#e treated by the patriarchy
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you're assuming a lot about binary trans people, and if anything it makes me think that our understandings of our genders aren't actually that different? Not every binary trans person wants to pass as a cis person. I don't want to pass as a cis woman, I want people to understand me for what I am, a collection of internal beliefs and thoughts that I've constructed an identity with. It sounds like we both have created identities for ourselves! If you think that non binary people are the only people capable of creating their own identities and striving to be seen as them, that's on you
im gonna try one more time. i cant really tell if youre being sarcastic or not so im gonna assume youre being genuine when you say you think we have similar understandings of gender. but to me it sounds like you are deliberately ignoring the Actual Words i am saying.
we need words to describe our experiences, both different and common ones. those words may be in themselves faulty or somewhat inaccurate, but they are what we have to discuss important concepts, and they function well enough if they have a generally agreed-upon meaning. right?
so. the dominant culture of the imperial core is one of strictly binary sex. anything that breaks this, is deviant of the "rules of nature", to this dominant culture. right?
so then we call people who are NOT of this binary system multiple different things depending on cultural context and personal identity and personal circumstance. right?
'nonbinary' is only one of those words. to each individual it may mean any one of hundreds upon thousands of different things. everyone has their own personal identity, and while we may use the same word to describe said identity, no two people will have the same definition.
this is true of 'manhood' and 'womanhood' as well. every individual, cis trans both neither intersex perisex and so on and so forth, every single one of them has different PERSONAL interpretations of these words and the concepts they are meant to describe.
but 'woman' has to mean something in order to function as a real concept. it has to have some semblance of shared meaning, shared experience, shared conceptual feeling and vibe, for it to work within the imperial core as a means of systemic control and oppression, for it to work as a communicable identity, and for it to function as a word in a language.
in the same vein of thought, 'binary' is a word we are using to describe someone whose gender, in some way, shape, or form, fits into the schema of 'man and woman'. your internal definition of your own gender does not actually matter very much to other people who do not know it exists.
for me, it matters that i am percieved as a binary gender no matter what i do. it matters, and hurts, a lot. and for some people, it matters and hurts less. for some people, it matters and hurts not at all.
whether you consider yourself binary or not is entirely up to you and how you interpret your own navigation of the world. its very strange to act as if im saying anything otherwise. YOU defined YOURSELF as binary in your responding to me. you said you were also agender, so, like i said in my prev tags, i dont think youre the target audience. but the way youre reacting, it seems you think you are. i am also going to reiterate that 'binary' is not a bad thing to be - binary trans people and for that matter, binary cis people, are not my enemies. but i deserve to have the language to talk about my experiences as they compare to binary people. that's all it is.
#if we cant reach a resolution here i think itd be best if we block and go our separate ways also lol#i also think its strange to assert that theres no such thing as a binary trans person bc that sort of fundamentally spits in the face of ge#derqueer and nonbinary trans identities imo?#there are certainly people who identify as binary to whatever degree that they do#nonbinary identities arent 'complex inner gender feelings' they are quite literally genders that DO NOT FIT WITHIN THE MAN/WOMAN SCHEMA THA#S IMPOSED ON US#which again this is sorta what i was talking abt in the original post#i cant talk about things that are unique to or uniquely affected by my gender as a not-binary gender without binary (or again 'binary-adjac#nt') people being insulted that i would dare try to talk about exorsexism as it affects nonbinary people#which is exactly why i need to use the word binary#its genuinely really frustrating how every time ive tried ive met the same resistance#the first person i met who didnt was in fact a binary trans man lmfao#and we talked abt the differences and similarities between being a gnc man and having 'pansy' be your desired presentation and what my desi#es were presentation wise. that i couldnt be an effeminate man or a masc woman bc either of those are still recognized as men and women#and i really dont understand why more binary trans people dont make that same effort to meet me and talk w me abt these different ways we a#e treated by the patriarchy#and instead essentially say that nonbinary identity doesnt actually really exist bc Everyone is nonbinary/No One is binary#like thats kinda shitty
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Name one area of life in which women are privileged and men are not.
Explain to us why women face widespread rape, sexual assault and harassment if there is no misogyny.
Explain to us why until very recently women’s lives were strictly controlled and women were forced to be dependent on men if there has ben no such conscious decision to subjugate women. (You can’t use physical work and the obvious strength differences as an excuse because even in jobs were physicality didn’t matter, women were banned).
Explain to us why the majority of victims of child marriage are girls.
Explain to us why women are the majority of trafficking victims.
Explain to us why you see global epidemics of female infanticide but none of boys.
Enjoy the validation you are getting from people who still look down on you.
"Name one area of life in which women are privileged and men are not."
Exemption from military conscription.
"Explain to us why women face widespread rape, sexual assault and harassment if there is no misogyny."
Except in a minority of instances, like sociopathic serial killers, men and women mostly rape because they are horny, not because they hate.
"Explain to us why until very recently women’s lives were strictly controlled and women were forced to be dependent on men if there has be[e]n no such conscious decision to subjugate women. (You can’t use physical work and the obvious strength differences as an excuse because even in jobs w[h]ere physicality didn’t matter, women were banned)."
The gendered division of labor is present in every known society and every point in history, which is because it is the product of millions of years of evolution, rather than a fictional "patriarchy". Women are the sex that gives birth: the survival of the tribe - and by extension, the human race - rests upon the continued safety of women, so women everywhere are protected in ways the menfolk are not. A man just has to be physically intact long enough to plant a seed inside a woman, then his biological job is done. Whereas, every time a woman becomes impregnated, the next 9 months of her life is her (and the child she carries) becoming more and more vulnerable and incapacitated.
So all human societies built into their cultural norms that the men would leave the tribe to hunt and build and labor and lay down their lives in war, and the women would remain closer to home, where there was safety in numbers, and generally maintain the fabric of society, community and the raising of children.
This continued for tens of thousands of years until sometime in the late 1800s, when middle class white women living unprecedentedly safe, spoilt, but mind-numbingly boring lives, decided that labor was a privilege that was being selfishly kept from them by their fathers and husbands and community, and so began campaigning to be allowed to share the treat of being a wage slave, like their fathers and brothers and sons were forced to be. And men, because they are innately programmed to want to help and support and facilitate the wishes of women, for the most part just said "okay? if that's what you want? I guess?"
"Explain to us why the majority of victims of child marriage are girls."
Not quite sure what this is specifically asking: cultures that have arranged marriages marry off both boys and girls to each other. I guess if being married makes you a "victim" then they both are. If you're asking why men are attracted to and place value in young females, I guess it's because the younger a bride is, the more fertile she will be and the more healthy children she will be able to give him during her life. But you'd really need to speak to people who live in the cultures that practice that to get an answer.
"Explain to us why women are the majority of trafficking victims."
Different bad things happen to women and men. But more bad things happen to men. Explain why men are the overwhelming majority of casualties in war. Explain why men are 93% of all work fatalities. Explain why 80% of the homeless are men. Explain why 80% of suicides are men. And so forth. And so on.
"Explain to us why you see global epidemics of female infanticide but none of boys."
My understanding is that in certain poor parts of the world, having a son is favored over having a daughter, because the son is traditionally more likely in those cultures to be able to make a good amount of money to support the parents when they get old. But it seems to me that nature itself will eventually balance that out, because after a few generations, it becomes very hard for those sons to find any women to marry, and so women become more valued, at least by the sons.
But as I said before: different bad things happen to girls and to boys, but it's the worse option that generally happens to the boys. When Boko Haram kidnapped hundreds of Nigerian girls a few years back, there was global outrage and everyone from Michelle Obama to the cringiest Hollywood actor was photographing themselves with signs demanding their release:
But none of them said anything about what Boko Haram did to the hundreds of boys they encountered, which was to burn them alive.
Of course, murder is worse than kidnapping, but we all care about girls more than boys, and we all prioritize that over justice and equality and human rights and all the other feelgood buzzwords we like so much.
Because of their ability to bear children, females everywhere in the world are seen as having innate value simply for existing, in a way that males are not. Males have to achieve something to be seen as worthy of interest and care. Because of this, everywhere in the world, males are treated much more harshly and brutally in every part of life than females, but you are unable to see and feel anything about that, even when it's unfolding right in front of your face, and that is for two reasons: firstly, evolution made you, along with everyone else, care more for women than men. And then secondly, feminism came along to amplify, politicize and weaponize that innate indifference to males, making you not only callous but openly, gleefully hateful. This is the biggest and most fundamental problem here that you most urgently need to examine and try address in your life if you want to do any good in the world.
"Enjoy the validation you are getting from people who still look down on you."
Everything about this sentence is based in assumptions in your own head, and nothing to do with anything I've said.
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E.1 What are the root causes of our ecological problems?
The dangers associated with environmental damage have become better known over the last few decades. In fact, awareness of the crisis we face has entered into the mainstream of politics. Those who assert that environmental problems are minor or non-existent have, thankfully, become marginalised (effectively, a few cranks and so-called “scientists” funded by corporations and right-wing think tanks). Both politicians and corporations have been keen to announce their “green” credentials. Which is ironic, as anarchists would argue that both the state and capitalism are key causes for the environmental problems we are facing.
