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seeing feminist events and protests etc being ruined breaks my fucking heart :( like what do they think they're even accomplishing? even if they hate radfems there should be alternatives to just thrashing every feminist good deed radfems do for women in their often impoverished communities

if AT LEAST they had been working hard replacing it with their own trans-positive feminist version or whatever in the area that would've been one thing. but often they just destroy and just go aha! job well done, that'll teach those bitches. when women in those communities actually really truly need these things and all they do is ruin those resources for others and losing the movement activists that the movement badly needs. if they only knew that other activist movements that they respectfully bow down to ARE ALSO FULL OF WOMEN WHO HOLD RADFEM BELIEFS!!! and if every woman who thought that sex mattered, which is especially common with woc from outside the west or with family outside the west since they know first-hand how horrifyingly bad oppression can get for afab people, if they all had gotten called out cancelled banished from the spaces etc the movements would've failed before they even began and that would've led to SO MUCH more marginalized suffering!!!!

i truly believe that these kinds of extreme trans activists tend to be more on the privileged side outside of being afab, and use that activism as a way to prove they're not bigots like their white middle-class parents were nope they're radical and they fight the cistem and are cooler than those freaky bigoted genitals-obsessed gays and transsexuals... the same ones that fought hard for decades to earn them all the rights they currently enjoy and were oppressed on the basis of being same-sex attracted and are now being thrown out of pride events

it's also interesting with different cultures, bc for example with french instances of trans activists going batshit, the french world is much newer to the concept of gender identity than english folks, like there's SOOO many stolen english words that young french qweer activists are trying to awkwardly make a Thing in french spaces and they have the intense righteousness of trans english tumblr but the people around them are just like huh ????? bc the words and the concept of gender identity just aren't as widespread in french spaces, esp since our language is so sex-based. it makes them feel even more like martyrs and seeing the entire french world as bigoted. it makes for some wild shit in france like sex-based feminist events being trashed and cis feminists being assaulted and only english radfems hear of it and call it out, bc english trans activists don't care about news like these, it makes them all look bad and they assume it's all just elaborate fox news type shit or cis women are being dramatic again

i just think that the way trans activists are treating the feminism vs gender identity divide is really unproductive, surprisingly violent, very dangerous, and negatively impacts the afab women who need feminist events and protests etc the most. especially woc, disabled women, senior women, and other women w few resources. i'm seeing women being turned away from SHELTERS and other life-saving resources for using the words man/woman in a sex-based way or wanting only people with vaginas in trauma victim spaces for safety and healing reasons. would a homeless dude spouting the same language be turned away from a shelter or lead to activists rallying and protesting outside the shelter for daring to home him bc he's unsafe for transmasc people??? would a trans activist say nope we shouldn't give him a safe home we shouldn't give him a space in a shelter we should record him and post a video of him and shame him and laugh at him???? I REALLY DON'T THINK SO

I am going to try to explain something as best i can so it comes out how i mean it but that is something i am the worse as doing. I think that when it comes time to cast rachel in pjo i think she should be white, not because of her original character or i that i think we shouldn't have diverse casting. I think that rachel being white may not have been that important in the books, if rick does it for the show it could make it a bit more layered in some sense, if rachel was white, rich, ect it would contrast to annabeth in a new way. Now when annabeth is insecure about Rachel and percy being close it is bit deeper i guess, now it's oh no Rachel feels societial beauty norms more than me because societial beauty norms are inherently racist and exclude people of color, or like if percy and rachel got together it would be like rachel is giving up more than her cause of her not being a demigod so she is putting herself into more danger, or she has money and her family is influential anf she is setting herself to lose that, ect. When this is stuff that annabeth already doesn't have like white women are constantly praised for doing a lot less than woc in many ways like in feminist movement, i also think it could leave insecurity about being in an interracial relationship, even if it's legal (cause remember it wasnt always legal in the us) it's still not completely excepted by everyone, so now if annabeth and percy get together it leaves room for insecurity about being the cause as to why percy is being treated differently together because they are together in a way that rachel anf percy wouldn't and i know rhis is a kids show but i think even if tjey don't mention it, it leaves room for people to perceive or i cant find the word i am looking for, but it would be very similar to how annabeth in the book was blond and it was don't base someones intelligence on stereotypes but in the show annabeth was black and it still carried the same message but now because poc are veiwed as less intelligent in a lot of spaces because of how they speak like aave, their hair or systematic oppression like public funding in predominantly black areas ect., it takes the same message but makes it more relatable to this time period and for more people, i think that is the best i can explain. If i said something wrong please tell me i would love to learn from it and correct i, this is just my opinion and if rachel was a woc i would not be super mad or like send death threats, (the bare minimum), i will be happy with whoever gets casted these are just my thoughts on what would make an interesting dynamic

So I've been thinking, and i feel like the ACOTAR series would have made a lot more sense if the Archeron sisters were illyrian women. Fighting back against the oppression they've faced from illyrian men and from the High Fae who see them as inferior.

