#this gender essentialism is bad and dumb

[selfinflictedgunshotwound]

how do terfs grapple with the fact that they're white supremacist losers who think that women are weak essentially like adult babies but that they also bear the apparent brunt of all human pain... liiike ok which narrative are we going with

[vamptastic]

It can just be sort of exhausting growing up in a time where everybody's worst projections and stereotypes and misconceptions about transness are constantly shoved in your face by assholes if you're remotely involved in trans communities online. Or hell, they're just in the news headlines themselves. Or being espoused by peers that wouldn't have had transgenderism so much as cross their mind twenty years ago. I'm tired of the evil voice in my head having an endless supply of ammunition.

[anti-terf-posts]

Many terfs try to be “funny” by making fun of trans people but their “jokes” literally make themselves look stupid. their jokes are really repetitive, unoriginal and some of the unfunniest things you can hear and not in the way that it’s so bad it’s good.

Also their “jokes” are of course always bad arguments that has no ground except “I think it’s wrong” or “my religion says it’s wrong”

I can't find it anywhere, but theres a thread on twitter that sums it up pretty well.

I think it went somewhere along the lines of the op saying "Transphobes have the same three jokes", someone replying with "We have as many jokes as you have [r word] genders". op replied to that comment with "That's just the same joke". essentially, the tweet just shows how dumb transphobes are and how terrible and unoriginal their jokes are

[copperbadge]

Hey Sam. Considering some recent posts I thought you might be interested in this article.

A deaf and blind mind: What it's like to have no visual imagination and no inner voice?

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-01/aphantasia-no-visual-imagination-inner-voice/103649486

Hope you enjoyed the long weekend! Cheers, Kate.

Oh, thanks for this! And apologies my response is like a MONTH LATE :D

It's an interesting article because it's more about the study than the topic directly -- which is not a bad thing, it's cool to see people working in that space getting profiled and hopefully getting attention/funding on account of it.

Especially interesting was the discussion of ways of "having" thoughts and the fact that Derek doesn't pre-hear his speech. I do actually often rehearse what I'm going to say but primarily, I think more like Loren, when I'm writing -- I may, for example, get a question on Tumblr and go about my chores for the next half hour kind of mentally laying out how I'll respond, but it's not like I hear my own voice, I'm just structuring the response. And I don't usually pre-hear spoken thoughts -- I don't pre-hear them at all, but if I'm going to give a presentation or have a difficult conversation I will often work out some modes of speech/response ahead of time.

I'm of two opinions about the reference to the mind being "deaf and blind" -- my knee-jerk reaction is that it's an actively bad way to describe aphantasia, because it implies that there's an impairment to cognition itself, which I don't think is the case. On the other hand, we don't think of hearing or visually impaired people as lacking senses, just as having a different experience of them, which does line up with how aphantic cognition happens, at least I think. It's true that unless I'm actively working at it, I don't see or hear anything in my mind, and even when I'm working at it I generally can't "hear" -- I can recite song lyrics mentally and they will be in the rhythm of the song, but I don't hear the music or the singer.

There's a highly stupid "test" that's gone around that's meant to indicate if you're transgender, which asks you to imagine a stick with a red end and a blue end, floating vertically in front of you, with the red end on the bottom and the blue end on the top. You're meant to imagine it rotating three times end over end, and then say what position the colored ends are in (which is on bottom, which is on top) after the rotation. Apparently depending on whether you have a "male" or "female" mind, you'll read "rotate three times" differently and a different color will be on top. This is self-evidently dumb but also when I encountered it I had to keep re-reading it because I couldn't picture something so abstract, let alone picture it moving, and I kept forgetting what was supposed to be where. Gender essentialism: defeated by neurodiversity!

In any case, I don't have the deep, profound grief that some people who were diagnosed with cognitive disability post-adolescence have, I think in part because my ADHD is mild and I did okay -- not great, but sufficient -- without treatment. But I do think that if I had been diagnosed with ADHD or known about aphantasia when I was a kid (not that it was conceptually present in the field when I was a kid) I would have probably gone into neuroscience or some related profession, or I would have stuck with my psych degree in undergrad. The longer I do this reading the more I wish I was working in that space. I don't think I have it in me to go back to school for a hard science, especially not if I continue working, but in a different world, I would have liked to have been a contributor to this kind of work.

