#it seems as though that women suffer more because of feminism and also because women are far more vocal about their problems than men are

[tenderhungering]

Have you noticed how women are used in the film? Their suffering, grief, ambitions and even deaths. It all benefits the men.

yes, i have! i think it was during the first time i watched with two of my friends that we mentioned how fucked up it seemed to bring in lilly. she was an abused child in circumstances that june describes as inhumane and now she's supposed to come on and chat about said abuse.

to better delve into this though, i'm going to do a little ramble on each female character (i've been meaning to this regardless so this question has me excited!)

Lilly

as i mentioned before, lilly, to the public, is an abused child who has been rescued from a cult and is now the subject of dr. june's book. i believe that june really did care for lilly but she in a way, was still benefiting from her by writing about her. something to study while parenting. reminds me a bit about parents who write about raising troubled children.

jack brings them onto the show almost because he knows how shocking this is to audiences, to have survived what lilly did. i think that fear and shame but also desire kiss on the mouth. the public both fears the occult but want to learn more, there is some sort of fascination with the idea of someone being in it and being able to get out of it (would people do the same?). lilly is a spectacle. she is to go from not knowing the outside world to standing in front of the camera and expecting to behave like a typical girl her age. it's almost like she has to prove herself well-adjusted after her trauma.

june explains to her that everyone having a demon inside of them, acknowledging that lilly's might be a little more literal but because the demon serves as a stark reminder of her time in the cult, it's similar to someone working around their triggers. everyone has hurt in them. like a therapist helping you work with carrying that hurt rather than just suppressing it. clearly the demon leaves lilly exhausted, upset and feel not like herself. she's crying after her scene and asking june as to why she's hurt her, and apologizing for whatever happened when Mr. Wriggles was there. she is not in control of her actions. but jack wants more. he's momentarily sympathetic but realizes that it's getting him higher ratings. the more hurt is displayed, the happier than the media is.

even in the final scene, when the demon possesses her, we can see it in her face that she's distraught. confused. but all the camera does is zoom in on her expression,

June

june is so intriguing to me as a character because it's almost as though her instinct toward things is a calm and collected behavior, one that thinks of the ethics of it, whether anyone will get hurt, but her decisions are so easily swayed by jack. and he knows exactly what to tell her too. Everyone finally take you seriously. It is the 70s so there's no surprise that misogyny is rampant (though the 70s did introduce the second wave of feminism, she may be a representation of challenging attitudes as well). june is a very passionate woman in her studies, she'd be considered an expert in the field but this is almost immediately dismissed as soon as she's introduced as a doctor. you call yourself that. is that what you believe you are? can you prove you are?

i think it makes june feel better if everyone has a distance from lilly - hence writing a book about her. you can know lilly through the pages. you don't need to make her suffer for views then, you can educate yourself on what was happened to her and understand she's hurt more than necessary. she might've felt the need to write the book for them both. lilly need to be understood and emphasized with as more than just a "child of d'abo". but jack invites her with the idea of simply talking about said book, one of her biggest accomplishments and instead wants to treat them like some sort of circus act. do a trick for me, june! you know how to! it's not enough that you tell me you know, you have to show me, you have to prove yourself to me, the camera makes it real.

it is that logic that sometimes makes her feel inclined to prove herself. and sometimes this is at the cost of her own morals.

Minnie

my beautiful wife,,,

i love minnie. so much. i've written a bit about how i think she was prior to her death in other asks but i never quite touch so much on how much she was exploited by both jack and the industry.

to be ill is a personal affair. and it was on all the tabloids whenever minnie was diagnosed with cancer (even if she did not smoke! i mention this because while smoking might contribute to lung cancer, it did feel like an odd mention that they'd pay so much attention to whether or not she did? it might've been to emphasize how sudden this all was but i'd also like to throw in that perhaps she was also just taking care of her voice! she was in theatre.) she has no privacy to mourn the gradual loss of her life. some people believe the cult was implied to be the one who had made this illness manifest for her which is awful in its own regard and more so when one considers the fact they did it to get to jack. almost as though minnie is an extension of himself and not his own person.

jack inviting her to the show could very well be done just because he wanted to invite his wife (though it does feel a bit odd he waited till she was sick to do this. maybe it was some sort of public gesture of affection, they both live to entertain, it's their job) but there's something saddening about the ordeal. it's almost as though knowing minnie was sick was not enough, the public had to see her in order to have some sort of confirmation. and the immediate comment about inviting her over being followed how even then, this wasn't enough to surpass johnny carson is morbid to say the least. almost as though minnie had just been used as a way to gain better ratings. sympathy ratings. i don't want to remove any agency of minnie, it might have been her decision to go on the show but the public's reaction to is that is what is more concerning.

even her death was simply a sacrifice. she was nothing more than a missing puzzle piece to have jack move forward (or downwards?). something that would benefit jack. as all the women in the film have been. each with such distinct personalties and motives to what keeps them going (or who are still amidst figuring out what they'd want out of life) being only part of a larger scheme where men are the benefactors. the grove only allowed men. the cult birthed sacrifices from their women. women are a stepping stone. a chess piece. something that needs to bleed for someone who demands it.

i love writing about how compelling these characters are! so sorry if sometimes my ramblings feel leaning more towards just dissection rather than downright analysis! i hope it gave some insight though!

#late night with the devil #lnwtd #june ross mitchell #lilly d’abo #minnie delroy #madeleine delroy #the women of lnwtd #jack delroy #laura gordon #ingrid torelli #georgina haig #david dastmalchian #character study

[batbeato]

My partner keeps telling me to go on Tumblr whenever I launch one of my 20-10000 minute ramble-rants about Umineko at them so here I am AGAIN

Something that a lot of people love about Umineko (and I do too!) is how much Umineko centers its female characters: Umineko focuses a lot on the rich inner lives and emotions of these women, all of whom have been negatively impacted by ideals of submissive feminism and the needs of the patriarchy.

In general, in Umineko, there's this phenomenon that I don't often see elsewhere, where male characters' emotions and feelings are treated as less important, less interesting, etc. than female characters' are. This is interesting to me, and I think it makes sense - in many spaces and works, female characters are treated as caricatures - they are tragic dead mothers, loving wives, sexy girlbosses who secretly have a soft spot for the protagonist, etc. It's only par for the course that in a work where female characters are so celebrated and explored, it is male characters who suffer the fate of being reduced to more base qualities and have their feelings and emotions brushed off or waved over.

Umineko takes the concept of the absent dead wife, mother, lover and turns them into these complex, unknown ghosts who haunt the story: Kinzo's wife, Bice, Kuwatrice, Asumu. These are all female characters central to various plot points and aspects of the story, including thematic ones, but these women are very rarely, if at all, given space to truly express their inner thoughts. This is in contrast to the Ushiromiya women (Eva, Kyrie, Rosa, Natsuhi) who are so often able to express their innermost thoughts in these long, emotional sequences. Umineko doesn't allow space for these women to be caricatures, but instead seems to make space for them to be characters we simply don't have enough information on.

I think Asumu is the best example of this: she is a character with very little actual voice in the main story. Rudolf theorizes that she knew about Battler's true parentage and raised him with love regardless, but also worries that her death was due to his lies and infidelity. Her cause of death is never revealed. Kyrie talks about Asumu as a smart woman who played dumb and innocent to steal Rudolf from her, and there is the distinct concept that if Asumu hadn't died of Cause X, Kyrie would have killed her soon after. Battler sees Asumu as an uncomplicated, loving mother. And then, when Ryukishi released Last Note, we saw this different side of Asumu - an arrogant, jealous woman who took pride in her skill at puzzles and believed that she could have saved everyone, but also still a loving mother who loves her son, and even accepts her son's half-sister, Ange, in the end. Never a caricature, always cast in shadow, but with depths beneath.

