#{some people don't like it because of the feminized ways a few of the males are drawn}

[newrww]

people love acknowledging that society was backward and then men were sexist but they don't like highlighting the fact that sex based oppression was brutal and it existed because of male dominance. because that's not really necessary. or else when it's done it's done to suggest as if we're ever not going to exist under male dominance. All the changes that women have fought hard for are taken for granted in a way or this erroneous idea that we don't need feminism anymore is hinted at. The educated people writing these opinion pieces live in a different world from the rest of us. they may have some understanding of feminism but a lot of the West isn't that knowledgeable and privileged and I don't even think the educated really care about women to be honest. or else they wouldn't be supporting shit like transactivism blindly with a very few people willing to risk to their careers to criticize that crap.

Once you start noticing the passive voice being used for men's actions, you can't unsee it. In history class it was always "women weren't seen as equal human beings" or "women weren't able to own property or have jobs or get education" rather than men legally considered women their property and banned them from work, school, and property rights.

In the news it's always "girl raped in park" or "woman killed in home" which would make some sense if the perpetrator was unknown, but they often have already caught the culprit by the time the article comes out and it's always a man.

The amount of times I've seen a headline about a man murdering his entire family before killing himself being titled "man commits suicide after family is killed" with a nice little family photo of them is absolutely absurd.

Hell, just last night I saw an article titled, "3 kids killed after mom let ex-partner take them to get food." Her male ex took the kids to get food and murdered them before killing himself. Not only is the headline passive, but it also phrases it in a way that makes the mother somehow look guilty like she knew what he had planned or knew he was insane.

To top it off, people get really uncomfortable if you stop using the passive voice for this stuff. They start squirming if you straight up say "men wrote laws banning women from voting" even when that is literally what happened. BOTH men and women act this way. It's like we're all just supposed to pretend that rape, enslavement, murder, and other human rights violations against women just fell from the sky.

[hellsslibrary]

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚ NSFW Alphabet with Ruggie Bucchi˚ ୨୧⋆｡˚ ⋆

DNI : minors.

#a.n. : I promise this is the last change in post design. I'll leave it for a few months, not days, really. (´。＿。｀)

!!Warnings : sub!bottom!Ruggie, breeding kink, teasing, praise/humiliation kink, toys, oral sex, light feminization, bratty behavior, male reader.

Jack <————«« Ruggie »»————> Leona

Savanaclaw. Ruggie Bucchi.

A = Aftercare (What are they like after sex?)

He is probably tired. His fatigue is not critical, but it is still fatigue. But I see him as much as possible as a person (beastman?) who desperately needs your praise and care after sex. Like, hell, he's definitely a brat, so he needs to make sure you're not angry or something.

B = Body part (Their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

Well... His favorite part of you is probably your whole face(?). He is definitely a person who loves to tease. So to see how your face is distorted in one emotion or another is a great joy for him.

And his favorite part of his body is definitely his legs. Well, in the end, thanks to his childhood, he is very good at using his legs to avoid problems, so they are definitely chiseled and muscular (although still thin thanks to his physique in general).

C = Cum (Anything to do with cum basically)

He cums a little at a time, and bringing him to an orgasm that is too intense is quite difficult, if possible in principle. And his sperm is more liquid than the average.

Well... He loves when you cum inside him. Who in their right mind would think otherwise? He is an animal hybrid after all.

D = Dirty Secret (Pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

Mmm, I guess he'd like to seriously get pregnant by you (if it wasn't for the biological make-up, of course. But if your OC is someone who can impregnate someone regardless of gender, drop it here or not lol, mine too anyway). Like, really, he would like to have about two children (puppies?), and provide them with a better life than he had. And he just loves the idea that you could seriously impregnate him.

E = Experience (How experienced are they? Do they know what they're doing?)

He's... a virgin, yes. But he definitely knows a lot. Like really a lot. Because judging by the stories and articles from the Internet about what is happening in such areas where he lived, then he should have observed sex of other people at least once in his life.

F = Favorite Position (This goes without saying)

Well... Any position where he can see your face, out of obvious love for your face, as I mentioned earlier.

Oh yes, he definitely does. He loves to tease or make fun of you during sex. It seems that at one moment you calmly fuck, and then he shouts out some strange and vulgar thing.

G = Goofy (Are they more serious in the moment, or are they humorous, etc)

H = Hair (How well groomed are they, does the carpet match the drapes, etc.)

I don't think he's too hairy in general, so he doesn't have much hair there either. And they are even lighter than on drapes, so he does not see the need to clean them up somehow.

I = Intimacy (How are they during the moment, romantic aspect…)

Nah, he's not a romantic, really. Perhaps, after advancing your relationship in the future, he will become a romantic one way or another, but not soon for sure. For him, sex is just the satisfaction of your needs.

J = Jack Off (Masturbation headcanon)

He doesn't have time for this, lol. Although sometimes, very rarely, he may do this while he takes a shower, but this happens extremely rarely.

K = Kink (One or more of their kinks)

Breeding kink (no, I'm not making it easy for myself by sticking this kink with everyone in Savanaclaw, they're a beasts, I have the right to). I've already explained this, so let's move on. Well... Besides the obvious kink of praise, he definitely has a kink of humiliation (although don't touch on his finances and don't call him "poor", please). And maybe he has a kink for feminization/crossdressing. He likes to dress up for you sometimes, so he doesn't mind it.

L = Location (Favourite places to do the do)

Mmm, he doesn't mind any place, to be honest. But I think his favorite would be any place in nature. Forest, field, some clearing. Something like that.

M = Motivation (What turns them on, gets them going)

Whispers turn him on! Your whisper, to be exact. I think he has very good hearing, so when you lean into his ear and whisper anything to him, pleasant goosebumps run through his body, and blood rushes to his dick. But he is quite easily excitable, speaking in general.

N = NO (Something they wouldn't do, turn offs)

As I mentioned earlier, no way, no way really, don't mention his financial situation and his childhood anyway. Also, I guess he wouldn't like it if you even teasingly said something like "Maybe I should find someone who is better than you at (something) or for me in general."

O = Oral (Preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc)

Oh, he definitely love more to give. He loves to suck you off, especially if you fuck his throat while doing it. It's just so exciting how rough you are with him.

On his own I think he'd love more if you teased him anyway. Just lick his cock from time to time or lick his rim? Yes, something like that. He loves to cum from your cock in him more than oral.

P = Pace (Are they fast and rough? Slow and sensual? etc.)

Definitely fast and rough. He loves rough, wild and in a sense animal sex. Although he is in the mood for something more sensual, he still prefers rough sex.

Q = Quickie (Their opinions on quickies rather than proper sex, how often, etc.)

Yes, this happens quite often. He ends up incredibly busy with these things of his, so you both often have a quick fuck in some closets/empty classrooms/toilets and so on. His attitude is quite positive, sex is sex anyway.

R = Risk (Are they game to experiment, do they take risks, etc.)

He is very very like that, yes. Like he's ready for a lot, really. He knows how to take risks and experiment if you, he or both of you want it.

S = Stamina (How many rounds can they go for, how long do they last…)

He certainly has a huge stamina, thanks to his childhood. So it lasts incredibly long and long. Maybe 7-15 rounds?

T = Toy (Do they own toys? Do they use them? On a partner or themselves?)

Yes, just yes. He loves when he has free time to send you this or that photo / video where he uses some kind of toy on himself and writes something like "oh, now if it was you, it would be better, but unfortunately it's not you ;b".

