(Cress-pe-cue-lee-ar)

Supplemented by my own observations as a trans man, about other afab people in my family as well as my own experiences, to give some reference points for considering a transmasc interpretation of Gabrielle in AMC's TVL/IWTV 

(This started as a reply to THIS post by @hallucinatinghalos, but it got long enough I'd just rather make this as an independent post than a reblog so I can share it with more people.)

I think characters who are afab and no doubt victims of patriarchy but also pretty unflinching people who perpetuate abuse are fascinating.

(Alongside Gabriella, Cersei Lannister is also a good example) 

It makes me wonder if maybe the huge brain play of the writers (albiet this is more of a Game Theory from me) is something like "Gabriella IS transmasc but she represses/has a perspective on gender where she doesn't really identify with womanhood but finds the idea of being/being seen as a man untenable"

This falls in with how I've previously talked about how Gabriella reminds me in places of my Grandmother (who's own mother was the youngest of a family of minor russian nobles who moved to the US pre-revolution), but she also reminds me of my aunt in some ways too. Both my grandmother and my aunt (her daughter) chafed against gender roles and expectations for women, and while they both navigated the expression of that differently (my grandmother by relying on smarts, professionalism, and using her approval to manipulate; My aunt by being very performatively masculine, verbally abusive, and generally stubborn) they both desired to ascend through academic/professional settings where patriarchy endemic to those environments. 

So in a takeway from that, in thier own ways, both came away with both misogynistic and misandrist perspectives (yes I know misandry doesn't exist systemically speaking don't @ me) that caused both of them to have complicated relationships with their own gender identities as well as the gender identities/presentations of others.

Where this all wraps back around is that I am a trans man, and according to my mom a very formative moment of parenting me for her was seeing a photograph of my aunt as a young child that looked almost exactly like me. So she became very concious in considering what she could do differently to raise me, then how my aunt had been treated. It occured to me recently that the person who would've been even more aware of it than my mom would be my grandmother, who in contrast did a lot to subtly mold/manipulate me into being the kind of person she approved of. I feel this came from a place of genuinely wanting the best for me, we had a lot of postive authentic connection and according to my sister my grandmother said I reminded her a lot of herself as a young person.

But that said, although I in my childhood felt my grandmother was a good and safe maternal figuire, in hindsight this was because I worked very hard not to act in ways she would object/rejected to, and when she passed I realized a lot of my most negative internalizations/patterns of self judgement ultimately came from my fear of her judgement and disappointment. With additional context, I can see she took a subtle approach in influencing me because her orignal more confrontational approach to try and manage the identity and gnc expression of her own daughter resulted in a pretty catastrophic person who's desire to embody (toxic) masculinity chronically results in the destruction of intimacy in basically any major relationship she pursues. I have a much more complicated regard for her now than I did growing up.

Additionally and unfortunately, both my grandmother and my aunt have been transphobic to me. 

My grandmother was just one of those grandparents who accepts you have a different  name and pronouns because they love you, but never really "get it" on why you (or anyone) is trans/transitions. And in her case, she hoped for a bit I wasn't trans ("Why can't you just be a gnc girl?" And all that) because she also feared from me in the life I'd face as a trans person. (Side note she was genuinely worried I wouldn't make friends as a teen because I wore mostly black so much)

My aunt despite very likely having done steroids to reach certian bodybuilding goals and is just one of the most overtly/toxically masculine people I've ever known (of any gender), told me in text that because I was on HRT my mind would be stuck at that of a 14-year-old boy, nevermind that I was 18-19 at the time. (And this was in response to me telling her I was leaving her beach house early because I wasn't going to tolerate her extremely inappropriate reaction of cursing me out and insulting people in my family on both sides when the inciting incident was literally just her being mad my then-boyfriend didn't use a coaster and didn't flush the toilet when he'd pissed in it cause he was from a rural family where that was normal to save water)

All this to say....

I have shared a lot of personal anecdote, but I feel this better illustrates my conclusion. Many afab people have while growing up have been purposefully or inadvertently barred from even being able to entertain the notion "What if I lived as a man?" due to the complicated experience any afab person has growing up under patriarchy. Especially, might I add, if they didn't have a queer culture to connect to.

Which, no doubt Gabriella IS queer, but for her in the time she's from being honest about ANY sexual desire would've been queer and taboo for her as a woman, because the prevailing notion was simply that women did not HAVE sexual desires whatsoever, so to her even her own sexuality in the context of the time she's from is not "Womanly". She's also not going to slut shame herself, but then that means she doesn't see herself as a "fallen" or even a "liberated" woman, because as she says she doesn't see herself as a woman at all. More of a force of desire and consumption. Even if we see she's fully comfortable with attraction to women, she still comes from a time where queer sexuality was seen more as "Men being submissive/passive and women being dominant/active" and queerness wasn't nearly as ascribed to the party acting in conguity with expected gender roles. 

"Gabriella is a repressing trans man" is only my headcanon at the end of the day, but regardless of that being true I think we have a lot of evidence not just her sense of gender but her sense of self is very intrinsically tied to power and her ability to get what she wants. How she's honed herself is to be a predator of men, and she prioritizes the power she can hold over others to a very high degree, especially Lestat. But because she defines herself in proximity to power, and her perspective on power was drawn from being born into but also opressed by aristocracy, it seems like she always circles back to obsessing over Lestat because he represents more of what she authentically may in somw area of wounded childhood wish she could be, but also looks down on due to various socializations and experiences in her life.

Lestat is a man yes, but alongside that he's sensitive, desires connection, has romanticism, values those he loves. He can also be dramatic, emotional, and reactive. These are all aspects that I think exist in Gabriella as well, but she actively represses in favor of the power she gains by doing so. 

When I was young I externalized a lot of my gender envy as attraction because it was the only way I knew how to process my emotions in that regard, and as I was trying to figure out my own identity in girlhood archetypes of powerful "Maneater" type women were the first I ever saw or knew of who had power, and power over men. So it's not shocking to me that Gabriella has a "status quo" of a stable identity that works for her in how she understands the world and navigates it, but her grooming and manipulation of Lestat reads to me as more than anything as seeing him as part of her but also part of her she refuses to actually claim when she can just sorta bask and unravel in it by having sex with and being loved by Lestat.

(There's a Cersei Lannister parallel here, she obsesses over Jamie because she sees them as one, and in a way interchangeable because it's mentioned they swapped clothes and did each other's lessons a fair few times as kids, but also obsesses over him because she herself is fixated on and arguably driven mad by the fact that her birth sex means she's not seen as equal to men by her society.)

So, in final summation: