[ellieintheskywithdiamonds-deact]

radfems will harrass kinky women, call us rape apologists, treat us like stupid children who don't know what's good for them amd it's all fine and dandy and feminist but the moment you say someone is vanilla it's a national fucking issue and we should all be ashamed of ourselves fo r being such misogynists 🙄🙄

[ellieintheskywithdiamonds-deact]

like they're straight up inventing victim narratives all the while turning a blind eye to the way we get mistreated by their ilk and we're all supposed to take them seriously as our "liberators" give me a fucking break

[chamerionwrites]

There’s something I want to say about toxic positivity and the difference between hope and optimism, and the way people misuse the former when they really mean the latter; for ages I’ve been turning over thoughts about it and then discarding them, because I know it will make people mad and while they have a right to their feelings, this is a horribly tender spot for me and it takes a lot of spoons to sit down and write about it, and the thought of doing that and then getting angry responses leaves me preemptively exhausted

But it’s getting to the point where I might have to say it anyway

[chamerionwrites]

I’m not here to stir shit or shame anybody so I’m not going to link to it, but a while back somebody made a post on Twitter (which then got passed around as a screenshot on Tumblr): “Trying to explain to my parents (very gently) that basically nobody under 40 right now expects good things to happen ever again.”

Now to my ears that clearly sounds like at least a little bit of hyperbole-for-effect. Personally I don’t literally believe that nothing good will ever happen again, and I don’t have the slightest intention of throwing in the towel in the fight to make those good things happen, but I absolutely relate to the sentiment and to the difficulty of conveying to some older people how pervasive that feeling is among many friends my own age. But a lot of people did seem to take the post literally, and boy were they angry about it. Just a sample of responses:

“Keep up that mindset and nothing good WILL happen.”

“Y'all are closet nihilists. I’m getting a promotion and my own place later this year. Speak for yourselves.”

“Not with that attitude! If we don’t have hope then we have nothing!”

“With that attitude, they never will. It’s up to you, it’s up to us. What a defeatist, self sabotaging attitude.”

Maybe you agree with those responses. I think a lot of people do, and I think they’re mostly well-meaning, and I think I have enough empathy to understand why they feel that they’re being helpful or taking some kind of a stand against despair. But imo this is a deeply fucked up response, and I’m going to try (gently) to explain why.

Keep reading

[xmimikyuusx]

but fr I'll never take it seriously when someone says "i was abused by men, I'm allowed to hate them and anyone trying to show love for men is an MRA" like you know how many of us were abused by our mothers and it's still (rightfully) considered not okay to say that women are all abusers just waiting to kill their children. If you blame violence on someones gender instead of the societal mechanisms that encourage and allow violent and harmful behaviour you're perpetuating that cycle.

[3cosmicfrogs]

"abuse by women is not as bad" "women cannot abuse" "men cannot be abused" "men inherently abuse" "women are inherently nurturing and kind" "jobs requiring empathy such as working with children should only be entrusted to women" "women are homemakers and inherently suited to the role of mothers" do you see the terf slide. do you see it.

[thefaceless-man]

Really love the implication that claiming that women are inherently abusive is widely condemned, as if 'women, and especially mothers, are inherently morally suspect and potentially abusive' isn't the default belief on this hellsite.

And people aren't criticising you for 'showing love for men', they're criticising you for pushing inaccurate worldviews about how men don't actually oppress women and how patriarchy is a kind of amorphous social force that harms everyone and benefits nobody. You're not some revolutionary thinker spreading avant-garde ideas, you're literally the kind of person that this quote was responding to back in 1973.

[thefaceless-man]

Sure, you're a feminist but have you addressed your resentment towards your mother? Do you show her basic respect as a fellow human being? Do you cast her as the main villain in your life story or view her exclusively as an obstacle to your self-actualisation? Are you capable of recognising her humanity even if she made mistakes? Do you recognise the very real sacrifices she made whilst raising you?

