#is bc i realised i only liked men in theory and not in practice at all

[sapphic-luthor]

i am really on the verge of identifying as a lesbian because i feel like that label really does fit me but what’s confusing me is that there is one fictional tv show character who’s a man who is probably the only man i’ll ever Like but it does really confuse me as to why i feel like i may find him attractive but never any man irl

would just like to generally casually direct you to the lesbian masterdoc just in case you were looking for a bit of a read this lovely friday eve

[madamspeaker]

Hi there, knowing your political interest I wanted to share my thoughts on the German election today. I am German and I’m what they call Generation Merkel. I was 4 when she got elected and pretty much only know her as our leader. I know I am in the minority of this generation when I say: I don’t really want anyone else to lead this country. She is such a character; intelligent, calm and thoughtful. It’s not like other politicians where you basically know they are shite human beings. You really believe she has your best interests at heart. I mean, have you seen where she lives? She lives in an apartment in Berlin. Not like other leaders in castles or at least big houses, no it’s an apartment in a rather unremarkable building. She loves her hiking vacation with her husband and when she has the time, she also enjoys cooking for him. Merkel is so down to earth it’s hardly believable for someone who was the most powerful woman on the planet for many years. I think it’s sad to see her go today (especially bc all three new candidates are utterly impossible and complete dolts). I hope she gets some peace now because god knows this woman deserves it. (But I really have a hard time letting her go :(()

Thank you so much for this!!!! Merkel fascinates me so much, and I will miss her a lot. Here is a woman who has pretty much dispelled every single horseshit theory and myth as to why women cannot be national leaders, and she has done it surrounded by men who have at various stages all demonstrated those supposed very traits that critics say disqualify women - emotional volatility being the main one. She has been the bastion of stability - the one calm presence in a world, particularly in the west, that has often been anything but. I often think about how if someone wanted to know what a Hillary Clinton presidency would look like, you simply have to look at Angela Merkel. They share that common unflappability and methodical approach to problems. Maybe it's their respective background of law and science, and both having been deeply invested in those careers rather than seeing them as just stepping stones to something else. I have always got the impression from Merkel that she looked at the job of Chancellor as precisely that - a job - one that she was hired to do. She has never struck me as being "in it" for any other reason other than governing its strictest sense, that is to say the job description said that you have to govern, and she approached the gig exactly like that. You can't say that about many of the rest in the top jobs of their respective nations - for quite a few you do very much sense that they are there for the power, for the adulation, for the ego trip that comes with holding office and the trappings that come with it. If Merkel ever had any of that, she has never shown it. Instead she just gets up and gets on with - do the work, nice that it comes with a company car, but do the work. When I think about all she has been through since she became Chancellor (there's a fabulous graphic out there that shows all the leaders who have come and gone since she took office), and how she probably thought Berlusconi and Bush were the worst she'd encounter, only to realise those two were the practice run for Trump and Johnson, it's been an amazing career. She is truly one of the greats, not just in terms of her accomplishments as a woman in politics, but overall. She is titan, and an entire era - one marked by her moral clarity (when she opened Germany's door to migrants, she did the right thing! She knew it was the morally right thing, and she did it - some know what is the morally right thing and ignore that option because politically it might be tricky), and Germany rightfully taking it's place as the top dog in the EU (you cannot rely on Italy, France, or frankly anywhere to have the grounded political stability of modern day Germany under Merkel). As to what will happen post Merkel... who knows, but the Merkel Golden Age was fantastic. I dread to think what the Trump years might have been like without her steadying the western ship from the other side of the Atlantic. I hope she has a fantastic retirement.

