#at least of SOME specific rape pattern

[unionizedwizard]

zenos' #1 character trait being that he's a rapist (rapist-coded obviously but still) was honestly such an inspired choice. MANDATORY DISCLAIMER LIKING ZENOS DOESNT MAKE YOU A RAPIST IN THE MAKING okay. moral OCD gods having been appeased we can proceed to the actual poast

it's the boredom (due to extreme solipsism & refusal to see others as actual people with their own thoughts and feelings and as individuals). the extreme entitlement. the casual cruelty (unlike yotsuyu, who revels in cruelty and sadism; sadism is a way to take control of the suffering, in her case as a reaction to her own victimization), zenos doesn't mean to be cruel for cruelty's sake: he merely does the equivalent of children poking at animals with a stick to provoke a reaction of some kind (see his strategy in ala mhigo), in order to groom the "perfect adversary", angry and impredictable like a wounded animal pushed beyond its limits and having nothing to lose. (as an aside, remember emet-selch's lines: "But conquest is the easy part. The true challenge begins once the dust has settled─quenching the glowing embers of animosity and maintaining a semblance of peace. This requires the conqueror to treat the conquered with dignity, and the conquered to let bygones be bygones. A difficult feat to achieve." zenos is purposefully doing the exact opposite for selfish ends, ultimately causing the fall of the empire). but more than anything, i think the truly unnerving aspect of zenos' character is his childishness

to get through to him, alisaie had to talk to him like an adult trying to discipline a child. all in all, zenos behaves like a bully who's been rebuffed on the playground - the wol being the one child who's not afraid of him and isn't interested in him either: his sense of entitlement makes this state of affairs intolerable to him. he'll resort to every tactic in his arsenal to force the wol's attention, from breaking toys to tormenting other children to direct physical (and eventually, sexual) aggression. which gets us to "in from the cold", which i think was that upsettingly effective because of this very unnerving mix between sexual predation and childishness.

as fandaniel puts it, the whole affair was a kind of game - playing pretend, like children on the playground playing house, a sham candlelit romantic dinner in a high-end restaurant (with a "loyal butler"!), but it peters out immediately as the wol refuses to play along (zenos then expressing his lack of interest in this "masquerade"), the whole thing establishing a very distinctive sexual/romantic tone. perhaps more importantly though, fandaniel remarks ("aww, daddy is happy that his little boy has found a playmate!") on the childish aspect of the scene, which is immediately followed by the body-stealing sequence (apt representation of rape: it's about dehumanization and entitlement to the other to an extreme, as punishment for resisting the rapist's first attempts)

interestingly enough, and in case anyone had missed this symbolism, zero reveals that zenos (by way of fandaniel) subjected her to a similar treatment - something between enslavement and sexual assault, considering the nature of voidsent and that it implied a forced fusion of their souls). i understand why they couldn't push harder in this direction but i do wish we could have explored this dynamic more thoroughly with zero - the wol being in a unique position to understand her (and vice-versa)

[diamondcitydarlin]

Just fair warning- I said on my personal post about this that I wasn't going to talk about Neil Gaiman anymore, but as it's becoming clear that him and his publishers and anyone else who makes money off of him is circling the wagons and trying to bury these allegations, as well as some fans still defending and trying to 'rationalize' this information, I feel like, actually, we need to keep talking about him (as much as I cannot stand him and feel physically disgusted now when I so much as see his face somewhere). Specifically, the fact that he's a liar, master manipulator and should not, under any circumstances, be given access to his fans like he has in the past. At the very least. (And if you need to blacklist his name or even unfollow me so as to not be triggered, I completely understand, but I will always try to tag these posts accordingly and I think it's crucial right now that the truth be put where people can see)

This post specifically is in response to those 'rationalizations' I've seen, some that have gone as far as to blame the young fans/groupies that hooked up with him for being 'golddiggers' or just making a mountain out of a molehill for something they now regret. It's not that simple, yall. (And, again, this requires some amount of completely ignoring the story about him extorting his tenant for sex under threat of eviction of her and her three young children, I'm not sure how you 'rationalize' that under the best of circumstances)

So let's be clear here. What we know is that NG has routinely, for possibly an upwards of 30 years, pulled sexual 'partners' from his fan groups, most of whom are 18-22 year old young women (though possibly younger, accounts are coming forward of 16 year olds having allegedly been inappropriately touched/flirted/propositioned by him, which ig is the age of consent in the UK but still?? 16 year olds!!). This wasn't one or two times in the course of three decades, this was a constant pattern of behavior for him and for a very insidious reason.

This isn't to try to infantilize those fans or young women/young people in general or try to suggest that they couldn't have consented to sex with an older person or famous person. In fact, the onus isn't on them at all. This is about an older guy with a lot of fame, power and wealth choosing to sleep with people that he had already conditioned to idolize him and using that power imbalance to coerce them into doing things they didn't want to.

Regardless of one's age or gender identity, it can be difficult to impossible to say 'no' to someone like that. After all, you've been 'chosen' by the chosen one, you're special and not like everyone else, and if you don't do what the popular person everyone trusts is telling you to do you could end up ostracized. Alienated. Or worse. And you know what? Gaiman knew that! He knew it when he was crafting his 'approachable dad' persona on tumblr. He knew it when he was cultivating a fandom of personality. He knew it when he was having huge meetups to try to ensnare more victims. I hate to even think it, but I'm starting to believe he knew it when he was writing children's books too.

It's been talked about again and again in separate issues, but needless to say something not being strictly illegal does not make it inherently, morally okay. It does not erase the fact that this man has been essentially grooming his fandom to feel safe meeting/speaking with him so he can coerce those he can snare into sexual acts they're not comfortable with. That is predator behavior, whether strictly 'illegal' in the eyes of a court or not (but ofc I think he should be criminally punished even if I'm not naive enough to think he actually will be, because this IS rape and rape should be criminally punished)

I'm not personally advocating for anyone to give up being in his related fandoms, but what I am personally advocating for is that people don't forget who he is and what he's capable of, especially when he tries to crawl back to where he was (I'm almost certain he will eventually, as I've said).

Again, at the very least, we need to use what little influence we do have to keep him from infiltrating fan spaces again. He should not be on tumblr yukking it up with young people, he should not be at public appearances hitting on teenagers, he should not be given the unrestricted access to fans that he's 'enjoyed' for the past 30+ years because he is not a safe person. While I wish there was more in the way of restorative justice that could be done, I think at very, very least we should do what we can to limit his proximity to people he could hurt in the future. Make sure no one forgets, because sweeping this under the rug means Gaiman gets to hurt more people.

Lastly, no one is the wrong for having been manipulated by him. Let's make that very clear. What we're NOT gonna do is blame ourselves, each other, the victims, etc, for evil acts that Gaiman chose to do himself, time and time and time again. It doesn't help the situation and it certainly doesn't protect future potential victims. We were all duped because we're human and we attach and a lot of us want to believe there are good people out there, particularly those who make art that means so much to us.

And there are. But let's also use this a teaching/learning tool about how much faith we place in famous people in the future, regardless of how 'approachable' and 'safe' they might seem. Let's remember to have a healthy suspicion of creators/famous people that are oddly immersed in fandom spaces- yes, even the ones you still currently like that seem fine, as difficult as that may seem.

At the end of the day, we don't know them or what they're capable of doing or what they might be plotting to do to us. Support victims. Amplify their voices. Don't forget.

[leonkennedybreedingkink]

NEUTRON STAR

real dad!leon kennedy x reader

tags: dddne. discussion of incest and noncon, implied child abuse (one line), spit, vomit discussion, hallucinations, victim blaming, discussion of ptsd and anxious behaviors (from personal experience). reference to my dark vanessa btw.

Session transcript, October twenty-first, 2018. [15:03]

Patient: Kennedy

”Ms. Kennedy, would you tell me why you’re here?” Your therapist asks after five minutes of silence, her pen writing the date and time on the right corner of her legal pad.

[Silence.]

A steadying inhale. “The court ordered me to.”

More scratching. ”And why is that?”

“They say I’m traumatized.” You answer, audible clicking noises as you pick at your cuticles.

“Why is that?” Your therapist asks, eternally patient and blank.

“‘Cause my dad and I had sex.”

The pen stops scratching, then scratches again briefly. “Would you elaborate?”

You scoff audibly.

[Silence.]

“My dad and I had sex. That’s it.”

More scratching. “What led to that event?”

A long sigh through one’s nose. “Um, I came home from college for the weekend. I was hanging out with my dad and doing nothing when I… felt weird. My, my wine tasted salty, I almost spat it out.”

Scratching. Patient’s wine was drugged by father.

“My head… felt fuzzy. Couldn’t move my arms or legs, they felt so heavy. I thought I was gonna throw up and choke on it, like Jane.”

”Jane? Is this a friend of yours?”

”No, um. Breaking Bad. She was Jesse’s girlfriend. She did a speedball with him and Walter rolled her onto her back on accident. When she puked, she choked on it and died.” More clicking. “That’s what I mean.”

”I see.” Scratching as she writes down the events in order. “You may continue.”

”Anyway, uh,” Your voice wobbles slightly. “I was in and out of it. Dad, um.” You clear your throat.

[Silence.]

”He… pulled down my pants, my sweatpants. He… fingered me, and it hurt, cause I was dry. Despite the wine.” Your voice lowers ashamedly. “I came.”

Patient focusing on smaller details outside of rape by her father.

“Then he pulled down his pants and got on top of me.” Sniff, sniff. Rustling as your therapist hands you a tissue box. “Thank you.”

”You’re welcome.”

You clear your throat. “Then we had sex. He drooled in my mouth. I was… I was drooling a lot, there was a wet spot on the couch the day after. I threw up the entire day afterward.”

The scratching stops. Insistence on ‘sex’ instead of rape. ”Was this… a pattern?”

A loud sniffle. “Pattern?”

”Did he violate other women?”

”I don’t fucking know.” You blow your nose and toss the tissue out. “How do I know they didn’t want it, if he did?”

Patient blames other hypothetical victims.

”Did he violate you any more after this initial encounter?”

A derisive laugh from you. “It wasn’t a violation, it was sex. With him. The law says a lot of things are wrong without taking nuance into account.”

A scratch as your therapist underlines insistence on ‘sex’ instead of rape. “How often did your encounters with your father occur?”

Your voice lowers. ”At least twice a week.”

Violations from father at least twice a week.

“All the specifics.” You snort, blowing your nose again and throwing out the tissue. A soft squelching noise as you squirt some hand sanitizer into your hand and the wet sound of you rubbing your irritated and chafed hands together.

Patient compulsively washes hands.

