#patriarchy in the ancient world

[carolinemillerbooks]

New Post has been published on Books by Caroline Miller

New Post has been published on https://www.booksbycarolinemiller.com/musings/i-die-you-die-they-die/

I Die, You Die, They Die

“Suicide,” someone murmured after reading the announcement that a woman had died at the retirement center. “She was estranged from her family,” said another who stood beside the first speaker. Her remark rang true because the death notice asked that no condolences be left for the family. A shiver of melancholy ran through me as I read it. Being the last of my tribe, I realized that upon my death, no one would need consoling.  Headstones proliferate like autumn leaves in a graveyard but no matter how touching their inscription, the words are unreliable tributes to a life.  A generation passes and few remember. After eons come and go, archeologists may take an interest in a burial mound. And, if they find a necklace or smooth stone left beside someone they have disentombed, they are elated rather than grieved because the found object has been shorn of its memories.       Sometimes two bodies share the same grave, a discovery that raises a question.  Are these bones those of lovers? Or does a mother lie eternally with her stillborn child?  Their deathly embrace tells a story but who remembers? The desire to escape oblivion is potent. A hundred thousand years before homo sapiens walked the earth, the prehuman Homo Naledis buried their dead with mementos before carving the histories of these loved ones on cave walls.  Again, researchers rejoice because while the personal memory of these beings is erased, something about the hominin culture remains.  Patriarchy has a long presence in the affairs of humanoids, for example.  DNA studies of ancient sites suggest that females left their home community to join another– suggesting the probability that they followed their male companion to his home tribe.  Memory is a frail weapon with which to hold back the dark. Technology may come to serve us better.  In an earlier blog,  I wrote that one day we might download our stories into avatars but that would be a pale version of immortality. A combination of technology and biology is also possible, like current efforts to merge Artificial Intelligence (AI) with brain cells.  Will the result make machines smarter?  Or will humans become superhuman? Either way, will the merger help us conquer death?  We must wait to see. Some among us seek a less ambitious goal. With diet and medicinal cocktails, they hope to reverse the aging process.  Regimens like theirs are spartan, often eliminating meat and sugar.  To obtain a longer life, will humans forgo their hamburgers with cokes? Again, we must wait to see. Beyond tinkering with the human lifespan lies an existential question.  Having plundered our planet’s resources to the point of self-extinction, do we have enough time to save our species with discoveries and technological advances?  Or, is our destiny to grovel in the dust for a sip of water? To be or not to be IS  the overwhelming question.  The woman who committed suicide at my retirement center made her choice freely. Others have done the same because without love and respect what is life?  Germaine Greer, a woman near my years, ponders a related question: how to age with dignity?  Once a  professor,  feminist, and author of numerous books, The Female Eunuch most famous among them, and a person brilliant enough to disabuse William F. Buckley of his misconceptions about women’s liberation at 84 faces a growing infirmity. To maintain her independence, she moved into a retirement center.  The solution proved to be unworkable.  There, she suffered endless days of Bingo and bus outings to places that looked the same.  This she endured for ten months, being subjected all the while to abuse from  fellow residents who repeatedly told her to  “shut up.” The treatment must have come as a surprise to a person accustomed to being paid to speak. Fortunately, a brother took pity on Germaine and built a studio in his home where she could live in the bosom of her family but in solitude.  I say, “Happy is a woman with a compassionate brother.”  Happy is the individual who dies loved. Science and technology have the power to lengthen life spans but human attitudes toward aging are slow to change.  In the United States, prejudice against the elderly is the last reservoir of disdain that people feel free to express, as if growing old were a personal failure.  Teenagers may be forgiven for imagining themselves to be immortal, but tyrants who feel the same are fools.   Is it the light that falls from the swords of their armies that blind these dictators? Are they unable to see that like any pauper, they serve no higher purpose than to satisfy the appetites of worms? How greater their history might have been had they considered our common destiny and devoted themselves to acts of kindness.  In death do triumph and failure humbly meet.   (The Victory City by Salman Rushdie, Thorndike Press, 2023, pg. 531.)

[teachanarchy]

What is hysteria, and why were so many women diagnosed with it? - Mark S...

[angelfishe]

# 𝐌𝐘 𝐄𝐌𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐒

<< yandere genshin men x empress reader >> Concubine AU

Character : zhongli, diluc, ayato, alhaitham, Childe, baizhu.

( inspired by the story of apothecary diaries as well the concubine system in ancient china )

The empress is the mother of the nation as well being a regal and possessed the beauty of a celestial maiden, as well the mother of the crown prince is known by the nation as the goddess of love due to possessing many admirers.

Warning : non-con, patriarchy system, abortion mention, touching and more

<< viewers discretion is advised >>

# ZHONGLI

- the emperor of the nation, the husband of the empress as well the father of the crown prince, a powerful warrior that holds the abilities of the draconic god of the nation, the one that created a force field around the continent to defend the nation from the abyssal monsters he is busy with his attendant and generals defending the nation bothers due to high activity of monster. leaving the city to fight leaving you in charge but don't worry he will be back, The emperor and the empress were childhood friends, the empress was forced by the emperor to marry him, zhongli possessed much hire status stand you. You were the child of his wet nurse.

- zhongli and you grow up close together, he made a promise towards you to make you the mother of the nation, originally you were already betrothed to someone but unfortunately your betrothed was executed thru false accusations of over throwing the nation.

- the next day you and him were to be married and the night before he visited your pavilion and upon that night he forced himself upon you, and he didn't even feel bad he felt bliss and pleasure even tho you were suffering

- due to this accident the crown prince was consummated that night. The entire kingdom was celebrating holding a three day festival for the new emperor. You were silent the entire time while everybody was celebrating all you could think is how your baby is gonna suffer in this world being born not out of love.

- you would try to find ways to save him from being born by finding ways to miscarriage until the emperor finally catches on to what you are trying to do and locks you up on the pavilion not allowing you to anywhere and no one is allowed to talk to you only him it was pure torture but he made a proposal you are allowed to take many consort as much you want. Even tho he hated sharing you he knows he's the first to everything towards you the baby is proof and if those consort wanna steal you away they have to go thru him.

#DILUC

- the favoured consort, the empress most beloved consort and imperial consort the second towards the emperor. Known thru the entire palace or court as a kind gentleman. Overseeing the nations trading goods as well assisting the empress on her duties to overrule the nation meanwhile the emperor is out.

- The son of a western merchant that comes from the royal bloodline, he originally was sent into the nation for business, his family owns a popular wine industry that is widely known across the world. And when he met the empress it was during a tournament being hosted

- originally he didn't think of participating but his brother as a prank signed his name on the list of fighters so he had no choice of joining, when he entered the arena and looked around and his eyes landed on you in all of your glory.

- you and him make eye contact when he was snapped out of it during the announcer yanfei asked him to enter the arena, he could feel 4 pairs of eyes, one is full of adoration and the other one is full of jealousy and hatred he guess it was the emperor sitting next to you.

- after the match he received a message from an eunuch that was asking for his presence because the empress wants to see him, and he met you as well as your husband staring at him with disdain, he was chosen to be a consort towards the empress. And that's how he joined in the harem.

- he and the illustrious consort is known to have a rivalry for the empress affection, due to him being the most visited consort by the empress the illustrious consort has been trying to find ways to sabotage him but by far the most he hated In the court is the emperor, he is the empress destined to be and main lover meanwhile he's just a consort, the emperor know this fact and takes pride and mock the entire harem that the empress is his.

#AYATO

- The illustrious consort second towards the imperial consort diluc, a cunning and mischievous consort the reason why many consorts of the harem disappear or run away allegedly was because of him, he Eliminated anyone that's been trying to get in his way for the empress. His trusted attendant Thomas is sent to deal matters while he and the empress spent time together.

