#ESPECIALLY if those men are part of a marginalized group

[ex-furry]

yeah there is like. no way to get around how awful and immoral conscription is. you can try and dress it up all you want, but a government forcing its people to enter the military and defend it is so demented

[nerdygaymormon]

The LGBTQ community has seen controversy regarding acceptance of different groups (bisexual and transgender individuals have sometimes been marginalized by the larger community), but the term LGBT has been a positive symbol of inclusion and reflects the embrace of different identities and that we’re stronger together and need each other. While there are differences, we all face many of the same challenges from broader society.

In the 1960′s, in wider society the meaning of the word gay transitioned from ‘happy’ or ‘carefree’ to predominantly mean ‘homosexual’ as they adopted the word as was used by homosexual men, except that society also used it as an umbrella term that meant anyone who wasn’t cisgender or heterosexual. The wider queer community embraced the word ‘gay’ as a mark of pride.

The modern fight for queer rights is considered to have begun with The Stonewall Riots in 1969 and was called the Gay Liberation Movement and the Gay Rights Movement.

The acronym GLB surfaced around this time to also include Lesbian and Bisexual people who felt “gay” wasn’t inclusive of their identities. 

Early in the gay rights movement, gay men were largely the ones running the show and there was a focus on men’s issues. Lesbians were unhappy that gay men dominated the leadership and ignored their needs and the feminist fight. As a result, lesbians tended to focus their attention on the Women’s Rights Movement which was happening at the same time. This dominance by gay men was seen as yet one more example of patriarchy and sexism. 

In the 1970′s, sexism and homophobia existed in more virulent forms and those biases against lesbians also made it hard for them to find their voices within women’s liberation movements. Betty Friedan, the founder of the National Organization for Women (NOW), commented that lesbians were a “lavender menace” that threatened the political efficacy of the organization and of feminism and many women felt including lesbians was a detriment.

In the 80s and 90s, a huge portion of gay men were suffering from AIDS while the lesbian community was largely unaffected. Lesbians helped gay men with medical care and were a massive part of the activism surrounding the gay community and AIDS. This willingness to support gay men in their time of need sparked a closer, more supportive relationship between both groups, and the gay community became more receptive to feminist ideals and goals. 

Approaching the 1990′s it was clear that GLB referred to sexual identity and wasn’t inclusive of gender identity and T should be added, especially since trans activist have long been at the forefront of the community’s fight for rights and acceptance, from Stonewall onward. Some argued that T should not be added, but many gay, lesbian and bisexual people pointed out that they also transgress established gender norms and therefore the GLB acronym should include gender identities and they pushed to include T in the acronym. 

GLBT became LGBT as a way to honor the tremendous work the lesbian community did during the AIDS crisis. 

Towards the end of the 1990s and into the 2000s, movements took place to add additional letters to the acronym to recognize Intersex, Asexual, Aromantic, Agender, and others. As the acronym grew to LGBTIQ, LGBTQIA, LGBTQIAA, many complained this was becoming unwieldy and started using a ‘+’ to show LGBT aren’t the only identities in the community and this became more common, whether as LGBT+ or LGBTQ+. 

In the 2010′s, the process of reclaiming the word “queer” that began in the 1980′s was largely accomplished. In the 2020′s the LGBTQ+ acronym is used less often as Queer is becoming the more common term to represent the community. 

[faggy--butch]

is it just me or is the "trans guys are just some boring guys and they make lame music and trans women are cool and interesting and make loud music" jokes almost like. an excuse for why theres not that many trans guys who are popular content creators or musicians or actors or authors or what have you. like blaming the invisibility of trans men on being "boring" and therefore not doing anything rather than oppression.

not to mention the example of music being that people have heard of one singular trans guy who works in a genre they dont like [people really love to act like cavetown is like specifically bad or cringe but thats just what most indie pop/rock/folk sounds like] and theyve heard of a handful of trans women who make hyperpop that they already like [and laura jane grace of course] and its really telling on themselves. theres trans guys making hyperpop and trans women making ""lame ukulele music"" and both of them and nonbinary people making music of tons of other genres. like. cmon. it reminds me of xkcd 385.

also i dont think these jokes are intentionally malicious or anything [most of the time] but it also feels sort of weird to be joking about how boring a group of marginalized people are. im not going to act like its the biggest deal in the world but its sort of low level bullying, innit? and i imagine having this weird expectation to be "cool and interesting" isnt fun for trans women either. its nice to get to be lame sometimes.

Yeah it's super weird, especially because it's repeated over and over, that part is the suspicious part. I even saw it on reddit a few days ago in one of the ftm subs. I do think it's like blaming the lack of trans men artists on trans men being "boring" instead of, you know the bigotry, the erasure, the inequality I think it's also a weird expectation that we all HAVE to live up to what other people think of as "cool" like if we're all not making hardcore metal and being as "SICK" as humanly possible, we are failing at transgender music and therefore are the reason trans men aren't represented as artists enough, which is ummm. okay.

why can't we make soft love songs about being bugs, or whatever. What happens to trans women who don't live up to the metal hardcore aesthetic? Look at Dylan Mulvaney. She made a dumb cutsie girlypop song and everyone acted like she is the founder of misogyny herself. So not only are we ridiculed for the music we make, we're trapped in transphobic expectations of what music we can or should make.

If you expect all trans women to make metal, you'll only see trans women who make metal, if you expect all trans men to make soft music, that's all you'll find! because that's all you looked for! Another thing is like, Oh all trans women music is cool and hardcore rock and roll, but trans men music is dumb and cutsie ukulele music? I wonder what gender those genres are normally associate with? Uhoh we're doing a sexism maybe the person making the joke doesn't have malicious intent, but the joke itself sure does.

[sarasade]

One of the most generally useful things to come out of Hbomberguy's plagiarism video and Todd in the Shadows' similar video on misinformation is how they bring transparency to the internet phenomenon of "I made up a guy to get mad at".

Seriously, I've seen people make up a lot of stupid shit on the internet over the years and it's often just a manipulative attempt to paint a group of marginalized people in a bad light.

That's the TL;DR version of this post. 

ANYWAY here is the long version

Those videos are mostly about James Somerton's plagiarism of other queer people's work. However I'd like to talk about that 20-30% of Somerton's original writing- and oh boy. It's mostly about complaining about White Straight Women and misgendering well-known trans creators such as Rebecca Sugar and calling Becky Albertalli a straight woman while it's pretty common knowledge that she was forced to out herself as bi because she received so much harassment over "being a cishet woman who appropriates LGBT+ stories".

One thing that irks me especially is how in his Killing Stalking and Gay Shipping videos Somerton brings up how straight women/ teen girl shippers exploit gay men for their personal sexual fantasies. This gets brought up several times in his videos.

Being all up and arms about Somerton being a "White Cis Gay Who Hates Women and Queer People tm" is not that useful because the kind of rhetoric he's using is extremely common in fandom and LGBT+ spaces on Tumblr, TikTok and Twitter. We really don't need to bring Somerton's identity to this since he is in no way an unique example.

It's hypocritical to make this about an individual person when I've seen A TON of posts, tweets and videos where queer people talk about these Sinister Straight Women who are supposedly out there fetishizing and exploiting queer men. It's pretty clear to me that this is just an excuse to shit on women and queer people for having any sexual interests. At worst these comments are spreading misinformation about BL, a form of media that has been excessively studied by both Asian feminists and Asian queer women.

