#when women ruled with world

[nappingpaperclip]

y’all we r not beating exorsexism and misogyny by calling every transmasc that pisses u off a ‘theyfab.’ Idc if they are annoying or have dumbass opinions, literally using someone’s agab as an insult is wrong and treating transmascs as annoying little afabs is deeply misogynistic and transphobic. What happened to just calling people fucking idiots

[diltonsstrangescience]

Jughead Jones, famous woman-hater.

[uncanny-tranny]

Trans solidarity is being a trans man whose vocal range is finally under a trans woman's low range 🩷

[skrunksthatwunk]

you go to a lesbian blog and find it says women only!! no men allowed!!! and go oh! excuse me, um, what about other lesbians? plenty of lesbians are genderqueer... and they go well, okay, go fuck yourself tim chop off your sweaty dick and stop calling yourself a lesbian. you do not have a dick, actually. you think about that fact often, even though it does you no good. you do not tell this person that.

you go to another lesbian blog and it says women only and you try again, and this time they change it to wlw + nblw only (non-men who love non-men :D). and you'll say hey i appreciate that but gender's not really that cut and dry for a lot of people. someone could be both a man and nonbinary, for instance. i just worry that you're looking at nonbinary as a generic third gender, or an extension of womanhood. i mean yeah you include nblw in your tags but all your posts are about pussy-havers exclusively. what's with that? and they say go fuck yourself you pervy man pretending to be a lesbian. you tried to sneak in but i won't let you.

so you go to a lesbian blog with a dozen or so posts about queer people needing to be more weird about it and you sigh in relief. but you still see the men dni. that's odd. hoping for the best, you say hey! i know you mean well but please maybe don't put men dni at the end of the lovely posts on your lesbian blog bc some lesbians are men. and they'll be like ok!! well you're allowed ;) and you say no that's not. no. some men are lesbians not just me. you think about your own dicklessness and wonder if that's why you were given entry. and you add that even if male lesbians are allowed, there's no indication of that. how would anyone know without asking? and they're like ohh gotcha gotcha well men dni + this is for sapphics only!! and you'll be like ok well that treats the concepts of men and sapphics as mutually exclusive identities and i just told you that's not true and you agreed with me so.. i don't think that solves our problem. and they're like. ok. fine. men dni but genderfluid and multigender people are allowed! and you're like no see that's. that's still the same thing.. you're saying the same thing just with different words. if you don't want men to interact but you're fine with multigender/genderfluid/etc ppl interacting then you either don't see them as Real Men (because they don't reach a standard of Full Manhood) or Complete Men (because they're only Part-Time Men), both of which suggest that they are, in some way, not men or less-than men, which is invalidating and defeats the point of the exception in the first place (accommodation) OR that you don't really mean the dni which is confusing and inconsistent and makes guydykes feel weird and uncomfortable and excluded from the lesbian space you're trying to cultivate. and they're like um. ok. so. cishet men dni? and you're like well i think that makes more sense, but what if someone identifies as both a cishet man and a sapphic? again, if we're trying to accommodate the genderfucky populace then that has to be a possibility that is considered. and they say god you people are never happy. what do you want me to do? what am i supposed to say to keep the right men out? and you pause. you empathize with the need for a space free from dudes trying to fuck you straight and feminine. dudes who watch lesbian porn and joke about what they'd do if they were allowed into girls locker rooms. who look at you like a piece of meat, and like someone who looks at women like pieces of meat in the same way he does. you get it. you know. you want a space where you can be sapphic, too. that's why you came to these blogs in the first place. you brace yourself and you say well i don't know that there are "right men" to keep out. i don't know that there's any single label that would accomplish whatever it is you're trying to accomplish. you could go for "sapphics only" or "queers only" and i think that might be the closest thing to what you want, but it's never going to be perfect. creating any exclusive space is going to shut out people you didn't account for, and the broader the label, the more people will be shut out that you didn't want to shut out. and what about people who don't know if they're allowed? what of questioning transbians, where are they supposed to go? and, frankly, i think i might rather my dykey posts get read and appreciated by a gay guy who sees me as a man than a woman who only sees me as a sacred womb, pure from male perversions or violence or whatever. i think community might just be more complex than a dni can handle. and they look at you and say i don't want to not have a dni. i think you're too permissive. you can't just "what about" or microlabel your way into everything. go fuck yourself, i bet you're not even a lesbian anyway. go find a real problem to get mad about.

