#or have you not unpacked the fact that not all men are your oppressors

[trans-androgyne]

I love men idc. The world built me not to; I’m not a man, I am a lesbian, I’ve been through hell at the hands of some of the worst men out there, and I am still put in a lot of scary situations around them. But men as a whole deserve to be loved and celebrated for who they are, and we need to recognize the kinds of pressures that are on men to constantly perform, to constantly do, to constantly prove themselves, and the kind of fucked up shit that can do to a person. I feel like trans people in general have a special perspective on this matter and I hope we can use it to extend our love to all kinds of men, cis, trans, and anything else.

It doesn’t help that when people hear “man,” too many instantly think “cishet, white, abled man,” which is exactly what the patriarchy & white supremacy want you to think (though these men also deserve love and compassion and care). Don’t put your suffering under systems of power on individual men. And remember, you never have to prove yourself as a man to be one.

[spacelazarwolf]

i just keep thinking abt how that guy said "its transphobia and misogyny. let your experiences unite you with cis women, trans women, and enbies, not separate you"

and like idk its like we can't use transmisndry/transandrophobia/atm/etc bc its transmisogynistic. but we also cant use transmisogyny bc thats only for trans fems and trans women. but we cant use misogyny either bc we're not women. like you said it doesnt matter what word(s) we use or even if we don't use any words at all, they still get mad at us.

but also, why does us trying to give a name to our experiences separate us from those groups? all of those groups can experience atm in various ways. why is it that using the term transmisogyny does not separate trans fems from those groups? why does using the term exorsexism does not separate enbies from that group? (assuming these people even agree exorsexism exists, some of them dont)

and the assumption that all of those identities listed are completely separate really bothers me. all of those can and do overlap. how can i as a transfemmasc multigender enby, separate myself from those groups by describing some of my experiences, when i AM those groups?

(im not going to even bother with the fact that cis men weren't included, we already know why)

imo it's because the idea that women (and people they can group in with women) forming separatist groups and separating themselves from MenTM is actually feminist and girlboss and just Protecting Them From Their Oppressors, whereas any other group doing it (not even just men as a group, but i see this shit happen to jews, black people, indigenous people, people with closed practices, etc.) is just trying to make themselves feel special or they think they're better than everyone else. also people just still straight up do not believe trans men are oppressed.

also it's particularly hilarious bc like. so much conversation around anti transmasculinity is about the fact we share a lot of experiences with both cis women and trans women. i can't tell you how many butch cis women, intersex people, and trans women and femmes have expressed to me that they have experienced something similar to what i describe in my posts. and the thing is, we have been talking about this kind of thing in queer circles for forever. we've talked about how butches are demonized because of their masculinity, we've talked about how trans women are forced to present as feminine as possible so as not to be seen as a threat, we've talked about how nonbinary people who were assigned male at birth and choose to present more masculine are demonized and stripped of their identity. but putting a name to it means there's a systemic problem in our community, not just Problematic Individuals Who Are Bad Who Are Totally Not Us So We Don't Need To Unpack Any Of Our Biases Uwu.

[transmascpetewentz]

if you had to spend even one day as an actual homosexual male in my country, you'd fucking kill yourself out of despair.

i am so FUCKING SICK AND TIRED of evil anglo westerners like you treating homosexuality like an aesthetic! we are not your constume! stop appropriating us!

i'm ANGRY because i experience homophobia every single day despite the fact that i hide who i am from the rest of my society, and then i go on the internet thinking it's the one place i can openly be myself... and what do i see?

gay male spaces being OVERRUN with BIOLOGICAL FEMALES who live under the DELUSION that they are homosexual males! and i fucking slam my laptop shut in anger! i'm fucking sick of you people!

WE CAN'T EVEN HAVE A SINGLE SPACE FOR OURSELVES ONLINE.

you have no idea what it's like to be an actual gay man!

you have no idea what it's like to laughed at, taunted, called "faggot" as you walk through your school hallways.

you have no idea what it's like to be excluded and socially ostracized by the majority of your male peers because they view you as inherently dirty and disgusting.

you have no idea of the PAIN you feel when your first highschool crush — the one boy who isn't repulsed by you and enjoys your company — ends up being a straight boy who never saw you as anything more than a "buddy" and abandons you the second he gets a girlfriend.

you have no idea what it's like to live a LIE, to conceal who you really are, to lie and say you're straight when someone questions you for your own safety, despite the fact that hiding you true self only makes you even more miserable and eats away at you every single day.

you have no idea what it's like to wallow in a puddle of your own misery and loneliness, knowing you are going to die alone & unloved due to the miserable circumstances of your own society.

you haven't SUFFERED nearly enough to be able to understand what being a homosexual male is truly like.

you have never experienced any of these things, because you are not homosexual males, yet you still have the loudest voices in online gay male communities.

it's not fair!

why should you get to be happy and enjoy LARPing as a gay man despite being female, while i have to suffer every single day? you don't deserve it.

and, yes, i know you people not my main oppressors. i DESPISE heterosexual males a lot more than i despise you, don't worry. you're not the ones killing us, but i am still irritated with the erasure of digital male homosexual spaces, as well as the transing of male fictional characters, because those two are the only coping mechanisms i have to distract me from my awful reality — and you people have taken that away from me too.

you might argue that i'm mean or hateful or a bad person because of the way i talk, but can you really blame me? the world left me no choice but to be full of HATE and BITTERNESS.

i am extremely disappointed in, mad at and saddened by your community & how you spiritually degrade, humiliate, disrespect and erase real homosexual males.

your blog is a mockery of us. that's all.

This anon is really funny, because even if I didn't experience homophobia, you act like transphobia doesn't exist. There's a lot to unpack here, so I'll respond under the cut.

if you had to spend even one day as an actual homosexual male in my country, you'd fucking kill yourself out of despair.

The suicide rate of trans people in my country (USAmerica) is 50% lmfao. While I'm currently in an okay place mentally, the same can't be said for most others in situations similar to mine. I try to use the mental energy that I do have to do activism that will help me and others like me.

i am so FUCKING SICK AND TIRED of evil anglo westerners like you treating homosexuality like an aesthetic! we are not your constume! stop appropriating us!

Trans men exist in non-western countries. The reason that you don't know of us is because it is literally too dangerous for us to come out in countries that do not accept us. The only reason I'm even out to a few people is because my gender nonconformity was obvious before I even realized I was trans, so being visibly trans wouldn't change much in terms of how I'm treated. I also lived in a country where being gay and/or trans is illegal before I moved to USAmerica, and I was targeted there for my gender nonconformity even though I didn't know I was trans whilst living there. Even though I live in USAmerica now, I'm not divorced from the reality of what it's like to be queer in a country where things are worse.

i'm ANGRY because i experience homophobia every single day despite the fact that i hide who i am from the rest of my society, and then i go on the internet thinking it's the one place i can openly be myself... and what do i see?

