#metoo critical

[so-what-then]

Look at this point if you think Depp is guilty because of your own trauma or academic theories about patriarchy, then fine. No one can help that except you and as long as you aren't trying to change the world for worse based off your personal issues, it doesn't matter.

But that means don't seek out posts like mine - which was about the existence of false accusations - to vent your struggles and Depp fixation onto others. Use that energy to find a therapist. I can't help you, sorry

[icedsodapop]

I wish journalists would stop asking Martin Scorsese silly questions about what he thinks about Marvel movies. It's a fluff question at this point, he's already answered this question before many times. What's the point in asking him this question again other than to generate a clickbaity title for your publication? It's boring.

Journalists should start asking him the real tough questions like, does he or does he not regret supporting Roman Polanski back in 2009?

[planetzambon]

because youre not allowed to so you should know not to say that i know wnhere youn work.

[fuck-hamas-go-israel]

Hamas is a heinous, murderous, vile terrorist group that’s intent on killing Jews.

But you can’t say they haven’t been honest about their intentions. Their manifesto, the interviews they’ve given, and the way they try to brainwash children through schools and media content have all been quite blatant in showing their modus operandi.

However, despite their very brutal honesty, why do Hamas-sympathisers try so hard to make Hamas look like good guys by defending literal crimes in the most insane ways?

It’s worrying and also shocking as these hypocrisies are such common sentiments coming from college campuses, which were once institutions that honed critical thinking.

Do they think that “kill all Jews” is a code phrase for “we want our territory back”? How do you possibly interpret open calls for the annihilation of Jews in any other way than what it is?

Do they not think that kidnapping women, raping and torturing them, and parading their naked, mutilated bodies around town to sexually humiliate them while men cheer is sexual violence against women? Isn’t this a feminist issue, part of the MeToo movement?

“Think about the children!” Yes, but when babies are beheaded and burned, when 4 year olds are kidnapped and orphaned, is claiming that these are AI-generated images and ripping down the posters of the hostages thinking of the children?

They cry out about war crimes but ignore that raping women and taking hostages are literally war crimes.

They scream to boycott companies for their ties to Israel using devices with technology designed in Israel. Will they give up their life’s pleasures because of their ties to Israel? My money is on no, because it’ll affect them personally and heaven forbid they take up activism that actually would inconvenience them in the slightest.

They claim to be experts in geopolitics after watching one TikTok video and claim that this is about territory and not antisemitism while also saying that Israelis can just “go back to whichever other country they also have citizenship in”. While turning a blind eye to the multiple antisemitic attacks around the world, and calling Israelis “white colonisers”.

They also claim to be champions of mental health awareness, experts in the psychological mechanisms of mental illnesses and take cautions to avoid triggers and micro-aggressions so as to not offend those who have psychological conditions. “We should let those who actually have these conditions speak up about their experiences!!”

But then when it comes to actual psychologically stressing situations like being kidnapped and taken hostage, they suddenly can speak for the hostages and know exactly what went on based on the most vacuous, flimsy evidence? “Oh she’s in love with her captor, she’s smiling at him! They’re smiling and waving, they must have been treated nicely by Hamas!”

How do they sleep at night with these competing ideologies in their heads? What do they achieve by making all these seem like the actions of good people?

They’re like Hamas’ PR team and defence attorneys rolled into one.

No matter what crime Hamas commits, they’ll come up with justifications and make it look like some kind of beneficent act of humanitarianism.

It’s so exhausting trying to reason with people who don’t see reason.

[girlactionfigure]

in broad daylight

It's 2024, not 1933. 

Crowds of thousands are chanting for the indiscriminate murder of Jews in major western cities.

why do you continue to gaslight us?

Intifada: indiscriminate suicide bombings, bombings, stabbings, and shootings targeting civilians.

There it is. In plain English. To a crowd of thousands, in front of an exhibit in New York City memorializing the victims of the October 7 massacre. "Long live October 7."

These are not ceasefire marches. They are Jew-hate rallies. Why are you still gaslighting us?

OCTOBER 7 SHOULD HAVE BEEN YOUR WAKE UP CALL

For years, as someone whose politics have always been left, myself and others have been warning of the genocidal antisemitism brewing on the left. Our concerns were minimized, and we were gaslit, both within and outside the Jewish community. Even when people conceded that yes, antisemitism does exist on the left, they insisted that only right-wing antisemitism was actually dangerous. If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll know how frustrated I always was with this sentiment. I hope they see now that they were wrong. 

Even though I knew something ugly was brewing on the left, even I was shocked not just by the Hamas atrocities committed on October 7, but by the world’s reactions. On October 7 itself, very few people on the left unequivocally stood with the Israeli victims, no ifs, ands, or buts. They talked of “context,” decided that was the appropriate time to criticize the Israeli government, justified, or even went as far as to celebrate the heinous massacre. Now, as more indefensible information came out, they deny it. 

Supposedly progressive organizations, like the Women’s March, #MeToo, and even some chapters of Black Lives Matter either ignored the atrocities or outright supported them. On October 8, before Israel retaliated, enormous crowds in New York City marched in support of the murderers of October 7. As recently as a few weeks ago, influential progressive politicians were gaslighting us about the unabashed antisemitism present at the college encampments. 

If you haven’t noticed that genocidal hatred for Jews has become acceptable, in broad daylight, so long as it’s disguised under the costume of “pro-Palestine activism,” I don’t know if you ever will. Maybe you will after it’s already too late. Every genocidal antisemite in history had an excuse. This is no different. 

WHO IS ACTUALLY RUNNING THESE PROTESTS?

Virtually all “ceasefire,” “pro-Palestine” protests in the United States are organized by groups such as Within Our Lifetime, Students for Justice in Palestine, and Samidoun. 

Samidoun, which has ties to the internationally-recognized terrorist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and has an office in Tehran, is banned as a terrorist organization in Germany. Within Our Lifetime and Students for Justice in Palestine both openly support Hamas, other Islamic Republic proxies, and the October 7 massacre. 

On October 7, various SJP chapters released statements justifying and even celebrating the massacre. National Students for Justice in Palestine released a “toolkit” calling the massacre a “historic win for the Palestinian resistance.” 

SJP’s founder, Hatem Bazian, is also the co-founder of American Muslims for Palestine, an organization formed by former members of the HolyLand Foundation, KindHearts, and Islamic Association of Palestine, all of which were disbanded after its members were convicted of transferring material support to Hamas. 

Meanwhile, Within Our Lifetime is openly supportive of Hamas and other Islamic Republic proxies. WOL promotes “Palestinian resistance by any means necessary.” On October 7, WOL issued a statement, saying, “We must defend the Palestinian right to resist Zionist settler violence and support Palestinian resistance in all its forms. By any means necessary. With no exceptions and no fine print.” Abdullah Akl, a WOL organizer, has a top role at the Muslim American Society, which was founded as the American arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, though MAS denies that they continue to have an affiliation. 

Would you attend a protest hosted by the KKK? By the Nazis? If a hate group organizes a protest, can that protest actually be deemed “peaceful”?

WHAT ARE THE PROTESTORS ACTUALLY SAYING?

In between “ceasefire now” and “free Palestine” calls, the protestors aren’t exactly making their genocidal aims a secret. Among the most popular chants at “pro-Palestine” protests since October 7 are “intifada, intifada,” “there is only one solution, intifada revolution,” and “globalize the intifada.”

The intifadas were Palestinian “uprisings” that indiscriminately and primarily targeted civilians, in a series of suicide bombings, car bombings, shootings, stabbings, and even stoning. When you call for a “global intifada,” you are openly calling for violence against Jews, not just in Israel, but around the globe. The chant couldn’t be any more explicit. 

