WARHOUND and the transfeminine psyche

mecha and 'sploitation

CONTENT WARNING: discussion of canon-typical sexual violence. It’s kind of what the whole thing is about.

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If you don’t already know what WARHOUND is you don’t spend a lot of time around a certain kind of gay early 20s transgender women. Basically it’s about what if a woman mech pilot was sexually treated like a dog, and trans is very into that. It is currently spawning an entire transgender post-Empty Spaces microgenre about this.

Anyways people get very upset about WARHOUND, for many reasons: they don’t think women should be treated like dogs; they find the whole thing depressing; they feel like Kallidora Rho is working in a genre and context that she isn’t sufficiently engaged with; they hate women.

I happen to agree with some of their criticisms. I find Rho’s prose lacking; I think WARHOUND isn’t a very context-grounded work; I think that Ancyor isn’t a very interesting mech for a story to which the mech-as-power-fantasy is critical. But the prose is not the point! The worldbuilding or lack thereof is not the point. WARHOUND is not about any of those other things, and analyzing it through those lenses isn’t going to get you anywhere, because WARHOUND is pornography — and the telos of pornography is pure stimulation. Here are WARHOUND’s stimuli: the thrill of skill and power suborned to an eroticized fear of bestial debasement, the supremacy of control over desire, and also lots of getting punched in the stomach.

No wonder trans women love this so much.

The value of WARHOUND, then, is in what it can tell us about the kinds of pornography trans seeks out and creates, and the antecedent transgender neuroses which cause her to do so.

As previously discussed, the upbringing transgender women are forced through, while it does permanently damage her, at least allows her expertise and a defiant joy in testing her own limits through competition. She is aware, however, that this is not an opportunity often afforded to her counterpart non-trans women, and therefore often develops a complex of guilt around it. This complex is part of why trans women are so drawn to WARHOUND: it posits that she can atone for her prowess, which she feels she is somehow unwomanly of her, through debasement and sexual subservience.

Sarthra Thrace performs her unfeminine display of physical prowess as ordered by her Handler, who controls and rewards her, treating her like a dog sexually. The fear of deviation from womanhood is assuaged by her lack of agency — Handler is making her do this, so she doesn’t need to be ashamed of it.

And then this fear of deviation from womanhood is deliberately stoked, and stoked, and assuaged again. WARHOUND is pornography. She is made to betray her allies; to be debased with various bodily fluids; to be sexually available to whomever her Handler wishes. Of course she does not want these things¹. But anybody who has studied or been subject to power knows that control is only real insofar as the subject can be made to do things against some part of their own will. The subject is only controlled insofar as she is made to abandon and defile her former principles as a demonstration of the supremacy of that control and of her own abjection.

Desire = Weakness = Animal Nature < Control = Strength = Inhumanity. Yes this is reiterated endlessly but that’s the point. It’s pornography. That single line about the Handler not drinking takes on more and more importance as the story goes on. (I did like Kione Monax developing an eating disorder.)

By being made into a creature that exists to only to fight she flirts with the fear of detransition — of being perceived as an actor rather than an object; a man rather than a woman. We all know dogs are the boy animal. But this, too, WARHOUND answers: It’s fine. It wasn’t really her fault. She is not and never can be a man because she is treated as something fundamentally feminine; ie, subjugated. She is being controlled hard enough to erase her complicity, isn’t she. (isn’t she? well, yes. you shouldn’t blame her, at any rate.)

So what is the side being turned on? You may notice that the entire rebellion is made up of queer women, and that all three protagonists are alienated from it: Sartha is crushed by expectations; Kione is a mercenary²; Leinth is canonically trans.

(Imperials are also shown mostly to be women but Leinth considers it worthy of thought that a female pilot is groping her; we also see a man or two as gerontocrats in SHOWHOUND, though those men are probably gay. We are meant to understand that men are around but not really sexually involved, except as groping hands and phalluses, if Handler deems it appropriate. This is because Kallidora prefers women sexually. Which is quite a reasonable preference.)