- the son of the most prestigious clan of the nation, he managed to pull some strings to get himself into the harem. After he heard that the empress is allowed to take in multiple consorts he goes right up ahead trying to get himself into the harem.

- he and diluc have been trying to one up the other, he believes that he should be the imperial consort and hates how diluc is always the one getting attention, and not to mention the death of many lower ranking consorts are his fault, they are pathetic and not worthy of his beloved empress attention.

- during his entrance to the harem, many of his subordinates disguise themselves as servants to work under him, when he wishes the death of a consort that has been too cocky about the empress he sent them to assassinate that lowly consort.

- he will use his looks, status, and intelligence to slide his way into the court and the empress heart. His by far one of the nations greatest getting by far one of the highest scores in the nations court exams and secure a place as the emperor strategist and when right time he will strike.

# ALHAITHAM

- a scholar and envoy for the land of wisdom ruler and was sent to negotiate with the emperor to take lord kusanali place, arrive with other 3 envoys ( kaveh, tighnari, cynon) to discuss matters. Unfortunately the emperor was out and unable to attend the meeting so you take your husband place

- you welcome your visitors with open arms and get the servant to ready the guest room for them since the meeting is gonna last for one week to establish cooperation and business between both of your nations. The rumors were true your beauty was immacable.

- when you were giving a tour of the palace you will always be followed by guards and ladies waiting as if they're making sure you will never leave and always 3 steps behind you. after the tour alhaitham decided to go out and look around the city, and during his walk, he heard many rumors about you and the emperor so when his back, he used his skill to convince a servant who worked in the palace about you and the emperor.

- the servant told him the story about you and the emperor the version that was realest towards the public not the actual truth, so steal a eunuch keys to enter the palace libraries holding records of everything and found a book holding records about you and the emperor consumption and the birth of the prince, that process of producing the crown prince was too early, based on his studies in the akedemiya.

- and during the months of pregnancy the stress was unbearable causing you to find ways to abort the baby so the emperor decided to keep you in captivity not allowing you to leave your room. Piece by piece he puzzled the truth, poor you, force into a life you never wish betrayed by your loved ones, he will find ways to save you from this life.

#CHILDE

- another envoy who was sent towards the nation and accidentally got mistaken as a barbarian due to his bloodlust for battle, during his carriage it was so boring he needed to find ways to get rid of it, low and behold some monsters are in a field unbeknownst to him those monster was purposely put there to fight of some of the creatures that were eating the crops of the royal palace as well as pets for the servants.

- minutes later he was tied up and was presented towards the empress as entertainment when he was about to be executed but his eyes were on you, before the blade could decapitated him many of his underlings who were looking everywhere for him burst thru the door commanding towards the executioner to put his blade down.

- the truth was revealed he was an envoy and his underlings were forced to apologize for his place since he was the one that killed the royal monster, he didn't care because he knows that he wouldn't easily die because if the blade came in contact with him it will release a shockwave of electro around the room.

- but the entire time he was adoring you, so after the misunderstanding cleared up he was escorted to his room. He hands all of his works towards his underlings because he wants to see you before they could protest he was already gone using his inhuman speed to follow you.

- during the night, he managed to break into the royal chamber of the emperor and empress room where they shared together a good thing the emperor was out, he heard the emperor was a powerful warrior that holds the title of god of martial arts and holds strength rivalling the gods defeating other worldly entities to defend his nation. Look at you peacefully sleeping unaware of him watching you, you're probably left unsatisfied with your husband absentsy but don't worry he's here to fulfill your desires.

#BAIZHU

- the royal physician of the royal court, he personally does daily check ups on you during your pregnancy and birth of the crown prince supervising you through the process. As well making sure the crown prince is healthy.

- the most skilled and renowned physicians and healers of the nation were sought out by the emperor to supervise the crown prince birth and empress well being. Also a former student of the akedemiya.

- he of course knows the truth of when the crown prince was conceived, during your pregnancy he would supervise you and do daily checks up on you. You were always on high alert when you were near him because you don't know him very well but he became useful towards the emperor.

- he and the crown prince have a good relationship, sometimes the prince would seek him because he likes to help him make medicine, poor prince unaware the truth of his birth regardless you were a okay mother of course sometimes the prince reminds you of the emperor but you will always try to be present in his life.

- since he supervise your health and so he make sure your food is full of nutrients but sometimes he would add something towards your meal causing you to fall into sickness so he's able to see you with out suspension, every check up he would take time with you as if he was admiring art, he would over due it and caressed some parts that could lead him to be executed by the emperor good things he's not here and he's able to adore and admire you, and he will soon try to develop ways to poison the emperor.

[creature-wizard]

How the "divine feminine" and the "divine masculine" perpetuate patriarchy - and what we can do about it

One thing the occult is very good at is coming up with systems to categorize and conceptualize things. These can be incredibly useful to us in various ways. But we also have to remember that these systems we come up with are mere constructs, and the actual world itself probably doesn't conform to them as we might like. As the saying goes, all maps are wrong. But as the saying also goes, some maps are useful, and some are more useful than others.

One thing that often comes up in esoteric and occult systems are various forms of binaries or polarities. This often makes sense; for example, without light, you have dark. Without heat, you have cold. One party gives, the other takes. Creatures are born, and eventually they die.

But we can run into problems when we start trying to lump all apparent forms of polarities and dualities together. Here's an example: Life/Death, Masculine/Feminine. In doing this, we create an association that might lead us toward some terrible ways of thinking about real people. If we associate masculinity with death, we can find ourselves thinking that waging war and inventing weapons of death is just what men and masc people do, but women can always be counted on to be diplomats and peacekeepers. Or if we associate femininity with death, we might find ourselves more inclined to think that women and femmes have a natural desire to commit infanticide and tear apart societies, and they must be carefully watched and their freedoms limited so they don't upend civilization and endanger the human race.

These are of course extreme examples, but they are real ways that some people think. And you might think to yourself, "well, I don't polarize genders this way, I think people should try to be a healthy balance of masculine and feminine." And if this is you, I want you to ask yourself why you're so attached to categorizing traits as "masculine" and "feminine" at all.

If you're like most people, you probably just came across this in some form of occult or spiritual literature and just adopted it without really asking yourself too many questions about it. When we see something framed as ancient or higher wisdom, it's pretty easy to take it fairly uncritically, especially if it aligns with our unconscious biases in some way. It often doesn't cross our minds to ask where these terms really come from, and what they signified in their original contexts.

You may have heard that male/female stuff has roots in alchemy, which is true. But the thing with alchemy is that it was using familiar terms and concepts to describe chemical processes and reactions. Think of it a little bit like how we use terms like "male plugs" and "female plugs." While old-time alchemy did have a spiritual component to it, it was more about believing that you had to be spiritually pure to make your desired alchemical reactions happen. When alchemy gave way to chemistry, and people began to realize that your spiritual condition had nothing to do with your ability to make things happen in the lab, certain people began to seek more mystical meanings in the works of alchemists, and this idea of masculinity and femininity as transcendent mystical forces unto themselves really started to emerge. It was an incredibly easy concept to project on all kinds of mythologies, because a lot of myths have male and female figures interacting in various ways.

Now the thing is, having myths with male and female figures doesn't mean seeing masculinity and femininity as discrete forces or powers unto themselves. It can mean that they simply personified various figures as male or female depending on what their own experiences and cultural biases suggested to them. For example, straight men tend to think of love and lust as something they experience when they see a beautiful woman. In a patriarchal society, where men are calling most of the shots in conceptualizing the divine, a love deity is thus likely to be personified as a beautiful woman. Straight men can also see beautiful women as a source of discord and strife, so it makes sense that love goddesses would have war aspects to them.

