#every day i hate modern feminism more and more

[la-vie-en-lys]

Men are selfish, bad, oppressive Alpha Males when they don't want to make themselves infertile.

Also, of course women have the right to pressure men into getting vasectomies; bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom is for women only, apparently.

Feminism win!

[sweatermuppet]

This is probably a futile message but genuinely most radfems wish nothing but the best for trans individuals, including dressing and living however they want and being called whatever they want. So radfems will reblog or agree with a post by a trans person and have no problem with that, you know. It’s totally fine to disagree with any or every aspect of radical feminism but I find that a lot of people who are militantly against it don’t really know what it actually is. I feel like a lot of people feel more in danger/more hated/more targeted than they need to online because of this, which hurts them and their mental health in addition to preventing them from learning different or challenging viewpoints. Most radfems see radical feminism as something that challenges popular talking points or perspectives in modern LGBTQ activism, but which doesn’t oppose the humanity of trans individuals. Whether or not you agree with that assessment is obviously up to you, but that’s the place most radfems you see online are coming from. A lot of them lived as transgender at some point or continue to do so. Hope this message comes across in good faith and that you have a good day.

can you step up to the mic & explain clearly & loudly how "most radfems support & agree with transsexual lifestyles" when i see, every single day without fail, radfems harassing transsexuals i know & love, usually by targeting trans women?

[thottybrucewayne]

A LIST OF PEOPLE WHO ARE GOING TO HELL: 2024 EDITION

Every zionist, duh, but esp yall who screenshot perfectly reasonable posts and go "Um, the look at this idiot who thinks genocide is wrong" yall make my ass itch and nobody takes you seriously, MOVE. 2. The entire U.S. government but esp Joe Biden that old ass man gettin spit roasted in hell (AND NOT THE FUN KIND!) 3. DIDDY AND EVERY SINGLE PERSON THAT PROTECTED AND DEFENDED HIM. 4. Tory Lanez whole family, his mama, his daddy, his dog? All them. 5. The nonblack people who run those Rap House Tv type blogs that are clearly trying to be shade room clones. 6. People who get all their news from the Shade Room and Whatsapp, sorry auntie, I'm sick of you tellin' me COVID can be cured by sticking cloves of garlic up my nose :/ 7. Every single one of you dirtbag leftist ass people, yall do nothing for nobody except you thousands of adoring "former nazi" fans that need to be told it's okay that they still say the n word in private. 8. N.O.R.E and every single hiphop "journalist" 9. Charlemagne Tha God and Dj Envy, they know why. 10. Everyone who made Ike and Tina jokes after Tina past away. Grow up. 11. You fanfic girlies. So many of y'all are seeing the lake of fire, But esp if you donate to ao3 or own ao3 merch. Like, that is just embarrassing. 12. It's 2024, If I see you coming up here saying shit like "Miku wroke harry potter!" or " Hello Kitty wrote Ofmed, actually" I'm sending you to hell myself. 13. Booktokers? This is yall the second year on this list, tighten the fuck up and stop being weird about strange men on the internet, now. 14. People who do LITERALLY NOTHING yet try to tell other people how to be activists. You contribute nothing to any conversation you're a part of, suck my dick from the back. 15. People who stopped masking because other people were making them feel bad. Fuck your mama not being able to see your smile, PEOPLE ARE DYING???? 16. Lana Del Ray and Taylor Swift. They know exactly what they did. 17. Every white girl on twt who tried to jump me cause I said the Barbie movie is white feminism at its finest. 18. Elon, you raggedy bitch. 19. Every single man who hit on me this year who isn't one of my friends. 20. People who don't know what transmisogyny means and make that everyone else's problem. I need yall to start reading so bad it's not even funny. 21. You "goth is a feeling" people. You gonna be "feeling" that hell fire nippin' at your ass, NEXT 22. You 35 defending fanservice of high schoolers in anime/manga all day every day...yeah, just get on down there, big fella. They waiting on you. 23. Cishet Black men on tiktok and twt who make it their life's mission to make an ass of themselves for minor ducats. You are a one-man modern-day minstrel show and you will be dealt with. 24. White Tyler The Creator fans. Y'all know what you do.

Dishonorable mentions: Shojo fans who never talk about the fucked up shit in the manga they recc you because "At least its not as misogynistic as shounen!" (yes, yes it is) Fashion tiktokkers I hate so many of you its not even funny Every person who put the image of T.D. Jakes getting his doonies beat down at a Diddy party in my mind. Like I literally never needed to think about that. My dad <3 and all my friends' dads. Patricide NOW!!!!! People who are still whining about having to boycott shut upppppp god damn. People who stare at me in public. You got a fuckin problem?????

That's a wrap! Here are the lists from last year and the year before feel free to add more in the tags <3

[distractedducky]

So I was thinking about it… why sterek

I’ve shipped a lot in my time. From the classics like spirk and destiel, to the straight vampire diaries nonsense, from murder husbands to buddy to name a very small few. They all hold weird little places in my heart and mind but they fade and as I flow in and out of fandoms I move on to the next hyperfixation. But sterek just keeps sticking around.

It’s an old ship for me. If you go on my ao3 all the way back to 2013 you’ll see my first ever book mark was a sterek fic. That fic is still a comfort fic for me today and is something I read when my anxiety is uncontrollable.

It was something I read late in 2022 when the reality of the pandemic and the last few years hit me hard and got me back into Teen Wolf so hard it actually pushed me out of the supernatural hole the start of the pandemic put me in.

I’ve always been a shipper and I have my ride or dies, my OTPs and Ot3s, and so on and so forth, but fandom has always been weird for me. I started young and witnessed the birth in Tumblr and ao3, as a tween my taste can only be described as pure trash* Affectionate * but as I got older, like most things in life, my taste changed. And though I still love me some hot garbage, I engage with it differently than that little 12-year-old who thought werewolves and vampires were cool no further explanation necessary.

Now I’m an academic, a librarian, who actually studied critical lit analysis, book studies, and religion. Who spent years learning how to dissect prose and poetry to look beyond text in an professional setting. And though I don’t regret it and it has led to some fun changes in the way I engage with fiction it also kinda ruined the fun engagement I had with things back in the day when baby me bookmarked that first fic.

I need more from my characters now, more from my fandoms and it has led me away from and into the arms of content that I never saw coming. (Looking at you Danny phantom phandom) I needed depth or the potential for depth that some shows just didn’t lend themselves to cleanly enough to satisfy me and yet… sterek persisted.

