#this isn't all as feminist as you think it is

[ladyloveandjustice]

I want to expand on what I'm talking about. And I said a little bit extra in the comments:

There's just some posts that have been going around about how to solve the issue of men swinging real right in America right now,which does have an impact on society. some guy was saying he was attacted to the right bc they were all 'welcome brother' but in the left people resent him. I think it's just. It's easier to go to an idealogy that's like 'you're entitled to this' than an idealogy that says 'hey you're not entitled to everything but you could be more emotionally healthy and kinder to other people and". That's something simply being nice or making them feel good won't ever fully fix. The "rewards" for being in the right will always feel more immediate for white men.

It's not unique to men to feel alienated in an idealogy that wants you to challenge yourself. At the same time, more kindness to everyone, emphasis on acceptance, less volatile language toward each other, will help the community be stronger over all. it is a difficult conundrum, but I don't think it comes down to 'we don't make men feel special enough

It also ignores I think, that white men DO get rewarded in leftist spaces too. a lot. Men will get a ton of adoration for saying something vaguely feminist than if a woman says it a lot of the time, and so on a so forth, everyone loves a sweet guy...I think that's something that already happens.

But let's get back to volatile language:

We always say guilt isn't going to help anyone and it isn't about guilt. But I think we need to admit that no, we do try to make people feel guilty and ashamed a lot. And not framing it around that most of the time would do a lot.

I've seen posts straight up saying it's a bad thing to want to survive and live happy lives and take actions to do this because (x) bad thing is happening. You know, the most basic human instinct? And that's not going to win over people. You may not like that, but it's not.

I don't think that needs to center on women helping men feel special about themselves. A lot of us are asked to take care of men all the time and it's exhausting. Men on the left can focus on being more positive about the concept of manhood if they want, but asking women to do the work. is just....yeah that's just the patriarchy.

I do think examining things like black masculinity etc is great though. If you have another marginalized identity, it will intertwine with masculinity in very specific ways that will be used against you, just as it is with femininity or being outside both those concepts (yet the world assigns you one anyway). I totally get that masculinity is used as a weapon against both gay men and gay women, in different specific ways. And I think at least learning about that and supporting efforts to stop this makes one a better person.

On the other hand. it would be insane of me to ask a Black woman to make a Black man feel special and accepted for simply being a man if she doesn't want to do that. Like. absolutely wild.

And it's it's rarely about that, is it? When we say "celebrate men" it's not bringing any unique experience into it. It's about white men. They're the ones who make up most of the alt-right.

Communities in the right are not compassionate but because they offer some form of reward and companionship they can seem like that. As much as people are lured in by "welcome brother" or whatever, those same people will on the right will mock any person who steps outside the strict roles that have been set.

So....we need to abolish to same roles. I think we need to focus on how we talk to people. On supporting people when they're trying.

It also comes off in how we talk to each other about basically I can harshly tell someone who has privilege over me-- a white man or straight person ect ect-- their guilt about their privilege does nothing, I'm not interested in guilt and what we need is action. But let's be real. Telling someone "you benefit from a system that makes other people suffer" is going to make someone feel guilty. And yelling at someone for feeling guilty isn't going to make that better. I think we avoid saying the truth and say what's the core of it-- no, it's not your fault you were born a certain way and now you benefit from something. A society hundreds of years in the making made that happen. And that sucks, that you basically have no choice but to be complicit. And it sucks way, way more for the people who are kept down by that system. So we need to change society. We can do it together. It's not to "make up" for you existing. It's because we care about each other. I want this for all of us, because when we see each other as whole people and are treated equally, it benefits all of us.

This is a not a "men are uniquely punished by the left for being men, we need to celebrate masculinity, stop being so mean" thing. It's a human thing. It's about the way we talk to each other and try to weild guilt towards people in general. People want to feel good about themselves. They want some kind of acceptance. If you're constantly made to feel bad, it can be hard to want to stay. This is something everyone feels, because we all have a selfish instinct.

People don't like feeling guilty. That's just how people are. It's promoting compassion, rather than hatred and resentment, that's going to help us in the end.

