Cw Slurs - Tumblr Posts
me, as I’m rubbing my t gel into my leg: hmm. what if I was cis this whole time
the transsexual angel sitting on my shoulder: who fucking cares. you’re having a good time being on t. either take t as a tranny or take it as a cis dyke. who cares!
me: thanks transsexual angel. are you allowed to reclaim those slurs btw
Oh my God yes. I'm trans. Genderfluid specifically. As a young kid, I *was* a girl. I am not now, but I was. I've also been a boy. I've had no gender, I've had all gender. If you identify with a term in good faith (eg. A black person using the n word to describe themself, gay using the f slur to describe themself, and more) then that's fine. It goes beyond slurs too. Transsexual, FtM, MtF, whatever. If someone IDs with a term, let them use it
don't use "ftm" it's outdated and offensive. it implies that the trans person was their agab, which we never were. i was always a boy, never a girl who became a boy.
i'm 35 years old. i've been IDing as trans or something similar to trans for nearly 20 years. i was probably calling myself FTM while you were playing tag during recess, anon.
i WAS a girl. i IDed as a girl early in my life. i recognized myself as a girl, called myself a girl, lived as a girl, and was a girl. who then IDed as a man. hence, F t M.
spend more time worrying about yourself instead of strangers on the internet, anon.
sorry not sorry if this comes off as needlessly hostile, but i've been getting a lot of shit from a lot of teenage trans kids about the language i use to describe my own goddamn experience, and i'm growing real fuckin weary of it.
i have elder trans friends who call themselves transsexuals and transvestites and trannies. are you going to seriously go to a 60-year-old trans person who survived the reagan years and tell her she's not allowed to use certain language to describe herself because it might offend the delicate sensibilities of some teenager on the internet?
do yourself a favor and log off, find some real-life trans people who are over the age of 20 or 25, and spend time talking to them instead of getting all holier-than-thou at random strangers on tumblr.
That’s perfect thank you
john (me) i was thinking we’d write a song with yoko about womens oppression, what do you think we should call it?
Hm…
What about…
[CENSORED]
:33 < idont care if youre anti or pro endo, if you use "delusional" or "p*ychotic" as an insult towards ANY system, YOU ARE ABELIST. you are singlehandedly showing off youdo NOT care for people with psychosis, youdo NOT care for people on the schizospectrum, and you are ABELIST TOWARDS YOUR OWN COMMUNITY. JUST BECAUSE THEY HAD ALTERS AS A DELUSION OF THEIRS, does NOT GIVE YOU THE RIGHT TO BE ABELIST TO THEM. my god, just leave delusional folks alone if youre gonna be uneducated and reality check them.
I made something bad, please enjoy.
cw: slurs
Izzy Hands: Masculinity, Class, and Queerness
This meta is an examination of how Izzy's internalized homophobia manifests within the first season of Our Flag Means Death. Head's up: this analysis includes copious use of the word "queer" in a reclaimed context as well as references to historical anti-gay slurs. If that's not something you want to see, you should skip over this post. This is my metatextual analysis and informs my headspace for the character in RP and just like, in general.
Massive spoiler warning for all the major plot points in the first season
For the purposes of this meta I will be assuming that Izzy Hands as portrayed in the first season is a queer man. Though we haven’t learned much about his backstory, he is portrayed by an actor known for portraying queer characters, said actor has confirmed that he’s “in love with Blackbeard” and the creator of the show has described Izzy as the “jilted spouse” in the Stede-Ed-Izzy triangle. Additionally, I would go so far as to say that all of the pirates are assumed to be queer by the narrative, based on certain dialogue and the way that the narrative normalizes queer relationships between them.
Izzy has quite a few markers of the familiar queer-coded villains in media. He’s the loyal, cuckolded sidekick to the more impressive Blackbeard, but the romantic nature of his devotion is explicit, rather than subtext. For instance, when Stede hears them arguing and titters about ‘trouble in paradise’, neither of them corrects him. He’s small in stature with a high-pitched voice and off-putting mannerisms. He has a sadomasochistic streak, implied early on when he deliberately drags his fingers through the candle flames on Blackbeard’s desk. He’s introduced as formidable from the get-go via his proximity to Blackbeard’s power, his ruthlessness, and his status as renowned swordsman but neither Stede nor the crew of the Revenge find him intimidating.
