#but there is nothing in the book said about trans men that is straight up inaccurate. as far as i can tell

[remidepointedulac]

The book just straight up does not say that in any way shape or form omg y’all 😭 People keep coming into your inbox painting Whipping Girl as some baeddel manifesto and it’s the opposite of that. The book does mention trans men being welcomed in lesbian and feminist spaces when trans women were barred from them, but it is brought it up to illustrate the point of how trans men/transmscs and trans women/transfems (and people perceived as such) are treated differently by cis people. Trans men (at least at the time and in the general area that Julia Serano was from) were welcomed into cis women’s spaces but trans women were barred from both cis men’s and cis women’s spaces. This is fundamental to the theory of transmisogyny.

She does frame this acceptance from transphobic women as a kind of privilege. And I think that is where anon is getting the idea of the book saying trans men are oppressors from. But it’s a common misconception that having a privilege means you’re oppressing the people who don’t have that privilege. It is the same way that black people with light skin are privileged over black people with dark skin, yes the light skinned black people still face racism, yes if they make one wrong move the people who treated them better for having lighter skin may switch up on them, but nonetheless they are privileged in a way that dark skinned black people are not due to having closer proximity to white society (which brings things like money and safety). This proximity to white society doesn’t make the light skinned black people oppressors as a class, it just makes it easier for them to oppress other black people if they as individuals chose to.

it's extremely funny of her to say that on that particular post because from my understanding Whipping Girl tends to go on about how trans men are oppressors of trans women because they're "more welcome in cis lesbian spaces." nevermind that cis lesbian spaces are often misgendering them and only accepting as long as they can keep pretending they're women and will often shun them the minute they can't, that's not important because SHE wants in those spaces instead, so trans men are privileged

when will the transmasc oppressors stop selfishly breathing transfem air

[spacerockfloater]

Being a female viewer and hating Criston Cole is deranged.

I have to get this off my chest. The blind hatred that Criston is receiving from women is insane and I’m going to explain why.

For context, I am talking about Show Criston, not Book Criston. Comparing two standalone versions of a story is silly.

I cannot wrap my head around the fact that so many women, who are the primary victims of utilitarian relationships, would ever come together and shit on Criston for enduring such a situation.

I’m sorry, but how many of you have been used by men? How many of you have been reduced to one night stands, situationships and placeholder wives? How many of you have been deemed “not good enough” to be an exclusive partner? I log into tiktok and I see NOTHING but stories of broken women who are just used for sex, money, care and whatnot by men, and then they are tossed away like worthless trash while said men continue their pursuit of the ideal woman. Being used by men just for sex and being denied the status of girlfriend, let alone wife, is probably one of the worst plagues women are experiencing in the western world because the MOMENT we were emancipated, men understood that they don’t owe us shit anymore and instead of treating us with respect, they decided to grab whatever they can and give nothing back. Do not tell me that there are women out there that are fine with this arrangement because the multiple “GWM while I tell you about the guy that was with me for 12 years and then married someone else” tell a different story, one of multiple women’s dignities being trampled by hungry men. My heart breaks for every woman (EVERY woman, cis, trans, EVERY woman) who has been called by a man she loves just for sex, for every woman whose man never wanted to be seen in public with her, for every woman who had to hear that her man is not ready for a relationship only to witness him getting engaged to another woman 2 weeks after. I hope you overcome this and become stronger and I am glad that we are finally supporting one another.

How can we then, the women who are helping other female victims rise up and speak out against this kind of abuse, push Criston down and tell him to suck it up and accept being Rhaenyra’s plaything? Have we no mercy? Are we so hungry for revenge against men that we’d want them to endure the same humiliation that we did, as if one fictional man’s suffering would bring us justice? Are we so jealous that Criston didn’t sit down and just take it like the rest of us, but instead spoke up and removed himself from that situation? Or are we so gullible that we accept what the screenwriters shove down our throats and unknowingly support the patriarchic view that if you’re being used by someone you should just accept it?

I can hear some of you arguing that “Oh, this is different because Rhaenyra is royalty!” as if being used and tossed by a powerful person somehow makes the situation any better? Would it be okay if a rich person wanted to constantly use you for sex while he keeps looking for a better woman to be by his side, just because he values his wealth and status more? Rhaenyra straight up sneered at the idea of a simple life with him. She straight up told him that HE is not worth as much as her crown. OUCH. Even though I can’t even begin to imagine the pain of being told you are not enough by your loved one, it was Rhaenyra’s right to choose what her priorities are, but WHY would he have to accept being her sidepiece? “These were different times”: does this make it any less devastating for the victim? And he was a victim because Rhaenyra still used Criston and misled him by constantly complaining about how she HATES her duties for YEARS and then luring him to break his oath. Do you think he would have still slept with her if he was aware that moments ago, Rhaenyra was begging on her knees to be fucked by Daemon and only turned to Criston because her first option was no longer available? Like, the man was contemplating having sex with her and resisted her for a good fucking while, so imagine how quickly he would have turned around and walked out that door if he had that information beforehand. You know why? Because he loved her. He loved her to the point that he broke his oath for her, the oath of a station he FOUGHT FOR IN A WAR. He shed blood and sweat and risked his life for the mere opportunity to gain that position. This was ALL he had, he came from NOTHING and he was still willing to toss it all away for Rhaenyra not once, but twice. It wasn’t just sex he wanted because we never see him have sex again after that. He became vulnerable and gave up everything that he was to be with Rhaenyra. He was willing to abandon his whole identity for her sake. Is this not what the ideal partner is? Ready to abandon everything for your shake? Everything he fought for, tooth and nail? Was he unreasonable in thinking that Rhaenyra was willing to do the same for him? Was he crazy to think that because he was ready to put everything he FOUGHT for aside for her shake, Rhaenyra would also put aside a duty she was handed and actively seem to hate for him too? Fuck no! After hearing her constant talk about how she hates her father, her duties, her refusal to wed other men, how she is trapped as a princess, how people have no idea how much it SUCKS being her, why would he not assume that she’d be willing to give it all up for him, as he’d do for her We never see Rhaenyra even TRY to be a ruler, just complain about it. Of course it would be a fucking shock to him hearing her say “Lol dude, I actually do kinda want this”.

Criston was actually the only person in the series that wanted Rhaenyra for her, not her money or crown. I’m not saying she had to follow him, it was her right to refuse him, but his willingness to lead a simple life with just her has got to mean something. And don’t give me that “he only wanted to redeem his honour by marrying her” crap, because first of all Criston nutted up and admitted everything to Alicent and was ready to face death without EVER blaming Rhaenyra for anything, and second of all, oh no, how dare a human being have ethical values and desire to live with dignity in society’s broad light rather than move in the shadows as the princess’s secret boytoy! Bad, bad Criston for feeling you have to atone for your sins. Maybe we as people have become so corrupt that we envy those who wish to walk a virtuous path in life. Or maybe y’all have become so fond of the unhinged unapologetic character trope because it feels “original” (even if it’s ridiculously overused nowadays) that you’ve actually forgotten what characters with good morals are. Like, picking your fave war criminal and rolling with them because you enjoy good drama, especially in a show that’s meant to provide entertainment, is one thing, but passionately stating that Criston had to submit to that humiliation is something else entirely.

Finally, let’s ditch the Criston being a misogynist bullshit because he had NO issue obeying Rhaenyra before their affair or Alicent. And he is ALWAYS true to himself and his values, because even after everything he endured, he did not use Alicent’s anger as an excuse to take revenge on Rhaenyra and harm her children. Criston never betrayed her, Rhaenyra used him and he walked away and he went towards the only person who seemed to spare him some sympathy and understand him and not condemn him for his crimes even if he hated himself, which is typical victim mentality. And don’t get me started on the Joffrey incident because y’all tore Cole to SHREDS for it. Joffrey had it fucking coming. You don’t go up to people’s faces, especially ones you don’t know, threaten them by telling them you know their secret, a secret that SHAMES them and burdens them to the point they’re ready to commit suicide, and all but directly call them a whore. What the fuck did he think was going to happen? They’d shake hands? Piss off. Let this be a lesson to anyone that doesn’t know how to keep their mouths shut and their noses out of other people’s business. Also, mocking his suicide attempt makes my stomach turn. Just take a moment to consider all the young women who just like him, reluctantly surrendered their virginities to men only to find out they were nothing but sex dolls in their eyes, all these girls whose trust led to their secret being spread and them getting ridiculed and slut shamed for it: how many girls have taken their own lives because they found living with such a burden unbearable?

For the love of everything you hold sacred, please wake up. The narrative that you can be used by someone powerful and you have to accept it because that’s the way things are is a man’s construct. Do not let them fool you.

[gatoraid]

Shelley Parker-Chan for Locus Magazine

Locus Magazine's March 2024 issue had a long interview with Shelley Parker-Chan! They talk about their inspirations, the writing process of The Radiant Emperor duology, exploring gender in their books and how writing fanfic has shaped their writing (among a lot of other things). I was finally able to get my hands on the magazine and wanted to share some favorite quotes.

Check out more quotes and how to buy the magazine to read the full interview: Shelley Parker-Chan: All the Others

On their origins with scifi/fantasy

My mother was such a stereotypical Chinese tiger parent: 'You have to study really hard, get great grades. But then she also loved Star Trek. So we’d spend a lot of time watching that together at home. That was a formative part of my childhood, to the point where I wanted to be an astrophysicist when I grew up. I was obsessed with the stars.

A lot of the themes in science fiction/fantasy really spoke to me. Robots! I love an awkward robot - Murderbot by Martha Wells is one of my favorites. As a slightly awkward, possibly on-the-spectrum child, I really identified with robots, and the Spocks of the world.

On writing and fanfiction

Action/adventure plus relationships has always really interested me. Obviously, back in the day, nothing was really queer, so in my teens I gravitated towards Japanese manga and anime, which had more queer themes. Especially in the online spaces, people were writing fanfic, so I started writing it, too.

I never did any formal writing classes outside of fandom and fanfic - that was where I learned to write. I think the number one Most Important Thing was that fanfic was a place where you could write and find acceptance and enthusiasm. […] You could express very upsetting desires, and really explore aspects of sexuality, personality, and problematic relationships in a way that other people would read with an open mind and greet very enthusiastically without judging. No one said, 'Well, this is not the correct moral lesson that we want in fiction!’ Which is a response that has increasingly popped up in traditional publishing.

On exploring themes of gender in The Radiant Emperor Duology

There’s a lot of trans issues and gender exploration in the books, but I didn't want to make it too close to contemporary life because then it’s not fun for me. I like exploring those issues from a step removed, allowing for people with many different identities, for instance, to project themselves onto a certain character. Like, a eunuch - no one has a eunuch identity these days. But any kind of gender nonconforming, nonbinary, trans person - I've had many trans women write to me and say they enjoyed reading a character like that. If I had written an actual trans man character in the book, that would have narrowed it down a bit.

I always think that my main goal as a writer is to explore characters. But I don't start with the characters. I start with a theme, and the theme was gender and being oneself in a system where a rigid gender binary is enforced. It’s about the performance of femininity and masculinity. Not that I put it in so many words- ‘I want to write a book about gender!’ Its about people exploring, expanding that, confronting that, battling the binary in their own ways. What does it mean to be yourself when that self is in opposition to what people say you should be?

About the characters of TRE

All of the characters are either queer or they are really engaged with the concept of how to be themselves when the world is pressing afainst that. I do have a straight female character, Madam Zhang, based on a famous nineteenth-century female pirate in Southern China, who ran rhis mercantile empire. […] It was said that her background was a courtesan. So I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll take that character – a woman in a very male world who uses femininity as a weapon. But, knowing she can never rule herself, she has to work through men.’ That’s one character who bounces off of gender in an interesting way, and then I could have her in dialogue with other characters.

