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ceofcatgirls · 4 months ago

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//suggestive

Going to finally make a post about this bc its been haunting my mind for a good month or two at this point--

This is a brief-ish post about guns being used as a metaphor for masculinity, power, and potential stand-in for phallus imagery in the dollars trilogy. I'll also be speaking about these things from a general stand point too, but I'll try to focus on how and where they interconnect.

I doubt most ppl will read all of this but I have brainworms so I need to put this out somewhere .

I think a lot of these points can be said about Westerns in general, btw. Not just Leone movies. However I'll focus on the dollar trilogy because this is already too long and needs to have a focus.

Now, I'm sure masculinity will need no defining, but I'll briefly show what definition of phallic imagery I use;

(Yes I'll eventually tie all this to the homoeroticism present in the movies, with a slight feminist bent to this analysis)

(I want you to keep in mind throughout this post that guns are metaphoric stand ins for dicks lol, just so i dont have to keep repeating that all the time)

I think this definition is quite good as it incorporates the concept of power into itself, which imo is a must-have when discussing masculinity in artwork.

As expected, there is an undeniable connection between phallic imagery and masculinity, which is also tied to power. A lot of masculinity throughout human history has relied upon genitals (even if not completely) to assert itself, which in turn, would affect the power relations men and women have, but also between men themselves. After all, the patriarchy is dependent on gender, with the male gender having the upper hand. This would mean, within a patriarchal society, men with more masculinity have more power, so we can see how sexuality is so tied to the patriarchy also, and how men will inevitably compete.

I'll start with perhaps one of the most obvious examples of this from the trilogy; which also conveniently has phallic imagery, or phallic metaphors.

Specifically, I'll start with the first proper interaction Colonel Mortimer and Manco have in For a Few Dollars More

(I'll link the clip just in case)

youtube

I'll state the obvious first; this is obviously a competition to define who would have the most power (and thus upper hand) in their relationship. That's why neither character backs down, and why there is a tense animosity between the two. Of course its also more complicated than that; Manco, the youngest of the two, is obviously taking this more seriously and is the more antagonistic. Mortimer seems to just be entertaining him at times, whilst also trying to show that his years of experience can give him the upper hand. Its a perfect scene presenting power, age, experience, who the characters are, and how their relationship will be forward from this.

And of course, as any western, guns are used for this.

Perhaps it's the perfect genre for what Sergio Leone wanted to present. Guns are the perfect metaphor for a phallus; they display power, they display masculinity, and they even have the shape! They can define life or death, much like how male sexuality, and therefore a phallus, can define a man's position in the patriarchy.

The shootout ends in a draw, as both Mortimer and Manco are skilled with their guns. Their stand-off for power and dominance led to a standstill and an equilibrium between the two. This will then define their relationship, as they form a equal partnership.

(And of course, perhaps Mortimer was being kind to Manco and held back a bit. He did the same in the end of the movie, by letting him take all the rewards. To Mortimer, there is more to gunslinging than an attempt to assert masculinity. And the fact that he holds back in his competition with Manco presents a level of respect he has for him, which adds on to the already existing homoeroticism of two men using guns to assert their dominance onto each other. I'd even argue that's what makes the homoeroticism purposeful, in this movie's case.)

There are other examples of guns bring used to impose masculinity throughout For a Few Dollars More. That is the crux of every final duel after all. But Mortimer and El Indio don't have significant homoerotic undertones so I won't get into it.

My other favourite example of this occurance in the dollars trilogy, is in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

It's a quick, small moment in a wider, longer scene. However I like how it gets across its message in a simple way.

It's the end of the scene where Angel Eyes forces a partnership onto Blondie.

I think it's important to mention how this is how Sergio Leone chose to end a scene where Angel Eyes and Blondie form a partnership. Its basically telling the viewer that Blondie consents to working with Angel Eyes. On a surface level, Blondie is sliding the gun to its holster to show that he's making peace with Angel Eyes. However, further introspection on the subtext also reveals other things.

For starters. The slow sliding in and the zoom in on the gun, with it becoming the centre point of the scene, easily becomes homoerotic (I don't think I need to explain how sexually suggestive it looks), but with it being seen as a sign of peace, it can also be seen as a sign of not only consent, but also submissiveness. Blondie here is admitting that he's under the thumb of Angel Eyes, and he can't do anything about it, not even with a gun. He can't challenge his power, nor his masculinity. The phallic imagery here only adds on to all of these points, for reasons mentioned previously.

Moving on from specific scenes, I'll mention something present throughout the movie that the definition I used above also mentions; cigars can also been stand-ins for phallic imagery, and masculinity.

Do I really have to mention how The Man With No Name is literally always having a cigar in his mouth ??? Its a very obvious oral fixation, one that Sergio Leone uses to his advantage.

Leone doesn't just use a cigar to make TMWNN look cool. The cigar, much like how a gun was used to represent Manco and Mortimer's, and Blondie's and Angel Eyes', relationships and partnerships, its also used to represent the relationship between Blondie and Tuco.

The scene where, imo, Blondie's and Tuco's relationship changes, is where Blondie offers Tuco a cigar after eavesdropping the conversation between Tuco and his brother.

And Tuco takes it, smokes it and grins!

Notably, Tuco's and Blondie's changing relationship is shown through a cigar rather than a gun, which is objectively significantly less violent, which sets them apart from the other relationships. There is also a closer contact between them, as in the other iterations of TMWNN never gave his gun to any ally of his, much less shared such a close contact as mouth-to-mouth.

The homoeroticism is rather obvious, and in this cade, it's present without power but still with phallic imagery.

(Another notable example was, if my memory serves correctly, in a Fistful of Dollars, Joe lights up a cigar for Ramone. But I won't mention that much since I could be confusing this for another movie, but if it did happen, it's also another scene packed with symbolism, and quite the opposite to Tuco's and Blondie's cigar scene).

Continuing to speak more generally, there are often focus and zoom ins on the guns in the movies. This peaks at the final Mexican standoff in GBU, where the guns are in their holsters and belts. Its natural that they'd be near their crotches too, but that only emphasises the masculinity, power and phallic imagery already present in the movie (as well as tension in the scene).

It comes with no surprise when Blondie chose Angel Eyes to shoot at. After all, Tuco and he had already made peace with each other. The only true masculine competition was between Angel Eyes and Blondie + Tuco.

There are also scenes where TMWNN shows off his skills with his gun; displaying his masculinity again through phallic imagery, so it's no wonder he went to become a figure of masculinity.

There is also the scene where Tuco acquires a new gun after being abandoned by Blondie. That represents what was mentioned previously; how men often fight for power. In this case Blondie takes away Tuco's power and masculinity by humiliating him in a desert. Tuco acquiring a new, polished and refined gun is his way of reclaiming his masculinity after Blondie emasculated him.

I won't speak much about A Fistful of Dollars, because the relationship between Joe and Ramone isn't as developed as the other relationships in the other movies. But it's also worth noting how a focal point in the final duel includes Joe's pistol and Ramone's supposedly stronger gun.

"When a man with a .45 meets a man with a rifle, you said the man with the pistol is a dead man. Let's see if that's true. Go ahead, load up and shoot."

In here, Joe reclaims his masculinity through a final duel. I wish the movie had been longer so I could connect potential homoeroticism to this scene like I did with the other examples, but I think it's a good scene, so I mentioned it nonetheless.

Sergio Leone movies are very much centred around men. That's generally how westerns work, too. But I think it's interesting, as it adds aligns with the analysis that men uphold the patriarchy between themselves, and this is even more true with Leone movies as they include little to no women (whereas many westerns have at least one or two), so most interactions are between men.

I'm not suggesting Sergio Leone intended all this. I do think the homoeroticism, phallic imagery and masculinity is purposeful. He was a Marxist, so perhaps the feminist angle to all this was also purposeful, but I don't think that's the case. Much like his contemporaries, Leone focused on class analysis when critiquing power structures (this mostly in his other movies), so the patriarchal angle was perhaps unintentional. I like to give the benefit of the doubt to artists when analysing their art, though, so I'm always happy to be proven wrong.

As I said. This is way too long and no one will probably read all of it. There are far more examples but I won't include every bc this is already a long asf post.

What the conclusion? I need to stop thinking about gay people!!!!!!!!!

A look into how my braincells look whenever I think about these homos a bit too much;

And this is how I felt writing this post:

And the thing is there's so much more I can say but I don't wanna make this too long esp since this is me ranting more than a proper analysis but jfc Leone always made sure to make his movies so damn gay it's actually insane

#my brain is so cooked thanks leone #western actors and directors would be unemployed on the streets if gay people didnt exist #everyone say thank you sergio leone for inventing gay people #this post wasnt meant to be deep or that serious but i kinda steered off that at times sorry #no ones reading all that bro 😭😭😭😭😭#dollars trilogy #the good the bad and the ugly #for a few dollars more #a fistful of dollars #the man with no name #sergio leone #yes ik what blondie smokes isnt called a cigar but its a shorter name and easier to write ok

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drbased · 19 days ago

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People are obsessed with naming certain things feminist or anti-feminist because they want to believe that 'feminist' is short-hand for 'perfectly moral, with regards to gender'. They do this because:

They want short-cuts to percieving themselves as moral when faced with moral questions

They percieve anything that brings up questions of morality as ultimately belonging to the collective: social sciences are 'soft science' and therefore anyone, no matter what their credentials or even if they've thought about the topic until 5 minutes ago, has an equal say; if morality is about everyone, and therefore we have an equal stake in the topic, then don't we earn an equal say by default, by the nature of being human?

