#ethical misandry all the way

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Helen Pluckrose

Published: Nov 1, 2024

The recent surge of virulent homophobia among a subset of individuals identifying themselves as gender critical feminists has been the subject of much consternation and argumentation on X in recent weeks. It’s really not at all ambiguous.

I have had a couple of threads on this issue making what are really quite basic liberal arguments against the collective demonisation of gay men on the grounds of some mythical ‘gay sex culture’ that is the epitome of misogyny and sexual depravity and apparently responsible for everything from women having anal sex to the development of the concept of gender identity to anorexia.

Andrew Doyle, himself recently a target of some particularly nasty homophobic abuse, has been a solidly liberal voice in all this, consistently condemning the behaviour of homophobic GCs while stressing that this is a handful of toxic individuals who do not represent principled feminists or their goals to protect women’s rights which he continues to support. However, between the principled gender critical feminists who have straightforwardly condemned this development and the virulent homophobes who unapologetically defend it are a worryingly large number of gender critical feminists who, while not spewing homophobic bile themselves, seem inclined to prevaricate about the ethics of it on illiberal collectivist grounds. Andrew has pointed out correctly the similarity between these tactics and those of the Critical Social Justice movement.

He followed this up with a thought experiment,

and when it went unanswered, with this post.

I am not one to be able not to weigh in on a question like “What do we think is going on here?” I see two main drivers underlying the recent surge in gender critical homophobia - authoritarian social conservatism and radical misandry - sometimes operating independently and sometimes, bizarrely, overlapping.

Extreme Authoritarian Social Conservatism.

The gender critical movement has, over the last couple of years, attracted a sizeable contingent of old-fashioned extreme authoritarian social conservatives. This is an odd development as they seek to enforce gender roles & gender stereotypes and so represent the opposite values to those typically held by gender critical feminists. The difference looks like this:

Gender critical feminism - "We believe 'gender' to be a harmful social construct which perpetuates roles & stereotypes which teach men to be domineering, aggressive & regard women as sexual objects & women to be submissive, self-effacing & servile to the desires of men. We reject these stereotypes and roles and believe there is no right way to be a man or a woman. Men who have traits more typically associated with femininity and women who have traits more associated with masculinity should simply embrace these rather than believing they have a gender identity at odds with their biological sex that they should identify with rather than their biological sex. Because we believe gender to be a harmful oppressive fiction that perpetuates these roles & stereotypes, we do not believe gender identity to be a real thing & to be, instead, another iteration of these roles & stereotypes that empower male sexual predators & present a threat to women. Gender nonconformity and same-sex attraction are naturally occuring phenomena which are enabled to thrive when pressure to conform to gender roles is reduced, and we support people who fit into either or both categories.

Extreme authoritarian social conservatism - Gender roles & stereotypes are good, actually. Men should be men & women should be women as defined by the most rigid gender roles & stereotypes which we should tie even more firmly to biological sex & enforce more strongly. Because we believe that men & women have a moral responsibility to uphold gender roles & stereotypes, we object to anybody who does not fit within a norm of stereotypically masculine men & stereotypically feminine women being attracted to each other and having monogamous relationships based on these stereotypical gender roles. We object to gender identity as the ultimate form of gender nonconformity that betrays this ideal and it’s convenient to piggyback on a well-established gender critical movement that has support due to its concerns for women’s rights and children’s bodies. However, our end goals are opposed and this becomes most evident when we do things like verbally abuse women with minds of their own in the public sphere by telling them they’re too fat, ugly & unfuckable to have a worthwhile opinion or send pictures of bunches of sticks (faggots) to men who are attracted to men.

Liberals reject authoritarian social conservatism because of its authoritarianism and support gender critical feminists’ goals to liberate people from restrictive gender roles and stereotypes that they do not wish to be in. We also support same-sex attracted people’s right to pursue their consensual romantic and sexual lives without interference or harassment. We may differ with gender critical feminists on the extent to which psychological differences between men and women are socially constructed. There is significant evidence that differences in our evolved brains and hormones has resulted in psychological sex differences between men and woman on average and that this influences what they choose to do in life. However, these are simply differences in distributions of traits on average which do not apply to every individual and do not justify constraining anybody into a gender role or making stereotypical assumptions about them.

Radical Misandry

Radical misandry has always had a presence in the feminist movement - a movement concerned with advancing or maintaining women’s equal rights and social status - and always been opposed by other feminists. Feminists are defined by their opposition to patriarchy - legal and social systems which give men all the power in society and especially power over women - but some of them expand and distort this to the demonisation of men. It is much the same pattern as seen in opposition to racism in which all anti-racists are defined by opposition to white supremacy - legal and social systems which give white people all the power in society and especially power over people of other races - but some of them expand and distort this to the demonisation of white people. This is, of course, bigotry that is rejected by the majority of people who recognise that patriarchy and misogyny can be and are opposed by people of both sexes and white supremacy and racism can be and are opposed by people of all races and that unified opposition to such unjust systems and horrible beliefs has been and remains the best way of overturning the systems and marginalising the beliefs. Some people continue to argue that misandry and anti-white racism are justifiable due to prejudice and discrimination against women and people of racial minority having been a far bigger problem for much longer. However, consistently principled people recognise this illiberal collectivist mentality to unhelpfully replicate the fallacious and morally abhorrent reasoning that justified and sustained systems like patriarchy and white supremacy in the first place, and this kind of ‘retributive justice’ to be no justice at all and reject it as both unethical and counterproductive.

Nevertheless, feminists who take a radical misandrist position continue to exist and to insist that the problem with society is men, men, men. Men’s depravity, men’s entitlement, men’s fragility, men’s aggression, men’s misogyny, men’s endless quest for domination. They take this position despite an abundance of evidence that many of the people promoting patriarchal systems and restrictive gender roles are women and many of those opposing them are men. One particularly revealing UK study from 2016, (just before Critical Social Justice became so culturally dominant that it melted a lot of people’s brains and sent them into tribal warfare mode) found that 86% of men and 74% of women supported equal rights for women. The evidence that men are at least as likely to support women’s rights as women are is neglected because misandrist feminists have a collectivist mentality which defines ‘men’ and ‘women’ as sex classes with specific sex class interests as defined by them and not as living, breathing men and women with diverse individual political and ideological views.

But why would misandry cause this subset of feminists to engage in virulent homophobia? Even if men were all violent, domineering sexual predators perpetuating a misogynistic rape culture to satisfy their own depraved sexual appetites, surely the men we’d have to worry about least are those whose appetite for sex with women is non-existent? My observation of this odd phenomenon suggests that this is related to a strong streak of puritanical opposition to male sexuality as something dark and inherently dangerous alongside a belief in the gentle purity of female sexuality. As I was informed following one of my threads, “Female sexuality DOES act as a breaker for male depravity, and it is absent here.” I was also informed in this thread that gay male sexuality is all about men publicly urinating on each other, engaging in public anal sex, walking about dressed as dogs with dildos protruding from their anuses and performing drag acts that feature fake vaginas. Rhetoric about ‘gayman culture’ (it seems a ‘gayman’ is something different to a man) and ‘gay male sex culture’ abound in these threads as do claims that all gender non-conforming men are autogynephilic sex offenders while autoandrophilia is absolutely not a thing.

