#white cishet males ruin everything

[lilyvalerieorchard]

As much as I hate Lily Orchard, white favoritism is a thing in pretty much every fandom. One example I can think off the top of my head in the toh fandom, was back when Thanks to Them aired, and many people mocked Luz's scene in the classroom (despite being literally a display of suicidal ideation) while writing thinkpieces about Hunter's mental health and abuse, basically ignoring the Black main character's mental health issues to focus on the white boy (hopefully this doesn't come off as me hating Hunter, I like him a lot, it's just an example)

Speaking of season 3, there was quite a group of people who hated on Luz due to her mental health issues, calling her selfish and ungrateful while she was struggling with self-destructive behavior while, once again, Hunter didn't get as much backlash for his ""selfish"" behavior in For the Future, as people mostly understood he was struggling with his mental health and grief. It's a sadly common thing in fandoms to narrow Black characters down as one dimensional and "bad", while white characters get a pass and sympathy from fans

Another example of racism in the fandom, is whitewashed art of Black and brown-skinned characters, mainly Luz, and how many artists don't take this topic seriously - that was more common in the early fandom, though, thankfully becoming less frequent as time went one

There's some other examples: in 2021, there was a Skara/Edric comic that spiraled huge controversy on Twitter due to Odalia objectifying Skara and referring to her as an "it", which has very clear racist undertones. Also, art on Twitter of Luz saying she's gonna "ruin" Amity's bloodline by joining her family, also having clear racist undertones (There's likely more, but these two are the first ones to come to my mind, as they received tons of deserved backlash)

So yeah, once again, I dislike Lily Orchard, but denying racism in the fandom is just... wrong. It may be a minority of fans, especially nowadays, but it's there and it harms people of color in the fandom, who tend to get mass harassment for calling it out. I also hope this doesn't come off as rude, the post just brought back some memories of my personal experiences in the fandom, and I thought I should share

Oh my...I never knew it was that bad. The large majority of the fandom loves Luz but to hear some truly nasty people treat her and the other BIPOC characters like this is just wrong. Speaking as comic and video game fan: I know how most of the Batfam fandom will erase Cass, Duke and Steph all while propping up white/white-passing male characters like Dick, Jason, Tim and Damian (nothing against either of them); how Marvel comic fans will downplay characters like Kamala and Miles or slut-shame MJ; how lead female characters of color in games like Forspoken, Dustborn and Mirror's Edge are lambasted as "too angry", "too vulgar", "too snarky", "too unlikeable" by gamers AND critics alike while angsty white male leads in certain popular games are given free passes. I feel you, There is rampant cishet white male favouritism in ALL of nerd culture and I absolutely hate it. For the record, I have nothing against cishet white male characters in general, I just cannot stand double standards that force female and minority characters to jump through multiple flaming hoops to prove their "authenticity". I looked up the whitewashing "fanart" people were drawing of Luz, Gus, Willow, and-

Disgusting.

*To those so-called "fans"*

If you think Luz, Guz, Willow, Darius, Camilia and others would be better if they were white, if you so happen to be inbred, racist piece of crap.

Get the Hell out and NEVER set foot in this fandom (or any fandoms) EVER AGAIN. Dana didn't create a beautiful whimsical masterwork of animation just so you could hijack it for portraying your own twisted Hapsburg utopia. In fact, she hates everything filth like you stand for. So once again, get out and get drenched by acid rain.

*sighs* That felt good.

Just remember: Plasma Lily stands with marginalized voices.

[ribstongrowback]

something that radfems fail to understand about rape, is that it's a system

they'll tell you that they do, but if they did, they'd understand why trans women are much more likely to be on the receiving end of it than the other way around, and for this you just need to look at the way rape culture works.

look at bill clinton. look at dominique strauss khan. look at harvey weinstein.

everybody fucking knew.

everybody shut the fuck up.

god was in his bedroom and everything was normal. people understood on a fundamental level that these powerful men could do whatever they want, and whenever they were "exposed" people jumped to their defence because it was normal.

There is a system in place and it is meant to protect specifically white cishet male from repercussions when they commit rape.

specifically white, because POC men are seen as animals.

specifically cis, because trans men are seen as either dangerous butches or weak women who must be saved

specifically het, because gay men are seen as pedophiles

and specifically men, because women can't want sex

I'm focusing on men here, of course, because that's what radfems see us trans women as, so the way rape culture protects cis women from consequences when they do commit rape and the intricacies of that are beyond the scope of this post

what I'm getting at here is that trans women are exempt from this protection because there is nothing normal about a trans woman anywhere other than within a 100% transfem space. a trans woman is expected to be a rapist. if a trans woman rapes someone she is dead. if a trans woman is ever in a grey area situation with anyone she is dead. if a trans woman ever makes someone else uncomfortable she is dead.

trans women face scrutiny at every turn. men don't. men just get to rape people and escape the consequences. their friends will stick by them. the media will comiserate their ruined career while they get million dollar gigs talking about economics or whatever.

a trans woman will have to move back into her parents and into the closet, and die.

that is what sexism, on a political level, on a systemic level, looks like. if you fail to see that, you cannot hope to help any woman.

[polskasroka]

I've seen a couple of posts mentioning the "discourse" on twitter (on which I don't have an account bc I value my time and I'm too impulsive to let myself waste time on there), so I'll use my time here, adding my thoughts abt it

As I've seen, ppl on twitter are bitching abt too many fluff fics and not enough evil satanistic takes on the Papas, the Clergy etc

Ppl on tumblr are bitching abt there being too few fluff fics

Let me grab the ao3 data

There's scraps when it comes to evil Papas 0-3

When I choose the tag "Fluff", ao3 shows me this:

which makes me wonder how come that ppl start complaining abt there being a shortage of fluff ghost fics

To sum up: ppl on tumblr complain abt there being too few fluff fics, ppl on twitter complain abt too little evilness in the fics, which makes both sides complain basically abt the same thing, which makes them the same, essentially

2. Ghost is not a universe like a game or a book to be clinging on to when it comes to the lore and canonical stuff

Basically, there's actually not that many things that are pre-established that should be followed. And! even if there's sth pre-established in a universe, ppl on the net change it anyhow, and even not on the net!

Example? The Witcher Netflix. They had pre-established everything. They've turned it all upside down. They've ruined a book universe that is literally a heritage of my country. I hate them for that.

So if ghost fanfic writers were to follow strictly pre-established stuff, we'd get the people behind the masks, not the actual characters.

3. That leads me to a thought that what I've mentioned above is an extremity, yes. But making characters super evil, no matter what they do to be evil, is as much of an extremity as babygirlfying them and making cinnamon rolls out of them.

4. Ghost fanfiction is a FICTION. It's a fiction with a little pre-established bg that should be followed no matter what. That's why we get all the content that wouldn't be possible if anyone from the band said, "my character is x and y and z." This is not how it works here. Let ppl create what they want.

5. For some, fluff is comforting. For others, reading/writing abt any kinds of evil is comforting. That doesn't make those ppl support any kind of hate towards anyone. Just as Dostoevsky wasn't a m*rderer. And Nabokov wasn't a p*do.

6. Last but not least. What I see this particular discourse and the problems in some other fandoms is this:

when a character is turned evil and r*pist w/o a context in a fanfiction, it's bad when a character is turned into anything or anyone but a neurotypical cishet white male w/o a context in a fanfiction, it's fine

So basically, use filters on ao3. Don't look at what you don't wanna see. If you want a specific kind of content, look for it, create it yourself or ask someone to create it for you. I'll keep writing my evil Copia fics, you'll keep writing your fluff Copia fics. And it's fine <3

If you don't agree w my points, it's also fine. Free speech, everyone.

[chuckdraug]

“Don’t complain, it’s just a game”

This is a translation - and at some extent rewording - of a post on my Spanish blog that I finally decided to post here as well.

WARNING: Before you start reading the actual post, please follow the links down here since these posts where the ones that made me write mine, and because context is important:

«What We Talk About, When We Don't Talk About Natives», by Dia Lacina (English)

«Resulta que Horizon Zero Dawn también es ofensivo», by Juan Tejerina (Spanish), though Google-translated here

Hope you are ready now.

--- 

Yes, this very post here comes from an opinion article published on the Games Tribune Magazine web (I'll just name GTM as the platform where it was posted in due respect to their ethical code, despite this being their vicedirector's opinion) as a reply to an article regarding cultural appropriation and native Americans on fiction due to the PS4's latest hit, "Horizon Zero Dawn".

I didn't want to talk about this. In fact, for some days... well, no, hours I didn't say a thing on Twitter aside from replying to some people. But everyone has a limit to their patience, and so I hit mines and wanted to come to my egocentric Internet corner and say what I want to say.