Feminism, like everything women create, cannot ever be a product of our subjective personhood: it must be something that exists in the ether that women merely tap into; any 'ideas' women have are something we are simply conduits for. So, when men argue with us, you may notice that they're not arguing with you as a person, as a human woman with subjective ideas that come from your own brain, but rather they're arguing through you, over you, arguing instead with the vague ethereal entity from whom those ideas actually emerged. So, then, feminism becomes a stand-in for something naturally bigger than us, something never created by imperfect human women but rather something that must mean something bigger than that.

'Terfs', despite echoing the closest analogue to traditional feminism, are derided as 'getting feminism wrong', because feminism is simply morality as it relates to gender. Meanwhile, things that literally go against the fundamentals of feminist principles - bdsm, 'sex work', pornography and belief that misogyny is a product of internal 'gender identity' rather than the sexed body - are in mainstream circles considered 'real feminism', despite none of those featuring as positives in any classical feminist theory. Yes, definitions change, shift and evolve over time - but that doesn't mean you can't acknowledge the human realities that have forged feminism. That classical feminist theory was written by real people, with real ideas that came from their real female brains.

We would be all better served by understanding that 'feminist' is a product of flawed, imperfect human beings - and not everything that is 'feminist' is automatically morally perfect, and not everything that is 'anti-feminist' is automatically evil. This may ruffle some feathers, but I think ironically we become better feminists by respecting the fact that feminism is the product of actual human women. Feminism is a combination of philosophy, theory and activism, as described and built upon by real people. Yes, there are contradictions within feminist circles, as there are contradictions in all moral and political theory and philosophy, as exacerbated by points 1 and 2 above - but it's worth taking a step back and respecting the inherent, natural subjectivity of feminism.

#my writing #theory posting

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rockybloo · 5 months ago

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Slightly (or extremely) unrealistic scenario but it’s funny (at least to me) so I’m sharing it:

A random person (preferably a woman) asks Sweetheart and Bitterbat “Do you think I’m pretty?” And, Sweetheart being the sweetheart she is (pun intended 🙂) says “Of course!” Bitterbat on the other hand is like “Yeah, but not as pretty as my girlfriend.” And then Sweetheart just looks at him with a serious face and says “Did you just tear down another woman in the age of the Barbie movie?” Bitterbat confused starts sputtering and before he can say anything else she drags him away saying “We’re having a talk about this when we get home.” Leaving the poor individual just as confused.

…The point is Sweetheart is a feminist no doubt (actually some doubt because you’re the creator so…)

I thought the Barbie movie was cute but...it was def very much 2010s Tumblr feminism for me. As in it just...really lacked dimension for my tastes.

So I don't particularly see it as something that speaks to Sweetheart save for her pointing at Ken during the earlier scenes and telling Bitterbat "Look it's you".

This is a long one so buckle up

In a situation where a woman randomly asked them (while they were their civilian selves) their opinion on her appearance, I imagine this would happen on a mall date where they are probably shopping for make up or clothing. And I imagine this is just someone wanting some outside views on herself to make an opinion on what to get. Or maybe it could even be a random street interaction.

Sweetheart would of course say she looked pretty since...well she isn't called sweetheart for nothing. And she would hype her up some to give her more confidence just for a extra nice cherry on top since she knows how it feels to have low self esteem when it comes to appearances.

Sweetheart also knows her man. She knows he thinks she is beauty herself and no one compares. She can also read Bitterbat's body language and knows he can be blunt as hell. She knows regardless of gender, that man will hurt someone's feelings.

So all she needs to do is give Bitterbat look. A very specific look he knows very well.

It's that "BEHAVE" look.

Bitterbat does what Sweetheart tells him, verbal or not, and he agrees with Sweetheart with a big ole artificially sweet smile. He enters that good ole customer service mode he takes when he knows being "himself" might lead to upsetting Sweetheart, and compliments the woman's appearance enough to send her on her way.

He's a smart guy and he knows his way around emotions very well. It's what makes him dangerous because of how well he can play people.

And once the woman walks away, beaming and happy, Bitterbat drops the act and Sweetheart just gives that amused sigh as she shakes her head some.

"Boy, if you don't stop being mean" But there's a chuckle to it because she finds it somewhat entertaining.

Bitterbat just does that smug ass expression where his forked tongue peeks from his mouth before pecking her on the cheek.

As for Sweetheart being a feminist, I don't really slap labels on OCs save for their race or ethnicity, their sexual orientation, and gender identity.

Labels don't give good enough insight into how a character really thinks so I don't wanna give one to a character and have people misread them.

So, to give her stance on gender based stuff, Sweetheart certainly believes everyone should be equal and that men shouldn't be deemed better than women. She also doesn't believe all men are complete heartless assholes or vilianizing masc things. Nor should more feminine things be deemed weaker and pathetic.

She also loves trans people and believes that women's rights should include trans women as well and that trans rights are human rights. And she believes that change cannot be achieved through the demonization of people just because of their gender identity or sexuality.

If that is what Feminism stands for then yeah, she totally is one.

#ask #ask: Sweetheart #ask: Bitterbat #ask: licorice #ask: glitter and guilt

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baiwu-jinji · 7 months ago

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Dug up a very old paper I wrote almost 6 years ago titled "Tianyuan Feminism and Women in Contemporary China," putting it here if anyone's interested in reading this verbose thing:

Zhonghua tianyuan nüquan, which literally translates to “Chinese rural feminism,” is a term that became popular on the Chinese internet in recent years. It should be noted that the phrase nüquan, meaning “feminism,” is used ironically and negatively within the term, as the zhonghua tianyuan nüquan represents a set of beliefs contrary to feminist ideals. Also, zhonghua tianyuan, meaning “Chinese rural,” does not indicate the rural areas of China, but as is generally agreed by Internet users, refers to a breed of domestic dogs indigenous to China. Therefore, “Chinese rural” really signifies the indigeneity of the concept. The phrase tianyuan, which means “rural,” can also refer to an idyllic countryside far from the scenes of buzzling life, and its implication of utopian impracticality leads to some people’s interpretation of tianyuan as “empty talk with no practical results” (Du, “A Reinless Wild Horse in the Age of New Media”). For the sake of brevity, I will refer to zhonghua tianyuan nüquan as “tianyuan feminism” in my following analysis. I will discuss the meaning of tianyuan feminism, its indigeneity, the possible reasons for the rise of such phenomenon, and people’s usages of and responses to the term.

What is tianyuan feminism?

In a discussion board titled “what’s the definition of tianyuan feminism?” on Zhihu, one of the most popular online forums in China, a top comment that received over eight hundred likes defines tianyuan feminism as thus:

Tianyuan feminism is a freak born of the hybrid of the remnants of Chinese feudalism and Western consciousness of individual rights. These women have no idea what feminism is. They want the benefits of Western idea of equality, but neither are they willing to let go of traditional gender notions. This double standard is, in essence, a form of utilitarian selfishness and greed […] Only the unique social and cultural environment of China can give rise to such grotesque “feminists” who ask men to provide for the family like women in Japan and Korea do, but also try to get away with responsibilities by evoking the ideas of personal freedom and rights like women in Western societies[1].

While the commenter did not specify what responsibilities these women try to avoid, many of the male internet users who complain about their girlfriends or wives being “tianyuan feminists” list the shirking of economic responsibilities by the women as the primary problem. More specifically, women labeled “tianyuan feminists” would demand that their male partners pay for everything either on dates or within a marriage – which include the wedding, the house, the cars, and other daily expenses; they would push men to earn more in order to amply provide for themselves, and would chastise their male partners if they fail to do so. The underlying logic of such practice is that women are the weaker sex oppressed within the patriarchal system, therefore they should be compensated and taken care of, meaning that all responsibilities go to men. One of the main arguments used by tianyuan feminists is that women have done their essential part in marriage by giving birth to children; since they have made their main contribution through childbirth, men should take up all other responsibilities. One can see at a glance that tianyuan feminism is the opposite of what real feminism stands for: by shoving all economic responsibilities onto men, tianyuan feminists deny their own potential to excel professionally and achieve economic self-sufficiency, and by seeing their greatest value in giving birth to children, they objectify themselves and ignore their innate self-worth. It is not self-esteem, self-fulfillment, independence, or equality that they strive for, but material benefits and superior treatment from the other sex. Tianyuan feminists have internalized the idea of feminine inferiority, and instead of challenging the patriarchal system, they try to exploit it to their own advantage.

Tianyuan Feminism versus Feminism

The curious thing is perhaps that tianyuan feminism is associated with feminism at all. Unlike the principles of human rights and equality upon which feminism is built, tianyuan feminism devalues both men and women by objectifying and commodifying them, and as one commenter on Zhihu crudely but vividly describes tianyuan feminism: “the man keeps the woman like a pet, and the woman sees the man as an ATM machine” (Zhihu Journal: Women’s Rights Equals Human Rights 63).

