#That is called The Patriarchy and we want it gone

[proudfreakmetarusonniku]

”he shouldn’t have had to apologise” he was fucking misogynistically blaming a woman for shit her grown ass son did and expecting HER someone COMPLETELY UNRELATED to the situation to do something bc she was a woman and woman have to take responsibility for what men related to them do actually. he should apologise bc messaging sarah at all is misogynistic as shit. like imagine if people sent dream's mums dms if he did shit they didn’t like that’d be obviously horrible and invasive and misogynistic as shit bc why you blaming a random woman for shit men did. he should be on his fucking knees begging bc he did like misogyny 101 blaming women for shit men did.

[chryblossomjjk]

it sucks how everything has been tainted by patriarchy and as women we cannot do literally anything without it being linked back to patriarchy. like wearing makeup or pink or whatever has been determined feminine by the patriarchal definition feminity, so doing those things means you’re playing into the patriarchy. not doing those things means you’re also playing into patriarchy because it’s a rejection of the idea of femininity, and thus, reaffirms that identifying with feminity in any way is inherently inferior. likeeeee we really cannot win lol… i think a big part of reclamation includes allowing space for people who identify as women to find out what that means to them.

[red-write-hand]

"You're killing people?" "No, I'm killing boys." || thomas shelby x assassin!reader

pairing -> thomas shelby x assasssin!fem!reader

word count -> 2.5k (this took me two weeks)

warnings -> i was watching jennifer's body while i was writing the beginning and i think it accidentally started to seep into my writing, bisexuality??, hella tension, maybe some ooc tommy???, assassin stuff, a lot of dirty thoughts (i mean a lot)

notes -> yeah jennifer's body was a reeeally big influence of this. i had a good idea but this could have died, sorry yall!! also no beta read, we die like peaky fookin' blinders

REBLOGS AND COMMENTS ARE LITERALLY SO HELPFUL Y'ALL HAVE NO IDEA

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An assassin is defined as someone who is paid to kill someone. In this business, you need to pay a handsome price to kill someone as important as Thomas Shelby. It wouldn’t be easy but no one saw a beautiful woman as someone who could kill you, but then again, that was usually the same people who called her sweetheart when passing her in the street. The very same people who would never be able to harass another woman after her. Y/n cut down any man that would hinder her fellow woman. Women too, if she viewed them as a threat. She was completely innocuous. She looked like every washerwoman in Birmingham. No one ever thought she was the one who was slowly taking out Peaky Blinders one by one. 

No one saw her go in and no one saw her leave. It was easy for her. Men were becoming easier and easier for her to manipulate. Really, this is truly why she was bisexual. Women were truly better but sometimes she would find that one man who saw her. Saw her for what she was. A soldier who didn't know how to stop what she was doing. She had gotten so good at it that every time that she wanted to stop, another high paying aristocrat or politician would waltz in and give her a stack of cash to do away with their competition and she knew that her rent was due so just had to keep going. She was also supporting her family, all the family she had left after the war. She had grown up with brothers and most had gone to war and come back changed. There was nothing she could do about it. She just had to keep her head held up high and persevere, and persevere she did. She began to get very good at petty crimes, and more importantly getting away with them. Another thing she got good at was blending into the background. Become a nobody. Someone that people could easily see through. An excellent cover for an assassin.

There was another part of her that wanted recognition. Y/N wanted that fame and fortune. Nothing that she could have. Women had to work twice as hard in this world. Especially in the business of murder. Then again, those feminist rallies kept yelling about fucking over the patriarchy, why not instead, poison the patriarchy? Slowly? Maybe in the night? Maybe a little murder could do the feminist cause some good. She seemed to know every woman in this tiny town. She really didn’t but it was quite fun to see the men worry that all the pretty women they felt up would disappear. No one knew she existed and everyone knew her name. She barely knew how everyone knew her name. Maybe she did have a bit of that fame and fortune business. She just hoped that it would lead to women feeling a little safer to walk the streets, knowing that they had a silent protector who was not against a little homicide in the name of female comradery. It always feels a little warmer when you know you have a friend protecting you with a knife in the back of her skirt. It was never outright said but it was only men that saw through her. Women knew she was there. This is why she never took jobs that meant hurting or killing women. If it was a husband, she would leave the money for the widow. She was not going to be an asshole about it. No matter what, she would make sure that no woman would go without help. 

She had no qualms about killing men. As much as she loved men, especially tall, dark, and handsome men, they can be a real pain to deal with sometimes. She tried to stay civil but really, how can straight women deal with them all the time? How do they not realize that the best part about married men are their wives?! And god, did the Shelby boys have the best pick of the women! God the women that hung around the Shelby betting shop were proper fit. Or maybe that’s just what drunk men said about them. 

Tonight was special. It would be the death date of Thomas Shelby. The people who had paid her to poison him and make it look like a suicide. The only thing was that he was at a gala. 

Great. 

Using some of her extra earnings and her pay from doing laundry, she bought herself a tight fitting dress and some sparkling jewelry. She stood in front of her mirror and surveyed her body. She wasn’t well endowed at all, really she was the most average looking woman in the country, but not tonight. Tonight she would be the prettiest girl in the room. Tonight she would kill two birds with one stone. She would wreck Thomas Shelby’s public image and she would actually kill the devil. Her. She would be the one to kill the Devil of Small Heath. Oh what joy it would be to sit back and watch the Peaky Blinders scuttle around like sewer rats after their god and king died. They would never know who killed him, well, they would think they knew. She would make it look like a suicide but really, that was easy to stage. She would cry along with everyone else and wipe her tears with the cash she would receive after this job was done.

Stepping out of the car, making sure her dress wasn’t flashing anyone, she made her way up the stairs to the Shelby charity gala. Her dress was short and her faux fur shawl was draped around her shoulders precisely so that she would get all the right looks. She had studied men for too long without knowing what they looked for. Sauntering onto the floor, looking for the guest of honor, her trained ears could pick up the hushed chatter. Everyone here thought she was a prostitute. Figures. A woman dresses the way she wants and people call her a whore. Maybe it's for the better. It would ruin his reputation even more. Be here and be seen talking with a woman who people gossiped was a prostitute? Perfection. She hadn’t even planned this bit.

Finding him was the easy part. Talking was harder. He was surrounded by donors and grifters trying to weedle their way into his pocket. He just hadn’t noticed her yet. She perched herself on the edge of a stool at the bar and ordered what she usually liked to drink on the job. A daiquiri. Easy and plain. Continuing to accentuate her inconsequentiality. She wrapped her crimson covered lips around the rim slowly, watching him circle the room and finally alighting his eyes on her. She turned on her bedroom eyes and ripped more of her drink as she crossed her legs. She was trying to go for ‘come over and see if I’ll take a chance on you’ but really, it was more like ‘come over here and I’ll ruin you before you can finish whatever drink you order to look more casual’. This had worked plenty of times before so she was fairly sure it would work on him. At his core, Thomas Shelby was still a man. A man with a cock. A cock that needed a lot more than a regular man, or so Lizzie Stark told her. She loved Lizzie. Whenever Thomas was done with her, Y/N would always offer her a place to stay and open arms for her to settle in. Stroking through her hair was somehow calming to both of them at the same time.

The room seemed to heat up as he got closer. It really was a toss up if he would guess what she was really here for. Tensing up, she could feel him behind her. Shifting her hair so that it cascaded down her shoulder wasn’t a huge issue but it did wonders for her confidence. Her breath got shallower but gathering all of her courage, her foot spun her barstool to face the looming figure of Thomas Shelby.

“What are you ‘ere for, eh?” The head Shelby took a drag from his cigarette. Giving Y/n a once over, he chuckled. She obviously wasn’t a prostitute but really, he wanted to see what her game was. He was not about to impede a fellow business person while they are trying to do business. She tried to compose herself, tried to keep herself from falling into the endless pools that were his eyes. Endless pools that would ultimately drag her down and bring her to ruin before she could drive her knife into his chest and put an end to the whole ordeal. She could do it right now. She could see the blood seep out of him and see that look of pain that she so dearly needed to see from him. That look of pain that would be payment for all the harm he and his family had caused. She pondered whether or not she should actually fuck him here and now or fake wanting to and kill him just to get it over with. All this nasty business, gross man blood getting on this amazing dress. 

