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".
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.
Okay, I more or less agree with that too. In fact, I think that "doubt you could find two people that experience what it feels like to be e.g. a woman exactly the same way" is a pretty good argument for stuff not being gendered beyond a personal, or goofy social level. How do you mean, "both gendered and not gendered", anyway? "Kinda gendered"?
Okay, whatever, Schrodinger's gendered anatomy??? Like I said before you can just keep thinking that any dude who likes cock is "at least a little bit gay", as you said, I just think that's a weak stance.
If you want an anecdote to go with yours, the chasers I've met have never really given me the impression that they would ever be into dudes. They have the absolute worst and most scuffed ideas about gender, of course, but what they said tended not to line up with the extremely binary gendered worldview they had. No interest in male cock, only the female ones. I still think it's a lot more productive to view typical chasers as just freakish objectifiers, the same way any misogynist man is. Their atrocious ideas about gender, doubtless rotted from pornbrain, can be extremely hurtful though.
But wow, this whole thing really just comes down to "trans chasers are just gay men" for you, huh? It's kind of weird to argue about whether or not anatomy is inherently gendered, as per the original subject, by bringing in the viewpoint of weird fetishists. But it's a point I went over already.
Well first of all, I'm not saying they are "just" gay men. Like I said, I don't think it's all that useful or even possible to try and draw boundaries around what or who is gay vs straight. People and gender and sexuality are way more complex than that.
And the original context WAS about cock-obsessed chasers. And not all of them, but some of them definitely are (internally or otherwise) misgendering trans women. And that is definitely gay.
I guess SerLava's comment kind of implies that, although everyone else basically talks around the concept. But what I asked was "Is anatomy inherently gendered". But you argument seems to have gone from "yeah a little" to 'well labels are so omplicated you can't even define sexuality!' as you've ignored and sidestepped and generally not responded to like 75% of what I've said. While trying to mischaracterise my points as transphobia, as a bonus. Drawn this whole comment chain in a circle to get back to "but chasers are doing gay things!" which ignores my original question. Okay.
TL;DR anatomy is not inherently gendered in any way and thinking so says more about the person thinking it.
Because my point is that I really don't give a shit about litigating queer identities, and I think it's pointless to try. Which you keep mischaracterizing as transphobia. You ask if I think anatomy is inherently gendered, and I just think it's a bad question.