There’s a genderfluid character, my main protagonist Zhu, who used the performance of gender kind of like a superpower. She can move in and out of identities and doesn’t feel particularly wedded to any of them.

Then we have a nongender-conforming – but straight, I guess – man, Wang Baoxiang, who does not conform to society’s standards of what it is to be a man, and that impacts his identity in a certain way. His self-esteem is very damaged, and he often feels like, ‘I was born in the wrong time. If I had been born in a different time, my version of masculinity would be recognized.’ Through that character, I was thinking fo the way in which Chinese traditional performance of masculinity, for instance, is not recognized here in Australia as masculine - it's seen as feminine. In Australia. we have a certain white, sports-playing, particular idea of masculinity - It looks like Chris Hemsworth. If you do not look like Hemsworth, it you're a little Asian guy, your’e inherently seen as feminine, no matter now masculine you feel.

I have a eunuch character, someone whose gender has literally been ripped away from them, and that kind of reflects a trans experience – someone who feels they are intensely masculine on the inside, but the entire world sees them in a different way. Then you feel the need to perform, in order to seen to be the way that you feel you are. But this character, in trying to be the most manly he can possibly be , starts to adopt all these toxic masculine traits, and, in a sense, kills a lot of his own honest desires in pursuit of performing this ideal of masculinity.

About their next book and future aspirations as an author

I'm going to write a secondary-world fantasy. I've never built a world from scratch before […] It will feel pre-industrial, historical. It will be very kinky and - what are the comps? So far l've been saying, 'It's Foucault's Discipline and Punish meets Simone Weil's Gravity & Grace with a side of of Kushiel’s Dart. There's a lot of kinky BDSM in a world like that. One of the joys of fan fiction was people were not afraid to create these worlds where society is completely based around kink concepts, so I'm building a world around kink concepts here, and that’ll be fun.

I'm a frustrated romance author, so I really want to write some romances in the future - straight up. None of that politics stuff. none of the adventure, only the relationships! I'm not fast enough to write category romance, though, that's for sure. I'll have to stick with fantasy romance so I can do one every two years.

[popculturebuffet]

Mutant Month: House of Claremont: Avengers Annual #10: Rogue Rises, Carol Falls (Patreon Review for Brotoman.exe)

Hello all you happy mutants and welcome back to Mutant Month, my celebration of the X-Men and all things marvel mutant. Today we're taking a step back from the strangest heroes of all themselves: while they do cameo in this story and Charles plays a very imporant roll, the main focus is on the X-Men's sometimes friends, sometimes rivals, and sometimes guys who sit there and do nothing while genocide happened because of editorial not stopping to think how bad this would make them look, the Avengers.. specifically Carol Danvers, at the time Ms Marvel. While Carol is absent most of the story it's her being found half alive and mostly brain dead that kicks off the story, her scathing reason you suck speech to the avengers for the events of Avengers #200, and the writer of this book being so pissed off by the events of said issue he wrote THIS ONE in the first place.

For those who haven't heard of avengers #200... i'm truly sorry i'm about to tell you it exists. But since this story is a direct sequel/fuck you to the story, I have to. Apologizes in advance.

So Avengers #200 was the story of how Carol Danvers got mystically impregnated by Marcus, extradimensional son of avengers foe Immortus... WITH Marcus. Marcus then revealed he'd previously kidnapped Carol, made her fall in love with him with the subtle manipulations of his machines, his EXACT words, and then when he had to go back to his home dimension due to his presence destroying the world, took Carol back with him. The avengers all GLADLY sent her off with her rapist and hoped she'd be okay.

If your curious to view this nightmare for yourself, my review of it's right here`, and it's easily one of the worst things i've reviewed. And that's not in a general group.. i'm still not sure if this monstrosity or the transphobic episode of faimly guy where Brian vomits for 2 minutes straight because he slept with a trans woman is worse. It's a toss up. It's a straight up deadlock of things that PHYSICALY HURT to write about.

So as a sort of apology Brotoman, who comissioned the review of Avengers #200 not having any idea how bad it was, as did I as while I knew what happened reviews only prepare you so much, agreed to eventually have me review the direct response to that, this issue. As for why it's in X-Men Month.. well if you know Carol's history or x-men history.. then you know where Rogue got her powers.. and this is where not only that happens.. but Rogue debuts. So not only does this change avengers history.. but it's also VITALLy important to x-men history, to the point the issue is both int he x-men and marvel masteworks and their respective epic collections. It's simply too vital to both stories to ignore, especially the x-men's as Carol also basically joins the group for a while after this.

As I said this is a direct response from Chris Claremont about Avengers #200. Now any resonable person would hate this story, something i'd rarely say as tastes differ but this is

So I feel confident saying no one likes this and if they do their just being a trollish jackass.

But no one liked this story less than X-Men Maestro Chris Claremont. Chris was deeply attached to Carol and for good reasons: While Carol existed before him, debuting in Captain Marvel and then getting her own solo, the character wasn't exactly defined, first being a kinda sorta but not really love intrest to Captain Mar-Vell, then having this weird split identity gimmick and working at a women's magazine printed by J Jonah Jameson. It was clear while Marvel had the idea of "neat new womens superhero" that was about all they had.

Luckily Chris took on the book and quickly ended the split identity schtick and defined carol as we know her: Tough as nails, badass, miltary referree. He defined her backstory, the son of a sexist jackass who joined the Air Force to get an education after he refused because she was a woman. He defined most of her supporting cast, her skill and genuinely who she was. He even took her archenenemy mystique with him when he started writing x-men and to my shock Rogue was actually intended for an arc in Carol's book.. but the book got cancelled before it happened.

So finding out a character he poured his heart into was raped and her friends were just fine with it while also pouring a thick gravy of sexisim on top of the procedings.. didn't go so well

Shooter.. let Chris right the ship. Which says a lot as normally when editorial is asked to correct a creative mistake they either wait a bit so they can make money off correcting their own bullshit or actively refuse

Granted in this case, Chris Claremont was marvel's #1 writer at the time, with X-Men rising to be their best seller, with Chris having just finished the back to back classics Dark Phoenix Saga and Days of Future Past. It was clear the X-Men needed chris, wouldn't be the same without him and Chris had all the power in this negotation, while all Shooter could do is nod and say sure. While Shooter would ocasoinally flex his power on x-men for both good (shutting down the Colossus and Kitty Pryde thing) and bad (not letting Mystique and Destiny be publicly gay.. or letting Destiny be nightcrawlers mom and Mystique having shapeshifted into a man to make that possible. ), but it was stuff Shooter was willing to fight for where as here the writer of his biggest hit was asking to fix a huge mistake for him. And given jim was busy making mistakes of his own

Someday.... i'll deal with this mess someday.. but for now Chris had the greenlight to fix Shooter's mistake, and thus we got Avengers Annual #10. And as said, since he couldn't do the Rogue story in carol's book, he did it here a way to both set up Rogue as the next big threat for the x-men, and of course swerve it by them being forced to take her in, and Carol joining the team in a supporting role while not having her powers... then giving her a new more powerful set. The latter part was also likely always intended, it simply played out diffrently. It's hard to tell. What won't be is does this issue hold up on it's own and does it help wash the taste of avengers 200 out of our mouths? Let's find out.

Avengers Annual #10 gets right to it as we open with a woman getting pushed off a bridge.. thankfully she's quickly saved by one of the guest stars.. no not storm...We're in san francsico and Chris Claremont is still writing non- mutant books so...

Yup. As a nice bonus to this issue in addition to Carol and the X-Men guest starring, we also get the Startling Spider-Woman. As I mentioned in my review of God Loves, Man Kills, claremont really likes using everything he's worked on or has worked on. I see echoes of that attitude in Al Ewing's work today, finding ways to weave in your other books or tie off loose ends you never got to.

For those less familiar with her, Jessica Drew was experimented on by her dad and the high evolutionary, raised around Animal People, and then became a super heroine, with Claremont turning her into a detective after some hit and miss directions. I'm a fan thanks to Dennis Hopeless breakout run, so it was nice seeing Jess here. When we next see Jess she's waiting at the hospital, where she finds out her Jane Doe is carol.. and whlie not suprising to us given this issues place and history, it was meant to be a suprise at the time with the cover lady easily being any super being the avengers had met.

And before we move on, let's talk about that cover for a second because it's this weird mix of being both really eyecatching and an absolute hot mess. On the one hand the striking red, various panels of all the stuff and nice bit of building intrigue as they don't spell out what out of the brotherhood knocked out cap and iron man. On first look it's not too weird.

But when you really step back and look at it it's saying a lot of nothing. instead of going just with cap being thrown through a window or showing the various things happening to the avengers and then having jess and the x-men on the botttom it tries to showcase EVERYTHING in this issue and cram it all on to one cover, which is never a smart idea. Not helping is the large advertisment for a ten speed giveaway taking up a lot of real estate in an already busy cover. I don't mind covers homaging this, as it's a neat IDEA for a cover, the excecution is just sloppier than I remember and has diminishing returns: it does the job of catching your attention.. but then gets it for all the wrong reasons.

Anyways there's a problem: Carol's mental state is so withdrawn the staff psychologist assumed she'd been insutlationalized since child hood, and they can't really reach her. Thankfully Jess happens to be friends with the x-men.

That's something.. weird that happened with the passage of time. See due to Chris writing her early on Jess was friends with the x-men and her reason for knowing them is not remotely small: on a case she found former member Banshee's lost daughter Siryn, who'd go on to be a major part of X-Force and X-Factor and a faviorite of mine thanks to the latter. It's not the biggest foot note but it's something that almost never gets brought up. She's friendly enough with the x-crowd it's weird it dosen't get brought up apart from her skrull counterpart and wolverine being on good terms due to Jess also having been a close friend of logan's in his series during her powerless days. For instance in the solo I mentioned, none of the uncanny x-men visit her party. They just kinda fell out of touch. I mean Logan was dead at the time but I can't imagine Kurt Wagner would pass up free shrimp and pretty ladies. It's just not who he is.

At any rate Jess calls the professor for help, and we get a little bit of slice of life stuff with the x-men. It's something chris REALLY loved doing and that I honestly miss in modern comics: with how tightly packed the pacing is there isn't time for the x-men to say, be busy rebuilding the danger room after Kitty had to use it to murder an alien, which is the case here. It's fun seeing Kurt and Kitty slowly bond and also fuck up some machinery together trying to fix things. Charles heads down to San Fran, and the avengers have been notififed: Carol's identity isn't public YET , so it's just said their linked "somehow". Charles tells Jess in his mind that not only is her concious mind just.. gone but he was able to find out who did it: Rogue. Who at the time would've gotten a solid reaction out of fans as

As this is her intro. It's a good way to set up a villian though: have her take out a hero at Carol's level.. and a few more. YOu do have to thread this needle carefully: if you go too far, the villian comes off overpowered. Here , Rogue has just enough to be a threat, but not so much she's entirely overpowered, as we find out some drawbacks later.. and much later will find out permenanlty stealing Carol's powers and memories comes with the whopper downside of a whole other person being grafted to her brain.

And we first meet Rogue properly.. as she suprise attacks captain america. Which COULD be seen as cheap.. but Rogue makes a valid point after: she has Carol's memories.. and thus unlike most foes fighting cap , knows how he fights. And Carol being military herself meant she probably thought about how to take him down just in case someone possesed him, turned him into a werewolf or created a nazi clone. You know the usual.

Rogue then does what would become her trademark of taking the power with a kiss. This is also where we find out she stole Carol's powers for keeps, and as long as she dosen't touch someone TOO long can usually not take too much. This part.. is a bit out of sorts with her later deep fear of being touched, but I feel fits: At this point Rogue is a villian and is being encouraged by her moms to be evil. As such the ethics are likely being actively downplayed. Most memroies she's taken fade away and so does the guilt with only her first use of her powers with her childhood friend cody really bothering her. It's a case of her simply not having the downside of her powers HIT HER yet. Without any consequences, she has no reason to fear her power.

While the rest of the avengers minus thor and iron main wait for cap, Rogue leonardos him through a window. This gets them to contact Tony as Iron Man who plans to help.. but turns out the attack on Cap wasn't something random.. it was well planned, with Mystique waiting in hiding as the wasp to trick tony.. and slam some sort of doo dad that depowers the armor and leaves tony stuck inside it.

Finally for the big three, just as Thor turns out of being Donald Blake, Rogue hits him. Granted she docent know he's thor's mortal alter ego... but it still makes sense as he's their doctor. Before she can finish him though Jess shows up, having apparently travled to NYC to follow up on Carol's attempted murder.

We get a neat fight as Rogue really beats the shit out of the avengers, but like I said it's done in a way that dosen't leave her coming off OVERPOWERED. Yes she snatch's thor's powers.. but that's why: She has the combined powers of thor, cap and ms marvel with Steve, Carol and Thor's combined knowledge of their teammates. It makes perfect sense she easily floors them and only dosen't kill them because Mystique has other plans for her daughter. It's also a ncie way to show off her inexperience and deference to mystique: she stole three powers but dosen't know if she can do more, and balks out of a guaranteed win simply becaase it's not in the plan.. which sets up the brotherhood's defeat LATER by not finishing the avengers NOW.

With the avengers on the backfoot for now, Jess reveals that Carol disappeared from new york 6 months ago with avengers 200.. but resurfaced three months later in San Fran, living just fine. It's our first hint that Carol isn't exactly happy to see her friends again. She moved to a city with one other superhero, hasn't picked the mask back up, and didn't call them. And as we'll see later she has every reason not to.

The avengers reacap avengers 200, and after giving me some flashbacks, we get to the main point: This attack was cordinated, the avengers are now down their three strongest and most experienced members. The only good news is Beast, who was an avenger for a while, it's why he wasn't in the Claremont run outside of a few choice guest spots as by the time he wasn't, he got swept into x-factor, meaning beating Rogue won't be easy.

The reason behind hobbling the avengers like this? A prison break. See the brotherhood first appeared a few months before this in the landmark x-men story Days of Future Past, trying to assassinate bigoted senator kelly, our heroes winning.. but Kelly being an ungreatful bastard about it and turning around to be mutantkind's greatest pain in the ass for a while, trying to publish the mutant registration act.

The brotherhood at the time consisted of Mystique, master shapeshifter and Carol's arch enemy at the time turned x-men villian, Destiny, Mystiques wife who can see the futttttttooorrrrrr, the blob, the imovable object, Pyro, Australian arsonist and fire bender, and Avalanche, earthquake machine of the cool costume without a personality to match, with Rogue joining here. They'd keep the lineup minus Rogue for most of the 80's, transitioning from terrorists to being the goverment's go too hired goons

At any rate Misty was the only one to escape last time, so it's her job to break them out, with help from her wife predicting when, and Iron man being used as a blunt instrument. Though really he's more of an object. All that matters is he's blunt, hard and blunt.

So the brotherhood is broken out and costumed up... just in time for the avengers to arrive. Spider-Woman heads to fight iron man while a decent fight ensues: the main gimmick is destiny is tipping off the brotherhood before the avengers each move, allowing them to counter. It's a reminder of just HOW powerful Destiny is: her knowledge of the future isn't 100% , it's more propablities than full info or other wise she'd be invincible and our heroes could never win and it'd be really, really boring. But it's still potent enough and showed off well by chris claremont here: while the rest of the brotherhood get a great showing, their mostly hired goons. Destiny is Mystiques #2 for more reasons than that mouth thing she likes, and this shows it. The avengers are entirely on the backfoot because of her and it's telling the tide turns after Wanda gets a chance to attack her.. and more telling that it was only concidence she got a shot in on her and pure luck, as none of them KNEW destiny was doing this. The X-Men at least later have the advantage of knowing Destiny's the most dangerous piece on the board.

Mystique tries to kill Jessica, mostly because she's pissed Carol lived. Destiny warns her this will be their downfall.. and she's right. Mystique was a terrible choice to send for this as Jessica sees right through her nick fury disguise and Misty barely escapes , with Jessica bringing iron man back

With that the tide has fully turned: Iron Man goes with the genius strategy of hitting Rogue real hard.. and her feeling it tells her she's down to just Carol's power and Mystique tells her to retreat, the two of them feeling. Now.. tha'ts a solid marriage right there. Where you can leave your wife to get captured by the avengers.

We get more of the fight including highlights such as pyro makin ga giant firebird, his trademark and Vision and Jocasta using double laser vision to collapse the ground beneath blob. It's a decent enough fight, I just don't care about it a lot and it's one of the issue's main weaknesses: A lot of it's a fight scene and while there was good setup for it with Misty taking out a lot of their members, the people who did said setup.. have left at this point. IT's down to blob, pyro and avalanche. And while I like all three for their designs and they've had great development in later years... in this case their just three interchangable mooks. Destiny's the one really making them dangerous and with the people who actually personally hurt the avengers gone, it looses any emotional weight. It's just the avengers against some b-list super villians. I've seen this before, i'll see it again and while it's fun enough it just feels like padding. What Chris HAD to do to justify the issue. It would've been more intresting had they actually escaped. The avengers won, the brotherhood just had to retreat. But i'm guessing Chris wanted the actual escape in his own book, and knew it'd also be weird if these guys beat the avengers and the earth's mightest heroes weren't after them.

It's nice ot see the brotherhood in this sort of situation.. but I can see why we only saw them pop up more elsewhere after they became freedom force: it's a lot easier to have the heroes eat the loss or the villians loose when the villians are working for the goverment and thus wont' be going back to jail.

The ending of this annual.. is what we came for though, the big centerpiece. The only thing I can say bad about it is the art. See the avengers come to see Carol, whose staying with the x-men, and will be for the next 20 or so issues of their title. More on that in a moment. For whatever reason artist micheal golden.. decided to have her pool side so this scene of a woman talking about her sexual assault.. is done in a swimsuit.

The art in general is the book's weakpoint: As a critic while i'll point out stuff I dont' like I generally try to be positive. Something bad like Avengers 200 isn't my usual wheelhouse. i'll gladly REVIEW terrible media for money, but even then I try to be fair.

But while the writing is good as any Claremont story of the era... the art from Micheal Golden is just bad. It's bad. At best i'ts inoffensive and at worst we have Rogue's looking like she's a 4 year old who found mommy's make up

Wonder Man looking like he pulled everything , everywhere all at once and cannot move from this pose as a result

Or the blob breifly replaced with a wax statue by the ghost of vincient price

Now credit where it's do there are good shots like this one of wanda

Or beast easily out manuvering pyro and blob

But as you can see their still not the BEST shots, just decent ones. It puts a damper on an otherwise solidly written book.

Speaking of which, it's time for the moment you've been waiting for, the reason we're here. Carol has the x-men and Jessica go inside, she needs to speak with her guests alone. Before she does though there's one small moment.. but an important one

It's a small subtle thing.. but the fact Jess is still here despite this scene taking place weeks later... shows she was there for Carol's recovery. While she found out what happened.. she cared enough to stay by her side and help her.. and it was through that one of the strongest friendships in the marvel universe war born. While it takes Jess becoming relevant again to really take hold, the two have been best friends for most of modern marvel, only briefly having a falling out over civil war II.. and even that didn't last long. Jessica and Carol are each othe'rs ride or die, and that call goes both ways. While we never see these weeks their what built a bond stronger than any on earth.

But this is something Carol has to do alone.

It's an utterly heartbreaking scene, one of the best in Chris Claremont's long career on this reread. The pure PAIN in carol's voice comes through in print, a hard feet but one Chris makes seem easy. And while Golden's artwork still isn't the best... he does a damn fine job of capturing her pain without making it melodramatic: instead we see a person who was horribly violated, has her friends casually assume she was in love with her rapist and even has one loudly tell her "no we saw you you didn't see what you think we saw".. only for Carol to calmly and tearfully explain that no, she did. Marcus violated her, and they LET HIM take her with him. It's only through sheer grace of his instant death far worse didn't happen and by then he'd still done more than enough.

What i love is that while Claremont is very thinly calling out how horrible the writing was.. he dosen't let his understandable outrage hurt his ablility to make a good narrative out of it: many a comic writer can succumb to clumisly fixing what they deem a mistake or even when fixing an actual mistake, fumble the ball. Chris here however turns it into character: Carol calls them out, tearfully, but calmly and lets them know how bad they hurt her, how bad they betrayed her.. but right after also makes it clear theyc an learn from this. They HAVE to learn from this. And if they do maybe all of this will have had SOMETHING good come out of it. But that's their choice.

It gives Carol agency back after an issue that was determined to strip it away, mocking her for not wanting a baby that was forced on her, that left her to a "happy ending" with her rapist." She could wallow in anger, but chooses to move on. She's cutting the avengers out of her life for now.. but after all they've done she can't bare to have them in it, and that panel above, that one right there shows how badly they get that: they came expecting to get some closure.. and instead got the wakeup call that they lost that one. Their friend was in pain, needed help, and they ignored what she wanted, ignored her concerns.. and like marcus ignored her consent. LIke him they didn't care what she wanted or who she was, just waht this whole thing meant to them. And it's clear fromt heir expressions.. that won't happen again.

I also like how it ends: Wanda, the one of them who was the most supportive during this debacle (and was missing during the sendoff with captain rapist, rest in dust you miserable bastard), is the most broken up by it and tells her sorry.. and Carol wipes her tears and accepts it, knowing at least one person tried not to betray her. It's a fitting sendoff for Carol's time in the avengers, a time that wouldn't come again till the 90's, one that dosen't let the avengers off the hook at all and has them utterly raked over the coaals for their henious actions, but allows her to move on

The final scene is in the Quinjet, as most of the avnegers sit in stone silence as the weight of everything hits them.. but it's once again wanda whose the most affected

It's a hell of an ending, one that offers no easy comfort.. simply the promise that maybe there will be a better tommorow. It's not easy making a mistake.. but it's the harder step learning from it. And evne harder to live with what others have inflicted on you.

So yeah while the art is hit and miss.. this issue is still solid. THe last act really steals the show, and is one long callout by chris.. but again it's done perfectly in character, a way to bridge carol leaving the avengers and joining the x-men and to make the Avengers deal with what they did. To make sure #200 isn't just fixed, with Carol back and Marcus a pile of dust, but to make sure it isn't forgotten. It's easier in comics to just.. wipe away a bad decision, and sometims necessary. But it's ofen the better route to take a huge writing mistake and refit it for character.

As for Carol her story would continue: she'd basically join the x-men, helping them on occasion, then get shot up into space with them, with her powers reawakend and reformatted as the even STRONGER binary. But with her emotions attached to most of her memories gonCarol's place on earth was gone and she took to the stars. She'd regain those emotions and rejoin earth of course, rejoining the avnegers, leading them and eventually becoming Captain Marvel.

As for Rogue.. having Carol's Memories would nearly drive her insane, revealing her not as the callous monster seen here.. but as a scared 20 or so year old... and forced to turn to the people who hated her most for help. But that.. my friend sis a story for next year. For now .. we can take comfort that even with lows like Civil War II under her belt.. Carol has never been through something like avengers #200 again.. and god willing never will. Thanks for reading

[recomvery]

Hi! Your blog is great! It really helps me because recently I started to go on dates again (the last time was before the pandemic) and I hear a lot of negative comments about my appearance... Men do comments about my gap front teeth, body hair on my arms, my short hair, thin eyebrows. Why are they doing this? I am not perfect, they aren't perfect. We are humans. Is it because they watch online all these perfect women with filters and makeup? I will never comment on someone's appearance in a negative way. And if they don't like me, it's okay, but why they ask me on date and be mean? It hurts hearing all these things... It took me years to build my confidence because I was very insecure when I was teenager. I take care of myself, eat healthy, exercise, reading books, have my job and I have a good character. I know I am not a 10 but they make me feel like a zero... I am very romantic and all I want is a good man to spend our lives together but I don't think I will find him. Do other women have similar experiences? And men too. Maybe women act this way too. Are people mean when they go on dates?

Hello dear,

First of all, this is such a good quality question and analysis and I love how vulnerable you are and I think a lot of people can relate to this a lot.

Dating men can be so difficult because a lot of men can be really problematic and sexist about womens bodies and I hate it. I actually found your description of yourself so endearing and cute. It makes me so angry that your dates have been negatively commenting on your body, that's SO messed up. Also it broke my heart when you said you were not a 10 because that rating system is so sexist and I think you are absolutely perfect and enchanting just the way that you are, like every other woman too.

To answer your question: There is nothing "normal" about people being mean to you on a date and you should absolutely not entertain it. Don't let people get away with this. Don't stay in contact or on a date where someone says mean things to you. Get up and leave. Block them. Stand up for yourself and show people that you are confident and love yourself and that you will accept 0 bullshit.

Personally, I have always used dating apps in a way where I texted for a long time with a person before going on a date to see if we are even compatible and so that I knew they were a good person. What I always did is ask men to play a question game and then ask them questions that were important to me such as their political affiliation, if they are ok with gay people, fat women, trans people, etc. I had a list of questions that were important to me in my notes and would try to ask them in a fun, lighthearted way to filter the people I would go on dates with, and STILL I have encountered people making comments about my weight and stuff. Of course, not everyone likes to date that way.

What's way more important than some mens opinion on your looks is your own confidence. It would be cool for you to get to a point where you are so damn confident about your own aesthetics that when someone sais something mean, you can straight up tell them: "LOL, you're wrong, I'm so cute." And leave and not be hurt by it. I am such a huge fan of women that unapologetically love themselves and are very confident, I think it's the best way to live your life.

I hope you're gonna find some cool and nice people to go on dates with ♡ because you are awesome and you deserve it and there is nothing wrong with you. When it comes to dating, know exactly what you want and what you will never accept.

[ricanvvas]

And this HAD to be said. I cannot express how much it triggers me and makes me lose interest or faith so quickly. Makes me believe that you understood absolutely nothing through what the given relationship between the characters was trying to portray. Are you even properly watching the show?

Like it or not, by the way, fetishizing gay people has become so common that not only are weirdos fetishizing gay men, they’re starting to insert sexualities of their choice INTO a character that does not belong to them in any form. Go, turn tf back, and watch/read your yaoi stuff, don’t drag it into anime that has nothing to do with it + people genuinely want to enjoy what is canonically given (indeed, I’m a canon freak). Straight up disrespectful to the original author when you really try to twist characters or their relationship with another character. Disappointing.

Babes... why would it trigger you when people ship two characters? You need to understand that queer people exist in a world where there is a severe lack of queer representation in different genres, so we have to accept bits and pieces wherever we can. And frankly, I think you're a piece of shit for the way you speak about us. "Are you even properly watching the show?" "Don't drag it into that has nothing to do with it" Excuse me? The fuck do you mean by that? Queerness is not limited to "yaois". Queer people are not any different from straight people. I can tell that you have a stick up your ass about "canon" but frankly, most people don't. People ship non-canon ships all the damn time but why is it only such a big issue when they're gay? And you can say it's because you think it's "fetishing gay people" but it only comes across as homophobic. Queer people can't sexualise their own sexuality (and if you're talking about straight girls, most queer people have explicitly stated that there are nuances to everything).

As a writer myself, and hopefully a soon-to-be-author, I’d be damned if I ever opened a phone and saw some no-lifer trying to ship the two characters I put in specifically to show their deep friendship—it sounds so absurd.

I'M SORRY WHAT??? Why would you call your non-existent hypothetical readers "no-lifers" if they choose to ship two NON-EXISTENT HYPOTHETICAL characters? That's actually crazy to me, babes. I disagree with most of the things you've written on that post but I specifically wanted to say something about this. you need to understand that while yes, you are the origin of said hypothetical characters but once said hypothetical book is published, you no longer have creative liberty of said characters. think about harry potter for example. the author is a terf and yet trans people and allies headcanons some of her characters as trans. do you think jk r*wling's okay with that? i highly doubt it. (And babes, if you want to be an author, or at least one that doesn't get cancelled, a small advice would be that if people are shipping a ship that you don't want them to ship, you might not be as good of an author as you might think. Think about Naruto. No one particularly enjoys the ending. Some find Naruhina to be forced and Sasusaku were done so wrong in Boruto. And that's mainly part of the reason so many people ship SNS. Think about JJK. Geto and Geto have been explicitly written to be foils of each other. While I do understand why straight people might not be able to see the blantant queercoding but I would suggest that you start reading into things more deeply rather than just accepting whatever is presented to you on a silver platter by the author. But also think about AOT, why do you think most people don't ship Armin and Eren while they do ship Eremika? Because for once, there is a well written ship WITH a well-written female character? (Yes, I agree it's not perfect but much better than most ships)).

Small note that I forgot to add: Most female characters are horribly written (which is no fault of their own and lies heavily with their authors). Think Hinata. Why would I ship something when one part of the ship has no fucking personality other than the main male character??? I'm in no way hating on Hinata but more so on how Kishimoto writes female characters. I ship things based on chemistry and canon. I can still ship things if it's not canon but not if there is no chemistry.

This may have come across as rude and I do not apologise and I'm sure you understand why (your original post was rude as fuck if you didn't lmao). I ranted a lot so it might not make sense but feel free to ignore if you're only going to get "triggered".

Quit it with the “babes”, I don’t know you personally and it makes me gag.

Like, 98% of this message is indirectly saying I’m homophobic. I’m not.

My original message was blunt and straightforward, if I preached canon friendships and you found it rude, I do wonder who really has a stick up their ass. I mean, I’m not the one dissatisfied by canon givens and twisting platonic relationships anyway.

Frankly, keep your advice. It’s crappy! I don’t need a drag down. I’ll do what I damn wish to do with and speak my book, my characters, and my story.

None of you have convinced me of absolutely anything because there is nothing to convince. I’m not bothered by general shipping, I’m bothered by shoving it down people’s throat or attacking them when they disagree with your ship. Might as well as attack the authors, tbh, for keeping the characters platonic. Nasty.

Also, unnecessary use of profanity really does show how literally all of you resort to pure insults and attacks.

Peace and Sincerity （＾ω＾）！

[runthepockets]

I've been reading The Secret Life Of Men by Steve Biddulph and I think it's the best men's wellness book I've come across in a hot minute. It goes into a lot of things-- navigating your post pubescent body, how to talk to your father and fit the missing pieces of the puzzle into your own masculinity, how to develop deep and enriching friendships with other men, how to get your point across in arguments with female love interests without having to resort to violence or petty insults or stonewalling, etc-- but what I'm most fixated on right now is the way he talks about sexuality. He does it in ways I'm always thinking and can relate to, but have never quite have the words for.

Basically this guy is like, when you raise boys to treat women as objects, when they're coming into their sexualities and you give them nothing but pin ups and rock music videos and degrading film and tv shows to latch onto, they grow up very ignorant and ashamed. They talk about women in context of "scoring", they keep "body counts", they don't know the difference between ejaculating and actually climaxing because you've taught them that masturbation is anything from a sin to necessary evil rather than a natural bodily function that keeps you healthy and sane (especially when you're not using low grade porno to get to the end) and that sex is a fleeting experience where someone else just happens to be along for the ride; that it's an excersize routine rather than a pleasant, fulfilling experience where both parties have fun, bare their souls, and become a little closer as a result. He said his biggest sexual awakening was when he was 14 and watching a very intimate scene in a movie where a woman made love to a parapalegic Vietnam Vet. And like. Yeah.

I'm frequently afraid to talk to other men about the intricacies of my sexual desires-- about what I want, about how I want it, about how I like kissing and hand holding and telling her she's pretty a lot and how I like back rubs and muscle stroking and all sorts of other cutesy shit-- despite being a pretty vanilla straight dude, because sometimes you give other guys an inch and they take a mile. Even if I simply say "I hung out with a girl" or intentionally and appropriately use phrases like "courting" or "making love" or "intimacy", I get crude metaphors and graphic questions about the woman's appearence in turn. I get told I have "another notch under my belt" and that I "scored" and that's really not how I like thinking of my partners. It feels gross, vouyeristic, disrespectful, invasive, both to her and me. I made a friend, we had a nice evening. All of this is doubled by the fact that I mostly pursue trans women and that makes a lot of other dudes antsy and/or ready to pounce with homophobic and transmisogynistic commentary.

Up until pretty recently I thought being a straight guy was all about having all kinds of porn catered to me, I thought sex was the only thing that mattered because that's the only thing other straight guys really talk about, and only in the vaguest terms and most degrading phrases, I hadn't even known there was a difference between ejaculating (the sensation a guy gets when he's close) and climaxing (actually cumming) and how important it is to really pay attention to your body until I had started reading this book, despite being a person who masturbates pretty regularly. Even though I'm the top demographic of people that the majority of mainstream sexual content is catered toward, I still felt unhappy and confused and ashamed and angry, and now I know why. Dudes really be treating sex like it's a game to be won and that makes me not want to engage in any sort of discourse or merrymaking unless absolutely necessary.

[anneowl2803]

I think it’s pretty unfair to say there was nothing in the HP books that showed Dumbledore’s homosexuality, because there was some interesting context regarding his relationship with Grindelwald that made you wonder why they were, even in the face of death or already dead, so devoted to each other. Remember, the boos were written from Harry’s point of view and we all know he was pretty oblivious.

As for the inevitable “what about Wolfstar?”. In my opinion, the only reason she didn’t admit to that particular romance, was because of Remus. Remus being a werewolf was a metaphor for AIDS. Imagine the only (important and likeable) character in the entire series she says that about being gay. It would have almost implied, specifically at the time, that AIDS was a disease of gay people. How do you think that would have landed with the public?

As for being a TERF. Not once, not once, did JK say she disliked trans people, though they were making their identity up or that they were, in any way. dangerous. Here’s what she actually said:

A woman shouldn’t be fired for referring to biological women as exactly that in a scientific study about biological women.

That, although they were valid individuals, trans men weren’t biological men, trans women weren’t biological women and that sometimes that difference can be pertinent or important.

There are cis men who have and will continue to abuse trans inclusive laws to further their own personal agenda. Like a cis straight men in Scotland, who, on the day of his sentencing, claimed he was trans (not having said that ever before) only to be sent to a women’s prison. He was arrested for being a serial rapist. He continued to rape women in prison.

These laws have to either be updated with mechanisms that prevent this kind of abuse, or they should be suspended.

Many of these law abusers hide behind the “woke mob” and people don’t realize that, because they’re to busy screaming their pretty slogans.

Instead of parroting what everyone on this site says, go read the actual tweets with an open mind.

In my opinion, glossing over the kind of men I mentioned and detransitioners by ignoring their existence, will ultimately only harm actual transexual and non-binary people.

J. K. Rowling and Neil Gaiman are such a funny contrast to me, like Rowling: Oh, and by the way, I put gay characters in my books. People: Is there anything... showing that? Rowling: No. Also trans women don't deserve respect People: wtf Gaiman: Here are some immortals that transcend all human concepts of gender and attraction who use a variety of pronouns, and also some clearly canon human queers. People: Are the immortals queer? Gaiman: That is an entirely valid way to view them. Other people: Ugh, pushing a modern woke agenda. It used to be- Gaiman: Fuck you

[princess-dirt]

My hot take for the Queer community is that sleeping with conservatives is gross and hurts everyone. More specifically, trans women sleeping with chasers, twinks or femboys hooking up with older guys on the down low. A d similar things are just lame.

I understand my own bias as someone who finds older men generally repulsive, but I'm not judging preferences here. Adult queers in their 20s hooking up and dating people in their 40s of 50s is fine. And men lying about themselves and their beliefs to get someone to be more willing to sleep with them is infinitely worse than what I'm going on about.

This post isn't meant to slut shame nor is it to victim blame. It just hurts to see such a lack of basic self-respect from people like me. Like I get it, sex is just sex at the end of the day. But the thought of any queer person being used to pleasure the exact type of person who despises them is just a gross thought.

I know what I'm talking about isn't some common thing. I know a lot of these people sleeping with these older guys and conservatives aren't the norm. I also know that this distaste and anger should be directed towards the conservatives and bigots themselves. But I can rage against conservatives and older men being creepy groomers while also sparring some energy to address the community I'm apart of.

And to this point, I'm not mad at victims of grooming for sleeping with their groomer. It's fucking disgusting and partly why I feel the way I do, but it's also why I can't personally understand why someone would sleep with the exact type of guy who would groom someone.

Idk, I see like 40% of the US becoming fascists and openly disliking queer people and minorities, then I see the 100s of anti trans laws and the waves of book bannings, then I see Dems not pushing back on anti trans rhetoric while older conservative men fetishize and groom queer people. Only for those older freaks to get exactly what they want, sex with someone they go onto say they want dead.

Maybe it's because of my lack of experience, but I could never imagine compromising my basic morals for meaningless sex or some facade of companionship. I get if, like I previously mentioned, the man had lied, and you were essentially tricked into the situation. In that situation, the dude is fucking disgusting and nothing else. Before any TERFs enter this convo, fuck off. Trans people not revealing their identity immediately isn't the same. It's to protect themselves in case said man I have been mentioning is there.

I don't make this post out of malice for any queer person who has slept with conservatives, I only feel pity for that tbh, but instead as a way to work out my own thoughts on this. I openly invite people to try to help me empathize or something. This post is a bit spontaneous, but it's a thought I've had for a while. I got inspired to post it seeing a straight person on tik tok saying they introduced a kkk member to grindr and how the old man found femboys hot.

This is in the context of the creator trying to rehabilitate them, and tbh i don't even believe 90% of what the dude on tik tok said. But a part of what he said sparked this feeling I've had. I'll probably edit or add to this post at some point, but again, I invite others to chime in to this.

[leafkingofbirds]

Hmm what about modern TCH? Like what do you think their modern professions would be, their styles, how they would act. I can already picture the mc being a nurse or doctor but I would like your take on that.

Also I feel like we should have gotten like Jack/Longclaw cause throughout the book I was like "damn are they really going to romance each other?" And then it never happened lol

-💜💜💜

how funn!

Gotta admit, the moment you said you saw MC as being a doctor or nurse, I had an image of MC being a Claire Fraser character, going "back in time" to a more primitive Fae world with all her modern-day knowledge, and them thinking she's a witch for making people wash their hands or trying to explain germ theory. LOL

But! Assuming they're all in a modern AU with no magic...

Kieran: I can't see him working for a living, lol. He inherits a multibillion dollar company from his parents but doesn't do any actual work, he just shows up to board meetings sometimes. He lives in a very private, very tasteful mansion in a remote area with a very small staff, because he hates being around people and he just wants to be in nature and by himself. Also, he's getting his private pilot's license because he loves flying. He only wears the finest, most expensive clothes by a designer no one's ever heard of, tailored perfectly, but they're also very understated and classic. Even his casual clothes are tailored. Money means nothing to him because he has an endless supply of it.

Oleander: Kieran's best friend from college. Either an adjunct humanities professor working on their PhD, or a law student about to take the bar. Was cut off financially from their rich homophobic family for being gender nonforming, so lives in Kieran's mansion and Kieran pays for their schooling. (Kieran expects Oleander to repay him by being his personal lawyer or PR person so Kieran doesn't have to deal with the public.) Mentors trans youth in their spare time, and maintains a niche fashion Instagram page with lots of "dos and don'ts." Still wears a lot of vests.

Jack: He's like...hmm, he works as maybe a server or cook in a restaurant and he HATES it, has big dreams of fame and fortune. A city boy who pickpockets and cons rich business men for extra cash 0 but is rarely caught because he can lie so well with a straight face. Keeps trying to encourage his coworkers to form a union and that's part of why he can't keep a job long. But he keeps getting hired back because he's fast and efficient, even if he doesn't have any people skills. He wears eyeliner, black leather jackets, with lots of earrings and a chain necklace passed down to him from his mother that he never met, and he's very mysterious and emo about it if anyone asks. He's the lead singer and songwriter of a metal band that's trying to get off the ground and they're actually pretty popular small-time. He has a ton of admirers and fans, but he's too laser focused on his career to notice any of his groupies.

Longclaw: Like Kieran I think she is a nepo baby, but she doesn't seem to realize it because all her time is spent helping charities for kids and animals. She has her own cooking/gardening/design talk show a la Martha Stewart and her designs are praised as being very classic, feminine, and welcoming. She can go out in public and not be recognized because she doesn't wear makeup and wears simple (but feminine) clothes from Target or The Gap. Most of her estate is dedicated to all the stray animals she adopts, because she can't help but take home any poor animal she meets, and she has a whole team to take care of them and find them homes. A literal ray of sunshine in human form. Universally beloved.

MC is either a hardworking newbie resident doctor or underpaid, overworked nurse serving an impoverished area. Maybe an ER, or a nursing home. They live in a basement apartment and have a huge amount of student loan debt. Most of their clothes are from thrift stores and they live in jeans and a t-shirt. They're still working their way up in the world but are praised at work for having exceptional bedside manner and getting to know their patients on a personal level, which has sometimes led to them catching some clue that more experienced doctors miss and helps to turn their treatment around.

Anyone that I missed??

(God this makes me want to write this AU where MC runs into Kieran after some emergency (car accident?) and treats them without knowing who he is, then he demands they come work as his personal on-site medic or something?? Anyway haha.)

Also yeah!! If Longclaw had stayed Fae (and I kind of wish she did, her human form is GORGEOUS) I could totally see them being together, or at least being friends. Longclaw is very motherly and Jack never had a mother, so maybe they wouldn't work romantically. Also there is the issue of him having killed Sir Monty. But! He'd still like her very much because she's the opposite of every Fae stereotype he knows, and Longclaw physically can't hold a grudge for long!

But, if they got together and had kids, it would make the royal families related by blood 😬 idk how that would work haha

Thanks for this diverting ask! 😁 Lmk what you agree/disagree with haha

[doctor-looneys-remedy]

Bi-erasure, part 3

In the early 90's we had a small flurry of mostly people in the grunge and alternative music category claiming bisexuality as an identity. Some of these felt honest. Some felt, at least to the outsider, as if they were just grabbing onto another way of being alternative.

Bisexuality was there and a clear identity, but it still wasn't very real to most of us on a daily basis. Celebrities had a far greater distance from their audience than the parasocial relationships they have today. In college, I knew a lot of straight people, a good number of gay people, and a couple of people who said they were bi.

Pretty celebrities could be bisexual. Most people rolled their eyes and generally just didn't believe in the "Pretty alternative girl bisexual" that was typical in music. Some fanboys did, but largely, it was met with a "whatever."

Regular people who said they were bi were largely regarded as just gay men who hadn't figured it out yet, and unattractive, desperate women who willing to hop into bed with whoever came along. Beggars can't be choosers, after all.

Bisexuality wasn't an attraction pattern for the regular person, it was seen as a coping mechanism. It was cool for celebrities, but celebrities back then were just abstract beings separate from the rest of us in a way that doesn't exist today. It was what you resort to when you can't get the thing you naturally want.

In the few gay bars I had gone to, and even around the gay, lesbian and trans people I knew, there was a huge tendency to talk down about bisexual people. We didn't quite fit in, even among well-meaning members.

Of course, I have to address that one episode of Sex in the City. I don't know what bothers me more- that it was said, OR that people my age and older who should have fucking known better at that point in their lives took it as gospel because it appeared on a dramedy about a narcissistic disaster human who constantly acted like she and her friends just plain knew it all (even though their decisions were constantly made a point of proving how stupid they were.)

So, let's meet in the present.

We are more visible than ever. Still some battles, but definitely in a much better place than we were.

I am in a much better place than I was.

But we still have a few bones to pick:

Bisexual erasure happens every time when a bisexual person (usually a male) is called "gay" instead of bisexual, when they clearly call themselves bisexual. A woman who clearly identifies herself as bisexual is relegated to the label of "ally" instead of being called bisexual.

If I could put every single person inside my head to understand what it is I am experiencing to better explain it, I would. But I can't do that.

I am bisexual. I am physically attracted to mostly men, but sometimes also women. It is not something I choose. It isn't something I control. When I say attraction I mean the same attraction you experience when you see that hot movie star or musician - and you are attracted in a way that bypasses your thought process.

Believe me, my life would be much much easier if I was one thing or the other. But the pain and confusion could have been lessened if the word itself wasn't bogged down with the level of BS that it was. If I had lived in a world where someone could have explained literally any of it to me. If I had been made to feel as if I could be comfortable discussing it with literally anyone at all ever.

Gen X ... we have a hard time owning up to the shit we have done. I know a good 75% of us probably went to a drag show in 1997. So why, in this era of super hate, are we saying nothing? The books that Moms for Liberty is banning regularly were books that were required reading, that made us better people. No one cared if our feelings were hurt by legitimate historical facts, and we took all of that in and it made us better people.

There is a positive note from my high school experience:

My Lit teacher in high school wasn't weird about the solid possibility of Shakespeare's sexuality when we started reading poems he wrote about men. She just said, "People think he as probably bisexual." and we all took that in for a minute and went on with it. No fuss, no muss.

That is what I hope for. No Fuss, no muss. No screaming about how bi people are this, that and the other. No shit about how we are confused. No crappy attitudes. No censorship of a real thing about a real person in history.

[murfpersonalblog]

Imma assume this is in reference to me.

To Nonny's comment:

NO. Firstly: I mentioned that Lestat owned the Azalea lest we forget that he and Tom Anderson ("a fulltime Bourbon Street gangster") were also participating in the exploitation of women that only Louis gets vilified for, as if he''s the ONLY abuser, and Lestat gets to walk away smelling like roses.

I never denied this--I've talked about book AND show Louis reflecting the exploitative & predatory nature of vampires over & over; and why the jump from slaveowner to pimp works so well (X X X X)--just like Lestat's lineage from French aristocrats ALSO reflects the exploitative & predatory nature of vampires (X X X). But unlike Lestat, "Louis the Pimp" is discussed wildly out of context as evidence that HE'S the abuser: abusing Lestat (most explicitly on stage during the Trial, which a lot of viewers have taken WAY too seriously, refusing to accept that the Trial was staged & scripted as a sham to justify why he was being lynched by the mob for crimes he didn't commit--or rather, trumped up charges & their abuse of power against him, just like IRL Black men experience every effing day); and most especially abusing Armand in Arun/Maitre convos.

Secondly: Jim Crow was NOT why Lestat owned the Azalea. OBVIOUSLY, Louis & other Black men could own businesses (and homes!) during Jim Crow--and get them all burned down by white men in race riots--get your historical facts straight before you come for me, Nonny. Louis couldn't AFFORD to buy the Fairplay/Azalea, so he took out a LOAN from Lestat--Tom & Alderman Fenwick were "happy to buy the property back from you. Say… 15 cents on the dollar." We see him AND Les sign the papers, agreeing that Les would be his partner & that Lou'd "pay him back, with interest."

So what's "blatantly insulting," Nonny, is you ignoring what AMC plainly showed on screen, which clearly flew right over your head, as you try some sort of racial dynamics gotcha! as if you care about Louis' "character and agency," when you didn't even pay attention to the episode or care to get Louis' story straight before insulting ME.

And now I'm a terf--that's new. Just cuz I said it's misogynist to reduce gender solely down to clothes--when the previous anon I was responding to implied through their over-emphasis of Lestat crossdressing & Louis not crossdressing was that wearing dresses is the only way to be accepted as a woman/female-coded; and only pants/suits/etc to be accepted as men/male-coded.

What I actually said:

I'm not saying that "a gay black man being domestically abused by a flamboyant white man revolves around the oppression of cis women"--I'm saying it REFLECTS/PARALLELS/CODES the oppression of women--trans or cis; if the power imbalance shoe fits, it fits. Even straight & gay men can be battered by their male or female spouses, which Loustat OBVIOUSLY demonstrates. NUANCE, however, requires looking DEEPER than the surface level. Ignoring the SUBLIMINAL message misses the social commentary that vampires as everything/nothing/both/other/neuter symbolize, as representations of the monsters within ALL OF US, as per Gothic literary tradition. Lestat even struggled to understand this when Gabrielle rejected HIS 18th century expectations of societal/familial/gender norms when SHE crossdressed--Marius was better about respecting Zenobia & Eudoxia's agency transcending gender in the friggin Late Antique/Byzantine period than Lestat was for his own effing mother in the Early Modern/Enlightenment period! And she heavily factored into his abandonment issues & expectations in the 20th century that his fledglings WILL stay with him & obey him--I AM YOUR MAKER. Lestat's a constant work in progress--but he's NOT as progressive as people like to imagine.

Hence why I NEVER said men can't be domestically abused--why would I, when I've been screaming that Louis' the one being abused by Lestat the whole time. "Mutual" abuse is moot when one vampire's 100 years older & killing people everyday, while the other's not even a century old and has an literal eating disorder that made him weak enough to get knocked TF out by Lestat & dragged out the courtyard by his jaw & dropped 2km in the sky.

This is literally what I've been saying though. That cuz of race, queerness, disability, etc, Louis (A MAN) can be abused by his partner--and Lestat can walk away smelling like roses by the Trial audience AND the IRL court of public opinion that will uwu blorbo yassify him and say it's LOUIS' fault what happened to him, and that it's karma cuz he was a pimp!

WOAH! Whoever believes that "black men can't be victims of abuse or violence without being somehow women" is clearly not Black; doesn't know any Black men IRL; and has never heard of police brutality, slavery, lynching, the KKK, Nazis, gang violence, nothing. That argument literally sounds made up on the spot. If you're going to talk about race, be serious about it.

And that's not even what this convo's about--it's about how Louis reflects Anne Rice's experiences with motherhood & loss & being a wife in a troubled marriage; and how she created Claudia, Louis & Lestat to represent those experiences, and various facets of herself.

Y'ALL brought up misogyny. I've never argued or suggested that Loustat discourse is about misogyny, internalized or otherwise--I flipped the accusations made against me to challenge assumptions about crossdressing making Lestat the embodiment of C*nt Queen femininity in the fandom. My argument is about the power imbalance between Loustat, based on a MULTITUDE of factors--I talk about RACE more, cuz that's what's MOST IMPORTANT. Gender norms/dynamics fluctuate with the age, but one's race NEVER changes, and racism against Bipocs by their white spouses always instills more HORROR in me than spousal abuse in general; cuz (white) society consistently gaslights the public to vilify the Black spouse in favor of the white one, regardless of the perpetrator or their gender--as even Black women get beat by cops as if they're men, cuz of ridiculous racist stereotypes about Black people being more physically fit than anyone else; when y'all kill us the most. 💀💀💀 (And the IWTV fandom proves me right every time y'all act like "godlike strength" Lestat "I'm not in the mood, I have the blood of Magnus & Akasha in me" de Lioncourt was ever in any real danger from Louis in Ep5 & the Trial's revisit). But ofc gender dynamics factor, too, and I just find it interesting how Les gets painted one way, and Lou by the other, when neither the book, film, nor show vilifies Louis the way Lestans do. And that IS racially motivated.

I've never said Lestat isn't feminine, or exudes femininity. I've said he's not female-CODED. Again, I've discussed Lestat wrt 18th century dandyism (X X) if anyone wants some IRL historical context for what men dressed & acted like at the time Lestat would've been born & raised--and how that is REFLECTED in what he wore in Ep5 when he beat the hell out Louis & dropped him 2km from the effing sky "to BREAK what he could not OWN." Cuz I do my research before I start talking, unlike a lot of y'all--as Nonny's demonstrated.

Agreed, actually. Cuz gender doesn't really matter.

Claudia's a woman. Women love her BECAUSE she's a BAMF who'll WRECK a man. Lestat, specifically.

Akasha's a woman. (Mekare's a woman, too.) And they're the 2 most powerful vamps in the entire TVC. And we're gonna see in living color just how capable Akasha is of dominating men--Lestat, specifically. (Plus there's Gabrielle, Pandora, Bianca, Zenobia, Eudoxia, Petronia, Mona, etc etc.)

So this argument doesn't actually hold up, unless you're only talking about people who've never seen ANY iterations of Claudia in IWTV, or any iterations of Akasha in TVL & QotD.

Agreed. But I'm not talking about femininity in general, I'm talking about gender dynamics wrt uneven power dynamics, and femininity within the context of power imbalances in an early 20th century nuclear family unit that was mimicing the 18th-20th century human households they were raised under & thus perpetuated the good AND bad aspects of--hence: cycles of abuse. Cuz vampires are MIMICS.

This show IS about abuse & trauma, which is why Rolin Jones even put SA & DV in Ep5, doubled-down on it in S2 with Claudia telling us exactly what Bruce/Killer did to her; confirmed the Loustat fight in the 2x7 revisit Louis-antis swore would prove Louis was a liar about being dropped & that Lestat didn't abuse him (sure, Jan)--he was tryna stop Louis from killing himself that night (LOL?)--and why AMC disagreed that it should have a trigger warning, has NEVER put a TW on Ep5 (only Ep6), & boldly said S3 will NOT have trigger warnings & to kiss their grits if y'all don't like it.

DKY y'all swear you're engaging with the story when Marquis de Lioncourt & Gabrielle are NEVER mentioned in relation to Loustat. Maybe you missed this part of my response, cuz you said you didn't read all of it cuz of the text/font.

All that matters is the Blood, and how much Lestat had, and how much Louis had, when Lestat decided to choke TF out of his "built-like-a-bird" daughter and her Daddy Lou who swooped in to protect her, even though he'd been starving himself on rats & raccoons for the past 7 years & was thus sorely under-levelled against his husband when he got beat to a effing pulp, dragged out the yard by his effing jawbone, and dropped 2km from the sky "like an egg from an airplane" by the white man who wanted to "break" him cuz he suddenly realized he couldn't OWN his Black spouse anymore. 😲 Imagine. But yes, let's talk about how much we care about Louis' "character and agency." 🤣

And like I've said elsewhere, Louis is NOT less of a man. His behavior is the product of him trying to NOT be treated as a lesser man (esp. by white men), because of his race (and sexuality). The uneven gender dynamic is a side effect of other expressions of power Massa Lestat used against him, to "break what you cannot own." And I literally said that in the response you admitted to not reading fully:

Duh. Louis AND Lestat are obvs men. You keep dancing around my terminology: FEMALE-CODED. Being female-coded isn't the same as being a woman, either. It's a literary device, which neither you nor Nonny has even mentioned--the lack of metaphor is striking.

Trying to DENY that Lestat reflects masculine & patriarchal ideals when he is literally repeating history through his verbal & physical abuse of his spouse & child a la Marquis de Lioncourt just cuz you insist that abuse has to fit into your narrow-minded view of what an abuser and a victim looks like is well, ILLITERATE. It's in the books!

Is Lestat the Gabrielle-coded here? NO!

Is Louis Gabrielle-coded? CONSTANTLY.

CYCLES ARE CYCLING.

I can't WAIT to see people spinning their wheels when Marquis de Lioncourt's on screen in S3 doing exactly what Lestat does in S1 & S2; as the same people who cuss Louis & Claudia out rush to Gabrielle & Lestat's defense, omg. Using all kinds of white!feminist rhetoric about men not being recognized as men (but only when attacking black!Louis)--before gallivanting off to post 1000 Lestat gifs of him in a dress & flipping his hair & wrists and tagging it as MOTHER~! and then saying I'm a gender essentialist terf homophobe for calling him a patriarchal overlord just like his no-good effing daddy.

The democracy of hypocrisy is what I'm responding against, how Louis is inevitably disqualified in the Uwu Olympics cuz of his outward appearance--no wonder Imane Khelif's effing SUING for discrimination & bullying against ACTUAL terfs like JK Rowling! Cuz y'all do this to us ALL the time, Jedi mind tricking everyone to pretend it's either NOT about race & we're looking too deep into it; or that you care so much about race while not even citing historical facts about racism properly, wtf.

it's so crazy that people are out here making literal terf arguments over a fictional gay couple

also it was taking me out how that reply was literally citing examples of Louis' textual racial oppression as evidence of him being a subtextual woman like is that really what we're doing now?? Lestat owns the Azalea on paper because Louis can't own it as a black man during Jim Crow not because Lestat is equally invested in running the business as The Man like it's 1000% Louis' thing, and ignoring the strategic ways he operates his business black man just bc you're uncomfortable with the moral nature of that business is so blatantly insulting to Louis character and agency it's ridiculous. Like if Louis is a woman the majority of these people are being unironically sexist towards her because they like the boring self-insert wattpad version of her they created in their heads rather than the actual character.

sorry for the rant you can feel free to ignore it but that was driving me crazy

don’t apologize for the rant I’m so happy u sent me the rant bcus now I feel like I’m not crazy 😭😭. I didn’t actually read that one reply bcus the weird font changes gave me a migraine, but I skimmed enough to know what their thesis was 💀.

the terf shit is genuinely insane. I think a lot of this interpretation comes down to cis women with internalized sexism and transphobia (and racism cough cough) choosing to interpret Louis and lestats relationship in a way that aligns with their heteronormative narrow minded view of relationships (especially abusive ones) bcus they r unable to interpret a story about a gay black man being domestically abused by a flamboyant white man in a way that doesn’t revolve around the oppression of cis women bcus they believe that cis women are the central and only victims of oppression and domestic violence.