However, tianyuan feminism is associated with feminism because, first of all, tianyuan feminists demand rights as feminists do, although they do so from the premise of accepting the patriarchal system and their gendered inferiority. While by definition tianyuan feminism is a form of “false feminism” or mockery of feminism, many Chinese internet users genuinely confuse tianyuan feminism with real feminism, and even consider tianyuan feminism to be a branch of feminism. This confusion leads to further stigmatization of feminism on the internet, adding the accusations toward tianyuan feminism such as “selfish,” “materialistic,” and “unreasonable” to the already proliferating vilifications of real feminism. It also reflects a trend of thought on the internet which conveniently attributes every objectionable behavior or mentality of women to the influence of feminism. As Chinese scholar Dong Jing notes in her article:

If women says things that are too ‘radical,’ it is at the instigation of feminism; if women ride roughshod over men, it is because of the ‘cancerous’ influence of feminism; and if women do not wish to apply themselves in work, and ask men for financial support instead, the fault is with feminism again, and such women are called ‘feminist sluts’ with double standard – it is as if women are led astray all because of feminism. (Dong, “Don’t Yell ‘Feminism is Cancer’ if You Don’t Understand Feminism”)

The confusion of tianyuan feminism with feminism stems from people’s limited and often biased understanding of feminism in China. Feminist ideas were introduced into China at the end of the nineteenth century, but as Li Yue observes, “Throughout the hundred years between its emergence and the present, feminist movement in China has always lacked theoretical explorations and guidance, and Western feminist movements have had very limited influence on feminist movement in China” (Li, “A Comparison of the Development of Western and Chinese Feminist Movements and Their Emergence”). The peripheral status of feminism in China means that issues and ideas associated with feminism have never received sufficient attention or clarification.

Feminism in China took roots during a series of social reform movements starting from the late nineteenth century, such as the Hundred Days’ Reform and May Fourth Movement, which introduced Western ideas of human rights, democracy and equality into China. During that time, women activists such as Tang Qunying and Qiu Jin actively participated in revolutionary movements and demanded political rights for women, while in the literary field, “protofeminist contestations of women’s identity” began to develop “in the writings of women like Zhang Ailing, Lu Yin, Shi Pingmei, and Ding Ling, who has been called ‘the founder of modern Chinese feminism’” (Schaffer and Song, “Unruly Spaces: Gender, Women’s Writing and Indigenous Feminism in China”). However, a fully-fledged women’s movement never took shape, either during the turbulent revolutionary times of the early twentieth century or in the following hundred years. Women like Tang Qunying and Qiu Jin were exceptions in a male-dominated political landscape, as much as is the case now in the Chinese political scene, where “no woman has ever ascended to the elite Politburo Standing Committee, the small cabinet that effectively runs the country in concert with the president,” and where “the pattern of under-representation ripples down through the entire political system” (Cunningham, “Good Girls Revolt: The Future of Feminism in China”).

Besides its peripherality, women’s movement in China never achieved independent status, but has always been seen in association with the larger social and political context. Xu Jiaqing and Li Xi comment on women’s liberation movement in China during the last century that “women’s liberation movement in China has always been led and guided by Chinese men, and is closely linked to China’s social revolutions and constructions. Men were the first to realize, on the social level, the oppression and abuse of women by the feudal tradition, and consequently put forward the slogan of ‘equality between men and women’” (Xu and Li, “Feminism in Chinese and Western Contexts”). The situation has not essentially changed in contemporary China. In their 2007 article “Unruly Spaces: Gender, Women’s Writing and Indigenous Feminism in China”, Kay Schaffer and Song Xianlin note that “the movement towards women’s equality is linked to China’s ‘carefully propagated self-image of socialist modernity at the heart of China’s drive for progress and sovereignty” (Schaffer and Song). If one visits the official website of All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF), the state sanctioned women’s rights organization, one can see that the front page is occupied by the slogan written in big red letters “Women Heroes Turn Their Hearts to the Communist Party, Making Contributions to Building the New Era.” Women’s liberation and enlightenment is linked to, and ultimately serves China’s economic progress and modernization, while women’s individual rights and self-fulfillment are attributed little importance.

The marginalization and virtually absence of women’s movement and feminist thinking obviously do not help the public to understand and sympathize with the feminist cause, and has contributed to the bizarre situation where, while terms such as nüquan zhuyi (the Chinese translation of “feminism”) and tianyuan feminism are freely and casually used, discussed, and debated on countless occasions across the internet, little action is taken in real life to promote the feminist cause or propagate women’s rights. “Feminism” as a concept seems to be emptied of its innards, or substance as it were, and cannot find a solid foothold in people’s lives or their intellectual understanding. Consequently, vague, misrepresented, or even libelous descriptions of the term “feminism” float around the internet, and become conflated with people’s criticisms of tianyuan feminism, creating a larger stigmatized image of nüquan zhuyi that is at once messy, confusing, and intimidating. As Wang Lan explains in her article “The Spread of Feminism in the New Media Environment:”

Due to the highly open and accessible nature of new media, the varied degrees of enlightenment of its users and the slow development of feminism at one time in our country, the state of unchecked spread of feminist ideas in recent years leads feminism in China to exhibit a ‘Year Zero temperament.’ Some women have rather biased misunderstandings of feminism, others try to avoid responsibilities in the name of feminism, giving rise to ‘tianyuan feminism’ which stresses personal rights but shuns obligations. Due to the spread of this erroneous ‘feminist’ thinking, many people developed an aversion to feminism even before they can get to know what feminism is truly like. (Wang, “The Spread of Feminism in the New Media Environment”)

While tianyuan feminism may have started out as ironic criticisms of beliefs and practices contrary to true feminist ideals, it has sometimes been subsumed under feminism due to people’s insufficient knowledge in and misunderstanding of both nüquan zhuyi and tianyuan feminism. Many internet users express the belief that nüquan zhuyi (or feminism), just like tianyuan feminism, possess the central tenet of exploiting men and serving women’s self-interest. This state of affairs is apparently detrimental to the development of feminism in China. As a commenter on Zhihu insightfully remarks, “considering that feminism in China has not yet taken shape, and that there aren’t so many feminists in China yet, to throw around labels such as tianyuan feminism and false feminism could strangle feminism in the cradle[2].”

Women’s condition in contemporary China

In this section I would like to explore the reasons that may have led to the rise of tianyuan feminism. While tianyuan feminists are characterized as materialistic and self-serving, one main reason for it is probably the financial and social insecurities that women in contemporary China face, as Schaffer and Song observe:

The market-driven reforms and Open Door policy have had more negative effects both materially and symbolically for women. The reforms offered men increased opportunities in education, employment and financial success. Women, however, had to face the dilemma of choosing between the demands of a career or a family. (Schaffer and Song, “Unruly Spaces: Gender, Women’s Writing and Indigenous Feminism in China”)

Workplaces are often more willing to employ men because women’s pregnancy delays work progress, and many women leave their jobs after giving birth, making them a destabilizing factor at the workplace. Besides workplace discrimination that makes it harder for women to find employment, women who give up jobs to take care of their children become financially dependent upon men.

Besides women’s financial insecurity, traditional gender discrimination against women accentuates their social insecurity. The traditional saying “a daughter that is married off is like spilled water” accurately reflects the mentality of many Chinese families who see a married woman as belonging to and subsumed under her husband’s family and dependent upon her husband, and is no longer part of her original family. This means that it is harder for women than men to gain financial and emotional support both from her parents and from her in-laws.

The economic and social vulnerability of women contributes to some women’s desperate determination to seek financial security and guarantees of material comfort from the most convenient and apparent source – their male partners (a defining trait of tianyuan feminists). While women’s financial and social independence is another route, it is not necessarily encouraged by society. After women’s liberation in the early twentieth century and the “iron-girls” of Maoist era who actively participated in socialist constructions, the present market economy, where “the collusion between capital, patriarchy and state is hardly rare” (Song, “Is Chinese Feminist Thoughts Abducted by Western Theories?”), sees a return of women to the traditional gender role of wife, mother, and beautiful object. According to Tania Angeloff and Marylène Lieber,

The move from a planned to a market economy had significant consequences on the evolution of inequalities between the sexes. While the Maoist state (1949-1976) sought – at least in official discourse and employment policy – to eradicate inequalities between men and women and their adherence to pre-communist traditions, the reform and opening policies adopted in the late 1970s were largely built on the traditional representations of women’s role in the family and in society. (Angeloff and Lieber, “Equality, Did You Say? Chinese Feminism After 30 Years of Reforms”)

All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF), which voices the state’s view on women’s rights, also tilts the public opinion toward seeing women in their traditional role – that is, within the family. An article published on the ACWF website on October 29, 2018 quotes president Xi Jinping saying “we should stress women’s unique role in promoting China’s traditional familial virtues” and “women around the country should voluntarily shoulder the responsibilities of taking care of elderly family members and educating children, as well as upholding familial virtues[3];” another article on the website, published on November 13, 2018 titled “Shao Yanlin’s Family: Good Wife Setting Positive Example by Looking After Sick Father-in-law” details the life of Shao Yanlin, who takes care of her father-in-law with laryngeal cancer, and is rewarded the title of “the good wife of Gu-lu-ben-jin Village[4].”

