#radical perspectives

[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

Nick Heather - Radical Perspectives in Psychology - Methuen - 1976

[balkanradfem]

[sturnina]

Jealousy

Chris Sturniolo x Fem!reader

— tags;; mentions of a physical fight & injury, injury tending, fighting, pet name (baby), no use of yn, toxic habits (overprotectiveness)

— wc;; 1282

— author‘s note;; my take on overprotectiveness since i hate the „touch her and you die“ trope, hope you enjoy <3

He did it again.

You don‘t know how to feel as you silently drive home, Chris in the passenger seat, seemingly oblivious to the storm raging in your mind.

He did it again. He hit a guy just because he looked at you weirdly.

Don‘t get me wrong, you love his protective side. It is hot, honestly. The way he always makes sure everyone knows you‘re his girl, the way his arm sneaks around your waist at parties, the way he gets rid of other boys trying to flirt with you.

But this… this wasn‘t protective, this was violent. He hit a guy, for the second time this week. The second time in four days.

Yes, the guy was rude and obnoxious. Yes, you felt uncomfortable around him. Yes, you were relieved when Chris came to your help after the guy wouldn‘t listen to your No’s.

But Chris‘s punch, it wasn‘t protective. It was violent, brutal, merciless. And of course, the guy hit him back, right on his cheek.

When you glance to your right, you can see the dark patch forming on your boyfriend‘s cheekbone.

You arrive home — your house, not the triplets‘ —, and you go to fetch the first aid kit immediately after entering through the front door. Chris trails in behind you, unbothered by his split lip and bruised cheek.

He just sits down at the kitchen table, knowing you will take care of him. Expecting you to.

You take an ice pack out of the refrigerator and settle down next to Chris, all in complete silence. You can‘t bear to hear his voice now, or your own. You‘re afraid it might give your thoughts away. And your eyes, your eyes will surely betray you, so you keep them focused on the ice, the bruise, your hand, anything but Chris‘s eyes. That he is looking at you constantly isn‘t helping.

But eventually, he picks up on your uncharacteristically silent behaviour.

“Hey,” he says softly. “Everything alright?”

You swallow thickly, knowing your voice will give in the second you try to speak. So you remain silent. For exactly three seconds, dabbing a cotton pad at his split lip, before Chris speaks again.

“That dick won‘t bother you anymore.”

Of course, he thinks that‘s the problem. Of course.

“That‘s not what I‘m worried about,” you mutter, stoically keeping your eyes on his injuries.

“You‘re worried about me? Oh, baby, you know I can take care of myself,“ Chris says warmly.

“That’s not… I am worried about you, Chris. You need to stop this. But-”

“Baby, you know I won‘t,“ he mutters, slowly tilting your chin up with the hand that isn‘t holding the ice pack. “Those pricks deserve it.“

“Besides the fact that no one deserves to get beat up, that‘s not what I mean,“ you say, pulling away from him. “You need to stop or you‘ll end up in serious trouble.“

“I won‘t,“ he says softly. “I promise. I just want to teach them a lesson-”

“You‘re not listening to me, Chris!”

“What are you talking about, of course I‘m listening to you,“ he says, his brows furrowing.

“No you‘re not,“ you scoff. “I see the way you look at the guys you‘re going to hit. I‘m not blind. I can see that you want it.“

“Of course I want it,“ Chris says, laying a hand on your arm. “I need to protect my girl-”

“That‘s not what I mean, and we both know it,“ you snap, quickly closing your mouth and taking a deep breath. “I am just an excuse. Don‘t deny it!“

He already opened his mouth but closes it again, worry and confusion clouding his gaze. “Baby-”

“No. Listen to me,“ you interrupt him, trying to keep your tone calm. “You like the confrontation, don‘t you? The adrenaline? But you can‘t see… You don‘t see the way it‘s hurting me.“

Chris‘s expression falters for a moment. “I don‘t- what are you- what do you mean? I don‘t understand…“ he stutters.

“No, you don‘t,“ you say softly, pulling your arm out of his grip and standing up to bring more distance between you.

