#gender roles 2

[someoneintheshadow456]

Idk what tag to use to describe the phenomenon of "Tiktok/Instagram Reels being full of toxic femininity/Gender Roles 2 but I just want to make a thread of examples of batshit takes I have seen from Instagram Reels (I don't have examples for all of them):

"I hate playing with my kids because I think they're 'emotionally abusive'/'gaslighting' when they change the rules every 30 seconds and rough house with me. Also, only fathers can enjoy playing with kids because they don't parent like mothers do (being a mom is soooooo harddddd). I refuse to teach my kids how to play nice and go shocked Pikachu when they don't."

"If you're over 25 you will never find a partner ever and should just get an arranged marriage" (said by someone IN THEIR LATE 20S)

"Sleep studies are all based on mens' needs women actually need 10 hours of sleep because uterus"

Just a whole lot of "Girls are mature well-behaved angels until they hit their double digits, then they become satanic demons from hell. Meanwhile boys are satanic demons from hell BEFORE puberty instead."

"Children produce more oxytocin around their dads because dads are the fun parents and they will never appreciate the hard work their mothers do"

"Bullying is good actually because something something evolutionary psychology. I am very smart, I was a gifted kid in high school"

"Men are useless overgrown children who can't keep house or be trusted around babies. But if a man can keep house and/or is good with children, he's either 'not a real man', a pedo, or gay."

"Some women??? Beat their kids??? To cope??? Kids should understand when mommy brings out the chapathi roller it's because they're just ungrateful brats! Being a mother is sooooo harddddd"

[hajihiko]

'Strong opinions about femininity and masculinity' moment

[t4transsexual]

really unpopular opinion but if ur trans u should probably lie to ur doctors. not all of them necessarily, but like you could and should especially in the er/urgent care, specifically if what youre having treated/checkups for has nothing to do with your transition. i had chest pain from binding for years that wasnt addressed because i was told it was just anxiety, until the first time i stealthed at the er. suddenly they wanted to run tests on me and said that my ribs were fucked up but they didnt know from what. ive had chest pain for years and i thought i was binding safely but i was also binding for 6 1/2 years before my operation and youre not really supposed to do that

also, even if youre getting gender affirming care, they do not need to know all the details. gay/lesbian/st4t? they dont need to know. transfem top/transmasc bottom looking for srs? dont tell them that. nonbinary/nondysphoric /otherwise gender nonconforming? dont fucking tell them that. a lot of trans people that arent t4c heterosexual and binary trans people, or just trans people who dont follow traditional gender norms during sex/in general are discriminated against all the time. you cannot lie to your doctors about everything, but theres a lot of things that you honestly should just keep to yourself when seeking care as a trans person. as far as your doctor is concerned, youre a binary trans person who isnt comfortable disclosing their personal sex life and its none of their business. letting them think ur a binary trans t4c heterosexual is the smart thing to do

[cry-ptidd]

How to serve a man

[tavina-writes]

I'm not exactly sure how I want to phrase this yet, but I think a lot of the utterly weird takes I see sometimes float by me on our cursed blue hellsite (esp when it comes to mdzscql fandom) is coming from a refusal to meet the genre where it's at.

Like, why are we trying to interrogate classism in MDZS society, MDZS is a romance, the societal worldbuilding is just enough to support some general big ideas and the provide context for the romance. We can't get ANY kind of read on general classim/sexism/anything else from. this source material. if you think you can get granular when your sample size of characters from various social and gender strata are so small and we don't know how the vast majority of people in here live you are making stuff up.

Like, meet the story where it's at: it's a romance novel.

[randomalistic]

While we're on surface level white liberal political takes - I think I finally understand (very basic idea) that pretty much everyone assimilated into any society is bound to have horrible subconscious biases. Not always because they're those "Bigoted Slur-chanting Assholes TM" but simply because EVERYONE has absorbed bigoted information at SOME POINT in their lives. Bigotry is also a quiet, insidious force that is perpetuated through EVERYONE in small ways, not just a mean & loud minority. It's good to think about this often

AKA: If you live in society (which you do), you 100% unknowingly have inherited racist, ableist, misogynistic, queerphobic preconceptions. YOU ARE NOT IMMUNE TO PROPAGANDA. NOBODY IS. And that's NOT YOUR FAULT. And I think the sooner everyone realizes that (notably those of privilege, myself included) and you DON'T take that fact personally - is how you change and grow into someone better equipped to fight for good. This growing does not stop

[heavenlymorals]

Sadie and Arthur and the Affects of Gender Roles in 1899 America

(warning: there is sexism and sexist ideas in this analysis because I refuse to sugarcoat the time period that RDR2 takes place in. Arthur is a product of his time and though it isn't shoved in your face, it's still there. Understanding the gender dynamics of this time period makes the characters much more understandable, nuanced, likeable, and better, if I'm being frank.)

