#misogyny anons

[persephoneflouwers]

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[transmascissues]

if you can unironically present a genuine argument full of proof as to why you are a real male, i will unironically pay you 50000$.

but, seeing as i have yet to see a good argument that explains how and why trans"men" (aka pathetic females lol) are males, i think i'm gonna end up keeping my money.

oh, of course, i would be more than happy to provide a 100% indisputable argument as to why i am a real man:

i am as swift as a coursing river.

i have all the force of a great typhoon.

i have all the strength of a raging fire.

i am mysterious as the dark side of the moon.

i rest my case. i look forward to receiving your very generous gift of $50k.

[trans-androgyne]

It is honestly starting to feel like y'all using transandrophobia are actually just girls that wanted to feel extra special. Stopped experiencing misogyny so now you need a new problem. Get a life.

This is such low-grade anon hate, I was just making fun of another anon for doing the whole worn-out “you’re just girls who want to feel special” thing in my inbox. I’ll still post this for documenting purposes as well as because it’s really funny you’re saying I don’t still experience misogyny while being misogynistic to me. Thanks for the example of transandrophobic rhetoric, but be more creative next time.

[bonefall]

.. opinions on wind runner? i feel like im one of the only ones that genuinely hates her sometimes

If you feel like the only one who genuinely hates her, I think you need to look around more. Wind Runner is a very widely disliked character, because she's often used within the story as a small antagonist who "threatens" the authority of Tall Shadow. Gray Wing dislikes her. Thunder is openly cat-racist to her. She spends several books trying to break through the moor cats' xenophobia to join a group that came to HER LAND.

Then, when Moth Flight is old enough to be a relevant character in Forest Divided, Wind Runner is turned into Yet Another mean mom the very moment Moth displays ADHD. She's contrasted to her mate Gorse Fur, who is a Soft And Good Dad, and ultimately MASSIVELY punished with the harrowing events of Moth Flight's Vision (even though, for most of that book, she's completely right.)

Ask yourself why they're especially harsh on WIND RUNNER for being mean to her child, in the arc with Tom the Fucking Wifebeater and his redemption death, plus Thunder being forced to stop being mad at his abuser Clear Sky, please.

To me, Wind Runner is an intense, ambitious woman who's demonized for it in a way that men just aren't. She's subject to several misogynistic trends within WC, plus a huge helping of xenophobia that goes absolutely unexamined. If DOTC cared at all about women, it would have treated her with the nuance she deserves.

Wind Runner is treated with nearly endless suspicion by Gray Wing through books 1 - 3, while he's bending over backwards to suck Clear Sky's toes.

Her wanting to join the group that came TO HER HOME and being a bit pushy about it earns a stronger reaction from Gray Wing than Clear Sky murdering people.

She's pressured into changing her name "to fit in," and it's still not enough. She wanted to join the group so bad she changed her name, at the request of the Mountain Cats, for a chance of being better accepted

This came after she'd already saved Jagged Peak's life when a burrow collapsed on him. She's plenty trustworthy.

She keeps doing shit to try and prove herself to this group of assholes. Remember Bumble being dragged back to her domestic abuser? Gray Wing interprets this as a power struggle, when WIND RUNNER WAS NOT EVEN PART OF THE GROUP AT THE TIME.

From Wind Runner's POV, she did something that the Moor cats wanted done. It was fucking evil. It was committing violence against another member of the out-group the cats see her as.

But who actually has the power here? Tall Shadow does.

Gray Wing said it himself that she could have come up with some excuse for Bumble to stay, and she didn't. In fact, any cat could have spoken up. No one did.

and still. STILL. Wind Runner gets nothing. Her reward is Gray Wing surmising that actually, her doing their sick dirtywork was a political move.

It's more consistent as a motivation with how Wind Runner wants to join their group. The thing she's been doing.

She only actually gets to join the group after Thunder starts publicly hurling slurs at her for suggesting they need to be ready for Clear Sky to attack them. "What do you know about peace? Last time I was here you were NOTHING BUT A ROGUE WITH A ROGUE'S NAME"

Gray Wing even starts purring when she gives birth, because her ambition goes away briefly and she "stops bossing everyone around." this is treated like a sweet thing. god forbid women retain their personalities when they have kids

She loses her first premature child to a seizure and Gray Wing starts proselytizing his religion to her. "Maybe it's a good thing your weakest child died because Jesus has them now" I want to beat him with a hammer

When her second child gets sick, Clear Sky has a bright idea that involves killing it. I refer to this as his "reverse leper colony" suggestion. He only develops a sense of humanity towards the sick when his brother's pregnant wife is in danger. Wind Runner and her kitten barely seem to clock as people to him.