“Here on business Mr. Shelby. Lizzie Stark gives her regards.” She would apologize to Lizzie later. Dear, dear Lizzie. Hopefully she would forgive Y/n for this later. She swung her legs around and walked closer to him, dragging a single hand down his chest. The easiest part of her job was having sex. She constantly thought about herself as a female protagonist written by a man made the process a little easier. Molding herself to the wants of the man. 

She just wanted to hide away from the world but right now she was on the clock. Laying the charm on heavy and batting her eyelashes. His heart was beating faster and faster. This was getting easier and easier. Now she was divided. It was taking too long. The longer it took, the more attached she got. This is one target she didn't want to get attached to.

“Just because you look fuckin’ gorgeous, doesn’t mean you can just-” She gently plucked the cigarette from his pink lips and took a drag herself. Under her other hand, his pulse raced faster. She beamed at him. This time, she was actually feeling some semblance of happiness. Taking a small step forward, she got as close as she could so the smoke, ebbing and flowing from the smoldering edge of the cigarette, would be the barrier between them. She felt a strong hand at her waist, the hand away from the crowd, so the interaction would still look inconspicuous. 

The cigarette hung her from her dark painted lips. They stood an inch away from each other. Each one wanted the other to move first. In his mind, he dreamed of slick thighs, breathy moans, painted breasts, fucked-out expressions, and those perfect gummy walls hugging his cock so well as she screamed in pleasure. In her mind, she dreamed of a perfectly executed mission…and nothing else. Definitely not his perfect jaw and how strong his hands felt at her waist. Definitely the way he was looking at her. Well, at least that meant she was doing what she did best correctly, but still…there was some part of her that had that morbid curiosity. Lizzie had told her what Tommy was like. Rough but loving. Rough enough to satiate himself but since he had taken all this effort to bring you here, he would not snap you in half. Maybe she could do that for one night. That would make a good story. ‘I spent the night with Thomas Shelby and survived’. Definitely something Lizzie would find funny.

Her mind just kept going back and forth in the span of a minute. Does she give in to her curiosity and see what the Devil of Small Heath would do to her or does she put on even more of a show just to ruin his reputation and then pull him outside to finish him off quietly. ‘Pun very much not intended.’ Truly, this was the worst situation to be punny. 

To try to keep her mind on the man in front of her, her eyes just kept alighting on his sturdy looking chest. There was something strangely mysterious about what lay under that perfectly pressed tux. Just to be able to slowly pull every layer off of him was tantalizing. Maybe she might. 

All of this took place in two minutes. They had gotten impossibly closer. His hands had started to slide down, slowly and even slower as she played with the edge of his tie. Oh how much fun it would be to pull him by his impeccable tie, just for him to land on top of her. This could be very fun.

His thoughts were undressing her, meticulously feeling every curve and every fold, kneading anywhere he could elicit a reaction, kissing, biting, anything she wanted. Feeling her under him. Hearing all those pretty noises as he devoured her completely. He knew that all she wanted to do was destroy his reputation but really? What’s so bad about having a little bit of fun? No one could comment because no one messed with the King. 

No one.

They were forcibly shoved together at the hip. His grip was harsh and she was grinning. Sliding the cigarette behind her ear, she gently, temptingly, tantalizingly brushed her plump lips against the edge of his jaw, leaving trace amounts of her lipstick and perfume with it. Giving him one more flash of her sultry eyes and ghosting her hand against his face, ever so delicately holding his jaw, she grabbed her clutch and escaped expertly from his grasp. But not slipping her number into his jacket pocket so he knew where to find her. This was a different kind of mission now. A longer game. A game where she would move up the ranks. Infiltrating the Shelby operation at every level. Finding out their secrets. Knowing what shouldn't be known. She’d make a pretty pound for what she would know. 

Of course, there was that added bonus. Now she had her snares in the most powerful man in Birmingham. Now she could manipulate him as she liked. She would make him fall for her completely. Make him promise her the world. Make him believe that she was what she told him. See her as she wanted him to see her. Control his judgment if someone decided to try to sow seeds of doubt into her darling. Making sure that when she was finally ready to stick the gilded knife in his back, that he would smile and tell her that he loved her one last time. Till next time Mr. Shelby, until next time.

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thank you for reading (and if you reblogged/commented, double thanks) !!

@birminghamshelbyboys @pinguwrites @forgottenpeakywriter @hanawrites404 @runnning-outof-time @no-fooking-fighting @no-1peakyfan @hllywdwhre @floralcyanide @cilldistilled @stridingseer @darlingsfandom @mrkdvidal1989 @lunavelha @aphroditeslover11 @henrywintersdearestgirl @thatwitchybitch420 @classicsandfantasy @marilynmonroefanfics @ninja-potato-shelby-solomons @scorpinelle @chellyrps @maxwell-demon @atrwriting @cassius-casim @your-nanas-house @sherwoodknights @munstysmind

[susandsnell]

Re anachronistic feminist characters, you are absolutely right and you should say it.

Maybe people who want to read "write women who sew" type stuff should just go do that instead of trying to make every single female character fit into their worldview. Because I don't want every character to be Eloise, I'm fine with variety, but a lot of people seem like they can't stand even one woman challenging gender norms.

No amount of faux progressive language will change the fact they sound like highschool bullies picking on girls who are too GNC or too "weird."

Thank you so much! Ideally, you'd have feminist characters more representative of the feminist or proto-feminist views of their era where the work is going for historical accuracy to honour the different points of where we were in history and also acknowledge the flaws of the movement at different points in time (1994's Little Women versus the hilariously bad 2019 version comes to mind), and certainly there's an element of repetitiveness in this character type, but this is seldom if ever the criticism I see. The truth of the matter is that in fact many early feminists did denigrate work designated as feminine, but we can acknowledge this as misdirected anger at having one option deemed valid.

Instead, we've somehow arrived at "wanting to be treated with human dignity is internalized misogyny because it really cramps my ability to romanticize the past". As you say, nothing wrong with valuing the labour more frequently done by women, but the fact of the matter is you can do that and show that there were always many people who resisted or did not fit into the tight boxes that society forced them into. Instead of, you know, ridiculing them for wanting to break the boxes while enjoying the fruits of having to fit into fewer boxes than our predecessors precisely because of women who loudmouthed and fought back and didn't fit into certain people's fantasy of being a submissive little princess. The kind of girls you made fun of and ostracized in high school, one might say.

To address a particular point you raise that I think is the most important in this entire ongoing discussion:

No amount of faux progressive language will change the fact they sound like highschool bullies picking on girls who are too GNC or too "weird."

I keep saying it, but a certain type of liberal feminist are now using "NLOG" the way it was socially acceptable 10-15 years ago to call someone a lesbian/homophobic or transphobic slurs because they didn't wear makeup or want a boyfriend. It is absolutely high school bullying mentality and has gone from an imperfect attempt at addressing internalized misogyny to active misogyny and latent/often overt homophobia and transphobia.

This is what the numbskulls making video essay after video essay about the apparent 'NLOG crisis' fail to grasp. The Heathers and the Plastics are not 'demonized for being feminine', they are accurate representations of how under patriarchy, social capital is gained through strict, obsessive adherence to white, Western beauty standards (which corporations can profit off of endlessly by manufacturing infinite insecurities, so bonus to the rich girls) and excelling at heterosexuality and pleasing others, and this system self-reinforces by the 'winners' bullying those who do not conform as easily. Jo March, queercoded dynamo that she was, took nothing away from the sisters who were happier with more traditional lifestyles because she wanted better for herself and the girls of the future, and represents so many women who fought for just that. You're not actually an intellectual for thinking Daphne Bridgerton has more value than Eloise because she was designated the season's Diamond, a literal in-universe (and true to life) Prize For Being Correctly Female, and unquestioningly accepts being paraded around like an ornament and smiling at being auctioned off to the highest bidder while Eloise fought back, criticized, and wanted an education more than any boy until they forced heterosexuality upon her. You are in fact a vanguard of the very patriarchal system the franchise even presents as backwards, because you don't want anyone raining on your arranged marriage fantasies.

There is nothing, and I mean nothing feminist, about snarking girls who do not like or for whatever reason, cannot or will not perform conventional femininity.