Sartha Thrace is in a trans woman’s position: held up as a banner, lauded for her accomplishments, effectively abandoned by those who should be her community. No wonder so many people thrill at the chance to rape and debase her. The Handler is at least honest about her desire to do so: the trans woman is a woman. That’s why she’s subjugated. As a trans woman — as a woman — as a human — she has desires and those desires are a perfect handle for the Handler to judo flip break her spine.

WARHOUND would be completely unrecognizable in a world where transgender women felt accepted.

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MECHA INTERLUDE

Mechsploitation’s roots in Armored Core VI’s story trailer are clear, but we can go deeper.

This is obvious to anybody who has watched a Gundam (Evangelion counts) and has a brain, but it still bears saying: a giant robot is a body that conveys a relationship to force. Cyber Newtype Four Murasame’s Psyco Gundam externalizes her mental instability into indiscriminate civilian casualties³; neural damage from Mikazuki Augus’ spinal-port connection to Gundam Barbatos leaves him hemipelagic⁴, and incapable of civilian life; Eva-01’s Berserk Mode is diagetically Yui but functions thematically as the release of Shinji’s own repressed rage⁵.

Whether or not Kallidora Rho is familiar with these sources⁶, they color the informed reader’s perception of Ancyor. Ancyor is a mobile melee fighter consistently referred to in animalistic terms. That’s a very “cool” thing to be. It could be even “cooler” if she fleshed it out more, even if I know Kallidora only intended to paint it impressionistically. Yes, very few people have ever had the opportunity to pilot post-Cold War so I can’t really fault her for not having any practical experience. To her credit she does move further in this direction with Theaboros Archon. Personally I find that pornographic material is much stronger firmly embedded in a context. But that’s just my own sexual preferences, which I will write an article about some other time.

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OKAY BACK TO THE SPLOITATION

I’ve been trying to meet this text on its own terms, but I just don’t have the thing that makes me afraid of being a violent monster attacking my former comrades-in-arms.

This probably sounds like I think I’m better than that. Like I think I would never betray my principles. But I’m not so arrogant. If you tortured me enough you could probably get me to say or do anything — although, I must note, if anybody were to resort to torture to force me to commit transphobia, or any other bigotries, they would by doing so have admitted that they lost the true battle, of rhetorics.

I’m fit enough, if only because my older sister is running marathons now and I can do anything she can. I jog sometimes; I walk a lot. I am a performer, and performance demands skill. I’m competitive, if not usually in the same arenas as transgender women are. I do a lot of work to be at least competent at anything I try, and I do it successfully. As a femme I have complicated feelings on womanhood and deviation and appropriation and assimilation.

I think (I hope) a lot of trans women can relate to a lot of that. Or some of you, to some of it. We’re women, trans and cis alike.

I mean, I understand the fear of public humiliation. I understand the fear of rape. I understand the fear of having the girl you love most in the world walk out on you during your anniversary dinner because she saw a flash of black hair. Those things don’t necessarily have to have happened to me for me to fear them, but they are possibilities that I have at least considered. I’m just not afraid of being turned into a violent monster and attacking my previous peers for the same reason I’m not scared of, I don’t know, having a tree grow out of my nose. I haven’t had the life context that would make me aware that that would even be something to be scared of. WARHOUND’s fanbase indicates that many transgender women have.

That scares me.

Also I don’t like it when girls get punched in the stomach. That makes me feel gross.

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articles I am considering writing:

why so many cis men seem to follow me + a basic explainer of what I mean when I say Trans Women Are The Women Of Women (these two things are connected)

the definitive Mobile Suit Gundam watch order

how I feel about having somebody else decide to be a married version of me on twitter (probably the second most surprising thing that has happened there, besides somebody drawing me pregnant.)

1. I mean, mostly. She does probably want that entire hangar to leave her an insensate drooling mess.

2. I don’t think she had it from birth. she got it surgically attached. we know she likes buying fancy customs.

3. hence the wide angle on her Diffuse Mega Particle Cannons, and their placement over her heart. Augmented Person and Cyber Newtype are, of course, both translations of 強化人間, kyouka ningen.

4. how I wish they’d only animated one side of his face. maybe they did. he has a very flat affect.

5. 01’s repeated stabbing of Sachiel is a visual quote of Amuro stabbing a Zaku.

6. She has said that she found IBO too misogynistic to keep watching.