#the patriarchy expects women to look perfect at all times

[yourgfdgirlfriend]

can we talk about how toxic this whole “that small thing gives me the ick” narrative is?

like, girl, him using a basket at the grocery store or bringing water to the airport gives you ‘the ick’, but him never doing a single chore or believing women are inherently better at cleaning, like it’s some instinctual level ability is fine!? you’re gonna deal with him actually thinking he’s superior to you, but don’t he dare pick up a ping pong ball or you’re out?

wanna know what gives me ‘the ick’? rudeness. sexist behaviour. selfishness. masculinity, that is so fragile wind could knock it over. being unable to give a genuine apology. those are things that make me wanna drop someone; not normal human actions.

can we stop picking on any even slightly feminine perceived behaviour in men and just let them live without this ginormous expectation to always be this strong masculine picture of a man that no one is ever gonna be able to fulfil? you’re creating the same pressure on them we as women get all the time. you’re feeding into toxic masculinity. stop. make an effort to end this thinking instead. all the ‘icks’ I see on social media are so fucking stupid and misogynistic in their core; usually accompanied with sentences like “well, if he’s gonna cry about a birthday gift, he’s not my alpha anymore” no, he’s not. he is a real person with feelings, you fucking brainwashed-by-the-patriarchy monster.

give me a fucking break; i’m so sick of seeing people pressured into these roles their whole life and being so unhappy and hold so much resentment. just stop. let men cry. let men think kitties are cute. let men dangle their feet. let men giggle and be silly. let men have genuine moments of happiness without thinking about whether or not they seem masculine enough. cut them some fucking slack. and maybe there will be fewer men hating women, because they always had to be a certain way to be accepted. every woman knows the feeling of all these expectations and rules you have to follow. we know how much it sucks; how suffocating it is. so let’s stop repeating this narrative and start breaking out of it. reflect on where you’re coming from before criticising someone’s behaviour. we’ll all be happier for it.

and don’t anyone dare to use this as anti-feminist. this is inherently feminist, because it breaks with the tale of women being poor innocent damsels in distress unable to harm anyone or anything; always the victims. perfect little dolls. we’re not. women are cruel and flawed. women are offenders. women are judgmental. women are cold hearted and shortsighted. women are petty. women are misogynistic. (not all women of course *cough cough*) women are not perfect. we are human. of course the “women are capable and smart. women are superheroes” side of feminism is widely preferred. let’s be honest no one wants to hear bad things about themselves, especially when fighting against your own oppression; but it’s therefore no less true. both are legitimate; they’re two sides of the same coin. deal with it.

and if I see anyone hurting a sweet boy’s feelings, because him owning a stuffy or something adorable like that gave you ‘the ick’ I’m gonna personally bitch slap you so hard, that looking in the mirror will give you the ick for the rest of your life. savvy?

[shakemeetsworld]

I saw this and had a lot of thoughts and feelings about it, so I decided to write something up.

Ok yes, I completely agree with the female side of this. They were not looking for love and marriage but something greater than themselves and the small worlds they occupied.  I think Cinderella was open to marriage and love to get out of her miserable existence, and wanted to go to the ball not only to get out of the house, but because every eligible maiden in the kingdom was to attend.  And she’s a rule follower, clearly, since she obeys her stepmother and stepsister’s every command. (Granted if she didn’t she’d be thrown out probably.)

The men on the other hand, I’m not convinced all of these men wanted marriage, or only wanted marriage.  The Beast basically wanted to be left alone.  He knew he had to find love to break the curse but by the time Belle came along he seemed pretty resigned to that never happening.  While his staff clearly wanted Belle around to hopefully break the spell, I don’t think the Beast agreed to trade her for her father for that reason.  He was scared of the outside world and its judgment of him, and found Maurice’s intrusion threatening.  And by that point had become so beastly that all he knew was anger and violence.  (A great metaphor for the only acceptable masculine emotions and actions.)  So he kept him and then her as a prisoner until his staff said, maybe this could do something and he gave in to them.

With Prince Eric and Prince Charming, I think marriage was what was expected of them because of their titles and the time periods.  Eric seemed much more interested in adventure and exploration than in romance and marriage.  And when he thought he’d found the woman that saved his life it was just the thing to do to marry her.  And the King was the one pushing Charming to get married and set up the ball for that purpose.  We don’t really get much personality from him so I can’t say he didn’t want that but we don’t get a sense that that’s his sole goal.

I completely understand that Disney and fairy tales give people unrealistic expectations of love.  And yes to us now it’s ridiculous to “fall in love” almost instantly.  But we forget that most of these tales come from a time when your options were limited or decided for you.  And marriage wasn’t about love necessarily, it was procreation and expectation, and for the woman security.  Eric found a girl who cared enough to save him so of course marrying her makes sense.  Then when he finds out it's also the girl who also seemed to enjoy adventure like him and captivated him for the last few days, well win-win. Charming found a woman he could stand for more than 10 minutes after meeting all the women in the kingdom, so sure she’ll do.  The Beast and Belle are more realistic because it’s clear they got to know each other over a longer period of time.  It feels like months have probably passed.  And they found similar interests with the library.  That being said, they all waited until they found someone they genuinely liked, even if they knew immediately.  The timeline is unrealistic and so is the image of perfection that’s created with these romances.  Things in reality won’t be perfect and the connection won’t be immediate.  But I also feel like these stories of “true love” also gave me a desire not to settle.

I understand the point that this post is trying to make, and it is a good one.  There is much to be said about most things being shown through the male gaze and patriarchy.  And yes, as a society we forget/don’t care about the wants of women.  But I honestly feel like using these fairy tales as an example of that misses the point of many of these stories.  Sure Ariel married Eric, but a life on land and then a life with him was what she wanted in the story.  The whole story is about what she wanted.  And how she had to give up her voice to be heard.  And yes Belle was kept as a prisoner at first, and her story can be likened to Stockholm Syndrome of course.  Though once the Beast learned to love her he let her go and she chose to return. As a little girl growing up with these stories, sure I learned that love and marriage is the goal.  But I also learned from Belle that it’s ok to be different, to want more for your life than what you’ve been given, and to fight for what you believe in.  First she fought for her father’s wellbeing and then stood up to the town to defend the Beast.  I learned from Ariel that curiosity can take you to great places, that there’s always more to learn, and that we don’t need to be afraid of what we don’t know. Cinderella taught me that even when life is unfair or hard, to try to have a positive attitude and hope for a better future, and to ask for what you want.  She asked to go to the ball and tried so hard to make that happen even when the odds were stacked against her.

And honestly these men taught me things too.  The Beast taught me that people can change when given support.  Prince Charming and Prince Eric taught me to never give up searching for your dreams.

We absolutely need to talk more about the wants and desires of women.  And we need to stop putting marriage as the end goal for everyone.  But let’s not put these fairy tales in an anti-feminist box without exploring the nuances.  And maybe let’s use more real world examples of how patriarchy erases the desires of women and makes them into objects for the purposes of men and their desires.  Because there are plenty of those, and by using real examples we give kids (and adults) more practical and tangible problems to be aware of.

[sokkastyles]

Do you think Toph was jealous (that might be a strong word) of Katara natural femininity And how easy being girly was for katara? It’s just that when they argue they do project some of their own insecurities onto each so it got me wondering. Maybe katara was jealous of toph toughness idk?? Thought?

Oh, absolutely. I don't think that's interpretation so much as textual fact.

I see a lot of discussions of this that take one side or the other, but I think Toph and Katara's relationship is a great portrayal of how gender expectations harm girls in multiple ways, and also can turn them against each other, and people who only take Katara's side or Toph's are missing the point.

Toph is jealous of Katara's natural femininity, and that has to do with why she disdains it, but not because she's a misogynist or she hates girls or whatever, but because those are expectations her parents tried to force on her. A lot of what it is popular on the internet to label as "not like other girls" behavior, in a way that implies that being NLOG is a bad thing, are girls who are rebelling against forced gender expectations. Toph is both an abuse victim and a disabled girl whose disability was used in conjunction both to force her to fit a certain gender standard and keep her dependant on parents who were emotionally abusive, and to reinforce how the nature of her disability meant that she would never fit certain gendered standards. I've written about this before, how Toph can't be totally comfortable with makeup because even when she enjoys getting made up and looking pretty, other people can look at her and know that she didn't do it herself, like the girls in the episode who make fun of her for it. Toph enjoys looking pretty but she also has no control over what she looks like and can't even see it for herself, so that also clashes with her trauma over needing to be independent and distance herself from what her parents wanted her to be, a girl who sits still and looks pretty and is there for other people to look at. Makeup as empowerment is all well and good, but it doesn't work that way for people who have certain disabilities, and there is a lot of ableism in makeup culture. Eyeliner that's perfectly on point isn't always possible for women who have vision problems or neurodivergence, and women who wear makeup are supposed to look perfect but make it look effortless at the same time, and that is naturally going to exclude a lot of people, especially disabled people. The show illustrates that beautifully without condemning one way to be a girl or the other.