It's only after her SECOND baby succumbs to a horrible, painful death that she decides the moor cats are assholes, and she goes to start her own group. It's LONG overdue. I was extremely excited to see it.

Now. Listen.

I've been treated just like Moth Flight before. I've practically heard the scolding in Book 6 Chapter 3 verbatim. I'm not downplaying anything about Wind Runner being harsh to her; being yelled at like that never fixed the problem.

What I'm saying is that this is the SAME arc that summons the hollowed-out ghost of Storm to coo that Clear Sky "never drove anyone away" with his abusive behavior and gives Tom the Wifebeater a heroic redemption death.

So why is the scolding from Wind Runner treated as unambiguously harsh? What's the difference between her and them?

Why is it that outside of this little bubble of the community, you can get buried in a flood of people crying about how "Clear Sky made Summisteaks Butt he thought it was the right thing :((( He feels bad about shoving Thunder's face in a weeping, pus-filled wound and trying to kill him :((((" but Wind Runner is mean about Moth Flight not catching a rabbit and she should be skinned alive

Why is WIND RUNNER held responsible for the death of Clear Sky's child in Moth Flight's Vision, WHEN IT WAS COMPLETELY HIS OWN FAULT??

So, why should I hate her? Because she's mean to the idiot protagonists? Because she's Yet Another Bad Mom whose actions ARE treated as Bad in the story, in the arc famous for openly weeping whenever someone's mad at their abusive dad?? When she has this whole horrific, unexamined story about how incredibly bigoted The Settlers are towards her and the extremes she goes to in order to please them?

I'm glad she's mean, actually. She should have been even meaner. I think she should have a gun

[kindlespark]

dropout discord HATED my friend and I for saying the same thing thank you for talking about kipperlily being manipulated because holy shit

lol i believe it it’s nasty in dropoutcord and im sorry you had to deal with that. i seriously do not think brennan was careful enough about writing in teacher student dynamics in fhjy because like. you cannot just introduce a subplot where a teacher coerces/kills several students under their care and then not address it at all as part of said students’ motivations and be okay with condemning one of them to death. like the fact that he did not consider the subtext and implications of that genuinely makes me so mad 😭

like i personally dont give a fuck if kipperlilly “chose” the ragestar; her mental illness was being fed into by two adults in a position of power of her. there’s no other way to interpret the jaceporter/rat grinder dynamic and yet soooo many people ignore this so they can continue to spew vitriol about a fictional teen girl. out here exonerating the adult male imperialist to call a teen girl a bitch/cunt/whore/slut (ALL REAL TERMS I HAVE SEEN PEOPLE CALL KIPPERLILLY) but they think it’s okay if they put “white” in front of it

anyway. fhjy should’ve been about how children are failed by the school system and the adults around them. it adds tremendous depth to literally every character in the show—it gives the bad kids an emotional arc in sympathising with their foils, it makes the rat grinders deeply tragic, it makes jace and porter deeply threatening. like i rly srsly thought this is where they were going this whole time like 😭😭 how did we get here

[butch-reidentified]

why do y'all have to make it a misogyny issue whenever dysphoric or trans ppl are disgusted at pussy obsession (not in a sexuality way of course) in relation to their womanhood. like i mean screaming and chanting about their vagina. it's just unsettling, i fully respect womens autonomy, that part is always untouched.

Why are you asking me this? I *am* a dysphoric person, did you even read my bio lmao

All of female anatomy and physiology has been demonized and mystified for hundreds of years. I'm only in my 20s and I grew up knowing nearly nothing about the vulva, as did most people my age. I grew up hearing about the "myth of the female orgasm" and being told pee came out the clit (or that the clit was inside the vagina, or nonexistent). I didn't know the word "labia" until I was 17. In high school, I was taught what the vas deferens was and about the male refractory period, but to this day I see arguments online about how common squirting is or if there's pee involved or not. There are MULTIPLE subreddits devoted to sharing screenshots of incorrect discussion of women's anatomy and physiology, with seemingly endless content, but nobody stops to wonder why we don't see equivalent misinformation about male bodies?? Have you tried critical thinking?

So yes, when women seek to educate, demystify, and normalize our anatomy and its functions, and to fight the shame girls and women are taught from birth to feel about their bodies and especially their genitalia, it's not "obsession," and calling it such or feeling disgusted by it is misogyny at its most basic core definition-based level. Why do you think things like the Vagina Monologues came to be? Why do you think men will spam women with dick pics but nothing is more humiliating to a woman than having her nudes leaked? Too many of yall have lost touch with reality and history.

Men never shut up about dicks and balls and fucking and fapping and nutting, even though they have no actual reason to go on about it, and nobody ever has a problem with that. But if I want to fight back against the stigma, shame, and misinformation surrounding female bodies and sexuality, it's "disgusting," "unsettling," and an "obsession." The fact that you even need to ask this question is so telling. Log off, go outside, and start paying attention to the way male vs female bodies, genitalia, and sexuality are talked about and generally viewed in society.

If "big dick energy" isn't unsettling to you but "pussy power" is, maybe try asking yourself why.

[pumpumdemsugah]

An black man got lynched and strangled in bus yesterday

But "male violence" though lol

And 4 to 7 Black women in America are murdered every single day almost exclusively by Black men, if this is competition now

5 women and girls are killed every hour globally from femicide

I'm Black. Fuck off. Come back with a less remedial " counter ". You lot genuinely think racism cancels out misogyny and will use the death of someone to do that because you're dumb, desperate and probably unemployed

You lot never have anything to say about issues that impact Black women because racialised misogyny scrambles your little brain. Even if we spun Black female issues as a race only issue, you still wouldn't care because you're a misogynist who's pissy that I'm posting words on the internet.

What a massive loser. Which one of my posts sent you over the edge ?

[peggingeddiediaz]

I've read so much bucktommy tumblr posts and ao3 fics that I'm done with buddie. Maybe you should read some and be done with it too. It's ok to admit when you're wrong.

I don't ship buddie because Buck and Eddie are hot together. I ship them because they complement each other.

Buck has always been searching for a family, for stability, for someone to love, for someone to stay, for someone to love him completely and for someone to accept his love.

Eddie, has been stuck trying to take care of everybody, carry out their plans for him, always sacrificing himself for others, never allowing himself to get what he wants without feeling guilty, unable to express his emotions freely, reluctant to ask for help.

You know what’s the beauty of buddie, even as just friends? That in the first 3 episodes of season 2, the buddie dynamic was already stablished and it gave us so much characterization. Buck, wanting to be supportive, helped Eddie out by introducing him to Carla, checking in with Bobby so that Chris could stay at the station, driving Eddie to pick up Chris after the earthquake. And Eddie, who wouldn’t normally ask for help, not only accepts it but allows Buck to continue to take care of him and Chris.

Now compare all that characterization across 7 seasons, 7 years that we got to know these characters vs 5 scenes with Tommy... You can't tell me you give up on buddie after 4 episodes with a new character whose storyline could barely fill a paragraph and be taken seriously.

Like it's ok to admit you only wanted to see Oliver kiss a man and that's it. That's fine, but miss me with all this superiority complex with shipping bucktommy.

Yeah, you guys wrote 3000 fics and innumerable posts on tumblr filled to the brim with *check notes* tropey headcanon on top of horny headcanons, gender roles, and once again buck getting female coded with stereotypical bottom tropes. Fanon buddie bore me before, and I’m already done with fanon bucktommy aka Tommy “might as well be an OC” Kinard and Evan “self insert” Buckley.

 Every single previous female love interest of Buck had more characterization than Tommy, but somehow *cough* misogyny *cough* Tommy has this insane fan support behind him by his 4th appearance. I wonder why?

I don't hate Tommy or the ship, but I'm sorry, he is not a fleshed out character, you guys just love how plain he is (so the headcanons are easier to apply) and how hot Lou is, because where was all this energy and push for a love interest to stay in the show, for any of the previous female love interests??? 

All this talk about how perfect the relationship is but when Natalia and Buck, who also had the same amount of scenes and development by her 3rd/4th episode, no one was rooting for her to stay.

[gerrysherry]

Kys Zionist cunt

Ok but to send this to a Jewish woman is so funny like anon my ancestors have survived so much and you really expect me to leave tumblr and end my life over a mean comment?

You want me dead, kill me yourself, coward!

[atthebell-moved]

hi, i completely agree that the fandom has a problem with misogyny and often fails at self-introspection. my question is, do you have any resources/tips/thoughts on how to be better about it? even, how to recognize it in yourself the first place? "ok i'll stop being a misogynist now" is a lot easier said than done, especially for people who might not be that educated on the subject, and majority of the people in this fandom are quite young as well.

this is long as fuck and possibly somewhat incoherent bc it took so long to write but i did my best

my biggest tip for people who don't know much about misogyny is to look at your own behavior and learn how to clock what you're doing as sexist.

