#epic cis feminist things

[lesbianchemicalplant]

the constant appeals to Natural Bodies from epic cis feminist bloggers is on the same level of dogshit as any tiktok woo about “Chemicals” “they can't pronounce” and I hold them in the same level of contempt

btw if you're so into your precious Unaltered Natural Bodies as a sacred feminist value then I hope you don't need any of those pesky unnatural bodily technologies like birth control or modern medicine in general!

[lesbianchemicalplant]

1. this is a TERF who thinks trans women are asking to be sexually harassed and sexually assaulted

2. "Natural" Face should have been an obvious clue. you need to recognize the reactionary thread of positing some people's bodies and features as NATVRAL, pre-social, corresponding to some innate physicality outside of society (and others as artificial mutilations)

3. very tedious to frame makeup as primarily a matter of body image and individual women Not Accepting Our Own Natvral Faces when there is material coercion to wear makeup (and otherwise comport and present ourselves in various ways)

"why shouldn't you?"—If I don't wear makeup to my job, I would likely be fired for that, especially for doing so as a trans woman! what does that have to do with "accepting my NATVRAL face" or not?

and that's not limited to employment either—women are treated worse in public and by peers, family, even in their own friendships and relationships when not wearing makeup. this is a reality external to anyone's own feelings about herself. one side of a tradeoff (treated palpably worse) may be opted for over another (time, money, personal discomfort, health effects), but the problem there isn't primarily body image and is unchanged by whichever misogynist punishment is chosen in a given context

honestly very weird how many of you (not just this TERF) posture as more Very Seriously Feminist by downplaying the actual misogynist coercion to wear makeup. (and half of the time, it's just to dunk on other women as basically being Cringe NPCs With Bad Body Image, including women who are punished much more harshly for not wearing makeup than you ever would be)

[rotationalsymmetry]

Ayyy.

So I got a little into the tags on this one. And it's wild. (Transphobia discourse ahead including brief mentions of sexual violence, physical violence, and police and prisons. feel free to scroll past if you don't want to see it.) (btw I'm talking trans fem and trans masc a lot and I realize some non-binary people don't think either term is really applicable to them and...I think that's legit I just don't know what to say about it. Apart from yeah exorsexism is also its own thing. Sorry.)

Here look. Do trans women and trans femmes have some pretty epic issues that are much more a thing they face than a thing that trans mascs face? Of course. If I walk down the street in a short haircut and a binder, I'm not going to be especially worried that a cop will decide to harass me because they think I'm a sex worker. I'm not at especially high risk of a lover murdering me because he's so freaked out at the idea of maybe being a little bit gay because the woman he fucked turned out to not have been born in a body the doctors recognized as female. If I get arrested, well, a lack of hearing about transmasc prison horror stories does not mean they don't exist, but I have heard transfem prison horror stories and they are horrific.

Plus the extra layer of some feminists (terfs) being utterly convinced that trans women are a unique and terrifying threat to feminism and should not be allowed in women's spaces or to even, like...work for feminist organizations? Anyways. It's a whole thing.

And I've known about at least some of this stuff for as long as I've known about any trans issues. And it's horrifying and very much worth talking about and doing stuff about. And it also as far as I can tell does get talked about extensively when people talk about trans issues at all. Which I mean. They often don't.

At the same time, I have also seen a sort of overcorrection, more from cis people than trans people I think, to go "well ok clearly we have to draw the line somewhere, if feminism can include trans fems we have to exclude someone so I guess that means feminism does not apply to trans mascs."

Which is ludicrous.

Misogyny affects trans fems. Street harassment and job discrimination and a million other feminist issues affect trans women. (In fact, trans fems often offer a uniquely valuable perspective on these things, as they can compare how people treat them at different stages of how other people see them.) Misogyny affects trans fems, again not surprisingly because is there any group of women that misogyny does not affect, so feminism should include trans fems.

And misogyny affects trans mascs. Abortion access and contraception access affects us. The restrictions placed on girls affect us, since most of us didn't transition at age two. Clothes without pockets often affect us. Sexual harassment and sexual assault and unfortunately in some cases corrective rape affect us. And here look, I pretty much look like a cis woman who doesn't shave her body hair, but trans masc who look like guys have this really unpleasant problem where often they still need "women's health care", Pap smears and whatnot, because "women" need a lot of health care, while looking like guys, where the worst scenario is getting refused care and the next worst one is getting care but being misgendered the entire time and the best case scenario of getting appropriate care and not being misgendered and also not being slammed by dysphoria or the psychological residue of past health care experiences too hard, is hard to find. Ok?

If misogyny affects trans mascs, and again it does, then trans mascs belong in feminism, ie the struggle against misogyny.

If misogyny affects trans mascs in a way that intersects with transphobia -- if trans mascs get special experiences that are much more common for them than for either cis women or trans fems or cis men -- then there should be a word for that. And in theory you could talk about transmisogyny to cover both, because hey intersection of transphobia and misogyny what else are you going to call it, but a lot of people are deeply convinced that transmisogyny means specifically the oppression that trans fems expeiences so it's almost less effort to just coin a new term than to fight over what transmisogyny should mean. So. Here we are.

It's really wild that any of this is controversial. Let alone that people will get so intensely angry about it.

[butchladymaria]

11, 12, and 16 for the violence asks!! I need to know

OG POST HERE!!!

