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”.
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.
Again, why do you think any of this precludes someone’s gender from being “real” or “objective”? I am confused…
What the hell, no lmao, why have you spent this thread ridiculously mischaracterising my position??? People undergo medical gender transition to feel more comfortable with their bodies, to align their bodies with their gender, their desired presentation. I did too. While I don’t think that say, thick body hair or skinny thighs or flat chests are inherently gendered… if that shit makes you say “gross, I don’t wanna be a fuckin man like the doctor assigned me, I am gonna be a woman”, then YES! Do it, I did! Why the fuck would I think people should just stop feeling gender dysphoria?? Gender might be socially constructed, but that doesn’t stop people feeling things about it and those feelings are entirely valid. Being a social construct doesn’t stop something from inpacting us as people, which Imogen Binnie wrote a famous line about it her book :)
I think people tend to take “gender is a social construct” as some kind of assault against the very concept of having a gender, as an end-of-gender sentiment. Not really though! It doesn’t magically stop being a thing, or something people have extremely valid feelings about, because we examine its moving parts. I will say, I think the ol feminist “burn your bras and stop shaving” thing is pretty cool as well, and I’ve been a lot happier since I decoupled body hair from any sort of gender connotation. Obviously not everyone can bend their mind around that because dysphoria, obviously, but the no-inherent-gender thing can be helpful to trans people in many ways imo.
Plus, you know nonbinary people? Agender people? Xenogenders? How could these people express themselves in gender terms if everything was inherently male or female? How would gender euphoria even work?
But I’m not saying everything is inherently gendered. I’m saying things can be both gendered and not gendered, and it’s super subjective and context dependent precisely because gender is a personal experience unique to each person. Even within the gender binary, I highly doubt you could find two people that experience what it feels like to be e.g. a woman exactly the same way. I believe this contradicts the existence of an objective gender binary.
To clarify, I think maybe you interpret me saying that anatomy can be inherently gendered to mean anatomy is always gendered a particular way. I don’t think that’s true. I think it can be gendered, but that always depends on context and subjective experience and can ultimately be a valid personal viewpoint one way or another. I don’t think it’s prescriptive, i.e. having a dick is always masculine no matter what. I do playfully question the sexuality of “straight” men who are obsessed with cocks, and I’m not interested in protecting their self identification as straight. I do this in response to being objectified by chasers in ways that make me feel particularly dysphoric, and I’m sorry if that stance makes other girls dysphoric in a different way, but it’s really not a comment on them or their femininity.