fozmeadows - Tumblr blog

fozmeadows · 8 hours

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This is a really important thing to talk about, and I'm going to add that this is a significant way in which TERFism and its attendant dogwhistles dovetail with Evangelical purity culture, ie: the idea that evil bad predatory behaviour is stored in the penis. TERFy fearmongering about trans women being fundamentally dangerous derives from exactly the same toxic, fucked-up view of male sexuality - and of male existence - espoused by Evangelism: that all men are biologically predisposed to predation, violence and other sexual evils, such that they can't ever really be trusted.

It's a difficult thing to talk about, because demonstrably, gender-based violence directed against women by men is a widespread problem! But it doesn't follow that a majority of men are bad by default; rather, it's that many have been trained to entitlement and bad behaviour by patriarchal systems and misogynist ways of thinking, which are both things we have the power to change.

Attemping to affect this change and bring about equality is the core conceit of feminism, and we can see, very demonstrably, that it works. So if you fall into the gender-essentialist trap of believing that men are bad fundamentally, whether because of Evil Biology or Original Sin, then you're not only saying that the long-term goal of feminism is impossible; you're functionally agreeing with every disgusting, sexist rape-apologist who brushes off assault and misogyny as "boys will be boys" and "men are just like that." You cannot hope to hold bad men accountable for their actions without acknowledging the existence of good men; that their misdeeds aren't synonymous with their masculinity, but are rather choices they specifically have made.

So while it's crucial to call out the ways in which women suffer from sexism and gender-based systems of violence and to name the misogyny inherent in their perpetuation, it's also important to show how these systems are unnatural: that, rather than representing some default state of cruelty to which all men naturally revert, misogyny is instead taught - and that the teaching itself, while offering contextual authority to men, can also be harmful to them.

I cannot express how jarring it was after being raised by a "Porn Addiction Coach" to get into a relationship with a woman and come face to face with the fact that she did actually want me to sexually desire her.

Like, in Evangelical Purity Culture, male desire was basically poison. It was a threat. It was this constant temptation that would destroy everything. And even after leaving, in the sort of queer, feminist spaces i spend most of my time in that wasn't something that pretty much anyone was spending time actively dissuading me from feeling.

But my desire is good. It's not something that I'm being accepted in spite of. It's a positive thing. It's a bonus. Not even just vanilla stuff, all the stuff I'd convinced myself were these weird terrible desires that were shameful to have.

It honestly took me over a decade to fully accept that. To stop dissociating during sex and confront that I was, in fact, being a massive perv and that was fantastic and preferable and that I could accept that into my self-image without shame or self hatred.

But it's important to do. It's important to leave relationships that don't welcome that part of you. To know that your sexuality is valuable and valid and worth owning and celebrating. Because the alternative is just...not being. Either existing as yourself and repressing the part of your identity that is sexual or allowing that sexuality to exist but turning off your self while it does.

#feminism #purity culture #gender #transphobia #lgbtq

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fozmeadows · 23 hours

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if you like a piece of media that is good eventually youll more or less run out of things to say about how good it is but if you like a piece of media that is objectively pretty mediocre but also somehow deeply compelling thats how the demons get you

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fozmeadows · 3 days

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I'm sorry but Christian Mingle paying for ad space on tumblr dot com is one of the funniest demographic mismatches I've ever fucking seen, I'm wheezing

#tumblr #hellsite #memes #shitposting #christian mingle #tumblr ads

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fozmeadows · 5 days

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it’s interesting learning which homophobic ideas are confusing and unfamiliar to the next generation. for example, every once in a while i’ll see a post going around expressing tittering surprise at someone’s claim that gay men have hundreds of sexual partners in their lifetimes. while these posts often have a snappy comeback attached, they send a shiver down my spine because i remember when those claims were common, when you’d see them on the news or read them in your study bible. and they were deployed with a specific purpose — to convince you not just that gay men were disgusting and pathological, but that they deserved to die from AIDS. i saw another post laughing at the outlandish idea that gay men eroticize and worship death, but that too was a standard line, part and parcel of this propaganda with the goal of dehumanizing gay men as they died by the thousands with little intervention from mainstream society.

which is not to say that not knowing this is your fault, or that i don’t understand. i’ll never forget sitting in a classroom with my high school gsa, all five of us, watching a documentary on depictions of gay and bi people in media (off the straight and narrow [pdf transcript] — a worthwhile watch if your school library has it) when the narrator mentioned “the stereotype of the gay psycho killer.” we burst into giggles — how ridiculous! — then turned to our gay faculty advisors and saw their pale, pained faces as they told us “no, really. that was real” and we realized that what we’d been laughing at was the stuff of their lives.

it’s moving and inspiring to see a new generation of kids growing up without encountering these ideas. it’s a good thing. but at the same time, we have to pass on the knowledge of this pain, so we’re not caught unawares when those who hate us come back with the oldest tricks in the book.

