#Insidious fucking sexist bullshit

[thehoardofthegreatdragon]

watching Olympic weightlifting be like

men’s:

“wow he really pushed through it, that was a grind but he’s got it, look how happy he is about that lift!”

women’s:

“the crowd really gave her the energy for that! Her coaches look so happy! She’s so relieved!”

[raggedyanndy]

obviously all of it's bullshit but "girl math" is particularly insidious because like, yeah, lots of girls and women (in the u.s. for sure but probably other places, too) struggle w/ math because of sexism. we deal with shitty sexist teachers and professors, we get pushed out of or away from STEM fields in general, we don't get the same level of help and support in those classes - but that doesn't mean being bad at math is inherent to a single gender!

if a woman is bad at math, it isn't becasue of her gender. if gender is involved at all, it's gendered notions of what men and women are "good at" - because patriarchy says men are logical, rational, reasonable, while women are emotional and soft and good with words rather than numbers and blah blah blah. don't feed into it with this "girl math" horse shit! hypatia is rolling in her fucking grave.

[ooops-i-arted]

always thought it was weird how they tried to make ahsoka seem so overpowered and advanced even before training with anakin for what? two years? even having her go up against grievous as a padawan? lol screw filoni for trying to explain how she survived order 66, because she got special "blocking" training that no other jedi did. what an insult.

EXACTLY it's just "look at my super awesome OC aren't they so cool" bullshit. Yeah I've had fun doing that myself in fanfic (mostly when I was A PRETEEN and I've learned to improve since then!!).... but I'm not a Lucasfilm employee forcing it down everyone's throats and making every goddamn product have to bring Ahsoka into it somehow. To the point of taking what's basically the original sequel trilogy and inserting her in it. YES I AM STILL MAD AS FUCK.

Also the "special training" or whatever is just bullshit. It really rankles my nerves because it comes off as "oh, if only THOSE OTHER Jedi were as cool as Ahsoka or had clones as cool as Rex who could ~resist~ Order 66." Admittedly I've only unwillingly seen gifsets and not the episode but it REEKS of "only my special Mary Sues* could do it because they're BETTER than all those other Jedi/clones." It was HUGE deal in RotS that Order 66 worked because it was so insidious, took over the clones without them being able to resist so the Jedi couldn't sense it and couldn't react in time, and it was tragic these two groups that worked together were suddenly turned against each other with no choice and no chance to stop it. "Actually my OCs are so cool it didn't work on them" cheapens that.

*Usual disclaimer this is a sexist term, it's good it's being phased out, but I use it here because it's the only convenient shorthand I have for the original definition which is "character that warps the narrative around themselves at the expense of the canon characters or plot."

Also: THIS is my Grievous. Filoni can shit on and nerf my beloved Grievous in his TCW all he wants, it doesn't take away the fact that original flavor Grievous would've crushed her into Padawan pudding without any effort. 💚💙

(Even if you don't like my bitching, please go watch, 2D Clone Wars Grievous is AMAZING and the GOAT and the reason I fell in love with the character.)

[misshorrorotaku]

Y'all are delusional.

There is a woman for adult human female. But that term also describes trans women. And even describes women to which the definition of "female" does not fit, like the intersex athlete you radfem filth spent weeks calling a man.

There is no insidious bullshit. No conspiracy to keep women divided. Y'all are just pissy cuz you can't settle for "female" and want to throw out anyone who doesn't fit your definition.

Which makes it really funny y'all are claiming there is at all any amount of solidarity and class consciousness between you and any other woman. Y'all literally harass women every fucking day for not being woman enough to satisfy you. Even the women who, by your definition of meeting the definition of female, are indeed "real" women.

People will start taking you sexist, mean-girl harpies seriously the day y'all stop pretending you're not sexist mean-girl harpies. But that day will never come cuz you've deluded yourselves into thinking you're liberators, and how women all get along and will always do so unless men interrupt the harmony (something your very existence disproves).

So why *can't* we have a word for, "adult human female?" Seems like a significant group with lots in common (and lots to talk about.) And why can't that word be "woman?"