The aforementioned workplace discrimination and women’s internalized perception of their dependent status and essential role as wife and mother is reflected in a national survey conducted in 2010:

The Third Survey of Women’s Social Status in China in 2010 shows that almost 62% men and 55% women believe that “men belong to the public life, while women belong to the family,” with the percentages rising 7.7 and 4.4 percent compared to 2000; at the same time, wage gap is broadening. In urban areas, the average yearly income of women is only 67.3% of that of men, and the percentage is 56% in rural areas, with the percentages dropping 10.2% and 23% compared to 1990. (Liu, “‘Crazy Women:’ From Version 1.0 to 2.0”)

It is not only the governmental opinion that leads to a regressive view of women’s place in society, but the popular media as well. As Liu Jin argues,

From the images incessantly constructed by the media of women as traditional good wives and good mothers or modern ladies valued for their pretty faces, we can smell the rotten and outdated values and gender notions that should have been eliminated. Media’s portrayal of women unconsciously influences its audience’s (including female audience’s) perception of women: that women are meant to do housework and sacrifice their careers for family, and that it is in their nature to bear and raise children. This prevalent view, attitude or prejudice means that men keep their dominant social position and women’s status is weakened. (Liu, “The Construction and Subversion of Popular Internet Term ‘Straight Man Cancer’”)

The media and the consumerist market not only promote the idea of women’s retreat into traditional family roles and female objectification, but also harmfully encourage women to seek self-value in material possessions and self-objectification. Advertisements and promotional texts from companies that sell luxury and fashion products are often identified by internet users as sources of information that foster a tianyuan feminist mentality. These advertisements and texts tell women that they deserve to treat themselves better, that the products they buy reflect their own beauty and sophistication. In this way, women are encouraged to over spend, and consequently often turn to their boyfriends or husbands for money.

We can see that in contemporary China, women are still beset with gender inequalities, economic and social disadvantages and pernicious and outdated gender notions. While these factors should not justify tianyuan feminism, they do contribute to its emergence as a social phenomenon.

Usages of and Reactions to Tianyuan Feminism

I have discussed how tianyuan feminism can be mistaken as one kind of feminism by some internet users who have misunderstandings about the subject, and can serve to further stigmatize feminism. On the other hand, more enlightened internet users have tried to clarify the difference, in fact the clear opposition between tianyuan feminism and feminism, and explain that feminism does not stand for gender superiority or women’s exploitation of men, but can actually help create a win-win situation for both sexes where there is shared responsibility and mutual respect, and neither sex need to suffer gender stereotypes and their accompanying social expectations.

Due to the fact that tianyuan feminism is a popular internet term with no traceable origin and no authoritative definition, and have passed through the hands of countless internet users, it is by nature sensational and ambiguous, and have picked up a complex host of connotations, implications and associations along the way. From Du Yunfei’s definition of tianyuan feminism in his article on tianyuan feminism, one can glimpse the confusing assortment of conceptions that tianyuan feminism has come to represent:

The group identified as tianyuan feminists on media platforms usually exhibit the following immoderate qualities: firstly, they detest men and patriarchal power, and when discussing topics of gender inequality, they aim their criticisms at men under all circumstances; secondly, they want to enjoy personal rights without undertaking obligations, and consider themselves to naturally possess moral high ground in society, at work, in the family and in relationships between the two sexes due to their biological inferiority; thirdly, they hate traditional gender roles, especially those that demand self-sacrifice for the sake of marriage or family, and they disapprove docile, beautiful and family-oriented women who are perfect in the traditional sense; fourthly, they have extremist attitudes and give radical speeches, and overexaggerate the unfavorable conditions in which Chinese women live.” (Du, “A Reinless Wild Horse in the Age of New Media”)

The four definitions put together can hardly describe one single type of woman: while the woman of the second definition is passive and dependent, the woman described in the other three definitions is angry, extreme and men-hating. We can see that besides being used to refer to women who believe they have every right to leech off the patriarchal system, tianyuan feminism has also come to represent extreme and men-hating speech and behavior. On other occasions, tianyuan feminism has been used as a generic insult to women with feminist tendencies, or even used to demonize feminism. For example, some internet users believe that tianyuan feminism is feminism in its extreme and irrational form that aim to exterminate all men and establish a matriarchal society. Other times, tianyuan feminism is linked with issues of race and sexuality: some see Chinese women who prefer wealthy white men to Asian men as tianyuan feminists; others claim that tianyuan feminists have a particular hatred for straight men but leave gay men alone. When browsing the internet, it is easy to get lost among the endless arguments, assertions and heated discussions, which, nevertheless, reminds one of the connotation of the phrase tianyuan mentioned at the beginning of this paper: “empty talk with no practical results.” The enthusiastic debates about tianyuan feminism and feminism online forms an ironic and stark contrast to the silence and inaction regarding the issues of women’s rights and social conditions in real life. While discussions about feminism on the internet can help raise awareness on the subject, Chinese women and the Chinese society have a long way to go in defending women’s rights and fostering the ideas of gender equality, self-respect and self-worth in women.

[1] See Zhihu discussion board (https://www.zhihu.com/question/266449349/answer/439864556).

[2] See Zhihu discussion board (https://www.zhihu.com/question/266449349/answer/439864556).

[3] See online article (http://www.women.org.cn/art/2018/10/29/art_19_158955.html).

[4] See online article (http://www.women.org.cn/art/2018/11/13/art_19_159188.html).

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punkeropercyjackson · 10 months ago

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The reduction of Stephanie Brown down to being just a white blonde girl needs to end.That was never all she was,even back in the Robin 1993 days-Did most of her charactet revolve around Tim at first?Yes but he was literally the protagonist and she was the love interest so it was necessary to make them a big part of eachother's lives to make their romance make sense and she gets more and more fleshed out as the run goes on and this extends to her 90s Yj guest starring,her Detective Comics issues and all the Batgirl runs up until to the point where SHE HERSELF became Batgirl because that's how much of her own character she was by then.You cannot seriously call yourself a Stephanie stan if you read all those years of her life and came to the conclusion that the only important part of her character is her having a 'desirable' hair color by white standards

Stephanie Brown has anger issues and violent tendencies and self-worth issues that she tries her best cope with through presenting herself as having unflincing self-confidence that eventually became real to an extent and the reason for all of this is that she grew up with an abusive dad and a drug addict mom yet she was brave and capable enough to stand up to him by becoming a vigilante at 15 without even having powers or special training and ended up being one of the best Gotham's ever seen anyway.She loves all kinds of food,anything and everything purple and girly,weird things,sports,video games,causing chaos and art.She's a shameless flirt but that dosen't mean she goes for just anyone because she has standards for herself and she refuses to give up on anyone but especially herself even if she wants to sometimes and she got murdered as Robin but Gotham ressurected her because it believed in HER too(Idc about the 'was just in Africa' shit DC tried to pull,that's what actually makes sense with the actual lore)and she's so kind to kids that it blurrs the line between big sister figure and pseudo-mom

And yet nonstop,the Batfam fandom can't look past her hair color-It's always 'the blonde Robin' instead of the girl one,making her listen to fucking Taylor Swift as if she's a not huge feminist both in-universe and in a meta sense,calling her an 'It Girl' and 'Preppy' as if she wasn't either a normal student or a troubled kid depending on the writer and sometimes even both and weird as fuck in literally all her incarnations,reducing Tim's pure and well-intended love for her down to her being conventially attractive and even Cass can't escape it because white wlw can't understand that Stephanie and her are canonically equals on every level so they see her as nothing but Stephanie's woc cheerleader gf who has no existense outside of her

Steph's not written like a soulless Barbie doll with no personality or arcs outside of being a girl,she's multilayered and written like a PERSON.You guys are straight up somehow even more misogynistic to her than DC is and i am NOT going to keep my mouth shut while y'all call removing her entire character to make her a cishet gender stereotyped fantasy 'girlbossing' and especially not canon.This is why i give her black hair and brown eyes in my blasian design for her even though it makes her less recognizable because not only do i want her to actually look like me since half the reason i have that hc for her is that i'm black mixed and she's so much like me in so many ways but also because y'all's obsession with acting like blondeness is a personality trait is weird,gross and deeply unserious.Aaaaaand end rant

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haggishlyhagging · 5 months ago

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Sarah Grimké, like prior commentators, stressed the early version of Genesis as decisive. She argued that Creation was filled with animals who could have been companions to Adam but that God wanted "to give him a companion, in all respects his equal; one who was like himself a free agent, gifted with intellect and endowed with immortality." She interpreted the Fall as showing Adam and Eve equally guilty, an interpretation we have previously encountered on the part of a number of writers. But Sarah Grimké's interpretation of God's curse on Eve—"Thou wilt be subject unto thy husband, and he will rule over thee"—was innovative. She argued that the curse is

simple prophecy. The Hebrew, like the French language, uses the same word to express shall and will. Our translators having been accustomed to exercise lordship over their wives and seeing only through the medium of a perverted judgement . . . translated it shall instead of will, and thus converted a prediction to Eve into a command to Adam; for observe it, it is addressed to the woman and not to the man.

The "prophecy" interpretation of this section had been earlier made by Mary Astell, but there is no evidence Grimké knew of it. Her effort to base her interpretation on linguistic grounds is original with her. More important is her insistence on the bad faith of the translators and her feminist effort to historicize their gendered view of the text. Sarah Grimké pursued that theme vigorously in succeeding letters. She charged that man had exercised "dominion" over women "for nearly six thousand years" and continued:

I ask no favors for my sex. All I ask our brethren is, that they will take their feet from off our necks and permit us to stand upright on that ground which God designed us to occupy. . . . All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and says, the being thus deeply injured is his inferior.

Here Grimké moved far ahead of her predecessors and her contemporaries. Men have not only degraded women, but have made them mere instruments for their own comfort. They have enslaved women's minds, deprived them of education and finally robbed them of the knowledge of their equal humanity. These charges will not appear anywhere else until the 1850 Woman's Rights Convention held in Ohio and even there they appear in isolation, not as part of a feminist world view which dares to challenge patriarchal thought.

