#and the role of gender in society more broadly

[communistkenobi]

I’m sure those articles written by ex-terfs looking to deradicalise other terfs do occasionally help, and honestly if you’re an ex-terf I think you are morally obligated to berate the bigots you used to call comrades out of their horrendous belief systems, but whenever I read those articles it’s clear to me that these people still view trans people as research specimens to debate over, they’ve just generously shifted over to the side of “i think exterminating this minority group is bad”

[steveyockey]

While some of both Davis and Crawford’s work could arguably be described as camp (for the former, King Vidor’s Beyond the Forest; for the latter, later-era films such as Strait-Jacket and aspects of the wondrous Nicholas Ray film Johnny Guitar), that their entire careers and places within film history are defined as such does a disservice to their artistry. But they aren’t alone in representing what has become a troubling trend when it comes to women’s work. As camp entered the mainstream lexicon, especially after Susan Sontag’s landmark 1964 essay, “Notes on ‘Camp,’” the term has been increasingly tied to work featuring women who disregard societal norms. Camp is often improperly and broadly applied to pop culture that features highly emotional, bold, complex, cold, and so-called “unlikable” female characters. I’ve seen films and TV shows such as the witty masterwork All About Eve; the beguiling Mulholland Drive; the stylized yet heartwarming Jane the Virgin; Todd Haynes’s Patricia Highsmith adaptation Carol; the blistering biopic Jackie; the deliciously malevolent horror film Black Swan; Joss Whedon’s exploration of girlhood and horror, Buffy the Vampire Slayer; the landmark documentary Grey Gardens (which inspired the 2009 HBO film starring Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore); and even icons such as Beyoncé and Rihanna be described as camp. Look at any list of the best camp films and you’ll see an overwhelming number of works that feature women and don’t actually fit the label. Usually, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, the film whose behind-the-scenes story provides Murphy’s launching pad for Feud, will be at the top of the list.

While camp need not be a pejorative, that hasn’t stopped it from being widely used as such. In effect, being labeled as camp can turn the boldest works about the interior lives of complex women into a curiosity, a joke, a punch line. The ease with which camp is applied to female-led films and shows of this ilk demonstrates that for all the (still-paltry) gains Hollywood has made for women in the decades since Davis and Crawford worked, our culture is still uncomfortable respecting women’s stories.

That major Hollywood icons such as Marlene Dietrich, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford (and, more recently, Natalie Portman, thanks to Jackie) have been roped into this lineage isn’t surprising. Society doesn’t know what to do with women of this ilk without discrediting their very womanhood. Take artist and filmmaker Bruce LaBruce’s offensive description of Mae West in an essay on camp: “[She] played with androgyny to the degree that her final performance — her autopsy — was necessary to prove her biological femaleness.” In his 2013 essay “Why Is Camp So Obsessed with Women?”, J. Bryan Lowder expands on Sontag’s most well-known line: “It’s not a lamp, but a ‘lamp’; not a woman, but a ‘woman.’ To perceive Camp in objects and persons is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role.” Lowder writes, “‘Woman,’ the concept within the quotation marks, is not the same thing, at all, as a real woman; the former is a mythology, a style, a set of conventions, taboos, and references, while the latter is a shifting, changeable, and ultimately indefinable living being. Of course, there may be some overlap.” But if all gender is a performance, where does the “real” woman begin? And why does the presence of camp hold more importance than the actual work and voices of actresses such as Crawford, who have come to be defined by it?

At times, camp can feel like a suffocating label. Its proponents often misconstrue the fact that recreating oneself as a character is not merely an aesthetic for women, but rather, for many, a matter of survival. Living in a culture that profoundly scorns ambition, autonomy, and independence in women, girls learn quickly the narrow parameters of femininity available to them. When they transcend these parameters, life can get even more difficult. Women often pick up and drop various forms of presentation in order to move through the world more easily. Performance as a woman — in terms of how one speaks, walks, talks, acts — can be a means of controlling one’s own narrative. Camp often limits this part of the discussion, focusing instead on the sheer thrill of watching larger-than-life female characters cut and snark their way across the screen. How these works speak to women, past and present, becomes a tertiary concern at best, and the work loses a bit of its importance in the process; it either comes to be regarded as niche or, if it still has mainstream prominence, as abject spectacle. In turn, the conversations around these works become less about the women at their centers and more about how those women are presented.

Much of Baby Jane’s camp legacy comes down to how more recent audiences have interpreted Davis’s performance. She’s ferocious, frightening, and grotesque. But framing Davis’s performance as camp, as Murphy does, doesn’t take into account how dramatically acting has shifted over the course of film history. In some ways, camp has become a label used when modern audiences don’t quite understand older styles of acting. Modern actors privilege the remote, the cold, the detached. The more scenery-chewing performances that make the labor of acting visible — such as the transformative work that Jake Gyllenhaal did in Nightcrawler, or most of Christian Bale’s career — is typically the domain of men. (Or, at least, it’s only men who can get away with it without being called campy.) As Shonni Enelow writes in a marvelous piece for Film Comment, “[Jennifer] Lawrence’s characters in Winter’s Bone and The Hunger Games don’t arrive at emotional release or revelation; rather than fight to express themselves, her characters fight not to. We can see the same kind of emotional retrenchment and wariness in a number of performances by the most popular young actors of the last several years.” Davis’s work as an actor was the antithesis of that; she painted in bold colors. Even her quietest moments brim with an intensity that cannot be denied.

[headspace-hotel]

the foundation of a lot of conservative thought is that there is some kind of magical force keeping the amount of suffering in the world constant, and that any effort that would broadly reduce suffering a great deal can be safely dismissed as being useless or untenable without examining it very closely.

This goes along with a very deep fear or intuition that something very very bad will happen if people do not suffer enough. It is a belief that the innately corrupt aspects of human nature will run rampant without "punishment" both in the strict sense and in a bigger, more general sense of "being taught a lesson" about how the world is harsh and cruel.

Conservatives who aren't, like, openly sadistic monsters can only resolve the cognitive dissonance by placing a very sharp dividing line between "kind/good/compassionate behavior as an individual" and "things that would improve society."

You, as a conservative individual, can donate to a charity or do something nice for someone, but this cannot be part of any responsibility you have as a member of your society. An individual can be kind, but it is either necessary to make sure the society individuals belong to is cruel, or at least necessary not to try to make it less cruel.

Conservative folks that don't consciously embrace cruelty must rely on historical illiteracy to call upon a monolithic " The Good Old Days" where the cruel and coercive aspects of society were stable and accepted enough that they were tempered by the benefits of true absolute conformity to traditional morality and gender roles+ the pleasures of a Simple Homesteading Life.