[drtanner]

By far the most frustrating thing about this Liz Truss bullshit isn’t the fact that it’s going to embolden dyed-in-the-wool bigots - of course it’s going to do that, that’s not a surprise - but rather the fact that there are reams and reams of moderates and centrists, people who sit comfortably couched in privilege that they have no idea they enjoy but nevertheless don’t consider themselves to be racist or sexist or whatever else, who will have heard her griping and moaning about labels and “identity politics” and go, “Oh, that sounds reasonable. I don’t like labels. We all bleed red, after all!” without realising how fucking insidious it all is.

These are the folks you hear saying things like “I don’t see colour!” and “Love is love!”. You know the sort. They think the solution to inequality is to deny and ignore difference, to pretend that everyone in the world is just like them [read: white, cishet, financially stable and reasonably well-off] and that if only people would stop making such a big deal about being different, we’d have world peace in no time. Them. Those people. They’re going to eat this shit up without understanding what it means, and the rest of us are going to suffer for it the next time they get the opportunity to vote.

It’s not a coincidence that this is coming hot on the heels of that recent court decision to prevent trans kids from getting access to puberty blockers. Truss is a certified TERF. But, as I’ve said before, people are very seldom only one flavour of bigot, and the abuse and oppression of trans people never stops with trans people. We’re just a foot in the door for people like Truss, and this government will be coming for you, too, before too long.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

[cottoncandysecretlair]

Man it's one thing when people promote some despicable shit shamelessly. Obviously that pisses me off, but at least they're up front about their bullshit so you can avoid. Like really open racists and sexists and supremacists that will tell you exactly what they think. Like, fuck off, that's awful, but thanks for letting me know.

What's really insidious, what really sets me off, is people hiding behind a pretense of doing good and helping people to pull this shit. All these anti-semites hiding behind Palestine so they can say Hitler was right, Radical Feminists acting like they're here to help and support women when really they're going to eat you alive for not bending to the will of the movement, people that support censorship because of children or abuse victims or whatever.

Those "causes" are all scapegoats to slip in and shape the world in the way they desire. It's so much more despicable and gross than someone that will just admit it.

[aceofwands]

I remember hanging out on the TrekBBS forums as a teenager in the mid to late 2000s and seeing the exact same sort of comments - and even thinking to myself at the time, oh they're right it doesn't make sense that he'd react this way given his background. That's how insidious this kind of knee-jerk defensive racist shit is, especially when you're an impressionable teenager (well, it was more that I was very hyperfocused on the Trek universe and making everything make sense in-universe lol).

Mind you, I also saw a lot of sexist bullshit about pretty much every single female character at one point or another on that forum, so I definitely had a lot of awareness even then of how sexist and racist a lot of Trek fans actually are.

But it wasn't until I rewatched the series again as an adult that I was like wait, hold the fuck up, it makes perfect sense for Sisko's character that he'd react this way, and Kasidy and Jake wouldn't. Even if Avery Brooks was the one who pointed out that after Far Beyond the Stars, Sisko wouldn't be as cool with Vic as the others, that just demonstrates his integrity and commitment to the character - as well as his commitment to the social commentary that made DS9 and Star Trek so important. But I'm completely unsurprised that the typical straight white male Trek fan would see this as a bad thing, given their tedious takes about the "wokeness" of modern Trek.

Kasidy: I know that Vic’s isn’t a totally accurate representation of the way things were -and it isn’t meant to be. It shows us the way things could have been. The way they should have been. Ben: We cannot ignore the truth about the past. Kasidy: Going to Vic’s isn’t going to make us forget who we are or where we came from. What it does is reminds us that we are no longer bound by any limitations except the ones we impose on ourselves.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Badda-Bing, Badda Bang (24.02.1999)

[supporthosechi]

Visiting my friend again.

Erica, Aaron and I were visiting fresh on the heels of Alisha being released from Segregation; punished for articulating she would defend herself if attacked, and naming the COs who had been targeting her for continued harassment. We wanted to be sure to bring her some things to brighten the visit and made a stop to snag some magazines. None of us could remember how many we were allowed to bring, and of course the website for Decatur Correctional was of zero help. We grabbed Teen Vogue, Cosmo, Bust, Ms., and The Nation just in case. LeLe likes reading up on current events and fashion (she’s an amazing designer herself). Aaron has already ordered a couple of books to bring, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson and Theif’s Journal. So we were banking on bringing the whole shot in with us like we had done at Logan Correctional.

