#their patriarchal societies? yes!

[agnesandhilda]

that historical fiction character would hold that general belief but they would not phrase it like that 

[qiu-yan]

pet peeve: "jiang cheng killed wei wuxian"

look. this is not a morality problem. this is not even a "what does the text of the novel actually say" problem. this is a powerscaling problem and nothing more.

do you really think jiang cheng would have a snowball's chance in hell against the yiling fucking patriarch?

mr. jiang "always second place" cheng? mr. jiang "could never beat wei wuxian even before wei wuxian's demonic cultivation megabuff" cheng? mr. jiang "couldn't even shake off a single wen patrol in an area he grew up in" cheng???

lmao.

the yiling patriarch is a once-in-a-generation genius who invented an entirely new branch of cultivation. his inventions continue to revolutionize the field of cultivation over a decade after his death. at the height of his power, his presence alone was enough to turn the tide of entire battles, and he is credited with singlehandedly killing over 3000 enemies at once.

jiang cheng is literally just some guy.

as if jiang cheng could kill the yiling patriarch even if he tried. sandu shengshou who. yiling laozu eats 100 sandu shengshou for breakfast and still has room for brunch.

lol. lmao, even.

[slobozan-shitposting]

I've finally finished a fanfic (f/f and wh40k), in fact, my first since ehhh middle school. It's in Ukrainian, my native language, and right now I'm trying to translate it so English speaking part of the fandom can fall for my yuri propaganda too. The problem is that Ukrainian has grammatical gender and in some parts of the text it works better than without it in English. There's a difference between "she was Lotara's only friend (feminine)" and "she was Lotara's only friend (neutral)", how the hell do I show it in English? Or another example: calling Lotara "lady captain" or just "captain Sarrin" makes sense in Ukrainian, but sounds strange in English. My fanfic is about a woman in a position traditionally reserved for men, it's about gender-sex first and foremost, so it's really important here.

Feels like it will be a tough work and I'm gonna use outdated English words more than I normally do.

[harrowscore]

another anti-dany post from someone with a sansa pfp, another blocked user 💃💅

[zaldrizescrowned]

I hate how TG stans have interpreted Rhaenyra telling Alicent that she has to take Aegon's head as some sort of "gotcha" moment, using it as proof that Rhaenyra was always going to murder her siblings and was always a powerhungry bloodthirsty bitch.

Y'all do realise that if Rhaenyra had taken the throne peacefully, she would have had zero need to take Aegon and Aemond's lives? Yes, some nobles would've whispered and muttered that Aegon should be king, but if the family had stood strong and Aegon and Aemond would've actually supported Rhaenyra's claim, whatever rebellion there might've been brewing would've faded rapidly. For a rebellion, you need a figurehead and if there is no figurehead, there's nothing to fight for.

And yes, the smallfolk were mocking Rhaenyra when she'd just been named heir. Because that's what smallfolk do, they laugh at the nobles ruling them in good times. It's a tale old as time. But if there had been no civil war, only a peaceful transition and the traditional "bread and games" for the people during said transition, they wouldn't have given a flying fuck about who sits on the Iron Throne. As long as there is food on the table, a roof over their heads and some entertainment, smallfolk usually don't bother with highborn politics. It's only when those highborn politics fuck them over (like during a civil war or a famine or whatever) that the regular people start getting involved.

Ergo, the only reason there needs to be bloodshed and death is because the Greens created a situation in which everyone is pissed off and suffering, and the transition (or continuation) of power can only happen by the death of the opponent.

(Also, can we please also remember that Otto and the Green Council were planning to have Rhaenyra and her family murdered on Dragonstone asap after Aegon's coronation? Because they knew that what they were doing was wrong, and they knew that the transition of power they envisioned (from the 'rightful' heir to a usurper) could only happen with the death of their opponent. They are the ones who created this situation and they are very much projected their own grasping for power onto Rhaenyra.)

