fuzzy post-it

Anonymous asked:

(1/2) Regarding amdusias gender disappointment (sorry if I spam but I forgot). In the comic you've only put focus on the dapper suit upper body and not the skirted lower body and with the reveal of GLORIOUS YAOI HANDS on ch5 p53, people really wanted amdusias to be male so all the funny yaoi jokes thet were up and coming in their minds worked. I too was like "He's gonna be touching face with those puppies and it's gonna look awkward. Yeah.". If she's female, obviously yaoi jokes don't work.

belethstoybox answered:

(2/2) Anyway my point is, even “I feel scammed” comments may be something benign like that and amdusias design being “owed” or more like lending itself to being male may be just because of that silly yaoi hands context and not because of some deeply rooted misoginy. We form the weirdest connotations sometimes, consciously and subconsciously but not necessarily malicious. Luckily this, one could be explained.

While it may be that there were other factors, it’s really hard to deny that deep-rooted misogyny is in everything, even if malice isn’t intended at all! (And those are the contexts in which it is especially important to examine it!) So even if there were other factors, misogyny is going to come into play a lot more than we’d like – for instance, it’s kind of weird to me that “suit” automatically read as male.

Women wear suits too, especially when conducting music. This isn’t an occasion where it was a specifically “gendered” outfit - for instance, it’s not like she was in a suit as part of a wedding, with someone else in a dress. It wasn’t that sort of obvious binary setting – to me!

That the base assumption was “oh, so this character must be male because of the suit despite that male and female conductors wear suits” wasn’t too appealing to me. I understand perhaps people weren’t aware of that, but, then it’s important to realize that that’s a thing, that suit-wearing doesn’t necessarily equate to a specific gender. It’s something to think about, at least! The whole point of this blog is to discuss / have conversations about why we have these assumptions (and to dissect misogyny when it may be cropping up, as well). And I mean, even if someone did assume she was male because of the suit - like you said, that’s not necessarily malicious, but it does require some reexamining of future situations.

Gotta think about the why!