I don't ship Sadie and Arthur, at all, it makes no sense to me besides two people liking the characters and thus putting them together. I like them as friends but that's about it.

And let's be so real for a second- even if they do get together for whatever reason, they absolutely wouldn't be compatible as partners because its been shown time and time again that Arthur believes in gender roles and gets visibly annoyed or angry when a woman takes up a man's role when a man is there or when a woman does something he thinks is unladylike in their line of work (just listen to his antagonization of Abigail (for her past as a prostitute, usually), Sadie, Karen, prostitutes, and female performers, all women who take on unconventional roles in their life(also pay attention to certain mission dialogues, and cutscene body language)).

Sadie proves herself as capable, and Arthur works with her, but he makes quips about her behavior or subtly judges her or makes fun of her("Oh, I'm sorry princess. Was there an insufficient feather in your pillow?" "You got a pair of pants and all of a sudden you think you're Landon Ricketts?" "You want to ruuuunnnn with the men?" "Few more like her and there wouldn't be much of a world left." "That ain't what you mean- I can still fight!" Or him being visibly annoyed when she doesn't take his hand to enter the boat and other similar things like that)

Arthur believes that a man should be the one doing the work that revolves around such physical exertion and if he isn't the one doing those things for a woman, he feels as if he is failing in his role as a protector and provider, which then provokes annoyance or in some cases, even anger. Sadie doesn't care about this obviously, and Jake Adler didn't either, hence why they worked so well together as a couple.

Not Arthur though. To put it quite simply, he prefers and is compatible with women who believe in the same gender roles as he does (Mary Gillis, Abigail Roberts, etc.).

This doesn't mean he dislikes Sadie, because it's quite obvious that he is fond of her, but given the intimacy of a relationship, Sadie would get fed up with him trying to be the ONLY provider and protector, and him getting fed up with her by encroaching on what he sees as his duties and responsibilities. He works with her in the way that he does because he has to and he respects that.

Some people may disagree with me on this analysis and that's fine, but to me, it feels like the most realistic outcome if they did become romantic partners. Another reason why I say this is because my mother comes from a culture that still operates a lot like 1899 America and I've seen this dynamic between men and women so many times that it's ridiculous- men who will accept working with a woman in more traditionally masculine roles and prefer partners who are more traditionally feminine.

[arcadialedger]

Love the not so subtle gender subversion of Tewkesbury teaching Enola to dance, and Enola teaching Tewkesbury to fight.

[mostlyvoid-partiallyflowers]

The most recent episode of Interview with a Vampire let's us see Lestat's side of the story and see how it compares to Louis' accounting of their relationship. As a result, it reaffirms just how unreliable of a narrator Louis is, but it also further illuminates elements of his character that the director and writers have been playing with since the beginning of the show.

There's this part in the episode where Lestat turns to Louis and apologizes and it's framed with Lestat turned to Louis on one side and Claudia on his other side. They're the angel and devil on Louis' shoulders, but who is the angel and who is the devil? And as my friend said, Armand and Daniel are placed into that same dynamic with Louis later on. We are being asked to decide who to trust, who's telling the truth, who's the good guy, but the fact of unreliability robs us of that decision.

This whole story is about Louis, he's the protagonist, though not the narrator, and he is constantly being pulled in two directions, no matter when or where he is in his story. He's a mind split in two, divided by nature and circumstance. He's vampire and human, owner and owned, father and child, angel and devil. He's both telling the story and being told the story. His history is a story he tells himself, and as we've seen, sometimes that story is not whole.

Louis is the angel who saved Claudia from the fire but he's also the devil who sentenced her to an life of endless torment, the adult trapped in the body of a child. He's the angel who rescued Lestat from his grief and also the devil who abandoned him, who couldn't love him, could only kill and leave him.

He's pulled in two directions, internally and externally at all times and so it's no wonder that he feels the need to confess, first to the priest, then Daniel, and then Daniel again.

He's desperate to be heard, a Black man with power in Jim Crow America who's controlled by his position as someone with a seat at the table but one who will never be considered equal. He doesn't belong to the Black community or the white community, he can't. He acts as a go-between, a bridge, one who is pushed and pulled until he can't take it anymore. He's a fledgling child to an undead father, he's a young queer man discovering his sexual identity with an infinitely experienced partner. He's confessing because he wants to be absolved, that human part of him that was raised Catholic, that child who believed, he wants to be saved. He wants to be seen.