In other words, anarchists argue that pollution and the other environmental problems we face are symptoms. The disease itself is deeply imbedded in the system we live under and need to be addressed alongside treating the more obvious results of that deeper cause. Otherwise, to try and eliminate the symptoms by themselves can be little more than a minor palliative and, fundamentally, pointless as they will simply keep reappearing until their root causes are eliminated.
For anarchists, as we noted in section A.3.3, the root causes for our ecological problems lie in social problems. Bookchin uses the terms “first nature” and “second nature” to express this idea. First nature is the environment while second nature is humanity. The latter can shape and influence the former, for the worse or for the better. How it does so depends on how it treats itself. A decent, sane and egalitarian society will treat the environment it inhabits in a decent, sane and respective way. A society marked by inequality, hierarchies and exploitation will trend its environment as its members treat each other. Thus “all our notions of dominating nature stem from the very real domination of human by human.” The “domination of human by human preceded the notion of dominating nature. Indeed, human domination of human gave rise to the very idea of dominating nature.” This means, obviously, that “it is not until we eliminate domination in all its forms … that we will really create a rational, ecological society.” [Remaking Society, p. 44]
By degrading ourselves, we create the potential for degrading our environment. This means that anarchists “emphasise that ecological degradation is, in great part, a product of the degradation of human beings by hunger, material insecurity, class rule, hierarchical domination, patriarchy, ethnic discrimination, and competition.” [Bookchin, “The Future of the Ecology Movement,” pp. 1–20, Which Way for the Ecology Movement?, p. 17] This is unsurprising, for “nature, as every materialist knows, is not something merely external to humanity. We are a part of nature. Consequently, in dominating nature we not only dominate an ‘external world’ — we also dominate ourselves.” [John Clark, The Anarchist Moment, p. 114]
We cannot stress how important this analysis is. We cannot ignore “the deep-seated division in society that came into existence with hierarchies and classes.” To do so means placing “young people and old, women and men, poor and rich, exploited and exploiters, people of colour and whites all on a par that stands completely at odds with social reality. Everyone, in turn, despite the different burdens he or she is obliged to bear, is given the same responsibility for the ills of our planet. Be they starving Ethiopian children or corporate barons, all people are held to be equally culpable in producing present ecological problems.” These become ”de-socialised” and so this perspective “side-step[s] the profoundly social roots of present-day ecological dislocations” and ”deflects innumerable people from engaging in a practice that could yield effective social change.” It “easily plays into the hands of a privileged stratum who are only too eager to blame all the human victims of an exploitative society for the social and ecological ills of our time.” [The Ecology of Freedom, p. 33]
Thus, for eco-anarchists, hierarchy is the fundamental root cause of our ecological problems. Hierarchy, notes Bookchin includes economic class “and even gives rise to class society historically” but it “goes beyond this limited meaning imputed to a largely economic form of stratification.” It refers to a system of “command and obedience in which elites enjoy varying degrees of control over their subordinates without necessarily exploiting them.” [Ecology of Freedom, p. 68] Anarchism, he stressed, “anchored ecological problems for the first time in hierarchy, not simply in economic classes.” [Remaking Society, p. 155]
Needless to say, the forms of hierarchy have changed and evolved over the years. The anarchist analysis of hierarchies goes “well beyond economic forms of exploitation into cultural forms of domination that exist in the family, between generations and sexes, among ethnic groups, in institutions of political, economic, and social management, and very significantly, in the way we experience reality as a whole, including nature and non-human life-forms.” [Op. Cit., p. 46] This means that anarchists recognise that ecological destruction has existed in most human societies and is not limited just to capitalism. It existed, to some degree, in all hierarchical pre-capitalist societies and, of course, in any hierarchical post-capitalist ones as well. However, as most of us live under capitalism today, anarchists concentrate our analysis to that system and seek to change it. Anarchists stress the need to end capitalism simply because of its inherently anti-ecological nature (“The history of ‘civilisation’ has been a steady process of estrangement from nature that has increasingly developed into outright antagonism.”). Our society faces “a breakdown not only of its values and institutions, but also of its natural environment. This problem is not unique to our times” but previous environmental destruction “pales before the massive destruction of the environment that has occurred since the days of the Industrial Revolution, and especially since the end of the Second World War. The damage inflicted on the environment by contemporary society encompasses the entire world … The exploitation and pollution of the earth has damaged not only the integrity of the atmosphere, climate, water resources, soil, flora and fauna of specific regions, but also the basic natural cycles on which all living things depend.” [Bookchin, Ecology of Freedom, p. 411 and p. 83]
This has its roots in the “grow-or-die” nature of capitalism we discussed in section D.4. An ever-expanding capitalism must inevitably come into collision with a finite planet and its fragile ecology. Firms whose aim is to maximise their profits in order to grow will happily exploit whoever and whatever they can to do so. As capitalism is based on exploiting people, can we doubt that it will also exploit nature? It is unsurprising, therefore, that this system results in the exploitation of the real sources of wealth, namely nature and people. It is as much about robbing nature as it is about robbing the worker. To quote Murray Bookchin:
“Any attempt to solve the ecological crisis within a bourgeois framework must be dismissed as chimerical. Capitalism is inherently anti-ecological. Competition and accumulation constitute its very law of life, a law … summarised in the phrase, ‘production for the sake of production.’ Anything, however hallowed or rare, ‘has its price’ and is fair game for the marketplace. In a society of this kind, nature is necessarily treated as a mere resource to be plundered and exploited. The destruction of the natural world, far being the result of mere hubristic blunders, follows inexorably from the very logic of capitalist production.” [Post-Scarcity Anarchism, pp. viii-ix]
So, in a large part, environmental problems derive from the fact that capitalism is a competitive economy, guided by the maxim “grow or die.” This is its very law of life for unless a firm expands, it will be driven out of business or taken over by a competitor. Hence the capitalist economy is based on a process of growth and production for their own sake. “No amount of moralising or pietising,” stresses Bookchin, “can alter the fact that rivalry at the most molecular base of society is a bourgeois law of life … Accumulation to undermine, buy out, or otherwise absorb or outwit a competitor is a condition for existence in a capitalist economic order.” This means “a capitalistic society based on competition and growth for its own sake must ultimately devour the natural world, just like an untreated cancer must ultimately devour its host. Personal intentions, be they good or bad, have little to do with this unrelenting process. An economy that is structured around the maxim, ‘Grow or Die,’ must necessarily pit itself against the natural world and leave ecological ruin in its wake as its works it way through the biosphere.” [Remaking Society, p. 93 and p. 15]
This means that good intentions and ideals have no bearing on the survival of a capitalist enterprise. There is a very simple way to be “moral” in the capitalist economy: namely, to commit economic suicide. This helps explain another key anti-ecological tendency within capitalism, namely the drive to externalise costs of production (i.e., pass them on to the community at large) in order to minimise private costs and so maximise profits and so growth. As we will discuss in more detail in section E.3, capitalism has an in-built tendency to externalise costs in the form of pollution as it rewards the kind of short-term perspective that pollutes the planet in order to maximise the profits of the capitalist. This is also driven by the fact that capitalism’s need to expand also reduces decision making from the quantitative to the qualitative. In other words, whether something produces a short-term profit is the guiding maxim of decision making and the price mechanism itself suppresses the kind of information required to make ecologically informed decisions.
As Bookchin summarises, capitalism “has made social evolution hopelessly incompatible with ecological evolution.” [Ecology of Freedom, p. 14] It lacks a sustainable relation to nature not due to chance, ignorance or bad intentions but due to its very nature and workings.
Fortunately, as we discussed in section D.1, capitalism has rarely been allowed to operate for long entirely on its own logic. When it does, counter-tendencies develop to stop society being destroyed by market forces and the need to accumulate money. Opposition forces always emerge, whether these are in the form of state intervention or in social movements aiming for reforms or more radical social change (the former tends to be the result of the latter, but not always). Both force capitalism to moderate its worst tendencies.
However, state intervention is, at best, a short-term. This is because the state is just as much a system of social domination, oppression and exploitation as capitalism. Which brings us to the next key institution which anarchists argue needs to be eliminated in order to create an ecological society: the state. If, as anarchists argue, the oppression of people is the fundamental reason for our ecological problems then it logically follows that the state cannot be used to either create and manage an ecological society. It is a hierarchical, centralised, top-down organisation based on the use of coercion to maintain elite rule. It is, as we stressed in section B.2, premised on the monopolisation of power in the hands of a few. In other words, it is the opposite of commonly agreed ecological principles such as freedom to develop, decentralisation and diversity.
As Bookchin put it, the “notion that human freedom can be achieved, much less perpetuated, through a state of any kind is monstrously oxymoronic — a contradiction in terms.” This is because “statist forms” are based on “centralisation, bureaucratisation, and the professionalisation of power in the hands of elite bodies.” This flows from its nature for one of its ”essential functions is to confine, restrict, and essentially suppress local democratic institutions and initiatives.” It has been organised to reduce public participation and control, even scrutiny. [“The Ecological Crisis, Socialism, and the need to remake society,” pp. 1–10, Society and Nature, vol. 2, no. 3, p. 8 and p. 9] If the creation of an ecological society requires individual freedom and social participation (and it does) then the state by its very nature and function excludes both.