They rationalize coercive social standards through the argument that it only FEELS like coercion if you are introduced to another possibility, and if you immediately go limp in the jaws of the role predetermined for you, you will never want anything else. Women for instance were all perfectly happy being submissive housewives, back when there was no choice socially or legally. Everyone would be straight if no one was ever exposed to a happy openly gay person.

There is also a deep conviction that the human brain can only handle a small amount of pleasure or happiness above a neutral baseline, and "too much" sexual pleasure or mercy or relief from pain always either comes from or causes something grotesquely evil.

Their view of pleasure and happiness is very cynical and economic Law of Equivalent Exchange type stuff. Often, lots of sexual things are evil in the eyes of these people basically because they offer a suspicious amount of pleasure with no obvious "cost." They will SAY that sexual deviance is all these terrible things, but they believe that "deviant" sex feels good—too good, in fact, that's why it's that much more evil.

A lot of "trad" losers believe masturbation is from Satan because their schema for understanding the world can't accommodate the idea of something that gives you pleasure for "free," without hurting someone else or hurting you. For that pleasure to be "given" to you, it has to be "taken" from somewhere else (your soul or whatever)

It also works in reverse: the more you suffer in the present, through Hard Work or whatever, the more Good you will reap. It's a big reason why war and dying in combat are so romanticized by these people: that kind of Extreme Bad unlocks a level of Good not accessible otherwise (Freedom🎆🇺🇸)

real turd of an ideology all things considered

[lurinatftbn]

Hello! To preface this question: this is truly not intended to be an accusation or anything, I genuinely just want to understand some of the worldbuilding in your novel which I’ve been reading recently. I’m not all the way finished, I think I’m about at chapter 45~? So if this gets brought up later feel free to just let me know and leave it at that.

My question is: why has the gender norm stayed in place in this world? It’s been something I’ve been stuck on since the conversions concerning Fang and Ophelia. In a society where it’s highly recommended that you change the face and general appearance of either yourself or your children to prevent paradoxical incidents, I’m struggling to understand why a firm gender binary would still be socially accepted as correct - wouldn’t a significant amount of people opt for an androgynous presentation anyway to avoid paradoxes from masc/fem instances of the same body? I can understand why the order would have the whole girls to one side guys to the other from a doylist perspective, it helps solidify the conservatism of the order for the reader compared to the protagonists. But I am genuinely struggling with how and why the gender binary persists for any other reason, even in older generations. The way Fang’s talked about is extremely odd considering the casual conversations about sexuality, especially considering the conversation where people tried to figure out what they are that’s mentioned.

Again, very genuine question, and thank you for reading!

Hi, thanks for your question!

To correct what I think might be a misconception first, changing ones appearance in the setting as an adult is not particularly common - when the characters talk about 'distinction treatment', what they're usually referring to is altering their genetics away from that of their seed in utero or early childhood, resulting in them developing a different appearance naturally. Adult distinction treatment or plain cosmetic medicine exists, but is much less common.

As for the rest, the answer is, pretty boringly, that the world of TFTBN is broadly socially conservative, since the cultures in the setting were largely founded by people who rejected the transhumanism of the Imperial Era and then embraced an even more entrenched traditionalism in response to the collapse. I don't think this is an outlook that comes from a necessarily pragmatic or logical place; by nature, social conservatism values the upholding of firm societal roles for their own sake rather than in pursuit of any sort of utility. Obviously even in our own world there are lots of conventions around gender and sexuality that don't really make sense any more, but are upheld for that reason.

There are a lot of ways in which the society of the story is supposed to come across as a little ridiculous in how far it goes to hold on to its perception of a more 'natural' past, and the sort of world that creates when the older generations can never really be forced to cede cultural power in the way they are in reality.

There's more I could say from a doylist angle, but you might be a bit too early in the story for that.

[fox-steward]

hi, your blog is incredibly interesting- i genuinely didn't realise there was a not conservative side of the gender critical sphere. i've been on testosterone for about 7 months now, so far this has been making me feel more like myself. personally I am not thinking about 'gender' but rather what i want to look and sound like- this has been working better than the whole 'gender is a feeling' thing..which is definitely a theory! If its okay to ask, what are your thoughts on medical transition?

i think medical transition is, broadly, very harmful.

it harms the individual: disrupts natural hormone cycles, negatively impacts cardiovascular health, negatively impacts reproductive functioning, creates an artifice which the individual comes to rely on to "feel like themself," thereby severing that person from true authenticity, necessitating the person remain a lifelong medical patient to keep all effects of hormones, subjecting the person to unnecessary risk of surgery, including death. it costs a lot of money and time that you don't actually have to spend. there is no evidence it correlates with mental health improvement, and it is my opinion that by focusing on transition, people do not attend to the areas of their lives that actually need and would benefit from attention and intervention.

it harms the group: gays and lesbians are disproportionately impacted by medical transition; gender non-conformity (which homosexuality is a form of) has become pathologized; now young lesbians and gays are not only growing up in a culture dominated by heterosexuality and rife with homophobia, they also have to navigate the pervasive message that they might benefit from transition. when i was a kid i was told by adults that i was "trying to be a man," that real women are not lesbians, and eventually i agreed with them. that gender non-conformity is seen as a precursor to "trans identification" only makes this worse--it's like, you get the "what, are you trying to be a man >:( ??!!" but also, "what, are you trying to be a man <=D ??!!" messaging. and what chance do we stand against attacks from all sides?

it is harmful to all women: look around at misogyny--devaluing women's opinions as vapid or lesser, assuming women are weak and fickle, dismissing women's perspectives and ideas, preying on women and girls sexually, seeing women as one-dimensional vessels for the transformation of the men around them--of COURSE girls don't "feel like a woman" these days, who would? instead of looking at the way society treats women and the disidentification it is producing among youth as the blazing alarm that it is, trans culture has wedged itself between women and liberation with the suggestion that "maybe you're not a woman if you don't feel like one?" never minding that "feeling like one" generally means liking being objectified, belittled, seen as weak, ignored, simultaneously not being taken seriously but being blamed for things. not only does this derail the actually important conversation about misogyny, but it leaves women and girls vulnerable to the predation of medical transition, which as i mentioned above, is harmful physically, emotionally, socially, and financially.

also, i would argue there are actually no conservative "gender critical" people. conservatives tend to reject gender non-conformity and embrace traditional gender roles; ain't no way to be critical of gender while holding central traditional gender roles. conservatives may be "trans critical," but they're not actually "gender critical." trans ideology has a lot in common with conservatives when it comes to gender, actually. both reinforce traditional gender stereotypes; how different is "i'm masculine and fit in more with boys than girls, so i must really be a man" from "i'm not a man, so i can't act masculinely, i must act femininely" really? they are threads of the same rope and that rope holds us prisoner, it doesn't free us. true gender non-conformity is being female but realizing that your masculine nature doesn't change anything about you (trans ideology), nor does it need to change itself (conservative ideology).

