#pre-patriarchal

[xlelife]

Chiara Baldini is currently running a gorgeous, image-saturated course for ADVAYA.LIFE on Dionysus: Rave, Ritual and Revolution.

She delves into the mythological, historical and anthropological dimensions of the Dionysian cult, a cultural lineage that accompanied Western history since primordial times. One that defines our identity in deep resonance with other non-Western cultures and can support us in rediscovering meaningful aspects of European and, more specifically, Mediterranean indigeneity.

This is part of her PhD work at the California Institute for Integral Studies and a longtime fascination of hers.

XLE.LIFE's Kai Altmann is enrolled and enthralled in the course as a guest.

ADVAYA.LIFE offers regular free webinars, paid courses and meetup events, with a primary hub in London. Focusing on ideas around spirituality, culture, history and theory, they present comparative lectures and exploratory discussions on pressing de-colonial and holistic issues, featuring some of the world's leading thinkers on the topics. Vandana Shiva and Timothy Morton have been recent presenters!

(Bursaries are available for the courses, apply at their site.)

[lozeyart]

A quick sketch of Wei Wuxian that I might color later when I have the time

[heeheeehaw]

I love it when artists draw yiling laozu! Wei wuxian like the most ragged scary looking motherfucker. I want him to really look like he just clawed his way out of the burial mounds. It is entirely sexy when you can see a man visibly haunted in every conceivable way.

[leolaroot]

actually why was i born into a cult when i already had mental problems and god knew i was going to be transgender 🤔did he hate me .

[cubbyhole-for-flea-bee]

so a little while back I was talking to my sibling about jin guangyao’s customer service smile, used a pic of a meerkat to make my point and then was like Wait, actually I might be onto something here

cuz both JGY and meerkats? they are smol, got deceptively cute-looking, friendly faces + large dark eyes and seem so nice exCEPT

yup :)

and now i have a bunch of meerkat-jin-guangyao drawings

bonus; the pic i made that started this nonsense

[wangxianficrecs]

How to piss off the Yiling Laozu in one simple step! by Eicas

How to piss off the Yiling Laozu in one simple step!

by Eicas

T, 3k, wangxian

Summary: After Wei Wuxian has vanished with the Wen remnants, Lan Wangji roams the land, nighthunting wherever he is needed... and promptly gets himself kidnapped by rogue cultivators who believe having captured the great Hanguang-Jun will be a surefire way to win the Yiling Laozu's favour.

It is not.

Excerpt:  "Ask us where we are taking you," [his captor] goaded. "Beg for your life, Lan Wangji."

"No need," he said coolly. It did not matter where he was being taken. His life, for now, was safe; had they wanted him dead, he would be. Whatever their plans were, he would find out when relevant, and act accordingly. For the moment, all he could do was bide his time and gather his strength.

kidnapping, kidnapped lan wangji, hurt lan wangji, forehead ribbon, pre-slash, pre-relationship, burial mound days, pre-sunshot campaign, white knight, rescue, harlequin, BAMF wei wuxian, BAMF lan wangji although it’s mostly just attitude at this point, damsel in distress, fix it, at some point probably, protective wei wuxian, yiling patriarch wei wuxian, hurt/comfort, POV lan wangji, @eicas​

(Please REBLOG as a signal boost for this hard-working author if you like – or think others might like – this story.)

[rynliadon]

i really want to see seyka and talanah interact tbh. i think that aloy had a massive unrequited crush on talanah through zero dawn (and some of forbidden west!) and seyka would simply see the two of them talk to each other and Know and be insanely jealous. talanah and seyka would be best friends tho

like just PICTURE these interactions with me. seyka enthusiastically telling aloy about hunting machines with talanah and learning about the lodge. aloy being interested and referencing her time as a thrush. seyka getting pouty and playfully jealous. talanah has no idea any of this is going on while also being in the room.

[cliveguy]

i think what the 'transmisandry' argument comes down to is essentially that people don't take most forms of transphobia seriously in general. and it appears they do when discussing transmisogyny because a lot of those forms of transphobia are more visible / easy to grasp, while trans men typically have been less visible and so have managed to escape a lot of the worse transphobic vitriol. when people ignore that terfs sexually harass trans men, it's not out of a hatred of trans men specifically, it's because they don't see sexual harassment against trans people as an issue or as a manifestation of transphobia. the same goes for medical gatekeeping, or workplace discrimination. i think this idea does scare people a little and that's why they have to do these mental gymnastics to try and make people care about the issues they face, they're just doing it in a very reductive and misogynistic way.