The state’s centralised nature is such that it cannot handle the complexities and diversity of life. “No administrative system is capable of representing” a community or, for that matter, an eco-system argues James C. Scott “except through a heroic and greatly schematised process of abstraction and simplification. It is not simply a question of capacity … It is also a question of purpose. State agents have no interest — nor should they — in describing an entire social reality . .. Their abstractions and simplifications are disciplined by a small number of objectives.” This means that the state is unable to effectively handle the needs of ecological systems, including human ones. Scott analyses various large-scale state schemes aiming at social improvement and indicates their utter failure. This failure was rooted in the nature of centralised systems. He urges us “to consider the kind of human subject for whom all these benefits were being provided. This subject was singularly abstract.” The state was planning “for generic subjects who needed so many square feet of housing space, acres of farmland, litres of clean water, and units of transportation and so much food, fresh air, and recreational space. Standardised citizens were uniform in their needs and even interchangeable. What is striking, of course, is that such subjects … have, for purposes of the planning exercise, no gender; no tastes; no history; no values; no opinions or original ideas, no traditions, and no distinctive personalities to contribute to the enterprise … The lack of context and particularity is not an oversight; it is the necessary first premise of any large-scale planning exercise. To the degree that the subjects can be treated as standardised units, the power of resolution in the planning exercise is enhanced … The same logic applies to the transformation of the natural world.” [Seeing like a State, pp. 22–3 and p. 346]
A central power reduces the participation and diversity required to create an ecological society and tailor humanity’s interaction with the environment in a way which respects local conditions and eco-systems. In fact, it helps creates ecological problems by centralising power at the top of society, limiting and repressing the freedom of individuals communities and peoples as well as standardising and so degrading complex societies and eco-systems. As such, the state is just as anti-ecological as capitalism is as it shares many of the same features. As Scott stresses, capitalism “is just as much an agency of homogenisation, uniformity, grids, and heroic simplification as the state is, with the difference being that, for capitalists, simplification must pay. A market necessarily reduces quality to quantity via the price mechanism and promotes standardisation; in markets, money talks, not people … the conclusions that can be drawn from the failures of modern projects of social engineering are as applicable to market-driven standardisation as they are to bureaucratic homogeneity.” [Op. Cit., p. 8]
In the short term, the state may be able to restrict some of the worse excesses of capitalism (this can be seen from the desire of capitalists to fund parties which promise to deregulate an economy, regardless of the social and environmental impact of so doing). However, the interactions between these two anti-ecological institutions are unlikely to produce long term environmental solutions. This is because while state intervention can result in beneficial constraints on the anti-ecological and anti-social dynamics of capitalism, it is always limited by the nature of the state itself. As we noted in section B.2.1, the state is an instrument of class rule and, consequently, extremely unlikely to impose changes that may harm or destroy the system itself. This means that any reform movement will have to fight hard for even the most basic and common-sense changes while constantly having to stop capitalists ignoring or undermining any reforms actually passed which threaten their profits and the accumulation of capital as a whole. This means that counterforces are always set into motion by ruling class and even sensible reforms (such as anti-pollution laws) will be overturned in the name of “deregulation” and profits.
Unsurprisingly, eco-anarchists, like all anarchists, reject appeals to state power as this “invariably legitimates and strengthens the State, with the result that it disempowers the people.” They note that ecology movements “that enter into parliamentary activities not only legitimate State power at the expense of popular power,” they also are “obligated to function within the State” and “must ‘play the game,’ which means that they must shape their priorities according to predetermined rules over which they have no control.” This results in “an ongoing process of degeneration, a steady devolution of ideals, practices, and party structures” in order to achieve “very little” in “arrest[ing] environmental decay.” [Remaking Society, p. 161, p. 162 and p. 163] The fate of numerous green parties across the world supports that analysis.
That is why anarchists stress the importance of creating social movements based on direct action and solidarity as the means of enacting reforms under a hierarchical society. Only when we take a keen interest and act to create and enforce reforms will they stand any chance of being applied successfully. If such social pressure does not exist, then any reform will remain a dead-letter and ignored by those seeking to maximise their profits at the expense of both people and planet. As we discuss in section J, this involves creating alternative forms of organisation like federations of community assemblies (see section J.5.1) and industrial unions (see section J.5.2). Given the nature of both a capitalist economy and the state, this makes perfect sense.
In summary, the root cause of our ecological problems likes in hierarchy within humanity, particularly in the form of the state and capitalism. Capitalism is a “grow-or-die” system which cannot help destroy the environment while the state is a centralised system which destroys the freedom and participation required to interact with eco-systems. Based on this analysis, anarchists reject the notion that all we need do is get the state to regulate the economy as the state is part of the problem as well as being an instrument of minority rule. Instead, we aim to create an ecological society and end capitalism, the state and other forms of hierarchy. This is done by encouraging social movements which fight for improvements in the short term by means direct action, solidarity and the creation of popular libertarian organisations.
#climate crisis#climate change#faq#anarchy faq#revolution#anarchism#daily posts#communism#anti capitalist#anti capitalism#late stage capitalism#organization#grassroots#grass roots#anarchists#libraries#leftism#social issues#economy#economics#climate#ecology#anarchy works#environmentalism#environment#solarpunk#anti colonialism#mutual aid#cops#police
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Dearly Beloved
A/N: This is it for Matty and Jo! Final installment of the Valentines Week mini-series. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU @abiiors for hosting 💗💗💗💗
Warnings: none. Typos are probably going to happen in my writing. While I do proofread before I post most of the time, I’m also 80% blind. Apologies in advance.
***
Jo and Matty looked into each other’s eyes, the nerves written all over both of their faces.
He reached for her hands, squeezing them. “Tonight’s the night.”
“Mhm.”
In Jo’s eyes, Matty saw their entire lives together. Their first kiss in George and Charli’s garden; their first date; the first time they slept together; saying ‘I love you;’ moving in, having Sophia. The last few months had been hell on them. In Jo especially. Despite his best efforts to remain supportive and understanding, Matty did not always handle it well. It had driven them apart. In a way that could’ve easily changed them both forever. So, they both needed tonight. Their relationship needed it. They’d been looking forward to and talking about it forever. And now, it was here.
Their excitement teetered on the edge of anxiety. They both felt slightly disoriented. Jo found herself abnormally self-conscious. Aware of her body and the way that it has changed, anxious underneath Matty’s passionate gaze. He was scared too. Not wanting to make her feel weird and treat her differently, but he couldn’t deny that things were different now. They were both different.
“You know we don’t have to do this, right?” Matty whispered.
“Wh-why? Do you not want to?”
“Of course, I want to, Jo! Look at me! I’m wearing clothes, like, real clothes- not fuckin joggers and a t shirt, for the first time since Sophia was born. I’ve got a bit of aftershave on, too.” He wiggled his eyebrows playfully. “To seduce you. In case you haven’t noticed.”
Jo broke a smile, leaning into him and wrapping her arms around his waist. “You do smell divine.” She inhaled. “Sexy.”
“Right, then.” Matty cleared his throat. “Shall we?”
“Let’s do it.”
“Oh, wait. The baby!”
Jo frowned. “You’re bringing Sophia? isn’t that a bit-“
“She’s not gonna be in there with us. Just dropping her off at Louis’s.”
“Oh. Yeah. Right.”
Matty picked his daughter up, cooing to her softly, “who’s ready for a lovely day with uncle Louis? Hmm? You gonna show him your new toys ?”
***
Jo and Matty rushed out, hand in hand, giggling into the street.
“We’ve done it!” Matty looked down at her.”
“Finally!”
“We are, officially, husband and wife.”
He clutched the marriage license in his hand, dipping his head down to kiss her. “In the eyes of the state, and the patriarchy, this thing between you and I is official now.”
Jo giggled, “love it when you talk sexy to me.”
Matty took her hand in his as they walked down the stairs, into the crowded city streets.
“Does this mean I have to start smoking big cigars and putting my feet up on the furniture now? Bossing you around and complaining about dinner not being at the table the second that I make it home form a long, hard day’s work?”
Jo laughed, rolling her eyes playfully at him. “We got legally married, Matthew, not teleported to the 1950s.”
***
“Okay, I think everything’s ready, yeah?” Jo looked up at him, breathless from the nervous pounding of her heart.
“Yeah, yeah. I even added ‘Isn’t She Lovely,’ to the playlist, you know, for Sophia.”
Jo rolled her eyes when she realized that they’re having two separate conversations. “Matty, I’m talking about everything else, not the playlist! The - the dinner. The table. The house!”
“Everything is perfect, Jo. Relax.” Matty pressed his lips to hers, before she could interrupt. He took her hand, leading her to the couch. “Mum’s ordered from the chef friend of hers. Catering will be here in an hour. I’ve asked for a bartender. He’ll be arriving shortly before the guests.”