There is a certain sour-grapes defensiveness that comes from beig ostracized and punished for Failing At Your Gender if you weren't good at what was expected of you/resisted it. Femininity is derided, but it is also imposed (the two work in tandem to oppress women); and if you fail at its imposition, it's natural to try and gain protection by participating in the derision. Hell, I theorize that people who proclaimed themselves "not like other girls" in the contemporary age often did so out of resistance at the fact that we're supposed to perform (cisheteronormative) sexiness from the time we hit our teens, and of course the panopticon self-reinforcement that is how Other Girls treat you if you, an adolescent girl, shirk performance of femininity in any way. Certainly, I've also read much about GNC girls (of various identities) and neurodivergent girls equally having turned to this, which makes sense, as they're frequently targets for such bullying.

I do also think - and have personally experienced - it was an often imperfect articulation of queerness in many cases. The societal ideal of women under a patriarchy is cisheteronormativity; our value is derived from our appeal to men, and from the time we start maturing, sexual availability and appeal to men is the highest virtue. Therefore, women whose sexuality is not limited to men - or heaven forbid, doesn't include them at all - 'fail' gender, and accordingly often feel a sense of alienation and ostracism from other girls when they don't get as excited about dating boys. Also, in many cases (anecdotal I admit from people I know, but still significant), people who had a phase of asserting they "weren't like other girls" were in the process of discovering that they weren't girls at all!

And in some cases - again, I've mentioned that I was an Eloise for all the handwringing about how girls of that era wouldn't say that or do that and it would never occur to want more than what they had (...okay, so why are things different now?) - it's a frustration from the outspoken feminists and reformers at not being able to get other girls on board with us, because deviation from expectation will make you the weirdo who gets punished and rejected because ugh, annoying! As one historical costuming youtuber I won't name so charmingly puts it in her godawful video essay, "the women who made a big show of fighting back were freaks." (Way to convince us you care about feminism...)

All this to say the anti-NLOG brigade have utterly worn out my patience, and at best seem ignorant of the battles that have won us the freedoms we have today because it's not fun to consider how your escapist fantasy might be problematic (understandable, you don't always have to reflect on this to be aware), and at worst? They're getting the chance to be the mean girl in high school again/that they never got to be, they're just dressing it up in the bastardized language of feminism.

[daenerysies]

someone sent me an anon ask about the anti rhaenyra agenda most rhaenicent shippers have and like a dumbass i accidently deleted it so i'm just going to try my best to re-answer it here (yes i wrote a whole spiel about it and now it's gone forever and i'm upset.)

from what i can tell there are only two reasons as to why people can't stand rhaenyra but love rhaenicent; and it's because they either have some heavy internalized misogyny OR that's the only way to continue and keep their uwu sad lesbian alicent headcanons semi-tethered in reality. alicent is a character that has next to no positive interactions with other characters, least of all any women. she has a 'good' (and i say that lightly) relationship with rhaenyra for 2 episodes in hotd, and then they are adversaries for the rest of the show. the only other women we see her interact with are helaena and her lady in waiting talya ( who regularly spied on her for mysaria) and minus talya, those are the same female relationships she has in f&b. she doesn't really have a good track record with anyone.

in the book she terrorized rhaenyra from aegon's birth up until rhaenyra's death. rather than teaching her son to rule and raising him to be an upstanding prince of the realm she instead spent her time calling rhaenyra, a literal child, a slut, she accepted criston into her service as her own personal protector in spite of his predatory behavior towards rhaenyra (which she acknowledges), and continuously tries to have rhaenyra and her sons disinherited and killed due to her own spreading of the bastard rumors. not to mention that she was eighteen when she married viserys to rhaenyra's nine. there's really nothing romantic about it. in the show almost everything is still the same except for her being the one to arrange helaena's marriage to her known degenerate and rapist son (in f&b viserys is the one who had them marry) and most likely told her the same rhetoric of rhaenyra killing them to secure her claim that she told her sons from when they were babies up until the coup. with rhaenyra she still antagonizes her because she (lemme check again, told alicent she didn't sleep with daemon and got otto fired because he was working against the crown to install his grandson as heir over her). don't even get me started on the villainization of rhaenyra in order to uphold alicent's constant victimization storyline. alicent is the one who abused rhaenyra, not the other way around, and the age changes in the show (which are so stupid omg) only serve to make alicent more sympathetic and rhaenyra an apparent privileged brat who doesn't understand what it's like to suffer because of the men in her life and therefore deserves her fate (i can literally see the entire galaxy with how far back my eyes are rolled rn.)

if the show wanted to include or focus on two women who were torn apart by the patriarchy and the men around them, helaena's blank character was right there for the taking (and would've been even juicier with the sister vs sister, queen consort vs queen regnant debacle.) she has no personality in the book or any relevance besides losing her children in violent ways and going mad, they definitely could have made her a more present character on screen in a manner that adds an actual emotional connection to her but alas, rhaenicent is top priority. furthering that, if the show wanted to include queer representation with their leading lady, laena had more hints in the text for that type of relationship than anything the show has given us for the rhaenyra/alicent dynamic, even with how hard they're trying to force it down our throats.

the entire relationship has made the story go completely off kilter because the show won't just let it be, and it's affected almost all of their other relationships. they're not going to convince me that rhaenyra cares about alicent more than her own children or even vice versa (though in an entirely different manner) and that reconciliation is possible in spite of aemond murdering luke. it makes both the characters and the writers look like delusional idiots. there's absolutely no reason for these types of glaring mistakes in a series where characterization and the relationships that revolve from them are the reason it's so popular amongst the masses. this lack of proper relationship building has caused hotd to feel a lot more shallow and lackluster than what you'd expect with how massive it's budget was when they created it, the amount of talented actors they casted, and the literal blueprint laid out of what not to do that got season eight is. someone should have taken accountability for these dumb decisions and realized how quickly they're streamlining straight towards what ruined game of thrones in the first place.

[hmsindecision]

I hope one day you realize how horrid bigotry is, and can look back on these days with shame and embarrassment, but also with pride how one became a better person. When the people who want to oppress us are done with trans people they'll go after bisexuality next, then lesbians and gays, then women. We need to stand together or they will push us back into the 1700s.

In order to become an adult you need to release this “us vs. them”, black and white, dichotomous vision of the world. It doesn’t exist. There is no cohesive “they” that I must bond with any ally I can in order to resist.

Do you really think that I have gone any period of time without suffering from systemic homophobia and misogyny? Do you really think that I am sitting from a place of privilege looking down at people who are “one rung below me on the oppression ladder”? What a childish way of thinking.

A large proportion of the homophobia and misogyny that I have experienced has been from people who identified themselves as on the left, as trans, and whose values in some ways align with my own. That really sucks. It really sucks that I have been verbally berated and called slurs by both conservatives and trans people alike. Those who believe that performatively being homophobic or anti-lesbian to me have varied values, religions, creed, and political beliefs. They are a deeply heterozygous group. People approaching my short haired wife to ask her for her pronouns and therefore implying that she is improperly signaling womanhood are the most frequent gender police I encounter.

Why is it that I must accept things like being called names for being exclusively same sex attracted? I by should I accept that because other people have been targeted by the same people who have targeted me?

Why is it my womanly duty to provide solidarity with people who tell me I deserve to be raped, beaten, my career destroyed, my friendships rescinded…. Because I don’t ascribe to their philosophical beliefs? I don’t believe in gender as a framework to be upheld. I hold gender in the same regard as capitalism or the divine right of kings. It is a system of oppression designed to place men over women. It has had loopholes in many societies, mostly to create a third sex for homosexual men. It operates differently in different societies. But I think it’s anti-woman and anti-human. To ask me to believe that someone has an inborn gender identity/gendered spirit is like asking me to believe that corporations are people, that God chose a king, or that the world is flat. There is simply no evidence for that to be true, because it would require there to be something that makes us men or women beyond biology.

There is not. Non-biological differences between men and women are purely socialized. If it isn’t inscribed on the X or Y chromosomes, it’s something you were taught. The clothes you wear, the way you act, the things you like, they are all influenced by the society you live in. The associations of colors, toys, interests, and other things to our sex assignation is partially arbitrary and party about subjugation. Women aren’t born loving makeup any more than serfs are born loving to serve.