At the same time, Katara is jealous of Toph for the way she gets to be "one of the boys," and gets respect from Sokka and Aang in ways that she doesn't. See her anxiety over everyone thinking she is no fun and acts like a mom. Katara is a nurturing person and that's one of her stengths, but she also is a kid who wants to have fun, too. And just because being the "mom friend" is natural for her doesn't mean it isn't hard on her. Just because Katara seems to fit gender expectations a little easier than Toph doesn't mean she doesn't feel the weight of those expectations, and even women who fit gender expectations also get derided for them, because patriarchy both tells women they need to be a certain way and then hates them for it. See Sokka making fun of Katara for sewing but absolutely expecting her to mend his pants. I think Katara also thinks that Toph should be on her side, as a fellow girl. Katara is so starved for female companionship and resents it when it appears that Toph is siding against her, because she's feeling the weight of those expectations. And Toph doesn't always understand that, and thinks Katara's attempts to bond with her are trying to force gender expectations on her in the way her parents did.

[starlene]

Layers of symbolism in Barbie (2023)

I’ve seen Barbie twice now, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the symbolism in the story. It’s a lot!

So, I wrote a breakdown.

Barbie (the character)’s story

In Barbie’s story…

👠 Barbieland symbolizes girlhood, childhood, innocence, immaturity, and naivety.

👟 The Real World symbolizes womanhood, adulthood, growing older and more mature, and becoming a fully realized human. It also symbolizes accepting the inevitability of change, aging, and death.

🏢 Mattel symbolizes society in general, and men in particular, telling women how to live their lives.

✂ Weird Barbie is an example of a woman who does not look and do as she is told. For that, other Barbies have punished her by calling her names and pushing her aside – so at first, Barbie is terrified of becoming like her. At the same time, Weird Barbie is a wise female mentor who helps Barbie along on her journey.

→ For Barbie, moving to The Real World means she is free of the expectations Mattel, and people in general, put on Barbie dolls: she doesn’t have to be perfect or only dress in pink and pastels anymore. No one can put her into a box anymore.

→ At the same time, Barbie leaving her hyper-feminine aesthetic behind when she leaves Barbieland for good symbolically connects that aesthetic with childhood and immaturity. In turn, her more subdued costume in the last scene of the movie symbolically connects that aesthetic to adulthood and maturity.

→ Moving to The Real World is a positive change for Barbie: she becomes more mature and learns to appreciate the beauty in aging. However, I think it’s noteworthy how the movie mostly shows The Real World in a negative light: while in The Real World, Barbie gets disappointed, harassed, and chased down, and all of this makes her experience anxiety for the first time.

→ In the end, Barbie can’t stay in Barbieland because she’s grown too mature for it, showing that it’s impossible to escape growing up – even when the world of grown-ups seems very chaotic and unfair. Becoming a woman means you have to encounter, and learn to deal with, toxic masculinity and the patriarchy.

Ken (the character)’s story

In Ken’s story…

🕺 Ken himself symbolizes a young, immature man who hasn’t found his place within society and who has a very low self-confidence. Instead of placing value on himself and his inherent qualities, he has tied his whole sense of self-worth to Barbie’s approval. As a group, Kens are oppressed within Barbieland.

💃 Barbie symbolizes an idealized image of a perfect girlfriend. At the same time, she is someone who inadvertently hurts Ken because she doesn’t understand her own privileged position within their society. As a group, Barbies are the oppressors within Barbieland.

👠 Barbieland symbolizes oppression, marginalization, and social exclusion. For Ken, it’s a society that has no place for him or people like him.

👟 The Real World symbolizes patriarchy, which Ken interprets to mean a society where things are better for Kens than they are in Barbieland. (In truth, as Ken grows to learn, it’s a system that harms all genders with its strict and oppressive gender roles.)

🐎 Horses symbolize all the positive, joyous, healthy, harmless, non-toxic parts of masculinity.

→ In short, Ken’s story is about a young man falling into the manosphere, and how good self-confidence and supportive connections with other men can help battle toxic masculinity.

→ Just like Barbie, Ken too matures during the course of his character arc: he acknowledges that he’s been wrong about the patriarchy, he starts to feel a sense of self-worth that’s not tied to Barbie, and he learns to lean on other Kens for support.

→ Unlike Barbie, though, Ken remains in Barbieland at the end of the movie, and presumably starts working together with other Kens and Barbies to shape it into a more equal society. This is because to Ken, Barbieland does not symbolize childhood like it does to Barbie, so he doesn’t have to leave it behind when he grows up.

→ When you think about Barbie as a part of Ken’s story, it feels disappointing that when they arrive in The Real World and Barbie experiences the way real women are mistreated, she doesn’t seem to make much of a connection to the way Barbies mistreat Kens in Barbieland. This is, again, because The Real World symbolizes different things to Barbie and Ken.

→ Unfortunately, all too often, the joyous parts of masculinity become tied together with sexism and toxic ideas. The way horses are often seen as a girly thing in our modern-day culture underlines how ridiculous this is: Ken assumes horses and the patriarchy go together and gets into both, though actually, they have nothing to do with each other. In reality, Ken just wants to enjoy the majesty of horses – that is, the positive parts of his own masculinity.

Barbie <3 Ken

👫 The relationship between Barbie and Ken symbolizes heteronormativity and amatonormativity, and the way those concepts are forced down all our throats practically from toddlerhood.

→ Barbie and Ken are not in a real relationship with each other. At the start of the movie, they’re both too immature to understand what being in a relationship means – let alone if they really want that for themselves and each other.

→ Ken is in love with an idealized image of Barbie he has created in his mind. He tries to play the part of a perfect boyfriend, though he doesn’t really know or understand what being a boyfriend entails.

→ Barbie, in turn, is not romantically interested in Ken at all.

→ Despite all this, people (and even Barbie and Ken themselves) expect Barbie and Ken to be together. Notably, the Mattel CEO thinks that Barbie’s ending is that she is in love with Ken, even though there has been literally no evidence in the entire movie that this is the case.

From a female point of view

To the human characters Gloria and Sasha, and also to many real women watching the movie…

👭 Barbies symbolize idealized, stereotypical, perfect femininity.

👠 Barbieland symbolizes girlhood, childhood, imagination, and fun. It’s a thought experiment; a safe haven reminiscent of the innocence of childhood; a place where women can be whatever they want while looking and acting unashamedly feminine.

👟 The Real World is a place where the idealized femininity of Barbies and Barbieland is unobtainable. For many women, instead of being a source of inspiration, idealized depictions of womanhood turn into a burden, something that restricts and disheartens women instead of uplifting them.

Barbieland

👠 Apart from its role in the arcs of individual characters, Barbieland is an exaggerated mirror image of the real world we live in. It’s a joke that criticizes the gender inequality of our world – and as such, it acknowledges that one gender holding power over others is not a good thing.

→ Somewhat confusingly, it’s treated as a victory when Barbies take Barbieland back from Kens – even though that means returning to the unequal matriarchy, not becoming a truly equal society.

→ This is because in Barbie (the character)’s story and to Gloria and Sasha, instead of being a symbol of an unequal society, Barbieland symbolizes girlhood innocence and unabashed femininity. The Barbies, Gloria and Sasha take the joy they feel in their girlhood and femininity back from the patriarchy, which is certainly a feat worth celebrating!

Mattel (the fictional version of the company)

Finally, from the fictional Mattel board of directors’ point of view…

👠 Barbieland is a reflection of their Barbie brand and products, though it’s also shaped by the people who buy Barbies and play with them.

👭 Barbies are a way of making money. Because of that, the executives think they have to be perfectly beautiful and, thus, marketable. Notably, the Mattel CEO doesn’t like Gloria’s idea of a Normal Barbie – until he’s shown evidence that it will make Mattel loads of money, which causes him to immediately change his mind.