This all sounds really familiar and I think it's good that people are calling it out as what it is: misogyny and transphobia. I'd also point out the potentially racist motives behind being this hypervigilant about Asian media.

People can absolutely be misogynist regardless of gender or orientation. I really don't know why we need to create some kind of made up enemy to get mad at. I actually think it's almost sinister how "anti-fujoshi" people call Slash shippers and fujoshi misogynists or claim that they have internalised misogyny while being dismissive about women's interests and creative pursuits under Japanese obscenity laws, China's censorship, book bans in American schools and various other disadvances that are part of being a queer and/or female creator.

I think we shouldn't be naive about the bad faith actors who want to turn queer people against each other. For example Fujoshi.info mentions anti-gender (TERF, GC etc) movement using this kind of rhetoric as well.

Anyway if you want to read more:

- about the false info around BL fandom fujoshi.info

-There is the scholar Thomas Baudinette who studies gay media in Japan. Here is a podcast with him and the scholar Khursten Santos

-James Welker is a BL scholar as well. Here is a podcast interview about the new international BL article collection he edited.

-I've already talked about this Youtube channel by KrisPNatz and his great Killing Stalking video that actually engages with the themes of the manhwa

- There is also HR Coleman's thesis DO NOT FEED THE FETISHIZERS: BOYS LOVE FANS RESISTANCE AND CHALLENGE OF PERCEIVED REPUTATION where she interviews 36 BL fans and actually breaks down why fetishization has become such a huge talking point in the fandom discourse. Spoilers, it's mostly about young queer people and women being worried that they will get judged and pathologized for their interest in anything sexual.

-Great podcast about Danmei and censorship with Liang Ge

[drdemonprince]

So, I (a trans guy) am kind of coming to terms with the fact that I might be more gay than bisexual after all. Where I live, the queer community is split pretty definitively between the "women, non binary and trans people" (or FLINTA*, if you're familiar with that horrible term) and the gay male community. While I have lots of problems with the former, it is kind of the community I am in, mostly because it has felt safe during my transition. It still feels safe, but not really comfortable. I want to feel like I am part of the gay male community, especially if I mostly want to date queer men in the future.

I am like, so scared of existing in any gay male spaces. When I tried being in them pre T, I felt like an imposter. When I travelled to the US a few years ago, the only place my then partner (also on T) and me were misgendered consistently was in gay bars (in a lot of famous "gay friendly" cities). All of this has left me with a sense of humiliation and not-belonging that gets reactivated every time I even think of stepping into one again, even if I am fairly certain I would not get this reaction now.

How do I get past the shame that is attached to my previous experiences and learn to actually enjoy myself there?

So, I believe that you have the order of operations wrong here. You don't get past shame and then go out to these gay spaces -- you go out to those gay spaces and then overcome (some) of your shame. And that shame may live with you forever in some form. You can still have a worthwhile life with it.

Go to the gay bars. There are many different kinds of them, all with wildly different energies and clientelle, and it is normal and boring and blase for trans guys to be at each and every single one of them.

One way that many newbies unwittingly screw up is by going to the most circuity, dance-y kinds of gay bars that tend to be filled with young, thin, rich, superficial people -- and then they mistake the meanness of that crowd for the meanness of all gays, or interpret the meanness as a sign they are not accepted by "the gay male community."

There is no singular gay male community. There are in fact a wide variety of subcultures with their own beauty standards, stylistic choices, interests, and norms. And there's a lot of cliquishness and mean girl behavior among people who have decided they are high rank in any particular small subculture, don't get me wrong. But you don't have to believe in any of it. They're just coping with their own history of marginalization and rejection by trying to become a new ruling class within their own tiny pond. You can laugh it off as the work of kind of sad, small thinking and just enjoy yourself and talk to people who are not assholes.

So, go to the leather bar. Go to a pup night. Go to an old-timers bar filled with gays over 60 (they will be nice to you and buy you drinks, I promise). Go to a gay bar that's casual and nerdy, with arcade machines and pub trivia. Go to a drag bar on a weekday night and meet some of the newer queens who are still trying to find their chops. And yes, go to the DJ sets and dance clubs all you like, but don't let what a few snatched bitchy 22-year-olds (or insecure former twink 42 year old real estate agents) get you feeling insecure. They're doing that shit because they are insecure.

Bring a friend. Talk to someone who seems nervous and alone on the side of the dance floor, too. Wear an outfit that will get some compliments. Nurse a drink at the bar and trawl grindr to see if anyone seems worth talking to. Join a dungeon or a gay running group. Attend a gay men's support group at your local lgbt center. Meet a ton of people and just get yourself out there, and quickly you will realize that your mind has wildly over dramatized how much you stand out or how much anybody cares.

Fat gays, disabled gays, older gays, Autistic gays, nerdy gays, poor gays, Black and brown gays, immigrant gays, they all feel like they do not belong and are not welcome too. Find them and be kind to them and hold onto them. Notice who is nice and warm with you, but also don't read into it too much if some people are just neutral. Eventually you will figure out what you like doing, which spaces you enjoy inhabiting, and who you want to be there with -- and then you'll have some fun.

[uncanny-tranny]

I promise you can speak about and denounce undesirable behaviour without attributing it to some in-born, immutable, unchanging trait that you must "civilize" away.

In this specific instance that inspired this, you really don't need to attribute bad behaviour that's done by a man with unchanging character traits. This isn't even solely about men, because doing this affects everyone, men included.

"Men needed to be civilized out of behaving this way!" Who are you expecting to be doing the civilizing and why? This is just defending the idea that women are responsible for training up men - the millenia-old idea that a man's failings are actually a woman's fault, not his.

As a man, I am responsible for my actions. You don't need to dehumanize me in order to preserve your misogyny and your need to hate a group of men. Don't get me wrong, this rhetoric absolutely is not good for men to face. It especially targets men who have experiences with marginalized identities. If you're on my page, you know that this is something I deal with personally, have personal stakes in that affect my life daily. I just also think we really need to remember that this issue exists in a context where women and other folks will inevitably be punished as a direct result of these ideas as well.

I need to make that last part emphatically clear: even if this rhetoric (somehow) only hurt men, it would still be wrong. It would still be wrong! I want to - as a man - remind people (especially those who already have decided to dehumanize entire groups of people) that nobody is safe from being exempt from punishment due to this rhetoric.

[highfantasy-soul]

So I need to get something off my chest about 'writing' and what a show is trying to do vs if the writing is the best to show that.

I haven't seen this complaint so much on Tumblr, but it has been brought up several times in a Discord server I'm in and I don't think there is the best place to address it (it might be taken as too political or an attack against specific people) but I really really needed to write out how I'm feeling about it.

So a massive complaint in this Discord is that the writing of the Acolyte is bad. The ones making this criticism claim that they like the ideas behind the show, but the execution with the writing is terrible and they need to get a whole new writing team for season 2.

So. Hmm. How to not get too in my feelings about that.

Let's take a look at who the writers are. We have:

3 men - 2 of which are men of color, the last I don't know enough about to say if he's part of a specific marginalized identity or not

and we have 7 women - Leslye who is openly queer, 3 black women, an asian woman, a trans woman and activist, and another who I again, don't know enough about to say if she's a part of a specific marginalized identity (other than her femininity) or not.

