#like i’m sorry what is the point of this ‘well women enforce the patriarchy too’ literally acknowledged that with the cersei commentary!!!

[thewingedwolf]

me trying to talk about the structural reasons why the tyrell girls are treated like shit and why cersei doesn’t see the walk of atonement coming

someone leaving the most annoying comment i’ve ever seen that’s now going to be the most popular version of this post bc they’re a bnf:

[werevulvi]

This is a very long, ranty post that's only lightly edited. It's about me deciding to basically leave radfem, so I wanted to be thorough about explaining how and why. And this is mainly because my blog ended up existing in a radblr bubble, deemed as hostile by other ideologies/groups of people, and I need to break out of that bubble, because I feel trapped in it. I'm not sure how, as I may have to start over with a new blog entirely, but I'd hope to avoid that if at all possible (my blog is my baby.) So I'm thinking that making this kinda post is a good start in trying to change how my blog vibes and what kinda blogs I can interact with in a non-debate kinda sense. Basically, damage control.

A while ago, I made some post about how I wanted to move away from the worst rudefem stuff of radfem, for the sake of my mental health. Well, I've now hit a point of wanting to take further steps away from radfem, pretty much altogether. The main reason for this is that there's still too much focus on ragging on trans women, and trans people in general. It's suffocating me, because I'm not all that detrans and I'm not anti-male. I miss connecting with other trans people, and I miss being part of that community. Truth is I've become really fucking hateful towards my own kind and I've been in denial of it. This has been carving a hole in my heart that my radfem views have carved even deeper, and it has led me to become a quite lost soul.

Do I hate trans women? No, but I clearly act as if I do, and I don't feel comfortable with my own actions and thoughts towards/about them anymore. Are some of them cumbrains fetishising my oppression (misogyny) and/or predators? Yes, undoubtedly. But I am not a collectivist and I can't view all trans women like that. Nor does it sit right with me to treat them all as potential predators. I care about trans women in general, ultimately because I am trans too and their struggles reflect my own. I cannot shit on them without shitting on myself. But it's not just about me. I feel empathy for them, and I want to extend kindness and care towards them. I cannot with any goodness in my heart view them as men. Males, yes, but not men. More on that diffentiation later in this post.

I do not want to politisise their gender identities as women, because I don't want my own gender politisised, regardless if that is man, woman, or otherwise. (More on that later too.) I don't want to trap them in the category of "man" because I do not want to be trapped in the category of "woman" as if our transitions and gender incongruence meant nothing at all. Do our transitions change bio sex? No, and I'm not arguing that. I'm saying transition changes SOMETHING and that that something matters. And in a lot of contexts, it even matters more than bio sex.

But isn't that just an emotional argument, like boohoo, my/their feefees? YES, it's an emotional argument. But you know what: I believe that feelings matter, about as equally much as facts and logic matters. An argument being emotional does not make it necessarily useless or invalid. Grave robbery and necrophilia is illegal due to purely emotional arguments. Perhaps think about if that's useless.

I care about trans women's feelings and comfort, not just their rights, and I care about men's feelings and comfort too, because I do not think individual males' oppression being patriarchy's fault even remotely means that "men cause their own problems" because one male suffering at the hands of other men (patriarchy) is NOT his own fault. And him reaching out to women for help when other men fail him AGAIN shouldn't be hard to understand. Of course it's optional to help him or not then, but I feel like it is truly heartless not to, unless he is some kinda raging misogynist. I see that kinda vibe a lot in radfem circles and it honestly churns my stomach. That kinda man-hating is to me absolutely repugnant. You do you, but I will not support it.

Why do I care about males? Because they're human. They're the same species as me, and I care about them as one human to another. Because I don't believe there's any difference between males and females beyond the physical biology stuff. Socialisation varies from person to person. I've always been a person of principles, so I can't sit around and say I only care about fellow females and all females, because no one choses to be born female - and then in the same breath hate males for essentially having been born male, which they also did not choose. If I had been born male, I'd probably hate radfem, and that says something. It's very fucking lopsided, and barely even to my favour.

And I've been asking myself that a lot lately: Is radfem even to my (a bio female's) favour - or is it only the the favour of some kinda statistic average of a general female who doesn't even exist? I dunno, but it's an important question to ask.

This is getting ranty already, but hey I'm trying.

Trans women and males aside, radfem often has a kinda negative view of trans men (and any variety of dysphoric females) that I've always felt iffy about, but first thought I had been mistaken about. It seemed for a long while that radfem is totally supportive of transmascs/dysphoric females, but..... upon closer look, it appears a little bit rotten, sorry to say. Because lately I've come to realise maybe I was kinda right from the start that radfem really is not as supportive of transmascs/dysphoric females as it claims to be. This is probably not intentionally unsupportive, I'm aware, but some of the things that really stand out to me like sore thumbs:

1.) The idea that if gender abolishion happened, no one would be dysphoric or wish to transition medically, is frankly incredibly unfounded. Do you have ANY evidence for that dysphoria is ENTIRELY social, because I've yet to see any reliable study on this. As far as I'm concerned this is just a theory based on essentially the exclusion method that all the biology-based theories are incomplete. So this strong assertion that a genderless society would have no trans people (with sex dysphoria only) gives me this unsettling vibe that radfem is not at all supportive of transition, but would prooobably prefer it if no one was trans - even in a world where gender is abolished and transitioned females are masculine women who just like looking like males, and transitioned males are feminine men who just like looking like females, and I dunno dysphoric nonbinary people would just be men and women who transition in a variety of atypical ways.

Which was always what I envisioned. That no one would be FORCED to be feminine or masculine or anything, because of their sex - NOT that trans people would be forced or expected to accept their physical sex characteristics. Because I don't know about you, but I've personally never based my sex dysphoria on that it's too hard to live as a masculine woman, and I've met tons of other trans people who feel the same way about that. It's a myth about dysphoric trans people, and I think perpetuating it does more harm than good.

Feminism, gender abolishion, etc, probably can't cure anyone's sex dysphoria. And even just striving towards that is a little iffy. How about leave it up to the dysphorics if we wanna be cured? Because I bet most radfems would not wanna enforce a cure for autism if that became a thing, or strive towards curing the world of autism. So why do it with sex/gender dysphoria? Point is I'm just noticing these uncomfortable, kinda hidden anti-trans sentiments behind the gender abolishion idea. I'm FOR gender abolishion, but only if transition would still be available in such a future. But I'm sensing that's not what radfem is actually about, and I've been properly fucking fooled. If so... fuck you for that.

2.) Some of you operate on the false assumption that trans people never pass as the opposite sex. This level of intellectual dishonesty is skewing radfem certain arguments really badly, and makes them appear poorly thought-out at best, and impossible to implement in real life at worst.

3.) The idea that sex segregated spaces can be upheld in a world where some people pass as the opposite sex, is frankly ludicrous to me, if you think of how it would actually pan out in practice. If women's spaces became only ever available for bio women, and males spaces only available for bio men, I'd be banned from both, due to my own transition. (And why the flying fuck would I promote that? I'm not insane.) Because there is no way I can prove that my sex is female, most people do not even believe that my sex is female when I tell them, and I already get tossed out from women's spaces due to that I just look like a man.