[nothorses]

Do u happen 2 have resources abt what femmephobia is? Ur reply 2 that post recently is 1 of the 1st times Ive heard the term & I gather u dont have positive feelings abt it but idk what it is exactly, let alone y it would b bad or good as a concept, & Im curious.

The basic idea behind "femmephobia" is (in general) that people are oppressed specifically for being feminine. I believe there's an older definition that refers to the specific oppression of femme lesbians; iirc this is also a part of the ideology that believes butch lesbians gain male privilege and oppress femme lesbians. Both of these definitions are dumb as hell.

The idea of "femmephobia" ignores and erases the existence of transphobia. It claims that regardless of the gender presentation expected of a person, they will always be rewarded for presenting in a masculine way, and punished for presenting in a feminine way. It claims that women who conform to the gender binary will always be more oppressed than women who don't, and implies that, for example, butches and transmascs gain privilege by associating more with masculinity. It implies that homophobia and transphobia don't exist, period.

Some people believe this idea is supportive of trans women; the logic they follow is that trans women reject masculinity and embrace femininity, therefore "femmephobia" is the cause of their suffering. The problem with this logic is that it erases violence done to trans women who are GNC, masc, or butch, and implies trans women who don't pass or transition are inherently more privileged than those who do.

It implies that the defacto Most Targeted Group is cis women. The definition of "feminine" here is proximity to cis womanhood; the closer you are to a cis woman, the more oppressed. The same idea is used to make TERF arguments: AFAB people are oppressed for a femininity trans women can never possess, etc. etc.

It's a weird and fucked up idea that essentially just attempts to erase the existence of any kind of gendered oppression that is not plain misogyny, and positions cis women specifically as The True Victims; which is because it originates from radical feminism.

(Disclaimer: this is a pretty loose breakdown based on scattered knowledge. I haven't done enough research to speak with the confidence I would like to, and I welcome additions and information!)

[hiriajuu-suffering]

Kamala aunty and the Hindu vote

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So yeah, Kamala2024. Bite me.

[jackrabbit-fandom]

Hi hi hi!!! I saw you write for one piece and was wondering if I could request something for luffy thats probably a little too specific..????

I headcannon luffy is somewhere on the aro/ace or gray spectrum and would just be so interested in reading about reader having feelings for him because hes like just you know luffy our boy😭 and luffy considers reader as practically oul mate type thsts how close they are.

Maybe like he feels just a tiny bit of something but decides to leave that until after he becomes king of the pirates but if its too hard you dont have to do this😭😭

Like doesnt have to be anything long or too grand and its okay if you dont want to write it🙏but thank you so much in advanve if you make it! ^^ (also hopefully no events that happen after sabaody because thats where i am right now im sorry but you dont have to if yoh dont want!😭💔)

AroAce Luffy headcanons (sorta)

So I'm not super versed on the aro part of the spectrum, but i am on the ace side, so i know more given that. Ether way, luffy is one of my favorites, and this is one of my own headcanons for him. More so, headcannon style then "story" cause im still trying to figure that part out, lol

Firstly, I'll say that to make this work, im going more so in the demi-romantic/sexual side. I am of the opinion that while he is slightly oblivious, and let's be honest, kinda dumb at times, luffy isn't completely clueless to these things.

Nothing too big here, gender neutral pronouns, fluff/tiny bit of angst, It's a tiny suggestive, but it's not really anything bad, Mabye, a bit of crack cause luffy

Sorry if this wasn't exactly what you were looking for. Like i said, I've never done this before, but hopefully, you liked it anyway

~Jack

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Having feelings for this guy would be kinda hard, mainly because he's very obvious when people do like him. Hed likely just assumed your best buds for a while unless you get the courage to just tell him. This can get frustrating when he's constantly hugging you and hanging around you.