But back to what I mentioned before - male characters being treated as those flanderized, flatter caricatures, with their feelings brushed off. It's very interesting to me, because it's not even just a case of male characters simply not having the screentime - they do. Battler and Kinzo get the most of it, but George also receives plenty of discussion as well.

Battler and George, however, are the male characters who I see the most flanderization of. Battler is a pathetic crying malewife twink bottom. George is a child predator who grooms Shannon.

George is a man who was raised by a hovering, overprotective mother with ridiculous expectations of him. She made him study every day and tried to instill values befitting of the power and status she hoped he would someday have into him. However, he saw how Battler, who was meant to be 'inferior' to him, getting along better with girls - even the one he liked - and grew jealous. His relationship with Shannon began because of this, but it also helped him to understand his own flaws, and he tried to change himself. Coming from a place of privilege, this is a difficult task. He also truly loved Shannon, even though he sometimes had a patronizing view of her due to his own instilled biases, and was even willing to go against his family for her. He isn't a perfect person, but he was attempting to change and grow.

Battler is a man with a deep empathy for others and is overly emotional at times - a trait I think is unfairly made fun of, given how men showing emotion is often portrayed as unmasculine, feminine, and shameful. He has a strong sense of right and wrong, and though clumsy and foolish at times, does his best to help others. He was raised by his grandparents for 6 years, so he is somewhat divorced from the privilege he now once again holds as a member of the Ushiromiya family, and makes mistakes because of that. He makes a lot of sexual jokes, but it's implied that this is due to being socially awkward after reuniting with the family he hasn't seen in six years. It's very difficult for him to truly despise someone, but once his trust is broken, even if he still loves them, it can be very hard to earn that trust back.

...I don't think the fandom needs to focus more on the male characters, per say. No one should be told they need to focus more on X than Y because enjoying X is more ethical, progressive, fair, etc. etc. But I would like to see people at least acknowledging the complexity of the male characters in Umineko more. The malewife Battler jokes are funny, I admit, but I'm tired of the child predator George jokes. Can we please leave people who ship Shannon and George alone? At this point, I'm beginning to worry about if they're alright... seeing a lot of hate for something they love can't be pleasant.

It's a general trend I see - liking a male character means you need to prioritize female characters more. Liking a het ship means you need to make it gay, or appreciate gay ships more. If a bisexual character dates someone of the opposite sex, this is bi erasure or erasing queer representation. But it's alright to like male characters, het ships, bisexual characters in het relationships, and so on. What isn't alright are the biases that are keeping queer media from receiving as much publicity, as much funding. What isn't alright are the biases that give male characters much more complex writing than female characters in many pieces of media. We as consumers can examine these things in the production and text of the works we enjoy, but I think there is too much focus on this ethical consumption of media.

...And that's how we end up making child predator George jokes - to reconcile the existence of a flawed, nuanced male character (who can and should be criticized of course) with the fact that Umineko is such a woman-central media. Umineko needs to be one of the 'good ones', the 'ethical ones'. So the male characters must be reduced to jokes, to one-liners. It is an overcorrection on a fandom level to reconcile with a society level issue, one that can harm fans of those characters and introduce toxicity to a place that should be about sharing love for a small universe we all enjoy.

(Whoops. This is why my partner told me to go on tumblr, huh?)

#umineko #umineko spoilers #sexism

[anghraine]

I forget what the opposite of strawmanning is called, but it's like ... I don't doubt that Tolkien genuinely disliked feminism, I just find it rather odd that his way of addressing this in his work seemed to be writing bitter, hard-edged, and incredibly eloquent women who give fantastic speeches about being fucked over by patriarchy. And either there's no real response from other characters or the response is deeply underwhelming, so I'm like ... okay, what are you even trying to do here?

These women are also usually very beautiful, in the interests of full disclosure, so you get all these ... like, tall hot women who do not fear pain or death!!! and are full of towering resentment at very real injustice and/or suffering. The details and nuances of these characters are quite different, but these characters obviously represent a type that Tolkien found compelling and kept returning to without really finding a solution to the problems these characters raise and pose.

I've read a lot of female characters by a lot of authors, and maybe it's just because my personal taste in female characters is really similar to Tolkien's, but few things click with me so much as Éowyn's speech to Aragorn, or Erendis's to Ancalimë, or Andreth's and Morwen's... everything, or even the shorter defiant responses we hear from Haleth, Aredhel, Niënor, Galadriel. There's even a trace of this with someone as improbable and deliberately unlikable as Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, who confronted Saruman's men, survived imprisonment, and tottered out to hobbit glory.

I don't know, really. Maybe giving angry female characters kickass speeches was as far as he was willing to go with them. And to go by his favored types in male characters, he did have a taste for proud, attractive, talented, often abrasive, and hubristic characters regardless of gender. But it's not only a general type, IMO, when you've got a bunch of these women talking about gender specifically and its impact on them, so—I don't know, sometimes I just shrug and get on with my fandom life without trying to navigate the quagmire of intent. But it's definitely a question I return to.

So there's no real conclusion here. I guess I'll just leave you with my personal favorites! Here's Éowyn's response to Aragorn:

"All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more." (LOTR 767)

But also Erendis, my love:

"...Númenor was to be a rest after war. But if they[men] weary of rest and the plays of peace, soon they will go back to their great play, manslaying and war. Thus it is; and we are set here among them. But we need not assent. If we love Númenor also, let us enjoy it before they ruin it. We also are daughters of the great, and we have wills and courage of our own. Therefore do not bend, Ancalimë. Once bend a little, and they will bend you further until you are bowed down. Sink your roots into the rock, and face the wind, though it blow away all your leaves." (Unfinished Tales)

#i honestly don't remember how much of ancalimë's backstory he even came up with before mentioning her in lotr #but the idea of going 'what if there were ruling queens' and then coming up with 'the mariner's wife' to explain it #is the most tolkien writing women thing ever #anghraine babbles #long post #legendarium blogging #gender blogging #legendarium fanwank #i'm not sure i have another canon where the women manage to exude so much 'fuck all y'all' without a single expletive tbh

[jambeast]

as a former misandrist my views weren't formed via direct experiences of abuse but like, a combo of living in a pretty ambiently sexist society and having a fairly black-and-white moral schema and then receiving "misandry doesn't real and anyway men deserve it" heavily from feminist peers online. feels like leviathan-supersystem is being reductive here

I've said this before but I think the big thing people need to understand about sexism is that 90% of the time it's not *just* about liking one sex and hating the other sex.

It's about having an incredible *gendered* view of people, and about seeing genders as first-class groups that hold moral weight and make decisions.

Like if you've ever listened to a really sexist person, like your Andrew Tates of the world, they actually have some pretty horrifically disparaging views of *men* as well as women, that maybe we don't recognise as horrific because of how normal they see it. Like the belief that it's a man's duty to die in war protecting women. It's sort of patronising for women. I can imagine feeling uncomfortable around that. But also it's not as bad as Having The Duty To Die! Nobody seems to recognise what a horrific thing that is! What a terrible and inhumane way to treat men - along with insisting you're not allowed to talk about problems or be emotionally vulnerable, instant suspicion of them as being some kind of dangerous predator etc etc etc.

The sexist worldview has pretty strong roles for genders, and I don't think either one is necessarily superior in every way (women get to be weak and cowardly and considered inherently valuable and worthy of protection by others in a way men in this worldview aren't), but the strictness just doesn't account for human variety or individual freedom. It's cruel and callous to men and controlling and stifling to women.

Now this has nothing to do with *power*, which I think even the more-reasonable-side-of-mens-rights-types can acknowledge is squarely concentrated in the hands of men, though they'd argue it's used to benefit women (who they say are, statistically, in the west at least, the safest group of people ever in history ever (Which seems to be the case? Hard to measure.)), and also that the power in the world is concentrated in the hands of *some* men - a small enough sliver of them to not really be representative of Men as a gender on the whole.

