Hey there, I know it's been a while since I've posted. Moving sucks, so I'm going to take a break to talk about some queer issues for a bit.
An acquaintance of mine posted this image on Facebook today.
As the title of this blog would suggest, and as I said in my intro post, I am queer. There is a bit of fluidity to my gender identity, sometimes I will feel very male, other times I feel very feminine. So, speaking as a gender- queer person, I find this super problematic.
Now, first off, I want to say that I agree that this movie and her character are both extremely relatable for me as a gender non-conforming person.
The song "Reflection" is, line by line, an absolutely heart wrenching narrative of how I feel on a daily basis.
I personally, never recognize myself in the mirror. Just today I went shopping and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and thought for a split second "that person has the same shirt as me....oh.... wait... :/"
That is far from being the first time something like that has happened. I don't know how to express how painful it is to regularly not realize that you are looking at yourself, and in that way, this movie really does speak to my heart.
That being said, nowhere in Mulan does it suggest that she is anything other than a late blooming, socially awkward teenager who dresses like a man in order to join the army and protect her father. It doesn't even suggest that she particularly enjoys dressing and acting as a man, in fact, she generally seems to dislike it.
So basically, my beef comes down to the fact that cross dressing does not make one gender fluid or trans.
If this person had said "when I watch this movie, I see Mulan as being this." -I could get behind that. I get that the lgbtqia community has virtually no representation in children's movies, and trust me, I get the desire to be able to see people similar to yourself depicted in popular culture.
But stating that someone crossdressing= being gender-fluid or trans is false. It is important to make that distinction, because a LOT of people (read : the majority of people) think that that's exactly how it works.
Posts like this encourage the type of mindset that says boys who wear makeup and girls who are tomboys are trans. I feel like it invalidates what the trans identity actually is, which is literally being a man, or a woman, or whatever, regardless of your parts or your clothing. It completely erases the efforts of people who are working extremely hard to educate the general population about the fact that no, we aren't just playing dress up.
We can't go making characters queer just because we wish they were. If we want representation in popular culture...we need to represent ourselves. We need to support artists who do accurately depict lgbtqia characters in a respectful way, and directors who use trans actors to portray trans characters.
We have to stop spreading misinformation just because it makes us feel good. It's not doing us any favors, and quite honestly, we deserve more than that.