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everyday i strive to have the lack of shame a man has

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The Substance (2024) dir. Coralie Fargeat

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There's something so dark to have a YouTube channel start like this:

...And end like this:

I never saw this woman's videos before because, why would I watch videos about being a trophy wife? But people are talking about her newest video, in which she revealed that her husband raped her 4 times in the first few months of their marriage, and she just left him because she found out that he was assaulting her two year old and four year old daughters.

I am not victim-blaming this woman at all. No woman deserves this. No mother or child deserves this. Any woman can wind up in this situation, and it's extra fucked up because she said she'd been a victim of CSA, too.

I'm only saying that no fantasy of being totally reliant on men, whether it's as a trophy wife or anything else, will save women from abusive men. That's the lie that conservatives tell women: "just submit to your husband and you'll be safe!" Tradwives and housewives and trophy wives are not less vulnerable to abuse because they center their lives around their husbands (and are usually less able to escape those situations than more financially independent women). Every woman can be abused. There's no way to make yourself desirable enough for men not to abuse you, because that's not what abuse is actually about.

I feel really sorry for this woman and her children, and she was incredibly brave for immediately taking her kids and running. She believed her daughter instantly when she told her what happened. But the fact that this woman didn't try to run after her husband initially raped her speaks volumes, doesn't it? Women are trained to look past their own rape. I hope her husband rots.

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Bernie is wrong. He has always been wrong and is still wrong. The flaw in his theory is what he deems the “wealthy elite” versus what everyday Americans consider them to be. Voters don’t see all billionaires as the elites. They see college-educated liberals on the coasts, some of whom are billionaires, as elites.

Bernie-style populism didn’t land because billionaires figured out long ago they could undermine it by being socially right-wing, and the working class would forgive their wealth and privilege. That’s why this same demographic is willing to make it rain for grifters like Joel Osteen and Pat Robertson. That’s why they worship the wealthiest man on the planet like a God and consider him some real-life Tony Stark. People dismissed Donald Trump as a shameless attention-hungry New York oligarch until he called Mexicans rapists. Then he shot up to the top of the GOP primary polls. The working class didn’t think much of Elon Musk until he said “pronouns suck.” Then he became their hero. A scion of working-class Pennsylvania lost his US Senate seat last week to a hedge fund manager from Connecticut. West Virginia elected their richest man to the Senate after electing him governor – as a Democrat and later a Republican. Ohio tossed out their longtime Democratic senator, known for his strong support of labor rights, for – literally, no joke – a used-car salesman.

You can’t tell me the working class in America thinks being a billionaire alone is what makes one a “wealthy elite.” There are significant factors at play here Bernie is either oblivious to or purposely ignorant of.

In college, a professor once told me that Communism never succeeded in the United States because we are too religious and proud as a country. Religion, traditions, and culture were never widely discredited the way they were in Europe and Asia, where the clergy and nobility kept the bourgeoisie in figurative chains for centuries. The relative ease of social mobility made America unique compared to its Western counterparts. Historically, American progressivism has been focused on expanding social mobility – initially limited to only white men – to identity groups who had been denied it at the start: blacks, women, and immigrants. We have done it, with various amounts of success. While it may seem counterintuitive, Americans pride themselves in being the nation that pioneered the idea that wealth and status can be achieved through ingenuity and hard work and not just based on a lucky roll of the genetic dice, as it was in the Old World. It doesn’t mean we don’t have generational wealth in our country; we do, but since it isn’t the sole way to achieve wealth and power, we don’t care nearly as much about destroying all of it. Further, we will happily endorse it if the oligarchs and the aristocrats vow to promote and protect the social values we care about and the social hierarchy that benefits us.

It’s one of the reasons I believe Bernie could never beat Trump. If you ask working-class people what they want: an anti-immigrant, anti-intellectual billionaire or a Vermont socialist backed by kids from Harvard and UC Berkeley who hate our traditions and customs, the working class will always back the billionaire.

–Nick Rafter, "Bernie Sanders Can Take a Seat"

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women please take self defence classes and do not listen to men that tell you it’s futile to fight against a man. learning to defend yourself from men is not the same as when men fight each other, you are not trying to beat the shit out of him, you are trying to hurt him just enough so that you can get away. you can learn techniques to prevent a man from grabbing or choking you or how to escape a grip on you. men can knock you out or kill you if they land a proper punch but you can reduce the chances of that happening. even if you’re very small, it really doesn’t hurt to be able to dodge a punch from a man but it’s something you have to practice. it doesn’t matter how strong he is if he misses.

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Pop Culture has never been anything to admire, but the current state of pop culture makes me really disgusted. The explicit misogyny of it all being rebranded as 'stan behavior', as fun and quirky, as natural for KIDS and TEENS to participate in.

'Daddy'/'Sugar Daddy' are now normal and popular terms to use for a celebrity you like, if you see someone pretty you can say 'i'm just a hole' as if that's not disturbing. Discussing fetishes and nasty kinks is commonplace and encouraged even, """influencers""" openly share their tips on how to sell your nudes and how to enter the porn industry.

If a famous person does something sexy, the common response is 'they could punch me and i'd like it. they could choke me and i'd like it. step on me. humiliate me.' and i'm so fucking TERRIFIED that young girls are being taught so insidiously to be complicit in their own dehumanization and oppression, that they're being taught is funny to call yourself someone's dick socket, that it has no impact in the way you see the world or yourself.

I'm just really exhausted with pop culture. If I had a female child nowadays, I'd be afraid for them.

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We are at what stage of apathy now?

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Stevie photographed by Sam Emerson - 1976.

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I find it so ironic when men make statements like ‘we fought the wars’, ‘we gave you rights’, ‘we invented the phone you’re using’ etc like.. so when it’s something you want to take credit for it’s fine to generalise men as a whole group but as soon as someone brings up rape, murder, assault etc and how men commit majority of those crimes it’s suddenly ‘not all men’ ? Right okay so now you’re individuals and can’t take credit for the entirety of your demographic?

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Women don't do makeup, wear skimpy uncomfortable clothing, break their skin barrier with a bunch of useless "skincare products", shave daily, go under the knife, suffer eating disorders and spend an insane amount of money on beauty enhancements for men. They do it for themselves. But the part of themselves that they're doing it for, is the part that grew up in a patriarchal society which tells them that their natural self isn't enough, that makes them embarrassed to show their unaltered appearance to the public, that tells them they're not woman enough if they're not "feminine". They do it for themselves because they've internalized the man made insecurities that have been pushed on them since birth. "I'd do this even if men didn't exist", we say, but that's only true for the society that we are in. If men were to have never existed, we wouldn't feel the need to go to such extremes for beauty in the first place.

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A woman choosing to get an abortion because she can't afford a child is 100% valid reason. If u can’t provide a child with food, a roof over their head, clothes, school supplies, and be present in their lives then you are not ready for a child, and having an abortion is a good idea actually. I hate the “you'll figure it out” people. No, you'll only add more people to poverty. Imo abortion is more merciful than a life of misery.

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this is immensely funny to me

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still thinking about the back of this dress worn by kay francis in one way passage (1932)