Like this should all be totally compatible with feminism. It should never be about Men, as a first-class group with moral weight, weighing up some kind of Oppression Debt against Women, as a first-class group with moral weight, evening out the suffering until the balance hits 0.0

That's, uh, not how this works.

#feminism

[gendercriticalthinking]

I'm a radfem but I have a boyfriend too. I don't talk about him online 1) obviously nobody wants to hear about men in radfem spaces, especially lesbians, which I don't blame them for 2) some people on here are really just not normal about it and I don't want the drama 3) I personally think you can have a bf and be a radfem if you have strong, uncompromising boundaries when it comes to sexism and not tolerating it. Idk, I feel weird about lying about it but I also don't want to invite issues when we attract so much hate for our beliefs as it is.

That's absolutely understandable, and I agree! Women, and lesbians especially, deserve to have female-exclusive spaces! It's just a little off-putting to come into a space where everyone says "my feminism is for all women!! female solidarity!! i center women first!!" and then something most women have in common and is innate to them causes multiple rounds of controversy???

2. Like that's the thing though!! If you want to be a feminist, and you claim sexuality is innate, how can you not be normal about the most common type of female sexuality. Yes the vast majority of men are awful and not worth being in a relationship with, yes I do think most women would be happier alone than with the average man, especially right now. But why is the conclusion here "het women bad and stupid, i laugh at your suffering because it's your fault for not listening to me as i berated you" and not "let's help women understand they're allowed to have standards and boundaries, and that they don't have to be in a romantic relationship to be happy"???

3. I'm not a radfem and haven't read much primary-source info on it outside scattered quotes posted here, so I can't say whether or not having a boyfriend/husband is incompatible with it or not. Either way, the fact that you and I and other women feel weird/guilty/uncomfortable about talking about one of the most important people in our lives is a huge red flag to me. Either something rings true about radfem criticisms of het relationships and he might need to go, or something really stinks on here. Or both, I guess. But again, helping women figure out their worth and their standards does a lot more good than telling them "your whole life you just listen to what random men tell you to make them happy. that's bad. now listen to what i, a stranger, tell you to do to make me and other women happy." She still is operating on female-socialization autopilot where her personal beliefs and boundaries don't matter, it's just that she's doing it for you and other women instead of men. Which is progress to some people I guess???

Overall I think it'd be better if radfems with this mindset called themselves lesbian feminists instead of radfems, since their beliefs align with that strain so much. Or make up a new name for it if they want idk. But either way, they're putting women off feminism as a whole and making things worse as a result (and if you point this out to them they often don't seem to care, having a "fuck those dick riders they don't deserve to be happy then" attitude, which again, odd way to react if you claim to be a feminist).

Like if giving up makeup--an optional hobby that's something even women who like it are sometimes willing to admit is expensive or annoying or time-consuming or uniquely targeted at them--is still a sore topic to a majority of women, how tf do they expect "suppress your innate sexuality" to go over??? And it'd be one thing if it were just Some Ladies Online, but uhhhh there's a history here. Multiple books were published touting political lesbianism as praxis. It's A Thing and you should probably talk about it more than you do if you actually want the women you mock to engage with the movement and leave their abusive male partners!

(For the record, I'd be over the moon if women stopped wearing makeup every day and never felt the need to again... but it's so easy for me to say and think that when I never liked it in the first place. To me, small things like getting women to admit part of the reason makeup makes them feel good is because it's a societal expectation for them to wear it, or if they slowly start feeling comfortable wearing less of it or less often in public, that's real progress that could never come about from hardline cold-turkey-now-or-you're-antifeminist guilt tripping. Much like transgenderism, regardless of how it makes the people involved feel, at the end of the day reality and actual progress is most important, and if believing/talking a certain way doesn't actually get us anywhere then it's time to try something else.)

I wish I could remember the user on here who wrote about this in her tags, but it comes down to "You say you believe misogyny is pervasive, near-invisible, taught to us in such a way that we believe it without realizing it, and extremely difficult to fight back against, yet you're so impatient and unkind to women who don't snap out of it the moment you dump extremist tenets on them. Do you need a reminder of why feminist is an uphill battle, or do you not actually think it is?"

I've said this before, but it feels like they've turned feminism into their own version of NLOG, where lesbians and febfems and celibate women are the True And Wise Women and the rest of femalekind are the vapid selfish Other of the "other girls" giving the True And Wise Women a bad rep and causing their undeserved suffering.

TL;DR Feminism that cares more about hating men than helping women gets us nowhere.

#radfems please interact #radfems please touch #misogyny #ask #ty for the ask btw!! hope your boyfriend treats you like you deserve and you're happy together :)

[natasha-in-space]

Hey matsuda lover anon here!

so I was thinking about something. So I looovee yoosung very much and for a long while in this fandom being a yoosung fan was quite a tough job because of how people wrote him off as annoying immature incestuos etc.

But as the years went by and we enter the 2020s I have seen things getting quite alot better for us yoosung fans. Of course i am not going to lie there are times i see people mischaracterising him hating him for being 'immature' and even when things have gotten better I still have quite a tendency to be very guarded in the fandom because it hurts me personally to see him getting hate.

But I will still admit that from somewhere around 2021 opinions on him started to get more positive and people have started to love him as the kindhearted loving person he is and actually see that he is not incestuos but a depressed guy who is genuinely working hard to be better and being resilient and optimistic in his struggles.

I partly believe it is because of how from the 2020s there is this movement of embracing feminity in contrast to the whole "disliking anything feminine" shtick we had back in 2010s. And yeah while yoosung is a man, alot of the hate he had gotten is like had misogynistic undertones like many people disliked him for being emotional (and hating someone for being emotional has roots in misogyny because being emotional has been mostly associated with women and the whole "women being emotional" has been used as a reason to downplay and suppress them).

Besides, a very large portion of yoosung fans are sapphic queer people and i had asked my lesbian yoosunger friends and they said that they love him because he is feminine (ofc they dont represent all the sapphic queer yoosungers but my lesbian friends made me THINK).

Oh and I see this similar pattern regarding matsuda in the death note fandom. Now I am quite recent in the Death Note fandom but knowing how Shonen fandoms usually despise emotional characters wayyy more than shoujo or women-targeted medias like mysme (because shonen fandoms have more men who are less tolerant beings and shame their own kind when vulnerable) so I was actually expecting matsuda being disliked by the Death Note fandom. And no surprise he seemed quite underrated and not well liked for being emotional immature and most importantly a hindrance to the Kira task force because of his positive opinions on Kira because of his own "black and white" mentality and "sense of justice". But again even for matsuda, he seems to get quite popular recently and some people even say that he is "overrated"(which is not true i want more matsuda love).

I will also say I see the same for Misa Amane as well, though unlike yoosung and matsuda her rise in popularity as an appreciatable character is more directly related to the surge in embracing feminity because she is a woman.

Hmm, this is a very interesting perspective to consider! Neither Yoosung nor Matsuda are my favorites (though I never disliked either of them tbh), so I cannot speak on their fandom perception as thoroughly as I could with, let's say, Choi twins or Rika. However, I do agree that Yoosung had to suffer a ton of very gross mischaracterization over the years. Granted, this case can be made for pretty much every mm character, especially when the fandom was at its most popular (which is why I honestly hate to think back on that time, and I adore the smaller but more mindful space we all share with each other now).

Reading through your ask made me think and look back on a lot of this fandom discourse I've seen over the years, and I can't help but agree. I never thought of looking at Yoosung's particular case of mishandling his themes and traits in the fandom from a misogynistic perspective. There is definitely some merit to that thought, though. Yoosung is someone who shows off his emotions the most openly out of anyone in the RFA, and he's subsequently a very sweet and romantic kind of guy. He also expresses some very compelling inner struggles with his masculinity in game on multiple occasions, which is also something worth to consider. I've seen and talked to plenty of queer folks in mm fandom over the years who personally headcanon him as trans! So, in a way, Yoosung always had some queer energy about him. Which is lovely! It's great to see folks loving and appreciating him from such a personal place of love.