And if we were discussing the whole pregnancy thing, there would not be any of that shit about changing their anatomy to bear winged children if they were already illyrian women.

Idk, if you really think about it, the series would be a lot more impactful if it was from the perspective of 3 illyrian women who are trying to fight back against all the misogyny and the whole thing with the wing clipping and who eventually meet their mates who love and protect them and support them.

I just think the ACOTAR series had so much potential if it were written by someone who understood that perspective instead of an author who promotes white feminism every chance she gets. It's such a missed opportunity.

Like i saw a fan art of Feyre sitting on a throne and Rhys standing behind the throne and it just really made me uncomfortable the way it sorta of glorified this idea of a white person taking control of a place and a culture she was never a part of and not doing anything to make a difference for illyrian women.

If Feyre and her sisters were illyrian though, the story would have made a lot more sense and they would have actually made a difference.

I've never thought about this before, but it truly makes sense when you think about it. After Sarah scrapped the original ACOTAR 2 and decided to take this series in a new direction with ACOMAF, it became wayyyy too disjointed, and looking at the series as a whole this would've made so much more sense than Feyre being a human turned High fae attempting to overcome High Fae sexism which is... not really existent systemically. But the Illyrian sexism Feyre and her sisters would've had to overcome could have made for a powerful story. The only problem, anon, is that Sarah seems to have decided the Illyrians are POC, which would make Feyre, Nesta, and Elain WOC. And we all know WOC can't be drop dead gorgeous like the Archeron sisters are, so they have to be white women!

And yes, that last line was sarcasm before anyone asks

Have you noticed that a big part of the unconditional support transactivism receives from women despite this movement being built on misogyny is because many MANY so called feminists don't want to actually acknowledge male supremacy? They eventually will criticize/oppose to one or another sexist event (like the abortion ban in USA) but as time goes on, they just forget it and even manage to despolitize them. Now, reproductive rights isn't an integral part of women’s rights anymore, it's “queer/lgbtqia+ rights”, “bipoc with vaginas rights”, etc.

But nothing makes it more obvious than the fact that women(even black/indigenous women) easily accepted they're “cis” - implying they have privileges for their womanhood not being denied - which is laughable because how being “acknowledged” as women is a privilege when to be a woman - specially a woc - in a misogynistic world is oppressive? The acceptance of the infamous “cis” also implies that both men and women are equally oppressive towards trans people, thus the analysis of male violence lost space to the more malleable “gendered violence”. By place both “cis” men and women, any observations of male patterns of violence is discouraged because it's “transphobia” (but why it would be transphobia if trans women are women like “cis women” and are targeted by men most of the time? Hmmmm) and a vile MRA rhetoric start to take place in feminism disguised as a true compromise with “gender equality”: women can be as bad if not worse than men. Women aren't victimized by male supremacy, in reality it's men who are the biggest victims. In the name of “not infantilizing women” for JUST acknowledge that misogyny exists, people are infantilizing men and giving them a free pass on their mistreatment of women.

Many so called feminists also lack sex class consciousness and they internalized all the sexist shit we have been taught by our society. So they really act that trans women are the ones who bring humanity to women's status, this is why claims like “If you don't think trans women are women, it means you think women are inferior” what is the connection between a man thinking he is a woman because he identity as one (whatever that means) with women supposedly inferiority? Women literally carry the whole humanity! Our bodies are complexes and prepared to survival and they pull out this weak guilt tripping rhetoric and women eat this up, think the only way they can achieve humanity is through males? Pffff

Honestly, after reading The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner(a must read to any feminist), this actual state of feminism became even more clear: men have stolen women's humanity, women's knowledge of our bodies, even the position of the creators of life, despite the fact that they can't get pregnant. The next step is stealing the womanhood itself and it isn't a random event, it's part of their colonization of females. Understanding how they operate helps us to fight back.