I didn't do deep dives on them, they're writers, so it's kind of hard to specifically find out 'hey, do you personally have a lot of experience with colonialism/religious trauma?' BUT I think that just baseline seeing how many women, people of color, and queer people there are on the writing staff and the way I could see so many extremely nuanced and real things on screen that I personally know about gives me a good idea about their own experiences/knowledge about such subjects.

Despite the claim that 'they like what the story is going for', the understanding of how the writers are telling that story isn't translating to everyone. I have a little suspicion as to what unites the people who 'don't get' the writing despite claiming to like what the show was going for. Kind of like how people 'liked what the civil rights movement was about, but those leaders and their methods? Get those out of here and accomplish the goals in a different way'. Or reading a classic and having no context for who wrote it or when the story was written and trying to judge it based on your own very limited understanding and claiming it's "bad" because you, personally, are just not aware of anything outside of your own world view.

It's important to be able to identify where your own understanding might be lacking - and acknowledging that just because YOU don't 'get it' doesn't mean that the writing is BAD. It just means... you don't get it. Personally, I don't get every single show made for a very specific audience - especially racialized comedies specifically for the race the writer/performer is. As an example, Dave Chapelle (horrendous transphobia aside) wrote a great deal of his material for his very specific audience of Black Americans. I personally, as a not-Black person, wasn't sure how to feel about some of his jokes - but what I DIDN'T do was say that he was bad and 'I get that he's making fun of his own community, but he should do it in a different way, maybe get a different writer'. Because I'm not the one equipped to judge that. I acknowledge that his comedy is outside my wheelhouse and honestly, for Chapelle's case when it comes to his racial jokes, I simply remove myself from the equation and just look to other Black people and how they react to his comedy to see if he's stepped over a line. (Also, when it comes to comedy, as he himself pointed out, some white people were laughing a little TOO hard at his jokes - I think that's mainly an issue with comedy and poking fun at yourself only to have someone not in your 'group' not take it as friendly ribbing but rather more malicious - and so he dialed it back).

Comedy is a bit different than any other media - I do think that comedy requires a lot more knowledge of the subject matter to know when the person is exaggerating, critiquing, or affectionately ribbing that is pretty important to know before internalizing what's said in the show. If you're not aware of that stuff, you might hear a stand-up routine and internalize a lot of really harmful stereotypes so I think it's ok to step away from comedy that isn't "for you" in a way that I don't think is particularly great for ALL types of media that isn't "for you".

With romance stories - I just don't get why a character would make all their decisions focused around getting a romantic partner, maybe I actively dislike watching/reading about that, but what I'm NOT going to do is say Jane Austen is a bad writer. I can point out things I disliked aside from the romance aspect or even larger writing critiques, but I'm not going to say that 'I see what she was going for, but get a different writer because I didn't get it'. Those stories were intensely personal to her and many people see themselves in the characters she wrote. Just because *I* don't get their motivations doesn't mean others don't.

So, examples aside, I think it's incredibly important that before we say 'the writing was bad', think about if maybe it's just that you don't have the meta understanding of the groups being highlighted in the story. It does give me the ick when people say to 'replace the writing table' on The Acolyte when the story trying to be told is of marginalized groups interacting with massive colonial institutions and the generational trauma that causes - and when you look at the writers....they are part of the groups affected by those issues, and the ones who are saying 'replace them'....aren't (largely).

When you 'don't get' something in media, especially if that media is telling the stories of groups you don't belong to, go to see what those groups are saying. There have been articles written about The Acolyte from the points of view of marginalized groups and meta posted around about how these irl subjects are being handled. In my opinion, as someone a part of such effected groups, I think the writers have done an incredible job with the show.

The main issue I think (good faith) people have is that DISNEY didn't give the show more time to tell its story, but then they lay the issues at the feet of the writers for 'not explaining enough' - but the things they want explained, largely I find are things that...were explained enough if you know the basics of colonization, missionaries, and generational trauma.

Other complaints I've seen boil down to "the show should have told me everything in order, clearly, and told me what to think about it and each of the characters - because I was left guessing, instead of using my own brain to think about it, I have decided it's bad writing because everything wasn't fed to me in a straightforward way" which again, isn't a fault of the writing, it's a flaw in the way you THINK all shows need to hand-hold you. Just because a show doesn't spoon-feed you the story and character motivations, doesn't mean the writing is bad.

Finally, I've seen critiques of the writing (and story) to the effect of 'it's a Star Wars story - it NEEDS to fit into the Star Wars box/expectations and if it doesn't, that means it's bad writing' - which again, kills diversity. You want surface-level inclusion where "yay! It's a woman doing bombings now! Cheer for her!" rather than "Look, it's a woman doing war-crimes and we're pointing out that war crimes are STILL wrong and here's other marginalized people fighting against that!"

So before claiming 'the writers need to be replaced', take a step back and look at why you feel that way, take a look at who the writers are and what story they were trying to tell, and first consider: maybe you just aren't knowledgeable enough about the subject matter. And just because it's not 'baby's first colonizer story', doesn't mean the writing is bad. Maybe you aren't the center of the universe for once and maybe its OK for you to feel a little behind in understanding - it just means there's new stuff for you to learn! Which is a good thing!

Obligatory explanation that all this doesn't mean that you can't critique the writing or that if you critique the writing that means you 100% are who I'm talking to in this post. All I'm saying is that maybe before having the knee-jerk reaction 'get rid of the writers', take a look at it from this perspective to see if you 'not understanding' isn't on the writers, it's on you and your life experiences not preparing you for such a story told in this way.

[transmultiphobia-discussion]

Just came across an anti-lesboy video on my fyp on tiktok (which is a bit weird, because I'm actually largely on the true queer liberation, fully inclusive side of tiktok where I've genuinely come across people saying everything from "hey transmascs face violence too" to "hey support allo aros", stuff that's "controversial" because of bigotry everywhere from twitter to tumblr to facebook).

I'm just so frustrated. That's a label primarily used by multigender people, and secondarily by monogender transmasc and nonbinary people. Very rarely it might also be used by a closeted transfem or transfem egg.

Like no, there's not actually an epidemic of cishet men identifying as lesbian because you've heard a lesbophobic cis guy joke about being a lesbian once. Hell, even if you've heard it many times, THE DIFFERENCE IS THAT LESBOY IS A GENUINELY HELD IDENTITY. If you can't tell the difference between someone being a lesbophobic dick and someone just going about their lives like... it's almost as if you never learned that you can't identify safe people based on their identity but have to judge their ongoing actions and patterns of behavior!

(Not at you tbc, ranting at anti-lesboys.)

Like hmm I wonder why someone who is both a man and a woman attracted to solely women, as an example, might identify as a lesbian. No one tell these fuckers about straight lesbians/straight gays, I stg. Or someone who is abro (I still am waiting for the other shoe to drop and to see someone call my sexuality "just the bi cycle" when by it's very nature it is multiple separate sexualities with fluidity between them, sometimes occurring at the same time, in large part because of my system's plurality making our identifies overlap and intertwine and mix). Or a member of a system (especially a median system).