Sarah Grimké proceeded to build her challenge to patriarchy by critically surveying various aspects of women's conditions at different times and in different places. She gave a cursory overview of women's status in Asia and Africa and in various historical periods ranging from Ancient Mesopotamia to Antiquity, through European history to the American present. She attacked discrimination against women in education, law, economic opportunities and within the family. Her exposure of the sexual exploitation of women in marriage was particularly advanced for her time. She argued for women's equal access to the ministry and outlined in detail all the biblical passages authorizing women as teachers and prophets. Her analysis of St. Paul was historical and critical, and she pointed out every contradiction in the biblical account. She asked, if women are not allowed to preach or teach, why then are many young women now employed as Sunday school teachers, ostensibly breaking the Pauline injunction and yet "warned not to overstep the bounds set for us by our brethren in another? Simply. . . because in the one case we subserve their views and their interests, and act in subordination to them; whilst in the other, we come in contact with their interests, and claim to be on an equality with them in . . . the ministry of the word." In an earlier passage she had summarized the most advanced part of her analysis, which would be "reinvented" many times over by future generations of feminists:

I mention [this] . . . only to prove that intellect is not sexed; that strength of mind is not sexed; and that our views about the duties of men and the duties of women, the sphere of man and the sphere of woman, are mere arbitrary opinions, differing in different ages and countries, and dependant solely on the will and judgement of erring mortals.

Here, Sarah Grimké, reasoning by way of a close reading of the scriptural text and relying only on her own judgment and interpretations, defined the difference between sex and gender and stated, in terms which would not be as clearly stated again until late in the 20th century: gender is a culturally variable, arbitrary definition of behavior appropriate to each of the sexes. Feminist Bible criticism had reached the point where it led directly to a feminist world-view.

-Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness

#Gerda Lerner #Sarah grimké #feminist analysis #women’s history

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ciderjacks · 6 days ago

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sorry to ramble in your inbox (feel free to ignore this ofc) but you are the only person on my dash being realistic about misogyny rn

I'm so annoyed by the posts like "men are being ignored by women and that's why they aren't supporting us". Because the feminist movement for over a decade has had a focus on supporting men, especially with mental health. And there's a whole month (this month!) that is focused around men's health (mostly physical but with some mental as well). And women are all over the internet encouraging men to do things like go to therapy. The list goes on.

and the fact that they know (or acknowledge) none of that shows how much posturing it all is.

"complete strangers made generalizations I didn't like on the internet so it's their fault I'm a misogynist" I am going to scream.

god i can’t stand how much the feminist movement centers men. I feel like honestly part of the problem is ppl don’t see women as a marginalized group even when women are clearly facing really brutal oppression, bc subconsciously they think that’s how it’s supposed to be.

And like , when they acknowledge women as oppressed, its never acknowledged as being done by men— there’s always some invisible boogeyman doing it: “the government” or “capitalism” or “society”. All these very vague gender neutral concepts.

The fact that it’s taboo to actually acknowledge women have an oppressor and that oppressor is MEN drives me insane. Among leftist groups it’s at its most hypocritical. They are so clearly able to understand oppression, and the dynamic between oppressed and oppressor…until it’s women. Then suddenly we’re equal apparently.

And that’s something men want, that’s why they push so hard for this narrative that “men’s issues are different but just as bad” (even tho that’s 100% fucking false lmao) because it means that they’re distanced from accountability, and women aren’t suffering anymore than them so really those bitches should just shut up about it.

It’s disgusting and intentional and I encourage any woman reading this to stop caring about “mens rights”. They already have rights.

It’s like, think about how offended ppl were when straight ppl requested their own month. Think about how blatantly racist it sounds when white ppl try to imply they’re oppressed for being white.

now unpack why you don’t feel that way with mennn

#ask tag #sexism #sorry this is only kind of related to the ask 😭#I hope more ppl are anti sexist on ur dash anon #Also ok i generally dislike using racism as an argument when it’s about smth that isnt about racism #bc I’m indigenous and it annoys me so much when ppl just use it as a “gotcha”#Like the amount of times white ppl use anti-native and anti-black racism as an easy gotcha move is crazy #BUT when it’s about sexism and hypocrisy in talking about women’s oppression #I’ll bring it up #Bc also the way sexism and racism function is way more similar than anyone talks about #Not identical but the whole hating you from birth outcasting you for your appearance making you seem uneducated and uncivilised #While simultaneously preventing you from getting an education so you stay uneducated and therefore easy to control and keep down #Fetishizing and killing you as a powerplay #Keeping you from voting keeping you from seeing any significant power #Unfair imprisonment (like how despite less women ending up in jail they tend to be there for more minor crimes with longer sentences)#Being systematically forced into poverty and having your body systemically controlled #(Note - specifically talking about cis women here. For trans women it’s a mix of some of this and a lot of really brutal homophobia)#Anyway #Oh also police brutality especially against female DV survivors #It just shocks me how ppl talk about sexism

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nicklloydnow · 7 months ago

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“This campaign against Rowling is as dangerous as it is absurd. The brutal stabbing of Salman Rushdie last summer is a forceful reminder of what can happen when writers are demonized. And in Rowling’s case, the characterization of her as a transphobe doesn’t square with her actual views.

So why would anyone accuse her of transphobia? Surely, Rowling must have played some part, you might think.

The answer is straightforward: Because she has asserted the right to spaces for biological women only, such as domestic abuse shelters and sex-segregated prisons. Because she has insisted that when it comes to determining a person’s legal gender status, self-declared gender identity is insufficient. Because she has expressed skepticism about phrases like “people who menstruate” in reference to biological women. Because she has defended herself and, far more important, supported others, including detransitioners and feminist scholars, who have come under attack from trans activists. And because she followed on Twitter and praised some of the work of Magdalen Berns, a lesbian feminist who had made incendiary comments about transgender people.

You might disagree — perhaps strongly — with Rowling’s views and actions here. You may believe that the prevalence of violence against transgender people means that airing any views contrary to those of vocal trans activists will aggravate animus toward a vulnerable population.

But nothing Rowling has said qualifies as transphobic. She is not disputing the existence of gender dysphoria. She has never voiced opposition to allowing people to transition under evidence-based therapeutic and medical care. She is not denying transgender people equal pay or housing. There is no evidence that she is putting trans people “in danger,” as has been claimed, nor is she denying their right to exist.

Take it from one of her former critics. E.J. Rosetta, a journalist who once denounced Rowling for her supposed transphobia, was commissioned last year to write an article called “20 Transphobic J.K. Rowling Quotes We’re Done With.” After 12 weeks of reporting and reading, Rosetta wrote, “I’ve not found a single truly transphobic message.” On Twitter she declared, “You’re burning the wrong witch.”

(…)

Phelps-Roper has taken the time to rethink her biases. She is now the host of “The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling.” The podcast, based on nine hours of her interviews with Rowling — the first time Rowling has spoken at length about her advocacy — explores why Rowling has been subjected to such wide-ranging vitriol despite a body of work that embraces the virtues of being an outsider, the power of empathy toward one’s enemies and the primacy of loyalty toward one’s friends.

The podcast, which also includes interviews with critics of Rowling, delves into why Rowling has used her platform to challenge certain claims of so-called gender ideology — such as the idea that transgender women should be treated as indistinguishable from biological women in virtually every legal and social context. Why, both her fans and her fiercest critics have asked, would she bother to take such a stand, knowing that attacks would ensue?

“The pushback is often, ‘You are wealthy. You can afford security. You haven’t been silenced.’ All true. But I think that misses the point. The attempt to intimidate and silence me is meant to serve as a warning to other women” with similar views who may also wish to speak out, Rowling says in the podcast.

“And I say that because I have seen it used that way,” Rowling continues. She says other women have told her they’ve been warned: “Look at what happened to J.K. Rowling. Watch yourself.”

(…)

Phelps-Roper told me that Rowling’s outspokenness is precisely in the service of this kind of cause. “A lot of people think that Rowling is using her privilege to attack a vulnerable group,” she said. “But she sees herself as standing up for the rights of a vulnerable group.”

Rowling, Phelps-Roper added, views speaking out as a responsibility and an obligation: “She’s looking around and realizing that other people are self-censoring because they cannot afford to speak up. But she felt she had to be honest and stand up against a movement that she saw as using authoritarian tactics.”

As Rowling herself notes on the podcast, she’s written books where “from the very first page, bullying and authoritarian behavior is held to be one of the worst of human ills.” Those who accuse Rowling of punching down against her critics ignore the fact that she is sticking up for those who have silenced themselves to avoid the job loss, public vilification and threats to physical safety that other critics of recent gender orthodoxies have suffered.

(…)

In the words of Fiennes: “J.K. Rowling has written these great books about empowerment, about young children finding themselves as human beings. It’s about how you become a better, stronger, more morally centered human being,” he said. “The verbal abuse directed at her is disgusting. It’s appalling.”

Despite media coverage that can be embarrassingly credulous when it comes to the charges against Rowling, a small number of influential journalists have also begun speaking out in her defense. Here in America, Caitlin Flanagan of The Atlantic tweeted last year, “Eventually, she will be proven right, and the high cost she’s paid for sticking to her beliefs will be seen as the choice of a principled person.