One of my problems is I didn’t really engage with the fandom when the show was airing and only watched a few season sporadically until recently, so I wasn’t there when things were forming organically. It has left me out of step with the primary directions fan content creators have taken with the ship and the directions they took, though fun and interesting, aren’t really my usual thing.

I hate the infantilization of stiles and other teen wolf characters like Isaac. I generally hate infantilization of adults, hyper feminization of certain types of characters and so on and so forth and it has to do with my own gender stuff, but I usually avoid it in fanfiction. I am also not a huge fan of modern werewolf romance erotica. I have a lot of opinions on real supernatural mythology and legends and I don’t like the anthropomorphism that shows up a lot in werewolf stories. Not that I haven’t read some amazing takes on werewolf lore, especially in the Teen Wolf fandom but I’m speaking generally. I’m also not a fan of pack mom stiles (again my own gender stuff) and though I think Scott’s inconsistent character and writing throughout the show lens him to be whatever your fic needs to be (best friend, hype man, wingman, idiot, genius, villain, so on and so forth) I don’t like a lot of the 'Scott sucks just because' fics. I don’t like the hate in the fandom around that. I also don’t like the hypermasculine depictions of Derek in a lot of fics and on and on. I have read a lot of TW and sterek and by all accounts, it should be a fandom I wouldn't personally engage with this much. Yet for all that, I have found there is an exception to every trope I hate, every hard line i draw for myself, because the fic was just so good. For every dozen or so fics that seem to tell me that this isn’t the fandom for me, there is that one amazing thing that says “No! This is exactly where you wanna be”.

Like I said, I need more from my fandoms now a days and most of what that boils down to is plausible deniability. I need enough gaps in the narrative to fill them in myself, but with enough connective pieces that everything can make sense when put together. The fatal flaw of telling without showing, which allows people to extrapolate out what they want from certain things -all the subtext with none of the text - is exactly where my degree comes in handy.

And sterek well… I think what it is for me as a shipper is the inconsistencies. That is kind of why I still ship it so far and for so long. It's the fact of why was Stiles in Derek's dream at the end of 3b? We can talk about all the things with him being his anchor and the grasping at straws that we as shippers all love to do but the narrative fact is they did not spend that much time on screen together or even saying they were doing things off-screen together. That leads us to a lot of whys. Why were they together at the beginning of season two talking about the alpha pack? Why were they in certain situations in season four that ld them to work so well? What happens in all of this dead time? What happens in season six? We see stiles in episode one be like "Oh my God Derek is a mass murderer wanted by the FBI" and at the end of the season, they've apparently driven and or flown back to California together, apparently spent some time together. They're not on the run from the FBI so that got cleared somehow, stiles isn't limping so his foot healed. There's so much dead time like that throughout the show so when scenes happen like the hand on Derek's shoulder after the death of Boyd you're left thinking that's kind of off, we haven't seen any interactions with them that would show that they have that kind of deep solemn relationship where comforting him would make sense.

The show notoriously has a terrible timeline, but all that does is fuel the fact that we don't know how much time any of these characters are really spending off-screen together. We can only assume that it happened in this weird dead time. This is why somehow Derek's view of Stiles in his head is like a calm stable dependable figure who can help him talk through an issue. This is why they always gravitate towards each other in fights. This is why they work so well together in a crisis. Like we have to assume that happened before which is stupid and I know it's so much reaching, but in my little brain, it's the only way that makes all of this random shit fit together- so I gotta ship it. Obviously, the real-world explanation is inconsistent writing plus putting space between them once the writer stopped wanting people to ship it, but because you get all of these disjointed scenes where they're too intense for what we've been previously seeing there is some type of disconnect here -what is that? and if you're looking at the show, not as a work of fiction, but as a narrative, what else are we gonna do then assume that they have spent way more time emotionally connecting than we have seen on the screen.

And for me that’s everything I want in a ship, that ability to play and extrapolate random events and ask, okay now how would these all fit! And that’s what spawns great ideas and stories and art and why I ship it, dispute the fact that it really shouldn't work for me personally.

I think it’s why a lot of people still stop sterek despite the fact that the attitude towards it and the show has shifted a lot and in many different ways in the last decade.

Sorry for the rant, I’ve been thinking about this for days and had to get it out there. I hope I didn’t offend anyone. I truly love the Teen Wolf fandom and everything it’s done and everything it created and I’m so happy to be able to engage with it.

[thesunfyre4446]

Yo. New to the HoTD discourse. I hope you don't mind me rant dumping on your blog. I'm a bit scatterbrained so I hope I lay out my feelings about these things clearly. I have finally watched HoTD and ....

Listen, I could have liked Rhaenyra well enough, in fact I didn't really mind her in the beginning. But it really all changed once I saw what the audience were saying. How the majority seems to have no sympathy for Allicent at all.

I thought we all understood that no character in Westeros is really all that great?? So I really cant understand the vile hatred spewed towards her? It feels like they even hate her more than anyone ever hated Joffrey or Cersei. People were rightfully angry with the show runners decision to have Jaime r*** her in that one scene. People were capable of feeling empathy for Cersei despite how despicable she is. But there's SOOO much victim blaming for Alicent. It drives me fucking nuts. And to show sympathy for her would have people dogging on you.

I really cannot believe my eyes when I see people thinking she willingly seduced that rotten walking corpse.

I was so naive to think people would understand where her character is coming from. She is utterly powerless. She doesn't have a king for a father to pardon every mistake she makes. She's suffocating and it makes sense for her to hate Rhaenyra who has more privilege than any woman who ever lived in that world, and yet still step over every single rule while expecting everyone else to just live with the consequences of her actions. We're supposed to like her??

I GET that the point of it all is that monarchy is just a shitty way to run a kingdom. I GET that Rhaenyra being a terrible ruler is the point. Man or woman it never mattered.

What I don't get is people thinking she's some feminist figurehead?? She behaves as a man does in that universe, entitled and unfit for what they feel entitled to. I get that that's the point, but that doesn't mean she's for the women at all. Like any man, she's out for herself. Why would I like her if she behaves as any corrupt man in that world would, when the only difference is she doesn't have a dick? And I wouldn't necessarily mind that? I don't watch HoTD or GoT for perfect characters. But if only the audience didn't treat her like some sort of hero and Alicent the pure villain.

I never felt frustrated with GoT discourse. Why the fuck does it seem like HoTD has bred this extremely toxic environment? You can't seem to have a different opinion unless your mouths dick sucking on Team Black.

