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04:24 pm resorc [Link]	tl;dr Okay, but for real Something that rubs me the wrong way, as an orc fan, is people who conflate gender presentation or even racial traits with sexuality and use it to undermine GBP depictions of male orcs. I mean, for one thing, don’t be shitty about people’s sexuality headcanons in the first place. A headcanon is a headcanon, and everyone is allowed to have one. But even more importantly, don’t act like it’s impossible, unreasonable, or– God forbid– gross when someone depicts a masculine orc as liking other males. It gets to me the most when it’s Garrosh. Perhaps because he’s my favorite character, or because I headcanon him as gay. But I can’t help but feel like people who get all “but Garrosh is a man, he’s not gay!” have firmly missed the point of his character. Garrosh, if anything, is a critique of toxic masculinity: mocked by Jorin for showing emotion in Nagrand and then further dismissed when trying to explain this to Thrall, he takes to suppressing entirely valid feelings about his father’s legacy. As he rises to Warchief, he cultivates an image that is Masculine™ but also forced; this is best demonstrated in The Shattering when he covers himself in tattoos to prove how tough he is, not only showing his own insistence on creating an image, but also the culture feeding that wish, as the tattoo artist scoffs at him for reacting to pain (and even just sweating). Garrosh becomes a man divided. Honest concerns and hesitations are thrown out the window to look Strong and Tough, feeding a toxic, pigheaded mindset that, in part, brings about his fall. And it is his interaction with other males that makes this discussion so interesting: his desperation for approval from male society, his almost-decade long obsession with (besting? killing? who knows?) Varian, his hatred for and then hero-worship of his father, and the way he gives into male characters like Thrall and Malkorok rather than relying on his own sense of self all become important sites for discussing the negative effects of male socialization. He looks to other male characters– as role models or as opponents– as the shapers of his identity, and, in doing so, becomes a shell of a person. He is a cautionary tale, and it scares me that the fandom seems to miss this. So when you say “Garrosh is such a man, there’s no way he’s gay!” not only are you conflating gender and sexuality, undermining millions of men in the gay community who identity with masculine-gendered identities– bears, the leather community, or gay bodybuilding, just to name a few– but you are also missing a valuable discussion of male socialization and toxic masculinity by opting to buy into it wholesale. “Garrosh is too manly to be gay” only affirms that stamping out emotion or weakness and championing the views of other men over everyone else are entirely honest and genuine ventures. Say “Garrosh is too concerned about what other men think to admit if he were gay/bi/pan,” sure, or “Garrosh is too disconnected from his own feelings to know what his sexuality is,” fine. Those are all valid and important discussions to have. But do not assume that a constructed gender identity amounts to an honest gender identity, or that that constructed identity mitigates the possibility of a GBP sexuality. In doing that, you are tossing out an exceedingly important discussion about gender and socialization– both in the gay community and the wider world– and I cannot stand it. All of this is to say, I am tired of people looking at male characters with more stereotypically-feminine appearances– Anduin, Wrathion, and the blood elves being the primary examples that come to mind– and accepting GBP interpretations immediately while tossing out all of Garrosh’s complex interactions, obsession-level interactions, with males as “lol haha but he’s a manly man tho.” An acceptance of GBP men based solely on assumptions of femininity is neither fair nor correct. If you are going to claim to accept LGBT headcanons as valid, you need to accept all LGBTP headcanons as valid, not just those that fit into your preconceived notions of what an LGBTP character looks/acts like.
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