one of rgu's best takes about rape and incest is that rape and incest are not deviant. they are exceedingly normal. they are, in fact, the logical extension of patriarchal romance and the patriarchal family -- the same logic that underpins those structures facilitates abuse, rape, incest, and csa. many people, even those who nominally understand the idea of rape culture, conceive of rape as a deviation from cultural mores, and even more people view incest as an aberration, a twisting of the Family (which is Good) into something unnatural and evil. but rgu correctly identifies that rape and incest are outgrowths of patriarchal society, not alien intrusions upon it. incest is merely a symptom of the problem which is the patriarchal family itself. rape and domestic abuse are merely symptoms of the problem which is patriarchal & heteronormative romance and society itself. rather than rape being deviant, it is resistance to patriarchy which is deviant; rather than incest being abnormal, it is a girl holding out a hand to another girl in pain which is abnormal. because 'abnormal' does not mean 'bad' any more than 'normal' means 'good'. "fall in love normally, get married normally, have a normal family, and have a normal life -- but normal has nothing to do with us!"
every year there are apparently a bunch of people who are vehemently against cishets being within 20 feet of a pride parade, and these people are apparently numerous and influential enough that their viewpoint needs to be addressed and opposed constantly
personally I have never encountered one of these people. but from the plethora of defiant responses to them that one reads each June, surely they must exist
Black woman invents or popularises a phrase -> it enters the vernacular and circulates widely amongst Black and nonblack people -> people removed from the phrase's initial context read it too literally, do not interpret it with sensitivity, assume that the ideas expressed when people use it are shallow / "over"-sexualised / problematic in some way or another that mirrors their feelings about Black people as a whole -> there is a backlash where a supposedly more 'thoughtful,' 'subversive,' etc. alternative to the initial phrase is offered, implying that the initial phrase contained none of that complexity within it to begin with -> rinse & repeat
happy disability pride month to people who have never questioned if they're really disabled. happy disability pride month to people who never wonder if it's all in their head. happy disability pride month to people who can't be invisibly disabled even if they don't use a visible aid. happy disability pride month to people who don't question if they belong to the community. happy disability pride month to everyone who carries the trauma of spending their whole life as their parent's "disabled child". happy disability pride month to people with no interest in validating others. happy disability pride month to people who wish they could identify out of being disabled. happy disability pride month to people who don't even have the option of questioning whether they might really be able bodied
Happy disability pride month to people who arenāt permitted an identity beyond their disability. Happy disability pride month to people who are always used as an example to point out that āit could be worse you could be like that.ā Happy disability pride month to people who have spent their entire lives as an afterthought. Happy disability pride month to people who are considered ātoo disabledā even by other disabled people.
every so often i see takes from new fans of rgu who are like "i was liking this anime but idk why it has to have so much incest :/" and i bang my head against the wall
one of my biggest points of frustration with all the western cartoon makers (or any kind of lesbian western art as a whole) who cite revolutionary girl utena as an inspiration is that every "homage" or inspiration they take from the show seems to be about Cool Lesbians With Swords And Nothing Else. or at best star crossed lover girls. it's like all the darker and more genuinely challenging and unique aspects of it has to be cleanly excised. and like don't get me wrong i absolutely get why a western kids' cartoon is not gonna address any kind of sexual abuse nvm incestuous ones but it's frustrating to see newer fans want to omit these aspects of the show, or downplay its importance to the plot and themes at all as though the entire final arc wasn't about utena's grooming and anthy's suicidality as her sexually abusive brother ropes her further into the duel system and in helping grooming utena, while believing she doesn't deserve saving and resenting utena for how she refuses to understand the dynamic between them or how akio treats either of them for the longest time. like sorry the hand reaching scene at the end isn't simply touching because Yuri Wins or whatever but because even when anthy tries to push away utena one last time by stabbing her, giving in fully to her forced role of Witch and of suffering, utena straight up ignores akio and crawls to anthy to tell her that she's worthy of being loved and being saved no matter what. no matter if anthy thinks of herself or is seen as unclean and broken and monstruous both as a victim of incestuous sexual abuse and as the designated Witch who cannot be a clean woman or loved in normative ways according to the structures and rules of ohtori--anthy IS worthy of that love and of being saved. of existing outside these structures. it feels genuinely kinda sad when people think that discussing these structures at all (incestuous abuse and csa being considered the pillars of patriarchy in rgu, disguised and normalized by ideas of the nuclear family and the princess/witch archetypes) is sick or disturbing and should be left out!