[dirtytransmasc]

I'm sorry but the moment Alicent decided to obey her father she knew what was going to happen she knew she would have to have sex with him and have heirs. It's the only reason viserys remarried

"decided"????

what else was she meant to do? this was a day and age where women, especially young girls were controlled by their fathers, to some if not a great extent until they were married off (children of nobles typically betrothed for political reasons not love, these betrothals arranged by their fathers to whoever they pleased and saw fit, no matter what it could mean for the daughter). was she supposed to say no? was she supposed to disobey? what could have happened to her if she did? there was no point in which she could say no, when she could disagree. she was a girl, a child, all she could do was bite her tongue and pray for a miracle, pray for Viserys to not take to her, that at the very least he would wait to get her pregnant (the fact a 14 year old had to worry about that is sickening)

she was 14, she was grieving Aemma and reliving the pain of the loss of her mother, her father gave her an order, though disguised as a suggestion, one she could not deny. it didn't mean she wanted to, it didn't mean she wanted him to marry her, it doesn't mean she would have been forced to bear heirs as a child herself (especially because Aemma died because Viserys tried to get her pregnant to young and cause long lasting health issues that eventually lead to her fatal pregnancy), it doesn't mean she wanted any of it. but she didn't have any other choice, she didn't have a choice when her father sent her to his chambers, when Viserys claimed her hand, when Viserys assumed her consent and raped her in their marital bed, when she bore multiple children before she was 18, when she had to take care of him in his illness, when she had to practically rule in his stead. women didn't have choices at the time, nine of it was s choice she could have said no to, she just had to take it, all of it, cause her father told her to and it's her duty to obey him, and then Viserys married her and it was her duty to serve him.

y'all are so quick to blame a CHILD for the actions of her father and the king himself and forgetting the time and place she was in. nothing she could have done would have spared her fate, if not bringing her a worse one.

[cakemoney]

i don't want to put my uninformed foot in my mouth or get involved with the Discourse but i've been seeing the two extremes of reactions to the korean low birth rates issue (on tumblr and twitter both) and i'm just kind of like. look. i feel like "low birth rates (in many countries but especially japan and korea as part of this conversation) are more broadly the result of capitalism/a culture of overwhelming overwork that makes social relationships and having families incredibly inaccessible to young people" and "low birth rates are very much a part of the current conversation about misogyny and social expectations for women in korea especially in the context of reproduction as 'unpaid labor' for women" are statements that can both be true

[blessedmoonsoul]

that being said....self titled was just such a moment tho like when i say that was a formative album for me i mean that shit

[tetradic-echinoidea]

As much as I do not believe transmisandry/transandrophobia to exist I do believe there is a bit of a trend going on where transmen and transmascs are not listened to when they talk about their relationship to patriarchy. I've seen a lot of posts where transmen are told to understand their place in society as men. And while I agree that understanding the priviledges manhood might bring... It fucking sucks when you get silenced when you try to talk about how your past and present lived experience and therefore the priviledges you're afforded really does not match that of a cisman's, ot if you even after transitioning (whatever that means for any given individual) experience patriarchal oppression. I will personally always continue suffering from it as long as I have my uterus and ovaries. And even if I someday passed as a (cis)man, that will never take away the way living under patriarchal oppression has shaped my life and personhood.

I would like it if trans men were allowed to define their own experiences instead of thrown around the pathriarcally oppressed/opressor boxes with absolutely no regard to an individual's life. It's so easy for ciswomen to throw out any solidarity with a transman/masc individual when he/they come out as a man/masc, as if that somehow erases the same lived struggles. It makes me so sad that a word to describe your identity is a more important factor in building solidarity rather than mutual struggles and experiences!!

[synnthamonsugar]

Girl. Help. The owo humanity?? has always been nice??? post is going around and making me irrationally annoyed.

[gendiebrainrotreceipts]

Why do ppl so obsessed with p#n#ses?

It's just part of male body, it's nothing special. Why ppl who obsessed with hands are called fetishists, but obsession over this body part is considered as normal (and progressive in some places)?

I get that society in general is phallocentric and it’s tiresome af, but I don’t think you can have a fetish for a sexual organ…

[transvarmint]

Personally, we're really not bothered by the occasional quip of "men are trash" or "I hate men" or whatever. We recognize that they come from a place of trauma and genuine expression of frustration. We fully believe people are allowed to express their pain in imperfect ways.