Our drive always takes us past racist/sexist billboards, corn and soy fields and lasts about three hours. Every time we make this trip, without exception, we complain about the city economies that establish themselves around prisons--the false promises of “good jobs” which entail keeping people in cages, working in the trade of dehumanization.

I was anxious like always to see my friend. I have memories of how bad some of my other friends had been roughed up while in “the hole” and I was nervous to see Alisha’s physical condition.

I saw the same damn COs I always see at that front desk. I remind myself not to fall into the learned convenience of smiling at their familiar faces. I never smile in that place until I see LeLe. When I’m getting shook down I explain again about my small orthopedic lift (one of my legs is shorter than the other) in my shoe. I shake my hair out to confirm I’m noting hiding anything in it’s tangles.

She’s escorted to us so much faster than usual! We all laugh and scoff when the CO makes Aaron sit across from LeLe instead of beside her--her self-professed hardcore “dyking out” coupled with the fact that Aaron is her “big brother,” is more than enough to make our eyes roll at this arbitrary rule.

We spend most of our visit talking about what kind of new aesthetic she wants when she’s free of this place. She wants a new long and wavy weave, maybe with purple and blonde highlights. She’s got big plans for body art--a full leg sleeve (a comprehensive piece that twists and turns on her curves). She wants to wear high heels every day, and she wants to walk out of that place wearing a long flowing white dress. I can see her in and with all of these adornments as she paints this picture for us. I love hearing my friend talk about things that make her smile and feel beautiful. I wish I could give her all those things right then. I hate that she has to wait, stuck with ill-fitting white tees and grey shorts.

We’re not allowed to go outside on the visitation patio even though it’s vacant and the weather is beautiful outside. They claim someone was caught having sex out there... “good for them if they got some” we all say. But it seems like a bullshit claim by the COs, another thing to take away. We talk about her love, her sneaky tat, how legit that vending machine cheesecake might be (turns out she’s pleased with it), family updates, what’s been happening on the outside, and finally the hell that is Segregation. I don’t mean to make our conversations sound linear, they are everything but. We bounce around, joke about music, she dabs when she’s showing off and playing around. It’s really something else to see someone laugh while locked up. Talk about resistance. 

Four hours flies by. It always does. We leave knowing the names of the COs who have been fucking with her, and having a better sense of just how insidious their policies can be regarding what inmates can/can’t say on phone calls or during video visits etc. We also leave knowing our grrrl is in love and resilient. She is full of fight and life and refuses to let that place stifle her. My next visit will likely be via the Video visitation service (I’m relocating to NYC) so I hug her three or four times, extra long, not wanting to let go. I already miss her before we’re out of the room.

[undothedamage-blog]

Talking About Abuse

Strap in, this is a long one. Skip to the bottom for a TLDR if needs be.

It’s impossible to spend time in the #abuse tags on Tumblr and not run into discourse re: personality disorders. 

And it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot because I’ve stumbled across the dividing line trying to figure out where I stand. And I think both sides need to remember this:

Mental illness does not make someone abusive. But an abuser with a mental illness may be particularly cruel.

It’s a point that abuse expert Lundy Bancroft has made, and he knows what he’s talking about.

Ideally, I’d like to see the abuse community create new terminology. What exactly, I’m not sure. I’m certainly open to suggestions. Egotistical abuse? Trumpian abuse? Egocentric abuse? Conceited abuse? I don’t know (personally, I prefer Egocentric). We’re not actually trained and qualified to diagnose our abusers with specific disorders. So I’d feel more comfortable avoiding terminology that is already well-defined as something specific that may or may not accurately apply to our situations and that, imo, removes some responsibility from abusers for their choices and behavior.

That said, on the other side of things I’d say to think long and hard about whether you want to attack and possibly re-victimize somebody who is in the long, hard process of recovery from abuse for talking about things like “narcissistic abuse.” Not everything is about you. And if you have experience with mental illness you should consider using that experience to fuel compassion for victims (who are highly likely to be suffering their own mental illness as a result of their abuse) rather than launching into them because they are repeating the terminology that was handed to them by somebody else. By all means, educate people via posts on your own blog. But if you must call out a specific person (whether by reblog or anon asks), remember that the person on the other side of that screen has just spent a very long time, years or decades in some cases, being put down, attacked, criticized, shamed, and endlessly treated as wrong and stupid. If you want to engage with them, don’t do it in a way that will trigger them. And don’t treat them like just another ableist asshole. They’re trying to make sense of what has been done to them and a lot of the people providing answers and hope to them for the first time are teaching them this vocabulary. These people, the ones with a large audience and significant influence, are probably who you should be asking to reconsider their wording.

