#can reflect real like misogynistic views on women are the same people

[redysetdare]

I always find it interesting that homosexual coded main characters don't really get shipped with every single side character of the opposite gender. And people get told off for shipping lesbian coded characters with men or gay coded characters with women by the rest of the fandom. But it's always aroace coded main characters getting shipped with every single side character that exists. And aroace fans getting told to "not generalise the entire aspec community" and "let people ship whomever they want!! It's just fiction!!!" as if we don't deserve to see characters living happy lives not being in relationships. And my biggest pet peeve is the trope of an aroace coded character "growing up and maturing" by... getting in a romantic/sexual relationship. Really shows what these people think about non-partnering aspec people irl. It's not just about fictional characters but they'll never admit it 🤷

I will say that there are some idiots out there who do ship gay characters with the opposite sex because they believe in people being able to ship whatever they want (which can lead to some disturbing places but I digress) But those kinds of ships do get a lot more push back and the same people who get after people for changing characters from gay to straight do not have the same energy when it happens to aro /aroace characters.

These same people are the ones calling for representation and how we treat characters identities in fiction does reflect how we view those identities in the real world EXCEPT when it comes to aspec characters. Suddenly then it's "fiction doesn't effect reality!!!" there's some double standards happening and it's beyond frustrating that no one seems to even notice and get mad at us for pointing it out.

Not to mention it's incredibly funny to hear them cry "Don't generalize the community" while they generalize the community by acting like every aro/ace/aroace person can date and have sex - which like you said ignored the existence of non-partnering identities and I'd like to add it also erases repulsed identities.

None of these people actually care about the aspecs who date or have sex. they don't actually care how those identities work or those experiences at all. they're using them as a get out of jail free card. a loop hole. a "I can't be homophobic because I have a gay best friend" card. They don't care about QPRs and how those relationships can be experience in wildly different ways. All they care about is if they get to have two characters kiss without having to genuinely look at themselves and their biases and possibly have the revelation that they might hold bigoted beliefs about aspec people.

And at this point I'd rather them admit that they don't actually care about aspec identities or experiences instead of tying themselves into knots to try and prove "I'm not aphobic!!!!" because they actively tried to find a loop hole to make it so that they could feel superior and in the right for being able to erase an entire identity of people.

[bitegore]

@cleverthylacine re: this post and particularly the bit about reparative readings

(I think we're getting off topic and wanted to avoid clogging OP's feed lol)

I think there's a tendency toward what I can really only describe as call-to-action-to-Fix-Fandom attitudes when it comes to discussing any kind of -isms in fandom when, like. in my view it doesn't actually do anyone any good. Fandom is very big and people are small and largely the biases in society will be reflected in fandom no matter what we as individuals are up to, especially if we're up in arms because of A Post (fleeting, unserious motivation). I prefer to look at common forms of fannish misogyny where it crops up in my own behavior as an indicator of actual attitudes rather than some sort of checklist of Things To Fix In My Fannish Output. I care way, way more about treating the actual women in my life with respect and care than I do about the female fictional characters I think are fun to write about, you know?

So I like really don't trouble myself over whether or not I'm trying half as hard to read into female fictional characters as their make counterparts, I'm with you on that. Fandom is full of people who are enjoying their fictional women because they like them and not out of some misplaced sense of obligation. When I start doing fic and art with female characters it's because I like the characters, not because I'm compensating. But I like having discrepancies pointed out because it helps me set my barometer for what I might be fucking up with my actual friends and acquaintances in real life, which I think is a lot more important and generally relevant to my life anyway.

This is a lot of words to say 'i'm with you' - not only do i think no one should be obligated to do reparative readings on female characters just because it 'evens it out' or w/e, but honestly I think it's an active distraction from the part of the problem worth caring about, which is that it shows a bias in thinking.

I don't really know. As much as I enjoy fandom and it's a big part of my life, I'm pretty intimately aware it's not that important on the grand scale of things. And as much as I enjoy fiction, i'm of the impression that it reveals more about us than we think it does, so even if you do everything on the list to Eradicate All Traces Of Misogyny, the misogyny will keep sneaking back in until you just... are not writing women with misogyny in your heart and mind. It's a barometer for personal improvement more than anything else, the way I look at things. And certainly in concept but I'd like to also hope in reality, I like having the knowledge toward where I can try to be better instead of flying blind. If I stop being misogynistic, then my fic will be less misogynistic too, but like, I have so many better reasons to not want to be misogynistic!

I also think pressuring people to change the things they have fun with for the sake of Not Being a Bigot (prescriptive, & according to my handy-dandy list which I will hand down from on high...) tends to piss me specifically off, and I like to live by a standard of "not enough significant statistical variance from the mean exists in me to consider this a wholly unique behavior or attitude" so I would also assume that other people feel much the same way. So i also don't like to treat any "xyz is misogynistic" as a hard fast rule anyway, because then I'll get mad and start doing it out of spite while also aiming to make it not misogynistic somehow, which might spawn ideas but doesn't really do me or anyone else any good anyway. (That's definitely not a universal issue and i wouldn't be shocked if there are people who badly want the list because it makes them feel more comfortable writing or something; good for them, we're in totally different categories vis a vis fannish bigotry and how we can work on not doing it and the approaches we take will have to reflect that.)

I had one other thing but I think I forgot it. Uhhh something something it's harder to do reparative readings to compensate for misogynistic writing than it is to do it for flat writing with male characters because a lot of the time it either requires you to work with stereotypes you don't like or to outright dismiss elements of characterization and many of us don't want to do either, when background whiteguys tend to just have a handful of extremely neutral traits and nothing else; this is also part of why it can be hard to do the same for characters of color or characters that are clearly meant to be homophobic stereotypes or whatever, I won't fault anyone for not wanting to put their hands in that. nWFC Elita is a pretty good example of that, honestly - I don't remember a lot about the show because I didn't like it and i watched it one time several years ago lol, but I remember walking away with the impression we were supposed to think of her as Optimus's nagging wife, and annoying and overly negative, even though she was right on all counts every fucking time. I'm not writing nWFC-continuity fic because i have absolutely no interest in doing so, and I don't particularly want to carry that characterization over to any other continuity because - why would I? I like Elita-1 better in basically everything else, and she is broadly always Pretty Damn Competent (at least in theory). But in nWFC i can square the circle by comparing her cynicism to, like, Ratchet, who is equally convinced Optimus is making all the wrong moves. Suddenly she doesn't have to be the annoying nag, she's the last lone voice of real legitimate pushback in Autobot HQ, which has been bleeding dissenters as they're ignored, or whatever. And honestly I do like that. But contrast it with, uhhhh... trying to pick a random character here idk it's cheating if i pick bayverse characters... idk let me pick on IDW. If you want to work with the female character from All Hail Megatron, whose name I can't remember but who I genuinely liked, you have to deal with the fact that she falls head over heels for Spike fucking Witwicky right after meeting him and that her job is largely to deliver motivational speeches to the more important male background characters whose names I also can't remember. You absolutely can read depth into her, and I do because I think it's interesting that there's a character who lives through a horrifically traumatic upending of her life and then realizes that the only way everyone will survive is to stick together and immediately makes it her job to make sure they do, but, like, "woman exists as footstool for man's power & place in the plot" is one of the oldest misogynistic tropes in the book. I wouldn't blame literally anyone for not wanting to work around that, and it's... literally her entire role in the plot, so it's also really fucking hard to try and read out or compensate for. I genuinely do not think she even speaks to another woman in the entire comic. I think my point got muddied in the miles of examples; my thinking is that at the end of the day no one is getting paid for this and I don't think it's really an even playing field between male and female characters to reparatively-read-into anyway.

Last final thing is that the tropes that interest me in a character don't often tend to be done in female characters or when they're approached they take on distinctly misogynistic overtones. i really like characters who talk a big game, brag often, are deeply vain, and are not actually half as good as they claim they are... "woman thinks she has skills and is really good at things, but is Put In Her Place by a Man" is also one of my least favorite tropes ever. It's hard to work around that. There's just not much you can do when an entire concept has been all but poisoned for you.

inb4 "he said its ok to be a misogynist!" he said its important to focus on real life & fixing your heart first instead of hoping other people will tell you what not to write to look like you're not a misogynist ^-^

[michiruze]

Many people have said that the best way to avoid dudebros and incels in fandom is to not interact once they make bigoted jokes, but however, there is an easier, surefire way to detect dudebros and incels, especially anime and manga, without having to interact with them:

Never trust people who are disgusted by Shoujo.