I'm not going to talk about cultural appropriation nor about colonialism nor about how "HZD" borrows from native Amercians, celtics, vikings, ainus or whatever. I haven't played the game and I'm an ignorant on those topics, so I better not say a thing about it. I want to talk of what I know, of something I could be blamed for in the past - and maybe at times in the present day -, and that is clear on the GTM post: whenever someone complains, critics or just expresses themselves regarding a social topic on fiction and/or real life we just say they overreact.

There's one big trouble when we just tell people they overreact whenever they have something to say in those matters, or if their opinion just differs from ours. We say they get offended so easily.

So in this particular case, Dia Lacina points out her problems about topics she knows about on a game that's actually getting a pretty good reception and its protagonist, Aloy, is seen as a good example of female protagonist. A huge step, specially when you see a lot of women talking about their experience with Aloy, what they feel with her. Representation matters, as they always say.

But... No work is perfect, and the fact we advance in some social topics doesn't mean everything is done, as there's a lot to do yet. Lacina's post not only talks about the problems she sees on "HZD" when it comes to racial and cultural matters, but on how native Americans are often portrayed on fictional works. This doesn't mean Aloy being an empowered female protagonist is of no avail, it only points out that even if we get things right in some parts, others still need more work, there's a big picture and we have only retouched a speck on it.

What happens then? Tejerina's reply is nothing but a new evidence of what we usually do: we label these critics, complains and even just opinions and points of view as suspicious, as exaggerated, as weird and out of place. The general feeling I get from his words is the classic white cishet male speech of everyone else is overreacting, that they whine with no reason and are complaining and taking the fun away. You know, their usual speech of deeming others as haters, as Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) or as supporters of a politically correct dictatorship.

But am I going to sum his text up as just "you complain about everything"? Sure not, but that point is still there and I'm not going to ignore it. Though truly, it goes beyond that.

It goes beyond when he compares Lacina's post with the reaction of the Spanish media with the "katana murderer" case many years ago, and how they related the murderer to "Final Fantasy VIII" and its main character, Squall Lionheart, to the point of claiming that such murderer got his looks from Squall - he was just a regular Spanish guy, not some Squall impersonator.

To make it clear, Tejerina is comparing Lacina's point of view to that of media wanting first pages and their minutes of fame around a murder. Yes, he's doing that: he's comparing the vultures of the Spanish media to a native American's point of view regarding a videogame.

Yes, we can go this low.

So Lacina posted her criticism on the Internet. She made it public, she wanted to show it. Oh geez! She's expressing herself and you come here and accuse her of looking for her five minutes of fame.

Oh, but it doesn't end here. But first, some context.

Recently in Spain, the Catholic organization "Hazte Oír" sponsored a bus where you could clearly read "Boys have penises, girls have vulvas" in a "deal with it" tone, claiming it was biological evidence even though biologists everywhere called that bullshit. "Hazte Oír" is a bunch of people who repeatedly show how sexist, homophobic, transphobic and many-other-things they are.

Well, what does it have to with these posts? At the end of his, Tejerina pointed out that what Lacina wrote isn't important, and so isn't any social opinion on matters like sexism or transphobia.

He considers this kind of opinions responsible for dividing the gaming community to the point we look at each other as enemies - say what?! really?! That and the fact those opinions don’t focus on “the real enemy” he points out: the right-wing bastards who are ruining our lives, and the religious indoctrination many of us have gone through since we were toddlers.

So in Tejerina's opinion, you talking about sexism or cultural appropriation isn't that important compared to ditching Trump, Rajoy and the Catholic Church. Because you can't talk about both things, you either complain on one or another. So yes, the feeling you get with the final paragraphs of his text is that you wanting to be treated as the human being you are isn’t as valuable as talking about other problems.

It's clear, right? We, the white cishet males - though some would argue about me being white because I'm a Spaniard - have no problems at all, and every time a woman, a PoC or LGBT person gives their point of view, we feel uneasy, to say the least. We, the privileged ones, look down at them and ditch them for making us feel uncomfortable, how dare they do that?!

And when we feel uncomfortable, uneasy, instead of listening to them, on analyzing ourselves and the world we live in, we say that they are whiners and haters complaining on everything. We call them SJWs, we call them feminazis, we call them lots of names. We say they only want some Internet fame. We tell them to shut up.

And if you had a bad experience with a feminist or PoC or whatever, you quickly label all of them as people you cannot reason with, but the very moment we are called for something due to the injustice in the current status quo, we are eager to yell NOT ALL MEN. 

Don't you see it? We say they whine, when we are the ones actually whining. And why? Because for us, it's easier and makes us comfortable.

It's easier if we claim we live in a politically correct dictatorship instead of looking at yourself and seeing what's wrong with you. Why? We are Always Right™, how can we be wrong?! 

 It's easier when you say "it's only a game" without thinking on why someone else feels uneasy. We can separate facts from fiction, but those works of fiction can be analyzed, specially when looking at real life. They have their context.

(I'd like to point out here that Tejerina himself told me that with that paragraph I was actually supporting his views because "if we kept thinking of what might upset someone, if we over-analyzed everything, we wouldn't create anything"... it's true that we won't please everyone, it's impossible, but it is his - and many others’ - way to get the focus on something else so he - and anyone else - won’t feel guilty. If we show our works, people can give their opinions on them, and that includes any social views. And that kind of feedback is actually important, not just for our works, but for us as social people.)

It's easier if we think that these people want to take the fun away from us, even though they claim that you can enjoy something despite its problems - it's OK while you acknowledge those problems. We say that they hate our hobbies instead of listening to them and looking at these problems and thinking why they are... well, problems.

It's easier if we say "I'm not like that, don't you dare blame me for that" because the fact that our society isn’t fair is proof enough of how right they are. We might think we are the "nice guys", but no one is a saint, you know the current situation benefits you and you only, and you don't want to share it. Also, these changes won't be immediate, they need a lot of time, yet we complain at the slightest evidence.

I'm sure you've heard and read this from people who are way smarter than I am. Still, I wanted to say it as well.

Because I'm tired of this shit.

Because minorities and the oppressed express themselves - freedom of speech, remember? -, yet instead of listening to them we try to shut them up, we want to turn their opinions and criticism into babycries. We tell them they criticize everything - "you see sexism everywhere!" is the first claim that comes to my mind.

We, the privileged, don't wanna accept their points of view, because by doing so we will see how wrong we are, how society made us this way, how it has spoiled us in believing we are special snowflakes that should step on those who are different from us, calling them weak and despicable and not fit to live like us.

This is hatred mixed with fear to them. We fear that we are wrong, that we aren't the kings of the hill anymore, that we aren't those nice guys and snowflakes society told us we were. There is no perfect being since we ALL are humans.

We are scared of reality and of being stupid, so instead of listening and reviewing our very acts and behavior... we protect our egos, our pride, and we ditch those who are different, we blame them for our insecurity, we hate them. And in the process, we demonstrate that we are stupid. And full of hate.

It's frightening. It's embarrassing. It's horrible.

It isn't just about fiction. It is about the reality we live in. It is about us hating on those who aren't like us, on stripping them of their humanity, because it is easier if you treat a woman/PoC/LGBT as less than human beings. Who cares how others feel if I can feel OK with myself? Who cares if the only way to be in harmony is by making other people feel miserable and inferior to me?

No one wants to be told that they're doing wrong. But surprise! We will fail a lot of times - and I'm pretty sure this post of mine is full of mistakes. Even if it upsets us, wake up and smell the ashes: perfection does not exist. No one says this is easy.

We, the privileged, instead of whining, should sit down, listen to other people and learn from them. And even shut up, because we think we are the protagonists, but no, at best we are support characters in this fight.

But what if you don't wanna do it? You're free to choose your destiny. Just deal with the consequences of your choice, no option is free of them. I can go and support these people and I know there will be other people out there saying that I've been brainwashed or that I'm a white knight or whatever. I know and I have to deal with that.

And I’m glad of my choice.

Truly, if it weren't for the whole Gamergate shitstorm, I'd be one of those people who would never, ever, get to think of what they are doing and how it affects others. I would be one of those saying that "it's just a game". I'm happy I'm not one of them. At least, most of the time.

