#not because misogyny is a Tool of Capitalism

[musical-chick-13]

Yes, capitalism is bad. Yes, we should dismantle capitalism. No, capitalism is not the Sole Thing Responsible for every single bad thing that has ever historically happened to anyone.

[mangled-by-disuse]

not everything bad is white supremacy

not everything bad is capitalism

not everything bad is conservatism

not everything good is leftist for that matter

maybe this is a hot take but posts that blame, idk, the urge to punish on white supremacy, or power imbalance as a whole on capitalism, or personal greed on conservatism, are just a really great way to not be taken seriously. and shouldn't be taken seriously, because they strongly suggest that you put no thought into the cause of social ills beyond your own context.

[mohulu]

I've been on a 3 day Facebook fight over a comment that was completely unrelated to what this guys talking about and honestly. Wish his working conditions were worse

[psychotrenny]

People really love to cynically abuse that whole "old dead white men" line don't they. Like there is a very genuine issue with how various systems of oppression (racism, misogyny etc.) mean that thinkers from privileged backgrounds got a disproportionate amount of attention and praise compared to those from a more marginalised position, with the theoretically contributions of the latter getting frequently mis-attributed or outright ignored. It doesn't mean that the contributions from said privileged thinkers are all inherently worthless on that basis alone.

Like it's a classic example of the way that liberals take structural critiques and turn them into a matter of personal morality. "Overrepresentation of privileged thinkers is bad" gets turned into "Privileged thinkers are all bad people". And it always gets used in the most cynical way possible. You hardly ever see this line used on thorough reactionaries like Nietzsche. It's mainly used to denounce progressive thinkers who, whatever flaws they had and bigotries they were unable to escape, still made innumerable contributions to the causes of liberation and laid the groundwork that was later developed and expanded by marginalised theoreticians. Like people should definitely read more Ho Chi Minh and Amilcar Cabral and Angela Davis, but that doesn't diminish the value of Marx and Lenin.

As important as it is to remind people of the contributions that marginalised people all over the world have made to Marxism (if only because even many Marxists themselves fail to appreciate this*), using it counter the whole "dead white guys" gotcha misses the point of why it's such a stupid thing to say. Because that line is a critique of a system, and it loses all power and meaning when removed from that context applied on the level of individuals. Bigotry is a dialectical structure and not a metaphysical condition; possessing privilege matters in terms of interaction with the broader world not as an ontological fact of your existence. Individuals do matter to some extent, but mainly in terms of how they fit into broader systems and not how systems fit around individuals. You need to realise all this if you want to get anywhere. This individualist bullshit only works as a tool for personal gratification and flagellation; it's masturbatory in the worst possible way

*even if you consciously support an ideology of anti-bigotry, it takes discipline and vigilance to properly unlearn all the biases instilled by life under Imperialist Capitalism and not everyone is successful at applying this

[autolenaphilia]

The average tumblr queer hates fascism and terfs, and they should, but because they have zero understanding of what those ideologies actually is, they end up repeating such ideology anyway.

They have zero understanding that it is the transmisogynist bioessentialism that makes radfemism so poisonous. So they call trans women mentioning the words "misogyny" and "patriarchy" a terf, while their use of "afab/amab" reveal that they haven't unlearned any bioessentialism and transmisogyny. I've written about this at length before.

And this intellectually lazy acceptance of reactionary thinking goes far beyond that.

Criticize the institutions of religion and the family on this supposed queer communist site, and you'll get massive cries of protest from these queer leftists. And in content if not form they are basically indistinguishable from fascist rhetoric about how "queer leftists who read too many jewish writers (like Marx and Hirschfeld) are trying to eradicate the vital institutions of tradition, religion, family and community with their soulless materialist globohomo." (Note that the link is to a critical glossary of the alt-right on rationalwiki, so there are slurs galore)

And yes, that is what i'm doing, and I'm very proud of it. Abolishing religion and the family, and all of their sanctified traditions is a very important part of the communist project. The main Jewish writer who convinced me of this is Marx, read him.

"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness." Literally read The Communist Manifesto, which openly calls for the abolition of the family. A lot of suppose leftists repeat what the manifesto calls "The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents and child"

It's especially ironic to hear such things from self-described queers, as if family, religion and tradition aren't the most common tools used to oppress queer people.

A lot of reactionary garbage with a superficial anti-capitalist veneer has gotten into the left, which is not new. The just mentioned manifesto spends a whole chapter criticizing reactionary forms of socialism. I have myself used Marx's still valid analysis as my basis to criticize reactionary anti-capitalism.

There has been so much nationalist garbage absorbed by the left at this point that fascist thinking crop up all the time in the left. This is because planting the roots of 19th century romantic nationalism tends to bear the same fruit. And tumblr leftism is the most intellectually lazy kind of leftism.

Like your average pseudo-leftist position on nations is basically ethnopluralism, a neofascist ideology originating in the European "New right" that is trying to sell the old wine of blood-and-soil nationalism in new bottles for a postcolonial world. It's creator Henning Eichberg spent decades trying to sell his Völkisch ideology to the left. With some success, it seems like. Like the neofascist in ethnopluralist clothing position that "every culture has the right to preserve their own culture and tradition from the onslaught of global capitalist culture" is something that you'll see all the time regurgitated by supposed leftists. The one 19th century european/western concept that is seen as universally applicable is nationalism. It's bleak.

I can't even say the far-left cliché of "read theory", because a lot of theory is garbage. Not all of it though. This list comes from my libertarian marxist/"councilist" biases but Nationalism and Socialism by Paul Mattick is good, as is "Third-worldism and Socialism" an excerpt from an early 70s pamphlet by the British organization Solidarity, and the 1989 essay The Universality of Marx by Loren Goldner.

[genderkoolaid]

hi! i was wondering if you'd be willing to do an analysis of the aromantic manifesto thats been going around? most of the ppl ive seen so far have been from either non-aro queer ppl or non-loveless aros and i cant find any loveless aros talking about it, and ik thats something youve talked abt b4 (loveless aros i mean) id love to also see your thoughts on it.

So funny enough I saw this manifesto a while ago, but didn't really have any thoughts on it because I had too much trouble reading it for brain reasons, because its just. A lot.