Dany, just as entitled as she was, she was still able to do as duty demanded. Rhaenyra is a just a spoiled child all the way through. The hatred for Alicent and the inability for people to see Rhaenyra for what she is, has me thinking people have really missed the fucking point about what feminism actually is. And once again, I didnt watch HoTD for feminism. But the audience seems to think Rhaenyra is a beacon for it. Wether intentional or not, ideas take on a life of its own and you cannot divorce these fan-imposed ideas from the show anymore. That's really the part of all this that pisses me off.

I'm TG now not because I condone everything they've ever done. Literally everyone fucking sucks. I'm TG because I understand everyone fucking sucks. And I dislike being tube fed by the biased writers on what to think and feel.

anon, not a single lie was told.

people hate on alicent for displaying human emotions. it's insane. it's always "rhaenyra will turn westeros into barbieland" until someone brings out the fact that she has no intention of helping any other woman other then herself and then it's all "well, we shouldn't judge her from a modern day pov"..

"I'm TG because I understand everyone fucking sucks" this!! also, they have better characters lol

[nothing0fnothing]

"Radical feminism is terf feminism. We all know what you mean when you tag #radfem on your man hating posts." - literally people who have no idea what radical feminism is, and I can't even blame them because terfs ruin everything for everyone.

Radical feminism is the belief that in order to have a truly equal sociey, old systems that uphold inequality need to be torn down and radically rebuilt anew. (Yes a truly gender equitable society includes trans people, why tf wouldn't it?) Feminists in the 70s beleived it and 50 years later its still true, we cannot create equality within an unfair system. We can patch the cracks to try to make it more equal than it was, but after 50 years of patching cracks we know better than ever that the reason people are still disenfranchised in 2023 is because they live in a society that was not created to fairly treat them.

Society will not be truly equal until we create a system that is. That is the core belief of all radical feminism.

Literally no part of that ideology requires gender essentialism to work. Actually gender essential ideology completely opposes radical feminism at its core and combining the two is pretty fucking braindead.

I mean, you're telling me that you beleive that terfs believe gender equality must be predicated by a society that has completely, radically changed every antiquated system and structure but the structure that needs to stay exactly the same as it was in the 1900s and never adapt into modernity or improve at all is the sociological understanding of gender itself? That's crazy. So crazy I'd argue that, No they don't beleive that.

Terfs beleive trans people are icky and gross but know "icky and gross" is not a valid argument, so they stick "feminist" in front of their weird cis only gender ideology thinking it gives it some validity. It doesn't. Terfs, real radfems see through you and the entire feminist community hate you and you know why.

Truly, terfs aren't actually feminists. They're bigots who identify as feminists. They want to be in progressive spaces because as women (and weirdly a lot of them are lesbians but thats a topic for another day) their views will not be heard in conservative ones, but that doesn't mean they belong here. Their circa 1910 inspired gender theory doesn't belong in any progressive, feminist space today, and they know it because on every lefist space they land in they're torn apart and on every Joe Rogan esque, Fox News inspired platform they thrive.

They don't like being called sugar tits on the street or being hit on by their boss, and they think that that makes them feminists, but the truth is the only change they want to see in the existing power structures is change that will only help them. They want a society that supports only cis women. Primarily the white, straight and wealthy women who are happy to conform to bioessentialist gender ideology and uphold patriarchal values, so long as they can work a 9 to 5 and call it #girlbossing at the same time.

They don't actually want to see old structures of power and inequality brought down and radically rebuilt anew. They don't care about most women and they're not radical feminists. They're feminist identified bigots, so I call them FIBs, because even their feminism is a lie.

[adarkrainbow]

what exactly is 'the bad “woke movement'. you mean Disney's attempts at political correctness in their casting choice? describing it as "woke" is a serious misuse of black slang.

I was a bit confused at first since I have switched the subject out of the Disney Snow White controversy some times ago.

I am sorry to inform you that the use of "woke" as a deragoratory term to designate the people we once called ironically "Social-Justice Warriors" is actually not a "black slang" anymore. In fact I didn't even know it was supposed to be a "black slang" originally, my perception of it was that it was originally a term that was created on the Internet in a positive way, to designate people that were actually fighting against all sorts of discriminations and social problems, and opening their eyes to the wrongness of societies and modern age... Only to then be switched, by the Internet itself at first, and then by the media who took the word back, to be used as a designation of extreme social-justice warriors, or people who'se extreme self-righteousness, mixed with either hypocrisy or just ignorance, resulted in them coming of as a more mad or harmful than helpful.

If you do not like me using the term, unfortunately for you you'll have to go after pretty much every American media, then after after European media - and I am not even counting the politics of both America and Europe! The term "woke" has left its Internet-exclusivity a long time ago, and now is used even in non-English speaking countries (such as France) to designate the extremes to which some people or groups carry on the "social war". Now the thing to be careful of is that many extreme-right or very hateful people will use "woke" as a way to degrade or humiliate rightful defenders of things such as feminism, transgender rights, homosexuality, etc, etc... So I want to insist: I am not susbscribing to any extreme-right ideology, and I know very well they are using this term for their own negative agenda.

But I am not of the extreme-left either, and as someone who saw very well the dangers of any kind of extremes, I have to recognize that there is indeed a bad, extreme "woke" movement, that ranges from the ridiculous to the hateful. It exists. To imagine that all fights for the right reasons are done with the right means is to be too naive.

A very recent case - which is not woke, because it isn't about social justice or social blights, but about ecology, however it illustrates VERY well the stupidity and hypocrisy of some of these modern extreme groups. In France there is an extreme ecological group that has been making a lot of noise and some extreme actions to alert people and authorities about climate change and asking for something to be done. Interesting, right? Good, right? Except that their actions are VERY dubious in effect. For example some times ago they did protests related to, I think it was the droughts and water supply handlings? I can't recall exactly the why of the protest - but they did so by destroying entire fields and putting several farmers in difficult position because they had their entire crops gone. It wasn't some big mass-industrial farming, it wasn't genetically modified stuff, it was just your regular farmer with his fields, and he had his whole crops destroyed by the group's protect - which wasn't even aimed at him (if I recall there was something about them mistaking his field for another nearby, or something). Now my memory of this case is very blurry as you can see - but one other case popped up just two days ago so I can clearly tell you the problem this time: a few days ago, the group protested against the instalation of a toxic waste disposal site near a city and precisely near a river that passed by the water's city. To protest that and alert the city's citizens, they poured tons of products in the river's water that turned it bright, glowing green - to show them the fear of toxic products reaching them by the water.