11. number of fandom-related words you’ve filtered

actually all 36 terms i have filtered are fandom-related lmao. honestly i use the filtering system as a way to clean up my dash. i sometimes filter a tag if someone i follow gets into a new thing that i’m ambivalent about or unfamiliar with. it means i can keep following them without seeing stuff i’m just not all that interested in yet but also (and especially) to avoid having something spoiled for me if i want to check it out in future! it also means that i can click the “show” button if i’m in the mood for something specific or want to learn more about it — go to their blog and just look for anything filtered :) this is literally the only way i know of to search a tumblr account for specific shit because the actual search function is Actually Useless Shit

16. the unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them

man there’s so many picks here but i’d have to say annalise. she’s not unpopular as in actively disliked afaik, just more generally overlooked. i need to post more about her but like — she’s such a key piece of bloodborne’s themes around gender and motherhood and its a goddamn shame it doesn’t get talked about more!!! she feels like a foil to miss doll in many ways (editor’s note: i Went Off on this but it needs to be its own post, so rest assured i will elaborate lol). she’s such a goddamn tragic character. in so many ways it feels that she retreated into the role of the queen to cope with the loss of her people: there’s nothing left of her home besides that. she calls herself “we”, not “i”. she is the queen of cainhurst before she is a human being and it feels like a very visceral reaction to the bigotry of the church. she is trapped in the throne room in a nightgown — evidenced the fact that her portraits show her wearing period-typical gowns, and the attire she wears looks like historical sleepwear. it makes me fucking insane. she was wearing her nightgown when the executioners attacked. despite seeing everyone she ever knew and loved be butchered before her eyes, despite being reviled as a corrupted subhuman monstrosity, despite being imprisoned in complete solitude for god only knows how long, she still fucking demands your respect and i love her for it. she is canonically some flavor of queer on account of the fact she rejects your marriage proposal in an identical way regardless of gender. i am able to fulfill my fantasy of a beautiful vampire woman bossing me around thru her questline. what is not to fucking like!!!!

17. you can’t understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc.)

hands down probably the defanging of the women characters: chiefly maria, miss doll, and adella/arianna. like, i know WHY it happens (misogyny) but it’s still baffling to me. why are you making them waifus. follow up question is your taste honest to god just that boring, and if so get better soon. they’re so much cooler than that. shut the fuck up. maria is such a complex character and if i see another clown reducing her to some soft maternal wifey because… what, she was compassionate to the research hall patients and felt bad about doing uhhh *checks notes* A Whole Ass Genocide???? i will staple myself to the ceiling. like some folks will do the most absurd mental gymnastics to call a woman in any media maternal for the most basic things 😭. in a similar vein are the people who shit themselves to death trying to claim that she TOTALLY COULD HAVE BEEN a femmey little uwu housewife even though she has a canonical and marked preference for masc presentation, and actually a woman conforming to victorian gender roles and being attracted to men is an EPIC FEMINIST WIN, actually. usually this comes from cis and/or hets who are convinced they are personally oppressed because like 3 queers on tumblr said maria is a butch lesbian. having said that there are so many amazing artists and theorycrafters that when i was trying to link specific posts/art the list was actually a million years long. some people are annoying but MORE people are so cool and thoughtful and creative!!!!! shoutout to nishihii saintadeline butchjolyne and pretty much all the lgbtqs in the mariadeline tag, all of your work is like oxygen to me 💕 yall are amazing :)

it’s the same with miss doll. either their complexity is painted over by making her the butt of those insufferable sex doll jokes or they’re made out to be this pure innocent mommy/housewife. usually this is hand in hand with just blatantly ignoring the misogyny inherent to the dynamic between her, maria, and gerhman and i just have to wonder how anyone manages to so spectacularly miss the point. i wrote a forty page paper on this. needless to say it makes me insane. i’m also a big fan of YOUR theories on the matter for a different yet equally neat perspective :) also i think marble did a post on it but i cannot for my LIFE find it

also i cannot stress enough how lame it is that adella gets reduced to a flat stereotype. they took a violently traumatized woman who was groomed into loathing herself by the catholic blood cult and who desperately clings onto the hunter for showing her justo the most basic decency of not Leaving Her To Die and decided instead of any of that it would be way cooler to water her down into a “yandere”. same can be said for arianna. like istg if they were men ther would be ESSAYS. but then again if they were men their themes would literally not even be half as cool AND they couldn’t be lesbians so i am writing the essays myself. tl;dr i am absolutely OBSESSED with both @/jurasicass and @/undefeatablesin’s portrayals of both these ladies. finally some good fucking adella/hunter/arianna dynamics‼️‼️‼️

[briannapuppet]

Sigil sightings and thoughts about prejudice

My local goth club is go-located with an alt burlesque show that runs until about 11:00, and there's a ton of overlap and mutual friendship in the two sets.

Anyway, one of the burlesque performers was outside smoking, she was wearing a sexy unicorn costume and happily bearing skin since it was still like 70 at night. And oh my gosh, she had the combined Lilith/Lucifer seal from Sitra Achra tattooed on her chest, Saturn by Goya on her stomach, and another goetic sigil on her arm. I didn't go up to her, but I was really happy because I felt like I was in the right place.

It also makes me kinda sad. I wanted to bumble up to her and grab my necklaces and say, "Look, we match!" but I felt like that was a bad idea, so I didn't. She had a cluster of traits that indicate she's going to project things onto me:

She's a white cis woman in her late 30s or 40s

She's economically heterosexual (she may be bi, but she primarily engages in heterosexuality for economic benefit)

She's an occultist or pagan, specifically involved with Lilith, our favorite alt-feminist chaotic mother deity

She's a performer and a big talker

I feared that she'd decide that I had a crush on her, based on her prejudiced, stereotypical understanding of trans women. I've known so many women who fit this specific set of parameters, and they find power in believing that they are uncannily perceptive and worldly. But I see people who are exceptionally neurotic; who get a dopamine kick when their subconscious projects vicious little prejudices onto every situation, then their conscious mind socially maneuvers me according to those prejudices.

