{ hate to say i told you so }

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[vvvillanelle]

I may be a slow learner, but I get there eventually.

The last thing I have to publicly say about Killing Eve is that I’m probably not going to invest in “LGBT shows” written by cishet people anymore, which feels like a pretty important act of self-care to me right now.

Bye.

[fleabaged]

Feels really validating seeing verified accounts address the very thing a lot of us have been concerned about.

[mijuoh]

What you were saying about filling up the spaces for people to feel comfortable, I deeply relate to that. And I’m sure a big part of it has been because when you’re the only one on set who looks like you, just very unconsciously, I can’t really tell you what it is, I naturally try to make that space smooth, make that space safe or make that space fun. Not only for the other person but honestly probably for myself as well. I don’t know, but I do think that being that sole person in a different culture, a different country, somehow affected Eve quite deeply.

Sandra Oh & Kerry Washington - Actors on Actors

[plaidos]

I, as a trans woman, have Issues and Problems with Phoebe Waller-Bridge & some stuff she’s written about womanhood in pretty bioessentialist ways (in otherwise really good tv shows) but I don’t know if I wanna post them here because I’m worried people will tell me I’m being Over The Top & clutching at straws as people always accuse trans women when they criticize cis women.

[plaidos]

I’ve had a few people in the notes and a few more people privately tell me that they’d like to hear my take on this, so I think I’ll elaborate.

Firstly I want to talk about how I think the fans of it I’ve seen are sort of hyperbolic about just how groundbreaking and feminist Fleabag is. I haven’t seen enough of it to really say whether this is fair or not, but to me (and many of my friends who really like it!) it’s sort of feminist in a pretty milquetoast way. Waller-Bridge’s female characters are pretty well written in that they’re complex and kind of bad people, and the shows allow that without either vilifying OR excusing them. That’s really cool! I think just how amazingly feminist her shows are is definitely overstated, though, and a very white, middle class look at womanhood.

Her shows being overstated to how monumental they are isn’t really her fault though — what I DO take issue with is some of the bioessentialist views on feminism present in her works. There’s a scene — widely regarded by the fanbase and audience as one of the greatest moments — in the second season where a character has a speech about how women’s suffering is tied directly to “female biology” that I’ll paste here:

Women are born with pain built in. It’s our physical destiny. Period pains, sore boobs, childbirth, you know. We carry it within ourselves throughout our lives. Men don’t. They have to seek it out. They invent all these gods and demons and things just so they can feel guilty about things, which is something we also do very well on our own. And then they create wars, so they can feel things and touch each other, and when there aren’t any wars they can play rugby. And we have it all going on in here, inside. We have pain on a cycle for years and years and years and then, just when you feel you are making peace with it all, what happens? The menopause comes. The fucking menopause comes and it is the most most wonderful fucking thing in the world! And, yes, your entire pelvic floor crumbles and you get fucking hot and no-one cares, but then you’re free. No longer a slave, no longer a machine, with parts. You’re just a person in business.

Now… this is just an incredibly, showstoppingly, awfully cold take on womanhood. Not only is it absolute nonsense — it might feel fun to hear, but it doesn’t really reflect anybody’s experiences of misogyny or womanhood — but it suggests the reason men are violent is because they don’t have pain in the way women do; that the reason men are the way they are is a biological difference between men and women; and it practically says the reason women suffer is because they are biologically predetermined to. Now, to me, this doesn’t seem very feminist. In fact, it seems super reductive of the actual reality of misogyny — women are a class of people nigh universally treated worse than men because of a systemic, societal & culture power imbalance — and instead suggests that men aren’t really responsible for their problems, and women are only ever truly happy when they stop being menstruating.

It also fucking reaks of transphobia, especially transmisogyny. Women are oppressed because of their biology. Men are violent because of their biology. That’s what this scene is saying. It feeds into an incredibly transmisogynistic and TERF-like view of women’s oppression and pain; one that you will find repeated near verbatim on any TERF blog on this website. Call it coincidence, or misplaced values, but when the show’s most loved soliloquy that I have seen pasted on every thinkpiece about the show, reblogged to every Fleabag fan’s tumblr, etc. is indistinguishable from real trans-exclusionary radical feminists… maybe there’s a problem.