i know you didn't ask for this part, but you're here in my inbox, so here you go: doesn't it strike you as strange that it's taking synthetic medical intervention to make you "feel like yourself?" is the route to authenticity really via the path of cosmetic surgery and synthetic hormones?

it's either intellectually dishonest or intellectually lazy to stop at you're just "thinking about...how you want to look and sound." WHY do you want to look masculinized and have a deeper voice? there is a zero-percent chance the answer to that question is entirely separate from how those traits get you treated in society. and that's the impact of misogyny. and please don't misunderstand this as me suggesting you should not be masculine--i just don't think you have to subject yourself to the harms of medical transition in order to BE masculine.

and i say this as someone who took these steps, who masculinized with a mastectomy and many years of testosterone. i get that there are certain advantages to appearing as a man in society despite being a woman, but largely these are individual advantages for ME that come at the expense of WOMEN. thinking i'm a man, men take me more seriously; this impacts women by reinforcing the idea that men deserve consideration when women's voices don't, and it means that i don't have to advocate for women to be taken seriously because I don't personally need it; it runs the risk of making me complacent to this phenomenon, convincing me that surely women are exaggerating when they share their experiences because i don't have such a hard time of things, all the men are nice to me. see how pernicious it is?

because i'm 5'10", skinny, and with a flat chest, many people think i'm a man when i'm running. this means i can run at night, with headphones in, in new places--all basically without fear. the stories other women tell me make it clear this isn't the case for them. some women i know don't run outside anymore at all because of how men treat them, sexualize them, harass them, prey on them. so i get that it is a clear advantage to appear as a man sometimes; this is one thing i'm actually really grateful for. but it is not worth the damage i did to my body, it isn't worth the sense of alienation i sometimes feel from women, a sense i also felt with men, even when i was pretending to be "one of them," it isn't worth the money and time and effort i spent trying to convincingly imitate men that i could have spent on things that would actually nurture me and my life.

"gender is a feeling" certainly is a theory, but so is "transition makes me more myself," and one is about as good as the other.

we are not alive to simply take our thoughts and feelings at face value! interrogate your feelings and your ideas! we live in a culture and none of us are immune to that. something something unexamined life.

best of luck, i'm rooting for you.

[mitigatedchaos]

Poll: Gender in Night City

There are a lot of gangs in Cyberpunk 2077. With some gangs, like the Valentinos, almost half of the gang members are women. In real life, any homicide is much more likely to have been committed by a man. What gives?

A) With the final achievement of gender equality, women are no longer pressured to conform to restrictive gender roles, freeing them up to pursue what they have always wanted most - murder.

B) Arasaka paid off environmental officials rather than install the €$3.2M scrubber system to remove industrial pseudoandrogens from the runoff of their production lines. The entire water supply of Night City is tainted with hormone disruptors and/or synthetic hormones.

C) Overuse of cosmetic cyberware, widely marketed to women, results in chronic low-grade cyberpsychosis. Due to sexism, cyberpsychosis is under-studied in women, especially because it's more likely to manifest in joining a boostergang than mowing down an entire busload of school children.

D) Almost everyone in Night City is using a hormone scheduler implant to alter their hormonal balance in order to get an advantage in the city's cutthroat competitive business environment. The effect is more pronounced on women, but society there leans masculine so this is broadly considered a good thing. This is causing subtle systemic social issues that no one can be bothered to deal with.

E) A strain of micro-organisms originally developed as part of a treatment protocol for transgender individuals got loose in the environment - 30 years ago. This is just how gender is now. Only old people remember otherwise, and everyone else just rolls their eyes whenever anyone over 45 starts complaining about it.

F) Presenting as the opposite sex in a social group provides a social advantage the more that said sex is in the minority in that field. XX and XY have become decoupled from appearance as every field in Night City approaches 50% presentation balance. Ripper docs are just that good.

G) Due to feminist lobbying, Night City laws dramatically reduce criminal sentencing for gender-equal organizations, all the way from street gangs to megacorps. Cross-gender employment is easy money in a city where easy money is hard to come by.

[melrosing]

The discussions about the “gaze” and Jaime fans is interesting.. like as a gay man who loves him I suppose the way he’s described physically helps but I think another big part of it at least to me is the subtle themes of gender roles in his story. The whole dressing as Cersei thing for one thing is.. interesting but also how he’s this seemingly perfect Westerosi man at first but after he loses his hand he has to learn other skills not usually ascribed to masculine men in Westeros and is made to feel less of a man due to his disability. At least from my own experience and hearing from others we tend to have a complex relationship with our masculinity thanks to society. It makes his relationship with someone like Brienne who has a complex relationship with gender herself really interesting too. Anyways sorry for the rant lol just wanted to add my two cents.. btw love your takes on him!

thank you so much for sharing, this is really interesting! I think one of the problems with the whole 'male gaze v female gaze' is that the definitions can become over-reliant on interests and experiences typical of cishet men and cishet women. I find these parts you've mentioned of Jaime's story really interesting as well, and I guess it's just about what those parts mean to you based on your experiences w gender & sexuality and what they mean to me based on mine??

but I do think gender is a big part of the appeal to both female fans and the LGBTQ+ community more broadly, because it makes the experiences of a cishet man, supposed paragon of masculinity, more accessible and engaging.

I suppose it's also worth clarifying again that the 'gaze' doesn't purely mean whether one feels attracted to a character or not but rather it's about whether the framing of a character/theme etc feels accommodating to that audience based on their own views and experiences of the world, whether that's with gender, sexuality, family, culture, power, pain, whatever. really not easy to define and I think it's easy to just slap a 'gaze' label on something w very little justification cos what does it really truly mean but. sometimes. u just feel it

[zippers]

ended up on a fucking idiot radfem's post due to tumblr's cursed "more like this post" algorithm. but i have to laugh. I didn't make it through the first sentence before the first (hilariously telling) lie. here we go (only time i am quoting the radfem):

"In most hunter-gatherer societies, men are the hunters and women are the gatherers – with men seemingly walking the furthest."

& linked that exact source. As a prehistoric archaeologist who wrote their thesis on how anthropological studies on women's roles are historically and currently biased by sexism in the field, and teaches a class debunking historical & prehistorical gender myths with facts about women & gender nonconforming individuals in antiquity... I was pretty sure whatever article that caused said radfem to claim that so broadly would be published in the 80s at the latest. (I'll refrain from specifying which 80s, but I will say I was not giving the radfem the benefit of the doubt as I watched & waited for the link to load!)

But to my surprise! A NatGeo article from 2020! And though it's behind a paywall you have to make free account, I laughed out loud when I saw the head/tagline:

And wait, it gets better:

I just had to read more, so I made an account to access full article... and, well, this radfem certainly didn't:

"B-but males are innately evil and have always been oppressive to f-females," hypothetical radfem reading this cries!

Oh and?

