#women's torture

[saddayfordemocracy]

Sujata Setia, "A Thousand Cuts," 2024,

For centuries in southeast Asia, lingchi was employed as a particularly brutal form of torture in which a knife was used to methodically remove parts of the body over long periods.

Translated as “death by a thousand cuts,” the ancient practice provides the metaphorical groundwork for London-based Indian artist.

For the past two years, Setia has collaborated with SHEWISE, a charity that empowers marginalized women to overcome trauma and cultivate lives free from oppression and violence.

Through this connection, she spent two years photographing survivors of abuse in South Asian communities across the U.K. “A Thousand Cuts is an effort to understand abuse from many different frames of reference,” the artist says in a statement.

[dapper-lil-arts]

Can we talk about the kind of woman Applejack attracts.

[queerunpleasantdanger]

Amber Kim's move to a men's prison for a consensual sexual encounter is a crime against humanity. It's a crime against humanity that our culture tries to render unmournable, but it is nonetheless a heinous crime, and a stain upon the legacy of all the officials who abet or tolerate it.

Even when cisgender women rape other cisgender women in prison, they are not transferred to men's prisons. One does not have to believe that consensual sex in prisons is acceptable to acknowledge that this transfer is a double standard. And yet this is the treatment transgender women can expect, apparently: a brutal double standard of violence, wherein our presence in any space is that of, at best, a conditional visitor. Yet when push comes to shove, we are more impoverished, more violated, and more mistreated by our patriarchal society.

The state of Washington must reverse it's decision. If it cannot be compelled to do so, then Kim's sentence must be commuted - even if we accept that prisons can perform justice, surely we all agree that justice is never forwarded by torture; that a day served of a sentence in the form of torturing a minority is not, in fact, a day closer to any kind of justice.

The use of either solitary confinement or sexual violence against a transgender woman as a means of control is so far beyond the pale that it must be opposed under all circumstances.

[1989deluxealbum]

The Tortured Poets Department is a great reminder that women don't owe the world pretty. Taylor Swift doesn't owe anyone an easily digestible pretty pop album wrapped in a bow with short songs you can make TikToks to. She's allowed to present something raw, uncomfortable, and vulnerable to the world.

[girasois]

taylor swift — please, like or reblog ♡

coloring by the lovely @miniepsds ♡

sharpen by the amazing @buntterflies ♡

[theodysseyofhomer]

odysseus and penelope's slaves: a primer.

eurycleia: odysseus' childhood nurse, as well as telemachus'. her backstory is briefly mentioned (book 1): she is the daughter of ops, bought by odysseus' father laertes when she was young. specific mention is made that laertes never slept with her, in order to keep peace with his wife anticleia. (her name has the opposite meaning of odysseus' mother's.) at the time of the odyssey she is old, and among named slaves has probably been with the family the longest. she is the only character who recognizes odysseus unprompted (and he threatens to kill her about it). they trust her heavily throughout the plot to kill the suitors; afterward, she handpicks the other enslaved women who have slept with the suitors, so that odysseus can execute them. if i were to beg for one thing, it would be that you consider what living in close proximity to her owners for so long might do to her psychologically, and how her experience with laertes might skew her view of the "disloyal" women.

eurynome: another older woman who attends penelope (and eventually odysseus).

hippodameia and autonoe: two younger slave girls who attend penelope.

actoris: a slave penelope mentions once (book 23) as the only person besides her and odysseus who knows the secret of the olive tree bed, because she used to guard their room. actoris was given to penelope by her father. it's possible that she's already dead by the time of the odyssey, as she never appears in person.

the unnamed traitors to penelope: three times in the odyssey, we hear the story of penelope unweaving a shroud for laertes at night to hold off the suitors. two of those times the suitors tell it, and say that a female slave told them the truth of what was going on. later penelope tells the beggar-who-is-odysseus, and she says that they caught her in the act with the help of her slave girls.

dolius, his unnamed sons, and their unnamed mother: dolius is another slave given to penelope by her father (book 4). now an old man, he seems to look after odysseus' father laertes, who no longer lives in the main house. father of melantho, melanthius, and six other sons by a sicilian woman who also cares for laertes. it is unclear whether she is the mother of all dolius' children, or only the six sons present in the farmhouse. dolius' first and last appearance on page is in book 24, when he greets and kisses odysseus; in the text, he never learns that odysseus has executed two of his children.

