#it’s giving internalized misogyny

[ennawrite]

the “anti valkyries” tag is so … interesting. How you can hate women taking back their agency and overcoming their traumas while forming bonds they all deemed themselves unworthy of but are also at the end of the day, just girls who like to have fun is truly beyond me but to each their own ig 🤷‍♀️

[susandsnell]

Re anachronistic feminist characters, you are absolutely right and you should say it.

Maybe people who want to read "write women who sew" type stuff should just go do that instead of trying to make every single female character fit into their worldview. Because I don't want every character to be Eloise, I'm fine with variety, but a lot of people seem like they can't stand even one woman challenging gender norms.

No amount of faux progressive language will change the fact they sound like highschool bullies picking on girls who are too GNC or too "weird."

Thank you so much! Ideally, you'd have feminist characters more representative of the feminist or proto-feminist views of their era where the work is going for historical accuracy to honour the different points of where we were in history and also acknowledge the flaws of the movement at different points in time (1994's Little Women versus the hilariously bad 2019 version comes to mind), and certainly there's an element of repetitiveness in this character type, but this is seldom if ever the criticism I see. The truth of the matter is that in fact many early feminists did denigrate work designated as feminine, but we can acknowledge this as misdirected anger at having one option deemed valid.

Instead, we've somehow arrived at "wanting to be treated with human dignity is internalized misogyny because it really cramps my ability to romanticize the past". As you say, nothing wrong with valuing the labour more frequently done by women, but the fact of the matter is you can do that and show that there were always many people who resisted or did not fit into the tight boxes that society forced them into. Instead of, you know, ridiculing them for wanting to break the boxes while enjoying the fruits of having to fit into fewer boxes than our predecessors precisely because of women who loudmouthed and fought back and didn't fit into certain people's fantasy of being a submissive little princess. The kind of girls you made fun of and ostracized in high school, one might say.

To address a particular point you raise that I think is the most important in this entire ongoing discussion:

No amount of faux progressive language will change the fact they sound like highschool bullies picking on girls who are too GNC or too "weird."

I keep saying it, but a certain type of liberal feminist are now using "NLOG" the way it was socially acceptable 10-15 years ago to call someone a lesbian/homophobic or transphobic slurs because they didn't wear makeup or want a boyfriend. It is absolutely high school bullying mentality and has gone from an imperfect attempt at addressing internalized misogyny to active misogyny and latent/often overt homophobia and transphobia.

This is what the numbskulls making video essay after video essay about the apparent 'NLOG crisis' fail to grasp. The Heathers and the Plastics are not 'demonized for being feminine', they are accurate representations of how under patriarchy, social capital is gained through strict, obsessive adherence to white, Western beauty standards (which corporations can profit off of endlessly by manufacturing infinite insecurities, so bonus to the rich girls) and excelling at heterosexuality and pleasing others, and this system self-reinforces by the 'winners' bullying those who do not conform as easily. Jo March, queercoded dynamo that she was, took nothing away from the sisters who were happier with more traditional lifestyles because she wanted better for herself and the girls of the future, and represents so many women who fought for just that. You're not actually an intellectual for thinking Daphne Bridgerton has more value than Eloise because she was designated the season's Diamond, a literal in-universe (and true to life) Prize For Being Correctly Female, and unquestioningly accepts being paraded around like an ornament and smiling at being auctioned off to the highest bidder while Eloise fought back, criticized, and wanted an education more than any boy until they forced heterosexuality upon her. You are in fact a vanguard of the very patriarchal system the franchise even presents as backwards, because you don't want anyone raining on your arranged marriage fantasies.

There is nothing, and I mean nothing feminist, about snarking girls who do not like or for whatever reason, cannot or will not perform conventional femininity.

There is a certain sour-grapes defensiveness that comes from beig ostracized and punished for Failing At Your Gender if you weren't good at what was expected of you/resisted it. Femininity is derided, but it is also imposed (the two work in tandem to oppress women); and if you fail at its imposition, it's natural to try and gain protection by participating in the derision. Hell, I theorize that people who proclaimed themselves "not like other girls" in the contemporary age often did so out of resistance at the fact that we're supposed to perform (cisheteronormative) sexiness from the time we hit our teens, and of course the panopticon self-reinforcement that is how Other Girls treat you if you, an adolescent girl, shirk performance of femininity in any way. Certainly, I've also read much about GNC girls (of various identities) and neurodivergent girls equally having turned to this, which makes sense, as they're frequently targets for such bullying.

I do also think - and have personally experienced - it was an often imperfect articulation of queerness in many cases. The societal ideal of women under a patriarchy is cisheteronormativity; our value is derived from our appeal to men, and from the time we start maturing, sexual availability and appeal to men is the highest virtue. Therefore, women whose sexuality is not limited to men - or heaven forbid, doesn't include them at all - 'fail' gender, and accordingly often feel a sense of alienation and ostracism from other girls when they don't get as excited about dating boys. Also, in many cases (anecdotal I admit from people I know, but still significant), people who had a phase of asserting they "weren't like other girls" were in the process of discovering that they weren't girls at all!