✂ Weird Barbie shows the way many children really play with Barbies. Rough play is not in line with Mattel’s pristine brand for Barbie, so Weird Barbie is pushed aside in Barbieland.

→ Barbieland is the way that it is partially because that’s how Mattel has designed it, partially because that’s how the girls who play with Barbies want it. For example, Kens are oppressed because no one likes to play with Kens as much as they like playing with Barbies, and thus, Mattel also puts less resources in designing and marketing them.

→ Somewhat confusingly, this connection goes both ways: the things that happen in Barbieland also affect the things that Mattel does. For example, when Ken redecorates Barbie’s Dreamhouse so it becomes Ken’s Mojo Dojo Casa House, Mattel’s factory starts producing Mojo Dojo Casa Houses in The Real World. What is that all about??

~

This is all I can think of right now. Let me know if you’ve interpreted something differently, or if you think I’ve missed something!

[starr-angelofnarnia]

OK OK I have to talk about Barbie!

I went and saw the Barbie movie on Friday. I don't typically go to movies when they are in theaters because my adhd doesn't handle sitting quietly still for an extended period of time. But marketing for this movie was on point and I had to go see it.

In short, with no spoilers, I loved it. There were a few bits of the story that could have better, but overall, it was a wonderful movie. So I want to discuss it but I'm hiding the rest under the cut because there are spoilers.

Also, I have to say that the criticism that the movie is inappropriate for children though it was marketed to young children is hilarious. It was not marketed to children; it was marketed to the millennial women who grew up with Barbie at its most controversial. Not once did I see a marketing campaign and think, "this is perfect for children!"

I digress...

Didn't Like: Ruth and Barbie's Conversation to the Last Joke

Getting out of the way what I didn't like: basically the ending. I appreciate the point that was trying to be made, that ideas live on, that humans live on through what they put into the world. But I personally don't feel it was done effectively. The scene where Barbie talks with Ruth is weird and doesn't flow with the previous scene. And the gynecologist joke that closed the film took away from this message. Read somewhere that the end came to Gerwig in a dream, and it honestly looks like it (but not in a good way).

Liked: References to Discontinued Dolls

All the jabs at discontinued Barbies (would have been cool if they would have had a scene of Midge giving birth like they had with growing up Skipper) were hilarious. I appreciate that Mattel didn't shy away from the cringier dolls in the collection. And I personally think that's a sign of strength, being able to learn from your mistakes. I did find an article about other dolls that could have been included, which I'll link below.

Liked: Sasha's Criticism of Barbie Being Anti-Feminist

Sasha's speech about how Barbie has set women back because it's a valid argument that many people have made. I grew up with concerns that Barbie was giving girls body image issues, that she gave men unrealistic expectations for women, and that her portrayal isn't even biologically possible. And for a bit, I fell into this line of thinking. Though it was never Barbie giving me unrealistic expectations for my body, it was images of celebrities that did. But acknowledging this criticism makes the film far more powerful than if they'd ignored it completely.

Loved: Barbie Encourages Ken to Find an Identity Outside of Her

One of the criticisms I've heard was how pathetic Ken is as a character. But I think that's the point. For one, this is how women are often portrayed in films centered around men. For once, the man was the damsel in distress. Second, after the Kendom falls, Barbie encourages Ken to create an identity for himself outside of being "with Barbie". The Barbies aren't trying to put the men down in restoring Barbie Land (a common criticism) but encourage the Kens to be more than Barbie's companion. (Side note: the word patriarchy was used too much; it became a cringey buzzword after a while.) Finally, Ken didn't get the girl so to speak. Women should be free to have men as friends without it becoming a romantic relationship. Barbie loves Ken platonically and that doesn't change.

Loved: Barbie's Emotional Confession and Gloria's Response

I've seen tons of praise for Gloria's monologue about the complexities of being a girl. And this was definitely a highlight of the movie. But I haven't seen as much praise for the events that led to this: Barbie's grief about not being good enough. I cried during this part of the movie because it was so relatable. I constantly feel this way, that I'm not good enough. This was such an emotional scene and it really resonated with me.

Final Thoughts:

I hope that this shows men some of the struggles of women that they often overlook.

I love that Greta Gerwig was able to support trans people without taking away from what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman. (Part of what the gyno joke was)

The soundtrack is fire. The only thing that could have made it better is a song from queen Taylor Swift. Also don't know why Ken's cover of Push couldn't have been included

BTW, links where I got my information and pictures

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT88cVS2U/

https://nypost.com/2023/07/27/greta-gerwigs-barbie-features-discontinued-dolls-like-allan/amp/

https://www.dexerto.com/tv-movies/did-barbie-shade-bratz-in-the-new-movie-trailer-2159598/

https://www.ok.co.uk/lifestyle/fashion/kenough-tie-dye-hoodie-barbie-30545994

[alexissara]

Fantasy Vs Sexuality Labels

"They don't even have words for it because it is so common and normal that people simply exist." This sentiment is a frequent trope of fictional worlds in reference to queer people's existence. Today, I would like to challenge the idea that people wouldn't have labels even in a "Perfect Non Binary Bisexual Utopia" and unpack everything involved in these conversations.

What Is Homophobia/Transphobia

I know this sounds obvious but I want to explain it beyond like, the obvious part of it. We're skipping past the bigots with guns stuff because that is not all that this kind of bigotry is. If we live in a society that expects you to reproduce that in itself is a form of homophobia. Yes with a trans partner you can have a same gender bio baby but that is if their treatments don't stop them from having babies and also it be a transphobic ask of trans people to be the reporductive labor force for all cis gays.

If society still assigns people genders and has gendered expectations then we also have a form of transphobia even if you remove gendered expectation what are the barriers to transition social and physical and do you need to transition to be seen as valid? Do queer couples exist as a prominent feature of the world not a rare side show? Do women still have some degree of expected submission and do men have some kind of expected dominance?

Homophobia and Transphobia are baked into the way we think about things in the world. People assign kids gender, gender clothing, accessories, manners of setting, etc, etc. And these genderings are tied to the idea of a future partner. Even subverting these genderings often makes one assume something about their sexuality and not just their taste. Subverting heterosexuality or cisgender status is rarely unchallenged even when it's not a violent bigot.

Transphobia and Homophobia are parts of the system, parts that assume all men want to leer over women, that all women want a strong man, that all men should aspire to one of a few roles and the same to women, that non binary people simply do not exist or are some light version of one of the two binary options. It isn't just like yelling the F slur or doing a terrible thing to a queer person.

Let's say we have a princess, there is no bigotry in the world but she is a lesbian, the waring kingdom only has one child a son and to end the war a political marriage is arranged. That is still homophobia even if otherwise the parents would have totally respected the sexuality of the princess. That's just one small sample but we're gonna go into the systems of power and why queerness doesn't even really work like this example, right now, below the keep reading thing.

Why Does Homophobia and Transphobia Exist

Transphobia and homophobia are systems of control. The people with power must create roles for people and they must maintain that power. The creation of strict binary gender and heterosexuality as a standard were both systems of control of people.

Gender denoted an ownership class and the owned class. He Yin Zhen has proposed the creation of ownership of women came from war where men would take women as prizes and with the women at home simply accepting it eventually it bleed to effect them when women began prizes to be won in war rather then part of the society. This bleed into many societies, mutated, changed and we gained the patriarchy as it stands now. The fascists advocating against queer people are almost always looking for a time where "women were women and men were men" aka men were the owners and women were the owned class.

A system of hiarchay needs strange ways to justify itself. For the rich to keep getting smaller and smaller they need systems that explain their wealth and they also need people to serve them. This need for people to serve them leads to anti queer politics, they want a reproductive class even other men must be part of this class who are poor to create servants for the rich.

Transness acts in defiance of all these structures by inherently challenging the gendered power of control. If someone is cast a role and can change it then it becomes a lot harder to justify oppression based on their gender. Property can't decide things for itself and therefore trans men aren't exist to them and to chose to become a property class removes the fake superiority they created.

What Does It Say To Have A World Without Bigotry But Still Has Oppression

So given all of the above, when we make a world without bigotry we are talking about a Utopia. We'll talk more about Utopia's in a bit but right now let's focus on the reality that most these stories that describe themselves as being a world without labels are worlds with strict hierarchy, class based oppression, etc, etc.