[norgestan]

it’s funny how everyone is saying Dani has a personality or characterization and then just says he knew amira since they were kids.... we only know that because they TOLD us, they haven’t SHOWN anything. “show, don’t tell” is literally the basics of writing/television. he’s a bland white boy who gets by because people take scraps and over analyze them and insert them into headcanons that subconsciously become canon to them 🤭

i wrote a really long answer to this ask and tumblr made it disappear, i’m so sad:(

but anon! i love this ask because you point out a very interesting thing, which is people taking anything about dani that reminisces a “personality” and use that to argument that he’s not bland when the only thing that we really know about dani is that... he likes amira. that’s it. and this is a trend in fandom with white background characters in shows.

and like, do you know who has a personality??? kasim. the show makes a point on his introduction clips that he clicks incredibly well with amira because they’ve lived so many similar situations!!! but not only that. in the clip we can see that kasim is feisty and funny as fuck, but also knows how to listen and to make the person in front of him feel good and respected. (which was kinda ruined by the... other clips. but eh.) the only thing that the show told us rather than show us is everything that dounia said about him on today’s clip.

and compare what one clip did vs all the clips in this season about dani. we know that he’s careless because he’s the archetype of the bro-ish, cishet white dude... and that’s about it. we know he’s... a decent brother? because he took cris to the hospital to see joana when she begged him to. and that he’s... kinda perceptive? because he kinda makes amira crack up when she was stressed during the tuesday clip... alright. and like, that’s it. besides, i don’t think lucas is good enough of an actor to really portray dani in a way that shows more besides the straight-bro-dude persona he’s got going on since s2. just think about all the other actors that have made their characters stand out beyond the script because of their quirks: irene with cris, hajar with amira, celia with viri, alejandro with lucas... hell, i even found miquel charming at times. i don’t think lucas has the range and that’s the saddest thing.

i mean, i know because i’ve read the spoilers (and stop right here if you don’t want to know) that we get another clip on saturday that expands more on dani. but then, it’s the same “tell rather than show” thing, and only about his relationship with religion, as well as more crumbs of amira and dani being childhood friends. even then, i’m positive that the show will do more to flesh out dani in the future (unless they’ve completely forgot how to write a good character). but the fact that fans are already lining up to defend dani this early in the season, when it’s a fact that he’s a bland character??? now those are the things that only happen to characters that are white. people only showed interest in kasim after he looked at lucas in the second clip he appeared on; not because he could be a compelling romantic companion to amira, but because he can be more wanking material to male-attracted fetishizing girls in fandom.

[a-queer-seminarian]

we are taught to interpret Esau’s trading of his birthright for a bowl of stew as impulsiveness, even (in Christian language) as a ‘weakness of the flesh.’ He chooses instant gratification over the farther off but far more valuable thing, and thus proves himself unworthy of his firstborn status and all it entails -- Abraham’s wealth and social power, but also Abraham’s relationship with God.

i don’t believe that.

Esau gave in to Jacob’s demand because he knew that Jacob would never have the means to compel Esau to make good on his word.

Jacob was physically weaker. Jacob was set to inherit the tiniest fragment of the wealth and resources that Esau would inherit. how on earth would Jacob ever wrest the birthright and the blessing he was owed from Esau?

Esau’s ‘crime’ here is less impulsiveness, and more a trust in the status quo. his world of patriarchy and primogeniture promised him his inheritance, whether he was a good man or bad, an honest man or a liar. he could tell his younger brother whatever Jacob wanted to hear, but down the road he could trust that their father would bestow the blessing on Esau anyway.

his reliance on the status quo is what allows Esau to hand over his birthright so easily -- because he knows that merely saying it’s Jacob’s now does not make it so.

Esau’s great failing is that he assumes that his culture’s will is God’s will.

the problem for Esau is that God does not play by human rules.

____________

in the Book of Genesis and throughout the rest of scripture, we see God working within the bounds of cultural assumptions and norms, rolling with the binary systems that human societies construct -- right up to the point where Xe doesn’t.

In The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective, Jewish scholar Joy Ladin focuses on the elements of gender inherent to the system of primogeniture that places the firstborn Esau over the secondborn Jacob in every way. To her, biblical maleness comes in different “flavors” -- the roles expected of a firstborn son are different from those assigned to non-firstborn sons. She says,

“Jacob and Esau are both male and are born almost simultaneously, but they are assigned at birth to very different gender roles. Because Esau emerges from the womb first, he is considered the firstborn, heir not only to Isaac’s worldly possessions but also to the relationship with God that Isaac inherited from his father, Abraham. Though Jacob is born holding onto his brother’s heel, he is considered the second-born, expected to accept the authority of his older brother, who, after their father’s death, will be the head of the family. Like the gender binary, this law of inheritance, called ‘primogeniture,’ creates a lifelong, life-determining binary division between males who are and those who aren’t firstborn sons. And like the gender binary, primogeniture turns biology, in this case birth order, into destiny. The way male children are raised, the roles they are assigned, and the futures toward which they are steered are determined by whether they are or aren’t firstborn sons.” (p. 36)

Esau has grown up understanding that his inheritance is his destiny. It’s what he’s been born for, what he’s been raised for, what he is entitled to. Why would he believe that he would ever have to make good on his silly promise to Jacob to hand over that destiny? It’s set in stone, inviolable.

at least it is in the eyes of men. but not to God.

“If God were committed to the gender binary idea that people are unchangeably defined by the gender roles we are assigned at birth, then either Esau would have been destined to inherit Isaac’s relationship with God, or Jacob would have been born first. But as God reveals to Rebekah before the twins are born, God intends for the younger brother to usurp the elder, prenatally linking God’s blessing to trans experience. (Ladin, pp. 37-38)

in the ancient past and in the present day, countless roles get assigned to us as soon as -- or even before -- we exist the womb. biology is presumed destiny in so many ways: our gender, our race, the class and geopolitical location and family into which we are born, supposedly map out what our personalities will be, how our lives will go. and certainly these things do shape us, both by nature and nurture -- generational traumas come packed into our very cells, while our environment and how others treat us based on our assigned roles impact how we perceive ourselves and the world around us.

but even so, even so, biology is not destiny. especially not if God has any say in the matter.

for God is the great binary breaker, no respecter of persons or prejudices, unbeholden to the status quo. indeed, God almost seems to delight in upending our assumptions about who is blessed. secondborn sons and eunuchs, women and disabled persons, impoverished persons and disenfranchised peoples -- these are the ones whom God selects, again and again, to be recipients and agents of divine blessing. “blessed are the poor;” “the last shall be first.”

Esau assumes that biology, his status assigned based on birth order, is destiny. he does not fear his younger brother, who is rendered powerless by their culture to claim what he is promised in a moment of hunger. and probably this is safer for Jacob -- because when Esau does finally realize, too late, that Jacob is a real threat, Esau becomes murderously angry.

when Isaac is duped into giving Jacob his blessing after all, Jacob cannot stick around to claim the wealth and status that comes with it -- he must flee, or die under Esau’s hand.

i wonder if some of the violence we see in our time, and across every time and place, stems from the same kind of rage and fear that Esau experiences:

the rage of the ones who are raised to believe the world belongs to them, that they are entitled to certain blessings and privileges, only for the truth to pounce on them unexpectedly -- the shocking truth that biology is not destiny, that they are not inherently superior, that what they thought would be theirs without question might could be snatched from them after all.

the divine right to rule. manifest destiny. the ‘white man’s burden.’

white men who assume they are entitled to white women, so that the mere thought of a Black man winning a woman’s heart is enough to incite them to brutality.

white women who understand that the police are their personal body guards, to call down upon the bodies of Black adults and even Black children on a whim -- and are indignant in the rare circumstance that they are told otherwise.

men and white people who expect the best jobs and properties to go to them, so that anyone else advancing over them seems an appalling injustice.

cis women who perceive trans women as “invading their spaces;” cishet couples who think LGBTQ/queer couples ruin “the sanctity of marriage;” persons who are accustomed to being accommodated without even realizing it sneering at “safe spaces” and trigger warnings....

and on and on.

Esau had every reason to assume that his biology determined his destiny -- that he could make an impulsive promise, make a big mistake, and everything would still turn out in his favor. he was born into a world that told him so every day -- even that God sanctioned these human assumptions and systems. But God does not.

“God’s disruptions of gender in these stories make it clear that even the gender roles that matter most to human beings are not sacred to God. ...God in the Torah uses gender, but is not bound by it. On the one hand, God depends on gender to transmit the covenant across time and space, so that even after hundreds of generations, Jews will still see themselves as children of Abraham. On the other hand, God disrupts gender as a way of making God’s power and presence known. ...In these stories, faithfulness to gender has little to do with faithfulness to God. In fact, God counts on the fact that people are not bound by gender roles. The covenant with Abraham is founded on Abraham, Sarah, and Jacob’s embrace of trans experience: their willingness to live outside the gender roles they were born to and become the kinds of people they are not supposed to be.” (Ladin, pp. 57-58)

Faithfulness to human constructs has little to do with faithfulness to God. God blesses us when we can imagine beyond the narrative we are assigned -- as Jacob does in this story where he demands a birthright the world does not intend for him....and as Esau eventually does.