And look! You're even mentioned by name in the article, in the very last line as a cautionary tale against bioessentialism!

So I'll send you off with the most fitting words in the article you certainly did not read in your attempt to prove that ""males"" are biologically inclined to oppress women:

[qqueenofhades]

Congrats on your new journal article! Can you talk a little about your research? What’s your area of focus, what research plans do you have coming up? I have an insatiable interest in other peoples’ research!

I am a medievalist by training, though my focus has also expanded into early modernism and modernism, and one of my main research interests is how medievalism or medievally-themed ideas (for better and often uh, very much worse) operate in modern politics, culture, and media. My latest journal article is examining the premodern history and the culture of crusading in the current Russia-Ukraine war; the one that came out earlier in the year was premodern queer history and the crusades. I generally work on premodern (broadly defined) gender/queerness, law and society, war, crusades, religion, and politics, based in but by no means confined to Western Europe, with ancillary interests in the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe. As noted, I also have a strong comparative-historiography interest in demonstrating how medieval history is used to inform modern society and why this is often very misleading.

My current research focuses on premodern queer history, which has been the theme and/or co-theme of most of my more recent stuff. I am developing a mini-book project based on my UK conference paper from this summer focused on reconsidering queer legal, textual, narrative, and physical space within the premodern/medieval context. The general disclaimer is often that this material is marginalized, individualized, ignored, irrelevant, or existing unremarked on the fringes of medieval society, far from the centers of power, which frankly I don't think is correct. If you look at the places in which the theme and substance of "queerness" (in the modern definition; this is not the same at all in the medieval world) exists, it in fact directly informs and creates some of the most central institutions (and anxieties) of European-medieval society, including the king, the church, the literature, and other areas of traditionally-defined "power." So while the study of queer silence, gaps, omissions, and other places where the heteronormative record has prevailed is useful in some amount of retrieving unsignified queer experience, this also gives rise to the notion that premodern queerness is only ever silent or subtextual, and places where it very explicitly appears or speaks have to be argued over or discredited or somehow created to say something other than what they say. So yes.

Because my current university role is primarily administrative rather than teaching-focused, I don't have nearly as much time for actual research as I would like. I am in the process of developing the written prospectus for the above project; it will go to the editorial board at a medieval and renaissance studies center and university press when I am done. We don't know when that will be, but we certainly hope something like a timely fashion (I also have another full-length research project/monograph on premodern queer history that will probably have to wait for a faculty post with dedicated research time, assuming I ever get one. We will see.)

[echofromtheabyss]

I am starting to have this idea that queerness isn't the only thing that gets constructed differently over time. So does straightness.

I think there is a unique quality to 1950s-80s heterosexuality that sets it apart as a distinct "thing." It's distinct from before. It's distinct from after.

The 90s-2000s are in kind of a long tail of this cultural motif, and now we're seeing this particular expression of heterosexuality really disappear in a lot of types of media and in the public eye; society just isn't trying to match up 18 year olds the way it was between the 50s-80s. Increasingly, a middle class person is going to stay sexless up until age 25 then they have 5 years to get their shit together to get married. This is a really alien way of thinking about life and love to Boomers, who basically may be, as heterosexuals, the very most privileged generation with the very most social options.

This is really coming up for me writing a sci fi setting that's basically just stuffed with frustrated Boomers.

First of all, heterosexuality in the Late Midcentury and Late Century begins to be constructed as an actual agentic lifestyle and mode of hedonic expression and freedom as opposed to just a broad social expectation.

Like, a 50s square is just assumed to be heterosexual by default.

But increasingly from the 60s on, in many cases, a heterosexual is increasingly actually agentically heterosexual. And agentic heterosexuality requires 1) increasing sexual agency, 2) a high number of options, and 3) the acknowledged existence of non-heterosexuality (even if you think it's the devil or something) and the idea that you come of age and learn your sexual identity/broadly have a sexual awakening. There are still unconscious trad gender role expectations mixed up in all of this too for a lot of people which makes this a much more confusing analysis.

Granted, I think that this last is far truer of Gen X and Millennials (declining options, higher agency, and a sense of "when did I know I was straight?" as opposed to just taking it for granted.)

Also I think this is actually going away.

No, we are not all becoming gay.

But what's going away is the shape of life that gave rise to a particular expression and construction of heterosexuality, now that middle class younger people are facing a couple of years at best (assuming you hit 25 as a total virgin in every respect, then are in a hurry to find a partner while you can, in what are really evaluative, status-conscious, shitty conditions) during which they have to do all their dating, then marry a Socially Appropriate Partner, and polyamory is a straight person's only way out of this shitty high-pressure thing we've constructed normie heterosexuality to presently be.

This is *not* the agentic heterosexuality of Boomers, and Gen X maybe got to experience the fading end of it. Also, it's not the "marry for transactional reasons because it's What Everyone Does/and we just assume everyone is straight anyway" of pre-Boomers because 1) it's clearly not what EVERYONE does, being able to marry at all is privilege now 2) we now have the youth narrative of figuring out your sexual identity (though this happens very differently for Zoomers than it did for anyone older than Millennial). It's easy to say heteros are just a default that people assume to be a norm, but in 60s and 70s work it becomes really clear that some men and women are actually horny for each other. That actually stops being legible later which is where a lot of Stalking is Love comes in, because the media stopped representing female thirst and female initiative. (Lots of analyses here but in 50s work - women actually flirt back, whereas in 80s-90s work, men flirt and women roll their eyes or act icy.)

And it stops being legible entirely once society stops being so openly horny. It's like the Sexual Revolution created a very specific construction of heterosexuality outside of normie heteronormativity, that is... kinda its own thing and its own energy. It stops being as legible because 1) the norm got bigger and more liberalized toward a larger number of behaviors and 2) society is just less horny. But that's not all. I think modern LGBT identity is constructed differently from the world I came out in. In a weird way, it's like 80s-90s LGBT identity is downstream of the Sexual Revolution and 60s-70s ideas about individuality, in ways that lots of expressions of modern LGBT identity are not; modern LGBT identity is... different somehow in ways I can't put my finger on. (I am NOT saying there were no LGBT people prior to the Sexual Revolution!)

FWIW, the idea that sexual and gender identity can be constructed differently in different times and cultures, is fairly standard Queer Studies 101, the big thing is that here I'm actually considering that *heterosexuality* constructs differently in different cultures and eras, too.