Louis wants to attain a forever life that is morally pure, but he can't. He's been soiled by sin, by "the devil," as he calls Lestat, and he can never be clean again. Deep down, I think he knows this, but he can't stop trying to repent. He tries to self-flagellate by staying with Lestat and then tries to repent by killing him, but can't actually follow through. He follows Claudia to Europe to try and assuage his guilt. He sets himself on fire, attempts to burn himself at the stake, to purify his body, rid himself of the dark gift.

Louis is a man endlessly trying to account for the pain he has caused and he ultimately fails, over and over again, because he can't get rid of what he is. A monster. He's an endlessly hungry monster. He's hungry for love, for respect, for power, for forgiveness, for death. He's a hole that can never be filled. He can never truly acquire any of those things because he will always be punishing himself for wanting and needing them in the first place. He will never truly believe he deserves them and as a result, can't accept them if they are ever offered. He can never be absolved for he has damned himself by accepting the dark gift and thus has tainted himself past the point of saving.

[javierduffy]

“uh … it’s a bit girly … no?” javier examines himself in the reflection of his knife’s blade, looking this-a way and that, the dark blue of a large silken bow now peeking sheepishly around his neck as it sits gently in his hair. next to him, kieran clams up a smidge, hands still held close to his chest nearby his completed ribbon project on javier’s head. he finds it in himself to wring his hands a time or two rather than immediately undo his work as javier seems to continue to formulate his final opinion. ��you … think so? look at me?” kieran asks, politely as a mouse. javier easily complies, turns at his hips and looks behind, up at kieran where he sits on the stump above him.

kieran, as he peers over, can’t help the meadow of flush that blooms over his neck, then his ears, then his nose and his cheeks. he can tell javier is deep in thought by the look on his face, mouth twisted just a might sideways, cocking his mustache awry, and the deep wrinkle sat between his brows. the ribbon he used matches javier’s vest perfectly, and the shine of the silk warms bright in the sun, just like every piece of jewelry and metal javier has adorned himself with. with this ribbon, javier’s hair sits lower on his head, ponytail draped down his nape and more hair framing his face in his bangs. kieran resists an urge to tuck one side back behind his ear.

kieran thinks that he looks like a painting, a muse, a love letter so heartbreakingly full of adoration that the only language it could be written in is bright swipes of pigment on a canvas. as he makes eye contact with the silk squinting around the red of a necktie, he thinks that javier may be right, if ‘girly’ could sum up ’poetry written in effeminate reverence’.

kieran always did think women made better art, wrote better books- found a better way to love. softer. warmer. prettier. like javier.

the world sounds like it’s underwater.

“i think … it’s very pretty. it suits you real well.”

earnest to a fault, the look in kieran’s eye dances gingerly with javier’s internal voice. it dips and sways him, and javier, despite his instinct, finds himself charmed by its rhythm.

“-b-but! i could take it out! if you don’t-“ javier looks down at himself in his knife again, the sunlight filtered through the leaves glinting a yellow green around his dark features, and kieran hands him patience on a silver platter. a rich blue makes friends with bright green quite easy, javier thinks. this is how he must look through kieran’s mossy lens.

“pretty … yes. you know, i think you may be right. i’ll keep it. gracias.”

[serpentface]

What's the Wardi cultural take on Akoshos sleeping with/partnering with/marrying other Akoshos?

It's not highly regulated to a degree that there are overwhelming cultural norms about it. There's a lot of societal focus on akoshos being theoretically suitable sexual partners for both men and women due to being dual-gendered, but not to an extent that relationships with One Another are stigmatized.

They also largely get to escape from the most severe concerns about penetrator/penetrated power dynamics because they're not regarded as Men (they're regarded as dual-gendered, and they're a female social class on every practical level), there's no status of manhood to Lose by receiving sexual penetration. The only real thing you see in that department is people assuming that one acts as 'the man' and one acts as 'the woman', but this is largely due to preoccupation with a notion of sex being Penetration With A Penis (and that Penetration With A Penis means that one person is in a Man's Role and one person is in a Woman's Role). But this will not be regarded as unnatural as in same-gender male relations, akoshos will Have to take up a position in this sexual dichotomy if they want to have Real Sex (Penetration With A Penis) with each other, and this is not unnatural and doesn't involve gaining or losing status since they are simultaneously male and female, not men.

