#brave men and women

[zebrasonice]

Happy Memorial Day

Happy Memorial Day. Thanks to all the men and women who gave their lives to defend our country.

[uniqueartisanconnoisseur]

Diners with a Military or Veteran's Connection

There is something special about dining in a spot that has a military connection. My father Bill Disque served in the Navy during the Korean War, and my nephew Michael Salisbury, and Austin Rhodes also served, and Austin is still serving. When I think about those veterans that served and the freedom that they bought, I am inspired. I think dining at restaurants that honor the military is just…

[sarasade]

One of the most generally useful things to come out of Hbomberguy's plagiarism video and Todd in the Shadows' similar video on misinformation is how they bring transparency to the internet phenomenon of "I made up a guy to get mad at".

Seriously, I've seen people make up a lot of stupid shit on the internet over the years and it's often just a manipulative attempt to paint a group of marginalized people in a bad light.

That's the TL;DR version of this post. 

ANYWAY here is the long version

Those videos are mostly about James Somerton's plagiarism of other queer people's work. However I'd like to talk about that 20-30% of Somerton's original writing- and oh boy. It's mostly about complaining about White Straight Women and misgendering well-known trans creators such as Rebecca Sugar and calling Becky Albertalli a straight woman while it's pretty common knowledge that she was forced to out herself as bi because she received so much harassment over "being a cishet woman who appropriates LGBT+ stories".

One thing that irks me especially is how in his Killing Stalking and Gay Shipping videos Somerton brings up how straight women/ teen girl shippers exploit gay men for their personal sexual fantasies. This gets brought up several times in his videos.

Being all up and arms about Somerton being a "White Cis Gay Who Hates Women and Queer People tm" is not that useful because the kind of rhetoric he's using is extremely common in fandom and LGBT+ spaces on Tumblr, TikTok and Twitter. We really don't need to bring Somerton's identity to this since he is in no way an unique example.

It's hypocritical to make this about an individual person when I've seen A TON of posts, tweets and videos where queer people talk about these Sinister Straight Women who are supposedly out there fetishizing and exploiting queer men. It's pretty clear to me that this is just an excuse to shit on women and queer people for having any sexual interests. At worst these comments are spreading misinformation about BL, a form of media that has been excessively studied by both Asian feminists and Asian queer women.

This all sounds really familiar and I think it's good that people are calling it out as what it is: misogyny and transphobia. I'd also point out the potentially racist motives behind being this hypervigilant about Asian media.

People can absolutely be misogynist regardless of gender or orientation. I really don't know why we need to create some kind of made up enemy to get mad at. I actually think it's almost sinister how "anti-fujoshi" people call Slash shippers and fujoshi misogynists or claim that they have internalised misogyny while being dismissive about women's interests and creative pursuits under Japanese obscenity laws, China's censorship, book bans in American schools and various other disadvances that are part of being a queer and/or female creator.

I think we shouldn't be naive about the bad faith actors who want to turn queer people against each other. For example Fujoshi.info mentions anti-gender (TERF, GC etc) movement using this kind of rhetoric as well.

Anyway if you want to read more:

- about the false info around BL fandom fujoshi.info

-There is the scholar Thomas Baudinette who studies gay media in Japan. Here is a podcast with him and the scholar Khursten Santos

-James Welker is a BL scholar as well. Here is a podcast interview about the new international BL article collection he edited.

-I've already talked about this Youtube channel by KrisPNatz and his great Killing Stalking video that actually engages with the themes of the manhwa

- There is also HR Coleman's thesis DO NOT FEED THE FETISHIZERS: BOYS LOVE FANS RESISTANCE AND CHALLENGE OF PERCEIVED REPUTATION where she interviews 36 BL fans and actually breaks down why fetishization has become such a huge talking point in the fandom discourse. Spoilers, it's mostly about young queer people and women being worried that they will get judged and pathologized for their interest in anything sexual.

-Great podcast about Danmei and censorship with Liang Ge

[tiredyke]

i cant stand feminist discourse on this site because its like 90% "feminism means equality which means you can't say anything bad about men and you have to criticize women just as much as men because misandry is just as bad as misogyny" and these posts always get thousands of notes from other people who call themselves feminists likeee

[hbfmguy2]

Brave Fox and the Jake Black Gang, Part 14

As the kayoed Nate slowly came to, he found he had been securely bound by Brave Fox, and his face forced to lean forward into the buckskin material of the young woman’s belted knee-length dress while she stood either side of him and gagged him tightly. Charlie looked on in horror at this humiliation of his friend by the female warrior, but his angry protests just sounded like one anguished cry of “Mmmmmppppphhh!! as his threats and promises of revenge were muffled by the gag covering his mouth.

“You boys wait here and enjoy the evening air,” Brave Fox smiled, “I will be right back once I’ve discovered if your boss wants to come quietly, like.” The female brave’s prisoners looked on helplessly as Brave Fox left them, padding out of the forest grove on silent moccasined feet.

To be continued.