[communistkenobi]

Sorry if this is a dumb question can you talk a little bit more about what you mean when you say someone’s politics are reactionary? And what the opposite of reactionary would look like in politics or media or what have you? I get that it’s a bad thing but not totally why and also what something better looks like

Not a stupid question at all - I use the term reactionary broadly to refer to right-wing responses to/analyses of current political circumstances. They are reacting to social, economic, and/or political progress and fighting for those things to be dismantled or destroyed in order to return “back” to an idealised past where those social and political advances were not available to people. This is the reason why the right wing has an eternal obsession with “tradition.” I don’t know the exact scope of the term’s lineage within Marxist thought specifically, but part of reactionary politics is, well, reaction - there is no political imagination offered beyond what already exists or has existed, reactionaries can only react to current conditions, and so right wing political projects demand a backwards historical trajectory, either to an earlier stage of capitalism or even feudalism, where these institutions better enforced (in their view, not necessarily in reality) gendered divisions of labour and gendered roles in society, cisheterosexual norms and practices, racial segregation, imperial and colonial domination, aristocratic class structures, and so on. These are founded on moral claims about what society “ought” to be like, and those moral claims are often bound to religious authorities like the Christian church, intellectual and political projects like white supremacy, colonial states like the US or France or Canada or the UK or etc, and so on. The goal is to protect these existing institutions and reinvigorate them with more political and social power - to make them great again, one might say! 

Often to justify these political goals, claims are made about harm being done to a nation or people (this is what animates “the great replacement” conspiracy about white people being bred out of society), to traditional family values, to IQ, but these are not empirical claims being made - the harm is metaphysical, the progress they oppose destabilises idealistic categories like gender or race, it’s not actually physically harming real human beings in the world. Reactionaries can hold the belief that the white race needs to be protected from non-whites, for example, despite the fact that “race” is not something that can be discovered or proven in the material or natural world, it is a fiction that organises society hierarchically but is not premised on anything real. Reactionaries equate the destabilisation of these categories with harm (eg trans people destroy the gender binary, gender equality destroys the need for men, racial equality harms whites), and so their opposition is founded on maintaining these categories, not reducing harm. The harm is part of their goal! It’s why when you point out that, for examples, trans healthcare greatly improves the lives of trans people in order to rebut reactionary claims that most trans people regret transition, they don’t care - their goal is not to reduce harm, it is to maintain existing gendered institutions and norms. They are using the language of harm for rhetorical purposes, but they are not making empirical claims about harm because they don’t give a shit about reducing harm to trans people.

It is opposite to revolutionary politics, a political imaginary looking to produce new institutions, new forms of social and economic relationships, new political horizons not previously developed in human history, or to build upon past projects that have come before. These projects are premised on analyses of current political and social conditions in order to identify the harms they cause. Things like decolonisation, socialism, transfeminism, and so on can act as (potentially) revolutionary political projects that seek to abolish old social/political relationships and hierarchies, be they gender, capitalism, settler colonialism, etc, for the purpose of creating a more just and equitable society. Demands to abolish old social and political forms are founded on empirical claims of harm - settler colonialism produces harm, the gender binary produces harm, capitalism produces harm, etc., and we can measure and assess the extent of these harms. This is part of the reason people claim Marxism is scientific, because its political conclusions and proposed solutions are based on an analysis of “material conditions” ie the real world & its various structures

[probablyasocialecologist]

Publications like Die Freundin (The Girlfriend); Frauenliebe (Women Love, which later became Garçonne); and Das 3. Geschlecht (The Third Sex, which included writers who might identify as transgender today), found dedicated audiences who read their takes on culture and nightlife as well as the social and political issues of the day. The relaxed censorship rules under the Weimar Republic enabled gay women writers to establish themselves professionally while also giving them an opportunity to legitimize an identity that only a few years later would be under threat.

[...]

There were some twenty-five to thirty queer publications in Berlin between 1919 and 1933, most of which published around eight pages of articles on a bi-weekly basis. Of these, at least six were specifically oriented toward lesbians. What made them unique is the space they made for queer women, who had traditionally been marginalized on account of both gender and sexuality, to grapple with their role in a rapidly changing society. (The concept of the “new,” albeit straight, woman in the Weimar Republic has been researched broadly, including by Rüdiger Graf in Central European History, who writes that it reflected a crisis of masculinity following defeat in the First World War as well fears over the country’s future when women were putting off getting married and having children.) In these interwar years in Germany, queer and transgender identity became more accepted, in large part thanks to the work of Magnus Hirschfeld, a Jewish doctor whose Institut für Sexualwissenschaft focused on issues of gender, sex, and sexuality. At the same time, women in Germany were making strides toward greater independence and equity; they gained the right to vote in 1918, and feminist organizations like Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine cultivated space for women in public spheres, encouraging their advancement in politics. As Sara Ann Sewell writes in the journal Central European History, the German Communist Party created the Red Women and Girls’ League in 1925 to attract more women and working-class people, particularly through organizing factory workers. More generally, German women were becoming increasingly empowered. Queer people—including women—rallied around the abolishment of contemporary sodomy laws. This struggle “created a wider climate of publication, activism, and social organization that was much more embracing of different types of queer and trans lives,” according to Katie Sutton, an associate professor of German and gender studies at the Australian National University.

[enarei]

I'm sorry, but I don't believe you have even a rudimentary grasp on feminist theory, and could benefit from an education.

maybe you're right, and you're welcome to educate me (like, genuinely, I would probably enjoy that). I would appreciate if you were a bit more specific with what of what I've said makes you think that, because I believe the gist of my argument is very important if not to feminism broadly, to a model of feminism that is capable of incorporating trans women without stabbing them in the back within its critique of patriarchy —namely that there isn't one intrinsic, "natural" female/woman identity or trait that invites misogyny, it's a self-reifying set of relations which creates the necessity for the concept of "womanhood" to exist, performing a woman's roles and being perceived as a woman is what makes women, women, and that includes trans women, there's little more to it than that

if you wanna set yourself apart from everyone and say you're actually a real woman, because you say you are, and dissect the difference from the transfem that doesn't necessarily think of their relation to gender through the same exclusive binary lens, however that manifests in practice, whichever labels and pronouns they choose to use, then do so, but I think you'll find that gets us no closer to examining why we are actually oppressed and the ideas we have to disseminate to counter that, because that line, while important for self-actualization, isn't actually very relevant to how we're perceived, which is often the most important aspect of how we're treated by society. while we can affirm our personal identity in relationships that are both recurring and premised on mutual respect, we don't get that privilege most of the time, and people's understanding of us are based on assumptions.

it does not matter then that you ID as a woman and the other person doesn't if you never get the opportunity to say that, it's completely irrelevant. if you are both read as <genderweird person dressed like a woman & male voice>, you're both legitimate targets for modes of violence for people associated with the words "tranny faggot".