And I've been trained to be maneuverable, specifically by cis women. I was already pretty locked up from having to deal with my birth mother a few days earlier. I guess I prefer freeze to fawn in this situation, but still, the stretching and recovery that I have to do to get out of a freezing attack is epic; it usually takes about 2 days.

In essence, this makes them a form of Karen. They behave reasonably only according to their own dream world, and when people try to wake them from it, they become ornery and combative.

[lesbianchemicalplant]

cis women literally do this shit for fucking League of Legends

so called feminists: "actually women are naturally inferior at everything, including quiz game shows, beauty pageants, chess, and video games. we need a society that is segregated so that anyone who would ever have to potential to win against a woman is eliminated. this is actually far better than organizing sports into weight classes or different athletic/skill level based categories that ignore sex, like what wrestling and video/board game tournaments already do. I cannot accept the reality that men and women are the same species. this is actually how we truly protect women. by calling them weak pathetic losers who could never win against even the worst opponent, and preventing them from even playing at all."

[lesbianchemicalplant]

I don't think I'm being unreasonable that the way people can't talk about makeup/shaving/etc. without recoursing to “Natural” Bodies vs. “Mutilated” “Unnatural” Bodies is fucking intolerable and makes me immediately distrust anyone who says it

so many of these people are going to become Trads in a few years' time, explicitly citing their reactionary notions of Natural Bodies, evopsych-ified Biotruths about “Female Dating Strategy” and Natural relations between The Biological Sexes, the Natural unit of The Family, etc.

this isn't a weird hypothetical, this has happened millions of times over with epic feminist bloggers specifically

[moonyplays]

About Me:

My name is Moony! Not really, but that's what everyone calls me. I go by any pronouns, my gender is somewhere between queer, refuse to gender (not-cis), and Rage Against Society as I like to say, and I'm Pansexual!

I'm A Grown Ass Adult (1997 shout out) in the Eastern Timezone, I'm white, and can speak French (badly) and English (less bad but still bad)

My hobbies are writing (scifi and modern supernatural/fantasy), gaming (pokemon and Overwatch 2), Dungeons & Dragons, and I read when I can. I also collect fountain pens and dice! I used to play MTG, but I've mostly gotten out of it. I'm a Data Entry Clerk full time, too.

I am neurodivergent, for those that are curious. My Brain Doctor isn't sure if it's ADHD, Autistim, or just years of *trauma* and C-PTSD so we're working on that right now. I also have anxiety (GAD and Social), but I manage w/o medication. I consider myself lucky and am grateful I've been able to get to this point - it took a lot of work.

Other things: Anticapitalist, Antiracist, Antifacist, Feminist! TERFs fuck off, Trans Women are Women, SWERFS fuck off, sex work should be safe accessible and legal, Men-Exclusive Feminists can also fuck off! Atheist, Pro-Ukraine, pro-palestine, very loud supporter of BLM and yeller of ACAB at cops, and if, during my lifetime, I saw Jeff Bezos get guillotine'd, I'd wanna be in that crowd!

I think that's it? Might add more later. I'm a pretty open book so my ask/inbox is always open! I might not respond right away, but I absolutely love making friends and talking to people! 😁

Edit: If you wanna game with me, DMs/Asks are open for my various Gaming Network Tags (Xbox/PSN/Steam/BNet/Epic)!

I have a Bluesky, feel free to give me an follow https://bsky.app/profile/moonyplays.bsky.social

[dasha-aibo]

I kinda feel like we need a name for people who aren't feminist and are often the type to "totally own feminists ld epic style", but get really concerned about women's rights-cis women's rights more specifically, when trans people are brought up. Am I crazy or is that a thing?

Trads.

[lilquill]

i take it you read circe!! did you like it?

I did read Circe!! And my gosh, I’m in LOVE with everything about it!! The language is stunning, the portrayal of emotions is done incredibly well, the themes are complex, and I couldn’t put the book down! I spent several nights in a row reading until 2 A.M.! All in all it was a captivating, exquisite story.

There will be spoilers below the read more cut, just so all those who haven’t read it yet can go in with a fresh perspective if they wish!

The first thing that really hits you is the prose. It’s BEAUTIFUL! The tone of it is very much like a myth or fairy tale, ethereal and full of stunning descriptions and metaphors, which fits perfectly with the story it’s telling.

Circe’s own powers are strong in transformation, and the way that her narration uses incredible metaphors reflects that quite well: looking at something and seeing something else as it.

I loved the aesthetic of the book. The vivid imagery really sucks you in! Picturing a young girl in the dark halls of Helios, a young woman desperately wringing our herbs over the sleeping body of her beloved to make him a god, a weary yet defiant mother holding her baby and casting a spell to spite the Olympians, a woman walking into the sea to confront a massive god as old as the planet to ask for his tail and risking eternal torture, a daughter finally standing up to the sun god himself to demand her freedom as he almost scorched her….I could go on! The writing was so evocative, and I had chills at so many points!

I also loved the structure of the story itself, and its circular narrative that contrasted itself. How it starts with a cruel family where she felt out of place and alone, and how it ends with her having found her family, bound by love and compassion. How it starts with her trying to turn her beloved into a god so he can be with her with pharmaka, and how it ends with her using that same herb to become mortal so she can live with those she loves. How it starts with her turning Scylla into a monster, and how it ends with her killing Scylla so she no longer kills mortals. How it starts with Helios burning her as she stands firm that she has harnessed an herb’s powers, to how it ends with her standing her ground against that same burning father with her own magic from those herbs as a defense. I could go on and on, but I loved how Circe grew and how she inverted the beginnings of her narrative.