Heaven help any gay man who ventures into these threads to suggest that being a same-sex attracted small gamete producer may not actually be the same thing as being a fetishist exhibitionist and/or that he, personally, has objected to such public displays and argued that they subvert the purpose of Gay Pride to advance acceptance of same-sex relationships. This will not exempt him from being accused of complicity in the behaviour of other men who hold entirely different views and values and may be gay. May God have mercy on the soul of any lesbian who expresses a liking for anal sex and points out that it does not require a literal penis or suggests that anybody take a look at the genre of lesbian erotic fiction associated with terms like ‘stud’ or ‘packing’ before declaring too confidently that autoandrophilia is not a thing. She is likely to be accused of being a fake account run by a man. Any heterosexual woman objecting to the “vanillafication” of her sex life and pointing out that the 50 Shades of Gray phenomenon was not driven by male consumers (it certainly wasn’t inspired by the quality of the writing, captivating plot or compelling character development) or daring to say that she finds male sexuality…..well, sexy, is very likely to either disappear under a pile of ‘pick-me, dickpanderer’ accusations or be held up as an example of what gay male sex/porn/orgy culture does to poor, innocent women.

We cannot do anything with reasoning that works like this. It begins with its conclusion that men and male sexuality are defined by something dark, dangerous and ugly and that gay men’s sexuality, unconstrained by the influence of an imagined pure and virtuous female sexuality, represents a particularly concentrated variation of this vile and contaminating depravity. It then works backwards from there. No amount of reasoned argument or evidence to the contrary will reach true believers in this narrative. They are prisoners of their own minds and the rest of us can only be thankful we do not have to live in such minds. Nor can we realistically hope to be able to do much with the mindset of extreme authoritarian social conservatives. They too have a distorted ideologically captured mindset that is impervious to any attempts to introduce it to the reality of men and women as demographics with differing distributions of traits but also much individual variation. Nor can we convince them that it is perfectly fine if some women are not particularly feminine and some men are just not that masculine, that some women will be ideal leaders in the public sphere and some men the most wonderful full-time parents and that some people will be attracted to others of the same sex and we can just accept this reality and treat them with the same dignity and respect as everybody else. (Failing that, you can just leave them alone).

Fortunately, the majority of people do not hold either of these extreme positions and acceptance of same sex relationships in the UK continues to increase. (We have more cause for concern in the US). Homophobia, blessedly, remains a fringe position. However, I would suggest that there is genuine cause to be concerned for young gay men and especially for boys who are or will soon be recognising themselves to be gay and who are particularly likely to operate more in the social media world of narratives than in the real one. For them, we must fear the homophobic narratives of the ‘queer theory’ brand of Critical Social Justice activism which will try to convince some of them struggling with their sexuality that they are actually girls and the rest that it is transphobic to be solely same-sex attracted. We must continue to fear the ever-present extreme social conservatives who will tell them there is something wrong and dirty and disgusting about the way their attractions and their romantic love works. And, increasingly often, now, it seems we must also fear for those who reject both of those narratives and find themselves in the gender critical space where a small but highly vocal minority of those gender critical women will inform them that their sexuality is the root of seemingly all evil.

We cannot ban these homophobes or seek to cancel or penalise them for their morally abhorrent views (provided they remain in the realm of ideas). We can only counter them and ensure that there is another stronger, more convincing, more ethical and more evidence-based stance on male homosexuality that is easily findable online. There must be a principled, liberal stance that reminds young gay men that their same-sex attraction is both important and irrelevant. Human sexuality is important on a personal level because it determines what our closest and most enduring relationships look like and who we love and are loved by on the most intimate level. To some extent, it shapes what our families, friendship groups and communities look like. Those close human bonds are possibly the most important thing to humans and this was why it was so important to achieve acceptance of same-sex love and attraction in the first place. It should never have been “a love that dare not speak its name” leading countless individuals to lead lives of secrecy, loneliness or shame. We must never allow that to happen again.

At the same time, we do not need homosexuality or bisexuality or heterosexuality to be speaking its name at all times and in all contexts. In most broader, cultural contexts, an individual’s sexuality is, or should be, irrelevant. It has no inherent ethical or political content. It does not make somebody virtuous or immoral. It does not make them stunning and brave or degenerate and depraved. It does not make them special (or not especially special). Our individual qualities, beliefs, values and actions determine whether we are people who make the world better or worse and those are the only things on which each of us can be rightfully judged. Whenever somebody says “You are <insert race, sex, sexuality, other characteristic here> and this means you must hold specific abhorrent views and values, are complicit in some harmful culture or community and should be held accountable for the behaviour of other individuals who share this characteristic” that person is being illiberal, unethical and simply factually wrong. That person really is complicit in a harmful culture or community and the rest of us should uphold a culture that tells them so and holds their views in low esteem.

Sadly, it seems to be necessary to do this in the gender critical space at the moment in relation to homophobia. Plenty of gay men have been doing so and their voices will be particularly valuable for younger gay men who are concerned about CSJ ‘queer’ activism. Unfortunately, some gay men who share these concerns have now decided that their presence and support is not wanted in the gender critical feminist space. This makes it particularly important that principled gender critical feminists are also seen to object to the homophobes among them. This matters for strategic reasons of not alienating their allies but, more importantly, it matters for ethical reasons that hurling homophobic abuse at people is simply an appalling thing to do. Many have been condemning homophobia and I have been encouraged to see many gender critical feminists “liking” my tweets on the subject. Unfortunately, some continue to prevaricate on the issue. This will not do. While I could understand and respect feminists’ wish to avoid a ‘pile-on’ of any individual or a wish to address the problem privately with another feminist who is behaving badly rather than publicly, there really is a need for feminists who recognise that homophobia is wrong to say so publicly and without equivocation. The time to do that is now.

==

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redstockings#Ideology

Redstockings were strongly opposed to lesbian separatism, seeing interpersonal relationships with men as an important arena of feminist struggle, and hence seeing separatism as escapist. (Like most radical feminists of the time, Redstockings saw lesbianism primarily as a political identity rather than a fundamental part of personal identity, and therefore analyzed it primarily in political terms.) Redstockings were also opposed to male homosexuality, which they saw as a deeply misogynist rejection of women.

This has been framed as "imagine hating women so much you'd rather fuck each other."

This is what the mind-virus of social constructivism gives you: the same "it's a choice made by sinners who want to sin" contention as conservative Xians.

Prediction: responses denying Helen's position will themselves vindicate and demonstrate it. They will be both sexist and authoritarian in nature, as it's an ideological imperative to defend the ideology no matter what (this is cult mentality).

Further prediction: despite me making this prediction and making it public, this will not stop the prediction from coming true.

[chaos-otter]

I'm posting this knowing full well that I'm about to upset people, particularly people I'm close to. However, I hope whoever comes across this post takes it at face value and thinks about it deeply. I am making this post in a good faith effort to have a conversation for those willing to have it, and I will ignore any rude comments.

Transmisandry is not the same as misandry for a few reasons:

1. I hear and value the transfems who argue that transmisandry paints transfems as oppressors of transmascs. However, the idea that transmisogny paints transmascs as oppressors of transfems would also have to be true in that case. Yet I see many people denounce that idea, so why is one way true and not the other?

2. Transmisogny is set as the idea that transfems experience specific prejudice for being transfem. Why isn't transmisandry the same for transmascs?

3. I experience prejudice due to being transmasc. It isn't misogyny because I am not a woman. Telling tansmascs they are experiencing transmisogny in the "rare" (it isn't rare for all of us) times they are experiencing prejudice is incredibly invalidating.

4. Men are not oppressed for being men, that is why misandry doesn't exist. However, transmascs are very specifically targeted for transitioning in a way that conservatives, and some queer people, hate, because it is seen as specifically devious cus "many transmascs pass as men."

5. Transmisandry, as a word, sucks, that's fair, but it doesn't mean that many transmascs don't have specific reasons to not consider transmisogny to be the best word for our situation. Particularly as it allows for the assumption that transmascs are only oppressed for being afab, which is a really gross way to think about the situation, and not all transmascs are afab.

6. I really need white transfems to take a moment, step back, and think before saying things like, "all transmascs have power over me for passing as men!" It's giving, white women blaming poc men for crimes of existing. I will never have as much power as a white feminine person, no matter how much I pass as a man.

I know many people are going to hate this, I'm expecting hate comments. I still think it needs to be said because transmascs issues are constantly ignored because men oppress women, so transmascs must have power over transfems. Oppression is never that simple, and nothing is as black and white as it seems. Trans, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming people have similar but unique difficulties. Arguing that every word transmascs come up with to discuss our difficulties as "acting like MRAs" decreases the ability to discuss issues with nuance and consideration since the discussion is derailed by morality and ethics arguments about the words used.

[wolf-soup]

genderfluid transsexual lesbian ⚧️♀️ radfem, but not a terf.

disabled, cane-using, plural, audhd, npbpd, schizoid, visually impaired, hard of hearing, celtic paganist, irish and japanese whasian 🇯🇵🇮🇪♿ (what a mouthful...)

conservationalist 🌱 anarchist Ⓐ radinclus 🌈 radical leftist 💙 pro-kink 🔞

my stances

trans women and transfemmes are oppressed for being women as well as being trans. they have always had a place within feminism and excluding them from it is denying logical statistics and factual information.

all men benefit from the patriarchy in some way or another. there are of course exceptions as there is to everything but in general this is objectively true. misandry does not exist because men cannot be oppressed, systemically or socially, for being men. almost every problem that "misandry" poses is a direct result of misogyny and the patriarchy. misandry is a term only ever used to silence and belittle women, and it only draws attention away from misogyny.

women of color, especially black women, are stripped of their femininity and humanity and thus are the group of women in most dire need of protection. this is especially true for trans women of color.

gender is entirely a social construct and has been used historically to place people into boxes and strip women of their autonomy.

kink is part of lgbt history and thus belongs at pride. pride was never meant to be a sanitized and youth-friendly space. if you are going to go to a pride march you should be aware that there will be many kinksters there. to add to this, cops do not ever belong at pride. fuck cops.

religion is used as an oppressive force towards minority groups. all religions as they currently exist are misogynistic in some way or another. religiocentric countries and regions should not exist. religion should not be taught in schools. however, despite my gripes and criticisms towards religion, i believe it is one's right to practice and believe in it. even so, i believe we as a general society need to begin moving away from religion entirely.

free palestine. israel is an oppressive state. hamas is not a terrorist organization. israel is committing a g*nocide and participating in ethnic cleansing.

capitalism is an inherently flawed and oppressive system. there is no version of it that succeeds. there is no version that is ethical.

captivity should be a last resort for animal preservation. a lot of zoos are unethical and interfere with the natural environment of wild animals. exotic animals should not be kept as pets. domesticated animals should be kept inside or under proper care. the agriculture and meat industry treat animals very poorly and do not give animals proper ethical environments.

trophy hunting is unnecessary, even if the hunters are donating after killing the animal (why not just donate?). hunting is fine and necessary within moderation. make usage of every part of the animal once you kill it (including hide, bones, and meat). overhunting should only be done for population control. it is normal for animals to die in the wild and hunting does not interfere with that natural phenomena.

certain animal species should be left to go extinct, especially ones that cannot survive on their own in the wild. extinction is a natural thing. however, animals shouldn't be hunted or forced to extinction.

possibly more to be added

other

my pronouns page ✨

@radfem-not-terf (radfem exclusive sideblog)

PIRFism ♀️

my instagram

my carrd

[hasenheim]

i saw a post about GNC m/f ships and now im just thinking about how weirdly hostile people were when i was younger on this website. i mean it's probably STILL an issue but like. people full-on acted like shipping the twinkish guy with a woman was Evil because of like ten thousand layers of inbred gender politics that only make sense to a HIGHLY specific subsection of people. like there rly were some sections of this website that decided the best way to address gender issues in society was by making new ones instead of. yknow. deconstructing gender entirely. like i remember there was a period of time where 'man hating' on tumblr had like very specific rules so that it'd be legitimate, in the sense that our political opponents could not genuinely critique us for it. for, but then i saw people descend so hard into their ironic misandry that it basically just became an unhelpful inversion of the binary politics we deal with in major society. hell, ive even seen it from trans dudes who have a vested interest in being a man - to the point where they were no longer cemented in their gender identity because they couldnt resolve the dissonance between how they see men bc of tumblr vs how they are as a man

and because of social media - the way it creates echo chambers and isolated bubble communities - this very post could read wildly differently to somebody who wasnt in my very specific corners of tumblr/twitter. like i have a general idea of the broad sweeping motions of the social groups ive been in, sure, but the specifics? for one person, they might know precisely what im referring to, but for another, they might be like 'uhhh what, all my friends hate men and its fine (proceeds to describe the state of affairs that for me was very much in the earlier days of tumblr)'

hell even me calling a fictional character of ambiguous sexual identity a 'twink' is a big deal to some because i guess some fujoshis said the word a couple hundred times in some moldy corner of the internet. and now i, a trans woman with very complex relationships to the very concept of gender, cannot simply refer to feminine men as being twinks or twink-like - at least, without a minor chance of being harangued for it. which i think is silly but that's the kind of minor squabbles people get seriously heated over

its just... the way one minor event happens and then people codify it into their entire ethical framework forever, and the way this process repeats and builds on itself, and bounces off of hundreds of people inside a given social media platform... the way it's like dominoes. the ideologies it forms tend to not be built on solid ground at all & it has worried me for quite a long time. it's a lot of why i've been so inactive

[elena-astor]

Subtly, but not wholly unnoticeable, Elena took a slow breath the way she had been taught both in therapy and in Yoga. Suppressing all her wants and needs as well as her thoughts and reactions had made her body being in a tense, rigid state at all times second nature. She wasn’t a mean person, nor did she look down on people for being socially, financially, or academically ‘beneath her’, but she did have a tendency to snap at the little things. Woe be unto whoever was at the end of her when she did. Of course, she tried not to, hence the therapy and Yoga. It helped for the most part, and yet something was off with her today. There was logically no reason for her to be so short with Eric. Had hadn’t done anything — well, besides presuming a bit too much and attempting to be overly casual. Still, it wasn’t really anything that warranted her bad behavior. 

Sighing, Elena shook her arms and shoulders a bit, her intention to loosen her tight muscles and joints and relax her body. It was unfair of her to be so heinous so early in the morning, even if she had been dealing with that insufferable smile for too long. He had a cockiness about him that was just the kind of thing she hated to see in a man, only made worse by the fact that he was a raven haired Adonis with eyes like a storm and a build that would make most wrestlers cower in fear. Elena hated to own up to her misandry, but her time in the workforce had only made it grow, and knowing that he still wore a grin while submitting so willingly and still managed to trip her up with his commentary made Elena even more annoyed. It didn’t help that as he grabbed his hand, the muscles underneath flexed and showed off the veins in his strong grip. 

“Don’t put words in my mouth.” Elena scoffed, almost offended. “ I didn’t make any claims about your appearance hindering your work ethic,I just want to make it clear that I’m not some spoiled princess who needs — Look, whatever. It doesn’t even matter. I was in the wrong for inquiring and it wont happen again. And I don’t need any services from you outside the ones you were hired for, so let’s just… Nip this in the bud so I can get to work. 

