#the not like other girls backlash just circled back into misogyny

[aerithisms]

we don't actually <3

[langernameohnebedeutung]

Am I the only one who is a little concerned about this obsession with 'body counts' lately?

I know it's easy to say 'well it isn't a re-emergence of any sort, culture has always been obsessed with women being 'pure' and 'chaste' - and we are here in the process of stamping it out! Look how far we've come since 1970s/1950s/1920s/19th century/whatever.' or 'it's just your usual incels balking against change'

And yes! you are right! And I don't have statistics or anything! - But something that alerts me is that we're no longer talking about religious or conservative contexts or specifically misogynistic circles or older people. It is a mainstream discussion and people talk about how you should ask girls for their 'body count' on the first date and if she 'doesn't answer she's for the street' and 'whatever number she says, add x%." - and is really young people regurgitating it - even young girls.

Another hint for me that this is a re-emergence and not just some remnant or something passed own from previous generations is language. I've seen quite a few tiktoks and and insta-reels by non-English speaking teens and early tweens who used the specific English word 'body count' to talk about this - something they wouldn't do if they had gotten this from their parents or grandparents or if it were an organical idea they had come up with on their own. It must have been inspired by other users who produce similar content - and these users were likely inspired by others and so forth. And as someone in her late 20s, I've never heard it used in my social circle and it was never really a big issue for any of us once we got out of puberty.

Personally, I've expected the cultural pendulum to swing back on sex positivity and the deconstruction of virginity for a while now, but I think it is important that a lot of these terms (not just the 'body count' thing) aren't your classic 'the mainstream is afraid of change' kind of backlash. A lot of this talk is coming directly from the red pill manosphere and is strategically being normalised among the youth - and because misogyny is still treated as some 'normal cultural thing' in many contexts, it is something that most young people aren't prepared for and aren't taught to contextualise and cannot identify as rooted in hate.

The obsession with virginity is one of the oldest forms of subjugation because it's so disconnected from any kind of physical reality or moral action. The moment this kind of rhetoric is given any power, any woman can be the most altruistic, morally upstanding, generous best person to ever have walked the earth - but with this tool, you can still ruin her. (The same way that a man can be the most moral upstanding, generous best person to walk the earth and then get mocked for being 'an adult virgin' or something). That's how/why this rhetoric survived for millennia in societies whose entire structure was based on denying women permanent social status - because anyone can do it! You don't need to understand anything to call a woman a slut - you can be the dumbest idiot in your village and still call a professor of quantum-physics a slut if you don't like her (or not do it, if you like her! That is what power is!). You don't need to understand anything about her policies or success-rate to slutshame a politician. You don't need to know her as a person. You don't need to have listened to a single speech of hers or anything.

That's why it always worked so well. Because it allows anyone to mistreat a woman based on nothing to do with her personal convictions, thoughts, or actions. Because anyone can invent and adapt their own standards of when a woman's 'body count' is too high (even: not high enough!) - and even if she's a virgin, you can still say she 'well, look how she dresses' or 'she wears make-up' - or just say she is lying. Because it is absolutely unprovable - that's also a tale as old as time: the moment you start ascribing any value to how much sex a woman has or has had, you can go all medieval and make up the wildest claims and they are given relevance from the power you gave that claim.

And whether it has been used against individual women or against entire cells and movements of women carving out some independence for themselves and detaching themselves or even changing the societies they had no power in, the strengthening of 'purity' rhetoric was a very common response to this because it was a way of denigrating these women without actually being forced to engage with their arguments.

I actually feel a little stupid laying out something that has been said so much more eloquently and in so much more detail on many other occasions by other people and that has been much more thoroughly analysed, but I'm actually worried that because of the sexual liberation of the last one hundred years, we might become blind to how dangerous this kind of rhetoric is for women and how ingrained it is into our culture structurally. But I am really worried watching this - especially bc a lot of similar and related rhetoric: That's not something that has been passed down to these kids from their parents and grandparents or...priest or whatever:

This is incel and MGTOW rhetoric being normalised as memes and jokes. And I see the argument of 'well, if we treat it as a joke and make fun of these dudes, then we're taking power from it'. But these last few years, I've seen so many things start out as jokes - some harmless, some not - that are now being taken 100% serious by a lot of people out there. And virginity-rhetoric is something that is still being taken seriously around the globe by billions of people, so it's not something that will treated as a conspiracy weirdo hocuspocus - but something that is falling on very fertile soil.