But what's the twist of the story? To make the water bright green, they poured ACTUAL toxic chemicals and colorants in the water, which resulted in killing numerous fishes of the river. It went viral on the Internet, the whole "ecologists kill fishes" thing, but it shows how by ignorance (here ignorance of the toxicity of the products you use), those who fight against pollution become the pollution-makers themselves.

Now, that was not related to social things so "woke" isn't to be applied to them - but it is a good illustration of how fighting one extreme can lead to another. But if you want a case of "bad woke" actions I have a perfect one for you - which is from before the term "woke" was taken back by the media. It was something that happened in the French part of Canada (and in general when you want some misguided and extreme woke behavior, you can go to Canada, they are very talented here at misguided good actions). It was a gesture done by Christian (Catholic) religious groups, related to the whole dreadful rediscovery of the horrors of the special so-called "schools" they had prepared for First Nations kids. You know, the ones with mass graves and such. To show that they wanted to bury the past behind them and reject the discrimination of Native-Americans, they decided to collect all sorts of old classics of French childhood literature that had depictions of First Nations people deemed offensive (for example Lucky Luke and Asterix comic books)... and they burned it in a huge bonfire.

Of course, thats CERTAINLY the best way to prove you want to help the people you have persecuted and killed for so long: do not give them money, do not change the laws, do not actually do something for them, just become book-burners! That's CERTAINLY going to help and that's CERTAINLY going to make you the "good guys".

You see what I mean by the "bad woke" movement? It isn't a movement in itself, but just the extremes these attempts at "good" and fighting against discrimination can lead to. Sometimes to the point of just coming off as a new form of discrimination. Another case, that was in France, and done in Paris. I personally think that it was a dubious idea, and maybe someone will disagree with me, but it was a project brought forward - to handle the help provided to rape victims. The whole idea was that man should be banned of all groups, organizations and help systems brought to rape victims, because in the politician's words, women had to stay between themselves, and rape victims had to cut all ties with men to get better. Another similar dubious "woke" incident (it happened, just like the one above, in Paris, because Paris recently went through a wave of bad-woke incidents and propositions thanks to the local government in power), was when a "set of safe space" was created, from which men were banned - all men - and which only welcomed... "Women and transgenders". The phrasing and formula might seem weird, and that's literaly how it was said, and it took not a long time to understand the problem: it welcomed all transgenders, and all women, but banned all men. Aka: transgender men either had to be banned from it, because they were men (so they lied upon saying they welcomed all transgenders) ; either they were allowed in, but thus not recognized as actual "men" and still considered women.

You see how there's some good intentions buried down there, but in effect it is twisted and warped in another form of discrimination?

When it comes to my worries about the new Snow-White movie, it isn't about an active, harmful, reverse-discrimination type of "bad woke". But I do fear about the "accidentally harmful" and "plain ridiculous" bad-woke. To handle the idea that a character named "Snow-White" is black is something that needs carefulness and intelligence - and Disney's had the bluntness and grace of a hammer wielded by an angry bear recently. I have one precise fear for example that I keep repeating around: if they choose to still refer to Snow-White's name as a reference to the fact she has a lighter skin and thus is beautiful because of it, and given they have chosen an actress with a light skin tone - it can result in a scenario enacting "colorism" fully. Aka, a practice and set of worldviews put in place in the slavery and discrimination-era America, about how the lighter the Black person's skin, the "better" and more "beautiful" they were. This resulted in practices such as putting "lighter" Blacks above "darker" ones, for example choosing Black people with light skin to oversee "darker" slaves and the "lighter" ones being given a less harsh treatment than the others.

Its a whole another cesspool of discrimination born of the horror that was America in this era - but it is still something that Afro-American people fight against and dislike today, and something many media have been accused of doing by putting "lighter skinned" Black characters in the position of "prettier" or "better" characters than "darker skinned" ones.

No need to tell you the whole dwarf issue is also a big "bad woke movement" move on the part of Disney. To answer to a loud minority that thinks the dwarfs roles in Snow-White is backward and insulting, they simply decide to erase them from the story... Despite the role of the seven dwarfs being something that many actors with dwarfism enjoy and defend because it was often their first entry into the acting world, and despite the fact that the original Disney seven dwarfs were positive and complex characters that were far more compelling and powerful than many other Snow-White adaptations (in fact, that's the problem, the reason the dwarfs are seen as "backwards" today is because so many post-Disney adaptations reduced them to goofy, joke secondary characters as flat as a cardboard cut-out). There are tons of ways of making the dwarfs strong and badass and cool and powerful characters - and it has been done before. (Just remember how the dwarfs in the original Disney movie are the only ones who stand up to the evil queen, and the only ones who make her VISIBLY AFRAID as they hunt her down to kill her in revenge).

So we come with the mixed and complicated result we have: Because a role is deemed "problematic", it is erased and replaced - but as a result, erasing an opportunity for actors with dwarfism to become famous and appear in a big blockbuster seen by millions is perceived as discrimination against said actors with dwarfism, as they are replaced by so-called "normal" people. They could have simply worked on making the dwarfs' characters a badass role the actors could have had no shame of playing, and they could have just gone wth what the original movie did - make the dwarfs the true heroes and protagonist of the tale. But they rather decided to close the door and make actors with dwarfism even less visible on screen.

I hope it clarifies my whole position on the subject.

[tellurian-in-aristasia]

Please excuse what is probably some of the worst graphic design I have ever done, as well as the use of the word "gender" which I believe the Aristasians particularly disliked, but as a mere bongo, I find the word "gender" much more understandable when speaking with my fellow bongos about such a topic. A lot of criticism, back when the Aristasians were active on the internet, was aimed at the concept of Blonde and Brunette, and how they were just "reinventing gendered stereotypes", but I do believe that the Aristasians had a fairly ahead-of-their-time concept of gender.

Generally, Aristasians believed in 4 genders: Mascul, Femin, Celani, and Melini. On top of this, it seemed like it was perfectly acceptable to be somewhere in between, or identify as multiple genders, sometimes referred to as "Ambis".

However, to the Aristasians back in the day, the genders weren't necessarily free floating, but rather along a scale of feminine to masculine, and not every gender-mix was doable. Little has been said, by the Aristasians, about transwomen and transmen, and it's difficult to say if it was a "rules for thee, but not for me" situation, but some hullaballoo had been made about "genuine" women, and the statement had been made by a high-ranking pette in Aristasia that, to their knowledge, no Chelouranyans have been born into a male body.

That being said, the Aristasians seemed to be, more or less, accepting of at least the idea of trans individuals along the femin/mascul scale, and there is even mention of Rhennish rituals to change one's gender in the old The Coming Age magazines. They also seemed to recognize that many femins were not necessarily nestled neatly in the femin box, and while some of them may be along the sliding scale towards mascul, other's were closer to chelani or melini. Many Aristasians (and later Chelouranyans, of course), who considered themselves chelani or melini didn't even consider themselves as female, but rather as something else completely. Similar to the modern idea of xenogenders. They just so happen to view their genders on a scale of feminine to masculine, and some complete genders happened to be firmly within the sphere of femininity. To the exiled Aristasians, these were strong, and personal, identities, that those of us out in bongo-land weren't quite ready to accept at the time. And while I feel that there are many things to criticize about the Aristasian subculture (of course, another word they probably would have hated), but I never really felt it was fair to criticize their concept of gender identities. But, I am just a bongo, so maybe my understanding of Aristasian genders is very incorrect.

[spider-xan]

What’s the beetle

Okay, so I've decided to answer this in good faith, more for the benefit of my mutuals and followers than anything bc I suspect this was meant to be bait given that (a) I never once said the title of the book in any of my recent posts, yet anon knew exactly what I was talking about (which means you already know what the Beetle is, don't you, anon?), and (b) at least two other people received this exact same anon at the same time and there is a clear pattern to who received these messages, though I seem to be the only POC who got this.

Anyway.

The Beetle is gothic horror novel written by Richard Marsh that was published in 1897, which is notable bc that is the same year that Dracula was published - but while the Beetle is obscure and Dracula is a major pop culture phenomenon today, it actually outsold Dracula back in the day; the plot is similar to Dracula in that it is a xenophobic and racist reverse invasion story, this time featuring an Arab villain who turns into a beetle and uses mesmerism (similar to hypnosis) on a British man whom he sexually assaults to help him get revenge on another British man; (as a side note, I think there has been confusion about the villain being Muslim, but as far as I can tell, he seems to worship the Egyptian goddess Isis); there is a reveal at some point where the villain, an Arab man, turns out to have a vagina, which is both transphobic and Orientalist; (I think people get why it's transphobic, but the Orientalism is in Eastern men being 'feminized' as a negative comparison to Western men being 'masculine' as part of the broader idea of the Orient being 'decadent' and 'feminine'); the book is also very badly written, at least by modern standards.

I have no problem with people reading the novel bc ofc consumption is not endorsement and reading 'problematic' (I hate that word, it's so fucking vague) books isn't inherently a reflection of personal morals, and there is value in studying a novel like the Beetle for its historical significance (and how not to write a novel) and what it says on a Doylist level about important topics like colonialism (specifically the British in Egypt), Orientalism, gender, popular tropes during the Victorian era and what they say about Victorian society and its social anxieties at the turn of the century, etc.; for all of its faults and bigotry, there is a lot of thoughtful commentary to be written about the book itself on a meta level.

However, what does and did make me uneasy last year was the fandomization and memefication of the book, which is part of a larger phenomenon I won't get into right now, and fandom analysis often focuses more on Watsonian analysis, especially of characters like real people; I'm not saying you can't have fun or that you need a racism disclaimer on every post or should self-flagellate if you're white, but there are some books where fandomizing might not be the best way to engage with the material or certain aspects of a book - like, joke fanart of an Arab man as an animal molesting a white man is a really weird way to engage with the Arab man as a rapist and animal tropes (definitely Orientalist in at least two ways), especially if you are white and not the target of that kind of racism (like, quick, why is it funny to you?), and I saw very little grappling with how maybe there should be context provided for why that shit is racist, in stark contrast to how Dracula Daily did frequently discuss the bigotry in the novel.

Like, maybe I guess people thought the racism was so egregious, everyone would get it, but as we saw from DD, a lot of people genuinely don't know these things, and that's how you get serious racist, xenophobic, and Orientalist tropes that do very real harm to actual people - we're seeing this happen right now where Orientalist beliefs about Arab men being violent rapists and the idea of Arabs being a threat to the Western world are being used to justify violence and genocide - either being glossed over bc it's not fun or treated as a joke; and I'm not saying the Beetle is responsible for current geopolitics, but while fiction is not reality, fiction can reflect, affect, and reinforce beliefs that shape reality, and it's naive and denying the power of literature to act as if that isn't true.

Anyway, all that to say that I just think people should be a little more sensitive and thoughtful about how they engage with the novel instead of jumping immediately to irreverent fandomizing and memes, especially with what's going on in the world right now.

[therubymuse]

Women's History Month 2024

While International Women’s Day has been and gone this week, we are still in the midst of Women’s History Month, which happens to be every March. That’s good for yours truly the slackass, because it means I have had some time to organize my thoughts; to sit with them and really get a feel for what needed to be said. 

It’s also worth noting that it’s been awhile since I could pickup up the metaphorical pen. The last time I shared something I wrote was last summer, a piece about how important it was for me to be a dyke. It was a good piece, but the words have been all jammed up since. Like logs in a river. The only way to get out of a rut like this is just to let my consciousness ramble, and to accept it’s output as just as valid as any authors or people I look up to. And that’s a hard ask some days.

So today, let’s talk about what being a woman means to me. And why it’s a label and a cause I’ll gladly give my life for as necessary. The first thirty years of my womanhood was denied, in equal parts by those around me who said I was an effeminate man who needed to be toughened up, and by myself, having buried those traits so I could fit in with others. It also didn’t help much that I was born with a penis, so the doctor naturally assumed I was a boy. I’ll forgive him, it was 1986. 

I believe I was born a woman, and that I’m biologically female. What we know about science backs up claims of both. Sexual characteristics do not solely present all as male, or all as female, in most of the animal kingdom, so why should we be any different? Many cultures outside of our nightmarish puritanical capitalist hellscape not only recognize genders outside the traditionally masculine and feminine exist, they celebrate our existence. 

And yet, there are those who recoil at my claim to the word, and who claim my existence is erasure. These people virulently insist that me and any of my trans sisters are in fact just delusional men. But here’s the thing. Feminism has long sought to define a woman as more than just a birthing machine. We are strong, capable, smart, creative and wise in ways that extend beyond our recorded history and agreed upon definitions. We have always been here, in all the different ways. The true erasure is demanding women occupy only a box of preconceived notions of what others think we are.  