People's failure to believe I'm THAT passable irl, is about as frustrating as people's failure to believe I'm actually female, and both those people's arguments on where I "should" go is entirely useless garbage. This doesn't only affect me, but a lot of trans people out there in the world. And then I'm probably more accommodating to this kinda drama, than what most trans people would even be willing to pretend to put up with. I am your faithful lapdog, yet I still get my teeth kicked in for being annoying. To which I have to ask myself: is this kinda martyrdom really worth it? Other trans people often see me as self-hating for being a radfem, and I'm sadly starting to see why.

And to then claim I could just use gender neutral spaces is frankly robbing me of MY female rights. To treat me as a threat to other women is very uncalled for, and yes... misogynistic. And to assume that male-passing females would be welcome in women's spaces in such a world is frankly laughable. Masculine women who have not even touched a vial of testosterone in their lives already have trouble being allowed in women only spaces that have harder rules on "no trans women allowed." This is anti-trans in a way which I cannot support.

If I am to be barred from women's spaces (which I am) because I look like a man, then I WILL use men's spaces. Because I refuse to be dehumanised and stuffed into a "trans toilet/locker room" for other people's convenience. The majority's comfort does NOT get to override my personal comfort. Especially considering men (in general) are not actually uncomfortable with my presense in their spaces, because I look like I belong there. So there is not even any damn argument to be made against me using male only space. This is not because of me wanting some kinda validation for how much of a "man" I "identify" as or whatever. This is about me not wanting to be dehumanised for my medical condition or for how I choose to treat it. Because yes, barring me from both men's and women's spaces does feel a lot like considering me sub-human, because my physical body is frightening, unsettling, gross, or otherwise inconvenient for "normal" men and women to be subjected to. Fuck that noise. I am just as much human and I deserve the same level of basic respect, and that should not be asking for too much. I will not sink below that bar. That's like telling a disabled person that they "have to" use the disabled space because their amputation (or whatever is their ailment) freaks people out, even if they're capable of using the regular men's/women's space despite their condition. So, I'd say barring trans people from both men's and women's spaces is actually rather ableist.

So how do I think that issue should be solved then? Honestly I do not have a solution. So I'd say skip the sex segregation of stuff like bathrooms and locker rooms completely (but keep it for stuff like sports and rape relief shelters) and let trans people themselves figure out which space suits them best, and only intervene in cases when they make a really poor judgement. The only other option would be allowing ALL females in women's spaces (yes, including fully passing trans men) and vice versa all males into men's spaces, but I'm extremely worried about how exactly passing trans people would be expected to go about proving they're going to the right spaces. So I'd say don't do shit until we have found a better (actually better) solution.

Because I can't sit here and say that trans women should never use the women's locker rooms, while I go showering butt naked in the men's locker room. That would be a very hypocritical double standard. Yes, I think passable and/or post-op trans women can and should be allowed to use women only spaces. Based on that I think passable and/or post-op trans men can and should be allowed to use men only spaces, but I do not think that is a perfect or ideal solution.

3.) There's just in general a lot of negativity towards medical transition and how trans people look; our desires, hopes, goals and our dysphoria. This feeds my self-hatred like fuck. Yeah I'd consider myself a rather strong person in general, but I'm not made of concrete, and I think radfem and gender critical thought has broken me down a lot, which took me a while to notice. I don't even know if the real reason I'm calling myself a woman nowadays is because my dream of being a man in ANY sorta sense (be it fantasy or reality) has become completely crushed. Yet I'm unable to truly be okay with being a woman.

Yes, I truly love my pussy, I'm fine with my reproductive ability (producing ova, chance at pregnancy) and in general I like that I started off on a female ground. I love that I have small hands and feet, and a relatively small frame. I really like my height, that I'm not very tall, but do tower most other females. So there's a lot I like about being bio female, and it's mostly things I can't change about my physique anyway. As for my curves, I seem to sometimes like it and sometimes not. I'm also okay with having cellulites and stretch marks. But what I'm NOT fine with about being female is being driven by estrogen, my body's natural gravitation and persistense towards re-feminising itself as soon as I went off of testosterone, having breasts, having less muscle mass than males, having a higher voice, having little to no body/facial hair, etc. I am not fine with being recognised as a woman, or having most female secondary sex characteristics, or lacking male secondary sex characteristics.

This does make me feel like although I'm actually fine with simply being bio female, I'm only fine with it on the condition that I get to look/sound/appear as close to male as medically possible. And does that make me a man in the bio male sorta sense? No, obviously not, but I'm starting to ask myself: Why the FUCK does it matter so goddamn much?! I am sick and tired of being a political pawn no matter where I go. I just wanna live my life.

And radfem discourse (as well as TRA discourse) is so goddamn far from real life it's honestly pathetic and destructive. Most people really don't give a fuck if I'm male or female, or if I have a dick or pussy. It's only really relevant for my doctors and my sex partners. But outside of those very specific contexts, I do like being open about my bio sex, because it just makes it easier to be open about my life, and I feel like that's a good reason to be open about it. However, being open about it solely because some people on the internet think people's bio sex is absolutely crucial info (outside of the context of sex/dating and docs) does not feel good.

I shouldn't feel pressured to be so open about myself, just to not feel guilty for how I choose to treat my dysphoria. I should not have to feel this guilty.

I think my opinions on gender are actually unhealthy for me. I understand more and more that people's opinions on gender are largely just based on their own personal experiences with whatever trans people they've stumbled across. There is no objective facts on what gender is and what it is not. If it's an internal identity or just social roles and clothing. If it's somewhat biological or entirely socially constructed. I feel like I've been arguing bullshit semantics that don't even hold water. I'm not saying that bio sex is changable or a spectrum or completely unimportant, or anything like that. When I say gender I don't mean biological sex.

I'm not saying that I'm not biogically female. I'm saying that just because I'm a female, doesn't mean I cannot also be a man - under, not another, but just slightly looser definition of man which is still connected to physical maleness - in contexts where it simply does not, and should not, matter if I do not fit someone else's definition of what a man or woman is. Because maybe semantics are killing discourse more than it's killing real life issues like human rights. Just saying.

But I dunno what I want with my gender or my label. But I think my realisation that I need to scrap my views and values in regards to gender altogether, and rebuild them from scratch... might actually quite likely change my sense of my gendered self (again.) Because you know what? My gender identity seems very highly influenced by my opinions of gender as a whole, and not just by my dysphoria. If I go by just my dysphoria, I think I would consider myself a trans man, which is why I guess I never truly stopped considering that... but my opinions on gender as a whole (women's rights, female liberation, gender abolishion, trans stuff, bio sex, etc) intervene and conflict with that, and makes me wanna be both a woman and a trans man at the same time, which I can't. So I end up being pulled in two opposing directions.

It's just that up until recently my opinions on gender used to matter more to me than tending to my dysphoria. And now I've come to a point where I don't think I wanna have that sorta prioritisation anymore, because it's having real bad effect on my mental health.

And I need to get very real with myself and ask myself if this really is the life I want. Upon knowing that I'm not actually comfortable with my own opinions, and their affects on my mental health is not actually worth advocating for female liberation, which I already know by now. Then my next step is to take a step back and try to consume less media from any and all sides of the discourse, and listen to my intuition again. Hear myself out. This might take a while, and in the meantime I'm just gonna have to say that my stance on feminism, trans stuff, women's rights, etc, is "under construction."

