#feminist analysis

[melancholypilled]

As a woman, watching men claim that the worst form of humiliation is to be penetrated- “like a woman,” is depressing. All it does is tell us that penetration in a patriarchal society that disregards female sexuality is inherently degrading. men remind us of that all the time, why do you think “fuck you,” “suck my dick” and threats of rape are insults? However, this humiliation of women is necessary for the continuation of our species. It is tradition for women to suffer degradation. No matter how powerful a woman is in society, her biology, and hateful men, will remind her of her place, she is destined to be humiliated.

Is this truly the case though?

Women are the only ones capable of creating life, men play such a minor role in the grand scheme of pregnancy and the creation of life inside a woman’s body, so why have they pushed the narrative that penetration, something necessary for reproduction makes us inferior? A society that values male pleasure and depravity, as well as fetishizes female suffering isn’t normal. However, most cultures have adopted this mindset.

Why is this our reality? It doesn’t make sense.

[brainrotarchive]

some thoughts on Good Omens and male privilege

Crowley and Aziraphale (as well as all other celestial beings) are canonically genderless icons. However, through all of history they present masculine and I think the reason for that is pretty obvious. It‘s not like their personalities simply align with masculine traits and that‘s why they choose it most of the time. They both love traditionally feminine (meeting up for fancy wine dinners to talk about life and gossip about their bosses) and masculine (cars) things. And Crowley in season 2 explicitly does not identify as a "lad". Also, the definitions of masculinity throughout history are neither logical nor consistent and they more than anyone would be aware of how made up gender roles really are. I also don‘t think that Above or Below are patriarchally structured especially in the show. They are supposed to be completely indifferent towards gender so why do they always choose to present as men?

I think it‘s because they are both lazy when doing their jobs and choose the path of least resistance. Think about the Arrangement, for example. If there‘s a way to make their job easier, they‘ll do it. Being a woman is and always was limiting in some way. Especially when trying to influence humans (men) into doing either good or evil, being perceived as a woman makes things harder. And as observers of human cultures they‘re very aware of that and they probably, over the years, got very comfortable with their male and white privilege and use that to make their lives easier. Aziraphale also imo got attached to his appearance at some point and doesn‘t want to change anything about it.

The only time Crowley appears as a woman, it‘s as Nanny Ashtoreth. Here, again, she benefits from traditional gender roles (woman=trusted to care for children) to reach an end goal. So, I think overall they just present as the gender that‘s most convenient at the time which is usually male.

[balkanradfem]

So I like the Barbie movie enough to do an analysis of their feminist statements and try to get to the root of the problem! They did give us a long list of expectations women worldwide are dealing with, now let's see why they're dealing with it.

1. "We have to always be extraordinary, but somehow, we're always doing it wrong. You have to be thin, but not too thin, and you can never say you want to be thin, you have to say you want to be healthy."

This issue happens because women in practice, culture, and their real-life circumstances are still effectively living as the second class citizens, and they're viewed as servants for males, and male toys. It does not benefit us to be expected to be extraordinary, and it does not benefit us to be thin. So who benefits from it?

It's a feature of a male fantasy. Male wants to posses a woman who is trained to please him in every possible way, but she also needs to be unique and different from all other women, so he feels like he has something special. Every woman already is unique and individual, but he doesn't notice such things as personality, he needs her to be special in a way that he and his male buddies will notice! So she has to be extraordinary in something that males appreciate, but also if she is better than them at it, then they no longer feel the ease of being superior, so she's doing it wrong.

Women's ideal being thin is also a male fantasy, they've managed to pavlov themselves into finding thin women the only kind of woman that is attractive, thus the requirement on women is to be thin, even when it damages our health. Men love causing trauma to women, but to see women actually visibly struggling with it, putting it into words, saying it hurts us, that makes them uncomfortable! So they shame the language, until we phrase it as something that doesn't relate to them, or that makes it seem like it's for our own good. 'Being thin for health' makes it seem like the required starvation is for our own good, and healthy, in fact.

This could not possibly happen if we were not existing in service of the other half of population. If we were respected and valuable human beings, what is bad for us would not be represented to us as an ideal.

2. "You have to have money, but can't ask for money, because that's crass. You have to be boss, but can't be mean. You have to lead, but you can't squash other people's ideas."

These are double standards that men put up for us. Even though women are paid less, own less, are globally more impoverished and have a harder time gaining money, that is no longer enough for us to completely depend on men for money; they hate this. So as a revenge for us managing to earn a bit of our own money, we now can't ask them for any, we are supposed to 'have our own', and still depend for them, but in fear, reluctant to ask or to demand. Notice how it isn't crass for a man to ask for money, it's almost expected, but for a woman, it's shameful.