As for Matsuda, I actually was in a Death Note fandom a while back and, yeah, misogyny was very much a big issue. I have no idea what is it like today, but back then both Matsuda and Misa were... definitely not fan favorites to say the least. I can't speak on Matsuda's behalf much, but, as a Misa fan, it was tough.

While I have tons of modern issues with fandom spaces currently, some things are definitely way better now. It's great to see female characters being perceived with more depth, and it's definitely refreshing to see feminine men be loved and appreciated for who they are, instead of being mocked and ridiculed like they were before. Not that these issues have disappeared completely. But, it's a pleasant turn in the fandom spaces for sure!

Thanks for this insightful message, it was a very compelling read, Matsuda lover anon!

#mia talks #matsuda lover anon #hope it's ok to give you this nickname anon! :D

[not-a-space-alien]

I saw your post about abortion and no, it shouldn't be free, it should only be free to women that have suffered rape, in any other situation women shouldn't be allowed to abort mainly because women nowadays sleep around, being a slut is practically normalized at this point thanks to feminism... Which I have a very strong opinion on, but back to topic, if you sleep around and don't even use protection or any of the various contraceptives women have that's almost entirely on the woman because she knows she can get pregnant but because she can undo it with no consequence she'll just do it and no, the excuse of "I was a naïve young girl" or "I got manipulated" is hardly valid, men look to fuck and can only do that if the woman opens her legs and since she can get pregnant for that she should be responsible and not sleep around and as I said, even then she has lots of options so getting to the point of abortion is practically on purpose and no, the excuse of "I didn't know what contraceptives to use" to that I say, internet's a thing. But back to the main point, the reason abortion shouldn't be so accessible because it allows for the disgusting habit of sleeping around which yeah, it's kinda gross... I'd fuck a girl who sleeps around, I guess but would never get into a relationship with one, much less marry... The stats paint a clear picture on how that'd go... But back to the point, having so many ways out of pregnancy out of wedlock not only encourages sleeping around but also makes women less accountable for their decisions, proof of this is terms like "slut shaming", "fat shaming" and well, you probably know a lot more so instead of inventing all this terms women should just be better and I could branch into feminism but I'll only do so if you want to hear, I wanted to tell you this much, though and no, I'm not saying men are perfect but we get called out for our bullshit while women aren't called out often enough and you didn't seem to be aware of this lack of accountability caused by feminism and sexual liberation, anyways, hope this was insightful and you see a bit more now, it isn't as simple as you may have thought, not that I'm an expert

Wow! New copypasta everyone

#this is the definition of 'there's a lot to unpack here but let's just throw away the whole suitcase'

[progressivemillennial]

Feminism is for Everybody: Remembering bell hooks (Very Belatedly)

What if I told you about a version of feminism rooted in love, inclusion, and community that acknowledges the unique struggles of women of color and other marginalized groups while not seeking to alienate and divide? A feminism that is for everybody? Well, let me tell you about bell hooks, one of my favorite public intellectuals, who sadly passed away at the end of last year. 

While inclusive feminism with love at its foundation may seem impotent and naïve, I would argue just the opposite: her solidaristic vision of feminism is the greatest threat to--as she put it--the imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. This is not dissimilar from the threat posed by MLK's potent, similarly inclusive, spiritual, love-based politics if you're looking for a more familiar point of reference.

So where does the power of these ideas come from? Simply put, an oppressive status quo could not survive a large, diverse community that transcends gender, sexual, racial, class, religious, and national divides. In this instance, that community aims to liberate women from the many forms of oppression and domination that they face. And this is key: as women--particularly black women--experience liberation, we will all experience liberation. The establishment will no longer exercise power over us; instead, we will share power collectively in the spirit of love and justice.

Now, some might say that they don't think America is white supremacist or patriarchal or an empire or that capitalism is an issue, and I think bell hooks would say it's normal to have differences, and that we shouldn't fear them. Instead, we must celebrate our differences, courageously love and seek to understand each other and ourselves, and in so doing, we free ourselves to bring about a more just world through our devotion to one another, not in competition with one another. Again, this talk of love may sound utopian and pie-in-the-sky, and it may be, but it's also incredibly strategic: we cannot achieve equality if we are constantly divided and alienated from each other.

The work that bell hooks called for is difficult: it requires ceaseless vulnerability, bravery, dissent, introspection, humility, dedication to justice, and consciously looking to overcome the most entrenched powers and perspectives of our time. But the desired results are more than worth the effort, certainly for women and any marginalized people, but for everyone else, too, because we all suffer to varying degrees from living under the imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. 

Feminism according to hooks appeals to me for a number of reasons. It speaks to a number of my core values like equality, connection, education, and service. I also find her work challenging, which I relish because it has helped me grow. Moreover, in this version of feminism, it's vital for men to grow and share in the struggle, too. Because of that, it's even easier for me to feel at home and motivated to participate in the feminist struggle. At the end of the day, we need people of all kinds who want justice to come together and support each other, because justice is the root of love, and from love we can connect and heal, and through connection, we can build communities which we can then use to dismantle imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy together. And that, my friends, is feminism for everybody.

I tried writing this with love and as faithfully to the teachings of bell hooks as possible because I adore the presence and wisdom she brought to this world and because I always felt considered and seen by her, even though I never met her. 

If you've made it this far, I hope you'll look into her more. Her writing is very accessible, and she's a pleasure to listen to in talks and interviews if you're more of an audio/visual learner like me. And if you are already familiar with her work and have any favorite bell hooks content, feel free to share it in the comments to help people explore.

Rest in power, bell hooks, and thank you for your infinite inspiration and wisdom, and for your beautiful vision of a better world we can create together.

#bell hooks #progressive #america #united states #politics #feminism #intersectionality #values #capitalism #imperialism #patriarchy #philosophy #justice #social justice

[dejaentends]

this is probably a very controversial opinion but i don't love the fandom's current interpretation of feminine sirius. i have long seen sirius as someone who exists outside of binary gender and expresses femininity, they express gender in infinite ways, they're a gender maximalist, but i also solidly see them as 1) orientated within the queer man community and 2) nasty and dirty and hairy.

in part this is because i relate to sirius, and though i orient myself within the queer woman community i am nasty and dirty and hairy. part of why i relate to sirius are "masculine" traits i hold (not just nasty and dirty and hairy) that he holds as well, in canon. sirius is comfortable with physical violence, they are vengeful and cruel, and it's not in a dark feminine refined way (that's narcissa imo).

sirius is passionate and reckless in a way that reminds me of how we characterize teenage boys. teenage boys are often allowed to get away with their recklessness and cruelty, but ultimately sirius suffers the worst consequences for their choices. though the narrative is more forgiving to sirius than it would be a woman, sirius is punished with azkaban and death. when dumbledore discusses sirius' death with harry he accurately points out that sirius was cruel to kretcher and reaped what he sowed.

sirius black is punished for exhibiting these "masculine" traits that are often celebrated or at least accepted in most men. he's punished like we punish women who are not compassionate and maternal. this resonated with me as a child because i'm not compassionate and maternal the way women and girls are expected to be. the way i express care and passion are closed to how sirius expresses them, with intense loyalty, willingness to suffer on behalf of loved ones, a desire to protect, a need to be brave.

and i was too much. and sirius is too much. and sirius and i are both queer, both older siblings. my level of attachment makes this kind of feminization of their character uncomfortable for me. he is being portrayed in a way that is far more socially expectable for me to be. he is being portrayed as a person that would fit in with the gays and the girls. i never have fit in with them and i never will.

it feels like they've been watered down to be easier for everyone else to swallow. i want them bitter. i want the masculine and feminine coexisting in the wrong ways. and honestly i know i shouldn't care but i don't want to enter a space i use for comfort and be surrounded by reminders that i don't do queerness right and don't do "womanhood" right. it does hurt me. sirius just seems so weak now. but sirius is one of the most powerful characters in the series. why take that?