Never trust anyone who expresses disgust towards media catered to women (and non-men), be it Shoujo, Otome games, and more.

It is a misogyny litmus test, but hating Shoujo can reveal a lot about a person, it is most likely a sign of homophobia, queerphobia, transphobia, and bigotry.

Let me explain,

Recently, bigoted dudebros and incels from all over the world has been more millitant on their bigotry online due to.....more media being catered for women. Hiding behind their hentai and fanservice girl profile pictures, they were upset as hell, spitting out angry 'thinkpieces' on 'the double standards feminists has on media with fanservice' --- solely for the fact that there are media where male characters are treated like female characters in media that dudebros enjoy.

The way dudebros describe male characters in Shoujo and Joseimuke media also veers to homophobia and transphobia, calling them 'gay' or misgendering them, all because of these characters not adhering to their standards of masculinity.

They also carry these views to women (and non-men) who enjoy them with slut-shaming to boot, solely for the fact that they see and treat male characters the same way that dudebros see and treat female characters.

When dudebros sees women and non-men getting attracted to male characters, they see it as a threat, as a reflection on how they would treat real men (ignoring that there are sapphic, ace, and aro shoujo enjoyers!), as if they weren't already treating real women like shit the same way they do it to female characters.

"But I don't like Shoujo! I just don't like it, not in the misogynistic way incels do!"

This isn't a call for anyone to 'go like Shoujo now' --- disliking Shoujo is fair, it is not a bad thing to dislike it. You don't have to like it, Shoujo is not for everyone after all. Romance and shipping is not for everyone after all (even though there are Shoujo media with no romance).

Just stay in your lane and stay away from Shoujo-positive spaces, don't be assholes to people who like Shoujo.

But feeling disgust over media made for women (and queer people) and being assholes towards people who enjoy it is not a good behaviour.

At this point and climate, Shoujo hate often means "Women are not allowed to have things made for them, because it will turn them into delusional sluts who will threaten real masculinity. Women will be so poisoned by Shoujo that they will become man-hating sexuality-collecting gender-queers who will not bend to real men."

And it happens all too often. It is no longer cringe culture, but outright hate.

That is why Shoujo hate is gateway to bigotry.

[hamartia-grander]

Tell me everything you hate about Leon Kennedy so I can agree

Careful, anon, or you'll make me fall in love with you

The things I don't hate about Leon would make a shorter list and my instinct is to give you a jokey answer, but you seem genuinely curious of Leon's faults as a character so I'll do my best to explain it:

Obligatory "just because a character sucks doesn't mean you have to hate them, and I'm not saying people can't like Leon, I'm simply expressing why I personally don't" statement for those with no reading comprehension <3

My biggest reason for hating him is the misogyny. Leon's most prominent trait is his continued misogyny. And while this previously was brushed off as "the writing of the time" in which the games/CG movies were released, that is no longer an excuse, because 1. Leon is still being written as a misogynist, just in a different context, and 2. There are other RE male characters who were never written to be misogynistic, such as Chris Redfield, and there are RE male characters who were originally misogynistic but have been rewritten to no longer be, such as Luis Serra. And of all of the RE male characters who were originally written to be misogynistic, the only character who has maintained that misogyny despite remakes is Leon. This makes it no longer just a reflection of the early 2000's writing, it now becomes a facet of his actual character. And while Leon's misogyny is no longer as blatant and bold as "following a lady's lead just isn't my style", or making demeaning comments on a woman's butt, or scoffing and spitting "women", it is still a part of his character.

Especially in relation to Ada Wong. The way he treats Ada is like a stereotypical reddit incel who experienced one breakup and now hates/disregards all women in his perceived dating pool. Ada never fully revealed who she was to Leon, she never promised him the truth, and she never expressed a want to allow him to see the real her - in fact, she did quite the opposite, constantly trying to push him away. But Leon - being a man who sees a woman in a dangerous situation as someone who needs his help, despite Ada saving his ass multiple times - sticks around. And because he knows nothing about her, he starts to create a projection of who he thinks Ada is, based entirely on the very minimal and evasive information she has given him. And yes, being lied to by anyone is not fun, especially in the middle of an apocalypse. But Ada made many attempts to get Leon to back off, to leave her be, and yet he in all his macho-heroism insisted on "helping" her, thus forcing himself into her line of work despite her warnings against it. And then, when her lie is revealed, he completely disregards his respect for her, and begins to view her as nothing but an emotionless manipulator. She refuses to shoot him, even though it meant forfeiting her entire mission, and he still actually believes she never cared about him. And when they meet again, his attitude towards her is utterly abrasive, inconsiderate, and cold. What makes this misogyny however, rather than just Leon being an asshole, is that we have another character in the same game who Leon used to admire and whose identity is revealed to be something Leon is morally against: Major Krauser. And yet, Leon entirely maintains his respect for, and his consideration for the feelings of, Krauser. Ada Wong was a mercenary who lied to Leon to keep her cover. Krauser was a war criminal who kidnapped the president's daughter, which brought Leon into this mess, and then murdered Luis right in front of Leon. And Leon has a very no-nuance, naïve, black and white view of morals prior to and throughout re4r, so if his vitriol for Ada was truly about conflicting morals, that would be reflected in how he treats Krauser, too. However, Leon maintains his respect for Krauser. Leon appeals to Krauser's honour, to Krauser's emotions. Leon actively tries to sympathise with Krauser in an effort to rationalise Krauser's actions in Leon's mind. And yet it is Ada Wong, who has saved his life countless times, who has shown him she cares, and who has helped him at no cost, who receives his ire; rather than Krauser, who couldn't care less about Leon and his predicament. This kind of misogyny is especially infuriating to me because Leon's actions are portrayed as Just™, he is still portrayed as the Correct Hero™, and the fans ignore his misogyny just as easily as the narrative itself does.

I don't hate Leon just because he's a misogynist; there's too many of those in media to hate them all for that. I hate him because his misogyny is made to be a quality of his character, and is never punished by the narrative nor is he ever forced to reconcile with it. And what's worse, the way he treats Ada is in turn perpetrated by fans who refuse to acknowledge his misogyny, and thus become little misogynists themselves, tearing into Ada with utter vitriol and no consideration for her as a character.

And obviously, not just Ada. Another modern example is how he treats Claire Redfield in re2r and Infinite Darkness. He sees her as a kid in need of protecting, despite her only being 2 years younger than him, and proving repeatedly that she's more than capable of handling herself. And when she asks when he'll stop treating her like a kid, he says "probably never". (I am strangling him I'm exploding him with my mind). But his misogyny towards Ada is the most significant and reoccurring. She has long been written to serve as the object of Leon's desires, and now that she's been given significant substance, fans hate her for no longer fitting into their own misogynistic ideal of who she should be. But that's another discussion.

There's other things I hate about him, such as his part in modern copoganda, or his arrogance, but the misogyny is the most prominent thing. And I truly admire fans who love Leon while actively acknowledging his misogyny. But to me, he has no other redeeming qualities significant enough to help me get over it.

Sorry that was a lot but if you read this far, I hope I did okay explaining my feelings on this. Thank you for asking <3

[theeholytrinity]

The double standards against Rhaenyra and her children in this fandom never fail to astound me. Any argument in Rhaenyra’s defense is always met with the rebuttal that "we shouldn't be applying a modern lense" to Westeros society which is a reflection of the real-world Medieval Era, but the deflection is disingenuous when the people who make this same rebuttal never apply this logic to their own favorite characters. We're not allowed to point out the fact that the reason for the Greens usurping Rhaenyra is based on a misogynistic ideologies, we're not allowed to say that shaming Rhaenyra for having sex with her partners of choice and having children, even if they’re out of wedlock, with someone she actually likes, isn't a bad thing in spite of the stigma that's attached to those actions in Westerosi society, we're not allowed to say that the social norm of passing up a woman in the line of succession in favor of a man is wrong, even if that's the norm in Westeros society.