Women in lead will be criticized, called out, scrutinized and humiliated like no male leader ever would be; this is to make it harder for women to feel in control and comfortable in leading positions. Male leader is supposed to step all over ideas he doesn't find useful, hell he can even squash it and take credit for it later, but if a woman doesn't acknowledge a stupid idea, she is immediately told off for 'not being a good enough leader'. Even when she's doing exactly what she's supposed to do. It's a hypocritical little game to ensure only men can comfortably lead.

3. "You're supposed to love being a mother, but don't talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman, but also always be looking out for other people."

This is a feature of "women existing for male convenience" problem. We are supposed to be naturally loving of raising kids, because it's convenient for males to just have their children raised for them without having to do much about it, and if this is not provided to them, then women are evil for not 'loving being a mother' when it's convenient for men that women are super into that and willing to do it for free, forever, without complaining or talking about it, because men don't like to know that it's an actual effort, they feel more comfortable feeling it's a silly little chore that deserves no thought whatsoever.

Women having careers is something men have been making difficult in any way possible, because it means women are not reliant on them for resources within capitalism, but they were not able to completely prevent us having jobs, so now they're just trying to get as much use of it as possible. If women earn money, they will leech off of that money. If women have careers, well then those women should prove that they're just as convenient, nurturing, always available, running at every beck and call, and act as if they still only exist to serve and please men. If women fail to do this, they'll again be accused of being selfish, horrible people, bad mothers, bad community members, and so on and so forth. Men of course, can ignore the entire world and do their job badly, and have a violence problem, and be addicted to p*rn, and it's fine. They're not bad people regardless of how little compassion they have for anyone who isn't them.

4. "You have to answer for men's bad behavior, which is insane. But if you point that out, you're accused of complaining. You're supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you're supposed to be a part of the sisterhood."

This is an example of psychological abuse; victims are most often told they're responsible for their abuser's actions, as if they would in any situation be able to control or influence them, which they can't. But, putting that responsibility on women will make women hyperfocus on their own behaviour, on prevention of abuse, prevention of violence, which means they will go a long way trying to please men, tiptoe around them, give them insane amount of attention and care, in hope or preventing the escalation of their behaviour - and this is exactly what men want, this is what the abuse was for. To gain that devotion and attention, with the threat of violence. If women understood perfectly that men are responsible for their own behaviour, their way forward would be to hold men accountable, to lock them up and never look back. It's only in the world where women are victims of severe psychological abuse that we try to please men into not committing acts of violence. And it never works, because men love violence, and will turn to violence at every corner, even more easily and smugly knowing they can simply blame a woman for not working hard enough to prevent it.

Men expecting women to be pretty but then punishing them for being pretty is also an act of abuse; women's exterior is being judged as if our appearance is both a statement and a crime. Men can look whatever they naturally look like, and it's not a provocation, temptation, lack of solidarity or anything worth criticizing; but any way that a woman looks can be scrutinized and a ground for moral callout. The reality is that women also just look like the way they look like, and there's nothing wrong with it. There is zero moral problems with women looking pretty or not pretty. There isn't even a problem with tempting males because males are responsible for their own actions and not toddlers who have no power to resist impulses. This is a tactics for making women responsible for male behaviour - the way she looks is responsible for what I want to do to her. Complete nonsense, they just found a way to blame her for his own behaviour.

Calling women out for not being 'a part of the sisterhood' based on their appearance is very poorly concealed tactic to turn women against each other, to distract them from seeing that men are the root of the problem. Men don't turn on each other based on appearance, and it doesn't make sense for women to be assumed to do it either; in women-only communities, it doesn't matter what women look like. Whatever women look like is never a threat or an attack on other women, men are trying to play on female insecurity and frame other women as a threat to that insecurity - when the only threat all along was men, creating ideals and standards of beauty that don't correspond to reality or nature.

5. "Always be grateful, but never forget that the system is rigged, so find a way to acknowledge that, but also, always be grateful. You have to never get old."

The waves of feminism have forced the public consciousness to acknowledge that the system is rigged, but the pressure to do something about it falls completely on women, even though men created the system, rigged it, are keeping it rigged, are using violence to enforce it, and are benefiting from it. And it's convenient to them if women do nothing else but acknowledge it's rigged and stay grateful they're still allowed to live within, we're supposed to be threatened by the fact that we can easily be killed if we step out of line.

Men are threatened by older women because mature women have experience, they are no longer easily manipulated or cheated out of their gain, they will not bow down and please men like young, inexperienced women can be tricked into doing. So they convince those young women, that being old is shameful and ugly for women. They want women to stay young and susceptible, like children that they can control and not allow any agency or free will. This ensures we stay focused on being scared of time, aging and our own bodies and nature, but not of the predators who are taking our lives as a service for themselves.

