#feminism is poison

[artist-issues]

How many times do we have to say:

Create characters with strength of virtue, not strength of skills.

I just finished A Tale of Two Cities with the character Lucie Manette, who "does" nothing but love the people around her and extend compassion toward everyone within her sphere of influence. She makes no "choices" that contemporary audiences would award the stupid badge of "giving her agency" to. She doesn't make a speech that saves Charles Darnay's life. She doesn't lead the victims of the French Revolution into a counter-revolt. She doesn't fight off the soldiers that come to take her husband, or beat up Madame Defarge when she threatens her child, or even come up with the escape plan to flee Paris.

She makes none of those kinds of choices. (You know who does? Madame Defarge. But the compare-contrast between those two can wait till another day.)

But she makes these kinds of choices:

She'll give her honest testimony in a trial for a potential traitor to the crown, and demonstrate her compassion and grief for a near-stranger, wearing that vulnerability on her sleeve in front of a huge court of people clamoring for blood.

She'll be compassionate toward Sydney Carton, even though he's rude, careless, and brings a bad attitude into her happy home.

She'll spend the energy of her life making that home happy.

She'll stand for two hours in any weather on the bloody streets of the French Revolution so her husband might have a chance of glimpsing her and getting some comfort from the prison window.

She'll trust the older men in her life when they ask her to.

She'll allow an old woman to care for her and go everywhere she goes, and treat her like a child, as long as it makes the old woman in question happy.

And what, WHAT is the consequence of these kinds of decisions, choices, that some ignorant people call "passive?"

That old woman is allowed to love Lucie Manette so much that she defeats the villainess in the climax of the story, holding Madame Defarge back from getting revenge with sheer strength that comes directly from that love.

Her father is allowed to draw strength from the fact that Lucie believes she can depend on him--because she chooses to let her father take the lead and do the work of saving her husband, Dr. Manette is fully "recalled to life;" he doesn't have to identify as a traumatized, mentally unstable victim anymore, because Lucie is treating him like he can be the hero.

Her husband does see her in the street, and does draw strength from that--just that--instead of losing his mind the way her father, starved for a glimpse of his loved ones, did during his own imprisonment.

Lucie's home is so full of the love and kindness that she fills it with that not only does her father return to remembering who he is after his long imprisonment--but Mr. Lorry, a bachelor with no family, can feel at home with a full life, there. Miss Pross, whose family abandoned and bankrupt her, has a home with a full life, there. Charles Darnay, whose life of riches and pleasure as a Marquis was empty, has a home with a full life, there. In Lucie's home, because she spends her life making it the kind of home others can find rest in.

Sydney Carton, a man whose whole life has been characterized by a LACK of "care" for himself or anyone else, suddenly cares about Lucie. When he thought it was impossible to. And he doesn't care about her because she's pretty. Her beauty was just a source of bitterness for him--one more pleasure he could've had but can't. Until he "saw her with her father," and saw her strength of virtue, of pity, of compassion, of self-sacrificial love--then he felt that she "kindled me, a heap of ashes, into fire." He started caring about life again, where it was associated with her, because she brought to life every good thing. Just by being a woman of good virtue. And we know what that inspiration led him to.

Without Lucie's strength of virtue, and the decisions that naturally came from that, none of the "active" choices other characters made would have happened. Sydney would not have been redeemed. Darnay would not have been saved. Her father never would've been recalled to life. Miss Pross and Mr. Lorry would've had no light or love in their lives. Even Jerry would've had no occasion to learn from his mistakes and resolve to stop abusing his family.

A character like Dickens' Golden Thread, who does what a woman should do, inspires the choices other characters make. That makes her more powerful, in her own way, than the heroes and any decisions they make. Because she's the cause. She's the inspiration. She's the representation of everything good, right, precious, worth fighting for.

Lucie Manette's not the only character like this. Cinderella. The original Disney Jasmine. The original Disney Ariel. Lady Galadriel. Jane Eyre. Amy March.

"Behind every great man is a great woman," indeed! Absolutely! Bravo!