are you criticizing a female creator? think about why you're doing it, what the actual beef you have with them is. if it seems to be just a sense of discomfort or thinking they're annoying or overly loud or pushy, think about male ccs who act the same way and why you dont consider them annoying. are you annoyed with them for being on a male cc's stream? why? does it feel like theyre taking up too much attention? do you get annoyed with them for talking too much or flirting with guys? for gaming especially-- do you get annoyed with them for not knowing something or being "bad" at a game? think about why that is and why its just funny when a male cc is bad at games or doesnt know something.

a HUGE problem i see in this fandom is the Madonna-whore complex, repackaged as the little sister-racist dichotomy (kudos to @yourlittlemenace for that phrasing).

if a female cc is deemed to be "playing nice" (doesnt talk too much, is "nice", streams with male ccs but doesnt flirt with them, isn't "overtly sexual"), she's the little sister of the group. all the male ccs "protect" her, she literally folds their laundry, she doesnt call out how people treat her, and the fandom pretends that this is a normal and cool way to treat women who are public figures. this also goes for mom/big sister/etc. if you think you haven't done this, think about all the aus where you've forced puffy into some kind of maternal or sisterly role when it made no sense. then think about how pissed people got when she decided not to be the server therapist and was "mean" to Tommy (in lore, with permission. that she didnt even need to get. see that clip i rbed earlier from her podcast.)

if the fandom decides she doesnt play nice, if she flirts with male ccs too much or stands up for herself or points out how unfair it is that she's being treated this way, she gets demeaned, harassed, and shunned by the fandom. consider, again, puffy. consider how niki flirted with wilbur and talked about misogyny and got called a racist for *checks notes* "speaking to schlatt and fundy" and "not being a native english speaker". she got called a slut and a queerbaiter for kissing another woman despite being bisexual.

consider how hard people went down on hannah for having said the r slur several years back versus how hard they went on dream for the same thing. and how people dug it up as a direct response to her being on stream with dream. consider how every time hannah talks about how unfair it is that the mcc subreddit treats her like trash, she has to delete all her tweets bc they harass her to hell and back and act like she's an asshole for pointing out their hypocrisy.

the fandom doesnt do this across the board; i shouldnt have to say this, but its not an everyone versus no one issue. some people do this outright and loud, some dont seem to realize theyre doing it, and a few people dont do it at all (incredibly rare, i can count on one hand the number of people who genuinely seem to try to avoid these issues, which is why im complaining).

in terms of lore, have you ever once done analysis on a female character? why do you think you haven't? the bechdel-wallace test is an (imperfect) way of gauging how a piece of media ignores women and prioritizes men. think about the fact that there are FOUR female ccs on the DSMP and they are continually ignored in favor of male characters. consider that puffy and aimsey both talked about trying to do genuine lore and getting shafted, either because no one was online and wouldn't put in the effort to stream with them or because they received insane amounts of criticism for breaking anything on the server, despite the clear lack of "no griefing" rules and the precedent that you can blow other people's shit up (tommy leveling one of puffy's builds, amongst many other examples).

a quick thing about ships: have you ever wondered why m/m ships are so popular? the general consensus amongst people who care about feminism and are into fandom studies is that for a long period of time, m/m was hugely popular because women are so rarely written as full and complete characters in any media. so people took to engaging with m/m ships and writing about them because they were the most fulfilling relationships, and because misogyny led them to be predisposed to be uninterested in female characters.

say an m/m ship is incredibly popular, something like, i dunno, john watson and sherlock holmes from bbc sherlock. lets also say the canonical media presents one or both of the characters with a female love interest. how do you think a fandom that prioritizes m/m ships and is primed to be disinterested in women as characters (either because of our society's role in teaching people that women do not matter or because of fandom's history in assuming female characters are not fleshed out) is going to react? if you said theyre going to send undue amounts of criticism her way and act like its an act of homophobia to give a canonically straight character a female love interest, congrats, you've figured out a huge component in fandom misogyny. take this, amplify it over several decades, and add the psychic damage that supernatural gave society. queerbaiting is bad but mistreating female characters in service of nonexistent queer relationships is also bad.

this is relevant in general but i also believe its relevant for the dsmp because of the complete lack of m/f ships. aside from phil and kristin, who are literally married irl and kristin isn't even on the server, there are no m/f ships that involve female creators. this is not, despite what you may think, due to the inherently yaoi nature of minecraft roleplay. this is because the creators, including the male ones, are afraid of the blowback of m/f flirting and how fucking awful people are to female ccs anytime it happens. once again look at niki. as another example, consider how notfounders harassed the living daylights out of mxmtoon for flirting with gnf on twitter. if i was a cc i would avoid it like the plague too considering how happy people are to dig shit up about them or accuse them of being a slut or an attention whore/"pick me girl" for speaking to a man.

one last thing, this is more about fanart than anything else but stop drawing women to look like teenage boys. the amount of fanart i see where i literally cannot tell if someone has drawn niki or tommy is fucking insane. niki has curves. draw her with them. if you cannot draw women or people outside a very specific body type you cannot draw. fatphobia and misogyny have a clear overlap.

i cant think of anything else and ive already spent forever on this. look into feminist media analysis. think twice about how you react to female ccs & female characters. consider not just what characters have interesting stories but who is allowed to have interesting stories. you might be neglecting someone who has a lot going on because you're dismissing a female character as inherently less likely to be interesting. you might not even know someone has an interesting story because the fandom neglects it so completely.

as a final little note: like i said earlier, if you're not familiar with gender & sexuality studies, you may not know this, but homophobia and transphobia are rooted in misogyny. the idea that gender is immutable and rigid is because of the patriarchy. this is why gendered slurs are used against queer people and why queer men in particular get accused of and demeaned for being feminine. your understanding of queerphobia is incomplete without considering how sexism plays a role.

also go read everything rayne fisher-quann has ever written but especially this piece on getting woman'd and listen to you're wrong about

[marzipanandminutiae]

The post about "we need feminism because there's a men's rights movement in LGBT" is from radfems. "Baeddelations" has a pinned post about being a baeddel, "men's rights" in this context pretty much means trans men speaking about being trans men. (I'm not denying issues in the community but I know you've wanted it pointing out when you've missed dogwhistles before, and the post is all very thinly veilled references.)

I did some looking into this, because I was not familiar with the term "baeddel."For anyone else who didn't know: It's an Old English word generally meaning "effeminate or castrated man" as far as I can tell, and some transfem people adopted it primarily back in the 2010s (although some still use it, like the user in question). Baeddels in the modern sense claim to focus on transmisogyny and trans women's issues...but as you say, some can lapse into prejudice against trans men. To the point where, while it doesn't seem like they ALL hold that view, it has become one of the most prominent things about the movement. Kind of like radfems and transphobia. The poster in question seemed, when I looked through their blog, to come down in the middle- there were some comments that raised my eyebrows, but not as extreme as things I saw on other blogs.

I went back and forth about what to do re: the post in question, though. Because I don't want to be associated with hatred of trans men, since. You know. I don't hate trans men. However, I do feel that the modern left, and even the LGBT community, believes misogyny has been fixed and refuses to examine the undercurrents thereof that women in these circles still struggle with.

(Trans men can be misogynistic. NB people can be misogynistic. Anyone can be misogynistic, and the community letting misogynistic people off the hook because they're not cis men, or the expectation thereof, is a real issue that I have witnessed/experienced IRL. Shoutout to the trans guy who insisted I let him do everything for me out in public, and got mad when I didn't want to, because it "made him feel more masculine" so I should apparently just shut up and act helpless, for example.)

(There's also been a lot of "not all men" going around in response to women expressing frustration with the bullshit we face for our gender, which is like. Come on. I thought we all figured out in the 2010s that no-one sensible is talking about LITERALLY all men; we just shouldn't be expected to water down our anger to make men comfortable. Tacking "but what about trans men?" onto that doesn't negate the entire rest of the conversation.)

I disagree that the post is "all thinly veiled references" because it looks like most people reblogging it are like me- folks who aren't familiar with that term but feel that there's a still a misogyny issue in progressive and queer spaces. However, because of the association with a specific movement I am not part of and largely disagree with an apparent key point of, I will be deleting it.

Do not mistake this for me recanting my personal sentiments on the matter. There is a misogyny problem in my community, because the misogyny problem in broader society remains. Trans men and NB people are not exempt from being misogynistic. This needs to be talked about, and it is deeply frustrating to me as a queer woman.

Do I even have to say "this is not for t*rfs?" Well, just in case, it is Not. Fuck off.

[tra-archive]

https://www.tumblr.com/daysofxavierspast/747612206973190144/they-can-also-go-eat-shit-and-die-mad?source=share

Words cannot describe how much I hate these people.

[bonefall]

So, I'm writing an essay on the whole STATE of misogyny in WC for one of my university classes, and I was wondering if I could ask you a couple of things! No pressure of course, please feel free to say no!

A) Could I reference your good takes with appropriate harvard referencing and links back to your blog?

B) Are there any specific moments from the books that you think should be covered the most?

C) The end result will be a visual essay, so it's like those fun infographics people on Tumblr make on like ADHD and stuff, so when it's done, would you like to be tagged to read it?

(Sorry for anon, I'm nervous lmao, but if you'd be more comfortable I'll resend this off anon)

AAY good topic! You've got a lot to work with. Absolutely feel free to reference anything I've written, and tag me when you're done.