when i wake up remind me to make a post about the lack of blood in utena and what it means to have a world where suffering can only be beautiful or hidden
oh i should probably finish this thought lmfao. anyway of course there r the genre limitations of a shojo not being expected to show much blood, and of course the fact that the wounds caused in the duels are largely spiritual rather than physical. but thereās also something about how the entire world theyre inhabiting has a false quality to it: itās a stage, an endless and eternal play where akio is the director. because the characters operate inside akioās construction, wounds are only allowed to be as ārealā as anything can be in this world. thereās no true bloodshed in a stage play after all; the characters need to be able to get up and perform again the next night.
i also think it signifies akioās perpetual immaturity in its unwillingness to deal directly with difficult subjects. akio, as much as any of the other characters, is trapped at the school, perpetually unable to āgraduateā and thus deal directly with the real world.
instead, bloodshed is transferred to the rose petals. losing your rose in the duel indicates an erosion of self, a loss of innocence, and anthyās role as the gardener indicates her complicity in the violence of the duel games. is made even clear by the moments of real violence that are obscured by the endless spinning roses and reinforced in adolescence of utena when we see the dueling grounds now covered in a field of red roses, signifying the ābloodshedā that has occurred across countless duels.
oh i guess i should also add in contrast to the performative, beautiful violence of watching roses blow away on the breeze is the very real violence hidden at the center of the story: anthy, trapped by hundreds of swords piercing her, rendering her unable to move. violence against anthy is the mechanism that keeps the whole performance spinning, so that duels can be about flowers
in the dueling arena, female black rose duelists wear the prince's clothes: this gendered expression of power, which is so significant when utena does it outside the symbolic space, becomes natural, even from the most mundanely feminine women. I say mundanely feminine to emphasize that these are not women who feel any angst about being women. kouze, wakaba, keiko, kanae, and shiori may be tortued, they even may be tortured about the how the nature of their womanhood affects their relationship with other women (shiori being the most obvious, but think also of how any friendly relationship kouze may want from anthy is affected by the fact that she is another women in akio's life, or how keiko is targeted by nanami in a way nanami would never target a man, or how wakaba's feelings about anthy stealing saionji are clearly a projection of how she feels about anthy stealing utena which she cannot verbalize because she's been raised to center male attention), but they never turn toward their own womanhood as the fault in the situation.
shiori, unlike juri, does not wish she were a man in her relations with juri. wakaba does not realize that it is masculine power which makes saionji and utena "special." kouze does not wish that she could inherit directorship herself. and yet, they still wear a man's clothes when they attack anthy for their woes. their one claim to specialness, to power, to autonomy, is in the clothes of male authority. unlike juri, nanami, and utena, however, they do this under a psychoanalytic trance: they are far from realizing this desire consciously. the black rose duelists will never get what they want because they do not realize that their only autonomy within the patriarchy comes though imitation of (juri and utena) or proximity to (nanami) male power.
what is so interesting about rgu is that this dance with masculinity/princehood that the women in the show do could so easily be painted as a kind of freudian penis envy: the more "mature" ("enlightened"?) female characters (juri and utena) are the ones who emulate masculinity the most, who are the most upfront about the fact that they wish they were a man in their dealings with other women. compare juri with tokiko: juri's desire for masculinity, her frank analytic understanding of her lust for shiori, are what make her a duelist, while keiko's passive femininity makes her so insignificant utena doesn't know her name. however, ikuhara makes it clear that this understanding of the power of masculinity under the patriarchy is not real maturity, and in fact takes duelists even further from graduating ohtori. akio, the embodiment of a powerless child taking refuge in this abusive masculine authority, will never leave the school and never grow up. it is the realization that masculine authority will always be toxic which allows duelists to mature. nanami spends most of the show as the most childish duelist, the one who is years and years from graduating, but once she realizes that her proximity to touga's power (the masculine safety of the patriarchal family system) will never serve her, she becomes clearly one of the most enlightened among them. the black rose duelists are so pathetic and hopeless in their dueling attempts not because they do not want to be men, but because they do not even realize that the world that they want to impress so badly wishes they were. juri, touga, saionji, and utena (for most of the show) trap themselves in an attempt to become what ohtori wishes they were: real men, princes. nanami and anthy, a little wiser in their way, accept that they will never be able to achieve this perverse ideal but, instead, attempt to find security by clinging to the coat tails of those in power.
dios presents the fantasy to the students of ohtori, the hope, that this power can be absolutely good, absolutely protecting, and absolutely eternal. a man has the power to stop something bad from ever happening again. when touga is a man like akio is, he will have absolute control over anyone who might hurt him and be absolutely safe. when utena is a man like the prince is, she will be able to save herself from the coffin and be absolutely safe. when anthy has a man like dios was, he will be able to keep the entire world away from them and they will be happy.
it is only by rejecting this power entirely, by recognizing that the prince is an impossible dream, that they can escape. utena realizes this when she sees that anthy will always be victimized by male oppression. on some level, this is the realization that the rose bride (who is every woman) will always be abused by the patriarchal society-- on some level, utena's realization is a theoretical one. but on a truer level it is the realization that anthy will always be abused. this is what it is to really love a woman as another woman: to realize that the way the world hurts her is so intolerable that it is better to enter the vast unknown than to abandon her in exchange a perfect, white picket fence life. to fall into the nothingness, the empty map of lesbian desire, and hope she will follow. it is better to free her and die than to live happily when she is trapped without you.
