#i forgot how much they reeked of misogyny

[bugbuoyx]

c/mic book mission: define women outside of their relationship with men mission immediately failed

[davyjoneslockr]

I feel I've just seen the tip of a giant iceberg float scarily close to my boat, but what is the context of 'i hope jakey dies'? Who is jakey and why did his gf (i am assuming) become the target of such awful biphobia?

I’m no expert because I never really got into the joke much, but basically, “I hope Jakey dies” is a meme that started here, making fun of a cringey dynamic some m/f couples have. So don’t worry, Jakey isn’t a real person, just kind of an archetype for an assumedly mediocre “golden retriever”-type cishet boyfriend. Pretty harmless hater brand tumblr humor, basically.

(Honestly, the original post is also where the first red flag kinda popped up for me. The first replies were whatever, but, especially since Jakey is, again, supposed to be an archetype of cishet man, “nonbinary Jakey” to refer to someone’s AMAB nonbinary partner seems. Idk. Telling of how people view AMAB nonbinary people sometimes.)

After that, it kinda just ended up spreading around as a joke here and there, and tbh I kinda forgot about it until that weird Barbie post this ask is in reference to. There’s not much to say about it that hasn’t already been said, but to me, 1) it’s pretty obvious that the original tiktok was either exaggeration or outright bait, and 2) even if it wasn’t, it’s maybe a little cringe, but harmless. But regardless, people are using it to mock (or outright wish harm or death upon) bi women for dating men, or implying that bi women are actually straight and just pretending to be queer (for attention? I guess?). And “I hope Jakey dies” has kinda become the phrase all those folks are spamming ad nauseam. I’ve seen a lot of comments about how people defending the tiktok or calling out the biphobia are just “defending men,” but like. I’m not just seeing things right. This whole thing reeks of misogyny and weird gender essentialism. Because the center of the joke usually isn’t even on the man or “Jakey,” it’s on the woman dating him for expressing that she likes him or whatever.

And also I really hate how people seem to be extremely comfortable with threatening people, or hoping they die or kill themselves, over something that’s “cringe” or somewhat annoying. Like it’s genuinely gross behavior. But idk maybe that’s just me.

[autumnoakes]

i literally ran out of space in the tags ranting about this aksjsjdjsjdjd no, botw/totk doesn't like women. here's why:

the gerudo in botw/totk continue to be written through this racist/orientalist view for male characters. this has been an issue with them since they were first introduced (originally, they were a group of women led by one (1) man. this isn't an issue that started in botw or totk, but that doesn't mean the games don't perpetuate it). the worst part of botw is that gerudo town is meant to be women only (nonbinary characters don't exist in zelda games until echoes of wisdom /joking), but link, a (white) male character, has to enter in order to progress the plot and calm vah naboris. his help is greatly appreciated, but he does it by.... pretending to be a woman by dressing up in gerudo clothing (that he bought from a character serving as a charicature of a trans woman. you can't tell me that vilia's entire character doesn't reek of transphobic views and stereotypes, i won't believe you). there are SO MANY OTHER AND BETTER WAYS HE COULD HAVE APPROACHED THIS.

the men around gerudo town are only there because they want to get into the town itself. why? well, there are women in there. tall, muscular women. they want to *ahem* talk to them. a lot of them don't really want to be approached by a man and in totk, a lot of the girls are cautious around link because he's a man (they make an exception for link specifically in totk, i forgot about that). there is a course that one of the gerudo teaches about how to woo a man (voe) that uh. hm. well, i avoided that part actually akdjskdjs i was already over the misogyny and racism surrounding this entire arc, i wasn't about to have amatonormativity and heteronormativity to deal with also.

the part that keeps on pissing me off though is bozai. bozai, who introduces himself as 35 years old, shamelessly flirting with a disguised link, who is implied to be very young still (i think he's meant to be around zelda's age, which is 17. which is HALF OF BOZAI'S AGE). the interactions with him are played off as comedic (link swindles him out of both pairs of boots, leaving him barefoot in the middle of the desert), but that doesn't really excuse a lot of the shameless flirting he does, even after link doesn't reciprocate his interest (and even considering that link is still most likely a teenager. he's not even considered old enough to drink by gerudo standards).

