#heterosexual supremacy has to go

[crvvys]

there is a robust community that teaches women how to endure their relationships with men. which reinforces the social script that women are not anything until they’re with men. there’s this pressure placed on us all bc of that.

women shouldn’t have to come to each other and get advice on how to make their male partner love or respect her. she should be taught that disrespect is not something to ignore and that she will be okay without him. I think on this a lot bc I was an outcast among my many bisexual friends who suffered through their relationships with men and what struck me was how they didn’t want to stay single or date women (bc I’d suggest these things) and that’s probably for many reasons and I’ve thought a lot about why and I have a few reasons but one major one is that there is not really a bigger support system among women than with heartbreak or dealing with heterosexual relationships. why would bisexual women choose to be single if they did want love but also didn’t want homophobic attacks. or to abandon the social script that they can follow.

there is no robust support for lesbians or lesbian relationships. there is no robust support for single women who are pressured to partner with men. the social script of “man is active, woman is passive” is absent in same sex relationships so many bisexual women don’t know how to engage (I have my own harsh opinions on this but I digress). I may not like their choice or that logic but I can understand it. bc I did not have a strong community in the same sense and it’s something that I think a lot of women take for granted. women can lean on their female friends, female relatives, even female strangers lol to get through pain with their heterosexual relationships. it’s virtually ubiquitous. but I think it’s faulty. not the support itself but the framing and the message of the support.

teach women and girls that they are people first and then move on to the relationship aspect so that women can tell the difference between enjoyment and endurance. we can’t get far if we can’t even admit that heterosexism is strong in a lot of women’s thinking.

[communistkenobi]

could you expand / share reading materials on "gender is a structure that mediates access to personhood"? i feel like that's an important point that i don't fully grasp. especially because it is my understanding that until relatively recently even white, bourgeois, cis-heterosexual, perisex etc women were also denied personhood, but were already gendered as women, right?

thanks in advance!

I’m so sorry you sent me this ask like three months ago and I’m only getting around to it now lol

This is going to be a long post. I will be talking a lot about citizenship and rights in this post. I’ll include citations, but two overarching texts I will be engaging with a lot are Unequal Freedom (2004) by Evelyn Nakano Glenn and The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (1989) by Gøsta Esping-Andersen.

This is also not meant to be a comprehensive answer to your question. I am much less familiar with migration & refugee scholarship, which is obviously deeply engaged with the concept of citizenship as an apparatus for granting rights. I’m flagging this because my answer has a particular focus that is not generalisable. Everything I say is not “the answer” to your question, but an answer informed by specific domains of scholarship.

First, I think a good place to start is that when we talk about ‘personhood’ as a status that a human being can or cannot possess, we are often talking about a status that is realisable through citizenship. ‘Personhood’ is itself a legal term, and we can see this in how stateless people (i.e. people with no citizenship) are treated - because rights are granted by and administered through states, being without state citizenship means you are unable to realise any set of rights, and therefore, you are rendered as a non-person. The UN has two separate conventions on the rights of stateless people for example, as being stateless is necessarily an international issue. I think this approach helps makes sense of why “human rights” is a popular framing in discussions of how to remediate inequality (e.g. “trans rights are human rights”). The “human” part of that equation is only realised through the attainment of “rights,” i.e., through citizenship. Citizenship = personhood can also be seen when people invoke “second class citizens” as an articulation of legal, political, and societal discrimination - i.e., groups of people who have less/no access to rights compared to other groups within a state. Systems of classed citizenship often emerge from regimes of settler colonialism, slavery, and apartheid (Glenn discusses this in her book).

The basic Marxist intervention in this discussion is that this class system still exists even in places that have abolished slavery, abolished apartheid, and/or gone through formal decolonisation, because state law under capitalism is fundamentally unjust. Marx calls law the “mystification of power” (I believe he says this in The German Ideology? I'm rusty on my Marx readings lol) - he argues that law is a bourgeois system of justice that caters to the wealthy and powerful and disenfranchises the poor and marginal, but appears as neutral and fair through a liberal “theater” (Marx’s term from The 18th Brumaire) of equality and democracy, mystifying its actual effects and purpose (The Red Demiurge (2015) by Scott Newton is a book about Soviet legal history that goes into some of this. His focus is on the evolution of the Bolshevik relationship to law as the USSR developed and encountered quite literally new legal problems that emerged as a result of the formation of a socialist state). This is also part of the Marxist critique of nationalism - if state citizenship is what grants access to rights, and citizenship is classed (through your relationship to production, through white supremacy, through patriarchy, through colonial status, through religious status, through etc), then equality does not legally exist, that all equality is bourgeois equality, i.e., not universal, not equal.

Gøsta Esping-Andersen provides a really helpful theory of thinking about citizenship rights within a capitalist state (his book only focuses on Western imperial core states, so just flagging that lol). He begins by arguing that:

all markets are regulated by the state, there is no actual “free” or anarcho-capitalist market,

because of this necessary regulatory function provided by the state, the commodity of wage-labour (i.e., the process of selling your labour-power as a “good” or commodity on a market in exchange for money in the form of wages) is likewise always regulated to some degree, and so finally,

welfare should be understood as the regulatory system of the commodity of wage-labour.

This regulatory apparatus is what grants people “social citizenship rights” - sick leave, pensions, disability and unemployment insurance, welfare payments, food stamps, tax bracket placements, childcare, healthcare, education, housing, so on and so on. Within this framework, Esping-Andersen demonstrates that various welfare regimes produce different citizenship classes - Canada, Australia and the US, for example, explicitly reproduce an impoverished “welfare class” through a marginal, means-tested welfare regime that only provides benefits to the very poorest. Various European countries by contrast tend to have what he calls a “corporatist” welfare regime that often grants different social citizenship rights based on which occupation you have, which he argues emerged from feudal and pre-capitalist religious (esp. Catholic) social forms of organisation.

ANYWAY, the purpose of doing all that set-up is to contextualise how we arrive at the question of gender. Feminists make the basic point that citizenship is also classed by gender - in Unequal Freedom, Glenn talks about this in the US, where white women were legally treated as extensions of their husbands and had no access to property rights, voting rights, and so on. Black women, in contrast, were treated sexually as women by slaveholders (i.e., raped and abused) but denied any and all personhood on the basis of their slave status. Citizenship in the US was historically based first on your ability to hold property (reserved for white bourgeois men), and then on your ability to “freely sell” your labour-power on the market - white women were denied citizenship on this basis because they were consigned to managing what was defined as the “private realm,” i.e., the realm that houses free labourers (white men). This public/private distinction emerges through capitalist markets and the commodity of wage-labour, which produces a sharp distinction where productive labour takes place “out there” (paid for in wages by the capitalist class) and reproductive labour takes place “in here” (i.e., labour that is not paid for in wages* by the capitalist class and forms the social basis of reproducing the public labour pool). 

*for white women. see below

As Glenn argues, this public/private distinction in the US is fundamentally racialised. We can see this difference in the emergence of the suffragette movement, where white women appeal to their whiteness (i.e., free labour status) as the rationale for being granted the right to vote. Black women were disqualified from this movement, and did not benefit from white women’s demands for equal citizenship on the basis of them providing all this unpaid reproductive labour to their white husbands, as Black and other racialised women often provided domestic housekeeping labour for white women (unpaid during slavery and for indentured servants, for wages after its abolition). This leaves Black women without a private realm, subjecting them to a “purely public” arena that is uniquely difficult to organise for unionisation and/or improve working conditions (Deborah King talks about this further in Multiple Jeopardy, Multiple Consciousness (1988)).

Trans-feminism explicates this further - coercive sex assignment at birth classes people on the basis of reproductive capacity. “Females” are impregnated, “males” do the impregnating. This particular system of sex assignment is deeply tied to colonial population management concerns, where measuring the labour capacity of colonised subjects was a matter of managing white wealth (as well as making sure “there weren’t too many of them” compared to white people in colonies - this was especially a major white anxiety after the Haitian Revolution at the turn of the 19th century, the largest slave revolt in history. See Settlers by J Sakai). You can read Maria Lugones’ papers The Coloniality of Gender (2016) and Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System (2007), Alex Adamson's (2022) paper Beyond the Coloniality of Gender, and Guirkinger & Villar's (2022) paper Pro-birth policies, missions, and fertility for some introductory reading.

(Note: patriarchal gender hierarchies predate and exist outside of European colonial domination - it is a popular white queer talking point that Europe invented gender, that indigenous peoples actually all had epic radically equal genderfuck systems that were destroyed by Europe, and this is a very patronising and racist historical generalisation that I want to avoid making. Third World/Global South feminism is a necessary corrective to this - an arena of scholarship I am sadly not well versed in. Sylvia Wynter is the only scholar I’ve engaged with on this topic, which again, is a very limited slice. I welcome reading recommendations in this area).