(…)

Because what Rowling actually says matters. In 2016, when accepting the PEN/Allen Foundation award for literary service, Rowling referred to her support for feminism — and for the rights of transgender people. As she put it, “My critics are at liberty to claim that I’m trying to convert children to satanism, and I’m free to explain that I’m exploring human nature and morality or to say, ‘You’re an idiot,’ depending on which side of the bed I got out of that day.”

Rowling could have just stayed in bed. She could have taken refuge in her wealth and fandom. In her “Harry Potter” universe, heroes are marked by courage and compassion. Her best characters learn to stand up to bullies and expose false accusations. And that even when it seems the world is set against you, you have to stand firm in your core beliefs in what’s right.

Defending those who have been scorned isn’t easy, especially for young people. It’s scary to stand up to bullies, as any “Harry Potter” reader knows. Let the grown-ups in the room lead the way. If more people stood up for J.K. Rowling, they would not only be doing right by her; they’d also be standing up for human rights, specifically women’s rights, gay rights and, yes, transgender rights. They’d also be standing up for the truth.”

“But I do like the phrase, implying as it does a refusal to bow down to the establishment. Although we had a Labour government from 1974, it’s fair to say that the establishment of the 1970s was a fusty right-wing thing, sexist and racist and snobbish. But funnily enough, it’s still sexist and snobbish, in that women and the working-class are expected to obey (transvestite) men and the liberal elite respectively; it’s not racist in the old vulgar way but in a modish, middle-class way, dealing in the poverty of low expectations, seen best in that hilarious Labour election promise that only Jeremy Corbyn ‘can be trusted to unlock the talent of black, Asian and minority ethnic people’ when the Tory cabinet already featured more black, Asian and minority ethnic people than a Labour one ever had. Oh, and racism is also judging people on the colour of their skin as opposed to the content of their character – as Martin Luther King preferred – which is inherent in every diversity and inclusion drive, every taking of the knee, every ‘black-out’ theatre performance. When people of colour refuse to lose their agency by identifying as underdogs and waiting for whitey to save them (some to the point of becoming Conservative politicians), they may be called ‘coconuts’ and all sorts of nasty names – but in a caring, anti-racist way.

(…)

Punk wasn’t ever left-wing – it was anti-establishment, so whatever the establishment is for, punk was against it. The anti-Lydon lot will always bring up The Clash as an example of a left-wing punk band, but this was more a difference of class origin than of politics proper; Joe Strummer was a lovely fellow, but he was also an upper-middle public schoolboy and thereby prone to a bit of P’n’P (poncing and posing) with his R’n’R. Of the other big punk bands, The Damned were about as political as The Munch Bunch, The Stranglers had a soft spot for the crazed Japanese militarist Yukio Mishima and The Jam were young patriots who pined for ‘the great empire’ and spat loathing at avuncular James Callaghan (‘The truth is you’ve lost, Uncle Jimmy!’). Unlike the cosy 1960s scene, they barely spoke to each other; that was the whole point of punk, to be different. But the rewriting of punk history by anxious middle-class lefties happened almost from the start; by the 1980s, punk was being recalled as a reaction against Thatcher’s Britain, despite it all kicking off three years before she became prime minister. Indeed, with her desire to destroy anything which seemed weak and outdated, there’s a case for saying that Mrs T was the most punk politician thus far. This was echoed in Sex Pistol Steve Jones’s autobiography Lonely Boy – surprisingly good – in which he understandably writes that he went into showbiz to make money as much as music, and that when he finally scraped enough royalties together to buy himself a second-hand car, Vivienne Westwood accused him of ‘selling out’. This would be the Vivienne Westwood who took an honour from the monarchy and was a shameless tax avoider. Hypocrite, heal thyself.

Punk was, as Westwood and McLaren so flagrantly demonstrated, always marbled with corruption, as indeed is every place where art meets showbiz; it gives it its piquancy. But punk is like a religion to some pathetic purists now. There was a long-running argument on a social media forum a few weeks ago about whether Anarchy In The UK was a call to real anarchic communal living. (No, that would be for the filthy hippies.) Others said (correctly) that it was simply a call to smash the status quo – and the status quo is now woke.

Punk can be traced back to historical anti-establishment art from the political cartoons of the 18th century, through Beyond The Fringe to Monty Python, all mocking the monarchy, judges, police and politicians. It couldn’t have started anywhere but England; someone said that Brexit was an amalgamation of South Downs Tories and snarling inner-city punks. It was only natural that the great charismatic loner contrarians of 20th century pop, Lydon and Morrissey, were in favour; If you’re independent and rebellious, you certainly weren’t going to be a remainer.

Predictably, the vast majority of those who identify as punks these days come across as extremely wet blankets who get their knickers in a twist over weird things; think of the hissy-fit Rage Against the Machine had over people who wouldn’t wear masks at their gigs and the American ‘punks’ who beat up ‘fascists’ who aren’t fascists in the least unless one uses the word in the manner of Rik in The Young Ones. Then we have the weirdest cause of all, trans. whereby privileged white men can whack on some rouge and call themselves women – the war for the soul of punk is being fought on this front, too.

(…)

When I started out as a musician, I thought that punks were anti-establishment; then when my first album was released, I passed through the scene and realised it’s full of Stasi boneheads who love the boot when they’re the ones wearing it. Punks pretend to be rebellious musicians but act more like bureaucrats and propagandists who contribute nothing to music except a pathological hatred of women and the highest form of wokery I’ve ever personally encountered. Speaking your mind publicly is what making music is all about; freedom of speech and our hard-won rights as women – especially in male dominated music industry – is something that should be protected at all costs no matter what -ism we’re living under. But when the establishment and corporations support you, you are the establishment. So, for me being a Terf is about as punk as it gets.

I was there; I may not have liked the music much, but I lived the ribald and riotous experience that was punk – and I know a short-haired hippie when I see one. As I wrote in Welcome To The Woke Trials: ‘Woke is the revenge of the dullard on the wit, the curtain-twitcher on the headline-maker, the wallflower on the whirling dancer’ – add to that ‘the establishment stooge who believes himself righteous on the outlaw’. So, punk’s not dead – this time, she’s a Terf.”

#terf #punk #anti establishment #john lydon #johnny rotten #brexit #joe strummer #the clash #britain #margaret thatcher #julie burchill #woke #jk rowling #harry potter #free speech #antiauthoritarian

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coochiequeens · 7 months ago

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Another "male feminist" trying to mansplain feminism, on behalf of men in dresses.

By Julie Bindel APRIL 29, 2024

I am very familiar with men on the Left telling me I’m doing feminism wrong. The musician and activist Billy Bragg is just one in a long line of males telling me I don’t share their precious values. In an interview published yesterday, the double-denimed demigod was asked about his role in the debate on gender and single-sex spaces:

“My problem with people like [J.K.] Rowling, like Julie Bindel, is really who they are lined up with. [Rowling and Bindel] are people who I agree with about women’s rights. I agree with them about abortion. But we don’t agree on this.”

I can certainly say that Bragg and I will both support access to free and legal abortion, but I would imagine we hold these views for somewhat different reasons.

If there’s anything that benefits men, the likes of Bragg will declare it to be feminist. As my friend and comrade J.K. Rowling has pointed out, male Leftists tend to applaud prostitution and stripping, so long as women are doing it and men are in the driving seat. Surrogacy, lap dancing and slut marching are “empowering” activities — a word never ascribed to anything done by men. It is faux feminism for the boys.

Just like his bro Owen Jones, Bragg insists that trans women are women and, handily, this stance doesn’t seem to have any drawbacks for these men. They get cookies for being such great allies, and not an ounce of danger or inconvenience as a result.

Suggesting that silly women who object to men in women’s changing rooms, hospital wards and prisons have joined forces with the hard-Right is ludicrous. Left-wing feminists, such as myself and Rowling, have led the charge against gender ideology because we campaign against rape and domestic violence. For Bragg to bleat about how abortion rights and equal marriage are at risk as a result of these imagined alliances is a bit rich considering that he, as a straight man, needs neither.

Bragg doesn’t like the powerful, Right-wing men who agree with me and Rowling on the trans issue. The inconvenient truth is that neither Donald Trump nor Viktor Orbán would be au fait with feminist politics, but are each aware that there are only two sexes. If to Bragg that means I agree with those men, so be it.

Feminists — all women — have been deeply and profoundly betrayed by Left-wing men. They have preened and postured about being such good trans allies while we have been attacked, abused, harassed, libelled and shunned for standing up for women’s rights. They turned a blind eye when lesbians were told by transactivists that we are bigots for excluding men from our dating pool. These men clapped along as we were losing our jobs and reputations, agreeing with the zealots that we just needed to be more kind.

Men on the Left rarely prioritise women’s issues, and we are expected to dance to their tune in order to be deemed acceptable. As the late feminist author Andrea Dworkin wrote: “To Right-wing men, we are private property. To Left-wing men, we are public property.”

This problem spans many decades and continents. In 1964 Stokely Carmichael, a prominent Black Power activist, was asked about the role of women in the civil rights movement. He replied: “The only position for women in the movement is ‘prone’.” It is precisely because men on both the Left and the Right displayed such misogyny that the Women’s Liberation movement was founded in the Seventies. Bragg is a modern-day Carmichael, and men like him will always put men first, whether they claim to be women or not.