So @spacelazarwolf compared this to lesbian separatism/radical feminism and I think that is pretty apt. Radical feminism takes accurate criticisms of the patriarchy (such as gender as a tool of oppression and misogyny) and comes to the conclusion that gender is, in all forms, inherently oppressive, men are inherently oppressors, and that to personally identify with gender roles or men in any way contributes to oppression, so we must take on political lesbianism to reject this.

This manifesto seems to do the same with amatonormativity. There are real criticisms of amatonormativity in queer spaces here; aromantics have talked a bit about how focusing queer liberation on romantic love as a reason why we shouldn't be oppressed is alienating, and how queer spaces often reinforce amatonormativity. But it then comes to the polarized conclusion that romance is itself oppressive, identification with romance contributes to oppression, and that we must take on (essentially) political aromanticism to reject this.

Which, like political lesbianism, is just... unnecessary? This is not the only conclusion we can come to as a result of these criticisms. And these conclusions prioritize abstract political theory over people's real lives and autonomy. Which is a big reason (although not the only one) why radical feminism fell apart, because eventually women got tired of having to structure their entire lives and identities around acting out Good Political Theory instead of being able to. y'know. Be themselves? But also, these kinds of conclusions are so absolute and polarized. They assume that nothing about gender or romance can grow and be improved.

There are parts of this manifesto I like. The line "The first big ruse of romance is that it is ubiquitous because it is natural, and it is natural because it is ubiquitous" I think is actually pretty cool and can be adapted to all kinds of things; for example, capitalism does the same thing, taking over as much of the world as possible & erasing other ways of life, and then using its dominance as evidence thats its just how humans naturally are. It brings up criticisms of love that are big parts of lovelessness, like the idea that love is inherently a good thing when it can be harmful and still be "love."

But then it takes the... strange path of saying that if people can't help how who they love, then neither can racists and transphobes and fatphobes, which is why romance is inherently oppressive. But like. Even within relationship anarchy, where all hierarchies are rejected, this problem won't disappear. Its a problem of attraction & how social systems shape how we think.

I also disagree with how it frames private vs public life:

Public life concerns the interests of people as citizens and is regarded as a legitimate sphere of social intervention. Private life concerns the interests of people as consumers/individuals and is nobody’s business but those privately involved. While the domestic sphere fashioned by heterosexual kinship relations has been historically designated as private life, queer intimacies have instead been regarded as a matter of public concern due to moral panics associating them with predation and perversion throughout history.

I disagree with this framing of private life as something which is seen as "nobody's business." Maybe that's true on the small scale of social politeness and ideals. But on a systematic level, to me, this is absolutely untrue, and its something I've been doing some thinking about with regards to modeling the patriarchy.

The patriarchy is greatly concerned with the private lives of individuals. In order to keep its control over society in general via gender-sex-sexuality, its important to control how people interact with others. Even heterosexual, cisgender relationships haven't been free from patriarchal scrutiny; the wife must submit to the husband, the children must submit to the parents, and the queers must be kept outside the home. Again, on the level of neighborly politeness, people are going to say "what happens in the home is none of my business." But a relationship where the wife is the breadwinner and the husband stays at home is easily subject to scrutiny because it threatens the patriarchal norms, which causes unease.

Romance, as a construct, is a tool of oppression in multiple ways. But the physical reality the construct is built on top of is not inherently evil. The feeling of romantic love is not inherently corrupt, the same way the feeling of gender isn't.

Their advice for abolishing romance also feels kinda... vague and unhelpful and messy. I'm still not really clear on what "abolishing romance" even entails because most of the things they list can be done while romantic relationships occur. It just reads like they took the ideas of relationship anarchy and made it political lesbianism 2

I, as an aromantic, find the idea of political aromanticism to be pretty gross. I know how it feels to be pushed towards a certain relationship with romance and I don't want to seen it done in reverse, and tbh I don't like the idea of making my identity into a political stance. Being aromantic absolutely influences my politics, but its also my experience as a person. Again, similarly to why it would be uncomfortable to have lesbian spaces be full of women who are not in any way attracted to women but are making a political statement.

It disappoints me that this manifesto's conclusion is that romance itself must be rejected, the same way radical feminism does. Because there are good points here, but all-or-nothing conclusion, to me, is more divisive than connective and that's a big problem. My feelings about gender abolition are that, if we achieve true liberation from the patriarchy, our construction of gender is naturally going to be very different. Perhaps those people will no longer use gender, or they'll just use it differently- but trying to force a specific outcome is unhelpful and clashes with individual autonomy and culture for the sake of political theory. Same goes for this. Maybe in a post-amatonormativity world, "romance" will lose meaning, or at least be very very different. But trying to force that outcome isn't helpful.

Anyways I hope these takes were interesting! Honestly given how much arophobia I've seen I'm worried people are going to see this manifesto and get hostile to a lot of aromantic ideas. So I wanna suggest that people check out I Am Not Voldemort by K.A Cook, which is where the concept of "loveless aros" came from, as well as The short instructional manifesto for relationship anarchy by Andie Nordgren, which created the concept of relationship anarchy. Both of these essays do a much better job at criticizing love & amatonormativity than this manifesto.

[hiriajuu-suffering]

Kamala aunty and the Hindu vote

Getting this out of the way, I'm voting for Kamala Harris. Biden really should've dropped out two months ago, and there's no other corporate democrat I would really endorse besides her, and not because of the identity politics. Well, sort of. If the Republican primary taught us anything, is a person of South Asian descent will continue to be the ideological punching bag of the white community.

South Asian men get deleted so hard I can't even find a GIF of Vivek Ramaswamy

How Kamala was treated the past four years by the democratic administration of Biden's was nothing short of egregious. Every impossible problem to solve she was blamed for with no tools address the root cause, and she stayed in there looking dumb like a loyal corporate employee. Now the entire system is banking on the political capital they were sweeping from underneath her to stop a literal convicted felon from retaking power and pardoning himself.

Not to mention the states where votes actually mattered 8 years ago were too sexist to put in a woman in power before, so now we're hoping a woman of color would go over better?

Candace Owens already showed how envious she is of Kamala's biracial swag with some really dumb comments.