I, too, experience homophobia every single day, even though I try to hide my homosexuality. Being AFAB doesn't exempt you from experiencing homophobia. Instead, I get to hear what cishets say when they think no gays are in the room. People like me are treated as jokes and predators at the same time.

gay male spaces being OVERRUN with BIOLOGICAL FEMALES who live under the DELUSION that they are homosexual males! and i fucking slam my laptop shut in anger! i'm fucking sick of you people!

Actually, most gay male spaces are hostile to trans men, which has caused us to form our own spaces. If you go to our spaces and then get mad that you see trans men, cry about it. Also, the use of "you people" is so telling. Don't the people in your country refer to gays as "you people" or similar? So don't do the same to trans people.

you have no idea what it's like to be an actual gay man! you have no idea what it's like to laughed at, taunted, called "faggot" as you walk through your school hallways. you have no idea what it's like to be excluded and socially ostracized by the majority of your male peers because they view you as inherently dirty and disgusting. you have no idea of the PAIN you feel when your first highschool crush — the one boy who isn't repulsed by you and enjoys your company — ends up being a straight boy who never saw you as anything more than a "buddy" and abandons you the second he gets a girlfriend.

Actually, yes I do know what that is like! I've had those things fucking happen to me! Except for me, it's not just homophobia, it is transandrophobia as well. People see me as a predator and potential rapist any time I try to express any attraction to men. Why are cis people trying to educate trans people on what it's like to be socially ostracized? Lol. Lmao even.

you have no idea what it's like to live a LIE, to conceal who you really are, to lie and say you're straight when someone questions you for your own safety, despite the fact that hiding you true self only makes you even more miserable and eats away at you every single day.

...are you fucking serious right now. You, cis person, have no idea what it's like to actually live a lie, to lie and say you're a woman and dress like a woman for your safety even though it makes you even more miserable and eats away at you every single day! I understand that cis gays face homophobia but are you fucking serious right now? I really hope that you're joking.

you have no idea what it's like to wallow in a puddle of your own misery and loneliness, knowing you are going to die alone & unloved due to the miserable circumstances of your own society.

Actually yes I do because I am a transsexual man. Except due to being raised as a girl, I have been taught to accept dehumanization from cis men and women alike. I had to spend years unlearning the misogyny I was raised to accept, and I still have a lot more work to do. The thing is, if I was to say something like the statement above to someone, I would be called an "edgy teenage girl faking depression for attention" because you have to be a cis man for your problems to be taken seriously.

you haven't SUFFERED nearly enough to be able to understand what being a homosexual male is truly like.

The only requirements of being a homosexual male is to identify as male and be homosexual. That's it. There isn't a required amount of suffering that you must go through to receive your gay man card, and even if there was, every gay trans man has suffered far more than whatever the requirement is.

you have never experienced any of these things, because you are not homosexual males, yet you still have the loudest voices in online gay male communities.

Actually we have experienced these things, because we are homosexual males, and we face transandrophobia as well as homophobia. We also do not have the loudest voices in online gay male communities. If you're a user on this side of Tumblr, you are either invading transmasc spaces and acting like they are the entire community, or you are in an echo chamber that tells you that we are the loudest in the community.

why should you get to be happy and enjoy LARPing as a gay man despite being female, while i have to suffer every single day? you don't deserve it.

What is it about my blog that makes you think I enjoy being transsexual? I constantly talk about how awful people are to me, how my sexuality and gender are constantly targeted by others, and how all of these problems are systemic. I do not enjoy facing systemic oppression on the basis of my gender and sexuality.

and, yes, i know you people not my main oppressors. i DESPISE heterosexual males a lot more than i despise you, don't worry. you're not the ones killing us, but i am still irritated with the erasure of digital male homosexual spaces, as well as the transing of male fictional characters, because those two are the only coping mechanisms i have to distract me from my awful reality — and you people have taken that away from me too.

Guess what—you, as a cis man, are perfectly able to relate to trans male characters. If a character being trans makes you unable to relate to them anymore, maybe you should examine what makes you believe that you are so different from trans men. Maybe it's because you don't see us as human.

you might argue that i'm mean or hateful or a bad person because of the way i talk, but can you really blame me? the world left me no choice but to be full of HATE and BITTERNESS.

You are not a transphobe because you face homophobia. You facing homophobia was not what convinced you that trans men aren't people. You are using your experiences with homophobia as an excuse to be transandrophobic while the root of your bigotry is actually a form of systemic oppression just like homophobia, except one where you are part of the oppressor class.

i am extremely disappointed in, mad at and saddened by your community & how you spiritually degrade, humiliate, disrespect and erase real homosexual males.

And I am disappointed in how your community excludes, ostracizes, fetishizes, and disrespects transsexual men. Except y'all are way louder about the issue of us existing than we are about the regular dehumanization that we face from y'all.

your blog is a mockery of us. that's all.

Cry about it.

[horce-divorce]

And ykw, in re: queer people eating up terf rhetoric uncritically, I'm STILL reeling about how, when I came back from Twitter, i was seeing all these ads for Folx and Plume on Tumblr, and the ONLY comments and reblogs were attacks, things saying "this company exploits trans people, don't use it."

Plume is a company run BY trans people. It's a bunch of trans doctors who will prescribe you HRT via telehealth and do all your labs, refills, needles etc for like $99/mo (last time i checked). Folx is the same but a bit cheaper and operates in different states, in an attempt to cover gaps in trans Healthcare coverage.

As soon as I started blocking terfs I stopped seeing those comments. But I also stopped seeing anyone talking about Folx or Plume. Point blank. I dont even get the ads for it anymore. It's like everyone just absorbed the idea that they're "preying on trans people" by giving you HRT, which is TERF 101 LEVEL SHIT. None of you even fucking Googled it!!!

Like honestly I'm pretty bitter about this whole thing, and the fact that I've not yet seen ANYONE talk about this or own up to it in the 2-3 years since???? Folx and Plume are both still around. I've had to consider using them multiple times even in relatively "safe" states like Michigan, because sure, your insurance might cover HRT, but good luck finding a doctor who will prescribe it, because PP doesn't do HRT there, there's like 4 doctors in the whole state that will, and they will be like a 6 hour drive from you if they're accepting patients at all.

So like idk especially with all the absolute HORSE SHIT that you guys like to put TPOC, intersex ppl, asexual ppl, and trans men thru at the mere SUGGESTION of terfs, I just have to wonder how many of you are STILL repeating word-for-word terf rhetoric without unpacking it. (I mean, in addition to those of you I SEE STILL DOING THIS.) You may be critically/outwardly against TERFS, but if you don't actually take ANY time to block them, or even recognize and challenge their rhetoric in your head, you arent doing enough to avoid them. Cause you're STILL repeating it and you look foolish, WHICH WAS THE GOAL, BTW. To make queer (esp trans) people look foolish and disorganized, and to drive a wedge between our communities about struggles we actually fucking share.