[mithliya]

i think this will be my last anon bc maybe i dont know how to read or write english properly like most of the things youre telling me are already implied in what i said like you say they’ve heard lesbophobic ideas of lesbians like exceptions liking one man etc but i already said they are homophobic. you say oh you think they read adrienne rich when i said not poliles (as in normie kinsey 5-ish or just not into men who call themselves lesbian) that febfem anon says “questioning being a lesbian” she had one clear example of osa for that one guy and probably from following u made her realize its not lesbian, she’s one of those women too that went in the world thinking that lesbians can have that attraction until she came to senses. and about bi womens ssa and such the belief that their ssa is quirky addition and not serious + will end up with men + promiscuous is not a fringe opinion? and many of these women think bis can never be uncomfortable w idea of men And for the comphet ones that’s the main thing that gets them. your cousin is the middle east is smart. my ass in ghana seeing tiktoks like that u posted was too and tho i internalized those beliefs about bi women and refused to identity with anything since comphetbians sounded the same to me while also having a superiority complex over the former. i do think the average westerner is very brain rotted by a lot of things, the lgbt ones to a greater extent and me thinking these iding as lesbians while being into men probably have some internalized biphobia alongside their homophobia cause like even rad bis do it😭

eh maybe i misunderstood that other anon but i dont think she was going around thinking lesbians CAN be attracted to men, the impression i got was that she thought that how she felt about men wasn't attraction at all. i think thats v different from a woman who will straight up say "im attracted to one man / some men but im a lesbian bc i strongly prefer women", especially the women i mentioned who are straight up married to men and saying this. i will reemphasise that i think bi women being simply confused about their sexuality and perceiving their attraction to men as sth else due to otherwise being disgusted by men, to me, are not the same as bi women who openly state that theyre sometimes or rarely into men but that theyre lesbians regardless. i think one is a group of women that may have internalised biphobia as was argued by the other anon but regardless were genuinely confused about their sexuality, and the other is a group of women that are just...homophobic and insistent on their homophobia.

i agree my cousin is smart, n maybe shes an exception or something! but genuinely, speaking from my experience in the MENA region, women saying theyre into men, knowing of bisexuality being a thing, but also insisting theyre lesbians regardless is practically unheard of. im sure theres women who thought they were lesbians then realised they were bi, but none of the ones ive come across have ever talked about being into men (past or present) yet insisted that theyre lesbians. i cannot comment on ghana, maybe things are different there but my point there was just to say that if in one of the most homophobic regions like MENA a bi woman with strong preferences can know shes bi, how come so many westerners so deep in LGBT community and q***r theory and all of that are this misinformed about bisexuality all while seeing bis talking about having strong preferences and even basically saying "im a bi woman and ive only ever been attracted to one man"? honestly the whole phenomena just does not make sense to me. i do not understand the mindset nor do i claim to and thats rly the gist of what ive been saying, i know theyre homophobic bc they insist on these ideas but i dont know what the goal of these ideas is.

also id like to apologise to you because i dont think i had considered that ur ESL and thus probably were struggling to express your side and understand exactly what im saying. i kind of assumed you were intentionally misrepresenting me & my position, instead of considering that maybe you really were just misunderstanding or struggling to put your exact thoughts into words. if u want to tell me more about ur experiences being bi in ghana id love to hear it, bc i dont know much about that

[macgregorhoughton]

First off, thanks for sharing your headcanons, I love them! I'm really hoping theres gonna be ride references too, from the clips we're getting the puns at least. I'm gonna be watching the backgrounds for any sneaky references to the Society but I bet you're right, its going to be in there somewhere. I’m the same with the Native issue, I’m a bit worried how they’ll deal with it but hope they might have a bit of awareness and address how messed up some of the stereotypes the ride had were- cont

Response under the cut! (following asks copied there too for reference)

First of all before I respond to anything, you do not have to apologise. This is quite literally my dream way to spend my time- talking to someone about a thing I like at length. The fact that you checked all the posts I made and took time to respond to them with your thoughts means the world to me.