Her black half isn't what's the issue is, because she embodies a lot more blackness than Asianness in her disposition to the American psyche. And the precedent for half black Presidents that perfectly fall within the cookie-cutter corporate democrat on policy has already been set.

It's her Asian side that might stoke the xenophobia that caused the whitelash red wave of 2016; y'know, because she's going to be subject to nearly the same misogyny Hilary was.

As an Asian-American, Kamala Harris and Andrew Yang weren't just the two candidates I identified most with, they were the best candidates in that primary, period. But they got dismissed and belittled so immensely because of the need to appeal to milk-toast whiteness. Republicans pander hard to grab minority votes, Democrats just avoid putting any minorities in significant positions influence. Don't believe me? Seen any LBGTQ+ positions in real moving and shaking positions?

The DEI stuff the right is going to criticize the entire scope and sequence of how Kamala became the candidate isn't good or fair, but it's not entirely wrong. Because of just how hollow the Democratic Party treats anyone with the poor affliction of being a minority.

There's a key part of the South Asian diaspora Biden lost exactly that Kamala herself is a part of, which makes things interesting to say the least..

Kamala does have the best policy on Israel of any candidate, but that's not saying much since her policy is essentially Obama-lite.

But that means she might lose her own identity vote on just that considering how abhorrently Islamophobic naturalized Indian-Americans have gotten in their support of Narendra Modi

I don't care how effective the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue has been at curbing Chinese aggression, the Nationalist imagery isn't a good sign for any society, really.

Especially when Muslim civil rights in India have all but evaporated. Nikki Haley wasn't particularly bad on Muslim civil rights compared to other Republicans, even as a half-Indian, she didn't buddy up to Modi (probably because he's done more to encourage gender-based violence in India than stop it), and I expect Kamala to actually get the misogynistic slander from conservative Indians because the hyperpatriarchy only comes when it comes to the opposition.

Being half Brahmin though certainly can't hurt her chances with her Hindu base, right? Well, Hindu men certainly have deeper roots in the red pill movement then we'd like to believe, and the first ones they point the finger towards are Hindu women that didn't choose them. Nikki Haley was polling better but Vivek Ramaswamy ate up her press pretty handily. Everyone sees Asian feminine beauty as valuable, but our misogynistic standards prevent us from seeing that type of ethnic image as leadership-worthy.

At least it's not Gavin Newsom. But that might not be enough for South Asian American males dissatisfied with their lot in life. Trump's message is appealing to us because it feeds into our vanity and takes responsibility off us as to why our sisters are meeting the model minority myth and we aren't. While we're not solely to blame, at least the right has some crazy narrative that explains why life didn't turn out to what was expected of us, even if that narrative twists it in a way that will end up just making us feel more isolated, because the right has the most racist women in the country, bar-none.

Well, women on both sides of the political spectrum are equally pretty racist in their courtship preferences, it's just liberal women will explain things in vague externalities and icks rather than being a sign for public restrooms in pre-1963 America.

In either case, this is a biracial black woman who was never in touch with the struggles of an Asian man, never really having been related to one even though she's an Asian woman. To a lot of Asian men, Trump is just more of what we expect of the lunacy of American politics, versus Kamala might be one of those people who actively makes us feel subhuman by being of the same race but still treating us as less than, like many desi women have been doing since biracial marriages within 1st generation South Asian Americans began getting normalized.

The normative view has to become where femininity isn't inherently more attractive than masculinity, especially so that women aren't just fit to be more educated and start making more, but actually lead society in meaningful ways.

I think if you're an AAPI in any capacity and you're not voting for Kamala Harris, you're missing the point somehow. But we're not the movers and makers of these elections, because we always reside in states that are firmly blue or red (well, at least until 2016 when Georgia did a thing). Kamala Harris's black vote definitely extends further than Biden's, but by less than makes actual sense. Can't do much worse than Biden on the Hispanic vote, but Kamala Harris if anyone is how you do that.

So if there's fundamentally just about how identity works in America, we will have a POTUS 47 in 2025. But we've learned the two decades in America has been anything fair to identity. Heck, as a Muslim teacher of a liberal arts content area in a red state I feel at the time. My supervisors won't make exceptions for me they readily make for anyone else, not that they were requirements to begin with, just because my identity bears the ugliest parts of the model minority myth. I don't look Asian enough to be Asian, and the media makes my ethnic identity look to threatening to be trusted with novel ideas, at least.

That's at least something this candidate and I have in common. Biraciality and Multiethnicity isn't well understood in our discussions of intersectionality in social and political discourse. The only people that try to make sense of it are the ones that actively try to erode the ethnic barriers enclaves self-segregate on. Kamala has had to think about that because it's a fundamental part of her identity.

I'm not voting on identity or identity politics, as the right would claim I will. I'm voting because at least this candidate has the capacity to understand me, because they're not a white, entitled, spoiled brat that tried to overthrow the government when he didn't get his way. Y'know, fundamental stuff like that.

Because I'm still American through-and-through, regardless of what my ethnic background is. What's more American than having a minority prosecutor in a liberal enclave? That's literally one of the top 5 career options every desi child is given when they think about their careers.

So yeah, Kamala2024. Bite me.

[thebtchtheory]

"I have to shave because of sensory issues"

In the grand scheme of things, whether you shave or not isn't the hill radical feminists want to die on. However, it is important that we attempt to inform you and other individuals that the beauty industry, shaving being the most well-known example, is not something that you willingly take an interest in. You cannot and have not ever had a choice in whether you want to shave or not. It's not your choice to wear makeup, to wax, to get your nails done. Misogyny has used capitalism, and thus the beauty industry and any other "wellness" topics, including but not limited to your weight, your skin, you hair etc, as a tool to embed misogyny in social, cultural and most importantly, mental capacities.

An example of cultural capacities is the value that is found in individuals, particularly women, with lighter skin in some Asian cultures. Women will bleach their skin to be accepted by society.

Social capacities include the ostracization and isolation of women that, for example, don't shave, don't get braces, don't wear makeup, don't use skincare.

Mental capacities have been the most important and strong hold that the industries and capitalism have over our minds. The influence and indoctrination is so strong and seeps so deep that they've convinced us that it is our choice to shave, to get cosmetic surgery, to paint our nails, to adhere to rigid and inhumane diets to achieve a "healthier look". When in reality, our only choice is what shaver brand we use, what cosmetic surgery we get, what colour we paint our nails, what diet we adhere to.

It is all symbolic of the many headed beast that is misogyny. It is important that you understand that your "sensory issues" (unless diagnosed), is misogyny at work in real time. It has convinced you that you are dirty unless you shave, you are unclean unless you wear makeup, that you are worthless if you don't diet, if you don't look pretty, if you don't meet euro-centric standards. Your sensory issues are still a product of the patriarchy, whether you like it or not.

There is no perfect feminist. People still shave, people still diet, people still wear makeup. We have no right to judge others for not being able to change the way they think after decades of patriarchal indoctrination. But you must be informed, you must be aware of the reality of your life, how the freewill you think you have isn't as extensive as you've been led to believe. If you still defend your choice even after knowing all of this, I don't judge you. I pity you. You are a pawn, and in your attempt to defend your position, you will shame others. "I shave because it makes me feel dirty". "I shave because I feel unclean if I don't". "I shave because the hair gives me sensory issues".

Why is hair discomforting? Why does it make you feel dirty? Why does it make you feel unclean? Would you say the same to a woman you see on the street, who doesn't shave? Would you think she's dirty and unclean? Would you think yourself a pawn, so the blame can be shifted off of capitalism and the male fantasy?

Would you find the hair on a male dirty or unclean? Would you tell him the best brand of shavers? Would you recommend waxing or laser?

Please understand how your words and seemingly meaningless semantics is symbolic of the power and control that misogyny truly has.

[hxhhasmysoul]

Gender presentation of JJK female cast

This post contains spoilers for events in the JJK manga that happen after season 2 of the anime.

Part 1 - presentation

The first part of this post is going to be about how I perceive the gender presentation of most JJK female cast - aka the characters I’m fairly confident the author wants the audience perceive as women. 

There are a few caveats I need to make up front.

First of all I will be using adjectives like feminine and female, masculine and male to describe the gender presentation of characters. 

These categories stem from the cultural concept of a gender binary correlated with a biological sex binary that exists in many contemporary societies in one form or another. Concept because neither biological sex nor gender is binary. And this concept is very closely linked to traditionalist thinking, patriarchy, misogyny, right wing ideologies (including radfem ideologies) and fundamentalist religion and is reinforced by capitalism. All these forces have a vested interest in building up masculinity and femininity in opposition to one another and drawing a very clear distinction between them.

Of course as such these categories’ve been tackled by feminism, queer theory and general leftism, reinvented, reclaimed, etc. 

And like pointing out the origin of masculine and feminine is not me trying to judgemental about them. It’s to explain that when I’m using them here, I’m using them in reference to their origins, to what I believe a right wing person would consider feminine or masculine. It will become clear why later. 

The second caveat is that my perception on what would read more feminine and what more masculine is very subjective and deeply rooted in my own culture, my own experiences with gender and also what I’ve seen from other cultures over the years. And some of you looking at my categorisations below will think: nah, I don’t read that like that at all. I hope you will still understand my points even if you’d put some of the characters in different groups. 

The third caveat is that I’ve included most of the characters but not all of them, not even all of the ones the tier maker offered. I skipped them because I considered them too background to feature, like looking at them I couldn’t recall anything about their personality or anything like that. 

The last caveat is that by presentation I mean outer appearance (clothes, hair style, accessories) mixed with how the characters carry themselves and their mannerism. So like the overall visual vibe. 

_

I used the tier maker website but this is obviously not a tier thing but I just found this tool easy to organise the characters, it had most of the characters I wanted to use, and it was easy to upload the one I felt was missing. 

Since this is an organising effort, I actually put blank lines into it to separate the groups: masculine, mixed and feminine. 

_

And just one look at it shows how the vast majority of the women in JJK neatly fit into the feminine side of the presentation spectrum. 

So I divided it further. Here is my thought process behind it, and I know it may sound a bit weird. 

First of all, I separated classical feminine presentations from contemporary ones. 

The classical ones are for me ones that even rather conservative right wing people wouldn’t consider unfeminine, or not feminine enough. Even if they could consider some of the presentations sexually aggressive. 

The contemporary ones are those where some right wing dipshits would be like: she’s not trying enough to be appealing to my very narrow view of what a proper woman looks like.

The second distinction is between deliberate and casual. So whether there are grounds in the text of JJK to believe so or whether I get the overall vibe from the character that she’s putting thought into the femininity of her presentation or whether it just feels that she just leans that way and doesn’t consider the reasons for that. 

So the deliberate contemporaries all sometimes assume female associated poses and mannerisms at will and they are doing it consciously. And they seem to have an attitude towards their gender.

But they do not weaponise it like the deliberate classicals. Only Takada doesn’t do it for evil, she just does it for her career. The other four are very aggressive in their use of it. Mei Mei uses it to seduce her baby brother. Remi and Ogami to lure men to their deaths. Tsubasa to get her classmates to bully Junpei. 

I don’t want to say that it’s conscious on Gege’s part, that the cursed cat put this much thought into it. But it feels in line with how this classic femininity is seen as a tool by the right wing men. A tool they want to use but also fear because they feel weak to it. 

In this framing the deliberate contemporary would be not appealing enough to right wing men. It’s more a presentation that feels targeted to appeal towards centre left women. 

The casual classical presentation is probably the most desired by the traditionalist crowd. Women just falling in line but not trying to wield it.

But to people who are not into policing how others look and don’t follow right wing influencers, both casual looks classical and contemporary will likely register as neutral. 

I put three characters into the feminine but not sure how category. Uro has her jewellery and her body language slants feminine for me but she’s naked and I’m not sure how to read that. I also put there Sasaki and Nitta because we only see Sasaki in her school uniform and Nitta in her work clothes and after some thought I decided that I don’t want to make a decision without seeing their casual outfits, because I didn’t feel like they gave me enough of a clear vibe, unlike Mimiko, Nanako or Riko. 

_

Now to the three in the masculine presentation category, or at least leaning masculine.

Yuki often vibes masculine clothes-wise and posture but it’s not 100%. She has feminine outfits, she strikes feminine poses sometimes. For me she’s very “however I felt that day” gender presentation wise.

