#tw: patriarchy mention

[candiid-caniine]

so I've seen this going around lately, and I want to talk about it. I didn't want to add discourse to OP's post because I didn't know if/how much was welcome.

this is a very hot button issue for me. general tw for this post: mention of abuse within kink dynamics.

so. y'all all know that I have some very strict limits on this blog. I have a boundary against play with cis men. I have a hard limit on misogyny and patriarchy kinks being in my space. and I'm not alone in that: a lot of other queer ppl I know (mostly wlw, nblnb, t4t, and intersex) have the same limits.

for me it's trauma rooted. all dynamic abuse I've ever experienced has been at the hands of cis men, so I don't deal well with them. and growing up in purity culture as a closeted afab has ruled out misogyny/patriarchy kink. as a result, I am very avoidant of anything that rings of these dynamics...which happen to be overrepresented as dominance in modern pornography.

it is very hard as a t4t to find porn that isn't influenced by this binary, which usually plays itself out as:

to be feminine is to be weak, and vice versa

the submissive partner is the bottom

the dominant partner is controlling outside the bedroom

submission is holy for the feminine and deviant for the masc

dominance is holy for the masculine and deviant for the femme

existing power balances in society are utilized in play

the submissive is to be protected

the submissive is the dominants responsibility and not vice versa

aesthetic perfection is expected of the sub

and many more.

so to say "signs of domination in your social circle" may mean different things to different people. I'll be honest, I don't know what OP meant; this post was awhile back in their blog -- I'm just using this as a way to talk about some of my own hangups, hence why I made my own post instead of responding.

and yeah. if someone in my social circle showed signs of being controlling outside the bedroom, magnifying social inequalities in play, deeming submissives weak and demanding of protection, or expecting aesthetic perfection of submissive seeming people....would I call that evil? um. fuck no.

but I would recognize it as something I can't be a part of. I would form resentment if treated accordingly: as something inherently weak, defenseless, naive, and feminine due to my preference for submission, or hell, for being fucking Asian. cause yeah, that happens.

that said: if someones treating every sub, or every person they decide is submissive, like that...they're a fucking weirdo. their problem.

but there's another side to this. one that affects people who top, people with penises, and people who present as masc who...

may derive euphoria from aligning with a binary role in a kink setting

may genuinely share a desire to be protective and controlling with their partner/s

may face othering or prejudice for seeming like an angry trans woman or a violent butch or an angry Black person

are already only tenuously accepted in queer spaces due to masculine presentation or AGAB or race

so what's to be done?

simply put, don't put your trauma or your bias onto others. I really think that's the answer.

if a particular type of dominance triggers you, remove yourself from the space. unless it's your space, in which case set boundaries.

if you find yourself side eyeing people of a certain AGAB or presentation more than others, consider that this is a you problem.

understand not everything's about you. subs can be just as selfish as doms. just because your friend likes to dominate doesn't mean they want to Dom you. just because they Dom in a way you wouldn't want to be dommed doesn't mean they're wrong.

fuck off with your kink shaming. flat out, unless you are speaking about dynamic abuse or any other type of abuse, you have no grounds to judge the way other d-types or s-types roll. unlearn your purity culture.

learn a thing or two about top drop and/or Dom drop.

and for God's sake...in this hellish 2024 pride month where trans rights are backsliding and other lgbtq+ rights will certainly follow: educate yourself. cishets didn't invent kink. leather daddies have been doing this for decades. lesbian pulp fiction featuring s&m dates really far back. hell, ancient Greeks have art documenting s/m relationships, and y'all know they were gay as shit.

cause I have an inkling that in queer circles this comes from the decrying of evil, icky cishet culture in kink. you are entitled to your boundaries, but your bias and your judgment and your disgust can damn well be kept to yourself. my partner deals with enough guilt over their preferred role, and enough crisis about whether their masculinity comes off as creepy, without neopuritans exacerbating the issue.

and that includes me. I've had to unlearn this shit from the ground up since coming out. I thought coming out was the unlearning, but no: you are not immune to internalized bias. and your masc, amab, intersex, and Black and Brown queer siblings are not immune to the harm you may be perpetuating.

anyway. I'm stoned AF. and prepared to turn off reblogs for this post. lol

[very-gay-poet]

people wonder why we still need feminism when boys in my class were comparing what the suffragettes (/womans right to vote movement in the uk) did to get the right to vote (hunger strikes, arson attacks, destroyed property where the majority of people would notice, leaving behind notes to say that they did it, etc, etc) to Hitler. They were comparing woman who just wanted to be fucking equal to men and get the right to vote for all woman (not just rich white woman like the suffragists did) to HITLER.

[mywingsareonwheels]

The rise in extremely highly funded transphobic discourse and attacks in the last few years started very shortly after victories for same-sex marriage and abortion rights in various countries. I don't think it's even remotely a stretch to see it as a response to those victories.

I remember the absolute joy of a lot of trans women I was following on Twitter in 2019 when abortion was decriminalised in Northern Ireland. It was beautiful to see and utterly unsurprising.

I remember how much het and ace trans people have supported same-sex marriage, like, forever. <3

Transphobia is designed to split and break both the LGBTQIA+ rights movement *and* the women's rights movement, in order to weaken both. It's divide and conquer. One of the biggest fundraisers for both the anti-trans movement in the UK (who is also a significant donor to the Tory party...) is a mostly-former fiction writer who claims to be doing this for women but whose intense degree of internalised misogyny leaks between every line of everything she says and has written. That's not a coincidence.

Transphobia is intrinsically entwined with misogyny (and at minimum certain kinds of misandry), homophobia, biphobia, and acephobia. It's also pretty much always accompanied by racism, antisemitism, ageism, and ableism (internalised or lateral in some cases; still there). That's not a coincidence either.

The message? Well, don't be a transphobe, obviously. Don't give any money to that fucking mostly-ex-writer. But also beware of anything else that tries to create or increase divisions between us.

[elin-moon]

More on Alicent and her inconsistent character in season 2:

I feel like the writers and directors forgot what and who Alicent is as a character, what she represents. From watching season 1, I'd say Alicent is a representation of the women who not only live the way the Patriarchal society wants them to live, but also openly supports the Patriarchal system and shames women who don't live by the expectation, because for them it works so it should work for every woman.

This is most evident in Alicent's treatment of Rhaenyra, constantly going out of her way to put down Rhaenyra's authority amongst the men at court and in the council. Of course, it is all for her own gain, as Rhaenyra having less power means more power for her, which comes in the form of respect from the men around her. In everything Alicent does, she's looking to make herself look more endearing to the men around her by putting down another woman who is not behaving in the typical way that a woman is expected to be.

Such as with the really strong focus on Rhaenyra having bastards, not because she's sleeping around with a lot of men, but because the man she's married with can't have children with her; Rhaenyra is having bastard children out of a necessity to have heirs, but also because it is expected of her as a woman. If she were a man, no one would've cared, which is even said in the show:

"If I were born a man, I could father a dozen bastards." - Rhaenyra Targaryen

A man can have sex with as many women as he wants and have as many illegitimate children as he'd like, but a woman can't. If she does, she's considered a whore, which is exactly what happens to Rhaenyra, and Alicent perpetuates this by further spreading the rumours of Rhaenyra's infidelity and her children's legitimacy, all for the betterment of her own cause, to make Aegon appear as a better candidate for the throne. Alicent uses the Patriarchal system to her advantage to get what she wants, to put her son on the throne.

The most important thing is that Alicent doesn't necessarily see this as wrong. I mean, look at her father, Otto Hightower, who constantly tells her that a woman could never rule, that it must be Aegon that is king, becuase he's the first born son.

"It wouldn't matter if she were Jaehaerys himself come again; she is a woman."

In his eyes, Rhaenyra could never rule on her own as a woman, and he sends this message down to his daughter. Society itself also supports him in his belief, as is evident by the Great Council of 101, where Viserys was chosen over Rhaenys to rule, the very first scene in the first episode. As every woman in the show, Alicent suffers under the Patriarchy, but she's been raised to believe that that is what's right, and any other woman who refuses to suffer the same and tries to push back against the system in anyway is wrong and should be taught better.

Alicent's loyalty to the Patriarchy is also presented through her piousness to the Faith of the Seven, a fictional religion that takes inspiration from real life Christianity. Now, we all know very well that Christianity is being used as a tool to keep women down and subservient to their husbands, encouraging them to be obedient to the men in their lives. Christianity is alos the root of purity culture, telling young girls they must remain pure and chaste maidens for their future husbands, and if they don't do so, they are harlots and whores and sinners and they will surely go to hell. Since the Faith of the Seven is so similar to Christianity, it supports a similar concept of women needing to remain pure before marriage, and Alicent would've been raised with this belief, so evidently believes it so herself. This would not only further tie into her treatment of Rhaenyra, who she believes has sullied herself by having sex outside of marriage, but also her treatment of other girls and women.

For example, Dyana, the maid that Aegon raped. While, by all means, Alicent does help her, giving her contraceptive Moon tea and money so she can get away without trouble, Alicent still helps the maid hide. It is suggested by the show that this isn't the first time Aegon's done this, yet he hasn't really been punished by the law in anyway, because he's a man, and Alicent knows this. So, the best she can do is offer Dyana (and possibly other maids that have suffered similarly) an escape from further suffering. But she also has to keep her son's actions a secret, because they are considered bad, and while Aegon won't get punished for it, it may give him a slightly bad look to the public and give Team Black something to use as proof that Aegon isn't a capable ruler, and Alicent can't have that. So, she makes sure the maids, like Dyana, don't talk of what's happened to them, paying them to get out as soon as possible. She knows she can silence them easily since their voices don't matter as mere maids, so her privilege as queen is used as well, making sure women beneath her struggle in silence.

Her perpetuating Patriarchal values is also evident with her daughter, Helaena. While she doesn't mistreat her in any matter and cares for her dearly, Alicent obviously thinks that what is bets for Helaena is for her to live by the expectations set out for women. She has her daughter married to Aegon at 13, and forces her to have children with him as a teenager. In the book, she's 14 giving birth to the twins, and in the show, assuming she's around 19 and the twins are 4, she gives birth at 15. Either way, she's far too young to be getting married and having children, but this is what society expects of her, and what Alicent pushes for, since she believes it is for the best. Alicent herself was a teenager getting married and having children young, both in the show and the book. Sure, in the book she's 18, but that is still quite young (as an 18 year old myself, I couldn't image getting married and having children), and in the show, she's about 14 getting married and 15/16 having her first child. Alicent lived by society's expectations, and it is evident in the show she doesn't enjoy it, but she believes she must, so she thinks Helaena must as well. In fact, she believes every woman must as well. She sees Rhaenyra doesn't live a life of servitude to her husband, and Alicent hates her for it, most likely being jealous of her freedom, seen most evidently first when Alicent is still young and Rhaenyra is still unmarried and refuses to marry even though she's given plenty of men to choose from while Alicent had been given no choice.

"I think it's rather romantic" - Alicent Hightower

"What's so romantic about being locked up in a castle and made to squeeze out heirs." - Rhaenyra Targaryen

Alicent is jealous of Rhaenyra's percieved freedom, of her ability to choose who to marry, who to have children with. Alicent doesn't see that Rhaneyra is still being forced to marry when she doesn't want to, she just sees the privilege of choice on who that Rhaenyra has, and she wishes she could have that, and feels that Rhaenyra is being ungrateful. As time passes, and Rhaenyra gets away with stuff women wouldn't normally get away with, such as having illegitimate children as her heirs and having an affair with the man she loves, Alicent becomes more and more jealous, and it turns into cruelty, trying constantly to put Rhaenyra down to make herself feel better; she's the one being a good woman here, she's the one following the rules that society set out for her, she she believes she is righteous in what she does. She believes women must live like her, living for the men around them and offering everything they have to men, even their ambition, or else they are wrong.

"You've gone too far!" - Rhaenyra Targaryen

"I!? What have I done but what was expected of me? Forever upholding the kingdom, the family, the law, while you flout all to do as you please! ... Where's duty? Where's sacrifice? It's trampled under your pretty foot again!" - Alicent Hightower

Alicent believes sacrifice is necessary, something women must do, and when Rhaenyra doesn't sacrifice her owns self for the men around her, Alicent believes she's not being a woman correctly, that she's behaving incorrectly because she doesn't live exactly as the Patriarchal society expects her to.

The Patriarchy requires women to sacrifice everything: their very freedom, their very rights, their very desires, all to be desirable to men, and religion is used to make women believed that these sacrifices make them righteous, that it makes them better then other women, which only strengthens the system as the women who are being oppressed support their own oppression.

This is who Alicent was in season 1, and season 2 fails to deliver this. She has sex outside of wedlock even though her religion would forbid it, and she tries to break away from what she started and tries to go back to Rhaenyra even though she hasn't been given a good reason to other than a desire for freedom from the system. While I don't believe her character arc of breaking away rom the system is bad, I feel it was badly written; it all happens far too quickly. In just a few short weeks (at best), she's gone from fully supprting her son taking the throne and being willing to make sacrifices to achieve this, to abandoning her son entirely while he's injured and longing to break away from the cage she's been trapped in for years. It's unrealistic, no one can change that quickly in a few weeks. This arc would make sense if it was more drawn out and build upon slowly. Perhaps Alicent's desire for freedom could be foreshadowed at best in season 2, and in season 3 have it fully manifest, but it being far too late for Alicent to escape and now she has to suffer with her guilt and regrets as she watches everything fall apart around her, driving her mad as she can no longer change anything, no matter how much she wants. She has build her own cage and chains, and now has no choice but to keep to them, no matter how much she hates it now.

But whatever, we shall see what season 3 will do with her character. Perhaps they'll fix up on the inconsistencies and find a way to make her character make sense in a satisfying way that somehow aligns with season 1 and 2, but we'll have to wait.

For now, I'm done.

[cervinelich]

Until some of you start recognizing that the patriarchy also negatively affects men, you're going to remain a gender essentialist. I don't care how many "I'm not a TERF"s you say in front of the mirror.

Saying that you don't care about men's issues such as loneliness & increased suicide rates and then following that up with some anecdote about a man sexually harassing a woman is literally just the same shit TERFs do. You're just using personal experiences and statistics to avoid meaningfully engaging with the reasons patriarchy is harmful.

The way that some of you dehumanize men is seriously disgusting and reads not only as bioessentialist garbage but also doesn't align with the basic ideals of rehabilitation.