Izzy and Stede are like oil and water from the beginning, disliking each other on sight. They read as opposites visually as well, Izzy in buttoned-up black, sturdy leather that, while it’s probably too hot to be real-life practical is at least resistant to the elements where Stead is in fine, jewel-toned fabrics with frilly sleeves. Izzy dismissively characterizes him as a “ponce” (notably not to his face) and Stede’s barbed tongue is constantly lancing him with disrespect, most notably calling him by the wrong name. On Stede’s part, this foreshadows the “passive aggression” skills he demonstrates to Ed in the party episode. In the abusive boarding school culture he came of age in, as a boy unwilling and/or unable to fight, he learned to use his words instead.
The differences between Stede and Izzy are immediately understood then to be class-based and also gender-performance based. The two are inextricably linked, as far as Izzy is concerned. He questions why Blackbeard would be fascinated by someone so bad at pirating—and by extension, bad at being a man. Piracy, we are told by other characters, is a blood-thirsty, dangerous, hard-living profession, typically only undertaken by people who have no other choice. As a result, Izzy seems to take offense at the fact that Stede essentially appears to be LARPing as a pirate. The world of piracy does not appear to be one that leaves room for multiple models of masculinity. You have to be tough, rough, and violent to survive—being soft is a luxury. For Izzy, Stede’s lack of traditional masculinity—more correctly, his overt flamboyance—is a privilege of his wealth and therefore not something to be respected. Stede’s taking on a lower-class profession—and as far as Izzy’s concerned, making a mess of it—by choice.
By contrast, when Izzy rants at Blackbeard that in their early years he was “honored to have the chance to work for the legendary Blackbeard”, he doesn’t speak of other offers he had or people he left behind in an effort to twist the knife. We get the impression, then, that Izzy’s not a man who has been given many choices about what he wants to be in this life.
Yet for every failure of Stede’s, he has a success too. It’s true that he runs his ship aground but he then succeeds in getting the drop on Izzy and the pirates in the woods, even managing to hold Izzy at knifepoint, which seems to garner a momentary, grudging respect. Of course, Izzy later complains to Blackbeard that the ambush was “unprofessional”—truthfully a baseless critique once we learn that one of Blackbeard’s favorite battle tactics is “fuckery”.
Izzy likes rules, even in this messy, blood-thirsty space he inhabits. In fact it seems like he depends on them. To be a proper man you have to fight the proper way, to use specific weapons and follow a set strategy (summarized in a blasé manner as “the usual” following a description of flaying a crew alive). His specialty is swords and through various dialogue, we understand him to be a renown swordsman and duelist(he cuts his own name into Stede’s shirt in a series of swift movements and receives the sincere compliment “you’re very skilled” for his intimidation efforts, which Izzy clearly perceives as mockery). He wears his dueling glove at all times, perpetually ready for combat, even though Blackbeard makes it clear that before the events of the plot, they haven’t had to really fight anyone in what might have been years at this point. Wearing the glove when he doesn’t need to serves to remind people of who he is, and also allows him to keep a protective layer around who he is under it. He’s never totally ‘bare’. He also wears a tattoo of a ‘spade’ playing card suit on his other hand, which traditionally symbolizes swords. His swordsmanship, then, is a central tenant of his identity and by extension, his manhood. Later on, he challenges Stede to a duel for what Izzy clearly perceives to be Blackbeard’s honor and loses on a technicality, which makes Izzy furious. His success in expressions of traditional masculinity and, in his own mind his value to Blackbeard and as a man, are slipping out of his protectively-gloved grip.
His own queerness and his masculinity are also inextricably linked. Kaz Rowe’s videos on historical queerness describe queerness in this era as “less about something that you called yourself and more something that you did”, suggesting that queer identity was not acknowledged as an umbrella but that queerness was calculated in terms of queer acts that one engaged in. Indeed, historically queerness was regulated wholly by the banning of queer acts, specifically sodomy and buggery laws and laws banning “cross-dressing” as well as those banning “vulgarity”(pornography). In the show itself, we are not explicitly told about the sexual nature of the relationship between Izzy and Blackbeard. They are portrayed in turns as a boss and a henchman, an old married couple who are headed towards divorce, and comrades-in-arms, and none of these definitions are made to contradict each other. The cast and creator of the show have confirmed Izzy’s feelings for Blackbeard to be romantic and separately, there are two different scenes where Blackbeard is violent towards Izzy and Izzy visibly appears to be aroused as a result. The first is when Blackbeard angrily pins Izzy against a wall after Izzy degrades him in a vulnerable moment. In response, Izzy strokes Blackbeard’s face and coos “there you are, I’ve missed you” in what is easily the most tender behavior the character has displayed. The second is when Blackbeard cuts off Izzy’s toe as punishment for his disrespect; Izzy’s face is a mixture of pain and arousal in the moment and we later see him limping around the deck with the smug exhaustion of someone who has just been fucked, satisfied that “Blackbeard is himself again”. The question of if the two of them have ever had oral, intercrual or penetrative sex, then, seems immaterial considering the fact that Izzy considers Blackbeard performing violence on him to be a sexual act.