When these things happen we start to create myths about how the systems of power can be better. It presents a reformist view inherently and ignores the way these governments use their heels to oppress it's people. It also removes the fact we have interconnected struggles, that oppression against one of us is oppression against all of us. It also ignores that fact that even if the only oppression is class in the world that in the real world the poorest people are typically queer folks of color. We start to whitewash oppression by pretending a black trans lesbian being the oppressor of poor white people is something progressive or something.

Instead it's just conservative propaganda, it's the meritocracy, that no matter who we are we can be anything and is it possible for someone to make it to role of chief oppressor in theory, sure but in practice it is highly rare.

This is only made worse when queerness or queer coding is actively assigned to like terrible fascist governments pretending that a government who killed people for X trait like magic would be cool with gay people. It starts to paint the picture of the evil queer elite pulling the strings, the full fascist make believe fantasy.

Utopian Call For Labels

Now let's say your writing a chill story set in an actual utopia, capitalism has been destroyed, reparations have been made, we've removed the systems of oppression and we live in this lovely world. Then we would still have the history, the labels people have used and the words people have used. What kind of people do you like dating and then everyone has no preference simply would not happen. People will have taste and it is easier to use a general term, maybe one that is historically used to describe the taste you have in romance.

If we lived in a world that never had bigotry, never had bad things happening, people have still used labels. If we look at indigenous cultures across the world many which hard multiple genders had explicitly used labels for those genders, why if people wouldn't naturally label themselves? There is a use for being able to say "i am a person who needs this kind of medical care so my body can look the way I want it to look", there is a use to be able to say "I don't date men", or whatever else without having to say that every time.

Labels are a very useful thing we have as humans. We can say fun very specific things and much broader general things. It is nice to be able to say I am A Fire Emblem fan but also more so an Edelgard fan and that says something about me and to a similar extent saying I am a lesbian but more particularly a trans asexual lesbian is a nice way at a glace of painting a picture for someone even if my experience will not be the same as others.

Labels also allow us to find community with one another. Outside of having to explain to people things, the very idea of having a name for a group allows that group to find one another then share with each other. It is nice to be able to go to a lesbian event and meet other lesbians. It's nice to go to a trans event and be able to talk to other trans people. Even in a utopian world without the words it would be hard to share like innovation in HRT with each other if we didn't know who to communicate that with.

Conclusion

This isn't saying that I want stories to focus around homophobia, I don't, I actually much prefer happy queer stories then sad ones. What I am saying is that we don't need our worlds to be unrealistic to be happy and we don't need to strip ourselves of our labels to be progressive. There is no reason for people not to say they are a Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, Queer, etc, etc, etc in fiction or some made up word or some word from some other language that means a similar thing.

Regardless of the tone of our story we can realize that we live in the real world where people live with their actual sexualities and being represented matters to them so having a bisexual character say they are bisexual and a lesbian character say they are a lesbian matters. Trans people saying they are trans matters. We can do representation that is explicit, clear and focused. Doing that also makes it easier to tell the messier queer stories of people who aren't sure of their sexuality, that's sexuality and gender shifts, that don't line up perfectly with their labels. When we start to define things we can actually talk about them and be critical of them and engage with them in real ways.

I don't think treating our words like a dirty little secret is what we should be striving for as a utopian ideal, I want a world where people are happily openly lesbians, gay, bi, trans, asexual, bigender, non binary, etc.

Not to mention very often this kind of "we don't use labels" really exists to just say queer subtext is canon to people who are queer and just playful for straight audiences. It is a way to avoid defining a queer politics or angering people. It is not real representation most often it is not done in good faith but for a company to play it safe.

[limeade-l3sbian]

Why do radfems conveniently forget that female socialization, and societal pressure exist when it's convenient for them.

We make girls insecure by bombarding them with impossible standards that they will never be able to reach, we reward girls who do conform, and partake in beauty rituals and whatnot and AS A RESULT, girls see this and adapt their behavior, clothing, appearance and sometimes even interest to be treated decently and then radfems see this and have the nerve to go "why are women resorting to cosmetic procedures, just let yourself age gracefully" "stop wearing makeup to inspire other women" "stop saving don't give them your money" as if it was that fucking easy, as if we're supposed to ignore all the pressure we're subjected to and pretend it doesn't happen or doesn't affect us. Like come on we're women here we know what it's like. You know damn well if you were to go over a certain BMI you'd be treated like a monster. Like I'm not a bad person or anti feminist for not wanting to have a hard life, and it is not my responsibility to make women feel comfortable in their own skin like this is crazy I didn't subject women to males oppression why is it on me to make it stop.

We condition women and girls to put up with shitty male behavior, to take up less space, to not make a fuss etc.., so when you see a woman complaining about her shitty boyfriend/husband why is your first fucking thought "omg just leave him" as if it was that fucking easy. I've even seen a loooot of radfems say "if you partner up with a man don't be surprised about what happens to you, don't expect any help me from me, you knew what was gonna happen".

Like radfems do acknowledge that female socialization is a thing but how dare women be affected by it.

As individualistic and selfish libfems are, I've never seen them look down on or mock a woman for just trying to survive in a patriarchal world.

You can ignore this like I get it you don't owe me a reasone like im just so tired do radfems belive that women should be faultless and perfect in order for them to discuss issues or dip their toes into radfeminism. Shits already hard enough what do you want from us

No, I won't ignore. Because what you're saying is correct and reasonable. 🤷🏾‍♀️

A lot of radfems have an unfortunate disconnect, and often judge reality by the parameters of idealism.

I don't think the "age gracefully" and "stop wearing makeup" things are judgements (at least they shouldn't be) so much as they are encouraging rally cries, if that makes sense? At least by the women I follow, that's what they mean. It's certainly what I mean. I think there is a lot of judgement passed on women who, like a lot of us at one time, play our part in the patriarchy. I think radfems can be chronically online as well, and that's when you get these needlessly judgemental or "easy fix" (i.e. "just leave your boyfriend") posts.

That's why it's important to balance out your online voice with your real world one. We actively live in this society so to suggest one can be completely removed from its influences is naive. We will defend the actions of women of the past as victims of oppression yet simultaneously pass judgement on a woman making feminist points because she's wearing makeup? I hope I never come off as someone who thinks this community is perfect. But I think it's problems she fixable and redeemable. I think the biggest issues we're dealing with are ego and chronic onlineness (don't think that's a word but you get it).

I fully understand that it's not your fault that men oppress us. So why should it be your job to make it stop? Well, I think that's just a matter of community more so than shifting responsibility. Men are not going to turn their backs on a system that benefits them so much. And if men aren't going to do it, then we (not just you), have to do it ourselves.

I'm rambling now but yeah, this community ain't perfect. We've got a few leaks we need to focus on instead of babies on planes, but I've got hope. 💜

[thatnerdinthecorner]

you know what i make fun of tiktok a lot, bc most of the time it deserves it, but i think that a lot of people on tumblr could use some time on tiktok. a little bit of exposure.

the majority of tumblr users have been here a while and i know we all said that we wouldnt do the whole millenial vs gen z vs whatever comes next thing, but theres a whole lot of people on here taking things from tiktok out of context and going 'oh no look at the next generation, look how terrible' and then saying how awful tiktok is. and tiktok is awful. but its awful bc it harvests data, and is super addictive, and is fucking up the music and publishing industries, and not, i repeat not, bc the younger generation are just so terrible

yeah the whole goncharov rip off was boring and inauthentic and we all made fun of it, but the whole girl dinner and girl math thing. No.

girl dinner isnt promoting eating disorders. are there people with eating disorders that are using the girl dinner trend, yeah, but idk if you know this but any food related trend is going to have people with eating disorders jump on in there, and whilst there are definitely things we can do to mitigate the success of them spreading their gross diets and whatever the next fad laxative is, we shouldnt stop having fun with food just bc any food trend online can be done by people with eating disorders too.

girl dinner isnt some evil trad wife trend, its the exact opposite. women arent using the 'girl' in girl dinner to say la lala la laa look at me, im a little girly who only likes pink and not thinking, la dee da

they use it to say there are certain expectations that we have been taught women have to be beholden to, the idea of the perfect woman who can do it all, raise the kids, do the housework, have the full time job as well, but the kids and housework are full time jobs, and this is exhausting, and heres what i make for dinner when im too tired to cook a full meal, when living up to all the expectations is hard, bc im human, im not perfect, and if its not what a perfect adult woman would do then i guess im not, so heres me eating my girl dinner and i wont be ashamed of that, bc the patriarchy feeds on our shame, and if we arent ashamed of being the perfect woman under patriarchy, then at least in that way, it does not control us, if patriarchy is the panopticon then if we dont fear the watchman, we will never become our own watchman

ill admit, i know less about girl math, bc its popped up less for me (i think its a trend fewer people do, but it could just be the algorithm), but from what i can tell its basically just social/behavioural economics. it illustrates things like the sunk cost fallacy, eg. if ive already put money on an app to pay for my coffee then that coffee is 'free'. the people making those videos dont literally think their coffee it free, they're just saying it feels like its free, which it does, because of the sunk cost fallacy. thats not women being stupid, thats an actual theory in behavioral economics. i've also seen people talk about 'its cheaper to buy something else and get free shipping than to pay less but not get free shipping'. they don't literally think that, and its kind of insulting the amount of people there are seeing women make that joke and immediately assuming that they are too stupid to be joking.

