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are you just scrolling down my blog getting angry at stuff now? are you upset people are fundraising for victims of genocide? does it make you angry that people donate to help kids who are being bombed? 🤔 Interesting
hey guys headcanoning mizu as trans is incredibly western-centric because *describes a deeply western-centric view of trans identities that a lot of non-western trans people don't subscribe to*
do I tell you you're wrong because transness is not a western perspective in the first place so you don't need to argue for a western right to trans headcanons or do I tell you you're wrong because you can't read satire? I literally can't pick someone flip a coin
hey guys headcanoning mizu as trans is incredibly western-centric because *describes a deeply western-centric view of trans identities that a lot of non-western trans people don't subscribe to*
Wow! If I had a nickel for every time I consumed a work with an Asian protagonist, in an Asian setting, that pretends to be a man, is morally dubious and raises several gender discussions, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice. Right?
since my post about sexuality in bes took off, i've been thinking about making one about gender because people have been even more Chronically Western about that than anything. but the topic of gender has also been talked to death about this show.
still. i've yet to see a single person touch on the actual historical aspect of gender in this period of japan. (weeaboos where ARE yall??? i cannot be the only one left here jfc)
so, more below the cut.
okay. so. before westernization and christianity came in and obliterated and sanitized the culture, there were 3 recognized genders that i know of. there was possibly a fourth but my research only got me so far on that and i gave it up a long time ago. i'm gonna be talking about the 3 i do know about.
male and female were the obvious ones. aligns exactly how you think. cock and balls = male/man, vag and tits = female/woman. yes, there were many crossdressers of both genders. yes, there were people who by today's language and understanding would be considered trans. they, however, did not have these words nor have a need for them. you were either man or woman. or...
then there was a third, which was USUALLY but not always applied to adolescent males called wakashu. the closest thing you might refer it to is androgynous. earlier in edo period it was pretty much a catch-all for any adolescent male, but much later it became far more specific to the exceptional beauty of the young male. a wakashu was a sex icon, something to be desired and lusted after, so beautiful and alluring that even the most stoic and hardened samurai warrior could break and beg for their attention. and yes, we're talking about minors. wakashu were typically in the 6-17 age range.
many delayed their coming-of-age ceremony (which would then make a wakashu a man) well into their 20s. and there are records of some who continued to identify as wakashu even into adulthood. a person could decide when it was time to move from wakashu to man, it wasn't so set in stone.
this time in japan did have a lot of strictness but there was also a whole hell of a lot of fluidity that was just so extremely normal for them. choosing to remain wakashu wasn't a big deal. want to go on to be a man? cool, congrats on all your man-related responsibilities now hurry up and find a wife. want to remain wakashu? cool, congrats on all the awesome sex you're gonna be having and the many things you'll be learning. either way was a good path. you were likely to have a bit more opportunities gaining power and land going forward as a man, but as wakashu you'd be expected to be an apprentice and learn more things from your teacher (while also sexually servicing him, extra bonus - most of the time.), so both had benefits. a samurai class wakashu, for example, would very likely go on to be a man since by nature of being samurai they have tons more opportunity. but a peasant wakashu would probably be more likely to remain wakashu and learn as much as possible and earn as much money as possible (since they were often prostitutes or performers as well).
so desirable were wakashu that sometimes female prostitutes tried to disguise themselves as one to attract more clients. they were often indistinguishable from women with their colorful and intricate kimono - sometimes the hairstyle was the only giveaway. and though the japanese didn't give a shit about the gender they were fucking, as i've covered before, true wakashu enjoyed a bit more freedoms with sex than did women pretending to be wakashu. like i mentioned in my previous post how they did have specific terms for who was giving and who was receiving in sex, certain aspects played into this. wakashu were expected to receive when with men, and expected to give with women. this would of course depend a little upon caste heirarchy too but that was the general gist of it. women on the other hand were expected to always receive. (and although straps were very much a thing, you'll find the double ended dildo far more popular amongst w/w relationships - at least in depictions. in reality it was probably an equal mix.)
the concept of wakashu has not entirely left japanese culture and has actually since been divvied up into the two aspects it represented: youth (shonen) and beauty (bishonen). hence why shonen manga and anime is so popular, why there are always always always bishonen prominent in manga and anime, why yaoi often has the strict dichotomy of uke and seme. and why shotac-n remains so wildly popular while the loli opposite has gradually declined with the introduction of censorship laws. the entire concept surrounding adolescent males is still very rooted in the role that the wakashu gender played until quite recent in history. (it formally ended in the meiji era, which was not that long ago.)
now with all of that said, where does mizu fall?
she's still a woman. plain and simple. had she been born in late edo, she would have absolutely been considered an extraordinarily beautiful wakashu and lusted after constantly. people would be tripping over themselves to bed her. but being early edo that was not the case and she is still a woman having to disguise as a man in order to survive so she can fulfill her goal. that must be acknowledged. that is a key point that is brought up many times within the show. to ignore that fact is to erase who mizu is. she is masking as a man because she has been told since childhood being a woman would get her killed. because she has seen it far too many times how simply existing as a woman leads to a dead end. because she tried it and it turned out exactly as she was told. being a woman is not an option in her quest for revenge. if she weren't mixed race, though? i'd bet my left hand she would have embraced the hell out of wakashu and used it to her advantage. screw sex as an art, mizu would have made it a weapon. mizu wielding both a sword and the sexuality of wakashu would make her the deadliest thing in all of japan. however, that wasn't the case and we musn't ignore what is ths case. in her world, she is a woman forced to disguise as a man. period.
