Sometimes I struggle with things that KT produced because it just does not fit into the world building she already produced, and this saying is one of the major, major times — as far as mando’a goes.
Like … in the past, and even now, my brain struggles to process this phrase within the context of mandalorian culture as it is developed, written, and shown … and the only time I can make sense of it is within the context of a society that, while they don’t recognize gender, recognize the role that gender plays in a larger society actively trying to snuff them out.
Because how many instances have we seen of societies that don’t follow or recognize a gender binary have people within those cultures face extreme hardship and violence for failing to adhere to strict gender roles of the more powerful societies they have to navigate? In this case, navigating the Republic as the Republic clearly have gender roles that are expected to be followed.
So then is this phrase meant to indicate a raising of children based on surviving a harsher galaxy where they may not always be able or allowed to be who they are? Can it be? Is that something we can twist the original toxic meaning to allow it to become?
But even so, it still causes a rift — discordance in what is mandalorian (not recognizing gender) and what isn’t (emphasizing specific gender binary).
Even more insidiously, it demonizes weakness and softness in it’s implied condemnation of “not strong,” — it’s an important mechanism to perpetuate toxic masculinity while under the “innocent” guise of empowering women. And if a daughter is not strong, is that her failing, or her parents? Her family’s? If she then comes to be hurt in some way, is it because she was not strong enough? Is it then her fault?
Victim blaming is insidious, and easily stems from common phrases that were so innocuous on first glance. Then there’s a lot to be said about this phrase and it’s purpose in the grand scheme of things as KT writes mandalorians — that is, there’s a lot of female-coded labor that is purely expected and hoisted onto the shoulders of all the women that she writes, and to a degree that renders her female characters not as individuals with autonomy but servants to perform that labor that “of course” the men can’t (emotional labor, “housekeeping” and “cooking/cleaning” that’s traditionally coded as “women’s jobs”). The woman is expected to act as the foundation and hold up the clan, and it is ultimately a thankless job that can (and often is) taken for granted.
I’m really concerned about the demonization of “not strong” as a serious issue, not just because traditional femininity is coded as soft and fragile, but that the idea of a person being soft and fragile is no longer someone deserving respect — and that is something that leads to dehumanization, and abuse.
And for a series that so carefully emphasizes that Mandalorians mark helmets to indicate disabilities as both a badge and a quick forewarning to prepare the person who approaches of any issues so that they can accommodate any disabilities, why then have a phrase that flies in the face of that kind of mindset and culture? Because having a disability is usually coded as not strong, especially when they are not “earned in battle,” ie another facet of the toxic meaning of strength.
Or is it a different kind of strength, and thus our translation is then lacking? Not strong in the physical brutal way, but strong in the way that it means to survive anything? Because even weak, fragile things can and do survive in the face of adversity — and is that something that we can then use to restructure the phrase, to give it an alternative meaning or connotation that translates more appropriately?
I think of, sometimes, a flower growing upwards through cracks of concrete. A visual metaphor of strength and the survival of something simultaneously fragile and vulnerable and yet strong enough to erode what was once solid and whole and suffocating.
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