🙏🏽

“Cis” is the biggest pile of horse shit and my #1 source on this has always been and will always be my girl Audre Lorde. Who in the entirety of the book Sister Outsider goes to great lengths to emphasize: women can simultaneously have different lives/womanhoods (ex.black versus white womanhood, ie intersectionality) while working together against patriarchy. I think it’s funny/sad that today the white man’s “intersectionality” hates black women like me who reject gender roles and claims there is a sweeping “cis” womanhood privilege that’s so universal it automatically places all non trans “afabs” (nearly 50% of the goddamn globe) above trans “afabs” and “amabs” in status and life quality. Audre also goes to great lengths to support the statement “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” which I’ve always pretty plainly taken to mean that gender will never dismantle sexism.

You’re 💯 on these feminists who can’t deal with the reality of male supremacy. Gender framework is a sugar coat that makes things easier to cope with. I get it, sexism is pervasive and normalized as fuck and it’s scary to think about how angry a lot of men would probably get if things actually changed and they didn’t have access to female abuse as often as they do. But I’m personally also fed up with being scared and highly prefer just being pissed off back lol and trying to actively do something about changing it. They can be mad all they want, I’m not stopping until we get our humanity back fully even if it’s not within my lifetime and step #1 is naming the problem

this is something that i've been trying to understand for a while from a curiosity-driven standpoint, and i was wondering what your thoughts are on it. this is specific to american politics most likely. why do you think "leftists" - like TRAs, libfems, male leftists, etc,- target white women in a way that isn't about racism but is about sex? i'm not at all talking about legitimate issues with racist behavior. more like the ideas that white women are even worse than white men at every ism which has become super popular. white men seem to be not brought up anymore, or any men at all. and i'm trying to figure out who sort of started this pseudo-activist thing? because it delegitimizes actual critiques of racism from white women, and has eclipsed critiques of racism and grown into something a lot different imo. i feel it isn't the best word because i don't want to put a "victim" or "delicate/fragile" slant on this, but i guess white women are the scapegoats to white men in leftist spaces and everyone's going along with it? i'm trying to understand how "progressives" got to this point. again not talking about condemning racism from white women (absolutely needed and shouldn't be policed) i hope you get what i'm trying to say. like why do you think this came about and who benefits from it?

tbh to me it’s because anti-feminist rhetoric has subtly become more accepted and normalised + white men still have power and have successfully moved the target from them and avoided all accountability by arguing it’s their white moms’ and other white womens’ faults that they did what they did. they’ve coopted woc not having much voice and facing racism and often even misogyny from white women and use it to justify their misogyny, as if white men are somehow better. also every oppressed group, such as women in this case, are held to higher standards from my experience. when you’re a woman, you don’t get away with what men get away with. it’s the same reason why black women, or lesbians, or other woc, etc are all held to far higher standards. when lizzo used a questionable / “problematic” word, she was treated far more harshly & with far more contempt than a white man or even white woman would. when ellen got called out for not treating her celeb guests well, she was cancelled in a way straight white men criticised for sexually harassing, abusing, or otherwise harming their female coworkers haven’t been. when azealia banks was being racist, she was criticised for it in a far harsher way than for example iggy azealia was. the examples are endless but the point is, minority groups especially when they’re women get held to different standards. somehow people only think it’s a problem when they see a black woman or a lesbian or even het white women do it. look at how “terf” vs simply “transphobe” (who are the ones actually being the population that commit hate crimes against trans ppl) are treated. people love to pretend that they hold others accountable but white men don’t get this treatment. men in general often don’t get this treatment.

this isn’t so say white women haven’t played a role in upholding white supremacy and racism, but to act like they’re the main instigators or like they’re worse than white men is a joke. white men are white women’s oppressors, and white men have been the “patriarchs” and the leaders of countless hate movements against LGB people, women, and poc. to remove accountability from them is to justify them and it is honestly pretty misogynistic. it sucks bc this conversation was started by woc & even poc in general to speak about how white women played a role in racism against us, and now it’s been coopted by white men as a way of dodging their role in racism as well.

i saw a tiktok comment recently that was like “black men have 0 privilege over white women” and i’ve been mulling it over since bc i see where the sentiment comes from but i absolutely do not agree and i think it’s the product of the kind of toxic idpol which has infected tiktok where you just like … rank people in terms of how oppressed they are rather than actually tackling the root of that oppression. it also ignores all nuance and context to situations which is literally the entire point of intersectionality: everybody is going to have a different narrative depending on their background, the social circles they are in, their job etc.