Or any other number of the extremely marginalized and erased identities that usually use the term.

Like you (again at anti lesboys) could at least try and make an effort to understand why people might use the word and accept it even if you don't understand. I'm so tired of, in general, people automatically assuming bad faith about identities, especially taking all their info about them from people who clearly hate those identities. Like somehow at least the trans community and most of the queer community knows you shouldn't believe genocidal transphobes or even pickme class traitor trans/queer people when they start spouting off about trans identity being about child molestation, but suddenly when people are spouting off about lesboys being cishet men and drinking the nonmen loving nonmen radfem koolaid and being openly and cruelly derisive surely they must be the experts.

At the very least, it's taught me to only ever accept information about any identity from people who are not immediately claiming it's harmful and making mean girl quips about it. I don't actually at this point believe an identity itself can be harmful, only actions (which, tbc, I'm not including "hate group ideology" as identity here), but if I want to learn about an identity I'm certainly not going to take it from the ones calling it anything from queerphobic to ableist (plural discourse shit for example) to sexually predatory to whatever, even if it's coming from a member of a minority group.

There might be cases where I find the identity label is being used to justify harmful actions, at which point I condemn the actions and recognize that it's a bad faith usage of a label which still may be legitimate. If I can't find any good faith usage, I recognize that it's probably a dogwhistle or otherwise harmful, but continue to understand that a good faith usage could arise or I could simply be unaware of it due to erasure.

Anyway tangent aside I'm just very upset, probably a bit triggered from personal queerphobia trauma and general personal trauma but just

Why can't people not be utterly shitty about what are largely microlabels anyway? Why can't people just be kinder? :(

yeahhh tiktok has been on an anti-lesboy tangent lately, I haven't seen much of it myself but I have heard about it from users over here. it's something I've been fighting against for years now, and while things have seemed to have gotten better, other sites like tiktok are cycling through it. still pretty sad to see

[olderthannetfic]

/726901861182996480/ a lot of the Richard Siken response is honestly so homophobic, trying to come up with some sinister reason for why a gay man would be interested in writing or reading sexy fanfic about attractive men in a TV show. There was a viral post going around here by some person with a Stranger Things username (not insinuating that fandom is especially weird or anything, just that I remember this person had one of the characters from that show as their username) that suggested he was a creep or groomer or something because he had not responded well to a teenager basically wanting him to do her homework for her, but “he happily writes fanfic of shows for her age demographic” (or something like that) which is both a truly bizarre description of Supernatural, a show that’s always been aimed at adults even if it also has a fair number of teenage fans, but also is really clearly trying to invoke some sort of Groomer Panic in a time when that’s rising as a form of violent homophobia toward LGBTQ+ people especially those who are AMAB. And it’s just such a bizarre statement: even if we were talking about a drama that was aimed at teenagers, in what ways is it “groomer” for an adult to watch this show (lol, on the website that is full of adults freaking out over kids’ shows) or for that adult to find the adult characters played by adult actors attractive enough to write sexy fanfic about them? It’s just really obviously reaching for an excuse to call a gay man a groomer.

In general, I feel like this website has a serious problem (it’s been the case at the very least since the panic over CMBYN, and before anyone gets pissy, I’m not talking about anyone taking issue with the content of the film itself, but the people making weird insinuations about gay/bi men for liking it or “the gay community” for embracing it or over the bi male novel author’s own sexuality or reasons for writing it, etc.) where a lot of people who are not gay/bi men think it’s okay for them to make weird homophobic assertions about it, and generally not bother to question their homophobic beliefs about gay and bi men, because they themselves are some other kind of LGBTQ+. I’m a cis lesbian and a lot of this particular seems to come from cis lesbians and bi women, often trying to couch it in a general sort of skepticism that women as a marginalized group might have toward men as a privileged group, but then it only ever seems to be directed at men who are also marginalized such as gay/bi men (and also MOC) and specifically for things that are a result of those marginalized identities and that don’t affect women — NOT a situation where a man is using his marginalized identity as an excuse for misogyny or anything like that. Anyway, people need to knock that shit off. Not every person in the LGBTQ+ community has the same experience, and being, say, a cis woman who is queer doesn’t necessarily make you any better of an authority on gay or bi men’s lives than cishet people if you aren’t making an effort to talk to them or read stuff by them or learn about their lives, and certainly doesn’t mean you can’t be homophobic toward them — just like how in turn, queer men can be bigoted toward lesbians and/or bi women. I don’t understand how people can be aware of other kinds of intra-LGBTQ+ bigotry — cis gay or bi people being transphobic, gay people being biphobic, etc. — and not be aware that this is also a thing that can happen from other LGBTQ+ people toward gay men.

And being ANY kind of queer absolutely does not give you a get out of jail free card for buying into and disseminating the moral panics about groomers, “kink at pride,” “drag is problematic and always sexual” etc. which are used by the right wing to hurt all of us. This was bad enough in like 2018 as part of the perennial brain worms people on this website have about Pride (that are because way too many of them don’t leave their houses and actually go to a Pride parade) or when people could plausibly believe that “groomer” was purely about shipping discourse and maybe the occasional actually kind of creepy older adult in fandom spaces who spends a little too much time glomming onto teens specifically. But in 2023 you don’t really have any excuse for not being aware of how those terms have broken containment and are now part of regular right-wing propaganda, and particularly a concerted right-wing campaign to try to re-mainstream homophobia in places where it had become socially taboo. Your discomfort around a real adult gay man just enjoying fanfiction, which does not affect you, is not justified and you need to work through that. Using terms like “groomer” for fucking fandom discourse when it’s come to mean what it does in the broader culture is just completely morally reprehensible. Get a fucking grip

--

[comradekarin]

That last ask you got here, just reminds me of the fact that while TS fandom claims to be all about feminism and women supporting women, it surely lacks intersectionality and it SHOWS and this is in great part because that’s the kind of advocacy they get from the celeb they worship, that’s why is dangerous to just pander to one kind of feminism as if everyone had an universal experience, when it couldn’t be further from the reality, we need to have those conversations we need to learn from one another and whoever has a privilege, should make good use of it to uplift those who can’t at the moment

Yup!! That’s basically the point I’m trying to hone to be honest. Again, I absolutely believe we should support female artists in the music industry, especially when they will be held to higher standards than other male artists (even in that area we can have a conversation about the dynamic race plays between male artists, too). However, it’s imperative we discuss how Taylor and her fans only use feminism to tell other people they can’t be mean to her, or critique her. Are these group of people the minority in the fan base? Maybe, sure. But should we sweep it under the rug and let it fester just because it’s the minority? No.

Do I believe the average Taylor Swift stan is normal and doesn’t hate black women? Yes. I believe there’s a lot of them who just enjoy her music and don’t feel the need to bash other black female artists in order to prove how much better Taylor is. Nonetheless, there’s still a large group of her fans who claim to support all women but will not hesitate to degrade and shut out the voices of woc making valid criticisms against Taylor. Just look at the Matty Healy situation. A white woman’s partner is exposed for making disgusting racist comments about black women, and the responses are not “this powerful rich white woman is continuing to date this man and is being complicit through her silence, which is enabling his repulsive behavior and she needs to be held accountable” but instead “we need her to stay away from this bad man!”. Yes, because the image and reputation of this white woman is more important than the dangerous rhetoric her partner is spreading about the same women she claims to support! Yes, because this white woman can have a collab with the same woman (ice spice) her boyfriend was making racist remarks about and everything is ok! Yes, because it is the white woman who is the victim here, and if you can’t see that you’re a misogynist!

