#Approaching Women

[s-exy-sapphillean]

All the shit going on is already upsetting enough but it rly is devastating to keep seeing posts bashing trans men for asking to be included in conversations about reproductive healthcare, trans safety and hrt right now, at a time where solidarity and community is so fucking important

And unironic posts along the lines of "don't forget to include trans men in your no-dating-men practice".

And a post about how trans men aren't safe to date either because they're rapists too with replies full of this

Gender essentialism will doom us all. The fascists don't even need to "divide and conquer" anymore because y'all are just doing that shit for them for free.

[captainjonnitkessler]

Things I wish women were learning from true crime podcasts: how to spot early warning signs of abusive relationships, how to escape abusive relationships, how easily domestic violence can escalate to murder, how incredibly unlikely it is to be the victim of a crime done by a complete random stranger as opposed to friends and family

What women are learning from true crime podcasts: I am in CONSTANT danger and every day I survive without being murdered by a serial killer is a miracle. I should react to everyone I meet with distrust and paranoia and live my life as if I am in mortal peril and if anyone suggests that might not be healthy then they just don't understand what it is to Be A Woman In Today's Society

[lisaquestions]

Stay the fuck away from trans women

everything in this post is TMRA garbage, not worth even arguing with.

People like this have no business speaking to or about us, let alone insisting that we should be in community with them. This is just tortured rationalization to treat us like garbage and reify patriarchal hierarchy by placing men in authority and power over women.

Trans women, you do not have to let toxic dipshits like this into your lives nor do you have to listen to them. They do not know what they're talking about, they only want to define our place as subordinate to them even as they move through the world as actual men. Be free of this garbage, be yourselves, don't let this shit drag you down.

people like this love to accuse us of terf rhetoric, but that entire post is literally terf rhetoric

also could someone who is not one of these unhinged woman-hating MRAs explain how people got to "white trans women are more male than other trans women" like they realize they're just trying to litigate excuses to say that shit and this isn't real analysis or theory right? Especially given how often trans women of color are ~suddenly white~ when people are mad at them?

[theflashjaygarrick]

As someone who has studied the history of Early Modern European witchcraft at university it is funny how many terfs spread theories as indisputable fact that are unaccepted within mainstream historical scholarship.

Yes men could be witches. No it was not a conspiracy against midwives. Yes it was rooted in misogyny and the societal disempowerment of women. No this was not the only relevant factor. Religion, class and social dynamics were also super important. Not to mention the blatant anti semitism.

The European witch hunts are such a fascinating and disturbing historical phenomenon, and I hate how it has been over simplified to support a radfem narrative.

[hollow-dweller]

while i appreciate the sentiment behind "nonbinary people don't owe you androgyny" posts, the next level up from that is the understanding that androgyny as such doesn't exist in western society. the things that we associate with androgyny are almost uniformly masculine, but treated as neutral because under cissexism and patriarchy, masculinity is neutral. it isn't enough to assert that nonbinary people can dress however we want and still be nonbinary, if that assertion is still framed around the false dichotomy of femininity and masculinity. what we understand to be feminine or masculine is entirely socially constructed, and we have to train ourselves out of the impulse to neatly sort any individual's personal presentation into a box if we want to eventually loosen the grip that gender essentialism has on all of us.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

I know WWX has a traumatic past with dogs, but sometimes you see that the dogs just want his attention, and a part of me is unsure who to feel sorry for more. Who's more pitiable, the dejected dog, or WWX who jumps into LWJ's arms?

Ran the numbers, and it turns out they are both equally pathetic.

[stuckinapril]

choice feminism is not actual feminism and will do nothing to help push women out of the shackles we have been subjected to

No I understand this. It’s completely duplicitous to pretend that women choose things in vacuum, when in reality a lot of their decisions are influenced by the patriarchal system we were born into—makeup being a byproduct of it. I’m all for women going against the grain and existing in public without feeling the need to put makeup on.

There does need to be a push against rigid beauty standards, but putting a woman down for adhering to them just isn’t the way to me. It doesn’t mean I think every choice is inherently feminist and shouldn’t be questioned. It just means I’m mindful of not infringing on other women’s autonomy w my opinions. Besides, experiences w makeup are so different… one woman could just be wearing it bc she’s artsy and just likes the way it looks, whereas another could be wearing it bc she understands that it could help her up the corporate ladder. I wouldn’t dream of calling either of them anti feminist for doing it.