#and like not to mention as soon as the trans fem hc became popular the way they drew their body type changed SO MUCH like okay #tall and broad people cannot be trans fem? why are aLLL of them fitting traditional femininity come on now #text #my loves

[josiebelladonna]

remember kids: if someone says they “support all women, especially the unborn”, they are probably so flagrant with antisemitism and racism, and a r a p e apologist to boot that they probably don’t even realize it and we probably should start writing feminism’s obituary while we’re at it. they’re probably blatantly misandrist, too.

“men only support abortion because it proves that they’re deadbeat dads”. so, you believe that men force abortions on women, which is not only a completely alien concept to me because in my experience it’s the other way around (growing up around christians who thought that abortion was morally wrong; if a woman got pregnant, that was it, she has to carry it out and raise the child once it’s born no matter what the circumstances; i.e., i’ve always seen the pro-life side as far more controlling, so the whole “men forcing abortions on women” is science fiction to me), but also tells me that rather than being smart with your choices from who you choose to sleep with to what you do the day after to being responsible over your own fucking body, you instead blame the men and wish to make everybody else suffer because of your own hang-up against the male gender? you bitch.

you know how feminists had the reputation of being man-haters for decades and it wasn’t until about ten years ago when we started seeing a pushback against it, but it’s now rather pointless and back to square one now that i write this out and see how men are often trashed while women are built up? this is why.

“i survived a botched abortion”. i think this was the sentiment that made me realize that she was absolutely full of it and it really made me question her legitimacy, too. her mother had an illegal abortion when she was pregnant with her, either out of shame or guilt or fear or what have you, but kristin never expanded on it, though… at least that’s what i think the story is. again, she never expanded on it. when you ask her about it, she gives this convoluted statement that is really hard to follow unless you know both sides of the argument down to a t; nobody like me who admittedly only had a basic understanding of this until pretty recently (i just never saw the point of this argument: if someone wants an abortion, that should be okay, why is this a problem?) was going to get out from under it. total sensationalism on her end, and she doesn’t seem to realize this, either.

the whole “support all women” thing will never not make me laugh, either, because she’s one of those “everything after the year 2000 sucks” people (read: classic rock supremacy, that is officially a joke now), without really realizing that her precious classic rock and grunge were considered pop music at their time. plus, what genres of music have more women (or people of color for that matter) in them than pop? maybe jazz or the blues or country or hip hop. rock n roll, as much as i love it, is predominantly white and male: what women there are should be cherished. i’ll admit, i used to be like that, too, but then i started exploring more popular stuff just out of curiosity and then i realized this whole supremacy thing, “rockism” as it’s known, is complete nonsense. most rock n roll guys are into popular stuff, too (like alex’s love of hip hop, or a guy like eric being into ariana grande of all people, or dave grohl liking taylor swift), and most pop musicians and rappers ironically tend to be into rock n roll, so it comes off as totally pretentious.

in fact, i think that’s a word i used on her some time ago, “pretentious.” assuming that i know what you’re talking about and just blindly buying into it, but i have this nagging feeling that something about this just isn’t right. it feels “off”. there’s something about all of this that doesn’t sit well with me, and i feel helpless to say something because i don’t feel smart enough.

and then… the jews. i forget where or when i saw it, but all i know is when roe was overturned, i started seeing things how it violates jewish law. yes, separate church from state, but you should also respect other people’s religion and their right to practice it. she advocates something that infringes upon the right of jewish women to do as they please. plus, i started thinking, “you know i’ve never seen her say ‘happy Hanukkah’ or l’shanah tova or anything like that. i have never seen a single jewish person on her profile. i have never seen her with a black person before (i caught her using ebonics—that’s just one time, too, it makes me morbidly curious as to how many other times it’s happened).” the whole “support all women” thing becomes not only hollow but incredibly confusing, especially for someone like me, your basic bitch pro-choice advocate. (it becomes even more confusing once you realize that she actually wants courtney love, A WOMAN, dead. i wish i was making that up.)

the other night, before all of this happened, she was going on about the election how we’re having to choose predator #1 or predator #2, and how someone in their early twenties was groomed by one of them… something like that, i don’t remember the whole thing and i frankly don’t care, either. first off, you’re a legal adult when you’re in your early twenties (and i was literally laughing when i wrote that, too). second, in a perfect world, we’d have candidates who are actually good and clean people. but that’s not the world we live in, though: they’re all garbage, they’re all horrible people (it’s why i vote independent). but would you rather have the ones who have us in mind or the ones who pull dumb shit like banning drag shows? third, it’s so rich coming out of her because she is a r a p e apologist, there’s no way around that. she’s posted stories from people who “regret their abortions” and you actually read the whole thing and find the person was 11 years old when they had it done, failing to realize that that was a literal child. 11 year olds go outside and play, they watch cartoons and play with dolls; they shouldn’t have to worry about becoming pregnant and going through the traumatic experience of it and having their lives threatened all the while, and going in for a single scraping will save them. which tells me she’s okay with literal children having children of their own. in fact, because of that, i started wondering if she’s a closet p e d o for that reason. saying that r a p e is not okay but also saying that literal young girls should not have a procedure that can genuinely save their life because “it could kill the young girl inside”… yeah, that does not sit well with me.

like i said, it… gets so fucking disturbing once you read between the lines and start putting the pieces together. she tries to soften the blow by saying shit like “but life is complex!” yeah, don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining, kristin. you live in a fantasy world. you live in a fantasy world and you complain about shit that either isn’t an issue, is an issue but your approach is utterly baffling, or you phrase it in such a way that the implications surrounding you are abhorrent and i can’t help but wonder if you’re harboring some dark secrets and you come across as an absolute bitch in the process. what’s worse is she doesn’t realize it. i mean, the fact she’s never apologized or shown any nugget of humility is telling to me. she’ll also say bullshit like “yeah, i know” in the snottiest way possible. well, if you know, then why aren’t you doing anything, miss 3 feminist 5 u? you know, i’m so sick of this “armchair activism” as it’s known: after seeing too many people being shot in the last several years, i’ve started to take strongly worded tweets and blog posts as nothing more than airy noise that does fuck-all to get a point across. in the election post from the other night, i pointed out how 2023 isn’t even halfway done yet and yet here she is out here rambling about it in the vein of those fuckign ron desantis commercials I’ve been seeing lately. 2016 was awful: i remember that election cycle, it was hyped to the moon. and it literally began in 2015. which tells me this next one is going to be even worse.

here’s something interesting: when i was 10th grade, believe it or not, i picked up this trait about dictatorships of all things, in that the further they go onto a certain wing of the political spectrum, they end looping around to the other side. you get so conservative and strict in your rules and laws, that you wind up making sweeping changes and destroying everything in the process. conversely, you get so liberal in everything that you wind up being incredibly strict and hateful and everything around you goes sideways. i realize it’s not just politics, either: you see it at the granular level. i.e., someone this staunch in her positions cannot have her head screwed on right.

this woman is far too liberal for her own good. she’s so feminist that she winds up being a literal misandrist. her brand is feminism is pure white, to the point i couldn’t tell you if she has any minorities on her page (oh, she’s also a bully to christians, many of whom didn’t even come up to her and tell her she’s going to hell for being a flaming atheist, they’re usually just regular people). she’s so pro-science and yet she ignores all the science surrounding female biology. she’s also one of those royally annoying vegans who tries to convince you that it’s the gospel, but… I’m not even touching that one. she claims to be pro-lgbtq+, saying that lgbtq+ rights “start at conception”—another disturbing implication that you know your sexuality when you’re a bundle of cells the size of a dime—but i’m literally pansexual (and a crossdresser!) and she has patronized me far more than supported me. if you speak out against her, she humiliates you and rallies people up so they can verbally attack you, while she plays up this victim complex in that she’s this delicate girl, a fragile helpless little flower, even though she’s a year older than me and i would touch billie eilish before i touched her, and i wouldn’t touch billie with a 10-feet pole covered in grease.

i’ve said it to her before, it’s going to look even weirder the more time goes on; it already looks really bad just from her frivolousness, her ego, and the fact that she does not ask questions about her own beliefs: i have, many times, and i’m still questioning. i can only hope that she wakes up one day and realizes just how much she advocates is actually either unethical or illegal, and just how shitty of a person she’s been on top of it.