Miwa is fascinating. I searched for JJK wifu rankings (I took mental hits for this post, okay) and Miwa is in all of them, even the short, like 5 character ones. I haven’t seen her top any of them but she’s usually high. Miwa’s uniform is a suit, shirt and tie. I had a conversation about this with cursedvibes and he said that in a professional setting it doesn’t strike him as a masculine outfit, especially that the suit is cut for a female silhouette. But culturally, where I live, because she’s not wearing a blouse under the jacket, it would read masculine to a lot of people. It only shows how culturally loaded this all is. And then he found me a drawing of Miwa in casual clothing and it’s this:  

Yeah, her outfits are on the masc side but she feels so girly. I love her so much. 

Tengen will look masculine in a gown:

And she’s shown wearing suits with a masculine cut. Amazing.

______________________________________

Part 2 - Maki and Mai

So what prompted me to even think about the presentation of the female characters was this garbage post. 

It seems to have been deleted so I cropped the author’s name and icon out. Idk why the author did that but maybe they don’t hold these opinions anymore. Maybe someone pointed out to them that that vague about Maki is deeply misogynist and lesbophobic. And since they were trying to perform a feminism with this post, they just deleted it because it wasn’t a good look.  They could’ve just deleted that Maki vague, the rest of the post is inoffensive. 

Maybe they actually looked at the manga and realised that fuck, they are wrong about what’s in there. 

That Maki vague is very unpleasant to me on a few levels.

Before Jougo burns Maki, she usually wears skirts. She has a girly hair style. She wears the cutesy leg warmers. Maki pre burns actually tops several of the wifu lists I’ve looked at! Her appearance is read as girly and desirable by what I assume are straight male western anime fans who make these lists. 

So to associate Maki so strongly with masculinity you need to buy into the bullshit that personality traits are gendered. Or that having certain ambitions, desires or priorities is reserved for either men or women. 

That Maki’s ambition and/or lack of nurturing traits and/or her harsh bully personality make her by default masculine. While also pretending that Mai isn’t a harsh bully. 

Even after the burns her outfit is not masculine. 

It really accentuates her curves, it’s tight, it has the decorative belt and cape. Look how she poses in it. Cursedvibes said that he gets a superhero vibe from it and he’s absolutely right. Yorozu’s outfit has a similar vibe, and so do some of Yuki’s outfits.

But it also accentuates Maki’s arms. And she has amazing arms. 

Her pre burns outfits don’t expose her muscles so much. Her fighting style doesn’t really emanate with that much strength. 

The above post alludes to the moment of Mai’s death. The first time when Maki is wearing trousers while Mai is in a skirt in the same scene. It’s after Maki was disfigured, has shorter hair. Is in an outfit that accentuates her athleticism. 

Professional female athletes get their femininity questioned all the time, they try to perform femininity during competitions with makeup, hairstyles, sometimes their outfits to counteract that. Things that male athletes don’t have to do. 

And even though Maki’s outfit isn’t really masculine, it’s not as strongly feminine as her skirts because it doesn’t hide the physical strength in a palatable package. So there is some change in presentation but it’s not an obvious jump from full femininity to full masculinity. 

Also scarring is something women tend to hide more than men. Scarring is culturally charged considered a blemish and any form of deviating from the norm, clear and unblemished skin, carries the possibility of ridicule. But society puts extra pressure on the appearance of women. Naoya even attacks Maki’s post burns appearance directly. 

And this is the last level why that vague is unpleasant specifically in the context of Maki. Her family constantly challenged her value as a person. Tied a lot of their bullying to her not being enough. Not human enough because she had no cursed energy. And the only sliver of value they awarded to her was her attractiveness as a woman. Sliver because they despised her for not falling into the role of a meek, invisible woman, the servant to the heir. 

Yet neither she nor Mai seem to have ever rejected their femininity. Maki’s rebellion didn’t go into her gender or gender presentation. And it easily could’ve. With the trauma she has it wouldn’t be strange if she had a complicated relationship with her own gender. But she doesn’t seem to and that’s also okay. And this isn’t a criticism at creators of fan art or fic that depict Maki as more butch, that include considerations of gender and gender presentation into her trauma or rebellion against the Zenin. This is specifically an issue with these kinds of takes that wear the guise of interpreting the actual text of JJK. 

This is why I’ve been talking about how one needs to be careful when critiquing JJK from a feminist point of view. This is just the latest post I’ve seen where the author in their attempt to paint Gege as doing a supposed misogyny, did an actual misogyny themself. Here’s another one I actually responded to. 

One of my fandom friends, Subdee, has always talked about how radfems and right wing fundamentalists are astroturfing the fandom, how many people who pursue their fandom hobbies on social media get exposed to radfem ideology masqueraded as progressive feminism or queer theory. And if these people don’t have a solid foundation when it comes to these issues they will internalise the rainbow puritanism and radfem ideology. While they also usually get dragged into these ideas that fandom is activism, that you have to present a certain ideological purity through fandom not to be a bad person. That you have to be “critical” of what you “consume” and actively seek out the problematic aspects of the works and condemn them.

And it is very clear in both the post about Maki and the one about Nobara. The desire to be “critical” and the deeply rightwing radfem ideology. Because to think that Maki is masculine and Nobara is unfeminine you have to believe in such a painfully narrow idea of what femininity can be, an idea that you could hear espoused by a far right influencer. 

The Maki post actually went further than that. It hints upon other radfem ideas of any proximity to masculinity giving the person automatic privilege (aka butches have male privilege bullshit). But even if we imagined an alternative universe version of JJK which had grounds to link Maki to masculinity strongly enough for it to match Sukuna’s very obvious and aggressive traditional masculinity, there’s another radfem red flag in that post. The implication that a feminine person doing something for a masculine person is inherently an act of being exploited. Regardless of the circumstances of the situation, because the Maki/Mai situation is not even remotely similar to the Sukuna/Yorozu situation if you actually give it a few seconds of thought. The idea of femininity always being the victim of masculinity is one that inherently means that feminine people are weak, helpless and can’t make their own decisions, it strips them of any agency. It undercuts and disrespects both what Mai and Yorozu did. 

_____________

post script.