I also find this very disingenuous because it ignores that passing, presenting as our preferred gender, isn't always a possibility, likewise, the implication that "men" by necessity can't be discriminated for gender non-conformity under exactly the same rules as non-passing trans women is completely arbitrary. you don't know how other people are being read, you don't know if they're being read as a gay man or a tranny trying to hide the fact they're tranny, or something in between, how okay the interviewer is with either and where do they draw the line. you simply don't know that! we could run the same thought experiment where a trans woman is boymoding for a job interview, wearing a binder to hide her tits (something I've done countless times), using her deadname and not displaying any signs of femininity, and she gets the job and the "man" who has a panty wearing kink and maybe also presents a lot more overtly effeminate in public doesn't, because the interviewer thought she was less of a faggot.

even if the "man" may have an easier time concealing what you would call a "fetish" at work, something you can't really distinguish from a normal aspect of a person's gender expression without a degree of moralism, are trans women that are not always out, or hide their transness at their job, not subjected to transmisogyny, are they not deserving of calling themselves trans women? should we shun them and lump them with "chasers" because they are not baring their femininity full time and being pummeled for that constantly? like, where do you draw the line? and I'm not saying the guy who likes to wear his wife's skirt while she pegs him and is otherwise a massive homophobe the rest of the time gets it like you or me, but I think it's pretty obtuse to pretend the line between "binary trans woman" and "non-trans CAMAB person who cross-dresses; whose oppression should be understood under the framing of transmisogyny", can only be measured by those two points.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Colin Wright

Over the last decade, we have observed a striking shift in the politics of LGBT issues. There has been a move away from broadly supported principles based on equality toward the imposition of radical, pseudoscientific ideologies concerning biological sex. A growing genre of articles in high-profile news outlets, magazines, and scientific journals is signaling the end of a binary and immutable perspective on biological sex. The appeal of these pieces lies in the belief that rejecting the binary concept of sex provides society with a liberating opportunity for self-definition, unfettered by material constraints.

One might consider these debates too arcane to have any real significance. However, the pseudoscientific notion that biological sex is mutable and exists on a non-binary continuum serves as a key justification for allowing males who identify as women to compete in female sports and access female prisons, and for administering treatments such as puberty blockers and “gender-affirming” (i.e., body modifying) hormones and surgeries to adolescents and adults alike to fix a perceived misalignment between their sex and “gender identity.” The implications are serious, as these recommendations make women’s sex-based rights unenforceable and directly impact the healthy bodies and minds of children. It is of utmost importance that such actions are grounded in reliable science, not in fashionable political ideologies.

With Pride month kicking off, we can anticipate a veritable flood of articles heralding the end of the sex binary. Indeed, we didn’t have to wait very long.

On the first day of Pride month, the San Francisco Chronicle featured an article by ecologist Ash Zemenick titled, “Sex and gender are binaries? Sorry, that’s a scientific falsehood.” In the article, Zemenick wasted no time in proclaiming that the notion that “there are only two sexes available for humans to inhabit: male or female” is “false.” This stance stems from his argument that “Biological sex can be defined in many ways. And when it is accurately defined, it’s never binary.” He then goes down a list of candidate traits he claims are used to define sex with the aim of proving that none of them align with a binary view.

To the layperson unfamiliar with the science, Zemenick’s essay might seem like a compelling rebuttal of outdated, prejudiced notions of biology that have overstayed their bigoted welcome into the 21st century. However, this is far from the truth. Whether due to a lack of scientific understanding or a deliberate attempt to mislead, Zemenick's analysis falls short. To avoid being misled, it’s crucial to clarify several things: the difference between sex and gender, what sexes are, and what biologists mean when they refer to sex as “binary.” It’s vital to establish this foundation before demonstrating why Zemenick’s assertions lack credibility.

The distinction between sex and gender must first be disentangled. The term “sex” signifies whether a person is male or female, a categorization rooted in objective reproductive biology. Conversely, “gender” is usually characterized by notions of masculinity and femininity or the social roles, behaviors, and expressions traditionally linked to sex. Despite many activists’ efforts to blur the line between sex and gender, it is critical to maintain their distinctness. This conflation redefines sexual orientation in unscientific ways. Homosexuality, which means same-sex attraction, becomes “attraction to the same or similar genders.” Bisexuality, in turn, is morphed into “attraction to two (or more) genders”, gutting the term of meaning, and leading to asinine claims about bisexuality being uniquely transphobic. Needless to say, this makes advocating for LGBT rights as well as sex education much harder. Few people would seriously contend that human behavior and expression strictly adhere to two forms, but sex is different, which is why Zemenick’s arguments against the binary concept of sex fly in the face of science.

The sexes — male and female — represent two distinct reproductive strategies. Males are characterized as the sex that produces numerous small sex cells, or gametes, known as sperm. Females, conversely, are the sex that yields fewer but larger sex cells, referred to as eggs or ova. Consequently, we distinguish between males and females based on the type of sex cell their primary reproductive anatomy (gonads) can or are expected to produce. This is not unique to humans but is universally applied throughout the animal and plant kingdoms. Since there are only two types of sex cells — sperm and ovum — there exist only two sexes. This binary division between sperm and ovum forms the crux of biologists’ reference to sex as a “binary.”

[ This is what it would look like if biological sex were a spectrum. Source: Zach Elliott ]

In his introductory remarks, however, Zemenick asserts that “Biological sex can be defined in many ways,” none of which is intrinsically superior or more essential than the others. He lists external genitalia, chromosomes, hormones, and ultimately gametes as traits that, upon examination, fail to align with a binary construct.

Focusing on external genitalia, Zemenick highlights intersex conditions, which are developmental conditions that result in mixed or ambiguous appearing reproductive anatomy. He asserts that people with intersex conditions are as prevalent as "people with naturally red hair" (1-2%, according to his cited source) and that their existence discredits the sex binary. This argument, although widespread, is fundamentally flawed and relies on both misapprehension and distorted statistics.

The principal error in Zemenick's intersex argument lies in its gross misinterpretation of the sex binary concept. As explained earlier, the statement “sex is binary” from a biologist’s perspective does not imply that every human throughout history can be unambiguously categorized as male or female. Rather, it refers to the fact that considering the presence of only two types of sex cells (sperm and ova), there can only be two sexes. Sexual ambiguity does not undermine the sex binary because an intersex condition does not lead to anatomy that can or would produce a third type of sex cell.

Moreover, Zemenick’s claim that 1-2% of the population has intersex conditions vastly overstates the reality, exceeding the actual figure by nearly 100 times. This statistic originated from Anne Fausto-Sterling in Sexing The Body: Gender Politics And The Construction Of Sexuality (2000), and was reiterated in an American Journal of Human Biology article titled “How Sexually Dimorphic Are We?” Fausto-Sterling and her colleagues reached their 1-2% estimation by applying an arbitrary and excessively broad definition of “intersex” as “an individual who deviates from the Platonic ideal of physical dimorphism at the chromosomal, genital, gonadal, or hormonal levels.” To convey the absurdity of their strict criteria, females with unusually small clitorises and males with unusually large penises were classified as intersex.