#pro-life feminism is a joke #kristinnirvana #avoid her at all costs #text #hope you can understand my ramblings here

[lecafedezola]

NOT OKAY

#IamNotOkay —this is the catchphrase of the stunning, fresh new Shephard Quinn satirical movie, starring an incredible Zoey Deutch, a Mia Isaac whose performance doesn’t feel like a performance, but a very real, raw feeling, like the breath-holding “spoken words'' speeches she delivers, and a Dylan O’Brien who mastered the laid-back prick, and who we love to see again and again. The trend of criticising and blaming social media for any and everything has been going on ever since social media have been going on, so it’s not that much of a surprise that the news of a new movie about this very subject announced it, with the exclusivity on the growing platform HuLu. Yet this is not your typical modern-day satirical fairy tale, with the “be yourself, don’t lie for attention, and live in the real, IRL, 3D life” morale-incorporated happy-ending, teens have been getting since 2010s. Here, we get real anti-heroes (Colin, who dumps girls after fucking them raw in the fancy restrooms of some private clubs, Danni, manipulative, unapolegetic, two-faced perpetual liar who we can’t quite pinpoint if she’s truly okay or #notokay) and Shephard excels at writing this truly detestable, cunning, narcissistic, egoistic yet irrationally universal weirdo who doesn’t have any friends, looks over real struggle and pain for attention, was born into wealth class and race privileges and is doing all of this for a guy. I insist on the “anti-hero” aspect of Danni as a female character, and would not describe her as a female villain —because it goes beyond that simple dichotomy, and that I genuinely believe that we need more unredeemable female characters without weaponizing them and villainizing them just because they’re women (just like we get anti-hero male characters and their masculinity/gender identity is never an argument of their villainification). It’s honestly such a fresh movie about minority voices whereas it’s queer and LGBTQAI+ characters, the importance of talking about survivors and their own struggle, and young Black girls, feminist values in a real world with real, flawed characters : Shephard allows her character to be flawed and unredeemable and this is feminism also because it’s not naive and her feminity is not weaponised. Though the ending left me wanting more —leaving me with the need for more of the monster, more of the ever-going cruelty of the character we hate loving and relating to of the watcher's guilty craving, I can honestly assure you that you’ll experience something you may not have experienced often. Not to mention the visual effort to make this work pretty to look at (whose movie poster, I find, feels off and as if unrelated to the overall artistically on-touch influencer-moodboard aesthetic and softly eccentric character of the movie and its main protagonist and her milieu). The mix of neatly designed costumes and props and settings and the time bomb-structure of the movie is an attractive combination : you’ll never really get this gut-wrenching, ‘when is it going down’ feeling out of you until the third half of the movie and you’ll never find yourself lost among the fast-paced narrative thanks to the sequenced and titled subparts.

the paris effect & the emily in paris satire

I could spend hours writing about the Paris effect (meaning, the high expectations and excitement foreigners have upon the prospect of going to Paris, seeing the Eiffel tower, going to Le Louvre, eating a baguette and simping a cup of espresso with a croissant at the terrace of a cute little café by the Seine, watching beautifully styled people —if this gave you an orgasm, you suffer from the Paris effect, but don’t worry as it also works on French people, romanticisation of places and cities can work wonders sometimes) and its evil twin, the Paris syndrome, or in Japanese パリ症候群 as it seems to be a Japanese people thing, which is the extreme sense of disappointment when visiting the city which will never be what you expected, and is in fact quite a dirty and overly priced place (to be fair to Japanese people, I think French people suffer from a Tokyo overhype, too). This duality of Paris in cultural products, because this romanticisation that is responsible for the, it appears, inevitable disappointment that the city offers is ultimately imagined, constructed and perpetuated by Hollywood movies like Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen movies or any movies with these parisian apartments that display the Eiffel tower on all its window, but also French movies like Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain, binge-watchable platform shows like Emily in Paris (the ultimate guide to the numb and dumb romanticisation of Paris, a common point with NOT OKAY is featuring influencers), aesthetic, unrealistic Pinterest moodboards and Instagram posts that must include haussamien buildings streets, baguettes, croissants and cup of coffees, glasses of rosé, gold, beige and soft pink tones, the Eiffel tower or le Sacré coeur melting in front of photoshopped sunsets, and these keywords : #paris #parisfashion #eiffeltower #parisvibes #parismonamour #parisianstyle #parisjetaime #montmartre #emiliyinparis. We understand that Quinn wanted to mock these products by showing ultra-American characters like Colin finally listening when it comes to Paris, Paris the ultimate glamorous city of love, art and all your life’s opportunities, and addressing the romanticisation of a city that already suffered from at least two terrorist attacks in the last 10 years. We won’t miss either the satire towards Emily in the “now, where is my baguette?” scene, a clear reference to the pain au chocolat scene.

All in all, NOT OKAY depicts in a very smart, yet not always subtle (but the point of this movie doesn’t seem to be to be subtle) way the glamorisation of the city of love, that is also the city of terrorist attacks and tourist disappointment, using Emily in Paris, and all that the Netflix show represents, as a widely-known, cultural reference point for its satire.

the ninth of august twenty twenty-two

#notokay #movie review #quinn #review #movie analysis #Shephard quinn #zoey deutch #dylan o'brien #mia isaac #emily in paris #paris

[celestius]

Barbiety is the soul of wit

Walking into the movie theatre, I never would have though that seeing Barbie would be such a stimulating experience that it would prompt be to write about it.

In many ways, Barbie reminded me of the Black Panther - the focal point of both movies being emancipation, and both movies suffering from issues mostly unrelated to their message. However, much like the haters confuse liking the movie with liking the message, so do its fans, which makes any debate of its qualities seem like an attack on its ideology.

Unlike the Black Panther, however, Barbie is actually fun to watch :). Most of its narrative flaws come down to its emotional thread falling flat, some questionable acting, and its strangely anticlimatic ending. The screenplay is all over the place, but that somehow feels appropriate given the subject matter, and many of the scenes are hilarious, brilliantly constructed, and cleverly penetrating.

Throughout the whole movie, however, I was struck by the fact that it tries to say too much and thus fails to say enough.

Distilled to its basics, Barbie tries to be a movie about what it’s like to be a woman. That in itself is not merely a daunting, but a downright impossible task! A topic so complex cannot be distilled into a two hour movie about a doll that came alive, and if it does, then it certainly cannot be done by explicitly talking about it.

Time for a little side note: very early into my “writing career” (my writing career meaning creating 500 different word documents with two paragraphs of aborted plot), I came to the following conclusion: the more a work of art leans towards storytelling, the less likely it is that its themes can be openly discussed by its characters, rather than “seeded” in the reader’s heads through the story.

I always dreamt about writing a fantasy epic that somehow encapsulates all of my life beliefs: however, any attempt at having the characters actually TALK about them made them seem simultaneously inane and reductive - because those ideas necessarily had to be “dumbed down” in order to not become a treatise. This made me realize that if a story wants to address a larger topic, it needs to do so in a way that’s preferably brief and widely “applicable”, presenting a stimulating thought or question, but leaving the actual act of thinking to the audience, not to the characters.

