unpacking queer & gendered repression w/xiaoven
written at random in a pocket notebook on a work evening.
originally scribbled 24 september 2022.
oddly enough, the fact that xv is a m/m pairing makes it both more comfortingly familiar to and detached from me in a very gendered way that i just can't describe. i guess a part of me fears, for whatever reason, that maybe i'm actually a gay trans man and not whatever queer, girlish whatever-i-hesitantly-am-now.
this is definitely compounded by the fact that it is too emotionally or psychologically fraught for me to read or see portrayals of xv where either of them are trans or otherwise assigned female at birth. it's painful in a visceral way, like how a wild animal fears its own reflection.
i've known for a while now that it would be best for me to date bi men, should i ever get around to that sort of thing, bc i need to be secure in the fact that any partner of mine recognizes the fact that i am not a woman. it's been a long time since i've really been all that interested in a guy, but in the hypothetical space in my head, i think i would rather have my attraction perceived as more similar to mlm than wlm and definitely not wlw.
i don't know if i want it to be seen as entirely mlm— i don't know if i would date a gay man (though i'd rather date a gay man than a lesbian at least), for example— but i do know i want it to be undeniably queer, like how bi men are men who like women in a gay way and vice versa. i like men in a gay way because i'm queer.
this whole progression is kind of strange, too.
like, say you're me and you grew up in a deeply christian household, learning that sex and sexual attraction happens between a man and a woman— who are both definitely and immutably a man and a woman, by the way— and that to experience sexual attraction and desire for anyone other than your assigned heterosexual life partner is fundamentally Evil™ (and therefore harmful to other people), thus damning you to many hundreds of thousands of times more centuries in hell than you could have ever feasibly lived while on earth.
then you grow up unlike your peers. you behave contrary to expectations, experience life differently from them in a way you find simply inexplicable.
you discover asexuality, and you feel fine applying it to yourself, even after you learn that it is queer, because it still fits in with your image of the good, Christian girl. you still like boys, and now you never have to worry about sexual sin!
then you get into fandom and gradually overcome your homophobia. you read about the experiences of other queer people, because Fandom is fringe, and Queerness is fringe; it only makes sense that one should be full of the other.
you learn about transness. you read about one person's struggle and experience with transmasculinity in real time, because when you joined tumblr, you followed them for reasons you will never, ever be able to remember.
swimsuits stop being comfortable for whatever reason. you stop buying new ones, stop going into the ocean. the discomfort around your own body's transformation starts to become almost invasive in its unavoidability.
you start getting into queer pairings in fandom earnestly, just because they start to seem appealing. you decide to get a chest binder when you move out for college, just because it sounds like a nice thing to have. you realize that the sound of someone calling you "sis" is going to someday make you puke.
you force yourself to take that leap of faith regarding your own gender, adding a layer to your queerness that finally cannot be made to retroactively fit w/that image of the Good Christian Girl, and in doing so, you have damned yourself and you know it inside, even though you stopped going to church years ago.
(the last time you went, you felt like a rabbit inside a wire trap, though you didn't know why.)
you stop wearing bras. you never wear one again. you don't know why, and you can't explain how, but in doing so, you feel more like yourself again.
you fall in love w/a queer pairing for the first time. you get curious abt sex and intimacy for them, just as you had for every other het pairing you loved before them, and the queer smuts that don't instantly deal psychic damage are somehow different from the het smuts that didn't deal psychic damage.
but that feeling is still new, and so i'm hesitant to name it.
all i know now is that my curiosity is compelling me more powerfully for xv than any other pairing i have loved before them. perhaps [REDACTED HET PAIRING], towards the end of that airing, but it feels like xv is more insistent.
by acknowledging and indulging in these more sexual… thoughts? fantasies? i'm just going to settle on "curiosities" again— i have noticed myself growing more comfortable with my own desires. i want to bite; i want to touch; i want to love . in theory, anyway.
and that is progress. i am realizing, consciously, that i am not and cannot ever be the Good Christian Girl. i am learning that i am human; that i am of the flesh and not some imaginary ideal that will make my parents happy with me because to live up to it would mean i am Good rather than Damned.
i love that xiao is Damned. i love that he is so obedient in his desperation to be Good. and i love the fact that despite these things, he still dares have desire, as repressed as they may be. it really is classic Recognition of the Self Through the Other: in my compulsion to explore his character, i am being forced to reckon with my own.
bit by bit, i am denying myself the Shame i have allowed to become my own. bit by bit, xiaoven and its various aspects have been allowing me to unpack the things i've been repressing for god knows how long and letting the Shame of it all start to dissolve.
looking back, i wonder if [REDACTED HET PAIRING] allowed me to let go of some of my ideas about failure. i know it helped codify some of my ideals on starting anew after it.
i'm glad i'll always have "queer" to fall back on. i'm still not fully over the fact that i'm genuinely interested in how sex affects a character and their relationships when before i was staunchly insistent that it was unnecessary to sell a relationship's strength or meaning or value or whatever!
i mean, fuck, dude, i still staunchly believe it is entirely unnecessary when proving the worth or sincerity or depth of meaning characters have in/for each other.
but intimacy means something to a relationship, sexual or not!! and there is something compelling to me about the physical vulnerability of sexual intimacy, esp in characters with trust issues or habitual self-denial!!
it's like we are both indulging in sin, and i am still not over the loss of the Good Christian Girl. i don't know if i've ever even really accepted it.
at least i know the me in the future looking back on now loves the me i am right now. unconditionally. i wish i could say the same back to my future self, but i'm afraid that the truth is that it's conditional for now.