Oh, men are lonely and killing themselves more because the patriarchy conditions them not to address their feelings appropriately? Who cares! Women are statistically more likely to be raped by a partner, so men deserve it! I see no way in which all of these problems have a unifying cause. /s

You either believe the patriarchy is a social blight that destroys everyone or you subscribe to the same ideals it upholds - that men are base animal monsters & women are uwu soft and need protecting.

And I want to be clear about something - I specifically am not bringing up trans men here because I think if you need to mentally code a man as a "woman" in your mind for him to deserve compassion then, again, you're doing TERF shit.

[stellarxdeath]

thanks to @galileo-figero for prompting this addition to accompany my previous tags on the bad smut booktok post.

[ take all of this with a grain of salt bc i have not nor will i ever likely read any of these smut books and I'm A Faggot]

But essentially, through a bit of rambling in Galileo's messages [ thanks btw ! ], these kinds of booktok reads are part of a genre I shall call: The Hetrosexual Status Quo, or PanoptoPorn [ thanks user fleshdyke you will be missed ] - Smut primarily written by CisHetero White Women who engage with their desires as the patriarchy has dictated to them.

To save everyone the incoming ramble if you don't feel like reading pedantic pontification on Porn For White Women, TLDR; These 'Spicy Booktok' Authors, stuck in the bubble of shame built for them since birth, write porn in which Misogyny is the foundation.

Ignoring the brief "Getting fucked by thanksgiving leftovers" screenshot bc that one doesn't exactly count; The way in which the foundational misogyny manifests in each book is sorta formulaic, bc you can't really Iterate or subvert Misogyny without shattering the framework of the smut you're trying to make. You have the Young Spunky Female Protagonist, likely a virgin, definitely "innocent" but adequately sassy and Independent* - the pinnacle of purity without being.... Boring. [ it's still fucking boring ].

Spunk and sass, the "I don't need no man" attitude is actually what's being broken here. This nameless protag, is just capable enough until the Daddy Dom Love Interest shows up and, through a sticky series of borderline assaulty events, ends up "Curing" Female protag of what little autonomy she had - I use that word extremely liberally here. That's really all there is to it, though, in regards to the contents of this content.

The issues begin to arise when you Blink to readjust your eyes and come to understand that these books make no effort at all to break out of the aforementioned Status Quo. The uncomfortable, stunned humor most of us probably feel when reading these brief one-liner ads is because this is Just fetishized patriarchy. These writers fundamentally don't understand BDSM or kink dynamics, they cannot conceptualize sexual desire from men as anything other than borderline abusive, predatory and controlling and because they either Haven't confronted it, don't know how to confront it or simply just don't Want to confront it - "it" being The Entire Fucking Patriarchy and how it works.

But please don't misunderstand me; I am not trying to claim that each and every one of these women are Bad for writing these books. They are, in the end, still victims under the system and I wouldn't be surprised if this was all one complex coping method [ albeit unknown to the writers, oops ]. However, I must also acknowledge that these are Grown adults and we live in the year of our lord 2024; Remaining uninformed is... Difficult, to say the least.

Instances of Misogyny don't just stop there either, from what I've seen and heard, most of these Spunky Sassy female protags are no older than 25 and behave like "Bratty teenagers". Sexy Sexism requires you to write women like they're fucking stupid and frames the "I don't need no man" attitude as frustratingly and even attractively naive for the Daddy Dom in the story. The Idealization and sexualization of youth and Purity.

This is just... Rape culture in a velvet box. Go back to the post and read each screenshot, seriously. "He knocked her out and tattooed his name on her finger" "She pretended to be dead but he did it anyway" "When he pays 1.6 mil for her vagina" "You'll need a safeword when I'm done with you." What the fuck does that sound like? A woman saying no and not being respected, a woman trying to avoid sex but failing, straight up prostitution [ which isn't bad, I'm no anti-sexwork pundit, but the context of this sucks], and flagrant misuse of safewords in pseudo-kink situations.

Of course, all of this is fictional, so what's the hullabaloo? Honestly, I don't know. I can't truly assess the morality of these books bc they too exist in a state in which all fiction does where nobody irl gets hurt, and that's all I personally care about. I think I summarized the issue in a message I sent to Galileo:

this isn't as simple as "oh it's just cumbrained self-insert erotica" it's "oh no these women have fetishized an abusive institution personified into a hollow facsimile of what they wrongly assume BDSM dynamics look like."

Ultimately I suppose my conclusion is that I think I feel sorta bad for them. Sex and Romance and Desire can be so much more intricate and intimate and tender, even in it's most brutal or whumpy/snufflike forms in media, literature or art. From where I'm standing, having such a reductive, restricted view on love and sex is tragic.

[lary-the-lizard]

When I was a wee child, abouts the age of 8, my elder brother and his friend had taken to bullying my friend group. I don’t exactly remember when I decided that I would always defend them, no matter the humiliation and pain but that is my conviction since before then. I would do whatever I had to in order to protect my friends (and my younger brother who was a part of the friend group) and that often meant becoming a ball on the ground receiving all types of violence, including being beaten with wooden swords. Though I was agile and fast I wasn’t bigger than either of the bullies and my goal wasn’t to beat the bullies, it was to protect my friends.