mizu by today's standard's is a whole different story, though. there is enough ambiguity that she can fit nearly any label you want to slap on her and that's fine. we have a lot more leniency with modern western terms. we have a huge spectrum of gender and you can toss her just about anywhere on it. you are all correct and incorrect simultaneously because any modern terminology applied to her is automatically headcanon. and just as i emphasized on my last post, headcanons, fics, AUs, ect, are exactly where these modern western ideals belong. it's awesome that she resonates with so many different gender identities - few characters in media can pull that off so well! yall should absolutely celebrate that! use her to express your gender euphoria!
but do so while remembering who she is in canon. her canon experience is not pure fiction. there are still people in today's world that must disguise themselves out of necessity and quite often that ends up being women of color. there are people in living history who had to do that to survive.
you can respect the source material and also have your own unique headcanons and perspectives. both can be true.
I was very excited about the first half of this because cultural context is ignored widely by most fandom meta I've seen but then we hit a wall.
I get where you were going with this, but you do realize that transgender people existed before we came up with contemporary transgender identities, right? You do realize that a key part of the transgender identity is having a gender outside of the currently prescribed acceptable gender identities for your agab, right? That the existence of an Official Gender within the society you live in is NOT a prerequisite for being transgender, but quite the opposite?
Trans people and our identities were not invented 10 years ago. The current way that we talk about our identities and process them in our heads has evolved to what it is today, definitely, but people don't identify as trans solely because we invented categories for them to identify into. There have always and will always be people who identified outside of the gender roles available to them at the time, which occasionally led to that culture inventing boxes that could fit them (like third genders), but not always. This is a chicken and egg situation.
What is a contemporary western lens applied to this story is that Mizu cannot be transgender because they don't fit current definitions of a trans identity, which is exactly what this fandom is doing right now. Regardless of how you HC mizu's internal identity, even if you interpret it as an afab person that fully identifies as a woman but is forced to live as a man full time for their whole life, it's still inherently a transgender story, because modern ideas of gender identity cannot be applied to history. The themes themselves are inherently trans and if Mizu was a real person, actual historians would absolutely be purposefully studying their life through a queer and trans lens.
Also I am begging everyone interested in queer history to talk to queer historians because I've had this conversation with all of my museum and historical research friends repeatedly and it takes place all the time in research settings: no, looking at people in history through a queer lens is not erasure. Forcing contemporary language and identity discovery processes onto them can be iffy if you don't actually understand the context they lived in and the way they would actually think about their identity, but identifying queer experiences and themes in historical figures and exploring their lives with that in mind is NOT erasure, it's a perfectly acceptable way to look at history, one that has been rejected in the field for decades because queer people were themselves rejected. There is a vast array of queer historians today who do exactly that.
I'm not sure you actually read this since you're making an argument against things I never said nor even implied. I'm not even sure where you get off taking my post in bad faith. But okay, I'll bite.
I specifically stated there were people who we would consider trans. I'm well aware trans people have always existed. I'm older than the vast majority of users here. I not only know my queer history but lived a lot of it. queers have always been here. trans people have always been here. fucking duh. and if we're going to do this, I'm not going to be spoken to like i'm some conservative tiktok baby gay just now venturing out into the world so let's just nip that in the bud right now.
I'm not saying what we know of as transgender today didn't exist, of course it did. I'm saying their concept of it was either so outside our understanding that we don't recognize terminology used for it or that, like sexualities, it was such a non-issue there was simply no need for it to be part of the vocabulary or even mentioned in other roundabout ways. Maybe a bit of both. Maybe a secret third thing we just don't know about. for all we know they simply did not feel the need to indicate a trans individual as anything else. a transman was just a man. a transwoman was just a woman. i wouldn't doubt that is the case given how pre-modern japan was all about adoptive societal roles. but we just don't know for sure.
But hey, if we want to get specific about this - Wakashu, actually, was in itself a version of transness, given the fact there is an importance over the transition from wakashu to man, or bucking the trend and remaining wakashu. They were probably more likely expected to move onward to manhood by society since that was where power, money, offspring, and property could be acquired, but some never wanted to be a man. Maybe because they never felt like a man, maybe because wakashu was the closest they could get to being woman in the world they lived in, maybe because wakashu was what they felt most. We'll never know. Doesn't really matter though since it doesn't change that it was inherently a type of trans existence. is it the trans existence that we know of today? no, not really. in fact there are many facets of the whole wakashu gender i know a great deal of trans folk would take serious issue with. but regardless, it is still, by our current understanding, a version of it. it still belongs within the grand history of trans identities.
And that is precisely what I mean when I say that our ideas of something today do not look the same to those people in their time.