That begs the question though, if Izzy would indeed identify himself as queer. If he has not had what other people would define as sex with Blackbeard, is he himself not “a ponce”? Trapped in the limbo of a long-time pirate partnership with a man who barely touches him, Izzy exists essentially as ‘Schrodinger's’ queer’ throughout the first season.
Perhaps this is why in part he ties his own performance of violence to his masculinity. Izzy is seen eavesdropping on a evening where Blackbeard is teaching Stede how to fence. Hidden behind a mast, Izzy hears Blackbeard urge Stede to stab him, and then the lengthy process of Stede having to pull the sword back out again. The gag, of course, is that all the grunts and moans make it sound like the two of them are having sex, and Izzy’s face goes from shocked to sad and betrayed in a quick sequence. But while the violence is in the moment mistaken for sex, it’s simultaneously clear that for Izzy, violence is both sexual and a stand-in for sex, to say nothing of the fact that he already prizes his swordsmanship. The camaraderie generated between two men who feel comfortable enough with each other to hurt each other is invaluable to him, since in the space that they inhabit it seems to be the only acceptable way for men of their social standing to express intimacy. Also worth noting here that “sword” is commonly used as a term for “penis” in erotica. It’s pretty clear that Izzy is feeling replaced.
Izzy shouldn’t be pitied too much on this point, however. He is absolutely the one perpetuating this cycle of violence after it’s become clear that it’s detrimental to Blackbeard at the very least. He is the one policing Blackbeard’s masculinity and telling him that unless he conforms this uber-violent masculine ideal, that he is not worthy of respect. From the beginning of the season, Blackbeard makes it clear that he’s fed up with his life, that he’s tired of maintaining this draining persona, and that he wants to explore other sides of himself. Though Izzy originally implies that he’s okay with them parting(as long as he can take some power in return), time and again he refuses to let Blackbeard go, betraying them to the English navy in the process. A heart-broken Blackbeard pins Izzy to the wall because Izzy was mocking him for having the absolute gall to have feeeeeelings when ‘everyone else’ (mostly Izzy, in truth) wants him to be an emotionless brute. Izzy’s goading is what triggers the spiral we see Blackbeard in at the end of the season. Midway through the season, Blackbeard reveals to Stede that his biggest trauma is the result of having killed his abusive father, to the point where he had to view himself in that state as a literal monster in order to cope. He cries tears of distress at the memory, at the fact that he’s “not a good person”. One has to wonder, has he ever told Izzy this? Would Izzy have cared?
Although Izzy wreaks collateral damage on Blackbeard and, by extension the crew, he is absolutely the biggest victim of his own toxic masculinity.
Per his expectation that Blackbeard is going to depose Stede and leave Izzy as the de facto leader, Izzy treats the crew like he would Blackbeard’s own with truly unearned authority, giving orders as he would on their ship. He can’t be bothered to acknowledge Stede as a captain—and by his estimation, a man—even for this brief time.
He’s invasive too, skulking around in the shadows to learn more about the dynamics of crew. When he finds Lucius and Pete having just hooked up in the pantry, he punishes the more effeminate one of the pair, Lucius, with duties that both don’t seem terribly necessary at this current point in their journey and are also far outside the scope of Lucius’ normal duties.
While bonding (in at least a partial attempt to skive off said punitive duties) with Fang, one of Izzy’s longtime shipmates, Lucius hears the story of how unusually choppy seas once gave Izzy seasickness so severe that he vomited profusely in front of the crew. Considered an unusual moment of physical ‘weakness’ for him, the incident earned him the nickname “Izzy the Spewer”. Lucius is predictably amused by this and gleefully spreads the story around the crew, rechristening him “Dizzy Izzy”.
When Izzy confronts him about bailing on the work he assigned, Lucius leverages his old nickname—and then the new one— against him. Lucius’ power in the confrontation comes not from having seen the expression of ‘weakness’ himself (he obviously wasn’t there) but in the knowledge that it exists and his willingness to address it to Izzy’s face. Izzy can’t fulfill his role as untouchable authority figure if a newcomer can dismiss him so easily.
