#(probably mostly the women but)

[dootznbootz]

Sorry, not sorry but I see this too often and it bothers me :)

Before people get mad: Notice how I put “Me and Penelope fans” there? I know there's others. this ain't about you <3

edit: This is about how people in the fandom prioritize Odysseus and Telemachus (and even Diomedes, who is not in the Odyssey) despite the Odyssey also being HER story as well. I've seen many fics about Odysseus and Telemachus in their youth, and never really seen that for Penelope.

[inkskinned]

it just sucks because nothing is ever fucking made for you, and if it is made for you like 75% of the time it gets chopped into little pieces by every person alive because this is the one thing you have, so it has to prove itself to you.

like, a thing can't just be for women. men need to assign it to women. women have to experience "must" or "should" before their hobbies and passions - women are allowed to do silly, passive things like tuck our ankles and titter behind a fan, or something. women are allowed to, they are welcomed to. like the world is a house and we are supposed to be in the kitchen and now we are being given the divine right to enter the living room if we bring chips

because when it becomes for you, or about you, that is when the thing is vile. you should/must wear makeup so you can appear beautiful to men. once you wear makeup for yourself, or because you yourself enjoy putting it on, then you are no longer doing the right thing. there is a reason men hate certain fashion trends. there is a reason men hate things like the pumpkin spice latte - because it's not about them. you are buying it because it is good for you. they degrade your passions and interests. there is a reason women-led fields are largely seen as being "not a real" profession. when you are a good cook, that is because you can provide for him. close your eyes. you're not going to be a chef, be honest. that is a man making food for himself.

bras are made so breasts will be appealing to men. they are rarely about comfort or support. you have given up entirely on the idea of pockets. young girls have to worry about a shorter inseam on their shorts. a girl on instagram gets her septum pierced, and men in the comments are rabid about it - i just want to rip it out of her face. she'd be beautiful without it.

and fucking everything is for them. even the media that is "for you" is for them, eventually. remember "my little pony"? remember how hard it is to convince any executive to believe that little girls are worth selling to? in the media that is for you, you see little ways that you still need to make it accessible for them - the man is always powerful, smart, masculine. he is a man's man. the media usually forgives him. it usually says okay, some men are awful, but hey! gotta love 'em. because if you don't hold their hands and say "this is literally just a story about my lived reality", they shit their pants about it. they demand you put them into the media that's for you.

these are people who are so used to glutting themselves on the world. they are used to having every corner and every dollar and every place of leadership. so you say can i please have one slice of cake, just for myself, please, holy shit. and they fucking weep about it. they say you're being unfair, because some of their one-thousand-slices aren't beautiful, and your singular cake slice doesn't have their name on it. and aren't you being rude by not offering to share?

and honestly. fucking - yeah, man. you were kind of surprised, because the cake is a little basic (you bake at home, you're way past this stuff). but holy shit, it was nice just to be offered cake in the first place. you're used to having to starve. you're used to getting nothing, but going to the party anyway, because you're expected (professionally) to show up. you liked that it is a simple cake, and that it is warm, and mostly: you like that there is, for once, a cake-for-you.

in the real world, outside of metaphor, it feels like fucking being slapped. barbie didn't even say anything particularly unusual; it literally just made factually evident points. there are less women in leadership than men. we can look at that fact objectively. that is a real thing that is happening. and the movie is aware that it has to defend itself! that it has to spend like half an hour just turning to the camera and saying: i know this is hard for you to understand, but this is a real thing that women experience.

it's just - this is that one kid on the playground who thinks its allowed to hog all the toys. he builds this hoard that nobody else is allowed to even look at, or he'll get aggressive. everyone's a little scared of him, so they let it slide, because his daddy gave him the golden touch. he hates when people cry and thinks bullying is cool. he writes boys only! on a big sign and makes all his friends take "alpha male" classes.

and then girls pick up barbies, because there was nothing left for them. and in the void they've been given, with their scraps: they make long, spiraling narratives about how barbie is actually descended from snakes and has given her righteous followers magical (if concerning) powers and can speak 32 languages (2 of which are animal related) and has big plans for infrastructure (beginning with the local interstate). and the boy comes over, and he has a huge fit about how the girls aren't "including" him. he wants to know why the girls aren't making the story about ken.

"we didn't like your story." the girls blink at him. they point to his war stories and the gi joes and the millions of male-led narratives and how still in the modern day men get two-thirds of the speaking roles in movies and they point to men making mediocre shows that don't get lambasted and they point to men encouraging toxic masculinity and they point to men everywhere, men and men and men. and they say: "how is this our fault? you had ken."

