#just venting lol

[tozettastone]

RE: "there's so little F/F fanfiction," and its supposed relationship to misogyny, unexamined "fandom truly hates women," statements, and also why "eating your veggies" ala dutyfic is all kind of... inadequate and poorly expressed, in my view (and in my experience, as an AFAB person).

--

"Fandom hates women," is a statement that's usually written as though the person writing it does not hate women themselves. I think feminists who can't acknowledge their own misogyny are probably living the unexamined life (sorry, Socrates).

These people are right that misogyny is a problem. But they are wrong about how, why, and whether or not the amount of F/F fanfiction or female character-centric works is a proxy for measuring it.

I think there must be room to accept that among the people who happen to be assigned female at birth, even the most liberated suffer from some amount of internalised misogyny — or even just the relentless examination of their own thoughts in trying to root out the misogyny they know is in there. It's an ugly thing people really try to pretend isn't real. Feminists are also misogynists. Society has raised us all ugly and correcting it is a lifestyle, not a one-and-done deep clean.

Sometimes we've thought about it so much that every line of text is haunted by the long shadow of that misogyny. I know I often start and don't finish, or finish and just don't post, my f/f fanfics. It's not just because it attracts more harassment (although it sure used to, at least; I don't know now), but also because I overthink what I'm putting into the world: Is her vulnerability in this moment an attitude of feminine weakness? Is her stoicism just me the writer falling into a bland stoic butch trope because it's easy? Am I replicating gendered things I hate in M/F fanfiction but don't notice in F/F? Is this just writing in character, or is it a sexist stereotype? Hey, what if writing "in character" IS a sexist stereotype? What does this female character, a representative of her entire constructed identity, say about women? Shall I write another scene where she cuts her soft hair and rejects pink girly things and takes her job ever so seriously as part of a power fantasy, in which the excision of femininity goes hand in hand with the attainment of that power?

Every line of text might be a new enfilade in the long identity war. It's Schrodinger's sexism. Who's reading? What will this imply? What will they infer?

I just feel like, personally, until you can exist in society as someone that other people view as a woman, in a way that isn't being perpetually dissected and examined (by yourself, by others, by the people who feel insecure and defensive and want to respond to this saying "uhmmm sweetie that's YOUR problem, I'm an enlightened woman who genders and fucks how I want actually, YOU'RE the only misogynist here, you just suck," as though that's not yet another permutation of exactly the high-pressure, high-critique behaviour I just described), there will simply be fewer people putting their writing about female characters (and by extension F/F) into the public eye, and fewer people who want to do that writing at all.

It's just so fucking exhausting. I think it must be nice, sometimes, writing deathly boring (to me) M/F romance that openly embraces gender stereotypes, where she's always taken by surprise, and he's always competent. Ha.

But then you attempt a M/M romance, and you have to think, "isn't writing masculinity as the totally unexamined default actually kind of an act of collusion, too?" It doesn't have to be. But it sure can be, when you feel like this. And then you throw your laptop out the window. (I'm writing this on my phone. How did you guess?)

You have to draw a line somewhere, horribly, between your existence in a politicised body, your representation of politicised bodies in your art, and your existence as an individual who wants to enjoy their fucking hobby.

Maybe that means you delete all your social media accounts and go herd goats on a mountainside. Or you write about aliens for five years and give them whatever genitals you feel like today. But, like, listen. It's going to be fine. Gender is made up. I know, I know, pretty much everyone else thinks it's a holy binary, just like good and evil, and you have to live in the same world with them, sending coded gender messages all day every day and unable to stop. I know. But it is made up anyway.

Key takeaways: People should write whatever they enjoy writing and kind of just worry less about it. Worrying isn't helping you make fun art. And the amount of fanfiction about female characters and F/F relationships is a poor proxy for whatever we think we mean when we say, "fandom hates women."

[babacontainsmultitudes]

*breathes in*

[spillwayyz]

having some sort of romantic feelings for someone who is rather popular and has a partner feels so… idk, dumb? 😭 like it doesn’t make sense and yet here we are.

[nintendo-666]

I fucking hate being an alcoholic

I fucking hate drinking every day

I fucking hate feeling like shit all the time

I fucking hate feeling so spacey and stupid

I fucking hate nearly vomiting every night in a desperate attempt to drink enough to get drunk

I fucking hate how I act when I'm drunk

I fucking hate that I start thinking about drinking the second that I wake up

I'm soooo sick of every kind of alcohol, I feel sick no matter what I drink. I'm so embarrassed to be both physically and psychologically addicted to alcohol. I didn't get clean from opiates just to be weighed down by another chemical dependency.

