#gender IS gender roles

[lavenderfeminist]

but not performing to gender roles is not the same as being a gender, being gender non-conforming means you are the gender but does not perform to it's patriarchal roles

No, being gender nonconforming means not conforming to the gender (the roles) expected of your sex. Genders ARE roles. Saying “gender roles” is redundant. This is well understood in the majority of academia: sex is biological sex, and gender is the feminity/masculinity expected of you depending on your sex. Now, you could argue that because a LOT of regular people use gender as a politer term for biological sex, it also means sex, but that doesn’t really serve your purposes, either.

[cephalopod-celabrator]

It is inherently fun and sexy to say statements that swap the traditional genders of pronouns and terms mid-statement, such as: "I'm going to make him my wife" "She's my boyfriend" "Who says a guy can't be a pretty princess?" "That girl's the coolest dude I've ever met" "She's a madman who has to be stopped" "It's not his fault he's a material girl" Gender is a set of watercolors and the prettiest shades come from mixing the paints together.

[teaboot]

I love "gender bending" characters but HATE HATE HATE designs where canon buff dudes are wispy little fairy ladies and canon tiny women are beefy ass male linebackers. If you're not in it for JACKED WOMEN and TWINKS then what's what's FUCKING point

[exilley]

I do sort of wish western anime fans would analyze anime and manga from a framework of japanese historical and cultural context. Specifically a lot of works from the 90s being influenced by the general aimlessness and ennui that a lot of people were experiencing due to the burst in the bubble economy and the national trauma caused by the sarin terrorist attack. I think in interacting with media that’s not local to our sociocultural/sociopolitical sphere it’s easy to forget that it’s influenced and shaped by the same kinds of factors that influence media within our own cultural dome and there ends up being this baseline misalignment of perception between the causative elements of a narrative and viewer interpretation of those elements. It’s a form of death of the author that i think, in some measure, hinders our ability to fully understand/come to terms with creator intent and the full scope of a work’s merits

[yeoldenews]

An excerpt from the trial of Elinor Crane, who was arrested in Middlesex in 1693 on suspicion of burglary. A witness claimed one of the burglars was a woman in men's clothing, and Elinor had previously been seen in the area dressed as a man.

"But the Court asking her why she went in Mans Apparel, the Prisoner replyed, She went to Wooe a Widow. Upon the whole Matter the Jury brought her in not Guilty."

(source: Old Bailey Proceedings: Accounts of Criminal Trials, April 26, 1693.)

[tremendously-crazy]

"it's ok for labels to change as you learn more about yourself" and "i hope with every fiber of my being that I'm right about being aroace and nobody will come along to change my mind because I hate the idea of being in a romantic relationship or conforming to gender roles or heteronormativity" are two sentences that can and should coexist.

[o-wild-west-wind]

While I’m still a bit bummed that they didn’t go with a more book-aligned POC Fiyero for the Wicked movie, I’ve been thinking (heheh) about how his being white highlights the really interesting foil relationship between him and Glinda (and, in many ways, the audience yourself).

At its core, Wicked is a cautionary tale about propaganda, (literal) scapegoating, and what it means to uphold the status quo. The audience is watching through Glinda’s eyes—it is through her, arguably the most beautifully tragic character of the show, that we learn how lonely life becomes when you forfeit your values in favor of systemic power and likability (“No One Mourns the Wicked” is, in many ways, about HER).

Now, this is where Fiyero’s whiteness can get interesting—if you consider him and Glinda to share roughly equal footing at the beginning in terms of privilege/how much they have to lose (applying our real-world lens of race and power here, where whiteness is the apex), his storyline essentially represents what could have happened if Glinda had made the brave (and arguably wise and loving, if you’re picking up what I’m putting down 👀) choice to go with Elphaba and fight the good fight (this is also why I feel like a queer reading of G&E’s relationship is almost implicit to the story, but I digress).

As the POC/marginalized allegory, Elphaba has much less of a real choice in her curtain-pulled-back turning point. But Fiyero and Glinda—both representing privilege—get to choose. So in Act II, we see the consequences of both the choice to stay (Glinda) and to go (Fiyero). In Fiyero’s case, his ultimate rejection of his own power, privilege, and even beauty leads to immense physical loss—including his own body—but that is then compared to the loss of love, community, and identity that we see Glinda left with by the end. And this brings us to the question that the audience is left grappling with: in an unjust system where loss is inevitable (a.k.a. our own world, as the Wizard himself represents), which of these things are YOU more willing to give up?

It’s important that Glinda is an empathetic character because, in reality, most people are going to be Glindas (obvi this is nuanced among us Elphabas of marginalized identities, but I’d still argue that there’s some level of Glinda in us all)—and it’s important to be rattled by the end of the show when you realize that she is the one who has the sad ending. But it’s also so important that Fiyero is empathetic (which I’m SO glad this movie leaned into)—because he’s ultimately who Glinda—and thus we, as the audience—should have been.

And especially given the state of US politics right now…this is just all more relevant than ever.

[reasonsforhope]

Sometimes you just have one of those moments where the progress we've made as a culture get thrown into stark relief. You look at something and go "Holy shit, that would never have happened when I was a kid."

Today, I had one of those moments when I realized that the teenage boys I'm working with are just. genuinely, openly enthusiastic about going to Build-a-Bear for their outing.

These are sixteen and seventeen year old boys! They just had a whole conversation about what to name their "cute", mostly new squishmallows! They're genuinely excited that they're going to Build-a-Bear this weekend and asking other kids to pick up specific accessories for them!!

