A boy, A forbidden book, and her red scarf.

part 1 details super specifics of gender norms and im just going to lightly summarise what i’ve said there in the first paragraph since this post builds on that.

women and the domestic sphere:

women are closely associated with the domestic sphere, even as children, it is assumed that girls will be wives and mothers. the traits that make someone a good wife/mother become the feminine ideal:

within the story, historia attempts to embody this ideal by being a selfless, kind, dependable caretaker. and hence she gets “need to wife her up” reactions from men.

so adding onto that, you could see that sex itself is associated with a woman’s “role” in society, procreation. we see that sort of idea in founder ymir’s backstory. her “promotion” from slave is becoming fritz’s concubine. her reward for her obedient devotion is being able to become near-wifely, she fulfils her domestic purpose by carrying his children and rearing them. then her body is fed to her children, so she may continue to be of use to them even after death. isn’t that motherhood (womanly purpose) at its most extreme?

the ideal women is modest, the woman i don’t like is a whore:

+ within the “bad boy” spin-off, levi is insulted for being the “son of a whore”.

with the whole “women need to be mothers” norm, comes also the belief that sex outside marriage devalues a woman, it shows that she is “low class” and far from nobility and thus far from someone deserving of respect. a woman having sex for pleasure (historia “enjoying herself”) is her being immodest, not being selfless, her not adhering to her gender norm, her not being “fit for purpose”. the mp blames the freedom given to historia which allowed her to act disgracefully, continuing the idea of men needing to be responsible for women.

moving on, sasha occupies the role as not only an ethnic minority but a FEMALE ethnic minority and that in itself invites more hatred and prejudice against her. is sasha a sex worker? clearly not, she is a highly trained and ranked soldier, it’s just an inaccurate description, but it is gendered insult designed to be demeaning. accusing a woman of being immodest is practically derogatory. it is an insult to be related to a “whore”.

and, is she even responsible for the way niccolo felt about her? again no, yet she is blamed for being enticing, seducing, desirable. and this is rather common accusation thrown at woc. women / femme presenting people are regarded as sex objects just by existing simply because people are attracted to them.

finally, there is blatant misogyny in the last panel, since it is because because she’s a woman, even if her mind is lacking hitch can trade her body for position. that “dumb women” can simply sleep their way to the top (as opposed to men who have to “earn” their position). very obviously, hitch is not a stupid person, nor is she an incompetent person, she became military police on her on merit and yet because she is flirty, teasing and laid back, that alone makes her seem “dumb” and discredits her position. it’s also way meaner than the teasing hitch gave boris, (that he defended annie because he liked her).

so there is this sort of association between stupidity and low class behaviour and a woman being promiscuous, it is insulting for a woman to be accused of immodesty/called a whore which shows how badly “whores” are regarded (with even their children being demeaned) and thus how highly modesty is regarded.

[tiny tangent: jokes about modesty

eng dub of this scene has ymir ask if reiner has come to “ravage her”. obviously these are all exaggerations, neither ymir or hitch/annie actually feel like they are under threat, what they say is not meant to be serious comments, but they do tell us somewhat about the culture within the walls, a man and woman alone is rather charged, it’s inappropriate. there’s this assumption that men have “that” sort of intention toward women hence armin’s desperate attempts to clear things up with hitch lmfao. it’s meant to be funny to us, but it’s low-key life or death for him, to prove that as a man he isn’t doing anything “improper” to annie when left alone with her. after all her modesty is at stake, and that is valuable.]

sexual harassment and trafficking:

annie, despite being in military police uniform, is subject to sexual harassment. men both threaten her with sexual violence and even attempt to grab her for their own sexual gratification.

it is armin, who is dressed as a woman, and not jean who a man feels entitled to using for gratification.

mikasa’s mother is a “bitch” for fighting back against her OWN KIDNAPPING. we see that it is only mikasa and her mother who are targets for sex trafficking here*, the kidnappers already planned to kill mr ackerman. also there’s that race element again, mikasa and her mother are exclusive targets because they happen to be “oriental”, they are women of colour hence they are fetishised and have “higher value”, for their rarity. even if mikasa is only nine years old, she is still evaluated for her purchase.

[*that isn’t to say that men can’t also be targets of trafficking, again levi was also nearly forced into sex slavery. and presumably this extends to genderqueer individuals although we don’t see it.]