Sometimes I couldn’t draw the bullies away from my friends and get them to focus just on me and I’d have to fight. I remember the rage and helplessness that came with only being able to hold off one person. The vengeance I felt growing in me - it was so intense I couldn’t think. If I couldn’t defend all of the group in the moment, if they actually got hurt, showing my brother and his friend what happens when you harass or assault my chosen ones became my obsession. I was sure I could endure any pain if it meant keeping my friends safe.

I became such a pain in the ass to these bullies that they eventually gave up bullying us because beating me was no fun as I didn’t cry or complain and I’d often taunt them after they got tired of chasing us. It got to the point that if they saw me they turned around.

(“Where were the adults,” you ask. They didn’t believe us when we told them and we were hurt worse for telling on the bullies so it was legit up to us.)

I write all this to say that I am not into committing violence just to commit violence. Any violence I’ve committed was to hold off worse violence. I am even willing to take all the hurt to prevent it from spreading. The problem isn’t that we are willing to commit violence to get our way, it’s that police and governments and alt-right organizations are. Their agenda is to shut us up and make us invisible if not eradicate us entirely. And the only way centerist and liberals will support our liberation is for us to be sweet lambs that don’t ask for much. That doesn’t fucking work when those in power and those that worship that power are willing to display our mutilated bodies to show us what happens when we want to live honestly. There is hate thrown our way when we show any signs of who we are. We don’t have to be “loud and proud” to get it. We don’t have to stand by other causes. Many cishet people have been bullied for being perceived as one of us. And that torment and suffering grows when we decide to be open. But forced silence is violence too.

I have learned that I should not be treated like I’m lesser, and that my instinct to sacrifice my safety for others is not good. No one should be suffering and that includes me and those causing the suffering. But the only way to truly stop the violence is to make it more difficult to commit. You do not chase someone when they have a gun because they could shoot you. You do not kill someone when you know they have an army willing to hurt or kill you. Many people have given up their lives for peace and the only reason their lives were given up was because someone killed them. That sacrifice is not the honor and glory we treat it as. Because someone had to die. Because someone else refused to not kill. And no one should be willing to die, no one should be willing to kill, and no one should be pushing anyone to either extreme. But we got here because others decided that the way I exist, the way BIPOC exist, the way disabled people exist is worth killing us for. We are not violent people, we do not want to hurt anyone. We want to live in a way that doesn’t hurt so bad. And for that, many decided that we should sacrifice our loved ones, our comfort, our health, and our lives.

I do not want to hurt anyone. The only times I have wanted to hurt someone was when they thought my pain was entertaining. When I lashed out against them, when I made consequences, they stopped. I did not choose to be violent. Others chose to hurt me and mine so I made that difficult. The only way to do that is to fight back.

[fredhugesfan]

Tue. 5/28/2024

"Women are too emotional"~

I've never punched a wall out of anger.

I've never assaulted someone because I was angry.

I've never hit a woman, man, or child out of anger.

I've never drunk myself into a stupor to avoid processing my emotions.

I've never become addicted to anything because I lacked self-control, used drugs or alcohol to suppress my emotions, or because it 'felt good'.

I've never had gambling or porn addictions.

I've never raped anyone.

I've never been an arsonist.

I've never committed a 'crime of passion'.

I've never taken my own life due to my emotions.

Claiming that women are too emotional is a weak and desperate attempt to undermine an entire gender. This kind of rhetoric is often used to justify subjugation.

Men are not only "just as emotional," but they are also more prone to acting on those emotions with threats and harmful actions.

This is why most domestic violence is committed by men and directed at women.

This is why most stalking is done by men.

This is why most intimate partner homicides are committed by men.

This is why 'restraining orders' are usually granted to women because of men.

This is why 'red flag laws' focus on removing firearms from men, who are more likely to use them.

Men can be extremely volatile. Anger is an emotion.

Men are in no position to use the argument of being "too emotional" to strip women of their rights and freedoms.

If society were to be structured based on emotional control, it would be a matriarchy, and most men would face severe restrictions or punishment.

The issue isn't about being "too emotional." The real problem is that women aren't men. Some men assume superiority despite evidence to the contrary.

When this argument arises, accountability is essential. Men can be just as emotional, and their unchecked anger has caused far more harm to innocent women, children, and society than compassion ever has. Historically, more innocents have been harmed by angry men professing love than by external threats.

When you consider the societal damage caused by men seeking sexual gratification and the resulting sex crimes and industries, it becomes clear that men can be far more destructive to society than women.

I'd welcome any statistical evidence that contradicts this.