If we do go fully on aroace luffy, it'd probably hurt a bit. He'd probably fully ignore your feelings for him or just not notice. It would be more so a one-sided pinning. If you're part of his crew, he likely clings onto you like he does with the others, which could also make things worse

If you confess to him now, he'd just straight up tell you he's not interested, or he doesn't care about that kinda thing

However, if we go more of a demi route and you confess, theres a few outcomes:

The first one is that he just bluntly says he's not interested, just like in the aroace one, which is kinda harsh but not fully unexpected. I don't think he'd mean it to actually hurt you, but he does mainly seem to tell the truth with these things

The second would be where he misunderstands your confession somehow? And it ends up as a kind of "i love you." "i love you too, buddy!" Thing which just gets awkward....

The third is where he's known you for quite some time and has been able to get close enough to develop some feelings. With him, he's a very loyal friend, but in terms of relationships, he's not used to feeling that kind of love, i guess? So it'd likely take him a bit of time to get used to the feeling and figure out what to do with it. It likely does come with confusion and a few questions, but as i said, he's not COMPLETELY clueless. He knows what a relationship is, at least. You'd have to essentially be his soulmate, which in his mind is likely someone who has his sense of humor and can cook. Obviously, he has a bit more to that, such as he'd prefer someone who doesn't manipulate or hurt ithers for their own personal gain

If he were to start a relationship, i do think it would have to be after he became king of the pirates. He doesn't really want many distractions in his adventure when it comes to that kind of relationship. Plus, like i said, he'd have to be very close to you, so assuming you a strawhat as well, I'd give him plenty of time to grow attached. So once his goal was reached, he may be willing to try a relationship. I still see him as a very goofy person even then, so he'd probably still just treat you like his best buddy but with a new title.

Like i said, i dont think much would change when it comes to how he treats you. He's already very affectionate with his crew, so he likely acts the same with you. If you asked, though, i think he'd try to give you a bit more than the others, but it still wouldn't be a big difference. Though if you asked for a kiss... you might end up with the sloppiest wettest smooch in the world right on your cheek.

Given that he's inexperienced, he might ask the others for some advice which likely wouldn't end well, its ether zoro giving him the dumbest awnsers sense they share a brain cell, sanji attempting to give luffy 'gentleman lessons" and getting frustrated, usopp acting like a expert just to not be that, or him finally getting to nami and robin and getting actual advice. That would somehow backfire anyway.

On the side of Ace, i don't think he'd be very interested in that kind of stuff. It's been confirmed that he reacts towards the bath scenes and such due to usopp being there. He just doesn't strike me as the type to be overly active in that area, again i dont think hes clueless,i doubt makima never gave him and his brother 'the talk' he just doesnt care for it. It's just never been something he's been interested in. He likely overheard Shanks talking about it at some point but didn't really care.

One piece and luffy are not my own characters, though the headcannons themselves are mine

Sorry for any grammer or spelling errors.

[cursedcupcakemaster]

This is a small series I made for nothing but enjoyment

Notes:I don't own twisted wonderland or it's characters this is just my interpretation of how they'd be they belong to Yana Toboso and Disney

Reader is gender neutral, some of these are kind of short

Type;lemon cupcakes

How Savannaclaw helps their partner after a bad day

Leona:

Leona isn't dumb he knows when you're miserable

He has a few solutions to this after learning about what happened

Firstly he'd text you to come to his room

He's not much for mushy stuff but he knows one thing that helps people feel better after a crappy day is a nice nap

Once you got there he'd pull you into his arms holding you against his chest

Before you can protest he'll tell you sometimes you need to just calm down and rest so he's not letting you leave until you rest

You two essentially would take a peaceful nap together for some much needed rest and maybe play a game of chess when you woke up

Ruggie:

Ruggie isn't really that surprised to learn you're having a bad day, he knows because he's been in your shoes before

You're clearly exhausted with how quiet you are

He's had days like that so when you almost passed out in class that day he decided maybe you needed to be spoiled the same way you spoil him when you could

When you got to your dorm you were just a little shocked to find what Ruggie had done for you

He'd grin at you before mentioning how he made sure there was plenty for you both

Ruggie likes making sure you're fed and happy as much as you do for him so expect a lot of donuts in this little snack time of yours