While sex assignment is coercive for everyone, it is a particular problem for trans people, who are accused of impersonation and ID fraud if our sex markets conflict with our gender presentation, or we don’t “look like” our sex marker to cis people. Because you need a government ID to do basically anything - getting a job, applying for an apartment, getting a driver’s license, going to school, buying a phone plan, being on unemployment, applying for disability, filing an insurance claim, doing your taxes, opening a bank account, getting married, going to the hospital, buying lottery tickets at the corner store, etc - and sex markers appear on basically all government ID in many countries, trans people are systematically denied a whole range of citizenship rights (and thus personhood) on the basis of this sex assignment. Trans people are not merely treated as the wrong gender, they are ungendered, and by this process, rendered ineligible for personhood. Like just as an example, gay marriage is a luxury to trans people, as gay marriage is based on the state recognising both you and your partner’s gender in the first place. (See Heath Fogg Davis’ paper Sex-Classification Policies as Transgender Discrimination (2014) for example. Butler also talks about this on a more fundamental level in Bodies That Matter (1993), and Stryker & Sullivan also discuss this in The Queen's Body, the King's Member (2009)).  

This is likewise the impetus behind anti-trans bathroom bills and sports bans - citizenship guarantees, among other things, a right to public space, and these bans are meant to deprive transgender people access to those spaces. These bans should be understood as a way of circumventing the much more difficult process of revoking the citizenship of trans people outright by using a component of citizenship (sex assignment at birth) to impoverish the quality of citizenship that trans people have access to. This is why bans on medical transition are not actually just about medical oppression, but the oppression of trans peoples’ abilities to live in society in general. An instructive parallel is abortion bans for pregnant people, who, in addition to facing medical oppression and violence by being denied healthcare, are likewise systemically marginalised through being forced into the role of “mother” (again we see how cissexualism reduces people to reproductive capacity), economically marginalising them by reducing their capacity to earn a wage, tying them to partners/spouses that now have greater economic and social leverage over them (and thus have greater capacity to assault, rape, and murder them), depriving them of the choice of alternative life paths, and so on.

It’s generally much more difficult to get the state to sign off on unilaterally oppressing a group of citizens by depriving them of citizenship completely, so attacking a group through more narrow and particular policies like healthcare or the use of public space (with the ultimate goal of depriving them of their rights in general) is often much easier and more productive. See Beauchamp's 2019 book Going Stealth: Transgender Politics and US Surveillance Practices, who talks about this in the context of anti-trans bathroom bills in chapter 3. This is also a common thread in disability scholarship, as disabled people are likewise denied much of the same citizenship rights through similar logics - the book Absent Citizens (2009) by Michal J Prince talks about this in the Canadian context. To give an example he uses in the book, in Canada, accessible voting stations were only federally mandated in I believe the 90s, meaning that disabled people were practically disenfranchised until about 30 years ago in Canada, even though there were no laws explicitly banning disabled people from voting.

As a result, any barriers put in place by the state to change your legal name and sex marker should be understood as a comprehensive denial of personhood, not only because we as trans people want our IDs to reflect who we are, but because those barriers make it difficult to do literally anything in civil society. This the basis behind the cry of “trans rights are human rights” - taking away our healthcare rights also fundamentally denies us equal citizenship (and thus personhood), because healthcare is where we get all those little permission slips from doctors and psychologists to change our name and gender marker in the first place. This is of course not remotely the same as being made stateless (trans refugees are placed in a particularly harrowing and violent legal black hole, for example) - I as a white trans person living in the imperial core still benefit from a massive range of material, political and social privileges not afforded to many others, but my transness positions me at a deficit relative to cis people who have the same state citizenship as I do. As I hope I've made clear, it's not a binary case of either having or not having citizenship, but that citizenship is classed, and the quality of your citizenship is heavily dependent on a whole range of social, political, legal, economic, and historical factors that are all largely out of your control.

So not only is gender a barrier to citizenship, it mediates access to realising the full range of personhood within a regime of state citizenship. Trans people are not the only group effected by this, as I described above, but trans people are a group that makes obvious the arbitrary, coercive, and unequal nature of sex assignment through its connection to state citizenship.

[saintjosie]

apologies if you’ve talked about something this before, but your post on experiencing exclusion in trans fem circles on account of being an east asian woman who speaks up came up on my dash and it reminded me of something that‘a been troublingme.

i’m also asian and trans, and i’m always really sent off-kilter when i see white trans people idealizing japanese aesthetics and asian people in general. so many white trans people use anime tropes and aesthetics while also othering real asian people, esp other asian trans people. does it feel appropriative/fetishistic to you?

i guess it’s just something that echoes general white-centric society but it feels like a lot of white trans people focus more on their transness and forget that their whiteness doesn’t just go away or get excused, if that makes sense

this is a great ask with no easy answer. the short answer is yes, you’re absolutely right, but there is also a lot of nuance that’s very important to address too.

white people in general have an enormous problem with misunderstanding the difference between appropriation and appreciation. and that applies to appropriating the culture of all people of color because appropriation is a symptom of colonization. part of that is because it’s very difficult to have a catch-all definition that clarifies the distinction between the two because each person approaches the things they consume in a different way, with varying levels of excitement. i simply cannot point a finger at all white people who enjoy anime and say, “this is bad”, because it simply is not true. it would be just as harmful if a white person were to say, “i would never watch anime because i think it’s weird”, because while appropriation is objectively a form of colonization, appreciation is a celebration of diversity. and celebration of diversity is good!

but i think you hit the nail on the head when you say that a lot of white queer and trans people forget that even though that they are oppressed by cis heterosexual patriarchy, the intersection of oppression that exists between oppressed identities and race means that as white people, they still have white privilege. full stop. and so we often have this issue, especially with young queer and trans people (young as in newly realized queerness and transness, not age) where there is a pause in deconstructing whiteness because they are too focused on deconstructing the privilege that they have suddenly lost by embracing their marginalized identities.

and the issue goes even deeper when you realize that people of color also struggle to realize that we often also perpetuate and contribute to oppression of other people of color as well. east asian people in particular forget that even though we are people of color, we do not face the same kind of oppression that black and brown people of color do, and often we perpetuate racism through appropriation of black culture and also just straight up racism. i think most asian people can attest to how often asian people can be racist as fuck. and i’ve definitely seen asian people who think it’s acceptable to make aave and using the n-slur a part of their personality. and at the same time there is an enormous problem with black people fetishizing asian people and latching on to anime and k-pop in ways that perpetuate the oppression of asian people, as well as just being racist towards asians in general.

and root of the issue is that white supremacy affects all of us. EVERYONE has whiteness to deconstruct because we all live in a system that was built on white supremecy, even if we do not have white privilege ourselves. the answer is that everyone period must bear the burden of constantly deconstructing whiteness, deconstructing our own privilege, and doing our part to lift each other up. and while it is true that white people often have the most work to do in deconstructing their own privilege, none of us are absolved.

[silvermoon424]

I was born a guy, and I really don't think it's a good thing to blame men for the current dating/marriage rift or to join into polarization points over it, because, just in my opinion, it creates a negative trend. Like, I just want someone to share my pokemon and neopets with, and all the beautiful things and quiet moments, but I may never get there because of this message that dating, men, and marriage are bad. I platonically love you and all my soul sisters, Katy, so this is not an attack on you or your beliefs, but please think about the message before agreeing with it or reposting it.

I totally respect where you’re coming from anon, but I also think it’s very important to address and critique the way men (particularly cishet men) are brought up in our capitalistic, patriarchal society. Men are not inherently bad, not by a long shot; if they were, the patriarchy would not need to work so hard to reinforce itself and convince people that it’s “natural.”

I also think it’s important to address why women (particularly heterosexual women) are increasingly deciding to give up on dating/marriage/motherhood; a lot of it is because we have a choice to do other things now, yes, but I also think it’s because women have historically been given the shit end of the stick when it comes to those things compared to men (in fact, studies have shown that married women with children are more unhappy than single women, whereas single men fare worse than their married counterparts).

I’m trying to put this in a gentle way, but honestly it’s good that men (not talking or insinuating anything about you btw, just talking generally) feel uncomfortable when women bring up how patriarchy has hurt us and has caused us to abandon things like dating. It’s like when I, a white person, feel uncomfortable when POC bring up the ways white supremacy has hurt them and how white people perpetuate it. I SHOULD feel uncomfortable. But I should also do my best to work through my discomfort and try to empathize with POC; I should take note of ways I can make things more bearable for them. I expect men to do the same when they hear about women’s issues.

Again, I’m really not trying to be critical of you or say that your feelings are invalid! It’s just that misogyny has been a rot in basically every culture since the dawn of civilization and it’s not going to go away if we just ignore it. The rise of the manosphere has proven that misogyny is as strong as ever, and if men don’t want to be lonely they need to show us that they respect us as equals.