And beyond being a newcomer, Lucius has many of the traits that Izzy seems to despise on principle. He’s a man of letters who by his own account “doesn’t do manual labor”. He’s employed by Stede as a scribe, truly excessive on a pirate ship and a testament to Stede’s impracticality and egotism(by comparison, it’s not clear if Izzy can even read). He’s fashionable, flirty, effete, easily startled, speaks with a posh accent and has no apparent respect for authority. He’s opposite to Izzy in every way. For lack of better phrasing, it seems pretty clear that one of Izzy’s biggest problems with him is that he’s ‘too gay’.
It’s clear that Izzy has some degree of internalized homophobia based on the language he uses to describe men that he considers to be unsuitably masculine. As previously established, he considers effeminate men to be the result of wealth-based privilege and both are one in the same in his mind, enemies via class.
Lucius, we learn at some point, had a stint as a pickpocket and may not be nearly so posh as he appears, but that doesn’t seem of concern to Izzy, who has already decided that he’s not the ‘right kind’ of man, nor by extension, the ‘right kind’ of queer.
Lucius is joyful in his queerness; he happily flirts with a variety of men onboard, he makes no secret of his proclivities (“I know a little something about keeping secrets—not all beards are beards if you get my drift”, the only overt acknowledgment of homophobia outside of the ship that has been referenced so far), he’s a consistent source of emotional intelligence, counseling Blackbeard and Stede about their feelings for each other through their respective lack of self-awareness.
His strongest skill, however, seems to be his ability to let other men to be vulnerable around him.
After the two of them hook-up, tough guy Pete becomes noticeably kinder, treating Lucius with a gentleness that could be played for laughs in contrast, but honestly just seems really sweet. Given that this character was previously chomping at the bit to “shove hot pokers up (the enemy’s) arseholes” and degrading sewing as “women’s work”, the difference is staggering.
Similarly, Lucius gets on Fang’s good side by complimenting his appearance and expressing an interest in drawing him nude. It’s true that he’s doing this in part in an effort to get out of of work, but his sentiments don’t seem any less genuine as a result. When Fang confesses that “people don’t usually take interest in my form”, Lucius replies with full sincerity “then you’ve never met anyone worth a damn”. Within the narrative, Lucius’ polyamorous sensibilities characterize him not as flaky or fickle, but as someone with a lot of love to give to a lot of different types of people.
Of course Izzy can’t stand him. Lucius’ narrative is completely counter to the way that Izzy defines himself by suffering and misery and subservience. I think it’s important to consider here the historical attitude towards men having gay sex who took did the fucking versus the men who received the fucking. The man who fucked could retain his masculinity while the man who got fucked was considered effeminate, a ‘nonman’, an “invert”. Often dubbed with the slur “Mary” or “Nancy” and later “fairy”. Izzy’s internalized homophobia dances in a fascinating waltz with his desire to be dominated by Blackbeard. He can accept wanting to be dominated by a man, it seems, but only if that man is perceived as the manliest man who ever manned, personified as a red-eyed, smoke-monster demon man covered in guns. The idea of a relationship being built on mutual love and vulnerability seems to genuinely confuse him.
When Izzy catches Lucius with Fang, he tries to blackmail him by threatening to tell Pete of their dalliance, using what he intends to be offensive, feminizing language in calling him “a proper little seductress”. Lucius in turn laughs in his face and calls Pete in to tell him himself and is given an approving “Nice!” from Pete for his efforts. Lucius smugly tells Izzy that he and Pete “don’t own each other”, which is like a slap in the face to Izzy who is shown to be so possessive of Blackbeard that he tells Stede that Stede has no right to call Blackbeard by his given name of Ed.
On the topic of naming, the transition from “Izzy the Spewer” to “Dizzy Izzy” is an interesting one. The former is obviously derogatory, but also gross-sounding and masc by extension in the way it sounds like a title. “Dizzy Izzy” sounds, well, silly, and almost affectionate. It almost sounds like a drag name. The vulnerability it implies must be infuriating to him.
As he has been shown to do, Lucius weaponizes his promiscuity against the other man and asks Izzy if he’s even been sketched, which is understood to be a come-on. Izzy is simultaneously understood to be turned on by the offer and absolutely spitting mad. He has no good answer to this that will let him keep his power or his dignity. “Oooh, daddy” he moans in response, which is presumably supposed to be a mocking impression of Lucius but makes it very clear that he’s lost the exchange.