In a huff, Elena chose to ignore his parting words, wondering — mentally cursing, really — what was wrong with her that morning. “ I think that would be best. “ She sternly agreed. Him shutting up was the pivotal part in her getting her shit together and putting her game face on. “ And you’re not my secretary; you don’t need to keep me abreast of my schedule. When we’re inside the building and I’m in my office I think it’s safe enough for you to loiter around the floor or linger within proximity of me while finding something to entertain yourself. I’m hardly in any danger a dozen floors up surrounded by people.” She insisted. 

Like a hard shell to crack with a soft center, Eric had to imagine that she didn’t have many positive experiences in the business which in turn, chilled her to most people. The temperature he got from others was divided. Some liked her, some didn’t- and whether or not that had to do with the type of business they were in seemed to be a non-factor. Because she was a woman, no matter what she did she had to decide which was more important: to be well liked or to do the job and do it well. Having chosen the latter had its downsides he could only assume that how she was being now a direct result of that.

He already knew mid-speech she’d made up her mind already, arms fastened against her chest. It wasn’t that she was defensive or even close to the words most often used for businesswomen, but rather that she probably had little to no experience with people who didn’t want to steal her job right under her nose, or worse. Eric was no stranger to that knowledge and it was half the reason he approached her with such caution. It should have given him no joy to watch her turn back to him with an annoyance, even if for a split second he thought she might relent. Eric wasn’t there to poach jobs and climb the work political ladder, or even insult her intelligence. He knew that nothing but his compliance would please her, and he aimed to do just that.

He fought a smile of his own, way too satisfied hearing how valuable an asset she knew she was, and how confident she was in that fact. Elena was his superior, and there shouldn’t have been a source of pride in the way she was snapping back at him, nor in the way she tightened her eyes and closed herself off from him. It wasn’t as if she needed to prove anything to him he didn’t already know, but he sensed he might have come off as undermining. Whatever the case, it amused him in a way he kept concealed.

He wasn’t often one to refrain from what he wanted to say, of course the range of this ended with his professional life, but even he fought the urge to make comments. If he did he would’ve told her dogs could sense danger before it happened, that he wouldn’t hesitate to do all those things had she asked - as it would be foolish to think his job might overextend to other realms at least once in a while. Eric held back his amusement in her insistence that girls would be faking all over him. It was displaced, a throw of something that was unexpected, like it might have been more a personal opinion than his original intent. “I think I can handle that.” He answered her, remaining straight and narrow, waiting until all she had to say was spent and she seemed satisfied to get it all out.

A small smile sneaked onto his face. “I completely understand.” Whatever new thing he might learn about her would come from her own admission, a patience in waiting for that acceptance from her. Still, the fear of losing his job was not enough to stop him from trying his luck. He kept his space, closing his hand over the wrist of his other arm. “I thought we were being professional. That verges the line of discrimination bias. Are you making an judgement of me based on how I look?” He responded suggestively, trying not to grin, eyebrow raised. “I offered services outside of my role, at your request, and answered your questions about my lack of a personal life.” He said this all calmly, with as much authenticity as his tone could muster. “I’m sure lots of other men would fall over themselves to work under you, but that doesn’t mean any of them are going to really care if you’re safe, as long as the paycheck clears. If you want me to shut up and do my job, I can. Should I refrain from telling you that if we let this go on for too long you’ll be running late for your next appointment?”

[eclecticwordblender]

To be very clear, feminism isn’t about hating cis-het men, that is just what I do as a personal hobby.

[mcmusing]

And now, for a rant years in the making....

The longest thing I've ever written began because X-Men First Class was such a well-acted breath of fresh air. The dynamic between Charles, Raven, and Erik really captivated and inspired me. Enough to create an ongoing series that has had more good years than bad.

Unfortunately, starting with Days of Future Past, FC's legacy was sacrificed to the creatively bankrupt egos of the very production team that ruined the X-Men film series in the first place. This, along with the misandry/racism disguised as empowerment/diversity plaguing modern media, torpedoed what could have been an amazing series. James McAvoy pulled off the impossible by cementing himself as an iconic Charles Xavier on par with Patrick Stewart. After years of Ian McKellen's hammy one-dimensional villainy, the God's gift to acting that is Michael Fassbender emerged as the definitive Erik Lehnsherr. In Jennifer Lawrence's casting as Raven, the producers took an asinine, fanfic-esque concept like making Mystique Charles' adopted little sister and pulled it off so unbelievably beautifully. Despite their limited screentime, Alex, Hank, and Sean displayed more personality and likeability than any depiction of Jean and Storm across multiple films. However, moronic Brian Singer and Simon Kinberg could not wait to destroy all of FC's good will for their own agendas.

James McAvoy portrayed Charles as spirited and slightly mischievous yet highly intelligent, altruistic, nurturing, and self-sacrificing. Then the sequels tried in forced desperation to paint him as an overbearing, elitist misogynist and the one responsible for Raven and Jean's destructive abuse of power. Even though all he did was give them a home, make difficult choices in order to protect them and others, and brought both of them onto his team due to his personal relationships and trust in them. Because women are so strong and capable except when it comes to taking responsibility for their horrible choices. No, human flaws are strictly of the Y chromosome. Charles has been abandoned his entire life, received no real support, had his body and mind mangled because of his 'best friend', yet puts everyone before himself and always forgives the undeserving. Still, the producers and equally idiotic fandom reduces him to a spoiled white male with no concept of pain or hardship.

Through extensive research and dedication, Michael Fassbender put more into portraying Erik than, quite possibly, any actor taking on a comic book role. Erik is so worldly intelligent, handsome, sauve, and masculine to alpha levels, but with a pained vulnerability about him. FC is the ONLY film to paint him in this light. According to the sequels, Erik completely abandoned the friend/brother he crippled, couldn't hold his own team together for even a year, got captured by regular humans- the strategic nazi hunter got captured by REGULAR humans for ten years, betrayed his friends who freed him at the first opportunity, took no responsibility for the unforgivable things he did to Charles, abandoned his pregnant lover, almost ruined the lives of mutants everywhere by attempting a terrorist attack on TV, then ran off with his tail between his legs once thwarted. And that was only DoFP. In the next movies, he gave up his mutant identity completely, married a regular woman two seconds after declaring war on regular humans, was a pitiful excuse for a father who couldn't train his ONE mutant child to control her powers, got his family killed by his own past actions, then went on a murder spree with a lunatic that resulted in Charles' torture, Alex's death, and the destruction of the school- with the students being saved only by Peter's coincidental presence. I'm not even going to talk about that stupid phoenix movie. My blood pressure is already to the ceiling. No wonder Michael Fassbender grew to hate his character.

Speaking of hating their own character, even Jennifer Lawrence doesn't like how the warm, familial relationship between Raven and Charles deteriorated into something so cold and bitter. Raven abandoning her devoted brother is not only never properly addressed but the sequels want to pretend like it's Charles' fault they're estranged. Raven spends their every scene being a hostile, rude ingrate towards him right up until she's killed by that monotone wet rag they call Jean. Charles is willing to sacrifice his own life multiple times for Raven but she shows more regard for her attempted murderer Erik. So, I suppose the feminist message is that a protective, peace seeking, reasonable man is too controlling and toxic but a violent, unhinged, homicidal man is worthy to be praised. That phoenix movie sure thought so, considering they completely demolished Hank McCoy.

These movies also have no care or concern for life itself. The hellfire club slaughtered an entire facility full of people and killed Darwin yet Erik and Raven jumped to join them. Then, we're supposed to care that those monsters are dead by DoFP. Meanwhile, Sean and Alex's deaths are glossed over but Raven's is supposed to be tragic and meaningful.

That brings up yet another problem with this cursed series. Mutation is supposed to be an allegory for various prosecuted groups. The producers really wanted the live action mutants to be lgbt stand-ins. I can't even begin with how insulting that is. So, Magneto's the face of the gays, huh? Meaning if other people do anything but pledge absolute loyalty to that  lifestyle, gays will react with violence and destruction, willing to kill anyone- even their own-, who gets in their way. Also, those who believe the lgbt lifestyle will lead to inevitable chaos are proven right by X-Men execs. Mutants have caused massacres of government officials, killed their own family members during uncontrolled rages, and nearly doomed the planet too many times to count. This is what gays relate to? This?! This infantilized depiction as sadistic megalomaniacs?!

Overall, FC- as engaging as it was- is a mere anomaly in the grand scheme of the X-Movies. A dour, joyless, soulless catastrophe of unforgivable discontinuity, underdeveloped characters, multiple horrid actors, outrageous missed opportunities, and nonexistence ethics with a transparent, hypocritical agenda.

I started my fic in 2011 as a way of addressing the growing racial upheaval going on in the US at the time. Ten years later and things are infinitely worse than anything I could have predicted back then. There are no intelligent conversations to be had nor heroes to look up to. The entire entertainment industry has become a battleground for the war of identity politics. Not even just fandoms arguing amongst themselves but also Hollywood creators taking the time to be aggressively insulting and dismissive of their own fans. The flames of hatred are being fanned and everyone seems so blind to it.

[tellywoodtrash]

balh2 31.08.21 lb

priya stops the auto to let ram in, but he's whisked away in the now-fixed car by his posse, and she's like yeahhhhhhh seems about right for rich ppl, and goes her way.

very subtle playing of song show title is based on. ram hums along happily while priya tells auto bhaiyya to pls turn it off. lol she really does hate any type of sentimentality, and i'm here for this peak grumpy girl representation.

blah blah time waste establishing ram's family. aaaaaaaaaand they have shubhaavi choksey playing his mom when she's the same age as him irl. wonderful. best. very nice. i'm not angry about this at all.

snobby rich ppl greeting exchange. air kisses missing.

priya comes home to discover maitreyi and her husband are visiting. she just ignores them and walks into her room.

meanwhile ram walks into heartache after heartache. ek toh sagaai went on without him, and shivi's toast is only for her other brother shubham and her mom and her besties. (one of whom looks very familiar, where do i know her from???????) anyway someone give ram a (non-vegan) cupcake to feel better from having a shitty fam.

vedu notices ram and points him out to shivi, who's suddenly all RAM BHAIIIIIIIIIIIII, MY BIGGEST SUPPORTERRRRRRRR. pssssh.

oh btw, that fucker who wanted to use that totally non happening video for blackmail seems to be vedu's husband/???

ponky from naagin 5 is a friend of ram's. but he's a literal fetus???? i'd have thought he was a younger brother ala rudra.

priya's brother has his fucking shoes on her bed and mereko jo gussa aa raha hai na by goddddddd. YOU JUST CAME IN FROM THE FUCKING RAIN YOU DIRTYASS............

anyway priya's like idgaf that maitreyi married my ex bf.

"humein khush rehne ke liye kisi ki zaroorat nahi hoti." she's saying words i agree with, but show immediately cops out by showing her tearing up and blubbering "i don't need anyone, i'm fiiiiiiiiiine" unconvincingly. guh. idk if i'm gonna be able to watch this show if it keeps diluting its messages like this.

ram toh udhar giving lecture on baarish. BRO ENOUGH. I AM SO DONE WITH THIS TOPIC OF CONVERSATION. itna toh baarish se lagaan ke champaaner waalon ko pyaar nahi tha jitna iss show mein log karte hain.

priya doing a very convincing mimickry of kinda pretentious maitreyi to entertain one new younger sibling. how many fucking siblings does priya have??????? (too fuckin many, is the answer.)

i do not appreciate the characterization of ram's chamcha friend's wife as a nagging ball and chain type.

new mangatar and bitchy shubham are snidely remarking about ram and his bechaara broken dil thanks to vedika.

ok if shivaay was obnoxiously self assured, ram is just......... almost annoyingly roll over and show your belly type of soft and diplomatic and people pleasing. only extremes for nakuul sir i guess.

adi's wife (brinda?) catches him looking out into baarish and shedding a few silent tears, and she's here to nag HIM now about getting a wife. yes brinda, because you make marriage look like SUCHHHHH AN APPEALING PROSPECT.

ram's like no i don't need anyone and then wistfully stares at vedu saying i'll never find someone who loves like she does her husband.

brinda's like it's all fake, dude. real couples fight and argue and cuss at each other and wow.... i think brinda and adi might need couples' counseling coz..... you're not SUPPOSED to be so complacent about your marriage being so dysfunctional.

oh breakup was 6-7 saal pehle. ok yeah sir you should have gotten over it by now. therapy for you too.

NO NOT THE EK TARFA PYAAR KI TAAQAT SPEECH NO FUCKIN NO OK

SHUBHAAVI AS NAKUUL'S MOM WILL NEVER NOT ENRAGE ME. I NEVER THOUGHT IT'D GET WORSE THAN MANASI SALVI, BUT LOVE THAT TELLYWOOD MANAGES TO FUCKING ENRAGE ME WITH THIS SHIT WITH EVERY NEW SHOW.

priya refuses to have ice cream because of her principles against capitalism. which............... ok??? there's no ethical consumption under capitalism, sis. just eat the overpriced ice cream.

just realised that the eldest sister is played by the actress who was jai's elder sister in just mohabbat.

anyway eldest sister (sara) and youngest sister (sandy) are team!priya over maitreyi.

priya is as anti-shaadi as me and asks sara if she's happy (priya clearly doesn't think much of sara's husband who leaves all the child-rearing to her, in addition to running the bakery) and sara's like "maate, mujhpe mat shuru ho jaate, pls" snort. yeah, no one likes their bad choices rubbed in their faces.

oh, their dad ran away after allll the betiyaan and married someone else. zindagi gulzar hai sitch hai.

more of priya asserting that she's happy single and show undermining her with the music cues and character reactions. fuck this messaging. why can't it be that she's genuinely happy single and ram is just a good complementary partner she finds and decides to change her mind about marriage coz that's what they want for themselves. i hate this black and white nonsense.

sisters are forcing priya to go on a date (with whom?????) and the scene just cuts off awkwardly.

ram has PINK shoes on today. man this is so a nakuul thing, this one (1) atrangi styling element of an otherwise formally dressed man.

ram also being set up on date by adi/brinda. should be with someone else, i guess. i don't think brinda and priya run in the same circles.

ram is right in that the least these ppl could do is ask consent before setting it all up.

priya is grumpily refusing to do any thaam jhaam dress up for date. good for her.

lol @ sara trying to sneak away priya's beloved raincoat.

anyway psych 101 shit ki priya has confidence issues and is so down on herself that she rejects everyone before they can reject her.

lmao priya is me at hearing the date is in some hoity toity place where they give small portions for exorbitant amounts of money.

sara di gets call ki some "unhone" didn't pay their share of bakery emi? the nikkamma husband? or some other business partner??

priya is out on warpath to go confront that person.

she's psyching herself up outside their door. i think it's her dad?

