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#at least 80% of femininity is degrading
hadesoftheladies · 22 days
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being unwilling to accept degradation on any level as a woman makes people so mad at you lmao. no i will not exist and walk around like i am here to be performative art and not a human being fuck you
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bleach-your-panties · 8 months
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💔the financial abuser - kingpin!touya todoroki  x black! wife!reader
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warnings: modern au/no quirks, drug family business, mention of past child abuse (y'all know the story), family illness (not touya or y/n), oral (m! receiving), car sex, pre-marital sex, dacryphilia, degradation, breeding kink, size kink, pregnancy, coercion, controlling/obsessive behavior, stalking, angry outbursts, choking (not in a sexual context), drug use, gaslighting, manipulation, verbal abuse, emotional abuse, mental illness, serious injury/hospitalization. read at your own risk!
☠️: some dialogue/actions inspired by true events.
💔: banner images from pinterest
💔: banner made by me with canva
💔post themes: ain't about the money  - t.i. ft. young thug
                           soldier - destiny's child
                       throat baby (remix) - 
 brs kash ft. city girls
                           baby by me - 50 cent ft. neyo
                           whatever you like - t.i.
                           what you know - t.i.
                             superman - eminem
                           papers - usher
                    roses - outkast
                           gold digger - kanye west
💔9.7k words!
💔read in dark mode for best experience!
🖤yo. 🖤series. 🖤iida.
—-
----
If you ain’t no punk, holler,
“We want prenup!”
“We want prenup!”
Yeah, that’s something that you need to have
‘Cause when she leave yo ass
She gone leave with half
___
You met your husband, Touya, at a hair salon in your neighborhood. 
In the "hood", so to speak. You grew up in an impoverished neighborhood in one of the roughest cities to live in in the nation, with an 80% black population and a violent crime rate 95% higher than the national average.
Although it was dangerous as hell, the living conditions were less than desirable, and you were constantly surrounded by sketchy people, this was your home.
You'd grown up in this city and attended school here from elementary through university. Now at age 26, you're a successful chemical engineer, working as a consultant for the city's power plant. 
Your parents are both deceased unfortunately; your father died in your childhood and your mother passed away after a long battle with breast cancer just after your senior year of university, so as far as family went, you only had your dear aunt, who was getting up in age.
She's your father's sister, having supported you throughout most of your academic life by helping you get back and forth to campus, attending all necessary parental conferences when your mother was too sick to, and finally, attending all of your graduation ceremonies. You are extremely thankful for her.
Present day, all you do is work, pretty much. 
With your work, you usually have to keep your hair pulled back in a tight bun and covered with a protective hair cap. It was always a relief to be able to get your hair done and have your stylist rub her long, acrylic nails against your scalp while she lathered your natural tresses with sweet-smelling shampoo.
The soft ding of the bell hanging over the door alerted you to a newcomer's presence while you sat underneath the dryer reading one of the old Jet magazines that every salon always seemed to keep on hand. 
"Good afternoon, ladies."
You looked up from your magazine and your dark brown eyes fell upon the most handsome man you had ever seen. 
Tall, muscular frame, skin the color of freshly churned milk and hulking arms a collage of black ink. He was no shorter than 6'5'' at the least. You could tell by the way that he had to duck under the door frame to come inside the shop. 
"Heyyy, Touya~" Your eyes moved around, pupils enlarging as you realized that every other woman in the shop had stopped whatever they were doing to greet this man.
Just who is this guy?
He walked further inside the small salon, his small, narrowed, turquoise eyes roaming over each and every feminine face before stopping at yours.
Oh no, he's walking over here!
Your face began to heat up; you hated being put on the spot and this man was just too gorgeous, you might faint! 
He smirked at you and dug his big hands into the pockets of his black joggers.
"What's up, pretty? I think I would remember seeing a face as gorgeous as yours around here. What's your name?" 
Your stylist came over then, smacking her lips at Touya and motioning for you to come over to her chair.
"Leave her alone, Touya. She wants nothing to do with the likes of you. She's a good girl, she's not interested in thugs."
That made your blush worsen and you lowered your head to the tiled floor, hoping that he'd just move on and bother one of the other women.
Touya laughed loudly. He brought his arms up to rest behind his hair, which you now noticed to be a brilliant white, just like freshly fallen snow. 
His big biceps bulged and you could see that they were also covered in tattoos. He even had them all along his neck, trailing upwards to just under his chiseled jawline and then downwards, disappearing into his white V-neck.
"How do you know what she likes, Tisha? And I'm not a thug, I'm a well-respected businessman, I'll have you know."
The entire shop cracked up at that, making your anxiety lessen just as you looked up to further examine this man.
Unfortunately, he caught you looking and bit his lip at you. Usually, the gesture would've made you cringe, but it was different when he did it. It was sexy. 
His lips were a little plump and when he bit them, you could see two glints of silver: a tongue stud and a lip stud.
"Y/n is my name." You said simply. 
He smiled this time and squatted down so you didn't have to crane your neck to look at his face.
"Y/n, huh? Pretty name for a pretty girl."
You almost wanted to roll your eyes, but instead, you smiled.
"Thank you….Touya…"
He nodded slightly. More glints of silver when he made the gesture; he also had his right eyebrow pierced, three stud piercings in his nostril, and multiple silver hoops in each ear.
“God had no business making this man this damn fine.”
A deep chuckle broke you out of your thought process.
"Well, I appreciate that, beautiful. Tisha, don't charge her anything for her hair. I'll pay for it."
Aw, shit, did I say that out loud?! Nice going, Y/n!
"What? No! You don't have to do that, I can pay for myself!" You huffed. You knew this game all too well.
If he paid for your hair, he'd feel like you owed him something. Not a chance.
"Oh, girl hush and let that man pay for you. Keep that $750 in your pocket, shit." Tisha chuckled as she began to install your wig.
Touya handed her the money out of his wallet while grinning. He held his hands up, palms facing you in a gesture of surrender.
“I promise I don’t want anything in return, but maybe you wouldn’t mind grabbing breakfast with me one day? I know this great spot right down the street from the salon.”
You scoffed, now finally rolling your eyes at him.
“That’s still wanting something, pretty boy, even if it’s only a meal.”
Touya shrugged. “So that’s a no, then? Too bad. I won’t keep bothering you, though. See ya around, pretty girl.” He teased with a smug look on his face before turning and walking back out the door of the salon.
A few hours later, Tisha was done with your hair. She handed you a mirror so you could look at yourself.
“Thanks, Tish, it looks amazing!” You dug in your purse for your wallet so you could give her a tip, but she stopped you.
“Girl, what are you doing? Touya already paid me.” Eyebrows scrunched, you pushed the $20 bill into her hand anyway and got up out of the chair before she could protest.
“Just take it. Maybe next time I come I can get a discount on my lash installment.” 
“Girl, you crazy! Get on out of here!” 
You left the shop smiling to yourself. The bell tinkled over your head as you walked out into the bright sunlight. 
Your smile immediately dropped when you walked over to your car and noticed that you had a flat tire.
“Oh no, what the hell?! When did that get there? Aw, man…” 
The offending item that had punctured your tire was a long, rusty nail sticking out the side of it. 
“Dammit, now I’m going to have to call a tow truck.” You sighed and pulled your iPhone out of your purse.
“Need some help, pretty?”
It was Touya - he’s still been here all this time?
He casually leaned up against a smoke-gray Range Rover with black rims. The brake calipers had been spray-painted a deep purple.
“Oh, Touya. There’s a nail in my tire, but it’s fine, I can just call-”
“I can wait with you for the tow truck and then take you home.” He offered. Getting up off the truck, he stalked his way over, taking long strides. In a second, he was standing right next to you, so close that you could smell his expensive cologne.
You didn’t know how to react, just kind of looking up at him with a stuck expression on your face. 
“Uh, you really don’t have to…I could just call someone..”
“Why do that when I’m standing right here?”
A perfectly arched eyebrow raised. “Because I don’t know you? You could be a serial killer.” 
You know now that he’s most likely a drug dealer, like that was any better…but yeah.
Touya just laughed at you and shook his head. 
“Not gonna make it easy for me, huh? I like that. Keep it up, baby doll. I’ll get you sooner or later.” He walked back over to his truck and opened the driver-side door.
“At least come sit and chat with me until the tow truck comes?” You couldn’t continue to resist him, no matter how much you wanted to. Especially when he looked at you with those turquoise eyes.
—-
And that’s how your whirlwind romance began.
—-
Now I ain’t saying she a gold digger
But she ain’t messing with no broke niggas
Now I ain’t saying she a gold digger
But she ain’t messing with no broke niggas
Cutie the bomb, met her at a beauty salon
With a baby Louis Vuitton under her arm 
She said, “I can tell you rock, I can tell by your charm
Far as girls you got a flock
I can tell by your charm and your arm”
But I’m lookin’ for the one, have you seen her?
—-
After that day, you and Touya began somewhat of a friendship.
Whenever you came to get your hair done, he’d somehow always be there and he’d always pay for your hair, nails, and lashes. Turns out that he owned the beauty salon, the diner that he offered to take you out to, and pretty much everything else on that strip.
One day after you got off of work, you were surprised to see his truck out in the parking lot.
He was waiting for you.
“Touya! Funny meeting you here, what’s up?” You put your hands on your hips.
“I want to take you on a date tonight.” 
Your eyes bulged slightly, probably making you look like a fool, but Touya didn’t waver in his proposition. 
"What do you say, pretty? Go out with me?" 
You began weighing all the positives and negatives of going on a date with him. He could have a gaggle of jealous exes just waiting to catch him with another woman and raise hell, or one of his opps that was waiting to catch him slipping so they could blow his head off.
Tough decision, but eventually you folded and agreed.
—-
After your first date, you saw Touya more and more, seemingly everywhere you went.
The grocery store, the mall, restaurants. You even saw him across the street from your dentist's office one day while leaving an appointment.
Despite all of these seemingly random pop-ups, you found yourself undeniably attracted to Touya, which may have clouded your judgment just a tad.
So over the next several weeks, Touya would continue to show up at your job and surprise you with flowers, food from his diner, and lavish gifts.
This is how you would end up kneeling underneath the dashboard in Touya's Range in the parking lot of the industrial plant, hours after your shift had ended.
His black sweatpants were pulled down his thick, muscled thighs and pooled around his ankles while you struggled to take his huge cock into your mouth.
He regarded you with those cool, turquoise eyes, one large hand planted firmly on the top of your head as he guided you up and down on his hard shaft.
"Just like that, pretty. Such a perfect, slutty mouth. Yeah, you like being slutted out outside of your job? Not the perfect, innocent little scholar right now, are you?" 
You hummed around his dick, saliva spilling from the corners of your mouth while you breathed steadily through your nose. 
Touya's degradation never failed to turn you on, but sometimes you felt like he was just being mean intentionally.
His hands pressed down on your head harder, forcing you to take him further down your aching throat. Once he started, Touya wouldn't let up until he fucked your throat raw and tears streamed down your beautiful face, ruining your expensive makeup.  
He loved to see you cry.
"There you go, baby. That's my good girl. Take my cock like only you can." 
You moaned around him as best you could, but your jaw was aching and you felt like you'd pass out from lack of oxygen any moment now.
Suddenly, you were being pulled off of him by the roots of your hair. Touya dragged you over the center console into the backseat with you sputtering and trying to catch your breath.
"Down." He ordered and you immediately obeyed, getting on your hands and knees.
He clambered over you clumsily, his height preventing him from being able to get into the exact position that he wanted, but this would have to do.
"Arch." 
Tattooed hands came down to hold your lower hips as soon as you arched your back.
You were already wet from sucking him off, but due to the sheer size of Touya's dick, it wouldn't be enough.
Hiking one foot up, he removed one hand to guide his dick into your hole. You immediately felt the burn. 
"TOUYA! It's too much…" You moaned with your head turned slightly to the side to look over your shoulder at him.
"Not too much, baby. Never too much for you, my sweet girl. Take me, baby. Take my big fucking dick in your tiny little hole. I know you can do it."
Your freshly done acrylics scraped against the car door while Touya grabbed your expensive bundles up in one hand and forced your head completely flat on the floor with the other.