taking a wild shift actually, i wanna talk about mipha. she's only really relevant to botw, but she has a bit of narrative significant in totk too. mipha is a character who i think had a tonnnn of potential, especially before you first see her on screen. she is fondly remembered by her people, a century after her death, for her kindness, bravery, and strength. several characters still harbour anger towards link because they feel like link's failure had a large hand in mipha's death, and they blame him for it. however it doesn't take long for this to be about the fact that mipha loved link, and even was going to propose to him after the calamity. once mipha is actually on screen, she is never seen without another male character present. she is never talking about herself without either link or sidon becoming a prominent part of the conversation, in that one half of a cutscene where it's just mipha and zelda talking. the other champions have their own character (shoutout to revali who is obsessed with link in a very homoerotic rivalry kinda way. i don't know what the writers were doing there but i think they failed because revali beloved), but mipha stands out to me as someone who doesn't. i think the parallel between zelda and mipha is there, but the writers wanted them to be foils/opposites instead of similar characters, which combined with the amount of screentime mipha had led to her development being that way.

i haven't done a real deep dive into totk but i do really wish they hadn't made zelda haunt the narrative so much in that game. they kinda sidelined her, and her inclusion in the final fight is more supportive/what makes the fight possible to begin with as opposed to actually having a hand in the fight (even in botw she had a more active role against dark beast ganon). again, so much more that could have been done. sonia's death served more as character development and motivation for rauru than anything else.

i made a post the other day about how having badass female characters doesn't mean very much if they're still not as developed as male characters who are meant to be their equivalents. i kinda... wrote that about zelda games lmao. yes, there are badass female characters in a lot of the games, but how to they stand out besides that? do they stand beside their male counterparts, or are they pushed behind? are they allowed to stand beside their male counterparts if they don't meet this arbitrary level of physical strength and prowess?

does the Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom duology like women?

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the WIld/Tears of the Kingdom (Video Game, 2017/2023)

Explain your reasoning in the tags!

[fedonciadale]

Few last asks here reminded me when I was anti-sansa (yeah, shame), just when books came out. Let's be real, I was projecting mean girl stereotype onto Sansa (+I believed she bullied Ary@). I was hoping "she will learn her lesson" and apologize to her sister(back then my fave). All in all, I didn't straight up hated her, I was just (REALLY) annoyed by her behaviour (now I love her more then Ary@). Aand then all the shit happened. (1/2)

(2/3) Eleven y.o. girl abused and molested by whole court? I felt so uncomfortable that I had to stop reading after her chapters and take a deep breath. And this awful assault by Hound. I still prefered Ary, but I was just hoping for Sansa to get out of this court of psychos and be(and feel) safe. Years later I found Tumblr and started reading how people were HAPPY that she was MOLESTED, that she DESERVED it. I quit fandom for almost twelve(!) years. And now I've blacklisted them all.

(3/3 sorry, it's so long) I must say: I don't understand this level of hate. I'm not bashing individual blogs. I'm just curious why general audience reacts so badly to girly kid that dreams of true love. If it was, idk, 2%, 5% I'd be cool. But it's sth around 40% of fandom that hates her dearly. Why? Pov trap wasn't THAT deep. At worst time she was insensitive not downright cruel. I can't quote anything, I block this kind of blogs at once, but I don't get this vitriol at teenage girl.

Hi there!

Sorry, this was sitting in my drafts and I sort of forgot about it over Christmas. 😳

I fell for the PoV trap as well and I liked Ary@ more at first as well (I honestly vibed with her because I was never very girly).

By the end of AGOT I pitied Sansa though. I mean regardless what she had done, Joffrey forced her to look at her dead father’s head. In that moment I felt bad that I had ever been annoyed with her, because surely you wouldn’t wish that kind of experience even on your worst enemy? And at that point I was  still convinced that Sansa played a role in Ned’s capture (which is not true).

Sansa grew much more on me during ACOK. I think I really appreciated her when she saved Dontos despite her own fear. That was when I began to like her. I was also a Jon fan (although season 7 and 8 Jon can rot for all I care), but the amount of hate Sansa got for the stupidest things made me defend her actions.

There are so many people in ASOIAF who are really vile but somehow a teenage girl who fought with her sister and called her names is somehow the worst.

As for why she gets so much hate? The answer is rather easy and frustrating at the same time: It’s the dudebros who only like “badass” women and the misogynists. Both are not necessarily male. I won’t name anyone but there is one blog with particularly astonishing Sansa takes and they are as far as I know a woman, but in my head they are always “dudebro” because they reek of internalized misogyny.

The answer is so frustrating because the misogyny comes so natural to some of them that they never question why they can excuse Bobby B for hitting “that bitch” Cersei (and Cersei is a villain, but that does not mean that it is o.k. that Robert hits her), or Jaime for being slightly condescending or Theon for how he treats the captain’s daughter (because he is so in pain, uwu - I mean, he is in pain, but in ACOK he clearly has a long way to go yet), or Tyrion for exploiting his sex worker Shae (and killing her), or.... you get it.