But oh, when it comes to Alicent? We must look at this from a modern point of view, to further victimize her. Alicent is a child bride (by our standards), Alicent faced marital rape (by our standards), and therefore her pain is justification for the pain she inflicts on Rhaenyra and why she should be allowed to usurp Rhaenyra’s throne for her rapist son. But, if we were to apply the same logic that green stans apply to Rhaenyra, the logic that we should not be applying a modern lense to these characters because "everyone is wrong and bad", then Alicent was in fact not a child bride nor did she face marital rape or anything else that simply wasn't normal for Westeros. Viserys started courting her when was 15, then six months afterward announced his plans to marry her. By then, she would have been 16 or nearing 16, which in Westerosi society is the age of majority/consent. The real world equivalent would the age of consent laws in the USA which states that the legal age of consent is 18. Therefore by Westerosi standards, Alicent was in fact not a child bride. Nor was she a victim of marital rape, the concept does not exist in Westeros. There hasn't been any feminist movements or feminist thought to even  introduce the concept of marital rape, so how can she be a victim of something that Westeros doesn't even know exist? Viserys was simply claiming his rights as her husband, and no one in Westeros would call him a rapist for that. Furthermore, Alicent’s circumstances are not unique to her. Almost every Westerosi lady is married off at the age of 16 (sometimes younger) and often times to a man far older then her with the expectation of producing heirs. Just look at Lysa Tully.

So you see, if we applied the same logic to Alicent that is applied to Rhaenyra, then neither women is a victim of patriarchy and therefore their actions are not justified because everyone one is bad and you're not supposed to pick sides!!! But you see, you are supposed to apply a modern lense to this story. When you see Alicent married off at age 16 to a man old enough to her father, you're supposed to feel uneasy. When you see her popping out heirs left and right at such a young age you're supposed to feel uneasy. When you see Viserys claiming his rights, regardless of her own desires, you're supposed to feel uneasy. Even though all of those things are normalized in Westeros, you're not supposed to find those things acceptable, you're supposed to apply a modern lense to the situation and be rightfully disgusted! So why then can't this same logic be applied to Rhaenyra?

We are supposed to feel enraged by the misogyny Rhaenyra faces, we're supposed to feel enraged by how her children are spoken of, we're supposed to feel enraged when she's usurped simply for being a woman. She herself is not a feminist, the concept doesn't exist in Westeros, but her story in itself is a feminist one, about a woman defying patriarchal standards/status quo and fighting for what is hers by right against all odds. When she is called a bitch and a whore, when she is detested and slandered for being defiant and daring to fight for what is hers, you are not supposed to side with the people using misogynistic ideologies and language against her. You're supposed to apply a modern lense and understand that it's wrong for those characters to do so, even if it's normalized in Westeros. Because not everything that's normalized is morally good.

"Well Rhaenyra did bad things", Alicent isn't a saint either, but for some reason you all show her grace and understand that her actions and the reasoning behind those actions are nuanced, so again why can't the same logic be applied to Rhaenyra?

[thebutchtheory]

as much as i enjoy this new forcemasc movement coming around, just as with forcefem, there's just some big problems with misogyny and lesbophobia in the movement that really bug me. it's kind of par for the course for these kinds of gender-based kinks to have some misogyny or something like that in there and in general, it's whatever, it's part of the kink. but there are some things that get me so much that i just don't think it's okay, especially when it's coming from a group of people who have reason to be misogynistic because femaleness or being associated with it makes them uncomfortable.

transgender men -- whether out or not, passing or not -- forget about their capacity for misogyny. anyone has the capacity to weaponize misogyny, so this isn't unique to trans men, but trans men are in unique positions because for general dysphoria/gender trouble reasons, they often want to get as far away from femaleness/femininity as they possibly can. this often results in them, intentionally or not, perpetuating misogyny, be it because they're copying toxic masculinity to cope with the distress of dysphoria, or just because they want to get away from everything associated with femaleness/femininity because of how much discomfort it causes them to be associated with such.

this has resulted in portions of the forcemasc movement becoming extremely misogynistic completely without critical thought to what they're saying.

many transmascs decide that they're okay with perpetuating misogyny because they're not 'real' threats by virtue of having been born/raised female. but the thing about misogyny perpetuated by transmascs is that cisgender women hide behind the same premise, just with one alteration: that they can't be misogynistic because they are women.

annoying gay men do the same thing, radfems and TERFs also do it. so many people do it. you are not uniquely exempt from perpetuating misogyny for any reason, even if you experience misogyny.

most if not all trans men have experienced misogyny in their lives, which is what puts them in a unique position to perpetuate it without critical thought. for the love of god please at least try to think about some of the implications of what you're saying.

i'm freaky and extremely kink positive, but there's a long discussion to be had about kinks seeping into the ways that we view the world and the people that get us off, (i.e. a lot of extremely hardcore porn involving women reflecting a genuine hatred of and desire to harm women for being women; raceplay as a general example; sissy porn often involving the use of homophobic slurs to demean the sissy, etc).

please be mindful of the ideas you perpetuate when you say or imply it's okay to be misogynistic or even encourage it for the sake of forcemasc.

[make-a-desert-call-it-peace]

I am so very very very exhausted of men shoehorning misogyny into nominally neutral philosophical and theological discussions. I was watching an otherwise interesting video about different levels/modes of thinking and almost every single example he used to illustrate levels was wOmAn bAd aNd mANiPuLaTiVe. Like, my dude, you really couldn’t think of gender neutral examples? You had to use “woman ignoring a simp to get more attention for less effort, then reflecting on that and realizing it’s bad, then reflecting on that reflection with the view that morality is wholly relative”? There was nothing else you could think of for that? And for the level where you are aware of and prioritizing social norms, the example he chose was “woman sees ‘man bad’ on her phone and assumes her male partner is bad because of what she saw on her phone and then breaks up with him, then later reflects on it and sees that doesn’t line up with what her culture thinks is acceptable and what she did was Wrong.” Like I’m sorry your ex girlfriend found out what weaponized incompetence and emotional neglect are from tiktok or whatever and then dumped you, but that’s really not the universal example you think it is.

I just. I can think of a dozen neutral examples off the top of my head that illustrate the same concepts he’s trying to get across. I didn’t even finish the video; I got halfway through and decided to throw the entire man out because frankly if he is consistently showing that he doesn’t think women are real people who can have interactions or motivations outside of mAniPuLaTe mAn and MiSaNtHrOpY, I don’t trust his analysis on anything else. If there’s something interesting I missed because I noped out, oh well, I’m sure someone less shit thought of it too.

Like I don’t think the messenger has to be perfect for something to be true; truth is truth no matter who’s saying it. But there’s a massive difference between being an imperfect messenger and injecting your own bias & calling it part of the message. He even had “it’s a jooooooke” above one of the illustrations he was using for one of these “woman mean!” examples. Like sir you’re clearly aware enough to know you’ll have to defend this; why not use an example you don’t have to preemptively excuse?

Idk I am just very very tired of it. If anyone has recs for non-misogynistic discussions of epistemology / consciousness I would be most appreciative.

[mwdthroughoutdigitalmedia]

Blog Post #1 - What is the MWD?

By: Katie O

Mothers and strippers. We are led to believe that these two words do not belong in the same sentence; that they are two separate entities, and to combine them is to offend the mother by comparing her to a stripper. When they are combined into one human being it’s an enigma. Why do we feel this way? Why does a mother being a stripper feel unnatural, maybe even offensive to some? This can be explained by the Madonna Wh*re Dichotomy (which will be referred to as the MWD for Tumblr guidelines purposes). 

The MWD is essentially a dichotomy that splits women into two separate categories, not to be crossed. First, the Madonna; chaste women who are worthy of respect. Second, the wh*re; sensual, attractive women unworthy of respect. Men will often decide in their individual minds which women belong to which categories. For example, they may view one friend as a Madonna because the man finds her unattractive and another woman a wh*re because he is attracted to her. This can also be applied to a larger scale where more famous women will be categorized by the general public as one thing. For example, in the Bible, the Virgin Mary is thought of to be a Madonna due to her chastity and practical perfection while Eve would be classified as a wh*re because of her sins and sexuality. 