Taylor’s silence during the wave of transphobia, the criminalization and banning of drag shows, the uptick of hate against black women, and so much more just makes sense when you look at the company she keeps. Didn’t her team try to sue a journalist for stating Taylor constantly toes the line with conservatives and white supremacists a few years back? Just look at the CO2 emissions drama where everyone was like “man I hate privileged white millionaires” and then she dropped an album and everyone forgot? Any critique for Taylor is met with these responses: A) Taylor isn’t the worst apple out of the bunch so why is she getting attacked like this B) Y’all would never do this to male celebrities so just say y’all hate women C) Why is Taylor blamed for the actions of other men or D) [justifying anything Taylor has done].

So, what you’re saying is correct anon. We can not talk about feminism and supporting “all women” while also trying to lump the struggles of all women into a single category. The initial Feminist movement itself excluded other women of color, it was something only meant for white women. White women have a level of privilege over other women of color, and we can’t pretend they don’t because they’re just “women, too”. White women and their fake white tears have done so much harm to marginalized communities, especially my own black community. I want this conversation to actually mean something, for it to be a moment of self reflection, for it to actually be about supporting, advocating for, and uplifting the voices of all women. I don’t want this talk of “support all women” to only be brought up when someone attacks your white fav.

[horizon-verizon]

Alysanne is treated awfully by her husband, who is never once confronted by the narrative for his horrible behaviour. Who would rather risk her dying in childbirth than take any steps to prevent pregnancy as she requests, forces her beloved and mentally disabled daughter to be married off despite the obvious risk to her life and refuses to take responsibility when Daella inevitable suffers an awful death, and who values people of Alysanne’s gender so little that he completely goes against Westerosi custom by passing over his own granddaughter.

If Alysanne, powerless apart from what Jaehaerys deigned to grant her, helpless to stop her daughters being out at risk or to decide for herself to see Saera again, is GRRM’s example of a good queen, it’s pretty sad.

I understand the frustration, since again we never get more queens exactly like Rhaenys or Visenya and even here we may comment on how un-feminist or anti woman it is to not have them as "ideal" queens when Rhaenys died in the violence of war (the eradication of women in fiction) while Visenya enables a tyrant to rule...but really F&B and the Targaryens' history was not really supposed to be a feminist tale BECAUSE the history--though not-- was meant to show the decline of royal female power & agency that happened due to the assimilation into Andal patriarchy for power and/or to get a foothold and unified state to fight against the Others if you think of the theory of Aegon having a dragon dream about this. Especially in connection to Dany's rise.

AND I will say I do agree to critique on how GRRM's writing sometimes inspires anti-women-ess through a paltry (thought we can't say nonexistent, there is a punishment against rape or sense of social taboo on rape in Westeros, but...) pushback or punishment for rape and violence against women [joannalannister]. I'm saying that GRRM's work is not meanT to be taken as actual feminist literature but a series that really sets out to dramatize already present/past truths and conditions and sometimes to the detriment of its female characters and the impression made on readers. GRRM is still a liberal-ist white man.

AT THE SAME TIME, SINCE THIS ISN'T A FEMINIST SERIES BUT A "LOOK WHAT CAN HAPPEN" SORT OF THING

I think that the whole point is that, yes, this is a sad and it stems from how limiting such a set up is AND Alysanne was a politically "good" queen. How she treats her own kids and is complicit in how they died or ran away should be a part of how "good" one is as a general sort of leader, yeah, but unlike Jaehaerys and the "good" he did Alysanne's "good" acts for the realm had much more of a necessary impact in the sociopolitical landscape of their subjects. and I mean towards more marginalized groups, esp women. It's like she made sure to "round up" those left behind in other aristocrat's projects.

la-pheacienne says this:

Whether that someone has been chosen by the people, or by the gods, or by destiny, or by circumstances, and regardless of the political system that allowed them to yield that power, the point is that someone has power ad hoc at any given time, and power equals responsibility. What do you do with it? How do you govern? How do you choose between two equally grievous alternatives? Who do you listen to? Who do you trust? How can you learn? What if everything you've been told was a lie? How do you move on from there? What if the promises you made contradict each other? What if you fail? How do you live with the guilt, how do you go on? How do you instigate a structural change? What if you try to do that and people die? What if you try to do that and it kills you? Was it worth it? How do you use th

On top of that, Alysanne was still a Consort, not a Regnant. (POST & POST) She had less power than Rhaenya or Visenya, who though were not exactly Regnants they also weren't just Aegon's wives but consummate and active politicians themselves, making deals in the open, riding dragons into wars, enacting laws, and creating institutions. Alysanne had to rely on her husband's power to have and hope to have her thoughts on legislation come to reality. It is just a fact that queen Consorts, unlike Queen regnants, had to depend on her royal husband's favor, regard, or perception of need of her to have any semblance of power because she is a woman and a Consort. It's part of the deal, the sociopolitical conditions. In reality and real history, it was such for MOST queen consorts. Yeah they had more power at court and influenced their husbands, but you are seeing in Alysanne something that looks like what that sort of power could have been like. Even Alysanne had more influence over Jaehaerys than some real queen Consorts and those that came after her! Think of Rhaella, Naerys, Myriah Martell, etc.

Were there female consorts in real history who practiced more influence, power, etc. than their officially ruling husband or were their active equals in terms of policy making while showing some power over their kids lives than just, of course! But this is not the rule of the land, but exceptions. nor the common experience of medieval/early mod pd women/female consorts precisely bc it was thought women didn't make good rulers. There is Empress Sisi, who couldn't even keep her own children close to her because royal children are not considered the Queen's but those "of the state", so the emperor and/or his mother could force them apart for any reason.

Juxtapose this to the Viserra situation. Alysanne actually was the one to arrange for the marriages she knew her husband wanted (esp after the whole deal with Daella refusing nearly every man/boy), and insisted to Viserra she had to marry Theomore Manderly. She had more power over her kids than you may think...it's not perfect because she is of course anticipating Jaehaerys' desires for the girls to be married off quick enough to build certain alliances or to just get rid of them, but she does not allow herself to really think the match bad and refuses to listen to her daughter. There was will here, from Alysanne not present in Sis, and again, she had more power than later Consorts...yet based in Jaehaerys because she is a Consort and a dragonrider (helps the impression and image to gain "respect").

So we're presented with another question this series inspires: when & how should someone lay blame or responsibility on marginalized groups, identities, etc. like women of aristocratic classes, men of lower classes, either of different "races" (fiction and reality), and with what evidence?

First, Alysanne married and stayed with Jaehaerys as his companion since she was 13. She saw him as the default king, the leader, and herself as a necessary ingredient to Westeros' prosperity. That they would work more together than other couples...She was both right and wrong, and I think she was sorely and quietly disappointed well before she observed Jaehaerys pass a girl over the 2nd time. So she acted the way she did at "home" towards her kids to feel more in control bc that si where Jaehaerys left her to act more.