for example, as a white woman, i will freely admit in most scenarios i will have an advantage over men of colour, for example being more likely to be hired in a predominantly white workplace. however it is absolutely ridiculous to suggest that men of colour never have privilege over me in an interpersonal context. my ex was a black (mixed race) man who manipulated and emotionally abused me in a way that was very much misogynist. there was an instance where he lied to me about something he did by saying it was my mental illness causing me to imagine things, which is obviously textbook gaslighting amongst other stuff i won’t delve into.

and thankfully my leftist friends aren’t fucking weirdos and believed me when i told them about my ex (turns out he had treated another ex, a woc fwiw, also very badly) but i have seen takes on here where white women come forward about abuse by men of colour and are accused of lying by virtue of being white. (also when amber heard came forward people used the “white woman lying about abuse” thing when johnny depp is also white…lmao) a friend of mine is a black man who was physically abused by a black woman and their friends took her side. all of this is to say that if you try and create some kind of “rule book” of privilege you will never achieve liberation and there are better things to be doing with your time. the most oppressed person in the world is not necessarily going to have good politics or be a good person.

Can you explain the thing about feminism better? You said something about a white woman becoming CEO and that this doesn't mean the end of misogyny, but how does her color affect the misogyny she suffers from? /genq (I swear I would search, but for someone with autism, hearing you talk is a lot easier for me than reading a pile of professionals and their opinions... Not exactly great but I still haven't found a decent solution)

hiyo! so i was referring to the way a lot of people who are against feminism will use the experiences of privileged women to paint feminism as something unnecessary. you might see a man say something like "well my boss is a woman, how can sexism exist?" and similar things. but in reality, these "examples" of why feminism is "unnecessary" are examples of what we call "breaking the glass ceiling", a sociological concept where someone, usually a woman or a member of another minority, gains a position of power in the workforce, and sometimes society at large, that is traditionally only handed out to men/another majority. this is the exception, not the norm. so when you see feminism painted as an (often white, skinny, abled, etc.) woman in a suit #girlbossing the workplace, it is flawed in two main ways- 1) that person who broke a glass ceiling by, say, becoming the first female CEO of a company, most likely still started from some sort of position of relative privilege that enabled them to get to where they are, and therefore doesn't represent the struggles of more marginalized people, and 2) ignores the fact that while yes, this relatively privileged person broke the glass ceiling, they still had to work twice as hard to do so.

so it's not that a white woman's whiteness factors into her oppression (in the case of whiteness it factors into our privilege, not our oppression), but that seeing a relatively privileged person breaking the glass ceiling isn't a sign that social change has necessarily occurred, but that someone broke through a barrier that not many people have the opportunity to break through. just because many white, cishet, abled women have broken through the glass ceiling, that doesn't mean that all women are in the same place to do so or that they didn't face hardships along the way to breaking through. so two things are true- even the most privileged of women still face significant barriers which are often swept under the rug in the name of "girlbossifying" feminism to be a badass aesthetic, and most women are NOT that privileged. i have privilege in the workforce that my Black coworkers don't have, but I also have experienced many things in the workplace that my male coworkers haven't had to face, as well as things my nonqueer coworkers haven't had to face. the point of my post was that all women face barriers, and no universal truth about the experiences of women can be applied to all of us- we all face unique challenges, but all of us face challenges. the challenges faced by all of us are unique, influenced by our different intersecting privileges and marginalizations, but we all live in a society that centrally values us less than it values cis men. feminism is still an absolutely necessary thing and all women are important voices when it comes to dismantling it. mainstream feminism doesn't do nearly enough to emphasize the voices of woc, queer women and other marginalized women, and that is a deep flaw, but not one which takes away from the central fact that feminism is still vital.

It’s not a stupid comparison lol. You’re just saying that cause you have no reasoning for why you think one is ok and one isn’t. What’s happening in BOTH situations is somebody telling the oppressed group that they shouldn’t date their oppressor. And I’m not black but I am a POC. Don’t be making assumptions about what I can and can’t talk about lol.

My main problem is this idiotic pretence that none of you know why straight women get annoyed about this. Even in cases where the lesbian telling them to swear off dating men is “polite” (read: sickeningly condescending), it’s such a farce. You and I both know that most lesbians on radblr would absolutely lose their shit if some straight person told them they shouldn’t date because it’s safer for them. It’s hypocrisy through and through. But straight women are apparently supposed to say “oh! Thank you oh wise lesbian! Before I was too stupid to see the error of my ways, I know how dangerous and silly my innate sexuality is! I’ll stop immediately!”

I also love how you’re doing the “omg you’re SO upset, you sent me long response, so upset grrrrrrr”. Like. Ok. That’s not a valid rebuttal to… anything lmao. Classic tumblr projection though.

