Tender Gender Blender

I just finished reading this fanfic which on the whole is very good and touched on a lot of interesting things, but I think it suffers to much from only seeing gender as binary. I have touched on before how I dislike society's idea of binary gender, that time focusing on sexual attraction. I even mentioned the anime of which this fanfic is based as a key point in my developing sexual feelings, and that remains true with sexual identity as well. The problem as I see it, exactly like my discussion of sexual attraction, is the more people try to insist male and female gender roles are different the more they will be different. The more people insist that there is a inner "male" or "female" self, the more people are trapped by this idea. The more people insist they are born into roles they can't change the less they will ever be able to. People are driven I think more by memes then they realize, more by ideas about who they should be inside. They build up ideal personae and feel uncomfortable when they don't match it. And let me make this clear, in regards to this story, I think it would have ended up the same way if it was discussed this way. But there is so much grief and angst caused by this binary idea of male and female, of what the character "should" do, and no one, not one single person ever seemed to bring up the possibility of remaining both male and female, that you didn't have to choose like that. I don't think it would have changed the outcome that much, but I think it would have led to a deeper, less forced, and less fearful way of looking at the problem. I was even talking with someone not to long ago that seemed to be struggling with a transsexual identity crisis, and even I had a small struggle with one at one point. The thing is though, there are so many things, like make up and high heals, that I wouldn't put up with, even if I think it would be nice to have a female body sometimes. There are so many things, like sports crap and being macho, I refuse to put up with even when I have a male body. I roleplay as female or hermaphrodite characters a lot, and I am curious about it, but I really feel like my "true self" is something that gender just doesn't apply to. I still would like to be female some time, not because I hate being male so much as because I would simply like the freedom to choose and try it. The way technology is, that is just not practical, and so I stay male. I am not a fan of my body truth be told, nor of my gender, but I just don't see it as that important. My life doesn't revolve around it. I know it's just not that easy for some people, but I am not saying people should not live in the body they feel is right for them, I am just saying there is a lot more to it then "really being" "male" or "female". It shouldn't be something you have to force yourself into becoming another person for, and if you want to be another person that desperately, there might be something more then just your sexual identity behind it. I guess the real issue I see is that it's such a muddled and abused subject, caught up with so many preconceptions and confused messages. If people could just change their sex whenever they wanted, I don't think it would be anywhere near of an issue, and people would just be able to try it out and pick one, or not pick one. And maybe someday, but now this whole drudge of issues comes in to play, and for what? If you have a penis or vagina? If you want to put on dresses and pretty yourself up, do you need to be a girl? If you want to lay in pants and t-shirts and watch the game do you need to be a guy? Do what you want and live how you want to live, do that first and then worry about your naughty bits or how you present yourself to people.

Internet Art is Deviant

The other day I uploaded a new picture to my deviantart account which is in of it's self is a rare enough occurrence and has a long enough of a rambling nonsensical description that it might be worth a blog post of it's own (you might be interested in the picture or description if your interested in my silly romhack). In fact I am not sure how many people even know or remember I have a deviantart account. It's certainly not something I pay a lot of attention too. In fact, I mostly only got it to be able to view mature images and decided to upload a few of the old things I had laying around there.

Part of the reason for my lack of attention is because I have long ago given up on ever being an artist, since the only art I seem to be capable of making is either simple pixel art or stuff about on par with the pictographs I use on this blog (minus the ones that are blatantly traced). Most of the work I have in my deviantart account is either collage work or pixel art (and the new picture I put up counts as both), and none of it is very engaging I think. But another big part is because I am very apathetic about sites like deviantart in general and the type of art usually hosted on them.

Now I make no secret of the fact that I like porn, mainly hentai, cartoon, and furry smut, all of which is drawn art rather then actual live action porn. But Outside of x-rated art though I find I very rarely take a interest in much art online. But there is another side to it too. I quite like art used in comics, videos, games, and such, x-rated or not (but it's still better as smut, of course). Really it's only static images that usually fail to hold my interests without smut.

I think the thing is, when a artist draws fanart, or even original art, of random characters who sit there and look pretty, it seems to lack any real context or point. It just becomes a image. It doesn't move me, it doesn't inspire me, it's just there. There are exceptions to this of course, especially for interesting landscapes or interesting character design, but mostly it seems to run a little flat. Smut of course gives me a reason to care for more then the image it's self, but it has to be real hardcore stuff. Simply having a pretty girl doesn't do much for me, and sexy pinup poses rarely work either. Sometimes nudity isn't even enough. I guess I have just been exposed to so much really smutty stuff that it takes more to really wind me up.

Having a story or a game to go along with the art does the same for the mind as smut does for the body. It gives me a reason to really care more then just pretty pictures. And it works in reverse too, in that the art that goes along with the story or game gives the story or game more style and helps craft the world with the art. In fact, music acts much the same way in this regard. I am not quite as interested in music when it's just music, but when the music is put in to enhance a story or a game, it becomes a lot more powerful (but music and sex results in too much bad techno). But I suppose a lot of the time, at least with art, there is usually a story there I don't know about. A lot of original characters made by online artists seem to have roots in roleplaying chats or in progress works of fiction (in fact so does Jiggles, on both counts), and a lot of fan works seem to focus on exploring different aspects or ideas not seen in the original work (homestuck fan works tend to do a great job at that sometimes).