[candiid-caniine]

detrans/misgendering blogs dni

im fully out here for queering kinks that are usually bioessentialist at best.

give me butch patriarchy, make me the stupid little femme that naturally superior butches come home to and order to my knees, order me to suck their strap, dinner on the stovetop. cute little aprons, negligees, total financial control.

give me transfem supremacy, every wet little hole belonging to holy girlcock, assholes, cunts, mouths, you name it. give me filthy minded, musky transfems that cuck my cis girlfriend by using me as a fleshlight, making her hold me for their use.

hell, I don't see it as often, but give me transmasc supremacy, too. give me real men with boycunts and tdicks who pity me for being agender, who mockingly lament that if only I could commit to being masc, I could be as godly as they are...but it's too bad, I'll just have to resign myself to being their willing wet mouth. give me transmascs who sneer at the poor men in this world sullied by a biodick.

just make me a free use service housepet for all the trans daddies and mommies, all the butch patriarchs and breadwinners. let the butches forcefemme me, or keep me androgynous and mock me for not being a real butch. let the transfemmes praise me for shedding the false womanhood I was born with while I worship the true femininity of musky ladyballs and girltaints. let the transmascs undermine me for not being a real boy like them, for not having the guts to go on T, and put me at a level below even cis "men."

queer bioessentialism. send post.

[clowncarfullofrats]

*slams fist on table*

I DO NOT NEED FRIENDS, I NEED A FOUND FAMILY THAT EVOLVES INTO A GANG AND WE OVERTHROW THE PATRIARCHY AND CAPITALISM TOGETHER.

[poppyknitt]

i keep thinking of how at my job at the cafeteria my first real shift had 3 groups of guys who were talking abt diets and calories (in the way you might hear Keto-Loving Mckenzie talk about them). at least one was a group of athletes.

i work at the healthy, allergen-free station. one guy said the food here, which is usually below 300-400 calories per serving of each dish we have, had too many calories.

we really need to teach our boys not to do these things to themselves. eating disorders or otherwise, men deserve good food in healthy amounts too. it’s a problem for everyone ofc, but the amount i hear about EDs in men is scarily little. it’s so worrying for me. i want the best for everyone and it’s super bad that guys w EDs don’t often get support or help for reasons usually rooted in the patriarchy and misogyny. it’s actually terrible. if you know more on this please contribute because i only know my own experiences with ARFID specifically, no other EDs

[hard--headed--woman]

gay men be like what? are you joking. i do not have male privilege nor do i suport the patriarchy. what the hell are you saying you dumb fucking cunt. i hope you get raped like you deserve you whore

[sophiemariepl]

Okay, I was Googling “Jeanne du Barry”, the new movie with Johnny Depp that just came out by French director of Algerian and Vietnamese descent, Maïwenn.

And a huge trigger warning, before you continue on reading.

I genuinely wanted to learn more about it’s director and main actress, that is, the aforementioned Maïwenn, as it was the first time I heard about her. And I stumbled upon the information that apart from being an actress and a film director, she is also Luc Besson’s ex-wife, and apparently they have a daughter together - Shanna Leila Besson, who also happens to be a well-known French actress and photographer.

But something did not add up. Wikipedia stated that Shanna Leila Besson is already 30, while Maïwenn is around 46/47. Like, wtf…

Only then I learned that Luc Besson met her when she was only 12 and he was 29. They began to “date” Maïwenn when she was only 15. Also, they got married when she was 16, and he was in his early 30s. And that Maïwenn had Shanna when she was only 17. Besson left her when she turned 20, for Milla Jovovich. And apparently it was Besson’s relationship with Maïwenn that inspired the movie “Léon: The Professional”.

Like, honestly, WTF? Why is no one talking about this? Like, the whole world was apparently watching this situation and nobody said a word?

But unfortunately, that is not the end of this story. It seems like Maïwenn, despite being a de facto victim of Luc Besson, she has a huge Stockholm syndrome herself.

While researching Maïwenn on the French side of the internet (thank God I do know some French), I stumbled upon an interview in which she apparently… defends Roman Polański. And mind you, this is not an old interview. This is from 2020, so relatively fresh, and definitely made in the post-#MeToo era. Yeah, I know that the events in the English-speaking world may not have the same impact on the situation for instance in the Francophone world, but still. Still!

That said, I really doubt that we should support her new movie. Yeah, I know that many people are excited to see Johnny Depp back on the big screen, but should we really give a bigger platform to a director who openly supported a man who has used a 13-year-old? And not to mention, who despite being herself a de facto victim of a child m*lester, she still stands with the abusers, not with the abused?

(Because I’m not even delving into Depp’s situation, this is a rabbit hole on its own, and I honestly don’t care if you’re a Johnny Depp stan or Amber Heard stan, take your sh*tty war somewhere else than this post.)

Like, I’m not a big fan of cancel culture. Or rather, I’m not a fan of it at all. But at this point, this is a question of an extremely delicate matter, and that is, the safety of children in our society.

[vanilla-voyeur]

So usually when I try to explain why I'm not a feminist I get really condescending because it's really frustrating to hear people assume that the only possible reason someone could be for gender equality but not also be a feminist is because the person must have a very ignorant misunderstanding of what true feminism is. But for the most part those folks are very earnest, and perhaps it's better for me to turn down the snark sometimes.

