#women who paint

[muppetminge]

wow i love twitter sm.

on a serious note - i think it's funny to portray women not wearing make-up as silly and childish when you're the one apparently caring so much about what other people are doing to their faces.

ask yourself: why do you find bare faces not appropriate for formal events? why does it bother you to see a woman without makeup? how does it effect you? why do you think it effects you?

you're so insistent that there are no societal pressures at play, that women are doing this exclusively for themselves and for the joy of it - then where does this urge to force it on women who don't find joy in it come from? why does it annoy you to see women in their natural way of being? it's a choice, but also there's a right choice, apparently, and anyone stepping out of line shoud be promptly shamed into submission. right?

"a little (whatever) never hurt anybody" okay and neither does a bare face. grow up.

[mummer]

rhaenyra outsourcing motherhood to rhaena and assigning her that passive feminine role was REALLY interesting….. rhaenyra as a character is at her most fascinating when she is forced to navigate and ultimately perpetuate the gendered structures she despises and wishes she could transcend— the seeds of her tragedy already sewn here. just great character work

[mattdraws11]

im working on a bigger drawing of jon rn but i did this of sasha after i finished season two

[beresaad]

quick painting of my inquisitor and her future-divine bestie while i get used to clip studio on ipad

[empirearchives]

Portrait of Anna Maria Lergetporer, by Barbara Krafft, 1811, Napoleonic era

[wisebeth]

why does the pjo series have to unnecessarily villainize goddesses (hera & athena) or show them as silly ladies (aphrodite & demeter) BUT posiedon and apollo are somehow shown as the coolest/most likeable gods, even though arguably, they're right after zeus on terms of corruption?

ares shown as the worst god after zeus and hera amuses me. last time i checked, he was the patron god of amazons and literally killed a man for attempting to rape his daughter but guess who cursed women for rejection? apollo. guess who raped women when they said no (aside from zeus)? posiedon.

[roman-roy-apologist]

yeah ok i get it you don’t think transandrophobia exists but you do realize that it’s still bad to be shitty to transmascs right? you get that right?

[rosekasa]

consider: luka but he's juleka's 18 year old sister

[bug-hearted]

"angels can't be tempted, can you?"

— inspired by Yuri Klapouh's "Lilith and Eve" :)

[fayevalcntine]

Positioning Louis as the "Edwardian wife who becomes trapped by her husband" in a literal sense does no justice to analyzing his actual place and role as a Black man in his society and in his relationship with Lestat. Any interpretation or analysis you do of him when it comes to their relationship cannot be stripped of the racial aspect because it's constantly there. Texts analyzing Edwardian wives (and particularly ones this fandom loves to bring up) typically were white and the dissection of their place in societal rules are always viewed from the aspect of gender that is within these texts only allowed to white women, but never to Black men or even Black women. And gender and race become inseparable when you discuss the latter, no matter how people may view it.

This is why I can't take this approach to analyzing Louis' story seriously because if you don't consider the racial aspect in his relationship even to himself and his sexuality, what's the point? You're still centering the standards that were more placed upon white male/female couples than you're willing to look into the unique structure of Black families, religion, their view of homosexuality and how that sooner heavily influences Louis than the family's "need" for him to be sold off to an Edwardian husband. Even in Louis' own story, him and Claudia being Black is more centered on than any demeaning "housewife" comment he tries to go against from Claudia's perspective. She makes that comment once, whereas we have at least two episodes from Louis' perspective that have very blatant hints and showings of the racism he still suffers from under the Jim Crow era and how it affects his self-worth as well as his relationship with Lestat who doesn't seem to take into consideration how any of the blatant racial aggressions and objections still affect Louis and what he considers to be important to achieve in his own life.

