Okay so I am going to make this as… short and clear as I possibly can but essentially, Orientalism is the way the colonial West depicts the East.
Orientalism was first coined by Edward Said in 1978 with his book, “Orientalism.” Essentially it’s a critique of how the white West portrays the East (the Orient) as this exotic yet dangerous place while simultaneously fetishizing its people. It’s the way Western white scholars or artists depict the people in the “Orient” and how this single monolithical depiction of the East can build up harmful stereotypes as there is nobody to counter-claim them because of their “credibility.” The book goes into a lot more detail, it explains why the East is portrayed as it is by the colonial West, how a lot of white people view the East as something they can fix and unfortunately it’s still very prevalent today.
It’s why Hollywood tends to put that piss yellow filter on geologically Eastern countries, or why Asian or African countries are often depicted as a monolith or why Sci-Fi and Fantasy genres are the way that they are. There is this fear of the East but also this perverted interest in their culture through a colonial lens.
So why am I bringing this up? Have you heard of the Orientalist art movement?
It was an art and academic movement where the West scholars and artists would travel to the East (mostly Southwest Asia) and depict these regions and their people through their white Western lens. Often hyper-sexualizing their people in grotesque ways, writing cheap penny novels depicting Southwest Asian men as sexual predators, fantasizing about Harams, drawing women in skimpy innacurate outfits often tailored to the Western gaze and boil down to “pale woman in skimpy thinly veiled outfit does sexy belly dance.”
What I’m trying to get at is that these Western “credible” people would go out of their way to dehumanize and portray Eastern people and cultures as their “costumes” or “leisure.” The East became the colonial West’s carrier as they profited off of them.
These depictions are of course… innacurate, but they still live on. A lot of media nowadays, especially Fantasy and Sci-Fi media, portray these rich and diverse cultures as "very sexually charged people,” and “dangerous, but for us to conquer and fix”
So where does gerudo link come into this? And why did I make this statement?
There’s this… weird phenomenon especially on the internet where people tend to over-sexualize or effeminate men by putting them in these Orientalistic outfits. If you’re active in Fantasy spaces, then chances are you’ve seen characters in thinly veiled clothes, this weird sensual bikini or gold ornaments to “sexualize” them (this is especially common with Southwest Asian or North African coded characters).
Why is it bad when white trans people identify exclusively with these depictions?
Because you’re not identifying with the character’s gender as you think you are, you’re identifying with years and years worth of racist and dehumanizing depictions of our cultures. Drawing men in gold ornaments or “sexy ‘middle eastern’ bikini” outfits isn’t as progressive as you think it is.
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