I believe everyone should express their vision of themselves as they please. I hate the micro labels that are now applied to all aspects of appearance because people cannot conceive of human difference. I think that even things which I consider anti-self and anti-human can be things which adults do to themselves. If you need surgery or pills, then it isn’t about identity, it’s about fantasy. I understand the necessity of fantasy in an oppressive system.

But gender isn’t just a source of oppression against women. It is also fuel to create and sustain oppressors. That is part of why the anti-feminism of the trans movement feels so comfortable to people raised in patriarchy (all of us). Because the idea that we all have a muliplicity of gender identities is also about absolving men of thousands of years of terrorism and oppression against us XX chromosome havers. Why should I assume my oppressed has good intentions because of their clothing? Because they got surgery? Does that make a trans woman any safer than any other male under patriarchy? Or is that just a safe illusion so you don’t have to deal with the reality?

Even your trajectory in this ask—you think they started with trans people, then bi people are next? How are they going to go after bi people without going after gay people? Unless you mean just angry social opinions as opposed to systemic oppression? Then women last? Literally what fucking planet do you live on? I’m assuming you are American based on… this ask lmao… but…

They have already come for women. Abortion is illegal in many places. Rape is such a constant that we can’t even meaningfully address it. Teen girls are killing themselves over male violence just into puberty. Famous rapists and abusers are constantly fawned over. In my state, DV services are so taxed with women that last year they turned down over 50,000 asks for shelter in the statewide network.

50,000.

And my local LGBTQ community center has a ban of events that say they are for lesbians, or even AFAB people. Did you ever think that maybe *you* need to start showing some solidarity?

When it comes down to it, men always, always choose each other.

I’m doing the most radical thing I can think of, and choosing women every time.

I don’t hate you. But you sure are good at falling for propoganda. Are you wasting your time fighting feminists because it’s easier to attack women than to stand up to your oppressors?

I’m very proud of myself and the woman that I am, and the activism I do (which.. is not on tumblr). I hope you can find the things that make you deeply proud of yourself as an individual, and that you live in accordance with your own values.

[icarus-phaethon]

We are cooked. The evo psych peddled as truth and science has done irreversible damage to women and their thought process. They genuinely believe that they are a different species than males. They genuinely do not see gender as a construct. They see it as inherent in them. Especially with the rise of redpill and manosphere, femininity and masculinity in vocabulary of regular people has led to reinforcement of gender norms of 19th century. The acceptance of evo psych as science. Even so-called women influencers who talk about self-improvement for women peddle the narrative of evo psych. "Be in your feminine energy", "provider energy", etc. Saw some feminist say "you will never be respected as a man if you want submission when you earn less" do they not see how they are enforcing submission, sexism towards women who earn more and patriarchy with their statement? Have women gone smooth-brained? This woman in the picture believes that there is a set of knowledge men have and offer that women can't. When did this happen to us? How did this happen to us?

[doorhine]

I think the show does a really good job at validating and empathizing with Akemi’s concerns as a woman living under a patriarchy while also acknowledging her privileges, not just as a wealthy person, but as a literal princess. There’s a lot to be said about Akemi’s dynamic with Madame Kaji and the other sex workers but right now I’m focusing on her and Mizu as two main characters whose experiences as women contrast each other the most. I specifically want to talk about the end of episode 5 because it’s a culmination of so many things.

*SPOILERS BELOW

Mizu obviously isn’t there to personally see the misogyny Akemi experiences so from her perspective, she has no real reason to empathize with her running away. Mizu also just has her own priorities with her revenge quest. But even with the lack of context or understanding of Akemi’s situation, Mizu and the other sex workers' judgment of Akemi isn’t unfounded because she has real privilege over them. As a princess, she has an unfathomable amount of wealth that lets her live a life of comfort and luxury so far removed from other people’s experiences to the point where, Akemi herself states that being rich like that makes you forget that you’re rich. And while Akemi is clearly shown to utilize the skills sets she does have to her advantage when she runs away, it’s not an insult to her intelligence to acknowledge that getting as far as Madame Kaji’s establishment was also the result of luck because there’s so many ways that things could’ve gone wrong on the way there. 

So for Mizu to encounter Akemi

A princess who ran away from all that luxury for the sake of a failed marriage with a guy who bullied/hate crimed Mizu as a child and wants to duel and kill her for his honor/social status in the present (when social climbing was never truly possible for Mizu even when disguised as a man and because we know how her marriage ended)

A princess who tried to kill her and says she only regrets not doing it immediately 

A princess who calls her a monster just like everyone else 

A princess who has no idea Mizu’s even a woman or all the experiences that got her to this point, including the assassination of Kinuyo (who didn’t want to die) at Madam Kaji’s request because women have to be practical and think of the results (not how they get there) when it comes to revenge 

A princess who may have fought to help defend Madame Kaji and her girls but then expected a mentally, emotionally and physically exhausted Mizu (suffering from multiple puncture wounds after doing the majority of the killing/defending) to fight Akemi’s own guards like a personal attack dog when doing so would’ve more than likely killed her and Ringo while Akemi still lived and got taken back home…. *takes a deep breath*

It’s totally understandable why Mizu just lets them take Akemi. 

On Akemi’s part, she doesn’t know the context around why Mizu is the way that she is but at the end of the episode assumes that she’s not capable of love when they’ve only known each other for… not even a day and half technically speaking. Meanwhile Mizu’s assessment of Akemi’s privilege is still accurate in certain ways despite her lack of context that makes Akemi empathetic to us as the audience. Also, not that Mizu sees this happen, Akemi is able to maneuver her way around the shogun’s court and her new husband while also uplifting and hiring Madame Kaji and her girls to both their benefit. A path she chooses to continue taking at the end of the season. It’s still within the confines of the patriarchy and not without its challenges, but Akemi is taking advantage of the privileges she does have when she previously took them for granted. 

Both Mizu and Akemi are just so nuanced and well written and this scene is a perfect example of how and why they clash due to such drastically different lives shaped by their social status. I’m curious to see how their journeys will go from here and what circumstances reunite them (for better or worse) given where they left off with each other during the season finale.

[justforbooks]

Christina Hendricks

The star of Good Girls discusses Mad Men, sexual harassment and squaring her glamorous reputation with her ‘weird, goofy’ personality

Christina Hendricks appears on our video call with the most dramatic backdrop. Art deco gold peacocks bedeck a black wall, making her look, as she has so often in her career, a bit too good to be human. Perfectly poised, perfectly framed, perfectly lit, she is more like a dreamy vision of what humans look like. “I, erm, like your wall,” I say, pointlessly. She flashes a smile, as if to say: “Obviously.”

We are here primarily to discuss the comedy-drama series Good Girls, the fourth season of which will resume in the US this month after a midseason break. The elevator pitch would be Breaking Bad for girls: three suburban women, each hovering on the edge of bankruptcy, unite to embark on a life of cack-handed crime, only to discover they are good at it. The ensemble – Hendricks, Mae Whitman, who plays her sister, and Retta, their friend – works strikingly well, their pacey comic rapport instilling a sense of perpetual motion. You just can’t imagine Good Girls ending. Every time a plot line seems to be reaching its climax, something worse – and funnier – happens.

“It’s funny you say that, because originally, when I read the pilot script, I thought: ‘I love this, but I can’t imagine this being more than one episode,’” says Hendricks. “It felt like it finished itself.” She is unsentimental about it. Hendricks wasn’t looking for a new show – “I was happy doing films, taking my time” – but went into it with her eyes open. It is a network drama, for NBC – it is shown on Netflix in the UK – so producers are always aware that “it’s going into every house in the US on a Thursday or a Sunday and a family is watching it. They’re much more careful about numbers and advertisers and people being offended or not getting it. A cable show is much more: ‘We trust this creator – they’re a visionary.’”

It has a conventional tone – however dark the material, it is handled very lightly. Yet you can’t help but notice some hard-boiled social commentary from the off – if it weren’t for the bracingly callous US health system, the generation of wage-stagnation casualties and the patriarchy, none of the characters would have gone anywhere near a supermarket heist. More than Breaking Bad, it reminds me of Roseanne and the golden age of US mainstream comedy, when you could be poor on TV without that being a breach of good taste.

