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”.
Is anatomy inherently gendered?
It depends, like if I only like people with full on masculine features I’m a pretty standard gay man, if I only like people with feminine features I’m probably straight, and then it starts to break down in the middle, unless I don’t care about certain features, but there isn’t a hard line. Regardless of what specific person I am attracted to, I feel like if all I can think about is getting all up in a thick beard then I’m probably somewhere in the middle. I guess it’s all about the things that specifically are important to someone
“In the middle” shouts to the gender binary. I find it interesting that you acknowledge sexuality as being highly personal and deeply complicated, yet view it through a simple binary. Not that I broadly disagree with what you’ve said, fwiw
I guess by in the middle I just mean not exclusively attracted to masculine or feminine attributes, speaking in terms of like more superficial physical attraction and not so much about romantic attraction and how that can be affected by gendered cultural norms and that sort of thing
Sexuality definitely is hard to pin down, it’s like, all abstractions upon abstractions, it’s so complex really that identifying “objective” information about it is basically absurd- basically trying to describe a thought or emotion by listing out neuron states or something, it’s not possible
I mean… A little bit yeah
Howso & why?
I mean I get what you mean, my anatomy certainly doesn’t stop me from feeling like a woman. Obviously gender is far far more than anatomy, but I’m not going to pretend like they are completely unrelated. If that’s your experience, that’s great and I’m happy for you, but it’s unfortunately not mine.
Why aren’t they completely unrelated? Because doctors assign everyone’s gender at birth exclusively based on their genitalia? Doesn’t sound that inherent to me.
Especially given how surgeons frequently disfigure intersex infants to fit this binary.
I’m not really sure what you’re saying here. Society reduces gender to anatomy, therefore the two are completely unrelated, actually? Are you saying it’s wrong for trans people to want bottom surgery?
Wow, that’s a way worse reply than I was expecting! Way to twist what I said about disfiguring “corrective” surgery into transphobia, very pleasant. Not ridiculous at all.
The two are unrelated because the conflation of genitalia and gender is entirely a construction of our society. So in a way, yes.
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.