"no!" he is already back to screaming and stomping his feet and tearing at his hair and intentionally reminding them that men are holding back thinly concealed violence and he says: "if it's not for me, it's actually sexism."

[rockethorse]

The basegame wedding dress has a pregnancy morph??

[hedgehog-moss]

My top 10 nonfiction reads of 2023 (the asterisked ones are in French with no translation as of yet) :

Belle Greene, Alexandra Lapierre

The Indomitable Marie-Antoinette, Simone Bertière

Reporter: A Memoir, Seymour Hersh

Red Carpet: Hollywood, China and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy, Erich Schwartzel

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, Patrick Keefe

Servir les riches, Alizée Delpierre*

La Comtesse Greffulhe : L’ombre des Guermantes, Laure Hillerin*

Le Courage de la nuance, Jean Birnbaum*

The Book Collectors of Daraya, Delphine Minoui

Flowers of Fire: The Inside Story of South Korea's Feminist Movement, Hawon Jung

[vhalesa]

Guess who is actually capable of proper watercolor drawings if she really wants to?

[spitblaze]

Okay I've witnessed it happening enough in Queer Internet Circles that I think I can confidently say something about it.

Can we PLEASE stop picking arbitrary lgbt+ demographics out of a hat and having entire conversations about how they 'aren't actually queer' and 'taking valuable resources' for the crimes of 'some of them are cringe' or 'some of them are assholes' or 'they have a nebulous privilege over the rest of us so they're the oppressor, actually'.

Like look, some conversations are absolutely worth having. There's a lot of transmasc shitheads who latch on to toxic masculinity or seem to completely forget what it's like to navigate a world that considers you a woman, or completely fail to realize that being transgender yourself doesn't suddenly mean you don't have to examine yourself for internalized transphobia or transmisogyny. And that should be addressed, every community has its issues, no community is a monolith, no demographic is made up of entirely good smart righteous people or evil bad oppressive abusers. Obviously.

But I'm not talking about that!

I'm talking about people bringing up the same tired rhetoric they used when they tried to claim that nonbinary people are clout-chasing attention seekers who will keep cishet society from taking the rest of us seriously, that people used when they decided asexuals were actually cishets who co-opted our movement for their own personal gain, which was recycled from when people tried to claim that bisexuals are het-passing fakers and if a REAL queer has sex with one they'll be left for a cishet because that's what bisexuals do, which is the same as the shit they spewed at whoever the target was before that! It's paranoid nonsense all the way down, people looking for an acceptable target to take their shit out on!

Can we stop doing this, please?? Can we stop picking demographics within our own community that people arbitrarily decide are fine to bully and mock and kick out of the spaces they helped create because you think that they're cringe or that speaking about the issues they face is privileged whining? Can we stop giving bigoted cishets free reign on already vulnerable communities because someone arbitrarily decided that THESE queers are evil and cringe so its okay to make shitty comments and jokes about them? Can we PLEASE stop the cycle in its tracks while we can still see the crosshairs moving onto tranfems and trans women? We can stop this now before it starts getting uglier and deadlier, but we HAVE to be aware and do more than complaining about it online.

[lalaloobzy]

Boy oh boy do I love being an asexual aromantic with intense aesthetic attraction (or perhaps gender jealousy??) for both Roberta Colindrez and Kelly McCormack

[borgialucrezia]

unpopular opinion: i know most of the show fans find ursula bonadeo annoying and dislike her character because cesare projected lucrezia onto her and used her as a substitute. but after many rewatches, i grew to like her. she's very pretty, and she was very sweet to lucrezia while helping her with giving birth. i feel sorry for her because she's a noble young woman who spent her life trapped with an abusive husband who beats her. and when she thought she finally found this handsome, honorable savior who could free her (even though she was indecisive about him, which i don't blame her because women back in that era didn't have many choices, and her husband would probably kill her if he found out about her and cesare), he turned out to be unhinged, as he seduces her, and manipulates her while being lustfully obsessive over her. so, she was rightfully terrified and frustrated by cesare because he eventually assaulted her and dragged her around while forcing himself on her because she didn't exactly look like the perfect image (mirror of his sister) in his head after she cut her hair. then she got a very brutal end at the hands of the french army, raping her and mutilating her. she lived most of her life being tormented by cruel men. her character makes me so sad thinking about the women who were mistreated and killed by their abusive partners and were lost and forgotten to time because of the patriarchal system since it is beyond horrible towards women.