The 48-year-old has been a household name for almost 15 years, thanks to Mad Men. She was born in Tennessee, where her mother was a psychologist and her father worked for the Forest Service, and educated in Oregon and then Idaho. She didn’t have time for formal acting training; by the time she was 18, her modelling career had taken off. Later, when she had a manager, she took acting lessons: “I did that for almost a year and a half and put auditions on ice. Then I was watching a film – I don’t even remember what film it was or who was in it – and I thought: ‘I’m ready. I can do this.’” She has the most insistent work ethic; as she describes her life’s trajectory, she notes diligently the jobs she had while she was at high school, at a hair salon and a menswear shop.

In 2007, she appeared as Joan Holloway in Mad Men. She played the role for the next eight years, her character growing around the depth she brought to it, until by season seven she was almost the central part. In the early 2010s, Hendricks was talked about constantly, although she says the original focal points of obsession were the male characters: “Men started dressing like Don Draper and Roger Sterling. Suits came back in, skinny ties came back in. It took three to four seasons and then all of a sudden people wanted us [the female stars] on magazines. We were like: ‘This is strange – we’ve been doing this for a while.’”

Hendricks, along with January Jones, who played Betty Draper, came to represent so much. There was a great deal of rumination on their physicality, Jones as elegant as an afghan hound, Hendricks like the pin-up painted on the side of a bomber. What did it mean, people asked, that in the middle of the 20th century there were multiple ideals of the female form, whereas in the 21st century there was only one? How did that complicate the perception of gender equality as a steady march towards the light? Thousands of column inches went on that question – but, from the actor’s perspective, it was an annoying distraction. “There certainly was a time when we were very critically acclaimed, and getting a lot of attention for our very good work and our very hard work, and everyone just wanted to ask me about my bra again. There are only two sentences to say about a bra,” she says.

The signal impression the show left was of an ensemble at the peak of its creativity: actors, writers and the creator, Matthew Weiner, working in almost telepathic unison. It won the Emmy for outstanding drama series four times in a row, but the more notable year was 2012, when it was nominated for 17 Emmys (and didn’t win any of them). The take-home was: everyone involved with this is absolutely brilliant.

That harmonious picture was blurred two years after the show ended, when one of the former writers, Kater Gordon, accused Weiner of sexual harassment. Marti Noxon, a consulting producer on Mad Men, concurred that Weiner had created a toxic environment and said that he was an “‘emotional terrorist’ who will badger, seduce and even tantrum in an attempt to get his needs met”.

Hendricks takes this head on, in a considered, straightforward manner. “My relationship with Matt was in no way toxic,” she says. “I don’t discount anyone’s experience if I wasn’t there to see it, but that wasn’t my experience. Was he a perfectionist, was he tough, did he expect a lot? Yes. And he would say that in a second. We were hard on each other.”

It is impossible, from this distance, to adjudicate on Weiner’s character, but Hendricks’s response reveals something of hers. The easiest response in this situation, and the one 90% of actors give, is: “No comment.” Hendricks is always collected, never evasive, doesn’t gabble. She reminds me powerfully of Joan Holloway – and I am sorry to say it, because she insists throughout: “I’m an actress. I am completely not Joan. Not in any way. I wish I was more like Joan.”

I wonder if, while we were all fixating on Joan’s bras and whether or not, in the asinine words of Lynne Featherstone, the UK’s equalities minister in 2010, she represented a “curvy role model”, the audience was responding to Joan’s deeper life lesson – that self-possession is 9/10ths of the law.

What Hendricks emphatically doesn’t do is minimise the existence of sexism and sexual harassment in the industry: “Boy, do you think anyone in the entertainment industry comes out unscathed and not objectified? I don’t know one musician or one model or one actor who has escaped that. I have had moments – not on Mad Men; on other things – where people have tried to take advantage of me, use my body in a way I wasn’t comfortable with, persuade me or coerce me or professionally shame me: ‘If you took your work seriously, you would do this …’

“Maybe it was my modelling background, but I knew to immediately get on the phone and go: ‘Uh oh, trouble,’” she says. “That’s where it’s very much a job. We need to talk to the producers and handle this professionally.”

Yet, at the same time, she is defensive of her industry. “It gets a lot of attention because people know who we are. I’m sure there’s a casting couch at the bank down the street, I’m sure the same thing happens in management consultancy, but people don’t know who the management consultants are.”

Modelling always sounds like a harsh environment – predatory photographers vying with stringent agents to give everyone a complex about their thighs and stop them eating carbs. But that is not how Hendricks describes it at all. Her career sounds like one out of an 80s Judy annual: innocent and hearty, good for pin money and travel opportunities. “I think I was lucky – I didn’t start when I was 14. When I was about 18 or 19, I went to Japan for the first time, I went to Italy. We’d be lots of girls, sharing a house, and I sort of became the den mother. I’d make everyone egg salad sandwiches and Greek salads, going into this mother hen role.”

That is what they say about being taken hostage: if you want to survive, choose someone to look after. “Oh,” she says, coolly. “I wouldn’t consider being a model as being a hostage.”

She was only ever medium-successful, she insists – an “unusual and quirky” hire, rather than the slam-dunk face of everything. About as far as it went was that she never had to get another job to supplement her income. Probably the most famous image of that era in which she was involved was the poster for American Beauty. Two models were in the frame, so they took a photo of the stomach and the hands of each. In the end, they used Hendricks’s hand on the other model’s stomach. It sounds like a clunky metaphor, but it is true.

During this period, she moved to London with a friend, for the hell of it, living in a flat on Gloucester Road, “surviving on cider and hummus”. It is a glimpse of the oddball she says she was growing up, the outsider as whom she is rarely cast. This has been the story of her CV. “Early on in my career, I would get auditions and I would call my manager and say: ‘I would never cast me in this – she’s a cheerleader, she’s a bimbo. Can I audition for the other one, the weird doctor?’ And they’d be like: ‘No, they saw your picture.’ And I started realising that people didn’t see the weird, goofy me that I saw.”

She made the jump from modelling to acting via adverts, with what looks like fairytale ease. In fact, it was “a lot of pounding the pavement and showing up for auditions and getting rejected – and learning, as a young woman, to not take that personally”. By the late 90s, she was the face of ultimate female confidence, the woman who drinks Johnnie Walker and doesn’t need a chauffeur (these are two ads, not one for drink-driving). “I always thought of modelling as freeze-frame acting. It felt like a scene, and I still consider it that way. There are so many technical things that I think people don’t notice. They see you playing dress-up.”

From the commercials, she learned “how to hit a mark, how to memorise a line”, but acting wasn’t novel. She had been doing community theatre since the age of 10, and grew up expecting an alternative life, supplementing an art-house existence any which way. She never amplifies her creative urges. She is much happier talking about professionalism and graft, but that is strategic more than anything else. “I am incredibly emotional and I take things very personally. But I’ve learned to be a little bit of a politician and a little bit of a producer along the way. As a female actor, the easy go-to is: ‘She was emotional, she was hysterical.’ It can be a million other people’s fault, but it’s easy to point your finger at an emotional artist. So, I realised: if I’m going to be taken seriously, I need to have professional perspective and I can cry about it to my friends later.”

Yet she cares deeply about creativity, as is clear when she talks about Mad Men. “It may eclipse anything I ever did. And, if it does, it was a good one and I’m proud of it,” she says. “I got to bring who I was as a woman. I think I learned some of how to be a woman from Joan. No one would give a shit about me if it wasn’t for that show. I’d still be doing good work, but no one would have found me. If that’s the best thing I ever do, it was pretty good.”

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[wordslikesilver]

Seeing the discourse lately on transmisogyny and coming across new terms like tme and tma being used more than I think I’ve ever seen before because of everything going on had me uneasy, not gonna lie, I always do when I find new terminology from the alphabet mafia because I’m thinking to myself oh boy, more stuff to explain to cis people. Looked into it, it all seems pretty reasonable to me tho for including nonbinary femmes and femme intersex people I’ve sorta just always by default assumed “Trans Femme” was really good given the whole “it’s a spectrum and transmisogyny by definition is talking about the people on the femme side of it who didn’t start there” so admittedly I’ll probably be a grump about changing my vocab soon.

