a chapel of ease

so not only is he a trans man (personal experience here, people infantilise you a lot) but he’s also a gnome and he talks about being picked up and moved around a lot. so even to a dwarf like murray, he’s functionally child-sized. in universe this is racism, so this doesn’t have a 1:1 real world comparison, but it strikes a chord with the infantilisation of disabled people, especially people with visible disabilities who report incidents like having wheel chairs grabbed by strangers.

on top of all that he’s also an adult student. this means a lot of people will infantilise you for not yet having entered “the real world” (conventional work), whether that’s actually true or not. this is especially complicated for murray who has both institutional power over him as bursar but also a duty of care to his general well being. irl, teachers of adults, particularly in universities, are often encouraged institutionally to see their students as children to prevent things like inappropriate teacher/student romantic/sexual relationships. of course that isn’t a flawless system and generates it’s own problems re:infantilisation.

so it’s really important that brennan has demodus stand up for his own agency in conversation with murray, even if he does, at other times, ham up his own persona of jester/clown/silly person. i’d hazard that persona is itself a construction aimed at mitigating whatever anti-gnome (and possibly anti-trans/queer) violence comes his way. yes, he ordinarily chooses to mitigate risks to his safety but if anything that proves that he is Very Aware Of The Risks in a way that murray simply wasn’t giving him credit for.

increasing hostility towards trans men on tumblr

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