The labels have the character’s name followed by 受 (uke), which means being the receptive or passive partner, or in BL slang means the bottom. Most underrated organizational system ever by the way. Please show this to anyone who claims that “unwoke” Japan doesn’t “shoehorn queerness into everything”.
I wasn’t talking about intersex surgeries, sorry that was unclear.
Look, it’s obvious you and I just don’t mean the same thing by “X is/isn’t inherently gendered”. If genitalia are not gendered, then nothing is, and also any queer labels are all meaningless including straightness and cisness. Which I happen to believe, generally speaking.
But as long as we’re having a conversation about something “being gay” or whatever, then it’s silly to pretend like society doesn’t actually view genitals as associated with gender.
Okay, I was. It’s a good reference point for the concept of anatomy being gendered.
Yes; labels are also constructed things exclusively used simply by people to describe themselves. No one trait of a human is inherently gendered; nothing is. “Cis” and “straight” still have meaning, in fact all queer labels do. Descriptive meanings.
Right but that’s entirely on the person (in this case, the weird sad cis het man) doing the objectifying & presumable agonising about his sexuality. It’s not like it’s impossible that this man could simply be gay and coping weird, but inherently there is nothing gay about his attraction. The anatomy is only gendered in his goofyass mind.
But that’s exactly my point; society does gender anatomy. Society genders a bunch of other things, too. I’m not being prescriptive about it. I’m not saying I think that’s a good thing and we should do it more.
As for whether it’s gay to like dicks, I believe it is at least a little gay, but also I don’t care. Like I said, I think once we start trying to draw form boundaries around queer labels then inevitably people will start to get confused because nobody views it exactly the same way. For example, is a ftm4mtf relationship straight? Yeah, I guess. But it’s also queer. It follows, then, that queerness and straightness are not mutually exclusive, so something can be straight but also a little gay. Or very gay. It’s whatever.
Societal definition doesn’t count as anything like “inherent”…
A trans man in a relationship with a trans woman is undeniably straight, because it is a man and a woman. Whether or not it’s queer is more nuanced, most people would probably say it is, but some trans people don’t want to identify as “queer”. I think straight trans people balking at the queer label might be assimilationist, but I’m also just one person.
Of course you can be both straight and queer. This was a big heady topic until you started seeing more heteroromantic asexual people, who are straight, but asexuality is undoubtedly queer.
You’re sure allowed to believe that a man liking cock is “at least a little gay” based on the fact that straight society deems it so, if you want. But given that cock isn’t actually related to any gender at all, and that men can like cock without being attracted to other men at all, I think that’s a pretty poor stance.
Then nothing can be “inherently gendered” because gender is a social construct.
Yeah, that’s right! Gender Outlaw is a pretty cool book.
Ok sure, I just feel similarly towards sexuality, too. Like if nothing is inherently gendered, then I think sexuality is reduced to just having one’s “type” be a collection of traits. And so queer labels only exist for communicating to others what one’s “type” is.
And if nothing is inherently gendered, then there is nothing real about a person that indicates their gender besides their own feelings which are, at least to some degree, totally unique to their own experience. So “being gay” must be based on people’s internal feelings of gender, and has nothing to do with physical traits. That pretty much is how I feel about it; it’s much more of a vibe than anything real and concrete. I think that’s why people would clock me as gay or even a lesbian before my egg ever cracked.
But I don’t think that’s very useful, so I also consider “being gay” to be shorthand for being into certain physical traits. So men who are into women regardless of their anatomy can absolutely be straight. But chasers who are specifically into our dicks? A little bit gay.
“Being gay” is in fact about a person’s feelings towards physical traits, yes. There is more to it than that, because gender encompasses more than just your physical traits, but yes. Why are people’s unique feelings about themselves classed as “nothing real” by you? It is literally their identity; it’s all about personal feelings. “Being gay” is in fact also based on internal feelings of gender, yeah. You like people who are women, who have “woman” as their identity, but whether you like long hair or not, or prefer longer legs or muscular women or well defined collar bones, (idk this is how allosexuals parse sexual attraction right?) is entirely personal. It’s also greatly influenced by cultural norms, since concepts of gender are societal constructs, which is okay!
Some things have a sort-of association with specific genders, like generally thick facial hair is a “man” thing. But there are plenty of nonbinary, or genderfluid, or agender people with beards. Hell, there are women with beards!
Oh boy, it’s the chaser thing. Look, I’m not gonna defend chasers right, because fuck em. However, simply put, a man’s attraction to a trans woman cannot be gay because it would be implying inherent maleness in a trans woman, which is pretty much the worst thing I’ve heard this week, and also untrue. I kind of feel like male chasers are usually not gay anyway? Again it’s possible, but they could just go have sex with dudes. Using trans women as a sort of mental work-around seems weird, since A) it’s probably more socially acceptable at this point to be gay than a chaser, B) trans women are not men and so aren’t generally (allowing that the thing where allosexuals exclusively focus on genitalia as their only sexual interaction is a weird possibility) gonna satisfy the sexual desires of someone attracted to men? Rather than being repressed gay men, it’s probably more useful to look at straight male chasers as just straight men fetishising women, again. Just now with the bonus that they’re being weird about sexual anatomy, again not entirely new territory for straight men - men who are attracted to women, but also like cock. To the point of unhealthy, fetishistic fixation.
You know, I guess we just disagree that “being a man/woman” is a real, specific thing that someone can objectively be. For example, my gender expression fits pretty neatly as “woman” and that’s how I like to identify, but to me that’s just a social relation. Whenever I try to deconstruct what it actually feels like or means to be a woman, I just feel as though it’s all made up anyway. Other people surely feel differently.
I’m sorry you think I’m implying there’s some inherent maleness in a trans woman. More accurately, I just don’t think “inherent maleness” is a real thing. For my part, I can’t help but feel like you’re implying that medical transition is pointless because we should all just start viewing our features as feminine. Or that we should just stop feeling gender dysphoria because there’s nothing inherently masculine about our bodies in the first place.