[lurkingshan]

Only Friends and Engaging with Queer Male Media as a Cishet Woman

I’ve had some good conversations this week with friends as we’ve been unpacking our early reactions to Only Friends, which has only just begun getting into the messy dynamics we know the show is going to explore. One of the things that has come up in conversation is our different reactions to the scene between Boston and Top in the shower stall, and how we each read that in terms of consent, sexual coercion, and what it says about each of the characters. Some of us were relatively unfazed by the scene, finding it to be a fairly realistic depiction of a pushy aggressor and his conquest who is not that into him, but also not really opposed to getting sex anywhere and any way he can. Some were more uncomfortable, recognizing behaviors we might call assault in other contexts and wondering whether we should be condemning the character or the scene for the behavior depicted.

For me, this discussion brought up a lot of my previous fandom experiences, taking me all the way back to ye olden days when Queer as Folk (US) was airing and the majority cishet woman fandom spaces were scandalized, scandalized I tell you, by some of the aspects of gay male culture it depicted. It was not the first or the last show to do so, but it stands out in my mind as an important cultural moment at the turn of century as I was coming of age, when the internet was booming and the proliferation of online fandom spaces was rapidly accelerating. Because QaF did it all—casual sex, cruising, group sex, very public acts of indecency, aggressive boundary pushing and peacocking, open and polyamorous relationships, cheating and betrayal, age gaps—and it depicted it all quite explicitly, which made a lot of people uncomfortable. Especially women who were used to thinking about sex and relationships through two primary, and heavily socialized, lenses:

heteronormative romance, and

heterosexual rape culture.

Let’s take a moment to unpack those terms. Heteronormative romance is a big, broad term that I’m using as a kind of container for a lot of things, including patriarchal structures, misogyny, rigid gender roles, purity myths and fetishization of virginity, courtship rituals, promiscuity and respectability politics, the madonna/whore complex, sex as an act primarily for breeding and procreation, expectations of sublimating sexual desire in service of caretaking for others, and so on. Basically, all the bullshit cis women get jammed into our heads from birth that gives us so many hang ups about sex and love. With heterosexual rape culture, I am referring to the undeniable culture of sexual violence women also endure in a majority heterosexual society, in which we are in constant danger of having our boundaries transgressed, being physically and psychologically hurt, and then being told it doesn’t matter because our personhood has always been in question and never mattered as much as any one man’s power or pleasure. I’m not going to drop a bunch of citations for the above because this is tumblr and I have escaped the icy grip of graduate school, but if any of these ideas are unfamiliar to you, google is your pal (and please read about intersectionality as it relates to these concepts while you’re at it, because there are layers of identity that make these dangers worse for some, like our trans and BIPOC sisters, and all of this is undergirded, as ever, by white supremacy).

So, yes, engaging with media about sex is fraught for women, especially when that media does not conform to our heteronormative ideas of morality that have been shaped by all of the above, and particularly when we as individuals have not done the work to unpack and interrogate our socialized beliefs, which is often the case for cishet women especially. Many of us instinctively cringe away from unromantic depictions of sex. Many of us can’t stand cheating and betrayal in our love stories. Many of us shy away from media that depicts the unfortunate reality of grey and dubious consent. All of that is valid, to an extent, and rooted in the way we have been taught to think about this stuff from birth, and the ways we’ve had to adapt to survive. 

But, here’s the thing, girlies: most of those socialized hang ups I just talked about? Do not apply to a story by, for, and about queer men. 

Before you start yelling, here is your disclaimer: of course patriarchy and misogyny also hurt men. Of course rape culture also exists in queer communities, and of course some queer people engage in heterosexual sex, so these are not mutually exclusive categories of people. And, importantly, cishet women are not the only ones who struggle with these tensions—just the ones who are most relevant to this particular post. 

So, after that long and winding road, back to the point: this debate about the bathroom scene in Only Friends is the same shit that’s been debated in majority female fandoms around depictions of queer male sex since time immemorial. And whatever your personal feelings are on that scene, or the no doubt numerous other depictions of questionable romantic and sexual etiquette and dubious consent coming our way in this show, what it boils down to is this: can a majority cis woman fandom step outside of our own conception of sexual morality to engage with this show not with judgment, but with curiosity about what sex and relationships look like for queer men? This show has an entirely queer male writing and directing team. It is made with love by people of the community, for the community. They know what they’re about, they have resumes demonstrating they are damn good storytellers who understand safe sex, consent, sexual health, and sex work, and they are here to tell us a story grounded in their reality. BL has been moving in fits and starts toward depictions of sex that are more honest about queer male experiences, and Only Friends, spearheaded by the Jojo Tichakorn Phukhaotong (who demonstrated quite ably that he has a firm grasp on consent, sexual assault, and the damage that dubious consent can cause in The Warp Effect), is the next step in that evolution. The key point is that sexual activity simply does not mean the same thing or carry the same associations and hang ups for queer men as it does for cis women. With that in mind, can we try our best to process and critique this story on their terms, instead of our own?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Only Friends is not going to be a good time for people who are looking for romantic depictions of relationships and sex or invested in identifying heroes and villains amongst this cast of characters. This show is about deeply flawed people hurting each other, rooted in the lived experience of the Thai queer male community—and those of us who do not share all of those lived experiences may not understand the nuances of every single thing that is happening. We can be sure that the characters will all be wrong sometimes and they will all do things we think are stupid or reckless or unkind. Does that mean we can’t have empathy for them? Do they have to act in a way we think is morally “correct” in order to love them? You don’t have to be comfortable with the things these characters do, and it’s certainly valid to point out when you think lines have been crossed. But attempting to sort them into “good” and “bad” camps is pointless, and moralistic judgment of their behavior is out of place, particularly when it comes from a place of trying to force them into our own irrelevant frameworks for sexual politics. 

And with all that said, I am passing the baton over to my dear friend @waitmyturtles, because there’s an entire aspect of the intersectional cultures at play here that I have barely touched on—Only Friends as an Asian queer story that is building from a specific lineage of Thai queer media. I’m gonna let her take the mic for that part, and say thanks to her, @bengiyo, @neuroticbookworm and @wen-kexing-apologist for reading this over and helping me think through what I wanted to say here, and shoutout to @williamrikers whose post I also linked to above. 

[heterophobicdyke]

That kthulu woman literally is married to a male and has a kid with him and has whined before about how he's "allowed" to go out at night and spend time with his friends and hobbies and have fun while she has to stay at home taking care of the kid lmao she should be the last one defending het partnerships but I guess she needs that copium. If you tell her something though she will defend him by saying he does more chores around the house than her since she's disabled... alright sis. And last time I visited her blog she announced she was pregnant with a second child lmao soon she will have no time to argue with lesbians on the internet thanks to her useless man god bless

This is why if I didn’t try to normalise non-lesbian “radical” women living celibate/febfem lives for women to properly gain traction on the feminist movement then I’d not be a radical feminist. Me doing so is *because* I’m not leaving radical feminism for heterosexual women to own it and make it libfem again.

I left for a few years because I just couldn’t be bothered with the waste of energy on how bad men are for “radical feminist” women, not just for us individually but as a movement, while they refuse to leave them. Like sure if you’re actually in a threatening situation and can’t leave then that’s different but you aren’t. You love him so much, the moment people start questioning why you stay.

I left because of the hypocrisy - they call TIFs traitors for identifying as men, despite most TIFs being gnc lesbians and forming dysphoria from being treated like they’re a man their entire lives, while they think it’s misogyny to even have their male/female relationships questioned through a radical feminist lens.

I left because if the main objective of radical feminism is a re-ordering of society to eliminate patriarchy and male supremacy, why do we focus so much on what lesbians do in bed? How much lesbians are apparently “so manly” for being sexual - and when lesbians internalise that homophobia and identify as men they’re class traitors?

I now focus on how radical feminist actions align with a “re-ordering of society to eliminate patriarchy and male supremacy.” So, with that in mind, depriving men of sex and romance is literally number one - until they clean their act up. I’m anti-makeup, but whether a woman wears makeup or not is not stopping the radical re-ordering of patriarchal society. Not in any meaningful ways. That’s a reaction to patriarchy, not what necessarily perpetuates it. It’s a cope.

Men need to have less power in society for a re-ordering. So more women need to stop ironing men’s shirts for work, need to stop taking care of his kids while he builds the wealth (and is the only one to have financial literacy), need to stop depending on men for any kind of support, and need to deny them anything else that keeps his class in the powerful position. Because men abuse power. As Jenny Holzer says, “it comes as no surprise.”

After 16 years around radical feminism I’m tired of the venting circles and microanalysing meaningless things women do like paint their nails for whether it’s feminist or not. How about the elephant in the room? The male/female relationships? Let’s get fucking real about how and when women provide men with power that they don’t deserve. Women aren’t angry enough. Radical feminism IS the angry woman’s feminism.

[velvetvexations]

Hey it's me again back so soon! Right after I sent the thing about butch & femmes, it goes into how Karla helped write and edit the Women Identified Woman manifesto. She then goes on to say that she somewhat regrets how cautious and conservative it was (in her own words).

She talks about how the Women Identified Woman manifesto avoids talking about the sexuality part of lesbianism in an attempt to make heterosexuals more comfortable.

She writes:

"We even eschewed the term "lesbian," with all its sexually loaded baggage, and called ourselves "woman-identified women" - that is, those who chose to work with and for others of our gender. It was a term even heterosexuals could feel comfortable claiming.