you go to a lesbian blog. you ignore the men dni because you know you probably don't even count to them. or maybe you do count and, out of respect for your manhood, they'd shun you accordingly. you try to feel okay about that. you scroll past dozens of posts about mediocre men and gagging at straight friends' boyfriends and how gross and undeserving men are of the beautiful women they couple up with and how all women should be gay so they can get treated right and and and and and. you finally find a post about curling into someone you love and feeling at peace and try to lose yourself in it. you know that feeling is what unites you, what makes you belong. you try to focus on it. you think about carding your hands through a butch's hair or lacing fingers with a femme and feeling warm and loved and more yourself than you ever have before. like this is who you're meant to be. you read about lesboys and butch boytoys and genderfucky dykes and big hairy deep-voiced wonderful women (like you want to be someday, like you wish you could make yourself) and you try to ignore the men dni underneath each and every post. and you daydream about meeting someone kind and earnest at a lesbian bar even though you don't think any such bars exist within three states of you and you can't drink and don't want to drink because you need to be in control of yourself at all times so you don't fuck up like you're always about to and here in the nonexistent lesbian bar you feel wanted and safe and in good company. you picture your ideal, happiest self. it is a mistake. ideal-you has a goatee. not the mascara one you smear on and call drag even though you know it's not drag, not really, the beard you call drag because you think everyone would look at you sadly if you told them it was just to pretend you had something out of your reach. a beard that's soft and that you grew and that cannot be smudged away if you get too comfortable with it. the dream shatters. your people pull away from you, their scoffs mixing with the mind-numbing gay girl bedroom pop you learned to settle for just to have something that almost resembled you, they all pull away and turn their backs and do not look at you. you're too close to being a man now, even though you're the same amount of man as before. and they know you're not supposed to interact with men, not as you would with dykes, at least. and it sours. it's all your imagination, all in your head, but it sours.

you sigh. you think about how small you are. how short, how narrow, how feeble. how your voice pitches up when you talk to strangers because it's easier to speak quietly when it carries more, and because you're nervous. because it's a chore to talk, like everything is. you think about testosterone. you think about how your family would look at you, the questions they would ask, your answers they would only pretend to accept. the uncomfortable glances and whispered questions they'd try to hide from you. you think about how small you are, and how small you will always be. how you don't know of a way to fix it, but even if there was one, no one would want you anymore. you'd be the only one thinking it made you a cooler dyke. you think about how you don't even want a T-voice all the time, how you'll never be able to switch it at will, because you don't know how and can't bring yourself to figure it out. you think about how your throat closes around every hint of your own attraction. how wanting is perverse, how wanting is invasive, how wanting is embarrassing and too vulnerable so it must stay anonymous, as an online witness, and how you can barely manage to form or maintain friendships because your brain makes you pull away, always spinning out and struggling to recover from the simplest of interactions. how they'll all leave you and you won't chase after them at all and how that will hurt them. how stuck you get. how it looks like nothing's holding you back, how that frustrates everyone who thought you were going to be more than you were. the people you love who understand except when it comes to being ghosted, being shut out. how you don't want to hurt them. how you can't tell them that because you're stuck. how you turn to stone when touched, how you never reach out, how you lose your speech and can't look at people, how your autism is fun and sexy until it becomes real and you never see them anymore, how much you longed for someone who knew everything without you having to explain, and who loved you anyway. how unreasonable you know that is to expect of anyone. you think about that not-even-real lesbian bar. you think about how you still can't drive. how you can't leave your home on your own, without dragging somebody into helping you. how you can't leave your body. how you can't leave your manhood behind.