This extremely outdated ideology was theorized by Sigmund Freud, who simultaneously believes in the MWD and that all men are sexually attracted to their mothers (despite the clear contradiction). Freud wrote, “Where such men love, they have no desire, and where they desire, they cannot love.” He believed that the MWD is inevitable for all men to believe. However, modern scholars argue that the MWD is an idea rooted in deep misogyny and sexism, and is therefore unnatural and can be unlearned. This is because the MWD is rooted in the patriarchal idea that women can be put into boxes, in a way that society doesn’t put men into boxes. If this idea is broken down, then the MWD can be broken down as well. 

Oftentimes, the MWD is reinforced in the media unintentionally, such as in the song “Without You” by The Kid LAROI. The chorus follows “So there you go oh, can’t make a wife out of a ho.” Regardless of the fact that he’s using the offensive term “ho” for a woman, he’s implying that that is all the woman can be. She cannot be simultaneously sexual and worthy of long-term commitment. This is a key example of the MWD being portrayed, likely without realizing that this is what is being reinforced by the song.

However, sometimes the MWD is used in an intentional way, such as in The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. In the society presented, there are three categories of women; mothers, birthers, and sex workers. Mothers are the Madonnas of the society. They do not give birth, they don’t really have sex; their sole purpose is to raise children. Sex workers on the other hand are sterilized and cannot have or raise children. Their sole purpose is to dress sexually and have sex with men. The MWD is intentionally being represented to reflect and comment on modern society, as opposed to “Without You” which is upholding the misogynistic ideas of the MWD.  

Modern digital media has severely influenced how we perceive the MWD. Previously, we could only study it through books, television, and real-life scenarios. What’s unique about digital media is that anyone can write and post whatever they want. Even what is said in private can be leaked. So, when people make misogynistic/sexist comments relating to the MWD, it can potentially reach billions of people. This has increased society’s awareness of the MWD.

That being said, society’s awareness does not equal society’s willingness to break it down. Sometimes these opinions will be expressed through comments, receiving hundreds or even thousands of likes. For example, on TikTok, there’s been a trend/meme for men to write comments such as “someone’s daughter,” “for the streets,” and “hope my daughter doesn’t turn out like this” under videos of women dancing and lip-syncing. This usually happens when women are doing things that are usually perceived to be sexual by society, such as when they are wearing tight and low-cut clothes or twerking. However, these comments are usually written for women who aren’t conventionally attractive or don’t have the “ideal” body type (usually an hourglass figure). This reinforces the idea that conventionally attractive women are wh*res and can only be that, and women who are not conventionally attractive are Madonnas and must be chaste.

However, there is a duality to TikTok as it simultaneously allows creators to make and spread videos discussing the MWD. Just looking up the phrase on TikTok results in thousands of videos of people explaining it and its presence in everyday life, spreading awareness and light to the issue. 

As previously mentioned, the MWD isn’t only present throughout TikTok and other social media platforms. The ideas are instilled in us as children through the media we consume. Next blog post I will be discussing how Disney upholds and breaks down the MWD, and how it affects their viewers.

Sources:

[wouldyoudoanythingforme]

The difference between how men and women behave in society when it comes to dating is that women may have a dream man they fantasy about but they are also willing to date people who don't check off every box for them whereas men feel entitled to obtaining their dream woman and will settle for nothing less.

Not only is it unrealistic to go into dating with a preordained checklist and refuse to compromise on any of the qualities listed on it, it's also childish and immature emotionally. Like I don't mean this as an insult but rather as a diagnosis.

Every woman I know starts dating and is willing to let of of superficial preferences in order to find a genuine connection but few men are willing to accept less than what they believe they "deserve."

Like these dating interviews where misogynists are like "what's your dream man?" And then they take that answer as "see women admit they are looking for "chads" only!!!! I told you guys" no what you "discovered" is that women have preferences, like everyone else.

It's taboo to say this but it shouldn't be but everyone "settles" to some degree. You will not find a partner where every single quality they have is your individual preference, because humans are flawed creatures. We are not perfect and we don't realize that every "good" quality a person has reflects a "bad" quality they have as well.

Like I am very compassionate and empathetic to my friends because I am highly impatient + take steps to correct that about myself in my actions and behaviors. I am very intelligent because I am highly ambitious and competitive and view knowledge as the best weapon you can have in this world. It's all a give and take in this world, we are the sum of our good and bad experiences in life and as women grow up, we realize this about dating.

We realize that prince charming doesn't exist in real life, but men still look for Cinderella even though she's fictional too and they put their inflexibility to compromise on women because they think we behave the way they do, even when we tell them we don't.

Like, every single misogynist is always like "women lie about not needing a man to be 6 feet tall because when you ask them what their dream man looks like, they say 6 feet tall!!!" And it's like yeah, because you asked for their DREAM man, not their ex or current partner.

We all have preferences, my dream man has green eyes and is built like Dylan Obrien but the love of my life doesn't have either of these qualities. That doesn't mean I don't love my partner, it just means we all have different ideals in our minds that society and culture have influenced us to want, even if those things are shallow or not realistic. Because my dream man is also kind, empathetic, caring, supportive, funny, ambitious, a socialist, etc etc and I can afford to let go of the superficial preferences for all these other boxes he ticks, you know?

Like, also, even if we're talking about just looks wise right, what I find most attractive is what I would list as my dream man but that doesn't mean I'm ONLY attracted that very specific fantasy, right? Like if you ask for my dream man in terms of appearance, obviously I'm going to list the qualities I find MOST attractive. That doesn't mean other qualities don't turn me on or I don't find other eye colors attractive (I love brown, blue, Grey, hazel, Amber, etc colors but green is my favorite, I'd still sleep with blue eyed or brown eyed man right. Same is true for all my physical preferences). But like men seem to think listing preferences is the same thing as listing deal-breakers.

If these men asked those same women what are you dating deal-breakers for example, they'd get very different responses. Because like idk they're different concepts, you feel ?

I just find men to have a weird culture around dating where they project their thoughts onto women as justification for abusing them. It's wild.

[qqueenofhades]

Hi. I’m curious. What did you mean by “women who read fiction might get Bad Ideas!!!” has just reached its latest and stupidest form via tumblr purity culture.? I haven’t seen any of this but I’m new to tumblr.

Oh man. You really want to get me into trouble on, like, my first day back, don’t you?

Pretty much all of this has been explained elsewhere by people much smarter than me, so this isn’t necessarily going to say anything new, but I’ll do my best to synthesize and summarize it. As ever, it comes with the caveat that it is my personal interpretation, and is not intended as the be-all, end-all. You’ll definitely run across it if you spend any time on Tumblr (or social media in general, including Twitter, and any other fandom-related spaces). This will get long.

In short: in the nineteenth century, when Gothic/romantic literature became popular and women were increasingly able to read these kinds of novels for fun, there was an attendant moral panic over whether they, with their weak female brains, would be able to distinguish fiction from reality, and that they might start making immoral or inappropriate choices in their real life as a result. Obviously, there was a huge sexist and misogynistic component to this, and it would be nice to write it off entirely as just hysterical Victorian pearl-clutching, but that feeds into the “lol people in the past were all much stupider than we are today” kind of historical fallacy that I often and vigorously shut down. (Honestly, I’m not sure how anyone can ever write the “omg medieval people believed such weird things about medicine!” nonsense again after what we’ve gone through with COVID, but that is a whole other rant.) The thinking ran that women shouldn’t read novels for fear of corrupting their impressionable brains, or if they had to read novels at all, they should only be the Right Ones: i.e., those that came with a side of heavy-handed and explicit moralizing so that they wouldn’t be tempted to transgress. Of course, books trying to hammer their readers over the head with their Moral Point aren’t often much fun to read, and that’s not the point of fiction anyway. Or at least, it shouldn’t be.

Fast-forward to today, and the entire generation of young, otherwise well-meaning people who have come to believe that being a moral person involves only consuming the “right” kind of fictional content, and being outrageously mean to strangers on the internet who do not agree with that choice. There are a lot of factors contributing to this. First, the advent of social media and being subject to the judgment of people across the world at all times has made it imperative that you demonstrate the “right” opinions to fit in with your peer-group, and on fandom websites, that often falls into a twisted, hyper-critical, so-called “progressivism” that diligently knows all the social justice buzzwords, but has trouble applying them in nuance, context, and complicated real life. To some extent, this obviously is not a bad thing. People need to be critical of the media they engage with, to know what narratives the creator(s) are promoting, the tropes they are using, the conclusions that they are supporting, and to be able to recognize and push back against genuinely harmful content when it is produced – and this distinction is critical – by professional mainstream creators. Amateur, individual fan content is another kettle of fish. There is a difference between critiquing a professional creator (though social media has also made it incredibly easy to atrociously abuse them) and attacking your fellow fan and peer, who is on the exact same footing as you as a consumer of that content.