In retrospect, I think our position was a tragic error. We should have taken a more blatantly sexual stance. Our "cop-out" on this issue allowed straight women to continue thinking that lesbians really didn't do much in the absence of a penis and let them assume that straight women, too, could be "political lesbians", since our definition didn't depend on sexual acts."

and

"In addition to desexualizing lesbianism, the document declared that a lesbianism is a socially constructed "category of behavior possible only in a sexist society characterized by rigid sex roles and dominated by male supremacy.... In a society in which men do not oppress women and sexual expression is allowed to follow feelings, the category of homosexuality and heterosexuality would disappear."

Karla admits that in retrospect, the Women Identified Woman manifesto and the radical lesbian movement was very biphobic.

"We did not equate this utopian ideal with bisexuality. In fact, radical lesbians considered bisexuals dangerous "fence sitters" who refused to commit to lesbianism because they wanted to hang onto their heterosexual privileges."

She then describes other radical lesbisn manifestos who describe bisexuality as a result of a "struggle with privilege and fear".

Karla then goes into a story of how she spread the Women Identified Woman manifesto, but I'm hoping the part about bisexuality comes back into play. I want to see her explain more of the biphobia. Considering the book has a theme of Karla believing in something in good faith, realizing it wasn't exactly helpful, and then going out of her way to connect more with the people she misunderstood, I'm hoping this comes up again.

I once read a paper published in the early 2000s titled something like "Butch, Femme, And Women-Born-Women; The Manage E Trois of the 90s". It goes into a lot of detail about how radical lesbians as well as political lesbians (sometimes they worked together, sometimes they butt heads) tried their best to change what lesbianism meant -- and they succeeded. They actively pushed bisexuals, butches, femmes, and transgenders out of the spaces they originally created themselves. I wish I could find it again because I bet after reading The Lavender Menace, I would pick up on things in that article that I missed the first time.

Thanks again for reading, feels like I'm a penpal sending you letters lol!

- 🪻💀

radical lesbians tend to have the most amazingly conservative politics you could imagine but like transradfems they change one value to another (heterosexual to homosexual, or even man to woman) and it's like, wow, so radical

[odinsblog]

are you disappointed that bree newsome wants trump reclected?

Bree Newsome is a prolific tweeter and I’ve looked, but I haven’t seen anywhere where she said that she wants Trump to be re-elected. Please send me the link to the specific tweet if I’m wrong.

I understand and agree with much of what Bree has been saying on Twitter though. I mean, I dO get it. I think her major concern is that 1) in some important ways, the difference between Trump’s policies and some of Biden’s policies has not been all that great, and 2) if Biden should win (definitely not a guarantee) liberals will go right back to brunch and act as if the problem is gone and everything is “okay” again.

As far as the first point goes, you don’t need to look any further than Biden’s Title 42; or how the Biden administration literally sued to keep using Trump’s previous racist immigration policies. Not a good look. And now, you’ve got Democrats trying to out-Republican Republicans by showing how tough cruel they can be to refugees who are legally seeking asylum at the Southern border. Bottom line, the immigration policies are white supremacy-lite, and some of the changes Biden is proposing—like forcing asylum seekers to wait in another country while the government takes its sweet time with endless immigration red tape—these changes will fundamentally change America’s immigration system, for the worse.

And that’s without me even touching on how badly Biden is fucking up with Palestine.

And as for the second point, conservative Democrats have gone back to brunch once orange man gone. Remember how hard Democrats came down on the Trump administration for their poor Coronavirus response? Yet now we have the CDC basically telling people to stay their asses at work even if they’ve tested positive for COVID. WTF?? Did I mention that measles are making a comeback?? And Biden isn’t saying anything, and neither are his surrogates. And so it is perhaps this tendency towards inaction(?) that is the most significantly damaging and damning aspect that creates disaffected voters who should be motivated to get rid of Trump and Republicans writ large —in a lot of ways that matter, disaffected voters don’t see any significant differences. Sure, the stock market is doing great, but people are getting their asses kicked on a lot of day-to-day, kitchen table issues. Unemployment is down, but a lot of people still have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet.

So yeah, I won’t be dismissive or derisive about Bree Newsome. She’s making some really valid points for anyone who is willing to actually listen.

Now that all said, I think that there is something fundamentally wrong that people are missing when they say misguided things like, “We survived one Trump administration, and we can survive another one.” A lot of marginalized groups and oppressed people won’t survive a second Trump administration. They just won’t.

Because if you thought it was bad the last time, I promise you the next Trump administration won’t be anything like the last one. Last time Trump was unprepared and didn’t even expect to win, so they made rookie mistakes. That won’t happen next time. The next Trump administration will be stacked from top to bottom with diehard Trump loyalists who will ruthlessly execute his most racist policies, foreign and domestic. (See also: Project 2025).

And yes, Biden is 100% for shit on his policy of standing by Israel no matter what. People who agree with Bree think that we will, more or less, have the same kind of problems under Trump that we’re having under Biden now. Those people are what I like to call deadass wrong.

Literally EVERYTHING will become exponentially worse in a second Trump term. For everyone who isn’t a wealthy, cisgender heterosexual white male.

Just imagine America with a Republican controlled House and Senate. Goodbye Medicare and Social Security. Goodbye labor laws. So long minimum wages. See ya, state local and federal courts not totally stacked with Federalist Society judges. It was nice knowing you, “shithole” countries full of people who I love and care about.

Look, I finally figured out something that used to bother me when I first became politically aware: it bugged tf out of me whenever I heard someone say, “THIS is the most important election everrrr!! Because THIS time, democracy itself is on the line!” Pfft. I was like a lot of people I see now, saying “But that’s what you said about the last election.” The truth is, every election is pretty much life or death. Every single one. Because elections aren’t like something you do once, and then afterwards everything is all good forever and ever. Maybe it should be, but you got assholes like Mitch McConnell and Ron DeSantis and Trump and whoever comes after them, you got people who will always be trying their hardest to constantly make shit worse for everyone who isn’t wealthy and white. They aren’t going away. So we can’t go away either. Because the moment we checkout and go back to brunch, they get right back to working on their usual transphobic, homophobic, misogynistic, racist, bullshit culture wars.

So as long as Republicans, Libertarians and conservative “Democrats” keep punching in, we gotta punch in too.

I wanna be really clear about something here: Joe Biden has done some very good things (like capping the cost of insulin), but he has also been, in many ways (not all), a terrible “Democratic” president. Biden is far too enamored of “bipartisanship,” and reaching across the aisle (to people who do not want to compromise), and Biden is far far too enamored of the non-existent good old days™ when Republicans weren’t the evil pieces of shit that they are now, and he takes far too long to change his position on important issues. Like Palestine.

But yeah, (can’t believe I’M saying this) he’s definitely better than a second Trump term will be. And even if he’s slow to change positions, at least he can be persuaded. Trump can’t.

I’m not white and I’m not rich. I am terrified of a second Trump term. I’m basically a single issue voter now, and my issue is keeping Trump out of office and HOPEFULLY making him pay for every single law he’s broken.

[sophiegold123]

Panel Presentation: "Telephone" by Lady Gaga ft. Beyoncé & "Q.U.E.E.N." by Janelle Monáe ft. Erykah Badu

By Sophie Goldberg

"Telephone" by Lady Gaga ft. Beyoncé

The music video Telephone by Lady Gaga ft. Beyoncé serves as a continuation of "Paparazzi", where Gaga was arrested for killing her abusive boyfriend by poisoning his drink. It features a storyline where Lady Gaga is imprisoned but eventually escapes with Beyoncé's help, and they then go on to poison Beyoncé’s boyfriend and others in a diner and run from the police.  

 Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”

 Mulvey discusses the concept of the male gaze, where the camera represents the perspective of a heterosexual male viewer, objectifying female characters for the pleasure of the male audience. Beyonces and Lady Gaga’s portrayal aligns with certain aspects of the male gaze. The music video inevitably attracts male attention as the camera frequently lingers on their bodies and costumes, emphasizing their sexuality and allure.  Mulvey states “Traditionally, the woman displayed has functioned on two levels: as erotic object for the characters within the screen story, and as erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium” (716). For example, when Lady Gaga first enters the prison everyone is wearing revealing clothes, and as she's pushed into her cell officers strip her down, leaving her with nothing but fishnets. Another instance occurs when Lady Gaga and three other women wear studded bikinis and engage in a provocative dance down the prison corridors. Spectators also see them through the lens of a security camera, furthering the voyeuristic aspect. 

However in "Telephone," both Lady Gaga and Beyoncé also challenge traditional notions of passive femininity by taking on assertive, dominant roles. Mulvey states that “pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female’ (715). Women are presented as spectacle as the man's role is “the active one of forwarding the story,” (716) Lady Gaga and Beyoncé disrupt traditional narrative conventions  by defying societal expectations of female passivity and instead taking control of their own narrative. Gaga and Beyoncé portray themselves as empowered and even dangerous figures as in the music video there are depicted acts of violence against men.   