You KNOW there’s a difference between a lesbian (see, someone without the systemic power to ENFORCE any kind of dating recommendations she makes) telling women not to date men (EVEN in the most obnoxious way possible) and a heterosexual telling lesbians not to date women because it’s dangerous due to *THEIR* systemic power to punish us for being homosexual. Pardon me for *not* making assumptions when you can’t be bothered to leave off anon. I didn’t assume your race; I pointed out something I see an uncomfortable amount with other white people (and in the past myself). That you’re a WOC means you can ignore it. Fine.

The real world encourages, praises, and rewards women for dating men. That is not even remotely the same thing as the shame, hatred, and threat of isolation or violence a lot of us grew up with, and you KNOW it’s not the same. There’s no hypocrisy taking place. And yeah, I will do the “you sent me a long response and I’m not going to bother responding thoroughly to it” because the content I post is already on my blog for you to comprehend my opinions on this issue, and I have a life outside of tumblr so I’m not wasting any more time than I care to responding to anonymous messages rehashing the same arguments over, and over, and over.

If I told a straight women TO HER FACE “men are the oppressor and you’re foolish and naive for dating them” it would certainly be rude, but it wouldn’t be remotely the same as a heterosexual telling me “homosexuals are oppressed and you’re foolish and naive for dating women in spite of the threat of violence *we* pose to you”, and it would still be unjustified for a het woman to then responsd to my rudeness with “omg it’s so sad how much lesbians hate het women”. You’re not going to change my mind. Come off anon, DM me, or realize you aren’t saying anything I don’t already know, and stop wasting both of our time.

I wanna start this by start this by saying I'm not from west. I understand how imperialism is bad for us. I understand how it would affect economy and makes people poorer and obviously result in more women in poverty. I know foreign soldiers kill civilians and rape local women and military intervention is not good for women. And I completely agree with your point about racism of imperialism advocates and the west being sexist too.

but can you elaborate on how WOC facing worse sexist oppression than white women is only because imperialism?

for example percentage of abused women is considerably higher than many western countries and marital rape is legal and not counted as abuse in official stats so the real rates of male violence are even higher. how is this form of women oppression being worse here than west result of imperialism? how does non-white men beating and raping their non-white wives result of white men's intervention? I mentioned legality of marital rape and that law is based on religious law that existed for over a millennia and is not a new law installed by westerners (and even if it was our men didn't have to exploit that and use it to their advantage). not to mention some sexist cultural practices that were common in certain places but didn't exist in others. so how is this long history of misogyny in that goes back to centuries before European colonialism happened and before US was even created, result of their actions, and not the men who created the sexist traditions, religions, etc?

Marital rape was legal everywhere until about a century ago (with the Soviet Union being the first to criminalise it, I believe) and the movement to truly criminalise it not taking off much until the 60's. My country, Australia, did not criminalise it in every state until the 90's. Even now many legal loopholes exist in the west that downgrade the crime and it is rarely prosecuted, as all rapes are rarely prosecuted or reported. Every patriarchal religion justisifes marital rape and marriage being a way for men to treat women as property. If marital rape is legal in countries as diverse in culture as Afghanistan, The Bahamas, Tuvalu, China, India and Ethiopia, it is clearly not one religion or culture. My point isn't that all misogyny is caused by the west directly bringing their specific ideals, but that the difference in scale and extremity is largely influenced by imperialism and a difference in peace and economic opportunities that influence women's respective abilities to organise and the extremity of religion. If we look back to before the widespread colonialism of the past centuries, there isn't that massive disparity between how women were treated across cultures.

Likewise other laws of abuse have been similar across vastly different cultures. But even many laws based on religious extremism have indeed been influenced by imperialism. Many honour killing laws were influenced by "crimes of passion" laws brought in by French colonisers. Against White Feminism by Rafia Zakaria goes into a lot of detail regarding how imperialism has shaped religious extremism and misogynistic cultures.

for the record, the vast majority of people i've seen talking about transandrophobia are trans moc, and actually the reason i stopped being hesitant to accept that it's okay to talk about these issues is because a lot of them brought up that moc often face oppression in a way that's different (not "worse", but different) from racism aimed at woc, for example black men often being stereotyped as aggressive rapists and there being a history of white women getting them killed by playing on this. it really helped me to see that there's more nuance to this issue than the thing that radfems push where misogyny is the Ultimate Oppression and men automatically have all possible privilege no matter what that unfortunately still seems to have its grip on the majority of people on this website

thank you so much for bringing this up! this is what i've noticed as well. this is one of the reasons i wound up researching transandrophobia more in-depth than just reading about it in passing, because in order for there to be true transunitism, we need to acknowledge intersections of oppression that we all face on different levels and how that plays into our own unique understanding of gender.

and absolutely agreed, i think the bioessentialist thinking of "women good men bad" has done a number on this site's critical thinking skills.