I recommend the interview that Gege did together with Kubo, the creator of Bleach. There's some interesting stuff in the about how for instance someone from the industry views Gege's female cast.

(Side note, one wifu list included guys and Gojou and Megumi were higher than Yuuji! Can you believe that? He’s the only proper wifu out of the 3 of them. Disgraceful, that’s why straight people shouldn’t have the right to vote on anything, even anime wifus)

[transmutationisms]

Sorry if this is kind of a loaded or unorganized question but I'm interested in seeing your observations: similar to how you've talked about how some viewers tried to absolve Kendall of his responsibility in the waiter's death, do you feel the scene with shiv and the threesome gets interpreted too 'sympathetically' as shiv trying to deal with her own orientation in a straight marriage instead of the more prominent power dynamics in that scene? I don't discount her as being attracted to women especially since the show plays with gender dynamics but I feel like focusing solely on that, makes her seem more powerless than how she actually is in that context.

And as you said before, Shiv is backed into corners and has less power than her brothers' due to misogyny, but coupled with some takes about her ending on the show I think this 'zero agency' interpretation is too unquestioned, not helped probably that the mainstream audience has also mostly unquestioned ideas about feminism and imperialism/capitalism (and also related to that, and on a more personal note, I find the meta posts people make about Shiv coupled with Andrea Dworkin excerpts a bit silly)

yeah i talked a bit about shiv's threesome here; to me it's very clearly supposed to recall other examples on the show of homoeroticism and homosexual desire that are only able to be expressed through power-bound relationships: tom and greg, roman and the personal trainer, the way kendall talks to lawrence. the violence and imbalance of these relationships (employer–employee; more to the point, capitalist–labourer) are the necessary preconditions for homosexuality to exist. it's the explicitly erotic extension of how logan can talk about 'fucking' someone in a business sense, even though the thought of actual homosexuality disgusts him.

specifically, shiv pursuing a yacht employee is supposed to recall the cruises scandal, which we know involved covering up sexual violence and the deaths of sex workers and migrant workers, and is pretty heavily implied to have also involved the 'wolf pack' engaging in outright sex tourism. shiv chooses a yacht employee specifically for this threesome because, like the others in the upper echelons of power at waystar, she sees this woman as disposable and as a tool for shiv to use as she wishes. the woman's 'consent' becomes ambiguous with this framing, and with the fact that the show excludes her perspective to indicate how shiv and tom take into account their own desires but not her agency. to them, she's a body, to be used for their sexual gratification; again, this deliberately echoes the way the cruises scandal involved the use, violence against, and then discarding of vulnerable bodies: those of dancers, sex workers, migrant workers, &c.

so, there is homosexual subtext in this scene, the same way there's homosexual subtext between roman and the personal trainer. and in both of these cases, the expression of homosexual desire is specifically enabled by these relationships being made structurally continuous with the larger patterns of violence and exploitation that the show discusses: capitalist exploitation, racism, misogyny, and so forth. homosexuality can exist if it's an articulation of violence; to analyse these scenes without reference to the violence of the social forms is missing their central function in the story.

in regards to the second half of your question: i really haven't spent enough time with dworkin's work to have a confident opinion on it, besides disliking the obvious issues (her anti-porn stance, transmisogyny / bioessentialism, &c). what i can say about shiv the character is that, whilst the show does portray her as being subjected to misogyny in her family and in the company, it also portrays her as benefitting from capitalist patriarchy insofar as she can leverage her wealth and whiteness. a lot of analysis of shiv fails to take this second part into account, or to contextualise the roys generally as capitalists (not just 'rich people') who are trying to consolidate a 21st-century empire. also, i don't think a framework like dworkin's is really capable of accounting for the way patriarchy deals with, eg, roman's effeminacy; the figure of the 'sissy' and the functioning of transmisogyny are actually, i would argue, critical to understanding how gender functions for the roys, waystar, and capitalism writ large.

[pumpumdemsugah]

As black women who has always felt lost in black women's spaces due to their negligence of misogyny, your blog is really a bliss!

One of your recent responses about the curious tradition of the antifeminism from het black women was very on point and made me reflected once again the interconnection between race and sexuality but this topic is barely touched and when it's, it's usually approached in a way that places race above other systems of oppression or any other concerns towards misogyny, homophobia and capitalism is dismissed as “engaging in white supremacist theories” in some black activism circles.

However, as sad as it is, there are plenty of reactionary rhetoric among black women (and it doesn't really matter if they identify as feminists or if they're are openly antifeminists) and these untouchable topics don't get discussed. And the worst part is, we, Black women who do see these tendencies, sometimes even doubt what we're actually seeing. In some cases we even think we're in reality buying a white perspective for simply being able to see that a lot of black women can also reproduce the dominant culture like everyone does because we were all socialized into it.

But, imo, what makes sexuality really relevant when the topic about why so many black women dismiss misogyny, is because het feminists from all branches of feminism tend to equate womanhood to heterosexuality. In het black women's case it happens added to the notion that they are black women IN RELATION TO WHITE WOMEN! The race changes the flavor of the misogyny but it doesn't erase black womanhood neither downplay the importance of the misogyny for us. In reality, it makes our situation even more oppressive. All the talks about intersectionality but a lot of them fail to grasp that the concepts about white feminity/black masculinity don't exist in a vacuum neither separated, specially in western countries.

Race was used as a tool to divide women in deep hierarchies of power that even classes divisions alone couldn't do it. But this fact is just ignored. Instead, these het black women try to prove that misogyny isn't that bad because since they were left out of the specific ways the upper-class white women were oppressed, the oppression just don't exist. This vision ironically reinforce the idea that they claim to oppose, that only white women are “real women”, to the point of their oppressor race status canceling out misogyny not only for them but also for us. It's weird how somehow misogyny against white women become positive and something to aspire to have because if it happens to them, it's, in reality, white supremacy and in an equal society, the oppressed groups should have the same rights that used to be restricted to the oppressors. This is why a lot Black women will sell the myth of the romantic het love to their audience as a core part of black women's empowerment(ignoring lesbians and bi women experiences), but their whole talking about race/white supremacy usually just reinforce misogynoir.

!!!

