The rationale for male authority rested not only on biblical grounds but also on nature or natural law, on the generally accepted natural superiority of men. For nothing could be more self-evident than that the patriarchal conception of marriage, in which the husband was unequivocally the boss, was natural, resting as it did on the unchallenged superiority of males.

Actually, nature, if not deity, is subversive. Power, or the ability to coerce or to veto, is widely distributed in both sexes, among women as well as among men. And whatever the theoretical or conceptual picture may have been, the actual, day-by-day relationships between husbands and wives have been determined by the men and women themselves. All that the institutional machinery could do was to confer authority; it could not create personal power, for such power cannot be conferred, and women can generate it as well as men, a matter examined in greater detail in chapter 7. Thus, keeping women in their place has been a universal problem, in spite of the fact that almost without exception institutional patterns give men positions of superiority over them.

If the sexes were, in fact, categorically distinct, with no overlapping, so that no man was inferior to any woman or any woman superior to any man, or vice versa, marriage would have been a great deal simpler. But there is no such sharp cleavage between the sexes except with respect to the presence or absence of certain organs. With all the other characteristics of each sex, there is greater or less overlapping, some men being more "feminine" than the average woman and some women more "masculine" than the average man. The structure of families and societies reflects the positions assigned to men and women. The bottom stratum includes children, slaves, servants, and outcasts of all kinds, males as well as females. As one ascends the structural hierarchy, the proportion of males increases, so that at the apex there are only males.

When societies fall back on the lazy expedient—as all societies everywhere have done—of allocating the rewards and punishments of life on the basis of sex, they are bound to create a host of anomalies, square pegs in round holes, societal misfits. Roles have been allocated on the basis of sex which did not fit a sizable number of both sexes—women, for example, who chafed at subordinate status and men who could not master superordinate status. The history of the relations of the sexes is replete with examples of such misfits. Unless a modus vivendi is arrived at, unhappy marriages are the result.

There is, though, a difference between the exercise of power by husbands and by wives. When women exert power, they are not rewarded; they may even be punished. They are "deviant." Turk and Bell note that "wives who ... have the greater influence in decision making may experience guilt over this fact." They must therefore dissemble to maintain the illusion, even to themselves, that they are subservient. They tend to feel less powerful than they are because they ought to be.

When men exert power, on the other hand, they are rewarded; it is the natural expression of authority. They feel no guilt about it. The prestige of authority goes to the husband whether or not he is actually the one who exercises it. It is not often even noticed when the wife does so. She sees to it that it is not.

-Jessie Bernard, The Future of Marriage

and if I said that dennis’ insistence on being the breadwinner/provider despite literally being a pampered princess who dgaf about traditional roles of masculinity in every other regard (aside from ego) is because his mom only stayed with/chose frank for his wealth and dennis is highly aware that he’s difficult to love and unable to show his emotions openly so he has to be contributing something to the relationship materially in order to feel like he’s worth staying for… and mac grew up with parents who were extremely ambivalent to him and eachother so he has to overcompensate by proving his worth at every given moment and seeking praise/validation from people (and religious icons) who will never demonstrate the same amount of dedication to him but he has no idea how else to desperately keep himself close to those he loves other than by eroding himself into something they’ll approve of… dear god they’re both exactly what the other needs — someone who can’t and won’t leave them even if they try — and they don’t even see it…

the people who think ryan isn't actively making eddie a little gay with his acting have never seen the rest of his filmography

Orym entering his Dark Era

honestly when i tried to figure out why some fans are so mad at ivypool these days i was looking through avos and. the scene where ivypool apologises to twigpaw for not supporting sending a patrol for skyclan is genuinely very sweet??

i actually saw someone characterize this as "ivypool forcing twigpaw to forgive her". is it crack you smoke. is that what you smoke. you smoke crack?

There are some theories going around that the creators of Welcome Home are trying to make Julie and Frank a couple despite Frank being gay, which is why Frank and Eddie are forced to be distant in the show. I least that is what the audio has given me and some other people.

I’m answering this because I’ve gotten this vibe as well? I’m not quite sure what it is but from the audio clips it doesn’t seem like Eddie and Frank were so friendly with each other and you wouldn’t necessarily think they’d have ever gotten together in any situation.

