#you are as much a victim!! you are as much subject to patriarchy!!

[queerbauten]

I love how people (particularly men) think they get a free pass to be misogynistic when their target is the "pick-me girl", a phrase which increasingly means nothing

[snowblack-charcoalwhite]

I think the best indicator of "love" is screen time and development the characters are getting. Aemond is definitely not loved, perhaps not even liked by this team. He was sidelined in s1 after Driftmark as well, the show never explored the aftermath for him, ignored his trauma, barely showed relationship with his mother etc. But in s1 Aemond was still a compelling character who stood on his own, now in s2 they write him like an afterthought, it feels like they would have left him off screen if he wasn't needed for the plot, they don't develop him, but the audience sees him occasionally so people remember he exists. His sole reason to exist is to be a worse version of Daemon who gets the same character traits except for Daemon's depth and interactions.

It really sucks and imo it also hurts Ewan as an actor, because after all the hype and PR he got, people had their expectations only to see that he was heavily sidelined for... literally everyone else. And now people are criticising Ewan's acting, but what is he supposed to do when his appearances are so short and he isn't given any meaty scenes? Like you can't seriously compare Tom and Ewan's material yet people do this and say Ewan is a bad actor. Olivia's sad eyes are constantly on screen, it's getting tiresome and repetitive, but hey, they need her to have a chance at Emmys. Same with Emma and Matt, they'd rather show Daemon walking around for 10 minutes then give Ewan an extra second. The battle of Rooks rest could have been his moment, but no, it's Fabien who gets the spotlight out of the Greens. Anime villains can't show any emotions apparently! Aemond can only appear on screen for 2 minutes per episode max. This is downright disrespectful, HBO used Aemond and Ewan for promo, tricked fans into thinking Aemond will have a prominent role, but the show treats Aemond and Ewan terribly. People on social media say they want to watch HOTD just for Aemond because he looks cool and I almost want to say it's not worth it because he is barely on screen lmao. And the writing is awful. The showrunners and HBO had an iconic character in the making but they're boring morons.

Hello!

I have to agree on the point about the complete and utter disrespect with which HBO and the writers have dealt with Aemond and Ewan this season. Actually, basically all of the characters have been subjected to the exploitative treatment and used to either push the show's agenda in a very crude, dumbed down form or to straight out bait the audience to gain more views. Olivia plays a double part of "a terrible mother"/"a victim of patriarchy" (to make Rhaenyra look better/to hammer home the "women good men bad" point) with a default "I'm about to cry" face (she even kind of joked about it herself during one of the promo interviews). Emma so far has been playing another crying/disrespected/constantly in need of saving or standing up for victim of patriarchy. Matt this season gives a master class in playing the walking collection of psychological issues (and not in a good way) - but he at least has something to actually act out. The latter also goes for Tom though Aegon has been really dumbed down - plus sometimes it feels like his main purpose in the show is to evoke pity in viewers. Phia has been amazing with what she was given but overall storywise Helaena doesn't fare that much better than last season - she is still barely a character. Fabien has been talking a lot about Criston's loyalty to Alicent (and this loyalty was shown to us in season 1) but we have yet to see the actual proof of this loyalty in season 2.

But Aemond IMO takes the cake as far as the disrespect towards the character and the actor is concerned. It really feels like HBO after introducing this character with so much potential for development (and the coolest design to boot) played by a very talented actor with a really powerful screen presence just used Aemond for increasing the show's popularity and selling merch - and after that used Ewan during the promo campaign knowing full well that a lot of people have been intrigued by him and interested in learning more about him. Is it possible that no one at HBO had been aware about the way Condal&Co treated Aemond's storyline and how heavily he was sidelined before the season was released? I don't think so.

Anyway, even if HotD has robbed Ewan of an actual opportunity to fully show his acting abilities, at least it has brought him a certain amount of fame and popularity (including interest in his previous projects). People (directors and studio execs among them) now know who he is and what kind of range he has (based off the way he has been playing Aemond and the way he played his other characters). So, after all, some good has come of it.

[siryouarebeingmocked]

Women manipulating men for a more comfortable life (or even just to survive) is as old as patriarchy itself, being born from the disparity between men and women’s relative positions in society (‘The female Andrew Tate’: the new influencer dating doctrine is extreme – but I can see why it’s popular, 9 August). SheraSeven’s “dating doctrine” is apparently gaining popularity, and both the subject of this article and its writer, Kimberly McIntosh, rightly identify gendered power as relevant context. Men hold more privilege, money, status and agency. Women are perpetually required to adapt to and/or resist this oppression. Here, the focus is on heterosexual relationships. But there is a more sinister undercurrent that McIntosh fails to address.

Article | Archive

I found it jarring that the article said SheraSeven had often been described as “the female Andrew Tate”. Although it said this description was used “half‑jokingly”, this nevertheless gives a dangerously misleading impression that an equivalence between SheraSeven and Tate is in some way possible – it is not

Ah, yes, the classic "you literally cannot have opinions that do not agree with me."

Andrew Tate is an influencer best known for supposed sexism against women, including how to manipulate them. //ditto for Seven.

Misandry (and actually I saw none of this in SheraSeven’s views) and misogyny are not some kind of gender-swap equivalents. Violent misogyny is actively expressed in every corner of society every day – women are beaten, murdered and raped with impunity – and this is the context for Tate’s vile fame.

Last time I checked, society was generally against male on female rape and any violence by men against women, even in self-defense. /

Also, Andrew Tate is best known for his allegedly sexist opinions, not actual violence or the threat thereof, even if you back-door it into the discussion by talking about 'context'.

Also, the Guardian is a UK paper. In the UK, you need a penis to commit rape, by law. So if a woman rapes a man, there's not much chance she'll be charged with rape.

Also, sexism is sexism, no matter how it's expressed. If one person hates green tomatoes, and expresses it by setting a farm on fire, and another hates rutabagas, and expresses it by not eating rutabegas...they both hate veggies.

Some women tackle power inequalities in society by the manipulation, exploitation or indeed humiliation of men, but this takes place within the context of the gender hierarchy where men retain pre-eminence. There can never be a female Andrew Tate.