[stargirlstudio]

I want to write an Aemond Targaryen x Leng!Reader fic…

Is Leng very isolated and would it not make sense? Yeah, but Corlys visited the country on one of his voyages and maybe I can say they created an alliance. Maybe the reader can come to Westeros as a child for an educational rite of passage. Perhaps unable to go home due to the present political tensions.

Or I might make it an oc who knows

[orangerosebush]

Me when I see people espouse comedically inaccurate or shallow readings of a text that in all actuality just belie an even more profound trend regarding a refusal to seriously engage with a text's themes

[gia-batmm-crickle22]

I honestly had the same vid, different editing style, and this is just an edit of Thooraki lol

[soup-mother]

do wish there was more trans media acknowledging that like.... when you probably didn't even grow up as a feminine boy (although in my case compared to a lot of guys I was cus i like....cook and clean and tidy up and stuff) and so the trans feelings kinda just come out of nowhere and overwhelm you and all the realising stuff is in hindsight. like in hindsight i always wanted to dress a certain way or be called a girl but i absolutely didn't know it at the time. like not everyone is that stereotype and a lot of the time you were basically a bit of a lifeless husk before realising you're trans and that makes it so difficult to navigate. like you have no aspirations, maybe 3 friends all of who suck and suddenly you're realising you wish you were a girl. semi related to how vitriolic people are about the very concept of trans girls who used 4chan and stuff. it's like... I guess a lot of people's ideas of what trans women are and were like is very different to a lot of our lived experience.

like a lot of the time, pre transition gender and personality looks like a mattress on the floor, instead of cute feminine always wanted to be a girl always played with the girls sorta thing (again, complicated in my circumstances and a lot of it was essentially not being raised as a Patriarchal asshole)

[hyperions-fate]

There's a kind of anti-capitalism which, failing to recognise capitalism as merely the latest form of human inequality and domination, seeks refuge in everything believed to be pre-modern (the patriarchal family, 'national culture', tradition). In the process, it becomes reactionary and loses sight of the larger struggles of history. More often than not, the past is a creative invention of the present. And it will not save you.

[tr1ppykay]

something i rarely see addressed on here in discussions of transmasculine bathroom issues is the difference between men's and women's rooms, and the way it excludes transmascs with vulvas.

I am a trans man pre-surgery of any kind. ideally i would like meta with UL, but for euphoria reasons primarily- STPs are expensive and a hassle, so i have no issue sitting to pee. i am 11 months on T and do not pass. using the women's room bothers me, but i live in the southern US so it's safer. i have no issue dealing with it to quickly piss and leave. what i do have an issue with, is when someplace claims to be trans inclusive, but in practice, is not.

i had a pretty awful night. my boyfriend and i had been planning to try out a local goth nightclub for weeks, and we finally got the chance to go. when walking in, there was a sign on the door that said "no racism, no homophobia, no transphobia..." etc. i was excited, thinking that i may actually be able to use the men's restroom for once! a few drinks in and the urge hit- i was feeling anxious, so i asked a staff member if it would be safe for me to use the men's room. "yes of course, we are very inclusive, there are plenty of trans people here." in i went and....

5 urinals, and one single stall- which was out of order.

i turned around and used the women's room. i had no choice. of course, there were 6 stalls in there.

this is not the first time i have experienced issues with men's rooms having a single stall- at a gay strip club, i ran into a similar problem, where the single stall in the men's room was not out of order, but instead, had a line of 20+ people. i, and a few other guys, opted to use the women's room instead of waiting (clearly this design flaw hurts cisgender men as well!)

men's rooms being built only with people with penises in mind, and often all but excluding anyone who needs a stall, is an issue that needs to be addressed far more often.

edit: ive seen a few people in the notes adding their own experiences outside of transmasculinity, saying that they don't want to derail- i want to make clear that nobody is derailing. this issue absolutely intersects with transmisogyny, ableism, and general androphobia (which i define as the way patriarchal expectations hurt all men, not any group systemically oppressing men.) keep adding on your own experiences. this issue affects everyone who has ever needed to use the men's bathroom.

[johannestevans]

there's a thread on twitter where like. women are talking about frightening experiences they've had with men, and this person confidently goes, "well other men don't experience the same sexual violence from men that women do" and i'm just like.

i can't comprehend saying such a thing so confidently when you know that men are raped by other men, and when you know, also, that male children are raped by men

like we live in a rape culture that's broadly permissive of many forms of sexual abuse and rape across all manner of different lines, but like. the sexual entitlement felt by many cisgender men in our patriarchal society and their feeling of entitlement particularly to sexual dominion over the vulnerable, and how that includes not only violent dominion over women, but also a desire to emasculate and victimise other men, is? caught up in the same attitude?