Too many of the “Radical Feminism 101″ posts are just lists of what radical feminists are against and not about how to unlearn internalised misogyny, and that’s why you have “radfems” who can both say, “I’m a radfem because I’m anti-porn, anti-surrogacy, gender critical...” etc and then unironically say the nastiest, cruellest and most disgusting things about and to other women.

When you have tick-box lists of what radical feminism is, anyone can LARP as a radfem by reblogging the right things from the right women and then feel like that’s protection from any criticisms of misogyny. 

It’s especially common in women who have made their entire online personalities nothing but “I hate men.” There’s a difference between venting and then obsessively hating men to the point that the focus of their “feminism” is men instead of actually educating and supporting women. That leads to the most offensive takes like “homophobic and biphobic straight women aren’t actually a problem because the straight men are worse,” or “white women being racist to MOC isn’t actually a problem because they’re men first,” which only ends up harming lesbians, bisexual women and WOC, and those are only a few examples.

Then there are the “rudefems,” who are nothing but failed “radfems,” the women who say that they started out as “nicefems,” but then who realised that it was much more difficult than they realised to personally maintain a sense of class consciousness with all women, so immediately “forget” what patriarchy does to women and then they treat every single woman who behaves the way that patriarchy has conditioned her to behave like she’s a failure in some way, like the only “good” women are the cruel “radfem” women.

The point of radical feminism is for women’s liberation, and that means supporting women as a class. That doesn’t mean jumping to see a horrible woman and then scrabbling around in the dirt to excuse her actions and blame men instead. That doesn’t mean excusing abusive women, protecting violent women, coddling racist women, feeling pity for homophobic and biphobic women, patting ableist women on the head, cooing for classist women, etc etc etc. It means that no woman, at all, whatever she has done, should ever be victimised by misogyny and she should be free of oppression by the patriarchy. That’s all. We can recognise motivations behind the actions of the above women, we can see the factors of patriarchy in their choices, we can applaud women who break free of environments where bigotry was the norm and they learned to be better, but that doesn’t mean absolving any crime or bad behaviour from a woman just because she’s a woman. That just isn’t feminist.

If your “radical feminism” has you feeling like you’re somehow special and superior to other women in some way, if you look down on women who don’t have their eyes opened in the way you think your eyes are open, if you demand specific labels that women need to use before you think they’re “good enough” or otherwise treat radical feminism like it’s an identity politics game, then you’re not a radical feminist, you’re a misogynist with extra steps.

That’s all.

Hollywood dehumanizes people of color on screen using racist media narratives in order to justify oppression and violence against people of color in real life. These comics touch on a lot of complicated subjects about race and gender in media, but I realized mainstream representation metrics like the Bechdel-Wallace Test, Riz Test, DuVernay Test, and Aila Test don't fully cover the criteria to discuss those issues, so I made a test of my own.

I didn’t want to name it after myself at first, but after years of experience in both comics and Hollywood and having my work and ideas stolen and reposted online too many times to count, I know that no one will give you credit unless you claim it, so I decided to put my name on it. These are just a few of many stereotypical roles for POC but there are others, all designed to depict POC as inferior. Overall, the purpose of Hollywood is to produce propaganda to benefit cis-het white men—by lying about how pure and good they are—at the expense of everyone else. Basically, films are required to fail this test in order to reach the screen—even with leads of color. Let’s use Asian American films as examples: To All The Boys fails 1, 4 and 6. The Big Sick fails 2, 4 and 5. Always Be My Maybe fails 6. It's hard to think of a film that passes. Some say representation is a frivolous concern, but the fact is that movies and TV are not an escape from reality—they tell us what our reality should be. Media messaging is an integral part of the systems that perpetuate state violence and oppressive policies against POC. That's why having tests like these matter—it forces us to think deeply about the kind of content we're creating and consuming, and to push harder to do better. It requires that the world sees POC and other marginalized people as people, and to treat us that way, both on screen and off. Note: I didn’t include non-binary POC in the comics because they tend to not get roles at all, and if they do, are usually put into either the men or women category. I also didn't include white women, who are dehumanized as women but differently than WOC due to white supremacy. (Please don’t repost or edit my art. Reblogs are always appreciated.) If you enjoy my comics, please pledge to my Patreon or donate to my Paypal. I lost my publisher for trying to publish these strips, so your support keeps me going until I can find a new publisher/lit agent https://twitter.com/Joshua_Luna/status/1134522555744866304 https://patreon.com/joshualuna https://www.paypal.com/paypalme2/JoshuaLunaComics

i’m stuck between starting spartacus or vikings and i know you’ve seen both, so which one would u say i should start first?