He really doesn‘t. He doesn‘t understand the way your heart clenches every time a guy even just glances at you in public. He doesn’t understand the way your thoughts start racing even when someone is just walking in your direction. He doesn‘t understand the way you‘re terrified of talking to anyone while out with him — out of fear to trigger his jealousy.

The air feels thick as you look at his expression, his desperate eyes, the bruise on his cheek and his still-bleeding lip.

“Explain it to me,“ he says, “please, what am I doing wrong?“

“You don‘t see the way you‘re hurting me, hurting everyone around you,“ you whisper, your voice just as thick now. The words feel like they‘re stuck in your throat and you have to force yourself to speak them. „I hate seeing people hurt, especially you. I hate seeing you get hurt, and knowing- knowing that it‘s because of me.“

“That‘s not true, baby, I‘m-”

“Please, Chris,“ you whisper, tears collecting in your eyes, “Please let me finish. I hate avoiding to go- to go out in public with you just because I can‘t… I can‘t trust you not to lash out at someone, I hate b-being scared every time someone looks at me or talks to me, I- I just… I hate seeing you angry, I hate seeing you violent, I hate seeing you like that… And yet you- you keep doing it, n-no matter how o-often I ask you to stop…“ Your throat is clogged, your breaths are laboured, your eyes are watering, and you physically can‘t speak anymore, the words having drained out of your head. But there is one sentence left, one you‘re terrified to even think.

And Chris is just standing there, the words burning in his mind, on his skin, digging into his flesh while he tries not to rush to hug you because he knows, he knows it wouldn‘t help. And then he feels the tears running down his face, and the pain ripping through his chest. You don‘t trust him. You can‘t trust him, you said it yourself. You‘re scared of him.

Fists clenching at his sides, he lets that sink in. Everything he‘s done for you, everything he thought he‘s done for you, crumbles under the heavy weight of reality, the realisation that he‘s been hurting you all along.

He steps forward, raises his arms, and sees the way you cross your arms. A shielding gesture. Chris thinks he can hear his heart finally shatter at that, after slowly cracking over the entire conversation.

There are no words he can use to explain himself. He knows he should apologise. But how do you apologise after terrifying your girl over and over again without even noticing? What words are there to express the mixture of frustration, fear, and self-hatred he‘s feeling against himself?

Chris drops his arms to his sides.

He turns around, and leaves.

And you are left alone. The front door slams closed, but you don‘t even flinch. Your mind is full, and so are your eyes, your ears, everything is clogged with memories, everything is breaking inside you, but you are relieved.

You are relieved, because how could you bear his overwhelming presence any longer, with one last question, one last sentence burning on your mind, a question you can‘t ignore but also can‘t speak, not in front of him?

How can you be sure he will never lash out at you? How can you be sure that you will never be on the receiving end of his fist?

masterlist

[dreamsaflame]

mana in nea's memories

(ch219)

(ch221 -- second pic is a bit of a cheat because that's walker mana, not campbell mana)

(bonus cross from ch234 because, again, he is always remembered by other people as smiling/laughing)

nea in mana's memories/dreams/hallucinations

(ch219)

(ch236)

(ch241)

(ch242)

[mithliya]

i feel like some of you do genuinely need to go offline tho bc of all things to have a victim-complex about, being simply told not to date men should not be one of them. that is quite literally what every woman has been raised to believe her purpose is. women are literally treated as inferior failures with no value if we, for whatever reason (including innate sexuality), do not want to be with men. you will live through your boyfriend being called jakey, and you will also live through being told you're not a radfem because you have a boyfriend. it will not kill you, i promise. you will be ok. go offline, kiss your precious boyfriend, and maybe go on a nice picnic date together so you can remember just how normal and accepted, even encouraged, heterosexual relationships are.