Honestly, the descriptor I keep returning to for this moment is “juvenile”. It reminds me of boys in high school intentionally making sex noises to embarrass their classmates. As jarring as it is to watch on screen, it fits right in with the scenes of Calico Jack and Blackbeard bro-ing out, where the world of the pirates is portrayed as one big, rowdy, gross fraternity, with all of the misogynism and internalized homophobia baggage implied. Izzy, despite his usual attempts at presenting himself with dignity, is also a product of that culture.
And on the note of youth, I think it’s worth noting that Lucius is consistently referred to as a ‘boy’ by the other pirates despite appearing to be in his mid-twenties. One might infer that he is one of the youngest crew members. His youth directly contrasts with Izzy being firmly middle-aged as another catalyst for their conflict: Lucas has got so much about himself figured out while he’s got his whole life ahead of him while Izzy’s still tortured, trapped and struggling with himself.
Lucius’ youth, softness, and vulnerability are all understood to be advantages by the narrative and the scene ends with Izzy storming out and Pete praising Lucius that seeing him assert himself like that was “hot”.
Izzy’s constant attempts to control the crew with fear, abuse and intimidation result in a vicious cycle of them undermining his authority. In contrast to Stede and his “people positive management style” (which of course still has issues within the narrative), Izzy demands from the crew an unearned sense of authority. No one would be mocking him about being “Dizzy Izzy” if he didn’t insist on projecting such an invulnerable, hardass, drill sergeant persona. Because he’s created an environment where any display of weakness is cause for punishment, he is also inviting the crew to find and exploit that weakness in him, a fact that he seems to be ignorant of. Izzy is the one insisting that a lack of physical fortitude is equivalent to personal weakness and so, with this being the one thing people can exploit about him, they continue to use it against him. When he gains possession of The Revenge as the result of his betrayal, he retitles it “Izzy’s Revenge” to which Wee John rightly states “Sounds like an intestinal condition”—Izzy punishes him severely as a result. Insults are the only leverage that the crew has over Izzy when he’s acting as a veritable tyrant. The power he has over them far outweighs the sting of a few rude words, but as far as he’s concerned, causing him offense is a capital crime. Again, he cannot conceive of being a leader as someone with mutual respect for their crew. It speaks to how, well, weak his convictions in himself are and, all told, renders his previous critique of both Blackbeard and Stede’s leadership skills to be moot.
It’s also worth pointing out that the last time that the “Dizzy Izzy” moniker is used against him, it is in a situation where he has de facto power over the crew, though they don’t realize it. Unbeknownst to the crew, he is about to maroon them on a deserted island. Roach tosses out the name this time, showing just how thoroughly it’s been deseminated throughout the crew, along with a slightly sincere-sounding bid to “take care”. Izzy inclines his head with a stiff smile, at last, as far as he’s concerned, on the verge of getting his revenge.
Of course, Izzy manages to make himself the victim of his ideologies while being completely blind to the collateral damage. In addition to the fact that his ego is worth more than the lives of the crew, the rigidity of his beliefs in masculinity are contributing to destroying not only his relationship with Blackbeard but Blackbeard himself. When he complains to Blackbeard that the man has become “some namby-pamby in a silken dressing gown piiiiining for his boyfriend”, he considers every part of that sentence to be detestable. In being emotional, Blackbeard is being weak, which in his estimation is effeminate, which is linked to wealth already in Izzy’s mind and to the silken dressing gown that was given to Blackbeard by Stede. And of course, the word ‘boyfriend’, an acknowledgement of a formal relationship that Izzy can’t manage to secure for himself as a person who has committed himself to serving Blackbeard. He feels Blackbeard has betrayed him emotionally, and as a result of the method, that he is by extension also a class traitor.
As other viewers have wisely pointed out, Izzy is amazingly unaware of his own whiteness in this scene. While it’s true that both he and Blackbeard are part of this transient pirate class and are implied to have come from low-class backgrounds, Izzy is white and is shown to be afforded a level of dignity by groups like the British Navy that Blackbeard is not. Blackbeard is mourning a relationship with someone who treated him like a whole person and offered him things (physically and on an emotional level) that other people considered him unworthy of, and Izzy is functionally expressing distaste at the fact that he’s no longer acting like a hyper-masculine stereotype and telling him that he’s now unworthy of respect as a result. I can only assume this is the same selfish, horse-blinders attitude that started driving a wedge into their relationship in the first place.