🧿

Lesbian. Early 20s. Literally all my posts are okay to reblog unless I tagged otherwise. I mostly post feminism-related content. This is a side blog so I don't reply in the comments. Formerly radicalgeni-tales.

[feathered-friend]

Am I Thinking Critically?

Most of us have deeply held beliefs and opinions about the world that we feel justified in defending without thinking critically about what conventions have led us to believe them. I drafted this quick list of questions to cause you to think critically about an issue (i.e ethics and morality in pornography, women’s reproductive rights, gay marriage). This is short and doesn’t even begin to cover a comprehensive method of analyzing belief systems….so feel free to add more!!!

1. Who taught me to believe this? 2. Is the person who encouraged me to believe this in a position of power over me or are they a peer? (i.e a parent, boss, or teacher versus a coworker, friend, sibling) 3. Who/what group of people is the most widely known supporter of this belief? 4. What would the proponents of this belief stand to gain from my enforcement/complacency in this belief? 5. What would they stand to lose? 6. Who is harmed from this belief? (Think VERY hard before answering ‘no one’- most contested issues throughout history put at least one group at a disadvantage/directly harms them socioeconomically/physically/emotionally) 7. Have I pursued both sides of this issue in a reasonable, open manner or have I been too upset or frustrated to consider new ideas? 8. Are people’s safety, bodily autonomy, basic human rights such as food, clean water, freedom to express their own opinions at stake in my enforcement or complacency of this belief? 9. Am I using logical fallacies/propaganda/stereotyping/“buzz words”/slurs/threats to enforce this belief? (In my own thoughts and out loud) 10. Do I believe most of the same things of my friends/family/colleagues/social media tell me or do I challenge the status quo and think for myself by doing my own research and seeking unbiased information?

[sighingtirf]

11. How quickly has this belief spread to popular media and acceptance, especially in comparison to other beliefs that challenge the status quo? Can the speed of this acceptance have to do with the fact that it works hand in hand with already-existing power structures?

12. Do I have a firm grasp of the historical context behind my belief? Am I supporting regressive movements?

13. Who do I feel opposed to most? Is the group I feel opposed to made up mostly of marginalized people who are speaking out against my belief?

14. Do I have a clear understanding of why I believe the things I do? If someone asks me to explain my stance, will I be able to do so in a logical manner?

15. If someone has a point I disagree with but I don’t have reasoning against, is my goal to do whatever is necessary to cement my belief and “win” the argument, or am I willing to consider and research their point so I have a clearer understanding of the matter?

16. Am I using ahistorical language? Am I referring to a marginalized group using words that render that group an acceptable target?

17. Do I value looking at the facts to make an informed decision, or do I value pushing my viewpoint as the truth? 

18. Am I staying aware of misinformation, and how/why that misinformation may be being spread?

[seal-and-piggy]

Snow beans.

[seal-and-piggy]

Happy late birthday to the post popular post on this blog. snow beans.

[qualifiedaquarian]

[90svoorhees-deactivated20230616]

[best-of-imgur]

[notsoorganizedchaos]

I love this story.

[itscoldinwonderland]

Yaaaa

[maxineharlow]

[wvterways]

“i used to live there” is such a sad phrase. seeing places u used to live in is an odd thing. It’s like ‘i know where the best hiding place is in there. my bedroom was the one directly to the left as you walk in. i took my first steps on that flooring. i used to play in that yard with my grandma. she died two years ago. that was the only place i ever knew. those walls contain all of my childhood memories. i can no longer go there, but i know every corner like the back of my hand.’

[marbleguard]

When men see a woman they think is sexy, they become completely incapable of seeing her as human being. It’s like there’s some component in them that switches their perspective of her from “human” to “object I want to fuck” as soon as they get horny.

The baseline for men’s understanding of women’s humanity is admittedly low, but you can occasionally find one who understands that their mother, or their daughter, or their elderly female neighbor, etc, is a full human with an inner life. They can sometimes mange this for these types of women because they’re not attracted to them. However, you do not find this type of respect in men for their girlfriends or wives because men are unable to un-objectify someone they’re sexually involved with.