It's so hard to get through to straight Black women and they love being wrong and strong. There are so many anti-feminist Black women that call themselves feminist and claim they empower Black women. They're just interested in benevolent sexism and want the rest of us to follow along even if our sexuality means it complicates this delusion

[musical-chick-13]

It's unhinged (derogatory) that people think capitalism is why misogyny exists. Like. Oh my god PLEASE go read some actual fucking history textbooks. Because misogyny has been a thing in other systems besides capitalism and a thing well before capitalism as we know it. It's as old as civilization.

I KNOW 😭😭

The thing is, having someone to exploit, to look down on, to "other" to the point where it gives you power...that isn't. That isn't inherent to capitalism? Lots of humans just. Like that. Because a lot of people are selfish, and they want to be above someone. This is obviously a HUGE oversimplification of everything, but people aren't interested in controlling women (or other marginalized groups) solely because it's an Efficient Way To Feed The Capitalist Machine.

Can capitalism make misogyny worse? Yeah. Can misogyny be used to further the capitalist agenda? Sure, anything can be used as a tool for anything. I'm sure I could make...idk, Liking The Color Green into a political thing if I tried hard enough. But even without capitalism, the "benefits" people feel they get from misogyny (power, social standing, someone to blame when things don't go the way they want, someone to mistreat--as a way to feel "in control," as a way to act on their worst impulses that they have no desire to curb, as a punching bag they'll face no consequences for taking their rage out on--the idea that they are inherently "better" than someone else (and thus deserve more), the "promise" of having someone who is forced to do whatever you want for fear of reprisal, the idea of having a live-in-domestic-servant who backs up everything you say because That's Her Role In Life, JUST TO NAME SOME OF THEM) will still exist. You can have all of those ideas permeate society (and, indeed, historically, we HAVE had all of those permeate society!!!!!) without capitalism. The concepts of interpersonal power and social standing and a desire to Be Better Than Someone and wanting someone to cater to your whims and be a scapegoat/punching bag/person responsible for your happiness and ego-upkeep and literally nothing else...none of those are only present in capitalism, babes! Those can and do crop up in literally any environment!

Misogyny doesn't exist Because Capitalism. It exists because a certain group of people decided they could benefit from it. The "benefits" are the point.

(And, uh. Well. I've met enough Tumblr Communists™ to know that publicly divorcing yourself from capitalism doesn't automatically mean you stop hating women.)

I wonder how much of...a lot of Discourse™ is based on the idea that you can't care about multiple causes at the same time? Misogyny AND capitalist exploitation can both be bad. Transphobia AND racism AND ableism AND ageism AND homophobia can all be (and are!!!!!) horrible realities that people should work to dismantle. You can care about a suffering population in one country and populations in other countries who are suffering (whether that's for similar or different reasons).

Obviously for plenty of people, they are just. You know. Pretentious and/or oblivious, and they feel the need to make those things everyone else's problem whenever someone actually wants to talk about the sources and consequences of bigotry (or any societal issue). But I do feel like there's this idea that...caring about multiple things means that you...don't care enough about any individual cause? That your care or activism or commitment to an idea only means something if all of your time, energy, resources, and self is, at every second of every day, exclusively focused on that idea. You must not really care about trans rights if you are at this moment talking about misogyny (<-seen this one a lot--also way to suggest that misogyny somehow does not also affect trans people??). You...idk, you must not care about racism if you discuss ableism. You must not care about access to education or about misogyny if you talk about racism. (Again, with many people ignoring the fact that a lot of these things overlap, because that's what looking at things through an intersectional lens means.) You must not care about the flaws of capitalism if you devote time to talking about literally anything else.

And if you can't hold more than one cause in your heart at the same time...then the only way you can justify caring about multiple things is if they're all actually the SAME thing. They're actually all the SAME PROBLEM, you see. Aside from being inaccurate, I think this is just...actively detrimental to what (we claim) we're trying to do? We need to know how stuff functions in order to dismantle it (and to keep it dismantled). And going "everything is connected!!!" very frequently turns into Conspiracy Thinking. Which...well, first of all Conspiracy Thinking usually just ends in more harm being heaped on vulnerable people (and in many, many cases, Jewish people particularly, but trust me, I know tumblr at large doesn't care about Jewish people) because "well, when it really comes down to it, it's all THEIR fault".

Conspiracy Thinking also makes one look. Very unserious. And if we look unserious, it's going to be incredibly difficult for anyone to want to associate with us and help us fight. And!!! It gives us an untrue picture of how things work!!!!!! Which means we'll be developing fight/activism strategies based on false information. Which means all the more delays and roadblocks before meaningful progress can be made.

[cyberabbit]

You said ADHD and autism aren't real and then said a lot of BPD diagnosed girls were actually autistic. Can I ask for explaining? Sincere.

not really sure why i'm being grilled because this comes across as pro-psychiatry but okay.

adhd and autism aren't real because they're ways of problematising and pathologising behaviour that can't be exploited to maximise profit for late-capitalism. they take a series of traits and turn them into a "disorder" because they cannot be exploited, and they reject the constructs of the society they're part of. so, they're not real. they are not disorders. they're a series of grouped traits that are just undesirable in terms of labour exploitation, so the fault is placed on the individual. even the term neurodivergence (which encompasses more than adhd and autism) implies a normal vs abnormal.

adhd is the one i take issue with the most, because it assumes that there is a problem with not adhering to an unobtainable level of productivity, and you must therefore be medicated to be a good little worker bee. i think we should acknowledge that rather than make sob story relatable comics about it.

tl;dr shorthand term that's easiest to use when talking about this, but a series of traits that could easily be catered for if there wasn't an obsession with "productivity"

for eases sake, we'll use those horrible, flawed, medically abusive terms when discussing why BPD is a diagnosis of violence. it's simply a way of saying one set of traits is diagnosed as something else based on gender, sexuality, class, race etc. it's pathologising distress caused by refusal to meet the needs above, and giving it a different name.

so yes, none of them are real imo. but in terms of what psychs love doing, they use a very lazy misogynistic diagnosis because they cannot see that they use a very gendered lens in doing so. and while any of these diagnoses are terrible, bpd is a particularly life-ruining one that disproportionately affects people who experience misogyny.

to be anti-capitalist and acab is to also acknowledge that psychiatry is a tool of these, and support abolition.

