Dream On.

Behave.

Qian dealing with emotions.

[AVOID THE TEMPTATION TO MAKE CHOICES THAT ARE FAMILIAR BUT NO LONGER SERVE YOU]

I'm so glad that y'all are so into Monkey Man and the badass hijra priestess army, but friendly reminder that hijra are NOT trans women. Hijra are their own distinct gender; trans women are women. India has both :)

This is really...weird to post if you yourself are not a trans woman or hijra, op. Many (I would even say most) hijra are women. So many of us use the term hijra women instead of just hijra to emphasise this point. A lot of the hijra identity (and other trans identities in India like Jogta/Jogtini, Aravani etc.) is tied to the arts and religion in a way that the modern term "trans" does not fully encompass or represent, but that doesn't mean that these non-secular (i can't find a better word rn) trans people are not. Well. Trans. Hijra, Aravani and other transfeminine people and women have been active in LGBT and esp. trans activism at the grassroots within India for the longest time. I'm Indian and trans myself and I'm really so tired of this constant third-gendering (and thus misgendering) of trans Indians. (Not to say that many trans people don't view themselves within the third gender framework, but that that term has done more harm than good in the practical sense.)

Here's an excellent thread by an Indian trans women tearing apart the seminal anthropological text that has cemented the idea of Hijra "third gender"ness for its racism, orientalism, and transmisogyny.

https://twitter.com/talia_bhatt/status/1779895088266592638?t=HKXcxNoIXgo0pgWcMR-mzQ&s=19

Hijras are primarily considered "third gender" (which is similar to many other culturally embedded trans women in the global south being seen as a third gender) because western anthropologists and later Indian anthropologists uncritically accepted the degendering and marginalization trans women experience as ontological evidence of a third gender which was later taken up by state policies.

This has been done by ignoring hijras for decades who have self identified as women and using transmisogynistic talking points such as a lack of their wombs making it impossible for them to be women, their forced prostitution and begging because of their exclusion from the formal economy as "cultural practices", and their experiences detailing how despite their wishes and efforts society refuses to see them as women as evidence that they are not women. The vast majority of hijras are women; they exist as women, they take HRT, they get their legal names changed, etc. Calling them a third gender is structural transmisogyny.

TRUE BLOOD | 3.02

"if you ship this thing it's because you're too naïve to understand that it's toxic and that you wouldn't like a relationship like this" actually it's because I see one of them as a mentos drop and the other as a bottle of coke zero and I want to watch the mess they'll be together

TRUE BLOOD | 4.01

I’ve been internally comparing Yuan to Old Fashion Cupcake’s Togawa, which isn’t quite fair, because a shade of Togawa is his self-shame at what he revealed to Nozue when he admitted his feelings in OFC episode 5. But at least Yuan and Togawa share this strong and bold sense of sassiness within and vis à vis their attraction and list for the older men they court.

Today, in Unknown, episode 9, I got a sense of Nozue in Qian. I know that embrace at the end of the episode may be read in part as a shipping embrace, but what I also realized about that hug was that:

As Nozue had to contemplate “crossing a line,” as it were, to DECIDE on embracing his queer revelation, what is so beautiful about watching Qian’s process of change is that we get to watch his DECISION-MAKING about crossing A FIRST line from big brother/father to lover, and we’re seeing ALL THE BURDENS and senses of responsibility he has to his YOUNGER BROTHER/CHILD there. There’s a lot more there than a queer revelation, so much more — there’s a decision that he has also has to walk away (because Yuan is now self-sufficient) from brotherly/parental RESPONSIBILITY. He needs to process this, and San Peng is there to remind Qian of this.

These are two BIG LINES! (Togawa even talks to Nozue, at the end of OFC, about being identified as a social minority — but we’re not even there yet in Unknown, and that separately is a huge behavioral decision and deal for the outcome of any queer revelation we see in dramas, that someone who previously identified as straight and who will come out as queer will have to contemplate a minority social status. The second season of She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat covered this beautifully.)

We’re being blessed or cursed with Unknown spoilers of Qian and Yuan smoochin’, but this episode 9 embrace meant a lot more to me than a prelude to smooching. I think this show in part is affecting me so much as a mom, because Qian has GOT to accept Yuan as a self-sufficient and emotionally responsible adult before making an emotional transition to becoming a lover.

Not the lover part as much, but the acceptance that a kid has grown up: that is something that parents and older siblings really struggle with, because we want to box our youngsters into a segment of our memories when they were younger, dependent, unconditionally loving, and we as caretakers could BE depended on in an expected and reliable way. Admittedly, so many of us parents even want and explore the unbalanced power dynamic there.

Yuan’s fuckin’ up that power dynamic with his damn sassiness, it is so amazing to see, but I also empathize with Qian so much, because the adult growth transitions that HE has to make as a former caretaker are just really emotionally huge. And the show is allowing him his pace of growth that’s right for his character, and it’s really just getting me in the gut for how emotionally sound and empathic this journey is going.

[...]

#made a lotta money so now i'm a big SPENDER#helping out my friend cause she's TRANSGENDER (via @estrogenesis-evangelion)

The Untamed + text posts (pt. 4/4)

Oh my Untamed

yunmeng sibs go brr (mdzs/untamed tpmeme pt 10)

not believing that the omegaverse show is real is a privilege, actually. in thailand that shit airs on public television.