His pace was hard and rough, but he knew you were loving everything that he was giving you judging by your moans.
"Shit, pussy's so good baby, sucking me in so nice…fuuuccck!"
Of all of the women that he's fucked, you were the only one that had been able to take all of him without passing out.
It was a shock to you as well, how you hadn't passed out already from Touya's deep stroking. No doubt his fat tip was hitting your cervix; you could feel him in your damn stomach.
"Touya, I'm going to cum!" Your words were muffled, but he could just make out what you were trying to say and feel you clenching around him.
His eyes watched your ass move in waves as he pounded into you with everything he had, no doubt making the entire car shake from the sheer force of his thrusts.
“Come on, cum on this dick, baby. Make a mess on me, baby doll,” He cooed softly, leaning over you to press you against the floor as he rolled his hips into you.
"TOUYA!"
"Yes, scream my name, girl! SHIT!"
—-
The next thing you knew, you were waking up in the front of a large mansion with a high, wrought-iron gate around it. It was surrounded by acres of land, all to itself off in the countryside. A soft, fleece blanket covered your naked body.
"Where are we? Is this your house?"
"Fucked you so good you lost your memory, baby, but yes, this is my house." 
"Why'd you bring me here?" 
"Why wouldn't I? Why, you'd rather me fuck your brains out and just leave you passed out, only to wake up alone in a fucking parking lot in the dark? Come on, Y/n." You could see him roll his eyes through the rearview mirror.
Remaining silent, you just hugged the blanket tighter around your shoulders.
"So where do we go from here, Touya? What's next for us?" 
He hit a button and the doors unlocked. Touya came around to open your door and then scooped you up into his strong arms, holding you close to his chest.
"I brought you here in hopes that you'd agree to be my girlfriend."
"What if I say no?"
"Then I have to kill you."
"WHAT!?"
"I'm just playing, girl. Damn. So will you? Will you be my baby?"
—-
Touya and you began dating that night, and not even six months later, he asked you to marry him.
And you said yes.
Now, you believed that you were in love with Touya. He treated you like a princess and showered you with expensive gifts: jewelry, cars, designer clothes, shoes, and bags. Whatever your heart desired. Not to mention he was sweet, attentive, caring, loving, and amazing in bed.
Little did you know that Touya had another side to him.
—-
Stacks on deck, patron on ice
And we could pop bottles all night, and, 
Baby, you could have whatever you like
I said you could have whatever you like, yeah
Late-night sex, so wet, it's so tight
I gas up the jet for you tonight 
And baby you can go wherever you like
I said you can go wherever you like, yeah
—-
While you were planning your wedding, many of your friends and family members came to you with concerns about your fiance. Including your beloved aunt.
“That boy is no good, Y/n. I’m telling you. Just look into those cold, soulless eyes of his. That boy is not right in the head.” She would rant as you sat on her living room couch with wedding books opened up all around you. 
"Please, Auntie. Touya is a good guy. Sure, he's in the streets, but he'd never hurt me." 
"You don't sound too sure of yourself." 
Rolling your eyes, you had heard enough of the negativity. 
Gathering up the books and magazines, you threw them into your new Louis Vuitton tote bag and pulled it onto your shoulder. 
"I have to go, Auntie, or I'll be late for my dress fitting. I love you." You leaned down to give her a hug and kiss on the jaw. 
"I love you, too, baby. Just please think about what I've been saying before you rush into this marriage, alright?" 
"Alright, I hear you. I'm gone."
You stepped out of her house and closed the screen door behind you. Your black BMW M3 with the custom purple wheels sat pretty in the driveway. Touya had it custom-painted for you, said that everyone needs to know that you're his woman.
As you were backing out of the driveway, you heard your phone vibrating in your bag. 
🖤🫶🏾Husband💜 would like to FaceTime…
You declined the request and hooked your phone up to the car mount, immediately calling him back on the phone.
"What the fuck, Y/n? Why are you declining my calls? Where the hell are you at? I've been calling you all damn day!" He barked through the receiver, making you cringe.
"I-I just got in the car, I'm leaving Auntie's house, on the way home now…" 
You could almost hear him rolling his eyes on the other end.
"Yeah, and what did she want now? Still bitching about you marrying me?" He scoffed.
"Touya, stop that. She's only concerned about me, that's all."
"Yeah, whatever you say, Y/n. I know that your whole fucking family despises me, not that I give a fuck, though. I'm marrying you, not any of them."                
"That's true, Touya, but it would be better if you at least tried to get along with them."
"Well, maybe they should stop judging a book by its cover and try to get along with me since I'm about to be your husband."
"I don't think that's how it works, but okay, Touya. I'll be pulling up in a little bit."
"Are you trying to rush me off the phone? I called because I want to see you before I leave tonight. Gotta fly to Tijuana for business."
Of course, 'for business' meant, to pick up a "shipment".
—-
Ayy, don't you know I got kis by the three
When I chirp, shawty chirp back
Louie knapsack where I'm holding all the work at
What you know about that? 
What you know about that? 
What you know about that? 
I know all about that
—-
"And by 'see me', you mean get your dick wet. I have wedding stuff to do, baby. I have to fly to Paris to pick up my dress and how am I supposed to do that if you're taking the jet?" You complained. 
"Just send your assistant to get it. I need you here to take care of me, baby doll, just like how I take care of you. Come on, now."
You wanted to retort that you needed to be there to try it on, but there was no arguing with Touya, especially when he wanted sex.
"Okay, I'm almost there. Tell the guards to open the gate."
—-
"Ohh shit, Touya, baby, give me that dick~"
"Yeah baby, you like that?" 
And that's how the two of you went along for the rest of the night, Touya putting you in all different types of positions, beating your shit in.
He was always rough, pulling your hair and smacking your ass until it was raw and red.
He made sure to leave marks all over your neck and titties as well, marring your brown skin so that whenever any man looked at you, they'd KNOW that you were getting dicked down by a real motherfucking king.
"God Y/n, how do you keep this shit so tight? I'm gonna bust my load in you, fuck around, and get you pregnant tonight, girl."
"Mmm, if we don't stop now you're going to miss your flight."
"Fuck it," He chuckled, "I'll call Shoto to handle it." 
Shoto, his younger brother who'd just finished college a semester ago. Touya had taken him underneath his wing to train him to be next in line for the family business.
His other siblings, Natsuo and Fuyumi, wanted nothing to do with this life and just worked everyday blue-collar jobs.
"Here, get on top of me. Ride this dick while I make the call."
You sighed but complied nonetheless and crawled up onto his lap as he reclined against the head of your shared California king bed.
"Hello?" You heard Shoto's bland, emotionless voice come over the receiver.
"Hey Sho, I need you to go handle that for me. Jet's already loaded and ready to go."
"What? Why can't you do it?" 
"Because I told you to do it and I'm the boss."
"Yeah whatever, you're probably too busy fucking. Hey Y/n." He snickered, causing your cheeks to heat up. He knew his older brother too well.
Touya hung up on him and tossed the phone to the side, grabbing your hips and slamming you down onto his thick cock.
"You gonna let me get you pregnant, huh, baby? Gonna let me breed this little cunt, stuff you nice and full, and make you fat with my seed?" 
You weren't quite sure that you were ready to have a child, but you were starting to get up in age and you and Touya are getting married, so what's the harm? You nodded.
"Yes, Touya. I love you. Make me a mommy."
—-
Have a baby by me, baby, be a millionaire 
Have a baby by me, baby, be a millionaire
Have a baby by me, baby, be a millionaire
Be a millionaire, be a millionaire, b-be a millionaire  
I don't play no games (I don't play no games)
So when I'm in that thang (when I'm in that thang)
Come see what I mean (see what I mean)
See what I mean, see what I mean, oh
I said lil mama put me on (baby, put me on)
Bet I'll have you gone (bet I'll have you gone)
Come see what I mean, see what I mean
See what I mean (see what I mean)
New music, new mood, new position 
New erotic sounds, it's going down, now listen
I can hear your heartbeat, you're sweating
I could paint a perfect picture 
I get deeper and deeper, I told ya I'd get ya
I'd work that murk that, just the way you like it, baby
Turn a quickie into an all-nighter maybe
Yo, I need you to be what I need, more than liquor and weed
I need you to maybe give me a seed
I need you to give me reason to breathe
I need you
—-
Time Skip, Wedding Day
"Are you sure that you want to do this?" Fuyumi asked you while she was putting your veil in your hair.
You only giggled softly, rubbing a hand over your small baby bump.
"I think it's a little too late to back out now, Fuyumi." She shook her head, making her white and red curls bounce.
"It's never too late to change your mind. You're not his wife, yet. Y/n, I love my brother with all of my heart, but honestly, you deserve so much better than him."
It was hurtful to hear, but you weren't shocked by the young woman's words.
Natsuo and Fuyumi were like your family; they also didn't think that you should marry Touya.
"I'm pregnant with his child, Fuyu, and I don't want to be a single mother. I love Touya with all my heart as well, and whatever he went through in the past, we can get through it together. I'll be there for him, til death do us part."
Fuyumi just let out a long sigh and tried to put on a smile.
"I can't say I didn't try, but okay. If this is what will really make you happy. Just please take care of yourself and the baby, no matter what. Protect yourself."
She handed you your bouquet just as the wedding music began playing. 
"I'll see you at the altar."
She left, leaving you alone. You peeked out the door and saw the flower girls and ring bearers go down the aisle. 
Taking a deep breath, you exhaled and tightened your hands around your flowers.
"Hey, beautiful."
Your head whipped around so fast you almost gave yourself whiplash.
It was Touya, standing there in his all-white suit with a purple silk dress shirt opened up to show off his tattooed chest. 
"Touya!? What are you doing here, you're supposed to be at the altar!"
"Hmm, the wedding can't start without us, baby. I just wanted to give you something really quick."
He reached into the breast pocket of the suit jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper and a pen.
You watched him carefully.
"What is this?"
"A prenup."
"A what? Touya, I'm not signing a prenup minutes before our wedding! Why are you just bringing this to me now?"
He furrowed his white eyebrows, not liking the tone you were taking with him.
"I'm sorry, but who do you think you're talking to, Y/n? You should know not to ever raise your voice at me. Not even my own mother yells at me, baby doll, and you're damn sure not about to start. Now sign the goddamn prenup or I'm calling all this shit off." 
No way! He wouldn't actually call the wedding off, would he? Not after all of your hard work, not after everything you'd been through in the past couple of months.
Your dear aunt had been diagnosed with coronary artery disease a few months ago and hadn't been doing too well. She'd been in and out of the hospital frequently and even had to leave her job because of it.
You begged Touya to hire an in-home nurse to care for her and, after much disagreement, he finally let you.
Why would he do this to you now? Moments before your special day? 
With your lower lip wobbling and tears beginning to spill out of your eyes, you took the paper with a shaky hand and signed your signature on the line, initialing where it directed you to.
Touya chuckled darkly once you were done and took it back from you, stuffing it into his pocket.
Why would he make you sign a prenup? You didn't know much about this type of stuff, but usually, prenups weren't good.
However, you couldn't fathom losing Touya or your fairytale life. You were finally getting everything that you ever wanted.
A family.
"Hey, don't cry, baby doll. You know I'll always take care of you, right?"
He moved in to kiss you, his hand covering your bump and rubbing it softly. With his pinky, he swiped the tears from under your eyes, careful not to smudge your face makeup.
You nodded slowly and he smiled at you. 
"I love you, Y/n." 
With that, he left the room.
Five Years Later 
Being married to Touya was not at all how you expected it to be.
After quitting your job and becoming a full-time housewife, your life seemed to go into a downward spiral.
While you were dating, you’d found out that Touya and his siblings had grown up in an abusive household where his father beat him, his siblings, and their mother. His mother had had a hard time coping with what she'd been through, so the four siblings had agreed to have her committed to a mental health care facility.
During their childhood, in a fit of psychosis, their mother threw a pot of boiling water on Shoto, disfiguring the left side of his face. An ugly, red-marred patch of skin now covered the once-perfect porcelain. 
After that incident, Touya left home and never looked back. 
He talked very little about his father, so what you did know, you had to find out from Fuyumi, who still maintained limited contact with their father. Neither Natsuo nor Shoto talked about the man. 