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fozmeadows · 10 days

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fozmeadows · 15 days

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Rot in Piss, Joe. Thanks for fucking us over for a generation.

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fozmeadows · 19 days

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fozmeadows · 19 days

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You can donate to the Palestine Children's Relief Fund for as little as $1.00.

There is a fee you can choose to apply to cover processing.

Which if you choose to do leaves you with a total of ~$1.35 (USD) depending on the type of card you have.

PCRF has a score of 97% on Charity Navigator.

Adults and children alike are currently dying in Palestine due to starvation. (World Health Organization Link)

The Gaza Strip is one of two places in the entire world that is categorized as Phase 5 (the highest phase) on the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification scale.

So even if you think it isn't enough, remember that donating even as little as $1.35 helps! It's $1.35 they wouldn't have had otherwise. So donate if you can. 🇵🇸

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fozmeadows · 20 days

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My favorite ultra-specific character type is "this fucked up little man clearly just needs a consensual BDSM relationship and some therapy and he'd be fine, but that is very much not what happens in this story."

#beyond evil #k-drama #han juwon #lee dongsik #memes #shitposting #characters

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fozmeadows · 21 days

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So this calligraphy - and the changed lyric! - are gorgeous, but I am fascinated by OP's interpretation of Too Sweet as a "metaphor of being underserving of a love you think you'll ruin," because that is just... a read that would never, ever have occurred to me? Like, death of the author, pluralistic interpretations, do as thou wilt etc, but to me, Too Sweet is straight up just a song about Hozier, an Irish musician who likes coffee, alcohol, late nights and putting your phone down occasionally, describing an attempted relationship with an influencer-coded morning person who treats their body like a temple (derogatory) and is so obsessed with maintaining their youth and appearance that they won't indulge in various pleasures-slash-vices at all, and that while this is totally fine for that person, their sweetness - which here is a poetic euphemism for wholesomeness - makes them largely incompatible as a partner.

If you read the lyrics, I think there's a pretty strong case to be made for this interpretation. All the way through, Hozier's describing how this person and he are different, but his own lifestyle isn't couched in self-deprecating terms: instead, he's asking this person, in response to their insistence on early mornings: Don't you just wanna wake up Dark as a lake Smellin' like a bonfire Lost in a haze? If you're drunk on life, babe I think it's great But while in this world

I think I'll take my whiskey neat

In another line, he says:

But who wants to live forever, babe? You treat your mouth as if it's Heaven's gate The rest of you like you're the TSA

Which is, I would argue, given the rest of the song, not actually complimentary: it's not quite mean, per say, but I'm prepared to characterize it as a gently poetic roast, given that it's very soon followed by this:

You know you're bright as the morning As soft as the rain Pretty as a vine As sweet as a grape If you can sit in a barrel Maybe I'll wait Until that day

I'd rather take my whiskey neat My coffee black and my bed at three You're too sweet for me

Which is a very clever bit of wordplay: because having first described this person as "sweet as a grape," he then talks about potentially waiting for them "if [they] can sit in a barrel" - that is to say, the process by which grapes are aged into wine. And as one of the implications of the Heaven's gate/TSA lyric is that this person doesn't drink, in contrast to Hozier singing about how he takes his whiskey neat, this becomes an especially pointed little quip: we're not compatible in our pleasures now, but if you ever relax your standards and stop being so rigid about Living Right, let me know.

Because the other implication of the song is that the subject has been trying to make him live what is, in their view, a healthier lifestyle, one that doesn't fit who he is as a person. Early on when he's contrasting their sleeping schedules, he says:

You keep tellin' me to live right To go to bed before the daylight But then you wake up for the sunrise

Which is later followed by:

I work late where I'm free from the phone And the job gets done But you worry some, I know

In other words: the subject of the song wants him to be a morning person, and doesn't like that his work hours are, as a consequence, later than theirs, especially as he's not reachable while he's recording or writing. And as a gremlin insomniac who also routinely goes to bed at 3am, ignores their phone while writing, and has for years been constantly nagged about waking up earlier by people who think early mornings are a signifier of morality: Hozier writing a whole-ass song rejecting those demands is a fucking mood.