What we take issue with is repeated patterns of behavior in which men are treated as inherently more dangerous or untrustworthy than any other gender. Keep in mind, that this is different than pointing out common behaviors of misogyny from men, that stems from being raised in a patriarchal society.

I'm talking specifically about the rhetoric that posits that men are innately and irrevocably more violent or bigoted. This is gender esssntialism. This is what we are talking about when we bring up people who treat men badly on the basis of their gender. Treating real human beings as if their gender is just some curse that poisons their entire being.

This phenomenon overlaps very strongly with other forms of bigotry. Black men being treated as dangerous thugs - yes, because they're Black, but also specifically because they're Black men. Their masculinity is seen as violent and unsafe, and gender essentialism is weaponized against them more violently because of how it overlaps with racism.

When trans men come out, and are told that taking testosterone will make us angry, aggressive, and most importantly - ugly and infertile. When we experience corrective rape, have our life saving medications taken away from us. This is gender essentialism, overlapping with transphobia and misogyny. It's not just that we're transitioning, it's specifically that our masculinity is treated as more unsafe, more untrustworthy, more vile, because we're trans men.

And this does absolutely start with the way we treat cis men. Dehumanizing cis men on the basis of their gender, will inevitably lead to you dehumanizing marginalized men. You will contribute to the marginalization of men of color and trans men. You will actively contribute to racism and transphobia, because the oppression that we experience is intertwined with that same gender essentialism.

This is what intersectionality is. You cannot perpetuate gender essentialism and expect it not to have broader impacts on other marginalized groups. Because these forms of oppression intersect! They can't be separated from each other. You can't seperate the harm that Black men experience from the idea that men are inherently dangerous. You can't seperate the harm that trans men experience from the idea that testosterone makes you violent. Your ideas about men do not exist in a vacuum.

[ot3]

top 10 pokemon that are girls

'gender'.... much like 'animals' this is a concept from our world that has made itself present in the pokemon franchise. all pokemon began having genders (except for the ones that don't) in the second generation of games, in order to facilitate the pokemon breeding mechanic which has become a staple of the main series

you may think this means the issue of which pokemon are girls and which ones aren't is already settled. but do we really trust game freak to be the deciding voices on this one? i certainly don't. so here's a nonexhaustive look at some pokemon that are doing their best to be role models for young women everywhere who have been picking up and enjoying these games for decades.

#10 - NIDORAN♀

Not only is Nidoran♀ canonically a girl, she is the first pokemon to be canonically a girl as the gender distinction between Nidoran types predates the introduction of gen 2's breeding system that gendered all pokemon. she broke the glass ceiling, and for this we salute her.

#9 - KANGASKHAN

Both culturally and in media single mothers are subject to a lot of scrutiny and scorn, but kangaskhan breaks the mold. powerful, responsible, yet loving and joy-filled. the look on her baby's face tells us all we need to know; she holds on tight to the pouch, clinging to the safety she knows her mother can give her, but gazes awestruck and wide-eyed at the world around her, knowing its wonders will be there waiting for her as soon as she feels ready for it.

#8 - CELESTEELA

Technically, celesteela's gender is 'unknown', but it's obvious that celesteela represents what life can look like for a woman who truly has it all. As one of the largest and heaviest pokemon ever discovered, she's not afraid to take up space. she doesn't feel the need to soften herself to be more accepted by the world around her, but she's also comfortable enough with her feminine side to let it shine through where and when she wants. nobody tells her how to live her life but her and also she has big lazers

#7 - MISMAGIUS

Well she's not called MISTER magius now, is she?

#6 - LYCANROC

Perfect embodiment of the wolfgirl you knew (or, perhaps were?) in middleschool. There are many doglike/canine pokemon in the dex, but something about lycanroc's exaggerated unkempt mane and lanky, awkward posture evokes the physicality of a teenager who exists as a beast beyond the boundaries of her own body.

#5 - CHIKORITA

This saultry little binch...

#4 - RAYQUAZA

It's an uncomfortable truth in life that many women find themselves in the position of needing to play the mediator in order to stop the people around them from acting in destructive or harmful ways. But just because mediating conflict can be a difficult and unfair position to be put into, that doesn't mean it's a bad thing. Rayquaza just goes to show us all everywhere how a real woman can still thrive under these circumstances, doing her best to build a more peaceful world while not letting that push her into the shadows or make her take a back seat in her own life. she is a community leader and an innovator.