U = Unfair (How much do they like to tease)

He loves, he's one of the strongest teasers out there, no matter how, he'll do it if it makes you horny and possibly punish him for it later.

V = Volume (How loud they are, what sounds they make)

He... 7/10? He's quite loud, although if he's on its edge it can be about 9/10.

W = Wild Card (Get a random head canon for the character of your choice)

It has extremely sensitive ears and tail. If you scratch behind his ear for long enough, he might even get a boner. The same goes for its tail, especially its base.

X = X-Ray (Let's see what's going on in those pants, picture or words)

Muscular, especially in the legs, body, but he is still quite thin. Perhaps there are a few scars here and there. As for his cock... Strict 4 inches / 10 centimeters. And he's definitely not circumcised.

Y = Yearning (How high is their sex drive?)

He has a high libido, but not extremely high. But he still wants you all the time. He can just think of you at any time and he can feel himself shrinking around the void in anguish.

Z = ZZZ (… how quickly they fell asleep afterwards)

It depends absolutely on you. If you want to sleep, then of course. But if not, then he is ready to stay awake. But not for long, he still wants to sleep very much.

[dootznbootz]

Big oof guys Odysseus wasn't a cheater he was a victim you soggy feminist retelling enjoying fries. and I don't get them changing that so that "women who have been cheated on by their husbands can relate and know they're valid for being sad" because let's be honest if he was a women y'all would've been treating his situation appropriately. Feminism is about men and women being equal, and do you know how many women (and men) could relate to Odysseus's situation? He wasn't a good person (neither was anyone in Greek myth) but stop making him out to be the bad guy. It's not only insulting to his character, mythology fans but also victims. It can be insulting to male victims for this being erased and treated so lightly. And for female victims who know what that feels like and are (rightfully) disgusted when this sort of behavior gets excused.

And for those of you saying "But he had a choice with Circe!!" Um... not really? He slept with her to save his friends, his brothers. Let's put it this way "Let's say your best friend was being held captive, and the only way to save them would be to sleep with the guy who's holding them hostage. Cheating would imply there was a betrayal of trust between partners, this wasn't done out of maliciousness. This was done to ensure the safety of an innocent person/people who you care about deeply. Any good lover would understand there's a huge lack of choice in a situation like that. Again, if the gender roles were reversed y'all wouldn't have been saying this crap.

If men and women are so equal, a men getting sexually assaulted and used holds just as much weight as a woman. This isn't feminism, this is sexism towards men. And no, it's not justified because "that's what the Greeks did", it's not okay just because you lable it as petty payback/revenge. What happened to be better than your oppressor? As if you were the one's in ancient Greece who had to deal with these things. You are not in a friend group with every woman in history just because you had to deal with "scummy men".

And even if you are a victim, how can you be immature and gross to KNOW what that feels like yet still not care/be ignorant towards one suffering and easily erase it. And just because they were the same gender as people who were asses and creeps towards you or people who happen to be the same gender as you.

Tumblr never fails to disappoint me 😔 I have no doubt in my mind Penelope would beat up all these people victim blaming her husband

"you soggy feminist retelling enjoying fries."

Dear Anon, I love this phrase so much. Thank you for sharing it with me.

Sorry this took a while to get to. <3 I just answered quite a few heavy asks recently and I wanted to give a lil break in general :) You also wrote it all out very well already so I didn't really know how much I have to add or say without sounding like a broken record!

And yeah, like, he's not a good person. Nobody really is, especially by modern standards. But that doesn't mean what happened to him didn't happen. Or that people should diminish it.

I mean, I'm very very sure that Homer even shows Odysseus' PTSD from it all in the Odyssey. How he's so adamant about Nausica's maids NOT helping him bathe, despite that being the custom/culture of the time. Like Idk what other reason he would have to not ask for help, being "older" wasn't something that would've been too outta the norm, he was still exhausted from nearly drowning to death, etc. BUT this is RIGHT after he just escaped Calypso. Gives huge PTSD reaction to me.

ngl, I find it really disappointing in a way that this ancient text feels more respectful of victims and their trauma than more modern books lol. A lot of Modern shit feels like trauma porn ;~;

And you're absolutely right with Penelope. She loves her like-minded fool. She would not blame him. I honestly think she'd be the one to reassure him often because he'd probably feel guilt and/or just...need some comfort from everything.

I really hate the whole "He expected her to be faithful when he was not." Because guess what? He canonically was. He had no concubines officially listed ANYWHERE. People can take vague statements if they want but that's just it. Vague statements. All other "interactions" were against his will and/or it was coercion to save his friends. All under duress regardless.

Like in general, there is so much more potential in writing about about a character trying to help her incredibly traumatized lover. Seeing him as he is still and loving him. Him finally feeling safe again, LEARNING to feel safe again. After finally having clawed his way back into the arms he never wanted to leave in the first place, he can LIVE again. There's something incredibly beautiful in that.

I mean as you said, I find Odysseus very relatable in a lot of ways. His story is really beautiful in the whole "You've been through Hell, You've done some horrible things, but despite all that, you can achieve peace again. You can LIVE again." It's a really hopeful story in a way. And I really love that.

[lebensmudewing]

I know that women hate when people implies that feminists are emotional and ideological and irrational. But I really don't see how it is not true.

Feminists spend every single day of their lifes complaining, protesting, feeding other women's fears and paranoia over men, they say mindlessly "I choose the bear" and then go to bed with their husband or boyfriend anyway.

In what world is that not irrational? Most feminists in the west are not in limit situations, they are free to not have any kind of romantic relationship with men.

I have talked to feminists and nothing seems logical to me. Like, men have created an entire system to opress and exploit women, that is cross-cultural and has existed for centuries and thousands of years. But they, somehow, are part of the few generations of women who have had the idea of trying to educate men to not be bad with women. And, without any proof of it, they believe it will work.

They think that if they tell men that women are people, if they educate them, if they teach them, if they cure them, if they show how feminism "benefits them too", they will give up and dismantle the whole thing.

But what is actually more benefitial to men than:

Not having to compete with half of the population, so it becomes easier to thrive.

Having a cook, maid, surrogate, prostitute, nanny for the price of a minimum income.

Not having to actually being held accountable for rape.

Not having to actually being held accountable for abuse.

Believing you are superior.

Policies and any cultural norm favoring you at every step.

What feminism offers?

Having to compete with everyone, so it becomes harder to shine.

Having to do an equal amount of labor while also paying bills.

Having to respect "sluts" and being accused of rape for having intercourse with women without honor or virginity. Having to give a damn about consent.

Having to give a damn about your partner.

Being force to believe that people who they see as inferior are equal to them.

Culture and policies being more gender neutral, or "favoring women".

It's seems like a joke, feminism is trying to sell a common stone at the prize of a diamond, while patriarchy is the opposite: the minimun amount of effort with the higher rewards.

Men are not more receptive, they don't see how it benefits them. "Being able to cry" doesn't compensate losing his job because a woman does it better than him. They see how they have to moderate themselves, to contain themselves, to put up with the "political correctness" and watch how women are still angry for some reason.

And they see how women, who are so angry with men, still have benefits from patriarchy. "They win most custodies", "They win alimony", "Other men favors them over me", "They exploit men", "They have to option to lay down and earn a lot of money, while I have to go to work". They think the game is rigged against them, women didn't work out their asses to pave the roads, but they still enjoy them while they condemn the men who did that.