A society where men are sent to war while wives are left behind to raise the children and tend the farm is going to produce an association with men and violence, while the act of nurturing will be associated with women. Men who deny higher education to women are going to produce a society where intellectual pursuits and higher abstract reasoning are associated with masculinity, and intuition and practical knowledge are associated with women. A society where men are seen as bringers of social order and upholders of civilization while women are viewed more like forces of nature than rational actors will associate men with civilization and women with natural, wild spaces.

In continuing to associate these characteristics with the "divine feminine" and the "divine masculine," we preserve and perpetuate the implicit biases created by these patriarchal societies. And while there is absolutely value in saying, "hey, these 'feminine' things are actually valuable and worth respect actually," framing them as intrinsically feminine in any sense - physically, psychologically, or metaphysically - will undermine any effort to dismantle patriarchy and bring true equality.

So what can you do? I would suggest being more specific.

Do you mean passive/active? Then just say it.

Do you mean giver/receiver? Then just say it.

Do you mean harmonizing/disrupting? Then just say it.

Whatever you have filed under boxes labeled "masculine" and "feminine," you can simply take them out of those boxes and find better categories for them.

[biracy]

The John Post

The thing about John Gaius is like… a lot of people refuse to recognize him as like a Bad Guy, and a lot of people criticize tlt for having him as a Bad Guy, for similar reasons. I think a lot of people have these ideas that colonialism and empire and the vague concept of "war crimes" are bad due to some kind of ontological evil within the souls of white men or something, and that misogyny and the objectification of women exist due to some kind of ontological evil within the souls of straight men. Relating to the former, I think a lot of people hold a sort of "but it's okay when we do it" approach to systems of oppressive power + imperialism, where their vision of a perfect world is not one without these things, but ones where currently marginalized people get to participate in colonial and imperialist power forces just as much as the white men ("I hear the next one will be sent by a woman!"). John Gaius is both a representation of this and a good litmus test for people's opinions on this - he was a bisexual, Māori man living in colonized Aotearoa, and when he got to remake the universe, he made one where he is the emperor. Instead of making a world where these systems no longer exist, John went "but it's okay when I do it." A lot of people in real life are like this, honestly - a lot of marginalized people choose to only understand liberation and empowerment through the lens of the power wielded by their oppressors. It's an attractive concept, at first, but it doesn't really work in the long run and it cannot provide liberation for everyone. John becoming the most powerful man in the universe, literally becoming God, gives HIM that power, but does not give EVERYONE that power. The Nine Houses are subjugated under him, the non-House planets are regularly destroyed by him, and even his Lyctors are decidedly "under" him, even after ten thousand years. In choosing to wield the weapons of his oppressors for himself, John becomes not a liberator but an oppressor in his own right.

The same thing can be said about John and gender; people tend to reduce the misogyny John expresses because he's bisexual and played with girls' toys, but bisexual men are just as capable of wielding patriarchy against women as straight men. People also find it difficult to grapple with how John, a Māori man, constructed a blonde Barbie to house the soul of the Earth in, and are hesitant to analyze him as misogynistic because of this. But John making Alecto a Barbie, the icon of white femininity, is the same as him becoming an emperor and surrounding himself with Lyctors in the ancient Roman fashion. Alecto is the idealized white woman, and she is John's. John created her, possesses her, embodies her, in what is both a patriarchal power trip and a marginalized person taking power into his own hands. Alecto being a blonde white woman, being Barbie, carries very clear colonialist AND misogynistic connotations. White supremacy and colonialism has taught John that a blonde-haired white woman is the feminine ideal, which is backed up by the white, blonde-haired and blue-eyed Barbies of his childhood. At the same time, Barbie has an extensive history of being criticized for misogyny, with the doll's design embodying a very clear feminine sexual ideal. The desire to control and contain a beautiful woman is an inherently patriarchal one, and John takes it to the extreme when he chains his Barbie in a coffin at the center of a labyrinth. Alecto is the patriarchal fantasy to wholly possess a beautiful woman, powered by hundreds of years of colonialism teaching John what a beautiful woman even is, filtered through a thin veneer of exerting power over an image of whiteness (although John's treatment of Alecto is primarily misogynistic - it's a very clear part of the text and you need to get comfortable confronting that).

John Gaius is an example of a marginalized person who wishes for the power he has been denied, yet hasn't fully deconstructed colonialism and patriarchy. The only things separating him from anyone else fitting this description is that a) he is a fictional character being written deliberately and b) he had the opportunity to become God. And when John Gaius became God, he didn't change the world; he just made a world where he was in charge. This is an extremely important part of the books! The books are very clearly making commentary on both imperialism and misogyny, and to have people so passionately ignore these themes because they can be uncomfortable to talk about is disheartening. John is a character that invites so much analysis and conversation, there are so many layers to why he is the way he is and what that contributes to the books. People are so unwilling to discuss misogyny and assault or so uncomfortable with the idea of calling a nonwhite guy an imperialist that they steamroll right over these themes, which loses a lot of what makes the books so interesting to begin with in the process.

[molter-writes]

pleeeasssee miller i know you let the work stand on it's own but please tell us jsut a tad bit more about the valyerian sex magic!!!!

i meannnn

on valyrian sex magic

i am not the person to ask for the true asoiaf lore, of course; but there is obviously a pervasive source of magic across Planetos — accessible by many cultures in many different forms — and the "flavour" of the magic of each is very much a reflection, i think, of what GRRM wants us to glean about each. the Starks are themselves effectively the oldest singular consistent human organisation, if you will, that we actually meet in the books, and their magic is extremely rudimentary and primordial—they turn into animals and talk to trees. It's giving primordial man, it's giving Lucy—humanity as a symbiotic participant in (rather than an editor of) the natural world.

fast forward almost five thousand years: the valyrians are not tree hugging hunter-gatherers. they are the roman empire if the roman empire were composed of evil wizards. Their magic is dark, rooted in blood and fire—it was a tool of mind control, of asymmetric warfare, of wroth destruction. It required blood sacrifice and whips and horns and knives. It mated slave women to animals to produce grotesque chimeras. The entire thing is about the subjugation, not the embrace, of nature. Obviously until we have WoW or (lol) aDoS, we won't know—and maybe not even then—but the best prevailing theory in my view is that blood of the dragon is literal. Planetos has wyverns and, more importantly, firewyrms (flightless, firebreathing lizards) that the Valyrians almost certainly combined with human beings in some ritualistic hellcurse to produce the first dragons. this explains (1) the psychogenic bond between rider and dragon; (2) why nobody without valyrian blood can ride one; (3) the decline of the dragons correlating near-perfectly with the Andalisation (read: de-magifying) of the Targaryens; and perhaps most importantly, (4) why an animal that can fly hundreds of miles in a day would for some reason be found only on a single small isle in some random corner of a massive content that has volcanos and mountains and hot weather elsewhere. only one culture having dragons is like only one airport having planes.

much like the american NRA often asserts about guns, dragons are something of a sexual equaliser. part of why rhaenyra is so much freer than alicent when they're young is not merely because of her elevated social station (which is a principal part of it, yes) but also because she is in sole possession of one of the only six nukes in the world. At fifteen Rhaenyra possesses the power to go burn Riverrun to its foundation. I mean, if you thought Daenerys had firepower—regardless of D&D's absolute boneheaded visual mistakes in the show—Syrax is bigger than Drogon.