And as for my goddamn gender label... I'm half okay with pretty much anything right now. Transmasc, woman, ftm, trans man, dysphoric female, masculine/gnc/male-passing woman, etc, is all fine. It's not really about how other people label me anyway. How I label myself is the only thing that truly matters to me in that regard. That it's with self-respect, love and care... and not for political reasons.

I think that's just the thing. That I need to stop doing shit I'm not comfortable with just for political reasons.

With that said, I also wanna briefly touch upon other aspects of radfem that I find myself either no longer agreeing with, or just no longer caring about.

The sex work industry: I know it's bad. But I no longer care and I still might wanna become a sex worker one day. At least I wanna try it. Because no I don't want for sex to be personal, private or hidden. I feel like that's just not how I wanna express my sexuality. And sex is the ONLY of my passions I can in any way imagine turning into a job. Because it's the only one of my passions I never get tired of, and also never truly get obsessed with either. Sorry if the sex industry hurt you personally, but I kinda fail to see how that's my problem, or my responsibility, or how it would seal my fate. I don't wanna live my life after other people's problems, and I cannot learn from other people's mistakes (for those who chose it but still got burned.)

Watching porn, engaging in bdsm, etc: After having tried for a couple of years to heal my broken sexuality and to enjoy vanilla sex, I'm frankly giving up. Some say I'd have to go celibate and work really hard on my trauma for it to have effect, which... honestly I'd rather eat a bullet than do that. I saw a sexologist once last summer and oooooh BOY did that go badly! She basically told me I'm just kinky and need to work on accepting myself. That hurt a lot, and made me give up extra hard on psychiatry again (like it was the last drop again) but it made me realise that there just isn't any help for me out there. And that I'm also not willing to do anything drastic to change it on my own.

That what I want is to have a sex life that I enjoy. So... I'll go back to what simply works for me: bdsm sex. That's not entirely without some reluctance and hesitation, and I do plan on going about it in safer ways than I previously did. Like for example only doing it with people I trust and know well, use safety words, etc, as a bare minimum. I'm learning everything I can about safer bdsm practices, well before actually diving into it. But thing is that I like such extreme "kinks" that it's never gonna be entirely safe, and.... I guess I can't be fucked to care anymore, and I'm tired of even just hearing about the preachings of how bad hardcore bdsm is. Like yeah, I know it's bad, now shut up now and leave me the fuck alone to live/ruin my own damn life.

And as for porn: I never quite quit it, just reduced it by a lot. Again, not denying the harms about it, just not caring enough to change my habits.

Conclusions and wrapping it up: Basically, I've always been a Trauma Queen and I just wanna be myself again. I don't think my former views (more egalitarian/equality based rather than female liberation, and neither individualist nor collectivist) were bad or wrong, but rather that how I implemented them into my life and disregarded danger which was bad. Bio sex matters, but I think gender matters too, and the world is what it is. I have to accept that if I'm gonna have the slightest chance of living a happy life. I can't force myself to live according to feminist ideals for the sake of women in general, when those ideals smother my flame.

I cannot claim that either of the things radfem stand against are all inherently bad. I cannot claim that transitioning shouldn't be a thing, even in a perfect world, because I wanna bring my testosterone with me everywhere I go. I cannot claim that there's any "one road fits all" to happiness for all people, or all women. I cannot be a hypocrite who only values female lives when male lives are at core equally valuable. That has nothing to do with pandering to men. All it means is that I want a world where men and women can live in peace together, and if that's not possible, then at least I wanna live my own life in peace with myself, making whichever decisions I see fit for myself, and surround myself with both men and women who are respectful and decent people. I do not want to try to force my life to fit an ultimately flawed ideology. And all ideologies are flawed.

I'm flawed. We all are, and that is okay. Yes, I wanna strive towards happiness and some health and safety, but not ultimate health or 100% secure safety. Health and safety should not come at the expense of fun and happiness, if at all possible. Because I still need some amount of danger to find enjoyment in things, and I think having fun and getting bitter lessons is more important, than being healthy and safe. I've always thought that. It might just even be a core value of mine, and it does conflict with radfem values. What matters to me in life is in conflict with radfem values. I need to learn moderation and to balance fun with health, happiness with safety, and transitioning with reality. But what I do not need is to wingclip myself because of what matters to other people.

Radfem has taught me a lot of good stuff, it has made me aware of a lot of shit I didn't wanna know, but now it's time to move on and leave it behind me.

Please note that I do not mean to demonise radfem as inherently bad, fearmongering, transphobic, etc. It still has a lot of good points that I agree with. And I may still likely reblog and interact with radfem posts that I do feel are good and/or interesting. I just don't wanna lock myself to radfem as an ideology anymore. I do not think radfem is the ultimate truth, and I do not think there even is ANY ultimate truth to such things as gender.

I'm saying that I declare myself no longer a radical feminist because I am no longer dedicated to the cause as a whole. Not that it's suddenly all bad.

I wanna spread my wings and just be my problematic, true self... this sex-crazed, kinky tranny who deep down loves being a transitioned female, but also don't want for any female to suffer oppression simply because of how they were born, but also sees trans women as "women enough", values male lives and their opinions, etc! Whatever else I might think and feel which I haven't figured out yet. Instead of a forcing myself to become a perfect pawn for completely sex-based feminism.

I may adopt some of my old TRA views back, as well as some of my old libfem views. I will not limit myself to only one school of thought, ANY one school of thought. Please remember that if you're thinking I'm gonna go back to be a TRA libfem entirely, because that is NOT the case. What I'm breaking out of is the tribalism and extremism of radfem: the radical part of feminism. Because ultimately, that radical part of feminism, what I've been describing (perhaps poorly) throughout this post, is what's become suffocating for me.

I need to find myself again, beyond EVERY ideology that's telling me how I should think, feel and live my life. I've had enough of that shit. I need to think and feel freely, and live my life for myself.

Thank you all for your patience with me.

[the-desolated-quill]

She Was Killed By Space Junk - Watchmen (TV Series) blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. if you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

The first episode was a shaky, but intriguing start. The second episode was both incredibly provocative and intelligently written. What about the third episode? Um... I’m honestly not too sure what to make of it, if I’m honest. I watched it twice like I do with everything I review and I genuinely don’t know what to say about it. I couldn’t even tell you if I liked it or not. I think I liked it.... but I couldn’t tell you why.

Okay. Sorry. Hi guys. Let me explain what happened. I wrote that first paragraph and then I got writer’s block, so I decided to step away from it. I had a nap, played a video game and then decided to watch the episode again for a third time with fresh eyes. Now my thoughts are a little more concrete. So. She Was Killed By Space Junk. Having watched this episode three times now, I’ve decided that I don’t like this episode very much at all, and that’s less to do with what’s in the episode and more to do with what isn’t. 

Let me explain.

Reviewing episodes like this one can often be very frustrating because it’s hard to tell what is a genuine flaw and what is merely setup for what’s to come. I have a number of problems with this episode, but for all I know, what I’m about to talk about might not actually be problems at all and will all be explained in a future episode. Or they are genuine problems and I’m inadvertently giving the writers way too much credit. I don’t know. That’s why it’s so frustrating.