While you're here and about to write something so legitimate, I'm also going to recommend you check out Sunnyfall's video on gender in Warrior Cats. She breaks down the arcs into numbers, directly comparing the amount of lines mollies have to toms, and examining the archetypes women are usually allowed to be.

I think it's a must-have citation in a paper about WC misogyny.

...and, I think it's insightful to look at the WCRP Forum thread about the video. Note how the respondents immediately come into the thread to complain about how the video is too long so they didn't watch it, dismissing Sunnyfall as not being entertaining enough to hold their attention, even whining that she starts with statistics to prove her point, which I'm convinced she did exactly because they would have cried that she "had no evidence" if she didn't.

I am not a scholar, so I don't know how to document or prove that the books have an impact on the audience outside of anecdotes. But I think if you do write a section about fandom, it would be worth mentioning the in-universe and metatextual apologia for Ashfur and its reflection in the real world discourse, the authorial killing of Ferncloud because of fan complains, and the utter defensiveness against the discussion of misogyny you see outside of Tumblr.

You may also want to check out Cheek by Jowl, a collection of 8 essays about sexism in xenofiction by Ursula K. Le Guin. There's a very unique manifestation of authorial bias in animal fiction, having a lot to do with how the author views "the natural world," and it's worth understanding even though Warrior Cats are so heavily anthropomorphized.

So... Warrior Cats Misogyny

I think discussing individual instances can be helpful, but I'd implore you to keep in mind what's REALLY bad about WC's misogyny is framing and the bigger picture.

Bumble's death is shocking and insulting, but it's not just that she died. It's that the POV Gray Wing sees her as a fat, useless bitch who took his mate so she deserves to be dragged back to a domestic abuser, and he's right because the writers love him so much. It's that Bumble's torture and killing only factors into how it's going to hurt a man's reputation.

It's how Clear Sky hitting, emotionally manipulating, or killing the following women,

Bright Stream (pressured into leaving her home and family)

Storm (controlled her movements and yelled at her in public)

Misty (killed for land, children stolen)

Bumble (beaten unconscious, blamed nonsensically on a fox)

Alder (child abuse, hit when she refused to attack her brother)

Falling Feather (scratched on the face, subjected to public abuse and humiliation)

Tall Shadow (thrown into murderous crowd, attacked on-sight in heaven)

Rainswept Flower ("blacked out" in anger and murdered in cold blood)

Moth Flight (scratched on the face for saying denying medical treatment is mean, taken hostage in retaliation against mother for the death of his own child, which he caused)

Willow Tail (eyes gouged out for "stirring up trouble")

Is seen as totally understandable, forgivable, or not even questioned at all, when killing Gray Wing in an act of rage would have been "one step too far" with the ridiculous Star Line.

"Kill me and live with the memory, and then let the stars know it would only matter if a single one of your murder victims was a man."

It's the way that fathers who physically abuse their kids out of their ego (Clear Sky, Sandgorse, Crowfeather) aren't treated anywhere near the same level of narrative disgust and revulsion the series has for "bad moms", even if they're displaying symptoms of a post-partum mood disorder (depression, anxiety, and rage), an umbrella of mental illnesses 20% of all new mothers experience but are heavily stigmatized with (Sparkpelt, Palebird, Lizardstripe).

It's Crookedstar's Promise giving him two evil maternal figures in a single book, while bending over backwards to make every man in a position of power still look likeable in spite of the fact they're enabling Rainflower's abuse. Leader Hailstar is soso sorry that he has to change Stormkit's name for some reason, in spite of leaders being unaccountable dictators the other 99% of the time, and Deputy Shellheart functionally does nothing to stop his own son from being abused or even do much parenting before or after the fact.

It's the way men's parental struggles are seen sympathetically, and they don't have to "pay for it" like their female counterparts (Crookedstar's PPD vs Sparkpelt's PPD, how Daisy and Cinders are held responsible for Smoky and Whisper being deadbeats, Yellowfang's endless guilt for killing her son vs Onestar's purpose in life to kill his own), even to the point where a father doesn't have to have raised their kids at all to have a magical innate emotional connection to them (Tree's father Root, Tom the Wifebeater, Tigerstar and Hawkfrost).

It's less speaking lines and agency for female characters, being reduced to accessories in the lives of their mates and babies, women getting less diversity in their personalities, with even major ex-POV characters eventually becoming "sweet mom" tropes.