But then I see some new shit in the wake of all this TERF nonsense and bigotry being used against trans women? Detransitioned cis women calling themselves trans women and saying WE don’t understand the concept of gender well? The audacity? Look, changing the labels of a community to be less offensive is something I support so loudly and love and adore. This isn’t that. This is people encroaching on our pride and our identities and pretending the flag we nobly fly, the icon of bravery and unifying love in the face of oppression that it is, isn’t clearly “ours” enough. That it’s something they’re allowed to say belongs to them too so we need to come up with something new to call ourselves when we discuss the pain we face in our lives. Erasing and rewording the definitions of who we are til our identity is gone altogether. Moving the goal posts and telling us to teach everyone a whole new set of labels when the average layman still doesn’t even know that “Cis” isn’t a fucking slur, let alone what it means. Never forget that at your core when you fight against this new bigotry and they try to dance circles around you with their words and misdirect the conversation to stupid shit. Alienation from an already unified identity is a classic means of making it so much fucking harder for the oppressed to have their pleas for basic rights be acknowledged. Never let your people’s pain be silenced by someone pretending to they’re too stupid to know who you’re talking about.

To the TERFs and bigots who find this, and I fucking hope you find this, Trans Woman is not yours to fucking claim just because “gender is a construct and complicated” you will NEVER know the pain people like me have been through. I refuse to acknowledge a claim on my people’s identity because someone managed to misunderstand a concept hard enough and it’s now snowballed into a new form of complicating discussions of deserving basic and equal rights. I have felt the pains a cis woman has felt, I have felt sexist and awful treatment from men, I have been catcalled, I have been stalked, I have been made unsafe, I have been expected to be a mother for no other reason than “all women want them one day” and I have been assumed to be less than a man for some imagined frailty of the fairer sex. I am a woman. We can share that label, I WANT to share that label. We can bond over sapphic love and feminine experiences and hardships we both suffer under a cruel patriarchy. In just the same way, I have never known the pain of period cramps. I don’t have a vagina. I will never have a pregnancy scare and I will never feel the side effects of birth control. I wasn’t catcalled by gross men walking home when I was in high school. I was never sexualized by the media when I was in middle school the way cis girls would see happen to them. I am NOT a cis woman and I will never be one. I grew up as a boy, I lived and I loved as a young man, I saw the world through masculine eyes and was raised being treated as one, I will never pretend I know what it’s like to be a young girl being preyed upon and used by an older man. I will never touch that label because it’s simply not correct at the most fundamental level. I am a trans woman and that made me who I am. After all the people I’ve met and all the experiences I’ve shared, it took time to be so proud of calling myself a trans woman. Holding up the sky would’ve taken less strength of the heart, but now I feel the deepest pride knowing I’ve done something inconceivably harder.

But you, you people cannot take that from me and my sisters. I draw the fucking line at saying you think you have the slightest notion of what it’s like to be transfeminine. To be born in a body that makes people see you as a man from the very first glance, to hear you wrong from the first whisper of your voice. To spend the rest of your life working tirelessly in a fight against your own biology and/or the perception of the entire world whenever it casts its ugly eye upon you. Some of us don’t even have the privilege of fighting those perceptions or the things or own bodies have been programmed to force on us. Some of us don’t even want to have to do anything about how we look because it’s bullshit to have to fight for that basic respect from our peers in the first place and their standards just don’t align with who we are deep down in the first place! Gender is complicated but this isn’t. Have you EVER held your breath in the women’s public washroom and tucked your feet in because you were scared you’d make other women uncomfortable, because you’re not sure if you’re in an accepting space? FEARED what might happen if you step into the women’s change room to put on a bathing suit or your work clothes? Have you EVER been threatened with physical violence and called slurs in front of your own mother on public transit? Have you ever had to tell your doctor you’re ready to drop out of school to show how “sure” (re: fucking desperate) you are to be prescribed HRT? Sure, lots of cis women are on HRT, I treat them as patients all the time. Have you ever had a hot flash at the age of 21 because you were late on your injection? Did you pierce your skin with thin metal once a week for years and years to get the breasts you have? Did your body do irreparable things to your bones and your voice that make it so no one will ever see you as a woman at first glance without thousands of hours of effort, of tears, of sheer fucking focus and fixation on achieving the ideal self you see in your mind and dream of being one day? DID YOU HAVE TO BEG YOUR GOVERNMENT TO LET YOU HAVE THE BODY YOU LITERALLY ALREADY HAD AT BIRTH OR DID THEY NEVER EVEN SO MUCH AS TRY TO GET IN THE WAY OF JUST BEING CALLED MISS ON YOUR GOD DAMN LICENSE? Cis women can’t even begin to imagine the feelings I have felt, building my wings of feather and bones and wax, day after day, dreaming of flying beside my sisters who were born with wings they’ll never fear will melt, all the while remembering the last time someone born in a body like mine flew too close to the sun. Maybe they’ll perhaps know what it’s like to bind them to their back and hide them beneath their shirt, maybe they’ll even have sheered and ripped the bones from their sockets and one day wish they could have them back and sing with the rest of the angels like they used to, but they will NEVER fly on wings like mine, fear the heat from the light that makes life worth living the way I do, fear the same slings and arrows screaming up through the air from down below and even at times from above my head to let me know loud and clear they wanna knock me outta this sky, this sky that’s so beautiful and holy I cry when I touch it, the very first chance they get.

Transphobia won’t ever take the sky from me. My Icarian Wings are made on the foundation of generation after generation of my people who dreamed and yearned to touch the sunlight blue skies and the infinite glittering nights, each of us telling each other, telling ourselves we’ll never fear the light again one day, lifting each other when we fall, soaring higher each time than the ones whose wax melted before we could save them could, warmly teaching each other how to fix our broken wings and freely gifting each other the love it takes to make them stronger for the next flight. Holding each others hands as we dance and show each other how to fly, hand in hand and heart in heart with the angels who call us sister angels. A cis woman having the audacity to flap her never melting wings and saying hers are just like mine, that the name of my people is just a construct so she can say she she’s just like Icarus too, makes me wanna vomit. Pretending she knows what it’s like to watch in terror as all the feathers fall out suddenly in a moment of weakness making her break her bones upon the rocks, listening to everyone around her say “I knew it, I knew his wings were fake, look at him crawl along the ground in the dirt and the mud where he belongs.” Pretending that if two people both have skin, even of a different colour, that since the labels are made up, the sun and society itself will surely treat them the same if the white one calls themselves black.

Transphobia won’t ever take the sky from me. Come and fucking try to take these wings from me and see what happens.

[rollercoasterwords]

PLEASE tell us your barbie opinions!!!!! pls pls i also have opinions

happy 2 share but i will be putting it under a cut bc. a lot of people seem 2 think this movie is god's gift 2 earth and i am not in the mood 2 deal w barbie evangelists lol so if u do not want 2 see barbie movie criticism just scroll away

will preface by saying i enjoyed the movie i thought it was fun etc + i don't think there's anything wrong with enjoying it or finding it fun or even feeling very personally empowered/seen by what the movie had to say. that's all very nice on a personal level and i understand why so many people are finding the movie cathartic.

that being said i do not think the movie was feminist or subversive by a long shot and seeing so many people talk about how radical it was makes me feel like i'm being gaslit!!! like. did we watch different movies lmao. maybe i'd understand a little more why everyone was being taken in if barbie had like, gone to the real world and fought patriarchy in the movie--but she didn't even do that! they introduce the concept of real-world patriarchy only to have barbie go back to barbieland and destroy fake barbie patriarchy (which is rooted simply in one man's insecurity and easily resolved by gently encouraging him to seek self-worth outside his relationship--not exactly a cutting examination of the material investment that men have in patriarchy which makes it so difficult to challenge) and leave real-world patriarchy intact at the end (the big #feminist moment for real women is...mattel's sexist ceo saying he'll use a woman's idea for the next barbie, since he can make a lot of money off it? he doesn't even say he's going to pay her for the idea lmao).