Jo nodded, going over the schedule helped her to get a real sense of preparedness. “Yeah, and- Charli’s in charge of the cake.”
“Ross insisted on flowers. Even though I said it was a home wedding. Very lowkey.”
“Ross is the best.” She smiled, fondly.
“Would you please relax now? Everything’s accounted for!”
***
George stood up, smiling widely. “Ahem” he cleared his throat dramatically to gain the silent attention of the room. A hush fell over the place. Tim and Denise already brimming with tears.
“Dearly beloved-“ the words were barely out of George’s mouth before Matty burst into laughter.
“What the fuck, Matty?” George shot him a glare and whispered tight-lipped.
“Sorry, sorry. It’s just….so formal. Go on.” Matty wiped the grin off his face.
“Dearly beloved-“
This time, it was Ross’s giggling that had interrupted the preamble.
“Sorry, sorry. He’s right…you sound absurd… anyway, go on.”
George shook his back, loosening his shoulders in an attempt to remain composed. Giving both of his friends silent warnings, he tried again.
“Dearly-“ he cut himself off, turning to Adam. “You wanna laugh, too, I suppose? Get it out of your system now.” He demanded, stifling a laugh of his own. He was only deflecting, by projecting the laughter onto Adam. Now that it’s been pointed out to him, he was much too aware of the formality of the speech that he had prepared, unable to keep a straight face. ‘dearly beloved.’ What a ridiculous phrase. Why was it so unbelievably funny when you say it out loud?
The four boys burst into a fit of nervous laughter at the front of the room, whispering to each other incoherently, patting each others backs.
Matty turned to the room filled with his friends and family, “sorry everyone. Erm. Hello! Thanks for being here. My- my beautiful wife and I, as you all know, have already been married a while. We just thought that….well, with baby Soph finally here and all that…we wanted to celebrate with you all.”
The room roared with cheers and applause, Jamie whistled.
“I love you all so much. Thank you for coming.” Matty’s eyes welled up.
***
Charli handed Jo a bouquet of flowers that she had picked and tied together using a ribbon out of the decorations that Ross had ordered. “For the bride.” She kissed jo's cheek. “Congratulations.”
“Wait.” Carly held up her palms. “Those are the clips that I used on my wedding day. To keep my hair out of my eyes. You know….Something borrowed.”
Matty turned to his bride, mouthing, “all good?”
“Mhm.”
“Right. Where’s my ring bearer?”
Proudly, Adam and Carly’s son skipped over to the center of the room, with his hands extended out. “I’m herrreeee.”
Matty crouched down to be at his level. “Perfect. Thanks little legend. You��ve…gotta…mate, you’re meant to give them to me now.” Matty opened his hands, waiting for the reluctant ring bearer to complete his duties. “ So I can…you know… thank you! Smooth transfer, bro. You’re a natural!” He giggled, blushing like a teenager as his eyes locked on Jo. “Right, lastly, where’s my baby girl? Come here, Angel. Come to dada.”
Louis brought Sophia over, handing her to Matty.
“Hello my world.” He kissed her. “Come watch mom and dad get married.”
Their ring-clad fingers intertwined. Matty kissed his wife. She took a moment to let the tingle run through her, smiling, she turned to the crowd.
“Let’s get this fuckin party started!!”
That was George’s cue to let the music play.
Matty rushed over to the drinks corner, acquiring two glasses of champagne. He handed one to Jo, clicking it to his glass.
“we’ve done it. Cheers.”
“yes we have.”
“I love you, Jo.”
“I love you, too, Matty.”
#valentine75#matty healy fanfic#matty healy fanfiction#matty healy fluff#matty healy oneshot#matty healy x oc
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I was thinking about the whole... what's more progressive debate out of m/m romance representation and actually close and tender (as opposed to buddyish) m&m friendships. And how utterly futile and insulting to the need for more of both a debate it is when we need infinitely more of both and a lot of other things.
Fundamentally, between the lingering after-effects of the Hays Code and the extremist end of Christianity (not that those two are unconnected) and the patriarchy (ditto) and militarism and capitalism... in mainstream Western story media we still struggle to get *any* genuine emotional intimacy that isn't:-
romance between a different-gender couple who are both cishet, and which if it's happy will lead to marriage (but hasn't yet).
marriage between ditto, but only if they haven't been together very long (after they have for a few years they're supposed to bicker all the time).
at an extreme pinch, fond closeness between blood relatives, especially if at least one of them is a woman.
Friendships between men and between women are okay so long as there's a... distancing of rivalry and teasing. If you can imagine one of them tucking the other in or stroking their hair (especially if they're both men) or being utterly and wholly in solidarity with each other (especially if they're both women)... hm, no.
And that's... it. We're still at a point in mainstream western media where anything that deviates from, especially to the extent of serious warmth and trust and confidence and understanding between the characters, that feels at least a little transgressive, especially in e.g. a blockbuster movie. We're still at a point where everything else is under-represented. Less and less so, thank everything, but still.
I'm thinking of some of my favourite relationships in fiction at the moment and how they fuck with those stereotypes and do better things (and always as part of awesome stories, because as always, good rep is important but it should never be treated as everything). :-) This is inevitably a v personal list, I'm not claiming that anything here is The Purest And Least Problematic Thing Ever, and this is very much just a, "this is what's enthusing me right now" thing. :D
yes they're a het couple and both cis, but: Mike and Alison Cooper in Ghosts. They have been married for a few years now, and they actually like each other. They're best friends as well as lovers, and I know that some critics have actually had a problem with this and regard it as unrealistic. [facepalm] I adore so much that they're not a stereotypical sitcom married couple, nothing like. In a quiet way they are utterly defiant and fuck completely with the genre.
Donna Noble & the Doctor in Doctor Who. I mean, do I need to say much more? :D Close, glorious platonic friendship between a woman and... the Doctor. Some of the most beautiful platonic love in any fiction ever and it's so tender and gorgeous and fun. Adore it. <3
Red, White, and Royal Blue is a silly film but omg I adore it and part of it is seeing all of those standard romance beats between two men. And with a lot more true closeness than a lot of het romcoms manage. We're getting more and more of this (we need more between women too, and indeed other queer romances of many and various kinds!!!). <3 <3 <3
yes, they're shit at expressing their love for each other most of the time, but I still stubbornly add: E Morse & Fred Thursday in Endeavour. The fact that they're inhabiting the 1960s-70s and there is no framework for their mutual affection and devotion is of course part of why things get so hard for them both. They don't know what to do with it or where to place each other in their priorities, but the loyalty and the tenderness is there, and some remarkable emotional intimacy at times considering who they both are. We watch and interpret it as father-son or as romantic or as fraternal or as an intense and wonderful (and complicated and difficult) friendship. But it defies easy definition and... and oh goodness well anyone who's been following me for any length of time knows how I can go on about them, apologies. ;-)
the entire Fellowship of the Ring, but especially Frodo and Sam. And whatever my mixed feelings on the PJ films of The Lord of the Rings, my Gods am I endlessly glad and grateful that they retained warmth and intensity and devotion and intimacy. I worry that it wouldn't have been if made now, with a more stereotypical masculinity so much in the ascendant in mainstream film-making (we really are in the midst of a patriarchal/homophobic/transphobic reaction :( ). As with Morse and Thursday, you can absolutely interpret some of the connections there as romantic (and we know that Tolkien was remarkably non-homophobic for a man of his generation and religion), or as platonic. Either way, what matters is that there's serious love there between male characters and that goes right back to the books. Tolkien could be problematic af, but I love him so much for how he writes masculinity and love between men. <3
Heartstopper, not just for Nick/Charlie and Tara/Darcy, but also because of Charlie's friendships with Elle, Isaac, and (especially, actually) Tau.
everything with Found Family, and especially everything with Found Family where there is no easy equivalence to a "nuclear" family to map the characters on to.
Honestly I could go on. Hooray for all of these! But also: we are still in a position where these all feel subversive and make a lot of the more bigoted critics spectacularly uncomfortable (even when there is no actual queer rep). We're still in a position where mainstream film series and some tv shows struggles with anything like this, and/or will sabotage a friendship between men and even an entire character arc because it's got too close and intimate and there's a desperate need to "no homo" everything (*coughs* Steve Rogers *coughs*). We're still in a position where romance between women and any romance involving trans people of any gender is dramatically under-everythinged (but that between cis men is also still not exactly even a fraction of where it should be). We're still in a position where honestly even the representation of romance between cishet characters is most often weirdly distant and lacks real closeness or mutual liking between them (often, let's face it, because the writers struggle to write women as people).
I snarked a bit at first about the debate as to which is more important and under-represented between m/m romance and really open and loving m&m friendship, but honestly the main problem with that debate is that dividing up the exact same problem: we aren't going to get more open and loving representations of m&m friendship until the media get less afraid of the relationship being interpreted as romantic whether or not it is, by both fans and haters. (I.e. don't blame the shippers when a production company loses their nerve and trashes a friendship between men so that it's not seen as romantic! Blame homophobia. I mean, to put it on its simplest real-life terms, it's consistently my experience in the UK at least that het male allies are in general vastly more comfortable hugging each other than homophobes are.)