Back to Barbie then: in order to actually address the topic of feminism, emancipation and “what it’s like to be a woman in a man’s world” in all the seriousness that the topic deserves, one would need thousands of pages with meticulous considerations of each and every facet of the experience and contradictions between its various tendencies, and work with the whole spectrum of the experience. Any other rendition necessarily reduces the topic, disregarding not only the breadth of the experience, but also its inherent variety (no matter how similar any experiences can be, it is unlikely that any group’s experience can be exactly applicable to each representative - therefore, being a woman is invariably a different experience for different women, in spite of the possible underlying similarities). Having said all that, that still doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to address it, obviously, and props to Barbie for trying to do so!

So: if we don’t have thousands of pages, we need to figure out something else. In this case, it would have paradoxically been saying LESS. Having a character make an actual speech about what it’s like to be a woman only brings attention to the painful insufficiency of this approach - every word said points an accusing finger at the thousands of words unsaid. The key, I believe, is to instead work with stimulating “hints” that then cause the audience to fill in most of the words themselves, and therefore feel like everything that needed to be said was said, because THEY are saying it, not the movie.

Barbie works best when its themes are boxed within brief but more general comments and jokes, which, due to their “vagueness”, allow a wider range of interpretation. Whenever the movie gets too “literal” and heavy-handed with its message, it only brings attention to the observation that the sheer gravity and immensity of its subject matter cannot be summarized in a single speech, no matter how well written - and that part could honestly have been written with much more talent and feeling as it is.I found the presumably apotheotic description of what it’s like to be a woman preachy, cringy and reductive - not because I wouldn’t agree with any single segment of it, but because of everything that it failed to say.

….

And yet, having said all that, I was still struck by the realization that even the movie’s on the nose feminism is so rare it induced me to write something about it. Since I am already planning to write another piece about the movie’s central topic - female beauty standards in entertainment - I have to ultimately bow to the fact that in spite of its presumed shortcomings, the movie managed to be surprisingly stimulating - and although I would have preferred to go see Oppenheimer, I doubt it would have actually prompted me to write so much.

Barbie might not be the perfect feminist movie, but she definitely is more than Kenough.

[ednyfedfychan]

“Even within other sectors of what we might term educated but not humanistic society, women authors tended to associate ‘father’ with books and ‘mother’ with piety. For instance, Rose Hickman Throckmorton, reflecting at the age of eighty-five (ca. 1610) upon her reformist family’s history of suffering under Queen Mary, commends her mother for seeing to her daughter’s religious awakening. ‘My mother,’ she writes, ‘in the days of King Henry VIII, came to some light of the gospel by means of some English books sent privately to her by my father’s factors overseas; whereupon she used to call me, with my two sisters, into her chamber to read to us out of the same good books very privately, because those good books were then accounted heretical [so] my mother charged us to say nothing of her reading to us for fear of trouble.’ Throckmorton’s ability to write, however, and her mention of the sources she has consulted in crafting her family history indicate that she received a great deal more than oral instruction. Throckmorton’s family chronicle, though by no means an ‘elite’ text of the sort that her humanist contemporaries produced, shared the same instinct to foreground paternal connection. Throckmorton begins the work by associating her father, Sir William Locke, a wealthy merchant of Cheapside, with her reading practices. ‘Of my father,’ she declares, ‘In Hollinshed’s Chronicle I find this story.’ The story was that William Locke, mercer of London, stopped the ‘curse’ put upon the king and realm by the pope after King Henry divorced Catherine of Aragon. Locke was duly rewarded by the king with one hundred pounds a year and made a gentleman. ‘Now I, his daughter, Rose,’ she continues, ‘widow, late wife of Simon Throckmorton and first the wife of Anthony Hickman, a merchant of London, reading this of my father have thought good to leave to my children this addition to it.’ Her first impetus to write, then, was specifically to immortalize her father’s achievements. In the process, she notes that she not only read Hollinshed’s Chronicles—as a continuation to which she situated her own work—but also mentions that ‘Mr. Richard Hakluyt, in his second printed volume of English voyages to the south and southeast parts of the world’ [that is, Hakluyt’s Voyages] gave testimony to the ‘note and fame’ that her first husband and her brother accrued for their successful joint merchant ventures. In short, although Throckmorton seems to have been taught principally scripture by her mother, she nonetheless read and wrote in the interest of immortalizing her male relatives. She was particularly proud of her father’s godly social mobility, attesting that his rise in the king’s favor and thus in civic importance was unprecedented for a man of his otherwise middling station. She observes in this regard that the king ‘made him a gentleman of his Privy Chamber and he was the king’s mercer; moreover, he was knighted [and made] sheriff of London and so was never any Londoner before him.’ Her father also, and here she invokes the authority of first-person recollection, told her about his voyages abroad and how Queen Anne Boleyn ‘caused him to get her the gospels and epistles, written on parchment in French, together with the Psalms.’ By contrast, Throckmorton presents her mother’s greatest achievement as dying in the grace of God. Even in this rather different kind of family setting, then, the female author associates ‘father’ with books and ‘mother’ with piety.”

—  Sarah Gwyneth Ross, ‘The Household Academy, 1400-1580: Household Academies in Venice and London’, The Birth of Feminism: Woman as Intellect in Renaissance Italy and England

#gender tag

[idiosyncraticrednebula]

Feminism has brainwashed people so much to the point that people think of men speaking about their own problems as "misogyny". Like????

#text #you could have dudes talking about how certain societal expectations emotionally harm them #and feminists are like 'yeah but women suffer more :/' #WHY ARE Y'ALL TRYING TO MAKE EVERYTHING A FUCKING COMPETITION #y'all be like 'but women have been oppressed and mistreated' yeah according the feminist revisionists of the 20th century #this is why feminism needs to be stopped. it claims to wanna help erase gender inequality but no all it does is create animosity between #the sexes. if we wanna be honest men generally do worse in life. women are more beloved and cared for than men are #but feminism has brainwashed women into seeing their sex as a burden on them and that they will always be victims no matter what that a man #talking about his own issues is seen as a problem. feminism does this crap to you #feminism has taught women to not see anything good in being a woman because that is a pathway to being treated like less than human which is #why they need to behave like a man or whatever. how the fuck is this ideology supposed to help women?? it tells them that they are WORTHLESS #i don't believe in the concept of 'male privilege'. it's based on a lot of bs specially when you consider the fact that men are generally #viewed as expendable and tools for society. so miss me with that nonsense. i hate that concept because of the fact that it's not based on #reality and in a way implies that women will always suffer because they have a vagina. this is what feminism tells women #when in reality we all suffer and go through hard stuff. this is not a competition #it seems as though that women suffer more because of feminism and also because women are far more vocal about their problems than men are #men are just told to swallow it and shut up about it. women are not told that #but as i said before. this is not a competition. we should help each other instead of discussing whether WomEN oR MeN suFFer mORe. god i #hate feminism. this is what it has done

[whatishthepoint]

Sorry if this seems like a random question, but I'm trying to listen to as many trans & nb peeps as possible, since googling gave me a variety of answers, and I'm not sure what to believe. What is a terf? What do they do and/or believe in? Are they different from radfems or are they the same? Why aren't there amab terfs? -- Thank you so much! Feel free to ignore this if you don't want to answer, though, since I know it's not your duty to educate others for free.

Ok so im going to try and be as concise as possible but it is a really complex topic and i admit to not knowing loads on the subject. i'm not an authority but this is how i see it. as a transmasc.

In very basic terms a TERF is a Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist. They are basically the biggest transphobic wing of Radical Feminism. Some other wings of radfems are SWERFs (anti sex work radfems) and TIRFs (trans inclusionary radfems).

all TERFs are radfems but not all radfems are TERFs, in simple terms.