But me simply saying that isn't going to change much. Humans feel hurt and lash out too. When horrible things are happening to us, we resent people that don't understand that or are part of that. The paradigm shift will be hard. Not everyone will be able to do it and I don't think that's wrong.

Everyone gets frustrated by a class of people where a lot of them have more power and try to push them down. Nobody wants to talk to someone that's trying to hurt them.

That's why it needs to be someone like me who could explain racism 101 rather than idk. making a person of color say 'well white people don't feel special and accepted for being white. poc we must be nicer. let's celebrate whiteness because the right does and that's why white people are drawn to it, they feel accepted." listen to how ridic that sounds. you are literally asking for a white history month. That's the same thing you're doing when you're talking about manhood like this. The onus is not on the discriminated group to reach out to those harming them. That's up to others in the community.

But as a broader thing...We just need to figure out what the end game is. Do we want to yell and guilt trip, or do we want more people in our corner? What's more important, the end goal or if someone knows all the right lingo or matches up to your opinions exactly? What do we need to rally around? How can we take care of each other? If we're kinder to the community, more people will follow.

Anyway this is the last time i'll say some big thing like this and tag it. I don't like doing this on tumblr for a reason.

[0w0tsuki]

My thing about the femboy discourse is that I don't think there's much value in trying to delineate whether femboys are "really TMA" because that's not my fucking problem with femboys. My problem is something even the other trans feminists who've talked about this have had to tip-toe around and I'm just going to outright say it.

A MAJORITY of self identified femboys/femboy attracted people (yeah because our problem is not with the identity in and of itself but how the attraction to the transfeminine body while denying the transfemininity is a core tenent to Femboy culture. This cis girl who's into femboys because she sees them as someone that she as a woman can have power over un the patriarchy is a part of this conversation too) in the WIDER online community (Tumblr is a bubble!) are OPEN transmisogynists. Open as in they loudly proclaim their view of transfems as men, their complete disrespect of transfems boundaries, and their fetishisation of all transfeminine bodies as their preferred male sex object. Open as in STEALING the identity of Transfem Sex workers for their sissy scam blogs. Open as in harassing anyone they can get their hands on about how transfemininity is shoved down their throats. Open as in they can get together and make entire social media sites unusable with their bitchfit crybaby tantrums about Transfem existence.

Everybody loves to come together and make fun of these cretins when they get together to rage about the newest Transfem confirmation as a way to virtue signal being to recognize obvious out and proud transmisogyny and then collectively snap their fingers to forget about them the instant they quite down. The instant they would have to recognize that people like this are ALWAYS this vocal about it in their personal lives they just aren't as organized. The instant they would have to recon that there is a large contingent of mspec transmisoginists who are obsessed with transfems and make it their life's goal to sexualize our existence as much as possible while denying us our femininity and humanity.

The instant that they would have to recon that perhaps femboy isn't a queer friendly catchall term for "feminine boy" and is actually a term with history. That in that history there is trauma, exploitation, and harrasment. That that history is happening daily. That there are transfems whose only history with the term IS THAT HISTORY. That there are transfems whose experience with femboys has been the most transmisogynistic hateful bile she's ever experienced.

The instance a transfem asserts that she might not be 100% comfortable being around self identified femboys. That she might not not take kindly to the assertion that they are essentially the same thing and that infact femboys are her closest ally in the queer community. She's told to put all that to the side because uwu soft bean tboys would self combust from sadness if they were forced to think for even a second that their new word for gender expression might not be the purest thing in the world and they would actually have to be considerate of how they interact with others.

Then she's an evil perisex bio essentialist who just hates men being feminine and gender nonconformity and is trying to pull the ladder up by denying eggs femboy culture. She's actually actually an anti-sex puritan whose having an autogynophilia based disgust reaction. She's a pickme trying to throw Transfem femboys under the bus.

If you want transfems to feel safe around femboys then stop attacking everyone who doesn't. Work on your own problems. Neither of you were responsible for burning this bridge but it's selfish of you to put it on her to fix it. Your going to have to put an effort into stopping those fires from being started. Do not blame her for being burned.

