changing my bio to make it clear I'm a bisexual adult trans queer and I'm less angry now that I'm on meds but still angry because capitalism is bullshit
Legolas’s pupil size isn’t the problem here, though. 5 leagues is 17.262 miles. The curvature of the Earth means that for a person of average height, the visual horizon is less than three miles away. Even if your vision is telescopic and the atmosphere is perfectly clear, you can’t see around the planet. If they were standing on a hill, it would have to be at LEAST 198 feet above sea level in order to see the horizon at 17.2 miles away, with nothing tall in between. Which, knowing Rohan, isn’t impossible.
Yeah there is. The Silmarillion states that the world was curved after the fall of Numenor (I believe), preventing access to Valinor. But Elves (among others) can travel the straight path across it.
So middle earth is round, but not for Elves because magic.
So wait, the reason he can see that far is because Elves just have the ability to ignore the curve of the earth? That’s awesome. It also means that no matter how good your optics got, you would always want elf eyes manning the spyglass because they can see arbitrarily far while everybody else is limited by this ‘horizon’ bullshit.
This post went from amusing to horrifying, to be brought back down to amusing, sprinkled in with some cannon explanation, and then you leave me here in fucking outrage
Shoutouts to the time I had a severe fever and took benedryl and wanted to listen to feel good inc but couldn’t remember the name. I think I was crying over this
i hate these motherfuckers so much. our sewer system used to be infested with them. they;d crawl out of my fucking toilet at night looking for warmth, standing up from the bowl waving their shitass little arms at me. they don’t have eyes but you can feel them staring back at you, asking for hugs or god knows what with that pathetic whine that permeates their entire way of existence. uppies! uppies! i’m not giving you uppies you wet toilet freak
I found some in a jar in a museum and had to frantically cram back my immediate reaction of “It’s the uppie wet toilet freaks!” because you can’t just blurt that out in a museum
My faceblindness is JUST enough that I'm not certain if this is Hugh Laurie or just a scruffy white guy with blue eyes but he's DEFINITELY doing the Hugh Laurie mouth thing so I'm about 70% certain it is
I cant go to my local libary anymore because last year when I stopped by a librarian was reading a book I wrote under a pen name years ago. This book sold under 10k copies and I've literally only heard people talk about this book online *if* I went looking for it so I went up to them and tried to start a conversation like "oh hey I've heard of that book is it good?" Like hoping for some real feedback and she goes "yeah I love reading things by queer writers" and in a moment of terror I was like "oh but- hold on, I thought the author was some old hetero white guy?!" A thing I thought because I used my own dead grandpa's picture for the author pic because grandpa never had internet. I fake looked it up and was like "yeah if he was queer its not public?" And without looking up this absolute unit goes "oh the author bio is obviously fake. I'd bet my left leg the author is a west coast millennial non-binary queer who has never lived on the east coast." And then proceeded to rattle off a dozen linguistic flourishes that are specfic to the pacific northwest that are in the book and several that are nearly ubiquitous in the state where I said my pen name lives that are somehow completely absent from the book.
So you know. Got read for fifth and didn't even find out if she liked it.
Tldw; there is majority support in the European Parliament for a bill that would cover most of SKG's issues, and if passed this would bypass the decision of the Commission. There are also ongoing lawsuits in France and other places that would likely lead to some legislation. There is also a bill being worked on in California that wouldn't stop current games from being killed, but would stop future games from being killed
What do I need to do when people respond to arguments of "you, as an adult, should be capable of making this specific choice for yourself, and can be expected to take responsibility of the consequences" with shit like "but what about my sister's kids, if we let my toddler nieces loose in these circumstances unsupervised, they would get seriously hurt". Like I get that some of you were taught to just skip the words you don't understand and assume that they aren't important to understanding the whole sentence, but how do you not know what the word "adult" means??
When I was small, about six or seven, I was balancing on a curb while waiting with my mother. I don't remember what we were waiting for. There was a toddler nearby, their parent otherwise occupied but within earshot. While I was doing my balance beam thing, my mother noticed I had the toddlar's rapt attention and said to me "Careful, you have an audience."