in any case i digress; i bring this up to make the point that while we do know valyria was a patriarchy of sorts, you can imagine a world in which a valyrian noble house would be headed (on occasion) by a woman because she is the most powerful imperial military leader because she is in command of the largest dragon. as a result, you can imagine a culture that embraces less patriarchal sexual and gender politics than do the Andals, and when take this inference a step further with the chimeras and the dragon-making and all the other frankensteinian blood magic, i just don't think it's that much of a leap to imagine that some dragon-wielding all-powerful female ruthless blood wizard in ancient Valyria decided—based on blood purity or necessity or ego or whatever—to impregnate some other woman. some maesters recorded that dragons appeared to change their sex—becoming able and unable to lay and fertilise eggs. Anyway, I just don't put genderbending and fempreg past the people who—if the theory is right—invented fucking dragons. It seems easier to do magic pregnancy than to do dragons. idk. melisandre gave birth to a shadow. nearly every ancient tradition on the planet can explore the miracle of virgin conception but we can't have lesbo baby?? why?? thank you for coming to my Ted Talk

[hadesoftheladies]

it's normal to be insulted by femininity as a girl or woman and it's really simple why.

the core philosophy of patriarchy is that men and women are not defined by their sex but by their sexual roles in the male sexual hierarchy (a naturalistic fallacy). the philosophy of patriarchy cannot allow for equality at any given point, because a man ceases to be a man if he is not dominant and a woman seizes to be a woman if she is not submissive. keep this in mind.

so a woman as defined by patriarchy is a complementary thing (non-human, like animals or "nature") to a man's estate. the woman identity, as construed by patriarchy, exists solely for male pleasure and estate. that means the woman is only a woman if (it/she) is an asset to a male's estate. so it/she must be a wife, a concubine, a tradeable daughter (this is opportunity for wealth), a prostitute or mother. please note, in all these roles, a woman is always meant to be subordinate or she/it is not a woman.

now remember, this is only patriarchal philosophy, but this philosophy/worldview needs to become an ideology and way of life. so patriarchs, in order to justify their made-up bullshit about the sexes and their right to exploit without consequences, must naturalize this worldview. they can create patriarchal religions (for whichever has the power over life and death defines the value and purpose of a soul) and language (whoever defines the world controls how it is perceived).

but CLOTHES are an expression of both. clothes, aside from simply being utilitarian (even in ancient times), were visual symbols denoting things like class, age, sex, nationality, and beliefs. NOW UNDERSTAND, the first class distinction in human societies was between men and women. men were higher humans hence were to be treated as a distinct upper class, and women were lower-class.

class distinction via sex was the first kind of class distinction. so it became increasingly important to the patriarchal state that women and men had to dress according to their class (the Old Testament of the Bible shows that this was indeed important to early patriarchal states in the ANE via verses like Deuteronomy 22:5 which reads, “A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God.”) In short, clothes do not have sex (no garment can chan he your chromosomes), but they do have sex-class (which is gender).

in the development of patriarchy, the veil in the ancient near east, became a symbol of women's sexual status, publicly announcing them as married, concubines, virgins, etc. (i encourage you to read The Beginning of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner for more in-depth information on all this). clothes then, and today, have always been about determining women as a sexual class and what role they performed in that sexual class (modest, up for sale, married, low-value, lesbian/deviant).

because men get to define what women are, they get to define what our clothes mean. they get to decide if something is modest or if a woman is "asking for it."

what does this have to do with femininity?

patriarchal belief= a woman is a thing, defined explicitly by her inequality to man, that exists purely for the pleasure and purpose of the man. this means a woman can only be a sexual slave (whether as a mother/wife or a whore) and cannot live or exist outside of this male-defined sexuality (temptress/justified sexualization of underage girls) without becoming something other than a woman (a monster, a witch, ungodly, mentally ill). since it was made for man, it cannot pursue interests outside of pleasing him and still be a natural, healthy thing.

enter gender.

femininity (and gender) is how women are regulated by the patriarchal state. it is a costume, a uniform, that signifies an obedient subordinate, but it is also a performance that is constantly tested and scored. women with low scores get re-educated or removed from society (via death or ostracization). femininity is how women are policed. all you have to do is to look at the traits of femininity and it's rules.

the natural female face/body should always be palatable, pleasing and presentable to the man and what he specifically finds attractive (so it doesn't matter that you're from a different culture or of a different class, if you're dressing "modestly" or "promiscuously"--this is the only primary rule: that you please men and that you are tasteful to the man who fancies you)

this means that the woman's health is secondary and her body should be editable, adaptable, picked apart and put back together on a whim, on any and every level to appeal to any man who wants her (cosmetic surgery, corsets, trends)

nurture is paramount to the character of a woman (because a woman is meant to be an excellent breeder)

softness and smallness (signals submissiveness, passiveness, defeat, weakness--all of which are proper womanly behaviour)

martyrdom (a woman exists for the preservation of the man and his estate)

silence (this communicates mental submission which is important, women should not voice their experiences, grievances, frustrations, desires, stories because she is showing agency and none of these qualities aid her identity as a sexual servant)

i want you to look at and analyze, even within your own cultures, what femininity is defined as wherever it exists, and then see if you can find any connection to how it enforces the idea of the patriarchal woman-thing. the entire performance, clothing and behaviour, is enforced in order to justify the fictional woman-thing in patriarchal imagination.

but you are a human being.

you have always been able to think, feel, disagree, feel anger . . . because you are a person with a sense of dignity, history and purpose outside male-defined sexuality. so when you as a girl or woman express disdain at femininity, it is not because you think "feminine" women are beneath you. it is because you know femininity is beneath every woman and yourself.

the capitalistically driven insecurity market that pushes women to seek out the security of male validation is beneath all of us. the performance is beneath all of us. we were human before we were mothers, wives, sex workers. we were beautiful and wonderful before makeup. we were human before men looked at us and called us fuckable. we were powerful and divine before men told us we were demonic and simply angelic, servants of gods rather than goddesses ourselves. we had the capacity to create and invent the world before men told us we didn't have heads for learning.

we have always been human and always will be.

femininity is a patriarchal polemic against our humanity. it's fundamental philosophy disagrees with the reality of us. that's why there's so much anger and fear around this culture.

some of us, as girls, resented the fact that our mothers asked us to swallow the fact that they accepted (as right) their humiliation and ours. that they wanted us to show men and boys that we accepted that we were made to be humiliated. of course we got angry. of course we felt confused. didn't our mothers, sisters, aunts, friends care that this performance was never-ending humiliation as we were forced to parade ourselves in order to compete for male approval? in front of the eyes of men and boys we knew mocked us for everything? so we said, we're not like other girls. other girls want to keep up with this. maybe they like humiliation? but we can't live this way. something must be wrong with us, or with them. they're sheep, or we're disgusting lesbians. but the truth is that we're all just in a world of pain and desperation.

your (feminine) clothes are not made with you in mind, but they are also made to keep you minding yourself. checking yourself. making sure your bra doesn't show. your underwear doesn't slip. your belly isn't too prominent. it keeps you eager to perform your role. to win against a race you can't even define because you haven't ever questioned if it ends. you get approval from the state because you are trained to self-regulate, and you have been trained well. the relief you feel at the approval of other girls or boys is that they are giving you a high score. which means you are safe. you are beautiful, you are a good performer. you will be picked and not left behind.

you may say you dress for the girls, but that's part of the problem, still. you and the girls are. you are still agreeing with the political philosophy of patriarchy when you uncritically wear the uniform of the woman-thing. you think of yourself as the woman-thing. you think of your face and body as infinitely editable. delete the breasts, delete the pores, enlarge the eyes like you're a doll on a Wii avatar creator. and so other girls are scared of being themselves because you all know there's something here to fear. there's rejection and punishment waiting for pretty ladies who don't comply.

but you're a living, complete human being, darling. you are an ecosystem with mysteries as old as the universe in you. you are a person that deserves to be here fully and freely. this is your world, too. our world.

so you see why gender cannot be reclaimed by us in a meaningful sense? it is a performance that is invented, re-invented and validated by the philosophy of our dehumanization. it will never be independent of it in this system.

you are worth the freedom and strength you can give yourself. you are worth the fight out of this.

