prev tag -> #op how do you feel about kabuto
The role of gender in Naruto is wild if you go looking for it. Everyone jokes about the female characters getting shafted, but it's fascinating if you look at all the characters that play on the edge.
In the series, Femineity is associated with maternity, healing, looking pretty, and stability. Peace, too, if that is defined as not being at war.
In that way, its very interesting to consider that the ultimate villain of Naruto is not a warrior fighting for his ideals, pursuing revenge, or attempting to conquer the world. It's a powerful woman whose goal is to remove the abilities that cause the conflict in the first place. Who traps her victims in a perfect dream, rather than hurting them.
And Sasuke's place is also interesting, as a almost an ultimate masculine force. Over the course of the series several otherwise 'masculine' women act 'out of character' around him; think Temari taking time in her first appearance to note Sasuke's looks, while in active argument with team seven. Just like Shikamaru needing sexism to 'prove' his masculinity, being attracted to Sasuke is, time and again, used to 'prove' characters are really women.
And then there's the outliers. Orochimaru, gender-queer and portrayed by much of the series as true evil, constantly messing with gender. They even express desire for Sasuke, and what could be more feminine than that? And what 'redemption' is offered to them?
Becoming a mother. That is what moves him from a monstrous antagonist experimenting on children and twisting the natural order...to someone still doing all those things, but now 'acceptable' to the villages. Now she has a kid and stays in her house and wears feminine clothing and doesn't try to change the world in any way.
Compare that to Tsunade. A woman who rises to the highest position in the Leaf...as a single woman with no children and a focus on healing. Whose trauma is tied in with failing to protect the men in her life, making a doctor unable to stomach blood. Whose recommendation to prevent casualties is never instituted, and serves more to shackle her female students into a support role. Consider how female ninja almost all display some healing ability throughout the series, and none of their male counterparts do.
And then we reach Kabuto. The single major male healer in the series. Who very much follows in Shikamaru's mold, his sexism explicitly coming from suggesting that women attached to men are weaker , and whose trip to becoming main antagonist requires him 'stealing' power he doesn't 'deserve' and turning aside from healing and choosing instead to revive the dead.
For much of the series he remains a nebulous antagonist, healing characters for no immediate benefit to himself, resisting Orochimaru's control, and getting in Sasuke's way. Yet he opposes Konoha. And when he become truly evil, the first thing he does is...ask for Sasuke. Something at no point in the rest of the series does he have any interest in. It could be Orochimaru's obsession coming out, but it feels more pointed. Healers are devoted to Sasuke. Women are devoted to Sasuke. And he becomes the only person healed by Kabuto for the rest of the series. As a twisted person, he needs not only to upend death itself but also...forcibly control Sasuke.
And in the end, he earns the same treatment as Orochimaru. Assigned to childcare. Feminized in appearance (genderless clothes, a return to long hair, scarred to forever have mascara) and role, he is no longer a 'danger' simply because he has been given everything 'women' want - a stable home, children to care for - and therefore his massive power is completely neutered. Within the narrative, both he and Orochimaru choose to stay obedient to the villages, and the villages in turn reward them with everything they want. Outside the narrative, it stinks of upholding the status quo, 'fixing' the antagonists with children, and forcing the queerest antagonists into defined gender roles. By becoming female, they give up the right to make changes in the system, and can only uphold the same system that shattered their minds and forced them to commit atrocities long before they made the choice on their own.
Tl;dr : I think lesbian moon mommie was right, and she should have stolen all the super powers from the ungrateful, violent men who kept a system of eternal war running for centuries and used it to relegate women to childbirth, murdered their children, and systematically destroyed anything that didn't feed into the industrial war machine.
