dickhead on main

[kristenbouchard]

bitches will bring a million things to do on a train ride or long car trip and then spend the entire time looking out the window and daydreaming. i’m bitches

[wrightedgar]

jimmy neutron was really fucked up

[sir-renaissance]

This is what the mice look like from cats

[three--rings]

There’s always a lingering question that I ask myself, which is why do I, a cis bisexual woman, enjoy romance between two men so much?  

There are easy answers, like that it’s just fetishizing.  And like, I find men attractive, yes.  But I also find women attractive.  I don’t have a problem with enjoying het romance, assuming I can find good ones.  I enjoy stories with female characters I can relate to.

But there’s something much deeper at play, IMO.  A friend of mine who is a gender studies professor was the first person to point this out to me, but a lot of women enjoy m/m romance and gay porn because of the lack of women.  It removes a source of pressure and sexism.  Without any women present, you don’t have to constantly evaluate the sexism of their portrayal, or be reminded of negative experiences in your own life.  It allows women to experience romance and especially sexuality without all the baggage that comes with it in our patriarchal society.

This was recently illustrated to me rather dramatically.  I read a recommendation for a het romance.  And it sounded cute, and came highly recommended.  The tropes at play were fun.  Until I read a snippet and realized this was a romance between a woman and her boss.  I had a visceral negative reaction.  

Instantly I’m thinking of sexual harassment stories I’ve read and heard from other women. I’m thinking of how uncomfortable it would be to have your boss develop feelings for you.  How icky the power dynamics would be, etc.  

And then I realized…this wouldn’t bother me if it were two men.  Now, there’s no logical reason for that.  Sexual harassment is just as wrong when its object is a man.  But I know I’ve read fics with a similar premise and never thought about it.  Because when it’s two men I can accept this is just a light romance, a fantasy, meant to be fun and sexy and not to represent the real world.

But I can’t when it’s a het relationship.  There’s too much baggage there.  Too much societal history of abuse.  I can’t relax enough with the premise to enjoy that story.  

Now some people can.  And that’s fine.  And some people are never going to be okay with power imbalances like that regardless of gender.  That’s also fine.  I don’t think having either reaction makes one morally superior.  It’s okay to just enjoy light entertainment for what it is without going into deep analysis.

But it’s much more difficult for me, and I think for many women, to relax and enjoy romantic and sexual stories when they involve female characters.  We’ve been burned too many times by shitty depictions, by shallow role models, by abuse portrayed as romantic.  We have developed a stress response, a trauma response to heterosexual romance.  We are hyper-reactive to a wide variety of triggers in regards to it.   But removing women from the equation makes stories safer for us.  And maybe it shouldn’t?  In an ideal world?  But for many of us, that’s the truth.

[three--rings]

So this post blew up in the last 24 hours, for whatever reason, and I was looking through people’s responses, as you do.  I’m quite moved that so many found it relatable.

But I wanted to highlight one set of tags (via @reallifepotato​ )

Because I AM comfortable with my sexuality and fairly comfortable with my body, but still, this resonates so hard as someone who has always been overweight.  The amount that our society teaches women to constantly compare ourselves, almost always negatively with every other woman out there, can utterly ruin our enjoyment of this kind of thing.  Like how many times have you tried to watch a mainstream romantic comedy where some utterly gorgeous actress is bemoaning that she can’t get a date, or WORSE is made out to be less than attractive.  And you look at her and go…but she’s fucking perfect?  And you just want to puke.  

But with m/m romance you can put yourself in the place of either character and…not compare yourself.  You can enjoy a character being attractive without feeling bad about yourself, which is REALLY HARD to do for any woman in our fucked up culture.  

[docbe]

To add to this, I know back in the 00s when I was growing up and first starting to find mlm romances in fan spaces, at the time gay stuff wasn’t seen as something one could acceptably explore…unless it was for a straight male audience. Lesbian and bisexual women were not uncommon in media, but they were usually there to be a sexual experience for the male characters, something to drool over or a sexy joke. A lot of time, wlw media didn’t feel made for women, and if it did, it often suffered from some of the issues listed above. Mlm content, however, wasn’t quite so bogged down from a dfab perspective, and a lot of elements of being a queer/gay person in society were explored (or at least elements were) that were still v relatable.

So, gay male romances were a way to experience/explore non-straight dynamics and romances without the added baggage of objectification that you see/saw in wlw content. It’s gotten better since those days, but along w the other points, it’s still sometimes uncomfortable sifting through content with women in sexual situations…it’s hard to know what’s going to feel like it was created for queer women, or created to display them

[mwagneto]

first onision loses his patreon then pewdiepie gets robbed blind this decade is going out with a bang so far

[lolt64]

logan paul you’re next. likes charge reblogs cast

[persbaderse]

guys amazon is just a half-decent storefront at best and not supporting them is so easy. 

like ooo look, a cute mug i want

amazon includes the seller

all you have to do is look up the item and the seller and oh look i found it elsewhere for cheaper, no amazon worker had to suffer for my passing whims

BOYCOT PRIME DAY

SUPPORT THE WORKERS STRIKE

[tricerasox]

Ok, so I work for a third-party seller on Amazon and EVERY SINGLE THING we sell on Amazon is available on our own website for like, half the price. Amazon fees are so exorbitant and since shipping is “free” we have to add that cost to every product as well. On our own website, we don’t have the fees and can manage our own shipping tiers, so the deals are so much better. Always, always, always check and see if the thing you want to available directly from the seller. We don’t like giving all our money to Amazon either.