I noticed the toddlar, knew toddlars tend to copy others without understanding and don't have great balance, and promptly sat my butt on the curb as I realized I was Setting A Bad Example, and did not know I was doing it cause I didn't realize A Kid Was Watching.
If you are outside your home? Assume a toddlar somewhere can see you, and consider what they'd learn and then attempt from the watching. Would it be dangerous to them? You cannot assume supervision, toddlars people watch out windows all the time, and if you choose to act in a way that they copy dangerously? You just Made Labor for that kid and their entire family group to Unteach that before its an ER visit, and Kids Don't Roll With Un-Teaching. The harder a parent demands the kid stops without explaining why, the harder the kid will cling to that behavior or a permutation of it whenever they feel trapped, spiteful, or upset.
If you don't consider that there may always be a set of extremely young eyes on you, you will make life harder for all of your peers who have to deal with that kid. Consider them if and when you find yourself upset and feeling entitled to a public behavior when giving it up does you no harm, and may do others incredible good.
Part of Being The Change you want in the world is living it, even when no one is watching.
argument for why it is morally correct to constantly structure your life around the assumed presence of legions of invisible small children and the possibility of them internalizing a Bad Influence
i do get pushing back on "mean girl nurse" being used in a lazy misogynistic way against a group of workers who are institutionally abused & their feminized labor underpaid.
that being said. can we not erase the fact the entire conversation began with disabled people talking about being medically abused pretty please. & also, iirc the post that first really blew up about "mean girl nurses" never said "ALL nurses are evil bitches who hate everyone and they deserve to be mistreated" it was saying "women who sought power over other people in high school go into careers where they can wield power over other people, same as men, and there are women who go into nursing and present themselves as kind and caring and maternal, who are motivated by a desire to have unquestioned authority over other people's bodies to make themselves feel powerful, again, same as men who do the same things in masculinized careers." & i just find it "interesting" how all that has been reduced down to "all nurses are mean girls")
i think nuance is always important & doctors and nurses do need better treatment and society frequently praises them while also supporting their abuse. and yet they are also universally recognized as vital important members of society & empowered to have immense control over the lives of people who are systemically vulnerable and seen as leeches who add nothing to society. and yet who has to deal with the impacts of their stress and their trauma and their anger and their burnout? the disabled people under their care.
again. Nuance! but i just cannot help but Side Eye In Cripple some things people say on this topic. it can both be true that nurses (& doctors) experience horrible working conditions and that, in my opinion, that any conversation about burnout and abuse of medical professionals needs to also criticize the authoritarianism of the medical field and how widespread medical neglect and abuse is, lest we simply fall back into "the poor beleagured doctor who is Jesus Christ On The Cross Himself, all-wise and all-knowing and forced to tolerate all these entitled know-it-all ungrateful patients!" which changes nothing for anyone.
like. look at this article. the actual context for the "mean girl to nurse pipeline" (that some women seek out power over people to control them and make themselves feel bigger, and women are likely to do this through caretaking in the role of nurse, teacher, mother, etc.) is not brought up at all. the fixation is entirely on "its mean to call nurses mean girls! they experience a lot of bullying! you don't REALLY know any mean nurses, just poor tired bullied ones!"
First, the phrase itself is unfair to women. Although nursing is a female-dominated field, this phrase focuses on women as being the “mean” ones to worry about.
like. do youuuu fucking see the erasure of medical abuse. the actual bullshit nurses do to real living human beings, which goes massively under-reported. & not just disabled people but people of color as well. god fucking forbid medical professionals are treated as anything but literal saints descended from heaven. god forbid white cisgender women are recognized to have the ability to be cruel and power-hungry and to hurt other people through traditionally feminine roles based on caretaking. like I genuinely do understand that nurses are subject to immense stress, bullying, and violence, and that providing better working conditions for nurses is vital to improving medical treatment for all patients.
but when the actual neglect and abuse nurses can do to their patients is ignored and drops out of the conversation entirely, in the name of complaining about nurses being called "mean"? sorry but it pisses me the fuck off.
