#you can't be progressive by keeping the oppressive structures unchallenged and just swapping a couple positions in them! | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mythicalthings · 1 year ago

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Yeah, the tags under this cut have it right.

TA is still sexist for making Adrien the "feminine" one and Marinette the "masculine" one and having nothing else changed.

Adrien is still a stereotypical damsel in distress type, literally in narrative seen as a princess in a tower, and they treat him like shit for it. It's still sexist. You still see femininity as weak and in need of saving.

You know, I am 100% sure that if Marinette and Adrien were gender swapped the season 5 finale would be almost unanimously hated like it should be.

#prev tags ahead #the showrunners really thought that they could let a horribly oppressive structure get validated and left standing #if they just gender-flipped the occasional victim and perpetrator #(come to think of it. do they think that the roles of a romantic relationship inherently must be 'victim' and 'perpetrator'...?!)#(literally they did Not have to devolve the love square into this!)#also even if the roles in a stereotypically conservative power-imbalanced relationship got flipped #it's still a show aimed primarily at young girls and Adrien is one of the more prominent relatable characters #especially among the child abuse victims within the target audience. so. regardless of him being a boy #the harmful abuse apologia and victim-grooming rhetoric is still going to be internalised by young girls #it honestly feels like some kinda pseudo-feminism punishment for the girls who related to the male lead instead of Marinette #but that's unnecessarily cruel and really ignores that for many young girl viewers 'same experience' or 'same mental illness' -#- is gonna be a much more defining relatability factor than 'same gender'. besides #Adrien has a LOT of qualities that are statistically common in female abuse victims so of course he's relatable to them!#the gender subversion could have been cool if it hadn't devolved to apologism & devaluing Adrien for the feminine qualities.#ml writing criticism #ml writing salt #ml s5 #ml s5 criticism #abuse #abuse apologism #ml fandom criticism #adrien #marinette #garbage moth #your gender subversion isn't actually progressive if you're still devaluing/dehumanising whoever has 'feminine' qualities #that's still just an expression of garden-variety sexism. framing feminine boys as Lesser is sexism.#the insistence that a romance must have a conservative power imbalance with a passive victim and an active perpetrator #it's all just rooted in sexism!#you can't be progressive by keeping the oppressive structures unchallenged and just swapping a couple positions in them!

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