[modelsof-color]

when it comes to self love , we know it's all about making decisions , decisions that will hurt us because at first it feels like we're " betraying" old convictions .

it's important to be aware of it , on emotional and mental level , aware of these decisions haunting us until the day it won't anymore , and awareness is half of the battle

[magicalgirlmindcrank]

Tried out some style and perspective stuff and gave Radical Miku a slight design change

[secretmellowblog]

When I say "Victor Hugo's depiction of Jean Valjean's grief over losing Cosette is a reflection of Hugo's own grief at the death of his daughter" I'm not just theorizing-- some lines from Les Mis are basically just ripped word-for-word from Hugo's poems about the death of his daughter. Here are a few of them. Leopoldine drowned horribly with her husband only a few months after they were married; she was only nineteen. Jean Valjean's paralyzing fear of Cosette's marriage, his misguided useless rage at her husband, and his violent grief over losing her and never being able to see her again, is heavily influenced by Hugo's own grief. I have trouble finding good English translations of some of Hugo’s Leopoldine poems online, and would appreciate better links to English translations if anyone has them. But In A Villequier, one of Hugo's poems addressing God with furious grief over the death of Leopoldine, he writes:

Consider again how I have, since dawn, Worked, fought, thought, walked, struggled, Explaining Nature to Man who knew nothing of it, Lighting everything with your clarity; That, facing hate and anger, I have done my task here below, That I could not expect this wage, That I could not Foresee that you too, on my yielding head, Would let fall heavily your triumphant arm, And that you who saw how little joy I have, Would take my child away so quickly!

Which is almost word for word just Jean Valjean's:

I have left my blood on every stone, on every bramble, on every mile-post, along every wall, I have been gentle, though others have been hard to me, and kind, although others have been malicious, I have become an honest man once more, in spite of everything, I have repented of the evil that I have done and have forgiven the evil that has been done to me, and at the moment when I receive my recompense, at the moment when it is all over, at the moment when I am just touching the goal, at the moment when I have what I desire, it is well, it is good, I have paid, I have earned it, all this is to take flight, all this will vanish, and I shall lose Cosette, and I shall lose my life, my joy, my soul....

And this from the same poem:

I keep seeing that moment in my life when I saw her open her wings and fly off! I will see that instant until I die, the instant, no tears needed! where I cried: the child I had a minute ago— What? I don’t have her any more?

Is a similar sentiment to this angelic description of Cosette “taking flight” away from Jean Valjean:

Cosette, as she took her flight, winged and transfigured, left behind her on the earth her hideous and empty chrysalis, Jean Valjean.

And the moment when Jean Valjean realizes she’s in love with Marius, and has been “lost” to him without him realizing it:

The unprecedented and heart-rending thing about it was that he had fallen without perceiving it. All the light of his life had departed, while he still fancied that he beheld the sun.

This from the poem Demain dès l'aube, where Victor Hugo describes visiting Leopoldine's grave:

I will walk with my eyes fixed on my thoughts, Without seeing anything outside, without hearing any noise, Alone, unknown, back bent, hands crossed, Sad, and the day for me will be like night.

And Jean Valjean walking to Cosette's house, but never able to enter or speak to her:

There [Jean Valjean] walked at a slow pace, with his head strained forward, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, his eye immovably fixed on a point which seemed to be a star to him

This bit where Hugo talks about his faith weakening/cursing God in vain after Leopoldine’s death:

Consider how one doubts, O God! when one suffers, how the eye that weeps too much is blinded, how a being plunged by grief into the blackest pit, seeing you no more, cannot contemplate you.

Is similar to Jean Valjean’s spirtual self weakening and his consience “taking flight” at the idea of losing Cosette:

Any one who had beheld his spiritual self would have been obliged to concede that it weakened at that moment. (...) Grief, when it attains this shape, is a headlong flight of all the forces of the conscience. These are fatal crises. Few among us emerge from them still like ourselves and firm in duty.

Victor Hugo agonizing over his dreams of growing old with his daughter in A Villequier:

You make loneliness return always around all his footsteps.(...) As soon as he owns something, fate takes it away. Nothing is given to him, in his speedy days, for him to make a home and say: Here is my house, my field and my loved ones!

Jean Valjean:

“As one family! No. I belong to no family. I do not belong to yours. I do not belong to any family of men. In houses where people are among themselves, I am superfluous. There are families, but there is nothing of the sort for me. I am an unlucky wretch; I am left outside.