Jack Howl:

He doesn't entirely get it at first until he realizes how much you've been dealing with all month

Jack would organize something so you two could at least unwind

He'd bring you to the forest for a nice long run encouraging you that it would help you feel a lot better

He'd run fast but enough that you could keep up until you reached a clearing that overlooked everything the sun's shine would touch

At the end I'd day he'd talk with you about doing this every week just to take a hit of the edge off

[wrishwrosh]

the vaster wilds has the typical goodreads problem of all the negative reviews just being “this book was gross and sad and nothing happened :((“ “the prose was stylized and hard to understand”” but as a gross sad stylized prose enjoyer these critiques do not get to the MEAT of all the evils herein present

- the problem of the enlightened protagonist, where a character who has nominally lived in the real historical past until the book begins and yet somehow manages to individually develop a 21st century twitter-educated perspective on colonialism, god, and nature. classic groffism nothing new

- remember that tweet about how hiking is a bourgeois affectation and indigenous people never hiked before colonization. imagine if that was the premise of an entire novel. written by somebody who went to amherst

- another classic groffism is taking a real historical figure about whom almost nothing is known and constructing a history for them that can’t technically be ruled out as impossible given the dearth of records but IS ahistorical, implausible, and kind of stupid while also making sure that the one thing that is concretely known about this person is weirdly and smugly deemphasized in the narrative. in this case the historical figure is “jane” the anonymous teenage girl whose remains were found at jamestown exhibiting signs of butchering. the cannibalism is treated as a twist ending which is dumb as hell and made the pacing insanely frustrating as this was obvious from the beginning to any true jamestownheads in the audience. also the cannibalism of a young woman seems like an obvious place of exploration for a novel nominally about the exigencies of subsistence survival and how hard it was to be a girl in the dark ages before second wave feminism but what do i know. obviously you should just kind of shoehorn it in as a gotcha in the last 20 pages serving as the millionth indication that the bad guys in this narrative are bad and do bad things

- speaking of the bad guys every single character aside from the narrator is a one dimensional paper doll present to essentially speak one of groffs points directly into camera and then vanish in a way that literally made me laugh out loud several times. Some Women Are Vain, Which Is Bad. Some Men Hurt Women And Native People For Fun, Which Is Evil.

- there was a stylistic decision made to not capitalize proper nouns which sure. it makes sense with what the book is trying to do to not capitalize god or english or powhatan. but then it was so inconsistently applied like why is atlantic (ocean) not capitalized but James (river) is. why is god lowercase but Sunday is uppercase. why are all the names capitalized but titles that function as names arent. stop the madness

- a personal nitpick now but i have spent a lot of time kicking around in the area where the book is set and was hoping at least there would be some evocative descriptions of this place that i love. and yet in this book nominally about wilderness there was so little specificity in the depiction of it! this could have been any forest! the specific natural setting did not feel like a tidewater forest! feels like groff wrote it based on a google search of pamunkey traditional lifestyles and a glance at a topographic map

- cant even get into all the reductive and underresearched gender stuff but know it’s there. classic groffism

- finally and most minimally yet perhaps most egregiously groff has yet again failed to internalize a religious worldview in order to write a religious character. this narrator is a change from marie in matrix as we are sternly informed on page 4 that she believes what she has been told about christianity. like once every 20 pages groff remembers that and has her pray or something and then once she has been away from her culture for about 200 pages she realizes god is a lie and that’s the arc. cool!

- why bother! why bother with this setting, this character, this real place and real historical event and real belief system, if you arent going to USE any of it. this should have been a zine about climate change. it should have been like six tweets. if it needed to be fiction (and im not convinced it did) it should have been a contemporary novel and like three things could have been changed. why! bother!

in summary, i went so insane that i googled every single person mentioned in the acknowledgements to see how many were historians or archaeologists or librarians or ecologists or associates of the pamunkey tribe or anyone else who might be assumed to have expertise here and there was: one. illustrative i think!!!!

[22degreehalo]

Okay I finished the movie. (Spoilers follow!)

I liked the parts about Barbie as an actual doll. I liked the ending! It was fun and creative and had some real emotion to it!