2- I’m also really hoping we get a lot for McGregor (wtf is with that alternate spelling Disney?? But I do want the other two to call him Mac, I’d love that), learning to relax and find his place. I LOVE that Lily gets to do physical comedy, you’re right female characters often only get to be funny so long as that means they can still be sexy while doing it. Lily looks like she just goes “nope” to that and dives headfirst into a bit of slapstick and I love her already- cont

3- I really like Dwayne, hes got a warmth to him that comes across in Frank, even if hes trying not to show it to the siblings at first. I really want proper sibling moments too and I love that little one we got in the clip. Like, “you don’t get to laugh at my sister, now excuse me while I go give her a hand while laughing at her”. Like thats a great example of having siblings, I’ll help you out, but I’m totally going to mock you while doing it, but no one else can. BTS have me hopeful too- cont

4- I love your idea for the coming out scene. I think they’d be walking a very fine line in order to get it right, but if they did it could be wonderful. I really really hope we get that scene, no skirting around it or making vague illusions, I want McGregor to say “I’m gay” outright. Like, we’ll all know he is even if they don’t let him say it but for once I want Disney to live up to what they promised and let an actual main character be actually gay.- cont

5- I love the connection with the lights for our trio in the posters, I didn't put that together. I really want them to be a proper Trio, I’m really hoping this is a success so we can get sequels. Even if they’re terrible I still want them to see these three together. FRANK IS HUGGING MCGREGOR, I’VE GOT A GOOD FEELING ABOUT THIS ALREADY. I don’t really have many thoughts on our three villains, other than I'm getting evil musketeer, smug plantation owner & WWII in that order- cont

6- I LOVE THAT GIF SET OF THE PUNS SO MUCH!! McGregor’s little smile and his laugh, hes loving it, Frank is loving getting a reaction, Lily is going to eventually find it funny how unfunny they are. I can’t get over how much I love McGregor’s little face in this, I can’t want for this scene, I’m gonna join you in imploding. Also, in your protective brother gifset, is he wearing a little tartan/ plaid suit? Love it. And on that note, I adore Lily’s costumes- practical and realistic but flattering

7- ok so thats me taken up far too much of your ask box, I haven't even property looked at the press tour things yet, but I do have one more thing, I have a theory about how Jack ends up in the middle of Emily and Dwayne's kiss if you'd like to hear it. Thanks for kickstarting this fandom and the wonderful gif sets, we're so close now! - Skip

So on to my very long response!

I've watched SO much about the ride just so I'm prepared to catch any reference. They just released Behind the Attraction on Disney+ and ep 1 is about the Jungle Cruise ride (Dwayne Johnson is in it too!). He talks about how much he loved the ride as a kid and used to imagine himself as a skipper which is SO cute and I'm so happy his dreams came true (and I find it very relatable as someone who dreams about being a raptor handler at Universal).

I'm genuinely a lil mad that the spelling changed. Because if you google it really everyone thought it was McGregor, they must've at some point released something on the movie for the press with that spelling and then changed their mind. Now everyone has it wrong because I suspect these featurettes are also gonna be the DVD/Bluray extras so I'm confident this is the final spelling. However I will continue to live in denial until I see the other spelling ON SCREEN.

"I really like Dwayne, hes got a warmth to him that comes across in Frank, even if hes trying not to show it to the siblings at first." Yes! I love that every character is a trope that I ADORE. Frank is the cynic who thinks everyone just wants to cheat you anyway and miracles don't exist who eventually cracks and warms up to people and shows that there is a soft, warm person in there after all. Lily is wildly optimistic and aggressively individualistic, not trying to fit in or caring about what anyone thinks and will probably have a moment of losing that optimism and doubting herself after all. And McGregor is the person who appears to think he's better than everyone, who's pampered and refuses to sacrifice any of the luxuries he's used to until he reveals he's gay and you realise most of it was just a show to cover up how hurt he really is. Three PEAK character tropes we're working with here and COMBINED with a reluctant-allies to lovers and a siblings trope.

"Like, “you don’t get to laugh at my sister, now excuse me while I go give her a hand while laughing at her”. Like thats a great example of having siblings, I’ll help you out, but I’m totally going to mock you while doing it, but no one else can" I have a gifset for that queued already, I love that you also focused on that rightaway bc I really went "Siblings! peak sibling energy!!" and gifed it immediately.

