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,Β βOrientalism.β Essentially itβs a critique of how the white West portrays the East (the Orient) as this exotic yet dangerous place while simultaneously fetishizing its people. Itβs the way Western white scholars or artists depict the people in the βOrientβ 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 βcredibility.β 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 itβs still very prevalent today.
Itβs 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.Β
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 βpale woman in skimpy thinly veiled outfit does sexy belly dance.βΒ
What Iβm trying to get at is that these WesternΒ βcredibleβ people would go out of their way to dehumanize and portray Eastern people and cultures as theirΒ βcostumesβ orΒ βleisure.β The East became the colonial Westβs carrier as they profited off of them.
These depictions are of courseβ¦ innacurate, but they still live on. A lot of media nowadays, especially Fantasy and Sci-Fi media, portray these rich and diverse cultures asΒ "very sexually charged people,β and βdangerous, but for us to conquer and fixβ
So where does gerudo link come into this? And why did I make this statement?
Thereβs thisβ¦ weird phenomenon especially on the internet where people tend to over-sexualize or effeminate men by putting them in these Orientalistic outfits. If youβre active in Fantasy spaces, then chances are youβve seen characters in thinly veiled clothes, this weird sensual bikini or gold ornaments toΒ βsexualizeβ 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 youβre not identifying with the characterβs gender as you think you are, youβre identifying with years and years worth of racist and dehumanizing depictions of our cultures. Drawing men in gold ornaments or βsexy βmiddle easternβ bikiniβ outfits isnβt as progressive as you think it is.
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