So like you might see individual culture critics finding stuff to nitpick about it as their annoyance of the week or a singular Guy here or there who thinks it's weird, but this isn't a widespread norm. The vast majority of people don't give a shit about akoshos having sex with each other. The worst thing you're likely to experience Solely by virtue of being in an akoshos-akoshos relationship is someone asking you (probably with genuine curiosity) which one does the man stuff and which one does the woman stuff.

Akoshos also don't experience Hard expectations for marriage (though there are societal pressures that make marriage an attractive safety net all the same, ESPECIALLY marriage to a man) so unofficial life-partnerships between akoshos are pretty much the Only same gender partnerships between unwed people that are going to go unquestioned. ((Sworn brotherhood is technically a same gender life partnership for men that is Functionally similar to marriage (in that it's a kin-making practice between unrelated adults), but the tradition is Built upon the assumption that both parties will be married to women and that a primary goal of this kinship is to provide security for both parties' wives and children)). Marriage obligations in general are more lax in the economically secure but not Wealthy lower mercantile classes (as obligations to support and perpetuate one's family are universal, but these obligations can be filled simply by having at least One son who can get hitched, and marriages in the lower classes have no political functions and therefore there's less reason to ensure All your children are wed (there's still incentives like dowry, but this is not desperately needed when a family is economically secure)). So akoshos in this class group tend to have a Lot more freedom in terms of their life arrangements and chosen partners (though still experience the limiting frameworks of structural misogyny in other capacities).

The only thing that is out of the picture is akoshos/akoshos marriage. Marriage in this society has a predominantly reproductive function, the concept of reproductively non-viable marriages is generally considered absurd. This is not JUST this culture's form of homophobia, as marriage is a very practical arrangement at its core - both in a reproductive capacity and as bedrock for the patriarchal blood-kinship family system that forms the core social unit. The idea of same gender marriage isn't just absurd because 'ewwww weird' it's like, that Cannot work within this system, it Cannot fill core functions of what a marriage intends to do here, the ways on which marriage and kinship are BUILT makes same gender marriage practically (rather than just socially) untenable.

The sole exception to the 'marriage = reproductively viable" rule is that akoshos can be married to men (which in practice is almost always as a remarriage after a man has secured At Least an heir). This has a Little bit of internal logic here in that they perform predominantly female social roles (thus are suited to being a wife, even if they can't bear children) (and also on practical levels of them having the same legal status as women) but it's really more of a 'this is just how it's always been' kind of thing. A lot of the older pre-Wardi identity dual-gender roles that got mashed together under the 'akoshos' name would have involved marriage to a man as a second wife/concubine, in addition to his primary wife who would bear his children. Men potentially having multiple spouses has not been retained as a cultural practice, but the notion that an akoshos Can be a wife to a man has survived into modern day legal and doctrinal practices around marriage.

So like this being said, marriage as it is legally defined is only between a man and a woman, a man and an akoshos, or a woman and an akoshos. In practice the latter two are comparatively VERY rare- a man/akoshos marriage cannot provide children (though an akoshos can practically fulfill all other obligations and duties of a wife), a woman/akoshos marriage Can provide children (and while akoshos cannot function as a male heir, these children Will take their akoshos-parent's family name (though the wife retains her father's family name)), but akoshos are legally grouped with women in terms of rights and privileges (including being permanently under legal domain of their father unless they have been legally handed off to a male husband) and Cannot provide hard power patriarchal support that this family system is built upon and therefore depends upon, which makes these marriages socio-economically insecure. They can obviously still be a good partner and parent, but this is not the same as having the Legal hard power of a patriarch.

Akoshos marrying each other would be reproductively and socially nonviable, and is treated as a similarly absurd concept to a man marrying a man or a woman marrying a woman. It's just not a part of the marriage and kinship framework, it's not a thing that you can Do.

[menlove]

the thing abt the roman empire trend is it was very funny when it was ppl asking their white cishet husbands/fathers/brothers how much they thought abt it bc it was like. a subtle dig abt how a lot of white cishet men are very obsessed w war in history and nothing else and glorify an era that they saw as hypermasculine and White

like it started out good it started out funny

it got annoying when people started going "omg what's the roman empire For Girls? it's (poetry/bridgerton/ex best friend)"

like no I'm sorry the equivalent For Girls™️ (aka cishet white women as a critique) would be true crime. like in the same way cishet white men think obsessively abt war and hypermasculine periods of history, cishet white women obsess over true crime very unethically despite numerous victims and family of victims talking abt how harmful the true crime community is. they are obsessed with the violent death/rape/torture of people without regard to their real lives or their families. THAT is the "girl roman empire" and it has the same tongue in cheek critique as the og

but noooo we just wanna say War Is For Men and Poetry Is For Women bc the white cishet women missed the joke and just wanted to recreate "girls go to college to get more knowledge boys go to jupiter to get more stupider" but in their 30s

like it's not that serious I know but. I'm autistic and I notice these things lmao.