Another example: I've said it before and I'll say it fucking again, "trans men can't speak to being oppressed bc you are MEN and therefore have Male Privilege, SILENCE, OPPRESSOR," is the SAME ARGUMENT from a few years ago about "ace and aro ppl aren't queer bc you don't experience sexual attraction, you can't be oppressed for something you dont experience, therefore, silence, cishet!" Signed, an asexual gnc transmasc. This was another instance of queerphobic, divisive terf rhetoric getting passed around uncritically for YEARS. (I can't speak to this bc I'm not a lesbian but it does feel eerily similar to "bi lesbians are harmful to our community" as well, that whole, "anything that could even feasibly one day sorta be tied back to Men means its #unsafe" vibe, but also a very, "anyone queerer than a cis political lesbian is a threat to our community," vibe, which feels r/dfemmy to me.)

I see people TALK about the dark ages of asexual hatred on this site, but I dont see a lot of you dissecting how that happened or how to prevent it from happening again to other communities. I see people talking about "wow everyone on this site sure was unhinged about asexual ppl" and then turning around and saying shit like "transandrophobia truthers." fucking look at yourselves.

[skykittywhatchamahcallit]

ive seen your posts, and saying that radfems believe literally every single man ever is Wicked and Not Oppressed In Any Way (and therefore we completely disregard any other axis of oppression such as race, sexuality and class) is quite the strawman.

i have met some pretty dreadful women and girls and relatively decent boys. radfems do not believe men are intrinsically evil or other sex essentialist bs.. there is nuance in oppression as sex is not the only way to be oppressed, but even rich (in the few cases where its the women own money and not her husband/father/male relatives) western, white, straight, feminine women experience misogyny; in fact its literally the only way a woman so privileged can experience oppression, in the form rape (96% of rapists are men including men who rape men), domestic abuse, wage gap, glass ceiling, harassment at work, etc... all problems faced by women disportionately/solely, and who even the most oppressed man alive would not face, and when men face violence, it is mostly carried out onto them by men.

the majority of serial killers and rapists and domestic and animal abusers are overwhelmingly men and in a system and culture that protects violent men and fosters antisocial behaviour in men... (its almost like... a system of male violence?? caused by male socialisation and privileges under patriarchy that makes it easier for men to gather together and do deplorable things) and women face fgm and sexual violence and honour killings and are unwanted by their families and coerced into prostitution or forced to give birth its very clear to me that sex based oppression is real and affects our lives like a lot.

and being nicer to men wont fix any of these things.

and women and teenage girls who play in a 16 to 1 male dominated hobby have been sent letters with sperm in them and women have been shown to play less aggressively when they think theyre playing against a man online... idk suddenly it think its okay. to not include trans women in female only chess tournaments... its a 16:1 hobby there'd probably be a lot of them and usually these places want to include nonbinary people as well and then its just a queer space i suppose. so its not even those who id as women only anymore; then theres no place for young girls to play chess anymore.

im going to reread will to change this evening. It's been like a long time (6 am here sorry to bother you) but idk probably not gonna change my mind on an entire millennia spanning structure designed to subjugate female people or whatever... you probably arent going to either. change your mind, that is. you will likely not even read this, and people are going to continue to mischaracterise radical feminism, and i will lie on the floor,.. why

I’m not mischaracterizing radical feminism at all, I’m afraid. The essentialism comes down to “all women victims, all men oppressors” whether it’s ever meant to or not. We see irl white women weaponize their sex and their race to oppress black men(who are seen as predators for being black and for being men).

The mere fact there is no framework and minimal sources and support group for the reformation of men is what currently makes it difficult-er to move forward. As bell hooks succinctly put it “in order to have loving men, we must love men.”

When we forget that the enemy is the patriarchy(the framework that puts men and women into seperate, distinct categories with rigid gender roles) and instead believe the root(as radical is meant to be used as in the terms of Radical Feminism) is men. We forget, brush over, ignore how women add into the patriarchal landscape by making patriarchal men and women.Yes, this is our work to do as well, even as females, as social women. To unpack and recognize how we may be contributing to this system of oppression. Misogyny is not solely a male problem, and it is everyone’s job to learn and teach how to unpack it.

[glutenfreetitty]

No but I am literally at my wit’s end with the discourse between lesbians and bi women. Like I’m not even on twitter or even spend that much time here anymore, but it’ll just pop up somehow anyway. Last night I saw this tiktok video where this bi woman was explaining that she will only pursue relationships with other bi people, because cishet men objectify and don’t respect bisexuality and lesbians are biphobic and self-righteous. 

I’m not saying that’s an unfounded argument to make, there very much is rampant biphobia among lesbians, but this tiktoker went on to say that lesbians hold the same space in her mind as cishet men.

What???? I don’t know how many more ways there are of saying this, LESBIANS ARE NOT OPPRESSORS OF WOMEN. The social power and privilege held by a cishet man is not comparable to that of a lesbian. That isn’t to diminish a lesbian’s ability to hold prejudiced views about bisexuality, and certainly doesn’t mean that lesbians who do so don’t deserve to be called out and held accountable for upholding biphobia. But lesbians do not have the social power to oppress bisexual women. Holding lesbians and cishet men in the same regard is fucking lesbophobia. 

And this video gets even *better* because this white bisexual woman wanted to add a comment about how white lesbians are racist and are blind to their own whiteness. The thing is, that is often true, and is a warranted critique to make. It makes me think of all the callout posts directed toward cis white gay men, and holding them accountable for their lack of inclusivity and racism, which is very much deserved, but then the message totally goes over the heads of other white queer people. Like, we’ve established white gay men as the scape goat of racism in queer spaces, and I guess white lesbians as well, but they are not the only ones who engage in those problematic behaviors. 

I don’t know what white bisexual, pansexual, trans, asexual, queer person needs to hear this, but those takes on cis white gay men’s unwillingness to unpack their white privilege and be mindful of the space they take up as a white person in a queer space, are very much about you as well as a white queer person. Scapegoating white cis white gay men and lesbians is you deflecting from your own fucking white privilege and upholding racism in queer spaces.

Anyway, this commenter on the video got a ton of replies supporting her take, mostly from other white bisexual people, and I just think it’s so telling how lesbians have to (and should, don’t get me wrong, I’m just pointing out a double standard here) answer for our problematic behaviors, but then I guess bisexual women don’t? I guess they get to just? Blame it all on lesbians?

What I’m getting at here is that lesbians are held to a different standard than our queer counterparts. You’re just not going to fucking convince me that racism, transphobia, biphobia, and general toxicity is exclusive to the lesbian community. I want to be clear, I don’t want to diminish the fact that those things very much exist in lesbian spaces or imply that because other queer people participate in these behaviors as well that lesbians don’t deserve to be held accountable for their actions. 

But the comment section in this video was soo fucking telling, and it extends beyond the comments, or this particular video, or even online discourse. Like, the fact that these white bisexual women really felt that they could say “white lesbians are racist” without acknowledging their own whiteness or how they walk through the world as a queer, but white person, is quite revealing.