Then there's also the pointed topic of Louis' position as a Black man who is a pimp to the Black women he has as sex workers, as well as how his position as a Black father affects Claudia, another Black girl. If you insist on Louis being centered as this "Edwardian white wife" who is confined by his implicit gender in his marriage, where does that leave Claudia and the blatant misogyny and disrespect she gets from both him and Lestat? Lestat who is her white father abuses her. Positioning Louis within the strict confines of "being her mother" doesn't do her any favors because he didn't hesitate to choke her when he was deeply emotionally distressed, nor does it make him look any better when he's fine with chopping up her diaries and then delivering them on a silver platter so that Daniel, another white man, can read and dissect. Even if he does this under the sole pretense of "doing right by her", how does it in any way help when he also can't face up to his failures towards her?

[sunhowler-art]

so peculiar, so beloved

[manic-pixie-moodboard]

[smokeysweater]

Fat black women,, fat black women save me

Yeah she’s trans but you didn’t hear it from me-

[molsno]

what I've experienced and observed as an asexual trans lesbian is that engaging with certain kinks can be unhealthy and harmful, but it doesn't necessarily have to be.

by and large, most of the people who have "unhealthy" kinks are victims. that is to say, their kink originates from a place of trauma. someone who's experienced sexual abuse in the past, for example, may very well have internalized the idea that they deserved what happened to them. and because escaping that traumatic mindset is incredibly difficult, they may find themselves having sexual fantasies about being abused again long after the danger they were in ceases; to them, it can feel like being sexually abused means they're fulfilling what they believe to be their only purpose. these fantasies can be deeply damaging to a person's self worth, not just because they're blind to their own inherent value as a person, but because they're denying themself any form of sexual agency. they may very well seek out relationships in which they're abused once again. and that is unambiguously harmful! I've certainly seen several people that this has happened to, and it's an incredibly demoralizing and heartbreaking situation to observe and an even more miserable one to be in.

however, that isn't a universal experience. for some people, engaging with their kink with someone can actually be a source of empowerment. let's continue with the previous example. if, instead of seeking out a relationship in which they're sexually abused, they decide to engage in their fantasies with someone who genuinely recognizes their sexual autonomy - someone who they can honestly talk to about their experience, who respects their boundaries, and who communicates with them to establish safeguards to ensure that their consent is never violated - then they may well find a feeling of power over the situation that they didn't have before.

that isn't guaranteed to happen; for some trauma victims, their pain may be too great to replicate, even in a state of significantly reduced danger. some people may try to and discover that it is affecting them in an unhealthy way and stop. and that's okay! their sexual autonomy deserves to be respected. however, others who do engage with it may come out of the experience with a newfound recognition and acceptance of said autonomy. if they know they have the power to make the experience stop any time they feel uncomfortable, they may come to realize and truly believe that they didn't deserve what happened to them, and that they don't have to tolerate anyone who disrespects their boundaries in the future.

it's perfectly fine to not want to see someone's engagement with a particular kink. it can be upsetting for those who have been personally affected by it to witness recreations of it. luckily, in online spaces, there's an easy solution to this problem: you can avoid it by unfollowing or even blocking anyone who posts about it.

I find it troubling that so many people are averse to this idea - particularly because of the way they direct their anger toward trans women. it is a regular occurrence on this website and in fact most online spaces for someone to accuse a trans women (or multiple) of having an "inherently harmful" kink. often, these accusations are made with little to no context or even proof, if they're not simply fabricated outright (which they frequently are). accusing trans women of being sexual predators is one of the oldest forms of transmisogynistic violence you can commit, which is why I find it infuriating that this is such a common tactic in purportedly transfem-supportive communities.

perhaps you might be thinking that engaging in harmful kinks contributes to their normalization. I find this idea laughable, because sexual abuse is already normalized in society - it's baked into its very foundation, in fact. marriage, the nuclear family, christianity, police, the judicial system, and just about everything else was designed to give cishet white men absolute unchecked sexual power over women and children. and while some small advances have been made to chip away at this authority, by and large, these men are still free to perpetrate sexual abuse without facing any consequences.