[confessmau]

I find it annoying when people make Laurance hyperfeminine and everything feminine and Garroth hypermasculine and everything masculine.

Calling Laurance 'the mom friend' and Garroth 'the dad friend' saying Laurance is clean and likes to take care of himself while saying Garroth only washes his face. Letting Laurance break gender roles while not letting Garroth do the same. Having Laurance be comfortable with his feminine side and Garroth not, taking away Laurance's canon strength and athleticness, to go along with all the feminity, implying feminity excludes people from being strong. He was a top soccer player in mystreet and got into the possible jo9 members list. He is strong, even if it's with fastness and agility. Whatever fighting style you give Laurance; canonically, he can hold his own ground VERY well. Making Laurance sweeter than he is in canon, a "people pleaser", and making Garroth less so. And always giving Garroth the more traditionally masculine thing when assigning things to him or making an au and always giving Laurance the more traditionally feminine thing.

I don't know. It ircs me when I see this happened, I hate it so much. It doesn't need to be for fetishizating reasons and I am not implying it is or that you can't headcanon what you want. But it just makes me hurl.

This especially ircks me when it's done in mystreet where Garroth canonically does do it and Laurance doesn't.

In Diaries this is less the case, Garroth doesn't canonically break genderroles that much. But he still is very flustered during his crush on Aphmau, moreso than Laurance. And is actually pretty emotional? But tries to push his emotions away (and fails repeatedly). And regardless, doing that still makes me uncomfortable honestly.

No offense to the people that do it. It just, ircks me y'know?

~~

[daily-hanamura]

[heavenlymorals]

what do you think if arthur’s partner was against/doesn’t follow a traditional relationship? would he not go through with that type of relationship at all??

Hi anon 🥺❤️❤️

Believe me, I want to say yes- I'm a feminist from a very anti-feminist culture, so I just want to say yes, he would stay with you and love you either way, but my heart says no.

And to be honest, I don't think it'd ever come to that point either because Arthur would never want to be interested in a woman like that anyways. He makes a lot of snide comments regarding Sadie in cutscene and in antagonizations/greets. He is VERY mean to women performers if you antagonize them ("This ain't ladylike!" "Go cook someone some supper! "Go back to the kitchen!"). Antagonize lines are just as canon as greet lines and it's honestly super clear what he believes because of these lines.

He believes in gender roles, point blank period and he gets visibly annoyed or even angry when both women AND men refuse to conform to it.

He makes fun of John for not taking care of his family and for making excuses for that and he gets pissy at Beau when he wasn't there to get Penelope from the cabin.

Note the women that he is or was CANONICALLY interested in. There is Mary, who is very much a lady of her time and wouldn't even bother trying more traditionally masculine roles. There is also Abigail. Abigail is a hard worker and in the epilogue, she helps out John in terms of making money and getting the ranch started but she was still mostly just a housewife, but in RDR1, she is ONLY a housewife as John knows what to do and Jack has grown up to take up his share of the work.

The women he's interested in are women who believe in what he believes. Now, do I think Arthur wouldn't mind if you knew how to hunt, skin, shoot a gun, ride a wagon, and all that? Yea, he would feel very comfortable if you knew how to take care of yourself when he's not there and I doubt he would care if you occasionally do it, but all the time?

I just doubt that.

Also, let's look at it psychologically. Men being able to take care of their families by themselves was not only the standard, but men would also get punished socially by other men and women if they aren't able to do that. The woman would also get shamed too. Pride is a huge thing in American culture and back then? It extended to that too.

Arthur puts extreme value on a "man being a man" to the point where he'd call other people out on not being that even if it's none of his business, so that would extend to him too.

A woman having to work because the family and man are struggling like Abigail does? Sure, fine, but wanting to take on non-traditional roles just cause? Absolutely not. Arthur just doesn't vibe with that, even in canon.

Love back then wasn't like love now. Love back then was going into a relationship with the intent that you already know what you need to do for your partner in terms of the culture back then. Love now is about the person and working things out along the way.

Thank you so much anon, love dissecting gender roles 🙏🏼🙏🏼❤️❤️

[wall-maria-around-ba-sing-se]