It’s shocking to me that so-called “feminists” will fall over each other to tightly define who is allowed to call themselves a woman. Trans women have always been subjugated by this behaviour. We were at the forefront of the modern Pride movement over fifty years ago, and yet it took only a handful of years for cisgender feminists to push trans activists out of said movement, and we’ve been barred in varying degrees from doing anything like that since. Now that trans women can be visible enough to ask to be treated better, that’s seen as appropriating women’s rights for ourselves. 

But women’s rights are our rights. Because we are women. 

Cisgender women stand to lose a lot more than they gain through the targeting of trans women with hateful legislation and incendiary speech. Increased scrutiny and policing of appearances in public places will lead to mistakes ranging from the embarrassing to the traumatizing. This is already happening, with gender-nonconforming folks and butch lesbians being harassed in washrooms because they look trans, So are a lot of perfectly cisgender and heterosexual individuals who just don’t happen to dress and act in the prescribed way. 

All of this puts you in just as much danger as it puts me, if bigots think you’re a tans woman too. And it matters to me that you, me, and my trans sisters are all safe, no matter what. 

The label of “woman” means so much to me, because as it turns out, I fit the definition just fine. No matter what shape I contorted myself into, I never neatly fit into my expected gender roles. I was a mousy husband and an effeminate boyfriend. It was visible to everyone except me, and once I started knocking down the closet walls, I felt suddenly like I’d come home. When I said it out loud for the first time, I wept. I was standing in front of my mirror, in my bedroom. It was February 1st and I was getting ready for work. And I had to have a full-on ugly cry over the realization that I had known all this time, but for lack of a matching label, I had been unable to explain it to anyone.

Nobody can take that from me now. It has shaped me as a person, and I’m extremely proud of that person. I have parented my inner child, as we’re making progress on a lot of very deep, very old trauma. I have showered my body in affection and positive language, now that she doesn’t cause me such pain and discomfort via dysphoria. I have learned how to love more fully than I’ve ever known, and more patiently than I ever thought I could. I have allowed myself space to be vulnerable again. And all the while, I’ve been me; a gloriously unhinged disaster lesbian who is growing, changing, and finding a little more of herself every day. 

And, of course,  I’m a woman too. And as I wipe a tear from my cheek finishing this up, I have to admit that hits me just the same as it did all those years ago. 

Photo from Summer 2019.

[drowninginflora]

Does anyone hate when all feminist characters are labeled lesbians?

I consume a lot of content and so I enter a lot of fan communities. And every time there is a feminist character everyone screams that she is a lesbian- even is she has a male SO. I am not anti lesbian feminist stories. I am a bi woman and a feminist myself. But wanting every feminist woman be a lesbian feels so reductive. It says that any woman who wants equal rights just hates men. That is the vibe I get. And I hate it so much.

Wanting to fight the patriarchy while also wanting to find love with the sex that benefits from the broken system is interesting. Its what most feminist have to do. And when its in period pieces I love it even more. Having "difficult" women find men who want the same things is them is awesome and fun. Hell, Mary Shelly's parents are the founders of modern day feminism. These men exist! And saying that every woman who wants equal rights hates men is so dumb.

I know I'm not really explaining my message well. I'm kinda drunk and don't have much to say. But yeah.

Lets have lesbian feminist. Straight feminists. Feminist gay men. Feminist straight men. feminists trans people. feminists enby people. No matter what year the story takes place.

[mmmthornton]

Sorry, not be defeatist. But as a black woman I think even if we somehow get control around the narrative that this version of the trans movement is liberal's/leftists version of "progressive" Anti- Feminism and point out the parallels between conservatives and trans-activists and acknowledge right-wingers are against this for self-serving reasons, people will find a way to change the story and blame feminists for the whole thing. Liberals/leftists will claim it was man-hating that caused this.

I think those fears and concerns are definitely justified, we've already seen how easily people will blame feminists who prioritize other women for anything that men do. That said, I don't know if I can condone personally that defeatist track, if only because it's a self fulfilling prophecy.

Doomerism is an actual tool these days in the era of social media outrage, and it's been used pretty handily to limit the people turning out to vote or who willingly participate in politics. This is how the Republican party has been doing so well in the culture war for twenty years while becoming less and less popular overall every election cycle. "There is no hope for women" might be a fun mantra that feels appropriate at the time, but it's repetition also serves no one but anti feminists in the long run.

The benefit however to this being a pattern is, humans are made to recognize patterns as they happen in front of us. Already we've seen people and specifically women noticing the pattern of male voices and lives being treated as inherently better than female ones. Women are able to find feminism in their own lives even if they've never read a text on the subject or don't know the right words, just from observing the world around her.

Even if the patriarchy is working overtime to convince women that the REAL problem is those pesky, ugly feminists, at the end of the day they modern day sexism and entitlement of men can't help but create more feminists. There's a powerful pattern to recognize there, if we're open to it.

[bardicious]

I don't like to compare movies and tv/streaming shows the format are different. on tv or streaming, you have more time to explore characters and I feel spock and chapel stuff has been handled poorly and not well written in a mature way that is fitting for star trek.

i have seen some on reddit compare the spock/tpring/chapel love triangle to a CW show and I get why. on cw shows the plot points of romance tend to move very fast and feels rushed and the characters get new love interest like every 3 episodes and this is were we are with the spock/chapel/tpring stuff.

episode 5- spock sleeps with chapel after he takes a break from tpirng. This is CW writing from the good old days of gossip girl.

episode 6- they are dating secretly but cannot agree on when to go public with their romance. clearly they see a lot of things differently. we dont even know how chapel feels about dating spock when he is on a break with tpring. I think this should have been discussed in episode 6. Chapel is kind of like his official mistress. I feel this is worse than the tos version.

Spock = John Lenon?

Tpring =Yoko Ono?

Chapel= May Peng?

episode 7- Bolmier tells her she may be a phase and he will get back to his normal self

its like the show did not and could not even give them a chance to date openly for a long while for their relationship to have stakes so they can matter, even to the haters.

spock and chapel feels it was set up to crash and burn even before it took off

I think this is where I favour AOS Spock/Uhura more if I was to pick a spock het, they are written more like an adult couple that was built to go some distance and less of a phase and they try to make it work even by beyond.

They are not going to make spirk canon in any time line, AOS spock/uhura felt more saner and less problematic than SNW spock/chapel and SNW spock/tpring.

Also Uhura has always been a better female character than Chapel and Tpring, I think this is why in SNW they upgraded chapel and kind of downgraded uhura. it does not take rocket scientist to point out that snw uhura looks and feels nothing like TOS Uhura and the actress who plays her lacks the charm and beauty of Nichelle Nichols.