Even more horrifying, “there is only one solution, intifada revolution,” alludes to the Final Solution. Of note, at the outbreak of the 1948 war, the Palestinian Arab leadership, which had allied with the Nazis during the Holocaust, vowed, “The Arabs have taken the Final Solution to the Jewish problem. The problem will be solved only in blood and fire. The Jews will soon be driven out.”

Another popular chant is “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which, regardless of Rashida Tlaib’s lies, is not a peaceful call for coexistence. It’s a call for the destruction of the State of Israel, which has nine million citizens, the majority of them Jews. Its Arabic counterpart is “from water to water, Palestine will be Arab,” also heard at the protests, an even more explicit call for genocide and ethnic cleansing. 

Another common chant at pro-Palestine protests is “Khaybar, khaybar ya Yahud, Jaish Muhammad, sa Yahud,” translating to “Jews, remember Khaybar, the army of Muhammad is returning,” which alludes to the surrender to Muhammad, ethnic cleansing, and extermination of the Khaybar Jews in the seventh century. The chant is also explicitly genocidal. 

We’ve spent the last decade discussing microaggressions and dog whistles, and yet, when we hear antisemites call for the murder of Jews in broad daylight, you tell us that’s not what they reallymeant. Why?

MAYBE YOU MEAN WELL

I understand that you don’t want to see Palestinians suffer. No moral person likes to see people suffer. But has it ever occurred to you that terrorist organizations are not moral? That terrorist organizations extort your empathy to further their goals? Just the other day, The Wall Street Journal uncovered secret documents that revealed that the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar, openly said that more Palestinian deaths help Hamas further its political goals. They are extorting you because you care. This is not brand new information. Hamas leaders and leaders of virtually all Palestinian political factions and terrorist organizations have made similar statements in the past. 

(And yes, you could argue that Israel didn’t have to “give them what they wanted” by retaliating. Either way, though, it’s a lose-lose situation for Israel, because no matter what, the message Hamas would be getting is “slaughtering and kidnapping people is a great way for you to get what you want,” such as releasing Palestinian mass murderers from Israeli prisons. Most countries would react to October 7 exactly as Israel did, or worse, but this is a separate discussion from this post). 

If the “globalize the Intifada,” “there is only one solution, Intifada Revolution,” “intifada, intifada,” and “long live October 7” crowds do not represent the core of the free Palestine movement, why are these the voices leading the protests? Where are the condemnations from “pro-Palestine” organizations? From “pro-Palestine” celebrities? Why do they not issue statements making it explicitly clear that these people don’t represent them? When pro-Israel protestors fired fireworks into a “pro-Palestine” crowd at UCLA, Jewish organizations issued loud and clear condemnations. 

If these sentiments didn’t represent the pro-Palestine movement, the movement would be the first to distance themselves from them. Instead, they are either silent, or worse, they openly support them. 

PLEASE SEE WHAT'S HAPPENING BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE

Every antisemitic regime in history has mobilized the masses under the guise of a “righteous cause.” The Catholic Church did it. Hitler did it. Stalin did it. Now the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies — Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and the Houthis — are doing it too. And you, who has vowed to “punch Nazis,” are falling for it. 

In the nearly eight decades since the Holocaust, just about everyone has wondered: had I been alive during World War II, what would I have done? Would I have I have hid Anne Frank, as Miep Gies did, or would I have been a collaborator? Everyone, except the most rabid of Jew-haters, reaches the same conclusion: of course I would have hid the Frank family. I’m not a monster. 

The problem is that most people have been playing the wrong game, deliberating on a misguided rhetorical exercise. If it’s between the bad guy and the good guy, well, of course everyone will choose to be the good guy. But in truth, it’s notbetween the bad guy — and don’t get me wrong, the Nazis were certainly bad — and the good guy. It’s between the antisemite and the Jew.

When people pontificate over what their behavior would have been during the Holocaust, they tend to do so with one glaring oversight. Antisemitism, this deeply-engrained 2000-year-old hatred, projects whatever any given society hates the most onto the Jewish people. Nowadays, certainly in left-leaning circles, where white colonialism is considered the most egregious sin, we are powerful white oppressors and settler-colonialists. When we play bad guys versus good guys, a whole bunch of people will conclude that the bad guys are…well, the Jews. 

If you can't figure out a way to oppose the war without supporting protests led by groups that back Hamas and Hezbollah, call for a global intifada, protest in front of Holocaust museums and October 7 memorials, and wave banners that proclaim "long live October 7," your problem is not with the war. Your problem is with Jews.

Hope that helps. 

[joannechocolat]

On why women’s rage is a superpower

My mother hates my new book. I gave her a proof just a few days ago, and although she’s still only halfway through, she can’t wait to tell me all the ways in which she hates my novel.

“Is this science fiction?” she says. (She detests science fiction.) “Were you ill when you wrote this?” (I was.) And repeatedly, she says: “Why are the women so angry?”

I get it. She’s out of her comfort zone. At 83, with no internet, no interest in pop culture and a deep-rooted hatred of anything close to horror or the supernatural, she wasn’t my target audience. And yet it’s never easy to hear such criticism from a loved one. But in some ways, she isn’t wrong. Broken Light is an angry book. It came from a time of lockdown, when social media was my only window onto the world. It came from a place of trauma, when I was fighting cancer. It came from a place of corrupt hierarchies, self-serving politicians, anti-vaxxers, Covid deniers, victim-blamers, and those eager to blame all their woes on minorities. And of course, it arose against the background of the #MeToo campaign and the Sarah Everard murder – a murder that shocked the nation, not least because the murderer turned out to be a serving police officer with a reputation for sexual misconduct - which unleashed a collective howl of protest, as well as an ugly, misogynistic backlash. Even so, my story came as something of a surprise to me: the story of a woman’s rage, and, on reaching the age at which women often feel least valued, her coming into her power.

It surprised me, most of all because I wasn’t an angry person. At least, I didn’t think I was. Those who know me describe me as someone who tends to flee conflict, who generally tries to find common ground, who gets upset when people fight. And yet, writing this story, I found myself saying and feeling certain things on behalf of my heroine, Bernie Moon; things I might not have said for myself, but which felt right and urgent, and true, and strangely liberating.

Anger has a bad press. A woman’s anger, especially. While men are encouraged to express feelings of justified anger, women are often criticized when they try to do the same. Angry women are often portrayed as “harpies,” “banshees,” “Furies.” It suggests that a man’s rage is righteous, but that a woman’s is unnatural, making her into a monster. Male anger is powerful. The God of the Bible is one of wrath. Seldom is he ever portrayed as expressing any other emotion. In the same way, men and boys are often led to believe that expressing emotion is weak - except for anger, which is seen as acceptably masculine.

In comparison, women are often criticized when they show aggression. Angry women are hysterical, shrill, out of control, unreliable, unattractive, unfeminine. A perceived lack of “femininity” makes a woman less valuable, less worthy of respect and of protection. The Press coverage of women victims of violence is a case in point. A victim of violence needs to be attractive, white, gender conforming and virtuous in every way if she is not to be overlooked, or worse, portrayed as somehow having contributed to her misfortune. When trans teenager Brianna Ghey was stabbed, the Press were very quick to state that her murder was not thought to be a hate crime, whilst at the same time obsessing over – and questioning - her gender. When Nicola Bulley disappeared, police felt obliged to divulge details of her struggle with the menopause, as well as her alcohol issues, even though this was privileged information and of no public relevance. When Emma Pattison, the Head of Epsom College, was murdered alongside her daughter, the Press immediately assumed that her husband George must have felt “overshadowed” and “driven to distraction” by his wife’s prestigious job. In all three cases, the victim falls under the hostile scrutiny of the Press, while the perpetrator is given an excuse. In all three cases, the victim – one trans, one hormonal, one better-paid than her husband - is effectively portrayed as “unnatural”. Subtext: Unnatural women do not deserve the protection of the patriarchy. Unnatural women come to bad ends.    