So while, as I said, I am fully in favour of pluralistic interpretations of art, and also in favour of OP writing their own version of the song (which sounds awesome!), I also want to suggest this third reading, wherein the whole point about sweetness is not that the subject is too good for the singer or their love too cloying, but is rather a reflection of how wholesomely they live compared to Hozier, with a note of playful mockery attached to that ideal.

filmed a toktik for the first time in several months lol, that one hozier lyric was fucking infecting my brain I think.

but in the middle of the night i was beamed upside the head with the following lyric change:

So the original metaphor of being undeserving of a love you think you'll ruin becomes a metaphor for a cloying love you're too afraid to break away from, too afraid to hurt the other party

would appreciate the clickthrough to kick the algorithm in the shins but I fully understand if you're not touching that app with an 11 foot pole

#too sweet #hozier #lyrics #song analysis

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fozmeadows · 21 days

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ohhhh my god I Love This!!

A Strange and Stubborn Endurance is a good book

#a strange and stubborn endurance #tithenai chronicles #fanart

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fozmeadows · 24 days

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what is the tumblr boop but the facebook poke, rebranded?

#boop #shitposting

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fozmeadows · 26 days

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nothing could've prepared me for the audio to this clip

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fozmeadows · 26 days

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hey. i think i'm going through a phase of self-hatred and… I don't know, of believing I'm not capable of anything. would you have any tips or books that approach this from an AFAB/trans perspective so I can cope? (it's not that I hate myself for being trans. I just have insecurities, anxieties and I don't know what to do to stop most things from seeming so discouraging, for lack of a better word.)

I'm sorry you're having a hard time! I don't have any book recommendations, and I'm not exactly an expert, but:

Where possible, try to focus on what you enjoy about the process of an action instead of worrying about the end result. A lot of anxiety comes from privileging a hypothetical future version of yourself ahead of the person you are in the moment, and while it's still good to have goals and aspirations for the future, that doesn't render your present self irrelevant, because that's who you have to be to achieve them.

To give a personal example: late last year, I was really disappointed with how little reading I'd managed to get done in 2023 particularly, but also over the pandemic. I'd bought all these awesome books that I really wanted to read, but I never seemed to get around to starting most of them, and meanwhile, I was spending hours of my life mindlessly doomscrolling Twitter and TikTok, which regardless of anything else is a really good way to depress yourself about the state of the world. So I sat down and thought about it, and I realized that the problem was how much pressure I was putting on myself about reading. I wanted so badly to finish books that I was psyching myself out of starting them in the first place, because each choice had to be Perfect, lest I pick the wrong book at the wrong time and waste twenty minutes or an hour or three reading something I might later set aside. And because I'd subconsciously set the stakes for starting a book so much higher than they needed to be, I'd end up dithering and scrolling social media to delay having to make a high-pressure choice at all.

In other words: I'd become so concerned about Future Foz's hypothetical dislike of a book I was yet to start reading that Present Foz would be scared to start it in the first place. I was forever privileging a version of myself that didn't exist and likely never would over the person I was now, and it was making me wildly unhappy, because it felt like I was failing at something I loved.

So my single New Years' Resolution became: to value myself and my time in the moment. If I catch myself scrolling for too long, I ask myself: is there literally anything else I'd rather be doing right now? Could I start a TV show, or a book, or a game, or write something, or message a friend, or have a bath? It doesn't matter if the activity goes anywhere long term; what matters is that I inevitably get more pleasure out of doing something than not. My time now matters, because I matter.

And suddenly, just from that one change? For the first time in I couldn't even say how long, I've read something every single day this year. In the whole of 2023, I read just 67 books; it's now the 30th of March 2024, and I've already finished 33. By giving myself permission to start things without the pressure to finish them, I'm suddenly finishing way more than when I was telling myself I had to finish everything, and I am vastly happier for it.

Is the world still a burning hellscape that daily makes me want to yeet a solid 80% of elected politicians globally into the sun? Yes. Am I still working on self-improvement in other areas of my life? Yes. Is it magically any easier being trans and queer in the current moment? No. But it helps to focus on who I am now, in this hour, in this minute, instead of worrying so much about whether some future version of me will think I spent this time badly that I don't use it for anything at all.

I don't know if this is helpful to your situation, and if it's not, I apologize for rambling. But it's a little change I've made lately that's helped me a lot, and I hope it might help you, too.

#foz answers things #self help #anxiety #self improvement #self care #reading

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fozmeadows · 1 month

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