OMG CHACHI FROM IMMJ2 LMAO, IS SHE THE SECOND WIFE?

ok dad's a rudeass fuck. he's all she's not my daughter, but all ready to dole out thappads when she says it like it is. sperm donors like these should be kneed in the nads.

idgi tho? there's ONE beta there tho???? is akshay not his biological son?????

anyway, priya is right in thinking men suck. #yesAllMen

precap: her date niiiiiiicely validates the misandry by being a fucking jerk. looks like ram is cheering her up in a sweet moment? priya catches akshay getting cosy with.... shivi i guess??? idk all these girls look the same to me. #faceblindness

[beatrice-otter]

The majority of people never have and never will experience any serious misandry in the world, and certainly never be harmed by that, because it is not overwhelmingly systemic in the same way misogyny is. HOWEVER. Misandry does exist, and just like misogyny often hurts men as well as women, misandry often hurts women as well as men.

My cousin’s first wife drank the radfem kool-aid a few years into their marriage and divorced him. She has 1/4 custody of their two children (which used to be 1/2 custody). One of their children is a girl, and one is a boy, who was about two at the time of the divorce. And his mother treats him like shit because she hates men. Nothing (quite) bad enough to qualify as abuse that could get her custody removed, but toeing that line. And so by the time he was five, he was suicidal and had an extreme eating disorder. As in, there were times he had to go to the hospital for intravenous feeding because otherwise he would have starved to death because he would not eat. He’s ten, now, and doing better, but that’s not saying much. His life has been irreparably harmed by his mother’s misandry.

And then there’s his sister. What do you think it did to her watching how her brother suffered because of how their mother treated him? What do you think it did to her knowing that if she’d been born with a penis, her mother would have treated her just as badly? Nothing good, I can tell you that.

And even on a systemic level, once you get into the female-dominated ‘helping’ professions (nursing, social work, therapy, home health care, etc.) there can be systemic misandry. Women in power are no more naturally just than men are, and a lot of women are so used to being relatively powerless that they are unwilling to consider the ethics of using the power they absolutely have. Granted, that misandry is by far most likely to be used against men of color and disabled men then against white men, and more likely to be used against poor men than against upper class men, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It means it’s targeted. So, for example, a man with a disability is more likely to be labelled as ‘dangerous’ or ‘violent’ than a woman with the same disability and the same symptoms. A man of color or a poor man is more likely to be labelled a bad parent and have his kids taken away from him than a woman of his own race and class would be. The list goes on. It happens all the time.

It just doesn’t happen to able-bodied neurotypical white middle-class men. You know, the men we consider the ‘default,’ the ones with the majority of social power in society.

"misandry doesn't exist in any form" is a viewpoint that gets harder to defend when you stop seeing cis straight perisex white ect. men as the Default Man and anything other than that as a deviation from the norm. like obviously there's nuance to this but it feels like people have this very Top Of The Western Privilege Pyramid idea of 'Man' when they use the word but that only encapsulates a small small portion of the group they're actually talking about

[jonthethinker]

Alright, this is going to be a long post, but I like Critical Role a lot, so here goes.

Something to consider as the new CR Discourse boils over: fandom discourse is no substitute for activism, and if your emotions are so wrapped up in it that you feel enraged with a righteous fury or utterly devastated by a development in certain aspects of your favorite entertainment product, you may need to back away.

I understand what’s going through the heads of the people on both sides of this discourse. Critical Role feels like this safe place to feel a little less alienated and depressed about the world we live in. This is the same for many entertainment products. The people seem so open and fun and accepting, and we just layer all of these feelings and expectations on people we don’t have an actual personal connection to in real life, because we’ve spent so much time watching and listening to them and come to feel like we know them and are connected to them more that we actually are.

I get it. In this world we have very little in the way of actual power. Most of the power we have is what products we choose to consume, and so in a roundabout way, what you consume become a moralistic decision; you can be considered a bad person for listening to a certain podcast, or disliking certain characters, or having certain opinions on celebrities. We come to focus more on what people think than what they do.

There’s this quote by a civil rights leader named Stokley Carmichael I think about everyday that goes, “If a white man wants to lynch me, that's his problem. If he's got the power to lynch me, that's my problem. Racism is not a question of attitude; it's a question of power.“

I have come to believe this is true about everything; racism, sexism, religious bigotry, homophobia, transphobia, classism. All the major problems of our world are caused because certain groups have power to dis-empower and harm others with little to no consequence. This isn’t because of the group they belong to, but because they have that power in the first place. It may be an unpopular notion, but I believe that if you went through history and reversed every power dynamic the other way around, you’d still have the same situation. If women had the power men have had for all of history, misandry and in this case matriarchy would probably be just as bad as misogyny and patriarchy are in our current world. The problem isn’t the group, it’s the power.

So you have these folks online, who in real life are probably alienated and exhausted and depressed and they turn to an entertainment property to make themselves feel a little better and make it through the day, and in this instance, it’s Critical Role. And because everyone’s morality is all wrapped up the products they consume instead of the actions they take, it is Capital G Good to watch Critical Role. I mean, they support the charity, and say the nice things, and seem so fun and genuine, and so they are Good.

But then a problem arises. One of the Cast says or does something that goes against what they like. Maybe this is another in a long list of things they have done that have been deemed Problematic by certain sectors of the community. And seeing as these people have so little power in their lives, to demand better wages at work, more consideration from the halls of power, more protections from the many harms inflicted upon them by those with more power, they decide enough is enough. They don’t have the power to change their material circumstances, but if they can join forces with enough like-minded people online, they can perhaps forcibly remove the Problematic Element through social pressure, or at the very least, harass the person they don’t like into one hell of a headache.

But alas, there are others in the fandom community, here to save the day. They too see themselves as Good for consuming the Critical Role product, and they may very well like this thing suddenly labeled Problematic. And you see, it can’t really be problematic, because they like it, you see, and they are Good People, who only consume the Good Things, and if some aspect of this were Problematic, it wouldn’t be Good anymore, and that, in their minds, is a flat out impossibility. The Goodness of Critical Role, and by extension their Goodness for liking it, is at stake. That just won’t do.

So this second group proceeds to scold and harass the other group in mass, bitterness seeps in deeper, trenches are dug, and a fandom is further divided, its members further alienated, and everyone hates everyone else just a little bit more. In one fell swoop, the world is a little worse, and a little harder to navigate, all because some well meaning folks wanted to protect what is Good by using the power they have.

Critical Role is a show made by well meaning, upper-middle class white professionals who live in the Los Angeles suburbs. They seem to have a lot of compassion for others, I wouldn’t deny them that, but they make this product to make money. That is what it is for. They may try to do some Good with it, but that Goodness is going to be shaped by their well meaning upper-middle class white perspective, and all the blindspots that entails, and at the end of the day, if it didn’t make them money directly or indirectly, they would stop doing it, regardless of the Good they could do.

This does not make them Bad, and I’m not suggesting so. We live in a Capitalist society. We all want to be able to live comfortable lives with our dignity intact, and under Capitialism, in order to do that, you have to make money. So that’s what they do. I have empathy for that motive. As I do for Critters who want to hold them accountable with what power they have to Be Better, as I do for the Critters who hold those Critters accountable with the Power they have, and so on and so on. We all want to be Good. I just don’t think this is how you’re really going to do it.

I don’t care what products you consume. There is no ethical consumption under Capitalism. You’re going to be hard pressed to find a product in the world that doesn’t involve someone being exploited or tricked somewhere along its production or consumption (and while you can and should seek out those that do the least harm where you reasonably can within your means, it is unavoidable under our current system to avoid benefiting from someone’s exploitation). As much as it hurts me to say this, it is almost certainly true for Critical Role as well. And that is a hard pill to swallow. Especially if you’ve based your entire identity on consuming the Good products, instead of the Bad ones. This is why I don’t care about the products you consume, I care about how you use your power, however big or small. That is what defines you. Not your ships. Not your faves. Your actions.