(links to some sources on patient abuse under the cut since this is long enough as is)
Exclusive: Leaked internal document lays bare concerns of ‘toxic’ issues within watchdog that mean whistleblowers’ warnings are ignored — an
Nurses and midwives accused of serious sexual, physical and racial abuse are being allowed to keep working on wards because whistleblowers are being ignored, a damning new report has found.
Staff are too scared to report their concerns to the nursing regulator because of a “culture of fear” within the watchdog, documents seen by The Independent reveal.
One whistleblower, speaking to this publication, drew parallels with the Lucy Letby case, accusing the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) of being defensive and trying to protect their own reputation.
They claim “deep-seated toxic conduct” within the NMC is leading to skewed and failed investigations.
A review of NMC guidelines was launched after The Independent highlighted concerns earlier this year by speaking to staff who complained that the NMC was leaving nurses accused of sexual assault and domestic violence free to work unchecked.
Incivility is one of the most prevalent forms of interpersonal mistreatment. Although studies have examined the full range of experiences of
Incivility is one of the most prevalent forms of interpersonal mistreatment. Although studies have examined the full range of experiences of incivility against nurses and other hospital personnel, very few studies examined the forms of incivility that patients face in a hospital. [...]
Participants most frequently reported experiencing insensitivity (38%) or affectively negative interactions. A majority explicitly used the word “rude” to describe their interaction. [...]
When the Doctor was a smart mouth and came in and said “congratulations you have a period” it ended up being a very serious infection. [Participant 290, 27 years old, Biracial, Woman].
Participant 290’s experience demonstrates some of the potential consequences of rudeness. In this case, the doctor was not only insensitive but gave an incorrect diagnosis. In addition, participants frequently indicated how insensitivity was also communicated through a “rough” touch when the doctor was examining them. The consensus was that insensitivity—verbal and physical forms—only made the participants feel worse when they are already in the hospital not feeling well.
Participants (15%) indicated experiencing rudeness because of their identities. Many individuals explained how their socioeconomic status (SES)—specifically lack of health insurance—was a significant factor in shaping the treatment they received:
I had a first time grand mal seizure and wrecked my vehicle. I do not have insurance, so the hospital I was taken to was so rude. I was brought in by an ambulance, they wouldn’t give me anything for the severe headache from the wreck and also from the seizure. They wouldn’t give me anything to keep me from throwing up. The only thing they did was give me an IV of Keppra to stop the seizures. After finding out I didn’t have insurance, they discharged me within 10 minutes. They took me to the bathroom to change clothes, they met me at the bathroom door, handed me my papers and pointed me to the door. I didn’t even get wheeled out after having a seizure and a wreck…[Participant 272: 28 years old, White, Woman]. [...]
…[I] was told in plain terms that those who don’t pay for their [insurance] have no right to complain about not receiving the best treatment [Participant 47: 34 years old, Latina/Hispanic, Woman]. [...]
Participants (26%) indicated what we categorized as containing elements similar to “gaslighting” or mistreatment in which participants’ experiences were minimized, doubted, questioned, second guessed, or denied by health-care professionals. [...]
…I was told I was lying about being sick. I was told that I had lost 45 pounds in 2 months because of a mild cold, and that I was wasting their time. They tried to make me feel like I was a burden, and I was taking away from other patients who they implied were sick. Turns out I was sick, and I needed surgery. Going to a hospital out of town, they diagnosed my problem within 1 visit. [Participant 275: 34 years old, White Man]
Patients adjust their behaviour based on what they experience in care relationships with nurses or the hospital care. It is crucial that pat
Most research on aggression in health care relates to staff experiences about patient aggression. Research on patients’ perceptions of aggressive and transgressive behaviour in care relationships with nurses is limited. [...]
When it comes to competent care, some patients told stories of how expertise of care providers was questioned. One patient described a nurse provided pain-relieving medication while he is allergic to that product. In response, the patient’s daughter attached a list to her father’s bed listing products he is allergic to. Despite this list, every time her father asked for pain relief, that same product he is allergic to was brought to him. Another patient described a nurse accompanied him for an examination. He asked where she was taking him to and when she said it was to Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, he said he was not allowed to because of his pacemaker. He indicated the nurse had not gone through his medical file and was putting him in danger [...]