My main point of contention is with the character of Laurie. First of all, let me just say that Jean Smart doesn’t put a foot wrong. She gives a great performance and is a good choice to play an older Laurie. The problem I have is with her characterisation. Or, at the very least, bits of her characterisation. I don’t know. It’s complicated.

Laurie’s inclusion in the TV series was something I was actually most looking forward to because I felt her character was kind of shortchanged in the graphic novel. Initially starting out as an effective and scathing critique of how women are often presented in comics, over the course of Watchmen’s story her role was reduced until she ended up becoming little more than a prop for the male characters’ stories. It was disappointing and it’s led to me arguing multiple times that Silk Spectre is one of the most underrated and wasted elements of Watchmen. The HBO series felt like a perfect opportunity to right some wrongs and give Laurie the attention she deserves. She Was Killed By Space Junk certainly gave her the focus and attention she didn’t receive in the graphic novel, but I’m very much struggling to ascertain what the show was trying to achieve here.

Let’s quickly remind ourselves where the graphic novel left us with her character. She had recently discovered that the Comedian, the man who tried to rape her mother, was her biological father, she was in a relationship with Dan Dreiberg, aka Nite Owl, and they were both on the run from the law, hellbent on continuing their lives as vigilantes. Okay. How does the HBO series continue this? Well it turns out she and Dan are no longer together. I know some fans really don’t like this, but I personally don’t have a problem with it. In fact I’m perfectly happy with it. In my review of A Stronger, Loving World, I explained how I didn’t believe their relationship could possibly last long term because it was clear that they were together not because they were in love, but rather because they were indulging in each other’s fantasies, and the fact that Dan’s seeming fascination with the Silk Spectre porn comic supported this. Showrunner Damon Lindelof clearly agrees, so cool. It’s always nice to be proven right.

Anyway, at some point between the graphic novel and the HBO series, the fantasy was shattered and the pair split up. I’m assuming what shattered the fantasy was them getting caught by the FBI. It’s unclear what’s happened to Dan at this time. Judging by the fact that the police in Oklahoma are using Owlships and goggles, I’m assuming that Dan was arrested and his equipment was appropriated by law enforcement. Laurie meanwhile has struck some kind of deal and now she’s working with the Anti-Vigilante Taskforce and enforcing the Keene Act, which is an interesting parallel with how her father, the Comedian, served the American government during the Vietnam War. But you see this is where I start to get a bit confused.

The episode opens with Laurie setting a trap for a vigilante known as Mister Shadow (basically Fake Batman) and shooting him, either not knowing or not caring whether or not Mister Shadow’s body armour would save him. She’s also taken on the Comedian’s last name Blake and displays a very similar nihilistic attitude, making dark jokes and exhibiting uncaring, unsympathetic behaviour. Now I don’t necessarily have a problem with Laurie becoming more nihilistic, given what she’s been through. Having witnessed Ozymandias and his squid of doom, it’s bound to affect her worldview. However, her turning into a female Comedian doesn’t really marry up with her character at all. And yes, I know at the end of the graphic novel she talked about getting a gun and body armour, like the Comedian, but it didn’t work there either. It felt too drastic a character shift and was painfully on the nose. I didn’t like it there and I don’t like it here either. I just don’t buy that she would want to emulate the man who tried to rape her mother. 

I especially don’t like her violent, uncaring attitude toward Mister Shadow. Why does she have such a disdain for vigilantes? Is it because of what happened with Dan, and she’s projecting that onto everyone else? Has she become so nihilistic that she just doesn’t give a shit anymore? There’s a moment later in the episode where she asks someone if their civil rights are being violated only to then turn around and say she was being sarcastic. That really didn’t sit right with me. It just doesn’t feel like something Laurie would say.

And then there’s the whole thing with Doctor Manhattan. Throughout the episode we see her in a phone booth trying to tell a joke to Manhattan (quite what the purpose of these phone booths are, I don’t know. Considering that people in the world of Watchmen believe that Manhattan was giving people cancer, why would anyone want to call him?). She clearly misses him to the point where she has a large blue dildo hidden a briefcase that’s clearly a direct reference to Pulp Fiction. I REALLY don’t like this. At all. The reason Laurie left Manhattan in the first place was because he couldn’t emotionally satisfy her, being an omnipresent demigod and all. So why would she be pining after him? The blue dildo joke in particular just felt kind of degrading. Just... why?

Weirder still is the joke she spends the whole episode trying to tell him. It’s clearly an indirect reference to the Pagliacci joke from the graphic novel, except the Pagliacci joke had a specific purpose in the graphic novel and its meaning was clear. Rorschach was remarking on how America was relying on the Comedian to save them from violence and corruption, which was futile considering what a violent and corrupt person the Comedian was. Here, however, I have no idea what Laurie is trying to say with the brick joke at all. I’m assuming the bricklayer is her father and she’s following in his footsteps. Okay, I kind of get that (except not really for the reasons I’ve already mentioned, but whatever). But then we come to the whole bit with God at the pearly gates sending Nite Owl, Ozymandias and Doctor Manhattan to Hell, only to then get killed by the brick from the previous joke. Now... what the fuck is that all about? I’ve been racking my brains, checking what other people said, and I can’t find any satisfying answers. It just feels like pretentious, unnecessary fanwank. The best I can come up with is that Laurie is expressing how she’s not letting men dictate her life anymore. But... she’s spent the whole episode pining after Doctor Manhattan, she’s modelled herself after her rapist father, and at the end of the episode, she sleeps with her assistant Petey, an agent who claims to not to be a fan of superheroes, but is totes a fan of superheroes. So... is that the joke? She wants to escape from the shadow of the men in her life, but can’t? Or she intends to overcome the patriarchy that has kept her down, but she still ends up choosing to indulge in the power fantasy of Petey? Or does it refer to something else she’s planning to do later? It’s all so frustratingly vague.

As I was watching this episode, I honestly lost track of the number of times I thought to myself ‘I don’t know where Lindelof is going with this.’ Sometimes this approach works, keeping the audience in the dark in order to build intrigue and suspense, but for Watchmen, a story that’s famous for its dense material and subject matter, it’s just plain annoying. In fact this whole episode feels really off to me. Instead of focusing on character narratives and thematic storytelling, She Was Killed By Space Junk relies more on a plot heavy story that moves the pieces of the larger arc forward and keeping certain specific details vague in an attempt to keep people watching. Except that’s not really what Watchmen is about and it results in leaving the more integral aspects of the story in the dust. Angela barely gets a look in here, and considering a significant portion of the episode focuses on Judd Crawford’s funeral, it feels like a massive, missed opportunity. How does it feel discovering that the man you liked and respected wasn’t the man you thought he was? Does that change your feelings toward him? Does it invalidate the good times you had with him? And with Laurie there, the show could have compared and contrasted the two. How these two women move forward knowing these uncomfortable truths about the men in the lives? But the show never really capitalises on this.

And the annoying thing is, for all I know, all the things I’m talking about could actually be addressed in a future episode, thus rendering what I’m saying moot. I don’t know. I can’t tell if this is all just really bad setup for an eventual satisfying payoff or if it’s just plain bad.

That being said, while I do ultimately dislike this episode, there are a few things I like. For instance, I do like what we learn about the larger world of Watchmen. We learn that Oklahoma is the only state that’s allowing the police to mask up and that this law was passed by Joe Keene Jr., whose father was responsible for the Keene Act that was passed outlawing vigilantes. Joe Keene Jr. was briefly introduced in the previous episode and it looks like he’s going to be playing a larger role from here on out. Let’s wait and see where that goes. 

