i guess tired ramble and hope i knock myself out haha
so thinking abt goromi and kazumi like… idk i tend to use genderqueer over genderfluid, not that i have anything against the genderfluid label it's just, that's the way i understand myself? and tbf maybe that means my own experience is kind of genderfluid, but i like what i've got haha
both goromi and kazumi are born as performances that are put on, even if they do ultimately have root in long-standing feelings about the "role" of gay men in society, one loud and proud and the other repressed; one a "predator", the other denying his comfort, his very heart, to "conform".
as such their masculinity is very important to them, they're still men and still view themselves that way. phrases like "a woman who's really a man" when applied from the outside are absolute transphobic dogshit, but it can be a legitimate expression when coming from within.
like even with my own femininity, the idea of being seen entirely as a woman is very uncomfortable for me - even at my most feminine, where i happily answer to "pretty girl" and the like. to me, it's not that my gender is fluid so much as my sexuality and experiences with it (stereotype, poor treatment, failure to conform, etc) have shaped my expression of it. they're an inseparable pair!
so goromi flaunts her shamelessness, because majima knows shame well. she'll very happily tease about her tastes, dress in ways "no real man" would ever dream of, because fuck it, people don't see majima that way already. she definitely gets pissed off about people refusing to see her femininity at all, but to me it's less often about dysphoria and more often, the sense she's angry that other people can wield it as a weapon against her, but she's not even allowed it as a shield? bullshit.
and kazumi draws more from kiryu's experiences of his most repressed days; he remembers the "passive role" of which he was never allowed any partaking himself. it was him with the ideas, the money, the lead, everything - any kind of deviation met him with frustration and breakups. he's long had this sense of jealousy, not that he always completely understood that's what it was, of this soft passive femininity. but just the idea of being gay breaks the rules he'd spent so long learning - so being kazumi helps him to settle and accept affections, accept being treated and cared for.
even when the two aren't actively "playing" goromi and kazumi, just having them, their mindsets so to speak, ultimately helps them accept themselves in a world that would rather they didn't.
