#it sucks when most depictions of masculine women are still socially acceptable masculine. Their masculinity is feminine enough for most

[cowchickenbeefpork]

not to be a spiteful mean feminist I’m not trying to sound like that rn but why is Gotham genuinely allergic to having women not wear makeup? I genuinely can’t think of any instance where a main or huge side female character didn’t wear makeup. Like this show has the penguin be quite gender non conforming, I genuinely don’t see why one woman couldn’t just be not wearing makeup. I know they try to make Barbara be feminist and more masculine but it doesn’t land she’s still wearing more revealing male gaze like outfits she’s still wearing makeup her short hair styles are still socially acceptable female short hairstyles. It’s like every woman is this show has to involve men in this show, whether that be their death, relationships, narrative, somehow they all revolve back to men. It sucks, genuinely. It really hurts to be given scraps when it comes to this

[gayforsaturdays]

Is Billy Hargrove Racist??

Yes, yes he is.

That doesn't necessarily negate the possibility of a redemption arc, however.

Before I begin, I'd like to say that I am not promoting racist ideals.  I am always down for intelligent, respectful discussion, key word respectful, so please feel free to make a counterargument - respectfully.

We live in turbulent times.  With Cheeto Voldemort in power it seems to many as though racists have taken over.  This has been a long time coming, though, racist ideas implicit in the founding of America and evolving throughout our history.  Just because racism is not as overt as it was in the fifties doesn't mean it's gone, and that the average white American is immune to its effects.  Racism is the elephant in the room that we Do Not Talk About, showing its face in ideas and stereotypes and implicit biases so ingrained into our culture that we don't even recognize them for what they are.  When we do recognize racism, it is easy to make it the Other.  This is hatred, I do not hate, I am not a part of this.  This is what I see happening in fandom, but this is not where anti-racism needs to go in order to make real impact.

The Duffer Brothers have real potential here.  They are poised on a cliff in front of a vast audience.  Will Billy Hargrove get a redemption arc to parallel our dearest Steve, or will he tip over the edge to become a villain?  If he is redeemed, will his racist comments be swept under the rug?  In a show which has done excellent work creating extraordinarily human characters with foibles and flaws, after all the work they put into Billy this season without seemingly much reason, I don't think that Billy will go without some form of redemption.  His bully arc appears to be over, and considering his father's abuse and his own PTSD, to vilify him now would feel like another depiction of mentally ill people as evil. They would absolutely need to address his racist remarks in this instance, though. 

To give another explanation for Billy's outburst over Lucas is a cop-out, one of the most common when it comes to racism.  Not My Problem.  I don't want to deal with it, so I'm just going to pretend it isn't there.  This is silence, and silence is complicity - if we don't speak up, it will never end. 

To vilify Billy and his racism would actually be damaging as well, though.  I know that sounds bad, but hear me out.  Remember how I said that racism is a set of ideas and biases and stereotypes ingrained into our culture?  Those ideas and biases and stereotypes are bought into, often unknowingly, by average white people all across the country.  Average, white, human persons.  Human beings whose primary defining feature is not "a racist" - not white hoods and burning crosses.  This is where the potential with Billy lies - to show that a person who holds racist ideas is still a human being, and can even let go of those ideas as they learn and grow, as humans do.  The only way we can really dismantle racism is from the inside out, calling out our own ingrained prejudices and changing hearts and minds. 

It wouldn't even be that difficult to do with Billy - as his redemption arc begins, he'll want to distance himself from every vestige of his father.  With Neil tossing the f-word around so nonchalantly, I don't doubt that Billy's father has been the major influencer in his beliefs.  I want to see Max calling Billy out on his misguided distrust of Lucas, in explicit terms.  Leave no doubt as to the fact that Billy has inherited racist ideas from his father.  If Max and Billy have a conversation like this, perhaps Billy can begin to realize that this too is part of his father's legacy.  I want to see him awkwardly trying to reach out to Lucas, having no idea how to talk to him or apologise, committing little microaggressions like white people do all the time.  Have him say something that people say all the time and have Lucas give him the Lucas Look of Wtf, Bro (tm) so people will go oh, that's not a good thing to say.  I want to see Billy and Max go to pick up Lucas and Erica opens the door and totally calls him out, super sassy, because I fuckin love her ok Erica is the shit.  I want to see Billy experiencing white discomfort and realizing that he was wrong - not just about Lucas specifically because that gets into exceptionalist territory, but about people of color.  I want to see Billy feeling bad about everything he's done and believed and actively wanting to change, taking real steps towards making amends and becoming a better person, because that's what he is - just another human person stuck on this rock.  Separate the idea from the human being so that people can see racism as a set of ideas we all need to fight, both internally and externally, instead of a group of people separate from self ("the racists").