We also learn that Looking Glass knows Laurie and has prior history with her. He even confirms Sister Night’s secret identity to her, albeit reluctantly. So is he a plant? Maybe sent by the FBI to try and sabotage Keene Jr? Hmmm, what’s going on here then?

And then there’s Ozymandias.

While I dislike how Laurie is being handled so far, I love, love, LOVE what they’re doing with Adrian Veidt. After the events of the graphic novel, it seems he’s gone into self imposed exile. Whether this is as a punishment or as a way to make sure he doesn’t inadvertently blab about his involvement with the squid is unknown. Anyway, he’s been here for three years now, judging by the candles on the cake, and he seems to be going a little bit stir crazy. He’s sacrificing his clones in order to try and find a means of escape and now he has to contend with a bloodthirsty game warden (another clone). The idea of Ozymandias being hoist by his own petard and being oppressed by the very tools and instruments of his own vanity is absolutely tantalising, and I love what Jeremy Irons is doing with the part and the way he’s depicting the character’s slow descent into lunacy.

Also a special shoutout has to go to the costume department for the Ozymandias costume we see Adrian finally don. It’s gloriously, breathtakingly terrible. Truly one of the worst superhero costumes ever seen on screen... which is exactly what it should be! 

One of the things I intensely disliked about the 2009 movie was Zack Snyder’s attempts to make the characters look cool and stylish when in reality these characters are supposed to be the complete opposite of that. Rorschach looks like a hobo, puts on a gruff voice and wears lifts on his heels in a pathetic attempt to look more imposing. Nite Owl wears a ridiculously tight fitting costume that shows off his belly bulge. Silk Spectre’s outfit looks more like something a stripper would wear and is not even remotely practical. They look stupid to us, the outsiders, but to the characters, it makes them feel powerful. That’s the whole point, and the HBO series captures that perfectly. Adrian is going to war with the game warden and wants to feel powerful, so he puts on his objectively silly purple and gold shawl in an effort to reclaim the power he once had. It’s laugh out hilarious, made all the more funnier by the fact that he’s clearly far too old to be playing dress up. It’s moments like this that demonstrate that Lindelof clearly does understand the source material, which is what makes the way Laurie is treated all the more baffling.

She Was Killed By Space Junk isn’t a bad episode. There’s stuff to like, but it doesn’t have any of the intelligent thematic storytelling or characterisation the previous two episodes had. Coupled with the apparent mishandling of Laurie’s character and the deliberate vagueness of some of its plotting leads to it being an episode that’s ultimately more frustrating than enjoyable to watch.

[artemissarrows]

SOTUS The Series: Patriarchy & Queerness As Redemption

Okay, it’s been a little bit! But I have certainly been consuming a lot of queer content I need to discuss. First up is SOTUS The Series! It’s a Thai boy love (BL) show about an engineeing college that has a super-intense hazing culture. One of the freshman (Kongpob/Kong for short) stands up to the hazers who make them do endless squats and such….and ends up falling in love with the head hazer (Arthrit). It’s a romcom so you probably know where this is going.

I *hope* this goes without saying, but HAZING IS NOT OK and should not be lifted up as a normal part of a university experience. It is abuse, full-stop. One of the yuckiest things about the show for me is how the administration is totally and completely fine with it. People who are invested in the hazing culture (and, frankly, the showrunners) try to make the case that it teaches teamwork and problem-solving and stuff like that. Not really! More importantly, it’s incredibly damaging to participants and there are a lot less harmful ways to teach those lessons, if they’re really so important.

We could just leave it there--on a surface level, it’s honestly pretty enjoyable. The two leads have pretty solid chemistry and are quite believable (at least until the very end, when they’re equally as awkard three years on. But as my partner Mx. Arrows pointed out, they are painfully awkward engineer nerds on top of everything else, so maybe that’s actually realistic. Anyway.) It’s funny. It’s heartwarming. It’s gayyyyy. The supporting friend characters are also kind of fun and I like them.

But there are some other noteworthy things going on here that I’m interested in teasing apart, and which I’m not entirely sure the show intended. Let’s do that! Lots of spoilers after the cut (but again, it’s a romcom, there’s only so many things that can be spoiled). Note that I have only watched Season 1, I know there’s another season.

It’s about the patriarchy.

The more I thought about it, the more it seems reasonable to see the SOTUS (hazing) system as a useful dramatization of the patriarchy. When I say “the patriarchy,” I mean a system of dominance that gives men power over women; SOTUS also privileges older people over younger, straight people over queer people, etc.etc.. Here are some of the ways that we can see this system of dominance playing out in the structure of the hazing system:

The SOTUS system is run by men, exclusively. There are 6 or 7 head hazers, and they are all men

They belittle, berate, and punish their younger charges for doing things like looking the wrong way, singing slightly out of tune, or questioning their authority to mete out dubious punishments for nothing at all

It’s quasi-military, with uniforms for both the hazers and the freshman, and endless drills and the blind loyalty and authority that comes with military order

Women who are not freshman are present in the second tier of hazers, beyond the men. They are ancillary to the men, and their helpers. In particular they are the medics: they ensure that the hazers can assign their punishments etc. while also ensuring that it doesn’t get too out of hand and that no one gets hurt too badly. Without their assistance, the men could not do what they do, and could not enforce this system.

The head hazer, Arthrit, also uses sexism and homophobia as weapons to enforce control and order. Of course, he’s aware that the structure of SOTUS is headed by men. But he also taunts the freshmen in these ways too. At the beginning of the year, the hazers demand that the freshmen fill books with upperclass students’ signatures. In exchange for his signature, Arthrit demands that May, a female student who asks him, give him her number and take her picture. She’s clearly uncomfortable with the interaction; it happens in the lunchroom and she’s one woman who’s the object of the male gaze of 6 or 7 seniors. In that same scene, Arthrit also harasses Kong in a homophobic way. Again to get his siguature, he forces Kong to shout “I like guys!” three times loudly, and then to ask something like 10 male students if they’ll be his boyfriend. (He then doesn’t give his signature.) Mind you, this is something like day 2 or 3 of school in the show.

Arthrit is one repressed dude. More on that later.

It’s Also About Cycles Of Abuse

We’ve established that the SOTUS is all about dominance and control based on gender and other heirarchies--but that’s just the system in one particular point. What happens to this system over time? That’s where we get into cycles of abuse, and how SOTUS harms not just the freshmen who are on the receiving end of the abuse, but also harms the hazers themselves. Let’s look at Arthrit, the head hazer/one-half of the lead couple.

He’s an extremely homophobic and self-hating gay, at least to start with. Per above, he actively promulgates homophobia. He’s also deeply uncomfortable with expressing affection toward men, and Kongpob in partiuclar--though apparently fine with grabbing Kongpob’s shirt when Kongpob stands up to him during a hazing session. When they share their first kiss after Arthrit finally confesses his feelings, Kong tries to hold his arm and hand and he keeps shoving him off. Then they go on another date, where they meet a fellow student at the movies and Arthrit lies and says it’s not a date. (This is not the first not-not date they’ve been on together...this is not at all relatable. Not at all ^_^) Anyway, it takes him and painful time to do that.

