at the cityscape beyond the balcony. He still had his phone in hand.
“My father’s dying,” Kim said numbly.
“Oh, no.” Immediately Chay’s arms fell around him, pulling him into the safety of his boyfriend’s chest. “I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”
“I… don’t know.” Kim didn’t know what he was feeling, if anything at all. “I shouldn’t be. He’s my father. And he’s—”
“I don’t think there’s a right way to feel,” Chay soothed, working his fingers through Kim’s hair. “But I think it’s also probably still a shock? Why don’t we go sit down? I think we’ve both worked enough today, let’s just—yeah. Sit down. Let it, uh, sink in.”
“Okay.”
Kim let Chay take his guitar and lay it aside. He let himself be led back into the living room, which had unofficially become Chay’s workspace during these shared days. He watched Chay clear away his school clutter into an unorganized pile—he would probably regret it later—and then let himself be pulled down onto the sofa, into Chay’s chest.
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I used to like saying "gender is a social construct," but I stopped saying that because people didn't tend to react well - they thought that I was saying gender wasn't real, or didn't matter, or could be safely ignored without consequences. Which has always baffled me a bit as an interpretation, honestly, because many things are social constructs - like money, school, and the police - and they certainly have profound effects on your life whether or not you believe in them. And they sure don't go away if you ignore them.
Anyway. What I've taken to saying instead is, "gender is a cultural practice." This gives more of a sense of respect for the significance gender holds to many people. And it also opens the door to another couple layers of analysis.
Gender is cultural. It is not globally or historically homogeneous. It shifts over time, develops differently in different communities, and can be influenced by cross-cultural contact. Like many, many aspects of culture, the current status of gender is dramatically influenced by colonialism. Colonial gender norms are shaped by the hierarchical structure of imperialist society, and enforced onto colonized cultures as part of the project of imperial cultural hedgemony.
Gender is practiced. What constitutes a gender includes affects and behaviors, jobs or areas of work, skillsets, clothing, collective and individual practices of gender affiliation and affirmation. Any or all of these things, in any combination, depending on the gender, the culture, and the practitioner.
Gender encompasses shared cultural archetypes. These can include specific figures - gods and goddesses, mythic or fictional characters, etc - or they can be more abstract or general. The Wise Woman, Robin Hood, the Dyke, the Working Man, the Plucky Heroine, the Effete Gay Man, etc etc. The range of archetypes does not circumscribe a given gender, that is, they're not all there is to gender. But they provide frameworks and reference points by which people relate to gender. They may be guides for ways to inhabit or practice a gender. They may be stereotypes through which the gendered behavior of others is viewed.
Gender as a framework can be changed. Because it is created collectively, by shared acknowledgement and enforcement by members of society. Various movements have made significant shifts in how gender is structured at various times and places. The impact of these shifts has been widely variable - for example, depending on what city I'm in, even within my (fairly culturally homogeneous) home country, the way I am gendered and reacted to changes dramatically. Looping back to point one, we often speak of gender in very broad terms that obscure significant variability which exists on many scales.
Gender is structured recursively. This can be seen in the archetypes mentioned above, which range from extremely general (say, the Mother) to highly specific (the PTA Soccer Mom). Even people who claim to acknowledge only two genders will have many concepts of gendered-ways-of-being within each of them, which they may view and react to VERY differently.
Gender is experienced as an external cultural force. It cannot be opted out of, any more than living in a society can be opted out of. Regardless of the internal experience of gender, the external experience is also present. Operating within the shared cultural understanding of gender, one can aim to express a certain practice of gender - to make legible to other people how it is you interface with gender. This is always somewhat of a two-way process of communication. Other people may or may not perceive what you're going for - and they may or may not respect it. They may try to bring your expressed gender into alignment with a gender they know, or they might parcel you off into your own little box.
Gender is normative. Within the structure of the "cultural mainstream," there are allowable ways to practice gender. Any gendered behavior is considered relative to these standards. What behavior is allowed, rewarded, punished, or shunned is determined relative to what is gender normative for your perceived gender. Failure to have a clearly perceivable gender is also, generally, punished. So is having a perceivable gender which is in itself not normative.