 Bell Hooks, “Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators”

Hooks discusses how Black female spectators often engage with media representations critically as  “ mass media was a system of knowledge and power reproducing and maintaining white supremacy. To stare at the television, or mainstream movies, to engage its images, was to engage its negation of black representation.” (308) In "Telephone," Beyoncé's confident demeanor, assertive actions, and her role as the one with more agency than Lady Gaga—having the power to bail her out of jail—can be viewed as empowering examples of Black women asserting their autonomy within mainstream media.

Furthermore, Hooks critiques mainstream media for its tendency to eroticize and objectify Black women's bodies. In the video, there is a moment in which there is a high angle shot of Beyoncé's cleavage as she sits across from her boyfriend in the diner. Although, within the framework of the oppositional gaze, Beyoncé's character adopts a rebellious stance, refusing to conform to the gaze of desire and possession. Instead, she asserts her power by poisoning her misogynistic boyfriend and evading the police.   

 Audre Lorde, “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference”

In Lorde's essay, she states “As women, we must root out internalized patterns of oppression within ourselves if we are to move beyond the most superficial aspects of social change.” (122) One such pattern is internalized misogyny, where women devalue themselves and others, which can lead to judgmental attitudes towards different lifestyles and choices. In "Telephone," Beyoncé exemplifies Lorde's words by not passing judgment on Lady Gaga's choices when she bails her out of jail. Despite their differing lifestyles, they unite against a common oppressor. Furthermore, societal expectations surrounding gender roles can also be internalized forms of oppression, such as conforming to domestic responsibilities. In the video Lady Gaga challenge these norms when she incorporates the stereotype of women in the kitchen within a segment titled  “Lets Make a Sandwich”, but instead of adhering to these norms she instead puts poison in all of the food. 

Furthermore, Lorde underscores  the need to recognize differences among women as equals , relate across the differences, and utilize them to enrich collective visions and struggles. This is shown in the music video through the camaraderie and alliance depicted between Lady Gaga and Beyoncé. The video embraces diversity within feminism, showcasing representations of differences in sexuality and race, yet emphasizing a shared goal of empowerment. This sentiment is also echoed in the lyrics, “Boy, the way you blowin' up my phone , Won't make me leave no faster, Put my coat on faster, Leave my girls no faster” 

"Q.U.E.E.N." by Janelle Monáe ft. Erykah Badu

 Janelle Monáe's music video for 'Q.U.E.E.N.,' featuring Erykah Badu, serves as a freedom anthem within a science fiction dystopia. The title itself, 'Q.U.E.E.N.,' is an acronym representing marginalized communities: Queer, Untouchables, Emigrants, Excommunicated, and Negroid, reclaiming royal imagery to challenge traditional hierarchies of race, sexuality, and class. Monáe's Afrofuturist vision suggests a revolution, where marginalized communities and differences are celebrated rather than ostracized. The music video features rebel time-travelers that are frozen in a museum and brought to life by music. In the video's narrative, the song functions as part of a “musical weapons program” that disrupts the status quo, allowing the rebels to move through history and forge a new future in the present.

 Laura Mulvey “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” 

   Mulvey argues that traditional cinematic narratives often reinforce patriarchal ideologies and power structures as they cater to a male gaze. The music video "Q.U.E.E.N." offers a narrative that challenges this as it features strong, empowered female protagonists who challenge traditional gender roles and expectations. Janelle Monáe wears a black-and-white tuxedo, disrupting the traditional notion of gendered clothing styles. The ladies all dance with each other and build eachother up such as when they reply and affirm each other “Is it peculiar that she twerk in the mirror? And am I weird to dance alone late at night? (Nah) And is it true we're all insane? (Yeah) And I just tell 'em, "No we ain't" and get down”. Here, the mention of twerking in the mirror is not sexualized but used to empower the female body.  

Bell Hooks, “Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators”

  The oppositional gaze is seen in the music video as Black female spectators engage with the visual representation of empowerment and resistance depicted in the video. Monáe uses both queerness and Blackness as examples of modern “freakishness.” Monáe doesn't assign a "freaky" status to queerness or Blackness herself, instead, she challenges listeners to interrogate why these identities are perceived as "freaky." She suggests that what society deems as "freaky" is simply the act of being true to oneself. The lyrics declare those differences as things to be proud of  stating "Even if it makes others uncomfortable, I will love who I am". Monáe and Erykah Badu illustrate the way society "freakifies" their Blackness, showcasing how joy and celebration within Black culture are often viewed negatively due to racist stereotypes. The hook in the song highlights this, asking: “Am I a freak for dancing around? Am I a freak for getting down? I’m cutting up, don’t cut me down.” Black female spectators can find empowerment in seeing how the song recognizes differences and individuality as prideful assets. 

 Audre Lorde, “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference”

Lorde emphasizes the importance of recognizing the intersections of age, race, class, and sex in understanding women's experiences. The video highlights the oppression faced by diverse identities and experiences of Black women,  as well as showcases their resilience in the face of it.  The lyrics “Add us to equations but they'll never make us equal” resonates with Lorde’s claim that simply incorporating marginalized groups into existing systems does not address the underlying power imbalances or inequalities. Monáe’s next lyrics recognizes these inequalities stating “She who writes the movie owns the script and the sequel, So why ain't the stealing of my rights made illegal? They keep us underground working hard for the greedy, But when it's time pay they turn around and call us needy (needy)” Lorde further  advocates for collective action and solidarity among women of different backgrounds to achieve liberation. In "Q.U.E.E.N.," the song's message of female empowerment and solidarity is highlighted as Monáe and Badu come together to celebrate different identities, for example sexual and racial identity. Janelle Monáe promotes unity and collaboration among women as she says “Will you be electric sheep? Electric ladies, will you sleep? Or will you preach?” According to Janelle Monáe it is up to this community and this generation to create its new norm and break down the walls that limit them.

Discussion Questions:

Lorde says ““By and large within the women’s movement today, white women focus upon their oppression as women and ignore differences of race, sexual preference, class and age. There is a pretense to a homogeneity of experience covered by the word sisterhood that does not in fact exist.” In the music video, do you think Lady Gaga is focusing on the oppression of just women in general and treating the experience of all women the same, or is she not necessarily ignoring the differences but the video just does not explicitly address them .  

Is trying to make money and bring attention using our bodies promoting sexism even though it is our choice and feel empowering or confidence boosting

In music videos is using Sexuality and promiscuity still catering to the male gaze even if they are active agents in the narrative? What about in the cinema?

[aronarchy]

That’s when, somehow, the proprietary logic of our emotion, what Alva Gotby calls our “emotional reproduction” of one another and ourselves, along these propertarian lines, is weakened and loosened. Instead we see outbreaks of Red Love, as Alexandra Kollontai called it. Red Plenty, was Mark Fisher’s term. (I’m not sure Mark Fisher was down for our family abolition at all.) I think the emotional level of “red plenty” is the feeling that we are secure in the very contingency of our caring and cared for-ness. Where we don’t need containers like the family, like marriage, like private property, to reassure us that we will be held tomorrow, as well as today.

Indeed, those containers that I just mentioned, family, and all the mechanisms that come along with it (like inheritance and marriage and so on): they are already quite fallible. They do fulfill certain social reproductive functions adequately from capitalism’s point of view. But everyone knows a husband can walk out on you (or worse, maybe, not walk out on you, in some cases?). It is us that the family is not serving. It’s serving the market and the state pretty well.

I keep noticing that the conversation about the crisis of white masculinity in America doesn’t really refer to the ample evidence, the sociology, that shows that men benefit massively from heterosexual marriage. Even with all their complaints, like: “there’s no male breadwinner household anymore” and “women aren’t respecting men anymore.” Whatever narrative is being peddled by Jordan Peterson, basically. The hard evidence is basically that marriage is a great deal for men. It’s a great labor deal for heterosexual men. That’s why they don’t leave marriages. They cheat, but they don’t leave (unless their wife has a life-threatening disease).

TFSR: One of the things that you said that’s really important that comes in feminist and Gay Liberation texts from the ’70s is this idea that the family gives to the worker this mini hierarchy. You get yelled at by your boss at work, but you come home and you get to lord over your wife and children. And then there’s a chain of hierarchy there too, where the husband has power over the wife, or the wife maybe has power over the children. It’s the little laboratory in learning your place. And then also the violent pleasures of having power over someone, too.

I think that’s really an important thing to pull out. That’s how I tried to explain to myself this current movement of, in a moment of devastation and economic precarity for so many people, why there’s a parental rights movement. Why is that the thing? That’s one place where these people are naturalized into having power over someone where they have no power in any other situation perhaps?

SL: Yeah, yeah. That’s fascinating.