Most critically, the vast majority of the people Fausto-Sterling categorized as intersex exhibited no sexual ambiguity whatsoever. When a clinically relevant definition of intersex is applied, such as when “chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female,” the incidence of intersex conditions dwindles to approximately 0.018%, or about 1 in 5500. Nevertheless, the prevalence of intersex conditions is immaterial to the binary nature of sex. The occurrence of sexual ambiguity, regardless of its frequency, does not constitute a third sex.

Zemenick then addresses sex chromosomes, seeking to debunk the assumption that girls always possess XX and boys always have XY sex chromosomes by highlighting other “varied arrangements” of sex chromosomes such as XYY, XXX, XXY or XO. From this he concludes that “Chromosomal sex is not binary.” The issue here is that no competent biologist would argue that chromosomes define an individual’s sex. Zemenick appears to be very confused about the distinction between how sex is defined versus how it is determined.

In the realm of developmental biology, the term “determined” describes the factors that trigger specific tissues to develop along a certain pathway, resulting in a particular organ or appendage. This is the concept biologists refer to when they discuss “chromosomal sex determination” in humans and other mammals. However, the manner in which an organism's sex is determined substantially differs from how it’s defined. For example, some animals like alligators lack sex chromosomes altogether. Instead, whether a particular egg hatches a male or female alligator is determined by incubation temperature. Critically, even though humans and alligators have drastically different mechanisms for determining sex, the sex of an individual human or alligator is always defined consistently: by the type of gamete he or she can produce or would produce, based on their gonads.

Zemenick’s assertion that varying sex chromosome combinations (known as sex chromosome aneuploidies) disrupt the sex binary reveals a novice understanding of biology at best, despite his self-introduction as “a doctorate-carrying scientist.” In truth, these “varied arrangements” represent chromosomal variation within males and females, not additional unique sexes beyond males and females.

Zemenick next shifts his focus to what he calls “hormonal sex.” He contends that this concept is not binary because males and females each produce both estrogen and testosterone, and that “the levels of estrogen and testosterone in bodies is a distribution.” However, this is putting the cart before the horse. Hormone levels do not define one’s sex; rather, they’re a result of one’s sex. Males have testes and females have ovaries, and these organs predominantly produce testosterone and estrogen, respectively.

Lastly, Zemenick considers gametes, which he calls “the most reductive definition of sex.” He argues that we cannot determine a person’s sex based on gametes because some individuals are sterile and thus do not produce gametes. Others have their gonads removed and consequently cease to produce gametes. Moreover, boys don’t produce sperm until they reach puberty; does this imply they are sexless prior to that point? According to Zemenick, there exist “three states: no gametes, eggs or sperm,” leading him to conclude that “gametic sex is not binary.”

This overlooks the fact that one’s actual ability to produce gametes doesn’t define their sex. A sterile or pre-pubertal male remains male due to the development of male primary reproductive organs, irrespective of their current functionality. Similarly, surgical removal of one’s gonads doesn’t alter a person’s sex, as their reproductive phenotype has already manifested. Most importantly, “no gametes” doesn’t denote a third sex (which would require a third kind of gamete). Therefore, even under Zemenick’s proposed system, there would still be only two sexes.

As I have pointed out several times, an individual’s sex is defined by the type of gamete they can or would produce. This definition is not arbitrary; its validity can be evidenced by the fact that all of Zemenick’s alternate sex definitions — genital, chromosomal, and hormonal — still depend on the primacy of the gametic definition of sex to maintain any sense of coherence.

We know human males typically have penises and females have vaginas because we understand that being male or female is independent of external genitalia. We recognize that females usually have XX chromosomes and males XY because these chromosomal combinations correspond almost invariably with female and male sexes, respectively. We associate high testosterone levels with males and high estrogen levels with females because we comprehend that these hormone levels correlate with an individual’s sex. It would have been literally impossible to associate any of these traits with males and females without first understanding what males and females are, apart from these traits. And what all these traits are caused by or correlate with is the type of gamete — sperm or ova — that an individual’s gonads can or would produce.

One red flag that should alert readers to Zemenick’s unscientific, ideological agenda is that he fails to explain or clarify anything. Instead, his sole aim appears to be to muddle matters and leave his audience perplexed. A competent educator, possessing a mastery of their subject, wouldn’t undermine basic textbook portrayals of concepts only to leave their audience floundering. Instead, they would substitute one model with another that imparts a deeper, more comprehensive understanding of known facts.

It’s easy to differentiate a truth-seeking scientist from a Critical Social Justice activist masquerading as one. A scientist searches for patterns in the natural world to understand it in light of more fundamental truths. In stark contrast, the objective of these activists is simply to sow confusion while asserting that truth is always elusive and relativistic. Considering these different approaches to the natural world, Zemenick’s true modus operandi should be unmistakably clear.

Pseudoscience on the biology of sex has indeed permeated academia, medicine, and society at large, proliferating unchecked due to its perceived alignment with Critical Social Justice ideals. However, let us remember that political trends, while captivating, are transient in nature, whereas truth endures forever despite its unpopularity at times. Human rights must be built on a foundation of truth. Hope lies in speaking that truth as loudly as possible and limiting the collateral impact of reality-distorting ideologies on policy, medicine, and society until evidence and reason make their inevitable comeback.

[yico0]

The Powerpuff Girls

How do structural mythology, cultural studies, and cultural history reflect the series’ world and world-building around superheroes? 

The Powerpuff Girls constructs its world through a combination of structural mythology, cultural studies, and cultural history. Structurally, the series adheres to the superhero genre's conventions with the trio of Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup representing archetypal hero figures. The cultural studies lens is evident in the show's exploration of diverse characters and themes, challenging traditional gender norms by featuring female protagonists with distinct personalities. Cultural history manifests in the series' context, reflecting the late 1990s and early 2000s ethos, contributing to the development of the Powerpuff Girls' characters, their challenges, and the dynamics within their fictional world.

In what ways are the superheroes and their abilities informed by their racial, gender, sexual, and cultural identities? 

The Powerpuff Girls challenges gender norms by portraying the superheroes as three powerful and capable girls, transcending traditional gender roles in the superhero genre. However, the series does not explicitly delve into racial, sexual, or cultural identities. Instead, the characters' abilities and identities are more broadly representative, emphasizing universal themes of empowerment and teamwork, thereby fostering inclusivity. The focus is on their superhero roles rather than specific identity markers, aligning with the series' commitment to a diverse and inclusive narrative.

In what ways do costumes and concealing identities further separate the superheroes from normal society? How necessary is it for the superheroes to hide their true identities to successfully achieve their goals?

Costumes and concealed identities in The Powerpuff Girls serve to separate the superheroes from normal society by creating a distinct superhero persona. Despite their childlike bodies, the girls don't wear masks like the typical superheros, but their costumes signify their superheroic roles. The necessity of hiding their true identities is tied to protecting their personal lives and maintaining a sense of normalcy within the context of their youthful appearances. By concealing their identities, the Powerpuff Girls can navigate both the challenges of superheroism and the mundane aspects of their lives without undue interference or scrutiny. The juxtaposition of their childlike appearance with their superhero responsibilities adds an additional layer of complexity to the need for identity concealment.