6. "Never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear. Never get out of line, it's too hard, it's too contradictory and nobody gives you a medal or says "thank you". And it turns out, in fact, that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault."

These are lists of standards that are only applied to women, men are allowed to do all of these things and to be catered to while they're doing it. This behaviour is presented as bad only when women are doing it; if men do it, it's considered neutral, normal, intrinsic to human nature. Women being selfish inconveniences men, who are looking to exploit female selflessness. Women showing off and being proud would cut into their time showing off, they want that attention for themselves. Women getting out of line is inconvenient, since men have drawn those lines for women (those lines don't exist for men). Women showing fear makes it difficult for male predators to corner them down and have them act complacent; men don't want to see proof of victimizing women, except in private, except when they can get off on it. Never in public, never when women could potentially escape or reach for help, then it's sexist of women to be afraid.

Women getting medals, acknowledgment or gratitude again, cuts into male parade of getting all the acknowledgment, gratitude and medals, for them it doesn't make sense that they should share attention or credit with what they consider to be the 'servant class'. Men have deluded themselves into thinking they deserve more credit than women do, they don't consider us smart or capable, because they can easily oppress us, so how smart can we be? But also, they expect and demand us to be as smart and capable as necessary to resolve all of their issues, to make their life easy and pleasant and undemanding. We are forced to deal with issues they won't even look at, we often solve problems or create solution they wouldn't be able to produce, and this is when they simply take credit and convince themselves that they knew better all along. It's a 'male-delusion rules reality' kind of world for women.

After doing the biggest bulk of work on earth, creating and raising the entire human race, doing daily unpaid labour, putting up with violence, threats and constant degradation from men, after not having our interests represented by the law, education, government, economy or any other institution with any power, after spending a piece of our life being groomed and then having to spend another undoing the grooming, we are still told that everything is our fault, and that we're doing everything wrong.

This is abuse, and somebody is doing it. We are not put thru all of this for vague reasons, or for arbitrary reasons, someone is benefiting from all of it. While we're raising children, who lazes around and attaches their last names to our kids? When we're doing daily unpaid labour, who doesn't do their part? Who is staring at us while we're walking down the street, who fails to represent or even acknowledge our interests, and even our human rights? Who does the grooming, and who enables them to do it? Where do they get resources from it, who allows it to go on unchecked? How come young girls and women are regarded as such low value that we allow them to live unprotected around predators who will absolutely attempt to violate them in as many ways they can? Who fails to prevent, or arrest, or punish them?

It's not just a system of patriarchy, it'a a system of men, doing this every single day of their life. We can point the finger at the root of the problem. We have a common enemy, and they're working damn hard to keep us from realizing it.

[yaniasogames]

lacey’s flash games and the horrors of womanhood: part 1, lacey’s wardrobe!

(trigger warning for discussions and possible depictions of: sexual assault/rape, stalking, abuse, violent misogyny, gore)

so i guess it’s a bit awkward for me of all people - someone who is a girl but not assigned one at birth or passing - to be writing this post, but i just wanted to talk about this aspect of this series cause i think it’s a big part of why it feels so unique and why the horror works for so many people.

the lacey’s series is pretty often praised for it’s great horror and scares, as well as it’s depiction of trauma, but i think more specifically it deserves praise for taking subjects such as stalking and sexual abuse and executing them in a way that’s deeply sympathetic and yet still so shocking and effective.

in the first ever lacey’s video, lacey’s wardrobe, we of course follow the titular lacey in the titular game as she gets dressed for multiple occasions. a picnic, going to the mall, and a date with the “cutest guy.” all that is disrupted, though, by her stalker, a man who follows her in near every area of the game, proclaiming his love for her in a totally not creepy and invasive and wildly inappropriate way.

throughout the video, lacey seems to have no privacy, and no relief from her stalker. besides not even being safe in a public place like this one, some of the most terrifying events in the video bar the finale happen while she’s still at home. she gets threatening phone calls and a grotesque gift from the stalker that make her feel trapped, and there’s whole segments where the stalker is seen peering through her window and is heard knocking furiously on her door. all while she’s in her own bedroom getting dressed.

the videos ending consists of the player dressing up lacey and forcing her to go outside alone at night, even when she breaks the fourth wall and begs and begs and begs them not to. lacey gets cannibalized by her stalker, with audio of her crying and shots briefly flashing by of her dismembered corpse. unless, of course, her stalker kept her alive through all of this torture. said stalker’s reason for doing this?