In Genesis 33, Esau catches up to Jacob after decades apart -- and Jacob expects violence. He sends gifts of livestock to Esau and conceals his most cherished family at the back of his huge household. But to his bewilderment, Esau is no longer murderously angry at having “lost” what he grew up assuming he was entitled to -- he rushes to his brother, throws his arms around Jacob’s neck, and weeps.

Esau was raised believing that he would own everything, and his brother nothing -- that Jacob would be one of many members of Esau’s household, subservient to him. But now, he does not even feel entitled to the livestock that Jacob offers him: “I already have plenty, my brother. Keep what’s yours.”

Jacob is relieved by this unexpected reconciliation, exclaiming to Esau that “Seeing your face is like seeing God’s face, since you’ve accepted me so warmly!” He never expected Esau to accept what Jacob has known all along -- that biology is not destiny; that neither of them are bound to human constructs like birthright; that they can live a different way than the way prescribed to them, one in which both of them thrive.

___________

now, this story is by no means perfect. Jacob was able to imagine bigger for himself, to escape the destiny assigned to him -- but he does not imagine big enough. he does not use his new station to liberate others.

he becomes a patriarch -- assimilates into patriarchy and the power to own other human beings, to rule over every member of his household, rather than challenging the whole system that once oppressed him. i am reminded of trans persons, persons of color, women, who once they manage to acquire power for themselves never use it to help their fellow marginalized persons up. they land positions of power and use that power to oppress others as they were once oppressed, rather than using it to try to forge a new, better system for all.

Jacob the second-born becomes Jacob the patriarch. his household will be fraught with all the woes that come with this system that stifles all within it. his wives will hate each other and battle each other for what little power they can grasp. his sons will do the same, subjecting the younger Joseph to violence when, like Jacob, this little sibling dares to dream of being something greater than what his society assigns him.

what if Jacob could have imagined bigger? what if he had used his one fragment of shining clarity about how patriarchy and primogeniture stifled his true self to empower others, not only himself?

what if we could imagine bigger? what new and beautiful world could we build?

[archived18482939204848]

I got obsessed with some Ubisoft video game for an entire summer and used it as a distraction tool to avoid coming to terms with and facing the fact that something like that happened to me when I was 17 years old and then I made the Grave Mistake of wanting to engage with that media on tumblr.gov and was stuck with weird white separatist apologists and creepy cishet women who were obsessed with racist white male villains and wrote fanfics utilizing sexual assault as an intimidation tactic (especially centering about a Amman who was literally in the military ... we all know what the military fucking does in regards to that. ) or used it as a prop for drama or whatever . and my dumb ass at 17 sort of had my sadness turn into absolute fury and I began fighting with and screaming at these people and got known under my old url (lesbiancicero) as a “fandom bully” and “fandom anti” which I didn’t mind at all until I had these fucking 20-30 year olds telling me to my face that “your issues shouldn’t ruin the experience of everyone else” (same fucking thing Haley Abbacchiosbelt and co. said to me) and it was genuinely just such a shitty fucking time and of course nothing ever happened or came out of it because of tumblr’s fandom mom culture but now to have some stranger tag two of those freaks and say “:-) hey!” like do you not realize that behind every post on the internet, a human being made it and can see his activity feed? like I can see everything going on . this isn’t a public discussion for Perv Rights . fuck off

[honestmrdual]

i was given some gotham related questions by amazing @mydumbassenergy and now i am gonna give my absolutely honest opinion about these topics. what’s the most overrated thing of the show? why? oh boy, here we go. the most overrated thing is writers’s obsession with putting gordon in centre of everything. i don’t know what’s worse: them trolling us with such an interesting plots of other characters which end up related to gordon and gordon only because they hate their fans or them genuinely thinking that that is a genius writing. i don’t know if they are just this lazy to write more than one main character or it’s the desire to project their attractive cishet white male power fantasy (”i am so special by doing and saying nothing, i am an awful piece of shit who’s desirable by absolutely everyone”) on gordon. you know what i am talking about  -  Jim Gordon Is A Hero! He’s Ruined My Life! He’s The Only One Who Can Save Gotham! But Deep Down He’s A Monster! And Etc, Etc, Etc. the hillarious part is that sometimes these headlines given by the same characters at the same time! one half of characters want to fuck him, other half want to kill him, and some of them want both of these things at the same time, because, you know, he so Special, so Complicated, so Fucking Deep, EXCEPT HE ISN’T.

expect writers do not give us anything to think that he’s character deeper than “i am the hero this city needs” trope, or deeper than any other character. expect i don’t feel any sympathy towards him because out of “just sometimes annoying” writers somehow made him such an asshole that since s4 starts airing i genuinely want him to die already. expect mackenzie not even trying to act, because there’s no need for him to show any emotions on gordon’s face, because writers gonna put “i know that you feel [x]” or “i know that you are thinking about [x]” in other characters’s mouths. expect since s1 most of the time gordon is not doing anything to actually push the story forward, but writers trying to convince us that he is. expect writers trying to disguise his hypocrisy as a “he’s can’t decide if he wants to be good or evil. ugh, he’s so deep” topic. i literally do not understand what the fuck his motives are! is it “i’m gonna made this city better by obeying the law”? or “by breaking it”? or “by being a cop AND breaking the law”? or “fuck the city, i need lee”? or “fuck the city, but i am gonna verbally and mentally abuse harvey when he’s saying the same thing”? and the thing is, i genuinely do not care. because he’s not just a badly written character, not just an asshole. he’s a badly written character, who’s also an asshole, WHO’S ALSO STEALS A FUCKING 90% OF A SCREENTIME and ruins other character’s plotlines by his presence and, in the end, ruined half of the show! and that’s why i don’t care about his deep inner world, i just want him to be gone. fuck gordon and fuck writers’s obsession with him. most shameful guilty pleasure of the show? funny, but this one is actually a hard one, because i genuinely don’t know? the way most people out and in fandom treat this show (you know, “it just a silly batman show” or “every plotline is so stupid lol they are all on crack”) make gotham itself kinda a guilty pleasure (tho despite all my hatred towards it i don’t think is true). i personally don’t have in this show things that are so bad that it’s kinda a crack joy to like them. but i do have a character that sometimes i feel so bad for liking him. if you know me for a 0.2 sec, you know that i am in love with barnes, and if you know this fandom for a 1.3 sec, you know how it treats him. badly. “haha he’s face so funny” and “barnes is angry again what’s new lolololol” and “he’s so unattractive amirite ladies”  -  it’s an opinion of 90% of people in this place. the worst thing is that even writers think that way. and this treatment makes barnes a guilty pleasure of mine, except i don’t feel any pleasure and sometimes i just want to leave this fandom for good for making me feel this ill. do you think it was necessary to kill characters like fish mooney and carmine falcone? with fish, i will go for yes. at least first time, it was a logical end of her plotline. of course there was a few other decent options and reasons for her staying alive, but i don’t feel like her death was pulled out of nowhere. with second time i can’t say the same. brinning back fish from the dead only for her to appear in 6 episodes, have some superpowers that were taken away from her anyway, say some motivational speech to penguin and die again  -  it just silly and stupid. i am not saying i didn’t enjoy her presence in s2/s3, it just i wish it was done much better. with falcone, i don’t even know. at one hand, i don’t feel toward him anything, he’s neutral to me and i don’t think him dying is a terrible move. at the other hand, i do have a feeling that it was made just because writers want us to hate sofia (part of the fandom wants her dead after the 4x11, so nice move, i guess). again, him retiring in the end of s1 was a logical move, bringing him back only to kill  -  feels unnecessary. brutally honest gotham question rulette

[nightcoremoon]

i only like pop music when I can choose to hear it.

if rock's on, I'm on board. even if nickelback or creed is playing and I fucking hate them both.

if metal's on, I'm on board, as long as it's metal and not grindcore or deathblast or djentfuck or whatever the fuck else 4chan is concocting in their parents' basements.

if r&b's on, and I mean real r&b and not just "cishet male literal sex predators are sad", I'm on board.

if jazz is on, I'm on board, and I'm not even the biggest fan of jazz.

if classical music is on, I'm on board- I'm just so goddamn sick of vivaldi's spring, beethoven's symphony number five, bach's toccatta and fugue, pachelbel's canon in D, and liszt's hungarian rhapsody. THEY HAVE OTHER SONGS, GUYS.

if opera is on, I'm on board, just as long as it's not just fucking one of three ave marias by andrea bocelli. there's more opera artists than bocelli and there's mores songs besides ave maria.

