#with apologies to that one post about wishing more straight girls would write femslash

[synnthamonsugar]

While I understand the apprehension toward men writing women, and people who aren't wlw writing wlw, the implication that women / wlw are so alien that it's impossible for anyone who is not us to empathize with us, and that our experiences are so worthless that no one outside our own group(s) would want to engage with them in good faith is ... troubling, to make an enormous understatement.

To me, personally? People who engage with storytelling that centers on women in the romantic absence of men, and in the absence of male gaze-y bullshit, is a green flag, no matter their sexuality or gender.

It's not a guarantee they won't be misogynist, but it's a preliminary sign they at least conceive of women as independent entities whose worth isn't determined by their usefulness/appeal to men. That women are human beings with interior lives and wishes and wants and flaws and strengths and interesting stories like people of any other gender. Which is a low bar, but one many people — even plenty of women! — struggle to clear.

Speaking directly of men who make & consume media centering women, systemic misogyny and male privilege exist and shouldn't be ignored, but I refuse to believe that every individual man on earth is incapable of enjoying media centering women / wlw in good faith. I will not accept they are all unable to write about us, that we are too incomprehensible, too intolerable, that men and women are too different . . . I simply will not.

There's essentialism to it that turns my stomach. "No man can engage with women's stories in good faith" implies that ALL women can when . . . no? There are women who do not, cannot, or will not engage with stories about women (either as creator or consumer), women who write women poorly — as accessories to men, as plot devices, as stereotypes — sometimes under faux-feminist veneers.

This also begs the question of where NB people fall in this world view, and I flatly refuse to accept "actually, it's okay for non-men to write about women, because only men should be excluded" and "well, only women should get to write about women, NB ppl should be lumped together with men and excluded", because both have disgusting implications I don't have time to unpack here.

IDK I just want more stories about women that don't focus men, and I want more people who love women writing about women, and I want more people writing about women's love for each other, I want to be able to imagine futures or pasts or other worlds where we aren't accessories or playthings, I want kids of all genders to watch women protags and picture themselves in her shoes, I want writers of all genders to be excited about writing women!!!

#synnthposting #with apologies to that one post about wishing more straight girls would write femslash #and my post about personally viewing the world more in terms of ''people who care about women/people who do not'' than gender strictly