#this is wrt the excellent whipping girl post

[librarycards]

yeah I think there is an understandable tendency to equate all essentialisms with bioessentialism, especially considering the application of the false doctrine of “sex” to practices of gender(ing), but what that leaves out are the myriad violent forms of social / cultural / etc essentialism equally if not more insidious and difficult to uproot, at least in the area of cisheterosexism.

e.g. accusations of predatoriness are more accurately ascribed to understandings of “toxic” social environment cultivated by a critical mass of “antisocial” actors, or even the fundamental belief that a set of “feminine” (and always-already white) values must be endemic to certain purified socialities (though not necessarily to certain bodies) and it is for this reason that the aforementioned bodies must be protected from supposed contamination

[lukore]

something really feels like home to me about gideon and coronabeth as foils wrt transfeminity and gender performance (especially considering @cristabel-oct's post abt cavalier/necromancer gender).

Gideon's physical excellence (and in a greater sense her embodiment as the son daughter of god) is her only protection, her only reason for existence, her only agency, but also the through which and for which she is exploited—as a cavalier, as a biological weapon (to open the tomb), as a scapegoat (for the ninth). Likewise, the way Corona assumes a necromancer's frailty to protect both herself and her sister, and ultimately the reputation of her House, but utterly lacks agency in the first book ("'I can do nothing she said, and Gideon realised they'd just lost her, somehow." ie the scene where Naberius challenges Cam, and after, when Ianthe kills Naberius,') . That Gideon first fakes the role of cavalier but ultimately conforms and is consumed by it. The way that corona is twice refused to take the role of cavalier (symbolically when she tries to duel Gideon, and literally when judith rejects her offer of cavalierhood —WITH GIDEON'S FUCKING SWORD). In fact, the scene where corona attempts to challenge Gideon is practically Corona trying to come out gideon, "i am like you," essentially, but repressed by Naberius. The way that the Ninth house as a whole visits so much harm onto Gideon as the scapegoat and receptacle of their collective guilt long before she ever performed the role of cavalier (haha harrow literally calls gideon her whipping girl). The way that Corona is the hollow golden child face outshining Ianthe. lord.