Gender is taught by a combination of narratives, punishments, and encouragements. This teaching process is directed most strongly towards children but continues throughout adulthood. Practice of normatively-gendered behaviors and alignment with 'appropriate' archetypes is affirmed, encouraged, and rewarded. Likewise 'other'- gendered behavior and affinity to archetypes is scolded, punished, or shunned. This teaching process is inherently coercive, as social acceptance/rejection is a powerful force. However it can't be likened to programming, everyone experiences and reacts to it differently. Also, this process teaches the cultural roles and practices of both (normative) genders, even as it attempts to force conformity to only one.
Gender regulates access to certain levers of social power. This one is complicated by the fact that access to levers of social power is also affected by *many* other things, most notably race, class, and citizenship. I am not going to attempt to describe this in any general terms, I'm not equipped for that. I'll give a few examples to explain what I'm talking about though. (1) In a social situation, a man is able to imply authority, which is implicitly backed by his ability to intimidate by yelling, looming, or threatening physical violence. How much authority he is perceived to have in response to this display is a function of his race and class. It is also modified by how strongly he appears to conform to a masculine ideal. Whether or not he will receive social backlash for this behavior (as a separate consideration to how effective it will be) is again a function of race/class/other forms of social standing. (2) In a social situation, a woman is able to invoke moral judgment, and attempt to modify the behavior of others by shame. The strength of her perceived moral authority depends not just on her conformity to ideal womanhood, but especially on if she can invoke certain archetypes - such as an Innocent, a Mother, or better yet a Grandmother. Whether her moral authority is considered a relevant consideration to influence the behavior of others (vs whether she will be belittled or ignored) strongly depends on her relative social standing to those she is addressing, on basis of gender/race/class/other.
[Again, these examples are *not* meant to be exhaustive, nor to pass judgment on employing any social power in any situation. Only to illustrate what "gendered access to social power" might mean. And to illustrate that types of power are not uniform and may play out according to complex factors.]
Gender is not based in physical traits, but physical traits are ascribed gendered value. Earlier, I described gender as practiced, citing almost entirely things a person can do or change. And I firmly believe this is the core of gender as it exists culturally - and not just aspirationally. After the moment when a gender is "assigned" based on infant physical characteristics, they are raised into that gender regardless of the physical traits they go on to develop (in most circumstances, and unless/until they denounce that gender.) The range of physical traits like height, facial shape, body hair, ability to put on muscle mass - is distributed so that there is complete overlap between the range of possible traits for people assigned male and people assigned female. Much is made of slight trends in things that are "more common" for one binary sex or the other, but it's statistically quite minor once you get over selection bias. However, these traits are ascribed gendered connotations, often extremely strongly so. As such, the experience of presented and perceived gender is strongly effected by physical traits. The practice of gender therefore naturally expands to include modification of physical traits. Meanwhile, the social movements to change how gender is constructed can include pushing to decrease or change the gendered association of physical traits - although this does not seem to consistently be a priority.
Gender roles are related to the hypothetical ability to bear children, but more obliquely than is often claimed. It is popular to say that the types of work considered feminine derive from things it is possible to do while pregnant or tending small children. However, research on the broader span of human history does not hold this up. It may be true of the cultures that gave immediate rise to the colonial gender roles we are familiar with - secondary to the fact that childcare was designated as women's work. (Which it does not have to be, even a nursing infant doesn't need to be with the person who feeds it 24 hours a day.) More directly, gender roles have been influenced by structures of social control aiming for reproductive control. In the direct precursors of colonial society, attempts to track paternal lineage led to extreme degrees of social control over women, which we still see reflected in normative gender today. Many struggles for women's liberation have attempted to push back these forms of social control. It is my firm opinion that any attempt to re-emphasize childbearing as a touchstone of womanhood is frankly sick. We are at a time where solidarity in struggle for gender liberation, and for reproductive rights, is crucial. We need to cast off shackles of control in both fights. Trying to tie childbearing back to womanhood hobbles both fights and demeans us all.
