#is this oversimplified yes

[make-a-desert-call-it-peace]

I’ve seen a lot of talk about 4B and a lot of misunderstandings so I just wanna break the logic down real quick for American woman. It’s not about changing men’s behavior in the future via a collective strike (at least, I really doubt it will be in the USA lol) but rather about protecting yourself right now by removing them from your sexual/romantic life.

When Roe was struck down it was pretty common sense that women would be scared of getting pregnant in a state with an abortion ban. It’s a sensible self defense strategy to avoid getting pregnant entirely if you’re somewhere where you can’t get medical care if something goes wrong. That’s one of the Bs already (no babies) and many liberals and even moderates already support the idea. It’s not about men per se, it’s about not wanting to die of a preventable or treatable issue. Like, this is already happening in many areas.

Following that, we all know what the most effective way to avoid getting pregnant is — not having PIV (penis in vagina) sex. This isn’t “oh stop being a slut” - this is “any PIV sex can get you pregnant, even if you’re happily married and he pulls out.” Precum can get you pregnant. Condoms break, pills can fail or can be forgotten or can’t be tolerated, and even IUDs aren’t 100%. Keeping semen out of your vagina is the only way to be completely sure you won’t get pregnant. This is the second B (no sex with men) - it’s not about punishing men by withholding sex or trying to shape their behavior, it’s about avoiding something that can lead to pregnancy which can kill you. If conditions were different maybe PIV sex would be a more acceptable risk for many women, but when Project 2025’s goals include a national abortion ban as well as banning contraception and we’re less than one trimester out from inauguration… that changes the math quite a bit. Even if you orgasm, even if you have a great time, that PIV sex risks getting you pregnant and therefore risks killing you.

Is your husband or boyfriend or fiancé ok not having PIV sex for the foreseeable future due to your concerns? I hope so, but statistically he probably isn’t. PIV is a core element of most straight relationships (or most penis-vagina relationships, whatever you want to call it). Many women are pestered by their partner for sex, so much so that there are common terms for it - “maintenance sex” and “chore sex”, sex you don’t want but put up with because it gets him to stop bothering you about it (at least for a little while). Marital rape is illegal but unfortunately not uncommon. Date rape is illegal but unfortunately not uncommon. The best way to ensure you won’t be convinced or wheedled or coerced into having PIV sex is, statistically, to not be dating or married to man. Again, it’s not about controlling men’s future behavior or punishing them for anything - it’s about ensuring your own safety and eliminating the biggest source of risk. Maybe you’re with a wonderful man who will completely respect your wishes and won’t complain or try to change your mind or cheat to get it elsewhere. Most women are not. That’s the idea of the third and fourth Bs - no dating and no marriage with men. Really, no dating or marriage with anyone with who can produce semen. If you’re in a relationship with someone who has functioning sperm, your risk of having PIV sex (or otherwise getting semen in your vagina) goes up astronomically, and so does your risk of pregnancy.

The 4 Bs are really just following that chain of reasoning. It is, at its core, simple choices for individual self defense based on how much risk you, personally, are willing to accept. Lots of women are already doing the first B, not least because who can afford kids in this economy. As for the other 3 Bs, people who have outright stated they want to ban both abortion and contraception are going to be in charge now, so a lot of women regardless of political leaning are reassessing their own levels and tolerance of risk.

A non cis penis can still get you pregnant and that can kill you. A leftist penis can still get you pregnant and that can kill you. A penis attached to the most wonderful loving supportive champion of women’s rights can still get you pregnant and that can kill you. Project 2025 wants to take away abortions from everyone, birth control from everyone, no fault divorce from everyone. You have to decide if you are willing to take those risks in the current legal and political climate. Don’t look at what other women are doing - sit down and really think through how much risk you are willing to accept for yourself. Whether you want to call it 4B or celibacy or something else entirely, it’s your life and your body on the line and your decision to make.

[stgroversfire]

i do really adore the tgcf/mdzs top dynamic of "i love this extremely traumatized man so im going to follow him around and enable him to do whatever he wants"

[dayurno]

honestly you can say anything about the ravens (and you'd be right to) but you can't say the concept of them isn't delicious. a group of collegiate athletes in their intimidating raven motifs and their black uniforms who are basically bred to become the best of the best in a bloodsport. the adrenaline rush of every game being a competition between yourself and your teammates. knowing you're not just gearing up towards court but following in the footsteps of the alumni before you. the parties and the victories and the mindless sex and the way everyone around you somehow seems to always be thinking the same thing as you are. you are never alone and you will never be again if you just do as we say. who knows the kind of relationships that can happen in a place like that?

[thorarms]

Genuinely in hindsight it's so funny that the mcu added the lore of thor receiving prophetic visions and dreams on the regular just to awkwardly tease the next avengers movie and then literally never mentioned it again. Truly unparalleled lack of planning on marvel studios part there

[thejesterstears]

If I had a nickel for every time Lizzie Freeman voiced a character finding themselves in an unfamiliar new world and being greeted by a unique cast of characters who give them a name because they don't know their own, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice.

[heresronnie21]

Solangelo is grumpy x sunshine but in the opposite direction of what people seem to interpret it. Like the reason it's a fun ship is that it subverts what you'd expect based on their outward appearances. Nico is a sweetheart who acts intimidating because he's scared to get close to people, Will is a rude little gremlin who fakes being calm and okay because he needs to be a good leader. The whole point is that they get to be themselves around each other. The whole point is them being an odd couple who don't see themselves as an odd couple.