Please don't hate on people for being drawn to Billy, for shipping Harringrove.  People who see the humanity and the potential of Billy's character.  Because he does have potential, both as a person and to be an expositional tool for a lot of good social justice work that could reach a lot of people.  Not just anti-racism work either, but definitely anti-sexism and potentially anti-homophobia as well.  I want to see Max and Nancy and Eleven and even, most definitely, Steve calling him out on his overuse of the word bitch and treating women like sex objects.  He also holds potential as a queer character - if you read him as queer as I and many others do, his father's abuse is even more tragic because it features so heavily homophobia and toxic masculinity.  If Billy were canonically queer, it would make a tremendous amount of sense for the amount of anger that he carries (not that being a hormonal teenager with PTSD isn't enough).  Here his father is yelling at him not to be a f*****, beating him, and Billy believing that he's right, that liking guys is wrong, that he deserves these beatings because his father is right about him.  Show us Billy, the non-stereotypical queer guy, learning that his father was wrong and learning to accept himself and let go of his self-hatred.

Having thoroughly bashed Neil, it is necessary to recognize that he, too, is human.  Everything that he believes and does is ugly and twisted, but he is driven by fear and shaped by the culture he lives in.  He sucks, but there are men like him everywhere and every one of us has to work to change our culture so that we stop creating men like him so that they will stop creating and damaging boys like Billy.  We need to hold hope close that we can change people's hearts and minds, but we can only accomplish this without hatred. 

This is what I want to see in the next season.  You have a huge audience and a fantastic platform for wonderfully human characters, Duffer bros.  You can do something really amazing with it.

[phaylenfairchild]

The Social and Political Shaming of Men Who Date Transgender Women Is What Is Killing Us

Fact Check: In 47 States, “Trans Panic” is an actual legal defense for a Man who murders a transgender woman after sex. The “Trans Panic” indicates that the man who committed murder experienced immediate regret for fear of being labeled gay, or fear that is sexual encounter might be disclosed, incurring public shame, humiliation among his peers and ostracizing from his family or religious affiliation. In response to the sudden onset of that shame, men have stabbed their Transgender lovers- hundreds of times. They have dismembered them, burned them, strangled them and fled the scene. Frequently, when these men are brought before a court of Justice to plea their case, they invoke the “Trans Panic” defense- which is similar to the temporary insanity plea. They claim they weren’t in their right mind, they blacked out, they have no recollection of the events that led to the murder of their partner, and in a complete abandonment of justice, these killers are often given modest sentences that, by comparison to any other individual tried for murder, amounts to little more consequence than a slap on the wrist.

Three states have banned the “Trans Panic” defense- as well as the very similar “Gay Panic” defense, which has also been invoked in state courtrooms to justify the acts of murdering gay men. Most recently, in the state of Texas where “Panic” plea is still a viable means of defense, James Miller, 69, receive 10 years probation for killing his neighbor, 32-year-old Daniel Spencer after he alleged that Spencer, a gay man, attempted to kiss him after being invited into Miller’s home. Miller was sentenced to 10 years probation, much in thanks to the “Gay panic” plea and the Judge’s bias sympathy.

The problem here is a much larger social issue that often goes unaddressed. Perhaps because it makes people uncomfortable to talk about with the frankness necessary to make it a vital national dialog. While we, as a community, mostly accept gay men and women, bisexuality, trans men and women, gender fluid folks, asexuality, queer, questioning, and a multitude of other minorities who have been ‘othered’ by man-made constructs of imposed social norms, men who date- or would date a transgender woman are stricken with a crippling fear of doing so openly due to the potential repercussions.