I didn't... enjoy the portrayal of gender.

The movie just really does not seem to want to face up to the idea that in the Barbie world, women are the privileged class. They hold all positions of power and property. Barbie doesn't even know where the men live?

Yes, it's all deliberately weird and surreal. But it's all just too weird and surreal to relate much to the real world. The climax relies on assuming that the barbies would essentially relate perfectly to a random real-world woman, which... even if it were true that all women IRL can relate to each other, their life experiences are just way too different.

(Yes, the patriarchy got introduced into Barbie land! But... how??? It's very hand-waved. Why would the privileged class suddenly completely turn the system 180 just because a guy came by with some books? It almost feels like a reverse-racism thing...?!)

And then, in the end, the kens still aren't treated equally. The movie jokes that 'someday' they'll have as much power as women IRL. But... we literally just spent the last hour exploring how shitty women have it. So now the kens have it even worse than that. And that's okay?

Again: it's meant to be dumb and silly. But we're also supposed to suspend our disbelief and live in this world for two hours. And the world just doesn't really jive with the tone. The more you think about it, the more you treat it as a real place, the less sense it makes. It only works if you laugh off the kens as just privileged white guys just because they resemble them.

Which, also! The movie in the end tries to be comforting to men and say that they don't need to be defined by their girlfriends or whatever! Which is actually a good message IRL: for too many men, being able to Date A Woman really is treated as the ultimate arbiter of human worth! (It... makes little sense in the world, where it seems like the kens really do need to rely on the barbies? But. see above.)

Except the entire way through, the idea of men having feelings is mocked and laughed off. Like I said, they imply that a gender non-conforming man would have absolutely 0 reason to fear violence at the hands of other men, which is... completely detached from reality?! Everything a stereotypical 'man' might care about is treated as being not really all that good, men's fears of abandonment or failure are eye-rollingly chalked up to 'egotism' (again, despite the status of the kens in this world), and when Ken cries at the end, it's presented as humiliating, as opposed to the dignified crying Barbie does on multiple occasions.

To be clear: I am not accusing the movie of misandry. I'm accusing the movie of being excessively cruel towards men who do not fit the stereotypical image of 'masculine', and then also being kind of pointlessly mean at those who do, as well.

Like, in the climax, one of the ultimate scenes of 'female empowerment' has the barbies pretend to listen while the kens play the guitar at them ('Push' by Matchbox 20, which is a good song IMO??? But it's treated as like. Objectively bad.), only to deliberately check their phone to show they don't care, then get up and talk to another man instead. And all of this is framed as, like 'playing on their petty egos and jealousies.' And not as like... them opening up? To someone they like? And trying to do something nice? And then being hurt when they don't feel the connection they wanted?

(Also men getting angry at other men, or staging a 'war', is treated as entirely petty and silly and kinda funny. Just an 'own goal', so to speak. Which, again, feels very insensitive when men... do in fact violently attack other men over reasons like jealousy.)

(Also also it's treated as super arrogant when a man tries to help out a woman who is literally saying aloud that she doesn't understand and wants help??? Because it's soooo offensive to think a woman can't do something she says she can't do??? even though the end of the movie is all about how women shouldn't have to be perfect and should be allowed to be just normal and not really good at anything???? I'm so confused.)

It's just... such a weird mix of a genuinely fun and creative campy setting, which then mixes in the most weirdly tone-deaf and old-fashioned gender essentialism possible. It tries to be progressive at the end, but the setting is already so stuck in those ideas (that inverting gender power dynamics would be really good actually since women are better in power, that men don't have any real legitimate reason to have emotions so it's weird and dumb if they do) that it doesn't track. It doesn't match the actual events of the movie.

It's not just an empty popcorn movie. Frankly, it'd be a lot better if it was!!!!!!! (At least for me, hahah.) It's best appreciated, honestly, if you do turn your brain off and just enjoy the pretty visuals and the nice moments at the end. Which is sad. Because it clearly does try to do so much more than that! But all those attempts just... make the movie more confused and weird and kind of mean?

