• Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    I think there’s a large degree of “this question is not nearly as important to me as it is to society” here. It’s very important to have an explanation for why you, a man, want to portray a woman in a fictional context up here in our culture.

    But i don’t really care about that. That’s something other people care about a lot. I just made up this cool lady in my head and want to go be her while i murder things for a while.

    I think there might also be some “the only way to not portray a toxic masculinity manchild in a lot of games is be a woman or an alien” , too. Like most shooters are made for a statistically average 24 year old American man and I am extremely not that and often find almost any other character more relatable than dudebro mc doodbroson.

    I wonder if there isn’t an element of “if i’m portraying a woman i can also, for once, take off the cloak of fear and violence that i must otherwise carry around as a man in this society” thing going on. Cause that cloak is really fucking heavy. I don’t like wearing it. And sometimes in fictional spaces, by portraying a woman (or, in one notable case, a genderless pile of greasy rags with a katana sticking out of it that would sometimes do extreme violence :kenshi-ninja: on behalf of their friends) not so much bc i want to be a woman, but bc in that moment i want to escape from the weight and terror of being a man in our society. Idk gonna have to think about it. Bc what if the gender expression you dislike isn’t the internal self-conception, butt he horrible social, political, and economic realities that come with being assigned that gender? Like I don’t have strong feelings about being a man, but it is very definitely what “fits”. But i have very big feelings about being an American man and a white man and a straight man and a bunch of other kinds of man in this specific violent and awful culture, and i’m thinking that sometimes being not-a-man is a way to escape that burden of cultural horror, rather than a desire to not be a man. Damn, that sounds smart, i’ma have to work on that, i’ve been trying to figure out how to express that for a long time. I don’t want to be a man, not bc i want to be something else, but bc being a man in this society makes your a person who harms other people, even when you don’t mean to or are actively trying not to, and i don’t want that part, but there’s no way to get rid of just that part in this society at this time.

    • fanbois [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      11 months ago

      I think there might also be some “the only way to not portray a toxic masculinity manchild in a lot of games is be a woman or an alien”

      I would very much concur with that. I would rather be portrayed by a woman than that guy. It’s more interesting and and flavourful than generic dude xyz. I reject most of societies notion of being a man, so why not be a woman here in this space free from consequences.

    • TraumaDumpling@hexbear.net
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      11 months ago

      i basically feel the same, i don’t really have anything physical i want to change about my body, but i hate how much my decisions are constrained by the gendered expectations of others. i mean i guess i wouldn’t mind having tits and shaving more but i’m terrified of needles, paranoid about cardiovascular health problems, and i pass out or come close whenever i bleed or get injections

      • Dessa [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        11 months ago

        Hormones come in pills and patches too, and you’re likely to lower your cardiovascular risk by taking female hormones. Your risks of blood clots raise to the average level of cis women, and your much more likely odds of heart disease, stroke, and high blood pressure drop tonthat of a cis woman’s.

        Your greatest health risk in taking hormones is men

    • lorty
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      11 months ago

      This is how I’ve felt for a long time. I’m happy with my body but I really, really hate many social aspects of being a man. Even stupid shit like how uber drivers will happily talk about all the times they’ve cheated on their spouses to me just because I’m a guy (like I’d endorse that) just pisses me off.

      And the worse part is that I know how, in many ways, I play that stupid part. Being able to log on and just be cute helps me a lot, in a way.