Gosh, there’s something I literally thought just a minute before getting on this podcast with you, Scott. Someone shared a snippet of Hannah Arendt, who is a philosopher I’ve always disliked. She’s very, very conservative, in my opinion, anyway. But there was a section of an essay by her that I’d never read, which was her essay opposing desegregation! I didn’t even know this existed! Anyway, she argues that it is too great of an infringement on parental rights, basically, to demand that children go to desegregated schools if their parents don’t want to create a desegregated family culture. She has this fantastically clear and strong statement in favor of the primacy of family: the supremacy of parental authority over the realm of the public. I don’t know if this is actually useful, you may want to cut this from the recording. But I was just thinking about the social crisis that she was writing from within. The tumult of that moment. She’s writing from this moment of racial justice, upheaval, and movement and she’s saying, “The Family is threatened by this, and I choose to uphold the Family.”

I think we need to get braver. I think we need to be able to say, against the right-wing assault against Critical Race Theory: yeah, fine, this does threaten the family. I think there are so many similarities between that “integration” fight and this moment of organized assault on trans children and trans life more generally. Do people have the guts to understand the structure? The way in which the far right is sometimes onto something when it accuses anticapitalists, feminists, leftists of seeking to undermine the sanctity of the Family? Against Arendt, for example, can we insist that that parental rights can go get fucked, when appropriate?

I think the missing part of left discourse is the willingness to say, “Yeah, we do oppose the Family on x and y fronts.” Or even the willingness to merely criticize the family. I’d like us to be able to say: “We do not consider parental rights a supreme value on this terrain.” But we have to be very clear that at the same we oppose the devaluation, dispossession, expropriation and dehumanization of Black parents. There are many groups whose “parental rights” are always already pretty much null and void within the Child Protective Services industry.

Dorothy Roberts has important scholarship on family policing and the very, very white supremacist structure of parenthood as it is defined in settler-colonial law, and in child protection generally. We can, according to her, and I agree, seek to abolish family policing (and to that extent, basically argue almost for the voices of Black parents to count more), while at the same time fighting for family abolition, as a longer term anticapitalist goal. We can defend disenfranchised parents and at the same time struggle for parental rights to be limited or balanced out (relative to the rights of children).

But family abolitionism is full of these slightly tricky-to-think-through contradictions. Because we live in a world in which family is always already a racially bifurcated technology. Which is not to say that Black, or racialized, or immigrant, or queer, or proletarian working class families aren’t part of the privatization of care into private households. As I said, that privatization is the main thing about the family, so, even these alternative forms of household and social reproduction and kinship (which in many ways have skills and experiences that are going to be super useful for family abolitionism) are part of the family regime. It makes no sense to make exceptions for these sorts of marginalized and underserved and underbenefited families. People who benefit the least from the edifice of family values and the regime of familism (as an economic system) should not be used as a reason to shore up the family!

Saying like, “Oh, we don’t mean those families, we just mean, like, the white bourgeois family!” is much safer. People always want me to say that. They want me to specify that, when I say family abolition, I mean the white bourgeois family. But I think if you define the family—as I think it is correct to do—as a mechanism that really affects everybody and is reproduced, wittingly or not, by everyone, then then you really have to be talking about the privatization of care. It is non-bourgeois, non-white, non-settler people who are going to benefit the most from family abolition. In that sense, they deserve it the most. They should not be exceptionalized, or for that matter, romanticized. Because the private nuclear household is not somehow a wonderful thing, just because it happens to be situated in a racialized, proletarianized community. Unfortunately!

TFSR: Yeah, I want to get to the trans stuff, but where you’re leading me is thinking about the selling out of the radical liberationist movements of the women’s movement and gay movement by taking family abolition off the table. Is that another moment of white supremacist consolidation? I’m thinking about gender abolition, for example, or the word gender itself already includes the power structure. I think family maybe does, too, by thinking that family is related to blood and naturalized relationships, it erases other forms of relating to people that happening, but get called the family maybe, wrongly, and reproduces a kind of racialized logic that our belonging is based on blood.

So, what I’m thinking about here, and what I want to ask you about is on the one hand, why was it taken off the table? Do you think it has to do with this racialized logic? On the positive end of this question, how do we relate family abolition to these other kinds of abolitionist movements? Connecting it back to the abolition of slavery, but also police and prison abolition, which is explicitly Black liberationist and fighting against an anti-Black world? Do you have thought on why that was sacrificed in the vision of the movement and how we can make those connections now?

SL: Yeah, it’s really interesting. The collapse of that imaginary at the height of the struggles that proliferated around 1970 is definitely linked to, simply, our material defeat. It’s literally just the epistemic consequences (epistemicide) of the murder, frankly, and repression, that the state successfully carried out. Our people were stomped into the dust. We can’t really state that enough.

You can look at the beginning of the ’70s and the end of the ’70s and simply compare the texts! I found two things that struck me that were amazingly different. From the early ’70s and, then, in contrast, the early ’80s. A text by Pat Parker, who is a Oakland-based Black liberationist radical nurse and “third world” feminist, who has a speech that she gave at an anti-imperialist convergence, and it is all about how white women on the left need to get with the program of family abolition and stop being scared, because capitalism and the state will not fall until women and children explode the cell of the family (i.e. the private nuclear household).

That text [of Pat Parker’s] is amazing, because it puts Black women really squarely at the forefront of that politics [of family abolition], which I personally kind of imagined, like everybody else imagines, until I looked in the archive, was probably most forcefully articulated by the white, Jewish feminist Shulamith Firestone. It’s just not the case. Actually, Black women were saying it way harder, I discovered.

But then 10 years later (and, again, we have to think of all the successful State repression of Black liberationist struggle in the interim), we have Hazel Carby’s very famous and also very well articulated open letter, White Woman Listen!. I think that’s from 1984. And it’s basically about why white feminists’ excessive emphasis on the family as an oppressive structure is harmful to Black women. And she says, “Black feminists do not deny that the family can be a source of oppression, but it’s also, for us, an important site of survival and resistance to the state.” That’s the text that everybody knows. What people don’t know is the previous one, the one 10 years before that. Because as I said, the memory has been erased.

I find it so interesting that essentially, we’re talking about the defeat of Black feminist abolitionism in the widest sense. The abolitionism of the present state of things in its entirety: family, capital, state, criminal justice system, all of it. That intensity was actually voiced by the Black feminist imaginary. Which makes sense given, for example, Hortense Spillers’ analysis of how it is the Black woman who falls out of the symbolic logics of gendered humaneness in the grammar of American life. And it is the Black female social subject who needs to be made a place for. We don’t know what that place would be. She says she doesn’t know whether that place would be called a family anymore. That’s possible.

Tiffany Lethabo King reads Hortense Spillers’ epochal text, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe,” as potentially family-abolitionist. Tiffany Lethabo King is one of the Black family abolitionist theorists thinking and working today. And she’s not the only one. I quote in my book from Lola Olufemi and Annie Olaloku-Teriba, who are working on “patriarchal motherhood” from a Black radical perspective in the UK right now. I do think maybe it is the defeat of Black power that we must point to, if we want to explain why family abolitionism was no longer thinkable by the end of the ’70s.

[judeesill]

feel kinda guilty about it but i really love andrianne rich’s work...like i know political lesbianism is anathema on radblr but personally i find it extremely valuable from a bisexual perspective? of course i disagree with the appropriation of the term lesbianism but i still think there's useful insight into female relationships to get out of it

fwiw, i don't think you have ANYTHING to feel guilty about! for several reasons!

i haven't read adrienne rich in years, but from what i remember, i do think she had a lot of useful insight, even from a lesbian perspective. and, fwiw, so did most of radblr until, afaik, pretty recently?? idk when exactly everyone turned on compulsory heterosexuality but i feel like that essay was very much in rotation back in like, 2015.

political lesbianism may be anathema on radblr these days, but rdblr isn't everything! you're allowed to have your own opinions! we can't, as a community, preach about critical thinking then turn around and expect ideological purity, especially because as far as transgressions go, being a political lesbian is, i think, not that bad? i assure you, anyone who would try to guilt trip you about liking her work has far more problematic faves, because we all do. i like morrissey :-) i say, take what you can use, and leave the rest.

the definition of the term "lesbian" has been, and some could argue still is, up for debate, and back in the 70s/80s, using "lesbian" to describe a political positionality instead of, say, an innate biological one, would just not have been seen as appropriation by a lot of feminists. and, sorry to be a postmodernist, but "lesbian" as an identity at all is a product of modern social relations. women have been doing gay shit together since before we were even human, much less political subjects. i bet we'll still be doing gay shit under the coming technofascist fratriarchy, even if our understanding of ourselves and the language we use is different 🙃 i just think we should keep our eyes on the prize, which is a world where women are liberated from the yoke of male supremacy and able to live freely, and fuck each other if they so desire. and if adrienne rich had some useful ideas about how to get there, why throw the baby out with the outdated-terminology bathwater?

[nothingspecialapp]

How's believing\calling Sasuke "sasugay"\gay or shipping sns\hating any heterosexual Sasuke ship, is not offensive to Sasuke? How some pro sasuke not consider sns\any Sasuke gay ships-- fics to be bashing\insulting to Sasuke?

