I don’t think adding nonbinary to Victorian’s gender system would’ve fixed their weird sexism. If anything I think it would’ve made them weirder and sexismier
Of course, fashionable Honorables may be consternated by the proper open collar blouses as there is no way to tie a bow or cravat around it. In such cases a bow may be worn upon the top hat. Or a slim ribbon may be tied around the bare neck, however, given the salacious reputation some hold for such an accessory, that is best left to married Honorables.
YES. the way this hasn’t left my mind….Like okay they’re still Victorians. They’re still sexist and homophobic. My thought for this alternate history is third gender people are expected to only marry into already married couples. And they’d probably throw in a lot of Christian Holy Trinity and Mary Joseph God imagery to religiously validate triads.
Or three people (of all different genders of course bc again. They’re Victorian) could marry all at once but the courting situation would be a nightmare.
First thought: coverture. Coverture is the legal idea that a married couple is one entity, with the wife not having an actual legal identity of her own. This is why there’s the old-fashioned convention of women taking on their husband’s entire name (e.g. “Mrs. Robert Smith”), why men could control any inheritance or money their wives had, and also the origin of some now-obsolete laws (like making it impossible for a wife to sue her husband for damages, because it’s as if she was suing herself).
This is why it was so important for women to marry well: even if you worked as a married woman (and many women did), your money wasn’t actually yours. It’s one thing to have to live with a drunk asshole; it’s worse to have that drunk asshole be the sole person who decides if that paycheck goes towards rent or more booze.
So, having a trinity/three parts of one whole entity would totally fit Victorian ideas of coverture. I think you’d still have it be men > everyone else, because they’d expect some kind of hierarchy, and even within the Trinity, God is still the leader.
Second thought: separate spheres. The Victorian era was very heavily focused on men being involved in the “dirty” business of work/politics/etc., and women being more morally pure and better suited to the domestic sphere (the whole “angel of the house” thing). Obviously this wasn’t actually or practically true a lot of the time, but it was the aspired-to standard, the thing you’d measure people against to say if they were acting appropriately as members of their gender or not.
So you’d need a third sphere for Honorables to inhabit that is completely separate from the work/domestic dichotomy, or create an entirely different three-way dichotomy. Basically, you’d need a thing to point to, like “X is very ladylike” or “Y is not manly,” but for Honorables.
So, extrapolating:
You’d still have “Mr. and Mrs. Robert Smith,” it’d just be, “Mr., Mrs., and Mx. Robert Smith” (differentiating by title, not by first name). I could actually see there being a different title for unmarried vs. married Honorables, like Master vs. Mister or Miss vs. Madam/Missus. Mix vs. Max, maybe?
I think Honorables would definitely need to have some kind of dowry. It actually might be even more necessary, because unless the guy is insanely wealthy on his own, you’re going to need enough money to support three people, not just two.
I’m having trouble coming up with a third sphere, but whatever that third sphere was, you’d need to heavily police it. “You can’t do X, that’s for Honorables” has to be part of the culture. And you’d need to police it with as much weird pseudoscientific and/or religious justification as possible. Like, you need “women’s brains physically can’t handle the strain of learning math” but to explain why Honorables can’t swim, or whatever.
Non-leadership admin, teaching, and academia as the third sphere.
The idea of who should be in charge of household accounting has always waffled between a man’s job and a woman’s job. Is teaching the realm of governesses and school mistresses or lecturers and professors. Academics are too weak and frail to be masculine but too logical and rigorous to be feminine.
Clerks and accountants and secretaries and teachers and scholars.
I can see it becoming a Mind (Honorable) Heart (Woman) Soul (Man) kind of separation, all three together making up the body. Women are suited for feelings, nurturing, caring. Honorables are suited for the pursue of pure knowledge, but lack the Will to put it to any practical use. Finally men are the one leading force that brings all the parts together and leads it into an action.
Thus, men, even if they’re unqualified on whatever area of knowledge they’re dealing with, and even if they have no understanding of their or other people’s feelings whatsoever, still possess an inherent and intangible quality that makes them the only part truly suited for decision making.
Woman: Caretaker
Honorable: Assistant/Advisor
Men: Leader
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#gender #story ideas I will never write #sexism cw #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
girlhood is touching your necklace whenever you feel nervous
me when im absolutely not corrupted by the amulet
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#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
when i was little boygirl i was playing bikes with a friend and his tire popped and oozed out that green tire slime stuff and i had never seen it before so it freaked me out so bad i biked home really fast in a panic almost crying acting like i just saw an animal die. that fucking bike died and its blood was everywhere.
#does anyone else know what the green tire slime is #i…. I thought it was air in there #are you sure his bike. wasnt some sort of mimic or other creature transfigured
those are self-sealing bicycle tubes. the slime is there to patch small punctures. there are many brands but it may amuse you to know that one brand is sold by slime dot com.
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#bicycles #the more you know #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what #unsanitary cw? #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
A story within a story where a mother sits her rowdy children down and tells them a story about a the world’s sweetest, kindest mother who never lost her temper, never cursed and never yelled at her children, no matter how rowdy they could get. She would only gently, kindly told them to not do the dangerous things. One day she sweetly, kindly told her children to not go play at the riverbank, because it’s dangerous and they might slip on the rocks, fall into the water, and die. Her children do not listen. They go play at the riverbank, where they slip on the rocks, fall into the water, and die.
And the sweet perfect mother of the story comes to the riverbank, sees that all her children drowned, and starts crying so bitterly that angels overhear her, and the angels say to each other, “she does not deserve this, this woman has never done anything wrong in her life, this should not have happened to her”, and feeling great pity for her, bring her children back to life, and after that they always listened to their mother and lived happily ever after.
And the storyteller’s children, who at this point are familiar with the concept that these stories are supposed to have some sort of a moral or lesson in them, interject to point out that their mother hasn’t always done everything perfectly, she isn’t always sweet, curses a lot, and as a matter of fact loses her shit at her kids all the time. She isn’t like the mother of the story at all.
And their mother agrees: Her children are correct. She is not a perfect mother who has never done anything wrong. Angels will not have pity on her, and they will not bring her little shits back to life if they go to the river and die. So they better fucking not go get themselves killed in the first place.
this was forwarded to me by my kid and i gotta say that adds layers to the interpretation
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#storytime #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #death tw #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
Chunky stew, very bad necromancer. We banish, no problem, no chunks. I give you number of cousin Yvgeny. Will power wash house, very good prices. No other necromancer does this for you.
i somehow had heard “no other necromancer does this for you” without picking up the whole context, so i went searching. i am not disappointed.
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#that one post with the thing #storytime #I didn’t actually laugh aloud but it still amused me enough to reblog #death tw? #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
#Mass Effect #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #nsfw text? #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
Did you guys know that the most recent version of sharks have fins that are kinda leg like and they like to walk up onto land?
no way i must have missed an update!
The Epaulette shark is only about 9 million years old as a species, making it the most recent branch in the shark family. And it is slowly but surely evolving into a land animal
You know what to do boys
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#sharks #adorable #the more you know #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
the scariest thing in the world is probably whatever’s going on in the tiny gap between my kitchen counters and the oven
I didn’t know these existed for far too long as an adult but they are more than worth it (this particular brand is under US$10 on Amazon but I bet you can do better):
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#found this in the notes #unfortunately my stove is next to a wall and not a counter so I don’t think this will work for me #but something to bear in mind for other setups #domesticity #oh look an update #recs #unsanitary cw? #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
Brinens and Things 