Our manufactured ideologies of what constitutes or qualifies one to be a “Man” has led many down a tragic path of self-hatred, excessively aggressive or dominant behaviors, emotional detachments and outwardly expressed transphobic rhetoric. We call this toxic masculinity. The damage has afflicted men for centuries and perilously inhibited their natural development, but also prevented them from embracing their sexual identity, or openly, comfortably expressing their natural preferences for what it may cost them. This is why most men, when asked if they would date a transgender woman, erupt in disgust and immediately protest, defensively asserting their heterosexuality.

That shame persists to this day. Rappers Bobby V and Scrapper were recorded by an attendee of a party where they were in the company of transgender women. The video was broadcast on websites and social media referring to the up and coming artists as “F*ggots” and mocking them. Although the videos depicted no sexual activity or even acts of affection between the artists and their guests, their career suffered irreparable damage. In a similar care, R&B artist Chingy who claims a transgender actress falsely implied that they had a sexual relationship in 2015 admitted that the accusation ruined his career also. Once the rumor gained traction, Chingy stated that record deals and endorsement offers had been rescinded, despite his maintaining that the woman in question had lied.

The world of male celebrities has seen many men become entangled in controversy when it came to their relationships or interests in Transgender women. One extremely famous A-list actor in Hollywood has maintained discreet relationships with multiple transgender women over the course of the last two decades, even caught with a transgender prostitute which he claimed he was only “offering a ride” too as a kind gesture, reassuring media outlets who inquired that he “Had no idea she was a Transgender woman.” In reality, he has not only been romantically involved with multiple transwomen, he’s also asked them to sign non-disclosure agreements or, in some cases, accept large sums of money in return for their silence given the fact that he was not only a high profile movie star, but also a married father of 9 young children. Despite his attraction to transgender women, they were never socially appropriate by Hollywood standards to ever be seen on his arm. He didn’t want to be viewed as gay, have his masculinity challenged, or pull focus from his career achievements to his sexual proclivities- and we all know that is exactly what would happen.

Men who openly date transgender women experience an incredible amount of abuse and media scrutiny, mostly to sensationalize the stories and elicit laughter at their expense. Ex-NFL star Hank Baskett was one of those men who, while married to playboy playmate and reality star Kendra Wilkinson, was outed as having an alleged extramarital affair with a transgender model he solicited on Instagram. Despite the model sharing their text conversations and audio recordings of telephone calls shared between the two, both Wilkinson and Baskett, parents of 2 young children, demonized the trans woman, dubbing her a liar and fame whore. They concocted a story that Baskett had only visited the transgender model to acquire drugs… because it’s better to elicit sympathy as a drug addicted father than be accused of having an attraction to a transgender woman. As the two are now divorcing, Wilkinsin came out to accuse him, once and for all of actually engaging in the affair she previously disputed ever happened.

Olympic Gold Medalist swimmer Michael Phelps has a similar story, where he was arrested with his transgender partner for driving under the influence. After it came out that his partner that evening was transgender, the media latched onto that like a blood-sucking tick and lampooned the athlete- who never responded, but instead, almost immediately, abandoned his relationship with his transgender girlfriend- effectively ghosting her-and married an ex-Miss California Nicole Johnson, only to soon afterward welcome their first child. It felt like less a love story and more an atonement for having embarrassed his family, his team and tainted his legacy as role model for young athletes. He pretended it never happened and to this day, have never offered a confirmation or denial, but refused to speak about it altogether.

There is no question that transgender women have mostly been treated as sexual fodder for straight men. A dark, dirty secret reserved for shadowy encounters or fleeting fantasy-fulfillment rather than relationship material existing in the open, without concern of retaliatory, salacious gossip and grotesque fixation on their sex life. We, as a community, would be negligent to turn the other cheek as these men who risk persecution and blatant, unapologetic prejudice for not meeting the standard of a cisgender-centric industry regress deeper and deeper into the closet while we, as trans people, actively seek equality for ourselves.

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