The rot in the TERF belief system starts with Radical Feminism. (one of) the core tenants of this ideology is that men are always the opressor and women are always being opressed by men. the idea that men are an inherently evil force that ruins women and women are an inherently benevolent force that is constantly suffering.

This ideology is toxic because there is no intersectionality. as an example of this in their mind a straight white woman would be automatically opressed by a queer MOC simply because he is a man. this ideology leads to very bad places.

eventually you get to TERFS who have a very specific defenition of 'man' and 'woman' that is tied to genetalia and (white) western concepts of gender. They also have a loud presence in some lesbian communities, as the natural outgrowth of their ideology. these are lesbian sepratist communities that want to split off from the larger queer community because they believe that lesbians are being opressed by every other person under the rainbow.

What unites terf ideologies is suffering. they build their entire identities around their pain from growing up in a deeply misogynistic world and they become very protective over this identity. to be a woman to them is to suffer in a specific way. and this status and identity they hold feels threatened by trans ppl because we are complicated. we cant be put into simple binary boxes of men = bad and women = good. Simply by existing we force them to question their very sense of self and they lash out, attacking us. they seek to eliminate transfems in overt ways, because they see them as invaders and they seek to eliminate transmascs by abusing us into detransitioning and then weaponising this against our siblings. when it comes to nb people i suspect that they do not consider them as real, and from their obsession with genetalia they will treat a person based on what genitals they think you have just by looking at you.

TERFs are abusive, to themselves, to eachother and to everyone outside. They campaign vicously against the inclusion of trans ppl in queer spaces. they harrass and harm trans people offline and online. They infiltrate other groups in order to convert more people covertly (ace exclusionist --> terf pipline as one example)

A TERF is usually a feminist from one age group, only recently have they begun growing their numbers thanks to the aformentioned infiltration.

tldr: TERFs are radfems, but a radfem may not be a terf. They believe that the Woman is a sacred position in society that is under constant attack. They believe that all trans people should cease to exist and they are incredibly abusive.

i hope this answered some of your questions? and if anyone sees this and wants to correct anything or add on anything feel free.

#im v bad at communication sorry #transphobia #if your a terf reading this #fuck off #like jkr is a terf #but then like your everyday catholic mother #for example #is just a transphobe #this probably makes no sense lmao

[homosexuhauls]

Joanna Moorhead

Culture of silencing any challenge to prevailing ideology is damaging academic freedom, says professor

The press release that accompanies Prof Kathleen Stock’s new book says she wants to see a future in which trans rights activists and gender-critical feminists collaborate to achieve some of their political aims. But she concedes that this currently seems fanciful. As far as she is concerned, the book, Material Girls, sets out her stall – and she knows a lot of people will find it distasteful.

Stock, a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex, says the key question she addresses – itself offensive to many – is this: do trans women count as women?

Whatever else about her views is controversial, she is surely on firm ground when she writes that this question has become surrounded by toxicity. But the problem for her is, at least partly, that many people do anything they can to avoid answering it. “Very few people who are sceptical talk about it directly, because they’re frightened,” she says. “It’s so hard psychologically to say, in reply: ‘I’m afraid not.’”

Stock is at pains to say she is not a transphobe, and also that she is sympathetic to the idea that many people feel they are not in the “right” body. What she says she opposes, though, is the institutionalisation of the idea that gender identity is all that matters – that how you identify automatically confers all the entitlements of that sex. And she believes that increasingly in universities and the wider world, that is a view that cannot be challenged.

“There’s a taboo against saying this, but it’s what I believe,” she says. “It’s fair enough if people want to disagree with me, but this is what I think.”

That last statement is loaded, too, because the gender identity row is closely linked, especially on university campuses, with freedom of speech. Campuses are a minefield for those wanting to discuss these issues, she says, and she has faced calls for her university to sack her. So she is supportive of the government’s controversial plans for a free speech bill, which critics including English PEN, Article 19 and Index on Censorship have argued will have the opposite effect.

In a joint letter, they argued that the legislation “may have the inverse effect of further limiting what is deemed ‘acceptable’ speech on campus and introducing a chilling effect both on the content of what is taught and the scope of academic research exploration”.

But Stock backs the bill: “I think vice-chancellors and university management groups have shown that they can’t manage the modern problems around suppression of academic freedom. I think there are some genuine instances of unfair treatment of controversial academics, and those academics should be able to seek meaningful redress.”

This week the University of Essex apologised to two professors, Jo Phoenix and Rosa Freedman, after an independent inquiry found the university had breached its free speech duties when their invitations or talks were cancelled after student complaints.

Stock grew up in Montrose, Scotland, the daughter of a philosophy lecturer and a newspaper proofreader, and studied for her degree at Exeter College, Oxford, going on to do an MA at the University of St Andrews and a PhD at Leeds.

Having come out as gay relatively late in life, she now lives in Sussex with her partner and two sons from her previous marriage. She regards her OBE, awarded earlier this year for services to higher education, as a signal that her views have at least some backing in the establishment.

“Academics being online, students being online – it’s introduced a whole new landscape for dealing with controversial ideas, especially when those ideas are controversial within your peer group or a student body. Threats to academic freedom don’t just come from China, or millionaires trying to buy a library wing for your college; they also come from students whipping up a petition within seconds of you saying something and trying to get you fired.”

Sometimes, she claims, it is more insidious than sackings: “For academics [the gender identity debate] has a chilling effect, because academics believe their careers may suffer in ways that are less visible: they don’t get promoted, or they’re removed from an editorial board.” The net result of all this, she says, is an impoverishment of ideas and knowledge, and damage to the dissemination of information.

Because another of Stock’s key arguments in her book is that her own profession, academia, has failed to look in detail at some claims made by trans activists. She questions some of the data that gets shared regarding violence against trans people, saying that a lot of it is produced by groups that adhere to a particular narrative.

“I don’t doubt that transphobic crime occurs, but I want to know to what extent it occurs in a way that could help the trans community better understand the problem it faces.” She’s disappointed, she says, in some fellow academics for not rising above the fray. “I thought the point of philosophy was that you would be able to argue things without resorting to ad hominem attacks – I thought that was the point of our training.”

How, then, in her view, have we got to where we are? Stock takes issue with Stonewall, the LGBTQ+ charity, which campaigns for trans inclusion and opposes the views of gender-critical feminists. The charity’s Diversity Champions programme is very popular on campuses, and Stock believes this has in part “turned universities into trans activist organisations” through their equality, diversity and inclusion departments.

Beyond this, the introduction of student fees has played its part in the current situation, Stock believes. “As soon as students started to pay, they became customers, and universities became much more deferential. They started talking about coproduction of knowledge, giving them much more choice over the whole experience.” The problem with that, she believes, is that “some young people come along with fixed ideas about gender identity theory, and it’s awkward – especially when universities are branding themselves as LGBT-friendly and queer-friendly.”

Philosophy is a vast space, most of it without risk of abuse. So what keeps her in this particular arena? “I was bullied as a child and I think that gave me experience of social ostracisation and toughened me up,” she says. “I’ve also got amazing support. Sure, some philosophers and colleagues are against my views, but others are very supportive.

“Plus it’s personal for me: I’ve struggled with my body in terms of femininity. I could easily aged 15 have decided I was non-binary or even a boy. And I feel very worried for teenagers who are now foreclosing reproductive possibilities and their future, or damaging their bodily tissues in irreversible ways, based on an idea that they may come to relinquish at a later date.”

One tragedy of the gender identity debate is how hate-filled and polarised it has become. Stock says she has suffered online abuse, but makes it clear that she is going to continue to state her case.

Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism by Kathleen Stock is published by Fleet

#Kathleen Stock #gender critical #material girls #radical feminism #philosophy #radfem safe #was pleasantly surprised to see this in the guardian #although jfc could you walk on egg shells more