Thread by @summerwind1843, May I offer: a mini twitter thesis (bear with me lol) on [...]

May I offer: a mini twitter thesis (bear with me lol) on how internalized misogyny potentially manifests in ways we (

) view the nuances of

’s and

’s gender expressions.

I love androgyny; I love femme men. But I don’t think these describe

. So I wonder why a lot of us r attached to wanting to see him as andro / femme? I was into this myself when I first entered the fandom; he looks stunning, I get it.

I’m not trying to shade anyone. But I’ve been curious abt this phenomenon.

For context, I think

only wears femme stylings to make money. I don’t believe that he gets to choose what he wears professionally—what options does he really have between different Chan/el jackets, or various Sh/u Ue/mera eyeshadows? YH creates his contracts,he has to show up.

I don’t get the sense that he minds doing this — it’s just a job to him. But also, it’s NEVER what he wears when he’s not working (from what I’ve seen) — his style irl is totally hip hop / skater dude. Also, in interviews he’s said:

1) he can’t tolerate his debut style (which was very femme pretty boy), 2) he made a very clear differentiation between personal style and what a stylist puts you in when he was commenting on photos of

,

3) he’s said he doesn’t think men should wear makeup, & that he doesn’t wear makeup outside of work. All in all, I’ve seen no examples where

has indicated that he chose femme stylings for himself, but I have seen several ways he’s distanced himself from these stylings.

Yet, there’s still a lot of desire in the fandom to see him as femme or androgynous.

At the same time, there’s a lot of desire in the fandom to see

as masculine. But I, personally, read him as being feminine in a lot of ways.

— Never before in the history of humanity has a grown ass man looked so SOFT holding a plushie I mean —

— Yes 1000000%

is incredibly strong, determined, tough as nails, backbone of steel, a friggin courageous AF man. But these aren’t necessarily masculine traits, and for me, in

, they don’t read as masculine.

—> I think

is super masculine and not androgynous, and

is more feminine (including v strong & determined). Yet in (at least the eng speaking)

fandom, there’s a persistent desire to see

as androgynous or femme, and to see

as masculine.

So why is this happening? My thesis: one reason this pattern happens is because we (most of us at least) have some internalized misogyny, which means that, despite our best efforts to believe in / advocate for / embrace gender equality,

on some subtle, hard-to-shake level, it’s hard for us to TRULY FULLY like *down in our guts* believe that feminine traits/qualities/appearances etc are equally valuable to masculine traits/qualities/appearances etc.

This leads to a situation where in order to bolster our sense of the value of femininity, we want or need for femininity ***to be given value by masculinity***.

This is the real secret sauce to

’s appeal in a cha/nel jacket.

friggin radiates masculinity. In our subconscious, when we see someone as masculine as

wearing femme stylings, we feel like femme-ness is being elevated by his engagement with it. So we want to believe —

“surely, it must be

himself who is femme / is approving femininity — it’s not just a job he’s performing.” For those of us who are femme (myself included), that thought can make us feel more valued / valuable / respected / respectable.

But if we detach our perception of

from the roles he plays to make money, specifically from the femme fashions stylists put him in, it can feel like.... admitting defeat. Like losing an invaluable source of validation / the wind going out of our sails.

(FWIW, these are things I personally felt when I started to realize that

was much more masculine than I’d initially thought, and not rly androgynous or femme as himself.)

On the other hand, celebrating moments of

’s femininity doesn’t necessarily give us the same psychological boost. This is because, if we feel that feminine is less valuable than masculine, then in our minds, femininity cannot be validated by someone feminine.

E.g. ***femininity cannot validate itself***.

If femininity feels inferior to us, then femininity displayed by someone who’s already feminine just feels... blah. Not valuable. Not exciting. Not “bold” or progressive or validating. No value is “added”.

Rather, it can actually feel dangerous or devaluing to acknowledge that “too much” femininity is concentrated in one person (even when that person is a man).

Yes, there is a legitimate fear of

attacking

for being not “masculine enough”. (And I don’t think it’s coincidental that post-ww/x (a gorgeous flirty canon bottom),

’s image put out by his studio has been styled more masc.)

But I think fans’ desire to see

as masc goes deeper than that concern.

It goes to the fact that we often feel “less than” in the feminine parts of ourselves, and we devalue, or fear, seeing those aspects reflected in someone who isn’t “masculine enough” to “redeem” the feminine qualities.

The thing is, learning to value femininity on its own terms (without needing validation from masculinity), is actually a super beautiful and healing and awesome process.

This is not mutually exclusive by any means with celebrating androgyny, or gender transgressions, or a million different valid and awesome ways to have / experience / express gender.

But it IS about finding those parts of yourself that feel like femininity can’t hold its own, and giving them some attention.

tldr: internalized misogyny is a slippery beast, but maybe by naming it we can help move it out of the way. And leave ourselves free to more fully celebrate

and

for the incredible ppl they are

.

p.s. I turned off comments bc I’m not trying to get into twitter debates, just sharing these thoughts for ppl who are interested. If this sparked new thoughts for u tho, and u wanna respectfully discuss, my dm’s are open!