The fact that I cannot see AOS Spock sleeping with two women in one week like SNW Spock makes AOS Spock closer to TOS Spock, who will barely even admits he likes girls.

We can argue SNW Spock is becoming more like TOS Spock but I kind of disagree because they are not even sexualising SNW Kirk but SNW Spock is hyper sexualised. Spock gets more sex than kirk and pike in snw and he gets it from 2 women in tos he does not seem to give a crap about. you dont say.

If I was to rank mu spock

TOS Spock> AOS Spock > SNW Spock.

SNW Spock also suffers a lot for modern day extreme feminism writing where they make men into clowns to make the women appear stronger. to many make trek fans, they think the show has made him into a joke. a criticism you dont see with aos spock. so it is kind of like a loose loose scenario with both genders.

Many male fans hate or dont care about the romance triangle of spock/chapel/tpring because men dont really care about this stuff in sci-fi shows

many female fans hate it because they are mostly spirk shippers

I can see your point with the writing from those terms, but honestly? It doesn't bother me. And there's no real angst on Spock's part with either relationship to Chapel or T'Pring. That's why I particularly don't feel the whole love triangle thing. To me, its more like they're playing with the love triangle trope, but everyone and their mom knows no one in this triangle is invested AT ALL.

T'Pring having her own Vulcan duties and agenda, Spock wanting to be more human, Christine seemingly being in "love" with Spock, but feels more like she has unresolved issues in general. So it's more like three adults, have their own issues, and aren't successfully communicating any of them. Not the same as teenage angst, tho I can see the similarities you're drawing from.

From what I gather, you see SNW as more childish, but for me AOS is worse, cause the defining traits I remember from everyone is smugness and anger. That may have changed by the point of their third film (I did hear it was one of the better ones, but I personally just don't care about it either) but in the first and second, it was all about action and revenge and just... so not anything to do with star trek.

At this point tho, I gotta assume you're trolling? Because saying Celia Rose Gooding lacks charm and beauty is just a downright lie?? lmao.

Spock is being sexualized because he's Spock, and Ethan Peck is hot. Spock is the poster boy for Star Trek and lots of people have always been attracted to him. And I'd wager Zachary Quinto didn't escape sexualization in the modern era of Trek either. Also, Trek has a history of sexualizing both men and women, following us way back to the sixties.

You're last few paragraphs... I just full stop disagree. And genuinely doubt men OR women dislike SNW at all, actually... the negative views are the minority and if it's cause of ridiculous arguments like "SNW suffers from modern day extreme feminism writing" than good riddance?

Sorry, I don't think I can take these asks at face value anymore. It doesn't sound like you want a conversation in good faith? If you want to rant about whats wrong with SNW, you'll have to do it on your own posts. And by all means, interact with people who think similarly. Our views diverge too much. Good luck though, nonnie!

[radicalitch]

i was watching a youtube video by one of the many standard white man atheists about the history of the modern pro-life movement the other day. in it, the creator argued that evangelists created the pro-life movement after they’d already lost the culture war of civil rights in the 60s—that, after they saw the writing on the wall that racial civil rights were going to be put on the books and there was going to be some culture shift towards racial equality—they needed a new point to rally around, and thus they chose anti-abortion, or, as they call it, ‘pro-life.’

now, there is some truth in this. of course! american evangelism has racism baked into its very bones, especially white american evangelism. however, this creator said, “yeah, the anti-abortion thing comes down to RACISM, duh!” and completely neglected to mention ANYTHING about misogyny.

i don’t deny racism has a part in the shift of the evangelical right to become the party of anti-abortion. however, to completely ignore misogyny is infuriating. especially coming from a fucking white man.

yes, evangelicals lost their anti-civil rights bids in the 1960s. yes, they then shifted towards focusing on anti-abortion. but to blame it all on racism, and using anti-abortion as a new target for their hate after not being allowed to be so openly racist is wrong. plain wrong.

second wave feminism came right along with the civil rights movement. at the same time as americans fought for racial justice, american women were fighting for women’s rights. think of all of the changes that happened during the 1960′s and early 1970′s—birth control, the equal pay act, women being allowed to open their own bank accounts, women moving into higher government offices, roe v. wade.

these changes were terrifying to the patriarchy. they still are. and i can think of few other groups of people who are more patriarchal (at least in the US) than the evangelical church.

so yeah, they were looking to redirect hate, sure. but they already hated women, so women gaining rights enraged them. evangelicals teach that women belong at home, married to a man, bearing that man’s children. they teach ‘biblical submission.’ they don’t want women to have autonomy over their lives. their culture relies on women not having any of the freedoms fought so hard for by second wave feminists.

plus, anti-abortion discourse was already a well-seeded christian political point by then. the catholic church had been at it at least since planned parenthood came into existence, and honestly, probably a lot longer than that. it wasn’t all that hard for evangelicals to get scared of the rapid expansion of women’s rights, look for a christian prospective that already existed and was anti-woman, and latch onto it, and do what they do best—turn it into a capitalistic project.

anyway, i know this was long and rambling but hearing this creator’s opinion of the origins of the modern anti-abortion movement pissed me off, because it was another example of the erasure of misogyny. like, we can talk about every other kind of structural oppression and realize it exists, but not misogyny. can’t have even played any role in the modern anti-abortion movement.

[knotgonnalye]

Lesbian radfem made the trauma from my fresh abuse worse.

I found radical feminism after dumping a very abuse ex and the trauma from being r@ped and was very confused about my sexuality. I thought I was bi and was told the most misogynistic slurs I have ever heard by lesbians and told it was "lesbophobic" to even defend myself. It was ongoing, I was in a radfem bi server and others would share the horrible things lesbians said about straight and bi women. Every online space where radfems gathered, I was never spared, I was an evil "bihet cumdumpster, cum brained, tainted by penis etc". That "there is no feminism without lesbianism" and to "get out of lesbian spaces" aka feminism cause only lesbians are the true feminists.

The straw that broke me was on ovarit and a radfem lesbian said basically just being around men, breathing the same air, just in the same room, "osa" women "absorb male energy and sexuality and lesbians can sense it". A bi woman argued this is just saying we are tainted by men like not being a virgin and the lesbian justified her stance. I just recently lost my father when I read that and was heavily mourning his passing.

(plus I was yelled at and berated ovarit admins for even asking for a bi only space)

Being in these spaces made me suicidal, hate myself, hate my body, be insanely hyper scared of any male, got sexually abused again this time by a woman, on top of freshly escaped a abusive relationship. I left all radfem groups, deleted my ovarit and left all radfem discords

After some healing (still in the process, day by day it's hard with my cPTSD) I'm straight and I feel so much more relief accepting being straight as normal and not a curse lesbians and lesbian influenced bisexuals made me to feel daily.