Many times, you had tried to persuade Touya to get therapy in order to deal with his past traumas, but he never listened. If anything, he would become completely enraged whenever you would broach the subject.
It also didn't help that Touya was now even more deeply involved in the drug lifestyle. 
At first, it didn't bother you as much as it should have, but as time went on things just got worse and worse.
Your son, Takuya, was now five years old and you really didn't want him exposed to the people and dealings that Touya was involved in.
Takuya would ask you many questions:
Mommy, why is Daddy never home?
Who are these strange people in our house?
Why can't my friends come over to spend the night?
Why does Daddy have flour underneath his nose?
Yes.
Touya had been abusing cocaine ever since your third year of marriage.
He said that it helped ease his mind. Made him forget the past. 
A knock came on his office door, causing the turquoise-eyed man to look up at it.
"What, Y/n?" He asked in irritation once he looked up and saw you standing there, just staring at him.
"Are you seriously getting high in the middle of the day?"
Spread out over his desktop were multiple, identical lines of freshly chopped cocaine. With a rolled-up hundred-dollar bill, Touya closed off one of his nostrils while he used the bill to snort the white powder into the other.
He did it effortlessly, almost elegantly. 
"Touya, really? What if Takuya ever walked in and saw you doing this shit? You know he's getting older now, and he's started asking me questions about your…habit."
Touya didn’t seem deterred; better yet, he most likely hadn’t heard a word that you’d said as he focused on the feeling of the drug entering his system.
“Did you fucking need something, Y/n? If not, then kindly get the fuck out. I’m busy.”
You gave him an incredulous look but bit your tongue and nodded.
“I need you to sign the check for Takuya’s school tuition so I can mail it off today.”
Touya sucked his teeth and sniffled. With the back of his tattooed hand, he wiped his nose roughly.
“Of course, that’s what you always need. Money. “
With a soft sigh, you prepared yourself for one of his rants. On top of abusing drugs, Touya had been diagnosed with, post-traumatic stress disorder, dissociative identity disorder, and bipolar disorder. 
You’d seen him dissociate firsthand, especially when he was high. You figured that the alternate personality that he’d created stemmed from his traumatic childhood. This persona’s name was Dabi, and Dabi was not nice by any means. He was awful, much worse than normal, agitated Touya.
If it wasn’t for you insisting on having genetic testing done while you were pregnant, you’d have never found out what mental ailments your husband had been suffering from. 
“Well…if you hadn’t taken my name off of all the accounts, I could have done it myself and not have to disturb you while you’re taking care of business.” You finally snipped. You’d had enough of Touya’s drug abuse, verbal abuse, and emotional abuse.
You had gotten sick of him always taunting you, downplaying you, and making you feel as if you were less of a person because you had left your job, your family, and everything that you knew, in order to cling to him and become his wife.
He made you feel low, lower than the earth beneath your feet, and you had had enough of him.
To pour even more salt into your stinking, infected wounds, Touya treated you like a child. 
You had an allowance, you had to call and check in with him anytime you left the house, and he didn’t let you go anywhere without him or one of his guards. 
It hadn’t always been like this. No, this behavior only began once you attempted to leave him the first time.
You’d tried to leave Touya many times over the past five years, but your efforts were always in vain. No matter what you did or where you tried to go, he would always find you and bring you back, literally kicking and screaming. After a while, you just decided to give up, telling yourself that you’d never be able to get away from him.
—-
Mmmm
You high, baby? (Yeah)
Yeah? (Hahaha, talk to me)
You want me to tell you something? (Uh huh)
I know what you want to hear 
—-
The veins in his neck bulged and he turned on you, turquoise eyes flashing with lightning.
“Did you just talk back to me?”
The blood froze in your veins as Touya stood up, calmly pushing his desk chair back. The wheels screeched eerily across the wooden floor. Touya stomped towards you like a panther, waiting to attack and kill its prey.
“T-Touya- I…”
One hand was all it took to constrict your breathing. Touya held you up like a doll, the muscles in his arm barely flexing as he slammed you against the wooden double doors of the office entrance, making them rattle violently. Your little legs thrashed as you moved your body, attempting to get Touya off of you, to no avail.
“Bitch, how dare you disrespect me, after all I’ve done for you. I took you out of that shitty neighborhood you were living in, took care of you and that fucking brat, took care of your whole fucking family despite them cursing the very ground that I walk on. This is how you repay me? Flapping your fucking lips at me? HUH?!?!”
He yelled directly in your face, making you squint your eyes as spit flew from his lips. His face was so close to yours that you could see up his nostrils, see the white residue from the hit he’d just taken.
If he didn’t let you down soon, you’d pass out. Touya soon realized this, and he let you go, let your body drop to the ground with a ‘thud’ while he stepped back and regarded you without a smidgen of concern.
Your hands flew to your throat as you coughed violently. Your chest burned as you tried to regain the precious oxygen that your lungs had been deprived of for far too long.
—-
You know you want me, baby
You know I want you, too
They call me Superman
I'm here to rescue you 
I wanna save you, girl
Come be in Shady's world
(Ooo, boy, you drive me crazy)
Bitch, you make me hurl
—-
"You act like…," you wheezed, then halted to take in a few more deep breaths, "you act like I wasn't somebody before I met you. Like I wasn't on my own, living independently and happily before you came along and messed it all up!"
He must have found your lamentation amusing, because he chuckled, deep in his chest.
"Oh Y/n…when have you ever been independent? Your whole life you've always depended on someone. Your aunt, your family, your friends, and then me. You think you're so special, because what, you went to school and got a degree?"
Said degree was displayed on the back wall of his office. He'd let you hang it there after buying an expensive, mahogany wooden frame lined in real 24k gold for it. A gift for your first year wedding anniversary.
Now the object seemed to offend Touya. He made a beeline for it and snatched it off the back wall before sending it hurling across the room, narrowly missing you before it went crashing against the wall next to the door and shattering.
You whimpered in fear as he began walking back over to you. 
Kneeling down so that he was eye-level with you, much like he'd done at your first meeting in the salon, he glared at you with eyes colder than Antarctica. 
"How's that degree working for you now, Y/n? You're nothing more than a stupid slut willing to open her legs for the first man that showed her any shred of attention. You're pathetic, and I can't stand the fucking sight of you." He said lowly, the baritone of his voice rumbling in your ears.
You buried your head in your hands, the tears flowing freely down your firearms as you tried to shield yourself from him, from his rage. His hatred.
It wasn't like Touya had never yelled at you before or threw fits when he was high, but this was the first time in five years that he'd ever put his hands on you.
And it would be the last. 
"That's it, Touya! I've had enough! You're impossible and I'm finished dealing with you and your issues. I'm leaving for good this time."
Touya laughed at you again. He just kept laughing for a long time.
"That's really funny. Have fun trying to leave me with no money and nowhere to go. You'll be back. You always come back, Y/n, because you can't survive without me."
Your tear-soaked face curled up in disgust; you couldn't believe what this man was saying to you right now.
"Since you're so adamant on leaving though, you can go ahead and get the fuck out." 
"Pardon?" 
He stood to full height again.
"Did I stutter? Get the fuck out of my house, right now, Y/n." 
"No! We're married, which makes this my house, too! You can't just put me out!"
He must have thought that you still weren't getting enough oxygen to your brain, because Touya grabbed you by the arms and hoisted you up.
You kicked, screamed, and clawed at him all the way, almost causing him to drop you a few times, but finally he made it to the large ornate doors leading to the outside of the estate.
"NO! TOUYA, NO! NO!" 
—-
They call me Superman
Leap tall hoes in a single bound
I'm single now
Got no ring on this finger now
I'll never let another chick bring me down
In a relationship? Save it, bitch
Babysit? You make me sick
Superman ain't saving shit 
Girl, you can jump on Shady's dick
—-
Thank goodness Takuya was at school and not here to witness the scene of his father throwing his mother out of her own house.
"I hate you, Touya! You hear me?! I HATE YOU! You won't get away with this!" 
Was the last thing the snow-haired man heard before he slammed the door in your face. You heard all of the locks and the deadbolt click.
With fury, you kicked at the closed door with all your might.
You were kicked out now, with nothing. Not your purse, wallet, clothes, phone, or anything. Only your Apple watch on your wrist, which you guessed might be a bit of help.
Looking down at it, you noticed that it was charged to 75%, which was good. You'd have time to get to a charger. 
With an indignant huff, you rushed down the many stairs leading from the house and into the driveway where your car was parked.
It would be a dumb idea to get in and try to drive it, because Touya more likely than not had a tracker installed into it. However, you had an idea.
—-
Don't put out, I'll put you out 
Won't get out, I'll push you out
Puss blew out, popping shit
Wouldn't piss on fire to put you out
—-
See, though you had been quite gullible the past five years, believing that your sham of a marriage was pure and true, and that your bastard of a husband was your Prince Charming, you were still a college-educated woman and had plenty of good sense to use.
When Touya started getting high every other day, you began stealing his money and putting it away when he wasn't looking.
Small amounts here and there that you passed off with simple excuses that Touya found to be believable. No way his dumb little housewife would ever think to steal from him.
How wrong he was.
You had accumulated a good amount over the last three years, but when you first tried to leave Touya, he became suspicious of you, thus limiting your access to the money by taking your name off the accounts and giving you a weekly allowance. 
How stupid of him.
You took a portion of that money and stored it away every month, in case you ever needed it. In case you finally got the courage to leave Touya and never look back.
The day had finally come.
Pulling up to your sister-in-law's house, you waited for her to come to the door. Looking down at your Gucci slides, you felt embarrassed about the situation that had just occurred. 
"Y/n! What are you doing here? What's happened?" 
With the look on your face, she immediately knew that something terrible had happened and that her elder brother was more than likely the cause of it. 
She moved aside so you could come inside. You sat on her couch and put your hands in your lap.
After swallowing down the lump in your throat, you began to speak.
"Touya…he, um, he locked me out of the house."
"HE WHAT?!"
You had to cover your ears slightly from the sheer volume of her exasperated voice.
"Yeah. We got into an argument and he tossed me out onto my ass like Jazz from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air."
Fuyumi didn't laugh at your joke; instead, she gave you a look of sympathy. 
"Y/n…I'm sorry you had to go through that…" Her voice began to crack and you gave her a questioning gaze.
"Was he…?" She couldn't even finish the question. 
You immediately understood and nodded.
"Yes. He was high." 
"And where was Takuya?"
"He's at school."
A sigh of relief from the white-haired woman. "Thank the heavens."
Fuyumi moved from her spot on the opposite couch to come over and give you a tight hug. You sank into her warm embrace and hugged her back, more tears bubbling up as feelings of shame, stupidity, and anger came to the surface. 
"It's okay, Y/n. It's all going to be okay. I feel like this is my fault. I should have tried harder to get you to leave Touya. I should have-"
You stopped her from talking by pulling away from the hug and giving her a small glare.
"Don't you dare try to blame yourself for his actions. He's a grown ass man, yet he acts like a child. Don't worry, Fuyumi. This time I'm done with him for good. It's time for me to move along in my life with my child and leave Touya's miserable ass behind. I tried everything to help him and all he did was treat me like shit for five years."
Fuyumi was a bit stunned to hear you speak with so much initiative, but she nodded, nonetheless.
"If you need anything, anything at all, don't hesitate to call me or Natsu. We want what's best for you and Takuya. Always." 
—-
After talking with Fuyumi for a little while longer, she ended up calling Natsuo over, who works as a mechanic.
With a little trial and error, he managed to remove the tracker from your car. Touya had hidden it meticulously, but he was no match for Natsuo's years of experience with machinery.
You finally bid your brother-in-law and sister-in-law goodbye so you could go and speak to your lawyer before picking up Takuya from school.
—-
I can't get to work on time
Can't believe the words to him I just said
Who the hell argue and fight 
Like dogs at six in the morning?
I know it's gonna be some more shit tonight (oooh) 
Our pastor's calling, telling me I done went too far, 
And I'm sitting round town and my friends can't recognize me
Cause I took a chance on love 
It's like, I'm dying (ooo dying)
For you, I gave my heart
And turned my back against the world
Because I was your girl, girl, girl
I done damn near lost my mama
I done been through so much drama
I done turned into the woman I never thought I'd be
I'm ready to sign them papers, papers 
—-
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Todoroki, but the prenup that you signed is very much valid. According to this, he really doesn't have to give you anything."