[mrmallard]

While I'm reminiscing on weird fucked up periods of my life that I've moved on from, I'm gonna broach a topic I've touched on in the past.

I wanna give a big apology to bronies.

The impetus for this happened a couple years ago, when I saw this meme:

And it really put things into perspective.

Because yeah, there was an apocalyptically shitty subset of bronies who would go all in on how uplifted the show made them feel, before posting on forums and twitter and stuff with "redpill" talking points - white supremacy, the most heavy-handed and vile sexism imaginable, real fascist shit. It's a similar case with K-ON - dudes take a sweet, uplifting show and end up associating it with outright neo-nazi shit.

But the other half of the brony fandom, including both cis and transgender women, who had nothing to do with the other half ended up getting heat by association, not because they themselves were allying with bootlicking stormtrooper-wannabes - but because they were cringe. Because in a lot of people's minds, there was enough of an overlap between "neckbeards"/that mid-10's quirky personality type that came with bronies on the internet, and the channers who were being neo-nazis on twitter (the perceived overlap being that both were maladjusted bedroom dwellers who had trouble talking to other people like human beings), that they might as well be the same person.

I just spoke about this in some tags - I was in a very vocal, sex-negative slice of social justice posting on Tumblr for a while as a young adult, and one way the more toxic elements of that community manifested was in labelling bronies as sex pests who were making the internet unsafe for children, citing the brony fandom as another wave of misogyny laying claim to things that were made for girls and aggressively pushing those girls out of online spaces through their aggressive self-proclaimed ownership of it.

While it's true that not every benign, non-channer brony eventually became transfem, this meme still resonates because - and please excuse me if this is too much of a reach, but - this was happening at a time before there was a schism in the social justice/progressive circles that led to a newer fourth wave of feminism and the reactionary TERF movement who weren't on board with the broader points of acceptance it brought with it.

This was when assimilationism and rainbow capitalism were widely spread as a means of furthering queer acceptance in a heteronormative world, kowtowing to some ideal societal expectation of a Decent Person to let a very thin, rigidly defined archetype of the "tolerable gay" into the cultural zeitgeist. We were seeing emerging arguments among a younger generation about how transgender people fit into the queer community, given that you could have straight trans people - ergo, people arguing that transgender people didn't belong under an umbrella that predominantly focuses on sexuality.

Basically, what I'm getting at is that there are aspects of that anti-brony backlash that end up mirroring transphobic rhetoric, intentionally or not - and it might have applied even back then, sure, but it's especially prominent now that we're living in a world where TERF speaking points have been mainstreamed to the point that they have. And I fully believe that in retrospect, a lot of the most heavy-handed anti-brony posting (at least the stuff that wasn't clearly reacting to the more extreme 4chan aspect of the fanbase) was linked to what was essentially proto-TERFism.

There are bronies who found true self-acceptance in this light-hearted cartoon show about pastel-colored ponies living in an idyllic fairy-tale setting, and while some people had the MLP bug come and go with their view of their own gender unshaken, it makes sense that just about anything about this show could resonate with an egg to the point where they realise some fundamental things about their gender that helped them move on and become happier, more productive people in their own skin.

And in hindsight, being in that pre-schism Tumblr-progressive community that was just as likely to shit on bronies for being neo-nazis as they were likely to shit on bronies for being cringe - that was a fucked up environment to be in. Eventually there was a dissonance I noticed between the stated beliefs and goals of the social justice community I saw myself in, and the really sketchy, aggressive way people in that community treated gender non-conforming people, or people with non-vanilla sexual proclivities behind closed doors, or people whose main crime was being socially inept and not very presentable - but until that dissonance manifested, and I took the time to leave all that behind and do the soul-searching that led to me becoming a better person, I was a part of that problem. I was trying to fit in with an environment that told me I was making up for past transgressions by targeting the right people and groups, and times like these - and a lot of times, honestly - I really wasn't. I had a lot of growing up to do.

I can only see a lot of these cracks in hindsight. And I'm sorry for participating the way I did and getting roped into all of that. Whether you were a closeted trans girl whose egg got cracked by My Little Pony, or you were just a megafan in the heyday of the craze who celebrated how fresh and innovative and emotionally resonant it all was - the anti-brony shit got way out of hand, and I think a lot of people owe the broader brony fanbase of the early 2010's a bit of an apology.