You could zoom in on any one of these examples and have an amoeba try to argue with you that "Oh THIS makes sense because X" or "Ah well my headcanon perfectly explains this thing" or "MY mother/girlfriend was abusive/toxic/neglectful and I've decided that you are personally attacking ME by having issues with how a character was written or utilized," but the beleaguered point,

That I keep trying to hammer in, over and over, across books worth of posts,

Is that these are trends. More than just a couple one-off examples. It's the fabric that has been woven over years, showing a lack of interest in, or even active prejudice of, women on behalf of the writers.

LONG STANDING trends, which have only gotten worse as the series progressed. From Yellowfang being harshly punished with a born evil son who ruins her life in TPB and the mistreatment of Squirrelpaw that begins in TNP, all the way up to the 7 Fridgenings of DOTC and Sparkpelt's PPD being a major character motivator for her son Nightheart.

So, I would stress that in your paper, and structure it less as "the Sparkpelt slide" and "the Yellowfang slide," and more as "The paternal vs maternal abuse" slide, and "the violence against women" slide. They're really big issues, there's tons of examples for each individual thing.

Anyway to leave off on a funny, look at this scene in Darkest Hour that I find unreasonably hilarious,

"Everyone who matters to me; my truest friend, my sensible and loyal warrior, the wisest deputy I've ever known, and 2 women." -Firestar, glorious idiot

He can't even think of a single trait for either of them what the hell does "formidable pair" mean lmaooo, when I finished a reread about a year ago this line killed me on impact.

[maingh0st]

The hate Taryn gets is way too exaggerated and disproportionate. It’s just straight up misogyny at this point, in my opinion. The fandom needs to get over it.

I could literally write a treatise about Taryn-hate at this point lmao. I’m going to share some thoughts (this actually got quite long), but I want to include a big ole disclaimer: at the end of the day, everybody gets to engage in fandom in the ways they want. everyone is free to love or hate whichever characters they want, for the reasons that feel valid and real to them. that being said, the treatment of Taryn specifically is really troubling and bizarre to me. 

I think it’s worth pointing out that when we say Taryn-hate seems misogynistic, that means a lot more than just “people who hate Taryn hate her because she’s a girl.” in my opinion, fandom misogyny toward her often gets couched in broader terms. some examples of what I mean by this are:

(1) Taryn does things that are bad and I don’t like that - uhhhh okay. everybody in these books does shitty things, so let’s think about why specifically the actions of Taryn (a 17-18 year old girl being manipulated by multiple men in her life) fall into the category of unredeemable for you. the reason we might point to this being misogynistic is because it’s a double standard that doesn’t apply to other characters—we’re willing to forgive Cardan his cruelty, or centuries-old Madoc for the trauma he's inflicted and his ongoing need for bloodshed, but Taryn is just a stupid, evil girl for trying to secure her place in Elfhame through the levers of power that are available to her. she can never be forgiven nor redeemed no matter how loyal she is to Jude moving forward. why is that? what sin of hers are so particularly evil to warrant this response? and we have to answer these questions in the context of Elfhame & its moral code, not in the context of our own world.

(2) I could never see myself acting in the way Taryn does and therefore I don’t like her - okay? I can never see myself acting like Madoc, or even like Vivi (don’t get me started on Vivi & the fact that she gets passes Taryn never does), but that doesn’t mean I can’t have empathy for them. I understand that we experience the books through Jude’s perspective, so we’re automatically more prone to rooting for her—and to be clear, I love Jude! but fiction challenges us to experience the world through other perspectives, and it’s my opinion that Taryn acts in a way that is completely consistent and understandable with her experience of Elfhame. “I’m not like you,” she tells Jude. “I want to belong here. Defying them makes everything worse. You never asked me before you went against Prince Cardan—you didn’t care what it brought down on either of our heads.” 

while Jude’s defiance is held up as girlboss behavior (by me, too! I love a “get worse” arc), Taryn’s more traditionally feminine approach to finding her place in Elfhame is reviled (@slightlyrebelliouswriter23 has a great post on the fawn response to trauma & on passivity). more on this point below. 

(3) Taryn isn’t a “girl’s girl” - I am begging fandom to think critically about why Taryn betrays Jude & what that says not just about Elfhame, but about our world. these girls live in a world that affords them little power and agency. we meet them on the cusp of adulthood, and they’re both hyper-aware that they need to secure their place in Elfhame. Jude refers to knighthood as “earning” her place and is uninterested in marriage, but Taryn seems aware that she’s more likely to secure her place through the latter option (and also expresses the fear that Jude is going to leave her behind). it’s an oversimplification, but a useful one for the sake of this conversation, to point out that Jude chooses a more traditionally masculine approach, while Taryn chooses a more traditionally feminine one.

the tragedy is that this world—and particularly the men in their lives—pit them against one another. Locke offers Taryn the thing she wants most, requires a vow of her secrecy, and then begins flirting with Jude (and that's not even to mention him being a gancanagh!). at a point in her story where Madoc and Oriana are the only family who are still around for Taryn, Madoc capitalizes on Taryn’s ignorance (and also her awareness that she's never been the favorite daughter) & uses her to betray Jude. I almost never see these complexities brought up in conversations about Taryn, which is just gross to me, and echoes the ways that patriarchal power structures pit women against each other in the real world. 

