#and societal systems of oppression

[martyrbat]

habeas corpus – detective comics #1086

(ID in alt!)

[prolibytherium]

No hate I’ve just got like.. The absolute polar opposite opinion. I tend to be less into high fantasy where gods are confirmed Real with little to no room for interpretation because of the way it often sets up dichotomies of like, the Correct/Good belief systems vs the Wrong/Bad belief systems. If gods are observably materially real with exact specific natures and correct interpretations, it just kind of Adds limitations that would not otherwise exist, and a lot of the times results in worlds that feel flat and lacking in diversity. I think this framework can be perfectly fine for fantasy but approaching it with the exact same lack of nuance I'm talking about lends to executions that are reductive at BEST.

Part of why I’m into the hard realism no canon magic/supernatural fantasy is because of how much freedom it gives to explore the full spectrum of belief systems. There's nothing about this framing that prevents you from treating belief systems in a thoughtful and serious manner, and if anything it's a better framework to explore the full implications and effects on reality of religious belief (because In Real Life religion is a personal/cultural lens to subjective reality and has profound societal effects without people having Empirically Provable interactions with deities or etc). And tbh I feel like thinking that having a religion be Canon Reality in a setting is the only way for beliefs to not be treated as Stupid just kind of loops back around into treating religious belief as Being Stupid (ie: it's only NOT stupid when it's a materially provable aspect of reality)

I think you can have a setting that embraces the idea of a religion people believe in by simply having a setting that embraces the idea of a religion people believe in. You know?

[obstinaterixatrix]

this is a generalization but for the most part I think what is vital for understanding the romance genre and romance tropes is that it’s a fantasy genre. it’s romantic fantasy. (set aside specific subgenres/subversions etc for a moment). and it’s fantasy that needs to be contextualized by societal ideas about romantic relationships, whether the fantasy is about reinforcing them or subverting them. I personally think that because of genre/subject is a fantasy in context of a society that is oppressive/hostile to the core audience (speaking generally, women), the fantasies naturally center power in most narratives. You can say the same about a lot of other genre fiction, but I do think the romance genre is distinct in terms of having a core audience of women and being dominated by women. (I’m also speaking specifically about novels—I don’t have evidence to back this but, but I do get the impression that a lot of romantic movies have a more even split of male directors/writers…?) but anyway, I think it’s a really interesting mirror… even the really shitty ones can be read from the perspective of ‘what cultural relational shorthands are they using to convey a romantic fantasy and how are they failing’ lol

[gendertrickster]

i feel like the role of prince of blood could only ever belong to an autistic person

[pickapea]

there's something beautifully romantic about heterosexuals. despite their differences, despite being raised differently in different cultures and with different expectations put on them, despite coming from different worlds and being kept apart their whole upbringings, they still manage to bridge that gap to find love. it's unfortunate that they don't like each other and don't view each other as human, but i digress

[watermelinoe]

i don't think of homosexuality and bisexuality as behaviors and i think conflating sexuality with behavior unconsciously is the undercurrent pushing this discourse. gay people aren't oppressed because they partner with the same sex. that's the behavior oppressors see on the surface, yes. but gay people are oppressed because they are homosexual. even if they spend their entire lives in the closet, "passing as straight" (i hate this phrase), they are affected by societal homophobia. this is the part radblr struggles with: it is the same for bi people. just apply the same class analysis, i promise the world as you know it won't collapse.

[anachronistic-falsehood]

i NEED to do a big gender themes analysis of knives in tristamp i’m listening to the melanie martinez album and milk of the siren is soooo knives i’m going to lose it. i gotta write about him AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!!!!

[therevengeoffrankenstein]

i literally hate when people act like transandrophobia isn't real despite the fact that i am constantly excommunicated from online spaces talking about misogyny/transmisogyny because i am a trans man. despite that the reason that those things do effect me is because i am a trans man. and i am never included in discussions about pregnancy/abortion and u.ter.ine/vag.in.al health despite both of those literally being things i have to think about and deal with because i have a u.ter.us and a vag.ina. despite the fact that i do not pass (and might never pass) and have had to and will probably always have to deal with people misgendering me and seeing me as a woman and being misogynistic to me because of it. and people being chill with me for a while but then automatically seeing me as predatory the second they find out i'm a man. and people seeing me as inherently inferior and physically weaker than cis men.

transphobes will always see me as a woman until they can oppress me about being a man. they will only properly gender me when they can use it against me. to call me weak and predatory and irrelevant and 'entitled.' but sure. i'm not oppressed because i'm a man.