“Is this the point where you diagnose me?”

“No, that comes after a few more sessions of getting to know you.”

Another derisive laugh.

”Are there any encounters with your father that stick out in your mind?”

”Chickenshit.”

[Silence.]

”I’m sorry?”

“You’re a chickenshit.”

”Why is that?”

“You won't call it what it really is. It’s just sex, it doesn’t mean anything.”

Patient is in denial.

A deep inhale from your therapist. “What you just described to me sounds like no consensual sexual encounter I’d ever heard of. Are there any encounters with your father that stick out in your mind?”

Clicking. Clicking. Clicking. “We went hunting over Thanksgiving break. Mom died close to Thanksgiving. We, uh, went up to the cabin and got settled in before we had sex again. He made me promise not to tell anyone, afterward.” Pause, dead air. “And I didn’t.”

First encounter: Patient was home for the weekend from college and was drinking. Father drugged her wine and raped her on the couch. Patient threw up all day and the day after.

Second encounter: brought patient up to a cabin to go hunting, raped her, and made her promise never to tell anyone. Patient followed instructions.

”We went hunting in the morning and brought home a doe. I thought—“ Your voice breaks and you clear your throat. “When dad slung her over her shoulder, I saw myself. And when he showed me how to butcher a deer and when I was butchering it, I saw myself again.”

Patient hallucinated herself as the deer her father killed and brought home for meat.

“I threw up outside.”

“That must’ve been distressing.”

A snort. “You think?”

Scratching. Patient extremely defensive as a response to long-term trauma—uses sarcasm and humor to deflect.

”Is there anything about your relationship that sticks out in your mind? Did he manipulate you?”

A haughty scoff. “Him sharing his feelings isn’t manipulation. That’s what’s wrong with psychiatry, it pathologizes normal human behavior.”

Patient exhibiting protective behaviors over her father, herself, and their relationship. Cognitive dissonance to distance herself from what happened as a protective measure.

“What feelings did he share with you?”

[Silence.]

”That he was lonely.” Your voice quiets down. “He’s my only family, and I’m his only family. We’ve only got one another, since mom died. He didn’t wanna lose me. That’s why we got so close.”

Use of present tense when describing her and her father’s relationship. Father employed emotional manipulation to groom patient into accepting a sexual relationship after the second rape.

“So your father intentionally isolated you from everyone else and made you feel as though you were the only one who could save him.” Your therapist says patiently.

”No, he didn’t.” You say stonily. “I still had friends and people I could talk to. He never took my keys or anything like that.”

”I mean emotional isolation. Your father very carefully whittled you away from your friends and made you feel as though you only could be understood by him.”

”Well, he didn’t, no matter what the DSM or ABC or whatever the fuck says. He’s my dad, he’d never hurt me.”

Stomping, and a door slamming shut.

Patient has hit a wall when it comes to recovery: cannot fathom her father raping her willfully and has mental walls in place to avoid reality of incestuous sexual abuse.

Session three transcript, November fourth, 2018. [29:58]

Patient: Kennedy

“Before we get started, I’d like to thank you for coming in for another session with me.”

”The lawyers are paying for it, figured I wouldn’t waste their money.” Click, click.

“Right, I see.” Patient is not coming of her own volition. “Actually, I’d wanted to ask you a question before we continue from last time, if that’s alright with you.”

”Uh, okay. Shoot.” Rustling as you adjust yourself.

”Since your father’s incarceration, how have you been sleeping?”

[Silence.]

“Not well.” You don’t speak very loudly, it’s hard to hear over the recording. “I have to down a bunch of nyquil every night just to go to sleep. And even then, um… I don’t sleep well. I have a bunch of waking interruptions and nightmares.”

“Would you be willing to tell me what the nightmares entail?”

Rustling as you shift again. ”It’s dad. Always him.” You clear your throat. “It’s almost always the first time we had sex, too. I… can always taste the wine. And… my tears.” Your voice wobbles. “And… the pain. Like he was gouging at me from the inside. Even after I came.”

A sniffle and rustle as you take the tissue box. “Thank you.”

”What happens after you wake up?”

”I can’t sleep. I don’t. I get up and watch TV or play on my phone, since there’s—“ You cut yourself off, blowing your nose.

Scratching of a pen. Patient has nightmares and acute stress response to said nightmares. Patient afflicted by insomnia.

“Since what?”

”Since there’s nobody else for me to wake up. I slept better when we slept in the same bed.” You murmur, almost inaudible. “My dad and I, I mean. He… it was like having an octopus in the bed. I’d always wake up sweating because he runs so hot and he’d be clinging to me. I didn’t sleep in his bed until after our second time.” Your words muffle as you put your face in your hands.

More scratching. Patient and father codependent, typical of familial abuse survivors.

“Is there anything else you’re experiencing since your father’s incarceration?”

Cracking as you pop your knuckles nervously. “I can’t see police lights anymore. I… they make me hyperventilate. I feel like I can’t breathe. I can’t watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer anymore.”

Scratching: trauma responses to related stimuli (e.g., police lights).

”How come?”

”I got to season six in my rewatch. And… Buffy’s almost raped by her boyfriend in an episode. Onscreen, violently.”

[Uncomfortable silence.]

“I couldn’t see, and I was back on the couch with him on top of me. I felt… phantom pain. And I was crying. I couldn’t stop.” Your voice breaks and you pull a tissue from the box, blowing your nose and throwing it out. Wet squelching as you sanitize your irritated hands.

Your therapist adds, patient exhibits trauma response to sexual abuse related stimuli. Beneath your name, she writes Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder with anxious facets.

“And all—“ your voice breaks, soft sniffles leaving you as you try to keep it together, “all I can think is that I wanted it. I must’ve told him, shown him, something. I must have.”

Rustling as your therapist stands up, pouring a glass of water from a pitcher.

“Thank you.” Your voice is wet and raw as you take the cup, soft swallows echoing through the recording.

Brief silence as your therapist waits for you to compose yourself. “I think we should have a discussion about personal responsibility.”

A mirthless chuckle. “I’m sure. Isn’t this the part where you coddle me and tell me that I didn’t do anything wrong?”

”It is, because you didn’t. Let’s unpack this.”

A groan under your breath. “Goodie.”

”So, what makes you think you did something to tell him you wanted him to have sex with you?” Patience, must meet the patient where they’re at.

”I… I don’t know.” Your voice quiets like your head dips forward. “Maybe it was unconscious.”

”I see. You wanted your father to have sex with you. But you saying that you wanted it and broadcasted it to him unconsciously doesn’t answer why he had to drug you.”

Footsteps and muffled sniffles and sobs, a door opening and shutting.

Your therapist lets her last client out for the day, locking the practices’ doors behind her and walking out to her car in the lot, heels clicking on the pavement and sidewalk. Her phone rings in her bag and she pauses, pulling open her bag and fishing through the mess in her bag to pull her phone out.

It’s you.

You’d reluctantly accepted her phone number after session eight, for use during emergencies.

She picks up, putting her bag back over her shoulder and walking to her car. She unlocks it and tosses her bag in the passenger seat.

“Ms. Kennedy?” She asks after a period of quiet sobbing on your end of the line.

”He—“ You clamp a hand over your mouth to muffle a loud sob. “He said he didn’t want to see me. Ever. And I’m no daughter of his. He—He thinks I sold him out and left him to rot.” The last word trails off into sob into your palm, wet and ragged inhales almost painful to listen to.

Oh. You’d gone to visit him today, you’d made a remark about that after the last session.

“I didn’t, I told him I kept the promise, I swore to him.” You’re nearly incomprehensible through your tears. “It was those other bitches who’d made that complaint and got him locked up, it wasn’t me.”

Your therapist listens silently, heart breaking with every sob.

”And he’d—“ A dry sob. “He’d told me that he loved me so much, that what we did was a natural extension of his love for me as his daughter, that he didn’t want to lose me, he needed me like air. Did he lie? Was it all a lie? He’s my only family, he’s all I’ve got.”

You sob between your words. “He’s all I’ve got and he’s cut me off. I have nobody. And I—I felt so small, like I was nine and he was having a fit again, breaking glasses and all that shit.”

A pause as you keep sobbing, making no effort to muffle yourself. “I wish my mom was here. I wish he was here. I just want—“ A pained inhale.

Your therapist cries with you.

“I just want a hug. He’s my dad, and I love him, and I just want one last hug.”

She sits in silence with you, intermittent sniffing coming through the receiver. Eventually, you blow your nose and sanitize your hands.

“If it’s not a love story, what is it?” Your voice comes through, heartbreakingly small and raw.

You know the answer: rape, incest, abuse of power, emotional manipulation and abuse.

“I… I need it to be a love story. It has to be, because I have nothing left if it isn’t.”

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

(Warning for rape mentions, this one’s a little heavy)

🚩

(So I can find it later)

AITA for hardblocking my former friend and did I overreact over a roleplay blog?

Basically, I found a roleplay on Tumblr while I was scrolling through some NSFW tags. The post I first saw that drew me to it was tame sexual fantasies in comparison to what I found on the rest of the blog.

Basically it was a rape-fetish blog, which on its own is none of my business but I was reading a few of their posts and something stuck out about them.

They kept talking about one specific person they want to rape, and at first I didn’t think much of it, but the details got creepier as I read. It weirdly seemed like they were describing me, or at least that the descriptions were very similar to me.

The girl they fantasized about had the same hair colour and length as me (as far as I could tell), was about my height (they were described as short and I am short), even things down to a shirt I happen to own, and a recent post described her smelling like a specific new perfume, a scent that I just so happen to have bought and tried a few days before the date on that post.

I tried to shake it off as nothing but the name was all too much. They censored the name a a letter then a bunch of asterisks (for example S*****) and the letter they used and the number of asterisks lined up way too perfectly for my own actual name.

Then I found an old post on the account that was a rant about how the user had themselves been sexually assaulted and then described the attack in fair detail.

That stuck out because somebody I thought was a friend had gone through an assault like that, very similar (as far as I knew) to how it was described.

I blocked and reported the account, then I blocked them on everything, from Tumblr to Facebook. They’ve been trying to contact me since but I’ve ignored every attempt.

Maybe I overreacted and am seeing patterns that really aren’t there? As far as I know that blog has been deleted off Tumblr, or at least I hope it has. I know that people can be into different things, and that being raped can make you want to take that control back, but now I’m paranoid that what if this actually happens, they act out these fantasies? I want to believe they wouldn’t, they’re not like that, but I can’t. I can’t contact the police because they haven’t actually done anything, and in my area you need reasons for restraining orders and all that stuff. Rape victims aren’t taken seriously where I’m from.

Should I have heard them out? AITA for overreacting?

What are these acronyms?

[evilwickedme]

It's very frustrating to talk about fridging bc the original point of it was like a very specific criticism of how minorities are treated in comic books in particular and it's now been universalized so much people think it means "killing a woman off because she's a woman" or "killing any character to motivate another character" (the definition according to tvtropes fyi, kill it with fire kill kill kill kill). Fridging isn't bad because you're killing a character as motivation, and it's not bad because you're killing a minority off, it's bad because it's a pattern of behavior from an industry overrun by white men writing and drawing and editing those stories. You're allowed to kill a woman off if it suits your story, but the issue was that women are constantly getting hurt or depowered or raped or killed off to motivate other, non-coincidentally male characters.

The problem that stood behind the original women in refrigerators website was that the narrative that the comic book industry at large was telling was that the purpose of female characters was to get hurt in order to motivate some other guy. Kyle Rayner's girlfriend gets stuffed in a fridge, we're not sad because her life got taken from her too soon, we're sad because Kyle Rayner just lost his girlfriend. Gwen Stacy gets killed by the Green Goblin, we're not sad because she didn't get to live a full happy life, we're sad because she didn't get to live a full happy life with Peter Parker. That is not to say that the story doesn't still get told. Peter going after the Green Goblin is horrific and terrible and amazing and leads to some great plot and character development. But the choice was not to hurt Peter himself, not even to threaten his loved ones but not actually harm them, the choice - CHOICE! - the writers in the comic book industry consistently made was to hurt a character who was already part of a marginalized group, and to do that for the benefit of a (presumably) white male cishet able bodied main character's narrative.

I speak mostly in past tense because once fridging took hold in the collective popular consciousness it didn't disappear completely, but it did fall out of favor in being used so blatantly. It became isolated cases rather than the main feature of one of the best selling batman books of all time. Characters get killed off occasionally, and those characters are even sometimes members of minority groups, and biases still inform those writing choices, but I'm struggling to remember reading a comic in the last couple of years that specifically fulfills the criteria for fridging.

Anyway if you're reading this in context, you know that at the end of this month (may 2023) Marvel is planning to celebrate the most famous fridging of all time by absolutely not learning their lesson and fridging another character. They're being lazy about it, too - they've decided to do it to Kamala Khan in Peter Parker's book, two characters that mean close to nothing to each other, and being extra awful by making it a Pakistani Muslim woman being killed off during AAPI month, and so far the information we have doesn't even involve Kamala's own friends and family and superhero team mourning her at all. It's supposed to motivate Peter, because it's part of his book, and it's also supposed to parallel Gwen Stacy, and they chose to do... This. Kamala is a wildly popular and beloved character who deserves better, and frankly Peter deserves better too. If you're going to fridge, at least do it well.

But I'm also already seeing white men, who supposedly agree with me and think this is bad, saying, well it's for MCU synergy, not "because she's a female" or "because she's not a white character" (direct quotes don't @ me). And firstly, ok, way to assume the rest of us didn't also catch up to the obvious conclusion that marvel comics is doing MCU synergy, AGAIN. The thing is that those aren't separate concepts at all? Or well, they are, but they don't negate each other. They're trying to do MCU synergy and make Kamala into a mutant, but they could've done that a million other ways, just as cheap and not as offensive - a simple retcon would've sufficed, they just did that a few years ago with Franklin Richards.

They chose to do it by killing her off, and they chose to kill her off in somebody else's book to motivate him rather than tell a story about her, and they chose to do it while celebrating Gwen's fridging for some fucking reason. This is context that, when removed from the situation, makes the whole thing meaningless. And you can say a lot about Gail Simone, but that she didn't have a Goddamn point is not one of them.

[minetteskvareninova]

Anyway, in light of ContraPoints' essay, I promised to continue my slow, steady Chłopi brainrot, so here it is:

My thesis is that you can absolutely read The Peasants, specifically the central pairing of Jagna and Antek, in light of the DHSM, it's just that it comes out of the other end as a pretty brutal deconstruction, which I don't think Reymont had intended.

Consider Jagna. She's your typical feminine protagonist, beautiful, virtuous and madly in love. The object of her desires? Goddamned Antoni Boryna. Antoni Boryna is, of course, very conventionally attractive, I daresay the most attractive man in the movie (although the competition is stiff, see Maciej and the organist's son, whatever the fuck his name is). He's also kind of unhinged. Antek is the kind of person who mostly acts on instinct with little regard to morality. He's nice to Jagna at the start, because he likes Jagna; he defends Hanka from his father's abuse, because nobody mistreats Hanka but him, and also fuck his dad; he leaves his dad's household and stubbornly refuses to submit to his authority despite the difficult situation it puts him in, because fuck his dad (sensing a pattern here?); he tries to kill his father, because fuck his dad, only to chicken out at the last second and realize, hey, maybe I don't hate my old man THAT much? These two are an Oedipal nightmare, is what I'm saying.

More than that, when I say that he acts on instinct, his instincts are... How would I put this... Stereotypically masculine in a very toxic way. He's very angry, bad-tempered, doesn't express tenderness that much - mostly because there isn't a whole lot of it things or people in this world that he genuinely likes. As far as I can tell, he kinda likes Hanka at the start (or at least the way old Boryna treats her is too much even for an A-grade asshole like Antek Boryna; there's also the fact that it's part of the ongoing power struggle between Antek and his old man, but that's neither here nor there) and really likes Jagna, and that's about it. His main motivation in life is to get one over his old man, which I almost sympathize with, since his old man is somehow even worse person than him. But don't get it twisted, Antek is a very, very bad dude. Some might even call him... A bad boy.

That's right, I am going there! Antek is in many ways very similar to the typical "bad boy" love interest found in romance novels. Toxic masculinity? Anger issues? Desperate need to dominate? Freaking daddy issues??? Yeah, baby, he's an alphahole all right. The only thing he's missing is, perhaps, an elevated social position, but even then - his dad is supposed to be the richest man in the village, and in the second half, his old man dies, presumably leaving Antek most of his property.

Anyway, Jagna starts out having feelings for Antek, which are in context kind of understandable. I mean, he is hot and she's one of the few people he treats with any tenderness; 18-year old girlies have fallen in love for less. The situation these two lovebirds find themselves in is of course very difficult. Jagna is coerced into becoming the trophy wife of Antek's shitty dad, while Antek is still married to Hanka and still mad at his dad for other reasons. But aside from being start-crossed lovers, there's another tiny problem with their relationship: Jagna, though young and in love, isn't stupid, and increasingly realizes that Antek, as mentioned above, is absolutely unhinged. Add to this the fact that Jagna kinda feels bad for poor Hanka, and it's kinda understandable why their relationship turns sour. So Jagna just... Dumps Antek. For which he rapes her and lets the villagers do the ending scene to her.

And here's where we get to the DHSM of it all. A lesser deconstruction might go for the "see, you can't in fact change him" angle, but like... Here? The thought of Antek ever changing never even crosses anyone's mind, least of all Jagna's. If she fell in love with Antek despite him being, as mentioned above, unhinged, it's because she clearly didn't know him that well and didn't recognize the full extent of his assholery. An understandable, if unfortunate mistake to make. Anyway, if the common DHSM dynamic is a woman elevating herself by worshipping or in some way (like morally) elevating an already exceptional man, it clearly doesn't work here. Jagna cannot adore Antek once she gets to know him, cannot abide by his assholery (she's too smart and proud for that), not can she change him into any kind of admirable person, and that thought doesn't even seem to cross her mind. Jagna cannot elevate Antek in any way.

But he can, and does, drag her to the mud.

That is the other side of the coin, the objectification and degradation of the woman, isn't it? And, well, since Antek cannot be elevated in Jagna's mind above her moral concerns, nor in real life by becoming a better person... Well then. To abide with the DHSM, Jagna has to be humiliated instead. First morally by sleeping with the married man, then, when she refuses to participate in this "sin" anymore, physically trough the rape and the ending scene.

And that's the unintentional genius of The Peasants - it reveals, in its full ugliness, the degradation side of DHSM by subtracting the elevation side completely. Antek was never worth the pain he put Jagna trough and that she was put trough for the relationship with him. But of course, is any man ever? There's a reason why Jagna never actually seems to consider a relationship with any other man, outside of maybe her ex Maciej, who, while not as terrible as Antek, still does some pretty shitty things, namely lying about sleeping with her (unwittingly contributing to her downfall). It's not that Jagna just happened to find a bad man. The whole system is clearly broken.

Of course, "the system" here clearly isn't meant to be just DHSM, as much as I focused on this aspect of it in this post, but patriarchy in general - for the writers of the movie if not Reymont (because I haven't read the book, so I can't speak on it, sorry). But to make a full feminist analysis of The Peasants is kind of outside of the scope of this tumblr essay, so.

[nerdy-autistic-things]

Is it just me or does anyone get hints that Lely was abusive in some way? (Spoilers below, both for general game stuff and skill checks)

At the very least we know it was toxic because Ruby just tells us that she was legit worried about Klassje being with him. That she has “dangerous patterns” of behavior with men. Could be jealousy, but she seemed genuinely unbothered by that aspect of things. Big deal, she lost interest.

We know that, for a mercenary, Lely was nice. For a mercenary. He liked to party, chat, and fuck. That doesn’t mean he cares about her or what she wants, just that, at least sometimes, they want the same things. But what about when they disagree? Can she “tame the beast” then?

We also know that she’s lying when she doubles down about being 100% sure if you pass the half light check. Besides, she’s shady, yeah, but the only benefit I can see to saying this is a real stretch, because it honestly doesn’t help her sell the story as much as it tanks her credibility. If she wanted sympathy she could’ve said she was, if she wanted an iron clad redirection she could’ve said no she wasn’t (her not being SA’d was directly related to shifting blame to ruby), but 89% is weirdly truthful. It does strike a middle ground between sympathy and redirection, but that doesn’t make it false. If anything, being the truth would make it easier to use. The game even explicitly says she is more prone to half truths and misdirections than full lies. Maybe it was a joke or fucking with us, but she doesn’t treat it like one and neither does the game. The game treats it as dead serious.

We know that she believes it’s possible to deserve being raped. Very specifically that she can think of at least one person who does, and then adds “plenty of people”. A rhetoric check reveals that she rolls her eyes if you tell her otherwise.

We know she lies about their time together, because the details of their encounters she gives don’t match the deserters spying (not when he died, but other ones). In fact, she contradicts herself in the middle of her storytelling.

Lastly, we know that this 89% moment is when a check reveals that she has cigarette burns on her body, which in context adds more weight to her being covered in bruises. It could be kinky, and so could the SA thing. I think that’s sometimes how she sees it (as stated earlier, there’s an 11% of the time when she doesn’t see it that way). But I don’t get the impression they used prior negotiations and safe words, and the skill check that indicates her pride in keeping him contained is a classic response to abuse. And that’s not even mentioning how fucked up they would get.

Here’s the facts: 89% of the time she thinks fondly of it (nostalgic even), 11% of the time she doesn’t, she cared for him a lot, but she was also scared, she says love is terror, she was proud of herself for “taming” him, she’s more than willing to wreck her mind and body, the people who cared for her were worried about their relationship, and Lely said verbatim “I’m gonna rape her”. Is it bravado in front of the mercenaries, is it a hot fantasy, or could it be that he was indifferent to her desires and he saw himself as taking advantage of her? Who knows? Even if it wasn’t that specifically, did he show a bad side to her in other ways?

We can’t know the answers in a game that was designed to make this ambiguous, especially since she would never tell us when she can’t be taken in.

[wickershells]

Something very interesting to me when watching the walking dead is its by-large refusal to meaningfully engage with sexual abuse as a topic… I’ve never read the comics, don’t really plan to, but from what I’ve heard there were several instances of rape depicted there, but very little to go on in the show — Carol reveals when praying that her husband sexually abused (or at least wanted to abuse) their young daughter (presumably + contextually her as well), something that to my memory is never referenced again; the Governor forces Maggie to strip herself half-naked and bend over, but “doesn’t actually do anything” (forceful stripping is, indeed, a form of sexual abuse) compared to his apparently brutal (?) rape of Michonne in the comics; Lydia is repeatedly raped by members of the Whisperers in the comics, encouraged by her mother, an aspect removed entirely from the show; Negan, of course, comes closest — his ‘wives’ are quite literally coerced into sexual relationships with him — and yet the show seems reluctant to address even him as an abuser.

Negan’s redemption is written only for him as a killer, a tyrant, and not as a rapist — it would have to address very difficult questions about power, patriarchy, the prominence of violence against women both historically and whenever worlds fall apart, and the ways in which any of these can be tackled meaningfully, what a society that actively prevents rape might look like. We know statistically that punitive justice does incredibly little to actually prevent it, and yet this is exactly what happens to Negan, and in the show his language when exacting power is, as always, very sexual — sexual language to humiliate, to express dominance, success, influence over a victim. One of my favourite lines of his is often seen as comedic: “I just slid my dick down your throat, and you thanked me for it”. Highlights just how Negan thinks of violence, and why his rules supposedly against rape are so sanctimonious, so two-faced.

It matters that his weapon of choice is phallic, that he named it after his wife, that he personifies it to such an extent he feels like he has lost some part of himself when it is gone; like a castration, like he’s a eunuch, only a half-man, nothing left for him to swing or thrust or penetrate with. But then none of this is addressed in any substantial way, and all we get are people telling us that he has changed, because now he doesn’t murder anyone (in this specific team), and he is gentler and kinder and starved himself in his suicidality, and doesn’t he have a soft spot for children? None of this is relevant to patterns of rapist thinking and behaviour, to rehabilitative methods. But it isn’t a topic worth exploring, and if it was, it is probably too dark for this show where there is no shortage of rotting bodies tearing apart the living, and skulls being cracked open while loved ones scream and cry and wail, and violence and its repercussions are at the heart of every action — so long as that violence has nothing to do with the existence, and subsequent examination, of misogyny

[horizon-verizon]

Alys is described as a “war prize.” That term alone makes it clear she wasn’t there by choice.

This term was literally given to her by people who weren't there in Harrenhal and didn't know what really happened between Aemond and Alys. She is also called a witch who could have enchanted Aemond.

That's the thing about F&B, it's up to your interpretation. Team black fans and team green fans are literally alike in that they both interpret things as better for their team or their fav characters and worse when it comes to the characters they don't like or hate. Calling Strongs Alys' family when it's never stated in the text that she had any decent relationship with them is just an interpretation, she is a "Strong" only because her father may or may not be someone from this family, but she works as a servant for them. It could even be implied that the Strongs raped her because she had all these children who died, why are people sure she was with them willingly? And with Aemond came an opportunity to get rid of them and rule herself, so she took it, and that's my interpretation. Aemond at least treated her well, called her his lady, listened to what she says (she stopped him from murder) and took her flying on Vhagar.

I already went into this several times starting HERE. But I will again.

You have showed yourself to either not read the book very well or at all.

A) Going Over Specific Claims/Suggestions

It could even be implied that the Strongs raped her because she had all these children who died, why are people sure she was with them willingly?

Why is this MORE likely than Aemond and her not being a"real" couple because he was a maniac who she had every reason to believe could and would threaten her life if she didn;t comply with his desires for her?!

Why would you think that or think of this as a stronger likelihood? Show the evidence OR show some context from historical/asoiaf events that create a pattern and we may be able to consider this as an actual LIKELIHOOD instead of a mere conjecture. Below, I describe war prize context in any conquest-context that has existed since the beginning of conquest's existence in the ancient world.

Alys could just as easily just be having lovers before Aemond arrived and for years, and there's nothing wrong with that (other than it might get in the way of a fantasy of her and Aemond). Why does she need to have been raped to get those children? How many children do you think she even had?! Other servants, people in Harrentown, etc., and it doesn't need to be "a lot" of partners, either. With what textual evidence do you have for you to be making as if she was not only raped but raped so many times that ALL of her dead infants were products of such?! Even if she had been raped, who said ALL/MOST her kids were rape babies?

And why are you taking non-wartime rape for granted, as if it happens on the daily in the Strong household at this time? Though lords can and have abused their seravnts or those beneath them (Aegon II), without suggestion form the text, you have no evidence that Alys' Strong relatives were doing that to her in particular and for a long time? KEY WORD HERE IS WARTIME VS NONWARTIME.

Calling Strongs Alys' family when it's never stated in the text that she had any decent relationship with them is just an interpretation

And when did I imply they were close or cared/loved each other, which is what I am implying with how you use the word "family" here?

The point of bringing up that the Strongs are around her or control the castle and are Alys' overlords is that they are her protection from others precisely bc others would be encrosching on Strong authority if they happened to o itno arrenal to mess wit one of teir servants. Do you have in-text proof that they abused her or that ALL or MOST lord's female bastards are forced to become servants? No? Then stop.

It was never about "relationship"; the Strongs passively and automatically Alys a buffer against the world, an income, a place to rest her head. And bec she is related to them even distantly (much more distantly that Falia Flowers with her half sisters and their mother), they're less inclined to either dislike her OR actively flagrantly mistreat her for fear of their reputation--they are much more public and politically active, too, than Falia's father was. Two sisters were Rhaenyra's handmaids, Lyonel was Hand, Harwin as a goldcloak, and Larys was master of whisperers. you should weigh the possibilites there.

That's the thing about F&B, it's up to your interpretation.

No, some things are not. Rhaenys did NOT burst through the floor of the Dragonpit, bc that absolutely would have been written down as much as Aerea taking Balerion and dissapearing for a year or the Storming of the Dragonpit were recorded. Addam Velaryon did elp the blacks in Tumbleton. Daeron the "Daring" did kill thousands of war refuees just to make a point. Rhaenyra and Daemon did marry very quickly after Laena's death and it was most likely bc their first son Aegon would have been a bastard and was born before expected. Which means they had been messsing around for not that long after Laena died. elaena did kill herself. Alicent did try to get her granddaughter to kill Aegon III even though the girl was 8ish and Aegon 10-12. Blood and Cheese did kill one of Helaena's children. And Aemond did kill many Strong scions out of pure rage and feeling emasculated, just as he did to Luke.

It is up to us the reader to try to glean the implications of these facts, but it is certainly NOT by out willful desires that some things are unknowable. Just as real historical textbooks will still have irrefutable or most-likely-to-have-happened facts.

B) The Picture in the Story

Imagine if Robert had taken a castle similarly, had taken a woman like Alys as a "spoil" of said victory and ten killed a roup of innocents te irl ad known er entire life, and no other details about their relationship proving the will of the woman/girl prior to said conquest...would you have honestly maintained "open to intepretation"?

Once again, I must repeat myself bc people aren't getting it:

Aemond did not got to Harrenhal for a Sunday visit or for afternoon tea; he went there at a time of war to capture it and claim it for the grens for its strategic location and when he realized that Daemon tricked him so the blacks could capture King's Landing he went crazy and mass-murdered children in front of everyone there, including--most likely Alys herself. He turned her home into a prison and did away with possible pieces for later strategy (hostages) against the blacks, which show his emotional volatility, something that would alarm those he has complete and utter authoirty over.

THIS IS NOT AN "INTERPRETATION", THIS IS HISTORICAL FACT!!!!!

Alys did not invite Aemond to Harrenhal bc they didn't know each other or communicate prior to Aemond's "takeover"-that-was-not-a-takeover. Which is more likely? That she'd be horrified and terrified for her own life, or that she'd be turned on by this or have lust more than survival on her mind?! If so, where does it suggest that?!

There is no incontrovertible proof whatsoever that she spelled him to be attracted to her above all other options and even IF so, there is no incontrovertible proof nor strong evidence that she wanted him for the hell of it.

LOGICALLY, all this prooflessness of an alternative to the war-prize/sex slave norm means that we NEED to Occam's Razor this and default to the assumption that this is like most other conquest/war prize events. ALL WE HAVE are the FACTS of:

Aemond taking over

him killing innocent people after feeling publicly humilated (repeating what went down when Maris Barathoen called him manless and he proceeded to kill Lucerys near Storm's End)

Aemond choosing Alys

Alys stopping him from killing another perosn who went up to him with a message of another defeat/humilation

him impregnating her

her telling him he needs to go the the Gods Eye and telling him he'd win against Daemon bc of a vision...when he actually was pretty quickly killed (which then brings to question what Alys was really doing here even IF she truly had visions...she'd have known he wouldn't survive!)

Here is what I said in another post:

Ian Plate writes this in his article: The treatment of women as objects, used to mark male prestige, appears in our earliest extant Greek literature, Homer's Iliad. Here, women are valued as prizes in competition between men, awarded to acknowledge relative male prowess. If you are taken as a war prize, you are an object, a literal reward or prize. You cannot even give consent because your other option is violence/death. Aemond arrives the day after Criston Cole & his army get to Harrenhal, & he almost immediately takes Alys as his war prize...BEFORE he hears about King's Landing. So there was, assumingly, only a few days between his arrival & his claiming Alys. not enough time at all for there to be a deep emotional relationship. Unless we claim that theirs was a love-at-first-sight, true-love romance.

THEREFORE, under all this context AND the lack of reliable proof of her "consenting" to sex or against the war prize/war context, it really doesn't matter that Alys might have SEEMED to consent to sex with him. Esp when the text uses "bedmate" and when he had other options that men expect him to have as a young warrior who "won" a castle and all its inhabitants. This is the word the text uses AND another phrase it uses is "spoils of war".

Under all this context, Alys cannot really say "no" even if she wanted to, and women have been known to comply or to warlord's desires to survive or to protect others.

Look what happens with Dany: in order for her to gain any sort of power, protect herself and others, she had to have sex with Drogo and make it pleasurable for him...she was his sex/bridal slave. Before, he just ignored her and forced himslef on her to the point she wanted to kill herself. she would have been eventually killed, gang-raped, and or utterly alone. The dynamic of a war prize or a woman taken as a "bedmate" (sex slave) when her home has been ravaged is more similar than dissimilar to that.

The women and the others had little to no choice to "comply", thus we cannot come here and say she had the freedom and safety to have a relationship with Aemond no matter what her age. She and other women/children/young men or lower-classed servants in her position are too vulnerable to a swordwielding DRAGONriding PRINCE for us to believe in a situation uncorroborated by EVIDENCE.

Making as if the text allows us to read Alys as fully consenting even as a possibilty reveals itself as a mere fantasy. Not as reasonable assumption. It reveals itself as reifying status quo. It also makes people think they don't have to read the book or practice critical thinking skills, they just have to fantasize to enjoy or understand anything from this or ANY series/work! This is not what "death of the author" really means or allows!!!!!!!!

Again, DO NOT MAKE AS IF THE TEXT ALLOWS THIS INTERPRETATION, IT DOES NOT!

And before anyone tries to bring up Lyanna and Rhaegar, i also already wrote about that HERE, where I point out Lyanna was not a war prize or a spoil of war!

You like "dark romance", fine, but there are some stuff that are simply not morally gray, and esp not without critical details that are NOT given!

[northwest-cryptid]

Jumping off the anon from earlier: I don't think anyone likes the new world set and I've seen plenty or people call out the devs for it so your def not alone there. Also I thought the Ala mhigan gown was African American patterns, since that is what they take inspo from?

Also as a certified zenos simp he calls even himself savage and while I sympathize with you having it used against you I dont think its as deep as you're making it out to be, zenos is a villain of course he's going to say rude shit to the wol

Anyway I dont go here and I don't doubt you'd block me for this if I wasn't on anon and I don't feel like being attacked for an opinion. So ✌️

A. The fact "no one likes the New World Set" isn't good either, the thing I dislike about it is the headdress specifically. As I said the actual outfit itself feels very "Party City Native" but it's the headdress that's actually offensive. Everything else about it is fine, at least more or less.

B. "He's bad so he's gonna do bad things it's not that big of a deal" I'm gonna say it again, SAVAGE IS A SLUR THAT HAS BEEN USED AGAINST MY PEOPLE FOR HUNDREDS OF YEARS, DENIAL OF IT BEING A SLUR DOESN'T MAKE IT ANY LESS OF A SLUR. This is exactly what I'm talking about when I say people don't listen to Natives. I don't care if he's a bad person doing bad things you're REALLY missing the point, he's not real, someone at Square wrote that shit into the game thinking it's okay to use a slur and you are living proof that people do not care, congratulations you are part of the problem. Again people wouldn't be saying this shit "isn't that deep" if he used a different slur, you just don't think Native problems are worth worrying about unless they're cookie cutter shit like the New World Set which you still miss the point about.

C. You thinking the Ala Mhigan gown was African is exactly what I'm talking about, Natives aren't given any recognition when our culture is being stolen and profited from. I literally told you I'm Deer Clan Lakota and those very same patterns are on clothing passed down from my father's grandfather to him, and from him to me; patterns on clothes made by our people.

D. The entire ending of your message shows you don't know me but assume your opinion would upset me enough to block you rather than correct your misunderstandings, what do you take me for; some kind of savage? (See I can make that joke.) Ask yourself why you think I'd block you and ask yourself why you would be "attacked" for your opinion.

I genuinely do mean people like you when I say I wish people would listen to Native voices. A lot of people don't actually know squat about us, our culture, or our problems. Since you were so confident in making an assumption about me, allow me to do the same; you would not say these things about other minorities. Because you feel safe telling a Native that slurs that have been used against us aren't that deep, but you sure as hell wouldn't tell a Black person that the N word isn't a big deal, and before anyone says "well you can say one of them and not the other!" Yes I can, savage is our word, the N word is not. If I were Black it'd be the other way around for me.

People do not want to accept what we as Natives have to say unless we specifically say what you want to hear. This is specifically a big reason why most people don't know about our history, our culture, and our problems; it's not that we're not sharing them, it's not that we're not trying; it's that most people don't care enough about Natives and would rather get up in arms about FFXIV.

Do you realize how little I care about FFXIV?! There are Natives being raped, and murdered every day. The government has told us that if we cannot keep the blood of our people pure enough for them to consider us Native we won't be able to inherit our land and the American government will just take what little we have left because Native American people will no longer legally exist, our options are inbreeding or choosing to give up our very existence and we don't want to take either opinion.

And you want to argue with me about whether or not a slur is a slur because you're horny about a fictional video game character who says a slur.

I don't even have to say "people aren't listening to Natives when we try to tell you something is bad" because not only do people STILL think this is about FFXIV but people are willing to tell me it's "not as deep as you think it is" yeah alright cool thanks, let's not pay attention to the fact that it took until the 70s for Natives to be able to practice our culture and religion off the res, and even then where my father grew up, if a Native was off the res past 8 pm they would be violently beaten by cops. On my father's res the young men were taught how to survive in the white man's world of business while our young women were taught how to please the white men and not make them angry so they wouldn't be murdered or worse. Our culture was literally taught out of the youth because we are being forced to conform or die.

Let's ignore the decades of hate crimes committed upon my family alone, let's ignore every time I've heard the word savage while being beaten, mocked, and harassed. Classmates would try to hold me down and cut off my braid because they heard it would dishonor me. Classmates would grab me in the hallways and beat me, if I defended myself at all I'd put up with the parents of these kids screaming about how "this savage hurt my son" and when I'd explain I was just trying to get to class and was jumped by 3 kids with sharp objects even the principle would say I shouldn't have used force only to remark how he realizes "my people often don't handle conflict with words" so sure yeah, you can deny racism all you want.

Because it doesn't hurt you, and it's easier to look away and pretend this is all about some MMO than some actual real world problem that I was literally just saying the MMO exemplifies in its use of our culture and the use of a slur, and sure you can continue to defend it, to be mad about the wrong things because listening to Natives is hard.

But hey maybe it's just not as deep as I think it is, right? Perhaps all the racism and rape and murder and erasure of a whole people isn't that deep, because after all "savage" is just a word.

Look you're going to need to excuse me here, because yes I am upset; you have no idea what it's like to never be listened to when you try to explain racism and the problems your people are facing. Only for it to get some traction and then every inbox message I get completely misses the point, okay fair I'll explain things, no one has been offensively misguided until now; but to get this in my inbox first thing in the morning is like waking up to someone saying "no one cares about Native shit, shut up it's not that deep" and then ending it with the most passive aggressive "you're just gonna block me anyways and I don't want to be attacked for my opinion so ✌️" that tells me your not listening, you don't care to listen, you didn't want to learn you just want me to shut up.

This whole answer isn't for the Anon who sent me this message. This answer is for you, the individual who's actually taking the time to read it, because I do appreciate that you're actually reading what I have to say, even if it's easier to say it's not that deep; even if it's easier to look the other way and pretend we don't exist. I say these things in hopes my message reaches you and that you are aware of the kind of shit we deal with. I want for a world where the needs, concerns, and racism against my people receive the same coverage and care that other minorities get. We're being ignored, we're being intentionally forgotten, swept under the rug by anons like this who can't accept that our problems are real.

Do not be that person. Be better.

[bisolationist]

If biphobia is real, where are the specific bi slurs, anti bi laws preventing you to get married, to have a job, to be serviced etc..

As I've said multiple times, I think biphobia is a subset of homophobia. So I think right off you're trying to put me into a position I don't actually believe anyway.

However, I think you are also trying to imply that since biphobia doesn't look exactly the same as general homophobia, it is therefore it's not real. I don't think that follows and I think it's a bad argument.

Lots of oppressed minority groups do not have explicit laws against them, but rather rely on other laws and ingrained cultural bias to work against that group implicitly. For example, many very homophobic countries only have sodomy laws against male-male homosexual sex. That by no means indicates lesbians are less oppressed in those places - just the opposite, they tend to be extremely dangerous for lesbians. I think the oppression of bisexuals functions in a similar way, leveraging systemic homophobia, misogyny, and cultural expectations in specific ways against bisexuals that end up causing certain material patterns**. I'm not saying this is worse than it is for homosexuals by any means, or that we have "double" the oppression or anything, rather that there are specific patterns for bisexuals that deserve specific focus.

However, I do want to note there *are* more and more anti-bi laws in function or in practice: for example, it seems routine in almost all western countries that provide refugee status based on dangerous discrimination deny this to bisexuals. There have been at least two serious pushes within the US to say that bisexuality is not sex-linked and thus not protected by sex-linked discrimination (in the US at least, homosexuality is protected because it is argued to be sex-linked so this is relevant there); so their argument is that employers, landlords, etc. etc. have a case for discriminating against bisexuals.

**Getting back to this, most importantly to me, the material effects of biphobia upon bi people are measurable and observable. Why are you trying to tally whether horrific abuses like rape and domestic battery are important enough to care about through things like "are there common bisexual slurs" when we can look at much more direct data? That's ridiculous.

We can observe the oppression of bisexuals through intimate partner violence rates, sexual assault rates, homelessness rates, mental distress/mentall illness rates, substance abuse rates, etc. and seeing how startlingly elevated they are for bisexuals. It's not hard to google and many of these have been looked into by multiple independent studies at this point. And yes poverty rates too, since you mention having a job. In any other minority group this would be a huge red flag that the group does in fact suffer enough implicit bias to make life very hard for that group; for some reason with bisexuals everyone just wants to pretend we're whiny and there's no reason bisexuals should act specifically concerned?