They see how women say that men are rapists, beaters, abusers, and also how women engage in sex with strangers, have male friends, drink or drug themselves with other men. It seems schizophrenic to them, women complain about men and still engage with them in the most revolting ways. Such incoherence only have one possible explanation: women are irrational man-haters, women are like entitled children, women are destroying society.

Feminists don't seem to have a real problem with men, their hatred/fear/outrage is a mere performance. Maybe they have a problem with abusers, wife beaters, pedophiles, discrimination, but not men, not with male nature. They still benefit from the "good ones", their bills are being paid, their cellphones upgraded, their shelfs full of male written books. They don't seem to despise their husbands and boyfriends.

They can feel a lot about women's condition worldwide, but they don't act accordingly.

[genderqueerdykes]

I stumbled across someone who calls themself 'gender critical', a 'hater of all things male', AND a 'transguy butchdyke'.

we've finally done it, everyone. a gender crit who is the very thing their peers despise: someone who's transmasc. I'm starting to think people are this stupid on purpose

this happens soooooooooooo often it's really painful. i'll try to explain, i do agree with you that it's just willful stupidity in the sense that they're riding the high of being a jackass. like inside of troll communities like this all they really do is ride the high of pissing people off. also, unfortunately, a lot of these people are extremely vulnerable and deal with very low self esteem and use these kinds of violent, angry, exclusive communities as a way to self soothe and it never works out. its an echo chamber and they stay miserable and all that's left to do is ride the adrenaline rush you get from pissing someone off

generally what happens in this case can be one of a few things. the first is that they tend to be trans mascs or men who watch fucked up trans creators on YouTube like Kalvin Garrah or Buck Angel who tell them that non binary people aren't trans and that trans men can never be feminine ever. but then they also interact with rad fems and get suckered in because the rad fem community tolerates butch transmasc people to an extent in order to increase their numbers. they don't really care all that much if you're transmasc as long as you're suckering other people into their cult, they're happy as can be.

unfortunately this also stems from people who detransitioned and felt completely disenfranchised from their trans identity and time spent as being trans so they take it out on other trans people. they didn't end up being trans and they're pissed off because trans people "tricked" them into doing it too. usually what it is is that person is either genuinely curious or has low self esteem and does something because someone they look up to does, only to find out its not for them, so they take it out on the group they didn't fit into instead of moving along. it just realy sucks because there's nothing wrong with detransitioning at all whatsoever, but its the people who become bitter and jaded from their experiences and take it out on other trans people that really need to sort their shit out.

anyone who's proud to be a man hater is a rad fem there's no other reason to be like that. and it's just weird as hell when i see rad fems trying to "reclaim" certain genderqueer lesbian terms when they don't even fit into those categories to begin with. if you hate and reject manhood how are you a man? suffering is not righteous, you will not gain anything by allowing yourself to suffer for someone else. if you hate manhood and are a man: that means you hate yourself. that is your cross to bear. you need to sort that out with yourself, not take it out on other people.

it's just dumb. i agree with you it's some sort of willful stupidity in order to troll and fuck with people. they get a kick out of it because it pisses people off. that's really all it is. they think they're counterculture, but they're edgelords. they're not making any bold statements by using terms that are heavily used by trans people (including detrans btw) and then somehow saying its now a rad fem or gender crit thing. you're doing that for shock value.

i stopped seeing that kind of behavior lately fortunately but it's all over this website. there are so many people on here who have just completely willingly walked right into rad feminism and brag about it. like they're somehow these cool punks who don't follow the rules. like they're somehow making a statement, like they're somehow breaking societal norms in a productive way. theres literally 0 critical thinking involved in rad feminism. all they do is actively oppress women and trans people, how is that "counter culture"? that's fascism. you're just a jackass fucking around with words on the internet to piss people off. that's just troll behavior. nobody cares, we have shit to do off of our phones and computers

[tlonista]

I wish the conversation over Problematic Relationships In Fiction weren't so heavily framed around individual stories. Because I don't care about some random fucked-up novel, but I do feel like current romance media trends toward a recommendation-fueled monoculture with some frustratingly rigid gender norms, and a lot of "does fiction affect reality" discourse offers no way of talking about it.

Every time I dip my toe outside AO3 (Wattpad, Kindle Unlimited, Reddit, my BookTok experience is limited but that's the vibe I get there) I'm dismayed by how hard it is to find M/F romance that's not implicitly or explicitly about eroticized male-dominated power imbalance. Not just "he's a serial unaliver" dark romance, but the huge focus on hypermasculine heroes taking care of heroines and possessive alpha-male fated mates and nigh-inescapable trends like "good girl" praise-kink stuff.

Obviously this was always common in romance publishing, but a) the internet was supposed to support niches and b) I find significantly more diversity on AO3, so I think it can. It's just that no other platform or online community seems structured to do it. Instead a combination of recommendation feeds, word-of-mouth virality, and fast-fashion self-publishing surfaces infinite variations on a handful of the most broadly appealing industry blockbusters and buries everything else.

So instead of offering an alternative to old monolithic print publishing, online platforms seem even better at elevating male-domination kinks from "a fairly popular dynamic" to an inescapable default of What Romance Is. Even if you're fully aware it's a sexual fantasy, it gets downright hard to articulate desire in any other way, especially if you don't have a fully-formed picture of what you like. Unless you think sexuality simply isn't a "real" component of people's lives, I think this is a reasonable example of fiction in aggregate affecting reality in a negative way.

(It's also obviously not unique to romance lit. I just can't speak to stuff like video porn firsthand, and I don't see a ton of pushback on people criticizing the gender dynamics of Pornhub.)

But if the only available question is "is X book corrupting impressionable young women," then... no, that's silly. If anything, the aggregate system makes individual books feel bad in ways the authors probably didn't intend. Like, in Popular Kink Land, "your feminism says no but your body says yes" tropes are appealing for some women working through a particular kind of purity culture. In Inescapable Dynamic Land they take on this Gorean overtone where all women secretly want a man to take charge of them. The former is not my thing but fine; the latter feels like some kind of weird accidental gaslighting.

To the extent AO3 escapes this, I think it's for four reasons.

A focus on tags and chronological sorting, which helps surface non-popular stuff and gives readers more control

It's strictly non-commercial so there's less incentive to write for the broadest audience or fill the site with boilerplate sludge

It doesn't segregate categories like "romance for men", so there's less gerrymandering of cross-gender niches like femdom

The fourth reason, which is most interesting to me, is that fanfic ships (specifically not X-reader ships) create easily discoverable literary microgenres drawn from a huge range of media outside the tropey echo chamber of Romancelandia Proper.

In my experience it takes hours of scouring Reddit and Goodreads to find non-normative original romance, but one AO3 search and a few clicks to get from "I played Resident Evil and liked Ada and Leon's vibe" to a substantial microgenre about a badass woman making a cute guy stutter, or "I loved Kaz and Inej in Six of Crows" to a bunch of takes on a not-conventionally-masculine hero and a powerful but vulnerable heroine pining for each other. Since a decent number of fanfic authors also write non-fanfic, there's even a chance you'll find somebody who does original characters with a sensibility you like. I have no idea how you'd bring this system outside shipfic, but I'd love to see someone try.

[incense-and-nonsense]

Finished watching Arcane last night and I have some thoughts about Ambessa Medara that I need to get out of my system.