[starswallowingsea]

Book Review: Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel

I ended up giving this book a 3/5 star rating based on just a craft perspective but as soon as I finished reading I ended up looking at reviews by Hindus online and well. Let's discuss below the cut.

So Kaikeyi is a retelling of the Ramayana from the perspective of Queen Kaikeyi. The Ramayana is a very important text in Hinduism and thus, assuming that Patel grew up in a Hindu household, one would expect her to be familiar with it in the same way I, as someone who grew up in a Catholic household, am familiar with the Bible.

Before I get into all of that, I would like to actually talk about the content of the book, since I am the target audience as an outsider to Hinduism looking to learn more about the stories that make up its foundations. I don't know anything about the Ramayana and I found this retelling to be very off, at least from a historical perspective.

One of the biggest issues I have with historical books is that authors really love to put their modern, 21st century views and ideals onto the narrative. It happens on all sides of the political spectrum and as a historian it makes me want to tear my hair out. I know it's unavoidable that our own perspectives shape how we write, but I wish that more people would take a step back and see how their ideas of feminism, in this case anyway, would actually have looked in the time period their book is set in.

Kaikeyi is the third wife of Dasharath and gives birth to his second son, Bharata, whom has been promised upon their wedding to ascend the throne. Kaushalya, Dasharath's first wife, also gave birth to his first son, Rama, of whom the Ramayana is actually focused on. However, while their children are growing up, we get a lot lot lot of the pushing of 21st century ideals in a historical setting. Kaikeyi is very invested in the ideas of women's rights which is fine? I guess? But it is very very hard for me to believe a woman of her standing, quite literally as the Queen of her nation, would be so class conscious and care this much about the average woman in her country without much reason.

Every single time Kaikeyi devolves into a rant about the Patriarchy and Feminism, it feels like this book would have been better suited to a modern retelling of the Ramayana rather than a historical one, though I can imagine it would still come with a lot of the same baggage re: an apparent lack of understanding of anything in the original Epic. The whole thing feels forced and like if Kaikeyi doesn't care about all women then she can't be a feminist character or reclamation or a "girl's girl" as the kids on tiktok are saying these days I think. Honestly I'd rather have a meaningful examination of her biases that are certain to actually be there if she were written to be like a person rather than a perfect ideal of Patel's feminism.

The first 2/3 of the book also felt like everything was just handed to Kaikeyi on a silver platter with very minimal pushback which just made her such an unbearable character to be in the headspace of for that period. I feel a lot of that space could have just been used better to show her stubbornness in the face of adversity that shines towards the end of the novel rather than just. Letting her passively have all of her goals handed to her with very minimal work on her part.

As a reading experience, the last 150 or so pages were probably the best to read as Kaikeyi's actions finally have real, tangible consequences for her but this is also the point where I saw a lot of Hindu readers had such an issue with this retelling of the Ramayana. Rama being portrayed as a misogynistic, war hungry prince and the erasure of Ravana's history of raping and kidnapping women were the two biggest points of contention for Hindu reviewers. I don't see why either of these changes were necessary to adapt this story for a modern, Western audience. By doing this, I believe Patel, intentionally or not, is playing into colonialist narratives about Hinduism rather than fighting them. It's also a disservice to present the Ramayana this way to both Hindu and non-Hindu readers, given that Hindus will be able to spot all the changes and disregard them, and non-Hindus are none the wiser to all the liberties Patel took with her retelling and are bound to spout them as fact if they don't look into the original.

I'd probably skip this book unless you're really into hashtag girlboss feminism retellings of fairy tales and myths, since so many of them miss the point of the original story. I can see the potential here for Patel as an author and am on the fence about trying her book coming out next month as the writing itself wasn't awful, but I'm not sure if I trust her with another myth retelling. At the very least, I suppose I can thank Patel for making me interested in reading the Ramayana at some point in the near future, so this review might have an update eventually.

[horizon-verizon]

Why are there many radfems/terfs who like Alicent? Does it has anything to do with the childbride thing?

Basically, since both (some) RadFems and (all) TradCaths wish to regress women to this status of "thing that is helpless or diminutive against male aggression/authority" (and not say or believe it is possible for a woman to have power), then Alicent is their goddess and representation of what they think is the "reality" of a woman, what she is and looks like.

A)

I and @rhaenyragendereuphoria wrote/reblogged about why some people liked the ship Rhaenicent HERE. Many of the points we bring up still apply to just Alicent, since this ship is really about Alicent and her using Rhaenyra's "cool" to further her own (how the shippers feel if not admit). 

To make this shorter, let’s apply a trope to Alicent. rhaenyragendereuphoria mentions how Alicent fits under and is written towards the Proper Lady trope which:

is a gentle yet strong being, incorruptible and pure as the driven snow, as unlike The Vamp as she comes, and Madonna-like in her virtues. She sacrifices herself for the good of her family, religion, and country. She is intelligent enough to smoothly run a household, and wisely spends her husband's money for the good of her family, never guilty of negligence or selfish frivolity. She possesses the wit, taste, and esprit necessary to be a star of Society, and never crosses the border of good taste and civility. She is devoted and loyal, never treacherous or scheming. Her manners are never less than impeccable, and her good will and charity are a beacon to those lucky enough to live around her.

And even the Team Mom trope (episode 2 where she “guides” Rhaenyra). 

Now Alicent doesn’t fit totally into Proper Lady trope because she actually  schemes and is treacherous against Rhaenyra, her supposed friend. But the fact she tries to uphold the conservative priorities of “sacrifice” (sacrificing oneself for the supposed “greater good” of the conservative social order/feudal class and gender hierarchy by dutifully following the rules). 

Basically Alicent is the perfect “good girl” -- the feudal version -- because she pushes for people to obey the hierarchal social order and its rules, but Alicent’s character on HotD also is very contradictory and changed drastically so that her motivations are confounding. I basically pinned two-three different and related options: 

feel she “deserves” to gain the rewards of having her sons inherit the throne

make all Rhaenyra subordinate to her (psychologically making up for her “sacrifice” in gving up her body) and have this one girl/former recognize her superior authority

make Rhaenyra and women also have to follow the rules so she doesn’t have to feel as miserable and jilted as she does

So Alicent comes across as this victim of both the patriarchal system in place and a victim of not getting what she deserves for “playing her part” and obeying that very system. She is “relatable”, as @la-pheacienne says:

People don’t relate to these exceptional heroines because they are not looking for exceptional characters. They are looking for a more successful or a more glamourous version of themselves.  

 Does this sound counterintuitive, since such hierarchies don’t “care” about how you feel and actually prioritizes the will of the ruler/clan-or-house head? Yes. Just don’t tell that to a green stan and not expect to get a bunch of ad hominem “arguments”.

B)

Though they hypocritically bleat about how the patriarchy in Westeros is their culture or something that no one then could escape, they, yes, use the idea that Alicent was a child bride (15 when married) in HotD (even if you tried to say the same of her original character she wasn’t since she was 18 when she married Viserys in the book), they don’t care about history and how environment and/or know that Westerosi nobles have been marrying their young girls from the time they got their first period. 