[girlscience]

i am so goddamn tired of every single fantasy story being about men. i am so goddamn tired of women being side characters and love interests and set dressing and an afterthought. i am so goddamn tired of women who are powerful but feminine. women who are "dressed to kill" and they are wearing eyeliner and a dress and heels. i am so goddamn tired of women always being healers and having water magic. i am so goddamn tired of men going on adventures and dying nobly. i am so goddamn tired of never being able to find a story about women that i can fall in love with. i am so goddamn tired of all fandom being about men.

[autumnhobbit]

please keep telling me how sexist tolkien was with lines like “All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more.” hot DAMN.

bro

[creamybunnybullet]

Daddy’s on the phone planning a trip with his friends. I want to go suck his cock sooo bad but I don’t wanna interrupt him. Sigh.

[archangeldyke-all]

ugh

[shopcat]

turns anon off. i think one aspect of the reason there are intolerably endless amounts of gay and even bi transmascs who claim to not be able to like character who is a woman and use every reason under the sun to justify this, from "i just can't relate to them" to "the writers themselves don't like them so why should i, they're written badly and don't deserve the effort", and additionally, the implication that in order to Enjoy a Character you must be capable of being attracted to them And also be plain attracted to them (which only ever applies to women for some reason, I Wonder Why, and also is a weird mindset to have regardless about anything in the world forever) is because they, AS transmascs with a flawed mindset, particularly with baby transes, are so used to rejecting femininity and some sort of nebulous concept of womanhood that it comes to the point where women are now entirely unrelatable, entirely useless to you as they serve no purpose, entirely unable to be empathised with or liked and entirely unable to exist as people, reduced to nothing and left behind with the "girl clothes" you threw away or whatever.

they're operating under the notion that to be transmasc is to reject being a girl or a woman, and in one foul swoop reject everything about them and everything that may encapsulate that, and fail to see how this is not only obviously some very surface level unsubtextual misogyny, but also absolutely ridiculous and childish and Wrong as a mindset (and somehow fail to see how negative of one it is in the first place... being trans is about embracing what makes you happier and more comfortable, not soullessly rejecting something else). they don't WANT to engage with female characters, they don't fucking care!!!

and to be clear i hold absolutely no sympathy for people who hide behind their own dysphorias and misgivings and identities in order to absolve themselves of having to actually care about women in any substantial way, esp the ones who cling onto the gay/bi identity before anything else bc it provides them some sort of euphoria and then clouds their judgement entirely and leads to situations where people genuinely say "i think the reason i can't relate to women is because im gay (and don't want to fuck them)", and i refuse to sympathise with little boys who refuse to grow the fuck up.

i also think this is particularly important just to note, bc like yeah i'm talking about fictional women here, but it's no surprise to me when these men and boys turn out to be raging misogynists irl, recreate meninism and harbour unquestionable transmisogyny, all bc they've normalised this way of thinking whilst victimising and infantilising themselves at the same time so that they can't be criticised. i would be deeply ashamed if i had the lived experience of a woman in any way, shared everything in common with them that we do and actively chose to turn my back on them. you don't grow misogyny the second you try out he/him pronouns but these idiots sure act like it. if you as a transmasc cannot at all find it in yourself to want to relate to or share experiences with or even just plain like and love and respect women you need to seriously examine why, doubly so for anyone who IS attracted to them in some way for some very obvious reasons.

[caterpillarinacave]

cop shows are ruined by the fact that I don’t like cops lmao

[g0thsoojin]

im like genuinely slowly becoming more and more apathetic towards women like wow.. i kinda don't care about y'all because you make it incredibly hard to care about you :/

[fiftysevenacademics]

I've become lowkey obsessed with behind the scenes videos of filming wuxia movies. Like, if you want to be a successful actor in China, you have to be OK with plunging off cliffs suspended by just a few cables or spun around in midair without screaming in sheer terror, while trying to keep your elaborate wig and costume in place and trying to act in character. Every one of these actors deserves an Oscar.

[difeisheng]

.

[hbfmguy2]

Brave Fox and the Jake Black Gang, Part 18

Less than half an hour later, Brave Fox, once again astride her faithful Moonflower, had Charlie, Zeke and Nate on their feet, but with their hands and arms still bound and gags in place. The humiliated but depressed and unresisting outlaws miserably accepted their fate as the young Dakota warrior slipped nooses of rope around their necks, tethering them to each other, and Charlie who was tied to Moonflower’s saddle horn. The grimly triumphant warrior woman, Winchester in hand and the sacks of plundered loot from the Silver Creek Great Western bank strapped to her steed behind her, urged her reluctant cavalcade of prisoners forward. “Get going, boys!” she ordered.

In front of her trotted the wounded, broken and naked figure of Jake Black - a shadow of the desperado who had terrorised the town and murdered its sheriff. Hands bound behind him, and tied to Moonflower’s bridle, the defeated former Confederate guerrilla sobbed quietly to himself, scarcely able to believe his mighty gang of veterans had been brought low by a single squaw.

To be continued.

[isawthismeme]