#long post#post i wrote when i should be looking after my neck by not being on my laptop oops#bbc ghosts#doctor who#rwrb#red white and royal blue#itv endeavour#lotr#heartstopper#mcu critical#tw homophobia discussion#tw misogyny discussion#tw transphobia mention#i could so easily have got into good omens and conversations from a long marriage but honestly they were both almost too easy :D
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Barbie was so good?!? Fucking loved every minute of it, but special shout-out to some things...
(BARBIE SPOILERS below the cut)
This movie was so funny, I can't get over how fucking funny and camp it was, an actual masterpiece 11/10
"This movie is overly feminist and man-hating" - THIS MOVIE AIN'T FOR YOU, SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GO WATCH THE SHITTY FLASH MOVIE THEN IF YOU'RE SO MAD
(haven't actually seen the flash, have seen a few clips on twitter and i'm glad i haven't, i don't want to, don't @ me)
I'll be honest, I had very few Barbie dolls growing up, I had a medium sized doll house that was not for Barbie-height-toys, and so most of my toys were random figurines collected over the years (shout-out to the McDonald's Happy Meal Narnia toys!), but I was still getting pumped at the beginning of this film when the narrator went into detail about how Barbie can have any career, any life she wants etc.
The attention to detail in Barbie-land, like the pools/sea are all flat and not actually wet, there’s no actual liquid in the cups when they drink, no water in the shower etc.
Look, I will fully admit that HOTD has fucked my brain and my taste in men up, and so I'm blaming that for me looking at Ryan Gosling as Ken and going "yes I would like to obliterate that twink" 🙈
There were a lot of kids in my screening who absolutely did NOT get the "beach you off" joke, meanwhile I was sitting there laughing embarrassingly loudly like an idiot
Why was Allan a whole ass mood, I'm sorry but he was so relatable, arguably the best character I fear-
I like that weird-Barbie is basically what a lot of girls go through with their Barbies at a certain age by cutting off their hair, drawing on them with pens, etc. Like that’s a mood, my sister and I used to wash our Barbies’ hair and draw fake tattoos on them with felt tips 💀
“Do you ever think about dying? 😃” took me out oh my fucking god 💀 I already had one existential crisis this weekend watching Oppenheimer, I don’t need another one from Barbie of all things 😭
The way Ken says “because we’re boyfriend girlfriend” has the most random place in my heart and I don’t know why lol
The sheer horror over Barbie having flat feet LMFAO
Weird-Barbie having the dog where you feed it pellets and then use the tail so it shits the pellets back out?!? Me and my sister were like "oh my fucking god" because we literally had that fucking toy lmfao
Weird-Barbie talking about Ken's smooth plastic bulge, I literally CHOKED-
Honestly just... Barbie entering the real world and being confused that men treat her like a sex object, being super uncomfortable, meanwhile Ken's like "they're looking at me appreciatively!"... oof
I nearly choked on my drink when Barbie loudly declared "I don't have a vagina and he doesn't have a penis!" like?!?!?
Barbie and Ken getting arrested not only once but TWICE... oh that's the content I'm living for lmao
I’m so so SO glad that the scene with Barbie and the elderly lady was kept in, I shed a tear because it was so beautiful and simple. When Barbie said that the lady was beautiful?!?! I’m a mess just thinking about it 😭❤️
Pleasantly surprised by the sheer amount of horsey content in this film like yes, that's 100% what the patriarchy should be, it should be about Kens riding horsies :D (I’m aware this is NOT the only thing that happened lmao I’m just saying that the world would be a better place with more horses)
America Ferrera is a fucking QUEEN and I adore her, I know HTTYD is over but she will always be MY Astrid, aka Chieftess Queen and Dragon-Rider
Not gonna lie, I felt Sasha’s little monologue where she rants about the unrealistic standards set by Barbie like I see both sides of what Barbie represents and how she can be viewed and I get it. Like on the one hand, hooray for girls growing up having a doll that can show them they can be Presidents, Nobel Piece winners, doctors etc., hooray for all the feminism to come from Barbie. But also you could argue that there’s unreal expectations in regards to Barbie’s body shape, and that when we girls grow up into women, we realise that the Real World is not as simple as what we dreamt of while playing with Barbies, that our world doesn’t revolve around having women in positions of power, that we still very much live in a society where women are viewed as being there solely for men, as home makers and wives and mothers, that we can have a certain amount of freedom and power but not too much etc.
Did I kind of guess "hey maybe it's not the daughter who has triggered Barbie's crisis, maybe it's the mother"? Yes, I guessed that early on but I still loved it anyway
I have no idea how Greta Gerwig got Mattel to agree to this script but holy shit, she must be magical or something
The spirit of Ruth Handler, aka THE creator of Barbie who named the doll after her daughter?!? Played by Rhea Perlman?!?!
Also I've only just learnt, after looking at Ruth Handler's wikipedia page, that Ken was named after her son?!?! Barbie and Ken are siblings?!?!
JOHN CENA AS MERMAN KEN?!?!
My sister was so delighted by the amount of Sylvester Stallone references in this film omg
DEPRESSION-BARBIE I WAS IN LITERAL FUCKING TEARS I COULDN'T STOP LAUGHING, AND SHE WAS WATCHING BBC'S PRIDE AND PREJUDICE?!? WHILE EATING SWEETS?!? I CANT STOP CACKLING AND CRYING
Depression-Barbie also comes in other variations, including an anxiety one?!?! 🤣
I shit you not, I NEED America Ferrera to be nominated for supporting actress for all the awards because holy fUCK, her monologue?!?! That monologue?!?!
WHAT DO YOU MEAN ROB BRYDON AKA UNCLE BRYNN FROM GAVIN AND STACEY IS SUGAR DADDY KEN?!?!
“We mothers stand still so our daughters can look back and see how far they have come.” - STOP I WAS ALREADY SOBBING
The Helen Mirren fourth wall break where she says that if the filmmakers wanted us to believe that Barbie was no longer pretty, "they shouldn't have cast Margot Robbie in this part", literally ICONIC
KEN’S FLUFFY TIE DYE HOODIE THING THAT SAYS “I AM KENOUGH” ASDFGHJKL I WANT ONE
Ridiculously glad that Ken and Barbie didn’t get together to be honest, yes I get it that Ken is designed as a boyfriend for Barbie but also it would have sucked to have this whole film play out as it did and then have them end up together 💀
The soundtrack of this film was IMMACULATE, 10/10, five stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
There’s a definite message and commentary here but I’m too stupid and tired to write it out, so I’ll reblog it from the people who are smarter and more eloquent than me instead but oh my good this film was such an amazing piece of cinema
This isn't everything about the film obviously, there was a lot going on and I'm still mentally processing it so I might add more to the post later but wow, just… wow.
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In Old Cincinnati, Nights Before Halloween Were Packed With More Tricks Than Treats
These days, Halloween seems to kick off sometime just after Labor Day and drags on into the first week of November when the seasonal candy goes on sale and the fake spider webs sag under a load of soggy fallen leaves. In the old days, however, Halloween was restricted to two or three nights and the emphasis was on “trick” rather than “treat.” The Cincinnati Post [27 October 1922] carried the schedule for St. Marys, Ohio:
“Mayor W.H. Swift and Tony Johns, police chief, say the boys can have a good time on these nights if they don’t destroy property. Oct. 29 is to be ‘Cabbage Night;’ Oct. 30, ‘Corn Night;’ and Oct. 31, Hallowe’en.”
Let us, for the moment, leave aside the fact that this invitation was addressed only to boys, and focus on those additional nights. What was Cabbage Night? What was Corn Night? And, depending on where you lived in the United States, what was Gate Night, Goosey Night, Devil’s Night, Tick-Tack Night, Mischief Night, Beggars Night, Trick Night and Damage Night?
Donald E. Weaver, assistant city editor of the Cincinnati Post, explained Corn Night in a reminiscence published on Halloween 1930:
“Corn Night was the last night before Halloween. The kids threw shelled corn against the windows, rang doorbells and soaped a few windows.”
Weaver describes a ritual week of various mischief-breeding nights, beginning with Tick-Tack Night and ending with Halloween. A Tick-Tack (or Tic-Tac) had nothing to do with bad breath. It was a device built around one of Mom’s old sewing spools, screwed onto a long stick so that, when the miscreant pulled a string wrapped around the spool, it sounded like someone rapping on the window. It was the same principle as Corn Night, only louder.
Gate Night is somewhat self-explanatory when you picture the bygone neighborhoods of yesteryear, each little yard surrounded by a picket fence. As Weaver explained:
“The next morning was apt to find Squire Hickey’s gate hangin’ from the belfry of the Town Hall.”
Goosey Night wasn’t much celebrated in these parts, being almost entirely confined to the New York and New England region. The origin of the name is disputed, but most authorities believe it has nothing to do with poultry, and more to do with ghosts. It was a night devoted to scaring nocturnal pedestrians with noisemakers and eerie lanterns.
