tired, broke and sad @majikayooo - Tumblr Blog

The Bathhouse, which stands on a half-dried swamp is a very grandiose and opulent structure on the island Yūya in the Spirit Realm. It is owned by the witch Yubaba, who made a promise to hire anyone asking for a position as a worker there.

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.

moki-dokie

oh my god someone put it into words!!!!!

flippyspoon

there are soooo many nuances and reasons that many of us aren’t even conscious of which makes me doubly angry when it’s dismissed as fetishizing. fuck off and let me read my love stories pls.

dumbhotbitchknightgwaine-deacti

nail on the goddamn head there

duck7-motorsports

saskjeeper

How fucking strong must those suits be for the guy to view crashing as a mild inconvenience

warheads-r-us-deactivated202301

10/10 form

trydianth

“OH POOP!”

a-daks

In moto racing the points are for crash style

kairibloodheart

The second to last guy straight up doing a meme pose but I can’t find it

gahdamnpunk

Honestly!!! This is just psychological trauma in the making

toastbutteregg

THANK YOU

aphony-cree

I’ve asked parents about this and they always say they are teaching the child responsibility and “respect for other people’s things.” If I point out that the child accidentally broke their own toy they always say “I bought them that toy” or “my sister gave that to them.”

The problem is that parents view all possessions as not really belonging to the child. A part of them always seems to think that the adult who provided the money is the real owner

If a parent breaks a dish they see it as breaking something that already belonged to them, but if a child breaks it they see it as the child breaking something that belonged to the parents

People raising children need to realize that household possessions belong to the entire household. If everyone has to use that plate then it belongs to everyone and anyone can have a forgivable accident with it. It’s okay to deem certain possessions as just yours and ask everyone in the house to respect that, but extend the same respect to your child’s belongings

cannilyuncanny

Big mood. I know most of these are talking about little little kids, but here’s a tale from middle school. I had forgotten to charge my phone one night, and this was back when cell phones used to beep loudly when they were low on battery. I kept hearing the noise throughout the afternoon and not recognizing what it was because I’d never heard it before. When I finally did realize what it was, I was in science class and my fellow classmates were making presentations. I reached into my bag to try to turn off the phone, and then the low-battery sound went off, loud enough for the teacher to hear it. She confiscated my phone in front of everyone, and I didn’t get it back until after the weekend because it was a Friday. I was really embarrassed, especially to tell my parents.

When I got my phone back that Monday, my teacher said it was important for me to learn this lesson now since in college they wouldn’t tolerate phones going off. Fast forward to when I was in college, any time someone’s phone went off, either the professor would tell them to turn it off, or they would say, “Oh, my bad,” and turn it off themselves, and everyone would move on. I even had a professor who danced around while someone’s phone went off, and it was a welcome moment of levity during the lecture.

I say all this to say, one of the worst aspects of being a child/teen was adults assuming my intentions were malicious.

dechart

God I’ve been reading these posts for a while and each time I am struck with the realization that certainly not all parents were supposed to be a parent

bobcatdump

“I say all this to say, one of the worst aspects of being a child/teen was adults assuming my intentions were malicious.” YES this

what-even-is-thiss

The problem is, even if families are forgiving the culture around children still effects the child. I use myself as proof of that.

A few times between the ages of 4 and 18 I broke things. I broke my grandma’s favorite Christmas ornament. Her first question was: “Are you hurt?” and when I apologized profusely she said “I’m just glad you weren’t hurt.”

I broke a few plates. I broke a couple glasses. Every time my dad’s first response was “Did you get cut?” the second step was cleaning up the broken bits, and the third was a discussion of what led to me breaking it and how I could avoid doing that in the future.

Same with spills. Same with stains. My biggest “punishment” from my immediate family was being taught how to clean up the mess I made and being shown in detail how to avoid the same mistake in the future if it was avoidable. There were consequences for my actions, but they were the direct result of those actions and nothing much beyond that.