Sure, recently cis white gay men have been called out on their problematic behaviors, but it seems like that typically exists in online spaces. I have fucking never seen a gay man have to explain himself the way lesbians do. Again, not implying that lesbians shouldn’t be held accountable, just pointing out the double standard here and what it says about the way we see lesbians. 

Or how about the notion that lesbians are inherently transphobic? Again, I understand that this notion is not entirely unfounded. There are certainly lesbians who hold transphobic beliefs that endanger trans people, and deserve the backlash they get. I’m just saying, there are plenty of non-lesbian identifying people who hold similar transphobic views and I don’t ever see anyone other than lesbians having to answer for the transphobia of other lesbians. Like what, are you telling me you’ve never heard a bisexual or pansexual person make a transphobic comment? Gay men? Fucking straight people? How about the fact that currently the most well known TERF on the planet right now is JK Rowling, a straight woman? Do you think the people who question lesbians and are distrustful of them take that same energy to straight women, or any other group of people? That’s not even getting into how there are, and always have been, trans lesbians, and the idea that lesbianism is exclusive to trans identities is both historically inaccurate and fucking invalidating to a number of experiences.

I am just fucking sick of y’all. It’s not that the problematic behaviors you’ve noticed in lesbians is wrong, or that you shouldn’t call it out, it’s the fucking double standard you hold lesbians to. It’s the fact that you will designate lesbians as the root of all troubles facing the queer community, and not fucking self-reflect on how you participate in similarly problematic behaviors. Just say you hate lesbians and leave.

[theseerasures]

so you wanna revolution (but everyone’s being so mean)

this post is a response to a lot of little flare ups that have happened in the past few weeks, but most particularly this post, and responses like these. my usual approach whenever someone has an opinion in front of me in this septic tank of opinions is to just ignore them to death, but this line of rhetoric has been flying around a lot lately, and isn’t going away anytime soon. i don’t think banging my head against this particular pinata will finally break it wide open to reveal the sweet sweet candy of complete and total anti-racism, but as an ally in this fight i’d still rather it be MY head instead of, say, someone with even less time and mental energy to spare, and more cranial trauma.

you all want a civil, even-handed explanation for why you need to put aside your opinions and hurt feelings and just learn? why these activists aren’t giving you the patience and understanding you feel you deserve? then let’s unpack this shit.

for the sake of argument i’m gonna take it as a given that the allies who protest that they’d be better at helping/more people would help if everyone were nicer to them ARE coming from a place of sympathy and desire to help. i’m not here to question anyone’s motives: i’m sure you’re also heartbroken about senseless black death and have been shaking your metaphorical fist at the injustice. but i want to dig a little deeper to figure out why your sympathies manifest so frequently and comfortably in critiques of how people talk to you/other theoretical allies rather than actions or conversations that actually dismantle the systems you’re supposed to be against, and to do that, i’ve laid out a few things that motivate comments like the above.

1) Don’t I have a right to feel hurt when someone is mean to me?

this is already a very commonly discussed point. yes! you do. but get a god damn sense of perspective about it, people are dying. it is perfectly normal–particularly if you’re coming from a position of privilege–to feel shocked or hurt when someone brusquely corrects you for doing/saying something you thought was on the level. no one is asking you to get rid of these feelings (at least, not all at once); what we ARE asking is that you not make the whole thing about your hurt feelings, rather than trying to learn from the critique. derailing productive discussions about what you’re all ostensibly here to do (ie., antiracist activism) so you can bicker over Robert’s Rules does not a good ally make. when you do that, you are implicitly declaring that there is nothing in the world so important that it can’t be postponed in favor of how YOU feel. your feelings cannot be more important than black lives. if the implication is that you won’t help if people are mean to you, you are essentially trying to hold the movement hostage for the sake of your own feelings.

2) We’re all working together. Shouldn’t I get equal say in how we do things?

short answer: no. long answer: if you’ve just jumped onboard the antiracism train, it might help to think of it as a skill that you need to practice and develop like any other. activism requires training and work, and the people who have been doing it for longer generally tend to be better at it. you should try listening to them and thinking about what they say instead of going with your gut response, because your gut response at the moment of criticism is most likely guided by emotional defensiveness. this doesn’t mean that you don’t get ANY say; saying something wrong and being corrected is an essential and constructive part of the process, but Jesus CHRIST learn to read the room. if you’re with people who have been immersed in this work for years, try LEARNING from them instead of criticizing the way they say things. if you all can appreciate asshole artists, critics, and comedians in other aspects of culture, you can definitely learn from activists who don’t have the patience to hold your hand every time you make a mistake.

3) You catch more flies with honey–that’s just how the world works.

sure, okay–i want you to take a moment to recognize the incredible gall and presumption to come freshly into a history and movement that has existed in some form for more than FOUR HUNDRED YEARS and speak to it as if it has no experience with “how the world works.” what you are just now realizing might be an actionable issue is a lived reality every day for black people. the fact that you immediately feel comfortable telling them how to secure their liberation and aren’t comfortable when they correct you is the height of white privilege. this is how knowledge and politics get colonized: colonizers come in under the guise of “helping,” adopt a position that they say is more “rational” or “worldly” compared to that of the colonized, and try to take it over for the colonized’s “own good.” if you are in fact trying to help marginalized people improve their situations, DO NO PRESUME to know how to address their problems better than they do. and if someone calls you out on it, learn to be better.

4) Shouldn’t we be on the side of reasonable discussions? People don’t learn from being namecalled a white supremacist, even when they get over themselves.

you know what? you’re right. education is a hugely important part of activism, and even beyond that, the cohesion and efficacy of activist movements do depend on its members treating each other with a certain generosity. black people have shown us a remarkable level of generosity by letting us–those who have been complicit in their oppression for centuries–into their movement, teaching us how to be most constructive and forgiving us when we make mistakes. so practice being generous to THEM instead of demanding more from them. recognize that it takes an immense amount labor to offer well-thought-out critiques to your shitty actions, and even more to have a long conversation with you. realize that attempting to communicate to you why you should care about their lives and livelihood is a deeply painful and traumatic experience. have some of the fucking empathy that you’re demanding from them! think about how terrible you’re feeling about all the 2020 tumult, and then think about how everything that’s happened this year has been orders of magnitude worse for the black community, and how terrible they must be feeling as a result. think about the fact that these moments of high activism DO NOT LAST FOREVER, so many activists are rightly prioritizing direct action and do not have time to guide you through your emerging wokeness. of course learning about why what you did was wrong is important, but the right way to do that is not to pester black people to educate you. the resources are out there. other, more experienced allies are out there. if you’re behind in a class, the solution isn’t to demand that the rest of the class stop to help you–the responsibility is on YOU to do the extra work to catch up.