Ancient and medieval people -- even going into the early-mid 1800s -- died a lot sooner than they do now in Western societies due to lack of knowledge and tech, so everyone married much sooner. Plus, as la-pheacienne says in another POST, where they say:

The problem with the word “grooming” is that it’s not a neutral word. It’s a word with a very heavy meaning, that frames an individual who has a perverse, unnatural sexual desire for children whereas the society this individual lives in has decided (fortunately) that these children are not to be considered in a sexual way. So this individual breaks a fundamental moral code of the society they live in, and they do it so skillfully that they go the extra mile as to manipulate their way into basically, committing the crime that constitutes child sex abuse. It is a crime punished by law. You go to prison for it. Everybody knows it is perverse, unnatural behaviour, everybody tries to protect their children from it, and children themselves have a certain knowledge that it is NOT ok for an adult to approach them that way.

Grooming cannot be applicable to Alicent and Viserys, Rhaenrya and Viserys. grooming can’t be used as a serious criticism when the persons involved expect to get married this way and actually can find/use power through such unions. The problem with Alicent marrying Viserys, as presented in HotD, should have been how Otto pressures her into it, not how Viserys chooses her. Because Viserys doing that is actually him choosing not to go for a girl even younger, a 12 year old.

Child-brides work in the context of a world where such marriages intentionally flout rules/laws/ against them in the larger context where the idea of youth vs childhood itself becomes totally realized. And it wasn’t in the ancient/medieval ages. We’d have to wait until the 19th century when people focused more on instructing children and the Romantics for that one, and even then the idea of childhood came from the Romantics wanting to isolate themselves from the sociopolitical demands and smog of the then industrial age. a “return” to the “innocence” of early life. Some wrote works that emphasized:

childhood came to be seen as especially close to God and a force for good [...] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose Émile, or On Education (1762) not only rejects the doctrine of Original Sin, but maintains that children are innately innocent, only becoming corrupted through experience of the world.

But they use “child bride” with ignorance and the intent to prove how Alicent is the “real” and only victim aside from Aemond. The actual protagonist/the story’s central interest. And it certainly doesn’t help when the actual show and its writers refuse to frame Alicent as anything but a deluded misogynist in no uncertain terms more than they display her as helpless time and time again: Olivia Cooke plays her as frantic and beset by here fear that Rhaenyra would kill her kids and she looks very pathetic and helpless when she protests against Aemond’s eyes lost. there is her with Larys.

All of these come across as Alicent being beleaguered by disobedient, “over”- privileged royals (meanwhile, her father is Hand and she comes from the richest, one of the most influential houses in Westeros).

Finally, if Alicent is a child bride, their “sympathy” should extend to Rhaenyra, who was canonically forced to marry Laenor when she was 17 and he was 20. It should extend towards Daenerys Targaryen, who not only marries Drogo at 13, she is actually sold into sexual slavery to the same man who becomes her first husband. But it doesn't, because Valyrian/Targ girls are all evil for being Targaryen.

That in of itself tells you that Alicent being a child bride is not the real reason why many of the stan her or think she is "right". They stan her because many of them think she is more relatable and deserves a reward for her obedience to the patriarchal system in place that victimizes her in the first place. They love her because she is the "good girl" who should have found success. Nothing more, nothing less.

[baybelletrist]

CW: rape culture, misogyny, depression

I've never wanted to be a mom. Even as a tween, I had an instinctive revulsion for the idea. I started babysitting pretty young, so even though I was never the primary caregiver, I got enough of a look at the demands of child-rearing to know it wasn't for me. As a woman in her fifties, I can say that it's a damn good thing I never had kids; if I had, nobody involved would have enjoyed the results.

It's already hard to be a parent, especially a mom. The utter lack of support for parents, especially mothers, in the USA just makes it worse. Capitalists don't care about supporting families because it doesn't make them any money. (They are, however, only too happy to cash in on the need for child care and housecleaning by creating businesses employing poor people for the benefit of wealthy people. Which still leaves poor people unsupported.) The entire capitalist system is built on the unpaid labor of women.

Then there's the misogyny. We're taught from birth that our bodies don't belong to us, they belong to men, and we're just here to be barefoot and pregnant and ugh, fuck that noise so hard. Pile the fall of Roe on top of all this and you've got the perfect recipe for a hellscape right out of Margaret Atwood... and I'm gonna stop now before I throw up.

tl;dr Set the patriarchy on fire, protect reproductive rights, and support parents and families of all persuasions.

But over time I came to see that the basic tenets of rape culture run through our cultural expectations of American mothers. Just as we normalize sexual violence against women, we normalize the suffering of women in motherhood. The image of the haggard mom woefully failing to do it all has become so commonplace in American culture that her beaten-down body, excess wine consumption and clinical depression rarely register as serious public health concerns, even though her struggles can easily be traced to historically and culturally specific conditions.

[tittyinfinity]

Just watched Barbie for the first time. I way over-analyze shit, but here's my review I suppose

I'm not gonna lie, it wasn't as good as I thought it was going to be. I didn't seem to find that "spark" that other people found. The advertising pushed HARD that it would be a groundbreaking movie, and I feel like it may have put a bit of a placebo affect onto some of the people who praised it. But that's based on my biased opinion.

I think that maybe the reason I didn't enjoy it as much is because I've already spent so many years thinking about how the patriarchy works and how to dismantle it, and I'm always thinking about what my purpose is and what I'm supposed to be doing with my life. I do see how it could be meaningful for people who don't have the time to sit around and think about this kind of stuff like I do.

While yes, the movie is correct that in the real world, women are always expected to be perfect at the expense of the patriarchy, it seemed to do so in a very shallow way that involved throwing around buzzwords and stereotypes. "Women's oppression" was only linked to how the worst types of men treat them and nothing else. Their example of "patriarchy" was limited to "men are the ones in power and they all treat women like shit." There wasn't much discussion past that point. When the young girl, Sasha, brings up that a capitalistic society is also what's causing pressure on women, she follows it up by calling Barbie a "fascist," causing her to cry, which to me, looked like they were making a joke out of how "people who critique capitalism always take it way too far." After that, there is no discussion as to how patriarchy and capitalism are connected, it just cuts to "men are stupid airheads who don't know how to do anything other than sexually harass women and boss them around."

I feel like you can't approach conversations about the way women are oppressed without talking about how it's also linked directly to capitalism. Clothing advertisements, weight loss ads, only seeing certain types of people being represented in media, pay gaps, "the pink tax," etc. It's not just limited to "men are shitty to women." And yes, men are a major reason as to why these problems related to capitalism exist in the first place, but capitalism is ultimately the biggest threat to women and women's rights.

But they wouldn't be able to dive that far into those kinds of discussions in that movie, because the whole thing was just a fucking advertisement for toys that used feminism as a crutch.

Anyway. 3/5 stars. It was still funny and entertaining.

[kenobihater]

len my dear friend do u have a like list in ur mind of like wild west media that u think showcase what u love abt the genre(westerns?? cowboy stuff??)

ps. willing to trade jidaigeki recs gehehe

i'd LOVE your jidaigeki recs, and i have lots of western recs, tysm for asking! i was raised on westerns, and though i have PLENTY of issues with the genre overall and how it was used to enforce an ahistorical ideal of white heteronormative patriarchy on an era that was actually pretty queer in compairison to the rest of the western world at the time and had a significant number of people of color and strong women in it, i still love the genre despite all of its faults.

the first western that comes to mind is true grit, the original true grit. i hate john wayne personally, but even i have to admit he does a good job in this film, though the real show-stealer is the actress who plays mattie ross. the new true grit is also really really good and more accurate to the book, which is okay and i only read for school.

the next of the classics that i wanna mention is the dollars trilogy (a fistful of dollars, for a few dollars more, and the good the bad and the ugly), of which i've only seen the good the bad and the ugly in full and remember liking as a child. the first in the trilogy, fistful, is a remake (or a ripoff, depending on how you look at it) of yojimbo! so, if you liked the basic plot of that, you'll probably like fistful as well if you don't mind clint eastwood. also, even if you don't like the films, do yourself a favor and listen to the soundtrack of at LEAST the good the bad and the ugly. i love it so much i have it on vinyl lol!

another classic western that is a remake/ripoff of a samurai film is the magnificent seven, which is inspired by seven samurai. i've honestly only seen the shitty chris pratt remake, so i can't speak to the quality of the original, though i've heard it's good.