And in some cases - again, I've mentioned that I was an Eloise for all the handwringing about how girls of that era wouldn't say that or do that and it would never occur to want more than what they had (...okay, so why are things different now?) - it's a frustration from the outspoken feminists and reformers at not being able to get other girls on board with us, because deviation from expectation will make you the weirdo who gets punished and rejected because ugh, annoying! As one historical costuming youtuber I won't name so charmingly puts it in her godawful video essay, "the women who made a big show of fighting back were freaks." (Way to convince us you care about feminism...)

All this to say the anti-NLOG brigade have utterly worn out my patience, and at best seem ignorant of the battles that have won us the freedoms we have today because it's not fun to consider how your escapist fantasy might be problematic (understandable, you don't always have to reflect on this to be aware), and at worst? They're getting the chance to be the mean girl in high school again/that they never got to be, they're just dressing it up in the bastardized language of feminism.

[teafiend]

[doomdoomofdoom]

Every now and again I wonder if maybe all trans people face roughly the same amount of bigotry and one just gets more attention, but then i have to read terf posts and.

wow.

obviously every group of trans identities faces their own struggles and unique oppression but there's this incredibly vitriolic kind of hatred reserved for transfems and its sickening.

[gatheringkeepsakes]

if i have to see one more post infantizing oscar before 2024 ends i'm going to turn into an oyster

[frostmagik]

Hey so, if all the women in your fic are construed as unreasonable, and their actions unforgivable, but all the men, despite committing far worse crimes (like war criminal bad) are considered perfectly reasonable and their actions are forgiven, maybe you should have a nice hard think about why you’re doing that.

[smile-files]

at the end of the day... suitcase and marshmallow are cool as hell (whatever is going on with knife)

[saturnniidae]

I miss being new to fandom and thinking the prominence of m/m ships was progressive instead of it actually just being people refusing to engage with female characters

[saetoru]

ppl who consider 30s to be old are wild to me bc realistically most people spend up until roughly 24-26 in college and so you’re basically saying you can rly only live your life for about 4-6 years freely before you’re considered “too old” to enjoy anything. wtf are ppl supposed to do for the next 30 years after that jackass ?? you tell me 🤨 are they supposed to just buy curtains and a new blender and be content with that 🤨

[claudiadiaries]

Also the way people talk about asa generally is so fucking annoying god bless

[musical-chick-13]

I think. I think there's still a lot of "Well I don't want to be like THOSE girls," even among plenty of adults who truly do genuinely care about feminism. And I just want to say that trying to assure someone who is attempting to parse all of that out with "Oh, don't worry, YOU'RE not like One Of THOSE™️ Girls" does not........actually help.

[non-un-topo]

Spending hours trying to figure out why I feel so irritable and sensitive today and I’m only realizing now it might have something to do w being invited to a birthday party full of an entire family I’ve never met and like seven very small children and the person inviting me assuming I would love that. I want to support her bc I like her and she’s family now, but I cannot---I will not---go to another family event and be pushed into the kitchen doing dishes with the women or cooing over someone’s baby who just stares at me and whines when I try to mask and say hello.

[cainite-bite]

Im sorry but this trend of "stay at home girlfriend" that's being glorified is the saddest fucking thing.

First of all never let anyone control your finances and solely rely on another for that because if they leave you're stuck with nothing. If they die you are stuck with nothing. If they are abusive and you need to get outta dodge you got nothing. Never let anyone have that power over you whether man or woman or literally anyone else.

2ndly it's also sad to say you cook, you clean, you wash the literal smudged underwear of some schmup, you're doing the full time work in their place and all for nothing but to get to call yourself "girlfriend". You don't get paid, you don't have the same tax benefits that you might have from marriage, you can't hop onto their insurance, you don't get anything because you're stuck with a person who doesn't view you as anything more than a live-in bangmaid with little value outside of that because they know you got so little self worth that you allow yourself to get used as a doormat.

[dragontatoes]

it's fine for anyone to love having a vagina, it's fine for anyone to not want to have a vagina, it's fine to have genitals that can't be neatly defined as a vagina or not a vagina, it's fine to feel nothing about your genitals, it's fine for your feelings to change all the time, it's fine for your body to change, it's fine to get surgery and it's fine to not get surgery

people should get to do what they want/need to with their own body without it being a grand statement on their identity

[llitchilitchi]

I think it's about finding women pretty to watch their content indeed. People don't tend to listen to women or to watch them for entertainment, bc it's not the default. The ones that will manage to get pass the "known status" are often conventionnaly attractive because that's a reason to keep watching (very sexist, but pretty sure there are studies about it)

There's also the fact that internet is ruthless to women and as such they must surely try to appear as beautiful as they can to avoid insults about their look...

I really, really need to find an essay or a book or Something that tackles this topic. I think the only time I've seen women do well online without being attractive was people who make art (painters, illustrators, doll makers) and that in itself I think is its own niche, so I'm not sure if it counts - and here I am talking faceless creatives, so the aspect of looks first does not come into question.

[giantkillerjack]

Dear horror youtubers who write video essays explaining and examining extraordinary works of horror that I deeply want to see and understand but will literally never be able to safely watch due to my own trauma - thus providing me with a way to learn from and connect to works of art that would be otherwise forever inaccessible to me,

I love you.