There is a real hunger to do good in this community. I see it all the time. Think of all the charity drives CR has handily met the targets of. That desire is real, and it’s beautiful. I am here simply to encourage another avenue besides online discourse for you all to act upon all those good intentions. There are many organizations and political bodies that would love your In Real Life support, that will simultaneously allow you to do good and build real connections with the people around you in your own communities, and start the delicate, difficult process of empowering the dis-empowered and holding the powerful to account.

And I know you may feel tired and beaten down, anxious and depressed, socially-limited and uncouth in comparison to what you imagine the members of these organizations to be. But I promise you all of them started out feeling the same way. It is through those efforts that you can truly do good instead of just feel good, and create a purposeful, meaningful life for yourself along the way.

It is through solidarity and cooperation towards mutual goals that we make this world more livable for ourselves and the most vulnerable among us, not bitter infighting and petty online squabbling. Maybe I come off as an a real ass for saying all of this, and for that I’m sorry. I don’t mean to or want to hurt anyone. I too just want to do good, and maybe this will help, in some small way.

Don’t forget to love each other.

[whoneedssexed]

How do you transition when you have a mirage of fears even though you know that you're trans? For me, I feel like I don't want to transition because I don't want to be a gross man because all I've seen is how men are bad and it's a reason why I don't like talking about my attraction to men or pursue men as a bisexual person. I'm also afraid of losing everything even if they are bad things like unsupportive family members. I even consider never coming out as anything. How do I get over this?

Unfortunately there CAN be a point in which fighting or venting about our oppressors becomes toxic and perpetuates the same issues we claim to be against.

Misandry and “reverse sexism” may not be real, but that doesn’t mean toxic masculinity, body shaming, racism, objectification, etc do not exist nor affect men to some degree.

I understand where you are coming from. I have difficulty grappling with my own masc tendencies / leanings because of that same stuff, making me afraid of facing the possibility of having some level of maleness. 

So that being said, how to deal with it... depends a bit on whether there’s a specific angle to it. For example, you’re afraid of being gross and bad, remind yourself of the ethics of good communication, explicit intentions, consent, etc. You know what consent looks like and you have tools for helping making sure everyone is comfortable and not afraid of you.

You do your best, and apologize when it falls short, making an effort to do better. And that’s all anyone should ask of you.

You can remind yourself of ways in which men may try to dominate conversation or turn it into being about them, and actively fight against that in your own conversations. Make room for others, make an effort to allow people to speak.

It’s okay to be a man and it doesn’t inherently make you gross or bad. The things that make men gross and bad are not biological or part of their makeup. It’s social conditioning entirely. Making an effort to push back is doing what you should be doing.

So you might find comfort in articles addressed to men that are about what you can do to make space for folks of other genders, work on your emotional health (since a lot of social conditioning for men is destructive to their emotional health, ie it forces them to lose touch with their ability to grieve and be pained in a healthy way), and in general try to equal the playing field and be a good ally. (Most of these articles will be about women but you can apply them to other not-men genders.)

A lot of transmasc people attest that things DO change in the way they are treated when they come out and start to transition, mainly in that they start getting treated more like men. This can be good and bad - as I’ve said there are unhealthy and unfair social pressures put on people based by gender. So for example you may see people taking you more seriously with other people more likely to view you as a threat. 

The fears you are dealing with regarding losing everything are very typical for a trans person (or any LGBT+ person really). You should go into trans spaces and seek out their advice for dealing with loss, as well as encouragement. Living as your authentic self can be so much better even after losing some people, but there’s also the chance you won’t lose them.

It’s okay. You’re not a bad man, and you’re not alone.

- mod BP

[plungermusic]

Berni Inns, avocado suites, the Three-Day week?

It’s easy for old gits like Plunger to think of flies in the ointment of Arielle’s rose-tinted view of ‘the good old days’ but it would be churlish to dwell on them too long… and it’s refreshing to find someone under thirty who doesn’t think history only ceased being irredeemably crap once they were born. A millennial with an old soul (and a very old world work ethic, this is her ninth album!) Arielle channels her love of 60s and 70s music on Analog Girl In A Digital World in 8-and-a-bit tracks that play fast and loose with notions of genre.

The high-pitched modem burble of the “and-a-bit” Dial Up provides an evocative (for those of a certain age) prelude to the almost-title track Digital World. This hymn to a pre-internet, pre-mobile, prelapsarian Golden Age epitomises the magpie’s eye style of much of the album: a Bangles-do-Baba O’Riley with Byrds-cum-Petty jangly guitar and Day Tripper-riffing; an old school “quiet bit” with piano, phased vox and soaring solo; and a hint of Townsendy proto-sequencer to close. The twangly jangle continues, along with more Beatlesque hooks, into Peace Of Mind, an easygoing rock’n’roll stroll (like a half-speed Ray Of Light with Sheryl Crow at the helm) with some lovely harmony vocals and a strong lower register from Arielle, before 70s synth accents, Moonish cymbal-heavy drumming and eastern-spiced noodly closing guitar bring more hints of ‘The ‘Oo’.

This Is Our Intervention juxtaposes more jangle in the verse with a four-to-the-floor tub-thumping garage rocker chorus before mashing the two together for a clever tricksy finish, while the witty misandry (turning the tables on her own experiences in ‘the business’) of Still A Man matches an earthy barroom blues-boogie with a burst of sweet surftastic multi-voice harmonies. More lush harmonies add a bit of Californian sophistication to Inside & Outside’s moody late-Mac bass-led pulse aided by to-the-fore acoustic, a muted electric hook and Arielle’s lead vocal ranging from seductively breathy to impassioned peaks.

Have you ever seen those Murder She Wrote episodes set in ‘Merrie England’? Well, I’d Rather Be In England is the pop-rock equivalent: a light-hearted, anglophile-but-hopelessly-confused US tourist board imagining, with celtic harmony guitars, bodhran-beats, and a wild wordless Irish jig ‘chorus’ butting up against references to British skies, a Hollywood “if that’s a harpsichord then this must be London” snatch of chamber music, a brief Pugwash shanty and a quote from the national anthem… but while it might risk the break up of the Union and the end of the special relationship it’s a dashed jolly and very bloody catchy tune, what!

On much safer home ground, gentle Greenwich Village acoustic folk ushers in Living In A Fortress before blossoming into a trippy West Coast rocker with phased vox, proggy timings and a gimlet toned solo, all in under 3 minutes. More FX-drenched soaring vocal (and the bass synth from Lost Horizons) herald the closer, Reimagine Redefine, an 80s electronica-backed otherworldly reverie topped off with a brief-but-epic stinging metal wig-out.

Bubblegum prog? Bobbysox rock? Who knows what you’d call it, but Analog Girl In A Digital World deals with some weighty issues and ideas in a highly ear-friendly way… at the risk of Plunger and our opinions going to hell, we like it... and there’s nothing more retro than us!

Analog Girl In A Digital World is released on 7th May, available on CD, Vinyl and digital from here: https://smarturl.it/officialarielle

[pigcatapult]

Firo from Baccano! and a serious look at something canon usually plays for laughs

So, if you’re a fan of Baccano!, you might know that Firo has a crush on Ennis starting in 1930, and it literally takes him 50 years to admit his feelings to her. And then another 20 years of marriage before he can bring himself to suggest a honeymoon, except at the last moment he can’t bring himself to suggest a honeymoon and says “family vacation” and they bring Czes.

