Combustion Kevin said:
Isn't it a female privilege to given more leniency to express yourself?
I go to a lot more fantasy themes events but cosplay and dress-up are still very much present there, and most people you talk to dress up like that for themselves, either out of love for a character or their own design.
I think Amyss put it pretty good in this respect, that female expressions of masculinity are generally limited to things that can be considered "cute", or are overtly sexualized. Still women kind of do have some privilege in expressing themselves, as women can often get away with breaking gender norms, but at the same time they tend to get labeled things like "lesbian" and "dyke" for doing it. So the situation is sort of a yes there is some female privilege there, but for the most part it's still extremely limited.
Combustion Kevin said:
It can not be denied, however, that it is women who are given the most attention for their costumes, a cursory glance at the collective photo albums from these events would tell you as much, and they come in many varieties, ranging from tomboy-ish post-apocalyptic survivors to armour-clad valkry's, and even conventional princesses, yet, there is hardly a man among them unless they stand out like some wicked chaos creature or some extravagant rendition of a movie/comic character, it's usually a 1 to 9 ratio.
This is not a problem, however, as it does not interfere with the enjoyment people take in donning these costumes, they're not professional models, after all.
While I mostly agree, especially with the part about it being a labor of love, not a career choice, there is still an issue. These articles are generated to play on "male gaze" where it's significantly more an atmosphere of "sex sells", so that's why you get more attention paid to females. This also contributes to a bias line of thought that says; "cosplay is something only women do", in the minds of the casual observer.
Combustion Kevin said:
Also, I don't know exactly where you live, but lambasting guys with any homophobic slur is basically social suicide in those circles, masculinity is a personality trait that anyone can or can not possess, same goes with femininity, these words are mostly used in jest or to provoke a mock-fight.
Which, granted, is kinda part of our masculine atmosphere.
Weather or not it's used in jest as part of a mock battle of masculinity is still a fundamental challenge presented to one's masculinity for not conforming to societal gender norms. As an American I can tell you that, even in the most liberal places in America, it's depressingly easy for people to get a pass for casual homophobic, transphobic, racist, and sexist slurs in most social circles.
Combustion Kevin said:
Personally, I think a large part of the backlash against transgenderism is because of a level of confusion on the matter, a lot of people can not find consensus over a variety of definitions and gender politics sometimes do not translate well cross-culturally.
For example, the sense of masculinity I was brought up with can be summarized as such: "Be a man, no matter what kind of man is, whether you're gay, feminine, straight or macho is absolutely not important, decide what kind of man you wish to be, and BE that man as best you can."
There is not a dutch word for "gender" specifically, the word "trans" only translates to "transsexual" specifically because masculine and feminine behaviour are not tied to one's sex per se.
I hear that fairly often and it seems that in that area of the world people more or less get a pass for breaking gender norms. So it's quite possible that there is an advantage the Dutch and neighboring places have when it comes to this sort of thing, but I don't live there so I don't know how much leeway there is. Having said that, in English speaking countries, like the US, Canada, Australia, and the UK, gender and sex are heavily tied together. They're so heavily tied together that most people default to defining gender by a person's genitals, when that fails they try to back into other biological essentialist arguments like genetics, which also usually fail. As a result of these sorts of attitudes, breaking gender norms and showing cross-gender expression is extremely taboo, especially for people who were born male.
Combustion Kevin said:
No one perception on the matter is "the correct one", however, and I think that is important to remember as people discuss such matters, just my two cents.
I'm sure that no one view point is the absolute correct one, but some hold more weight, especially when the question becomes contextual, like when it comes to cultural differences. This rings especially true when you're talking to trans folk from English speaking nations, where the fixation on gender and it's link to physical biological sex borders on the obsessive.
Areloch said:
KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime said:
After reading the article and scanning the thread, well I've noticed that two important factors have been ignored.
The first is male privilege: In this case the reason women are more tolerated as cosplayers is because there is a tendency, mostly unintentional, to see women as sexual objects first. So the reason "male gaze" gets played to here is because cosplay is seen as something that's done for the entertainment and enjoyment of men. This isn't all that uncommon, a lot of lesbians I know have really screwed up images of the relationships they're supposed to have, because their initial exposure to their sexuality was through pornography designed to cater to men. The same thing goes for almost all of the trans women I know too, same thing, first exposure to their identity was via pornography designed to play to male sex fantasies. That in particular has done a lot of damage to some trans folk I know, several can't even wear skirts and dresses on a regular basis because of how they've come to associate it with arousal.
Obviously my cosplay/convention experience won't mirrior anyone's by a long way, but I'm not gunna lie here, I have a hard time believing that cosplay is a male privilege thing because some people think it exists to entertain men specifically. That's a really bizzare train of logic in my opinion. If some people think that, that's on them, but I've never gotten the impression during my time in those situations that it was even remotely true.