Is that ideal? No. Should it should be questioned, analyzed, changed for the better? Again, bc I don’t want my words to be twisted—yes, it should be. I was never trying to say it shouldn’t. All I was stating was that I don’t think policing women on whether or not they should wear makeup is the answer. I rly don’t. I’m not prepared to call a woman who wears makeup anti-feminist. I’m not prepared to shame a woman for wearing makeup or getting plastic surgery. I’m just not. That is not the same thing as promoting choice feminism. Like I know this isn’t the critical thinking website but being accused of being pro choice feminism for simply supporting other women being happy is crazy

[joseigamer]

Patalliro! is fascinating to me because of stuff like this. It's unapologetically gay - even within its anime which aired during primetime hours in 1982 - in a way that many later BL manga would never be, like the ones from the early 2000s which would never dare to call their characters actual homosexuals. Patalliro has actually aged quite well in this regard, there's something comforting about how campy it is.

[bonebabbles]

Scenes like this keep cropping up and I cannot help but roll my eyes all the way back into my skull

Don't worry guys, having NEW children fixed him. This famously teaches a violent man to stop hitting kids and makes him no longer feel the need to construct nightmarish scenarios so he can humiliate and embarrass those he has power over. Men whose wives produce lots of babies for them are Very fulfilled and Understand how strong bonds are supposed to be

"Instead of advising him he'd been defensive" is a REALLY INTERESTING way to phrase "got so offended at the suggestion to stop murdering women for their land that he shoved his son's face in a festering wound and told him to leave him to get eaten by maggots."

I wonder how they'd spell something like, "walked through a patch of thorns so that his son would be in physical pain and then belittled him for finding an alternate route because he wanted him to suffer" and "lied directly to his face about why he abandoned him when he realized the child could be useful"

[torchwood-99]

I don't think Lord of the Rings is a sexist book (as in that's too definitive, there's positives and negatives in its depiction of gender) or that the LOTR fandom is in entirety a sexist fandom. But I do think the fact that women take a significantly smaller amount of page time up attracts certain types of male fans, who appreciate that they don't have to read too much about women or give them much thought outside of them being rewards and love interests for the blokes.

[carlyraejepsans]

for real WHERE does the idea that [utdr humans] are nongendered so that "you can project on them" come from. their literal character arcs are about NOT being a blank slate to be filled in by the audience

i think i understand the assumption on some level for undertale, because there is a very intentional effort to make you identify with the "player character" in order to make your choices feel like your own (the beating heart of undertale's metanarrative lies in giving you an alternative path to violence against its enemies after all, and whether you're still willing to persue it for your own selfish reasons. YOUR agency is crucial).

of course, the cardinal plot twist of the main ending sweeps the rug from under your feet on that in every way, and frisk's individuality becomes, in turn, a tool to further UT's OTHER main theme: completionism as a form of diegetic violence within the story. replaying the game would steal frisk's life and happy ending from them for our own perverse sentimentality, emotionally forcing our hand away from the reset button.

i think their neutrality absolutely aids in that immersion. but also, there's this weird attitude by (mostly) cis fans where it being functional within the story makes it... somehow "editable" and "up to the player" as well? which is gross and shows their ass on how they approach gender neutrality in general lol.

but also like. there's plenty of neutral, non PCharacters in undertale and deltarune. even when undertale was just an earthbound fangame and the player immersion metanarrative was completely absent, toby still described frisk as a "young, androgynous person". sometimes characters are just neutral by design. it's not that hard to understand lol.

anyone who makes this argument for kris deltarune is braindead. nothing else to say about it.

[echidnana]

also the notes on the last post are so bad LMAO like fundamentally mouthwashing is about the systems in place that enable abuse in the workplace. like to say any of the men "did nothing wrong" is simply incorrect and ignores the point. every man on that ship was benefitting from the system that allowed anya to be abused. jimmy's actions, while obviously made of his own free will, were informed by the environment he was in and the fact that he FELT COMFORTABLE abusing anya. he had zero regret for assaulting her, only that there was evidence (her pregnancy). this is because he fundamentally did not see abusing her as being wrong. he only expresses guilt that he tried to crash the ship, hurting curly.