What I find fascinating about Ambessa as a character is the fanbase's reception of her: she's a big muscle mommy with a hidden soft side. However, I don't think the show's writers want us to like her and especially don't intend to portray her as an attractive person. The reason I think this is because (aside from her gender) she's a textbook example of a toxic, hypermasculine, alpha-male power fantasy.

Let's elaborate. Only a few minutes after we're introduced to her (having invited herself into her estranged daughter's world in a display of Emotionally-Healthy Parenting TM), she announces that she's off to "sample the local cuisine," gesturing towards a male consort/companion who awaits her.

And then there's this scene:

Here we are shown Ambessa naked in a bath being massaged by the same comparatively small companion we met earlier. The power dynamic in the relationship is clearly one of domination and submission. She's indulgent in her consumption and luxury and lobs criticism after criticism at a visibly uncomfortable Jayce, all while the artwork behind the two reinforces how this exchange will play out: Ambessa holds all the power, while Jayce is on the defensive.

In short, everything about the way Ambessa talks and carries herself is meant to convey one simple message: I am powerful. She never needs to insist on her power--it's self-evident.

On the surface, this seems like an extremely well-written feminist icon. Ambessa is strong and confident, bending to no-one and self-assured. In flashbacks and in her own dialogue, she's presented as someone who is willing to take ruthless and decisive action regardless of other's feelings. She exudes confidence and charisma and never apologizes for the space she takes up in other's lives. Other people exist largely to fulfill her goals and desires. Further, later she reveals that she exiled her daughter Mel because her daughter's more merciful and diplomatic nature weakened Ambessa and her resolve.

In short, Ambessa is the textbook icon of hypermasculine power fantasies enfleshed in a woman.

Thing is though, these traits don't become less toxic when they happen to belong to a woman. Imagine the two scenes above if the character's genders were swapped. Then what we see is a confident, muscled warmonger who establishes his place in the social hierarchy through displays of sexual dominance and belittling those around him. Imagine Caitlyn attempting to discuss the situation in Piltover as a nude, muscled man insults her competence and strides naked over to her in a clear display of power. That's not a character we celebrate; it's a character who makes us feel violated by their very presence. Moreover, it's a character we've all probably seen before a hundred times.

Toxic behavior doesn't stop being toxic when done by a woman instead of a man.

Ambessa is not intended to be a likable character. She manipulates and dehumanizes others (especially sexually), refuses to show mercy, and pushes away those closest to her out of her fear of weakness. She's not an icon of female empowerment. Her character is a commentary on how easy it is to think that feminism means adopting the toxic ways in which men have often exercised power over others. Dehumanization and exploitation aren't behaviors that we should celebrate just because they make a women look strong. Rather, we should re-evaluate what we think strength looks like.

[connoroaks]

Hot take #2: Femcels don't really exist

A few days ago I received an angry anonymous message from someone, referring to me as a "racist cvnt" and telling me to kms. I obviously didn't respond to this, as doing so would just be feeding the troll's ego (rule 14 of the internet), and anyone with common sense knows this, but it did get me thinking about another thing, with that being what type of person would've gone out of their way just to call some random guy online a racist and hopefully get the attention they desperately wanted out of it. As a straight cis male who decided to make a Tumblr account to join the tcc and now post long paragraphs like this one, I'm obviously part of the minority here, as most people who use this site are either women or trans men who are in reality also biologically female, and this site is home to some of the most radical of feminists, as I stated in my previous post. Most of these women (and trans men) identify as femcels since they struggle with dating, sex, and finding a partner just like incels do, but I think the latter one is definitely less voluntary than the other, as women are way more respected in society and could find a bf or gf almost instantly if they really wanted too, whereas it takes most average looking straight men years to find a partner, and even longer to lose their virg1nity and sh1t. Now obviously I'm not saying that femcels can't exist, as there are some women who suffer from things like severe facial deformities or are just unfortunate enough to be in the bottom 1% of women, what I'm saying is that they're a lot lot rarer than people make them out to be, and male incels are wayyyyyy more common because for example, if you're like a 3/10 woman who's not very attractive at all and you want to find a bf, there's still gonna be plenty of 5 even 6/10 men who would be willing to date you, whereas 5-6/10 women mostly refuse to date men on their level, and instead sleep around with Chad and Tyrone for their entire late teens and 20s until their 30s when they finally realize that their actions have consequences, and from here they will either settle down with the 5/10, who probably now doesn't want her knowing that she has a body count in the hundreds, or they can just become a cat lady and die alone and childless, wishing they could go back in time and do it all over again. There's even 7/10 men who are struggling with dating in today's world because the 7/10 women are all in the 10/10's harem of b1tches that he talks to. Most women here on Tumblr however are average looking (4-6/10s), and they could easily pull a man on their level (like me) who shares similar common interests and wants to build a family and grow old and die together, and for almost all of history, that's how it was. However, starting in the 1960s and 70s second-wave Feminism led women to become more career focused and less family oriented. This in itself is not a bad thing, as women of the time still maintained a healthy balance between their work and their family, and were not just fvcking around with a bunch of different guys, but third-wave Feminism in the 90s and early 00s told young women that starting a family and having kids was bad for their mental health and that they didn't need a man and should just fvck, party, post borderline n@ked pics online, and completely focus on work and their careers. This effectively made it extremely difficult for average looking men to find a loving wife who's actually loyal and not a degenerate and made it impossible for below average men to ever even feel the touch of a woman other than their own mother without doing something like hiring an esc0rt or some sh1t. The top 20% of men get 80% of all women, and it leaves the bottom 80% to have to either find a non-feminist woman, which is not very common in today's day and age, or to compete for the bottom 20% and probably still fail anyways. There is really no such thing as a femcel, as even "ugly" women have it way easier in the dating market than 6-7/10 men do. And also, I don't really consider myself to be an incel either.

I may be average height, and I'm definitely not as attractive as Chad is, but I'm not below average either, and I have a bigger pen1s than most men at my level do. I'm more of a cutecel than I am an incel, I'm like Elliot Rodger but taller and with a much bigger d1ck, fluffier curly hair, and blue eyes. Take that information as you will, but girls never even look at me, not even gay guys either. I've been told by my parents a few times in my life that girls were checking me out, but I don't really think that's true. For example, last spring break we went to some Japanese garden while on holiday in Florida, and both my parents said that this one girl in front of us was really checking me out, but when I started being more aware of this random girl in front of us as opposed to only looking at the flowers and sh1t, not even once did she turn around and look at me, and she couldn't have heard them either, as they whispered it to me, and we were pretty far away. I don't think they're lying to me, but I do think they tend to overexaggerate things like that. Another time we were at some restaurant and my dad mentioned that these girls were looking at me, but again there was no sign of anything, and if they really liked me they probably would've just gone up to me and asked me for my number or something. However, to be honest even if they did I wouldn't have given it to them. I don't trust normie women, as I've been wronged by them many times in the past, but that's a story for another time. I'd rather find a girl that actually loves me and shares common interests, even if she's average looking or crazy. I'd rather take the crazy yandere who texts me to see if I'm ok every 5 minutes and starts imagining bad scenarios if I don't respond right away than a "normal" girl who I share nothing in common with and who'll leave me the second she finds a more attractive guy.