5) But aren’t I being generous already? I’m offering to help these people even though I’ve never done anything wrong to them.

short answer: go fuck yourself! long answer: yeah, let’s go back to the “name calling” thing again. i fail to recognize why it’s so difficult–particularly for predominantly queer and/or feminist spaces–to recognize complicity and privilege in THIS arena compared to all others. we don’t say “not all white people” for the same reason we don’t say “not all men” or “not all straights” or “not all cis”–because white supremacy is baked into every aspect of our lives. it is inescapable. white supremacy cannot be restricted by the things other, cartoonishly racist people do. it is blood that is on ALL our hands, and we benefit from it daily. it IS uncomfortable to realize when you’re not the oppressed but an oppressor in a situation, but the way to resolve that is to sit in that discomfort, and learn to be better.

so the next time someone sharply corrects you, or tells you to check your privilege, and you’re upset about it, remind yourself that it is NOT ABOUT YOU. you are literally here because it’s unfair that so many things ARE about you. watch this video to remind yourself of what’s at stake! (it’s also in gif form!) revisit these slides about what you’re experiencing! (they were made by a high schooler, so you can really put yourself in that education mindset.) sit and process that feeling and learn why you were wrong without getting publicly defensive or asking a black person to coach you through it. donate to some MutualAid funds, legal defense funds, and personal fundraisers. badger some elected representatives about defunding the police. and realize that you’re still alive. you lived. you learned how to do better, and it didn’t kill you, and there’s still so much to do.

and if that still isn’t sitting well with you, you can also try eating an entire dick.

[saintambrose]

haha it’s US politics hours

listen, this tumblr has always been a fandom place since its inception and I’ve not really designated it as a space for political discussion because 1) I have several other avenues for that arena of discussion and 2) escapism was the theme here; but I’ve finally watched The Comey Rule and I have some THOUGHTS 

and I’m not really sure how active anyone is here anymore anyway, because I’ve not really been around as regularly as I was before the nsfw-ban shitstorm, so. Diving right in.

Probably my favorite thing was how it painted the American right wing as this faux-centrist bastion of impartiality at first, the whole circus with HiLLaRy’S EmAiLs being about how they legitimately believed they could play the angle that the emails were a threat to national security all while they knew damn well it was a huge big nothingburger (with a side of hatred of women) while doing that thing that right wingers have done since the Reagan administration where they malign anything left of fascism as communism (including basic human rights) and then, predictably, you have all these very furrowed-browed old white men sitting around a conference table being VERY CONCERNED that precisely the thing they wanted to happen came true and they are completely unprepared to do damage control on the mess they engineered because WHITE MEN ARE INCAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING THE CONCEPT OF CONSEQUENCES OF THEIR OWN ACTIONS. 🤣😂🤣😂

In all seriousness. I wasn’t crazy about Hillary either. I don’t like dynasties of any kind, royal or political. I don’t like establishment dems who are really just center-right in the real world while masquerading as left in backwards-ass bizarro-world USA. But I’m an old motherfucker now, I’m well into my 30s, I’m boring and watch CSPAN for leisure and shit. I read the reports coming out of the DOJ. One of my degrees is in political science, though admittedly, that’s the least thing that matters, in the scope of everything else these days. But it’s safe to say Hillary was unfairly maligned while republicans committing atrocities exponentially worse have been treated with kid gloves for decades. A very distinct double standard has been applied here for....longer than I’ve been alive, that even the most educated people on the left have refused to acknowledge for far too long. I watched that entire BeNgHaZi hearing (which is easily accessible on youtube, so there’s literally no excuse not to know the facts on this), and everyone knew -- everyone knew it was a bullshit smear campaign. 

So, this post isn’t so much a review of the miniseries more than it’s an indictment of the corruption of American politics. The most damning aspect being that, on principle, US politics has always had a problem with embracing progressive policy, and basic civil rights in general. That’s not news; people have known this for some time. But the thing that this miniseries really illustrated in a very cartoonish, yet succinct, way is that there are experienced professionals who hold the highest, most powerful seats of authority in this country who won’t bat an eye at dedicating their entire careers to denigrating common decency, basic human rights, and even constitutional law, while being absolutely incapable of conceiving the long-term consequences of these actions, who will then turn around and concern troll over the ashes of the empire they enthusiastically helped to burn down. It’s nauseating. It’s infuriating. It shows a pathological disregard for personal responsibility.

Everyone was so preoccupied with their massive turgid erection for hating the Clintons (and women) that no one saw they were enthusiastically living in a henhouse built by fucking foxes. No one saw the genuine threat. 

And, by extension, no one had the balls to acknowledge that age-old instinct of white men willing to engage in a scorched earth campaign simply to satisfy their worst impulses and entitlement complexes. 

Can you fit “Who cares if we’re screwing over several generations with corrupt court-packing and a flagrant disregard for checks-and-balances predicated entirely on the honor system; we just don’t feel like doing domestic labor or respecting women and minorities so we’ll continue expediting reprehensible policies that exploit the most vulnerable people in this country because we can’t compete in an authentic meritocracy" onto a campaign slogan banner? 

I sounded the alarms on this trend 20 years ago, meanwhile. My parents and I had just gotten US citizenship, luckily months before 9/11 and the patriot act; and as an outsider looking in, as someone who had risked their life escaping a dangerous regime at an incredibly young age, I saw the warning signs in the republican party even back then. Naturally, I was denigrated as an alarmist and a butthurt liberal. 

You know, I’ll acknowledge that as a white person, I’m not the average American’s image of what an “immigrant” looks like. My experiences here over the past couple of decades have thrown into sharp relief how “immigrant” is just a dogwhistle for racist bullshit, because people who concern troll about us don’t seem to have many problems with us white ones. But I came out of a communist country. I’m straight outta the eastern bloc. And I don’t think there are any words in any spoken language that can do justice to how insulting it is when americans try to americasplain communism to me. Bitch. Y’all don’t fucking know. You just don’t.

The point is, even back then, I could see the slippery slope republicans were tumbling down, and I can't say I derive any pleasure from being vindicated in such an extreme fashion. Like. I told y’all motherfuckers. TWO DECADES AGO.

People who aren’t familiar with US politics, and even long-term US citizens who for some reason feel like it’s a waste to pay attention to your own shit, seem to spend a lot of time trying to unpack what precisely went wrong. My observations came up with 1) the manipulative aspect of US history in public schools glossing over, and even omitting, the most gruesome aspects of the revolutionary war, the holocaust, and the cold war (and oftentimes, the cold war is NEVER EVEN COVERED, which is especially insulting to me, for obvious reasons); 2) the manipulative aspect of US history in public schools teaching kids that the Declaration of independence and the Constitution are unassailable doctrines of freedom and liberty, and, as such, after independence was won, no further activism to maintain democracy was needed so we can all just smoke a bowl and be complacent because all those authoritarian third world regimes we constantly ridicule and criticize can NeVeR HaPPeN hErE 😒; and 3) how limpdick both-sidesism replaced civil, comprehensive political discussion because the right spent so long abusing, denigrating, and bullying the left that it was just easier to play it safe and take the milquetoast ~centrist~ stance, which always, always, always capitulates to the lowest common denominator, which is always the oppressor. 

And generally just this age-old trend of holding the victims of systematic oppression to a higher moral and behavioral standard than the perpetrators of systematic oppression. 