[autisticsupervillain]

Hahaha, No. Not remotely. I'm saying they think that. Because the mere existence of people who aren't in The Group is an attack on The Group. As far as The Group is concerned, The Group is always the underdog, the righteously oppressed, etc. It's how these cults justify their own existence. They're not right, but once you're that deep into the process, you stop caring what objective reality has to say about your beliefs.

But that's a late phase of the process. The process starts with "who can we convince to join The Group?" That's what my whole point is about. Certain groups within the left movement haven't really reconsidered how they see men in their understanding of the world and that makes it easier for right wing groups to get that foot in the door. Be that in the form of TERFs saying "see, all men are disgusting evil monsters, join us to stop them" or misogynistic white supremacists groups saying "see, they think all men are monsters, join us and we'll stop them". The fact that both groups horseshoe around to just hating women isn't a coincidence. There has to be A Problem that The Group can convince you it alone can solve. Whether that problem actually exists is an optional step, as they frequently take broader systemic issues and blame them on a convenient scapegoat to spread hate. Buuuuuut, making it look like that problem exists by not actually confronting your own groups biases can make the issue worse and makes the bad guys jobs easier.

The point of both my tags and the original post is that people keep misunderstanding and misinterpreting feminism and leftism as just saying "man bad". Even some feminists and leftists themselves. You might know intellectually that that's not what the movement is, but you can still have some bias there. What the left is actually saying, and what needs to be completely internalize to make progress, is "men are systemically given power over women, are encouraged to abuse that power, and are socially and systemically punished for not doing so and we need to stop that".

There are honest to god people who say they support trans people and then say they hate men. They are people who say they love all queer people and then say they hate men. Hell, there are people in leftist spaces who straight up won't acknowledge trans peoples chosen identities, be they masc, fem, enby, or otherwise, because they "don't pass" and look too much like a man. Body hair, fatness, balding, those "immutable traits" he talks about that are gendered towards men. There is a problem with leftist people not examining their internal biases regarding men and I tell you that having experienced it myself. Hell, I'm not even a man and I've experienced it.

That's a lot of words to say one important thing. Leftism does not hate men. In any way. And any leftist that thinks it does is a TERF in the making. But, when you don't confront your own biases and give them impression that it does hate men through your actions, you make it monumentally easy for bad faith actors to paint you as "The Problem" that they alone can solve.

What we need to do going forward is confront the actual problem going forward. To make it clear that the problem is not just sexist men, but the systems in society that encourage and foster that behavior. Because once we're able to address the actual problems that torment people, TERFS and Right Wingers will run out of people to exploit and won't be able to paint themselves as the Solution to a Problem that they invented.

Will that do anything to stop the people in those groups who have just always been knowingly terrible? No. But it'll give them less power and less tools to exploit other people into their cause. Such terrible people will exist forever, plain and simple, but there's always more that can be done to improve ourselves and make the world better so that they can't build up that platform.

But, for arguments sake, lets say I'm reading this wrong. None of the problems with leftist approach to rhetoric and progress exist and leftists in no way contributed to the way Right Wing cults push their agenda. In that case...... you're making fun of a guy for not fully automatically unlearning everything he'd been lead to believe after getting his life together and trying to put Nazi ideologies behind him. Which makes you a spectacular asshole. So, whether the guy has any point to his rant is kinda pointless when your response makes you the dickhead in the argument regardless.

what is this "as someone who escaped the alt right pipeline" failpost I've seen so many people vague about

[woman-respecter]

"How many men feel comfortable crying around you." lmao anon really thought they did something with this. men want to believe they're stigmatized for being eMoTiOnAl so bad and also never confront the fact that one half of the population gets smeared (and a long legacy of insane psych diagnoses) as crazy attention whores for crying or just expressing discontent at all and it definitely isn't them. never forget that kavanaugh cried -- as a scion of the Don't Be a Pussy party, even -- and it cemented his seat on the court. i fucking wish i felt as comfortable crying around anyone as men do.

i do think that men can be emotionally constipated but that’s because men call orher men gay for having feelings, not because of mean feminists on the internet