Obviously, again, this doesn’t mean that you can’t call out people who are engaging in actually toxic or abusive behavior, fans or otherwise. But certain segments of Tumblr culture have drained both those words (along with “gaslighting”) of almost all critical meaning, until they’re applied indiscriminately to “any fictional content that I don’t like, don’t agree with, or which doesn’t seem to model healthy behavior in real life” and “anyone who likes or engages with this content.” Somewhere along the line, a reactionary mindset has been formed in which the only fictional narratives or relationships are those which would be “acceptable” in real life, to which I say…. what? If I only wanted real life, I would watch the news and only read non-fiction. Once again, the underlying fear, even if it’s framed in different terms, is that the people (often women) enjoying this content can’t be trusted to tell the difference between fiction and reality, and if they like “problematic” fictional content, they will proceed to seek it out in their real life and personal relationships. And this is just… not true.

As I said above, critical media studies and thoughtful consumption of entertainment are both great things! There have been some great metas written on, say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe and how it is increasingly relying on villains who have outwardly admirable motives (see: the Flag Smashers in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) who are then stigmatized by their anti-social, violent behavior and attacks on innocent people, which is bad even as the heroes also rely on violence to achieve their ends. This is a clever way to acknowledge social anxieties – to say that people who identify with the Flag Smashers are right, to an extent, but then the instant they cross the line into violence, they’re upsetting the status quo and need to be put down by the heroes. I watched TFATWS and obviously enjoyed it. I have gone on a Marvel re-watching binge recently as well. I like the MCU! I like the characters and the madcap sci-fi adventures! But I can also recognize it as a flawed piece of media that I don’t have to accept whole-cloth, and to be able to criticize some of the ancillary messages that come with it. It doesn’t have to be black and white.

When it comes to shipping, moreover, the toxic culture of “my ship is better than your ship because it’s Better in Real Life” ™ is both well-known and in my opinion, exhausting and pointless. As also noted, the whole point of fiction is that it allows us to create and experience realities that we don’t always want in real life. I certainly enjoy plenty of things in fiction that I would definitely not want in reality: apocalyptic space operas, violent adventures, and yes, garbage men. A large number of my ships over the years have been labeled “unhealthy” for one reason or another, presumably because they don’t adhere to the stereotype of the coffee-shop AU where there’s no tension and nobody ever makes mistakes or is allowed to have serious flaws. And I’m not even bagging on coffee-shop AUs! Some people want to remove characters from a violent situation and give them that fluff and release from the nonstop trauma that TV writers merrily inflict on them without ever thinking about the consequences. Fanfiction often focuses on the psychology and healing of characters who have been through too much, and since that’s something we can all relate to right now, it’s a very powerful exercise. As a transformative and interpretive tool, fanfic is pretty awesome.

The problem, again, comes when people think that fic/fandom can only be used in this way, and that going the other direction, and exploring darker or complicated or messy dynamics and relationships, is morally bad. As has been said before: shipping is not activism. You don’t get brownie points for only having “healthy” ships (and just my personal opinion as a queer person, these often tend to be heterosexual white ships engaging in notably heteronormative behavior) and only supporting behavior in fiction that you think is acceptable in real life. As we’ve said, there is a systematic problem in identifying what that is. Ironically, for people worried about Women Getting Ideas by confusing fiction and reality, they’re doing the same thing, and treating fiction like reality. Fiction is fiction. Nobody actually dies. Nobody actually gets hurt. These people are not real. We need to normalize the idea of characters as figments of a creator’s imagination, not actual people with their own agency. They exist as they are written, and by the choice of people whose motives can be scrutinized and questioned, but they themselves are not real. Nor do characters reflect the author’s personal views. Period.

This feeds into the fact that the internet, and fandom culture, is not intended as a “safe space” in the sense that no questionable or triggering content can ever be posted. Archive of Our Own, with its reams of scrupulous tagging and requests for you to explicitly click and confirm that you are of age to see M or E-rated content, is a constant target of the purity cultists for hosting fictional material that they see as “immoral.” But it repeatedly, unmistakably, directly asks you for your consent to see this material, and if you then act unfairly victimized, well… that’s on you. You agreed to look at this, and there are very few cases where you didn’t know what it entailed. Fandom involves adults creating contents for adults, and while teenagers and younger people can and do participate, they need to understand this fact, rather than expecting everything to be a PG Disney movie.

When I do write my “dark” ships with garbage men, moreover, they always involve a lot of the man being an idiot, being bluntly called out for an idiot, and learning healthier patterns of behavior, which is one of the fundamental patterns of romance novels. But they also involve an element of the woman realizing that societal standards are, in fact, bullshit, and she can go feral every so often, as a treat. But even if I wrote them another way, that would still be okay! There are plenty of ships and dynamics that I don’t care for and don’t express in my fic and fandom writing, but that doesn’t mean I seek out the people who do like them and reprimand them for it. I know plenty of people who use fiction, including dark fiction, in a cathartic way to process real-life trauma, and that’s exactly the role – one of them, at least – that fiction needs to be able to fulfill. It would be terribly boring and limited if we were only ever allowed to write about Real Life and nothing else. It needs to be complicated, dark, escapist, unreal, twisted, and whatever else. This means absolutely zilch about what the consumers of this fiction believe, act, or do in their real lives.

Once more, I do note the misogyny underlying this. Nobody, after all, seems to care what kind of books or fictional narratives men read, and there’s no reflection on whether this is teaching them unhealthy patterns of behavior, or whether it predicts how they’ll act in real life. (There was some of that with the “do video games cause mass shootings?”, but it was a straw man to distract from the actual issues of toxic masculinity and gun culture.) Certain kinds of fiction, especially historical fiction, romance novels, and fanfic, are intensely gendered and viewed as being “women’s fiction” and therefore hyper-criticized, while nobody’s asking if all the macho-man potboiler military-intrigue tough-guy stereotypical “men’s fiction” is teaching them bad things. So the panic about whether your average woman on the internet is reading dark fanfic with an Unhealthy Ship (zomgz) is, in my opinion, misguided at best, and actively destructive at worst.

[transfemstarscream]

a father (commonly) influences how a son perceives and treats women, i.e. how he treats a woman (the most common example being his wife, usually) will often be the same way a son grows up to treat women as well. although megatron is not really misogynistic (as in there’s very few moments where he treats female characters badly because of their gender), the lack of a female presence in the decepticons can be seen as an example of this, along with how characters such as nightbird, thunderblast, etc. are treated within the decepticon ranks.

on the other hand, a father (commonly) influences his daughter in how she perceives herself, extending to her choice in romantic partners (or the people she surrounds herself with), and how much she tolerates abuse from other men. this is where megatron’s treatment of starscream comes in: perpetual years of reoccuring abuse that follows the “abuse cycle” to an extent (tension -> incident[abuse] -> reconciliation/calm [though apologies are very rare; this cycle often goes immediately to the calm/”honeymoon” phase]), although further creating that anger and hatred starscream takes out on other people, also claws at any self-worth she genuinely had. despite her nonexistent hesitance to shoot anyone who upsets her, she subconsciously allows herself to be degraded or manipulated by other characters.

so you kind of see the gradual change in this: when starscream is under megatron’s care, constantly having these masculine ideals and displays of power pushed onto her, it influenced in how she is towards about everyone. when starscream is no longer under his care, given that freedom yet left mentally unstable, she slowly transforms from the manipulator into the manipulatee. although still a manipulator i.e. windblade and others, it’s revealed over the stories that she herself is played by other male characters in the long run, often stronger and much more “ideally masculine” than herself.

and i think this plays into the unintentional anti-masculinity aspect of starscream’s character, where the fatherly/masculine figures in her life have always been mediocre to awful (and i should mention that starscream’s hypocrisy is important here, as she subconsciously distances herself from them) and that she has almost exclusively been able to confine in, equate herself to, and find respectable opponents in women (windblade, elita-one, mistress of flame, thunderblast, etc.). hell, the human she finds herself most attached to is alexis, a young girl surrounded by a pair of “dumb” boys that are almost like her brothers (this reflecting starscream’s relationship to demolisher and cyclonus; only real difference is that alexis does not have any sort of dislike for the other boys whereas although starscream obviously cares in her own shitty way she definitely doesn’t like demo and cyc personally).