But as I said, I am not an artist, I do not know the mediums and techniques, and I tend not to pay that much attention to style or ability aside from a vague sense of aesthetics and some basic skill. I probably just don't appreciate all of the details that people tend to obsess over in art. I like well done art better then sloppy and badly proportioned art, but I can't say that's something I look for so much as something I notice when done wrong.

Sex mess

I stumbled across this video presentation about a study about sexual attraction on the Internet which I found extremely interesting. If partly because it amused me that they found that she-male porn is outrageously popular with strait men. Men like dick apparently. IT'S SCIENCE!

Over all though I have some objections to some of the conclusions they reach. Not necessarily because I doubt the results, because it's pretty much mostly stuff I already knew just from poking around in the dark corners of the Internet, or most of the core theory. It just seems to me that they tend to segregate people, though I am sure that's not the intent.

It sort of reminds me of a forum discussion about gay tolerance that I got involved in arguing. primarily for the sake of my strong belief in free will, that the argument that people are born "gay" is wrong and ultimately just hurts the cause of gay rights activists.

I guess it's kind of a different topic, but I sort of generally feel the kind of clinical, detached, social or evolution based explanations for sexual attraction and relationships ultimately do nothing but encourage people to think of it only in narrow inflexible ways. It's like relationships as described by stand up comics and Ladder Theory are the only valid kinds, and it's impossible for men and woman to ever understand each other.

I once made a thread on the Homestuck fourms as a sort of rebuttal to the comic's own troll relationship system which every one says is much more confusing and complex then human relationships. And really I missed some stuff (like pet/human relationships) and it was probably not really very helpful, but my point was that you can't really divide relationships so evenly into strict categories, only mix and match descriptors to get a good approximation. I feel the same way about sexual attraction.

To say for example, guys like breasts, butt, dick, and feet, I think is misleading. Having a cue-based theory is a valid one, but I think it has to be a much more subjective set of cues for each person. Now I will admit, I like all four of those things, but I also like a lot of the more "female" cues, like confidence and competence, if not as much. And I am sure they are not saying everyone is the same, it just became a sort of self-enforcing idea when you say stuff like "this is what men like, this is what woman like". It's a standard that people live to because that's what people say is 'normal'.

And I suppose it again, for me, comes down to free will. I guess being free to be attracted to what you choose to be attracted to is a kind of an odd idea given that choice and attraction are on totally different levels, but I firmly believe people learn fetishes after being exposed to them, and people learn different ideas of attractiveness too. I guess that's the problem of doing a sexual study on Internet porn in the first place, because you can't tell if a fetish reflects an acquired taste or an intrinsic one.

I think with me most everything has been the former. I think my whole experience started with Ranma ½ which got me into anime, which got me into hentai, which got me into furry crap, which got me into all sorts of weird stuff. I mean if I had not heard of hentai, and not had this idea that that's what male porn was, I might be into fanfiction, and hear about shipping and do all sorts of that kind of crap. I donno. I just don't think my maleness really had as much to do with what I like as the cultural environment and expectations. I don't know.

I am a firm believer though, that men and woman are fundamentally the same, and the pressure of society as well as admiringly a few hormones decide their role more then anything else. Or at least I think people should look at it that way. The more you try to convince people men and women or straits and gays, or anyone and anyone are different, the more I think they will be different. And maybe that's not how life works, but I rather people choose to be who they are then just being born that way.

Fetishist Morality Play

I got into a conversation today about various things I felt was wrong with society. Among these is how we treat children. Children are caught up in this grand conspiracy where parents mislead and hide things from kids in order to protect them. One consequence of this is, I think, a very misguided and skewed view of sex and morality.

It is often said that pornography and erotic material produces such a view, and as much as I like a lot of pornography and erotic material, I have to agree. There is someone who I met on IRC who goes by the name of NovaYoshi who somehow got into the furry fandom as a teenager and seems to have acquired more fetishes then I probably care to list. His stories would probably horrify a majority of people with there utter perverseness (or bore them with their nerdyness, he is also heavily into programing for old systems in ASM). The thing is though, none of these fetishes, as perverse as they may be are actually really that wrong, but the thing that worried me at first was how he would tend to force people on IRC into things.

Even though it's fantasy, the fact that a good deal of erotic material invoves some sort of force or even all out rape is too wide spread to ignore. On the whole, for a lot of people it's harmless and just a fantasy, but I because of how people are exposed to it and how very little is done to prepare children for it, a lot of young people don't really see the ethical implications of it. Bondage for example, and master/slave play is everywhere on the net, even in sites like Gaia Online, which is intended more for teens. And once again, in a normal situation, this would be fine, but when someone young is exposed to it before any type of grounded ethical ideas, it becomes something more sinister.

