U should talk to dalia @oreganosbaby about this but roman is both punished for the ways in which she's marked as feminine, & further feminised as punishment for failing in her father's eyes. maybe most obvious is her impotence, cockshyness, and failure to maintain a heterosexual relationship: we see again and again that she cannot/does not want to perform sexually as a man, & ofc when logan accuses her of queerness for this we understand this as inextricably gendered. when logan seduces a business relationship, he does so by dominating in a "big dick competition;" he's disgusted by the way roman instead places herself in the role of sexual object to be won in a conquest; flirt; cocktease. she is aroused by matsson pissing, or mencken peacocking, but reacts to these by offering not her own display of dominance but rather an almost submissive conciliation, proposing for example to use mencken as the public face of the company while in reality she performs favours for him behind the scenes -- a similat arrangement to logan's with the raisin, but framed like mencken would be getting a new work wife rather than like he's cowing to a business empire. what kendall identifies in his eulogy as logan's will to power, his drive & capacity for action, roman simply does not share at all.. like, she's literally sleepy. her impotence is different to kendall's both because it extends into the literal sexual realm, and because, while kendall tries to reenact logan but is just too soggy for it, roman doesn't have the nature to even try. in a moral universe where ideal masculinity is defined by loganness, roman delegitimises her claim to manhood by her lack of ruthlessness, the way she uses her sexuality to seduce rather than to intimidate, & even her sentimental attachment to logan himself (sniffing his sweater...) also, for how much people do identify her anorexia and repeat jokes that she was sexually abused as a child, it's crazy no one ever follows the logic on those things & how they are specifically configured as, respectively, a way to act out femininity & a retributive mechanism that further feminises the deviant boy-child. even when logan is onscreen openly making fun of caroline for her own food restriction like aye and so what does it mean that roman also takes up this pastime with her? what does it mean that the sexual role roman identifies with is raped, in a show obsessed with penetration & the phallus as the act & signifier of proper productive masculinity? &c. this is kind of the difference between making an identity claim vs describing a social mechanism, it's not really hidden at all in just the literal text of the show -- roman specifically is feminised, she's considered to already be feminine & therefore pathological & she's also further feminised to punish her for it. i might have also said more about this on @caden-archive tagged as succession but tbh i lost a lot of succposts when i got termed
gummygunk
romaincrisis
turnnoffyourmind
origamiaround
pixelskylines
stormborns
