#ALL MEN BENEFIT FROM THE PATRIARCHY

[frankfortkentucky]

“Are You A Feminist?”

At 4 years old, I was taught that when a boy bullies a girl, that means he liked her. I thought “Oh, so that means I should bully [my little pre-school crush], because if boys bully girls to tell them they like them, it goes both ways!” So I raced around the playground with him at recess, I poked him in class to tell him jokes, and laughed when he tripped while helping him up and he did all the same to me. In my mind, this was bullying, but as you can probably tell, it was no where near it. But still, whenever he whined about losing the race, I got in trouble because “I wasn’t playing fair;” whenever he laughed to loud, I got in trouble because “I was distracting him;” whenever I took a second to long to help him up, I got in trouble because “I had pushed him.” But whenever I whined, or laughed to loud, or was on the cold linoleum floor for to long, he was never in trouble, it was still always my fault for not being fast enough, “it’s okay, you’re just a girl.” For not ignoring [crush], “he’s just trying to get a rise out of you.” For being unlady-like and absentminded, “you have to pay more attention.” My teacher was a woman.

At age 6, right before starting kindergarten, I was told my dad was not my “real dad” and how all my brothers, but one, came from different fathers. My mother had several conversations with me throughout that year explaining in detail how three separate times, 3 guys lied and manipulated her into a relationships with them. Throughout this she told my about the abuse and sexual assault towards herself and us kids in every house. Once my full-brother had gotten to 6 I asked, “Will you tell him to? I can help if you want” but she surprised me by responding, “Of course not, he’s much to young go know all that!” “But that’s how old I was when you told me?” and her response to that is something I wish I could rip out of every throat that’s ever said it to me since. The fact that the first time I heard it was from my mother will always haunt me. “But it’s different because you’re a girl” To this day she hasn’t told my 3 younger brothers anything and they are all well over 6 years old. My 2 older brothers only know because their dad has split custody, but they know nothing except that their dad provided the sperm for them. I will have to live with this knowledge for the rest of my life, and have had to since I was learning to tie my own shoe laces, but my grown brothers will be “protected” from that information and will likely never know about the abuse my mother had to go through.

Growing up with five brothers wasn’t easy. I don’t like any stereotypical “boyish” things and neither do half my brothers, but while they were asked interesting, thoughtful questions about what they did like, whether or not it was just “boyish” things (it was always just football or video games), I was always dismissed as just liking makeup and fashion and barbies. I didn’t like any of those things growing up. I liked looking at what ancient sculptures used to look like, and how land animals evolved from sea creatures, and how other languages came together into the one I speak, but of course no one wanted to hear me talk about those things. My brothers flourished in school and everywhere else; I was labeled as dumb and a loner. Soon I was forced to “like” stereotypical “girly” things so I could have normal childhood friendships, but my brothers, even though also not conforming to gender norms at all, were not forced to being anything bug themselves. They were celebrated for being different, I was berated for not being “normal.”

From 7 to 8 years old, my mother refused to buy me glasses, and wouldn’t tell me why, even though she knew I really needed them. Around that time she also started refusing to let me wear my hair up in a ponytail or pigtails. She made me start wearing long sleeves in summer. She refused to buy me new shorts after I grew out of my old ones. She started teaching me how to make a grown man “go to sleep” with kicks to the groin, thumbs and pepper spray to the eyes, and sharp objects to the throat.

Throughout my life I have experienced many, MANY horrible things. I decided to tell some passive sexist things I’ve had to go through that has fucked me up emotionally and mentally and will continue to, just like my physical assaults have and will as well. All men benefit from the patriarchy, even if just to be celebrated for being decent human beings because the bar is set so low, or to not get the blame as a child, or to be “protected” from knowing women's struggles, or to be loved and appreciated as a child, or to not have to be trained how to not get raped at 7. Even if it’s “not all men,” all men still reap the benefits whether they know it or not. EVERY woman is a victim to the patriarchy and sexism, even if she hasn’t been physically SA’d.

[dykedvonte]

You ever just see a Mouthwashing take that makes you want to bang your head into a wall? I literally just saw someone claim Curly couldn't have been emotionally abused by Jimmy before the crash because he was in a higher position of power than Jimmy.

-Shrimp Anon

The mouthwashing fandom has shown me that people genuinely do believe that certain types of abuse are not as detrimental as other types especially when they deem those immune/resistant, ergo, believing one is objectively worse no matter how it affects the person nor the intersections of power, history and dynamics at play.