I’ve seen people argue that while Jude’s approach is also flawed, she at least doesn’t betray Taryn. and like… kind of? she certainly doesn’t betray Taryn as directly as Taryn betrays her—but some of that just strikes me as dumb luck. consider what might’ve happened if Dain hadn’t died at the end of book one. what lengths might he have asked Jude to go to in order to prove her loyalty to him? or if we rewind even further—it’s honestly just dumb luck that someone didn’t harm or kill Taryn (Valerian, for example, could've chosen the wrong window). Jude’s antagonism of Cardan & his friends had a direct effect on Taryn’s life, and even though Taryn begged her to stop, she bullheadedly charged on. the difference is that Jude’s risky decisions ultimately work out for her, while Taryn has to face the consequences of hers not panning out the way she wanted them to. 

this isn't exhaustive, and there’s so much more I could say, but this is already so long. so in conclusion, the reason all this matters to me personally is twofold: 

at its best, fiction teaches us empathy. part of why I love tfota is because it takes characters & dynamics that are really messy & helps you, the reader, understand where everyone is coming from & why. the fact that we love Madoc is a testament to fiction’s ability to do this. so why is a teenage girl treated like the true villain of this story? what about her makes us incapable of empathy? why, in the mind of the fandom, is she not allowed forgiveness (or even just a chance at redemption) for the harm she's caused, while other characters are? I see people stanning Nicasia, who actively tortured Jude (over a boy, no less!!) ffs

fandom misogyny reflects our world. why are people eager to forgive toxic male love interests, yet hold the bar impossibly high for girls? why is there such a narrow set of choices & behaviors that we consider acceptable for female characters? Holly wrote a story about two young women carving out places for themselves in a world hostile to them, hurting each other in the process, and ultimately deciding to forgive, love, and root for one another—and fandom has taken that complex narrative and pitted them against one another, upholding one as the girlboss who can do no wrong while treating the other as scum. misogyny thrives on women treating each other like the problem, so if this is our attitude toward a fictional story where we’re afforded direct looks into characters’ thoughts, how much worse are we going to be in the real world, faced with real, imperfect women?

anyways, in conclusion: you're entitled to dislike taryn, but if you feel such vitriol toward her that you're literally making hate posts (or commenting under fanart of her!! holy shit), I invite you to interrogate where that hate actually comes from. fin.

[trans-androgyne]

reading a lot of antitransmasc posts because I'm trying to block people on twitter and it rly feels like the queer community just took the "pick-me girl" misogynistic stereotype and shoved in onto transmasc people. i even saw on twitter someone saying "did you do it. did the men pick you." in response to a gay trans guy and it just felt the same.

i'm not a binary guy (nb guy + nb gal + secret third thing) but I've felt the same pressure irl from queer groups when i assert my masc gender or preference for other masc-aligned nbs (i'm butch4butch). i think it's weird how misogynistic a lot of intracommunity antitransmasc sterotypes are, especially when other queer gals are the ones mainly supporting them. i'm not sure if this is just a me thing though? have other transmascs talked about this at all?

Yuck. No I’ve definitely noticed something similar. It feels like the Progressive version of “transmascs transition to get male privilege” with Pick-Me Girl flavoring. They genuinely only don’t recognize it as misogyny because they don’t believe you can be misogynistic towards people who aren’t women (people have said this to me directly). Newsflash: you can be, and you are.

[rickybaby]

I don't think the level of hate towards Daniel would reach the level of calling him Nepo baby. Just because a Christian likes him, f1tiktok is really pathetic.

The Daniel who had to wait tables at 17 to raise money for him to go to Europe? The Daniel whose parents managed to raise just enough funds to send him to Europe for a year and he knew he had to do everything to get spotted by Red Bull if he ever wanted to continue racing? The Daniel who didn’t get paid in his first year racing in F1 because Red Bull somehow had to get back their investment? The Daniel who got braces only after he got his first pay check in F1? That Daniel they’re calling a nepo baby??

They also forget even Christian who apparently likes Daniel so much, was unwilling to pay Daniel the same amount of money as a much younger less experienced Verstappen in 2018 until Dietrich Mateschitz put that offer on the table …