You heard it here first! When a woman is horrible and manipulative and sexist toward men, that's actually men's fault, and they're not really victims, because society is a Patriarchy.

The irony here is that Tate and pickup artists in general are usually stigmatized by society. Same as their audience. The idea that they have power just for being men is, um, sexist.

I love how this person's concern is not the toxic influencer who wants to manipulate dudes and teach other women how to do it, but the idea that it's a serious problem.

I don't think she actually condemns wossname, even by implication, at any point.

[eastgaysian]

Sorry this is a dumb question but can you explain why tomshiv is not abusive? Shiv seems to hit a lot of textbook behaviours of emotional abusers

thank you for your follow up clarifying this was in good faith bc i checked my inbox yesterday right after getting high and was like man come on. don't do this to me. but yeah i can talk about it, it's obviously something i have a fair amount of thoughts on

on a fundamental level, i take issue with the assertion that there are 'textbook behaviors of emotional abusers' in the first place. distilling abuse down to a set of behaviors is, imo, effectively meaningless and totally unproductive. it's not the behavior of an individual that defines abuse, it's a specific and intentionally cultivated imbalance of power and control within a relationship. victims of abuse can and do resort to survival mechanisms that could be considered in isolation as 'abusive behavior', the point is that you can't consider them in isolation. there's a gulf of difference between the same actions when they're coming from a person in a position of significant financial or physical or social power over someone else, or when they're coming from the person at a disadvantage.

i think viewing abuse as a set of behaviors also encourages you to treat interpersonal abuse as if it's discontinuous with systemic abuse, which is inaccurate and unproductive. a key part of succession's premise is that, because the family is literally the business, the familial abuse within the roy family is inextricable from the broader systems of capitalism, patriarchy, and the sexual violence and abuse endemic to them. with regards to how the show satirizes and critiques these systems, i think it's very telling that all of the characters are to some degree complicit and/or participants in abuse, but logan is the only one i'd say is unambiguously and intentionally presented as 'an abuser' (whose abuse is not an isolated product of him as a person, but integrated into/inseparable from the capitalist system which persists after his death). still, logan isn't reduced to a one-dimensional angry, abusive dad, he's given depth and complexity. his continued insistence that he loves his children isn't treated as something that's untrue, but that doesn't make it inherently good, and it certainly isn't incompatible with him abusing them.

circling back to tom and shiv. their relationship is unhealthy, it's not good for either of them to be married, shiv does fucking awful things to tom and tom does awful things right back, i'm not questioning any of that. but at my most cynical and bitchy, what it comes down to is quite simply: shiv doesn't have enough power over tom to be abusive, systemically or personally.

the thing is sometimes you see people say 'wow, if the genders were reversed people would say tom and shiv's relationship is unambiguously abusive!' which... hrm, but really the issue is that. the genders are the way they are, that's for a reason, and yes, that does make a significant difference in how we perceive their relationship and power dynamics. tom holds very real and present power over shiv as a man and as her husband, proposing to her when she was vulnerable in a way that placed huge pressure on her to accept and then trying to get her to have his baby so he can become patriarch. shiv's the heiress with the legitimacy of her family name and generational wealth but she is continuously, unavoidably subjected to gendered discrimination and violence. she's never allowed direct access to real power - she has to rely on the men around her, her husband or her brothers, and if they don't feel like humoring her she's shit out of luck.

this doesn't cancel out like a math equation, but it definitely makes things much more complicated than shiv being an Evil Bitch Wife to her Poor Pitiful Husband. when shiv finally does push tom too far, he immediately, successfully, goes over her head to her abusive father to fuck her over. maybe shiv wants to be her father in her relationships and exert the same kind of control he does. but she doesn't and she can't! she does not have that power! she cannot stop tom from kicking back and his hits are significant. as much as she might like to pretend otherwise, tom not only has always had the power to leave in a way shiv doesn't, he had and has the power to fuck her up badly, and he's used that power. that is simply not the power dynamic between abuser and victim to me.

i also have to say that abuse is not always going to be definitive black and white. in real life there are plenty of unambiguous situations but there are also plenty of complicated situations, and applying judgments to fiction is not always straightforward. i can't exactly call someone 'wrong' for personally being uncomfortable with tom and shiv's relationship or believing shiv is abusive, but i'm very skeptical of the viewpoint and the motivations or assumptions that are often contained within. if shiv is abusive, she definitely isn't uniquely so among the cast, so you had better be applying that label and any associated moral judgments equally across the board.

[transmascutena]

Hey I found your blog kind of at random coincidentally right when I started RGU after putting it off for a long time. I grew up on toonami and I like going back to the "classics" for any form of media, so it's an obvious choice.

The reason I delayed watching it for so long is kind of odd; when I perused the Wikipedia summary way back when the blurb for (i think) ep 30 had the line something like, "Utena realizes she has fallen in love with Akio against her will." My knowledge of the series was 1) Akio is bad guy and 2) Utena is heroine, and something about that plot point just soured me on the entire thing. It was mostly a personal issue, my own phobias around corruption and loss of control, so I wasn't in the mood for a story of falling victim to that, especially a protagonist I'm supposed to empathize with, and I also just hate that trope. "Oh no, I love Bad Person so I will now do Things I know are Bad because Love." That can certainly be well done but I think it's more often the sign of bad writing from writers without the skill or patience to adequately portrayed a character arc. I found a few fan blogs and essays about the seduction of Utena, and how it's allegedly done in universe as very calculated, meticulous and believable.

I can't say exactly why but the entire concept just repulsed me. I think difficult subjects definitely should be discussed in media, so the reluctance was out of character for me. Eventually I found myself thinking about it so much I decided I had to just sit down and watch it just to be able to make up my own mind. I guess I just figure that Big Bad Seduces Hero and She Dies but also Wins Somehow?? is such a dumb plot that it can't actually be the content of a show that is so highly regarded.

I suppose I don't actually have a question for you, I just wanted to write out my reservations to somebody, but maybe you have some insights on it. Because I'm also learning from your blog that there's a scene that some people can't decide is rape or not? The hell? I guess I just don't want to sink hours of my life into this and then find a gratuitous rape scene that's trying to be Deep and Artistic.