Are many of these ship fics laugh on Sasuke's canon decsions, character, look, etc? Yes

Are many of these ship fics put naruto (and kakashi, itachi, basically every character that antagonized sasuke at some point) in pedestal and used as tool to insult Sasuke in every aspect possible? Yes (One don't need to read fics to get what I mean, a little trip to their profiles is sufficient)

So, Who are u kidding? Why not confess and admit that being "bottom" is literally considered insulting in many fandoms( just...why the hypocrisy? many hated charcters are bottoms in fics, why people lie that gay ships aren't used as bashing/slander? And many hated characters are called twinks or any word that will turn into slurs just like how pretty boy turned into a slur) I mean, there is a reason why NH/naruto, kakashi wankers hate ss ship and like sns, and it's not for the good reason you might think it's.

Cannot you people connect the dots between Sasuke being hated in the western fandom, and him also being shipped in gay pairings? 

What's the difference between A-holes saying "sasugay" and these people\shippers, anyway? Just the pro lgbt make someone entitled? Is that it? As long you are pro Lgbt\anything then you can just practice being an anti as a "joke" and it's just "fun"? (and it gets worse when one knows their standing on real life issues, as many of these people are openly zionist or one of the "it's a complicated situation" crowd, or when they're anti-asians and consider every male mangaka to be a misogynist)

And I'm not talking about the fujoshi here, to be clear, even though these people practice pedophilaia openely and I see none poiniting that out, but I should not excpect things from fandoms, the good thing here is that they're (fujoshi) in thier own spaces(most of the time), and that's a different topic, anyway

It's ridiculous how hypocrite the western(pro queer) fandom is. They talk alot about equality and sexuality, etc,  and how being feminine is not an insult, and then they just go and practice that exactly; what they accuse male incels of:- misandry&misogyny(what's up with whining whenever someone ship Sasuke with karin or ino or any girl? What's up with many clowns here getting pissed that Sasuke fit the "casanova" type, especially in east asia? I mean there's different between dislikng SS for logical reasons -being a real pro sasuke one of them-, and getting pissed that your Yaoi fantasy isn't real?), internlized racism (anyone believing Uchiha to be an incest clan and slander them for this is racist to asians), white supremacy (there's a reason why many western fandom believe naruto to be "manly" and attractive(lol), or they consider any calm-darkhaired-pale(asians) male to be "twink", and any hetersexual women to be less of a woman and insulting to women in general -becuase she's attracted to men,the bad type of men, ya know? Because being attractive to itachi, kakashi, any character but Sasuke is smart and "logical"- so they turn her into some queer hero to, somehow, redeem her -sakuino shippers for instance-)

If you're Sasuke fan(shipper or not) and don't (even at core) admit that, then you're lying to yourself or one of the weird fans who hate thier own favs.  There's a thin line that differentiate someone between being a fan and a hater.

It's ridiculous how little of the so called "Pro" Sasuke don't realize that, but there are so little genuine Sasuke fans out there, and I don't blame the people who hide thier liking to Sasuke, cuz sometimes I believe Sasuke fans aren't really his fans (just remembered a male sasuke fan saying that Sasuke has "meh" abilities\skills, and his post become a hating sasuke playground in reddit, and it's not the first kind of such posts that exists in internet)

I agree, one should be objective as possible even when it comes to one's own favs, but not in this way, not when the fandom is already split-up, not when the hystrical Sasuke haters uses anything against him (they even reached a point where they bully anyone who says they like Sasuke, and "Any girl who likes Sasuke have a bad taste" and "who even likes Sasuke lol")

Fandom discourse, in general is bad because it' all about and filled with with hate, not love. Even their love is about hating another. It's a dangerous, disgusting pendulum.

[crvvys]

a lot of women tie in commiserating as a form of bonding in order to better understand their womanhood in surviving heterosexual supremacist institutions and I hate that.

it’s extremely common for women to have complaining sessions within their circles about how awful men are but they still often just come up with ways to deal with that and nothing more. or how the more restrictive burdens of femininity actually bother a lot of women but they don’t abandon them.

I’m all for complaining to feel less alone and to feel heard and understood, to form community. but what I don’t like is how we teach endless generations of girls how to endure the trials of heterosexual relationships and femininity bc of how that is often straight women’s understanding of womanhood. thus it’s assumed we all must go through these things and learn to survive relationships with men even if that doesn’t benefit some women at all. heterosexual supremacy primes all women to be forced into this kind of thinking and to even more or less accept misogyny at times.

i was just listening to a podcast with different segments celebrating Juneteenth and one mini podcast had these two black female comediennes who were discussing Moms Mabley which led to a conversation about black female storytellers and how women often learn family history and advice on life from our female elders. within that conversation one of them talked about how she learned how to survive relationships with men from her aunt and later jokingly said everyone hates their husbands.

and you see this everywhere. women are taught to survive misogyny but not how to imagine their lives without it bc that could mean understanding womanhood from a perspective that doesn’t center heterosexuality.

this is not an argument that attacks women who want to partner with men either. bc I don’t believe in women enduring relationships with men but I want them to know enough about themselves to know whether they enjoy the relationships with men that they engage in (bc I do believe that’s possible) or if they’re enduring them and I think that’s extremely hard to differentiate at times when womanhood is closely tied to heterosexual partnership and enduring all kinds of poor to abusive behaviour from men.

which is why we see the commiserating bc women seek out other women to confirm that they aren’t crazy. and they aren’t! but. when the social script we are taught is that we are not women if we don’t partner with men or perform our feminine role then how are we ever going to become independent self-actualised people who define ourselves as people alone separate from men. we are not opposite from them, we are people all on our own.

too often it’s easiest to follow the social script bc it makes life…more manageable. but the girls that don’t follow it need that support to keep being themselves so that they don’t feel crazy. and more and more girls will follow I think. the social script among women has to change. the mindset is still stuck in a heterosexual death dance between women and men and how all women must learn to survive it. but more of us need to just quit playing and move away from that. truly in order to fight misogyny, we’re gonna have to fight heterosexual supremacy as well.

[leporschespam]

tag 9 people you want to get to know better

[the thing is 9, but i've got 4 :) ]

i was tagged by @braceletofteeth

fhfhf thank you sm <333

i was asked yesterday on tellonym is there anyone you want to know better and i thought of my tumblr moots so hell yeah let's go~~

(i say all enthusiastically as if i have the ability to start conversations 😔✋️✋️)

three ships

no stop there is no possible way for me to narrow this down to three, i've watched far too many shows

we shall attempt 💪💪

- kinnporsche

vegaspete could definitely be up here too, but i'll stick with kinn and porsche (also porsche is my all time favourite character so of course he's up here)

- moonjo x jongwoo from strangers from hell

whatever they had going on was not heterosexual and i will be standing by that

- sae-bom & yi-hyun from happiness

a healthy relationship being on this list? fake marriage, childhood friends, found family, of course they're here. happiness has to be one of my favourite shows and bfhfhdh i adore them

first ever ship

i definitely had some in childhood but the one that i'm really thinking of has to be mulder and scully from the x-files

they consumed my 10/11 year old brain, and continued to do so until i was maybe 12/13

last song

timezone by måneskin

their new album is actually so good, and this is probably my favourite song from it

it's giving kimchay au imo

nah i really need to write a kimchay fic because i've got ideas but the words aren't wording

last movie

eternal summer, and i think this letterboxd review summarises it very well [spoilers firstly]::

it was a solid 3.5/5 i'd say, but especially considering it's from 2006- oh my god,,

currently reading

i literally haven't read a whole book since about summer last year and i feel awful-

anyway

various stuff on ao3, mainly kinnporsche, but a few gap stuff, some goncharov (the fics are so good istg), and yeah dude a lot

i've got 488 fics downloaded–

yEahh

currently watching

- gap

let's fucking go sapphics

it's perhaps a bit all over the place, but i have been in desperate need of sapphics, and it hasn't disappointed

- all of us are dead

(rewatch) korea just does zombies so much better. su-hyeok x cheong-san, and mi-jin x ha-ri supremacy

- between us

i haven't watched it in a little while because i wasn't feeling amazing and wanted stuff i knew well, hence going back to aouad, but i've got to ep 4 (and omg omg), and will be resuming at some point soon hopefully

i'm also gonna mention stuff i recently finished because aaaaa

- vincenzo

went in expecting a dark mafia show, got a comedy mafia show (and i am SO here for it)

- till the world ends

i need other people to watch this for my own sanity, had me sobbing at 2am last sunday when i finished it

currently consuming

do you consume oxygen–

currently craving

no more writers block would be nice :)

i haven't had it for so long and i thought i was free, but uh no :(

i am vaguely writing though besties (30 wips 😩✋️ send help)

tagging

of course there's no obligation to continue this <33

@saturnskyline @kinnporsche-n-chill @spookyspiderseb @achilleanskops

[r-rook-studio]

The Sherwood Tour: Character Creation

Found out this morning that Sherwood has sold 72 copies over the three weeks it's been live on DTRPG and Itch. With physical copies arriving at Spear Witch this week, I figured this would be a good day for a Sherwood tour while also admiring Eric Swanson's work on these chapter headers. Today, we'll focus on character creation.