[jadedbirch]

Girls don't want boys; girls want to battle ancient gods to the death!

My friends, the time has finally come for me to review the entire Burning Kingdom's trilogy by Tasha Suri. I've mentioned it before in my rec list of queer historical novels, but that was before I completed The Lotus Empire, the last book in the series. And now I can say with conviction: Tasha Suri is the only writer out there who truly understands love and romance and WHAT SAPPHICS WANT. 🙌🏻

To back up, the Burning Kingdom's story takes place in the imaginary kingdom of Parijatvipa (a reimagining of South East Asia/India with a lot of magical realism flowing through its veins). One of our heroines, Malini, is a princess who has been told all her life by the clergy and her younger brother the Emperor that her destiny is sacrificial immolation. Our second heroine, Priya, is a priestess in the ancient and mystical temple of the Hirana, where for centuries Temple Elders and Temple Children have worshipped the Yaksa (ancient nature divinity spirits that were supposedly destroyed at the end of the Age of Flowers). Their love story begins when Malini is sent by her brother to repent at the Hirana for her unwillingness to be burned alive and Priya is assigned to be her servant/guard.

The trilogy follows the two women as they clash against each other like waves, or like two powerful tornadoes that destroy everything in their path. Their love might be easier if one of them was softer, but what makes Priya and Malini such a power couple, is that they're both incredible badasses with spines of steel and nerves of fire. The stakes cannot be higher and only keep rising. It starts out as one Princess vs The Patriarchy, and ends with Gods vs Nature, Humans vs. Gods, and Sapphic Love Conquering All. I feel it is very important to let everyone know that the trilogy has a very satisfying ending, despite the many devastating and heart-breaking twists and turns along the way.

While this trilogy is incredibly Girl Power and is full of countless badass lady characters, I must say that one of the reasons I enjoy Tara Suri as a writer is because she also understands how to write good male characters from the female gaze perspective. Sure, some of the men in this book are horrid villains, but then she gives us truly complex and good boys like Rao (I would die for Rao), Aditiya, Jeevan, Ganam, and Rukh along the way.

This series is really riveting and never stops delivering. We get really wonderful gay/lesbian solidarity. We get so much great ladies supporting ladies content (Bechdel test? LOL Tasha Suri straight blows right past it into a different dimension of female solidarity.) We get hot girl on girl under the waterfall action. We get gorgeous rumination on the nature of faith and sacrifice. But most importantly, we get two very deeply flawed women who love each other so powerfully and so beautifully that their love literally reshapes the world.

I am begging everyone to drop whatever they're doing and read this series. It's really up there for me as some of the Best Gay Shit Ever.

[vidavalor]

I noticed in the flashbacks that all the stories are biblical up until the crucifixion. After the cruxifiction there are no biblical stories but only non religious historical events. Thoughts?

Hi @i-go-like-the-raven! 💕Hope you're having a good week. That's a great observation. Some thoughts on Golgotha, Rome, and why the Biblical story flashbacks might stop with Jesus below.

My take on this would be that the wordplay-happy Good Omens has used the Biblical story flashbacks to make a bildungsroman that-- wait for it lol-- builds towards the ancient Roman flashback 😂 and all that follows.

A bildungsroman, for anyone who doesn't know, is a story that is focused on the first, initial formation of a character's identity and worldview through the development of their own core spiritual and philosophical beliefs. It's sometimes a story about young adulthood but it doesn't necessarily have to be as it's never too late to start down a more free-thinking path.

If we're open-minded, curious people, then we're all always growing and changing and learning-- that never stops-- but a bildungsroman is mainly concerned with the very first time that a person begins to gain a little independence from those who raised them and so starts to form their own identity and worldview.

This involves deciding what of that they were taught they are going to continue to believe. It involves experiencing a lot of things for the first time, meeting new people who offer up different perspectives, and learning about the larger world and different schools of thought. It's basically the results of a person's initial, independent exploration of life on Earth.

Traditionally, by the end of a bildungsroman, the characters have emerged more fully into themselves and are in a more mature stage of adulthood. They will continue to grow and change but that initial process of forming a core, independent view of themselves and the world is complete. This is what I think that the Biblical stories in Good Omens are accomplishing in the overall narrative of the story.

Good Omens isn't Bible fanfiction-- it's a satire of oppressive systems. It's using The Bible to come at ideas of patriarchy and fascism that cause harm to so many. The whole Bible is like that but the stories that they have chosen to take a flamethrower to here are probably the most damaging and well-known and the ones best suited to most dramatically come at patriarchy, obedience, authority, etc..

Good Omens is a story about human living that is tackling things like trauma and mental health and has themes about autonomy as freedom and how we're the author of our own lives. The stories chosen across the board-- both the flashbacks and ones just alluded to or used to form the story in the present, like Armageddon-- are all ones best suited to be gutted like a fish in support of Good Omens' themes.

In Good Omens, The Four Horsepeople and Armageddon are used to describe a mental health crisis. It's use of the book that has done more damage to more people than anyone can count by doing a spin on the story where it's actually about how you survive trauma born *of* The Bible and other tools of oppression. Eden and Genesis are getting into ideas about authority, obedience, genocide, gender, patriarchy...

There's a mocking of Leviticus across several scenes and its unhealthy ideas about consumption in different parts of the story at the same time as the story also takes on lunacy 'wellness' ideas via Famine and the foodless food of Chow. It's talking a lot about the queer hate born of Sodom & Gommorah (hold that thought, please, as someone else asked for a post on that). It chose Job for the center of the flashbacks, since that very fucked up story lives at the intersection of all of the story's themes.

But why might the Biblical flashbacks themselves end with Golgotha, as you ask?

Part of it, I think, is a witty little wink to the historical timeline that, for ages, stopped and restarted time with the birth of Christ-- B.C. and A.D.. Everything was centered around Jesus for everyone, whether you believed in that or not. The arrival of Jesus was the be all and end all of everything. This is also in Michael's description of Armageddon in S2-- how, if successful, Armageddon-- which supposedly includes the return of Jesus-- would mean the end of time and the world and the beginning of the misery of...

But The Second Coming is The Parousia, which is a Greek word meaning presence, and also what the concession stand in the theatre in the opening credits of S2 is named. This is a story about mindful, healthy living where Armageddon is a breakdown. This story is a lot more concerned about whether or not anyone is eating a cheese sandwich than it is about telling a story where Jesus is somehow back to judge everybody.

This is the Discworld-- we're all gods of the Disc. When we die, we go wherever we most believe we're supposed to be. That's what eternal life is. No one needs poor Jesus for that-- just leave him alone.

To this end, what has Good Omens done with Jesus to date?

He's just kinda there in the background for a minute in the flashbacks. 😂 Good Omens was basically like Jesus was a nice guy with some decent ideas, if a bit traumatized and repressed, and it's a damn shame he's dying in the background of this scene that is really focused on Crowley and Aziraphale and their romance.

Nothing says 'this story is not about The Bible but is using The Bible to come at toxicity that The Bible and things like it creates' more than this story about the angel and the demon living a human life on Earth has had Jesus on screen for exactly eleven seconds. 😂

Even better, the only thing about our main characters' personal connection to Jesus' story that we learn in this scene is that Crowley was who tempted Jesus in the desert-- a pitch-perfect detail that the food kinky Crowley, who is the antithesis of Raven Sable by design and believes in a more healthy way of living, was there going c'mon, man, why don't you flip those rocks into some bread? It's really, seriously not the end of the world? Starving yourself isn't great, actually?

But what makes that revelation in the Golgotha scene even better is the fact that it's an additional punchline to Aziraphale's flirtation in the present two episodes earlier. Jesus very famously shut down temptation in the desert-- so, in Good Omens, shut down Crowley-- with "get thee behind me, foul fiend" so when we find out that Jesus said that to Crowley, it makes the already deliciously blasphemous flirtation from Aziraphale back in 1.01 even funnier and filthier.

