#and this is not to victim blame women!!

[radsplain]

this is why i don’t believe the majority of women who say they didn’t see the red flags before they got married/had kids. you did see the signs. you saw them, chose not to take them seriously, and got married/had kids anyway because you thought you could “teach” him to make him behave better. the fact that he got pissy because he had to wrap his own mother’s gift IS a red flag and this woman shouldn’t be engaged to him anymore. call me alarmist lmao but I don’t care. this is the tip of the iceberg and once they get married it’s just going to get worse.

[queerautism]

Unironically I have a solution to this - Encourage young women to also read Lolita by Nabokov in addition to these books.

[eve-was-framed]

a very important lesson I was taught by my parents is that if I’m around an angry man and he’s threatening to kill himself then that is between him and the lord and my only response to that situation should be to get the fuck out of there and call 911. do not ever take the murder-suicide statistics lightly

[gay-otlc]

Actually I think we should talk about how incredibly fucked up it is for sapphic women to say shit like "I'm no better than a straight man 😔" when attracted to a woman in a way that isn't 100% pure and wholesome, or act like men's attraction to women is inherently dirty, predatory, or objectifying.

[lobotomy-lady]

jakey is apparently misogynistic now so I suppose I'll have to figure smth else out. in place of the J slur I will refer to everyone's boyfriend as follows: "the incomplete female, the chromosomal abnormality, the bepenised abomination, the walking abortion, aborted at the gene stage. the mention of it threatens to give me deep vein thrombosis & the sight of it makes me feel like I'm going through a slow motion byford dolphin incident." is that better do you guys approve of that one is it gentle sweet kind baby honey enough . nevermind I'm not taking feedback at this time

[lqfiles]

instead of focusing on what member unfollowed him, or making up additional allegations, please just wish the best for the victim who had to endure his torment. please wish the best for all the women in south korea right now with the current uprise in SA crimes as well as chatrooms filled with nonconsensual content. wish the best for the underage girls who have also fallen victim to these crimes by other underaged men. the women who don’t have the courage to come forward and speak about this because of the society they live in.

[mithliya]

it makes no sense to claim to be a radfem while being het-partnered. maybe ur some other form of feminist, but certainly not a radfem. i also think the women who claim to be radfems while calling women dick-obsessed and other vulgar terms are not radfems either. these two beliefs can (and should) coexist

[marzipanandminutiae]

what the fuck. why is it everyone's reaction to scream at girls baking cute pies for getting Trump into office. this seems so ironically counterproductive and blatantly misogynistic

honestly I feel like it's because striking out at something you can see is easier than admitting that ideologies are slippery, often invisible things

everyone would love to have a code for ferreting out trad types, a visual signifier you can spot beyond an actual, overt insignia or slogan (which most of them, especially women, don't wear). and a way to signal to others, without fail, that they are Not Like That. it's comforting to say "don't wear this or do this, and avoid anyone who does, and you will be Safe and signal to others their safety around you"

but the real world just. doesn't work like that. you cannot tell someone's politics from their aesthetic, with very few exceptions. and all that "avoid XYZ because that's trad!!!!" leads to is alienating people in your community who do the thing you've decided to demonize, and making yourself miserable if you want to do those things or wear those clothes

[punkeropercyjackson]

'Problematic things were considered good in the past so you're puritan for critizing them!'Oh yeah,by WHICH people were they considered good?Quickly🧍🏽‍♀️

[bsof-maarav]

me, an obvious out lesbian in my orthodox shul community where i visibly stand out from the norm and the norms...matter: happy, comfortable, welcomed, included, respected, in my lane (or on my side of the mechitza, if you will), crops watered, moisturized, thriving, etc.

same me, at or anywhere near a "queer"/lgbt/lesbian event or space where i look like i'd belong if not for their keffiyeh fever:

[soberscientistlife]

[castiel-left-his-mark-on-me]

As a woman,

As a victim of rape

As someone who's needed an abortion,

As an educator,

As someone who's witnessed domestic terrorism up close,

As a member of a mixed race family,

As someone with queer friends and family,

As someone with chronic health issues,

As an American,

I'm scared.

[uncanny-tranny]

It's weird how people paint "daddy issues" and even "mommy issues" as, like, a joke or a failure on part of the person who has those issues, rather than recognizing that daddy and mommy issues stem, for so many people, from abuse. What this all is is just abuse apologia, and nobody seems to either notice or maybe even care.

When somebody with daddy or mommy issues opens up about the "why," I can't ever seem to shake the fact that they tend to have gone through a ton of abuse and bullshit as a child. It's just crazy that other people would look at that and see a joke or a failure of the once-child who was abused.

[rabiesofficial]

I genuinely think more women should be untrusting of men. You see a man acting shady around the gas pumps near your car, see him chilling a few steps away from you as you get ready to enter your car. I’m not saying he’s 100% going to do something, but does it hurt to be wary? I think the idea that men and women are the same in terms of violence and the liberal feminist misunderstanding of “gender essentialism” severely limits women’s ability to trust their own intuition and gut feeling. You are not crazy, fear is an evolutionary gift and you are a mammal with pattern seeking abilities.

[andreal831]

Lily Salvatore and Misogyny

I did an analysis on Esther a while back and was asked to do the same for Lily by @unabashedmoonlight. Sorry I am just getting around to it. I wanted to rewatch before discussing it in any kind of depth.

The misogyny Esther faces from the fandom is not limited to her, Lily and her heretics are constantly framed in misogynistic ways. She is yet another woman who has suffered immense levels of abuse, but is granted none of the understanding or forgiveness of her male counterparts.