[psychotrenny]

I don't think "Fascist" is a very useful or accurate thing to call Caesar and his Legion (from Fallout: New Vegas) in the context of the game world itself. Like there are a lot of aesthetic similarities and basically all of their unironic real world fans are some sort of Nazi Nerd, but when talking about their place within the context of fictional post-nuclear Nevada it just doesn't work. Like Caesar's whole deal is that he's a Social Scientist who, living in a world that's been "blasted back to the Stone Age", figures that society must evolve through the same stages if it wants to properly return to modernity. The Legion is basically comprised of "Primitive Communists"* who've been forced into a Slave Society. His criticisms of the NCR boil down to them being a moribund remnant of/reversion to Old World Capitalism rather than something organically adapted to the post-Nuclear world. He repeatedly talks about how the Legion isn't meant to represent an ideal society but simply a stepping stone onto something better (the thesis that will clash with it's antithesis and evolve into a superior synthesis). His interactions with the Courier heavily imply that the Legion's Misogyny, Homophobia, Tech aversion etc. are much more tools of social organisation and control than values that Caesar personally holds. The Legion isn't just some band of mindlessly violent reactionaries but the product of very deliberate Social Engineering; a peculiarly post-nuclear sort of scientifically planned society

Now I'm not defending the Legion as a "good" choice or anything; Caesar's plan has a lot of problems, it's not hard to poke holes into and in terms of unadulterated cruelty The Legion is easily the most morally repugnant of the main factions. But the thing I really love about The Legion is how, within the specific context of Fallout's setting, it makes sense. Like once you really think about it you can understand why someone in Edward Sallow's position would arrive at these conclusions, and there are good reasons why (if you take your roleplaying seriously and don't treat the Player Character as an extension of yourself) someone living in this world might chose to side with him. The Legion may be terrible but it's not evil for the sake of evil; there's genuinely a compelling ideology behind it.

It's why I get sad when I see so many people dismiss them as the "dum dum fascist slavers" because there's so much more to them than that. Like I think the best part about The Legion is how ridiculous they first appear ("These raiders dress like Ben-Hur extras?????) but once you find out more about them then it all starts to click ("Oh I see their leader is trying to assimilate them into a distinct and alien culture in order to maintain their loyalty; severing their previous connections and giving them a whole new identity"). So it sucks to see so many people get caught up in the first part and never make enough connections to reach the second. Like in general, Fallout: New Vegas is very messy and flawed and yet it's full of all these interesting little nuances and I think that's worth appreciating it. It's why, time and time again, I keep walking down that dusty road

*in the very broad sense that Fallouts "Tribals" are meant to represent people who have reverted back to some sort of pre-state society; of course there are countless problems with how Fallout treats this matter (including but not limited to incredible amounts of racism) but in order to understand Caesar we're forced to meet the game on it's terms

[venusianmystique]

I really hate how much capitalism, consumerism, and patriarchy has corrupted beauty culture, beauty rituals, etc. Like makeup should have just been seen as a tool of self expression and cultural expression. Skincare should have just been seen as another aspect of health because you’re literally taking care of the biggest organ of your body that is constantly exposed to harmful things. But no, society just push us to consume so much and try to fit into these narrow categories of attractiveness which is just influenced by white supremacy, misogyny, fatphobia, ableism,etc. And it’s so draining. I just want to be able to take care of myself and have fun

[happyfanofeverything]

I’ve been peeking at your liveblogging but I’m a little confused as to what you mean by the post about describing power and abuse as filth and whatnot :0c

okay this ended up quite long but i wanted to try my best to explain what i mean here:

tl;dr framing abuse of power as “filth”/“disgusting”/“dirty” etc is inaccurate and supports abusive power structures. umineko does this, at least in the question arcs, which i’m hoping is buildup to correcting it.

i always take care to describe abuse of power in the most accurate ways i can, like, “child abuse”, “misogyny”, “ableism”, “sexual predation”, “capitalism”, whatever it may be, because at their core, they are the subjugation/control/killing of people who have been forced into marginalized/oppressed positions on a large structural scale.

the siblings fighting over kinzo’s inheritance isn’t “filthy”, it’s family members using abusive power structures established in their family and in their broader capitalist society to fight for vast amounts of money kinzo gained from imperialist-fascist mass murder and capitalist exploitation. eg eva using patriarchy/misogyny as a weapon against natsuhi, the older siblings using the childhood trauma they inflicted on their younger siblings as weapons, etc. nearly every tool they use to fight is a tool of abuse and their prize is resources made from abuse to continue abusing people to sustain themselves.

^ that’s why i hate how the ushiromiya siblings fight for the inheritance. not because it’s “disgusting” or “dirty” or anything inaccurate like that.

associating “bad”ness with dirtiness or grossness etc is playing into ableism and classism and racism and colorism and more - this sort of framework materially harms people on huge scales. people with dark skin, houseless people, disabled and disfigured people with conditions like eczema or facial paralysis or burn injuries or much more, chronically ill people who can’t clean ourselves much, i could go on a lot here. tl;dr it’s abusive language and it’s not accurate.

(sidenote, i also take care to not frame abuse of power as violence, because that’s not accurate - violence can be revolutionary, fighting against abusive power structures. i also take care to not frame abuse of power as originating from an abuser’s character or mental state, because the fundamental problem is the material power structure enabling them to harm people. and more. i can talk a lot about this)

(higurashi chapter 6 spoilers:)

many people (like Rena!) use frameworks like metaphorical-“filthiness” to understand their experiences. it’s ultimately inaccurate, and inaccurate frameworks generally benefit abusive structures and harm the people marginalized/abused. eg i ease myself out of delusional spirals about my own “disgustingness” by reminding myself that that is ableist, which helps me understand what triggered me in a way more beneficial to myself (especially because the trigger is usually an external entity harming me with ableism). ryukishi shows rena experiencing something like this, the way she survives via categorizing her experiences with mental illness as “ickiness” and trying to fully cast them aside, and how this hurts her, and how friendship that truly accepts her for all of her experiences is what she needs.

umm Yea i think that’s all the thoughts i can get down rn. thank you and please feel free to send me more asks, i probably won’t write this many words every time svxbsbcbnsbcnd though my rambley incoherently-structured writing style will probably stay