[mrhaitch]

hi mr. haitch! just wanted your advice on some...boy advice. sort of.

i've been thinking lately about standards/requirements i would like in a partner, particularly if they were male. i think that if i ever have a boyfriend and date again, the bare minimum should be that he should identify as liberal/agree with me on a few things that i feel like every decent human being should believe in. for context, i'm american, and the main thing that makes me believe this is the idea of being pro-life vs. pro choice. if he doesn't think i should have my bodily autonomy, should i even be dating him? having kids with him? what if things go wrong during the pregnancy later in the term? would he want me to die, just like that woman did in georgia?

i know this is veering into politics, but i was asking this not to ask for your opinion on "being liberal vs. being conservative" but rather "xyz belief that i'm not sure i should be so strict on." i understand people have room to grow, particularly young men who are exposed to a lot of...things and radical ideas from a young age. this isn't to say that i don't want someone who disagrees with me, but i think in american politics there's a lot of things the right believes in that harm women, and consequently me.

so, the gist of what i'm asking is that do you think that young men (who are in college/in their twenties) grow in that regard? or do you think that, if from the get go that they believe in such things that i shouldn't waste my time?

i'm trying to keep this short (and failing horribly), but what really formed my dilemma is that i have a best friend (who is male), and he's a very nice person. became friends with me when i was not favorable with his friend group, i was chubbier, and he's the one who's helped me improve myself. still is friends with me even though his "bros" make comments about our friendship. we have insightful conversation and he's rare in the way that he actually sees women as people and recognizes the men who don't (his friends, who he's not really friends with because he recognizes that they suck). he's a decent human being, something not a lot of young men are.

however, he sends me content like "equal rights means equal fights," dark humor about feminism, interacts with onlyfans bait accounts, makes jokes about toji fushiguro from jujutsu kaisen (who has become sort of an icon for the incels who clearly have not watched the show) abusing all of his wives. a lot of young men think that just because he's muscular, tall, and powerful, he abused his wives and other typical woman-hating stuff. which is hilarious and horribly mischaracterizing but i digress. is this someting he'll grow out of and recognize as things that you shouldn't joke about?

as always, please feel free to ignore this ask if you think the mention of politics is something you don't want to discuss. i would understand. i would totally ask my dad about this, but he's conservative himself and my parents don't have the best relationship either. i hope you and haitch have a great day!!

Oof. Okay, my answer has some caveats to it so if you're hoping for something cut and dry then you may be disappointed.

Do I think boys with this kind of attitude can change? Yes. I have to believe that or my job would be pointless. Many of my students are male (in fact the overwhelming majority) and many of them hold views I would deem questionable if not outright bigoted. It's not necessarily my place to change their mind, but I do take it upon myself to find ways to challenge their thinking - albeit gently as these students have a tendency to become violent or start riots if they encounter too much opposition.

Case in point: the other day two girls in one class were talking about their experiences of creepy older men catcalling them on the way to school. We were talking it through, and a boy piped up with statistics about men's mental health and suicide rates. This boy is severely autistic and has an inclination towards what I think of as reddit-bro positions. I talked to him about it, gently, explaining that men's mental health is a pressing concern - but it wasn't what we were talking about. I then talked to him about it in greater depth, at a later point in time.

On another occasion some of my students complained that Pride Month overlaps with Men's Mental Health Month, and proceeded to argue that 'the gays don't care about men's mental health'. There have also been incidents where groups of boys have been loudly discussing how rape allegations are almost always false and women are liars, that kind of thing.

Now - I have to believe these boys can change or I'm wasting my time. But I'm also just their teacher, and at the end of the school day they are no longer my problem. Being in a relationship or close with them is a different ballgame entirely and you could be exposing yourself to harm.

Your friend may well outgrow this worldview, but it's something he has to do himself. Similarly for all men, really. If they can't talk themselves out of violent or derogatory views on women, women's health and wellbeing, and all of the other shit that goes with them - they should not be pursuing women romantically or sexually.

Fundamentally it's your call. They might grow out of it, but they might not.

[marley-manson]

Do you have any petpeaves regarding the M*A*S*H fandom?

lol sure i'll take the opportunity provided to express a few, ty for the ask!

Overall Mash fandom is pretty awesome imo, and I actually don't have many compared to a lot of fandoms I've been in, and the ones I do have tend to apply to most fandoms anyway lol, they're staples of fandom in general.

-- The biggest one is probably the common take that Hawkeye is insecure, self-loathing, emotionally repressed, thinks he doesn't deserve love, yadda yadda yadda. This isn't really Mash specific because the bad-self-esteem-ray hits every bottom in fandom at some point lol, but it's extra grating in Mash fandom for me because to me it feels more blatantly OOC than most versions of this.

Now to be fair to fandom there are a few scattered lines throughout the series you can take out of context to justify this take, and one bad episode that provably contradicts the rest of the show (Who Knew), but I feel like you have to stretch like a gymnast to justify it and ignore 99% of the rest of the show and Hawkeye's behaviour.

And it's boring and flattens Hawkeye to a caricature of someone else imho.

-- Generally, and again this applies to all fandoms lbr, I dislike the way a lot of people need to jump to accusations of bigotry to justify their personal preferences. One example I've seen a couple of times that's absolutely bizarre to me is the take that if Klinger gets dicked down and/or feminized in fic it's because of racist fetishization. That's Maxwell Q. Klinger, the dude who wears dresses throughout most of the show and canonically grows to genuinely enjoy it. And even if he was 100% masculine, that's what a lot of fandom does to every single dude they love ever lol, all it means is that Klinger has a fanbase, which is a good thing. imo attitudes like these help contribute to non-white characters getting less fanworks about them, and while I don't think it's prevalent enough in Mash fandom to have a negative effect, I've seen it destroy other ships featuring characters of colour.

Another example is the classic bad take that if you don't ship women in het or interpret a heterosexual relationship as doomed/not romantic/etc, it's because of misogyny lol. It's not hugely common in Mash fandom but I've seen it occasionally from BJ/Peg shippers and the very occasional Margaret enthusiast.

Oh and another example is that depicting Hawkeye as effeminate is homophobia. Again, this is Hawkeye, the dude who proudly calls himself unmanly in various ways every episode and makes 50 jokes about wanting to get fucked in the ass. Frankly it's a bigger stretch to me to assume he wouldn't easily and happily adopt actual effeminate body language/phrasing and tone if he's, say, at the bar and wants to pull a top. Or maybe even just if there are no straight people around, yk? Why not? The take that writing unmasculine men is offensive is a fandom classic and usually strikes me itself as homophobic, gender essentialist, and basically just someone's masc4masc kink masquerading as an issue.

Like to be clear there is certainly bigotry in the Mash fandom, as in every fandom, and it's worth discussing, and sometimes depending on context it can even apply in the above cases (eg if a fic about Klinger getting dicked down earnestly described him as idk exotic or something, or if people who 'feminize' male characters take it to silly extremes and start writing meta about how these men are woman-coded/victims of misogyny lol) but this ain't it chief, this is people repackaging their own pet peeves in social justice language to win perceived arguments, and it's a bad vibe.

-- This one IS fairly Mash specific lol, and to be clear it's 100% harmless and just something that makes me roll my eyes sometimes because I'm not into it myself and it strips away the things I do like about the ship: the way a lot of Hawk/BJ fans headcanon BJ as much more supportive and sensitive to Hawkeye than he actually is, by taking various things he does and assuming he does them for Hawkeye, like he's constantly aware of Hawkeye's unexpressed needs and catering to them.