#3 - SALAZZLE

She's the archetypal femme fatale. A dominatrix. A baddie. Does she make me uncomfortable? Yes, absolutely. But I'm not a furry so I'm not really the target audience of what's happening here.

#2 - SLAKING

I know so many butches who look exactly like her. you love to see it.

#1 - MEWTWO

as one feminist philosopher has said: "I see now that the circumstances of one's birth is irrelevant, it is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are."

I think any woman living in a patriarchal society can sympathize with mewtwo's story. enraged at being treated like the property of the people who created her rather than her own fully realized person, she goes on a rampage where it quickly becomes obvious that she is even more powerful than that what she was originally created in the image of. Although this takes her down a dark path, she eventually learns to self-actualize by working on herself rather than pointlessly lashing out at people who had nothing to do with hurting her. it's empowering stuff. doubly empowering because she killed all those clowns who DID hurt her

now, of course, there are plenty more pokemon that are girls than just what i've listed here today. but i hope youve learned a little something from this.

[caffeineandsociety]

"'Socialization' arguments are bullshit" not as in "actually, there IS no difference between how people raise 'boys' and 'girls' because trans people exist, I am a very solid critical thinker uwu"

But as in "yes, there IS a double standard to how kids are treated based on AGAB, and it IS largely binary, BUT there are so many intersecting confounding factors - including but not limited to race, dis/ability, body type, gender conformity, local culture, individual family politics, sometimes even what gender one's parents WANTED, and, yes, one's own internal sense of gender and when it developed - that trying to make hard and fast rules about what people take away from it is an exercise in futility at best; it is up to any given individual to work out what they, personally, internalized from that experience; there are unfortunately no cheat codes for that"

Also as in "stop trying to pin the blame solely on one gender and/or AGAB - we ALL have shitty gendered biases to unlearn, dipshit, it came free with your birth into a patriarchal society"

[buddiesmutslut]

“Tommy left for a good reason.” Yes, he did. Buck’s journey to accept his sexuality is his own, it’s not up to anyone else to walk him through it.

He still left though.

Taylor & Natalia were also valid in taking a beat when faced with the full Evan Buckley effect, but they’re villainized while Tommy is applauded.

Idk man, I know everyone loves BuckTommy, & I enjoy Tommy’s character a lot too, but the imagery is pretty clear. Tommy’s a great guy, but he’s not Buck’s guy.

EVAN BUCKLEY + the curse of first dates

[cinnamonest]

I'm not looking to start shit so I'm not linking it or anything, but you may have seen a recent anti-dark-content post circulating with a lot of notes making rounds in the x reader sphere and while I have nothing against people posting their feelings in their own private spaces, every time I see these kinds of posts there's a lot of misinformation that gets regurgitated in the reblogs/replies and I saw what looked like a battlezone in the replies, so.

I know posts like that can be very jarring and affects people like my readers, so to combat misinformation/shaming for anyone who saw it, I'm going to share some of my information on combatting fandom puritanism/misogyny/kinkshaming in its most common forms.

The most important fact, if you read nothing else, is this:

Most women have rape fantasies.

62% to be exact. I think the most pervasive myth on this content is that consumers are "weird" for it, when the numbers don't indicate that. You're in the majority!

The vast majority of people who have rape fantasies do not put them into practice in real life. A variety of factors can determine whether or not they do, particularly specific psychiatric disorders. (X)

To specifically address common harmful and pervasive myths:

the "go to therapy!" line

Generally any academic or professional resource will immediately tell you that consuming and engaging in "dark" fantasies is accepted and encouraged by mainstream psychiatry and part of the professional education for psychiatrists. (This also used to be pretty well-known until like the last 5 years or so, not sure why that changed.)

Here are some particularly insightful resources:

1) This article by Dr. David Wahl, in my opinion, hands-down does the best job of simply and thoroughly explaining why these fantasies occur and why couples practice CNC, as well as the fact that they are both harmless, psychologically beneficial to those with them, and not at all correlated to real-life rape.