I think you can see where this is going.

if rap is on, I'm on board, as long as it's not just fucking Drake Drake Drake Drake Tyga Drake. they're not even good rappers ASIDE from being two steps from pedophiles. give me wu tang, tribe, roots, nwa, public enemy, kid cudi, wiz, biggie, tupac, outkast, kurupt, beasties, jay, bone thugs, busta, eminem, nas, nate, luda, cypress hill, childish gambino, tech 9, snoop, give me real rap with meaning, feeling, flow, cultural impact, bass, clever lyrics, RHYTHM.

if country is on, well, if it's pre-9/11 i'm on board but if it's post-9/11 then fucking kill me. because post-9/11 country music is glorified pop with subliminal fascist ultranationalism and commercializations for alcoholism and cars. except for lil nas x and probably a small handful of others I don't know or care to know because I don't give a fuck about country music.

if punk's on and it's real punk I'm on board but not if it's just nasally white boys crying over an ex girlfriend or ugly british men with bad hair because THATS NOT WHAT PUNK IS. black flag, bad religion, bad brains, jack off jill, ice t, cromags, poison idea, rancid, misfits, against me, nofx, even sum 41, green day, offspring, and four year strong have redeeming qualities. but plain white tees, all american rejects, all time low, mayday parade, ramones, sex pistols, simple plan those are just pop groups who play four chords kinda fast, maybe yell sometimes. and while I do like songs by these bands, they are essentially pop, not punk.

if grunge is on and I mean like alice in chains (not rooster) or soundgarden (not black hole sun) or nirvana (not literally half of nevermind) or stone temple pilots or mudhoney or mother love bone (oh yeah and pearl jam is there too but honestly pearl jam is overrated, mike and eddie were way better in mad season, temple, and all the other configurations) then I'm on board. even if it's A- tier grunge like pumpkins, bush, live, spacehog, screaming trees, melvins, silverchair, veruca salt, l7, meat puppets, blind melon, local h, which isn't AS good but it still quality music made outside of commercialized bullshit which is what grunge was created to ESCAPE FROM after england fucking ruined metal in the 80s with hairspray and leather taking precedence over the actual music itself.

wait look commercialization ruined metal and grunge and punk and r&b and rap and country. I wonder why that is-

The Fucking Pop Music Industrial Complex.

so, look. there's a lot of music I don't know. I couldn't tell you billy eyelash from lil rubber ducky. maybe they're amazing and maybe they're not. I'm not gonna talk shit about modern music or pop music or anything. my problem is I can't go anywhere without hearing katy perry or taylor swift or miley cyrus or any number of dumbass inbred white trash idiots, and they all have like 80 songs each on replay. drake and cardi b are the same way, without the inbred and white parts. but they're all still horrible people made worse by $$$. it's a huge circlejerk of millionaires sonically engineering the airwaves to brainwash the masses into the sweet sweet ad revenue from youtube spotify itunes etc. it's made as a product to recycle. "Your style's like garbage cans meant to be taken out on a weekly basis, ever since your first record you've been in a state of suspended animation." There's no artistic integrity in the same song made over and over again except oh this one's about someone breaking up with you over booze and this one's about someone you broke up with because they cheated. 😑

Now I like some music that was made to sell for a product. Backstreet Boys, Nsync, New Kids on the Block, Britney, etc. I like it now 30 years later. Because I can choose to listen to it on my own terms. But I have no control over the shit they play now that's constantly pumped into my ears. It's all the same goddamn drivel and come a decade we're not gonna remember any of it. You know how much terrible music there was in the 50s? The 60s? The 70s 80s 90s and 00s were so full of the worst garbage anyone could ever churn out. Billboard was stocked to the brim with terrible music that nobody recalls and we only remember a tiny portion of it. The top 500 of 1982 is horrible. Even good bands like The Cars had boring unlistenable shit. There was good stuff too like Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull and The Who and other bands THAT DIDNT SELL WELL AND WERE PERCEIVED AS FAILURES BY CRITICS IN 1982. It's always been that way. The popular shit is always bad and the good stuff subsists through the popularity to be remembered fondly. Why do you think the 80s are making a huge resurgence right now in meme culture? Because we know that Toto and Men At Work and A-Ha and Depeche Mode and Tears For Fears are actually good no matter how poorly they may have sold back then. But now, post-9/11 with American culture becoming what it is today, it got worse. So much worse. I watched it happen. There's no nostalgia filter here, music just sounds different at its core. The notes themselves affect my ears differently and actually cause pain nowadays. I use the same pair of earbuds and I can listen to stuff from earlier time periods just fine, even if I've never heard it before. But new music now? Either something's different with production and mixing or I just have auditory hallucination issues. Which I don't. I don't even have chronic tinnitus. Something is wrong. And looking at the fossil fuels industry, the software industry, the cinema industry, the automotive industry, the prison industry, politics, social media, and the economy, there's no possible way that everything is just a coincidence.

The things that make money benefit the ones getting that money and hurt everyone else. That includes music.

...

...

...

or maybe pop music just sucks.

[androgynousblackbox]

Also,In what universe are platonic male friendships are rare on tv? Everywhere I look I seek bromance on tv, ESPECIALLY between two cishet white dudes. As a matter of fact they get FAR more focus than m/f or even f/f friendships.

“But, but, if they are close male friendship then those meanie ugly fujoshi take them as gay and that is so sad, that is why we can’t have nice things” PERSON. HUMAN. SHUT THE FFFFFFFUCK UP. Like honestly, if your maximum concern is that SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE, is reading into that perfect bromance without a B, then I almost wish I had such a carefree life like that, but not really because what the fuck is wrong with you. OP was already bad, but the people going “this is actually good, good post, it’s so awful that people have to make everything gay, can you believe how awful those people are, putting gay feelings between our favorite male friends, that is so bad”? I don’t know them, but I felt so dissapointed anyway. Like I usually try to give people the benefit of the doubt, but come on, you are not making it easy for me. An easy way to discover dogwhistles? Just change the genders and see if is still sounds like a good post. If it sounds weird that people would think shipping m/f together sometimes ruins m/f friendships in mainstream media, then why the heck is different when we are talking specifically about m/m. And. AND. If you are a writer who gets upset at queer hcs, like on that original post, to the point you have to immediately to shut it down, because god forbid anyone taint your good straight characters, then I will find that character, I am going to dye their hair pink and give them genderqueer goth partnerS, and there will be nothing any god, angel or demon is going to be able to do to stop me.

[blastmeintospace]

This is a sweet post and I don’t wanna derail the positivity but I just gotta say I saw another post like this just yesterday on Twitter that got bombarded with responses from people saying “no, humans ARE bad” and honestly, hating all of humanity on the basis that ‘humans are terrible and ruin everything’ is a special kind of stupid.

very tiny example, a post I saw once mentioning how humans are gonna die out one day and only animals will remain on earth and someone responded to the post with simply “good”. and other dumb stuff like that.

Honestly it’s basically being woke but on steroids.

Hating white people, males and cishets? Woke af.

Hating humanity as a whole? PEAK WOKENESS. “Gimme all the brownie points!”

but yeah, nah humanity is amazing for the most part.

i don’t think humans are inherently bad i just don’t. once i posted about how i can’t ever get poached eggs right and someone took time out of their day to send me tips on how to make them. they used their finite time on this planet to teach me how to poach an egg with no motivation other than helping a stranger have a better breakfast and if that isn’t proof humanity is worth saving i don’t know what is

[softgrungeprophet]

i don’t plan on harping on about this because i’m tired and this whole plot makes me feel gross and reminds me why i feel unwelcome in mainstream comics but like

it’s interesting (not in a good way) that the current Venom run Donny Cates is writing has so far only featured women as literal plot devices who either don’t exist or are dead and have been retroactively rewritten into a place of violation and that’s just supposed to be No Big Deal

It’s not great

and it sucks that like.... Venom alone has some great female characters who would benefit from their own solo mini-series, and then--the Venom comics in which Andi Benton saw the most care and growth as a character, and comics like Silk and the Kate Bishop Hawkeye solo all get canceled. (at least we have Ms Marvel)

But this Venom comic where women are basically just objects to further the plot and offer redemption arcs that--as eabevella pointed out--cannot even be forgiven by the affected character due to her being dead--this is THE best seller? it rubs me the wrong way. why is it that the comics about (or at least including) women that approach them as people get canceled and the ones where women are objects and targets of violence and erasure are the ones that get to sell a million billion copies and are heaped with praise and the author is some flawless perfect wonderful god? stupid.

I am fucking DREADING the moment this man gets his hands on a character like Andi or, god forbid, Jubulile, who are both young women of color and therefore so much more likely to be mistreated by the author whose only approach to women is death, non-existence, or sexual assault.

And DO NOT tell me “oh it’s not sexual assault” no. it fucking is. nonconsensual pregnancy is a form of sexual assault.

I don’t care whether it was “shown” or not, my issue is not that; my issue is that it’s being retroactively presented as really not that big of a deal and something worthy of forgiveness even though this kind of thing happens in real life (not exactly the same for obvious reasons) and literally ruins people’s lives. (and still irl the news focuses always on how sorry these boys are, who ruined these girls’ lives, how they just made a mistake... ha ha ha) AND in fact Anne DID die, her life WAS ruined, so like?