Yk, he wears pink shirts for Hawkeye! He grew the moustache for Hawkeye (never mind that Hawkeye hates it)! He stole Hawkeye's joke to give Hawkeye enrichment because Hawkeye loves... being upset I guess. Joker Is Wild? All for Hawkeye because Hawkeye loves being paranoid and alienating people. (The reasoning I've actually seen is that Hawkeye loves having an excuse to throw a tantrum lol). He totally comforts Hawkeye when Hawkeye is upset, they just never show it. He is devoted to Hawkeye, he'd do anything for him, ignore the episodes where he calls him crazy and ditches him while he's facing adversity. He's Hawkeye's emotional support!

I've seen it in serious meta and casual headcanons and fic where BJ just falls into role of tender, emotionally intelligent emotional support like it's an assumed part of their dynamic despite not only never seeing that in canon, but Hawkeye actually pointing out multiple times that BJ is not very supportive.

It's also a misreading of Hawkeye who is actually the emotional support of their friendship, rather than vice versa, and tends to go hand in hand with my first pet peeve: Hawkeye as an emotionally insecure, repressed mess lol. BJ goes to him when he needs a shoulder to cry on, something consistent to the point of it being a way to manipulate Hawkeye in Picture This. Not vice versa. Hawkeye goes to Margaret or Mulcahy or Sidney. The only example I can think of where BJ provides emotional support (by which I mean listening to Hawkeye's emotional concerns and offering supportive input) to Hawkeye is the end of Comrades in Arms, and it's like the bare minimum of fulfilling the typical best friend on tv role.

(I like that BJ doesn't fulfill that role tbh! It's more interesting that way, it makes their dynamic feel more unique and intriguing.)

-- Also people who think Mash got more progressive in the later seasons. I think it demonstrates a shallow understanding of the political implications of the show. Getting rid of the character with a slur for a nickname doesn't automatically equal less racist, it's just an easy thing to point to that doesn't require much critical thought. And the growing feminist concerns go hand in hand with depicting republicans, patriots, and racist imperialistic military commanders as good people.

And to be fair I sympathize with this take, I've seen it everywhere from fandom to grumbling republicans complaining about mash getting preachier to professionally written retrospectives and academic analysis lol, so it's not like I hold fandom to higher standards. The ways Mash grows more regressive are more insidious, and the problems in the early seasons are much more obvious and in your face than in the later seasons. And there will always be some debate on whether eg rampant womanizing is worse than pro-imperialism messages, though I know what side I fall on there.

But imo it still sucks that it's such a popular opinion.

-- The emphasis on found family, especially in a 'the war brought them together' sense. Any hint of gratitude that the war let them meet people they love in fic, or whatever. This is something I can't completely blame on fandom because the show itself veered uncomfortably close to this a few times too in the later years, but yeah I'm not a fan. To me the most important aspect of Mash is the fact that they all hate it there, the war is worse than hell, they're virtually prisoners trapped in a nightmare, and any of the draftees would absolutely trade those relationships for an end to the war or just a ticket home. Their friendships are less a silver lining and more a painkiller that just barely takes the edge off. I think this vibe is clearer in the first half of the show, but that's yet another reason the first half is better and more progressive politically lol. And it doesn't disappear in the latter half either, just gets a bit more muddied.

-- This kind of goes hand in hand with the above points, but I feel like it's more of an older Mash fandom issue that I encounter when archive diving moreso than a thing currently (though I do occasionally still see it these days): fans who actively like the military stuff lol. I've read fic where dog tags are kinked on/romanticized, fic that depicts draft-dodging as bad, etc. These days it's more stuff in line with the worst parts of canon, like taking Potter at face value as a Good authority figure who deserves respect because of his military experience, but yeah. Don't like that.

-- Okay that's all I got off the top of my head. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to whine lol

[redditreceipts]

thoughts on r/ask_AGP?

So I've been on there a lot, and a lot of the knowledge I have about AGP comes from that subreddit. I think it's the best way to understand how an AGP man thinks and what motivates him.

But I have a few criticisms of the guys I generally see on there:

they genuinely don't seem to understand why many people are against them exercising their ETII* in public. I mean, you should not involve people in your fetish. And if you have a fetish for being seen female and you demand everyone call you a woman, you are forcing them to participate in that.

They also don't seem to care about why women don't want them in their spaces. I have not once seen a discussion about how a woman may feel if a man whose fetish it is to come into a woman's changing room comes into her changing room. It kinda makes sense, because how would men know why women are afraid of men? but well, I think that they could at least try to listen to our experiences.

There is so little reflection on how misogyny and homophobia interact in creating a fetish for being a woman or having a female body. Like, why would you find it arousing and humiliating to dress femininely if you didn't view femininity as less than? Idk. But sometimes, I do see these discussions.

I actually think that there are gynephilic mtfs who are not agp. This could be - straight or bisexual males who transition because of gender dysphoria that has nothing to do with sexuality, but maybe more with trauma or self-hatred - mtfs who fit more in the hsts category, but have some marginal attraction to women. As in being bisexual, but overwhelmingly attracted to men. I would think that Gigi Gorgeous could fall under that category, for example. But r/ask_AGP seems to want to press everyone in these boxes, but I don't think that everyone really fits.

I really like that there are some people who seem to be genuinely aligned with radical feminism (if you frequent the sub, you know whom I mean lmao)

*ETII is short for "erotic target identity inversion". It describes a person who, instead of pursuing their sexual interest, wants to become their sexual interest themselves. For example, instead of wanting to sleep with a pretty woman, they want to become that pretty woman they sleep with themselves.

[stillarandom-radfem]

There's something that I want to say, and I'm trying to work out the right way to phrase it right now.

Libfems. They are so... idk. Is wishy-washy the right term to use? They're sort of silly. They are so adamant about the notion of "smashing the patriarchy" but it's all just lip service, and it's not even necessarily because all of them are intrinsically bad or anti-woman. For some of them, idk, a few, their hearts may actually be in the right place, but the actions (or rather, lack thereof) that they take to get there are misguided and will never grant them their desired result. And I want to elaborate on why I think that is. It's because you can not fight against a social institution (in this case, patriarchy) without first having a clear understanding of what it is, why it exists, how it operates, and what it's goals are. In other words, you have to know your enemy in order to fight it effectively.

Libfems don't. Their version of feminism lacks a solid sense of analysis. They don't know who the patriarchy consists of (jealous, controlling, entitlement-minded men acting collectively against women in their own self-interest). They don't understand why it exists (the male phenomenon of womb envy exists at the heart of patriarchy; men wish to control the biological function of life-giving which only women possess, and to do that, they must first control and subordinate women). They don't grasp how patriarchy operates (by controlling the legal, financial, and social norms and institutions that govern every patriarchal society on the planet, and forcing them to operate in men's favor rather than women's, and also by using violence against women in order to keep us in line). And they don't know what patriarchy's goals are (complete and utter control, subordination, and enslavement of women to men). They don't know that men are the enemy, that hurting and controlling us is their goal, not some unfortunate accident. They don't realize that the system is working as it's intended to (by men), that it isn't a fluke or a flaw. They mistakenly assume that men are like us, that they are truly decent people underneath it all, and not that they are being cruel on purpose. They see men show compassion and kindness and empathy for other men, and falsely believe that they would do so for women, too, if we could just show them the way. But, they couldn't be more wrong, and the fact that men do show such kindness and caring for other men tells us that they know what that looks like, that their horrible treatment of women is a choice on their part, and a very deliberate one at that.