And sure, you could argue we’re not meant to agree with the character in this scene but… it’s certainly not framed that way. It’s not framed as out of touch, maybe a little barmy, but overall true and respectable. And even if it was, it obviously isn’t framed that way well enough to stop people plastering it all over the internet when talking about how feminist Fleabag is. Perhaps if a character is meant to be in the wrong, it’s your responsibility to not let the audience come away thinking that actually, their views are correct and progressive.

This is a pretty major pitfall for me, and made me very uncomfortable with PWB… but I let it slide! Unfortunately, most cis women writing feminist shows do something similar at some point, so whatever. Maybe it was just this one time, right?

And then I watched Killing Eve. And I LOVE Killing Eve. It’s one of my favourite shows ever — and the first season was written by PWB! I really enjoy this season, but there’s a scene in Season 1 Episode 5 — I Have a Thing About Bathrooms — that made me have to stop and think about how PWB thinks about trans women.

In this episode, a man named Frank is murdered by one of the main characters, Villanelle. After she kills him, she cuts his penis off and puts him in a woman’s dress. Now, Frank wasn’t a trans woman; he wasn’t coded as one, there is nothing to hint that he was trans… but the imagery of a “man in a dress with his penis cut off” is strikingly, astonishingly close to transmisogynistic beliefs about trans womanhood. The similarities there are not a coincidence. The fact that this is sort of meant to be a dark joke is absolutely sickening to me. As if the imagery of a man in a dress with his dick cut off — murdered, as well, obviously — isn’t clear enough, a later episode goes out of its way to have Villanelle say to a woman she loved that the woman only loved her husband because he “had a penis” — the factor that makes him a man, is obviously the implication — and Villanelle actually ended up murdering him and cutting his penis off too.

The truth behind my anxieties here is undeniable; the black comedy of a man having his penis cut off, and yet worse, being stuffed in a fucking dress, combined with the bioessentialist drivel in Fleabag paints a really disturbing, transmisogynistic image of Phoebe Waller-Bridge. I’m not going to say she’s a TERF, or that she hates trans women — I don’t know that and I couldn’t in good faith suggest it — but she certainly has some issues with gender in that she sees it as bioessentialist, and is far too comfortable making jokes about men in dresses with their dicks cut off.

I’ve never seen anybody talk about this, or mention either scene as anything negative about PWB or either of the shows, which is alarming to me because both Fleabag and Killing Eve have fandoms on this website full of people who claim to want to listen to trans women, and who claim to try and look out for cissexism and transmisogyny and protect trans women at every turn. At the very best, nobody thought it worth warning me, a trans woman, of these deeply upsetting scenes, and at very worst it went completely unnoticed or uncared about by the fan bases.

Anyways. That’s why I don’t trust PWB at all. If you’re not a trans woman, please take note of these things and try and form an understanding of why they’re so deeply fucked up.

[blondiepoison]

Sandra Oh by Greg Swales | Elle Canada (June 2020)

[tallulahshark]

If we’re doing spicy takes I’ve got one: so far Killing Eve has been 0% written by lesbians and it fucking shows

you REALLY didn’t have to do it to em… lets not bring up the only white show runners as well, who sidelined sandra’s fave plotline (aka the ghost) for LITERALLY a man

[villanevellee]

And there’s nothing I can do.

[anevolutionarynecessity-deactiv]

Carolyn’s estranged daugher Geraldine

[avatricist]

villanelle text posts 

[commanderlexas]

Bonus:

[lowgrainwholerat]

Selling killing eve to straight friends: it’s just really good cus yaknow not a lot of shows allow women to be this messy, powerful, and complex and the cinematography and visual design are great plus the stellar soundtrack and-

Selling killing eve to gay friends: vdsybgeethg MURDER GIRLFRIENDS

[youlooklikearealbabetoday]

Sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine. –Siken

[jodiecomersource]

Jodie Comer: My Last… | British Vogue

[carsonshawson]

do you think they captioned this promo “hallelujah” because it makes you believe in god again

[rebelspies]

My brain has switched full into Killing Eve mode. Do I care about anything else other than Eve and Villanelle getting together? No. Eve’s mariage? Don’t care. UK national security? Unimportant. Eve’s friends? Expendable. Villanelle’s acquaintances? Good as dead already for all I care.

[jodiecomersource]

Jodie Comer and Florence Pugh attend The BAFTA Los Angeles Tea Party on January 4, 2020

[thelma2017dirjoachimtrier-deact]

“if the greatest possible being exists in the mind, it must also exist in reality”