minorities, on the other hand, have always been and continue to be violently punished for even being accused of sexual abuse. for example, there's a very long history of white women falsely accusing black men of rape with the express purpose of getting them lynched. still today, black people are viewed as hypersexual predators who pose a danger to white women and children for doing things as insignificant and nonsexual as wearing a revealing outfit. trans women are in a very similar position, with our mere existence being nothing more than a fetish to a significant number of tme people. it's no surprise, then, that accusations of sexual predation against us largely focus on the non-normative ways in which we often have sex.

what this inequality often looks like in practice is that cis men are free to browse the step-sister category on pornhub to their heart's content, whereas a trans woman who might, potentially, call her girlfriend her "sister" as a means of recovering from a form of sexual abuse she faced in the past is stalked online by people who believe her to be a physical danger to others, who will then publicize all of the details they can find about her private sex life with the intention of isolating her from what is likely the only community and support network she has. this should be obvious, but a trans woman without any community to accept her is significantly more likely to attempt to commit suicide, making this form of social outcasting a form of violence.

so the question then is, why does this happen? because let's be honest, it's not really about "removing predators from our communities", as much as people like to claim it is. if that were the case, then it wouldn't happen so disproportionately to trans women; the demographics of people accused would be more representative of their actual proportions. the real reason this happens is specifically because of transmisogyny. tme people, even those who are outwardly supportive, harbor internal conceptions of trans women based on stereotypes of us being sexual predators, and they react to our every action with undue scrutiny and vigilance. and because they hold the privilege of being transmisogyny-exempt, they can exert power over us in a way that they can't do to cishet white men by exiling us, knowing full well that they'll be believed by other tme people, even if they have no evidence of actual harm being done.

and that's the metric by which we should actually be judging the validity of claims of sexual predation - whether or not someone was actually harmed. if no one has genuinely been harmed, what good does it do to isolate someone from the only community they may have? that in itself is obviously harmful to the person being exiled, so the question to ask before utilizing it is: will doing so actually prevent more harm from being done unto others?

trans women as a whole are a deeply traumatized demographic. I can almost certainly list off more trans women I personally know who have been raped than who haven't. we are victims, in the vast majority of cases. despite that, we live under a veil of transmisogyny that constantly calls us dangerous degenerate freaks. as a result, some trans women develop coping methods you may find unpalatable. I'm not a very kinky person myself, and a result of me being ace is that a lot of even the most basic and common sexual acts are physically repulsive to me. because of that, I feel uncomfortable when I see people engage in certain kinds of sex and kinks, even if they're fellow trans women. you know what I do in these cases? I just don't follow them. I mind my own business and move on. it's really that easy.

arguing that nobody can engage in certain trauma-based kinks because it can harm them is short-sighted at best and actively dangerous at worst. how can you claim to be a feminist who supports bodily and sexual autonomy and be opposed to people having consensual sex you don't like? it's the same conservative rhetoric that aims to suppress women for taking control of their own sexual desires. it's one step removed from telling trans people not to get bottom surgery because they'll regret it. if you truly believe that people have the right to do what they want with their bodies, you're going to have to accept that some people will do things that personally make you uncomfortable, and you're going to have to acknowledge the fact that just because they make you uncomfortable, that doesn't mean they're harming anyone. just mind your own business. it's seriously not hard.

[carfuckerlynch]

it's genuinely crazy to me that misogyny + patriarchy have made what could conceptually be reasonable advice about how to connect with or flirt with other people (find out about their interests! if they're coming over have snacks they can eat! whatever!) and managed to transform it into a precursor to genuinely vicious predatory behavior. like i know why it happens but it's still fucking wild to see trans men deciding that 'learning about a woman's interests is a tool to get her to have sex with you, not a feature of human connection' is a thing we should keep

[the-pantry-of-art]

POV: You're Ivypool

Fernsong and a background exercise/study