Parts of the fanbase were absolutely rancid - but fuck, as much as people love Avatar: The Last Airbender (myself included, that was my first huge fandom moment), there are slices of that fanbase who take things way too far. We don't discredit and drag the entire fanbase through the mud because a few extreme people don't know how to treat other people with basic human dignity. We acknowledge that extreme minority for what they are and we criticize them for that, and we still celebrate the show and communicate with the people who make the broader fan experience worthwhile.

As much as the bad apples were ruining the common perception of the show's unintended demographic back in the day, a lot of people who called themselves bronies and pegasisters and stuff like that should have been left alone to enjoy their favorite show amongst themselves. They weren't out to hurt anyone, and I think the show did a lot of good for a lot of decent people. I feel bad for contributing to a broader backlash against bronies of the time, and I apologise for any role I played in that. I never thought I'd ever reach a point where I would say this, but bronies deserved better than what they got.

[battlestar-royco]

re: twilight. yes, it was a problematic dumbster fire and it deserves to be criticized, but it deserves it in the same way that sjm's books are, coming from a place of care and concern for the young readers and the quality of ya. back in the day when the twilight hate was at its peak, the fair criticism could be barely find due to the amount of memes. twilight was memed for being cringey and dumb, and if the problematic elements and the bad writing were brought up, it was only to shame fans 1/4

even more for liking such a problematic bad series. take the honest trailer for twilight for ex. they have like two points that are fair criticism, and in the comments those points aren't discussed at all. it's just people laughing at the "world's gayest vampire" line and how cringey twilight is. the huge age gap is brought up just as a joke, and the top comments aren't about how its bad to include that in a book aimed at young girls like in sjm's case, it's just people laughing at the joke 2/4

on the other hand, i acknowledge that it may be because i used to spend my time in different circles of the internet, and there were actually a lot of people who criticized it fairly, i just didn't see them. and i'm glad that this is changing now and there are more intelligent discussions around twilight. but i still think that the fair criticism pales in comparison to the grown ass men who are crying right now over pattison being cast as batman bc ~uwu he was in a dumb girly movie~ 4/4

Oops, #3 went missing, but I understand what you’re saying. Firstly, thanks for including the SJ/M-critical community in the realm of good criticism! That means a lot. And I definitely hear you; T/wlight/Meyer and fans were for sure victims of misogyny in a way that a problematic and poorly written male-dominated series/fandom would never be (ie Transformers). It is impossible to deny or not notice that and I don’t mean to. The fact that it was hard to find actually valid criticism is only a testament to the misogyny of the time because most, if not all, of the noteworthy criticism was coming from women. I think you’re spot-on with saying that different parts of the Internet yielded different results, because that still holds true today (ie following a mixture of SJ/M stans and antis vs only one or the other based on what kind of conversation you want to see about the books; only going into tags for a certain character in a fandom etc).

I don’t mean to paint the situation as completely balanced because even today I feel like mainstream T/wilight critics are still overwhelmingly misogynistic and critical of every little detail (except on Tumblr, whose community is a bit more progressive), but the amount of people speaking out about the abuse and such was not insignificant. I don’t remember how I got to the actually interesting conversations, but I do remember trying to ignore the homophobic and sexist idiots. I think it was one of those things where once I found one article/blogger, it was easy to find a bunch of other related ones. I just get frustrated because just like it’s absolutely true and fair to say most of/the most vocal T.wilight critics had nothing to do with the actual problems in the book, it’s also true and fair to say that the women actually speaking about the issues were in great number. I also watched a lot of videos by fans who acknowledged and/or backlashed against the criticism. It just rubbed me the wrong way that Ellis (and the original discourse around the T/wilight Renaissance) focused on the edgelords and didn’t bring attention to any of the issues in the books.

[bhaalble]

Alright I think is gonna be the last post I do on this for a bit, for a variety of reasons. Mostly because it's unproductive. But I wanted to make a last point.

I normally really don't like slinging accusations of internalized misogyny because unless you're a literal Stepford wife it's one of those things that’s extremely hard to verify. I can't prove you have internal biases that are making you be unfair to a character. And its important to note, accusations of internal misogyny can be turned into a weapon to shut women up. 

So, to make my position clear: criticizing a female character does not mean that you are a misogynist. A good example of this is Captain Marvel. However empowering it may be for young girls that Marvel finally has a female superhero with her own movie, this doesn’t negate the fact that it functions as military propaganda, both by virtue of its content and its financial backing. So people who critique Captain Marvel for these things are not misogynistic inherently, especially if they also consistently critique other Marvel films for their relationship to the military industrial complex.