[yuridovewing]

i understand the frustration with “i made this gay pairing cis x trans so they can still have biological babies” with no thought to other methods and how ppl assume thats the case when it comes to mothpool aus where mothwing is also the mother of the three, but also…. idk i kinda dont give a shit if someone wants to do that and i dont really think its inherently transphobic as long as its handled with care and respect.

what really concerns me about this debate is how some people are adamant that you cannot portray trans people having biological children in media or youre being disrespectful. and im gonna say as a nonbinary person who doesnt want children for themself- thats kinda fucking weird? like i understand that for some people, theyre trans themselves and theyre speaking from a place of dysphoria, and i absolutely get that, which is why i think the topic should be handled with nuance and diversity in trans characters, but like…. guys. pregnant trans men exist irl. trans women get people pregnant irl. trans ppl’s ability and right to parent and have biological children are being debated irl. we get denied the opportunity to adopt as well.

in a climate like this, are we SURE we want the stance on rewrites and headcanons in the silly cat books to be “if you portray trans characters having children, especially with a gay couple, youre a transphobic freak no matter what!” does it really matter? especially if its being done by a trans person handling the topic with nuance who has a lot of trans characters with varying perspectives?

obviously yes, remember that thats not the only way certain gay couples can have kids, remember that not every trans person is fully comfortable with it and keep that in mind, remember that surrogacy and adoption are also perfectly valid ways to give fan babies- but remember that there are OPTIONS. not that you need to condemn the idea of transgender parents in the first place unless they fit the very specific criteria of “proper transgender representation” and anything that dares deviate from that is proof the op is a transphobic monster (bonus points if theyre a trans creator bc i mostly see trans people getting shit for this and it kinda pisses me off. although idm if cis people do it either as long as theyre handling it with respect)

[fictionadventurer]

Why was "Mrs. Gaskell" used as a way to dismiss her as an author? As if she's just a middle-class wife and mother who can't care about anything beyond the cozy and the domestic? This should be something to celebrate! She was a wife and a mother and an author!

And not just one who's writing stories for her children. (Not that there's anything wrong with writing for your children--Tolkien writing for his children gave us some masterworks--but it is the expected path of a mother of the period who wants to write.) Gaskell wrote stories examining big societal issues like labor and technology and the class divide. She's living proof that a woman doesn't stop having a brain or caring about the wider world once she has a husband and children. She managed to write stories that have become part of the literary canon and raised a family. Why was this used to frame her as a lesser author when she managed to do more with her life? It's amazing that an author with that background got to be part of the literary conversation, and it should be celebrated more.

[comradecowplant]

whenever i see people defend having ai in everything because they believe we are on the cusp of the great singularity blah blah sci-fi magic future that does not (& most likely will not ever) exist:

[forgetful-river]

Vaguely creepy Feferi for your troubles

[july-19th-club]

i think there's horse sexism in the kentucky derby . field of twenty horses, right? plus a couple more runners-up that can swap in if somebody has to drop out . not a single filly in the lineup. which obviously doesn't mean i think that like ... the HORSES are sexist . but i imagine that in a field where most of the top trainers are men themselves, there's more of a focus on training the colts that come across their paths, and perhaps even more colts being selected to be trained towards these big races in the first place . a horse is a horse is a horse, they all go fast, but there's probably an unconscious bias from breeders, trainers, owners, etc that prevents the field from being more diversified

[a-drama-addict]

got tagged by @layalu to put 5 bad bitches against one other and I’m picking My bad bitches of all time (that i assume the moots.. know somewhat)

This is the women competition i guess! choose your fave woman NOW

anyway tagging @brainwormterrarium @bearsizedant @beelzebard @nomouthtospeakof @goofsoup and anyone else who feels called upon themselves to do this

[coffeeworldsasaki]

It's totally predictable but I still got a couple minutes of confusion when someone didn't agree with me when I said that people think Dao Is a dark fantasy unlike all the games that came after just because there's women raped and used to breed

[sunsetzer]

On one hand, I want a final fantasy 6 remake, because the game is criminally underrated and the amount of fan content (which is all absolutely fantastic btw) is Not Enough for my neurodivergent, hyperfixating brain.

On the other hand, that would inevitably encourage more people to join the fandom, which would be great, except it seems these days the bigger a fandom gets the more toxic it becomes, and I really like what we have going on over here in our little corner. We all just love the game and its characters and nobody fights about who should and shouldn't date who or who you shouldn't like because they're ~problematique~. Nobody's trying to make one ship morally better than another, nobody's calling anyone names or threatening to doxx people who don't agree with their opinions. It's so peaceful and I love that for us. We're just vibing. Moisturized. Unbothered. In our lane. Flourishing.