Man! I Feel Like A Woman!
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Romano hates being female. He hates it with everything in him - he hates having breasts, he hates how his balance is completely thrown off, he hates the way people look at him when he talks, he hates how other girls giggle and titter behind their hands, he hates the look that a new boss always gives, he hates that Veneziano has bigger breasts than him, he hates suddenly bursting out of his clothes, he hates it all.
He hates the fact that he sometimes bleeds.
From, you know, "down there".
He shouldn't have a "down there".
That's what girls have - and he. is not. a girl.
He's read Freud and Foucault, and everyone else. He's read almost everything on queer theory, on misogyny and feminism, transsexualism and intersexed beings. He knows about the subconscious, stereotypical gender stereotypes that his culture perpetuates, and knows that his society (and most of western society along with it) is heavily patriarchal. He knows that he identifies as being male, and knows that that will not change even if he is biologically female.
He knows that no matter how much he physically changes, he'll still be him.
He knows that.
But that's all to do with his brain. And he's Italian. He's emotional. Germany, high on the changes sweeping through the scholars of his country, once insisted that he and Feliciano were the personification of the 'Id'. He'd called them 'Id-ridden' and 'Id-heavy'.
Bastard. Romano knows exactly what else Germany calls 'Id-ridden'.
Spain had laughed at him - at his reaction, really - and had asked why he was angry. Italians were Id-ridden, they were emotional and for the most part lived life vivaciously, and nothing was going to change that any time soon.
But it wasn't okay for Italian girls to be like that. Sure, everyone expected the elderly Italian females to be harridans, and they modestly lived up to that expectation, but not the young. Italian girls were quite, demure, innocent and sweet, they blushed charmingly when offered a flower or complimented and put up with their scheming grandmothers with long-learnt patience.
That's not Romano.
His personality doesn't just randomly do an about-face when he sneezes. He doesn’t suddenly become a demure little thing, he doesn’t suddenly find himself with an instinctive knowledge of how to react to a man's flirting and he certainly does not magically become softly spoken.
Romano is not a woman.
Except that sometimes he is.
And he hates it.
Notes:
This had to be edited so many times because I kept on screwing up the format. :sobs:
:cries: WHEN YOU'VE STUDIED ENGLISH LIT INTENSIVELY, YOU ACTUALLY KNOW ALL THAT.
Freud is, of course, the German psychoanalyst, though I lean more towards post modern, post-structuralist deconstructions than the psychology side, so I don't know too much about him besides the whole 'Id, Ego and Super-Ego' (which, I should mention, is not what Fraud called it. His words translate into English as 'the It' and a couple of other things that I can't remember).
Foucault (Michael Foucault) (like Colbert, the 't' is silent) was very heavily involved in changing the way we view feminism in literary theory, and in creating queer theory.
Misogyny is related to male-dominated sexism, it's most often thought of as being the 'hatred of women' but we use it as the male version of feminist literary theory. Romano is NOT a misogynist by any stretch of the term. None of the characters really are, weee, yay for Hetalia!
Transsexual: defined (according to Google) as "condition in which a person assumes the identity and permanently acts the part of the gender opposite to his or her biological sex".
Intersexed is having no clear gender/switching from one gender to another - which, I firmly believe that the nations are. If a human can change from being a mildly intersexed male to a biological female in three months, a nation can do it when it sneezes (tho, headcanon insists that it takes longer than that).
Babies are considered to be Id-heavy/ridden/personifications of. This may be the wrong term for it, I can't remember off the top of my head.
I feel sorry for fem!Romano, especially if her personality doesn't change. Even though we're moving away from those gender stereotypes, a girl that behaved like Romano would not be accepted into polite society. Everyone'd stare at her as soon as she opened her mouth. Imagine that - sneeze, and you have to change everything about yourself.
New headcanon: female nation's period = time when country is very fertile. I.E, fem!Egypt knows that she's gonna be screwed over when the Nile floods.
In other news, I finally worked out how to work LJ Cuts, hooray! Why is it so hard? /cries
Once again, please check out the help_japan auction!