Patients told stories of being ignored by nurses or not treated as human beings. One woman described the nurse criticized her for not having to have worked a day in her life because of her long-term illness. Another man described dinner was put in front of him without a single word, no ‘good afternoon’ or ‘enjoy’. Patients also provided examples of a lack of gen- uine involvement of nurses in the nurse–patient contact. Various patients mentioned they felt like a number:
. . .One thing that is very annoying is when two nurses are caring for you and they are conversing with each other over your head. That’s so annoying, you really feel like just a number. . .
Furthermore, various patients indicated nurses are more concerned about the way care is organized than they are about the patient’s request. Patients mentioned nurses stick to their routine and are reluctant to deviate from it. One nurse distributes medication while another checks parameters of all patients. Patients describe they cannot approach the nurse about matters that are not part of his/her task at that moment [...]
Various patients gave examples of situations where they were not acknowledged or heard with regard to their own appraisal or expertise concerning their illness and health. Patients stated they themselves felt what they could or could not do, but nurses kept emphasizing and imposing things, according to guidelines and protocols, they should be able to do at a certain point in time. Several patients felt they were not heard:
. . .I had two surgeries on my back. So the first day after the surgery, they said, ‘roll to the side and sit up’, of course that’s difficult. On the second day, they demand you get out of bed. But I felt worse, I couldn’t get out. And they didn’t believe me, the nurse didn’t believe it. ‘You’ve had surgery and according to the textbook, you should be able to get out of bed on the second day’. On the third day, they made a new scan and saw that those nerves had not been unblocked and on the fourth day I had another surgery. So they don’t listen, because that’s not possible, according to the ‘textbook’ you should be able to do this. . . [...]
When patients realize it is not self-evident to receive adequate care or do not feel in competent hands, they become more observant and vigilant. Patients describe they observe nurses carefully, check their medication and ask which examinations they are having and why. The care they receive is more outspokenly questioned:
. . .They came to collect me for my hip. Ah, you’ve got a scanner appointment. She says: ‘it’s an MR scan’. I say: ‘an MR scan? I can’t do that because I’ve got a pacemaker.’ And she says ‘And now you tell me?’ ‘Listen here, missy, you walk in here and tell me to come.’ You’d be in there if you wouldn’t have said something, wouldn’t you! The battery can generate voltage which could burn your heart, destroying your pacemaker. If you’re not paying attention, you’re done for. You constantly have to be on your guard. . .
You literally cannot find any information on abuse or racism perpetrated by nurses by searching up pretty basic terms, because the results are entirely full of abuse done to nurses. Which is important, but my god.
@genderkoolaid 's original tags because lying to patients is 100% something so many people believe as being unequivocally good when that patient is seen as anything other than perfect:
#m.#reminds me of how the pitt has several scenes i remember being like.#whyyyy are we making so many jokes about drug addicts and mentally ill people and their distress guys 😀#like that one fucking scene of the one doctor berating a drug user for no goddamn reason but it portrays her as#righteous because He Lied For Drugs (literally no way for him to be honest with you)#lying to HIM about giving him a drug that CAN MAKE YOU GO INTO WITHDRAWAL IF YOU TAKE ANY OTHER OPIATES WITH IT (suboxone i think)#WITHOUT TELLING HIM!!!!!!!!!! MASSIVE massive violation of patient autonomy and SAFETY. since she LIED about what drug it was#and the man HIMSELF clearly wanted opiates so he wouldnt be in withdrawal for his daughters wedding#and then she. berates him? for not caring about his daughter???????#and no one seems to be annoyed at this scene but me a fucking pparently#because it was the sweet nice doctor and its her fucking character development to be cruel towards a drug user for doing literally nothing#except trying to seek the care he needed to live his life in the way he knew how#and ofc they presented it as ''well maybe when hes ready he'll get clean now that you were a jerk to him :)''#she shouldve been fucking berated for that. they shouldve had a whole scene telling her how big of a fuckup that was#but nooooo its her cute little character development moment#idc get that poor man some methadone and TELL HIM HOW IT WORKS
It is shocking how recent the idea that "people have the right to decide what medical care they do or don't want" is. The whole modern medical system in the US, for example, was built with the presupposition that doctors give instructions to nurses and patients, nurses follow those instructions and give instructions to patients, and patients do exactly what they're told and be thankful for it. Hell, the Tuskegee "Experiment" didn't officially end until 1972 and the ADA was only passed in 1990. The present day system is the culmination of literal centuries of medical abuse of vulnerable people, and the ways in which the system has improved has been through the ongoing struggles against it by those it abuses. And this is not unique to the US by any measure, just the one whose history I know best.