even tho it is explicitly shown to us that Lestat is able to abuse louis bcus louis is socially oppressed as a black man and lestat has societal power over him, ppl feel the need to put this “he’s also a metaphor for women” angle on it bcus they don’t want to confront the reality that men, especially men who are oppressed bcus of race or queerness or disability or any number of things, can be abused by their partners, and often are. I’ve noticed a lot of cis women have a problem with acknowledging that men can and do experience oppression that is “for women”. Domestic violence is often leveraged against women, but men are also victimized by it too, and stories about men who r abused deserve to be told without being “secretly about women”. This is especially weird since Louis is a black man, and I think a lot of this interpretation is happening bcus a lot of ppl subconsciously believe that black men can’t be victims of abuse or violence without being somehow women. Which is fucked up, obviously. It also undermines the actual story being told about a black man trying to navigate abuse and power structures by suggesting it’s actually about misogyny, bcus the implication is that misogyny is more important or legitimate then a black man’s experience and therefore he is just a mouth piece for a “real issue”

this is also why I think ppl argue lestat can’t be feminine bcus he abused Louis. They think that a feminine person can’t be an abuser, so they think that when I say lestat is feminine, im actually invaliding that he’s an abuser and suggesting he’s actually not abusive (bcus he’s fem). Believe it or not, u can be feminine and flamboyant or be a woman and at the same time be domestically violent against ur partner. Lestat’s feminine self expression and behavior is completely irrelevant to him being abusive, and he can be abusive and leverage his privilege over Louis while still being a feminine person. I think cis women have a problem with this bcus they are frightened to admit that they are capable of being instigators of violence despite being women/feminine . So friendly reminder, femininity is not the same as being morally good or pure, and femininity and victimhood are not the same. Trying to paint lestat as this embodiment of masculine and patriarchal ideals when he is very much a feminine queer man just bcus u insist that abuse has to fit into ur narrow minded view of what an abuser and a victim looks like is well, ignorant.

so Ppl who r socially oppressed are often victimized, and women are often victimized bcus they are socially oppressed, but Louis is socially oppressed and and that does not make him a women. Got it? 💀

It’s also important to acknowledge that Louis is a pimp who uses the victimization of women to gain social status and money for himself. Equating his suffering with the suffering of women is just not accurate when the show explicitly demonstrates to us that Louis is able to use the victimization of women to his advantage. Louis still operates within the patriarchy as a man, and him being abused by another man doesn’t make him less of a man, doesn’t make him akin to a woman thematically, and doesn’t mean he experiences misogyny the way women do in the narrative

(also, just a disclaimer, I’m not talking about ppl who headcanon Louis as trans or gnc or feminine, that is all awesome and a great way to express urself and how u relate to him. What I’m talking about is ppl who say that iwtv is thematically about domestic abuse against women bcus Louis is presented as the woman in the relationship since he’s abused by lestat )

[that-disabled-radfem]

Happy back-to-school y’all

I’ve attended and worked at a couple of super liberal universities. I avoid the gender studies departments for obvious reasons and I still had a lecture in which the female prof gave a brief overview of TERFs and proclaimed her hatred of JKR. Being openly critical of gender ideology, the porn industry, kinks, and ‘sex work’ are the kind of things that can ruin your future in academia. Not to mention the fact that any speech or actions that could be labelled transphobic (ie. defining woman as adult human female) can get you a suspension according to many universities anti-hate-speech policies. 

So, here’s a list of small and smallish (small in terms of overt TERFery, some may require more effort than others) radical feminist actions you can take as a university student:

(this is a liberal arts perspective so if you’re a stem gal this may not apply. but also if you’re in stem maybe you can actually acknowledge that women are oppressed as a sex class without getting kicked out of school. idk)

(Note for TRAs hate reading this: One of the core actions of radical feminism is creating female networks. This is not so that we can brainwash people into being anti-trans. This is because female solidarity is necessary for creating class consciousness and overturning patriarchy. It is harder to subjugate the female sex when we stand together.)

Take classes with female profs. Multiple sections of a class? Pick the one taught by a woman. Have to chose an elective? Only look at electives offered by women. When classes have low numbers they get cancelled. When classes are super popular, universities are forced to consider promoting the faculty that teach them

Make relationships with these female profs. Go to office hours. Chat after class. Ask them about their research. Building female networks is sooooo important!

Actually fill in your end of year course feedback forms. Profs often need these when applying for tenure or applying for a job at another university so it is very important (especially with young and/or new profs) that you fill out these forms and give specific examples of how great these women are. Go off about what you love about them! Give her a brilliant review because you know the idiot boy in that class who won’t shut up even though he knows nothing is going to give her only negative feedback because he thinks any woman who leaves the house is a feminazi b*tch. 

(note: obviously don’t go praising any prof - female or male - who is blatantly racist, homophobic, etc.)

(Also if you have shitty male profs write down all the horrible things they have done and said and put it in these forms because once a shitty man gets tenure they are virtually untouchable)

(also also, leave a good review on rate my profs or whatever other thing students use to figure out if they want to take classes. idc if you copy paste your feedback from the formal review. rave about the class to your friends. do what you can to get good enrolment for that prof for reasons above.)

Participate in class. Talk over the male students. Say what you mean and mean it. Call out the boys when they say dumb shit

Write about women. If you have the option to make a text written by a woman your primary text in an essay, do it. Pick the female-centred option if you’re writing an exam-essay with multiple prompts. (Profs often look at what works on their syllabus are being written about/engaged with as a marker of whether to keep those texts the next time they teach the class. If there are badass women on your syllabus, write about them to keep them on the syllabus) Use female-written secondary sources whenever possible. 

(pro tip: many women in academia are more than happy to talk to you about their papers. expand your female networks by reaching out to article authors through email and asking them about their cool shit)

Get your essays published! Many departments have undergrad journals you can publish in. This will ensure more people read about the women you write about and will demonstrate to the department that people like learning about women

Consider trying to publish your undergrad essay with a legit peer-reviewed journal. If you can do it, your use of female-written secondary sources boosts the reputations of the women who wrote those secondary sources. Also this helps generally to increase scholarship about women’s writing!

Present your papers at conferences! Many schools have their own undergraduate/departmental conferences that you can present at. Push yourself by submitting to outside conferences. Bring attention to women’s works by presenting your papers. Take a space at a conference that would otherwise be reserved for mediocre men

Talk to your profs and/or your department and/or your university about mandating the inclusion of female works in classes if this isn’t something they do already

Sit next to other women in your classes. Talk to them. Make friends. Form study groups. Proofread each other’s essays. Give each other knowing looks when the boys are being dumb. Just interact with other women! Build those female networks!

Be generous with your compliments. A female classmate and I were talking to a prof after class and the classmate told me (out of the blue) that I always have such interesting things to say. I think about that whenever I’m lacking confidence about my academic skills. Compliment the women in your classes for speaking up, for sharing their opinions, for challenging your classmates/profs, for doing cool presentations, etc.

Talk to other women about sexist things going on on campus. Make everyone aware of the sexist profs. Complain about how there are many more tenured men than tenured women. Go on rate my professor and be explicit about how the sexist profs are sexist

Be active on campus and in societies. If a society has an all male executive or is male-dominated, any women who join that society make it less intimidating for more women to join. Run for executive positions! Bring in more women! 

(Pro tip: Many societies’ elections are super gameable. You can be eligible to vote in a society election sometimes just by being a student at that university — even without having done anything with the society before. Other societies might just require that you’ve taken a class in a particular department or attended a society event. (Check the society’s governing documents.) Use those female networks you’ve been building. If you can bring three or four random people to vote for you, that might be enough for you to win. Societies have trouble meeting quorum (the minimum number of people in attendance to do votes) so it is really super achievable to rig an election with a few friends. And don’t feel bad about this. The system is rigged against women so you have every right to exploit loopholes!)

(Also feel free to go vote “non-confidence”/“re-open election” if only shitty men are running. Too often people see that only candidates they don’t like are running and so they give up. But you can actually stop them getting elected)

Your campus may have a LGBTQIA+alphabetsoup society. That society definitely needs more L and B women representation. It may be tedious to argue with the nb straight dudes who insist that it’s fine to use “q***r” in the society’s posters and that attraction has nothing to do with genitals, but just imagine what could happen if we could make these sorts of societies actually safe spaces for same-sex attracted women and advocated for our concerns

Attend random societies’ election meetings. Get women elected and peace out. (or actually get involved but I’m trying to emphasize the lowest commitment option with this one)

Write for the campus newspaper. Write about what women are doing - women’s sports, cool society activities, whatever. Review female movies, books, tv shows, local theatre productions. Write about sexism on campus. We need more female by-lines and more stories about women

Get involved with your campus’s sexual assault & r*pe hotline/sexual assault survivor’s centre/whatever similar organization your campus has if you can. This is hard work and definitely not for everyone (pls take care of yourself first, especially if you are a survivor)

(If your campus doesn’t have an organization for supporting survivor’s of sexualized violence, start one! This is probably going to be a lot of hard work though, so don’t do it alone)

Talk to your student council about providing free menstrual hygiene products on campus if your campus doesn’t already do this. If your campus provides free condoms (which they probs do), use that as leverage (ie. ‘sex is optional, menstruation is not. so why do we have free condoms and no free pads?’)

If you’re an older student, get involved with younger students (orientation week and such activities are good for this). Show the freshman that you can be a successful and well-liked woman without shaving your legs, wearing heels, wearing make-up, etc. Mentor these young women. Offer to go for coffee or proofread essays. 

Come to class looking like a human being. Be visibly make-up less, unshaven, unfeminine, etc. to show off the many different ways of being a woman

Talk to the custodial staff and learn their names. (I know there are men who work in this profession, but it is dominated by low-income women) Say hi in the hallways, ask them about their lives, show them they’re appreciated

Be explicit with your language. When you are talking about sex-based oppression, say it. Don’t say ‘sex worker’ when you mean survivor of human trafficking. This tip is obviously a bit tricky in terms of overt TERFyness, so use your best judgement

That’s all from me for now! Feel free to add your suggestions and remember that feminism is about action

[radiosandrecordings]

5, jmart? :)

Y’know I really appreciate that TMA never has an ‘explaining to you that these characters are mlm’ scene but also. That does have implications and if they never had a convo off tape where they each learned the other was a Dude Liker, then I am kind of struck with the comedy of “Oh thank god they both were, they just kinda launched into the whole being in love thing without checking huh”

5) Things you didn’t say at all

“What’s up, mmh? You’re staring into space again.” 

Jon looked up from his position on the bed, lying pressed up against Martin’s side, book lying open and discarded on what was probably his hip, under several layers of blanket. 

“What? Oh, nothing really.” 

“‘Nothing really’ always means something. I don’t want to push, if you don’t want to share, but you seem to have something on your mind.” 

Jon spent a few seconds chewing his lip, before craning his neck up to meet Martin’s gaze. “It’s just... It’s so stupid, in the small scale of things? Laughably, almost, I mean there’s so many more big, important, world ending things I’ve spent the last three years trying to figure out and...” Martin gave him a nod to continue, “I just realised I’m not sure you ever actually told me that you like men?” 

“... Well I do. Clearly.” 

There were several seconds of silence proceeding that statement, culminating in an abrupt break into laughter from the pair. Jon’s face was flushed slightly, ducking his head in embarrassment, but managing to laugh along with Martin’s uproar. 