I never once stated mizu cannot be trans. I stated what she was by the genders that they had at the time. Which is vitally important for people to keep in mind for context. That doesn't mean it can't also be true that she simply wants to be that way now instead of being forced into it. But I'm not talking about what she may or may not think or identify as. I'm talking about what we know for fact that she is within the parameters of their time and society. and within their parameters, their concepts, and their vocabulary, the options we have are man, woman, and wakashu. since there is no term for trans i'm not going to shoehorn ours in.
The way we talk about all things trans is indeed a rather new thing, but there have been other words, other definitions, and a plethora of allusions for transness in the English language for a very, very long time. Japanese has not had that. Wakashu and onnagata actors are about the closest wet can get (unless you want to count fictional tales, such as Torikaebaya Monogatari, which on the one hand are usually based around a morsel of truth but on the other hand are still fiction so its ehhh... iffy). but both of those have their own unique cultural significance which they cannot be separated from. they are indeed part of the long, grand history of transgenderism, but they are also their own thing.
Who knows, maybe in season 2 we get the big reveal that she does identify more like a man, that she simply can't see herself as a woman. And if that happens then the facts will have changed and I'll be happy to revise my post.
I also never said it wasn't a trans story. I never said it was any sort of story actually. I fully agree that it is, as much as it is a queer story. However I'm not willing to impose our modern western idea of gender or sexuality on any of them when i'm referring to them in their canon setting because I feel it takes away from the importance of the historical context. That's just me and my opinion. If others want to project then nobody is stopping them. It isn't necessarily wrong. My whole point is just offering the insight that their way of life did not look like ours in any way. My point is for people to think about that before they go trying to stuff them into boxes. My point is that there are contexts that play a huge role in these characters lives.
Ultimately I don't give a crap what someone wants to headcanon any of them as. I don't care if someone sees it as a purely cishet story (though I would have to question their sanity maybe just a teensy bit) or if it's a queer trans story or if it's all one giant metaphor for bisexualness - if that's what they think then who am I to judge that. All I want is for people to know that hey, our concepts about these things are different from theirs in ways that are very hard for us to understand sometimes and that's worth some thinking about, to maybe expand horizons, or just to have a better understanding for life in that day and age. And maybe so we don't end up whitewashing away historical and cultural significance by accident, as has been happening.
So when I say mizu would have been wakashu under different circumstances but what she is instead is a woman, I'm saying that is what she was by the cultural setting she's in. And that does not include a word for being trans. So I'm not going to use it. because i'm referring specifically to her time period, not ours. to the vocabulary they had, not ours.
Calling mizu trans doesn't automatically erase the significance of her womanhood in the cultural context so long as that context is recognized. There have been quite a lot of posts I've run across where that context is not being recognized or isn't even known of at all.
I'm trying to provide that context. Plain and simple.
See, this response I do understand and really appreciate, because we do indeed agree on a lot of things. Most of them, in fact. If you found my response to misinterpret what you were saying, it's due to how you worded the below:
You do have a lot of nuance in how you approach the topic and some of that nuance was missing from the original post, which did strongly imply that you think trans readings of the story (outside the acceptable pre-existing gender boxes recognised at the time) are in direct opposition to canon, historically inaccurate and/or disrespectful towards the source material and woc with those experiences. That is what I took issue with.
So I apologise for going in too hard if that was not your intention, but I did need to point out why I read it that way.
I also took it rather personally because, hey, I know Mizu's experience is not pure fiction because I am one of those non-western women who's had to crossdress for my survival growing up in a society dangerous to me. I am also trans and not a woman anymore. I don't appreciate the fandom-wide erasure and implication that this is a trans-exclusive experience or an experience that erases the womanhood central to it, or the amount of harassment, anon hate and suicide baiting directed at people like me in the fandom just for pointing out we exist. So if I sounded like a bitch, that might've been a factor. I'm sorry if the above was not what you were trying to say and I took it out on you.
Now to get onto what we do agree on, I do appreciate trying to provide the historical context and the reminder for everyone that no, people in edo-period japan would not be thinking about their gender or sexuality the way we do today, not with our words or in relation to everything else in their society.
I think part of where the breakdown of communication on this issue happens is the fact that "trans" in itself is an extremely wide umbrella term that can encompass a lot of concepts, including:
1. Transgender identities the way that they are widely viewed and understood in western countries today by the majority of the community or society at large.
2. The wider experience of someone who exists outside of the gender binary in any capacity. I think Mizu goes under this definition.
A lot of people use it in the first context towards historical figures, which is inaccurate, western-centric and does erase the plethora of experiences outside of our understanding today. So I do commiserate with the frustration and I agree entirely with everything you said.
I'd say it goes even further than queer identities/experiences. I wish we talked more about gender and sexuality at large, because we can't hope to even begin to understand how queer identities and experiences emerged at the time when the majority of people don't consider that the roles of (what we might call cis today) men and women were entirely different themselves. This is where you get issues like historical figures/characters who get called "gnc" by fandom even while fulfilling a perfectly normal gender-role in the time and culture they lived in, simply because it was different from what we consider normal of a man/woman today.