[egg-emperor]

Eggman genuinely isn't feminist going by the in game stuff. He's been outright sexist towards Blaze and even besides that, he most commonly has female hostages, and female characters usually seem to have to "prove" themselves harder to him to recognize they have skill over the male characters (Blaze, Amy)

That's why I can imagine the feminist part of his Heroes bio (which doesn't say womanizer in JP btw) is supposed to be self proclaimed. Because yeah, he would claim to be a feminist to try to make his conquest and domination more appealing. He'd lie about anything to trick people into it as willing as he is to force them when it doesn't work

But in reality he doesn't stand by any of it and everyone is going to be miserable and suffer under him. He doesn't give a fuck about anyone's rights but his own; to rule the world and build his empire and get everything he wants. But judging by his words and actions, he still doesn't see them all as equal despite this but he also doesn't care enough to target anyone specifically unless they refuse to obey or get in his way

This tracks with how he calls his robotomy treatment "all inclusive", besides how it's also his way of saying everyone is supposed to belong to him as his slaves under his rule. It was a propaganda video where he was trying to make his awful procedure sound appealing as possible and he realized he can turn his demand for everyone to submit into something that sounds nice and inclusive as he promotes it as a benefit

So that way some people will think "wow he's so inclusive and is offering so many benefits" as he leads them to total destruction and rips away their freedom as they're forced to be his mindless slaves or suffer the consequences. That's what he wants you to believe and tell everyone you know so you can all become his mindless slaves that never even fought to keep your freedom, so he can mock you for being weak willed for being fooled and walking right into it. Don't fall for it lol

And that makes it even more fucked up than him always being upright about what he believes and feels, with him also being willing to make false promises and lead people into a cruel trap. He's an absolute asshole

[spiltcandycoatedpunkblood]

really want to say a lot on this radfem inspired narrative about enforcing a gender binary based on biological differences and how anyone vaguely masculine is a threat, like for example with the problem society has with gender neutral bathrooms and also 'safe spaces' that shove anyone aside who isn't a 'woman or nonbinary person' (aka woman lite and stereotypically androgynous and white and skinny), and how we're applying this to the queering of gender and just applying a shit coat of paint to stereotypical presentation and portrayal of gender, but i'm too tired for that, so here's just this.

[againstpollution]

every boy in the world grows up seeing men holding 99% of important political and economic posts, owning the worlds riches, making most art, owning all land, making the decisions. every boy in the world gets socialized to believe he is SUPERIOR to women and girls and not that he is "evil".

some minor fringe feminist groups don't influence what 12 year olds think of themselves lmao, no middle schooler who watches joe rogan and violent porn and starts calling the girls in his class cunts know what a "terf" is, and if he did he'd just make rape threats against them.

the mainstream feminist thought is to be pro porn, pro femininity, pro coddling men, and not even that is enough for them because women dare to get married and fuck less men, and have less children. if telling someone they have privilege and are part of an oppressor class, a simple truth that isn't up for discussion, makes them double down and demand even more subjugation for the oppressed, then we might as well scratch all class analysis and activism. because clearly we can't name or discuss anything.

just remember, men will never, ever, ever, ever defend you the way you are doing. every male "ally" or moderate will throw you under the bus, because unlike women, men actually have class solidarity and will always defend each other first and foremost.

"as a guy who escaped the alt-right pipeline, [*blames it on Misandry*]"

[transmascutena]

the poor little meow meow-ifictation of saionji in this fandom has got to stop i can't take it any more

[backpackingspace]

I am once again thinking about how odysseus who witnessed the horrors that the captured women went through (one of his main duties in the iliad was taking the women back home and making sure they were as comfortable as possible and safe because he was the only one trusted not to violate them further due to his devotion to penelope. And in the odyssey part of the reason circe sent him to the underworld was so that he'd have to listen to all these women's stories (before he could talk to the prophet) ). Who was one of the few that saw women as people and respected their space and opinions. And was then put in those exact same situations. I don't have the motivation right now to do a full literary analysis of this (I'll site the sources too) but oh man one day I'm going to write a full essay on this.