Once you start to acknowledge it, rage grows at a surprising rate. Over the past three years, I have found myself growing increasingly angry. Angry at the injustices committed by our Government; t the greed of corporations; angry at the prejudice extended to those who are different.

Connecting with others on social media has made me more aware of the lives and experiences of those from different backgrounds to mine, and with different levels of privilege. For a long time I’d been resistant to calling myself a feminist. Feminists are angry, I thought. What right have you to be angry?

Growing older, I realize that this was my mother speaking. A woman of a certain generation, who although she was aware of the challenges of living in a patriarchy, still had a level of privilege that many women do not share. White, professional, cishet women can sometimes have the luxury of choosing not to be angry. White, professional, cishet women can sometimes have the illusion of equality. But feminism isn’t only for just one kind of woman. A feminist must look beyond the limits of their own experience. And that’s where the anger really starts: anger at injustice; anger at corruption and lies. Most of all, anger at the prejudice against certain people for just being themselves; for being transgender, or Black, or old, or simply not conforming to what a white, patriarchal society expects and values. And once you start seeing injustice, you start to see it everywhere. It’s like an eye, which, once opened, cannot unsee inequality.

My anger flourished in lockdown. A time of growing divisions. Masks are invaluable in a pandemic, and yet they inhibit connection. They serve as a kind of reminder of who can speak, and who is to be silenced. While Boris Johnson was urging the public to trust the police, a vigil for Sarah Everard was broken up, with violence, by officers citing lockdown laws. While elderly people were dying alone; while I drove for four hours just to go for a half-hour walk in the park with my son; while I sat alone in my chemo chair, politicians were partying. Billionaires were enriching themselves. Behind the mask, the eye opened wide. I caught myself making faces behind my disguise at strangers. There was something weirdly liberating about this; as if, behind the piece of cloth, I could express myself at last. Not unlike writing a book, in fact. On screen, the eye opened wider. Bernie Moon, my heroine, was unlike like me in many ways, and yet anger connected us. The anger that comes from helplessness; from seeing others mistreated. Anger at a society that propagates inequality. And the anger that comes from hormones – those mood-altering chemicals that everyone produces, and yet which allegedly make women erratic; unreliable; hormonal.

In his novel, Carrie, Stephen King tells the story of a girl, whose telekinetic powers are unleashed by her teenage hormones. Carrie is unpopular, bullied, isolated. Her rage finds an outlet in her power. Driven to breaking-point by the bullies, she becomes a monster. Of course she does: after all, the author of this tale is a man, writing from the perspective of a couple of thousand years’ worth of patriarchal inheritance. In literature, a woman’s anger is unnatural; monstrous. It leads to terrible, unnatural things: makes murderers and infanticides of Clytemnestra and Medea; monsters of Medusa and Scylla. Unnatural, monstrous women are always punished in literature, even while acknowledging that they are often the victims of men. And unnatural women are often seen as physically repulsive – a reminder that, to be valued and loved, women must be young, and pure, and conform to the standards of beauty set out by their society. In literature, just as in life, those women who do not conform tend to be less valued, less seen, and when they do appear, do so as wicked witches, evil stepmothers, ugly crones and hideous travesties of womanhood.

But what would happen if a woman took control of the narrative? In recent years, we have observed a number of retellings of Greek myths from the point of view of the monster. Stone Blind, by Nathalie Haynes; Medusa, by Jessie Burton; Circe, by Madeline Miller. In both cases, the monstrous woman is seen from a different perspective; her rage absorbed and justified; her narrative reclaimed from a patriarchy that seeks to tame and subdue a woman’s rage, even at the cost of her life.

My new novel, Broken Light, comes from the same process of reclamation. It owes a debt to Carrie, but I have avoided the explicitly paranormal theme of the original, as well as the girl-on-girl bullying and the psychopathic mother. In my version, Carrie lives; marries her childhood sweetheart; internalizes all her rage and suffocates her power. Until the menopause – a topic which until recently has been largely misunderstood and taboo – at which point her power returns, and with it, a new kind of freedom. Freedom from the male gaze; from the responsibilities of motherhood; from the largely impossible expectations of society. Unlike puberty, menopause is triggered by a lack of certain hormones; and yet the symptoms can be just as dramatic and isolating. Loss of libido, exhaustion, depression, emotional outbursts as well as unpredictable and alarming hot flashes – my version of Carrie’s pyrokinesis. Whether my heroine’s powers stem from any kind of paranormal source is very much up to the reader to decide – after all, paranormal is only a step away from unnatural. And what counts as unnatural is in the eye of the reader – an eye that has been opened, I hope, to a series of new possibilities.

One is that rage is natural. Living in a patriarchy, women have a right to their rage. In fact, it seems more unnatural to me when women are not angry, given how much misogyny remains in our society. And growing old is natural. Being hormonal is natural. Differences are natural; so are disabilities. All women matter; whatever their age, or colour, or sexual orientation, or marital or reproductive status. The value of a woman’s life should not be defined by her popularity, or her age, or her looks, or her kids, or her value to the patriarchy. And no-one else gets to decide what a woman ought to be. A woman is not what, but who - a person, not an object; an active participant in her world. Women have lived too long behind the mask. They deserve their own stories. Stories in which they are allowed the full range of human possibility. So, to answer my mother’s question: Why are the women so angry?

Because it’s a superpower.

[warningsine]

Lynskey says she loves engaging with the fan theories surrounding Yellowjackets, but she’s been somewhat dismayed by those who can’t seem to believe that Adam (Peter Gadiot), the hunky young artist Shauna has an affair with, may harbor genuine interest in her character. “I’m just like, ‘Wow, really? That’s where people’s heads are at, that the most important thing is being thin or young?’ ” she says. (Perhaps more perplexing to her, if amusing: the fan theory that Adam is Shauna’s wilderness baby. “Why would his revenge plot be to come back and fuck his mother?”)

It wasn’t just online trolls being passive-aggressively insulting. Lynskey says a member of the Yellowjackets production commented critically on her body during filming: “They were asking me, ‘What do you plan to do? I’m sure the producers will get you a trainer. They’d love to help you with this.’ ” Her three veteran co-stars, Cypress, Ricci, and Juliette Lewis, banded together to support Lynskey, with Lewis in particular writing a letter to the producers on her behalf. It all seems to be a litmus test for how, even post-MeToo, Hollywood still views women of Lynskey’s age and size as essentially disposable, something Lynskey feels she has a responsibility to try to change through her role on Yellowjackets.

🔪🔪🔪🔪

[queen-of-weird-girl-nation]

Why are you against taylor swift? I'm just curious.

❤️- Aurora

OK! so basically

1. I just don’t like her music, like I find it rlly bland

2. Her actions rlly suck:

Like:

Saying she stands with victims of SA, even posing on a times magazine cover for #metoo but recently she’s been such good friends with Brittany Mahomes, who told victims of SA to ‘just shut up’ (for context Britanny’s brother in law is accused of SA)

Taylor, by hanging out with Brittany sm, has given her a lot more publicity, which is gross to me. Jackson Mahomes, the guy with all the SA claims against him, is someone who she’s also been seen buddying up with, taking selfies and high fiving

Taylor dated Matty Healy, a known racist, who said awful things about black and POC women. While Taylor broke up with him, she never addressed his behaviour.