He is a seriously repressed and emotionally stunted person, and being the head hazer is a major part of why. As head hazer, he berates the freshman, he enforces order, he snaps at them, he plays games where he makes them humiliate themselves for his attention and benefit. He is comfortable ordering people around. But when it comes to being in touch with his own feelings, he’s hopeless. It takes him forever to realize he has feelings for Kong. He’s deeply confused about it, up to the very second he kisses him. His friend Knott literally has to tell him to talk through difficulties with Kong and not let them stew. He spends most of the show running away from Kong, hiding from Kong, or otherwise finding ways to not open up to him. It would be funny, if it weren’t deeply sad.

Friends, this is classic toxic masculinity. At least his friend Knott has his head on straight and gives some decent advice.

I honestly get the sense that Arthrit is a quiet, introverted, and smart guy, who felt like he was forced by duty to become the head hazer, the one everyone looks up to. Even when he’s with his hazing friends, he seems aloof, apart, and alone. But guess what: he made that choice himself! When he’s sick--because he ran 54 LAPS IN A DAY for a hazing challenge--we see that he’s into comic books, and action figures. We learn that he also gets good grades, so is obviously smart. And even when he talks to his friend--the former head hazer who recruited him--about his feelings for Kong, his friend tells him, “be tough.” (His friend also implies that he hasn’t dated much...no surprise there.) Sigh.

Are we meant to envy Arthrit, feel sorry for him, or both? He’s at the top of the social structure of the school, but he doesn’t seems particularly contented, and in fact seems disconnected. He’s the person who seems to have it all, but has nothing. I’m somewhat curious if others share this reading of him as a discontented bully who longs for human connection.

We can also think about the succession of the head hazers, and how the head hazer before Arthrit chose him, and how Arthrit chose Kong. The one before Arthrit chose him because when he punished Arthrit for speaking out by telling him to greet a banyan tree for three whole hours, Arthrit did it. Then Arthrit chooses Kong because he speaks out and heckles Arthrit. It’s super interesting to me, but I think the thing is to identify people who have strong enough feelings about the system--and care enough--that speak out and therefore demonstrate leadership skills. They then turn those feelings of rebellion back into the system and coopt them. Toward the end of the show Kong starts to feel more invested in the hazing system and I was hoping that he would try to reform it; he doesn’t seem to that much. Kong says that he likes the teamwork and problem-solving aspects of hazing; he could do those things as head hazer and take the abuse out, but he doesn’t. Cooptation.

It’s Also About The Redemptive Power Of Queerness And Queer Love

This says it all.

They’re at a party, and someone asks Arthrit if he and Kong are dating. He says, “so what?” and throws his arm around Kong’s shoulder--and Kong seems pleasantly surprised that he’s able to do this publicly. This is just ugh, so beautiful, and Krist/Arthrit acts it so incredibly well. It’s truly the first time we see Arthrit truly, hugely, bashfully smile, in the whole show. It’s always been a sardonic smile, or a joke at someone else’s expense. But here, he’s just experiencing happiness and joy, even if he’s still quite shy about it and can’t look people in the eye while he hangs his arm over Kong’s shoulder. Queerness as redemption is a trope I wish would become a thing!!

PS, here are some screenshots of Arthrit making fun of Kong’s food habits. Enjoy the fluff <3

[secretlyatargaryen]

"I read an article that said that Sansa’s type of femininity isn’t rewarded in Westeros". Isn't the article about GoT? Sansa's femininity is not rewarded there. Many show!only fans think her "peak moment" was not, say, being a good diplomat (they didn't even let her have that in 6x07), it was killing Ramsay, an action that isn't traditionally feminine. That's why some show!only fans think she's a "better character" than Arya, she was "weak" and became "strong", while Arya was always "strong".

http://www.assemblyofgeeks.com/blog/why-sansa-stark-is-the-game-of-thrones-hero-we-need

It’s possible that Game of Thrones’ Sansa Stark has suffered more than any other character on television. The eldest Stark daughter has been a glorified hostage, forced to deny her own identity and profess loyalty to the people torturing her. She’s had to watch almost everyone she’s ever loved die – from her direwolf to her septa to her own father. She’s been married off to men she doesn’t love; she’s been beaten and raped and threatened with death repeatedly.She’s been left largely on her own, with no one to trust, in a world that doesn’t respect or reward her particular type of personality and brand of femininity.

The article is saying that Westeros doesn’t reward Sansa’s traditional femininity, and that is very much not true. This is a separate idea from whether the show or the books reward her femininity. I think many fans get confused about this because they have this idea that women who “act like boys” get rewarded in media or in the modern world. Which isn’t really true anyway because the “rewarding” is often shallow and the character still has to be sexually available to men and is still subject to misogyny and is never actually respected as a woman. And women in the real world who have masculine coded interests often get told that they are fake, that they are just doing it to attract men, how dare you have interests which are different than the ones you are supposed to have, you slut. And if you’re not pretty or sexy while you have masculine interests you DEFINITELY do not get rewarded.

And it’s definitely not true in a medieval world with very strict gender roles. Arya doesn’t get rewarded in any way by Westerosi society. I mean, it’s not a huge win for Sansa that she gets the shallow rewards of being feminine. Like, woohoo, you get to be treated like a piece of meat! But the article implies that Arya is getting rewards for going against enforced femininity and that is just not true at all.

The world Sansa lives in actually does reward girls for adhering to compulsory femininity. It’s a double-edged sword, because it also punishes her for it, but to say that she doesn’t get rewarded in an article that also praises her for being unlike her sister is really misguided. And the thing is, as I’ve already said, this double edged sword of misogyny also applies to unfeminine women in the real world. The articles that talk about how Sansa is better than Arya because Arya is too angry, too wild, too impulsive, those things are also said about women in the real world. The backlash against angry women in fandom doesn’t do women any favors because angry women are already punished. And the fact that this article says that Sansa suffers “the most” is really insulting. I think we are getting into very slippery territory when we try to quantify victimhood, and that’s largely what my problem with asoiaf fandom is about. People keep telling me that Sansa suffers the most, that Sansa gets the most hate, that Sansa deserves love more than any other character. No, sorry, no. Love Sansa the most, by all means, but don’t tell other people they can’t love their fave because Sansa “deserves it more”. No.

I think it’s true that many fans praise Sansa for “becoming strong” on the show just because she killed Ramsay and I hate that. I also hate that many fans said that killing Ramsay somehow made her “less feminine”, or that it was somehow a traditional move for a heroine to get violent revenge and still retain her goodness and kindness. The fact that people who supposedly loved Sansa for her goodness and kindness were questioning that goodness and kindness because she got revenge against someone who deserved it gives me serious pause. It’s not that you can’t like Sansa for being good and kind, it’s that people think that in order for her kindness to count she has to be kind all the time, she has to be a martyr, she has to be a noble victim. And this is one of the most toxic things that patriarchy teaches about women. The good and kind woman whose kindness never fails no matter how she is abused is a very old archetype, and one that adds to making this character appealing to the male viewer. See: Cinderella. It’s just as oppressive as the “strong female character” who is boxed into being sassy and badass and sexy for male objectification. And it’s a harmful archetype to promote especially for young girls, the idea that they need to be endlessly forgiving and never fight back against abusers.

