#gender roles

[tumbler-polls]

[feminineenergylife]

Stop trying to be like men

Stop trying to work hard like men

Stop competing with men

We are not men

And we never will be.

Embrace being a woman

Embrace working easy/less like a woman

Embrace being delicate & powerful like a woman NOT strong like a man

Embrace being divinely feminine

When you learn to embrace being what God created you to be, your life will flow much easier.

There's a reason women get burnout quicker & experience more dissatisfaction when they're living primarily masculine lives. Trying to work like men, work hard, work as many hours as men, work the same jobs, etc. Even the 9-5 work schedule was designed around men's biology not a woman's. No wonder women struggle trying to fit into this lifestyle. And why we're usually happier working part-time.

And there's a reason why men are also unhappier when they are living primarily feminine lives where they aren't the breadwinner, the provider or a respected, hardworking, masculine man. They usually feel lost without the role of being the provider.

[yeoldenews]

An excerpt from the trial of Elinor Crane, who was arrested in Middlesex in 1693 on suspicion of burglary. A witness claimed one of the burglars was a woman in men's clothing, and Elinor had previously been seen in the area dressed as a man.

"But the Court asking her why she went in Mans Apparel, the Prisoner replyed, She went to Wooe a Widow. Upon the whole Matter the Jury brought her in not Guilty."

(source: Old Bailey Proceedings: Accounts of Criminal Trials, April 26, 1693.)

[the-crooked-library]

so within the universe of Dune, gender roles abide by a rigid false dichotomy created by the bene gesserit - men lead the noble houses, while the women may join their order, and the powers of both are kept intentionally separate. at the same time, the plot demonstrates repeatedly that the role of paul atreides as a character is that of the border between the concepts juxtaposed within dichotomies: he is both an outerworlder and fremen, both harkonnen and atreides, both a duke and a disciple of the bene gesserit.

as such, it follows that within the in-universe gender structure, he occupies the roles of both male and female, thus being functionally and societally nonbinary. in this essay, i will -

[redberryterf]

you want to normalize prostitution. I want public hangings for sex buyers. we are not the same.

[prokopetz]

I don't think we need fewer fighting game characters who attack by flying bodily across the screen to whomp their opponent with their dumptruck ass. I just think we need more of them to be men.

[lilithism1848]

[queerism1969]

[shaylogic]

Queer Experience Watching Barbie - AFAB Masculinity

I started to go into this in tags on another post but I wanted to type this up separately and try to develop my thoughts a little more. . .

Ryan!Ken’s arc in Barbie (2023) has been buzzing in my head for days.

I got fixated on it for a couple of major reasons:

1) We rarely have seen a feminist movie take time to address men with compassion in how patriarchy harms them too.

2) As a trans masc person, I think it hits a specific part of my identity that I don’t consciously let myself think about for too long. Something about being raised in a female world with sisterhood and community. Then being isolated in adult manhood without the tools to prepare you for that. Conscientious of respecting women and being unbothered by feminimity around you, but not knowing your place in the world.

How do I put it?

I know it’s not the direct intention of the film itself, but I’ve seen other trans folks (especially transmasc), reacting similarly to the feeling we get from it.

Ken’s arc feels pretty reminicent of the struggle afab lgbt folks go through when considering masculinity in their identity (butch lesbians, afab nbs, trans men, etc.)

How to make peace with masculine aspects of yourself without losing the women in your life? (One can argue Kate McKinnon’s Weird Barbie has aspects of this as well.)

Of course, then Ken goes off on the adopting patriarchy ride, which IS the point of the movie, and may skew a bit from the transmasc read on it--though I have known a trans guy here and there who avoids being misgendered so hard that they can become somewhat sexist. To which I say: “You don’t need to have a dick to be a man, and you don’t need to BE a dick to be a man.” But I digress.

Something about Ken being comfortable in a woman’s world but not understanding why he’s being shut out from socially bonding with them (in any sense! Romantic, Familial, Platonic Friendship. . .)

The overall theme of the movie for both Barbie and Ken--in an allegory of heavy gender roles harming all--leading them each to have to figure out who they are in themselves, regardless of others. . . 

Trans masc folx can relate to both Barbie and Ken’s arcs.

I don’t want to detract from Barbie’s arc being the main point of the movie.

I think the reason why we get hung up on Ryan!Ken’s character is because. . . we’ve related to the Barbie plot in other movies and shows before, thinking back to our “girlhoods” as children.

I have never seen the arc Ken has in this in any other story!!!!

There are some Man Movies that have attempted to discuss the struggle of Being a Man--but they often come off as too dismissive of feminine experiences, and are therefore as offputting to transmasc people as women.

Because of the nature of the two worlds exhibited in this movie, and Ken’s backround in his setting, personality, and purpose in relation to the Barbies, he’s a Man living with Female Socialization, in a Woman’s World; he’s a male character that inherently admires and respects women in his nature (until the real world influence distorts it).