Maybe that's my question, is the hype worth it, and does the show justify it's use of sexual violence in your opinion? Thanks for reading this, I mostly just needed to type it out.

to be quite honest i think "Utena realizes she has fallen in love with Akio against her will" is a bad summary of that episode, that i don't think really gets across what the episode, or the show as a whole, is about, so i don't blame you for feeling hesitant because of it. utena, at least in my interpretation of the show, is not and never was "in love" with akio. she is being groomed by him, and is being convinced that she is, but even then it's more complicated than that. it's just as much about the structure of The Family as it is about romance for example. it's about how the lines between the two often get blurry under patriarchy, and how that vagueness can be used to take advantage of kids who don't know better (utena especially because she does not have a family, and does not know what a family is supposed to be). there is so so much to this that i can't get to it all here, but if you're worried about it being a cliché plot executed badly, don't be. there are so many layers to it that say so much about how these systems work in real life, and it absolutely lives up to the praise people give it. but, you know, it is a heavy subject and it is portrayed that way, so be aware of that going in.

as for the rape scene, it is pretty unanimously agreed upon to be rape by the fandom, and the only reason there are a few people who disagree is that they don't know what the concept of consent means. that being said though, the scene itself is not gratuitous at all, nor is it at all explicit, really. it's clear what is happening for sure, and it is absolutely upsetting and uncomfortable, but the only thing that is actually shown is the character's face. the show as a whole does not really have any nudity either, if that tells you anything. the sexual abuse is there and it is not subtle, but it is always depicted with respect for the victim, and nothing is ever show that isn't strictly necessary. it's really impressive to me, to be honest. the scene is there for a reason, and it is important to the plot/character arcs, because the show is about (among other things) commentary on systems of sexual violence/abuse. the show absolutely does "justify" it's use of sexual violence, because it's about not only why it's bad, but also how and why it happens.

[mintacle]

Jason Todd being girl-coded, you've opened my eyes! You are so right and suddenly a lot of things about him make sense (including why I like him so much), especially with how the narrative treats him (right down to turning a morally complex character into a straight-up card-carrying villain who eats puppies, ironically right around the time they did that to another female character, Talia). Jason is even written how I (a girl) tend to write angry victim power fantasy female characters. Like yes babygirl, scream and rage against the heavens about how unfair it all is!

I remember a post calling Jason "the Punisher for girls" except... yeah he kinda is. The Punisher is a male power fantasy with all that implies, while Jason is such a girl power fantasy and written with a lot of the usual negative narrative bias female characters usually get.

Except if we're honest and look past the superficial similarities of lethal force and guns, the narrative role of Batman is far more like the Punisher than Jason. Jason's role is the Punisher's daughter. Jason is if Lisa came back and was angry after what happened and big parent man Frank had to try to keep his (hysterical emotional angry-like-a-girl) daughter from crossing his arbitrary lines because she was going "too far" and tragically, he's unable to "save" her from herself and he must Move On while his child gets locked up or lies dying behind him (I can seriously imagine exactly how a proper Lisa-is-back plot would go down it's crazy how similar it'd be to Jason's return).

And another way Jason is girl-coded is that he's mentored by Talia, a woman. In comics you don't see male characters mentored by female ones often. Sometimes they can be taught specific skills by them for a brief time (like Tim and Shiva) but Talia's role as Jason's primary mentor and caretaker for several years is pretty unusual in comics.

True!! I'm glad my posts resonated with you so much. :)

I don't really know anything about the Punisher so I can't add my opinion to the mix, but other people will probably recognize your point.

But! On the subject of female characters mentoring male characters @benbamboozled made a great post actually about how women are seen as Having A Specific Skill or Expertise to teach whereas men are mentors For All, or For Life. And yeah Jason does break the rule absolutely! But we also don't get to see to much of that on page. He is in Talia's care for years, but other than Lost Days and utrh we just don't get to see these two interact. I either made a post or drafted and forgot about it, how DC won't publish Talia and Jason working together because it is vital to DC's agenda of keeping them marginalized that they each be alone nomatter how much reason and history they have to be in more frequent and meaningful contact.

At the same time, we really only see Talia caring for Jason in a motherly context, she isn't cast quite in the role of a mentor, rather sending him around to teachers than teaching him herself. It's a step in the right direction, but the fact of any mentoring and most interactions occuring off-screen, as well as their relationship being ignored later, or ret-conned like in the utrh movie where Talia was kind of replaced with Ra's.

For me a lot of Jason's girl-coded aspect arises from his opposition to Bruce who embodies patriarchal ideals. To some extent Jason is in the role of every person who has been let down by the patriarchy. The system we were told is for our benefit as well and which has let us down. It's about how we were let down by this world we thought was fair when we were smaller and trusted to be protected. It's about how our own father's have let us down, even if the time we last thought of them as protectors might have been many, many years ago.

None of these experiences are exclusionary to women either. I am not a woman, but I am queer. And I have been let down both by the idea that my father could ever be my protector instead of the one I needed protection from. And I have been let down by the idea I used to have of a world that would give me a voice without me having to prove myself every step of the way.

The need I have for more interaction between Talia and Jason is so much about two people villainized and victimized by the same patriarch-favoring narrative bonding and rising to challenge and upset the status quo. While I am aware that it will never happen and that DC already left Winnick a lot of leeway to have made Talia play such a type of role at all, logically it should be what follows.

Jason is girl-coded, but he also drinks his respect-women juices.

