Morwen wrote:There's a saying you may have heard:
Various Artists wrote:Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out.
It has been attributed to many over the last couple of centuries and the wording changes slightly over the years, but the meaning should be clear.
Now that my creepy memetic declarations of agreement over the Internet are over...
JerrBear wrote:Artemisia wrote:
Unfortunately, I've been on the receiving end of a variety of hatred from just about everyone in the Community. The biphobia and transphobia isn't just among gay men. There are a number of biphobic and transphobic lesbians out there, and even within the Trans Community, there are people who can be very prejudiced. For those who wouldn't know, not all trans people identify as the Trans part, and unfortunately, that can mean a lot of prejudice getting thrown at someone who doesn't see being trans as being an identity. I'm probably mangling this explanation.
Simply put, there's a lot of hate within the Community, and Dillon is showing a lot of the usual signs of being one of those who has a very narrow view of gender and identity.
I can see that happening too easily.
To oversimplify the issue : Just because someone has suffered/is suffering from a lack of understanding, bigotry, and discrimination doesn't mean said person is incapable of bigotry and discrimination.
Feminists and lesbians being transphobic? Check.
Homosexuals being biphobic? Check
People of races other than the only race not suffering any visible discrimination in mixed communities developing tendencies to discriminate (usually not based on race) other people? Check.
Women encouraging other women into open misandry? Check.
Men repeating the same insults they were treated to in youth due to lack of physical attractiveness or somesuch traits to others? Check.
This just perpetuates the simple fact that people who suffer very easily join one of the two groups : Those who try to prevent others from suffering similar pains, and those who alleviate their traumas and pains by indiscriminately directing their anger towards people they can direct it to with little consequences. The problem is how big the second group seems to be right now.
Don Alexander wrote:(...)
1) For example, a conniving, traitorous individual who presents themselves as a supporter of the PCs might have a viper as their soul animal, which indicates their true nature and would be a warning of upcoming treachery.
2) So yeah. In light of that, having a strongly homosexual man be bi- and transphobic at the same time is not that surprising after all... Though I've had the feeling Dillon is not involved in the LGBT scene at all. He's just supermegagay, doesn't mind if anyone knows that, and does his supermegagay thing. ;)
1) Snakes and (to a lesser extent) wolves always get the short, villainous end of the stick. Poor schmucks.
2) Funnily enough, Dillon gets with Zii (who is so obviously bisexual, it *hurts*) MARVELOUSLY, but is biphobic towards men.
Basically a man who for his early life was probably feeling bad about the pressure to date girls wants to pressure guys into making a choice, while at the same time evidently having a knack for trying to get as many self-identified as straight men touch him in all sorts of intimate ways.
He's a gay guy who likes playing with straight-ish bicurious guys (arguably to the point of trying to make them actively bisexual, or at least confused) with a tendency to despise bisexual men and pressure bisexual men into making a choice one way or the other.
Oh, also the concept of gender identity doesn't register with him.
Objectively, the terrifying depth of this hypocrisy makes Dillon a quite well-written character. It also makes him easy to despise.
Artemisia wrote:
Morwen...I'm not just thinking in terms of language. Every story you have ever read contains the concepts which our culture passes on to each of us. Each story about a Prince saving a Princess reinforces the gender constructs and gender norms that our society demands. Most of these constructs date back only about four hundred or so years. The rigidity of our culture is mostly an Enlightenment phenomenon. There are elements of human experience, however, which defy the rigidity which our culture has built in.
There's a certain thing to be said about nature vs nurture here.
Despite some people trying their hardest to enforce the idea everything is relative and a social construct, it is undeniable that certain mental tendencies in humans are based on the way their body and brain have developed, and there are even quantifiable differences between most 'male' and 'female' brains.
For every person that believes a Prince saving a Princess is reinforcing constructs and norms there's another who dreamed of such a scenario not from the moment they've read such a story but from the moment they started interacting with other people in a romantic manner. Whether the cause is hormonal balance, natural brain development, or something else, there is a biological basis that reinforces certain gender identities. It is not the only or the main factor in gender identity, but it can hardly be denied that tendencies we're born with and develop through our phenotype pitted against the environment we grow up in are a major factor in developing a gender identity.
Personally I believe it's not that things that reinforce basic notions of 'femininity' or 'masculinity' as they've been traditionally held for thousands of years are somehow inherently bad (some are, some aren't, as usual). It's how easily people who managed to conform to them react with horror to those that don't conform to them ('tomboy' is sometimes an insult, the eagerness with which effeminate men or tough women are called 'sissy' or 'butch' is a little scary, and the only way some people are able to identify genderqueer people is through porn misnomers), in any way, that is the problem.
Morwen wrote:A quick search only reveals one instance of the "five genders" bit and I'm gonna go with the Wikipedia entry of it, since it includes what I found in other sources and is convenient enough.
Aaand then, there's this wonderful concept where everyone has six or seven (I keep forgetting) gender "Points" on which they can be "Masculine, moderate, or feminine", where the number of gender combinations becomes so high, it ceases to have meaning.
I do fear that humanity is splitting between two extremes : Those that are too scared to admit gender may not be a black-and-white type of things, and those that are too eager to accept gender as a spectrum as broad as visible colors and an entirely mental construct.
I did once mention the idea of some over-eager LGBT folks in my country that wanted to make six year old boys in skirts a mandatory thing, right?
More often than not people fail to see the entirety of the issue, and focus on a single facet of it. Ask yourself what makes you right before you set fire on other people for being wrong. // "Chemical reactions between the kawaii and uguu hormones.Within the Desu Gland. This is near to the upper Moe muscle."