Get ready cause this is a yap session:

Cause like it's heavily implied that Curly and Jimmy's friendship was toxic and abusive, pointedly in the direction of how Jimmy uses Curly's belief/comfort in him. Curly wasn't forced to enable Jimmy but he was emotional and mentally on edge around him in almost every scene in some way. Mental and emotional abuse are not contingent on what positions you have at work. Yeah, he's Jimmy's boss but he was Jimmy's friend first and it's like getting into Psych discussion to talk about how social power tends to overshadow any perceived organizational power in the human mind. People are concerned about their jobs ofc but they tend to hang onto and put more value/investment into their personal relationships, hence why there tends to be laws and restrictions around mixing the two.

I always see the sentiments that "Curly is a grown ass man", "Curly is bigger than Jimmy", "Curly is Jimmy's boss", "He just needed a backbone" as criticisms of Curly and while I do agree that on the surface level all of these to be true and viable ways Curly could've taken more control of the situation, I often look at the parallels of Anya and Curly as victims of Jimmy pre/post crash.

The way Jimmy talks to Anya post crash is how he talked to Curly in the pre-crash segments. It's hard to pin-point mainly because we know he hates and wants nothing to do with Anya compared to his contrary but similarly handled obsessions with Curly. It's a weird sort of "honey-moon" effect of abuse Jimmy does in terms of emotional and mental victimization. He is always horrid to Anya, always talking down or questioning her abilities and thoughts in a situation, this of course includes the harassment and assault. However, he has a moment of attempted gentleness/conditioning when he question her about the mouthwash when she's contemplating drinking it at the table. The key difference is he has no personal investment in Jimmy outside wanting nothing to do with him, meaning there is no sort of romanticized version of him that he can condition her off of. He knows this, hence, why he always reverts to trying to make her to scared to oppose him.

This sort of give and take of "kindness" doesn't work on her because she knows he is just doing it to take more from her than whatever he could possibly give but it reflects even the "softer" scenes between him and Curly where he always rewords or rephrases Curly's sentiments and concerns to sound more shallow. He is feigning a deeper understanding by reworking Curly's emotions into something bad and needing to be hidden. Everything is laced with envy and resentment, an outburst just around the corner, I mean he even slams the table in the birthday party scene, a tactic in emotional manipulation to set the victim on edge and cloud their ability to respond. Even if Curly knows Jimmy won't get physical in that moment, the physical actions is intended to make him back down in the confrontation in case it does. This is something that is just not person specific. It ingrains itself into how you interact with the world and life and it shows in major and minor ways with Curly.

Post-crash, the abusive nature is more in tandem to the physical victimization Anya went through and the stripping of voice and autonomy we see take place. Like the parasite in HFIM, Jimmy speaks for Curly most of the time and puts words in his mouth, similarly to how he takes Anya's plans as his own. He very commonly, with the both of them mind you, supplements the worst aspects of himself into them; pettiness, selfishness, lack of understanding... And tries to cover himself with their best qualities; kindness, planning, initiative, etc...

These parallel are just to say that positional power has little to do with if a person can be abused and how it can even be flipped to further the abuse. There is no doubt that Curly could've picked up on Jimmy's envy of his position hence another reason he never confronted him as a Captain but as a friend as doing so would immediately put Jimmy in a space to be confrontational/combative.

I think the disdain some people have when they talk about the heavily implied if not implicitly stated emotional/mental abuse Curly experienced being Jimmy's friend is when treating it as an excuse to why he didn't do more. I can understand that completely because it is not an excuse to why he didn't do more but is a very real reason people in his position in these scenarios can experience whether in the context of a work or social environment. However, I also think the way people talk about it really does demonstrate a bigger problem when talking about abuse when somehow who is/was abused is either part of the issue or enabled it.

Harkening back to the sentiments about Curly's inaction regarding Jimmy, I think the exact phrases I used/have seen show how there is an inherent belief that it is easier to overpower the effects of emotional/mental abuse that go in tandem with the perception of Curly as someone who should be able to. There is not an age you suddenly stop being susceptible to abuse nor a set point or low where you realize how it has affected you. You don't suddenly know to stand up or put a face on to face your abuser nor admit that you inadvertently enabled them to subjugate someone else to the same treatment. Maybe it's my psych brain but their is this growing belief that direct action is somehow easy or always the best method with the game shows you instances where it is not always the case. In real life that rings true too. He should have done more, but it's not impossible to see why he struggled to find a way or didn't even if it makes us mad.