“Seriously? Seriously? I don’t even know where to start with that. I mean, A) Yeah I mean I suppose it wasn’t really a priority to discuss who we thought was hot during our day jobs at the Eldritch Office, but like... B) I am honestly a little offended you couldn’t just tell, I mean, do you know how insulting it is that someone might look at me and go ‘Hmm, that’s a straight man right there’.” 

Jon made noises of protest, none of which ever managed to resolve themselves into words. “It... I never thought about it, really! I knew Tim was bi, but I’m not sure he even knew I was...? It didn’t really come up. And secondly... Well, Georgie used to tell me that I had an abysmal... I believe the term she used was ‘gaydar’?”

“That’s the one!” 

“Right. Well, apparently I’m just a bit shit on picking up on other queer people? I didn’t realise she was bi as well until she mentioned her ex-girlfriend several months into our dating. Apparently she had thought I’d known from her commenting on actresses in movies or the like, but I just... Never really connected the dots. She had just assumed that I was as well, apparently I just radiated the ‘energy’ in some way I’m still unaware of, so I never really formally had to have a coming out talk to her.”

“Huh, I don’t.. I don’t think I ever officially knew you did, either? But, I mean, I do have to agree with Georgie here. Even when you were all stuffy academic boss man, queer vibes. I wouldn’t have given you a second look if you didn’t, not going down that road.” 

“That’s... Good to know, I think?” Jon smiled, before it morphed into a small sigh. “...I don’t think I’ve ever had to ‘come out’ to anyone at all, actually? I rather feel like I missed something.” 

“Oh, well that’s... Hm.” 

“That’s ‘Hm?’” 

“Oh shut up... It’s just that... Well it’s not always a fun time, having to come out, so you’ve kind of saved yourself in that regard, and of course there’s the whole thing of how we have to come out while straight people just get assumed, but... I mean, better late than never?” 

“I mean, I’d rather think you’d have figured out I’m also rather keen on men as well by now.” 

Martin groaned. “Great, my boyfriend is hilarious.” There was an undeniable smile playing at his lips, though, despite the faux-annoyance. Both of them were still acclimating to the term and it resulted in large amounts of grinning and, on occasion, giggling, at each utterance. “I just meant like... If you wanted to. Just to, I don’t know, fulfil the imagined queer quota?” 

Jon blinked, somewhat taken aback by the soft sincerity of Martin’s voice. “That... That might be nice, actually. Uhm. God, how does one even do it.” 

“Different for everyone, I suppose. I can go first though, if you want?” 

Jon nodded. 

“Right. Well, I’m Martin Blackwood, and I’m very trans and very gay, and I’m very much in love with my boyfriend.” As he said the last part he reached forward, fingers coming together to hold Jon’s chin and tilt it up, before pressing a gentle kiss to his brow. 

Jon, somewhat flushed, stammered through his words at first, trying to get his bearings. “I... God this is... I’m Jon, and I am, in the loosest definition of the word, a man and I.. Am biromantic asexual and, what a coincidence, am very much in love with my boyfriend as well.” Here he took Martin’s hand from where it rested atop the duvet and laced their fingers together, pressing a kiss to the back of Martin’s knuckles. 

“Right, well that’s that. One thing off the bucket list.. Christ it’s nearly twelve, we should probably be up by now, right?” 

Jon made a grumble of protest, followed immediately by an attempt to burrow further under the blankets and into Martin’s side. “Five more minutes and then we’ll make breakfast?” 

“...Deal.” 

[nimona-antifa]

Person to person oppression. DOES. NOT. EQUAL. SYSTEMATIC. OPPRESSION. STOP SAYING IT DOES. THAT'S HOW WE GET PEOPLE CLAIMING THAT GAY PEOPLE OPPRESS STRAIGHT PEOPLE BECAUSE THEY MET A TOXIC PERSON WHO HAPPENED TO BE GAY OR THAT BLACK PEOPLE OPPRESS WHITE PEOPLE BECAUSE ONE BLACK PERSON WAS RUDE TO THEM.

I love how they're trying so desperately to sound progressive with this but immediately go to the most racist and TERFy arguments in the book. Time to talk about the yucky stuff apparently. Takes deep breath Okay. So. First off, this is the one thing I prefer not to talk about as it's very close to home but here we go. Let's strip all LGBTQ+ labels away for a moment and talk about my trauma. I am a trans woman of color, however my skin is somewhat lighter than some. I, who this person would consider to be "a man" of color was sexually harassed by what this person would consider to be "a woman" (they were nonbinary) of color with darker skin than me. Sometimes all reasonable axes of power just go out the window and shit happens. Once they pushed for the thing I really wasn't comfortable with (traditional sex) I finally spoke up for myself as the thought of that made me extremely uncomfortable. They accused ME of being the one who had sexually harassed them, and because I was apparently higher up on the axes of oppression, everyone just took it as the truth. That cut me off from my one support group and threw me into a depression I still haven't recovered from. I still feel gross any time I get aroused and worse after I masturbate.

Life does not follow a strict oppression hierarchy, there is now an increase in anti-Semitism in America, and they are find out some of it is being committed men and boys of racial minority backgrounds too, Latino, black, and sometimes Asian. Identity politics, thinking the real world is going to follow a strict BIPOC model of who is a good person and can harm others is why nothing will ever get better.

THIS IS ALL WE'RE TRYING TO SAY!!! THERE IS NO RACE SEX STATUS OF ABLEDNESS SEXUALITY OR ANY SUCH AXIS THAT DETERMINES WHETHER YOU'RE A GOOD PERSON OR A MONSTER THAT ABUSES PEOPLE. AGAIN, THAT KIND OF LOGIC IS HOW WE GET HOMOPHOBIA AND RACISM.

You choose what to do with the cards you're dealt and in my opinion tumblr user thelesbianpoirot you've chosen to be a bit of an asshole. I'm so tired of people reading things that haven't been written and aren't at all what the person said. I've had my fill of TERF logic for the day and I need a fucking drink.

Today's hot take:

Men... Can be oppressed.

They can be men of color, or disabled, or queer, or Jewish, or poor, etc.

"Men aren't oppressed" is a nonsense statement. Being a man does not exempt men from being marginalized in other ways.

[tehcoop]

I am an old. I'm an old, old fandom lurker wandering from one fandom to the other for the past (oh God) two decades. I've read in everything from Gundam Wing in my (not that) delinquent high school years to Due South to Stargate Atlantis, Harry Potter, Star Wars, yadda yadda yadda, on and on up to The Witcher, most recently. 

And then The Old Guard.

Guys... Guys.

This movie smacked me in the face and shook me to my core. It was everything I've never known I wanted in an action movie because it just never occurred to me that it might exist. Two female leads! One of them is black! Eighty. Five. Percent female representation behind the scenes. 85%! Amazing character beats. Everyone has their own arc and motivations. No stereotyping. It's just beautiful.

And then there's Joe and Nicky. 

I have never related so hard to characters or to a relationship in my life. I love my badass immortal husbands so much. It's ridiculous. I could gush for hours. I'm nothing like them, of course. I identify as a mostly straight, mostly cis, so white I reflect sunlight (though I hope I'm at least an ally to BIPOC) woman. There's nothing particularly badass about me. But I still relate like hell to these characters. 

I love to laugh like Joe, and completely understand his protective instincts. And then there's Nicky. I relate to him more than any character I can think of currently. I'm introverted and can be kind of intense, but I'm also patient, kind, and nurturing. And if anyone does anything to hurt my family, especially my kids, I can rip you apart with just my words. (Seriously, I think my mother in law is afraid of me now after she got a talking to when I called her out for being shitty to my spouse. Our relationship is Much Better now). 

Most importantly, I am deeply in love with my wonderful spouse who happens to be a trans woman. 

And guys, I'm angry.

Remember, I'm an old. I've been searching for scraps hinting at any kind of queer love story in all kinds of media for decades. And I'm angry because I shouldn't have had to. 

I shouldn't have to read into a maybe not on purpose significant glance. I shouldn't have gotten excited when two characters grabbed each other in anger because clearly they're so in love. I shouldn't have been delighted when an actor bit his lip to hint at a love story in film, or that a writer said that a character was gay years after the books were written. I made myself believe that those little bits of subtext were enough and somehow better than getting it outright because then we can tell our own stories, right guys? I preferred reading fan fiction because I could think of the hot guys I wanted to pair up in the way I wanted. I even stopped watching a lot of gay movies because they were always so sad and full of strife, and I just couldn't relate to them. I just wanted my fluffy romantic comedies. Fan fiction was literally the only place that I could see any kind of healthy queer relationship.

Which is how I got to be almost forty and still identifying as mostly straight even though I'm in a queer as hell relationship. In each of these canon stories, the character's sexuality was part of the conflict, and I was never particularly conflicted about mine. I just liked who I liked and craved a healthy, stable relationship. Or when I did see characters like Klaus in Umbrella Academy (who I love) who is comfortable with their sexuality, he's also so fantastically ridiculous that I can only laugh or cringe at him. I enjoyed many of these stories, but still related more to the Jane Austen heroines I saw in straight stories even while I preferred to chill by reading about say... John and Rodney accidentally making a baby or something.

And then Joe and Nicky come along. And they're beautiful. They're a goddamn interracial, interfaith, committed, happy, unkillable gay couple. In canon. They are the most married. They're 900 plus years of married. Their sexuality and relationship are incredibly important to who they are and to the story without being the conflict of the story. Or without being a walking stereotype of one thing or other. Instead, you have two men casually stating their love for each other, blatantly declaring it, cuddling, and kissing all while they each have their own stories, skills, and motivations. 

I have literally never seen that before. Except at home, in my own house, where my spouse and I get to be our own people, but then support each other, tease each other, and cuddle at the end of the day. It was beautiful to see something that reflected the kind of love I always wanted and now get to have. In canon, on screen. Seeing Joe and Nicky's love makes me so deliriously happy that I'm incredibly angry I've never seen anything like that on screen before. Just imagine what it would have been like seeing that kiss in a crowded theater.

So why am I writing this? Because this movie is important. It's so goddamn important. I'm so happy it exists. And I want you all to know the actual weight of all the years of going without characters like this. What it means to say that I'm furious that I've never seen this before after decades of searching. How ridiculous it is that I still identify as mostly straight possibly because I've never really seen nuanced, flawed, real queer characters before. Instead, I've imagined and created evidence of gay relationships from nothing while ignoring the awful canon hetero relationships my favorite shows have forced on us. All while still unironically sighing over Mr Darcy and Clueless. I'm tired, y'all.

I want to see all the stories with all the people in various configurations. Romances, action, sci fi, fantasy, everything. The Old Guard did it. And they did it well. I'm done with the queer baiting. I don't think I can look at many of the fandoms I have loved throughout the years the same way again. I'm incredibly grateful to Gina Prince-Bythewood, Greg Rucka, Marwan Kanzari, Luca Marinelli, and the rest of the cast and crew for bringing me these already beloved characters. It's so refreshing to finally get what I've really wanted all these years. Representation absolutely fucking matters. 

And now? I'm gonna go back to being a lurker. I'll read all the Old Guard fanfiction I can. I'll watch all the movies, read all the comics because I want more stories like this, dammit. I'll probably go back to giggling over and overanalyzing little character moments in all kinds of fandoms again. Mostly, I'll just go back to quietly taking care of my little family. And I might post something again in another couple of decades when my kids are off to college. And God, do I hope it doesn't take another couple decades to get more characters like this. I hope that my kids get all kinds of stories I never did growing up so that they can figure out who they are and who they relate to before they're almost forty frigging years old. It's about goddamn time.

Thank you for listening to my TED talk.