[transgayhawkeyepierce]

"If you write fantasy or sci-fi, don't include racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc. in your story. If you include it, you're writing tragedy porn and endorsing it," was truly the worst take of all time. Set us back years. Extremely stupid stuff y'all.

[lakesbian]

my knowledge that lake isn’t a “intentionally wants to be a gender rebel/stand out” gnc girl but a “is just This Way and wishes that people would stop treating her differently for her appearance” girl vs my desire to make a mini-amv to weird girl by mommy legs

[protobrieile]

ooooooo i am feeling particularly riled up about marginalized community infighting today

[transandrobroism]

i am not being needlessly alarmist when i say that popular feminism has become extremely radfem-esque and that the normalisation of negative stereotypes towards men needs to be resisted. like. i clearly remember when feminists were derided as "man-hating feminazis" and the main counter-argument to that went something like "we don't hate men, feminism is for everyone, patriarchy harms men too and our goal is to dismantle that oppressive system, this will benefit everyone including men, men can and should be feminists because feminism is a movement for gender equality"

in fact the major rebuttal to men forming "men's rights" movements was always that the issues these groups identified were the negative impacts of the patriarchy on men. they didn't need a separate group because feminism was for everyone and feminist thought and theorising already accounted for the ways patriarchy harms men. which is true! many of the societal issues faced by men stem from white supremacist patriarchy and restrictive gender roles and traditionally feminism has given thought and time to those issues. feminism is for everyone and it is concerned with men's struggles under patriarchy alongside women's.

but somewhere in the last few decades that attitude fell by the wayside and now popular online feminism is this radfem-flavored "all men are bad forever" thing. now mocking, belittling, or hating men is #feminist #praxis. it's feminist to make jokes about #killallmen. it's feminist to view masculinity as inherently bad and dangerous. it's feminist to talk about the men in your life like they're animals who need to be house trained, or emotionally stunted children who need to be babied and distracted.

it's this idea of flipping patriarchy on its head and saying that actually women are the Superior Gender, women deserve to run the world and make all the decisions, and actually it's men who are the Inferior Gender who can't be trusted or left unsupervised.

these attitudes will always have the most severe negative impact on marginalised men. i don't know how we got here but it's past time we circled back around to "feminism is for everyone".

[bigprettygothgf]

some of you are really like im so punk fuck the system down with societal norms 😡 btw men are the most oppressed group on the planet

[patricia-taxxon]

while i was being attacked and smeared by terf blogs, i happened to see one very revealing thought. back when i was being accused of emotional manipulation by bringing up my own assault and getting upset when i'm called a liar on the basis of my assigned gender, one of them essentially said something like "it's so pathetic that he's trying to gain sympathy by talking about mental issues, because that NEVER works for us."

like, that's the terf ethos. talk yourself into thinking you're the first person on earth to oppress trans women so you don't have to accept yourself as being complicit in the systemic patriarchal structure you claim to oppose. misogyny against real women is societal, misogyny against trans women is individual. hell is a room with 2 doors

[landslidingmirrorballinvienna]

ever after high versus monster high is just an extremely rich private school versus public school bcs like cleo and torelai can be mean but are kinda just typical bullies who are rude but you can tolerate while kids in ever after high are like “you are lower than me societally and you are doomed to have an awful life reflecting the systemic oppression of all those who came before you and despite having different intentions and dreams since you were born into the wrong situation if you fail to accomplish those duties you are endangering all of us with dark fates. which only YOU GUYS are supposed to have. we are supposed to be happy and rich!” also because headmaster bloodgood is like actually a positive force in her students lives while grimm is a fascist cult leader focused on status. Cupid wtf?😭😭😭

[tigerinkangel]

Literally begging people to learn what intersectionality actually means and not treat it like additional pokemon typing.

Like I get people are trying to do their best, but if your best involves stepping on people in the same fight just because you dont p e r s o n a l l y have experience with oppression unique to that group, you're not helping anyone.