Though I can’t tell if it’s Frank’s absolute sass or what, but the bug killing thing did sound like he was almost fond of how Eddie was reacting to such a silly little thing so I’m not sure! I wouldn’t put it past them (the shows creators) though. I mean, Welcome Home as a story doesn’t include events from the 70s of course so I wonder if the issues towards homosexuality would’ve been referenced at all in the project

Orym in combat is really just, you invent elaborate combat fighting styles which allow you to go between someone’s legs.

popular m/f ships dynamics that I wish could change but hey algorithms on the clock app have an awful amount of power

jock/swot where she’s the muscular athlete with the swoony biceps and he’s the repressed nerdy tutor

sunshine/grumpy where he’s the joyful walking sunbeam and she’s busy scowling in the corner (also: she talks in grunts and has tattoos)

best friend’s older sibling where she’s the older and protective one

she’s the reclusive lady of the gothic manor and he’s the innocent lad who has an arranged marriage set with her

on the plus side, fandom's about-face on many aspects of the Capaldi era indicates that in five or so years, people might actually be able to parse the Whittaker era as a work of intentional televisual storytelling

New info Deanna learned about Laudna this episode: SHE AND IMOGEN HAVE A HOUSE TOGETHER IN JRUSAR

[ID: they seem to very good friends meme]

So the recent ContraPoints video about Twilight goes all

and now I'm making it everyone else's problem by posting on the romance book subreddit about it. This post now has a bunch of recommendations for books that break these molds, so that's nice.

hilarious how ppl with made up niche gender and sexual identities seem to genuinely believe they’re some fringe radical punk group and not like. victims of a marketing scheme

what even prompted you to send this to me? whatever. maybe if u experimented with ur gender and sexuality a little u wouldnt be so mad🙄

let my heterosexual uni friend be biphobic today when she said i was like ” basically 50% lesbian anyway” bc she was doing a bit of making me in sims and putting me in an ugly yet lesbian flag coloured dress. cause im an ally….

Hey birch! Quick ask for your writing on POF. What do you like the most about your Kurloz and Gamzee? If you could pick a few favorite things or traits from the versions of them you created, what do you think those would be? It's ok if you skip, I just got curious. I love your epic clown sagaaa 🥰🥰

!!! :Oc oh huh! My favorite traits are almost always the ones that create friction--some of those are neutral but create drama and some of them are outright negative, lol. Short answer, PoF Gamzee's a reckless coward and PoF Kurloz is incredibly dangerous and proud over top of a deep well of insecurity. Long answer.....under the cut, lol.

The Gamzee I write is, and I say this with authorial love and tbh no moral judgment, kind of a coward. He's not scared of the same stuff as most of us would be, he's good at combat and he likes pain, but also he's hugely, deeply afraid--of lots of stuff, but especially being left behind, and that drives a ton of his characterization.

Being left/abandoned is a pretty returning theme for a reason! From the very first chapter, when Gamzee's internal monologue is basically, "Well, time for the thing that made me happy to Go Away again. Hopefully if I'm good and I wait well enough, it'll eventually come back." He's been captured on his first mission, is his family going to leave him to die? Karkat's cocooning, is he ever coming back? Kurloz is poisoned and the family is turning on him as a suspect, are they done with him forever? He's the lynchpin of the Cult of Flesh's heresy, are his gods going to turn their faces away from him?

And when he feels like he has been abandoned, he goes through cycles of rage and then retreating from the rage, because being angry is holy but being angry is bad and drives people away, but being angry feels right, but-- It drives him to be overly obliging, trying not to drive people away, and it pushes him to be vicious when somebody seems to be interfering with his grasp on the things he values. It makes him a very sweet guy who'd do just about anything for the people he cares about, and it makes him clingy and dependent and blindly devoted, and prone to lashing out when he feels like they don't care about him as much as he cares about them!

I identify with a lot of that as an author, but I also just feel like it dovetails pretty neatly into the scant amounts of canon characterization we get for Gamzee, so I find it very compelling to read/write!

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As far as Kurloz goes, what I like most about him as a character is probably like...his pride? And (especially because this is a kinky sex fic) the shame that goes along with that.

On a very surface level, the concept of the Grand Highblood as a grumpy, proud old guy who's getting reluctantly dragged in the direction of a still terrible but less hemoist society is very funny to me. Make up a bigoted old man and then force him to knuckle under repeatedly to the people he's bigoted against. But also on a more-plot-less-humor level, a character who's made himself a very strict code of "this is what's expected of me and I will fulfill it no matter what it does to me" is RIPE for drama. Especially when the plot of the story is then giving that character something that suddenly he finds he values at least as much as that code and pride, and making him struggle with that.

The counterpoint to that being; it's fun to set up a character as a proud, badass, dangerous son of a bitch, and then give the POV/the readers a shot straight into the shit that he's hiding behind that "I'm untouchable, don't fuck with me" pride. Sadism, especially as extreme as I've written into Kurloz, can be an intimidating thing! On the surface it's part of the mask, part of the scary persona--but it's really compelling and interesting to me to then sidestep that mask and go into the roiling mess of sexual shame and religious guilt and uncertainty and self-loathing. MAN I love writing the Brother Immortal scenes, you guys.

my mum just spent a good five minutes complaining about the scottish ballet’s touring production of cinderella, which features the dancers playing cinderella and the prince exchanging roles at random before each show, bc of how ‘woke’ and in her mind probably gay and/or trans it is.

but sucks to be her bc in my bisexual little head that fucking rules and i just bought a ticket to it