This isn’t even particularly personal for me! But it still makes me feel gross. Anne dying way back when for Eddie’s manpain was bad enough. This makes it worse. An apology to fall on dead ears, regret, blah blah, that’s not... really.... that doesn’t really make it okay.

(ON TOP OF years’ worth of emotional and mental manipulation and mind control (ALSO retconned in) also being part of this potential “redemption arc”?)

Anyway, we’ve had redemption arcs, actual redemption arcs and character growth. But apparently those don’t matter. All that matters is that Cates fabricates his own unforgivable history of manipulation and abuse that is somehow supposed to be worthy of redemption.

I don’t like this Eddie, I don’t like this symbiote. They are bad people. I don’t want their happy ending because their happy ending necessitates the suffering and sacrifice of everyone else.

And not to be an asshole, but I’m an asshole, so I’m gonna add in that they’re not the only characters in this comic I don’t like.

I don’t like Dylan because he’s a symbol of everything I hate about this run, of replacing Mary despite making no more sense than her, of the skewed plot and dropped twists and insensitive approach to literally every topic this man takes on.

It’s a comic steeped in white male privilege and the complete lack of being affected by any of the topics it “addresses” (though it doesn’t actually address any of them, just throws them onto the page)

(not that mainstream comics being overrun by privileged cishet white men is new and I don’t know what I expected lmao)

And you know what Don. Yeah, you’re right, not everything has to be canon and I’m definitely not accepting any aspect of this run--not even the first six issues--into my interpretation of canon, but that doesn’t change the fact that this comic is going to have some effect on the following comics, so--what am I supposed to do? Just stop reading Venom comics until someone steps in and retcons the retcons or makes a new timeline? Is that your answer?

Don’t like; don’t read? Like fanfiction, which is well-tagged and thoroughly warned for, and has no effect on the comics’ continuity?

I’ll stick to Toxin with a Vengeance and Carnage 2016 and Space Knight and Lethal Protector but I am allowed to be annoyed that things like this are just fun plot twists and not handled with even the remotest amount of care or thoughtfulness, that they’re supposed to just be something characters can move on from no problem (amidst all the dropped plot threads and constant soliloquizing)

I’m all for tackling serious subjects in comics and all other media but lmfao

I guess I’ll go back to previous comics and stay there in my little nook which is simultaneously belittled and expected to be the place i stay, ignoring this as much as I can (even though it’ll most likely be inescapable)

now i’m gonna go back into making my own backstory for a side character from SM/DP and probably read some more Daredevil

[barzombi-shitpost]

So I just finished playing Vampyr...

This game is fucking good.

I was expecting a good game, and I walk away from what is probably my favorite game of all times, or at least a strong contender (Senua’s Sacrifice is probably there too).

The problems with the game do exist, however. Drops of framerate, some dialogue choices not that clear on consequences, not-that-good motion capture, some awkward moments (you can accuse someone of poisoning another person, and they’ll continue to talk to you like nothing happened !), and a sometimes clunky battle system.

But aside from that, I loved EVERYTHING. The question of which NPC to eat or spare, and the consequences of your choices, are the best mecanic of the game ! Because to get more XP out of an NPC, you need to know them, their little secrets, who cares for them, etc... so most of the time, you look at an NPC, worth sometimes thousands of XP, and think “Nah... I can’t eat them, who will take care of their grandma ?”, and you think about that PRECISELY because you have to know them before eating them for the sacrifice to be worth it !

It’s fucking genius.

Aside from that, good quality of dialog if you like melancolic gothic horror (and lucky me, I do !), and every single NPC is unique and has their little story and features. There isn’t a single one of them who has nothing to say, even though some of them are not as well-written and important as others.

Good diversity, also, even though, again, it could have been even better.

There’s something like 40-ish male characters, and 20-ish female characters, with something like ten of them being PoC. 

I know for a lot of people it’s not enough, but for a game about gothic themes and vampires, I was (sadly) expecting an almost all-white cast (*cough* The Order 1886 *cough*), and some women, but not much.

The LGBT community is... well almost not there, alas (at least officialy), but there IS an openly gay couple, and for a game set in 1918, that’s something, at least.

The main story is good, but I honestly prefered the interactions with the NPC and the sidequests. Some of them are extremely sad, others are hilarious.

The big boss battles are... untertaining, but clearly the game shines more in its quiet, intimate moments and in the narration. Don’t go in there thinking it’s gonna be Bloodborne all over again.

Oof. There, finished. I might add some other things later, but I’d like to talk a bit about big fat SPOILERS, now. Just one thing, about a debate on the main character love interest.

SPOILERS  SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Honestly, I don’t get WHY people are so mad about lady Ashbury and Jonathan Reid. Really.

I mean, yes, it IS a heterosexual relationship. Yes, it IS an indivisible part of the story. But, seriously, it’s not enough to ruin a game, as I have seen some proclaim.

The same thing more or less happens in Life is Strange AND Life is Strange : Before the Storm (althought they aren’t cishet relationships, I’ll give you that), and it doesn’t ruin the game : it tells a story.

But in these three games, the love story in here to reinforce the theme : highschool life and discovery of life in the titles of Life is Strange, and gothic, “noble” and almost Arthurian themes and relationships in Vampyre.

Would I had prefered to have the choice ? Yes. But considering the very end of the game, or at least the one I had, it fits the theme so perfectly that to change it would be stupid, in my opinion.

I also see people saying Jonathan has more alchemy with McCullum, that we encounter exactly FOUR TIMES in the game (and twice less than 10 seconds), than with Lady Ashbury, who is here from almost the very beginning. 

I disagree.

Jonathan and McCullum DO have alchemy, it’s true. As adversaries, not really as love interests. The battle against McCullum (the Boss battle, I mean) is very interesting, because YOU are the usual antagonist, and the fact that you can spare the lad, after telling him that you want the same thing, and aren’t really that different... Well it was fucking good, and an excellent use of the trope in reverse.

But I’d rather have a hundred stories of Victorian slow burn with Lady Ashbury than to basically rape a man who wants to kill me to make him a vampire.

Because that’s option number two, after the Boss battle, and I’ve seen people ship these two together because of that. And it honestly makes me uneasy.

I precise that this man is, for what I know, the ONLY NPC you can turn that would undertake the transformation unwillingly, where you have to force-feed him your blood.

So think what you will of Lady Ashbury, but please don’t give me this excuse as a “better couple”.

At least Doctor Swansea would have taken the blood with pleasure ^^

[takaraphoenix]

Odd question but what do you think of the “fujoshi” community? Harmless fun or harmful fetishization?

Oh, oh I’m getting a headache just reading that question…

No, it is not fetisihzation that is utter bullshit. No it is not harmful, that is even more bullshit.

The people accusing fujoshi of fetishization do the exact same thing. They write the exact same stories and draw the exact same fanarts about the exact same gays. But because the creators in one case are females, they are the devil and they are fetishizing.

By every definition of the word, I am a fujoshi too - a female fan of mlm ships. Yaoi or shounen-ai, if you wish to continue using Japanese terms.

What fujoshi discourse boils down to is a group of people being misogynistic crybabies and not allowing females to have genuine interests.

The term “CIShet woman” is thrown around like a slur in this discourse - disregarding that not all fujoshi are CIS or het. I, for my part, am a lesbian. It’s literally only about those people’s hatred for women, really.

Because the exact same content is totally fine if it is made by a gay man.

They don’t even realize how ridiculous that is.

If we would ever only get representation if it gets written by a person from the group in question, we would literally barely get anything.

Most gay stories were written by straight men and women. Most stories involving characters of color used to be written by white writers. Someone has to pave the way - and it is the group that is most “accepted” to do the job. In the case of writing for Hollywood, those would be the white men. Does that mean we have no right to see movies about women or characters of color or non-straights? No, no it does not.

As a lesbian, I can still enjoy Willow and Tara as a lesbian couple on Buffy even though they were written by a CIShet man. I still get to enjoy Elena’s coming out story on One Day at a Time even though the show was not written by a lesbian.

So if you, as a gay man, can not accept seeing a mlm couple written by a woman, then the problem is not the woman who invests her time into writing this, it is with you.

Especially since we are talking fandom here.

We’re not even talking Hollywood. We’re talking about authors on AO3 and fanarts on DeviantArt and on here. We’re talking about fans, people who love something and dedicate their own time into creating something for free, something that you and everybody else gets to enjoy without getting any form of payment for it.

So instead of being grateful for the content, those people insult, belittle, bully and even threaten the creators.

THAT IS WHAT IS HARMFUL.