But somehow, a girl that dreams of a husband who is nice to her and takes her on a pleasure ride on a bark with puppies - that girl is somehow the worst character of ASOIAF.

Apart from the misogyny I think it’s also another effect that happens: GRRM forces you to live through Cat’s and Sansa’s uncomfortable and horrid experiences and their suffering from the patriarchy but there is no way out. No secret power they can activate, nothing. It’s just their wits and survival instinct. You cannot read Sansa chapters and be comforted by the security that she will escape that. It is as if GRRM shakes his readers and forces them to look at it, and apparently that is - especially for some men - very hard to swallow. It is uncomfortable because the readers are forced to look at that experience. And that is why some of them refuse to acknowledge it by victim blaming Sansa. She was a brat, she deserved it. She bullied Ary@, she deserved it. She betrayed Ned, she deserved it. If you look at Sansa’s suffering and tell yourself that she deserves it you can avoid admitting that the system as such is flawed.

It’s the knee jerk reaction of “not all men” or “some women profit from patriarchy” or “feminine women should just be less feminine.” If you blame the victim you don’t have to think about the fact, that it should not be like that. In a way you protect your own mindset from going to deep into how fucked up it is that women are supposed to dress appropriately and stay at home so that they won’t get assaulted instead of that men are supposed to just behave decently.

Thanks for the ask!

[wanderingdreamer2]

Doomsday?

During election day, me and my mother only voted in the afternoon due to time constraints, considering I also have meetings with my clients in the morning. As we go on with our respective precincts, it is inevitable to hear sentiments from voters who are 40-50+ older than me. “Leni? Wala manay klaro?” One voter said. Not surprised, forgot to mention that he’s also a man. I expressed disgust towards them, while hearing them mock the candidate felt inhumane. I did the deed, voted peacefully, and quite shock to see how I am the only student, or a voter who is less than 20 years old inside the precinct, but I didn’t budge. 

My mother, who is assigned to another school and another precinct, since she didn’t transfer yet to my registered address, went on and vote. I waited for her, but then, the line didn’t move because it was announced that the vote counting machine was broken. We waited for hours, 3 hours specifically, until the VCM was back and running. My mom had to move faster and vote, considering that the line is really packed. My stomach was grumbling, unable to endure the hunger that I am holding in. I had to contact my father, telling him to bring a packed dinner for us to consume while I am waiting and after my mother already casted her votes. 

Tons of chismis circled through the area, talking about how vote buying is very rampant in the precincts, and in the municipality that we were registered in. My ninang and ninong, who ran for Governor and Representative respectively, was very much concerns my mom, considering she also works for them as the Municipal Assessor in the municipality. She even lit candles the night before the elections, praying for a safe and fair elections and for them to win of course. By then, it was rumored that other candidates, especially in the Governor position, was accused of vote buying, giving 2-5 thousand pesos to voters. A commotion happened before we went to the precincts, where a sudden incident happened while voters are waiting in line, causing a distraction. 

Mindanao is shockingly, not a Leni-supported region. Most of the voters are UNITeam supporters, even from Cagayan de Oro City alone. Including some of them are my batchmates, highschool peers, Student Body Officers, Citizen Advancement Training officers, and even my teachers in Highschool, which I don’t have a fond relationship with anymore. Most of them are living in middle to upper class households, showing reeks of privilege, misogyny and internalized misogyny over assessing what candidate they are in favor to. Throughout the campaign period, some of them are constantly mocking other candidates, sharing misinformation regarding such topics, especially the history of the Marcos dictatorship and Martial Law. 

Now, if I remember vividly, we did had a Araling Panlipunan subject on our last year in Junior Highschool, specifically about Contemporary Issues, and Martial Law is one of the topics discussed in the course. It is a disgrace seeing the people that I know disregard such information from school, and I am emphasizing this deeply, applauding for their ignorance and pettiness. It is a slap in the face, that even MY AP Teacher is also a BBM-Duterte Supporter. I just can’t help it. It’s depressing. Sad. Bitter. Disappointing. Outrageous. Disgraceful. I can insert tons of negative words here for better emphasis. 

As an individual born after Martial Law, it might be unbeknownst to me, that the past events can mentally scar the vicitims of that era. With my very upscale empathy, supporting a dictator is also a red flag. Fast forward, the unofficial results were in, and it was deeply shocking, to the point where I had to cry silently in my room and hear judgements from both of my parents which are also dismayed in the tallies. Robin Padilla as a Senator? Jesus Christ. If only I know that I’m still living in the dream, I’d consider that. But now? For the love of God, people are just-- unbearable. 

Is this, Doomsday? A cycle of horrors? I’m not sure, and I hope it won’t be.