And even though I get frustrated with that too sometimes, I think it raises some other interesting points about how we use language to talk about historical/cross-cultural concepts and from what talks I've had with people in the field, it splits into two situations:
1. Someone who wouldn't have been considered queer at the time but we can read as queer by today's definitions, which is still worth talking about. I think Wakashu is a great example of this, where it's an accepted male gender role/subgender in the time they existed but would possibly be a queer identity today. Another one would be bisexuality as a practice in cultures and times when it was more or less the default, rather than an identity apart from the default.
2. Someone who was queer at the time but would not be so today because our gender roles and sexuality norms are completely different.
And the issue that I've seen expressed a lot is a failure in making it clear which way we are defining someone under the queer experience, especially doing so without providing the right context for how exactly that experience is queer. Because I think both perspectives are really valuable to analyse, if done correctly.
Hey! Just wanted to let you know that as a transmasc genderfluid mixed asian individual, i see a lot myself in mizu in all their struggles. I also see people going "shes just a woman ! With woman struggles!" A lot. Which kinda hits a very personal note of people often trying to erase my/our experiences. Thank you for being a rational and funny voice uplifting ours.
I keep wanting to shut up about it all and just enjoy my silly little corner of the fandom, but the amount of trans mixed race people I've seen hurt by this rhetoric is insane. There is no way to argue Mizu being trans erases womanhood unless you:
a. Erase the multitude of trans identities which don't inherently exclude womanhood as an identity.
b. Erase that even for identities that do, the experience of womanhood is still part of that identity for many people.
c. Imply transness is inherently a contemporary, white, western usamerican concept, which is both incredibly transphobic and incredibly racist.
d. All of the above.
So I guess I won't shut up about it. Glad I can at least bring some humour to it all ❤️
Idk, I guess it's also really hurtful to see how far we've come as a community and yet how confidently people will spread misinformation about our identities, our experiences and our history, all to justify why we can't exist in a story. I feel like I'm talking to the void sometimes so I'm just happy to be a positive voice on here even if it's for one person ❤️
Hey! Just wanted to let you know that as a transmasc genderfluid mixed asian individual, i see a lot myself in mizu in all their struggles. I also see people going "shes just a woman ! With woman struggles!" A lot. Which kinda hits a very personal note of people often trying to erase my/our experiences. Thank you for being a rational and funny voice uplifting ours.
I keep wanting to shut up about it all and just enjoy my silly little corner of the fandom, but the amount of trans mixed race people I've seen hurt by this rhetoric is insane. There is no way to argue Mizu being trans erases womanhood unless you:
a. Erase the multitude of trans identities which don't inherently exclude womanhood as an identity.
b. Erase that even for identities that do, the experience of womanhood is still part of that identity for many people.
c. Imply transness is inherently a contemporary, white, western usamerican concept, which is both incredibly transphobic and incredibly racist.
d. All of the above.
So I guess I won't shut up about it. Glad I can at least bring some humour to it all ❤️
since my post about sexuality in bes took off, i've been thinking about making one about gender because people have been even more Chronically Western about that than anything. but the topic of gender has also been talked to death about this show.
still. i've yet to see a single person touch on the actual historical aspect of gender in this period of japan. (weeaboos where ARE yall??? i cannot be the only one left here jfc)
so, more below the cut.
okay. so. before westernization and christianity came in and obliterated and sanitized the culture, there were 3 recognized genders that i know of. there was possibly a fourth but my research only got me so far on that and i gave it up a long time ago. i'm gonna be talking about the 3 i do know about.
male and female were the obvious ones. aligns exactly how you think. cock and balls = male/man, vag and tits = female/woman. yes, there were many crossdressers of both genders. yes, there were people who by today's language and understanding would be considered trans. they, however, did not have these words nor have a need for them. you were either man or woman. or...
then there was a third, which was USUALLY but not always applied to adolescent males called wakashu. the closest thing you might refer it to is androgynous. earlier in edo period it was pretty much a catch-all for any adolescent male, but much later it became far more specific to the exceptional beauty of the young male. a wakashu was a sex icon, something to be desired and lusted after, so beautiful and alluring that even the most stoic and hardened samurai warrior could break and beg for their attention. and yes, we're talking about minors. wakashu were typically in the 6-17 age range.
many delayed their coming-of-age ceremony (which would then make a wakashu a man) well into their 20s. and there are records of some who continued to identify as wakashu even into adulthood. a person could decide when it was time to move from wakashu to man, it wasn't so set in stone.
this time in japan did have a lot of strictness but there was also a whole hell of a lot of fluidity that was just so extremely normal for them. choosing to remain wakashu wasn't a big deal. want to go on to be a man? cool, congrats on all your man-related responsibilities now hurry up and find a wife. want to remain wakashu? cool, congrats on all the awesome sex you're gonna be having and the many things you'll be learning. either way was a good path. you were likely to have a bit more opportunities gaining power and land going forward as a man, but as wakashu you'd be expected to be an apprentice and learn more things from your teacher (while also sexually servicing him, extra bonus - most of the time.), so both had benefits. a samurai class wakashu, for example, would very likely go on to be a man since by nature of being samurai they have tons more opportunity. but a peasant wakashu would probably be more likely to remain wakashu and learn as much as possible and earn as much money as possible (since they were often prostitutes or performers as well).