[milowing]

"in the original myth medusa was a rape victim!" i'm literally banging my head against the wall

[viciouslyrobotic]

Except it isn't! Shockingly, the internet doesn't revolve around just what you specific come across! That literally isn't whats being discussed here and no one said you have to tolerate bigotry AT ALL. You are injecting what you want to into a discussion that is not about cowtowing to people who feel entitled to their misogyny and bigotry without facing consequence. Also, the screenshot you're showing is some rando admitting that yes, equality is the morally correct choice, and he also has to reconcile that he's seen as scum of the earth regardless.

Are you knew here? Do you know what rehabilitation is? Because I damn well don't think people that claim to be reformed but have no action to show for it have actually been "reformed" and have argued with plenty "reformed" alt righters who curiously still attack all the same marginalized people they were already attacking but now (mis)use feminist language to do so now so this screenshot proves nothing to me beyond what it says. He went down the pipeline and also is admitting he's contending with being seen as scum for "immutable traits" while course correcting himself. What immutable traits? You don't have to unpack his feelings of guilt for him, but you also don't need to weaponize them to feel justified in your actions.

You're defensive for a reason, I get it, been there. At the same time that man needs a therapist and community so he doesn't go back to fascism and we, AND ESPECIALLY HIMSELF, can hold him accountable for his past actions while, again, course correcting as we would for any other ally. There are plenty of legitimately reformed alt righters, stop weaponizing the ones that aren't to justify yourself. Stop weaponizing peoples genders to justify yourself.

Idk I feel like "Men are responsible for their own actions, women aren't to blame for men being misogynistic" and "You do not have to tolerate bigotry from others, call them out on that shit" and "People may be less likely to become radicalized if they receive kindness and compassion" don't have to contradict each other

[lgbtlunaverse]

Half the internet talking about how we just need to be more niceys to men and misogyny is the fault of mean internet feminists and the other half going "Let's try seperatism again!" I'm so tired. I want to be in community with men, especially marginalized men whose political goals align with mine, while trusting that any critique of misogyny won't immediately turn them into fascists. Is that too much to ask?

[musical-chick-13]

The problem is. When I go, "Oh, this system is bullshit" and try to live outside it. My choices are still defined by that system. And that makes me feel really weird.

[itsmygarbagepail]

Fun(?) anecdote from real life: I know multiple people who were raised in a woman-only feminist lesbian circle in the 80s where they all raised their kids together. Like, they were really trying to make a man-free micro society thing happen, lived together in women-only houses, started their own women-run businesses, and obtained semen through various means that didn't include a relationship with a man. They were really serious about this.

About half of them went on to have children. And some of them had boys. Or at least children that were assigned male at birth. They also had girls, obviously.

I don't think this setting was good for either the girls or the boys, and I know some samples of both.

The ones that were assigned male at birth, really struggled for multiple reasons:

They were initially part of this really supportive and kind community, showered with love and affection from a lot of mother figures. But around 5 years old, some of the women stopped being comfortable with having those boys in their spaces. Which means boys were kicked out of the only community they knew, and the only community their moms were a part of. At 5 years of age. Holy abandonment issues, batman.

They were surrounded by women who thought that all of humanity's problems were caused by men. They were surrounded by women who thought all sexism was the fault of men (surprise! a lot of misogyny is perpetuated by women! it sucks but it's true!) They were surrounded by messages that said that women were victims and men were violent, harmful beings.

They were told a lot that they had to be very careful to not talk over others, to respect other peoples' boundaries, to be gentle and kind, etc, which is great as far as it goes- but they weren't told about respecting their own boundaries, or stepping up for themselves, or protecting themselves from harm.

About half the women in that group were what was called at the time a 'political lesbian' which means they were choosing to ignore their attraction to men because they thought men were, to put it simply, bad and not trustworthy. Do think of the message that that sends to their children.

If you were thinking that this would lead to some really depressed individuals who hated themselves/their gender/their sex (and not like, in a trans way, but in a "men are abusive assholes, and I'm a man, therefore I must be bad despite a lack of any evidence to support that position" way, along with a feeling that you're doomed to be an asshole), who ended up getting taken advantage of and hurt by others, you'd be right. Really, really depressed. And hating every part of them that is considered masculine . That is not, needless to say, healthy.