Hang on! Hang on to those kinds of characters. Those a real "strong female" characters. The muses, the inspirations, the reminders of The Greater Good. The people who make fighting the dragons worth it at all. Who cares about fighting the dragon? That's not so great, without her.

Don't forget those kinds of characters! Reading Dickens just makes me desperate for our generation to keep up the reminder: make characters that the next ten generations can learn from: strength of virtue is much more important than silly little strength of skill.

[winterdilemma]

Feminism is when Batman made the most dramatic af entrance ever just to get immediately bodied by Ivy and Harley who were literally just chilling in their underwear

[muppetminge]

gd i get so fucking angry when i see crying about "boys are doing worse in school :(" being pulled up to look like a huge problem. you're not upset about boys doing 'badly' - you're upset about girls doing well. blaming it on the school system is so funny because tell me how the school system is suddenly modelled after the girls when we weren't even allowed in when the basis of the current system was being created lmao.

the difference between average grade by sex is about the same as the regional/geographic difference and it's less than the difference sorted by race/ethnicity (not even to mention the socioeconomic differences), yet these aren't the differences creating headlines every year. why?

because you find girls doing well wrong, like it's upsetting the natural order. you're hanging on to this idea that girls are stupid, yet when you're proved wrong you refuse to accept it, hanging on to an excuse of systematic differences that have to be solved now, because won't somebody please think of the poor boys :(

so we're looking at averages. here's the thing: those are never going to level out. we're always going to see one group being above/below others. you're just upset it's not in the "right" order.

the difference is smaller than you'd think, by the way. when i was in high school (non-us system, meaning voluntary/different kinds of secondary) we were 70 percent women. you know what else? the girls, in general, were working fucking hard. every single grade point they fucking earned. there's this story of girls' grades being inflated due to this and that, but all i've seen is boys getting grades for doing less - because they're outnumbered, the poor things, so it's obviously the teacher's job to support them, right? right??

even in trade school where we were a handful of girls per year, i saw nothing but the girls putting in their all and the boys showing up. sometimes. if they felt like it.

but it's a systemic problem, right? how else would girls be doing well? we've got to solve this, lest the boys get their egoes wounded by not placing in their 'natural' position. gd forbid we end up with an overweight of women professionals.

[release-the-mccracken]

"Men can't even be masculine anymore!"

Oh, I know, brother. I miss when men used to be MEN.

[deadinarussianelevator]

The more I read about feminism, like pure unadulterated feminism, the more I’m just like. This is evil trash.

The nice things like “Women can vote! And work! And can matter independently of men or their ability to have children!” Are just. Trojan horses for this enormous pile of evil. Especially the second wave. Like there’s not delight in being a woman. There’s just erasure of differences between the sexes.

[citruscola]

Girls' night!!! AGGRESSIVELY CLICKING GEIGER COUNTER

[viivdle]

cardan greenbriar.

nothing else needs to be said

[poetry-protest-pornography]

So, a radfem reblogged a post of mine, so I blocked them, obviously (I don't want any more of them in my notes, thanks) but this was also on their blog, and I just...:

Like, listen. I am not going to defend the porn industry, there is a lot of bad stuff there (like any other industry, even if I do find a fair amount of what porn depicts to range from ridiculous (no way that position is practical, please stop doing the splits) to gross (no kinkshaming). YKINMKATO. As long as everyone involved is sober and consenting, and no one is hurt (in ways they aren't okay with in the case of kinky stuff) it's just people making movies.

Plus, there are a ton of independent folks making porn that makes them feel good.

And mostly, the idea that watching porn makes you dangerous is absurd (literally have been to seminars about this). Watching movies with sword fights or ninjas doesn't make you more likely to attempt a duel or to try to ambush someone and martial arts in their direction.

Men are not all looking for excuses to commit violence. Watching a porn with violent or dehumanizing imagery isn't giving people the idea that those things are okay.

And plenty of women enjoy porn, and aren't convinced that they really want to participate in like... group sex or choking.

Ugh, this did sort of sound like a defense of porn, but honestly, whatever. As long as it's all SSC.