The way that Circe’s tale spanned so many different stories in Greek mythology was done incredibly well and highlighted her experiences with love and loss and pain and her perspective on the world around her.

I also deeply loved Miller’s portrayal of Greek mythology as it is commonly known. The stories of great battles and grand feats have the glamor stripped back to reveal their ugliness and callousness, all with a switch of perspective. From the perspective of a woman relegated to the sidelines in these epic stories, a woman who has been watching all this happen for millennia, these stories change.

I’ve talked about how the senseless violence in a lot of western stories, both older and now, bothers me (maybe not on my blog, but definitely to a lot of my friends). Therefore, I really loved how Circe was genuinely upset by these things and sought to fix them.

There was so much tension, and the stakes were incredibly high, but Circe does not succumb to the usual fantasy protagonist’s “war is evil but it is necessary and this whole series is about war and the conflict of war, the protagonist throws up on the battlefield and then becomes a great warrior and/or commander and then it’s all good” type deal. She was not tangled in a “war” or “battle” in the literal sense, other than the conflict between Olympians and Titans in which she became a pawn. This is what I mean about tension without unnecessary violence!! So many books are just the literary equivalent of a first-person shooter, and this is certainly the case with a lot of portrayals of Greek mythology as well, especially because of the heavy influence of ancient Greece on the West today. Circe’s story is mired in violence, but the moments with no violence at all are some of the most breathtakingly intense and dramatic.

Circe’s kindness and love, though often fierce and burning and messy, and her aching loneliness, are such a stark contrast to the gods––and even some of the mortals like Odysseus––who care nothing for lives or genuine emotion. She truly loves people, and in the end it is the way that her relationships always end as she outlives them that motivates her to give up being a god. I really enjoyed this aspect of the story! The way Miller portrays love and relationships is something I truly want to see more of.

And, speaking of kindness and love and relationships, I LOVED Miller’s portrayal of motherhood. I enjoyed that it was a subversion of the ideal of pristine, perfect, pure, gentle white housewives while still maintaining a deeply loving mother-son relationship. Many seminal feminist stories by cis white women demonize motherhood, framing it as a cage for women. Then this experience becomes universalized to all women. The problem is that, for instance, in the case of women of color, having children and a loving family is what is often denied to us. The world forces the kids of mothers of color to grow up faster and tears their families apart.

Circe is a mother in this story. She struggles with raising her child, but she loves her son fiercely and deeply, to the point where she risks eternal torment just to protect him. The gods want to take her child away, and she endures great pain and works incredibly hard to keep him. It is how the world treats mothers of color.

Look at the struggles Black women go through during pregnancy, with inadequate care at their hospitals and little research on the issues and conditions they go through, and high rates of maternal death. (I strongly encourage that you look at the ProPublica/NPR collaboration series Lost Mothers for more on this!) Look at how Latine families are being torn apart at the border, and mothers are losing their kids as those children are given to white families. Look at how the families of indigenous peoples are torn apart as kids are taken from their mothers and forced into assimilation programs. Look at the forced sterilization of mothers of color, and how eugenics treats the bodies of women of color.

Circe’s story, though written by a white woman, was deeply resonant with these things, which is something I adored about the book.

And, of course, here’s the commentary on womanhood, and how women have their agency stripped from them. Reading Circe’s story was cathartic at points. The story of a girl abused, silenced by fear, constantly put down, growing and honing her powers to the point where she can challenge those with immeasurable power. The experiences of various women woven into the story, from Perse to Pasiphae to Medea to the nymphs sent to Aiaia to Penelope. There’s so much to say tere, but Miller has already said it in her book.

I really really really deeply enjoyed this book!! Thank you for sending me this ask, anon, and I wish you well!! This reply was a lot longer than I expected, but there is truly so much to experience in this piece of literature and I’m definitely going to reread it soon!

Also, to everyone reading this, please feel free to send me your own takes on this book, and to @ me in your perspectives/reviews/etc.!! Much love to you all!!

[lesbianchemicalplant]

I don't feel a need to defend Paris Is Burning or Livingston as a director, but the attitude here toward black drag queens as Imitating White Womanhood is straightforward transmisogyny. this is the standard cisfeminist perspective on drag as misogynist male mockery of women: "casual and cynical mockery of women, for whom femininity is a trapping of oppression"

that Marilyn Frye is a radfem btw. In that same essay collection hooks quoted, The Politics Of Reality, she also describes trans women as "actual robots" "constructed" to replace cis women "to serve as stagehands", and literally cites Janice Raymond's The Transsexual Empire:

these are just the awesome sort of things cisfeminists were up to at the time. which could mean nothing

right after writing on about how we need to love and nurture men more bell hooks victimblames and insults several women. very fitting.