[ko-neko-san]

Ykw maybe Soul has the right idea, join a kpop/music group just to dance and hang with the homies, make enough money for some nice ass lego sets, and be a silly weird little dude outside of the music

[historicalfictionenthusiast]

When you’re a history nerd so your Roman Empire is the Roman Empire

[la-pheacienne]

Some People : Ohhh Daenerys will be S O mad when she finally meets Jaime she will want to burn him alive for treason

What Daenerys will actually do : stare at Jaime for a long while in sheer amazement and then just say "tell me about T H E M".

[wardensantoineandevka]

Ashton: It could be ANY of us who lose it and hurt the others, and we need to all take that lesson and reflect on that.

the party: Actually maybe it's fine to let that happen. Yeah, go ahead, FCG, lose your shit, Chet will hold you down.

[gravelynz]

awful slideshow i used to briefly explain aqw tonight

[time-for-none]

yanagi could create jet boots if she took a pair of literally anything, get shoda to smack them, and use poltergeist to ride them like how monoma did in the joint training. then when shoda says ‘fire’ she blasts off into the distance. imagine ua sports festival but class b chooses to go all out instead of holding back. imagine how crazy that would be half of them would go flying. literally. like a surprising amount of class 1b can fly. have we ever brought this up why can so many of them fly. okay well like five of them can and one is only hypothetically

[lizmitches]

i love hannah and shira because they’re basically just jackie and shauna if their biggest problem had been a massive height difference and not. y’know. cannibalism

[n7punk]

a french SMM player finally beat the illegitimately-uploaded "final" level (but disqualified once it was revealed by the creator to have been uploaded via TAS) of super mario maker yesterday (twitter clip and twitch), meaning there's no doubt now that team 0% reached their goal of clearing every single non-hacked level upload in the entire SMM1 game

[widowspeakconnoisseur]

Do you have any head cannons about Kyosuke Higuchi and his father Jiro Higuchi?

I've finally gotten round to answering this ask. Apologies for the lengthy wait.

Okay, so I'm probably going to approach this ask as more of a mini-essay explaining parts of Higuchi's childhood (likely in an incredibly incoherent manner) and his relationship with his father. In fact, I think that Higuchi's childhood is where all the majorly problematic parts of his personality begin, and then they're pedalled even further by his time at Yotsuba.

I'm going to refer to Higuchi as Higuchi and his father as Jiro to avoid confusion.

It's no secret that Higuchi was a golden spoon child, what with his family being essentially elites, but I never took this as "Higuchi came from an affluent upbringing, therefore he was spoiled". In fact, I always assumed that his relationship with his family, especially his father was comprised of desperately searching for his approval as his father was disengaged as a parent. My personal headcanon, which I believe I have mentioned on this blog before, is that Higuchi is German-Japanese. His mother was the daughter of a prominent business figure in North Germany and so was heavily encouraged to marry Jiro to unite the businesses. They didn't have much chemistry and so when Higuchi was born, he just served as a reminder of the obligations Jiro had to a family he never asked for. As well as this, Higuchi being half-white meant that Jiro's son was obviously not fully Japanese. In Japan, there is quite a heavy social stigma surrounding interracial couples and mixed-race children, particularly due to one of the parents being a foreigner. This meant that there was always a hint of Jiro being unhappy with Higuchi as a whole. He always privately viewed his son as defective and felt embarrassed by him, as it was obvious to other adults and children that Higuchi was not purely Japanese. As a result of this, most of Higuchi's childhood is full of exactly what you'd expect: trying at any opportunity to gain his father's approval, feelings of inferiority and always falling short, not understanding what is "wrong" with himself and desperately looking for love where there sadly isn't any. From day one he was discriminated against by his own father and I think the theme of discrimination in Higuchi's life is very important. Not only was he mixed-race but he was also conventionally unattractive his whole life, which in Japan are the two most polarising things a person can be. I imagine Higuchi's sharp features to have been prevalent as a child as well and that often made him stick out even more, furthering his feelings of social exclusion. Jiro often gave Higuchi the cold shoulder because he wanted a good-looking Japanese baby, which according to Japanese standards, Higuchi could never live up to.

We can see the aftermath of these experiences in Higuchi as an adult man. He always felt like the underdog at Yotsuba even if his circumstances were more favourable than some of his co-workers (like Hatori) and it's pretty clear that Higuchi is constantly over-compensating for his negative traits because he is so painfully aware of them, as well as over-compensating for positive traits because he's worried others don't see them that way. As an adult, Higuchi and his father basically don't communicate at all outside of business-related endeavours and his mother is fairly checked out as well, leaving him pretty much on his own. I also don't imagine that Higuchi had many friends as a child, partly because of his experiences with his father quickly souring his personality but also because people didn't like Jiro much either so didn't want their kids talking to his son. Like father, like son and so on. Jiro, in my head, is a pretty cold man who isn't necessarily in active conflict with his son but is more so a stranger to him. I doubt Jiro would be able to tell you when Higuchi's birthday is or his favourite colour for example. This would've left a big mark on Higuchi as a child because I think he would've initially looked up to his father and wanted to be like him. Jiro, however, did not care much for anything his son was doing. He didn't attend any school events to see him, he didn't spend quality time with him at home (instead leaving him to his own devices) and he never really told him that he loved or appreciated him. As a result of the minimal effort put into Higuchi's childhood, he ends up as the guy we all know and (maybe) love, jaded by the lack of attention and care from his father.

I hope that wasn't too much word vomit and you feel that I sufficiently answered the question. And I'm again sorry for putting this ask off for such a long time. I had a lot of assignments to attend to and tend to struggle to articulate my thoughts, so I end up spending far too long on things like this than I should lol. Thank you for the ask!

[westerberg]

From “Sex Will Be Good Again” by Katherine Angel