As I was winding down work on Enoch's Wake, I wanted to get a chance to reconsider and rethink how that attempt to do my own version of the core rules of Traveller. It seemed a good fit for my love of the Robin Hood legend, which I'd revisited during the 2020 and 2021 lockdowns. As omicron threw the world back into partial lockdown, it gave me an excuse to immerse myself in movies, novels, Middle English balladry, medieval and Victorian romances, and even a few scholarly works.

Sherwood keeps the lightweight Traveller-inspired 2d6 mechanics I'd used for EW, but adjusts the four attributes and works with them in new ways. Before we start with character creation, though, lets look at the principles:

Be an outlaw! Even if a sheriff never declared your character a wolf’s head, you do not need to worry about what a typical medieval villager or aristocrat would do or think. The forest is too grand a place to for polite society’s petty anxieties about sexuality, gender, and propriety. Make your character whomever you want them to be.

Fight for something! Struggle for justice, scheme for revenge, plot for personal gain. Set some goals for your outlaw and your band that are bigger, wilder, and more wonderful than your character’s former, respectable world allowed.

Dabble with magic! While the traditional Robin Hood ballads do not foreground the magical and mysterious, plenty of Robin Hood novels, movies, and television shows have, and many other medieval outlaws stories included curses, prophecies, spellcraft, fey spirits, and even dragons.

Ditch the ethnic conflicts! The Saxon-Norman conflict was tacked on to the Robin Hood legend and outlaw tradition in the 19th century.

Fuck the true king! Waiting for King Richard to return was a very late addition to the Robin Hood legend. In the original ballads, kings were occasionally useful tools if the outlaws could get their help against officials and aristocrats.

Embrace diversity! While bigots who know little of history will complain, avoid confining yourselves to the biased and discredited accounts of historians from well over a century ago. Go into the forest and find the range of people living free of white supremacy, religious bigotry, and cis-gender heterosexuality.

People laugh about dying in character creation now, but Traveller was the first time we saw character creation as a stand-alone mini-game with push-your-luck mechanics. If you died, you could try to make the same decisions again but weren't likely to get the same outcome. In EW, I'd toyed with an option I borrowed from several versions of Cepheus, a family of Traveller retroclones and near clones: if things went badly, you were thrown out of your chosen job.

In Sherwood, though, all lifepaths and careers you can choose from are heading to the same place: outlaw life in the Greenwood. The push-your-luck element here is how long you could stay in the wide world before scandal, misdemeanors, or being officially declared an outlaw (and thus having no legal existence).

Attributes

Like EW, Sherwood uses four attributes: Endurance, Luck, Willpower, and Wits. Like Traveller, they can take damage and like Traveller's psi attribute, can be spent down for various effects, but they aren't used to directly modify most rolls. (And be careful how you spend them: while Skill Checks are 2d6 aiming at the magic target 8, Saving Throws are 2d6 equal or under an attribute's current value.) They're rolled 2d6 straight down, though you also roll one wildcard. You can replace any attribute with the wildcard number (if you want to) and then swap any two attribute scores.

Background Abilities

As in EW, everyone gets two Background Abilities. They can increase your ability scores, give you a small collection of starting skills, designate your character an aristocrat, or give you access to sorcery and arcane talents.

Careers

Like Traveller, Enoch's Wake, Cepheus, and similar games, your character has a career. Sherwood gives you five choices that will ultimately lead to the woods:

Hermits might be Christians or just living in the hermitages for seclusion and study (until the hermitages were disbanded and integrated into traditional religious communities). If you didn't take arcane talents as Background Abilities, this is your one chance to learn them. Inspired by Friar Tuck, anyone can become a Hermit.

Traders require a quick test to join, and then decide whether they did their mercantile travels on land or sea (and if they made any secret studies while traveling). Inspired by the traders and merchants who work with the outlaws in the Hannah Weinstein-produced, CPUSA-funded, and Richard Greene-lead Adventures of Robin Hood TV series.

Performer, a background I keep coming back to for fantasy or medieval games, learn a bit from their time traveling, a bit from their time playing in inns across the land, and a bit from studying old stories. Obviously inspired by various versions of Alan-A-Dale, but also by some versions of Little John that had him living as a festival wrestling performer before joining Robin.

Laborer is a background anyone can take as long as they aren't aristocrats. They learn their skills from their farm and/or town trades as well as by spending their evenings in roadside taverns and inns. Inspired by Robin's peasant, yeoman, and commoner followers in numerous sources.

Cavaliers is a background anyone can try to get into (though those born as aristocrats are never refused). Inspired by the later ballads and novels in which Robin Hood and many of his followers were aristocrats, field sports, jousting, and time in various courts provide most of their skills.

There's two other backgrounds that always start as condemned outlaws who eventually join Robin's bands. The Young Outlaw starts the game as an 18 year old with few skills (a simple character creation option) and the Notorious Criminal who chooses their skills based on the criminal profession they once pursued. These were inspired by the ITV Robin of Sherwood versions of Much the Miller's Son and Will Scarlet as well as the versions of both characters in Jennifer Roberson's Marian novels, as well as other Medieval ballads such as Adam Bell.

Finally, once the career is fleshed out, there's

Equipment and the Band

While everyone has some personal equipment (like a weapon), most other items are held in common. Rather than keep an extensive inventory of what members of the band are carrying on an adventure, characters predetermine their encumbrance or load and roll against their group's two shared stats: Resources (to determine what they have) and Legend (to determine who they know and who'd want to help them). The clever group can figure out how to get what they want or need with either.

Next up: Rules and Arcana (coming sometime before Pax U next weekend).

[galadrielspeaks]

ooh for the askgame, arwen and also legolas =)

OOOO Arwen!!! :D

Sexuality Headcanon: She may be married to the most heterosexual man in the world but i am a firm believer that Arwen has kissed a girl before! I think she’s bisexual :)

Gender Headcanon: I think she’s firmly comfortable in labelling herself as a woman!

A ship I have with said character: Ofc her and Aragorn <3

A BROTP I have with said character: HER AND BILBO. I REALLY believe that her and bilbo got along very very well while he stayed there and that she considers him a good friend :) Arwen and Bilbo supremacy!!!!!

A NOTP I have with said character: I think I’ve seen her and Glorfindel being shipped before?? that was a bit strange but i cant think of anything else so yeah that ship probably

A random headcanon: I headcanon she gets migranes! Just makes sense to me :) Although elves don’t really suffer human conditions her human side gets the better of her in this regard!

General Opinion over said character: I love her a lot, I definitely wish there was more content of her Not as Aragorn’s wife if that makes any sense. Like I wish her identity outside of loving Aragorn was explored more!

LEGOLAS!!!!! 🤍⭐️🌿🏹🧚🌿⭐️🤍

Sexuality Headcanon: Gay. But a victim of comp-het! Just like Gimli I think it took Legolas a while to figure out the reason he wasn’t interested in anybody around him was because he hadn’t met the right dwarf yet :) Basically what I mean is that him discovering his feelings towards Gimli definitely led to him having a sexuality crisis.

Gender Headcanon: Once again I think elves are outside the gender binary but Legolas fully embraces this. I think he’s non-binary. Like he’s okay with the role as Prince and such but I headcanon that in formal attire and things of that sort it is almost impossible to tell what gender he is. Legolas doesn’t care what gender people see him as and doesn’t bother defining himself by anything either :)

A ship I have with said character: OBV GIMLI. him and Gimli are the blueprint ‘enemies’ to friends to lovers. nobody does it like they do it 🔥

A BROTP I have with said character: Obviously Gimli!!! I do believe they are best friends. But besides that of course him and Aragorn, I think besides Gimli Aragorn is the closest thing to a best friend he has! Also this is totally a headcanon but I think after the war of the ring he and Frodo got along pretty well in a very sort of casual sense. Also him and Arwen are casual friends as well :) espc after the war of the ring!

A NOTP I have with said character: As we all know from that one post of mine: LEGOLAS X ARAGORN. i am so sorry i know it’s a really popular ship but listen okay we are all much older now, we know better. the elf is fucking the dwarf. aragorn is the straightest man this world has ever seen.

A random headcanon: Oh god I have SO MANY… I headcanon that despite refusing to be a tragic character Legolas is a little bit of a sadder person. If this makes ANY SENSE FKFJJS. Like he’s totally that one friend who is super positive and funny and lightens up everybody’s mood but when you find out their backstory you’re like DAMN. HOW ARE YOU HAPPY?! Also I headcanon that the reason Legolas is so silly is because he is a raised by a village sort of child! His community helped raise him :D and they definitely supported and encouraged his more silly antics! Especially after his mothers death, I could go on for a while about this but I’ll stop here FKFJDJ there’s soooo much I could say about that.

General Opinion over said character: I LOVE LEGOLAS. Love him, I really do. As someone who will crack a joke no matter what situation i’m in, his silliness enduring in the face of evil is so relatable!!!