However, I want to emphasize again to my fellow abuse survivors, that not all abusers have personality disorders (in fact, most probably don’t). Not all people with personality disorders are abusive (and we should really, really hesitate to add to the stigma they face). And abusers who DO have personality disorders would probably still be abusive even if they were magically no longer mentally ill. So just as I ask people to have compassion for victims, I’d ask victims to have compassion for the mental illness community and embrace language that allows us to talk about certain flavors of abuse without co-opting words from the DSM nor contribute to stigmas that harm others (especially when we consider that the mentally ill are often more likely to be victims of abuse themselves). We are, generally, on the same team. And it really requires very little effort to just abstain from using certain phrases or words. 

Again, mental illness does not make somebody abusive. Don’t let abusers get away with using mental illness as an excuse by perpetuating language that implies otherwise.

It boils down to the same problem I have with people calling mass-shooters or terrorists “crazy.” For one thing, it dissolves their responsibility and that’s bullshit. For another, it further stigmatizes mental illness. Millions of mentally ill people every day manage to live their lives without hurting a fly (though many mentally ill people are, in fact, hurt and abused by others). And, perhaps most insidious, it absolves society of any blame for helping create abusers.

It is NOT mental illness that makes, for example, a man shoot up a bunch of people because his girlfriend dumped him. It is entitlement. And we need to face the fact that our culture absolutely contributes to teaching men they are entitled to a woman’s attention, affection, body, emotional labor, etc. We celebrate media that repeats the trope that even the most mediocre of man will be rewarded with a beautiful woman that adores him. We talk about the friend-zone as if it’s a real thing and it is something that women unfairly do to victimize men. We tell women that they’re feelings are wrong and they should be flattered by sexual harassment. We legislate that women’s bodies don’t belong to them (and even afford corpses more bodily autonomy than living women). We tolerate misogyny in our music, movies, television, and government. We teach women they are responsible for preventing assault instead of teaching men not to assault. We teach generation after generation that “boys will be boys” and that girls should just tolerate their bad behavior. 

So, yeah. Maybe a lot of us have, in fact, been abused by somebody with a personality disorder. But unless we’re a psychiatrist, we’re not really qualified to comment on that. And we’re shooting ourselves in the proverbial foot when we frame our discussions about abuse in terms from the field of mental health. Because mentally ill or not, abusers will continue to abuse as long as they feel entitled to do so. If we borrow language from psychiatry to frame the conversation around abuse, we make it too easy for everyone to throw their hands up in the air and say “well, we can’t really do anything about it” (especially when talking about disorders that haven’t found successful treatment options).

And that simply isn’t true.

Because, guess what, we CAN do something about abuse. Now, we can’t do much about individual abusers. Only abusers can change themselves. But, and Lundy Bancroft talks at length about this at the end of Why Does He Do That, society and individuals can absolutely do things to combat problems that contribute to abuse and to protect victims. Things like:

BELIEVE VICTIMS. The rate of false accusations of abuse is, despite what MRAs would have us believe, incredibly small. Bancroft says “There is a natural temptation to speak out forcefully against abuse until the man whose behavior is under the microscope is one of our own, and then we switch sides. But we can’t have it both ways. Abuse won’t stop until people stop making exceptions for their own brothers and sons and friends.“ He also says “Nothing would work faster to end the abuse of women than having the friends and family of abusive men stop enabling them. And that begins, in turn, with making sure that you listen carefully and respectfully to her side of the story— something the abusive man never does.” (emphasis mine) 

TEACH WHAT ABUSE LOOKS LIKE. Bancroft specifically advices therapists, the clergy, etc. to “provide some basic education to any male about partner abuse. Give some examples of abusive behaviors, describe their destructive impact on women and children, and explain that a man is entirely responsible for his own actions.” I think a huge aspect of why people discount women’s reports of abuse is that they don’t recognize abusive behavior as, in fact, abusive. This comes back round to entitlement and justification as well as abusers and their allies tendency to point to worse forms of abuse to say “that’s what REAL abuse looks like, what I’ve done isn’t REAL abuse.”

REFORM THE JUSTICE SYSTEM TO BETTER PROTECT VICTIMS AND FORCE ABUSERS TO FACE REAL CONSEQUENCES FOR THEIR ACTIONS. I won’t go into the details on specific changes that need to be made. This post is already super fucking long. You can find Bancroft’s suggestions in Why Does He Do That.

I’d add that we also, as a society, need to:

REFUSE TO SUPPORT MEDIA THAT IS MISOGYNIST. If it promotes the idea that men are entitled to behave in controlling or abusive ways it doesn’t deserve our attention, accolades, or money. We should also stop handing out awards to abusive men as if separating their performances and public persona from their abuse doesn’t teach them (and others) that abusers can abuse without consequence.

CHALLENGE DAMAGING IDEAS AND STATEMENTS. This is particularly important for men to do. If you hear dudes complaining about the friend zone, or celebrating rape culture, or otherwise espousing sexist and harmful ideas, call them out. Make it clear that such views are entirely unacceptable.

LISTEN TO FEMINISTS, SJWs, AND OTHER SO-CALLED SNOWFLAKES. There’s a false notion that when progressives voice concerns or complaints about micro-aggressions or subtle sexism, or whatnot that they’re focusing on small stuff and should just get over it. But the reality is that the small stuff matters. All the various small things add up to a culture that sends abusers the messages of entitlement they use to justify their abuse. Take the Bechtel Test. I recognize it is only one step in beginning to evaluate whether a movie is, in fact, sexist. But, generally speaking, any movie that doesn’t feature enough named, female characters with dialogue about something other than a male character sends the subtle message that women’s roles revolve around the men in their lives. It says that woman are accessories to a man’s story. When feminists call for more women in the writers’ room of television and movies, it goes so far beyond just wanting to level the employment playing field (though that’s important in its own right)! More women contributing to scripts means more well-rounded women characters and less sexist tropes being repeated. It means more boys growing up consuming media in which the world presented to them is not one that revolves around men.

If you’re still with me at this point in this long-ass post I just want to say thank you. I know tumblr is usually a place for more pithy communication. But I go on at length because there is just so much to say that is so important.

That said, here’s a TLDR for those who can’t handle the endless wall of text (I’m ADHD, I can empathize):

The abuse community would do well to create new terminology to discuss our experiences that doesn’t rely on language which may inadvertently harm the mental illness community.

Be patient and kind to abuse victims if you want to talk to them about how something they’ve repeated may be problematic so that you can avoid triggering them or adding to their trauma.

If somebody asks you to reconsider your language, be kind and sympathetic and remember that they may share more of your experiences than you realize. 

Society can do a lot to prevent and combat abuse.

And most importantly let me repeat this:

Mental illness does not make somebody abusive. Don’t let abusers get away with using mental illness as an excuse by perpetuating language that implies otherwise.

[juniperpomegranate]

This is so important, signal boosting!

because i myself have harbored those (pretty colonialist) fantasies about finding a place in the middle of nowhere to live, where I don’t have to live with other people unless I want to and I don’t have to be beholden to a landlord. (these fantasies got really intense after I was evicted and spent several months basically couch-surfing and then landed in a homeless shelter.) so i get it, it’s a great fantasy.

BUT THESE THINGS ARE ALSO TRUE. A lot of my fantasizing basically came from reading hippie books at an impressionable age (I came across The Commune Cookbook by Crescent Dragonwagon when I was seventeen--she wrote it when she was 16, living in a brownstone commune in New York City in 1972). And while I’ve always harbored a non-racist view of building a commune--I want to live on one with all my best friends, few of whom are white--the fact of the matter is that a lot of these skills that are put up on things like YT are often hawked by white people who are racist, fascist, sexist, homophobic, or some delightful combination.

So signal boosting for the recommendations, I will check them out! and remember to interrogate your sources. even the ones you watch/read for fun--keep a critical eye out, because white supremacist bullshit is incredibly insidious, and it’s fucking everywhere.

lmao projareds down 150k subscribers he must be setting a record of some kind