But a lot of the articles and fan posts that praise Sansa for being different than Arya? They are doing the same thing you are complaining about. A lot of them (and most of the ones I looked at were written long before the Ramsay - Sansa plotline), follow a line of thought like “people think that Sansa is weak but really she is just biding her time and becoming a political mastermind, and I can’t wait until she SLAYYYYS!!!!” These people don’t value Sansa for who she is, either. They want her to become Sarah Connor, but they want her to wear a dress and be courteous while doing it. They want her to be some kind of super woman, perfect in every way. I don’t think that kind of thing is doing women any favors.

Sansa should be treated as worthy of praise not because she has some “crouching femininity, hidden badass” thing going on (and that goes for people who praise her for “becoming a political mastermind” as well). She should be praised because she’s worthy, all by herself, of love.

Also, I’m not sure what your argument about show fans thinking she’s a better character than Arya for bad reasons is supposed to make me think. Are you trying to prove that I shouldn’t defend Arya? Because it sounds to me like you are saying that both Sansa and Arya get hated for bad reasons. It sounds like what you are talking about is the false and often repeated idea that Arya never grows or changes during her arc and that Sansa is a more dynamic character. I’ve often said that it’s shitty to only love Sansa after she’s changed a bit, but it’s equally shitty to claim that Arya has never changed or grown in any way. And untrue.

Back to the original point, though, the thing about that article is that it was trying to make the claim that Sansa isn’t rewarded for her femininity in order to claim that she has it worse than any other character. Which is not true, offensive oppression olympics that props up patriarchy conforming women at the expense of marginalized women, and a super weird and kinda fetish-y reason to love a character to begin with. How do you even begin to quantify suffering, especially in a series like this? The thing about this series is that so much of the things that happen to the characters can be compared to real world suffering and abuse, so saying that any character suffers the most or in a more realistic way is automatically gonna turn me off.

[loudlytransparenttrash]

I wasn’t prepared for this...

There’s plenty of weird and wacky things going on in America these days. The Apprentice guy is our president, BLM is rioting in defense of criminals and chanting for cops to be killed, SJW’s are rioting against democracy and feminists are walking around dressed as giant vaginas and calling themselves oppressed.

The left tries to normalize everything from Islamic terror to 400 genders but not even I could have imagined they would go low enough to try normalize child abuse. I mean, it’s bad enough that they’re forcing 5 year olds to carry “this pussy grabs back” signs and forced to say “which one of us will be raped next?”, “I shouldn’t need a penis to get paid” and “fuck the patriarchy”. But what’s worse is this whole gender issue that’s becoming out of control.

When people ask me what I think about trans people I give a pretty distinct answer. In general I have no issue of women transitioning into men and men transitioning into women but what I do have an issue with is normalizing children being forced to become transgender.

These two parents went on Buzzfeed in a video called “I Am A Gender Non-Conforming Parent” to brag about how awesome it is to force your child to live as a boy AND a girl because gender doesn’t mean anything, right guys? It’s pretty fucked up. In the video we have a mom… and a mom, raising their kid and essentially messing with them psychologically. “My understanding about gender is that ultimately it doesn’t mean anything, it doesn’t give you the information about that person.”

In 1965, some kid named David Reimer was born and he was reassigned to become a girl and raised female at birth. He was given hormones, surgeries, etc and he was raised entirely female. For a long time David was fine and researchers and phycologists such as John Money took this as proof that gender identity was learned and not biological. But it ultimately turned out to be a failure after David stopped calling himself a girl aged 11 and transitioned back into being a guy aged 15 and began discouraging others from transitioning, after being depressed for years he killed himself. It’s the many cases like these that are swept under the rug by people who claim that there’s no difference between guys and girls and their behavior and identities are all just a social construct.

Raising your child as something they’re not, the child is going to grow up thinking they are something they’re not. Gender isn’t this amazingly complicated thing some people like to make it out to be. Already kids are being confused as hell because everybody is telling them to question their gender and change their gender, even when they’re just three and four years old.

The fact is, most children who experience gender dysphoria will not remain gender dysphoric after puberty. Most kids grow out of it. And the ones who don’t are usually confused by their homosexuality as most GID children turn out to be either gay or bisexual.

Children aren’t born with the cognitive capacities of your average adult, and before the age of 11, most children are simply unable to perform abstract reasoning or understand nuances when having a discussion. Instead, children below this age generally see things in either-or scenarios, and divide the world into dichotomies of “wanted or unwanted.” So when a parent asks a little girl if she wants to be a boy, the little girl probably thinks, yeah sure I want to play in mud and wrestle people so their mom excitedly posts on facebook that she’s a cool mom with a cool transgender kid and books the next appointment to see a therapist to begin the transition process.

How about we let the kid grow up first before we start pumping them with hormones or blocking their hormones, it’s really not that hard to stop yourself from abusing children. Anyway, back to talking about the crazies in this video:

“The person I am today was very much in line with a person that I was or longed to be when I was little. I was a tomboy, my best friends were primarily boys, I played with “boys” toys.”

I don’t know how many times I have to make this point. Liking things that aren’t traditionally for guys or for girls doesn’t make you a new gender. It means that you may not be traditionally masculine or feminine. If I like something that wasn’t traditionally female, it doesn’t mean I should turn myself into a guy or start calling myself genderfluid or whatever one of the 400 new genders I can pick from. What makes these people think that since they have some non-traditional gender trait (which is fine by the way) they have to change their entire gender, transition into a new one and enforce their kids to do the same? What the fuck is going on?

“People ask me, “do you have a boy or a girl?” Whatever that means, this person could be anybody.”

This is like saying it’s wrong for humans to call their babies human because many people identify as a non-human. Whether you’re pushing for children to be genderless and to stop conforming to oppressive gender roles or whether you want them to be known as non-human and stop conforming to oppressive human species roles, first you must throw out everything we know about biology, endocrinology, neuroscience and any last piece of common-sense that you have left - which is something most people just ain’t willing to do.

“It’s real funny because our son is super into sports, like maybe he was like an Olympic athlete in his past-life, like he’s come with all of these sporting talents that were like visible at seventeen months.”

Yes, it’s so funny and weird that your male son is super into sports and is naturally talented at sports even though you’re raising him as a total genderless child. Totally shocked! Who would have thought! … These people like to contradict themselves. First they call their “genderless” child a boy and then they talk proudly about him being a traditional male. This entirely goes against the non-binary, agender narrative. She’s telling us that the kid is just a typical boy but she’s trying to queer him up not because it’s what he wants but it’s what she wants to make herself feel better, so why not mess with him right? It’s like those fat dance moms and beauty pageant moms who force their 3-year old daughter into dancing on stage and wearing wigs and make-up and the mom is stood up in the middle of the audience desperately encouraging and reciting their kid’s choreography and routine while the kid is dying on the inside as everyone watches on, all because the mom wants to live her own fantasy through a toddler.

“I’m constantly trying to like queer up my relationship with him and get him to wear tutus and he hates it, he’s just like NO!”