I like the headcanon that after anthy and utena reunite and live together, Anthy never marries her. They live together and are long term partners but she just refuses to marry utena or anyone ever. Utena probably wanted to marry her at some point but she respects her decision not to
I always wonder what happens to pet dogs and cats in the vegan utopia where there is no farming of animals for food. Contrary to (some) vegan beliefs: Dogs and cats need meat. And listen, maybe I could personally give up meat but I am not giving up my fucking cats.
Do we only do farming for animal food? Do we completely abolish farming animals for food for everything? Do the domestic species we bred specifically for human use just die out and, with it, the domesticated dog and cat? What about zoos? Or āsanctuariesā that house carnivorous animals? What actually happens to domesticated farm animals? Do we just stop production after every farm animal is slaughtered? Like what is the plan here?
Should we mass-euthanize any animal that relies on farmed meat?
Different vegans have different ideas on this, despite what the no-true-vegans online might say. BUT there are a lot of things here, so I'll go one at a time. But it is important to note that any realistic "vegan world" plan or idea is gradual, it's not realistic to think that we'll be going from our current system to a vegan one even over a decade.
For pets, some vegans feed their animals all vegan food. This CAN be harmful if the food is not properly formulated. The things in meat that animals need are nutrients, and more and more, these nutrients can be made with less or no suffering. Advances in gene technology, lab grown meat, and systems like CRISPR make it easier to synthesize nutrients usually found in flesh. However, because so much vet business is tied up in the animal agricultural system, these advances are slow and not well published. I know many vegans who still feed their dogs and cats meat, myself included. In a theoretical future, however, it is not hard to imagine these things being synthesized to reduce harm.
"Do we only do farming for animal food? Do we completely abolish farming animals for food for everything?"
This brings me to a point about veganism I think is really misunderstood. Veganism is not just about not eating or using animal products, it is the ethical belief that animals are not ours to use. The use of the word vegan to mean "someone who abstains from animal products" regardless of why can confuse this. A vegan stance would see animal farming largely abolished. That is what veganism is.
REALISTICALLY and personally I think that a total, 100% abolition is largely unrealistic. I think we could eliminate MOST of animal ag, more than people think, but some rural areas need to rely on animal proteins. This, however, is mostly the harshest areas humans live on: arctic, some deserts, ect. I know many vegans that do no think this is a good enough reason, and would want to make food systems that allow people to eat vegan. Personally, I think that this is largely an irrelevant topic to me; We are not likely to get to the point at which this is a practical conversation in my lifetime, if at all.
"Do the domestic species we bred specifically for human use just die out and, with it, the domesticated dog and cat?"
I'm gonna link a few resources here, but domestic species are not a universal good. Many species were bred for "output" to their detriment. The continued breeding of species KNOWING they will suffer is immoral, and the chickens we bring into creation this way are no different than the pugs we bring into creation knowing they cannot breathe.
"What about zoos?"
I'll just link this. Zoos are not vegan.
"Or āsanctuariesā that house carnivorous animals?"
Animal sanctuaries will stay. There are animal sanctuaries run by vegans that house carnivorous animals right now. Where the meat will come from if everyone is vegan will likely make more sense if we approach this, but I imagine a combination of synthesizing, lab growing, or some other combination of solutions.
"What actually happens to domesticated farm animals? Do we just stop production after every farm animal is slaughtered? Like what is the plan here?"
People way smarter than me have talked about this, here's a few articles on the subject
A vegan world would gradually reduce farm animal populations, ending mass breeding while creating more space for wildlife.
š„ Jun 1, 2026 - From Vegan Food And Living - āIf everyone went vegan, what would happen to the animals?ā Sometimes itās a sincere concern. O
The TL;DR on all this is that no, we wouldn't just fuck over every animal, it would likely be gradual, with many recent improvements in biological technologies providing a lot of support for animals that eat meat
having thought about it this is a generationally anti-consumer announcement that will have a profoundly detrimental impact on consumers and retail markets. this will price out new consumers even more than a $600 PS5 and $80 games will. this will make games less accessible and more nickel-and-dimed. this will make games impossible to share irl without giving your console up, and will stop institutions like libraries from being able to loan copies of modern games. and most importantly, it will be for a minimal profit, as most of the sales in video games are already digital.
this is such a staggeringly catastrophic piece of news that i'm shocked it wasn't said by nintendo. congrats to sony for one-upping them in anti-consumer practices.
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