Guys, I’m tired. I’m so tired. 

I’ve gotten a few questions over the years about why my writing is so angsty, why it always seems to follow the same themes; war crimes, PTSD, gore, torture. 

I already escaped one authoritarian regime. The USA promised us one thing, and then once we got here, it started emulating the very tyrants we worked so hard to get away from. A lot of people have no idea what that feels like. How much of a betrayal that is. Especially considering all the financial and legal landmines one has to navigate just to do it, and then we’re punished for that, too.

I write about PTSD because I fucking have it. I write about war crimes because I’ve experienced them firsthand - just as a victim and not the perpetrator. I so often write about soldiers committing them because I want to roleplay what it’s like to not be a victim for once. 

tbh writing a fucking Hamilton fanfiction is one of the most cathartic things I’ve ever done, but the extensive research I’ve had to do to be able to write this thing has been low-key traumatic. There’s a lot of historical material I’ve consumed that should have been covered at the most basic level of compulsory education, but conspicuously isn’t. And I know that’s a feature, not a bug. It’s by design. 

Democracy - and independence, freedom, liberty, justice, civil rights in general - isn’t just some final xbox achievement that you unlock and then just shelve the game and forget about it for the rest of your life. You have to keep grinding to maintain it, because there will always be selfish, malicious people out there who will dedicate their entire lives playing a long con to ensure you don’t get the same opportunities as them. For the love of god, stop playing the both-sidesism game. From someone coming out of the eastern bloc, I can tell you with great confidence that that was part of the propaganda campaign you were fed to keep you from engaging so they could install a dictatorship under your nose. Do some self-guided historical research, guys. It can be very illuminating.

Anyway. I’ve gone on long enough here, but damn, don’t screw this up again, guys. Today is the first day of early voting in Texas, and I’m going to do my duty. When I first came to this country, after experiencing the rigorous vetting process and labyrinthine legal requirements of US citizenship, I was led to believe that in exchange for that privilege, I was personally responsible for my own civic self-education. It’s so much more important than you've been led to believe. 

[whitecaucus]

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group.

Peggy McIntosh

Through work to bring materials from women’s studies into the rest of the curriculum, I have often noticed men’s unwillingness to grant that they are over privileged, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged. They may say they will work to improve women’s status, in the society, the university, or the curriculum, but they can’t or won’t support the idea of lessening men’s. Denials that amount to taboos surround the subject of advantages that men gain from women’s disadvantages. These denials protect male privilege from being fully acknowledged, lessened, or ended.

Thinking through unacknowledged male privilege as a phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there was most likely a phenomenon of white privilege that was similarly denied and protected. As a white person, I realized that I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage.

I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was “meant” to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks.

Describing white privilege makes one newly accountable. As we in women’s studies work to reveal male privilege and ask men to give up some of their power, no one who writes about having white privilege must ask, “Having described it, what will I do to lessen or end it?”

After I realized the extent to which men work from a base of unacknowledged privilege, I understood that much of their oppressiveness was unconscious. Then I remembered the frequent charges from women of color that white women whom they encounter are oppressive. I began to understand why we are justly seen as oppressive, even when we don’t see ourselves that way. I began to count the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege and have been conditioned into oblivion about its existence.

My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will. My schooling followed the pattern my colleague Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out: whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work that will allow “them” to be more like “us”.

Daily effects of white privilege

I decided to try and work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege in my life. I have chosen those conditions that I think in my case attach somewhat more to skin color privilege than to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographic location, though of course all these other factors are intricately intertwined. As far as I can tell, my African American coworkers, friends, and acquaintances with whom I come into daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place, and line of work cannot count on most of these conditions.

1.     I can, if I wish, arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.

2.     If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area that I can afford and in which I would want to live.

3.     I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.

4.     I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.

5.     I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.

6.     When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization”, I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.

7.     I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.

8.     If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.

9.     I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods that fit my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser’s shop and find someone who can deal with my hair.

10.  Whether I can use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.

11.  I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.

12.  I can swear, or dress in second-hand clothes, or not answer letters without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race.

13.  I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.

14.  I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.

15.  I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.

16.  I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color, who constitute the world’s majority, without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.

17.  I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.

18.  I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to “the person in charge” I will be facing a person of my race.

19.  If a traffic cop pulls me over, or it the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure that I haven’t been singled out because of my race.

20.  I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children’s magazines featuring people of my race.

21.  I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied-in rather that isolated, out of place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance, or feared.

22.  I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having coworkers on the job suspect that I got it because of race.

23.  I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.

24.  I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help my race will not work against me.

25.  If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has racial overtones.

26.  I can choose blemish cover or bandages in “flesh” color that more or less match my skin.

Elusive and Fugitive

I repeatedly forgot each of the realizations on this list until I wrote it down. For me white privilege has turned out to be an elusive and fugitive subject. The pressure to avoid it is great, for in facing it I must give up the myth of meritocracy. If these things are true, this is not such a free country; one’s life is not what one makes it; many doors open for certain people through no virtues of their own.

In unpacking this invisible knapsack of white privilege, I have listed conditions of daily experience that I once took for granted. Nor did I think of any of these perquisites as bad for the holder. I now think that we need a more finely differentiated taxonomy of privilege, for some of these varieties are only what one would want for everyone in a just society, and others give license to be ignorant, oblivious, arrogant, and destructive.

I see a pattern running through the matrix of white privilege, a pattern of assumptions that were passed on to me as a white person. There was one main piece of cultural turf; it was my turf, and I was among those who could control the turf. My skin color was an asset for any move I was educated to want to make. I could think of myself as belonging in major ways and of making social systems work for me. I could freely disparage, fear, neglect, or be oblivious to anything outside of the dominant cultural forms. Being of the main culture, I could also criticize it fairly freely.

 In proportion as my racial group was being made more confident, comfortable, and oblivious, other groups were likely being made unconfident, uncomfortable, and alienated. Whiteness protected me from many kinds of hostility, distress, and violence, which I was being subtly trained to visit, in turn, upon people of color.

 For this reason, the word “privilege” now seems to me misleading. We usually think of privilege as being a favored state, whether earned or conferred by birth or luck. Yet some of the conditions I have described here work systematically to over empower certain groups. Such privilege simply confers dominance because of one’s race or sex.

Earned Strength, Unearned Power

I want, then, to distinguish between earned strength and unearned power conferred systemically. Power from unearned privilege can look like strength when it is in fact permission to escape or dominate. But not all of the privileges on my list are inevitably damaging. Some, like the expectations that neighbors will be decent to you, or that your race will not count against you in court, should be the norm in a just society. Others, like the privilege to ignore less powerful people, distort the humanity of the holders as well as the ignored groups.

We might at least start by distinguishing between positive advantages, which we can work to spread, and negative types of advantage, which unless rejected will always reinforce our present hierarchies. For example, the feeling that one belongs within the human circle, as Native Americans say, should not be seen as privilege for a few. Ideally it is an unearned entitlement. At present, since only a few have it, it is an unearned advantage for them. This paper results from a process of coming to see that some of the power that I originally saw as attendant on being a human being in the United States consisted in unearned advantage and conferred dominance.