I have noticed however, a lot of people will realize the implications if they are pointed out. For example, I used to use Jiggles in RPs a lot, but when involved in a questionable situation, she will explain in simple moral and ethical terms what exactly she thinks is wrong. A bit Anvilicious perhaps, but Some Anvils Need To Be Dropped. The problem is, a lot of the erotic stories out there ignore any ethics or moral implications of things. After all, this is fantasy right? And that's all fine and good, but people without a good moral or ethical framework simply get ideas form these stories and run with them, usually not stopping to think about right and wrong. The same may be said with violence in the media: It's not that violence exists, it's that young people who encounter it are not introduced properly to it's downside. At least in violence, some people are willing to address this issue, with sex however, everything is hidden, put in dark little rooms and secret corners, and when young people find it they have no experience to go on because everything has focused on hiding it away from sight.

I brought up some old erotic Anne Rice novels to illustrate that point. I never read them, I just saw a review on them online so I was slightly surprised when the woman I was talking too actually sort of defended them saying they were about teaching the royalty and rulers of a society discipline and self-control, and sex was just a method. So it is some sort of point I guess, but I don't think it's a very good one. So to that statement, I thought I would give what Jiggles' response to that would be:

"It may be true that leaders should have self-control, but it is wrong to force people this way! You can't just punish a person and force them to see everyone as an equal, even if you succeed it hurts people and makes them like slaves. It may give them self-control, but I think in the process it hurts the thing that makes them unique and their self-respect. That's not real equality! I think people can get along and learn control themselves if they are motivated to, and that's why friendship and love are important. Isn't it better to have people want to come together because they respect each other rather then because they don't respect themselves? I know people can be selfish and they have their disagreements, but I believe people can work together beyond that if they try! I don't know much about royalty and leadership, but I think the best leader is the one who loves and stands by people because they truly care, not someone who is forced to repress everything and is molded into a leader through discipline."

Yeah, I know, she is a bit of a love-freak, but hey, she is based on an anime cliché. :P

Boobs = Feminism?

I just got done reading a article about if Lara Croft is a Feminist Icon or a Cyberbimbo. I admit I never cared much for her design anyway, with the slug lips and ridicules body shape, and I Admit I never cared for the games themselves too much, but besides that I think I can safely say Cyberbimbo.

Now I am a guy, and also a bit of a pervert, but due to having my gender identity thoroughly and repeatedly screwed with by anime and the internet I think I can at least relate to feminism enough to say she is an extreamly misguided attempt at it by male-centered game makers at best and a shameless attempt to exploit the female form at worst. Samus Aran is probably a much better example of a good feminist role model in a game, but even she is somewhat exploited. So the question becomes, who is a good feminist role model?

I recall an episode of Cowboy Bebop which had a character called V.T. who popped into my mind. She was a woman that towered over most everyone, and at first I didn't really know if she was a woman. (link for reference. She is the one in the center, not the one hiding behind btw.) Now I am not saying feminist figures have to be unattractive, not at all. In fact she was actually quite attractive at one point. Yeah maybe not in the thin as a rail way most people would think, but those people are exactly the problem here. And don't you dare try the "she must be a lesbian" thing. That guy in the last link? Her husband. Anyway it wasn't her look that I really liked. It was her character. Basically a space version of an older female truck driver type character you might see in films: Tough acting, slightly bitter, but with a hint of real class, hidden sensual side, and a slight motherly taint. Or maybe I am just projecting that last bit. At first glace this seems like a good feminist role model right?

Well maybe, but maybe not. That might be the kind of thing some people think of as feminist, but really it's still projecting a very male role image. Is putting a woman in a male role really feminism? By having a woman in a male role and adopting a male image, you do diminish the idea of gender exclusive roles and images yes, but while good, that's not the real point of feminism.

Not to long ago, I saw a video about a game character I never really heard much of. One that, like most female game characters is oversexualized, but, if you believe the video's analysis (which, note, like this rant, was also done by a guy) there is a twist: The character is sexualized in a very feminist way. In other words, this character is attempted to be sexually empowering and emasculating. Too often we forget, woman are still human, they like hanky panky too. The thing feminists fight for, I think, is not that woman are sexually appealing, but that they are seen by a lot of men as inferior and subservient. For a lot of woman, sex is empowerment. Not even all woman who strip or prostitute themselves do so out of desperate need, this is proven. The problem is some men see them as little more then conquests or vehicles for there own empowerment.

Still at the end of the day, I can only look in from outside on the whole issue. I like woman, I respect the female form, but I would be lying if I said there wasn't a bit of base lust there. Still, what men do to woman sometimes is one of the grave injustices of society, and is almost enough to make me want to have a sex change. That and... having boobs and a vagoo sounds fun... but eh, I would still be a man in most aspects and I would look ugly as a chick. Maybe when nanotech to re-form my whole body comes along... Eh screw it, time to jerk of to pr0n.

Sigh... I guess I have a ways to go to be gender sensitive after all...