She makes a choice to hang out with these people, people who harm vulnerable communities, which leads to her (majority white and young) fandom thinking it’s ok)

Taylor Swift, as you probably heard, has huge carbon emissions. Like huge. She unnecessarily uses her private jet for useless trips.

When 1 person tried to make her climate use more public, they allegedly got sued, claims TS hasn’t yet disputed.

Taylor also sued a blogger who demanded that she denounce white supremacy in 2017

Why was this blogger asking that she denounce white supremacy? Bc swifties, as a fanbase, has some very toxic elements

As a POC, I don’t rlly feel safe in swiftie spaces (especially the ones on Twitter) bc her fandom has a tendency to go after people who don’t like her, especially POC. (Luke going after travis kelces ex, being rude about the Latina’s who criticised TS response to a girl dying at one of her concerts)

I know, ofc that not every swiftie is racist and white, but her fanbase can be, and it does affect the POC who try to criticise her.

Taylor has also done nothing to stop the harassment of her ex Joe Alwyn, with some ven saying she leads her fandom on with the way she releases her songs. If ur fandom is telling ur ex: if I were u I’d kill myself?’ Let get a hold on them!

She’s a billionaire. Enough said.

All in all, you can like her music and vibe to it, TS is someone who you can separate the art from the artist pretty well, unlike some others (cough JK Rowling, cough) but be a critical fan.

Ilysm 🩷

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Young women are more likely to identify as liberal now than at any time in the past two decades, a trend that puts them squarely at odds with young men.

44% of young women counted themselves liberal in 2021, compared to 25% of young men, according to Gallup Poll data analyzed by the Survey Center on American Life. The gender gap is the largest recorded in 24 years of polling. The finding culminates years of rising liberalism among women ages 18 to 29, without any increase among their male peers.

Several societal forces have conspired to push young women to the left in recent years, including the #MeToo movement, former President Trump, rising LGBTQ identification and, most recently, abortion policy. Slower-cooking trends in marital status and educational attainment have also nudged the needle.

“I think there is a big generational shift that happened with Generation Z women who were really coming of age in the last five years,” said Kelsy Kretschmer, a sociologist at Oregon State University who studies gender politics.

The rift between young men and women may widen further. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a precedent that had protected abortion as a constitutional right for nearly half a century. The ruling has energized young women. New survey data, released this week, shows that 61% of young women consider abortion a critical issue, compared with 36% of all Americans.

“I would always choose a candidate that’s pro-abortion,” said Rose Merjos, 21, a government major at Wesleyan University in Connecticut who is an avowed liberal. “Almost everyone either knows someone who has had an abortion or has had one themselves. This is something everyone can relate to.”

The share of men who identify as liberal has held fairly steady for almost 25 years, according to annual Gallup surveys. Roughly one-quarter of men ages 18 to 29 term themselves liberal, year after year.

Meanwhile, among young women, liberalism has exploded. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, fewer than 30% of women identified as liberal. The liberal camp grew through the second term of former President George W. Bush. It expanded further during the tenure of former President Obama. It reached 39% in 2017 with the inauguration of Trump. In the last two years, liberalism surged anew.

“Young women today are much more liberal than young men,” Daniel Cox wrote in a June newsletter of the Survey Center on American Life, a project of the American Enterprise Institute. His work documents “a growing political rift” between young women and men.

Merjos attends a university long associated with both liberalism and activism. These days, though, she senses more of both among the women.

“In all of my government classes, there are probably two men out of 18 people,” she said. “ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union], that’s mostly women. I’m wondering if women are maybe just more inclined to be involved in the community, engaged in the community. And that liberalizes them.”

Ezra Meyer, 22, is a senior at the George Washington (GW) University who leads the College Republicans. He is a conservative on a campus that is overwhelmingly liberal and largely female. In conversations with classmates about politics, he treads lightly.

“My metric for deciding if I’m going to be friends with someone really does not come down to what their politics are,” he said. “It comes down to how tolerant they are.”

Meyer doesn’t know whether the men at GW skew more liberal or conservative than the women. But he has noticed a distinct trend among campus conservatives this fall.

“We’ve been doing a lot of recruiting of freshmen on campus,” he said. “And I would say, overwhelmingly, it has been male. The conservative females that do get involved, there’s fewer of them, but they tend to be way more passionate and way more involved.”

Several factors have liberalized the nation’s 20-something women. The most recent, and perhaps the most powerful, is #MeToo, an uprising against sexual assault, abuse and harassment that caught fire in 2017, empowering millions of women to come forward and seek justice.

The inauguration of Trump in the same year pushed more young women into the liberal column. The 45th president battled his own #MeToo allegations and proved uniquely unpopular among young, female voters. Polling in 2016 showed that only 25% of women ages 18 to 34 favored Trump, compared with 40% of same-aged men.

The rise of liberalism among young women has also marched apace with a dramatic increase in young people identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer. In a recent survey, 56% of young women reported exclusive attraction to men, while three-quarters of young men said they were solely attracted to women. Prior research suggests LGBTQ Americans of all ages trend toward liberalism.

Several longer-term trends have fed the liberalization of young women as well. One is marriage. The share of women ages 18-29 who are married has fallen by half in twenty years, from 31% in 2000 to 15% in 2021, according to the National Opinion Research Center.

The growing ranks of single, 20-something women feel a sense of “linked fate,” researchers say. They gravitate toward female friends in political views, whereas married women more often mirror the politics of their spouses.

“The correlation between women’s sense of linked fate and liberal political preferences suggests that the Democratic Party will benefit” from declining marriage rates among young women, Kretschmer and two co-authors wrote in a 2017 paper for the journal Political Research Quarterly. They noted that “women make up the majority of the population and vote at high rates.”

Women also outpace men in educational attainment, a trend that dates to the 1980s. The ratio of women to men in college enrollment now stands at roughly 60 to 40, and it continues to grow. Americans who complete college are more liberal than those who do not.

“Putting off marriage, going to college, entering the workforce, women are doing that at much higher rates than they used to,” said Marc Hetherington, a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “And all of those things are going to make conservatism and the Republicans significantly less attractive to women.”

In 1998, the first year of data collected by Gallup in its Social Series surveys, 28% of young men and 29% of young women identified as liberal. The gender gap in liberalism grew steadily wider in the 2000s, wider still in the 2010s. The 2021 poll yielded a 19-point spread between young men and young women, the largest on record.

“I do have some male friends that are moderate,” said Luci Paczkowski, 20, a California liberal. “And it annoys the hell out of me.”

What bothers Paczkowski about her nonliberal friends is not their centrism but her suspicion that they “do not have any clue why they are moderate. They just do not want to pick a side and, therefore, they are apathetic.”

[lullabyes22-blog]

FnF Characters in an Acting AU + Shipping AMV Reactions

For you @frostybearpaws

<3

Mel: Former model. Not just any model, mind you. We're talking Iman or Naomi Campbell levels of powerhouse. She is the muse for a dozen fashion brands, from Versace to St. Laurent. Fluent in a half-dozen languages. Has an MA in art history. A prodigy at piano and harpsichord. Her social media is sublime eye candy; she is lauded as a style icon, and highly sought after by Vanity Fair and Vogue for covers.

Champions tirelessly for better roles for black women in TV and film. Outspoken advocate of the #MeToo movement. Passionately antiwar, and works with a number of educational advocacy groups. Has even made a formal speech before Congress.

re: the AMVs - "Oh this is delightfully done." Flattered by the passionate responses of fans, and amused by the spirited fanbase split between Meljay and Melco. When asked who she ships: "Meljay, I'm afraid. Silco has his charming qualities. But Mel needs someone who will prioritize her, and only her."

