#like it's gotten so bad that ppl are saying it's feminist and empowering that so many women are getting bbls

[sergle]

this might just be the pessimism talking but there are times when I feel the body positive movement is straight up Over. even stuff from now that’s meant to be body positive, or is packaged in that way, is of a lower caliber. like it feels like it’s gotten worse.

[battlestar-royco]

corrrect me if I'm misinterpreting this, but it seems like lately, ppl are calling everything bad "cishet white shit" (I've seen this on several blogs, both in the anti community and in others) and it's really starting to rub me the wrong way. yes, cishet white people can pull off the worst shit in their books (like Ameri//can Di//rt - which they should def be criticized for!), but bad literature is not inherent to them or their identities, and it is really starting to come off like that lately

(bad literature anon) to further clarify, I’m not saying there shouldn’t be conversations about how someone’s status as a straight cis white person affects their work/the views in their work (eg JKR) and their chances of being published and whatnot. Those are v important conversations to be had!

So, Laini and Kat provided really good answers to this here that you’ve probably already seen. I’ll give my own answer in this ask without a recap so I don’t clog up everyone’s feed. I can’t speak for others but I have a few reasons why I personally like to add “white cis/het” qualifiers to things.

First off, even just saying those words disrupts our typical mode of discussion. In no way am I changing the social order by saying “white cis/het” on my blog—I’m not redistributing wealth to pay reparations for POC, I’m not overturning the institution of marriage, I’m not stripping society of gender norms etc—but I’ve gotten a huge amount of fuckery and backlash on and off Tumblr over the years for literally just using this rhetoric (as opposed to engaging in irl activism, which I have done off this site). People get uncomfortable when these words are used because it’s probably the first time their identity has been discussed as powerful in a way that POC, queer people, disabled people etc have been disempowered from birth or a very young age.

Second, by naming something as white cis/het, not only do you bring attention to the dominance of white cis/heteronormativity, but you also bring attention to who is excluded from that dominance. Using an obvious example: SJ/M’s books are marketed as feminist works. However, SJ/M and co rarely if ever acknowledges said feminism as white cis/het feminism, or they posit her feminism as some truly progressive and inclusive work. It’s a very dishonest practice, considering that her goal is to empower white cis/het women, and her work necessarily disempowers any other type of woman. By leaving out WOC, trans women, wlw, plus sized women etc in feminism, you defeat the purpose of feminism. So much “feminism” unfortunately turns out to be just for white cis/het women, and I find that unacceptable, so I bring attention to it when I can. Otherwise, Laini and Kat said everything very eloquently, so I encourage everyone to hop over to that post for more thoughts on the subject. :)