Nie Huaisang and masculinity

[superborb]

aka NHS is not particularly coded feminine in MDZS/CQL and I'd like to provide some context why!

I'm sure this has been pointed out before, but I'm not like, really ~with the youth~ aka how do people find meta post-LJ? So I don't know how redundant this post is... First, the caveat that obviously anyone can do what they want and headcanon whatever they want! These are just my thoughts!

I think people are mistaking NHS's love of art and fans as particularly feminine traits, which conflates Western ideals of femininity with what is happening. For reasons beyond the scope of this post, ancient China's ideals of masculinity rest on the ideal of a scholar -- the highest social class for much of imperial Chinese history served as officials and bureaucrats. (Of course, the perfect man was both martially AND academically inclined.) As a result, poetry, painting, these are /not/ coded feminine, because any true gentleman is a master of these arts. 

On the topic of fans, folding fans were commonly used as canvases, and so scholars would gift fans etc etc until decorated folding fans were a Big Deal. Some of the aesthetic hanfu blogs say folding fans are masculine and the stiff round fans are feminine, but I don't think this is broadly true through much of history? Like, yes, that is the association NOW, because a lot of dramas will give the young women the round fans and we see men with folding fans. But also there are lots of examples of historical folding fans that were designed to be carried by women, and the round fans predate the existence of folding fans. In any case, folding fans are not coded feminine and may even be a masculine accessory.

In conclusion, I have and will continue to happily read f!NHS and related fics, but mmm how to put it? If you're taking a textual reading of the canon, you need to do a bit more work to explain it?

Comments

[jo_lasalle]

This is very interesting!

The novel has that scene where NMJ is very mad at NHS and burns all his fans, and at least in the translation I read, to me it came across as NMJ disapproving of "weak" and "frivolous" pursuits. I always figured NMJ's in-universe reaction had a lot to do with the NHS-coded-as-queer stuff I've seen around, but I could be wrong about both that scene and where people get (specifically) female-coded NHS from.

[superborb]

Hmm, I was mostly guessing about why people were reading female coded NHS! I think we're supposed to see that NMJ is starting to be affected by the song of turmoil at that point and him being mad that NHS isn't taking up the saber, bc he knows that qi deviation is coming soon and NHS will have to be sect leader? And of course, we know that the Nies are a much more martial sect than the others, so it's possible they value the arts much less.

EDIT: struck out a timeline fail -- the song of turmoil isn't played until after the fan burning, so it can't be that. But I think we're supposed to think of the Nies as less gentleman-y a sect and therefore one that places less importance on art

[rekishi]

But isn't that because Nie cultivation is the way it is? Not having read the novel (yet) but considering the threat of qi deviation and the saber spirits, on top of the sects running by bloodline and NHS being the heir... That and the location of Qinghe close to Qishan, they would have to be always be wary of potential attacks, especially under Wen Ruohan. So there's not really much time to pursuing the arts.

Live fast die young?