When we first meet Lily, the show does a great job as painting her as the perfect villain. She appears to have almost no redeeming qualities. She is a ripper, she abandoned her own children to an abusive man, she started a new family and never looked back, etc. And this is what the fandom focuses on. They ignore the entire backstory that unfolds in Season 7 and her development. Yet, when the men in the show are critiqued for being monsters, the fandom jumps to explain it away by trauma and half-assed redemption arcs.

Lily is a perfect example of the cycle of abuse, escaping from one (Giuseppe) to find herself with another (Julien).

Lily and Giuseppe

Lily's abuse was even more explicitly stated than Esther's. There's no denying she was verbally, physically, emotionally, and financially abused throughout her marriage. To the point that she was willing to fake her own death and flee.

They even explicitly show that Lily was dependent on Giuseppe. She had to steal money from him to try and run with her own children because she didn't have any means for herself. She wasn't able to work and didn't have access to money.

During the time period they lived, Lily had nearly no resources to escape. She would have been the legal property of her husband. If she had run with her sons, Giuseppe would have had legal rights to throw her in jail. Yet she was willing to risk it to save her children. When Giuseppe found out he made certain that this was not going to be an option.

Lily also had less ability to protect her sons than Esther did since she wasn't a witch. She was not able to stop the abuse no matter how much people wanted her to. She could have stayed with her sons, but it wouldn't have stopped their abuse. She can be criticized as a mother for that, but at the same time, she was worried about her own survival as well. Giuseppe shot his own sons, it's not farfetched to believe she felt afraid for her life from such a man.

Lily and Julien

Shortly after she flees, Lily meets Julien. This is such a pivotal time for survivors. She had not had a chance to recover from the abuse in any means. It is very common for people who have suffered abuse to find themselves in second, third, fourth, etc. abusive relationships. It is a cycle. Abuse makes people feel weak and vulnerable as well as lowers their self-esteem. This can cause the survivors to seek out people who reinforce their low self-image and treat them how they feel they deserve to be treated.

In Lily's case, the only relationship she knew was Giuseppe. So when she meets Julien, and he is not physically abusing her, she truly believes he is better. She misses all of the other signs of abuse. She doesn't realize the manipulation. Julien is the reason Lily doesn't go back for her sons. She sends Oscar and Valerie to check on them and Julien convinces them to tell Lily they moved on from her death. Julien needed to stay in control of every aspect of Lily's life and he manipulated his way into getting that control without Lily even realizing it.

This is obvious by the way she vehemently tells her sons that Julien is nothing like Giuseppe. But as soon as they point out the similarities, she notices it right away and switches sides. This takes an incredible amount of strength to do. Once she realizes that Julien is no longer the man she thought he was, she turns on him. This is something the fandom tends to leave out when talking about Lily.

Her last moments are for her sons and her heretic children.

"I never had the courage to tell you before... I can choose them both."

After her death, Julien says that Lily is the only thing that kept her sane. This language is textbook narcissistic abuser. Making a person feel like every time you mess up it is their fault. They are the only thing that can keep you in line so if they ever leave, it will be their fault for everything you do.

Lily experienced abuse nearly her entire existence, but was finally able to fight back at the very end.

Lily, Stefan, and Damon

Most of the hate Lily gets is because of Damon. Damon's entire redemption plot is essentially tied to his treatment as a child/human life. TVDU likes to redeem characters by not making them seek redemption, but by making the fandom just feel bad for them and making excuses for their behaviors.

Damon and Klaus essentially get the same exact backstory because it is effective and takes minimal effort. Watching a child suffer abuse is an immediate way to garner sympathy because children are innocent. No one deserves to be abused, least of all children.

So painting Lily as a absolute villain allows more sympathy for Damon. But again, if Damon can get sympathy, it's only fair to give Lily sympathy as well. They both suffered abuse at different times. I'd even argue that Lily had better development.

Damon's last words to Lily show just how little Damon was able to grow as a character. He, like Klaus, hung onto his childhood trauma almost as a safety blanket. If he never faced his abuse, he could continue to use it to be angry. He never had to take accountability for anything. This is furthered by Damon at her funeral, acting like a child when his brother clearly needed to grieve. But that's another discussion.

Damon's development was tied to the women in his life, whereas Lily's was tied to her overcoming her abuse.

Lily and her Heretics

I also don't necessarily blame Lily for finding her family. TVDU is full of found families, even from characters that have living families. Yes, it hurt her sons to see her being more of a mother to other people, but should she have been alone the rest of her life?

Lily loved her heretics and even chose them over Julien. She wanted the best for them and even was willing to compromise with them to make them happy. This to me shows that she was a good person, but circumstances pushed her to do terrible things. Much like every man in the show.

The Misogyny of it all

Every character in the show has done bad things for various reasons. But the men get excuses and forgiveness, while the women get blame. I hate how often the show abuses women just so a man can have some kind of character development without doing anything.

Lily is a complex character. She is not all good or all bad. No one is. She wasn't evil for how she behaved, rather she was someone suffering abuse and responding to it.

I'm not saying Lily is perfect or that she deserved forgiveness from her sons. She still did so much that can be criticized. But we also can't ignore the abuse she suffered. She was a complex character who yes made terrible decisions, but ultimately was she worse than some of the fandom favorites? She did everything to fight for her and her family's survival like Elijah. She abandoned her children because of her own trauma just like Klaus did. She was a ripper like Stefan. Why are the women, who are victims of abuse, treated like the abusers rather than their fellow survivors?

[crazysodomite]

do u ever notice how even in situations where a man is behaving shittily its always women being blamed and being the butt of jokes and stereotypes