so desirable were wakashu that sometimes female prostitutes tried to disguise themselves as one to attract more clients. they were often indistinguishable from women with their colorful and intricate kimono - sometimes the hairstyle was the only giveaway. and though the japanese didn't give a shit about the gender they were fucking, as i've covered before, true wakashu enjoyed a bit more freedoms with sex than did women pretending to be wakashu. like i mentioned in my previous post how they did have specific terms for who was giving and who was receiving in sex, certain aspects played into this. wakashu were expected to receive when with men, and expected to give with women. this would of course depend a little upon caste heirarchy too but that was the general gist of it. women on the other hand were expected to always receive. (and although straps were very much a thing, you'll find the double ended dildo far more popular amongst w/w relationships - at least in depictions. in reality it was probably an equal mix.)
the concept of wakashu has not entirely left japanese culture and has actually since been divvied up into the two aspects it represented: youth (shonen) and beauty (bishonen). hence why shonen manga and anime is so popular, why there are always always always bishonen prominent in manga and anime, why yaoi often has the strict dichotomy of uke and seme. and why shotac-n remains so wildly popular while the loli opposite has gradually declined with the introduction of censorship laws. the entire concept surrounding adolescent males is still very rooted in the role that the wakashu gender played until quite recent in history. (it formally ended in the meiji era, which was not that long ago.)
now with all of that said, where does mizu fall?
she's still a woman. plain and simple. had she been born in late edo, she would have absolutely been considered an extraordinarily beautiful wakashu and lusted after constantly. people would be tripping over themselves to bed her. but being early edo that was not the case and she is still a woman having to disguise as a man in order to survive so she can fulfill her goal. that must be acknowledged. that is a key point that is brought up many times within the show. to ignore that fact is to erase who mizu is. she is masking as a man because she has been told since childhood being a woman would get her killed. because she has seen it far too many times how simply existing as a woman leads to a dead end. because she tried it and it turned out exactly as she was told. being a woman is not an option in her quest for revenge. if she weren't mixed race, though? i'd bet my left hand she would have embraced the hell out of wakashu and used it to her advantage. screw sex as an art, mizu would have made it a weapon. mizu wielding both a sword and the sexuality of wakashu would make her the deadliest thing in all of japan. however, that wasn't the case and we musn't ignore what is ths case. in her world, she is a woman forced to disguise as a man. period.
mizu by today's standard's is a whole different story, though. there is enough ambiguity that she can fit nearly any label you want to slap on her and that's fine. we have a lot more leniency with modern western terms. we have a huge spectrum of gender and you can toss her just about anywhere on it. you are all correct and incorrect simultaneously because any modern terminology applied to her is automatically headcanon. and just as i emphasized on my last post, headcanons, fics, AUs, ect, are exactly where these modern western ideals belong. it's awesome that she resonates with so many different gender identities - few characters in media can pull that off so well! yall should absolutely celebrate that! use her to express your gender euphoria!
but do so while remembering who she is in canon. her canon experience is not pure fiction. there are still people in today's world that must disguise themselves out of necessity and quite often that ends up being women of color. there are people in living history who had to do that to survive.
you can respect the source material and also have your own unique headcanons and perspectives. both can be true.
I was very excited about the first half of this because cultural context is ignored widely by most fandom meta I've seen but then we hit a wall.
I get where you were going with this, but you do realize that transgender people existed before we came up with contemporary transgender identities, right? You do realize that a key part of the transgender identity is having a gender outside of the currently prescribed acceptable gender identities for your agab, right? That the existence of an Official Gender within the society you live in is NOT a prerequisite for being transgender, but quite the opposite?
Trans people and our identities were not invented 10 years ago. The current way that we talk about our identities and process them in our heads has evolved to what it is today, definitely, but people don't identify as trans solely because we invented categories for them to identify into. There have always and will always be people who identified outside of the gender roles available to them at the time, which occasionally led to that culture inventing boxes that could fit them (like third genders), but not always. This is a chicken and egg situation.
What is a contemporary western lens applied to this story is that Mizu cannot be transgender because they don't fit current definitions of a trans identity, which is exactly what this fandom is doing right now. Regardless of how you HC mizu's internal identity, even if you interpret it as an afab person that fully identifies as a woman but is forced to live as a man full time for their whole life, it's still inherently a transgender story, because modern ideas of gender identity cannot be applied to history. The themes themselves are inherently trans and if Mizu was a real person, actual historians would absolutely be purposefully studying their life through a queer and trans lens.
Also I am begging everyone interested in queer history to talk to queer historians because I've had this conversation with all of my museum and historical research friends repeatedly and it takes place all the time in research settings: no, looking at people in history through a queer lens is not erasure. Forcing contemporary language and identity discovery processes onto them can be iffy if you don't actually understand the context they lived in and the way they would actually think about their identity, but identifying queer experiences and themes in historical figures and exploring their lives with that in mind is NOT erasure, it's a perfectly acceptable way to look at history, one that has been rejected in the field for decades because queer people were themselves rejected. There is a vast array of queer historians today who do exactly that.