They’re very different shows. Both are fairly stylized and unrealistic, both are pretty violent. But Spartacus is generally a lot more graphic in terms of violence and nudity so while I would say that both of them deal with issues like murder, torture, sexual assault, and slavery…. Vikings simply is a lot tamer in terms of what it can show onscreen on every level. It was also shot to mimic realism a bit more whereas Spartacus is intentionally very over the top. For me, the over the top nature of Spartacus made the physical violence at least (separate from the sexual violence) easier to watch. It’s a lot easier to move on from a decapitation for example when none of it looks real. Although say, the famous blood eagle scene in Vikings is much less graphic, it’s also more realistic.

They also have very different perspectives, I’d say? Vikings is the story of a man who goes from being a farmer to a king and is corrupted by power and it extends to his family. Spartacus is a free man who is enslaved at the beginning of the show. Most of the protagonists of Spartacus are people who are or have been enslaved. The goal is for them to be free, not for them to rule the world. In a lot of ways, Vikings is honestly a show from the perspective of oppressors while Spartacus is a show from the perspective of the oppressed…. Though this doesn’t mean it portrays all of its protagonists as simply *good*.

Imo Vikings has a great first couple of seasons and begins to really falter in season 3. There are issues in the first two seasons, but like… you can move past them for the story. I think I finally gave up somewhere in season 5. Like, honestly, not even sure how many seasons that show ended up having because it began with a standard ten ep season structure and then extended to like twenty eps a season but it would be like…. Season 4a, 4b, and so on. There was a point where almost everyone was just…. So bad that even I couldn’t root for them anymore, or “good” but actually bad which was WORSE because the narrative didn’t realize they were bad.

The thing I can say about Spartacus is that it is a much tighter show. It’s older, so some things are inevitably dated and could have been done more sensitively…. But generally speaking, I think Spartacus knows who is good and who is bad and while they are interested in exploring the morality of good people and the humanity of bad people on that show, they never try to *redeem* a truly awful person. Two of the most prominent villains on the show are married to each other. They obviously deeply love each other. They’re also rapists, murderers and slave owners. These two realities are allowed to exist, and while I never doubted that they were human beings, I never was like “oh poor babies”. Nor did I feel like the show wanted me to feel that way.

Spartacus also has better representation. It ain’t perfect. The show could be a lot less white and a lot more gay. But it’s waaaaay less white and way more gay than vikings, and it has much better writing for women. There are evil women on Spartacus and good women and women who like to fight and women who don’t and upper class women and poor women and white women and woc. Vikings has …. One prominent woc in the original show, I think? And she is a drug dealing Asian woman who has sex with the protagonist and then he murders her. So…. Yeah.

Vikings has tons of homoeroticism and the main protagonist actually tells his male best friend “you can’t leave me, I love you” but they never make the connection explicitly sexual or romantic. Spartacus has an entire arc devoted to two men (one of which isn’t white) falling in love and they have to like work on their relationship after and they kiss and fuck and it’s great.

Vikings has some cool moments but I never saw the ending and I’m good with that. Spartacus has many, many more cool moments and I loved the ending. While I’m glad I saw what I saw of Vikings, and Spartacus is FAR from perfect, I prefer Spartacus a lot.

Are you really posting stuff implying that it's okay for POC and cis women to be homophobic or transphobic...? Most of us who do call out WOC for being bigots are POC ourselves, deflecting that only cis gay white men are calling them out is just ignoring that cis WOC still have privilege over, and often still are awful to, queer POC.

is this about this post?

Because that's definitely Not what it's about. It's saying white gays need to decenter themselves in the universe and understand that being gay isn't the only axis of oppression that exists and they need to stop acting like it is. Because doing so makes them active players when it comes to oppression against WoC.

Like the first gif is literally a white gay man telling a young black woman she has no idea what being fucked by "the system" is like. The second is a white gay man telling a different WoC she can't relate to being a minority.