[saintmelangell]

re phoebe bridgers it v much felt like too many young women were into her at the same time which obviously activates the misogyny brigade. i stopped mentioning her entirely because there was so much memeing about how ~theyfabs~ like her music and i already get sniffed at for not doing queerness correctly lol. plus she smashed a guitar which made various men very angry.

i also think youth culture's tendency to jump from topic to topic has fused with a social justice need to moralize so that artists are treated to the devalue-discard stage of abusive relationships. no one can just be mad at charli xcx for selling out to the kamala campaign, instead we need to all reassure each other that we ALL secretly felt she was a bad songwriter this whole time.

i love this take and i completely agree- and i'd extend your thoughts on fusing social justice and youth culture has a lot to do with commodification. i've ranted about this before about how social justice and activism culture has been reduced down to a commodity culture in which you must accrue the right amount of permissible morality, and if you fall short of this you end up essentially blackballed: and its seen in the reduction of blm to those black squares in 2020 and the ai generated picture of palestine that said all eyes on rafah. in addition to demeaning observers of injustice it absolutely and completely dehumanizes victims into consumable objects for a western audience who derives further privilege from voyuering their suffering in ways considered correct. and charli xcx selling out to kamala is a really good example of this, and so is people backpedalling on their enjoyment of charli. its all performance and its terrible for activism, terrible for people who need help and support, but also terrible for the essential activity of enjoyment. i think about that quote from karl marx about capital a lot, which i will post here for this unfamiliar:

Thus political economy – despite its worldly and voluptuous appearance – is a true moral science, the most moral of all the sciences. Self-renunciation, the renunciation of life and of all human needs, is its principal thesis. The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorise, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save – the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour – your capital. The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, i.e., the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being.

capitalism lulls us into a sense of false security by coopting the means of resisting it for itself: by commodifying morality as something which can add or deplete one's essential value, one views the subject of that morality as an object, as an It (i will call upon martin buber here) rather than someone to whom we live in relation, whose freedom predicates our own freedom. i am not saying to consume artists and their work uncritically by any means, but the more we commodify social justice the more the sneaking agenda of capitalism, patriarchy, fascism, and so forth can leach into that pursuit of justice: one repackages misogyny as "i find this woman cringe" and denies their participation in patriarchy while actually aiding it. or, in another vein, we should not be participating in the bds movement because its moral for us to do so, but because it is required of us as human beings in a way that absolute transcends any binarized notion of right or wrong: the morality of that participation transcends the materiality of the act of consumption. the individual who has the privilege to be an activist without risking their mortality should not be at the center of their own activism, because morality reduced to the material ceases to be morality. and the more we apply sweeping standards of morality to fairly innocuous things, like pop singers, the more we are centering our material existence, as consumers in the west, as the activity of morality.

essentially what i am saying is that the more we attribute moral weight to ordinary activities, the more we reduce morality to something that can be bought and sold, and this reduction is (and i don't think people want to hear this) fascistic in nature. but this is definitely a topic far too complex to talk about on tumblr. in any case i really liked your response to this and i totally agree!

[caffeineandsociety]

Also I feel a huge reason that a lot of debates over whether trans men or trans women Have Male Privilege/Experience REAL Misogyny fall flat in a lot of regards is that they assume that misogyny is EITHER about Femaleness/Womanhood as an identity, OR the simultaneous idealization and demonization of, and possessiveness over, the presumed-"female" body, when in reality it's very much a matter of both in complex and intersecting ways.

Which ends up meaning that trans women are subjected to the body factor, especially the possessiveness thereof, in ways that are definitely unique - phallocentrism, an aspect of patriarchy and usually tied to male privilege, becomes at LEAST as much of a detriment as a benefit (on the one hand, at least medicine for the "male" reproductive system is pretty well understood and taken seriously; it's not just a matter of biological logistics that make prostate cancer one of the most treatable cancers out there, but that sure as hell doesn't take away the fact that people get fucking creepy and invasive and obsessive over women's dicks - sometimes even when they're trying to be affirming - with obsession with and terror of The Dreaded Penis being a major motive behind arguably the majority of transmisogynistic violence), and trans women are held to an even higher standard of "if you're not a flawless supermodel goddess you shouldn't be breathing my air, let alone outside in public being an eyesore" than cis women - but trans men are ALSO subjected to the possessiveness of it, as well as the neglect, in ways that trans women, save for some intersex ones, are often straight up biologically incapable of being primary victims of (see: the erosion of abortion rights, doctors prioritizing preserving one's ability to become pregnant over anything else in their care, forced pregnancy as an explicit goal of corrective rape, etc. - though notably, the sorry state of the way medically significant period distress is treated is NOT a case of this, as hormone fluctuations can cause everything but the bleeding even in the absence of a uterus!), and it's not like lacking a "natal" penis makes someone inherently immune to being harmed by phallocentrism - treating someone like a lesser person over the lack of a penis where one is expected, or a penis that doesn't function "normally", is very much a manifestation of phallocentrism! Never mind the way vaginas are treated as essentially a gaping void in the brain, or the disgust with which they're so frequently spoken of - that impacts pre- and non-op trans men, AND post-op trans women, both in similar yet slightly distinct ways!

The intersection of these factors also means there are unique ways trans men and trans women experience the identity factor. Trans men experience misogyny for moving away from a female identity being forced upon them; trans women experience it for trying to actively claim that identity for themselves. That identity is seen as lesser, as a Property role, so as far as society sees trans men of COURSE anyone would want to escape it...but you have to stop ~playing pretend~ eventually, right? Alternately, it's traitorous, it's an "I got mine so screw you", it's prolonging the pretend game with roid rage, it's any number of horrible predatory ugly things - because to society, a trans man can never be a real man; his core identity is still A Woman, whether he knows it or not; the closest he can ever come is a disfigured caricature, acting out a rough approximation of an ideal that of COURSE is all the violent parts of that ideal and nothing else. Meanwhile, as far as society is concerned about trans women, no one would EVER opt INTO such a lesser identity without ulterior motives, so it MUST be a predatory thing, right? In many cases, these have similar narratives, but very different overtones.

So, who has it worse? Who experiences more Real Misogyny? Who experiences More Transphobia? Well, that depends on way too many individual factors; there is no constant answer and, critically, there doesn't need to be! It's not about keeping score, it's about making the problems get better! We're not going to do that by denying that people other than us have unique experiences with this shit!

[jeremywhitley]

Dear Mr. Whitley,

This is a loaded subject, but it seems that aside from how you chose to address it in the Unstoppable Wasp, it seems nobody talks about Janet Van Dyne's feelings on the incidents leading up to her divorce from Hank Pym anymore. Sure, we get to see the incident itself brought up a lot. Whether seriously or just as a cheap joke, we get reminded of how Janet was a victim and Hank an aggressor. However, we don't really get Janet's input on the matter, in terms of any lingering trauma she's feeling. We do get Hank's input up until Rage of Ultron. We see his angst, his regret, his desire to atone. We see how he gets forgiven and excused and is continually in the process of moving past his mistake. After the 80s, though, we stop seeing Jan's healing process, even as she keeps drifting back into a romance with Hank.