My unpopular take: lesbians were right. There is no feminism without lesbianism especially modern feminism. It's a Marxist cult which is destroying society. As a black women, 2nd wave feminism had a hand in the destruction of black America, influencing black women to "don't need no man", destroy the black nuclear family, created a baby mama matriarchal culture of where single mothers raised broken men(and women) and the demonization of black fathers, demonize marriage, demonize the nuclear family and even worse, planned Parenthood was run by a marxist racist Margaret Sanger who believed in destroying black people by aborting us in the womb, which in America, the most aborted unborn babies are black. So feminism supports the destruction of black people. Why would I take advice from a bunch of racist lesbian feminists who tell me I'm tainted because I like men?

Literally they proved to me they are the man hating feminazi that I thought wasn't real.

Take it or leave it but 2nd-4th(?) Wave feminism is absolutely Marxist filth. I know one may say my abusive ex is proof to "kill all men", but I love my father and maybe they just got daddy issues idk, plus it was a man who I was with who was so gentle with my abuse, flashbacks, was there when I wanted to off myself. Lesbian radfems encourage suicidal intentions by telling me I'm evil cause of my "osa". That I deserved my abuse cause I choose to be near men and deserve future abuse if I do it again, that I was looked at like shit in the sidewalk cause I said "I'm bi' and told I'm disgusting cause I dated men. It was lesbians feminists who made me feel worthless when I thought they "supported all women". They wanted "osa" women to worship them and their sexuality.

It's a Marxist cult. Modern qFeminism is Lesbian Marxism. A matriarchy is communism and it's beginning in the west.

It hates heterosexuality, hates the nuclear family, demonizes motherhood but worships the empty womb, practices sexual purity on women, blames women for their abuse, uses black women for their own agenda just like all woke ideologies.

I'm sure lesbians and other lesbian influenced feminists will twist everything l said like women usually do. , but I needed to get this off my chest and what better place is radbr, the garbage dump echo chamber that got me into this fucking mess.

Fuck modern feminism.

This is a lot. Ovarit is pretty tame, so I am not sure I believe you although I know many radfems are super weird and bigoted.

[whitedragoncoranth]

Kirathian Dragon Ieesha

Human Feminist

It was while Ieesha and I were at the beach one day, that we were approached by a woman; I will not detail the description of said women as it wasn't important. What is important, is that this woman began talking to us - or rather at us - her words becoming darker and darker. The woman questioned us about the bond my dragoness and I shared; then started to become horridly abusive to Ieesha and I. The awful human accused me of keeping Ieesha as an oppressed slave; of Ieesha being a docile servant, and more besides. Her hurled vitriol, insults, and abuse got so bad that in the end - as Ieesha calmly shielded me with a wing and stoically bore the brunt of it all - a policeman and dragon duo were swiftly called by another Kirata and his bound partner. The woman, a hardcore, insane militant feminist was arrested. Wordlessly, Ieesha flew me home, our day ruined.

Later that night, having doffed and hung up her harness, Ieesha stumbled into our shared bathroom and promptly puked her guts up into the toilet she used, sobbing and keening low as I rubbed her side with a hand. Then, after rinsing her mouth out and taking something to settle her stomach, Ieesha researched the twisted version of feminism she'd gleaned from the woman's mind. When she learned that the so-called modern version of feminism was a vehicle for nothing more than toxic hate, disempowerment, degradation, and humiliation of men, utterly horrified, my beloved dragoness burst into tears again. Wordlessly, my beloved Ieesha shut off the computer, then slowly turned and gave me a look, one I knew well. Needless to say... when a dragoness the size of an A380 airbus gets into a mood... you do as she asks of you.

I didn't resist as she slowly, gently, undressed me with her telekinesis, then led me over to the fleece pile where we slept together. Nor did I resist when she curled slowly, intimately around me, getting her body as close to mine as she could. ~Dii mun,~ she whispered softly with psychic voice, adoring me with her midnight-blue eyes, even as those eyes misted with tears. ~Dii hom'nh~ she near whimpered as she gently fawned over me, her own word for "human." Ieesha breathed warm breath over me, nuzzled my face, delicately pawed at my body, touched me with unbelievable gentleness. Then... "Dii Ah'vii" she whispered with physical speech, pronouncing my name as best she could. "Dii Ah'vii! Dii fahdon, Ah'vii!" Over, and over, and over she whispered these words to me - "Dii mun, dii hom'nh, dii Ah'vii" - as she began to clean me licking and laving every inch of my human body with her tongue, from my hair to my torso, to my genitals, legs and feet; even as she cried, her silvery tears falling on me.

Then, slowly but with no hesitation whatsoever, my beloved dragoness lay on her side, baring her belly and lifting a hind leg her LOVE/ADORATION/TRUST roaring through our bond. More tears flowed as I did what she wanted, rubbing her belly, then moving to touch her most intimate places; I kissed her, licked her, gently pushed my hand and forearm inside her, thrusting gently until she whined and came; then she rolled to her back, and we made love. Later, after Ieesha gently groomed us both clean, slowly and intimately she curled about me, unfurling a wing to cover my body as I lay back against her warmth. Then, my eyes widened as she nuzzled me and softly physically whispered "Aaaaaiiieee.... L-l-loooo-f'huh... Yh-Yuh... Yh-o-o-o-o-o-ouh, dii Ah'vii..." then trilled in her native tongue, the alien sound full of the love she had for me that she couldn't put into words. Overwhelmed, it was all I could do to hug her head, and pepper her muzzle with kisses, returning her love with my own through our bond. "I love you too, sweetie; I love you too," I replied.

Adendum: The horrible woman who'd belittled me, and berated Ieesha, found her life becoming very difficult. No one would hire her for jobs. No male Kirata'Dov would ever bond with her; they sneered at her and turned away. Other female Kirata'Dov - whose bound companions were human men - 'hid' their men from the awful woman's sight, curling about their men protectively, or shielding the humans with their wings! Other Kirata'Dov still would give a great roar-bark, take their humans and move away whenever she approached. The horrible human woman soon became poor and destitute, and lived in an alley, homeless.

*** "Dii fahdon, Ah'vii!" This phrase translates to: "My friend, David!"

*** "Dii mun, dii hom'nh, dii Ah'vii" This phrase translates to: "My man, my human, my David."