Basically, the movie tries to do a whole 'haha what if we switched the power of the genders' but then still wants to treat all of the men like they're privileged white guys, even though there's 0 worldbuilding reason for that to be justified. (Plus also it has the typical 'wacky misandry' problems of being incredibly shitty to GNC and disabled men. but like I just expected that literally always nowadays.)

So yeah uhhh. unfortunately I gotta say that I don't really agree with those 'lollllll men hate this movie even though it literally just says that they're okay by themselves and don't need to base their worth on women!!!!!' like YEAH but it also implies some pretty. questionable stuff about oppression and mental health and how much we should respect men who have ~delicate fragile emotions~ too.

[pumpumdemsugah]

Sorry I hate ' essays ' like that

It always just feels like they cobbled together every popular criticism of anything online that specifically mentions women and make sure you say intersectional but nothing that specific.

#Female rage isn't what got Black men lynched but cold hard white supremacy. We need to recentre white supremacy in these discussions. Do you think those people believed what they were actually saying all the time? They didn't give a fuck if that Black man did or didn't do shit. They needed a pretense for horrific torture and murder. They were superior ( apparently) so could do what they wanted. They wanted blood, humiliation and to use fear to control Black people and all parts of the white community were enthusiastic participants to make that happen. The stereotype of the pure innocent white woman doesn't work if there's no Black threat or animalistic opposite. White supremacy was essential.

This can be said about literally any oppression. It doesn't stop it from being a facet of that oppression.

???? Is this a real criticism? Why limit it to women, because this is specifically about women, that's how talking about a group of people works. Did anyone make these claims ? Why are we strawmanning a glib hashtag as if it was some movement that started out deeper than women online mentioning women's rage ? We can't do female rage because other people are oppressed. Sorry you're dumb

I was half hoping maybe this would be an exploration ( no I wasn't lol this was exactly as swallow as I'd expect but let me continue to lie lol) about how and what anger means for women. How anger is weaponised against black women in particular and how useful rage is and isnt for us but I still think Black women should be allowed full and human representation including rage. A criticism I have of #femalerage is it's often women being denigrated first and then she snaps. We don't actually have that many depictions of female psychopathy or killing in cold blood. Women literally do not talk as much as men in film and that's why so many women online have latched onto any crumb of anger, there isn't much out there. A lot of the female characters that are tagged #female rage are murdered, beaten and their violence is never narratively condoned. It ends up reinforcing in the ideal that #female rage is bad because they're punished for it anyway.

A lot of misogyny is centred on the body, and ideas of inferiority around women's body - that's not gender essentialism. That's an important way misogyny functions so can we all stop playing dumb about this? Large and I mean large chunks of Black feminism is very literary about the body but none of you read enough to even know that but you love Black feminist somehow even though a lot of black feminist thought is antithetical to this idea.

Nahh some of you just need to admit your fundamental problem is shit being about women ( or finding this cringe ) because none of these criticisms were particularly deep or argued convincingly. It relied on the audience being exposed to certain talking points before so filling in the blanks to make up for how swallow that was and expecting agreement because the right combination of phrases in buzzwords were mentioned.

I'm uncomfortable when women are mentioned hottake number 975,899

[understandingbimbos]

years later (and it hurts me to say this, but it has been years) i think one of the things that annoyed me the most about bimbotok (besides the blatant spread of misinformation, making a joke of feminism, and spreading harmful ideas+content to minors...) was the flattening of the bimbo aesthetic to a bad ariana grande impression and a poor implementation (and misunderstanding) of y2k fashion.

you see it in spades on tumblr now, even with the blocked tags. "female manipulator," "coquette aesthetic," "dollete core," "girl interrupted syndrome," lana del rey, it's all nonsense that for some reason has gotten wrapped up with and conflated with bimboism.

i read a not terrible article on bimbo-couture about bimbotok and gatekeeping. it deals with the irl bimbo community which, as i've been saying, is not my forte but it bleeds over and in our failure to gatekeep bimbofication (and bimbos) we've just let it be pigenholed in a different ways by others. bimbofication is not more diverse or varied now its just a vague mess of gender essentialism and like, eating disorder chic. all these girls talk about how they're porcelain dolls and soft little fertile white lambs. they listen to lana del rey and glamorize abusive relationships, mindlessly buying into consumerism as their birthright. it's garbage.