Firo Procheinezo is a man who has so much internalized misandry and shame about intimacy and sexuality that, when he agonizes about his feelings for Ennis, he never thinks about the specific ethical challenges of dating Ennis. Like, there are all sorts of interesting questions to be had here about their power dynamic (and they have one, whether Firo likes that or not), and at what learning-to-human milestone does Ennis become capable of informed consent. All very interesting stuff that this post is not about.

Because Firo? He is too busy feeling revulsion towards himself for fantasizing about premarital hand-holding to think about all that. That’s not even hyperbole. That’s a specific example that happens in book 14. The main way Ennis’s inexperience with human relationships factors into Firo’s angst is that she’s oblivious to his feelings and won’t make the first move, requiring Firo to submit to the mortifying ordeal of making his feelings known if he wants to actually find out if she likes him or like-likes him.

(I’m legally required to pun about this manga panel, in which Felix Walken is being an intrusive thot in Firo’s intrusive thoughts, on account of Felix having the exact opposite approach to approaching women: Instead of pining silently for one woman for decades, Felix proposes right off the bat when he decides he likes a woman, is turned down because that’s an absurd thing to ask on a first meeting, and immediately moves on to the next one. The fact the first time this tactic actually works gets Felix into a relationship that’s still going strong when he’s in his 90s does a lot to support his argument that he’s just dreaming the entire Baccano! universe as its solipsistic god)

But getting back on track, Firo never actually grows past his perception that male sexuality (and therefore his sexuality) as this awful toxic predatory thing. I already mentioned that he couldn’t even say the word “honeymoon” to Ennis in the 2001 plotline, the furthest forward in time canon’s gone to date, but there’s more. A guy Firo meets at the casino on the cruise ship invites him back to his room to talk, and Firo’s worried he might be being propositioned, but no, there’s a terrorist plot and I’ve never seen a character so relieved to get shot four times in the chest and have his honeymoon cruise thrown into violent chaos.

TL;DR: Firo needs therapy and I’m saddened that this part of his character has remained so static--and, largely, remained a punchline.

[angstylittlecatboy]

Just going to say it

Misandrists suck.

"MISANDRY DOESN'T REAL" bullshit. You can say that institutional misandry doesn't but even then an asshole without power is still an asshole and can still hurt people, and really the capitalist system's definition of "success" is the only reason the "institutional" argument holds weight (female CEOs still suck, smash capitalism bby.) And don't even get me started on the immense pressure to "be a man" in this society, hell notice how men wearing dresses and other feminine clothing is "crossdressing" and is still a fringe where we don't even really have a concept of what "clothes women shouldn't wear" looks like. This isn't fixed until nobody bats an eye if I, or better yet, a guy who cannot pass for a woman under any circumstances, goes out in a dress.

We've got a million fucking people out here believing they can't be good people, that they're unworthy of love because they were born a certain way. And what happens to them? Incel groups. Alt right. Being an asshole...makes people hate you! Who'da thunk? And they join groups that hate people like you! And when your enemies are "the alt right" they just start hating minorities, LGBT people, etc. I once saw a video where a crossdressing man, a pretty one honestly, was leading an alt right rally and it broke my heart because I know it happened because he had nowhere else to go and the alt right was willing to compromise their traditionalism to get another drone. They prey on white cishet male outcasts.

I'm not going to circle around it anymore. Denormalize "men are trash" and all the other disgusting garbage common here and Twitter. It's for prejudiced assholes. I don't care if it's "not actually about all men," "actually it's about venting about creeps," that's not what it says on the screen, is it also actually about ethics in gaming journalism? And I've seen it in regards to other things, ridiculous shit like men not wearing makeup (which should be normalized as an OPTION, not as a necessity, just like women not wearing makeup should.)

And wlm, especially straight girls, who do this are the fucking worst. I came to believe misogynists shouldn't expect love from women. I hold women to the same standard in regards to misandry.

Just don't be an asshole to people on the basis of their gender. Simple uwu.

Also, get the fuck out of the boy positivity tags with that shit. You have the rest of Tumblr.

One last thing: "softboi" was for feminine men. Let us have something that you don't use to disparage us. You can say "men have fortune 500 companies" or some other shit, but no, the majority of men you're talking to have nothing to do with big business and they have even less spaces the less stereotypical they are.

I don't think of myself as an anti-feminist (if you're mad at this post you probably do though,) my views lean closest to men's liberation (NOT the men's rights movement,) but feminism isn't a sacred cow to me either. And I understand not all feminists do this. "Feminism," even "radical feminism" isn't really a coherent movement as much as an umbrella term for many ideologies, some I absolutely despise and others I'm cool with. But I felt like it needed to be said.

[jointheunwritten]

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[knightofbalance-13]

I’m sorry for getting so political on this blog. I really am. I didn’t open this blog to be political and debate alot. I was just using this to write about Taiyang and try to get a decent discussion about RWBY. I did not intend to get into a some pseudo war with RWDE nor did I expect to be preaching for men’s rights or against the current iteration of feminism.

But I want people to understand why I do this.

With RWDE, as I have said before, that stems from me seeing people lying about the show and trying to pass off their subjective opinions as fact. Just as well, there is a severe lack of ethics in RWDE were whenever they talk about RWBY, positively or negatively, they either skimp out on the details or completely and utterly lie and cheat which makes them useless as gauges for truth. And this isn’t just about RWDE, RWDE is just the more reprehensible side. I get pissy at all these people who completely and utterly kiss the show’s ass and act like it’s perfect and for everybody and it’s a gift from god or some bullcrap. It’s not. The show is flawed, it is flawed beyond the “it’s man made” excuse. And seeing people rate rwby 4 or 5 out of 5 or 9 out of 10 just makes me cringe in embarrassment. I hate the polarization of RWBY criticism where you either think it’s perfect and never mention the flaws or you overblow the flaws or get mad when it isn‘t what you want. If I actually say people being attacked for disliking RWBY and not just calling out shit., you’d see it a lot more on my blog here.

A similar thought process goes with politics. I have my fair share of issues with both the left and the right. With the right, I do not like how they are trying to conserve everything about the old ways of America when some of the old ways simply do not fit in today or were faulty in the first place. But with the left, I criticize them more because they are simply a bigger problem and a bigger issue. I absolutely loathe the idea of identity politics because it takes away the idea of individuality and personal responsibility and more and more issues coming up from identity politics crop up every day. Just as well, I hate the idea that it’s okay to be racist against white people, misandry and heterophobia because not only is that just the same problem as before but judging from my knowledge of history, that will cause the entire cycle of equality to reset and we’ll have to go through all that pain again just to have a shot at equality again, which upon failing will just bring back the original iterations of sexism, racism and sexual phobias all over again. And I am 100% against the use of violence for civil rights because violence breeds fear, fear breeds resentment, resentment breeds anger and anger will breed injustice. It has happened before in history: The Christians oppressed pagan worshippers because tehy werem oppressed by Romans. True activism only works because you keep your morals even in the face of death and you prove to everyone you are right.

But most of all, I have to live with all of this. Because I am a RWBY fan, I have to live with RWDE making the show look bad and the fandom look toxic as shit while I get lumped in with them because they refuse to admit they aren’t fans. I have to live with them and their amoral, unethical actions. Likewise.,, I have to live with the above. because I’m an AMerican, I have to live with the results of the above actions and I have to deal with them everyday of my life then on. I cannot ignore them and I cannot avoid them. So in both cases, I have to speak up and fight with everything I got or else I’ll have to live the rest of my life knowing that I let that happen. I’ll suffer the consequences with nothing to do about them but accept it. And I’m a bit too stubborn for that.