But that's just the amab side. I've known a few women who were raised in that setting and:

They were taught that they had to be tough, and assertive, and make them selves heard.

They were taught that men are bad, and men were looking to hurt them

They were taught that men are not and cannot be allies, and will never be able to learn enough to be a good ally

So, as adults:

They automatically think they are smarter and more ethical than men.

They think men will never understand feminism (even though it's really not that difficult of a concept??? Like, seriously. It's not hard.)

They end up being straight up mean to their sexual partners (because being lesbian isn't infectious, so most of them are straight) and other male loved ones; being disrespectful, not listening to them when they bring up issues, belittling and shaming them.

Thinking that men are always wrong, so making fun of them for say, wearing sun screen. Yes, really. Sun screen.

Straight up tell men who were raised by the same feminist lesbians they were, who were taught feminism explicitly by their (shared) mothers and again in college, that lived and breathed feminism from birth, that they just couldn't understand sexism or feminism, and that they could never be a feminist.

Pigeon-hole their amab quasi-siblings as sexist and pathetic man babies, despite their siblings' partners explicitly saying, "no, he does more of the house work than I do. No, he's more emotionally skilled and does as much or more of the emotional labor than I do. No, we're equal partners. No, actually, we're both agender, so stop putting your (stupid) gender essentialism on us."

Have a huge double standard- if a childfree woman doesn't know how to change a diaper, that's a non-issue. If a childfree man (with vasectomy even) doesn't know how to change a diaper, well clearly he's sexist and just expects women to take care of the babies.

When one of their amab siblings comes out as trans, completely flip their behavior from the above, and immediately take on the protective, let-me-show-you-the-ropes big sister role. Has the person changed? Nope. But they're no longer a man so now their feelings matter.

To their credit, the women that were raised this way that I still talk to have gotten better, once enough women and assorted non-men pointed out their behavior. So, yay, growth.

The folks who were assigned male at birth? They're doing better now; I've managed to convince the one that I'm married to that they're not evil because of their genitalia, and I've even managed to convince them that they don't have to let other people belittle them and trample all over them.

In sum, I think we should teach everyone to both stand up for themselves and be assertive and also to be able to listen to and respect others. To maintain their own boundaries, and respect other peoples' boundaries. To be kind, to themselves and others.

i used to be a kind of 'i think we need spaces with no men but in a trans-inclusive woman-positive way' person but the more i grow i think that whole idea is pretty flawed from the core? because like, 'no men' is reactionary thing by nature, but it also, like people much more learnt than me have said, suggests that the only way to create meaningful feminist spaces is by excluding men entirely? and 1. thats not true and 2. that bodes badly for a feminist future! as badly as some people might want it we are not becoming lesbian geckos any time soon.

the ways in which its flawed definitely interface w transmisogyny - and i think some antifeminists describe ideology like this as 'segregating the genders!!' in a way thats Wrong, but like, it's important that if we want a feminist future, people who might be percieved as men are accepted and allowed to learn and treated as people with equal potential to create a more just world and some of them become women and thats awesome and some of them dont, yaknow? fundamentally it comes back to the radfem idea that 'the people i think are Men have a sort of Evil Particle in them' being so unconducive to a meaningful feminist movement cos it prevents people from sharing their own experiences under the patriarchy and forming solidarity. it also positions the ultimate conflict of society as Men vs Women which very handily erases a lot of other lines of oppression in a way that benefits the white women who perpetrate it.

thats my feminist thinkpiece for the day

[woman-respecter]

eh, I'm kind of tired of the relentless promotion of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood as feminist when all those female characters exist in relation to men, and that was the message I felt it sent to me: women are great but only if they don't forget their place. Those women are just better written than most because the original mangaka is a woman, but I've read a lot of Arakawa's stuff and it feels like she's really into this kind of promotion of traditional women in a way that has its pluses in showing how fully-faceted those women are, but never seems to really question those roles in a larger sense. I get why it appeals to people but I wouldn't exactly call it "feminist."