Victor Hugo's poetry in A Villequier again:

in the midst of cares, hardships, miseries, and of the shadow our fate casts over us, how a child appears, a dear sacred head, a small joyful creature, so beautiful one thinks a door to heaven has opened when it arrives; when for sixteen years one has watched this other self grow in loveable grace and sweet reason, when one has realized that this child one loves makes daylight in our soul and in our home,

Jean Valjean:

this man, who had passed through all manner of distresses, who was still all bleeding from the bruises of fate, (...) merely asked of Providence, of man, of the law, of society, of nature, of the world, one thing, that Cosette might love him! That Cosette might continue to love him! That God would not prevent the heart of the child from coming to him, and from remaining with him! Beloved by Cosette, he felt that he was healed, rested, appeased, loaded with benefits, recompensed, crowned. Beloved by Cosette, it was well with him! He asked nothing more! Had any one said to him: “Do you want anything better?” he would have answered: “No.” God might have said to him: “Do you desire heaven?” and he would have replied: “I should lose by it.”

Victor Hugo begging God to talk to his daughter again:

Let me lean over this cold stone and say to my child: Do you feel that I am here? Let me speak to her, bent over her remains, in the evening when all is still, as if, reopening her celestial eyes in her night, this angel could hear me!

Jean Valjean thanking God for letting him speak to Cosette one more time:

The good God says: “‘You fancy that you are about to be abandoned, stupid! No. No, things will not go so. Come, there is a good man yonder who is in need of an angel.’

I think the ending of Les Mis never made complete sense to me until I realized that Jean Valjean isn't grieving like a parent who has watched their child grow up; he is grieving like a parent who has just watched their child die.

[lesbionia]

Contrary to popular belief, being a lesbian and being a feminist are not the same thing. I deliberately refer to myself as a lesbian and a feminist—rather than a lesbian feminist—to denote the separation. 

I think that most radical feminist works about lesbianism are homophobic to some degree because they posit lesbianism as a political choice, which it is not. Homosexuality might be politicized, but it is an innate and unchangeable characteristic, which makes it inherently apolitical. To me, there is little difference between the claim that being gay is a choice that comes from radical feminists and the one that comes from the religious crowd, in a sense that neither speak to my truth. 

I still consider myself a radical feminist because I believe in women's liberation and dismantling male supremacy, and I don't believe in throwing the baby out with the bath water. But I do think that being a lesbian and a radical feminist is sometimes a strange and frustrating experience, and that it's good to talk about it once in a while. 

[artofjim]

worked on this for the 25th Anniversary voice cast reunion at a local con this weekend.

Prints Available Traditional Ink, Digital Color

[arakkne]

Does anyone know of any compelling counterarguments for gender abolition? (/speaking as someone who is pro gender abolition but wanting to engage more with the subject)

So far the only counterarguments I've seen have been from trans people who are like "but nooo I like having a gender :(( you can't abolish it" and "if gender is abolished, then so will being trans" which is often portrayed as "gender abolitionists just want trans people to not exist!"

I hope it's obvious why I'm not compelled by these arguments. Like I'm happy for these people that they've found something meaningful in their relationship with gender, but that doesn't make gender any less oppressive as a concept.

And as for "it would make being trans impossible!", well... yeah? Because if gender doesn't exist, then neither does gender identity, and I fail to see how that's a bad thing. Not because I hate trans people. Eradicating trans people is not the goal, ever. I just don't see why anyone would desire to transition in a world with no difference between men and women. No gender roles, no stigma for anything, nothing meaningful attached to the words "femininity" or "masculinity." Limitless self-expression. Sex-based oppression and harassment and violence reduced as much as possible. Would anyone still care to transition? What would transitioning even look like? I don't see a reason that HRT and SRS wouldn't still be available for those with sex dysphoria. I just don't see a reason to socially transition in a world where there would be no difference in how one is perceived.

Are there any problems with gender abolition that I'm missing? Please tell me, I'm curious!