The common arguments I see seem to fall into these three, from best to worst -

A) "It's all Just homophobia so there's no need for biphobia as a word" Once again, I do think biphobia is a subset of homophobia so I do understand this to some degree. And again, a lot of what bisexuals experience IS just generalized homophobia! But there are specific stereotypes and attitudes against bisexuals, too, and as discussed above, there's material patterns that we deserve to analyze further and talk about amongst ourselves. Moreover, it's also very frustrating that people act like it's this simple when there's a lot of people that outright argue that bisexuals do not experience "real" homophobia at all and only incidental 'misdirected' homophobia, and this is RARELY challenged in any meaningful way. Ultimately it just feels like a lot of this group thinks the ways in which bisexuals face elevated risks are unimportant.

B) "It's misdirected homophobia, not something relevant to bisexuals". Hate this, drives me fucking insane tbh. Absolutely insane to act like abuse victims are being whiny and self-serving for just saying their abusers did very much mean to target them specifically for traits specific to them. It's incredibly condescending and plainly wrong to act like they know better than we do that our abusers would actually just be so so nice to us if they knew we were actually bi. Furthermore since bisexuals ARE same-sex attracted, how is it misdirected anyway? Absolutely transparent way of trying to be dismissive of bisexual abuse victims and the cultural context of their abuse through woke-sounding language.

C) "Eugh none of that shit matters bisexuals are just trying to feel most oppressed when they are actually basically heterosexuals". This is just extremely proud and loud biphobia lol. Like, if you are so eager to insist bisexuals are morally bankrupt and whiny for speaking about... homophobic hate crimes from heterosexuals they've suffered... then you are literally supporting homophobic hets over SSA abuse victims and feeling righteous about it. Such a thing in most contexts would rightly be called extremely homophobic, but for some reason in some circles it's lauded as putting bis in their place so everyone claps? Absolutely appalling behavior that's both biphobic and homophobic.

TLDR version: I agree it's not exactly the same as homophobia. I agree bisexuals have privileges compared to homosexuals. I agree that bisexuals do not experience many facets of homophobia, or when we do (in non-abuse cases) the punch is significantly reduced since we are OSA.

I simply do not agree that bisexuals being abused, sexually assaulted, disowned by parents, facing domestic abuse, etc. is as unimportant , trivial, and irrelevant as the anti-biphobia crowd wants us to act. I don't think it's appropriate flood us with accusations of homophobia just for speaking about our abuse and mistreatment, or for talking about how people have belittled and mocked our abuses either. If you want to have disdain for our abuse that's your damage, don't ask us to hate ourselves the same way.

[analoghorrorexplained]

Hi, this ask is probably gonna be lengthy. But I wanted to say your posts on UrbanSPOOK are really good and perfectly nail everything wrong with the series, which is why I wanted to run something by you

I ended up finding the series pretty late into its prevalence (5 episodes in) and I’ve been going back and forth over my opinion of it with how split the community is over whether it is a masterpiece or problematic

Ultimately I’ve come to the conclusion that ‘The Painter’ does have a unique premise and impressive art, but poor execution in terms of blatant insensitive/inappropriate theming and an inconsistent story (which the creator has even admitted himself to be simply a way of promoting his art)

Which is why I personally want to try remastering the series. My goal is to polish it and fix the glaring issues, such as obviously removing the unnecessary ‘content’ and retouching the story to make it accurate and understandable. (I also intend to recreate every piece myself instead of directly reusing all of Slug’s art since I have some art skill)

I’ve been conceptualizing for the past month, but that’s as far as I’ve come. Besides the problem with original story currently incomplete (and most likely staying that way should the reception deplatform him), there is simply too much to fix to the point I’m not fully confident I can remake a well-thought out portrayal completely on my own.

I want to know your opinion on a possible repaint (literally) and if you have any advice on fixing the broken storyline, it’d be appreciated before I formally decide to do this or not

I am going to be honest: the only thing that does work about the series is this idea of having the villain be a person and not some sort of existential threat or disease. That, and having the killer have a gimmick like leaving paintings behind. That is about it and all I will praise. Everything else either conceptually or in execution is a dumpster fire.



One of the biggest points of re-write here would be the Painter himself and his motives. At the moment: we have no idea why the painter is doing what he does nor is there really a pattern to his behavior. Real serial killers do not act like this. There is usually some sort of greater reasoning or motivation to their choosing their victims. Some serial killers favored people with certain features or were in certain communities. Others tended to kill in a certain area or have a specific way of doing it. There is usually some sort of clear pattern or patterns set. So far the Painter just seems brutal for brutalities sake and it adds very little to the story. There is no reason for the painter to be as brutal as they are or for them to target the people they do. In the 6 episodes we have seen of UrbanSPOOK at the time of writing all we know is what the painter looks like (kind of) and that he kills/paints people. This second thing can even be debated since it is implied there is more than 1 person behind what is going on. We have no hints of motive or patterns. Being angry because a victim got away isnt enough character development for 6 episodes worth of story. Painting and taunting the police isnt either. Being a sexual degenerate isn't. The painter is just a hollow character with no real defining traits other than "he does fucked up shit".

For a painter re-write you are going to need to fill those gaps at least somehow. Presuming the painter is human, which I am going off of the assumption he is: why the fuck would he kill people so brutally. Why is there this fixation with rape or forms of sexual trauma/violence? Why does the painter paint their victims? Does the painter incorporate their victim's remains (IE: teeth, hair, bone shards, blood, etc) into the art somehow or are these paintings painted before the killings even happen? Why is any of this happening and why would the painter be doing this? You dont have to lay all your cards on the table right away. But to have a compelling story: you gotta have more than what we are shown at the moment. Its not enough to keep me hooked since its ALL over the place. And despite being all over the place, we still dont even know anything about who the painter actually is beyond their crimes and why they are doing what they are doing. This also goes for the victims and any other additional character. What is the point for them being there and why should we care about/hate them? What are they doing to push the story forward (or create a story to begin with)

Secondly, there is going to need to be major edits in terms of presentation, how info is given to the viewer, and how events in-universe happen.

As I mentioned before the series suffers from not really having an overall story to tell and from not using the format its in well (which leads to additional logistical problems for the story down the line). I do not think UrbanSlug really understood the setting of his own story or the genre he was putting it in. To fix this, you need to think about how this story might actually appear in an analog format (IE recordings of old news broadcasts, safety briefs, PSAs, websites, etc) and how those might look depending on the time and place your series is set in. I would hesitate setting it any time after 2000 since we are moving away from Analog tech in the 2000s which makes the format the info is being displayed in a lot more confusing. But I would really think about just how this shit would look if it were happening in real-time in the time period you have chosen. Would the police address this publically? Would victims be interviewed on the news? Would there be stories about this floating around? Would there be briefings? Would there be any reason to lie to the public about what is going on? Is the painter producing some of the content we are seeing? Where are things taking place and what technology does that place have that can be used as a storytelling device?

I would also really be careful of plotholes and inconsistencies. For example: the "incompetent police" trope is really overplayed. In urbanSPOOK proper: it seems like the police all have brain damage from being hit with a brick by the painter too hard. They do not seem to be doing anything and only serve as a way to explain why we know about the paintings or how we know how these people died. They serve no general narrative in-universe purpose other than to be exposition dumps. Same with the sexual violence and gore. There is no reason for things to be they way they are with the info presented and due to how inconsistent it is presented. And the fact the Painter was somehow able to kill both active duty and retired cops (one of which was also a farmer) in the deep south without getting shot or caught is impressive and also nonsensical since he is just a guy. The police more or less seemingly discovered the painter's hideout. Why the fuck is nothing being done to track down who that is? Cops have died they took one of their own. Would that not be additional motivation to keep on fighting harder? And with the wax bit, how the fuck was that even possible given how the painter got into the house and the things in the area? Why did the painter have any reason to sew the twins together or rip their genitals off? Why does the series never mention the swamps at all even when its set in an area where those are common? Why is nothing from the setting, time period, or environment taken into account? What should be taken into account? If there is a variable (like post-9/11 gun culture in the south, the fact gators and swamps are common in the area the story is set in, or realistic police reactions to things) are all things you need to think of when crafting your story. Would it make sense for the painter to be able to travel really far distances in a short amount of time or would it make sense for a news broadcast or police PSA to leave out all identifying details and locational details when talking about something?

If you cannot find a reason for something existing within the story, do not include it within the story.

And finally, I would like to stress that while having extreme violence or SA in your story is fine: it should not be used as a gross-out factor. If the main point of the narrative is to be like "look at this guy, he is so evil, he killed a person in a violent way and fucked a dead child" and that is the extent of where things go: you have a terrible story and a poorly handled topic. This kind of goes along with the "dont include things in your story that serve no overall purpose" point. But you owe it to the victims of these crimes, your audience, and everybody else to address this topic with respect and not blind sensationalism. There can be a lot of different ways this manifests in practice. A lot of it will have to do with research and how a topic might fit in your story. But it needs to serve a purpose beyond being gross and horrible.

TLDR:

Make things have a reason for happening and have that reason make logical sense for the story. If it does neither do not include it.

Take advantage of your setting and of the format your story is in to help tell it (and make sure your story makes sense for both the setting and format)

Make things semi-logical so we do not get any more candlewax mound/people being terminally stupid incidents. Stick to your own universal-rules or the laws of reality and do not rely on suspention of disbeleif.

Do not rely on shock horror to tell your story or use it as a crutch to try to get the viewer to love/hate something constantly

Have more than 1 character that does something

Follow your own rules of reality and when in doubt, do research

Try to avoid filler/repetitive episodes/points as much as possible. If you find yourself saying the same thing over and over move on to something else or cut out that point

Have an idea of what your endgame is before you begin writing the series

TLDR TLDR:

Write a story first, make art later.

I hope this helps. Idk how much can logistically be done to fix it but you can attempt. But itll take a lot of ground-up work.

[limeade-l3sbian]

Sometimes I browse TV Tropes for new media to look into. In my journeys, I have noticed an "interesting" pattern, that surely none of us could have predicted (/s). Whenever I find media that specifically depicts TIMs as meaningfully being women, without question or doubt (as in, things that "only affect females" will affect them, and things that "only affect males" won't), the media in question is also undeniably fetishistic, specifically in a deeply misogynistic way, and often pedophilic.