im not saying the kink community as is was alright but at least it was catering to adult women about adult things, and "bimbo" meant "bimbo". now "bimbo" means "hot girl" and all girls are "hot" because all girls are beautiful. to be a girl is to be beautiful, and if you're not beautiful you're not a girl. this is where we're at. this is what it's come down to. "on wednesdays we wear pink," because that's what girls do. that's bimbo. because bimbo = girl.

its seriously infuriating. at least when bimbo was being used as a pejorative or just completely fully associated with fetishism there was a distinction, there was an understanding that's been obscured now. for those of us this matters to, you could name a character or person who wasn't blonde and never wore pink and had the smallest tits in the world as an example of a bimbo and this would be ubiquitously understood. because we knew it wasnt just blonde and pink. or blonde and tits. or "girl". we understood bimbo to mean stupid, sexual, playful -- regardless of what form it took, a bimbo by any other name. not just "hot" but flirty. not just dumb but fun, frivolous, the party girl.

it feels like that's been lost now and the result hasn't been more bimbos in more styles doing more things but less bimbos in less styles doing less things. and its been like that for 5 years now. here's to 2025.

[wheresmycontent]

‘Til Death Do Us Part [Castlevania]

Isaac x Reader [Gender Neutral]

C|TW: implied yandere

Let me start by saying, no. I don’t believe Isaac would ever turn his lover into a night creature, dead or alive. That’d only happen if he truly hates you and has no intentions of trying to make things work. Even then you’d have to be an abuser of some sort to deserve that. Other than that, Isaac will not mention transforming you, his beloved spouse.

On that note, he’s not going to be abusive to you either. He believes loyalty and love are essential, why would he betray the one person he loves? He’d much rather hold you in his arms and bask in your warmth, talking about his plans for your future. Promising to give you the world you deserve before he passes. That sounds better than beating on you for no reason.

You should follow his example. The minute he believes you’re just another worthless waste of space there’s no turning back. What reason would you have for mistreating him when he’s done nothing but care for you? Making sure you’d never go hungry or die at the hands of demonic beasts. There’s no saving a person that’d betray those that helped them, he hopes you’re nothing like that.

Isaac will never trust anyone with your well-being, he can’t afford to lose you especially after losing Dracula. So please try to understand why he drags you along with him and the horde of night creatures. You’ll be by his side the entire time riding on the horse that he was able to find. Don’t worry about the demons, they’d only attack if he commanded them and there’s no way he’d be dumb enough to joke around.

For a while, as he’s reeling from Dracula’s death he’s hypervigilant. You can’t be too far away from him, you’re not allowed to eat anything unless he puts it in front of you himself, while entering a new village you must walk two feet behind him on his right side. Most nights he’ll watch you sleep for two hours before falling asleep over you. That way he’d be harmed first should anything bad happens.

Because of Isaac’s strong will, it’s hard to make him see things from your perspective. Until he’s ready to question his way of thinking there’s not much you could do. It’s better to pull him into your chest and force him to take a minute to breathe or surprise him with a meal you manage to pull together. Then he’d be more willing to be soft and allow himself a moment of peace. He genuinely appreciates it and will return the kindness when the opportunity comes.

If he’d let a horde of demons lose over being denied entry how do you think he reacts to your distress? He’d have his beast devour anyone brave enough to insult you in his presence. It’s a sick tendency but who in their right mind would tell him to stop? Not you, that’s for sure. It’s better to offhandedly mention how sickening it is to witness the heinous acts. That’d stop him from doing it in front of you.

[otto-c-graves]

Boy howdy, do I hate venting on here but I am livid. TLDR and trigger warning for narcissism, gaslighting, and abuse.

I cannot STAND when someone tries to tell me something I already know involving my job or passion.

I understand constructive criticism. I understand trying to be genuinely helpful. But when you’re a narcissist gaslighter that needs to be right every GOD DAMN time on EVERYTHING you do, I do not accept it.