Sucking up to men, doing their bidding, and pleading for kindness from them will never eliminate patriarchy; only full liberation from them can accomplish that. But libfems, still blithely unaware that men are the enemy at all, dont grasp this. So, they keep doing the opposite, thinking that, if they can prove themselves to be "cool" girls who will submit to men's desires and even convince themselves that they are their own, then men might maybe listen to them about rape culture or abortion rights or something. Baby steps, they tell themselves. Slow progress is still progress. They don't realize that control over women's reproductive capacities is at the heart of patriarchal societies the world over, or the role violence against women and girls has in maintaining men's hierarchal dominance over women, and thus, said reproductive capacities. This is why liberal feminism is so ineffective, so man-centric, so wishy-washy. This is why it will always play directly into the patriarchy's hands. It's why all of the major changes made to benefit women over the past century or so have been made by radical feminists, not liberal feminists. It isn't even that libfems are entirely evil or misogynistic (although, make no mistake, their behavior is definitely frustrating to see). It's because, in order to fight your enemy, you must first know your enemy. In order to destroy the patriarchy, you must first have some sort of feminist analysis and framework to work within.

[a-most-beloved-fool]

And what would happen if they made Captain Kirk a woman and paired him with Spock (who they kept as a man)? I think they would be capable of doing that (they've already given Spock enough girlfriends and paired him with Chapel?!), how do you think the public would take it? Would they be very upset? I think there would be a part of the public that would make a fuss, some because they made him a woman, others because they made them "conventional" to pair them (this idea intrigues me a lot since the rumor of a female Jack Sparrow)

(You sent this first as a reply on the 'Kirk and Spock should be Weird about each other' post, so I'm replying to it in that light)

I mean, either way they'd be weird about each other.

I think I personally wouldn't be a big fan of the choice to genderswap, simply because just Changing People's Characteristics tends to fall flat unless the authors put a lot of work into making sure it doesn't. I already don't trust Paramount to make old beloved characters queer, and I probably trust their ability to effectively change the gender even less.

Probably, if Paramount tried, it would come off as... very fake-feminist? Like the kind of plastic feminism that gets us female characters whose job is to Be Hot And Badass and utterly ignores like. making them human and compelling. It would be kinda tasteless. If they truly put in the effort, I'm certain something like that could be very good, but... I really, really don't trust them with that.

I also do think it would be sad to change it just to make them not-queer. It does feel pretty damn homophobic to me, frankly, to say 'these characters are together romantically Just Because they're a man and a woman' when they wouldn't let them be together as two men. If they were going to make one of them a woman, without letting the male versions be together, I'd rather the man and woman not get into a relationship, either. Give us a close man/woman friendship that doesn't turn romantic, for once!

That said, I do think it's possible to do it well, and include a romance. For example, if someone came at it from the light of either Spock or Kirk being trans, and showing the struggle between transness and sexuality, that could be very compelling. (In fact, I might have read a fic or two with plots like that.) though again idk if i trust paramount to handle an explicitly trans storyline

But, frankly, if they keep recycling their damn characters and beating them into the ground, i am going to have to fistfight an executive or something. I kind of just want them to let Kirk and Spock go. Let them be free. Make new things, I'm begging you.

As for the public? Yeah, they'd be pissed. There's no way to avoid it. I think you're right that a lot of people would be mad about the genderchange - some because they're sexist, and some because they find it insulting that they can't just. make new and original roles for female actors and are instead recycling things. There would also be people hopeful and optimistic about it, though.

And if they went through with the romance between the two, some homophobes would still manage to be homophobic about it, and a LOT of queer folks will be insulted that they didn't have the guts to give them the romance when they both were men.

I just think they should focus on new characters. Finish SNW and then let Kirk and Spock rest. Maybe give them a few shoutouts and cameos, but don't make any more series focusing on them.

uhhh this is long and i think i said everything i wanted to and i hope i worded it well, but it might be a bit repetitive. if you've got any other questions, ask away, but here's my general opinion on the matter.

[malk1ns]

Fic writer asks: 5, 18, 25!

<3

fic writer asks here!

5. What’s a fic idea you’ve had that you will never write?

never say never, of course, but i may not write this one simply because dealing with gender in a way that relates so closely to my own experience is not something i feel up to doing at this moment....but, i had an idea about a girl sid-boy geno fic that is a little...i guess maybe off-theme from what a lot of people who do rule 63 in this fandom do? i had a thought about a girl sid who reacts to being almost always the only woman in a male space by going hyper-feminine—she doesn't try to be one of the boys, she doesn't try to act or dress more androgynously. her defense mechanism is the exact opposite. you will never catch her doing press without her hair done and her makeup flawless. she speaks softly and politely and maybe even pitches her voice up a bit from what she 'really' sounds like. she dates, and they're all stereotypical manly men, but never involved in hockey in any way, because perception is everything. in this fic, she has an A, but it's pretty clear the organization did that as a token thing. the team knows she's the real captain, though. how does a geno who's desperately in love with her and is wearing 'her' captaincy manage that? how do they fall in love?

my issue with writing this is because i use m/m fic to deal with my own relationship to gender, but at a safe distance—it's why i do a lot of omegaverse. i'm a very tall, not-skinny woman, and i have a low voice, and my defense mechanism for years has been to try and shrink myself and be as girly as possible in public to counteract the non-feminine parts of how i look and act. i understand that there's been some discussion in fandom recently about feminizing certain characters, but writing characters in certain ways can do a lot to work through your own issues at a remove that doesn't hurt, or feel weird. i'm not sure when, if ever, i'll be able to confront that more directly and write about it in this fashion. i think it could be really fun, though!

18. What’s one of your favorite lines you’ve written in a fic?

i love all the lines i've ever written because i'm my own biggest fan, but something i wrote that i'm particularly proud of right now is this one, from this fic:

“I like you better now,” Sid says, bringing a hand up to cup Geno’s jaw, studying his face, the creases around his eyes and mouth, the hairline that’s higher this year than it’s ever been despite Geno’s best efforts, the silver in his sideburns. It’s a face that’s at once familiar and strange, because Sid’s known this face since he was 19, but looking at Geno now, at how he’s changed and softened with age, sometimes strikes Sid painfully, deep in his heart.

i've been thinking a lot about aging recently, and the joy of getting older with people you know. it's a privilege. and i have some lifelong friends, along with my family, and over the last few months i've been thinking about how when i look at these people who i've known since infancy i don't really see what they look like now...i see what they look like in my heart, which is sort of an amalgamation of all the ways they looked in their youth and young adulthood. but sometimes, when i'm talking to someone, it's almost like a mini out-of-body experience, and i see them how they look now, with all the marks of aging that they have—wrinkles, gray hair, weight gain, whatever it is��and it's like- oh wow, this person is almost a stranger to me, because i see them the way i did when i first met and loved them. i am sure this is a very common experience, but it's startling every time, seeing and recognizing that my own perception is so colored by how i feel about someone and the length and duration of our relationship that it can literally alter what they look like to me.

it's kind of beautiful, to have people like that in my life. and getting old together is a gift. but it's also strange, and poignant, and powerful to have happen. anyway, i did my best to capture that sensation with that paragraph, and i think i did a decent job with it.

25. Have you ever upset yourself with your own writing?

this whole ficlet sort of upset me.

[lilyspond64]

the idea that feminism should be a push to make women more masculine sucks lol

what needs to happen is that the idea of masculinity being equal to strength needs to be weakened. either that, or the idea that strength is a virtue needs to be weakened. preferably both.

edit: because someone found this post and misinterpreted it (and basically called me a man cause of course) let me explain what i mean here. masculinity, as a concept, is entirely socially constructed. the way that we have constructed it is to equate masculinity with competence and strength, and femininity as its corollary, incompetence and weakness. however, one may notice that it is more useful to associate people with weakness than with strength, as to not expect people to be strong or competent. however, a lot of mainstream pushes try to push femininity as a weakness, and the way for a woman to become strong and competent is to become masculine. theres a few issues with this, of course.