[marbleguard]

This is utterly bizarre to us as women because generally, when we meet someone we’re attracted to, their personality and humanity is a large part of that attraction. That’s why you see women almost never expressing interest in “hatefucking,” while for men the concept is hugely popular.

For example, when they meet a woman whose personality they don’t like, they know an easy way to neutralize their hate for her as a person is to simply cease seeing her as a person at all. The humiliation aspect is of course a turn on for them too, since for men, sex is an act of dominance/ conquering of an object.

[lichina-lycanthrope]

honestly i’ll be real with you, it’s not that they only objectify or dehumanize women that they’re attracted to. they do this to ‘plain’ and ‘ugly’ women, as well, it’s just that they tend to ignore those women. men believe that women that they do not find attractive are beneath their consideration. they are dust. this doesn’t mean that they treat women that they’re attracted to as human, either. they treat women that they’re attracted to like possessions. you’re a trophy, a toy, a game. that’s why “no” is taken as a criminal offense. imagine if your dustpan started talking, and it told you it didn’t want to help you clean. that’s how they view women they’re attracted to.

have you ever seen someone get hurt by an object they were using, who then used it more aggressively, as if out of spite? or as if they were trying to punish it, so that it “learned its place”? that’s where the “hatefuck” concept comes from. they don’t see you as human. they don’t see you as an individual, with your own feelings. you’re right about that. but they don’t see women that they aren’t attracted to as human, either. they see them as useless. they see them as less than trash. to men, women’s only purpose is to be of use to men. our aesthetics are for them, our actions are for them, and our bodies are for them--so an attractive woman is a functional tool, and an unattractive woman is a functionless tool.

no woman is seen as human under the male gaze.

[bannedwebsites-archive]

i hope OP sees this because how interesting it is that what she says in her original post (that its like theres a component in mens brains that switches to seeing a woman as an object) has been scientifically proved.

i cant post TikToks on other peoples posts for some reason but here are screenshots

(she replied with sources)

and from this presentation by Jessica Rey, on the same topic:

Princeton University had conducted a study of how male brains react to seeing people in different amounts of clothing, and brains scans had revealed when men were shown pictures of scantily-clad women, the region of the brain associated with tools, such as screwdrivers and hammers, lit up. Some men showed zero brain activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain that lights up when one ponders another’s thoughts, feelings, and intentions [...] researchers found this shocking because they almost never see this part of the brain shut down in this way, and a Princeton professor said “It’s as if they were reacting to these women as if they are not fully human; it’s consistent with the idea that they are responding to these photographs as if they were responding to objects, not people.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJVHRJbgLz8

[waifu-police]

[bermuda-n-drangle]

me when my jam comes on

[netheritenugget]

It's him, it's Blorbo from my Shows

[anti-terf-cuties]

Today’s anti-TERF cutie is Daria Morgendorffer from Daria who hates TERFs and supports trans people!

[cliteralviolence]

Lol u sure about that?

[year-of-the-terf-deactivated202]

LOL it’s like op has never seen Daria

[traumtropfen-deactivated2022111]

‘Stand firm for what you believe in, until and unless logic and experience prove you wrong. Remember: when the emperor looks naked, the emperor is naked. The truth and a lie are not sort of the same thing. And there is no aspect, no facet, no moment of life that can’t be improved with pizza. Thank you.’—Daria Morgendorffer

[sweatermuppet]

"so none of my experiences are unique huh 💔" rejoice in community & connection

[shirkers2018dirsanditan]

We weren't meant to see this many beautiful faces

In a world of normalised filters, cosmetic surgery and beauty tweaks, “beauty overstimulation” is now a thing. But what’s it doing to our br

In her newsletter The Unpublishable, beauty critic Jessica DeFino offers a cutting takedown of the cosmetics industry: ​“Beauty standards are the products of patriarchy, white supremacy, colonialism and capitalism”. She goes on to describe how ​“what the beauty industry sells isn’t actually beauty” but ​“diet culture’s face-focused fraternal twin”. Skincare isn’t self-care, she argues. It’s ​“more like extractive capitalism … Beauty products can only replace the confidence that beauty standards stole”.