#Another man who supports abortion access but doesn't care about other women's issues #Andrea Dworkin was right #To right-wing men we are private property. To Left-wing men we are public property

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feminismisstillahatemovement · 1 year ago

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Found a saved copy of this ask from a few years back, before my original tumblr got nuked for no reason. Still stand by it:

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Anonymous asked: Do you believe all feminists are hateful? I use the word but I just want equality, and that includes standing up for trans people, male rape victims, etc

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No, I believe the great majority of people who identify as feminist are otherwise rational, concerned, well-meaning people who have been hoodwinked and peer-pressured into supporting a hateful, bigoted and appallingly destructive ideology by having it sold to them as a force for good through a relentless campaign of hysteria-inducing propaganda and brute force attempts to corner the market on the word ‘equality’.

On the other hand, I think the great majority of radical feminists are either profoundly damaged or sociopathic individuals seeking to project their own internal uglinesses onto the rest of the the world, people we would all avoid like the plague if they did not have this ‘we just want to help the poor defenceless women, you don’t hate women, do you?’ mask to hide behind. And the problem is, all feminist theory (’The Patriarchy’, ‘rape culture’, ‘the pay gap’, etc) originates only with radical feminists - yes, becoming more diluted as it reaches the mainstream, but still exclusively rooted in the same unhinged, irrational, ideology.

Radical feminism is not fringe feminism but core feminism: the ‘why can’t we all just get along’ feminists don’t write the books on feminist theory taught to young, impressionable minds in gender studies classes around the world, or teach those classes, or draw up the petitions to lobby for anti-male legislation, or organize feminist action groups, etc. The feminists who make a life of it (and a living off it) are all RadFems, and the proclamations pretty much every single one of them make about ‘MEN’ would sound like the most unmistakably horrific genocidal hate speech to everyone overhearing them if they were only talking about any other group of people on planet earth. If you don’t believe me, just try mentally inserting the word ‘black’ or ‘gay’ in front of the word ‘men’ the next time you read any feminist text or listen to one of them rant.

If you want equal rights and treatment for all people, there are other words you can use to describe yourself rather than ‘feminist’ - such as ‘egalitarian’ - which are far less loaded with hateful bigotry and accompanying crazed ideological assumptions about the world. You don’t need 60 years of hysterical conspiracy theories to say you don’t want women or men to be discriminated against, all you need to do is say what you think.

So my recommendation for you would simply be to express what you think and believe on your own and in your own way, without being forced to adopt the ideological framework and scaffolding of a hateful political movement with its many accompanying agendas.

Distrust the hive mind. Be yourself.

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therubymuse · 8 months ago

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Women's History Month 2024

While International Women’s Day has been and gone this week, we are still in the midst of Women’s History Month, which happens to be every March. That’s good for yours truly the slackass, because it means I have had some time to organize my thoughts; to sit with them and really get a feel for what needed to be said.

It’s also worth noting that it’s been awhile since I could pickup up the metaphorical pen. The last time I shared something I wrote was last summer, a piece about how important it was for me to be a dyke. It was a good piece, but the words have been all jammed up since. Like logs in a river. The only way to get out of a rut like this is just to let my consciousness ramble, and to accept it’s output as just as valid as any authors or people I look up to. And that’s a hard ask some days.

So today, let’s talk about what being a woman means to me. And why it’s a label and a cause I’ll gladly give my life for as necessary. The first thirty years of my womanhood was denied, in equal parts by those around me who said I was an effeminate man who needed to be toughened up, and by myself, having buried those traits so I could fit in with others. It also didn’t help much that I was born with a penis, so the doctor naturally assumed I was a boy. I’ll forgive him, it was 1986.

I believe I was born a woman, and that I’m biologically female. What we know about science backs up claims of both. Sexual characteristics do not solely present all as male, or all as female, in most of the animal kingdom, so why should we be any different? Many cultures outside of our nightmarish puritanical capitalist hellscape not only recognize genders outside the traditionally masculine and feminine exist, they celebrate our existence.

And yet, there are those who recoil at my claim to the word, and who claim my existence is erasure. These people virulently insist that me and any of my trans sisters are in fact just delusional men. But here’s the thing. Feminism has long sought to define a woman as more than just a birthing machine. We are strong, capable, smart, creative and wise in ways that extend beyond our recorded history and agreed upon definitions. We have always been here, in all the different ways. The true erasure is demanding women occupy only a box of preconceived notions of what others think we are.

It’s shocking to me that so-called “feminists” will fall over each other to tightly define who is allowed to call themselves a woman. Trans women have always been subjugated by this behaviour. We were at the forefront of the modern Pride movement over fifty years ago, and yet it took only a handful of years for cisgender feminists to push trans activists out of said movement, and we’ve been barred in varying degrees from doing anything like that since. Now that trans women can be visible enough to ask to be treated better, that’s seen as appropriating women’s rights for ourselves.

But women’s rights are our rights. Because we are women.

Cisgender women stand to lose a lot more than they gain through the targeting of trans women with hateful legislation and incendiary speech. Increased scrutiny and policing of appearances in public places will lead to mistakes ranging from the embarrassing to the traumatizing. This is already happening, with gender-nonconforming folks and butch lesbians being harassed in washrooms because they look trans, So are a lot of perfectly cisgender and heterosexual individuals who just don’t happen to dress and act in the prescribed way.

All of this puts you in just as much danger as it puts me, if bigots think you’re a tans woman too. And it matters to me that you, me, and my trans sisters are all safe, no matter what.

The label of “woman” means so much to me, because as it turns out, I fit the definition just fine. No matter what shape I contorted myself into, I never neatly fit into my expected gender roles. I was a mousy husband and an effeminate boyfriend. It was visible to everyone except me, and once I started knocking down the closet walls, I felt suddenly like I’d come home. When I said it out loud for the first time, I wept. I was standing in front of my mirror, in my bedroom. It was February 1st and I was getting ready for work. And I had to have a full-on ugly cry over the realization that I had known all this time, but for lack of a matching label, I had been unable to explain it to anyone.

Nobody can take that from me now. It has shaped me as a person, and I’m extremely proud of that person. I have parented my inner child, as we’re making progress on a lot of very deep, very old trauma. I have showered my body in affection and positive language, now that she doesn’t cause me such pain and discomfort via dysphoria. I have learned how to love more fully than I’ve ever known, and more patiently than I ever thought I could. I have allowed myself space to be vulnerable again. And all the while, I’ve been me; a gloriously unhinged disaster lesbian who is growing, changing, and finding a little more of herself every day.

And, of course, I’m a woman too. And as I wipe a tear from my cheek finishing this up, I have to admit that hits me just the same as it did all those years ago.

Photo from Summer 2019.

#women's history month #transgender women #transition

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justsomeguycore · 7 months ago

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also had a mind blowing epiphany about the necromancer-cavalier gender binary. i’d been looking at it in terms of there being a sexism/classism intersection in their society’s sort of oppression hierarchy but i’d forgotten the crucial aspect of their society was that it was started from scratch. i’d been thinking about it like they were a very progressive society as compared to my society both presently and historically, but when you think about it, their society likely never actually had overt sex based oppression. obviously there’s residual misogyny happening in these books, but i’ve gone so long reading absolutely everything with a feminist lens that i didn’t even realize i was applying it where it’s not quite applicable.

like take sex/gender/sexuality based oppression completely out of the equation. imagine that they live in a society where there are genuinely no roles based on sex and never were. it’s a foreign concept i know but imagine. having a daughter, having a son, it actually legitimately doesn’t matter. what they want is a necromancer. necromancers are the metaphorical sons of this society. take everything you know about patriarchy and apply it to necromantic aptitude. that’s this society.

like in our society, a cishet man and woman of the same socioeconomic class and race etc still have the intersection of sex based oppression. a woman succeeding against a man of her same stature is still an achievement. but imagine that in their society womanhood is nothing. it has effectively no meaning, like how you see squirrels in the park and have no idea if they’re male or female or if it matters.

again i don’t think this is always the best way to interpret this world but i do think it helps you see the scale of the systemic oppression of cavaliers by necromancers. necromancers can be of any sex or gender or race or sexual orientation, so from our flawed perspective their society seems progressive in those areas. yeah necros have all the power but at least the power is distributed amongst those classifications that are so significant in our society. but in their society it doesn’t matter. if you look at their society like they never had those forms of oppression, it’s not a win at all.

take off all the lenses you’ve ever learned to apply to literary analysis. pretend that they live in a society where race and class and gender legitimately have no impact on a person’s life. so many things start to fall into place.

reframe the tridentarii’s relationship so that instead of seeing two sisters, one necromantic and one not, in a futuristic society, you see them like a brother and sister who were pretending to both be brothers in an antiquated society.

reframe abigail and magnus’s relationship so that instead of seeing a girlboss and her golden retriever husband, you see a nobleman who’s effectively married the chambermaid, a CEO who’s gone and married his secretary. that’s what harrow’s seeing when she looks at them, why she’s so scandalized by necro-cav marriage and relationships. that’s the level of improper it is.

and why palamedes comes across as such a male feminist type guy. his and camilla’s necro-cav relationships is congruent with their man-woman relationship, so it’s easy to see the outlines of it when you take the idea of sexism away. he’s not just a male feminist, he’s a cav rights ally. the way he sees camilla as a whole person whose intelligence and opinions he values is different from all the other relationships we see. people keep trying to tell camilla that their relationship is unequal and that she’s being taken advantage of, but she stands her ground and ultimately palamedes does prove himself to believe in her personhood as equal to his own.

even the way judith saw marta and just had to have her, went to her father to arrange their partnership, has echoes of a fairytale prince seeing a woman dancing at a ball and being like i must have her dance for me alone! and then trying to come onto her later and her having to be like. i’m just here to dance for you, this can’t go any further than that, it’s not proper.

idk it just kind of slots a lot of things about cavalier oppression into place when you not only ADD it to your understanding of other intersections of oppression, but actively REPLACE your ideas about other forms of oppression with ONLY the necro-cav oppression.

