quaidpoppinjack replied to your post “I appreciate people drawing or hcing Crowley's presentation as...”
Thank you for this addition about aziraphale. I feel like tumblr fandom has written him off as either- middle aged gay man or voluptuous female. And like - my best friend IRL is genderfluid mostly enby but they dress butch. And even within supposedly safe spaces, it’s been hinted at them because they are overweight and only choose one way to dress that they *can’t* be enby cuz of that. It’s hurtful- too fat to be enby? I worry people thin=androgynous=enby since it’s happening IRL
I’m so sorry that your friend has to go through that. There’s nothing worse than your own community doing something like that to you.
You don’t have to put an effort into being enby! There’s no rules or criteria! I think that there’s this “aesthetic” with being enby that’s really exposing the racism and fatphobia that has always lingered in the LGBT community. You don’t have to be thin and pale and wear flower crowns and have an undercut to be considered genderqueer! You are who you are, and no one gets a say in that but you!
On a whole other level, I feel like this also overlaps into those niche “queer culture” things. Like that post that was like “tumblr says that every lesbian listens to so and so and I have to google who this person is and why they’ve been assigned to my identity by a niche online group.” Which is how gatekeeping happens for the LGBT community, and I’m sure there’s whole histories of this happening far back. The second we start making criteria for being LGBT is the second we start excluding people who seriously need love and support.
The LGBT community is very diverse in all shapes and forms, and we should be embracing each other’s differences because that’s what we should be advocating for all the time! Embracing and accepting differences!
On the Aziraphale note: yeah, it’s not cool to have Aziraphale as being either gay grandfather or a busty woman. I see a lot more of Crowley dressing in skirts and dresses with no other changes to their body than I see of Aziraphale dressing in those clothes with no changes.
People either want Aziraphale to be a cis woman or a passing trans woman. There’s no fun “experimenting with clothes and makeup” content like what we get with Crowley--and while it’s perfectly valid to stick with one style as I said above, I feel like experimenting with clothes and makeup at least a little is a big thing that a lot of us do. It is, to a lot of us, crucial to finding what we’re most comfortable with. But Aziraphale always seems to be Peak Ideal Feminity.
There’s one artist that I love who handles it so well imo. They draw Az with fun clothes, Az is still in that same corporation--still middle-aged, still soft. I can’t remember their URL right now, but I will update when I do find it.