A woman creating art or stories is and can by definition not be harmful, because it is fiction about fictional characters and it is on the internet where you can just avoid it if you do not agree with it.

But those people who made this into a “discourse”, they are the ones being harmful because they mistreat people who do something they enjoy.

People crying that “Those women enjoying what I am enjoying and what is clearly aimed only at me because it represents me, they are ruining the thing for me!!!” are the exact same type of whiny babies as the men who started crying this exact same sentence when women started showing interest in nerd culture - you all do remember that, right? The uproar against female fans in the MCU and DC and Star Wars and Star Trek culture because how dare women show any interest in these things that “belong” to men. All this shit about “fake nerd girls” that female fans of those shows and movies have to put up with, just for being female and interested in this thing.

Women aren’t allowed to have interests.

That is literally what this boils down to.

95% of canonically gay anime and manga were written by fujoshi - most of the things those antis consume was created by fujoshi.

The most ridiculous thing I ever saw on the topic was an anti making a post that fujoshi aren’t allowed to go and see Love, Simon because it is not meant for them, it is meant for gays.

It is not.

I, as a lesbian, wish to see this movie about a gay teen romance, because heaven knows I won’t get my lesbian teen romance any time soon on this big scale.

And the wildest part? Love, Simon was literally written by a fujoshi. By the very thing they hate - the CIShet white woman. The very kind of person they want to forbid from seeing this movie. That is the author of the book.

It’s a ridiculous double-standard and it baffles me that so many people on this hellsite don’t seem to grasp that.

Representation only matters if it is written by the minority represented and no one else aside from said minority is allowed to enjoy this.

That is literally like saying white people and non-black POC aren’t allowed to watch Black Planther or make fan content to it because it solemnly belongs to black people? Aren’t allowed to see Coco because it is clearly only aimed at Latinx people…? Oh yes, it is very clearly created for this group of people and from everything I’ve seen on this site, they’re the ones who get the most enjoyment out of it and out of the representation it brought with it - but that… that doesn’t mean that no one else is allowed to enjoy this.

I saw Coco five times by now and I’m white as fuck and I highly doubt that Latinx people in the fandom will give me shit for writing fanfiction for it, or accuse me of “fetishizing” their culture just because I’d write fanfiction for this movie. Which I am, literally working on a fic for that, hence the example.

Just because something is aimed at a certain group does not mean only they can enjoy it.

It’s a ridiculous concept of double standard that is being used in the fujoshi discourse.

I’m a woman, but I’m still allowed to consume media aimed at men - holy shit, aren’t we literally trying to break gender norms these days, like, seriously?

I’m a lesbian, but I’m still allowed to consume media featuring straights and gays and bisexuals and everything else under the rainbow. It’s not like I am only allowed to watch lesbian shows… because then I would literally have nothing to watch.

I’m white, but I’m still allowed to consume media featuring and focusing on characters of color. Because holy shit, I also don’t want the all-white casts anymore, it’s intensely stale and boring and outdated?? We are literally glad that we finally broke this kind of writing when it comes to representation in this aspect, so how could you want to revert back in the case of representing sexualities…?

If everyone is only allowed to consume media that focuses on representation of themselves, then you are really living in the stone-ages. They do know that this led to Hollywood and TV shows being predominantly white and male, right?

Fujoshi are female fans creating content for other fans.

Fujoshi discourse is overgrown babies crying about women having interests, using bogus claims like “Stop fetishizing ME!!!”.

No one is fetishizing you, unless you are a male celebrity and reading RPF about yourself. Those are literally the only people who can cry out about personally being fetishized. Celebrities who are being directly lusted after and have smut written about them.

Someone writing about something that includes part of your identity does not and will never personally fetishize you.

Hentai anime about big boobed girls? Does not personally fetishize me just because I’m a busty girl. It’s gross as fuck and I don’t like it, but I can just avoid it and I don’t feel personally victimized by its existence.

That is fetishization though. Women with waists that should break under the laws of physique and boobs trice the size of their heads. That is fetishizing women.

If fujoshi would be fetishizing gays, then they would be with such emphasis of their glorious cocks and mighty balls or some shit.

Essentially 50% of the things fujoshi create are soft. Fanfiction, fanart, doujinshi - fluff, about cuddling, two characters holding each other, that 50k slow-burn coffee shop AU you read last month.

Writing about a healthy, slow relationship is not and never will be “fetishization” - and it sure as heck will never be fetishization of you personally, because it isn’t about you.

Now to get back to a point I mentioned earlier.

Not every fujoshi is CIShet. For me, personally, writing about mlm relationships and reading about them was dealing with my own homosexuality - because we don’t get female gay love.

I could walk into any bookstore and thanks to Japanese fujoshi authors, I could just buy a manga about two teenage boys, discovering their sexuality and dealing with it. No sex involved. Not a single manga I own written by a fujoshi is even yaoi. Sex doesn’t have to be in it. Like I said, most content is impossibly soft and fluffy in nature.

And it helped me come to terms with my own sexuality, with the fact that it is possible to not be straight.

It’s harder to write about wlw ships than it is to write about mlm ships by sheer math alone.

Look, say, at the Avengers - you had one female character and five male characters in that lead team. There wasn’t even an option to write about a wlw ship, while you have ten possible mlm ships. So, what are you supposed to write about as a woman? Natasha masturbating for 20k words, or what? Because I, as a woman, am not allowed to write about men…?

Look at the Voltron fandom, where you have five male characters and two female… but oh my, one of the females is literally 15 while the other is an ancient alien; not the kind of ship I sail, so again no wlw ship to write about, but just as many mlm options as in the above mentioned.

And that is a pattern.

Franchises - anime, manga, cartoon, TV shows, movies, books - are dominated by male characters. Most lead characters are male. They are more fleshed out, better developed than the rare female characters.

Even nowadays, the male characters are still mostly more dynamic and more interesting than the females, because the females are either the Mother Character, the mere bland Love Interest who doesn’t get developed beyond being a love interest to the male lead, or the Badass Female whose only real trade is that she can kick ass, but real personality mostly still comes short.

So yeah, it’s virtually not a surprise that fanfiction authors - male and female alike - mostly latch onto mlm ships and write and draw about them, because there are statistically speaking more male characters in fandom and more mlm options than wlw options.

And if you forbid women from being interested in male characters and their relationships, if you forbid women from participating in fandom, if you forbid women from creating for the things they love…

There would be no fandoms.

Literally.

Fanfiction started because women wanted to see Spock and Kirk fuck. While there are many male creators by now, fandom has always been rather dominated by women, who created and set the path.

So we are good enough to put you where you are now, but now we are forbidden from participating in the very thing we created? Literally, the thing we created - because most of your boyslove manga and anime were created by fujoshi. So you are allowed to consume that but you do not allow the people who are like the author to also enjoy it…? Really?

And then there is also still that accusation that, somehow, “we” evil CIShet women get off to fetishizing “you” poor gay men.

I’m ace. I don’t get off to the smut I write. I write the sex scenes because they are part of the relationship, just as I write the wooing and getting together. It ain’t about “getting off”. It’s about the enjoyment of writing.

And while I, personally, don’t identify as a fujoshi because I don’t like the term, others do - and others have a right to. Just like I would never call myself a stan of anything, because I don’t like the term - but by definition I most likely do stan a lot of characters and shows and things.

I think a big problem is that fujoshi, translated, means “rotten woman” and somehow the butthurt crybabies who feel personally victimized by fujoshi see that as meaning something bad.

Yes, the words rotten woman do not exactly scream “Oh, this is a nice thing!”, but those people don’t even bother looking up the meaning - because words have meanings, connotations attached to them. And meanings change. Just because something seems to ��say” one thing if you do a literal translation of it does not necessarily mean that the word also means the same thing that said literal translation offers. That is not how language works.

And at its very core, all that fujoshi means is “female fan of mlm”. The term itself was coined during times where liking gays and being gay was even more scandalous than today. You were rotten if you liked gays, a disgusting, rotten person - and yet still those women weren’t stopped. They created.

They created things that future generations got to enjoy. They created a pathway.

And if people today want to call themselves fujoshi because they identify with the term, then absolutely no one has a right to judge them, has the right to assign a different meaning to that term.

How do we, today in this day and age where we are all about claiming our own identity, have people out there who think they can dictate the identity and interests of others?

How is the gay community so rotten that there are people not allowing women to have an interest and condemning them for the label they chose for themselves…?

That is the disgusting and harmful part of the fujoshi discourse, really.

[bpd-tallia]

So there’s this guy at my work who is a meninist and while had made some valid points, I’m super fucking pissed because the fact that he’s a meninist, means I need feminist. 