They laugh at this. They think they’re doing a noble feminist deed by forcing their son to dress and act like a girl, even when they themselves admit that he hates being dressed up in feminine clothes and begs them to stop, they just laugh it off and continue to force it onto him. He’s too young to understand the importance of dressing like a girl but he’s old enough to tell doctors he wants hormone treatment, right? Am I the only one who’s noticing how fucked up this is? What’s the difference between this and forcing a little girl to wear dresses instead of jeans? They go mental when it’s reversed but when they enforce their own version of genderless roles on children, it gets turned into a cool empowering Buzzfeed video to inspire others to do the same.

”He’s taking in like kid media and he has a book that is like just pictures and words but it also has like a picture of a girl and there’s a picture of a boy and but I’m just like child - child. This is where he starts learning like what things are and so I hate the idea that he’s getting imprinted on him what people look like.”

Oh shit, he’s being introduced to reality? Oh fuck, learning about biology is going to cause some problems. I mean, it goes back to what I was saying earlier, getting pissed that a children’s book shows a boy and a girl and calls them a boy and a girl would be the same as a human non-conforming parent getting pissed that there’s a book with human children being called human. I’m so sorry science isn’t changing just because parts of it goes against your fantasy. A woman is a woman, a man is a man, a human is a human. If YOU don’t identify with these, that’s fine, you have my sympathy, but leave children out of it and stop trying to force the world to play along. I can’t believe that saying something as realistic and obvious as “don’t abuse and lie to your children” is now controversial.

“Everybody needs to be reconsidering the way that they’re presenting genders to their kids.”

No. They don’t. This goes to show just how closed-minded these people are for thinking they have the moral high ground to tell every parent out there to join their genderless utopia where everyone pretends to be equal and abide by their oppression rankings and rules and if they don’t, well they’re just bigoted assholes. Why does the word “cult” continue to spring to mind whenever I start talking about their ideology? Maybe it’s for good reason…

[sailingurl-blog]

To the mattresses: part 1, basic training

‘Manners maketh man’ is sizable social construct by a patriarchal religious institution in a patriarchal society, which largely, a patriarchy eschews practising? Well – when one considers 98% of incarcerated persons are male. At what point do women need to become downright fucking rude to advance their human rights?

Over the weekend, women in STEM hijacked an existing industry campaign to give US President Donald Trump a big-ole social media finger. And it was as pretty as it sounds.

The ‘actual living scientist’ tag ‘to improve industry access to professionals’ was leveraged in an emerging gender issue as threatened by the new White House administration.

Worldwide; tough, intelligent, tenacious STEM women segued existing discussion to comment professionally on Trump’s new ‘dress like a woman’ workplace policy, and tweet pics.

Like Karen Romano Young, who assert for her female colleagues in science and snow – ‘here’s what we wear in the Arctic when we’re studying the effects of climate change’.

Or, Ivelisse Viruet who tweet Trump commenting: ‘while you were granted five draft deferments, I served 22 years in the military – I #dresslikeawoman, and you need to #actlikeapresident’; and, Amy Tan MD, who says ‘I can’t #dresslikeawoman without my scrubs.’

But it’s Herding Movement who best demonstrates a continuing workplace problem: ‘I’ve had engineers ask me to get them a coffee because I #dresslikeawoman (and) then realise that I’m the #actuallivingsciventist running the damn project.’

Pound for pound, these women, and women globally, are doing it better than men in their arena. Period.

It’s easy to qualify that statement; simply, those women did it without the resources men have thrown at them, and yet, they continue to throw-in for the potentially criminal shitshow that they are often victim too.

Like my 1990s Defence colleague, ADFA naval officer Fiona, who was physically tortured by her officer-in-charge – made to march while carrying a vacuum cleaner over her head because he knew she had a bad back.

Or my mate Summers, a naval investigator at Garden Island whose well-qualified Christmas Day search request was blocked by lazy male officers.

In the end, she went around them; ran the investigation herself and uncovered a hoist of illegal weapons. One sailor had nine guns. Job done.

Or the time I was sexually harassed working for Immigration in 2010. Again, yawn. I was chatting with female colleagues about the green wedding dress Cate had worn, when ACT change pretender Troy lurched over.

Troy thought to demonstrate his kinky workplace VPL fashion concerns, which seemed strange for a Hawaiian-shirt loving Neanderthal? ‘You wouldn’t have worn panties on your wedding day, would you Amber,’ Troy grunted.

I tend to feel sorry for these professional deviants or workplace terrorists; well, look at them? What’s someone like that actually got going for them? Hot tip. It will never worry me when a 2017 male mode ‘chooses’ socially, politically and economically regressive personal policy, which as studies show, negatively affects ‘their’ mental health.

As women, we need to focus on circumstances within our control. These oft-silent terror attacks are and continue-to-be managed by professional women on a case-by-case basis. Think Turnbull and Trump for next four years, ala ANZUS Gate last week. Besides, warfare is a training grounds.

The real problem for women is not the odd workplace dust-up. It’s this. Despite the Dunning-Kruger effect, professional females who are ‘actively’ aware of their talent, are ‘actively’ underselling themselves because it’s ‘unladylike’.

And Australian female professionals have a further cultural barrier; more colonial hangover with the Tall Poppy Syndrome. Women are taught in so many ways – not to acknowledge professional strengths that aren’t sexually-based, and sell themselves in a capacity which is not physical-based. Think about that, people?

On the other hand, men are biologically-programmed and well socially-advised to double-down on risky behaviour that backs numero uno. Studies show, men are more likely to talk themselves up, and all the while, women are talking themselves down. Christ, I don’t need a study. I am the study.

Like Airservices colleague, German national Sven, who introduced self as an ‘ANU scholarship awardee’? Sure, it’s impressive – but it smacks of hubris, and is ultimately unAustralian. One does not walk around dispensing tickets to their own show, PT Barnum-like. ‘Step right up, folks!’ People want people to go about achieving quietly, and this is especially true of women.

Why? Over 150 years of studies show the incredible conscious and subconscious bias that both genders have towards women. Neurobiology well demonstrates the hurdle. For example, researchers recently discovered that while both genders objectify undistorted images of each other – when the images were both distorted, both genders continued to objectify women…and not men.

Clearly, human beings have no real response control to ‘the feminine’ as a society – and I doubt we can ever know the full depth and breadth of an issue that will make or break us, I’m sure.

One thing is clear – male self-promotion is effective. This means professional women must adopt a new personal public relations strategy, and enforce new boundaries.

Because no one is here for anyone – if you don’t believe in you, with necessary self-talk required to develop a positive attitude and enact supporting behaviours, nobody is going too.

So, try it out. It’s won’t be easy for most – people will laugh at you, depending on the size of your social experiment. Like Canberra Business Chamber representative Kate, when I test to partially determine her usefulness to me?

Although, it’s worth noting, the failure finally occurred some 14 days later, in which time, Kate had managed to sign-me-up electronically for a $180 in-house workshop, all the while not distributing to me, the start-up information freely proffered.

Apparently, a smart professional woman who self-brands as ‘talent’, will continue to be confronting. Of course, there is the other thought? That it’s just so hard to find talent these days.

Ghandi said it best: when you go to ‘change the world’, people will ignore you at first. Then they laugh and resist you, before finally, accepting the change. The beauty is, also according to Ghandi, all you need to do is, ‘be the change’.

Yep, there it is. The man-made world already largely ‘works’ for men. So – it’s actually time for women to beat their change drum, which will benefit our species. Yep, time to double-down, ladies.