#tlt

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magnoliamyrrh · 2 years ago

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im actually not kidding when i say, instate the matriarchy. i dont want equality between the sexes, i want equity - which i believe leads to matriarchy.

the female is not like the male. this is actually a point of conflict ive seen before between some islamic feminists and some branches of western second wave/radical feminism and even marxist feminism and even liberal feminists; tho its not like theres a super distinct line between the first 3, the women of colour of the second wave had a particular influence on some of the most prominent islamic feminists, and ive seen plenty of marxist influence, open international discourse and all. this is also a point of conflict between some branches of radical feminism and separatist and/or pro-matriarchy branches

some branches of western radical feminism hold that the male and the female are equal. the biological difference does not mean that one sex is either above or below the other, it does not mean women should be treated different than men and vice versa. children should be rised ideally in a world which has abolished gender, in which their biological sex will not mean they get socialized one way or another. no "you wear this you wear that, you play with this you play with that, youre allowed x and youre not allowed y". the goal is equality between the sexes, the abolition of gender stereotypes, the abolition of the importance of sex differences in how we treat each other. the liberation of women from patriarchy and all its many facets etc etc. okay, good goal, very high goal as it is with all radical movements, generally im on board with this

but, to say what many have said before - the female is not like the male, and this must be taken into account. different =/= inferior. the female will always be unique in her ability to reproduce, which is the root cause of most of our opression anyway, she will always continue to be uniquely vulnerable and require certain things because of this difference....despite islam functioning in most cases as a patriarchal system (the worlds largest matriarchy is the Minangkabau, an indonesia people. the islamic system exists at the same time as the indigenous matrinilial system. v cool), this i suppose would be the idea you Hear but not See often, that women get special benefits and privileges in islam and have more rights then men in some regards, that a woman ought to be treated like a queen. well, its like that, except Actually putting it into practice, and not in a patriarchal system. i do not believe equality gives woman her deserved role and protection

speaking in theoretics of where to aim - society would need to accomondate for the differences between male and female. we may try our best to abolish gender stereotypes, but sex differences are a material reality which we will always have to negotiate with - and were going to have to keep society from sliding back into a patriarchy and males Once Again taking advantage of our reproduce labour. so, how do we do this? well, some things:

the female, due to her reproductive capabilities, is unique in that she can be raped with the purpose not only of rape itself, but the purpose of producing children - in a patrilinial system, these children being to the benefit of the male and his wealth and influence (they take his name, they are under his control to marry off to increse social standing&wealth etc girls get married off for wealth and connections boys do too but differently. children also can provide household and farm labour, also to the males benefit as he owns land and family wealth)

this is an obvious bastardazation however, of the role of woman as life giver, as mother, as the one who sacrifices to create and birth a child. all the male does is shoot sperm, the sperm actually not being half of the genetic material even. the female egg holds most of it, and the female body and psyche and soul is the one which actually does all of the work to create, sustain, and give birth to a child. unfortunately, we are not seahorses. it is her body alone who can make new bone, new flesh, her body which can grow another heart and conciousness. probably one of the most batshit and awe-striking things in existence. the male does barely a single damn thing to this - and then the male creates male gods in his image and dares say that male gods created humankind! hah! and he dares to say the female - which he owes his very existence to, is inferior and unholy! he has no right claiming the child with his name, for his line of the family and benefit. he has no right to claim the role of life giver, and he has no right to subjugate the female and thus his mother to whom he owes his entire life, and to whom we owe the existence of human civilization.

she is also the primary caregiver of the child, naturally. as i said in that other post, this is because shes the one who carries the baby, and the one who breastfeeds for months-years. it is on her that the child is primarily dependent on and cannot survive without. the existence of baby formula and such is a very new invention, an expensive one, and, also, studies have shown that it is lacking in comparison by a whole bunch of things (a big one being the transfer of antibodies hormones etc etc which increse immunity and chances of survival). part of the reason why children were nursed for longer is that while in times of food scarcity it may be very hard to feed a toddler, the female body still produces milk under extreme circumstances of malnournishment; up to a point. so, point being, she's the primary caregiver and have been through history

it is her line, then, which the child should pass through - the matrilinial line. it is her who is responsible for giving life and sustaining life, her labour and effort, her sacrifice and potential death, her which is before anyone else responsable for shaping the life of a human. i also hold that, yes, the female and the mother Should be given spiritual and communal respect and power specifically because of this - though not in such a way which diminishes the importance of women who cannot give birth or do not wish to give birth.

Anthropological/arch research etc discovers all the time, the woman is the cradel of civilization, not the male. Most cave paintings are made by women. As it is often said, as has been said by many, woman in actuality invented culture and society- and without her there would be nothing. Also why some of the earliest human societies were matriarchal. Nope they werent perfect as some radfem theory says but uhh, better. We owe everything to the women who were our first ancestors in Africa. Everything - as we owe everything to nature. It was the male who forgot this, whose ego takes over, who dared to proclaim that he is both above woman and above nature at once, so that he may subjugate us both to his benefit.

Apart from this - that i think some kinds of feminism do not give the woman and mother the proper respect for being the creator of life - society needs to accommodate this. It needs to be one which allows for the female sex a period long enough of stability, rest, saftey, and free time not only to carry a pregnancy but to raise a child. If society wishes to do more than just Pretend to care for the mother and pregnant women and babies - as the conservatives do - then society needs to create systems of communal support. We must also take into account that in the vast majority of cases, it is the woman who ends up a single mother and takes on this role, not the male. This is already in a regard a privilege over males, or rather an unavoidable difference in rights which arises. I would also include here that as the female menstruates monthly, and this is known to often be a painful, exhausting, and even disabilitating thing, society ought to accommodate for this too. yes. every month. males have been shoving women in menstrual huts or banishing them from villages globally - nepal parts of africa some pre-colonial american indigenous tribes, just a few off of the top of my head. no. how about we do the exact damn opposite and respect the female body, reproductive system, and person/human which is the whole reason any of us exist, and accomodate women and girls instead. how about maybe instead of considering it a dirty or unholy thing, we do the opposite.

One of the highest causes of death of pregnant women is being killed by their male partners. If not the highest cause of death. This is also something we need to protect women from, and why i think partial segregation of the sexes must exist. Full segregation of the female sex, as in societies with no men, has been achieved at smaller levels (the umoja village in Kenya and the several matriarchal all-female villages that followed), but at a larger scale this is,, i dont place my bets on this. Partial segregation however i think can be done. Taking example from the matriarchal Mosuo people of china perhaps, in which the matrilinial female line all lives together and some village women live together separate from men - men may only visit for relations. This protects not only pregnant women, but infact girls and boys from being molested (not that females dont rape, just at incredibly lower statistic rates), it also protects women and their children from domestic abuse and being murdered. Living alone with a male can be very dangerous - so. how abt we do less of that. It also happens so often that the woman just ends up doing so much work for the man and being exploited - how about we do less of that. This also means that boys grow up with several female role models and, like, seeing women as human beings

Next, apart from the reproductive thing. Females tend to be smaller and less strong. Yea this isnt always the case. This also has something to do with the effects of patriarchy being around for so long, and also with women and girls often not being encouraged to work out and develop as much as men, and being fed less. Still, generally speaking, in many cases, mannnyy cases males are the stronger sex, physically. which is why in many societies across the globe sex roles are divided with them doing harder manual labour. they tend to be bigger and develop muscle mass different than us....,, humans out of the ape families dont have drastic sexual dymorphism (more visible in gorillas per example) but we still have it. issue here being. it is actually very easy for most males to kill a female. theres case upon case of /teenage/ boys raping and killing grown adult women. case after case. most men do indeed have the strength to trap or strangle or kill a female, very quickly.

so. this is another reason why women need special protection in society. laws which acknowledge this (which we dont have, because of the difference when women get physically attacked they will use objects to defend themselves, but the courts will not admit this and punish them). protection not only to flee to a place of saftey in domestic abuse cases, but protection in general. this is why women living with women is a ,,, much safter idea. ill choose to have a go at it with a random woman any day than even a teenage boy.

There's other ones for sure but the general idea is there; equality wouldnt take this into consideration. The female is not like the male. For there to be equity, the difference needs to be acknowledged and balanced.

Must also say, i have never seen a matriarchy do what patriarchy had done. never. not once. The patriarchy subjugates and opresses, it rapes, it enslaves, it tortures, it exploits, it kills. It in one way or another declares the Woman as less than male and claims merit for her labour.Almost every single damn time..... Matriarchies do not do this. They do not subjugate males, they do not torture them, rape them, enslave them, kill them. When men are in power it is a nightmare. When women are in power, it is not, and not only is the male treated as human, but finally the Female as well - and she gets to know what it is to live a life free of fear and psychological subjugation.

#you see. my lesbian ass just actually believes women should be outright worshiped so uhm 🤷‍♀️#feminism #islamic feminism #i guess? yea im tagging it that too. listen if muslim men wanne be like ThE mUsLim wOmAn is a QuEen FINE LETS DO IT LETS DO IT #separatism

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