Second, Daenerys is the example of a "perfect", ideal but also realistic "good queen", someone that realistically and optimistically chooses to do good with the power she has and has managed to find value and meaning to use said power for others other than herself despite all that she went through. Howe those things would likely have turned other women out and as compelled to be more self-oriented as Rhaenyra or Daena. She is purposefully different from her ancestors this way, but also similar to a lot of them, ion that particular strength that she has to reinforce her altruism. That doesn't mean that people who don't do it to her level are completely incapable, evil, or "bad queens".

Cersei? Hell yes, but even with Cersei we must acknowledge how she is how she is due to certain circumstances and most criticism against her in the fandom--or the loudest--are sexist or just unfair. Alysanne? She at least did something where most did nothing and went against the clear wishes of her husband, and within the timeline she still is a source of inspiration for people like Dany. That has to mean something or there really is less of a source to compare oneself and learn from or to be able to analyze thr good, bad, and how things developed the way they have.

This is a world where you are not encouraged to think outside of your own class, much less the principles and ideology about your gender. There are little to no thinkpieces or essays about how sexist some men and women are, how they ae, what gives them the feeling that the way they think is correct, etc. There was no and is no vocabulary for that; there is just experience and having to respond to your environment. You have to do the legwork yourself, fnd your group and support system, your own connections, and play the game. Soemtime, you will fall off and especially when you have been bested or someone has used their socially given advantage over you, as Jaehaerys has done to Alysanne a few times.

So, with this in mind, I think it's important to acknowledge that yes while GRRM did not supply more examples of ideally acting "good queens", he does provide a clear outlook on how women could, would, and did act in real life history and TODAY. Because those questions about how to be a good ruler or a good person or how to differentiate. But it's not GRRM's personal example, necessarily or what he thinks a woman is capable of in his idea of a what a good medieval queen cold be. Alysanne is a "good" queen in that she does try to think of her subjects' needs before aristocrats even with her behavior towards her daughters. To undermine that in our understanding that she did what did to her daughters is probably on GRRM.

Not even Jaehaerys was that sincerely altruistic: right of first night abolishment, the KL drinking water, her attempts to convince maesters of girls and women becoming maesters, etc. Again, It is Queen Consorts, unlike Queen regnants, had to depend on her royal husband's favor, regard, or perception of need of her to have any semblance of power because she is a woman and a Consort. I

I suppose I'm trying to say that in the process of understanding rather than being told what is right or logical, it's important to "good queens" from the context of which they come and take serious their conditions to understand the nuances of how truly "good" they were...even if we can say being a "good" queen needs to be an absolute in ther first place.

Does Alysanne need to be a perfect feminist to be a good Queen? What if she is also responding to the setbacks against her AS she is trying to rule better, these setbacks that are designed for a man, her husband, to have more power than her and even to stop inhibit her ability to address certain problems without fear of losing said power given to her in the first place bc of her connection to him and official subordination to his paternal rule?

Outside of how he writes sexual violence and general violence against women, the line b/t power of self vs power from men, present in women's authority (especially in pre-feminist movement history), must be studied with some more nuance than with men's power. On our part as readers.

I'd say that GRRM uses violence against women as too much of a "gotcha" or flagrantly uses it as a device of emphasis than it needs to be, which simultaneously converts it to something psychologically insubstantial, something we shouldn't pay as much mind to, yes. The specific events of violence or normalization of violence done to women in ASoIaF that doesn't match real historical realities for women is definitely a huge concern because of this, but to mistake the power dynamics b/t a Consort and her ruling husband and most women to men does not help matters.

[acommonloon]

Except for a few white knuckle moments on our stormy drive home, Saturday’s adventure ended with Ethereal Brewing located in the old James E. Pepper Distillery where I had one beer. Weather was predicted.

The atmosphere here is one of my favorites and the beer is always interesting with old ales, barrel aged beers, and European styles on offer. I especially appreciated the Progress Pride flag.

On the drive down we stopped at DQ for biscuits and gravy. A black woman was the only person working front of house. I thought she was early thirties, for sure she was a pro at this. On the side opposite where we sat was a group of old white men, several sporting MAGA hats.

I watched her carry food over to the mildly boisterous group a few times. The interaction seemed familiar and friendly. “Must be regulars I mentioned to D.”

As we got up to leave, I suggested I’d shout “Go Kamala!” As we passed them.

“Better not.” D replied. (I didn’t)

Sitting at the bar, I recalled a post, I’d read before leaving that morning, by Penzy’s Spices called “About Republicans”. A declaration right on their website and at a cost.

We’d got up early to go stand in line at Buffalo Trace in Frankfort to hopefully get a couple of bottles of Blantons bourbon. It’s one of my favorites and I especially like to give it as gifts. It’s allocated, meaning retail liquor stores get very little of it so they put it behind the counter and mark it up at huge margins. It retails for $69.99 but I mostly see it for $110-$180 locally, when I see it at all.

People travel from far and wide to visit Buffalo Trace and the many other distilleries in this part of Kentucky. It’s become a tourist destination for those who make drinking bourbon a hobby. According to the man controlling the front of the line, last year they had visitors from all 50 states and 32 countries.

When we arrived at the parking lot, staff members with Hi-Vis vests on, directed us to park. We were about 30mins before they opened but there was already 3 and a half snakes. Yes - snakes. There is a FB site devoted to tracking the bourbon availability there each day as well as how many people are lining up, with a line being a snake. It’s all very organized. Long lines painted on the asphalt define how to que up like at the airport. Unlike the airport, there’s no sense of desperation so no physical barriers are needed. There were dogs and kids in line. The people in front of us were from North Carolina and they had one of each.

What I realized, sitting at the bar was, there weren’t any black people in that line at Buffalo Trace. Ahem, none I noticed. There also weren’t any black people at our next stop, West Sixth Brewing either. There were a few black people at our next stop, the large art fair held in the park. A few exhibitors and a few walking about like us. <sigh> This is far from the first time I’ve noticed the places I choose to spend my time and money are mostly all white affairs.

What’s my point? Let’s elect a black woman to president. Let it be a step towards outlasting the racist homophobic anti other segment of our society. Let them die in fear as they’ve chosen to live. Let’s stand in lines of color.

[teaveetamer]

How does Raxis's orientation, gender, and skin color matter? And why does yours matter?

Why does me being a queer woman matter when a cishet white man accuses me of being queerphobic and misogynist?

Assuming you're the anon Ezra keeps getting who is complaining about us pointing out his age (since I got this right after I reblogged one of those), you probably read his blog right? Considering Raxis claims to be such a great progressive ally and co-opts all that progressive language, I'd think people who follow him would understand why this is so important?

Okay, I'll be very clear, cut because this got long, I'm not repeating it ad nauseum after this post.

His gender, sexual orientation, and race wouldn't matter if he hadn't made it matter. Raxis is not only a bully, he's a bully who constantly appropriates the language of social justice. My very first direct interaction with him was literally me calling his ass out for using the murder of Roe v. Wade as a bludgeon to win a fandom argument. Which happened, like, right the fuck after that decision came down and most women in America were fucking traumatized from literally having our rights stripped from us. And I wish our relationship ended at that "apology" but he hasn't changed and he keeps doing it.