this video on it’s own already carries a lot of dark subtext with it. it’s not uncommon knowledge that many people in real life experience stalking, with most victims being women. it’s also not uncommon knowledge that in many parts of the world, walking home at night as a woman is very unsafe and carries the risk of your wellbeing being in danger, which is why many women carry pepper spray and why products such as rape whistles exist. lacey is aware of her stalker, and pretty clearly feels unsafe throughout the whole video. her permanently smiling face and the music distort after the first call from the stalker, and she begs at the end not to go outside. she knows how vulnerable she is against this threat, but she has no agency as a video game character simply there to be dressed up and beautified by the player. it’s like watching prey get dropped right into the cage of a predator, despite all the fear it’s showing at the sound of the predators roars.

this feeling extends to how out of all of the ways lacey could’ve ended up at the end of the episode, the specific choice is made to have her be eaten. to be gruesomely consumed by a man who claims to “love” her. consumed so that he can keep a woman who shows zero interest in him all to himself, not even caring that she’s crying and in immense pain as he literally rips her apart. it’s entitled. it’s greedy. it’s horrifying. and everything about this video shows how many stalkers view their victims, and how many men view women in general - as something they consume, they indulge in. as pretty dress up dolls who only serve to fill them up and be the objects of their affection, even when those women don’t want it.

another thing to note (although i am definitely not trying to victim blame poor lacey in any capacity) is the outfit lacey wears at the end. while a common shitty excuse that rapists make to put down their victims is that “they were asking for it!!1” because of the clothes they chose to wear, lacey pretty obviously doesn’t have a choice in this situation, and for her date, the player chooses to put her in a red jacket, choker and daisy dukes, a color and articles of clothing that are often associated with flirtiness and sexuality by society. these would be great choices if lacey wanted to go on this date of her own volition, but it’s made unsettling because, again, she doesn’t have a damn choice. in two of the shots, there’s even deliberate focus on her torso and therefore chest and legs as she meets her demise. could these possibly be from the stalkers POV?

a piece of media that this all reminds me of is silent hill 3, an (actually real) horror game that also taps into the many fears women commonly face, and how it feels to be a girl in a world that largely sees you as nothing but a target, an object, a tool. while not directly tying into the main plot of that game, in the area of the brookhaven hospital, you can find letters directed to main character heather from an unseen man named stanley. these letters are very… purposefully uncomfortable. the whole vibe of this part is made even worse by the fact that 1) the sound design, way the letters are written and the fact that earlier letters disappear when you go back to them support the idea that stanley is actually in the hospital watching heather from afar, and 2) heather is still a teenager, only being 17 years old throughout this whole game. not even her young age protects her from these circumstances. hell, many girls that age are already thought of as being “woman” enough.

stanley, similar to lacey’s stalker, is convinced that himself and the girl he’s stalking are meant to be together, and he objectifies heather through his writing and the way he sends her a doll as a gift.

stanley is shown as well to be a physical threat to others. you can find out he stabbed another patient at the hospital completely unprompted, and in one of his final letters, the doll that was a gift to heather? it’s broken into pieces.

the parallels to lacey’s stalker are apparent, as he both shows signs of violence against others before harming lacey (yells and demands her to come outside over the phone and sends her a gift of blood and guts), and is shown to have broken lacey into pieces when he eats her. just like children with their dolls, violent and dangerously misogynistic men often decide to rip apart and carelessly destroy the women they view as their playthings when they aren’t getting what they want. they desire control and for women to feel like their tools, and their victims are often left feeling like they have nowhere to go that’s safe. not a picnic with friends, not the shopping mall, not their own house, nowhere at all. it’s profoundly isolating and calls to mind how many abusers function, with the typical victims of both domestic violence and stalking usually being - you guessed it - women.

while all of this is heavy stuff for one video, as the lore of the series expands in the following videos and you learn more of lacey’s situation, the themes of the abuse, objectification and unwanted sexualization women face are strengthened, and become even more integral to why the lacey’s games are the way they are.

as rocio, the in-universe creator of the series states, these are the real girl’s games.

[feminist-pussycat]

Hot (maybe) Take: I think the enemies-to-lovers trope marketed in so much fiction geared towards women is propaganda. Yeah this man treats you like shit and like he hates you. But you end up falling in love with him anyway! And it turns out he’s in love with you too!

It’s re-packaged Beauty and the Beast. To keep women hoping that the ‘enemies’ in their lives (men) will slowly develop feelings and become caring lovers, and yearn after that dream that will likely never happen. This is a much deeper line of messaging sent to women throughout centuries with new pretty progressive envelopes.

It’s so disheartening to watch these tired misogynistic tropes manifest through so much of culture and media through so many different methods. Both straight men and straight women are fed constantly the narrative that it’s normal, romantic even, to find your future partner hateful and despise them in the beginning, and that they will hate you. The ‘hard-to-get’ strategy that so many men insist women use? The ‘women broke his heart and now he hates them so it’s up to you to show him a woman’s love’ premise?