And these standards are always shifting. It’ll be interesting to see whether appetites for Brazilian butt lifts will plummet, given the Kardashians were recently spotted sporting smaller-sized bums. ​“The fact that these standards change over time is important because it means we could invest endless time, money, and energy trying to achieve one aesthetic only for that aesthetic to become passé,” Craddock says. ​“The goal posts are constantly moving.”

Even if we do manage to score, consumers are rarely winners in the beauty game. ​“We shouldn’t forget that all these apps and filters, they’re commercial entities – somebody’s making money out of our insecurities,” Dr. Eckler says.

​“The ones that drive us to change our face features and all that, they exist so that the developers of those apps can make money. They’re profiting by making us feel insecure about ourselves. So I think, we [need to] stop and think: who’s benefiting from all this? Because obviously, it’s not me as a person, right? I’m yet to see a single piece of research that says this is good for you.”

[ronedob-deactivated20220805]

Julia in 1984 is based on Jacintha Buddicom, a girl that Orwell tried to rape when he was 15. Winston being a rapist isn’t Orwell being critical, it’s him writing his fantasy.

i'm so fucking tired of being right about men all the time. and i promise i'm not trying to be funny or sarcastic. i genuinely think it's exhausting to assume the worst of men, have women try to school me on how wrong and stupid and unfair i am, and then be proven right. every single time.

[izzavi]

So that he raped her comes from the postscript of a memoir she wrote, Eric & Us. I don’t know where to find that book yet.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacintha_Buddico

Jacintha Buddicom - Wikipedia

Jacintha Buddicom - Wikipedia

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Such,_Such_Were_the_Joys

So it turns out George Orwells original name was Eric Blair https://www.liquisearch.com/jacintha_buddicom

“Jacintha Laura May Buddicom (10 May 1901 – 1994) was a poet and a childhood friend of George Orwell (Eric Blair).

Buddicom was born at Plymouth to Robert Arthur Buddicom, of that family of Ticklerton Court, Church Stretton, Shropshire, which property he inherited on his father's death in 1922, and his wife Laura Lucie (nee Finlay). The family moved to Shiplake, Oxfordshire, where she first met Eric Blair in the summer of 1914 when he was standing on his head in a field at the bottom of the Buddicoms' garden. When asked why, he replied, "You are noticed more if you stand on your head than if you are the right way up."

From that summer afternoon, Eric and his younger sister Avril became very close friends with Buddicom and her younger brother and sister, Prosper (Robert Prosper Gedye Buddicom, 1904-1968) and Guinever (Guinever Laura Olivia Norsworthy Buddicom, 1907-2002). With Prosper and Guiny, Blair enjoyed shooting, fishing and birdwatching, while with Jacintha he preferred to read and write poetry and dream of future intellectual adventures. At this time he told Buddicom that at some point he might write a book in a style similar to that of H. G. Wells's A Modern Utopia, although Nineteen Eighty-Four turned out to be far different from Buddicom’s expectations.

Buddicom was educated at Oxford High School, but neither of them achieved their mutual dream of going to Oxford University. The couple lost touch shortly after Blair went to Burma. She became unsympathetic at the letters he wrote complaining about his life, and stopped writing back. The reason for this is explained in the Postscript edition of Eric & Us, which suggests that the then eighteen-year-old Blair may have attempted to rape Buddicom shortly before his departure to Burma.

In 1927, Buddicom gave birth to a daughter as a result of an unsuccessful affair, and gave the baby away for a childless aunt to adopt. When Blair, who never knew of Buddicom's daughter, came back from Burma on leave that year, he assumed that she was away from the Buddicom family home because she was angry with him and they did not make contact again. She then began a 30-year affair with a peer of the Realm.

It was not until 1949, a few months before Orwell’s death, that Buddicom realised that George Orwell, the author of Animal Farm, was her childhood friend Eric Blair. They exchanged a few letters and phone conversations and he was eager for her to come and see him, "to talk about my little son Richard", but it was too late by then, and a few months later, after her mother's death, she slipped unnoticed into Orwell’s funeral service at Christ Church, Marylebone in 1950.