In each of these pieces of media (none of which are considered porn), I have found at least five (but often more) of the following concepts having a fairly consistent presence: BDSM, women dressed as young and effeminate dominatrixes (regardless of their character), women and girls being made to worn (often exclusively) fetishized outfits, mind control, women's attractiveness to men being framed as a deliberate "trap" or lie, humiliation (always targeting the women and girls more than the males), depictions of incest, fetishization of incest, fetishization of little girls (often via manners of dress, ways of speaking, mannerisms, or interests associated with them) depictions of female suffering being given much more attention and (often intimate) detail than depictions of male suffering, female characters being made to suffer far more than male characters (in general), rape as a major plot point, pregnancy through rape as a major plot point, author's obvious urination kink, author's obvious scat kink, depicting prostitutes as "empowered over" and "in control of" their Johns (even if their Johns are men in positions of power, such as president of the country) while still having sex with them and enacting male fantasies, magic that stops women from aging, magic that stops girls (children below the age of 18) from aging, fetishization of lesbians, exoticism fetishes (racism and xenophobia), women (and even girls) being depicted as either Madonnas (typically either mother figures or female characters who can be seen as some gross combination of a daughter and a wife) or wh*res (typically depicted as evil), instances of male violence being justified or excused by the narrative, female on female violence being depicted as more prevalent or severe than male on female violence, and females regularly enacting (often outright sexual) sadism on other females in day to day life.

Additionally, I have noticed regular themes of mind/body dualism, individual exceptionalism / "One Great Man" / "chosen one" narratives, thematically xenophobic narratives (the "evil" force is some undefinable "outsider," or maybe multiple different kinds of "outsiders," none of which are framed as comprehensible or worth anything other than total destruction; "white savior" narratives are also common, although, this occurs in Japanese narratives with Japanese protagonists that are equally framed as more moral and sensible than "outsiders," as well), and tokenization of minorities.

I understand that this will likely be seen as my own derangement, by people who still believe in trans ideology. They will believe I'm cherry picking, or maybe that I'm actively seeking out degenerate media for my own purposes, and projecting onto a group I "unreasonably dislike." It's worth remembering that I found this information through TV Tropes' "Random Media" button, and I began noticing this trend well before I "peaked," as it's called (which is to say, when I still believed in trans ideology, myself). If I'm wrong, it's because of confirmation bias, and nothing else. I obviously doubt that's the case. The correlation has been to constant, from my observation, and it carries over to the interests of the "trans women" I have met. They, themselves, have told me they have these "interests"--And the ones that haven't clearly correlate femininity with womanhood by overperforming femininity in misogynistic and often infantilizing ways. Maybe I am deranged, but I believe it's worth looking into, if nothing else.

1/2

[radkindoffeminist]

Ahhhh sorry for the little rant/vent I'm going to go on I just kind of wanted to share my thoughts with someone sorry for the mass of text imma bout to go on🙏

to the anonymous trans man that told you to give him a blow job with the results of hissurgry, thats gross and you didnt deserve that and the dick complications are inevitable but it was also the most female way to send that?? Like any male would've sent a violent rape threat but look at that ppl born women just don't

2. did you read inauthentic selves? If you didnt, its some investigative journalism taken down when originally posted for transphobia but it's been saved by other and can still be found. And its really everything every radfem tries express. Didn't fact check it myself though but when I'm free I really do wanna

3. did you hear about self id in Scotland right now? Sorry for the questions I'm just curious about your thoughts I like how you write

4. everyone wants to call it the "bathroom debate" when talking about letting trans women in women's restrooms and honestly that's smart of tras bc they know talking about the changing rooms/lockers is harder to argue so just boil it down to bathrooms. You're in and out for restrooms- yet men still assault ppl- but they can't quite argue why it's totally okay for ppl with penises to be able to strip to their underwear in front of women

5. everyone talks about trans women in women's prisons- bc fair- but ignore trans men in male prisons. First, beginning to see a pattern of poor trans women trying to say they're oppressed for women nor trusting them in their spaces bc they're "trans" and not bc they're literally born men. But nobody wants to let trans men in male prisons. Bc they'd die/get raped. Bc men can't be trusted with anyone with a vagina. Trans man in a male prison walks into the shower room/uses the unsanitary restroom where others can see and have a vagina/clear evidence of phallioplasty? Just straight dead. So both trans women and trans men are safer in women's prison? Shit I thought no sex was inherently better/kinder/safer than the other

6. nothing big but I had some trans men talk about the "gender euphoria" of being able to walk around the beach without a shirt after a double masectomy- which I like to call it instead of top surgery bc doesn't sound quite nice now. And like bestie???? Of course it makes you happy????? A natural part of you isn't being sexualixed by society?? Going barechested with no chance of harassment is like a dream to me? I know that's sounds a bit dramatic but I'm a person I like the sun too I like rolling about in the sand too. It's just such a personal big deal to me. You know that one post about hiw some girls get the "luxury" of spending girlhood as a sexless little thing. And thats not true youve still got gender roles to be forced to but at least youre a little protected from sexualizatuon. Well amyways I'm an immigrant american and got to swim barechested like the boys when little and now that I'm grown in America I can't and i had another point but I lost it now. It's just, those little things that bother me. The big things too of course

7. I had an eating disorder starting in middle school, 6th grade. I was a little 12 year old starving and I won't share specific numbers but it was bad. I just kinda wanted to thank you and radfem tumblr for being a major part in moving me into a better mind set. Those posts of how "you're pretty as you are" never worked. Being able to look into why society/patriarchy is the root cause and not a natural state of my mind gave me control, learning to empathize more with women got me to realize my mother my aunts my mother's women friends my female teachers and all the rest of the women in my life I regularly look up to or emulate are all ppl I emulate not bc of their looks, and that focus on women being women no matter the differences in our bodies was all so so so freeing and solidifying and grounding and eyeopening. Anyways, thank you. But I'm really horrified to find my stomach really has shrunk. I've been nauseous for a while now trying to eat enough again and grow it. And I think about it now with the feminist perspective you've helped me develop and I'm just horrified what I did to myself. I can see I shrunk my stomach, what else did I do? What else to my body or organs? What else to my development? My mind? I firmly believe eating disorders stunt growth in puberty- the last largest developmental stage- for women so much, call it intuition. But I guess that's the point

8. Something I've heard from male Healthcare practitionars is that women don't really develop more after periods become constant(not skipping around playing truant like when you first get it) and I just think that's absolute bias bc just being a women looking at my friends grow they're change so much. I got my friends together and we estimated between the 20 of us we've grown 1.8 inches average after our periods got regular. We've all felt our bodies change. We hold fat differently. Just that constant bias in everywhere even Healthcare

-drag queens suck but remember vine? Remember those long videos of men with shirts/towels on their heads being "funny" but videos of women with fake mustaches/wearing flannel shirts being called embarrassing? And now how on tik tok men get to do the same thing while women don't really do the opposite anymore to get any views. There's the beard filter but it tisnt the same and isn't as mocking

10) I feel like terms like fat phobia, ageism and similar words that have been brought up are just to disconnect from seismic. Like it's just sexism, or at least mainly sexism. Like fat men will pretend to be oppressed when fat women are the ones most effected. Old men I don't even wanna defend myself for, it's just Old women getting a raw deal

11) I was never comfortable around trans women like I am around regular women. I use their pronouns bc path kf least resistance and i dont really care. And tras always act like that's bias I need to "unpack". Well they got me to push down my intuition and think I'm bad for thinking it but all it took for me to peak was to freely think about why that is. Answer: they're born men, stupid you literally know better

12) well actually it'd be more accurate to say I really peaked when saying lesbians aren't attracted to penis became bigotry. Like mf leave those ladies alone and "unpack" your cognitive dissonance

13) I don't hate trans people. I think they suffer mentally and should be supported. But everyone's just being nice calling them a man/woman. Like it's not your true identity stfu. Like using the wrong pronouns will make them kill themselves? Bruh chill if words hurt you that much it's sign a mental illness. But of course, saying that's unhealthy is also bigotry

14) apparently lgbtq+ being together is for the betterment of us all but like. Lgb ppl would literally have such an easier time without trans ppl in everything? Sexual orientation and gender identity are two seperate things like damn

15) want to again thank you for opening my eyes into why I always kinda knew gender identity is stupid. You're right gender doesn't exist and gender stereotypes are literally so strong despite ppl acting like misogyny is over. A explanation for gender I could finally accept without cognitive dissonance and this one post about the amount of glaad focus on trans ppl versus other opened my eyes right open

16) I tried to accept trans ideology so hard bc the way they try and make it is is either their stance or violent conservative stances that don't even belive women are ppl. They make a fake dichotomy and boom, I accepted their thoughts bc between the two choicespresented, knew the better one. Anyways, all those term blocklists and misinformation are totally bc you ruin the dichotomy they love. Like, they'll always talk about conservative men. Trans youtubers pull up conservative tweets and shit all the time. But for you, suddenly we don't engage. Suddenly, it's a block. It's a dni, it's a weird ass shinigami eye. Bc engaging with you is mentally satisfying. And then when nobody intervals with you, lump them with conservative men to preserve the dichotomy. Actually seeing what you have to say and your understanding and your actually putting women first was like something clicking in my mind.b

16) trans ppl literally nake life hell if you're gender nonconforming. Ppl start saying your an "egg" for just fucking being an unshaved woman. Like oh my god shut up I'm tired of you. And then other ppl against gender non conformity? They were calling ppl a boy/girl for stupid stuff like which toys you play with when i was a kid and now? They also call you trans man/ trans woman. Tras talk about how terfs side with conservatives but both them and tradition gender roles ppl act like a girl is a boy for not liking skirts they can't run in. Like somethings wrong if a girl wants short hair that won't tangle and won't have their moms brushing it out in the most painful way possible with little care

17) I've had more ideas but I've lost them 😭. Just know that im really changing the way i livs my life with the radical feminism ive intercated with on this site. Sometimes I'm sure it might not feel great posting here, but you've helped me a lot. Anyways have a good day and a happy new year!

1. Yeah, I get that. While it was fucking disgusting and it’s normally men talking about forcing their dicks into lesbians, you’re right that she was much more polite than typical men. Really reads like a woman playing at a male power fantasy -disgusting and horrible, but nearly as violent as men normally are.

2. I remember seeing it at some point and I can’t remember if I ended up reading it or not? If I did then it was long enough ago that I’ve forgotten it but I should probably check it out again.

3. Yes, I did. I live in Scotland, lol. I honestly don’t know what effects it’s going to have as it’s about the changing of legal documents, though I can’t imagine any of them are going to be good. Self-ID is pretty much respected here by most places already (I went to a bar a couple of weeks back where the bathrooms were labelled as ‘2 stalls’ and ‘1 stall, 1 urinal’) so it’s not going to be the day to day things which are going to change but any statistical recordings: crime reports, % of job applications by women, etc.

4. Yep, and even then they show complete misunderstanding of all their arguments. I’ve seen things like ‘I don’t care who’s in the stall next to me’ which is true, but I do care if they’re going to peer over to watch me or put on a spy cam to make porn of me or sexually assault me when I’m out of the stall? They put it down to being weirded out that a male might be pissing next to you.