(I also have longstanding beef of how people use that to excuse the really fucked up messages about race in that show/manga, especially to dump on the original FMA anime which does that aspect much much better and whose female characters felt a lot more genuinely independent to me, but whatever. Neither is a bastion of feminism lol and don't want to make this about fandom beef)

It's also not necessary because there are a lot of anime that are outspokenly feminist and center women. Revolutionary Girl Utena being the obvious one, and got me through the 2016 election aftermath with episodes like when Utena beats Touga after he defeats her the first time, showing how women can triumph eventually even when the odds are wholly stacked against us. And it has a really probing analysis of the patriarchy and heteronormativity woven throughout the whole show.

A whole bunch of magical girl anime (not the entire genre, some suck and are made for gross dudes, but a lot of them, especially the 90s ones are aimed at women - Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura etc). Sayo Yamamoto's stuff that isn't Yuri on Ice - not that that show isn't great and gay and cute and doesn't say interesting things in its occasional one-off subplots about women, but it's obviously focused on men. But people who liked it who want great women-centric stuff should watch her Lupin III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine and Michiko and Hatchin, both centered on women and very feminist in their themes, albeit in a way that requires you to pay attention and think and watch the whole show so you occasionally get Tumblrites without reading comprehension missing the point of them. I was really surprised, given the kind of trashy title, by the anime Maria the Virgin Witch, which is all about fighting patriarchal ideas about sex in fantasy medieval Europe. Also, Yurikuma Arashi by the same creator as Utena is a really good analysis of the ways that lesbians are portrayed in Japanese media and by the broader patriarchy.

For as much misogyny as there is in anime, the stuff that does engage with feminism can often be pretty radical and smart and does it better than you'll see in a lot of other media. It's like having that low hum of misogyny in the medium as a whole builds up a rage in some of its creators that just explodes in the stuff they make. Same with how it often engages with queer themes, tbh.

And then there's just that anime has a lot more female-character-centered stuff even if it isn't "feminist" exactly. Like stuff about women where the story and world is centered on women that you can just put on as a comfort watch. Love Live or something lol

you do bring up a good point about fma, i kinda forgot about that bc i watched it like a decade ago. rgu is really great and i defo recommend it even tho it was directed by a man. yurikuma is actually my fave anime of all time but does seem sexist and fan servicey on the surface. and i love love live and the other cgdct anime but it feels like there is always an underlying misogyny of that genre, knowing how the male fans and creators are. if i were to recommend a comfort watch i would go with k-on bc it has a female director.

thanks for the recs!

[blackswallowtailbutterfly]

Can I ask when the last time “dick worshipper”, etc. has actually been used by a radblr woman? Not a black-pill orbiter; they’re awful to everyone and don’t tend to last long here. I mean from someone in radblr, claiming to be a radical feminist or supporting radical feminism. I know it used to be fairly common years ago. So did political lesbianism, which pissed everyone off for different reasons. Most of those people either left or just don’t show up in my circles anymore, and those that do again don’t last long. So where is this coming from? I see it referenced but no recent examples. I am seeing a hell of a lot of recent homophobia from women in radblr though. Every woman I’ve seen addressing the homophobia has stated the misogynistic terms aren’t okay, again, even though from what I’ve seen it hasn’t happened for a long time. Whereas I’m seeing a ton of defensiveness and doubling down in regards to the homophobia. And there seems to be this demand of all lesbians and non-lesbian pro-separatist women to denounce the “dick worshipper” type comments, and it’s like, A) they already have and B) if they’re not the ones who said it can you stop conflating pro-separatist arguments with that shit? Again, this is just what I’ve seen. Maybe the “dick-worshipper” comments are all over some areas of radblr, but they’re not from anyone I follow or have seen on my dash for years. I’d say for the last four or five years the only time I’ve seen it is from women asking not to be called that--which, I agree, I don’t want to be called that and I don’t want to see other women called that. It’s just, I haven’t been called it or seen it for a long time, so something’s not adding up.