Based on the reports (that I cannot stress enough I have no idea how accurate they are) he doesn't say "gay" but it's unambiguous what he's talking about. Let's hope that's true! I'm imaginging some sort of "relationships with men" or "no interest in women but rather men" or sth like that. I hadn't really considered that it might be ambiguous to someone who doesn't know he's supposed to be gay so that's a new fear unlocked lmao

I'm going to be so sad if we don't get sequels cause so many franchises with several movies don't have a core group of actors that are just friends and get along as well naturally as these three. Or if we get more movies and Jack isn't in them or sth like that. Like any future where these three aren't the leading trio in more movies is a nightmare.

"I'm getting evil musketeer, smug plantation owner & WWII in that order" this sent me I swear. I'm most interested in Edgar Ramirez bc I'm curious abt the whole "conquistador alive "today"" thing. also what's up with the snakes lmao.

McGregor laughing at Frank's puns alone could sustain me another year if I had to wait that long for the movie. Luckily I don't have to. It is so wholesome tho, like the fact that they're gonna get along and also get closer and McGregor won't end up sidelined for being a bitch until the last minute or sth is so wonderful.

And yes! It's tartan! We've seen p little of the beginning of the movie in London and since that's gonna be focused on just Lily and McGregor I'm so excited bc we got so little content so there's gonna be SO much in the movie to look forward to that I can barely even piece together!!! (All we know is lily will steal the arrowhead before falling out of the window which mcgregor sees and he immediately follows her so I assume he knew to come there and that there's a scene where she asks him in one of their bedrooms about wanting to go on an adventure. So I'm assuming the bedroom scene comes first and she'll tell him about the arrowhead, he'll refuse to help her but decide to come last minute because he's worried about her (and the worry is immediately proven right as she falls out of a window lol). But we know so little that it's a really loose theory.

And yes!! Lily's costumes are so good. Frank calls her Pants so they will absolutely address that she's dressed very unusual for a woman of her status in 1916/17 and I hope they explore that a little and address where she even gets her clothes and everything. I mean Emily Blunt looks good in everything but the costume department really made something gorgeous with this. She is, for the time the movie is set in, very gender nonconforming which I love in a female lead. And Emily described Lily's fighting style as very Indiana Jones and brutal without much tactic or thinking and just brute force and I really would die for this characterisation. Like when I compare this to similar female leads like in The Mummy for example they're usually highly feminine, aggressive only in their attittude and witty banter but always emphasised to be beautiful and wearing dresses and lots of (usually historically inaccurate) makeup and they get like one scene where they smack the bad guy with sth heavy or sth so noone can say they're a damsel in distress even though they are. But Lily feels very much like a coherent person to me. She's very unusual for a woman at her time, her desire for adventure is in line with how she fights and dresses but she doesn't seem to have the "uwu I'm not like other girls" thing going on, she's just exactly who she is and wants to be.

and of COURSE I wanna hear your theory are you kidding! Cause I still haven't figured it out at all lmao. I just settled on "she probably meant he was off screen but right next to them while they filmed it" or sth bc I couldn't make sense of it otherwise.

also I haven't posted everything new directly here I think, but you probably know where to look for the new stuff. like there's some clips on their instagrams and most stuff is on youtube.

[j-kaiwa]

Discussion Article July 3rd~9th

Why Men Don't Like Shopping and (Most) Women Do

Do you like shopping? The answer may partly depend on one factor: whether you are male or female. Of course, it’s a generalization to say that, "Women like shopping, men don’t"—I’m sure we all know people this doesn’t apply to (my wife, for example, doesn’t particularly like shopping). However, there is evidence that this isn’t a complete myth. A survey of 2,000 British people conducted in 2013 found that men become bored after only 26 minutes of shopping, while it took women a full two hours. The survey found that 80 percent of men didn't like shopping with their partners, and that 45 percent avoiding doing so at all costs. Almost half of all spousal shopping trips ended in arguments, with men becoming frustrated because they bought what they needed straight away, while their partners were still looking and taking too long to make decisions.