He is the one who consistently accuses me (and other women) of being misogynistic and having internalized misogyny. He is the one who consistently accuses me (and other queer folk) of being queerphobic. He is the one who accuses BWIIDT (who is mixed race) for being out of line for thinking Cap (another white man!) has written racist elements into his fic (unintentionally or not). He consistently uses our oppression as a justification for why it should be okay for him to bully us.

If you are going to use our identities as part of your justification for harassing us, then we have every right to point out that these are identities that we hold and you don't. We have every right to point out that the opinions of a cishet white man about misogyny, queerphobia, racism, etc. do not matter as much as ours because you have never fucking experienced it like we have.

The role of allies is to amplify voices in spaces where we are not respected (e.g. with other cishet white men), not to lecture marginalized people for being "bad queers" or "bad women" from your throne of privilege.

It's especially fucking slimy because he pretends to be super progressive live and in concert, but when he slinks back to his buddies he laughs at us for being upset about being misgendered:

(Yes because you repeatedly misgendered me for months and only started correcting yourself and your anons when I called your shit out. You are literally "the misgendering type" but it's cute how you tried to act like I was being unreasonable for wanting the basic human respect of being referred to by my proper pronouns)

Accuses us of trying to hide behind "identity politics" when we're talking about the fucking oppression we face:

(Always a great sign when a cishet white man accuses queer women of "trying to use identity politics as a shield" when they're talking about their own fucking oppression. An even better sign when a cishet white man brags about "out identity-politicking" queer women when they're telling you to stop fucking throwing their oppression back in their faces. Whining about "identity politics" whenever marginalized groups try to voice anything is frankly such an alt right dogwhistle in itself at this point and I genuinely hope he's just not aware of it.)

Bullies queer women on his side who disagree with him and try to say basically exactly what I'm saying right now. That straight men can't appropriate the language we use to describe our oppression:

(usernames censored for the privacy of those being harassed and those not participating in harassment. This conversation has so much fucking more btw holy shit.)

Accuses me, specifically, of being "desperate to be a victim". I'll remind you I quite literally tried to give him grace despite him consistently using my oppression as a bludgeon to win stupid fucking fandom arguments and harass people (see also, the link above about me calling him out for the Roe v. Wade thing):

(Yes, Raxis, I fucking loved pouring my heart out about how my dad would kick me out for being queer and how I've faced sexual harassment. Tee hee. I'm having soooooo much fun "being a victim". I don't 'argue', I tell you, because your horrible treatment of people and my feelings about it are not up for debate.)

And engages in racist behavior like calling being black a "multiplier" to deflect from criticism and mocking a WoC when she posts about how racism upsets her.

(Yes Raxis, WoC tend to get "big mad" and "suffer" when they encounter racism, you ghoul. Before you ask, the blacked out part just wasn't relevant to the conversation.)

And this is just the stuff I got out of a quick keyword search because I don't want to expend that much energy on this. God only knows what else is buried in there.

This tells me you aren't actually an ally. You're an "ally" when it's convenient for you or when you think it'll make you look good, but your allyship is conditional, and the second you're "crossed" by someone you claim to champion you throw their trauma back in their faces. Not even your supposed friends are safe from it, so what chance did we have of not getting harassed by you?

"But there's queer women in the Edelgard fandom who like him!" Okay? So he can't be engaging in harmful shit just because he has a queer friend? When has "I have a [blank] friend" EVER been an actual good faith defense against criticism? News flash, we're not a monolith, and just because some women and queer folk might like you or even agree with you doesn't mean you get to tell me how I should respond to my own fucking oppression. It is not your place to accuse me, a fucking queer woman, of having "internalized misogyny" or "internalized homophobia" every time I say something you don't personally like.

Frankly, from what I've seen of their server, it's less "queer women like him" and more like "queer women are too afraid to say anything against him" because whenever they try he cries to his pro-genocide mod buddy (THAT is a whole fucking story) who threatens to ban them.

And I'm not going to add these screenshots because I feel icky airing her personal business like that so explicitly, but I do have them. The woman involved in the censored screenshots above posted, in the server, about how unsafe she felt because she'd been threatened and silenced by cishet men for trying to talk about queerphobia. She left the server entirely after that.

And let's not forget what started this: he's thirty five years old and in many cases he's pulling this shit on people who are significantly younger than him. Exceeding a decade his junior in some cases. I point that out primarily for the power dynamic inherent to that. Not only is he privileged on the basis of race, gender, and orientation, he's fully developed and he knows what he's doing. He has the privilege of age and experience.

Fuck dude, he started going after some folks on Tumblr when they were still like? 18? 19? Not children, but fucking close.

I'll be very explicit because I know he's going to take this and try to accuse me of ageism, because that's what he always does when he gets called out for appropriating the language of social justice: you are a fucking adult. You have been an adult the entire time you have been in this fandom. As an adult, it's your job to be a fucking adult in these situations. Not to verbally abuse and harass inexperienced teens and early 20 somethings because they don't agree with your video game opinions. You are a grown ass 35 year old man man who thinks he's cool because he can "beat up", "cow", and "bitch slap" teenagers and early 20 somethings who are still developing, figuring themselves out, and learning how to express themselves in an articulate manner. Many of whom are already dealing with varying levels of actual trauma based on their upbringings (abusive, hateful, uncaring, or just generally unpleasant environments) or how they've been treated because of their identity (race, class, gender, sexual orientation, mental health, disability, sometimes multiple all at once) or both. That is why I keep bringing up your age.

It is quite possibly the single most embarrassing thing I have seen someone in fandom brag about. Not even just because you did it, Raxis, but because you're proud of it and you genuinely think it makes you look cool. It's embarrassing. You're embarrassing yourself.

[aquaburst3]

There is an ongoing debate in the fandom where some people wish TWST was an otome while others are firmly against it. For me? I'm somewhere in the middle. Because, to be honest, I don't think TWST would work well as a traditional otome game as some might think.

For one, that would automatically mean giving Yuu a defined gender, appearance and personality. While I'm all for giving Yuu more personality, since they have the presence of a bottle cap, that would strip away the self insert nature of their character. Part of the fun of being in this fandom is imagining how you or your OC would handle being in that world. It allows marginalized groups to imagine themselves in that world, especially black and brown people, men and genderqueer people. Let's face it. Most otome protagonists are shit with a few exceptions. In all likelihood TWST would be no different if it was an otome. Frankly, I have little faith in Yana's ability as a writer to create a compelling female otome lead.

There are way too many characters in the game for that to work. Most otomes have 3-7 love interests. TWST has 20 main characters, excluding Ortho and Lilia for obvious reasons. The game has a hard enough time juggling all of the boy's arcs and development without adding romance into the mix.

I think turning it into an otome would also affect the characterization of these guys as well. Unless something is a dark otome like Diabolik Lovers, which—let's face it—Disney would never allow or extremely well written, otomes tend to sanitize the love interests to some extent in order to make them seem more desirable to the player. With main appeal of the game being that most of the boys are complex and grey, that would go the drain if it was an otome.

Plus, it wouldn't focus as much on the boy's platonic relationships. The main appeal of an otome is them romancing the player. A lot of the time they neglect all of the other kinds of bonds to only focus on that. While there are exceptions, again, this is Yana we're talking about, so I doubt she can pull that off. That would be another appeal of the game down the drain as well.