Romano hates being female. He hates it with everything in him - he hates having breasts, he hates how his balance is completely thrown off, he hates the way people look at him when he talks, he hates how other girls giggle and titter behind their hands, he hates the look that a new boss always gives, he hates that Veneziano has bigger breasts than him, he hates suddenly bursting out of his clothes, he hates it all.
He hates the fact that he sometimes bleeds.
From, you know, "down there".
He shouldn't have a "down there".
That's what girls have - and he. is not. a girl.
He's read Freud and Foucault, and everyone else. He's read almost everything on queer theory, on misogyny and feminism, transsexualism and intersexed beings. He knows about the subconscious, stereotypical gender stereotypes that his culture perpetuates, and knows that his society (and most of western society along with it) is heavily patriarchal. He knows that he identifies as being male, and knows that that will not change even if he is biologically female.
He knows that no matter how much he physically changes, he'll still be him.
He knows that.
But that's all to do with his brain. And he's Italian. He's emotional. Germany, high on the changes sweeping through the scholars of his country, once insisted that he and Feliciano were the personification of the 'Id'. He'd called them 'Id-ridden' and 'Id-heavy'.
Bastard. Romano knows exactly what else Germany calls 'Id-ridden'.
Spain had laughed at him - at his reaction, really - and had asked why he was angry. Italians were Id-ridden, they were emotional and for the most part lived life vivaciously, and nothing was going to change that any time soon.
But it wasn't okay for Italian girls to be like that. Sure, everyone expected the elderly Italian females to be harridans, and they modestly lived up to that expectation, but not the young. Italian girls were quite, demure, innocent and sweet, they blushed charmingly when offered a flower or complimented and put up with their scheming grandmothers with long-learnt patience.
That's not Romano.
His personality doesn't just randomly do an about-face when he sneezes. He doesn’t suddenly become a demure little thing, he doesn’t suddenly find himself with an instinctive knowledge of how to react to a man's flirting and he certainly does not magically become softly spoken.
Romano is not a woman.
Except that sometimes he is.
And he hates it.
Notes:
This had to be edited so many times because I kept on screwing up the format. :sobs:
:cries: WHEN YOU'VE STUDIED ENGLISH LIT INTENSIVELY, YOU ACTUALLY KNOW ALL THAT.
Freud is, of course, the German psychoanalyst, though I lean more towards post modern, post-structuralist deconstructions than the psychology side, so I don't know too much about him besides the whole 'Id, Ego and Super-Ego' (which, I should mention, is not what Fraud called it. His words translate into English as 'the It' and a couple of other things that I can't remember).
Foucault (Michael Foucault) (like Colbert, the 't' is silent) was very heavily involved in changing the way we view feminism in literary theory, and in creating queer theory.
Misogyny is related to male-dominated sexism, it's most often thought of as being the 'hatred of women' but we use it as the male version of feminist literary theory. Romano is NOT a misogynist by any stretch of the term. None of the characters really are, weee, yay for Hetalia!
Transsexual: defined (according to Google) as "condition in which a person assumes the identity and permanently acts the part of the gender opposite to his or her biological sex".
Intersexed is having no clear gender/switching from one gender to another - which, I firmly believe that the nations are. If a human can change from being a mildly intersexed male to a biological female in three months, a nation can do it when it sneezes (tho, headcanon insists that it takes longer than that).
Babies are considered to be Id-heavy/ridden/personifications of. This may be the wrong term for it, I can't remember off the top of my head.
I feel sorry for fem!Romano, especially if her personality doesn't change. Even though we're moving away from those gender stereotypes, a girl that behaved like Romano would not be accepted into polite society. Everyone'd stare at her as soon as she opened her mouth. Imagine that - sneeze, and you have to change everything about yourself.
New headcanon: female nation's period = time when country is very fertile. I.E, fem!Egypt knows that she's gonna be screwed over when the Nile floods.
In other news, I finally worked out how to work LJ Cuts, hooray! Why is it so hard? /cries
Once again, please check out the help_japan auction!