you think about finding another lesbian blog and ignoring everything. about skimming it for the parts you can juice some meaning from. the parts men ignore and don't understand, and how typical of you it is to do so. or the parts where you're not welcome and you should accept that, because it's for lesbians only. how you are a lesbian anyway. how you're meant to choose lesbian or man, how each is a betrayal of some kind to yourself or your people, your family, your lovely strangers, your rare friendly acquaintances. about the parts that tell you you're not wanted, that you're ugly and lazy and gross and insert yourself everywhere without even asking. about the parts that tell you you are hated, and how lesbians are above it all by rejecting men. how lesbians are each blessed miracles. about the parts that say you should be ashamed of being whatever twisted confused freak you are, of everything, of looking and wanting or not looking or not wanting, of picking and choosing instead of taking it all in with a smile. after all, shouldn't you take it? or is your ego too fragile, as men's so often are? aren't you tired? good. we're not here for your consumption. and we sure as hell don't want your company or "community" or whatever. didn't you read the sign? no boys allowed. and if you want to come in you have to make up your mind. as if you haven't told them the only answer you have. you're both. you're both.

you know you broke the rule by interacting.

but it gets lonely sometimes. you wonder if they know.

[flyinglowdown]

i have a dream. and that dream is cressida/eloise/lord debling

[uwmspeccoll]

A Winter Pinecone Wood Engraving Wednesday

This winter, I received two hand-printed holiday cards with original wood-engraved pinecones from a couple of engraving friends of UWM Special Collections: Wisconsin artist Tony Drehfal and Kentucky printer Joanne Price. The top pinecone is by Drehfal, and in his card he writes:

I created this pine cone “study” engraving for the special WEN [Wood Engravers Network] calendar, and it was printing so easily on my finally restored Albion Press, that I kept on printing winter cards, which I have not made for years. The image is closely based on a inked sketch by a U.S. Forest Service field worker -- C. L. Taylor, in 1907. The Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation (Carnegie Mellon University) has a bunch of these drawings in their collection. I loved this one and worked to see if I could translate it into a wood engraving. I learned much --

Price’s pinecone, entitled “Pinecone Breeze,” is one of nine wood-engraved illustrations by Price for When Children Ruled the World: A Christmas Story written by Sena Jeter Naslund and published by Larkspur Press in 2021 (which we did a post on back in March 2022). 

It is always exciting to get original wood engravings in the mail!

View more work by Joanne Price.

View more posts with wood engravings!

-- MAX, Head, Special Collections

[bigothteddies]

oh my god re: your recent post... the 'girl dinner' shit. omfg. idc if it's 'not that deep' you're still reinforcing terrible shit!!! and also the like 'boys when they see a stick/cool rock' and 'girls when they time travel vs boys when they time travel' wojaks. the gender-fication of barbie vs. oppenheimer. why the fuck is the recent internet zeitgeist hyper stereotypical cisnormativity. like. i thought we had collectively outgrown this.

exactly. And that’s all just some parts of it too. People pretend they’re so on top of things but it’s just because they don’t want to seem out of touch and offensive. It’s wild watching people barf out gender binaries with new terms and new ways to categorize trans people as not their gender and new ways to reinforce the same gender roles on ourselves but in “good” ways now. It’s just….really frustrating and pretty terrifying at the same time

[ophelia-thinks]

Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars

[remcocoa]

.