[thefaceless-man]

Always very funny to me when 'transandrophobia' guys complain about transfeminists using 'TERF rhetoric' - the idea that trans men have some kind of unique common cause with women or are uniquely non-threatening to women because of their ASAB is quite literally TERF rhetoric!

[thefaceless-man]

Radical feminist critiques of sexuality are weird to me because like, on the one hand I do agree that male domination and female subordination is equated with sexuality in general under patriarchy and that this is a bad thing, but on the other hand sometimes I will read people's writing and think 'I really don't think you understand how human sexuality works'.

[thefaceless-man]

Like, I don't think that eroticising parent/child relationships is some kind of conspiracy to Normalise Child Abuse, I think it's just an inevitable result of the fact that parental relationships are our first experience of love and external authority and people are naturally going to derive an erotic charge from that dynamic.

[thefaceless-man]

Radical feminist critiques of sexuality are weird to me because like, on the one hand I do agree that male domination and female subordination is equated with sexuality in general under patriarchy and that this is a bad thing, but on the other hand sometimes I will read people's writing and think 'I really don't think you understand how human sexuality works'.

[nineherbscharm]

seeing “the fandomification of all media has to stop” on a post about the batman is so funny. it’s a man who dresses up like a bat and uses funny little gadgets to stop crimes.

[nineherbscharm]

i guarantee you it is not

[queenlua]

this is almost certainly not a novel take but

i do wonder how much of the derisive language you hear toward "resistlib winemoms" or whatever is just "people who grew up in Safely Blue Coastal Enclaves rebelling against ppl who remind them of their mom b/c they are emotionally stunted adults"

like, as A Child Of A Very Conservative Area, i have a very vivid recollection of the first time i encountered this type of person, and my reaction was mostly baffled delight. wait you're telling me this PTA mom with unassailable Wholesome Americana credentials is gassing up the cause of trans rights at her book club. you're telling me she's batting her eyelashes and "think of the children"-ing, except instead of doing that to promote some obnoxious "ban this book from the school curriculum" agenda, she's shaming her state representative into actually funding the damn schools? i do not care how cringe her UV-bleached "i'm with her" bumper sticker is or whatever, she is working extremely hard & successfully on shit i care about and i will brook no slander against her

[thefaceless-man]

A lot of political discussions online make more sense when you realise that vast numbers of adults on the left in their 20s or even older never really grew out of the desire to SHOCK THEIR PARENTS!!! with their political views. If they encounter somebody on their side who reminds them too much of their mother, they have to find ways in which she just doesn't get it and isn't a True Radical.

[olderthannetfic]

I feel like people who use the word gooner are a red flag. They just seem like anti sex radfems and/or misogynists immediately to me. Like they assume sexuality is something everyone needs to be ashamed of feeling and it’s this gross embarrassing thing we should all be hiding about ourselves because expressing sexuality is to them a symptom of some sort of moral failing. I just don’t trust them at all.

--

And they are specifically embarrassed by masturbation. There's usually some weird "You must have a partner to be valid" floating around on top of the rest of that.

[prismatic-bell]

Ngl, I haven't gotten that vibe, but I've only encountered it a couple of times. I honestly assumed it was just Zalphas and Alphas creating their own word. Like, we've got jacking off/jerking off, it's not like we say "masturbating" every time.

[olderthannetfic]

I pretty regularly block people who show up to go "Hur, hur, female gooners" on some post about explicit fic... like... existing.

[thefaceless-man]

The use of the term 'gooner' is kind of like 'cuck' in that it's a fairly classic example of the far-right borrowing its imagery, language and anxieties directly from pornography and the term eventually breaking containment and becoming normal online slang.

(For people who genuinely don't know, 'gooning' originally referred to people edging for a long term and becoming sexually uninhibited, and then evolved into a genre of pornography that basically eroticises the concept of 'porn addiction'.)

It's kind of like if feminists started throwing around the term 'bimbofication' to refer to women conforming to hypersexual gender stereotypes and referred to social media 'bimboifying' women. Deeply bizarre behaviour.