It's not easy to suddenly gain a "back-bone". You don't immediately want to resort to aggression, especially if it mirrors the type you were a victim to. You don't want to believe you allowed yourself to be treated this bad, let it get that bad or allowed something bad to happen to someone else. It is easy to be in denial, to retreat to your thoughts or make excuses to avoid the painful truth. It's frustrating but in a way we know is relatable. It why we both hate and love Curly for it. We know we'd be better, we think we'd be better, we like to think we wouldn't falter in the same ways but it's always easier to say that from the outside looking in. It's easy to see what he was doing wrong because we are seeing it, not him, but the game really does make you picture what you would do if this was your raw reality and it's why this debate about Curly seems so never ending/contradictory. We can all say what we'd do but bottom line is that's much different when you're in the moment with all the emotions and human feelings attached.

I personally think Mouthwashing tackles the themes of rape culture, enabling, toxic masculinity, types of abuse and patriarchy in ways that are meant to deconstruct the typical straightforward views we mostly have of these concepts and how little subtilities of them are just as, if not more, detrimental than the overt/obvious parts. The game deals with the idea of little details and bigger picture in a way to show that sometimes the bigger picture is not the issue but the little details that make it up. It's why I have a personal dislike of depictions of Jimmy as the typical horrible person who would of course do something like this because the game is about noticing the little warning signs, the foreshadowing and foresight.

It's why I dislike the typical discussion of "bro code" and "boys will be boys" for the game because the game makes a point to avoid the standard depictions of such. It is about the type of men who still enable despite not condoning, agreeing or even perpetuating harmful beliefs because they can't see the little details or the ways it seeps into their everyday. The severity is not obvious to them as it was not obvious to Curly, Swansea or even Daisuke the way it was to a woman like Anya. There are little details about Jimmy that should ring alarms but if you are too naive like Daisuke, too distant like Swansea or too conditioned like Curly, they are just off markers.

There is 100% more constructive/concise ways to say "Curly was a victim of Jimmy's abuse on an emotional and mental aspect that clouded his judgements and perceptions in the scenario" while also critiquing on the side of "Curly still had a responsibility to protect Anya as a crew mate and Captain that he failed to do due to biases and stigma's he failed to surpass" without the weird condemnation people give him about should've knowing better than to let himself be manipulated by a person he considered a close, if not family/best-friend and had his own reasons to trust initially. Also stop being weird about victims of abuse in general with this fandom, like sorry not everyone has a like social epiphany the moment someone's nasty to them. People are treating it like you immediately know when you are in a toxic relationship immediately or comprehend when a person is actively dangerous and either it's your fault for not knowing how to leave/cut them off or you deserve it. Like the hypocrisy of people believing how certain fans treat the story reflect their irl views but not their own is crazy.

End statement is: I honestly don't even know man, I've been writing this too long and just like no man on that ship was perfect or really helped Anya when it mattered and I feel like pitting them against each other in discussion on who did the least or most or how it was justified sucks cause in the end Anya always did the most and best thing for herself.

[blueeandyellowmakesgreen]

yall know i love my ronance content but a part of me is also really happy for nancy for finally having a platonic girl friend her age. i imagine ever since barb, shes had a lot of walls she had to put up, and maybe robin practically tearing it down and letting herself in is just what she needed and wanted, so nancy just.. let her. idk im looking forward to more of them in the next season. nancy deserves that

[6okuto]

one day people will stop looking at misogynistic men and saying they're secretly gay, and finally realize implicitly associating non-queer men's hatred with queerness as well as disregarding the patriarchy's pervasiveness helps (checks notes) literally nobody

[unlimitedbutchworks]

Ignoring the fact that trans men face misogyny is not the way to go about this

I always get asks like this which is Just Magical considering I never comment on how to class the gendered oppression trans men face or deny it, as I instead choose to look to the very real patriarchal dynamics of them perpetuating and reinforcing misogyny. so what’s your deal here? can you just not read what I type, and fill in the blanks of what you misunderstand with your existing biases against women, assuming we’re trying to ~silence your lived experience~? or do you genuinely think it’s impossible for trans men to enact gendered violence based on some nebulous and totally not bioessentialist view of them “facing misogyny”, despite the reality of cis women being completely able to support misogyny while still being victimized by it?

you have to find a way to argue without just stuffing words in your opponents mouth. you have to grow beyond vulgar identity politics.