Mischief Night and Trick Night pretty much define themselves. Nights carrying those formal names were mostly celebrated eastward from here, but the spirit spread throughout the Cincinnati area, as Editor Weaver recalled:
“Widow Green’s cow got so used to being put queer places on Halloween she didn’t seem to mind. But Widow Green, she took on somethin’ terrible, especially the time the boys crowded Flossie into Biddy Harmon’s henhouse, ‘cause Widow Green and Biddy hadn’t spoken for years.”
Cincinnati lies at the southern fringe of an area in which Devil’s Night is observed. The real hotbed of Devil’s Night activity is in Michigan, especially around Detroit where, in some years, the riot squad had to be called out to quell disturbances that fell just shy of urban warfare.
So, how did cabbages get mixed up in all this rowdy mischief? To explain, we must return to the question of gender discrimination and the nefarious suppression of women by the patriarchy. While their brothers and potential boyfriends were out soaping windows and stealing gates, in other words, “having fun,” proper young ladies observed Halloween by attempting to determine who would become their future husbands. One guaranteed method involved cabbages. Don Weaver, apparently ignorant of the matrimonial aspects of the family Brassicaceae, reports only on the mischievous aftereffects of the cabbage ritual:
“The next night after Tick-Tack Night was Cabbage Night, when they swiped what cabbages were left in the gardens, and tossed ‘em onto front porches.”
Not so fast, Donny Boy! Way back in 1875, a correspondent to the Cincinnati Times, who signed his article only with the penname “Nepenthe,” gave the real story:
“Imagine the young belles of our city arrayed in their most-tied-backest evening suit en traine, and the beaux in their lavenderest pants, spotless diamond decked shirt-fronts, and faultless swallow-tailed coats, tripping out into the nearest Mill Creek garden, groping about among the protecting fodder for a cabbage-stalk, which, upon being brought under the gaslight, will presage by its crookedness or straightness the character of their future life-partners.”
Having done its vegetative duty as a marriage predictor, of what use was the clairvoyant cabbage? Hence it was tossed upon the nearest porch, or the porch of one’s prospective father-in-law, perhaps.
Another scrying technique, employed by boys and girls involved three bowls. One was filled with clear water, another with either mud or ashes, and the third left empty. The three receptacles were laid out in a row on a table, the subject blindfolded and the bowls reordered repeatedly. The visually impaired supplicant then felt for a bowl and plunged his or her fingers into it. If they splashed clear water, they would marry a virginal spouse. If they touched the mud or ashes, they would marry a widow or widower. If they found the empty bowl, a lifetime of spinsterhood or bachelorhood awaited.
Why did these antique celebrations fade away? One reason is certainly the expansion of the Halloween season. It was rare, well into the 1950s, for adults to take any part in Halloween festivities. This was a spooky holiday for children only. The very idea of a “sexy nurse” costume was inconceivable. Pop-up Halloween stores that open shop before the Autumn Equinox are very much a modern development.
But the main reason these “mischief nights” are no longer commemorated has to do with active police suppression. During the 1930s, Cabbage Night destruction got completely out-of-hand. The Cincinnati Post [31 October 1940] reported incidents from the night before involving flaming barricades blocking streets and tying up traffic, tool sheds being set ablaze, gangs of ruffians driving around firing rifles at windows in occupied houses, all the windows of a school being broken, piles of garbage filling alleys, multiple cases of flat tires, and dozens of fist fights.
The 1960s brought escalated mayhem as “Mischief Night” evolved into “Damage Night.” The Enquirer reported several outrageous incidents the night before Halloween in 1963, including two serious grass fires in Indian Hill and a foot-deep crater blasted in the Kyles Lane entrance to I-75. In 1986, 59 automobiles had their tires punctured by Damage Night vandals in Brentwood. In other words, the stuff your parents described as “good, clean fun.”
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Sci-Fi Saturday: Deluge
Week 11:
Film(s): Deluge (Dir. Felix E. Feist, 1933, USA)
Viewing Format: Blu-Ray: Kino Lorber
Date Watched: August 6, 2021
Rationale for Inclusion:
Not all disaster movies fall under the genre of science fiction or speculative fiction. What causes the disaster and/or its results are what determines the classification.
Deluge (Dir. Felix E. Feist, 1933, USA) came to my attention either from browsing the Wikipedia list of 1930s sci-fi films or Kino Lorber's website. The film was regarded as lost for decades, but promised apocalyptic natural disasters and the survivors needing to rebuild society. We had yet to encounter the post-apocalyptic subgenre on our survey and figured it would be interesting to compare to later examples. Plus, neither my partner nor I had known Deluge existed, much less seen it, prior to this survey.
Reactions:
As one would hope with a disaster movie, Deluge has respectable special effects for its era. Stop motion, models and superimpositions render the epic storm, eclipse, earthquakes and tsunamis that absolutely wreck the world. No explanation is provided for the extreme weather and geographical upsets, in part because it comes on so quickly no one can gather sufficient data to form a hypothesis, and in part because it does not matter to the overall narrative. The natural disasters are just set up for a post-apocalyptic survival narrative.
Despite its spectacular opening, Deluge goes downhill as a film rapidly. The cinematography and acting are just okay. The concerns of survival in the new wrecked landscape become the main focus, and in the process the film ends up treating some gross attitudes about gender as matters of nature not socialization. Some amount of sexism is bound to be present in most films, even if it's implicit systematic context that doesn't even register to the target audience, but Deluge had examples that deeply bothered me and my partner.
Typical of post-apocalyptic narratives, a gang of roving rapist men assemble and become a threat to other survivors, including the newly formed town the protagonists end up in. Do the townspeople band together, kill the rapists, and then post their corpses with expository signs around the borders of their new community as a warning to others? No, because the film does not treat these men as outliers and societal threats beyond reform, but the expected result of men not being constrained by law or social pressure.
The newly formed community takes for granted that they cannot stop men from devolving to rapists, so instead of direct action against the rapists, the men who have assumed leadership roles decide that every woman must be married to a man. I do not know if the logic is that rapists supposedly do not rape women that belong to a man, or that wives cannot be raped by anyone, or that the husbands will defend against the rapists as necessary. However, their logic boils down to the only way to protect women from feral men is to have them become subjugated by civilized men; it's not to eliminate the threat or hold people who break community expectations accountable for their actions, but affirm the same position held by the rapists that women are commodities and resources, and treat them as they would storehouses of grain.
As repugnant as I find Deluge being explicit in its belief that Patriarchal values are unquestionable, universal laws, it is hard to truly find fault with the survivors clinging to what bits of the world they knew that remain. For all protagonist Martin Webster (Sidney Blackmer) has to say about rebuilding society better than it was, he and the other civilized men hope to rebuild society along the same lines as prior to the apocalypse. It's why Patriarchy and monogamy are clung to so tightly by the main characters. Yes, Martin and his wife Helen (Lois Wilson) could build a polycule with the new romantic interests they met when they thought the other was dead, but no one involved can see the viability or appeal in it. Frankly, if anyone suggested it they would view that person as morally on par with the roving rapists. Humans, after all, are creatures of habit despite existence being nothing but change.
As someone who finds Patriarchy limiting and damaging, and generally is not a fan of disaster movies, Deluge is not a film that I enjoyed. It's an interesting case study, but it failed to spark positive impressions or a desire to watch it again.
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zindagi gulzar hai has soured soooo much for me over the years lmao. kashaf as a character was so interesting from the outset but to see her have to be the one to make concessions constantly in order for her relationships to survive or for her mistrust of people and subsequent loneliness to resolve itself got to be so depressing at some point when coupled with how little umera actually bothered to question the society that surrounded kashaf. the fact that zaroon never truly made an effort to understand her or internally question why she acted a certain way and simply idealized his marriage with her bc she was conservative and not flashy was so.. and i have even worse problems with durr e shahwar! one of my parents’ favorite dramas i think bc the letters between durr e shahwar and her father made them really emotional but to see her have to bite her tongue and just wait for things to resolve themselves if she was compliant enough truly broke my heart. i know she had her quite rebellions with her husband too but it’s still a really painful series to watch in retrospect and i hate that recycled idea of women conceding to make a relationship survive that populates so much of umera’s work (which is ironic considering the existence of those other dramas you listed, daam and kankar in particular)
in general that is i think something i really dislike both zindagi gulzar hai and humsafar for repopularizing. there’s this tendency to romanticize women who are “strong” bc they withstand all of the suffering in their marriage and come out alright at the other end, but where does it lead us really? we’re popularizing a whole litany of dramas where women are chained to those traditional expectations regardless of how horribly they’re treated or misunderstood in their marriage. and interestingly, i’m not sure if you kept up with kuch ankahi, but i was so surprised to see how many people complained about saif and samiya’s marriage bc i feel like it addressed that exact phenomenon really well. that saif was actually explored in depth and given background to explain his own cowardice without removing accountability from him; that we saw samiya try to be compliant only to realize that compliance doesn’t actually make a marriage and she deserved better; that she stood her ground on separating and made saif have to do the work to start to win her back if he really wanted to, and as a friend first on top of that. i loved it! i don’t think anyone is opposed to marriages having problems, but it’d be nice to see more balanced exploration where not just women are held accountable from start to finish, and i really appreciate kuch ankahi for tackling that. in general i feel like it was a drama that acted a lot more mercifully towards its female characters than umera ahmed dramas typically do so the occasional comparisons people made to umera ahmed characters struck me as a little odd lol
I remember back when the show was on air the PRIMARY reason Kashaf resonated with me was because of how vocal she was in her dislike for her father. it wasn't something we get a lot. the relationship between a father and daughter in most desi households is always so much more complicated and Pakdramas only show a tiny facet of it. Kashaf and Murtaza's dynamic in the earlier episodes of the drama is something that I still haven't seen other dramas do. sure, ZGH as a drama hasn't aged really well considering how blatantly forgiving the show is of Zaroon's misogyny and how there's just no growth or resolution of that and the show just ends on this weird note where all of the serious problems in their relationship are just brushed under the rug as "oh she's just being silly~" instead of being actual barriers to their long term happiness. Zindagi aise hi nahin gulzar bhayee. all the compromises came in Kashaf's account while Zaroon continued to roam scotfree because in UA's world, characters like Zaroon are never the wrong ones because the way they uphold patriarchy is for the women's benefit and not just theirs.