Violet: Relative newcomer. Mostly typecast in sporty 'tough chick' roles. Had a big breakout role in a "Bend it Like Beckham" type early 2000s film. The scriptwriters chickened out with a heteronormative ending, but fans latched on to all the queer subtext in film. She's got a huge Insta following, due to her popularity in the fandom, her status as an LGBTQ+ icon, or her being an ex-pro athlete.

She's a big proponent for more diverse representation in pop culture. She also has a degree in gender studies, and is an avid fanfiction reader. She's even written some smutty one-shots of her own <3

re: the AMVs: "Wow. Just... wow." Speechless at how horny y'all are.  Like, off the chains horny. And she's totally not judging. At all. But... "Damn. Take a cold shower, guys."

Sssh. She ships CaitVi too.  And she agrees the Nao arc was uncalled for. "Idk what the writers were thinking. Vi would never cheat on Cait. Even if they did break up." </3

Jayce: Child actor who was thrust into the limelight after starring in a 1990s sitcom. It was cancelled, but ended up having a massive cult following. His last big project was the 2000s comedy flick, "Freaks of Zaun," which, despite a critical drubbing, remains a favorite of the genre. He's kind of a douche irl, but fans are still super into him. He's also an influencer, and runs a successful YouTube channel where he posts workout routines, travel vids, and other lifestyle-adjacent stuff.

Huge fanboy of his own character, and never shuts up about him.

re: the AMVs: "You know what? I kinda get it. These are pretty good." Is a little miffed at the whole "Jayce is an idiot" meme.  “Look, he's a fucking scientist. I don't think a stupid guy could pull off the invention of Hextech." He also doesn't appreciate the ship wars, especially when it gets into toxic territory. "C'mon, guys. It's acting. There are no actual relationships. Don't turn this into a hatefest."

Has gotten cancelled once already. He's since learned not to touch that particular can of worms.

Ships MelJay and tolerates JayVik. Blanches at the mention of JayCo.

Jinx: Total newbie to the industry. Was a former gymnast, and an Olympian in the making. A torn meniscus put her out of the competition. Her agent, who'd been trying to convince her to switch to acting, seized the opportunity to get her in front of the camera. She's never had a day's training. But she's a natural. Her energy is infectious, and her charm is unmatched. A real sweetheart, too. Loves dogs and is a vegan. Advocates tirelessly for animal rights.

re: the AMVs: Shrieking at the first video like a kid in a candy shop. "Is this real? How do I join?" The first to suggest livestreaming the cast's reactions. She's not a fan of shipping wars, but has a live-and-let live attitude. Will scroll through instagram liking any video or post that has #Timebomb in the tag - her favorite ship, btw. She also likes Melco, Sevilco and JayVik.

But not Cait/Vi. Or Jinx/Silco.

"Just... yuck."

(CaitVi shippers accuse her routinely of homophobia. She's not homophobic. She's ace-aro. She's just finds the CaitVi pairing boring.)

Sevika: A rising star, and a fan favorite. She was a former MMA fighter before an accident left her with a paralyzed left arm. She'd been content to go the rest of her life as a trainer, until a talent scout noticed her. She was cast as a supporting character in a cop procedural. It ran three seasons, but her charisma made her a longstanding fandom icon. Audiences in FnF have been clamoring for more screen time, and the writers have been accommodating. Rumor has it that they're working on an origin story arc, where she'll be the main character.

re: the AMVs: "How'd this become a thing? You're all fucking weird." Has an opinion on every video. Doesn't hold back. Her reviews are highly anticipated, and fans love her blunt commentary. She doesn’t ship anyone. But she will like any MelCo tags that cross her Twitter feed.

Not because she thinks they're hot, but because she hates Jayce, and thinks it'd be fun to watch him suffer.

Married IRL to Mel, whom she met on set<3

Caitlyn: Nepo baby. Her parents were both Academy Award-nominated actors, who met while filming a romcom. They've had an on-again, off-again relationship for the last thirty years. Cait has been in the industry her whole life, and acting professionally since she was five. Her resume is filled with romantic comedies and period pieces. She's been compared to Audrey Hepburn, and is considered a classic Hollywood beauty. Originally, she was cast in the role of Nandi, opposite "young" Silco. But the Vekauran community derided the casting as whitewashing, and her chemistry with young Silco was totally lacking. She was recast as Vi's romantic interest, and the rest is history.

She's a huge fan of CaitVi, and is known for her frequent appearances at Comic Con. Always happy to pose with cosplayers of her character. She also has a penchant for weird memes.

re: the AMVs: Has a very strict rule about never Googling her name. Opts out of the shipping wars, too. "If it makes people happy, who am I to judge?"

Vander: Former action star, and a fan favorite. Played a superhero vigilante in the late 80s. Known for his iconic lines: "We can do this the easy way. Or the hard way." He had a string of hit films before the industry shifted away from the genre. His career suffered, and he found himself typecast in a string of poorly-received knock-offs of his old films. His final movie tanked at the box office, and he nearly threw in the towel. But his manager convinced him to audition for the show.

He and Silco are known for their on-screen chemistry, and were the subject of a lot of "Are they?" questions. In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Vander even stated, "Look, I'd do Silco. It's no secret." Which caused quite the stir on the internet. Sources still aren’t sure if he meant the actor or the character.

He's a huge fan of the show, and a proud member of the fandom. He ships Jinx & Silco, but as platonic soul-family. He's also a CaitVi and Timebomb fan.

re: the AMVs: "Aww, this is cute." He's the most positive out of the bunch.  Is a bit weirded out by the fan obsession with his love life. "I mean, I'm flattered, really. But c'mon, guys. I have a husband." Is super active on Twitter, and frequently replies to fans.

Viktor: Little-known actor from a small country in Eastern Europe. He'd been an up-and-coming romantic hero, guest-starring in a popular soap opera. When a visa snafu kept him from appearing on the show, he was replaced. But the fans revolted. They loved the character, and didn't want to see him gone. The studio listened, and after he found good legal representation, he was able to secure a permanent work visa and keep the role.

Very sweet and reserved; he's not really into social media, or even the internet.

re: the AMVs: Totally geeking out over them. Has a huge crush on Jinxtor, but doesn't realize it's a no-no in the USA as Jinx is 18, and Viktor is 34. He enjoys JayVik as both a scienbros dynamic and as a romantic couple.

Favorite ship is SkyVik. He's even collaborated with a few AMV creators on Youtube on a whole collection of SkyVik videos.

"It's a tragic love story, no?"

Silco: Indie darling. He was a teen star in the early 80s, and garnered a small but loyal fanbase. His first film was a horror flick, where he played a troubled runaway who'd been possessed by a demon. The raw animalism of the performance garnered him a Golden Globe nomination, and his subsequent projects had a similar gothic flair. He's also starred in a number of subversive art house films. His breakout role was the dissolute vampire king in the cult classic, "Blood for Blood" - for which he snagged an Oscar nod.

IRL he's a vocal advocate for unionization, and regularly attends protests in support of worker's rights. Conversely, he's also a vocal proponent of capital punishment.

re: the AMVs: Is mystified at first. Then intrigued. Then appreciative. "This is quite good. The editing. The cinematography. The music. It's not all amateurish, as one might expect." Mostly, he's a silent observer. Always watching, and seldom commenting. A veritable mystery.

He ships CaitVi, but only for the aesthetic. Jilco gets a raised eyebrow and a headshake. Vanco gets a crooked smile. Sevilco, and he'll actually chuckle.