I understand the tragedy of Janet and Hank's marriage isn't something that needs to be dwelled on too much with Janet Van Dyne. She's done so many awesome things since then, such as lead the Avengers, save the world many times over, and become a great mom for Nadia. However, she's also constantly surrounded by the legacy of a man she loves, who loved her and then hurt her. She was together with him during Rage of Ultron, and became the chief mourner at his memorial. What's more, right before she and Hank were on the Avengers together for what is currently the final time, Alex Summers in his inverted state hurt her more than Hank Pym ever did. There must have been some extremely complicated emotions going through her mind.

This is part of the reason I love the partnership she has with Bobbi in Unstoppable Wasp. Aside from the fact that they click well with each other, there's also the subtle undercurrent of how they're both women who loved and then were hurt by love.

That's part of why I loved putting her and Bobbi together. They get each other in a way that can't be taught. Whether you ship them or not (and I know people do) they're extremely important to one another.

As for why no one has written about Janet's feelings regarding being hurt by Hank...well...I think that's much bigger than comics. Society is much more interested in punishing bad people than they are in restoring injured people. Rape and abuse survivors make patriarchal society uncomfortable. Rape and abuse are symptoms of a rot within the guiding concepts of patriarchy and trying to do right by victims would mean actually reassessing their own system.

That's why I had her talk about it, because it was so messed up that we hadn't given that room.

[kutputli]

sex work (prostitution) is based on sexual exploitation of young people. Sex work wouldn't work without young girl (I was a victim who thought it was empowering bc of shitty people like you spreading lies)You are a monster. Aside from your shitty view, I don't care about your study or whatever. black men often exploits black women, your post on Louis is at best laughable. Do you know why? Because Louis admitted in the church exploiting young black girl. He's not a nice pimp. Nice pimp aren't real. You don't care because Louis exploited young black girl. I'm sure, if white women were pictured in his brothel, it wouldn't be the same reaction. Louis and his fandom are awful with black women, that's why the white audience can cling with this character. People have far less empathy for black women. And Louis is creole, he was mad to not be part of the white patriarchy. He never cared for other black people.

Is it possible to call out shitty black men? People like you make it very hard.

Your post about sex work make me want to vomit.

I'm very sorry for your experience of being victimised. It is never acceptable to harm anyone, sexually, economically or in any other way. I'm sorry it happened to you, and I do not condone the actions of the people who harmed you.

I do care, very much, about Black women and how they are disproportionately coerced and abused into various forms of economic harm, including sexualised labour. Just as I care about Dalit and Bahujan women, who, as I stated in the post you are referencing, have been subjected to generational sexualised enslavement systems.

I will, however, continue to support the dignity and freedom of sex workers who have consistently unionised and self-advocated for more safe and equitable labour conditions for their profession. I will not support any argument that seeks to shame or berate sex workers or those third party labourers involved in the sex work industries such as pimps.

Coming specifically to Louis de Pointe du Lac, a fictional character - if your reading of his character is that he is a shitty Black man, then by all means, you should feel able to post your critiques of him in your spaces. I have seen many critiques of Louis, though relatively few of them from Black-identifying fans.

In case you missed this while reading my previous post, I myself am not white - I am brown and a South Asian living in India. One of the reasons I love the character of Louis is because of his Blackness, and what I see him bringing to his relationships because of it. As I referenced in that post, it is Louis's relationship with both his own Black employees, as well as with Miss Lily, that contextualises my reading of him as a fair, non-predatory employer and client.

And going beyond the professional, it is Louis' unabashed love and support of Claudia, along with his love for his sister and mother, that informs my reading of him as a Black man with a great deal of passion specifically for Black women. I understand his character to be one that is profoundly aware of the inequities of racism, and while he may not have a perfect feminist understanding of misogynoir and how intersectional patriarchy operates, I think that he has a sensitivity towards Black women that knows they are enduring and surviving forms of harm that he is not subject to.

It's fine if you disagree with my reading of a fictional character.

But please don't come to my blog expecting me to denounce actual, living sex workers, because I have too much respect for the conditions they survive to ever do so.

[c0rpseductor]

i think when discussing the idea of masculinity and patriarchy hurting men it’s important to view it not as “men are subject to gendered oppression for their maleness” but “men are subject to a system that asks them to give up some portion of their humanity in exchange for privilege.” like i think in many systems like this there is a certain blowback for the oppressor group, but it isn’t oppression so much as the emptiness that results from perpetuating violence and from cannibalizing oneself to be the vector for said violence. if that makes sense?

like, the more fervently a man performs normative masculinity, the less room there is in his life for anything but violence. and conversely, a refusal to participate in this violence may subject him to violence (although a lesser violence than that exercised on those who are oppressed under patriarchy). patriarchy exists to privilege men, and therefore also to perpetuate itself.

ultimately it’s like. i think there’s a soullessness that comes with being any member of such an oppressor class, and especially with expending effort in living up to the expectations of that class. and that does not mean enacting that violence or ripping your own heart out to do it makes you a victim of oppression — but you are ripping your own heart out. do you know what i mean? systems of violence are cannibalistic. and i can’t say in good conscience “no one profits by them” knowing full well that materially speaking of course they do — this is the reason such systems exist — but on a broader level it’s like, these systems turn the world into a crab bucket.

so like, yes, i do think men as individuals are subject to harm under patriarchy, but it’s the “willingly stepping hard into a bear trap to prove a very important point” sort of harm, not any kind of broad or overarching harm, because men are still the benefited class here. misandry is actively a stupid fucking concept, and what i see labeled as “misandry” is almost invariably misogyny that just so happens to sometimes blow back on men (discussions on male SA survivorship are rife with this nonsense, for example).

i guess tl;dr: men are hurt under misogyny in a wil e coyote sort of way where they get hit in the head with their own overly complicated death traps

[soleminisanction]