Lying to patients? It's for their own good.
Giving them a medication without telling them what it is? It's for their own good.
Having a patient imprisoned committed institutionalized against their will? It's for their own good.
Berating a fat patient for existing? Drug users for using drugs? Patients with disabilities needing (legally mandated) accommodations? It's for their own good.
We're only just now starting to grapple with the vast number of people who have been traumatized by the medical system. The last estimates I saw we're around 12% of patients exhibit symptoms consistent with PTSD related to experiences with the medical system, and that number rises sharply for patients of color (especially black patients), disabled and chronically ill patients, fat patients, LGBTQ+ patients, and basically any other marginalized group. Some doctors and nurses have worked intentionally to try to address and mitigate their biases, in many places the number of medical professionals who are themselves members of these groups has been increasing, but the vast majority just never even consider that they could be harming their patients. Like, for fucks sakes, it's 2026 and research is still finding that a substantial portion of graduating medical students still believe that black people have thicker skin and higher pain tolerance (or even can't experience pain at all!?!) and that women are more likely to exaggerate their pain and other symptoms.
I can have solidarity with medical professionals as a worker but still point out the ways that they hold (and abuse) power over us. Even the ones who aren't intentionally causing harm. Treating them as unassailable, unerring paragons doesn't help anyone except in shielding those who use their position to hurt us.
As a chronically ill and disabled person, I have extensive medical trauma. As a scientist, I've gone digging for academic research on said medical trauma.
I was shocked how little of it there is. Basically what I learned is that it falls under the umbrella of 'iatrogenic harm,' iatrogenic meaning 'coming from medical treatment,' which is mostly discussed in the context of things like side effects and maybe physical harm from medical errors, very rarely in the sense of giving people psychological trauma. But there is ONE PAPER! ONE! which specifically identified and defined the type of trauma I have - trauma caused specifically by being repeatedly treated badly by medical professionals. It's called "clinician-associated traumatization" and there is one fucking paper!
I think this is probably an extremely common form of medical trauma, but of course there is no research on its prevalence whatsoever! God, if I could talk about this subject much without getting triggered I could write a fucking PhD on this.
Anyways here's my one fucking paper that validates my experiences.
hate when men complain about how theyre not allowed to be vulnerable and people will be like "and who set that system up?" as a gotcha moment. stop acting like patriarchy was funded by calling in Every Man Ever in a room and letting them all singularly decide if they wanted it. patriarchy hurts everyone in different ways, they're allowed to complain and you shutting them down and telling them to stop complaining are doing exactly what toxic masculinity wants you to enforce
But when a little boy is being told by his mother to suck it up or else he’ll never be a real man?
That’s a woman placing that system’s constraints upon her son. She didn’t set it up any more than her son did, or her father did. But she is being the enforcer of the system.
We need to stop talking about patriarchal systems as though the current men who live under it made it, and we also need to stop talking about patriarchal systems as though they are ever only enforced by men.
And, as OP pointed out. By doing the, “and who set the system up?” at a man expressing that he’s constrained in certain ways by the patriarchy, you’re dodging the opportunity to deconstruct toxic masculinity (a crucial element of the system) and are instead enforcing that over him.