onto modern westerns! tombstone is the first one to come to mind bc of how popular it is. it isn't my favorite bc of how it mythologizes a kind of shitty person, wyatt earp, into this larger than life figure. same goes for doc holliday (though i admit i'm only human and i ADORE val kilmer's performance in this film). if you're at all interested in unraveling the wyatt earp myth, i highly, HIGHLY recommend picking up the wonderful biography wyatt earp: a vigilante life by andrew c isenberg! it really cuts through the bullshit and the many lies the man told about his life and got early hollywood to buy into.

another modern western i like is django: unchained. it's been a few years since i last watched it, but i really want to stress to y'all that this is both a tarantino movie, so expect gore, and a movie about slavery, so expect blatant racism. if either of these things are a trigger or exhaust you, steer clear.

idk if this is classified as a western bc it's set during the era of fur trapping and mountain men, so a little earlier than most westerns, but the revenant was a good and gritty revenge story. though it was also pretty gory, so avoid it if that bothers you

one i really enjoyed was the harder they fall, though warning for gore again, though not to the extent of tarantino or anything. it was wonderfully told and it was SO cool to see a black-led western. i know there was some controversy around colorism and the handling of a queer character which i don't feel is my place to comment on, but i do think the film was good despite its flaws.

this isn't a movie, but i cannot stress enough how much red dead redemption 2 is a good example of western storytelling. arthur morgan's journey in the waning years of the wild west is SO compelling to me, and though it isn't flawless it's imho the closest thing on this list to my perfect western story. 10/10 recommend playing this one!

that's everything that's currently out that i can think of, but a western show i'm looking forwards to is the new bass reeves show that the yellowstone creators are making. yellowstone bored me to tears and i heard 1883 was bad, but i have high hopes for this bc bass reeves was a certified badass, likely inspired the lone ranger, and honestly deserved all the hype wyatt earp got for being a good lawman. so hopefully that will be good!

oh, and i'm sure you're aware, but there's a lot of bad westerns out there bc they pumped them out like crazy back in the day. modern day less so, so i can point to specific ones that suck major ass, like the ballad of buster scruggs, hostiles, and dances with wolves, but just as a rule of thumb if you aren't vibing with what's happening onscreen just turn it off lmao cause there's so much bad shit out there you could waste years watching it.

those are all of my recommendations (and a few to avoid for good measure), i hope you enjoy some of them and thank you for letting me ramble about westerns!!

[thephantomcasebook]

To be honest, I'm afraid they won't include Daeron in 2s. I mean, despite the fact that Martin confirmed it, I think the writers will still decide on their own. Because no one from the actors talks about him, no one mentions him. It would be so weird to have another blond guy show up in 2s without any explanation xd. The show set such a tone for Alicent's dysfunctional family by sacrificing book!Helaena that Daeron would look quite strange next to them. Because everyone says "Daeron will be the most normal among them." And it's kinda weird (lol)

Clear the Chickens off the runway, I'll be the bad guy.

The reason that no one mentions him from the cast is because, none of the actors most likely read the source material. They all watched "Game of Thrones" - except for D'arcy who didn't seem to do shit of anything but show up. And, to be fair, when they were cast, the edition of "Fire & Blood" that was on the shelves at the time is drastically different than the one that is out now.

I'll be blunt. The culture of Season 1 production was straight fucked and it, most likely, will fuck the show in the long run. The attitude of the production and the casting process was a giant "Fuck you" to not just the source material, but the fans as well.

Spotchnik has famously - Legendarily - hated the viewing audience and George RR Martin. Why HBO asked him to head this venture is the type of Hollywood foolishness I've come to expect. Spotchnik and some activist producers took over the show and decided that they wanted to tell their own story, not GRRM's ... and it was gonna be about the patriarchy and women's struggles rather than what "The Dance of the Dragons" was really about ... which was the corruption of Power in the hands of any gender.

Olivia Cooke and Emma D'arcy are hold outs and relics of this agenda minded Spotchnik and Hess led narrative. They were chosen, because, the political message that hijacked the project was one that appealed to them and they fit with. So, no, they didn't read any of the books - Cooke binge watched "Game of Thrones" and D'arcy proudly proclaimed not to give a shit about anything. Most likely because they were told they didn't need to, because, fuck the source material ... we're telling our feminist political story.

And the contempt for the fans and GRRM's source material was extremely evident in their press tour interviews.

Now, with Spotchnik giving his walking papers along with his dumb ideas, and GRRM back in the writers room having to emergency rewrite Season 2 and vowing publicly to keep a closer eye on the production from now on. As well as a 50 BILLION dollar in debt Warner Brothers breathing down their neck, I can almost guarantee you that Season 2 is most likely gonna be a completely different animal from Season 1.

Alan Taylor - who is taking over Production - is a extremely experienced "Keep the trains running on time" kinda show runner from the old day of early "Game of Thrones" who is about efficiency and foundation building. I don't see him having any agenda but to make sure everything runs smoothly and as it should.

As a writer myself I feel that Daeron is a perfect fit, because, he's so different from his siblings. I feel that him coming back from the Stepstone Wars via Oldtown is perfect to show a contrast to what perhaps the Greens were like before he left and what they became after he was gone. Daeron is also a perfect foil against Larys Strong who is trying to turn Alicent to the Dark Side and having that contrast with Daeron whose simple every day morality and honor could pull Alicent out of this manic tailspin and bring her prospective.

Condal said that he expects a lot of people to root for Team Green in Season 2 from the stuff that GRRM, Alan Taylor, and he had been working on. And once upon a time, Daeron was a creation that GRRM actually was interested in. Despite editing his character down recently, GRRM still maintains his extreme importance ... and highlighted him in the Blu-Ray features of the Later Seasons of "Game of Thrones".

I think we'll get Daeron in Season 2 ...

But I'm not sure about Alys Rivers, Nettles, or any of the other Dragonseed Riders - I feel they'll be in Season 3.

[broodpeas]

on pop music and coachella.

In the old tumblr times, Coachella was a cool festival. It had an indie ineup and most of us discovered music or listened to bands we liked if we couldn't afford to go. It was great. I still think it's great, except now I wouldn't go to a festival. Coachella has changed a lot since 2010: from rarely seeing women, POC, or LGTBQ+, now it has more diversity. It was time. It also has more pop music, which for me is also fun, because pop music will always be great.

I'm not sure when did pop music crept back for me in music festivals, but I can tell you not a single show will ever top Beyonce's homecoming. I will not be discussing this with anyone who argues against this. It's the reality of pop music: there are pop artists, and then there's Beyoncé. She is her own category. The idea of this post is not to discuss this -again: not opening for discussion-, is more to put some random thoughts in order about pop music, back when I was growing up and now that I am well into my 30's. Coachella somehow works to try to put some order into the thoughts. Let me dig in.

_

I remember the first time I saw a Britney Spears video. I was, like so many of us, enthralled. Then I saw Christina Aguilera, Mandy Moore, Destiny's Child, Aliyah. They were all....so perfect. So beyond cool, so comfortable in their bodies and their sexuality. They were all the type of peopleI thought it'd be great to be.

But, like many of us, I couldn't confess this. We grew up in a world that censored our love and devotion for pop music, especially for pop female performers- they were everything that everyone wanted, aspired or desired, which for some reason led to people to hate it. The looks you'd get when you admitted that you liked pop music, it haunts me. Of course, now I understand that behind this contradictory train of ideas was patriarchy and a big dosis of misoginy. Pop music in the early 2000's and very well into the late 2010's was understood as dumb music, and behind it, racism, clasism, imperialism and all the baddy -isms you can think of would thrive. And still, most of us secretely enjoyed pop music, and some who were braver than me, admitted and were quite happy to enjoy it sans guilt.

In 2023, pop music still has the same issues that had 30 years ago, but now it's easier to be critical and recognize when it's a valid critic and when it's the shitty system acting up. This has allowed many of us to enjoy pop music more freely, not just the "old" pop music, but the contemporary music. The fact pop music is now diverse and that some artists work to make sure they are not just producing bops, but also producing political comentary, will never cease to amaze me. They don't do it perfectly, but then again, who can make it? After all, they already make perfect bops, to demand more is not wrong but it's also ridiculous.