Here's the role of Jesus in Good Omens-- it's Aziraphale using a Jesus quote as sexual invitation. Telling Jesus' temptress that he has no intention whatsoever of resisting him like that uptight messiah did and he'd liked to be fucked asap, please. (The "after you" on the end of it is always the bit that sends me. 😂) This appears to be about as much Jesus as Good Omens plans on getting into here.

Jesus is in the background in Good Omens for a reason. The Second Coming is just Armageddon: Round Two. Jesus is not coming back to judge anybody. Frances McDormand is, in all likelihood, a Voice of God that talks to Aziraphale sometimes. She effectively is Aziraphale, which is probably why she's awesome.

Nothing about The Bible is going to happen in this story the way The Bible says it's going to happen because this is a satire, not Bible fanfiction. The angels and the demons exist in this story to talk about being human. This is a story about breaking these characters free of this stuff, not about retelling The Bible.

Golgotha is the end of the Biblical flashbacks because it's a scene contrasting definitions of the word passion. It's the Passion of the Christ meets the passion of the Crowley. The scene builds to the ending of our bildungsroman, which is Crowley telling Aziraphale that he's changed his name to Crowley. It symbolizes the identity he's formed for himself and, after S2, the audience understands it even more because, having seen the Job minisode, we now know why the crow.

We got the sense of this being a romantic admittance back in S1, largely based on Aziraphale's reaction to it, but after S2? There's no way not to see the intimacy and heat in Aziraphale being a little jealous about Crowley's reputation as the great seductress and Crowley replying with the revelation that he's given himself a name that they both know that only Aziraphale understands.

Directly off of this, we chronologically ditch The Bible story flashbacks for good because, while stuff like Armageddon can be used in the present for other parts of the story, there's no need to set these characters in these Biblical flashbacks anymore because those were the foundations of this romance and the bildungsroman. They're to get us to Rome. They're to develop Crawley and Aziraphale, the angel that was on apple tree duty, into Crowley and The Angel of The Eastern Gate.

And it stops right here-- with the passion of the Christ being contrasted with romantic passion-- because this is the set up for Rome, where they more fully start to break free.

Off of Golgotha, we jump to what, for them, is about 30 seconds into the future, into the first historical flashback, and it's in ancient Rome, which is to where our bildungsroman was building. It's time for them to start writing their own roman-- an old word for a novel. Their book of life began with Eden but The Bible stories are just their youthful origins and their life on Earth is the story they're writing together, for which the Biblical stories are just the first book and the start of the volume that is more fully their own is Rome.

Rome represents Crowley and Aziraphale both on the other side of their early Bible days. They also can't go any further with The Bible here because-- like for many humans whose experiences this is all paralleling-- it's the source of trauma. Crowley and Aziraphale are more definitively themselves by Rome-- more ready for something a bit more full grown. The story here and on out is about how it's human living that is healing and holy and that's going in the opposite direction of the self-denial of The Bible.

There ain't no story in The Bible that was ever gonna make for a flashback that could get Crowley a partnered oyster, ok? 😂 For that, he needed the emerged and a little more worldly Angel of The Eastern Gate, ya feel me?

Pretty much the most subversive thing this story does is pat The Bible on the head and say oh, flaying you alive to talk about how toxic you are will do nicely to form a nice little bildungsroman for the early days of this romance between these queers with religious trauma... but you're definitely not the basis of our entire story because that's about walking the Earth. We're going to jump to the history of the real world the second that angel and that demon go from hilariously parasexual ox ribs to the Aphrodite and Eros of actually going out for oysters.

The Bible flashbacks in Good Omens end with the passion of Golgotha contrasting death with the little death as it sets up for the romance of Rome and all the years of doing as the Romans do that follow.

[the-most-humble-blog]

Feminism Ends When the First Bomb Drops🚀🔥

Modern feminists love to scream about patriarchy and male privilege while living in a world built, secured, and maintained by the same men they despise. They whine about "oppression" in air-conditioned coffee shops, but when real oppression arrives wearing combat boots and carrying rifles, suddenly, equality doesn’t seem so fun anymore.

They think all men are dangerous—until the truly dangerous ones show up. Not Chad from accounting who called them “sweetheart,” but real wolves—men with no allegiance, no morals, and no concern for your pronouns or your feminism.

🔻 Feminism works great… until you're getting invaded. 🔻 Every woman is "equal" until war reminds her she's prey. 🔻 Your gender studies degree won’t save you when the wolves are at the door.

☠️ Feminist Delusion vs. Wartime Reality ☠️

🟢 Feminist Fantasy: "I’m a strong, independent woman who doesn’t need a man!" 🔴 Reality: When the first shot is fired, you’ll be looking for the nearest “toxic male” to protect you.

🟢 Feminist Fantasy: "Men oppress women every day!" 🔴 Reality: You live in the safest, most comfortable era in human history, secured by the very men you demonize.

🟢 Feminist Fantasy: "Women can fight just as well as men!" 🔴 Reality: There's a reason war zones evacuate women and children first—because they know exactly what happens when the conquerors arrive.

🟢 Feminist Fantasy: "I deserve to be treated equally!" 🔴 Reality: In war, there is no equality—there are conquerors and the conquered.

🔥 History’s Brutal Reality Check 🔥

Ancient Rome? Women were spoils of war.

Vikings? If you weren’t shieldmaiden-tier, you were cattle.

World War II? Rape and slaughter defined the fall of cities.

Modern conflicts? Ask Ukraine, Syria, or Afghanistan what happens when the "bad men" come knocking.

🚨 The REAL Gender Privilege 🚨

The biggest privilege women have isn't their right to vote, work, or wear whatever they want—it’s male restraint.

Because here’s a cold, hard fact:

🚫 The only reason modern women get to play the "strong, independent" game is because civilized men allow it.

🚫 If the wrong men show up—the kind that don't give a fuck about your feminism, your rights, or your opinions—there won’t be Twitter activism, protests, or HR complaints.

🚫 There will just be raw, unchecked, primal male dominance.

And the biggest irony? The same men they demonize will be the ones fighting, killing, and dying to keep them safe.

"But Women Fight Too!"

Yeah, sure. Some do. And God bless them. But let’s not pretend the majority of women could survive five minutes in an actual battlefield. There’s a reason women and children get evacuated first. The world knows what happens when the conquerors arrive, and trust me, they do not care about your gender fluidity.

Final Thought: Reality Doesn’t Care About Your Feelings

You can call men toxic all you want. But if real war breaks out, guess who you’ll be begging to protect you? The same men you spent years demonizing.

💀 REBLOG if reality is undefeated. 💬 COMMENT if you know someone who needs this wake-up call. 🚀 FOLLOW if you’re tired of delusional bullshit.

⚖️ LEGAL DISCLAIMER: This post is written for the purpose of artistic expression, cultural commentary, and psychological exploration of social and gender dynamics. It does not condone or encourage violence, harassment, or discrimination of any kind. Any references to power, strength, restraint, or critique are metaphorical, symbolic, and rooted in historical and cultural analysis. This is not a call to action — it’s a cultural mirror. If you feel offended, ask yourself if it’s from actual harm — or from seeing something you hoped no one would say out loud.

✨ TL;DR: If you're mad, it’s probably not because it’s wrong — it’s because you know it’s true.

[unlikelysaintdelele]

The Arcana World-building - a high school project

it is exactly as i have titled it. while going through old google docs, i came across an old project from one of my fiction classes. just thought i would "share with the class" a portion (and slightly revised version) of what my high school self whipped up. enjoy!