melantho: the daughter of dolius, who penelope raised "like a daughter" and pampered (book 18), though clearly only to a point. she is sleeping with the suitor eurymachus (also book 18). the text doesn't offer insight into how she actually feels about eurymachus. she has two scenes, and in both insults the beggar. both odysseus and penelope berate her and call her a dog. melantho is often assumed to be the one who betrayed penelope's weaving ruse to the suitors, but this is never stated in the odyssey.

melanthius: the son of dolius and brother of melantho, a goatherd who sides (vehemently) with the suitors. it is said that eurymachus is his favorite (book 17). he insults the beggar and eumaeus multiple times as well. he is present for the bow contest, helping the suitors, and when the slaughter begins, he brings them armor and weapons. odysseus orders the two herdsman on his side to tie him up, hoist him into the rafters, and torture him. they leave him tied until after the fighting, when "the men" (presumably odysseus, telemachus, eumaeus, and philoetius) cut off his nose, ears, and genitals to feed to the dogs, then chop off his hands and feet.

the unnamed hanged women: twelve (out of fifty) enslaved women whom eurycleia handpicks for death, because they were sleeping with the suitors (according to her, book 22). all the enslaved women are hiding during the slaughter; afterward, eurycleia goes to them, calls the twelve, and brings them to odysseus, who has them clean up the corpses and blood. odysseus means to execute them with swords when they're done, but telemachus decides to hang them instead, specifically to deny them a clean death. melantho is presumed to be one of these twelve. like with her, the text offers no insight into how they feel about the suitors.

eumaeus: a swineherd with an extensive backstory told in book 15. his father ctesius was the king of syria, but his enslaved nurse ran away and took him with her, intending to sell him, when he was too young to know better. she died on the ship, and laertes bought him in ithaca. like melantho, he was brought up there by the queen, in proximity to odysseus' younger sister ctimene. when they were older, ctimene was married and eumaeus sent to the country. he is well-off enough to own a slave of his own. in the odyssey, eumaeus personally takes care of the beggar, tells him all about the situation in the palace, and tries to protect him from the suitors, though he is openly skeptical of anything the beggar has to say about odysseus. when telemachus returns to ithaca, it's eumaeus he goes to first, greeting him like a family member. odysseus finally trusts his identity to eumaeus right before he wins the bow contest. he promises to give him a wife, wealth, and a house near the palace (and freedom, implicitly? unsure). eumaeus participates in the slaughter, the torture of melanthius, and possibly the executions. if i were to beg for one thing regarding eumaeus, it would be to consider how often in ancient literature, the only enslaved characters who are portrayed with dignity or sympathy are those who were, at one point, nobility.

mesaulius: a slave who serves and cleans up after eumaeus. eumaeus traded for him while odysseus was away, with his own money (book 14).

philoetius: a cowherd and overseer. like eumaeus, he is kind to the beggar and expresses loyalty to odysseus. he says that he would have run away, except that he still holds out hope for odysseus' return. odysseus reveals himself to philoetius along with eumaeus and promises him the same things (wife, wealth, a house). also participates in the slaughter, torture, and executions.

medon: house slave who has become a favorite of the suitors, but reports on them to penelope (book 4). telemachus tells odysseus to spare him (along with phemius, the bard) due to medon caring for him when he was young. medon then comes out of hiding to corroborate this and profess his loyalty. toward the end, medon hears the people of ithaca assembling to avenge the suitors and tries to discourage them, saying that he personally saw a god helping odysseus.

-

a lot of other unnamed slaves are mentioned in passing. i love the passage in book 20 when odysseus overhears an enslaved woman grinding grain as she prays to zeus for relief from the suitors. to odysseus, this is an omen, but it's also a very human moment which has nothing to do with him. there are more like this; i couldn't include all of them.

i wrote this up because i see a lot of people who are more familiar with retellings of the odyssey than the epic itself getting interested in these characters, often without really understanding a) that they are enslaved and b) how they function in the odyssey. both those things are important to grasp, if you're going to question both the assumptions of the cultural world of the poem and many knee-jerk modern responses to it—including what is, or isn't, deemed suitable in a retelling.