Gender is baked deeply enough into our culture that it is unlikely to ever go away. Many people feel strongly about the practice of gender, in one way or another, and would not want it to. However we have the power to change how gender is structured and enforced. We can push open the doors of what is allowable, and reduce the pain of social punishment and isolation. We can dismantle another of the tools of colonial hedgemony and social control. We can change the culture!
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90 and cook
“If I ask you to kiss me in front of all these people, will you do it?” // Alana Cook (1,698 words)
It felt like everything had been leading up to this.
All of the late night travel, own goals, offside calls, and yellow cards.
An NWSL regular season final at Lumen.
Instinctually, you looked over your shoulder and let your eyes find Alana’s as you took your spot just outside the center circle. The centerback didn’t even have to say a word, just a nod of your head and you could feel every ounce of confidence she had in you.
That confidence is what pushed you through the 3rd minute foul, annoyance ringing through you at the same pitch of the refs whistle.
“Walk it off Y/LN!” Her strong voice sounded from the backline. And so you did, sparing only a half glare towards the Orlando player who had flopped under your light touch.
In the 12th, you ripped a shot off your left that went just over the crossbar. Before you could even shout out in frustration, she was there.
“Good look, Y/LN.” She yelled, and the noise of protest died in your throat as you jogged back towards the center of the pitch.
In the 20th, you were the one offering affirmations.
“It’s alright! We know the drill!” You shouted, clapping your hands as the Reign players all moved in as Orlando went to take the corner. But the words weren’t for her. Instead, as you crossed behind her to support at the near post, you let your hand brush just slightly against her back. Physical touch, that was for her. It wasn’t something she could get often, either due to nosey teammates or because you were playing in front of thousands of fans, but you could see the way the little touch had teased the tension from her shoulders.
Alana and Lauren cleared the second corner without fuss, the score remained 1-0.
Jordyn’s goal in the 24th had even the defenders crashing in for the celebration, this time it was Alana’s turn to brush against you.
It was a delicate dance, hiding from friends and cameras alike, but it served to keep a smile on your face and your head in the game.
In the 29th, you were thrown to the ground. The whistle was immediate but so was the dissent from your teammates, the card to the Orlando player followed quickly after.
Meanwhile you fought to find your feet, still wheezing a bit from the blow to your stomach.
“Here.” It was Alana, of course, who held out her hand to help you up. She didn’t ask anything further but her eyes held all the concern in the world. In response, you nodded. The signal was understood, the call left you a little battered and bruised but don’t worry you were fine, play on.
In the 31st, your revenge for the card came quickly.
The cross came in at a speed that was all too familiar from Fishlock, and without a second thought you were there. Jumping forward off your back leg, the ball fell to your extended front foot and slammed right into the center of the net.
You couldn’t be bothered to stick around. The moment it crossed the line, you were sprinting towards centerfield and your teammates were close behind. Of course, Alana got to you first. Perhaps not the most discreet move for someone who isn’t often involved in goal celebrations, but neither of you could care less when her arms wrapped around your waist and spun you around before you were crushed by the rest of the team.
Orlando was a lot less thrilled.
In the 44th, a shove from Jenkins sent you sprawling to the ground and almost caught underfoot by her teammates. But you jumped back up before anyone could reach you.
“Y/LN!” Her voice called, and you just nodded again. Play on.
Halftime followed soon after, the locker room abuzz and Laura full of praise that had you floating.
“You gonna stop letting them kill you this half?” Alana joked, knocking her shoulder against yours where you sat at your lockers.
“That depends if you keep being the one to help me up?” You teased back, wiggling your eyebrows suggestively before turning your attention back to your coach.
Turns out you did stop letting them kill you, but you decided to take out some anger of your own.
In the 47th, the ref flashed you a yellow for a late timed jump. Huffing in response, you opened your mouth to complain at the harshness of the card but were quickly cut off.