despite cryak’s only appearance being in the halloween special, she serves as a maternal figure for starscream, helped by idw2′s focus on mentor/student relationships. we only know her for a single issue and yet starscream is portrayed as having fond, connected memories of her as attention is brought to cryak. their relationship is a much more emotional one, and emotion is often viewed as a much more feminine, mother-exclusive feature traditionally, where fathers are often portrayed as emotionally absent and harder to earn the approval of.

starscream's narrative, when in favor of her and/or the autobot influence she has such as in armada or IDW1, largely condemns the aggressiveness and detachment of masculinity; megatron is often portrayed as very aggressive, powerful, strong, and a figure that's hard to earn approval from, to which starscream eventually suffers the consequences of when it's taken to more extremes (armada ep23 "rebellion" is an example, where a simple quip from starscream infuriates and hurts megatron's ego so much that he beats her even though it's explicitly not her fault they’ve been losing). demolisher and cyclonus, though ambiguously treated less so as megatron’s “sons” and a lot more masculine coded, are never really given this amount of flack and abuse that starscream endures, despite the fact they are prone to making more mistakes and in cyclonus’ case not taking it seriously (a reflection of fathers having high expectations for daughters yet giving a lot of leeway for their sons’ actions). there is also the underlying assumption that a father/son connection is tied to (physical) strength—something that is made obvious starscream lacks to an enormous amount compared to megatron—whereas a mother’s connection to her child is expressed through internal strength, the form of love/affection/sympathy/etc., something starscream yearns for. 

and this father and daughter dynamic, more specifically abusive/detached father figure and emotionally stunted daughter figure relationship, is also seen in just how little in common they are when you take away the one thing they can bond over, which is being decepticons. starscream is always shown being more occupied with her looks, how she’s perceived, just how emotional she is and how quick she is to rely on her heart than her mind; vanity/emotion = femininity in this case. megatron is often a lot more driven, couldn’t care less about looks and publicity and is more likely to rely on logic and intellect than what he personally thinks may be morally wrong or bad; this being masculinity in this case. megatron projects his ideals and what he thinks starscream should follow, yet starscream is literally not capable of adapting and understanding. she doesn’t want just his approval, but also the care, empathy, understanding, and love that a lot of daughters will often seek in comparison to son’s who strive more for simple approval and honor.

all this about starscream is ultimately what urges her to separate herself from the masculine identity megatron pushed onto her, rejecting it in hopes of being separated from people that fit the construct of masculine = abusive, aggressive, strong, etc. she doesn’t want to be part of the figures, most masculine, who upheld these standards and ideas of true strength and power. she finds what she needs in presenting femininely, and in other women, even if most are blatantly unhealthy and simply enemies. megatron may be a father to his men, but to starscream he isn’t.

this father/daughter dynamic of megatron and starscream can also be seen in other things: how overtly harsh and demanding he is of her yet obviously a lot more protective such as in armada/energon, how megatron’s development into a more fatherly/uncle-y figure betrays that of how starscream’s own maternal and motherly instincts have developed, starscream’s body dysmorphia and how her relationship with megatron has impacted her way of coping with it, and a lot more. i didn’t really know where i was originally going with this but. yeah. i think megatron and starscream isn’t really of a father/son relationship but a father and (trans) daughter relationship.

[captnjacksparrow]

Hey, really liked your analysis of Hinata. I feel almost the same way about her. Even though generally I dislike female characters who are naturally meek, subservient and pointless with no character arc in any type of media, what made me absolutely hate her character was how she treated Neji. If Kishi wanted to show her arc being developed organically, instead of proposing to Naruto that removes her stuttering and gives her new found confidence (because girls only get confident when proposing to guys 🙄), Kishi could have shown her talking to Neji after he literally told his bitter story on the chuunin exam grounds in front of everyone. She is shown like she is sympathetic but didn't do anything about it. She didn't even talk to him after he was hospitalized. She knew exactly why he was the way he was, and yet she fights him as if it was his fault. She, an heir of the clan, could have asked her father to support Neji, she had some clout. But nope. In fact, it was Neji who apologizes to her in a way, he is the one who trains her and help create a new jutsu for her. What did she ever do for him exactly? And Neji didn't have to help her. She was in the best position to help and understand Neji but what did she do? A lot of fans like her character because she is reserved but kind and sympathetic. She is reserved but a coward. She was not kind towards Neji. He died for her when he didn't deserve to, he had dreams and goals that were much bigger than Hinata's entire existence. She couldn't even see her own cousin's pain and she claims to understand Naruto?? Really??

Even Kishi said she was a pitiful character who only watches from a distance. He deliberately made her that way, no goal, no backbone and no lines. And I think she sucks the most after Danzo.

WoooW!!!! Thanks for the ask, Anon.

[[Hinata and Sakura fans!!!! Please stay away and don't interact. I fucking tagged them properly]].

Even though generally I dislike female characters who are naturally meek, subservient and pointless with no character arc in any type of media, what made me absolutely hate her character was how she treated Neji.

We definitely share the same thoughts on this one, Anon.

I am really tired on most of the media for their poor treatment of female characters.

The last time I was amused by a female character was from 'Game of Thrones', I loved Cersei Lannister, who is an absolute biashhh and Sansa Stark, started out as an annoying rose tinted princess but ended up winning everyone's heart. Both are non-combative, soft spoken and somewhat powerless women in a world dominated by men. But they just didn't let the inconveniences stop them and instead they learned how to fuck that world back and take control. Both are similar and yet very different.

After seeing, such well-developed characters..... For me girls in Naruto series, is blehhhhh..... Nothing to get inspired from them. And I knew it by episode 3 itself. I have no idea how can girls, in real life, treat Sakura as some feminist icon, which makes my skin crawl for number of reasons. If you point her mistakes out in any discussions, they will pull the misogynist card to your face. When in reality, I am also a girl and my world views are entirely different from Sakura or Hinata. There is no way a 12 year old girl would want to look at the Duck of another boy.

And the problem is, They form the majority, I mean people who can connect with Sakura or Hinata. So, as long as girls like them exists, we really should suffer from these crap portrayal I guess.

That's why I advise people that If you want to see a good woman character, Narutoverse is not the place.

Having said that, I find Temari, Konan, Tsunade were better (I mean inside the Narutoverse). Though their motivations or reason to achieve a goal revolve around their men, I find their attitude relieving. Unlike Sakura or Hinata, they don't wet themselves on the sight of the men they love.

What irritates me was, Kishimoto could've easily put a character like Temari or TenTen or Tsunade into Team 7. It would've made my viewing experience a lot better. If he doesn't want the strong girls to take over the attention from his boys, then he should've introduced a meek character like Rin Nohara. She is silent and cute but atleast she was willing to die for the Village and never wetted herself over Kakashi, though she loved him. And she treated Obito like her best friend. But he deliberately made Sakura hateful and he never stopped.

Sakura and Hinata were the lowest of the low, compared to any other side characters. And, in the end, they got the main Character's Ducks without actively doing anything. For me this tells me three things

He was using these girls as a shield to close the hetero normative mouths while in reality hiding those boys true feelings under that shield.

He really hated these kind of girls and constantly showing his hatred on them at every given chance and never redeemed them back. 

He knew the target audience’ mindset and he simply caters them by giving them what they need and at the same time writing the important arcs according to his wish.

I think, it’s the combination of all three. 

Just to give you an example.

There is this delusional SS shipper Who justifies Sasuke was acting Tsundere throughout the war arc. I mean, come on!!!! 

I came across this post because, the Original Poster was an idiot who comes into the anti SS tag and reblogged my content and saying I was wrong... So, I don’t mind sharing that person’s content.

So I don’t know where this delusion comes from... It's truly pathetic.

There are millions of idiots who believe in this kind of shit and Kishi is deliberately feeding them with bits and crumbs while making his boys go out and save the world.

These delusional mindset tells us they don’t give a single shit about the story as a whole. They watch it purely for the pretty faces and getting high over them. In this case, Sasuke.

