#all my problems would immediately be solved..

[dwslvr]

i really feel like dean winchester whimpering in my ear would fix me..

[angel-babycakes]

The idea of affectionate terms of endearment is rather common, everyone has heard it all the time, so of course you would hear it all your life as well but the idea of you, their forever final girl, their delicate lamb, pretty little minx, darling angel, their forever sweetheart, makes you want to hear them praise you more, worship you greatly. Love is a wonderful thing, love is known to make you breathless and crave it more because after all, the angel of love smiles at you, so as their beloved, you should make love in your own way, be soft and sweet or be aggressive and rough, at the end of the day, these boys just want you to be forever theirs. You are their savior, their other half that’s pure, that’s fragile and blinding, you give them a reason to keep going, make them realize you are their prize truly worth fighting for…

Came up with the idea of the boys just giving you personalized nicknames, whether they say it out loud or in private, they just want to show you in every shape and form that they love you so much, they would do anything for you: Ghost would call you his “forever final girl”. Price would call you his “delicate lamb”. Soap would call you his “pretty little minx”. Gaz would call you his “darling angel”. König would call you his “forever sweetheart”.

[creamd-soder]

made a whole new fuckung brush just to Clown Around with

(variants of comic under cut)

[perpetualprocrastinationisme]

"Ty?" she whispered. "Ty, I-" - Livvy's Final Words "I would never let anything hurt Ty," he said. "You see, I-" - Kit in Queen of Air and Darkness "Kit," he began haltingly. "I thought that you - I thought that it would be-" - Ty after raising Livvy in Queen of Air and Darkness

WHAT WERE THEY GOING TO SAY, CASSANDRA!!!!!!!! After TWP she needs to reveal how these sentences ended. It's a need, not a want.

[liarsblade]

Its kinda crazy actually. How much better I feel since cutting my hair + how many of my problems that solved.

[arathejedi394]

i got banned from the Crying Ao3 Down community for complaining about how all of them were posting the exact same message about ao3 being down that's hilarious it's the least aggressive thing i've ever been banned from a group before

[wanderestless]

i fucking hate having to be my own babysitter. stop crying in an uncomfortable position, go to bed. don't forget to take your pill. yes, you need to check your calendar instead of meditating on oblivion. like come on you dumb BITCH

[screambirdscreaming]

Saw a post complaining about how women are perceived as being "gender nonconforming" if they just exist in their bodies without modifying them (shaving, wearing a bra, makeup, etc)

And I deleted the reply I wrote because I don't want to aggro the op and I can see how that would come out of genuine frustration and exhaustion in various situations

Especially because being "a woman but nonconforming" is a perceived gender that can be socially punished in various ways

But truly. How the fuck else do you want it to work?

Do you want "woman" to be a box you can't escape? A box you're put in based on some aspects of your body that you *can't* change, or put on and take off, and then you're gendered at the same constant baseline level no matter what you do?

Yeah, it's fucked up that you're socially punished for not shaving your legs and wearing a bra, that those are treated as signs of slobbishness in a blatant double standard to men. Yes, I think that social stigma should be eliminated.

But not by making it so you're still percieved as equally feminine and womanly regardless of presentation! I do not fucking want that outcome and I don't understand why you do!

It's kind of baffling to me because, ok, I'm at one extreme end of this scale. I would prefer not to be read as a woman at all, while ALSO not being read as a man. This option is rarely if ever available to me, so usually I get by on some variation of "woman (nonpracting)." People perceive me as being in the position of a woman structurally, within society, but the degree to which I don't perform femininity modulates how strongly people treat me as a woman, in day to day interactions.

There's a whole bunch of other cans of worms in there. One I'll mention is that, if you set all your woman sliders as low as possible performance/behaviorally, you actually get less social pushback than if you present as feminine in some ways and not others. Overall, the most punished gender category tends to circle around any variation on "aiming to be a woman and not doing it perfectly according to the standards of the viewer."

Which is probably another component of the original frustration. That "failing at womanhood" is so strongly stigmatized and punished, as the overlap of "wanting to be a woman" even though in sexist society a woman is a bad thing to want to be, and also "failing to meet the observer's standards for womanhood", where in a sexist society womanhood is something that exists for the benefit of the consumption of others.

[The shadow this casts, in inverse, is that the ideal form of womanhood is to be perfectly, pristinely feminine in all ways, without putting in effort, and while being perfectly uninterested in it. (Hating being a woman is also undesirable.) This actually also explains a lot of the weird reactions to makeup in male chauvinist spheres, actually - that the look of very feminine makeup is desired, but any indication that it takes effort and that you did it on purpose is detested. But that's a WHOLE other other thing.]

So in light of all that, yes, it would in some ways be an easy way out if you could still be treated as a woman (performance levels within acceptable standards), even without any given signifier of performed feminity. But I am arguing STRONGLY that the thing to push for changing, is the issue where falling below a certain performance standard of feminity - or hitting a certain degree of inconsistency between feminine and unfeminine traits - makes people treat you like shit.

NOT that "woman" should extend at the same intensity regardless of how it's performed. Just that different performance levels should evoke the same basic social respect.

I know I'm an edge case, but just about every woman I know modulates how feminine they are presenting situation to situation. To evoke different social reactions, or because they're feeling differently day to day. And yeah, some of that's tactical, done because certain presentations of womanhood are stigmatized, rather than outright personal preference. But what is gender, actually, if not at least largely a game of managing people's perceptions of and reactions to you? Is it ever based only on personal preference? Could it ever be?

Certainly not if you remove any mechanism for willfully non-conforming to it!

And to be clear, all of what I said above applies to trans women wherever i said "woman". The rights of trans women and cis women to be treated with respect regardless of how femininely they're presenting, to not be socially punished for simultaneously having traits considered both feminine and unfeminine (both in or out of their ability to control), and to have active signifiers of femininity read and respected without having to pass some baseline level of expected gender performance - are all actually in alignment.

And those also do not contradict with maintaining the ability to opt OUT of gender - to nonconform - by choosing NOT to engage in certain gendered signifiers.