[ofcamerons-blog]

☼ ☼ ☼ ⎿ MUSE A : KATHRYN NEWTON, CIS FEMALE, SHE/HER ⏋ oh look, CAMERON REID is back, the TWENTY year old HEAD OF DANCE AND GYMNASTICS at camp otenaw. looks like it’s their SECOND year as a staff member. rumour has it, they tend to be IMPETUOUS and SELF-CENTERED, but hopefully we’ll get to see their HUMOROUS and SPIRITED side too. I heard they WERE FIRED FROM THEIR PREVIOUS JOB AS A BACKUP DANCER ; let’s hope this will be an epic summer ! ⎿ BROOKE, 22, EST, SHE/HER ⏋ ☼ ☼ ☼

hey everyone! i’m brooke, and i’m so excited to be rping with you all this summer! i’m 22 and live in the est, but i’m basically nocturnal at this point, so expect me to post at weird times probably. anyway, i’m currently playing my queen, cameron reid! without further ado, here’s her intro!

history

cameron reid was born in winnipeg, manitoba to andrew reid and lucas reid-kleinman via surrogate. she’s the second child of four, but her dads always had more than enough money to provide for them. andrew is a big-shot defense attorney and lucas owns his own clothing brand, reid-kleinman. 

when she was four, she watched barbie in the nutcracker for the first time and fell in love. seriously, cameron saw that movie probably a thousand times over the next year. her fathers quickly decided to let her try dance classes, and cam’s been hooked ever since. she started with ballet, and eventually signed up for jazz, contemporary, tap, hip hop, modern and ballroom too. it’s her whole life, honestly.

she started dancing competitively when she was eight, and began placing in third or higher by the time she was ten. eventually, she started being homeschooled to make time for rehearsals. 

but, all of that was during the school year. during summer, cameron spent her time at camp otenaw. all four of the reid kids attended camp at least once, but cameron’s the only one who stuck around. the sunshine and fresh air felt pretty magical after nine months indoors, training and preparing for competitions. she loves dancing, don’t get her wrong, but being outside and goofing off with her camp friends will never get old. she’s been here since she was an itty bitty ageratum, and now she’s a counselor! 

she started working at otenaw two summers ago, but back then she was just a dance counselor. that fall, she went to the ryerson school of performance for dance for her freshman year. during the fall semester of her sophomore year, she was scouted and offered a job as a backup dancer on a tour for a well-known pop star, and she took it without hesitation. in cameron’s mind, she could always just go back to school if things didn’t work out.

and they didn’t. she hated tour life; it was exhausting and demanding and full of constant criticism. it seemed like everyone was constantly snapping at her, and the whole environment just really made her upset. things came to a head when she ended up blowing up at the pop star, effectively getting her fired before the tour was even over.

so now, she’s sort of dealing with the thought that she might have ruined her career before it even took off, and she’s freaking out about what she’s going to do in the fall. and she is telling NO ONE that she got fired because she’s very embarrassed by it and wants people to think she’s fun and successful and great!!! she’s a bit of a perfectionist, can you tell?

personality + head canons

it would be so easy to write cameron off as the pretty little rich girl - and she is, in a lot of ways. but, coming to camp has also really pushed her to fend for herself. she’s been able to build her own campfires since her third summer at camp, and she’s right at home on the sports fields or in a canoe. the only time she really freaks out over being in the great outdoors is when she sees a spider, but that is a very normal fear, okay?

cameron doesn’t take shit from anyone. like the first person to make some comment about her being a dumb blonde or a girlie girl is going to get a ten minute lecture on why it’s not a bad thing to be blonde or feminine. she’s a tiny, feisty feminist who does not back down from an argument.

she loves a good party. during the rest of the year, she trains pretty hard and doesn’t really go out and drink much, so she goes a bit wild at camp. cameron’s a social butterfly and a happy drunk, so she’s usually the girl who makes sure everyone is having fun and that no one feels left out.

she’s smart, strong and capable, but she can be a bit self-centered at times. everyone has flaws, alright? cameron focuses on herself and her own problems more than anyone else, which isn’t great but is very human. she’s also the first person to throw caution to the wind and do something crazy because it sounds like a good idea at the time. like the time she went skinny dipping in the lake at midnight and almost got caught. it seemed like a good idea at the time, honestly. 

she’s sort of inspired by elle woods (legally blonde), cher horowtiz (clueless), and torrance shipman (bring it on) because i love blonde protagonists from 1995-2001 apparently.

wanted connections

i’d love for her to have a sibling-like friendship? like she and someone else who’s been coming here for forever have just formed this really tight bond over the years and they tease each other constantly but would kill for each other at this point?

her cousins! i’m super open with this, but i just think it would be fun for her to have cousins (distant or close) that go here too? idk

a rival of some sort? like maybe they started some sort of friendly rivalry back when they were tiny babies here at camp and they keep it up for the fun of it? like any time there’s a sports competition, they’re on opposite teams because everyone knows they’ll cancel each other out with their competitiveness

a will-they-won’t-they type of relationship where they’ve known each other for years and flirt a lot, but they’ve never actually gone for it because both of them think the other probably doesn’t like them like that?

more can be found here! and i’m always down to brainstorm something else! like this for me to message you to plot <3

[itspatsy]

Part of me thinks JJS2 didn't want to acknowledge they'd majorly dropped the ball on race in S1, so in S2 they amped up the "Jessica is a part of a minority group" aspect, had a black woman say "you people," to turn the narrative even further away from Jessica's own white privilege, and destroyed Trish, who was a viable target because she wasn't a traumatized white woman like Jessica - she was a RICH white woman. And they were desperate to avoid their fuck-ups so they made Patsy a patsy.

okay, so this turned into a long, generally incoherent rant that starts with “this show absolutely fails at dealing with race” and ends with “wtf were they even trying to do with trish’s story,” and it should probably be separate posts or better yet just not posted at all, but it’s all generally related to this ask, so whatever. it’s a mess, i have a lot of confusing thoughts, ignore me.

rather than acknowledging the mistakes of s1 regarding race and trying to course correct, the show definitely seemed like it decided to double down. before the season started, as it was becoming clear they were going to do this “prejudice against powered people” thing, i was really weary about how they would handle it, and apparently my instinct was right. 