the criticism against ZGH are valid and they were there back when the show was onair as well. but i feel a decade later..the issues become more glaringly obvious because the rose tinted filter of the Fawad-Sanam chemistry has lost its effect so we can see the show for what it was actually trying to say more clearly now.
DeS toh I didn't like when it was on air because of how it much it focused on the women being the sole person in the relationship to compromise as a wife and as a daughter in law. the ultimate lesson of the show really was just "hey..quietly suffer in silence for some time and then you'll definitely get the reward!" not something I particularly support but I could see how this hope for reward resonated with the women around me. so many of women either had to suffer what Shehwar suffered in the early years of their marriages or they were still suffering to this day so this idea of light at the end of the tunnel is became something they clung to for their own sanity and peace. the idea of the end to the troubles is what keep us going anyway. so yeah..i don't support it but I get its appeal.
I didn't watch any of KA to add anything to your point but I do agree that in PakDramas the narrative always 10/10 puts the onus of makign a relationship work on the women. the success and failure of a marriage is always due to women even if we see the husbands being disloyal or unappreciative of the marriage. by all teachings of religion that our society is supposedly built on, marriage is supposed to be an equal partnership between two people where both husband and wife are meant to ensure the happiness and peace of each other. but since our culture only seeks to benefit men, their part is almost always downplayed. by any chance we get a good husband toh we still see that marriage suffer because happy marriages just cannot exist in our dramas. problems exist in aLL marriages, we know. but dramas mein jo problems hain woh toh matlab bass tabahi level hi ki hoti hain jo lifetime ka trauma de den.
not defending KRQ here at all but i think what he did with the ladies of Mera Naam Yousuf Hai is something that I haven't seen happen in a lot of dramas. specially in the character and ending for Afia Khatoon (Hina Bayat). she was in an unhappy marriage with Noor Mohammad and it was evident that despite like 25+ years of their marriage, she never loved the man. and when things came to an end, it was Afia who walked away with her freedom and dignity while Noor Mohammad was left with nothing. THAT was the kind of justice given to the right characters that other dramas cower away from. at least in MNYH KRQ's writing completely sided with the women as one of the central themes of the drama was a woman's right to choose for themselves and how it's wrong to strip away that right from them. Zulekha's fight was never for Yousuf but just for her right to choose, to either accept or reject, and to do it without being pressured into it. Afia got divorce from Noor Mohammad when it became abundantly clear that the man basically cheated on her all his life. the drama showed a woman who was a mother of three reclaim her maiden name as her the only identity she wanted for herself. marriages without loyalty and respect between spouses should end regardless of them being 25 years old or 2 years.
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Dorcas Meadows Headcanons
° definitely a slytherin
° her house is 70% plants
° was never comfortable in converse to stuck to running shoes/trainers
° her love languages are eye contact, quality time, and simple physical touches (e. g. holding hands, kisses on forehead, but doesn't like cuddling that much)
° loves to put on Marlene's make up for her and has a small smile dancing on her lips whenever her awsome gf comes ro ask her which piece will go with her outfit better
° has a 60s jazz record collection. her favourite singer is billie holiday (lady day>>>>
° in a modern au, she would be the person who has no social media expect messaging apps
° always carries the same backpack with her no matter if it goes with her outfit or nah
° im telling you, alcohol can't effect this girl
° had a "am i trans or not" crisis at one point, later found out she's just mad at the patriarchy and how women are treated in society (basically she mistook the want of the freedom that men had with the want to be a man)
° if you want someone to tell you the harsh reality and be blunt with you, you go to dorcas fucking meadows, man. that's rule, that's fact. period.
° extremely selfless and kind
° always helps the younger students who are lost in the castle
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Golden Vanity
Golden Vanity is the debut novel by Rachel Pollack (1945-2023), first published in 1980 and it’s a solid little space opera novel. It’s remarkably short considering how many ideas there are in this book. The original 1980 print edition was only 227 pages long.
There are a bunch of common space opera tropes. There is the mysterious ancient progenitor race who seeded the universe with life, so there are humans like those on Earth all over the place, yet they’ve grown disconnected over the eons. There is jumps into hyperspace to facilitate interstellar travel. It’s the same ideas Star Trek draws from.
But the novel brings original takes on these ideas. Ships are steered by pilots using their minds and constructing elaborate fantasies. And the book’s equivalent of hyperspace feels truly alien and frightening. It’s a space beyond the universe that humans know, and Pollack understands that. It’s symbolic that in the novel, it’s literally only reachable by a great feat of human imagination.
And the universe is ruled not by a benign federation or even the evil galactic empire of Star Wars, but by ultra-capitalistic corporations. A single world got control over the technology of space travel and now is using it to exploit other worlds, stripping the planet of whatever resources it has, including their peoples. It’s capitalism at its most ruthless.
And Earth is one of the most recent human-inhabited worlds to be contacted. The humans of Earth unaware that the aliens who have landed don’t have their best interests in mind. They have abandoned developing and taking care of their own society, and are now waiting on whatever boons the aliens might bring. It’s a fascinating portrayal of societal decay and the dangers of relying on someone else for salvation.
The plot is set into action by the title character, Golden Vanity (or just Vanity for short), a young woman who escapes from her abusive father, an alien corporate executive by the name of Jaak, and escapes to Earth. She meets Hump (short for Humphrey), an ordinary but clever Earthman.
The relationship between Hump and Vanity is basically the screwball comedy thing, where normie man meets and falls in love with a weird woman. It’s straight of course, but again the book develops it beyond clichés. Vanity especially is an interesting and well-developed character. The most interesting part of the relationship is that they discover telepathic abilities, and can inhabit each others bodies via it. How this is written towards the end of the book destabilizes any cisheteronormativity of the straight relationship, as the lovers inhabit each other’s bodies. The telepathy becomes a message about the interconnectedness of humans.
And the book shows how patriarchy and misogyny is tied up with capitalism. The villains of the book are clearly Jaak the corporate executive and the mercenary starship pilot Loper, who both want to possess and abuse Vanity like an object. And this is an extension of the ruthless capitalist mentality of the corporations they serve, which treats human bodies as resources.
As dark as the book gets, there is plenty of humor. The book makes fun of everything from Erich von Däniken to radfems. There is a kind of joyful sprightliness to the plot, as the novel delights in the act of storytelling.
It’s a solid debut novel, a space opera that is able to create a fascinating world in a relatively short book. It has spent decades out of print, but is now available as an e-book in Gollancz SF Gateway imprint (which DRMs their books, but there are ways to fix that).
#my writings#book review#rachel pollack#golden vanity#this is a close to forgotten book#so little about it written online#but it's good y'all
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Hello, please tell me about the asteroid Nefertiti in the 1st house
nefertiti, queen of egypt and wife of akhenaten (asteroid 3199)
since i have not covered nefertiti this ask looks like a good place to start. the 1h is about philosophies on life, appearance, personality, and beginnings so in reading the history below, i hope you can take what resonates and leave wasn’t when comparing the 1h ideals to her story. please feel free to comment with follow up questions if you are still unsure where this leaves you!
now for nefertiti!