You blew out a frustrated breath. How could you have been such a fool? If Touya wanted to call the wedding off because you wouldn't sign, you should have just let him. 
It would have saved you a world of heartache and headache, that's for sure. 
"So, there's absolutely nothing that I can do?" You asked the well-dressed man in front of you. 
You fiddled with the rose gold, 5-carat diamond aquamarine pear-shaped ring set on your left ring finger. 
“What about our son? Did he say anything about providing for him?”
The brunette man pushed his glasses from the bridge of his nose up to his eyes. 
“Despite his trying to implement a clause in which he wouldn’t have to pay child support since the child was conceived outside of the marriage, as the child’s biological father he’s still legally responsible for providing for Takuya. Though he could contest his paternity and ask for a DNA test.” He set the paper on the desk and looked at you.
“That slimy bastard…he did everything in his power to make sure that I’d never try to leave him. He’s sick….”
“Again, I’m very sorry, Mrs. Todoroki. I wish that there was more that I could tell you.”
“I just can’t believe this…Touya had all of this planned from the very start. He came to me in a moment where he knew I couldn’t refuse him. He knew that I needed to lean on him at that time and he took advantage of me.”
“What do you mean by 'took advantage of you'?” The man in front of you sat up straighter in his chair, slightly leaning his body towards you.
“Well, I never expected that Touya would ask me to sign a prenup. He never made it a priority to discuss how we’d do finances; he just always said that he’d take care of me. Which is why it was such a shock that he made me sign the prenup minutes before I was about to walk down the aisle to marry him.”
“He asked you to sign a prenup minutes before your wedding? He coerced you and didn’t even give you time to seek your own legal consultation. I’m glad you told me this, Mrs. Todoroki; this changes everything.” 
Could this be it? Could this finally be your way out of this marriage?
“And that’s not all! I was pregnant with Takuya at the time and my hormones were all over the place. My aunt…she’d been very sick as well, and it was just an overall bad time for me. I w-wasn’t thinking straight…I-I just…I just wanted someone to be there for me. I didn’t want Touya to call off the wedding.” 
You cursed yourself for crying over this again, but speaking about it out in the open really made you realize how badly Touya had manipulated you. From the very beginning of the relationship he tried to break you down and make you weak for him, and you let him. Your lawyer handed you some tissue from the box on the desk.
No more weakness. No more vulnerability. It was time to be strong; you had a child to raise and he needed his mother.
It was time to fight for what was rightfully owed to both of you.
“Coercion and signature under duress; oh, he’s done for. I’ll make some calls to get this in front of the judge as soon as possible. Don’t worry, Mrs. Todoroki, I’ll handle everything from here.”
—-
You left the law office with a massive weight lifted off of your heart. 
Takuya's private school was only a few minutes away if you took the interstate, so, after picking him up, you'd probably just go back to Fuyumi's house for the night.
"God, I hate this bend in the road, it makes me feel like I'm going to fall off into a ditch." You grimaced while holding the steering wheel carefully.
When you were almost around the corner, a black SUV flew past you at top speed and caused your car to lose control and spin in circles several times before crashing into oncoming traffic. 
—-
You had to have blacked out from the impact - were you dead? 
No, your hearing was still intact. You could hear something in the distance: footsteps.
Your head was bent at an odd angle and you could feel the blood dripping down your forehead.
"Well, would you look at my little broken doll, all bent out of shape. It's a miracle you aren't dead, huh? That was a nasty accident you had."
With you not being able to turn your neck to the sound of his voice, Touya had to step into your line of sight. He looked down into your eyes, his own turquoise ones shining with mirth. They seemed darker, more sinister.
Then it dawned on you. 
This wasn't Touya.
It was Dabi.
"W-w-what's wrong…with you…? You're…. you're insane…"
That was the final thing you said before slipping into unconsciousness.
—-
Dabi just watched your unmoving form with an evil grin plastered across his face. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, and lit one.
With his free hand, he reached out to stroke your face while his eyes glowed.
"I know you want, me baby. I think I want you, too. I'm here to save you, girl. Come be in Shady's world.  I wanna grow together, let's let our love unfurl. You know you want me, baby. You know I want you, too. They call me Superman, I'm here to rescue you."
With a flick of his wrist, he threw the cigarette down and the entire car caught on fire.
—-
You want what you can't have
Ooo, girl, that's too damn bad
Don't touch what you can't grab
End up with two back hands
Girl you just blew your chance 
Don't mean to ruin your plans
—-
 911, what's your emergency?
"Yes, my wife has been in a terrible car accident! Her car caught on fire and she was trapped inside. I-I pulled her out, but she's unconscious and I think her neck might be broken!
Okay sir, I'm going to need you to get her to a safe location and wait for help to arrive. Avoid moving her anymore and try to keep her neck supported.
"O-okay."
—-
Three Months Later
You ended up with three severed vertebrae in your neck. The doctors still don't know how you didn't end up paralyzed or dead, but at this point it must have just been a miracle from God.
Touya brought you to the hospital under the guise of the distraught husband and no one seemed to suspect anything.
Except for Natsuo, Fuyumi, and your lawyers.
Your family was just grateful that you were alive and didn't think to question how the accident may have occurred, though Touya didn't get away completely scot-free.
Your lawyer was the number one accusatory figure when your divorce case went to court. He argued that Touya had been following you, tracking your phone, and was angry that you were finally filing for divorce from him.
That you were going to actually leave him this time.
Touya had an amazing defense lawyer that continued to play him up as the distraught husband; Touya knew what he was doing when he decided to stay at the scene of the accident and "help" you. Your other lawyers and Touya's went toe to toe in the courtroom for days.
— 
Caroline, Caroline
See Caroline, all the guys would say
She's mighty fine, mighty fine
But mighty fine only got you somewhere half the time 
And the other half either got you
Cussed out or coming up short
—-
The jury was at a deadlock.
It wasn't an easy fight. More days in the courtroom with you sitting there in a neck brace, your body bandaged beneath your clothes from the burns you sustained in the fire.
A miracle that you were even alive. 
Finally, after two weeks of court, Touya was convicted of attempted murder.
His defense lawyer tried to go for an insanity plea which was supported by him staying at the accident scene and bringing you to the hospital afterwards.
The prosecutor argued that Touya, though aware of his mental illness, never sought the proper help and continued to mentally and emotionally torture and abuse his wife.
These claims were supported by Natsuo and Fuyumi, who both agreed to testify on your behalf since you couldn't speak up for yourself due to spousal privilege. 
More deliberation, more waiting.
At last, there was a breakthrough.
The insanity plea fell through and Touya finally decided to just plead guilty.
—-
Regardless, we don't want to get involved with all them lawyers
And judges, just to hold grudges in the courtroom
I wanna see your support bra, not support you 
—-
He was called to the witness stand, where he told all the grueling, gritty details of the past five years of your marriage. As much as he didn't want to let you go, he just couldn't bring himself to drag this battle out any farther. After hearing his testimony, the jury found him guilty and he was sentenced to fifteen years to life in prison.
So now, here you are, sitting in front of the man that you once loved with all of your heart.
Dressed in an orange jumpsuit, wrists and ankles shackled, Touya regarded you with a downtrodden expression. 
"Y/n… I'm sorry for everything that I put you through. I just want you to know one thing: I'll always love you and my son." 
With a dry chuckle, you shook your head.
"I don't think you know the meaning of the word love, Touya." 
You pushed the divorce papers with your wedding rings situated on top of them towards him and nodded up at the guard standing behind him.
The elder man unlocked Touya's wrist cuffs so the inmate could sign his name where required. He didn't even read over it.
The shackles went back on immediately, and, with one last look, the guard escorted Touya out of the room and back to his cell. 
—-
The sunshine was bright on your face as you walked out of the prison. A funny thought crossed your mind and caused you to giggle out loud.
For years, you'd felt like a prisoner under Touya's watchful gaze.
Oh how the tables have turned.
—-
I know you like to think your shit don't stank 
But lean a little bit closer, see
Roses really smell like booo-booo-ooo
Yeah, roses really smell like booo-booo-ooo
a/n: i feel like i was starting to drag this out, so I just had to hurry up and end it 💀 i still think it came out pretty good though! i had to do a lot of research for the legal part and i still don't think it's all correct, but oh well! i ain't no damn lawyer/judge!😂 
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laundryandtaxes · 5 years
Note
I recently got into a pretty heated debate with a fellow dyke about strap-sucking and we need you to weigh in with your wisdom. She says it's always been an innate part of sex for stone butches but I think it's a newer trend stemming from porn culture and was originally popularized by Male fetishization, although I'm admittedly not up on my butch/femme history so I could be wrong?
Oh no it is a pretty old practice- you can find photo evidence of that pretty easily at least in the 80s and I think the 70s, with reference to it in texts that reference sex that would have been going on the 1950s and 60s. "Porn culture” definitely dates back much, much farther than that, but if you mean that it’s a thing that was popularized BY porn and therefore BY male sexual desire then I definitely disagree. I will say, I think people trying to act like there has been no patriarchal influence on butch/femme culture and sex are reaching and trying to clean up butch/femme. A lot of the first cultural femmes would have been women who’d had a fair amount of sex with men simply because that’s what they would have assumed they must do before realizing they didn’t actually desire that kind of sex, and a lot of the first cultural butches would have been very sex dysphoric women with male role models and who measured themselves according to male sexual standards rather than female sexual standards. So this idea that there’s no trace of that in butch/femme culture and sex I think is silly- though I get where the reaction comes from and I do think “butch/femme is an imitation of straight sexuality” is uninformed, moralistic, and straight up inaccurate. Maybe strap sucking is just simple blowjob imitation (and frankly it is usually just called dick/cock sucking by most butches and femmes I know that practice it) but lesbians who don’t engage in butch/femme are constantly engaging in practices that they can’t possibly claim are patriarchy-free. Maybe strap sucking is “patriarchal,” but that claim from someone who shaves on a regular basis, regularly wears makeup, practices femininity in more ways than not, uses an especially feminine voice when she picks up the phone, sits in such a way as to make herself smaller, etc is rich- none of us live in a patriarchy free world and therefore none of our actions and sexualities and desires are somehow FULLY uninformed by the EXISTENCE of and our constant interpellation by patriarchy. At a certain point you’re splitting hairs. If it’s not beating or degrading women for sexual enjoyment, or literally fetishizing violence (gunplay is an example of this) I personally don’t worry much about it. I think a lot of people presume I am “anti kink,” but I’m not opposed to kink- I am opposed to violence against women, whether it is done outside the bedroom because a man got pissed off or done inside the bedroom because a man finds it sexually arousing. So that’s my personal position on “kink” as a category of sex that people have, since I think this is a bit connected.
I PERSONALLY have found that a lot of women are very into strap sucking and I’m totally cool with it but I am NOT okay with even small gagging noises which. Can pretty easily become an issue with that. I personally think pretty much anything in women’s mouths looks hot and I think that’s fundamentally where that comes from, because it’s hot even with the kinds of dildos I like, which are the kind that don’t look like actual penises. But that’s just mine own two cents.
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terfslying · 5 years
Text
‘The Dialectic of Sex’ supports trans inclusion. Here’s why.
The dot points:
DoS states that while gender is rooted in biological division of childrearing labour, there is no reason for this to continue in a modern society
DoS comments on a divide between actual equality-seeking feminism, and “reformers” who want discriminatory protective laws
DoS states that feminists must seek equality for not only female people, but non-female humans who are also oppressed by systems which enforce biological sex division, such as childhood
DoS condemns the way that women can be physically divided into “castes”, and turned against each other to reinforce patriarchal values
DoS states that all of “men’s” culture and “women’s” culture must be merged
DoS argues for free availability of both contraceptives for women, and artificial reproductive technology & acceptance of non-biological offspring, as a requirement for ending the reproductive servitude of female humans
DoS claims that there is no biological basis to strict homo/heterosexuality based upon the sex of the other party; instead, Firestone believes that in a non-patriarchal system, the sex of a person’s romantic partner would have no major role in sexuality
Go through the readmore for the quotes and full summary.
DoS states that while gender is rooted in biological division of childrearing labour, there is no reason for this to continue.
I often reference Simone De Beauvior for her 1940’s writing ‘The Second Sex’, which contained the quote, “not all females are necessarily women”. And ‘The Dialectic of Sex’ in its entirety is actually dedicated to Ms De Beauvior; Firestone discusses her ideas in the first chapter, and builds upon them.
“Unlike economic class, sex class sprang from a biological reality: men and women were created different, and not equally privileged. Although, as De Beauvior points out, this difference of itself did not necessitate the development of a class system - the domination of one group by another - the reproductive functions of these differences did. […] The need for power leading to the development of classes arises from the psychosexual formation of each individual according to his basic imbalance, rather than […] some irreducible conflict of Life against Death, Eros vs. Thanatos.”
This view, that the functions of biological reproduction led to the patriarchal system, are inherent to radical feminism. Ms Firestone discusses this at length, but does not agree that a system rooted in biology is required, or even good.
“Though a sex class system may have originated in fundamental biological conditions, this does not guarantee once the biological basis of their oppression has been swept away women and children will be free. On the contrary, the new technology, especially fertility control, may be used against them to reinforce the entrenched system of exploitation.”
Fertility control here refers to the at-that-time-current issue of women’s access to contraceptives and abortions without a husband’s approval. But ultimately, Ms Firestone wishes to completely disregard with biological sex’s role in childbearing and society:
“But to grant that the sexual imbalance of power is biologically based is not to lose our case. We are no longer just animals. And the Kingdom of Nature does not reign absolute. […] ‘Natural’ is not necessarily a ‘human’ value. Humanity has begun to outgrow nature: we can no longer justify the maintenance of a discriminatory sex class system on grounds of its origin in nature.”
DoS comments on a divide between actual equality-seeking feminism, and “reformers” who want discriminatory protective laws.
In the second chapter, ‘On American Feminism’, there is one very interesting tidbit discussing the differences between feminists who truly want equality, and “the reformers” who want discriminatory protective laws.
“Even worse than the conservative feminists were the increasing number of women who, with their new-found bit of freedom, jumped enthusiastically into all the radicalisms of the day, the various social reform movements of the Processive Era, even when at odds with feminist interests (Consider the old debate about discriminatory “protective” labour laws for women. Margaret Rhondda, Britain’s leading post-World War 1 feminist, put it this way: ‘One may divide the women in the women’s movement into two groups: the Feminists and the reformers who are not in the least Feminists; who do not care tuppence about equality for itself.’)”
I’m sure plenty of TERFs would state that intersectional and trans-positive feminists are the sort who “jumped enthusiastically into all the radicalisms of the day”; however, the question of who is the real feminist side, and who are the “reformers”, depends on what is really “at odds with feminist interests”. If trans exclusion is, as I believe, at odds with feminist interests - then TERFs are the reformers; but otherwise, we are.
DoS States that feminists must seek equality for not only female people, but non-female people who are also oppressed by systems which enforce biological sex division.
Things get interesting in the comparisons of childhood to femininity:
“In each case a physical difference has been enlarged culturally with the help of special dress, education, manners, and activity until this cultural reinforcement itself began to appear “natural,” even instinctive, an exaggeration process that enables easy stereotyping: the individual eventually appears to be a different kind of human animal with its own peculiar set of laws and behaviours (“I’ll never understand women!” … “You don’t know a thing about child psychology!”).” & “The interrelated myths of femininity and childhood were the instruments of this oppression.”
Radical feminism here, Ms Firestone discusses, requires the breakdown of not only the idea of femininity, but the idea of childhood; the “modern” family unit of the 1970’s & 80’s keeps a male member in charge of a fertile female person and their offspring; this is the ultimate root of patriarchy.
But then, she says something very very interesting about feminists having to stand up for children:
“We must include the oppression of children in any program for feminist revolution or we will be subject to the same failing of which we have so often accused men: of not having gone deep enough in our analysis, of having missed an important substratum of oppression merely because it didn’t directly concern us.”
Since the oppression of children and women is intimately linked, feminism must stand for freedom of children from mistreatment and parental oppression. I would argue that very much on the same vein, the oppression of women is reliant on the punishment of gender-variant people, and particularly “males” who take on women’s social roles. As a result, feminists must stand for trans women’s rights as well; else they are guilty of “having missed an important substratum of oppression merely because it didn’t directly concern us”.
DoS condemns the way that women can be physically divided into “castes”, and turned against each other to reinforce patriarchal values
In the chapter, ‘Sexism: The Racism of The Family Of Man’, Firestone discusses how black women and white women have historically been turned against each other due to their different levels of privilege and legitimacy as women.
“The black woman is jealous of the white woman’s legitimacy, privilege, and comfort, but she also feels deep contempt: white women are “frigid bitches” who have it too easy, leaving black women to do all their white woman’s work - from supplying their husbands’ sex/passion needs and taking care of their children to doing the literal dirty work (“help”). […] [T]he white woman’s contempt for the black woman is mixed with envy: for the black woman’s greater sexual license, for her gutsiness, for her freedom from the marriage bind. For after all, the black woman is not under the thumb of a man, but is pretty much her own boss to come and go, to leave the house, to work (much as it is degrading work) or to be shiftless.”
A mirror of this kind of mutual antagonism among women due to patriarchy would be transgender women and cisgender women. Transgender women are, understandably, often jealous of cis women’s legitimacy, privilege, and safety; cisgender women feel envy for the ways that transgender women aren’t oppressed, and they are. Much like the white woman in the above example by Firestone, cisgender women are objectively wealthier and safer than counterparts on average; but their attention is drawn to the ways that they are limited, that transgender women aren’t, precisely to create antagonism and divide women.
Firestone summarises it very succinctly, I believe:
“Their long antagonism makes it hard for them to trade the valuable (and painful) lessons they have learned about The Man.”
DoS states that all the way from the culture of romance to in academics, typically “men’s” culture and “women’s” culture must be merged together, for access by all, and changed in order to do so
The following two chapters are on the topic of sexual and romantic love in a patriarchal world; on the idea that “romantic” love itself in heteronormative culture treats the woman as an object.
“He has let her in not because he genuinely loved her, but only because she played so well into his preconceived fantasies. Though she knew his love to be false, since she herself engineered it, she can’t help feeling contempt for him. […] She feels cheated. She has gotten not love and recognition, but possessorship and control. This is when she is transformed from Blushing Bride to Bitch, a change that, no matter how universal and predictable, still leaves the individual husband perplexed”
Firestone also discusses specifically how the strong US culture of no platonic contact plays into this patriarchal system.
“1) Eroticism. A prime component of romanticism is eroticism. All animal needs […] for love and warmth are channelled into genital sex: people must never touch others of the same sex, and may touch those of the opposite sex only when preparing for a genital sexual encounter […] Isolation from others makes people starved for physical affection; and if the only kind they can get is genital sex, that’s soon all they crave.”
These issues in living in the patriarchy are, for all intents and purposes, universal; you are labelled either a subject or an object in romantic love. This happens on a cultural level; there is nothing inherently objectifying about female love; Firestone goes as far as to say that the issue is that “Men can’t love.”
In the next chapter, Firestone moves onto examining the impact of the “sex role system” on art:
“[T]he difference between the “male” approach to art and the “female” is not, as some like to think, simply a difference of “style” in treating the same subject matter (personal, subjective, emotional, descriptive vs. vigorous, spare, hardhitting, cool, objective) but the very subject matter itself. The sex role system divides human experience; men and women live in these different halves of reality; and culture reflects this.”
This essentially describes how men’s art (“high art”, technical design, etc.) is so wildly different to authentic women’s art (and it has a long discussion on the difference between “authentic” women’s art, and art created by women in a men’s environment).
The next chapter, ‘Dialectics of Cultural History’, branches this argument out even further: not only does the sex role system corrupt romance, love, and art, it corrupts our technology and our society:
“[M]odern science has been determined by [sex duality]. […] C. P. Snow was the first to note what had been increasingly obvious: a deep fissure in cultural - the liberal arts and the sciences had become incomprehensible to each other. […] These are some of the modern symptoms of a long cultural disease based on sex dualism.”
The discussion also centres on the way that an artificially masculine “pure” science is in fact dangerous; by labelling social sciences and caring “women’s” subjects, there is a significant risk:
“As long as man is still engaged only in the means - the charting of the ways of nature, the gathering of “pure” knowledge - to his final realization, mastery of nature, his knowledge, because it is not complete, is dangerous.”
Firestone is also very optimistic on the current state of this, arguing that we may not be “in the transition pre-revolutionary period, in which the three separate cultural streams, technology (“applied science”), “pure research” and “pure” modern art, will melt together - along with the rigid sex categories they reflect.” Again, there is a call for the complete reunification of the sexes at all levels of society.
DoS argues for free availability of both contraceptives for women, and artificial reproductive technology & acceptance of non-biological offspring, as a requirement for ending the reproductive servitude of female humans
The chapter ‘Feminism and Ecology’, primarily discusses the problem of overpopulation and proposes that limiting birth control for women is not only bad for women, it’s bad for the world; it is selfish, and patriarchal. There is also a brief discussion on the use of artificial reproductive technology; it in fact argues that:
“[U]ntil the decision to not have children or not to have them “naturally” is at least as legitimate as traditional childbearing, women are as good as forced into their female roles.”
The note on having children “naturally” was discussing primarily IVF in this time, as it was a new issue. But the point remains that not only is contraceptive highly important, but artificial fertility is also highly important. Firestone is positive about the possibilities of new technology to reproduction:
“Artificial reproduction is not inherently dumanizing. At very least, development of an option should make possible an honest reexamination of the ancient value of motherhood.”
Given lack of quotes to the contrary, there is no reason to believe that DoS doesn’t support the application of artificial reproductive technology to allow “male” people to fully take on women’s roles in society.
DoS claims that there is no biological basis to strict homo/heterosexuality based upon the sex of the other party; instead, Firestone believes that in a non-patriarchal system, the sex of a person’s romantic partner would have no major role in sexuality.
With this, we reach the conclusion. Firestone gives 4 demands for any alternative system to the patriarchy:
1. The freeing of women from the tyranny of their reproductive biology. by every means available, and the diffusion of the childbearing and childrearing role to the society as a whole, men as well as women. […] To thus free women from their biology would be to threaten the social unit that is organized around biological reproduction and the subjection of women to their biological destiny, the family. […]
This ultimately supports “males” taking on women’s childbearing and social roles as a method of freeing women from biological servitude.
2. The full self-determination, including economic independence, of both women and children. […] We are talking about more than fair integration into the labour force; we are talking about the abolition of the labor force itself under a cybernetic socialism, the radical restructuring of the economy to make “work” i.e., wage labor, no longer necessary. […]
This one is a socialist demand; but note that it demands economic independence for both women and children. Presumably this includes male children (who may, in this post-revolution world, become women).
3. The total integration of women and children into all aspects of larger society. All institutions that segregate the sexes, or bar children from adult society, e.g. elementary school, must be destroyed.
This relates back to the idea of discriminatory “protective” laws being against feminist interests; protecting women by targeted discrimination does not necessarily equate to feminist interests, in Firestone’s view.
And the final, and most interesting one on a trans-inclusive front, is this:
4. The freedom of all women and children to do whatever they wish to do sexually. […] In our new society, humanity could finally revert to its natural polymorphous sexuality - all forms of sexuality would be allowed and indulged.
“Humanity would revert to its natural polymorphous sexuality” - that’s right, Firestone here thinks that rigid gender-based sexualities come directly from the patriarchal society we live in. Firestone believes that we’d all have indefineable polymorphous, not necessarily sex-related sexualities in a truly equal world.
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Can you please submit Adam's past!!! As well as some headcanons on him ;(
Out of Character:
Adam’s past is in the works… You see, I started some day in December and didn’t do so much work on it since. 😅 Technically, it’s finished, but it’s especially hard to edit, because it’s the longest one I’ve yet written, and I really do want it to be perfect. But don’t worry, I’ll def publish it. ☺️
Lemme start with my headcanons:
My biggest one: Adam is a psychopath. So, sometime ago, I asked people on their opinion on that topic and legit no one replied… Thanks for that, guys. 🙃😂 Anyway, I have been drowning myself in research for several weeks now, and I know that there’s a lot of misinformation about psychopathy online. Like, psychopaths have very little to do with Hollywood movies, and it’s not a mental illness but a neurological disorder. I differentiate between sociopaths and psychopaths as well, as in: Psychopaths are born, sociopaths are made, and they behave and think differently. I have been analyzing Adam’s behavior and scenes carefully and, as far as I’m concerned, he meets all the signs for psychopathy. I know it’s kind of a critical topic to discuss, but I’d love to analyze Adam’s behavior and thoughts and compare it to psychopathy, in a separate post. (I am not looking to insult or offend anyone with this, I just love giving interesting characters more depth and exploring their minds and ways of thinking, especially when it comes to villains.)
Fitting the above one, Adam was a con artist at some point. I always thought of this job he would be so good at, but never knew the name until I came across it during my psychopathy research. Con artist! That job is made for him. I headcanon, some day after being a politician as a human, he came to America and started working as, I don’t know the name, but those people who came to people’s houses and sold them bullshit. He didn’t do that for a long time, though, because I don’t think it makes good money and it has a low social standing. However, that’s how he slipped into the con artist job or how he calls it “working in the finance sector”. He did that for, I don’t know, ten years or more, before he decided he had made enough money with it. He wanted to get into poilitics again to satisfy his desire for power, and quit being a con artist, because it would have been too risky to do both at the same time. (I doubt he was ever caught, but conning people is obviously illegal.)
It was slightly hinted at by Adrian that, sometimes, Adam kills women after sleeping with them. I think when he was around Priya’s age, he did that very often. Just sought them out and killed them afterwards, because he liked the feeling of power and control it gave him. In the present, it is more likely that he has contacts for things like that, contacts he does not kill, because it would be a huge scandal, obviously. Still, he sees all people as objects, humans more so than vampires, and attractive young women primary as sex objects to use and discard, and he thinks it’s pathetic that they adore him and seek him out the way they do, that they ‘let’ him kill them. But of course, he pretends to be this super elegant gentleman. I do think he was taught to treat women with special respect, but, if you consider his actual personality, it’s highly unlikely that he keeps that mask on in the bedroom. He displays it in public, because most women love gentlemen, but, unless his lover needs to be manipulated by him or he wants something from her, he is totally different, degrading even, in the bedroom.
I think Adam is very vain to the point that he needs longer in the bathroom than some ladies. I think he has a personal barber, stylist, you name it, and they come over every morning. He loves his appearance and - sorry - I can definitely see him making out with a mirror. At least, whenever he walks by, he does admire the guy he sees. But how could you not? How could women not? At least, that’s what Adam thinks. And lemme judge: he’s damn right. Adam’s About 183 cm tall (I just know), he’s muscular, he has a nice haircut, a fancy beard, great taste in fashion… And those, lemme guess, thick 7 inches. 😌😏 Hehe.
Pretty sure that Adam has a wild, irresponsible streak in him that he must live out somehow. I mean, he dated Priya and as if she would ever date anyone boring. Adam loves partying, irresponsible sexual acts, the adrenaline when seeking thrills. Despite what people think, I can definitely see him as a reckless driver, especially when alone. This guy has no fears. He is similar to Kamilah in some ways, but that’s one where they differ: I think he can let go better than she can, he just needs the right circumstances, right people, right situations. He is a lot more likely to play Roulette and bet on black just for the hell of it. With Priya, he did many irresponsible things, thinking “I don’t care. I love it.” Icona Pop knows. 😉
As a mortal, Adam had a family and children. Considering the historical context, this is more than likely. People often say they can’t imagine him as a father, and in a way I agree: I think he was a very neglectful and absent father who had a lot more kids than he wanted (considering the fact that he wanted none 😂). Furthermore, he was a very disloyal husband, married more than once, got women pregnant who he wasn’t married to, banished them or forced them into an abortion (people knew there were ways to miscarry)… I’m guessing the probability for him to cheat in a relationship to be as high as 80%. I see no reason for him not to cheat, because he has no moral compass and he believes he can have anyone, deserving of as many lovers as he wants. However, if she would cheat, he would either be incredibly angry or totally careless. Anyway, if there is one person seeing a crying toddler and thinking “Damn, I’m glad my kids are dead”, it’s Adam.
Back to his roots: Adam grew up Catholic. This is not me saying religion makes people bad (I’m religious myself), but me saying he grew up at a time and in a country that was certainly Catholic. However, I highly doubt he ever believed in any religion, simply was raised into a strictly religious environment. In that way, he broke rules very early such as no lying or no touching yourself, and this is how he learned to be sneaky about it. This theory explains his name as well, as Adam was the first human created by God, and he was likely named after him, not as the first human in the world, but the first baby born to his parents, a noble couple. I’m very sure he grew up in a big family. However, he is only focused only on himself since… all the time.
Obviously, regarding sex, Adam has done almost everything there is to do. I think he is much more animalistic and pleasure-focused than people think, and he loves to break taboos the same way he breaks rules as he considers himself above them. Imagine anything nasty and I bet he has done it. Either with someone kinky like Priya or he just persuaded a ‘normal’ person into letting him try whatever ‘sick’ fantasy he had. Also, he loves group sex with, like, four women who cater to his needs. I tried to widen this headcanon a bit by bringing guys into it as well. While I think Adam is definitely heterosexual, I wouldn’t be surprised if anything happened between him and a man. I headcanon something like: He was at an orgy, drunk or whatever, centuries ago, doing his thing, and a guy just approached and gave him oral. Lol. And he let him do it, because why the hell not? Meanwhile, I find kissing a bit too intimate, but I can imagine he has done it, too, out of manipulation or because a guy just kissed him. With Priya, I headcanon he seduced young women, killed them… and they had fun with them, like… blood play and stuff…
I think Adam’s basic directive is “I don’t care”, regarding the other members of The Council as well. Of course, there are things he cares about deeply, like killing the Clanless or getting votes, but all of that serves no one but himself, the only person on Earth he actually cares about. You could give him any person’s name and ask if they shall live or die and he wouldn’t care at all what happens to them (unless that person’s existence is useful or bothering for him). Yeah, he has no conscience and he gives zero shits. His emotions are super limited. Like, when Gaius presented them his morbid plan, Adam was careless to the point that he had to observe the others’ reactions to be able to form and voice an opinion. He is calm by default and rarely gets angry (the anger he showed in several scenes was fake in order to appear believable).
Regarding lovers, Adam has a type. He likes young women (22-28), naive and ‘stupid’, women he can easily control, and he sees himself deserving of having all the pretty ones, like trophies or possessions. When someone doesn’t have the right age or look, he considers them not good enough for him and would find it pathetic if they asked him out. He doesn’t like independent women, he likes women he can make dependent on him. He always needs to be the superior one, financially as well as intellectually. All this explains why he never had and never ever will have a thing for Kamilah. She is everything he can’t control, can’t subject, and that’s why he respects her and can openly express a platonic liking for her. But deep inside, women like that threaten him and he wants to destroy them, because they are too smart to fall for him. And women (people) he can’t benefit from, who refuse to obey him, who he can’t manipulate, have no use to him. Regarding one night stands, which he had a lot more than gilfriends, he only targets very attractive women. He likes dark types, like himself, rather than blondes, and women who are particularly feminine. Long hair, long nails, dresses, high heels… I think that attracts him. And he loves asses. And Latinas. Sorry.
I think Adam has more than two faces. To the public, he is that super friendly, charming guy who wants the best for anyone. To The Council, he is that friendly guy who has drastic measures, but still puts a lot of importance on their team-spirit. Part of the mask is off, but he still presents himself as friendly and interested in the well-being of the public. Like, he greets the members happily and calls them his “friends”, but everyone does know they shouldn’t turn on him. (The Baron even said so.) When dating Priya, he showed a different face again. More of that easy-going guy, a great sport, overly protective of his ‘loved’ ones. He always alternates between “Hello, I am super friendly and chill, you can talk about anything with me” and “I am super dangerous and you better not fuck with me”. Then, in reality, he is a cold-hearted snake who cares about no one but himself. Now imagine him around his Clan. I think his mask slips off even further than it does when he’s with The Council, in a way that they might even fear him, because they know what he’s capable of. Or they admire him because he leaves the mask on, like the nerd in the train to the Ball does, who obviously has a crush on him? It is so different to assess Adam, because he is a great actor and he can legit be anyone. He can be the kind philantrophist you support, the sexy celebrity you admire, the relaxed guy who is your best friend, the intelligent Clan leader, the most caring boyfriend you have had, the most abusive boyfriend you have had… or the man who is actually planning to murder you.
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musingcompany · 7 years
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hello, world!! as always, I come back with the most random resources in the world. this time I’m presenting you all a list of #225 latin words/saying that can be used as tags, slogans (admins!!) and whatever else you find this useful for. if you guys want it in any other language, just let me know because I love words. hope y’all find this useful!
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1. ab incunabulis: from the cradle 2. a bon chat, bon rat: to a good cat, a good rat (retaliation in kind) 3. a bouch ouverte: with open mouth (eagerly, uncritically) 4. ab ovo usque ad mala: from egg to apples (from beginning to end) 5. a bras ouverts: with open arms 6. ab uno disce omnes: from one learn to know all 7. a coup sur: with sure stroke (surely) 8. acte gratuit: gratuitous impulsive act 9. ad arbitrium: at will (arbitrarily) 10. ad extremum: to the extreme (at last) 11. ad majorem Dei gloriam: to the greater glory of God 12. ad patres: to his fathers (deceased) 13. ad unguem: to the fingernail (exactly) 14. ad utrumque paratus: prepared for either event 15. aegri somnia: a sick man’s dreams 16. aequam servare mentem: to preserve a calm mind 17. aequo animo: with even mind (calmly) 18. aere perennius: more lasting than bronze 19. a huis clos: with closed doors 20. a l’abandon: carelessly 21. a la belle etoile: under the beautiful star (in the open air at night) 22. a la bonne heure: at a good time (all right) 23. a la page: at the page (up to the minute) 24. alter idem: another self 25. a maximis ad minima: from the greatest to the least 26. a marveille: marvelously 27. amicus humani generis: friend of the human race 28. amicus usque ad aras: a friend as far as to the alters (a friend to the last extremity) 29. ami de cour: court friend 30. armamentum ad baculum: argument of the staff (appeal to force) 31. arrectis auribus: with ears pricked up 32. a torte et a travers: wrong and crosswise (without rhyme or reason) 33. au bout de son latin: at the end of one’s Latin (at the end of one’s mental resources) 34. au fait: to the point (socially correct) 35. au grand serieux: in all serious 36. au mieux: on the best terms (on intimate terms) 37. aurea mediocritas: the golden mean 38. auspicium melioris aevi: an omen of a better age 39. ausssitot dit, aussitot fait: no sooner said than done 40. autres temps, autres moeurs: other times, other customs 41. aut vincere aut mori: either to conquer or to die 42. bellum omnium contra onnes: war of all against all 43. bien-pensant: right minded (orthodox) 44. bon gre, mal gre: whether with good grace or bad (willy-nilly) 45. bonis avibus: under good auspices 45. brutum fulmen: insensible thunderbolt (futile threat of display of force) 47. cadit quaestio: the question drops (the argument collapses) 48. capable de tout: capable of anything (unpredictable) 49. cause sine qua non: an indispensable cause or condition 50. cheval de bataille: war-horse (argument constantly relied on) 51. comedie humaine: human comedy (the whole variety of human life) 52. comedie larmoyante: tearful comedy (sentimental comedy) 53. comagnon de voyage: traveling companion 54. compte rendu: report 55. concordia discors: discordant harmony 56. confessio fidei: confession of faith 57. contemptus mundi: contempt for the world 58. coup de maitre: masterstroke 59. coup d’essai: experiment 60. coute que coute: cost what it may 61. cri de coeur: cry of the heart 62. crise de conscience: crisis of conscience 63. crise de nerfs: crisis of nerves 64. crux criticorum: crux of critics 65. cum grano salis: with a grain of salt 66. custos morum: guardian of morals (censor) 67. de bonne grice: with good grace 68. de l’audace, encore de l’audace, et toujours de l’audace: audacity, more audacity, and ever more audacity 69. de mal en pis: from bad to worse 70. Deo favente: with God’s favor 71. de profundis: out of the depths 72. desipere in loco: to indulge in trifling at the proper time 73. Deus absconditus: hidden God (unknowable God) 74. dies faustus: lucky day 75. dies infaustus: unlucky day 76. dies irae: day of wrath 77. esprit d’le escalier: the wit of the staircase 78. faux bonhomme: false friend 79. faux-naif: affectedly simple or childlike 80. festina lente: make haste slowly 81. feux d’artifice: fireworks, or show of wit 82. folie de grandeur: delusion of greatness, megalomania 83. furor loquendi: rage for speaking 84. furor poeticus: rage for poetry 85. furor scribendi: rage for writing 86. gens du mond: fashionable people 87. guerre a outrance: war to the uttermost 88. haut gout: slight taint of decay 89. hic illae lacrimae: hence these tears 90. homme d’esprit: witty man 91. in omnia paratus: ready for all things 92. in partibus infidelium: in the land of the infidels 93. in statu quo ante bellum: just like before the war 94. januis clausis: behind closed doors 95. jeu de mots: play on words 96. ktema es ai: a possession for ever (enduring art or literature) 97. la belle dame sans merci: the beautiful lady without mercy 98. lacrimae rerum: tragedy of life 99. lapsus calami: slip of the pen 100. lapsus linguae: slip of the tongue 101. laudatory temporis acti: one who praises past times 102. lusis naturae: freak of nature 103. magni nominis umbra: the shadow of a great name 104. malade imaginaire: imaginary invalid 105. malis avibus: under evil auspices 106. mauvais quart d’heure: uncomfortable but brief experience 107. meden agen: nothing in excess 108. mens sana in corpore sano: a sound mind in a sound body 109. metteur et scene: (stage or film) director 110. meum et tuem: mine and yours 111. mirabile visu: wonderful to behold 112. mole ruit sua: it collapses from its own size 113. monumentum aere perennius: a monument more lasting than bronze 114. multum in parvo: much in little 115. mysterium tremendum: overwhelming mystery 116. ne quid nimis: not anything in excess 117. nil admirari: equanimity 118. nolens volens: willy-nilly 119. nostalgie de la boue: attraction to what is unworthy, crude, or degrading 120. novus homo: upstart 121. novus ordo seclorum: a new cycle of the ages 122. nuit blanche: sleepless night 123. obscurum per obscurius: explaining the obscure by means of the more obscure 124. onus probandi: burden of proof 125. ore rotundo: eloquently 126. otium cum dignitate: leisure with dignity 127. outre-mer: overseas 128. pallida Mors: pale Death 129. panem et circenses: bread and circuses 130. pater patriae: father of his country 131. paucis verbis: in a few words 132. pax vobiscum: peace be with you 133. peine forte et dure: strong and hard punishment 134. per angusta ad augusta: through difficulties to honors 135. peu a peu: little by little 136. peu de chose: a trifle 137. peu d’occasion: piece for a special occasion 138. piece justificative: document serving as evidence 139. piece montee: set piece (said of decorative food) 140. pleno jure: with full right 141. plus royaliste que le roi: more royalist than the king 142. pocas palabras: few words 143. point de repere: point of reference 144. police verso: with thumb turned (down) 145. pour rire: for laughing (not to be taken seriously) 146. pro aris et focis: for alters and firesides 147. pro bono publico: for the public good 148. pro hac vice: for this occasion 149. pro patria: for one’s country 150. pro rege, lege, et grege: for the king, the law, and the people 151. pro re nata: as needed 152. quantum mutates ab illo: how changed from what he once was 153. quantum sufficit: as much as suffices 154. quoad hoc: to this extent 155. quod erat demonstrandum: which was to be proved 156. quod erat faciendum: which was to be done 157. quod semper, quod ubique, quo dab omnibus: what (has been held) always, everywhere, by everybody 158. quorum pars magna fui: in which I played a great part 159. raison d’etat: reason of state 160. reculer pour mieux sauter: to draw back in order to make a better jump 161. re infecta: the beusiness being unfinished 162. religio loci: religious sanctity of a place 163. ruse de guerre: war strategem 164. rus in urbe: country in the city 165. saeva indignatio: fierce indignation 166. sal Atticum: Attic salt (wit) 167. salon des refuses: salon of the refused (exhibition of officially rejected art) 168. salto mortale: deadly jump (dangerous or crucial undertaking) 169. sancta simplicitas: holy simplicity (naivete) 170. sans doute: without doubt 171. sans gene: without embarrassment or constraint 172. sans peur et sans reproche: without fear and without reproach 173. sans souci: without worry 174. scene a faire: obligatory scene 175. secundum artem: according to the art (according to the accepted practice) 176. secundum naturam: according to nature (naturally) 177. se defendendo: in self-defense 178. semper eadem: always the same (feminine form) 179. semper fidelis: always faithful 180. semper idem: always the same (masculine form) 181. semper paratus: always prepared 182. simpliste: naive 183. splendide mendax: nobly untruthful 184. spolia opima: rich spoils (spoils of the victor) 185. status quo ante bellum: the state existing before the war 186. suaviter in modo, fortiter in re: gently in manner, strongly in deed 187. suo jure: in his own right 188. suo loco: inits proper palce 189. suo marte: by one’s own exertions 190. sur place: in place (on the spot) 191. suum cuique: to each his own 192. tant mieux: so much the better 193. tant pis: so much the worse (too bad) 194. tempus edax rerum: time, that devours all things 195. totidem verbis:: in so many words 196. totis viribus: with all one’s might 197. toto caelo: by the whole extenet of the heavens 198. toujour perdix: always partridge (too much of a good thing) 199. tour d’horizon: circuit of the horizon (general survey) 200. tous frais faits: all expenses defrayed 201. taut au contraire: quite the contrary 202. tout a vous: wholly yours (at your service) 203. tout bien ou rien: everything well (done) or nothing (attempted) 204. tout court: quite short (simply) 205. tout de meme: all the same (nevertheless) 206. tout de suite: Immediately 207. tout ensemble: all together 208. tout le monde: everybody 209. trahison de clercs: treason of the intellectuals 210. tanche de vie: slice of life 211. tristesse: melancholy 212. ultima ratio regum: the final argument of kings (war) 213. uno animo: with one mind 214. urbi et orbi: to the city and the world (to everyone) 215. utile dulci: the useful with the agreeable 216. va et vient: coming and going (traffic) 217. ventre a terre: belly to the ground (at very great speed) 218. verbatim ac litteratim: word for word, and letter for letter 219. vieux jeu: old game (old hat) 220. vin du pays: wine of the locality 221. virgo intacta: untouched virgin 222. virtute et armis: by valor of arms 223. vis medicatrix natureae: the healing power of nature 224. vita nuova: new life 225. vox et praeterea nihil: voice and nothing more
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elizabethleslie7654 · 5 years
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Modern Family and Marriage: The Crumbling Foundation of Our Society and Future
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This piece is part three of a 14 part series on modern society. Here are links to Part One and Part Two
Marriage and family has been attacked from many angles. At the current moment there has never been a higher percentage of the population that is unmarried regarding women. This is due to many reasons. As we’ve discussed before, women’s true nature and unfettered hypergamy has caused a dramatic shift in the standards (really unreasonable expectations and inflated self-worth) of the modern woman. As a result she usually shoots too high, or doesn’t focus on looks and feminine nature and winds up 35+, childless, and dissatisfied with her available options for men. However this is just one aspect of the family degradation that has occurred. No fault divorce, child custody laws (in which women gain custody over 80% of the time), and the tilted family courts have disincentivized men (the initiators of marriage) from ever beginning the process and causes them to opt out entirely. With the advent of video games and online (free) pornography, men can virtually fuck and conquer countless women and 100’s of worlds, all from the comfort of their home. In truth, men don’t have very high standards for what they desire in a wife, but even that relatively lower bar has become too high for an increasing number of women. In times long past, women were encouraged to aspire to beauty, femininity, and even feminine deference to their husband. Sadly, something that has been lost in time is the abhorrence of, and resulting rise of, the ���strong woman” that #1 doesn’t naturally exist, and #2 conflicts with nearly all masculine men. Good men don’t want strong women, they want composed, self-confident, submissive, feminine women who are going to listen to them when they talk and do what they’re asked.
This however has another dynamic to it. Usually marriages are based upon shared interests and values, and approximately 80% of the time they also share a racial aspect (within the US). Because, as stated previously, women are more susceptible to outside influences, particularly so when considering mate selection, propaganda has been aimed at women to also abandon their racial heritage in relationships. Interracial relationships are pushed upon white women (and men, but to a lesser degree) to pair with those outside their race (particularly so when considering white women and black men). Even if these women don’t marry these black men, by merit of copulating with them they are often ruined in the eyes of many race conscious white men, and often times even those who aren’t fully red pilled on race (as they usually have even a gut level understanding of potential microchimeric or even telegonic effects of race mixing). This is relevant to the marriage and family discussion because as more and more white women deny their heritage and burn coal, they often permanently disqualify themselves from marriage to a white man and therefore further destabilize the family fabric of America (and other western white countries).
Additionally, men are no longer allowed to lead in the biblically suggested fashion that formed the basis for many successful societies. While I personally hold the biblical view of household structure to be best, analogous structures throughout time (re:patriarchal) have shown themselves the most effective in holding together societies and advancing human flourishing, while minimizing the fuckery that is occurring in current times. This hamstringing, as well as general humiliation (think Disney Channel fatherly portrayals, as well as most commercials) has a profound effect on society, as it further continues the loss of frame by men. Without this dictation of reality (what I’ve been calling frame) by men, we are unable to maintain heritage and further see the browning of America by daughters either failing to procreate or doing so with a black, hispanic, or otherwise non-white character. Sons are no longer taught the ways of their fathers and grandfathers and daughters are no longer watched over and cared for in the same fashion by their fathers, brothers, uncles, and cousins. We have truly lost the familial aspect of this relationship, due to many causes, but at least due in part to the rising age at first birth which further robs families of intergenerational connections and knowledge (and cultural) continuity. In the past it wasn’t uncommon to have 4 generations in one room. Now, it is becoming rarer and rarer to have even 3 generations in the same room in which the youngest is old enough to understand and internalize the valuable lessons of each generation.
This also ties back into the previous section regarding youth culture. Because families have destabilized it has led to the rise of the aforementioned youth culture, more so as a result of little to no familial influence via intergenerational contact and broader interconnected extended family networks. This in turn further destabilizes families by not allowing for further family formation via previously listed race mixing as well as lack of familial support. In earlier times husbands and wives had a broader family network to help support them during both easy and difficult times. Now, hardly any support exists for married couples and even worse broader society actively encourages a childless, commitment free life, making even healthy relationships that much harder by forcing couples to fight against the broader ethos of our culture. In addition, if fights occurred in past times, other wives, mothers, and grandmothers would help with and encourage reconciliation between the two. Hopefully they’d encourage the woman to follow their man’s lead and to submit to his wishes, even if she disagreed. But now in current times women have no such network, and as a zeitgeist of the cultural ethos, often have “girl-friends” that encourage a “strong woman” attitude, and that their men should “just listen to them” and that they “can’t figure out why he just won’t listen, or give in”. They actively sow discord in the sacred halls of marriage. In addition, men often have cucked male friends or exist in a world in which their colleagues (both male and female) discourage strong male leadership and encourage female leadership and supremacy. They must be careful because any leadership that is too strong is “abusive” or “controlling”. This is, in all reality, a complete falsehood. Women, for most of recorded history, have not been in control and in charge of themselves. I don’t believe they possess the true ability to be responsible for themselves in a manner similar to men. In fact, a good portion of men are unable of being responsible for themselves. So to insist that women are indeed equal in this manner to all men, is absurd and surely a result of our subverted society. Women, when faced with the strong authority of a man will often react like children, throwing tantrums and fits of rage. And anyone who knows anything about children knows you don’t give in to their tantrums and demands if you want to maintain any semblance of authority. However, as we’ve seen, if men attempt to hold their authority in the face of objections by women they’re often labeled abusive and at times even thrown in jail for simply not caving to the pozzed reality we currently exist in (if their insane wife wants to gender-bend their son or daughter but they disagree, for example). It’s clown world plus a psychotic toddler’s birthday all in one. Needless to say this isn’t very conducive to the formation and maintenance of immediate (re:nuclear) or extended families.
However, there is hope. If we carefully begin to make changes at the family level and slowly initiate a reconstruction of culture and positive familial connections and influence, I do believe we can begin to recover in 2-3 generations. The road back will undoubtedly be more difficult than has been the fall from grace. This is simply the case because many who wish to rebuild this structure of times lost have often not seen it, nor have they even had any consequential connection with as little as 2nd or 3rd hand knowledge of what the reality of said structures were like. However, we did go to moon with very simple computers, so I don’t think this is entirely out of the realm of possibility. But like our endeavors to the moon we did have some fuck ups along the way, and unlike the Apollo missions, I don’t think we’ll give up on the family as easily as we did on continued moon access. Everything else aside, the moon metaphors fits even better because as the strong, western, white people we are, even our miss aimed at the moon will surely land among the stars. A family structure 50% better than what we’re experiencing writ large is surely 1000x times better than no family at all, because without healthy white children, there is no white future.
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adambstingus · 6 years
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Stranger in a Strange Land by George Prochnik review – Gershom Scholem and Zionism
The author, like his subject, rejected consumer capitalism and travelled to Israel to find a more meaningful Jewish life. But problems arose
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One day before the outbreak of the first world war, a precocious boy called Gerhard Scholem burst into a room at home and began the rite of symbolically castrating his father. Papa, I think I want to be a Jew, he exclaimed. He was planning to learn Hebrew, study the Bible and become a Zionist. His father, an assimilationist German businessman who despised his Jewish heritage, was appalled: You want to return to the ghetto? he asked. Youre the ones who are living in the ghetto, his son snapped back. Only you wont admit it.
Scholem meant that his father had established the family in a gilded bourgeois Jewish prison within a hostile German society his friend, Walter Benjamin, who grew up in a similarly privileged west Berlin milieu, described it as something of a ghetto held on lease. These rebellious sons turned out to be unwittingly prescient.
Such Oedipal confrontations were common in German-speaking lands during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as the privileged sons of Jewish businessmen rebelled against their fathers devotion to bourgeois accumulation and deluded patriotism for a Wilhelmine polity that denied Jews equal rights. Some rebels such as Gerhards brother Werner (who would die in 1940 in Buchenwald) became communists. Others, Scholem for one, were attracted by the Zionist hopes advanced by political activist Theodor Herzl and philosopher Martin Buber. Scholem kept a portrait of the former on his bedroom wall, and felt a jolt of electricity when he heard Buber lecture and identify Jews as Orientals for whom the priority was mutuality and community, processes and relationships against the atomised, petrified western man of the senses.
He dreamed that the Jews could replace, as George Prochnik puts it, the attitude of impotent suffering with rambunctious perilously naked self-expression. Instead of being strangers in European lands, Jews could go home and become themselves not hobbled melancholics of the diaspora, nor spiritless worshippers of degrading consumer capitalism.
David Ben-Gurion (centre), Israels first prime minister, giving an address in Tel Aviv, 1948. Photograph: AP
This at least was the messianic dream that led Scholem in 1923 to quit Germany for Palestine, where the young philologist and scholar of that mystical thread of Judaism called Kabbalah spent the rest of his life. That was the year of Hitlers beer hall putsch, only 10 years before the Nazi leader was elected German chancellor and 19 before the Wannsee conference implemented the Final Solution. Scholem figures as an antithesis of Stefan Zweig, subject of Prochniks previous book, the cosmopolitan humanist who couldnt abandon his idealised vision of European culture: Scholem is a hero to the author because of the virtuosity with which he developed alternative, non-European Jewish, visions.
In Jerusalem, Scholem changed his first name, becoming Gershom the name given by Moses to his son after the escape from Egypt. It was after that escape that Moses said: I have been a stranger in a strange land, with its implication (encoded in one meaning of the name Gershom) that the prophet was home after the woes of exile. But, for Scholem, anarchically esoteric exegete that he was, Gershom also meant Stranger is his name. Prochnik tells us he revelled in this paradox, glossing it thus: Once a stranger, now home; forever a stranger, by destiny. He was never at home, not quite.
Certainly if Scholem had been a stranger in Germany, he was to be differently alienated in his new home. Prochnik takes us through the history of British mandate-era Palestine to the creation in 1948 of the state of Israel, whose birth pangs were witnessed by Scholem. From the heights of the newly founded Hebrew University on Mount Scopus, the professor looked down on his disappointing people like a new Moses on Mount Sinai finding that, instead of Zionism meaning the transcendent salvation of the Jewish people, in practice it involved the recrudescence of godless western materialism, dubious religious conservatism and heartless treatment of the Arab population. He stayed but became something Guardian readers can identify with, a remoaner.
Yet Scholem also became a source of pride to the new Israel, symbol not of its martial valour or economic chutzpah but its intellectual excellence. Prime minister David Ben-Gurion reportedly shut his office for five days in 1957 and went to bed to read Scholems magnum opus on the false Jewish messiah, Sabbatai Sevi. Imagine, by way of parallel, Theresa May suspending Brexit negotiations to curl up with volume three of philosopher Derek Parfits On What Matters.
But thats only one thread of this ardent, beautifully written book. The other is Prochniks parallel rebellion and Zionist awakening in the late 1980s when he quit the US, converted to Judaism, learned Hebrew and settled in Jerusalem. He describes his upbringing in Fairfax City, Virginia, as spiritual violation. The despoliation he witnessed as malls consumed Americas wilderness resonated somehow with the ruins of European history that my fathers family had fled. Israel promised, or so it seemed, escape from both ruins. Like his hero, Prochnik was a first-born son sticking it to the old man for letting the flame of his Jewish identity burn down as low as it could go.
And so, one day in the late 80s he flew to Israel clutching his battered copy of Scholems On the Kabbalah and Its Mysticism. In Jerusalem he married Anne, an artist and teacher, and raised three children, all the while struggling with his writing career and with his place in, and commitment to, Israel. Like Scholem, only more so, he was both beguiled by and estranged from its realisation of Zionism rising consumerism, irksome dress codes, the unresolved Arab question.
Harvesting wheat in a field near Modiin, Israel. Photograph: Abir Sultan/EPA
As he delved deeper into Scholems mystical Jewish thought, Prochnik explored the notion of the Shekinah, roughly the glory of the divine presence interpreted in Kabbalism in feminine terms. Just as Aristophanes had imagined in Platos Symposium human nature split into gendered halves who yearned for their original wholeness, so Scholem suggested that a part of God Himself is exiled from God, namely the feminine part, who is the spiritual personification of exile and Jewish exile in particular. For Kabbalists and for Scholem, humanitys task of bringing Gods masculine and feminine aspects back to their foundational unity was akin to Zionisms dream of overcoming Jews exile.
One imagines Prochnik looking up from his exciting esoteric readings, to be confronted with Israels sometimes disappointing reality, gender-wise. Jewish religious practice, at worst, was hardly premised on rediscovering that foundational unity: Orthodoxy effectively cut women out completely from non-domestic religious activity, Prochnik writes. I felt there had to be a more meaningful role for women than just replicating male functions in a ritual territory demarcated and dust covered by men.
Other demarcations slowly impinge on Prochnik. At one poignant moment, he wonders why Arab boys cleaning tables at a restaurant arent at school. While he is graceful in admitting his omissions of empathy, the book reads as if he sometimes lost sight of how, to repurpose Walter Benjamins remark, Israeli civilisation, like every other in human history, has its barbarous flip side.
His estrangement came to a head with the 1995 murder of Yitzhak Rabin by ultraconservative student Yigal Amir, who was opposed to the prime ministers support for the Oslo peace accords that entailed Israeli withdrawal from West Bank settlements. The villain of Israels recent history, for Prochnik, emerges as the nations current prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who, before Rabins murder, made the breasts of conservatives swell with a sense of their own vigilante machismo while sending psychopaths into a frenzy.
He doesnt quite indict Netanyahu for creating favourable circumstances for Rabins assassination, but when Bibi was months later elected prime minister, it was time for Prochnik and Anne to leave for the US. He writes: the very thing that once drew us was what we needed to renounce. Worse, their marriage, founded on the joy of their Israeli adventure, couldnt survive the rupture. What remains, however, is Prochniks adoration for Scholem, and his unrealised and perhaps unrealisable notion of Zionist transcendence.
Stuart Jeffriess Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School is published by Verso.
Stranger in a Strange Land: Searching for Gershon Scholem and Jerusalem s published by Granta. To order a copy for 21.25 (RRP 25) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over 10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of 1.99.
from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/stranger-in-a-strange-land-by-george-prochnik-review-gershom-scholem-and-zionism/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/173473695312
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midnightminx90 · 7 years
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Every 4th for you
4. Who was the first person you came out to? How did they take it?- I guess it was my mom? But there wasn’t ever really a “typical” coming out sorta thing? Like, I think I just said that I’d just gotten my first kiss from my (now ex) gf
8. How many LGBT friends do you have?- Honestly, I’ve no idea. I know most are LGBT+++, that I have fewer straigh friends
12. How much do you like cats?- I LOVE THEM SO MUCH
16. How accurate is your gaydar?- Pretty accurate? I’m more likely to think someone’s gay/bi than straight, rather than vice-versa
20. Ellen or Portia?- Ellen? I don’t really know much about Portia; I’ve barely seen her
24. Would you ever want to give birth?- FUCK NO
28. How many rainbow items do you own?- I have one rainbow button, one bisexual button and five paper flags? I think?
32. Have you ever worn a woman’s suit?- Yes. Also a pantsuit. Both before and after I figured Im bi
36. Who is your favorite LGBT celebrity?- I have no clue tbh. I know who my LEAST fave it tho
40. Are you comfortable with terms such as lezzie, lesbo, dyke, or tranny?- I don’t think “lezzie” is that bad, and it might come from dialects in the UK? Unsure about the middle two, but fucking hell I hate the word “tranny”
44. Have you ever been in a long distance relationship?- No
48. Do you think it is possible for someone to truly be a 50/50 bisexual, or is the percentage always skewed in favor of one gender?- I don’t know? Like, personally I’m bi, and I have a strong preference for women. That’s just my personal preference/experience, but I don’t see why someone can’t favour one sex more than the other (I feel gender is the wrong word here)
52. Have you ever been hit on by another female?- Never irl
56. What does equality mean to you?- That everyone gets treated the same way and get the same pay for the same job, no matter the colour of their skin, their sexuality and gender identity, or if they’re disabled. It means everyone gets to marry the person they want, can donate blood, can adopt, can inherit their parnter
60. How flirty are you?- NOT AT ALL
64. Have you ever been discriminated against because of your sexuality or gender identity? If so, please explain. - No, thankfully not
68. What personality trait are you most attracted to?- Humour compatible with mine (meaning non-degrading/racist)
72. From 1-10, how attractive are muscular women?- I mean, I guess it depends? Like I don’t mind muscles at all, but personally I don’t find body-builders attractive, I find that to be too much (it’s got nothing to do with femininity, because I feel the same with guys). So like 7-8?
76. From 1-10, how attractive are women with short hair?- 10. Although it depends on the style as well, because unkempt hair is a no-ho
80. Have you ever been on your period the same time as a girlfriend?- Can’t remember, but probably not as I’m pretty sure I was on the pill the entire time due to really bad cramps
84. Have you ever pretended to be completely straight?- No
88. Do you have any celebrity crushes?- So many, but the only one I can think of right now for some reason is Kristen Stewart
92. Where do you think is the best place to meet a potential lover?- I honestly don’t know about a single place but gay bars and I’ve never been to one, so. Not so sure about cons bc it’s not that easy to get to know someone and you can’t just ask if they’re straight or not,or if they’re single, so
96. Have you ever been part of a softball team?- Nope. Tbh I don’t like games involving balls and it’s not at all a big sport in my country, so
100. What advice would you give a girl who is struggling to come out?- I am so so so bad at giving advice! But I guess it would have to be to stay true to yourself no matter what, even if it means hiding it at times. And just because others use labels, it doesn’t mean you should feel the need to use them yourself
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