I'd also like to correct myself on saying "evolved" because it sort of implies our understanding of gender identity has undergone a linear improvement, which it hasn't, the way we conceptualise it is simply what best fits the sociocultural context of today, but even that isn't necessarily the "best" way everywhere and for everyone. I personally don't find the predominant thought in USAmerican queer theory helpful to my own identity at all, so I also take issue with the assumption that it's what we mean when we say a character or historical figure can be read as trans.
I am begging everyone in this fandom who actually wants a good look at transgender/queer identities and trans themes in a historical period that completely lacked our contemporary and western notions of gender and sexuality please for the love of god go and read She Who Became the Sun before you say another word on gender identity in BES
since my post about sexuality in bes took off, i've been thinking about making one about gender because people have been even more Chronically Western about that than anything. but the topic of gender has also been talked to death about this show.
still. i've yet to see a single person touch on the actual historical aspect of gender in this period of japan. (weeaboos where ARE yall??? i cannot be the only one left here jfc)
so, more below the cut.
okay. so. before westernization and christianity came in and obliterated and sanitized the culture, there were 3 recognized genders that i know of. there was possibly a fourth but my research only got me so far on that and i gave it up a long time ago. i'm gonna be talking about the 3 i do know about.
male and female were the obvious ones. aligns exactly how you think. cock and balls = male/man, vag and tits = female/woman. yes, there were many crossdressers of both genders. yes, there were people who by today's language and understanding would be considered trans. they, however, did not have these words nor have a need for them. you were either man or woman. or...
then there was a third, which was USUALLY but not always applied to adolescent males called wakashu. the closest thing you might refer it to is androgynous. earlier in edo period it was pretty much a catch-all for any adolescent male, but much later it became far more specific to the exceptional beauty of the young male. a wakashu was a sex icon, something to be desired and lusted after, so beautiful and alluring that even the most stoic and hardened samurai warrior could break and beg for their attention. and yes, we're talking about minors. wakashu were typically in the 6-17 age range.
many delayed their coming-of-age ceremony (which would then make a wakashu a man) well into their 20s. and there are records of some who continued to identify as wakashu even into adulthood. a person could decide when it was time to move from wakashu to man, it wasn't so set in stone.
this time in japan did have a lot of strictness but there was also a whole hell of a lot of fluidity that was just so extremely normal for them. choosing to remain wakashu wasn't a big deal. want to go on to be a man? cool, congrats on all your man-related responsibilities now hurry up and find a wife. want to remain wakashu? cool, congrats on all the awesome sex you're gonna be having and the many things you'll be learning. either way was a good path. you were likely to have a bit more opportunities gaining power and land going forward as a man, but as wakashu you'd be expected to be an apprentice and learn more things from your teacher (while also sexually servicing him, extra bonus - most of the time.), so both had benefits. a samurai class wakashu, for example, would very likely go on to be a man since by nature of being samurai they have tons more opportunity. but a peasant wakashu would probably be more likely to remain wakashu and learn as much as possible and earn as much money as possible (since they were often prostitutes or performers as well).
so desirable were wakashu that sometimes female prostitutes tried to disguise themselves as one to attract more clients. they were often indistinguishable from women with their colorful and intricate kimono - sometimes the hairstyle was the only giveaway. and though the japanese didn't give a shit about the gender they were fucking, as i've covered before, true wakashu enjoyed a bit more freedoms with sex than did women pretending to be wakashu. like i mentioned in my previous post how they did have specific terms for who was giving and who was receiving in sex, certain aspects played into this. wakashu were expected to receive when with men, and expected to give with women. this would of course depend a little upon caste heirarchy too but that was the general gist of it. women on the other hand were expected to always receive. (and although straps were very much a thing, you'll find the double ended dildo far more popular amongst w/w relationships - at least in depictions. in reality it was probably an equal mix.)
the concept of wakashu has not entirely left japanese culture and has actually since been divvied up into the two aspects it represented: youth (shonen) and beauty (bishonen). hence why shonen manga and anime is so popular, why there are always always always bishonen prominent in manga and anime, why yaoi often has the strict dichotomy of uke and seme. and why shotac-n remains so wildly popular while the loli opposite has gradually declined with the introduction of censorship laws. the entire concept surrounding adolescent males is still very rooted in the role that the wakashu gender played until quite recent in history. (it formally ended in the meiji era, which was not that long ago.)
now with all of that said, where does mizu fall?
she's still a woman. plain and simple. had she been born in late edo, she would have absolutely been considered an extraordinarily beautiful wakashu and lusted after constantly. people would be tripping over themselves to bed her. but being early edo that was not the case and she is still a woman having to disguise as a man in order to survive so she can fulfill her goal. that must be acknowledged. that is a key point that is brought up many times within the show. to ignore that fact is to erase who mizu is. she is masking as a man because she has been told since childhood being a woman would get her killed. because she has seen it far too many times how simply existing as a woman leads to a dead end. because she tried it and it turned out exactly as she was told. being a woman is not an option in her quest for revenge. if she weren't mixed race, though? i'd bet my left hand she would have embraced the hell out of wakashu and used it to her advantage. screw sex as an art, mizu would have made it a weapon. mizu wielding both a sword and the sexuality of wakashu would make her the deadliest thing in all of japan. however, that wasn't the case and we musn't ignore what is ths case. in her world, she is a woman forced to disguise as a man. period.