“Y/N!” The sound of your first name stopped you where you stood, not used to hearing that from her when you were playing. The older woman shook her head when you locked eyes and you angrily let the protest die, focusing your energy instead on fixing your prewrap headband.
In the 50th, Alana carefully heads a ball into Phallons hands and you’re left trying not to scream your praises for the defensive work. But your excitement quickly died down when the ref decided you were the guilty party on another foul.
In the 56th, your feet were swept out from under you again and you were sent rolling down the pitch.
“Oh come on!” Alana yelled, throwing a hand up in casual frustration as she jogged to your side. It wasn’t out of her way at least, seeing how this far right side would be peak Cook freekick territory.
“I thought I told you to stop letting them kill you.” The defender muttered, her voice low you assumed due to the proximity of the bench.
“And yet here you are, helping me up.” You grinned, shooting her a wink as you jogged away to continue play, vaguely aware of the wolf whistles that followed you from the sidelines.
It was smooth sailing until Dougherty-Howard decided to get into Alana's space in the 81st. Dougherty-Howard who had been giving you hell all night. So naturally, Alana sent her falling face first to the pitch before giving the ref nothing more than a chuckle and a shrug as she jogged away innocently. For your part, you were trying not to die of laughter. The crew of chaos creators on the sidelines? Well, they tried less hard.
It seemed Dougherty-Howard took that to heart, or at least to the ego. Because in the 90th, she came in for Alana’s ankles with a fierceness.
“THE HELL!” The words coming out of your mouth before you could even stop them, your feet already carrying you to where Alana lay splayed out on the ground. Thankfully, the ref pulled out the yellow card before you needed to say much else.
“Remember you’re on a yellow.” Alana fussed, already trying to get back to her feet as you took her hand to help her up this time.
“I’ll be fine.” You laughed, rolling your eyes at our characteristically Alana it was for her to be worried about you after a fall like that.
With extra time on the clock, you fell to the ground once more with a shove from Gunny but a nod and you were back to your feet.
You were ready for this to be over. You were ready to win.
And then the final whistle blew and the Reign won the Shield.
You fell to your knees in a combination of exhaustion and joy. Teammates piled around you. Everyone was dancing and screaming and celebrating.
And the dance continued.
While Alana went to talk with friends, you were off to the fans. Snapping BeReals, signing shirts, and giving away the boots you definitely needed to replace now anyways.
Caught up in a conversation with a fan who had mentioned your Stanford days to you, you didn’t hear the older woman sneak up behind you until she cleared her throat.
“Mind if I steal this one from you?” Alana smoothly asked the fan who just laughed and held her hands up in surrender.
“She’s all yours!” The girl said, earning a smirk from Alana.
“Damn right she is.” She whispered, pulling you away from the barrier and into her arms.
“Well hi there!” You laughed, leaning back from the hug to look at her. Much to your surprise though, her big brown eyes were much too busy looking at your lips to look you in the eyes.
“Alana…” Her name was a warning that she didn’t heed.
“If I ask you to kiss me in front of all these people, will you do it?” Alana’s voice was low, and you weren’t sure if it was her word or her tone that made you shiver.
“Why don’t you find out?” You whispered, licking your lips in anticipation.
“Y/N, can you please-”
But you didn’t let her finish. Between her worn out voice and the sound of your name, her lips were too appealing to leave lonely for another second.
You could hear the roar of the crowd that remained in Lumen field, topped only in loudness by the screams of your teammates who had spotted this special moment.
Neither of you could care less. Your focus was on the warmth of Alana’s touch as callused hands rested against your bare hips, sending sparks through your skin as you brought your own hands to the back of her head. When air became a necessity, you let Alana pull away and trap your bottom lip between her teeth in the way she liked, nipping down on it before letting you go completely.
“You didn’t let me finish asking.” She pointed out breathlessly.
“No way is that what you’re complaining about right now.”
And the two of you, and all of your nosey teammates, dissolved into laughter under the late-night lights of Lumen Field.
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