"You are a strange, strange people."

His favorite ship is Melco. Largely because he and Mel had a fling irl during his tenure on the show.

Ekko: Hearthrob of the fanbase. He's an influencer, and runs a YouTube channel where he reviews tech toys and gadgets. His fans are mostly teens, and he has an adorable 'too cool for school' schtick. He's a huge nerd, though, and is actually a prodigy when it comes to mechanical engineering. His parents were scientists, and he was homeschooled his whole life. He got his first TV role by winning a game show, where he had to create a prototype toy that would be marketed and sold to kids.

He's also the funniest out of the cast. And he knows it. Always quick with a zinger, and can turn even the most awkward situation into a comedy routine.

re: the AMVs: Cracks up over the first few videos. Then becomes an avid fan of the whole genre. Has a soft spot for Timebomb, but he and Jinx are friends irl, so he doesn't want to make things weird. Comes up with his own random ships to troll the fanbase.

Ekko/Vi - "A disaster. Imagine how awkward that would be."

Ekko/Mel - "She's totally out of his league. But I'm down to see how it would go."

Ekko/Sevika - "Now, that would be something. She is one hot mama."

Ekko/Jayce - "I'd top him. There, I said it."

Ekko/Cait - "She's totally a virgin. She'd die."

Ekko/Silco - "Fuck this guy, amirite? Literally."

[so-what-then]

Good faith critics of MeToo have been saying for years that the one-sided narrative that sexual violence is "never" punished or taken seriously, therefore we must #BelieveAllWomen, is a dangerous and racist approach that will hurt POC in particular.

Now we are reaping the consequences. White feminism says I have to believe - or at least not be too incredulous - about Israel's mass rape claims because BelieveAllWomen.

Well I don't. If that makes me anti-feminist then so be it.

[mariacallous]

Is a five-year age gap in a relationship a little untoward? What about a three-year gap?

On social media, Gen Zers ― at least those who are chronically online ― are constantly debating the ethics of age gaps. Even if some relationships are perfectly legal, that doesn’t necessarily make them ethical, many say.

It’s little wonder then that age-disparate relationships are cause for so much conversation: Having grown up alongside the #MeToo movement, Generation Z is well versed in unbalanced power dynamics and the language of consent. And lately, there’s been plenty of celebrity pairings to interrogate.

There’s the obviously icky examples, like the recent, short-lived romance between Aoki Lee Simmons — Russell and Kimora Lee Simmons’ 21-year-old daughter — and restaurateur Vittorio Assaf, 65. Earlier this month, viral photos showed the pair flouncing around on vacation in St. Barts.

Yes, they’re both consenting adults, but it was still unseemly, critics said. If anything, the argument that they’re both of age is “something groomers cling to,” as one young woman on Threads put it.

“Adulthood was meant to signify voting/draft age,” she wrote. “But everyone knows your prefrontal cortex is not fully formed at this age.” (This difference between so-called brain age and chronological age ― you might be 21 but your brain is undeveloped! ― often gets brought up in these kinds of conversations.)

There are gender-swapped examples too, like actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson and filmmaker Sam Taylor-Johnson, a now-married couple who met while working on a 2009 John Lennon biopic called “Nowhere Boy.” At the time, he was in his late teens and she was a mother of two in her early 40s.

“I didn’t relate to anyone my age,” the actor told The Telegraph in 2019, reflecting on when they first met. “I just feel that we’re on the same wavelength.”

Some fans aren’t convinced. “We def aren’t talking about male grooming victims enough and this is literally proof,” one person wrote in a highly shared TikTok video about their coupling.

Then there’s the less expected critiques: Is four years too much of an age gap? “At 25, I wouldn’t even date a 21 year old,” reads one tweet with around 80,000 likes.

What about 10 years? Fans of Billie Eilish were up in arms in 2022 when the then-20-year-old singer revealed that she was dating fellow musician Jesse Rutherford, who was in his early 30s. One viral tweet about the 10-year age gap reads: “jesse rutherford was alive during george h w bush’s presidency . billie eilish cannot legally drink.”

Long-established relationships aren’t safe, either. Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively’s 11-year gap has been scrutinized. And recently, Beyhive members have begun debating whether Beyoncé was “groomed” because she was 19 when she started dating Jay-Z, who was in his early 30s.

Noncelebrity couples are getting called out, too. “I was 19. My now husband was 27. My now 13yo child calls him my ‘predator,’” one woman wrote on Threads alongside laughing emoji, probably only half-joking.

Why Gen Z Seems To Have Such An Aversion To Age Gaps

Is Gen Z just more prudish on this subject than prior generations?

Not necessarily, said Justin Lehmiller, a research fellow at the Kinsey Institute and the host of the “Sex and Psychology Podcast.” He’s been studying age-gap relationships for roughly 20 years and said the stigma around age-disparate relationships is long-standing.

In 2008 ― when terms like “cradle robber” and “cougar” were bandied around a lot more than they are now ― Lehmiller co-authored a study that found age-discrepant couples reported experiencing significantly more social disapproval than people in gay or interracial couples.

So the discomfort around these types of relationships isn’t anything new. What is new, according to Lehmiller, is how comfortable Gen Z feels about publicly and vocally disapproving of these relationships ― even on people’s personal Instagram pages. (Aaron and Sam Taylor-Johnson recently spoke out against the “bizarre” online judgment they’ve received. Eilish and Rutherford brushed off the criticism from overly concerned fans by dressing up as a baby and an old man one Halloween.)

“To some in Gen Z, age-gap relationships read as being inherently exploitative because they perceive age discrepancies as necessarily creating a power imbalance that favors the older partner,” Lehmiller told HuffPost.

What’s also changed is which parties tend to receive the brunt of the judgment. In the past, people were often scornful of both the younger and older partners in these relationships. Historically, the younger partners, especially when they were women, endured labels like “gold digger” ― with the implication that they were the ones doing the exploiting. That terminology doesn’t always fly with Gen Z.

“That perception seems to have largely disappeared when you look at what Gen Z is saying,” Lehmiller noted. “They seem to cast the younger partners as victims who are being preyed upon or ‘groomed.’”

Gigi Engle, a certified sex and relationship psychotherapist and resident intimacy expert for dating app 3Fun, worries that the term “grooming” is being overapplied and losing its meaning.

“The narrative is really toxic here and in many other cases,” she told HuffPost. “Trans people are groomers, gay people are groomers, older people dating younger people are groomers ― and this just isn’t accurate. It’s a really fear-mongering time we live in.”

Gen Z may be hyperfocused on this because of their age: If you’re a 35-year-old woman, you’re probably less hung up on the idea of a 50-year-old guy expressing interest in you.

“I think younger people may be more susceptible to manipulation and are therefore more afraid of it,” Engle said. “The reality is, age-gap relationships have been happening since humans have existed, and it is absolutely not some one-size-fits-all. In the vast majority of relationships like this, nothing untoward is happening.”

Here’s What Gen Z Has To Say About Age Gaps

Talking to actual Gen Zers, you’ll find that their opinions on age gaps run the gamut. As with most things, their takes on the subject are much more nuanced than those found on X, the platform previously known as Twitter, would have you believe.

That said, many are genuinely bothered by age gaps. While the #MeToo movement gave them the language to talk about power imbalances, some 20-somethings say their opinions are more colored by their own personal experiences.

Layla — a 23-year-old who asked to use her first name only for privacy reasons, like others in this story — thinks it’s better to date within your own age group, ideally within a two- or three-year range.

“When I was around 21 and 22, I tried talking to guys who were 30 and over but soon realized it wasn’t right,” she told HuffPot. “They had so much more life experiences than me, and it was awkward being from different generations.”