It’s all connected. But it seems so innocuous! These things on their own don’t seem like indicators of a larger pattern until you line them all up and see what words those letters are spelling to all of us.

[haggishlyhagging]

In times when feminism is at a low ebb, women assume the reactive role—privately and most often covertly struggling to assert themselves against the dominant cultural tide. But when feminism itself becomes the tide, the opposition doesn't simply go along with the reversal: it digs in its heels, brandishes its fists, builds walls and dams. And its resistance creates countercurrents and treacherous undertows.

The force and furor of the backlash churn beneath the surface, largely invisible to the public eye. On occasion in the last decade, they have burst into view. We have seen New Right politicians condemn women's independence, antiabortion protesters firebomb women's clinics, fundamentalist preachers damn feminists as "whores" and "witches." Other signs of the backlash's wrath, by their sheer brutality, can push their way into public consciousness for a time—the sharp increase in rape, for example, or the rise in pornography that depicts extreme violence against women.

More subtle indicators in popular culture may receive momentary, and often bemused, media notice, then quickly slip from social awareness: A report, for instance, that the image of women on prime-time TV shows has suddenly degenerated. A survey of mystery fiction finding the numbers of female characters tortured and mutilated mysteriously multiplying. The puzzling news that, as one commentator put it, "So many hit songs have the B-word [bitch] to refer to women that some rap music seems to be veering toward rape music." The ascendancy of virulently misogynist comics like Andrew Dice Clay—who called women "pigs" and "sluts" and strutted in films in which women were beaten, tortured, and blown up—or radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh, whose broadsides against "femi-Nazi" feminists made his syndicated program the most popular radio talk show in the nation. Or word that in 1987, the American Women in Radio & Television couldn't award its annual prize for ads that feature women positively: it could find no ad that qualified.

These phenomena are all related, but that doesn't mean they are somehow coordinated. The backlash is not a conspiracy, with a council dispatching agents from some central control room, nor are the people who serve its ends often aware of their role; some even consider themselves feminists. For the most part, its workings are encoded and internalized, diffuse and chameleonic. Not all of the manifestations of the backlash are of equal weight or significance either; some are mere ephemera, generated by a culture machine that is always scrounging for a “fresh” angle. Taken as a whole, however, these codes and cajolings, these whispers and threats and myths, move overwhelmingly in one direction: they try to push women back into their "acceptable" roles—whether as Daddy's girl or fluttery romantic, active nester or passive love object.

Although the backlash is not an organized movement, that doesn't make it any less destructive. In fact, the lack of orchestration, the absence of a single string-puller, only makes it harder to see—and perhaps more effective. A backlash against women's rights succeeds to the degree that it appears not to be political, that it appears not to be a struggle at all. It is most powerful when it goes private, when it lodges inside a woman's mind and turns her vision inward, until she imagines the pressure is all in her head, until she begins to enforce the backlash, too—on herself.

In the last decade, the backlash has moved through the culture's secret chambers, traveling through passageways of flattery and fear. Along the way, it has adopted disguises: a mask of mild derision or the painted face of deep "concern." Its lips profess pity for any woman who won't fit the mold, while it tries to clamp the mold around her ears. It pursues a divide-and-conquer strategy: single versus married women, working women versus homemakers, middle- versus working-class. It manipulates a system of rewards and punishments, elevating women who follow its rules, isolating those who don't. The backlash remarkets old myths about women as new facts and ignores all appeals to reason. Cornered, it denies its own existence, points an accusatory finger at feminism, and burrows deeper underground.

-Susan Faludi, Backlash: the Undeclared War Against American Women

[strawberry-library]

(some of) my favorite video essays

why do girls love horror games? by moon channel

a theoretical analysis as to why audiences for horror games (and the horror genre as a whole) are largely female

the bloody, brutal and trans horror of dasaku by amelie doree

(MATURE WARNING) an in-depth look into how body horror is used in Dasaku to convey the pain felt by victims of ableism, transphobia, and abuse

how to (literally) kill your love life | school days (visual novel/manga/anime story breakdown) by lexa&!

a look into the various retellings of School Days, specifically the characters and their dynamics

how forced romance hurts people by tensai productions

an analysis on how media’s depictions of romance (from the “i can fix him” for girls to the “mpdg” fantasy for boys) romanticize bad ideals and create unachievable expectations

[harrowfuckinghark]

Hey remember when I mentioned I was trying to find a place to publish my 12 page essay on Bones and All? Well I finally did it and by did it I mean put it in a blog post on medium! I’m linking it below:

[womenplz]

learning about the advent of capitalism and the way it specifically isolated women + put them in a situation wherein they were totally dependent on men unless they wanted to enter prostitution or commit crime is fucking mind blowing and I just want to remind all of you that our feminist analysis is incomplete without being anti capitalist!

reading rec: the caliban and the witch by Silvia Federici

[melancholypilled]

I’ve been replaying bloodborne and the dlc is so beautiful, and i’ve been having thoughts

TW for sexual violence

Kos is obviously a symbol of womanhood and motherhood, her name is “mother kos” and she is designed to almost resemble a human woman laying on her stomach, as present in the official art. This contrasts ebrietes, blood starved beast and moon presence, who are all female but appear scary for the horror effect. She also resides in the only ocean like area in the game, the fishing hamlet. Water of course being a literary symbol for birth and fertility, and the boss is literally her child wielding his placenta.

This concept is not only in her appearance but is made present within the lore, and reflects a much larger issue. Kos was once revered, but was later grossly violated by the hunters, as they used the parasites inside her body as well as her blood, and it can be inferred that more was done to her as her corpse is drastically more deformed compared to her normal appearance. The violations of mother kos can possibly be an allegory for rape and other sexual violence, as the term “violated” is frequently associated with rape, and her possibly unwanted pregnancy may have been a result of this, metaphorically speaking.

It is confirmed that Lady Maria committed suicide over the tragedies at the research hall, and the fishing hamlet. She obviously did this because of the trauma that she endured for witnessing Kos being mutilated and watching over human experimentation. However, Maria is the only hunter shown to have been psychologically impacted by Yharnam’s violence. This is a stretch, but perhaps Maria felt extra sympathy from Kos, as they are both female. The universal suffering of women affected her more than Gehrman or Ludwig, because she could relate to Kos

it’s a graphic allegory for the sexual violence that women face, bloodborne is full of this idea, but Kos’s tragic story highlights the universal suffering of women

[being-kindrad]

Simone de Beauvoir’s English rendering of “The Second Sex”

By myopically reading “The Second Sex” as “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,” TRAs reduce Beauvoir’s otherwise complex feminist arguments to a well-circulated, popularized, easily consumable catchphrase They say that Beauvoir contradicts herself. But Beauvoir's seemingly contradictory propositions come with the most interesting possibilities or interpretations

“As long as a woman has to fight to become a human being,” Beauvoir concludes in The Second Sex, “she cannot be a creator”

The ability to “create” marks the goal of Beauvoir’s existentialism. She contrasts woman’s imprisonment in repetition (pleasing the opposite sex and child rearing) to man’s opportunity to transcend it

Man gives himself the opportunity to invent and forge the future, positing himself as sovereign. He encounters a woman: he sees that transcendence inhabits her. She is an intelligent being who, given the opportunity, could surpass repetition, invent and forge the future

Man edges out the threatening competitor. He trains woman to limit herself and participate with him in festivals that celebrate the success and victories of men. A woman's misfortune is to have been destined to a flawed concept of femininity only, while the patriarchal society does not provide her reasons for being

There is the brute reality of “human existence” and then there is the “meaningful” existence “created” by men for men. As an existentialist philosopher, Beauvoir concerns herself with existence and how women have been socially at a disadvantage to enter into a fuller, more self-determined and more engaged relationship with the world. Existence goes beyond “sexual activity” or child rearing—for other animals manage to do that—and extends to “creating” the world with one's mind, actions and projects

“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” too is a critique of femininity. Beauvoir understands that womanhood is a biological reality. It's the social constructs confining womanhood in femininity that she denounces as demoralizing for women

—iCONIC from /o/GenderCritical

[feminist-theory-blog]

Class Theory Written Post

Marxist feminism is a theory that regards classism and capitalism as the fundamental cause of women’s oppression. They argue that this capitalist system has perpetuated the idea that a woman’s body is the site for her labor. They argue that class differences under capitalism divide us like nothing else. I would like to apply this lens to the body positivity movement especially where it pertains to the fat acceptance and anti ableist movements. 

There is a trend on Tiktok right now consisting of people out on the street asking strangers their opinion on ‘hot’ topics. For example, asking if blue balls are real, or if they think gay marriage should be legal. I will show one of these videos in another post, but a trend I see a lot is asking people’s opinions about fat bodies, especially fat women. These videos ask men if they would date a fat woman, if they would have sex with a fat woman, if their parents would approve of them being attracted to fat women. The most popular response given to these questions are that fat women are lazy, unproductive, and cannot maintain the ‘active’ lifestyle that they are looking for. 