so all in all the whole "barbie destroys patriarchy" bit of the movie just. did not feel particularly feminist to me beyond a very surface level acknowledgment that sexism exists and is bad. and like--i get that it's the barbie movie, and people could say "well of course it can't be that subversive but it did a good job for what it was!!" but i'm just like. ok yeah then let's call it what it was...instead of calling it subversive?? also every feminist message the movie tried to champion was immediately undermined by its fundamental investment in gender essentialism, which remains unchallenged throughout the whole film. like--barbies are literally canonically sexless and so u can't even try to argue that the gender binary which their society is based around is anything but 100% socially constructed, and we see that that gender binary affords privilege to some and not to others and also leads to ostracization of those who fail to conform to it, yet the happy ending of the movie is barbieland just...staying that way. and i feel like the movie then kinda says the quiet part out loud when barbie becomes a "real woman" by getting a vagina like...ok. lol

so like. even the interior politics of the film i struggle to understand how it could be considered groundbreaking feminism; and then when we zoom out and look at the material impact of the movie that just cements it as un-feminist to me. this is a really good article about the beauty standards being pushed + perpetuated by barbie marketing, and of course as with basically any hollywood movie the rich (and mostly rich men) will be getting richer, cycles of consumerism will be perpetuated, etc. honestly the "feminist" aspect of the film almost feels insidious to me in this context, as if it's meant to provide the catharsis of feeling like there's been some big challenge to patriarchy while quietly reinforcing the systems of oppression it publicly decries.

and like. at the end of the day i was not expecting barbie to be a subversive feminist film nor do i think it like...has a responsibility to be one. and it's nice that so many people feel like they're getting something out of it! but i think it's important to evaluate both the personal and societal impact of the media we're critiquing, and in that context it just seems silly to me to claim that barbie is subversive. i also find the amount of rhetoric i've seen about how the movie "encapsulates the female experience" so fucking irritating lmfao like...i am sorry but the idea that watching a group of hyperfeminine women flirt with men as a method of destroying patriarchy (<- not an exaggeration that is literally the plot. flirt with each other's boyfriends to make them jealous so they fight each other. zero lesbians in barbieland i suppose) is THE quintessential experience of #womanhood...well alright then.

anyway. there is more i could say but i am going 2 get dinner w a friend so. stopping here <3 not gonna post the link but i do have a full/in-depth review on my substack if u wanna poke around over there!

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

so I was expecting to see it pinned but I can't: could you summarize why you hate feminism? I feel like it's doing a lot of good but I'm wanting to see other perspectives better of that makes sense?

I really ought to have something pinned so I don't have to keep writing new responses, but I always find there are new angles that need expressing and I never feel I've written one specific post that addresses everything.

I was a feminist myself from the age of 13, when I read Marilyn French's novel The Woman's Room, and within another 5 or 6 years I'd gotten pretty radicalized and gone out and bought my own copy of Valerie Solanas' SCUM Manifesto, along with a bunch of Riot Grrrl records. I stayed in that echo chamber for quite a few years, but increasingly started noticing things that didn't - and couldn't - make sense and asking questions of the movement that no-one within it could answer, and as soon as I did, I was out of the cult. If you try doing that yourself, you'll find the same will happen to you.

I'm at a loss to know how to summarize in a brief and easy-to-digest way the way my life and thinking has developed since then, and what the most pertinent points to relay should be.

Basically, what I'd most noticed was the disconnect between what the feminist movement claims to be and what it actually is. The more involved in feminism any person becomes, the more callous, hateful and contemptuous towards men they will become. If Feminism WAS just a movement that seeks to treat men and women equally, as it publicly claims, then it wouldn't make any sense that that should be the entirely predictable outcome every time: you'd expect the most radical feminist to be the most loving and fairminded towards every man she encounters, instead of gleefully calling for his genocide.

On top of that, the bedrock claims of feminism the past 50 years or more - Patriarchy, rape culture, pay gap, glass ceiling, etc. - are all revealed to be self-evidently false if you scrutinize them with any rigor at all. To be a feminist today you have to believe all human civilization is a conspiracy invented by men to benefit all men through the oppression and exploitation of all women, the world over. But no man knows anything about this conspiracy, which occurred in every disconnected and uncontacted corner of the globe, without a single exception, and there is no evidence or even attempt to theorize how and where this conspiracy is supposed to have taken place (the only attempt I've even heard any feminist trying is Riane Eisler's fanciful and thoroughly discredited theory of "matrifocal" cultures existing at some point in Ancient Greece, that run contrary to everything we know of the past from all historical records and archeology, as well as the rest of the world at that time).

What feminists call "The Patriarchy" is, in reality, the gendered division of labor that we (and other mammals) evolved over millions of years to best survive in a hostile natural world. To frame nature itself as an evil and oppressive human conspiracy is utterly insane and enormously destructive to millions of people's mental health and ability to connect to others.

Feminism has done, and continues to do, massive harm to relations between the sexes, because by framing every second human being on planet earth as The Oppressor, and the other half of the human race as innately abused and perpetually bedraggled Victims, it makes love between the sexes impossible, if taken at all seriously.

It's important to make the differentiation between Feminism (a far-left political ideology) and Women (half of the human race): feminism does not speak on behalf of the majority of women, and never has (the last I heard, only around 10-15% of women identify as such, depending on where you ask). You can support equal rights and opportunities for all without lending your support to the idiotic ideas of class/gender war mostly borrowed from Marxist theories, which is what most of feminism from the second wave onwards has been based on. Although I tend to avoid labels myself, many people today feel much more comfortable identifying as egalitarians rather than feminists, because it removes the century of hateful sexist baggage that word brings with it.

This is already getting quite long, so I guess I'll leave it there, but I'm happy to expand on any specific aspect of feminist belief you may want more detail on. It's easier to get into the nuts and bolts when the topic is not so broad.

[traumascumathena]

it is very hard for me to be nice about this. it really is. I have extensive trauma with Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists, to the point where I have lost almost all pride in my identity as a transfem and to the point where I had to choose between my physical safety and the well-being of my family over my identity. my ma is a trans woman that does advocacy for inmates, particularly lgbt inmates, and shes received death theats from TERF groups on the basis of her being a trans woman. Ive gone back in the closet and pretend to be a genderconforming cis man just to keep selling my art without getting threats from TERFS. they’re very present in our lives. Ive changed the entire way I live in order to survive their presence. 

And when I see posts like this. I know they dont come from a place of understanding this present trauma. These people dont know what its like to have their name and face dragged through the mud on pamphlets and fliers and “feminist” gatherings. they see TERFs as an abstract enemy and not a real one. they see TERFs as a general bad guy to be applied everywhere. and not a specific type of transphobia applied by a specific type of person. they see TERFs as traumatic but they dont see who is traumatized by them. 

a TERF is a Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist. nothing more and nothing less. Trans Exclusionary: they want to exclude trans people, predominantly trans women, from society. they want trans people to cease existing, or if they should insist to exist, that they be content with the bottom of a social ladder. Radical Feminism: liberation of women from the patriarchy in a method that focuses solely on sexism, without regard to other forms of discrimination, creating a new social ladder with cishet white women on top. 

so tell me, where does being against endogenic systems fit into this? what is trans exclusionary about being anti-endo? what is radically feminist about being anti-endo? 

and dont fucking tell me its “rhetoric.” everyone fucking says the rhetoric is the same, but no one explains in a way that matters. “just change trans with endo!” except, when you change the words in an argument, its meaning changes. is it TERF rhetoric for me to say watermelon is the worst fruit, because if we replace watermelon with trans women and fruit with type of human being, it is exactly what a TERF would say? 

honestly. you people only say ideologies you dont agree with are TERF rhetoric because its an emotional appeal, because youre out of strong arguments. everyone agrees TERFs are bad, and so if you can paint the person youre arguing with as a TERF, then you automatically win to people who dont take more than two seconds to think about things. and in this age of low attention spans, thats everyone that fucking sees this! 

listen. I do believe in endogenic systems. despite the url, despite other mods opinions, I believe endogenic systems exist. Ive seen arguments for their existence that make sense. Ive seen arguments against anti-endos that make sense. saying anti-endos are using TERF rhetoric actively degrades those arguments, because flawed logic in one aspect makes the collection of arguments as a whole look flawed. how can I argue for the existence of endogenic systems when the common defense of them is “anti-endos use TERF rhetoric!” my side looks a fool! 

this is why transfems leave system spaces en masse as well. its all “TERFs are bad! TERF rhetoric is everywhere!” but never “how can we help transfems? How can we make transfems feel safe?” 