like there's a reason that many women talk anecdotally about getting the most of their experiences of catcalling and entitlement when they look underage and esp when they're like, young teens, and that's all to do with the level of power a random dude thinks he can exact over them, bc they're a child and bc they're far more vulnerable

and? of course the same attitude is applied to young boys or young pre-transition t-girls, esp bc of the way that gay or effete traits in young boys are like, targeted for violent correction via sexual violence, but also to many rapists like

accurately signal that this individual is going to be seen as less worthy of protection than adults around them, bc of queerphobic attitudes and the disposability of young queer ppl? that that person is going to be more vulnerable to abuse?

idk i just. i understand that some people get so focused on these radical feminist ideas that they end up incapable of seeing the wood for the trees, but the desperate desire to dismiss sexual violence that might not back up what they think is like. their current most valuable talking point is baffling

as if to say "multiple more vulnerable and marginalised classes of people are vulnerable to sexual violence under this system" somehow takes away from your favourite category of class of person most vulnerable to sexual violence

[ghelgheli]

Historians are rarely challenged just for applying words like ‘woman’ and ‘man’ to the past; it would not inevitably cause a backlash to say that a historical figure wanted power, or grieved, or felt anger. A trans historian, though, is caught in the double-bind of the DSM-5. Our experiences and our desires are quite literally mad. We do not have the social license to see ourselves fractured and reflected in historical figures; we are standing in the wrong place to write. Put simply, if you foreclose trans readings, you foreclose trans writing. When we reflect on the similarities between our lives and those of historical figures, we are accused of spreading our social contagion to the dead. To read our own anamorphoses in a text, to communicate that to a cis academic establishment who have rendered our unqualified subjectivities unimaginable, we are forced to accuse historical figures of transness. And then, of course, we are chastised for pathologising them. For a trans historian, it is not viable to simply universalise our experiences of gender. In order to relate to historical figures’ gendered experiences in our writing in a way that is legible to cis readers, we have to assert that those figures were trans. There is a gap to be bridged, and the onus to bridge it falls on us… Transmisogyny and anti-effeminacy were and are integral to the structure of patriarchy and therefore to cisness (or vice-versa). In ‘Monster Culture (Seven Theses)’, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen proposed a methodology for reading cultures: ‘from the monsters they engender’. In concluding this sketch of Byzantine cisness, I would like to attempt to apply this method. To monster a group or an individual is a violent act, and through examining the way transfemininity was monstered in Byzantium, we can begin to understand the shape of the violent regulation of gendered possibilities that constituted Byzantine cisness… Synesius [of Cyrene] did not simply compare the image of the elegantly coiffed effeminate with the shiny dome of the soldier’s helmet; he went one step further, proclaiming that pretty hair was the give-away for hidden effeminacy. He rails against ‘effeminate wretches’ who ‘make a cult of their hair’, who he suggests engage in sex work not out of economic necessity but as an act of sex and gender exhibitionism, to ‘display fully the effeminacy of their character’. Then, he goes on to say:

And whoever is secretly perverted, even if he should swear the contrary in the marketplace, and should present no other proof of being an acolyte of Cotys save only in a great care of his hair, anointing it and arranging it in ringlets, he might well be denounced to all as one who has celebrated orgies to the Chian goddess and the Ithyphalli.

The implication is clear: long, well kempt, perfumed and curled hair is not just hair, it is a signifier, one that signals total abnegation of manhood, and therefore of cisness. This demonstrates one of the mechanisms by which cisness was maintained and enforced in the Byzantine world. Relatively minor embodied gender transgressions, like too-long or too-pretty hair, could be linked to transfemininity and to sexual receptivity, the two farthest points from patriarchal manhood. That is not to say that this prevented people from committing such gender transgressions; rather that it made them risky, a weapon that could be used against you by anyone who wanted to do you harm. The other thing demonstrated by Synesius’ invective is the relationship between effeminacy, unmasculine vanity and presumed sexual receptivity. It would be tempting, based on the relationship Synesius draws between long beautiful hair and receptive anal sex, to suggest that the animating force of this antipathy is, if not homophobia, a narrower pre-modern equivalent. There is, however, a fantastically complicating detail in Synesius’ remark on the reasons such ‘effeminates’ engage in sex work: being sexually available is presented as an instrumental, rather than terminal value. In Synesius’ imagination, sex work is the means, but social recognition of the feminine gender of the sex worker is the end: to ‘display fully the effeminacy of their character’. The monster Synesius invokes to shore-up his own gender position, to guard his own cisness and his access to hegemonic masculinity, is an unambiguously transmisogynist fantasy. It is here that Byzantine cisness most sharply converges with twenty-first-century cisness.

‘Selective Historians’: The Construction of Cisness in Byzantine and Byzantinist Texts, Ilya Maude [DOI]