The reality is that men are hurting and that the whole culture responds to them by saying, “Please do not tell us what you feel.” I have always been a fan of the Sylvia cartoon where two women sit, one looking into a crystal ball as the other woman says, “He never talks about his feelings.” And the woman who can see the future says, “At two P.M. all over the world men will begin to talk about their feelings—and women all over the world will be sorry.”
If we cannot heal what we cannot feel, by supporting patriarchal culture that socializes men to deny feelings, we doom them to live in states of emotional numbness. We construct a culture where male pain can have no voice, where male hurt cannot be named or healed. It is not just men who do not take their pain seriously. Most women do not want to deal with male pain if it interferes with the satisfaction of female desire. When feminist movement led to men’s liberation, including male exploration of “feelings,” some women mocked male emotional expression with the same disgust and contempt as sexist men. Despite all the expressed feminist longing for men of feeling, when men worked to get in touch with feelings, no one really wanted to reward them. In feminist circles men who wanted to change were often labeled narcissistic or needy. Individual men who expressed feelings were often seen as attention seekers, patriarchal manipulators trying to steal the stage with their drama.
When I was in my twenties, I would go to couples therapy, and my partner of more than ten years would explain how I asked him to talk about his feelings and when he did, I would freak out. He was right. It was hard for me to face that I did not want to hear about his feelings when they were painful or negative, that I did not want my image of the strong man truly challenged by learning of his weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Here I was, an enlightened feminist woman who did not want to hear my man speak his pain because it revealed his emotional vulnerability. It stands to reason, then, that the masses of women committed to the sexist principle that men who express their feelings are weak really do not want to hear men speak, especially if what they say is that they hurt, that they feel unloved. Many women cannot hear male pain about love because it sounds like an indictment of female failure. Since sexist norms have taught us that loving is our task whether in our role as mothers or lovers or friends, if men say they are not loved, then we are at fault; we are to blame.
from The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks
When a man earnestly tries to verbalize the immense pain and suffering he experiences under patriarchy, and your response is a witty quip that shifts the conversation away from vulnerability towards mockery and blames him for the existence of the system both of you were born into without choosing, you are acting as a patriarch would like you to act: man up, shut up.
(Also, before anyone gets mad at hooks, the above quoted section comes right before she discusses the fear of violent men and the difficulty of women and men, in confessing how much they fear the men in their lives, referencing her own family's experience with her violent and abusive father. She is not ignoring or ignorant of (cis) male violence when she talks about love and loving men.)
I totally understand the pressure to include that last paragraph, but I do think it's ironic that even on the "men can't talk about their feelings without backlash" post we can't talk about men talking about their feelings without reminding everyone in the room women are scared of men. I don't think we actually have to say that for it to be known and it's fucked up people refuse to let any post about men that's positive in nature escape this commentary.
I also wonder how much of women's fear of men is magnified by feminists repeating this truism over and over again, plastering it on even the most innocuous things, and how much easier it would be for women to talk to men if people didn't constantly say- essentially- women should be afraid. They should live in an exhausting state of fear always. Y'know, something that's super healthy.
i mean i really don't like the implication that "women are afraid of men" is a "truism" that feminists repeat as if its not based in actual material experiences that people of all marginalized genders have. i do agree that "women should live in a state of perpetual fear around men" is harmful and is fundamentally patriarchal, but we should not conflate that with frank discussion of the reality of gendered violence.
i do think it would be worth it to read the actual chapter & what hooks has to say on the matter, because it actually feels quite relevant to your point here:
There is only one emotion that patriarchy values when expressed by
men; that emotion is anger. Real men get mad. And their mad-ness, no matter how violent or violating, is deemed natural—a positive expression of patriarchal masculinity. Anger is the best hiding place for anybody seeking to conceal pain or anguish of spirit. My father was an angry man. At times he still is, even though he is past eighty years old. Recently when I called home he said, speaking of me and my sister, “I love you both dearly.” Amazed to hear Dad speak of love, I wanted us to talk but I could not find words. Fear silenced me, the old fear of Dad the patriarch, the silent, angry man and the new fear of breaking this fragile bond of caring connection. So I could not ask, “What do you mean, Dad, when you tell me that you love me dearly?” In the chapter focusing on our search for loving men in Communion: The Female Search for Love I make this observation: “Lots of women fear men. And fear can lay the foundation for contempt and hatred. It can be a cover-up for repressed, killing rage.” Fear keeps us away from love. And yet women rarely talk to men about how much we fear them.