Firstly, the ages of the love interests range from late twenties to early forties, the oldest among them being Nadia and Lucio. Obviously, they are attractive. That is their purpose, to be attractive so to entice readers into playing their routes. This also shows readers that being older than twenty-nine isn’t as ancient or unattractive as the media insists on portraying. If anything, Nadia is more regal and refined because of her age, and Lucio is… Lucio. Immature as ever. Depending on the route, he is either a self-centered nuisance who refuses to take responsibility for anything or the love of your life who goes through a redemption arc with your support.

Secondly, the game’s depiction of gender and gender roles is unlike that of any other otome-esque game I have ever played. There’s Asra, with him being canonically nonbinary and wearing skirts for formal occasions, and Lucio (with his love for high-heeled boots and tight pants) and Nadia’s dynamic. Though their marriage is more of a business relationship, I think we can all tell who is the top between two.

i maintain the usage of the word "top" in this piece as this is an inherently queer game, allowing for the apprentice/reader to pursue anyone under any pronouns. even in high school, i understood how peg-able Lucio was. no further questions.

I believe I’ve made my case.

And then there’s Julian during his love confession in his route. Which is not the only piece of art depicting him bond/tied-up.

Men in romance media, from games to books, are usually portrayed as the ones who take the lead in their relationships, with more influence and authority than their counterparts. In The Arcana, you’ll see our lovely men—Muriel, Julian, and Lucio—weak in the knees for the apprentice and sharing moments of softness and vulnerability. As for women, they’re usually depicted as the passive partner (though in recent years there has been an increase in stories where women are the aggressive ones while the men remain more passive).

In Nadia’s route, she is persistent in her pursuit with the apprentice, showing them in gifts and sultry looks. Nadia is tall, brown, assertive, has strong facial features, and feels comfortable within her own skin. Within the views of toxic masculinity, her strength would be seen as unearned confidence and her beauty denied simply because of the color of her skin and her height. However, these masculine attributes of hers appeal even more to femininity even though they are not classically recognized portrayals of womanhood.

As for Portia, while she has more ideal characteristics according to the patriarchy (pale skin, petite, big boobas, softer features, approachable personality), she also does not smoothly fit into the mold because she is curvy and has quite the mischievous and irrepressible personality. If you pay close attention, you'll notice her sprite includes leg hair!

I would just like to touch back on Asra, namely his outfits and how he took every opportunity to show off his slutty waist. Like, excuse me??

endnote: i added more commentary on portia and asra. i almost wish there was more on julian and muriel, but i found julian irritating in high school and muriel pretty firmly fits into the visual aspects of men's beauty standards (at least through the male gaze, he is built). i believe it should be obvious which parts of the revisions and which parts are the original. either way, i will be coloring the lines i added.

thank you for coming to my tedtalk.

[molkolsdal]

This Band Thought Their Biggest Hurdle Was the Patriarchy. It’s Actually the Internet.

By Safina Nabi

October 25, 2021

In almost every way, the tiny village of Ganasthan seems cut off. The closest big city, Srinagar, is a two-hour drive away. The main road that snakes through it is so narrow that most people are forced to walk two to three miles to get home. 

Surrounded by tall pine trees that are hundreds of years old, most villagers busy themselves with the yellow paddy fields ready to be harvested, but the all-women band Yemberzal are practicing their distinctly traditional Sufiyana music at home and recording their sessions on their mobile phones.

They’re at a band member’s home made of mud, brick and wood – a traditional house no longer found in other parts of Indian-administered Kashmir. Despite being remote and traditional, the village has been connected to the rest of the world through mobile phones for years.

That is, until the internet blackouts that have driven the region of 12 million people into isolation. 

“It’s been so long that we haven’t seen or performed on a stage. If you see other parts of the world, there are online music concerts, classes, but in Kashmir, nothing happens,“ said 22 year-old Gulshan Lateef, a member of Yemberzal, which last performed in 2019. 

In August 2019, the Indian government revoked a 1948 UN resolution that gave Jammu and Kashmir autonomy as the only Muslim-majority state in India, and started one of the longest internet bans in history. It was restored in February of 2020, but internet outages have been frequent and unpredictable since then. A recent spate of violence prompted the government to cut the internet in the region yet again. This writer too had to ultimately resort to social messaging to submit this story when it proved too difficult to use email or other cloud sharing platforms.

Lateef and Irfana Yousuf, another 22-year-old Sufi musician, grew up with the internet easily accessible on their families’ mobile phones. 

As soon as Yousuf was introduced to the basics of Sufiyana Mausiqi by her father, she knew she wanted to keep the dying art form alive by connecting with audiences on the internet. But first she had to formally learn the classic Islamic mystical music genre that is almost exclusively dominated by men, has unique instruments and is on the verge of extinction in Kashmir.

Experts say there are only four master teachers or ustads left in Kashmir who teach this ancient genre that is believed to have been born in the 15th century. Yusuf enrolled in a music course at the University of Kashmir in Srinagar to learn from one of them.

Her mission is to revive the dying genre of devotional music by preserving it and reviving its audiences through social media.

Read More

[creature-wizard]

What Is Conspirituality? A Primer.

Whatever your spiritual beliefs are (or aren't), something you need to be aware of is conspirituality - that is, a spiritual worldview that incorporates conspiracy theories.

Any (and I do mean any; there are no exceptions) form of spirituality can turn into conspirituality. Some forms of spirituality even use conspiracy theories as a foundation for their views.

Conspirituality is very common in far right Christianity, typically manifesting as a belief that world is secretly controlled or beleaguered by a secret society of devil worshipers. Europe's witch hunts and the Satanic Panic were driven by this worldview. The people who subscribe to this usually believe that everything they find threatening is the literal work of Satan and his followers.

It also comes up in neopagan spirituality from time to time. An example of this is the belief that Christianity was created to suppress the worship of a great mother goddess, and thus create patriarchy. In reality, cultures like Greece and Rome were already patriarchal, even though they worshiped a number of goddesses. (This doesn't mean that we should just accept that patriarchy is the natural state of things and give into it, but it does mean that we have to understand that fighting it is a little more complicated than popularizing the Divine Feminine or something.)

New Age spirituality is rife with conspiracism; in fact, its entire mythology is fundamentally conspiratorial. For example, it claims that Atlantis was real and the gods were actually aliens that visited us in ancient times, but this has been covered up by a faction of malevolent aliens who secretly control the world in order to exploit us. Many people don't realize that "aliens built it" was an idea proposed by white people who were resistant to the idea that ancient POC were intelligent enough to build things on their own, who had to ignore and distort a lot of evidence to try and support it. They don't realize that this whole idea of secret malevolent forces controlling the world comes out of the far right Christian playbook.

If you want to learn more about recognizing conspiracy theories in spirituality, I recommend checking out my post, Is the spiritual person a conspiracy theorist? A list of red flags.

[haggishlyhagging]

It has been said that female separatism is radical feminism's natural and logical conclusion. Most radical feminists have chosen not to follow their politics all the way to that end and do what they can to avoid, ignore, or deny it. Anti-separatist feminists engage in what has been called "thought termination," meaning the act of refusing to follow one's own thoughts to their logical conclusions, in order to justify their decision to stay connected to males. They also encourage this thought termination in other women, wanting to undermine female separatism as a legitimate political and personal choice for their own selfish reasons.

When making political and feminist analysis or when attempting to determine in your own life if a particular decision is feminist or anti-feminist, it is useful to ask the ancient Roman legal question: "Cui bono?" or "Who benefits?" Of course, women do stand to gain certain rewards and privileges from engaging in male loyalism, misogyny, and anti-feminist actions, but whatever the matter at hand, an anti-feminist and anti-female decision will ultimately benefit males the most. When we ask "Who benefits the most?" from women and girls choosing to lead male-inclusive and male-centric lives, the answer is clear: males do.

