notreallystars

Well this was a bit longer than I'd anticipated! I'm doing a lot of thinking here.

I've just watched this amazing video about masculinity in Fantastic Beasts.



I loved it; I think this is exactly the kind of discussion about masculinity and performance of masculinity that society needs to be having, and I think Pop Culture Detective does this kind of thing really well in other videos too.

That's not the bit that I want to talk about. I haven't seen Fantastic Beasts, but I identify a lot with Newt as he is described in the video - a nurturing, empathetic person who can have difficulties forming friendships. What interests me is that this is described in the video as a way of performing masculinity. When cis men behave in these ways and display these personality traits that can be understood as a performance of masculinity, whereas when I or any other transmasculine person behave in the same way it is often interpreted as proof that we're 'really women after all'.

( More about transness and gender performance )