[fluentisonus]

still chewing this one over so hopefully this makes sense but one very minor running thing I feel like we get w jean valjean is that without disliking women or even believing that they're in any way unequal to him he. hm. for the most part doesn't have much normal contact with adult women after his sister (and presumably none for the 19 years he was in prison) which means that. not that he doesn't understand women so much as i feel like idk. he makes the mistake of unconsciously assuming men-are-from-mars-women-are-from-venus style that he doesn't understand them (being aware of that lack of contact & under the impression women are fairly different to men), and because he's a guy who wants to understand things & is largely self taught (often from books) especially wrt social niceties, he ends up being very credulous, in that presumed lack of understanding, of commonly held beliefs & traditional, societally reinforced ideas of gender rolls & gender characteristics, and this sometimes ends up ultimately hurting women around him despite his genuine good intentions

like obviously firstly in montreuil-sur-mer where he wants the female workers to have "pure morals" and gives them a separate workroom to the men to "remain discreet" which I think he genuinely intended as a means of making it a good work environment for the workers -- women can have privacy & focus on work & nothing uncomfortable or untoward is being brought into the workplace etc -- but as we know this backfired horrendously because it essentially resulted in fantine being fired for having a child out of wedlock & everything she went through after. and given his reaction he doesn't seem to have ever considered this a potential effect of his rules -- like he doesn't seem to have understood how those sorts of rules end up ultimately punish the women involved more than anything

and the other main instance of course is with cosette and his assumption that essentially a woman has a father, & then she has a husband & having a husband no longer needs a father (this is strengthened a lot by his own feeling of his own taintedness -- it's not the main thing responsible for what happened by any means. but it's a part of it) & this assumption is incredibly hard on her!!! she obviously doesn't see it that way at all! but it never seems like it occurs to him not to think of it in that framework bc essentially society in general sees it that way

idk I guess what I find interesting abt this is that it's a big blind spot in a guy who's otherwise extremely willing to question social biases & generally likes to take people all on a level as just another sort of person like himself. again I think in his general behavior towards women interpersonally there's nothing bad & in fact there's a lot of genuine respect there & probably willingness to learn even (in fantine 's case), but it's like he just never worked out that these ideas about gender are about as true & helpful as ideas about class or criminality etc etc

[tenderperversion-moved]

(kicking a hornets nest) i think i would like chappell roan much more if it didnt feel like her attraction to women comes from disillusionment and dissatisfaction with men.

[pernillecfcw]

Zecira Musovic 🧤

[bbqhooligan]

i am glad drake is being called out and i’m glad kendrick is doing exactly that but i can’t help but notice that men are only quick to label other men they hate as predators and not their very own friends.

its a valid way to feel but when trying to analyze peoples actions possible political results i find its better off to try to lock away ones own feelings about the entire system. its unfair.

like ive seen many people upset along the lines of "so kendricks just coming out with these serious allegations just cuz theyre beefing. men only care about womens violence to dunk on other men" and while thats a valid way to feel about the culture, about the general, the majority, about men, cuz we literally see this happen around us, etc etc we literally cant apply it to individuals baselessly.

i have 0 idea what the circumstances were and what kendrick was thinking through this whole thing, WHAT I DO KNOW is that its literally historic someone with this kind of platform is so ruthlessly coming after someone else from the industry with very clearly stated accusations. its so ugly but in Hollywood, you have actors and directors revealed as sex offenders or in lawsuits of sexual violence OR EVEN COMPLETELY OFF THE GRID unacceptable behavior and no one breathes out a word on it. its tradition directors take advantage of women to give them roles. tradtion to write naked scenes for women they want naked. but everyones tail is caught in everyones mouth, so people whose brands are wholesome or "progressive" stay silent to stay employed. its all very hushed.

ive never seen a man this popular and widely respected openly call another man a misogynist. like i said before, its not that Kendrick Lamar is some Feminist Scholar King, its that the action, the angle is surprisingly pro-woman. in times feminist sentiment gets so much backlash and is so unpopular with general audiences i was pleasantly surprised by the way he spoke of women. thats it.