Idk what the fuck to doooooooo UUUGGGHHH

[dunewizard]

South Aussie government sucks because I try to log my car rego and even though I am doing the quick no-sign in payment it still asks me to verify my email and to me that means I gotta do my rego in person

Pain

[peaceandlove26]

everything is funny & i love being alive

[littlelykan]

I wish I was treated like I was physically little.

I wish I was greeted with a smile and a kind word by adults who didn't know me. I wish my shyness was seen as cute and not 'weird'. I wish my mistakes were corrected gently and forgiven. I wish I was carried to bed as I grew tired and tucked in with a kiss. I wish that when I grew frustrated and cried it was met with "aww, it's OK" and not sneers and laughter and "why are you acting like a baby? Grow up." I wish that when I got overwhelmed it was understood that I needed some quiet rest and I wasn't pushed to keep going.

I know lots of adults didn't give these graces even when I was physically little, but even the little bit that I got made it just that much easier. I'm still so small in such a big world, and it's just gotten rougher as I got bigger.

[frogdrip]

Hm. Annoying. I tried to reach out and be goofy w my ex bcs he added me on Snapchat so I thought we could be on good terms - except he would reply on and off to my story and never even said hi when he added me so I felt bizarre around the situation. Also he always lurks on my posts : T anyway so I just ask him nicely basically like “hey you added me and I’m not sure why is everything ok” and he was like “I don’t reply bcs I don’t think ur funny 😗” bitcch LOL wtf who fucking ASKED THAAAAAAAAAAT kid gets daddy’s money and suddenly he think ppl give a shit about his opinions 💀 damn I was just trying to be nice. I was like “ok asking bcs u randomly added me and act sus af” he didn’t reply to that so I’m so over it and and say “Ok go ahead and block me again plsssss 💋♥️♥️ mwaaaaah!!! Thx babe” Why the fuck did I ever date someone who literally has no concept of reality and other peoples perception. He’s so ugly inside 😭 whyyyyyyyyy like any part of him I thought I could connect with again has been smushed and crushed into the dirt. Kinda hard to accept but everything is fluid blah blah blah change is inevitable I guess I just got nostalgic and this is the outcome LOL whoops

[spooky-pop]

~I don't know what I'm crying for, I don't think I could love you more~

[itsaspectrumcomic]

not my usual kind of comic but just... how I've been feeling recently

if you're feeling the same, maybe it will help to know you're not the only one

[phantom-of-the-north]

.

[tozettastone]

I'm still thinking about this exchange. It's living rent-free in my head.

(cut for general negativity)

They described one of the biggest use cases for screen readers, and insisted that people shouldn't have to use them for that use case: "People shouldn't have to use a screen reader just to access small text sighted people can see."

And they also wrote, "A solution to this is to include a plain text transcript after the small text, so you can still get the same effect while remaining accessible to people who can't read smaller text and providing another option for them."

This is a bad take if you're trying to support visually impaired people.

I am not a power user of screen readers the way I would have to become if I had much worse vision. I am not a representative of legally blind people. I am visually impaired, and my glasses don't fix everything about my vision, so I do sometimes adjust how I use devices, etc. I have used screen reader apps very occasionally. So I know that they can read text. Even small text.

What they don't do is recognise repeated text. And, guys, it takes so much longer to listen to text than to read it with your eyes.

So in this scenario, if I WAS using a screen reader, it would read the first section of text just fine. And then it would read the second, identical section of text. I would try to skip it, and almost certainly skip to the wrong place, and then scream in frustration.

I dunno. I'll make this unrebloggable because it feels more like venting, and I don't really like to feel like I've incited anything against a particular person, which I would definitely feel if someone reblogged it. But... I think this blog is not doing good work, and the person who runs it evidently does not want feedback on how to improve that work.

[wildfane]

spontaneous combustion

[imaginariumwanderer]

Actually I haven't been doing so well lately. Maybe these cute beast kitties will cheer someone up in my stead

[lotuslate]

decomposition!

[hajihiko]

Don't be mad over dumb internet things. Or, if it's inevitable, share it with someone unconcerned and then laugh about it later