I just went through most of your character rants and analysis and I love them so much!❤️ It’s so nice to find someone with a lot of the same opinions as me, especially after seeing a good bit of Tim hate in TikTok comments lately. I love the animatics and cosplays on there but it sucks that it seems like it’s seen as cool to be nasty to Tim’s character over there, or maybe it's just the comments of the videos I get? It’s usually people thinking he’s a misogynist or that his character steals from and or makes other robins look bad to hype him up. I don’t get these comments because I feel like all of the bats have been written with misogynistic dialogue at some point, even the girls! I don’t understand why people latch this on to Tim as some big character trait. Maybe it’s some joke I’m just not understanding. Also with the bringing other characters down to prop his character up, isn’t that what pretty much every character that is currently in the spotlight does at some point (like Steph’s Batgirl run infamously does to Babs and Tim)? Why do they attribute this only to Tim? Also, all the robins steal traits from each in adaptations and other comic runs, again why do they act like it’s a Tim only thing? Basically, all the other Bats do what they claim they hate Tim for?! It’s genuinely mind-boggling to me!

TikTok's algorithm is the worst thing about that app, because it's got a terrible tendency to send peoples' feeds into negativity spirals, and that in turn fosters a community of people who are either looking for rage-bait, are mad because they can't get away from the rage-bait, or try to bait other people to rage because that gets them engagement. There's no way off the merry-go-round once you get on it either, it's just miserable; it's why I eventually had to drop the app and now only watch the videos ported over to YouTube or Tumblr.

For my money, the reason Tim specifically gets blamed for this thing that is very obviously a problem with comics as an industry, not with his character specifically, comes at least in part from the drama involving Steph.

Because see, defenses of Steph tend to start from a seed of truth -- she was the subject of sexist writing in War Games, both in the fact that they chose to fridge her for Bruce's manpain and that artists during cuts away to the infamous torture sequence (which did not need to be as long as it was) drew her in a highly sexualized manner. But some people took that truth and ran with it, leaping onto this frustrating, stupid second-wave feminist idea that women are inherently innocent and can only ever be victims of The Patriarchy and therefor if anything goes wrong in the life of a woman, it MUST be the fault of A Man. And since it can be hard to pin-point which comic creators are responsible for these things, the brunt started to fall on the in-universe men.

So all the men around Steph became scapegoats, and Tim is the man she's both around the most and whom she has wronged the most. And then that attitude got amplified by her Batgirl run, which does this really manipulative bullshit where it only brings up Steph's past in terms that make her look like a helpless victim with no agency, without acknowledging or even mentioning any of the things she chose to do of her own free will. It especially went out of its way to demonize Tim and paint him as unreasonable, judgey and sexist, because the alternative would mean acknowledging that Steph had done some really fucked-up shit to him in the last days of Robin, and it was in fact perfectly reasonable for him to want her out of his life.

But see, that would mean that a good guy (gasp) didn't like her. And had a good reason not to like her. And trying to write a character who rises to become a true hero because they're fighting to make up for the shitty things they did in the past is so much harder than writing a innocent widdle victim who only has the best intentions and whose only problem is that the world is unfair to her specficially. White women with no self-awareness can project themselves on the latter, but not the former.

Amplify that by the faction of Damian stans who treat fictional rivalries as Deadly Serious Business and the fraction of Jason stans who hate him for existing as the result of Jason's death, both of whom will jump on and amplify any criticism no matter how baseless and uninformed just to score points against their perceived "enemy," and there you go. That's what I've observed unfolding since about 2007 anyway.

[ftmtftm]

Hey ty for combatting that one post saying tranandrophobia isn't real. I came to tumblr on the recommendation that this was a space transmasculine ppl can actually find each other but it STILL seems swarming with radfem rhetoric on like every app I try to use. I'm so scared bc next week I have to get a pap test done at this WOMANS clinic (I have a full beard) and every time I go something happens. Nurses get scared of me and have sabatoged my papers. Gestured me to go somewhere else for genital care. Every time I go to pick up my T I have to be so careful bc my papers have been shredded to keep me from getting it. Transmasculinity is so lonely sometimes. I've been sexually harrassed by a chaser, who is a woman. I feel unsafe whenever I go outside.

So for people like us to come to websites like these to have fun and escape reality and STILL see people including trans ppl who SHOULD be understanding us completely ignoring our experiences and talking like they have spoken to any of us, seeing bad faith takes constantly about how we're all attention seeking liars (while simultaneously being invisible bc that makes sense somehow) and MRA preachers bc we want ppl to stop ignoring when trans men get hurt and talk about their pain and how we don't actually get magical privilege and how secretly everything we complain about HAS to be about a trans woman somehow to shut us down-

It makes me feel crazy. Bc I know it's real. Lots of us do. But they still keep getting so many notes from radfems and queer ppl who want to look good. It feels so hopeless sometimes. I wish everyone who reblogged that had read your addition instead. Sorry if that was long

No worries anon! Like, seriously never be worried about leaving a long ask in my inbox.

Tumblr is a really complex place when it comes to the safety of any trans person really, because Tumblr is pretty dependent on the way the user curates their dashboard (though with the app trying to force new users onto the algorithmic dash that is becoming less of a feature - which blows bc user curation part of the whole appeal of the site!) But I digress - It's absolutely really frustrating the way even the most well meaning queer people regurgitate Radfem rhetoric because they don't actually know what Radical Feminism is because the Radfem propaganda machine unfortunately works and it has had decades of time to work well.

It's also especially frustrating because it is extremely emotionally labor intensive to try and discuss these topics and so you end up with a lot of extremely burnt out, frustrated trans mascs who want to give words to their experiences but are constantly told their experiences don't matter both on and offline. Which then ends with people expressing themselves in ways that are infinitely easy to take out of context or twist in unfavorable ways. Like, there's a reason why when I'm upset about something on here - I try to talk to my girlfriend or my best friend first to gather my thoughts. It's something I know I fail at sometimes to some degrees, but ultimately I don't want to fall victim to something like that. It's why I try to talk about my experiences clinically sometimes. Show too much vulnerability online and it can and will be weaponized against you.