mizu by today's standard's is a whole different story, though. there is enough ambiguity that she can fit nearly any label you want to slap on her and that's fine. we have a lot more leniency with modern western terms. we have a huge spectrum of gender and you can toss her just about anywhere on it. you are all correct and incorrect simultaneously because any modern terminology applied to her is automatically headcanon. and just as i emphasized on my last post, headcanons, fics, AUs, ect, are exactly where these modern western ideals belong. it's awesome that she resonates with so many different gender identities - few characters in media can pull that off so well! yall should absolutely celebrate that! use her to express your gender euphoria!
but do so while remembering who she is in canon. her canon experience is not pure fiction. there are still people in today's world that must disguise themselves out of necessity and quite often that ends up being women of color. there are people in living history who had to do that to survive.
you can respect the source material and also have your own unique headcanons and perspectives. both can be true.
I was very excited about the first half of this because cultural context is ignored widely by most fandom meta I've seen but then we hit a wall.
I get where you were going with this, but you do realize that transgender people existed before we came up with contemporary transgender identities, right? You do realize that a key part of the transgender identity is having a gender outside of the currently prescribed acceptable gender identities for your agab, right? That the existence of an Official Gender within the society you live in is NOT a prerequisite for being transgender, but quite the opposite?
Trans people and our identities were not invented 10 years ago. The current way that we talk about our identities and process them in our heads has evolved to what it is today, definitely, but people don't identify as trans solely because we invented categories for them to identify into. There have always and will always be people who identified outside of the gender roles available to them at the time, which occasionally led to that culture inventing boxes that could fit them (like third genders), but not always. This is a chicken and egg situation.
What is a contemporary western lens applied to this story is that Mizu cannot be transgender because they don't fit current definitions of a trans identity, which is exactly what this fandom is doing right now. Regardless of how you HC mizu's internal identity, even if you interpret it as an afab person that fully identifies as a woman but is forced to live as a man full time for their whole life, it's still inherently a transgender story, because modern ideas of gender identity cannot be applied to history. The themes themselves are inherently trans and if Mizu was a real person, actual historians would absolutely be purposefully studying their life through a queer and trans lens.
Also I am begging everyone interested in queer history to talk to queer historians because I've had this conversation with all of my museum and historical research friends repeatedly and it takes place all the time in research settings: no, looking at people in history through a queer lens is not erasure. Forcing contemporary language and identity discovery processes onto them can be iffy if you don't actually understand the context they lived in and the way they would actually think about their identity, but identifying queer experiences and themes in historical figures and exploring their lives with that in mind is NOT erasure, it's a perfectly acceptable way to look at history, one that has been rejected in the field for decades because queer people were themselves rejected. There is a vast array of queer historians today who do exactly that.
A question for all the individuals who insist that Mizu is a trans man:
If there was a character who's story was explicitly about being a trans man, and masses of people began claiming that his story was actually about racism and misogyny, would you be upset? Would you be angry about all the people erasing a story that is explicitly about one group's trauma, and claiming that the story is actually meant to represent a different group?
Mizu's story is explicitly about being a mixed race woman.
My intention is not to say misogyny and racism are mutually exclusive to transness.
My point is that a story about the impact of racism and misogyny on a woman shouldn't be retold as a story of trans experience. In the same way that a story about trans man experiences (regardless of the impact misogyny and racism have on that story) shouldn't be retold as a story about misogyny in relation to womanhood.
Mizu tells a story of misogyny and racism, and the way that impacts her as a woman. This is different from a story of how misogyny and racism impacts a trans man, and should not be erased.
But because they are not mutually exclusive, it's not entirely accurate to call it a retelling or erasure, when the story can be about both themes simultaneously? Either they exclude one another or they don't.
Being a woman is not mutually exclusive with being trans and that can include trans women, non-binary people and yes, even trans men who either have a non-binary identity that includes womanhood or binary trans men who see womanhood as an inherent part of their lives.
Literally the only way to see the two as mutually exclusive experiences that cannot be told at the same time within the same character is to see transness as an experience limited to the trans people who see their identity as a constant and inherent essence of their soul/being/whatever, which is not all trans people. I would even dare to say that historically, it's not the majority of people. This understanding of transness is very modern and western and while there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, there is a widespread misconception (likely due to the ubiquitous nature of modern western politics) that this is the definitive way to experience transness. And this is what led us to this whole discussion in the first place, that this particular definition of transness has completely taken over the conversation.
To me, as a trans man, I literally cannot comprehend how anyone thinks saying I identify with Mizu's experiences is an erasure of Mizu's womanhood when it's not an erasure of my own womanhood that I have lived and still do live in a lot of respects, especially through being born a girl in a repressive non-western society.
A question for all the individuals who insist that Mizu is a trans man:
If there was a character who's story was explicitly about being a trans man, and masses of people began claiming that his story was actually about racism and misogyny, would you be upset? Would you be angry about all the people erasing a story that is explicitly about one group's trauma, and claiming that the story is actually meant to represent a different group?
Mizu's story is explicitly about being a mixed race woman.