to start with, it felt kind of pulled out of nowhere. realistically, sure, people would be weary of powered individuals, but it hasn’t really been fully built into the fabric of the mcu or the netflix mcu as a realized form of bigotry. it was also really only a thematic element in the first half of the season, and they made no effort to really explore it and its implications before they tossed it out and changed gears. it was just there to be used as a device for conflict and drama. 

and it’s such a ridiculous thing when you only have one powered person in the show that’s experiencing that bigotry and she’s a skinny white heterosexual cis woman? like, the most direct parallel for this wasn’t misogyny or homophobia, but racism, and they didn’t try to tell multiple perspectives about it. having a black woman say “you people” at jessica was the most tone deaf bullshit, like, i could not fucking believe it (and then they later killed her off in the most disposable way, which is a whole other issue, and something this show has done repeatedly). they had oscar, a moc that had been in prison (of course), start out the same way, seemingly expressing bigotry and getting “righteously” called out for it by jessica. then there was pryce, another moc, aggressively going after jessica, trying to steal her business, calling her an animal because of her anger and powers, and he “never takes no for an answer” and jessica gets to be like “how rape-y of you” in what was supposed to be a moment of #femaleempowerment. but it just feels like white lady empowerment at the expense of poc. 

but hey, gotta pile on to show how very oppressed jessica is in every aspect of her life, right? which, yes, she has absolutely been oppressed and violated and traumatized, and that is so important and real and should never be diminished, but the show didn’t attempt to contend with the ways she’s also privileged and the ways she’s been able to use it to her advantage and having her acknowledge it (including the fact that having powers, being able to protect herself, is an incredible privilege instead of only the awful burden it’s been portrayed as and she’s always interpreted it as). i probably wouldn’t have even said they’d need to explicitly deal with this under other circumstances, if they were focused on telling a different story, but they’re the ones that decided to make analogies to racist prejudice and have poc express it towards a white woman, so they put the expectation on themselves to tell a nuanced story about oppression and privilege and intersectionality, and they didn’t do that at all. they clearly weren’t actually interested in talking about prejudice in a serious, meaningful way. 

but here’s the even bigger issue: the show tries to present itself as being feminist, but it can’t be feminist when there are no women of color in main roles or even supporting roles. it makes no effort to tell the stories and perspectives and experiences of woc, and that is an absolute failure. it’s inexcusable that they made no effort to fix this. it absolutely doesn’t help that the woc that are actually present in small roles keep getting killed off unceremoniously. i had some hopes when i saw that they had females directors that actually included some woc, but i don’t think they have any in the writing room, and that matters SO MUCH. it makes such a difference, and they could’ve probably avoided so many of these missteps if they just had other voices represented in the creative process. i just saw a headline with melissa rosenberg where she says, “oh yeah, i totally agree with the criticism we don’t have enough women of color,” okay, except this is not a new criticism, people were saying the same thing after s1, so if she agrees with it and cares about it, why didn’t she do anything about it while they were making s2?

the show has sort of attempted with men of color, in that they actually exist in the cast, but it doesn’t handle them well at all, some of which i mentioned before. then you’ve got malcolm. the only lead character of color in s2. he was set up to be the moral center of the show, but there was no real follow through. he was ultimately treated like an afterthought in most situations. he just? disappeared? constantly? when shit went down? i lost count of the number of times i was like, “umm, where the fuck did malcolm go? is he all right?” and the characters around him were pretty consistently awful to him. jessica almost always treated him like shit. his relationship with trish was a train wreck they both kind of contributed to, but trish turned on him pretty epically, and the emotional fallout for him wasn’t really dealt with. and the writers told his “proxy addiction” story in the laziest, grossest way possible (sex? really? that’s all they could think up? and then to use it as excuse to have him treat women like they’re disposable and faceless?). they just clearly have no respect for him. 

it’s such a mess, and s2 was probably worse than s1 in this regard, and there’s no reason it needed to be. this isn’t an impossible thing. when people tell you, “hey, you fucked up. this is how,” you don’t double down or pretend it didn’t happen, you listen and you do better. this should be a show for everyone, not just white women. 

turning to trish, since you mentioned her: i’ve mostly tried to avoid post-s2 reviews, but one of the few i read described her character arc as a critique of the white savior mindset. i highly doubt that’s what the show had in mind. as we established above, careful thoughtful commentary about race is not this show’s strong suit, and writing a critique of the white savior mold wouldn’t even occur to them. i could kind of see where the reviewer was coming from, there were some flavors of white savior-ism in trish’s behavior, but they had to pretend she had never experienced an ounce of hardship in order to make it fit. this was basically the conclusion: “trish is rich and has a family and could never under poor traumatized orphaned jessica’s life.” nevermind that money doesn’t stop you from being abused and traumatized, that a family member was her primary abuser, and that living in poverty and wanting money was the motivation for her abuser to sell her out. this take also ignores the thing driving trish the most. it wasn’t “i want to help people, and they should listen to me because i know best” or even “i want to be special, i want to matter.” it was “nobody touches me anymore unless i want them to.” she was tired of being the victim, of never feeling safe. that’s why she wanted powers. it was muddied by the writing, but it really is as straight-forward as that.