That's not calling out bigotry. It's being straight up tone deaf. Straight up blind to the ways women and more specifically specifically WoC are oppressed and how their refusal to see that is actively playing into the oppression of women.

And it's rooted in the fact white LGBTs completely ignore intersectionality in favor of only giving a shit about the oppression they personally experience. Because at the end of the day that's their privilege as participants in white supremacy.

And let's be real it happens a lot more within the LGBT community than y'all are willing to admit. The fact you managed to twist the point from "White gay men lack awareness of their part in the oppression of others" into ''so it's okay for WoC to be homo/transphobic?" is proof of that.

Decenter your own oppression for like 5 seconds. Because nowhere in either of those gifs did we see ANY reason for you to think this was about white gay men defending themselves against bigotry.

Further "most of us who call out WoC are also PoC" okay well the post is clearly about white gays so feel free to stop defending yourself against a conversation that's not even about you. White gays don't need a savior deflecting accountability for them, I promise.

(for context the black girl in the first left said "you have no real problems" and the white boy said "yes I do I'm gay, You're the one that has no idea of oppression). The second was CLEARLY said to someone who is CLEARLY a minority.

You projected the idea that they were defending themselves against bigotry to justify picking an argument with me and playing victim. And honestly? This ask is a perfect example of how incapable LGBTs are of seeing passed the scope of their own oppression.

"Radical feminism, trans inclusive or not, is based around biological essentialist white supremacy whether radfems want to admit it or not." This is the first time I’m seeing this and idk I’ve seen some rad fem blogs (not terf just rf) but I don't get how it then makes it white supremacy (genuine q). Those blogs never seemed exclusive toward poc to me, but the opposite? Like completely acknowledging the far worse struggle of woc with accessing reproductive healthcare and stuff.

Obviously other and better educated people than me have said and explained this better (and I’d specifically invite WoC to expand on the topic and invite white feminists and radfem sympathizers to do some reading by WoC on the topic) but

Glossing over what was already said in that previous post: Basically, radical feminism tends toward discrimination of other groups because the “radical” part is that sexism and the patriarchy are the biggest oppressive forces in society, which leads to a lot of glossing over of the experiences of other oppressed groups (i.e a black woman who experiences discrimination is experiencing it because she’s a woman and not specifically because she’s a black woman). It’s also antithetical to ideas like “no war but class war” - to radfems, it’s “no war but gender war.”

Basically, to radfems, all forms of oppression either tie to or are dwarfed by sexism - gay men are only oppressed because they are “like women,” etc. - other forms of oppression lead back to sexism. Radfems tend to hold a narrow definition of what women think, look like, and want, that most reflects the actual appearance and desires of middle-class white women (breaking the glass ceiling, the right to an abortion, etc.) That’s not to say radfems can’t be part of other oppressed groups, but the movement as a whole usually doesn’t focus on them.

(And there might be a handful of people who send-identify as radfems but don’t necessarily fit this mold - these are patterns in the movement as a whole and not everyone who says they’re a radfem necessarily has educated themselves about the history of the term.)

So when a gay woman or a black woman, for example, talks about her experiences as a woman, white straight radical feminists listen, but when these same women speak up about their experiences as black people or as gay people, radical feminists are not so willing to boost these messages.

“Intersectional feminism” is a preferred route for many feminists which recognizes how all parts of an individual’s identity affect the way they experience oppression. A black woman and a white woman, or a gay woman and a straight woman, or a poor woman and a rich woman, or a Muslim woman and a Christian woman, experience oppression, and even sexism specifically, differently. It requires people to specifically recognize that they probably experience both privilege and oppression. (For example, I’m a bisexual woman with a learning disability - I could experience oppression for that - but I’m also white and able-bodied - for those things and others I experience privilege.)

And since I said other people have said it better than me, here’s other people, taken from a USA Today article on the topic of intersectional feminism:

https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/96633750

“Moreover, privileging attention to abortion rights over other reproductive justice issues — such as forced sterilization — can be seen to elevate a middle-class white women’ agenda over other issues that are equally if not more important to poor women and women of color.”... Intersectional feminism is a form of feminism that stands for the rights and empowerment of all women, taking seriously the fact of differences among women, including different identities based on radicalization, sexuality, economic status, nationality, religion, and language. Intersectional feminism attends to the ways in which claims made in the name of women as a class can function to silence or marginalize some women by universalizing the claims of relatively privileged women.”

And here’s an article on the topic of radical feminism:

https://jacobinmag.com/2017/07/radical-feminism-second-wave-class