[supercool-here]

Watching the episode (94th) where the cuartel prompts Berta to get the surgical procedure to have a hot bod and it's Betty and Inesita the only ones having reasonable and smart takes as to why she shouldn't do it (and get the car her husband told her to get instead) but in the end she does get the procedure because insecurities and ego and vanity and coaxing and whatnot. And then they tell Betty how she's ingenuous for believing a man can love you no matter your looks. And then it's BETTY who ends up looking prettier without having undergone any surgeries, but most importantly, Armando, the womanizer who was always surrounded by models and who only chased the most beautiful women, falls in love with her, out of all the ordinary and even undeniably unattractive women he must have met in his lifetime.

[fiendishartist2]

reading my own oc lore and being gagged as if i didnt write it

[fideidefenswhore]

philip making mary happy like she was 10 is a line i remember from her Children of England bio. so "for the first time since she was ten, when her father's eye had first lighted upon anne boleyn, she was truly happy." it's anne's fault again! so i guess weir wrote this novel from reading all her old books again, and not updating it with modern theories. which is kind of like endorsing herself.

also, she says mary had "dreams" about philip, "reliving the delights" iykwim. weird she changed that part.

the boleyn years are actually the only section of the book where weir imagined and wrote out long, extended, creatively reimagined scenes and conversations between characters; pretty much everything else, up till her marriage with philip, reads like a summary of events, either paraphrases or literal verbatim excerpts from her previous works. but, as she herself said in the author's note, the only piece of her life weir sympathizes for was her 'victimization' by anne boleyn; after that she says her sympathy for her is over (an objectively wild thing to say...no sympathy for the execution of her maternal surrogate in 1541? fr?). one gets the sense that the dialogue she gives mary concerning this is 100% what weir wishes she had said to her own father's 'other woman', that she never got the chance to say (tl; dr, revenge fantasy...i still have so many questions about that a/n...her mother was threatened with jail??)

she repeats the line about dreams; ('she was tormented by sensual dreams, in which [they were] making love'), however the actual portrayal of their sex scenes makes it explicit that she doesn't experience orgasm with her husband:

"this time she began to feel, in the core of her body, some tingle of response [...] but he was pressing on heedlessly to his climax and the moment was lost anyway."

and that is...the closest she ever gets.

she does this with her AB novel as well, which i just attributed to her hating her, because she portrays that in such a roundabout way...there's 'no alchemy' between her and henry (of like, all historical couples, this seems like a reach), and the evidence she could've used to support the choice (although, i think it's pretty clear now, especially from this A/N, where she says her own mother = coa, and this other woman in her own past = anne, that it was because she found it gratifying to write about anne suffering and unhappy and lacking pleasure in her life, again...revenge fantasy/transference) she dismisses (the 'vigor nor virtue' quote is a 'lie' from jane boleyn out of spite, anne even has the thought that it's 'not true'...?).

[dramarants]

binged 14 eps of my dearest in one sitting. jang hyun the man that you are, the love you've grown to be capable of. gil chae the love that you are capable of, the woman you've grown to become.

[they-call-me-hippie]

Yeah I can tell people have lost their grasp on basic ongoing forms of oppression when they say things like "hatred of men and masculinity is one of the reasons trans women, BIPOC and Jewish men are persecuted" like what a non-sequiteur. Imagine being so ignorant of power structures in your attempt to """progressively""" defend men that you become transphobic

[tonyglowheart]

reading thru old meta posts on qian qiu and there's like, some stuff I agree with sure but there's also a lot I don't lol. w like yan wushi especially. there's a lot of. I think too much conventional-mindedness in approaching yws even from the ppl who did like him as a character. saying he's a difficult character, and is meant to be a difficult character, but then still framing him along more conventional moral frameworks. yet another apartment 'complex'? strange, I find it quite simple moments.