It’s as clear as day that Sasuke didn’t care about anyone other than Naruto when fighting the war. You don’t have to be a shipper but even a non-shipper can point this out. I mean Sasuke wouldn’t have saved Jugo either, if he didn’t come to Sasuke and advice him. Do you think Sasuke would’ve tried to look for Jugo and saved him at all cost???? It’s just that he came to Sasuke and he helps him back. But Sasuke would’ve saved Naruto from the bomb blast even if he was standing a mile away.

So, if these delusions reflects the mindset of the majority of the women audience, then the creator will never try to give anything better but instead give us some low-life characters like Sakura and Hinata. 

So, Anon, your expectation for Hinata’s character could’ve been developed much better is just a wishful thinking. Because, Hinata is a character for these kind of people and not for us. And the author deliberately did it. 

She was in the best position to help and understand Neji but what did she do? A lot of fans like her character because she is reserved but kind and sympathetic. She is reserved but a coward. She was not kind towards Neji. He died for her when he didn't deserve to, he had dreams and goals that were much bigger than Hinata's entire existence. She couldn't even see her own cousin's pain and she claims to understand Naruto?? Really??

For me, this also irked me a lot. 

Hinata could’ve tried to talk to Neji about his problems even when he was a child. But she was simply playing innocent when in reality, she is just a coward. Even after the Chunin Exams, there was no apologies from her side, like you said. Because she is from the Main Branch. That hierarchy never changed. If she had the gall, she could’ve easily broken that hierarchy by saying, ‘I want Neji Nii-San to take over our Clan, He is the best candidate for this and I can gladly help him with all my efforts’.  A single line and just 2 or 3 panels, it all takes.

For me killing Neji is where Kishi asking us silently, 

Do you really want these pair to happen despite having a blood stain of another character??? 

Most people said, ‘Yes!!!’, because they don’t give two shits about Neji. As long as Hinata gets Naruto, the main character’s Duck, that’s all there is to it. It doesn’t matter who dies, who lives. 

That's why Kishi is shitting on them by making her as a non-existent woman in the Boruto Manga.

Even in real life, there are many hopeless foolish little girls who would do anything for the man she loves. I've seen them and I always stay 2 miles away from them. I mean, they even ditch their own friends and spends her entire time with him and when he dumps her later, she will come back to her friends for consolation. I think Sansa Stark is the best example for this. She started out much similar to Sakura and Hinata, believing in Princes and shit, she even naively betrayed her father for the man she had crush on. But the author made her to learn her lesson in a much painful way and later she came out as a Queen who no longer needed any man at the end. I think, this is called Development.

At the end of the day, Romance and Sex is all that matters. The author knew it. So, he is feeding these girls with some low quality cookies and they are very glad to take and eat it.

[innovativestruggles]

how we can utilise our love for anime/manga to dismantle gender-based violence

In the past couple days, the escalating situation amongst women and girls in Afghanistan got me reflecting – what can I do, even if it is a teeny, teeny, tiny drop in the ocean, to help, to contribute?

I want to use this post to discuss how we can utilise our love for anime/manga to dismantle gender-based violence.

As a large portion of the anime/manga fandom on Tumblr are women, I would really like to reinforce the importance of how film and fiction intersect with what’s going on in real life. It is important for us fans to be aware of how our values and opinions influence those around us – our friends, families, neighbours and those in the community. What we read, what we watch, who we interact with – online and offline – have the potential to influence our perceptions and our views. This may play into our unconscious bias and enact a domino effect.

People’s contribution to the anime fandom affect those around them. Whether they contribute via writing, artwork, blogging or just general conversation with other fans, it is important to know that these play into how they view women and girls, and whether they are condoning violence against them.

I have seen a lot of misogynistic posts circulating the fandom, and whether these fans are aware of the impact of what they are posting, I always believe it is important to call these behaviours out. We do not have to be rude about it, but being firm and letting people know that what they are posting/saying/drawing/writing is condoning violence against women and girls, and reinforcing toxic patriarchal values.

The patterns I have seen across the anime fandom relating to the condoning of violence against women and girls;

1. Hating on female characters because they are female 2. Labelling a female character a “slut,” or “whore,” (or other derogatory terms normally used to demean and undermine women and girls) 3. Saying female characters “deserves to be assaulted” or “deserves to be raped” 4. Hating on a female character because she gets in the way of a m/m ship 5. Believing that male characters are superior to female characters. I.e. If you hate a female character for doing xyz, but don’t mind if the male character does the exact same 6. Being lenient on a male character because he is male. I.e. saying things like “I hate her, she is annoying,” whilst also saying “He’s not annoying because it is not annoying when a man does it.” 7. Changing your mind about hating a character because you find out they are male. I.e. hating a female character for doing xyz and then no longer hating that character when they are revealed to be a male OR loving a male character for doing xyz then hating that character when they are revealed to be female. 8. Excusing/condoning male character violence against female characters i.e. “she led him on, so she should accept that he is going to rape her.” 9. Hating on female characters because she does not return a male character’s romantic advances (no matter how nice he is to her) 10. Labelling female characters with negative terms if she does xyz but then praising male characters with positive terms if he does the exact same as the female character

While you do not have to like a female character for their character or who they are, simply hating them or discriminating against them because they are female is the issue. As I stated earlier, it can take covert forms and we all must remember that we still live in a largely patriarchal society. Women and girls are disadvantaged in how they are represented and portrayed in both fiction and real life.

A large proportion of anime and manga contain misogynistic content, some more overt than others. I want us all to play our part by being aware of our own values and opinions, and how that is promulgated across the anime fandom and into the real world. What we say and how we interact with others reflect who we are as a person. Anime/manga may be a hobby we all share and enjoy, and though we feel our opinions are sheltered within our respective fandoms, just remember that it does spill out and influence other people.

Rigid gender roles and gender-based violence connects to what we watch/read and vice versa.

You can do your share by being mindful of your unconscious bias, and how you portray female characters in your stories, artwork and opinions. You can enjoy your hobbies whilst also making a difference at the same time.

I pray for the safety of the women and girls in Afghanistan 🙏🏼

[bonvoyagenoona]

Why are your characters so misogynistic? Like you try to pass it off as comedy but it's not funny. Like you're obviously aware of it because you'll address it in your fics, but like they'll say horrible shit about women and really blatantly sexist stuff and you never add any character development. Idk it's just weird to see.

Hi anon! Definitely had a whole cast of misogynistic characters in Hideaway and Matchmaker, and there are definitely elements in the AMOMK universe that are misogynistic, what with the brothers sometimes puffing their chests out about their conquests or bragging about themselves. I can even think of the beginning of shorter fics, like Finger Hearts, in which Jin makes some bold and self-aggrandizing claims from a misogynistic point of view. This isn't misogyny, but I even wrote a very unsavory Y/N in Kittenfishing, where she's a straight-up stalker. People have shared in comments for these fics that it has sometimes been very challenging to read.

But, like you mentioned, I do address them in my fics, and those same readers who shared similar comments have also shared that these characters do develop over time, or, at the very least, these readers have developed some empathy, even if those characters are arguably undeserving of it.

I've shared in the past that I wrote Matchmaker as one way to reflect and process what it has been like as a woman working in a traditionally male-dominated field, with other characters visibly frustrated with Jungkook's nonsense and, as someone else mentioned in feedback, "asshattery". In Hideaway, the entire group still has tons of growing to do, and I'm working to share even more character growth in the spin-offs, starting with Jimin (spin-off title: Breakaway) and Jungkook (spin-off title: Faraway). In Finger Hearts, Jin eventually realizes that his same old spiel isn't really helping him progress in his life and his new relationship. And in AMOMK, which will be written steadily over this entire year, there are going to be some big conversations about this very point.

Like with all my fics, I've pulled situations from real life, often inserting dialogue that has been said directly to me, or that have come up in conversations that I've had with others. Many of those moments unfortunately did not come with happy resolution, which is partially why I chose to write about them. I'm also very mindful about screening my future fics (namely my WIP Ficdrunk, which will focus on Y/N and her best friend!) against checks like the Bechdel test.