If there is some validity to these generalizations - and if they are more than just the result of social conditioning - where could these different attitudes to shopping stem from? I have had a "pet theory" about this ever since writing a book called The Fall several years ago, which involved research into early human history and anthropology.

The Hunter-Gatherers

For hundreds of thousands of years, until around 8000 BCE, all human beings lived as hunter-gatherers—that is, they survived by hunting wild animals (the man’s job) and foraging for wild plants, nuts, fruit, and vegetables (the woman’s job). I learned a lot of surprising things about the "hunter-gatherer" lifestyle in my research. For example, it wasn’t a particularly hard life. When anthropologists began to look systematically at how modern-day hunter-gatherers use their time, they discovered that, far from exhausting themselves in their search for food, they actually spent only 12 to 20 hours per week at it. (This led anthropologist Marshall Sahlins to call hunter-gatherers “the original affluent society.”)

Interestingly, women were the main "breadwinners" in hunter-gatherer groups. Anthropologists estimate that women’s gathering provided around 80-90 percent of groups' food —a fact which has led some anthropologists to suggest that these peoples should be renamed gatherer-hunters. This is also meant that their diet was largely vegetarian (only around 10-20 percent meat), and also quite healthy, with a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, roots and nuts, all eaten raw.

Ancient Instincts

Beginning in the Middle East, human communities began to switch to farming around 8000 BC, and slowly, over the following millennia, the practice spread widely throughout Asia and Europe. But after so many hundreds of thousands of years of living that way, it’s no surprise that hunting and gathering are still instinctive to us. And this brings us back to shopping—because these instincts may show themselves in our shopping habits. When most women shop, they are in more of a 'gathering' mode - browsing from tree to tree (or shop to shop) looking for ripe and nutritious fruit. They spend a lot of time examining the food, checking its freshness and edibility, and they discard quite a lot of it. At the end of the trip, they return home laden with a wide variety of food stuffs (or shopping bags).

In the same way, men's shopping habits may be related to their hunting heritage. This might explain why men appear to be more mono-focused, rather than browsers. In prehistoric terms, they have one thing in mind: kill an animal and go home. They don’t want to waste time browsing, and it’s not so necessary for them to examine their food acquisitions. They just look for animals, kill them, pick them up, and go straight home. Perhaps this rush to get home was based on the knowledge that if a hunter left an animal lying for too long, other animals or insects would start to eat it. Some dead animals would also have been heavy, and so difficult to carry around for long. Also, in hot and humid conditions, it wouldn't be long before meat would start to go bad.

 Let me repeat that these are generalizations - there are undoubtedly million of men and women to whom these characteristics don't apply. And I'm obviously being facetitious in making these connections between modern shopping habits and hunger-gathering. But if there is a tendency for men and women to shop in these different ways, then they could be explained in terms of our hunter-gatherer past.    

Of course, as with most "pet theories," I eventually realised that I’m not the only person who has thought of it. In 2009, anthropologists Kruger and Byker found very clear similarities between modern men and women's shopping habits and our hunter-gatherer past. They found that women "scored higher on skills and behaviors associated with gathering, even though the environment and the objects being gathered have changed with respect to our ancestral environment....Men scored higher on skills and behaviors associated with hunting." They found that women were more inclined to spend extended time browsing around shopping malls, while men more inclined to buy what they needed and then leave straight away.* Their findings supply empirical evidence for the connection I'm making in this article.

One good thing about this: It provides justification for our shopping habits. You can always use the excuse that you can’t help liking (or not liking) shopping because you inherited those instincts from our prehistoric past. More seriously, this might also help us to overcome the impulse to buy unnecessary material goods—items that we may not be able to afford, which often don’t bring us any happiness, and which are often produced by low-paid, exploited workers in poorer parts of the world—and which, on the massive collective scale that we consume them, contribute to environmental degradation.

Once you become aware of the reasons for a behavior, it becomes easier to control and overcome it. I’m not saying that we should stop shopping, but perhaps we should shop more sensibly, and bring our buying more in line with our needs than our desires.

But then again, I am a man, after all.