 I have met very few men who are truly distressed about systemic, unearned male advantage and conferred dominance. And so one question for me and others like me is whether we will be like them or whether we will get truly distressed, even outraged about unearned race advantage and conferred dominance, and, if so, what we will do to lessen them. In any case, we need to do more work in identifying how they actually affect our daily lives. Many, perhaps most, of our white students in the United  States think that racism doesn’t affect them because they are not people of color; they do not see “whiteness” as a racial identity. In addition, since race and sex are not the only advantaging systems at work, we need similarly to examine the daily experience of having age advantage, or ethnic advantage, or physical ability, or advantage related to nationality, religion, or sexual orientation.

 Difficulties and dangers surrounding the task of finding parallels are many. Since racism, sexism, and heterosexism are not the same, the advantages associated with them should not be seen as the same. In addition, it is hard to disentangle aspects of unearned advantage that rest more on social class, economic class, race, religion, sex, and ethnic identity than on other factors. Still, all of the oppressions are interlocking, as the members of the Combahee River Collective pointed out in their “Black Feminist Statement” of 1977.

 One factor seems clear about all of the interlocking oppressions. They take both active forms, which we can see, and embedded forms, which as a member of the dominant group one is taught not to see. In my class and place, I did not see myself as a racist because I was taught to recognize racism only in individual acts of meanness by members of my group, never in invisible systems conferring unsought racial dominance on my group from birth.

 Disapproving of the systems won’t be enough to change them. I was taught to think that racism could end if white individuals changed their attitudes. But a “white” skin in the United States opens many other doors for whites whether or not we approve of the way dominance has been conferred on us. Individual acts can palliate, but cannot end, these problems.

 To redesign our social systems we need first to acknowledge their colossal unseen dimensions. The silences and denials surrounding privilege are the key political tool here. They keep the thinking about equality or equity incomplete, protecting unearned advantage and conferred dominance by making these subjects taboo. Most talk by these whites about equal opportunity seems to me now to be about equal opportunity to try to get into a position of dominance while denying that systems of dominance exist.

 It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all. Keeping most people unaware that freedom of confident action is there for just a small number of people props up those in power and serves to keep power in the hands of the same groups that have most of it already.

 Although systemic change takes many decades, there are pressing questions for me and, I imagine, for some others like me if we raise our daily consciousness on the perquisites of being light-skinned. What will we do with such knowledge? As we know from watching men, it is an open question whether we will choose to use unearned advantage to weaken hidden systems of advantage, and whether we will use any of our arbitrarily awarded power to try to reconstruct power systems on a broader base.

 Peggy McIntosh is associate director of the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women. This essay is excerpted from Working Paper 189, “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women’s Studies” (1988), by Peggy McIntosh; available for $4.00 from the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, Wellesley MA 02181. The working paper contains a longer list of privileges.

[ywhiterain]

@anotheralix wrote a post that can be summed up as “how about we ditch the double standards surrounding how we talk about female and male protagonists.” She even admit she does this herself with Clarke Griffin (100) and Elena Gilbert (The Vampire Diaries). It’s not a particularity nuanced post - but it wasn’t meant to be. It was a vent. A vent, in particular, how women are judged differently than men.

This is not a shocking rant. This is a self evident perspective shared by many women across time in different cultures. Look, I could get into the science and cite different articles and meta-analysis that back up the idea women are held to higher standards than men. But not everything is about meeting high standards when creating an argument. Sometimes you want to make short rant on your tumblr about sexism and move on.

But, see, @candyumberella responds to this post. Not a problem in itself. But how and what she says reveals that her issue is not with creating inter sectional spaces for women to talk about feminism. No, I think she hates that female fans sometimes really love female leads.

I’m going to take apart some of her arguments under the cut.

“I think it’s pretty telling that whenever people get uncomfortable with seeing a female character (espically the most privilaged white female character in a ‘verse whose narrative is based on and constructed around her privliage) criticized in any way, they knee-jerk respond with, "You wouldn’t do this with a white man!”

Let’s unpack this. There are two claims in here that I disagree with: female leads are constructed around her privilege and being critical of the knee-jerk response. I’ll with the second first, because it’s easier to address. Yes. Women, particularly women who have been influenced by feminist thought, tend to get frustrated when women are held to a higher standard than men. It happens. It’s annoying. And I believe it’s understandable. The fact that @candyumbrella doesn’t acknowledge that female heroines are held to higher standards is a glaring omission. If she took into account how misogyny and sexism hurts all women, her arguments about how women are treated in fandom would fall apart. I mean, even more so than pointing out the existence of The Golden Girls and its large fandom does.

The second part is that her claim, espically the most privilaged white female character in a 'verse whose narrative is based on and constructed around her privliage is not backed by any evidence at all. Now, @anotheralix doesn’t give powerful evidence herself, but that’s because it was a short vent about sexism. @Candyumberlla takes issues with this vent because of a weird ass Interpretation of All TV Based On One Sitcom. If you’re going to take issue with someone complaining about sexism, and how this post complaining about sexism is a problematic trend in fandom as a whole, you need some convincing arguments. Otherwise you look like a sexist apologist.

But here, I’m going to argue against her claim by pointing to Buffy. White female lead - skinny and blond to boot! But the premise of the worldview of Buffy isn’t that she’s the most privileged character in her world. She spends a good portion of it struggling against the Watchers Council (aka patriarchy) in order to use her own power on her own terms. Buffy being pretty and tiny and girly is the fucking point - because society sees women who look like her as empty shells. Buffy being the undisputed heroine of her own story is and was an attack on that worldview.

Buffy didn’t do great about race. It’s treatment of Kendra Young has not aged well, to put it politely. It’s peek manufactured whiteness. As for queer issues, while Willow/Tara was groundbreaking, but there’s as much to critique as there is celebrate. Fans of Buffy do this all the fucking time. There is nuance to be had and Buffy’s got plenty of academic and fannish work exploring that nuance. It’s failures and it’s successes.

But

It’s not about the injustice of misogyny so much as people wanting their female fave to not be criticized and using her gender as a catch-all reason why she shouldn’t be.

That’s a pretty unfair statement. Loving and being fannish about female characters can be an exercise in frustration in fandom. I don’t know how many times I went in the tags for Elena Gilbert only to see fans calling her a two-faced and manipulative in very gendered ways. Slut. Bitch. Whore. I’m glad a dude is beating her up and putting her in her place. Speak true to that ungrateful bitch, male character I like! This exists in fandom. It puts a lot of people on guard.

Critiquing a character like Elena is not as easy as doing one like Klaus. Because there is baggage there. Misogyny is a thing. It informs how women are framed and treated in the text. It informs audience expectation and reaction. Elena being white didn’t stop her from ending up with her rapist.