And yes, it's very much based around this model of sexuality where the only acceptable form of sexual expression is men sexually dominating women and women serving the desires of men. Jokes about 'female gooners' are really just complaining about the idea of women having some form of sexual expression that is *solely* about their pleasure rather than fulfilling their ~natural role~ and getting men off.

[adriagan]

it fucking sucks being a disabled person who can't work and having to see these fuckass posts where someone's like "ahaha jobless people have no life and that's why everyone shitty online has No Job" and everyone and their mother reblogs it joyfully onto my dash for me to see. yes unemployed and unemployable people are truly without exception dogshit people with no hobbies and no redeeming qualities. you're so right. anyway if you'll excuse me i have to start my shift at the I'll Never Be Employed Because Of Permanent Disability And I Love Knowing How You Really See Me store

[adriagan]

if ur able to work can u reblog this i am seriously SO sick of it.

[adriagan]

btw this isn't solely a disability rights issue or an issue about people who are entirely unable to work. you should also be thinking about the people who are regarded as unhireable. transfems are hugely discriminated against in this way, people of color are passed over for less qualified white people, anyone who has any difficulty playing the interview game is less hireable... frankly anyone who made the mistake of pursuing the things they love and now has a degree for a niche field. if you still joke about Jobless People it's because you've fundamentally connected the worth of people to their labor, and specific labor, work that you see as valuable. and while i'm at it stop making fun of people who still live with their parents. asshole.

[coldforestnight]

Remember that regardless what anyone on this bitch of a website tells you. It is always morally correct to read, write, and post about some guy getting raped

[st-just]

Which is to say that the overlap of 'mostly straight-guy fan community' and 'vibrant fanfic writing scene' is small but they do absolutely exist, and do in fact perfectly solve the issue of f/f shipping not being common. Somehow I doubt the result is quite what the people complaining about it are hoping for though lol.

[johnybones56]

My Little Pony

[st-just]

Actually yeah if you're just complaining about relative quantities of f/f and m/m without seeming to have any other sort of standards then having ever complained about bronies disqualifies you outright I think.

[thefaceless-man]

To be fair, I think that most people who are complaining about the lack of f/f fanfiction in Ao3 really just want to see fanfic with the same style and tropes as Ao3-style m/m, but with women. Straight-guy fandom communities are usually chock-full of f/f, but they tend to have slightly different genre conventions to what people who mainly read fanfiction on Ao3 enjoy.

[thefaceless-man]

Obviously nobody is saying that 'go outside' is disablist simply because some people can't go outside - that's ridiculous. But when you try to act as if knowledge and experience gained through interactions 'offline' are more meaningful and 'real' than knowledge and experience gained through 'online' interactions, it's important to remember that a major difference between 'online' and 'offline' interactions is that disabled people are often excluded from physical, outdoor space. This is extremely relevant when able-bodied, neurotypical people want to complain about 'frivolous' accusations of disablism that they only ever hear 'online'.

[thefaceless-man]

'Just write porn about university students!' isn't really an effective substitute for people writing porn about teenagers because a major part of the appeal of porn about teenagers in school is being able to explore the thrill of navigating sexuality in an environment where your life is still heavily controlled by adult authority figures. Writing about adult university students is a completely different situation, even if the characters look the same age!

[fluorescentbrains]

seeing straight men be disgusted by booktok smut recommenders has actually radicalized me to the side of booktok smut recommenders. girls your taste may be atrocious but i will never disparage you for exposing mainstream discourse to the concept of soaking through your underwear. spent my whole life listening to men talk about penises it’s about time they get jumpscared by women talking about pussy in crude detail on social media. go forth and goon my warriors

[thefaceless-man]

People on here will really act like they're the only people on tumblr who have full-time jobs and then assume that the only reason why somebody doesn't want to watch a 4-hour arthouse film is because social media has destroyed their attention span.