For YEARS I spoke about being unsafe physically due to TERFs, and I received no help. my family received no help. I have given up being out and proud because of TERFs, and in this depressing fact, instead of getting help from the LGBT community, I am isolated! we are isolated! and yet, and yet, you all simply cry out hatred for TERFs and never love for transfems! 

what good is hating TERFs if you leave transfems for dead? what good is calling out TERF rhetoric if countless transfems have to be closeted to survive? what good it to paint the enemy as TERFs, if you cant even support your own transfems? 

[this-daydream-is-dangerous-13]

Rolling Stone Ranking updates from beloved Rob Sheffield:

169. Say Don’t Go

“I would stay forever if you say ‘Don’t go’ / But you won’t.” A 1989 vault outtake co-written with Eighties hitmaker Diane Warren, “Say Don’t Go” is relatively straight-forward and smooth compared to its peers, with echoes of “Mirrorball” in the tightrope imagery.

Best line: “We’re a shot in the darkest dark.”

92. Suburban Legends

“I broke my own heart because you were too polite to do it”—now there’s a line that sums up a lot of chaotic Swiftian love stories. “Suburban Legends” is a witty yet regretful tune with more of her 1950s fantasies, with Taylor fantasizing about a happy ending to a long-gone high-school romance. Like other 1989 vault tracks, “Suburban Legends” sounds like it would have fit right into Midnights—so many invisible strings between those two albums, in terms of her songwriting.

Best line: “You kiss me in a way that’s gonna screw me up forever.”

50. Suburban Dreams

After years of marveling at the great 1989 bonus tracks that didn’t make the album, it’s startling to hear these intense vault tunes that didn’t even make the cut as bonuses. But if Taylor combined the 1989 bonus/vault loosies into a 10-song album of their own, it would add up to 1989’s nastier, cattier, funnier evil sister. “Now That We Don’t Talk” shows off her acerbic wit, especially her staccato vocals when she snipes “it just ended” one petty syllable at a time. Funny to hear her drag “acid rock.” Poor Taylor—one minute you’re on a nice innocent yacht ride, next you’re trapped listening to Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service bootlegs.

Best line: “I don’t have to pretend I like acid rock/Or that I like to be on a mega-yacht / With important men who think important thoughts.”

47. “Slut!”

“Slut!” is one of her most hard-hitting vault treasures, up there with “Nothing New” and “Is It Over Now?” It comes from the same place as “Blank Space,” or “Shake It Off,” but lets more of her anger show. As she explains in her new 1989 Prologue, “I had become the target of slut shaming.” She’s trying to trust in a new romance (“in a world of boys, he’s a gentleman”) but all too aware of the world’s misogynistic disapproval, noting, “I’ll pay the price, you won’t.” Yet she resolves, “If they call me a slut / It might be worth it for once.” It’s a sadly pained love song and a scathing satire at the same time, indexing ways that patriarchy corrupts the heart. Can you imagine if she’d dropped this song on people in 2014? But like so much of 1989, “Slut!” was truly ahead of its time.

Best line: “Being this young is art.”

33. Is It Over Now?

These 1989 (Taylor’s Version) vault songs are a revelation—4 of the 5 would have been highlights on the original album. But “Is It Over Now?” looms over them all—her greatest vault stunner yet. It sounds like it’s part of a trilogy with “The Archer” and “Labyrinth,” as that spooky synth-drone intro leads into a brooding powerhouse mediation on love and loss. (If we’d heard this song in 2014, it might have been less shocking to hear “The Archer” 5 years later.) Taylor travels back and forth in time, finding different angles to look back at a youthful romance that crashed like a snowmobile. The story is full of blue eyes, blue dresses, red blood, blouses, couches, boats, the jet-set distance of “Come Back…Be Here” and the scarlet letter of “New Romantics” and the NYC coffee of “Holy Ground.” This guy turns on the charm for “unsuspecting waiters,” just like the guy in “All Too Well” charms her dad like a talk-show guest. But it all comes down to a heartbreak that these four blue eyes didn’t want to see coming. What a massive song.

Best line: “Let’s fast-forward to 300 takeout coffees later.”

(I clearly love you besties. The RS mobile experience is the f*cking worst, and this took like an hour of trying to scroll/copy paste to compile. Lol. 😘)

[nanierose]

Saw Barbie last night and was talking about it with my sisters and we were talking about how we felt called out for watching the BBC Pride and Prejudice. But I think the best thing about that is they chose the scene where Darcy makes the worst proposal in history, listing every reason why he thinks marrying Elizabeth is beneath him but against his better judgement wants to be with her, and still expects her to say yes because it's known that women want to marry well and bagging someone as rich and respected as him is obviously the smart choice. Then is surprised when she says no and dresses him down for being so presumptuous and arrogant.

And it mirrors perfectly how at this point in the movie the Kens have gone all in on the patriarchy and expect the Barbies to do what they want and be in love with them because they're men and better. Only for the Barbies to remember they have agency and don't have to follow the constraints placed on them by patriarchal society.

[fromevertonow]

Edit: before people choose to call me a bitch again, this was written after ep5 came out. Any inhuman act of ADULT Alicent’s is not taken into consideration here. I know what she’s gonna do. Just open your fucking eyes to the backstory she’s given IN THE SHOW and shut up. Thanks.

Why are people hating on Alicent for marrying Viserys like it was her choice and then use that as a baseless foundation to hate on her? Is she the picture of perfection in this story? No, absolutely not, but literally no one is. Alicent is as much a victim in all of this as Rhaenyra is. They’re two different women in two different situations who both try to break out of the wheel of patriarchy. How can you sit there and defend Rhaenyra for her completely whacky choices while Alicent makes due with her LACK of choices?

I was on team black when reading the book, but I have a feeling the show is gonna make me a green precisely bc Alicent is so much more fleshed out. We get to see so many things from her perspective and I think it takes incredible bravery to face all of these issues and actually deal with them. Being subjected to a loveless marriage where she’s only used as breeding stock, losing her best friend bc of it, trying to placate her father despite all her unvoiced objections…

Alicent’s animosity towards Rhaenyra is valid in ep 5. She’s tried to make amends with Rhaenyra and it backfired. From the moment Viserys announced his marriage to Alicent, Alicent has been alone. Rhaenyra wanted nothing to do with her bc she felt betrayed and Viserys… well, it doesn’t need much explaining why Alicent doesn’t want to talk to him. The only person she had left was her father, and despite all his flaws, he is still her father whom she loves and cares for. Perhaps also the only person she could confide in, to some degree. Now she’s truly alone. And it is Rhaenyra’s fault, partly.

So far, all Alicent’s done is obey her father. She married Viserys, she gave him heirs, she semi-cooperated with voicing Aegon’s rightful claim to the throne. The one time she directly goes against Otto is when she defends Rhaenyra’s virtue, losing her father in the process. But in the light of rekindling her friendship with Rhaenyra, this was a worthy sacrifice, one she didn’t make lightly. It clearly hurt her to see him go, but she at least had Rhaenyra.

When it turns out that Alicent defended Rhaenyra over a lie, that Alicent lost her father over a lie, that Alicent has been played a fool, it makes perfect sense that she turns bitter. With her friendship with Rhaenyra now officially broken and her father gone, Alicent doesn’t have any internal allies at court anymore, no one to confide in, hence why she strikes an alliance with Ser Criston. He’s hurt too by Rhaenyra’s actions. It makes perfect sense why he’d join Alicent in her plans. In the books it always kind of seemed like backstabbing Rhaenyra, but even a princess has to deal with the consequences of her actions.

I don’t think Alicent is in the wrong to cut Rhaenyra off as a friend. Do I agree with all that she’s about to do? No, but with, again, her lack of choices, Alicent can’t and doesn’t want to do much more than secure her own position and that of her children. Not only does this explanation justify Alicent’s actions, but it also adds much more complexities to the conflict between two former best friends. Neither of them wants to fight the other, but to protect themselves, both have to do the unthinkable. It makes it actually kind of hard to pick a side in the war to come.