[tiny tangent 2: sex work

the only sex workers we “meet” are both of “lower social status and women- kuchel and alma. we don’t get much detail about kuchel, but im sure the hunting down of ackermans contributed to her going underground, it doesn’t seem like she had any support or sources of income considering how she died and how she sold a tea set to keep going.

in alma’s case, she worked as a maid for the reiss family and became rod’s mistress. we can clearly see she does this sort of work out of necessity not desire and entirely resents the result of their affair (historia). now this could be since historia as a bastard child of a of a royal endangers her, or because she was forced on/coerced into sex by rod, or as kenny said because she saw historia as a way to climb up the social ladder and yet historia brought her further down, or because she was not ready for a child/didn’t want a child just couldn’t go through with the abortion, or because pregnancy has meant she can no longer work as a maid and must resort to other means of keeping afloat etc.]

the inherent misogyny of gender roles ft eremin and yumihisu:

as p1 established, women occupy the role as “protected and provided for” with men being responsible for them, but this comes with it’s own implications on how femininity is perceived, because assigning traits / function invites comparisons. you’ll notice that when boys like eren and armin are placed into the “female” category on account of being protected, they also feel like burdens:

because you are weak if you are protected and you are inferior to those that are protecting you, masculine love itself is infantilising because of it’s implications (eren’s “i’m not your kid or your little brother.”)

-> both armin and eren have their self esteem ripped apart by this role, they don’t trust themselves, they don’t see inherent value in their existence (erehisu cave scene & armin screaming at mikasa that he shouldn’t have been brought back) and hence they are all to eager to sacrifice themselves.

they even end up blaming themselves for things that couldn’t possibly be their fault, since their self hatred stemming from this inability to be strong (or equals to the strong) goes that deep. and this leads them to freeze up. and this sort of outburst happens repeatedly for the both of them, just that feeling of weakness overpowers any memory of their strengths, i.e. here eren despite being a 15 metre tall titan feels insecure about his strength, about his place in the world:

emasculation is supposed to be demeaning to men bc it means they are similar to women, which is a “bad” thing to be only because women are “weaker/inferior” to men. i do think this emasculation element is there on purpose, after all mikasa was designed as intentionally masculine to subvert the traditional heroine, but even her power comes from a very manly physical strength. basically what @drowninglilys says “armin is not a violent person but he feels he must abandon that to protect his best friend and perhaps to prove he’s Man enough to stand by [mikasa’s] side.” personally, i don’t think either of them are misogynistic / opposed to being out of societal norms and the proof for that is in part 3, just trust me bro for now, but it’s just the implications of femininity (weakness) that encroaches on their self esteem.

the reason i bring them up is because they introduce this idea of powerlessness -> unequal to saviours (“men” are the societally nominated protectors) -> burdenhood -> alleviation from burdenhood via selflessness. and this link is further emphasised because historia and ymir’s arcs are about feeling like burdens, and their arcs are very closely tied to their gender. armin is even dressed as historia to hammer home his character’s similarities to her. [ also @drowninglilys has an excellent post here that goes into more detail about armin’s feminine coding]

historia is made to feel like her existence itself is a punishment to her family: now i don’t think she is hated specifically for being born a girl, in fact i doubt alma or her grandparents would love her more if she was a boy, but im just looking at the subtext. sons have more utility, they can carry the family name, they are future protectors and providers, they are seen as inherently more capable etc, all the while daughters are more burdensome:

…and hence we have historia who is living at the expense of her loved ones -> thus she must live a life as selflessly, as femininely, as possible to make up for the sin of being born, for being a heavy weight on her family. for freckles ymir, it is made explicit that she was picked off the street because she was a girl. she was fed and clothed and adored (provided for) by adults who would have ignored her otherwise, because that love is conditional on her being their “goddess”. even via clothing, they dress her in a white dress and finery, as opposed to the trousers she wears on paradis. but none of this was her choice and yet she ends up being framed as the leader by the very same people that claimed to adore her, she very easily becomes a burden to them even when they were the ones who chose to have her. ymir continues to play the goddess, selfless and sacrificial, for the greater good of her people, again not out of choice.[and note that her martyrdom failed, she was stoned alongside them and turned into titans.]

now take the scene where historia is pressured into becoming queen:

it is physical pressure that levi uses (much like kenny & rod did to make her “krista”), his masculine power, to force her into submission, into another role that is required of her on account of how she is born. strangling her (depriving her of air) and pushing her head down when her arc is about living with her head held high, with pride. because as women, she must be meek and submit.

he says that she should beat him back if she doesn’t being lifted by the collar, which emphasises her powerlessness. because aside from the obvious fact that levi is an older man whilst historia is a teenage girl, he is also her military superior- thus nobody physically interferes whilst he does this to her. he only lets go when he wants to not when she asks. nobody helps her and she can’t help herself. it is obvious in universe and out that she can’t run from him or fight him:

much like when kenny bestowed the role of “krista” onto her, historia makes a reference to donning a new role.