Queen Nefertiti who ruled alongside the Pharaoh Akhenaten is considered one of the most powerful yet mysterious women to have existed in ancient Egypt. In 1913, a sandstone bust of her face was discovered and quickly became the icon for beauty and power. Nefertiti translates to "the beautiful woman has come" (she was possibly foreign and not from Egypt) which only furthered her popularity post-discovery of her bust. Pharaoh Akhenaten was a leader of a cult for the sun god Aten (I still have ptsd from 6th grade seeing the one sandstone wall - they looked like aliens lmao). Pharaoh Akhenaten attributed Nefertiti's fertility to the god as she had - six daughters within the first ten years of their marriage (we all know how rare it was to survive birth like that back then let alone succession birthing like that). Two of their daughters would later become queens of Egypt themselves. Like most queens of Egypt, very little can be found about her: likely due to wishing to keep masculine energy associated with rulership. Though based on art it is very likely that the family was a happy and seemingly perfect nuclear unit. It is also likely that she had significant political power due to art depicting that she sat on a similarly decorated chair next to her husband (this one more so has to do with the sun cult than the throne room) and wore the headdress of a pharaoh suggesting that she may have ruled independently or equally with her husband. There is also scandalous (for the time of their ruling) art that depicts the two as inseparable and sometimes even kissing in public - this is a rare find for ancient marriages not often was their affection in public nor were royals often happily married as depicted in these pieces of art. Twelve years after the start of her reign she goes missing from all historical texts and art works - either destroyed by patriarchy or due to some unknown reason regarding death (something too painful to be documented). They believe that they discovered her body in the wall of Akhenaten's tomb - scans determined that she likely wasn't as beautiful as she was sculpted to look (then again it could be aging) and DNA testing suggests that she bore King Tut. IN MY OPINION Nefertiti in a natal chart suggests a) where you are iconic, b) what you tend to believe in or worship, c) how fertile you are, d) where you tend to create a lot of mini-mes, e) your ability to lead and where you are treated as an equal, and/or f) where you are most mysterious to others.
relocation charts can tell you where you too can be “Nefertiti.”
i encourage you to look into the aspects of nefertiti along with the sign, degree, and house placement. for the more advanced astrologers, take a look at the persona chart of nefertiti AND/OR add the other characters involved to see how they support or impede nefertiti!
OTHER RELATED ASTEROIDS: akhenaten (326290) and aten (2062)!
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#astrology#asteroid#asteroid astrology#astro chart#astro community#persona chart#natal chart#astro placements#queen of egypt#queen of queens#nefertiti#egyptian mythology#asteroid3199
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indian movies can definitely be clunky when they try to address social issues at times and it’s not to say they don’t infantilize indian men when trying to teach them something about like misogyny or patriarchy but ig as a pak drama girlie what i appreciate is that there’s an attempt made at all.. like you don’t really see male protagonists learn in our dramas or cinema and often the most that happens is their recognition that bc they treated someone badly, god in turn treated them badly. which isn’t wrong to portray per se but i also wish there was like. any analytical aspect to these things rather than it being purely through the lens of religious karma. it’s very rare we ask a male lead to question his actions on the basis of his being a man and often even where an attempt is made there’s usually a critique of the female lead not far behind (qaid e tanhai is a good example of this) even though the actions aren’t anywhere near comparable. there’s just a really, really stark lack of gender critical media in our industry
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ngl i understand what that anon meant by western radfems and asian radfems being completely opposite mindsets, however i do take the side of asian radfems and think they are doing superior activism lol many radfems on here will accuse others of being blackpilled (whatever that means don't know don't care) if they say they anything negative about women being in relationships with men, we get told that if we don't include those women's actions into our feminism then it's not radical and we're just raging misogynists who want all women and their boyfriends to die, which isn't true - we mainly just want their boyfriend to die lol i'm probably biased because i'm originally from indonesia and was treated like dogshit by the men in that country, was beaten daily and forced to cover my entire body despite not even being muslim, but i think asian radfems from places like south korea, taiwan and china, while they are called more extreme than western radfems, are definitely are getting things done in a way we might not ever be able to here in the west simply because most are or are forced to be too dang nice to everyone and don't want to upset or alienate other women. there's a reason radical feminism is considered the only feminism of those countries and why liberal feminism is the main feminism of the west, because even in radical feminism we're being told by others we have to accept women into our movement that are not doing anything radical. there's nothing radical about being with your oppressor (a man) or having their child, women who are upset by asian radfems sound a lot like they're insecure or projecting or hate feeling guilt. i look up to asian radfems a lot and i'm incredibly happy to see more of them coming on here and posting, even if their words might upset many women on radblr i find their words very comforting and relatable *shrug*
pretty sure the blackpilled accusation comes when the person being called that starts saying vile things like calling women misogynistic slurs, saying women deserve to be raped, laughing at women for being abused, etc and acting like women are inferior + patriarchy is somehow biologically innate or w/e. if people are throwing it at separatists then they simply do not seem to understand the words bc a lot of separatists ive come across are of the belief that its NOT inescapable and think that separatism is a potential route to pushing men to see our importance & change accordingly. to some that may be too radical, but im not seeing any smarter alternatives. there's little to no radical feminist action to be found in the west whereas in the east, even in the worst countries for women youll see women finding ways to practice separatism.
i wish ppl would understand that "its not feminist to wear makeup" does also apply to other things too. its not feminist to have kids or marry men or date men etc. do u deserve to be abused, berated, put down, harassed, etc if u do such things? no. is it feminist? also no. not everything has to be a feminist action. no one is a perfect feminist and is feminist 24/7. the exhausting aspect of it is these women cannot accept that, they have to whine and hate on separatism overall and act like there's its just impossible despite the fact that women in the east show us otherwise.
also same! and im sorry for what u went thru in indonesia <3 i faced abuse almost daily from boys in bahrain growing up myself but it sounds like ur situation was extremely dire. i hope ur out and safe now
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sorry im back on it again this morning (since i think these asks i came across are from the same op as the last post i screenshotted and this is likely in response to my post and the tags of others on the post)
a) op states that refusing to acknowledge harmful things a person (woman) is doing is not feminism. thats true, its not. and it’s not what i do, either. what i am specifically talking about is baseless comments made that distort reality and presume olivia to be an unequivocally immoral person and harry a victim of a stunt, rather than understanding this as a mutually-beneficial arrangement that both parties have entered into, with full knowledge of what it entails and what would be asked of them
b) if anything, there is no “lowering an objective moral and ethical standard” for women, but in fact an unreasonably high standard women (in general, but also specifically within this fandom context) that women must meet to ever be considered acceptable (and if any woman has met this standard, please do tell me cus i cant name one). the things olivia is derided for, the thing she is hated for, are in equal measure (or greater) present in harry styles. “treating others poorly in professional settings” (firing previous members of his band w/ little to no regard for their financial wellbeing or that that his tour was likely the major source of income they were waiting for since they had been slated to work it prior to covid) (not to mention that olivia’s supposed mistreatment of people is, so far as can be materially proved, pretty baseless atm), “allowing them to make everything about sex to the detriment of other people’s comfort” (again, fairly baseless for olvia since she has talked about a range if things in regards to dwd, and she is hardly to blame for the focus that media outlets and fans have on sexual aspects of the movie) (and i think this is where harry’s music videos come in-- in ws and lnt both he was full clothed surrounded by much-less-clothed women, and i think its likely models and actors in the videos were more likely to accept the role despite discomfort because of financial motive, and i do not think there was any kind of intimacy coordinator to help manage sexual and sexist scenes, since this role is apparently very important to dwd haters)
c) i disagree with the “crux of feminism” here and find it unbearably shallow, but the whole “women do bad things too!” is the most useless and overdone idea of modern feminism, as if women do not have a history of being accused of wrongdoing, being thought to be immoral, being the scapegoat for all things bad and the downfall of good society, etc. there is no “dehumanizing” here or denial of “complexity”.
d) literally what in god’s fucking name decisions are you talking about in which patriarchy made it harder for olivia to make the RIGHT decisions?? (also condescending but). for all that this last paragraph pretends to be sympathetic to patriarchy and the impact it has on women, it all comes down to “well even if patriarchy is involved, olivia still did wrong and deserves no ‘pass’ at all and btw i have no empathy for her and the position she is in”. again, no one is getting a “pass��, but if someone actually wanted to consider patriarchy as a motivating factor for any of olivia’s actions, i think you would end up at a much more nuanced and empathetic conclusion.
e) my “crux” of all of this is that it is absurd and obviously misogynistic to say baseless things about olivia and hold her to much higher standards than you would harry. clearly so. if you dislike olivia, stop paying attention to her. disengage. admit that your dislike comes from a place of “protecting” harry and not liking the choices HE is making, rather than pretend you are on a moral crusade.
#hello anon from this morning here is my more meaningful and coherent post about misogyny#tbh its funny i even came across these lol#this isnt the whole post but tbh if u have a brain its not worth reading the whole thing
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this is such an incredibly dangerous way of conceptualizing manhood and patriarchy lol you can correctly point out/acknowledge that trans men (or w/e other category of men this person has placed in opposition to cis men - i've before talked abt how highly gnc cos men are often not treated the same as their more gender-conforming counterparts i think) have a different relationship to patriarchy than cis men without implying that trans men are incapable of perpetuating patriarchal violence. this implies that they aren't really men in a sense which imo kinda contradicts the whole "cis men don't own manhood" thing?? like correct me if i'm wrong but i'm pretty sure manhood as a sociocultural category does not exist outside of the context of patriarchal + misogynistic violence (though the same also applies to womanhood or the gender binary in general.)
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