I feel pretty confident at this point that I am aware of feminism at least as much as the average feminist. I was a feminist for 7 years. I've taken gender studies classes, I've read academic feminist works, I've read belle hooks (much later than I should have), I used to frequent feminist blogs, I'm subscribed to a pro-feminist subreddit, I have feminist friends and partners, and my Tumblr dash is full of feminists. I've heard it all, I used to believe quite a bit of it, and I'm no longer convinced.

It's difficult to not make this sound incredibly defensive because, well it is. I've been told over and over again the same things by feminists who assume that they're the first one telling me it. I'm already familiar with these things mostly because I believed them back when I was a feminist and have since learned a more nuanced way of looking at gender. I'm trying to preempt as much of the rebuttals as possible.

That also makes this explanation exhaustingly long. There's a TLDR at the bottom. But if that's all you read then whatever your counterargument to it is probably already addressed in the rest of the post.

What is feminism?

Let's start with the definition of feminism. There are many feminist schools of thought. It makes it hard to talk about my disagreement with feminism as a whole because if I make a claim broad enough to include all feminists according to my understanding of what feminism really is, the assumption is that I am ignorant of the less distasteful schools of feminist thought because feminists don't consider other feminist schools of thought as true feminism. I genuinely think TERFs are a form of radical feminism, but that gets misunderstood to mean that I think all feminists are TERFs or are tolerant of TERFs. I don't buy the claim that TERFs aren't feminists because real feminism includes all women when the dominant online leftist narrative is white feminism. While I do think some feminists are for gender equality (asterisk) I don't agree with the feminists who define feminism to be nothing more than a fight for gender equality.

So what is the essential thing that is common to all people who call themselves feminists if it isn't gender equality? In my understanding, it is a belief in the patriarchy concept and that it must be dismantled. The difference between different schools of feminist thought is what the definition of patriarchy is and what is the best way to dismantle it.

This means TERFs are real feminists. They define patriarchy to be men existing and that trans women are a particularly henious type of man who have discovered a particularly insidious way to sneak into women's spaces. The fact that this is abhorrent to most feminists (and also decent people in general) does not stop it from being a patriarchy concept that people who self-identity as feminists believe.

Feminists for gender equality (asterisk) believe that the patriarchy is... well... it's uh... So every time I make a claim what the dominant narrative of the patriarchy is, if it doesn't match up word-for-word with the individual's specific views, then they take it as a sign that I'm ignorant of real feminism. Nevermind that when they explain the real definition of patriarchy, it's more-or-less what I just said in every way that is important to me. This still happens when I just straight up direct quote the last feminist who explained the real definition of patriarchy to me.

I will quote this definition:

Patriarchy is a system of relationships, beliefs, and values embedded in political, social, and economic systems that structure gender inequality between men and women. Attributes seen as “feminine” or pertaining to women are undervalued, while attributes regarded as “masculine” or pertaining to men are privileged.

The things that stick out to me in this dominant narrative that I don't believe in:

Patriarchy benefits all men

All gender inequality is due to societal structures that consistently favor men

If your personal definition of patriarchy does not include a belief that structural misandry exists, not as the patriarchy backfiring, but as a societal disadvantage that men have because they are men and not women, then it's not sufficiently different enough from previous definitions I've heard to be new to me.

Which is not to say that structural misogyny doesn't exist or male privilege doesn't exist. Both exist and also female privilege too. They are in effect in different contexts. I've made a previous more snarky post about how feminists use examples of misogyny to claim that misandry isn't real and MRAs use examples of misandry to claim that misogyny isn't real and all those examples prove is that both are real. (Shoutout to the TERF in my replies who did the exact thing I brought up in my post but worse because all the stuff she said was plainfacedly false. You think men can never be raped? Bruh.)

The prefix "fem" in the word "feminism" contains a clear indication that feminism is not any and all support for gender equality, but at best a specific belief that the only thing we need to advocate for to get gender equality is women's right.

If men's rights was part of feminism then it wouldn't be considered derailing to talk about men's issues in a feminist space. The frequent complaint that MRAs only bring up men's rights to derail a discussion of women's rights betrays a belief that any amount of talk about men's rights in a feminist space is derailing. (Or sometimes any amount of discussion in any space.) Nevermind that MRAs have created their own spaces to talk about men's rights, so it's not solely derailing. No, feminism is not "just gender equality". It has narrow assumptions about what counts as gender equality and what doesn't.

I don't believe in the patriarchy, so I don't consider myself a feminist. All people who self-id as feminist believe in the patriarchy, but not all people who self-id as feminists believe in gender equality. Furthermore, not all people who believe in gender equality self-id as feminists. (This is less surprising to leftists of color than white women.) The patriarchy concept is more essential to feminism than gender equality.