How do the economic, political, and social events that occurred during the series’ creation and broadcast cultivate and inform the superheroes’ decisions and actions? 

Drawing insights from Kevin D. Williams's article, which explores how superhero narratives reflect societal changes, we can apply this framework to The Powerpuff Girls. The late 1990s and early 2000s, when the series was created and broadcast, were marked by significant cultural shifts. The show aligns with broader societal trends of the time, emphasizing themes of empowerment and diversity, which are likely influenced by the cultural climate of that era. For instance, the late 1990s witnessed a growing awareness of gender equality, and the Powerpuff Girls, as female superheroes, may be seen as a response to or reflection of this cultural shift. The series captures the zeitgeist of the late 20th century and early 21st century, with its characters embodying the values and aspirations of the period.

How do the superheroes question themselves, each other, and their obligations and duties to the people around them? 

The series engage in self-reflection and questioning throughout the series. Despite their superpowers, they grapple with typical challenges of growing up, forming their identities, and understanding their roles as superheroes. The dynamics between the sisters involve questioning and occasional conflicts, reflecting the complexities of sibling relationships. The superheroes' obligations and duties to the people around them are generally portrayed positively, with the girls embracing their roles as protectors of their city, but occasional moments of doubt or internal conflict contribute to their character development and the overall narrative.

[sleepyperefix]

The barbie movie isnt perfect but I am kinda confused as to how many people think it's anti-men. It is a feminist movie and as such among other things, it holds a mirror up showing how we as men do ourselves a disservice by relying our self worth (and by proxy form our identities) on manhood and capabilities, instead of just who we are as individuals who exist. The movie is incredibly on the nose, which at first I thought was a flaw, but then I remembered that I have seen discussions where it was obvious that those sentiments actually need to be said out loud as they not obvious to everyone. On the other side apparently it should have been more clear with how it is not anti-men but also a commentary for all genders about growing and building an identity and self worth outside your designated role and question your world.

This ended up way too long but I hope it is understandable nonetheless. I am going to generalize a lot. Obviously people are not card boards and most men who are secure in themselves have an identity beyond manhood. I am broadly comparing toxic masculinity and gender hierarchies in reality to Barbies and Kens in Barbieland. Also spoilers.

The movie touches on how men, in order to hide their insecurities, lean into their role as man and acquire/max out object-focused (esp. male connotated objects and topics as cars, STEM and technology) knowledge and skills. This is to conform to the capability and providing standards for men, to find an identity within good role fullfilment and also a place in the united/uniform male experience (perfectly seen in 'push' and in men vs. women memes) since diverging from it devalues the own claim to manhood. The good ol' toxic masculinity spiel. Men in the patriarchy cope with the responsibility of power with misogyny, highlighting the perceived gender-dichotomy and how they are just biologically more [insert positively connotated attribute, men have claimed as part of their biology]. Then they assert the claim by 'proving' to be more capable than women. They decide the rules of the game and what a worthy skill is (and for whom), which they then get trained on as early as they are toddlers through toys. It is a lose-lose cycle.

And the Barbies do something similar at the beginning. They celebrate and are named after their professions/capabilities, believed they saved girls in the real world (legacy), and let the Kens worship them. They have more natural self worth and security as Barbies by virtue of being Barbies (just like men build their individual self worth on being man and their object-focused capabilites) but are somewhat empty because they are captives of their own system and habits, never really questioning it. They deserve power and to be worshipped, because they are Barbies. However Kens, at the beginning, are supposed to be empty on the inside and focused solely outwards on Barbies. It is not even that the Barbies want them, but this is how it is supposed to be. They are accessories. Their role inherently doesnt offer worth outside of Barbie, not even in capabilities (just as the women's role often is described as worthy only in relation to men and family). When the positions switched you then see how the Kens still not having the same natural self worth the Barbies had. It is socialized and fundamental, a casualness of design in Barbie society and the Kens are just copying the structure without understanding it and still having their old socialization internalized. Leading to Ken still being unhappy, chasing the same dream, and still insecure as a prestige role needs to be nurtured into natural self worth and with that a belief of deservingness and worthy capabilities to provide and be desired.

The movie then shows how men hold themselves captive in patriarchy, in the real world this is leading to sentiments such as: "Only women, children, and dogs are loved unconditionally. A man is only loved under the condition that he provide something" (Chris Rock), which was discussed as if feminism was to blame for the transactional nature of love and not the patriarchy. But then the movie also shows them that they are enough and how to escape the cycle. Accept yourself and fill yourself with self-worth by virtue of existing as an individual. It is an extremely timely message for men in a time when hustling, grinding and becoming a "high value man" is taught to young boys by influencers.

And most importantly it shows that we as humans can all be equal offenders if we have power but are emptily reproducing, insecure, and not reflecting. Ken is not an evil character. At first he is suffering from being oppressed. Not because Barbie doesnt want him, but because he isn't allowed and able yet to be anything other than the unloved and eternally competing and unsure accessory. His fault lies in going 'eye for eye' instead of for equality. Barbieland is said to be perfect but subtextually we are supposed to see that it is not. However, the Barbies are not evil either, they just don't know differently, they reproduce instead of question. This inherent human flaw is seen in them not establishing equality immediately but wanting to ease into it over time. They also are brainwashed in "seconds", because - an this is just my interpretation - they were just reproducing a (more prestige) role and an identity build on profession + role. Our main Barbie did not want to question anything either. In the real world then, men are also not inherently evil, but complicit in evil by naivety or ignorance, and with festering insecurity and lack of self-identity we have the very real potential to become toxic and alt-right. That's how they get you. They pick insecure men and give them a manual: (1) support the patriarchy and right-winged/conservative parties, (2) become capable and able to provide (dont worry, the path has been eased for you), (3) base your self worth on that, you will apear confident. Then women, who in this system have limited options, will want them and they will be powerful and worthy individuals. All in all, this message is as pro-man as feminism usually gets and supported in the movie by the men in the real world. They don't have an evil scheme to hurt someone, they even try to save Barbieland but ultimately cannot let go of their habits (almost like the Barbies) as they are ignorant and reluctant to lose power.

So no, Barbie (2023) is not anti-men. In fact, I felt more understood by this movie than by any other that sugar coats the lose-lose cycle of patriarchy. Barbie leaves at the end and that makes perfect sense. Like Frodo she has been irreversibly changed too much and and Barbieland has not. The Barbies might be capable and secure, but they are also just learning to question their world and changing it and themselves only slowly. The Kens are just starting to become secure and to find themselves outside of Barbies. The stereotypical Barbie on the other side has to go to a place where life might be worse but in the end as complex and full as she now is.