So actually, I see plenty of people accusing male characters of making everything about themselves–usually when they want to deflect from criticism directed against their One Special White Girl and do so by perpetuating the lie that ONLY White Men are the REAL Enemy, We Are All Allies Against Them, blah blah.

Because, shockingly, men and women are treated differently in both canon and fandom. I’ve seen @candyumberlla spend more time talking shit about Clarke, Elena, and Donna (Suits) than Oliver (Arrow), Angel (Angel), or Sam or Dean (Supernatural). Even Ted, the privileged white dude who informs all of her meta these days, is not treated with such distaste. She is gleeful about her interpretation of Clarke (she’s being humiliated and dethroned!) She gushes about the Fall of Elena and the Rise of Caroline. She might mock, say, Stefan Salvatore, but she doesn’t the same use belittling and angry language.

Misogyny is informing her meta. Because misogyny is a threat. It’s real. Her attack on female characters is built on centuries of female oppression.

Also:  –usually when they want to deflect from criticism directed against their One Special White Girl

Women and girls can’t just be tired as hell of white male dominance in their world? Critiques against male dominance in media are About Protecting That White Women. 

MOST privileged woman in a ‘verse appropriating and parasitizing those LESS privileged and LESS institutionally elevated than she–so she’s not the victim in this scenario, she’s the oppressor.

Prove it. When and how did Clarke, Elena, Veronica, Buffy, Rey, or any other white female characters target more vulnerable women. Hard mode: look their stories in context of a male dominated society with white dudes being the ones who generally created their stories. Remember internalized misogyny is not just those Bad Female Fans Who Like The Wrong White Female Leads and how much female creators in Hollywood and TV have to balance to just get women to talk to each other without it being about a dude. Honest mode: take into account how the leads have both built up and torn down the women in their lives. Put the narrative into a cultural and historical context.

so this parasitic stanning impulse is just white male worship transmuted in a different form that ~feels more like ~feminism and thus more morally acceptable ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Tell me more about how Clexa fans just love Finn. Or Xena/Gabe fans just thirsting for that dick. Bias is a thing. It influences how we think, feel, and react to things. There is no story that doesn’t fail on some level when it comes to systems of oppression.

But people finding personal power, meaning, or joy in female lead stories doesn’t mean they just really want the dick. Korra/Asami fans don’t tend think too much of Mako. Buffy/Faith shippers may have an opinion about Angel and Spike, but they’re generally more interested in the charged relationship between Faith and Buffy. Sailor Moon fandom does have a good chunk of het, but lesbian content and focus on friendship between women is one of the reasons it’s still beloved by many people.

Or, hell, maybe actually allow for the idea that maybe a het shipper is more invested in the female half than the male half and it’s not due to her status as a guy who was killed off and the fandom as a whole cheered. 

[lebogangletselebe]

IMPORTANCE OF WOMEN IN SOCIETY

It is the year 1955, and hundreds of thousands of women in the pre-democratic South Africa decide to take a stand against the vile apartheid regime, having had enough of their oppressors, these women gather together in solidarity to march to the Union Buildings in Pretoria. Little did they know that this act of unity will significantly alter how the world views women. “Wathint’abafazi wathin’imbokoqo”, says the powerful Zulu saying. “You strike a woman, you strike a rock”,

The notion that not every hero wears a cape resonates with me deeply. Before unpacking and diving into the importance of women in our lives, kindly allow me to pose a question; what would society be without women? To be very succinct and to the point, the world would amount to nothing without women and their feminine energies. Due to the fact that the world’s most powerful and affluent man is birthed by a woman, and as a result all great men were birthed by women. This universe has bear witness to great writers, poets, activists, scientists, philosophers, engineers, teachers, legends and peasants of the times before us and during our lifetime, and they were all at one stage carried in the wombs of great women.

Since the beginning of time, women have always been known for their abilities to nourish and nurture. To give selflessly, without expecting anything in return and to love unconditionally. Being responsible is what makes women important. Expressing boundless responsibility to their loved ones and making sure that their wellbeing is taken care of, whether physically, psychologically or emotionally. It is often said that, your ability to love unconditionally is your response ability (responsibility), and women are synonymous with loving. Women are tremendously powerful and with power comes great responsibility. I am of the notion that women are love personified, they embody love so effortlessly. Their selflessness enables them to give love in abundance infinitely so, thus in the process putting those that they love before them. In all honesty, I strongly believe that love is a sacrifice. Being able to put the needs of others before yours, that is true love and that is a trait that make women across the face of this earth special.

We live in a society that constantly degrades and devalue women. It is extremely difficult for the girl child, for odds are stacked against her as if the system was designed for her to fail. This is especially true for women of colour. The black girl child is faced with countless challenges to overcome, ranging from broken households and abusive families. To poverty, alcohol and drug abuse, lack of quality education, inequality, discrimination and not having enough good role models.

Recently we have been reading stories of the kidnapping of women and children. It is tragic and quite alarming the rate at which women are being raped and killed. The sad reality is that these are our mothers and our sisters whom we are committing these barbaric crimes against. As soon as we turn on our television sets, news headlines read as follows: ‘7 months old baby girl raped and killed by uncle’. We as society, we are practically killing those that birthed us, and those that could potentially bear off-springs for us.

With that being said, the role that women play in society is colossal and second to none. Even with the challenges that women face, women are of invaluable importance, for they are the glue that keeps family together. Statistics exhibit that in South Africa most households are headed by a single parent and most of these single parents are women

One of the greatest characteristics women possess is resilience. Women are important human beings for they are resilient. On a daily basis women are faced with trials and tribulations. However, their resilience allows them to overcome adversities, hence being important for thriving and blossoming amid hardships. Our country would not have been where it is today if it were not for the sacrifices, courage and resilience of all the women that were part of the struggle. Whenever a woman is courageous, determined, loyal to her course and resilient even the impossible become possible.

Children take from their parents and it so happens that seven out of ten times children will take from their mother, because oftentimes women are compelled to step up and play the father figure role to their children. A week ago, there was an article of a woman that had lost her husband. As a result, she had to take care of four of the children her husband had left behind, from a reader’s point of view I could not begin to imagine what this woman had to go through. The amount of pain and heartache she felt, her fears that were beginning to tear her life apart, her paralyzing anxiety of not knowing where her children will get their next meal, let alone their tuition fees, for her husband was the only bread winner. Above all the paramount pain the perpetrator had caused this woman. The woman had found it in her heart to forgive the perpetrator and reconcile with him. She completely forgave a man that took away from her the one man she had willed to spend her forever with. Reconciliation is something that is awe inspiringly innate in women and it makes women unique, special and extraordinary. Lastly, women are people we all draw inspiration from, they are the people we look up to when all hope is lost.

In closure women are a bunch of winners that allows society its much-needed sanity. To the person reading this, let it be known that your mother, my mother and our mothers are queens, unsung heroines with no capes and they are symbols of strength, symbols of what it truly means to be resilient and beacons of hope. With women the possibilities are infinite and that is why women are important.