Society views fat bodies as a hindrance, simply because they are not perceived as being meaningful laborers or contributors to society. Men regard fat women as terrible partners because what they understand about fat women is that they cannot be workers. They cannot ‘match’ them in a physical sense. I heard someone having a debate once, about whether being fat was morally acceptable. They ultimately decided no, because fat people need more financial assistance from the government, which means that they did something to themselves that now everybody has to pay for. “Because all commodities are worth exactly the labor necessary to produce them and because workers’ labor power (capacity for work) is a commodity that can be bought and sold, the value of workers’ labor power is exactly the cost of whatever it takes (food, clothing, shelter) to maintain them throughout the workday” (Tong pg. 98) Fat individuals are simply not valued under the limitations of a capitalist society. Fat is not deemed morally acceptable despite the intentions of the individual with the body. 

Being able to focus entirely on weight loss or a healthy lifestyle is a privilege. Many individuals and families do not have physical or financial access to nutritious food, nor do they have the time to prioritize calorie deficits or going to the gym daily. Weight loss is a luxury, and thus overweight individuals are seen as lazy, poor, noncontributors to society. “Alienation is a profoundly fragmenting experience. Things or persons who are or should be connected in some significant way are instead viewed as separate. As Heilbroner saw it, this sense of fragmentation and meaninglessness is particularly strong under capitalism” (Tong, pg. 101). Weight indicates class to many, and the separation grows. 

The same is true for disabled individuals, whose bodies are seen as being sub par and unable to contribute to society. People view accommodations as unfair advantages to those with disabilities, again using tax money to aid them. This goes along with the Marxist feminist ideas that a women’s bodies are seen as a site to their labor. 

“Some children turn on their mothers, blaming them for everything that goes wrong in their lives: 'I'm a failure because you, my mother, loved me too much/too little’”(pg 115). This quote is in regards to how, in traditional roles, the mother acts as the domestic worker and leads the children and father to team up against the mother. This is due to social capitalistic ideals placed around working, intelligence, and more. There is this phrase on social media, referred to as an ‘almond mom’. An almond mom is known as a mother who keeps the house stocked with little to no food, healthy food at that. These moms eat a handful of almonds for dinner, and claim that they’re full after an appetizer at a restaurant. They refuse dessert and are blamed as the sole reason gen z young adults have eating disorders. The truth is that our mothers were faced with even harder stereotypes and body shaming than we were growing up. The husbands of these almond mothers joke about this with their children, but these husbands also contribute to the expectations that the mother faces. These mothers also definitely contribute to unhealthy relationships with food for their children, especially young daughters. They just don’t realize that they are victims to the same disease. Just like in the marxist example, young daughters are fated to end up like their mothers in the culture they live in. Instead of supporting each other they just end up splitting up into mother vs. father and children. 

Overall as a society, I would say that we have decreased the frequency of people judging bodies for morality and character, but it isn't gone. Ask any woman you know or yourself, and find many examples of being reduced to your physical features. I still hear stories and see examples of men who don’t even genuinely regard women as people. People think that sexism is gone because the feminist movement exists, people think that fat phobia or ableism doesn’t exist because of the body positivity movement. Just don’t stop questioning the reality you live in and assessing where things may not be perfectly fixed. 

[haggishlyhagging]

“Within the feminist analysis, the labelling process is seen to serve the function of maintaining women's position as outsiders within patriarchal society; of dismissing women's anger as illness - and so exonerating the male oppressors; and of dismissing women's misery as being a result of some internal flaw - and thus protecting the misogynistic social structures from any critical gaze. The earlier dissenters may have been correct in pointing out that psychiatric labels serve society: what they omitted from their analysis was that it is a patriarchal society.

In the historical analysis of women's madness, we have seen how nosological categories were ascribed to women who were actually archetypally feminine. The Victorian maiden wasting away in her darkened boudoir, the hysteric, the neurasthenic, the anorexic - all were aspiring to heights of femininity within the narrow confines which patriarchy dictates. The twentieth-century mad woman is no different. As madness itself is synonymous with femininity, those women who wholeheartedly embrace the gender role assigned to them, or those who reject it, are at high risk of being diagnosed as mad. As Chesler has commented:

Madness and asylums generally function as mirror images of the female experience, and as penalties for being 'female', as well as for desiring or daring not to be. (Chesler, 1972: 16)

The socialization of women can be seen to prepare women for the mask of madness, the 'desperate communication of the powerless' (Showalter, 1987: 5). Having no legitimate outlet for feelings of frustration, anger and misery evoked by the reality of living in a patriarchal society, women fall into the psychiatric trap. Madness in the wentieth century has become institutionalized as a discourse which legitimates the positioning of women as good/bad - attractive and seductive, dangerous and fearful. The discourse, associated with the fear of women and the confining power of madness in the nineteenth century, has merely taken on a tougher veneer of respectability, as well as extending its authority to greater numbers of women.