Holy shit, that never would've happened when I was 16. None of the boys would have dared to be visibly interested - and neither would most of the girls! There would have been a million gay jokes and "Haha, you're a girl" jokes and "What are you, a baby?" jokes. Teenagers weren't even supposed to care about anything back then!

Less than 15 years later, and I'm watching three 17 year old boys treat all that as not even worthy of comment.

So let's call that a reason for hope. Even when the kids aren't alright, in some ways apparently they are alright. Go Gen Z, honestly. It's so lovely to watch you guys just openly doing and saying stuff that, when I was a teen, would've been a social death sentence.

[unapologeticallygay]

“Fuck your gender”

New York City Dyke March, June, 1995, via lesbianherstoryarchives /ig

[the-crooked-library]

so within the universe of Dune, gender roles abide by a rigid false dichotomy created by the bene gesserit - men lead the noble houses, while the women may join their order, and the powers of both are kept intentionally separate. at the same time, the plot demonstrates repeatedly that the role of paul atreides as a character is that of the border between the concepts juxtaposed within dichotomies: he is both an outerworlder and fremen, both harkonnen and atreides, both a duke and a disciple of the bene gesserit.

as such, it follows that within the in-universe gender structure, he occupies the roles of both male and female, thus being functionally and societally nonbinary. in this essay, i will -

[visenyaism]

stop being a terf and laugh at a joke good lord

terfs are literally the loudest and most obnoxious about women needing to be tiny and hairless and dainty and childlike and incapable delicate waifs and cisgender and hyperfeminine (and white) to be “real women” because they are reactionary.

Me saying that I find it unfunny and unacceptable to either make or laugh at girl math girl dinner I’m just a girl jokes where the punchline is that women are all tiny delicate incapable little waif-children because those jokes are reactionary IS me being a buzzkill. I don’t find that reactionary shit funny and I won’t let anyone else around me find it funny either. That punchline and what it communicates about women is especially harmful to trans women and transfemmes. Me being a buzzkill about this is NOT me being a TERF and I think you’re nasty for putting that shit on me.

[stepfordgentleman]

Stepford Gentleman's list of nonsexual forms of domination for dominants

-Ordering for your sub at a restaurant

-Choosing sub’s outfit for the day

-Giving a bedtime

-Corporal punishment for bad behavior

-Instructing the submissive to write your name somewhere on their body daily

-Training sub with non-verbal cues

-verbal cues to correct unwanted behavior in public

-sub must be at a certain distance & position when in public

-Training sub how to greet you(on call/in person)

-Sub must wear a collar/necklace w/your name/title on it

-Scheduling hypnosis time

-Choosing and/or putting sub’s shoes on for them

-sub must ask permission before speaking

-sub must ask permission before entering/exiting a room(could be in public, a designated play/comfort room, at home, etc)

-Sub may only sit on the floor, on a cushion, in a designated chair

-Scheduling exercise time for sub

-Scheduled chore time

-Controlling their alcohol intake(when they can get drunk, if they can’t get drunk, cutting them off)

-Monitoring water intake

-monitoring screen/phone time

-Monitoring a submissive's outfits while out

-scheduling a time daily/weekly for sub to sit on their knees in silence, repeating a predetermined mantra

-Instructing sub to complete scheduled chores in a required uniform

-serving Dominant drinks/food

--

Let's add some more in the reblogs...

[pjharvey-moved]

i found out recently that the guy who invented love languages was a sexist conservative who basically did it so he could tell his wife "see, your love language is acts of service so you can keep doing all the dishes, and my love language is physical touch so i just show love by having sex with you" men are lame as fuck!!!

[prokopetz]

Indvisable tabletop RPG premise #137: solo journaling game where.. okay, you know that serialised boys' adventure schlock from the 1930s and 1940s where the writers needed the otherwise intensely homosocial male leads to be seen hanging out with girls in order to prove that they're not gay, but they didn't want to include more than one female character, so they'd have just the one girl and sort of imply-without-ever-directly-stating that she's dating all of them at once? Solo journaling game where you take on the role of that girl.

[septembermonologues]

dorym girlies it is insane how much we're winning

[washingtonmarvel]

Trapeze artist, strongwoman, and all around badass Laverie Vallee, stage name Charmion, flexes for the camera in this (colorized) picture from around 1905. Born in 1875 in Sacramento, Charmion was a pioneer. She shocked conservative Victorian/Edwardian men with her daring "Trapeze Disrobing Act" (which was the subject of one of Thomas Edison's first films) and her insanely jacked body. But the ladies loved her, and her performances, which were viewed as practically pornographic by the extreme standards of the time period, were mostly attended by women. Throughout her career, she inspired women to exercise and to free themselves of the restrictions society placed on them. Charmion criticized the prudish attitudes of the time and told women they could be just as strong as men (this was a radical claim for that era, but her own body was the proof). A brilliant woman, she was fluent in six languages and regularly lectured and wrote newspaper articles about fitness. She was the highest-earning performer on the vaudeville circuit for much of her career, sometimes earning as much as $500 per week (equivalent to almost $20,000 today). Charmion was known to curl 70-pound dumbbells as part of her workout regimen and she could walk 12 miles without feeling fatigued. Charmion's biceps reportedly were almost exactly the same size as those of Eugen Sandow, who was widely considered the world's strongest man, and in a friendly sparring match she fought on an equal footing with the then-famous boxer Terry McGovern. She retired in 1912 and lived a quiet life outside the limelight until her death in 1949.

EDIT: I made a second post with some more info about Charmion if anyone's interested: