#because one of the things rape culture does is blame women for their assault

[leupagus]

I've seen a number of posts claiming that Rebecca choosing to stay on Boat Guy's houseboat was "incredibly stupid" or "wildly unsafe" or other such descriptors. Everyone's perspectives are valid; I certainly understand that individual people would not want to stay there in that situation, and don't get why Rebecca did.

That being said, I really disagree with the posts that think she should have left or that she was in danger. Even putting aside that this is a television show and not real life, Rebecca, had she been a real person, did not have a "death wish" merely by remaining on board and spending time with Boat Guy.

Boat Guy was clearly interested in Rebecca, even before she fell into the canal — after all, he tries to warn her about being in the bike lane first by whistling at her and then saying she's a beautiful woman. He's smitten right from the jump! And during the scenes they have together, we see him make a number of passes at her. This is a guy who saw Rebecca and thought "ooh yes please."

But that does not make him unsafe, nor does it make any of his actions "creepy," "gross," or "red flags." What it makes him is a middle-aged man speaking as an equal to a middle-aged woman, who is similarly showing sexual interest in him. And who doesn't feel the need to pretend he doesn't find her gorgeous and compelling and sexy, which again, is not a bad thing!

I suspect a lot of the folks framing this guy as predatory just... don't have a lot of personal experience of being a 40-something woman flirting with a 40-something man. And I can say, from personal experience, that it's really fucking nice to see that dynamic between them.

Because I would've stayed on that boat, you'd better believe.

[drbased]

I wholeheartedly believe that the rise of andrew tate is a direct response to metoo. There's always been edgy misogynist male figures that men have gravitated towards, but andrew tate was the first one for whom there wasn't a veneer of jokey irony. and the thing about metoo is society really did not fucking know how to handle it. any feminist worth her salt would not be surprised at the obvious pattern, but for the first time in all of recorded history we had that pattern laid bare for the world to see. if famous and powerful men and women were committing sexual assault at the same rates, then I don't think we'd have seen such a backlash. literally no male figure was 'safe' - the edgy ones, the nice ones, the strongly political ones, the toughguy ones, the hot ones, the 'wife guy' ones, the forgettable ones, the accessible average ones. one from every category has been found committing some sort of assault, and it's jaded our entire populace. society did not fucking know how to handle it. and now, we have an entire generation of boys raised in a society already full of misogyny but no veneer of 'only the other type of man is the Bad Guy, not me - he's the one who's the wrong type of masculine'. leftists themselves didn't even know how to handle it, really - they've tried to talk about 'toxic masculinity' and 'no positive male role models' and 'men in power' but there's this stink all over it - like the stink of a cheap air freshener trying to cover up decades of bad air. it's literally impossible to engage with metoo without directly engaging with feminist theory, just as it's impossible to engage with blm without directly engaging with white supremacy. these social issues once considered niche have become mainstream and forced the normie populace to engage with ideas well beyond their comfort zone, forcing apolitical people to take a stand. most people have tried to take some sort of neutral stance by vaguely gesturing to 'the patriarchy' as some nebulous force that hurts men as much as it does women, but there's an increasingly large subset of men for whom engaging with even the most casual of media now has to involve being reminded of feminism - for a lot of us, there's kind of no escapism anymore. I've seen comments like 'enjoying a song and hoping the singer isn't caught with child porn' which very much echo my experience when engaging with any media made by... oh shit, it's really is mainly men, isn't it?

I'm a millenial, pretty squarely a millenial, and my generation of teenage boys were obsessed with edgy humour - eminem, dead baby jokes, rape jokes, family guy, south park. but that era is dead - if there's irony now it's a knowing irony. and that's what metoo did. teenage boys have always wanted to play in the dirt of society, they've always wanted to engage with the shittiest of what society has to offer. as they come of age they learn that society is their stomping ground, morality their playground. if rape of women is no big deal, then why care about the rest of morality? it's all just one big joke. and once, that joke used to carry with it a sincerely held belief that it was all just a joke - that is, inconsequential. but now we all know that this is shit isn't all theoretical - we've all heard the term rape culture, and the harmful effects of the n word. so if the joke has to continue, then it has to be on new terms. there has to be no irony anymore. if theoretical rape is funny, and rape of women is real, then real rape has to be funny. if rape isn't allowed to be funny, then rape has to be righteous.

andrew tate's popularity is an active 'fuck you' to society. it says that if men can't hide behind a veneer of respectability, blame rape on 'the other guy' and there aren't any nice guys, then fuck it, there aren't any nice guys. the idea of the 'white knight' has been popular in the manosphere for some time - the concept of a man only being kind to a woman because he's trying to sleep with her is something mras despise not because of the dishonesty to her but because of the dishonesty to other men. they value men being honest to each other in their hatred of women. and andrew tate is the embodiment of that mentality in the mainstream. men didn't mind the concept of popular powerful men being dishonest about their hatred of women because it was a useful societal buffer. perhaps you might even believe that these men liked the 'unproblematic' famous guys precisely because thinking about evil stuff all the time can make you feel a bit bad sometimes; a lot of the cool meme guys have an image that's nothing to do with women or sex. but if even those guys can't be divorced from misogyny and rape, then fuck it, we're not gonna pretend to care anymore. the veneer of male respectability was always for the sake of men. if women aren't gonna let us hide, then we're not going to hide.

[manie-sans-delire-x]

How come you enjoy sexual submission/masochism? Wouldn’t it make more sense to be a hardcore fem dom? Given your misogynistic upbringing, i mean. Why would you want to be demeaned and objectified in bed, when you’ve already been underestimated enough and mistreated all throughout your childhood?

Yeah that would make more sense, but sexuality usually doesnt really make sense. In fact I think a lot of human sexuality is liking the forbidden, the taboo, often the opposite treatment of what you want in daily life. (In fact its shown in studies that many highly feminist women like rough sex, and men in high power positions like being sexually degraded and submissive as well. The idea is that it can be a relief from power, from being in control. There is an aspect of being taken care of in submission.) You know how men say they want "a chef in the kitchen, a maid in the living room, and a whore in the bedroom"? Well I think many women want to be treated like "an equal person on the streets and a whore in the sheets" lmfao. Sadly, many men understand the first but cant seem to comprehend the second.

(Well technically I'm a switch so I like both, although being a hardcore dom is much more for sadistic pleasure than sexual for me. They're too pathetic for me to feel sexually attracted to them.)

I wasn't gunna answer this at first but I feel ok to talk about it actually. Its a really good question, and I struggled with understanding and accepting my sexuality for a long time. Still do sometimes.

I think a lot of straight and bi women, especially women with a strong feminist spirit, struggle with their sexuality because of this, especially if they have past sexual trauma. They may feel ashamed, confused, disgusted with themselves. Like their misogynistic oppressors are right, like what their sexual assaulters said was right- that they're a whore, that they wanted this, that they liked it, that thats what women are for, that this is what womens sexuality inherently is.

The thing you have to understand about sexuality from a psychological perspective is that we are inherently drawn to the taboo. Sex in itself is taboo in many ways, especially for certain time periods, cultures, and religions. Many people want the opposite of what they want in everyday life, possibly as some sort of relief. Many men want to be sexually dominated as well, its actually very common. For men who work highpower jobs, it may be a relief to be out of power and responsibility. There is an aspect of being taken care of in submission.

Psychologists originally thought that fantasies about rape were wish fulfillment, that they secretly wanted it. This has been shown to be largely untrue. People fantasize about a lot of things- killing someone, rescuing someone from imminent danger, being a crime boss, killing themselves, being the only person on Earth, etc. This does not mean they genuinely would be happy if that occurred. It is simply a thought exercise where they are in full control of the scenario.

A fantasy rape is very different from a real one. In fantasy, you get to choose what the rapist(s) looks like, even smells like, where it occurs and for how long, and all of what exactly he does. You can set limits of what exactly you want or dont want to occur (so its not a true rape at all. Perhaps you could argue that thus, any rape fantasy is not truly a rape at all). There is no risk of murder or kidnapping or any physical harm. There is no worry of pregnancy or STDs. A real one, is clearly very different. No one really wants something that they do not want.

So now the common explanations are:

1- Sexual blame avoidance: women are often raised to be ashamed of their sexuality and desires, or to deny they exist completely, especially in certain cultures and religions, so being forced allows them to have sex while remaining an innocent party (not that that really matters to most misogynistic cultures and religions...)

2- Sexual desirability: women are often seen as the object of sexual desire instead of the one having sexual desire, and women want to be sexually desired and have their attractiveness be validated (I think most people do, men too, although maybe not in the same way or to the same extent). Fantasies may bolster feelings of seductiveness and desirability. "I'm so hot men cant control themselves around me, I drive them crazy".

3- Sexual openness: feeling sexually liberated, safe and comfortable, women know its just a fantasy for fun, similar to watching a horror movie for fun and thrills

---------------------------------------------

Now I have some of my own theories.

1- Old and new wiring.

Coming from an evolutionary psychology viewpoint. Basically I think that perhaps, physically forceful mating was common and normal in our evolutionary timeline long before humans developed, let alone developed emotionally and psychologically enough to become distressed at forced breeding or develop a sense of morality. So perhaps we have our ancient wiring of not caring about forced sex, and on top of that we have our modern human wiring of being traumatized by forced sex. Does that make sense?

For example lets look at cats. Sex is known to be painful for the female cat, and males will hold the female down by biting the scruff of her neck to keep her in place. This can be seen as rape by a human, but female cats seem to be very unimpacted by it. They are not traumatized and even return to the male for a second turn. Cats simply do not have the psychological development and emotional complexity that humans have. Perhaps like cats, we were a creature where this kind of forceful mating was normal, common, and not psychologically harmful.

As our ancestor progressed into becoming a more human like creature, our brains developed and at some point we began to have intellectual concepts such as morality, consent, body autonomy. Mating wasn't just mating anymore. Our emotions grew much more complex and varied. We developed self consciousness and empathy, not just an animal driven by instinct.

2- Trauma and psychological self-protection.

I think another very real possibility is that women are just very traumatized, and are reacting to or being conditioned by that trauma. When sexual trauma is so abundant and constant- either in a personal lifetime or in terms of epigenetic trauma- it makes sense for the female brain to attempt to protect itself by learning to become aroused by sexual danger. What else is there, when it is inescapable? It can be seen as a form of dissociation, fragmentation, or detachment from the body.

"By measuring genital blood flow when women looked at potentially arousing imagery, Professor Chivers discovered little agreement between what women said arouses them and what their bodies registered as arousing."

"The fragmentation between physiologic arousal and subjective arousal thought to be common to the majority, if not all women. I want to suggest that sexual fantasies of rape are an outcome of living in societies in which sexual violence impacts a significant minority of women (and in some places, a majority), and has since at least the advent of civilization."

"I consider sexual violence against women as what epigenetic researchers call a legacy trauma, which is a wide-scale trauma, such as the Holocaust, the effects of which continue to impact future generations physiologically, psychologically, and culturally. But since sexual violence against women continues, often in isolation, the effects of this legacy may include unusual warnings to persistent danger for how to deal with the threat. And I believe sexual fantasies of rape may be such a warning and method for managing the fear caused by the ever-present threat of sexual violence."

(https://www.pacesconnection.com/blog/why-do-women-have-sexual-fantasies-of-rape#_edn6)

[mishafletcher]

Are you a Gold Star lesbian? (Just in case you don't know what it means, a Gold Star lesbian is a lesbian that has never had the sex with a guy and would never have any intentions of ever doing so)

So I got this ask a while ago, and I've been lowkey thinking about it ever since.

First: No. I am a queer, cranky dyke who is too old for this sort of bullshit gatekeeping. 

Second: What an unbelievable question to ask someone you don't even know! What an incomprehensibly rude thing to ask, as if you're somehow owed information about my sexual history. You're not! No one—and I can't reiterate this enough, but no one—owes you the details of their sex lives, of their trauma, or of anything about themselves that they don't feel like sharing with you.

The clickbait mills of the internet and the purity police of social media would like nothing more than to convince everyone that you owe these things to everyone. They would like you to believe that you have to prove that you're traumatized enough to identify with this character, that you can't sell this article about campus rape without relating it to your own sexual assault, that you can't talk about queer issues without offering up a comprehensive history of your own experiences, and none of those things are true. You owe people, and especially random strangers on the internet, nothing, least of all citations to somehow prove to them that you have the right to talk about your own life.

This makes some people uncomfortable, and to be clear, I think that that's good: people who feel entitled to demand this information should be uncomfortable. Refusing to justify yourself takes power away from people who would very much like to have it, people who would like to gatekeep and dictate who is permitted to speak about what topics or like what things. You don't have to justify yourself. You don't have to explain that you like this ship because this one character reminds you a bit of yourself because you were traumatized in a vaguely similar way and now— You don't have to justify your queerness by telling people about the best friend you had when you were twelve, and how you kissed, and she laughed and said it was good practice for when she would kiss boys and your stomach twisted and your mouth tasted like bile and she was the first and last girl you kissed, but— 

You don't owe anyone these pieces of yourself. They're yours, and you can share them or not, but if someone demands that you share, they're probably not someone you should trust.

Third: The idea of gold star lesbians is a profoundly bi- and trans- phobic idea, often reducing gender to genitals and the long, shared history of queer women of all identities to a stark, artificial divide where some identities are seen as purer or more valuable than others. This is bullshit on all counts.

There's a weird and largely artificial division between bisexuals and lesbians that seems to be intensifying on tumblr, and I have to say: I hate it. Bisexual women aren't failed lesbians. They're not somehow less good or less valid because they're attracted to [checks notes] people. Do you think that having sex with a man somehow changes them? What are you so worried about it for? I've checked, and having sex with a man does not, in fact, make your vagina grow teeth or tentacles. Does that make you feel better? Why is what other people are doing so threatening to you?

Discussions of gold star lesbians are often filled with tittering about hehe penises, which is unfortunate, since I know a fair few lesbians who have penises, and even more lesbians who've had sex with people, men and women alike, who have penises. I'm sorry to report that "I'm disgusted by a standard-issue human body part" is neither a personality nor anything to be proud of. I'm a dyke and I don't especially like men, but dicks are just dicks. You don't have to be interested in them, but a lot of people have them, and it doesn't make you less of a lesbian to have sex with someone who has a dick.

There's so much garbage happening in the world—maybe you haven't noticed, but things are kind of Not Great in a lot of places, and there's a whole pandemic thing that's been sort of a major buzzkill? How is this something that you're worried about? Make a tea, remind yourself that other people's genitalia and sexual history are none of your business, maybe go watch a video about a cute animal or something. 

Fourth: The idea of gold star lesbians is a shitty premise that argues that sexuality is better if it's always been clear-cut and straightforward—but it rarely is. We live in a very, very heterosexist culture. I didn’t have a word for lesbian until many years after I knew that I was one. How can you say that you are something when your mouth can’t even make the shape of it? The person you are at 24 is different to the person you are at 14, and 34, and 74. You change. You get braver. The world gets wider. You learn to see possibilities in the shadows you used to overlook. Of course people learn more about themselves as they age.

Also, many of us, especially those of us who grew up in smaller towns, or who are over the age of, say, 25, grew up in times and places where our sexuality was literally criminal.

Shortly after I graduated high school, a gay man in my state was sentenced to six months in jail. Why? Well, he’d hit on someone, and it was a misdemeanor to "solicit homosexual or lesbian activity", which included expressing romantic or sexual interest in someone who didn’t reciprocate. You might think, then, that I am in fact quite old, but you would be mistaken. The conviction was in 1999; it was overturned in 2002.

I grew up knowing this: the wrong thing said to the wrong person would be sufficient reason to charge me with a crime.

In the United States, the Defense of Marriage Act was passed in 1996, clarifying that according to the federal government, marriage could only ever be between one man and one woman. It also promised that even if a state were to legalize same-sex unions, other states wouldn't have to recognize them if they didn't want to. And wow, they super did not want to, because between 1998 and 2012, a whopping thirty states had approved some sort of amendment banning same-sex marriage.

Every queer person who's older than about 25 watched this, knowing that this was aimed at people like them. Knowing that these votes were cast by their friends and their families and their teachers and their employers. 

Some states were worse than others. Ohio passed their bill in 2004 with 62% approval. Mississippi passed theirs the same year with 86% approval. Imagine sitting in a classroom, or at work, or in a church, or at a family dinner, and knowing that statistically, at least two out of every three people in that room felt you shouldn't be allowed to marry someone you loved.

Matthew Shepard was tortured to death in October of 1998. For being gay, for (maybe) hitting on one of the men who had planned to merely rob him. Instead, he was tortured and left to die, tied to a barbed wire fence. His murderers were both sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison. This was controversial, because a nonzero number of people felt that Shepard had brought it upon himself.

Many of us sat at dinner tables and listened to this discussion, one that told us, over and over, that we were fundamentally wrong, fundamentally undeserving of love or sympathy or of life itself.

This is a tiny, tiny sliver of history—a staggeringly incomplete overview of what happened in the US over about ten years. Even if this tiny sliver is all that there were, looking at this, how could you blame someone for wanting to try being not Like This? How can you fault someone who had sex, maybe even had a bunch of sex, hoping desperately that maybe they could be normal enough to be loved if they just tried harder? How can you say that someone who found themself an uninteresting but inoffensive boyfriend and went on dates and had sex and said that it was fine is somehow less valuable or less queer or less of a lesbian for doing so? For many people, even now, passing as straight, as problematic as that term is, is a survival skill. How dare you imply that the things that someone did to protect themself make them worth less? They survived, and that's worth literally everything.

Fifth, finally: What is a gold star, anyhow? You've capitalized it, like it's Weighty and Important, but it's not. Gold stars were what your most generous grade school teacher put on spelling tests that you did really well on. But ultimately, gold stars are just shiny scraps of paper. They don't have any inherent value: I can buy a thousand of them for five bucks and have them at my door tomorrow. They have only the meaning that we give them, only the importance that we give them. We’re not children desperately scrabbling for a teacher’s approval anymore, though. We understand that good and bad are more of a spectrum than a binary, and that a gold star is a simplification. We understand that no number of gold stars will make us feel like we’re special enough or good enough or important enough, or fix the broken places we can still feel inside ourselves. Only we can do that.

The stars are only shiny scraps of paper. They offer us nothing; we don’t need them. I hope that someday, you see that, too. 

[hospital-wh0re]

gendered fears and online male audiences: the road to mass misinterpretation

a comparison of fight club by chuck palahniuk and gone girl by gillian flynn

trigger warning for mentions of sexual assault, violence and abuse

modern literature, in comparison to literature produced pre-1900, has the privilege of being transcribed into multiple mediums within years of an author’s release. books being quickly adapted to film allow audiences to choose multiple mediums through which to consume the same story, and as a result have access to various popular interpretations of it. movies, as part of the entertainment industry, have a wide reach and therefore the potential to make a particular version of a story more widely known or popular, but also allow audiences to express interpretations of the story on extreme ends of the spectrum. many messages can be entirely overlooked by an audience member’s refusal to accept what they are being presented with. gillian flynn’s gone girl and chuck palahnuik’s fight club have become cult classics in their own ways, and the various receptions to them, specifically by male audiences, have shaped this. while online communities mostly consisting of men have twisted fight club to glorify and justify violence, they have also used gone girl to justify a critique of the way women respond to their treatment by man. these misinterpretations are driven by a refusal to accept the fears typically attributed to either men or women, and can have dangerous consequences.

gone girl and fight club represent similar things. amy and the unnamed narrator (implicity suggested to be called jack) confront the audience with the potential consequences of gendered fears being fulfilled. within literature at least, the female fear is ‘being used’ and the male fear is ‘being useless.’ amy feels used by her husband nick, and the events of the novel are driven by her reaction to this, and jack is made to feel useless by his life in general (but specifically his job) and the events of the novel are driven by his reaction to this. the two texts are received wildly differently, particularly by male audiences.

chuck palahnuik’s fight club, the movie adaptation of which was directed by david fincher, is often recognised for the gritty satire of masculinity and consumerism that fincher intended it to come across as. however, the narrator (and by extension his alter ego tyler durden) is often the subject of misdirected envy or identification by fans. men who identify with tyler durden or see him as an idol to model their behaviour and ideas upon tend to misinterpret many of the text’s messages. the book and movie are decidedly anti-capitalist, with tyler’s monologues and jack’s voiceover narration constantly critiquing the need to buy products and shape a life out of purchases. jack and tyler work low-wage jobs and tamper with the food they serve to rich customers, mocking them as an act of rebellion. despite this, many online fans seem to overlook this clear theme in favour of a totally different aspect; violence. to a large and worrying proportion of fight club’s fanbase, the book and movie cater to their male entitlement: entitlement to express anger and aggression in a very particular way. it allowed them to indulge in a purely deterministic idea of masculinity. this particular misinterpretation of palahniuk and fincher’s work feeds into the idea of men being predisposed to violent behaviour and that it is acceptable to ‘undomesticate’ themselves. the idea of a dominant, brutal, independent figure being what truly makes a man is an outdated caricature of masculinity. rather than promoting the idea of unlearning social etiquette and becoming wild and violent, the text instead promotes unprogramming one’s consumerist framework and desires. it does so by utilising the aforementioned ‘male fear’ of being ‘useless’ to demonstrate an extreme version of this reprogramming. it is likely that a refusal to openly acknowledge this fear is part of why certain online circles, namely incels, fail to understand the intentions of this text. palahniuk recognises in his book that patriarchy harms men just as much as it does women, and in fact that somewhat becomes the crux of the book; durden’s project mayhem serves as an extreme way of exploring how capitalism and patriarchy join forces to create and condition men that crave more raw and fulfilling expressions of themselves, and end up finding it in violence behind closed doors, or devotion to a destructive cause.

gillian flynn’s gone girl utilises gendered fears in a similar way; it portrays both typically feminine and masculine fears being fulfilled and reacted to, but subverts the customarily gendered expressions of this. while men are conventionally those who are permitted to react to what they perceive as threats strongly, flynn depicts amy as the character with the most intense and perverse reaction to being made to feel used. the movie adaptation of this is interestingly also directed by david fincher, who intended to convey somewhat similar ideas to that of fight club; rather than being a piece of media that justifies violence, it uses extreme examples to explore the commodification of marriage. While it does not serve as a direct critique of capitalism in the way palahnuiks’ work does, it investigates and demonstrates the influence of the media, particularly in terms of reinforcing both traditional and modern ideas of marriage. amy recognises how the media (more specifically, news channels and talk shows) values and attempts to embody traditional values, including the sanctity of marriage, and she uses this to punish nick for making her feel used. from the reception that can be found online, the same communities that use fight club to justify aggression perceive amy’s actions as a legitimate threat, and liken them to situations involving false rape allegations. their misinterpretation of gone girl allows them to feed into the narrative surrounding false accusations, and build a culture within their online communities that dismisses and blames victims of abuse, sexual assault and more. amy is an extreme example of the female fear being fulfilled and being responded to; these men see amy as a threat because her behaviour confronts them with the idea of being punished for their treatment of women either online or in their real lives. these circles often share more right-wing ideologies, explaining their more conservative ideas on both marriage, gender roles and capitalism.

the book and film are subversive in that they allow the female character to be just as sadistic as a typical male character, and the husband’s actions are met with genuine consequence. often the media attacks or blames female victims, but in this instance amy is martyred. what makes the text such a clear critique of the commodification of marriage and the media is not only how it works to amy’s advantage but how it works to nick’s detriment. amy’s initial act of disappearing is what makes nick’s male fear fulfilled, what makes him feel useless, but the media’s presentation of the events and criticism of nick’s reactions to it are what prolong this feeling and drive his actions throughout the text. eventually, it pushes him to partake in a television interview and recite a speech that he knows will appeal to both the news channels, talk shows and amy, who have so far collectively been his biggest critics. while this moment in the text is a turning point for the protagonists as they both reluctantly find false harmony in their relationship by acting ingenuously, it additionally serves as yet another evaluation of how relationships are presented to the public by the media. nick must navigate a storm of misinformed opinions surrounding his marriage in order to find the words that will appease as many people as possible, and accept that the majority of thoughts about him expressed on tv are not true to his situation but will ultimately decide his fate regardless. this is, at core, what fulfills his fear of being useless.

ultimately both these texts do handle the subjects of their misinterpretations; fight club is not solely about masculinity, but it is a core theme, just as gone girl does not revolve around false allegations but does undoubtedly discuss them. palahniuk, flynn and fincher craft stories that explore gendered fears being reacted to in the most extreme ways possible, partially in order to demonstrate their dangers and their links to culture (consumerism and media). an inability or unwillingness to admit to these gendered fears, whether due to fear of ridicule or having to confront one’s own treatment of others, is what prevents men in these right-wing online communities from understanding these texts for what they are. should men or others in these groups admit to these fears, they would have to ask themselves: ‘do i feel useless? am i useless? am i using women? do the women in my life feel used by me?’ which is, ultimately, not a conversation many are willing to have with themselves.

i.k.b

[fairy-serigala]

Are you forgetting that gray stalked lucy, by trying to follow her home?. Then getting caught by natsu. Then he broke into her apartment and stripped nude. It really shows that men can't be seen as stalkers while women characters like juvia are easy targets because she is an important side character. I literally don't understand the logic?, they did the same thing but nobody cares because gray is the tall dark and handsome guy everybody gloats over.

Look, there are other blogs for this kind of discussion, and this isn't one of them. This is the only butt-hurt gr///uvian I'm responding to, because it's the first, but from here on out I'm going to be deleting any and all messages like this.

(This ended up being much longer than I was anticipating so here's a cut so you don't have to see it all. TW: Mentions and discussion of abuse, stalking, gaslighting, sexual harassment & assault, double standards & misogyny, abuse apologism, and a single mention of rape culture.)

Let's get this over with quickly-

Gray stalked Lucy by trying to follow her home - Gray followed Lucy home because she said she thought she was being followed. He followed her to make sure she got home safely. He said this, even when he was caught by Natsu and Happy.

He broke into her apartment - So did Natsu and Happy and Erza and many, many other characters. No, it's not right when Gray does it. But it's also not right when anyone else does it. Either punish all off them or none of them, you can't cherry pick Gray because you don't like him.

He stripped nude - Yep. You're right. Go get yourself a cookie.

My friend runs the blog @absolutezerotolerance and I've heard all about you, Anon. I get it, you don't like Gray, you think he's an awful person who deserves all the abuse he endured, but here's the thing because you refuse to listen.

Just because Gray has done some shitty things, does not mean he deserves to be stalked and abused.

If you think he does then I hope to GOD that we never meet because you are an abuse apologist and I do not need to know someone like you.

Men who stalk women should be held accountable for their actions, it is not acceptable. Women who stalk men should be held accountable for their actions, it is not acceptable. There should not be a double standard, but unfortunately there is, and it doesn't go the way you think it does.

We hear all too often about men and masc. folk who get abused and stalked and hurt and no one believes them, because men are meant to be strong and tough and hide their emotions. I've seen on this very website people who believe that men are incapable of being abused because of some made up genetic component.

Men and masc. folk need to be listened to. This is not something that can be brushed aside, it is key and it is crucial. The wellbeing of men and masc. folk cannot be ignored.

And this is what's happening here, with Gray and Juvia and Lucy. No, it's not okay when Gray does it to Lucy. But Gray has suffered more at the hands of Juvia. That's all.

Gray should be held accountable for his actions, but Juvia's actions are simply further reaching and far more detrimental. They are indicative of a problem that makes me so, so sad to see.

Juvia isn't an easy target because we're looking for someone to hate. That isn't how this works, Anon. We hate Juvia because she gave us a reason to. Because she stalked Gray multiple times, including across several countries to Isvan. Because she has emotionally manipulated and gaslit him multiple times both after Ultear sacrificed herself and saved Gray, and on top of Gray's parents' grave after his father died a second time. Because she has a history of sexually harassing him - including touching him without permission and refusing to let go, and asking him to spank her when they a) aren't a couple and b) he makes it clear that he isn't comfortable with that. Because she objectifies him to such an extent that everything in her room is Gray-themed in some way - from multiple stuffed plushes, to a bar of soap that she uses to wash herself with. Because she admitted to sexually assaulting him during the one year time skip. Because he does not consent to what she does to him and she doesn't listen. Because she drugged him in an attempt to make her love him - removing consent from the equation all together.

What Gray does to Lucy isn't okay. But Juvia has a much, much longer list of crimes. This isn't okay to ignore. Especially when it's romanticised to this degree.

Your reasoning for ignoring everything Gray has gone through is the exact same reasoning that abuse apologisers and devil's advocates use to ignore women when they report abuse against them. "They're too pretty" or "this person did [x] to [third party] so they deserved it". It's a couple steps to the left of rape culture. Going to absurd lengths to ignore and dismiss Juvia of all wrongdoing and instead putting all the blame on Gray.

When I, or my friends, talk about GrUvia, we don't have to talk about Lucy. If she isn't relevant to the discussion, we don't have to bring her up and say "oh but don't think Gray's perfect because xyz". It doesn't cripple our arguments and it doesn't suddenly make everything we say redundant.

There are parts of Juvia that need to be discussed critically because they're a microcosm of a much bigger issue with today's society and the way it responds to abuse, abuse victims and abuse survivors.

We need to be able to look at situations like GrUvia and recognise that they're dangerous. Otherwise, how are we meant to do that when it comes to the real world? How am I meant to trust that if someone comes to you, Anon, saying they've been abused that you'll believe and help them?

This isn't about who's done worse, this is about the victims of stalking and abuse.

Laser focusing on the perpetrators only makes it more likely for victims to fall through the cracks without justice. And some, like Gray, may end up giving into their abusers and that isn't okay on any level.

Suffering isn't a competition, Anon. Gray is able to do shitty things and still be a victim, his right to health and safety can't be taken away because he isn't flawless. No one is flawless, but everyone deserves to be safe. This is all about empathy and listening to victims and having the ability to realise when a piece of media is perpetuating an idea that hurts and kills real people.

[comrade-meow]

It's not enough to just listen - men need a seismic shift in our behaviour, starting with jokey banter

There are many factors that create somebody like Wayne Couzens but only a seismic shift in our concepts of masculinity will cure our society

Men have killed 80 women in this country since a man killed Sarah Everard in March.

If it reads jarringly put like that: good. It’s supposed to. We are so used to the insipid “officialise” of crime statistics – for the UK in 2020, there were 62,000 rapes and 1.6million women suffered domestic violence – that we no longer see what this kind of phrasing hides. “There were”. “Suffered”. Passive tense. These things didn’t just happen. Men did them. And while narratives around violence against women tend to focus on prevention, forever advising women how to avoid it happening to them – carry a rape alarm, go out in pairs, stick to well-lit streets at night, and dozens more – they rarely impress on men not to do it in the first place.

When talking to my male friends and acquaintances about the epidemic of violence against women, I’m almost always met with one or more of three reactions: “Most male attacks are on other men”; “Women are domestic abusers too”; and “Not all men”. The first two are statements of the bleeding obvious and the last confuses responsibility with involvement. All men are involved in this, for it’s a problem which one half of society foists on the other half while simultaneously blaming that other half for it. Every woman already knows she’s involved, but how curious then not every man does.

There are many factors which help perpetuate male hatred of and violence against women: physical (superior male strength), social (men see other men getting away with it), economic (at both ends of the scale; men who earn enough to feel themselves untouchable and men who earn less than they feel is their due or responsibility), cultural (deep-seated narratives of how men need to keep control of their houses), and political (a legislature which, the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 notwithstanding, seems to be doing a fraction of what it could be).

This is not just about rape and murder. It’s about the unwanted “flirtatious” comments, jokey banter, the unasked-for direct messages on social media, the touch which lingers too long, the constant low-level hum of threat and entitlement.

Attacks on women start long before physical violence; it’s in men’s conversations with our fellow men, how we treat women in our own lives and how we treat and perceive women we don’t know. Sexual abuse starts early and is a series of points on a scale. At one end is women being demeaned, called names, objectified. Next comes sexual harassment and pestering. Then sexual assault, then rape, then murder. 

Not every man goes to the end of that chain, obviously, but no man who’s killed a woman has started right at the deep end either.

Only a seismic shift in the very ideal of what it means to be a man – our rights and responsibilities, our concepts of masculinity – will act as cure. Even if legislation and enforcement were adequate – which they aren’t, not even close – it’s not enough to expect them alone to handle this entire burden. Unless the change comes at the level of attitudes, hearts and minds, it’s not real change; it’s just fear of the consequences. It’s like watching motorway traffic bunch at 69 mph when there’s a police car in the inside lane and then all going back up to 90 the moment the cop car peels off. The equivalence is not in the measure of the offence, of course, but in the rationale behind it: not doing it because you know it’s wrong as opposed to not doing it because you don’t want to get caught.

Such a seismic shift will have to start early, with the values we instil in our children. Boys are taught to be tough, strong and unemotional, damaging them in two ways. First, it prevents them from accessing their own weaknesses, meaning they don’t know how to deal with emotionally anxious situations; second, it sets them up in direct opposition to women, who behave in very different ways. Boys who don’t assert their power over girls are shamed by other boys. Weaker girls are picked on because they don’t resist; more assertive girls are seen as needing to be put in their place and taken down a peg or two. There’s no way a woman, whoever she is, can win here.

Subverting this won’t be an easy process. These things take decades, centuries: they are always works in progress and they are always incomplete. But they need to start somewhere and be refreshed and improved daily. This spectrum of dismissiveness and entitlement has to stop. No: that’s the same impersonal language that has allowed us to evade responsibility. We men have to stop this, each and every one of us.

[a-room-of-my-own]

Have you read "An Apology to JK Rowling" by Petra Bueskens on Areo? I'm pathetically grateful to read something so clever and well articulated on the subject after the amount of abuse JK has been subjected to

It's a great piece so here it is, thank you anon!

 Rowling recently published an eminently reasonable, heartfelt treatise, outlining why it is important to preserve the category of woman. There’s only one thing wrong with it: it assumes a rational interlocutor. Rowling outlines why the biological and legal category of sex is important: in sports, in rape crisis shelters, in prisons, in toilets and changing rooms, for lesbians who want to sleep with natal women only and at the level of reality in general. Rowling marshals her experiences as an androgynous girl, as a domestic violence and sexual assault survivor and as someone familiar with the emotional perils of social media, in ways that have resonated with many women (and men). Her writing is clear, unpretentious, thoughtful, moving, vulnerable and honest. At no point does she use exclusionary or hostile language or say that trans women do not exist, have no right to exist or that she wants to rob them of their rights. Her position is that natal women exist and have a right to limit access to their political and personal spaces. Period.

Of course, to assume that her missive would be engaged with in the spirit in which it was intended, is to make the mistake of imagining that the identitarian left is broadly committed to secular, rational discourse. It is not. Its activist component has transmogrified into a religious movement, which brooks no opposition and no discussion. You must agree with every tenet or else you’re a racist, sexist, transphobic bigot, etc. Because its followers are fanatics, Rowling is being subjected to an extraordinary level of abuse. There seems to be no cognitive dissonance among those who accuse her of insensitivity and then proceed to call her a cunt, bitch or hag and insist that they want to assault and even kill her (see this compilation of tweets on Medium). She has been accused of ruining childhoods. Some even claim that the actor Daniel Radcliffe wrote the Harry Potter books—reality has become optional for some of these identitarians. Rowling’s age, menstrual status and vagina come in for particularly nasty attention and many trans women (or those masquerading as such) write of wanting to sexually assault her with lady cock, as a punishment for speaking out. I haven’t seen misogyny like this since Julia Gillard became our prime minister.

The Balkanisation of culture into silos of unreason means that the responses have not followed what might be loosely called the pre-digital rules of discourse. These rules assume that the purpose of public debate is to discern truth and that interlocutors on opposing sides—a reductionist bifurcation, because, in fact, there are many sides—engage in argument because they are interested in something higher than themselves: an ideal of truth, no matter how complicated, multifaceted and evolving. While in-group preferences and biases are inevitable, these exist within an overarching deliberative framework. This style of dialogue assumes the validity of a persuasive argument grounded in reason and evidence, even if—as Rowling does—it also utilises experience and feeling. By default, it assumes that civil conflict and opposition are essential devices in the pursuit of truth.

Three decades of postmodernism and ten years of Twitter have destroyed these conventions and, together with them, the shared norms by which we create and sustain social consensus. There is no grounding metanarrative, there are no binding norms of civil discourse in the digital age. Indeed, as Jaron Lanier shows with his bummer paradigm (Behaviours of Users Modified and Made into an Empire for Rent) social media is destroying the fabric of our personal and political lives (although, with a different business model and more robust regulation, it need not do so). The algorithm searching for and recording your every click, like and share, your every purchase, search term, conversation, movement, facial expression, social connection and preference rewards engagement above all else—which means that your feed—an aptly infantile descriptor—will quickly become full of the things you and others like you are most likely to be motivated to click, like and share. Outrage is a more effective mechanism through which to foster engagement than almost anything else. In Lanier’s terms, this produces a “menagerie of wraiths”—a bunch of digitised dementors: fake and bad actors, paid troll armies and dyspeptic bots—designed to confect mob outrage.

The norms of civil discourse are being eroded, as we increasingly inhabit individualised media ecosystems, designed to addict, distract, absorb, outrage, manipulate and incite us. These internecine culture wars damage us all. As Lanier notes, social media is biased “not towards the left or right but downwards.” As a result, we are witnessing a catastrophic decline in the standards of our democratic institutions and discourse. Nowhere is this more evident than in the contemporary culture wars around the trans question, where confected outrage is the norm.

This is why the furore over Rowling’s blog post misses the point: whether we agree with her or not, the problem is the collapse of our capacity to disagree constructively. If you deal primarily in subjective experience and impulse-driven reaction, under the assumption that you occupy the undisputed moral high ground, and you’ve been incited by fake news and want to signal your allegiances to your social media friends, then you can’t engage in rational discussion with your opponent. Your stock in trade will be unsubstantiated accusations and social shaming.

In this discombobulating universe, sex-based rights are turned into insults against trans people. Gender-critical feminists are recast as immoral bigots, engaged in deliberately hurtful, even life-threatening, speech. Rowling is not who we thought she was, her ex-fans wail, her characters and plots conceal hidden reservoirs of homophobia and bigotry. A few grandstanders attempt to distinguish themselves by saying that they have always been able to smell a rat—no, not Scabbers—and therefore hated the books from the outset. Nowhere amid this morass of moral grandstanding and outrage is there any serious engagement with her ideas.

Those of us on the left—and left-wing feminists in particular—who find trans ideology fraught, for all the reasons Rowling outlines, are a very small group. While Rowling is clearly privileged, she has also become the figurehead of a rapidly dwindling and increasingly vilified group of feminists, pejoratively labelled terfs, who want to preserve women’s sex-based rights and spaces. Although our arguments align with centrist, conservative and common sense positions, ours is not the prevailing view in academia, public service or the media, arts and culture industries, where we are most likely to be located (when we are not at home with our children). In most of these workplaces, a sex-based rights position is defined a priori as bigoted, indeed as hate speech. It can get us fired, attacked, socially ostracised and even assaulted.

As leftist thinkers who believe in freedom of speech and thought, who find creeping ideological and bureaucratic control alarming, we are horrified by these increasingly vicious denunciations by the left. The centre right and libertarians—the neo-cons, post-liberals and the IDW—are invariably smug about how funny it is to watch the left eat itself. But it’s true: some progressive circles are now defined by a call out/cancel culture to rival that of the most repressive of totalitarian states. Historically, it was progressives who fought against limits on freedom of speech and action. But the digital–identitarian left split off from the old print-based left some time ago, and has become its own beast. A contingent of us are deeply critical of these new directions.

Only a few on the left have had the gumption to speak up for us. Few have even defended our right to express our opinions. Those who have spoken out include former media darlings Germaine Greer and Michael Leunig. Many reader comments on left-leaning news sites claim that Rowling is to blame for the ill treatment she is suffering. Rowling can bask in the consequences of her free speech, they claim, as if having a different opinion from the woke majority means that she is no longer entitled to respect, and that any and all abuse is warranted—or, at least, to be expected. Where is the outrage on her behalf? Where are the writers, film makers, actors and artists defending her right to speak her mind?

Of course, the actors from the Harry Potter films are under no obligation to agree with JK Rowling just because she made them famous. They don’t owe her their ideological fealty: but they owe her better forms of disagreement. When Daniel Radcliffe repeats the nonsensical chant trans women are women, he’s not developing an argument, he’s reciting a mantra. When he invokes experts, who supposedly know more about the subject than Rowling, he betrays his ignorance of how contested the topic of transgender medicine actually is: for example, within endocrinology, paediatrics, psychiatry, sociology, and psychology (the controversies within the latter discipline have been demonstrated by the numerous recent resignations from the prestigious Tavistock and Portman gender identity clinic). The experts are a long way from consensus in what remains a politically fraught field.

Trans women are women is not an engaged reply. It is a mere arrangement of words, which presupposes a faith that cannot be questioned. To question it, we are told, causes harm—an assertion that transforms discussion into a thought crime. If questioning this orthodoxy is tantamount to abuse, then feminists and other dissenters have been gaslit out of the discussion before they can even enter it. This is especially pernicious because feminists in the west have been fighting patriarchy for several hundred years and we do not intend our cause to be derailed at the eleventh hour by an infinitesimal number of natal males, who have decided that they are women. Now, we are told, trans women are women, but natal females are menstruators. I can’t imagine what the suffragists would have made of this patently absurd turn of events.

There has been a cacophony of apologies to the trans community for Rowling’s apparently tendentious and hate-filled words. But no one has paused to apologise to Rowling for the torrent of abuse she has suffered and for being mischaracterised so profoundly.

So, I’m sorry, JK Rowling. I’m sorry that you will not receive the respectful disagreement you deserve: disagreement with your ideas not your person, disagreement with your politics, rather than accusations of wrongspeak. I’m sorry that schools, publishing staff and fan clubs are now cancelling you. And I’m sorry that you will be punished—because cancel culture is all about punishment. I’m sorry that you are being burned at the digital stake for expressing an opinion that goes against the grain.

But remember this, JK—however counterintuitive this may seem to progressives, whose natural home is on the fringe—most people are looking on incredulously at the disconnect between culture and reality. Despite raucous protestations to the contrary, you are on the right side of history—not just because of the points you make, but because of how you make them.

[finelythreadedsky]

hiya!! i know that this is basically your whole blog jsnsjxnjd but do ya have more thoughts on the whole "retroactively grantin agency to female characters isnt always the best thing" thing?

I think this is a three-pronged thing and the points are Lavinia, Helen, and Persephone:

I talked about Ursula Le Guin’s Lavinia some here and specifically responded to that idea, because Le Guin does something really interesting in terms of agency. Lots of retellings function to resist the culture of the myth, a culture in which women, mythical or real, are not supposed to have power or agency or ability to make their own choices or take action. So they give the character the agency to stand outside of the text and chafe against those shackles. And Le Guin says that’s impossible, the character only exists within the text. She’s not imprisoned by the text that denies her agency, she IS the text. It’s not that Lavinia has no agency because she’s a woman, it’s that she has no agency because she’s a character. Aeneas equally has no agency. (I think this approach works specifically well with Vergil because the Aeneid is just Like That in terms of fate and the power of the author and the gods, not sure how it would go to come at Homer like that, although Helen in the Iliad does seem strikingly similar to Vergil’s Aeneas and Le Guin’s Lavinia in that regard, simultaneously able to look at the text as if from the outside and unable to separate herself from it and aware of her inability to escape it.)

And Helen really embodies how agency is sometimes equivalent to blame. Someone in this story did something wrong. Either Paris (and/or Aphrodite, by forcing Helen to fall in love with him) committed the wrong by abducting a woman against her will, in which case Helen did nothing wrong and was merely a passive figure and it’s Paris (and/or Aphrodite) on whom the blame for the Trojan War rests, or Helen went willingly with him and thus committed the wrong herself and is therefore to be blamed for all the men who died at Troy. To say that Helen has agency, has the ability to make her own choices, is to say that she actively, freely, and knowingly made the wrong choice and is to blame for it. And this is a conversation that has been happening since antiquity! Gorgias argues that Helen possesses neither agency nor blame. Stesichorus comes to the same conclusion, denying that she was in possession of agency or is deserving of blame. His denial that she has agency is an assertion that she is not the villain in this story. Agency doesn’t do much when you cannot change what happens in the story and who is harmed by those happenings and the only thing you can really ascribe is blame when you decide who wanted those things to happen as they did or who caused them.

And Persephone is the other side of what it means to add agency when you cannot change what happens in the story but you can change who wants it to happen. Because to give Persephone agency in her story is to turn a story of rape into a story of romance. The only way you can have it so that she is in control of her own story is to say that actually she wanted her rape and abduction to happen. And I have said a LOT on here about that at this point but what I want to emphasize is that it’s okay to tell a story about a woman who does not have agency. It may even be a more important story to tell. @chthonic-cassandra talks some about agency here and @teashoesandhair makes a corollary point that I think is important: that to insist that Persephone is the agent of her own descent into the Underworld “sends the message that a strong woman always has agency”— that a loss of agency is permanent, that to have one’s personhood and autonomy violated at one time permanently strips a woman of them, that once a woman has been raped she can never again truly be the arbiter of her own decisions. And to insist that Persephone must have agency and be an active agent in her relationship to Hades and descent into the Underworld ignores the fact that real women historically were and still are stripped of their agency and ability to make decisions about their own lives and bodies. Is it not also important to tell those stories? Is it not important to acknowledge the reality that rape and assault and abuse and forced marriage happen, and that the women to whom those things happen are still people and still have futures and personhood and autonomy and still deserve stories? Do we not owe it to the ancient women whose experiences went into this story and Persephone’s lack of agency in it, and to the women today who are still reflected in that? It’s the “retroactively” part I want to get into— there’s a reason she doesn’t have agency already. I want to resist the pressure to add agency to this story and insist that Persephone’s LACK of agency does speak directly to a cultural reality in the society from which that story comes, and that same reality still exists in the cultures that read and receive the story today, and that’s important.

(Louise Gluck’s Persephone the Wanderer has, I think, a very interesting and complex reading of the story in terms of agency and where we want to see it and how and why we read for agency or a lack of agency)

[theunderdogwrites]

In Defense of Marilyn Manson

Just kidding.

This is another one of those ‘if you live under a rock, you might not know what is going on’ pieces. But because this story appears to be unfolding daily, I’d think you’ve heard a murmur here or there even if you haven’t really paid too much attention to it because for many, I think this may fall into the “that guy has been a messed-up weirdo for years so I’m not surprised” category.

Please note that in NO WAY I am making fun of this situation, but I learned a long time ago that I require a certain amount of humor to be able to digest much of what this world presents to me.

As always, let me give you the Coles Notes version with the hopes you will go and do your own reading as well.

On February 1 actress Evan Rachel Wood posted this on her Instagram:

"The name of my abuser is Brian Warner, also known to the world as Marilyn Manson. He started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years. I was brainwashed and manipulated into submission. I am done living in fear of retaliation, slander or blackmail. I am here to expose this dangerous man and call out the many industries that have enabled him, before he ruins any more lives. I stand with the many victims who will no longer be silent."

Quick history lesson – They started dating in 2007 when she was 18 and he was 34 and were engaged for a brief time in 2010.

This was Manson’s response to what she wrote:

"Obviously, my art and my life have long been magnets for controversy, but these recent claims about me are horrible distortions of reality. My intimate relationships have always been entirely consensual with like-minded partners. Regardless of how - and why - others are now choosing to misrepresent the past, that is the truth."

Since the original statement on February 1 a number of women have come forward with stories of their own ranging from physical and emotional abuse to human trafficking. And everyday something new is revealed. Evan Rachel Woods is feverishly posting on her Insta-Story and is slowly burying Manson in an ocean of consequences. She isn’t “fired up” or “a woman scorned”, she is a victim rising above the shame she has felt and the fear of what others will say about her to tell her story and encourage others to do the same. She is the voice that started the ball rolling. The ball that is about to crush Marilyn Manson.

Whenever I write stuff that is currently being heavily featured in the media, I always dive into articles so I can get as much information as possible. But more importantly, I plunge my sensitive little soul into the murky depths known as “the comments section”. I do this because unlike those polished, finished pieces the comments section will give you a better idea of what your fellow human beings think and feel about the topic at hand. And it is never polished or even polite. And often not for the faint at heart. In case you didn’t already know – people can be quite terrible.

The comments section is the modern-day gladiator pit. Only most (not all) of the participants are not ripped, athletic warriors but rather drooling basement dwellers with one hand down their pants (not gender specific by the way) and the other hand maltreating the letters on their keyboard.

Side note: Look, I am not the grammar police as I often just push past all the warnings from the Gestapo editing program in Microsoft Word. BUT I know the value of proper spelling, well placed punctuation and valid attempts to appear smarter than a domesticated turkey by making sure sentences are well-thought out and complete. Raising your argument doesn’t mean USING ALL CAPS AND ABUSING THESE THINGS -> !!!

I just deleted three paragraphs going over the recent “reckoning” that has taken place in the past few years with regards to sexual and physical abuse accusations against (mostly) men in positions of some kind of power. I eliminated all that writing because I started to tumble off topic. I’m not writing about all the dicks now getting their comeuppance, but rather the reactions to it being Marilyn Manson’s turn in the chamber.

Victim shaming is sadly a real thing.

The easiest way I can explain this to you – if a person gets pickpocketed and then blamed because they should’ve known better than to carry their wallet in their back pocket.

Evan Rachel Woods and others have come out to accuse Manson of some pretty appalling acts of abuse and what I’ve found to be the biggest reaction is, “How did they not know he was a bad guy? His music is so graphic and they thought it was all an act? Why did they stay so long?”. As innocent as those questions might seem, and I say that because our brains don’t always serve us or others well, it is a form of discrediting those women. Let’s be honest here… it’s hard to look at Marilyn Manson and his art form and not say, “What the fuck, this guy has bad idea written all over him!”. I feel that is a perfectly reasonable response, but that is where it should end. I think it is fair to pause and attempt to understand the choices of others, but it’s heartless to minimize their experience by placing blame on them for a situation we couldn’t possibly understand if it has never happened to us.

And like I’ve quoted before: People only understand from their level of perception. But that doesn’t stop them from laying on the judgement and damaging already fragile individuals with their inability to show compassion for a fellow human being. Reading through comment sections isn’t just maddening, it’s disappointing and sad but also a real look into how awful many people feel about themselves… to the point where they seem to derive some pleasure or satisfaction from condemning a rape victim for wearing a short skirt and getting drunk.

So… we have to touch on this to be balanced: innocent until proven guilty. Only these days it’s an automatic trial by media with the public acting as judge, jury and executioner. This is where “cancel culture” steps in and within days can destroy an entire career / life. I am not a fan of cancel culture. It does not give people a chance to learn from their mistakes or make amends as it immediately harms their very existence. Often times even before any proof has surfaced. I don’t think I need to tell you how dangerous this is… the fact that just an accusation could ruin your life.

Let me make this clear: if someone comes forward and claims they’ve been sexually assaulted/abused, they need to be taken seriously and not dismissed based upon the circumstances, their gender identity, the color of their skin, their economic position or profession or the person they’re accusing. In turn, the individual being accused should be given time to address the claims before the public begins demolishing their life.

A reoccurring comment in almost all these cases where someone comes forward and alleges abuse YEARS after it happened, is – “Why did they wait so long to come forward?”.

Is this a fair question? Sure. And I feel it is asked because our brain needs to find a way to understand the information we are being given. Because while we’d all like to think that if in the same situation we’d be unfuckable with and anyone who dared to bring damage to our doorstep would immediately suffer the consequences, we actually cannot predict our reaction. There are too many unknown variables to be able to confidently say we’d instantly speak up and seek retribution.

The fear of not being believed. The fear of being blamed. The fear of rejection. The fear of retaliation from the person being accused. The fear of being forever defined by your experience. The fear.

It does not matter the why, what matters is the chance they’ve taken by speaking up at all. Those who come forward should be embraced, not ridiculed. Not abandoned. Not criticized.

“Don’t ask why victims wait so long to speak up. Ask what systems were in place to keep them quiet”. Anonymous

I own a few Marilyn Manson CD’s. And I’ve even attended one of his concerts. Would I say I am a fan? Probably a number of years ago I was but truthfully, I’ve not paid attention to any of his music in recent years because I feel it devolved while my taste evolved. That’s not a slam against him or anyone who fancies his work, it’s more a statement on how I’ve matured and now seek out music that feels authentic to me.

The one concert I attended was opened by Courtney Love. I know, what a duo to pay money to see. Near the end of Manson’s set he made a disparaging remark about Love and trashed her music. At the time he was wearing some pretty hefty platform shoes so it made it all the more hilarious when from out of nowhere she charged like a rhino and tackled him to the stage; throwing punches at his head all the way down. When he finally was able to get up, he announced the show was over. There would be no encore and then him and his bandmates trashed the stage in a temper tantrum worthy of a toddler Napoleon. Still makes me laugh to this day.

Shoutout to Evan Rachel Wood and her most recent movie ‘Kajillionaire’. Watched it on demand about a month ago and it’s a brilliant comedy that will also pull at your heart. I highly recommend you give it a chance.

Check out the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiMPCevu8Wk

[lilbitof-alilbitch]

The Girl(s) at the Rock Show

The culture surrounding the music industry, particularly the rock scene, was largely built on the abuse and degradation of women. Read that again and repeat it to yourself if necessary. Growing up in the scene, we always thought it was a safe space, a place where you could be yourself and get away from the world for a little while. And to an extent, it is just that, somewhere where those who are different can feel a part of something. But for women and female-aligned people, it’s not as simple as that. Even if you cast aside the general misogyny of the fact that we must worry about dressing “too slutty” for fear of being mistaken for a groupie, the real issues reside in the predatory behavior of the men in the bands. For it seems like every day new allegations and accusations are coming to light, showing the true nature of the bands we grew up adoring. Grooming, assault, abuse, general sexual misconduct, and more are the reality for women and female-aligned people in the scene. Not only have the behaviors associated with those crimes been largely accepted in the rock scene, but for a long time, they were encouraged and celebrated.

My mother often romanticizes the 1980s, when rock music was at the height of its popularity. And as she reminisces, she’s told me a countless number of times that it was common for women to wear negligees to bars and shows. No doubt to help boost their chances of catching the eye of a band member. And how can you blame them? The motto of the times was “sex and drugs and rock and roll”. Being a groupie wasn’t frowned upon back then, but rather expected of the women in the scene. But these expectations are derogatory in and of themselves. Women were expected, and encouraged, to always be on display like pieces of meat, for male pleasure. It was the cultural norm, a cultural norm we’ve been fighting for decades now. And while Generation X may glamorize the 80s, and despite enormous strides in feminism during this time and before, women in the scene were treated like dirt.

Speaking of “dirt” I can’t think of a better example of the mistreatment of women in the rock scene circa the 1980s than an incident that Nikki Sixx wrote about in Motley Crue’s 2001 autobiography The Dirt. As he was having relations with a girl, he got the oh so hilarious idea to have bandmate Tommy Lee switch places with him, like it was some sort of tag-team sport. The issue here is, neither one of these men informed the woman, who consented to sex with Nikki Sixx, not Tommy Lee, of what was happening. That’s rape. Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee raped this girl, and the book was still glorified enough to become a movie. Now, for obvious reasons, this scene never made the movie adaptation. But the question is: how could they have allowed this book a movie adaptation in the first place? Answer: Because it was the 80s. That’s just how things were. Incidents like that were probably commonplace. It’s seen as ridiculous to protest things that happened in the past where the cultural mindset of the time deemed it appropriate. And that movie quite literally brought Motley Crue back from the dead, with a whole new generation of fans ready to rock. It gave an even bigger platform to actual rapists and revered that lifestyle. If a band was caught doing that today, luckily it would be career-ending. It’s almost 2022, and the scene is just now moving to a place where behavior like this results in being canceled, and rightfully so. However, we need to get to a place where we can take away the platforms of abusers, despite how many years have passed since their abuse. Or we’ll never get the rock scene to become the safe space we always thought it was.

While on the subject, how does Steven Tyler still have a platform? How was he able to grow into the enigma he is today? Is he one of the best rock musicians of our time? Quite possibly. But did he, in 1975, at the age of 27, convince a 14-year-old groupie’s parents to sign over guardianship to him so she could move in with him as a live-in girlfriend? Yes. How did that get swept under the rug for so many years? How did nobody seem to bat an eye? That’s not only a 13-year age difference with a minor, but I’m sure the relationship was sexual. And yet, here we are, 47 years later and what does Steven Tyler have to show for it? Fame, fortune, and a slot as one of the most influential rock artists of our time, despite grooming and statutory raping a minor. It’s no wonder we still see these issues today in the scene when artists are just now beginning to see consequences for this kind of predatory behavior.  

These days it seems like no band can be completely trusted. Not in the age of media, with new information coming to light what seems like every day. Even bands that claim to be feminists and stand with victims have been caught up in webs of manipulation and abuse of power. And repeatedly, we women and female-aligned people are left wondering if anyone with the slightest position of power can be trusted, if there really is a safe space out there for us. Because it’s certainly not the rock scene like we all grew up thinking. How could it be? When bands thought it was okay to invite minors on their bus or van during Warped Tour days. When young girls have been so frequently complimented on their breasts by band members that instead of being uncomfortable or disgusted, they celebrate.  I mean, it wasn’t but a little over a decade ago when it was common practice to make rape jokes on stage. It’s amazing how we ever saw this as a safe space. But it’s not our fault. We surrounded ourselves in a culture that told us those things were funny and/or okay. We put our complete trust into adults who were supposed to be helping us, not taking advantage of our adoration. We didn’t know any better, we were kids. But they should have.

The irony of the scene not being safe for us is that the scene would be nothing without us. Without our devotion and dedication, artists wouldn’t ever get to where they do. We are the backbone of this industry, and yet instead of being met with gratitude, we’re looked down on and exploited. We shouldn’t have to fear for our safety at shows. We shouldn’t have to live with the soul-crushing pain of finding out that a band you’ve dedicated a decade or more of your life to is nothing but a bunch of predators. But we do. And damn it, we deserve better, way better.

So how do we get to “better”? We need more women and female-aligned people in music for starters. The numbers are insanely low regarding women in the music industry, making up only 22.4% of all chart-topping artists, 12.2% of all pop songwriters, and a whopping 2.3% of all producers. We need them in these and so many more positions; security, touring crew, stagehands, you name it. Women know how to keep women safe, and the more women we have in positions of power the safer we are.

We also need to start holding artists accountable for past mistakes. Just because something was acceptable a few years ago doesn’t mean that it was ever okay. Apologies need to be issued, changes need to be promised and made. And a huge conversation needs to be had between artists and fans about boundaries, what they are and how to set them properly. Bands have too much power over us when really, we should have the power over them. We made them what they are. The very least they can do is give us basic decency and respect.

I see a day where women in the rock scene are finally safe, but it’s going to take a lot of hard work to get there. We have decades of cultural norms to undo, and sometimes the fight seems fruitless. But I refuse to give up. How can I? When I have nieces who will be old enough to go to shows on their own one day. When the little pieces of what’s left of 15-year-old me keep dying off with every new accusation that surfaces. No, we can’t give up. Not now, not ever. We made this scene what it is, and we can make it what it needs to be too.

[aboutafeministx]

Why ‘not all men’ isn’t good enough

Of course, it is not all men, but with 97% of women having been harassed, it’s enough men. Being a decent human being and not harassing a woman is the bare minimum. It is not doing enough in the rape culture that exists today. If you are one of those decent men who has never done that to a woman, that’s great, but with the statistics we have, that means you know a man who is not as decent as you. Just because you are not the one doing it, does not make you innocent. It is your responsibility as a member of society and of human decency that when you hear another person that says something inappropriate, offensive, or that could potentially lead to the endangerment of someone else to speak up.

As women, we were told for so long to not talk about it, or if we did, people got uncomfortable. Every woman I know can remember the first time they felt sexualized in public, I was 12 years old. 3 years later, a boy shoved a blanket in my mouth so that I was quiet and attempted to put his hand up my skirt. 3 years after that, a boy tried getting his friends to turn off the lights so he could try to assault me. 2 years after that, I was manipulated and guilt tripped into having sex after persistently saying I did not want to (on several occasions), but yet, I have never claimed to be a victim of sexual assault. I couldn’t even begin to tell you the amount of harassment received walking down the streets, in a bar/club, online, or in school. I thought it was just something as a girl I had to deal with, I didn’t know that this was even harassment.

The saddest part of it all, I’m still nervous and embarrassed to talk about the sexual coercion because I feel like I didn’t do enough to not have sex, or maybe it’s nothing really to complain about, and I should have more of the suck it up buttercup attitude. And what is most interesting to me, is many women will tell you sometimes it’s just easier to just let it happen than to keep resisting. I can’t even say I blame the guy completely. I think because it wasn’t the stereotypical idea of what most people consider to be sexual assault, to him it wasn’t. I think he was a product of the society he was raised in. I really believe he thought maybe he had convinced me. Of course, this is not an excuse, and it was wrong, but did he know it was wrong? Had our society up to that point openly discussed all of these forms of sexual assault and the impact and trauma it has on a woman? No. I genuinely don’t believe he meant to hurt me emotionally. I think he was simply being selfish, which is an entirely different issue. However, the friend who got uncomfortably awkward and silent around me when I told her I think arguably caused more trauma. The lack of support from another female who I thought would be able to understand my situation.

Nonetheless, my point to this is not for sympathy or for pity. I have not had it bad; I’ve not had an awful traumatizing violent sexual assault or anything like it. I think sadly, what I’ve had happen has happened to most of us women. I’m not saying it isn’t valid to feel exploited, I’m merely stating I don’t want this to be a woe me outcome.

However, from reading this I do want you take from it that when a woman tells you something makes her uncomfortable, believe her. When your friend comes to you and tells you these things remember how much courage it took her to say it out loud, and most of all, respect people’s personal autonomy, boundaries, and rights to their bodies. To all those people saying not all men, I love my mother, sister, etc., the next time before you or someone else you overhear says something to a woman in that context, ask yourself if you would be okay hearing your sister or your mother or your daughter having that experience.

[annebrontesrequiem]

Femininity and Bridgerton

So 27 days ago a lovely anon said that they’d be glad to hear my thoughts on femininity and Bridgerton, and since I’m now finally free from school I decided to stop playing Genshin Impact and binging Disney movies and actually do something.

This is going to probably be very long (spoilers it’s 1,800 words long), so more under the cut.

So, a few things. Firstly I am specifically talking about Bridgerton, as the way that femininity is portrayed in media is a very complex and arduous topic. Secondly this is obviously just my opinion and you can absolutely disagree, even tell me if you do I love listening to different perspectives. Thirdly I’m talking about a show that is very heteronormative (the painter and Benedict aside as I’m focusing mostly on Daphne in this post), and presents a very specific part of straight, cis, upper class femininity. So keep that in mind as well. Also as I’m going to be talking about patriarchy, femininity, and masculinity I know that there might be a few TERFs that crawl out of the woodwork and just… don’t. This isn’t for you and while I’m at it please go read some actual feminist texts. Also I know that this is a period piece but I will be addressing that don’t worry.

Also I am going to be talking about that one scene so trigger warning I’m going to be talking about sexual assault.

Also full Bridgerton season one spoilers.

----

So, all that set up out of the way, let’s talk about femininity in the Bridgerton series.

A good deal of Bridgerton focuses on the ways in which women are often confined by their role as women in society, as well as how they subvert that role for their own gains. This is used well in some cases, such as when the Viscountess uses the network that is forged between servants and women of the upper class to subvert Daphne’s marriage to Nigel Berbrooke. Being a period piece with a (mostly) diverse cast it also allows for women of color, specifically black women, to be portrayed in a very feminine light, where in society at large they are usually not allowed to inhabit such a space. However in attempting to subvert the status that women often occupied in Regency England the show accidentally reinforces views of femininity and its value.

Let’s talk about Eloise and Daphne. Eloise is very outspoken about the difficulties that comes with being a woman in society, wishing to break out of the confines of femininity. Daphne, on the other hand, wishes to stay within the traditional woman’s sphere, get married, have children, run a household. And while in text these two women often debate the meaning of their position as women, each making very valid points about their status and how they’re confined by it, the framing makes it seem that Eloise’s position is ultimately the “better” one.

Full disclosure, Eloise is my favorite Bridgerton character. I love her outspokenness, her determination to make something out of her life, the fact that she attempts to make the oppression of the society around her explicit. However I think the way she is framed as this, for lack of a better term, “girlboss” in the making is often reductive. The show seems to have this idea that Daphne is in some ways inferior in goal to Eloise. That is, Eloise’s value isn’t that she is an ambitious person whose status as a woman hampers said ambition, but rather that she is in some ways morally and intellectually superior to Daphne by rejecting her femininity and repressing qualities that are considered less masculine and thus lesser.s It presents this idea of women’s empowerment wherein one is only empowered if they deliberately step out of traditional femininity, either in appearance or in life path, rather than confronting a society that sees femininity as inferior. Daphne’s wish to continue in the traditional sphere of womanhood is somehow lesser, and she only becomes truly empowered later in the series when she becomes more aggressive (we’ll talk about that later).

That Eloise has her own book where she presumably falls in love and gets married makes this all the more confusing. Does she then lose her intellect and her status as an empowering woman? The messages feel very mixed. In portraying Eloise as enlightened for actively resisting the woman’s sphere and Daphne as needing to learn to be more “assertive” to gain said enlightenment, the show accidentally presents femininity as inherently passive, inferior to the assertion that is more traditionally masculine. This is something that modern period dramas often fall into. Empowered women are only empowered by attempting to transcend their femininity, to become more masculine. The bottom line isn’t to present women and femininity as equal in all ways to men and masculinity, but femininity is something reductive that must be shed to truly become equal.

Since we’re talking about Daphne I want to examine her character arc within this lens as well. Daphne is adamant that she wants a love-match. She is also very aware of the importance of presentation, as well as the importance of reputation. This is a very solid foundation, as is a way where Bridgerton taps into the complexity of the role of women in regency society in a good way. However as the show goes on this complexity seems to fade in favor of making Daphne, again I’m sorry, a “girlboss”. This is made explicit in the scene in which Daphne violates Simon’s consent, as well as the way in which this act is framed.

Now you can tell immediately from the framing of the scene in which Daphne violates Simon’s consent what this is supposed to be interpretated as. From the music to the triumphant looks on Daphne’s face, this is supposed to be a moment in which Daphne has finally gained control of her life. And yet in doing this, and in presenting this whole scene as a result of Simon’s “betrayal” – and thus something his has to take the blame for – the show is making a value judgement. Daphne can only become strong by becoming “assertive” (ie aggressive) to the point of violating someone’s consent.

The topic of rape culture is a very long and arduous one which I will not be diving into, but I do wish to point to the fact that men are supposed to be aggressive, both sexually and otherwise. Men are the ones who always “want it”, who are uncontrollable, and who are willing to be aggressive to get what they want. This toxic idea of sex and masculinity is what I felt Daphne dipped into during this scene, and instead of presenting it as horrifying or a betrayal on Daphne part, it is presented as the climax of her character arc. I believe a showrunner once said that it was imperative to the “education” of Daphne Bridgerton. Thus is Daphne’s strength no longer her determination to be happy within the sphere she has been placed in by patriarchy, but her willingness to take back her life, no matter the cost. And yes this could’ve been a message about how men are also assaulted, but that is not at all what the showrunners wanted you to get out of this scene.

Lastly I want to touch on the men in the Bridgerton universe, because the devaluation of femininity also affects men no less than it does women. All the men in the Bridgerton universe are either bad people or rakes. Name me one (1) man in the Bridgerton universe who is presented as feminine, either in appearance or personality. And no femininity is not the same as being gay, the painter is not feminine. To be a man worthy of screen time or romance in the Bridgerton universe one must be as traditionally masculine as possible, and ready to make that your defining character trait.

Now I know that this is a large romance novel issue, as someone who has read three of the Outlander books I am unfortunately aware of how romance novels fall into this derivative state. But just because something is common that doesn’t mean it is any less worthy of criticism. The argument that it’s simply being “period accurate” is also something I don’t accept. Yes the regency era was incredibly patriarchal, but that does not mean that the women within it were helpless and could only break out of that helplessness by rejecting their own femininity. Jane Austen is a classic example, but I will also point to women such as Elizabeth Gaskell, the Bronte Sisters, and George Eliot in terms of English women who were highly intelligent and worthy of acclaim despite still associating themselves with their status as women in society. For a broader historical view I’d also like to present Catherine the Great and Empress Josephine who, despite being viewed in an often very derivative manner by the men around them, rose to great prominence and power.

In the end this is a larger societal issue and not one that my post will magically fix. But I will say this: we need to stop telling women and girls that the only way to get rid of patriarchy is to reject femininity. In doing so we say that masculinity is indeed the better trait, that by repressing one’s emotions and one’s femininity one can attain equality. We also need to stop telling men that the only way to ensure their own value to be aggressive, to tap into that toxic masculinity which we spoon feed them from birth. This hurts everyone, men, women, non-binary people. It makes the world a worse place and only when we stop trying to wiggle our way out of femininity and actually acknowledge its status as equal to masculinity will we achieve this.

I believe Bridgerton wanted to do that, wanted to present the complexities and anxieties of women living in a patriarchal world and the way in which they can subvert that world to their advantage. However it falls into the same trap it seems to be attempting to get out of, and at the end of the day one is left with a sense of vapidness. Though I may like Bridgerton (so much so that I binge watched the series twice and am even considering reading the books) I think that we need to acknowledge its flaws, because only then will we be able to move forward and make media that is more enjoyable, more nuanced, and ultimately better in terms of expectations and norms.

Like I said this is a very complicated topic, but I hope I got my point across well. Thank you if you read all the way through this and I hope you have a lovely day!

[tea-academy]

Was watching the new Woodstock documentary with the bf and while it was a good documentary and I learned about a period in time that was pretty hazy for me (was pretty young in the 90′s, and definitely didn’t hear anything about Woodstock ‘99 being a giant trashfire), one thought occurred to me after finishing it.

One point they make and return to over and over again is how the greater music culture that was featured in the festival and also the majority of the attending demographic (20 something white males) were exploitive of women. The rise of Girls Gone Wild exploitation and the inherent misogyny in new metal along with the aggression resulted in among several awful things at this festival, first among them being an environment where women were groped, molested, assaulted, and raped. Like, hundreds of assaults were likely to have happened based on the accounts of the attendees.

And the documentary makes the point that this didn’t fall on the women -- in fact it casts one organizer who blames the women for what happened to them for going topless in a horrible light. There are direct parallels to these women willingly flashing and stripping down and exposing themselves for male attention to a lot of the bimbo / only fans shit we’re seeing today, and I’m certain that a lot of the women we see flashing the cameras and walking around mostly or completely naked deeply regret doing that when they were young and consider it a terrible decision...

.....and the documentary does nothing but show more and more footage with women exposing themselves. Constantly. Of course we can see that it was a common and frequent thing at this event, but for a documentary that critiques the exploitation of women in media and music and at this specific festival NOTHING stops the filmmakers from exploiting these young women the same way.

They just show endless footage of women flashing, getting fondled (often unwillingly), crowd surfing while topless, posing while having their breasts painted in face paint....and they didn’t need to. They could have omitted so many clips of topless women -- the documentary was oversaturated with them. These women are 22 years older now. Most of them were probably teenagers or just barely 20. The documentary doesn’t even blur out their faces. They could have easily had done a montage where they get the point across that this was a major aspect of the festival and then either not shown more clips of breasts or at least blurred them out afterwards, but no.

Media, especially male produced media (because I am assuming the filmmakers are men, if I’m wrong then whoo boy is this another essay altogether then) still cannot criticize the exploitation of women without also contributing to it directly. I doubt that the filmmakers even thought they could possibly be exploiting women the same way that the attendees of the festival did, and it’s just such a disappointing thing to realize that the machine of media will never not feature exploitation of women on some level. It’s built into the system so deeply that those within it can’t not use women’s bodies to sensationalize or objectify.

To any gender critical feminists / radical leaning women out there with a passion for filmmaking, please consider documenting the world around you. In 20 years when people look back on what’s happening today I so desperately want it to be through the perspective of women who care about women, women who refuse to exploit women the way men do. Your voices are so needed.

[ardenttheories]

Homestuck's always been antagonistic and insensitive, but I don't recall seeing any of you try to dox Hussie? But please, continue to rationalise how cyberbullying lgbt people for not being nice enough and having opinions about a fictional character you disagree with puts you in the right. A story doesn't go the way you'd like and this is how you respond? You COULD have just not bothered reading it instead of CHOOSING to make your online life about something you hate like a toxic weirdo.

Hi, Kate. I’m so glad you could find my blog. (Edit: that was a joke. Apparently, some anons find it impossible to tell that I don’t actually think you’re Kate). It’s clear to me that you didn’t take the time to read through any of the content that’s actually on here, since you’re throwing around rather wild accusations, so let me take this down step by step.

Homestuck has only rarely been antagonistic and insensitive. Things like the Alpha Trolls - which were clear criticisms of fandom culture - were relatively few and far between, and when we complained about them, they actually stopped. Remind me, for instance, how relevant the Alpha Trolls were to the plot? How long they stayed as mockeries towards the fandom? Yeah, not long. I actually have talked about this before on the blog - alongside other things I thought were negative towards the fandom from the original comic - but the difference here is that... in the entirety of Homestuck, these things were outliers and inconsistencies. They stuck out because they were in stark contrast to the otherwise wonderfully handled content Homestuck went over.

For instance, Homesuck is critical of abuse - especially in terms of relationships. We see through a critical lense the shit normalisation of parental abuse can do to a child - with actual talk of triggers and of the mental and emotional scarring left behind, and the complexities of the child’s feelings towards the parent’s death through Dave - and we see how self destructive relationships can be, how harmful they are, and how hard it can be to leave them - such as Terezi’s very toxic blackrom with Gamzee, which was always portrayed as something negative and harmful especially with how worried Karkat was for her and how withdrawn she became during its run, and Dirk’s relationship with Jake, which goes very much over how communication can cause a deterioration in romantic relationships especially when the two participants have conflicting mental illnesses. 

It also goes over how men, though they can be mired in toxic masculinity, can choose to be good. How sometimes we’re not born as good people, but we can become good people through the love we have for the people around us, through frequent attempts to check what we’re doing, through the sheer willpower to be good. Dirk’s entire arc, knowing that he could very easily become Bro but deciding he doesn’t want to be, that it’s something he wants to work on, is so important and incredibly powerful. Mental illness in men is often just given as an excuse to make them violent with no attempts at betterment - so Dirk actually existed as proof that you don’t have to be that stereotype. 

In contrast, Homestuck^2 completely uncritically gave Jade, who was cis, a dog dick, made her, a bisexual woman, a sex maniac and the yaoi “woman who gets in the way of the gays” trope, made her a cheater and someone who forced her partner into the relationship to begin with, and made her a neglectful mother after having cheated with her best lesbian friend in something that has incredible recall to just about every futanari video ever - and they tried to claim that this was good representation of trans women, actually, and that the only reason we didn’t like it is that Jade is “a woman” who “has sex”.

Likewise completely uncritically, they made Gamzee, an anti-black stereotype, enter a relationship with Jane, a fascist, and then made the entire thing into a cuck joke wherein Jake being frequently drunk and sexually assaulted was funny because he wasn’t “man enough”. They then forced him to go back to his abuser after he left her in a scene that read very much like, “ridiculous man thinks woman is abusing him, go back and do your manly job”. 

This, of course, doesn’t even go into the travesty that is any form of trans representation in the comic. Roxy, a trans man, is barely even focused on as trans; they make no attempt to enforce in the fandom that he’s a trans man the way they do that June is a trans woman, and even then, they seem to think that just saying someone is a trans woman is actually good representation. Not, like, bringing it into the comic - just saying that it’s a thing. And of course, that’s not even going into the completely uncritical lense they have of Vriska, wherein her being a trans woman completely frees her of any and all blame for the past abuses she has comitted, and once again she becomes an amazing character to save the day without a single flaw - which in turn inherently associates trans women with abuse apologism, abusers, and the ideology that just because we’re trans we can get away with anything scott free. 

I honestly cannot think of one instance of good and genuine representation in Homesuck^2, nor can I think of any scene where negative content was actually treated as the negative thing it actually is. There’s no critical lense at all, not like we have in Homestuck; there’s just no fucking comparison. And this isn’t a one-off situation, either. Whereas Homestuck does do fuck ups - isn’t perfect - in between the otherwise brilliant content, Homestuck^2 is just founded upon these horrific takes. There’s almost no good content in between, and what is left is a slog to get through when surrounded by the thick slurry of shit that compromises futa Jade, abuse apologism Vriska, and victim blaming Jake. 

Of course, we didn’t “doxx” Hussie. Hussie actually listened to our complaints, for the most part, and worked with us to create something that worked well. The way Homestuck^2 was touted to work. You know, since it was meant to be written with the fandom in mind, influenced by the things we suggest and react to. We went into Homestuck^2 with the explicit idea that we were going to be listened to and taken into consideration when it was being written - the way we were with old Homestuck. I’m very sorry to say that, when you make these expectations, people are going to be a titchy bit upset when you then commandeer the entire thing and exclude the fandom from any of the process that you said they were going to be part of.

Additionally, it’s rather funny, isn’t it, that what you call doxxing is actually just people upset with how triggering content is being handled, and going to the people who actually wrote the content in order to voice their complaints? It’s almost as if social media exists to allow this communication between reader and author, which is a fundamental thing you’ll learn in any creative writing course, such as the one I’m on currently, wherein you’re actually taught how to respond to social media and to build up your image with your fans. 

Homestuck^2 is an ongoing piece of media. We’re well aware that we have a potential to change these uncritical takes and the horrific way they’re being handled if the writers will just listen to genuine criticism. This is, frankly, no different to the people who go to J. K. Rowling’s Twitter to tell her how harmful her transphobic comments are; because if she believes these things, they will work their way into her texts and will perpetuate harmful ideologies. 

The literal same thing is happening in Homestuck^2 - again, such as futa Jade, which normalises the point of view that bisexuals are cheaters and completely trivialises what it means to be trans, or Gamzee, which perpetuates just about every anti-black stereotype possible. Media does have a very powerful impact on what people see in the real world. This is why, for instance, positive black characters are so important in media; if they’re always portrayed as villains, then people will see real world black people as villains as the ideology is perpetuated to the point of fact. This is especially true if the people already believe in the ideology.

Fiction is one of the best ways that we can counteract this cycle. If you make a character that they like, and they happen to be positive representation, and then they watch more media that is likewise positive representation, it’s more likely to stick that these positive representations are the actual experiences of minority groups. Also? It’s important TO those minority groups. A black person, especially right now, doesn’t want to see an anti-black stereotype fuck a fascist, engage in sexual assult, and then enact pedophilia - only to die at the hands of a hero and be laughed at for the death. Surprisingly, shit like this is why we need to tell the writers that what they’re doing is harmful, that they’re perpetuating phobic ideologies, and that we need better representation - especially in a comic that is this widely read, and also has a very large minor fanbase. 

I shouldn’t need to explain why exposing minors to anti-black stereotypes, transphobic, homophobic, biphobic, abuse apologism, victim blaming, and the trivialisation of rape and sexual assault (especially towards men), might be a federal fucking issue. 

So, no, we’re not actually cyberbullying LGBT+ people. We’re trying to hold shitty writers accountable for the incredibly toxic and harmful ideologies they’re forcing into a text that has always been written with critical thought in mind. 

I should also point out how funny it is that you’re focusing on how some of the writers are LGBT+ - as if we’re not? I’m trans, I’m gay, and I’m ace. Yes, I can actually be these things and absolutely furious that a trans women is writing some of the most transphobic shit I’ve seen in a while into characters she then claims to be completely free of blame. We can be furious that people within our own community are enforcing negative stereotypes.

Being LGBT+ does not make them free from blame. We cannot give them a free pass to be racist, to be transphobic, to be homophobic, biphobic, to be abuse apologists, just because they’re LGBT+. Not only because that’s just a terrible fucking idea to begin with, but because it also reflects so, so badly on the community as a whole. As if being part of the community instantly means that you can do no wrong? As if there can be no toxicity within our own community, despite the fact that there very much is and it is still an issue to this day?

That is such an issue, one of the biggest issues even shown just in Vriska and the way Kate handles her as a whole - and, once again, is WHY we need to get them looking at this shit more critically. This view that LGBT+ people can do no wrong and cannot be criticised is shoved into Homestuck^2 and, once again, perpetuates the ideology. This isn’t something to be proud of. This isn’t something that’s actually okay.

Also, your point that the writers aren’t nice enough and that we disagree on fictional characters - well, I’ve already been over the second part. But for the first part, I would like to remind you that they aren’t just random LGBT+ people on the internet that we’re going to because we think their takes are a little shitty. They’re actual writers working on a piece of media. They are official content creators. 

Again, one of the first things you learn on any creative writing course is that when you become a writer, you gain a significant amount of responsibility for your interactions with the fandom. This is something that you genuinely have to expect, and if you don’t, then, unfortunately you just don’t know what it means to write something that thousands of people have a potential to read. As a writer, it is your responsibility to portray your image online; it is your responsibility to engage with the fans in a meaningful way; it is your responsibility to not cause drama and to listen when criticism is brought up, to have genuine discussion and not to perpetuate hatred - especially towards your own fanbase.

Consider, for instance, the way I’m talking to you right now. This is the sort of tone that someone should take when talking to a fan about genuine criticism. When things are brought up, you go over them step by step, you listen, you write back - you don’t go on a flurry of “fuck yous” to a minor who asked you why your team didn’t post anything about the BLM movement on the official Twitter, and you definitely don’t respond to every comment with genuine criticism with the word “pigshit”. You almost definitely don’t tell your trans masculine and masculine-aligned nonbinary fans that their opinions don’t matter.

As a writer, Kate and the rest of the team have a responsibility with their interactions with their fans. They aren’t just normal fandom voices anymore; they’re official fandom voices, voices that have more weight behind them than anyone else. They’re who people are going to turn to when it comes to anything regarding Homestuck^2. Their words now reflect literally everything about Homestuck^2, the future of Homestuck as an expanded universe, and the opinions of the group as a whole. They have to be careful with what they say. They have to be held to the same standards as industry voices because that’s essentially what they are - especially now that Homestuck is something you pay for. 

Also, this isn’t a point of the story not going the way I want. This is a point of many of people in the fandom being upset with how content is being handled, upset that their voices are being shut down, upset that triggering content is being laughed at or used flippantly and without care or respect. This is people being upset that trigger warnings were removed specifically to make the comic unsafe for them as a punishment for daring to say that something was wrong. This is people being upset that a piece of media that used to be so fucking good at portraying sensitive content in a critical light, that used to be so good at normalising LGBT+ identities and healthy representations of those identities, has suddenly turned to this. 

The story can go whatever way it wants - and frankly, that’s fine be my. What isn’t fine is that content is being used specifically to hurt and to incite.

And, of course, that final piece; nothing will improve if we don’t say that it’s wrong to begin with. Someone needs to voice the complaints of the fanbase, othrewise these toxic ideologies are going to go unchecked. One of the biggest things I’ve come to understand while making these posts is that a significant portion of the fandom feels isolated in their hurt; they don’t think other people feel the same way they do, and several people have mentioned feeling like they were going crazy because they were upset with things that the text and writers are normalising. It’s so important to make sure that these people know they’re not alone. It’s so important to make sure that our voices are heard. It’s so important to try and create critical discussion and debate over something that so many people still fucking love. 

The thing is, I don’t hate Homestuck^2. I actually really, desperately wish I could enjoy it. I wish I could read through it and theorise, could go in depth about how amazing the characters are, could write long and extensive posts on how creative and engaging it is - could even just go on about how interesting the Meat-Candy divide is, and all the points they’re trying to make about canonicity. But I genuinely fucking can’t. There is just so, so much wrong in the text that is completely unrelated to plot and to the overarching Point that makes it impossible for me to read, to want to read, to try to encourage other people to read. They’re things that literally don’t need to be in there, either; stereotypes and toxic ideologies and uncritical or badly handled sensitive topics that could be rectified so, so easily. 

Homestuck^2 could be amazing for a lot of the fandom. It could be something that we all rally around the same way we did for the original comic. For for a lot of people, it has ruined their fandom experience, has ruined their desire to want to read anything more to do with Homestuck, and has caused a significant portion of the fandom to just drop out entirely. That in and of itself should be a sign that this isn’t just a little fandom drama. That this is something much bigger and much more serious that, just maybe, needs to be looked into, talked about, understood - and, potentially, changed. 

[kemetic-dreams]

Rick Ross Sued For ‘Rape Culture’ In Sex Assault Case NO GAMES

A young woman has claimed the rapper’s bodyguard drugged and raped her, and says Ross and his record companies are also to blame.

She had enough sense to text an S.O.S. to her friend, but was too tipsy to press Send.

The drink-and-drug cocktail packed too much of a punch, leaving her comatose as rapper Rick Ross’s 42-year-old bodyguard Nadrian James (and possibly others) allegedly violated her, according to a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on September 18.

“It was at least [James] and maybe others—we haven’t tested everything yet,” the alleged victim’s attorney, Okorie Okorocha, told The Daily Beast, referring to the dress and underwear that's now been tagged as evidence.

The complaint tees up its accusations against Ross, his record label Maybach, and Warner Music Group, by claiming the victim suffered from being drugged and raped by Ross’s bodyguard “and possibly others.” It goes on to say that both record companies are on the hook for fostering “an environment in which drugs and rape were not only tolerated and condoned but also encouraged.”

Multiple attempts made by The Daily Beast to Rick Ross and Nadrian James’s criminal attorneys, reps and relatives were not returned.

Both Ross and James have plunked down exorbitant bail sums to to be free while facing an unrelated charge in June of allegedly kidnapping and pistol-whipping two groundskeepers at Ross’s 235-acre palatial estate in Fayetteville, Georgia.

The woman, who is not named in court papers, says the alleged attack occurred back on February 7 inside L.A.’s posh W Hotel.

Okorocha is repping the twentysomething Los Angeles-based woman, known as Jane Doe in court papers, and filed a graphically detailed civil lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court last week, demanding the rapper and his bodyguard be held accountable for the alleged attack.

“It could have been a gang rape because she only remembers very little of the incident,” Okorocha said.

The swaggering Ross has rapped about drugged women before—on his collaborative track “U.O.E.N.O.,” he spit: “Put Molly up in her champagne, she ain’t even know it, I took her home and I enjoyed that, she ain’t even know it.” After some public outcry Ross apologized, stating, “To suggest in any way that harm and violation be brought to a woman is one of my biggest mistakes and regrets.”

In the lawsuit, the woman says she thought she was meeting Ross and his crew to apply for a job.

According to the civil rape complaint, Jane Doe met Ross’s muscle, Nadrian James, two years ago in Fresno, California, during a concert. They “exchanged phone numbers” and over time stayed in touch by texting and chatting on the phone.

But Okorocha, who described Doe as being “very attractive,” says the woman turned to James—whom she knew only by his nickname “Black”—for job prospects and maintains they “were never sexually intimate” before the alleged attack.

“She was talking about doing different things like promotions and possibly working for [Ross’s Maybach] record label,” Okorocha said.

Fast-forward two years and on February 6, James allegedly reached out to the woman to see if she would like to attend “an industry party” hosted by Rick Ross, whose real name is William Leonard Roberts II.

The woman turned him down “because it was late at night and she had no interest in going to his hotel room late at night…she wanted to hang out during daylight with others present,” according to the complaint.

The following day, though, the woman accepted an invite to tag along with Ross and his crew to the Cannabis Cup in San Bernardino, California. The woman hoped a friend would join her on Ross’s party bus, but the other girl flaked “at the last minute.”

Doe decided to go stag and arrived at the W Hotel. While waiting at the bar for James to do errands, she downed “a single cocktail,” according to the complaint.

Around 6 p.m. Doe joined James, a DJ, Rick Ross, three security guards, another entourage member and the driver—all of whom allegedly smoked dope on the ride to Cannabis Cup, according to the complaint.

In the lawsuit, the woman claims James boasted about the extra dedication he gave to his celebrity boss. He allegedly told Doe he was ordered to “hang out with music performers and groupies to network and carry on the public persona… which included drinking, smoking marijuana, and hanging out with beautiful women.”

Once at the festival, Ross was snapped toking what appears to be a briar of bud burning from a makeshift champagne bottle.

Backstage, Ross and his cannabis clique popped his signature Bel Aire bubbly and Jane Doe says she was handed a flute. She says she “had only one glass the entire evening.”

The same ensemble cast returned to Ross’s van and they drove home.

That’s when the curtains came down on the party.

James allegedly offered the woman some more liquor. This time it was Ciroc vodka, according to Okorocha, and the woman accepted.

But before she took hold of the cup something queer occurred, the complaint alleges. James “turned away from [Doe] and held the cup and bottle out of her view.”

It was then that the woman is certain that James “drugged [her] beverage.”

Within 10 minutes after drinking the mystery hooch from the cup, Doe “began feeling intensely dizzy and ill.”

Apparently, the woman asked and received water but “it made her even sicker,” the complaint says. And then she “blacked out and lost all consciousness.”

Two hours elapsed before the van arrived back at the W Hotel. According to the complaint, Doe remembers “[James] telling her to get out of the van, and gave her his hotel room key and told her to go there to feel better.”

Staggering to James’s hotel room, Doe felt the situation was becoming dire and she attempted to text her friend “but was unable to do so because she lost consciousness again before [the text] could be sent,” according to the complaint.

The woman says she slipped in and out of consciousness and at one point remembered “[James] close the door” and then “being up next to her on the bed and smacking her buttocks,” according to the complaint.

“Put molly all in her champagne, she ain’t even know it / I took her home and I enjoyed that, she ain’t even know it,”

Rapper Rick Ross apologizes for saying he doesn’t hire female artists because he would have sex with them