Then they argue that the bathroom in your own home is gender neutral, ignoring the fact that the bathroom in your own home is shared between you and the people that you live with or any guests that you have over. It is not shared with dozens upon dozens of strangers who may or may not have the intention to just pee and get on with their lives.

And yeah, it’s literally always the bathrooms in which they argue this stuff. They don’t discuss changing rooms. They don’t discuss shelters/rape crisis centres. They don’t discuss wards on hospitals. They don’t discuss care homes. They don’t discuss prisons. All these places where women are much more vulnerable than in a bathroom and which will also be affected by self-ID laws but which they could never argue aside from saying that it’s wrong for trans women to be excluded and that there’s no way men will abuse self-ID laws in these spaces.

5) Because everything TRAs say ends in contradictions. Trans men should, by all accounts, end up in male prisons. But actually they’re safer in female prisons so let’s just leave them there? Suddenly, safety matters when discussing trans prisoners but almost no other prisoners - especially the female prisoners who are forced to be housed with TIMs!

6) That’s one of the things which is so difficult to explain to TRAs and get people to understand: women are so heavily sexualised and constantly being watched, so being able to just feel free must be so good! I understand why they feel the way they do but doesn’t make it gender euphoria.

7) I’m sorry to hear that your struggled with an ED but glad to hear that you found something which helped. I also always hated the ‘you’re pretty as you are’ rhetoric because while I understand why it was common and supported, it still lent into that misogynistic view that women exist to be eye-candy for men rather than accepting that women are people who deserve to just exist in peace.

8) I hadn’t heard the regular thing before. I heard something about how you supposedly stop growing something like 18 months after starting periods? Which sort of worked out for me. Either way, the female body is so understudied that it’s difficult to know what’s true and what’s old wives tales these days.

9) Yep. Hundreds upon hundreds of videos of men just mocking women. Though I have to say that I’ve been lucky and TikTok has also had some really feminist trends. #womeninmalefields is probably one of my favourite trends. Weaponised incompetence has picked up. I know ‘married single mother’ is a term which picked up a lot and women resonate with it. It’s good to see so many women jumping on these feminist trends and getting the word out because I’m sure it’s helped women, even if many don’t think it applies to them.

10) There’s something to be said about ageism existing, not just because older women are erased from media but also because of active discrimination against ‘Gen Z’ employees as they are considered to be inherently lazy as well as laws like minimum wages which discriminate against younger employees. BUT I do agree that there is a heavy cross over with misogyny specifically, especially something like medical misogyny/fat-phobia has a high cross over.

11) It’s always the ‘unpack this’ and ‘unpack that’ as if you are not within your right to just be uncomfortable with a whole ass man in a women’s space. This is why I hate that they’ve attached themselves to LGB and use terms which oppressed classes used: they can continue to act like other people’s discomfort is that person’s problem because, as the cis oppressor, they are the one with the privilege and the progressive people around them have to accept it because they support trans people as an oppressed class.

12) ‘Lesbians can like dick and it’s actually bigoted of them to not’ is probably the most common reason for people peaking. When I ran peaktransstories (before it got banned and when I used to borrow the stories from r/GenderCritical in the good old days), it was by FAR the most common reason which caused people to either peak or at least look into these things.

13) Same as me. I don’t hate trans people for ‘being trans’. I think many of them are struggling with their identities, especially where their identity is rooted in internalised homophobia and/or misogyny. For those who are struggling with dysphoria, I think they need a lot of mental health help. I hate some trans people/allies for spreading misogyny, homophobia, and other hate, but I do not believe that all trans people are like that./

14) I hate how much trans people have become a parasite to LGB people. Like, it’s not even the being in the movement together, it’s the wanting to centre themselves into every conversation and acting like because trans people from decades ago fought for LGB rights that it’s then their turn (even though said trans people were LGB and ignoring all the actual LGB people who fought for LGB rights?)

15) Aww, I’m glad my blog was helpful for you!

16-1) Same! I really did try to accept it and put it down to one of these things which I was never going to fully understand because I am not trans, but the inconsistencies and gender stereotypes really got to me! And then you come online and it’s suddenly very culty. Like I don’t know any other group who openly says like ‘don’t follow these people, don’t read their posts, don’t understand their points’ and tries to convince people that they’re consistently actively lying and manipulating you! Healthy groups encourage viewing the opinions of the opposing side, understanding their views, and then disagreeing with their actual views.

16-2) ‘Egg’ stuff is always so annoying because it’s almost always something like ‘I liked something which is seen as typically really girly/masculine’. You can just like a thing? What happened to trying to break gender stereotypes?

17. You had 16 ideas and you still had others that you forgot?

[timeline32]

I Have Questions

I have Questions

Last night I was scrolling through twitter, or as they call it today, X. It’s one of the only apps where the algorithm REFUSES to cater to my usual patterns. It’s plastered with right wing hobby politicians and amateur porn and frankly it fucks up my mood every time I’m on that god forsaken app

The tweets that especially worry me are the ones that echo, what I believe or at least imagine, are common thoughts that people have. One of them being that what currently is happening to Palestinians is not a genocide. This claim is backed up with statistics from previous genocides, “30 000 casualites is not a genocide” and preceding to refer to the Rwandan genocide or WW II.

This sentence scares me, because it so greatly reflects why genocides keep happening even when we’ve said never again.

So what really is genocide? Genocide is a combination of highly strategic, multi-layered stages of systemic segregation of people with the intention of extermination. It encompasses so many meticulously orchestrated military offenses and spreading of propaganda that it actually takes years to accomplish, in most cases. Now, the Israeli occupation of Palestine is at least acknowledged by the many people, though with different thoughts about its justification. (As if there is any !!!!)

Almost all genocides have these stages in common. When you actually go into the nitty gritty, even the slurs used are the same; all stemming from the fear of an outsider who’ll destroy the peace of the perpetrator. Rat, cockroach, vermin, terrorist. Entities that bring sickness, are parasitical, dangerous and infectious. When reading about any genocide, the first thing that will strike you is how similar the mechanisms are. So what exactly do they encompass?

Classification: Grouping people based on perceived differences. Ethnicity would be one.

Symbolization: Assigning names or symbols to these groups, often with negative connotations.

Dehumanization: Portraying the targeted group as subhuman or inferior.

Organization: Planning and coordination of genocidal activities.

Polarization: Exacerbating divisions and promoting hostility between groups.

Preparation: Finalizing plans and gathering resources for genocide.

Extermination: Carrying out mass killing of the targeted group.

Denial: Distorting or negating the genocide to avoid accountability.

What else do we call it? What else is there to describe the systemic dehumanization, displacement, the killing, the raping of Palestinians?

What besides apartheid accurately describes the separate legal systems, subjecting Palestinians to military law while Israeli settlers are governed by civilian law; a standard based on ethnicity? What besides open air prison should we use for the movement restrictions in the West Bank, when Israeli settlers have unrestricted access to roads and infrastructure?

What do we call it when Palestinians experience disparities in access to basic necessities like water, when Israeli settlements receive disproportionately higher allocations? Not just as of October 7th as some believe but for decades, intentionally keeping a whole population weak? What do we call it when Palestinian homes get demolished, when people are displaced, when there is a literal blockade modeled to isolate a population? Is it sufficient to call it self defense by the Israeli state? If it is, what do we call the kidnapping and murder carried out by Hamas? And if so, who is truly the more dangerous “terrorist”?

I saw a video of an Israeli child defending the murder of Palestinian children because he thought that they could grow up to be potential terrorists. The fear installed in that poor child is one strategically indoctrinated from birth, designed to make him passive as his peers are slaughtered. It’s designed to make him see a threat, not a peer.

Understanding genocide through these very specific stages and developments is essential for preventative measures to be taken. I want to, have to, believe that the tweet was from a place of ignorance. But the thing is, ignorance in the age of information is a choice. And if this person would’ve had the dignity to use just 10 minutes of their time, they would have understood that genocide can’t be defined through the amount of real time-death. It has to be boiled down to the intention of the perpetrators, and how strong of a foundation and resource they have to accomplish it. If there is an actual plan with seeds sown decades ago, it will be set in motion and it will succeed. (Especially with America as it's closest ally, Marg Bar Amerika, Disrespectfully)

If we cant see a ghoul for what it is, how can we defeat it? It will certainly make no difference to light candles and join the international politicians sighs of disbelief as thousands turn into hundreds of thousands. It is the smallest of steps, but language holds a significant amount of power. Not only in this case but always. No action will be taken until there’s a consensus that what is going on is in fact, genocide. No preventative measures to save the remnants of Gaza, or Khan Yunis, or the Palestinian people.

The person who wrote that tweet is already at stage 8; denial. Without identifying the narrative we are being fed with, that is where we all will end up, accomplices to what is one hundred percent a genocide.

[taylor14firefly]

Some Reflections on Separatism and Power

by Marilyn Frye

In The Politics of Reality: essays in feminist theory (1983, Crossing Press) (originally written and published 1977/1978)

"In my life, and within feminism as I understand it, separatism is not a theory or a doctrine, nor a demand for certain specific behaviors on the part of feminists, though it is undeniably connected with lesbianism. Feminism seems to me to be kaleidoscopic–something whose shapes, structures and patterns alter with every turn of feminist creativity; and one element which is present through all the changes is an element of separation. This element has different roles and relations in different turns of the glass–it assumes different meanings, is variously conspicuous, variously determined or determining, depending on how the pieces fall and who is the beholder. The theme of separation, in its multitude variations, is there in everything from divorce to exclusive lesbian separatist communities, from shelters for battered women to witch covens, from women’s studies programs to women’s bars, from expansion of daycare to abortion on demand. The presence of this theme is vigorously obscured, trivialized, mystified and outright denied by many feminist apologists, who seem to find it embarrassing, while it is embraced, explored, expanded and ramified by most of the more inspiring theorists and activists. The theme of separation is noticeably absent or heavily qualified in most of the things I take to be personal solutions and band-aid projects, like legalization of prostitution, liberal marriage contracts, improvement of the treatment of rape victims and affirmative action. It is clear to me, in my own case at least, that the contrariety of assimilation and separation is one of the main things that guides or determines assessments of various theories, actions and practices as reformist or radical, as going to the root of the thing or being relatively superficial. So my topical question comes to this: What is it about separation, in any or all of its many forms and degrees, that makes it so basic and so sinister, so exciting and so repellent? Feminist separation is, of course, separation of various sorts or modes from men and from institutions, relationships, roles and activities which are male-defined, male-dominated and operating for the benefit of males and the maintenance of male privilege–this separation being initiated or maintained, at will, by women. (Masculist separatism is the partial segregation of women from men and male domains at the will of men. This difference is crucial.)"