[booksandwords]

When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt by Kara Cooney

Read time: 6 Days Rating: 3.5/5 Stars

The Quote: Once upon a time, there were women who ruled the world. Six of them—Merneith, Nerferusobek, Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, Tawosret and Cleopatra—climbed the highest the wielded the most significant power: not as manipulators of their menfolk but as heads of state. Each started as a queen—a mere sexual vessel of their king—but each became chief decision-maker, five of them served as king outright. — Kara Cooney

When Women Ruled the World is perhaps unsurprisingly divided into six sections, one for each of the six queens, an introduction and a conclusion (both of which are on a theme). The six queens are Merneith, Nerferusobek, Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, Tawosret and Cleopatra. There are other women of power noted some are queens others are just women in positions of power in the Egyptian system. These include Neithotep, Tetisheri and Ahmes-Nefertari. The Queen/ King's Horus names are included and explained, all of them are interesting. Nefertiti and Hatshepsut's particularly so. A suggestion for those new to academic non-fiction, if you have an interest in the added detail provided by the notes, try using a second bookmark. But the narrative style used by Kara Cooney means you can skip them with ease. Same are added commentary, some are simply sources and some are where to look for more information.

🤎 Merneith — Queen of Blood (ca 3000-2890 B.C.) Merneith is the first of the six queens ruling as a regent for her son, Den during the 1st dynasty. Her entry acts as an overview of the kingship in ancient Egypt and the role of the Queen in it. Merneith provides something of a fascinating study in brutal strength and the things one must do to survive. Little is truly known of her really but I like the way this is written. The style empowers her and allows her ferocity to shine. As much as this is about the women Den himself is interesting, The First King of Upper and Lower Egypt. Den must have greatly respected Merneith burying her in a tomb fit for a king though with fewer human sacrifices (nothing to do with gender everything to do with afterlife necessity).

💚 Nerferusobek — The Last Woman Standing (1777-1773 B.C.) Nerferusobek has one of the best name meanings, beauty of Sobek. "Named for the fierce god of the Nile inundation, a deity of aggressive sexuality and violent fecundity." (p.77). Her crowned names are Beloved of Re; Daughter of the Powerful One; Mistress of the Two Lands; Stable of Appearances. This entry continues the discussion on succession discussing royal reproduction practices, including harems and a quite interesting section on incest (all neat logic no ick factor). There is an insightful and logical comment on harems that I quite appreciated. Her subtitle comes from why she was even sitting on the Horus Throne, Nerferusobek was the last royal of the 12th Dynasty, a product of incest (probably) causing sterility. She perhaps willingly but perhaps reluctantly took the throne to steady the ship. She had little to gain and was little threat to the status quo, with no chance of a male heir. Her short reign allows the board to be reset and allowed all the major power players to get their viable sons into position for the start of the next dynasty. Nerferusobek is almost the exact opposite of her female predecessor, it is easy to admire her patience and intelligence.

💛 Hatshepsut — Queen of Public Relations (1473-1458 B.C.) "Hatshepsut broke all the rules."(p.99) is the first line of this section and it is the perfect summation of her rule. Let's start with the pronunciation of her name as included by Kara Cooney Hat-shep-suit. One of the cutest moments in this section is what the young princes were called... nestlings look it made me smile okay. There was an interesting moment for me. The extremely young pharaoh, the two-year-old on the throne, could only happen in ancient Egypt with its focus on mythos and god-kings. Anywhere else would be civil war. Cooney has a great reading on Hatshepsut's potential romantic attachments. They weren't needed for her to maintain power, there was little place in the historical record for them. I did like the section on Hatshepsut and one day I will get around to reading Cooney's Hatshepsut work but not today. This is the longest section of the six, unsurprising really, Cooney wrote The Woman Who Would Be King dedicated entirely to Hatshepsut. As that book does exist there is less discussion and commentary in the notes they are nearly entirely sources. In some ways, I would consider her the opposite side of the coin to Merneith. Where Merneith held her position with strategic blood and violence Hatshepsut used ideology and human relations. Especially ideology.