There is also something to be said about how the absolutely atrocious damage actual MRAs have done to feminist discussions on manhood under Patriarchy is deeply upsetting. Like I said in that post, it is actually absolutely not anti-feminist to attempt to understand the ways in which Patriarchy reinforces harmful gendered stereotypes and roles onto men, especially marginalized men. Actual MRA's have taken that discussion and twisted it into something misogynistic, but the ways in which people shut down general feminist conversations on the subject quite literally stem from Radical Feminist thought - not general feminist belief - and it's deeply upsetting that that isn't more widely recognized.

I think, ultimately, hurt people hurt people and Tumblr is an environment full of hurting people who don't know how to cope well with their own lives. Marginalized people are canaries in the coal mine of capitalistic failure and we're all suffering in some way or another. That combined with the fact that Tumblr culture rewards feeling bigger or morally superior to others creates an awful cesspool of an environment for having real discussions on marginalization.

All of that said, I really hope your appointment goes well anon. Hopefully it all goes smoothly and without complications. 💛

[they-them-that]

The Hyuna news is upsetting but also nothing new. There's a pattern of women who are upheld as feminist that turn around and date/marry shady men. It's a complex but systemic issue that I wanted to dissect to propose a productive and feminist way to approach these situations.

1. The Root Cause (Patriarchy)

I get we don't want to give these women any room for excuses when it feels like they've thrown women under the bus but we still have to recognize that although they have unique privileges and are still accountable for their actions, they're also victims of the patriarchy.

We have to recognize that these women are the subjects of a predatory industry and most of them were groomed by it. They're highly isolated and honestly, most of the men they share a career and social circle with are the Junhyung types.

Just like how misogyny and rape culture is still normalized for us common folk, it's fervent in the celebrity sphere where the men have even more power and privileges to abuse. Understanding that, it isn't surprising how shady men have access to these socially isolated women.

2. Placid Feminism

These women live in a bubble and a lot of the feminist action they've seemingly done never extended outside themselves in actuality. I don't deny the possibility they genuinely consider themselves to be feminists because at least for some of them, the issues they've talked about came from personal experience.

The issue comes in on how placid and underdeveloped their feminist values are that they don't think to look for those virtues in romantic partners. It brings into question if they even addressed their partner's past actions and social values or if they just "enjoy each other's company". It becomes even more shallow when these female celebrities revoke their feminist fanbase by doubling down rather than acknowledging the issue. That simply, feminism isn't relevant in the dating scene.

3. Rose Tinted Glasses

How much of a feminist was Hyuna really? Her song Babe was believed to be about the sexualization of minors due to the music video but when you actually read the lyrics, it's really just a love song that romanticizes youth.

Many female artists put out a consumable "girl boss" aesthetic of feminism while their music still revolves around the affection and pleasure of men. A lot of the sexual liberation these women have been praised for actually fails to challenge the status quo and ultimately caters to men and their unrealistic and predatory expectations of beauty and sex. We then have to consider what these women have done for us outside sexy girl-power beats and sadly, it's not much.

We've seen these women being beaten down by misogyny and rise from the ashes and we made it feminist. Their actions felt empowering and radical even when they were just doing it for themselves. We witness their liberation and then seek that these women are activists. The feminist iconography they market at us fulfills our confirmation bias and we hail them as a "girl's girl".

Although I don't blame this on fans when the celebrities literally pink wash their image, it's also important we deepen our own understanding and standards of feminism. We can feel empowered by their work but we shouldn't put these celebrities on a pedestal when they're frankly not doing as much as they actually can be. There are social activists out there who are facing the brunt of the movement, who actually make it their mission to liberate all women and marginalized people. We have to differentiate between an entertainer and an activist. We have to hold celebrities to a standard of basic human decency and activism but we mustn't be impressed by shallow gestures of feminism.

[horizon-verizon]

https://x.com/maxistakgae/status/1812693512233566233?t=Np6VWP__YoA7kUqYXa7OSQ&s=19

All these Alicent stans who are now using RHAENYRA being subjected to misogyny as a way to claim that Alicent bears no responsibility for contributing to it, that ALICENT is only a victim in all this... God. It gives "white women can't contribute to oppression because they're oppressed for being women." It gives conservative who jump when women in progressive movements PUSH BACK against sexism they face from within the movement (something they're able and encouraged to do much more so than their conservative counterparts) so they can go on about how "See! They're just as bad and misogyny is simply the unfortunate natural order."

I need to know how these people operate politically and socially irl. But also I'm scared to know.

It's that desire to forever be victims to have something close to the accountability-less-ness men enjoy, or to just retain that white women status of helplessness. HERE is an ask that better describes why there are Alicent stans or NPC female/Dead Ladies Club stans, and an excerpt:

they've always been people who, to say this nicely and vaguely, take a very passive approach to trauma and hardship sometimes to a frustrating degree. And the way they'll talk or write about these fictional women often mirrors the way they talk about themselves. And there's a good part of me that suspects they see themselves in these passive women and the patriarchal fantasy of one day being rewarded for passively enduring your hardships. It's basically internalized misogyny tied on with real life pain that they channel through fiction because, as I said, they're often either quite passive or quite... "my pain should be centered at all times but I refuse to extend that empathy I demand to others" in real life. Which is why I honestly don't think there's any sense in... trying to talk sense into a lot of these people. They're channeling feelings from their real life that they've not addressed in their real life, and they're so obstinate about it that they're not the kind of people who would ever see it as a chance to examine how they feel about their own life. Because for them, characters like Sansa and Alicent validate their own feelings about their own lives, while Dany and Rhaenyra challenge them and therefore must be destroyed in order to protect that validation, and they're simply not the kinds of people willing to rethink, or even be aware, of what they're doing. [...] Because in their eyes, they're defending themselves while refusing to either separate themselves or reevaluate themselves. In some ways, that actually makes them quite similar to the open bigots — it's just more insidious.

And we don't want to be all "psychoanalyst" or anything, but there is a reason(s) why most if Alicent stans were first including tradcath and tradwife ideology in their hotd metas when the show came out. You can look through some of the "team green thoughts", "tradcaths", or "alicent stans" tagged posts I have here in my blog that I've reblogged.