i think trish being rich has likely had some influence in the audience diminishing how she was violated and abused in most every kind of way (physically, emotionally, sexually, financially), but i definitely don’t think the show went after her for being a rich famous white lady as a cover for its various racial fuck-ups. i don’t think the show even really tried to contend with or acknowledge her rich white privilege anymore than it tried to contend with jessica’s privilege. if anything, it tried to do the opposite by showing her to be belittled and demeaned and disrespected by everyone around her, similar to how they were upping the ante on jessica’s oppression by having her face bigotry about her powers. granted, it’s clear the audience had an easier time relating to jessica (probably partly due to the money and fame aspect again; also partly because the narrative backed her up more: for instance, the dynamic of having trish envy the privilege of jessica’s power, but the show seeming to say “oh, gosh, trish just doesn’t understand it’s not a privilege at all, it’s a terrible burden” even though that’s kind of ridiculous, as i mentioned earlier). the execution was shitty, but they were definitely still trying to show that trish’s life was not good and people treated her like she was nothing and worthless in a way that paralleled jessica’s treatment.

tbh, rather than punishing trish for being rich or whatever, i sometimes got the vibe they were actually punishing her for daring to have ambition, but that probably wasn’t on purpose, just an unfortunate implication of the way they treated her in general. at first, i’d assumed they were trying to tell a story about addiction and the ways it can destroy your life, and they just sucked at handling it with any kind of thoughtfulness, but now i think that’s being too generous. they didn’t even really try to grapple with the reality of her addiction and mental illness, so much as use it as an excuse to make her more unstable and put her in a position where she’d keep escalating things. 

i read an interview before the season dropped where melissa rosenberg talked about female anger (or, as the reality of the show is, white female anger), and anger definitely was a theme for all the female characters. if you recognize trish’s main motivator as mentioned above (protecting herself from further abuses), you can see where it fits into this theme, and that it wasn’t just senseless anger and was driven by vulnerabilities and never feeling safe. so, i don’t know, i guess trish’s story was maybe intended to be about an abused woman finally being so goddamn fed up with victimhood and disrespect and belittlement that she decided to take what she needed instead of quietly waiting for other people to acknowledge her humanity and treat her accordingly. that she finally said “fuck it” and tried to find her own power and become her own hero. except, if that was the story, the way it was executed was, wow… exceptionally awful and not remotely clear and not at all done in a positive way. a storyline like that could’ve had the potential to be powerful and affirming and perhaps empowering (once again, for white women at least), but that’s not the story they ended up telling. 

like, i honestly don’t get what i’m supposed to take away from it. they seemingly gave her what she was after, but they spent the entirety of the season shitting on her and had her destroy everything good in her life to get what she believed she needed, which was really just to feel safe. what’s the point here exactly? you do you boo and fuck everybody else because it’ll pay off? don’t have dreams and ambitions for yourself because they’ll make you heartless and selfish and you’ll hurt other people? the desire for power always corrupts even when you’ve been a victim and just want the power to protect yourself? trauma doesn’t go away and can make you do terrible self-destructive shit that you think is helping you but actually isn’t? drug addicts are awful, amirite? what. are. they. trying. to. say?

[lesbianchemicalplant]

“I am a feminist [that draws on] some radfem theory, but I am 100% trans inclusive” 🤪

also note the repetition of “reblogs are not endorsments of the entire blog or person”, a phrase which here means “I reblog from so many TERFs”

I only even saw this blog because another Very Serious Feminist Blogger reblogged a post from me—a post specifically about how much I hate these stupid fucking radfem apologists—and this was listed on the side as one of the related blogs

scrolling down a little, feminist-ravings also reblogs directly from trans women who almost surely are not aware a radfem is trying to glom onto them

[inside-liminale]

#BlackLivesMatter (2)

InSide-Liminale, Alice ed io, sosteniamo la causa del #blacklivesmatter.

Sia come individui che come collettivo di lavoro, siamo impegnati nella lotta contro qualsiasi tipologia di razzismo. Ci stiamo attivamente mettendo all’opera su come possiamo sostenere la nostra comunità sia negli Stati Uniti che a livello internazionale. E’ nostro compito interrogarci sul nostro rapporto con le questioni politiche, razziali ed economiche e indagare su come il nostro lavoro può portare verso il cambiamento. Non abbiamo delle risposte, ma vogliamo apportare il nostro contributo.

Queste sono alcune risorse che abbiamo raccolto e che vorremmo condividere con voi come strumento di sostegno e di apprendimento in merito al tema.

Articles:

“The Death of George Floyd, In Context,” by Jelani Cobb of The New Yorker

“Of Course There Are Protests. The State Is Failing Black People,” by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor for the New York Times

“This Is How Loved Ones Want Us To Remember George Floyd,” by Alisha Ebrahimji for CNN.

The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning The 1619 Project is as important as ever. Take some time to read (or re-read) the entire thing, particularly this essay by Nikole Hannah-Jones

“You shouldn’t need a Harvard degree to survive birdwatching while black,” by Samuel Getachew, a 17-year-old and the 2019 Oakland youth poet laureate, for the Washington Post

“It’s exhausting. How many hashtags will it take for all of America to see Black people as more than their skin color?” by Rita Omokha for Elle

“The Case for Reparations,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates for The Atlantic

“How to Make This Moment the Turning Point for Real Change,” by Barack Obama in Medium

Books:

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson

Can we talk about race? Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria by Beverly Daniel Tatum

A Spectacular Secret: Lynching in American Life and Literature by Jacqueline Goldsby

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah

How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo

Biased by Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt

Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy by David Zucchino

Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children In A Racially Unjust America by Jennifer Harvey

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of  How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Next-Time-James-Baldwin/dp/067974472X