What I think would work a lot better is the Persona/Fate route. Have only a select few characters be romanceable and the rest stay strictly platonic, being able to bond with characters in both regards of your own choosing. That way we can have the best of both worlds. People who aren't into romance can play the game strictly platonically while picking who they want to spend time with. Those who do want romance can seek that out as well. Plus, the main boys would stay pretty close to how they are now. Yuu would also have more of a presence and impact on the plot.

There's a catch. For that to work, there can only be a few possible characters to romance. If I was in charge of that decision, I would make it the overblot boys. They have the most development and care put into their backstory, so I think they would work the best as potential love interests.

Idk, that's just me.

[colorisbyshe]

I think part of the frustration with people being so uninformed by historical movements, especially 2nd wave feminism, is that they don’t get that political lesbianism as a movement was deeply lesbophobic too, and still realistically hurts lesbians today with the subconscious attitude that simply choosing not to date men or interact with men is what makes a lesbian. Which then is how you also get weirdos thinking lesbians should make space to give dating men a shot. And thinking lesbians, who are not attracted to men, are exactly the same as the rage bait terf folks harping about cutting men off from dating women.

Obviously this is. A facet of the larger problem with this ideology, but it’s frustrating how few people acknowledge how damaging it was for more than lesbian separatist reasons. Straight women (a significant amount of political lesbians) largely trying to take over lesbian spaces in the name of feminism was also deeply traumatic for the community too.

Absolutely, it was also a grossly biphobic movement AND.... misogynistic. Second wave feminism, separatist feminism, political lesbianism found a way to really attack all women on an ideological level, not even getting into how the entire era was also... deeply racist.

Political lesbianism was not for lesbians (especially when its leaders tried to define lesbian as just women who didn't date men, by choice or otherwise) or any other women attracted to women. It wasn't for anyone other than the most privileged of women and often led to just attacking more vulnerable, more marginalized women.

While the ideology is not identical, movements like 4B are not for the longterm benefit of most women. Or most marginalized people. (When you separate women as the only cause worth caring about, you leave out... every marginalized group. When you stop caring abut the rights of every marginalized group, you inevitably harm... the women of those groups.)

I'm not even going to claim to be an expert on any of these movements: I have done readings on those I am speaking about but haven't done extremely deep dies into them but part of why I haven't is because... the flaws ae on the surface level. You don't really have to get into the nitty gritty or nuance of these movements to realize that they are fundamentally flawed.

To have a movement that effectively says "Women's oppression is literally stored in the balls (ie the sex with men, which are presumed to be people with balls)" is... inherently stupid. You aren't more or less oppressed when you have sex with or date men. Men aren't getting their power from sex or romance with women. You aren't really harming or criticizing rape culture.

Likewise with political lesbianism, being perpetually single or fucking women doesn't free you from misogyny's impact or even necessarily empower you against it. "Act the right way towards men or you deserve what you get from them" isn't feminism. It is victim blaming, though.

These movements just sort of become... prescriptivist in the same way the systems they're supposedly rebelling against. "Act this way or you're the enemy." "Do this or you deserve what you get."

"Our gender MUST act this way" only ever hurts your gender.

Which is the flaw of most radical feminist movements. They exist to take power from men and then lord that same power over more vulnerable and/or more "deviant" women. Or any other more vulnerable group (like white radfems using white supremacy in tandem with their radical feminism).

There's nothing wrong with being a lesbian. There's nothing wrong with being bisexual or straight and choosing to not date or have sex with men. For whatever reason.

Turning that into political movement where you then try to dictate the right/wrong ways to have sex, date as some sort of moral code... that's where you are just recreating the harms you're supposedly against.

Like... on the most obvious level, these movements are extremely stupid and there's no other way to frame that. They’re not just morally bad, they make no fucking sense. Even if you don't understand the bioessentialism, the way certain identities are stripped of meaning or politicized even when they're innate, or whatever...

just on its face... how the fuck are women liberated by new terms dictating what sex and love they're allowed to have, what reproductive choices they're allowed to make? implying by having sex with someone gives them power is inherently and obviously harmful

we need to be so fucking real

[ravenkings]

One term you may sometimes hear in socialist circles is “red-brownism.” In this color scheme, the red refers to socialism, and the brown refers to fascism — the implication being that the ideology bridges fascist and socialist politics. The most overt example of this is a NazBol or National Bolshevik, a movement that originally started essentially as Nazism for people who idolize Stalin instead.

This phenomenon is not new. In Nazi Germany, the Strasser Brothers, Gregor and Otto Strasser, promoted a strain of thought in the Nazi Party along these ideological lines, hoping to appeal to members of communist and socialist parties prior to when those groups were targeted for repression. These were sometimes called “beefsteak Nazis.”

Contemporary commentators might try to equate it to the so-called “horseshoe theory,” which suggests that going too far left or right brings one to a similar point. Red-brownism does not validate this theory. Rather, it may better be thought of as a form of marketing, infiltration, and recruitment targeted towards those on the opposite end of the spectrum.

Many modern fascist movements are influenced by the works of Aleksandr Dugin, whose Fourth Political Theory advocates such syncretism as its core ideology. Though passing itself off as different than fascism, decrying Hitler as having gone to too great an extreme, the reality is that the ultranationalist, traditionalist ethnostates it advocates are not radically different.

This line of thinking is often subversive. Many socialists follow the commentary of Glenn Greenwald and Michael Tracey, who have developed a recent reputation for appearing regularly on Tucker Carlson, whose political views are fascistic. These appearances usually consist of them all happily gloating together at some mistake on the part of liberalism — which often invites parts of the socialist left to partake as well.

A non-red-brown Carlson appearance is, perhaps, one that will not get aired — Rutger Bregman’s unaired interview in which he skewered Carlson for his political views and faux anti-elitism.

Red-brown media works the other way as well, where ostensibly left-wing shows play host to fascistic figures, whose views are whitewashed on the show. For instance, Loud & Clear on Sputnik radio, a Russian state media network, has platformed all sorts of fascist and white nationalist leaders. Sputnik and its sister network RT largely seem to be ways to launder both fascistic ideas and Russian geopolitical goals to the global audience.

Countering this is not easy, though there are two areas one can focus on in order to help push out these ideas: internationalism and the needs of marginalized groups. Both of these run counter to the goals of this fascistic process, which seeks strong borders, isolationism, and a lack of diversity. We must work across borders to build movements to solve today’s now global problems and make sure that we do not play into ploys to recreate the sorts of oppression that enable fascism to take hold such as white supremacy, misogyny, cisheterosexism, and ableism.

Beware of sources and communities caught up in just being a contrarian view of everything. Remember that, as easy as it is to get frustrated about the failure of the Democrats to deliver on a lot of desperately necessary policy in recent decades, they aren’t a threat in the way fascists are. Do not let the dopamine rush of “owning the libs” take precedent over anti-fascist work. Never let concern for human rights be swept by the wayside.

Red-brownism propagates especially easily when the discourse is dominated by cis white men, who have little to lose by taking a “class-first” or even “anti-idpol” stance on issues that affect marginalized groups.

We can stop this from destroying the Left once again and build a movement based on solidarity, intersectionalism, and internationalism — one that addresses these concerns but will ultimately still appeal to anyone committed to building a world where everyone has a sustainable, high standard of living.