2) Dr. Claudia Six has some of the best and most thorough material out there on the subject, specifically explaining why this is taught in mainstream academia psychology and how it is incredibly helpful to rape victims (X).

3) Lisa Diamond is a professional who focuses on this subject a lot, and was featured in the documentary "The Dilemma of Desire," in which she specifically focuses on how these fantasies are not correlated to real-life desires. (X)

4) Dr. Casey Lyle has specifically talked a lot on his socials about how fantasies, even in men/the perspective of the offender, do not correlate to actual risk of offending.

5) This article is not by a professional, but from the perspective of a survivor discussing how it is beneficial to survivors.

the "why would you want that?" line

The idea that fictional tastes = what you want to happen to you in real life is actually of misogynistic origin. I don't want to seek out or add links on this one, but if you're really curious, you can research about how the idea that "women read rape fiction, that means they secretly want rape!" was originally a classic "red pill"/MGTOW/4chan talking point that made its way into mainstream dialogue and thus the public mind in the last 15 years or so due to the incel epidemic popularizing those communities.

the "it's only valid for survivors then!" line

On one hand, yes it's very important to acknowledge that trauma victims use it to cope, however I feel that over-emphasizing that gives the impression that non-victims should be excluded from consumption of dark content, so to clarify, it's a very valid means for all women. Many women who have not personally experienced rape still fantasize about it, and that's fine.

The full explanation as to why this is true for many of them would be lengthy (and addressed in the aforementioned Dilemma of Desire documentary), but in the simplest terms, nonconsensual sex is the only context in which patriarchal society permits women to have sex at all without feeling guilt. For many women, particularly those in more heavily misogynistic or religious cultures, these fantasies are appealing because the idea of consensual sex may give them feelings of shame, guilt, "sin," etc. These fantasies allow them to experience the feeling of being desired without guilt of participation.

No society on earth is free of the psychological grip that cultural misogyny has on women, and shaming women for adapting to the conditions they are forced to exist under is as harmful as the misogyny that causes it itself.

ALL women experience a form of psychological trauma inherent to female childhood and female adolescence in a patriarchal world, and that is just as valid as coping with individual traumatic events.

Good resources on the subject of why women have these fantasies and how they are helpful in general:

(X) (X)

The "what you consume will make you do it in real life!" myth

Although the resources above already address this, it's important to establish why this myth is so prevalent and what its origins are.

The idea that consuming media with dark themes leads to or indicates desires to replicate those acts is a residual element of two major events:

1) Puritan revival culture, popularized in the US and UK in the 90s and 2000s (also known as "Satanic Panic"). A major facet of this movement was TV megachurch preachers making money off of exploiting well-meaning but paranoid parents into believing that your child playing Dungeons and Dragons or Pokemon would make them future serial killers and lure them into satanic cults. (X)

2) at the tail end of this, it was cemented in the public mind as a cultural ripple aftershock of the Columbine shooting, where this sentiment became popularized as the general public blamed violent video games like Doom and "dark" music like Marilyn Manson (whose life was temporarily completely upended by the events and took him years to recover/be safe from) for the 1999 shooting. This event had MASSIVE permanent and global effects in all sorts of ways that the public often underestimates the sheer scope of, notably that it solidified, prolonged, and, in the minds of many, "proved" the paranoias of the preexisting Satanic Panic. (X) This established a precedent, leading to virtually any major horrible event being blamed on the perpetrator's media consumption, including murder and sex crimes.

What this myth ignores in the cases it references (the slenderman stabbings, columbine, sasebo slashing, batman shooting, etc) is two crucial facts: that hundreds of millions of people consume the same media with no negative effects (helpful effects even), and that in every single case cited as "evidence" to the claim, the perpetrator had a preexisting psychiatric condition correlated to acts of violence (which usually went ignored, downplayed and even accelerated/worsened by those around them rather than the help they needed).

Sorry for the wall of text, but I feel an ethical obligation to combat this kind of misinformation, and I hope these resources are helpful for those who may be negatively affected by common misunderstandings.

You are not abnormal or wrong for the fictional content you consume or the fantasies you have!