[tinybed]

[comealongphil]

dawn dimmadome? wife of doug dimmadome, owner of the dimmsdale dimmadome?

[punkrorschach]

actually she took the dimmadome in the dimmadivorce

[vampireapologist-archive-deacti]

Just found out moose can dive as deep as 20 feet (6m) for aquatic vegetation. Can you imagine like, being a diver, and you’re 20 feet underwater, it’s murky, and you run into a moose

A

MOOSE!!!!

[gallusrostromegalus]

This is, by the way, one of the reasons that a regular predator of the moose is the orca whale.

[nyanbinyuri]

[goosewithajob]

“Can One Punch Man beat-”

Yes. Always. Good lord. I never understand why people can turn this into a big serious discussion. Yes, One Punch Man would beat Thanos. He would beat Luke Skywalker, Superman, every single character from Dragon Ball Z, and every ninja from Naruto. He would beat Thor and Wolverine and the Hulk in a tag team match. 

Because he plays by different rules. One Punch Man is a PARODY character. His skill set is defined by comedy, not power levels or physical strength. One Punch Man not Superman facing off against an ever-more powerful lineup of villains. He’s the Roadrunner against Wil E. Coyote’s ever more convoluted plans. Deadpool is the only other super hero type character who comes close to living in the same realm of parody, but frankly, Deadpool repeatedly getting the crap beat out of him would be funnier than Deadpool winning, so One Punch Man would win that fight too, even if he can’t actually kill Deadpool in one punch. Because parody.

If I see another Youtube video recommended to me like “Could One Punch Man beat-” really, truly, I do not care. 

[riotlion]

I saw somebody also make this point once in another great post, I’m paraphrasing from what I remember; how strong is Saitama? However strong he needs to be in order for it to be funny.

[morelsupports]

what about squirrel girl.

[plucky-passerine]

Squirrel Girl is 100% probably the ONLY character who could POSSIBLY beat Saitama, and only because she operates under the exact same rules and it would be enormously funny for One Punch Man to finally be defeated by a hyperactive girl in a squirrel costume

[teathattast]

[gahdamnpunk]

VACCINATE YA KIDS FFS

[blueinkblot]

The other thing about measles is that it resets your body’s memory of other diseases. So all those times you’ve gotten sick? Your body’s memory cells no longer remember those illnesses, so even if you get the same type of illness again your body will react like it’s the first time you’ve been sick.

It’s so much worse than “just a disease”. 

[viostormcaller]

Measles does WHAT

[kari-izumi]

Holy fuck

[ruffboi-mags]

Anti-vaxxers legitimately need to have their children taken away (and vaccinated) and be put in prison for child abuse and endangering the public, i swear to absolute FUCK.

[omghotmemes]

I laughed way too hard at this

[memestashhash]

[thisissoimportantrightnow]

[youthxcrew69]

THIS IS A CAT IN A HALLOWEEN COSTUME PLAYING WITH A TINY PUMPKIN THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT

[disgustinganimals]

IT’S NOT EVEN OCTOBER

[sticks-to-snakes]

IT’S ALWAYS OCTOBER

[ndiecity-deactivated20241101]

[demilypyro]

stop bringing your evangelism to skateboarding class, frank, it’s skate or die, not skate or die for my sins

[lindleland]

separation of church and skate

[boglog]

No one:

Me talking about grey-morality hyper-competent fictional women driven by their trauma:

[fantrollfriendsim]

After a brief hiatus, we’re happy to announce a return to posting fantrolls for the upcoming sim! Say hello to Cheska and Patria! We should be resuming stable weekly updates again from now on, so please look forward to it! <3 [ID image one: A bronze card which reads “Cheska Silnak”. Below is a bulleted list reading “That’s what I thought you’d say you dumb fucking highblood” “dabbler of the prankster’s gambit” “luck is at 0% and dwindling”. To the left is a frowning homestuck troll with zig-zag horns and short hair. She is wearing a grey polo with a bronze bowtie, and a taurpia sign, grey slacks, and grey shoes. image two: A gold card which reads “Patria Mauree”. Below is a bulleted list reading “longs for the thrill of battle” “i’ll look down and whisper ‘no’” “the only thing left once the bombs drop”. To the right is a homestuck troll with two sets of horns and long, tied back hair. She is wearing steel-toed boots with a modified maid uniform with several large pockets, and a circular sign with two pairs of hornlike lines coming from the top on the apron.]