[dragontatoes]

maybe it's how it gets people on the radfem pipeline or maybe it's me being triggered from erasure of my own experiences, but I've been seeing a lot of gender essentialism in the last couple weeks and it has me feeling like joker from the joker

[fanglesshound666]

sorry if this is terribly offensive but I dont get why the "men are bad" jokes (as long as they ARE jokes) are inherently bad

[mariemariemaria]

Does anybody else feel the waves of history crashing over them constantly and like they can't escape the generational trauma that permeates and poisons every interaction they have or do I just need to chill and have a drink lol

[canichangemyblogname]

Wow… what an amazingly revolutionary ideology that is totally challenging and deconstructing the patriarchy (/sarcasm) by *checks notes* blaming victims of patriarchal violence…

I’m sure you have other totally normal, totally non-racist, totally non-homophobic things to—

Hmm. Wow. Yeah. Fascinating how “hate all men” leads people to specifically single out marginalized men and discourage people from forming class consciousness on issues of race and queerness. Would have never expected that (/sarcasm). I’m sure this is super duper helpful for combating white supremacy 👍

[angelsaxis]

i cant think about the current state of feminism in online spaces without wanting to tear my hair out what the fuck do you people mean you sincerely believe misandry is a structure of oppression that men suffer under. WHAT.

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

the thing about not all men is. obviously not all men are awful that removes responsibility for men choosing to be bad but also any man who says not all men is definitely one of those men. bc like people aren’t usually saying “all men are abusers” like that’s what conservative assholes trying to defend their abuse of their wife say to justify it they’re saying men by default are privileged by the patriarchy (and by privileged, it’s more accurate to say “not actively oppressed” bc the thing is oppression doesnt actually materially benefit the majority of the privileged class in any way but making them feel superior. rights are not given to them, rights are taken away from the oppressed class so the privileged class feels, well, privileged despite having like the bare minimum bc other people don’t have that bare minimum) which like. yeah. the patriarchy isn’t great for anyone but it specifically discriminates against women and not men (obviously this is oversimplified bc systems of oppression are interlinked and the patriarchy hurts marginalised men bc it’s idea of man is influenced by those other bigotries but like on a basic level. privilege is complicated and not like some pokemon type system but also like we are talking in broad terms about one specific system of oppression ok)

[pinayelf-archive]

it's like weird to genuinely believe and insinuate that love between women is inherently purer and deeper than other love between two people

besides the fact that it leads to sanitization of wlw attraction (like wlw being afraid to be sexually attracted to other women) its just...lol no it's not?

there's many factors why afab people tend to be more emotionally mature in relationships and that's why you think that

but it's really weird to think men are incapable of deep love...do you not think it's weird to think that a whole population of the human race is incapable of that 🤨

[wewontbesleeping]

it's so fun having a feminist post get popular on tumblr bc you get two different and very distinct types of misogynistic responses: the first is the "you are not a real feminist if you do not center men in your feminism. the patriarchy affects men just as much as it does women. to the boys with soft tummies who are reading this: you are valued. you are loved. you are perfect just the way you are. hating women is a valid coping mechanism." and the second is just calling you a cunt and telling you to die. love both of them, though. <3

[minlex]

Once again begging people on this site to recognize men as an oppressive class

[unlimitedbutchworks]

Hi first of all love the chicago quiznos coyote icon. But i wanted to ask if you wanted to elaborate at all on being of two minds about the whole femboy thing ? Genuinely just curious about what you have to add but feel free to answer privately or even just ignore if you don't wanna !

ya sure!

i meant that more about shared stuff w transfems&femboys. obviously there’s a lot of wiggle room for lack of a better word in terms of where someone’s trans femininity stands when they id as a femboy and I was trying to think about the social back and forth surrounding different parts of that umbrella.

i.e. a trans woman might have more experience with misogyny and seeing/pressing against it than a femboy who’s more ardently identified with being a man and “dodges” (word doesn’t fit well because they’re catching transmisogyny time2time) some of those experiences by not actively pursuing being seen as a woman and not enacting whatever gender social roles come with that.

and i think there’s something to say too about how a perception of professed manhood changes the way some ppl interact and how some people live; that femboy/trans woman twitch stream experiment thing a bit ago is sorta getting at what I mean with much more traffic on the femboy stream. or that an individual might approach something different depending on gender identity because of societal views and what they’ve been taught in line with that identity. this is all essentially to say that I think misogyny is a prime evil of the world and I think about it a lot

also THANK YOU ive been waiting so people wouldn’t think im sivi but my coyotepilled heart needed Quiznos icon

[cruelsister-moved2]

this is why we won't survive if we continue to focus on the oppressed but ignore the oppressor and the oppression because people might acknowledge that more than 1 in 4 women have experienced sexual assault, but doesn’t that bring up concerning questions about how many men have committed it? a lot of you are building a frankly deranged worldview where misogyny is just a natural part of the world that we’re all equally helpless against and apparently the solution is to completely deny it exists and force women to make nice with the people actively benefitting from our subordination. this happens with other forms of oppression frequently too but you seem to have the most difficulty in grasping that the patriarchy is intentionally maintained by people who benefit from it. There is no oppression without oppressors and your activism is far worse than useless if it frightens you to admit that