[jamesmirandabarry]

Listen radblr,

I agree with you that people who were born female have certain oppressions they face because of their anatomy. I share many patriarchal oppressions with you when it comes to my body.

That being said, I am socially a man and will never be seen as a woman in society. If you saw me in public, you would not think I was female. I present myself as a man and live as one day to day, because this is what feels right and happy to me. Because of this, I don’t share some of the social oppressions that women face and I would not enter social spaces for only women because that is not how I am read— even though I am female, women would be uncomfortable if I entered their space because I look like a man.

I wish more of you could reconcile that instead of resorting to “women are adult human females and all adult human females are women,” when it’s a bit more complicated than that. Speaking from experience, I can tell you there’s a grand difference between the social category of sex and the anatomical one.

[balkanradfem]

I've managed to curate my small misogyny-free space both online and in real life, and now I'm no longer used to misogyny, it's no longer normal to me. So when I accidentally glimpse it, I'm not desensitized to it, I'm always shocked and unbelieving.

If I notice a m*n talking about a woman like she's 'just some ***' I'm immediately aware that this is in fact a demonic creature who needs to be burned. If I see anyone using a slur against women or pretending women are at fault for any of the world's issues, the hair on my neck stands up at the unbelievable amount of hatred.

Anyone implying that women should be in any way controlled, punished, forced to do anything against their will or dedicate their lives to anyone but themselves, is preposterous and villainous to me, I'm at loss that someone could even think that way about a half of the human population who are creators and administrators of life.

I know I am in a bubble, but it feels different knowing deeply in your heart that all of this is not normal, that casual or normalized hatred against women is absolutely insane, that it's sharp and painful and dehumanizing at every turn. It's insane to realize that women just have to live like this, believing all of that is normal, that I once lived like this, wondering what was wrong with me and why I couldn't just be what everyone was expecting me to.

I think still, if I can make a small space without this hate present in it, without anyone or anything implying we should be anything but free, anything but full complete human beings with absolute control over our lives, then we can strengthen and grow these spaces, and get more women in, have more women experience what life is like when hatred is removed. There is hope for women.

[womenstruation]

Perhaps as a result of the masculinisation of Back women, nowadays hyperfemininity has somehow become a necessity to being a Black woman who is proud of her Backness. As a young woman who has no interest in make up, wigs /weaves etc. I often stick out amongst other Black women my age, which doesn't bother me too much. What does bother me, however, is the constant implication that I somehow must be "white-washed" as a result or some self hater who knows little about Black culture. I have to constantly field accusations of knowing nothing about my country of origin and nod along to well meaning "jokes" that I'll end up with a white husband.

[thedreadvampy]

I guess a question I actually have is what would it actually look like to build communism/radical leftism in the imperial core?

I do believe (when I can) that we're living through a transition away from the imperial age, and that necessarily requires loss for people in Northern Europe and North America.

To be clear, that isn't an argument against it. In the imperial core there are things we are very very used to having which a) we aren't entitled to and b) cost a disproportionate amount to the rest of the world. and in a post-colonial future we could see a flattening of social and economic inequality (if we made it happen).

but I increasingly think there's a difficult tension in building liberation movements within the borders of countries which built and are at the heart of the current hegemon. And then at the same time, NOT building liberation movements within our own countries isn't really an option, both because a) we have to live now and letting ourselves continue to get fucked over by power is just pointless self-harm and b) because the internal collapse of these systems is part of the external collapse of the imperial order.

buuuuuut a lot of the current leftist movements in the imperial core are very much based on improving the lot specifically of people within the country and idk when/if that starts to run counter to a global restructure of power?

[elegantcherryblossomsheep]

the thing is that whats happening is really scary. not because everything is going to fall apart - he may do far less damage than we fear.

but because this outcome has people afraid for their lives and uncertain if they want to live. democracy should never leave such a large proportion of people fearful.

yes, there will always be people upset about the outcome of an election - usually around half. but there should never be people interested in harming others or constructing conspiracy theories, and absolutely never people interested in harming themselves.

American politics, radicalism and individualism has gone too far and its dangerous.