My family tried so hard to teach me how to deal with accidents in a healthy way. They were patient. They treated every slip-up as a learning opportunity. They showed me a lot of love. The other adults still got to me. Teachers still punished and publicly shamed me and other students for our mess-ups. Extended family members outside of my small supportive circle still yelled at me. My friends’ parents still got mad.

To the point where whenever I messed up my first instinct was that my dad or grandparents were going to punish me, or yell at me, or hit me, even though they never did. They just didn’t. They always responded with patience and an attitude of “I’m glad you’re safe and I want to help you learn from this.” And I was still afraid of messing up. Mortified. Expecting the worst every time.

It’s like… we need to change the culture around this, man. Completely.

marzipanandminutiae

sometimes I hate how much modern clothing is determined to show women’s bodies

like if it’s not skimpy, it’s skin-tight- leggings, skinny jeans, bodycon dresses, etc.

doing historical costuming has made me hyper-aware of just how “on display” my body is when I’m wearing normal modern outfits, and it affects my behavior. don’t bend over to pick things up at work because men will stare at your ass. sit differently so you don’t show stomach rolls. a guy running a pop-up stand next to my shop commented so much on how I had “great legs” that I didn’t wear leggings and skirts- one of my favorite winter outfit combinations -for the rest of the season

there’s a certain freedom in medium-to-long skirts and skirt supports, I find: the freedom to define what people see of my body. men won’t stop being creepy no matter what women wear, but I like that kind of dramatic body re-framing. you don’t get to see my legs and hips, Creepy Guys. you get to see a massive bell skirt, or a bustle, or an upended trumpet flower shape. my body is to be seen only by those I’ve chosen to trust, not the world at large

of course, empowerment is different for different women. some feel comfortable and powerful showing as much of their shape as possible, and I applaud them in doing exactly that. what pisses me off is the pressure from the fashion industry for all of us to be empowered by the same thing…a thing that just so happens to tie in with the diet industry and the cosmetics industry. it’s easier to sell the idea that you have to be hairless and smooth and thin and blemish-free when it’s all on display

sometimes I just wish I could go about in a hoop skirt and a t-shirt that says “fuck off” in delicate script

fuguhbuguhbuhugguhval

marzipanandminutiae

BEST RESPONSE TO ANY POST OF MINE EVER

THANK YOU

fangirltothefullest

Technically unless there’s a dress code for your work or whatever there’s nothing that says you can’t wear a hoop skirt everywhere.

Fight the man.

Wear a hoop skirt if you want.

gay-slime

Why are you 17???? Explain

I’m sorry what???????????

themoonshinesystem

same energy

inactive-followmysideblog-deact

umperilysm

i-homeostasis

dude seeing these Mega high quality images of the surface of mars that we now have has me fucked up. Like. Mars is a place. mars is a real actual place where one could hypothetically stand. It is a physical place in the universe. ITS JUST OUT THERE LOOKING LIKE UH IDK A REGULAR OLD DESERT WITH LOTS OF ROCKS BUT ITS A WHOLE OTHER PLANET?

i-homeostasis

LIKE THIS JUST LOOKS LIKE IT COULD BE A PERSON’S BACKYARD. LIKE YEA A LITTLE DUSTY MAYBE THERE WAS A SANDSTORM BUT THAT’S COOL I’M JUST GONNA WALK DOWN TO THE STORE P S Y C H YOU’RE ON MARS BICH!

schro-dingus-deactivated2023030

i hate to be rude and intrude on this post but we have decent pictures of the surface Venus too!

jumpingjacktrash

#venus has a low render distance

thecraftychemist

See also below Saturn’s moon, Titan. Mars has a blue horizon at sunset so it looks even more Earth-like in this image:

Source

Also: Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko

ultraviolet-divergence

So it’s not quite snowing on Churyumov–Gerasimenko, unfortunately; the white specks are artifacts of cosmic rays impinging on the CCDs in the camera, as well as a rotating starfield in the background (since the comet is spinning). A few specks could be dust. But, holy shit, that’s the surface of a comet. That’s a spot you could in theory cling to for dear life sit down on. The Cliffs of Comet 76p are a place.