And yet, on sunday, while I was organizing stuff, I decided to watch a replay of Blackpink's coachella set. I don't know if they are the first kpop to headline a western festival, a fact we can google, but I was amazed by how annoyed I was: too much playblack, too much dancing and not so much talent. Then I realized I was displaying a classic pattern of thinking, where we judge these female artists of not beoing good enough artists because they're not what we expect them to be, even though they are. I certainly couldn't sing and dance in front of thousands of people. I can barely put one feet ahead of me, so me taking this position was not only surprising, but revealing- no matter how much time it goes by, we always have residues of thinking patterns that are harming and dangerous.

But...I still think it's important to put order into my ideas about Blackpink and the uncomfortable feelings they gave me. Mainly because it confronts a part of my feminism I always sit, which is the idea of hyper-feminity, and how it's demanded that some bodies are allowed and demanded to perform in a certain way. Performance in pop music is a necessity, pop requieres it so it can be relevant. The performance manages to attach some moral values, and there will always be the discussion of whether the performers can actually own their autonomy on their genders, sexualities and bodies if they fulfill the patterns that patriarchy forces on them. Because, whether we agree or not, their performers reinforces that pattern, and there seems to be a contradiction. Can they/we be free of those frameworks of thoughts if we decide to own them? to make them our sign of identity? Feminisms have taught us to not be critical of other people's bodies and ways to live- we don't know how those bodies live in the world, how they inhabit it. And yet, those apparently fragile bodies, abled bodies, they reinforce a way of being I, deep inside, know it's too similar of what people taught me to hate on pop performers.

And this way of thinking, it's not complex- it's toxic. The way it creeps into our understanding and enjoyment of pop music, it's insidous and subtle. You don't slam it, you drop the thoughts slowly- by being annoyed at how much playback, and how little singing they do on stage. By how much they reinforce what bodies are considered desirable and loved, and which ones are rejected. When you judge them by how they perform.

_

I don't know how to change this. It's just there. Whenever I feel it's there, I acknowledge it, and stay silent. I realize I'm not being fair nor just, that I'm letting the hate come out freely. I don't judge myself too hard, I am after all, a bad feminist and it's something I've come to be okay with it. I am critical of myself, but sometimes I do let the jealousy mixes with the admiration I feel- I'll never be that tall, that thin, I will never experience that objectification, commodification or exploitation. I will never experience that judgement in that massive way- it's not the same to exist when you're a regular person than when you're a celebrity. It is expected that you allowed certain things, because you're a celebrity. Everybody has an opinion about what you do, who you are, how you exist. It's....something to keep in mind.

_

Coachella, like I said, it's not what it was when I was 19. It has super stars that are vocal and brass, like Charlie XCX, whose set was so, so good, she's such good performer and she enjoys it. It has atists who perform knowing what they have to deliver and are also aware of the limits and boundaries and do not give in into the old ways, the ways we grew up accepting tacitly -rosalia, boygenius, kali uchis willow...-. It's our generation and the ones after us. It is also people that are located in places where they know the way they can be it's okay because they know it will not have serious consequence, or if it does, at least some justice might happen. I don't think many colombian people for example were kind with Shakira when she dropped her bops, even if feminists defended her and tried to change the discourse. many argued things that are relevant, but the world will never stop hating on people who decide to break off from the old ways, and find their own ways to be- that comfort, that freedom.

Like I said, pop music has changed, but at the same time, it's the same chew on and spit off to discard machine that it has always been.

_

The older I get, the easier it is for me to trust my gut when something doesn't add up. sometimes it's a fleeting thought, or something someone said or wrote. other times, is by reading and learning about how to identify when things don't add up. We are thankfully now in a time where it seems it's okay to enjoy whatever we want, without needing permission, but this I think is a big and dangerous façade. Our existence, interconnected with gender, race/ethnicity, social and economical class, culture and geography, history and memory....everything inflicts on us, it profoundly affects who we are now. To be aware of this has also helped me to understand the complexity, the ambivalence, the contradictions on what it all lies in.

_

Coachella is great and like most music festivals, I always find ways to enjoy it. I still think it's a cool way to find new artists to listen to, or to watch shows from artists you love. To see how much it has changed, to know it used to be something and now it's another, it's great.

[ileftherbackhome]

the fact that taylor performed cant feel my face on the 1989 tour during the height of her eating disorder is really painful because while that song is obviously about drug addiction it can also be interpreted to be about having an ED. idk maybe this is poorly worded or seems weird it just feels like she chose that song for a reason if that makes any sense

i've taken a break from studying to procrastinate on the internet but I haven't been able to stop thinking about this actually.

I went back and listened to her performance of the song and I find it really interesting that she switched the pronoun to "him." I find it interesting because there really was no need for her to do that. I know she was very closeted at the time but she also wasn't hiding the fact that she wanted to be out either.

She sang other songs like Cheerleader for example where she didn't bother to change the original lyric and I think the fact that she used "him" does make your theory that she chose the songs she covered on purpose during 1989 tour.

the reason I say this is because if you go to this page and just scroll until you reach the "1" time played part, you see the song titles of every artist she invited on tour and I think the songs she chose to play were very gay and sad but this one specifically... yeah I think this one was intentionally done because of her ED.

I think she views her ED voice as masculine, which is very interesting to me. I don't really want to speculate too hard but remember when we were talking about style and blank space's cake scene and how this feels ED related? I think this is another thing that lends credibility to that theory because okay, you could take this down a literal route or down a very metaphorical route about how she was brainwashed by the patriarchy into wanting a prince charming to the point where she would kill herself to attain the superficial standards that society lays out for women, where she is masculinizing her ED voice.

I think Taylor has struggled a lot with her gender identity actually, but not in like the 'trans' way but more in like what does it mean to be a 'good' woman type of way. Like, white women have this standard of womanhood that is quite harmful to society and all the things that are praised in us lead to oppression for other groups, and especially other women. Not even in like the gender expectations of dress or make-up but just how you are as a white woman and what society tells you as a white woman is that in order to be good, you need to be liked.

sorry this is getting so off topic but i have a point promise. white women in society are taught to prioritize being liked above all else, and it is clear in the documentary, Taylor also felt this struggle. I also think that Taylor is autistic so like I feel like she knew this from a very young age. Go look at her unreleased lyrics (most of which are from 12-15 year old taylor) and you can see this desire to be seen as like desirable from early on. She constantly penned songs about yearning for a man who doesn't know any better than to chase a prettier pageant queen than you. I think as she grew older, she became aware of this warped worldview that she was forcefed through media and I think by 1989, she was highly aware of a lot more than we give her credit for as a fandom.

side bar: when people say taylor didn't write the 10mv lyrics before 2021, i have to laugh because a line that says fuck the patriarchy is actually exactly the type of line I would expect 2012 taylor to cut in order to seem more palatable as a songwriter. I think that's also why we see her fucking the patriarchy more in her lyrics now, because she truly doesn't care about seeming like a good girl anymore.

ANYWAYS

white women are taught as a class that we need to be liked, ABOVE ALL ELSE. we must be peaceful wives who are practically perfect in every way but that never show any anger because anger is a "man" emotion. It's everywhere in white culture, but especially in the ways that white women interact with each other to enforce this standard. Being polite often means, for white women, sitting down and shutting up.

That's why in the miss americana documentary, she focuses a lot on her belief system of good vs bad and how it really enabled her to be the worst version of herself because in order to be good in this society, you have to be polite in the face of a lot of injustice. You cannot speak out because speaking out labels you a bitch and nobody wants to be a bitch.

I think by 1989, Taylor was kind of fed up with the cage she had built for herself but couldn't find a way out of that shit. You gotta keep in mind, once you hand over the amount of control BMR had over Taylor, it's IMPOSSIBLE to get it back. In a way, she had to be hit with 2016 in order for her to realize that it DOESN'T MATTER IF EVERYONE LIKES YOU because the people who matter will shoulder anything for you. I think she needed to realize that getting everyone to like was an impossible goal to set for herself in order for her to grow into the person she is today.

Like, I think she was very aware of social dynamics because songs like blank space really hides a lot of female rage under the comedic tones of the music video/song. Like, I don't think the fandom realizes just how angry taylor was/is with the media perception of her because she's so good at hiding her true emotions well.

I say all this to say that I'm almost positive taylor masculinizes her ED in her music because it's such a multifaceted metaphor for all the ways in which she internalized the most harmful parts of patriarchy growing up and how being in the public eye for almost 20 years and growing up in that eye as a woman really fucking almost killed her. I say all this to say that I'm pretty sure she meant it that way anon and I'm sad now.

Thanks for this.