Layla said she’d tried to joke and laugh about certain things ― a meme or a TikTok video ― and got a lot of blank stares. She wasn’t a fan of their humor, either: A date recounting the umpteenth “Seinfeld” episode or that one “Step Brothers” scene gets a little old after a while.

“Trying to relate to one another just didn’t work out, and it felt awkward and wrong,” she said.

“I believe a relationship between an 18- and 25-year-old is problematic,” Layla said, noting that this applies regardless of gender.

“I actually wish women got called out for their predatory behavior, too,” she said. “It almost seems like no one wants to hold women accountable.”

Mona, a 21-year-old college student in Georgia, even finds her own parents’ 11-year age gap a little “predatory”: Her dad was in his late 30s and a divorced father of one when he met her mom, who was in her late 20s and didn’t have children.

Mona would date someone three years older. She wouldn’t consider going younger, though. “I do think that an 18- and 25-year-old together is unacceptable,” she said.

She is particularly weirded out when she hears people talk about how their partner basically raised them or taught them “how to be a woman,” as Beyoncé said to Jay-Z in a 2006 birthday toast that went viral recently.

Mona is also wary of anyone who almost exclusively dates young people ― the Leonardo DiCaprios of the world. Every time the 49-year-old actor gets a new girlfriend, a graph highlighting the fact that each of his ex-girlfriends has been 25 or under starts circulating again.

“Any respectable adult would have the common sense that pursuing a teenager is extremely weird, and I also believe it says a lot about the headspace of the older person,” the 21-year-old said.

Mona also thinks the COVID-19 pandemic might’ve been a factor in Gen Zers’ apprehension over age gaps. They might technically be 21, but given that weird few-year pause, they don’t feel it.

“You hear about how we’re mentally the same age that we were when the pandemic first started,” she said. “That might play a role in why some people are not settling on older people pursuing them ― you feel you’re still too young.”

Not everyone agrees. Rei, a 22-year-old who is queer, said they don’t find age-disparate relationships inherently problematic. They said there’s a lot more than age that gives people power over each other, and if you consider five years an “age-gap relationship” then Rei is currently in one.

“Though my partner is older than me, I have a college degree and she doesn’t,” they said. “So arguably I have a better financial and career outlook that would make me the ‘abusive one,’ if you’re using that language.”

Age gaps may be more common in the queer community, Rei said. “I don’t know a gay guy who hasn’t been with someone much older than him,” they said. “It’s just normal to us.”

Problematic dynamics can exist no matter the age. “People now don’t know what grooming is and just use the term as synonymous with age gaps,” Rei said.

To some extent, Rei sees the hubbub over age gaps as an overcorrection of the mores ushered in by the #MeToo movement.

“People overadjust and assume that any relationship out of the norm is abusive,” they said. “In my experience, people who feel age gaps are problematic are also the same people who argue the internet is harmful and should be censored because they had a bad experience as a kid. Your experience isn’t universal.”

For Amelia, 24, actual age matters less than the stage of life you’re in. She figures if you’re a relatively accomplished 28-year-old dating an accomplished 40-year-old, what’s the big deal? The word “grooming” really only applies when an adult is introduced to a future partner when they’re underage, Amelia said.

She cited the relationship between Dane Cook and his wife as an “egregious” example of a questionable age gap. (The now-52-year-old comedian met Kelsi Taylor at a game night he hosted when she was in her late teens.)

“Do I think it’s possible for people like that to have a healthy and happy relationship? Sure,” Amelia said. “But the older I get, my desire to talk to high schoolers grows slimmer and slimmer. I really can’t put myself in the shoes of someone who would want to befriend a high schooler.”

That said, Amelia thinks that some Gen Zers take their judgment too far. To her, the concern over age gaps seems like a weirdly “paternalistic” brand of feminism, where women feel the need to protect women from men.

“It’s similar to how Swifties treat Taylor Swift,” she said, referring to the now-34-year-old pop star.

“You have young women ‘looking out for’ a billionaire woman in her 30s. I’m a fan of Taylor Swift, but I don’t think she needs protecting from Travis Kelce because Travis Kelce got in the face of his NFL coach during the Super Bowl.”

The anti-age-gap sentiment held by many plays into the “puriteen” narrative that’s been inescapable lately. Online, there’s a lot of hand-wringing over Gen Zers’ seeming aversion to sex: Studies show that they’re having less of it than earlier generations and that they don’t want sex scenes in their movies.

Though Amelia overall disagrees with age-gap critics ― she feels like their arguments rob women of their agency, she said ― she gets where those in her peer group are coming from.

“The majority of us had unsupervised internet access from a young age. We were in chatrooms, on Tumblr, and other various corners of the internet that we probably should not have been on at that age,” she said. “It was easy for grown men on the internet to reach us if they wanted to.”

If you’ve been oversexualized at a young age ― or seen others in your age bracket be oversexualized ― that experience is understandably going to shape how you perceive these kinds of things, Amelia said.

But the reality is, there are likely just as many happy May-December unions as there are disappointing ones. “Believe it or not, we often see more ― not less ― equity in these relationships,” Lehmiller noted.

All of the Gen Zers we spoke to said that ultimately, two consenting adults can do whatever they want in their private lives, even if others find it off-putting.

“Men can like women that are younger and not be a creep,” Amelia said. “He also can be a creep, but some random person with a Twitter cartoon avatar shouldn’t necessarily be the judge of that!”

[grison-in-space]

Part of the problem with trying to protect young people from exploitation and grooming by extremist elements of the manosphere is that our understanding of exploitation and how to tackle it is still hopelessly out of touch. Dr. Firmin explained that the very hallmarks of adolescence that most attract young men to these online communities are also the ones least understood by traditional support mechanisms. During adolescence, young people prioritize belonging, self-autonomy, and independence. This, she said, is a period in which young people are struggling with intense emotions: they are “more inclined to take risks” and are particularly unlikely to think about “long-term consequences.” As such, traditional support services are not well suited to this period, because they tend to be “targeted at individuals who don’t like to take risks and will think about the long-term consequences of their behavior and will be generally emotionally stable.”
While support structures struggle against these typical adolescent behaviors, Dr. Firmin explained, those who exploit young people “will tend to work with” them, offering children

a sense of risk or going against the grain, focus on short-term gains, what it means in the here and now, and push aside the potential negative long-term consequences… They will provide means by which you can be very emotionally driven and passionate…and also validate those emotions as authentic when other adults are saying, “Don’t get so worked up.”

All this resonates powerfully with the tactics of the manosphere. Young people are offered a highly emotive narrative and a sense of deep belonging and community. They are repeatedly encouraged, in incel forums, for example, to take violent action that would position them as countercultural disrupters without thinking too much about the consequences. “It’s very easy to sell those ideas,” Dr. Firmin added, in a community that boasts about “going against the norm.” In the case of the manosphere, she said, that manifests as “pushing against this idea of new masculinity…or men’s increased role in parenting… This narrative would push against all of that, push against #MeToo, so it’s very easy then to sell it as a risk and sell it into this idea of wanting a sense of self, a sense of personal identity.” In some respects, she said, given the current climate, the attractiveness of the manosphere to young men is “not very surprising at all.”

Men Who Hate Women, 2020, Laura Bates.

... Ohhhhh. Well, Bates is talking about young men getting sucked into the manosphere, but TERF tactics make a whole lot more sense now, don't they? There's all this uncertainty in our collective lives, and a simple but risky narrative that just requires brave, passionate folks to stand up for what they believe in to fix everything...

Ah.