Hell, it doesn’t always have to be for real life important reasons. Sometimes you just don’t like a female characters, because they don’t do anything for you personally, or because they evidence writing that is not inherently problematic but isn’t your cup of tea. And that’s actually fine. To give you an example from my personal life: I’m not super into Katara from ATLA. I could give you a few writing examples for this (I don’t tend to like people in general who take on the “designated parent” role and then self-martyr about it, etc.) but what it ultimately comes down to is that she’s just not my type of character. I don’t hate her. I don’t even strongly dislike her. But I could do without her. She’s not my cup of tea. And that’s fine! People shouldn’t be forced to like characters they don’t, and I’ve never advocated otherwise.

So, whether for real life problematic implications, or just for personal taste, there are plenty of valid reasons to dislike female characters. However, where this becomes a problem is when people use valid criticism as a shield for misogyny. A good example of this phenomena in action (and I’m stealing very blatantly from Dan Olsen and Lindsay Ellis here) was the backlash to both Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey. There were many, many, many valid reasons to critique both those franchises, both in reference to in-fiction bad writing and real-world problematic implications. But this doesn’t take away from the fact that there was a large chunk of the Twilight hate that came from people who weren’t actually looking for a literary discussion, but to be absolutely vicious to teenage girls. Similarly, (now quoting Dan Olsen directly), “it needs to be acknowledged that a good chunk of the backlash from Fifty Shades stemmed from and manifested as rampant misogyny and an assault on the public visibility of female sexuality and sexual agency, with many, many people using legitimate criticism as a springboard to mock ‘mommy porn’ and the very idea of women finding anything erotic if it didn’t conform to strict, male-centric ideas of feminine sexuality”.

This can become even more complex when its women who are performing this bad faith criticism, because it can often become an exercise in empowerment via degradation. I think most of us go through this phase as baby feminists, where we feel the need to distance ourselves from anything overtly feminine in order to prove we “deserve” respect from men. This usually manifests as something those 8 billion thinkpieces about how “if you think about it the disney princesses are actually pretty regressive” and outright hatred of anything that doesn’t immediately qualify as a “good feminist role model”. I definitely went through this phase in high school and I sometimes still catch this attitude in myself even today. 

So the question becomes, how to distinguish good faith criticism from bad faith criticism. And I’ll be honest: there’s not a hard and fast line. Its like distinguishing “good writing” from “bad writing”, its not necessarily something you can create a scientific definition for. But a big indicator is how the critic comports themself in reference to the thing they’re criticizing. So I’ll circle back to my above example, my dislike for Katara.

I do not like the character Katara. As a result, I do not seek out content for her, and if asked by people, I will explain to them why I don’t like her. The person will either agree that these are good reasons or disagree, and either way is fine. This is, broadly speaking, what valid criticism looks like: stating an opinion, backing it up, and allowing for disagreement even if it doesn’t ultimately convince you.

What would make it invalid would be if:

-I obsessively stalked Katara’s tag to get myself even angrier at her

-I vague posted about people who liked Katara despite having never interacted with them (ESPECIALLY if the people I was vaguing were minors). Like I said before, its very easy to win arguments if you don’t invite your opponents to come.

-I wrote people who liked Katara off as being either blinded by their physical attraction to the character or just being desperate for female representation (because nothing says feminism like re-affirming anti-feminist talking points of “the matriarchy just doesn’t think women can do anything wrong”)

-I was inconsistent in my criticisms between Katara and other characters (for instance, if I was hard on Katara for constantly agonizing over the right thing to do but gave it a pass in Aang)

-If I just straight up chose to ignore parts of the text to fit my own hatred for the character (e.g. saying Katara never learned a lesson about being too over-bearing, which would be ignoring “The Runaway” where she apologizes for it and makes an effort to be better). This one isn’t necessarily a symptom of misogyny but it is a sign of lazy criticism. 

And to make sure people don’t twist these, none of these individually are an immediate indicator of “WOMAN-HATER”. But they do all constitute red flags, and once they build on each other, I’d say it definitely merits at least some serious side-eye

So, to those who are asking: no, there is not a “quota” on male criticism vs female criticism and the feminazi brigade isn’t coming to make you swear fealty to any and all female characters. But maybe its worth examining why you see attempts by strangers to defend a fictional character (who doesn’t stand in for any real world shittiness) as a personal attack on you. 

Ceci n’est pas une deep bro