Well that's not the point I was trying to make actually. My point is that cosplay is becoming associated with women as a feminine hobby in mainstream societal perceptions, which is why articles about cosplay focus on women. Basically that a mechanism of misunderstanding the sub-culture of cosplay in mainstream media. Sorry if that wasn't clear. Still as a result cosplay is becoming less inclusive to men, as it becomes more sexualized and plied to the "male gaze" idea.
Areloch said:
Also, I feel it's kinda different between cosplaying and doing porn. While cosplay CAN be designed to be sexually arousing, porn IS designed to be sexually arousing. So while there may be some overlap there, I don't think they're really directly comparable like that. Maybe I just missed the point of the latter part of this?
Kind of, basically the point is that media, not cosplayers, but mainstream media is sort of turning cosplay in to a sexualized idea. So the point was that sexualization is a bad thing, that causes people to be excluded from the art form/hobby. In this case it's men who get the short end of the stick in terms of ability to participate, but who get media designed as sexual gratification on the other hand.
Areloch said:
KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime said:
The second is toxic masculinity: Cosplay has become associated with women, which when paired with the necessity of sewing in cosplay, it basically restricts the hobby to women. Because femininity is treated as a toxic trait, especially when expressed by a man.
Maybe I've only really been exposed to super non-uptight people, but again, I don't think I've EVER encountered this sort of mentality in real life. No doubt, a man being able to sew, or cook or clean in popular media like TV shows is played as a punchline but I've never met anyone that actually thinks that in real life.
Have you ever personally met a guy that really thought that being able to sew, cook or clean is 'girly' and therefore shameful? Because if so, wow, what a toolbag.
Unfortunately I've met a lot of guys who think being able to cook, clean, and sew are "girly", so thusly having such skills damages if not outright destroys their masculinity. The worse part is that I've met no short of women who hold these sort of attitudes too. They both tend to stick ideas that domestic skills like sewing, cooking, cleaning and child care are exclusively feminine skills, while skills like home repair, auto repair, money management, career/vocational skills, and sports prowess are exclusively masculine skills.
The worst part about that is that most of the people like that I know aren't toolbags, they're generally really nice people who happen to hold misguided opinions on the subject.
Combustion Kevin said:
Something Amyss said:
Combustion Kevin said:
Isn't it a female privilege to given more leniency to express yourself?
I go to a lot more fantasy themes events but cosplay and dress-up are still very much present there, and most people you talk to dress up like that for themselves, either out of love for a character or their own design.
The leniency to express one's self still comes from a rather fetishistic approach towards women, regardless of whether the individual choose it. Were it not for that approach, the leniency, and their choice would likely not exist. I mean, you can call that privilege if you want, but that's gaming the concept pretty heavily.
Well, consider the flip-side, what does it say about male privilege if it only serves to restrict them while emancipating women to do as they wish?
To interpret this interest as fetishistic is valid, I suppose, but I feel it would be equally valid to interpret this as a general reluctance to celebrate men as physically or sexually attractive on a human level, to dress provocatively is often considered a joke at best, and threatening at worst.
Unfortunately that's not entirely how it works, a major mechanism in the fetishistic approach requires the objectification of women as sex objects. So instead of being emancipating, it shackles women to a role of existing purely for male sexual consumption. The flip side is that this assumes that men have more self control by default, thus depending on the context they're free to dress in a sexually attractive way, or a conservative way, and still attract female attention. Really it's a lose/lose situation, but men get the societal benefit of automatically being in the position of power in this regard.
Combustion Kevin said:
I don't really subscribe to the idea of "male privilege", there's a few kinks and inequalities in our supposedly emancipated society that go both ways and need to be worked out, but to ascribe everything wrong to masculine influence while discounting the MASSIVE social influence women have always had in society just seems misguided.
Unfortunately women haven't always had massive social influence, generally it's been the men who make the decisions, but at the same time, women were allowed to influence their husbands and fathers with "feminine wiles". That's an inherently sexist position. Take the United States for example in the 18th and 19th century, where we ascribed to traditional European gender roles. As a result women couldn't personally own land, any land that belonged to a woman was either in the name of her husband, or father, and was generally passed on as a dowry when a daughter got married. As a result for a long time women couldn't vote because they couldn't own land, then when women were allowed to own land they still were denied the vote. The Utah territory gave women the vote. So do you know what they had to do to get statehood? They had to change their laws and take the vote away from women.
While things have gotten better, we still assume men are the ones in power, that men are the ones with technical competence, and that men are generally superior to women by default.