The most recent studies have found that heterosexual marriage makes men happier and women more unhappy overall. The overwhelming majority of domestic labor and childcare continue to fall on the wife's shoulders in heterosexual marriage throughout the developed world, and this is true even while most married heterosexual women in developed countries work full-time throughout adulthood. Heterosexual and bisexual women openly admit to experiencing sex in their heterosexual relationships that ranges from inorgasmic and boring to violent, humiliating, and painful. Outside of heterosexual relationships, women and girls often find themselves on the losing side of unequal relationships with male family members and friends who take advantage of their labor, emotional and otherwise, and do not reciprocate or bother suppressing their sexism.

The power struggle between males and females has always been sexual, both in the carnal and reproductive sense. Even the word patriarchy rests on the sexual, social, and familial arrangements that exist in a predominantly heterosexual, mixed society where men and women live in constant contact with each other: rule of the father assumes that women and girls are in a position to be ruled, both socially and physically. It assumes the presence of a man.

Female separatism is the unavoidable, ultimate conclusion of radical feminist politics for the simple reason that separatism alone prevents the male objective driving men's oppression and domination of the female sex: using women and girls as sexual, domestic, social, and economic resources. If this is the point of patriarchy, how can anything other than female separatism be the solution to it? In a system where males already have all the power and control, women and girls will never be able to change their own status or achieve liberation from oppression through cooperating with males and granting them everything they demand.

Males want sexual access to female bodies above all else, and furthermore, they rely on women and girls to perform the domestic labor, social labor, and professional labor that keep men comfortable physically, emotionally, and psychologically. For thousands of years, men universally made sure that women and girls could not survive independently of them by locking us out of education, paid work, and the political arena and refusing to give us basic rights to own money and property. They knew and feared that if women had the option to survive and thrive apart from men, most of us would choose to do exactly that.

The only reason women now have the legal rights and protections that allow us to reject heterosexual marriage and motherhood is because we fought hard for those rights and protections over the course of at least a hundred years in developed countries, and we are still fighting all over the world, not only to gain what we lack but to protect what we have. Men have never yielded any political concessions to women willingly, easily, or readily. They have resisted us every step of the way, and they will never cease their attempts to take back the progress we've made.

If female separatism was of no consequence to the male sex, they wouldn't have spent all of recorded history making it virtually impossible. They wouldn't now be going out of their way to destroy any and all female-only spaces, both physical and digital, in the name of transgenderism. They would not have lorded physical and sexual violence over us since the beginning of time as punishment for our resistance and disobedience.

-Sekhmet She-Owl, “Female Separatism: The Feminist Solution” in Spinning And Weaving: Radical Feminism for the 21st Century

[aroaessidhe]

okay I was asked about fey books I’ve read that Do stick to folklore a bit more than certain popular books - and actually looking at what fey books I’ve read  it’s a bit like.... books that stick to folklore closely I sometimes Don’t Love, and there are others that don’t stick to it as much but I like the overall narrative more? or some mix of that. 

so here’s a list of a few - a range of how much they stick to folklore (which of course is an amorphous thing) and how much I like them, but it’s something!

YA

That Self-Same Metal - literally just read this, it’s about a Black girl who’s the stage blade expert for shakespeare’s company and can see fey, and they’re appearing more and more in the city. explores a bit of the midsummer night’s dream fey but also like “shakespeare was wrong” and general folklore. definitely the start of a series and has a lot going on but I thought it has some cool ideas!

all Holly Black’s books deal with them well! the Modern Faerie Tales companion/trilogy has maybe aged a bit by now, and I hate way the romance ended up together in The Folk of the Air (and the way the fandom is about it) but otherwise I do really like how it deals with fey and politics! also enjoyed The Darkest Part of the Forest. these are all intertwined/same world

The Buried And The Bound - a hedgewitch girl keeps fey away from her town, and gets caught up with two boys who are cursed. mostly deals with minor fey and a powerful hag

An Enchantment of Ravens - it’s been quite a few years since I read this, but I do remember enjoying it. It is a bit more of a romance focused story also, an artist stolen into the fey realm for painting a fey prince as if he was human(iirc?)

The Bone Houses - not directly dealing with fey, but like the aftermath of the ancient fey’s curses? welsh myth inspired. which I think is cool.

At The Edge of The Woods - about a girl in a religious/patriarchial village who starts to have strange dreams about a fey boy luring her into the woods. it’s not super focused on them, but they’re very much the classic ‘dangerous fey stealing people away for entertainment’ kind of thing

Adult

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries - I sort of have mixed feelings about this - I really enjoy how it dealt with fey and the creepier folklore creatures side of it! the handling of the changeling was a bit iffy and not sure about the romance

The Wolf Among the Wild Hunt - dark fantasy novella about a wolf-shifter made to join the wild hunt to save his qpr. focused on the unseelie/wild hunt area

Silver in the Wood - gaslamp fantasy novella about the keeper of a magical forest, dryads and dangerous fey

The Wind City - a bit of a mashup of fey folklore and Māori atua in a modern NZ setting

Sinners/Veiled - very classic but also with the element of a modern setting where human pollution is like a drug to fey (and the MC is a drug lord.) (so kind of dark but also not dark in the sexy way bc the MC is aroace)

Under The Pendulum Sun - this is a gothic fantasy that has a bit of a new take on a fey world, but also definitely has some of those creepy folklore vibes.

Siren Queen - this only partly involves fey but I thought the way that it mashed up old hollywood and fey (aka shady deals for fame themes) was interesting!

Sorcerer to the Crown/The True Queen - my memory on this is hazy, but I believe it’s regency fantasy, with its own take on a fey world/magic (moreso the 2nd book)

Malice/Misrule - adult high fantasy lesbian sleeping beauty reimagining, this is kind of doing it’s own thing I guess (I don’t remember if they’re even called fey?) but definitely has a bit of the creepy creature/court vibes in book 2 especially

In The Jaded Grove - I was just looking up books to see if there was anything I missed and found this, which seems interesting to me!

I also haven’t read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (but I watched the show ages ago) and I believe that has the vibe too

[cozycryptidcorner]

This might be a weird question but your vampire world has me thinking. How would periods be regarded by the vampires? Throughout human history they have been mystified or considered a topic to be hidden, often giving them connotations of dirtiness and shame and all that kind of stuff. How would it be in your world of vampires? I think you said it was also a patriarchal society, so they might have the same biases, but because of humans being considered a food source, would periods be considered a waste of blood? Something they are actively trying to get rid of "as a trait"? Would drinking from a menstruating human be frowned upon because there's a risk of too much bloodloss combined? Just curious how something like that might be regarded from a cultural and functional perspective! :O

Not a weird question and right up my alley, especially since I’m tackling how women would especially be treated since they are minority squared (so like poc women in a white patriarchy)

I can see how some vampires would see it as a waste, since Ancient Greece thought it was a purge of extra blood, but I’m kind of in the middle of figuring out what would shape their understanding of human health.

So given how this society is technologically and socially byzantine/medieval, I looked into how those cultures viewed menstruation. Medieval Islamic doctors had theorized (correctly) that it was tied to fertility, Benedictine Christians thought it was tied to women’s inherently poor morality.

I think, given how the state/church in power benefits from human subservience, and actively WANTS women to have as many children as possible, menstruation would be considered a waste or some kind of curse. But the blood coming out would be considered “unclean” for vampyric consumption.

But just because something is church doctrine does not mean everyone follows/believes it. And there will also be clashing religions and beliefs, considering the setting is only one city-state out of an entire planet.

While I believe the human traffic in and out of the country would be vaguely monitored (can’t have your lifestock go wandering), it wouldn’t be a closed country because they would depend on other entities for things like fabric, jewelry, human food, and so on.