For her countrymen there was no longer any point referring to her as "queen." That title was only used for women subservient to their sovereign. — Kara Cooney (p.84)

🧡 Nefertiti — More Than Just a Pretty Face (1338-1336 B.C.) Ideology was also important in Nefertiti's reign. Nefertiti was actually treated as an equal to her husband during his reign. An equal female to his male god. (Because yes he was a 🤡) What is clear is that in any other time, any other place, her husband, the completely bonkers Akhenaten would likely have faced regicide. There isn't a consensus that she even ruled alone, if she did she ruled with her daughter taking the role of Queen, the feminine role to her masculine. So much of everything around her is dependent on which school of Egyptology you belong to. It can be difficult. Was she ever a King in her own right? 🤷🏼‍♀️ Nefertiti is... complicated. It had to make many comments on her. So much of Nefertiti's reign in her own right is a matter of superposition. But I'm not even sure I knew that I ever knew the potential connection between King Tut and Nefertiti.

💙 Tawosret — The Survivor (1188-1186 B.C) Tawosret comes from a very different period of Egyptian history. She was needed by Egypt but not welcome. Women were greatly distrusted in any position of power. She is a mixture of all the previous queens except maybe Nefertiti. It all starts with a discussion of how times had changed in Egypt and the Ramesside period. Her crowned names are Daughter of Re, Beloved of Amun; Mighty Lady, Chosen of Mut; Strong Bull, Beloved of Ma'at; Founder of Egypt, who vanquishes foreign countries. Using the title Chosen of Mut is a brilliant ideological move, ditto Beloved of Ma'at. Mut was a mother goddess, her name means mother, she's a primordial deity. Ma'at was a deity tied to balance and justice, a key to the processes of entering the afterlife. All these women knew how to manipulate the greek pantheon for their own power. There is a lovely quote in here about human society and feminine rule. "Many of history's women could rise to power only within extraordinary crisis and, when the immediate predicament had abated, were unceremoniously pushed aside. Indeed, the catastrophe itself was usually blamed on the woman's rue, a Catch-22 if there ever was one." (p.240). Tawosret feels like something akin to one of the British succession crises (there have been three), but one, in particular, ended with a queen on a throne decided from a piece of genetics.

💜Cleopatra — Drama Queen (51-0 B.C.) If you are going to know any of the Queens it will definitely be Cleopatra. Cleopatra was a true power player, a power player that would likely succeed even in the modern-day, maybe more so in the modern-day. Sex is power and she was totally unafraid to use it but that is far, far from all she was. Cleopatra was also strategic, intelligent and openly ambitious. Even if you know Cleopatra you will likely find information in here you don't know. For example, Cleopatra was in Rome when Ceaser was assassinated or the import of Ceaserion. There was an amusing moment for me when I realised Cleopatra essentially bought Mark Antony, she wanted his power for some form of legitimacy, he needed money to pursue his military campaigning. Cleopatra's section ends with a quick section on what happened to her children. While her sons were killed her daughter, Kleopatra Selene was married to a Roman ally and well. She went on to become a queen and clearly inherited her mother's intelligence. What I didn't know was that Kleopatra Selene and Juba II's son was killed by Caligula just for being descended from Marc Antony and Cleopatra.

I did enjoy this. I enjoyed learning about new powerful women. Women who used power in different ways to maintain the stability of their Egypt and their position. There is some well-written background included too, like the way an heir was chosen and reproductive practices. I had completely missed in all my time reading about ancient Egypt the connection between Nefertiti and Tut. I do appreciate the use of the modern to help readers understand, Trump, Clinton, the Saudi Royal family and just general or universal expectations moments experienced by women.

Let me justify the rating. While I was reading this wasn't a 3-star book. But it feels more like a 3.5-star book upon reflection, I'm rounding down. Cleopatra's section let me down a little. I was confused for quite a bit of it, to be honest, it was a bit of a slog to get through. In the previous paragraph, I mentioned the moments experienced by women, that is also a bit of a flaw. This feels like it is squarely aimed at women. And perhaps relying too much on female experience and contemporary references.