genesis1926 | (no subject)

Jotting down some thoughts while I have them rolling around in my tiny noggin.

Regarding Dante's sexuality:

Generally I default to playing most of my characters as bisexual, but since Dante's sexuality is actually addressed in canon and is partially a cause of some of his strife and backstory, it only felt appropriate to give it some more thought. And basically I think Dante is gay.

It's canon that he's been romantically involved with Vergilius, another man, since their youth, with their love for each other basically confirmed to carry through to present day about a decade later. Even outside of that, he's shown getting into fistfights with the other boys at the church because they called him gay. ('Gay' in the localization, though the original JP uses ホモヤロー, which I feel is closer to being an explicit slur.)

However, he's also shown having a good time in the company of skimpily-dressed prostitutes, even if he refuses to actually engage with them sexually, and one of the volume extras also states that he was often caught hoarding snippets of pornography of women as a youth, and would get scolded for it. Initially I thought that this indicated Dante was bisexual and just happened to have his messiest relationship be a gay one, but the matter is addressed once more later.

When Father and Vergilius are discussing Dante in chapter 62 (with the conversation later reflected on in chater 88), Vergilius is shown to know about Dante's womanizing tendencies, and further calls him an idiot for getting into trouble over those habits. On the one hand this could just be Vergilius calling Dante an idiot for pursuing casual not-flings to sate his lust when they obviously still had feelings for each other, i.e. feeling personally slighted, perhaps out of jealousy/attachment. However, given Vergilius' more somber, almost pitying expression and the fact that he then segues into asking Father "Why don't you leave the church and live freely?", my interpretation is that he's calling Dante an idiot for still masquerading as a horny straight man and getting into trouble for it, instead of being truer to his desires. If anyone might know Dante's orientation it would be Vergilius, and thus his condemnation of Dante's womanizing feels significant enough to read into.

The question then becomes why Dante would bother masking his sexuality. Even setting aside his generally irreverent attitude towards the Catholic requirements for being a priest (his encouragement of Father to masturbate when necessary and pursue a sexual relationship with consent once he's of age, as well as his own pretty shameless love of alcohol), given Daniel's willingness to endorse Leah as Grand Priest despite her gender and Mikhail's position in the organization despite his open crossdressing, the exorcists seem like a fairly open-minded organization. However, in chapter 41 it's explained that the church is divided into two factions -- the more traditional sect, and the more progressive sect. Most of the exorcists -- Daniel, Leah, Barbara, Mikhail -- report to Cardinal Heisenberger, who leads the more progressive sect alongside the other cardinals. However, Father and Dante report directly to Pope Johanness, who has a more traditional attitude towards matters. And while Heisenberger frames this conflict in terms of systems, the wording suggests that this attitude might also encompass ideology, given Johannes is stated to sweep problems under the rug and attempt to overwrite them with faith. Presumably these 'problems' would also include matters like discrimination based on sex and sexuality -- which might help explain Dante's desire to remain in the closet even as he pretends not to care what's expected of him as an exorcist for the Vatican. Having also grown up under the care of the extremely harsh and strict Abbot Nicholas, he might have also internalized a lot of problematic attitudes about homosexuality and buckled to the (reasonable) desire to avoid being persecuted for his sexuality.

While hopefully we'll get a little more clarification on matters in the future, given we still haven't been shown exactly what happened on the day Vergilius and Dante basically split up, for now my reading of Dante is that while rationally he doesn't consider homosexuality a sin -- in the same way that he doesn't consider sex outside of marriage a sin -- he has trouble internalizing that notion and applying it to himself. In general he seems to have a fairly open-minded, almost secular attitude towards a lot of things, including sex and sexuality. But growing up in a highly controlled, homophobic and strict environment, as well as the trauma of his ugly split with Vergilius, have probably caused him a lot of complicated feelings about his own sexuality. While he doesn't read to me as being particularly confused or conflicted about being gay, given how frankly he's able to talk about loving and being loved by Vergilius, he does strike me as the type to beat around the bush and try to hide what he is unless he's certain he's in trusted company.