My siblings and I have never talked with Dad about the years he held us hostage—imprisoning us behind the walls of his patriarchal terrorism. And even in our adult years we are still afraid to ask him, “Why, Daddy? Why were you always so angry? Why didn’t you love us?”
In those powerful passages where she writes of her father’s death, Barbara Deming names that fear. As death is swiftly taking him beyond her reach, she sees clearly that fear had kept him away from her all along—his fear of her being too close, and her fear of seeking to be close to him. Fear keeps us from being close to the men in our lives; it keeps us from love.
Once upon a time I thought it was a female thing, this fear of men. Yet when I began to talk with men about love, time and time again I heard stories of male fear of other males. Indeed, men who feel, who love, often hide their emotional awareness from other men for fear of being attacked and shamed. This is the big secret we all keep together—the fear of patriarchal maleness that binds everyone in our culture. We cannot love what we fear. That is why so many religious traditions teach us that there is no fear in love.
We struggle then, in patriarchal culture, all of us, to love men. We may care about males deeply. We may cherish our connections with the men in our lives. And we may desperately feel that we cannot live without their presence, their company. We can feel all these passions in the face of maleness and yet stand removed, keeping the distance patriarchy has created, maintaining the boundaries we are told not to cross. In a class with students who are reading the trilogy of books I have written about love, with forty men talking about love, we talk of fathers. A black male in his late thirties, whose father was present in the home, a hard worker, talked about his recent experience of parenthood, his commitment to be a loving father, and his fear that he will fail. He fears failure because he has not had a loving role model. His father was almost always away from home, working, roaming. When he was home, his favorite way of relating was to tease and taunt his son mercilessly, in a biting voice full of sarcasm and contempt, a voice that could humiliate with just a word. Reflecting the experience of many of us, the individual telling his story talked about wanting the love of this hard man but then learning not to want it, learning to silence his heart, to make it not matter. I asked him and the other men present, “If you have closed off your heart, shut down your emotional awareness, then do you know how to love your sons? Where and when along the way did you learn the practice of love?”
^ hence why i think discussing fear is actually VERY relevant and important to bring up when it comes to the topic of allowing men to discuss their feelings in a feminist context. we can't separate our (INCLUDING MEN) difficulty truly loving men with our personal and cultural fears of men.
i did make that disclaimer largely to prevent people from derailing the conversation to rant about how hooks must not understand women's fear of men. but my concern was more the derailing by thinking that hooks' wasn't considering that fear and real pain, and thus feeling the need to "critique" hooks on something she was already thinking about deeply. i don't think its helpful to veer close to genuinely anti-feminist talking points, when we really need to encourage people to talk about their fears of men with men, in the same conversations men talk about their feelings of isolation and self-hatred and shame and being unlovable. hence why i specified that hooks was not talking about just women being afraid of men, she was talking about patriarchal violence and is as much concerned with young boys & the men they grow up into and how they are affected by patriarchal violence as she was with girls & women.
also while i fully understand many people who are women have different feelings and needs relating to this, as someone who is a woman i do not like the implication that by virtue of being a woman, a man talking to me about his feelings / pain Ever is some great terrible imposition that saps me of all my energy and dignity. "how can you expect WOMEN to CARE about MEN'S FEELINGS???" well for one i have a sibling who is a man and also friends who are men and i do like. care about them. and for two i am a human person who is capable of understanding my own limits and when a conversation or relationship is mutual or one-sided, and i do care about helping other people especially when it comes to navigating complex sociopolitical issues and how it relates to them personally. also im an androgyne so like when i do self therapy is that technically a man demanding emotional labor from a woman?
i just hate how some people need to treat every situation involving A Man And His Feelings interacting with A Woman as if both people inherently must embody the social trends of their respective (exclusive!) genders. every woman feels like a burdened voiceless housewife and every man is emotionally unintelligent and acts entitled to her emotional labor and offers no emotional support in return and if you try to add any nuance to this you must hate women.