This isn’t a perfect example of a transmasc experience either, but it’s a lot closer than most of us generally get to see! That’s why so many of us are getting caught up in this.

Please, other trans folx (transfems, too!), I really need us to have a discussion about this. What were your experiences and thoughts around this movie?

P.S. Yeah, we kinda get that nonbinary allegory from Allan (not a Ken, not a Barbie, siding with Feminism in the Gender War), but he wasn’t in significant focus of the plot the way Ryan!Ken was. If I try to read into Allan, I don’t have much to work with.

[profeminist]

“Can we all agree that cooking & cleaning is a basic life skill and not a gender role??????” 

- @unknwns0ul (page deactivated)

[redditreceipts]

It's so ironic and sad at the same time that they put her quote right over two pictures where the camera focuses on the breasts, not her face.

Yes, New York Post, you are the fucking reason girls feel like once they develop breasts, their humanity is fucking gone. she says it and you prove it in the same fucking tweet

[mindblowingscience]

Prehistoric men hunted; prehistoric women gathered. At least this is the standard narrative written by and about men to the exclusion of women. The idea of "Man the Hunter" runs deep within anthropology, convincing people that hunting made us human, only men did the hunting, and therefore evolutionary forces must only have acted upon men. Such depictions are found not only in media, but in museums and introductory anthropology textbooks, too. A common argument is that a sexual division of labor and unequal division of power exists today; therefore, it must have existed in our evolutionary past as well. But this is a just-so story without sufficient evidentiary support, despite its pervasiveness in disciplines like evolutionary psychology. There is a growing body of physiological, anatomical, ethnographic and archaeological evidence to suggest that not only did women hunt in our evolutionary past, but they may well have been better suited for such an endurance-dependent activity.

Continue Reading.

[jstor]

A post from @asksecularwitch inspired us to do a quick search on JSTOR about witches, and we discovered Fantasies of Gender and the Witch in Feminist Theory and Literature, an open access book by Justyna Sempruch.

Through a critical re-reading of feminist texts, Sempruch develops a new concept of the witch, one that challenges traditional gender-biased theories linking it either to a malevolent "hag" on the margins of culture or to unrestrained "feminine" sexual desire.

Image: "We Are The Daughters Of The Witches You Didn't Burn," from St Lawrence University's Street Art Graphics collection on JSTOR.

[mist-sterious]

every month there seems to be a person admitting a hyperspecific thing that makes them dysphoric and people attacking them over it because they dont feel the same so.. let me break this down for people that dont understand.

excessive and rigorous hygiene routines, doing housekeeping related tasks like cooking or cleaning, etc. those things can make a transmasculine person dysphoric. you know why? gender roles. these things have been constantly portrayed as "a womans duty" and have been pushed onto them their whole lives. of course theyre going to have complicated feelings when doing them even if they enjoy them.

theyre not reinforcing gender roles, theyre victims of it. theyre doing their best to be vigilant of when patriarchal thinking seeps into their minds and mingles with thier insecurities. theyre making jokes and pushing the thoughts away. leave them be.

if your reaction to somebody else's dysphoria that you dont understand is to claim youre embarrassed of your transness then simply become cis :]

or fuck off.

[artificial-father]

They’re not a golden retriever boyfriend! >:( They’re nonbinary.

Oh… so… they’re a lab partner?

[thehmn]

There’s a million horror book, comics, movies and games about men victimizing women written by men, but I’ve noticed when the roles are reversed and a woman writes about a woman victimizing men people immediately assume she must be agreeing with the woman’s actions no matter how hard the author is trying to depict her as a villain.

I was reminded of it because I’m almost done with the first chapter of my schlock horror comic where the big bad is a woman and I’m already well aware that it’ll get that reaction from some people despite her being cartoonishly evil with no redeeming qualities (unless you’re into that sort of thing I say because some people do love a villain)

And when I think about it that’s extremely chilling because that would imply people think men who writes about men hurting women hates women in real life and want to hurt them and that’s just a-okay.

Of course another assumption is simply that we’re used to seeing certain genders in certain roles and we only realize how fucked up they are when the genders are switched or when we see our own gender in the victim role.

I made the villain a woman for several reasons but mostly for the schlock factor. There’s just something inherently schlocky about a cartoon villain of a woman doing whatever the fuck she wants while wearing leather boots. But definitely also just to play around with common conventions because nothing highlights them more than turning them on their head.

I dunno, it’s definitely horror so don’t expect a fun light rump but hopefully people can see what I’m going for. I’m honestly impressed by how chill people have been about Red Prism despite the main characters basically being serial killers, so I trust that most people will trust me to know which characters are villains and who deserves redemption and who doesn’t even if the main villain is a woman this time.