That person you linked, they act like Alicent/Alicent stan critcizers thought the men around Rhaenyra were feminist or followed Rhaenyra bc they thought her as equal to a man...no. It mirrors the whole "Rhaenyra is not a feminist" spiel to invalidate people arguing for why Rhaenyra should have been allowed to rule or avoid patriarchal violence by the purpose. In both, it's to disguise and distort the point of how women--the targets of misogyny and main one of patriarchy--can and still can contribute to their own/other women's debasement, deprivation, or deaths. White women owned enslaved people, raped them, sold their children, they didn't include or think of Black women in their first feminist voting rights movement...today they continuously attack PoC and esp Black women when they feel they are not being put "above" them in perceptions of desireability or professionalism. And there was a white women who chose to "adopt" black kids recently and force them to be essentially slaves alongside her husband. They enter in certain queer spaces and act as if their presence is a blessing. And they have long sublimated their own assertiveness to reserve that for nonwhite men in order to have a higher status in the (U.S., but let's be real everywhere) racial hierarchy: white men -> white women -> non Black PoC men -> non Black PoC women -> Black men->Black women.

All this to say, Alicent has participated and ensured her own as well as Rhaenyra's suffering even while having been a teen when coerced to marry Viserys and have his kids and go through marital rape. By her own choice and jealousy, and HotD, as we find out through the reveal of Alicole, asserts that she really goes after Rhaenyra bc she's jealous of her having been with Cole & for not being in a forced marriage or following Westerosi purity culture as hard as her. For being a sort of "block" towards her finally getting her just rewards (Queenly authority) from said marriage that Rhaenyra, in her eyes, disrespects. Or as close to a conclusion as I've gotten bc this show forces you to wade through its incoherencies when it comes to her motivations.

They simply wish to avoid how damning the bit abt Alicent choosing, unlike Rhaenyra, to subordinate not just her own desires for autonomy but other women. For the pay off of having respect from men who will never give it to her. Rhaenyra--in the show--is also debilitated by a need for male validation and in less obvious ways, comparatively. But at least she's constantly not seeking or allowing herself to drink the blood and tears of women to do so. But they want to act like her wanting some autonomy for herself is also selfish of her....so what does that make Alicent, then, who gave abortive-contraceptive potions to a girl her son raped instead of pressing Viserys to give some sort of order for sending Aegon away into exile? Who slapped around the same son around for a thing not actually his fault out of her own desperation to find fault when Aemond's eye was taken? Who belittled Lucerys' death? Who decided to sleep with the same man who she decided to abuse Rhaenyra over for YEARS, punish for being "loose" and possibly threatenign to her own sons as she claims but then go around and accept her apology in episdoe 8 as a sign of her "finally" showing some respect, thus nullifying pretty much all she said to her sons abt Rhaenyra and her sons needing to be taken out or set aside for their survival and having been so adamant about it?! To go diegetic and Watsonina about it.

They try to say that Rhaenyra is not suffering from sexism like Alicent, too...and then they say this shit? Pick a lane, Joan!

[limeade-l3sbian]

Why do radfems conveniently forget that female socialization, and societal pressure exist when it's convenient for them.

We make girls insecure by bombarding them with impossible standards that they will never be able to reach, we reward girls who do conform, and partake in beauty rituals and whatnot and AS A RESULT, girls see this and adapt their behavior, clothing, appearance and sometimes even interest to be treated decently and then radfems see this and have the nerve to go "why are women resorting to cosmetic procedures, just let yourself age gracefully" "stop wearing makeup to inspire other women" "stop saving don't give them your money" as if it was that fucking easy, as if we're supposed to ignore all the pressure we're subjected to and pretend it doesn't happen or doesn't affect us. Like come on we're women here we know what it's like. You know damn well if you were to go over a certain BMI you'd be treated like a monster. Like I'm not a bad person or anti feminist for not wanting to have a hard life, and it is not my responsibility to make women feel comfortable in their own skin like this is crazy I didn't subject women to males oppression why is it on me to make it stop.

We condition women and girls to put up with shitty male behavior, to take up less space, to not make a fuss etc.., so when you see a woman complaining about her shitty boyfriend/husband why is your first fucking thought "omg just leave him" as if it was that fucking easy. I've even seen a loooot of radfems say "if you partner up with a man don't be surprised about what happens to you, don't expect any help me from me, you knew what was gonna happen".

Like radfems do acknowledge that female socialization is a thing but how dare women be affected by it.

As individualistic and selfish libfems are, I've never seen them look down on or mock a woman for just trying to survive in a patriarchal world.

You can ignore this like I get it you don't owe me a reasone like im just so tired do radfems belive that women should be faultless and perfect in order for them to discuss issues or dip their toes into radfeminism. Shits already hard enough what do you want from us

No, I won't ignore. Because what you're saying is correct and reasonable. 🤷🏾‍♀️

A lot of radfems have an unfortunate disconnect, and often judge reality by the parameters of idealism.

I don't think the "age gracefully" and "stop wearing makeup" things are judgements (at least they shouldn't be) so much as they are encouraging rally cries, if that makes sense? At least by the women I follow, that's what they mean. It's certainly what I mean. I think there is a lot of judgement passed on women who, like a lot of us at one time, play our part in the patriarchy. I think radfems can be chronically online as well, and that's when you get these needlessly judgemental or "easy fix" (i.e. "just leave your boyfriend") posts.

That's why it's important to balance out your online voice with your real world one. We actively live in this society so to suggest one can be completely removed from its influences is naive. We will defend the actions of women of the past as victims of oppression yet simultaneously pass judgement on a woman making feminist points because she's wearing makeup? I hope I never come off as someone who thinks this community is perfect. But I think it's problems she fixable and redeemable. I think the biggest issues we're dealing with are ego and chronic onlineness (don't think that's a word but you get it).

I fully understand that it's not your fault that men oppress us. So why should it be your job to make it stop? Well, I think that's just a matter of community more so than shifting responsibility. Men are not going to turn their backs on a system that benefits them so much. And if men aren't going to do it, then we (not just you), have to do it ourselves.

I'm rambling now but yeah, this community ain't perfect. We've got a few leaks we need to focus on instead of babies on planes, but I've got hope. 💜