The characters I've mentioned above are not stellar, and all are still growing. Also, though I explore these themes to varying degrees, there isn't always going to be resolution. I totally understand if my voice is not your cup of tea, and thank you for reading what you have read! But if you do still have an interest in my work, I hope you'll find that my fics, drabbles, and ask responses are supportive, diverse, inclusive, celebratory -- but above all, purposeful.

I also just want to point out that I appreciate you bringing up this discussion! Like I always say, I absolutely love talking about writing! Whether you continue to read with me or not, I'm very grateful for the time you've spent in these worlds!

[omegafrisk]

so i have some criticisms of berdly

ok so i wanna get my thoughts on berdly out in public because the way people have started talking about him after chapter 2 is making me very uncomfortable. apologies for the length of this!

a lot of people have warmed to berdly after chapter 2, but personally i have nothing but criticism for his writing. from his introduction he's been coded like a baby misogynist dudebro. every part of how he talks echoes that subculture. i can't even call it parody because that's literally how these people are.

i've seen people say it's wrong to call him a misogynist or transphobe because he doesn't overtly speak that way in the text, but i seriously object to that. he's a fictional character; toby fox doesn't write microaggressions. he's artificially sanitised because he's not real while otherwise word-for-word echoing the sentiments of real bigots. a man who, let's be honest with ourselves, was likely intended by the author to be cis calling himself superior to everyone is kind of inherently going to fall into misogyny and transphobia. yes, berdly is a child, but so are the people around him and around real people like that who are hurt by his beliefs and actions.

being a child, berdly is of course capable of growth, but he isn't even given the opportunity to do that. he's the butt of every joke and humiliated a bunch, but noelle never gets a chance to properly stand up to him. yeah, she chokes him out for saying he has a crush on susie, but she doesn't get to confront him for how cruel he's been to her or to others in the same way she gets to confront the queen as a standin for her mother.

berdly is right back to his old self once the chapter ends with minimal growth because he spent the chapter learning almost nothing. not even queen tells him off, we just get the running gag (which is hilarious, don't get me wrong) of her avoiding him. of course there's still the opportunity for growth in future chapters, but i think that's extremely poor pacing on toby's part when he's introduced an actual bigot into his story.

berdly is far from the only example of toby poorly representing real-world harm in this chapter. just look at him bending over backwards to defend hometown's police and defang king spades with a "haha, he wasn't THAT bad see everyone? he's funny and he was totally bluffing! queen likes him she's cool!" and, of course, acting like being imprisoned has made king spades way better. these are all completely unnecessary narrative decisions.

because that's the thing about berdly - he didn't HAVE to be like this. his narrative role of being a bit of a jerk who's tied up in noelle's backstory could easily be filled without touching on that. you can be a stuck up prick without echoing real bigoted sentiments.

a character can be a bad person while still being a good character, but i absolutely object to the idea that berdly can be counted as that. he's just unpleasant. quite frankly, i find the fact that so many people like him suddenly because he's kind of sort of trying a bit and might possibly try more in the future disturbingly similar to how people treat real bigoted men when they show the slightest sign of any kind of improvement, too. remember that post that went around about that incel who started healing from depression after learning to take care of shrimp, who called his uncle a homophobic slur in the post and never mentioned no longer viewing women as inferior...?

i guess my point is that sometimes you have to look outside a text to understand a character. or, really, all the time. characters exist in the context of how they reflect the real world. writers you like a lot can do things poorly. #ReplaceBerdlyWithAnOC20k21

[stonerz4sokka]

i rlly like your analysis and interpretation of the characters!! what do you think is the correlation between katara's trauma with being put on the mother role and her relationship with sokka? because it's obvious none of them are the sole parental figure to each other, but for some reasom people seem to think sokka is always irresponsible while katara had to keep him from doing stupid stuff and being his ‘mom’ or whatever. do you think sokka only being able to picture his mom as through katara has to do more with how katara is the girl and what sokka imagines his mother would be in theory, more than the actual dynamic they have in practice?

thank you for the compliment! 

short answer; yea you’re pretty much right. here’s the long answer though:

katara had her childhood stripped from her at such a young age and shouldered the domestic and emotional labor both in her home & within the gaang. she performs tasks like washing clothes, sewing sokka’s pants, even in s1ep1 she’s doing the chores while sokka is ‘playing warrior.’ it makes sense for her to do water related chores since... y’know... she’s a waterbender. she can wash clothes way faster than a nonbender like sokka would. but it’s clear that both sokka and katara throughout the show hold gender essentialist values. like when katara tells toph she’s not being ladylike or when she made fun of sokka for carrying a purse and wearing a ponytail. or even when sokka tells aang to not respond to ‘twinkle toes’ because it’s not manly. both sokka and katara grew up in the same environment, so they’ve both internalized these misogynistic beliefs, but since their respective genders are different, how it manifests in their actions differs as well. 

it’s safe to say that mothers are more often than not the bearers of emotional and domestic labor, so sokka envisioning katara when trying to remember his mom is actually a reflection on how skewed his understanding of motherhood is, because he genuinely cannot remember his mom like katara does. mothers are more than the domestic and emotional labor they provide, but if you are a young boy who doesn’t remember his mom and holds the belief that women are the natural caretakers, if your sister does those tasks that your mom isn’t there to complete then it makes sense why she’s filled that void. but katara remembers kya, which is why she was so offended when toph said she acted like a mom. she knows the hole her mother’s death left is one she cannot and does not want to fill. katara doesn’t want to shoulder these responsibilities, but she never had a choice. it’s clear from the beginning when she and aang went penguin sledding that she’s just a young girl who wants to have fun. 

just like katara was forced to take on more responsibility, so was sokka. going back to TBITIB, look at the precision in his warrior makeup application, how he kneeled at the edge of the village ready to fight knowing he would lose. he’s had a very real understanding of his own and his people’s mortality from a young age. not that katara doesn’t share any of this awareness, but she’s sokka’s little sister, which is a crucial aspect of their dynamic. sokka plays the role of the ‘wet blanket’ so katara can retain at least some of her innocence. even though he’s a boy who insists on fact and logic, he always follows katara down her impulsive paths because she’s his number one priority, period. he doesn’t care how irrational or selfish she’s being, he will always be there to protect her. 

your point about people misinterpreting katara’s empathetic and bossy nature as motherhood boils down to three things: 1) a lack of understanding of what motherhood entails, 2) racism & misogyny and 3) lack of experience with youngest sisters OR are the youngest themselves and lack self-awareness. i am not a mother, so i cannot paint an accurate picture of what motherhood is. what i can say, as someone who loves my mom very much, is that if she acted like a 14 year old katara i would’ve died years ago. katara’s trauma forced her to assume certain responsibilities that the target audience of atla couldn’t understand, but that doesn’t mean she’s not a child.  if you’ve ever spoken to a fourteen year old you know that one minute they could say something thoughtful & intriguing and the next say something incredibly stupid. she’s still growing as a person and she still deserves to be treated as a child even if her obligations aren’t of one. 

it’s also rooted in racialized misogyny because of the notion that traumatized dark-skinned girls are inherently more mature than their light-skinned peers. it strips brown girls of their innocence and acts as if their experiences are ‘justified’ or ‘less harmful’ because naturally, of course, they can handle more. again, katara is still very much a child and is no one’s mother, please stop viewing the brown women in your life as emotional dumpsters. and finally, katara is the youngest sister. i am the youngest sister, and although my relationship with my sibling is one that’s not similar to sokka and katara’s & is too complex and personal to unpack on tumblr.edu, it is a universal fact that we are insufferable. we’re bossy & can be really mean and snarky. it’s in our nature to make our eldest sibling(s)’ life as hard as possible. the “himboification” of my brown king sokka is also rooted in racism & fandom’s general affliction towards critical thinking. y’all literally cannot handle when a brown man is intelligent and the terrible takes around his character shows how y’all don’t actually engage with the text but just view these characters as barbie dolls to dress up with whatever imaginary traits and ‘headcannons’ you pull out your ass. 

basically, while sokka leans on katara’s emotional and domestic labor, she also leans on him as the ‘plan guy’ and as her older brother who’ll be there for her no matter what. they both feel strong duties to uphold the sacrifices of their same-gender parent but through their arcs, they subverted their respective gender roles and redefined what being ‘the last waterbender’ and a ‘warrior’ meant. they are both deeply traumatized children who raised one another and are nowhere near capable of raising kids.