LightLamia @lightlamia - Tumblr Blog

angelicdewdrop

angelicdust

beatainfernaluz

Art by Roberto Díaz

tacosockos

Dance for me

bauliya

so women are supposed to grin and bear the books, the comics, the movies, the plays, the tv shows, the stories, the sci-fi, the translated ancient poems, the fucking millennia of men writing about their self inserts torturing women and it being declared as High Art by other men, we’re supposed to read it in our free time, study it in classrooms, include their styles in our own writing, accept their cultural influence as natural, watch it in the cinema, write about it, talk about it, accept it, aspire it, but men can’t tolerate three seconds of female wish fulfilment of a woman snapping the wrist of a creep without feeling personally kicked in the balls.

darkshrimpemotions

This reminds me of something I observed in college while I was doing my honors thesis on women in modern horror films. I watched a LOT of horror during that time as part of my research, and sometimes that was done with my family around.

And my dad and brothers? Were deeply disturbed by the movie Jennifer’s Body. I was flabbergasted. It’s not scary! It’s not even that gory. But they were horrified by it. These men who grew up on 70s slashers were legitimately shook by 90 minutes of Megan Fox eating a few teenage boys, mostly off-screen.

Similarly, my all-male reading panel for my thesis? Were so disturbed by my synopsis of the film Teeth that they couldn’t even talk about it. One of them said he couldn’t look at his wife for a week after reading it.

Again, grown-ass men who study and teach media for a living. Who definitely watch and enjoy horror movies. One of whom was a huge Tarantino buff. We watched and read worse in his intro to mass media class! But one movie about a girl whose vag could bite was enough to haunt him.

Then of course you have things like the Gone Girl backlash–men yelling that Amy Dunne is evil and women clamoring to assure everyone that they know she is not someone to emulate–the backlash against Carol Danvers, and, more recently, the griping from MRAs against the upcoming film Hustlers, which is about strippers scamming their Wall Street clients.

My conclusion? Most men–at least most straight, cisgender men, who are both my sample population and most of the ones whining that Carol is a “villain”–are perfectly fine with, and desensitized to, media where men do violence to women (horror movies), or men do violence to men (horror and action movies). They’re even sort of fine when women do violence to women (“ooooo cat fight!”).

But they get intensely uncomfortable when women are depicted doing any kind of violence to men, especially in films that tilt the balance of power to the other side of the m/f gender binary beyond a single moment or scene.

So woman as flesh-eating monster with men as her preferred cuisine? Woman who responds to unwanted sexual contact by biting it off? Woman who frames her cheating husband for murder? Woman whose response to harassment–behavior that many of the loudest whiners know is both creepy and reflective of their own thoughts/actions–is to break something?

Too scary. Unacceptable. Disturbing. These men hate being presented with the idea, even in fiction, that their position of power is socially constructed, that it could easily be flipped the other way. It terrifies them.

In feeling that terror, they experience a tiny modicum of what living, existing, moving, being perceived as a woman in the world is like.

And they flinch every time.

tzikeh

Here have a newspaper comic from 1993

acollectionofas

Extremely excellent, very very very autistic quote from Brennan Lee Mulligan:

"Curiosity is love for the world, and when you love something, you want to get to know it more. So when you share facts about crows or pterodactyls or whatever, what you are expressing is gratitude for the ability to exist in and come to understand the beauty of the world around you."

"When you tell someone that you don't like all the crow facts, you're...

"You're actually saying that you hate me. I am my crow facts."

crabussy

I am forever of the opinion that SO many people would be so much happier if they stopped trying to fit their relationships and feelings into "just friends" and "romantic partners". man those are two boxes. twoooo. you are an entire living being. you are alive and your brain is full of electric signals and your body is sending crazy chemicals all over the place. you cannot always cram your experiences into two neat cookie cutter shapes. you are alive on this stupid gay earth please relax and have fun. I love you

supern30n

Uhh toxic billford anyone?

roadside-coyote

Tessellate.

hummise

"The discrepancy makes him think of a lure on a much larger predator. Like a Venus flytrap or an angler fish.

Ford does feel like a very small fish, sometimes."

hiii so this has been haunting me

byjove

just wanted a visual demonstration since I was talking about how much I love them

bubobubosibericus

Mules are like horses with the self destruct button removed

wolfeyedwitch

...do you mean the 'self preservation instinct' removed????

byjove

No, absolutely not. It’s the opposite. Mules will straight up refuse to do things if they don’t have the confidence that they can complete it. This is where the term “stubborn as a mule” comes from. A horse would attempt these feats and break its weak little ankles and roll over and kill its rider. Mules do this because they know they can. That’s also why mules and donkeys are used as mounts around the Grand Canyon, they’re both sure-footed and stubborn and will refuse to do things that put them and the rider in danger when a horse would listen to the call of the void and just do it. Donkeys are less domesticated than mules, less dependent on humans and more self-assured, this is why they can be harder to train but also why they have such great self-preservation skills. A mule inherits those traits from its father.