[it is never their choice to be in that role, just like when babies are assigned their sex and brought up with bioessentialist standards, instead of being allowed to identify themselves develop as a people.]

also, like with ymir, there’s this element that historia “must” don this role for the greater good, levi is only acting in this way for the sake of humanity- it’s evil but eviller is historia not doing what is required of her. in terms of the domestic sphere, it is the woman who must leave behind her previous life to take on the role of “mother”, she must sacrifice her body and become a selfless caretaker for the sake of her children.

it is always better to sacrifice one woman than the rest of the world —> the fifty year plan is based upon historia’s sex, yet again we have that “children is a woman’s purpose” thing.

there is also this idea that women are only given power, the goddess role and queen, to be in service of others, they are burdens otherwise. even in those higher positions, they still lack the true power to live life as they choose.

founder ymir the most perfect woman.

there are certain overlaps between ymir’s role as a slave and her role as a woman, after all being a good girl is being ymir, she is the feminine ideal krista tried to be.

ymir is a perfectly devoted and obedient girl dedicated to selfless service. always at her husband’s beck and call then at her children’s beck and call when her husband died. does whatever is needed of her, she is someone who can’t even talk back to him, doesn’t complain when he takes other wives (men obviously can’t be immodest). doesn’t fight her own kidnapping. takes whatever she is given quietly, even abusive punishment and earns her right to fulfil her domestic purpose as a wife and mother.

we don’t have much of ymir’s life before fritz, but it seems really mundane, she was an ordinary village girl who became a child slave under the heels of a monster who killed her parents, burned her village and cut her tongue, in other words a physically dominant male, forcing her into a role she doesn’t want and doing so because she lacks the power to stand up to him as a helpless little girl. she had one singular moment of rebellion against this overpowering evil, where she tried to be strong, she frees pigs trapped in a pen and was punished via dogs and arrows (remember it is also her fellow slaves, society as a whole, that pointed fingers at her. it’s societal pressure to conform to gender norms.)

if we go back to how armin and eren are made to feel when they faced an overpowering evil that made them feel weak, we can also understand how ymir felt, even after receiving the power of the titans. she still feels fear, still feels weakness. the way everyone turned in her, the way she was punished brutally for rebellion when she was weak and he was strong. and that insecurity persevered, she might have still felt “lesser than” despite her now overpowering abilities [gender norms teaching people they are inherently weaker than others]. she couldn’t recognise her strengths, just like eren she felt like she didn’t have anything to fight with despite her titan powers. just like armin, she thought this power would have been better off in someone else’s hands. she couldn’t advocate for herself, she didn’t even dare think of rebelling against him even if it could only do her and the world good. she freezes up, she relies on what she knows, that she is a slave and that she is beneath fritz. she submitted to him, hoping she would be useful in hopes she’d be loved. and then she submits to their children, and the way she does this is through again selfless, obedient servitude.

why would she trust in her own decisions if she’s been constantly told she’s a slave? why would she trust in her own decisions if she’s constantly been told she is inferior to men? why would she rebel against her husband-master when she’s not supposed to as a woman-slave? founder ymir is very much trapped in her role as a woman (slave), that cannot change even if she is given power, just as historia and freckles ymir lacked agency despite their queen/goddess title. Frieda herself took the mantle of founding titan in service of others but her power wasn’t her own. founder ymir perfectly does what her role demands of her and it doomed her and the world. this is why she could only be freed by another woman, one who sought a traditional, feminine life just like her.

so yes, women are doted upon, adored, protected and provided for at the expense of others, but all this marks them as weaker. roles denote women as inherent followers and not leaders, even when they are given “power” it isn’t by choice. they are seen as softer than men, more delicate and vulnerable, more emotional, feeble etc. they must be selfless since they are already “burdens” as men must provide for them and protect them, they have to be loveable to incentivise that care, they have to be maternal since the domestic sphere is where they’ll always be. they must be modest, since sex has to be for procreation, they are “whores” else. simply put, they learn they are not equals to men and can never be so, according to society they are fundamentally weaker even if they try their best not to be. they may submit to feeling like burdens and do everything to be less of a burden to people around them.

[final tangent- the yumihisu thesis:

live with your head held high, live freely as a burden, live selfishly, live for yourself, refuse the role of “krista” (Ultimate Woman) and reclaim historia (unloveable, unwanted, unpalatable), never apologise for being born and let yourself take up space. they never make each other feel like burdens, they are all about empowerment and agency. their love is a rejection traditional gender roles and heteronormative standards.]