Other reasons I need feminist: 

Women being told they need to stay in the kitchen and make a sandwich (joking or not) 

Being asked “What were you wearing” or being told that you “were asking for it” whenever someone sexually harasses you. 

Being told not to tell anyone about your sexual harassment because you will ruin those men's lives. 

Those men do not get their lives ruined after you do someone. 

The fact that most characters in media are men. (White cishet men, but that’s another discussion). 

Young Justice had a mostly female viewership and they drove it into the ground because they wanted to sell toys to boys. 

Lots of men do everything to get into a woman’s pants then just leave her afterward. 

Some men take a condom off during sex, then leave when you’re pregnant. 

Men refuse to use a condom in the first place, then leave when you’re pregnant. 

As soon as a woman goes through puberty, people start oversexualizing her, even if she is a minor. 

If a man is a confident go-getter and aggressive, he is a MAN but if a woman is like this, she is a bitch. 

Men act like you owe them something when you are nice to them. 

Men throw fits if an all women cast is in their favorite reboot (*cough* ghostbusters *cough* 

Transwomen are losing a privilege when they transition.

“When are you gonna have kids?” “I don’t want kids” “Awww you’ll change your mind when you’re older” (A discussion that I have had with my family literally every Christmas since before I even had a period. Seriously I was like ten when we had this conversation)

Lesbians being oversexualized. (Gay men have their own problems, but that’s a post for another time) 

One of my male friends saying they didn’t believe that over 50% of gamers were girls. (Comics are the same way). Women being oversexualized in both of these and having ridiculous costumes/poses. 

My paster opening up a magazine and reading “It’s the women’s job to please her man” and the whole church agreeing. 

Women having to tell their men that they have a headache because their men won’t take a normal “I don’t feel like banging” for an answer. 

A man actually divorcing his ace wife because she said she didn’t want to have sex with him. (Ace people having their own set of problems, too, but as an ace woman, I’m putting this under here).   

The entire girls’ aisle STILL being pink. As if boys can’t like pink and girls can’t like blue anymore. Or as if boys have to like army men and trucks and girls have to like dolls and baking sets. 

Girls playsets being all towards cooking/cleaning/taking care of babies/grooming/make-up. (Where the fuck are the girl superheroes?) 

Gamora not even being on any of the GOTG merch (for a while. Idk if they fixed this). 

Catcalling is still a thing. 

Guys sending dick pics to women who didn’t even ask. No one wants to see your dick. 

Revenge porn is a thing and it can ruin women’s lives. I have never heard about a man’s life being ruined by a dick pic. Seriously. Men do this shit all the time. 

Being picked on is an acceptable way to show a girl you like her. (This probably can go both ways, but I usually see it more with boys picking on girls) 

As a mother, I taught my daughter to defend herself. If someone put their hands on her, she could smack them. I would not be mad. She punched out a boy who put his hands on her without permission. I was looked down for teaching her to do this. 

Girls cannot where Speggetti straps to class because boys will not be able to concentrate. 

I’ve heard about a couple of comic artist being told they need to change their female leads to boys because a female lead wouldn’t be as popular. 

A weather woman being told to “cover-up” with a jacket when the only skin that was showing was her shoulders. 

When men have lots of sex people praise them, but when women have lots of sex they are whores. 

90% of our politicians are men. 

Men are still regulating abortion, and thus telling women what to do with their bodies. 

A woman gets mad, she’s on her period. Always. Doesn’t matter if she has a valid reason to be mad. 

There are like a million pills for not being able to get a boner, but we barely know anything about the female reproductive organs. 

[justanisabelakinnie]

More people need to read this.

I have come across so many people saying that queer headcanons are bad and just being blatantly homophobic in the name of “the theme of the movie“. Saying stuff like ”not everything is about being gay“ ”Why did you have to make it queer” ”you’re ruining the message of the movie” ”all the Madrigals are homophobic”(yes really) ”it’s canon that they’re cishet”(WHERE?! SHOW ME WHERE?! Aside from possibly Dolores, the couples, and Alma, none of the others have love interests and Isabela clearly doesn’t like the male one that was chosen for her so please do me a favor and cough up evidence that the Madrigals are all cishet?!), I’ve even seen some use this 💅🏾 emoji in place of the actual word gay or queer, as if it’s too much of a dirty word to even say, attacking people for their queer headcanons by saying ”sorry it’s not canon, she’s straight”, etc. etc. etc. and…

LOOK, of course the movie isn’t canonically about being queer and white queer people are constantly trying to take away the message of the movie to make the characters represent themselves but…queer people have NOTHING. Basically nothing, anyway. Disney still hates queer people(and Black women but that’s a topic for another discussion) and will do the most to make sure that we aren’t seen. So of course queer people will try to create headcanons to see themselves in the characters. It obviously becomes a problem when white queer people donit by erasing the Colombian culture and portraying the characters through a white context, but…have you ever considered that maybe QUEER LATINE PEOPLE also have headcanons of their own…like…

Maybe Latina lesbians see themselves in Isabela both because of her struggles with perfection and having to throw her life away for the sake of a man and the family AND ALSO because of comphet and the expectation that women need relationships with men to give their lives fulfillment and have to hide their true feelings behind a mask? Or hc Bruno as gay because Hispanic families are often homophobic and coming out as gay to your family can lead to you being estranged from them as they consider you too unworthy to be even mentioned? There are lots of reasons to headcanon the Madrigals as queer that aren’t just ”this movie is secretly about pride and also Alma is a homophobic villain” like come on.

It’s not fair to Latines to erase the message of the movie solely to make it queer. But some people are just homophobic and act like that’s the only reason these queer headcanons could even exist, when they could simply be add-ons to an already canon interpretation. And that couldn’t be further from the truth. So the next time you try to tell people that Isabela is actually straight and that she just didn’t want to marry Mariano, just be quiet, please, and think about what you’re REALLY saying.

Okay I’ve posted about this before but I got a really terrible YT recommendation and I think this bears repeating: “Encanto is not explicitly about queerness and it is reductive to only focus on that instead of the intended message.” and “The Encanto fandom has a homophobia problem.” are statements that can coexist.

Let’s first discuss the first statement:

Encanto, at its core, is a film about trauma. Abuela Alma was deeply traumatized by witnessing her husband’s brutal murder firsthand and then being left to raise three newborns alone (whether or not the other people in the Encanto lent her a hand with childcare is uncertain). Because of that, she became obsessed with perfection and earning the Miracle she was given, and as a result, her trauma bled into her children, and then her grandchildren. Her trauma and fear turned her into someone she didn’t really want to be, and her entire family suffered as a result.

Mirabel as a character is like a metaphor for breaking the cycle of generational trauma. She’s taken the brunt of Alma’s frustration for a long time due to lacking a Gift (and therefore, a place in the family in Alma’s eyes), and as the movie progresses, she sees firsthand how the constant pressure to earn the Miracle is affecting her sisters; something she never saw before because she was so wrapped up in her own traumas. In the end, she pierces Alma with the realization that she is the cause of the family’s problems, and they work together to rebuild the family and truly appreciate the Miracle for what it really was; a last Gift from Pedro out of love for his wife and children.

Now, there are lots of queer headcanons for Encanto. It��s inevitable; as queer representation in media grows and queerness as a whole becomes more known and valued in society, people are gonna start seeing queerness where it doesn’t seem to be. The most common headcanons include genderfluid Camilo, bi Mirabel, and ace and/or lesbian Isabela. These headcanons are fine and dandy; no one is being hurt, and people are seeing themselves or their allies in these characters.

Rather, the problem is that the headcanons are, in some circles, the only thing discussed about the movie, overshadowing the message. Generational trauma and breaking the cycle are extremely important for everyone, especially children, to see and know about, because so many people are living with trauma and not realizing it’s negatively affecting their families, and children are living with pressures, expectations, even toxicities, and they need to see that being treated poorly by family is not okay and should be called on.

It truly sucks to not get representation from the biggest entertainment studio in the world; as a queer woman, I would shed tears of joy to see an explicitly queer Disney protagonist one day. However, we can’t lose sight of what Encanto truly represents. As mentioned, it’s important to talk about generational trauma and breaking the cycle, and while making queer headcanons for the movie is fun and mostly harmless, it’s ultimately not the point.

However, that leads me to my second statement.

The other side of the Encanto fandom is stubborn about enforcing the true message to the point that it’s just coming to blatant homophobia. Bashing headcanons just for existing, putting shame on the idea that the characters could possibly not be cishet. I’ve heard at least one the statement “Latinas can’t have anything these days” like queer Latines don’t exist? For heck’s sake, Mirabel was voiced by a queer Latina!

Overall, what I’m trying to get across is that Encanto has an extremely important message, and it’s important that we don’t get lost in our fanon and lose sight of it. But for the love of God, there are ways to explain that without being a homophobic dick.