The point is is that media consumption =/= real life actions. Men aren't inherently predators. And watching porn "with the same eyes that you look at [other women] with" is a fucking absurd thing to demonize. Yes, I also watch cat videos and the news with the same eyes, I'm not looking at my cat and expecting her to do tricks, and I'm not watching everyone around me and expecting tax fraud or murder to break out at any moment.

To punish and institutionalize teenage boys for jerking off and looking at naked women to protect hypothetical girls and women is batshit crazy. "It's not normal"? For teenagers to masturbate and be curious about bodies and sex?

I know radfems think all sex involving men is oppression and violence, but to propose enacting violence on their own sons for something almost everyone does is beyond.

[chadillacboseman]

Is it so much for me to ask for this fully fictional man to be so fully, totally obsessed with me that he kills other men for looking at me wrong.

Honestly

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

Radical feminism is when you defend antisemitism in a video game because the person who made the IP it's based on really fucking hates trans people.

[theofficialdailyplanet]

dc needs to have some kind of writing work shop with trans women, woc, and sa survivor authors cos they have so many writers that use rape and assault s fan service and it pisses me off to no end.

the latest panel i've seen with blue beetle mid-fight with bleez where she's on top of him and jayme loudly tells the stag he's not aroused. shes obs disgusted and in the next page the stag forms a literal penis underneath her.

and this with bleeze, the woman who's origin story is being violently gang raped and murdering her rapists when she recieves a red lantern ring.

not to mention the many other characters who've been assaulted from poison ivy to nightwing.

nightwing has been raped by multiple different women in the comics with no consequences for the women.

both drugged and assaulted by tarantula

the only thing time they mention anything later is when mirage shape shifts into starfire and tells dick in front of her it wasn't actually starfire. and yall know starfire's reaction? she -verbatim- calls dick a slut.

poison ivy gets abused and then these writers have the audacity to not only make her mind control only work through kissing (??) and on top of that in multiple iterations becomes a serial rapist with the men she's assaulted aka mind controlled.

one of the many, many men being batman who's been raped repeatedly in canon by talia, ivy, and im sure others. and they never delve into the repercussions it would have on him as a male rape survivor. the only time the writers reference it is for jokes like damian telling bruce to get better taste in woman and to "cover your drink."

as as for trans women:

the harley quinn the animated series comic had an entiresubplot regarding peach's missing sister miia- a black trans woman who was trafficked (whos only picture u see of her was pre-transition?)

and they make it a point to say "black trans woman," repeatedly only to make a joke out of it in the end with black mask calling himself an "ally"

i'm just constantly dissapointed with dc, i'll be so excited for a new run or film and then shit like this happens and just ruins it for me it makes me so sad

[sjbattleangel]

For trans people everywhere:

And cis allies:  

[91vaults]

Once you get rid of your cringe and disgust for things you don’t like/understand then suddenly the world becomes a nicer, you become less angry and more empathetic and you can focus your ire on the things that really matter

I don’t understand all the identities and nuances of the LGBT+ umbrella, I find some things silly and cringe, and really don’t care, I don’t care about furries or leather daddies at pride or an amab person of any gender presentation wants to call themselves a lesbian.

The weirdos of the world are not the ones that will harm you, the harm will come from the same people who seek to oppress you, who will hold any accepted on the grounds that you act the way they want you too.

When you cultivate the mean part of yourself that laughs and spends time hating on those who do you no harm it clouds your judgement, you become convinced the people not practicing queerness or life the way you would are the enemy

i’ve been thinking a lot about terfs/gc’s lately. It always starts with vauge “reasonable” notions yet appears to devolve into nothing but obsessing over the minute details of people’s appearances and saying awful things and whipping each other up in a frenzy of disgust and contempt. There are people whomst i find detestable and even i don’t do that. You look at the big name terfs and that’s all they seem to do. It’s all about obsessing over this small portion of the population with no regard to the cis women who are harmed by the logical conclusion of their beliefs…the cis women they claim to protect

[emperornorton47]

[beeclops]

[sevens-evan]

tragically that post abt elderly women and feminism was made by a terf. their bio says not a terf and you open their top posts and there’s like eight terf posts in there. very annoying