[hyacinthsgrimoire]

( @womenaremypriority for the text post; aesthetic meme is mine @hyacinthsgrimoire )

[cametotheshowinsd]

Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me? (2024) written & directed by Taylor Swift

So tell me everything is not about me …but what if it is?

[marzipanandminutiae]

There were so many dramatic changes in women's clothing in the 1920s that coincided with peaks in ongoing fights for our rights that the two end up conflated. Such that nobody wants to discuss any flaws in it- as exist in any clothing system -because it's Liberation FashionTM (spoiler: it's not; it's just another era of style )

One thing that comes to mind is: what about women who just didn't like the fashion? Obviously they would still have to wear at some degree, because that was an element of respectability back then. But I think when the question comes up, everyone immediately jumps to the idea of women who were more conservative and afraid of any sort of change. I am wanting to know more about the women who just… Thought it was ugly. Or uncomfortable, or impractical, for whatever reason. You don't really hear about them as much, but they surely must've existed

I guess nobody wants to acknowledge them because they're so busy waxing rhapsodical about a clothing style they have no more worn than the garments that came before it, and the comfort of which they have as little clue about as a Gibson girl's ballgown

("but it's not that different from modern clothes!" most people haven't tried it with the corsets/girdles and binders though. which a lot of women wore- I wouldn't necessarily say "most" for the binders but girdles- again, often still called corsets -remained VERY popular. despite being just shapewear at this point with no support functions)

[stheresya]

we need to bring back poser-shaming because nowadays fandom spaces are filled with people who pride themselves in liking edgy horror stuff and have words like 'gore' and 'torture' in their usernames clutching their pearls at the sight of any slightly taboo relationship in fiction. these people are attention-seeking posers trying to be part of a community that they clearly don't belong into. let's point and laugh. let's gatekeep.

[viviarts-c]

Alastor.exe has stopped working

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Ritual Self Torture Masterpost

[aimbutmiss]

TW//SA

I just love the idea of Buggy having more women on his crew than the average pirate captain. We have female captains in the story but other than that it doesn't seem like having women on your crew is the norm in the one piece world (which also makes Luffy's crew a minority, but the strawhats are very unique compared to other crews we see, especially in regards to their size but that's a whole other story).

We (kinda) know that Buggy has a thing for "adopting" weird kids and giving them a home where they can feel normal, like part of a crew, a family. He gives people who don't fit in a place to stay, in exchange for their labour of course. This is especially highlighted by opla where Buggy offers Luffy a place on his crew, not hating him from the start but feeling pity for him.

So would it really be surprising for him to offer women who have been wronged a place as well? Ex-prostitutes, r@pe victims etc. I feel like he'd be really considerate for their struggles.

And it makes everyone in the crew feel safe, men women and everyone in-between, to see that on Buggy's list of crimes crewmates can commit, SA is right on top alongside mutiny.

Maybe that's why Alvida trusted him so easily, because she could see he cared where other men wouldn't. And perhaps, this is one of the things that push Mihawk and Crocodile to start respecting the clown.

[starryvomit]

“If you do not tell your story, someone else will, and they will tell it wrong.”

-Kane Smego, 2014.

[bbygirl-aemond]

okay i won't lie i did giggle a bit when daemon tried to call the brackens on their bluff and they weren't bluffing and then he just LET THEM LEAVE my dude.... you're so bad at this

[obsessionavecdescouteaux]

Guns don’t stalk and methodically plan your abduction. Guns don’t suffocate you and lock you in my trunk. Guns don’t cover my walls, ceiling, and floor in plastic wrap. Guns don’t set up lights and cameras to record you. Guns don’t chain you to the furnace in my basement. Guns don’t torture you and make you do unspeakable acts. Guns don’t drag your body into the bed of my truck. Guns don’t dig 6-foot-deep graves in the woods at 4 AM, and guns certainly don’t seek comfort in the chase, the kill, or the cleanup. Guns don’t kill people; people do.

[girasois]

taylor swift — please, like or reblog ♡

coloring by the lovely @miniepsds ♡

sharpen by the amazing @buntterflies ♡