1. as femininity and masculinity are socially constructed, we can associate any traits with either of them. we could just say that both have strength and competence associated with them.

2. strength and competence aren't moral good. in my view, they are often bad. weakness is more useful than strength.

3. associating femininity with strength rather than associating masculinity with weakness is not useful. it's just raising expectation of strength rather than lowering it. Again, strength is NOT a good thing.

4. For an explanation of why I dislike strength, I equate it to a weapon. Some people have it and others don't. This has nothing to do with your gender or presentation, it's just dependent on your abilities. People who have it can weaponize it against people who don't. The solution to something like this has never been to distribute the weapons more freely, it's been to take the weapons away. If strength is no longer seen as a virtue but rather a neutral trait, this will be greatly mitigated.

5. Weakness SHOULD be a virtue. However, it is not a weapon. Why? Weakness is the natural state of a human being. We are born vulnerable and needy and somewhere along the line that is our life we are expected to stop being vulnerable and needy, until we die, trying not to be too vulnerable or too needy. This is true for men and women traditionally, however, being stoic and strong is commonly seen as a masculine trait.

5. Of course, an easy solution is to see these traits of masculinity and femininity and throw them away, saying these signifiers are entirely fake, nonexistent, and un-useful. Honestly, this is rather appealing to me. However, in terms of practicality, this would be difficult to enforce. Plus, the traits that exist as socially distributed between them are still useful for everyone.

6. Why is engaging in exploited labor feminist? Why is the goal always set so low? "We must allow women to work their lives away" or even fucking "Let women murder children for nationalism?" How is that feminist? Cause men do it too? Maybe instead of saying women can... we say men can't? A woman CEO is a CEO first and a woman second. This was actually present in the reply to me! Uh, also, STEM fields are not "more useful" than other fields.

7. This is the simplest one: adopting the patriarchy through assimilation is not freedom! It is a continuation of the patriarchy! Right now we sort people into two groups, men and women, and say men are the strong ones. Changing this to say, strong and weak, is just skipping the gender middleman. Systems of oppression cannot be assimilated, they must be abolished.

8. This is more personal, but femininity's association with weakness and vulnerability is exactly why it is so appealing to me. As a human, I am vulnerable. I accept this state. Under maleness, society does not allow me to accept this state. So I reject it. Does this mean women are weaker than men? No, that is the expectation. I've been called sexist repeatedly for an implication that me wanting to be weaker and more vulnerable is my way of being more of a woman, whatever that means. Obviously wrong! I just know that strength exists as a tool for violence, and hate it outright.

9. This applies to men too! Men should not be "masculine", plain and simple. Delete this entire notion of men being masculine! You will just insist that men should be violent. Men are not naturally violent. On the inside, we are all babies with wants and needs and feelings that only vulnerability and weakness will solve. Let's work to redefine masculinity, not femininity.

11. No, I don't think people should be "traditionally" feminine, or really even feminine at all. I think the standards held by masculinity (some of which, at least) should not be upheld, even in a feminist society.

12. What do I define as strength? I've been using this word a lot, but I never defined it. I'm using strength to mean the outward numbing of physical and emotional pain. Has anyone ever said that real men don't cry? Or what about: Women are so emotional? These gendered stereotypes seem to point to one specific thing: let men cry, and women SHOULD be emotional. You can't say "yes they should and no they are not" as this is a backwards mindset. Whether or not women are actually naturally more emotional than men, women are categorized as more emotion societally. When people say emotion in this context, they mean outward sadness and excitement - never anger. Anger, is of course, traditionally masculine, and angry women are therefore actually basically men. Anger is not a bad emotion persay, but it is a violent one. Breaking systems of violence mean breaking systems of anger - ie most criminal justice systems. Strength is the ability to throw someone into a steel hole and not feel bad about it.

13. So what, I want a society where everyone cries all the time? Yeah sure. If everyone simply shows their vulnerability more often, people will naturally become less violent. Stress is caused mainly by an emotional shutdown that can be relieved by an outburst. Allowing healthy outbursts at low stress levels will avoid unhealthy outbursts at high stress levels. Sure, one is more frequent than the other, but it is also more useful and helpful.

I have this all thought out pretty well. It's not a statement that insists feminists believe this, by the way. I'm sure many a feminist would agree with me on all these points. However, I am ok with being disagreed with. However, I do not accept gender essentialism as a talking point here. Masculinity as I described it is not inherent to men nor is it inherent to having a penis, or whatever. It's a societal standard that we uphold because having a lesser class is always beneficial for a greater class.

[markantonys]

What’s your ranking of Bridgerton siblings?

hmmmm let's see! i'll exclude gregory and hyacinth since i haven't seen nearly enough of them to be able to compare them with the others, so that leaves us with

francesca

benedict

anthony

daphne

eloise

colin

no hate to colin, he's just boring to me (but he did rise quite a bit in my estimation in s3pt2 due to fulfilling the "my whole personality is loving my wife" male character archetype that i love dearly haha)

i don't have a strong opinion on daphne vs. eloise so they could be switched, and probably will be in another season or two as we see more and more character growth for eloise. daphne is somewhat boring and has faded into a vague memory for me by now, but eloise boomerangs between extremes of delighting me in some scenes and aggravating me in others, so it kinda balances out. i can't stand the I'm Not Like Other Girls (I'm Better, Because They Only Think About Dresses And Romance Whereas I Am An Intellectual) archetype, but the show is self-aware of this archetype and is interrogating it as eloise grows and matures and gains a more nuanced understanding of feminism, so i enjoy her more each season and i expect that will continue.

benedict becoming canon bi instantly shot him up above anthony haha but without that i would've ranked anthony above him because anthony is such a good, layered character whereas benedict, while always lovable and funny, has been kinda flat and just treading water for a while now (though this is also a symptom of the fact that anthony's had his main character season already and benedict hasn't, so of course anthony is the better & deeper character as of now).

and finally, my beloved francesca!!!! i had zero opinion of her before s3 since she was barely in the first 2 seasons, but she stole my heart very quickly during s3. she's quiet and polite and sweet, but there's a steely streak in her too. once she decides what she wants, she WILL get it - she'll be calm about it and do her best not to ruffle any feathers, she won't make a scene or be loudly rebellious, but she will do what she wants even if other people don't approve of it. an introvert, but not at all a pushover. this is a fun mix of traits that i enjoy a lot! not to mention that as an introverted music geek myself who went "oh my god mood" at pretty much every single thing she said or did, i see a lot of myself in her and that makes me very happy.

so i probably would've ranked her #1 even before i knew she was going to be canon wlw, and now with that knowledge - well, i could not possibly love her more!!!!! in a lot of the media i personally have consumed, what few canon wlw characters there are tend to be very different from me in personality, so a character i was already relating to so strongly turning out to be wlw Like Me, on top of all the other ways i already connected with her, has brought me incredible delight!!! i absolutely can't wait to get to her and michaela's season (i swear to god they better not cancel the show before we get there), because i can already foresee that it will cater to Me Specifically and just be right up my alley. swoony escapist period romance is a genre i adore, but it's not often i get to see happy-ending queer romances included in that genre!