"I'm Your Man," (X/G)

~Fun with gender-bending! Gabrielle is Xena's man. I mean, why not?
~I think I make a pretty strong case. And tomorrow, I'll make it for the other side. ;-)
~The capacity for successful violence is a strong marker of masculinity in the gender code of many societies. Why do you think we have the trope of the star quarterback and the head cheerleader rather than that of the virtuoso musician or the chess master and the head cheerleader? Why is it that women in the U.S. military are still not--officially, at least--allowed in combat?
~This vid was especially fun to make because the more obvious fun-with-stereotypes route is to make Xena the man in the relationship (she's been better at violence for longer, for one thing, and so was often the knight to Gabrielle's damsel in distress).
~What do I really think? Well, if anyone cares, I think one of the incidental perks of same-sex relationships is that they contain a lot less societal and internal pressure to conform to prescribed gender roles within the relationship, and so two people deliberately applying such restrictive roles to such a relationship because they believe there must be "a man" and "a woman" in every relationship, as in the butch/femme paradigm, seems even more ludicrous to me than maintaining the roles in heterosexual relationships. Personally, I see butch and femme as roles to play at, to be donned and doffed like costumes. They need have no more permanence, no more realness, than that because "masculine" and "feminine" themselves have no more realness; they are culturally transmitted ideas to which we shape ourselves, and others, to fit. To say one of Our Girls is "the man" is just to use shorthand to describe what is itself a socially constructed paradigm of gender that need not apply (to anyone, let alone to same-sex couples). In short, if I were to seriously answer the question of who is the man in X/G, I'd say that they are both the man and they are both the woman. They are each all to the other. They don and doff the gender roles as they don and doff armor and slinky dresses. It's one of the things that makes XWP so much fun to me. Viva la/le gender fluidity! ;-)

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Xena
• Gabrielle
• X/G
• Xena: Warrior Princess
• subtext
• gender-bending

[TheJorjafox]

Great vid! I love the gender bending and how you show the rougher side of Gabby!.....Xena loves Gabby as her man! Haha thx!

[NH4CHO]

I love these two so much it's ridiculous. I'm glad you could capture their relationship here, and Gabrielle's rougher/protective side here. The song is perfect! The little phrases between them is amazing too!! Thank you for this gem! It definitely deserves more views.

[ryanboomery]

Lol! Well done! I always think Gabby has the butch-ness in her :D

[KLionheart002]

Great vid. Haha Gabrielle's eyes at 0:46 got a little distracted for a moment ;)