#remember when “men being told they can't feel or god forbid SHOW emotion is a patriarchal standard that needs to be abolished”#was a fact commonly accepted and recognized and even engaged with by feminism?#yeah me too
well you see a lot of people seem to believe that the solution to this is "men just need to go other men for their emotional needs" which like, they SHOULD! but its a "yes and" not an either/or???
there's generally a lot of anti-heterosocial trends in pop feminism, by which I mean people strongly support the idea of women and men being completely separate groups with separate spaces and separate movements, and are very suspicious of anything which encourages the social mixing of genders and coalition-building between genders. there's this idea that the solution to patriarchy is that all men will go off into a fucking cave somewhere and become the perfect feminist men with zero engagement with women at all, and all the women will do the same in their own cave completely separate from men, and SOMEHOW this is the solution to patriarchy, a system which is fundamentally build on oppositional sexism and keeping men and women socially divided.
and its just so frustrating. especially being again multigender and very much affected by both misogyny and toxic masculinity / misandry! i get where the impulse comes from & i do think that men should organize on a feminist basis with other men. but heterofatalism is a plague upon feminism, and many people (especially those who exchange feminism for "being a girl's girl") feel fatigued or pessimistic about the ability of men and women to be able to have hard complex conversations in which everyone's emotional pain is held and discussed and then synthesized in a way which allows us to move towards clear material goals for feminism & liberation as a whole. so instead of trying, they use surface level feminist critique affirm their pessimism and wash their hands of the problem entirely.
this is why everyone really should read bell hooks' The Will to Change, because so much of that book involves grappling with messy painful emotions, for both men and women, and how an inability to confront our own pain and anger and fear leads to an inability to move feminism forward towards healing and liberation.
various people about trans men: I hate you. because i hate men of course. there is a heavy overarching implication in my behavior that I would not treat you with this level of cruelty and scrutiny if you were a cis woman, but shouldn't you feel so validated right now? shouldn't you feel validated that I wouldn't treat you like shit if you hadn't transitioned? shouldn't you feel validated that I'm treating you like shit explicitly because of your identity?
this post is not anti-feminist btw or about misandry this is about trans men. i also didn't even have the behavior of any trans women or trans fems generally in mind when writing it. i just want people to admit that its really painful when cis women suddenly don't want solidarity with us and garner hatred towards us even when we experience the same things they do on top of other things. they never take a step back to analyze the power dynamics relative to them and the trans man, they only justify their behavior by fixating on a version which in a trans man oppresses another minority group without ever fixating on the fact that cis women would be one of the oppressing groups too. we are given zero grace as a group unlike cis women despite our material circumstances. you are overly fixated on alienating us specifically from solidarity and can never say anything positive about us. its just like everything you do always entails the implication that you would treat us better if we hadn't transitioned. you would be kinder to us and take our pain seriously if we hadn't transitioned, you would be able to conceptualize solidarity with us if we hadn't transitioned. it just feels like we're not worth updating your thinking for even slightly. when you disregard us for being trans men it feels the exact same as when transphobes disregard us for being trans men. can you just acknowledge that it really hurts
Okay so I was all done with these for today, but then this mad genius, @avoid-avoidance came up with the most incredible idea. I couldn't stop til I got this down.
Something something Erid is a high-pressure, no light planet with liquid water and bioluminescent, lure-based, energy efficient ocean creatures could develop; something something Eridians have close to no spatial memory and therefore worse scale? memory; something something Eridians are the apex land predator specifically.
(All that, and I forgot the suit. Ah well. Point is, they deserve a buddy comedy ending.)
you know when terfs say "if I was a young person now I would transition" that's not an expression of their own sense of self, it's an extension of their belief that trans men are "confused women" who transition to "avoid/escape misogyny"
they're not saying "I'd be happier as a man", they're saying "I would have been tricked by the evil trans cabal into ruining my pure feminine body"