These aren't the words of someone who decided they WANTED to be a man...holding on to the privilege that manhood afforded was a necessity for her, not something she actively chose. People missing that and disregarding the plight of women during this time and reducing her to wanting to be anything but a woman is frustrating, especially as a woman of color. Mizu's gender isn't complicated. She's a woman who was forced to live as a boy to not be found, or killed, and forced to stay a man to get revenge as women dont have many choices and once again, not be killed, since if she were found out by the wrong person she would have been. These are the words of a woman who's surviving in a society that has given her the short end of the stick. As a woman and a biracial person.
Stressing that HC are JUST FINE! it's always nice to see any group see themselves in a character. As someone who's an arcane fan, and who's favorite character is Vi, I see this so much. Ppl who aren't women see themselves in her and it's beautiful. But for Mizu, saying ur upset bc ppl use she/her pronouns for her or acknowledge that she IS a woman canonically is wild.
hey so like, as a transmasc who has uttered those exact words in the screenshots myself in the past and has had conversations like those prior to coming out, I really wish more people would take a moment to consider that trans people can have all of the same experiences women have in regards to gender-based oppression. We are not excluded from oppression and trans identity doesn't erase how traumatic having to hide your birth sex for your safety is to a trans person.
I don't mean this in a combative way and I have no issue with how people refer to Mizu or if a canon decision is made for Mizu's identity and I do think it's silly to get angry at women for identifying with a character who was written to represent them. But at the same time, I DO take issues with this fandom repeatedly telling me Mizu isn't trans because *insert something I have said or experienced as a trans person in the past*. That is actually directly erasing my experiences and oppression as a trans person.
Us having similar experiences doesn't mean we can disregard her gender trauma as a woman who never got to be one. I take no issue with trans masc hcs or ppl who aren't women seeing themselves in Mizu, I've said this. But actively getting upset that people state the blatant fact that she is a woman with gender trauma is what's ridiculous. No one's upset that other afab people who aren't women identify with Mizu, this is a good thing if anything, it's them entirely making her story about them when it's a testament to what some women have gone through, and seeing mostly MEN/ masc ppl be comfortable just disregarding her experiences as a woman who was forced into manhood is irritating. Getting upset with us for calling her a woman is irritating. Just because we share experiences doesn't mean women can just have our experiences ignored, because I agree we do have similar experiences, it's just people being bothered by Mizu being called an addressed as a woman that's my gripe.
But... Nowhere am I saying that Mizu's experiences as a woman should be disregarded, nor am I getting upset people see Mizu as a woman. In fact, I explicitly agreed with you that it's ridiculous when people get upset with women for the pronouns they use for Mizu or for identifying with Mizu's oppression as a woman. We are on the same side on this. That's not what I was as trying to address.
MY gripe is that you used an experience that I as a trans man have literally lived through as proof/justification for why Mizu is a woman. That's it. It's the fact that you think those experiences cannot happen to people who don't identify as women. That only people who identify as women can be forced into manhood and only people who identify as women can be traumatised by being forced into manhood for their own safety and survival.
These aren't the words of someone who decided they WANTED to be a man...holding on to the privilege that manhood afforded was a necessity for her, not something she actively chose. People missing that and disregarding the plight of women during this time and reducing her to wanting to be anything but a woman is frustrating, especially as a woman of color. Mizu's gender isn't complicated. She's a woman who was forced to live as a boy to not be found, or killed, and forced to stay a man to get revenge as women dont have many choices and once again, not be killed, since if she were found out by the wrong person she would have been. These are the words of a woman who's surviving in a society that has given her the short end of the stick. As a woman and a biracial person.
Stressing that HC are JUST FINE! it's always nice to see any group see themselves in a character. As someone who's an arcane fan, and who's favorite character is Vi, I see this so much. Ppl who aren't women see themselves in her and it's beautiful. But for Mizu, saying ur upset bc ppl use she/her pronouns for her or acknowledge that she IS a woman canonically is wild.
hey so like, as a transmasc who has uttered those exact words in the screenshots myself in the past and has had conversations like those prior to coming out, I really wish more people would take a moment to consider that trans people can have all of the same experiences women have in regards to gender-based oppression. We are not excluded from oppression and trans identity doesn't erase how traumatic having to hide your birth sex for your safety is to a trans person.
I don't mean this in a combative way and I have no issue with how people refer to Mizu or if a canon decision is made for Mizu's identity and I do think it's silly to get angry at women for identifying with a character who was written to represent them. But at the same time, I DO take issues with this fandom repeatedly telling me Mizu isn't trans because *insert something I have said or experienced as a trans person in the past*. That is actually directly erasing my experiences and oppression as a trans person.
while i'm thinking about intimacy and violence and the ways they intersect there's something so compelling to me about allowing someone to hurt you. seeing someone consumed by their rage and pain so completely that it's burning them up from the inside out and saying you need to set this loose before it destroys you. you need to let it out. so give it to me. i can take it. take it out on me. i'm giving you permission. i want you to hit me as hard as you can, for as long as you need to. the way it blurs the lines between who is the victim and who is the perpetrator. who is in control and who is bowing to whose power and authority. who is truly dependent on whom.
The contrast between his exquisite exterior and the horror within put Ma in mind of a pearlescent cocoon of silk thread: a coffin for the worm that had been boiled alive.