For that matter, the same patterns totally resonated with me in my teens and twenties; I just had causes that I still feel good about to stand up for, like queer solidarity and ace community raising and allyship as an active choice.

I'm carrying some grief about that this morning—I have a lot of scars that came from being brave and open and riskily vulnerable and trusting my own resilience and hard work to catch me, and it's been a hard, hard ten years. But I also find myself thinking in the same breath: oh. That's the same romantic tendency that's kicking off the wistfulness about labor uprisings I was so critical of last night, and that association builds commitment to changing the critically unfair economic systems of inequality we live with. That's the same energy that makes so many teenagers so emphatic about climate change. That's the thing that makes my grad students stamp feet and snap "well, it shouldn't be like that then!" while I'm trying to do more with less to support them and keep them safe. And sometimes that makes me adjust my course, often for the better.

Stuff like this really renews my commitment to listening to folks who are significantly different in age to me. Sometimes I think they are missing big things in their politics, but sometimes I think that the uncompromising optimism of what could be is a powerful, heady current.

I've only been an adult for about a decade, is the thing, and I've already watched the activism of the generation of millennial activists I grew up alongside make real, profound changes in the status quo, often but not always informed by the support and lessons of generations that have broken the trails before ourselves. I think there can be a certain complacency about that, an idea that younger folks are going to either save us unassisted (lol no) or pick up largely arbitrary battles and waste the momentum of their energy and commitment. I don't think that complacency is a good idea, but it exists. It's worth opposing.

Just like any social construct, generations are both imaginary and profoundly real at the same time, both a wave and a particle at once. It's worth thinking about what people at different ages and life stages need, and it's always worth thinking about how to build coalitions to best channel and support one another.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Pini Dunner

But, as it turned out, even though Reb Zushya moved from his spot on the floor to a seat at the table, he still got beaten up. Rather than this monumental change for Jews being the game-changer that neutralized antisemitism, Israel’s existence and actions have been leveraged by those who are drunk with antisemitism as the new justification for their prejudice, and for unleashing more violence against Jews — now called Zionists.

In fact, a critical aspect that is often overlooked in the discourse surrounding Israel and antisemitism is the conflation of the Israeli state’s actions with Jews. I don’t recall, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine last year, that Russians living in the West, along with descendants of Russian immigrants, were targeted by protesters sympathetic to the Ukrainian cause, and nor do I recall Russian Orthodox churches being daubed with swastikas — despite the frequent reports of horrific scenes of death and destruction in Ukraine.

And yet Jews are targeted, vilified, attacked, intimidated, ostracized, threatened with death, and accused of being murderers — British Jews in London, Australian Jews in Sydney, American Jews in New York, and French Jews in Paris — all because Israel is engaged in a war with Hamas in Gaza (after the war was initiated by Hamas attacking Israel).

The facts speak for themselves: criticism of Israel’s policies and military strategy has quickly morphed into undisguised antisemitic rhetoric that employs age-old stereotypes and conspiracy theories, and which calls for Israel’s existence to be undone.

And again, I don’t hear any calls for Russia to be undone as a country, or Syria, or Myanmar, or Zimbabwe, or Sudan — and the list goes on and on — even after tough images emerge from each of these countries, or countries of their foes, because of actions they have taken. Only Israel suffers the indignity of being called illegitimate. This means that the line between political critique and ugly bigotry has become dangerously blurred.

The argument that “Anti-Zionism is Not Antisemitism” is a cornerstone mantra of many anti-Israel groups, who insist that all criticism of Israeli policies and Zionist ideology is entirely separate from antisemitic sentiments.

But surely this distinction is undermined when we witness a marked increase in antisemitic incidents following the October 7 massacre. It all suggests that anti-Zionism either contributes to, or indeed serves as a pretext for, antisemitic attitudes and actions, challenging the clear-cut separation that anti-Israel groups claim to uphold.

Then there is the shocking lack of reaction by progressive groups to allegations of violence against Israeli women by Hamas on October 7, compared to their vocal support for victims of sexual violence during the #MeToo moment. Where was the outrage for Israeli women? And how can that lack of outrage be explained as not being antisemitic? The answer is: it can’t.

[mafaldaknows]

Finally, a legitimate news source calling out this situation for what it is.

It’s fascinating to hear the media use the evidence and language we ourselves in this fandom have been using in defense of Armie Hammer on social media. Holding this two-year long vigil may finally have opened the eyes that needed to see this situation for exactly what it is.

Armie Hammer is the victim of defamation by opportunists perverting the original intentions of #metoo and #believewomen in the virtual town square for their own selfish, nefarious purposes by exploiting those among the general public who love nothing more than to throw a rich and famous man with perceived privileges under the nearest bus, just because they can.

The perversion of #MeToo in the name of faux-militant feminist ideology is driving this popular online movement of indicting and condemning famous men in the court of public opinion without legitimate evidence of criminal wrongdoing, without the presumption of innocence, without due process, and without the possibility of redemption in any form.

Hammer’s accusers, as well as his ex-wife, recognized the window of opportunity presenting itself in the post-Weinstein zeitgeist, and climbed right in, in the search for the 15 minutes of internet fame to which they assumed they were guaranteed, and to which they felt wholly entitled, by any means necessary.

All it takes is one biased source with a fragile ego and a personal vendetta using gullible people mindlessly consuming internet content without due diligence or critical thinking skills to accept their even marginally plausible lies as if they were facts and spreading them like wildfire about their target on the internet. All the better for instant believability without the requirements of facts and evidence, if their lies come spewing forth from Instagram-ready, artificially-enhanced, telegenic faces.

People really are that simple. And the rush to judgment is what makes the internet go ‘round, after all.

We must aim to be more mindful and responsible consumers and creators of content on social media, lest we end up eating ourselves, as a functional and civil society.

Enough already.

[stillarandom-radfem]

And now, on today's episode of Libfems Haven't The Slightest Goddamn Clue What They're Talking About ®️, we discuss some of the things these ridiculous women claim are "white feminism," such as:

the #metoo movement, which was founded by Tarana Burke, a black woman, to combat widespread issues of sexual harassment and rape.

the Escape The Corset movement, which was first begun in South Korea to fight against the extreme pressure to conform to beauty standards there, and the severe social consequences for resisting them.

Gender critical feminism, which is the most common type of feminism outside of the Western world, including in the Global South.

Anti-sex trade feminism, when issues like sex trafficking predominantly affect women of color and poor women living in the Global South.

Of course, this has all been said before, but it's still extremely obvious that, not only do libfems not understand the origins of most of these movements, but they also clearly don't actually even understand what the entire concept of white feminism was originally meant to refer to. It's meant to refer to types of feminism that actively ignore and explicitly hurt poor women of color; it's not simply Feminism that White Women Sometimes Engage With, And That's Inherently Bad, For Some Reason. Meaning, if you can't successfully demonstrate how these movements actually hurt women of color, then what you are describing isn't actually white feminism. And I have yet to see any reason why ignoring issues of sex trafficking, which, again, predominantly affects poor women of color, rejecting beauty standards, which are often Euro-centric, refusing to compare women of color to men and/or culturally appropriate non-Western "third gender" categories without doing any actual research on them in order to support white, American men's so-called "womanly" feelings, or turning a blind eye to the fetishization, harassment, and sexual violence that routinely happens to women of color at least as often if not significantly more than white women, could in any way harm women of color. Libfems, explain how refusing to do these things hurts them, or how not refusing supports them. If you can't, then it's not "white feminism," it's just good old fashioned real feminism, and you've bought too much into your own internalized misogyny and white privilege to even realize that. In other words, you, libfems, Haven't The Slightest Goddamn Clue What You're Talking About.