I have been writing stories since I can remember. The one thing I took serious in school was learning how to write correctly and how to be a better writer. The one thing I’ve always wanted to be was a writer. An author. A creator of art.

But if you’re going to try and tell me I’m wrong on a simple grammar question only to back track and explain it correctly to make me look bad, I will NOT take that lightly.

Just because you stopped using big words because the people around you didn’t understand what you were saying so you dumbed yourself down to fit in. Just because you couldn’t break the cycle and understand that you could live the life you wanted, even if it meant making your family unhappy. Just because you decided you needed to have kids and pose as the perfect parent just to cut others down. Just so you could show off your children’s talents, to flaunt us off to make yourself look good. Just because your head is so thick and you believed the American dream. Just because you want to be waited on hand and foot, be respected and treated like royalty, only to have the accountability of a small child. Just because you get pissed off that people treat you like a toxic person because you can’t accept that you are. Does not give you the right to belittle others.

Just because you refuse to change for the better, does not grant you the freedom to pick at my flaws and treat me like I’m always wrong.

But you will. You will continue to do so.

And I don’t mean you, the reader, I mean my offender.

I know how to stop this. I do. But it’s easier said than done and there’s things here that I love too much to let go. And until then I can only do so much.

Essentially, please do not sit there and tell me how to do my job or my passions. My dreams. They are not yours to control. If you wanted this, then you should have pursued them yourself.

I’m sorry I didn’t come out like you wanted. I’m sorry I’m the wrong gender. I’m sorry you can’t completely control me anymore. I’m sorry I came out queer. I’m sorry you had to have me. I’m sorry I made your life miserable. I’m sorry I didn’t make you proud genuinely. I’m sorry.

And I feel guilty. I feel guilty that I’m venting. Because there are bigger problems out there. People are dying. People are suffering. There are much worse things happening and I’m sitting here, privileged, venting about a problem that seems so minuscule to others.

I’m so sorry…

[sniffanimal]

I can't find my post on it, maybe I deleted it, but the "would you rather encounter a strange man or a bear in the woods alone" thought experiment is not only just fucking dumb but is just sexist on premise alone. I despise seeing posts about that. clearly the experiment wants you to come to the conclusion "men bad" and have you pick the bear. if it really wanted a nuanced answer it wouldn't be such a clear message it's sending. and that message is bad!

if you genuinely are more afraid of the mere concept of a man (remember, the experiment doesn't say he has a machete or is actively hurting you or anything. it's just Some Guy) than a wild animal that can and will kill you, then you need to really do some soul searching on your views on gender essentialism.

it's not progressive, it's not feminist, it's not woke to replace one sexist viewpoint with another, this time with pink and glitter on it. dismantle the fucking binary and don't tell boys and men that they're inherently monsters for existing.

[moongothic]

oh my ... what you said about Oda using the "I want to be a man bc women are weak" trope made me think about Kuina.

I am bit upset we didnt encountered a strong swordwoman yet. I hope we will soon. Some people think Tashigi could be Kuina but that would really hurt me. She isnt near Zoro level at all. I dont want Kuina to be right.

This would be stupid.

But.

I think the best case scenario we could have, is if Zoro somehow encountered Ivankov before Mihawk, he could ask for HRT so that he could then go fight and defeat Mihawk "as a woman" and fulfill Kuina's dream for her and prove that a woman could be the strongest (and maybe get turned back into a man afterwards)

That's not how gender works of course, but Oda doesn't get it either, and I'm trying to picture the best case scenario Oda could actually give us

Because the only way Kuina's fears could be proven wrong is if both Mihawk and Zoro lost to a swordswoman at the end, and I do not think that is ever going to happen. Because the clash between Mihawk and Zoro has been like The Ultimate Goal of Zoro's whole story, so him losing to someone else would just feel bad

Like it'd be a lil dumb (from a queer POV (unless Zoro turned out to be a butch trans woman, which to be fair, valid, and I would enjoy the dudebros getting Fucking Angry About It lmao)), but like. Oda does have his issues with the gender essentialism and misogyny, and the way the chesspieces are arranged on the table right now, it's either that or Kuina's fears end up correct. And it definitely sucks