#effeminacy

You may now peg the boybride.

Why are all femboys straight like I can't date a dl trade please please ple

#1: Saint Quentin from Virgin and Child Flanked by Sts Benedict and Quentin by Francesco Marmitta, from the 1st quarter of the 16th century. (The painting was formerly attributed to a painter by the surname Bianchi)

In his work Certains (Certain Artists in the English translation) 1889, French art critic Joris-Karl Huysmans describes Saint Quentin as an: ‘ephebe’ with an uncertain gender, a hybrid of mysterious beaut.

“His long brown locks torrenting over an iron armored bust […] And what to make of that adorable face whose features have been veiled by an unquenchable sorrow? What to make of those clear eyes, whose blue color seems to be fading… as if covered by mud? — These are not the penitent and pure eyes of St Benedict, clear and cold like fresh spring water. These eyes burn to be led into temptations that will ultimately cause downfall. These pupils of troubled waters, when they calm they reflect back the rusty-brown color of the autumn sky. These are belligerent pupils that are hardly subdued by the feeling of remorse/penitence after a sin. The saint’s appearance alone is mesmerizing. These boyish features, this slightly developed hips, this girlish neck with flesh as pale as elderberry flowers, cunning predatory lips, slim waist, provocative fingers resting upon his weapon, the bulge in the breastplate which swells in the place of breasts and protects the exposed sloping of the bust, that piece of cloth exposed from under the armpit (between shoulder pad and gorget), even the blue ribbon tied onto him that a girl child would wear are haunting. All frantic assimilations of Sodom came together to create this androgyne, whose insinuating beauty (now sore) had already emerged as purified, as if transfigured by the deliberate approach of a God. […] A hermaphrodite armed in iron, a knight who’s consumed by lust and suffers under the weight of his sorrow.”

Like menstruants, royalty in many cultures could not touch the ground. They were carried everywhere on the shoulders of special servants, just as menstruants had once been carried on their grandmother's shoulders:

Formerly neither the kings of Uganda, nor their mothers, nor their queens might walk on foot outside the spacious enclosures in which they lived. Whenever they went forth they were carried on the shoulders of men of the Buffalo clan, several of whom accompanied any of these royal personages on a journey and took it in turn to bear the burden. The king sat astride the bearer's neck with a leg over each shoulder and his feet tucked under the bearer's arms. When one of these royal carriers grew tired he shot the king onto the shoulders of a second man without allowing the royal feet to touch the ground.

In other cultures, royalty would be carried in litters and divan chairs, completely covered so no one could see them—just as menstruants were carried in covered sledges on the North American continent, and as brides of north Africa went home from their weddings completely draped from head to foot, in tents atop their camels, unseen by strangers.

The men of the royal class also inherited the menstrual and bithing thrones, the shoes, gloves, hats and long capes, and the bridal divans of women. The footwear of royalty provided ritual protection for both king and people: "According to ancient Brahmanic ritual a king at his inauguration trod on a tiger's skin and a golden plate; he was shod with shoes of boar's skin, and so long as he lived thereafter he might not stand on the earth with his bare feet." The holy man of the Dogon is required to wear sandals, for otherwise his feet will burn the earth; the sandals cool him. In his sandals, he impersonates the sun, which for the Dogon is in the female domain. Among other restrictions, he is not allowed to sweat, and no one is allowed to touch him.

Style of dressing, of movement, and of gesture would form the bodies of royal and holy persons just as it did those of women in general. The royal hands, like the hands of menstruants, were particularly dangerous, so they could not touch themselves or do ordinary work. Consequently, their gestures became very controlled, turned slightly outward, away from the body, in what came to be called "elegance," "delicacy," and "refinement"—and also, and of course historically accurately, "effeminate."