Buddicom was at great pains to dispute the picture of childhood misery described by Orwell in his essay "Such, Such Were the Joys". She claimed that "he was a specially happy child", writing "There was no harping on inferiority and poverty by Eric then.... The picture painted of a wretched little neurotic, snivelling miserably before a swarm of swanking bullies, suspecting that he smelt, just was not Eric at all." And she made a systematic investigation of many of his claims and allegations in order to disprove them. She described him as an aloof and undemonstrative boy, and recalled him as being self-sufficient with no need of a wide circle of friends.

Buddicom lived with her sister for many years. She designed two Shropshire houses, and two motor-caravans for which she won prizes. She wrote a book of poetry published in America, and her Cat Poems were published in 1972, two years before Eric & Us, a memoir of her friendship with Orwell, appeared.

Among her many talents, she was an excellent mathematician and a keen astrologer. She mapped horoscopes for many famous people, from Aleister Crowley (sometimes called the wickedest man in the world) to The Beatles. This was a very private part of her life, and faded as she grew old.

After her death, her cousin Dione Venables, who was left the copyrights for the book and a quantity of family papers, did much in-depth research, and in 2006 published an updated version of Eric and Us, including all the previously unknown material about Blair's and Buddicom's relationship in a most revealing postscript.”

Jacintha Buddicom

[izzavi]

So this goes into detail on it some but I which the author of this piece had actually bothered to quote the postscript rather than just talk about it. Unless I missed something.

Also I would assume we can conclude George Orwell/Eric Blair was misogynistic, with rapist type attitudes toward women. I think it is very simplistic and naive to assume as the author of this article does that no rape, sexual harassment or similar can have occurred if the women who were subject to it “stay friends” with the man and have nice things to say about him, publicly and on the record at least.

Because of how people approach accusations toward men, and not because of what is right or wrong, I don’t think we have enough to convince the average person that he certainly did rape any specific woman, but we do have more than enough to establish his disrespect for women and misogynistic attitudes and conduct, many times over.

When telling people about this I will compile the evidence and let it speak for itself.

https://calitreview.com/george-jacintha-on-the-limits-of-literary-biography/

George & Jacintha: On The Limits Of Literary Biography - California Literary Review

The claim that George Orwell once tried to rape someone received scant attention in the United States, perhaps because the book bearing the

[ryan-sometimes]

I think it's so funny how we bred JOBS into dogs. I have two shih tzus and they were bred to be lap dogs. All they care about is looking cute and cuddling with people. Meanwhile my grandma has a border collie and that dog needs to feel so useful all the time, he acts like he will pass away if he doesn't have a job to do constantly

[ryan-sometimes]

The thoughts of my shih tzus: Man I love the couch. Flip flops are so yummy. I wish it was nap time again

The thoughts of my grandma's border collie: I have been silently observing the pigeons up in the tree for 3 hours in order to gain every tactical advantage. I'm trying to engineer the optimal jump into the backyard pool. I wish I could play chess

[purplesaline]

There are some dogs who, if you refuse to give them a job they will come up with their own job to do and chances are high you will come to regret letting them make that decision on their own.

[queen-susans-revenge]

Living with a mastiff is like having Secret Service protection. It's round the clock, it's very serious, they need eyes on you at all times. If you're going to the kitchen for a glass of water it's an Eagle Is On The Move situation requiring complex logistical support. You cannot opt out

[idiosyncraticrednebula]

A civilized people: Hey, it’s not ok to demonize or wish death on an entire sex for the actions of a few.

Your average radfem: oH, SO aRE yOu SaYinG thAt iT'S oK fOr mEN tO aBuSe, KiLL, TOrTurE, eXPloIt WOmEn? ARe yOU deNyIng thE tHouSandS oF YeArS oF FeMaLe OpPreSsIoN jUst cUz SOmEonE hUrt thEsE sCroTeS's PoOr lITtlE feELingS? WAh ThEse MeAn FeMinIsTs aRe mAkinG thEse mEn fEeL bAd. HOw Sad :(((

You can't tell me this isn't how they respond 95% of the time lmfao

[radical-desiderium]

If you genuinely don't think female oppression is an ongoing global problem, you are not worth having a civilized discussion with.

[kiefbowl]

[sandmandaddy69]