2022-02-18 7:28:49 ¶ ●

(following on from this)

so do clowns = masculinity?

it’s implicit that in Lord English’s gender paradigm, clowns and maleness go hand in hand; THEY’RE ALL MEN. BECAUSE I SAY THEY ARE. AND I WANT THEM TO BE. / …the higher CIPs, which were generally male-do+minated castes… / oUr view of hUman cUlture indirectly inflUenced alternia’s development. in this way, Caliborn’s relationship with clownhood and his father Gamzee seemingly relates to his relationship to manhood; when Gamzee/Dad feign interest in clowns to appeal to their sons, they are in fact feigning an interest in masculinity to appeal to the interests of their sons. John’s rejection of clowns and clown memorabilia stems from the very same fear that causes him to reject his father’s notes declaring that he is NOW A MAN.

Gamzee manifesting the clown doll in John’s head, the act that makes the human universe “terminal”, is in fact the imprinting of Alternian gender norms onto human culture; just like the relationship between John’s fear of clowns and his father’s interest in clowns is circular, so is the existence of gender, given by Caliborn to the trolls, to the humans, and back to Caliborn again.

John’s planet surrounding him with imps in clown garb isn’t just thanks to some mundane coulrophobia; just as we question why the blood-anonymous Karkat’s land might surround him with seas of red blood, we should question what fundamental aspect of John’s own self scares him so much that Sburb would use it against him in such a way.

so I suppose this makes John’s freakout about his Dad not really being a clown a gender freakout in disguise? “he really just works in an office?!” = “he’s not really the paragon of masculinity i looked up to”? (though Dad’s true occupation seems to be intended as the platonically ideal job for a male father to have, his personal obsessions with shaving and fashion do lean toward the effeminate… indeed, as @shigure points out, second only to John in terms of admiration for the man is Droog; ostensibly “the gay one” of the Midnight Crew, especially when compared to Jack, who, destructive and uncouth, is a more emblematic example of Homestuck’s “masculine” characters) despite John’s inner anxiety about clowns/manhood, his father’s clown/manhood is the thing he admires about him most, and discovering that not even his Dad upholds this imaginary standard of clown/manhood causes a total collapse of the ideals keeping his clown/gender anxiety in check…