Instead I call myself an egalitarian. I like it, not just because it includes men's rights alongside women's rights, but also because it also signifies intersectionality of all justice movements: for PoC, for intersex people, for trans people, for queer people, for disabled people, for working class people, for sex workers, and for every marginalized group.

What I believe

Ok so how does I explain the existence of misogyny without believing it to be a result of the patriarchy? The same way I explain the existence of misandry without believing in a matriarchy.

(Side note: MRAs don't believe in a matriarchy. They believe misandry is a result of gynocentrism, which is a society that prioritizes the life, health, and welfare of women over that of men. They explain misogyny as a result of gynocentrism backfiring. Again, I don't think that's the full picture.)

In my understanding, misogyny, misandry, and transphobia are all a result of restrictive gender roles that put AFAB folks in one oppressive box and AMAB folks in a different analogous oppressive box. It really doesn't matter which box is worse because once something is sufficiently bad enough, it becomes abominable to compare it to another sufficiently bad thing. (Q: What's worse murder or rape? A: Thinking that's an appropriate question to ask) In some contexts women have it worse, in other contexts men have it worse, and in still some other contexts they both have it equally bad in complementary ways.

(To be clear, while I believe trans people of any gender can be a victim of both misandry and misogyny, that is not to say that binary trans women aren't fully women or that binary trans men aren't fully men. They are, but the people who hate them don't think that. If someone thinks you're a man and they hate men then they're going to be misandrist to you regardless of what your gender really is. It's like how anti-Sikh violence in the US is a result of Islamophobia despite Sikhs not actually being Muslim.)

Being a movement for women's rights and not men's rights (except for the few times when it can be twisted into the patriarchy backfiring explaination) feminism has over the decades done a lot of things to reduce the oppressive gender roles that marginalize women. I think that's great! I just don't think it's enough. We need an analogous movement that fights for men's rights and frees them from the oppressive gender roles society puts upon them.

Time to unpin the asterisk in the claim that "some feminists are for gender equality". I think that the patriarchy concept is misandrist. It is an obstruction to fully supporting men's rights. The feminists who do believe in gender equality end up devising some convoluted way to explain why a thing that disadvantages men is actually the patriarchy backfiring before they can decide that it's worthy of addressing. I would rather take Occam's Razor to it. Another issue with the patriarchy concept is that if a men's rights issue can't be explained by the patriarchy then it's dismissed as not important or not real. Also "the patriarchy backfiring" is often used as a thought-terminating cliche. If we focus exclusively on women's issues then all men's issues will be fixed because they're all secretly things that hurt women more. It ends up getting real victim-blaming real fast.

That said, I don't think all feminists hate men. (Though some feminists definitely do hate men. I know because I was one.) We live in a misandrist society (bottom text). While most feminists don't care about men's issues in the slightest, feminists are no more likely to hate men than anyone else from what I've seen. I don't think the feminists who do care about men's issues are misandrist, just that the one specific belief in the patriarchy concept is misandrist. There are certain ways that misandry manifests that is unique to feminism, but other ways that feminists generally avoid. If you want to talk about the real misandrist fucks, look no further than conservatives.

One could make an argument that because feminists claim to be fighting for gender equality, we should hold them to a higher standard than the rest of misandrist society. Imo it's leftist in-fighting. We need to build coalitions with people we don't 100% agree with. I consider anyone who supports both men's rights and women's rights my ally. That includes the feminists who do so even though they believe in the patriarchy concept. That also includes left wing antifeminists even though I don't personally consider myself an antifeminist.

On structural misandry

If I went into depth about examples of structural misandry and why they're not just the patriarchy backfiring, this post would be twice as long (leftist wall of text amirite). If y'all really care, then I can make a follow-up post. If Tumblr search wasn't absolute ass, you'd be able to search my blog for the misandry tag and see a little bit of what I'm talking about.

TLDR

I'm not a feminist because to be a feminist one must believe in the patriarchy and I don't. The patriarchy concept does not adequately explain all structural misandry. I identify as an egalitarian instead. I think that misandry, misogyny, and transphobia are all a result of restrictive gender roles that hurt everybody.

[sixpathshimedanshi]

This might be controversial or whatever but I feel like the legal age for marriage should be higher than 18. Ain't nobody should be marrying straight out of high school before they can reasonably get a feel of who they're probably going to end up living with and potentially stuck with depending on how domestic issues such as home economics and children whether abortion is legal or not go.

More importantly, it's far to easy for young people to get entrapped by marrying and being married that young when there's no way in hell that they can have reasonable financial security of their own and may find themselves relying on their partner's income ESPECIALLY when said person is older and likely more financially secure than them. Being able to be married even at 18 is simply rife with abuse potential and being forced into a family unit via finances and children they weren't ready for, and then there's groomers and pedophiles who could have known them before they were 18 who convince them to run away or something and have to deal with those repercussions.

There's just so many issues that comes with such a low legal marriage age and there's a reason why reactionaries don't want it raised and it's not just cause they want them young (though that's definitely part of the issue). The legal marriage age should at least be 20 or 20 something.