Books for Black Dance Legacy

Dancing the Black Question: The Phoenix Dance Company Phenomenon

By: Christy Adair

Performing Blackness: Enactments of African-American Modernism

By: Kimberly W. Benston

Dancing Many Drums: Excavations in African American Dance

By: Thomas DeFrantz

Dancing Revelations: Alvin Ailey’s Embodiment of African American Culture

By: Thomas DeFrantz

Marion D. Cuyjet and her Judimar School of Dance. Training Ballerinas in Black Philadelphia 1948-1971

By: Melanye White Dixon

African-American Performance and Theater History: A Critical Reader

By: Harry Justin Elam, David Krasner

The Royalty of Negro Vaudeville: The Whitman Sisters and the Negotiation of Race, Gender, Class in African American Theatre: 1900-1940

By: Nadine George-Graves

The Black Dancing Body: A Geography from Coon to Cool

By: Brenda Dixon Gottschild

The Black Tradition in American Dance

By: Richard A. Long, Joe Nash

Dancing in Blackness. A Memoir: The Life and Times of Halifu Osumare

By: Halifu Osumare

WHAT TO LISTEN TO

podcast episode with Jamie Foxx, Michael B. Jordan, and Bryan Stevenson about Just Mercy

1619, a New York Times Podcast,  an audio series on how slavery has transformed America, connecting past and present through the oldest form of storytelling. Nikole Hannah-Jones

Still Processing, a New York Times culture podcast with Jenna Wortham and Wesley Morrison

Seeing White, a Scene on the Radio podcast

Code Switch, an NPR podcast tackling race from all angles

Jemele Hill is Unbothered, a podcast with award-winning journalist Jemele Hill

Hear To Slay, “the black feminist podcast of your dreams,” with Roxane Gay and Tressie McMillan Cottom

[thisbirdhadflown]

February Fic Rec Round-Up, Part I

Hartwin

Rather Emotional Days by Draycevixen

This fic is delightful. Yes, Harry Hart Lives!, but he comes back as a field agent and utterly confident in his desire for Eggsy. But things aren’t always straightforward; it takes time for Harry to requalify and Eggsy is the bright, shiny new agent taking on all the exciting missions. This throws Harry for a loop, but luckily, Merlin is around to troll assign his agents to missions where they’ll be forced to confront their feelings.

Callouses and Canes by starredthought

Adjusting to the world without a sight would be challenging for anyone, and Harry’s no different- his reaction at the beginning is heartbreaking. But with time and Eggsy by his side, he gradually adapts to his new circumstances and the world. This fic follows the process, and how they slowly grow together and take care of another. It’s just lovely.

First Impressions (Or a second) (Maybe a third) by propriety_is_not_a_priority

Think of this as the Meet Cute from hell. Harry springs Eggsy from jail, they share a pint at The Black Prince, and quickly realize they’ve met before… and we’re not talking about when Harry gave Eggsy the medal. Eggsy is cheeky and brazen here, and Harry’s embarrassment is palpable and delicious.

Accidental Roommates by enjoy_acne

YASSSS! @enjoy-acne just updated this, and it’s fucking awesome. Devastating, hilarious, and a great mix of canon elements. The Hartwin interactions are gold. READ READ READ.

Unwin, et al. (2016) by eggmuffin

Nerd humor FTW!

Okay, I love this fic. I’ve read other academia AUs and they tend to focus on the petty politics and the soul-robbing process of finishing the thesis. This story touches on all that and more, but the difference is its tone. It’s gleeful. It’s fun. You can tell that @eggmuffinwrites had a blast writing this, and for me as a reader, it’s so delightful to read.

where on this earth i could be by fideliant

When I was a teenager, my grandpa gave me his copy of “The Royal Road to Romance” and I learned that the word “romance” has many different meanings. I’m bringing this up because this fic by @fideliant embodies romance. Eggsy and Harry go on epic adventures together, and the slow burn between the two is gorgeous. Their love is never voiced, but you can feel it in every interaction.

And can I say that when they finally get together, I love how easy it feels?

to all the men who have stood without fear by romans

Hartwin vampire AU where Harry, instead of recruiting a young man into the service, has a taste for rent boys.

So this is fantastic with one hell of a twist.

For the sake of a simple thing by concernedlily 

At least in terms of ubiquitousness, Rentboy! Eggsy is the coffeeshop AU of Kingsman fandom, but @concernedlily elevates the trope to a new level in this fic. Harry is assigned to take Dean’s group down and Eggsy is his confidential informant.

The first thing that struck me about this fic is how gritty it is. There’s this low level tension that permeates the story and never lets up. Also, no glamour nor gloss here; the inglorious side of spycraft is emphasized. A lot of waiting, a lot of watching, a lot of politics and behind the scene machinations.

I was also struck by the writer’s empathy for Eggsy. Usually CIs are portrayed as craven and motivated by personal greed, but @concernedlily never lets you forget that Eggsy is the one taking all the risks, and he is the one with the most to lose. I remember feeling infuriated when Eggsy literally risks his life and limb (due to shoddy information) for an assignment.

Read it! The storytelling is top notch and the characterization of all the players, even the minor OCs is outstanding.  There’s a sequel as well, and it seems to lighter, thank goodness. I don’t know if I could take another equally intense follow-up.

A Long Way to Go by 221watson

Eggsy gets woke.

I love this fic for three reasons:

1. While class issues were discussed in Kingsman, nothing else was said about the lack of diversity of this mostly white, male, upper class group.So I enjoyed how @queercroft explored the prejudices that would exist in such an insular group.

2. The roles are reversed, and Eggsy is Harry’s teacher.

3. The emergence of Harry Hart, unapologetic feminist. (”…he even gets enthusiastic about it, because a gentleman should know his privilege, he says.”)