Thus the labels applied to women, labels which so cleverly place the problem within her as a person, distracting from the social reality of her life, serve to mystify the reality of her oppression, a process buttressed by the gender bias in psychiatric nosology, the labelling process itself.”

-Jane Ussher, Women’s Madness: Misogyny or Mental Illness?

[grrrae]

Dead or Alive: All We Need in Life is a Big Pretty Boy (An Analysis on The Handsomest Drowned Man)

Disclaimer: This post is for a school requirement xoxo

Do you think you’d kiss a dead beautiful man in hopes to bring him back to life? Well, people in Esteban's Village would probably do.

“The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” is a short story published in a 1972 collection Leaf Storm and Other Stories by the renowned Colombian writer, Gabriel García Márquez. This is a story about acceptance, community, and honoring the dead, ‘The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World’ is one of Márquez’s most powerful stories.

From the feminist point of view, the story reflects the nuance of women’s influence in our society today. This could be because of a few reasons. 

First and most importantly, a woman today would most likely experience what every woman in that village has experienced, which is for them to be seen as lesser beings by the men around them and thus, is expected to be subordinate and submissive by said men. 

More specifically, we should look into the fact that the men in the story also have a tendency to objectify the women around them. Using their imagination to belittle these women and their own aspirations, turning them into statues of ivory upon which the same men would pour their carnal desires out. This reflects on society’s leniency on men who harass and mistreat women, through catcalling, sexual harassment, rape, etc.  

On a more positive note (nitpicky, but positive), we looked into the story’s tendency to break gender based stereotypes. This includes gender based societal roles being broken, like the men sewing and knitting clothes for the drowned man, men being judged for being less compared to the drowned man in physical appearance and them striving to improve themselves . Compare this to our society, where women are more often judged for their physical appearance and are expected to “improve” themselves and for them to strive for “perfection”. 

Another point seen is that the novel shows acceptance of the drowned man’s personhood and the men having a much deeper understanding towards the drowned man, and thus, the women too. This could be compared to our society slowly starting to be more accepting of a woman’s desire to contribute to society as equals to men, earning the same as them, having representatives in politics, and overall being seen as more than just their physical appearance, being seen as equals.

In the beginning of the story,

the women in the village are depicted as being responsible for traditional domestic duties and caretaking roles while the men in the story are portrayed as laborers and providers for the community.

The women are expected to fulfill gender roles associated with nurturing, motherhood, and household chores.  They were also portrayed as being deeply connected to their families and community, as they come together to perform rituals and mourn the drowned man's death.

The men, on the other hand, were portrayed as laborers and providers for the community. They are depicted as performing more physically demanding tasks such as hauling the drowned man out of the sea, constructing a  house for the drowned man, and making plans for his burial. 

The community depicted in the story adheres to traditional gender roles, such as men being in charge of tasks that require physical strength or leadership, whilst the women are responsible for domestic tasks. These gender roles are ingrained into the community, and the characters of the story are shown to rarely deviate from it.

But as the story progresses, the presence of the drowned man challenges and even helps the villagers deviate from these roles. The women, initially shown as submissive and accepting, become so captivated by the drowned man and his charm that they start to question what could have been if they ended up with this man. And more importantly, they start to question what could be. The drowned man’s beauty also puts the men’s own desires and aspirations into question.

The women of the village are shown as curious and even a bit superstitious of the drowned man’s beauty.

They are described as being very fascinated by his handsome features; large size; and immaculate presence, actively participating in the rituals associated with him. Their fantasies represent the power of imagination as they picture a different life for the drowned man, with themselves at the center.

The story does not really show much evidence as to how the women are being treated. To us, it’s what the story doesn’t show that shows how the women of the village were being treated. The story has been shown to largely neglect the perspectives and experiences of every female character. The women in the village are treated as mere spectators, only reacting to the presence of the drowned man.

Conclusion

A. The story reflects the nuance of women’s influence in our society today. From society and its expectations for women to be submissive, to women questioning and breaking said expectations. The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World represents society’s shift in its view of what a woman is allowed and not allowed to do. And as the leader of this shift, the Drowned Man represents the rise of economic leverage the women are given. 

B. With the increase in education and political influence women are given, the more they will think about the potential of their lives and rethink what society expects of them. In a similar manner, with the rise of independence women are allowed to have, men need to rethink what they can truly provide to the women that they desire once financial security is not involved.

[shyjusticewarrior]

I think the line "the jokes weren't funny" is, at least in part, a reference to "I think Taylor and I might still have sex" and how she tried to laugh & go along with it at first.